Specifically, I want a machine that has a decent bus (for multitrack audio devices) that can be run either fanless or extremely quietly (-30dbA would be nice.) It would be really cool if the same machine could be toggled into a higher performance mode that allows a quiet (-20dbA) fan.
Even the systems that are being sold for recording studio workstations don't come close to this.
Don't they mean Xizang? "Tibet" is a nice idea for activist bumper stickers and so on, but it's not a contemporary geographical designation. They might as well refer to Iran as Persia, or Turkey as the Ottoman Empire. What's next? Weather reports for Prussia? Travel guides for Siam?
>I guess I'm just damn lucky to have one that works (knocks on wood).
My complaints are all about the "correct" operation of a fully functional unit, not a defective one. At best, there are severe usability problems with Atlanta Scientific DVR that Cox sells. I don't actually have a problem with the build quality of the unit, or with its reliability, at all. I just find that it has some extremely annoying UI design problems.
Yes. Even when it works as designed, it's got some serious usability issues.
One very annoying thing is the way it terminates playback if the program you're recording, ends while you are watching it. You then have to lookup the file, and do a linear search from the beginning or the end (which will spoil the ending for you!)
If you pause to read something on the screen, you have to go back more than you intend, because the big ugly progress bar will usually cover up whatever it was you wanted to see.
>Do you understand the point to the X-Prize at all?
I don't. It occurs to me that anyone capable of claiming such a prize should be doing it *anyway.*
It would be more impressive if somebody did it without regard for the prize. Didn't even claim the prize, didn't even enter the contest, just fulfilled the requirements ahead of any of the contestants.
That would be hilarious.
Re:History should be written by those who remember
on
Gadgets, Then & Now
·
· Score: 1
Well into the 1990's, my most cost effective backup medium in dollars per megabyte was 5.25 inch diskettes.
I remember waiting in vain for Zip media to reach the dollar-per-unit price point, where it could have dominated the removable storage market for a while. Instead, we were stuck with floppies for another decade. There are *still* many situations where floppies are required, although cheap CDR and now cheap flash RAM is starting to fix that problem.
If you're an artist, don't surrender your rights to anyone. If that means you need a day job to support your art, so be it. If everyone refused, the media corporations would fall in a day.
I read the article, and it's not being made anywhere clear enough what the problem is.
It would be quite possible for a person to read this article and end up with the understanding that the problem was Apple having not used enough grease, when it is actually a matter of them using too much.
That is only clear to people who already understand it.
BTW, don't call people names. You will never persuade anyone that way.
>Which is not the case, so your straw man is rather short on stuffing, isn't he?
Not at all. I was responding to the blanket argument that copyright law makes copyright holders into some sort of dictator with no possible execptions that could be made to their absolute right of control. That's far from the case, and in the scenario in the article, there are more arguments in favor of quoting the manual publicly than there are in favor of the company having an expectation that it must be kept secret.
>But then it wouldn't be copyright infringement, it would be libel.
So far, nobody has actually claimed it to be either. A letter from a lawyer might as well be toilet paper, until that lawyer manages to get a judge to sign it.
>Apple service manuals are private information. If you don't believe me, try to order >one.
Put it in another context. If their manual could be used to demonstrate that the company had discriminatory labor practices, or if they were aiding an enemy of the US, it would be acceptable to make that information public because the public need to know this information supersedes any protection that may be reserved under copyright law.
A less extreme context would be, if the manual illustrated a defect that made the product physically dangerous to the user. The scenario in the article is NOT terribly distant from that, and the line does not have to be drawn close to "this defect may cause the unit to catch fire."
The public interest of this disclosure is more important than any case the company can make for its suppression.
The only exception would be, for instance, if it turned out that this is not the actual service manual that is used in the field. Then it is misinformation and the company has a right to not be falsely represented in the media.
If it's an accurate criticism, the company has very little that they can actually ask a court to order.
There is no lawsuit on this, and there won't be one. Nothing to see here.
>Apple has a right to ask that is copyrighted material be removed.
