The platform can be moved. It has propulsion, an anchor that can be lifted, the ability to reel the cable in and out for movement up to 3 miles, and the ability to detach from the cable, leaving the end floating on a buoy, and move at up to 20 knots to get out of the way of a storm. All via remote control. Presumably there will be some maintenance required, but it looks like they've covered dodging storms.
I read the article before it was slashdotted. He intends to build the final version of this clock in a limestone cave, half-way up the side of a 10,000 foot cliff. The entrance will look natural enough, especially after several thousand years, but as you go deeper into the cave, you begin to see the workings of the clock. First, the slowest moving things like the zodiac, then years, months, etc, getting to faster moving pieces as you go deeper into the cave. All the way back, you finally get to where the heart of the clock is ticking. This guy is definitely trying to create a "wonder of the world" and it's not hard to imagine an "Indiana Jones" type of event where some future archaeologist rediscovers this thing. The fact that the display freezes until someone else winds it (he mentioned stepping on a plate to wind the display), is genious. Imagine you're this explorer, sweeping away cobwebs to get a closer look at the machine. The display reads sometime in the 23rd century. As you step closer, you step on a plate in the floor that sinks under your weight. The display begins to move and when things settle down, the current date, maybe in the 57th century, is displayed.
The thing that most impresses me about this clock is that it will run by itself with no required interaction for 10,000 years. It requires no external power, no attention at all. It is self-winding (he mentions barometric pressure change as a power source). As far as accuracy goes, it synchronizes to the sun when sunlight through a peep-hole heats a bimetal strip. That should re-sync the time every sunny day, so it should be accurate until it quits working. Imagine a future, several thousand years from now... maybe there's been another "dark ages" and people are just rediscovering bits of technology. Some explorer notices this cave in the side of this mountain, climbs up there, and discovers this massive clock. That's what this guy is after. He's trying to create something on the scale of a "wonder of the world" that will exist (and continue running) for millenia and cause future generations to marvel at the technology that these ancient people had.
Sure, an atomic clock is more accurate, and more useful, but it requires electricity, and I'm sure some attention to keep things running smoothly.
Although, I wonder if this mechanical clock will need to be lubricated every now and again... 5000 years from now there'll probably be some wierd religion where the priest pours holy oil over the sacred time keeper, or some such...
Google for "gulliver's travels mars". It will provide some interesting reading, if nothing else. Jonathan Swift described, with some degree of accuracy, the 2 moons of Mars long before anyone discovered them with telescopes. The explaination that I've heard is that the orbits of Earth and Mars used to cross, as the grand-parent poster referred to, and that humans had actually observered the 2 moons of Mars eons ago and passed the story on. Jonathan Swift supposedly heard about this and put it into his story. You can take it with a giant grain of salt, but it's interesting. If Mars showed up every couple of years, nearly filling the sky, and bringing meteor showers and earthquakes with it, I can see why early humans might have called in the God of War. There may be nothing to it, but it's interesting non-the-less.
Okay, smarty. How about this then. Every business can shift their business hours in the summer so I can get home and mow the grass. I understand that we don't gain or loose daylight hours. Nobody is so stupid to think so. The hours of daylight before I go to work in the morning don't do me very much good. The hours of daylight in the evening are much more beneficial to me to allow me to get yard work done, play with the kids before dark, etc. By shifting our time in the summer, most people actually do gain an hour of daylight that they would otherwise be sleeping through in the morning.
Right on. I used to live in Indiana. Lack of daylight savings time is seriously one of the reasons I don't live there anymore. It was a major bummer to be driving to work at 7am with the sun already high in the sky.
Obviously, you've never lived in Indiana. By 7am in the summertime, the sun is already high overhead, and it's setting by 8:30pm. The place I worked adjusted their office hours in the summer time to make up for the lack of daylight savings time. Daylight savings time is a briliant idea, IMHO. More daylight in the summer evening hours for mowing the grass, barbequeing, whatever, and yet it's daylight at a decent hour in the morning in the winter time. The only other solution is to shift your work schedule to get back those lost hours of daylight in the summertime, like the company I worked for in Indiana did.
I once set the phone down when a telemarketer called at dinner time. When I picked the phone up after finishing dinner, the telemarketer was saying "hello... hello..."
If the telemarketers succeed in repealing the Do-Not-Call lists, then I will have NO mercy on them when they call me! I'll act like a lunatic... I'll talk about the daily news... I'll read them one of my kids story books... I'll just set the phone down and leave them with dead air. Whatever I can think of to annoy them, I'll do it. Telemarketers beware: You do not WANT to call me.
