Well, Rado 'Coupole' and 'Integrale' models do have curved sapphire crystals. This is a major point of corporate pride, but you CAN make non-flat sapphire glass. Making one the size of a windshield has got to be prohibitely expensive, though...
There have been successeful prototypes on 'invisible planes' around WWII, but the whole thing was put on back burner. Invisibility to radar is a lot more important than what you see in visual part of the spectrum in modern BVR battlefield environment. However, 'plasma stealth' techologies ala 'project Aurora' have the potential for true invisibility (absorbtion as opposed to reflection ala 'stealth fighter/bomber') in visual range also...
Sorry about the scale confusion. I ment that there is no known substance harder than corrundum, but I was wrong here. There are reports that cubic boron carbide, some lantanoids or this thing:
http://www.ameslab.gov/news/release/substance.ht ml
Are harder than corundum. The (admittedly very hard) ceramics you mention are in the 7-9 range, to my knowledge. Also check out the autonomous discovery of ultra-hard materials project:
Yep, Al2O3 (corundum) is the generic term for rubies and sapphires and is completely clear when pure. It is the second-most hardest substance known to man after the diamond (Vicker's scale 9 to diamond's 10) The artificial variety is often referred to as 'sapphire crystal' and has been extensively used in fancy watchmaking to produce extremely scratch-resistant watch dials. See, for example, the materials section of rado.com
http://www.rado.com/topFrame.asp?rootMenuId=13&m en uId=13
My understanding was that MPEG2 has following properties:
* Its still operates on fixed-size rectangular block in a musguided attempt to ease the hardware implementation (Not sure about the size for MPEG, but JPEG's is 8x8. You've all seen 'pixellated' JPEGs that happen because of this at high compression ratios)
* it is based on a conventional FFT
whereas MPEG4 was a 'container spec' with extensible codec, where the default codec is already wavelet-based and does not require fixed rectangular areas. If this is so, MPEG4 should be superior to MPEG2 in all instances.
As fashionable as it is, I wouldn't write off
natural resources as a basis of economies just
yet. They'll keep their price at some minimum
level by the virtue of being limited, whereas
informational goods have a tendency to get
awfully cheap because of easy duplication. (note that this does not include professional services provided by humans - a different issue alltogether)
I thought exactly the same thing. AI should be
in 'can happen anytime or not at all' category
together with return of the messiah and FTL
travel. Before the gradual progression to PhD
level AI can happen, there needs to be a total
quantum leap watershed advancement in the field.
As far as I understand, AI research is not much
closer to its ultimate goal than it was back when it all started.
does not apply to CPUs which have a special fully pipeling int-float conversion instruction like SPARC, otherwise hell yeah. Even consider float loop iteration counters...
Yep. Never understood the JVM, which is essentually an arbitrary definition of a stack based processor that happens to rub every modern RISC CPU the wrong way. Why not use the AST for executable format instead of some arbitrarily chosen instruction set with no connection to reality?
Pascal is a toy language, but I remember Turbo Pascal being the most wicked PC compiler by far for a while. It did really evil things, but the generated code kicked the crap out of contemporary C compilers.
Java has no asynchronous networking - every time you make a networking call, you block the thread that made it. I can't think of a less suitable language for network server programming than Java.
Do yourself a favor, go to www.kx.com and download kdb, a database product that will blow your mind. I am trying to get my company to dump Oracle now. It just has been rendered obsolete by a bit of work by a genious. If somebody would've told me a month ago that a piece of code less than 200K in size will beat TPC benchmarks of multimillion-dollar SMP behemoths on a regular PC, do remote replication asynchronously, recover 100K tps from a log, run interpreted stored procedures at native speed and instantaneously evaluate impossible temporal queries, I would've laughed too, but go see for yourself.
When UCB hires people, they make them sign a paper that all the patents they produce while in their employ are property of Regents of University of California
Deja is still the resource for tech question. When you are doing something stupid, chances are somebody has done sometime, somewhere before and posted to the usenet.
