I think many people think that many older machines can't run newer Windows versions.
Actually, you can still run Windows 2000 Professional, given that the minimum requirement to run W2K Pro is a Pentium 133 MHz CPU. Given that there are a lot of machines out there with the ATX form factor that use the Intel 440LX and 440BX chipsets with at least a Pentium II 233 MHz CPU, you can set up for them to run W2K Pro with at least 256 MB of RAM installed (most of the 440LX/440BX chipset mobos can support three 168-in DIMM's for at least 384 MB of RAM) and a 16 to 20 GB hard drive.
I myself run W2K Pro on an Abit AB-BM6 440BX chipset motherboard with a Celeron "A" 500 MHz CPU; W2K Pro runs pretty decently fast, notably bacause I have 384 MB of system RAM installed.
In my humble opinion, if your computing needs are primarily business apps and accessing the Internet, you really don't need the fastest machine out there. It's only when you have to play the latest games or run programs to edit digital still pictures or videos downloaded from a MiniDV/MicroDV digital camcorder that you really do need a machine with a faster CPU.
A simple change could really help things.
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And that simple change is the removal of sulfur compounds in motor fuels.
By reducing sulfur compounds to under 40 parts per million (the new EPA standard that comes into effect in 2005), we can apply the very latest in fuel-delivery systems and exhaust emission controls without worries about the presence of sulfur compounds that will turn into something akin to sulfuric acid and damaging these systems.
In the case of gasoline engines, this makes it possible to apply direct fuel injection, meaning you inject the fuel directly into the combustion chamber instead of mixing it with incoming air before the air-fuel mixture is drawn into the combustion chamber. This allows for extremely precise control of fuel delivery, which could mean gasoline engines could get as much as 20% improved fuel efficiency! So instead of a US-market Honda Accord LX four-cylinder saloon getting 24 miles per gallon city and 34 miles per gallon highway fuel efficiency you get 29 mpg city and 41 mpg highway!:-)
In the case of diesel engines, the removal of sulfur contaminants means we can apply high-pressure common-rail direct-injection fuel delivery and the latest in particulate trap/exhaust catalyst technology, which will reduce diesel exhaust so it meets at least the Ultra-Low Emissions Vehicle (ULEV) standard. Because diesel engines are far more fuel efficient than gasoline engines, imagine all of our SUV's, light trucks and minivans being switched over to the latest in clean-burnig diesel engines--we could raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) of these vehicles by an astonishing 50 to 70 percent! =:-O And best of all, petroleum-based diesel fuel could be mixed with biodiesel fuel derived from long list of plant sources and it'll still work on a diesel engine safely.
Re:www.dieoff.org - depressing news for you
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Unless, of course, cold fusion works or a feasible technology for extracting energy from the ZPE is found. I sure hope something happens.
I wonder have you ever read Nick Cook's book The Search for Zero Point? Cook--who has top-notch credentials because he writes for the highly-respected Jane's Defence Weekly, said in the book that a number of Japanese companies have been doing some very serious (but not publicized) research into zero-point energy devices. Given that Japan is far more dependent on foreign oil than the US is, it is in their vested interest to find out if zero-point energy devices can produce the electric power needed for modern society. Given the fact that the hybrid drivetrain on the first and second generation Toyota Prius is essentially an electric motor powered by a mix of a small gasoline engine and a large battery, if the Japanese do achieve a ZPE breakthrough we could see it demonstrated on a modified Prius within the next 4-5 years. And when that happens, watch the price of oil take a nosedive almost overnight. =)
Re:Why energy and food are frequently excluded.
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The reason why food and energy prices tend to be excluded are the fact that you can experience wild swings in prices of both items due to unusual external factors.
This is especially true in the case of food, where the rapid change between over-abundance and shortage can occur depending on the climate of when the foodstuff was grown. I remember back in the 1970's when in one season a major freeze caused a huge loss in the Brazilian coffee crop, and that sent the price of coffee 2-3 times normal; but in a few years, when Brazilian coffee production came back to normal the price plummeted almost as fast.
Also, the price of energy will also depends on what happens with the high price causing more incentive to drill for more oil. For example, the former Soviet Union has very large reserves, but it's only in the 1990's when Western oil recovery technology became available that the oilfields there began to be highly productive. Anyway, the Middle East has a lot more oil than people predict, mostly because the Persian Gulf states have not bothered to use modern oil recovery technologies due to the fact up till now oil was so easy to pump out from the ground there. Apply things like steam injection and (in my humble opinion) we could extract maybe 3-4 times the oil there right now.
