• Paul (unregistered) in reply to Nick

    Is it just me, or is there a WTF when reading this site in Google Reading off the iGoogle home page. For some reason only the Daily WTF articles keep trying to resizing the pop up window and crashing the Firefox session. It really does appear to only be the WTF articles, for the past week or so - had it happen on two different computers too.

  • AntiQuercus (unregistered) in reply to jgoewert
    jgoewert:
    The Huntsman spider is one of the reasons my wife won't let us move to NZ or Australia. She said that if we find a spider like that in our house, we have to just leave and burn the house as it is a total loss.

    Hmm. Nah, huntsman spiders aren't a good reason to not move to Australia.

    Funnel-web spiders, box jellyfish and tiger snakes ARE good reasons though.

    I don't like ticks much either.

  • (cs) in reply to Theresa
    Theresa:
    You forgot about the salties. (saltwater crocodiles for the non-Diggers)
    Don't knock them. They keep the hippos out.
  • kerravon (unregistered) in reply to bsaksida

    Erm...

    a) The operator would probably notice that four cars aren't actually a truck...

    and...

    b) If the point is to say that the laser is more reliable, I'm not convinced, unless the cars are entirely transparent.

  • Georgem (unregistered) in reply to OzPeter
    OzPeter:
    I take it she doesn't know about the *poisonous* spiders that make a huntsman look like a pussy.

    Poisonous spiders? Simple solution to that: don't eat them!

    Now, venomous spiders on the other hand....

  • JayDee (unregistered) in reply to RBoy
    RBoy:
    Eevee:
    Jesus tapdancing christ. Was it really necessary to show me a giant spider at 8 in the morning? Turns out some people are really creeped out by those!

    Move to a different timezone, that should fix the problem.

    No it will still be 8 in the morning where he is.

  • (cs) in reply to iToad
    iToad:
    Rob:
    Zapp Brannigan:
    Anderson Silva:
    OzPeter:
    jgoewert:
    The Huntsman spider is one of the reasons my wife won't let us move to NZ or Australia. She said that if we find a spider like that in our house, we have to just leave and burn the house as it is a total loss.
    I take it she doesn't know about the *poisonous* spiders that make a huntsman look like a pussy. Or the snakes .. you know .. the deadly ones?

    Between the sharks, the snakes, the spiders, and the dingos, there's no reason to ever visit Australia.

    Don't forget the box jelly fish.

    Don't forget the platypus. I saw someone mention that everything was poisonous, even them. I didn't buy it and looked it up. Eeesh, you don't want to get stung (mauled? scratched?) by one of them

    Also, don't forget the Drop Bears.

    Nah, they're not a problem. You just have to remember to smear your hair with vegemite whenever you leave the house.

  • Jim (unregistered)

    TRWTF is : waiting spiders to clean

  • (cs) in reply to Eevee

    So this operator didn't even look at the mirror to see if the beam was obstructed? A big freakin' spider on it should have been hard to miss.

    Eevee:
    Jesus tapdancing christ. Was it really necessary to show me a giant spider at 8 in the morning? Turns out some people are really creeped out by those!
    Agreed very much.

  • aBrase (unregistered)
    Code Dependent:
    ... Oh, wait... there won't be any praying mantises. My booboo. or Oh, wait... there won't be any praying mantes. My booboo. or Oh, wait... there won't be any praying mantis. My booboo. or Oh, wait... there won't be any mantis religiosa. My booboo.
    FTFY
  • IByte (unregistered)

    Too bad the illustration is pretty much a spoiler for the whole story...

  • Grateful not to be Ned Beatty (unregistered) in reply to ChiefDanGeorge
    ChiefDanGeorge:
    I think you have to be in Appalachia to get appellatio.
    Great. Now you're making me remember Deliverance.

    "You've got a purty mouth..."

  • A. Rachno Fobia (unregistered) in reply to Gary Olson
    Gary Olson:
    Warren:
    Could it have been fixed over a web interface?
    Um, the web is usually full of bugs.

    Also, the reflector was already susceptible to web crawlers.

  • St Mary's Hospital for the Correct Taxonomy (unregistered) in reply to i fucking hate insects
    i fucking hate insects:
    I fucking hate insects

    A friend of mine told me once that the most devastating thing you could do to a spider is to use insect spray.