I have a Buick Regal that requires "rebooting" sometimes. Sometimes when you start it, the check engine light will come on and it will run very rough, hardly run at all. If you turn it off and start it right back up, the check engine light will stay off and it will run fine. Sometimes you'll be driving down the road and the engine will just die. One second it's running fine, the next second... nothing. Usually when that happens, it takes a while before it'll restart. I'm not sure if the two problems are related. I'm trying to sell the thing. In the mean time, I'm driving my 1972 GMC pickup. No electronics in that baby!
I'm tired of people saying things like 40 million US citizens don't have health care. In reality, the situation is that something like 40 million US citizens don't have health INSURANCE. Now, in many cases, maybe that means they don't get as good of health care as they should. HOWEVER, I DON'T HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE, BECAUSE IT'S TOO FRIGGIN EXPENSIVE! YET, my kids have all their immunizations and regular checkups, my wife has all her regular annual female exams, etc. We have all the health care we need, and, btw, all of our health providers (family doctor, ob-gyn, etc.) give us CASH DISCOUNTS. I DON'T HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE, BUT DON'T THINK FOR A MINUTE THAT I DON'T HAVE HEALTH CARE. IMHO, health insurance isn't the solution to high health care costs, it's the cause. Why else would my health providers give a cash discount... we're both saving money by cutting out the middle man, the health insurance company who is trying to screw us both.
This wasn't a personal rant against the parent poster, I just had to get it out of my system.
The article, and I did read it, said nothing about offshoring. You certainly don't have to move to a warmer climate to warm up the office a bit. I personally think the 77F mentioned in the article is too hot, but most offices I've been in keep the AC so cold that my fingers get stiff. The solution to cold offices isn't to move to the tropics, it's just to back off the AC a bit. I try to keep my office between 72-74F. Any warmer, and I start to get sleepy. Any colder, and my fingers start to turn blue.
The Netscape portal has at least three links that will take you to the netscape browser. Under the Tools section, there's "Browser Central" and "Netscape 7.2", and in the links in the bottom bar, there's "Download Latest Netscape Browser". Yes, they could advertise it a little more strongly, but it is there.
I expect part of the reason #38 (the common cat) is on the list is because #58 (the common mouse) is on the list. I know that's why I keep my cat. He catches everything from mice to moles to birds to rabbits nearly as big as he is. I guess that's the problem, cats are great hunters, which is a good thing, but I could see how they could be a problem in certain places. I don't plan on getting rid of my cat anytime soon. Besides, he's neutered.
Another one that struck me funny was #17, goats. We use goats in pastures with cows to keep the weeds eaten down. Goats will eat grass only as a last resort, and cows prefer to eat nothing but the grass, so they're a nice combo. I could see how they would be a problem if they were running wild in large numbers, though... they do eat EVERYTHING.
Sadly, their website shows one! It shows an image the way it supposedly looks in RGB and another image supposedly in RGBCYM. All this on an RGB monitor. Oh well. Kinda like ads for HDTV when they show a picture and say, "see, look how good HDTV looks"... all displayed on a standard def TV.
According to their web site, their "Patented Wear Leveling" algorithms attempt to spread write operations over the disk. My guess if you have a frequently written file/record/whatever is that it doesn't write it to the same place each time. It also looks like they have a "Flash Wear-Out Monitor" to warn you when the device has exceeded 95% of it's MTBF rating, though they say that the device may last beyond the rating. Also, looks like their "Automatic Bad Block Remapping" moves data to spare blocks if a block fails. So, yeah, like you said, they work around the dead bits remapping them to a new area, as well as constantly spreading write cycles across the device. Looks like they've really thought this through. Of course, so long as the price exceeds that of spinning platters, it'll be a niche product.
As far as "Within the decade the spinning hard disk may go the way of the floppy and CRT" goes, I guess that means that there will be other/better/different choices than spinning platters, but they'll still be more expensive and spinning platters will still be the norm. Looking forward to the status quo, I guess!
Wow, that's genious. (Not.) In this case, the solar powered car went out of control and swerved into oncoming traffic. It wasn't the fault of some woman gabbing on the phone in her SUV. If you're going to ban SUV's and minivan's because of their size, then you'd have to ban all tractor-trailers, buses, and anything else bigger than you econobox. Here's a better idea... establish limits on how flimsy cars can legally be made. This solar powered car should have never been allowed on the road because it was a deathtrap to start with.
