That about sums up the reporters knowledge of the process - why they didn't send someone with an ounce of insight into the process escapes me!
"I don't know what this machine does, maybe it makes the boards" - it's the damn screen printer that pastes the solder onto the board, and the woman isn't "removing the edges" she's stuck in a tiny booth all day removing flux from the through hole components.
I can think of heaps of peole, myself included, who would have loved a trip like this, and could have made a detailed write up that made sense, and did justice to the hard work and conditions those people work in. /rant over
Really wish I had mod points! You've just hit the best solution - well, cost effective anyway - it's not too likely you're going to be out of power for too long a period, so instead of forking out a fortune for some elaborate setup - just buy a piece of wire and a plug.
If you're out of power for a while and the ups is starting to drain, plug said lead into the ups (minimal soldering, but make good jonts & thick cable - 10A should be ok for medium length)and connect to your car and leave it idling...
The car will have no trouble providing the power a medium UPS uses, and will not consume much fuel just sat idling.
This is the exact solution I have, a 5m length of cable with a couple of plugs on - it's a 1KVA UPS, which is more than enough to keep a PC, TV, and a light and some heating going, and it's great watching your neigbours when you're sat watching TV with the lights on and the rest of the street is in darkness!
This will no doubt get lost in all the noise, but I work at an Electronics company, and I regularly repair customer returns that have been covered in..well.. you name it - we get returns of sensors that range from being covered in mud to god-knows-what chemicals that make you itch and eat off tracks...anyway;
There are a range of producs called 'Micro Care' that come in a bottle, all you need is a brush, cloth, and patience. It's alcohol based, and will not damage anything on the PCB, plus it evaporates away pretty fast. I've used this stuff on gold plated connectors, processor boards, drive parts, and it's been nothing short of fantastic. You will be able to just pull cards, scrub them clean (carefully) wipe them off, and they will be dry and ready to go again in minutes, and the stuff even smells nice. 'Araxel' is the one we use, but I beleive they do allsorts, just google for it - we get ours from Toolnet in the UK, but it's imported from the US if I remember correctly.
Don't forget to hang a 'magic tree' in the flow of a fan or two to get rid of that last bit of stink!
Is it me, or are there lots of bits left over after this mod...why not remove a platter from it's spindle, and glue the coil to this - you then have a shiny voice-cone - then mount all your gluey mess back into the case...you then have a quite nice looking shiny flat panel speaker!
You can then show this to your friends, and have them beat you for being a geek...
Would look cool though.
I remember many hours of geeky schoolyard fights between a group of us.. One person had a Mac, one had an Amiga, one had a PC (yeah, i know, but that's what everyone knows a windows box as) I had a trusty Acorn A4000... The arguments were never settled:
Amiga lad was, well, and Amiga owner.. i can still spot them today.. The Mac had blatently ripped off the Acorn desktop, and the hours of grief he got for having only one mouse button was amazing... The PC was crappily slow compared to the raw power of my 12Mhz RISC monster (he had a 486SX25)
The Acorn ruled supreme for a short while, then the PC finally overtook in my eyes, Acorn gave a small fight with the Risc-Pc, but it was too late...
Still nice to hear them appreciated on Slashdot though, they were damn good little machines, and I still venture into the loft and see if mine is still running..
Damn, I wish I had moderator points left! You obviously have sense, which is rare on slashdot... yes reading about scaring childern during halloween with the goatse.cx pic on the polls is amusing, and the soviet russia and beowulf gags still make me smirk, but when the first couple of lines of a post make u think, it's a good thing.
Cases should be exactly that...cases, if they are well designed and ergonomic, then that's about all we need. The new trend of cutting massive holes into panels and sticking neon lights in there astounds me - why is the case metal, duh! for EMC protection, so when their systems crash, and their pretty uv lights have prematurely aged their cables, that's their problem.
I'd personally rather see PC's get smaller, a whole system contained in a TFT monitor case. Or my dream, a better user interface... I mean a lump of plastic with rows of buttons and another lump that you drag about and prod at to move things...where's my neural interface!