Anyway, the price of oil is reaching the point where they could actually decrease consumer demand, and in the end that will end up hurting OPEC because there is too much financial incentive to not use OPEC oil.
Look, companies like Hewlett-Packard are already starting to do major work with Linux, at least on the server level. It would of interest to them to at least write Linux drivers for the company's printers and scanners that accesses the FULL functionality of the hardware.
Take for example the Color LaserJet 3700 series. Where's the Linux printer driver from HP's web site? This would be of interest given that many CLJ 3700's are run in networked environments, where the print server machine may be running Linux.
1. Will the software and/or software driver be able to be loaded and unloaded easily without a complete system reboot? They're getting better but we're not there just yet.
2. Will we get Linux drivers that take FULL advantage of the hardware? That means something like supporting all the soundcard functions of the Sound Blaster Live! and Audigy sound cards, all the graphics-processing functions of the graphics card chipsets from ATI and nVidia, and all the functions of all-in-one printers like the Hewlett-Packard OfficeJet 6110.
It's the hardware driver support issue that is currently the bane of Linux, though of course this is less of a problem with very recent Linux commercial distributions.
I would kind of agree with you, but you do have to remember that ESPN's web page is one of THE most popular sites on the Internet in the USA. As such, if you can't read that web page correctly that can cause problems for many users.
The fact I can properly read ESPN.com with Mozilla 1.6 shows that the developers of Mozilla are willing to accommodate the wishes of the majority of Internet users.
Actually, on most of today's faster machines, I prefer Mozilla 1.6 (and newer) because it properly renders web pages correctly in the vast majority of cases. I've had some trouble with Opera being unable to render some web pages correctly, especially complicated ones like ESPN.com.
I know it sounds like a hippy tree-hugging perfectionist attitude, but right now the world is SCREWED. I'm not talking about "could be better" screwed, but "if we don't do something soon it's gonna get a whole lot worse, very quickly" screwed. If we spent the money on the space program now, on people who actually need it to survive, we could actually do something good for our planet.
You're advocating Communism, aren't you? The Communist Chinese tried what you wanted from 1958 to 1963 with the Great Leap Forward and it turned into a MAJOR disaster for everyone involved. Is it small wonder why they embraced capitalist economics starting in 1979?
We're not going to advance human civilization if all we want to do is try like mad to solve our Earthly problems first. Go read Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave and you will understand what I mean.
I think humanity really needs to start embracing some far-out scientific research, to say the least. After all, who would have thought in 1950 that the average digital wristwatch by 1990 would have more computing power than the gigantic room-sized computers back then? The space program provided a huge emphasis on that research that resulted in a huge amount of spinoff technology (like the computer you're using right now and the public Internet we're communicating on). With a new space program to go to Mars using Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct scenario, we could have another round of technology spinoffs that could really benefit mankind.
Besides, we could see within the next 15-20 years huge breakthroughs in energy production that could render the whole idea of using petroleum to fuel our transportation infrastructure obselete. One idea that is current somewhat on the fringe of scientific research is something called zero-point energy, where when you shape metals in a certain fashion you actually get electron output with no need for fuel or moving parts! If they can mainstream this idea it could cause a HUGE revolution in both electric generation and transportation, because 1) instead of a huge powerplant to power a whole city we'll have small zero-point energy powerplants at every residence generating power in a highly-distributed fashion (think of it as "Beowulf-cluster power generation") and 2) we will finally fulfill the promise of electric vehicles, since they will never need to be charged! Yes, it's a very wild idea, but there are quite a lot of scientists doing serious of research in this field.
In short, it's time we should start looking at major quantum leaps in technological research to solve the world's problems.
Actually, who bother with a Boeing 747 is may not be structurally sound for low-altitude firebombing missions?
Recently, Boeing proposed an idea of using C-17A Globemaster III transports dropping 2,800 beachball-sized containers filled with water or fire retardant in a wide pattern some 2,000 feet above the fire. This means you could deliver up 144,000 pounds of fire surpressant in a wide pattern, which means more of a fire can be quench with such a plane. And because it is dropped around 2,000 feet in the air, that means the plane will fly in far less hazard conditions than firebomber planes do now.
If you check out the Popular Mechanics web site, the proposal is mentioned here: http://tinyurl.com/2otpd
Another interesting proposal is to bombard a fire with artillery sheels filled with liquid nitrogen. Why liquid nitrogen? Because it has these advantages: 1) the extreme cold of liquid nitrogen will quickly slow down a fire, 2) the presence of that much nitrogen gas expansion will snuff out the oxygen needed to feed and fire and 3) liquid nitrogen quickly boils away, so you don't have an enviromental hazard like you do with some chemcial fire retardants.
