My first MP3 player was a Rio Chiba 128 MB, a tiny little thing that had a built-in belt clip, and was even smaller than the iPod I went on to replace it with. It was powered by a couple of AAA batteries, and could store around 60 songs; easily enough for a few albums to listen to on the way to work.
Thing is, I didn't buy the Rio Chiba - I actually won it in a prize draw on the "MyCokeMusic.com" website, not long before that disappeared forever. It was the first time I'd ever won anything of any value. Many thanks to Coca-Cola for that!
Sure, 128 MB isn't a huge amount of space for storing music, but it certainly beat carrying around a CD player and a pack of discs. Or (*shudder*)... tapes...
I eventually replaced it with an iPod 60 GB (before they began referring to them as "iPod Classic"), which fell out of use as soon as mobile phones with built-in MP3 players and decently-sized SD cards became available.
Oh, forgot to mention - Lakka includes plug-and-play drivers for various game console controllers. I use my PlayStation 3 DualShock controller with it; absolutely zero setup required. You need to connect it up wired at least once, but then you can configure it to use the controller wirelessly (Pi3 has built in WiFi and Bluetooth, but older Pi units would need to have USB dongles to replicate the same functionality).
Lakka can also use ROMs and BIN/CUE files that have been shared from a NAS, but it does require a teeny little bit of command line usage to do.
They can be overclocked. The Raspberry Pi 3 has a newer ARMv8 SoC which runs a bit hotter than the previous SoCs they have used.
I'm going through this process at the moment; I have a Pi3 in the official Pi case running Lakka (an OpenELEC distro with RetroArch on top of it, designed exclusively for emulating a fair number of classic systems).
Like other people, I've found the Pi3 is perfect for emulating 8-bit, 16-bit, and some 32-bit consoles, but struggles a bit with some - Atari Jaguar and Sega Saturn seem to be way too slow to use, while N64 is just a bit too slow. PS1 emulation works pretty well, but gets choppy in some places.
I want to overclock my Pi3, so I have bought and fitted some heatsinks (one to the SoC and one to the USB hub/Ethernet controller chip). I have drilled ventilation holes in the underside of the case to allow cool air to get in to the RAM chip, which sits on the underside of the board. I have drilled ventilation holes in the lid of the case, along with holes to allow me to fit a 30mm 5v cooling fan. Then I fitted such a fan, and found it to be the loudest, whiniest, most irritating sound in the world. So I threw it away and have ordered a 40mm 5v fan from a company who specialize in making silent PCs instead.
A pound coin originally weighed one troy pound (around 370g) of sterling silver; this is why the currency is called "Pounds Sterling". Nowadays the pound coin is made of copper, zinc, and nickel, and they weigh less than 10g.
I'm not sure why the # symbol on telephones is called "pound" in America though, especially when on Twitter it's referred to as the "hash tag". In the UK it's called "hash", whether it's on phones, or typewriters, or keyboards, or Twitter. I've occasionally heard Americans refer to it as the "grid" button (again, talking about phones), which makes more sense than "pound".
The winds on Mars would never be enough to cause the rocket to topple over, because the atmospheric pressure is so low. Yes, the atmospheric gases move at hundreds of miles per hour in a storm - but the most they seem to be capable of is kicking up dust.
They're typically used in wireline logging (real-time collection of down-well data, used for measuring the mineral content of strata being drilled through - this is how they're able to tell there are hydrocarbons present). They also use them to measure flow rate.
"As of 2003 the isotopes Antimony-124, argon-41, cobalt-60, iodine-131, iridium-192, lanthanum-140, manganese-56, scandium-46, sodium-24, silver-110m, technetium-99m, and xenon-133 were most commonly used by the oil and gas industry because they are easily identified and measured.[3][5] Bromine-82, Carbon-14, hydrogen-3, iodine-125 are also used.[3][4]"
No - the BBC is not the only game in town when it comes to television and radio in the UK. The BBC is uniquely-funded through a "television license" which anyone who watches live broadcast television must pay, regardless whether they watch the BBC's channels or not. There is no commercial advertising on the BBC when watched in the UK (though I understand this is not necessarily the case with the versions of the BBC that are shown internationally).
