This was largely my reaction, too. It's great that they've put up a minimalist interface for the pricing data, but that is just one tiny piece of a vast and complicated infrastructure. They themselves admitted that their site doesn't tie into the systems of the IRS, DHS, or DHHS, which are enormous and archaic. Nor does the site interface with the various databases that may or may not be easily accessible in the 34 states covered by healthcare.gov.
I think the real problem with healthcare.gov, which can't easily be tackled by small teams like this, is the vast amount of systems integration and testing that must be done to make something like this work. Theirs is a self-contained widget. Great. But there are about 50 other self-contained widgets - all of which I'm sure function just fine in isolaton. But there is no one authority thumpin' skulls to make them work harmoniously together. Until someone takes on that job, it'll always be a terrible morass. Even if we get someone to do that integrations job, you are still left with a large and irreducible amount of complexity.
Hell, I don't know much about guns, either, but I've seen enough movies to know that.
In semi-automatic pistols, the slide (that upper part you talk about) does not return when the magazine is empty. That is, the reason it's stuck open is because it out of bullets. For a three-shot test they, very sensibly, only loaded three cartridges into the magazine.
Based on my experience with SLS and DLMS technologies, I can think of two reasons:
1) Scale: the resolution of the printer isn't that much finer than the pitch of the threads. So, yes, you could model the threads in, but they would come out terribly, and you would have to chase it with a tap anyway. Much better to just model/print a smooth hole/cylinder and then cut the threads from solid material.
2) Helix Angle: unlike plastic SLS, which is light enough to be self-supporting, the metal powders need grown supports to handle overhangs. Depending on the density of the metal and the make of the DLMS machine, anything that overhangs by more steeply than 45 degrees needs to have support structure grown with it. For the rifling, which is a very shallow helix, no support would be needed if the axis of the barrel was oriented in the z-direction (i.e., normal to the build platform). (you would probably still want to chase it with a reamer to get the inside diameter to the right dimension, form, and finish.) For screw threads, which practically sit on top of each other, you would either need to grow supports that you would have to clean away afterwards, or build with no support and end up with shitty threads. Either way, you'd still need to chase the threads afterwards.
If the threads are coarse enough (greater than, say, an M10x1.5), you have a chance at directly growing the threads. But, really, you'll get better results by cutting the threads afterwards.
I work with a lot of different rapid prototyping processes - including DLMS - on a weekly basis. In their current form you cannot change materials mid-part on a DLMS machine. Even if the machine itself could handle it (i.e., had multiple material-handling streams), you would have a tough time getting the dissimilar metals to properly fuse. As a welder how good the results of welding aluminum and steel are, or titanium and steel. Mixing these metals tends to result in brittle intermetallic phases, which are perfect places for fracture. Even worse is that, because the machine works layer-by-layer, the boundary between the two metals would be planar, making fracture all that more likely.
What is more, because the process is akin to SLS, what you end up with is a box - the build envelope - completely filled with powder, inside of which is the part you've made. You can ordinarily reclaim most of the powder and use it again. If you were to change materials mid-stream, you would have to junk most if not all of the leftover powder, because you wouldn't have a good way to separate the powders.
What is more, they wanted to simulate the spacecraft to several psi of positive pressure. In space, the interior of the capsule is at 5 psi, and space effectively at zero. On the ground, the outside pressure is 14.7 psi (1 atm), so they pressurized the interior of the capsule to nearly 17 psi. In a pressurized oxygen environment, almost anything is combustible.
Perhaps Georgia Institute of Technology has a big endowment, that they can afford to install such devices all over their campuses.
For most private enterprises, on the other hand, it's simply not affordable.
Most private enterprises have no need of this technology, because they don't have so many wireless clients packed into one location. Even the most happenin' Starbucks is an order of magnitude less dense than a lecture hall. This kind of technology would have application in crowded places that also have open sight lines. Airports are one example.
(The problem in airports, however, is that while you have crowds of people and relatively open spaces, all the people are on the move, so you would end up with lowered throughput because you'd be constantly walking in and out from each WAP's antenna coverage.)
and as for cost, well: it's infrastructure on a much bigger scale, with more stringent requirements, than most people deal with.
Well, you see, the reporters from the Daily Mail came and did the interview and photographs during the daytime. They may have glossed over that part that astronomical telescopes are typically used at night.
Horsepower doesn't mean anything - it's just a number. An M-1 Abrams tank has about 1500 horsepower - think it can go faster than a modest automobile? Power to weight ratio is far more revealing, and a much better figure of merit.
if the author can't be bothered to put their name behind it (and, really, since it can be a pseudonymous throwaway account, how hard it that?)
