That's what I'm screaming! Whatever happened to the good ole days of AOR? Where all the songs were meant to be listened to, not one or two songs singled out by fatcat record execs to be the hits, while the rest is (a) either lame padding, or (b) totally excellent, yet underrated due to the fact that the radio execs wanted to use them as (a)?
IIRC, wasn't there a proposal to embed encryption into monitors and HDTV sets so that it wouldn't show a picture at all if the signal going into it wasn't authorized?
Run the coax cable output of the good stereo VCR or DVD player through the coax cable input of a junk VCR (or your old mono VCR if it's old enough) tuned to the same channel as the output (usually channel 3). Then connect the video output of the junk VCR to your tuner card's video input. Then connect the stereo outputs of the stereo VCR directly to the tuner card's stereo inputs. This should work, assuming the junk VCR is old enough that it doesn't recognize macrovision. Sure, you lose some video fidelity, but this is infinitely better than what you see with macrovision.
I have a couple old mono "tape eaters" whose tuner sections are still good, I keep them just for this purpose. The way Macrovision was perpetrated on us was through planned obsolecence. Virtually all broken VCRs I come across have either broken mechanical parts (because the cams, levers, etc. are made of injection molded plastic and snap easily), or because VCR tape is wrapped around the spindles, guides, etc. like black cocoons. Yet the tuner and video output sections work perfectly. When the mechanical portion of a VCR conks out and the repair center tells people that it would cost more to fix than it would to buy a new one, they pitch the old one and go out and buy the new one with better features, i.e. stereo, 4 heads, etc., but they snuck macrovision in along with these new features.
They will be either stricken from the books eventually or end up as laughably quaint as some legendary local ordinances like it being illegal to step on the cracks in the sidewalk, or that FLA law that says a man can't kiss his wife if he has bad breath.
I'll be glad when the law that says you must purchase music recorded onto CDs only by authorized producers becomes as quaint as horse n' buggy ordinances. The very center of this whole controversy is the fact that technology has advanced sufficiently enough that to listen your favorite tunes in their original sonic fidelity whenever and wherever you want no longer involves a trip to the record store.
But the po' musician still gotta get paid, there wouldn't be aspiring musicians if there wasn't something in it for them (fame & fortune). The record execs should concentrate on different ways to compensate the musician, e.g. tabulate the number of times a certain song passes through Napster and clones, FTP, newsgroups, etc., then whoever is downloaded most gets the fame and fortune by filling stadiums and concert venues and by selling CDs, not for people to be obligated to buy if they want to listen legally, but as voluntary collector's items, just like programs and T-shirts.
Infact most of them don't see it as stealing, many of them would love to pay 10 bucks a month to download whatever the hell they want.
We are getting our music by connections we pay to have in our homes (be it dialup modem, DSL, cable, etc.) Many of these connections we are paying for are provided by companies that also have stake in the music industry, e.g. Time-Warner. What I want to know is WHY we are being punished, accused of getting our music for free by plucking them from the internet that is provided by those connections, when the connections are owned by companies that also own the music industry?
At least TLC has Junkyard Wars. Take the theme of this discussion (rebooting the world), add Junkyard Wars and then throw in all those Survivor shows, and come up with one big show: Postapocalyptic Survivor.
Back to the use of slide rules and other mechanical computing devices. Anybody ever balance their expenses with a Big Chief tablet, a ledger book and a mechanical adding machine? Or send messages across the globe via a Morse code key? Or a Kleinschmitt teletypewriter? It's amazing what we managed to do without silicon, for instance, build atomic bombs.
90% of what you learn in college will be obsolete in 5 years and you won't recognise the field in 10 years.
I couldn't agree more. I originally applied for college in 1986 to learn computer science, but never went, instead I joined the Army (for monetary reasons). I'm glad I did, because if I would have graduated with a CS degree in 1990, I would have had to keep up with the 90's computer revolution by taking short course after short course, acquiring those Microsoft "trophy" certificates along the way, and would now be jumping from one sinking dot-bombed ship to another. What a way to earn a living.