The very idea of using manure as a fuel source for a powerplant is an old one indeed.
Indeed, many developing countries have built small powerplants fuelled by what's known as biomass (e.g., manure and crop waste) at least since the 1970's. I believe that India was among the first countries to do this on a large scale.
I cannot believe that the Sony music executive has effectively ignored what Alvin Toffler warned about in his book The Third Wave when that book was published in 1979!
With today's communication technologies, the market for movies, TV shows, and recorded music has been severely fragmented compared to what it was like in 1979. Doesn't the executive realize that things like changes in the way CD's are sold (thanks to supersized retailers with tight inventory controls like Wal-Mart and Best Buy and the rise of online retailers like Amazon.com), the rise in the last few years of legal music download sites like Apple's iTunes web site, and competition from DVD and various kinds of game consoles has severely cut into what was once a monolithic market for music sales?
I think the problem that is affecting groups like the RIAA, MPAA, the television networks, and so on is the fact that their techniques for measuring things like sales and viewership are being rapidly obseleted by changes in communications technology.
If you're read Alvin Toffler's book The Third Wave, Toffer some 25 years ago said that as more communications choices for consumers become available, old means to measuring "eyeballs" won't work anymore. I mean look at what has happened since The Third Wave was published in 1979:
1. Consumers now possess the technology to time shift TV programming by videocassette recorders and increasing digital Personal Video Recorders, which is making the idea of prime time meaningless.
2. The choice of TV programming has literally increased exponentially. Back in 1979, most Americans could only watch at most 5-7 channels of TV programming on over-air broadcasts; today, cable TV has expanded the available channels to over 70 and small-dish satellite TV has expanded the available channels to over 200!
3. The rise of pre-recorded videocassettes and now DVD's have drastically altered the landscape of both movies and TV programming. Indeed, many movies are only breaking even with home video sales (or doubling their profit with home video sales!) and there's now the new trend of complete TV seasons available on DVD! I'm sure HBO has enjoyed healthy sales of full seasons of The Sopranos, Sex and the City, and Six Feet Under on DVD sets.
4. The rise of the public Internet has also started to affect TV viewership, as several recent surveys have shown.
5. Current methods of measuring TV viewership don't take into account the increasing trend of large scale public viewing of TV programs at public gathering places and/or having a large group of friends watching the program at someone's residence. For example, the final episode of Friends probably got underreported by Neilsen tracking because a large portion of viewers probably saw it in a group setting either in a public place or at a private residence with a large living room.
6. Tracking sales of music will have to be revamped, especially in light of the way Wal-Mart handles sales inventories, the sheer retail power of Best Buy, the heavy use of online sales at Amazon and Barnes & Noble web sites, and individual song downloads at various legal sites such as Apple's iTunes web site.
I think if the various media companies actually bother to change their way of monitoring sales/viewership they could actually get a far more accurate measurement, something that could eliminate underreporting of actual sales/viewership.
Do you know how expensive widescreen displays and the like are?
Of course they are still expensive because very few such widescreen displays are made in LCD form for the computer market (most of them are being made for the consumer TV market such as the Sharp AQUOS line). But once these displays at native resolutions higher than 1280x768 and larger diagonal sizes are widely made, the cost will drop quite a bit (my guess is that with large-scale production they could produce something akin to the Apple Cinema Display but at a slightly small diagonal size to sell retail around US$1,200).
Two 19" monitors do hog a lot of deskspace, but they sure look cool!
If you're talking two 19" (diagonal) CRT's, they also use a lot of power, too.:-(
I still think that unless your needs are very specialized (CAD/CAM, equities tracking, programming work, video editing and a few others), having more than one monitor is kind of overkill. After all, except for a very small group of users most computer users still work with one monitor. The number of games that take advantage of multiple monitors are still very rare, hence the reason why most computer games are design on the basis that the customer will be using one monitor only. I of course assume that the upcoming Doom III will have multiple monitor support, but then Doom III will be pushing the limits of computer hardware to start with.
The only places I know where multiple monitor setups are a good idea are in CAD/CAM work (where seeing multiple views of an object being drawn is a good idea) and in the financial industry (where seeing multiple real-time charts and other financial data are a must for equities traders).
Besides, most games are designed with the assumption that you're using only one monitor. Wouldn't it be better for a game to take advantage of a wider aspect ratio display so the view becomes a bit more realistic?
I thought the point was that multiple cards would split up the 3D number crunching calculations between them, and send the results to a master card to be displayed on a single monitor.