You acknowledge that AC posts can be just as anonymous as named accounts. It seems your objection is primarily to the content of this particular post.
There is a distinction between a pseudonymous account that is used once and never again, and an Anonymous Coward; they are not equivalent. I would point to this classic Penny Arcade comic. My objection is that, by being an Anonymous Coward rather than a long-established pseudonymous account, there is no way that anyone can judge what is being said: is it FUD, a bot, personal anecdote, or someone with some authority on the matter? My objection isn't with the content of the post, but rather that it got modded up, rather than staying at 0 where, as you point out, it is less likely to be seen.
it is equivalent to bullshit, FUD, and reverse-astroturfing.
I should amend my earlier statement: it may not be equivalent, but it is indistinguishable from those things, just as it is indistinguishable from fanboi-ism or astroturfing, and doesn't add to the conversation.
Alright, let me rephrase in that context: an Anonymous Coward post that gripes about product quality, even if the AC is speaking truthfully, does not even rise to the level of anecdotal evidence. In that light, I view it as having zero or negative merit, and should therefore never be modded up.
No, it's not even a prediction... it's an empirical observation on historical data. It tends to be self-fulfilling, but there's no reason that it must continue to any arbitrary horizon. Using historical trends can be useful tools for predicting the future, except when they're not.
Whoever modded this post up should be flogged. I don't care if the subject is Apple or anyone else, whenever an Anonymous Coward gets on a high horse and complains about somebody's product, you do not, do not mod it up. Even if they are speaking truthfully about their own experience, if the author can't be bothered to put their name behind it (and, really, since it can be a pseudonymous throwaway account, how hard it that?), it is equivalent to bullshit, FUD, and reverse-astroturfing.
You don't reward that kind of behavior with mod points, unless it is to mod it down so that it won't be noticed by anyone else.
That was something I wondered about. Sure, you could get information across an airgap this way, but could you get enough information across to be worthwhile? If the purpose of the ultrasonic link is to permit the virus to repair itself against attack, it must be able to download patches and software modules on the fly. Could you do that with bandwidth limited to, say, several kbps?
To gain access to the CAN bus you need physical access to the car. If you had that you could just cut a brake line, or simply plant a bomb.
cutting the brake line is pretty damn obvious, so is a bomb. If you wanted to be sneaky about it, you could add a module that would allow you to remotely command the car, while on the highway, to accelerate and then suddenly turn left, while also disabling the brake, traction control, and ABS. In other words, you could make it look like an accident. Depending on how you stage it, the car may or may not be thoroughly inspected, so your easily-concealed module may or may not be discovered afterwards.
Nobody with any experience in HCI thinks that the puck mouse was anything apart from half-baked
Which is why I qualified my statement "with few notable exceptions, and almost none in the last decade..." The puck mouse is almost 15 years old. And it wasn't half-baked in the sense that it was filled with bugs, had poor battery life, or was released before it was ready. It was a well-made product that worked as it ought to; it just happened to be an ergonomic nightmare.
Makes me wonder if it would be possible to create a tiny electrical generator built into a smartwatch that you "wind" the same way. You might be able to extract, say, 100 milliwatts, meaning your power budget for all-day use would be tens of microwatts. A typical digital watch can get by on about 10 nW; I've used microcontrollers that do useful processing on a few 100 uW. So there might be some realm where this could be possible. I wonder what the average power of the Pebble watch is.
You can forget about having a touchscreen, though, or a radio with any significant throughput.
I don't think Apple will nail it either because what people want in a smart watch is out of reach of current technology - the components are just too big.
Which is probably one reason why we haven't seen it yet. With few notable exceptions, and almost none in the last decade, Apple doesn't release half-baked products. Certainly not on the hardware side.
I don't think that it is out of reach of current technology, I'm sure that you could get a nice feature set into a slim watch form factor. Look at what was done with the iPod Nano. It had storage, a modest microcontroller, a color touchscreen, and an audio codec. About the only thing missing from it is some form of radio communications - bluetooth 4 being the most likely candidate - and modestly greater battery capacity to support that.
Because traffic lights go on and off and on and off all day long. They're a terrible idea for LED because the ballasts wear out doing that
LED lighting systems don't have ballasts. True, LEDs require power conditioning (for these applications, it's some sort of switched mode AC/DC converter with constant current output), but those kinds of circuits are highly efficient and robust. LEDs experience essentially zero degradation from being turned on and off repeatedly. All those blinky lights on the front panels of computers, all the flashing indicators on routers and switches, those are all LEDs.
You are probably thinking of fluorescent lamps (tubes and CFLs), for which frequent on/off cycling is indeed a good way to make them die soon. No one makes fluorescent traffic lights precisely for this reason.
