You have it backwards. When the USB charger voltage droops, the phone (or other recharging device) will dissipate more heat as the phone's charging process becomes less efficient. Apple's USB chargers generally don't sag like some cheap equivalents do.
It's easy to monitor this using simple and cheap USB tools like this one which report both voltage and current: https://www.amazon.com/PortaPo... (or many other equivalents)
Charge control is done within the phone, generally by a dedicated chip which also monitors battery temperature. In some cheap 'power bricks', the charge control is done via a microprocessor rather than a dedicated charge control chip, but this isn't common in more valuable products.
Li ion batteries have a separate protection circuit which monitors over voltage, under voltage and over-current (either direction). It opens the circuit when triggered.
Battery safety is controlled by IEC 62133, which was generated in the EU, but has been adopted in the US, too.
Susskind wrote a very interesting book on this topic, too. The Black Hole War, subtitled, "my battle with Steven Hawking to make the world safe for Quantum Mechanics". I was hoping someone in the thread would know if Steven Hawking's announcement was an acceptance of Susskind's position, or similar to it, or something else.
Your primary duty is to your child. I promise you, responsible parents agonize about the best options for their children. Sometimes private, sometimes public.
We started private and then left. The early years at private were probably worthwhile. I tell myself that. They were expensive.
But we've been delighted with the quality of our public schools. They operate from one third the budget of the private school (per pupil). The buildings and landscaping are dramatically tougher, but we're happy with the change. The teachers have been high quality, highly dedicated to the job and responsive to us. My kids are engaged and enjoy their schools.
You have essentially no control over the private school or the public school. In both cases, you will monitor your kids' work, talk regularly to their teachers, meet their friends and their friends' parents. Your recourse in both cases is to find a different school.
No one should demonize a parent for trying to do the best they can for their child. Your first duty is to your child. Social welfare and activism should come after family.
This makes some sense. Homo Sapiens may have evolved through particularly rapid evolution. If viruses (virii -- what a word) play a role in genetic mutation, which I think is now a commonly held theory, Homo Sapiens might have 'stabilized' by boosting their immunity with some Neanderthal genes.
It's easy to imagine that slower-evolving species would have better immunity, if the virus theory is right.
Subsequent natural forces would probably discriminate against the offspring which were stupid, giving the best of both worlds -- smart and comparatively immune.
I'm not trained in biology -- just remembering other 'stuff that matters'. (early Homo Sapiens were sickly and smart? And then came to rule the world? I'd say that's News for Nerds.)
There is a lot of confusion among the early commenters. Some think this is a form of differential GPS, some think this is a network of WiFi devices, or a hybrid of WiFi and FM radio.
It appears to be none of the above.
It most likely is a pseudo-lite (a terrestrial device which mimics a satellite), except that it does not operate in the GPS (L1 or L2) band(s). The government, researchers, FAA and Air Force (which runs GPS) are working on real pseudolites which may run in the GPS bands. But this private company couldn't get rights to do that, so they are transmitting in 'the same band(s) used by WiFi. That is, they are broadcasting spread spectrum signals in the ISM band(s).
They apparently scatter a number of these, at highly precise locations, and a compatible user device would then listen to several and calculate its own position. Since their geometry is as flat as the nearby terrain, they will have very poor altitude accuracy, but because they don't have bending or delays in the atmosphere (or rather, those inaccuracies are trivial in comparison), they will likely have very good 2D accuracy.
Notice that things flying over the top of these devices would likely have good 3D (the geometry improves for them).
What is less clear is why this is preferable to using DGPS. DGPS is a 'station' at a known location which can measure the errors of each satellite (including bending/delay) and transmits corrections to nearby devices. DGPS is a government service in many areas, I believe, but can be set up as a private service, too.
The one real liability to the new Locata system, if I understand it (and I probably don't) is that they don't necessarily use GPS time. One of the really fabulous things about GPS is that it established a world-wide synchronous, highly accurate clock. In many applications that may not matter. It does for a lot of systems which rely on GPS time (too many to mention nowadays).
Write a brief (1 to 2 page) plan for the CEO about how to 'better manage' licenses on company computers. The plan should focus on incremental improvement (what to install on new computers, what to install when asked on existing computers).
