Each time the scifi topic comes up on/. I mention Jack Vance and all I get in return is the equivalent of a blank stare. And I find it strange that none of his books have - to my knowledge - been turned into a movie.
Vance is a master at creating bizarre worlds, societies, technology and characters. The books are seriously funny (the "dry British humor" way), have a decently twisted plot and are baroquely decorated with myriad minutiae.
Granted, some books could be considered more "space fantasy" than scifi, but you will always find more than a dash of unfamiliar science and technology structuring the studied society.
Consider a barbell: two masses linked by a bar with a strain gauge. If they're rotating around the COG through an axis different from the bar axis, the strain gauge will detect the 'centrifugal' force. Now float this object somewhere in space. Clearly, you will see if it's rotating by comparing its position to the stars. The strain gauge will tell you the same thing. Why ?
Does a universal inertial frame for rotation exist ? That would be strange, because that special frame would have to be stationary relative to something outside the universe.
Or is that frame created by the combined gravity field of universe ?
For four years and counting I'm boycotting a certain unnamed oil major (Shell) because they didn't compensate me fully for the trouble when my car was immobilized by bad fuel. My goal is set at ten years; they will have lost three times the amount by then, and I will have gained some satisfaction.
I find it mentally very easy to stick to the boycott. Not unlike feeling a resentment for a certain kind of food that you got sick from.
they don't scratch as easily, but I wouldn't touch Sony products with a ten-foot pole anymore. They will need to prove themselves over and over again to make up for pushing Atrac and Memory Stick down peoples throats, let alone the recent DRM debacle of their music division, before they will regain a semblance of credibility.
If you're in the market for an MP3 player, do yourself a favor, bend over and get an iPod. Really. What it lacks in barely-missed features is made up by style, capacity and a whole ecosystem of third party accessoires and software. And don't forget, iPods have a decent second hand value.
Not getting an iPod now is like not getting a PC in the 1990s. Sure, you can always buy something else if you want something different just for the sake of it, but your idiosyncrasy is going to cost you in the end.
No, actually it's not the color temperature (your eyes/brain adapt) but the discrete spectrum that is the problem. Incandescents, being close to a black body emitter, have a continuous spectrum. Most LEDs however are monochromatic; white LEDs are made either by combining three monochromatic LEDs (RGB) or by exciting a yellow fluorescent with a blue LED. Neither method yields a continuous spectrum. CFs are slightly better, but not much.
If a pigment has a high-Q reflection peak at a certain frequency, and absorbs all the rest, but the LED doesn't emit light at that frequency, the pigment will remain dark.
In reality you won't encounter pure pigments too much, but many colors seem dull and lifeless under non-continuous spectrum lighting. Some people don't notice, but then some people don't seem to notice anything at all.
So unless that problem is solved, I won't install LEDs or CFs in my house except in places where it doesn't matter. I prefer 12V halogens powered by a stabilized 11.5V power supply. They seem to last forever (around four years, I've got some in my living room that are 8 years old) and produce a non-flickering, lively and lovely light. As to the power consumption: lights are on much longer during the long dark winter evenings where the generated heat isn't a total loss. Rising fossil energy prices are making heating by electricity less of an economic disaster anyway.
Still, it would be cool (or warm:-) to be able tune the color of the light.
Just shows what an overpriced cash cow voice is now.
Of course. At 64kbps (if that) a 1 minute voice call is less than half a maybebyte. My ISP charges 1 EUR / gigglebyte over the limit, and that's plenty rich. This means that, in a transparant market, 2000 transcontinental voice minutes should cost less than 1 EUR.
I'm still looking for an USB replacement (no more PS/2 ports on new PCs) of my slowly deteriorating collection of Logitech Trackman Marble FX (hence TmMFX) trackballs.
The TmMFX must have been the best kept secret and apex of Logitech engineering. I've tried other Logitech mice/trackballs in the meantime, but they all fall short one way or another. This gizmo is no exception.
Please, please, Logitech: bring back the brilliant engineer(ing team) that designed the TmMFX.
The SF novel Alastor: Marune by Jack Vance describes effect of the color of the planet's four suns (red, green, blue and orange) on the behavior of the inhabitants. Each phase caused by a different combination of the colors has a name (I don't remember which) with specific effects.
Bands, artists, songwriters of all flavors should make thier stuff availible online with one CC stipulation.. It can't be sold/profitted from unless the copyright holder changes the license.