It's like back to the days of the Voodoo 3 card running in SLI fashion? Such an idea seems superfluous nowadays, especially starting with the ATI R300 and nVidia GeForce FX generation of cards, which already have a tremendous amount of graphics processing power to start with. The very latest ATI X800 and nVidia GeForce FX 6800 series chipsets have graphics processing power far beyond what was available even only a few years ago.
Two 4:3 displays can be bought at a lower cost than one widescreen display.
I agree with that, but the desktop space hogged by two 17" LCD monitors is surprisingly large, far more than what you get with the Apple Cinema Display.
Besides, with large-scale manufacturing of widescreen LCD's the cost would come down very quickly. Remember, most of today's latest graphics cards can easily add display drivers that can support something akin in aspect ratio to the Apple Cinema Display (they're already part way there with the 1280x768 display driver used on some smaller widescreen LCD's).
I think the big question we need to ask is do we really need multiple monitor setups?
Besides the obvious issue of hardware cost of multiple graphics cards and multiple monitors, you also have to consider desktop space issues. Even with today's flat-panel LCD's, two monitors will hog a lot of desktop space, something that might not be desirable in many cases.
I think there is a far better case for a single widescreen display instead of multiple displays. Besides having a lot less impact on hogging desktop space widescreen displays allow you to see videos in the original aspect ratio more clearly and also allow for things like seeing more of a spreadsheet, clearer preview of work you do with a desktop publishing program and (in the case of a pivotable display) make the reading of web pages easier and/or single page work with a DTP program easier. Is it small wonder why people so much liked the Apple Cinema Display that uses a 1.85 to 1 (approximately) aspect ratio?
I think it will be interesting to see what kind of extraterrestrial civilization we do contact.
First, what happens if the civilization we do contact are beings who think by strictly rational logic (e.g., the Vulcans from Star Trek)? Such a civilization would probably not understand the concept of a higher being, let alone potentially the very idea of right and wrong.
Secondly, what happens if the civilization we do contact are immensely powerful entities who have achieved immortality? To such a civilization, the very concept of religion might be viewed in contempt or beneath their cultural norms.
I would also hope that a species more advanced than us would have the honesty to admit they may not know the answer.
I have to disagree there. I have to believe that every extraterrestrial civilization will still want to try to answer the very question of its own origins--scientific or not.
I think the big question the 1960 Brookings Institution report asks is how each religious institution will react to the formal proof that life did exist on some place besides Earth.
Personally, I think the big unknown is Islam--does the Qu'ran and the related Sunnah provide guidance on how to deal with exterrestrial civilizations that have drastically different cultural norms than what is taught in Islam?
I think Christianity might have a better chance to deal with such a proof. After all, the Roman Catholic Church managed to eventually accept the radical astronomical theories (for its time) of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo; the fact that Catholicism is actually openly discussing the very idea of extreterrestrial life bodes well for Christianity existing in a post disclosure age.
One of the things we have to deal with in terms of extraterrestrials is the fact some of the ET's we do contact may be a civilization of immortal, extremely powerful entities. In that case, it's a major unknown how any religion will deal with such a contact.
By the way, automatic transmissions have gotten a lot better in the last eight years.
I drive a Honda Civic HX CVT coupe and I get 34-37 mpg daily, thanks to the fact on a continuously-variable transmission you are more or less using the most efficient rev speed regardless of load you're applying (acceleration, cruise, and so on).
There are definitely two things you can do to improve fuel efficiency besides changing your driving style:
1. Change your air filter regularly. By changing the air filter at least twice a year you improve breathing of the engine, which means better fuel mileage.
2. Make sure the tires are properly inflated when cold. This means at least once a week check the inflation pressure of the tires in the morning before you drive the car for the day; make sure they match what the car manufacturer recommends (there's a sticker on the car either on the inside of the glove compartment box or on the door sill that recommends the cold inflation pressures). Properly inflated tires mean lower rolling resistance, and that can improve fuel efficiency by as much as four percent!
3. Keep the fuel delivery system reasonably clean. I'd recommend using something akin to Chevron's Techron additive about three times a year to keep the fuel injectors clean, and use something like Gumout to keep carbuerators on older cars clean on a regular schedule. Dirty fuel delivery systems can rob engine performance and fuel efficiency very quickly, to say the least.
Well, besides weather simulation (which is among the most CPU-intensive work around), they could use this new computer to do computational fluid dynamics analysis--perfect for studying the aerodynamics of airplanes, shaping the aerodynamics of an automobile, and possibly studying how to reduce noise on a maglev train travelling at over 250 mph.
Given the bad habit of broadcasters to have unusual starting and ending times nowadays for their programming, you'll be surprised how many people want PVR's with multiple tuners.
