X-Rays Of A TiBook's Interior 234
A reader writes: "A fine application of expensive medical equipment: producing neat desktop pictures by taking an x-ray of the guts of a PowerBook G4. Guy Mullins has the details." The actual photos are on a separate site.
Cool (Score:2)
Re:My analysis (Score:1)
Interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
Out of curiosity, are laptop batteries always made up of a large number of linked, smaller, cylindrical batteries?
Re:Interesting... (Score:2, Informative)
OTOH I'm sure there are some custom batteries out there.
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Interesting... (Score:2, Informative)
The reason for this is that a cell puts out about 2 volts. To get a higher voltage, you have to connect several cells in series to make a battery. For a car, you need six cells to make twelve volts. For a telephone exchange, you need 24 cells to make about 50 volts. You can also connect several batteries together in parallel to get more current or more power.
Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Informative)
And that is a good thing too. (Score:3, Informative)
I used to work as a technician for a firm that rented environmental instrumentation and we recelled batteries all of the time. It is a common practice for more than just laptops.
Re:And that is a good thing too. (Score:1)
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
I'm not sure if this is the case for the big ones that would power a rack of servers or whatever, but apparently it's true for the ones you'd put under your desk for personal use.
Assuming that's true, I don't see why laptop power supplies should be any different....
XRay.... (Score:2, Informative)
Anyone know what effects XRays have on magnetic media? I always used to post floppies with a 'magnetic media, do not xray' sticker on em?
Fantastic images tho.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:XRay.... (Score:2)
Please don't. If you use a X-Ray safe lead bag they can't see the film, so it doesn't get hurt. Then they blast it with a stronger dose until they can see. Of corse since they have to go through the lead twice the x-rays that hit your film are much much stronger.
The safest thing to do is get film in clear cylinders (Kodak select films and many Fuji films come that way), take them out of the boxes, put them in a ziplock bag. Don't put more then can be pressed to a single layer.
Have the ziploc bags of film hand checked (dump them in the change bucket).
If you happen to have an x-ray bag you can put the film in that after you have gone through the x-ray. It will keep the film from fogging in flight (there is less atmosphere to protect it).
Even low speed film is damaged by x-ray, just not very much. The fogging is normally slight, unless the airport happens to be extra paranoid, or you take lots of flights. Of corse there is no reason for you to buy slow film unless you want the best quality shots, so the slight fogging should be unacceptable to you, esp when getting hand checked is such an easy option...
(yes, I'm a film geek -- and a digital camera geek)
Re:XRay.... (Score:1)
Considering the number of people who have their laptops xrayed when bring them on to airplanes, I think it would be safe.
Re:XRay.... (Score:1)
The one they used was a medical imager...
Just curious if they are the same strength....
Re:XRay.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:XRay.... (Score:1)
Last time I was in hospital (I'm fatally allergic to wasp stings), the X-ray machine is operated by a nurse like 20 feet away behind a lead screen.
Also, there is a maximum number of medical xrays you can have before you get 'your dose'.
But those nutty security guards stand there all day scanning underwear for a living.
Which tends to make me think the medical ones are a wee bit more powerful.
Re:XRay.... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:XRay.... (Score:1)
t.
Re:XRay.... (Score:2)
Re:XRay.... (Score:1)
Re:XRay.... (Score:1, Interesting)
The most amazing was the one they duct taped to the top of the machine for something like three months. At the end, no problems.
Indeed, a quick search with Google to find the article in question brought up a Samsung laptop user manual that said you should always send your Samsung laptop through the X-ray machine, as the medal detectors might corrupt data.
Re:XRay.... (Score:3, Informative)
It's not the power, per se, it's that a medical imager is capable of dispersing X-rays over a much wider range of area, some of which are going to irradiate the operator.
The X-ray machines in an airport are shielded (ever notice the heavy looking rubber skirts that your bags go through on either end?), and the x-rays are directed at a very narrow section of the conveyor belt.
Re:XRay.... (Score:2)
As such, these techniques are only used on people with advanced stages of cancer, say, who are in a bad state already.
Someone who knows what i'm trying to talk about might be able to post some links to details or images of such stuff.
...j
Re:XRay.... (Score:2)
Use your common sense to tell you, which is going to be harder for x-rays to penetrate, large amounts of muscle and fat, or ten layers of cotton?
Re:XRay.... (Score:1)
PS throwing numbers around is meaningless without backing them up.
t.