But there's also the commercial broadcasters:
ITV (a regionalized network of broadcast companies) operates a number of channels
Channel 4 (also broadcasts E4, more4, Film4 (which makes original film content as well as screening Hollywood and independent films)
Channel 5 (again, they operate a few channels).
Sky (satellite TV provider, which has its own channels, but also broadcasts channels from overseas, typically US channels - their set-top boxes also have access to a streaming catch-up service with access to download TV show box sets for you to watch. Sky is hideously expensive, though)
There's the usual assortment of TV shopping channels and adult entertainment
The BBC also has its 24-hour news channel.
Telephone giant BT also has its own service, but it's a streaming service that is (as far as I know) only open to BT Broadband (DSL) and BT Infinity (FTTC) customers.
And we can watch Netflix and Amazon Prime here too. Just not with as much content as the US gets (this is true of Netflix everywhere though).
The first stage isn't supposed to land with humans on board. It's just designed to land so that they don't have to build another one from scratch every time they launch a customers' payload into orbit.
This will mean they don't have so much cost per launch, so they can either pass those savings on to their customer (customer wins), don't pass those savings on to their customer (SpaceX profits), or pass SOME savings on to the customer (so both parties benefit).
Virgin were deploying cable internet here years before BT spun off their infrastructure into what is now known as Openreach, let alone began their FTTC rollout
However, they've still not got cable anywhere near me, so they're not an option.
BT Openreach upgraded my telephone exchange to allow FTTC connections more than 2 years ago. However, they only got around to enabling my cabinet back in June. I can therefore get a FTTC internet connection from any number of providers - but my estimated maximum download speed is between 8 and 11 Mbit/sec, regardless which provider I ask. I currently get anywhere between 6 and 9 Mbit/sec on ADSL (but mostly nearer 6). There's almost no point in upgrading. I am guessing my cabinet is a fair distance away (I have absolutely no idea where it is).
I'd like to see Google Fiber coming to the UK - give BT Openreach some much-needed competition.
Sure, there are plenty of ISPs in this country - but they are all entirely dependent on BT Openreach's fixed-line infrastructure, telephone exchange network, and street cabinets.
When I were a lad, we used to load up games off audio tapes. If you were lucky, you'd have a tape deck with a counter on it, so you could fast forward or rewind the tape to the right place so that you could load the game you wanted. And it would then take about 15 minutes to load the game. The border of the screen would generally have rainbow striped patterns flashing all over it all the while, apparently something to do with how it loaded data from the tapes.
Sometimes, it'd take so long to load the game that the game makers would put in a little mini "loader" game for you to play while you wait for the actual game to finish loading in the background. Or, they'd have a tune for you to listen to (Ocean was famous for doing this - the "Ocean Loader", with music written by Martin Galway). That's right - Commodore 64 had multitasking and multimedia, 8-bit style.
And if your game failed to load, you'd have to turn it off and on again, rewind the tape to the right place, and try loading it again. With your fingers crossed harder, this time.
But Assassin's Creed tells us that we have genetic memory! That our entire lives' memory is encoded in our DNA and passed down through the generations! And with a fancy machine, our decendents can relive our memories, and those of our parents and grandparents too! Surely a genetic clone would have all those memories too???
Oh wait, it's a game, and not real at all.
This is the issue most people have with cloning - it's copying the physical form, not the memories, and not the personality. In order for "favourite dog v2.0" to be the same as "favourite dog v1.0", you would need to raise that dog in exactly the same way, responding in exactly the same way to its behaviour as you did with the original, AND it would need to learn from your behaviour and respond to it in exactly the same way as the original did. Too many variables.
Once we can download and upload the contents of the brain -- reliably -- then this may be a possibility. But we're so far away from that, that when we do invent this tech, it'll be powered by those long-awaited commercial fusion reactors that are only 20 years away.
One example was the Hawker Hurricane, which was in service before the Spitfire was developed, and which outnumbered the Spitfire by about three to one in 1940.
Hurricane pilots were responsible for more shoot-downs of German aircraft during the Battle of Britain than Spitfire pilots were.
This is partly due to the Hurricane being available in greater numbers, and partly because the simpler design of the Hurricane meant that the aircraft had a much shorter turn-around time (for rearming and refuelling) than the Spitfire did. The RAF also tended to field the slower Hurricane to shoot down bombers, and used the faster and more agile Spitfires to tackle the bombers' escorts.
