You can learn the theory, semantics and grammar of programming, you can learn everything in the books, and in actuality be a better programmer.
But here is what you miss. A culture and a type of group think that the university pound in to the students.
This is one where they are taught to produce mounds of myopic code. They are taught not to ask questions and to be OK not understanding the bigger picture and how it all comes together.
At the same time more attention is given to every dam minute detail of a language and with trivial logic puzzle during the interviews that these guys get through better. While at the same time, produce mostly marginal bloating and inefficient code that will almost never take in to account future growth paths.
Being self taught myself, I find it's getting increasingly harder to get in to corporate jobs because of this.
I have also run several startups and had many programmers working for me and have a hard time working with formally educated programmers unless they were self taught before they went to school.
This is again because with the self taught programmers I just have to share my goals and view, and they will plan with me. With the "educated" ones, they just put out brittle code that lacks insight.
I guess it's like an English major vs. a best selling novelist who probably never needed to study English in college to get to where he is.
I think social changes are going to be the next largest visible effect. It already is. The fact that CNN was forced to grab videos of the new president off youtube was one. Videos that the Internet savy had access to before the major news networks.
Yes, there is the obvious, we all will have broadband, and wireless broadband to our Cell Phones and laptops.
But the "Internet" as a network hasn't fundamentally changed since 1983. Just new apps.
So the future apps will more more VR/AR Telepresence and things that extend beyond the computer will be next. Think about what a big deal the Wii is, and I think it's stupid, but for most people it's a big shift having to get up and move while playing a game.
There's nothing like controlling an RC vehicle that's 1000's of miles away and seeing video back from it.
The average person had no idea what the Internet can do today. It's just a matter of time before these things trickle down to the public.
I think direct neural interfaces to the internet though a pocket mobile device is where it's going. But that's probably more then 10 years out.
Actually if you look at the grown curve for any technology it's not exponential but sigmoidal. Which can very much look like an exponential when it's curve first starts to rocket upwards.
If you want to see the trend for the Internet look at the phone. First was just connecting over 1 line, then plug panels, and then automated electron mechanical switching. A monopoly was given by the government to the third largest company! Still Bell Labs drove so much technology R&D. The transistor, the Laser, Fiber Optics.
Development and growth was very rapid for it's time, but it then slowed down and leveled off. Still developments occurred. touch tones, Muzac, Teletype, PBX's, modems, fax, answering machines, and voicemail, IVRU's, 1-800, 911, Video Conferencing, Caller ID, ISDN, DSL.
I am sure the same will be for the Internet. At some point it will level off, and development will slow. Limited by the pace of other technologies.
Having been on the net since the beginning when it was nothing but Uber nerds, I just don't see everyone wanting to server.
Youtube serves far more service then just hosting. It's a portal and steers people traffic. It organizes the data.
People can server right now today with little efforts even on there own system, but they choose not to. Except with P2P which again offers many addition benefits.
I have run my own internet servers since 1987, and I find I am moving away from serving myself more and more because of a number of reasons. 1.) Electric costs. 2.) Maintaining computers, dealing the hardware failures. 3.) Maintenance of software. This is a big one.
Anyone can drop FreeBSD or Linux on a box, but keeping the latest cool apps on your box, the latest scripting languages. Or support of some blogging software, mail package, spam filters etc.
It's for this reason I now post on Blogger.com rather then my own servers! 4.) Lack of fault tolerance and redundancy.
It for this reason why I am now on a virtual server at tektonic.net rather then my own hardware that I was on up to about 6 months ago. Far more and better service and for 1/5 of what my Co-Lo fees were.
Also almost everything is going mobile. I think if anything people will drop there hardwired connections in the future.
How many people have dropped hardline phones and now use only there cell phone? I know this trend was unimaginable in 1980. Or even in 1990.
None of us would want to pass around IP addresses let alone IPV6 addresses.
using things like H.323/H.324 and LDAP we can already map real phone numbers to the internet ipv4 and ipv6. Something people are familar with and still it's not really getting all that much use.
Especially when things like gmail/skype/AIM/MSN/YAHOO already provide voice, video and chat with mappings and personalized automated directories.
