The "compressed air" in a can you speak of may well be some freon derivative, not the nitrogen-oxygen-etc mix we call "air".
There may be some interesting chemical interactions between the plastic and the freon, which could be a solvent to the plastic.
Without further study, I am ill-prepared to advise you on what you will get. But there's no telling what might come of it.
I think you are wise in your advice to not breathe the fumes. I have no idea what hydrocarbons and halogen derivatives may be formed, but I do know some of our most toxic materials are formed from malformed organic molecules, which trick our biological organic synthesis systems into doing things they are not supposed to do.
He also notes the disk speed is lowered due to aerodynamic drag.
Personally, I would have been impressed if he had done something to the disk, maybe going over quarters of it with a black felt pen so an optical pickup could have determined its RPM, instead of guessing.
At those speeds, gyroscopic effects can really be exaggerated! Gyroscopic effects alone can result in some really bizarre behaviour when the plane of rotation is changed.
This experiment reminds me the time we got a flywheel spinning off the table-saw motor in high school shop. The flywheel got away from us when unexpected gyro forces wrenched it from our hands. The damage that thing did was talked about from then on to beyond the day I graduated.
Very insightful post, Hackus. If I had some mod points, I would have definitely used one for this.
I have worked in these aerospace programs.. it takes a helluva long time to really know something inside and out. I work mostly in robotics and motion control, used to do a lot of the analog design, but I found software and DSP control techniques quite fascinating.. so I went back to school to run through the Computer Science curriculum. I explained my situation to my professors, that I was after a thorough understanding of how and why things worked, not to become a guru on the OS du jour. They all understood. I did all my stuff on the system I know best, my old Borland C++ compiler for DOS. Sure, I did a little Windows stuff now and then to demonstate how to display stuff, but I always saw it as something I really didn't understand the innards of..kinda like a calculator.. I knew how to use it but really did not know how to fix it if it gave me unexpected results.
I *did* understand my simple DOS system. I knew exactly what hung up if it entered a weird state, and was able to detect weird states and bounce out of them. My stuff is all real-time processing, not really display intensive. I let the gui guys that know the OS du jour do the presentation stuff, they are really good at it. I prefer to stick with what I know best, designing the embedded algorithms that basically model the analog circuits I am so comfortable with.
I usually code my stuff to run stand-alone. No OS. I grab the Instruction Pointer at power-up and take it from there. I know exactly every clock cycle what the CPU is doing. However, I admit I build very simple systems.. usually around the Motorola 68HC000, MicroChip, or Atmel parts. Too much complexity lends itself to way too many things that can go wrong. Even on Earth, I do not like getting calls that someone is having trouble with one of my robots.
Yup.. old Borland 3.0 for DOS! I went right through most of my studies with it. I understand this one. It took me a good 10 years to really feel I understood it. Force me to use another system, and while I can usually make something with it, I have no warm fuzzy feeling inside that it will work no matter what.
With the assembler ( like the 68HC000 stuff ) I feel I am God... I tell the processor exactly what to do and how to do it. With a C++ executable, at least I know what I told it to do. With a lot of the high level stuff, I have no idea whats going on behind my back... and just have to trust and have faith that nothing bad will happen - but I don't sleep well on it.
Please, before we come down too hard on these posters... the reason a lot of us *hate* to "register" for these sites is that they require our email addresses, then make sure the address is valid by sending the logon credentials to it.
We are getting way too much spam already!
About the last thing I want to do is spread my email addy all over the net, especially to someone I flat do not trust to sell it to every marketer which will give 'em a buck.
And trying to constantly scrounge up throwaway email addys is a pain in the arse... or at least it is to me...
Please, moderators, go light on these guys for the comments they made.. and take it in the light of why the "registration required" sites are considered to be a pain in the arse.
Note that a lot of integrity checking, spread spectrum spreading codes, and encryption codes such as CSS use these codes. They are fast and generate statistically random codes.
Although these registers are often implemented at the hardware level, they are also quite easy to code.
Don't sweat it too much. The powers that be have grown very accustomed to power, and I strongly suspect the strongest fear they have is losing it.
The problem is the economy...we don't have the rest of the world depending on us anymore. Thanks to all the jobs exporting programs, we have a lot of our own technology people unemployed. We have ex-aerospace engineers working as countermen at Radio Shack. And as Greeters in Wal-Mart. I know this as fact. I worked along side of them.
