Another important difference between the black boxes in aircraft and the ones in cars is that the ones from aircraft never are used for prosecution of the pilots. As far as I recall, there is some explicit and specific agreement about this. Meanwhile, in this article it is said that the information tends to be used against the driver. I can just about imagine how insurance companies can exploit this...
Meanwhile, in the old car I have here, the only complicated piece of electronics is the radio.
Indeed! The idea of having coins matching the prices of products sold was discussed in a comical magazine years ago. The two examples there were a 47-crown coin suitable for the purchase of a bottle of booze, and a 6-crown coin similarly suitable for purchasing a box of headache pills for use afterwards.
As for coins with N sides, how about making them like gears with N teeth instead. Could lead to interesting implementations of money-counting machines if nothing else.
The good and really important stuff (e.g. Shakespeare) will be saved because everyone knows about it and cares, the mediocre and bad stuff gets sorted out if nobody cares about it.
However, the vagaries of fashion seem to indicate that old styles come back again regularly. And who gets to decide in the end?
Consider some of the classical composers who did not become popular until 50 years or more after they died. Today they are counted amongst the masters.
Or consider old cars. Vehicles which were generally regarded as low-quality bangers in the 1960s, then rubbish in the 1970s and 1980s are now being restored and sold for higher prices (numerically, but still...) than they cost new back then.
My point is, even if some literary achievement or some other work of art or utility is viewed as rubbish or irrelevant by whoever gets to decide at the time, years later, opinion may change. By analogy of slashdot moderation, this would correspond to something being rated (Score: 0, Troll) at some point and then being considered worthy of (Score: 4, Insightful) three years later.
The question remains unanswered: how are we to know what people will like and how well they will like it hundreds of years later. Certain things like Shakespeare's plays will probably be regarded as masterpieces forever, but how are we to know without the benefit of hindsight what is worth keeping and what can be discarded?
One way we try to get around this problem of loss is to try and record as much as we can, in the hope that someone will be interested in all of it sometime in the near future. Provided they are able to read it that is. Your point on proprietary file formats is an important one.
Some countries' national archives actually do this, they keep copies of all documents, magazines, newspapers, and books being published. Paper copies are readily readable, but no single storage medium seems to last forever. Keeping everything implies an ever-increasing job of copying all of it to new media ere the old ones rot...
The joy of making things work, even if it seems trivial to some seasoned expert, is not to be undervalued! Controlling things through the parallel port may not be novel, but learning how to use it to turn on and off LEDs and relays is still worthwhile.
There is this wonderful connection between the 1's and 0's of software actually appearing as electrical signals with one or the other voltage on them.
I have preferred connecting something to the serial port myself, since that was easier to get working under the Windows NT family of operating systems. However, with Linux, the parallel port is just as straightforward as the serial port, and offers a lot more signals.
I guess the duct itself could be used as a waveguide; after all, waveguides resemble ducts somewhat.
The problems might be with the sizes of the ducts, that they won't pass all wavelengths very well, so each size duct would need a different frequency... The smaller the duct, the higher the minimum frequency would be; with a free-space wavelength on the order of the longer edge length of a rectangular duct and the diameter of a cylindrical one. On the other hand, something like a 2.45 GHz signal could probably work in most sizes, since the wavelength is sufficiently small.
I guess there would need to be some considerations at tee-junctions and plenums...
As I recall, the original IBM AT would not allow any faster operation than 6 MHz. Try replacing the 24 MHz crystal with something faster and the BIOS would not let the machine run anymore.
The reason for this might have been to ensure the integrity of the signals within, and maybe meet the FCC specs for radiation; perhaps this is what is being aimed at here?
I guess similar arguments may be made for including further factors 7 (210n+7 etc) and 11 (2310n+7 and so on) but I suspect this gets too unwieldy too soon to be very useful.
Finally, I wonder where they found that "speed limit 31 mph" sign. I have seen speed limits of 13 and 19 mph elsewhere, so this could even be a bit fascinating. Also, I wonder how much of a coincidence it is that the numbers 3, 31, 17, and 13, can be found in the URL of the article.
I remember returning from Canada into Washington State and seeing a sign saying "Speed limit 88 km/h" on I5 just south of the border... Now, who has got their speedometer calibrated to that sort of resolution? And as for kilometer signs where all cars' odometers are showing miles, whatever would these be good for?
Similarly, a quart of milk would be labeled as 0.946 liters. Again, who in their right minds would want to be confronted with funny numbers like that? If at least they had changed the numbers to become nice and round in metric units, say, changed the speed limit to 90 km/h; sold 1 liter milk cartons and so on; the conversion effort might have stood a chance.
