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On Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:09:04 +0200, Gail Shaw sa dot com>
<"<initialsurname"@sentech> wrote:
> I've heard of TV casualties from the wrist band snapping. LCDs and
> Plasmas.
> The glass on a CRT is usually strong enough to survive,
> I have to wonder what kind of force is necessary to get it to snap. It
> seemed pretty secure the few times I've played.
The strap on the earlier models was weaker than the current one. When the
damage reports started trickling in, they redesigned it.
--
FE
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Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Power button? I was actually wondering this, but I though Apple would
> make it "hip" to lack one :p.
I thought it has a power button on top and a "home" button on the front.
It has a nice UI tho, I will say. That isn't what's stopping me from
buying one, tho. :-)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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> I had a go at playing something called "call of duty 4" on my sister's
> PS3. [Yes, I know. I still find it hard to believe a real person somewhere
> actually owns one.]
"Europe PS3 sales 'overtake 360'"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7386879.stm
I got mine because it was the cheapest blu-ray player out there. I also use
it a lot to stream music and videos from my PC wirelessly into the living
room. Oh and show off some POV animations on the big TV at 1920x1080
resolution :-) And I sometimes play a couple of games on it too (the
graphics from GT5 are awesome).
http://www.greatwallofgaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/gt5-prologue-5.jpg
The focal blur is a bit too optimised for speed and sometimes doesn't look
realistic, but while playing you hardly notice. But the HDR rendering and
tonemapping are great, and the detail of the car models both inside and out
are staggering.
> It seemed rather impressive on a vast 29-inch LCD TV.
And I suspect that on a 29" TV you weren't even playing it at the highest
resolution (I don't think (m)any 29" TVs support 1920x1080 resolution).
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> As for the Wii... Apart from the obviously ridiculous name, I think it's
> an "interesting" concept. But when I tried to play with my sister's
> boyfriend's Wii [do NOT say this out loud in public!] it just made my arm
> hurt [do NOT include this part in public either!!]
>
> Seriously - the centrifugal forces just make the veins in my hand
> overpressure. And my wrist hurt.
>
> I wonder... surely there have been some pretty serious injuries / property
> damage due to the Wii, no?
We broke a light, dented a door and I had to stay home from work one day due
to pulling a muscle in my back!
When we got our Wii we played the Wii sports games almost every day for like
2 or 3 months, we are a bit bored of it now, actually I don't remember the
last time we played. Definitely don't regret playing it though, we spent so
long on the tennis and bowling games.
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>> I've heard of TV casualties from the wrist band snapping. LCDs and
>> Plasmas.
>> The glass on a CRT is usually strong enough to survive,
Yup, whereas the glass in an LCD is usually under 1mm thick - the polarisers
stop it shattering, but it still cracks easily and then it's useless.
>> I have to wonder what kind of force is necessary to get it to snap. It
>> seemed pretty secure the few times I've played.
Ditto.
> The strap on the earlier models was weaker than the current one. When the
> damage reports started trickling in, they redesigned it.
I really don't understand how they did not test such an obvious part before
starting production. I mean surely, when designing it, they *must* have
asked themselves "ok, how strong does it need to be". They could have
easily got some strong dude to swing something around extremely violently,
the multiplied the required strength by 2 or 3. And even then, if something
went wrong when they started making the sample parts, you think it would
have shown up in their testing that they were snapping earlier than
expected.
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> You now have fingerprints all over your viewing area. Good luck cleaning
> skin oil off a plastic display. ;-)
>
> You get no tactile feedback from the "keyboard".
Previously Nokia and still today many car manufacturers rejected the
touchscreen keyboard approach for those very two reasons.
> As a matter of fact, my sat nav device uses a similar on-screen keyboard.
> While it's a little slow to operate, it's not *too* bad... The key [pun!]
> is to make the keys big enough to hit reliably. Not all products manage
> this.
It's not just getting the tactile feedback of having pressed a button, but
getting the tactile feedback that you are over a button before you press.
Try pressing those buttons on your satnav screen while driving fast on the
motorway - then try controlling your radio while driving using real
buttons - which is easier/safer?
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scott wrote:
>> I had a go at playing something called "call of duty 4" on my sister's
>> PS3. [Yes, I know. I still find it hard to believe a real person
>> somewhere actually owns one.]