Have the plan oriented to save money and reduce obligations of share ware. Give a few options, but don't preach about software philosophy.
Advise the CEO, NOT IN WRITING, of some of your concerns for legacy computers, and show him that you're committed to continuous improvement in this area. Remind him that the BSA wields a heavy hammer, and to be mindful of angry ex-employees who might take advantage.
CEO's like plans with no immediate funding requirement, low stress on the organization, and continuous improvement. Write your plan assuming the BSA will eventually read it - that is, don't incriminate yourself or the company.
Trucks and cars use LED lighting for the same reasons that traffic lights do. They are already colored and directional.
Low heat, low power dissipation and high shock/vibration tolerance are also pluses.
LED home lighting can avoid the CFL problem of being 'too white', and may first appear as architectural lighting (where intensity and color are varied by time of day, event or spacially).
I know I'd pay more for a LED solution that wasn't 'cold white', rather than install florescent in my kitchen or bathroom. Building codes now require florescent in those rooms, so look there for early adoption in new homes (when the present housing crisis abates).
I believe IS-95, the first publicly used version of CDMA, which was in public use in 1995, carries voice packets over a TCP/IP network from the phone to the mobile switch. From there, the full duplex phone call terminates on any phone on the PSTN.
The question is whether the Sprint or Verizon IS-95 infrastructure constitutes a 'public network'. I would think so.
Wikipedia includes a lot of detail about IS-95, as do books on CDMA available on Amazon, so presumably Qualcomm does not mind publication of high level characterizations of it. I also sat through classes in CDMA at UCSD which described IS-95 in glowing detail. So I have good reason to believe none of this is confidential. EIA/TIA/IS-95 and IS-99 and IS-707 are published specifications available from Global Engineering.
I learned about this TCP/IP network in 1996 while developing 'data devices' to run on the IS-99 (data) overlay of IS-95. In order to present a TCP/IP socket to a handset application (which could terminate anywhere on the web), we had to run an additional TCP/IP stack. That is, our application formed a PPP connection to TCP, wrapped in IP, then PPP again, which was wrapped in the lower stack TCP and the lower stack IP. The lower stack terminated at the mobile switch (enhanced to handle IS-99), with L2TP or PPTP connection to an IP router. The upper stack terminated on a web server. It seemed like an insanely complex link, but it worked surprisingly well because of the highly tuned TCP/IP stack running on the Qualcomm chipset. (I think this connection was later branded as "QuickNetConnect".)
That is, the lower stack wasn't there for data. It was there, I believe, for Voice (Over IP) services in IS-95.
I just installed QuickBooks Pro on XP SP2. Turns out some recent Microsoft patch had changed all the permissions in the 'all users' directory, where Intuit loves to install, and my administrator password wasn't enough to authorize installation.
Took downloading a 'change file owner/permissions' utility script from Intuit to install.
Like above poster, I also had to run the 'disk repair tool' once or twice on a 10.3.9 system.
I think the two OS's may not be different on this issue. Obscure, not rare enough. At least the Apple OS included the utility..;-/
Printing paper ballots and reading them with an optical reader is cheaper than creating many, many more 'screen voting' machines.
But there are lots of hidden costs in collecting and storing large quantities of paper.
The alternative is to be able to fully audit the MACHINES, as you have done in New York for years. But none of us trust the machine or the audit if the maker is partisan, or if the device is 'secret' or 'mutable'.
It's much harder to secure the PROCESS of electronic voting to be reliable and fair. Since we only vote once or twice a year, I think a paper ballot (with electronic counting) is much cheaper.
Notice that mass printing of ballots is very cheap. So is mass optical 'scanning'. It's only expensive if you have to have humans inspect each one, which really only happens in very, very close races. Who cares about the cost of the handful of elections that are that close?
That's not really the point
on
Who won?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Ronald Reagan famously said, "Trust, but verify" about the Soviet Union's disarmament. That applies here, too.
US elections should not be open to question. We should be able to audit to confirm elections, and vigorously pursue anyone who attempts to illegally influence elections.
Let's fix the system so that we can TRUST the process. That begins by being able to audit the results.
In California, we had the option to fill out a largish sheet of paper, filled on both sides with the elections and propositions. This single piece of paper contained the same information as the Electronic Voting machines. We filled in bubbles, could check our work, and then submitted them into a Diebold scanning machine.
