I don't know but - many clocks used to use the 60Hz line frequency as their reference (the power companies used to try to at least have that average out correctly over longish periods of time - 216000 cycles per hour, say. But if there is a higher frequency signal on the line due to the power meter, if a digital clock is too sensitive it could be picking up some of those transitions in excess, making them run faster. I'm just speculating but that's a possible mechanism. IIRC the old campus radio stations that broadcast over the campus power lines could cause some similar problems with digital electronics whose line-ins weren't properly filtered.
Twice at my college (back in the day...), once by accident and once on purpose, the line filter that prevented the radio signal from propagating off campus was removed or turned off or whatever - the campus radio was then essentially modulating the entire northwestern Illinois power grid. Folks all over the US could pick up our '10 watt' signal.:D At the time one of the students had a show that came on at midnight. He basically read Fidel Castro's speeches for an hour once a week. And that is what was getting broadcast. The FCC was not at all happy, especially the second time. They were picking up the signal in Washington DC as well as in Florida. Good times!:D
If the Christmas season keeps precessing, eventually it will wrap around - "Buy next year's Christmas stuff this year!!!":P
Maybe you will even be able to return the stuff you bought last year to give this year, in exchange for next year's stuff, without ever opening the box.
In fact, maybe that will be the Guv's next stimulus package - require everyone to buy their Christmas stuff one year in advance.
This was a while back, but I once ran a ray tracing project that ran nonstop for two weeks, essentially 100% CPU the whole time. In fact it didn't even finish - it was 2/3 done when someone else pulled the plug on it accidentally. Fortunately the data for that much of the picture was saved to a file as it went. Nowadays the same project would probably take 10 minutes, but hey.
I used to have T-Mobile, and loved their customer service. I had to switch for job reasons but I still think about switching back. TM are the only carrier that I have used that wasn't pretty much constantly screwing me around one way or another.
An even crazier splinter group made hay with PHP, breaking just about every rule of thoughtfulness and elegance known to God and man.
Hmm, reading this got me thinking. Looking at the collected stuff around various languages - PHP, Perl, Java, C/C++, Python, Ruby, FORTRAN, etc., etc. I have come to the opinion that every language/environment will eventually grow to become a cross between PL/1 and Ada.:)
In the better world, you and they are both sir - mutual respect, at least until proven otherwise. Thus the world avoids unnecessary conflict. It works that way most of the time, in several places I've lived.
Disregarding the other points, don't forget that during the summer the northern regions get a LOT of light during their long days. Alaska is famous for growing huge vegetables during their short growing season. I don't know how this difference in light would change the growth of grains like wheat.
As I recall, there have been a number of scientists who have left IPCC after their contributions (papers and conclusions?) were rewritten between the time that they were accepted and the final release of the report without their permission, changing the stated result to fit the political wind. One of them was Svensmark IIRC.
Funny you should mention the F15. Back in the late 1980s I worked in San Diego, and learned that the unmarked building next door was a General Dynamics facility where they wrote the software for the F18. According to them, the F18 had hundreds of VME boards, and that 1/2 the cost of the plane was the software. I'm sure that in theory, today most of those VME boards could be replaced by one board with a couple of chips on it (disregarding issues with EMP, etc.) Which raises the question - could a suitably programmed iPhone or Android phone run an F18? Probably yes.
I've been told before that it's better not to search for prior art at all. Then you can claim ignorance. But if you searched and found prior art or a prior patent, then if you proceed to get a patent you can be subject to counter claims and possibly prosecution for fraudulently obtaining the patent.
So the author is not doing the prior art search, and the USPTO is not doing the prior art search. So it's finally up to the accused infringer and the courts to do all the work.
Oh - also, I don't have a copy of the source any more, unless it's on a floppy stored in a box somewhere. But I never had a copy of the source for Metamorph. Part of the installation was getting a license key from Thunderstone.