They can ask anything they would care to ask of anyone who will open their mail.
However, in order to ask a *court* to *order* this removal subject the use of the force of law enforcement authorities, they will need to demonstrate that they have made the demand to the correct party, that they are in fact damaged by the refusal of that party to comply, and that the law does protect them from such damage.
I'm not saying the trick doesn't *work*, but the suggestion shows a poor understanding of how thermal heat sink paste works.
The paste itself isn't supposed to be a big gooey heatsink. It's supposed to fill the microscopic gaps between surfaces so that thermal transfer is maximized for a surface area.
Putting globs of heat sink paste here just makes an insulator. You should put a very tiny amount on the surface, and scrape off all but the thinnest possible layer. Any place where the copper of the heatsink can directly contact the surface of the chip, you should prefer that contact over any paste. Ideally you only want the paste where there are gaps. By "gaps" we're talking mainly about fractions of a micron.
That said, I admit that it is entirely possible that a big.25cc dollop of paste may help whatever overheating problem the fix seeks to address.
Never respond to a letter threatening to sue you, until the letter actually gives the docket number of the pending suit. Until then, it might as well be the guys grocery list. When they describe the evidence that they plan to take to a judge, and they stipulate the precise section of law that they claim protects them, and when a court has accepted this proposal, only then do you respond to it, and even then, only in a manner which is consistent with the legal process and rules of evidence.
This is just a special case of a general phenomenon -- people in a uniform, even if it's just a shirt color, tend to become defensive about that uniform.
I once had a temp job at a hospital loading dock. Horrible, crummy job, but it was a job. So all the people on the loading dock wore brown polyester pants, white shirts, and black shoes. So, my second day, I wore brown polyester pants, a white shirt, and black shoes. I was reprimanded for "wearing a dock uniform", paid for a half day, and asked not to return.
A different situation: There was a Greek Festival, where all the food service people were wearing black pants or skirts, white shirts and a black hat. My girlfriend and I happened to both be wearing black pants, white shirts, and we each had a black hat, all coincidentally (we didn't even know about the festival, just chanced upon it), and so we just sort of hung out for a while and all the workers treated us like we were hosts not patrons. We ate and drank for free and hung out while everybody partied after the festival was over.
Anyway, if you wear a blue shirt to Best Buy I'm sure they can throw you out if the laws of your state allow it, "for any reason", but not just because you wore a blue shirt, unless they eject *everyone* wearing a blue shirt (not just you.)
The band of pranksters could test this by being not just a bunch of clowns, but some organization whose uniform is *also* well-established as blue shirts and khakis, go in the store with legitimate business, and get kicked out for no reason other than their attire, they might be able to force the store manager to explain to a judge why he considered a shirt and khakis to be inappropriate attire, or whatever was his bais calling the police was.
But in this case, it is clear that the group was intentionally creating a disturbance, and that it was not terribly difficult to get a police officer to agree. If a reasonable person believes your intent is to disturb the peace (which it clearly was) then I hope it was enough fun to be worth the potential legal hassle.
Radioactive material will cause mysterious deaths and illness. Tribes will develop dogmatic arguments for avoiding the site, all on their own. They will mark it with their *own* symbols. Anyone who comes along with a scientific method, will stand a chance of figuring it out. Until then, tribe leaders and priests will make some argument, driven by the empirical understanding that avoiding the site helps increase the strength of the tribe, and vice versa.
I choose my vehicles based on their suitability to a 6,000 mile road trip. That's my primary consideration. I've got to be able to carry people, dogs, canoes, food, backpacks. It doesn't matter that most of my driving is short in-town trips for work and shopping. If it's not good for trips I'd have to buy two cars... which I would gladly do (and have done before)... but it's more cost-effective to have one moderately inefficient vehicle than to have two vehicles. And that's without even considering insurance costs, parking costs, or maintenance.
Let's see it go around corners faster than a Ferarri.
Once in the '80s some solar car race teams came in my store. I tried to joke with them about how the steam-engine solar car had come through hours earlier but they didn't buy it:-)
"Bear in mind that the US gave significant ground in its relations with other countries to stay their ire over invading Iraq."