I never tried that. I'm not sure that's going to work out all right.
Let's see: the grandiose and triumphant C major POM POM POM pom-pom-pom POM POOOOM ending of the 5th crossfading into the delicate F major string intro of the 6th... but then, why not ? Anything goes !
Nice and all, but after 10 minutes of browsing NH info I already ran into a bill that will force children to wear a helmet when biking ($35 fine if they don't).
Noble cause maybe, but from things like this it looks that freedom is going down the drain in NH as well. I hope you can make a timely difference.
Latest versions can be drawn down at 20C. This means you can draw 30A from a 1500mAh cell.
As to the lifetime, I rarely get more than 100 cycles out of them (due to the high current draw ); this means about $0.5 per flight. Not cheap, but there's no practical alternative for electric helis if you want a decent performance and flight time.
And don't forget the fire hazard. If they're abused (crash), shorted (exposed wires) or improperly charged, the Li will burn fiercely. Not for the faint of heart.
Actually I do like the surreal lighting of raytraced images a lot. It imparts an abstract sense of cleanliness into the decrepit and muddy real life we all know.
Over time raytraced images will no doubt look more natural, but I hope to still be able to see new and interesting images rendered 20th century style in the future.
Compare the essence of a Bach fugue with the bombast of Mahler. Both have their place.
A simple power supply with a current limiting knob isn't safe. Overcharge a LiPo and you'll set it on fire in a rather spectacular and difficult to extinguish way.
A charger that is specifically designed for LiPo charging is a MUST.
I agree it'll take at least a generation to get rid of the idea that natural diamonds are to be preferred over synthetic ones because they come with a piece of paper that isn't worth shit should you ever want to sell your diamond.
On the other hand people are slowly becoming educated about this, and are caring less and less about certificated diamonds. A market crash looks very probable to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Each time the scifi topic comes up on /. I mention Jack Vance and all I get in return is the equivalent of a blank stare. And I find it strange that none of his books have - to my knowledge - been turned into a movie.
Vance is a master at creating bizarre worlds, societies, technology and characters. The books are seriously funny (the "dry British humor" way), have a decently twisted plot and are baroquely decorated with myriad minutiae.
Granted, some books could be considered more "space fantasy" than scifi, but you will always find more than a dash of unfamiliar science and technology structuring the studied society.
I've been wondering about this for a while too.
Consider a barbell: two masses linked by a bar with a strain gauge. If they're rotating around the COG through an axis different from the bar axis, the strain gauge will detect the 'centrifugal' force. Now float this object somewhere in space. Clearly, you will see if it's rotating by comparing its position to the stars. The strain gauge will tell you the same thing. Why ?
Does a universal inertial frame for rotation exist ? That would be strange, because that special frame would have to be stationary relative to something outside the universe.
Or is that frame created by the combined gravity field of universe ?
For four years and counting I'm boycotting a certain unnamed oil major (Shell) because they didn't compensate me fully for the trouble when my car was immobilized by bad fuel. My goal is set at ten years; they will have lost three times the amount by then, and I will have gained some satisfaction.
I find it mentally very easy to stick to the boycott. Not unlike feeling a resentment for a certain kind of food that you got sick from.
As another anecdote goes that some people keep their children inside when a great tit feeds on a fat ball.
they don't scratch as easily, but I wouldn't touch Sony products with a ten-foot pole anymore. They will need to prove themselves over and over again to make up for pushing Atrac and Memory Stick down peoples throats, let alone the recent DRM debacle of their music division, before they will regain a semblance of credibility.
If you're in the market for an MP3 player, do yourself a favor, bend over and get an iPod. Really. What it lacks in barely-missed features is made up by style, capacity and a whole ecosystem of third party accessoires and software. And don't forget, iPods have a decent second hand value.
Not getting an iPod now is like not getting a PC in the 1990s. Sure, you can always buy something else if you want something different just for the sake of it, but your idiosyncrasy is going to cost you in the end.
was an exception.
Taka!
No, actually it's not the color temperature (your eyes/brain adapt) but the discrete spectrum that is the problem. Incandescents, being close to a black body emitter, have a continuous spectrum. Most LEDs however are monochromatic; white LEDs are made either by combining three monochromatic LEDs (RGB) or by exciting a yellow fluorescent with a blue LED. Neither method yields a continuous spectrum. CFs are slightly better, but not much.
:-) to be able tune the color of the light.
