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User: NixieBunny

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Comments · 556

  1. Re:His watch? on Woz Compares the Cloud and PRISM To Communist Russia · · Score: 1

    And the one on is left wrist is a Nixie watch. Very big, utterly practical.

  2. Re:Cross country? on Transporting a 15-Meter-Wide, 600-Ton Magnet Cross Country · · Score: 1

    My radio observatory is about to have a 12 meter telescope antenna transported from central New Mexico to western Arizona. They have the same problem, but I imagine the saving grace is that the southwestern desert doesn't care if freeway traffic is blocked for an hour.

  3. Re:Good thing... on Alaskan Middle Schoolers Phish Their Teachers · · Score: 2

    I was on good terms with my high school's computer person back in the seventies, when the entire school district shared a timesharing computer. He told me the password to the teachers' account (yes, just one) for our school. It was "SECRET".

  4. Since the ones we have were sufficient... on NYC Police Comm'r: Privacy Is 'Off the Table' After Boston Bombs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since the cameras we have in place already were sufficient to identify the suspects, we obviously need more cameras.
    We call this "logic".

  5. Re:In all fairness with this economy. on Steve Jobs' First Boss: 'Very Few Companies Would Hire Steve, Even Today' · · Score: 2

    No, you're thinking of someone programming a CP/M system in FORTRAN. The PDP/11 was a luxurious machine compared to that torture.

  6. Re:In all fairness with this economy. on Steve Jobs' First Boss: 'Very Few Companies Would Hire Steve, Even Today' · · Score: 1

    Recession? Oh, yeah, I got hired in the 2002 recession because I could fix a system for a radio astronomy project that an ex-coworker was working on, even though I didn't know the first thing about radio astronomy. I never have had to look for a job, and I'm a college dropout.

    It doesn't hurt that Jobs' old buddy the Woz wears my Nixie tube wristwatch.

  7. Re:Its a big city thing ... on Washington's Exploding Manholes Explained? · · Score: 1

    It's a math problem. All cities have risk management departments, whose job it is to calculate whether it makes more economic sense to pay their money to residents injured or killed by explosions, or to construction crews to repair the lines.

  8. Re:For those Curious on No "Ungoogleable" In Swedish Lexicon, Thanks to Google · · Score: 1

    So, they could change it to "oGooglebar®".

  9. Re:leave it at L2 on For ESA's Herschel Mission, the End Is Near · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hopefully, the scientific instruments will have improved substantially in 30 years, so its guts will be obsolete and therefore useless. As a worker in terrestrial radio astronomy, I can assure you that we don't use any receivers more than 15 years old, and those are about 5x less sensitive than current instruments. Any system designed for space will use the latest proven technology, given the cost to get it up there.

  10. Re:Why is it so difficult to cool on For ESA's Herschel Mission, the End Is Near · · Score: 1

    Cooling systems have radiators. I work on very similar radio telescope receivers on Earth. We have a big compressor, like the one used in a home air conditioning system, to cool the gaseous helium to its condensation point of 4 Kelvin. The compressor has a large fan blowing air through it to remove heat from the helium.

    Space == no air.

  11. Re:And blaming Forbes on SpaceX Launching Dragon Capsule to ISS Today · · Score: 1

    That article is a couple years old. Falcon 9 appears to work well so far, including today's smooth-as-glass launch.

    Sure, Musk doesn't understand how to deal with adversity (shoot the messenger?!?), but his companies are doing amazing things.

  12. I hope they figure it out on Tesla, Ford, Amazon Hint At Cloudy Future For Cars · · Score: 1

    This stuff has a ways to go. It's a major software undertaking to get it all to work. As an example, we recently bought a Prius with some web-enabled computer thingy in the dashboard. It's supposed to talk to the smartphone via Bluetooth and do all sorts of stuff. However, according to a list published by Toyota, only half of the integration features work properly with our iPhones. Basic things such as MP3 song time display are missing.

  13. Re:upside down keypads? on John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way To All-Digit Dialing, Dies At 94 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Elevators and cash registers did not have 7-8-9 keypads in 1960. Cash registers had 10 keys per digit, and elevators have always had one button per floor.