Re:XRay.... (Score:4, Informative)
Further inspection reveals that airports actually use two different strength scanners. Checked luggage goes through a high-intensity scanner, such as an Invision Technologies CTX [invision-tech.com] baggage scanner. This scanner starts with a low power beam, but can send a focused beam (1cm containing 100-300 milliRoentgens) on suspicious areas if closer analysis is required. The focused beam is actually a Computed Tomography scan, of the type that takes 5000milliRoentgens to do to one's head, so it's still less powerful than the medical version.
According to FAA Regulation 108.17 [faa.gov]
But you'll note that airports all tell you it's safe to let your film and camera go through the carry-on luggage x-ray. That's because they expose your luggage to less than 1 milliRoentgen. If they can't see what they need, they still have Explosive and Narcotic Detection Systems, and manual searches available.So you see, I wasn't throwing numbers around. I was making factual statements, you useless troll.
Re:XRay.... (Score:2)
The security xray machines vary from locale to locale, but generally they are more powerful than their medical counterparts; the reason being, of course, that there are strict health + safety regulations concerning xray dosages given to humans, while no such regulations exist for luggage. (Another good reason why you shouldn't try to smuggle illegal immigrants inside your luggage!)
Re:XRay.... (Score:2)
Medical x-rays vary widely, depending on the procedure. On the low-end, a chest x-ray exposes the patient to between 9-16 milliRoentgen's, while a procedure such as a CT Scan of the head exposes the patient to a dose of approximately 5000 milliRoentgens.
Re:XRay.... (Score:1)
Jaysyn
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
This reminds me of the time... (Score:2)
Re:XRay.... (Score:2)
No really. It will - don't try it.
Re:XRay.... (Score:1)
Not exactly... (Score:1)
Format? (Score:1)
Re:Format? (Score:1)
Well, it's busy downloading for me right now, but I'd guess it's a higher res of the .pict file, which is (understandably) a Mac image format, which is viewable by Quicktime on Windows machines, and possibly the Gimp on Linux? Unfortunately, the site has been /.ed now, so it will take some time to finish the download and LILO my way into the fun partition and verify.
And I need to reboot Windows anyway before viewing the pict file, because (a)I had to upgrade Quicktime, and (b)Windows is stupid and makes me reboot after every install/patch/upgrade/2 hours of productivity.
Re:Format? (Score:1)
Re:Format? (Score:1)
Since this appears to have been scanned with a Lumisys LS135 desktop scanner, I believe the 9.8 one ('TiXray.orig') is DICOM-compliant.
The viewer I use for DICOMs is MRIcro [nottingham.ac.uk] at 24 bpp. Your mileage may vary.
Re:Format? (Score:1)
This is a format used by medical imaging systems, which includes such interesting information as the name, sex, and age of the patient, how the image was obtained, the size and format of the image, etc. etc.
It is pretty easy to extract the raw pixel data, if that is what you want to do.
ImageJ (Score:2)
Re:Format? (Score:1)
-Henry
Did it. (Score:1)
It's the same (size/res) as the PICT file. Pretty damn exciting.
Re:Format? (Score:1)
Now wtf does it mean?
(And what can open it?)
Re:Format? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1, Redundant)
iXRAY (Score:2, Funny)
FYI (Score:1)
Nerf darts? (Score:1)
Is that good for your computer? (Score:2, Funny)
X-Rays and computers? (Score:1)
Re:X-Rays and computers? (Score:3, Informative)
yeah well now you are the moron. (Score:2)
Re:yeah well now you are the moron. (Score:1)
Re:yeah well now you are the moron. (Score:1)
Sorry, but I'm going to have to call you on that (Score:2)
The properties of EM radation change drastically over the spectrum. For example, visible light is easily blocked by little solid matter, even a 1mm sheet of aluminum is enough to block all but the most intense lights. On the onther hand, radio waves will go right through. That's why you can pick up TV signals in a room, even if little outside light is getting in. Don't assume that the properties of one frequency range of EM radation necessairly apply to another.
Re:X-Rays and computers? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, CMOS EEPROM cells that are designed using buried gate transistors (which is the most common type of EEPROM these days) can be damaged by xrays. If an xray passes through the buried gate to the channel, it'll ionize a bit of the silicon dioxide insulator between the buried gate and the channel. This makes the charge leak out of the buried gate somewhat faster. The more xrays that pass through that area, the more ionization and the faster the charge leaks out. This ionization is irreversable, and causes permanent damage.
Whether the damage actually causes the bit in question to revert to a 1 depends on the strength of the xray source and how long (total across all the sessions) your computer has been bathed. An airline xray machine is unlikely to erase a bit if your machine passes through once. But if you travel a lot, then its almost certain that you'll suffer at least a one-bit error.