I have been trying to do that when the bug-fix or other reply would take too long. Once I discover I have mail that is.
The problem is when they send the mail at 10 AM and I am not looking at the in-box until 3 PM.
Numbers at right angles to each other
on
Imagining Numbers
·
· Score: 1
As part of a theory course I held for some prospective Radio Amateurs, I mentioned how the complex numbers turned out useful when dealing with electrical components at AC.
The argument went as follows: "We have a series connection of a resistor and inductor, with some AC current going thru them. This is drawn as a set of rotating pointers, with the current and voltage of the resistor to the right, the voltage of the inductor 90 degrees ahead of the current, pointing upwards.
"The ratio for the voltage to current for the inductor is w*L, but note that these voltages are 90 degrees out of phase. We use the label j to indicate this, so multiply with j means turn the phase 90 degrees. So the voltage for the inductor becomes j*w*L."
To emphasize this, the same argument was repeated again for a capacitor, ending with the formula V = -j / w * C, and again it was noted that we can turn things around by multiplying with j.
"Now, look at what happens if we multiply twice by j; we end up with the pointer going the other way around. Evidently j*j = -1."
Thus the meaning of the complex numbers was imparted, avoiding the gee-whiz effect of the expression "square root of -1".
On a much lighter note, when I went to University, they would offer so-called "Thousand Island Dressing" which appeared to be a 50/50 mix of mayonnaise and ketchup. We called it "600+j800 islands" indicating that we would have to imagine some of them to make the full 1000...
Around here the best place for obtaining miscellaneous odds and ends must be the Ekeberg Market, which takes place twice a year, on a Saturday in May and September.
Basically a big flea market, there are stalls selling all kinds of old car parts, tools, mechanical equipment, old radio and stereo equipment, occasionally electronics components, even entire tubes of ICs, and on and on... There is also lots of antiques and all kinds of non-technical rubbish there as well; whatever pulls the crowds. I have found goodies ranging from microprosessors to hydraulic motors there.
Another useful surplus outlet is the store of name Havaristen, located in Enebakk, south of the city. The name of that business literally means "one who has capsized" and they sell an everchanging lot of stuff from failed businesses, and stuff damaged in transit. They have everything there, at some time or another, but it is not limited to "geeky" items.
Urgency is in the eye of the beholder
on
The Tyranny of Email
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Like the author of the article and several of the others posting here, I am also mostly doing development, which is not amenable to interruptions. I think I can get into the fabled Zone somewhat sooner than the stated minimum of 3 hours, but this is not a major point.
The interruptions are the problem. Whether these are phone calls or E-mail-notifications or people visiting.
Or when people call on the phone because they want to know if I have received their E-mails...
The problem seems to be that a lot of people think E-mails are something that is always to be replied to immediately, as if they were phone calls. I do not know why this is; ordinary paper-mail is certainly asynchronous, and any kind of written letter (paper or electronic) requires about the same amount of thought anyways.
Time and time again, I tell them: I will read the E-mail and answer it when it is convenient to do so. Most of the time this seems to be grudgingly accepted; the exceptions are when the mail is about some bad system bug that demands immediate attention. And some people never seem to be able to understand why they have to wait more than 10 minutes for a reply. Must be their jobs that have all this urgency; well, I've got deadlines as well so we will have to live with it! Besides, I have to think of an answer.
Otherwise, while in bug-fixing mode, phone, E-mails, and face-to-face meetings have all their good and bad points. Phone conversations are great for getting error information from the user, most of them can read off a dialog box, and I can tell them to click this and that and immediate evaluate responses. When it comes to correcting them by having to edit some configuration data however, phone is terrible. Imagine trying to dictate URLs or code full of important punctuation-marks and hope to get it right...
And here is exactly where E-mail excels. I can type up the correct texts in the mail itself or in an attached file, and tell the recipients exactly where to put them for things to start working again. But doing the active troubleshooting (in the style of "try this... hmm... try that... nope, how about you do this and then try... ah! it crashed. OK can you read me the stack-trace... ") over E-mail is slow and cumbersome.
E-mail also has the great advantage of persisting after the fact. I do not intend to, nor manage, to remember every little detail talked about on the phone, neither do the people at the other end of the line. Instead, when an E-mail from last month is lying around, this makes it easier to pick up the thread where we left it.
Face-to-face meetings are most useful when evaluating features, testing, or simply for "showing the flag" to the customers. Makes them feel appreciated, and we all know what an asset satisfied customers are.
The password being "no" is actually one of the big subplots in Umberto Eco's "Foucaults Pendulum".
