Also, you're going to get less than.7 efficiency from the inductive recharger. The.7 efficiency on something like a toothbrush-charging stand assumes that the coils actually overlap slightly (know that little knob that the toothbrush rests on? It's actually part of the magnetic core that helps transmit the AC over). The electric field decreases with the square of distance. In one of those toothbrush chargers, the inductors are separated maybe by a millimeter of thin plastic. If you have... say a mousepad-sized recharging "station" to put all of your goodies onto, you might end up with distances of several inches from the charging coil to the pickup coil in the device you actually want to charge. Without having an actual "stand" like electric toothbrushes do, you aren't going to transmit much power. If you're going to have a stand, might as well have metal contacts, and forego the less efficient inductive method. The only reason why toothbrushes really do that is because they're often wet, and you put them in your mouth, so you wouldn't want metal contacts sticking out (my waterproof electric razor actually has metal contacts, you just wouldn't want to plug in the AC while it's wet).
The median income might be 44k, but usually working includes benefits like medical insurance, retirement plan, etc, that add up to quite a few more thousand "worth" a year. I wonder if the 44k median takes that into account?
Honda makes a diesel that'll do 130 MPH, and get 92 MPG (not at the same time, mind you, but in the exact same vehicle though). It's not an overly-expensive interior-space-lacking hybrid, just a regular diesel, with an Accord body (looks like a normal car, not stupid-futuristic like a lot of "concepts" are). At the end of the quarter mile, the car is doing a dreadfully slow 54.198 MPH though. Acceleration isn't everything, but being able to get the hell out of the way of oncoming traffic and merge with a fast-moving freeway is necessary in many parts of the world. This would be on the dangerous end of slow acceleration for real-life driving.
I've been using Gentoo for almost a couple of years now, admittedly for my own fairly simple purposes (desktop, router/light server, laptop), and I've never once had a problem with an ebuild. I don't emerge anything fancy, but I ran ~x86 for a year on the desktop without a problem.
This is a reply to all in the level above: Yeah, I've tried the powertoys version of the virtual-desktop-switcher, but it's really aggravating to use, and it takes up lots of taskbar realestate, and didn't seem to have any options like screen-edge-mouse-switching IIRC. I also have the problem where even without a virtual desktop switcher, applications will "disappear" from the taskbar, but I can still alt-tab to them. It only seems to happen with Firefox and Thunderbird though (hmmm, Microsoft underhandedness, or just common bugs?). The reason why I even need/want a desktop switcher is because at work, I often have 60+ windows/applications open at any given time. I have to expand the taskbar to two levels to even see all of it (otherwise I get the scroll thing on the side, and even two-levels deep sometimes I get the scroll thing). I have to remember where everything is, 'cause I can't read the text very easily, and it totally aggravates me when programs "disappear", 'cause they inevitably reappear at the end of the task list, throwing the whole thing off. The windows taskbar _sucks_ a lot, you can't rearrange things or even drag-and-drop files onto it; windows actually pops up a thing saying "you can't do this"... If they can pop up a message, then they can do it, damnit.
I've tried numerous "virtual desktop" programs on my machine at work (have to use XP), and none of them work worth a crap. The most common problem for me is: when changing desktops, the entries in the taskbar (which also sucks a lot) sometimes get "stuck" such that I can see things in the taskbar that aren't present on the current desktop. Some virtual-desktop programs I've tried actually close programs at random (at least they disappear from anywhere I can get to them). I have yet to find one that works well in XP.
Efficiency is the advantage. One of the new advances that has helped to miniaturize "wall-wart" type AC power supplies is they use a "chopper" transistor to chop the 60 Hz AC into a much higher frequency. That higher frequency AC can be run through a much smaller transformer to get the required voltage out of it, with less waste heat generated.
A lot of people complain about automotive analogies, but I really like them:
Knowing about files and their sizes is a basic part of operating a computer. That's like driving a car and not knowing that you have to change the oil.
Not anymore. Any new car you buy, they tell you to bring the car in for service every 3000, 5000, or what-have-you miles. They don't tell you every specific thing they're going to do. They might not even necessarily mention that they're changing the oil. Obviously most people have been brought up enough around cars to realize that you need to change the oil every so often, but that's often the extent of their knowledge. If you bring up other maintenance, like flushing of coolant, suspension alignment and greasing, brake fluid changing; a lot more people will know a lot less information about it. While it may be obvious to an auto-enthusiast, people just don't know what they have to do, which is why manufacturers have "service intervals" where they do _something_ and your car continues to work. It stands to reason that most people probably need something like this for thier computer, something that automatically scans/protects/assumes things for them, such that for 99% of people, their computer "Just Works", just like for 99% of people, the service you get at the dealership so your car "just works" is ok-happy-fine.