My local telephone exchange has been enabled for fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) for a year and a half
The street cabinet my line connects to has not been upgraded. I can't even physically find the damn thing, no idea where they've hidden it. Maybe BT doesn't either. Nobody can tell me when or if it will be enabled.
I can get 4G LTE on my phone and get 30 Mbit/sec up or down. But ADSL2 is as fast as I can get - with the distance from my exchange to my house, I get no more than 9 Mbit/sec down (but more often than not closer to 6 Mbit/sec) and no more than 1 Mbit/sec up.
I'm all in favour of gigabit broadband rollouts - but I want them to finish the FTTC programme first.
Also - I live in the middle of a city of 230,000 people, and the area I'm in is entirely residential. They'd get more fibre subscribers if they enabled more cabinets.
So operating the robot wirelessly - will that mean it is completely self-contained? By which I mean, does the robot's shell contain all of the computer control / decision-making equipment it needs to operate and move around, or will this equipment remain on separate hardware, transmitting commands wirelessly to a much smaller "movement control" system on-board?
Just wondering if cutting the cords means that the robot could simply be told "go and explore your environment", with the decision-making on where to go, how to get there, how to move to overcome obstacles X, Y and Z (i.e. step over, walk around, duck under, etc), without damaging itself or causing injury to humans, all being performed on-board with no external input (power or control).
I just asked my 2012 Nexus 7 tablet to check for updates. I've done this numerous times since Android 5 came out.
It says I'm up to date. That, of course, is false. From this I conclude Google has abandoned me, and I will not be buying another Android device.
My Nexus 7 2012 (WiFi only) just got updated from 5.0 to 5.0.2 the other day, as an over-the-air update. It will happen, just it sometimes takes a little while - I have no idea why.
Traditional dealerships make their living on repairs/maintenance and electric cars just don't require that much of either
While the internal combustion engine, gearbox, and fuel tank may not exist on an electric car, they do still have mechanical components that will still need replacement... shocks, springs, anti-roll bars / droplinks, track rod ends, bushes, brake discs / pads / calipers, etc.
Electrical/electronic components wear and need replacing - fuses and wiring can become damaged or faulty through issues like water ingress. Which also means things like your water drainage needs to work, and your door / window / sunroof seals may need to be replaced. Your key (or keyless ignition system) may fail, with the key needing to be reprogrammed for your Tesla. You might lose your key and need a new one.
Teslas still have tyres; some people go to their dealer for tyres, rather than going to tyre places. Hell, even alloy wheels can get buckled if you hit a decent-sized pothole.
That's all stuff that's common between electric cars and combustion engine cars. The electric motors, the charging circuit, etc, may need to be replaced or repaired. Something as simple as a damaged charging socket would ruin your day and need fixing too.
If a chain of dealerships started carrying Teslas or other electric cars, they'd still manage to make as much money (if not more!) from repairs, servicing, and maintenance as they would from petrol/diesel/LPG models.
There's a cinema chain here in the UK called "Vue"; they have over 80 cinemas as far south as Plymouth to as far north as Inverness. And those are just the ones with Vue branding - they own cinema chains across Europe under different trading names. I wonder if they're thinking of rebranding them all Vue right about now... They have the right to, and hell, I might be tempted to, if I was in their position.
I can't see them permitting an online streaming movie product (in the UK, at least) under that name, without at least getting some revenue from Sony for the name, or without being beaten down by Sony lawyers in a bitter dispute. Possibly pan-European, if they did suddenly decide "all of our cinemas are going to be called Vue now".
Also, echoing what others have said - forget trying to compete with Netflix (or whatever Amazon's LoveFilm service is called these days) unless your product can:
1) work in a web browser on any platform, like Netflix 2) have a wider selection of media than Netflix 3) offer this choice for less money than Netflix
It's just pissing money into the wind if they don't make a product that meets all three of the above goals. Sony knows how to make a lot of money from home entertainment, but they know how to lose a lot too.
Slashdot Mirror
My first MP3 player was a Rio Chiba 128 MB, a tiny little thing that had a built-in belt clip, and was even smaller than the iPod I went on to replace it with. It was powered by a couple of AAA batteries, and could store around 60 songs; easily enough for a few albums to listen to on the way to work.