In the end, the system is only as good as the software, yes, we can all bitch and fight at which OS is best, but in the end people will choose what is best for them, programmers choose Linux becuse it lets them get to the roots of the machine, others choose MS because they don't want to see the roots of the machine, they just want to press a button, and be able to look on the web. I know this is all offtopic, but the article is merely an ad anyway... I'll get off my box now...
What! you let your children in the front seat when your Laptop is in the car?
My kids go in the boot with the spare tyre and car jacks... the Laptop gets the front seat, and wears a seatbelt.
That has always stuck in my memory - I was in the cinema watching it, and 90% of the people in there cheered when that happened..... made me feel all warm inside.
The other 10% were probably to old or young to get it, or busy groping each other on the back row:\
I'm from the UK, we have 230v - and from past experience you can follow three simple steps:
1) Plug everything into one extension lead, one of those bar ones, you know the type...
2) Plug extension lead into nearest socket. (If extension lead does not reach the socket, join on some suitable wire with sellotape. Xmas tree lights wire will do fine, but be sure to twist the wires, not solder)
3) It's only 110/220v, wrap lots of tape round everything... that should sort it... then go find an intern / office junior, and ask them to switch on your extension lead.
Seriously though - your big 'bottle' is the splice where the cores of the cable are seperated, it will be filled with a resin - that stuff sounds old! I've worked on 230 / 415v equipment that sounds scarily familiar - I will bodge almost anything, but seriously - go get an electrician, but make sure you keep an eye on him.. some do take the piss, and will charge you for parts not required / work not done, as joe public have no idea what they are talking about half the time.
Get quotes from at least 3 different contractors!
AHA! I've just twigged onto what's happening... the MPAA posts this to slashdot so everyone who downloads movies goes to check the ad's, then they log our IP's and send us letters.. after all, we have internet access, so therefore MUST be guilty of downloading movies.
Well, hasn't worked.... I, like many many others have IP blocking software, and we can't see these ads because the blocker won't let us near the MPAA's IP address. So - we NEED someone to pirate the ad's, so we see them and be educated about piracy.....hang on a sec......
Sure - If you're in America! Over here in the UK, M$ will NOT allow a re-activation via the net - you HAVE to phone up a jerk and wait in phone queues for 10 mins to get your number - and the best thing? They're closed all weekend, so u either upgrade your PC during your coffe break at work, or wait till monday to see if your hardware is ok.... real convenient!
Yes - I use M$ - No, i don't like PA, or a lot of other features, but I have no other option, all the machines I use are M$, and over here in the UK, you'll be suprised at how many people haven't even heard of Linux....
I am left handed & was forced to write in cursive with my right hand when I was young - god knows why! - but as far as I can remember I have preferred typing, I have even been known to feed post-it notes through the printer at work. Most people can type significantly faster than they can scrawl onto paper.
I don't have a problem with the dissapearance of cursive - it's difficult to write and near impossible to read sometimes. And have you tried to OCR someones coursework when it's in cursive!
It's not like we are loosing our ability to write - we are simply catching up with our lifestyles.
As long as we raise the next generations not to rely too heavily on the spellcheck button, then there's no harm in sacrificing cursive for a nice.txt file.
I agree. They have left out the best feature - now if this thing had Bluetooth and 128Mb+ of storage space in it, then it would rock.... Wireless accessories & the ability to leave it in your pocket and access to your files / porn etc from a nearby pc, then it would be useful!
Could be, but surely any semi-determined criminal only has to find a similar vehicle and have some plates made with their reg.no. Seems to me that this is yet another way for the police to keep tabs on people without getting off their asses. We don't need crap like this, we need to smack the whole justice system with a frigging big stick until criminals go to jail for a meaningful amount of time, and don't give the police more cameras, give the police more power and people, not more toys....
You can't beat a fresh install every year - and now winows XP has the files & settings transfer wizard, you can simply run this to a few cd's, or another HDD without the root directory on and after you have wiped & reinstalled the OS, it will set up all your e-mail accounts, files, prOn etc... Very little hassle really - except the fact that windows will tie up your modem for the next week downloading updates again...
Slashdot Mirror
That about sums up the reporters knowledge of the process - why they didn't send someone with an ounce of insight into the process escapes me!
/rant over
"I don't know what this machine does, maybe it makes the boards" - it's the damn screen printer that pastes the solder onto the board, and the woman isn't "removing the edges" she's stuck in a tiny booth all day removing flux from the through hole components.
