I worked on magnetic bubble memory at T.I. in the Dallas corporate research labs back in the mid-70s and it used a "racetrack" architecture where magnetic bubbles (domains) were stored in very long shift registers with the shifting accomplished by rotating magnetic fields. I hope it does better this time around.
Obviously, different elevators made by different companies, installed in different eras may well work differently. I am an elevator design Engineer for someone other than Otis. Our door close buttons work during normal operation on the majority of the thousands of elevators we've built and installed over the past quarter century that I've been designing them. There are some qualifications, though. The door close button won't work unless the elevator door is all the way open (door open limit switch is operated).
In "Independent Service" mode, the doors will stay open indefinitely until they are closed by constant pressure on either a car call button or the door close button. Releasing the button before you get the door all the way closed and are leaving the floor will allow the door to reopen.
In "Fire Service" mode where emergency personnel have taken control of the elevator, the Door Close button is operational, but only in constant pressure mode. The same is true of the Door Open button. So, if the door is closed, you can press the open button and the door will open as long as you keep pressure on it or until it gets all the way open. Once it's all the way open, it will stay open. Similarly the Door Close button will close the door as long as it's pressed, but will re-open if you release it before it gets all the way closed.
Note that elevators designed using 1987 and prior years ASME codes will probably work differently. Many from that era don't have a Door Close button at all.
Note, too, that some municipalities have used alternate codes and the operation will be different than what I've described.... Chicago, I'm looking at you.
Me, too... I use Virtualbox both ways, as well. XP hosted on an Ubuntu machine so I can run Quickbooks for my home business and, here at the office, I run Ubuntu hosted on XP so I can have Linux goodness for my web browsing safety.
I'm posting this reply using Ubuntu 10.4 on XP Pro SP3 running on a Core2Duo with 3 GB of RAM. It works on Win7, too.
Get as much memory as you can for best performance. The minimum machine I've run it on is a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 with 2 GB of RAM shared evenly between the host and hosted OSs.
The National Enquirer, spelled starting with an E. I know a couple of people that have written for them. The Enquirer has an army of fact checkers since they've been sued so often in the past. Their stock in trade is, of course, celebrity gossip, but the stories are accurate. Each is checked to within an inch of it's life before it hits the press.
Modern VHF/UHF handi-talkies are, well, handy if you've got repeaters that you can reach. The other alternative is HF low power rigs that can also be quite small and portable. If you don't mind learning the code, it can be extremely effective. Here's a mountain rescue story that involves just that.. If you take this approach, you can arrange scheduled times and frequencies when someone will listen for you. The great thing about this is that the person can be half way across the country.
I'll second the opinion about the Yaesu FT-817 as a great portable "DC to Daylight" rig that can run SSB and FM voice modes as well as CW (code) on most of the commonly used bands from HF to UHF. It's a little larger, but is extremely capable. The Icom IC703 is another portable rig. See one in use hiking in Colorado here.
I've been a ham for 53 years now and have run the kilowatt rigs with big beam antennas over 100 feet in the air, but I have the most challenging fun with a 4 watt CW rig and a wire or mobile antenna.
The extent of the instructions I give guests is, "This is not Windows, it's Linux, but it works pretty much the same. Here's the Firefox icon up here." Family and friends ranging in age from 10 to 70 have used it with no problems. Those who need to are able to work on business documents that they brought on a USB drive and can print to the inkjet and laser printers on our home office network just fine.
I think I detect a little arm twisting on the part of MS here, but nobody is surprised at that.
When Dell came out with their pre-installed Ubuntu machines a few years back, I bought an E520N the day they became available so as to vote with my wallet that this was a very good idea for Dell.
We had very reliable daily communication with home in the US.....via SSB ham radio. No Internet, obviously, or even computers or programmable calculators. In fact, no calculators at all. We did have a nice old Loran A that we used to get fixes at night. We always did a Noon meridian transit to verify our latitude and kept track of distance covered with the taffrail log. No problem finding Barbados dead-on after 28 days at sea. For the older hams who might remember, the rig was a Galaxy GT-550 and the antenna was a Hy-Gain triband vertical. We mostly used 15 meters.
