This article is about record companies wanting to raise the current fixed prices.
This article is a wank.. At $0.99 (US) per song, an album of 12 songs would cost $12. In Australian dollars, that is about $20. Now, a CD in the store goes for between $25 and $35 depending on what crappy store you go to (there are shitbox stores that cater for idiot kids, and other stores that are no frills and have better range and cheap prices).
For my $25, I get physical media, a cover, and some pretty printing and maybe a few extras if I'm lucky.
Really, increasing the price past $0.99 for any one track is nothing more than extortion in the search for infinite profits. The record company would be making _more_ at $0.99 than if it sold a whole CD at full price.
Many have said it before we should lock up all the GACs (see my posting history for a definition of this term) and be done with it. The world will be a happier place in the end.
Why not pick up an old pentium and throw in a large HDD?
It's really quite simple. The buy a slightly faster pentium (they're a bit more efficient in terms of power per cycle). Clock it down. Clock down the RAM speed. I have a 2x550MHz machine running at 2x350 (or so) with slghtly lower core voltage. It doesn't even need fans (well I haven't tried in the warmer weather but that is coming up, so we will see).
One place that uses quite a bit of power is DRAM. It is continually drawing power to do the refresh as charge is lost from the cells. Take out all the RAM you don't need.
Bigger hard disks use more power. It's an unavoidable fact. The platters are more densely packed with magnetic material. Faster hard disks use more power. If you want to minimise power, a 2.5" 4800RPM disk is the go. You can easily make an adaptor for the 44-pin -> 40 pin + floppy power connector. They retail for quite a bit if you can find em.
If you can't (or don't want) a 2.5" disk, a 3.5" disk at 5400RPM will use quite a bit less power than a 7200RPM job.
Don't put in a kick-ass video card. What's the point? Shitty old PCI S3 or something that doesn't use much power will suffice. In fact, if it's just going to be a simple server leave out all the cards. Why have sound, and all that other crap you don't ever plan to use? Disable it all in the BIOS if its built into the chipset.
Fans... if it's on 24x7 you need to be careful with fans. Go out and replace whatever fans are in the machine you get with expensive ball bearing fans. It's worth it in the long run. They are quieter and last longer.
Turn on APM and let it go to it's idle mode. It'll shut down the video and the hard disks but leave the CPU responsive so that you can bring it back up pretty quickly. You probably won't notice the delay while the hard disks spin up if you're accessing it over the network.
Nothing stops you from adding your own clauses to the GPL that allow plugins to take on whatever license they want, as long as they do not use any GPL code. You'd also have to provide a self-contained header (ie one that doesn't call on any GPL'd parts) and wrap up the whole interface in there. Then you'd need to make a GPL exception in your derived license code containing your interface header. It's all too hard!!!
The LGPL will do this to the same effect. Plugins are dynamically linked libraries (much like the libc). The only difference is that you control the loading and linking from your program flow rather than letting the system linker do it.
- Organize adult-supervised bicycle rides for kids who live within 3 miles of their schools
Seconded! This is a great way to get kids out in the fresh(?, see below) air and help to prevent them all getting fat fucking arses.
- Stop buying computers for primary schools that provide little educational value compared to cheap books and good teachers. The savings could pay for school bus
I don't get this computer thing in primary schools. Teachers have started using computers as babysitters. The computer keeps the kids attention and the teacher only has to answer the very occasional question. Kids are better taught by interaction with the REAL WORLD. Group games, going outside and actually looking at things.
It's not just a matter of saving money. Taking computers out of classrooms (instead of inisisting they be in every classroom) will improve the quality of education. Teachers will have to improve their skills (and relearn the basic skills, which I am sure they have forgotten). Students will enjoy the learning process more because it's different every day, instead of sitting in front of a computer and running a program that is much the same every time.
- Raise taxes. Gap! yes! raise *YOUR* taxes so that *YOUR* children may go to school and have a chance at a good education and a good future, a concept America as a whole has completely forgotten for some reason.
The quoted poster had two very good first points, but I will attack the price of fuel, as it is the point that pisses me off the most.
