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Comment Ambient EM radiation. (Score 1) 22

The sensor uses an ultra-low-power receiver to extract and classify gesture information from wireless transmissions around us.

I live in a Faraday cage, you insensitive clod!

P.S.

I approve of the name AllSee... well... except that they should drop the stupid CamalCase on the 'S'.... and the two l's might be a bit redundant.

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Comment Radix sort well fits human skills (Score 1) 195

I've got some experience sorting huge stacks of pages. You basically want to maximize the work done per trivial-human-step. If you stick with some algorithm based on binary-comparisons you're missing out on some of the work a brain can do essentially for free.

If you're sorting based on a number, it's a pretty quick easy step to drop the current paper in one of ten piles. If you're sorting by alphabetical then you can do one pass 26 piles (bulky but workable) or two pass (first pass A-F, G-M, N-S, T-Z, second pass sort into individual letters). This provides you with more than one bit-comparison of sorting per action. If you're sorting by date then year, month, first-digit-day, second-digit-day make excellent radix values.

Merge sort isn't bad, but it's probably less efficient. If you work with two-stack merge you're only getting one bit of work per step. If you work with more than two stacks you have to scan the tops of the stacks to figure out which page to pick up. Contrast this with radix sort - it's quicker/easier to look at one page and drop it in one of N piles than it is to scan N piles to find which one to pick up.

I see a lot of people mentioning bubble sort and related sorts, but I doubt those people ever had to deal with a few hundred pages. Those sorts are O(N^2), inherently worse. And shuffling the order of pages in a stack is a much messier and slower physical operation than simply dropping pages on the top of stack.

All the other sorting algorithms I can think of seem to suffer from smaller work per step and/or messy physical manipulation. I'm open to other suggestions, but Radix sort seems to be best suited to human work. I had great success with it.

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Comment Re:bad engineering? (Score 1) 526

I can run an a transformer at 40MVA average, but peak at 60MVA without additional cooling....
If I have correct protection circuitry, the system will function just fine

Except Dell connected mis-matched components without protection circuity. They delivered a product that self-destructs under normal operation in some circumstances, and they're trying to refuse warranty repairs.

"we don't support VLC"

Again, this really has nothing to do with VLC. Playing some (relatively rare) sound files causes speaker damage. VLC merely make it more common to run into this design flaw because VLC can make common sound files look like the less common sound files which trigger the problem.

A VCR is defective if it self-destructs when you play an ordinary videocassette of a movie set in a field of uncommonly colorful flowers. Same thing.

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Comment Re:bad engineering? (Score 1) 526

I don't think you understand the difference between peak and average volume.

I certainly understand peak and average.

A solution which limited you from pushing peak all the time would decrease the overall quality of the product.

It has a low-wattage speaker mismatched with a high-wattage driver circuit. The driver circuit overpowers and damages the speaker when you play a high-average-amplitude sound file at full volume.

It's like a flashlight with low and high settings, where the high setting sends 6 volts to a 3 volt lightbulb. It will be extra bright for maybe two seconds while it destroys the lightbulb. Obviously if your max power output is 6 volts then you need to pair it with a 6 volt bulb.

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Comment Re:bad engineering? (Score 1) 526

If your doing the sort of "compromise engineering" that results in the product self-destructing, then part of your "compromise" is the legal obligation to pay the warranty cost of repairing/replacing/refunding that product when it does self-destruct.

And if you are trying to push high volumes out of your laptop speaker, you probably should be carrying external speakers.

If I set the volume to full and I'm not satisfied with the sound level I get, sure, I'll go get external speakers. But using the laptop at full volume should never result in permanent damage. It should never self destruct just because I play a music file that happens to contain clipping.

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Comment Re:Of Course you can use VLC for this. (Score 1) 526

Dell paired a high wattage amplifier with a low wattage speaker, which any engineer knows will result in speaker damage.

Should is the key here. And technically they should, but then if they did could they offer laptops at $200 a pop?

Dell had several choices. They could have spent a few cents more on a bigger speaker and sold a same-volume-laptop for $200.50, or they could have saved a few cents on a smaller amplifier circuit and sold a slightly-less-loud-laptop for $199.50.

What they can't do is sell a defective product that self-destructs and refuse to honor the repair warranty.

In some ways Dell purchasers are getting what they paid for.

Baloney. They paid for a product that was advertized as having certain capabilities, in specific including a working sound system. Further more they purchased a product that came with both a legal implied warranty of fitness-for-purpose, as well as an express warranty.

What they were given was a product that unexpectedly self-destructs when you play some sound files.
(The only way the software is relevant here is that the software causes common sound files to resemble those uncommon sound files which trigger the self-destruct effect, making the hardware defect more commonly visible.)

The only way "Dell purchasers are getting what they paid for" is in some loony radical libertarian ideology where you call it "getting what you paid for" when someone sells a hair drier with low-and-high settings which unexpectedly melts whenever you use the high setting.

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Comment Re:A "clipped" audio signal is still a valid signa (Score 1) 526

You're missing something important here.

Lets say a recording has volume numbers 01210.
Amplifying (doubling) that would give you 02420.
If the maximum hardware volume is 2 then the software clips it to 02220. (The 4 gets reduced to 2.)
The important point here is that a music file could have had 02220 in the first place!

Most music files won't have 02220 because it sounds like crap. But a music file can have 02220, and there do exist music files that have 02220.

So this has absolutely nothing to do with the software - the issue is that the Dell speakers get damaged if you play certain sound files! A sound system that damages itself when you play certain music files is clearly defective hardware. The only way that the software is involved is that it makes "common" music files look like those "rare" types of music files which trigger the hardware problem.

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