I remember 10 years ago, they were trying to panic every about we would run out of IP addressed withing the year! This has never materialized. I'd love to plot a 10 year graph with stats on how many days left will we run out of IP addresses.
And IPV4 vs 6 has nothing to do with Doanload rates and bandwidth. I can push data just fine through a NAT, it does nothing to slow down skype or youtube.
The only people that need real IP addresses are those with domains doing mail/ftp/web serving.
It take a more ram and cpu to route IPV6. The cost for backbones to upgrade is significant.
I bet only 1% of the people who use the internet even know what IP is let alone IPV4 vs. IPV6.
Most importantly, the demand for ipv6 hasn't been demonstrated.
I don't see IPV6 taking off at the consumer level. It's already being used in GOV and internally on the big networks, but it doesn't offer anything to consumers other then increased complexity.
So unless it's mandated by law like it is for the GOV internal stuff it's just not going to take off.
Being 40+ years old now and watching technology my whole life starting computers at 7 it's something I am very in tune with. If you want to see how it's going to change in the future you can just extrapolate from the past.
First let's point out that the internet is a common method for moving datagrams (IP packets, block of data up to 1500 bytes at a time), much like the postal service ships individual letter. On top of this stream connections using (TCP) are created and most of what we see is built on this. The point is, there are no limitations over what can be sent, or the format. So telepresents, virtual reality, haptics, Remote control of UAV's, skys the limit on what can be sent over this network.
I remember the Internet clearly as it was 30 years ago. As a hacker breaking in to it was the most LEET thing you could do back in 1980. I wasn't till 1987 before I finally got my first legitimate access to the Internet.
Let me put a little time line down to put things in to perspective.
1969 CompuServe started. 1972 C Programming Language invented.
1980 -- there was no TCP/IP even is was NCP, no unix servers and it was the DARPANET. It was all 300 Baud Modems! UUCP and Email was there. 1983 BSD 4.2 Unix came out with first tcp/ip stack in . C++ first developed.
Modems and BBS's ruled at this time (sort of like when dinosaurs roamed the earth) 1984 Apple Macintosh first released. 1985 "thin" Ethernet first comes out (uses BNC Coax) 1987 Perl released. 1988 Linksys founded. First Internet Worm get's loose, create massive panic! (Robert Tappan Morris)
1990 -- there was no www, html, , it was telnet, ftp, gopher, Archie First Internet search engine starts.
10Base-T first comes out. 1992 Wais search engine starts. 1992 Tim Berards Lee came out with www and html. 1993 Mosaic the first "graphical" web browser. Before this it was all console text based !!!!!
WiFi was invented. Linux and FreeBSD first Released. Lycos search engine starts. 1994 14.4K modems first started to appear. WebCrawler search engine starts. VRML web based virtual reality. 1995 Yahoo and Altavista search engines start. Vocaltec first VOIP comes out. JAVA released. 1995/6 is when the internet boom started. 28.8K modems appear. 1997 Google & E-Bay started. 36.6K and 56Kmodems appear. PHP first comes out. Netflix starts. 100Base-T first comes out. 1998 Voip is 1% of all phone traffic. 1999 Napster first comes out. DSL & Cable Modems first become available. Metricom Ricochet service comes out. Blogger.com goes online.
Gigabit Ethernet first comes out.
2000 Dot com Crash. 2001 Metricom dies. 2002 Bit Torrent takes off. Wifi Starts to take off for consumers. 2003 Skype first comes out. 2004 Facebook goes online. 2005 Youtube goes online. 2006 Twitter founded. 2007 Hulu Starts 2008 Netflix start streaming video. 2009 HD videos are being streamed from Youtube.
Well as you can see things in the past 10 haven't changed all that much. I expect the next 10 will not bring any radical surprises unless your living under a rock.
I expect telepresents, and augmented reality to be the next big things.
I am going to try to keep filling this in and post on my blog johnsokol.blogspot.com
I had a start up, Nisvara Inc. 2002 - 2006 We had water cooled and could run whole server rooms with no air conditioning at all! Even had a partnership with NASA Ames.