America has forgotton a lot of things along the way. Most importantly all foresight is gone. Americans focus only on the right now and the how much will it cost factors.
You should all stop your pansy-ass whinging about the price of fuel. I tell this to the people around (in the land down under), EVERY SINGLE DAY.
If you don't like it, get rid of that whopping great V8 truck you drive and buy something more efficient. Buy a compact car; do you really need all that space and power to potter about, drop the kids at school, grab the groceries, etc?
Don't give me this shit about "but I might want to tow a boat or trailer or move big things in the future". If you need to pull a fucking boat or trailer or move big things, just hire something to do it for the few times you ever need to.
If you don't like it, stop fucking driving. Use more efficient means of transport. Catch a bus to work in the city. Damn it, walk the 100m down the road to whatever you would normally drive to.
Fuel prices are subject to supply and demand, like everything. The prices are also manipulated by governments.
Fuel is cheap. It is the single most limited resource we have, yet it is the signle highest demand resource we have apart from water, oxygen and basic food. Low supply and high demand means the price will be higher. If you don't understand the basic economics of that you're probably too fucking stupid to be allowed to drive anyway.
Think of your health. Think of the environment. It's a double-edged sword. If you burn less fuel, and burn it more efficiently, the air is going to be cleaner in the long run. If you start walking or cycling, your fitness is going to improve. Shit, if more people stopped driving their fat asses around maybe there would be less people with fat asses out there!
Well, you could XOR your data, or have the disk in EXT2 format (with a small FAT32 partition at the start with EXT2 drivers for various sysems.
As for encryption, I presume you're interested in keeping the average user from sector L out of your files, should your key be "misplaced".
I'd look at GPG; it's roughly PGP compatible. There are the pay for versions of PGP for Windows that can create a big encrypted file and give it a drive letter. Maybe there exists some GPG code that can mount those files?
I deduced that the person wearing the t-shirt was in-fact an Atari 2600 joy-stick
Kind of makes me think of all the tools I see around wearing T-shirts with the Atari logo plastered on them. None of them are old enough to know anything before the Nintendo64/PC era.
When you quiz them they tell you that Atari is some new fashionable clothes designer or somesuch. They just don't realise the significance of that logo.
Mmmmm Atari... *me goes out to the "museum room" for a bit of old-fashioned gamin'
1. Most cables aren't underground. I live in an area (that's not too old) where the cables are above ground.
1a. It's a damned costly exercise to put cables underground. They ain't going to get there any time soon.
2. Amateur radio gear (particularly expensive HF stuff) is particularly sensitive. It's quite easy to wipe out the front end of it if a strong local source is broadcasting at a frequency that's even close to the one you're listening on.
3. Amateur radio signals (particularly from far away in HF bands) arrive at very low power. Sometimes the signals are barely above the noise floor (some of the HF-Digital and even CW modes) by the time they get to the recipient.
3a. The whole point of HAM radio is to receive signals that are barely audible from far far away. BPL raises the noise floor and causes a lot of signals to become lost!
4. HAM operators typically build enormous, high gain antenna arrays. These serve to "amplify" the signal. It's difficult to build a HF antenna that is really directional (it is just too large), so it's hard to direct it away from a noise source. High gain on an already high power noise source just helps to wipe out the front end of your receiver.
4a. BPL wouldn't be adirectional noise source. It would occur as a blanket of noise on every cable in the area. This is bad because even if you wanted to you couldn't direct your antenna away from it.
5. Underground cables radiate still. The earth blocks out a good amount of the signal, but the cables are usually not buried far enough beneath the ground to stop it all. See point 2 for reasons why this a real bloody problem.
6. Even DSL is causing problems for me on some bands... The signal coming out of the phone cable in my house is enough to wipe out the receiver some times... It really depends on a lot of things though.
There's just too many things to list. Don't forget that one underground cable carrying one minute RF signal is nothing, but if you add up the number of cables running in a particular city you get a significant amount of noise being radiated.
I can attest that the bubble is bursting. On my way to work I see at least a dozen "For Sale" signs, and it's only a 10 minute drive. On my way to pick up my son in the evening I see another 10, and that's only a 5 minute drive.