I'd love to, but the core of it was licensed. It was a context-aware full text semantic search engine called Metamorph, produced by Thunderstone, which has since then been built into some other commercial tools. I think they may have a free-for-non-commercial-use non-open version of some sort. It really was quite a cool engine and probably still is. I haven't looked into it for a number of years.
Basically my product used the Metamorph search engine to spin through all the mail files, and using the NeXTstep object system was able to link right into the Mail app and display the email in question, with highlighting. It could run through ten thousand emails (a lot for the early 1990s) in a second or two, on a 25 MHz NeXTstation. So it was basically a relatively simple user interface (although tuning that to make it dirt simple to use and powerful was an interesting project), a driver for the search engine, and of course the packaging into an installable app. But the NeXT system made that part pretty straightforward.
I suppose that by now someone must have built an equivalent full text semantic search engine. As I recall it was originally based on a huge semantic network, constructed by 'reading' various dictionaries, thesauri and other sources. Bart Richards, the inventor (and one of the smartest people I've ever known) originally built Metamorph as a tool for processing research literature and looking for papers relevant to his interest, which (IIRC) was scanning tunneling electron microscopes. But I believe it was later used by the CIA for filtering newspapers around the world, and as of a few years ago was still used by some of the big legal/academic reference databases.
Context-aware semantic search is cool - I haven't seen any other tool that matches it in usability, at least for me. You could look for 'Congress' and it (if you wanted it to) would find both 'Representative' and 'Senator' - or vice versa. I suppose that, given an updated semantic network, you could look for 'geek' and find 'programmer'.:)
Apple takes 30 cents. Gov. take 30 cents. Developer is left with 40 cents to cover overhead and all.
From my own experience with software retail a long time ago, I would have loved to get that deal. I was selling an application called MailQuery(tm) for the NeXT machine, which was a relatively low volume environment. So all the costs tended to be high. The deal I was coping with was: catalog costs $5000 just for the ad in the catalog, plus 50% off the top. Distributor takes 40% off of that (20% of gross, leaving 30%). License for the underlying software engine takes 20% of the gross. I forget the whole deal but it turned out that selling the software for $500 retail (at least twice what the market would likely bear), I would make about $10 to cover all my costs.
The application provided very fast, very useful full-text semantic search of your mail with an easy user interface, so you could look for concepts rather than particular words. It was great for finding that email from a year ago that you couldn't remember the details of, but you knew what it was about. But there was no way to make any money off of it. So I got out of the business, and IMHO the world still hasn't seen an email search system that was anywhere near as useful.
Hey, you got a problem with systems based on binary arithmetic (gallons/quarts/pints/etc. - there's a full range from fractions of an ounce to barrels, though some of the units have fallen out of use) and base-twelve (OK, it's only 12 inches to a foot - but the foot is the length of MY foot!)? Working with liquid measures as a binary system is very nice.
In fact, in the grand scheme of things, the metric system is just as arbitrary. Use of base-10 is probably just descended from the number of fingers on my hands. The meter is based on an erroneous measurement of the Earth's diameter. Celsius temperatures are based on state changes in water, which isn't too bad (but Fahrenheit was based on a somewhat reasonable formula (The incorporation of body temperature was perhaps unfortunate, but made sense for its purpose.)
As we move into the universe, I expect we will find the metric system to be equally lacking, as so many of the important constants have to be defined in very unreasonably decimal fractions. A new system could be developed based on unitary assignments for those constants, and based on a binary unit multiplier to make arithmetic faster. There's no reason to use a system that assumes we are going to count on our fingers.
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Or Grampa break dancing because his pacemaker is trying to tap out the digits of the last hours power consumption???
I totally want to see the video - or at least an animation! :D Extra points for a long beard (ZZ-top) flapping around, and long johns. Yee-hah!!
I don't know but - many clocks used to use the 60Hz line frequency as their reference (the power companies used to try to at least have that average out correctly over longish periods of time - 216000 cycles per hour, say. But if there is a higher frequency signal on the line due to the power meter, if a digital clock is too sensitive it could be picking up some of those transitions in excess, making them run faster. I'm just speculating but that's a possible mechanism. IIRC the old campus radio stations that broadcast over the campus power lines could cause some similar problems with digital electronics whose line-ins weren't properly filtered.
