Would storing the laptop in some type of inert gas (nitrogen) help? Hell, should the whole capsule be pumped full of nitrogen to reduce corrosion effects?
The corrosion takes place inside the batteries and capacitors, so no.
The built-in flash memory (and any flash memory like an SD card) will only hold data for a few years without power. I couldn't find anything that says exactly how many years it will last, but probably not 25 years without at least a few corrupted bits.
Are you sure? You know a PLU is just a 4-5 digit number, usually in small print on the orchard sticker (not a bar code or anything like that). Go to Publix (since I know they use PLU codes at least around here) and look at the stickers. You should see 4011 on bananas, 4664 on tomatoes-on-the-vine, 4065 on green bell peppers, etc.
One thing new hardware, especially cheap new hardware, can't seem to match is reliability. I have a 10 year old 400mhz PII box (top of the line back then) that is still running fine. I haven't had to replace any parts, though I did replace the hard drive because it was way too loud, and I upgraded the memory. I am currently using it as a server for static pages over a slow connection, so there would be no benefit to getting anything faster. It uses only 60 watts, much less than most new desktops, and noise is not an issue since I run it in a closet.
VHS is actually more like 320i, and it is analog vs. DVD which is digital. Another big advantage to DVD over VHS is the fact that you can skip around non-linearly instead of having to fast-forward or rewind.
It is actually very easy to remove and replace a cable tie with virtually no sign of tampering. Simply stick a very small flat screwdriver (like an eye glasses screwdriver) into the ratchet mechanism so it moves the plastic ratchet out of the way. The cable tie can now be removed just by pulling it. To put it back together, bend the plastic ratchet back so it will ratchet properly, then attach the cable tie like normal.
Re:ambient light, tripod, shutter release remote
on
Digitizing Old Magazines?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Most people don't have an autofeed scanner, but many people do have a digital camera. A flatbed scanner would work, but it takes a long time. I needed to make a copy of a section of a reference book, and instead of spending hours lining it up on my scanner pressing scan, waiting for it to finish, etc., I set up my 5mp digital camera on a tripod with a light angled so that it wouldn't reflect off the pages. In 20 minutes--10 minutes of setup and 10 minutes of taking pictures--I got a hundred pages digitized and readable. A higher resolution camera and flatter light would have helpt, but the results I got were acceptable.
I actually made a PHP script that does basically what you described, except that it gives me web browsing on my phone. I have Verizon, and my phone has an email address (myphonenumber@vtext.com), so I can communicate with my server. To use it, I sent a text from my phone to a special email address on my server, which pipes incoming email to the script. The script then parses the URL from the message, downloads the page with curl, strips out html tags and stuff, splits it up into 160 character messages, and sends it back with 10 seconds between each message (otherwise the messages get out of order). Currently it only sends the first five "pages" because my phone basicaly freezes up when I get an incoming messages, but I could implement a way of replying saying something like "more" to get more pages. Eventually I'd like to add something that sends any images in a separate message, but I'm not that good at PHP.
On th subject of text message prices, I would think that carriers should charge less for text messages because they use less network bandwidth than voice calls, and because they can be transmitted at lower priority.
That's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. For some reason I had to upgrade InterVideo to get the files to play in Windows Media Player (ivivideo.ax was crashing), but it works now. It even converts HD video with no problems.
I know I could play the files in VLC without upgrading InterVideo, and even without converting them to.mpg. The problem is that VLC will play anything, and if I ever want to edit the video, I need to make sure that the output is a working file. Windows Media Player is a good way to test that.
I don't record from my DVR anymore since it was too inconvenient. Instead, I am recording stuff with a Media Center PC. Ideally, I would like to convert everything to h.264 to save space, but it takes about 5 hours to convert an hour of video on a 3GHz P4. I'll upgrade to a Core2Duo eventually.
No. A 1TB Samsung drive has an average read speed of 91MB/sec, according to Tom's Hardware. Firewire 400 has a maximum transfer rate of 49.152MB/sec (a bit less than 400mbps due to some overhead). Firewire 800 has a maximum transfer rate of 98.3MB/sec (a bit less than 800mbps). USB 2.0 is about 35MB/sec (about 2/3 the theoretical speed) because it has a lot of overhead. Another benefit of Firewire is that it does not use the CPU (although that shouldn't be an issue these days).
But good luck using the firewire port. I have a Comcast DVR, and it was a huge pain to get video off it.
Drivers came from a random third party website, and they are not that great. There are no drivers from Comcast or Motorola (the manufacturer).
Recorded TV had to be played in realtime
The output was a.TS file, and I had a hard time finding free programs that could convert it to standard mpg files.