Our system used sealed copper tube, and something I called a thermal ground, basically a copper or aluminum plate with the tube bonded too it. Then shims that connect the heat sources, the CPU, Northbridge, Southbridge and CPU Power supply and possible ram. Powersupply and hard drives were also connected to the plate to remove the heat.
We had many meeting with all the big players, Intel, Siemens, Sun, Maxtor, Pac Bell to name a few. None would allow water cooling in data centers. The liability for damaged equipment is too high.
We did come up with a lower cost fluorinert like solution that we could use, but still getting them to eliminate air conditioning was a very hard sell at the time. Also to including the extra plumbing and what not.
Maybe today they might start to change there attitude but I am not so sure about it.
It sounds like this is probably far safer and more controllable then X-Rays or Gamma Rays for the treatment of Cancer.
A big part of the idea with radiation treatments for cancer is to break the DNA of the cells such that they do not die instantly leaving a big hole, but instead are just prevented from successful reproduction. So as these cancer cells try to reproduce they die off instead. This happens slowly over time so that normal cells from healthy surrounding tissue can migrate over and fill in the treated cells as they die off.
These THz waves could target just the DNA, killing those cells in a region and unlike X-Rays may have a lower chance of creating a new cancer from the radiation itself or damaging surrounding tissues.
Cooling data centers accounts for almost 50% of the power consumption. This is a massive amount of energy used for cooling.
But sea water has several disadvantages mostly keeping the system clean, barnacles, muscles and other small plants and animals will get sucked in to the system, and eventually clog up everything. It's also very corrosive. In addition hot water discharged from the system will hurt local ecosystems in both salt and freshwater systems.
Using the Hull of a ship would solve the clogging problems, where there is a large mass of metal in which to dissipate heat without having to pump seawater. Even with paint, there is a massive amount of surface area on a ships hull.
Still using seawater is still not a very good solution. Even is it's cost effective in reducing energy consumption.
When I had my start-up Nisvara Inc.(2002 to 2006 RIP) we worked out that we could accomplish the same using nothing but chiller towers that just used evaporative cooling. In cooler climates like where we were based at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View Ca, we worked out that we could cool the largest computer cluster what would have been built at that time using nothing just large truck style radiators and fans. No compressors or any active cooling just circulating water or cooling fluid.
A lot of data centers objected to the use of water because it would damage equipment. The Nisvara solution kept water in continuous copper tubes without any joints or seals. Still that wasn't enough to belay their fears of water contacting electricity, so we also found other suitable coolants such as using 3M Novec 1230 Fire Protection Fluid. It's amazing stuff. Totally green and safe also known as "Dry Water" and "Waterless Water", will not harm equipment and just happened that it could be used as a coolant too.
It may even be useful as a refrigerant because it can phase change at a lower temperature then water, but this would have required more research.
1.) It can't shield Raidio noise, and so will never be fcc compliant. 2.) fire hazard, metal is used to contain any electrical fires that may break out.
Cardboard would become fuel. 3.) Cardboard would act like a speaker cone amplifying any vibrations from the fan and harddrive.
trust me in the past 20 years I have seen many people try this, some when as far as metalic coatings and fire retardant. Other used graphite coatings.
It's just not a good idea. And will never get past FCC and UL listing which meaning using it in your home means if for any reason the house catches fire and it happened around the area of the PC, like the power strip, they will not insure your home.
CoreBoot (formerly known as LinuxBIOS) is a Free Software project aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS (firmware) you can find in most of today's computers.
SAN JOSE, Calif. â" Phoenix Technologies Ltd. is using virtualization technology to carve out a new market in PC software beyond its traditional BIOS code. The company is working with notebook makers to roll out HyperSpace, a basic application environment for mobile systems intended to be a kind of complement to Windows.
HyperSpace aims to provide access to simplified versions of applications at times when Windows is not available because the system is booting, in a deep sleep mode or stalled. It will include a simplified Web browser, media player and e-mail client as well as systems management and security utilities.
While Windows can take as long as 45 seconds to boot, the HyperSpace environment should be ready in as little as 5-10 seconds. "No matter what Windows is doing you can access programs in HyperSpace," said Gaurav Banga, chief technology officer and senior vice president of engineering at Phoenix
The Phoenix moves comes on the heels of the launch of FlashMate from competitor Insyde Software. FlashMate aims to provide similar functions, however it rides a new flash module from Silicon Storage Technology, Inc.