Aah, my mistake then, I wasn't aware of that. I was (ass out of you and me, I know) assuming that carbon nano tubes would work much the same way as carbon fiber (which doesn't burn well at all).
Uh, I don't know what kind of carbon you're thinking about, but the kind of nanotubes that are used would be neither flammable nor (very) conductive. Any charge built up on the cable would remain fairly local, and not traverse the cable up or down.
According to the Equivalence principle in general relativity, the effects of gravity and acceleration are the same, so an accelerometer can make no distinction between these effects.
Yup. IC-based Accelerometers will read 1G of positive acceleration in whichever direction is facing away from earth when at rest, because of gravity. Without gravity (and by that, I mean the effects of gravity relative to where you stand; say, in orbit around Earth), it would read an actual 0 force in any direction. A ball-cage might not read anything if the ball wasn't touching the cage in a 0-gravity environment.
Interesting yes, but this is the _ANCIENT_ way of detecting motion like you're imagining. It's been done since the days of the first input devices. Nowadays, we have integrated circuits (chips, ICs), and MEMS chips that detect both linear acceleration, and rotational acceleration, no gravity (or ball in cage) needed.
Hmm, that's interesting. It's good to have options, but I think I'd rather default to using the keypad. Having a big, obvious number pad up on the screen isn't so good for keeping shoulder-surfers at bay. If you were just at your house though, and worried more about keyloggers than someone peering over your shoulder, it's a good idea.
Something that upsets me about the couple of bank websites I've tried is they have an extremely small _maximum_ amount of characters available for passwords, like on the order of 4-5 characters.
Also I'd imagine a twisted Keyboard would sound very different from a rectangular straight keyboard.
The algorithm in the description doesn't have/need a baseline recording of any particular keyboard, it learns as it goes along, using pattern, and dictionary-style decoding. It just listens for all sorts of different sounding keystrokes, then starts to assume things as it goes along. If you type the same three different sounding characters in a row a whole bunch of times, it's probably the word "the" rather than "zoe". It can use common words and lengths of words to figure it out, even if you're typing on a homemade, metal keyboard that sounds 100% unique from any other board.
If you're a small company with little money to spare for legal representation, that's just about the only thing you can do/say; rather than just being left up crap creek without a paddle, and letting google use the name that you rightfully had first (assuming that is the case, of course).
That's exactly what this article is about though... They can get your keystrokes with 96% accuracy just by listening to them over a period of time.
So, theoretically, yes; malware could listen to microphone input of you typing and work it backwards into key logging. If spyware's already on your system though, it'd be easier just to log the keys in the system. But you could figure out what someone else is typing just by recording it.
If you RTFA, you will see that the company is a small company, and was involved in communication with google over the span of 15 months or so, before jumping right into litigation. That sounds like the right thing to do, IMO, rather than just sue immediately. The company is a small one, and they say they don't have the big money that Google has to bring a law suit just to protect their name.
It would have been able to do that, had it been aim-able, and not embedded into the side of a hill, designed only to launch payloads into orbit. It is more likely he was killed either because he was coerced into helping building military-use missiles, or because he "knew too much" about too many governments, and projects.
Re:I haven't read the book, but...
on
Pornified
·
· Score: 1
No I don't, and you sound like an idiot. Here's why:
Stern's summary of the book, relating to the point I made said this: For many people, porn has quasi-addictive characteristics, requiring escalation to maintain a constant level of stimulation.
Many is a vague word, and implies "not all by a pretty good margin". My post stated that I'm one of those non-many people, and I wish the many people would get a grip, and that the writer of the book sounds like a religious person trying to get their way. This position is based not on any faith, guesswork, or assumption at all. Nor is it based on scientific study, because it's my opinion about one specific thing in the article. Please flame someone who can't defend themselves if you want to pad your ego.
-Jesse
I haven't read the book, but...
on
Pornified
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
What are these effects? The book devotes chapters to this, and I can summarize only very briefly. For many people, porn has quasi-addictive characteristics, requiring escalation to maintain a constant level of stimulation. It dampens empathy, it changes expectations, and it damages relationships.
You might say the same things about many other non-porn things, like eating, or gaming, or dieting, or exercising, or anything pretty much. Some people are going to react in funny ways to anything. I've never heard of anybody that takes a stand against dieting, but there are many people with eating problems (anorexics, bulemics, etc) out there. To me, personally, this just looks like someone with religiously imposed morals trying to get their way.