I use Netscape 7.1 right now, rather than Mozilla or Firefox because I have some online financial sites that recognize Netscape and IE, but refuse to work with Mozilla. I refuse to use IE whenever possible, so, I'm glad to hear that Netscape keeps marching on.
We can only hope! I've never understood why some companies use annoyance in their ads. Everytime I see Carrot Top on TV, it reminds me to use 1-800-COLLECT instead. There are plenty of other annoying ads out there, like people screaming at you to buy their cars. Do advertisers really think people can be annoyed into buying their products? Or, worse, does it actually work with some people? I know this is all OT, but you're mention of Carrot Top brought it to mind.
I agree with you for the most part, but to take it one step further... large corporations use MS software because nobody wants to stick their neck out and use anything else, even if it is better or cheaper. The logic seems to be that if you use MS software and it fails, you can bash MS and the management above you will blame MS, too. But, if you use something else like any free/open-source software, then when it fails, the ax falls on you. Management will blame you for the failure, since in their mind you were just cutting corners. I saw this on a project I was working on. I had used MySQL for a project at our facility for a couple of years and it had worked great. Due to the success of the project, corp headquarters decided to try to implement the project at other facilities, but they balked at MySQL and forced me to convert the project to MS SQL. Well... long story short, I now have to keep an eye on MS SQL to make sure it doesn't die, which it's already done several times in 6 months.
What's up with Dick Rutan at XCor and Burt Rutan at Scaled Composites? Both companies are working on rockets, with Scaled's SpaceShipOne due to hit 100Km very soon. Are Dick Rutan and Burt Rutan related? Seriously, anybody know? I never put the two together until the parent post here mentioned Dick Rutan being associated with XCor. I thought Rutan... I know that name, but I thought he was with Scaled Composites. Then I learned that there are 2 Rutans. Any relation? Just curious. Maybe the Rutans just have the "rocket scientist" gene!:)
Slashdot Mirror
The platform can be moved. It has propulsion, an anchor that can be lifted, the ability to reel the cable in and out for movement up to 3 miles, and the ability to detach from the cable, leaving the end floating on a buoy, and move at up to 20 knots to get out of the way of a storm. All via remote control. Presumably there will be some maintenance required, but it looks like they've covered dodging storms.
I read the article before it was slashdotted. He intends to build the final version of this clock in a limestone cave, half-way up the side of a 10,000 foot cliff. The entrance will look natural enough, especially after several thousand years, but as you go deeper into the cave, you begin to see the workings of the clock. First, the slowest moving things like the zodiac, then years, months, etc, getting to faster moving pieces as you go deeper into the cave. All the way back, you finally get to where the heart of the clock is ticking. This guy is definitely trying to create a "wonder of the world" and it's not hard to imagine an "Indiana Jones" type of event where some future archaeologist rediscovers this thing. The fact that the display freezes until someone else winds it (he mentioned stepping on a plate to wind the display), is genious. Imagine you're this explorer, sweeping away cobwebs to get a closer look at the machine. The display reads sometime in the 23rd century. As you step closer, you step on a plate in the floor that sinks under your weight. The display begins to move and when things settle down, the current date, maybe in the 57th century, is displayed.
The thing that most impresses me about this clock is that it will run by itself with no required interaction for 10,000 years. It requires no external power, no attention at all. It is self-winding (he mentions barometric pressure change as a power source). As far as accuracy goes, it synchronizes to the sun when sunlight through a peep-hole heats a bimetal strip. That should re-sync the time every sunny day, so it should be accurate until it quits working. Imagine a future, several thousand years from now... maybe there's been another "dark ages" and people are just rediscovering bits of technology. Some explorer notices this cave in the side of this mountain, climbs up there, and discovers this massive clock. That's what this guy is after. He's trying to create something on the scale of a "wonder of the world" that will exist (and continue running) for millenia and cause future generations to marvel at the technology that these ancient people had.
Sure, an atomic clock is more accurate, and more useful, but it requires electricity, and I'm sure some attention to keep things running smoothly.
Although, I wonder if this mechanical clock will need to be lubricated every now and again... 5000 years from now there'll probably be some wierd religion where the priest pours holy oil over the sacred time keeper, or some such...
