You'd never think so given the comments you read about carbon nanotubes here on Slashdot. If you were to go by all the discussions about "space elevators"...
(Sorry, have to catch my breath after laughing so hard.)
...you'd think that half the world's suspension bridges are already made out of the stuff, and that building a space elevator won't cost more than a couple thousand bucks. Should be ready by 2010, right guys?
My question is, how did all these people who are so detached from reality figure out how to operate computers to the point they can even get to Slashdot (the number one source of their "research")? Now that's something worth looking into.
The possible human effects weren't part of the question - they should be pretty damn obvious. I for one am curious about something like this. Exactly what kind of power does a category 5 hurricane pack? Has anyone ever tried to quantify something like that, or is it just too damn big and random to even warrant a guess?
A) A tiny organization that squeaks by with donations from a fringe element of society is lobbying city and council officials throughout America to make sure that people "...can't have direct rays on [their] neighbor's property, nor can [they] get waivers for security lighting."
or
B) NORMAL Americans are standing up for their rights to NOT have some selfish, slack-jawed moron of a neighbor install a 1500 watt "security" light in their driveway that shines 50% of the goddamn light in through other people's windows.
I've got news for you: nobody gives a shit about "amateur astronomers" or this IDA crap, despite what the guys who sell the tin-foil hats have told you. There is no fucking "dark sky conspiracy".
The reality is that the JACKASSES out there, who feel like they own the fucking neighborhood and can crank their goddamn stereo at all hours of the night, while simultaneously turning their neighbors yards into part of their wannabe international-airport-runway-lighting system, CAN KISS MY STUDLY, SWEATY ASS.
I think a single power plant supplying an entire city's worth of vehicles is going to be more cost-effective at controlling and minimizing pollution levels than an entire city filled with independently managed internal combustion engines.
Look at that run-on sentence! Woohoo! Time for more beer!;-)
If anyone's interested, I can dig up some c-code that I used - it works with the parallel port under dos.
If you can find it easily, and if it's not too long, can you post it? Those Dallas Semi products look interesting. I've got an old Pentium Pro system that has some heat issues - it'd be great to be able to remotely check the temperature.
Re:AMI BIOS and beeping console
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 1
Well... at least you found it interesting.
Then again, at least I tried to offer an explanation.
Re:AMI BIOS and beeping console
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 1
That's not a bug, nor is it odd. That's the system letting you know that the keyboard character buffer is full. This happens if the system hasn't been able to process the incoming keystrokes fast enough because the system is busy (probably dealing with the flood of keystrokes you're sending it by sitting on your keyboard). Instead of just dropping the keystrokes, the computer is smart enough to store them in a buffer in the hope that the system will soon become responsive enough to process them.
The PC keyboard buffer has a maximum capacity of only 32 characters. Once you hit that number, the system will beep each time you try to send it another keystroke and the new keystroke will not be stored. CTRL + BREAK will clear the buffer, at which point you're free to clog it up again if you're so inclined.
You pro-Mars base people make me laugh for so many reasons, not the least of which is the gravity issue. Spend 5 years on Mars, and then another 5 back on Earth rehabilating yourself to "normal" gravity. Any child unfortunate enough to be born there could never leave.
You'd be better off going to Venus:
a) Physically it is far more the Earth's twin than Mars will ever be. The gravity you'd experience there would be almost identical to what you have here on Earth. You'd just have to ignore the 90 times greater atmospheric pressure. No big deal.
b) Venus has too much atmosphere. If the the atmospheric pressure is that big a problem for you (wimp!), remember this: if we've proven anything here on Earth, it's that we're good at destroying large-scale stuff, not creating large-scale stuff. Just set up a few shop-vacs around the planet, and hoover away that extra sulfurous crap they call an "atmosphere". Simple and effective!
c) Closer to the sun = better solar power options (just got to get rid of those nasty sulfuric acid clouds first... a simple 20 minute project for an oil company I'm sure)
Why the hell would anyone want to go to Mars? Venus rulez!!!!!
I'm surprised the Slashdot crowd hasn't posted a link to this earlier Slashdot story. Here's a picture of the Coleman fuel cell unit. No updates from Coleman about when they're going to actually be distributing these things though. (Gee... what a surprise.)
As a health care facilty, I would expect you'd have easier access to suppliers of compressed gas (i.e. hydrogen) than others.
There are apparently a host of different types of UV LEDs. From the LED Museum, here's a quote about one particularly nasty one:
"This is one LED that you should NEVER, EVER look at directly with your eyes. This is because the invisible ultraviolet radiation is harmful to them, and can cause corneal fogging that mimics cataracts; and can cause even more severe damage to your eye's lens with only slightly prolonged exposure.