But I saw how rapidly the computer scene was changing, and when I enrolled in college full time in 1997, I decided to knuckle down on the math and try out for straight EE, because nowadays, the EE curriculum is so computer oriented that to say you are an electrical engineer means you also know a good deal about computers. But having an EE degree also means you know a bit about industrial controls (interface a new computer system to the same old assembly line every couple years), and know a bit about power engineering (deregulation won't change how you your electricity is delivered one bit, even if you say "Screw deregulation, I'll buy a generator", EE's ultimately designed the generator).
Build an X-ray machine out of an old EGA monitor. Or build a dye laser out of an old fluorescent tube and a package of Paa's Easter Egg color. Or build a pirate radio transmitter out of a microwave oven magnetron and a ballast transformer. Fun!
Wow. This is enlightening. As an undergraduate EE major, I've taken two control systems engineering classes and I'm currently enrolled in a dsp class, and all I've seen is shitloads of theory like root locus, Z-transform, state-space, robustness, etc., so much theory that what I thought would be interesting classes is instead hopelessly drowned in a sea of math. We are expected to know how to do simulations of things like an inverted pendulum on a cart, aircraft attitude control, etc. on MATLAB running on Windows NT boxes, but no mention is made of what type of computer systems are actually used to do process controls in the "real world", the advantages of one system over the other, or anything like that. I guess that's the sort of specifics that the professor doesn't teach because there's no telling what we might encounter in the workplace.
As an example, I had the opportunity to tour a couple local power plants. The local coal burning power plant had a digital control setup run by countless Sun workstations running the show, with 25" touch screen monitors all over the control room showing equipment status, power output, etc., and it was all wired together with fiber optics. Pretty amazing high tech control system for such a low tech way to generate power. In contrast, the local nuclear power station just across the way had a control system run by early 1980's vintage hardware, with countless meters and dials and pushbuttons and a few green monochrome monitors in the control room, all wired together with coax cable and analog loops. They had to keep up the vintage equipment because upgrading to something more modern would be prohibitively expensive due to regulatory requirements. (They started construction on the coal plant at the same time as the nuke, and it was up and online while the nuke's foundation was still being poured.)
I hate to sound clueless and naive, but what are real time kernels used for, anyway? I've downloaded a few Windows sound editors that are supposed to allow you to add echo in real time (provided you have a full duplex sound card). They work, but are choppy due to disk writes, mouse movements, etc. Would a real time OS solve this? I downloaded QNX 6 months ago and played around with it for a while. It actually recognizes my Sound Blaster Live card, while Mandrake Linux 7.2 doesn't. Are there any sound editors available for QNX? What other applications need real time kernels? Are there any video editors / recorders?
My local university offers a course in computer music, which is based on the music language CSound. CSound is based on the Music I-V programs which have been kicking around since the late 1950's. Back then, you definitely had to be a computer geek to do computer music. In order to make computer music, you have to know the fundamentals of digital signal processing, which is in the realm of electrical engineering. In the computer music class I took, we learned all the fundamentals like amplitude modulation, frequency modulation, additive (Fourier) synthesis, subtractive synthesis, filters (Butterworth, Chebyshev and all the other elliptical filters covered in advanced EE classes), and how to construct reverbs and do pitch shifting and chorusing with digital delays. I grasped the concepts immediately, even though I am musically challenged (what's all this jazz about point and counterpoint, anyway?) In otherwords, I can design my own synth, yet I'd be hard pressed to actually make anything resembling music with it. A rough analogy would be an expert craftsman building and tuning a fine piano but not exactly being able to belt out Beethoven's 9th on it.