Our electronics, freezer and refrigerator was powered by a 32 volt battery bank that was recharged via a 15KW diesel generator or the diesel propulsion engine. For entertainment, we had a Zenith Transoceanic radio for BBC, VOA, etc and we had a reel-to-reel tape deck stereo system that we could use when the generator was running as was usually the case at meal time since the main stove was electric.
Back then we didn't even have calculators and it was tough to write a crib on your slide rule.
I still have my slide rule. You never know when civilization is going to collapse and you can't get calculator batteries for your non-solar powered ones.
So you probably don't know about public service and emergency communications that hams do. The chat is part of making sure our gear works when nothing else does like the 24 hour "Field Day" exercise that tens of thousands of hams took part in last weekend to simulate communication in emergency conditions when grid power is not available and communications lines are down.
Oh, and don't give me the, "It's not needed because we have cell phones" story. We had a tornado in my neighborhood and cell phones didn't work.. The tower went down along with the power and cable wires. No power for a week, no cable/Internet for 10 days.
In Lincoln's New Salem, near Springfield, Illinois, there is a reconstructed carding mill powered by a tilted tread wheel on which an ox walked to supply the power. This would have been in use around 1830.
CW (code) operation is still very popular with hams. It can get through when voice modes can't, and with lower power and simpler equipment.
There are lots of operators today who can get above 30 WPM very comfortably and do so on a regular basis. The International code receiving record is still 77 WPM set my Ted McElroy back in the 1939. He was also the champ with American Morse (landline telegraph) and Japanese Kanjii code. Oh, and he could type 150 WPM on a manual typewriter. Quite a guy. He'd run rings around these texting kids.
Loran A that I was using around 1970. In mid-Atlantic you couldn't get signals during the day and accuracy was around 1 nm, but it certainly was nice to have.
Besides seeming to be not much of big deal convenience-wise, is this a "green" technology or is it a power leach drawing power even when it's not being used. What is the ratio of input power to power actually charging a device?
Back in the late 50s, I ran a several turn loop around my bedroom and created a "Halo coil" with many turns on a set of monaural headphones so I could have cordless headphones for listening to my shortwave radio. It worked, but wasn't particularly efficient.
When our power goes out, our Internet service is out, too. The buried phone lines work. We had a tornado in our neighborhood in March of 2006. I was on the POTS line (from the basement) with my kids when it hit. There wasn't even a click, it just worked. Power was out for a week and Internet was out for 4 more days after that. VOIP isn't ready for prime time in my book.
The nonsense about fiber having back-up is great until the outage is more than 8 hours, assuming your battery has been maintained. Of course, I've got a generator so I'd have power at my house, but what about the fiber hubs? How long is their backup?
Cell didn't work very well either since the tornado took down the main cell tower that serves our neighborhood.
POTS still does the job for me. Yes, I've got a couple of wired phones that don't require power to operate, one of them is a black 500 series rotary dial antique.
Of course, I've also got my ham radio gear and charged gell cells, for when all else fails.
I use Opera mini as my browser and have the gmail app for my email and calendar. That seems to avoid these problems. I've had my BB for almost a year now and like it a lot.
My default search engine is still Google. So far so good. I also use the Gmail application for my email and Google calendar rather than the somewhat clunky RIM mail.
Slashdot Mirror
What could possibly go wrong?
I worked on magnetic bubble memory at T.I. in the Dallas corporate research labs back in the mid-70s and it used a "racetrack" architecture where magnetic bubbles (domains) were stored in very long shift registers with the shifting accomplished by rotating magnetic fields. I hope it does better this time around.
Just disable all cars...
Ray LaHood is an idiot, BTW.
