They warn you here too, but in the winter, the warning is very, very difficult to notice.:) (Mine died this year, and luckily it died in April, which is a considerably easier time to change them than January.)
That's what I thought too, but car batteries fare far worse in the hot areas than they do here.
What cold will do is reveal when a battery is marginal. It may start your car at 20 C in poor condition, but it certainly won't at -20. And won't even try at -40.
Yes. The number of cycles a battery can handle varies. A lithium-ion or lithium-polymer battery can take way more short cycles than deep cycles. Different story for NiMH and NiCd cells, of course.
If you live in a place that doesn't get extreme heat, car batteries can last a long time. They have their shortest working lives in really hot places like Nevada or Arizona or the Australian outback, and tend to work longest in places that don't get very warm. Here where I live, in Saskatchewan, we're in the middle - but it's not our very cold winters that are the problem (they expose bad batteries but surprisingly aren't that hard on a battery's chemistry), it's the hot brief summers that drag our battery lives down. If I get 5 years I've done well.
Morse code is understood by many and it's freely decodable (record the content and slow it down and you can parse it, even if you don't understand Morse code). Similarly, it's perfectly legal to speak in foreign languages on the radio as long as you identify yourself on the required schedule in a native language for your station's country (e.g. French or English if you're in Canada).
Arguably I guess you could say that speaking on the radio in Esperanto is a form of encryption and in a practical sense, it might be, but you can't control whether Esperanto speakers are listening, and they would understand you fine if they did listen, so it's permitted.
Morse code isn't about being hard to monitor; it's about being able to communicate in conditions where voice communication is simply not possible. Morse code can survive very poor conditions that pretty much no other mode can survive.
I've been a ham since early April, and heard precisely one curse on radio - and it was clearly accidental. (I could hear the blushed cheeks of the ham over the radio signal, I swear.)
As usual, Slashdot's story makes this sound absolutist and it isn't. The proposal is for restricted permission to encrypt in the case of emergency traffic. Hams can and do frequently pass traffic during emergencies where communications might have failed or be overloaded (tornados, floods, earthquakes, you name it). Some of the traffic might be personal in nature (for the third parties who depend on the traffic). For example, a doctor might need to communicate sensitive medical information to a medical professional elsewhere to help with a diagnosis. It is this traffic that the proposal seeks to allow to encrypt.
I don't think hams of any stripe are generally in favour of allowing carte blanche encryption - but in targeted situations it can and does make sense.
And I have no issues with incandescent bulbs. They don't flicker like CFLs do (and they're far more innocuous to discard), and they don't pollute the amateur radio bands like I've recently discovered that LED bulbs do.
The problem I have with this definition is this: how do you tell someone you literally mean something - truly, literally mean it - if you can't be assumed to be being literal when you use the word "literally"? You can't, without dancing and singing and saying way more than you need to say. There's no need to use the word "literally" if you're not being literal.
Incandescents don't noticeably flicker. They might imperceptibly dim as the voltage changes but they take hundreds of milliseconds to dim completely, so the dimming and brightening is likely imperceptible.
There is a real component to it, particularly if you're a migraine headache sufferer. Migraineurs tend to be sensitive to certain frequencies of flicker. I find that fluorescent lights are uncomfortable and tiring whereas LED bulbs and incandescent bulbs are fine. Then again, I've never had a problem with LED/LCD, fluorescent LCD and CRT monitors because the flicker rates seem to be at rates that don't bother me. (Staring at highway markings close to the car at highway speed drives me absolutely bonkers, though. Good thing I don't really need to do that.:)
As someone who experiences this issue, I can confirm it exists. I imagine most people are sensitive to it at some frequency but it may not be at frequencies that are ordinarily an issue. Get a strobe light, play with it and chances are you'll find a frequency that bothers you.
Well, dynamic range and exposure latitude are linked. If you have wide dynamic range, you have wide exposure latitude. Two sides of the same coin.
As for HDR techniques, it's easy to get a wide range of light on the film, really - you can make it even wider using the Zone system (with colour negative film it's barely necessary however, if you expose sensibly). I agree, it's hard to get that whole range onto paper, but at least the detail is there for you to work with. Blow out the highlights, and there's no going back.