What is disturbing is that the computer music class is not in taught conjunction with the EE program, therefore I get no degree credit for it. But I took it for personal gain, and it would be an ideal prerequiste for DSP classes, as there was VERY minimal math (no Z-transforms as encountered in DSP class!) If creating computer music was incorporated into the EE program, like in the DSP classes, or at least whip up MIDI interfaces in the digital logic lab, then those subjects wouldn't be so dry and boring. When the others in the class, who were music majors, wondered why an electrical engineering major had applied for the class, I pointed out that every last means of making electronic music, be it synthesizers, organs, drum machines, sound cards, mixing boards, guitar amplifiers, etc. had EEs that designed the hardware, and software engineers that wrote all the popular sequencing programs and software synthesizers used in the recording of modern music.
Don't play games on your computer! Buy a Playstation or Nintendo. Computers are for real work.
That's always been my big complaint about computer games. I have two computers, one for work and one for games. What I want to see is games that do everything from a bootable CD. Insert, reboot, and play. No hard drive hogging bitmaps, DLLs, registry entries or other system fragmenting files. Just play from CD only. The game on the CD shouldn't even need to be OS dependent. Linux will boot from a CD, and QNX will boot from a floppy, why not games? If compatibility is an issue, maybe an autoconfig patch would be the first thing to load. Then when the game is over, remove the CD and reboot to a system untouched by games.
In 1627, Frances Bacon foresaw the widespread distribution of music in his essay New Atlantis: "We have also sound-houses, where we practice and demonstrate all sounds, and their generation... We have also the means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances..."
Then in 1897, a revolutionary new invention was patented, and it was predicted that current cities would be retrofitted for it and new cities would be built around it. The Telharmonium, invented by Thaddeus Cahill, was titled Art of and Apparatus for Generating and Distributing Music Electronically (pat. no. 580,035). The Telharmonium was the first music synthesizer, which operated by additive (Fourier) synthesis: Sine waves from banks of dynamos, all turning at different speeds, were added and linked through a complex switching system, then played through the speakers of its day, telephone receivers. The Telharmonium's music would be sent over telephone wires into homes, restaurants, and hotels. It was like the Muzak of the early 1900's. This way the best music could be transmitted into homes, and would be available to the poor.
But the Telharmonium was a massive instrument, quite possibly the largest musical instrument ever built, weighing in at over 200 tons, and had to be transported by 30 railroad cars. It was prohibitively expensive for its day, and only 3 were ever built. Broadcasting music by radio came into being, and companies like Hammond and Wurlitzer started making organs which worked on the same principle of additive synthesis, but on a much smaller scale, due to advances in technology. The Telharmonium was rendered obsolete forever. (For more info, see http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/machines/telharm onium/index.html).
Not to stray too far off topic, this post wasn't meant to be the history of electronic music, but rather, the distribution of music. People were meant to subscribe, to pay for the wired connection that delivered the music the Telharmonium produced. But when radio supplanted music delivered by wire, people could listen to radio broadcasted music, essentially plucking it from the ether, without having to pay for it. Nobody was interested in the Telharmonium anymore, and besides that, more "modern" organs made the same sound anyway. Therefore the Telharmonium and the entire business model of distributing its music has completely disappeared. (Indeed, all three of these 200 ton instruments have vanished without a trace.)
Now things have come full circle. We are back to getting our music by the wire we pay to have connected to our homes (be it dialup modem, DSL, cable, etc.), Many of these wired connections we are paying for are owned by companies that also have stake in the music industry, e.g. Time-Warner. What I want to know is WHY we are being punished, accused of getting our music for free by plucking them from the ether that is contained within the wires, when the wires themselves are owned by companies that also own the music industry?
Didn't someone once propose that electricity could be stored in huge loops of superconducting wire in underground tunnels as big around as particle accelerators? Power stations would charge them up at night when the load is low, then the electricity would continue to circle inside indefinitely until tapped, such as peak load during the day. This seems to be one step closer to that idea, as the original idea was to use copper wire and liquid helium (expensive!!!)