Problem is, the bubble has burst. I agree, rising petrol (mainly) and the general rise in energy costs (gas, electricity, etc) over the last few years has pushed most people over the razor's financial edge that they were teetering on.
Banks haven't helped. They've become only to happy to over-extend people's financial capacity with things like crazy honeymoon fixed 5 year rates. When your fixed term is up, you're balanced on a delicate razor's edge, and things like food start to become a luxury.
But, I thought this was a thread about Evil-T, not housing prices. You should go and read the Whirlpool (http://www.whirlpool.net.au/ forums some time. Recently, in the Internode (and probably others) forum has been a pile of discussion about how Telstra Wholesale is abusing their position to get people to sign up to BigPong DSL.
They seem quite happy to repeatedly reject your application with another ISP, but when you apply to BigPong they are quite happy to sign you up, remove technology blockers, find alternate paths, etc. Of course, once they have you locked into BigPong (thus proving that ADSL is, in fact, available) on a 24 month contract they laugh all the way to the bank.
This is why Telstra Wholesale should be completely separated from Telstra Retail. Telstra Retail should be subject to the same red tape and beaurocratic bullshit that other carriers are subjected to.
but if you only have 12V going through the wire, you don't need an electrician
Which is interesting, because 110/240V carries much lower current and uses enormous fat wire compared to your average 12V configuration. Not having regulation is a real problem because people associate low voltage -> low power, when that is not true.
The average unlicensed schmuck doesn't understand that 12V at 10A is only enough for 4x30W fixtures (and they don't even understand what 10A is). This leads to them installing wire that is far too small to carry the capacity ("it's 12V, remember, you don't need fat wire!!!" is what he would say)... can you say "fire hazard".
But i'm glad we agree:) 12V powered lighting is a stupid thing to do.
This, apparently, has some positive effect on the reduction of interest rates.
How unfortunate for those of us who earn well above the average salary.. and are looking for our first home. I am expected to pay rent _and_ save 5% of the price of a house over 6 months in order to qualify for a loan... and all that while paying an enormous amount of rent because the price of the house we're in went up exponentially.
Problem is that house prices here have gone up by well over 50% in the last 5 years while salaries have risen by less than 10% in the same time. The rise in house prices has been driven by the continually low interest rates (and a govt that wants to get reelected), and complete blanket of fucked "home improvement" shows that say "rip up the carpet, paint a wall red, put a fountain in and add $50k to the price of your house". Of course, everyone went out and did that.
Prices here are far over inflated; you need 2 good incomes, no children, no life and rich parents to afford anything that isn't in some grotty ghetto.
Back on topic: I was really hoping that the government would split the shitbox telco up into retail and wholesale (yay I got what I wanted). I was also hoping that the government would hold onto wholesale, drop the prices (it's not as expensive to run as the idiots in Telstra try and claim in their search for infinite profits) and force telstra retail to compete.
I don't want to see this massive piece if infrastructure privatised; once that happens, there are no controls on what they will charge, and everyone has to pay it!
new standard 12VDC power that's starting to be popular for some lightning
Um... even a 12W fixture chews a solid 1A... multiply this by 20 fixtures (not unthinkable to get a decent amount of light in a few rooms) and you have a nice solid 20A...
Now add on the heat losses from the current (in the wire, alone). We can assume about 1/2 Ohm resistance in the wire if it's a long run back to a central transformer... I won't even get into the losses in the transformer (which only runs at ~85% efficiency).
P = 20^2 * 1/2 = 200W of copper losses for 240W of light...
You should see the reason why mains power is distributed and generally used at high voltages...
That's no reason for you to try to achieve the maximum BS in each of those fields.
Where are the modpoints when I need 'em? That was a pearler.
It's not the patent office that is achieving the BS though... it's the damned Microsofts, Apples, SCOs, IBMs, and all the other GAC's (see one of my previous posts) of this world that are achieving maximum BS...
"a generic method for removing soil to form an arbitrary sized indentation in the ground with a flat metal blade on the end of a wooden stick" or somesuch... it is patented!