    Which is depressing for the spider because it isn't an insect.

  • Beavis (unregistered) in reply to Wizou

    "You can't fight nature :)"

    Sure you can. You just can't expect there to be no casualties.

    //Doing my part in the war on the environment.

  • nB (unregistered) in reply to jgoewert
    jgoewert:
    The Huntsman spider is one of the reasons my wife won't let us move to NZ or Australia. She said that if we find a spider like that in our house, we have to just leave and burn the house as it is a total loss.
    Ditto here, except it me, not the wife. If that had happened to me I would have screamed like a little girl (done it before), and *never* gone back to that mirror. for any reason. Snakes? Check. Bugs of almost any sort? Check. Puffer fish, fire coral, jellyfish? Check. Spiders? Piss off, I'm outta here.
  • N0G (unregistered)

    Am I the only one who thinks that Scott missed a trick? The spiders could have been employed to clean the mirror.

  • Bite Me (unregistered) in reply to Mel
    Mel:
    You'd be better looking out for a giant weta (again, mostly harmless)...
    Mostly harmless??? Only 1 bite in 4 is poisonous? WTF?
  • noob (unregistered) in reply to Thursday's Geek
    Thursday's Geek:
    Justice:
    I want to believe that picture has been faked somehow. Otherwise, I can only conclude that the child is some sort of Spider Shaman who will one day conjure an army of the beasts and destroy us all.

    Ah, I have pictures of me with my pet tarantula on my face. Spiders can be cute and fuzzy and gentle. I haven't quite worked up my courage to picking up a black widow with my bare hands, but I know it can be done.

    Have you heard of the Darwin Awards?

  • OldCoder (unregistered) in reply to Herby
    Herby:
    Code Dependent:
    al:
    Sensors can be used to make sure that the driver (and/or operator) isn't trying to cheat - keeps the truck fully on the scale. Leaving an axle off the scale will result in a low weight reading.
    In a different life, I drove a concrete truck. One day we had a pour inside a Louisiana-Pacific lumber mill, and they weighed our trucks going in (full) and coming out (empty). After I left the first time, someone at the mill called our dispatcher and told him that based on my truck's weight, I wasn't empty. This proved true on subsequent visits as well; my weight was substantially more than the other trucks. The reason, it turned out, was that I had a "log" in my drum. That's concrete terminology for a buildup of dried concrete on the fins inside the drum.

    Later that week, they rented a big air compressor and a small, hand-held jackhammer and had me get down inside the drum to break it loose. It was hot, nasty work... no air movement and lots of dust (loud as hell, too). I was wearing a mask, but it didn't stop all of the dust. After a while I got a nosebleed. I was going to get out right away, but then inspiration struck. I stayed in the truck for a few more minutes and let the white mask get thoroughly soaked with blood. Then I went in to the dispatcher.

    He took one look and ordered me to clean up and call my wife to come get me. One of the other guys had to get in my drum and finish up, and I got to go home. Hehehe!

    Ohters have mentioned the Mythbusters method for removing the buildup, but on "Dirty Jobs", the guy actually did the jackhammer technique. He mentioned that it really was a VERY dirty job.

    Me? I like the mythbusters method. Much more fun. Don't know the "success ratio", but the "fun ratio" is quite high!

    A common way my father used to clean out concrete/cement mixers (not lorry mounted ones, though) was to fill them half full of water and throw in a couple dozen half bricks/blocks and run it for half an hour or so. The sharp edges usually got rid of most of the dried residue.

  • Toby (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    How about, oh I don't know, a button?

  • Popeye (unregistered) in reply to pjt33

    Weightbridge checks for overweight. If you don't count the wheels then how do you know they are not cheating?

    Captcha - opto - as in you should opto know better than that?

  • Bitter (unregistered) in reply to Inhibeo
    Inhibeo:
    TRWTF is the laser sensor. Surely the weighbridge can detect the presence of a large truck...by its weight?

    Exactly. Any time there are "lazerbeems" involved I always grow suspicious.

