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Maybe you should look up the meanings of THEN and THAN. I thought the meanings were common knowledge, and there are lots of articles on the subject.

All in jest, but "AV forums buzzing" does not make something "common knowledge". Simple grammar rules such as when to use than or then SHOULD be common knowledge, however that is much too optimistic for slashdot :D.

How about this?

NB: I'm not the original AC you're arguing with. Anyway, some years ago I saw a video where a japanese scientist presented real-time image segmentation. It was quite cool, video looked like cartoons or animated comics.

While I realize that 'begging the question' is supposed to be a logical fallacy, I have never heard it used any other way than to mean 'raises the question.' And while I realize that my experiences and its use on TV and in movies are not the gold standard of the English language, at some point the language evolves.

Just think of all those English teachers in school that railed against ending sentences with prepositions. This particular 'grammatical error' was actually common to some of English's greatest writers, then went out of fashion in the 17th century, only to become accepted again more recently. Some people make it a point of pride to be uber-conscious of grammar, and cling to these little arbitrary rules to make themselves feel cultured or intelligent or something, but the point of language is to communicate something. If the person understands a phrase to mean X, and everyone generally understands that phrase to mean X as well, then the phrase means X. The fact that you understood 'begs the question' to mean what the submitter intended just shows what it really has come to mean. You can pretend that you are part of an exclusive group in the know ("Most of us won't say anything"), but the fact is that you are wasting valuable time nitpicking a grammatical non-issue to demonstrate your supposed superior intellect instead of doing something useful like selling your WoW character or compiling something for Gentoo.

For those that are curious, you can read more about ending your sentences with prepositions here and here. Also, a very interesting compilation of english grammatical issues can be found here.

Cryptography Class Rule #1

Don't trust the professor unless the PDFs available were obviously typeset in LaTeX.

Of course, I'm kidding. But here's some more crypto material from one of my professors.

There's a dated poster that hangs in a fairly well traveled hallway in the CoRE Building at Rutgers where Teoma was developed. It is an enlarged copy of an article theorizing that Teoma would provide significant competition to Google. It's somewhat funny to look at since it was written in the forgotten era of Google being popular, but not dominant. In fact, here's the article. My favorite quote: "Google has reached its maturity." Maybe this is Teoma's second chance at attacking Google.

There's a dated poster that hangs in a fairly well traveled hallway in the CoRE Building at Rutgers where Teoma was developed. It is an enlarged copy of an article theorizing that Teoma would provide significant competition to Google. It's somewhat funny to look at since it was written in the forgotten era of Google being popular, but not dominant. In fact, here's the article. My favorite quote: "Google has reached its maturity." Maybe this is Teoma's second chance at attacking Google.

There's a dated poster that hangs in a fairly well traveled hallway in the CoRE Building at Rutgers where Teoma was developed. It is an enlarged copy of an article theorizing that Teoma would provide significant competition to Google. It's somewhat funny to look at since it was written in the forgotten era of Google being popular, but not dominant. In fact, here's the article. My favorite quote: "Google has reached its maturity." Maybe this is Teoma's second chance at attacking Google.

Hah, thanks, but I can't get too excited about that. If I did, it would be acknowledging that there was something novel about my comment. But there isn't. Admitedly, when I first saw Fourier series, I thought it was the most interesting math I had yet encountered. Now, that was in no small part due to this guy and his excellent teaching and explanation of Fourier Series. This is really no different than when it was proved by Fourier that any function (for some reasonable definition of any) could be represented as a sum of trig polynomials. It was a *cool* idea. Once you learn that, the DFT is cool, but not as earth shaking. To me, second only to Fourier series in terms of the "wow" factor when learning were wavelets and the associated Discrete Wavelet Transform and Filterbanks. But, one fact remains. Once you learn the DFT or the DCT or the mDCT or the DCT-II or furthermore the DWT, the first most *obvious* question is "Hey, what happens when we start removing frequency components?" And that's what all the lossy algorithms amount to; take a transform, set entries to zero, do some entropy encoding. How this is patentable is beyond me. In fact, this compression scheme is built in to learning Fourier series. Even though the sum in a Fourier series is to infinity, you obviously can't calculate or graph that with infinite precision. But you quickly realize that you only need a few terms. Aside from Gibbs' effect, a few Fourier terms represent a function really well.