Thankfully here, the LED's UV emission is all long-wave, and not the even nastier medium and shortwave kind. If you need to view this LED directly for any reason (studying it, curious, etc.), obtain a UV filter and place it between your eyes and the LED's window before you try feeding this LED any power."
For the record, part of me hopes you're right. The other part just doesn't care anymore... there are just so many valid reasons to argue for or against such a thing that my vote defaults to the status quo. Sigh is right.
When people see China reach the moon (and they will reach it), everyone will say, "that's cool." And then go back to whatever they were doing.
The US government, in particular, will have this reaction. Why? Because they know better than anyone else that there's no point. China would suck itself dry of cash and resources if it actually tried to do anything serious with a lunar program with the technology that's available today... or even the technology that'll be available in the next 30 years.
It's nice to dream people, but face it - there's no way in hell that there's going to be anything more than a few "us too!" missions to the moon in the next 30 or 40 years. Some of us will probably be dead from some dumbass terrorist attack by then anyway. So why the hell care? Better to spend some time with your family and appreciate what we've got down here on Earth than try to spend a vacation on a godforsaken ball of rock and dust.
I know which lights you're talking about. I believe the Slashdot article actually included two relevant links.
One of them was to the LED Museum. Follow that link, and on the left hand side under the "Other LEDs" category, click on "RGB LEDs".
The variable-color spotlights you're thinking of are made out of those LEDs. But I don't recall the name of the company that creates the spotlights from those raw LEDs.
It's hard to look out the window when your office is in a sub, sub-basement (nuclear blast... what nuclear blast?). Likewise, when your "office" is actually an 8 x 8 x 8 cube (8 cubed cube?), the ability to focus on "distant" objects becomes rather difficult.
I was completely stunned by how expensive even a measly 40 character Braille display unit for a home computer costs. They typically start at $4,000 (USD)! That's for 40 characters in a straight line! The 80 character ones cost at least $10,000 (USD)! Can't believe it? Here's a good link to various Braille display manufacturers.
These piezo-electric devices also have an apparently well-founded reputation for needing frequent servicing, and just in general not being durable.
So... $10,000 for a straight line of Braille, consisting of 80 characters. The cells are either 6 x 2 dots, or 8 x 2 dots, and are distinct units. No graphics here! It sits on a desk all day and is still prone to problems. And you want to do what?
It's a nice idea, but unless you've got some super new technology to bring the price way down and the reliability way up, I'm not sure how well this would work.
For the record, I really wish these things were cheaper! It occurred to me a few weeks ago that Braille would solve a lot of my vision issues. I would love to be able to sit at my computer and keep my eyes closed... but still be working. My eyes feel like crap after staring at a computer screen for 14 hours a day. The ability to use Braille would be so great I'd make a serious attempt at learning it. I realized that graphics are such a small part of the things I use that I could easily get by with only text most of the time. But the displays are just too expensive....
A picture's worth a thousand words alright. However, the next sentence or two should highlight the fact that it's only PS/2 capable. Check their FAQ. No serial or USB capability - not even if you have the correct adapter.
Medic! CmdrTaco's talking about his Sims again!
on
The Sims Overtake Myst
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Non-violent? I have to say one of the most disturbing (yet mildly amusing) comments about a video game on Slashdot came from CmdrTaco last year:
Referring to the possibility of a Sims TV show:
"This sounds pretty lame... unless they use my Sim Neighborhood: I used skins from 20 Female Television stars ranging from the girls of Friends, Xena, Buffy, and beyond. I made many households and played the game normally for awhile. After the ladies all fell in love with each other, purchased everything available in the game, and had successfull careers, I started luring neighbors over and trapping them in my attic, or drowning them in my pool. You haven't lived until you've seen Xena Warrior Princess die in a terrible grill fire while Sculley flails her arms in terror. Now that would be good TV. Especially with anatomically correct skins."
Adaptec's Serial ATA controller
on
Serial ATA Coming
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Adaptec has a press release concerning their new Serial ATA ASIC/controller here. I'm sure many other manufacturers have similar news as well.
This is one new standard I'm willing to accept. In fact, I'm a bit surprised by the number of people here scoffing at Serial ATA. With performance of some parallel ATA drives matching mainstream SCSI drives for months now, with capacities closing in, and with SCSI manufacturers continuing to slowly drop production of SCSI optical drives, I think the end of SCSI is near. I never thought I'd say that, but I really think it is.