The mere fact that such diplomacy was *possible* indicates that the invasion of Iraq is not significantly contentious.
There is a difference between "we will roll over to let you scratch our belly" and "we will oppose this action if it takes the life of every able-bodied man in our country and the last coin from our treasury."
Somewhere in-between those two extremes is what I would expect, if some nation truly considered the war to be wrong.
>Face absolutely no opposition? What are you smoking?
No *meaningful* opposition. None of a military, political, or economic nature that would have had any chance of influencing the decisions of the leaders of the US. None whatsoever.
Suggestions of ways the war in Iraq could have been prevented or delayed:
1. The combined navies of the UK, China, Germany and Russia, in the Persian Gulf before the US arrived, as a blockade. 2. An immediate and complete cessation of trade between EU nations and the US, or by China. 3. A complete ban on travel for US citizens in those countries, with 24 hours notice for American tourists and business people to leave under penalty of death.
The *people* in the US would NOT have accepted Iraq, had it meant that invading Iraq would also mean going to war with Europe, for example.
NOTHING along these lines happened, and nothing short of this amounts to serious opposition, once the stakes are on the table as *war*.
"So what is Play-Doh made of, you may ask? It goes without saying that the top secret formula is a closely guarded secret, so its exact ingredients and their proportions are not known to the average person."
#1. If it was granted a US patent, then this information *must* be public, or else the patent could have been challenged.
#2. The patent expired in the mid 70s. If a reformulation is a trade secret that's one thing, but saying that the composition of the product was secret in 1956 shows a poor understanding of what a patent is.
Slashdot Mirror
Specifically, I want a machine that has a decent bus (for multitrack audio devices) that can be run either fanless or extremely quietly (-30dbA would be nice.) It would be really cool if the same machine could be toggled into a higher performance mode that allows a quiet (-20dbA) fan.
Even the systems that are being sold for recording studio workstations don't come close to this.
Don't they mean Xizang? "Tibet" is a nice idea for activist bumper stickers and so on, but it's not a contemporary geographical designation. They might as well refer to Iran as Persia, or Turkey as the Ottoman Empire. What's next? Weather reports for Prussia? Travel guides for Siam?
Assuming this isn't fraud, it seems to me your problem is Eric can ask for this sort of rider and expect people to deliver, while you can't.
>Does this mean that every time they see an object that might hit they're prepared to
>gamble the entire ISS with 10,000 to 1 odds.
It's not as though every collision is expected to do catastrophic damage, and you're treating it like it's 10,000:1 odds against assurd destruction.
>I guess I'm just damn lucky to have one that works (knocks on wood).
My complaints are all about the "correct" operation of a fully functional unit, not a defective one. At best, there are severe usability problems with Atlanta Scientific DVR that Cox sells. I don't actually have a problem with the build quality of the unit, or with its reliability, at all. I just find that it has some extremely annoying UI design problems.
Yes. Even when it works as designed, it's got some serious usability issues.
One very annoying thing is the way it terminates playback if the program you're recording, ends while you are watching it.
You then have to lookup the file, and do a linear search from the beginning or the end (which will spoil the ending for you!)
If you pause to read something on the screen, you have to go back more than you intend, because the big ugly progress bar will usually cover up whatever it was you wanted to see.
I never trust the Cox DVR to pickup my programs.
>Unfortunately, few "artists" (at least those that sell to the corps) do it for art.
Well then, I can't bring myself to blame the problem on "the industry".
>Do you understand the point to the X-Prize at all?
I don't. It occurs to me that anyone capable of claiming such a prize should be doing it *anyway.*
It would be more impressive if somebody did it without regard for the prize. Didn't even claim the prize, didn't even enter the contest, just fulfilled the requirements ahead of any of the contestants.
That would be hilarious.
Well into the 1990's, my most cost effective backup medium in dollars per megabyte was 5.25 inch diskettes.