The well-adjusted folk of the world who can look at porn, play violent video games, and eat fatty foods without going overboard and ruining their lives wish that everybody else would just get a freaking grip already.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, you're going to get less than .7 efficiency from the inductive recharger. The .7 efficiency on something like a toothbrush-charging stand assumes that the coils actually overlap slightly (know that little knob that the toothbrush rests on? It's actually part of the magnetic core that helps transmit the AC over). The electric field decreases with the square of distance. In one of those toothbrush chargers, the inductors are separated maybe by a millimeter of thin plastic. If you have... say a mousepad-sized recharging "station" to put all of your goodies onto, you might end up with distances of several inches from the charging coil to the pickup coil in the device you actually want to charge. Without having an actual "stand" like electric toothbrushes do, you aren't going to transmit much power. If you're going to have a stand, might as well have metal contacts, and forego the less efficient inductive method. The only reason why toothbrushes really do that is because they're often wet, and you put them in your mouth, so you wouldn't want metal contacts sticking out (my waterproof electric razor actually has metal contacts, you just wouldn't want to plug in the AC while it's wet).
The median income might be 44k, but usually working includes benefits like medical insurance, retirement plan, etc, that add up to quite a few more thousand "worth" a year. I wonder if the 44k median takes that into account?
-Jesse
Thanks for the brick of sanity this morning, I needed it.
And pay umpteen-thousand dollars for an engineering education, just so I could make less money than a manager at McDonalds :(
Anybody else depressed that people make a lot of money doing stupid things?
-Jesse
Honda makes a diesel that'll do 130 MPH, and get 92 MPG (not at the same time, mind you, but in the exact same vehicle though). It's not an overly-expensive interior-space-lacking hybrid, just a regular diesel, with an Accord body (looks like a normal car, not stupid-futuristic like a lot of "concepts" are). At the end of the quarter mile, the car is doing a dreadfully slow 54.198 MPH though. Acceleration isn't everything, but being able to get the hell out of the way of oncoming traffic and merge with a fast-moving freeway is necessary in many parts of the world. This would be on the dangerous end of slow acceleration for real-life driving.
-Jesse
I've been using Gentoo for almost a couple of years now, admittedly for my own fairly simple purposes (desktop, router/light server, laptop), and I've never once had a problem with an ebuild. I don't emerge anything fancy, but I ran ~x86 for a year on the desktop without a problem.
-Jesse
This is a reply to all in the level above: Yeah, I've tried the powertoys version of the virtual-desktop-switcher, but it's really aggravating to use, and it takes up lots of taskbar realestate, and didn't seem to have any options like screen-edge-mouse-switching IIRC. I also have the problem where even without a virtual desktop switcher, applications will "disappear" from the taskbar, but I can still alt-tab to them. It only seems to happen with Firefox and Thunderbird though (hmmm, Microsoft underhandedness, or just common bugs?). The reason why I even need/want a desktop switcher is because at work, I often have 60+ windows/applications open at any given time. I have to expand the taskbar to two levels to even see all of it (otherwise I get the scroll thing on the side, and even two-levels deep sometimes I get the scroll thing). I have to remember where everything is, 'cause I can't read the text very easily, and it totally aggravates me when programs "disappear", 'cause they inevitably reappear at the end of the task list, throwing the whole thing off. The windows taskbar _sucks_ a lot, you can't rearrange things or even drag-and-drop files onto it; windows actually pops up a thing saying "you can't do this"... If they can pop up a message, then they can do it, damnit.
-Jesse
Here lies the body of Johnathan Blake. He stepped on the gas instead of the brake.
-Jesse
I've tried numerous "virtual desktop" programs on my machine at work (have to use XP), and none of them work worth a crap. The most common problem for me is: when changing desktops, the entries in the taskbar (which also sucks a lot) sometimes get "stuck" such that I can see things in the taskbar that aren't present on the current desktop. Some virtual-desktop programs I've tried actually close programs at random (at least they disappear from anywhere I can get to them). I have yet to find one that works well in XP.
-Jesse
Efficiency is the advantage. One of the new advances that has helped to miniaturize "wall-wart" type AC power supplies is they use a "chopper" transistor to chop the 60 Hz AC into a much higher frequency. That higher frequency AC can be run through a much smaller transformer to get the required voltage out of it, with less waste heat generated.
-Jesse
A lot of people complain about automotive analogies, but I really like them:
Knowing about files and their sizes is a basic part of operating a computer. That's like driving a car and not knowing that you have to change the oil.
Not anymore. Any new car you buy, they tell you to bring the car in for service every 3000, 5000, or what-have-you miles. They don't tell you every specific thing they're going to do. They might not even necessarily mention that they're changing the oil. Obviously most people have been brought up enough around cars to realize that you need to change the oil every so often, but that's often the extent of their knowledge. If you bring up other maintenance, like flushing of coolant, suspension alignment and greasing, brake fluid changing; a lot more people will know a lot less information about it. While it may be obvious to an auto-enthusiast, people just don't know what they have to do, which is why manufacturers have "service intervals" where they do _something_ and your car continues to work. It stands to reason that most people probably need something like this for thier computer, something that automatically scans/protects/assumes things for them, such that for 99% of people, their computer "Just Works", just like for 99% of people, the service you get at the dealership so your car "just works" is ok-happy-fine.