In two early chapters of that book, one of the protagonists is trying to crack the password of his vanished colleague's computer. The machine persists in asking: "Do you have the password?" and lots of permutations and magical incantations are tried.
I remember a series of books by John DeChancie I read in the 80s about an intergalactic highway system. Evidently there is a series of these books, Starrigger was one, Red Limit Freeway was another.
On the other hand, we could still have use for a local road network for the solar system. However, should this be put out to tender, we will have to screen out Vogon contractors...
One feature of the usual blogs, as websites in general, is that we have text and words there. However, if this became a video feed, we would have moving pictures, and most likely audio.
Herein lies the rub. Imagine sitting at work during a break or some other time, and looking at somebodys full-media blog: "Hello my name is Ashtead and I have been eating peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast... "
Sounding loud and clear over the cubicle farm.
Besides, I tend to laugh when finding some funny web-page, and some of my colleagues already want to know why I am laughing for no apparent reason (to them anyways). Are they now having to wonder who all these other people in here are?
There will be no more looking at and listening to these things at work anymore!
Which could possibly be a good thing, considering...
Actually, the study of bread falling off table was taking into account the starting position which is on the table and with the buttered side up. Seems the height of the table and the inertial torque of the bread conspire to make it roll somewhere between 1/4 and 3/4 turns, and therefore fall face down more often than not. With subsequent need for cleanup. If the table had been about twice as tall as a standard table (60 in instead of 30 in) the pieces of bread would have time to tumble one full turn and thus fall face up.
Falling cats are famously able to turn around and land on their feet. Unless the height of the fall is too large, the cat has no problems with that. I forgot the exact conditions of falling cats, but they are able to turn around in a fall in a lot less than the 30 inches down from a table.
If the two were to be combined and the cat has a piece of bread strapped to it, it is the cat that prevails, being more active, heavier, and having a larger moment of inertia.
I'd imagine that the same would apply to pancakes, and I have disregarded the risk of the cat eating the food.
This is still impressive, much as the second landing on the moon was just about as impressive as the first.
I would imagine that they start off with low-risk operations now, as a form of practicing, as it were. No doubt they also have a backup team of surgeons ready to intervene if something threatens to go wrong. Besides, I do not expect that they will be remotely doing life-or-death or really invasive surgery for a long time, if ever.
There is also the matter of using robots and remote-controlled scalpels and the like for brain surgery; in these cases I am quite sure this is controlled by the surgeon located right there with the patient.
Norway is not a member of the EU, however, it is a member of the EEA (Europeian Economic Area) and thus required to implement a number of EU regulations. The EUCD is just one of these, and AFAIK it has only been implemented by Denmark and Greece.
Not sure if Europeian reading skills are much better... I'm Europeian, and like many others here I read this as "Europeian" not "Europan".
So I became a bit concerned about the talk of gas clouds, as in "Whatever is Saddam Hussein up to now?" Great was my relief to discover this had to do with the Jovian satellite instead. (Never mind some other small clues)
Perhaps I have been reading too much news recently.
A colleague once had purchased some additional SRAM cache memory for his PC, and managed to put the chips in backwards. Then he found out his machine wasn't working, and called me. The set of 8 61256's had just melted inside there, and it was a bit of an exercise prying them out. He got hold of some new chips and I put them in the right way round, and after that his machine was fine.
I tried these half-melted and by now somewhat battered chips out in another circuit I had which used these kinds of RAM chips, and found that 4 of them would not work at all, 2 others worked perfectly well, and the last 2 seemed to work, but some of the bytes within would not read back correctly.
I threw them all out; I'd rather not have to worry about bugs in the hardware as well as the software!
Slashdot Mirror
LM331
rechargeable 1512
place names
lorentz transformation
TLC272
solar panel
energy meters
16F877
hydroelectric power output
carbon 14
(all from recent memory, there is others along the same lines)
What kind of profile does that really show?
Meanwhile, in the old car I have here, the only complicated piece of electronics is the radio.
As for coins with N sides, how about making them like gears with N teeth instead. Could lead to interesting implementations of money-counting machines if nothing else.
However, the vagaries of fashion seem to indicate that old styles come back again regularly. And who gets to decide in the end?
Consider some of the classical composers who did not become popular until 50 years or more after they died. Today they are counted amongst the masters.
Or consider old cars. Vehicles which were generally regarded as low-quality bangers in the 1960s, then rubbish in the 1970s and 1980s are now being restored and sold for higher prices (numerically, but still...) than they cost new back then.