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I think many people think that many older machines can't run newer Windows versions.
Actually, you can still run Windows 2000 Professional, given that the minimum requirement to run W2K Pro is a Pentium 133 MHz CPU. Given that there are a lot of machines out there with the ATX form factor that use the Intel 440LX and 440BX chipsets with at least a Pentium II 233 MHz CPU, you can set up for them to run W2K Pro with at least 256 MB of RAM installed (most of the 440LX/440BX chipset mobos can support three 168-in DIMM's for at least 384 MB of RAM) and a 16 to 20 GB hard drive.
I myself run W2K Pro on an Abit AB-BM6 440BX chipset motherboard with a Celeron "A" 500 MHz CPU; W2K Pro runs pretty decently fast, notably bacause I have 384 MB of system RAM installed.
In my humble opinion, if your computing needs are primarily business apps and accessing the Internet, you really don't need the fastest machine out there. It's only when you have to play the latest games or run programs to edit digital still pictures or videos downloaded from a MiniDV/MicroDV digital camcorder that you really do need a machine with a faster CPU.
And that simple change is the removal of sulfur compounds in motor fuels.
:-)
By reducing sulfur compounds to under 40 parts per million (the new EPA standard that comes into effect in 2005), we can apply the very latest in fuel-delivery systems and exhaust emission controls without worries about the presence of sulfur compounds that will turn into something akin to sulfuric acid and damaging these systems.
In the case of gasoline engines, this makes it possible to apply direct fuel injection, meaning you inject the fuel directly into the combustion chamber instead of mixing it with incoming air before the air-fuel mixture is drawn into the combustion chamber. This allows for extremely precise control of fuel delivery, which could mean gasoline engines could get as much as 20% improved fuel efficiency! So instead of a US-market Honda Accord LX four-cylinder saloon getting 24 miles per gallon city and 34 miles per gallon highway fuel efficiency you get 29 mpg city and 41 mpg highway!
In the case of diesel engines, the removal of sulfur contaminants means we can apply high-pressure common-rail direct-injection fuel delivery and the latest in particulate trap/exhaust catalyst technology, which will reduce diesel exhaust so it meets at least the Ultra-Low Emissions Vehicle (ULEV) standard. Because diesel engines are far more fuel efficient than gasoline engines, imagine all of our SUV's, light trucks and minivans being switched over to the latest in clean-burnig diesel engines--we could raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) of these vehicles by an astonishing 50 to 70 percent! =:-O And best of all, petroleum-based diesel fuel could be mixed with biodiesel fuel derived from long list of plant sources and it'll still work on a diesel engine safely.
Unless, of course, cold fusion works or a feasible technology for extracting energy from the ZPE is found. I sure hope something happens.
I wonder have you ever read Nick Cook's book The Search for Zero Point? Cook--who has top-notch credentials because he writes for the highly-respected Jane's Defence Weekly, said in the book that a number of Japanese companies have been doing some very serious (but not publicized) research into zero-point energy devices. Given that Japan is far more dependent on foreign oil than the US is, it is in their vested interest to find out if zero-point energy devices can produce the electric power needed for modern society. Given the fact that the hybrid drivetrain on the first and second generation Toyota Prius is essentially an electric motor powered by a mix of a small gasoline engine and a large battery, if the Japanese do achieve a ZPE breakthrough we could see it demonstrated on a modified Prius within the next 4-5 years. And when that happens, watch the price of oil take a nosedive almost overnight. =)
The reason why food and energy prices tend to be excluded are the fact that you can experience wild swings in prices of both items due to unusual external factors.
This is especially true in the case of food, where the rapid change between over-abundance and shortage can occur depending on the climate of when the foodstuff was grown. I remember back in the 1970's when in one season a major freeze caused a huge loss in the Brazilian coffee crop, and that sent the price of coffee 2-3 times normal; but in a few years, when Brazilian coffee production came back to normal the price plummeted almost as fast.
Also, the price of energy will also depends on what happens with the high price causing more incentive to drill for more oil. For example, the former Soviet Union has very large reserves, but it's only in the 1990's when Western oil recovery technology became available that the oilfields there began to be highly productive. Anyway, the Middle East has a lot more oil than people predict, mostly because the Persian Gulf states have not bothered to use modern oil recovery technologies due to the fact up till now oil was so easy to pump out from the ground there. Apply things like steam injection and (in my humble opinion) we could extract maybe 3-4 times the oil there right now.
Anyway, the price of oil is reaching the point where they could actually decrease consumer demand, and in the end that will end up hurting OPEC because there is too much financial incentive to not use OPEC oil.