Thing is, I didn't buy the Rio Chiba - I actually won it in a prize draw on the "MyCokeMusic.com" website, not long before that disappeared forever. It was the first time I'd ever won anything of any value. Many thanks to Coca-Cola for that!
Sure, 128 MB isn't a huge amount of space for storing music, but it certainly beat carrying around a CD player and a pack of discs. Or (*shudder*)... tapes...
I eventually replaced it with an iPod 60 GB (before they began referring to them as "iPod Classic"), which fell out of use as soon as mobile phones with built-in MP3 players and decently-sized SD cards became available.
I haven't tried Retropie, I use Lakka (which runs on OpenELEC and runs Retroarch as the UI) and the Pi3 boots to UI in under 10 seconds from cold.
Oh, forgot to mention - Lakka includes plug-and-play drivers for various game console controllers. I use my PlayStation 3 DualShock controller with it; absolutely zero setup required. You need to connect it up wired at least once, but then you can configure it to use the controller wirelessly (Pi3 has built in WiFi and Bluetooth, but older Pi units would need to have USB dongles to replicate the same functionality).
Lakka can also use ROMs and BIN/CUE files that have been shared from a NAS, but it does require a teeny little bit of command line usage to do.
They can be overclocked. The Raspberry Pi 3 has a newer ARMv8 SoC which runs a bit hotter than the previous SoCs they have used.
I'm going through this process at the moment; I have a Pi3 in the official Pi case running Lakka (an OpenELEC distro with RetroArch on top of it, designed exclusively for emulating a fair number of classic systems).
Like other people, I've found the Pi3 is perfect for emulating 8-bit, 16-bit, and some 32-bit consoles, but struggles a bit with some - Atari Jaguar and Sega Saturn seem to be way too slow to use, while N64 is just a bit too slow. PS1 emulation works pretty well, but gets choppy in some places.
I want to overclock my Pi3, so I have bought and fitted some heatsinks (one to the SoC and one to the USB hub/Ethernet controller chip). I have drilled ventilation holes in the underside of the case to allow cool air to get in to the RAM chip, which sits on the underside of the board. I have drilled ventilation holes in the lid of the case, along with holes to allow me to fit a 30mm 5v cooling fan. Then I fitted such a fan, and found it to be the loudest, whiniest, most irritating sound in the world. So I threw it away and have ordered a 40mm 5v fan from a company who specialize in making silent PCs instead.
Don't follow the money?
What does currency have to do with weight?
A pound coin originally weighed one troy pound (around 370g) of sterling silver; this is why the currency is called "Pounds Sterling". Nowadays the pound coin is made of copper, zinc, and nickel, and they weigh less than 10g.
I'm not sure why the # symbol on telephones is called "pound" in America though, especially when on Twitter it's referred to as the "hash tag". In the UK it's called "hash", whether it's on phones, or typewriters, or keyboards, or Twitter. I've occasionally heard Americans refer to it as the "grid" button (again, talking about phones), which makes more sense than "pound".
The winds on Mars would never be enough to cause the rocket to topple over, because the atmospheric pressure is so low. Yes, the atmospheric gases move at hundreds of miles per hour in a storm - but the most they seem to be capable of is kicking up dust.
I, for one, welcome our Tub-Thumpin' robot overlords.
They're typically used in wireline logging (real-time collection of down-well data, used for measuring the mineral content of strata being drilled through - this is how they're able to tell there are hydrocarbons present). They also use them to measure flow rate.
This Wikipedia article is reasonably good:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"As of 2003 the isotopes Antimony-124, argon-41, cobalt-60, iodine-131, iridium-192, lanthanum-140, manganese-56, scandium-46, sodium-24, silver-110m, technetium-99m, and xenon-133 were most commonly used by the oil and gas industry because they are easily identified and measured.[3][5] Bromine-82, Carbon-14, hydrogen-3, iodine-125 are also used.[3][4]"
Not sure if serious, so I'll answer anyway.
No - the BBC is not the only game in town when it comes to television and radio in the UK. The BBC is uniquely-funded through a "television license" which anyone who watches live broadcast television must pay, regardless whether they watch the BBC's channels or not. There is no commercial advertising on the BBC when watched in the UK (though I understand this is not necessarily the case with the versions of the BBC that are shown internationally).
