Just went through this peice here:
http://blogs.reuters.com/bernddebusmann/2011/04/01/u-s-intelligence-and-the-wisdom-of-crowds/
U.S. intelligence and the wisdom of crowds
After a string of world-shaking events America’s spies failed to predict, most recently the turmoil sweeping the Arab world, a vast project is taking shape to improve forecasting. It involves thousands of volunteers and the wisdom of crowds.
It’s officially known as the Forecasting World Events Project and is sponsored by the Intelligence Advanced Research Activity (IARPA), a little-known agency run by a woman, Lisa Porter, who is occasionally described as America’s answer to the fictional Agent Q who designs cutting edge gadgets for James Bond. Much of IARPA’s work is classified, as is its budget. But the forecasting project is not classified. Invitations to participate are now on the Internet.
. . . . . . .
Reminds me of this:
There was that king, the ancient legend goes, who gathered knowledge from around the world. After several years he managed to compile bullockloads of data about each and every aspect of human life. But he wanted the shorten the data, since he was too lazy to read so much. So the cycle of shortening began, with the king disapproving each new version and asking for an even shorter one. After several months, the king was finally satisfied
The final version was 3 sentences. "Men were born. They lived. Then they died"
There, did I just save US treasury trillions of dollars?
Friday, April 1, 2011
How I dabbled on some TV repair
So, I (still) own this LCD TV, purchased in 2006 manufacturer syntax olevia (now extinct) and one day it refused to acknowledge power or start up..
Went to google to see if I could find any clues about it. I was fortunate enough to find a handful of users of this TV complaining of same or similar problems. At least, in my case the TV lasted more than 4 years; there were others for whom it had lasted just a year.
No one likes to see their investment go up in smoke, and a little more digging uncovered some interesting stuff about defective capacitors flooding the market and wreaking havoc on a lot of electronics manufactured in the last 10 years; the story supposedly starting from an incomplete job of thieving the specs from a Japanese company.
That known, the next step was to find out if it was easy to replace them. I had done exactly one soldering before in my life, and it had been successful so I thought it was worth a try. There are, in fact, videos available on the net of how to solder.
To cut a long story short, this is what I learned (after a lot of work and anxiety over the state of my circuit board):
- You want to minimize the time you hold the capacitor in the solder's heat. And, it is possible to minimize it to a split second. Yes, it is possible
- Just applying the lead to the soldering iron is not enough to melt it. So avoid holding the capacitor and the lead to the solder's fire. It is unnecessary
- The first thing you do after the iron is heated, if to rub the lead on it so that some of it melts and sticks to the iron.While doing this, try to see that the molten lead is near the tip of the iron as much as possible
- The second thing you do is, hold the iron to the place you want the molt to go
- And then, you apply the lead on the part of the iron that has the molten lead stuck to it. It may require some skill/being careful to see that the lead globs flow onto the connection you want soldered.
In all this, the most important is, knowing just how to melt the lead QUICKLY, and this is done by making contact with the already melted lead
Went to google to see if I could find any clues about it. I was fortunate enough to find a handful of users of this TV complaining of same or similar problems. At least, in my case the TV lasted more than 4 years; there were others for whom it had lasted just a year.
No one likes to see their investment go up in smoke, and a little more digging uncovered some interesting stuff about defective capacitors flooding the market and wreaking havoc on a lot of electronics manufactured in the last 10 years; the story supposedly starting from an incomplete job of thieving the specs from a Japanese company.
That known, the next step was to find out if it was easy to replace them. I had done exactly one soldering before in my life, and it had been successful so I thought it was worth a try. There are, in fact, videos available on the net of how to solder.
To cut a long story short, this is what I learned (after a lot of work and anxiety over the state of my circuit board):
- You want to minimize the time you hold the capacitor in the solder's heat. And, it is possible to minimize it to a split second. Yes, it is possible
- Just applying the lead to the soldering iron is not enough to melt it. So avoid holding the capacitor and the lead to the solder's fire. It is unnecessary
- The first thing you do after the iron is heated, if to rub the lead on it so that some of it melts and sticks to the iron.While doing this, try to see that the molten lead is near the tip of the iron as much as possible
- The second thing you do is, hold the iron to the place you want the molt to go
- And then, you apply the lead on the part of the iron that has the molten lead stuck to it. It may require some skill/being careful to see that the lead globs flow onto the connection you want soldered.
In all this, the most important is, knowing just how to melt the lead QUICKLY, and this is done by making contact with the already melted lead
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