  • Advice Dog (unregistered)

    NEWS FLASH

    • there are pictures of spiders on the internet.
    • the internet is not censored for your convenience.
    • there will CONTINUE to be pictures of spiders on the internet.
    • NO, we will NOT take down the spider pictures.

    please consult a therapist if you are still experiencing the anxiety.

    also, [image]

    and one more thing, [image]

  • (cs) in reply to noob
    noob:
    Thursday's Geek:
    Ah, I have pictures of me with my pet tarantula on my face. Spiders can be cute and fuzzy and gentle. I haven't quite worked up my courage to picking up a black widow with my bare hands, but I know it can be done.
    Have you heard of the Darwin Awards?
    The lethality of black widow venom has been overhyped. Fatal reactions are rare.

    It's still not fun, and you should certainly try to avoid being bitten, but a black widow bite probably won't kill a healthy adult

  • (cs) in reply to Nick
    Nick:
    Actually Huntsman spiders fangs can not penetrate human skin. So they are completely harmless.

    That's completely false. The venom is weak. The fangs are plenty long enough to penetrate skin. Most people have a vague allergic reaction to the venom, usually resulting in a rash for a few hours to days. BTW, that's the first time I've this myth applied to Hunsman spiders. Normally it's the Daddy Long Legs spiders that get this one (combined with the venom being the deadliest in the world). Mythbusters have an episode on that one.

    Nick:
    so TRWTF is that your scared of them.
    That part is 100% true.

    Addendum (2009-06-13 02:01): I also agree on the post above mine. The Black Widow is closely related to the Australian Red Back. They are potentially deadly, however healthy adults are unlikely to suffer anything beyond a seriously sick feeling for a few hours. That said, if you get bitten by one, get to a hospital!

  • hsk (unregistered)

    Now that's what I call one serious debugging job.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    Black Widows are mostly harmless. It's the Brown Recluse spider you have to watch out for. Not deadly (usually), but the resulting necrosis can be ugly.

  • Shinobu (unregistered)

    I've heard the phrase ‘It doesn't have any moving parts so nothing can go wrong’ too often to find it funny... As for nature, where I'm living now even the ants don't bite. Boring. But where I used to live, in a dry, sandy part of north-western Europe covered in pine trees, the ants were a lot more interesting. Not deadly, just interesting. There were large black ones, they weren't poisonous but big enough to make you bleed. There were small (5 mm) ones, I believe they're the same ones living here. Maybe they actually do bite but you don't notice because how could you tell? Then there were small red ones, they are aggressive and a bit poisonous, just your average insect sting. And then there were really tiny red ones that were really aggressive, always with thousands and thousands together, and their bites would leave large red spots that would itch for weeks. They get a healthy amount of respect from the local population. ‘They're tiny reds, let's try twenty metres away.’ So if you're gonna picnic in Europe, first check for ants.

  • (cs) in reply to jgoewert
    jgoewert:
    The Huntsman spider is one of the reasons my wife won't let us move to NZ or Australia. She said that if we find a spider like that in our house, we have to just leave and burn the house as it is a total loss.

    WTF? They are not dangerous, just scarely-looking. Declaring the house "a total loss" over a Huntsman spider? She needs to go and work on her phobias.

  • (cs) in reply to pjt33
    pjt33:
    Inhibeo:
    TRWTF is the laser sensor. Surely the weighbridge can detect the presence of a large truck...by its weight?
    That's one half of what I was planning to post. The other hasn't been posted yet: how does a weighbridge work with "no movin' parts"

    One design for a weighbridge is essentially a static metal structure, with a deck on top, and some strategically located strain-gages. It has no "moving" parts in the sense that there are no joints, and any "motion" is due to accumulation of locally minuscule deformations over a long span.

    Such a weighbridge works by ignoring one of the lies told to you in grade school -- that of iron being incompressible. A submerged iron ball, with a strain-gage attached to it (fed to a strain meter), is a simple depth sensor. A steel structure, with a truck on it, deforms enough that if you measure the strain (local deformation) at some key points, you can figure out what the weight of the truck is.

  • (cs) in reply to Me
    Me:
    snoofle:
    Since those scales are usually for fairly large trucks, instead of using a laser beam, why just let the thing be activated only if a certain minimum amount of weight is on the scale? It's unlikely that creepy crawlies, or even a couple of grizzly bears joy riding in a pickup would fool that.