If a pigment has a high-Q reflection peak at a certain frequency, and absorbs all the rest, but the LED doesn't emit light at that frequency, the pigment will remain dark.
In reality you won't encounter pure pigments too much, but many colors seem dull and lifeless under non-continuous spectrum lighting. Some people don't notice, but then some people don't seem to notice anything at all.
So unless that problem is solved, I won't install LEDs or CFs in my house except in places where it doesn't matter. I prefer 12V halogens powered by a stabilized 11.5V power supply. They seem to last forever (around four years, I've got some in my living room that are 8 years old) and produce a non-flickering, lively and lovely light. As to the power consumption: lights are on much longer during the long dark winter evenings where the generated heat isn't a total loss. Rising fossil energy prices are making heating by electricity less of an economic disaster anyway.
Still, it would be cool (or warm
Of course. At 64kbps (if that) a 1 minute voice call is less than half a maybebyte. My ISP charges 1 EUR / gigglebyte over the limit, and that's plenty rich. This means that, in a transparant market, 2000 transcontinental voice minutes should cost less than 1 EUR.
I'm still looking for an USB replacement (no more PS/2 ports on new PCs) of my slowly deteriorating collection of Logitech Trackman Marble FX (hence TmMFX) trackballs.
The TmMFX must have been the best kept secret and apex of Logitech engineering. I've tried other Logitech mice/trackballs in the meantime, but they all fall short one way or another. This gizmo is no exception.
Please, please, Logitech: bring back the brilliant engineer(ing team) that designed the TmMFX.
Lysdexious me read this as opening and closing braces (not the kind that Lisa needs), and wondered why they are big ticket items.
Then, looking at coders' salaries and the number of braces that end up in their correct location in code, I realized they really are.
...if that $100 would buy me a 4G flash based IDE drive instead.
I would use it to replace the 4G hard disk in my aging but faithful Libretto.
I just found a (Windows only) program that simulates the light of the 16 combinations here:
http://netserver.massmedia.com/~mikeb/jvm/marune/
The SF novel Alastor: Marune by Jack Vance describes effect of the color of the planet's four suns (red, green, blue and orange) on the behavior of the inhabitants. Each phase caused by a different combination of the colors has a name (I don't remember which) with specific effects.
Absolutely recommended, like all his other works.
Working on it: see url & sig.
Crossfading classical music ?
I never tried that. I'm not sure that's going to work out all right.
Let's see: the grandiose and triumphant C major POM POM POM pom-pom-pom POM POOOOM ending of the 5th crossfading into the delicate F major string intro of the 6th... but then, why not ? Anything goes !
ITER doesn't go "cladderadash" the first time it's fired up!
Is Intel having an iTantrum now ?
Nice and all, but after 10 minutes of browsing NH info I already ran into a bill that will force children to wear a helmet when biking ($35 fine if they don't).
Noble cause maybe, but from things like this it looks that freedom is going down the drain in NH as well. I hope you can make a timely difference.
All true.
Latest versions can be drawn down at 20C. This means you can draw 30A from a 1500mAh cell.
As to the lifetime, I rarely get more than 100 cycles out of them (due to the high current draw ); this means about $0.5 per flight. Not cheap, but there's no practical alternative for electric helis if you want a decent performance and flight time.
And don't forget the fire hazard. If they're abused (crash), shorted (exposed wires) or improperly charged, the Li will burn fiercely. Not for the faint of heart.
John, the cunning linguist.
Actually I do like the surreal lighting of raytraced images a lot. It imparts an abstract sense of cleanliness into the decrepit and muddy real life we all know.
Over time raytraced images will no doubt look more natural, but I hope to still be able to see new and interesting images rendered 20th century style in the future.
Compare the essence of a Bach fugue with the bombast of Mahler. Both have their place.
A simple power supply with a current limiting knob isn't safe. Overcharge a LiPo and you'll set it on fire in a rather spectacular and difficult to extinguish way.
A charger that is specifically designed for LiPo charging is a MUST.
Exactly how is the LiPo battery charged ?
0 9187
Without a proper charger, combining the energy density of a 80Wh battery with highly reactive Lithium is a recipe for disaster.
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2
I agree it'll take at least a generation to get rid of the idea that natural diamonds are to be preferred over synthetic ones because they come with a piece of paper that isn't worth shit should you ever want to sell your diamond.
On the other hand people are slowly becoming educated about this, and are caring less and less about certificated diamonds. A market crash looks very probable to me.