Posts by John Smith 19

@Destroy All Monsters

"But why would anyone do that except as a late-night fun-and-giggles project and/or to attempt to identify a particularly hot mate?"

Ho ho.

You really need to use that joke icon

Re: 200V @ 4.7uA ~= 1mW

"That one square centimetre is about the size of the finger; the contact is for perhaps a second or two... it's not going to do a lot of charging, I feel."

True.

But what about all those swiping motions on some phones?

That's where the big power is.

My instinct is this might be enough maintain memory during a battery replacement, but any active radio (WiFi, Bluetooth, GSM) is going to be needing watts of power

Re: How I'm driving, or where I'm driving?

"But I most certainly do not want them (or anyone else for that matter) maintaining a log of precisely when and where I drive. "

You appear to think this is your data.

In this universe the people who collect it think it's their data.

And the sock puppets politicians agree with them.

Re: Blinking

"Oh? I thought that was simply a feature of the way British electricians seem to do their job.."

Plaster dust in the switch during building work can cause some interesting flickering/poltergeist style lighting effects.

Disconnect mains power

Take out switch from box

Disconnect wires

Apply vacuum cleaner

Reconnect all hardware

Switch on mains

See what happens.

Re: The real "nano-tech."

"My daughter wanted to major in biochemistry and genetics. I heartily approved. Once she got to university however, she changed her major to computer science. We argued over it, of course. I pointed out to her that all the truly difficult work had been done in computer science, and that the next big thing was in the field she had first set out to master. "

Yay.

Go hogs

@Vic

"Even if you were using ping-pong tuners for your alternates - and you almost certainly aren't - you still need to lock your decoder clock to the clock reference, find the assorted tables necessary to interpret the ES streams, then wait for a GOP start before you can actually decode anything. And if there is any issue with A/V sync, you might have to delay further."

That all sounds very convincing.

Except my STB is also a recorder which allows watch-while-record.

Are you saying the system is "time sharing" the receiver hardware virtually on a frame by frame basis to allow this?

Because (apart from incompetent implementation) the only other reason I can think of is that the system powers down the 2nd channel in a rather misguided attempt to save power.

The "common sense" way to implement this function is too effectively switch the outputs of 2 live decoders between a single channel to the monitor, not to have a "primary" and "secondary" decoder and switch the channel inputs between them.

With both decoders running continuously I'd expect channel switching to be possible on the next frame output, whatever frame rate that is.

Obviously I'd expect switching to a totally new channel to take longer, but the speed of the switching for existing channels is rubbish.

@Don Jefe

"But it's really important to realize, most people can't actually make the cut in good Engineering and Science programs. That's by design. It's also why proper Engineers command such good salaries. They're exceptional people with natural abilities and innate curiosity that have been refined through grueling educational programs. Expect much wailing, rending of clothes and pulling of beards when parents discover their little genius wasn't such a genius after all. He was just being awarded 'Morale Boosters' in return for tuition."

Or as the head of department put it at our introduction "We can't remember all your names, but since about 30% of you won't survive the first year that won't be a problem."

By graduation 51% of the intake didn't make it. The rest finished the course before the course finished them.

@Psyx

"Which is not a problem in its own right, PROVIDING that there is oversight."

That's the trouble.

They are doing what they were told by the people in charge.

The PIC's believe everything is justified.

I believe a psychiatric study of NSA management (and their political "masters") would be most revealing.

Which is of course why it will never be done.

Oh Noess

""What, this burrowing autonomous drone with cutting attachments that can bore through reinforced concrete and pick up stuff? Built it for a military contract, but honestly officer, I think the NSA wants it, to breach buried cables and stuff. Well, hope you catch those ATM thieves!""

The last thing you need to give DARPA.

Ideas.

Re: Unfair to cider

"Why shoud cider drinkers pay more tax than beer drinkers?

Westons, Healeys, Aspalls and co should complain"

Because for many years they have been paying a lot less for their alcohol.

Check the price of cider versus any other form of alcohol at the same %/vol.

@Tom7

"number of 132 million phone calls made every day here. Suppose they all last for an average of 10 minutes (not everyone can match my mother's phone habits, after all), and it's stored as 8kHz 16-bit PCM (8kHz is what the POTS is designed to carry, being sufficient for human voice) then over 30 days you're collecting 1.32x10^8 x 10 x 60 x 8x10^3 x (16/2) x 30 = 1.52x10^14 bytes required to store it all for 30 days. 152TB. It's not peanuts, exactly, but surely the NSA can manage better than this?"

Phone CODECs are a bit different to the normal (linear) kind.

They use a non linear sampling law (Merkins use a "mu" law, the rest of the world a different one). Basically that compresses 12 bits of dynamic range to 8.

The question is do you have to expand this to linear forms to do analysis or can you keep it in the 8 bit format?

For a worst case calculation, assume everyone in the UK is on the phone say 12 hours a day 365 days.

It's a big number.

But not big enough that the cost will deter the true data fetishist.