Hah, thanks, but I can't get too excited about that. If I did, it would be acknowledging that there was something novel about my comment. But there isn't. Admitedly, when I first saw Fourier series, I thought it was the most interesting math I had yet encountered. Now, that was in no small part due to this guy and his excellent teaching and explanation of Fourier Series. This is really no different than when it was proved by Fourier that any function (for some reasonable definition of any) could be represented as a sum of trig polynomials. It was a *cool* idea. Once you learn that, the DFT is cool, but not as earth shaking. To me, second only to Fourier series in terms of the "wow" factor when learning were wavelets and the associated Discrete Wavelet Transform and Filterbanks. But, one fact remains. Once you learn the DFT or the DCT or the mDCT or the DCT-II or furthermore the DWT, the first most *obvious* question is "Hey, what happens when we start removing frequency components?" And that's what all the lossy algorithms amount to; take a transform, set entries to zero, do some entropy encoding. How this is patentable is beyond me. In fact, this compression scheme is built in to learning Fourier series. Even though the sum in a Fourier series is to infinity, you obviously can't calculate or graph that with infinite precision. But you quickly realize that you only need a few terms. Aside from Gibbs' effect, a few Fourier terms represent a function really well.

http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2006/05/15.html

http://www.crab.rutgers.edu/~goertzel/fourthturnin g.htm

http://www.futureswatch.org/Timeline.htm

http://paul.rutgers.edu/~mcgrew/ufo/to-be-merged/l azar.jet-car

He won't mind. There is a distinct possibility of failure, but if things go rotten he can always take a few penis pills.

(one wonders... if vitamin pills contain vitamins and garlic pills contain garlic, what might penis pills contain?)

You can count the children molested and killed by strangers in the past few years on the fingers of one hand (there were 4). That's in the entire USA. The average is about 1.5 per year, contrast to the 9 kids hit by lightning and the 3 children killed by baseballs.

Citation, please. And "molested and killed" is unquestionably a poor metric, since I personally know two people who were molested, and not killed, by strangers. And I don't know very many people.

And on top of that we can add in the figures for child sex trafficking, for which the US has allegedly become one of the largest markets.

--
Dum de dum.

"we use a proprietary ticketing system that is unlikely to be ported to anything that isn't Windows. It enters problems on a customer's account, and assigns the problem to the appropriate technician, who then updates the ticket as needed."

This exists in the open source world (and its LAMP, too :P)
http://ruqueue.rutgers.edu/

We've been using it for 6 months and it rawks. As much as trouble ticket systems can rawk anyway. AND there are a zillion programs like it on freshmeat.net in varying states of readiness.

In reply to the grandparent, I'm not sure about the middle of the road schools in the US, but the top schools are very good about having interesting material. Just like the parent, Rutgers offers a course on wavelets to undergraduates. It's invigorating to see practical tools that are only a couple of decades old being taught in an undergraduate setting. One could probably find a professor with which to do undergraduate research in the area without too much trouble. Certainly the case would be the same for graduates. The trick is to find a school with a big CS, EE, Math, or whatever department you're interested in; someone is probably doing research in your area of interest.

In reply to the grandparent, I'm not sure about the middle of the road schools in the US, but the top schools are very good about having interesting material. Just like the parent, Rutgers offers a course on wavelets to undergraduates. It's invigorating to see practical tools that are only a couple of decades old being taught in an undergraduate setting. One could probably find a professor with which to do undergraduate research in the area without too much trouble. Certainly the case would be the same for graduates. The trick is to find a school with a big CS, EE, Math, or whatever department you're interested in; someone is probably doing research in your area of interest.

You lied and you're proud of it. If you need to lie on your resume to get a job, then you clearly *don't* have the skills necessary. Lying is like cheating and I've never been one for cheaters. The following text from a professor highlights why such dishonesty is bad. It's about cheating but it applies well to people who lie on resumes.

My problem with cheating is twofold: 1) it is a moral outrage against honest students who are effectively penalized for their honesty, and 2) the cheating student does not learn the material and this reflects poorly on Rutgers when they enter the work force (and once again penalizes the honest student by association). Since it offends my sensibilities to watch idly while people get shafted, if cheating becomes a problem I'll institute some rather Orwellian/draconian measures to curb the illicit activity during examinations. Smile, you're on secret camera! Needless to say, if you are caught cheating you will fail the course and face expulsion. In addition, I will do all in my legal power to make sure your exploits are well-known both within and outside the University community. You will find it's a small world come job-hunting time.