I cringed when I saw the maker, but realized that my paper ballot was there for counting at the precinct, district or randomly selected audit. Anyone who tried to cheat, would have to change or steal my ballot.
Electronic screen voting should be reserved for special needs people, and should PRINT out the same ballot that the rest of us fill in.
That would be less expensive, faster, less prone to abuse, and absolutely verifiable.
Have a series of short stories about incredible problems your team has faced in the last few months or year and how the problem was found and solved. Spread credit widely within your department.
Leave management with the impression that you and your team are both busy and competent, and with a taste of the notion that IT problems come as surprises.
When you've developed some confidence from your management of your abilities (through multiple meetings like this) THEN start to aim forwards with suggestions for change.
Meanwhile, you'll see your requisitions have a vastly better chance of approval.
No one likes complainers. Everyone likes a horror story with heros and a happy outcome. Just don't make yourself the hero. Heroism is better as a reflected light.
IANAL, however I have filed and been awarded several patents. Authors claim under penalty of perjury that their filing is correct, and part of that filing is that they state their invention is unique. (I hope I'm remembering that correctly).
Authors don't have to search exhaustively, but if they have missed really, really obvious prior art, they may be criminally liable. They certainly are if they KNEW of the prior art and did not disclose it.
This discussion has an apalling lack of 'peers' who are RF qualified.
Software radio has been a fad for at least a decade, but in a much less ambitious sense. Mostly the focus has been on using embedded DSP in place of dedicated radio circuits - and the cost/power performance has moved in this direction (generally), particularly for smaller manufacturing volumes .
A 'universal' radio is substantially more difficult. Radio sensitivity is limited by the inherent noise of the receiver, the dynamic range of the receiver components, including the demodulator, and gain. These components are in 'conflict', that is, more gain can limit the noise of the receiver, but may limit dynamic range more.
There are also difficult architectural issues. A direct conversion radio (converts in one step to baseband) suffers from LO re-transmission (illegal if over certain limits), DC-offset and drift, noise and dynamic range. Single conversion to an Intermediate Frequeny (IF) simplifies these problems, but the choice of Local Oscillator (Synthesizer), including noise characteristics, switching frequency and bandwidth, combined with the necesary amplifier gain, broadband filters, mixer dynamic range, input power and noise, are complex.
Any attempt to transmit raises complex circuit and regulatory issues.
Radio requires a real investment in time to understand RF circuits, modulation theory, encoding and decoding techniques, protocols and regulations.
Jumping ahead to a Linux application that 'assumes' an always appropriate (wideband or universal) radio seems like an unfortunate waste of time.
The same code might be interesting, however, as a tutorial on modulation and protocols - if it's any good, but there are better sources.
If the immediate problem is that she can't make enough noise from the bell to wake her husband, how about a sensitive amplifier and speaker - a baby monitor. Exceedingly cheap, analog, portable and pretty reliable.
The same solution could be used to augment a heart rate monitor. A wrist heartrate 'watch' with an alarm for exceeding a certain heart rate would become louder.
Except for operating from flash (which is cool), the operation of the IMASS seems strongly similar to the Cobalt RaQ or its little brother, the Qube.
Similar prices, similar functions, Linux, browser based mainentance...
I set both up to run a small company network before I really understood DNS, email and networking. They ran with minimal attention and 100% uptime. Even patching was easy.
Slashdot Mirror
so only time will tell.
You have it backwards. When the USB charger voltage droops, the phone (or other recharging device) will dissipate more heat as the phone's charging process becomes less efficient. Apple's USB chargers generally don't sag like some cheap equivalents do.
It's easy to monitor this using simple and cheap USB tools like this one which report both voltage and current:
https://www.amazon.com/PortaPo...
(or many other equivalents)
Charge control is done within the phone, generally by a dedicated chip which also monitors battery temperature. In some cheap 'power bricks', the charge control is done via a microprocessor rather than a dedicated charge control chip, but this isn't common in more valuable products.
Li ion batteries have a separate protection circuit which monitors over voltage, under voltage and over-current (either direction). It opens the circuit when triggered.
Battery safety is controlled by IEC 62133, which was generated in the EU, but has been adopted in the US, too.
