While definitely a "savant", Kim Peek is not behaviorally autistic; Rain Man's character was modified to be an autistic savant.
This is true, but it's worth noting that the movie was based around Kim Peek. I've actually met Kim Peek (and his father, Kim didn't live by himself at the time), he's quite a fellow. Apparently Kim was having trouble getting medical care due to both insurance indifference and government beaurocracy, and Dustin Hoffman (who played the savant in the movie) moved mountains to help out Kim. I've also met people with classic autism -- while a psycologist may differ on the strictness of the definition, to the layman it's the same thing. Still, the opprotunity for education is appreciated.
It's still neat to ask Kim about a little blink-by-town in the middle of nowhere, and he's able to tell you about the area with enough detail that it seems as if he's been there before. (He liked to study maps at one point in time, and no matter how long ago it was, he still remembers perfectly). As long as we stayed in the guidelines set by his father (mainly talking about Kim's areas of interest -- and hence knowledge), he played a perfect game of 'stump the dummy.' (The term originates from one of my engineering professors, referring to Q&A sessions where students ask him questions about their homework, and has nothing to do with Kim Peek. Half the fun of the game was getting the professor to say "I don't know". When talking to Kim Peeks, this never happened.)
Mod parent up. Just because some punk AC that has never done a line of embedded coding in his life says something doesn't make it so.
The 4-bit MCU isn't seeing any real decline either.
The fact that you can get a cheap 32-bit doesn't mean squat; it still uses more power (extremely important, espescially with battery-powered devices), requires more memory, requires more complex circuitry and costs significantly more than an 8-bit (and 4-bit) MCU's.
I don't see a need for a microwave oven with a 32-bit processor.
What it comes down to is that (in general) a low-bit MCU costs less, but usually requires development in assembly (or rather expensive dev tools). A 32-bit MCU frequently has cheap C compiler.
When you're making a few million items, the economics are sharply in favor if the cheaper 8- and 4-bit MCU's if it's able to do the job (lower-level programming notwithstanding).
When you're only making a few thousand, then a more powerful MCU makes more sense (mainly because of easier/cheaper programming) offsets the higher unit price.
But you're still not going to get the power use that you achieve with a 8 or 4-bit MCU ('new' tech notwithstanding, more transistors=more power). Battery capacity is fairly close to being limited by physics (many estimate maybe a doubling in power density, and that'll be about it). Fuel cells have issues as well.
I have to ask: To whom are you disagreeing? While the actual ingredients are a bit wrong in my post (as pointed out, minor nitpick -- Aluminum Oxide is actually quite intert, although it is worth noting that 'aluminum powder' is always coated with Aluminum Oxide (because pure aluminum oxidizes extremelly quickly; it's the oxide that generally protects everything aluminum from further oxidation. Again, nitpicking.)
But my point is that while those who actually care know that it was the coating on the zepplin that caused the explosion, your average layman thinks the fault lies with the hydrogen filling it. (It was always the example used in my publick edyoukashun for hydrogen). The main point there was that the general voting public doesn't know the real facts, and their ignorance dictates public policy. Another good example is phobia of everything with the word 'nuclear.'
Although the hydrogen did go up in flames -- quite spectacularly. I loved when a college professor filled soap bubbles with Hydrogen and then ignited them with a long torch. Quite a satisfying bang. But also a very quick combustion.
The IEEE is actually interested in becoming one of the major global 'authorities' in the Hydrogen Economy. (Which makes a fair amount of sense considering electricity is usually required to generate Hydrogen).
Finally -- A recent Popular Science had a couple of rather neat articles on Aluminum: one on thermite, and the other on Aluminum's worst nightmare: Mercury. Apparently Mercury is so dangerous to aluminum (among other living entities,) that the FAA doesn't allow any Mercury onboard aircraft. (There are, of course, a few exceptions.) Something about corroding the airframe so quickly that it's practically impossible to land a plane before catastrophic airframe failure. The article then mentions that there is a legend about the French Resistance sabotaging German Aircraft by smearing a mercury paste on the airframe during World War II.
You don't seem to get the point: You can't electrolyze that much hydrogen from the sun; or more accurately, from the amount you would be able to get from the surface area of the vehicle. It would require the vehicle, sitting in the sun for DAYS to be able to generate enough hydrogen to go a few miles to work.
Hydrogen powered cars aren't that new of an idea, really -- it's simply a case of the percieved 'safety' of having hydrogen in a vehicle. Most people remember something about the Hindenberg exploding, and know it was filled with hydrogen. Nevermind the blimp was coated with aluminum oxide -- one of the oxidizers in the Shuttle's Rocket Boosters, and a key ingredient for Thermite. So there is this irrational 'fear' of hydrogen when compared to gasoline. That irrational fear is one of the largest hurdles to hydrogen powered cars. The other is getting the hydrogen (solar power->hydrogen is much less cost effective than wind turbine->hydrogen.)
A far more practical idea is to have a regular fuel tank holding Hydrogen, and then have your home covered with solar cells to convert water to hydrogen (and oxygen). Even BETTER is to have gas stations that provide Hydrogen, and use electrical sources like wind to provide energy for electolysis. (This is the idea that most engineers are following. Photovoltaic->Hydrogen generation is simply too inefficient, and MUCH more expensive.)
The electrolyzing equipment (as well as photovoltaics, etc.) adds unnecessary weight, bulk, and complexity to the vehicle, greatly reducing the efficiency and reliability of the vehicle.
It's sorta like the Unix mantra: Lots of little tools that are very good at their single job -- not a huge app that combines them all. You don't want to put unnecessary equipment on the car -- putting the fuel generating source ON the vehicle makes about as much sense as putting a machine shop inside the vehicle. Sure, you can make replacement parts 'on the spot', but it sure is a waste when you're driving.
Believe it or not, this is also true when driving the vehicle with electrolyzing equipment onboard -- the amount of H2 it generates at any given moment is inconsequential to the amount burned. It's certainly not enough to extend the operating time by more than a few seconds on the average daily commute.
Dude, you forgot the utterly trite comments made by many economists:
Many jobs that cannot be outsourced are in the 'Hospitality' industry (eg. Hotel employees, servants, housemaids, butlers, etc.), and that somehow, all the outsourced jobs are going to be made up in 'much more creative/rewarding/higher pay' jobs (such as being a domestic servant). Great; I go from having a fulfilling and challenging engineering career to... sucking up to rich people I'd just as soon spit at. That's good for the nerves...
The espescially galling part is where they claim that 'as long as we can maintain our technical edge, everything will be OK'. How short-sighted. We can't maintain our technical edge if the technical jobs are the ones being outsourced. Another case of mainstream America (both left and right wing, rich/poor, all those who just take technology for granted) holding the sciences and technical knowledge as a thing without worth or trivially acquired in the future.
Again, it may be a good thing for everybody in a few decades; but it doesn't do to get rid of all our technical workers, or even a small fraction of them. Many of the 'first world' countries do so well BECAUSE they kept their agriculture during the industrial revolution. They didn't think 'hey, we can just ship the food from other countries'. Self-sufficiency has a tremendous value to any country, and as much as some delude themselves into thinking humanity has outgrown fighting and warfare, I'm nowhere near so optimistic. We are going to have a few more wars over petroleum, no doubt. I don't doubt water will also be the cause for another war sometime in the future. Access to 'proprietary' information will likely be one as well. Anyone who thinks that information cannot be quelled should read about the dark ages; a millenia of ignorance that was arbitrarily imposed on Europe. The destruction of nearly every single ancient Mayan and Aztec written records. Knowledge and information can do become lost forever; it happens all the time. All it takes is one country to reach an ascendancy of technology like the western world has, then decide to cut off all communication with the outside world. Just because the current 'western' civilizations share information (relatively) freely does NOT mean that other civilizations will have a similar willingness to share.
There are a lot of issues that must be dealt with in terms of the global economy; and while I also believe free trade is a good thing (tm), it can also be a very bad thing as well. It's like fire; you don't unleash it all at once and pray for the shooting to stop (like we're currently doing -- or did it not occur to anybody that the free trade of American culture and ideals is one of the primary hatreds/'evils' towards America?).
