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Comment Laser cutter suggested (Score 1) 49

A 3D printer requires making 3D models, which can require considerable take time and skill to create. The printers are also very slow and good for only very small objects in a reasonable time frame. As an alternate, I suggest you consider a laser cutter. These act as "printers" for 2D vector files, which are easy to create in drawing programs like Corel. The user's complex shapes cut from plastic by the machine can be glued together to make many interesting and fascinating art projects. The laser cutter is fast enough so many people can use it what seems to be nearly the same time. You can get a good one for $10 to $15k. An Epilog Legend Mini 24 ( http://www.epiloglaser.com/legend_mini24.htm ) would be a good choice. We bought one two years ago at the Institute and it became an instant hit, busy all the time, with everyone using it.
Crime

Mom Arrested After Son Makes Dry Ice "Bombs" 571

formfeed writes "Police were called to a house in Omaha where a 14-year-old made some 'dry ice bombs' (dry ice in soda bottles). Since his mom knew about it, she is now facing felony charges for child endangment and possession of a destructive device. From the article: 'Assistant Douglas County Attorney Eric Wells said the boy admitted to making the bomb and that his mother knew he was doing so. The boy was set to appear Tuesday afternoon in juvenile court, accused of possessing a destructive device.'" She's lucky they didn't find the baking soda volcano in the basement.

Comment Re:How a planetary-based IVT system works in gener (Score 2, Interesting) 609

Although they may not officially encourage this kind of use, the Toyota Prius smoothly goes from forward to zero and reverse drive: Just throw the car into REVERSE while powering it forward. I've tried this up to about 10pmh or so,and it runs its planetary-gear setup through the motions like silk. I haven't had the nerve to do this at higher speeds. BTW, going into PARK while moving at highway speed just causes a motor-controlled slow down followed by neutral. This may be the easiest way to get around the "stuck-accelerator" problem (which I have experienced, very scary indeed).

Comment Re:falsely blaming the user (Score 2, Interesting) 345

Professor Richard Schmidt says user reports are often unreliable: 'When the driver says they have their foot on the brake, they are just plain wrong." My '08 Prious has had three "surge" events. I was able to stop all three times. In the most serious case there was a group of people standing about 20 feet in front of me, and my car stated surging towards them. I jammed my foot on the brake but was not winning the battle. Normally the Prius brakes are very sensitive and do not have to be pressed hard, so I was using my normal braking force. Quickly becoming alarmed, I pushed harder on the brake, with some effect, but still fighting the electric motor and the gas engine trying to power the car forward. I had to push harder than I ever recall doing to stop the car. At that point engine activity ceased. The people, now about 10-feet away, looked at me like I was an idiot, gunning my car toward them! I was just glad to be stopped. I challenge professor Richard Schmidt: If my foot was on the accelerator, how did I in fact stop? The Toyota people have told me they'll be reflashing the processors of all the Prius cars in a few months so any brake signal will shut down the engine. Why wasn't that done from the beginning? But anyway, I'm looking forward to the modification. In the meantime, I'm practicing quickly hitting the Neutral gear lever.

Comment Windows 7 does use too much ram. (Score 1, Informative) 451

But.... Windows 7 does seem to use too much memory, not as much as the O.P. claimed, perhaps, but more than Windows XP used. My system rapidly ramps up to the 75 to 80% level, which is a bit surprising. I installed 32-bit Windows 7, whereas I see most of the commercial offerings are the 64-bit version. The latter can utilize more than 3GB of memory, and arguably, may be happier with smaller amounts of ram than 32-bit installs.

Comment Re:Excited x86 assembly developers (Score 1) 209

I for one am delighted to hear this news, and appreciate the posting by Odoital. The wags here who have trash-talked assembly-language programming are not fans of small machines, doing small, dedicated and often time-constrained tasks on low-performance x86 processors. The right tool for the right job. There are places where MASM was the right tool, then WASM, and now JWASM. As a hardware engineer, I run into these places all the time. For example, say I want to take an inexpensive processor and turn it into 16-unit PWM (pulse-width-modulation) engine. The PWM resolution and frequency I can achieve will directly related to how tightly I can predict and control the processor, instruction by instruction.

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