Doesn't matter much - Kodak's days in the film business seem numbered.
Thankfully Fujifilm continues to do well, and Ilford is the market leader in black-and-white photography (and even brings out new products occasionally). There are also a few niche B&W fim manufacturers kicking around, like Foma.
This is true except at really slow film speeds, where film is equal. But photography isn't just about grain/noise, it's also about tonality.
Besides, even if film photography were inferior in every way (and it isn't), it's still fun. A hand-printed black-and-white enlargement from my darkroom gives me way more pleasure than something I did in Photoshop and printed on an inkjet, no wait, giclee printer.
Negative film has much superior exposure latitude to digital. There wasn't a need for HDR techniques with negative film - you could capture the dynamic range on the film. (Granted there were few ways to get all that range on paper, but there are now thanks to digital manipulation.)
Also, there's the issue of archivability. Black and white negative materials are inherently archival if processed at all well. Furthermore, this archivalness is passive, requiring little to no effort on the behalf of the photographer. Digital requires migration from device to device on a certain schedule, or data loss is inevitable. (Of course, if you do actually migrate it, you have a perfect copy of your data, but you actually have to do it.)
There are a lot of older technologies that have serious advantages over modern ones - I'm not a big fan of vinyl records (CD was more than good enough for me) but I buy CDs in preference to downloaded lossy formats, and even use fountain pens because of their superior anti-fatigue properties compared to ballpoint and gel pens (and their environmental superiority). Just because something is new doesn't mean it's better.
Slashdot Mirror
They warn you here too, but in the winter, the warning is very, very difficult to notice. :) (Mine died this year, and luckily it died in April, which is a considerably easier time to change them than January.)
Yes, the problem is that using the computer without the battery isn't always very practical.
I've gotten many years out of cell phone batteries by topping them up constantly, but the phones aren't on the chargers for days at a time.
That's what I thought too, but car batteries fare far worse in the hot areas than they do here.
What cold will do is reveal when a battery is marginal. It may start your car at 20 C in poor condition, but it certainly won't at -20. And won't even try at -40.
Yes. The number of cycles a battery can handle varies. A lithium-ion or lithium-polymer battery can take way more short cycles than deep cycles. Different story for NiMH and NiCd cells, of course.
If you don't care if the battery gauge is inaccurate, you should never cycle the battery completely. Lithiums thrive with frequent top-ups.
Unfortunately, having a useful gauge is handy so it's useful to cycle the battery occasionally.
I rarely use battery power deep into a battery's cycle so I don't worry too much about it.
If you live in a place that doesn't get extreme heat, car batteries can last a long time. They have their shortest working lives in really hot places like Nevada or Arizona or the Australian outback, and tend to work longest in places that don't get very warm. Here where I live, in Saskatchewan, we're in the middle - but it's not our very cold winters that are the problem (they expose bad batteries but surprisingly aren't that hard on a battery's chemistry), it's the hot brief summers that drag our battery lives down. If I get 5 years I've done well.
Morse code is understood by many and it's freely decodable (record the content and slow it down and you can parse it, even if you don't understand Morse code). Similarly, it's perfectly legal to speak in foreign languages on the radio as long as you identify yourself on the required schedule in a native language for your station's country (e.g. French or English if you're in Canada).
Arguably I guess you could say that speaking on the radio in Esperanto is a form of encryption and in a practical sense, it might be, but you can't control whether Esperanto speakers are listening, and they would understand you fine if they did listen, so it's permitted.
Morse code isn't about being hard to monitor; it's about being able to communicate in conditions where voice communication is simply not possible. Morse code can survive very poor conditions that pretty much no other mode can survive.
That would be true, if the Internet were 100% reliable. Which it isn't.
And in some countries, Canada coming to mind, it's not even that expensive. In Canada, it's absolutely free.
I've been a ham since early April, and heard precisely one curse on radio - and it was clearly accidental. (I could hear the blushed cheeks of the ham over the radio signal, I swear.)