Obviously, different elevators made by different companies, installed in different eras may well work differently. I am an elevator design Engineer for someone other than Otis. Our door close buttons work during normal operation on the majority of the thousands of elevators we've built and installed over the past quarter century that I've been designing them. There are some qualifications, though. The door close button won't work unless the elevator door is all the way open (door open limit switch is operated).
In "Independent Service" mode, the doors will stay open indefinitely until they are closed by constant pressure on either a car call button or the door close button. Releasing the button before you get the door all the way closed and are leaving the floor will allow the door to reopen.
In "Fire Service" mode where emergency personnel have taken control of the elevator, the Door Close button is operational, but only in constant pressure mode. The same is true of the Door Open button. So, if the door is closed, you can press the open button and the door will open as long as you keep pressure on it or until it gets all the way open. Once it's all the way open, it will stay open. Similarly the Door Close button will close the door as long as it's pressed, but will re-open if you release it before it gets all the way closed.
Note that elevators designed using 1987 and prior years ASME codes will probably work differently. Many from that era don't have a Door Close button at all.
Note, too, that some municipalities have used alternate codes and the operation will be different than what I've described.... Chicago, I'm looking at you.
"Does this mean that if I build PCs with Linux (Ubuntu/ChromeOS/Fedora and sell them I am at risk of getting sued by Microsoft?."
Apparently it's not a problem unless you're installing them on a smartphone. These aren't really Linux patents they're claiming are being infringed.
Me, too... I use Virtualbox both ways, as well. XP hosted on an Ubuntu machine so I can run Quickbooks for my home business and, here at the office, I run Ubuntu hosted on XP so I can have Linux goodness for my web browsing safety.
I'm posting this reply using Ubuntu 10.4 on XP Pro SP3 running on a Core2Duo with 3 GB of RAM. It works on Win7, too.
Get as much memory as you can for best performance. The minimum machine I've run it on is a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 with 2 GB of RAM shared evenly between the host and hosted OSs.
The National Enquirer, spelled starting with an E. I know a couple of people that have written for them. The Enquirer has an army of fact checkers since they've been sued so often in the past. Their stock in trade is, of course, celebrity gossip, but the stories are accurate. Each is checked to within an inch of it's life before it hits the press.
Modern VHF/UHF handi-talkies are, well, handy if you've got repeaters that you can reach. The other alternative is HF low power rigs that can also be quite small and portable. If you don't mind learning the code, it can be extremely effective. Here's a mountain rescue story that involves just that.. If you take this approach, you can arrange scheduled times and frequencies when someone will listen for you. The great thing about this is that the person can be half way across the country.
I'll second the opinion about the Yaesu FT-817 as a great portable "DC to Daylight" rig that can run SSB and FM voice modes as well as CW (code) on most of the commonly used bands from HF to UHF. It's a little larger, but is extremely capable. The Icom IC703 is another portable rig. See one in use hiking in Colorado here .
I've been a ham for 53 years now and have run the kilowatt rigs with big beam antennas over 100 feet in the air, but I have the most challenging fun with a 4 watt CW rig and a wire or mobile antenna.
The extent of the instructions I give guests is, "This is not Windows, it's Linux, but it works pretty much the same. Here's the Firefox icon up here." Family and friends ranging in age from 10 to 70 have used it with no problems. Those who need to are able to work on business documents that they brought on a USB drive and can print to the inkjet and laser printers on our home office network just fine.
I think I detect a little arm twisting on the part of MS here, but nobody is surprised at that.
When Dell came out with their pre-installed Ubuntu machines a few years back, I bought an E520N the day they became available so as to vote with my wallet that this was a very good idea for Dell.
We had very reliable daily communication with home in the US.....via SSB ham radio. No Internet, obviously, or even computers or programmable calculators. In fact, no calculators at all. We did have a nice old Loran A that we used to get fixes at night. We always did a Noon meridian transit to verify our latitude and kept track of distance covered with the taffrail log. No problem finding Barbados dead-on after 28 days at sea. For the older hams who might remember, the rig was a Galaxy GT-550 and the antenna was a Hy-Gain triband vertical. We mostly used 15 meters.
