When the batteries get low, software fires up the motors to open the doors. The current draw of the motors finally and completely depletes the last remaining charge in the batteries.
Or perhaps the design is that a powered element actively holds the doors shut. Any time the power level drops, the doors automatically spring open.
I like stuff like this. And line-powered robots and wheeled toys that shoot across the floor, only stopping when they unplug themselves from the wall.
That would possibly be one of the stupidest design flaws I have heard of in a long time.
For a portable medical device I once designed, marketing wanted an 'audible beep' to sound for the low battery alert. The problem with that was, the only small-but-loud audio transducer we could find that would fit into the case (design constraints- management wouldn't let us retool a new case, easily a $100-500K expense) was a nasty little 'voice coil' jobbie that drew so much current it had to be driven by an external MOSFET (the internal drive out of the weak little 4 bit controller we were using wasn't enough.)
So I stuck the audible beep in the prototype firmware to give it a try. The thing would put out one weak little 'chirp' which finally and completely depleted the battery. I found it funny as hell.
They better not call the Apple rep. Shipping and handling will deal a killing blow to the budget, even if the battery can be replaced for 'only' $99 by a qualified Apple tech.
You don't have to convince them. Just give them an allowance which pays for both their clothing and their 'fun money' and let them pick if they want one 'new' shirt or two thrift shirts and a movie.
Likewise, you can flounce around with your iPod, or use something cheaper and more practical. Me, I can't imagine paying $400 for any music appliance. For $400 I could get new caps (say some nice Vitamin-Q parts) and tubes for my Harmon-Kardon tube integrated amp. Seems like a hell of a better investment, since we're talking, presumably, about quality and not fashion.
I thought we were all agreed that the iTMS system charges about the same amount, or less, than one would pay for the albums in CD form at a music shop. So there's still $9,990 worth of music on that iPod, unless he's got stolen goods housed on it.
That's not really true. After spending the buttload of money people do on a Merc, they're likely to take better care of it and spend a LOT more maintaining it than someone who buys a cheapo car and just drives it.
It has a lot to do with wether you're going to obsess over something or just use it for what it was intended.
I definitely was not thinking 'that oscilloscope will make me rich someday' when I wanted the oscilloscope. That's a line I should have tried on dad to get the 'scope I suppose...
If anyone said it would cost over $10B when they started, they never would have started and people would be screaming about the traffic.
It's my understanding that if the boondoogle tunnel hadn't been built, the existing infrastructure would have seen incremental upgrades and repair. It probably would have meant far less 'suffering' with the old elevated roads over the last decade.
This ain't exactly like the Apollo program. I fail to see why people would wail and moan if it'd never been approved. Except trade unionists, contractors, and the other moss that grow on government funded projects.
One of the fundamental tenets of this country at it's founding was that it is a confederation of states. State government should always by default have higher powers over federal government, except in specific areas defined in the constitution.
It's really pitiful when someone such as yourself calls for 'national pride' as if it means 'rah rah big Federal government.' It doesn't and that isn't what America is about.
I looked into replacing the cells in the battery of my much-loved Toshiba 2105 (486DX2-50 with grayscale VGA display) and found that buying the NiMH cells for it cost about the same as a new battery pack.
I also have an older 386SX-25 laptop which I really like for some purposes (I want to install Minix on it sometime soon) that I did medium-major surgery on. It's extremely old in the Laptop hierarchy and worth essentially nothing, and I didn't have the proprietary power supply or a replacement battery. I stuck a 1/8" phono jack on it and power it with either a 12 volt power pack (with 1/8" plug grafted on) or the old car battery I plug it into when using it on the porch. If I was going to go nutso-portable with it, I'd get the cheapest motorcycle battery I could find to power it. (yes, I know, deep discharge, etc. etc.- that laptop running for several hours is probably the equivalent load of a motorcycle's starter motor for a few seconds).
Actually, it's a fetish device with attendant propaganda and hype making it so.
Furthermore, back in 1979 when I used to 'club' a lot, only the coolest, richest people had walkmans. They cost in the $200-300 price range at the time.
Actually, asyncronous bandwidth is technically feasible and cost-effective, which demonstrates that the Internet as rolled out in the practical world can and often is 'divided.'
Add to that the fact that many people don't have a permanent IP address and again, in the practical world clients and servers are 'divided.'
And many of the security problems experienced on the internet have to do with unmaintained 'services' as opposed to client application faults. If every machine on the net was listening on Port 80 there would be more, not less security problems and cracks going on.