If I fast-forwarded while copying a recording, the output file would not play
They also have 2 USB ports, an eithernet port, and an eSATA port on the back, all of which are disabled by firmware. From what I have read, the hard drive uses a nonstandard file system, so I can't take it out and copy everything that way.
I also run my CRT at 85Hz even though it is a bit fuzzier than at 75Hz and it makes the color a little off. I can't see any flicker at 75Hz, but I find it difficult to read long blocks of text. 60Hz is completely unusable.
I think there is some confusion here. I was referring to the flickering when a car has just tail lights on--they have their headlights on, so the brake lights are on but dimmed. If I move my eyes, I can clearly see a dotted trail. It looks like a POV display, but it doesn't say anything. When the driver puts on the brakes, the LEDs run at a high enough duty cycle that I cannot see any flickering when I move my eyes.
You are referring to flashing when brake lights come on. I usually see it on buses, and even though it can be distracting it is a good safety feature (since it *does* get drivers' attention very well). The best implementation is to make the brake lights flash only when the driver puts on the brakes harder than usual to alert drivers that they may need to stop quickly as well.
You can bring your bulbs in need of recycling to Ikea, but I'm not sure it will help. I brought on there, and they had a giant bin with a small hole in the top that you are supposed to drop the bulb in! I looked in and there were a bunch of incandescent bulbs at the bottom. I couldn't tell if any were broken, but it was very likely. I think there were a couple CFL bulbs, but it was hard to tell since it saw dark. I didn't want the bulb I brought to break when I dropped it, possibly exposing me to mercury, so I carefully lowered it down the tube, but I still had to drop it at least a foot. It didn't break, but I don't know what will happen when someone brings their outdoor flood light (a heavy bulb with thick glass) and drops it in without looking.
I completely agree that places that sell CFL bulbs should be required to take them for recycling.
100 microseconds every 10 miliseconds is only 100Hz. I'm not sure why car makers use such a low frequency, but I can see it as well and it is kind of distracting. I can also see colors in DLP projectors and TVs if I move my eyes quickly enough.
I'm using a homemade LED light as a desk lamp right now, and I can't see any flicker. The PWM chip controlling the voltage is running at around 300KHz, and I can dim it all the way to zero without any flickering. Even if it was running at a lower frequency, the filter capacitor is smoothing the voltage.
I used a 95 lumen Luxeon Rebel Star for the LED (but you can get up to 180 lumens with no additional power used) and a MAX774 for the PWM. The total cost was under $40, and it is at least as bright as a 15W halogen light. I took the circuit from a Maxim application note.
Download pi, Slashdot my server
on
Happy Pi Day
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· Score: 1
I put a billion digits of pi on my server available to download:
http://micronetsoftware.com/pi_day/
The reason I'm intentionally trying to Slashdot my server is that my web hosting company (Inmotionhosting) gives me 15TB of data transfer per month on my shared hosting plan for only $8/month. Obviously it is almost impossible for an average site to use that much since most big sites are CPU intensive, and they apparently have a secret CPU quota. I want to prove to them that overselling is a bad idea, and I want to use all of what I paid for.
I also have 1.5TB of disk space, so I extracted a small (4gb) zip bomb the other day. They didn't seem to notice. Eventually I'm going to use the extra space to backup my computers, instead of buying an online backup service.
I had the $11.95/month plan before it went unlimited, and it survived Slashdot just fine. It barely even slowed down at the peak. I switched to inmotionhosting to save some money, but I don't know how they will do under the same conditions. I supposedly get 15TB of monthly data transfer, which works out to about 50MBps continuous. Wikipedia only uses about 48TB/month according to something I read.
It doesn't dissolve anything either (well, it might, but not anything that is not already soluble in water). It reacts with things and creates other products. Consider this reaction:
2HCl + Zn ---> ZnCl2 + H2
The Zn is not dissolved. It becomes ZnCl2, which is insoluble in water and probably settles out. This is a simple Redox reaction.
When I got my Dell a few years ago (a Dimension 8400), it came with a piece of cardboard that looked like a CD, but said I had to go to Dell's website to get CDs. Same with a laptop I got about a year ago. It sounds like they went back to including CDs, so that's good.
The PCB is often used as a heatsink for SMD chips. It wouldn't work too well for a CPU, unless we adopt a new form factor with a surface area of 5,490 cm^2, or roughly a 2.5' square (and it would need a lot of heatpipes to make up for the extra distance between the CPU and the edges of the heatsink).
Cycling them on and off reduces the life significantly. CFLs (and any fluorescent bulbs) like to go on and stay on. If you are just using them in a bathroom, you will not get very much energy savings, and you will end up spending more money to replace the bulbs than with incandescent.