Its best to keep everyone employed and with a job and gradually move towards it.
So, while if done right, I think outsourcing would be a good thing, its current implemenation is horridly buggy. It doesn't keep a roof over my head, nor does it put food in my mouth, it took me many years to get an engineering degree, and I'm literally living in poverty at the moment because of it. (Public libraries; gotta love taxpayer money when you don't contribute to it). So I spent four years of my life and tens of thousands of dollars to get a degree which, when I started (and even as recently as last year) was listed as a 'most valuable degree' in terms of job security and pay. It was one of the safest bets out there considering my skills. Then I watched the entire job market collapse in the last eight months of school.
And the only thing I can think is 'what a waste'. I gave up a tremendous amount to go to college; I had nearly no human interactions due to the intensity of the program, didn't even watch TV because I had to spend all my time on homework and extra-curricular projects (supposedly to help me be a more attractive 'future employee' after I graduated).
Now I've got my degree, and I work 8-12 hours a day, 6-7 days per week putting chips into shipping boxes for Frito-Lay. (About 3-4 metric tons of chips a day, and that's just me)
Well, considering it's quite literally Rocky Mountain spring water...
Trace minerals, Magnesium, Potassium, Calcium, dissolved Oxygen, a bit of Chlorine for the larger municipal water systems, copper that leeches from the plumbing...
And finally, "...the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face"
Fluoride
Although the Fluoride is less than 4 years old since its addition, and is still quite the controversy.
You know, there are more than a few of us in Utah that DO want these 'imposters' out.
That being said, I'm not quite sure what you mean by imposter; they don't seem to be pretending at all. They're bald-faced crap weasels.
Hatch doesn't pretend to be free of special interests. But he gets re-elected because he is nevertheless a force to be reckoned with on Capitol Hill, whose name is well-known throught the country. Excepting Ted Kennedy, I'm not sure there are many other senators whose names hold the public interest for more than an election campaign or news scandal. He's the head of the Senate Judiciary Comittee, as I recall -- a position of no small importance. Couple that kind of influence and position with the cultural paranoia -- as you put it, and you have a guy who the people will continue to support in spite of his flaws.
The land in the Western US is largely Federally controlled -- not privately or locally governed. This means that the Federal Government often has more say about what goes on with the land here than the citizens of Utah do. It's a big deal: There is a continual struggle between environmental groups who want to make Utah into a giant wilderness area (leagal definition of wilderness), a definitive tourist hiker's paradise (meaning that all motorized access is prohibited -- Even airlines can't fly over the area at 40,000 feet), and the groups that want to make a living from the land more directly, whether it be cattle ranching, or farming, or by developing the land -- mining, etc. The point is that the citizens of Utah CANNOT make these decisions; as a result, the people of Virginia often have more say about Utah's economy then Utahns do. This causes no small amount of resentment.
Case in point: We see hundreds of jobs and millions of tax dollars dissapear when then President Clinton declared about 3.2 million acres to be a national monument as an election year gesture to environmental groups. (Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument)
Whether it was a good decision, economically, environmentally, etc. isn't the point. The point is that the whole thing happened without any public input, without congressional approval (and in fact in spite of opposition), and definately without the approval of those who actually lived there. It was an election year ploy to get votes from people OUTSIDE Utah, and to hell with those people who live there.
So it's seen as a good thing to have a powerful Senator like Hatch, a man who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee. If any 'new' guy ousts him, Utah starts back at square one, with a much weaker voice in national (and indeed local) politics. With Hatch there, the state gets a louder voice; without it, we get rolled over. So Hatch gets re-elected. Any corruption (perceived or real) is a moot point. Suffice it to say, there are a great many of us who don't appreciate our Senator either; and we vote(d) against him. So what?
The fact remains: He's a powerful man on capitol hill, and still watches out for Utah's interests more often than not; and that is a fair sight better than a man with no influence on capitol hill who watches out for Utah's interests more often than not.
On the other hand, Darl seems to be acting quite consistently with the behavior of an arrogant, wealthy (by the general standard of US living), greedy man. This arrogance is quite universal in every part of the world, so I don't see how geography or local culture really applies.
It's really easy to envision Darl as an exec for a major record label; same arrogance, same desire to take what is not his, same everything. Nobody voted for them either, but we have to deal with them.
I've actually seen footage of a lion stealing a Thompson's Gazelle from a Cheetah. It basically worked out thusly: The cheetah saw the Lion coming, and started gorging itself as fast as it could. It didn't leave until the Lion lazily batted the cheetah away (the cheetah then grudgingly walked away).
The lion didn't waste any energy chasing the cheetah, and the cheetah cut its losses and moped away.
Um... Not many bad things can happen on a wire only a few namometers long. If you're worried about that, than there are over a hundred million such points of failure. More importantly, this kind of error is extremely easy to catch, and would be discovered in the chip foundary, before it even gets cut from the silicon wafer.
One thing to recall is how much time, money, and effort goes into verifying that the die is 'perfect' before it is cut from the silicon wafer. Chip foundaries spend billions on testing equipment to test as much as they can. It's a pretty interesting thing to see done, because as you subdivide the chip down, eventually you get to the point where you can test a small portion for every single possible combination of inputs, and ensure things are working properly.
It's a time-consuming process, and requires extra transistors to make it happen; even your average Intel processor does this. The difference is in how much verification happens. A mainframe-class processor sees a LOT more such verification.
It's worth noting that Intel is constantly trying to figure out what to do with the 'dead' transistors on its CPU's. (by 'dead' I mean that they are on the die, but aren't used for anything in the finished product. These transistors are there specifically to make testing of the chip easier when it's still on the silicon wafer.
And since these transistors cost money to make, it would be nice for everybody involved for them to be used in 'normal' use, instead of only at the foundary.
If I get your gist, then I would say this: Mainframe processors aren't at all like your 'consumer' processors like G5's and Pentiums. People pay much, MUCH more for these things with the expectation that they will NEVER have problems of ANY kind; a processor as reliable as gravity. A processor for which a warranty is redundant, as the processor will be perfect to begin with.
But I digress:
That is not what I had in mind. I think about a situation where both pipelines work correctly, but an error happens in the comparision unit, such that you end up sending the incorrect data to RAM.
Even if an error happens in the comparison unit, it isn't going to end up in RAM.
The reason is simple if you understand how processors work: processors are a collection of logic gates. Gates are strictly one-way; there is no reverse. There are circumstanses under which a gate can be forced to operate in reverse, but they usually involve physically destroying the gate, and would quickly result in a system failure anyway.
A fundamental thing to understand is that the output from the pipeline is strictly 'read only' to the comparitor. Another important fact is that it is completely unnecessary to make a copy of the outputs in order to compare them, nor is it necessary to change or 'handle' the input data to compare them.
In any event, the comparitor looks at its two input values. And the comparitor probably only one kind of output: a single bit on whether the values are the same. If they are the same, other circuitry in the CPU takes the same input value the comparitor saw -- from the exact same electrical 'pins' -- and passes it along. And, most likely only one of the pieline outputs is actually used; the other, being identical, is simply discarded. (Saves transistors and logic that way)
Here's a crude table to list things out:
Only one pipeline bad=Error caught Only comparitor bad=Error caught Both pipelines bad(1)=Error caught Both pipelines bad(2)=Bad data->memory One pipeline bad, comparitor bad=Bad data->memory
** Both pipelines bad(1) means that the two pipelines do not have an identical defect, and will return a result different from the correct result and each other. ** Both pipelines bad(2) means that through some miracle they return the same incorrect result. This can happen because of a design problem -- but if that were the case, it would be happen on a lot more than just a couple of processors, and the whole batch would be recalled.
It's worth noting that the last three are many orders of magnitude less likely to happen than the first two. (With the probability of an identical error in both pipelines being so near to zero as to be a pointless conversation anyway.)
The worse case scenerio here is that you have an error in one of the pipelines AND an error in the comparitor that flags the mismatch as good; the effect being the same as if you had a 'normal' non-verified (Pentium/Athlon, etc) CPU generating errors.