Methinks we are really dregging the bottom of the barrel now trying to kick-start the economy.. note how the powers that be keep dropping the interest rates trying to maintain real-estate values. Once this system starts collapsing and fewer and fewer people can pay the price, we will see a lot of formerly rich investors find their money re-absorbed by the same process that generated the money in the first place. Money was created from nothing, it can go back to nothing just as fast, as it was created not by substance, but hope and hype.
I know we are on the bandwagon now to convert ourselves to an information-based economy with all sorts of intellectual property rights legislation, but this is going to work only if others want to send their money over here just because we say so. All these tax breaks are trying to put a few more dollars in the pockets of the public at large to bolster spending, so as to boost business ( and stock prices ), but its doing it at a steep cost of running public debt through the roof.
I am watching my Nation act like a family whose breadwinner has lost employment, yet continuing to spend the resources as if nothing's changed, using credit cards to give the illusion of maintained spending power. Ask anyone whose let debt get out of control to see what hell is. From what I see, we are heading right into it.
"put object in, hit start, hit stop as quick as you can, pull object out, done"
Just remember the magnetron is a vacuum tube. It has a filament. If it doesn't have time to warm up, you won't get any thermionic emission, hence no microwaves. You can probably hear the hum from the power transformer change as the magnetron filament warms up and the plate circuit begins drawing current from its 2 kilovolt supply.
"The bend over one. AAC is here, baby, and it's free for anybody to use. iTunes is on every Mac, and there are some non-Mac implementations out there for anybody who happens to be perverse enough to want to use one."
"So you're saying it's tougher to be a script kiddie than it is to, say, fly a commercial airliner?"
I would say its a lot tougher and requires a helluva lot more knowledge and study to penetrate a system than it does to fly a jet airliner... but landing one is a whole different story.
I guess the whole American economic paradigm is like a bunch of rats in the ocean.. the first thing that floats, they all want to climb on it.
Find any way you can of gumming up the works, then exact a fee to get out of the way.
Both the power utility and phone company here got quite sick and tired of being hit with all sorts of government regulations, and expected to quietly hide the cost of compliance in the utility bills, so it would not look to the consumer like another tax... then the utility companies started itemizing.. showing the consumers that the product they were trying to buy wasn't all that expensive, it was all the regulatory mandates that were causing the price run-ups.
Maybe if Ebay gets hit with this, they may want to itemize too, and show the public how much the seller got, how much eBay got, and how much extra went to compliance with whichever patent and law. Further links could point back to congressional records to show who voted for this. With the massive public appearance eBay presents, they would be doing us all a favor by showing which congresscritters are costing us so much money. Come election day, they can all hold their little shindigs and prance around with their little styrofoam hats, and tell the rest of us little guys how they fight for us in Congress... but those words will fall on deaf ears if the populace has been informed of what that politician does when the publicity cameras are off.
Yeh.. given the state of our country, I'm waiting any day now for news of the lawsuit McDonalds will pull on Burger King over the construction of a hamburger.
Ok.. since you brought up Religion getting in the way of human progress, let me run my belief system up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes it, or if they piss on it.
Given... God made the Universe.. Heavens, Earth, and everything in it. I am not stating what God is, or how "he" did it. I have no idea. I have been looking for 40 years now without much luck.
Science is the study of God's Creation. I choose to let Creation itself bear witness of the Creator. I consider the Laws of Physics to be God's Law. He created them. I certainly didn't. Scientists are recognized for observing and documenting a relationship, but name me any scientist that dictated the mechanization. Anybody here can change the charge of an electron? Only God can do that. And don't take me as a religious nut - I get in extremely heated arguments with every darned religion I come in contact with. Even the Bible itself describes how much deception is involved in searching for God. Many passages. If Science is the study of God's Creation, then I see Science itself as the ultimate study for verification of God.
I see all these lengthy texts from antiquity, but yet these were written by MAN. Of course, they say "Inspired by God".. but I am writing this right now, and I feel "Inspired by God" too. Does this make me a prophet? I hope not, for I don't have anything more than speculative reports at this time. I just want the TRUTH. I've known MAN for way too long and know he will tell me anything to get me to follow him. ( Leadership skills ).
