Don't buy brand name phone on a contract. I bought a generic Chinese android phone from Aldi (German supermarket chain) it cost about $150, has two sim sockets, microsd socket and is MINE to do whatever I want with. Change plan, change carriers, use two carriers at the same time, go overseas and use my local number AND my international number... If a carrier is giving you a phone for "free" why would you expect anything other than to be royally fucked by that carrier?
You might not be great at it, but I find it hard to believe you couldn't get better with practice. I know a few people with aspergers symptoms who have trained themselves to function "normally" in social situations. Sometimes this involves rote-learning "safe" responses to dozens of situations, because they can't "read" the situation on the fly. It's not easy, it takes a lot of time, and you may never be fantastic at it, but again, I find it hard to believe that by studying interpersonal situations you couldn't get better at managing them.
I have a Dell XPS from 2012 with similar problems: - no number pad, despite plenty of room for one. - sealed battery - slot-load optical drive, which died and took a disc with it.
I only bought it because it had an HD screen which was hard to find at the time. Who cares about an extra 2mm of thickness if EVERY other part of the computer is a compromise?
The Toshiba Satellite p50 looks promising though - a UHD (4K) screen and none of the trendy eye-candy that other manufacturers seem to force on you. Drawer-load optical drive AND a number pad.
I am not employed by Toshiba, but having looked long and hard at various UHD laptops recently this looks like the most useful model if you actually plan to do work with it.
I agree with everything you say except the bit about debating. In debating equal time is given to the "wrong" opinion. Rhetoric and emotional arguments often beat logic, facts and reason. Debating is someone's entertaining to watch, and great for raising a generation of politicians, but terrible at teaching kids how to work out what is true and who is trying to mislead them.
Your commodore has a roof. An efficient sedan shape will have attached airflow over most of the the upper surface, with the air possibly leaving the surface halfway down the rear window but rejoining the skin somewhere along the boot (trunk) lid. A convertible loses this laminar flow as soon as the airflow leaves the top of the windscreen. I'm not sure exactly how big the effect is, but it's significant.
So, around 0.1% of the deaths from hitting wind turbines as from crashing into buildings. Birds are good at flying. There's a pretty strong selection pressure in favour of birds with enough coordination not to crash into things.
And then our new prime minister can point to the high electricity bills and say "See? It's the result of carbon pricing! Let's dismantle carbon pricing! Let's allow the energy monopoly to do whatever they want!"
Early wind turbines, built in response to the 1970s oil crisis, were indeed a hazard to birds. However new wind turbines are bigger and spin at lower RPM, so they are easier for birds to see and avoid.
I don't know about the USA, but most countries also require and environmental impact statement before building wind turbines. These days, if they are proposed right in the middle of an area with high golden eagle populations, they don't get off the drawing board.
I built one using a picaxe + GSM module in 2010. It was pretty challenging fitting enough AT commands in the limited eeprom on the picaxe. Worked great on the protoboard but I never bothered making a PCB for what is really a pretty pointless device. Even in 2010 I could have bought a better phone for $20. GSM modules are really useful: using one to make a phone seems like a waste! They're much more interesting for things like remote monitoring or smart SMS-enabled devices...
I got one from Adafruit - they run out all the time but seem to get new stock frequently. I've basically given up on Element14 though - I ordered from them in November. First the ETA kept slipping back, now they don't even show an ETA. It's a sorry state of affairs when Adafruit can ship one to me in Australia, from New York, about ten times faster than the local supplier (and still counting!)
The $50 BeagleBone Black has many of these features and more GPIO, but lacks RAM and has only one CPU. The ODROID series can be specced with multiple ARM cores. This "Minnow" seems like the next step up, for users who really need SATA, lots of RAM and multiple x86 cores. There's probably a big enough niche for portable/cheaper PC-based hardware for this to find traction, but for anything that doesn't need x86 or huge RAM there are cheaper options. I just hope the supply issues with the BeagleBone Black get sorted out soon!
I remember the same thing in a a county library in Colorado, except the library would sell their unwanted books at ridiculously low prices. Older reference books worth hundreds would go for a dollar or two. A treasure trove indeed. Hopefully the the books sent to the dump were at least offered to the public first!
I should also add that a local university library near where I live now recently sent a bunch of their old books to the dump (except the ones I fished out of the dumpster) Shame on you, University Of Canberra.