So to all you people saying that this just introduces a new standard to a "mess", I think you're wrong. This will end the division between desktop storage and mid-level server storage. Firewire and USB will stick around - but only as the external storage interface options they should be.
From http://aswww.phy.ncu.edu.tw/ast101/spacenew.htm (link here):
There is also evidence that monks in Canterbury, England,observed an impact on the moon in June 1178. Astronomer-geologist Jack Hartung has linked the observations recorded by the monks with the crater Giordano Bruno, one of the youngest craters on the Moon.
That's a theory that's been around for at least 20 years. Some people doubt it - do a search for "Hartung" and "Giordano Bruno" for more articles.
Also, more recently, it's believed a meteor from a Leonid shower struck the moon.
A search for "meteor impact" and "moon" will turn up lots of other possible examples.
Most of the impactors are (obviously) trivial compared to the size of the moon. At best, you'll get a pretty crater.
Thanks for posting that link to the 'mydigitaldiscount' site. I've been looking for internal IDE/ATAPI compact flash adapters for a while now. Those external USB adapters have become so common I'm sure you'll be able to buy them at grocery stores soon. Why are internal ones so darn hard to find? Don't manufacturers understand that I've got a decent sized computer case on my desk with a few empty drive bays for a reason? The last thing I want is another stupid little item to take up more space on my desk - and certainly not one that's effectively chained to my computer with another cable to get in the way.
The only drawback I can see to the internal adapter on that site you mentioned is that they state that it needs a card inserted before powering-on the system. In the manual, it also recommends having a card inserted when shutting down your OS. I'm hoping to find an adapter that follows the more flexible ATAPI route that CD-ROM drives and ZIP drives offers - i.e. unhindered hotswap capability. The only possibility I have remaining is this unit. With few details provided, and having not run into anyone who's tried it, I guess I'm just going to have to shell out the $80 to see how it works.
Darnit! These sorts of internal adapters should be dead commmon by now! What year is it? 1986?
Slashdot Mirror
...up until now has been very problematic
...you'd think that half the world's suspension bridges are already made out of the stuff, and that building a space elevator won't cost more than a couple thousand bucks. Should be ready by 2010, right guys?
You'd never think so given the comments you read about carbon nanotubes here on Slashdot. If you were to go by all the discussions about "space elevators"...
(Sorry, have to catch my breath after laughing so hard.)
My question is, how did all these people who are so detached from reality figure out how to operate computers to the point they can even get to Slashdot (the number one source of their "research")? Now that's something worth looking into.
Well, duh! ;-)
The possible human effects weren't part of the question - they should be pretty damn obvious. I for one am curious about something like this. Exactly what kind of power does a category 5 hurricane pack? Has anyone ever tried to quantify something like that, or is it just too damn big and random to even warrant a guess?
We don't turn the power up on our Cat 5 because we're talk to Slashdot and eBay at the same time...
Damn! So that's what I've been doing wrong!
Hmm ... which is more likely:
A) A tiny organization that squeaks by with donations from a fringe element of society is lobbying city and council officials throughout America to make sure that people "...can't have direct rays on [their] neighbor's property, nor can [they] get waivers for security lighting."
or
B) NORMAL Americans are standing up for their rights to NOT have some selfish, slack-jawed moron of a neighbor install a 1500 watt "security" light in their driveway that shines 50% of the goddamn light in through other people's windows.
I've got news for you: nobody gives a shit about "amateur astronomers" or this IDA crap, despite what the guys who sell the tin-foil hats have told you. There is no fucking "dark sky conspiracy".
The reality is that the JACKASSES out there, who feel like they own the fucking neighborhood and can crank their goddamn stereo at all hours of the night, while simultaneously turning their neighbors yards into part of their wannabe international-airport-runway-lighting system, CAN KISS MY STUDLY, SWEATY ASS.
I think a single power plant supplying an entire city's worth of vehicles is going to be more cost-effective at controlling and minimizing pollution levels than an entire city filled with independently managed internal combustion engines.
;-)
Look at that run-on sentence! Woohoo! Time for more beer!
That's excellent morcheeba! Thanks very much for posting all that.
If anyone's interested, I can dig up some c-code that I used - it works with the parallel port under dos.
If you can find it easily, and if it's not too long, can you post it? Those Dallas Semi products look interesting. I've got an old Pentium Pro system that has some heat issues - it'd be great to be able to remotely check the temperature.
Well ... at least you found it interesting.
Then again, at least I tried to offer an explanation.