Our electronics, freezer and refrigerator was powered by a 32 volt battery bank that was recharged via a 15KW diesel generator or the diesel propulsion engine. For entertainment, we had a Zenith Transoceanic radio for BBC, VOA, etc and we had a reel-to-reel tape deck stereo system that we could use when the generator was running as was usually the case at meal time since the main stove was electric.
Back then we didn't even have calculators and it was tough to write a crib on your slide rule.
I still have my slide rule. You never know when civilization is going to collapse and you can't get calculator batteries for your non-solar powered ones.
So you probably don't know about public service and emergency communications that hams do. The chat is part of making sure our gear works when nothing else does like the 24 hour "Field Day" exercise that tens of thousands of hams took part in last weekend to simulate communication in emergency conditions when grid power is not available and communications lines are down. Oh, and don't give me the, "It's not needed because we have cell phones" story. We had a tornado in my neighborhood and cell phones didn't work.. The tower went down along with the power and cable wires. No power for a week, no cable/Internet for 10 days.
I'll pass on the implanted part. I'd like the option of leaving it behind if I so choose.... or wrapping it in foil.
There are just too many ways that this could be misused against my best interests in spite of all the reassurances that I'm sure would be put forward.
In Lincoln's New Salem, near Springfield, Illinois, there is a reconstructed carding mill powered by a tilted tread wheel on which an ox walked to supply the power. This would have been in use around 1830.
One hopes that the lawyers are paid in Classmate credits, too.
You only have to pass 5 WPM now.
CW (code) operation is still very popular with hams. It can get through when voice modes can't, and with lower power and simpler equipment.
There are lots of operators today who can get above 30 WPM very comfortably and do so on a regular basis. The International code receiving record is still 77 WPM set my Ted McElroy back in the 1939. He was also the champ with American Morse (landline telegraph) and Japanese Kanjii code. Oh, and he could type 150 WPM on a manual typewriter. Quite a guy. He'd run rings around these texting kids.
Yes, I'm a ham and, yes, I operate using code.
Loran A that I was using around 1970. In mid-Atlantic you couldn't get signals during the day and accuracy was around 1 nm, but it certainly was nice to have.
Facebook.
Besides seeming to be not much of big deal convenience-wise, is this a "green" technology or is it a power leach drawing power even when it's not being used. What is the ratio of input power to power actually charging a device?
Back in the late 50s, I ran a several turn loop around my bedroom and created a "Halo coil" with many turns on a set of monaural headphones so I could have cordless headphones for listening to my shortwave radio. It worked, but wasn't particularly efficient.
When our power goes out, our Internet service is out, too. The buried phone lines work. We had a tornado in our neighborhood in March of 2006. I was on the POTS line (from the basement) with my kids when it hit. There wasn't even a click, it just worked. Power was out for a week and Internet was out for 4 more days after that. VOIP isn't ready for prime time in my book. The nonsense about fiber having back-up is great until the outage is more than 8 hours, assuming your battery has been maintained. Of course, I've got a generator so I'd have power at my house, but what about the fiber hubs? How long is their backup? Cell didn't work very well either since the tornado took down the main cell tower that serves our neighborhood. POTS still does the job for me. Yes, I've got a couple of wired phones that don't require power to operate, one of them is a black 500 series rotary dial antique. Of course, I've also got my ham radio gear and charged gell cells, for when all else fails.
I use Opera mini as my browser and have the gmail app for my email and calendar. That seems to avoid these problems. I've had my BB for almost a year now and like it a lot.
My default search engine is still Google. So far so good. I also use the Gmail application for my email and Google calendar rather than the somewhat clunky RIM mail.
our tinfoil hats when we're in the new cars? Sounds like a big plus to me.
Like a dervish.
Oh, wait... that's going to happen anyway.