The patent office just removes the "BS" tags from it and makes it law... kind of like what tabloid media tries to do with celebs!
Another great aspect of teaching a course this way is that it shows them both the difficulty and the rewards of programming. It is not easy to create good levels in these games. They have to learn to handle various types of media as well as programming the main logic. As a great bonus they end up with something they all can play with in the end
Here, in Oz, there is a competition for uni students (we hear about it all the time) to program up the MicroMouse hardware for solving tasks. I can't remember what it's called off the top of my head and Google is just too far away.
It's an interesting concept. The Kids are given a set of mazes to negotiate. Their program must successfully navigate the maze and avoid all of the obstacles. You are not allowed to just program in the solution to the maze either. You must make the mouse solve it.
The task itself is quite involved, but I am sure that high school students could probably solve a simple cut-down version. It would teach them a whole pile about analysing a real-world problem, working out an algorithmic way of solving it and then breaking down that algorithm into manageable sub-parts for implementation.
I remember learning to program in BASIC during my very early years. I hated it. I still hate BASIC, it was crap.
I also remember learning Logo when I started at high school. That little turtle that pottered about on the floor was really cool, and it had all of the concepts that a programming language needs.... loops and conditionals! Having a real-world output from the program was a good way to inspire students to learn it - everyone really enjoyed it.
There are some gizmos now called the MicroMouse or somesuch. It's a little PIC powered rover that is similar to the Turtle. You program it up with a simple dialect of C, and download the code into the PIC. The development environment comes with all the libraries to make things like starting motors and reading switches easy from the C code. That might be a good way to teach the basics without boring students that otherwise don't see a use for it:)
Those that enjoyed it enough went on to study the more advanced stuff in later years of school.
Of course, my days in Logo were back when the BBC 8-bit micro was new and powerful.
I don't know what the big fuss is about... I decoded the Inca knot code years ago. It's really quite simple.
You hang the ropes from the wall so that the knots and colours form an aesthetically pleasing pattern.
When pattern becomes boring, rinse, repeat hanging procedure.
What is so difficult for these people to understand about evolving art? They always want it to have some hidden meaning..
Re:remember slashdot, that site that got taken dow
on
Behind the Xbox Boot Code
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· Score: 3, Insightful
His point is absurd, but it is a point. As much as we all value freedom of speech, there have been cases here when ISPs and Children (yes, children) have lost in court cases becase a web page belonging to said children contains links to pages (belonging to someone else) that linked to a few copyrighted MP3s.
The GACs (Greedy-Ass Cu..s) are making legitimite technology harder to develop, deploy and use; write a program that can easily share files and someone will load his entire CD collection into it for all to download... then the GACs will come along and take you to court for "developing software with the specific intent to violate copyright" or somesuch.
The world is in a sad state of affairs when it comes to matters like this. The (in the US and all countries that entered into free trade agreements with it) DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent any form of encryption, copy protection, etc.
Slashdot linking to an article that clearly describes the flaws in a copy protection implementation and how to get around it is becoming shaky ground. Gone are the days of free information... the GACs that run the world are making sure of that.
Although, this just goes to prove the point I always made when I was sitting through mind numbingly boring lectures given by stupid people in the past... "i feel dumber for having sat through that". Now I knot that I wasn't just imagining it!
I don't want my priceless family snapshots (Which were all taken on a digital camera) to be trackable back to the printer they were printed on... In fact, the printing of extra yellow dots alters my photos.
There are two courses of action here:
1. They have illegally modified a copyrighted work and produced a derivative work by adding extra dots. I did not authorise the addition of extra yellow dots to my images, and I certainly do not have any control as to whether they are added or not.
2. You have defaced my priceless memories you evil printer bastards, you. I demand $infinite in compensation for your deliberate and malicious vandalism.
Slashdot Mirror
This article is about record companies wanting to raise the current fixed prices.
This article is a wank.. At $0.99 (US) per song, an album of 12 songs would cost $12. In Australian dollars, that is about $20. Now, a CD in the store goes for between $25 and $35 depending on what crappy store you go to (there are shitbox stores that cater for idiot kids, and other stores that are no frills and have better range and cheap prices).