Phoenix believes users will be able to switch between HyperSpace and Windows more quickly than they can toggle between Windows and FlashMate environments, said Banga. That's because, unlike its competition, Hyperspace is based on creating a single environment that hosts both Windows and the Phoenix software.
The trade off in that approach is that some Windows applications could take a performance hit of as much as ten percent. However, the degradation is so small users should not notice it, Banga said.
Phoenix is now working with OEMs to customize Hyperspace and expects initial systems using the software could ship in about nine months. However, so far the company has not garnered any public support from any PC makers or third party software companies supporting HyperSpace.
The new direction emerges as Phoenix completes its transition to BIOS based on the Extensible Firmware Interface promoted by Intel Corp. EFI moves BIOS from its heritage in the 1980's as assembly language code running in real mode to a more high-level and open environment developed in C.
With EFI, BIOS also updates its table of hardware system resources. Today BIOS, operating systems and even applications sometimes each build their own separate tables of available hardware on a system.
"With EFI, that will go away. There will only need to be hardware discovery done once," said Banga.
Support for HyperSpace is embedded in the latest EFI-based BIOS code from Phoenix. The company will also make HyperSpace available on its legacy BIOS.
That's true for some coding, peace and getting in to the zone with the meditation helps a lot. But some coding, usually when working with other people code or debugging just required brute force beating your head against the monitor till bloody. I just can't to the Jolt, or now days Red Bull thing anymore. I an getting too old for that sh*t.
That music isn't half bad,http://www.myspace.com/explosionsinthesky
I usually do old school electrofunk or techno, MIA, Philip Glass, Vangelis, Aphex Twins.
I spend 3 weeks in Bangalore India trying to write code, It was easily as hot 34c or more outside (July/April) and dusty too, Indoors it may have been even hotter. And the smell, well it makes the smell of a NYC subway seem pleasant.
I don't know how the locals do it, but they seems cool and dry while I was sweating so hard it looked like I had just falling in a swimming pool. I was worried about the sweat dripping off my finger into my laptop and shorting something out.
Oh and the mosquitoes are just everywhere, they don't believe in screens there. Apparently there was some mosquito born illness rumored to be going around that would leave people paralyzed for like 2 weeks.
Intermittent 64K internet, check.
distractions, check.
From monkeys to rickshaws. And let's not forget intestinal discomfort and frequent bathroom breaks to a squat toilet. Not fun after knee surgery.
We had an automatic coffee machine, One day it dispensed a cup full of hot dead ants in water, yum.
Now add intermittent power where the USP would reboot everyone PC's even when power cam back on!
I had bought a generator but the neighbors companied about the noise.
By the end I was just plain loosing my mind.
India great fun when your not trying to get any work done.
Programming in ShenZhen China is slightly better but it's hot and humid there too.
Slashdot Mirror
You can learn the theory, semantics and grammar of programming, you can learn everything in the books, and in actuality be a better programmer.
But here is what you miss. A culture and a type of group think that the university pound in to the students.
This is one where they are taught to produce mounds of myopic code. They are taught not to ask questions and to be OK not understanding the bigger picture and how it all comes together.
At the same time more attention is given to every dam minute detail of a language and with trivial logic puzzle during the interviews that these guys get through better. While at the same time, produce mostly marginal bloating and inefficient code that will almost never take in to account future growth paths.
Being self taught myself, I find it's getting increasingly harder to get in to corporate jobs because of this.
I have also run several startups and had many programmers working for me and have a hard time working with formally educated programmers unless they were self taught before they went to school.
This is again because with the self taught programmers I just have to share my goals and view, and they will plan with me.
With the "educated" ones, they just put out brittle code that lacks insight.
I guess it's like an English major vs. a best selling novelist who probably never needed to study English in college to get to where he is.
Maybe they don't want us to know the real reason there are no more jobs in the US, because space aliens from Alpha Centauri took all the jobs.
I see many people talking about Visual Studios and IDE's . I think there are many good IDE's in Linux.
What I think is needed is something new that can take Linux to the next level.