Google for "gulliver's travels mars". It will provide some interesting reading, if nothing else. Jonathan Swift described, with some degree of accuracy, the 2 moons of Mars long before anyone discovered them with telescopes. The explaination that I've heard is that the orbits of Earth and Mars used to cross, as the grand-parent poster referred to, and that humans had actually observered the 2 moons of Mars eons ago and passed the story on. Jonathan Swift supposedly heard about this and put it into his story. You can take it with a giant grain of salt, but it's interesting. If Mars showed up every couple of years, nearly filling the sky, and bringing meteor showers and earthquakes with it, I can see why early humans might have called in the God of War. There may be nothing to it, but it's interesting non-the-less.
Okay, smarty. How about this then. Every business can shift their business hours in the summer so I can get home and mow the grass. I understand that we don't gain or loose daylight hours. Nobody is so stupid to think so. The hours of daylight before I go to work in the morning don't do me very much good. The hours of daylight in the evening are much more beneficial to me to allow me to get yard work done, play with the kids before dark, etc. By shifting our time in the summer, most people actually do gain an hour of daylight that they would otherwise be sleeping through in the morning.
Right on. I used to live in Indiana. Lack of daylight savings time is seriously one of the reasons I don't live there anymore. It was a major bummer to be driving to work at 7am with the sun already high in the sky.
Obviously, you've never lived in Indiana. By 7am in the summertime, the sun is already high overhead, and it's setting by 8:30pm. The place I worked adjusted their office hours in the summer time to make up for the lack of daylight savings time. Daylight savings time is a briliant idea, IMHO. More daylight in the summer evening hours for mowing the grass, barbequeing, whatever, and yet it's daylight at a decent hour in the morning in the winter time. The only other solution is to shift your work schedule to get back those lost hours of daylight in the summertime, like the company I worked for in Indiana did.
I once set the phone down when a telemarketer called at dinner time. When I picked the phone up after finishing dinner, the telemarketer was saying "hello... hello..."
If the telemarketers succeed in repealing the Do-Not-Call lists, then I will have NO mercy on them when they call me! I'll act like a lunatic... I'll talk about the daily news... I'll read them one of my kids story books... I'll just set the phone down and leave them with dead air. Whatever I can think of to annoy them, I'll do it. Telemarketers beware: You do not WANT to call me.
The chemical formula for octane, as an example, is C8H18. Burning that completely will create 8 molecules of C02 and 9 molecules of H2O.
I have a Buick Regal that requires "rebooting" sometimes. Sometimes when you start it, the check engine light will come on and it will run very rough, hardly run at all. If you turn it off and start it right back up, the check engine light will stay off and it will run fine. Sometimes you'll be driving down the road and the engine will just die. One second it's running fine, the next second... nothing. Usually when that happens, it takes a while before it'll restart. I'm not sure if the two problems are related. I'm trying to sell the thing. In the mean time, I'm driving my 1972 GMC pickup. No electronics in that baby!
I'm tired of people saying things like 40 million US citizens don't have health care. In reality, the situation is that something like 40 million US citizens don't have health INSURANCE. Now, in many cases, maybe that means they don't get as good of health care as they should. HOWEVER, I DON'T HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE, BECAUSE IT'S TOO FRIGGIN EXPENSIVE! YET, my kids have all their immunizations and regular checkups, my wife has all her regular annual female exams, etc. We have all the health care we need, and, btw, all of our health providers (family doctor, ob-gyn, etc.) give us CASH DISCOUNTS. I DON'T HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE, BUT DON'T THINK FOR A MINUTE THAT I DON'T HAVE HEALTH CARE. IMHO, health insurance isn't the solution to high health care costs, it's the cause. Why else would my health providers give a cash discount... we're both saving money by cutting out the middle man, the health insurance company who is trying to screw us both.
This wasn't a personal rant against the parent poster, I just had to get it out of my system.
The article, and I did read it, said nothing about offshoring. You certainly don't have to move to a warmer climate to warm up the office a bit. I personally think the 77F mentioned in the article is too hot, but most offices I've been in keep the AC so cold that my fingers get stiff. The solution to cold offices isn't to move to the tropics, it's just to back off the AC a bit. I try to keep my office between 72-74F. Any warmer, and I start to get sleepy. Any colder, and my fingers start to turn blue.
The Netscape portal has at least three links that will take you to the netscape browser. Under the Tools section, there's "Browser Central" and "Netscape 7.2", and in the links in the bottom bar, there's "Download Latest Netscape Browser". Yes, they could advertise it a little more strongly, but it is there.