As usual, Slashdot's story makes this sound absolutist and it isn't. The proposal is for restricted permission to encrypt in the case of emergency traffic. Hams can and do frequently pass traffic during emergencies where communications might have failed or be overloaded (tornados, floods, earthquakes, you name it). Some of the traffic might be personal in nature (for the third parties who depend on the traffic). For example, a doctor might need to communicate sensitive medical information to a medical professional elsewhere to help with a diagnosis. It is this traffic that the proposal seeks to allow to encrypt.
I don't think hams of any stripe are generally in favour of allowing carte blanche encryption - but in targeted situations it can and does make sense.
For now, until they get polysemous themselves. Better if words don't become that way with which to begin.
You're right about the whine.
And I have no issues with incandescent bulbs. They don't flicker like CFLs do (and they're far more innocuous to discard), and they don't pollute the amateur radio bands like I've recently discovered that LED bulbs do.
So I can only say it when I speak then? :)
The problem I have with this definition is this: how do you tell someone you literally mean something - truly, literally mean it - if you can't be assumed to be being literal when you use the word "literally"? You can't, without dancing and singing and saying way more than you need to say. There's no need to use the word "literally" if you're not being literal.
You couldn't watch PAL content on an NTSC display, or PAL content on a PAL display? The latter will look a lot more normal than the former.
Incandescents don't noticeably flicker. They might imperceptibly dim as the voltage changes but they take hundreds of milliseconds to dim completely, so the dimming and brightening is likely imperceptible.
There is a real component to it, particularly if you're a migraine headache sufferer. Migraineurs tend to be sensitive to certain frequencies of flicker. I find that fluorescent lights are uncomfortable and tiring whereas LED bulbs and incandescent bulbs are fine. Then again, I've never had a problem with LED/LCD, fluorescent LCD and CRT monitors because the flicker rates seem to be at rates that don't bother me. (Staring at highway markings close to the car at highway speed drives me absolutely bonkers, though. Good thing I don't really need to do that. :)
As someone who experiences this issue, I can confirm it exists. I imagine most people are sensitive to it at some frequency but it may not be at frequencies that are ordinarily an issue. Get a strobe light, play with it and chances are you'll find a frequency that bothers you.
Well, dynamic range and exposure latitude are linked. If you have wide dynamic range, you have wide exposure latitude. Two sides of the same coin.
As for HDR techniques, it's easy to get a wide range of light on the film, really - you can make it even wider using the Zone system (with colour negative film it's barely necessary however, if you expose sensibly). I agree, it's hard to get that whole range onto paper, but at least the detail is there for you to work with. Blow out the highlights, and there's no going back.
We might know each other... :)
You're right, I was talking about 35mm film. 4x5 and 120 film are different matters entirely.
Doesn't matter much - Kodak's days in the film business seem numbered.
Thankfully Fujifilm continues to do well, and Ilford is the market leader in black-and-white photography (and even brings out new products occasionally). There are also a few niche B&W fim manufacturers kicking around, like Foma.
This is true except at really slow film speeds, where film is equal. But photography isn't just about grain/noise, it's also about tonality.
Besides, even if film photography were inferior in every way (and it isn't), it's still fun. A hand-printed black-and-white enlargement from my darkroom gives me way more pleasure than something I did in Photoshop and printed on an inkjet, no wait, giclee printer.
Negative film has much superior exposure latitude to digital. There wasn't a need for HDR techniques with negative film - you could capture the dynamic range on the film. (Granted there were few ways to get all that range on paper, but there are now thanks to digital manipulation.)
Also, there's the issue of archivability. Black and white negative materials are inherently archival if processed at all well. Furthermore, this archivalness is passive, requiring little to no effort on the behalf of the photographer. Digital requires migration from device to device on a certain schedule, or data loss is inevitable. (Of course, if you do actually migrate it, you have a perfect copy of your data, but you actually have to do it.)
There are a lot of older technologies that have serious advantages over modern ones - I'm not a big fan of vinyl records (CD was more than good enough for me) but I buy CDs in preference to downloaded lossy formats, and even use fountain pens because of their superior anti-fatigue properties compared to ballpoint and gel pens (and their environmental superiority). Just because something is new doesn't mean it's better.
Someone always pays - either the callee (in Canada/US) or the caller (everywhere else).
T-Mobile charges $0.59 plus long distance for Canadian roaming now, per minute.