The average level of clue found in comp.* newsgroups is lot higher than on/.
I also liked the old Dejanews better, but no they had to become a "portal" Still use Usenet all the time. If I can't find something on the Web or with Deja, I post a question. Where else do you go to get a random question answered? Mailing lists should be really the last resort IMHO...
Yep. The first book (or 1/3 of trilogy) is THE classic and one of my two all time favorites I can't decide between. Than it goes downhill I think, reaches the low point at book IV? (the one thats thousand pages of emperor thinking aloud) and than pick up again. Not quite as epic and exquisite as book one, but great action-packed read nonetheless.
I have to second this (minority) opinion. My vote goes for the movie. I think ST is one of RAH's weakest books and big part of it goes to all the fascist drivel in it. The loved how the movie didn't take that part seriourly.
The imperial Russian setup appears to be one of the favorites in SF. Off the top of my head there is Barrayar of "Miles Vorkosigan" saga by Louis McMaster Bujold. Something about a militaristic aristocracy that found itself surrounded by much more modern societies and doggedly trying to hand onto old traditions. Just like old Russian empire trying hard to be a European country.
Don't agree about the movie though. I liked the movie a lot, but even the uncut four hour version is too hard to follow for people who didn't read the book. 'Dune' is just too big for a single movie. I would love to see it as several movies ala "star wars"
Slashdot Mirror
Well, Rado 'Coupole' and 'Integrale' models do
have curved sapphire crystals. This is a major
point of corporate pride, but you CAN make
non-flat sapphire glass. Making one the size
of a windshield has got to be prohibitely
expensive, though...
The piece of sapphire crystal on my watch is
perfectly transparent...
My guess is that it all depends on specific
crystalline structure. Similarly, pure carbon
can take the form of coal, graphite or diamond.
There have been successeful prototypes on 'invisible planes' around WWII, but the
whole thing was put on back burner. Invisibility
to radar is a lot more important than what you
see in visual part of the spectrum in modern
BVR battlefield environment. However, 'plasma
stealth' techologies ala 'project Aurora' have
the potential for true invisibility (absorbtion
as opposed to reflection ala 'stealth fighter/bomber') in visual range also...
Sorry about the scale confusion. I ment that there
t ml
r /T haler-9704.html
is no known substance harder than corrundum, but
I was wrong here. There are reports that cubic
boron carbide, some lantanoids or this thing:
http://www.ameslab.gov/news/release/substance.h
Are harder than corundum. The (admittedly very
hard) ceramics you mention are in the 7-9 range,
to my knowledge. Also check out the autonomous
discovery of ultra-hard materials project:
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/9704/Thale
(uses some sort of neuronal network)
Yep, Al2O3 (corundum) is the generic term for
m en uId=13
rubies and sapphires and is completely clear
when pure. It is the second-most hardest substance
known to man after the diamond (Vicker's scale 9
to diamond's 10) The artificial variety is often
referred to as 'sapphire crystal' and has been
extensively used in fancy watchmaking to produce
extremely scratch-resistant watch dials. See,
for example, the materials section of rado.com
http://www.rado.com/topFrame.asp?rootMenuId=13&
My understanding was that MPEG2 has following
properties:
* Its still operates on fixed-size rectangular
block in a musguided attempt to ease the
hardware implementation (Not sure about the size
for MPEG, but JPEG's is 8x8. You've all seen 'pixellated' JPEGs that happen because of
this at high compression ratios)
* it is based on a conventional FFT
whereas MPEG4 was a 'container spec' with extensible codec, where the default codec
is already wavelet-based and does not require
fixed rectangular areas. If this is so, MPEG4
should be superior to MPEG2 in all instances.
The spec for the Blu-ray thingie does include a
protective cover, according to the matsushita
press release. Me wonders, why no MPEG4, only 2,
though?