Susskind wrote a very interesting book on this topic, too. The Black Hole War, subtitled, "my battle with Steven Hawking to make the world safe for Quantum Mechanics". I was hoping someone in the thread would know if Steven Hawking's announcement was an acceptance of Susskind's position, or similar to it, or something else.
Your primary duty is to your child. I promise you, responsible parents agonize about the best options for their children. Sometimes private, sometimes public.
We started private and then left. The early years at private were probably worthwhile. I tell myself that. They were expensive.
But we've been delighted with the quality of our public schools. They operate from one third the budget of the private school (per pupil). The buildings and landscaping are dramatically tougher, but we're happy with the change. The teachers have been high quality, highly dedicated to the job and responsive to us. My kids are engaged and enjoy their schools.
You have essentially no control over the private school or the public school. In both cases, you will monitor your kids' work, talk regularly to their teachers, meet their friends and their friends' parents. Your recourse in both cases is to find a different school.
No one should demonize a parent for trying to do the best they can for their child. Your first duty is to your child. Social welfare and activism should come after family.
I really liked Stephen Hawking's, "A Brief History of Time" for an accessible description of Special and General Relativity.
This makes some sense. Homo Sapiens may have evolved through particularly rapid evolution. If viruses (virii -- what a word) play a role in genetic mutation, which I think is now a commonly held theory, Homo Sapiens might have 'stabilized' by boosting their immunity with some Neanderthal genes.
It's easy to imagine that slower-evolving species would have better immunity, if the virus theory is right.
Subsequent natural forces would probably discriminate against the offspring which were stupid, giving the best of both worlds -- smart and comparatively immune.
I'm not trained in biology -- just remembering other 'stuff that matters'. (early Homo Sapiens were sickly and smart? And then came to rule the world? I'd say that's News for Nerds.)
There is a lot of confusion among the early commenters. Some think this is a form of differential GPS, some think this is a network of WiFi devices, or a hybrid of WiFi and FM radio.
It appears to be none of the above.
It most likely is a pseudo-lite (a terrestrial device which mimics a satellite), except that it does not operate in the GPS (L1 or L2) band(s). The government, researchers, FAA and Air Force (which runs GPS) are working on real pseudolites which may run in the GPS bands. But this private company couldn't get rights to do that, so they are transmitting in 'the same band(s) used by WiFi. That is, they are broadcasting spread spectrum signals in the ISM band(s).
They apparently scatter a number of these, at highly precise locations, and a compatible user device would then listen to several and calculate its own position. Since their geometry is as flat as the nearby terrain, they will have very poor altitude accuracy, but because they don't have bending or delays in the atmosphere (or rather, those inaccuracies are trivial in comparison), they will likely have very good 2D accuracy.
Notice that things flying over the top of these devices would likely have good 3D (the geometry improves for them).
What is less clear is why this is preferable to using DGPS. DGPS is a 'station' at a known location which can measure the errors of each satellite (including bending/delay) and transmits corrections to nearby devices. DGPS is a government service in many areas, I believe, but can be set up as a private service, too.
The one real liability to the new Locata system, if I understand it (and I probably don't) is that they don't necessarily use GPS time. One of the really fabulous things about GPS is that it established a world-wide synchronous, highly accurate clock. In many applications that may not matter. It does for a lot of systems which rely on GPS time (too many to mention nowadays).
Write a brief (1 to 2 page) plan for the CEO about how to 'better manage' licenses on company computers. The plan should focus on incremental improvement (what to install on new computers, what to install when asked on existing computers).
Have the plan oriented to save money and reduce obligations of share ware. Give a few options, but don't preach about software philosophy.
Advise the CEO, NOT IN WRITING, of some of your concerns for legacy computers, and show him that you're committed to continuous improvement in this area. Remind him that the BSA wields a heavy hammer, and to be mindful of angry ex-employees who might take advantage.
CEO's like plans with no immediate funding requirement, low stress on the organization, and continuous improvement. Write your plan assuming the BSA will eventually read it - that is, don't incriminate yourself or the company.
I don't think so.
Trucks and cars use LED lighting for the same reasons that traffic lights do. They are already colored and directional.
Low heat, low power dissipation and high shock/vibration tolerance are also pluses.