For my $25, I get physical media, a cover, and some pretty printing and maybe a few extras if I'm lucky.
Really, increasing the price past $0.99 for any one track is nothing more than extortion in the search for infinite profits. The record company would be making _more_ at $0.99 than if it sold a whole CD at full price.
Many have said it before we should lock up all the GACs (see my posting history for a definition of this term) and be done with it. The world will be a happier place in the end.
Why not pick up an old pentium and throw in a large HDD?
It's really quite simple. The buy a slightly faster pentium (they're a bit more efficient in terms of power per cycle). Clock it down. Clock down the RAM speed. I have a 2x550MHz machine running at 2x350 (or so) with slghtly lower core voltage. It doesn't even need fans (well I haven't tried in the warmer weather but that is coming up, so we will see).
One place that uses quite a bit of power is DRAM. It is continually drawing power to do the refresh as charge is lost from the cells. Take out all the RAM you don't need.
Bigger hard disks use more power. It's an unavoidable fact. The platters are more densely packed with magnetic material. Faster hard disks use more power. If you want to minimise power, a 2.5" 4800RPM disk is the go. You can easily make an adaptor for the 44-pin -> 40 pin + floppy power connector. They retail for quite a bit if you can find em.
If you can't (or don't want) a 2.5" disk, a 3.5" disk at 5400RPM will use quite a bit less power than a 7200RPM job.
Don't put in a kick-ass video card. What's the point? Shitty old PCI S3 or something that doesn't use much power will suffice. In fact, if it's just going to be a simple server leave out all the cards. Why have sound, and all that other crap you don't ever plan to use? Disable it all in the BIOS if its built into the chipset.
Fans... if it's on 24x7 you need to be careful with fans. Go out and replace whatever fans are in the machine you get with expensive ball bearing fans. It's worth it in the long run. They are quieter and last longer.
Turn on APM and let it go to it's idle mode. It'll shut down the video and the hard disks but leave the CPU responsive so that you can bring it back up pretty quickly. You probably won't notice the delay while the hard disks spin up if you're accessing it over the network.
Nothing stops you from adding your own clauses to the GPL that allow plugins to take on whatever license they want, as long as they do not use any GPL code. You'd also have to provide a self-contained header (ie one that doesn't call on any GPL'd parts) and wrap up the whole interface in there. Then you'd need to make a GPL exception in your derived license code containing your interface header. It's all too hard!!!
The LGPL will do this to the same effect. Plugins are dynamically linked libraries (much like the libc). The only difference is that you control the loading and linking from your program flow rather than letting the system linker do it.
- Organize adult-supervised bicycle rides for kids who live within 3 miles of their schools
Seconded! This is a great way to get kids out in the fresh(?, see below) air and help to prevent them all getting fat fucking arses.
- Stop buying computers for primary schools that provide little educational value compared to cheap books and good teachers. The savings could pay for school bus
I don't get this computer thing in primary schools. Teachers have started using computers as babysitters. The computer keeps the kids attention and the teacher only has to answer the very occasional question. Kids are better taught by interaction with the REAL WORLD. Group games, going outside and actually looking at things.
It's not just a matter of saving money. Taking computers out of classrooms (instead of inisisting they be in every classroom) will improve the quality of education. Teachers will have to improve their skills (and relearn the basic skills, which I am sure they have forgotten). Students will enjoy the learning process more because it's different every day, instead of sitting in front of a computer and running a program that is much the same every time.
- Raise taxes. Gap! yes! raise *YOUR* taxes so that *YOUR* children may go to school and have a chance at a good education and a good future, a concept America as a whole has completely forgotten for some reason.
The quoted poster had two very good first points, but I will attack the price of fuel, as it is the point that pisses me off the most.
America has forgotton a lot of things along the way. Most importantly all foresight is gone. Americans focus only on the right now and the how much will it cost factors.
You should all stop your pansy-ass whinging about the price of fuel. I tell this to the people around (in the land down under), EVERY SINGLE DAY.