But there's also the commercial broadcasters:
ITV (a regionalized network of broadcast companies) operates a number of channels
Channel 4 (also broadcasts E4, more4, Film4 (which makes original film content as well as screening Hollywood and independent films)
Channel 5 (again, they operate a few channels).
Sky (satellite TV provider, which has its own channels, but also broadcasts channels from overseas, typically US channels - their set-top boxes also have access to a streaming catch-up service with access to download TV show box sets for you to watch. Sky is hideously expensive, though)
There's the usual assortment of TV shopping channels and adult entertainment
The BBC also has its 24-hour news channel.
Telephone giant BT also has its own service, but it's a streaming service that is (as far as I know) only open to BT Broadband (DSL) and BT Infinity (FTTC) customers.
And we can watch Netflix and Amazon Prime here too. Just not with as much content as the US gets (this is true of Netflix everywhere though).
The first stage isn't supposed to land with humans on board. It's just designed to land so that they don't have to build another one from scratch every time they launch a customers' payload into orbit.
This will mean they don't have so much cost per launch, so they can either pass those savings on to their customer (customer wins), don't pass those savings on to their customer (SpaceX profits), or pass SOME savings on to the customer (so both parties benefit).
Virgin were deploying cable internet here years before BT spun off their infrastructure into what is now known as Openreach, let alone began their FTTC rollout
However, they've still not got cable anywhere near me, so they're not an option.
BT Openreach upgraded my telephone exchange to allow FTTC connections more than 2 years ago. However, they only got around to enabling my cabinet back in June. I can therefore get a FTTC internet connection from any number of providers - but my estimated maximum download speed is between 8 and 11 Mbit/sec, regardless which provider I ask. I currently get anywhere between 6 and 9 Mbit/sec on ADSL (but mostly nearer 6). There's almost no point in upgrading. I am guessing my cabinet is a fair distance away (I have absolutely no idea where it is).
I'd like to see Google Fiber coming to the UK - give BT Openreach some much-needed competition.
Sure, there are plenty of ISPs in this country - but they are all entirely dependent on BT Openreach's fixed-line infrastructure, telephone exchange network, and street cabinets.
End the monopoly!
1541? Get off my lawn.
When I were a lad, we used to load up games off audio tapes. If you were lucky, you'd have a tape deck with a counter on it, so you could fast forward or rewind the tape to the right place so that you could load the game you wanted. And it would then take about 15 minutes to load the game. The border of the screen would generally have rainbow striped patterns flashing all over it all the while, apparently something to do with how it loaded data from the tapes.
Sometimes, it'd take so long to load the game that the game makers would put in a little mini "loader" game for you to play while you wait for the actual game to finish loading in the background. Or, they'd have a tune for you to listen to (Ocean was famous for doing this - the "Ocean Loader", with music written by Martin Galway). That's right - Commodore 64 had multitasking and multimedia, 8-bit style.
And if your game failed to load, you'd have to turn it off and on again, rewind the tape to the right place, and try loading it again. With your fingers crossed harder, this time.
But Assassin's Creed tells us that we have genetic memory! That our entire lives' memory is encoded in our DNA and passed down through the generations! And with a fancy machine, our decendents can relive our memories, and those of our parents and grandparents too! Surely a genetic clone would have all those memories too???
Oh wait, it's a game, and not real at all.
This is the issue most people have with cloning - it's copying the physical form, not the memories, and not the personality. In order for "favourite dog v2.0" to be the same as "favourite dog v1.0", you would need to raise that dog in exactly the same way, responding in exactly the same way to its behaviour as you did with the original, AND it would need to learn from your behaviour and respond to it in exactly the same way as the original did. Too many variables.
Once we can download and upload the contents of the brain -- reliably -- then this may be a possibility. But we're so far away from that, that when we do invent this tech, it'll be powered by those long-awaited commercial fusion reactors that are only 20 years away.
Sorry sir, we're right out of spiders.
... I've got a slug?
One example was the Hawker Hurricane, which was in service before the Spitfire was developed, and which outnumbered the Spitfire by about three to one in 1940.
Hurricane pilots were responsible for more shoot-downs of German aircraft during the Battle of Britain than Spitfire pilots were.