LED home lighting can avoid the CFL problem of being 'too white', and may first appear as architectural lighting (where intensity and color are varied by time of day, event or spacially).
I know I'd pay more for a LED solution that wasn't 'cold white', rather than install florescent in my kitchen or bathroom. Building codes now require florescent in those rooms, so look there for early adoption in new homes (when the present housing crisis abates).
Please... The journalist should have followed a proper scientific process -- he should have cited the names/articles of the scientists he references.
He could anticipate the next objection by citing evidence (degrees, peer reviewed articles) establishing the stature of the scientists he referenced.
If he was to edit his own article, it should have been to add citations or recant the claim if he couldn't. Not to obscure it.
Neither journalist nor 'activist' behaved well here. Why is THAT news?
This was greek to me. Here's how.
c onfig
Turn it on this way:
http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/tips
And information about how to access the secret tools (Why didn't I know this until now? I must be lame.)
http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/edit#about
I believe IS-95, the first publicly used version of CDMA, which was in public use in 1995, carries voice packets over a TCP/IP network from the phone to the mobile switch. From there, the full duplex phone call terminates on any phone on the PSTN.
The question is whether the Sprint or Verizon IS-95 infrastructure constitutes a 'public network'. I would think so.
Wikipedia includes a lot of detail about IS-95, as do books on CDMA available on Amazon, so presumably Qualcomm does not mind publication of high level characterizations of it. I also sat through classes in CDMA at UCSD which described IS-95 in glowing detail. So I have good reason to believe none of this is confidential. EIA/TIA/IS-95 and IS-99 and IS-707 are published specifications available from Global Engineering.
I learned about this TCP/IP network in 1996 while developing 'data devices' to run on the IS-99 (data) overlay of IS-95. In order to present a TCP/IP socket to a handset application (which could terminate anywhere on the web), we had to run an additional TCP/IP stack. That is, our application formed a PPP connection to TCP, wrapped in IP, then PPP again, which was wrapped in the lower stack TCP and the lower stack IP. The lower stack terminated at the mobile switch (enhanced to handle IS-99), with L2TP or PPTP connection to an IP router. The upper stack terminated on a web server. It seemed like an insanely complex link, but it worked surprisingly well because of the highly tuned TCP/IP stack running on the Qualcomm chipset. (I think this connection was later branded as "QuickNetConnect".)
That is, the lower stack wasn't there for data. It was there, I believe, for Voice (Over IP) services in IS-95.
No, it means that the Vista disk started under 'auto run'. It wasn't bootable, and didn't need to be. The computer was already booted under Win XP.
Oh, crap. I just realized you installed from the WinXP disk. Boot sequence wasn't your issue.
Vista CD probably wasn't bootable.
Srry. Ignore the above post. My bad.
Uhm....
Or your forgot to inspect your BIOS settings for boot sequence, and your CD wasn't on it?
A quick visit to BIOS-land might have saved you a lot of effort.
I just installed QuickBooks Pro on XP SP2. Turns out some recent Microsoft patch had changed all the permissions in the 'all users' directory, where Intuit loves to install, and my administrator password wasn't enough to authorize installation.
;-/
Took downloading a 'change file owner/permissions' utility script from Intuit to install.
Like above poster, I also had to run the 'disk repair tool' once or twice on a 10.3.9 system.
I think the two OS's may not be different on this issue. Obscure, not rare enough. At least the Apple OS included the utility..
Printing paper ballots and reading them with an optical reader is cheaper than creating many, many more 'screen voting' machines.
But there are lots of hidden costs in collecting and storing large quantities of paper.
The alternative is to be able to fully audit the MACHINES, as you have done in New York for years. But none of us trust the machine or the audit if the maker is partisan, or if the device is 'secret' or 'mutable'.
It's much harder to secure the PROCESS of electronic voting to be reliable and fair. Since we only vote once or twice a year, I think a paper ballot (with electronic counting) is much cheaper.
Notice that mass printing of ballots is very cheap. So is mass optical 'scanning'. It's only expensive if you have to have humans inspect each one, which really only happens in very, very close races. Who cares about the cost of the handful of elections that are that close?
Ronald Reagan famously said, "Trust, but verify" about the Soviet Union's disarmament. That applies here, too.
US elections should not be open to question. We should be able to audit to confirm elections, and vigorously pursue anyone who attempts to illegally influence elections.
