Slashback: Zoning, Linking, Fooling

Tonight Slashback brings you updates (below) on the video card ATi isn't really putting out, home-brewed electronic multi-room temperature control, NPR's linking policy, and more. Enjoy!

Welcome to the Fantasy Hardware League Regarding our post on the allegedly upcoming Radeon 8500 MAXX, reader eyelove yu writes: "This pic is fake, as many people have suspected. HardOCP.com (on front page) quoted Rubeena Hussein of ATi as saying,'"We have no current intentions of making this or similar boards.'"

Soon we will be able to assemble an entire system created in Photoshop. Yay.

Or you could roll down the windows ... vt@home writes: "As a followup to the earlier story, here is a system that not only allows to monitor the temperature throughout the house and draw nice charts, but also does already have computer controlled vents and even allows to control the A/C unit. Basically, this is a do-it-yourself zoning system, for under $500. Of course, the source is GPLd ;)"

Next week, the sidewalks will practically be free for public use. juanfe writes: "It's not like they really had any power to enforce their previous one, but NPR modified their Terms of Use on June 27. Now, linkers do not have to submit a form asking for permission, but NPR "reserve the right to withdraw permission for any link". More commentary from others.

Nothing like hundreds of angry bloggers threatening to withhold membership contributions to their local station."

Raising a stink to the power of 10. Snarfangel writes "After seeing Yet Another Slashdot Article extolling the virtues of meretricious metrification ("Isn't it Time for Metric Time?"), I decided to fight back the only way I know how -- by subjecting an innocent website to the Slashdot effect: This site goes into great detail about the importance of being Ernst (or at least Max Karl Ernst Ludwig) Planck, especially his system of units that only depend the fundamental constants of the universe -- the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the Planck constant, and the charge of the electron. With appropriate scaling, you get a unified measurement system that is not only more logical than Le Systeme International d'Unites, but is also much better for calculating physics problems in your head.

After all, if we are going to go to all the effort to change our measurement system, why not use that same effort and get the system *right* the first time?"

On a different note, Colin LeMahieu writes "I noticed your post on metric time. I stumbled across this while looking for various computer timing related articles and found it pretty interesting. This might not be as popular as metric time, but it seems to make more sense. The whole system is based on time as a fraction of a day; it even has the scientific measurment on how to re-produce the time, as with any scientific measurement."

Comments

fundamental constants

[s20451]

What if fundamental constants of the universe turn out not to be constant?

My car gets 50 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.

Deep Linking solution

[peterdaly]

It is possible, if you don't want deep linking, to just redirect to the homepage if the "referrer" isn't a site of yours.

It's not rocket science. I have seen people protect linked javascript code that way, why not "deep" pages? That way they don't have to write a usage policy to cover their wishes, it is a technical solution.

-Pete

Re:I figured out how they made the Dual GPU image.

[sirsnork]

The [H] on the image is the HardOCP watermark thing that they place on any images on their site. So it wasn't there before they got it.. Other than that.. good post :-)

Re:I always wondered about units of measurement...

[bcrowell]

But really, why are we basing measurements on all these arbitrary values anyway?
The standards are chosen so that they're easy to reproduce accurately. If you're doing ultra-high-precision work, using the Planck system wouldn't even be an option, because G, in particular, is known with very poor accuracy. BTW, c now has a defined value in the metric system, but they waited to do it until technology made it a better standard than the previous one. There's also talk of defining the kilogram in terms of a certain number of atoms of a certain isotope, but right now atom-counting is a less accurate standard than the famous platinum-iridium cylinders in Paris.

Many physicists do use natural units (systems of units where certain constants equal 1) very often for certain types of calculations. If you're doing relativistic stuff, it's much easier to work with a system where c=1. If you're one of the hardy souls working on quantum gravity, then you do indeed use the Planck system, simply because it makes all the equations simpler. But there isn't any advantage to the Planck system unless you're doing research in quantum gravity.

Arbitrary Units

[Lord Bitman]

I'm all for starting with universal constants, but the fact remains that no matter what you start with, the units you use will remain arbitrary. Unless we want to divide time by exactly a "Planck interval of time", we're going to be scaling it. So maybe a Planck unit of time is a universal constant , but if we still use "Planck Minutes", "Planck Hours", etc, it is still arbitrary. The problem is "to the power of ten" is _not_ a universal standard. In fact our entire base-ten system is just as arbitrary as our day/24 system.
So a day isnt a universal constant. So what? Saying that we divide it by 24 is no more or less arbitrary than saying that a Planck minute is 10% shorter than a 'regular' minute. Why not multiply the Planck unit by 11 instead of 10? Wouldnt that just about clear up the 10%? [yes, I know, ~11.111, so sue me. The point is that the two are just as arbitrary]
I wasnt going to say anything, but then I took a glance at the Hex-Clock page, which actually suggested that 16 divisions were somehow less arbitrary than 24 divisions. Is there somebody out there who actually believes this?
I, personally, like the idea of using universal constants as the basis for some time scales. But to suggest that this somehow makes the way we talk about time non-arbitrary, that seems far-fetched.

Not too many physicists on the street

[LuYu]

While a system that would depend on "the fundamental constants of the universe" is a great idea, I do not think most people on the street care to do physics problems in their head.

Rather, they will be concerned with something that regulates their behavior as greatly as the rotation of the Earth. Not fixing the time to the cycle of a day would confuse most people. Imagine having to go to work at a different time every day of the year.

This second time system also has a problem. While it looks very interesting, it is base 16. The entire argument was proposed over finding a base 10 system of time. Adding a base 16 time system to the metric system would be a step toward returning the metric system to something like the English Imperial System. Such a system would only be good for computers since it works no nicely with binary numbers. But if that is to be done with time, why not recreate the entire metric system for computers and base it on 16 and not 10?

However, when arbitrarily choosing a time system to replace the current one, the choice should probably be something made for people. Base 10 works well for those of use without physics degrees or wetware interfaces, and it fits into the original scheme of the metric system.