What about riots? When I was over there, riots were commonplace, hell, I thought that was their national sport. Nothing like being cooped up in un-airconditioned barracks with closed windows in the middle of summer as tear gas drifted by from nearby off-base riots. And it wasn't unusual to see the riot squad sitting under trees, leaning against their shields while playing Go (a board game) while anticipating the arrival of the students. It was usually the college students that started the riots, usually over things like the reunification of North and South Korea (like they could do anything about that) and almost always Yankee Go Home. (If Yankee did go home, the countries would re-unite- under communist rule, as the north would immediately overrun the south. Remember, the cold war is still definitely thriving quite well in Korea, and the war 50 years ago never officially ended, it was just a cease-fire.)
Having spent a year in Korea while in the military, I learned that the deferential grammar is really talking in polite speakee to the elders (or important people). Example: the greeting Annyong-ha-shim-nikka is the formal greeting, and it loosely translates to "Are you at peace?" Now knock off the ending that makes it a formal question (shim-nikka) and instead tack on the informal ending of the question (seyo) and you get Annyong-ha-seyo, which loosely translates to "Whassup?" This is just like American schoolkids are taught polite speaking, e.g. "yes sir" or "no ma'am".
All American servicemembers who serve in Korea are required to take classes (often called Head-start) to learn the culture and language of the Koreans (or at least how to order a bottle of O.B. and haggle with the street vendors). The funny part is that the instructors often teach the language part of the classes with Korean grammar school textbooks (See Cho run... See Sun Yi catch Spot... See Cho and Sun Yi eat ka-gogi...) and all the children's textbooks have the same formalized style of grammar.
Well, the link given above, at http://home.planet.nl/~mourits/koelkast/ doesn't work anymore (403-forbidden- reckon it got/.'ed so bad they had to slam the door??) but I've converted some scrounged stuff before, for example I have one of those old Hewlett Packard washing machine sized hard drives that I now use as a rolling tool cabinet/workbench out in my shed, and I knew a dude that used one as a bedside table. Stuffing newer computer parts into old cases is a popular case mod, e.g. AMD Thunderbird based hardware in an ancient Zenith case from the mid 80's, but my favorite thing to do is put computers where they weren't before. I'm not talking about embedded RTOS based Internet ready refrigerator with Bondi blue icemaker or other "modernized" crap like that, but rather taking used motherboard + related hardware and "converting" old technology while maintaining a retro look. I once gutted an old Betamax machine, stuffed it with an old Pentium 120 and first-gen ATI All-in-Wonder and put a DVD player where the tape slot was. I even retained all the original video in-outs, etc. But too bad I tore that one apart and ditched the old Betamax "skin", it would've made a bitchin' Tivo case mod. But I still have my first stereo, with a silver front, woodgrain sides, analog ruler-scale tuner, and 8-track player kicking around, and it's more than big enough for an ATX mobo. Hmmm... Retro looking Linux based MP3 player, anyone?
So basically, it's light emitting plastic. Is this the same technology found in the blinking watches, bracelets, etc. found at www.ravertoys.com, and in all those Indiglo(TM) or Limelight(TM) night lights?
That dark cloud over your car is not a rain cloud, it is the dump truck ahead pouring out more black smoke than an Iraqui oil fire. Following one down the interstate reminds me of seeing footage of a mid-60's B-52 taking off down the runway, trailing a cloud of brown smoke. And nothing stinks worse than all the mid 70's land yachts still on the road, you know, the rust buckets with the collapsed rear springs and different colored fenders and at least one window covered with plastic garbage bags and duct tape, all pouring blue smoke out the tailpipe as I drive through N'awlins. Hell, I see mid 90's minivans with as much blue smoke coming out the tailpipe as an old outboard motor. People don't seem to care about their cars enough to change the oil at least every 10,000 miles (much less the required 3,000 miles), therefore the piston rings wear out, the catalyst no longer works because it is covered with a thin film of oil, and they might as well be driving 2-stroke motor powered cars.
Screw all the uproar over second-hand cigarette smoke (anti's make that out to be more harmful than actually inhaling the smoke first hand). I have heard theories that if you smoke, you actually have a slightly less risk of cancer, because the "tar" from cigarette smoke actually forms a protective layer that blocks out particulates from smog. But I don't smoke. Not because it's unhealthy, but simply because it stinks. And I change my oil regularly on my truck, which I bought new 10 years ago, but now has over 150,000 miles on it, and it doesn't smoke either.
