Invisible wrote:
>>> I thought most PDAs come with a stylus? (Or they have a useless
>>> trackball like that Blackberry I had the misfortune of needing to
>>> configure...)
>> 
>> They do. And how do you think that stylus works? Touch screen! and one
>> of the most rudimentary types, too!
> 
> No, I mean... I thought it only registers touches from the stylus.

The stylus is a plain old piece of plastic. Your fingernail will work just 
as well (your fingertip not so well, but only because you won't have as much 
accuracy tapping small things).

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>> No, I mean... I thought it only registers touches from the stylus.
> 
> The stylus is a plain old piece of plastic. Your fingernail will work just 
> as well (your fingertip not so well, but only because you won't have as much 
> accuracy tapping small things).

Interesting. I thought it contained a magnet or something so that the 
screen could register its presence...

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Invisible wrote:
>>> I take it you don't like the Beach Boys either?
>>

> 
> Hmm. My car stereo plays the Beach Boys and Neil Sedaka. My dad's car
> stereo plays My Chemical Romance. Something is wrong with the world...

Pet Sounds, or something a little tamer?



Last I heard, my mothers car had Voltaire, Owl City, and what ever
Projekt label mixes I had forgotten to remove from the player. Strange
music for her, I leave these links for others.

Volatire http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu3NN4h5p7k
Owl City http://www.youtube.com/user/OwlCityVEVO#p/u/3/psuRGfAaju4
The Dresden Dolls (possibly NSFW) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4gPZPKJc0s

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Stephen wrote:
> On 13/06/2010 9:05 PM, Sabrina Kilian wrote:
>> Of course. He only responds if I mimic his last type of meow, though.
> 
> That will be the one that says "I am here". It is the meow that sounds
> strangulated.
> 

Yeah, after that he switches to different meow, myurp, bzzzrt noises,
and only responds when you get somewhat close to the last sound he made.
It's a game, but I don't know the rules.

>> If a person did that I would think I was getting language lessons.
> 

> much to their amazement, their cat will come over.
> 
>> Anthropomorphizing just leads to new scars, though, as he may not be
>> elitist but he is still all fuzz-and-claws.
>>
> 
> Our tom cat would not scratch if you had bare skin but if your arms or
> legs were clothed then that was fair game.
> 

He either doesn't know he has sharp claws, or he thinks I am better
armored. Could be either. He knows that stretching his paws and clawing
people gets him pushed off of laps, so that's reduced. But, tapping his
claws on my face does wake me up, and if that is what he is after then
it's hard to counter that positive reward.

The claws I deserve, apparently, for either oversleeping breakfast, or
for having the bad manners to roll over after he has thrown a toy on my bed.

>> While teaching a cat to fetch, it is very fundamental that they
>> understand the concept that fetching is "getting the ball while it is
>> not in your owners hand." When that part isn't taught properly, ouch.
> 
> Well done, I only ever trained Bertie to catch and take away never to
> catch and fetch.
> 

Catch was easy, throw something and it will get swatted the the floor.
If he can get his claws into it, it will get picked up an thrown again
with no help from me.

He's worked up to "Alright, I hit it in your general direction, you
fetch it." That last step is the tough one for cats.

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On Tue, 15 Jun 2010 10:09:53 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>> I take it you don't like the Beach Boys either?
>> 
>> I could listen to one or two tracks but I’ve moved on since the
>> sixties.
> 
> Hmm. My car stereo plays the Beach Boys and Neil Sedaka. My dad's car
> stereo plays My Chemical Romance. Something is wrong with the world...

Or with your car stereo. ;-)

Jim

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>> Hmm. My car stereo plays the Beach Boys and Neil Sedaka. My dad's car
>> stereo plays My Chemical Romance. Something is wrong with the world...
> 
> Or with your car stereo. ;-)

Actually, my old car refused to play the Beach Boys. Wouldn't recognise 
the CD. It's as if it was trying to tell me something...

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Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> and if that is what he is after then
> it's hard to counter that positive reward.

Keep a squirt bottle by the headboard. He'll soon learn he doesn't want to 
be around you when you wake up.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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On 15/06/2010 4:30 PM, Sabrina Kilian wrote:

> Yeah, after that he switches to different meow, myurp, bzzzrt noises,
> and only responds when you get somewhat close to the last sound he made.
> It's a game, but I don't know the rules.
>

I don't know those words. They learn them from their mothers, you know.
Not every cat speeks.

>
> He either doesn't know he has sharp claws, or he thinks I am better
> armored. Could be either.

A high pitched whine will let him know. But it depends how old he is, 
really.

> He knows that stretching his paws and clawing
> people gets him pushed off of laps, so that's reduced. But, tapping his
> claws on my face does wake me up, and if that is what he is after then
> it's hard to counter that positive reward.
>

LOL. My mother-in-law's cat used to gently bite you upper lip to wake 
you up. Not painful but the FISH BREATH. Yeuch!

> The claws I deserve, apparently, for either oversleeping breakfast, or
> for having the bad manners to roll over after he has thrown a toy on my bed.
>

True :-P


>
> Catch was easy, throw something and it will get swatted the the floor.
> If he can get his claws into it, it will get picked up an thrown again
> with no help from me.
>
> He's worked up to "Alright, I hit it in your general direction, you
> fetch it." That last step is the tough one for cats.

Now, that is him training you ;-)

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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On 6/14/2010 10:40 AM, Darren New wrote:
> Mike Raiford wrote:
>> given the clean-room requirements and high-resolution photo-etching
>> process.
>
> Except that it's pretty much mostly automated. It's a huge capital
> expense, and then automated after that. And when there's only a couple
> of fabs in the whole world, the amount of business they get pays off the
> fab pretty quickly. Basically the prices are set to make a decent profit
> by the time the fab's technology is outdated.
>

Yeah... I kinda got the clue when I was reminded that the $.05 TTL IC 
also requires the same sort of fabrication. ;)

>> Not heard of GPIB, so I looked it up. Apparently aka IEEE-488 surprised
>
> Wow. Even *I* heard of both of those years ago. :-)
>

I haven't .. IEEE-488 sounded vageuely familiar, but I must have been 
thinking RS-485.

>> they're not using Ethernet or something less obsolete
>
> Which ethernet? Thick? Thin Coax? cat-5? Test equipment like this is
> expected to last decades.
>

Cat 5, Cat 5e, Cat 6 ... one of those, UTP or STP.

Of course, that's just the wire. Some of the stuff I worked on used CAN 
bus over STP Cat 6 cable.. A lot of modern control systems use Ethernet 
to communicate with the host, some even use it to communicate from 
device to device, others use CAN.

-- 
~Mike

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>>> they're not using Ethernet or something less obsolete
>>
>> Which ethernet? Thick? Thin Coax? cat-5? Test equipment like this is
>> expected to last decades.
> 
> Cat 5, Cat 5e, Cat 6 ... one of those, UTP or STP.
> 
> Of course, that's just the wire. Some of the stuff I worked on used CAN 
> bus over STP Cat 6 cable.. A lot of modern control systems use Ethernet 
> to communicate with the host, some even use it to communicate from 
> device to device, others use CAN.

Where I work, we have devices which communicate via Ethernet.

Actually no, they don't. They communicate by RS-232. But the 
manufacturers supply an RS-323 over Ethernet box, and software which you 
install on your PC which makes the old RS-232 software think that the 
Ethernet link *is* RS-232.

In other words, you have hardware emulation at one end, and software 
emulation at the other end. And all so that they don't have to, you 
know, actually design their hardware to natively support Ethernet, and 
their software to natively support IP. :-P

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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