Anyway, it would seem to be prohibitively expensive to retrofit the electrical grid by building what basically amounts to be a liquid nitrogen pipeline with ceramic rods inside (very brittle too at those temperatures, no doubt.) But then the liquid nitrogen on the receiving end could be used in compressed air powered cars, etc., thus solving two infrastructure problems with one idea...
I think that there ought to be a law stating that the store itself honors all rebates, instant, mail-in or otherwise, then pay some lackey minimum wage to stuff envelopes and then when the lackeys on the receiving end say they won't honor the rebate because of some technicality, the store can throw their corporate muscle at the manufacturer and sue the bejeezus out of them if they don't pay the store the rebates they mailed in for their customers. A couple rounds of this and rebates (and all their woes) will finally be a thing of the past. Then something even more crooked will take its place...
Reading about this motorized scooter just adds fuel to my thoughts that whatever IT is, it can't possibly be YAMS (Yet Another Motorized Scooter). They say cities would be retrofitted for IT. Well, if IT is a self balancing, stair climbing scooter like everybody thinks IT is, nobody would have to retrofit anything. Existing handicapped accesibility laws already took care of that. Riding scooters, skateboards and inline skates at my college is a breeze because of all the sidewalks, ramps, elevators, etc. designed for the mobility impared (or enhanced).
Instead, maybe IT is what powers Yet Another Motorized Scooter. Maybe the power source is some sort of improved highly efficient heat engine (Kamden has already built improved Stirling engines and propane powered mopeds, as shown on a recent episode of 60 Minutes II.) A scooter would be an ideal affordable way to introduce a revolutionary new propulsion technology, especially during the current motorized scooter craze, instead of the new technology not catching on because only the super rich can afford a full sized car powered by IT.
The fact that IT is being called "Ginger" and the fact that Kamden is a heat engine junkie (did you see that huge steam engine in his living room on 60'II??) suddenly made this connection: Dave Gingery
(http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/index.html) published a bunch of how-to books for building your own heat engines. Coincidence?
I get that trippy watery effect when I run my finger across my 17" glass picture tube monitor. Either my finger is magnetic or it's an optical illusion (meaning I'm tripping a little too hard...)
A 10,000 hour life wouldn't be as bad as it sounds if the panel itself is as cheap, easy to replace and universal as a fluorescent tube, except just gradually getting dimmer (say 1/2 brightness at the end of its useful lifespan) rather than winking out during the middle of the big game or something.
The Maya Indians predicted that the world would end in 2012. They said that all ordinary inanimate objects would come to life and attack people. The rate at which miniaturization, nanobots, embedded chips, etc. are showing up in the most unusual places, the goal will be reached, and all it takes is a fast spreading virus or other rogue command from an evil empire to make them spring to life.
Actually, I think I saw this on an episode of Futurama...
Our local cable co. used to run the local access channel scrolling ads with an Amiga... For years, once every other month, the ol' Guru would be flashing, but then one day, they changed, it became an almost daily barrage of GPF errors and BSODs, usually when nobody was there to reset it. My heart sank and I wondered why they gave up on the old reliable Amiga and switched to an unreliable piece o'junk...
Another interesting tidbit about Cyrano: Understandably, in the 17th century anyone writing about voyaging to luna (lunatics) was considered quite insane and the two words were irrevocably associated. So it is this novel that is at the root of our modern understanding of the word 'lunatic'.
Gee, I thought that it was because people in the looney bin are more insane on the nights that the moon is full. Lunatic. Looney bin. *giggle* Looney Tunes. WOW! Think about it! The world would have been deprived of Bugs Bunny cartoons if that association had never been made! Imagine the implications... No Porky Pig, Sylvester & Tweety, no Foghorn Leghorn, no Roadrunner or Wile E. Coyote and all the rest... No Tiny Toons, no Animaniacs and... *gasp* NO PINKY & THE BRAIN???? We owe our existance to lunatics!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Not mine. I bought a Sony because I wanted to make damn sure my TV was made in Japan.
