What’s keeping us using desktops and even notebook, then, are corporate buying policies, hardware replacement cycles, and inertia.
While I actually agree with the assertion that laptops are on the way out, I don't ever see a day I *won't* want to have my own dedicated box. And what's going to keep me buying (or, rather, building) desktop computers is customizability and control. I don't want Google, Amazon, HTC, Apple or anyone else telling me what my computer should be. I don't want an internet outage to prevent me from using my machine, I don't want to be told what software I can or cannot install on my machine, and I don't want to be a slave to a company's repair center whenever I need to do a simple replacement. It's in the name: Personal Computer.
I'm not saying that thin clients don't have their place, and I don't doubt that their popularity will rise, but I don't think the PC is going anywhere.
500+ comments and nothing about the fact that in academia, most code that's written for speed (still waiting on that MATLAB code to finish...) is written in either C or FORTRAN? I must have missed something.
At various points I found myself really hoping he'd do an episode involving time travel which they'd explain was the same thing, thanks to special relativity.
I think I remember Ronald D. Moore saying in the Battlestar Galactica first season commentary that he felt slightly guilty about making up a magic "anti radiation" drug.
A large criticism that keeps coming up is that, if they're "more advanced" than us, they might not use radio waves for transmission of data.
But I assume no matter how advanced we as a society get, we'll continue using electricity, and the same could be presumed for other intelligent life. Transmitting power across power lines should generate SOME level of EM-spectrum signal, no? Could we detect that?
Okay, fine. Let's say they no longer use power lines and, say, transmit power wirelessly. Could we detect that?
Before this month, I definitely fell into the category of the 99% of users they claim never even get close to the 250GB limit, but this month, I'm already at 230 GB (I know what the spike in traffic is from, and, shockingly, it's not torrenting, not video streaming, and nothing illegal). My plan right now is to change the way I do things with regards to this service, but if Comcast offers a higher tier plan with a larger cap, I'd definitely consider uprgading to it.
From the article: "The researchers didn’t try to increase this probability, as some previous research has focused on, but instead took advantage of small amounts of excess heat to emit more power than consumed. This heat arises from vibrations in the device’s atomic lattice, which occur due to entropy."
The other thing to note is that these LEDs are being run at REALLY low power.
Your time dilation assumes c towards Alpha Centauri, instant deceleration to 0, collect pdf and instant acceleration to c towards earth. Wont work.
Yes. THAT'S the problem with heading to Alpha Centauri. First of all, if we're imagining an interstellar ship capable of lightspeed travel, why not give it one of these? Second, fine--my starship accelerates at 1 gee (spaceship frame) for half the trip, then decelerates at 1 gee for the other half. To me, the trip takes two years each way. To my friends on Earth, I'm gone for about 10-20 years, if I remember this calculation correctly. Still I can get there and back in far less than fifty. The Vogons were *completely* reasonable.
As for the leopards in the basement cabinet... well.
Actually, Alpha Centaru is only ~4.4 ly away. If you travel there and back at near-lightspeed, your friends on Earth will only have noticed you were gone for ~8.8 years, and thanks to time dilation, practically NO time will have passed for you.
They can say all they like that they'll be "modulated for safety," but the truth is that THIS GENERATION of LED headlights are too bright. My car is low to the ground, and I don't have the best of night vision, so on more than a few many a dark, rainy nights, I've been nearly blinded by the LED headlights of the SUV behind me to the point that it took several such incidents for me to realize these assholes didn't just have their high-beams on.
The app is surprisingly useful: accelerometer, audio spectrum analyzer, compass to name a few... it does everything you'd expect a "real" tricorder to do, with the only limitations being the phone hardware.
I love that app. Does anyone know, for those of us who still have it installed, Android App Market doesn't automatically uninstall apps without user permission (like they'll remove books from the Kindle) in cases like this, do they?
Well, if you want to get technical, ANY photon is a gamma ray. But if you're talking common parliance, there is also no upper limit on the energy of a gamma ray, unless you're talking those produced by radioactive decays, which is just a practical limit.
Gamma rays typically have frequencies above 10 exahertz (or >10^19 Hz), and therefore have energies above 100 keV and wavelength less than 10 picometers, less than the diameter of an atom. However, this is not a hard and fast definition which is agreed to by all scientific naming standards bodies, but rather only a rule-of-thumb description for natural processes. Gamma rays from radioactive decay commonly have energies of a few hundred keV, and almost always less than 10 MeV. There is effectively no lower limit to gamma energy derived from radioactive decay. Energies from astronomical sources can be much higher, ranging over 10 TeV (this is far too large to result from radioactive decay).
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What’s keeping us using desktops and even notebook, then, are corporate buying policies, hardware replacement cycles, and inertia.
While I actually agree with the assertion that laptops are on the way out, I don't ever see a day I *won't* want to have my own dedicated box. And what's going to keep me buying (or, rather, building) desktop computers is customizability and control. I don't want Google, Amazon, HTC, Apple or anyone else telling me what my computer should be. I don't want an internet outage to prevent me from using my machine, I don't want to be told what software I can or cannot install on my machine, and I don't want to be a slave to a company's repair center whenever I need to do a simple replacement. It's in the name: Personal Computer.