>
> "Europe PS3 sales 'overtake 360'"
Yeah. Obviously *somebody* must buy these things. It just seems weird
meeting somebody who actually owns one. In real life.
> http://www.greatwallofgaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/gt5-prologue-5.jpg
Now that's a little more like it. That actually looks good.
In fact, I'd go as far as to say this is the first scanline-rendered
image I've seen that manages to make crude polygon tesselations and
deceptive illumination trickery look like real curves.
I see what you mean about the blur though...
[Unrelated, but... TF2 somehow manages to achieve motion blur. On a
standard 3D card. I'm not really sure how that's physically possible...]
>> It seemed rather impressive on a vast 29-inch LCD TV.
>
> And I suspect that on a 29" TV you weren't even playing it at the
> highest resolution (I don't think (m)any 29" TVs support 1920x1080
> resolution).
While we're here... Is there a *reason* why HDMI leads cost £80 each??
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> http://www.greatwallofgaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/gt5-prologue-5.jpg
>
> Now that's a little more like it. That actually looks good.
>
> In fact, I'd go as far as to say this is the first scanline-rendered image
> I've seen that manages to make crude polygon tesselations and deceptive
> illumination trickery look like real curves.
Looking at it closer, the while line painted on the edge of the road is not
very curvey.
> [Unrelated, but... TF2 somehow manages to achieve motion blur. On a
> standard 3D card. I'm not really sure how that's physically possible...]
Why not? Motion blur is not impossible to do on a 3D card - there's even a
demo sample in the DirectX SDK showing you how to do it.
> While we're here... Is there a *reason* why HDMI leads cost £80 each??
Where were you looking? I typed "hdmi cable" into amazon and this one is
only 51p!!!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fisual-Install-GOLD-Plated-Cable/dp/B0014WH8EY
There are lots around 10 pounds if you want to spend a bit more.
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>> [Unrelated, but... TF2 somehow manages to achieve motion blur. On a
>> standard 3D card. I'm not really sure how that's physically possible...]
>
> Why not? Motion blur is not impossible to do on a 3D card - there's
> even a demo sample in the DirectX SDK showing you how to do it.
The only way I can think of doing this is to just rerender the entire
frame multiple times - which would obviously not work in realtime. So
I'm not sure what clever trick they've found to make it fast enough...
>> While we're here... Is there a *reason* why HDMI leads cost £80 each??
>
> Where were you looking?
PC World, Curries, Dixons... hey wait, those are all the same shop! o_O
> I typed "hdmi cable" into amazon and this one is only 51p!!!
>
> There are lots around 10 pounds if you want to spend a bit more.
...so it's a tax on stupidity then?
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> The only way I can think of doing this is to just rerender the entire
> frame multiple times - which would obviously not work in realtime. So
That's one way of doing it, and it works ok if your scene is simple enough,
or if you only want to motion blur certain parts of it (eg a fast moving
missile).
> I'm not sure what clever trick they've found to make it fast enough...
Another way is to render the scene to a texture, and at the same time render
the velocity information of each pixel to another texture. Then a final bit
of code (running on the GPU naturally) creates the final image each frame
using that data. This method maybe slows down rendering by 5-10% on a
complex scene, but allows full screen motion blur, all you need to do is
make sure you add some velocity data to each mesh you render.
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> You now have fingerprints all over your viewing area. Good luck cleaning
> skin oil off a plastic display. ;-)
I think it's glass actually. It's designed to be easily wiped down, at
any rate.
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scott <sco### [at] scott com> wrote:
> > The only way I can think of doing this is to just rerender the entire
> > frame multiple times - which would obviously not work in realtime. So
> That's one way of doing it, and it works ok if your scene is simple enough,
> or if you only want to motion blur certain parts of it (eg a fast moving
> missile).
Note that antialiasing also is based on rendering the frame multiple
times (although current cards might have some tricks to reduce the amount
of required rendering).
--
- Warp
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Eero Ahonen <aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid> wrote:
> > People often have prejudices against the touch screen in the iPhone,
> > but that's because they have never tried it.
> >
> To be honest, that would be the first touchscreen ever that would be
> daily-usable in something as intensive as telephone I've ever touched.
> It doesn't mean it's impossible - it just means I'm very, *very*
> skeptical about a touchscreen.
