As has been mentioned elsewhere, the byproducts of the hydrogen engine are water and heat. Putting it right on your "self-powered" mobo would greatly increase the heat output which would mean some of that power would have to go to additonal cooling fans/pumps... and then, of course, there's the issue of the water vapor being vented in close proximity to the electronic circuitry.
Separate the motor from the mobo, and you have a conventional device, with a gas tank instead of a power cord.
"How do you land the ship?"
"Umm... you don't have to. We can kinda land the people. Hell, send 'em wherever we want them to go."
"'K."
Of course this led to the amazing coincidence that ~50% of all planets have weird fields/mineral deposits/alien entities with the effect of completely neutralizing transporter technologies.
I was suddenly picked up on this in Enterprise; I don't know why I hadn't seen it before. The transporter was an ad hoc solution to a design flaw that worked so well that they had to scramble for new deus ex machina transporter difficulties in every other episode.
By now, it's almost canonical:
1. Enterprise picks up a subspace distress call.
2. Away team beams down.
3. Red shirts die, Captain kisses girl.
4. Transporter trouble prevents timely rescue of crew.
5. Engineer modifies the main deflector to emit a tachyon pulse, solving the problem. He does this in 1/4 the amount of time expected.
6. One week later, the crew of the Enterprise has forgotten the whole incident, but may make side remarks about events (shore leave, &c.) that did not occur in any episode.
Interesting. I'm still in favor of redundancy, though, at least in the data center. Sure, two power supplies means twice as many power supply failures, and twice as much power supply maintenance, but a single power supply failure doesn't result in a "catastrophic" system outage. And unless you're twice as unlucky[1], the chances of two power supplies failing at once are less than the chances of one power supply failing at once.
As long as either of the two engines can keep the craft airborne (e.g., the Fairchild A-10), I'd imagine the same "n points of failure" principle would apply to skycars as well.
[1] I pulled this value ("twice as unlucky") out of my ass. I'm sure the actual value is much less literarily satisfying.
Same here. I, and every other SA in my peer group that I know, got started in tech support.
If you're in the right place at the right time, with the right skills, you might be lucky enough to skip the tech support step, but chances are you've picked up the necessary experience by doing entry-level "support" of some kind anyway.
Even better: instead of going to college, get a job on some helpedesk somewhere and start paying your dues. Study up in your free time, and get some certifications (most employers will pay for that, even if they may not pay you to study for them). In the time it takes to get an IT-oriented degree from the college of your choice, you could already have well-paying IT job. And keep in mind that you're being paid to get there, instead of paying [the college].
Now, I enjoy my job a lot, and I find system/network administration fulfilling, but it's still just "something I do during the day to pay my bills". I enjoy a lot of freedom to explore and learn whatever I want, and I'm not encumbered by student loan debts.
I know what you're thinking: "without a college degree, you'll never get promoted beyond the level of flunky!"
We'll see, won't we? The company I work for has a strong tradition of promoting from within based on experience and performance, not "Education". And it's not uncommon for senior technical positions to be well-paying and not require a degree anyway.
Besides, if/when my career path ever does top out due to lack of Education, I'll just cash out and open a Geek Outlet in Humboldt.
Now maybe they'll have time to approve my patent for "a solar-powered perpetual motion machine in an open entropic system". Once that's done, I can get busy collecting royalties on all those solar-powered cars, calculators, and roadside assistance phones!
Offtopic, but note that it has been proven that a finite number of "monkeys", given a finite amount of time and 0 (zero) typewriters, not only can, but indeed will, write the complete works of Shakespeare.
But at some point, some words had to be invented specifically to describe things that had never been described before.
Whithout debating your entire post, I wanted to point out, in relation to the excerpt above, that my experience with foreign languages indicates something very interesting: cultures don't always develop words for previously unspecified concepts.
For example, the Portuguese word "saudade" can be roughly translated into English as "homesickness" - but this is a rough translation indeed. The actual concept, the complex feelings evoked by the word do not have an equivalent verbal descriptor in English. As a result - there are feelings and ideas that Brazilians are capable of thinking and talking about, that Americans aren't. Unless maybe the American in question is a gifted poet, but even then she would require many more English words to evoke the feelings associated with the simple Portuguese "saudade".
Without claiming to be an expert, I'm sure that most Chinese ideograms present the same difficulties to a translator.