In short: don't let the airport security goons xray your laptops, palm pilots, digital cameras, or anything else that has CMOS EEPROM memory.
Every airport security checkpoint in the US has alternate procedures for electronics (generally involving a swab and a "portable" gas chromatograph to search for nitrogen compounds). The goons will argue with you, but it's worth the annoyance.
I've done this in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, San Jose, Seattle, Denver, Sioux City, Minneapolis, and New Orleans. Those airports pretty much run the gamut of size from little podunk warts to huge transport hubs.
The FAA's assertion that airport x-ray machines dont damage electronics is a bald-faced lie.
Re:X-Rays and computers? (Score:2, Informative)
The critical question is, "Will you notice the damage?" We're talking about a one bit error, here.
Take your average PC. You've got pretty much three firmware chips in there: one for the system BIOS, one for the hard drive firmware, and one for the video controller. No matter which firmware suffers the error, there's first a question of whether or not the error is in a memory cell that ever gets accessed, and second whether or not the error changes the value in a way that makes a difference. If we're talking about one of those lame bootup graphics that a lot of manufacturers like these days, you'll probably never notice a one bit error. And if we're talking about code that drives a piece of hardware that you don't have installed (or dont use) you won't notice that error either. But if you get an error in your POST code, you're dead. System BIOSes these days are pretty fluffy. Lots of extraneous stuff in there. Video firmware is also pretty fluffy, but not nearly as bad as system BIOS. And drive firmware is quite tight. Almost any error you get in there will be in some code that gets executed.
But on the other hand, the Intel opcode set is full of lots of unused bits. There are a whole lot of examples where flipping a bit from 0 to 1 doesn't change the opcode or operands. And recall that we're talking about errors that can only change a 0 to a 1; there is no way that xray damage could change a 1 to a 0. If the bit that gets damaged is already a 1 (~50% chance of that) then your dead memory cell is still functioning exactly the way you want... until it comes time to do a firmware upgrade.
So that brings us to the last two issues: given that damage occurs, and given that its noticeable, then how long will it take for you to notice it, and will you ascribe the damage correctly to the airport xray machine? Many users are perfectly happy to ascribe crashes and corruptions to Windows. And while Windows certainly accounts for more than its fair share of errors, on a machine that crashes once every 40 hours, are you going to notice and correctly assign a failure that makes it crash every 39h30m?
Lastly, we're not talking about a bit suddenly changing from 0 to 1. Normally a buried gate transistor will hold its charge for around 150 years (each transistor will be different). No insulator is perfect. You zap it with a single photon, and maybe you've chopped a year off that. Of course, a xray machine isn't going to output a single photon. It's going to bathe your machine in a tremendous number of photons. So maybe one airport xray machine will drop you from 150 years to 130 years (I'm pulling that 20 year figure out of my butt, pretty much, but it's within an order of magnitude of being right). Do it again, and we're down to 110 years (it'll always reduce the life by the same number: a single xray photon opens a single ionizied path in the silicon dioxide, and that single ionized path will saturate at a small fixed current). So after 8 hits in the airport xray machine, you've probably got a number of one bit errors. And then the discussion above about whether or not you'll notice the error and whether or not you ascribe it correctly comes into play.
PS: these days, most microcontrollers, PICs, CPUs, MMUs, and other assorted large chips also have EEPROM cells on board. But in any particular computer, the technology used to design the EEPROM cells in functional chips is usually 5 to 7 years ahead of the technology used to create EEPROM cells in memory chips. That means that if your CPU is using a
Poor Guy... (Score:5, Funny)
(I just got my TiBook, and the airport range is less than spectacular anyway... sigh.)
Re:Poor Guy... (Score:1)
I just got my TiBook, and the airport range is less than spectacular anyway... sigh.
Have you tried other base stations or alternate base station antennas? (Just curious)
Re:Poor Guy... (Score:1)
Have you tried other base stations or alternate base station antennas? (Just curious)
The problem is not the basestation but the fact that the case of the Pb TI is made of
And a titanium case is a very good in keeping radiosignals in or out.
So, Apple had a problem with putting an antenna in the Pb TI.
Their solution is the best they could find.
They put a ceramic antenna on the left side and made some holes in the case.
This does work but it isn't as good as the antenna in for instance the iBook.
That's the drawback of using a titanium case.
