The Best Burglar Alarm In History 137
Sportsqs writes "When Nikola Tesla got creative with transformers and driver circuits at the turn of the 20th century he probably had no idea that others would have so much fun with his concepts over a hundred years later. One such guy is an Australian named Peter who runs a website called TeslaDownUnder, which showcases all his wacky Tesla ways, or rather electrickery, as Peter calls it." Very cool stuff, I wish I would have had something like this to protect my comic books from my little brother when I was a kid.
Idle (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, keep this shit in Idle, or get rid of Idle entirely.
Please.
Re:Idle (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Idle (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Idle (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Idle (Score:5, Informative)
SourceForge also said it "intends to take aggressive steps" to accelerate the growth of its core Internet properties: Slashdot, SourceForge.net and ThinkGeek.
"These sites represent a truly unique set of Internet assets and there is more we can be doing to make them better and more engaging for our users," said Neumeister. "We are focused on aggressively pursuing our plans for each of these sites and making opportunistic investments that will enable us to reach our objectives faster."
Thanks.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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"These sites represent a truly unique set of Internet assets and there is more we can be doing to make them better and more engaging for our users," said Neumeister. "We are focused on aggressively pursuing our plans for each of these sites and making opportunistic investments that will enable us to reach our objectives faster."
Later in the interview, Neurmeister demonstrated his agression by biting a chunk out of his own arm. "Thats how dedicated we are" he said, before glassing a reporter, kicking out a w
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Wow, thanks for the good info. Here's a quote from the article that you already linked:
SourceForge also said it "intends to take aggressive steps" to accelerate the growth of its core Internet properties: Slashdot, SourceForge.net and ThinkGeek.
"These sites represent a truly unique set of Internet assets and there is more we can be doing to make them better and more engaging for our users," said Neumeister. "We are focused on aggressively pursuing our plans for each of these sites and making opportunistic investments that will enable us to reach our objectives faster."
Thanks.
Why can't CEOs and such be satisfied with slow, even growth? Why does everything have to be aggressive leveraging of opportunity? Slashdot is never, ever going to be the next NYT or Washington Post. Why not just be satisfied with a job well done and a decent, reasonable profit?
The suits kill everything.
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Better yet, alienate your existing client base by screwing up something they like. Watch those growth number switch to negatives. The thing about community is that they have a voice. In this case, if they screw Slashdot up too much, we can all just leave. Find the next "Slashdot".
Layne
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Better yet, alienate your existing client base by screwing up something they like. Watch those growth number switch to negatives.
Layne
Then retire in style from all the short term profits you made by making the tough decisions. Ahh... the American dream .
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Why can't CEOs and such be satisfied with slow, even growth?
Well, you can't write off your Palm Beach golf membership unless you achieve you goal of investing several million dollars at a guaranteed 11% for life. Slow is for putzwads.
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Because they have 2 years contract and bonuses according to stock prices at the end of each fiscal quarter.
Steady growth is for people planning to stick with the same company for a rather long time. (read: company founded by their dad and son on standby for taking over in 30 years or so.)
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Why can't CEOs and such be satisfied with slow, even growth? Why does everything have to be aggressive leveraging of opportunity? Slashdot is never, ever going to be the next NYT or Washington Post. Why not just be satisfied with a job well done and a decent, reasonable profit?
Bahahahahaha!
I'm sorry you were serious, let me laugh harder.
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To be honest, I think a lot of CEOs *would* be satisfied by long term growth. The issue that they have is not so much a matter of choosing to act that way out of some desire for short term gain, but the fact that the entire market has moved in that direction.
Sometimes, the suit is running scared as much as anyone else in the company.
These days, if you do something that negatively affects the stock price, you can be faced with shareholder lawsuits, usually from the corporate raiders types who are looking to
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Because if they let things slow down even a little bit, then they might just possibly have time to get infected with the evil (but true) meme that "the world is a finite place ruled by an implacable law that you can't even break even" (second law of thermodynamics, in it's economic clothing) ; when a management type gets infected with that meme, they rapidly (or slowly, depending on native intelligence and mental flexibility) move on to realising
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This story is kind of ok, I guess. The kind of thing I'd want to see in idle, if I felt like looking at it. It's not even the miscatigorization or the idle section (though idle does generally suck). The thing that bugs me is that I th
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First we remove the level 1 'opinion creating' words:
SourceForge also said it "intends to take steps" to accelerate the growth of its Internet properties: Slashdot, SourceForge.net and ThinkGeek.
"These sites represent a set of Internet assets and there is more we can be doing to make them better and more engaging for our users," said Neumeister. "We are focused on pursuing our plans for each of these sites and making investments that will enable us to reach our objectives ."
And now with with a small rewrite and further ommissions:
SourceForge also said it "intends to take steps" to grow Slashdot, SourceForge.net and ThinkGeek.