My prime fear on religion has to do with the propensity of men to "create" a superior when they want authority to boss other men around, but don't want to take responsibility for their decisions. Its kinda like the business types that can make a decision, but if you press them for one that they don't want to make, they will come up with the line that they don't have authority to do it and will bring it up to the "committee". Knowing how the human psychology mandates pecking orders so heavily, how do I discriminate between That who Created the Universe, and something somebody made up long time ago? They speak many words, but offer no proof, citing "faith". C'mon now, am I to believe in a God that is sold like a bad investment? What do they take me for?
Science is the only thing I have to go on. Something demonstrable.
All this study on Genetics to me is just further study of God's Creation. God put it here for us. If whatever created us did not want us messing with it, we would never be able to comprehend it. Can you imagine cats studying genetics? If God had wanted a bunch of bleating sheep, He could have left it as such.
And as I stated, although I often use the word "He" to reference the deity, I have no idea what I am dealing with. Lacking anything definitive, I often see nebulous phrases such as "spirits" used as a descriptor.
I don't think the problem is so much what we know, its whether or not we can develop the wisdom of knowing what to do with it. Knowlege can be used for great good, or great evil. Our choice. If you pray for anything, pray for Wisdom.
"out of curiousity, why do you add plus signs "+" before everything you google? I thought the only need for the plus operator was to force common word searches."
Frankly, out of habit. I had worked with several other search engines in the past and they all seemed to recognize this syntax. I could easily switch the "+" to a "-" if I wanted to specifically exclude something.. like +"Crimson Tide" +"movie" -"football".
Other syntaxes may work just fine.. its just I got used to doing it this way, and it worked as I expected.. so I do it this way until something forces me to change.
"Even when directly contacting the sensor with the key fob in my pocket it didn't activate it. It had to be held infront of the device, almost touching it."
I betcha this is the design which doesn't have any batteries in the tag.. it uses the RF energy from the sensor for its power. The data is sent back synchronously with the pulses of RF being fed to it. Using spread-spectrum techniques, you can get the signal-to-noise rejection ratios quite high as the sensor receiver acts as a "lock-in" amplifier, correlating the data received with the known transmitted exciter. Sniff it? Hardly. It looks just like white noise, except to the interrogating device which is interrogating the tag with something that also looks just like white noise.
There is an infinite sea of number sequences out there which look just like white noise.. but if you know precisely which sequence you sent, and what to look for, no one else is privy to it and can't see it at all.
Remember, the power ( RF "illumination" ) drops off as the square of the distance, so if you set this thing right, you hold the tag close, it will work, but pull it an inch or so out of range, forget it. Insufficient power to do a thing. And if its not illuminated with the correct source, it can't return data in sync... so this thing oughta be really hard to spoof.
How many years does it usually take before proprietary file formats become unreadable as the forces of Windows Upgrades takes its toll, rendering the earlier executables unusable?
I am used to the concept of once I have data, its mine as long as I want to keep it, not like some VisiCalc program whose data is extinct when it can no longer be read.
I believe the ASCII file formats,.WAV,.MP3,.OGG,.BMP,.GIF,.JPG,.MPG,.PNG, etc, will be around forever, but proprietary formats will be gone or redefined in a matter of years, if not months, with earlier formats rendered unreadable.
If I am going to buy a book, it better be written in my native language, English. Its worth very little to me if I have to hire an interpreter to read an obscure dialect if the book was published as such, as the day my interpreter dies is the day I no longer have access to the information in the book.
We, the people, ultimately make the decision as to which file formats media will be released in. If they run some weird proprietary formats up the flagpole and nobody salutes, they will keep at it until people pull out the wallet. I won't buy bolts at the hardware store which are incompatible with my existing hardware... why should I buy into incompatible file formats for my data purchases?
I
googled for +"real networks" +"spyware" and got 770 hits.
Until they can provide me with some modicum of security, I have no intention of dealing with this outfit, especially now since DMCA prevents me and others from verifying and reporting the "honesty" of their code.
It is my recommendation that this software should be used by people who really don't have anything private on their machine, such as credit cards or any accounts of online businesses, don't have an email addy to be harvested, or can delegate accountability of resulting disasters to some lower subordinate.