I remember waiting in vain for Zip media to reach the dollar-per-unit price point, where it could have dominated the removable storage market for a while. Instead, we were stuck with floppies for another decade. There are *still* many situations where floppies are required, although cheap CDR and now cheap flash RAM is starting to fix that problem.
If you're an artist, don't surrender your rights to anyone. If that means you need a day job to support your art, so be it. If everyone refused, the media corporations would fall in a day.
>Learn to read you fool.
I read the article, and it's not being made anywhere clear enough what the problem is.
It would be quite possible for a person to read this article and end up with the understanding that the problem was Apple having not used enough grease, when it is actually a matter of them using too much.
That is only clear to people who already understand it.
BTW, don't call people names. You will never persuade anyone that way.
>Which is not the case, so your straw man is rather short on stuffing, isn't he?
Not at all. I was responding to the blanket argument that copyright law makes copyright holders into some sort of dictator with no possible execptions that could be made to their absolute right of control. That's far from the case, and in the scenario in the article, there are more arguments in favor of quoting the manual publicly than there are in favor of the company having an expectation that it must be kept secret.
>But then it wouldn't be copyright infringement, it would be libel.
So far, nobody has actually claimed it to be either.
A letter from a lawyer might as well be toilet paper, until that lawyer manages to get a judge to sign it.
>Apple service manuals are private information. If you don't believe me, try to order
>one.
Put it in another context. If their manual could be used to demonstrate that the company had discriminatory labor practices, or if they were aiding an enemy of the US, it would be acceptable to make that information public because the public need to know this information supersedes any protection that may be reserved under copyright law.
A less extreme context would be, if the manual illustrated a defect that made the product physically dangerous to the user. The scenario in the article is NOT terribly distant from that, and the line does not have to be drawn close to "this defect may cause the unit to catch fire."
The public interest of this disclosure is more important than any case the company can make for its suppression.
The only exception would be, for instance, if it turned out that this is not the actual service manual that is used in the field. Then it is misinformation and the company has a right to not be falsely represented in the media.
If it's an accurate criticism, the company has very little that they can actually ask a court to order.
There is no lawsuit on this, and there won't be one. Nothing to see here.
>Apple has a right to ask that is copyrighted material be removed.
They can ask anything they would care to ask of anyone who will open their mail.
However, in order to ask a *court* to *order* this removal subject the use of the force of law enforcement authorities, they will need to demonstrate that they have made the demand to the correct party, that they are in fact damaged by the refusal of that party to comply, and that the law does protect them from such damage.
I'm not saying the trick doesn't *work*, but the suggestion shows a poor understanding of how thermal heat sink paste works.
.25cc dollop of paste may help whatever overheating problem the fix seeks to address.
The paste itself isn't supposed to be a big gooey heatsink. It's supposed to fill the microscopic gaps between surfaces so that thermal transfer is maximized for a surface area.
Putting globs of heat sink paste here just makes an insulator. You should put a very tiny amount on the surface, and scrape off all but the thinnest possible layer. Any place where the copper of the heatsink can directly contact the surface of the chip, you should prefer that contact over any paste. Ideally you only want the paste where there are gaps. By "gaps" we're talking mainly about fractions of a micron.
That said, I admit that it is entirely possible that a big
Never respond to a letter threatening to sue you, until the letter actually gives the docket number of the pending suit. Until then, it might as well be the guys grocery list. When they describe the evidence that they plan to take to a judge, and they stipulate the precise section of law that they claim protects them, and when a court has accepted this proposal, only then do you respond to it, and even then, only in a manner which is consistent with the legal process and rules of evidence.
This is just a special case of a general phenomenon -- people in a uniform, even if it's just a shirt color, tend to become defensive about that uniform.
I once had a temp job at a hospital loading dock. Horrible, crummy job, but it was a job. So all the people on the loading dock wore brown polyester pants, white shirts, and black shoes. So, my second day, I wore brown polyester pants, a white shirt, and black shoes. I was reprimanded for "wearing a dock uniform", paid for a half day, and asked not to return.