    I would assume the scale itself isn't actually active until the operator presses a button. Once that button was pressed, it would likely kick off a process that weighs the truck for a short period of time (to average fluctuations in weight), then automatically print whatever slip needed printing.

    If the scale is constantly running, even in wait state, you end up wasting a good deal of power.

    A truck scale can use say 5 instrumented columns (load cells). Each column has say a 350 Ohm full-bridge strain gage fed with 10V. That's ~0.3W per column. The signal conditioning, including USB interface, will consume say another 0.5W. We're talking about roughly 2-3W of power. No biggie, the PC running all the time consumes way more than that.

    As for the averaging and whatnot -- that's no biggie either. The software on the PC should be able to run continuously, consuming very little CPU resources. It has to process a whopping few kilobytes of data per second, and the "processing" is quite simple. A PC-based truck scale should be able to figure out when a truck has entered and exited it, and thus be able to auto-tare, all without using any extra sensor. It should also be able to verify the calibration by having a predetermined weight roll over it at a fixed speed (say driving a car at 10mph).

    Also, you could run into a situation where that process is getting inadvertantly kicked off everytime something of significant weight (deer, bear, whatever) happens upon the platform.

    Trucks don't weigh what a deer/bear would. Also, a scale that uses multiple columns is able to measure the center of pressure. There's a very distinct motion in the center of pressure as a truck enters and exists the scale, and the axles go on/off the scale. To a point where just by looking at the scale's output you can figure how many axles the truck has. Figuring out that there's a deer/bear/whatever, but not a truck, on the scale, is very simple.

    A decent truck scale gives you enough data that you should be able to determine how many cylinders does the truck's diesel engine has.

    With the engine turned off, and the driver standing on the weighbridge, you should be able to tell the driver's heart and respiration rates, too. Heartbeat thrusts a good deal of blood out the aorta, and that gives a very noticeable kick to whatever you're standing on. Furthermore, heartrate is modulated by respiration, so those two can be separated out. Perhaps an el-cheapo scale won't be running a decent enough data acquisition system for that, but these days a 24 bit ADC runs ~$10/channel and that's all you need to measure what I'm talking about. You should get roughly 1/200,000 resolution at a 50Hz sampling rate.

    All it takes is some signal processing.

    Addendum (2009-06-13 16:47): I'd also posit that from such scale's signal, you can easily differentiate between a bear and a deer, just by looking at the hoof/paw spikes. Heck, probably one can literally have an automated "bear alert" in the scale's software as an Easter egg. If you ever implement it, I wouldn't mind being credited with the idea ;-)

  • Yanman (unregistered) in reply to Forumtroll
    Forumtroll:
    That's one half of what I was planning to post. The other hasn't been posted yet: how does a weighbridge work with "no movin' parts"?

    Wel, it is obvious that you don't know how the flightstick in an F-16 works. The F-16 integrated flightstick is mounted without movable parts inside the cockpit, and does not register movement displacement, but rather the force applied to the central axis of the stick. I guess this "low-tech" weightbridge works from the same principal.

    Which is exactly why I prefer flying the F-16 than say, the trainer jets we use ( Alpha Jet ).

    Funny related detail: The Mig-15 was a better airplane, but it still got beaten by the F-86, because the F-86 had easier stick control, resulting in less workload, resulting in less fatigue, resulting in a dogfight win.

  • Patty-O (unregistered) in reply to Theresa

    A story in reply to one of the comments; a friend & his girlfriend went to northeastern Australia and stayed at some coastal tourist centre there for two days. There were lots of hiking trails around, but they wouldn't be guided around the place until the morning after, when the guide was available. So they asked the receptionist in the hotel:

    "Hey - we saw the ocean down there by the road, and we were thinking about taking a walk there, do you think it's safe and okay?"

    The receptionist replied it was, and down they went strolling on the absolutely beauuuuutiful beach. But they soon reached the point where a creek flowed out into the ocean, and the beach continued much more beautifully on the other side. So they agreed to cross it and continue, and started wading through the creek. Brown murky water that you couldn't see anything through. Almost sorta scary-looking. It looked much shallower than it was. So after having waded abit the water started reaching their waists, and they agreed to turn around and go back. So they went back up to the tourist centre.

