Low pass filters go for $100 these days(yes, i am oversimplifying a little).. If this product is successful, somebody will produce something cheaper using a different method. Really, I don't see the reason for an adapter, just build it into the mouse controller.
At least in the female aspect of you post- when I lived in china a few months ago, I had no fewer than 10 girlfriends. Really, finding a girlfriend in china is like the proverbial shooting fish in a barrell... I guess, unless you are a complete dorky loser.
As for the dialects and food- true. But you can do well learning the main dialect (Mandarin), and English will get you by in Shanghai, Beijing and perhaps Shenzhen/Guangzhou.
I'm an EE, and I took some time off to study Mandarin Chinese in Beijing.. If you have interest in living in china/taiwan, there are opportunities out the yin yang with the exploding economy in China.
Mandarin is probably the best thing to learn, though Cantonese is more prevalent in southern china. Not to mention english literacy is fairly high among educated chinese.
Register www.dotslash.org, fire up the slashcode, and make a site that sucks less. Seriously. I've been reading/. since '98, and it would be nice to see someone run such a site with a less mediocre effort.
Something similar to this guy happened to me recently. It took me months to figure out why they locked my account.. Turns out, about 6 months ago I had a sexual joke on a website that mentioned Paypal ( a joke about cam girls). Good thing i did not have a balance in my account. I will never do business with them again.
FYI, the monthly salary for a laborer in china is around 300rmb. That's about 25 dollars. That still puts it out of reach for the average peasant class family in china(yes I know these are being sold to governments).
Personally, I've pondered what would go into a super-cheapo PC for the poor.. Maybe a whole pc on a single chip, really no frills. Seems like the better way to get computers to the poor is to give incentive to donating those old Pentium class computers to the poor, though transporting them is more expensive than the computer itself. As I see it, getting computers to the 3rd world poor in any fashion will be an act of charity- ie, not terribly profitable.
For education purposes, the PRC uses the pinyin romanization system.
I'm not familiar with your spellings of chinese words, maybe they are wade-giles.
Anywho, china is zhong guo, USA is mei guo, England is ying guo, Japan is ri ben(which whimsically can be translated as "fuck one's self"), South Korea is han guo, France is fa guo.
Many of the chinese people i met hold america in high esteem. Thank you, Backstreet Boys.
Yes *chinese* people are arrested... But I wasn't arrested for telling Chinese their policy on Taiwan was utter bullshit. Then again, I was not making a public spectacle.
I've lived in china, and though it is not quite a utopia, I'll be living there for a few years more.
You probably will not notice a substantial abridgement of your freedoms when you get there. However, due to the developing nature of China, many processes are highly aggravating.
Sure, you cannot access porn online- as easily as in the USA. It is still there, and you can find it.
One thing that really has pissed me off was that I left my computer at home in the USA running a server registered with DynDNS- I'm guessing all the domains with DDNS are blocked by china. I justed wanted access to my own stuff at home, not to start an insurrection.
All I can say is, feel free to express yourself at the right time, but use discretion.
If you want access to all your files, buy a 1GB flashdrive and copy all your important stuff on to that. Buy 2 or 3 if you need, or take a laptop.
As some of my chinese friends told me, the trick to have so few reported cases of SARS in a big city was to move infected people out of the city. Quite amusing.
I've looked into doing this, and after doing a cost analysis, I'ved concluded that making a *useful* pci/ide ramdrive is not worth the effort.
First off, it simply is not worth it to make an IDE or PCI based solid state disk with only a few megabytes. Why not simply buy more ram and create a RAM disk in windows or whatever instead? But even that will not give you much performance enhancement, perhaps speed up the start time of apps launched from the disk.
Familiar with Verilog/VHDL? I hope so, you'll probably have to roll your own IDE controller/ram interface. PICs make sucky IDE controllers. It can be done, but they are ass slow, which would render this whole exercise academic.
Now lets break down the price list for real: ram: why bother with less than, say, a gig. $200 pcb fabrication: $50 (optimistic) FPGA: $20-ish Board components: depends, but let's say $20 due to small quantities being ordered. Battery backup system: cr2032 perhaps, haven't really researched what would go into a reliable battery ram refresher system.
How much is your time worth? Mine is not cheap. I do electronics consulting, and I would estimate this project to be a bit pricey time-wise. The way to recoup the money is to develop a product that would sell, which is a losing proposition due to what i said above.
Other costs if you do not have the stuff: design software (for fpga, pcb layout and routing), a logic analyzer/oscilloscope.
Anyways, my point is not to beat you down, but to show that this is a nontrivial task. There are companies that sells these things, but they are expensive. If it was easy, I probably would have seen other people with homemade pci or ide ramdrives. Then again, I havent really looked in the last year or so.:)
The Chinese emperors used obscene amounts of resources to build these things, but, damn, I went to Xian on saturday to see the Terracotta Warriors, and it was awesome:) Last week I was at the Mutianyu Great Wall- these structures are spectacular, though I doubt they were intended as tourist sites:)
I live in china right now, and I can talk about any subject I want. But that does not mean I should dwell on sensational topics during social occasions, right? However, I get a kick out of telling chinese who have been force-fed their government's stance on Taiwan that noone else in the world sees it their way. A bit amusing, perhaps foolhardy.