Slashdot Mirror
Would storing the laptop in some type of inert gas (nitrogen) help? Hell, should the whole capsule be pumped full of nitrogen to reduce corrosion effects?
The corrosion takes place inside the batteries and capacitors, so no.
The built-in flash memory (and any flash memory like an SD card) will only hold data for a few years without power. I couldn't find anything that says exactly how many years it will last, but probably not 25 years without at least a few corrupted bits.
Are you sure? You know a PLU is just a 4-5 digit number, usually in small print on the orchard sticker (not a bar code or anything like that). Go to Publix (since I know they use PLU codes at least around here) and look at the stickers. You should see 4011 on bananas, 4664 on tomatoes-on-the-vine, 4065 on green bell peppers, etc.
One thing new hardware, especially cheap new hardware, can't seem to match is reliability. I have a 10 year old 400mhz PII box (top of the line back then) that is still running fine. I haven't had to replace any parts, though I did replace the hard drive because it was way too loud, and I upgraded the memory. I am currently using it as a server for static pages over a slow connection, so there would be no benefit to getting anything faster. It uses only 60 watts, much less than most new desktops, and noise is not an issue since I run it in a closet.
VHS is actually more like 320i, and it is analog vs. DVD which is digital. Another big advantage to DVD over VHS is the fact that you can skip around non-linearly instead of having to fast-forward or rewind.
Couldn't you just set up a cheap NAT router with port-forwarding?
It is actually very easy to remove and replace a cable tie with virtually no sign of tampering. Simply stick a very small flat screwdriver (like an eye glasses screwdriver) into the ratchet mechanism so it moves the plastic ratchet out of the way. The cable tie can now be removed just by pulling it. To put it back together, bend the plastic ratchet back so it will ratchet properly, then attach the cable tie like normal.
Most people don't have an autofeed scanner, but many people do have a digital camera. A flatbed scanner would work, but it takes a long time. I needed to make a copy of a section of a reference book, and instead of spending hours lining it up on my scanner pressing scan, waiting for it to finish, etc., I set up my 5mp digital camera on a tripod with a light angled so that it wouldn't reflect off the pages. In 20 minutes--10 minutes of setup and 10 minutes of taking pictures--I got a hundred pages digitized and readable. A higher resolution camera and flatter light would have helpt, but the results I got were acceptable.
I actually made a PHP script that does basically what you described, except that it gives me web browsing on my phone. I have Verizon, and my phone has an email address (myphonenumber@vtext.com), so I can communicate with my server. To use it, I sent a text from my phone to a special email address on my server, which pipes incoming email to the script. The script then parses the URL from the message, downloads the page with curl, strips out html tags and stuff, splits it up into 160 character messages, and sends it back with 10 seconds between each message (otherwise the messages get out of order). Currently it only sends the first five "pages" because my phone basicaly freezes up when I get an incoming messages, but I could implement a way of replying saying something like "more" to get more pages. Eventually I'd like to add something that sends any images in a separate message, but I'm not that good at PHP.
On th subject of text message prices, I would think that carriers should charge less for text messages because they use less network bandwidth than voice calls, and because they can be transmitted at lower priority.
That's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. For some reason I had to upgrade InterVideo to get the files to play in Windows Media Player (ivivideo.ax was crashing), but it works now. It even converts HD video with no problems.
.mpg. The problem is that VLC will play anything, and if I ever want to edit the video, I need to make sure that the output is a working file. Windows Media Player is a good way to test that.
I know I could play the files in VLC without upgrading InterVideo, and even without converting them to
I don't record from my DVR anymore since it was too inconvenient. Instead, I am recording stuff with a Media Center PC. Ideally, I would like to convert everything to h.264 to save space, but it takes about 5 hours to convert an hour of video on a 3GHz P4. I'll upgrade to a Core2Duo eventually.
No. A 1TB Samsung drive has an average read speed of 91MB/sec, according to Tom's Hardware. Firewire 400 has a maximum transfer rate of 49.152MB/sec (a bit less than 400mbps due to some overhead). Firewire 800 has a maximum transfer rate of 98.3MB/sec (a bit less than 800mbps). USB 2.0 is about 35MB/sec (about 2/3 the theoretical speed) because it has a lot of overhead. Another benefit of Firewire is that it does not use the CPU (although that shouldn't be an issue these days).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usb
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewire
- Drivers came from a random third party website, and they are not that great. There are no drivers from Comcast or Motorola (the manufacturer).
- Recorded TV had to be played in realtime
- The output was a
.TS file, and I had a hard time finding free programs that could convert it to standard mpg files.
