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Mod parent up! Vacuum tube making is really an intricate art. However, just because it WAS complicated doesn't mean that it HAD to be... It needn't be any more difficult than making a light-bulb (which is much simpler than semiconductor manufacturing).

The chemistry of state-of-the-art tube-making is very complex, but I think that if you were only expecting to switch it less than the kilohertz range (which would still be 100 times faster than a mechanical or relay-based computer), you'd be able to avoid many of the problems you are talking about. I think the reliability issue is the key. You could probably get around the issue by over-engineering the tubes, i.e. making everything larger, with thicker glass and such, and periodic maintenance.

Also, you might have to operate the tubes in a way that actually takes advantage of the residual gas in the tubes. I'm not saying the computer would be a state-of-the-art tube computer, merely that you could make one with pretty rudimentary skills compared to what's required for semiconductor technology. Besides that, your medieval electrical infrastructure would be uniform: vacuum diodes, light-bulbs, and vacuum-tubes.

One big problem is this:

What are you going to use for a filament? Either you need the cathode to be doped with thorium, or you would need to be able to mine and refine tungsten (preferably both thorium and tungsten), which would require some decent chemistry... Yeah, I think you'd have to have a source of tungsten, though I think you could do without thorium.

This site is cool: http://home.earthlink.net/~lenyr/hm-triode.htm It talks about how this guy made a vacuum tube using a light bulb and some other parts, with an inexpensive vacuum pump.

I believe the following is the earliest example of a popular (at the time) site that received a Cease-and-Desist letter and responded by posting it for everyone to see:

http://www.ibiblio.org/elvis/manatt.html

Also see the following articles which mention it:

http://home.earthlink.net/~barefootjim/writing/websight/websight1.html
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1997/web.whatnext/hit.miss/hit06.html

Of course, posting such letters has been the standard response ever since. Interesting that it took this long for someone to try copyrighting their letter to try to prevent this...

You youngsters and your simpleton slide rules. Try a real one that makes you use that noggin of yours. http://home.earthlink.net/~apendragn/runish/sliderule/index.html

this will just play into the hands of our detractors who can now claim that 'Open Source Really Is Like Communism' (never mind that it was invented by an American... ;-)

at least i'm trying to be funny...

j

--
open source -- in the long tradition of libraries, liberty, and threefolding...

I've used Eudora since the '90s, up until I released switched from Windows to both Linux and OS X, I bought a PC with Linux preinstalled almost a year ago and a couple of weeks ago got a new Macbook Pro. Since switching I've only used webmail, my ISP Earthlink offers users access their email by the web, Webmail. Now that the new Eudora has been released I can setup it up and import my old email. At least on my new Mac, now I just need to figure out to do it on my Linux PC.

1. Tithing (Deuteronomy 14:22ff) was not a tax. The best we could probably compare it with is a tribute in the style represented in Hitite (and other Ancient Near East) Suzerain-Vassal treaties. (See Mendenhall's "Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East, http://home.earthlink.net/~cadman777/Law_Cov_Mende nhall_TITLE.htm originally printed in Biblical Archeology magazine.

2. Giving outside tithing required? Can you cite this so I can look it up? The only thing I can think of is the offerings taken to build Solomon's temple, and those were strictly voluntary.

3. I would agree that initially Israel had a religious state, and that originally the Levites (among other things) handled the issues you mentioned.

4. Punishable by death? I can only assume you're thinking of Ananias and Sapphira. In the record, God killed them for lying, not for failure to comply to any giving requirements. Peter even told them that their resources were their own, to use as they saw fit. (Acts 5:1-11)

Dream on.
The oil gets expensive.
The alternatives do well.
The oil gets cheaper.
The alternatives die.
It is a cycle.
Just watch.
We have plenty of oil and the alternatives are a joke.
http://home.earthlink.net/~root.man/peak.html

Computer Eye, formerly Computerworld (1983); backcover with synopsis.

Just a reminder.

CC.

I suppose that any function with a vertical asymptote or the inverse of any function with a zero all grow to infinity in finite time, but that's wierd non-integer stuff. Busy Beavers apparently grow faster than any recursive function which would include Ackermann's.

This page talks about huge numbers and ways to define them.

Mark Tilden is the father of robots that mimic biology. What he has clearly demonstrated is that behavior, especially in insects, obeys very simple rules.

His insect robots have almost no processing power and yet mimic the behavior of real bugs very well.

Based on Tilden's experience, it would seem that these lizard? experimenters may actually be on the right path.

http://home.earthlink.net/~douglaspage/id25.html

Probably relevant articles:

Apple Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 35 F.3d 1435 (9th Cir. 1994), aka the "Look and Feel case" on Wikipedia, and the actual ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The MIT AI Lab has a fairly good introduction to the basis for the current U.S. software IP system, including what elements are typically protected by copyright and which by patents. (Basically: "Expression" = copyright; "idea/implementation" = patent, "concept" = (hopefully) neither.)