Your remarks remind me of when the girls on my co-ed dorm floor posted a vitriolic tyrade on how disgusting men are in the bathroom, anonymously of course. "There was urine on the seat - it must've been a man! Because men are the only ones who produce urine! Yeah!" In response to that, I posted an even longer note with my signature on it as big as John Hancock's, and put copies of The Lady's Dressing Room by Swift, which in my case counted as proof that women are, in fact, far more disgusting in the bathroom than men. Powders, chemicals, hair, etc.

You're as cowardly and platitudinous as they. "DRM bad! System not under my control!" You don't understand how it isn't under your control, if it's behind a firewall and has Linux installed in it. What has to happen? Does Steve Jobs have to beam down to your house and modulate his RDF to a particular frequency, activating the secret Trust chip and turning your computer's integrated Bluetooth system into a weapon to fry your balls?

RUQueue is an interesting rewrite of RT. I never really got into RT. I use RUQueue at work, and it works just fine. It may be too much for your needs, but it's worth looking into.

Call me highly skeptical. Helen Fisher is a physical anthropologist. As in population geneticists, primatologists, and paleoanthropologists. This is a far cry from being an expert in studying the "circuitry" that underlies love. In her book, she hooked up with some doctors from SUNY to use MRI brain scanning to "look at what love looks like", but the book is really mostly just anthropology. In truth, we have no idea what the circuitry of love is (yet), but we have long understood the effect of endorphins (caused by chocolate, heroin, running fast, and love) on the human brain and their relationship to one another. Thus her claim is both simultaneously old hat and inexpert.

Of course. And, may I add, that's one of the many, good reasons to be an Episcopalian - you get to believe in dinosaurs (and Darwin :)

Indeed, when was the last time a bunch of people rioted for days in one of our major cities like Los Angeles or Detroit.

http://www.67riots.rutgers.edu/d_index.htm

http://www.emergency.com/la-riots.htm

"Within a year, two determined econometricians, Dan Black and Daniel Nagin (1998) published a study showing that if they changed the statistical model a little bit, or applied it to different segments of the data, Lott and Mustard's findings disappeared"

pro
more pro
con.

I'm "con" myself.

Please read up on what, exactly, deus ex machina is. It is a literary term, describing the way gods would be lowered on to stage with a mechane (machine) to solve otherwise unsolvable problems that came up during the play. Because the "gods" would come from the "machine," the term "deus ex machina" was used - meaning, literally, god from the machine.

People using the term to describe Google sound like people who overheard the term once, had no idea what it meant, so they translated it and decided to take a literal meaning to the thing. I'm reminded of people using the term "body of crime" incorrectly (once even on CSI... *sigh*).

> Geez - I'm a woman!

No, you're not.
You're an Anonymous Coward.

Such a silly thing to oppose. There's a cyclotron a few hundred feet from me and I'm not frightened. I'm right next door to Rutgers Physics' Cyclotron. Maybe I'm not frightened because there is NO DANGER. *Sigh*

Sure:
      Annual solar energy received by the Earth: 5.44x10^24 Joules (1)
      Estimated annual 'extra' energy absorbed by the earth due to human increases in CO2 levels: around 2x10^22 Joules (2)
      Annual energy use by humanity: 4.31x10^20 Joules (3)

The actual heat produced by combustion is fairly insignifant at the scale of climte--it's around a 50th of the change in Earth's energy balance due to human activity.

Sources:

(1) from http://marine.rutgers.edu/mrs/education/class/yuri /in_energy.gif)
(2) forcing value of 1.4 W/m^2 taken from standard IGCC reference at http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/climate.html, multiplied by surface area of Earth, which might not be exactly right.
(3) from http://www.iea.org/Textbase/stats/balancetable.asp ?country=World&SubmitA=Submit&COUNTRY_LONG_NAME=Wo rld

Actually... I'm pretty sure that a statistical analysis of the 0's and 1's will reveal the difference between a DoD wipe and encrypted information.

Statistical analysis... that's how they used to break codes.