- If I fast-forwarded while copying a recording, the output file would not play
They also have 2 USB ports, an eithernet port, and an eSATA port on the back, all of which are disabled by firmware. From what I have read, the hard drive uses a nonstandard file system, so I can't take it out and copy everything that way.I also run my CRT at 85Hz even though it is a bit fuzzier than at 75Hz and it makes the color a little off. I can't see any flicker at 75Hz, but I find it difficult to read long blocks of text. 60Hz is completely unusable.
I think there is some confusion here. I was referring to the flickering when a car has just tail lights on--they have their headlights on, so the brake lights are on but dimmed. If I move my eyes, I can clearly see a dotted trail. It looks like a POV display, but it doesn't say anything. When the driver puts on the brakes, the LEDs run at a high enough duty cycle that I cannot see any flickering when I move my eyes.
You are referring to flashing when brake lights come on. I usually see it on buses, and even though it can be distracting it is a good safety feature (since it *does* get drivers' attention very well). The best implementation is to make the brake lights flash only when the driver puts on the brakes harder than usual to alert drivers that they may need to stop quickly as well.
You can bring your bulbs in need of recycling to Ikea, but I'm not sure it will help. I brought on there, and they had a giant bin with a small hole in the top that you are supposed to drop the bulb in! I looked in and there were a bunch of incandescent bulbs at the bottom. I couldn't tell if any were broken, but it was very likely. I think there were a couple CFL bulbs, but it was hard to tell since it saw dark. I didn't want the bulb I brought to break when I dropped it, possibly exposing me to mercury, so I carefully lowered it down the tube, but I still had to drop it at least a foot. It didn't break, but I don't know what will happen when someone brings their outdoor flood light (a heavy bulb with thick glass) and drops it in without looking.
I completely agree that places that sell CFL bulbs should be required to take them for recycling.
100 microseconds every 10 miliseconds is only 100Hz. I'm not sure why car makers use such a low frequency, but I can see it as well and it is kind of distracting. I can also see colors in DLP projectors and TVs if I move my eyes quickly enough.
I'm using a homemade LED light as a desk lamp right now, and I can't see any flicker. The PWM chip controlling the voltage is running at around 300KHz, and I can dim it all the way to zero without any flickering. Even if it was running at a lower frequency, the filter capacitor is smoothing the voltage.
I used a 95 lumen Luxeon Rebel Star for the LED (but you can get up to 180 lumens with no additional power used) and a MAX774 for the PWM. The total cost was under $40, and it is at least as bright as a 15W halogen light. I took the circuit from a Maxim application note.
I put a billion digits of pi on my server available to download: http://micronetsoftware.com/pi_day/ The reason I'm intentionally trying to Slashdot my server is that my web hosting company (Inmotionhosting) gives me 15TB of data transfer per month on my shared hosting plan for only $8/month. Obviously it is almost impossible for an average site to use that much since most big sites are CPU intensive, and they apparently have a secret CPU quota. I want to prove to them that overselling is a bad idea, and I want to use all of what I paid for. I also have 1.5TB of disk space, so I extracted a small (4gb) zip bomb the other day. They didn't seem to notice. Eventually I'm going to use the extra space to backup my computers, instead of buying an online backup service.
You obviously haven't heard of text messaging.
I had the $11.95/month plan before it went unlimited, and it survived Slashdot just fine. It barely even slowed down at the peak. I switched to inmotionhosting to save some money, but I don't know how they will do under the same conditions. I supposedly get 15TB of monthly data transfer, which works out to about 50MBps continuous. Wikipedia only uses about 48TB/month according to something I read.
It doesn't dissolve anything either (well, it might, but not anything that is not already soluble in water). It reacts with things and creates other products. Consider this reaction:
2HCl + Zn ---> ZnCl2 + H2
The Zn is not dissolved. It becomes ZnCl2, which is insoluble in water and probably settles out. This is a simple Redox reaction.
When I got my Dell a few years ago (a Dimension 8400), it came with a piece of cardboard that looked like a CD, but said I had to go to Dell's website to get CDs. Same with a laptop I got about a year ago. It sounds like they went back to including CDs, so that's good.
He was obviously multitasking when he typed it.
But does it fit on the iRack?
The PCB is often used as a heatsink for SMD chips. It wouldn't work too well for a CPU, unless we adopt a new form factor with a surface area of 5,490 cm^2, or roughly a 2.5' square (and it would need a lot of heatpipes to make up for the extra distance between the CPU and the edges of the heatsink).
Cycling them on and off reduces the life significantly. CFLs (and any fluorescent bulbs) like to go on and stay on. If you are just using them in a bathroom, you will not get very much energy savings, and you will end up spending more money to replace the bulbs than with incandescent.