Maybe some collaborative tools to help with development of SOA and cloud based systems.
Or something that will help automate the location, rating and selection of libraries.
I think social changes are going to be the next largest visible effect. It already is. The fact that CNN was forced to grab videos of the new president off youtube was one. Videos that the Internet savy had access to before the major news networks.
Yes, there is the obvious, we all will have broadband, and wireless broadband to our Cell Phones and laptops.
But the "Internet" as a network hasn't fundamentally changed since 1983.
Just new apps.
So the future apps will more more VR/AR Telepresence and things that extend beyond the computer will be next. Think about what a big deal the Wii is, and I think it's stupid, but for most people it's a big shift having to get up and move while playing a game.
There's nothing like controlling an RC vehicle that's 1000's of miles away and seeing video back from it.
The average person had no idea what the Internet can do today. It's just a matter of time before these things trickle down to the public.
I think direct neural interfaces to the internet though a pocket mobile device is where it's going. But that's probably more then 10 years out.
Actually if you look at the grown curve for any technology it's not exponential but sigmoidal. Which can very much look like an exponential when it's curve first starts to rocket upwards.
If you want to see the trend for the Internet look at the phone.
First was just connecting over 1 line, then plug panels, and then automated electron mechanical switching. A monopoly was given by the government to the third largest company! Still Bell Labs drove so much technology R&D. The transistor, the Laser, Fiber Optics.
Development and growth was very rapid for it's time, but it then slowed down and leveled off.
Still developments occurred. touch tones, Muzac, Teletype, PBX's, modems, fax, answering machines, and voicemail, IVRU's, 1-800, 911, Video Conferencing, Caller ID, ISDN, DSL.
I am sure the same will be for the Internet. At some point it will level off, and development will slow. Limited by the pace of other technologies.
Having been on the net since the beginning when it was nothing but Uber nerds, I just don't see everyone wanting to server.
Youtube serves far more service then just hosting. It's a portal and steers people traffic. It organizes the data.
People can server right now today with little efforts even on there own system, but they choose not to. Except with P2P which again offers many addition benefits.
I have run my own internet servers since 1987, and I find I am moving away from serving myself more and more because of a number of reasons.
1.) Electric costs.
2.) Maintaining computers, dealing the hardware failures.
3.) Maintenance of software. This is a big one.
Anyone can drop FreeBSD or Linux on a box, but keeping the latest cool apps on your box, the latest scripting languages. Or support of some blogging software, mail package, spam filters etc.
It's for this reason I now post on Blogger.com rather then my own servers!
4.) Lack of fault tolerance and redundancy.
It for this reason why I am now on a virtual server at tektonic.net rather then my own hardware that I was on up to about 6 months ago. Far more and better service and for 1/5 of what my Co-Lo fees were.
Also almost everything is going mobile. I think if anything people will drop there hardwired connections in the future.
How many people have dropped hardline phones and now use only there cell phone? I know this trend was unimaginable in 1980. Or even in 1990.
I think most of us prefer Domain names.
None of us would want to pass around IP addresses let alone IPV6 addresses.
using things like H.323/H.324 and LDAP we can already map real phone numbers to the internet ipv4 and ipv6. Something people are familar with and still it's not really getting all that much use.
Especially when things like gmail/skype/AIM/MSN/YAHOO already provide voice, video and chat with mappings and personalized automated directories.
I remember 10 years ago, they were trying to panic every about we would run out of IP addressed withing the year! This has never materialized. I'd love to plot a 10 year graph with stats on how many days left will we run out of IP addresses.
And IPV4 vs 6 has nothing to do with Doanload rates and bandwidth. I can push data just fine through a NAT, it does nothing to slow down skype or youtube.
The only people that need real IP addresses are those with domains doing mail/ftp/web serving.
It take a more ram and cpu to route IPV6. The cost for backbones to upgrade is significant.
I bet only 1% of the people who use the internet even know what IP is let alone IPV4 vs. IPV6.
Most importantly, the demand for ipv6 hasn't been demonstrated.
I don't see IPV6 taking off at the consumer level. It's already being used in GOV and internally on the big networks, but it doesn't offer anything to consumers other then increased complexity.