DING! DING! DING! As I have said in many previous posts, this is exactly what I do now. I'll get off my fat ass (figuratively speaking) and put the dishes away or wash dirty dishes, play with my cat, put clothes away, etc. Anything for those two minutes commercials are on.

I even wrote a short piece on how bad things have gotten.

I'm just about ready to drop Comcast due to:

A) rising prices but no additional channels
B) removal of a channel from New York so I can't get my cute asian babe fix every morning and not getting a reduction in my bill or a replacement channel
C) the continual theft of the last ten minutes of every half hour segment of CNN Headline News by having it replaced with their, Comcast's, crappy "news" channel.

Shall I quote Princess Leia and how the tighter one closes their grip the more slip through their hands?

Thanks for the links!

Yeah, talk about "who the hell?" -- looked thru the Radio1190 playlist and didn't see a single name I recognised, which as you say is often a very *good* thing! First song that went by didn't catch me, but the schedule looks sufficiently eclectic that at least some will appeal to me -- rather like KGLT (Montana State U), where I used to DJ :)

KEXP -- first song I heard was by Harvey Danger, which instantly endeared 'em to me :)

Added 'em both to my little list o'stations :)
http://home.earthlink.net/~thesandpit/misc/streami ngaudio.htm

Couldn't get a feed from any of the ?MP3? streams on PenguinRadio (and this machine doesn't do WMP) but the choices do look interesting; will try again later.

Don't worry about the hiphip/R&B link, my ears tend to run away screaming when I hear it :)

It is thought by most that transistors were the first semiconductor amplifiers (ie. device that can give gain). That is not true. Iron pyrites negative tunnel diodes were built in the 1920s http://home.earthlink.net/~lenyr/iposc.htm. Esaki got the Nobel Prize for discovering tunnelling in 1973, almost 50 years later http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_diode

EarthLink's Webmail and it limits to only THREE attachments. So in order to attach more than three or a quick way to attach multiple as one shot, I just zip up the images into a single zip file. Since most people can view zip files (XP and Vista have unzip and zip capabilities), this won't be a problem.

Troll? Fuck you.

Dont Bother emailing to tell her how stupid she is... I apologize for this automatic reply to your email. To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand. If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience. Click the link below to fill out the request: https://webmail.pas.earthlink.net/wam/addme?a=dssh ell@ix.netcom.com&id=1hsDj92nS3Nl36L1

'Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add,
    but rather when there is nothing more to take away'. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

as a technical writer for ten years, i've found the best book on the subject
for people who aren't designers is: Robin William's Non-Designer's Design Book.

it covers the four basic principles of Design:

1) Proximity: Make sure than when you Poke button X, status indicator Y is PROXIMATE to X.

2) Alignment: Don't start things out on a new Arbitrary Visual Margin, reuse existing Bounding Rectangles to ALIGN things to each other.

3) Repetition: Don't use a different icon for the same thing; consistently use the same Motif throughout.

4) Contrast: If two elements are not exactly the same, make them distinguishably different.

all the best,
j

Earthlink has a way of opting out.

Also, Earthlink has been doing this for months, which is why I recently replaced the DNS servers that have been burned into my skull since working there in 1998.

Earthlink still has their version Sitefinder. Charter will likely continue with this bad idea. Others will likely follow.

At least Earthlink offers "opt out servers" that function properly.

Also some screenshots and more information here:

http://home.earthlink.net/~mrob/pub/missile20.html :)

Man, if you're getting 2 cm sparks out of your sofa, according to Paschen's Law, that works out to about 61 KV. Zap!

And here I'm sitting in front of a clone that started life 13 years ago... has had two major upgrades, but the only component that ever failed was the original 2x CDROM (door belt broke at 6 yrs old), and the original mobo got killed by a keyboard short. I've got a dozen more clones with like longevity and reliability... and most were built from salvaged parts, at little or no cost.

Multiple component failures like you describe are usually not that component, but rather, secondary to a bad power supply. Over time, marginal voltage or microspikes will damage chips and fill a HD full of bad spots. -- In my experience, in an OEM machine the single component most likely to fail is the PSU, followed by the motherboard. IMO the *real* reason OEM mobos fail so often is a direct result of the fact that OEMs invariably use the most minimal PSU they can get away with. (Conversely, clone mobos very seldom fail.)

I've heard nothing good about Gateway laptops, but LIS laptops are not my area of expertise. My remarks were all about desktop systems.

I started using LiteOn optical drives about 6 years ago; tried one because several clone dealers that I trust told me they never had to do warranty replacements on them. Now I've got about a dozen assorted LiteOn drives, none have failed, and both readers and writers have done multiple marathon sessions. -- My Plextor CDRW is just as reliable, but cost 3x as much.