The entire point however, is that it is much, much less likely for you to have one of the combinations of these errors on the same chip (and hence much, much less likely to have bad data written to memory) than it is in a 'normal' unverified pipeline.
Memory doesn't go unmodified for long time
In processor terms, it sure does. It goes unmodified for a compartitive ice age, even. You've got to come to terms with how painfully, agonizingly, tormentuously long it takes to get data between the CPU and main memory (not to mention latencies added because of differences in clock speeds between memory and the CPU, etc. etc.). At 2 GHz, it takes more than a few clock ticks just to travel the distance from the CPU to the memory-- to hell with actually changing its contents once it gets there (which takes even longer).
how many instructions does programs execute on average between memory writes? (Less than 10 I would think). Rolling back memo
Not at all in fact if you goto the Churches web site, they offer all the music that is in the Churches hymn book (with the exception of a few that the copyright owner won't let them) for a free download.
It's simply not the case that you have to get 'church' music.
I live in Utah, and as such, am around many, many mormons (about 1/2 the population or so...).
Rob Zombie... No problem. Marilyn Manson... All the time. Metallica... Quite popular.
They don't regulate the music their members listen to; don't even try to. Even the common myth that caffeine is taboo is really a bogus claim. They won't drink coffee or tea, but 64 oz of Coca-Cola is OK.
I would say pulling out of a contract with Sony/RIAA and using their own label would be a 'good thing'(tm).
And for Hatch being a 'bad egg'... like most humans, he's had his brilliant moments where he does what is considered very good things... And the moments where it shows all too painfully where he listens to lobbyist pressure (either from his campaign coffers or his party).
I agree totally on the 'bad egg' thing making the Mormon Church look bad. Local politics is a mess, because everybody wants to 'blame it on the Mormons' and of course the other side of the camp. Many laws that pass with little opposition in other states (like one very similar to California's smoking law, which like 20 or more states have) get MASSIVE opposition due to this effect.
Then there's completely insane laws like a recently passed one where you can't have a pitcher of beer taken to your table. You can have as much beer as you like... but it has to be taken to you a glass at a time. I don't drink alcohol (less social pressure to do so here, and I don't drink to 'relax'), but I still think it's an insane law.
Then what the hell are the local radio staions playing? I thought it was everything from Aaron Neville to Zepplin, with every genre in-between.
Mormons don't seem to have anything against music, given that the Osmonds are Mormon (ok, ok, only SOME people consider that music... but there are many other mormon musicians that hit it big in the US and world music arena...)
Even the longest-running radio/music broadcast in the world is CBS and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Certainly not my taste, but it's still music to many an ear.
OK, here's really the only reasons why we use AC power to begin with:
All forms of conversion (Voltage conversion, AC->DC, DC->AC, whatever) results in some level of power loss.
It's much simpler, cheaper, and more efficient to change from one voltage to another with AC than it is with DC.
AC really only requires one wire to transmit power, DC requires two (literally doubling the cost of the wires to get the same power from point A to point B) The additional prongs on your AC outlet plug are a safety feature, not a real electrical requirement for operation.
Generators always generate AC power; a DC generator simply has a dynamo to convert the AC to DC.
And, finally, power transmission through wire is much, much more efficient at voltages that are much, much higher than a home would have. (At least through a non superconductor, which really isn't used by power companies in the present day, let alone a century ago.)
So, with AC power, you get:
* More efficient power generation, since you don't need a dynamo. * Easy, cheap, and relatively efficient step-up from the generator's output voltage to the hundreds of thousands of volts that efficient power transmission requires. Plus the same ease and cheapness in stepping it back down to a more useful 115 volts. * The flexibility of being able to convert-- cheaply, easily and reasonably efficiently, to whatever input voltage the final application requires, whether it uses AC, DC or both.
Back story:
Thomas Edison and his General Electric were the champions of DC power. Nikolai Tesla (and an employee of Edison's arch-rival company, Westinghouse) championed AC power. (I may have the companies reversed, but not the men and their power system) Simple economics found Tesla's idea considerably cheaper (mainly by means of greater efficiency, but also in the initial outlay of wire), and AC power became the 'norm' in most (but not all) countries. The ignorant often cite the 'safety' of DC power. Edison had going for him is the argument that DC power is 'safer' than AC (this was tragically demonstrated during when a child electrocuted himself with AC power when the two giants were competing for which would be used in the USA); The 'safety' is a subjective statement, since both are quite deadly.
It's also worth noting that the North American power grid is AFAIK, unique in the world at running at 60 Hz. This is because Tesla 'had 60 Hz all worked out in his head' to paraphrase a professor of mine. Most of the world uses 50 Hz. I've heard that 60 Hz is also just great for sending someone's heart into fibrilation, and 50 Hz is less apt to do so; although I don't know this for sure.
I do know that I've played with a 'toy' at a museum (DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, you'll kill yourself!!!) that 'steps up' regular 115V power to several thousand volts, with the current therefore dropping to a few microamps (safe levels). You put your hands on a set of upside-down aluminum bowls, and twisted one of the bowls like a knob to increase the output current (but always below 500 microamps or so). Still 60 Hz, just at a low enough current to be safe, if uncomfortable. The reason for the bowls is simple: Eventually, a high-enough current will eventually cause your hands to clench shut. If they do, there is nothing to 'grip', and your hand slides off the bowl, breaking the connection. Safety feature...
Naturally, as there were several guys around, and being 'macho' there was a competition to see who could 'take the most'. I got to the point where my hands started feeling weird (not clenching shut; but there was a feeling they were about to). And the distinct feeling of every sweat gland in my hand turning on 'full blast', instantly drenching my hands. Quite uncomfortable, but it didn't send me or anybody else to the hospital.
It's also notable that that the US/NTSC standard for TV is 30 frames/sec (60/2 Hz), and European/PAL is 25 (50/2 Hz).
Some of this comes into why we even use AC in the first place: It's so we can transport the power from point 'A' to point 'B' efficiently. In other words, so it's cheap for the power company.
First off, generators naturally produce a sinusoidal current.
Second, (see below) it's really easy and cheap to convert an input sinusoidal voltage to an arbitrary sinusoidal output voltage.
Third, power transmission is most efficient through wires at really high voltages (much, much more voltage (and efficiency) than the US standard of 110-120).
After they get it relatively close to your house, they then convert it back down (usually in a heirarchal series of steps) to your normal house voltage.
Now, for why we don't have a single DC converter for the entire house:
Two reasons:
First: The highly valued virtue of customization.
You see, not every electronic device (the vast majority of which are DC only) uses the same input voltage. DC-DC voltage conversion is neither as easy, efficient, nor anywhere as cheap as AC-AC conversion. (See above) Sure, you could use a very simple voltage divider to get to the desired DC voltage -- but you're losing gobs of efficiency that way. An AC-AC conversion requires only a transformer, which is really only two coils of wire, with the ratio being what determines the output voltage.
Second: A single DC converter in the house must, by its nature, be capable of handling all the current (amperes) that the house uses. Most AC->DC power converters use a 'bridge rectifier' (four arranged diodes) to convert AC->pulsing DC, then they filter the pulsing DC to a smooth DC (using capacitors; in this case you would need an obscenely large capacitor, and then regulate the output voltage using a 'voltage regulator' which is also in the end, a bunch of diodes. While high-current diodes exist, they are rather expensive. Much moreso than low-current diodes. High-current DC voltage regulators are even more expensive. Large capacitors aren't cheap either.
So, instead of having one massively high-current DC source (requiring huge diodes and capacitors), you have many smaller DC sources.
In the end, it's also many, many times cheaper to have several smaller DC converters than to have a few (or single) big ones. Kinda like a bunch of twigs versus a log. Or computing with multiple CPU's, instead of a single massive processor.
This is because most of the power-consuming devices in your house (and also in industry) use AC power directly to drive motors or create heat: refrigerators
Only partly true. You'd also be suprised by how simple brushless DC motors really are, they don't require any 'complex controllers'. Every motor in your PC is a brushless DC motor (brushes create nasty 'glitches' that generate interference). Take a fan, for instance: You just have to give it a sufficient DC voltage and it will operate. No external controller at all. There may be an internal one, but it's smaller than the rather miniscule capacitor used to keep the supplied power 'clean'.
