Caps charge fast, but they can also discharge fast.
Batteries have an inherent resistance that stops them discharging all at once. Without a resistor in the circuit, caps can discharge fast enough to be a hazard.
Depending on your application, this can be a good or bad thing. I haven't heard of any pocket flash cameras shorting out and hurting someone (unless modified it to be a "ghetto taser"), but larger devices like laptops could be another matter.
>Like I said: I live in Japan. We're the earthquake capital of the world, >and yet somehow we manage to have buildings stay standing.
It's not so much the building falling down that I worry about. It's the idiots that don't bother to secure their machines in the racks. Or the ones that leave their cabinets on rollers.
Even if earthquakes aren't a problem, a fairly small tornado could toss around a lot of machines.
Personally, I think most datacenters are waaaay too big. I see an awful lot of empty cabinets here in Austin, TX.
Too bad it's based on Windows CE. If it could boot Linux from a USB hard disk, or better yet, directly from a network, I could put it to work right away.
Forget the money. We're only talking $1500 at most if you buy it at their price. If your business plan is decent and that particular domain name is critical to your marketing plan, $1500 is peanuts. Your time and energy are probably worth a lot more than $1500.
Assuming you don't have the $1500 to spend and you have the time to haggle, start at $250. This is enough to raise their interest. Expect a few rounds of counter offers...just two or three at most. Anything more and you're wasting time.
An experienced negotiator might get the domain for around $300. A novice negotiator can probably get them down to at least $750. What it really comes down to is your negotation skills.
>But I see there's still a big study test and paying $200 for great >that amounts to a walkie-talkie. What is the draw anymore when >people these days have cell phones and the internet?
It's far more than a walkie-talking (or even GMRS/FMRS). More power, greater range, repeaters, etc.
The problem with cell phones is you can't broadcast a request for assistance if necessary. The internet isn't so hot for that either.
Try coordinating a large activity with cell phones. It's not easy. Ever try to coordinate the cell phone numbers of bunch of volunteers?
When some task needs to be done, it's a heck of a lot easier to broadcast via radios than to individually dial people and ask for assistance.
With the internet and cell phones, it is no longer a big deal to communicate around the world.
However, there's a lot of other interesting stuff to do. For example, building a wireless LAN that works over extreme distances is just an offshoot of the Ham mind-set...it just doesn't require a license.
There's a lot of cool Ham stuff you might do, but unlike the internet, you can't use it for commercial gain. This does put a damper on innovation.
The biggest draw for me is weather related...storm tracking, emergency communications, and stuff like that. The internet and cell phones just don't work well in those situations.
It's neither hard nor expensive to get started. Just get your license and go on the air with a handy-talky. I bought my first one for less than $200. No big antennas or investmens are necessary.
This assumes you live close enough to a population center with folks to talk to, but that isn't a big deal in most areas. From there you can decide if you want to branch out into longer-distance communications.
I suppose it depends on the patient's current condition and dosage, but my experience with Zolpidem (Ambien) is that it really messes with your head, particularly your memory.
So, if it brings somone out of a vegatative state, will they be able to remember it? It might make them more communicative, but what's the point if you can't retain the memory?
The hand crank idea was dropped because of the resulting mechanical stresses involved.
That makes a lot of sense. The torque on the screen, motherboard, and body would eventually lead to failures. A foot pedal or hand crank attached through a wire would solve the problem.
Going back to the survey in question, people are informed that only calling patterns are analyzed...there is no listening or recording of phone calls. People don't seem too worried about calling patterns. I'm sure if you phrased the question so it implied the government was listening and recording calls, the results would be much different.
Also, it is interesting to see that there is a downward trend in people thinking personal privacy should be sacrificed for possible terrorist investigations. It was high right after 9-11, but is slowly going down. Is this not a hopeful sign for privacy advocates?
Just make an evil executable that has a name that looks like a movie.
Most people will have no idea what an avi or mpg file is. They'll just open the icon and let it run. By the time they figure out it isn't a movie, it will be too late.
I remember this. It was a "hot" topic on the elementary school playground. That it got attention at that age level should indicate something of the popular beliefs of the time.
Or maybe the Weekly Reader was just stirring things up....
>If cows pollute more than cars, it's because we breed them in huge numbers. >This is not "natural".