Tinkering with cars is still fun. With an arduino and a few other components you could modify injector pulses [in real time!], build a new immobiliser, add water injection, build a GPS trip computer, active aerodynamics... all this is just off the top of my head. Sure the skills required are different from 30 years ago, but car modification is alive and well.
Let's also bear in mind that with modern cars you don't _have_ to learn so much maintenance. Re-grinding valve seats, decarbonising, so many "routine maintenance" chores are now so infrequent that they become pretty much unnecessary. Hell, my 1990 japanese hatchback has done over 330 000km (205k miles) and is still on the original clutch, gearbox, brake discs... This is a reasonably high-performance (for 1990) car - all-wheel drive, intercooled turbo... my point is, with advances in materials and manufacturing tolerances, most mechanical parts can be relied on to Just Work for hundreds of thousands of miles. This doesn't mean that there's nothing that a guy in his backyard can work on, just that the projects will be different. I am glad for the change - I'd rather be working on something new, than adjusting my points gap again, just because it's 3000 miles since the last time I had to do it.
All good points, and valid. However there were also some VERY shady deals to deliberately dismantle public transport on the USA, often misusing anti-monopoly legislation to gut the streetcar (tram) networks.
This is especially evident in LA, where the freeways have taken over the same routes that the old streetcars used to.
Yes, the example above is familiar - it was used [with some historical accuracy, ironically] in the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096438
European fuel typically has a higher octane rating than fuel sold in the USA, therefore they can tune their engines more aggressively, therefore they can get more power out of a smaller displacement engine.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the link. I think I've found my next laptop.
Yes. As has anyone who ever watched a boat sail over the horizon.
In Australia, your ISP is required by law to retain most of that as "metadata" anyway. Sigh.
Don't buy brand name phone on a contract. I bought a generic Chinese android phone from Aldi (German supermarket chain) it cost about $150, has two sim sockets, microsd socket and is MINE to do whatever I want with. Change plan, change carriers, use two carriers at the same time, go overseas and use my local number AND my international number... If a carrier is giving you a phone for "free" why would you expect anything other than to be royally fucked by that carrier?
You might not be great at it, but I find it hard to believe you couldn't get better with practice. I know a few people with aspergers symptoms who have trained themselves to function "normally" in social situations. Sometimes this involves rote-learning "safe" responses to dozens of situations, because they can't "read" the situation on the fly. It's not easy, it takes a lot of time, and you may never be fantastic at it, but again, I find it hard to believe that by studying interpersonal situations you couldn't get better at managing them.
Can you read words? Read a book on how to read people. Then practice.
I have a Dell XPS from 2012 with similar problems:
- no number pad, despite plenty of room for one.
- sealed battery
- slot-load optical drive, which died and took a disc with it.
I only bought it because it had an HD screen which was hard to find at the time. Who cares about an extra 2mm of thickness if EVERY other part of the computer is a compromise?
The Toshiba Satellite p50 looks promising though - a UHD (4K) screen and none of the trendy eye-candy that other manufacturers seem to force on you. Drawer-load optical drive AND a number pad.
I am not employed by Toshiba, but having looked long and hard at various UHD laptops recently this looks like the most useful model if you actually plan to do work with it.
I agree with everything you say except the bit about debating. In debating equal time is given to the "wrong" opinion. Rhetoric and emotional arguments often beat logic, facts and reason. Debating is someone's entertaining to watch, and great for raising a generation of politicians, but terrible at teaching kids how to work out what is true and who is trying to mislead them.
It hasn't happened with alcohol. Very easy to make at home using yeast, yet people still buy alcoholic drinks.
I think Lego EV3 uses embedded Linux... Does that count?
The only thing better than not being on a database is polluting that database with so much false information that it becomes useless.
Your commodore has a roof. An efficient sedan shape will have attached airflow over most of the the upper surface, with the air possibly leaving the surface halfway down the rear window but rejoining the skin somewhere along the boot (trunk) lid. A convertible loses this laminar flow as soon as the airflow leaves the top of the windscreen. I'm not sure exactly how big the effect is, but it's significant.
There's plenty of money being dumped into "fixing" the Middle East right now. What of some of that was re- allocated to improvements closer to home?