What all this suggests to me is that a culture's vocabulary is both (1) an manifestation of the issues that are important to that culture and (2) possibly the only rational tool for discussing those issues. I suspect that without a particular word, it would be almost impossible to have any discourse on the thing that word describes, and, over time, we as a culture would simply stop thinking about that thing (whatever it was).
After all, how often do we Americans discuss the pros and cons of schadenfreude, or bishonen?
My company contracted them to implement a site metrics solution. . . the first inkling I had that something was wrong came as a result of the following:
SENIOR E.PIPHANY CONSULTANT: Hey, this server you've given us? Does it have any utilities on it to run periodic processes? You know, like every day at the same time, run a process?
[The consultant goes on to name two or three 3rd-party process-scheduling apps that I've never heard of. This doesn't bother me too much though, because I'm thinking:]
ME (out loud): Well, there's cron, right?
CONSULTANT: "cron"? What's "cron"? Does it schedule processes?
. . .
Two days later their senior DBA tried to tell me that I couldn't get RAID-5 out of a three-drive array...
Um... Yes. Again, the Republican platform favors less gov't interference in business, more gov't interference in personal affairs. In practice, this ends up being "more gov't interference that enhances our profits, less gov't interference that restricts our trade".
And another thing: Is Microsoft trying to say that it (the corporation) is, or should be, terrified of viruses? This seems completely at odds with their historical nonchalance on the subject. Perhaps this conversion to a "state of intense fear" is a step in the right direction. Right?
Slashdot Mirror
If you make a site to make money you won't.
Exactly! Which is why TurboTax Online fails to make giant piles of money every year.
Or maybe you've heard of a little thing called "internet porn"?
Silly babelfish. That's hoaxor, not haxor...
100k 0u+ d00d i w177 h0@x0r j00!!!
That can't be right, can it? Consider:
(1) If the electron always travels the same path, than the output is always the same--not anybody's definition of a "computer"!
(2) Therefore, from (1), there must be more than one possible path for the electron to take.
(3) Any time the path branches, I'd imagine you've moved from the 1-dimensional world to the 2-dimensional world.
(4) Thus, from (2) and (3), logic arrays are conceptually 2-dimensional.
Or am I missing something?
Damnit! Wolves don't eat children!
Yes they do.
Are you talking about these guys?
Or these guys?
Or possibly even these guys?
Perhaps you weren't aware that LucasFilm is simply complying with the industry standard.
As has been mentioned elsewhere, the byproducts of the hydrogen engine are water and heat. Putting it right on your "self-powered" mobo would greatly increase the heat output which would mean some of that power would have to go to additonal cooling fans/pumps... and then, of course, there's the issue of the water vapor being vented in close proximity to the electronic circuitry.
Separate the motor from the mobo, and you have a conventional device, with a gas tank instead of a power cord.
"How do you land the ship?"
"Umm... you don't have to. We can kinda land the people. Hell, send 'em wherever we want them to go."
"'K."
Of course this led to the amazing coincidence that ~50% of all planets have weird fields/mineral deposits/alien entities with the effect of completely neutralizing transporter technologies.
I was suddenly picked up on this in Enterprise; I don't know why I hadn't seen it before. The transporter was an ad hoc solution to a design flaw that worked so well that they had to scramble for new deus ex machina transporter difficulties in every other episode.
By now, it's almost canonical:
1. Enterprise picks up a subspace distress call.
2. Away team beams down.
3. Red shirts die, Captain kisses girl.
4. Transporter trouble prevents timely rescue of crew.
5. Engineer modifies the main deflector to emit a tachyon pulse, solving the problem. He does this in 1/4 the amount of time expected.
6. One week later, the crew of the Enterprise has forgotten the whole incident, but may make side remarks about events (shore leave, &c.) that did not occur in any episode.
Ah. It's all much clearer now. Thanks!
Interesting. I'm still in favor of redundancy, though, at least in the data center. Sure, two power supplies means twice as many power supply failures, and twice as much power supply maintenance, but a single power supply failure doesn't result in a "catastrophic" system outage. And unless you're twice as unlucky[1], the chances of two power supplies failing at once are less than the chances of one power supply failing at once.
As long as either of the two engines can keep the craft airborne (e.g., the Fairchild A-10), I'd imagine the same "n points of failure" principle would apply to skycars as well.
[1] I pulled this value ("twice as unlucky") out of my ass. I'm sure the actual value is much less literarily satisfying.
Where did you find statistics about "cars at 30,000 feet"?
I think the parent post referring to self-evident truth that--unlike airplanes--cars at 30,000 feet have no way to stay there.