In my experience LiteOns put way less drag on the system (burning is CPU-intensive, and normally you need at least a P2-300 to avoid burning coasters -- but a LiteOn CDRW works fine on my old P233), they run relatively quiet and cool (unlike my Plextor which runs hot, and I've had 3 Yamahas literally cook themselves to death), and I've yet to see one burn a coaster that was the drive's fault (I get maybe one bad burn per 100 disks, invariably because Nero just came to a halt for no reason). And they do pretty well at extracting data from damaged disks.

I know there have been a lot of drive failures in the LiteOn 5005 PVR units, but I'm suspicious that those are built with outsourced drives, or ship with bad firmware, or something like that. Some people have replaced the original burner with off-the-shelf LiteOn DVD-RWs, and their problems went away.

BTW if you're curious about my wild assortment of computers, most of 'em are listed here: http://home.earthlink.net/~rividh/pc/the_borg.htm

Qaba was built entirely from other folks' trash; the case and mobo are all that's left of the original eMachine. Tinker (the Dell) was given to me cuz original owner couldn't get it to stop crashing; I downgraded the CPU, and the problem went away. Seems Dell used a mobo that was two years older tech than the CPU, and they didn't like each other much. Xorro (the Compaq) was a castoff; it's reliable enough, but the design is hideous and the hardware is hell to work on. The Mac fell on my head; it runs okay, but feels unloved (and WTF is with the sub-normal capacity DVD-RAM drive?!) Dink, Gremlin, and Argo are my everyday machines that run 24/7/365.

Wishing you better luck henceforth with all your computers, of any species!

Home flywheels. I used to have some much better links bookmarked, but here's what a quick google search turned up:
http://home.earthlink.net/~fradella/homepage.htm

In a related note, it was this article in Discover magazine back in the day that influenced my decision to go into engineering. It's a shame we've never seen anything come of it.

The culling of brain cells is a necessary part of organizing the brain along certain pathways and not others ...

For a good example, cats lose 2/3 of their brain cells before adulthood.

Humans lose half

We know that children of about age eight have twice as many brain cells, and twice as many neuron connections between brain cell as do adults. After age 8, the brains of children begin to cull out brain cells and the interconnections between brain cells, and to reorganize its connections.

Think of it as a maze - the culling removes all the dead ends, and keeps the useful highways and roads.

Without this culling, you'd have MORE random posts on /., not fewer :-)

Of all of the possible uses of Nuclear power, using it to power a rocket out of the atmosphere is perhaps the last one I'd want to see actually implemented.

1. Throium Nuclear reactor to make the hot parts safer than your car's gasoline engine.
   
2. Hydrogen as the reaction mass (yes, you still need reaction mass) so no secondary active radionuclides get made.
   
3. ????
   
4. Orbit?
   

I'm sure it'd be trivial compared to the spread of radioactive particles from coal power plants.

I think you meant Hee Haw.

BTW; I think you are thinking of "Jury Nullification", only the Supreme Court can do the 'unconstitutional' bit. And at that you are right that Judges have about nullified the right of "Jury Nullification".

I think Judge Gray, and the City of Tuttle's city manager Jerry A. Taylor, must be roomies... they display about the same level of awareness... and incompetence.

The problem is that Google has a monopoly on web search

As it is, Google is using its web search monopoly as leverage to promote its non-search products...

Is The Plague working for Microsoft now?

I encountered something equally silly in IE5, where what text was inside a table determined whether a border-width bug manifested. Sometimes just omitting punctuation changed what it did.

Here's screenshots, with the culprit text hilighted:

http://home.earthlink.net/~rividh/kennel/news/tabl ebug/ammo_02_tablebug_comp2.gif

The original page: http://home.earthlink.net/~rividh/kennel/news/tabl ebug/ammo_02_tablebug.htm

My disbelieving attempts to pin down the bug:
http://home.earthlink.net/~rividh/kennel/news/tabl ebug/ie5_tableborder_bug.htm

The bug is also in later IE versions, but manifests at completely different points. Even a different *build* of IE5.00 manifests it differently.

It's a freakin' table with a default border and nothing unusual inside it. How hard can rendering that be??!

I encountered something equally silly in IE5, where what text was inside a table determined whether a border-width bug manifested. Sometimes just omitting punctuation changed what it did.

Here's screenshots, with the culprit text hilighted:

http://home.earthlink.net/~rividh/kennel/news/tabl ebug/ammo_02_tablebug_comp2.gif

The original page: http://home.earthlink.net/~rividh/kennel/news/tabl ebug/ammo_02_tablebug.htm

My disbelieving attempts to pin down the bug:
http://home.earthlink.net/~rividh/kennel/news/tabl ebug/ie5_tableborder_bug.htm

The bug is also in later IE versions, but manifests at completely different points. Even a different *build* of IE5.00 manifests it differently.