It isn't? Let's go back a few hundred years in North America...where the buffalo (bison) roamed. There were *millions* of them...perhaps 60 or 70 million. At this point in time there may be around 105 million head of cattle. That's not even twice the number of critters that were living "naturally". Then consider all the other big animals that have decreased drastically in population...moose, elk, etc. I bet the total population isn't that far off from the number of cattle we are currently raising.
In any case, if it weren't cows, something else large would be living here anyway. And if it wasn't us that evolved, it would be the racoons.
No? Wheat, corn, soybeans...a lot of our foods are based on that.
>That's not the problem - it's other forms of food: meat in particular,
True, a large amount of our grain goes to feed animals to get meat, milk, and other products...but we still have a lot left over.
>also vegetables that only grow in small areas of the country. >A large amount of the food we eat is imported
And what necessary vegetable only grows in a small area of the US? There are none. You're confusing exotics and food variety with the basics. Believe it or not, there was a time when most Americans lived without tropical fruits.
Our food exports are greater than our food imports. I think in 2005 they were close to equal, but a lot of that is for "luxury" foods. For example, immigrants who feel they must eat the typical foods of their homeland, or New Yorkers who demand they have fresh strawberries in January. Or large mega-corps who buy cheap meat overseas. If we just limited ourselves to what is locally available and in-season, we would be just fine.
>even though there's arable land in the Midwest, they can't grow strawberries.
What? Growing up in the midwest we had more strawberries than we knew what to do with. It just depends on the season.
>just consider food for a moment. the average north american diet requires 3 >acres of areable land per person per year. for the entire population of the >united states that works out to just less a billion acres.
I don't buy this. If it were true, why do we typically have an agricultural surplus? Grain production is so high you have trouble finding a place to store it.
The US is loosing arable land, yet the remaining farmland is producing more than it ever has in history.
I think a more realistic figure is closer to 1 acre per person, not three.
>Is this implying that there are people who don't do a complete rebuild >after a system is compromised?
Yes. Sometimes it is just not practical from the user's perspective.
As an exercise, I tried to clean up some malware a few weeks ago. I made the assumption that the computer was a "living being" and I could not just wipe it out. Reboots were acceptable, but a reinstall was not. I thought of it as a human patient with a malignant tumor. I had to kill the tumor, but not the patient.
Over the course of a week, it took me about 10 hours of work to get rid of the malware. No mainstream malware-removal utilities would work (most didn't think anything was wrong). I had to resort to some higher end tools and mucking around with the registry, as well as a lot of trial-and-error. A combination of monitoring the creation of new files, CCleaner, KillBox, and HijackThis (none of which I had used previously, or even heard of) finally did the trick.
So, the patient is now functional, but it still has a few quirks, probably because I did some inadvertant damage along the way. It has an acceptable "quality of life", though.
I'm convinced that rebuilding is obviously the practical thing to do in most cases, but it's nice to know you can regain control if you really have to.
I'm just summerizing what I gleaned from the article, but it seems reasonable.
Profit Ratios (how much get for how much you spend)
Oil- 20:1 (Old discoveries) Oil- 8:1 (New discoveries) Coal- 10:1 Nuclear- 4:1 Biodiesel- 2.5:1 Wind - 2:1 Solar - 1.1?:1
Coal and oil obviously are the most profitable, thus the most popular. Nuclear might be much higher up if the regulatory and safety costs could be reduced.
>I first learned how bad these plant were a few years ago when I was watching the
>Discovery channel reporting on those massive dumptrucks at coal mines. An engineer
>was holding an eight pound chunk of coal and say, "This is just about enough power
>to turn on a laptop computer." I was appaled.
I don't buy that. I used to work in a coal-fired power plant. I've seen first hand the coal go from big chunk, to fine powder, to hot flame.
There's no way 8 pounds of decent coal could only provide power a laptop for long enough to turn it on. The inefficiencies are *that* bad.
Slashdot Mirror
Caps charge fast, but they can also discharge fast.
Batteries have an inherent resistance that stops them discharging all at once. Without a resistor in the circuit, caps can discharge fast enough to be a hazard.
Depending on your application, this can be a good or bad thing. I haven't heard of any pocket flash cameras shorting out and hurting someone (unless modified it to be a "ghetto taser"), but larger devices like laptops could be another matter.
>Like I said: I live in Japan. We're the earthquake capital of the world,
>and yet somehow we manage to have buildings stay standing.