Look, companies like Hewlett-Packard are already starting to do major work with Linux, at least on the server level. It would of interest to them to at least write Linux drivers for the company's printers and scanners that accesses the FULL functionality of the hardware.
Take for example the Color LaserJet 3700 series. Where's the Linux printer driver from HP's web site? This would be of interest given that many CLJ 3700's are run in networked environments, where the print server machine may be running Linux.
I think there are two issues that plague Linux:
1. Will the software and/or software driver be able to be loaded and unloaded easily without a complete system reboot? They're getting better but we're not there just yet.
2. Will we get Linux drivers that take FULL advantage of the hardware? That means something like supporting all the soundcard functions of the Sound Blaster Live! and Audigy sound cards, all the graphics-processing functions of the graphics card chipsets from ATI and nVidia, and all the functions of all-in-one printers like the Hewlett-Packard OfficeJet 6110.
It's the hardware driver support issue that is currently the bane of Linux, though of course this is less of a problem with very recent Linux commercial distributions.
I would kind of agree with you, but you do have to remember that ESPN's web page is one of THE most popular sites on the Internet in the USA. As such, if you can't read that web page correctly that can cause problems for many users.
The fact I can properly read ESPN.com with Mozilla 1.6 shows that the developers of Mozilla are willing to accommodate the wishes of the majority of Internet users.
Actually, on most of today's faster machines, I prefer Mozilla 1.6 (and newer) because it properly renders web pages correctly in the vast majority of cases. I've had some trouble with Opera being unable to render some web pages correctly, especially complicated ones like ESPN.com.
I know it sounds like a hippy tree-hugging perfectionist attitude, but right now the world is SCREWED. I'm not talking about "could be better" screwed, but "if we don't do something soon it's gonna get a whole lot worse, very quickly" screwed. If we spent the money on the space program now, on people who actually need it to survive, we could actually do something good for our planet.
You're advocating Communism, aren't you? The Communist Chinese tried what you wanted from 1958 to 1963 with the Great Leap Forward and it turned into a MAJOR disaster for everyone involved. Is it small wonder why they embraced capitalist economics starting in 1979?
We're not going to advance human civilization if all we want to do is try like mad to solve our Earthly problems first. Go read Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave and you will understand what I mean.
I think humanity really needs to start embracing some far-out scientific research, to say the least. After all, who would have thought in 1950 that the average digital wristwatch by 1990 would have more computing power than the gigantic room-sized computers back then? The space program provided a huge emphasis on that research that resulted in a huge amount of spinoff technology (like the computer you're using right now and the public Internet we're communicating on). With a new space program to go to Mars using Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct scenario, we could have another round of technology spinoffs that could really benefit mankind.
Besides, we could see within the next 15-20 years huge breakthroughs in energy production that could render the whole idea of using petroleum to fuel our transportation infrastructure obselete. One idea that is current somewhat on the fringe of scientific research is something called zero-point energy, where when you shape metals in a certain fashion you actually get electron output with no need for fuel or moving parts! If they can mainstream this idea it could cause a HUGE revolution in both electric generation and transportation, because 1) instead of a huge powerplant to power a whole city we'll have small zero-point energy powerplants at every residence generating power in a highly-distributed fashion (think of it as "Beowulf-cluster power generation") and 2) we will finally fulfill the promise of electric vehicles, since they will never need to be charged! Yes, it's a very wild idea, but there are quite a lot of scientists doing serious of research in this field.
In short, it's time we should start looking at major quantum leaps in technological research to solve the world's problems.
Actually, who bother with a Boeing 747 is may not be structurally sound for low-altitude firebombing missions?
Recently, Boeing proposed an idea of using C-17A Globemaster III transports dropping 2,800 beachball-sized containers filled with water or fire retardant in a wide pattern some 2,000 feet above the fire. This means you could deliver up 144,000 pounds of fire surpressant in a wide pattern, which means more of a fire can be quench with such a plane. And because it is dropped around 2,000 feet in the air, that means the plane will fly in far less hazard conditions than firebomber planes do now.
If you check out the Popular Mechanics web site, the proposal is mentioned here: http://tinyurl.com/2otpd
Another interesting proposal is to bombard a fire with artillery sheels filled with liquid nitrogen. Why liquid nitrogen? Because it has these advantages: 1) the extreme cold of liquid nitrogen will quickly slow down a fire, 2) the presence of that much nitrogen gas expansion will snuff out the oxygen needed to feed and fire and 3) liquid nitrogen quickly boils away, so you don't have an enviromental hazard like you do with some chemcial fire retardants.