    The only type of machine that had a 7-8-9 keypad was the ten-key machine, used by bookkeepers and accountants to total receipts.

  14. Re:Why is a wireless network required at all? on No Wi-Fi Around Huge Radio Telescope · · Score: 1

    Tee hee. My iPhone has a USB connection and an app called Files that lets me put PDF files on it via the charging/sync cable.

    I suspect that an iPad has the same capability, as it runs the same software.

  15. Re:Wy not cover the whole band at once? on Group Kickstarting a High-Bandwidth Software Defined Radio (SDR) Peripheral · · Score: 1

    Yup, I'm looking at eight 10gig Ethernet cables. But they are working on 40gig Ethernet, so life will get better.

    It's inevitable that we'll eventually digitize the air that we breathe.

  16. Re:Wy not cover the whole band at once? on Group Kickstarting a High-Bandwidth Software Defined Radio (SDR) Peripheral · · Score: 1

    RF bandwidth is the issue. The 1 GSPS digitizers only have one or two GHz of RF bandwidth, so we'd have to make a big messy RF processor to capture the entire band. Besides, the goal of the project is to advance the state of the art!

  17. Wy not cover the whole band at once? on Group Kickstarting a High-Bandwidth Software Defined Radio (SDR) Peripheral · · Score: 2

    I'm currently working on a research-grade gizmo that will digitize that entire 4 GHz wide band as one entity. It's to be used for an astronomical spectrometer. It's darn near doable today, the only problem being how to get the oscilloscope companies to shake loose a few 10 Gigasample/sec A/D chips.

  18. Re:Massive IP violation on Silicon Valley Before the Startup · · Score: 1

    This was hardware, not software. And their lawyers *were* very busy patenting stuff and fighting each other in court. Especially TI, who had invented the IC first (sort of).

  19. Re:I will still use my desktop computer on Intel Leaving Desktop Motherboard Business · · Score: 1

    Desktop systems won't go away, since they're used by Intel et. al. to design motherboards and processors, so they know what's up.

    They'll just get more expensive as the demand goes down, and they'll only be sold by vendors of professional gear.

  20. Poor Lisa, she never had a chance on 30 Years of the Apple Lisa and the Apple IIe · · Score: 1

    The Macintosh was such a superior machine in nearly every aspect that the unsold Lisas had to be hauled off to the landfill.

  21. Re:Really two varieties of Lego on Has Lego Sold Out? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We have at least a hundred LEGO sets from various of the "unimaginative" series from Harry Potter to Star Wars to the underwater things. They get built once according to the book, then they gradually get taken apart and mixed in with the giant bins of random LEGO parts. All these strangely shaped and colored parts mix together quite well, and my children have had no trouble whatsoever in creating weird fan-fic style mashup vehicles and action sets.

  22. Re:Batteries on Mobile Raspberry Pi Computer: Build Your Own Pi-to-Go · · Score: 1

    The guy states in his article that the battery pack hack was not something that he'd be comfortable with other people duplicating. That's why I brought it up.

    I, too, applaud his doing of the thing. I make things too, but I try to use parts that are available to the general public when I post how-to articles about the things that I build.

  23. Re:Batteries on Mobile Raspberry Pi Computer: Build Your Own Pi-to-Go · · Score: 1

    Indeed. But how many of the readers have their own laptop repair shops? A general source of such batteries is a requirement to get this project in the hands of the average tinkerer.

  24. Batteries on Mobile Raspberry Pi Computer: Build Your Own Pi-to-Go · · Score: 4, Informative

    The author could have done some research on battery packs instead of hacking up a laptop pack as he did. There is a company called batteryspace.com that sells multi-cell Li-ion packs with a protection circuit built in. They're not cheap, but they are reasonably safe.

  25. Re:So... on Nokia Dethroned As Top Phone Maker By Samsung · · Score: 1

    Apple is doing enough of that to get the job done all by themselves. No need for the rest of us to pile on.