I don't have a data plan with my phone, so if I do want to use the internet on it, it costs $2/mb through Verizon. If I filled up my 1tb drive, it would cost $2 million. Needless to say, I don't use it very much.
They should be driven by a constant-current supply, so if one emitter in a series fails to short the power supply will just drop the voltage until the current is back to a safe level.
A Matlab student license is just $100 as long as you don't need any extra toolboxes. For me, that was worth every penny compared to having to walk over to the computer lab any time I wanted to work on something (which tends to be in short chunks at random times during the day). There is a way, in theory, to ssh into a server on campus and forward X, but I could never get it to work, plus Matlab is slow enough as it is without adding an internet connection to the mix.
Speaking of deciphering Google Apps, has anyone looked at their Javascript source code? The Google Docs JS file is 300kb with almost no white space. It might be interesting to deobfuscate it. So far using find-and-replace, I inserted line breaks after every semicolon and curly bracket. At the top there are a bunch of two-letter functions that look like C #define statements, for example:
function na(a,b){
return a.filter=b
}
There are also a bunch of similarly named variables with common objects, like
var o="appendChild"
It shouldn't be too difficult to replace every instance of these variables and functions with what they actually do in the rest of the code, but find-and-replace won't work.
In addition to obfuscation, all this stuff reduces the code size, kind of like compression where you have a table of commonly repeated stuff. Analyzing the frequency of use of each of these functions might reveal whether they obfuscated the code only to save space or also to prevent reverse-engineering. For example, if there is a function like this that is used just once, it wouldn't make sense to make it into a function to save space, and they must be trying to prevent reverse-engineering.
Of course, there is no way to see their server-side scripts.
Then tech support tells you that the error is a "general error" and walks you through extremely basic troubleshooting for a problem you don't have, like making sure you are connected to the internet, when in reality the problem is something else that you can only solve by googling the error and hoping that someone else got the exact same error and was lucky enough to figure out how to fix it.
$5-6 shipping is perfectly reasonable. $15 shipping is not, and it is clearly gaming the system. Since ebay added a sort by price+shipping option, the number of auctions with outrageous shipping has gone down. Shipping is still high, but ebay and the sellers are not completely to blame because shipping companies, particularly UPS and Fedex charge too much, especially to anyone who is not a business that ships stuff all the time. The UPS store is the worst.
I used Safari 4 beta for a while since it was faster than Firefox, but then it crashed and forgot all my open tabs. I'm back to Firefox now (actually Shiretoko since Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 had a bookmark export bug that wouldn't let me switch to Safari).
I was thinking about making something just like this. Currently sitting on my desk, I have my laptop, 2 external hard drives, a wireless router, a USB hub, and a cell phone charger, some speakers, and an LED desk lamp (powered by another cell phone charger). Except for the speakers and the laptop, all these devices take 12V and/or 5V. I was thinking about getting a small ATX (or similar) power supply and adding some connectors for power. Then I would cut the proprietary end off each gadget's power supply and turn them into adapters for my "standard" connectors (.1" headers would probably work well). That way I could make a cord exactly as long as I need, and I only have to have one power cord plugged into my surge protector, instead of 3 wall-warts and 2 power cords. It would also make my desk neater since I wouldn't have bundles of coiled up cords that are longer than I need.
Here is the maximum power requirements of everything that runs at 12V or 5V. During normal use, I will never max out everything, so I could probably get away with a 120VAC to 12VDC power supply and a PicoPSU or something similar.
8A @ 5V; 40 watts
5A @ 12V; 60 watts
Seagate's customer service is the worst. I bought a Freeagent external drive on sale, and it came with a defective power supply/wall wart. So I figured, no problem, I'll just keep using the drive with a 12V power supply I have, and have them send me just a new power supply. That will save us both time and money. It took literally six months and probably 5 calls and several emails before I finally got the part. They kept claiming it was out of stock, but I told them they could just open the box of a new drive and take the power supply out. Looking back, I probably should have just exchanged the whole drive, but I had already sent them the power supply, so it was too late.
It's attitudes like that that are the reason the US is behind the rest of the world in Math and Science education, and falling behind in math, science, and engineering jobs. The Apollo program was, if nothing else, an inspiration to kids at the time.
Sure, doing anything in space is impractical and expensive now, but so were computers in the '70's. Eventually, private companies will take over space travel from NASA, but we aren't quite there yet. Until then, NASA needs to bridge the gap and keep space missions going.
Also, don't forget that we *have* benefited from putting stuff in space. If you have a GPS in your car, you are using space technology. I know the stuff NASA is doing now doesn't have much to do with satellites, but it might be important to whatever is coming next. Just like satellites today use a lot of ideas from the space race (controls and propulsion systems to keep them in orbit, etc).