That's not a bug, nor is it odd. That's the system letting you know that the keyboard character buffer is full. This happens if the system hasn't been able to process the incoming keystrokes fast enough because the system is busy (probably dealing with the flood of keystrokes you're sending it by sitting on your keyboard). Instead of just dropping the keystrokes, the computer is smart enough to store them in a buffer in the hope that the system will soon become responsive enough to process them.
The PC keyboard buffer has a maximum capacity of only 32 characters. Once you hit that number, the system will beep each time you try to send it another keystroke and the new keystroke will not be stored. CTRL + BREAK will clear the buffer, at which point you're free to clog it up again if you're so inclined.
You pro-Mars base people make me laugh for so many reasons, not the least of which is the gravity issue. Spend 5 years on Mars, and then another 5 back on Earth rehabilating yourself to "normal" gravity. Any child unfortunate enough to be born there could never leave.
... a simple 20 minute project for an oil company I'm sure)
You'd be better off going to Venus:
a) Physically it is far more the Earth's twin than Mars will ever be. The gravity you'd experience there would be almost identical to what you have here on Earth. You'd just have to ignore the 90 times greater atmospheric pressure. No big deal.
b) Venus has too much atmosphere. If the the atmospheric pressure is that big a problem for you (wimp!), remember this: if we've proven anything here on Earth, it's that we're good at destroying large-scale stuff, not creating large-scale stuff. Just set up a few shop-vacs around the planet, and hoover away that extra sulfurous crap they call an "atmosphere". Simple and effective!
c) Closer to the sun = better solar power options (just got to get rid of those nasty sulfuric acid clouds first
Why the hell would anyone want to go to Mars? Venus rulez!!!!!
I'm surprised the Slashdot crowd hasn't posted a link to this earlier Slashdot story. Here's a picture of the Coleman fuel cell unit. No updates from Coleman about when they're going to actually be distributing these things though. (Gee ... what a surprise.)
As a health care facilty, I would expect you'd have easier access to suppliers of compressed gas (i.e. hydrogen) than others.
Just what range of UV is that LED cranking out?
There are apparently a host of different types of UV LEDs. From the LED Museum, here's a quote about one particularly nasty one:
"This is one LED that you should NEVER, EVER look at directly with your eyes. This is because the invisible ultraviolet radiation is harmful to them, and can cause corneal fogging that mimics cataracts; and can cause even more severe damage to your eye's lens with only slightly prolonged exposure.
Thankfully here, the LED's UV emission is all long-wave, and not the even nastier medium and shortwave kind. If you need to view this LED directly for any reason (studying it, curious, etc.), obtain a UV filter and place it between your eyes and the LED's window before you try feeding this LED any power."
For the record, part of me hopes you're right. The other part just doesn't care anymore ... there are just so many valid reasons to argue for or against such a thing that my vote defaults to the status quo. Sigh is right.
When people see China reach the moon (and they will reach it), everyone will say, "that's cool." And then go back to whatever they were doing.
... or even the technology that'll be available in the next 30 years.
The US government, in particular, will have this reaction. Why? Because they know better than anyone else that there's no point. China would suck itself dry of cash and resources if it actually tried to do anything serious with a lunar program with the technology that's available today
It's nice to dream people, but face it - there's no way in hell that there's going to be anything more than a few "us too!" missions to the moon in the next 30 or 40 years. Some of us will probably be dead from some dumbass terrorist attack by then anyway. So why the hell care? Better to spend some time with your family and appreciate what we've got down here on Earth than try to spend a vacation on a godforsaken ball of rock and dust.
Fuck the moon.
This proved to be one of the more painful web searches I've done in a while!
Here they are:
Color Kinetics
It looks like they've further developed their spotlight products since that original Slashdot article.
I know which lights you're talking about. I believe the Slashdot article actually included two relevant links.
One of them was to the LED Museum. Follow that link, and on the left hand side under the "Other LEDs" category, click on "RGB LEDs".
The variable-color spotlights you're thinking of are made out of those LEDs. But I don't recall the name of the company that creates the spotlights from those raw LEDs.
Anyone?
Pig sticking
;-)
It's hard to look out the window when your office is in a sub, sub-basement (nuclear blast ... what nuclear blast?). Likewise, when your "office" is actually an 8 x 8 x 8 cube (8 cubed cube?), the ability to focus on "distant" objects becomes rather difficult.
;-)
Thanks for trying though.
...because no one could afford one.
... $10,000 for a straight line of Braille, consisting of 80 characters. The cells are either 6 x 2 dots, or 8 x 2 dots, and are distinct units. No graphics here! It sits on a desk all day and is still prone to problems. And you want to do what?