A different situation: There was a Greek Festival, where all the food service people were wearing black pants or skirts, white shirts and a black hat. My girlfriend and I happened to both be wearing black pants, white shirts, and we each had a black hat, all coincidentally (we didn't even know about the festival, just chanced upon it), and so we just sort of hung out for a while and all the workers treated us like we were hosts not patrons. We ate and drank for free and hung out while everybody partied after the festival was over.
Anyway, if you wear a blue shirt to Best Buy I'm sure they can throw you out if the laws of your state allow it, "for any reason", but not just because you wore a blue shirt, unless they eject *everyone* wearing a blue shirt (not just you.)
The band of pranksters could test this by being not just a bunch of clowns, but some organization whose uniform is *also* well-established as blue shirts and khakis, go in the store with legitimate business, and get kicked out for no reason other than their attire, they might be able to force the store manager to explain to a judge why he considered a shirt and khakis to be inappropriate attire, or whatever was his bais calling the police was.
But in this case, it is clear that the group was intentionally creating a disturbance, and that it was not terribly difficult to get a police officer to agree. If a reasonable person believes your intent is to disturb the peace (which it clearly was) then I hope it was enough fun to be worth the potential legal hassle.
Radioactive material will cause mysterious deaths and illness. Tribes will develop dogmatic arguments for avoiding the site, all on their own. They will mark it with their *own* symbols. Anyone who comes along with a scientific method, will stand a chance of figuring it out. Until then, tribe leaders and priests will make some argument, driven by the empirical understanding that avoiding the site helps increase the strength of the tribe, and vice versa.
I choose my vehicles based on their suitability to a 6,000 mile road trip. That's my primary consideration. I've got to be able to carry people, dogs, canoes, food, backpacks. It doesn't matter that most of my driving is short in-town trips for work and shopping. If it's not good for trips I'd have to buy two cars... which I would gladly do (and have done before)... but it's more cost-effective to have one moderately inefficient vehicle than to have two vehicles. And that's without even considering insurance costs, parking costs, or maintenance.
>>Let's see it go around corners faster than a Ferarri.
>It does.
Cool! So how long before Gasoline becomes the "Alternative Fuel" in auto racing?
Let's see it go around corners faster than a Ferarri.
:-)
Once in the '80s some solar car race teams came in my store. I tried to joke with them about how the steam-engine solar car had come through hours earlier but they didn't buy it
"Bear in mind that the US gave significant ground in its relations with other countries to stay their ire over invading Iraq."
The mere fact that such diplomacy was *possible* indicates that the invasion of Iraq is not significantly contentious.
There is a difference between "we will roll over to let you scratch our belly" and "we will oppose this action if it takes the life of every able-bodied man in our country and the last coin from our treasury."
Somewhere in-between those two extremes is what I would expect, if some nation truly considered the war to be wrong.
"Who allied with Iraq to fight against the United States?"
Absolutely no one. And you are the first person ever to comprehend my point.
>Face absolutely no opposition? What are you smoking?
No *meaningful* opposition. None of a military, political, or economic nature that would have had any chance of influencing the decisions of the leaders of the US. None whatsoever.
Suggestions of ways the war in Iraq could have been prevented or delayed:
1. The combined navies of the UK, China, Germany and Russia, in the Persian Gulf before the US arrived, as a blockade.
2. An immediate and complete cessation of trade between EU nations and the US, or by China.
3. A complete ban on travel for US citizens in those countries, with 24 hours notice for American tourists and business people to leave under penalty of death.
The *people* in the US would NOT have accepted Iraq, had it meant that invading Iraq would also mean going to war with Europe, for example.
NOTHING along these lines happened, and nothing short of this amounts to serious opposition, once the stakes are on the table as *war*.
"So what is Play-Doh made of, you may ask? It goes without saying that the top secret formula is a closely guarded secret, so its exact ingredients and their proportions are not known to the average person."
#1. If it was granted a US patent, then this information *must* be public, or else the patent could have been challenged.
#2. The patent expired in the mid 70s. If a reformulation is a trade secret that's one thing, but saying that the composition of the product was secret in 1956 shows a poor understanding of what a patent is.