I can think of heaps of peole, myself included, who would have loved a trip like this, and could have made a detailed write up that made sense, and did justice to the hard work and conditions those people work in.
Really wish I had mod points! You've just hit the best solution - well, cost effective anyway - it's not too likely you're going to be out of power for too long a period, so instead of forking out a fortune for some elaborate setup - just buy a piece of wire and a plug.
If you're out of power for a while and the ups is starting to drain, plug said lead into the ups (minimal soldering, but make good jonts & thick cable - 10A should be ok for medium length)and connect to your car and leave it idling...
The car will have no trouble providing the power a medium UPS uses, and will not consume much fuel just sat idling.
This is the exact solution I have, a 5m length of cable with a couple of plugs on - it's a 1KVA UPS, which is more than enough to keep a PC, TV, and a light and some heating going, and it's great watching your neigbours when you're sat watching TV with the lights on and the rest of the street is in darkness!
This will no doubt get lost in all the noise, but I work at an Electronics company, and I regularly repair customer returns that have been covered in..well.. you name it - we get returns of sensors that range from being covered in mud to god-knows-what chemicals that make you itch and eat off tracks...anyway;
There are a range of producs called 'Micro Care' that come in a bottle, all you need is a brush, cloth, and patience. It's alcohol based, and will not damage anything on the PCB, plus it evaporates away pretty fast. I've used this stuff on gold plated connectors, processor boards, drive parts, and it's been nothing short of fantastic.
You will be able to just pull cards, scrub them clean (carefully) wipe them off, and they will be dry and ready to go again in minutes, and the stuff even smells nice.
'Araxel' is the one we use, but I beleive they do allsorts, just google for it - we get ours from Toolnet in the UK, but it's imported from the US if I remember correctly.
Don't forget to hang a 'magic tree' in the flow of a fan or two to get rid of that last bit of stink!
#4 Bend
#5 Cheese it!
Is it me, or are there lots of bits left over after this mod...why not remove a platter from it's spindle, and glue the coil to this - you then have a shiny voice-cone - then mount all your gluey mess back into the case...you then have a quite nice looking shiny flat panel speaker!
You can then show this to your friends, and have them beat you for being a geek...
Would look cool though.
Yep - a couple of versions back it tried to download a virus onto my machine as an 'uninstaller'..great!
We need the same program to be stripped of the adware by someone who knows what they are doing, and then re-distributed...
Thank god someone finally mentioned Acorns!
I remember many hours of geeky schoolyard fights between a group of us.. One person had a Mac, one had an Amiga, one had a PC (yeah, i know, but that's what everyone knows a windows box as)
I had a trusty Acorn A4000... The arguments were never settled:
Amiga lad was, well, and Amiga owner.. i can still spot them today..
The Mac had blatently ripped off the Acorn desktop, and the hours of grief he got for having only one mouse button was amazing...
The PC was crappily slow compared to the raw power of my 12Mhz RISC monster (he had a 486SX25)
The Acorn ruled supreme for a short while, then the PC finally overtook in my eyes, Acorn gave a small fight with the Risc-Pc, but it was too late...
Still nice to hear them appreciated on Slashdot though, they were damn good little machines, and I still venture into the loft and see if mine is still running..
Damn, I wish I had moderator points left! You obviously have sense, which is rare on slashdot... yes reading about scaring childern during halloween with the goatse.cx pic on the polls is amusing, and the soviet russia and beowulf gags still make me smirk, but when the first couple of lines of a post make u think, it's a good thing.
Cases should be exactly that...cases, if they are well designed and ergonomic, then that's about all we need. The new trend of cutting massive holes into panels and sticking neon lights in there astounds me - why is the case metal, duh! for EMC protection, so when their systems crash, and their pretty uv lights have prematurely aged their cables, that's their problem.
I'd personally rather see PC's get smaller, a whole system contained in a TFT monitor case. Or my dream, a better user interface... I mean a lump of plastic with rows of buttons and another lump that you drag about and prod at to move things...where's my neural interface!