As for the population control... There are so many fucking people- EVERYWHERE. Really, some population control here would not be so bad. As I see it, a major problem is that the use of birthcontrol is not widespread enough to help fix the situation.
Gee wiz, I hope the chinese government doesnt track me down from my slashdot post and deport me:P
I'd be happy to design a working prototype for you. My consulting fee starts at $5K. Email if interested:)
You might be surprised how much time and effort goes into getting a product idea off the ground. Like other posters here have said, having the idea is the easy part. Even a "simple" idea has issues.
and thank goodness I can view slashdot, or else I would be out dating some hot chinese babes:) I'll get on that first thing tomorrow.
Seriously though, I am annoyed because I left my computer on at home in the States running sshd, and I registered with DynDNS... I get the impression all DDNS sites are blocked, ie I'm screwed.
What I need here is some 3G wireless internet access.. Dialup from my hotel is the suxors.
I'm a bit peeved, as I just wrote you a long response that was lost when i tried to preview, but no problem;)
Anyways, these are not kits, but some books that can help you get on your way: any electronics books written by Forest M. Mims III, which you might still be able to find at Radio Shack. To learn about digital electronic theory, Bebop to the Boolean Boogie by Max Maxfield explains things in an accessible manner.
You may want to pick up a few electronic components to get yourself started. Carbon film resisters of various values, various capacitors, a prototype board, some LEDs, a multimeter, a logic probe, a DC power supply, a voltage regulator chip (7805) if your power supply does not supply 5 volts, some logic ICs like the 7400, 7404.. AND, NAND, OR, NOR gates
Then figure out how to put stuff together. Get someone to help you out if necessary. Have fun.
YMMV, I'm an electrical engineer now.. I apologize ahead of time if I got the book information wrong- I'm studying abroad in china at the moment and can't see my bookshelf;)
Slashdot Mirror
Low pass filters go for $100 these days(yes, i am oversimplifying a little).. If this product is successful, somebody will produce something cheaper using a different method. Really, I don't see the reason for an adapter, just build it into the mouse controller.
At least in the female aspect of you post- when I lived in china a few months ago, I had no fewer than 10 girlfriends. Really, finding a girlfriend in china is like the proverbial shooting fish in a barrell... I guess, unless you are a complete dorky loser.
As for the dialects and food- true. But you can do well learning the main dialect (Mandarin), and English will get you by in Shanghai, Beijing and perhaps Shenzhen/Guangzhou.
I'm an EE, and I took some time off to study Mandarin Chinese in Beijing.. If you have interest in living in china/taiwan, there are opportunities out the yin yang with the exploding economy in China.
Mandarin is probably the best thing to learn, though Cantonese is more prevalent in southern china. Not to mention english literacy is fairly high among educated chinese.
Register www.dotslash.org, fire up the slashcode, and make a site that sucks less. Seriously. I've been reading /. since '98, and it would be nice to see someone run such a site with a less mediocre effort.
hehe, i think you got trolled..Come on, a solaris Roomba? Does Dancing Santa have a solaris-enabled flying sleigh too? :)
Is she willing to be seen in public with you wearing that? :)
Something similar to this guy happened to me recently. It took me months to figure out why they locked my account.. Turns out, about 6 months ago I had a sexual joke on a website that mentioned Paypal ( a joke about cam girls). Good thing i did not have a balance in my account. I will never do business with them again.
FYI, the monthly salary for a laborer in china is around 300rmb. That's about 25 dollars. That still puts it out of reach for the average peasant class family in china(yes I know these are being sold to governments).
Personally, I've pondered what would go into a super-cheapo PC for the poor.. Maybe a whole pc on a single chip, really no frills. Seems like the better way to get computers to the poor is to give incentive to donating those old Pentium class computers to the poor, though transporting them is more expensive than the computer itself. As I see it, getting computers to the 3rd world poor in any fashion will be an act of charity- ie, not terribly profitable.
It was when I was in university :p /. since before uni and haven't changed that bit of info.
I've been reading
The risk is not that great. And I enjoy living there.
The economy is booming there, I have oodles of girlfriends, and the people are pleasant.
In fact, I am fucking ecstatic that people have such bad images of china in their little heads- leaves more good stuff and opportunities for moi.
For education purposes, the PRC uses the pinyin romanization system.
I'm not familiar with your spellings of chinese words, maybe they are wade-giles.
Anywho, china is zhong guo, USA is mei guo, England is ying guo, Japan is ri ben(which whimsically can be translated as "fuck one's self"), South Korea is han guo, France is fa guo.
Many of the chinese people i met hold america in high esteem. Thank you, Backstreet Boys.
You are wrong, sir, I can indeed waste my day away reading slashdot in china.
Many news sites in English are not blocked...yet, who knows.
Yes *chinese* people are arrested... But I wasn't arrested for telling Chinese their policy on Taiwan was utter bullshit. Then again, I was not making a public spectacle.