In fact, a great many of your 'precision' motors (even industrial ones, such as elevators) are actually brushed DC motors. Nearly every power tool I've picked up is a brushed motor. Brushes do wear out-- but it takes a long time to happen.
And as for AC motors being simple. If only... if only. They're fine if you want to run at a fairly constant speed, some multiple of 60 (depending on the number of turns, and the armature type). But having a truly variable speed AC motor. Not that simple.
And AC motors don't really have much to say over DC motors in terms of efficiency. Often the difference between two motors is greater across models of a motor than across the power source.
Here is the question, however: Just how in the world did '#' become known as a 'pound' sign? I knew it as a hash until about 1994 or so, then I had to learn that people also called it a 'pound' sign... Which didn't make sense to me, since a pound sign always meant a curvy 'L' to me...
Utah will basically lose any bit of the Internet content industry it has left to other states
Um... I live in Utah. The only "Internet content industry" here is the online version(s) of the local newspapers. There ain't nothin' to lose!
Utah is generally not 'hip' enough for anything in the entertainment industry to publicize much. A couple of exceptions are the Sundance Film Festival, (which only exists because of Robert Redford's clout, and the fact that he liked the area enough to buy substantial portions of it) and that it is a relatively popular place to film for TV and movies, mainly because of its diverse climates/environments and relatively cheap workforce and extras.)
And for the 'news' industry? Well, it's a rather long way from anywhere you would find much world or national news; this is more a function of population than anything else. It just makes sense that you have a big news company on the east-coast; that's where the nation's capital is, as well as the vast majority of the US population!
So honestly... what is there to lose, both in present and future terms.
I'm sorry, but I just can't see MTV or CNN moving their offices to Salt Lake City.
It never had an internet content industry to begin with-- period. It's just not elite enough a place for most content creators to be caught dead in.
Honest question: (And mainly wanting to alleviate the devil's advocate in my head)
Public interest is pretty much all-important for taxpayer funded programs. That interest is, of course, something that is growing harder to keep, but that's not the point...
Try to look at astronomy from a blue-collar eye: Aside from the general 'oh that's cool' impressions, and the ageless 'Man has always tried to unlock the secrets of the stars'
What real, practical value does the research unique to Hubble have to the average blue-collar Homer Simpson with the attention span and patience of a fruit fly?
The fact of the matter is that it's a recession, and most people are generally less willing to spend any money that isn't going to benefit their everyday life during a recession, when that money can be used now to improve their lot in life.
I hear arguments all the time (that I disagree strongly with, BTW) from cancer researchers who want the money from anything to do with space (including astronomy) to go to their project.
This is pretty much an expected response from a great many humans, to try to cut the other guy out of a job and give yourself the easy paycheck instead of some worthless.
I agree that curing cancer would be great... but so are the many, many, many other things that I currently enjoy because the space program was funded. From sattelite communications to my shoes.
Too many great discoveries are made while pursuing something else entirely, strengthening my belief that science for the sake of science is worthwhile.
[Cynical Devil's advocate mode on]
It honestly sounds like much the same deal: Astronomy funding (and capability) is cut, and you're sore that someone else is going to get your piece of the pie now.
There's only so much scientific research mankind can support at any given point in time, and frankly, the stars have been there for billions of years. How is your studying them going to increase my happiness?
[Devil's advocate mode off]
And part of this is because, other than the general oooh neat-ness of the pictures, I don't (yet) see how any discoveries about the universe outside our solar system have ever in the past, and/or may in the future, help increase the quality of my life or my progency's lives for a long time to come.
[Devil's Advocate is back] It's a nice curiosity, but so far it seems the universe has turned out to be a rather inhospitable place -- to the point of feeling pessimistic, actually, about mankind's continued existence in it... Maybe I should just go stick my head in the sand...
RFID's are an interesting thing -- but one that people haven't thought through when they decide to get paranoid about them.
But here's the real ticket: You know all those 'Visa Check Card' commercials? Since they've become more common, ever notice how much people use a check card to buy everything from groceries to gasoline?
So, you go to the grocery store to get some groceries. You go to the checkout counter, they scan the bar codes, and the sale is stored in a database, itemized completely. Then you swipe your credit-card (or check card) to purchase said groceries. Your credit card is linked directly to your identity, which is then linked to the items purchased, and the retailer has the beginnings of a customer profile on you. Same story at Best Buy, CompUSA, or anyplace else with a credit/debit card reader.
So how this kind of linking differs from an RFID tag, which is essentially a faster bar-code (in the case of retail purchases) really does escape me... If you're that paranoid about T.H.E.M.M. (The Hegemony of Evil Marketers and Merchants) keeping track of your purchases, then pay cash -- RFID's just make it so you get to the point you fork the stuff over more quickly than bar codes do. Hell, I imagine paying by check would be just as effective, because who in their right mind is going to spend the time to link the check to a particular purchase? OCR isn't that good yet...
Case in point: Before February, I've never purchased gasoline at a Chevron station. More to the point: I've never paid for fuel with anything but cash before. Well in February, I decided to both get some petrol from a Chevron station, and to pay with my check card; not a really big deal, right? Imagine my suprise when days later I recieved a letter in the mail offering a Chevron credit card! (having never heard from the company before).
Bottom line: RFID's won't make privacy problems any worse than they already are. Your worst fears about RFID's have pretty much already come to pass.
The point is modularity. X was designed with modules to allow for the future.
To compare QWERTY in such a way is a really dumb thing to do, to say the least.
We still use QWERTY keyboards. Some people don't like the layout, but that's as much a personal issue as using Linux or Windows. No matter WHAT you want to say, keyboards have been around for over a century, and will continue to exist for the forseeable future.
So X in concept is like a keyboard. It's a mechanism to get a single task done. The thing is that X was designed from the start to be extensible. Keyboards weren't originally so (being hard-connected to typewriters); but a computer keyboard is a different animal, and is modular in a similar way.
The whole QWERTY analogy only applies if you have a keyboard that somehow doesn't allow you to remap the keys. Way-back when I remember IBM keyboards that even had removeable keycaps, allowing you to pull off all the letters, and move them around to match whatever keymapping you choose. You could also buy 'nonstandard' keycaps for those who just have to look at the keyboard to type. You can do this with pretty much any keyboard, although it isn't as easy to do as with the IBM keyboard (and possibly will destroy the keyboard).
The keyboard itself is unchanged everything from the electrical funcitonality to its form factor is the exact same-- the only 'real' change is purely cosmetic. The only thing that changes is the way the computer interprets a certain key being pressed. It is 'modular'.
There's nothing wrong with X. All it does is put pixels on a screen in a network-transparent way. Don't bitch and moan just because your favorite 'new' eyecandy hasn't been implemented yet. It isn't that it can't be done easily, or elegantly. It's just that it hasn't been done yet.
Windows didn't have wonderful font rendering until Windows XP (Windows 3.1 had uglier font rendering than X ever did; even Win98 or 2000 left much to be desired). The fact that font handling in X doesn't seem as simple as in Windows doesn't mean that it actually IS. It just means that you are actually exposed to the internals of everything going on when you use X, where it's all hidden from you in Windows or Macintosh. Knowing exactly what is going on is one of the reasons I choose Linux over Windows.
The only part of XF86 that needs work in terms of speed/stability is the actual *driver* portion of it, which has *absolutely nothing to do with X*. It's just that XF86 combines them both (two separate products, actually) into one package.
There are actual 'professional' OSes that do exactly this. (Or at least something close enough to be worth mentioning.) One such OS is called 'Pick', which is essentially BASIC, IIRC... It's also a multi-dimensional database, providing its actual 'usefulness'. The nice thing about Pick is that as long as the OS is ported to the platform you intend to run it on, every Pick program will run identically on every platform. So you're guaranteed that you won't have to do anything when your company decides it's moving from IBM to HP, for instance. Great stuff for mainframe work
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While definitely a "savant", Kim Peek is not behaviorally autistic; Rain Man's character was modified to be an autistic savant.