But the touchscreen in the iPhone is just amazing. It's not just a
touchscreen, it's a multitouchscreen. For example, you can zoom and rotate
images (or webpages or maps or...) by using two fingers, etc. Now do that
with your 12-key keyboard. ;)
Also the scrolling is just cool. (After having using the scrolling feature
in the iPhone, any other non-touchscreen phone will feel almost completely
unusable...)
--
- Warp
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>>> The only way I can think of doing this is to just rerender the entire
>>> frame multiple times - which would obviously not work in realtime. So
>
>> That's one way of doing it, and it works ok if your scene is simple enough,
>> or if you only want to motion blur certain parts of it (eg a fast moving
>> missile).
>
> Note that antialiasing also is based on rendering the frame multiple
> times (although current cards might have some tricks to reduce the amount
> of required rendering).
nVidia claims their full-frame AA works by just rendering the entire
thing to a larger framebuffer and downsampling with smoothing, but their
faster "smart AA" works by using filtered texturing, and does AA only at
polygon edges (using something like Bresenham's algorithm I would think,
rather than actual supersampling, since a polygon edge is a straight line).
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Warp wrote:
> But the touchscreen in the iPhone is just amazing. It's not just a
> touchscreen, it's a multitouchscreen. For example, you can zoom and rotate
> images (or webpages or maps or...) by using two fingers, etc. Now do that
> with your 12-key keyboard. ;)
>
> Also the scrolling is just cool. (After having using the scrolling feature
> in the iPhone, any other non-touchscreen phone will feel almost completely
> unusable...)
Ooo... so we have smudges and smeres as opposed to just finger prints?
Neat! :-D
Again, my sat nav allows you to scroll like this - but it's very
unpredictable. It doesn't "respond" very well to the touches you're
trying to make. I don't know why. Also, it's very hard to *slide* warm,
sticky fingers over a plastic surface in a smooth motion.
Still, at least it sounds like Apple actually thought about useful ways
to use a touchscreen rather than just throwing on in there to be contrary...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> Again, my sat nav allows you to scroll like this - but it's very
> unpredictable. It doesn't "respond" very well to the touches you're trying
> to make. I don't know why. Also, it's very hard to *slide* warm, sticky
> fingers over a plastic surface in a smooth motion.
Your satnav is likely a resistive touch screen, it works when you physically
bend the top layer enough to make contact with the bottom layer
electrically, and then just like a variable resistor you can measure the
resistance to work out the position you touched. The iPhone uses a
capacitive screen, as soon as you touch the surface of the screen the
electronics can detect the capacitance of your finger, also using clever
electronics/software it can work out the position of 2 fingers in contact,
to allow those wacky zoom and rotate operations.
The disadvantage of capacitive touch screens is that they only work with
your bare fingers, not while you are wearing gloves, or any sort of stylus.
The accuracy is also much lower than resistive touch screens, but that
doesn't really matter when you're using your fingers.
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scott wrote:
>> Again, my sat nav allows you to scroll like this - but it's very
>> unpredictable. It doesn't "respond" very well to the touches you're
>> trying to make. I don't know why. Also, it's very hard to *slide*
>> warm, sticky fingers over a plastic surface in a smooth motion.
>
> Your satnav is likely a resistive touch screen, it works when you
> physically bend the top layer enough to make contact with the bottom
> layer electrically, and then just like a variable resistor you can
> measure the resistance to work out the position you touched. The iPhone
> uses a capacitive screen, as soon as you touch the surface of the screen
> the electronics can detect the capacitance of your finger, also using
> clever electronics/software it can work out the position of 2 fingers in
> contact, to allow those wacky zoom and rotate operations.
>
> The disadvantage of capacitive touch screens is that they only work with
> your bare fingers, not while you are wearing gloves, or any sort of
> stylus. The accuracy is also much lower than resistive touch screens,
> but that doesn't really matter when you're using your fingers.
Damnit, I wish I knew some people IRL who possess such encyclopedic
knowledge... I'd never be bored again!
[FWIW, the sat nav *does* in fact have a stylus. Unlike my dad's cheap
device, the stylus is optional on mine. On my dad's, only the stylus
will operate it...]
PS. Is it only me who things pointing a sharp pointy thing at a delicate
and fragile layer of semi-liquid gloop fashioned into an intricate
display mechanism is a bad idea?
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> Damnit, I wish I knew some people IRL who possess such encyclopedic
> knowledge... I'd never be bored again!