"There is more we can be doing to make them better and more engaging for our users," said Neumeister. "We persue our plans for each of these sites and make investments to reach our objectives."
And at last the essence of the quote:
We are going to make changes to our sites
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Neumeister??? Sounds like a perfect name for the next Retro-Science-Fiction-Super-Villian. "Count van Neumeister" Or a made up villian as in in 1984...
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BTW, for those that don't like the new user info page:
http://slashdot.org/users.pl
I found it a few years ago and always preferred using it over the "~username" version, and it seems that my intuition hadn't failed me. Don't know how to get other users' pages this way, though ("?user=foo" doesn't work, any ideas?).
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You can use the UID: http://slashdot.org/users.pl?uid=1062422 [slashdot.org]
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Or, nick: http://slashdot.org/users.pl?nick=harry666t [slashdot.org]
(sorry to reply to myself there)
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Master Blaster!
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Re:Idle (Score:5, Insightful)
I really just don't get the hostility. I may have a high ID, but that's just because I only registered to go to the 10th anniversary party, I've lurked since 1998, and dudes, this is what Slashdot was created for. For chrissake, if anybody can find some of that early footage of Taco talking about why and how he created slashdot, you'll be enlightened to find that it was supposed to be kind of obscure and somewhat nonsensical. That's why it's called slashdot! It was supposed to sound weird when you had to verbalize the URL! Now in the intervening decade we have all these guys with sticks up their asses trying to pretend like
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>> you'll be enlightened to find that it was supposed to be kind of obscure and somewhat nonsensical.
Maybe that's true from a historical POV, but I believe (sorry, no stats available) that most people were at the end just driven by the classic "News for nerds, stuff that matters". So "idle" is misplaced.
Re:Idle (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I am aware that I am metacomplaining!
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I must protest about your metacomplaining, especially as you appear to be on my lawn.
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You don't have to "go there" - Idle stories are right on the front page. That's what's annoying.
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In Russia, First Pots
That's "In Soviet Russia" and "Frist Psot" you insensitive clod!
Re:Idle (Score:5, Funny)
I don't completely hate Idle, I go to Idle on a slow news day, but I don't think it belongs on the front page. I'd like to see a slashdot poll (I have just submitted this):
What would you most like to see done to people who think Idle should appear on the front page?
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Seriously, keep this shit in Idle, or get rid of Idle entirely.
Please.
Lighten up you anal retentive grouch.
Re:Idle (Score:5, Funny)
Darken down, you anally loose and cheerful ray of sunshine!
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Actually the two personality traits commonly associated with neuroses arising from conflict in the anal stage of Freudian psycho-sexual development are anal retentive and anal expulsive but otherwise, hell yeah.
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It's spelled "lose."
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NO MORE. IDLE.
NO. MORE. STORIES. LIKE. THIS.
Please. Editors take a moment to realize you are losing all respect for your readers. This will all end in tears.
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So, rather than just ignoring this story on the main page, you decided that it would be better to click into it, then post a comment about how much you hate these stories.
Seriously, what the hell is wrong with people these days? Almost no effort to skip over the story, yet you choose to whine like a stepped on dog.
You're the problem with the internet, frankly. Too many people out there think other peoples' websites should be changed to suit them. As though Slashdot is made just for you, and its owners aren'
Re:Idle (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm really not sure which is worse, that they post these things, or that they're so old. Really, I saw this years ago.
Feedback is good for any site. It shows the direction which the users would like the site to go in. It's important for good growth of any site (or any company). Try something, see if the users like it. If they do, keep it and/or expand it. If they don't like it, file it away somewhere so the same mistakes aren't made again.
But, posting what the site owner/editor/publisher wants is true. I run a news site also. It's a different format with a different target audience, but it's mine. I (owner/publisher) ran a story about men and their cats. My senior editor got a bit miffed. I'll paraphrase. "We're in the middle of two wars, the economy collapsing, and what could be the most detrimental US election ever, and you're running stories about f***ing cats?!?!"
There was good reason that I did. Because the NYTimes ran it first. Because the regular news is absolutely depressing. Once in a great while you have to give a little bright news. Broadcast TV doesn't want to do the fluff piece on a doughnut shop making the county's largest doughnut, but when all they've run for the last week is car crashes, shootings, and world news on terrorist bombings and the body count in wars we're involved in, sometimes you have to give a little bright spot in the news, even if it is still out of line.
I run what I want, when I want. I want real factual news run all day every day. I also want to keep our readers, so the fluff pieces are almost required. Silly things like the car with the tesla coil on it are good to bring in new readers too. Someone will ask someone else "Did you see the car with lightning around it on Slashdot?" Bringing in readers with fluff is fine. Keeping them around with real news is more important.