The very idea of using manure as a fuel source for a powerplant is an old one indeed.
Indeed, many developing countries have built small powerplants fuelled by what's known as biomass (e.g., manure and crop waste) at least since the 1970's. I believe that India was among the first countries to do this on a large scale.
I cannot believe that the Sony music executive has effectively ignored what Alvin Toffler warned about in his book The Third Wave when that book was published in 1979!
With today's communication technologies, the market for movies, TV shows, and recorded music has been severely fragmented compared to what it was like in 1979. Doesn't the executive realize that things like changes in the way CD's are sold (thanks to supersized retailers with tight inventory controls like Wal-Mart and Best Buy and the rise of online retailers like Amazon.com), the rise in the last few years of legal music download sites like Apple's iTunes web site, and competition from DVD and various kinds of game consoles has severely cut into what was once a monolithic market for music sales?
I think the problem that is affecting groups like the RIAA, MPAA, the television networks, and so on is the fact that their techniques for measuring things like sales and viewership are being rapidly obseleted by changes in communications technology.
If you're read Alvin Toffler's book The Third Wave, Toffer some 25 years ago said that as more communications choices for consumers become available, old means to measuring "eyeballs" won't work anymore. I mean look at what has happened since The Third Wave was published in 1979:
1. Consumers now possess the technology to time shift TV programming by videocassette recorders and increasing digital Personal Video Recorders, which is making the idea of prime time meaningless.
2. The choice of TV programming has literally increased exponentially. Back in 1979, most Americans could only watch at most 5-7 channels of TV programming on over-air broadcasts; today, cable TV has expanded the available channels to over 70 and small-dish satellite TV has expanded the available channels to over 200!
3. The rise of pre-recorded videocassettes and now DVD's have drastically altered the landscape of both movies and TV programming. Indeed, many movies are only breaking even with home video sales (or doubling their profit with home video sales!) and there's now the new trend of complete TV seasons available on DVD! I'm sure HBO has enjoyed healthy sales of full seasons of The Sopranos, Sex and the City, and Six Feet Under on DVD sets.
4. The rise of the public Internet has also started to affect TV viewership, as several recent surveys have shown.
5. Current methods of measuring TV viewership don't take into account the increasing trend of large scale public viewing of TV programs at public gathering places and/or having a large group of friends watching the program at someone's residence. For example, the final episode of Friends probably got underreported by Neilsen tracking because a large portion of viewers probably saw it in a group setting either in a public place or at a private residence with a large living room.
6. Tracking sales of music will have to be revamped, especially in light of the way Wal-Mart handles sales inventories, the sheer retail power of Best Buy, the heavy use of online sales at Amazon and Barnes & Noble web sites, and individual song downloads at various legal sites such as Apple's iTunes web site.
I think if the various media companies actually bother to change their way of monitoring sales/viewership they could actually get a far more accurate measurement, something that could eliminate underreporting of actual sales/viewership.
Do you know how expensive widescreen displays and the like are?
Of course they are still expensive because very few such widescreen displays are made in LCD form for the computer market (most of them are being made for the consumer TV market such as the Sharp AQUOS line). But once these displays at native resolutions higher than 1280x768 and larger diagonal sizes are widely made, the cost will drop quite a bit (my guess is that with large-scale production they could produce something akin to the Apple Cinema Display but at a slightly small diagonal size to sell retail around US$1,200).
Two 19" monitors do hog a lot of deskspace, but they sure look cool!
:-(
If you're talking two 19" (diagonal) CRT's, they also use a lot of power, too.
I still think that unless your needs are very specialized (CAD/CAM, equities tracking, programming work, video editing and a few others), having more than one monitor is kind of overkill. After all, except for a very small group of users most computer users still work with one monitor. The number of games that take advantage of multiple monitors are still very rare, hence the reason why most computer games are design on the basis that the customer will be using one monitor only. I of course assume that the upcoming Doom III will have multiple monitor support, but then Doom III will be pushing the limits of computer hardware to start with.
The only places I know where multiple monitor setups are a good idea are in CAD/CAM work (where seeing multiple views of an object being drawn is a good idea) and in the financial industry (where seeing multiple real-time charts and other financial data are a must for equities traders).
Besides, most games are designed with the assumption that you're using only one monitor. Wouldn't it be better for a game to take advantage of a wider aspect ratio display so the view becomes a bit more realistic?
I thought the point was that multiple cards would split up the 3D number crunching calculations between them, and send the results to a master card to be displayed on a single monitor.