Ok.. I am replying to a troll.. but you did post an interesting quote:
"I really don't think they understand or believe that illegal file-sharing is the same thing as going into Tower [Records], grabbing a CD off the rack, and running out the door with it," said Scott Hervey, chairman of California Bar's cyberspace law committee."
I tend to think of it in the same quagmire as all those tourists which go to Disneyland with their cameras and take pictures of Disney's Copyrighted Images and Characters, then sneak home with their exposed film and recall later their experiences at the park without paying Disney another fee for the enjoyment of his work..
One argument is that you didn't steal Mickey Mouse by taking a picture of him. Another may say you did. This is the quagmire. Personally, I see thousands of cameras snapping and Mickey is still there. So I take from this nobody stole Mickey.
My condolences to the Disney Corporation for mentioning their Copyrighted Characters in the Mickey Mouse discussion.
Weeel, I'll give him the benefit that the $75 + tax + gasoline is the money he has to spend after he deducts all the taxes and expenses he had to spend to get the spendable cash in the first place. It seems I have to "earn" about $500 to get around $75 that I can spend in a store. The rest gets siphoned off to an enormous assortment of taxes and overhead expenses.
I found I worked much cheaper than a gardener if I worked for myself, as I had a choice as to try to earn $500 to get $75 spendable cash for the gardener, or just do it myself. Ok, a couple of hours.. $250 hour equivalent to mow the lawn. But I am not taxed on the money I did not have to spend if I mowed the lawn myself, I am only taxed on the money I earn doing something for someone else.
The trick is in working for businesses, they need a write off too, so there is high incentive for them to report all transactions to get credit for their expenses, placing the tax burden onto me, yet the gardener, taking advantage that tax law gives me no incentive for deductions for employing a gardener, gets 100% pure spendable unaccounted for cash, not some block of numbers in a box on a chit of paper that look impressive, but when the spendable cash is extracted, not much. And much accounting to the government even over that. You may end up below the so called poverty line, and still pay more tax than Microsoft Corporation is rumored to pay.
As for solvents, watch it. Some melt plastic. Others will also remove the lubricants which made the plastic parts slide smoothly. My favorite technique is to use a solution of distilled water and dishwashing detergent and apply the solution with a paintbrush to the keyboard, scrubbing with the brush, so as to remove the surface contaminants while using a shop-vac type vacuum cleaner to remove any excess solution so it doesn't get in and gum the works. If the keyboard is already that gummed up, I'll take it apart and clean it in the sink, as many keyboards are made so that this is actually possible. Some are made with an assortment of springs in such a manner that once you discover how it was assembled, you will never get it back together again. It is obvious they used some sort of jig to get it together in the first place. But then, a lot of capacitive keyboards use some sort of molded elastomeric spring sheet, and are quite easy to clean. But the problem with these is that they are rubberlike, and like darned all rubberlike materials I have encountered, sans some in the space program, they lose elasticity with age. Cleaning them won't restore their former properties. Might as well get a new keyboard if thats the case.
Hey, I've sent quite a few in too. There's a helluva lot of readers here, and a helluva lot of submissions. If the folks running this joint posted everything in the pipe, there would be so much here to read that it would overwhelm us.
Please keep up sending in nifty stuff. I think the folks here do a pretty good job of sifting through it all and putting the ones they think everyone would like up the pole.
I haven't seen a one of mine make it yet, but no big deal. There's an art to making a good topic, and I have not mastered it yet - but that doesn't mean I will quit trying.
( Actually, upon previewing this, I intended this to go to your parent. But I am too damn lazy to retype it. )
To stop reverse engineering applications such as GATOR to see what they do.
Under the protection of DMCA, companies of dubious intentions are permitted the full protection of LAW to go into whatever systems they can penetrate and do whatever they will, while anyone attempting to verify their actions performs illegal acts in doing so.
The corporate businessman should rest in peace knowing that neither him or anybody working for him knows what his system is really doing. This right is protected by LAW. Isn't ignorance bliss?
Side note: I have just received my new "cardholder agreement" from VISA, and it states:
"K. SHARING OF TRANSACTIONAL AND EXPERIENCE INFORMATION
We may, to the extent permitted by applicable law, communicate information about our experiences and transactions with you to consumer reporting agencies, our affiliates, and others who may properly receive that information."
I italicized the "permitted" because I expect any organization which wants my respect to use the word "required".