    The morning after, the guide asked all visitors if they had a nice arrival and what they spent yesterday doing. When he got to my friend & girlfriend; "...and how about you?" "Oh, we went down to the beach and had a walk! :D" The guides face went from grinning to seriously concerned. "...the beach? So you went down to the beach. And what did you do on the beach?" They proceeded to tell him about the beauty of it, laughing through the story, mentioning the adventure of trying to wade through the creek. All blood drained from the guides face, and he went absolutely silent for a moment. After which he soberly informed them that that was no swimming beach, swimming is forbidden due to the entire beach being home to a grand number of 5 metre saltwater crocodiles. They especially like to be swimming around alittle further down the beach in the murky water where the creek meets the ocean.

    He proceeded to go smack the receptionist ontop the head.

    You forgot about the salties. (saltwater crocodiles for the non-Diggers)
  • verto (unregistered) in reply to b
    b:
    Or of course the Irukandji Jellyfish.

    To quote from wikipedia:

    "tiny and extremely venomous ... no larger than a fingernail... a very small amount of venom [causes] excruciating muscle cramps in the arms and legs, severe pain in the back and kidneys, and a burning sensation of the skin and face), headaches, nausea, restlessness, sweating, vomiting, high heart rate and blood pressure.

    There is no known antidote. Morphine will not help reduce the pain."

    Have fun at the beach kids! :-)

    Magnesium sulphate is used as of 2007 to treat Irukandji syndrome.

  • letatio (unregistered) in reply to Shinobu
    Shinobu:
    I've heard the phrase ‘It doesn't have any moving parts so nothing can go wrong’ too often to find it funny... As for nature, where I'm living now even the ants don't bite. Boring. But where I used to live, in a dry, sandy part of north-western Europe covered in pine trees, the ants were a lot more interesting. Not deadly, just interesting. There were large black ones, they weren't poisonous but big enough to make you bleed. There were small (5 mm) ones, I believe they're the same ones living here. Maybe they actually do bite but you don't notice because how could you tell? Then there were small red ones, they are aggressive and a bit poisonous, just your average insect sting. And then there were really tiny red ones that were really aggressive, always with thousands and thousands together, and their bites would leave large red spots that would itch for weeks. They get a healthy amount of respect from the local population. ‘They're tiny reds, let's try twenty metres away.’ So if you're gonna picnic in Europe, first check for ants.

    I used to tease ants as a kid, youknow the normal stuff, like mixing together chemicals and pouring it over them just to watch their exo skeleton melt and stuff like that. I got bitten a lot. As a result I developed an immunity to most of their bites. ;) Now, as a grownup I have a rather thick skin so I hardly even feel the bite of the large ants.

  • Transport Compliance (unregistered) in reply to bsaksida
    bsaksida:
    Inhibeo:
    TRWTF is the laser sensor. Surely the weighbridge can detect the presence of a large truck...by its weight?

    If you put 4 cars on that bridge, they will say it is a truck

    I reckon they'd activate the sensor too.....

  • Transport Compliance (unregistered) in reply to Me
    Me:
    snoofle:
    Since those scales are usually for fairly large trucks, instead of using a laser beam, why just let the thing be activated only if a certain minimum amount of weight is on the scale? It's unlikely that creepy crawlies, or even a couple of grizzly bears joy riding in a pickup would fool that.

    I would assume the scale itself isn't actually active until the operator presses a button. Once that button was pressed, it would likely kick off a process that weighs the truck for a short period of time (to average fluctuations in weight), then automatically print whatever slip needed printing.

    If the scale is constantly running, even in wait state, you end up wasting a good deal of power. Also, you could run into a situation where that process is getting inadvertantly kicked off everytime something of significant weight (deer, bear, whatever) happens upon the platform.

    How does a laser stop inadvertent kickoffs, each time a deer/bear/whatever passes it??