It even allowed them to find weaknesses in supposedly secure 1-time pads (which had been created from not-exactly-random code books)

Admittedly, statistical analysis isn't going to break any modern algorithms, but it'll certainly tell you the difference between a wiped disk and encrypted files.

http://www.computer-repair.rutgers.edu/wipe_out_do d.htm

Three iterations completely overwrite a hard drive six times. Each iteration makes two write-passes over the entire drive:

n the first pass inscribes ONEs (1) over the drive surface (in hex: 0xFF);

n the next pass inscribes ZEROes (0) onto the surface (in hex 0x00).

After the third iteration, a seventh pass writes the government-designated code "246" across the drive (in hex 0xF6) - which is then followed by an 8th pass that inspects the drive with a Read-Verify review.

Worked on all of my home machines well - choked to death on my work machine. Here's a nice screen:

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jgaynor/images/ff.bmp

Google shows others (if only a few) have had this issue with older moz builds.

Your absolutely right, which is why class distinctions are based on relative wealth.

"Look at what it would cost to maintain an early-50s middle class lifestyle today. One car (requiring constant maintenance), a gas or electric stove, and running water. If you have a TV and a fridge and a washing-machine, you've got it made, as most in the middle class are still working towards completing the set. "Luxury" is relative as well."

Of course, in the 1950s, the median home cost $7354 http://policy.rutgers.edu/news/rrr_sept03.pdf.
while median income was $3319, a ration of 2.22 to 1. http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/f05.html

In 2001, median home price was 139,700; national median income was 33,958, a ratio of 4.11 to 1. Since 2001, median home price has grown extremely fast while earnings have not, so these figures understate the difference in housing costs vs. incomes, which is now closer to 6 to 1.

So that 1950s lifestyle is a lot less likely for someone to afford today, even though there were far fewer amenities.

The author is spot on in quite a few respects - engineering is more a test of endurance than intelligence.

This is very true. I'm a MechE (though I plan on changing that tomorrow... more on that later) and I don't consider the material exceptionally hard, but very tedious and time consuming. I've come to a point where I'm absolutely bored with the material and have decided I am not studying enough mathematics to interest me. My grades are fine, I have a 4.0/4.0 in MechE, but I'm bored to death. Fortunately, my school offers a "roll your own" engineering degree, where you can take classes from all the different engineering programs, and that's what I plan on doing. It's not an accredited program (how could it be, it varies from student to student...) but you get to do what you love. That's what matters for me.

It's really rather amusing. The same thing I'm sure exists in other technical majors (math, physics, etc.), but typically, since engineering curriculum starts from the first semester rather than where you have some time to declare your major as being a technical one when you're just enrolled in a normal college, you see a lot of fluff in engineering early on. People are there because their counsellor told them it's a good thing to go into... or... they took AP Physics and did ok and their teacher recommended engineering. Silly stuff like that brings people into engineering.

I'd love to quantify the drop off... but there's obviously a big one after first semester and an almost as big one after first year. At Rutgers, we all took an English 101 type course. Conveniently, they group engineers with other engineers. I felt like a jerk for doing it, but I basically picked out those who I knew wouldn't make it, and sure enough, I haven't seem them around. I didn't even need to know about their technical prowess; sometimes you can just tell.

This is not about predicting the stock market. It is about using the idea of the stock market to make predictions.

The idea is to create a market and use the prices to make predictions. This is not new. In fact, the US government got some PR trouble when someone proposed to use this idea to predict terrorist attacks. Look at this workshop to get some pointers for further information.

Along that vein, a professor I once had built his own system for the Rutgers Physics Department. They've since switched to PRS in that lecture hall, but all the details of the project can be found here.

Along that vein, a professor I once had built his own system for the Rutgers Physics Department. They've since switched to PRS in that lecture hall, but all the details of the project can be found here.

I perceive you and I think very similar.

Note I never defined God.

And note I was cagey around the Bible, as it is written by Man, whereas I consider the Laws of Physics to be written by God himself.

I don't know what God is, and am also quite firmly convinced no one else does either.

Thanks for the link BTW! I collect those links to help me support my position that we should use our BRAINS, not blind obedience, to seek God. Stanley Milgram did some extensive research on Obedience . I have his book, and found it to be a real eye-opener on how people can be led to do terrible things in the name of obedience. My own feeling is this book has helped me recognize the pattern of how the 'control people' operate - albeit it has damned near ruined my 'team player' attribute. It now takes a helluva lot more than some well-coifed head jabbering atop a $500 suit to sway me, I insist that the head make sense.