Investment in research and development like NASA might have no short-term benefit, but it will lead to long-term economic growth. Without a supply of new technology, it will be difficult for our economy and the global economy to grow. Think of the industrial revolution and how much the global economy has grown since then as a result of technology that was revolutionary at the time. For a more modern example, look at China, which is experiencing explosive growth because of their recent industrialization. The space revolution could be the next industrial revolution, we just don't know it yet because it hasn't happened yet. If everyone had your attitude about science, we would be stuck in the dark ages dying of plagues.
Hey it was one programmer. And frankly if you are having issues with swap put more ram in.
I have 4GB of RAM in my Macbook Pro (the maximum it will take), and I still run out of RAM sometimes. A lot of times it happens when I am running VMWare, which I understand, but sometimes it happens when I should only have 1-2GB or RAM in use. Apparently what is happening is that OS X is keeping old stuff in memory called "Inactive" in case I need it again. Inactive memory is supposed to be freed up if something needs it, but for some reason OS X usually swaps out the active program before it attempts so free up any inactive memory. Swapping basically makes the whole system unresponsive for a few seconds.
8gb MicroSD: $27
The problem with my phone is that it needs a USB to 2.5mm adapter, then a 2.5mm-3.5mm adapter. (They might make a USB to 3.5mm adapter, but it is probably overpriced. The USB to 2.5mm adapter came in the box). I also have the wrong kind of 2.5mm-3.5mm adapter, so I have to put it in a certain amount (but not all the way), otherwise my phone crashes and I have to reboot it or I get no sound in either the left or right headphone.
The problem is that where I live, there is one ATT tower in the town at the center of the valley, but I live at the edge of the valley, so call quality is terrible. I can barely understand what people with ATT phones are saying if they call from my neighborhood, and there is one stretch of road nearby (about 3 miles long, so not an isolated spot) where ATT phones always drop calls, even though the coverage map shows good signal strength there (maybe they added a new tower recently). T-mobile looks like it's about the same as ATT according to the coverage map. I have not had any call problems with Verizon, and after all, it is meant to be a phone, so that's the most important functionality.
I have a RAZR v3m, and it has some good features in theory, but Verizon ruined it with their software and restrictions. Verizon disabled almost all the hacks for it, and the only USB support is transferring music with Verizon's proprietary music manager program. I used to be able to use Bluetooth DUN (at 14.4k), but now they changed my plan, and it costs an insane $2/MB even though I have plenty of extra minutes and it does not use EVDO.
That is exactly why I HATE Verizon. Cellphones could do so many things, but Verizon make almost everything impossible to do without paying them. For example, I just want to put my own ring tone on my phone, but they won't let me. I tried hacks like renaming an MP3 wile to whatever format they want it in (.q??) with the same name as an existing ringtone and copying it to my MicroSD card, but the phone refused to let me set the file as a ring tone, even though I could see it and play in in the list of recorded sounds. I'm not paying Verizon $2 for a ring tone when I already have the audio file. They won't let me install games without paying for them from their store; they won't let me access the built-in GPS without paying $10/month for the navigation app; they won't let me turn off the startup Verizon movie, etc. Also, there is a music player built-in, but it will only play WMA files that I load with Verizon's special software (which they make very difficult to find), even though the phone is perfectly capable of decoding MP3 files. (it also needs a USB to 2.5mm adapter and a 2.5-3.5mm adapter, but that's not Verizon's fault). I know I could switch to another carrier, but it seems like they all impose arbitrary restrictions to some extent, and unfortunately Verizon seems to have the best coverage, at least where I live.
Back on the subject of the article, I think the reason people are not using built-in cameras is that the quality is so horrible that it is almost not even worth taking a picture. I would almost rather not have a camera than have one like the ones that come built-into most phones.
in fact, the only surviving dinosaurs of the egg-chewing rodent crisis were the ones who could nest in trees, offering some protection from the ground dwelling egg chewers. of course, we call these dinosaurs birds today
I've seen it happen. I was temporarily living somewhere where Comcast was provided, and there was continuous activity, 24/7, trying to reach something at some port (14??). I tried powering everything off to get a new IP address, but the traffic continued. I doubt was P2P traffic, since they would give up eventually. My only guess is that there was a computer controlling a botnet on that IP address at some point, so there were thousands of zombie PCs trying to communicate with it. The internet was quite slow at times, but I don't know if it was all that traffic or congestion on the network or just Comcast having issues.
Why would we use ethernet cables in the future? Everything is moving to fiber optic, and it's only a matter of time before cat6 becomes the new 10BASE2.
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent up I usually find myself voting for Google, with bing second and Yahoo third.
I don't have a data plan with my phone, so if I do want to use the internet on it, it costs $2/mb through Verizon. If I filled up my 1tb drive, it would cost $2 million. Needless to say, I don't use it very much.