So unless it's mandated by law like it is for the GOV internal stuff it's just not going to take off.
Being 40+ years old now and watching technology my whole life starting computers at 7 it's something I am very in tune with.
If you want to see how it's going to change in the future you can just extrapolate from the past.
First let's point out that the internet is a common method for moving datagrams (IP packets, block of data up to 1500 bytes at a time), much like the postal service ships individual letter. On top of this stream connections using (TCP) are created and most of what we see is built on this.
The point is, there are no limitations over what can be sent, or the format.
So telepresents, virtual reality, haptics, Remote control of UAV's, skys the limit on what can be sent over this network.
I remember the Internet clearly as it was 30 years ago. As a hacker breaking in to it was the most LEET thing you could do back in 1980.
I wasn't till 1987 before I finally got my first legitimate access to the Internet.
Let me put a little time line down to put things in to perspective.
1969 CompuServe started.
1972 C Programming Language invented.
1980 -- there was no TCP/IP even is was NCP, no unix servers and it was the DARPANET. It was all 300 Baud Modems! UUCP and Email was there.
1983 BSD 4.2 Unix came out with first tcp/ip stack in . C++ first developed.
Modems and BBS's ruled at this time (sort of like when dinosaurs roamed the earth)
1984 Apple Macintosh first released.
1985 "thin" Ethernet first comes out (uses BNC Coax)
1987 Perl released.
1988 Linksys founded. First Internet Worm get's loose, create massive panic! (Robert Tappan Morris)
1990 -- there was no www, html, , it was telnet, ftp, gopher, Archie First Internet search engine starts.
10Base-T first comes out.
1992 Wais search engine starts.
1992 Tim Berards Lee came out with www and html.
1993 Mosaic the first "graphical" web browser. Before this it was all console text based !!!!!
WiFi was invented. Linux and FreeBSD first Released. Lycos search engine starts.
1994 14.4K modems first started to appear. WebCrawler search engine starts. VRML web based virtual reality.
1995 Yahoo and Altavista search engines start. Vocaltec first VOIP comes out. JAVA released.
1995/6 is when the internet boom started. 28.8K modems appear.
1997 Google & E-Bay started. 36.6K and 56Kmodems appear. PHP first comes out. Netflix starts. 100Base-T first comes out.
1998 Voip is 1% of all phone traffic.
1999 Napster first comes out. DSL & Cable Modems first become available. Metricom Ricochet service comes out. Blogger.com goes online.
Gigabit Ethernet first comes out.
2000 Dot com Crash.
2001 Metricom dies.
2002 Bit Torrent takes off. Wifi Starts to take off for consumers.
2003 Skype first comes out.
2004 Facebook goes online.
2005 Youtube goes online.
2006 Twitter founded.
2007 Hulu Starts
2008 Netflix start streaming video.
2009 HD videos are being streamed from Youtube.
Well as you can see things in the past 10 haven't changed all that much.
I expect the next 10 will not bring any radical surprises unless your living under a rock.
I expect telepresents, and augmented reality to be the next big things.
I am going to try to keep filling this in and post on my blog johnsokol.blogspot.com
That's just creepy.
It didn't seem to track the hand movements very well.
From personal experience I can tell you that mixing nerd programmer and stripped in one building doesn't mix.
The programmer who are generally desperate and lonely with teasing sluts that seldom put out, It the perfect mix to drive people over the edge.
I had a start up, Nisvara Inc. 2002 - 2006 We had water cooled and could run whole server rooms with no air conditioning at all! Even had a partnership with NASA Ames.
Our system used sealed copper tube, and something I called a thermal ground, basically a copper or aluminum plate with the tube bonded too it. Then shims that connect the heat sources, the CPU, Northbridge, Southbridge and CPU Power supply and possible ram. Powersupply and hard drives were also connected to the plate to remove the heat.
We had many meeting with all the big players, Intel, Siemens, Sun, Maxtor, Pac Bell to name a few. None would allow water cooling in data centers. The liability for damaged equipment is too high.
We did come up with a lower cost fluorinert like solution that we could use, but still getting them to eliminate air conditioning was a very hard sell at the time. Also to including the extra plumbing and what not.