That's what I'm screaming! Whatever happened to the good ole days of AOR? Where all the songs were meant to be listened to, not one or two songs singled out by fatcat record execs to be the hits, while the rest is (a) either lame padding, or (b) totally excellent, yet underrated due to the fact that the radio execs wanted to use them as (a)?
IIRC, wasn't there a proposal to embed encryption into monitors and HDTV sets so that it wouldn't show a picture at all if the signal going into it wasn't authorized?
I have a couple old mono "tape eaters" whose tuner sections are still good, I keep them just for this purpose. The way Macrovision was perpetrated on us was through planned obsolecence. Virtually all broken VCRs I come across have either broken mechanical parts (because the cams, levers, etc. are made of injection molded plastic and snap easily), or because VCR tape is wrapped around the spindles, guides, etc. like black cocoons. Yet the tuner and video output sections work perfectly. When the mechanical portion of a VCR conks out and the repair center tells people that it would cost more to fix than it would to buy a new one, they pitch the old one and go out and buy the new one with better features, i.e. stereo, 4 heads, etc., but they snuck macrovision in along with these new features.
I'll be glad when the law that says you must purchase music recorded onto CDs only by authorized producers becomes as quaint as horse n' buggy ordinances. The very center of this whole controversy is the fact that technology has advanced sufficiently enough that to listen your favorite tunes in their original sonic fidelity whenever and wherever you want no longer involves a trip to the record store.
But the po' musician still gotta get paid, there wouldn't be aspiring musicians if there wasn't something in it for them (fame & fortune). The record execs should concentrate on different ways to compensate the musician, e.g. tabulate the number of times a certain song passes through Napster and clones, FTP, newsgroups, etc., then whoever is downloaded most gets the fame and fortune by filling stadiums and concert venues and by selling CDs, not for people to be obligated to buy if they want to listen legally, but as voluntary collector's items, just like programs and T-shirts.
We are getting our music by connections we pay to have in our homes (be it dialup modem, DSL, cable, etc.) Many of these connections we are paying for are provided by companies that also have stake in the music industry, e.g. Time-Warner. What I want to know is WHY we are being punished, accused of getting our music for free by plucking them from the internet that is provided by those connections, when the connections are owned by companies that also own the music industry?
And then see who gets voted off the planet.
Back to the use of slide rules and other mechanical computing devices. Anybody ever balance their expenses with a Big Chief tablet, a ledger book and a mechanical adding machine? Or send messages across the globe via a Morse code key? Or a Kleinschmitt teletypewriter? It's amazing what we managed to do without silicon, for instance, build atomic bombs.
All your Wanderungenmitpenguinenborkborkbiergetrinkenundsow are belong to us.
I couldn't agree more. I originally applied for college in 1986 to learn computer science, but never went, instead I joined the Army (for monetary reasons). I'm glad I did, because if I would have graduated with a CS degree in 1990, I would have had to keep up with the 90's computer revolution by taking short course after short course, acquiring those Microsoft "trophy" certificates along the way, and would now be jumping from one sinking dot-bombed ship to another. What a way to earn a living.
But I saw how rapidly the computer scene was changing, and when I enrolled in college full time in 1997, I decided to knuckle down on the math and try out for straight EE, because nowadays, the EE curriculum is so computer oriented that to say you are an electrical engineer means you also know a good deal about computers. But having an EE degree also means you know a bit about industrial controls (interface a new computer system to the same old assembly line every couple years), and know a bit about power engineering (deregulation won't change how you your electricity is delivered one bit, even if you say "Screw deregulation, I'll buy a generator", EE's ultimately designed the generator).
Build an X-ray machine out of an old EGA monitor. Or build a dye laser out of an old fluorescent tube and a package of Paa's Easter Egg color. Or build a pirate radio transmitter out of a microwave oven magnetron and a ballast transformer. Fun!