It's my job to know such information, ask me anything about history or
literature and I'd be totally stumped.
> PS. Is it only me who things pointing a sharp pointy thing at a delicate
> and fragile layer of semi-liquid gloop fashioned into an intricate display
> mechanism is a bad idea?
Don't worry, the semi-liquid gloop is behind 2 or 3 layers of glass, a
polariser and some air space, so unless you press *really* hard... From the
specs I remember seeing, you could press with up to 50 N of force before
anything went wrong.
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>> Damnit, I wish I knew some people IRL who possess such encyclopedic
>> knowledge... I'd never be bored again!
>
> It's my job to know such information, ask me anything about history or
> literature and I'd be totally stumped.
...and I care about history or literature because...? ;-)
Seriously, is it normal for LCDs to get warm during operation?
>> PS. Is it only me who things pointing a sharp pointy thing at a
>> delicate and fragile layer of semi-liquid gloop fashioned into an
>> intricate display mechanism is a bad idea?
>
> Don't worry, the semi-liquid gloop is behind 2 or 3 layers of glass, a
> polariser and some air space, so unless you press *really* hard... From
> the specs I remember seeing, you could press with up to 50 N of force
> before anything went wrong.
...is 50 N a lot?
Heee, do you remember the old laptops with the blue/purple monochrome
LCDs? Where if you touched the screen, the whole picture rippled slightly?
[Actually, our photocopier has a display like that. And I think it needs
a screen saver, cos some of the controls are well burnt into it! I
didn't think LCDs could "burn" like that?]
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:05:21 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>
>...and I care about history or literature because...? ;-)
It shows that you are not a complete ignoramus.
--
Regards
Stephen
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>> ...and I care about history or literature because...? ;-)
>
> It shows that you are not a complete ignoramus.
I love the way not knowing about differential calculus is perfectly
acceptable, but not knowing about English literature gets you labelled
as some kind of idiot. As if English literature is somehow "more
important" than differential calculus...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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> Seriously, is it normal for LCDs to get warm during operation?
If they have a backlight, yes, because LEDs and CCFLs are only about 10%
efficient at converting electrical energy to visible light. A typical
monitor might need around 5W of backlighting power, most of that is
converted to heat.
> ...is 50 N a lot?
About 5 kg. Significantly higher than the force you usually use to
write/press with.
> Heee, do you remember the old laptops with the blue/purple monochrome
> LCDs? Where if you touched the screen, the whole picture rippled slightly?
They still do, if you don't have any protection on the front. My two
monitors and my laptop screen here certainly do.
> [Actually, our photocopier has a display like that. And I think it needs a
> screen saver, cos some of the controls are well burnt into it! I didn't
> think LCDs could "burn" like that?]
They can if you don't keep the average voltage across each pixel exactly
zero volts. A bad/cheap driving circuit can easily allow enough of a DC
voltage to start to screw things up after years of operation. However
usually the burn-in is not permanent, and disappears after some period (can
be up to an hour or so with very slow displays). Must admit I don't know
the details because the displays we work on are not allowed to have any
visible burn-in at all.
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>> Seriously, is it normal for LCDs to get warm during operation?
>
> If they have a backlight, yes, because LEDs and CCFLs are only about 10%
> efficient at converting electrical energy to visible light. A typical
> monitor might need around 5W of backlighting power, most of that is
> converted to heat.
Is that also why my LCD here at work is about 2°C warmer at the top than
the bottom?
>> ...is 50 N a lot?
>
> About 5 kg. Significantly higher than the force you usually use to
> write/press with.
5 Kg? Yeah, that is quite a bit... [Hmm, I wonder how much a human arm
weighs?]
>> Heee, do you remember the old laptops with the blue/purple monochrome
>> LCDs? Where if you touched the screen, the whole picture rippled
>> slightly?
>
> They still do, if you don't have any protection on the front. My two
> monitors and my laptop screen here certainly do.
*pokes it* Oh yeah, mine too. :-)
But it's not blue and purple. It's real colour. Even *our* equipment
isn't *that* ancient. ;-)
>> [Actually, our photocopier has a display like that. And I think it
>> needs a screen saver, cos some of the controls are well burnt into it!
>> I didn't think LCDs could "burn" like that?]