If you don't like it, get rid of that whopping great V8 truck you drive and buy something more efficient. Buy a compact car; do you really need all that space and power to potter about, drop the kids at school, grab the groceries, etc?
Don't give me this shit about "but I might want to tow a boat or trailer or move big things in the future". If you need to pull a fucking boat or trailer or move big things, just hire something to do it for the few times you ever need to.
If you don't like it, stop fucking driving. Use more efficient means of transport. Catch a bus to work in the city. Damn it, walk the 100m down the road to whatever you would normally drive to.
Fuel prices are subject to supply and demand, like everything. The prices are also manipulated by governments.
Fuel is cheap. It is the single most limited resource we have, yet it is the signle highest demand resource we have apart from water, oxygen and basic food. Low supply and high demand means the price will be higher. If you don't understand the basic economics of that you're probably too fucking stupid to be allowed to drive anyway.
Think of your health. Think of the environment. It's a double-edged sword. If you burn less fuel, and burn it more efficiently, the air is going to be cleaner in the long run. If you start walking or cycling, your fitness is going to improve. Shit, if more people stopped driving their fat asses around maybe there would be less people with fat asses out there!
Fuck!
I built this years ago (RS232, not USB) for a PIC uC. It's not hard to build from a large pic. We had 30 LEDs blinking on it.
What more can I say?
Well, you could XOR your data, or have the disk in EXT2 format (with a small FAT32 partition at the start with EXT2 drivers for various sysems.
As for encryption, I presume you're interested in keeping the average user from sector L out of your files, should your key be "misplaced".
I'd look at GPG; it's roughly PGP compatible. There are the pay for versions of PGP for Windows that can create a big encrypted file and give it a drive letter. Maybe there exists some GPG code that can mount those files?
Kind of makes me think of all the tools I see around wearing T-shirts with the Atari logo plastered on them. None of them are old enough to know anything before the Nintendo64/PC era.
When you quiz them they tell you that Atari is some new fashionable clothes designer or somesuch. They just don't realise the significance of that logo.
Mmmmm Atari... *me goes out to the "museum room" for a bit of old-fashioned gamin'
If you hand some strange person the keys to your house, then you haven't a leg to stand on when they start taking your things. Same with your car.
As for underground cables..
1. Most cables aren't underground. I live in an area (that's not too old) where the cables are above ground.
1a. It's a damned costly exercise to put cables underground. They ain't going to get there any time soon.
2. Amateur radio gear (particularly expensive HF stuff) is particularly sensitive. It's quite easy to wipe out the front end of it if a strong local source is broadcasting at a frequency that's even close to the one you're listening on.
3. Amateur radio signals (particularly from far away in HF bands) arrive at very low power. Sometimes the signals are barely above the noise floor (some of the HF-Digital and even CW modes) by the time they get to the recipient.
3a. The whole point of HAM radio is to receive signals that are barely audible from far far away. BPL raises the noise floor and causes a lot of signals to become lost!
4. HAM operators typically build enormous, high gain antenna arrays. These serve to "amplify" the signal. It's difficult to build a HF antenna that is really directional (it is just too large), so it's hard to direct it away from a noise source. High gain on an already high power noise source just helps to wipe out the front end of your receiver.
4a. BPL wouldn't be adirectional noise source. It would occur as a blanket of noise on every cable in the area. This is bad because even if you wanted to you couldn't direct your antenna away from it.
5. Underground cables radiate still. The earth blocks out a good amount of the signal, but the cables are usually not buried far enough beneath the ground to stop it all. See point 2 for reasons why this a real bloody problem.
6. Even DSL is causing problems for me on some bands... The signal coming out of the phone cable in my house is enough to wipe out the receiver some times... It really depends on a lot of things though.
There's just too many things to list. Don't forget that one underground cable carrying one minute RF signal is nothing, but if you add up the number of cables running in a particular city you get a significant amount of noise being radiated.
I can attest that the bubble is bursting. On my way to work I see at least a dozen "For Sale" signs, and it's only a 10 minute drive. On my way to pick up my son in the evening I see another 10, and that's only a 5 minute drive.