This is true, but it's worth noting that the movie was based around Kim Peek. I've actually met Kim Peek (and his father, Kim didn't live by himself at the time), he's quite a fellow. Apparently Kim was having trouble getting medical care due to both insurance indifference and government beaurocracy, and Dustin Hoffman (who played the savant in the movie) moved mountains to help out Kim. I've also met people with classic autism -- while a psycologist may differ on the strictness of the definition, to the layman it's the same thing. Still, the opprotunity for education is appreciated.
It's still neat to ask Kim about a little blink-by-town in the middle of nowhere, and he's able to tell you about the area with enough detail that it seems as if he's been there before. (He liked to study maps at one point in time, and no matter how long ago it was, he still remembers perfectly). As long as we stayed in the guidelines set by his father (mainly talking about Kim's areas of interest -- and hence knowledge), he played a perfect game of 'stump the dummy.' (The term originates from one of my engineering professors, referring to Q&A sessions where students ask him questions about their homework, and has nothing to do with Kim Peek. Half the fun of the game was getting the professor to say "I don't know". When talking to Kim Peeks, this never happened.)
It'll be interesting ot see what the study finds.
Mod parent up. Just because some punk AC that has never done a line of embedded coding in his life says something doesn't make it so.
The 4-bit MCU isn't seeing any real decline either.
The fact that you can get a cheap 32-bit doesn't mean squat; it still uses more power (extremely important, espescially with battery-powered devices), requires more memory, requires more complex circuitry and costs significantly more than an 8-bit (and 4-bit) MCU's.
I don't see a need for a microwave oven with a 32-bit processor.
What it comes down to is that (in general) a low-bit MCU costs less, but usually requires development in assembly (or rather expensive dev tools). A 32-bit MCU frequently has cheap C compiler.
When you're making a few million items, the economics are sharply in favor if the cheaper 8- and 4-bit MCU's if it's able to do the job (lower-level programming notwithstanding).
When you're only making a few thousand, then a more powerful MCU makes more sense (mainly because of easier/cheaper programming) offsets the higher unit price.
But you're still not going to get the power use that you achieve with a 8 or 4-bit MCU ('new' tech notwithstanding, more transistors=more power). Battery capacity is fairly close to being limited by physics (many estimate maybe a doubling in power density, and that'll be about it). Fuel cells have issues as well.
I have to ask: To whom are you disagreeing? While the actual ingredients are a bit wrong in my post (as pointed out, minor nitpick -- Aluminum Oxide is actually quite intert, although it is worth noting that 'aluminum powder' is always coated with Aluminum Oxide (because pure aluminum oxidizes extremelly quickly; it's the oxide that generally protects everything aluminum from further oxidation. Again, nitpicking.)
But my point is that while those who actually care know that it was the coating on the zepplin that caused the explosion, your average layman thinks the fault lies with the hydrogen filling it. (It was always the example used in my publick edyoukashun for hydrogen). The main point there was that the general voting public doesn't know the real facts, and their ignorance dictates public policy. Another good example is phobia of everything with the word 'nuclear.'
Although the hydrogen did go up in flames -- quite spectacularly. I loved when a college professor filled soap bubbles with Hydrogen and then ignited them with a long torch. Quite a satisfying bang. But also a very quick combustion.
The IEEE is actually interested in becoming one of the major global 'authorities' in the Hydrogen Economy. (Which makes a fair amount of sense considering electricity is usually required to generate Hydrogen).
Finally -- A recent Popular Science had a couple of rather neat articles on Aluminum: one on thermite, and the other on Aluminum's worst nightmare: Mercury. Apparently Mercury is so dangerous to aluminum (among other living entities,) that the FAA doesn't allow any Mercury onboard aircraft. (There are, of course, a few exceptions.) Something about corroding the airframe so quickly that it's practically impossible to land a plane before catastrophic airframe failure. The article then mentions that there is a legend about the French Resistance sabotaging German Aircraft by smearing a mercury paste on the airframe during World War II.
You don't seem to get the point: You can't electrolyze that much hydrogen from the sun; or more accurately, from the amount you would be able to get from the surface area of the vehicle. It would require the vehicle, sitting in the sun for DAYS to be able to generate enough hydrogen to go a few miles to work.
Hydrogen powered cars aren't that new of an idea, really -- it's simply a case of the percieved 'safety' of having hydrogen in a vehicle. Most people remember something about the Hindenberg exploding, and know it was filled with hydrogen. Nevermind the blimp was coated with aluminum oxide -- one of the oxidizers in the Shuttle's Rocket Boosters, and a key ingredient for Thermite. So there is this irrational 'fear' of hydrogen when compared to gasoline. That irrational fear is one of the largest hurdles to hydrogen powered cars. The other is getting the hydrogen (solar power->hydrogen is much less cost effective than wind turbine->hydrogen.)
A far more practical idea is to have a regular fuel tank holding Hydrogen, and then have your home covered with solar cells to convert water to hydrogen (and oxygen). Even BETTER is to have gas stations that provide Hydrogen, and use electrical sources like wind to provide energy for electolysis. (This is the idea that most engineers are following. Photovoltaic->Hydrogen generation is simply too inefficient, and MUCH more expensive.)
The electrolyzing equipment (as well as photovoltaics, etc.) adds unnecessary weight, bulk, and complexity to the vehicle, greatly reducing the efficiency and reliability of the vehicle.
It's sorta like the Unix mantra: Lots of little tools that are very good at their single job -- not a huge app that combines them all. You don't want to put unnecessary equipment on the car -- putting the fuel generating source ON the vehicle makes about as much sense as putting a machine shop inside the vehicle. Sure, you can make replacement parts 'on the spot', but it sure is a waste when you're driving.
Believe it or not, this is also true when driving the vehicle with electrolyzing equipment onboard -- the amount of H2 it generates at any given moment is inconsequential to the amount burned. It's certainly not enough to extend the operating time by more than a few seconds on the average daily commute.
It's not that hard to imagine. Take a bunch of young children on a long car ride. (Preferably 6+ hours)
Dude, you forgot the utterly trite comments made by many economists:
Many jobs that cannot be outsourced are in the 'Hospitality' industry (eg. Hotel employees, servants, housemaids, butlers, etc.), and that somehow, all the outsourced jobs are going to be made up in 'much more creative/rewarding/higher pay' jobs (such as being a domestic servant). Great; I go from having a fulfilling and challenging engineering career to... sucking up to rich people I'd just as soon spit at. That's good for the nerves...
The espescially galling part is where they claim that 'as long as we can maintain our technical edge, everything will be OK'. How short-sighted. We can't maintain our technical edge if the technical jobs are the ones being outsourced. Another case of mainstream America (both left and right wing, rich/poor, all those who just take technology for granted) holding the sciences and technical knowledge as a thing without worth or trivially acquired in the future.
Again, it may be a good thing for everybody in a few decades; but it doesn't do to get rid of all our technical workers, or even a small fraction of them. Many of the 'first world' countries do so well BECAUSE they kept their agriculture during the industrial revolution. They didn't think 'hey, we can just ship the food from other countries'. Self-sufficiency has a tremendous value to any country, and as much as some delude themselves into thinking humanity has outgrown fighting and warfare, I'm nowhere near so optimistic. We are going to have a few more wars over petroleum, no doubt. I don't doubt water will also be the cause for another war sometime in the future. Access to 'proprietary' information will likely be one as well. Anyone who thinks that information cannot be quelled should read about the dark ages; a millenia of ignorance that was arbitrarily imposed on Europe. The destruction of nearly every single ancient Mayan and Aztec written records. Knowledge and information can do become lost forever; it happens all the time. All it takes is one country to reach an ascendancy of technology like the western world has, then decide to cut off all communication with the outside world. Just because the current 'western' civilizations share information (relatively) freely does NOT mean that other civilizations will have a similar willingness to share.
There are a lot of issues that must be dealt with in terms of the global economy; and while I also believe free trade is a good thing (tm), it can also be a very bad thing as well. It's like fire; you don't unleash it all at once and pray for the shooting to stop (like we're currently doing -- or did it not occur to anybody that the free trade of American culture and ideals is one of the primary hatreds/'evils' towards America?).
Its best to keep everyone employed and with a job and gradually move towards it.