It's a freakin' table with a default border and nothing unusual inside it. How hard can rendering that be??!

I encountered something equally silly in IE5, where what text was inside a table determined whether a border-width bug manifested. Sometimes just omitting punctuation changed what it did.

Here's screenshots, with the culprit text hilighted:

http://home.earthlink.net/~rividh/kennel/news/tabl ebug/ammo_02_tablebug_comp2.gif

The original page: http://home.earthlink.net/~rividh/kennel/news/tabl ebug/ammo_02_tablebug.htm

My disbelieving attempts to pin down the bug:
http://home.earthlink.net/~rividh/kennel/news/tabl ebug/ie5_tableborder_bug.htm

The bug is also in later IE versions, but manifests at completely different points. Even a different *build* of IE5.00 manifests it differently.

It's a freakin' table with a default border and nothing unusual inside it. How hard can rendering that be??!

I seem to recall seeing a chart saying a 1910 penny was the equivalent to about 4 of todays dollars, but i can't find the chart anymore...i may not be remembering this correctly, this was a few years back. It's also interesting to look at some stock index charts that have been inflation adjusted. http://home.earthlink.net/~intelligentbear/com-dj- infl.htm

cheers ;)

Roach - just FYI, there is no time limit on the challenge response (I work for EarthLink). If the link in the auto-reply fails, it means the user viewed and deleted your message. They still get all the original messages, just in a special folder separate from their Inbox. I'm going post an entry on my EarthLink Web Mail Blog about how that user-controlled challenge response does work, to clear up misinformation. Regards.

I write Earthling, EarthLink's blog. I spoke to Stephen Currie from our email team this morning and published some more information from him on the issue over on Earthling.

3. THE SERVICE Depending on the type of Service that you choose, the Service may include internet access, software, hardware, email, webspace...

THE SERVICES ARE PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS. EARTHLINK DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICES WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE OR FREE OF VIRUSES, OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS. So while it sounds like its horrible customer service, it doesn't sound like they're in any danger of being sued.

Dream on.
Only idiots believe that.
Controlled demolition.
Do some research.
http://home.earthlink.net/~root.man/911.html

At full throttle (7 TeV beams), the energy stored in the LHC beam is 700 MegaJoules, or 10 TeraWatts of power while the beam is dumped. How big is that? Well, 10 TeraWatts is about half of the world's total instantaneous power output. No wonder the accelerator folks are a bit jittery! They don't want to dump 10 TeraWatts of beam just anywhere...

Here's a picture (courtesy of Tom LeCompte) to illustrate this point. The kinetic energy of battleship guns is 300 Megajoules, or just less than half that of the full LHC beam. Now we understand why the machine folks want to be a bit cautious...

This is the same team that gave us Windows CEMENT XP

This is one of the longest running, most prevalent urban legends. See 1, 2, 3.

I want people trying to influence this election unfairly to be Americans

Don't worry, my friend! Whether you're interested in hacked voting machines or hackable paper ballot scanners, the company that promised to deliver the 2004 election to Bush will see you through the next Republican landslide election!

Absolutely! Hey, Gary Larson was thrilled to have an owl louse named after him:

Strigiphilus garylarsoni Clayton, ~1989 (owl louse) "I considered this an extreme honor. Besides, I knew no one was going to write and ask to name a new species of swan after me. You have to grab these opportunities when they come along." - Gary Larson

One of my professors drives an old truck that he converted to an EV. He gives a short overview here (towards the bottom): http://home.earthlink.net/~alcompaan/

Actually Earthlink has a cool patched linksys image with ipv6, with the same web interface as the original one, plus with a ipv6 page for easy configuration.
I recommend it for anyone with a linksys and who are ready to check it out.
Rgds
Daxomatic

those aliens will be pissed we replaced their favorite show "single female lawyer" with two silly naked people.

we want McNeal!!!

Artificial Intelligence is coming a lot sooner than 2020.

The Singularity Timetable predicts True AI in 2006; an AI landrush in 2007; human-level AI by 2008; and Superintelligent AI by 2012.

AI has been solved in both theory for neuroscience and software for robots.

A theory of artificial intelligence has been implemented in Forth for robots and in JavaScript for tutorial artificial intelligence.

AI in Forth is free, open-source artificial intelligence for robots.

JavaScript for Artificial Intelligence describes how even a simple language like JavaScript is ideal for instructional artificial intelligence tutorials.

The Joint Stewardship of Earth will be in effect long before the year 2020.

Turing Store Books tells you all about the very most important writings by human beings about the coming artificial intelligence.

Mind.html in JavaScript has an enormous installed user base and can no longer be stopped from engendering a global AI Mind by 2020 if not sooner.