>
> They can if you don't keep the average voltage across each pixel exactly
> zero volts. A bad/cheap driving circuit can easily allow enough of a DC
> voltage to start to screw things up after years of operation. However
> usually the burn-in is not permanent, and disappears after some period
> (can be up to an hour or so with very slow displays). Must admit I
> don't know the details because the displays we work on are not allowed
> to have any visible burn-in at all.
Well, it *is* a 2-year old photocopier. And it runs 24/7. (Although
actually after a while it goes into a power-save mode where IIRC the LCD
shuts down too.) That's a touch-sensitive display, come to think of it.
But it doesn't ripple all that much... hmm.
I wonder... If you wanted to go all mad-scientist, how hard would it be
to concoct a chemical which forms a vaguely-functional LCD?
[NB. I once tried to make an oscilator at school. The damn thing never
actually produced any sound. It did, however, heat up the two power
transistors with remarkable efficiency - I would never have believed
that 9V was enough to burn your finger on...]
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I love the way not knowing about differential calculus is perfectly
> acceptable, but not knowing about English literature gets you labelled
> as some kind of idiot. As if English literature is somehow "more
> important" than differential calculus...
In context, it is, in fact. That's because literature is much more
related to the culture around you (which, in the end, is closely related
to socializing between people), while differential calculus isn't.
Humans are cultural and social beings and literature is one of the
best forms of learning and expressing about it. That's why it's usually
considered a good thing for your education to read a lot.
--
- Warp
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> ...is 50 N a lot?
Again we have to teach you about something you should know, especially
given that you are a technical nerd.
To get a grasp of what 50 Newtons means, it may be easiest to convert
them to kiloponds.
1 kilopond is the force exerted by Earth's gravity on one kilogram of
mass. In other words, assume you hold a 1 kg object on your hand, and
think how much force it applies to your hand downwards. That's 1 kp.
50 Newtons is approximately equal to 5.1 kiloponds. In other words,
it's the force you feel applied to your hand when you hold a 5.1 kg object.
--
- Warp
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> Is that also why my LCD here at work is about 2°C warmer at the top than
> the bottom?
Most likely just because heat rises :-) Don't know where the LEDs are on
your LCD, or it may even be a CCFL in there...
> But it doesn't ripple all that much... hmm.
That's because it has a touch screen on the front of it - not as easy to
distort the actual LCD.
> I wonder... If you wanted to go all mad-scientist, how hard would it be to
> concoct a chemical which forms a vaguely-functional LCD?
Read the first few parts of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_crystal
It's relatively easy to get a "functional" liquid crystal nowadays, the
extremely hard bit is creating one that works over a wide temperature range,
gives a high contrast ratio, has a fast switching time, etc.
> [NB. I once tried to make an oscilator at school. The damn thing never
> actually produced any sound. It did, however, heat up the two power
> transistors with remarkable efficiency - I would never have believed that
> 9V was enough to burn your finger on...]
I tried to make a simple AM transmitter, my first design transmitted about
5cm. I then proceeded to make the supply voltage higher and higher (in the
end I think I had 5 or 6 30V supplies in series) and eventually I made it
transmit about 3 metres while probably using half of the school's power :-)
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>> ...is 50 N a lot?
>
> Again we have to teach you about something you should know, especially
> given that you are a technical nerd.
I just figured that somebody who's used to dealing with such units on a
regular basis would have a more intuitive grasp of what is or isn't a
large force.
Of course 1 N is the force required to induce an acceleration of 1 m/s^2
on a mass of 1 Kg. But how much *is* that in real-world terms?
> 50 Newtons is approximately equal to 5.1 kiloponds. In other words,
> it's the force you feel applied to your hand when you hold a 5.1 kg object.
So... a reasonably large force to be pressing something with. ;-)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:53:59 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>As if English literature is somehow "more
>important" than differential calculus...
Warp said it all.
It's the way of the world.
[A well known Restoration comedy. Written by William Congreve, an
English playwright.]
:P
--
Regards
Stephen
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>> I love the way not knowing about differential calculus is perfectly
>> acceptable, but not knowing about English literature gets you labelled
>> as some kind of idiot. As if English literature is somehow "more
>> important" than differential calculus...
>
> In context, it is, in fact. That's because literature is much more
> related to the culture around you (which, in the end, is closely related
> to socializing between people), while differential calculus isn't.