Let's fix the system so that we can TRUST the process. That begins by being able to audit the results.
In California, we had the option to fill out a largish sheet of paper, filled on both sides with the elections and propositions. This single piece of paper contained the same information as the Electronic Voting machines. We filled in bubbles, could check our work, and then submitted them into a Diebold scanning machine.
I cringed when I saw the maker, but realized that my paper ballot was there for counting at the precinct, district or randomly selected audit. Anyone who tried to cheat, would have to change or steal my ballot.
Electronic screen voting should be reserved for special needs people, and should PRINT out the same ballot that the rest of us fill in.
That would be less expensive, faster, less prone to abuse, and absolutely verifiable.
What's wrong with that?
After reading Forbes articles on SCO, it's clear that they aren't neutral. They are trying to influence their readers rather than report to them.
They are lobbyists.
We should just ignore them.
I run my business from my PCS phone.
Did you know that you CANNOT get a white pages listing for your cell phone unless you get your cell phone service from your local RBOC?
Try getting a D&B on a number they can't verify with the RBOC!
I'm dumbfounded at the poor advice on this topic.
Have a series of short stories about incredible problems your team has faced in the last few months or year and how the problem was found and solved. Spread credit widely within your department.
Leave management with the impression that you and your team are both busy and competent, and with a taste of the notion that IT problems come as surprises.
When you've developed some confidence from your management of your abilities (through multiple meetings like this) THEN start to aim forwards with suggestions for change.
Meanwhile, you'll see your requisitions have a vastly better chance of approval.
No one likes complainers. Everyone likes a horror story with heros and a happy outcome. Just don't make yourself the hero. Heroism is better as a reflected light.
IANAL, however I have filed and been awarded several patents. Authors claim under penalty of perjury that their filing is correct, and part of that filing is that they state their invention is unique. (I hope I'm remembering that correctly).
Authors don't have to search exhaustively, but if they have missed really, really obvious prior art, they may be criminally liable. They certainly are if they KNEW of the prior art and did not disclose it.
This discussion has an apalling lack of 'peers' who are RF qualified.
Software radio has been a fad for at least a decade, but in a much less ambitious sense. Mostly the focus has been on using embedded DSP in place of dedicated radio circuits - and the cost/power performance has moved in this direction (generally), particularly for smaller manufacturing volumes .
A 'universal' radio is substantially more difficult. Radio sensitivity is limited by the inherent noise of the receiver, the dynamic range of the receiver components, including the demodulator, and gain. These components are in 'conflict', that is, more gain can limit the noise of the receiver, but may limit dynamic range more.
There are also difficult architectural issues. A direct conversion radio (converts in one step to baseband) suffers from LO re-transmission (illegal if over certain limits), DC-offset and drift, noise and dynamic range. Single conversion to an Intermediate Frequeny (IF) simplifies these problems, but the choice of Local Oscillator (Synthesizer), including noise characteristics, switching frequency and bandwidth, combined with the necesary amplifier gain, broadband filters, mixer dynamic range, input power and noise, are complex.
Any attempt to transmit raises complex circuit and regulatory issues.
Radio requires a real investment in time to understand RF circuits, modulation theory, encoding and decoding techniques, protocols and regulations.
Jumping ahead to a Linux application that 'assumes' an always appropriate (wideband or universal) radio seems like an unfortunate waste of time.
The same code might be interesting, however, as a tutorial on modulation and protocols - if it's any good, but there are better sources.
If the immediate problem is that she can't make enough noise from the bell to wake her husband, how about a sensitive amplifier and speaker - a baby monitor. Exceedingly cheap, analog, portable and pretty reliable.
The same solution could be used to augment a heart rate monitor. A wrist heartrate 'watch' with an alarm for exceeding a certain heart rate would become louder.
It's a sad problem. Best of luck.
Except for operating from flash (which is cool), the operation of the IMASS seems strongly similar to the Cobalt RaQ or its little brother, the Qube.
Similar prices, similar functions, Linux, browser based mainentance...
I set both up to run a small company network before I really understood DNS, email and networking. They ran with minimal attention and 100% uptime. Even patching was easy.
And the aesthetics of the Cobalt products rock.
Is it only me that sees the similarity?