It's not so much the building falling down that I worry about. It's the idiots that don't bother to secure their machines in the racks. Or the ones that leave their cabinets on rollers.
Even if earthquakes aren't a problem, a fairly small tornado could toss around a lot of machines.
Personally, I think most datacenters are waaaay too big. I see an awful lot of empty cabinets here in Austin, TX.
Doesn't that make them look like any other US Citizen?
1) Get chipped.
2) Cross the border.
3) Have chip removed.
4) Profit!
>I have a problem with people watching from private
>what I do anywhere in public.
I imagine this might be a personal preference, but is there any rational reasoning for that attitude?
I guess potential stalking could be a reason, but that goes a bit further than watching.
Too bad it's based on Windows CE. If it could boot Linux from a USB hard disk, or better yet, directly from a network, I could put it to work right away.
Forget the money. We're only talking $1500 at most if you buy it at their price. If your business plan is decent and that particular domain name is critical to your marketing plan, $1500 is peanuts. Your time and energy are probably worth a lot more than $1500.
Assuming you don't have the $1500 to spend and you have the time to haggle, start at $250. This is enough to raise their interest. Expect a few rounds of counter offers...just two or three at most. Anything more and you're wasting time.
An experienced negotiator might get the domain for around $300. A novice negotiator can probably get them down to at least $750. What it really comes down to is your negotation skills.
>But I see there's still a big study test and paying $200 for great
>that amounts to a walkie-talkie. What is the draw anymore when
>people these days have cell phones and the internet?
It's far more than a walkie-talking (or even GMRS/FMRS). More power, greater range, repeaters, etc.
The problem with cell phones is you can't broadcast a request for assistance if necessary. The internet isn't so hot for that either.
Try coordinating a large activity with cell phones. It's not easy. Ever try to coordinate the cell phone numbers of bunch of volunteers?
When some task needs to be done, it's a heck of a lot easier to broadcast via radios than to individually dial people and ask for assistance.
Each technology has its place.
With the internet and cell phones, it is no longer a big deal to communicate around the world.
However, there's a lot of other interesting stuff to do. For example, building a wireless LAN that works over extreme distances is just an offshoot of the Ham mind-set...it just doesn't require a license.
There's a lot of cool Ham stuff you might do, but unlike the internet, you can't use it for commercial gain. This does put a damper on innovation.
The biggest draw for me is weather related...storm tracking, emergency communications, and stuff like that. The internet and cell phones just don't work well in those situations.
K5GDN
It's neither hard nor expensive to get started. Just get your license and go on the air with a handy-talky. I bought my first one for less than $200. No big antennas or investmens are necessary.
This assumes you live close enough to a population center with folks to talk to, but that isn't a big deal in most areas. From there you can decide if you want to branch out into longer-distance communications.
I suppose it depends on the patient's current condition and dosage, but my experience with Zolpidem (Ambien) is that it really messes with your head, particularly your memory. So, if it brings somone out of a vegatative state, will they be able to remember it? It might make them more communicative, but what's the point if you can't retain the memory?
The hand crank idea was dropped because of the resulting mechanical stresses involved.
That makes a lot of sense. The torque on the screen, motherboard, and body would eventually lead to failures. A foot pedal or hand crank attached through a wire would solve the problem.
Has anyone really tested the reliability of Bluetooth during an electrical storm?
Has everyone forgotten him?
Going back to the survey in question, people are informed that only calling patterns are analyzed...there is no listening or recording of phone calls. People don't seem too worried about calling patterns. I'm sure if you phrased the question so it implied the government was listening and recording calls, the results would be much different.
Also, it is interesting to see that there is a downward trend in people thinking personal privacy should be sacrificed for possible terrorist investigations. It was high right after 9-11, but is slowly going down. Is this not a hopeful sign for privacy advocates?
It's more likely it's something in the water.
Just make an evil executable that has a name that looks like a movie.
Most people will have no idea what an avi or mpg file is. They'll just open the icon and let it run. By the time they figure out it isn't a movie, it will be too late.
They were probably honking at you because you were walking in a place you weren't supposed to be. Foot traffic is often prohibited for safety reasons.
It's not unusual for some city sections to have no pedestrian-legal paths between them. Pedestrians just weren't considered in the design equation.
>Life must have come from non-life because there's no other way for it to happen.
Or maybe non-life came from life. Ever think you might have it backwards?