It was featured here on Slashdot where the RIAA is apparently legally releasing a program to search out their copyrighted material on P2P networks and delete it. It would probably be hard to sue them for inappropriately deleted material or interference with the proper operation of my system.. but just as the RIAA claims copyrights on stuff they made ( I don't blame them ), I claim copyright on my life, as I am the author of it. I feel rather strongly if Congress is going to protect RIAA copyrights, it should protect mine too. I see TIA is just another Napster - but its MY copyrighted material this time being stored/distributed without consent of author. If they cannot demonstrate to me that my right to live my private life without others recording, analyzing, reversing, etc. is sacred, how can they expect me to honor other's rights? Now, that the business paradigm is to do whats "permitted" by law, am I to assume that since RIAA is "permitted" to enter others machines searching out data it considers proprietary and deleting it, that I can do the same? These Credit Card companies send me these notes with abandon telling me that they are going to share my dealings with them as "permitted" by law, how should they take it that they may be haxored as "permitted" by law to remove what one my consider his "copyrighted" information, such as details of one's private life?
Thanks for the suggestions.. its amazing how much one learns from other's insights.
I thought it was *me* for the longest time... but when I ran my situation past my statistics professor, he suggested I read a tiny book "Obedience to Authority" by Stanley Milgram.
That one answered a lot of questions I had on leadership and subordination, finding out it was perfectly natural for one to "lose drive" when micromanaged, as the one doing the micromanaging establishes himself as leader and his subordinates now merely follow orders. I guess its about the
quickest way of converting your artistic types into the typical run of the mill office drone.
Like you, I am inherently lazy and want it done right the first time so I don't have to do it over. I'll have to see that movie "Office Space".
I'm not much of a movie watcher, but hope its good enough to pry me away from my workbench.
Slashdot Mirror
There may be some interesting chemical interactions between the plastic and the freon, which could be a solvent to the plastic.
Without further study, I am ill-prepared to advise you on what you will get. But there's no telling what might come of it.
I think you are wise in your advice to not breathe the fumes. I have no idea what hydrocarbons and halogen derivatives may be formed, but I do know some of our most toxic materials are formed from malformed organic molecules, which trick our biological organic synthesis systems into doing things they are not supposed to do.
You will also get a lot of really smelly fumes from the ignition.
I have no idea of the toxicity of these fumes, but I can tell you your pizza will taste funny the next time you use the microwave oven to prepare it.
So, if you wanna experiment, do it in someone else's oven.
He also notes the disk speed is lowered due to aerodynamic drag.
Personally, I would have been impressed if he had done something to the disk, maybe going over quarters of it with a black felt pen so an optical pickup could have determined its RPM, instead of guessing.
At those speeds, gyroscopic effects can really be exaggerated! Gyroscopic effects alone can result in some really bizarre behaviour when the plane of rotation is changed.
This experiment reminds me the time we got a flywheel spinning off the table-saw motor in high school shop. The flywheel got away from us when unexpected gyro forces wrenched it from our hands. The damage that thing did was talked about from then on to beyond the day I graduated.
I have worked in these aerospace programs.. it takes a helluva long time to really know something inside and out. I work mostly in robotics and motion control, used to do a lot of the analog design, but I found software and DSP control techniques quite fascinating.. so I went back to school to run through the Computer Science curriculum. I explained my situation to my professors, that I was after a thorough understanding of how and why things worked, not to become a guru on the OS du jour. They all understood. I did all my stuff on the system I know best, my old Borland C++ compiler for DOS. Sure, I did a little Windows stuff now and then to demonstate how to display stuff, but I always saw it as something I really didn't understand the innards of..kinda like a calculator.. I knew how to use it but really did not know how to fix it if it gave me unexpected results.
I *did* understand my simple DOS system. I knew exactly what hung up if it entered a weird state, and was able to detect weird states and bounce out of them. My stuff is all real-time processing, not really display intensive. I let the gui guys that know the OS du jour do the presentation stuff, they are really good at it. I prefer to stick with what I know best, designing the embedded algorithms that basically model the analog circuits I am so comfortable with.
I usually code my stuff to run stand-alone. No OS. I grab the Instruction Pointer at power-up and take it from there. I know exactly every clock cycle what the CPU is doing. However, I admit I build very simple systems.. usually around the Motorola 68HC000, MicroChip, or Atmel parts. Too much complexity lends itself to way too many things that can go wrong. Even on Earth, I do not like getting calls that someone is having trouble with one of my robots.