I have to take anything that has been exposed to an error prone channel as likely to have some error, and not take it as absolute - especially when contradictions show up. If one sees black specks in a jar of supposedly pure white sand, its kinda obvious its been contaminated. Once contamination has been observed, I feel free to speculate there may be other unseen contamination, like its easy to see salt contaminated with black pepper, but I also consider if pepper is present, salt or sand may be present too.

One of the teachings in the Bible concerns what servants given 'talents', which in those days supposedly referenced a quantity of money, were expected to do with them. If my maker gave me intelligence to try to seek him out via the native curiousity He endowed me with, does he really expect me to "bury" my reasoning senses and do nothing with them, only because some other head tells me that its wrong to question and I should just follow. ( And, of course, I am expected to follow the guy giving me the "I am closer to God than you are so you should do as I say", never the other way around!!! ).

Especially, knowing the kind of things things men will do when they blindly obey, and override their own intelligence?

No sir.

I made up a quick-n-dirty keyhole file of the place:

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jgaynor/random/slashdo t-09-16-05.kmz

For the paranoid, feel free to save it and then open it up from within Google Earth. For the rest of us just launch it directly.

You sure have a short memory. http://www.eagleton.rutgers.edu/e-gov/e-politicala rchive-Clintonimpeach.htm

During high school I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. By the time I applied, I knew I at least wanted to Electrical Engineering and applied and subsequently enrolled in Rutgers' School of Engineering. I then toyed with the idea of double majoring in Computer Science. Things became even more confusing once I started taking classes and had to formally declare a major. Even though I convinced myself I was doing Electrical Engineering, I ended up declaring as Mechanical Engineering. Why? Who knows? (Well, I do, as I'll explain.) I've even entertained the thought of doubling in Math or Physics. In the end it comes down to trying to satisfy a number of interests. I've always liked things mechanical, so the mechanical aspect is great. Uses tons of math, also great. The most subtle quality of MechE is the large large provision for using programming in your studies. In other words, I can have my cake and eat it too. I can learn about fun things and also do research in modeling and computational analysis. All the while, I don't disconnect myself from the computer world which I'll probably be working in. And if that changes, it also provides me the math background for my next interest, quantitative finance. After all, the partial differential equation for heat transfer looks an awful lot like the PDE for Black-Scholes.

During high school I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. By the time I applied, I knew I at least wanted to Electrical Engineering and applied and subsequently enrolled in Rutgers' School of Engineering. I then toyed with the idea of double majoring in Computer Science. Things became even more confusing once I started taking classes and had to formally declare a major. Even though I convinced myself I was doing Electrical Engineering, I ended up declaring as Mechanical Engineering. Why? Who knows? (Well, I do, as I'll explain.) I've even entertained the thought of doubling in Math or Physics. In the end it comes down to trying to satisfy a number of interests. I've always liked things mechanical, so the mechanical aspect is great. Uses tons of math, also great. The most subtle quality of MechE is the large large provision for using programming in your studies. In other words, I can have my cake and eat it too. I can learn about fun things and also do research in modeling and computational analysis. All the while, I don't disconnect myself from the computer world which I'll probably be working in. And if that changes, it also provides me the math background for my next interest, quantitative finance. After all, the partial differential equation for heat transfer looks an awful lot like the PDE for Black-Scholes.

A lot of professors I've had discouraged notetaking. The best example of this was a physics class I took in which the professor provided excellent viewable and printable LaTeX created notes for each lecture. It worked out well. I usually didn't go to class and when I did I didn't have to take notes. (Yes, I still got an A).

A lot of professors I've had discouraged notetaking. The best example of this was a physics class I took in which the professor provided excellent viewable and printable LaTeX created notes for each lecture. It worked out well. I usually didn't go to class and when I did I didn't have to take notes. (Yes, I still got an A).

Ah, someone who knows his Soylent!

Too bad the Soylent corporation started out making Green from (phyto/zoo)plankton, then moved to Menhaden (macrozooplankton) and ended with PEOPLE!

Damn dirty corporations!

The sad thing is that even at the home of Teoma, everyone uses Google. Maybe because Google showers us with goodies and hires people. The only thing I ever heard about Teoma was in an open house lecture.