Slashdot Mirror
This was largely my reaction, too. It's great that they've put up a minimalist interface for the pricing data, but that is just one tiny piece of a vast and complicated infrastructure. They themselves admitted that their site doesn't tie into the systems of the IRS, DHS, or DHHS, which are enormous and archaic. Nor does the site interface with the various databases that may or may not be easily accessible in the 34 states covered by healthcare.gov.
I think the real problem with healthcare.gov, which can't easily be tackled by small teams like this, is the vast amount of systems integration and testing that must be done to make something like this work. Theirs is a self-contained widget. Great. But there are about 50 other self-contained widgets - all of which I'm sure function just fine in isolaton. But there is no one authority thumpin' skulls to make them work harmoniously together. Until someone takes on that job, it'll always be a terrible morass. Even if we get someone to do that integrations job, you are still left with a large and irreducible amount of complexity.
Hell, I don't know much about guns, either, but I've seen enough movies to know that.
In semi-automatic pistols, the slide (that upper part you talk about) does not return when the magazine is empty. That is, the reason it's stuck open is because it out of bullets. For a three-shot test they, very sensibly, only loaded three cartridges into the magazine.
Yes, Anonymous Coward, you are hereby banned from flying.
Based on my experience with SLS and DLMS technologies, I can think of two reasons:
1) Scale: the resolution of the printer isn't that much finer than the pitch of the threads. So, yes, you could model the threads in, but they would come out terribly, and you would have to chase it with a tap anyway. Much better to just model/print a smooth hole/cylinder and then cut the threads from solid material.
2) Helix Angle: unlike plastic SLS, which is light enough to be self-supporting, the metal powders need grown supports to handle overhangs. Depending on the density of the metal and the make of the DLMS machine, anything that overhangs by more steeply than 45 degrees needs to have support structure grown with it. For the rifling, which is a very shallow helix, no support would be needed if the axis of the barrel was oriented in the z-direction (i.e., normal to the build platform). (you would probably still want to chase it with a reamer to get the inside diameter to the right dimension, form, and finish.) For screw threads, which practically sit on top of each other, you would either need to grow supports that you would have to clean away afterwards, or build with no support and end up with shitty threads. Either way, you'd still need to chase the threads afterwards.
If the threads are coarse enough (greater than, say, an M10x1.5), you have a chance at directly growing the threads. But, really, you'll get better results by cutting the threads afterwards.
I work with a lot of different rapid prototyping processes - including DLMS - on a weekly basis. In their current form you cannot change materials mid-part on a DLMS machine. Even if the machine itself could handle it (i.e., had multiple material-handling streams), you would have a tough time getting the dissimilar metals to properly fuse. As a welder how good the results of welding aluminum and steel are, or titanium and steel. Mixing these metals tends to result in brittle intermetallic phases, which are perfect places for fracture. Even worse is that, because the machine works layer-by-layer, the boundary between the two metals would be planar, making fracture all that more likely.
What is more, because the process is akin to SLS, what you end up with is a box - the build envelope - completely filled with powder, inside of which is the part you've made. You can ordinarily reclaim most of the powder and use it again. If you were to change materials mid-stream, you would have to junk most if not all of the leftover powder, because you wouldn't have a good way to separate the powders.
What is more, they wanted to simulate the spacecraft to several psi of positive pressure. In space, the interior of the capsule is at 5 psi, and space effectively at zero. On the ground, the outside pressure is 14.7 psi (1 atm), so they pressurized the interior of the capsule to nearly 17 psi. In a pressurized oxygen environment, almost anything is combustible.
Or you accept it as a tongue-in-cheek comment, as it was meant. I guess I should have included a [sarcasm] tag.
Most private enterprises have no need of this technology, because they don't have so many wireless clients packed into one location. Even the most happenin' Starbucks is an order of magnitude less dense than a lecture hall. This kind of technology would have application in crowded places that also have open sight lines. Airports are one example.
(The problem in airports, however, is that while you have crowds of people and relatively open spaces, all the people are on the move, so you would end up with lowered throughput because you'd be constantly walking in and out from each WAP's antenna coverage.)
and as for cost, well: it's infrastructure on a much bigger scale, with more stringent requirements, than most people deal with.
Possibly because, in a game where the Queen is the most powerful and versatile player, she is subordinate to protecting the King.
Well, you see, the reporters from the Daily Mail came and did the interview and photographs during the daytime. They may have glossed over that part that astronomical telescopes are typically used at night.
Reflecting telescopes use front-side mirrors. The glass is just there to provide the shape; it is not part of the optical path.
Horsepower doesn't mean anything - it's just a number. An M-1 Abrams tank has about 1500 horsepower - think it can go faster than a modest automobile? Power to weight ratio is far more revealing, and a much better figure of merit.