HTH. HAND.
Does this mean that Sales Geeks are more likely to feel they're putting their lives on the line than regular geeks feel?
Same here. I, and every other SA in my peer group that I know, got started in tech support.
If you're in the right place at the right time, with the right skills, you might be lucky enough to skip the tech support step, but chances are you've picked up the necessary experience by doing entry-level "support" of some kind anyway.
The only reason they chose Radio Shack was to save money on barcode scanners. Think of all the free Cue:Cats you'd get for $50,000 of purchases!
So you're saying this program was the cat's idea?
Even better: instead of going to college, get a job on some helpedesk somewhere and start paying your dues. Study up in your free time, and get some certifications (most employers will pay for that, even if they may not pay you to study for them). In the time it takes to get an IT-oriented degree from the college of your choice, you could already have well-paying IT job. And keep in mind that you're being paid to get there, instead of paying [the college].
Now, I enjoy my job a lot, and I find system/network administration fulfilling, but it's still just "something I do during the day to pay my bills". I enjoy a lot of freedom to explore and learn whatever I want, and I'm not encumbered by student loan debts.
I know what you're thinking: "without a college degree, you'll never get promoted beyond the level of flunky!"
We'll see, won't we? The company I work for has a strong tradition of promoting from within based on experience and performance, not "Education". And it's not uncommon for senior technical positions to be well-paying and not require a degree anyway.
Besides, if/when my career path ever does top out due to lack of Education, I'll just cash out and open a Geek Outlet in Humboldt.
Funny, but the diagram doesn't appear to show Conxion, which is the hosting company that has "virtually all" of Microsoft's download servers. . .
My buddy used to work there, and can confirm this story. I know, I know "friend of a friend. . .", but at least I'm convinced.
As far as geekly horror goes, who could ever forget the legendary "you are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike"?
Now maybe they'll have time to approve my patent for "a solar-powered perpetual motion machine in an open entropic system". Once that's done, I can get busy collecting royalties on all those solar-powered cars, calculators, and roadside assistance phones!
Offtopic, but note that it has been proven that a finite number of "monkeys", given a finite amount of time and 0 (zero) typewriters, not only can, but indeed will, write the complete works of Shakespeare.
But at some point, some words had to be invented specifically to describe things that had never been described before.
Whithout debating your entire post, I wanted to point out, in relation to the excerpt above, that my experience with foreign languages indicates something very interesting: cultures don't always develop words for previously unspecified concepts.
For example, the Portuguese word "saudade" can be roughly translated into English as "homesickness" - but this is a rough translation indeed. The actual concept, the complex feelings evoked by the word do not have an equivalent verbal descriptor in English. As a result - there are feelings and ideas that Brazilians are capable of thinking and talking about, that Americans aren't. Unless maybe the American in question is a gifted poet, but even then she would require many more English words to evoke the feelings associated with the simple Portuguese "saudade".
Without claiming to be an expert, I'm sure that most Chinese ideograms present the same difficulties to a translator.
What all this suggests to me is that a culture's vocabulary is both (1) an manifestation of the issues that are important to that culture and (2) possibly the only rational tool for discussing those issues. I suspect that without a particular word, it would be almost impossible to have any discourse on the thing that word describes, and, over time, we as a culture would simply stop thinking about that thing (whatever it was).
After all, how often do we Americans discuss the pros and cons of schadenfreude, or bishonen?
Funny E.piphany story:
My company contracted them to implement a site metrics solution. . . the first inkling I had that something was wrong came as a result of the following:
SENIOR E.PIPHANY CONSULTANT: Hey, this server you've given us? Does it have any utilities on it to run periodic processes? You know, like every day at the same time, run a process?
[The consultant goes on to name two or three 3rd-party process-scheduling apps that I've never heard of. This doesn't bother me too much though, because I'm thinking:]
ME (out loud): Well, there's cron, right?
CONSULTANT: "cron"? What's "cron"? Does it schedule processes?
. . .
Two days later their senior DBA tried to tell me that I couldn't get RAID-5 out of a three-drive array...
Um... Yes. Again, the Republican platform favors less gov't interference in business, more gov't interference in personal affairs. In practice, this ends up being "more gov't interference that enhances our profits, less gov't interference that restricts our trade".
And another thing: Is Microsoft trying to say that it (the corporation) is, or should be, terrified of viruses? This seems completely at odds with their historical nonchalance on the subject. Perhaps this conversion to a "state of intense fear" is a step in the right direction. Right?