... but still be working. My eyes feel like crap after staring at a computer screen for 14 hours a day. The ability to use Braille would be so great I'd make a serious attempt at learning it. I realized that graphics are such a small part of the things I use that I could easily get by with only text most of the time. But the displays are just too expensive....
Well, maybe a few could, but not many.
I was completely stunned by how expensive even a measly 40 character Braille display unit for a home computer costs. They typically start at $4,000 (USD)! That's for 40 characters in a straight line! The 80 character ones cost at least $10,000 (USD)! Can't believe it? Here's a good link to various Braille display manufacturers.
These piezo-electric devices also have an apparently well-founded reputation for needing frequent servicing, and just in general not being durable.
So
It's a nice idea, but unless you've got some super new technology to bring the price way down and the reliability way up, I'm not sure how well this would work.
For the record, I really wish these things were cheaper! It occurred to me a few weeks ago that Braille would solve a lot of my vision issues. I would love to be able to sit at my computer and keep my eyes closed
"The interior space, with the noted absence of structural bulkheads, provides for tremendous versatility in interior layout and space planning."
Why do I imagine a conversation like this in their engineering department:
Who needs those structural bulkheads anyway? Seawater can't be all that heavy.
*shudder*
A picture's worth a thousand words alright. However, the next sentence or two should highlight the fact that it's only PS/2 capable. Check their FAQ. No serial or USB capability - not even if you have the correct adapter.
Non-violent? I have to say one of the most disturbing (yet mildly amusing) comments about a video game on Slashdot came from CmdrTaco last year:
Referring to the possibility of a Sims TV show:
"This sounds pretty lame... unless they use my Sim Neighborhood: I used skins from 20 Female Television stars ranging from the girls of Friends, Xena, Buffy, and beyond. I made many households and played the game normally for awhile. After the ladies all fell in love with each other, purchased everything available in the game, and had successfull careers, I started luring neighbors over and trapping them in my attic, or drowning them in my pool. You haven't lived until you've seen Xena Warrior Princess die in a terrible grill fire while Sculley flails her arms in terror. Now that would be good TV. Especially with anatomically correct skins."
Adaptec has a press release concerning their new Serial ATA ASIC/controller here. I'm sure many other manufacturers have similar news as well.
This is one new standard I'm willing to accept. In fact, I'm a bit surprised by the number of people here scoffing at Serial ATA. With performance of some parallel ATA drives matching mainstream SCSI drives for months now, with capacities closing in, and with SCSI manufacturers continuing to slowly drop production of SCSI optical drives, I think the end of SCSI is near. I never thought I'd say that, but I really think it is.
So to all you people saying that this just introduces a new standard to a "mess", I think you're wrong. This will end the division between desktop storage and mid-level server storage. Firewire and USB will stick around - but only as the external storage interface options they should be.
From http://aswww.phy.ncu.edu.tw/ast101/spacenew.htm (link here):
There is also evidence that monks in Canterbury, England,observed an impact on the moon in June 1178. Astronomer-geologist Jack Hartung has linked the observations recorded by the monks with the crater Giordano Bruno, one of the youngest craters on the Moon.
That's a theory that's been around for at least 20 years. Some people doubt it - do a search for "Hartung" and "Giordano Bruno" for more articles.
Also, more recently, it's believed a meteor from a Leonid shower struck the moon.
A search for "meteor impact" and "moon" will turn up lots of other possible examples.
Most of the impactors are (obviously) trivial compared to the size of the moon. At best, you'll get a pretty crater.
Thanks for posting that link to the 'mydigitaldiscount' site. I've been looking for internal IDE/ATAPI compact flash adapters for a while now. Those external USB adapters have become so common I'm sure you'll be able to buy them at grocery stores soon. Why are internal ones so darn hard to find? Don't manufacturers understand that I've got a decent sized computer case on my desk with a few empty drive bays for a reason? The last thing I want is another stupid little item to take up more space on my desk - and certainly not one that's effectively chained to my computer with another cable to get in the way.
The only drawback I can see to the internal adapter on that site you mentioned is that they state that it needs a card inserted before powering-on the system. In the manual, it also recommends having a card inserted when shutting down your OS. I'm hoping to find an adapter that follows the more flexible ATAPI route that CD-ROM drives and ZIP drives offers - i.e. unhindered hotswap capability. The only possibility I have remaining is this unit. With few details provided, and having not run into anyone who's tried it, I guess I'm just going to have to shell out the $80 to see how it works.
Darnit! These sorts of internal adapters should be dead commmon by now! What year is it? 1986?
Death to the floppy drive!