Maybe today they might start to change there attitude but I am not so sure about it.
http://web.archive.org/web/20040901070743/http://www.nisvara.com/
Dense Plasma Focus technology is the next best thing to what cold fusion had promised. Best of all it's real and doesn't use any questionable physics.
Safe, small, low cost, low maintenance and efficient. It looks like it will be small enough that it could be ran from inside a rail car or truck.
It's far ,more likely to work then blasting deuterium-tritium with lasers, but they can't get funding!
Slashdot's reported this several times.
A-Step-Closer-To-Cheap-Nuclear-Fusion
And I have posting my research in to this too.
green ideas thinktank
It sounds like this is probably far safer and more controllable then X-Rays or Gamma Rays for the treatment of Cancer.
A big part of the idea with radiation treatments for cancer is to break the DNA of the cells such that they do not die instantly leaving a big hole, but instead are just prevented from successful reproduction. So as these cancer cells try to reproduce they die off instead. This happens slowly over time so that normal cells from healthy surrounding tissue can migrate over and fill in the treated cells as they die off.
These THz waves could target just the DNA, killing those cells in a region and unlike X-Rays may have a lower chance of creating a new cancer from the radiation itself or damaging surrounding tissues.
Cooling data centers accounts for almost 50% of the power consumption. This is a massive amount of energy used for cooling.
But sea water has several disadvantages mostly keeping the system clean, barnacles, muscles and other small plants and animals will get sucked in to the system, and eventually clog up everything. It's also very corrosive. In addition hot water discharged from the system will hurt local ecosystems in both salt and freshwater systems.
Using the Hull of a ship would solve the clogging problems, where there is a large mass of metal in which to dissipate heat without having to pump seawater. Even with paint, there is a massive amount of surface area on a ships hull.
Still using seawater is still not a very good solution. Even is it's cost effective in reducing energy consumption.
When I had my start-up Nisvara Inc.(2002 to 2006 RIP) we worked out that we could accomplish the same using nothing but chiller towers that just used evaporative cooling. In cooler climates like where we were based at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View Ca, we worked out that we could cool the largest computer cluster what would have been built at that time using nothing just large truck style radiators and fans. No compressors or any active cooling just circulating water or cooling fluid.
A lot of data centers objected to the use of water because it would damage equipment. The Nisvara solution kept water in continuous copper tubes without any joints or seals. Still that wasn't enough to belay their fears of water contacting electricity, so we also found other suitable coolants such as using 3M Novec 1230 Fire Protection Fluid. It's amazing stuff. Totally green and safe also known as "Dry Water" and "Waterless Water", will not harm equipment and just happened that it could be used as a coolant too.
It may even be useful as a refrigerant because it can phase change at a lower temperature then water, but this would have required more research.
I write about this at my blog http://thegreentank.blogspot.com/2009/09/slashdot-using-sea-to-cool-your-data.html inspired by this slashdot post.
1.) It can't shield Raidio noise, and so will never be fcc compliant.
2.) fire hazard, metal is used to contain any electrical fires that may break out.
Cardboard would become fuel.
3.) Cardboard would act like a speaker cone amplifying any vibrations from the fan and harddrive.
trust me in the past 20 years I have seen many people try this, some when as far as metalic coatings and fire retardant. Other used graphite coatings.
It's just not a good idea. And will never get past FCC and UL listing which meaning using it in your home means if for any reason the house catches fire and it happened around the area of the PC, like the power strip, they will not insure your home.
See Mailclad where I already laid this out.
http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/ This is huge.
http://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Real-Numbers-J-Borwein/dp/0534128408 A Dictionary of Real Numbers (Hardcover)
I had my Livecam product doing this in 1996! www.livecamserver.com
Stereo video is nothing new, and anaglyphic video is terrible.
There are some excellent stereo video codecs that have been developed over the years, I even experimented with a few designs.
This is already out there see, CoreBoot
CoreBoot (formerly known as LinuxBIOS) is a Free Software project aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS (firmware) you can find in most of today's computers.