Yup.. old Borland 3.0 for DOS! I went right through most of my studies with it. I understand this one. It took me a good 10 years to really feel I understood it. Force me to use another system, and while I can usually make something with it, I have no warm fuzzy feeling inside that it will work no matter what.
With the assembler ( like the 68HC000 stuff ) I feel I am God... I tell the processor exactly what to do and how to do it. With a C++ executable, at least I know what I told it to do. With a lot of the high level stuff, I have no idea whats going on behind my back... and just have to trust and have faith that nothing bad will happen - but I don't sleep well on it.
We are getting way too much spam already!
About the last thing I want to do is spread my email addy all over the net, especially to someone I flat do not trust to sell it to every marketer which will give 'em a buck.
And trying to constantly scrounge up throwaway email addys is a pain in the arse... or at least it is to me...
Please, moderators, go light on these guys for the comments they made.. and take it in the light of why the "registration required" sites are considered to be a pain in the arse.
This was "intelligence". America's best. So we invaded. Where's the WMD????
Now, are we going to use much less detailed "intelligence" to determine if some citizen is going to be pestered?
Salem Witch Hunts all over again!!!!
These produce sequences of numbers known as PseudoRandom Binary Sequences .
Note that a lot of integrity checking, spread spectrum spreading codes, and encryption codes such as CSS use these codes. They are fast and generate statistically random codes.
Although these registers are often implemented at the hardware level, they are also quite easy to code.
The problem is the economy...we don't have the rest of the world depending on us anymore. Thanks to all the jobs exporting programs, we have a lot of our own technology people unemployed. We have ex-aerospace engineers working as countermen at Radio Shack. And as Greeters in Wal-Mart. I know this as fact. I worked along side of them.
Methinks we are really dregging the bottom of the barrel now trying to kick-start the economy.. note how the powers that be keep dropping the interest rates trying to maintain real-estate values. Once this system starts collapsing and fewer and fewer people can pay the price, we will see a lot of formerly rich investors find their money re-absorbed by the same process that generated the money in the first place. Money was created from nothing, it can go back to nothing just as fast, as it was created not by substance, but hope and hype.
I know we are on the bandwagon now to convert ourselves to an information-based economy with all sorts of intellectual property rights legislation, but this is going to work only if others want to send their money over here just because we say so. All these tax breaks are trying to put a few more dollars in the pockets of the public at large to bolster spending, so as to boost business ( and stock prices ), but its doing it at a steep cost of running public debt through the roof.
I am watching my Nation act like a family whose breadwinner has lost employment, yet continuing to spend the resources as if nothing's changed, using credit cards to give the illusion of maintained spending power. Ask anyone whose let debt get out of control to see what hell is. From what I see, we are heading right into it.
The moneyed people who buy big gas-hogs are getting annoyed that some people buy these gas-conservative vehicles.
Consider, a few meals for a Congressman could save owners of gas-hogs a mint.
Find any way you can of gumming up the works, then exact a fee to get out of the way.
Both the power utility and phone company here got quite sick and tired of being hit with all sorts of government regulations, and expected to quietly hide the cost of compliance in the utility bills, so it would not look to the consumer like another tax... then the utility companies started itemizing.. showing the consumers that the product they were trying to buy wasn't all that expensive, it was all the regulatory mandates that were causing the price run-ups.
Maybe if Ebay gets hit with this, they may want to itemize too, and show the public how much the seller got, how much eBay got, and how much extra went to compliance with whichever patent and law. Further links could point back to congressional records to show who voted for this. With the massive public appearance eBay presents, they would be doing us all a favor by showing which congresscritters are costing us so much money. Come election day, they can all hold their little shindigs and prance around with their little styrofoam hats, and tell the rest of us little guys how they fight for us in Congress... but those words will fall on deaf ears if the populace has been informed of what that politician does when the publicity cameras are off.
Only in America...
Given... God made the Universe.. Heavens, Earth, and everything in it. I am not stating what God is, or how "he" did it. I have no idea. I have been looking for 40 years now without much luck.