Re:Poor Guy... (Score:1)
~Philly
Re:Poor Guy... (Score:1)
the bigger screen alone makes the TiBook worth the extra expense to me, though i've had nothing but frustration with it otherwise (a word of caution: small rocks can get in between the screen and the large, flat expanse of metal when the machine is closed. and if you then proceed to walk around with it in your courier bag for a few hours, you wind up with a very large spot on the screen and marring on the metal. Not Good. i'm going to call apple about this on tuesday, to demand a replacement under warranty, because i consider this to be a design flaw)
Re:Poor Guy... (Score:2)
Learn to keep your tiBook keyboard clean. I mean *really* clean... or try out one of the various 3rd party 'protective sleeves' that are popping up now.
My tiBook is a few months old. Just remember this: when the hinges start flecking paint, those flecks will get on the keys.
And don't worry - the aluminum under the paint actually looks *really* good once the paint is all gone. Buff it!! It's a personal point of pride!
:)
Re:Poor Guy... (Score:1)
i think it's safe to assume that things aren't going to work their way into a closed laptop--i've not had a problem with this on my previous laptops. the marks are at a point where it makes perfect sense for something to have fallen in and gotten wedged, banging and scratching and dinging around for the rest of the day...
Re:Poor Guy... (Score:2)
Anyway, this is something for me to bitch at apple about, not for me to expose myself to public humiliation over.
WARNING!!!!#(*&@( (Score:3, Funny)
DMCA Complaint (Score:5, Funny)
Since the case is secured by a means to prevent access (screws) except as authorized by the copyright holder, you have, in effect, transported a method to bypass said method of "encryption." As such, you have potentially violated rights under the DMCA.
Please remove the description of the x-ray methodology and all links from your site. Failure to do so may make you potentially liable for copyright violation and subject to civil penalties.
DMCA - the Peter Principle of Legislation
Mirror (Score:4, Informative)
TiGutz plain [neversleeps.org]
The 3m and 9m files will half to wait for later
Sexy stuff.
4 circles (Score:2, Funny)
Kinda cool, see the firewire and usb ports, and the dual speakers. Even the 802.11b antenna. The battery doesnt look very hi-tech. lol
Re:4 circles (Score:1)
Re:4 circles (Score:1)
They're belt pulleys for the DVD drive('s suck-loading mechanism, I think).
X-Rays a violation of DMCA? (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:X-Rays a violation of DMCA? (Score:1)
Could the X-raying of electronics be a violation of DMCA? Seems like there might be a lot of copyrighted work in there, right down to the patterning of PCBs.
Of course. But not outside the US.
And second, who does give a shit about the DMCA?
The US is vastly becoming a second world country compared with Europe and the rest of the world.
And the DMCA will only makes this worse.
That happens when you let corporations rule your country instead of your government.
You lose and the corporations win.
Re:X-Rays a violation of DMCA? (Score:1)
Mmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Tech Support (Score:2, Funny)
Richard Gere's ti-book (Score:4, Troll)
Re:Richard Gere's ti-book (Score:2)
Richard Gere? Wouldn't that more likely be something Brodie's [imdb.com] cousin Walter would do?
Re: (Score:1)
OMG (Score:2, Funny)
Desktop? (Score:1)
Re:Desktop? (Score:1)
Okay, didn't pass the lameness filter. Back in my day, we didn't.. bah. Anyway, that's an old screenshot.
Re:Desktop? (Score:1)
Re:Desktop? (Score:1)
Personally, I've gone back to plain old xterm. Tinted, transparent windows are great for showing off and taking screenshots, but unless the transparency allows you to see other windows (most new window managers, including GNOME, E, KDE, AS, and WM, only show the wallpaper in the "transparent" area), it's really sort of useless -- a waste of RAM and CPU cycles. I've been told that OS X has real transparent terminal emulators (with anti-aliased, shadowed text -- ooh!), but I haven't seen this in action. Also, believe it or not, Windows 2000 offers this feature (one of the Windows weenies at the office showed me last week), although it is never used in application programming because the transparent forms aren't supported in Win98, NT4, et cetera.
But if you want transparency , aterm will do it, and seems to be much mroe resource-friendly than eterm.
well for me... it shows up more often (Score:1)
How'd they get that in somebody's mouth? (Score:5, Funny)
Mirror (Score:1, Redundant)
X-Ray? (Score:1)
New desktop backgrounds! (Score:1, Redundant)
AirPort card (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, so that's where the AirPort card slot is in these.