So, while if done right, I think outsourcing would be a good thing, its current implemenation is horridly buggy. It doesn't keep a roof over my head, nor does it put food in my mouth, it took me many years to get an engineering degree, and I'm literally living in poverty at the moment because of it. (Public libraries; gotta love taxpayer money when you don't contribute to it). So I spent four years of my life and tens of thousands of dollars to get a degree which, when I started (and even as recently as last year) was listed as a 'most valuable degree' in terms of job security and pay. It was one of the safest bets out there considering my skills. Then I watched the entire job market collapse in the last eight months of school.
And the only thing I can think is 'what a waste'. I gave up a tremendous amount to go to college; I had nearly no human interactions due to the intensity of the program, didn't even watch TV because I had to spend all my time on homework and extra-curricular projects (supposedly to help me be a more attractive 'future employee' after I graduated).
Now I've got my degree, and I work 8-12 hours a day, 6-7 days per week putting chips into shipping boxes for Frito-Lay. (About 3-4 metric tons of chips a day, and that's just me)
Welcome to the future.
wtf is in the water out there
Well, considering it's quite literally Rocky Mountain spring water...
Trace minerals, Magnesium, Potassium, Calcium, dissolved Oxygen, a bit of Chlorine for the larger municipal water systems, copper that leeches from the plumbing...
And finally, "...the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face"
Fluoride
Although the Fluoride is less than 4 years old since its addition, and is still quite the controversy.
You know, there are more than a few of us in Utah that DO want these 'imposters' out.
That being said, I'm not quite sure what you mean by imposter; they don't seem to be pretending at all. They're bald-faced crap weasels.
Hatch doesn't pretend to be free of special interests. But he gets re-elected because he is nevertheless a force to be reckoned with on Capitol Hill, whose name is well-known throught the country. Excepting Ted Kennedy, I'm not sure there are many other senators whose names hold the public interest for more than an election campaign or news scandal. He's the head of the Senate Judiciary Comittee, as I recall -- a position of no small importance. Couple that kind of influence and position with the cultural paranoia -- as you put it, and you have a guy who the people will continue to support in spite of his flaws.
The land in the Western US is largely Federally controlled -- not privately or locally governed. This means that the Federal Government often has more say about what goes on with the land here than the citizens of Utah do. It's a big deal: There is a continual struggle between environmental groups who want to make Utah into a giant wilderness area (leagal definition of wilderness), a definitive tourist hiker's paradise (meaning that all motorized access is prohibited -- Even airlines can't fly over the area at 40,000 feet), and the groups that want to make a living from the land more directly, whether it be cattle ranching, or farming, or by developing the land -- mining, etc. The point is that the citizens of Utah CANNOT make these decisions; as a result, the people of Virginia often have more say about Utah's economy then Utahns do. This causes no small amount of resentment.
Case in point: We see hundreds of jobs and millions of tax dollars dissapear when then President Clinton declared about 3.2 million acres to be a national monument as an election year gesture to environmental groups. (Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument)
Whether it was a good decision, economically, environmentally, etc. isn't the point. The point is that the whole thing happened without any public input, without congressional approval (and in fact in spite of opposition), and definately without the approval of those who actually lived there. It was an election year ploy to get votes from people OUTSIDE Utah, and to hell with those people who live there.
So it's seen as a good thing to have a powerful Senator like Hatch, a man who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee. If any 'new' guy ousts him, Utah starts back at square one, with a much weaker voice in national (and indeed local) politics. With Hatch there, the state gets a louder voice; without it, we get rolled over. So Hatch gets re-elected. Any corruption (perceived or real) is a moot point. Suffice it to say, there are a great many of us who don't appreciate our Senator either; and we vote(d) against him. So what?
The fact remains: He's a powerful man on capitol hill, and still watches out for Utah's interests more often than not; and that is a fair sight better than a man with no influence on capitol hill who watches out for Utah's interests more often than not.
On the other hand, Darl seems to be acting quite consistently with the behavior of an arrogant, wealthy (by the general standard of US living), greedy man. This arrogance is quite universal in every part of the world, so I don't see how geography or local culture really applies.
It's really easy to envision Darl as an exec for a major record label; same arrogance, same desire to take what is not his, same everything. Nobody voted for them either, but we have to deal with them.
I've actually seen footage of a lion stealing a Thompson's Gazelle from a Cheetah. It basically worked out thusly: The cheetah saw the Lion coming, and started gorging itself as fast as it could. It didn't leave until the Lion lazily batted the cheetah away (the cheetah then grudgingly walked away).
The lion didn't waste any energy chasing the cheetah, and the cheetah cut its losses and moped away.
Man if only the world had some more guys like you.
Um... Not many bad things can happen on a wire only a few namometers long. If you're worried about that, than there are over a hundred million such points of failure. More importantly, this kind of error is extremely easy to catch, and would be discovered in the chip foundary, before it even gets cut from the silicon wafer.
One thing to recall is how much time, money, and effort goes into verifying that the die is 'perfect' before it is cut from the silicon wafer. Chip foundaries spend billions on testing equipment to test as much as they can. It's a pretty interesting thing to see done, because as you subdivide the chip down, eventually you get to the point where you can test a small portion for every single possible combination of inputs, and ensure things are working properly.
It's a time-consuming process, and requires extra transistors to make it happen; even your average Intel processor does this. The difference is in how much verification happens. A mainframe-class processor sees a LOT more such verification.
It's worth noting that Intel is constantly trying to figure out what to do with the 'dead' transistors on its CPU's. (by 'dead' I mean that they are on the die, but aren't used for anything in the finished product. These transistors are there specifically to make testing of the chip easier when it's still on the silicon wafer.
And since these transistors cost money to make, it would be nice for everybody involved for them to be used in 'normal' use, instead of only at the foundary.
If I get your gist, then I would say this: Mainframe processors aren't at all like your 'consumer' processors like G5's and Pentiums. People pay much, MUCH more for these things with the expectation that they will NEVER have problems of ANY kind; a processor as reliable as gravity. A processor for which a warranty is redundant, as the processor will be perfect to begin with.
But I digress:
That is not what I had in mind. I think about a situation where both pipelines work correctly, but an error happens in the comparision unit, such that you end up sending the incorrect data to RAM.
Even if an error happens in the comparison unit, it isn't going to end up in RAM.
The reason is simple if you understand how processors work: processors are a collection of logic gates. Gates are strictly one-way; there is no reverse. There are circumstanses under which a gate can be forced to operate in reverse, but they usually involve physically destroying the gate, and would quickly result in a system failure anyway.
A fundamental thing to understand is that the output from the pipeline is strictly 'read only' to the comparitor. Another important fact is that it is completely unnecessary to make a copy of the outputs in order to compare them, nor is it necessary to change or 'handle' the input data to compare them.
In any event, the comparitor looks at its two input values. And the comparitor probably only one kind of output: a single bit on whether the values are the same. If they are the same, other circuitry in the CPU takes the same input value the comparitor saw -- from the exact same electrical 'pins' -- and passes it along. And, most likely only one of the pieline outputs is actually used; the other, being identical, is simply discarded. (Saves transistors and logic that way)
Here's a crude table to list things out:
Only one pipeline bad=Error caught
Only comparitor bad=Error caught
Both pipelines bad(1)=Error caught
Both pipelines bad(2)=Bad data->memory
One pipeline bad, comparitor bad=Bad data->memory
** Both pipelines bad(1) means that the two pipelines do not have an identical defect, and will return a result different from the correct result and each other.
** Both pipelines bad(2) means that through some miracle they return the same incorrect result. This can happen because of a design problem -- but if that were the case, it would be happen on a lot more than just a couple of processors, and the whole batch would be recalled.
It's worth noting that the last three are many orders of magnitude less likely to happen than the first two. (With the probability of an identical error in both pipelines being so near to zero as to be a pointless conversation anyway.)
The worse case scenerio here is that you have an error in one of the pipelines AND an error in the comparitor that flags the mismatch as good; the effect being the same as if you had a 'normal' non-verified (Pentium/Athlon, etc) CPU generating errors.