Problem is, the bubble has burst. I agree, rising petrol (mainly) and the general rise in energy costs (gas, electricity, etc) over the last few years has pushed most people over the razor's financial edge that they were teetering on.
Banks haven't helped. They've become only to happy to over-extend people's financial capacity with things like crazy honeymoon fixed 5 year rates. When your fixed term is up, you're balanced on a delicate razor's edge, and things like food start to become a luxury.
But, I thought this was a thread about Evil-T, not housing prices. You should go and read the Whirlpool (http://www.whirlpool.net.au/ forums some time. Recently, in the Internode (and probably others) forum has been a pile of discussion about how Telstra Wholesale is abusing their position to get people to sign up to BigPong DSL.
They seem quite happy to repeatedly reject your application with another ISP, but when you apply to BigPong they are quite happy to sign you up, remove technology blockers, find alternate paths, etc. Of course, once they have you locked into BigPong (thus proving that ADSL is, in fact, available) on a 24 month contract they laugh all the way to the bank.
This is why Telstra Wholesale should be completely separated from Telstra Retail. Telstra Retail should be subject to the same red tape and beaurocratic bullshit that other carriers are subjected to.
but if you only have 12V going through the wire, you don't need an electrician
Which is interesting, because 110/240V carries much lower current and uses enormous fat wire compared to your average 12V configuration. Not having regulation is a real problem because people associate low voltage -> low power, when that is not true.
The average unlicensed schmuck doesn't understand that 12V at 10A is only enough for 4x30W fixtures (and they don't even understand what 10A is). This leads to them installing wire that is far too small to carry the capacity ("it's 12V, remember, you don't need fat wire!!!" is what he would say)... can you say "fire hazard".
But i'm glad we agree :) 12V powered lighting is a stupid thing to do.
next week, stay tuned for when they are going to install windows on a 1 gb usb keydrive!!
Stay tuned... Next week, overpaid scientists enter programs into a computer in binary by toggling 8 switches and pressing a clock button.
How unfortunate for those of us who earn well above the average salary.. and are looking for our first home. I am expected to pay rent _and_ save 5% of the price of a house over 6 months in order to qualify for a loan... and all that while paying an enormous amount of rent because the price of the house we're in went up exponentially.
Problem is that house prices here have gone up by well over 50% in the last 5 years while salaries have risen by less than 10% in the same time. The rise in house prices has been driven by the continually low interest rates (and a govt that wants to get reelected), and complete blanket of fucked "home improvement" shows that say "rip up the carpet, paint a wall red, put a fountain in and add $50k to the price of your house". Of course, everyone went out and did that.
Prices here are far over inflated; you need 2 good incomes, no children, no life and rich parents to afford anything that isn't in some grotty ghetto.
Back on topic: I was really hoping that the government would split the shitbox telco up into retail and wholesale (yay I got what I wanted). I was also hoping that the government would hold onto wholesale, drop the prices (it's not as expensive to run as the idiots in Telstra try and claim in their search for infinite profits) and force telstra retail to compete.
I don't want to see this massive piece if infrastructure privatised; once that happens, there are no controls on what they will charge, and everyone has to pay it!
Um... even a 12W fixture chews a solid 1A... multiply this by 20 fixtures (not unthinkable to get a decent amount of light in a few rooms) and you have a nice solid 20A...
Now add on the heat losses from the current (in the wire, alone). We can assume about 1/2 Ohm resistance in the wire if it's a long run back to a central transformer... I won't even get into the losses in the transformer (which only runs at ~85% efficiency).
P = 20^2 * 1/2 = 200W of copper losses for 240W of light...
You should see the reason why mains power is distributed and generally used at high voltages...
That's no reason for you to try to achieve the maximum BS in each of those fields.
Where are the modpoints when I need 'em? That was a pearler.
It's not the patent office that is achieving the BS though... it's the damned Microsofts, Apples, SCOs, IBMs, and all the other GAC's (see one of my previous posts) of this world that are achieving maximum BS...
"a generic method for removing soil to form an arbitrary sized indentation in the ground with a flat metal blade on the end of a wooden stick" or somesuch... it is patented!
