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User: WonderSnatch

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Comments · 48

  1. Re:Don't like it on GIMP 10th Anniversary Splash Contest Winner Announced · · Score: 1

    I like the idea, but not the implmentation.

    I think the lettering added to the dial (along with the GIMP logo) should NOT have been pure black, but a shade of gray matching the numbers on the dial. The words "GIMP Years" aren't quite centered either.

    I also would've chosen a gauge that doesn't skip numbers at the begining! Since the chosen gauge is not symetrical, it just looks crooked. The 5 should be horizontal from the 25, and the 15 should be at the top, but since there's a tick missing between 0 and 5, it's out of wack. Speaking of symmetry, the location of the bezel bolts also makes this image look crooked.

    Brett

  2. An idea on Advice on Running a Successful Videogame Store? · · Score: 1

    How about a monthly news letter? There's a local game store (board games, but still similar people) that sends out an email once a month. It talks about that latest this and the greatest that. It's got a trvia question, and the first responder gets a $10 gift certificate. If a person reads the news letter and goes off in search of the answer to the question, they've got your store on their mind. People have been conditioned to think of the EBs and Gamestops when they want a game. You've got to get them to think of you too. The only way to get them to do that is to remind them you're there.

    Could I buy board games cheaper online? Of course. Why do I buy them from my local store (25minutes away too, and I don't like in the middle of nowhere!)? Because the staff is made up of knowlegable, nice people. They clearly care about what they're doing/selling. It's pleasant experience to go to the store and buy from them. If you can make your customers walk out of the store smiling, they'll come back!

  3. Re:now I'm convinced ... on Eleksen Introduces Electro Fabric · · Score: 1

    A better comforter cannot heat the bed before I get in it.

    Brett

  4. Re:How can they DO that? on New Technology Could Kill WiMax? · · Score: 1

    I think you're confusing bandwidth (measured in Hz) with channel capacity (measured in bits/second).

    Brett

    ps I am a radio engineer

  5. Re:How can they DO that? on New Technology Could Kill WiMax? · · Score: 1

    As some one above alluded to, you can use phase modulation, or QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) to acheive this. You could also use AM. Let's say that you and I (TX and RX) agree that 1V is 0, 2V is 1, 3V is 2, 4V is 4. Each time you send a cycle of the sinusoid, you send one of those amplitudes, and I decode it to a 0,1,2, or 3 (the equivalent of 2 bits). That same can be done with phase modulation or a combination of the two.

    Brett

  6. Re:Riddle on Your Favorite Math/Logic Riddles? · · Score: 1

    You're right, and if you don't beleive him, do a Monte Carlo simulation (or just work out all of the possibilites, there's only 9 combiniations of winning doors and iniial guesses). You can then see that 2/3 of the time switching will make you a winner. It's counter intuitive, but it's true.. The subtlty comes in because he opened the door AFTER you made your initial choice, therefore the original probabilities are not affeted.

    More mathematicall: A is the event that you've chosen the correct door. B is the even where Monty Hall opens the door. P(A)=1/3. P(A|B)=1/2. Had Monty opened the door BEFORE you choose your door, then P(A|B) would be correct, but since it's after, P(A) is the correct one.

    Brett

  7. Re:article text on When to Leave That First Tech Job · · Score: 1

    We have both cubicles and offices where I work. As on of my cubicle dwelling co-workers said to someone who had just upgraded to an offce, "Nice office! I'll took the extra money."

    Offices are nice, but they cost you money.

    Brett

  8. Kentucky Fried Movie... on Super Door of the Future · · Score: 1

    Doesn't the guy at the end of the video look like Bong Soo Han? He played Dr. Klahn in Kentucky Fried Movie.

    Brett

  9. Call me old fashioned... on Server Based Slots of the Future · · Score: 1

    But I never really cared for the video slots.

    There's something about a real reel reeling that sends me reeling...

    Brett

    --"You keep using that word...I do not think it means what you think it means."

  10. Re:In Other News on Wireless Networking Speeds of 540 Mbps w/ 802.11n · · Score: 1

    Sure enough, Belkin does make some "pre-n" stuff:

    Wireless Pre-N Router

    Brett

  11. Re:Different technologies, different purpose on E-mail Is For Old People · · Score: 1

    "Does your cell phone have some kind of magic keyboard that attaches to it?"

    Predective text input: T9. Most modern phone seem to have it.

    Brett

  12. Re:Err...not quite... on Old Floppy Drive Becomes New Turntable · · Score: 1

    But what if between one sample and the next sample, the amplitude of the signal goes up by *half* of a digital "step"? Do you get no change in the sampled value for that time interval, or do you get a full step change for that sample interval? It has to be one or the other.

    When you go to reconstruct the original analog signal, these digital compromises are introduced as noise. It's usually imperceptible, but maybe there's an audiophile out there who can actually hear it.


    This is quantization noise. Quantization noise can be modeled as a uniformly distributed random proccess, provided you have enough bits (16 is plenty).