As an example, I had the opportunity to tour a couple local power plants. The local coal burning power plant had a digital control setup run by countless Sun workstations running the show, with 25" touch screen monitors all over the control room showing equipment status, power output, etc., and it was all wired together with fiber optics. Pretty amazing high tech control system for such a low tech way to generate power. In contrast, the local nuclear power station just across the way had a control system run by early 1980's vintage hardware, with countless meters and dials and pushbuttons and a few green monochrome monitors in the control room, all wired together with coax cable and analog loops. They had to keep up the vintage equipment because upgrading to something more modern would be prohibitively expensive due to regulatory requirements. (They started construction on the coal plant at the same time as the nuke, and it was up and online while the nuke's foundation was still being poured.)
I hate to sound clueless and naive, but what are real time kernels used for, anyway? I've downloaded a few Windows sound editors that are supposed to allow you to add echo in real time (provided you have a full duplex sound card). They work, but are choppy due to disk writes, mouse movements, etc. Would a real time OS solve this? I downloaded QNX 6 months ago and played around with it for a while. It actually recognizes my Sound Blaster Live card, while Mandrake Linux 7.2 doesn't. Are there any sound editors available for QNX? What other applications need real time kernels? Are there any video editors / recorders?
What is disturbing is that the computer music class is not in taught conjunction with the EE program, therefore I get no degree credit for it. But I took it for personal gain, and it would be an ideal prerequiste for DSP classes, as there was VERY minimal math (no Z-transforms as encountered in DSP class!) If creating computer music was incorporated into the EE program, like in the DSP classes, or at least whip up MIDI interfaces in the digital logic lab, then those subjects wouldn't be so dry and boring. When the others in the class, who were music majors, wondered why an electrical engineering major had applied for the class, I pointed out that every last means of making electronic music, be it synthesizers, organs, drum machines, sound cards, mixing boards, guitar amplifiers, etc. had EEs that designed the hardware, and software engineers that wrote all the popular sequencing programs and software synthesizers used in the recording of modern music.
Don't play games on your computer! Buy a Playstation or Nintendo. Computers are for real work.
That's always been my big complaint about computer games. I have two computers, one for work and one for games. What I want to see is games that do everything from a bootable CD. Insert, reboot, and play. No hard drive hogging bitmaps, DLLs, registry entries or other system fragmenting files. Just play from CD only. The game on the CD shouldn't even need to be OS dependent. Linux will boot from a CD, and QNX will boot from a floppy, why not games? If compatibility is an issue, maybe an autoconfig patch would be the first thing to load. Then when the game is over, remove the CD and reboot to a system untouched by games.
Then in 1897, a revolutionary new invention was patented, and it was predicted that current cities would be retrofitted for it and new cities would be built around it. The Telharmonium, invented by Thaddeus Cahill, was titled Art of and Apparatus for Generating and Distributing Music Electronically (pat. no. 580,035). The Telharmonium was the first music synthesizer, which operated by additive (Fourier) synthesis: Sine waves from banks of dynamos, all turning at different speeds, were added and linked through a complex switching system, then played through the speakers of its day, telephone receivers. The Telharmonium's music would be sent over telephone wires into homes, restaurants, and hotels. It was like the Muzak of the early 1900's. This way the best music could be transmitted into homes, and would be available to the poor.
But the Telharmonium was a massive instrument, quite possibly the largest musical instrument ever built, weighing in at over 200 tons, and had to be transported by 30 railroad cars. It was prohibitively expensive for its day, and only 3 were ever built. Broadcasting music by radio came into being, and companies like Hammond and Wurlitzer started making organs which worked on the same principle of additive synthesis, but on a much smaller scale, due to advances in technology. The Telharmonium was rendered obsolete forever. (For more info, see http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/machines/telharm onium/index.html).