Twice at my college (back in the day...), once by accident and once on purpose, the line filter that prevented the radio signal from propagating off campus was removed or turned off or whatever - the campus radio was then essentially modulating the entire northwestern Illinois power grid. Folks all over the US could pick up our '10 watt' signal. :D At the time one of the students had a show that came on at midnight. He basically read Fidel Castro's speeches for an hour once a week. And that is what was getting broadcast. The FCC was not at all happy, especially the second time. They were picking up the signal in Washington DC as well as in Florida. Good times! :D
If the Christmas season keeps precessing, eventually it will wrap around - "Buy next year's Christmas stuff this year!!!" :P
Maybe you will even be able to return the stuff you bought last year to give this year, in exchange for next year's stuff, without ever opening the box.
In fact, maybe that will be the Guv's next stimulus package - require everyone to buy their Christmas stuff one year in advance.
Heck, today even the coffee maker in our lunchroom has a small color touchscreen display - it even has an idle-mode slideshow of coffee beans.
AFAIK it's still around $4500 per gallon.
This was a while back, but I once ran a ray tracing project that ran nonstop for two weeks, essentially 100% CPU the whole time. In fact it didn't even finish - it was 2/3 done when someone else pulled the plug on it accidentally. Fortunately the data for that much of the picture was saved to a file as it went. Nowadays the same project would probably take 10 minutes, but hey.
I used to have T-Mobile, and loved their customer service. I had to switch for job reasons but I still think about switching back. TM are the only carrier that I have used that wasn't pretty much constantly screwing me around one way or another.
How about Carlos Slim?
I recall a news article recently where some bad guy was tracked to the airport using his turned-off phone, and was arrested there.
An even crazier splinter group made hay with PHP, breaking just about every rule of thoughtfulness and elegance known to God and man.
Hmm, reading this got me thinking. Looking at the collected stuff around various languages - PHP, Perl, Java, C/C++, Python, Ruby, FORTRAN, etc., etc. I have come to the opinion that every language/environment will eventually grow to become a cross between PL/1 and Ada. :)
In the better world, you and they are both sir - mutual respect, at least until proven otherwise. Thus the world avoids unnecessary conflict. It works that way most of the time, in several places I've lived.
Thanks, that was well said.
My favorite aphorism: "Mother Nature eats her young."
Disregarding the other points, don't forget that during the summer the northern regions get a LOT of light during their long days. Alaska is famous for growing huge vegetables during their short growing season. I don't know how this difference in light would change the growth of grains like wheat.
As I recall, there have been a number of scientists who have left IPCC after their contributions (papers and conclusions?) were rewritten between the time that they were accepted and the final release of the report without their permission, changing the stated result to fit the political wind. One of them was Svensmark IIRC.
Climate is much easier to predict than weather.
No, it's NOT!
Indeed. It's a scale-free system.
Funny you should mention the F15. Back in the late 1980s I worked in San Diego, and learned that the unmarked building next door was a General Dynamics facility where they wrote the software for the F18. According to them, the F18 had hundreds of VME boards, and that 1/2 the cost of the plane was the software. I'm sure that in theory, today most of those VME boards could be replaced by one board with a couple of chips on it (disregarding issues with EMP, etc.) Which raises the question - could a suitably programmed iPhone or Android phone run an F18? Probably yes.
I've been told before that it's better not to search for prior art at all. Then you can claim ignorance. But if you searched and found prior art or a prior patent, then if you proceed to get a patent you can be subject to counter claims and possibly prosecution for fraudulently obtaining the patent.
So the author is not doing the prior art search, and the USPTO is not doing the prior art search. So it's finally up to the accused infringer and the courts to do all the work.
the female mode of conflict is longer term social violence: sabotage, character assassination, propaganda campaigns, name calling.
So, modern politics is female?