My point is, even if some literary achievement or some other work of art or utility is viewed as rubbish or irrelevant by whoever gets to decide at the time, years later, opinion may change. By analogy of slashdot moderation, this would correspond to something being rated (Score: 0, Troll) at some point and then being considered worthy of (Score: 4, Insightful) three years later.
The question remains unanswered: how are we to know what people will like and how well they will like it hundreds of years later. Certain things like Shakespeare's plays will probably be regarded as masterpieces forever, but how are we to know without the benefit of hindsight what is worth keeping and what can be discarded?
One way we try to get around this problem of loss is to try and record as much as we can, in the hope that someone will be interested in all of it sometime in the near future. Provided they are able to read it that is. Your point on proprietary file formats is an important one.
Some countries' national archives actually do this, they keep copies of all documents, magazines, newspapers, and books being published. Paper copies are readily readable, but no single storage medium seems to last forever. Keeping everything implies an ever-increasing job of copying all of it to new media ere the old ones rot...
There is this wonderful connection between the 1's and 0's of software actually appearing as electrical signals with one or the other voltage on them.
I have preferred connecting something to the serial port myself, since that was easier to get working under the Windows NT family of operating systems. However, with Linux, the parallel port is just as straightforward as the serial port, and offers a lot more signals.
The problems might be with the sizes of the ducts, that they won't pass all wavelengths very well, so each size duct would need a different frequency... The smaller the duct, the higher the minimum frequency would be; with a free-space wavelength on the order of the longer edge length of a rectangular duct and the diameter of a cylindrical one. On the other hand, something like a 2.45 GHz signal could probably work in most sizes, since the wavelength is sufficiently small.
I guess there would need to be some considerations at tee-junctions and plenums ...
The reason for this might have been to ensure the integrity of the signals within, and maybe meet the FCC specs for radiation; perhaps this is what is being aimed at here?
FWIW, I can offer the following additional observation: All primes except 2 and 5 must end with 1, 3, 7 or 9, and these must be matching one of:
30n+7 30n+11 30n+13 30n+17 30n+19 30n+23 30n+29 30n+31
for all n>=0
I guess similar arguments may be made for including further factors 7 (210n+7 etc) and 11 (2310n+7 and so on) but I suspect this gets too unwieldy too soon to be very useful.
Finally, I wonder where they found that "speed limit 31 mph" sign. I have seen speed limits of 13 and 19 mph elsewhere, so this could even be a bit fascinating. Also, I wonder how much of a coincidence it is that the numbers 3, 31, 17, and 13, can be found in the URL of the article.
Similarly, a quart of milk would be labeled as 0.946 liters. Again, who in their right minds would want to be confronted with funny numbers like that? If at least they had changed the numbers to become nice and round in metric units, say, changed the speed limit to 90 km/h; sold 1 liter milk cartons and so on; the conversion effort might have stood a chance.
I have been trying to do that when the bug-fix or other reply would take too long. Once I discover I have mail that is.
The problem is when they send the mail at 10 AM and I am not looking at the in-box until 3 PM.
The argument went as follows: "We have a series connection of a resistor and inductor, with some AC current going thru them. This is drawn as a set of rotating pointers, with the current and voltage of the resistor to the right, the voltage of the inductor 90 degrees ahead of the current, pointing upwards.
"The ratio for the voltage to current for the inductor is w*L, but note that these voltages are 90 degrees out of phase. We use the label j to indicate this, so multiply with j means turn the phase 90 degrees. So the voltage for the inductor becomes j*w*L."
To emphasize this, the same argument was repeated again for a capacitor, ending with the formula V = -j / w * C, and again it was noted that we can turn things around by multiplying with j.
"Now, look at what happens if we multiply twice by j; we end up with the pointer going the other way around. Evidently j*j = -1."
Thus the meaning of the complex numbers was imparted, avoiding the gee-whiz effect of the expression "square root of -1".
On a much lighter note, when I went to University, they would offer so-called "Thousand Island Dressing" which appeared to be a 50/50 mix of mayonnaise and ketchup. We called it "600+j800 islands" indicating that we would have to imagine some of them to make the full 1000...
Basically a big flea market, there are stalls selling all kinds of old car parts, tools, mechanical equipment, old radio and stereo equipment, occasionally electronics components, even entire tubes of ICs, and on and on ... There is also lots of antiques and all kinds of non-technical rubbish there as well; whatever pulls the crowds. I have found goodies ranging from microprosessors to hydraulic motors there.
Another useful surplus outlet is the store of name Havaristen, located in Enebakk, south of the city. The name of that business literally means "one who has capsized" and they sell an everchanging lot of stuff from failed businesses, and stuff damaged in transit. They have everything there, at some time or another, but it is not limited to "geeky" items.