Not to stray too far off topic, this post wasn't meant to be the history of electronic music, but rather, the distribution of music. People were meant to subscribe, to pay for the wired connection that delivered the music the Telharmonium produced. But when radio supplanted music delivered by wire, people could listen to radio broadcasted music, essentially plucking it from the ether, without having to pay for it. Nobody was interested in the Telharmonium anymore, and besides that, more "modern" organs made the same sound anyway. Therefore the Telharmonium and the entire business model of distributing its music has completely disappeared. (Indeed, all three of these 200 ton instruments have vanished without a trace.)
Now things have come full circle. We are back to getting our music by the wire we pay to have connected to our homes (be it dialup modem, DSL, cable, etc.), Many of these wired connections we are paying for are owned by companies that also have stake in the music industry, e.g. Time-Warner. What I want to know is WHY we are being punished, accused of getting our music for free by plucking them from the ether that is contained within the wires, when the wires themselves are owned by companies that also own the music industry?
Anyway, it would seem to be prohibitively expensive to retrofit the electrical grid by building what basically amounts to be a liquid nitrogen pipeline with ceramic rods inside (very brittle too at those temperatures, no doubt.) But then the liquid nitrogen on the receiving end could be used in compressed air powered cars, etc., thus solving two infrastructure problems with one idea...
I think that there ought to be a law stating that the store itself honors all rebates, instant, mail-in or otherwise, then pay some lackey minimum wage to stuff envelopes and then when the lackeys on the receiving end say they won't honor the rebate because of some technicality, the store can throw their corporate muscle at the manufacturer and sue the bejeezus out of them if they don't pay the store the rebates they mailed in for their customers. A couple rounds of this and rebates (and all their woes) will finally be a thing of the past. Then something even more crooked will take its place...
Instead, maybe IT is what powers Yet Another Motorized Scooter. Maybe the power source is some sort of improved highly efficient heat engine (Kamden has already built improved Stirling engines and propane powered mopeds, as shown on a recent episode of 60 Minutes II.) A scooter would be an ideal affordable way to introduce a revolutionary new propulsion technology, especially during the current motorized scooter craze, instead of the new technology not catching on because only the super rich can afford a full sized car powered by IT.
The fact that IT is being called "Ginger" and the fact that Kamden is a heat engine junkie (did you see that huge steam engine in his living room on 60'II??) suddenly made this connection: Dave Gingery (http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/index.html) published a bunch of how-to books for building your own heat engines. Coincidence?
I get that trippy watery effect when I run my finger across my 17" glass picture tube monitor. Either my finger is magnetic or it's an optical illusion (meaning I'm tripping a little too hard...)
A 10,000 hour life wouldn't be as bad as it sounds if the panel itself is as cheap, easy to replace and universal as a fluorescent tube, except just gradually getting dimmer (say 1/2 brightness at the end of its useful lifespan) rather than winking out during the middle of the big game or something.
Actually, I think I saw this on an episode of Futurama...
Too bad we can't download mj like mp3s and warez. Imagine downloading some THC into a "pad" of screens, then tear one off and roll it up and smoke it!
Our local cable co. used to run the local access channel scrolling ads with an Amiga... For years, once every other month, the ol' Guru would be flashing, but then one day, they changed, it became an almost daily barrage of GPF errors and BSODs, usually when nobody was there to reset it. My heart sank and I wondered why they gave up on the old reliable Amiga and switched to an unreliable piece o'junk...
Gee, I thought that it was because people in the looney bin are more insane on the nights that the moon is full. Lunatic. Looney bin. *giggle* Looney Tunes. WOW! Think about it! The world would have been deprived of Bugs Bunny cartoons if that association had never been made! Imagine the implications... No Porky Pig, Sylvester & Tweety, no Foghorn Leghorn, no Roadrunner or Wile E. Coyote and all the rest... No Tiny Toons, no Animaniacs and... *gasp* NO PINKY & THE BRAIN???? We owe our existance to lunatics!!!