'The original intent' of the net didn't include protocols like hypertext, so if we're going to fall back on 'original intent' and not the real practical implementation that exists, we'll have to roll things back to pre-gopher times. Then, yes, every system on the net can run a mail server. That's about it. Maybe some FTP as long as it's not very organized. Usenet is out because it started out on UUCP, not TCP/IP.
...to get whatever is one or two steps down from 'top end' and it always is. I find it excellent when there's someone willing to pay top dollar and subsidize my lower-cost choices. I bought a Pentium III 450 when the 650s and what-not were 'current.'
I have a number of 64 bit machines already, if I want to 'dabble' in 64-bitness. My Sun Ultra 1 boxes run NetBSD/Sparc64 and cost me $12.50 each at auction.
Why treat your paying customers like (prospective) criminals?
Stores and businesses have been doing that for years and years. Any store that doesn't just put a box of their goods out on card tables in a vacant lot with a drop box to put payment in is 'treating their paying customers like (prospective) criminals', no matter how different the rhetoric sounds the way you put it.
I remember hearing that Sun's Sol-something operating system is already tested and robust on a 64 bit architecture of some sort. Wouldn't that mean it shouldn't be hard to port over to a new processor, on whose 32 bit version they already have a 32 bit port?
Yes, but the Democrats haven't been running their 'simulated president' (algore) around nearly as much as some people predicted. He's been out of the limelight for long spells of time. Heck, the two Clintons have been acting more as 'shadow presidents' than algore has.
I have brewed beer without a license. I know others who have as well.
We own six cats and a dog, none of whom are registered in any way with the government.
DRM is about establishing a limited domain on which content vendors can purvey their products. The digital equivalent of building a shopping mall. People can't wander out in the courtyard of a shopping mall and set up a trinket booth without permission. This is no different.
But I'm talking sense, and interrupting the rant fest.
Slashdot Mirror
... or we delete this big lump of information that you thought you were entering somewhere permanent.
Thanks, I have a Britannica CD, and two bound Britannica sets (a 1978 and an ancient 1906 in miniature volumes)
The Wiki things are cool in a way, but too filled with unqualified opinion.
K-K-Kool.
How did you code something to be that nasty on Mozilla/Netbsd/i386 with popups disabled?
When the batteries get low, software fires up the motors to open the doors. The current draw of the motors finally and completely depletes the last remaining charge in the batteries.
Or perhaps the design is that a powered element actively holds the doors shut. Any time the power level drops, the doors automatically spring open.
I like stuff like this. And line-powered robots and wheeled toys that shoot across the floor, only stopping when they unplug themselves from the wall.
That would possibly be one of the stupidest design flaws I have heard of in a long time.
For a portable medical device I once designed, marketing wanted an 'audible beep' to sound for the low battery alert. The problem with that was, the only small-but-loud audio transducer we could find that would fit into the case (design constraints- management wouldn't let us retool a new case, easily a $100-500K expense) was a nasty little 'voice coil' jobbie that drew so much current it had to be driven by an external MOSFET (the internal drive out of the weak little 4 bit controller we were using wasn't enough.)
So I stuck the audible beep in the prototype firmware to give it a try. The thing would put out one weak little 'chirp' which finally and completely depleted the battery. I found it funny as hell.
I love foolish power management designs.
Lithium-ion?
They better not call the Apple rep. Shipping and handling will deal a killing blow to the budget, even if the battery can be replaced for 'only' $99 by a qualified Apple tech.
You don't have to convince them. Just give them an allowance which pays for both their clothing and their 'fun money' and let them pick if they want one 'new' shirt or two thrift shirts and a movie.
Likewise, you can flounce around with your iPod, or use something cheaper and more practical. Me, I can't imagine paying $400 for any music appliance. For $400 I could get new caps (say some nice Vitamin-Q parts) and tubes for my Harmon-Kardon tube integrated amp. Seems like a hell of a better investment, since we're talking, presumably, about quality and not fashion.
I thought we were all agreed that the iTMS system charges about the same amount, or less, than one would pay for the albums in CD form at a music shop. So there's still $9,990 worth of music on that iPod, unless he's got stolen goods housed on it.
It blows me away to think of having $9,990 worth of 'content' on one of those little things.
That's not really true. After spending the buttload of money people do on a Merc, they're likely to take better care of it and spend a LOT more maintaining it than someone who buys a cheapo car and just drives it.
It has a lot to do with wether you're going to obsess over something or just use it for what it was intended.
and another $40-$50 to have a certified engineer who is
A certified engineer? Wow. I thought the techs were manning the screwdrivers, now I hear that it's engineers.