Science is the study of God's Creation. I choose to let Creation itself bear witness of the Creator. I consider the Laws of Physics to be God's Law. He created them. I certainly didn't. Scientists are recognized for observing and documenting a relationship, but name me any scientist that dictated the mechanization. Anybody here can change the charge of an electron? Only God can do that. And don't take me as a religious nut - I get in extremely heated arguments with every darned religion I come in contact with. Even the Bible itself describes how much deception is involved in searching for God. Many passages. If Science is the study of God's Creation, then I see Science itself as the ultimate study for verification of God.
I see all these lengthy texts from antiquity, but yet these were written by MAN. Of course, they say "Inspired by God".. but I am writing this right now, and I feel "Inspired by God" too. Does this make me a prophet? I hope not, for I don't have anything more than speculative reports at this time. I just want the TRUTH. I've known MAN for way too long and know he will tell me anything to get me to follow him. ( Leadership skills ).
My prime fear on religion has to do with the propensity of men to "create" a superior when they want authority to boss other men around, but don't want to take responsibility for their decisions. Its kinda like the business types that can make a decision, but if you press them for one that they don't want to make, they will come up with the line that they don't have authority to do it and will bring it up to the "committee". Knowing how the human psychology mandates pecking orders so heavily, how do I discriminate between That who Created the Universe, and something somebody made up long time ago? They speak many words, but offer no proof, citing "faith". C'mon now, am I to believe in a God that is sold like a bad investment? What do they take me for?
Science is the only thing I have to go on. Something demonstrable.
All this study on Genetics to me is just further study of God's Creation. God put it here for us. If whatever created us did not want us messing with it, we would never be able to comprehend it. Can you imagine cats studying genetics? If God had wanted a bunch of bleating sheep, He could have left it as such.
And as I stated, although I often use the word "He" to reference the deity, I have no idea what I am dealing with. Lacking anything definitive, I often see nebulous phrases such as "spirits" used as a descriptor.
I don't think the problem is so much what we know, its whether or not we can develop the wisdom of knowing what to do with it. Knowlege can be used for great good, or great evil. Our choice. If you pray for anything, pray for Wisdom.
Other syntaxes may work just fine.. its just I got used to doing it this way, and it worked as I expected.. so I do it this way until something forces me to change.
There is an infinite sea of number sequences out there which look just like white noise.. but if you know precisely which sequence you sent, and what to look for, no one else is privy to it and can't see it at all.
Remember, the power ( RF "illumination" ) drops off as the square of the distance, so if you set this thing right, you hold the tag close, it will work, but pull it an inch or so out of range, forget it. Insufficient power to do a thing. And if its not illuminated with the correct source, it can't return data in sync... so this thing oughta be really hard to spoof.
Looks really neat to me.
I am used to the concept of once I have data, its mine as long as I want to keep it, not like some VisiCalc program whose data is extinct when it can no longer be read.
I believe the ASCII file formats, .WAV, .MP3, .OGG, .BMP, .GIF, .JPG, .MPG, .PNG, etc, will be around forever, but proprietary formats will be gone or redefined in a matter of years, if not months, with earlier formats rendered unreadable.
If I am going to buy a book, it better be written in my native language, English. Its worth very little to me if I have to hire an interpreter to read an obscure dialect if the book was published as such, as the day my interpreter dies is the day I no longer have access to the information in the book.
We, the people, ultimately make the decision as to which file formats media will be released in. If they run some weird proprietary formats up the flagpole and nobody salutes, they will keep at it until people pull out the wallet. I won't buy bolts at the hardware store which are incompatible with my existing hardware... why should I buy into incompatible file formats for my data purchases?
Until they can provide me with some modicum of security, I have no intention of dealing with this outfit, especially now since DMCA prevents me and others from verifying and reporting the "honesty" of their code.
It is my recommendation that this software should be used by people who really don't have anything private on their machine, such as credit cards or any accounts of online businesses, don't have an email addy to be harvested, or can delegate accountability of resulting disasters to some lower subordinate.
One argument is that you didn't steal Mickey Mouse by taking a picture of him. Another may say you did. This is the quagmire. Personally, I see thousands of cameras snapping and Mickey is still there. So I take from this nobody stole Mickey.
My condolences to the Disney Corporation for mentioning their Copyrighted Characters in the Mickey Mouse discussion.