The biggest reason not to use DST is the increase in auto accidents in the morning.

The balance of evidence appears to be that DST results in a decrease in auto accidents and pedestrian fatalities and a reduction in violent crime.

This testimony from the U.S. Department of Transport before the U.S. House Science Committee says:

With respect to traffic fatalities, we were able to identify a 0.7 percent reduction due to daylight saving time in March and April 1974 compared to the comparable months in 1973 when we were under standard time. At the time, DOT analysts believed that these estimates were conservative and that their calculations understated the real reduction due to daylight saving time, which they judged to be on the order of 1.5 percent to 2 percent.

With respect to the incidence of crime, study of daylight saving time impacts on the incidence of crime revealed reductions in violent crimes of 10 to 13 percent in Washington, D.C. throughout a 3-year period.

This study from Rutgers University argues that

Results show that a switch to full year daylight saving time would reduce pedestrian fatalities by 343 over the 1998-1999 period, or by 13 percent of all pedestrian fatalities in the 5 AM to 10 AM and in the 4 PM to 9 PM time periods examined in this research. Motor vehicle occupant fatalities would be reduced by 390, or 3 percent during the same time periods. In metropolitan areas, full year daylight saving time would reduce pedestrian fatalities by 255 in the 1998-1999 period, or by 12 percent, and would reduce pedestrian fatalities in non-metropolitan areas by 81 or 17 percent.

The reasoning is that the extra daylight in the working day increases visibility and thereby reduces accidents. Fewer people are also out after dark when they are more likely to be a victim of crime.

There are studies that show some increase in motor accidents during certain periods but this increase is more than balanced out by the decrease in other periods.

Trying to correlate accidents with daylight savings time is a complicated statistical exercise but, at best, the evidence for both sides of the question is inconclusive. The result is that, contrary to your statement, there is no strong case against DST out of concern for traffic fatalities.

Hence: get rid of TLDs...

I agree with the other who think TLDs are a thing of the past and are no longer useful. I understand your point that they can be useful, but I think their usefulness can be incorporated into whatever name one wants.

Example:

Instead of typing in http://www.whitehouse.gov/ to see what the Retard In Chief is up to, I could simply type "whitehouse" and bingo - done.

Instead of http://www.rutgers.edu/ I could just type "rutgers". And if there's a company that already owns "rutgers" then the university could simply be "rutgers-university" etc. Instead of http://www.microsoft.com/ I could just type "microsoft". I'd rather type "EVILEMPIRE" but microsoft will do.

How is appending a TLD to a name more useful? It's certainly not faster.

RS

We use Voyence for configuration management of almost 2000 Cisco devices. It gets the job done, does diffing of configurations for easy to see changes, scheduled jobs, things like that. As an alternative, you can probably roll your own around something like CVS.

Now, let's orbit these solar cells at 500 km altitude, i.e. a diameter of 13,756.3 km or circumference of 43,217 km. The article doesn't say how wide the ring should be, but to block 1.6% of the sunlight to a circle 12,756.3 km in diameter would require a strip about 160 km wide. That's 6.9 million square kilometers of solar cells in the full ring.

Now the silicon wafer in a solar cell is really quite thin, typically around 300 microns thick, so that's only 2.074 cubic kilometers of silicon all up. Density is 2330 kg/m3, so that's 4,833 megatonnes of silicon required, or about 0.0000005% of the earth's resources. I think we have enough.

Of course, the energy required to manufacture that sort of area of solar cells would be pretty high, but think of the returns. The earth receives about 1370 W/m2 in orbit, so multiply that by the area of cells facing the sun (2.04 million square km), and you get about 2.8 billion MW of incident radiation :-) Let's say these cells aren't particularly efficient, maybe 10%, plus transmission losses of another 70%, and you still have 84 million MW of usable energy, all day, every day.

Now, in 1997 we used 380 quadrillion BTUs, globally, or about 111 quadrillion watt-hours. That's an average consumption of 12 million MW, comfortably within our budget for some time. An energy-producing system with a capacity of 7 times the entire global requirements is worth quite a bit.

There's only one downside to this - if we divert all this energy down to earth & use it, it all ends up as heat in the end, which completely nullifies the original purpose of the ring (if you remember) of preventing global warming! D'oh!

There was a non-digital method : The TinkerToy Computer, based on spools and sticks that children could make models out of.