I definitely was not thinking 'that oscilloscope will make me rich someday' when I wanted the oscilloscope. That's a line I should have tried on dad to get the 'scope I suppose...
If anyone said it would cost over $10B when they started, they never would have started and people would be screaming about the traffic.
It's my understanding that if the boondoogle tunnel hadn't been built, the existing infrastructure would have seen incremental upgrades and repair. It probably would have meant far less 'suffering' with the old elevated roads over the last decade.
This ain't exactly like the Apollo program. I fail to see why people would wail and moan if it'd never been approved. Except trade unionists, contractors, and the other moss that grow on government funded projects.
One of the fundamental tenets of this country at it's founding was that it is a confederation of states. State government should always by default have higher powers over federal government, except in specific areas defined in the constitution.
It's really pitiful when someone such as yourself calls for 'national pride' as if it means 'rah rah big Federal government.' It doesn't and that isn't what America is about.
I looked into replacing the cells in the battery of my much-loved Toshiba 2105 (486DX2-50 with grayscale VGA display) and found that buying the NiMH cells for it cost about the same as a new battery pack.
I also have an older 386SX-25 laptop which I really like for some purposes (I want to install Minix on it sometime soon) that I did medium-major surgery on. It's extremely old in the Laptop hierarchy and worth essentially nothing, and I didn't have the proprietary power supply or a replacement battery. I stuck a 1/8" phono jack on it and power it with either a 12 volt power pack (with 1/8" plug grafted on) or the old car battery I plug it into when using it on the porch. If I was going to go nutso-portable with it, I'd get the cheapest motorcycle battery I could find to power it. (yes, I know, deep discharge, etc. etc.- that laptop running for several hours is probably the equivalent load of a motorcycle's starter motor for a few seconds).
Actually, it's a fetish device with attendant propaganda and hype making it so.
Furthermore, back in 1979 when I used to 'club' a lot, only the coolest, richest people had walkmans. They cost in the $200-300 price range at the time.
I just can't relate. Not at all. When I was a teenager I badly wanted an oscilloscope. What brand of clothing I wore was totally irrelevant.
Correction in above: Asymmetrical bandwidth, not asyncronous bandwidth.
Actually, asyncronous bandwidth is technically feasible and cost-effective, which demonstrates that the Internet as rolled out in the practical world can and often is 'divided.'
Add to that the fact that many people don't have a permanent IP address and again, in the practical world clients and servers are 'divided.'
And many of the security problems experienced on the internet have to do with unmaintained 'services' as opposed to client application faults. If every machine on the net was listening on Port 80 there would be more, not less security problems and cracks going on.
'The original intent' of the net didn't include protocols like hypertext, so if we're going to fall back on 'original intent' and not the real practical implementation that exists, we'll have to roll things back to pre-gopher times. Then, yes, every system on the net can run a mail server. That's about it. Maybe some FTP as long as it's not very organized. Usenet is out because it started out on UUCP, not TCP/IP.
...as long as you don't stare into the random bitmaps.
...to get whatever is one or two steps down from 'top end' and it always is. I find it excellent when there's someone willing to pay top dollar and subsidize my lower-cost choices. I bought a Pentium III 450 when the 650s and what-not were 'current.'
I have a number of 64 bit machines already, if I want to 'dabble' in 64-bitness. My Sun Ultra 1 boxes run NetBSD/Sparc64 and cost me $12.50 each at auction.
Why treat your paying customers like (prospective) criminals?
Stores and businesses have been doing that for years and years. Any store that doesn't just put a box of their goods out on card tables in a vacant lot with a drop box to put payment in is 'treating their paying customers like (prospective) criminals', no matter how different the rhetoric sounds the way you put it.
I remember hearing that Sun's Sol-something operating system is already tested and robust on a 64 bit architecture of some sort. Wouldn't that mean it shouldn't be hard to port over to a new processor, on whose 32 bit version they already have a 32 bit port?
Yes, but the Democrats haven't been running their 'simulated president' (algore) around nearly as much as some people predicted. He's been out of the limelight for long spells of time. Heck, the two Clintons have been acting more as 'shadow presidents' than algore has.
Nice rant.
I have brewed beer without a license. I know others who have as well.
We own six cats and a dog, none of whom are registered in any way with the government.
DRM is about establishing a limited domain on which content vendors can purvey their products. The digital equivalent of building a shopping mall. People can't wander out in the courtyard of a shopping mall and set up a trinket booth without permission. This is no different.
But I'm talking sense, and interrupting the rant fest.