Oh - also, I don't have a copy of the source any more, unless it's on a floppy stored in a box somewhere. But I never had a copy of the source for Metamorph. Part of the installation was getting a license key from Thunderstone.
I'd love to, but the core of it was licensed. It was a context-aware full text semantic search engine called Metamorph, produced by Thunderstone, which has since then been built into some other commercial tools. I think they may have a free-for-non-commercial-use non-open version of some sort. It really was quite a cool engine and probably still is. I haven't looked into it for a number of years.
Basically my product used the Metamorph search engine to spin through all the mail files, and using the NeXTstep object system was able to link right into the Mail app and display the email in question, with highlighting. It could run through ten thousand emails (a lot for the early 1990s) in a second or two, on a 25 MHz NeXTstation. So it was basically a relatively simple user interface (although tuning that to make it dirt simple to use and powerful was an interesting project), a driver for the search engine, and of course the packaging into an installable app. But the NeXT system made that part pretty straightforward.
I suppose that by now someone must have built an equivalent full text semantic search engine. As I recall it was originally based on a huge semantic network, constructed by 'reading' various dictionaries, thesauri and other sources. Bart Richards, the inventor (and one of the smartest people I've ever known) originally built Metamorph as a tool for processing research literature and looking for papers relevant to his interest, which (IIRC) was scanning tunneling electron microscopes. But I believe it was later used by the CIA for filtering newspapers around the world, and as of a few years ago was still used by some of the big legal/academic reference databases.
Context-aware semantic search is cool - I haven't seen any other tool that matches it in usability, at least for me. You could look for 'Congress' and it (if you wanted it to) would find both 'Representative' and 'Senator' - or vice versa. I suppose that, given an updated semantic network, you could look for 'geek' and find 'programmer'. :)
"Say... Is that a Beowulf Cluster in your pants or are you just happy to see me?"
"I don't know, but it's making me hot - in fact I think I'm on fire!"
Apple takes 30 cents.
Gov. take 30 cents.
Developer is left with 40 cents to cover overhead and all.
From my own experience with software retail a long time ago, I would have loved to get that deal. I was selling an application called MailQuery(tm) for the NeXT machine, which was a relatively low volume environment. So all the costs tended to be high. The deal I was coping with was: catalog costs $5000 just for the ad in the catalog, plus 50% off the top. Distributor takes 40% off of that (20% of gross, leaving 30%). License for the underlying software engine takes 20% of the gross. I forget the whole deal but it turned out that selling the software for $500 retail (at least twice what the market would likely bear), I would make about $10 to cover all my costs.
The application provided very fast, very useful full-text semantic search of your mail with an easy user interface, so you could look for concepts rather than particular words. It was great for finding that email from a year ago that you couldn't remember the details of, but you knew what it was about. But there was no way to make any money off of it. So I got out of the business, and IMHO the world still hasn't seen an email search system that was anywhere near as useful.
Thanks. I now have a new email sig. :D
Hey, you got a problem with systems based on binary arithmetic (gallons/quarts/pints/etc. - there's a full range from fractions of an ounce to barrels, though some of the units have fallen out of use) and base-twelve (OK, it's only 12 inches to a foot - but the foot is the length of MY foot!)? Working with liquid measures as a binary system is very nice.
In fact, in the grand scheme of things, the metric system is just as arbitrary. Use of base-10 is probably just descended from the number of fingers on my hands. The meter is based on an erroneous measurement of the Earth's diameter. Celsius temperatures are based on state changes in water, which isn't too bad (but Fahrenheit was based on a somewhat reasonable formula (The incorporation of body temperature was perhaps unfortunate, but made sense for its purpose.)
As we move into the universe, I expect we will find the metric system to be equally lacking, as so many of the important constants have to be defined in very unreasonably decimal fractions. A new system could be developed based on unitary assignments for those constants, and based on a binary unit multiplier to make arithmetic faster. There's no reason to use a system that assumes we are going to count on our fingers.
or not. :)