>
> Humans are cultural and social beings and literature is one of the
> best forms of learning and expressing about it. That's why it's usually
> considered a good thing for your education to read a lot.
Hmm... Clearly it's going to take me a while to wrap my brain around
this concept...
Presumably this is why all schoolchildren [in the UK at least] have
Shakespear inflicted upon them as a mandatory component of their
education. I still can't figure out what good it's supposed to do.
Certainly I can understand the importance of social interaction. But
"culture" always seemed to me to involve lots of pretensious people
standing around whaffling something incomprehensible about a bend lump
of metal painted green or something...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Presumably this is why all schoolchildren [in the UK at least] have
> Shakespear inflicted upon them as a mandatory component of their
> education. I still can't figure out what good it's supposed to do.
It's good because it's an expression of social culture.
> Certainly I can understand the importance of social interaction. But
> "culture" always seemed to me to involve lots of pretensious people
> standing around whaffling something incomprehensible about a bend lump
> of metal painted green or something...
You have a twisted notion of the term "culture". Culture is much more
mundane than that.
For example, if someone greets you, you greet back. That's part of
your culture.
--
- Warp
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> ...is 50 N a lot?
> >
> > Again we have to teach you about something you should know, especially
> > given that you are a technical nerd.
> I just figured that somebody who's used to dealing with such units on a
> regular basis would have a more intuitive grasp of what is or isn't a
> large force.
I didn't have any idea whatsoever "how much" 50 N is, but basic education
helped me in figuring it out. I knew that Newtons and kiloponds both measure
the same thing (force), and that a kilopond is a much more intuitive unit,
so the logical step was to convert the Newtons to kiloponds, and from there
imagine a real-life situation where such force would apply (in this case,
holding a 5-kilogram object on your hand).
--
- Warp
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"scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote in message
news:4857642d$1@news.povray.org...
> >> I've heard of TV casualties from the wrist band snapping. LCDs and
> >> Plasmas.
> >> The glass on a CRT is usually strong enough to survive,
>
> Yup, whereas the glass in an LCD is usually under 1mm thick - the
polarisers
> stop it shattering, but it still cracks easily and then it's useless.
Don't remind be. I cracked a laptop's LCD panel last year. The surface was
fine, something was cracked underneath. Large portions of the screen are now
black.
Repair place quoted me R8000 to replace the panel, and that was a 17" laptop
screen. I'd hate to see the price to replace a 40" LCD TV's panel.
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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:4857d493@news.povray.org...
>
> Of course 1 N is the force required to induce an acceleration of 1 m/s^2
> on a mass of 1 Kg. But how much *is* that in real-world terms?
Well gravitational acceleration is 9.8m.s^-2, so gravity exerts a force of
9.8N on 1 kg object.
Does that help?
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Invisible wrote:
>> There are lots around 10 pounds if you want to spend a bit more.
> ....so it's a tax on stupidity then?
It's an ongoing argument. HDMI is digital, so it shouldn't make a
difference. But it's a very poorly designed digital standard
(physical-layer-wise) so EEs who ought know what they're talking about
say it's important to keep the cables short if they're not really good
quality. I suspect it's more like "it's important to keep the cables
short, period."
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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scott wrote:
>> You now have fingerprints all over your viewing area. Good luck
>> cleaning skin oil off a plastic display. ;-)
>>
>> You get no tactile feedback from the "keyboard".
>
> Previously Nokia and still today many car manufacturers rejected the
> touchscreen keyboard approach for those very two reasons.
I read Nokia actually has a touchscreen that gives tactile feedback.
There's something behind it that "taps" from behind when the key would
click, or some such silliness. :-)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Invisible wrote:
> Damnit, I wish I knew some people IRL who possess such encyclopedic
> knowledge... I'd never be bored again!
<RainbowsEnd>
"You seem to know an awful lot about what's going on."
"Hey, I'm wearing."
</RainbowsEnd>
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Invisible wrote:
> I still can't figure out what good it's supposed to do.
I was like that for a long time. Then I realized it's basically
learning all the social macros, if you will.
One can make a reference to a piece of literature, or some other social
or literary context, and invoke an entire background to what you're
saying. Boss says "Time to go visit the customer," and coworker say
"Yep, back down the rabbit hole." If you never heard of Alice in
Wonderland, you'd have no idea what that meant, or why your coworker
would say it. If you'd read your literature, you'd know your coworker is
calling your customer and their entire environment crazily surreal.