I had a woven stainless steel wallet (for money) and be warned, their abrasive edges wear through your pockets really quickly.
There are Faraday cage wallets that are leather on the outside (presumably they have metal foil inside?) that will be kinder to your clothes.
I've traveled a lot with both kinds and never had any hassles.
So, around 0.1% of the deaths from hitting wind turbines as from crashing into buildings. Birds are good at flying. There's a pretty strong selection pressure in favour of birds with enough coordination not to crash into things.
And then our new prime minister can point to the high electricity bills and say "See? It's the result of carbon pricing! Let's dismantle carbon pricing! Let's allow the energy monopoly to do whatever they want!"
Got any references for those "bird kill" numbers?
Early wind turbines, built in response to the 1970s oil crisis, were indeed a hazard to birds. However new wind turbines are bigger and spin at lower RPM, so they are easier for birds to see and avoid.
I don't know about the USA, but most countries also require and environmental impact statement before building wind turbines. These days, if they are proposed right in the middle of an area with high golden eagle populations, they don't get off the drawing board.
As you say, "not just the US." He did a great piece about Tony abbott, the Australian prime minister. Find it on YouTube. Or don't, it's embarrassing.
I built one using a picaxe + GSM module in 2010. It was pretty challenging fitting enough AT commands in the limited eeprom on the picaxe. Worked great on the protoboard but I never bothered making a PCB for what is really a pretty pointless device. Even in 2010 I could have bought a better phone for $20. GSM modules are really useful: using one to make a phone seems like a waste! They're much more interesting for things like remote monitoring or smart SMS-enabled devices...
I got one from Adafruit - they run out all the time but seem to get new stock frequently. I've basically given up on Element14 though - I ordered from them in November. First the ETA kept slipping back, now they don't even show an ETA. It's a sorry state of affairs when Adafruit can ship one to me in Australia, from New York, about ten times faster than the local supplier (and still counting!)
The $50 BeagleBone Black has many of these features and more GPIO, but lacks RAM and has only one CPU. The ODROID series can be specced with multiple ARM cores. This "Minnow" seems like the next step up, for users who really need SATA, lots of RAM and multiple x86 cores. There's probably a big enough niche for portable/cheaper PC-based hardware for this to find traction, but for anything that doesn't need x86 or huge RAM there are cheaper options. I just hope the supply issues with the BeagleBone Black get sorted out soon!
I remember the same thing in a a county library in Colorado, except the library would sell their unwanted books at ridiculously low prices. Older reference books worth hundreds would go for a dollar or two. A treasure trove indeed. Hopefully the the books sent to the dump were at least offered to the public first!
I should also add that a local university library near where I live now recently sent a bunch of their old books to the dump (except the ones I fished out of the dumpster) Shame on you, University Of Canberra.
Tinkering with cars is still fun. With an arduino and a few other components you could modify injector pulses [in real time!], build a new immobiliser, add water injection, build a GPS trip computer, active aerodynamics... all this is just off the top of my head. Sure the skills required are different from 30 years ago, but car modification is alive and well.
Let's also bear in mind that with modern cars you don't _have_ to learn so much maintenance. Re-grinding valve seats, decarbonising, so many "routine maintenance" chores are now so infrequent that they become pretty much unnecessary. Hell, my 1990 japanese hatchback has done over 330 000km (205k miles) and is still on the original clutch, gearbox, brake discs... This is a reasonably high-performance (for 1990) car - all-wheel drive, intercooled turbo... my point is, with advances in materials and manufacturing tolerances, most mechanical parts can be relied on to Just Work for hundreds of thousands of miles. This doesn't mean that there's nothing that a guy in his backyard can work on, just that the projects will be different. I am glad for the change - I'd rather be working on something new, than adjusting my points gap again, just because it's 3000 miles since the last time I had to do it.
All good points, and valid. However there were also some VERY shady deals to deliberately dismantle public transport on the USA, often misusing anti-monopoly legislation to gut the streetcar (tram) networks.
This is especially evident in LA, where the freeways have taken over the same routes that the old streetcars used to.
Yes, the example above is familiar - it was used [with some historical accuracy, ironically] in the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096438
More on the "streetcar scandal" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal
European fuel typically has a higher octane rating than fuel sold in the USA, therefore they can tune their engines more aggressively, therefore they can get more power out of a smaller displacement engine.