    The signal to quantization noise ratio is approximately 6*NumerOfBits. For a CD that 16*6 = 96dB. This means that the power of the quantization noise will be 2.5e-10 times the signal power when the signal is at full scale.

    No one will hear that.

    Brett

  13. Re:7 Volts on Beginning Of the End For PC Noise · · Score: 1

    Me thinks this is a bad idea. Having all of the motor type stuff on 12V and the digital stuff on 5V or 3.3V keeps the supplies sepperate. A motor will produce some weird noise on the supply 5V supply rails if used as the web site suggests.

  14. Or also... on Free Beer That's Free as in Speech · · Score: 1

    Check out:

    Skotrat
    Beer Town(home of the Asscoiation of Brewers)
    Tasty Brew
    Stout Billy's

    Brett

  15. Re:No more freon in cars on Utah Teens Invent Better Air Conditioner · · Score: 1

    He said longer not faster.

    That govenor is there to keep you uner the rated speed of the stock tires. This is a good thing.

    Brett

  16. Re:Why not run a web server on Tivo??? on Peter Seebach Pokes Around His TiVo · · Score: 1

    Acutally, Tivo offers this service on Series 2 machines with the home media option.

    Brett

  17. Re:Why not run a web server on Tivo??? on Peter Seebach Pokes Around His TiVo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Like Tivo Web?

    Brett

  18. Re:Wood Ipod (guilt) on Real Wood iPod · · Score: 1

    Wood: Actually a non-perishable resource, if the right species are used. Maple is good.

    Then shaped by machines power with electricity generated from Oil, or Polluting Coal, or *heavens* NuCuLar energy, or River Blocking Dams and stained/finished with checmicals Made from Oil.

    Brett

  19. Re:mm, Audacity and diff? on Voice Authentication for Classrooms? · · Score: 1

    If you're just going to zoom in on voice, you might as well just record the voice and look at a plot of it. That would be far more repeatable. However, I don't think a human will be able to look at a time-domain representation and match it to the speaker. Looking at a spectrogram (ie a decimated short-time fourier transform plotter as an image map) would be better, but still isn't quite there. You can see formants and such, but each speaker will essentially look the same still.

    Some more info on dynamic time warping as it applies to speech recognition; it's not too different from speaker recognition

    Brett

  20. Re:mm, Audacity and diff? on Voice Authentication for Classrooms? · · Score: 1

    Think about this for a second. If the recording is different by one sample inserted (a .125 ms delay will do this at 8kHz sample rate), then this whole plan blows up. Humans aren't that accurate. You need some method for coping with the fact that when you speak a sentence twice there are bound to be temporal differences. For this, one ususally used dynamic time warping (DTM) or some such thing.

    Displaying it on an o-scope is slightly better, but for one it will fall victim to the same short-coming described above.
    Brett

  21. I did a project on this... on Voice Authentication for Classrooms? · · Score: 1

    For a graduate class at Goergia Tech. Voice identification/verification is not a travial problem. I don't ever recall hearing our professor talk about "voice prints."

    Most modern voice identification systems use linear predictive coded (LPC) ceptra and either hidden Markov models (HMM) to evaluate how close a a given speaker is to a known user.

    Having said that, I don't think it makes a very cool demo as the result is simply a number. In the case of speaker verification this number represents the probability that the speaker is who he claims to be.

    Good idea, but I don't think this is what you want.

    Brett

  22. Re:Wrong math on Carter Copter Breaks Mu-1 Barrier · · Score: 1

    I agree with what you say. Let's expand a bit.

    Let's say the air craft is sitting still, rotor rotating clock-wise. The center of rotation will be at the axel. As the craft begins to move forward, the center of rotation will move to the right. At some certain airspeed, the mu-1 condition will be met, and as you have pointed out, all points (except the tip on the right side of the craft, which is now the center of rotation) will have forward velocities.

    What I think the poster was getting at is that the airfoils are moving the wrong direction to produce lift. To the right of the axel, the front-to back component of the velocity is possitive in the forward direction, but since this blade rotates clockwise, on the right side of the axel, the blade needs a possitive reverse component to produce lift. I think that's what they meant by "backwards."

    Brett

  23. Re:Stupid editors / submitter. on Carter Copter Breaks Mu-1 Barrier · · Score: 1

    That's true when the helicopter is sitting still, but not when it is moving.

    Think of a wheel rolling on the ground. The center of the rotation is actually the point where the wheel touches the ground, NOT the center of the wheel. This is only true when the wheel does not slip of course.

    Here's a link with some information about rolling.

    Brett

  24. Re:Flash on Flash Drives in Future Apple Laptops? · · Score: 3, Informative

    In fact, here's a white paper from Sandisk.

    Brett

  25. Re:Flash on Flash Drives in Future Apple Laptops? · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm guessing these drives would have a sort of "wear leveling" just like they have in most compact flash cards.

    The wear leveling works by keeping a table of what physical flash is mapped to what address. The trouble comes when power is yanked whilst the table is in the middle of an update.

    Brett