-Jesse
Aah, my mistake then, I wasn't aware of that. I was (ass out of you and me, I know) assuming that carbon nano tubes would work much the same way as carbon fiber (which doesn't burn well at all).
-Jesse
Uh, I don't know what kind of carbon you're thinking about, but the kind of nanotubes that are used would be neither flammable nor (very) conductive. Any charge built up on the cable would remain fairly local, and not traverse the cable up or down.
-Jesse
According to the Equivalence principle in general relativity, the effects of gravity and acceleration are the same, so an accelerometer can make no distinction between these effects.
Yup. IC-based Accelerometers will read 1G of positive acceleration in whichever direction is facing away from earth when at rest, because of gravity. Without gravity (and by that, I mean the effects of gravity relative to where you stand; say, in orbit around Earth), it would read an actual 0 force in any direction. A ball-cage might not read anything if the ball wasn't touching the cage in a 0-gravity environment.
-Jesse
Interesting yes, but this is the _ANCIENT_ way of detecting motion like you're imagining. It's been done since the days of the first input devices. Nowadays, we have integrated circuits (chips, ICs), and MEMS chips that detect both linear acceleration, and rotational acceleration, no gravity (or ball in cage) needed.
-Jesse
Hmm, that's interesting. It's good to have options, but I think I'd rather default to using the keypad. Having a big, obvious number pad up on the screen isn't so good for keeping shoulder-surfers at bay. If you were just at your house though, and worried more about keyloggers than someone peering over your shoulder, it's a good idea.
Something that upsets me about the couple of bank websites I've tried is they have an extremely small _maximum_ amount of characters available for passwords, like on the order of 4-5 characters.
-Jesse
Also I'd imagine a twisted Keyboard would sound very different from a rectangular straight keyboard.
The algorithm in the description doesn't have/need a baseline recording of any particular keyboard, it learns as it goes along, using pattern, and dictionary-style decoding. It just listens for all sorts of different sounding keystrokes, then starts to assume things as it goes along. If you type the same three different sounding characters in a row a whole bunch of times, it's probably the word "the" rather than "zoe". It can use common words and lengths of words to figure it out, even if you're typing on a homemade, metal keyboard that sounds 100% unique from any other board.
-Jesse
If you're a small company with little money to spare for legal representation, that's just about the only thing you can do/say; rather than just being left up crap creek without a paddle, and letting google use the name that you rightfully had first (assuming that is the case, of course).
-Jesse
That's exactly what this article is about though... They can get your keystrokes with 96% accuracy just by listening to them over a period of time.
So, theoretically, yes; malware could listen to microphone input of you typing and work it backwards into key logging. If spyware's already on your system though, it'd be easier just to log the keys in the system. But you could figure out what someone else is typing just by recording it.
-Jesse
If you RTFA, you will see that the company is a small company, and was involved in communication with google over the span of 15 months or so, before jumping right into litigation. That sounds like the right thing to do, IMO, rather than just sue immediately. The company is a small one, and they say they don't have the big money that Google has to bring a law suit just to protect their name.
-Jesse
I hope you're joking :)
It would have been able to do that, had it been aim-able, and not embedded into the side of a hill, designed only to launch payloads into orbit. It is more likely he was killed either because he was coerced into helping building military-use missiles, or because he "knew too much" about too many governments, and projects.
-Jesse
You seem to be suffering from RAS syndrome.
-Jesse
No I don't, and you sound like an idiot. Here's why:
Stern's summary of the book, relating to the point I made said this:
For many people, porn has quasi-addictive characteristics, requiring escalation to maintain a constant level of stimulation.
Many is a vague word, and implies "not all by a pretty good margin". My post stated that I'm one of those non-many people, and I wish the many people would get a grip, and that the writer of the book sounds like a religious person trying to get their way. This position is based not on any faith, guesswork, or assumption at all. Nor is it based on scientific study, because it's my opinion about one specific thing in the article. Please flame someone who can't defend themselves if you want to pad your ego.
-Jesse
What are these effects? The book devotes chapters to this, and I can summarize only very briefly. For many people, porn has quasi-addictive characteristics, requiring escalation to maintain a constant level of stimulation. It dampens empathy, it changes expectations, and it damages relationships.
You might say the same things about many other non-porn things, like eating, or gaming, or dieting, or exercising, or anything pretty much. Some people are going to react in funny ways to anything. I've never heard of anybody that takes a stand against dieting, but there are many people with eating problems (anorexics, bulemics, etc) out there. To me, personally, this just looks like someone with religiously imposed morals trying to get their way.
The well-adjusted folk of the world who can look at porn, play violent video games, and eat fatty foods without going overboard and ruining their lives wish that everybody else would just get a freaking grip already.
-Jesse