  • Adam Savage (unregistered) in reply to Code Dependent
    Code Dependent:
    al:
    Sensors can be used to make sure that the driver (and/or operator) isn't trying to cheat - keeps the truck fully on the scale. Leaving an axle off the scale will result in a low weight reading.
    In a different life, I drove a concrete truck. One day we had a pour inside a Louisiana-Pacific lumber mill, and they weighed our trucks going in (full) and coming out (empty). After I left the first time, someone at the mill called our dispatcher and told him that based on my truck's weight, I wasn't empty. This proved true on subsequent visits as well; my weight was substantially more than the other trucks. The reason, it turned out, was that I had a "log" in my drum. That's concrete terminology for a buildup of dried concrete on the fins inside the drum.

    Later that week, they rented a big air compressor and a small, hand-held jackhammer and had me get down inside the drum to break it loose. It was hot, nasty work... no air movement and lots of dust (loud as hell, too). I was wearing a mask, but it didn't stop all of the dust. After a while I got a nosebleed. I was going to get out right away, but then inspiration struck. I stayed in the truck for a few more minutes and let the white mask get thoroughly soaked with blood. Then I went in to the dispatcher.

    He took one look and ordered me to clean up and call my wife to come get me. One of the other guys had to get in my drum and finish up, and I got to go home. Hehehe!

    There are easier ways to clean concrete Trucks

  • Adam Savage (unregistered) in reply to Jasmine
    Jasmine:
    Good for you that a spider is not an insect. Personally, I don't mind spiders in my house, and I can't say I understand why people are so afraid of them - 99% of them are perfectly harmless.

    Depends where you live, and where the 1% of harmful spiders live. If I lived near the 99% harmless spiders I probably wouldn't mind....

  • Mod (unregistered) in reply to Thursday's Geek
    Thursday's Geek:
    Justice:
    I want to believe that picture has been faked somehow. Otherwise, I can only conclude that the child is some sort of Spider Shaman who will one day conjure an army of the beasts and destroy us all.

    Ah, I have pictures of me with my pet tarantula on my face. Spiders can be cute and fuzzy and gentle. I haven't quite worked up my courage to picking up a black widow with my bare hands, but I know it can be done.

    I know someone who has studied spiders and is quite comfortable having Red-Backs running up and down his arm. He also seemed to think it was funny encouraging his (6-year old) daughter to play with trap-door nests (I must admit they're pretty cool, but they still give me the hibber-jibbers).

  • Mod (unregistered) in reply to Anderson Silva
    Anderson Silva:
    OzPeter:
    jgoewert:
    The Huntsman spider is one of the reasons my wife won't let us move to NZ or Australia. She said that if we find a spider like that in our house, we have to just leave and burn the house as it is a total loss.
    I take it she doesn't know about the *poisonous* spiders that make a huntsman look like a pussy. Or the snakes .. you know .. the deadly ones?

    Between the sharks, the snakes, the spiders, and the dingos, there's no reason to ever visit Australia.

    The sharks only take surfie fucks, and frankly the world can do without them. The snakes hang around in the scrub/bush (whatever you want to call it) and only come to backyards that are overgrown and have an old Ford or Holden buried in the backyard (also tend not to be in inner suburbia, although I think the outer reaches of most cities may get them). The spiders tend to hang around in backyards and sheds, but bites are actually quite rare (and despite how venomous some are, deaths are actually quite rare) Dingos make nice pets (unless you have a baby).

    Yep, Australia is certainly not for wussy Americans. But hey, we like it how it is here without them, and those of us who haven't been killed by our fauna yet quite enjoy living here.

  • Dogga through and through (unregistered) in reply to iToad
    iToad:
    Rob:
    Zapp Brannigan:
    Anderson Silva:
    OzPeter:
    jgoewert:
    The Huntsman spider is one of the reasons my wife won't let us move to NZ or Australia. She said that if we find a spider like that in our house, we have to just leave and burn the house as it is a total loss.
    I take it she doesn't know about the *poisonous* spiders that make a huntsman look like a pussy. Or the snakes .. you know .. the deadly ones?

    Between the sharks, the snakes, the spiders, and the dingos, there's no reason to ever visit Australia.

    Don't forget the box jelly fish.

    Don't forget the platypus. I saw someone mention that everything was poisonous, even them. I didn't buy it and looked it up. Eeesh, you don't want to get stung (mauled? scratched?) by one of them

    Also, don't forget the Drop Bears.

    Can't help but think all these nasties were invented to keep the yanks out!!