The entire point however, is that it is much, much less likely for you to have one of the combinations of these errors on the same chip (and hence much, much less likely to have bad data written to memory) than it is in a 'normal' unverified pipeline.
Memory doesn't go unmodified for long time
In processor terms, it sure does. It goes unmodified for a compartitive ice age, even. You've got to come to terms with how painfully, agonizingly, tormentuously long it takes to get data between the CPU and main memory (not to mention latencies added because of differences in clock speeds between memory and the CPU, etc. etc.). At 2 GHz, it takes more than a few clock ticks just to travel the distance from the CPU to the memory-- to hell with actually changing its contents once it gets there (which takes even longer).
how many instructions does programs execute on average between memory writes? (Less than 10 I would think). Rolling back memo
Not at all in fact if you goto the Churches web site, they offer all the music that is in the Churches hymn book (with the exception of a few that the copyright owner won't let them) for a free download.
It's simply not the case that you have to get 'church' music.
I live in Utah, and as such, am around many, many mormons (about 1/2 the population or so...).
Rob Zombie... No problem.
Marilyn Manson... All the time.
Metallica... Quite popular.
They don't regulate the music their members listen to; don't even try to. Even the common myth that caffeine is taboo is really a bogus claim. They won't drink coffee or tea, but 64 oz of Coca-Cola is OK.
I would say pulling out of a contract with Sony/RIAA and using their own label would be a 'good thing'(tm).
And for Hatch being a 'bad egg'... like most humans, he's had his brilliant moments where he does what is considered very good things... And the moments where it shows all too painfully where he listens to lobbyist pressure (either from his campaign coffers or his party).
I agree totally on the 'bad egg' thing making the Mormon Church look bad. Local politics is a mess, because everybody wants to 'blame it on the Mormons' and of course the other side of the camp. Many laws that pass with little opposition in other states (like one very similar to California's smoking law, which like 20 or more states have) get MASSIVE opposition due to this effect.
Then there's completely insane laws like a recently passed one where you can't have a pitcher of beer taken to your table. You can have as much beer as you like... but it has to be taken to you a glass at a time. I don't drink alcohol (less social pressure to do so here, and I don't drink to 'relax'), but I still think it's an insane law.
?!?
Doesn't allow music?!?!?
Then what the hell are the local radio staions playing? I thought it was everything from Aaron Neville to Zepplin, with every genre in-between.
Mormons don't seem to have anything against music, given that the Osmonds are Mormon (ok, ok, only SOME people consider that music... but there are many other mormon musicians that hit it big in the US and world music arena...)
Even the longest-running radio/music broadcast in the world is CBS and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Certainly not my taste, but it's still music to many an ear.
OK, here's really the only reasons why we use AC power to begin with:
All forms of conversion (Voltage conversion, AC->DC, DC->AC, whatever) results in some level of power loss.
It's much simpler, cheaper, and more efficient to change from one voltage to another with AC than it is with DC.
AC really only requires one wire to transmit power, DC requires two (literally doubling the cost of the wires to get the same power from point A to point B) The additional prongs on your AC outlet plug are a safety feature, not a real electrical requirement for operation.
Generators always generate AC power; a DC generator simply has a dynamo to convert the AC to DC.
And, finally, power transmission through wire is much, much more efficient at voltages that are much, much higher than a home would have. (At least through a non superconductor, which really isn't used by power companies in the present day, let alone a century ago.)
So, with AC power, you get:
* More efficient power generation, since you don't need a dynamo.
* Easy, cheap, and relatively efficient step-up from the generator's output voltage to the hundreds of thousands of volts that efficient power transmission requires. Plus the same ease and cheapness in stepping it back down to a more useful 115 volts.
* The flexibility of being able to convert-- cheaply, easily and reasonably efficiently, to whatever input voltage the final application requires, whether it uses AC, DC or both.
Back story:
Thomas Edison and his General Electric were the champions of DC power. Nikolai Tesla (and an employee of Edison's arch-rival company, Westinghouse) championed AC power. (I may have the companies reversed, but not the men and their power system) Simple economics found Tesla's idea considerably cheaper (mainly by means of greater efficiency, but also in the initial outlay of wire), and AC power became the 'norm' in most (but not all) countries. The ignorant often cite the 'safety' of DC power. Edison had going for him is the argument that DC power is 'safer' than AC (this was tragically demonstrated during when a child electrocuted himself with AC power when the two giants were competing for which would be used in the USA); The 'safety' is a subjective statement, since both are quite deadly.
It's also worth noting that the North American power grid is AFAIK, unique in the world at running at 60 Hz. This is because Tesla 'had 60 Hz all worked out in his head' to paraphrase a professor of mine. Most of the world uses 50 Hz. I've heard that 60 Hz is also just great for sending someone's heart into fibrilation, and 50 Hz is less apt to do so; although I don't know this for sure.
I do know that I've played with a 'toy' at a museum (DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, you'll kill yourself!!!) that 'steps up' regular 115V power to several thousand volts, with the current therefore dropping to a few microamps (safe levels). You put your hands on a set of upside-down aluminum bowls, and twisted one of the bowls like a knob to increase the output current (but always below 500 microamps or so). Still 60 Hz, just at a low enough current to be safe, if uncomfortable. The reason for the bowls is simple: Eventually, a high-enough current will eventually cause your hands to clench shut. If they do, there is nothing to 'grip', and your hand slides off the bowl, breaking the connection. Safety feature...
Naturally, as there were several guys around, and being 'macho' there was a competition to see who could 'take the most'. I got to the point where my hands started feeling weird (not clenching shut; but there was a feeling they were about to). And the distinct feeling of every sweat gland in my hand turning on 'full blast', instantly drenching my hands. Quite uncomfortable, but it didn't send me or anybody else to the hospital.
It's also notable that that the US/NTSC standard for TV is 30 frames/sec (60/2 Hz), and European/PAL is 25 (50/2 Hz).
Some of this comes into why we even use AC in the first place: It's so we can transport the power from point 'A' to point 'B' efficiently. In other words, so it's cheap for the power company.
First off, generators naturally produce a sinusoidal current.
Second, (see below) it's really easy and cheap to convert an input sinusoidal voltage to an arbitrary sinusoidal output voltage.
Third, power transmission is most efficient through wires at really high voltages (much, much more voltage (and efficiency) than the US standard of 110-120).
After they get it relatively close to your house, they then convert it back down (usually in a heirarchal series of steps) to your normal house voltage.
Now, for why we don't have a single DC converter for the entire house:
Two reasons:
First: The highly valued virtue of customization.
You see, not every electronic device (the vast majority of which are DC only) uses the same input voltage. DC-DC voltage conversion is neither as easy, efficient, nor anywhere as cheap as AC-AC conversion. (See above) Sure, you could use a very simple voltage divider to get to the desired DC voltage -- but you're losing gobs of efficiency that way. An AC-AC conversion requires only a transformer, which is really only two coils of wire, with the ratio being what determines the output voltage.
Second: A single DC converter in the house must, by its nature, be capable of handling all the current (amperes) that the house uses. Most AC->DC power converters use a 'bridge rectifier' (four arranged diodes) to convert AC->pulsing DC, then they filter the pulsing DC to a smooth DC (using capacitors; in this case you would need an obscenely large capacitor, and then regulate the output voltage using a 'voltage regulator' which is also in the end, a bunch of diodes. While high-current diodes exist, they are rather expensive. Much moreso than low-current diodes. High-current DC voltage regulators are even more expensive. Large capacitors aren't cheap either.
So, instead of having one massively high-current DC source (requiring huge diodes and capacitors), you have many smaller DC sources.
In the end, it's also many, many times cheaper to have several smaller DC converters than to have a few (or single) big ones. Kinda like a bunch of twigs versus a log. Or computing with multiple CPU's, instead of a single massive processor.
This is because most of the power-consuming devices in your house (and also in industry) use AC power directly to drive motors or create heat: refrigerators
Only partly true. You'd also be suprised by how simple brushless DC motors really are, they don't require any 'complex controllers'. Every motor in your PC is a brushless DC motor (brushes create nasty 'glitches' that generate interference). Take a fan, for instance: You just have to give it a sufficient DC voltage and it will operate. No external controller at all. There may be an internal one, but it's smaller than the rather miniscule capacitor used to keep the supplied power 'clean'.