I expect part of the reason #38 (the common cat) is on the list is because #58 (the common mouse) is on the list. I know that's why I keep my cat. He catches everything from mice to moles to birds to rabbits nearly as big as he is. I guess that's the problem, cats are great hunters, which is a good thing, but I could see how they could be a problem in certain places. I don't plan on getting rid of my cat anytime soon. Besides, he's neutered.
Another one that struck me funny was #17, goats. We use goats in pastures with cows to keep the weeds eaten down. Goats will eat grass only as a last resort, and cows prefer to eat nothing but the grass, so they're a nice combo. I could see how they would be a problem if they were running wild in large numbers, though... they do eat EVERYTHING.
Sadly, their website shows one! It shows an image the way it supposedly looks in RGB and another image supposedly in RGBCYM. All this on an RGB monitor. Oh well. Kinda like ads for HDTV when they show a picture and say, "see, look how good HDTV looks"... all displayed on a standard def TV.
According to their web site, their "Patented Wear Leveling" algorithms attempt to spread write operations over the disk. My guess if you have a frequently written file/record/whatever is that it doesn't write it to the same place each time. It also looks like they have a "Flash Wear-Out Monitor" to warn you when the device has exceeded 95% of it's MTBF rating, though they say that the device may last beyond the rating. Also, looks like their "Automatic Bad Block Remapping" moves data to spare blocks if a block fails. So, yeah, like you said, they work around the dead bits remapping them to a new area, as well as constantly spreading write cycles across the device. Looks like they've really thought this through. Of course, so long as the price exceeds that of spinning platters, it'll be a niche product.
As far as "Within the decade the spinning hard disk may go the way of the floppy and CRT" goes, I guess that means that there will be other/better/different choices than spinning platters, but they'll still be more expensive and spinning platters will still be the norm. Looking forward to the status quo, I guess!
Wow, that's genious. (Not.) In this case, the solar powered car went out of control and swerved into oncoming traffic. It wasn't the fault of some woman gabbing on the phone in her SUV. If you're going to ban SUV's and minivan's because of their size, then you'd have to ban all tractor-trailers, buses, and anything else bigger than you econobox. Here's a better idea... establish limits on how flimsy cars can legally be made. This solar powered car should have never been allowed on the road because it was a deathtrap to start with.
Sadly, in my experience, I have no evidence to refute that theory. The more people I meet, the dumber they all seem to be. :)
Thanks for the info. Maybe I'll try that.
I use Netscape 7.1 right now, rather than Mozilla or Firefox because I have some online financial sites that recognize Netscape and IE, but refuse to work with Mozilla. I refuse to use IE whenever possible, so, I'm glad to hear that Netscape keeps marching on.
We can only hope! I've never understood why some companies use annoyance in their ads. Everytime I see Carrot Top on TV, it reminds me to use 1-800-COLLECT instead. There are plenty of other annoying ads out there, like people screaming at you to buy their cars. Do advertisers really think people can be annoyed into buying their products? Or, worse, does it actually work with some people? I know this is all OT, but you're mention of Carrot Top brought it to mind.
I agree with you for the most part, but to take it one step further... large corporations use MS software because nobody wants to stick their neck out and use anything else, even if it is better or cheaper. The logic seems to be that if you use MS software and it fails, you can bash MS and the management above you will blame MS, too. But, if you use something else like any free/open-source software, then when it fails, the ax falls on you. Management will blame you for the failure, since in their mind you were just cutting corners. I saw this on a project I was working on. I had used MySQL for a project at our facility for a couple of years and it had worked great. Due to the success of the project, corp headquarters decided to try to implement the project at other facilities, but they balked at MySQL and forced me to convert the project to MS SQL. Well... long story short, I now have to keep an eye on MS SQL to make sure it doesn't die, which it's already done several times in 6 months.
You don't seriously think 10% of the population own a BMW, do you? :)
What's up with Dick Rutan at XCor and Burt Rutan at Scaled Composites? Both companies are working on rockets, with Scaled's SpaceShipOne due to hit 100Km very soon. Are Dick Rutan and Burt Rutan related? Seriously, anybody know? I never put the two together until the parent post here mentioned Dick Rutan being associated with XCor. I thought Rutan... I know that name, but I thought he was with Scaled Composites. Then I learned that there are 2 Rutans. Any relation? Just curious. Maybe the Rutans just have the "rocket scientist" gene! :)