The patent office just removes the "BS" tags from it and makes it law... kind of like what tabloid media tries to do with celebs!
Another great aspect of teaching a course this way is that it shows them both the difficulty and the rewards of programming. It is not easy to create good levels in these games. They have to learn to handle various types of media as well as programming the main logic. As a great bonus they end up with something they all can play with in the end
Here, in Oz, there is a competition for uni students (we hear about it all the time) to program up the MicroMouse hardware for solving tasks. I can't remember what it's called off the top of my head and Google is just too far away.
It's an interesting concept. The Kids are given a set of mazes to negotiate. Their program must successfully navigate the maze and avoid all of the obstacles. You are not allowed to just program in the solution to the maze either. You must make the mouse solve it.
The task itself is quite involved, but I am sure that high school students could probably solve a simple cut-down version. It would teach them a whole pile about analysing a real-world problem, working out an algorithmic way of solving it and then breaking down that algorithm into manageable sub-parts for implementation.
I once implemented a turtle library together in QuickBasic (and who remembers that :-) ?
Not me :) I avoided the ye-olde QBASIC...
I feel better for having learned it. Gone are the good days of computing. Now it's all VisualCRAP.
I remember learning to program in BASIC during my very early years. I hated it. I still hate BASIC, it was crap.
:)
I also remember learning Logo when I started at high school. That little turtle that pottered about on the floor was really cool, and it had all of the concepts that a programming language needs.... loops and conditionals! Having a real-world output from the program was a good way to inspire students to learn it - everyone really enjoyed it.
There are some gizmos now called the MicroMouse or somesuch. It's a little PIC powered rover that is similar to the Turtle. You program it up with a simple dialect of C, and download the code into the PIC. The development environment comes with all the libraries to make things like starting motors and reading switches easy from the C code. That might be a good way to teach the basics without boring students that otherwise don't see a use for it
Those that enjoyed it enough went on to study the more advanced stuff in later years of school.
Of course, my days in Logo were back when the BBC 8-bit micro was new and powerful.
I don't know what the big fuss is about... I decoded the Inca knot code years ago. It's really quite simple.
You hang the ropes from the wall so that the knots and colours form an aesthetically pleasing pattern.
When pattern becomes boring, rinse, repeat hanging procedure.
What is so difficult for these people to understand about evolving art? They always want it to have some hidden meaning..
His point is absurd, but it is a point. As much as we all value freedom of speech, there have been cases here when ISPs and Children (yes, children) have lost in court cases becase a web page belonging to said children contains links to pages (belonging to someone else) that linked to a few copyrighted MP3s.
The GACs (Greedy-Ass Cu..s) are making legitimite technology harder to develop, deploy and use; write a program that can easily share files and someone will load his entire CD collection into it for all to download... then the GACs will come along and take you to court for "developing software with the specific intent to violate copyright" or somesuch.
The world is in a sad state of affairs when it comes to matters like this. The (in the US and all countries that entered into free trade agreements with it) DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent any form of encryption, copy protection, etc.
Slashdot linking to an article that clearly describes the flaws in a copy protection implementation and how to get around it is becoming shaky ground. Gone are the days of free information... the GACs that run the world are making sure of that.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
I feel dumber for having read your post.
Although, this just goes to prove the point I always made when I was sitting through mind numbingly boring lectures given by stupid people in the past... "i feel dumber for having sat through that". Now I knot that I wasn't just imagining it!
I think it's evil...
I don't want my priceless family snapshots (Which were all taken on a digital camera) to be trackable back to the printer they were printed on... In fact, the printing of extra yellow dots alters my photos.
There are two courses of action here:
1. They have illegally modified a copyrighted work and produced a derivative work by adding extra dots. I did not authorise the addition of extra yellow dots to my images, and I certainly do not have any control as to whether they are added or not.
2. You have defaced my priceless memories you evil printer bastards, you. I demand $infinite in compensation for your deliberate and malicious vandalism.
In related news, Russian police sent 1 billion emails asking the killer to
"Cl1ck h3r3 2 turn urs3lf 1n", hoping that the murderer would turn themself in,