If you want a nerdier example, when friends (who I know will get the
reference) ask me how the weather is where I am, I've been known to
answer "It's very Windows 98 out."
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Warp wrote:
> I knew that Newtons and kiloponds both measure the same thing (force),
FWIW, I never even *heard* of a "pond" as a unit of measure. I knew
"pounds" were a measure of weight (rather than mass), but I never heard
of a "pond". Good explanation. :-)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Invisible wrote:
> Presumably this is why all schoolchildren [in the UK at least] have
> Shakespear inflicted upon them as a mandatory component of their
> education. I still can't figure out what good it's supposed to do.
Consider another example. Imagine this:
You're in the conference room, along with several coworkers, waiting for
someone you haven't met before to show up so you can start. This person,
who has been around the company a while but you just never happened to
meet, walks past the window on the way into the conference room. You
coworker whistles a tune under his breath,
... which you don't recognise.
... which you recognise as the Darth Vadar theme.
... which you recognise as the Wicked Witch of the West theme.
... which you recognise as the Indiana Jones theme.
OK? Your different opinions, of this person who you still haven't met,
have been shaped by a string of otherwise-meaningless tones. That's
culture. (Assuming you've actually seen those movies, see...)
The reason you read Shakespeare is because others do too, and when they
make references to a Shylock, a pound of flesh, or "Lead on, McDuff", or
things like that, they're bringing *that* entire story into context.
Sort of like that Star Trek NG episode where the aliens communicate
*only* in cultural references, and they kidnap the two captains and beam
them down to the hostile planet surface so they'll have some cultural
story in common to start communicating with?
(Yes, thank you, I appreciate just how f'ing nerdy this sounds. :-)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Darren New wrote:
> Consider another example. Imagine this:
>
> You're in the conference room, along with several coworkers, waiting for
> someone you haven't met before to show up so you can start. This person,
> who has been around the company a while but you just never happened to
> meet, walks past the window on the way into the conference room. You
> coworker whistles a tune under his breath,
>
> ... which you don't recognise.
>
> ... which you recognise as the Darth Vadar theme.
>
> ... which you recognise as the Wicked Witch of the West theme.
>
> ... which you recognise as the Indiana Jones theme.
>
> OK? Your different opinions, of this person who you still haven't met,
> have been shaped by a string of otherwise-meaningless tones. That's
> culture. (Assuming you've actually seen those movies, see...)
Wait... The WWW had a *theme*??
Maybe I'm just strange, but I don't think it would matter what a person
is whistling. The fact that they're whistling something would be more
significant...
> The reason you read Shakespeare is because others do too, and when they
> make references to a Shylock, a pound of flesh, or "Lead on, McDuff", or
> things like that, they're bringing *that* entire story into context.
See, now, in all the years I've been alive, I've never [knowingly] heard
of anybody making any Shakespeare references at all. [Except maybe to
Romeo and Juliet.]
> Sort of like that Star Trek NG episode where the aliens communicate
> *only* in cultural references, and they kidnap the two captains and beam
> them down to the hostile planet surface so they'll have some cultural
> story in common to start communicating with?
>
> (Yes, thank you, I appreciate just how f'ing nerdy this sounds. :-)
...as nerdy as me saying "yeah, I remember that silly episode"?
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Darren New wrote:
> One can make a reference to a piece of literature, or some other social
> or literary context, and invoke an entire background to what you're
> saying. Boss says "Time to go visit the customer," and coworker say
> "Yep, back down the rabbit hole." If you never heard of Alice in
> Wonderland, you'd have no idea what that meant, or why your coworker
> would say it. If you'd read your literature, you'd know your coworker is
> calling your customer and their entire environment crazily surreal.
Oh, is *that* what that's supposed to mean?
Obviously I've had the misfortune of reading Alice in Wonderland, but I
didn't understand a word of it. It just seemed to completely defy any
kind of logic... Just left me feeling really confused. [And wondering
why I just wasted several months of my life reading such an utterly
horrid book!]
> If you want a nerdier example, when friends (who I know will get the
> reference) ask me how the weather is where I am, I've been known to
> answer "It's very Windows 98 out."