CoreBoot
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202603163
Phoenix rolls environment for PC apps
Rick Merritt
EE Times
(11/05/2007 12:00 AM EST)
SAN JOSE, Calif. â" Phoenix Technologies Ltd. is using virtualization technology to carve out a new market in PC software beyond its traditional BIOS code. The company is working with notebook makers to roll out HyperSpace, a basic application environment for mobile systems intended to be a kind of complement to Windows.
HyperSpace aims to provide access to simplified versions of applications at times when Windows is not available because the system is booting, in a deep sleep mode or stalled. It will include a simplified Web browser, media player and e-mail client as well as systems management and security utilities.
While Windows can take as long as 45 seconds to boot, the HyperSpace environment should be ready in as little as 5-10 seconds. "No matter what Windows is doing you can access programs in HyperSpace," said Gaurav Banga, chief technology officer and senior vice president of engineering at Phoenix
The Phoenix moves comes on the heels of the launch of FlashMate from competitor Insyde Software. FlashMate aims to provide similar functions, however it rides a new flash module from Silicon Storage Technology, Inc.
Phoenix believes users will be able to switch between HyperSpace and Windows more quickly than they can toggle between Windows and FlashMate environments, said Banga. That's because, unlike its competition, Hyperspace is based on creating a single environment that hosts both Windows and the Phoenix software.
The trade off in that approach is that some Windows applications could take a performance hit of as much as ten percent. However, the degradation is so small users should not notice it, Banga said.
Phoenix is now working with OEMs to customize Hyperspace and expects initial systems using the software could ship in about nine months. However, so far the company has not garnered any public support from any PC makers or third party software companies supporting HyperSpace.
The new direction emerges as Phoenix completes its transition to BIOS based on the Extensible Firmware Interface promoted by Intel Corp. EFI moves BIOS from its heritage in the 1980's as assembly language code running in real mode to a more high-level and open environment developed in C.
With EFI, BIOS also updates its table of hardware system resources. Today BIOS, operating systems and even applications sometimes each build their own separate tables of available hardware on a system.
"With EFI, that will go away. There will only need to be hardware discovery done once," said Banga.
Support for HyperSpace is embedded in the latest EFI-based BIOS code from Phoenix. The company will also make HyperSpace available on its legacy BIOS.
That's true for some coding, peace and getting in to the zone with the meditation helps a lot.
But some coding, usually when working with other people code or debugging just required brute force beating your head against the monitor till bloody. I just can't to the Jolt, or now days Red Bull thing anymore.
I an getting too old for that sh*t.
That music isn't half bad,http://www.myspace.com/explosionsinthesky
I usually do old school electrofunk or techno, MIA, Philip Glass, Vangelis, Aphex Twins.
I spend 3 weeks in Bangalore India trying to write code,
It was easily as hot 34c or more outside (July/April) and dusty too, Indoors it may have been even hotter. And the smell, well it makes the smell of a NYC subway seem pleasant.
I don't know how the locals do it, but they seems cool and dry while I was sweating so hard it looked like I had just falling in a swimming pool. I was worried about the sweat dripping off my finger into my laptop and shorting something out.
Oh and the mosquitoes are just everywhere, they don't believe in screens there.
Apparently there was some mosquito born illness rumored to be going around that would leave people paralyzed for like 2 weeks.
Intermittent 64K internet, check.
distractions, check.
From monkeys to rickshaws. And let's not forget intestinal discomfort and frequent bathroom breaks to a squat toilet. Not fun after knee surgery.
We had an automatic coffee machine, One day it dispensed a cup full of hot dead ants in water, yum.
Now add intermittent power where the USP would reboot everyone PC's even when power cam back on!
I had bought a generator but the neighbors companied about the noise.
By the end I was just plain loosing my mind.
India great fun when your not trying to get any work done.
Programming in ShenZhen China is slightly better but it's hot and humid there too.
I already had it completely worked out.
Also with tons of science and data collection and research.
http://www.silentcomputing.com/i.html
I also ran the largest CDN in 19967 and have tons of data gathered from that. that lead to my design.
John
larger cost savings can be had by just selecting equipment that uses less electricity and produce less heat in the first place
So true.
http://www.embedded.com/215901024?cid=NL_embedded
energy efficiency improvements over the last 40 years in computers totaled "2,857,000 percent" thanks to semiconductor-enabled scaling.