The interruptions are the problem. Whether these are phone calls or E-mail-notifications or people visiting.
Or when people call on the phone because they want to know if I have received their E-mails...
The problem seems to be that a lot of people think E-mails are something that is always to be replied to immediately, as if they were phone calls. I do not know why this is; ordinary paper-mail is certainly asynchronous, and any kind of written letter (paper or electronic) requires about the same amount of thought anyways.
Time and time again, I tell them: I will read the E-mail and answer it when it is convenient to do so. Most of the time this seems to be grudgingly accepted; the exceptions are when the mail is about some bad system bug that demands immediate attention. And some people never seem to be able to understand why they have to wait more than 10 minutes for a reply. Must be their jobs that have all this urgency; well, I've got deadlines as well so we will have to live with it! Besides, I have to think of an answer.
Otherwise, while in bug-fixing mode, phone, E-mails, and face-to-face meetings have all their good and bad points. Phone conversations are great for getting error information from the user, most of them can read off a dialog box, and I can tell them to click this and that and immediate evaluate responses. When it comes to correcting them by having to edit some configuration data however, phone is terrible. Imagine trying to dictate URLs or code full of important punctuation-marks and hope to get it right ...
And here is exactly where E-mail excels. I can type up the correct texts in the mail itself or in an attached file, and tell the recipients exactly where to put them for things to start working again. But doing the active troubleshooting (in the style of "try this ... hmm ... try that ... nope, how about you do this and then try ... ah! it crashed. OK can you read me the stack-trace... ") over E-mail is slow and cumbersome.
E-mail also has the great advantage of persisting after the fact. I do not intend to, nor manage, to remember every little detail talked about on the phone, neither do the people at the other end of the line. Instead, when an E-mail from last month is lying around, this makes it easier to pick up the thread where we left it.
Face-to-face meetings are most useful when evaluating features, testing, or simply for "showing the flag" to the customers. Makes them feel appreciated, and we all know what an asset satisfied customers are.
In two early chapters of that book, one of the protagonists is trying to crack the password of his vanished colleague's computer. The machine persists in asking: "Do you have the password?" and lots of permutations and magical incantations are tried.
I remember a series of books by John DeChancie I read in the 80s about an intergalactic highway system. Evidently there is a series of these books, Starrigger was one, Red Limit Freeway was another.
On the other hand, we could still have use for a local road network for the solar system. However, should this be put out to tender, we will have to screen out Vogon contractors...
Herein lies the rub. Imagine sitting at work during a break or some other time, and looking at somebodys full-media blog: "Hello my name is Ashtead and I have been eating peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast ... "
Sounding loud and clear over the cubicle farm.
Besides, I tend to laugh when finding some funny web-page, and some of my colleagues already want to know why I am laughing for no apparent reason (to them anyways). Are they now having to wonder who all these other people in here are?
There will be no more looking at and listening to these things at work anymore!
Which could possibly be a good thing, considering ...
Falling cats are famously able to turn around and land on their feet. Unless the height of the fall is too large, the cat has no problems with that. I forgot the exact conditions of falling cats, but they are able to turn around in a fall in a lot less than the 30 inches down from a table.
If the two were to be combined and the cat has a piece of bread strapped to it, it is the cat that prevails, being more active, heavier, and having a larger moment of inertia.
I'd imagine that the same would apply to pancakes, and I have disregarded the risk of the cat eating the food.
I would imagine that they start off with low-risk operations now, as a form of practicing, as it were. No doubt they also have a backup team of surgeons ready to intervene if something threatens to go wrong. Besides, I do not expect that they will be remotely doing life-or-death or really invasive surgery for a long time, if ever.
There is also the matter of using robots and remote-controlled scalpels and the like for brain surgery; in these cases I am quite sure this is controlled by the surgeon located right there with the patient.
Norway is not a member of the EU, however, it is a member of the EEA (Europeian Economic Area) and thus required to implement a number of EU regulations. The EUCD is just one of these, and AFAIK it has only been implemented by Denmark and Greece.
So I became a bit concerned about the talk of gas clouds, as in "Whatever is Saddam Hussein up to now?" Great was my relief to discover this had to do with the Jovian satellite instead. (Never mind some other small clues)
Perhaps I have been reading too much news recently.
I tried these half-melted and by now somewhat battered chips out in another circuit I had which used these kinds of RAM chips, and found that 4 of them would not work at all, 2 others worked perfectly well, and the last 2 seemed to work, but some of the bytes within would not read back correctly.
I threw them all out; I'd rather not have to worry about bugs in the hardware as well as the software!