Some days it's harder to find real news than on other days. That's why you'll see repeated news on TV and in the newspaper. They have time and space to fill (respectively). We have a luxury on the Internet, where we just have to remain active. We don't have to fill X number of pages to keep our advertisers happy, we only have to bring in X number of viewers. On my site, that's trivial. I don't answer to advertisers, so if I bring in exactly 0 viewers for a year, then I simply won't make any money. If I bring in 1 million users a day, well, I'll be much happier on my yacht, checking my readership numbers once a day. :)
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I shouldn't say anything, but I will.
1) Your capitalization sucks.
2) Your sentence structure sucks.
3) Your rambling is pathetic.
4) I'm not African American, or anything of African descent.
5) I'm not Jewish, nor has any of my family ever been.
6) I am not homosexual, bisexual, or in any other way going to have oral/genital contact with another man.
7) If someone actually came close enough to
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or in other words:
HEY READER,
USE YOUR SECTIONAL DISPLAY SETTINGS. THEY WORK.
That would fix the idle part. We could have a debate about the value of the story and the section and the punching headline they use. /. is doing just fine. I briefed book reviews and idle, for instance. Of course, I would like to see more science stuff or something, but I'm just one here.
My opinion is that there is a lot of ranting about nothing and
Could Taco enlighten us about the current status of the editorial independence of /.
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To parrot/paraphrase what others have already written, lighten up and enjoy the refreshing mix of tech, freshness, and humor.
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For crying out loud. Why do you even care? I just don't get folks getting their undies in a bundle over whether stories are properly categorized. I really don't.
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Ya'll know that you can edit what you see on your homepage, by going to Help & Preferences --> Index:Sections, right?
I can't believe you consider yourselves nerds.
Must be a slow news day, this is old (Score:5, Insightful)
I already seen this site like a year or two ago.
How can this make slashdot now.
Tesla's very cool, but there is little new here.
And how come we are not talking about the shoe that almost hit George Bush instead.
Re:Must be a slow news day, this is old (Score:4, Funny)
Or at a bare minimum we should be talking about the guaranteed Obama/Blagojevich connection.
What did he know, and when did he know it?
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but there is little new here.
Especially since it isn't any good for the stated purpose. From his site [tesladownunder.com]:
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"And how come we are not talking about the shoe that almost hit George Bush instead."
Uh, because that is a topic for another thread and not relevant to this one?
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Indeed...
One thing I don't get about this story... (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing about this story confuses me: Why is samzenpus allowed to post stories outside of Idle?
Slashdotted (Score:3, Insightful)
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Pretty craptastic,
think free host.
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The website seems DownUnder. (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdotted, or rather electrickery?
Alarm? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see how this is a burglar alarm.
Anti-theft device sure, alarm no.
Re:Alarm? (Score:5, Funny)
Burglar touches it, fries, starts screaming. There's your alarm.
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"You can't scream when you are already dead"
That's just what Jimmy kept saying...
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That's just what Jimmy kept saying...
"How is that even physically possible?!?"
Tex is bad enough - Tex with a Tesla coil is not something I want to contemplate.
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I don't know about Australia, but in some countries, death traps for burglars are classified as illegal, and if you manage to kill a burglar with one you could be found guilty of at least manslaughter, maybe murder.
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Slashdit is idle. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea its cool but first its only a time lapse photo. Those sparks aren't arcing at 360 degrees. Every cool Tesla coil photo is time lapsed. Otherwise your just stuck with a single and sometimes dim arc.
What then hell is going on here? Like others have said is idle being merged with "regular" Slashdot? I turned off idle because of lame and non news items like this. Christ its like Slashdot cant be bothered to look for actual news for nerds or stuff that matters.
And whats with all the flame bait articles? Its like they enjoy whipping us into a frenzy and then sit back and watch the fire works. Slashdot is rapidly deteriorating into a faux news site that's more (lame) entertainment then actual news.
Re:Slashdit is idle. (Score:4, Informative)
Slashdot is rapidly deteriorating into a faux news site that's more (lame) entertainment then actual news.
No, management has simply determined a need to draw more readers to the site and so they've started creating one-off episodes that aren't part of the regular plotline to draw them in. Or as us BSG regulars call this phenomenon "Season 3". Don't worry, when the submitter's strike is over, things will improve. They already tried the webisode thing (aka Geeks in Space), and then quietly buried it.
Don't panic - everything is going according to plan.
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Don't panic - everything is going according to plan.
Would this be one of those plans like the one the Cylons allegedly had? But which seems have disappeared up its own plot hole?
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Slashdot is rapidly deteriorating into a faux news site that's more (lame) entertainment then actual news.
"oniondot", perhaps?
Re:Slashdit is idle. (Score:4, Informative)
Time lapse is a video where the frames are shot much slower than they're played back. Speeding up the world, essentially.