Their airframes have been quite competative
with Western ones so far in passenger jets and
they rule the heavy-duty cargo jets, IMHO.
As fashionable as it is, I wouldn't write off
natural resources as a basis of economies just
yet. They'll keep their price at some minimum
level by the virtue of being limited, whereas
informational goods have a tendency to get
awfully cheap because of easy duplication. (note that this does not include professional services provided by humans - a different issue alltogether)
I thought exactly the same thing. AI should be
in 'can happen anytime or not at all' category
together with return of the messiah and FTL
travel. Before the gradual progression to PhD
level AI can happen, there needs to be a total
quantum leap watershed advancement in the field.
As far as I understand, AI research is not much
closer to its ultimate goal than it was back when it all started.
will do your mirror asynchronously, with no impact
on performace. Will your obese monster of a
database do it? You can download from www.kx.com
does not apply to CPUs which have a special fully
pipeling int-float conversion instruction like SPARC, otherwise hell yeah. Even consider float loop iteration counters...
Yep. Never understood the JVM, which is essentually an arbitrary definition of a stack
based processor that happens to rub every modern
RISC CPU the wrong way. Why not use the AST for executable format instead of some arbitrarily
chosen instruction set with no connection to reality?
Pascal is a toy language, but I remember Turbo Pascal being the most wicked PC compiler by far for a while. It did really evil things, but the generated code kicked the crap out of contemporary C compilers.
Java has no asynchronous networking - every time you make a networking call, you block the thread that made it. I can't think of a less suitable language for network server programming than Java.
Oracle is not really multithreaded either...
Restate your assumptions :) If your transactions are globally ordered, you don't need two-phase commits. kdb is Oracle killer.
Do yourself a favor, go to www.kx.com and download
kdb, a database product that will blow your mind.
I am trying to get my company to dump Oracle now. It just has been rendered obsolete by a bit of work by a genious. If somebody would've told me a month ago that a piece of code less than 200K in size will beat TPC benchmarks of multimillion-dollar SMP behemoths on a regular PC, do remote replication asynchronously, recover 100K tps from a log, run interpreted stored procedures at native speed and instantaneously evaluate impossible temporal queries, I would've laughed too, but go see for yourself.
Illustra was bought by Informix. It wasn't co-opted, it was taking Postgres commercial (Illustra was Stonebraker's star-up)
When UCB hires people, they make them sign a paper that all the patents they produce while in their
employ are property of Regents of University of
California
Agree wholehartedly.
/.
Deja is still the resource for tech question. When you are doing something stupid, chances are somebody has done sometime, somewhere before and posted to the usenet.
The average level of clue found in comp.* newsgroups is lot higher than on
I also liked the old Dejanews better, but no they had to become a "portal" Still use Usenet all the time. If I can't find something on the Web or with
Deja, I post a question. Where else do you go to get a random question answered? Mailing lists should be really the last resort IMHO...
Take a look at Postgres
www.postgresql.org
Yep. The first book (or 1/3 of trilogy) is THE classic and one of my two all time favorites I can't decide between. Than it goes downhill I think, reaches the low point at book IV? (the one thats thousand pages of emperor thinking aloud) and than pick up again. Not quite as epic and exquisite as book one, but great action-packed read nonetheless.
I have to second this (minority) opinion. My vote goes for the movie. I think ST is one of RAH's weakest books and big part of it goes to all the fascist drivel in it. The loved how the movie didn't take that part seriourly.
The imperial Russian setup appears to be one of the favorites in SF. Off the top of my head there
is Barrayar of "Miles Vorkosigan" saga by Louis McMaster Bujold. Something about a militaristic aristocracy that found itself surrounded by much more modern societies and doggedly trying to hand onto old traditions. Just like old Russian empire trying hard to be a European country.
Don't agree about the movie though. I liked the movie a lot, but even the uncut four hour version is too hard to follow for people who didn't read the book. 'Dune' is just too big for a single movie. I would love to see it as several movies ala "star wars"