Appropriate (what if) xkcd
if the author can't be bothered to put their name behind it (and, really, since it can be a pseudonymous throwaway account, how hard it that?)
You acknowledge that AC posts can be just as anonymous as named accounts. It seems your objection is primarily to the content of this particular post.
There is a distinction between a pseudonymous account that is used once and never again, and an Anonymous Coward; they are not equivalent. I would point to this classic Penny Arcade comic. My objection is that, by being an Anonymous Coward rather than a long-established pseudonymous account, there is no way that anyone can judge what is being said: is it FUD, a bot, personal anecdote, or someone with some authority on the matter? My objection isn't with the content of the post, but rather that it got modded up, rather than staying at 0 where, as you point out, it is less likely to be seen.
it is equivalent to bullshit, FUD, and reverse-astroturfing.
I should amend my earlier statement: it may not be equivalent, but it is indistinguishable from those things, just as it is indistinguishable from fanboi-ism or astroturfing, and doesn't add to the conversation.
Alright, let me rephrase in that context: an Anonymous Coward post that gripes about product quality, even if the AC is speaking truthfully, does not even rise to the level of anecdotal evidence. In that light, I view it as having zero or negative merit, and should therefore never be modded up.
No, it's not even a prediction... it's an empirical observation on historical data. It tends to be self-fulfilling, but there's no reason that it must continue to any arbitrary horizon. Using historical trends can be useful tools for predicting the future, except when they're not.
Whoever modded this post up should be flogged. I don't care if the subject is Apple or anyone else, whenever an Anonymous Coward gets on a high horse and complains about somebody's product, you do not, do not mod it up. Even if they are speaking truthfully about their own experience, if the author can't be bothered to put their name behind it (and, really, since it can be a pseudonymous throwaway account, how hard it that?), it is equivalent to bullshit, FUD, and reverse-astroturfing.
You don't reward that kind of behavior with mod points, unless it is to mod it down so that it won't be noticed by anyone else.
That was something I wondered about. Sure, you could get information across an airgap this way, but could you get enough information across to be worthwhile? If the purpose of the ultrasonic link is to permit the virus to repair itself against attack, it must be able to download patches and software modules on the fly. Could you do that with bandwidth limited to, say, several kbps?
cutting the brake line is pretty damn obvious, so is a bomb. If you wanted to be sneaky about it, you could add a module that would allow you to remotely command the car, while on the highway, to accelerate and then suddenly turn left, while also disabling the brake, traction control, and ABS. In other words, you could make it look like an accident. Depending on how you stage it, the car may or may not be thoroughly inspected, so your easily-concealed module may or may not be discovered afterwards.
Which is why I qualified my statement "with few notable exceptions, and almost none in the last decade..." The puck mouse is almost 15 years old. And it wasn't half-baked in the sense that it was filled with bugs, had poor battery life, or was released before it was ready. It was a well-made product that worked as it ought to; it just happened to be an ergonomic nightmare.
Makes me wonder if it would be possible to create a tiny electrical generator built into a smartwatch that you "wind" the same way. You might be able to extract, say, 100 milliwatts, meaning your power budget for all-day use would be tens of microwatts. A typical digital watch can get by on about 10 nW; I've used microcontrollers that do useful processing on a few 100 uW. So there might be some realm where this could be possible. I wonder what the average power of the Pebble watch is.
You can forget about having a touchscreen, though, or a radio with any significant throughput.
Which is probably one reason why we haven't seen it yet. With few notable exceptions, and almost none in the last decade, Apple doesn't release half-baked products. Certainly not on the hardware side.
I don't think that it is out of reach of current technology, I'm sure that you could get a nice feature set into a slim watch form factor. Look at what was done with the iPod Nano. It had storage, a modest microcontroller, a color touchscreen, and an audio codec. About the only thing missing from it is some form of radio communications - bluetooth 4 being the most likely candidate - and modestly greater battery capacity to support that.
What, you mean you want to do science and discovery when you get there?
How often does the underside of a street lamp - ya know, the part that the light comes out from - get covered with snow?
LED lighting systems don't have ballasts. True, LEDs require power conditioning (for these applications, it's some sort of switched mode AC/DC converter with constant current output), but those kinds of circuits are highly efficient and robust. LEDs experience essentially zero degradation from being turned on and off repeatedly. All those blinky lights on the front panels of computers, all the flashing indicators on routers and switches, those are all LEDs.
You are probably thinking of fluorescent lamps (tubes and CFLs), for which frequent on/off cycling is indeed a good way to make them die soon. No one makes fluorescent traffic lights precisely for this reason.