They should be driven by a constant-current supply, so if one emitter in a series fails to short the power supply will just drop the voltage until the current is back to a safe level.
What will you do once the spammers realize that all they have to do is take off the +something part?
A Matlab student license is just $100 as long as you don't need any extra toolboxes. For me, that was worth every penny compared to having to walk over to the computer lab any time I wanted to work on something (which tends to be in short chunks at random times during the day). There is a way, in theory, to ssh into a server on campus and forward X, but I could never get it to work, plus Matlab is slow enough as it is without adding an internet connection to the mix.
Speaking of deciphering Google Apps, has anyone looked at their Javascript source code? The Google Docs JS file is 300kb with almost no white space. It might be interesting to deobfuscate it. So far using find-and-replace, I inserted line breaks after every semicolon and curly bracket. At the top there are a bunch of two-letter functions that look like C #define statements, for example:
function na(a,b){ return a.filter=b }
There are also a bunch of similarly named variables with common objects, like
var o="appendChild"
It shouldn't be too difficult to replace every instance of these variables and functions with what they actually do in the rest of the code, but find-and-replace won't work.
In addition to obfuscation, all this stuff reduces the code size, kind of like compression where you have a table of commonly repeated stuff. Analyzing the frequency of use of each of these functions might reveal whether they obfuscated the code only to save space or also to prevent reverse-engineering. For example, if there is a function like this that is used just once, it wouldn't make sense to make it into a function to save space, and they must be trying to prevent reverse-engineering.
Of course, there is no way to see their server-side scripts.
Then tech support tells you that the error is a "general error" and walks you through extremely basic troubleshooting for a problem you don't have, like making sure you are connected to the internet, when in reality the problem is something else that you can only solve by googling the error and hoping that someone else got the exact same error and was lucky enough to figure out how to fix it.
$5-6 shipping is perfectly reasonable. $15 shipping is not, and it is clearly gaming the system. Since ebay added a sort by price+shipping option, the number of auctions with outrageous shipping has gone down. Shipping is still high, but ebay and the sellers are not completely to blame because shipping companies, particularly UPS and Fedex charge too much, especially to anyone who is not a business that ships stuff all the time. The UPS store is the worst.
Just type in 'why' without the quotes and you will get an answer.
OS X. I think it was a Flash Player (10,0,2,54) that made it crash, though.
I used Safari 4 beta for a while since it was faster than Firefox, but then it crashed and forgot all my open tabs. I'm back to Firefox now (actually Shiretoko since Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 had a bookmark export bug that wouldn't let me switch to Safari).
I could add dummy load resistors.
I was thinking about making something just like this. Currently sitting on my desk, I have my laptop, 2 external hard drives, a wireless router, a USB hub, and a cell phone charger, some speakers, and an LED desk lamp (powered by another cell phone charger). Except for the speakers and the laptop, all these devices take 12V and/or 5V. I was thinking about getting a small ATX (or similar) power supply and adding some connectors for power. Then I would cut the proprietary end off each gadget's power supply and turn them into adapters for my "standard" connectors (.1" headers would probably work well). That way I could make a cord exactly as long as I need, and I only have to have one power cord plugged into my surge protector, instead of 3 wall-warts and 2 power cords. It would also make my desk neater since I wouldn't have bundles of coiled up cords that are longer than I need.
Here is the maximum power requirements of everything that runs at 12V or 5V. During normal use, I will never max out everything, so I could probably get away with a 120VAC to 12VDC power supply and a PicoPSU or something similar.
8A @ 5V; 40 watts
5A @ 12V; 60 watts
Seagate's customer service is the worst. I bought a Freeagent external drive on sale, and it came with a defective power supply/wall wart. So I figured, no problem, I'll just keep using the drive with a 12V power supply I have, and have them send me just a new power supply. That will save us both time and money. It took literally six months and probably 5 calls and several emails before I finally got the part. They kept claiming it was out of stock, but I told them they could just open the box of a new drive and take the power supply out. Looking back, I probably should have just exchanged the whole drive, but I had already sent them the power supply, so it was too late.
It's attitudes like that that are the reason the US is behind the rest of the world in Math and Science education, and falling behind in math, science, and engineering jobs. The Apollo program was, if nothing else, an inspiration to kids at the time.
Sure, doing anything in space is impractical and expensive now, but so were computers in the '70's. Eventually, private companies will take over space travel from NASA, but we aren't quite there yet. Until then, NASA needs to bridge the gap and keep space missions going.
Also, don't forget that we *have* benefited from putting stuff in space. If you have a GPS in your car, you are using space technology. I know the stuff NASA is doing now doesn't have much to do with satellites, but it might be important to whatever is coming next. Just like satellites today use a lot of ideas from the space race (controls and propulsion systems to keep them in orbit, etc).