Wuh?! o_O
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> See, now, in all the years I've been alive, I've never [knowingly] heard
> of anybody making any Shakespeare references at all. [Except maybe to
> Romeo and Juliet.]
Monty Python references seem far more common - although perhaps that
says something about the strange people I hang around with...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Wait... The WWW had a *theme*??
Um, yes. Very much so. :-)
> Maybe I'm just strange, but I don't think it would matter what a person
> is whistling. The fact that they're whistling something would be more
> significant...
It conveys their opinion.
> See, now, in all the years I've been alive, I've never [knowingly] heard
> of anybody making any Shakespeare references at all. [Except maybe to
> Romeo and Juliet.]
If you haven't read any Shakespeare, how would you know?
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Monty Python references seem far more common - although perhaps that
> says something about the strange people I hang around with...
While true, such references are usually not used to communicate
something complex in a quick way, I'd guess. As in, when people say
"It's only a flesh wound", they're really not saying "It's actually an
awful mortal wound, but I'm so dedicated to my cause I'm going to ignore
it." Instead, they really mean "it's only a flesh wound."
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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>> Maybe I'm just strange, but I don't think it would matter what a
>> person is whistling. The fact that they're whistling something would
>> be more significant...
>
> It conveys their opinion.
Surely it's more or less random and represents whatever happens to
wander into their heads? Besides, most people seem to whistle random
sequences of notes having no particular composition rather than actual
tunes...
>> See, now, in all the years I've been alive, I've never [knowingly]
>> heard of anybody making any Shakespeare references at all. [Except
>> maybe to Romeo and Juliet.]
>
> If you haven't read any Shakespeare, how would you know?
Who says I haven't read any Shakespeare?
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> Maybe I'm just strange, but I don't think it would matter what a
>>> person is whistling. The fact that they're whistling something would
>>> be more significant...
>>
>> It conveys their opinion.
>
> Surely it's more or less random and represents whatever happens to
> wander into their heads?
You know, I'm not sure I can explain it any better than I already have.
If someone says "Here comes with Wicked Witch" when they see your boss
walking towards them, that conveys an opinion of your boss. Whistling
the theme song (which, in the movie, plays every time the Wicked Witch
approaches) also conveys the same thought. But you wouldn't understand
either meaning without culture behind it.
>> If you haven't read any Shakespeare, how would you know?
> Who says I haven't read any Shakespeare?
Sorry. You didn't.
In any case, that's what it's supposed to do. If some time in your life,
someone tells you not to hire some particular lawyer because he's a real
shylock, you'll know what it means.
Of course, there are fewer references to Shakespeare and various operas
and such than there are to popular movies, but the movie references will
probably not outlive the Shakespeare references either. I mean, what do
you hear more, "Romeo and Juliet" or "Tony and Maria"?
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
Helpful housekeeping hints:
Check your feather pillows for holes
before putting them in the washing machine.
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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> [And wondering
> why I just wasted several months of my life reading such an utterly
> horrid book!]
Exactly how fast do you read? One word per minute?-o
--
- Warp
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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Wait... The WWW had a *theme*??
It never ceases to amaze my why you are so eager to shout about your
ignorance about things. You must know how it looks when you do that
constantly, yet you keep doing it again and again.
(And I didn't say "I'm amazed you didn't know that". That's irrelevant.)
--
- Warp
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > I knew that Newtons and kiloponds both measure the same thing (force),
> FWIW, I never even *heard* of a "pond" as a unit of measure.
Seems like Andrew is not the only one who hasn't read his literature. :P
(The first time I read about kiloponds, which was quite a long time
ago, was in a thriller novel, of all things. Maybe it was by Ludlum,
or someone who writes similar style. :) )
--
- Warp
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On Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:40:56 +0100, Invisible wrote:
>> I typed "hdmi cable" into amazon and this one is only 51p!!!
>>
>> There are lots around 10 pounds if you want to spend a bit more.
>
> ...so it's a tax on stupidity then?
Well, might also be a quality thing. Then again, I bought a splitter
cable off of Amazon for my Blackberry & headset so I could charge both at
the same time (the headset didn't come with USB charging cable). Cost
was about $0.95, and I got free shipping. And it works.
New iPod battery was about $7 including shipping. Previous one I bought
cost more like $15+tax.
"Tax on stupidity" = lottery. Or on "people who can't do math". :-)
Jim
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