In fact, a great many of your 'precision' motors (even industrial ones, such as elevators) are actually brushed DC motors. Nearly every power tool I've picked up is a brushed motor. Brushes do wear out-- but it takes a long time to happen.
And as for AC motors being simple. If only... if only. They're fine if you want to run at a fairly constant speed, some multiple of 60 (depending on the number of turns, and the armature type). But having a truly variable speed AC motor. Not that simple.
And AC motors don't really have much to say over DC motors in terms of efficiency. Often the difference between two motors is greater across models of a motor than across the power source.
Not in my experience, at least...
I grew up with 'lb.' for pound...
Here is the question, however: Just how in the world did '#' become known as a 'pound' sign? I knew it as a hash until about 1994 or so, then I had to learn that people also called it a 'pound' sign... Which didn't make sense to me, since a pound sign always meant a curvy 'L' to me...
Utah will basically lose any bit of the Internet content industry it has left to other states
Um... I live in Utah. The only "Internet content industry" here is the online version(s) of the local newspapers. There ain't nothin' to lose!
Utah is generally not 'hip' enough for anything in the entertainment industry to publicize much. A couple of exceptions are the Sundance Film Festival, (which only exists because of Robert Redford's clout, and the fact that he liked the area enough to buy substantial portions of it) and that it is a relatively popular place to film for TV and movies, mainly because of its diverse climates/environments and relatively cheap workforce and extras.)
And for the 'news' industry? Well, it's a rather long way from anywhere you would find much world or national news; this is more a function of population than anything else. It just makes sense that you have a big news company on the east-coast; that's where the nation's capital is, as well as the vast majority of the US population!
So honestly... what is there to lose, both in present and future terms.
I'm sorry, but I just can't see MTV or CNN moving their offices to Salt Lake City.
It never had an internet content industry to begin with-- period. It's just not elite enough a place for most content creators to be caught dead in.
Honest question: (And mainly wanting to alleviate the devil's advocate in my head)
.
Public interest is pretty much all-important for taxpayer funded programs. That interest is, of course, something that is growing harder to keep, but that's not the point...
Try to look at astronomy from a blue-collar eye: Aside from the general 'oh that's cool' impressions, and the ageless 'Man has always tried to unlock the secrets of the stars'
What real, practical value does the research unique to Hubble have to the average blue-collar Homer Simpson with the attention span and patience of a fruit fly?
The fact of the matter is that it's a recession, and most people are generally less willing to spend any money that isn't going to benefit their everyday life during a recession, when that money can be used now to improve their lot in life.
I hear arguments all the time (that I disagree strongly with, BTW) from cancer researchers who want the money from anything to do with space (including astronomy) to go to their project.
This is pretty much an expected response from a great many humans, to try to cut the other guy out of a job and give yourself the easy paycheck instead of some worthless
I agree that curing cancer would be great... but so are the many, many, many other things that I currently enjoy because the space program was funded. From sattelite communications to my shoes.
Too many great discoveries are made while pursuing something else entirely, strengthening my belief that science for the sake of science is worthwhile.
[Cynical Devil's advocate mode on]
It honestly sounds like much the same deal: Astronomy funding (and capability) is cut, and you're sore that someone else is going to get your piece of the pie now.
There's only so much scientific research mankind can support at any given point in time, and frankly, the stars have been there for billions of years. How is your studying them going to increase my happiness?
[Devil's advocate mode off]
And part of this is because, other than the general oooh neat-ness of the pictures, I don't (yet) see how any discoveries about the universe outside our solar system have ever in the past, and/or may in the future, help increase the quality of my life or my progency's lives for a long time to come.
[Devil's Advocate is back]
It's a nice curiosity, but so far it seems the universe has turned out to be a rather inhospitable place -- to the point of feeling pessimistic, actually, about mankind's continued existence in it... Maybe I should just go stick my head in the sand...
RFID's are an interesting thing -- but one that people haven't thought through when they decide to get paranoid about them.
But here's the real ticket: You know all those 'Visa Check Card' commercials? Since they've become more common, ever notice how much people use a check card to buy everything from groceries to gasoline?
So, you go to the grocery store to get some groceries. You go to the checkout counter, they scan the bar codes, and the sale is stored in a database, itemized completely. Then you swipe your credit-card (or check card) to purchase said groceries. Your credit card is linked directly to your identity, which is then linked to the items purchased, and the retailer has the beginnings of a customer profile on you. Same story at Best Buy, CompUSA, or anyplace else with a credit/debit card reader.
So how this kind of linking differs from an RFID tag, which is essentially a faster bar-code (in the case of retail purchases) really does escape me... If you're that paranoid about T.H.E.M.M. (The Hegemony of Evil Marketers and Merchants) keeping track of your purchases, then pay cash -- RFID's just make it so you get to the point you fork the stuff over more quickly than bar codes do. Hell, I imagine paying by check would be just as effective, because who in their right mind is going to spend the time to link the check to a particular purchase? OCR isn't that good yet...
Case in point: Before February, I've never purchased gasoline at a Chevron station. More to the point: I've never paid for fuel with anything but cash before. Well in February, I decided to both get some petrol from a Chevron station, and to pay with my check card; not a really big deal, right? Imagine my suprise when days later I recieved a letter in the mail offering a Chevron credit card! (having never heard from the company before).
Bottom line: RFID's won't make privacy problems any worse than they already are. Your worst fears about RFID's have pretty much already come to pass.
The point is modularity. X was designed with modules to allow for the future.
To compare QWERTY in such a way is a really dumb thing to do, to say the least.
We still use QWERTY keyboards. Some people don't like the layout, but that's as much a personal issue as using Linux or Windows. No matter WHAT you want to say, keyboards have been around for over a century, and will continue to exist for the forseeable future.
So X in concept is like a keyboard. It's a mechanism to get a single task done. The thing is that X was designed from the start to be extensible. Keyboards weren't originally so (being hard-connected to typewriters); but a computer keyboard is a different animal, and is modular in a similar way.
The whole QWERTY analogy only applies if you have a keyboard that somehow doesn't allow you to remap the keys. Way-back when I remember IBM keyboards that even had removeable keycaps, allowing you to pull off all the letters, and move them around to match whatever keymapping you choose. You could also buy 'nonstandard' keycaps for those who just have to look at the keyboard to type. You can do this with pretty much any keyboard, although it isn't as easy to do as with the IBM keyboard (and possibly will destroy the keyboard).
The keyboard itself is unchanged everything from the electrical funcitonality to its form factor is the exact same-- the only 'real' change is purely cosmetic. The only thing that changes is the way the computer interprets a certain key being pressed. It is 'modular'.
There's nothing wrong with X. All it does is put pixels on a screen in a network-transparent way. Don't bitch and moan just because your favorite 'new' eyecandy hasn't been implemented yet. It isn't that it can't be done easily, or elegantly. It's just that it hasn't been done yet.
Windows didn't have wonderful font rendering until Windows XP (Windows 3.1 had uglier font rendering than X ever did; even Win98 or 2000 left much to be desired). The fact that font handling in X doesn't seem as simple as in Windows doesn't mean that it actually IS. It just means that you are actually exposed to the internals of everything going on when you use X, where it's all hidden from you in Windows or Macintosh. Knowing exactly what is going on is one of the reasons I choose Linux over Windows.
The only part of XF86 that needs work in terms of speed/stability is the actual *driver* portion of it, which has *absolutely nothing to do with X*. It's just that XF86 combines them both (two separate products, actually) into one package.
Look -- I still have nightmares about that OS. And the company that ran it.
'nuff said.
There are actual 'professional' OSes that do exactly this. (Or at least something close enough to be worth mentioning.) One such OS is called 'Pick', which is essentially BASIC, IIRC... It's also a multi-dimensional database, providing its actual 'usefulness'. The nice thing about Pick is that as long as the OS is ported to the platform you intend to run it on, every Pick program will run identically on every platform. So you're guaranteed that you won't have to do anything when your company decides it's moving from IBM to HP, for instance. Great stuff for mainframe work