Investment in research and development like NASA might have no short-term benefit, but it will lead to long-term economic growth. Without a supply of new technology, it will be difficult for our economy and the global economy to grow. Think of the industrial revolution and how much the global economy has grown since then as a result of technology that was revolutionary at the time. For a more modern example, look at China, which is experiencing explosive growth because of their recent industrialization. The space revolution could be the next industrial revolution, we just don't know it yet because it hasn't happened yet. If everyone had your attitude about science, we would be stuck in the dark ages dying of plagues.
Hey it was one programmer. And frankly if you are having issues with swap put more ram in.
I have 4GB of RAM in my Macbook Pro (the maximum it will take), and I still run out of RAM sometimes. A lot of times it happens when I am running VMWare, which I understand, but sometimes it happens when I should only have 1-2GB or RAM in use. Apparently what is happening is that OS X is keeping old stuff in memory called "Inactive" in case I need it again. Inactive memory is supposed to be freed up if something needs it, but for some reason OS X usually swaps out the active program before it attempts so free up any inactive memory. Swapping basically makes the whole system unresponsive for a few seconds.
http://micronetsoftware.com/uploads_tmp/mirror/geoeye-1-kutztown.jpg
8gb MicroSD: $27 The problem with my phone is that it needs a USB to 2.5mm adapter, then a 2.5mm-3.5mm adapter. (They might make a USB to 3.5mm adapter, but it is probably overpriced. The USB to 2.5mm adapter came in the box). I also have the wrong kind of 2.5mm-3.5mm adapter, so I have to put it in a certain amount (but not all the way), otherwise my phone crashes and I have to reboot it or I get no sound in either the left or right headphone.
I think '07 Corollas didn't have ABS. They made it standard in '08 or '09.
For a business line, that's about right.
The problem is that where I live, there is one ATT tower in the town at the center of the valley, but I live at the edge of the valley, so call quality is terrible. I can barely understand what people with ATT phones are saying if they call from my neighborhood, and there is one stretch of road nearby (about 3 miles long, so not an isolated spot) where ATT phones always drop calls, even though the coverage map shows good signal strength there (maybe they added a new tower recently). T-mobile looks like it's about the same as ATT according to the coverage map. I have not had any call problems with Verizon, and after all, it is meant to be a phone, so that's the most important functionality.
I have a RAZR v3m, and it has some good features in theory, but Verizon ruined it with their software and restrictions. Verizon disabled almost all the hacks for it, and the only USB support is transferring music with Verizon's proprietary music manager program. I used to be able to use Bluetooth DUN (at 14.4k), but now they changed my plan, and it costs an insane $2/MB even though I have plenty of extra minutes and it does not use EVDO.
That is exactly why I HATE Verizon. Cellphones could do so many things, but Verizon make almost everything impossible to do without paying them. For example, I just want to put my own ring tone on my phone, but they won't let me. I tried hacks like renaming an MP3 wile to whatever format they want it in (.q??) with the same name as an existing ringtone and copying it to my MicroSD card, but the phone refused to let me set the file as a ring tone, even though I could see it and play in in the list of recorded sounds. I'm not paying Verizon $2 for a ring tone when I already have the audio file. They won't let me install games without paying for them from their store; they won't let me access the built-in GPS without paying $10/month for the navigation app; they won't let me turn off the startup Verizon movie, etc. Also, there is a music player built-in, but it will only play WMA files that I load with Verizon's special software (which they make very difficult to find), even though the phone is perfectly capable of decoding MP3 files. (it also needs a USB to 2.5mm adapter and a 2.5-3.5mm adapter, but that's not Verizon's fault). I know I could switch to another carrier, but it seems like they all impose arbitrary restrictions to some extent, and unfortunately Verizon seems to have the best coverage, at least where I live.
Back on the subject of the article, I think the reason people are not using built-in cameras is that the quality is so horrible that it is almost not even worth taking a picture. I would almost rather not have a camera than have one like the ones that come built-into most phones.
in fact, the only surviving dinosaurs of the egg-chewing rodent crisis were the ones who could nest in trees, offering some protection from the ground dwelling egg chewers. of course, we call these dinosaurs birds today
Ever heard of squirrels?
I've seen it happen. I was temporarily living somewhere where Comcast was provided, and there was continuous activity, 24/7, trying to reach something at some port (14??). I tried powering everything off to get a new IP address, but the traffic continued. I doubt was P2P traffic, since they would give up eventually. My only guess is that there was a computer controlling a botnet on that IP address at some point, so there were thousands of zombie PCs trying to communicate with it. The internet was quite slow at times, but I don't know if it was all that traffic or congestion on the network or just Comcast having issues.
Why would we use ethernet cables in the future? Everything is moving to fiber optic, and it's only a matter of time before cat6 becomes the new 10BASE2.