In the end, the system is only as good as the software, yes, we can all bitch and fight at which OS is best, but in the end people will choose what is best for them, programmers choose Linux becuse it lets them get to the roots of the machine, others choose MS because they don't want to see the roots of the machine, they just want to press a button, and be able to look on the web.
I know this is all offtopic, but the article is merely an ad anyway...
I'll get off my box now...
What! you let your children in the front seat when your Laptop is in the car?
My kids go in the boot with the spare tyre and car jacks... the Laptop gets the front seat, and wears a seatbelt.
That has always stuck in my memory - I was in the cinema watching it, and 90% of the people in there cheered when that happened..... made me feel all warm inside. The other 10% were probably to old or young to get it, or busy groping each other on the back row :\
I'm from the UK, we have 230v - and from past experience you can follow three simple steps:
1) Plug everything into one extension lead, one of those bar ones, you know the type...
2) Plug extension lead into nearest socket. (If extension lead does not reach the socket, join on some suitable wire with sellotape. Xmas tree lights wire will do fine, but be sure to twist the wires, not solder)
3) It's only 110/220v, wrap lots of tape round everything... that should sort it... then go find an intern / office junior, and ask them to switch on your extension lead.
Seriously though - your big 'bottle' is the splice where the cores of the cable are seperated, it will be filled with a resin - that stuff sounds old! I've worked on 230 / 415v equipment that sounds scarily familiar - I will bodge almost anything, but seriously - go get an electrician, but make sure you keep an eye on him.. some do take the piss, and will charge you for parts not required / work not done, as joe public have no idea what they are talking about half the time.
Get quotes from at least 3 different contractors!
Alternate Slashdot version;
"One of these days Ndnd, bang, zoom, straight to the third moon of omicron perei 8!"
AHA! I've just twigged onto what's happening... the MPAA posts this to slashdot so everyone who downloads movies goes to check the ad's, then they log our IP's and send us letters.. after all, we have internet access, so therefore MUST be guilty of downloading movies. Well, hasn't worked.... I, like many many others have IP blocking software, and we can't see these ads because the blocker won't let us near the MPAA's IP address. So - we NEED someone to pirate the ad's, so we see them and be educated about piracy.....hang on a sec......
I just feel sorry for Robin Williams...
Sure - If you're in America! Over here in the UK, M$ will NOT allow a re-activation via the net - you HAVE to phone up a jerk and wait in phone queues for 10 mins to get your number - and the best thing? They're closed all weekend, so u either upgrade your PC during your coffe break at work, or wait till monday to see if your hardware is ok.... real convenient! Yes - I use M$ - No, i don't like PA, or a lot of other features, but I have no other option, all the machines I use are M$, and over here in the UK, you'll be suprised at how many people haven't even heard of Linux....
I am left handed & was forced to write in cursive with my right hand when I was young - god knows why! - but as far as I can remember I have preferred typing, I have even been known to feed post-it notes through the printer at work. Most people can type significantly faster than they can scrawl onto paper. I don't have a problem with the dissapearance of cursive - it's difficult to write and near impossible to read sometimes. And have you tried to OCR someones coursework when it's in cursive! It's not like we are loosing our ability to write - we are simply catching up with our lifestyles. As long as we raise the next generations not to rely too heavily on the spellcheck button, then there's no harm in sacrificing cursive for a nice .txt file.
I agree. They have left out the best feature - now if this thing had Bluetooth and 128Mb+ of storage space in it, then it would rock.... Wireless accessories & the ability to leave it in your pocket and access to your files / porn etc from a nearby pc, then it would be useful!
Could be, but surely any semi-determined criminal only has to find a similar vehicle and have some plates made with their reg.no. Seems to me that this is yet another way for the police to keep tabs on people without getting off their asses. We don't need crap like this, we need to smack the whole justice system with a frigging big stick until criminals go to jail for a meaningful amount of time, and don't give the police more cameras, give the police more power and people, not more toys....
You can't beat a fresh install every year - and now winows XP has the files & settings transfer wizard, you can simply run this to a few cd's, or another HDD without the root directory on and after you have wiped & reinstalled the OS, it will set up all your e-mail accounts, files, prOn etc... Very little hassle really - except the fact that windows will tie up your modem for the next week downloading updates again...
We call it... The Alan Parsons Project... Mwah ha ha ha ha...