It's like back to the days of the Voodoo 3 card running in SLI fashion? Such an idea seems superfluous nowadays, especially starting with the ATI R300 and nVidia GeForce FX generation of cards, which already have a tremendous amount of graphics processing power to start with. The very latest ATI X800 and nVidia GeForce FX 6800 series chipsets have graphics processing power far beyond what was available even only a few years ago.
Two 4:3 displays can be bought at a lower cost than one widescreen display.
I agree with that, but the desktop space hogged by two 17" LCD monitors is surprisingly large, far more than what you get with the Apple Cinema Display.
Besides, with large-scale manufacturing of widescreen LCD's the cost would come down very quickly. Remember, most of today's latest graphics cards can easily add display drivers that can support something akin in aspect ratio to the Apple Cinema Display (they're already part way there with the 1280x768 display driver used on some smaller widescreen LCD's).
I think the big question we need to ask is do we really need multiple monitor setups?
Besides the obvious issue of hardware cost of multiple graphics cards and multiple monitors, you also have to consider desktop space issues. Even with today's flat-panel LCD's, two monitors will hog a lot of desktop space, something that might not be desirable in many cases.
I think there is a far better case for a single widescreen display instead of multiple displays. Besides having a lot less impact on hogging desktop space widescreen displays allow you to see videos in the original aspect ratio more clearly and also allow for things like seeing more of a spreadsheet, clearer preview of work you do with a desktop publishing program and (in the case of a pivotable display) make the reading of web pages easier and/or single page work with a DTP program easier. Is it small wonder why people so much liked the Apple Cinema Display that uses a 1.85 to 1 (approximately) aspect ratio?
I think it will be interesting to see what kind of extraterrestrial civilization we do contact.
First, what happens if the civilization we do contact are beings who think by strictly rational logic (e.g., the Vulcans from Star Trek)? Such a civilization would probably not understand the concept of a higher being, let alone potentially the very idea of right and wrong.
Secondly, what happens if the civilization we do contact are immensely powerful entities who have achieved immortality? To such a civilization, the very concept of religion might be viewed in contempt or beneath their cultural norms.
I would also hope that a species more advanced than us would have the honesty to admit they may not know the answer.
I have to disagree there. I have to believe that every extraterrestrial civilization will still want to try to answer the very question of its own origins--scientific or not.
I think the big question the 1960 Brookings Institution report asks is how each religious institution will react to the formal proof that life did exist on some place besides Earth.
Personally, I think the big unknown is Islam--does the Qu'ran and the related Sunnah provide guidance on how to deal with exterrestrial civilizations that have drastically different cultural norms than what is taught in Islam?
I think Christianity might have a better chance to deal with such a proof. After all, the Roman Catholic Church managed to eventually accept the radical astronomical theories (for its time) of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo; the fact that Catholicism is actually openly discussing the very idea of extreterrestrial life bodes well for Christianity existing in a post disclosure age.
One of the things we have to deal with in terms of extraterrestrials is the fact some of the ET's we do contact may be a civilization of immortal, extremely powerful entities. In that case, it's a major unknown how any religion will deal with such a contact.
By the way, automatic transmissions have gotten a lot better in the last eight years.
I drive a Honda Civic HX CVT coupe and I get 34-37 mpg daily, thanks to the fact on a continuously-variable transmission you are more or less using the most efficient rev speed regardless of load you're applying (acceleration, cruise, and so on).
There are definitely two things you can do to improve fuel efficiency besides changing your driving style:
1. Change your air filter regularly. By changing the air filter at least twice a year you improve breathing of the engine, which means better fuel mileage.
2. Make sure the tires are properly inflated when cold. This means at least once a week check the inflation pressure of the tires in the morning before you drive the car for the day; make sure they match what the car manufacturer recommends (there's a sticker on the car either on the inside of the glove compartment box or on the door sill that recommends the cold inflation pressures). Properly inflated tires mean lower rolling resistance, and that can improve fuel efficiency by as much as four percent!
3. Keep the fuel delivery system reasonably clean. I'd recommend using something akin to Chevron's Techron additive about three times a year to keep the fuel injectors clean, and use something like Gumout to keep carbuerators on older cars clean on a regular schedule. Dirty fuel delivery systems can rob engine performance and fuel efficiency very quickly, to say the least.
Well, besides weather simulation (which is among the most CPU-intensive work around), they could use this new computer to do computational fluid dynamics analysis--perfect for studying the aerodynamics of airplanes, shaping the aerodynamics of an automobile, and possibly studying how to reduce noise on a maglev train travelling at over 250 mph.
Given the bad habit of broadcasters to have unusual starting and ending times nowadays for their programming, you'll be surprised how many people want PVR's with multiple tuners.