There's ample evidence around us that life can create *both* life and non-life. There's zero evidence non-life changes into life.
I remember this. It was a "hot" topic on the elementary school playground. That it got attention at that age level should indicate something of the popular beliefs of the time.
Or maybe the Weekly Reader was just stirring things up....
>If cows pollute more than cars, it's because we breed them in huge numbers.
>This is not "natural".
It isn't? Let's go back a few hundred years in North America...where the buffalo (bison) roamed. There were *millions* of them...perhaps 60 or 70 million. At this point in time there may be around 105 million head of cattle. That's not even twice the number of critters that were living "naturally". Then consider all the other big animals that have decreased drastically in population...moose, elk, etc. I bet the total population isn't that far off from the number of cattle we are currently raising.
In any case, if it weren't cows, something else large would be living here anyway. And if it wasn't us that evolved, it would be the racoons.
>Americans don't typically eat only grain.
No? Wheat, corn, soybeans...a lot of our foods are based on that.
>That's not the problem - it's other forms of food: meat in particular,
True, a large amount of our grain goes to feed animals to get meat, milk, and other products...but we still have a lot left over.
>also vegetables that only grow in small areas of the country.
>A large amount of the food we eat is imported
And what necessary vegetable only grows in a small area of the US? There are none. You're confusing exotics and food variety with the basics. Believe it or not, there was a time when most Americans lived without tropical fruits.
Our food exports are greater than our food imports. I think in 2005 they were close to equal, but a lot of that is for "luxury" foods. For example, immigrants who feel they must eat the typical foods of their homeland, or New Yorkers who demand they have fresh strawberries in January. Or large mega-corps who buy cheap meat overseas. If we just limited ourselves to what is locally available and in-season, we would be just fine.
>even though there's arable land in the Midwest, they can't grow strawberries.
What? Growing up in the midwest we had more strawberries than we knew what to do with. It just depends on the season.
>just consider food for a moment. the average north american diet requires 3
>acres of areable land per person per year. for the entire population of the
>united states that works out to just less a billion acres.
I don't buy this. If it were true, why do we typically have an agricultural surplus? Grain production is so high you have trouble finding a place to store it.
The US is loosing arable land, yet the remaining farmland is producing more than it ever has in history.
I think a more realistic figure is closer to 1 acre per person, not three.
>Is this implying that there are people who don't do a complete rebuild
>after a system is compromised?
Yes. Sometimes it is just not practical from the user's perspective.
As an exercise, I tried to clean up some malware a few weeks ago. I made the assumption that the computer was a "living being" and I could not just wipe it out. Reboots were acceptable, but a reinstall was not. I thought of it as a human patient with a malignant tumor. I had to kill the tumor, but not the patient.
Over the course of a week, it took me about 10 hours of work to get rid of the malware. No mainstream malware-removal utilities would work (most didn't think anything was wrong). I had to resort to some higher end tools and mucking around with the registry, as well as a lot of trial-and-error. A combination of monitoring the creation of new files, CCleaner, KillBox, and HijackThis (none of which I had used previously, or even heard of) finally did the trick.
So, the patient is now functional, but it still has a few quirks, probably because I did some inadvertant damage along the way. It has an acceptable "quality of life", though.
I'm convinced that rebuilding is obviously the practical thing to do in most cases, but it's nice to know you can regain control if you really have to.
From this article: http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2005/05/energ y-density-key-to-understanding.html
I'm just summerizing what I gleaned from the article, but it seems reasonable.
Profit Ratios (how much get for how much you spend)
Oil- 20:1 (Old discoveries)
Oil- 8:1 (New discoveries)
Coal- 10:1
Nuclear- 4:1
Biodiesel- 2.5:1
Wind - 2:1
Solar - 1.1?:1
Coal and oil obviously are the most profitable, thus the most popular. Nuclear might be much higher up if the regulatory and safety costs could be reduced.
>I first learned how bad these plant were a few years ago when I was watching the >Discovery channel reporting on those massive dumptrucks at coal mines. An engineer >was holding an eight pound chunk of coal and say, "This is just about enough power >to turn on a laptop computer." I was appaled. I don't buy that. I used to work in a coal-fired power plant. I've seen first hand the coal go from big chunk, to fine powder, to hot flame. There's no way 8 pounds of decent coal could only provide power a laptop for long enough to turn it on. The inefficiencies are *that* bad.