I found I worked much cheaper than a gardener if I worked for myself, as I had a choice as to try to earn $500 to get $75 spendable cash for the gardener, or just do it myself. Ok, a couple of hours.. $250 hour equivalent to mow the lawn. But I am not taxed on the money I did not have to spend if I mowed the lawn myself, I am only taxed on the money I earn doing something for someone else.
The trick is in working for businesses, they need a write off too, so there is high incentive for them to report all transactions to get credit for their expenses, placing the tax burden onto me, yet the gardener, taking advantage that tax law gives me no incentive for deductions for employing a gardener, gets 100% pure spendable unaccounted for cash, not some block of numbers in a box on a chit of paper that look impressive, but when the spendable cash is extracted, not much. And much accounting to the government even over that. You may end up below the so called poverty line, and still pay more tax than Microsoft Corporation is rumored to pay.
As for solvents, watch it. Some melt plastic. Others will also remove the lubricants which made the plastic parts slide smoothly. My favorite technique is to use a solution of distilled water and dishwashing detergent and apply the solution with a paintbrush to the keyboard, scrubbing with the brush, so as to remove the surface contaminants while using a shop-vac type vacuum cleaner to remove any excess solution so it doesn't get in and gum the works. If the keyboard is already that gummed up, I'll take it apart and clean it in the sink, as many keyboards are made so that this is actually possible. Some are made with an assortment of springs in such a manner that once you discover how it was assembled, you will never get it back together again. It is obvious they used some sort of jig to get it together in the first place. But then, a lot of capacitive keyboards use some sort of molded elastomeric spring sheet, and are quite easy to clean. But the problem with these is that they are rubberlike, and like darned all rubberlike materials I have encountered, sans some in the space program, they lose elasticity with age. Cleaning them won't restore their former properties. Might as well get a new keyboard if thats the case.
Please keep up sending in nifty stuff. I think the folks here do a pretty good job of sifting through it all and putting the ones they think everyone would like up the pole.
I haven't seen a one of mine make it yet, but no big deal. There's an art to making a good topic, and I have not mastered it yet - but that doesn't mean I will quit trying.
( Actually, upon previewing this, I intended this to go to your parent. But I am too damn lazy to retype it. )
Under the protection of DMCA, companies of dubious intentions are permitted the full protection of LAW to go into whatever systems they can penetrate and do whatever they will, while anyone attempting to verify their actions performs illegal acts in doing so.
The corporate businessman should rest in peace knowing that neither him or anybody working for him knows what his system is really doing. This right is protected by LAW. Isn't ignorance bliss?
Side note: I have just received my new "cardholder agreement" from VISA, and it states:
I italicized the "permitted" because I expect any organization which wants my respect to use the word "required".It was featured here on Slashdot where the RIAA is apparently legally releasing a program to search out their copyrighted material on P2P networks and delete it. It would probably be hard to sue them for inappropriately deleted material or interference with the proper operation of my system.. but just as the RIAA claims copyrights on stuff they made ( I don't blame them ), I claim copyright on my life, as I am the author of it. I feel rather strongly if Congress is going to protect RIAA copyrights, it should protect mine too. I see TIA is just another Napster - but its MY copyrighted material this time being stored/distributed without consent of author. If they cannot demonstrate to me that my right to live my private life without others recording, analyzing, reversing, etc. is sacred, how can they expect me to honor other's rights? Now, that the business paradigm is to do whats "permitted" by law, am I to assume that since RIAA is "permitted" to enter others machines searching out data it considers proprietary and deleting it, that I can do the same? These Credit Card companies send me these notes with abandon telling me that they are going to share my dealings with them as "permitted" by law, how should they take it that they may be haxored as "permitted" by law to remove what one my consider his "copyrighted" information, such as details of one's private life?
I thought it was *me* for the longest time... but when I ran my situation past my statistics professor, he suggested I read a tiny book "Obedience to Authority" by Stanley Milgram.
That one answered a lot of questions I had on leadership and subordination, finding out it was perfectly natural for one to "lose drive" when micromanaged, as the one doing the micromanaging establishes himself as leader and his subordinates now merely follow orders. I guess its about the quickest way of converting your artistic types into the typical run of the mill office drone.
Like you, I am inherently lazy and want it done right the first time so I don't have to do it over. I'll have to see that movie "Office Space". I'm not much of a movie watcher, but hope its good enough to pry me away from my workbench.