I'm not saying that thin clients don't have their place, and I don't doubt that their popularity will rise, but I don't think the PC is going anywhere.
Shouldn't the headline here be "Chrome Wins Tom's Hardware Grand Prix?"
500+ comments and nothing about the fact that in academia, most code that's written for speed (still waiting on that MATLAB code to finish...) is written in either C or FORTRAN? I must have missed something.
Wasn't Orion de-funded?
At various points I found myself really hoping he'd do an episode involving time travel which they'd explain was the same thing, thanks to special relativity.
But alas...
I think I remember Ronald D. Moore saying in the Battlestar Galactica first season commentary that he felt slightly guilty about making up a magic "anti radiation" drug.
A large criticism that keeps coming up is that, if they're "more advanced" than us, they might not use radio waves for transmission of data.
But I assume no matter how advanced we as a society get, we'll continue using electricity, and the same could be presumed for other intelligent life. Transmitting power across power lines should generate SOME level of EM-spectrum signal, no? Could we detect that?
Okay, fine. Let's say they no longer use power lines and, say, transmit power wirelessly. Could we detect that?
a game server
Before this month, I definitely fell into the category of the 99% of users they claim never even get close to the 250GB limit, but this month, I'm already at 230 GB (I know what the spike in traffic is from, and, shockingly, it's not torrenting, not video streaming, and nothing illegal). My plan right now is to change the way I do things with regards to this service, but if Comcast offers a higher tier plan with a larger cap, I'd definitely consider uprgading to it.
From the article: "The researchers didn’t try to increase this probability, as some previous research has focused on, but instead took advantage of small amounts of excess heat to emit more power than consumed. This heat arises from vibrations in the device’s atomic lattice, which occur due to entropy." The other thing to note is that these LEDs are being run at REALLY low power.
Your time dilation assumes c towards Alpha Centauri, instant deceleration to 0, collect pdf and instant acceleration to c towards earth. Wont work.
Yes. THAT'S the problem with heading to Alpha Centauri. First of all, if we're imagining an interstellar ship capable of lightspeed travel, why not give it one of these? Second, fine--my starship accelerates at 1 gee (spaceship frame) for half the trip, then decelerates at 1 gee for the other half. To me, the trip takes two years each way. To my friends on Earth, I'm gone for about 10-20 years, if I remember this calculation correctly. Still I can get there and back in far less than fifty. The Vogons were *completely* reasonable.
As for the leopards in the basement cabinet... well.
Actually, Alpha Centaru is only ~4.4 ly away. If you travel there and back at near-lightspeed, your friends on Earth will only have noticed you were gone for ~8.8 years, and thanks to time dilation, practically NO time will have passed for you.
The first thing I thought when I saw this wasn't the Matrix. It was Dollhouse. Followed by Chuck.
Even though it might be delaying the inevitable, I'm glad that, for a few more months at least, I'm still on Magenta and not AT&T.
The scientists studying a toxic lake thought to be unable to support life have the last name... Stierle?
This was the first thing I thought of...
(what's the word for non-laser?)
incoherent?
They can say all they like that they'll be "modulated for safety," but the truth is that THIS GENERATION of LED headlights are too bright. My car is low to the ground, and I don't have the best of night vision, so on more than a few many a dark, rainy nights, I've been nearly blinded by the LED headlights of the SUV behind me to the point that it took several such incidents for me to realize these assholes didn't just have their high-beams on.
The app is surprisingly useful: accelerometer, audio spectrum analyzer, compass to name a few... it does everything you'd expect a "real" tricorder to do, with the only limitations being the phone hardware.
I love that app. Does anyone know, for those of us who still have it installed, Android App Market doesn't automatically uninstall apps without user permission (like they'll remove books from the Kindle) in cases like this, do they?
I had the same thought, but evidently, this guy has some trustworthy credentials (senior product manager for online communities, whatever that means).
About 89% of cosmic rays are simple protons or hydrogen nuclei...
Well, if you want to get technical, ANY photon is a gamma ray. But if you're talking common parliance, there is also no upper limit on the energy of a gamma ray, unless you're talking those produced by radioactive decays, which is just a practical limit.
Quoting Wikipedia,
Gamma rays typically have frequencies above 10 exahertz (or >10^19 Hz), and therefore have energies above 100 keV and wavelength less than 10 picometers, less than the diameter of an atom. However, this is not a hard and fast definition which is agreed to by all scientific naming standards bodies, but rather only a rule-of-thumb description for natural processes. Gamma rays from radioactive decay commonly have energies of a few hundred keV, and almost always less than 10 MeV. There is effectively no lower limit to gamma energy derived from radioactive decay. Energies from astronomical sources can be much higher, ranging over 10 TeV (this is far too large to result from radioactive decay).
Did you not notice the reply right above yours?
Oh, ha! No, I'm just a really bad skimmer today...