I've lived in china, and though it is not quite a utopia, I'll be living there for a few years more.
Taiwan is cool too; Taipei is a happening place.
though I'm in the USA for the moment..
You probably will not notice a substantial abridgement of your freedoms when you get there. However, due to the developing nature of China, many processes are highly aggravating.
Sure, you cannot access porn online- as easily as in the USA. It is still there, and you can find it.
One thing that really has pissed me off was that I left my computer at home in the USA running a server registered with DynDNS- I'm guessing all the domains with DDNS are blocked by china. I justed wanted access to my own stuff at home, not to start an insurrection.
All I can say is, feel free to express yourself at the right time, but use discretion.
If you want access to all your files, buy a 1GB flashdrive and copy all your important stuff on to that. Buy 2 or 3 if you need, or take a laptop.
As some of my chinese friends told me, the trick to have so few reported cases of SARS in a big city was to move infected people out of the city. Quite amusing.
I've looked into doing this, and after doing a cost analysis, I'ved concluded that making a *useful* pci/ide ramdrive is not worth the effort.
:)
First off, it simply is not worth it to make an IDE or PCI based solid state disk with only a few megabytes. Why not simply buy more ram and create a RAM disk in windows or whatever instead? But even that will not give you much performance enhancement, perhaps speed up the start time of apps launched from the disk.
Familiar with Verilog/VHDL? I hope so, you'll probably have to roll your own IDE controller/ram interface. PICs make sucky IDE controllers. It can be done, but they are ass slow, which would render this whole exercise academic.
Now lets break down the price list for real:
ram: why bother with less than, say, a gig. $200
pcb fabrication: $50 (optimistic)
FPGA: $20-ish
Board components: depends, but let's say $20 due to small quantities being ordered.
Battery backup system: cr2032 perhaps, haven't really researched what would go into a reliable battery ram refresher system.
How much is your time worth? Mine is not cheap. I do electronics consulting, and I would estimate this project to be a bit pricey time-wise. The way to recoup the money is to develop a product that would sell, which is a losing proposition due to what i said above.
Other costs if you do not have the stuff: design software (for fpga, pcb layout and routing), a logic analyzer/oscilloscope.
Anyways, my point is not to beat you down, but to show that this is a nontrivial task. There are companies that sells these things, but they are expensive. If it was easy, I probably would have seen other people with homemade pci or ide ramdrives. Then again, I havent really looked in the last year or so.
Did this back in '96 on my Ti85.
Your library doesn't have SAT prep books either? Damn those asians and their asian parents who want their children to do nothing but study.. :D
The Chinese emperors used obscene amounts of resources to build these things, but, damn, I went to Xian on saturday to see the Terracotta Warriors, and it was awesome :) Last week I was at the Mutianyu Great Wall- these structures are spectacular, though I doubt they were intended as tourist sites :)
I live in china right now, and I can talk about any subject I want. But that does not mean I should dwell on sensational topics during social occasions, right? However, I get a kick out of telling chinese who have been force-fed their government's stance on Taiwan that noone else in the world sees it their way. A bit amusing, perhaps foolhardy.
:P
As for the population control... There are so many fucking people- EVERYWHERE. Really, some population control here would not be so bad. As I see it, a major problem is that the use of birthcontrol is not widespread enough to help fix the situation.
Gee wiz, I hope the chinese government doesnt track me down from my slashdot post and deport me
I'd be happy to design a working prototype for you. My consulting fee starts at $5K. Email if interested :)
You might be surprised how much time and effort goes into getting a product idea off the ground. Like other posters here have said, having the idea is the easy part. Even a "simple" idea has issues.
Just reply to me, I'd be more than happy to build it :)
:)
Yes, I enjoy being an embedded systems consultant
mod up, por favor.
and thank goodness I can view slashdot, or else I would be out dating some hot chinese babes :)
I'll get on that first thing tomorrow.
Seriously though, I am annoyed because I left my computer on at home in the States running sshd, and I registered with DynDNS... I get the impression all DDNS sites are blocked, ie I'm screwed.
What I need here is some 3G wireless internet access.. Dialup from my hotel is the suxors.
I'm a bit peeved, as I just wrote you a long response that was lost when i tried to preview, but no problem ;)
;)
Anyways, these are not kits, but some books that can help you get on your way: any electronics books written by Forest M. Mims III, which you might still be able to find at Radio Shack. To learn about digital electronic theory, Bebop to the Boolean Boogie by Max Maxfield explains things in an accessible manner.
You may want to pick up a few electronic components to get yourself started. Carbon film resisters of various values, various capacitors, a prototype board, some LEDs, a multimeter, a logic probe, a DC power supply, a voltage regulator chip (7805) if your power supply does not supply 5 volts, some logic ICs like the 7400, 7404.. AND, NAND, OR, NOR gates
Then figure out how to put stuff together. Get someone to help you out if necessary. Have fun.
YMMV, I'm an electrical engineer now.. I apologize ahead of time if I got the book information wrong- I'm studying abroad in china at the moment and can't see my bookshelf