  • Kevin Rudd (unregistered) in reply to acid
    acid:
    jgoewert:
    The Huntsman spider is one of the reasons my wife won't let us move to NZ or Australia. She said that if we find a spider like that in our house, we have to just leave and burn the house as it is a total loss.

    For Heaven's sake man, hope she never hears about our funnelwebs, tiapans, sharks...

    8 out of of the most poisonous snakes on Earth live Down under. Half the shark attacks and fatalities around the world happen off our shores. And the animal that causes the most damage to Aussie vehicles is the (not so) humble wombat. Basically, think Besser Brick wrapped in fur.

    Oh, and this isn't even touching on the time I was leaving work late one evening and a 7' Big Grey (a kangaroo) was waiting for me at the office entrance and followed me all the way down to my car. I thought I was going to get rolled for an energy drink or something. And THIS was in our fair nation's capital.

    Oh, and Huntsmen are basically harmless, just LOOK scary. If you have them in your house here in Oz, it's a good thing. You get less insects that way, and they're the REAL problem. Especially up North with all the risk of Ross River Fever, Malaria, etc.

    And we haven't even touched on how many people die in our deserts every year. Or the fires, drought, and floods, sometimes all at the same time in different parts of the land.

    Still, it's great. It keeps the wusses out of our fair nation, and the real heroes like the fire fighters, flying doctors etc. wanting to stay.

    Oz - if you don't have a set, don't bother coming. :)

    Except Canberra's Kangaroos (Eastern Grey) don't quite grow to 7' (and who in australia uses feet anyway {other than the Kangaroos to kick you ;) } - 2.1m ) - Even Red Kangaroos (the biggest species) rarely grow to 6'6". (http://www.usc.edu.au/University/AbouttheUniversity/History/Environment/Kangaroo.htm

    Mind you, have seen plenty of them wandering around.... They seem (for some reason) to be particularly attracted to Defence Establishments and Universities. I think Kangaroos might be some of the Government spooks, but that's more classified than I'm allowed to see.

  • Jim (unregistered) in reply to Buzzard
    Buzzard:
    They may live in Australia, but NOT in NZ.
    Err..Yeah they do. The Avondale Spider IS The Huntsman.

    Mind you, as thousands have commented, they're not really the ones you need to be afraid of.

  • Always (unregistered) in reply to 50% Opacity
    50% Opacity:
    al:
    Sensors can be used to make sure that the driver (and/or operator) isn't trying to cheat - keeps the truck fully on the scale. Leaving an axle off the scale will result in a low weight reading.

    Not a problem to be solved technically, now is it? Especially if there's an operator around. With the sensor failing, two people were trying to get a machine to do the job that the one operator could've done alone.

    Why solve problems with process with Technology?

  • hasd;g (unregistered) in reply to Bite Me
    Bite Me:
    Mel:
    You'd be better looking out for a giant weta (again, mostly harmless)...
    Mostly harmless??? Only 1 bite in 4 is poisonous? WTF?
    Just gotta hope he hasn't already bitten 3 people...
  • m0ffx (unregistered) in reply to Kuba
    Kuba:
    With the engine turned off, and the driver standing on the weighbridge, you should be able to tell the driver's heart *and* respiration rates, too. Heartbeat thrusts a good deal of blood out the aorta, and that gives a very noticeable kick to whatever you're standing on. Furthermore, heartrate is modulated by respiration, so those two can be separated out. Perhaps an el-cheapo scale won't be running a decent enough data acquisition system for that, but these days a 24 bit ADC runs ~$10/channel and that's all you need to measure what I'm talking about. You should get roughly 1/200,000 resolution at a 50Hz sampling rate.

    All it takes is some signal processing.

    And some bullshitting. It's not about the ADC, what matters is the precision on the strain gauge itself. Which isn't going to be 6 decimal places - while that's available, it's needlessly expensive. Analogue noise in the system, prior to the ADC, will overwhelm the signals you're trying to detect. And then there's air motion.

  • Shinobu (unregistered)

    @Abrase: or: Oh, wait... there won't be any mantes religiosæ. My booboo.

  • Tom (unregistered) in reply to Fry

    I'm with you. They don't even sound similar!

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