This is partly due to the Hurricane being available in greater numbers, and partly because the simpler design of the Hurricane meant that the aircraft had a much shorter turn-around time (for rearming and refuelling) than the Spitfire did. The RAF also tended to field the slower Hurricane to shoot down bombers, and used the faster and more agile Spitfires to tackle the bombers' escorts.
My mod points lapsed; if they hadn't, you'd have got a "Funny" from me because I laughed. Thanks for that! :D
OMG - RUN! ZOMBEARS!!!
My local telephone exchange has been enabled for fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) for a year and a half
The street cabinet my line connects to has not been upgraded. I can't even physically find the damn thing, no idea where they've hidden it. Maybe BT doesn't either. Nobody can tell me when or if it will be enabled.
I can get 4G LTE on my phone and get 30 Mbit/sec up or down. But ADSL2 is as fast as I can get - with the distance from my exchange to my house, I get no more than 9 Mbit/sec down (but more often than not closer to 6 Mbit/sec) and no more than 1 Mbit/sec up.
I'm all in favour of gigabit broadband rollouts - but I want them to finish the FTTC programme first.
Also - I live in the middle of a city of 230,000 people, and the area I'm in is entirely residential. They'd get more fibre subscribers if they enabled more cabinets.
So operating the robot wirelessly - will that mean it is completely self-contained? By which I mean, does the robot's shell contain all of the computer control / decision-making equipment it needs to operate and move around, or will this equipment remain on separate hardware, transmitting commands wirelessly to a much smaller "movement control" system on-board?
Just wondering if cutting the cords means that the robot could simply be told "go and explore your environment", with the decision-making on where to go, how to get there, how to move to overcome obstacles X, Y and Z (i.e. step over, walk around, duck under, etc), without damaging itself or causing injury to humans, all being performed on-board with no external input (power or control).
My Nexus 7 2012 (WiFi only) just got updated from 5.0 to 5.0.2 the other day, as an over-the-air update. It will happen, just it sometimes takes a little while - I have no idea why.
Traditional dealerships make their living on repairs/maintenance and electric cars just don't require that much of either
While the internal combustion engine, gearbox, and fuel tank may not exist on an electric car, they do still have mechanical components that will still need replacement... shocks, springs, anti-roll bars / droplinks, track rod ends, bushes, brake discs / pads / calipers, etc.
Electrical/electronic components wear and need replacing - fuses and wiring can become damaged or faulty through issues like water ingress. Which also means things like your water drainage needs to work, and your door / window / sunroof seals may need to be replaced. Your key (or keyless ignition system) may fail, with the key needing to be reprogrammed for your Tesla. You might lose your key and need a new one.
Teslas still have tyres; some people go to their dealer for tyres, rather than going to tyre places. Hell, even alloy wheels can get buckled if you hit a decent-sized pothole.
That's all stuff that's common between electric cars and combustion engine cars. The electric motors, the charging circuit, etc, may need to be replaced or repaired. Something as simple as a damaged charging socket would ruin your day and need fixing too.
If a chain of dealerships started carrying Teslas or other electric cars, they'd still manage to make as much money (if not more!) from repairs, servicing, and maintenance as they would from petrol/diesel/LPG models.
Those would be Shetland ponies. i.e. ponies from the Shetland Isles, north of Scotland.
There's a cinema chain here in the UK called "Vue"; they have over 80 cinemas as far south as Plymouth to as far north as Inverness. And those are just the ones with Vue branding - they own cinema chains across Europe under different trading names. I wonder if they're thinking of rebranding them all Vue right about now... They have the right to, and hell, I might be tempted to, if I was in their position.
I can't see them permitting an online streaming movie product (in the UK, at least) under that name, without at least getting some revenue from Sony for the name, or without being beaten down by Sony lawyers in a bitter dispute. Possibly pan-European, if they did suddenly decide "all of our cinemas are going to be called Vue now".
Also, echoing what others have said - forget trying to compete with Netflix (or whatever Amazon's LoveFilm service is called these days) unless your product can:
1) work in a web browser on any platform, like Netflix
2) have a wider selection of media than Netflix
3) offer this choice for less money than Netflix
It's just pissing money into the wind if they don't make a product that meets all three of the above goals. Sony knows how to make a lot of money from home entertainment, but they know how to lose a lot too.