This is a regular long exposure. Single frame. Looking at the EXIF data on the original JPEG, the summary's image was a 31 second exposure. Hence why the driver is a bit blurry (he twitched a bit).
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Ahh thanks for the correction. For some reason I had time lapse in my head. I used to do a bit of coiling and had a Kodak digital camera that was capable of taking longish exposures. They were blurry though.
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I saw it . (Score:1)
Tesla was a Slashdotter (Score:5, Interesting)
I am currently working on several products that will replace current measuring instruments that use nuclear technology. Thanks to what may appear to be worthless patents filed by Tesla regarding resonance in solid bodies, I am having success beyond what I could have imagined.
It's unfortunate that someone with so much to offer is now regarded as a marginal creator of useless technology.
The next time someone promises $10,000 to increase the effiency of your DC Dynamos, kick him in the
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Re:Tesla was a Slashdotter (Score:5, Funny)
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So Tesla is to the Woz what Edison is to "the fast talking one". I never thought of it like that before.
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It's unfortunate that someone with so much to offer is now regarded as a marginal creator of useless technology.
I don't know that I would say that, they did name the measurement of magnetic flux after him. Having a basic unit of electromagnetism named after me is more honor than I expect to have granted to me in this life.
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Oh, Slashdotters have their conventional wisdom and groupthink too... Just because it doesn't match the mainstream doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Mostly due to the tireless efforts of generation of cranks who've spent their time wallowing in the more marginal of his creations an
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While my day job is as a Computer Progammer Analyst
You analyze computer programmers for a living? That job must be either a real hoot, or daily torture.
LOLbrothers (Score:1, Informative)
Faraday Cage bro be stealin' ur comic buks.
Can I get a smaller version? (Score:1, Offtopic)
Hope you like prison (Score:3, Informative)
And someone with a pacemaker would bump up against your car accidentally while his shoes were wet, and possibly die. You get sued, all your possessions/savings are forfeit, and then you are (rightly) sent to prison.
That's if the "parking enforcement" person (you know, that guy who is just there to do his job making sure people don't park like self-absorbed asshats) gets a shock doesn't get you arrested first. Assuming something he touched was conductive, I guess. And he wasn't wearing gloves. And he mad
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Better would be to park where you can't get a ticket, perhaps?
THOSE EXIST??
Shocking Story (Score:1)
MagnaVolt? (Score:3, Informative)
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I prefer the (real) South African Anti-Carjacking Device, shown here. [youtube.com]
Sadly, it seems like the company is now defunct [wikipedia.org].
I'm sorry but this one is clearly better (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFoUL_bIotw [youtube.com]
Pinko commies! (Score:2)
Tesla coils are a Soviet defence!
There's a better, more practical alternative (Score:1)
You used to be able to buy an anti-theft device for cars in South Africa that used a flamethrower to "dissuade" the thief. It was legal but never succeeded commercially.
Wikipedia Link [wikipedia.org]
Youtube Link [youtube.com]
Force field (Score:3, Interesting)
At first, I thought he had managed
to make a force field around the car using a tesla coil.
But then I saw that he was just rotating a pole connected to a tesla coil around the car, what a disappointment.
It might actually be possible to make a force field with a Tesla coil if you can find the correct field harmonics.
See http://amasci.com/freenrg/audwall.html [amasci.com]
You might also have to know something about
quaternionic electromagnetism to pull it of.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4445/quaternionic-electrodynamics [scribd.com]
Also if you think that slashdot stories have been
to low quality lately then maybe you should try http://crowdnews.eu/ [crowdnews.eu]
Tin-foil hat (Score:2)
I think that this might be the nugget that got it on
Yes, that's a really good anti-burglary device... (Score:2)
...right up until you meet a thief smart enough to simply pull the plug first.
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And BTW, BBC top gear had a show where they put a guy in a car that was then hit by a simulated lightning. The person was alive, the car was not damaged and the car started on the first turn of the key. So even if you never short out the circuit, as long as you can get inside the car somehow (by providing a high conductivity metallic wire far away from you), you are safe.
Love the advertising on the article page (Score:2)
One of the article pages had an ad for "The Tesla Shield [lifetechnology.org]: Transformational Technology for Mind Body and Soul" (courtesy of the Google Ad Network on that page). Wow. It's a nice reminder that people still buy this crap. Only $200 for the base model, although you can spend up to $2000 for the "Eye of Horus [lifetechnology.org]" version which "Incorporates Upgraded Internal Componentry PLUS Hyperspace Radionics Function PLUS 12 Specially Selected Precious Gemstones Chosen For Their Therapeutic And Metaphysical Properties: Diamo
It's been done (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2ismEjTFI4
No embarrassing alarm noise, no need to call the police and it wont even run down your battery!
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I have always wanted to turn a Tesla coil loose on the street, unfortunately I can't find any Xmyth specials.