For the humor impaired--yes, I do know where the AirPort card goes. I do believe that the TiBook Engineering team's meeting with Steve Jobs went something like this, however:
Jobs: Wow! That's thin, and sexy! We're going to sell a billion of these! Raises and stock options for everyone! By the way, how do you put the AirPort card in?
TiBook Team: Um, AirPort card?
Jobs: AirPort--and it's Absolutely Vital that the home user be able to install this card by themselves, without fucking anything up--as simple to install as RAM. You've got that in there, right? Otherwise, you're going to be shitting Titanium bricks really soon...
Titanium Team [palming screwdriver]: Oh, right! AirPort! Hahaha, we were just fooling. Of course we have that built in! Too bad we didn't bring a screwdriver to this meeting, we'll show you how to put an AirPort card in at the next meeting! You don't really need two PCMCIA slots, right?
Details from TiXray.orig (Score:2, Informative)
Image Type: ORIGINAL\PRIMARYStudy Date: 20010424Acquisition Date: 20010424Image Date: 20010424Study Time: 154340Acquisition Time: 154532Image Time: 154531Accession Number: TiModality: CRManufacturer: Lumisys Institution Name: Institution Address: Referring Physician's Name: Referring Physician's Telephone Numbers: Station Name: OPACS_SENDERStudy Description: Name of Physician(s) Reading Study: Operator's Name: Administrator Admitting Diagnoses Description: Manufacturer's Model Name: Lumisys LS135 Patient's Name: PowerBook^TitaniumPatient ID: Apple Patient's Birth Date: 20010101Patient's Sex: O Other Patient IDs: Ethnic Group: Additional Patient History: Body Part Examined: Device Serial Number: clt35403.datCassette Orientation: PORTRAITCassette Size: 35CMX43CM Relative X-ray Exposure: 1713View Position: Study ID: c0a865080gq5m8Series Number: 1 Image Number: 1 Photometric Interpretation: MONOCHROME2 Pixel Spacing: 0.172\0.172 Study Priority ID: MED Requesting Physician:
Re:Mac technology in medical imaging? (Score:1)
Imagine having to postpone emergency surgery because the X-Ray techs are too busy restarting their Macs after receiving those friendly "bomb" and "Error: type xx" dialogue boxes
Well, actually.. the reason why they are using Macs is that they are a hunderd times more stable than Windoze.
To be more precice :
Mac's don't crash when they are used.
And contrary to windoze, it is very normal to work more than a month without any crash.
Re:Mac technology in medical imaging? (Score:2)
And contrary to windoze, it is very normal to work more than a month without any crash.
You obviously never owned a Powerbook 5300 or any other Mac running OS 7.5 :(
I love Macs, too, but anyone who would call classic MacOS "stable" is full of shit.
Classic stability... (Score:2)
I had one of those HP Lovecraft moments a few months ago- I began to seriously question my sanity when I realized that the only Mac at work that hadn't been rebooted in over a month was..... my workstation. The one that was used every day, all day- a G4/733 with OS 9.1. The only time it's blown up in the last month was when I attempted to connect a bad firewire drive to it.
For UNIX, that's a fart in a hurricaine. For Windows, it's next to impossible (my boss runs Win2k and reboots at least twice before lunch, the sysadmin for the building cycles his every week or two).... and for the Macintosh OS, I'd thought it propability zero.
Wish I could get that level of uptime on my damned 9500 [G3/333, 196 RAM, Lucent USB, no-name Ethernet, Adaptec SCSI, Infinity and ATI video cards, Sonnet IDE card w/ an IBM and Fujitsu drive.... every piece of gear in the beast is made by a different manufacturer. Wouldn't stay up for more than ten minutes until I put OS X on it.
Re:Mac technology in medical imaging? (Score:1)
Re:Mac technology in medical imaging? (Score:2)
On the other hand OS X is pretty stable. Not as stable as my FreeBSD machine (which is modestly more stable then my Linux box, but that may be hardware related), but pretty good. It did refuse to unsusspend once last month, and it does panic when you umount -f. I also tend to reboot it a little more frequently for upgrades.
Re:Mac technology in medical imaging? (Score:1)
Re:Mac technology in medical imaging? (Score:1)
Re:Proof that slashdot is deleting comments (Score:2, Informative)
Figuring out why, and going back to figure out what other comments we might have missed, is one of our priorities for this coming week.
To the trolls who started this meme, if you are interested in getting these problems fixed rather than just raising a fuss, the next time you find something like this, please submit a SourceForge bug. Thanks. Meanwhile, extended discussion of Slashdot's bugs on a story that's not about testing the Slash code is offtopic and should be moderated as such.