Use military hardware. Unfortunately, a bit out of reach to us civilians. The closest that would be within our reach would be the kind used by the automation and process control industry. Spill some coffee or some acid on it then pressure wash it and keep on typing. Even explosion proof models can be found. A quick search turned up www.daisydata.com Unfortunately, many of their designs use elastomer (chiclet) or membrane keys, which suck hardcore. Sure, they're nice for occasional use, such as programming in the dimensions of a part on a CNC milling machine, or setting the order you want your PLCs to switch, but you wouldn't want to code on these all day long.
What I'd like to see is a laptop with no keyboard at all, just a touch screen overlaying the LCD, sorta like a Palm, only a full sized full color one. Wacom makes LCD monitor/drawing tablet combos (see http://www.wacom.com/lcdtablets/index.cfm), but it's just an LCD monitor with a touch screen on top, and it's brutally expensive, since the touch screen itself has 256 levels of pressure sensitivity (how the %$#@& do they do that???) I want to see one with laptop hardware inside, and just 1 level of pressure sensitivity on the screen to keep the cost down, one that can use anything, even your finger to touch it, rather than working only with a special pen the way Palms and Wacom tablets do.
Rubber chiclet keyboards suck more, and flat membrane keyboards suck hardcore. I don't trust iBook keyboards either, since I walked by a display of them at a Sears store and every display model had warped or broken keyboards. Yeah, I know, they're subject to a little more abuse while on display at a department store than they would be at work/home, but at least it's a proving grounds of sorts. Maybe the new iBooks have better keyboards than the toilet seat iBooks.
While I and O are next to each other on the keyboard, they aren't next to each other in the row of hammers which strike the rubber roll. Mechanical beasts typewriters are, all the hammers are in a row, but the keys would not all fit in one single row (unless you wanted a keyboard the size of a piano). Ever wondered why each row of keys is slightly offset from the next? It's so the hammer actuators can line up right next to each other. Computer keyboards are arranged differently (bit-paired and "space cadet" keyboards come to mind), but still retain the same offset used on manual typewriters. With numbers in the first row, QWERTY... in the second, ASDF... in the 3rd, and ZXCV... in the fourth, the rows are staggered such that the hammer actuator levers line up in 231423142314 order. Now assign the keys to each row and you get QA2ZWS3XED4CRF5VTG6BYH7NUJ8MIK9,OL0.P;-/... I and O are not next to each other, neither are T and H. But I just wonder how many Mikes and Eds have jammed their typewriters, and you'd be a bit more deliberate in typing "CRAP"......
You'd be surprised at how much modern technology people take for granted is based on older inventions, and I'm not talking about the old space shuttle booster rocket = width of two ancient Roman horse's asses urban legend. Ever wondered why the numeric keypad is "inverted", i.e. 1,2,3 at the bottom, 4,5,6 in the middle, and 7,8,9 at the top? It was the most efficient way of arranging the levers in mechanical adding machines for the best fit in the smallest space, and the layout persisted for the same reason QWERTY keyboards did...
Lemme see here... Aimster is part of the AOL Instant Messaging, run by AOL, which is part of the AOL-Time-Warner conglomerate which also owns Warner Bros., a record label, which is no doubt a standing member of the RIAA? This sounds like they want to cut off their own nose to spite their face.
Everybody knows that the instant someone figures out how the universe works, it will cease to exist and be replaced with something even more unexplainable. (Of course, some theorize that this has already happened before at least once.)
"Greetings, slashdotters. Have a take, and don't suck. If you're not sure whether or not you suck, YOU DO... You heard about where Phillies center fielder Doug Glanville hit two home runs against former teammate Curt Schilling, who's pitching for Arizona? Two homers in one game? Not just anybody can hit two homers in a game off of Schilling. Mark McGwire, maybe. Sammy Sosa, maybe. Dude's like one of the top 10 pitchers in the league. Wanna know how he did it? Or rather WHY he did it? He says he once played a computer Dungeons and Dragons game with Schilling when they were kids, and Schilling offed his character. So he went for revenge. WHAT? Dude got WHACKED in a video game a long time ago, and he's carried a GRUDGE for THAT LONG? HA HA HA! What's YOUR take on that? Let's go to the phones..."
Caller: "All your baseball are..."
Rome: {basketball foul buzzer: BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!} "I thought I told you no more "All your base" crap! Get over it! It was funny the first day, no, the first ten minutes!"
On the whole, the entire scene is enough to make a person turn vegetarian.
Word o' advice for would-be vegetarians: Grow your own veggies. Don't buy pre-processed stuff. You think they inspect every last apple that goes into making applesauce? I bet there's some ground up worm there, too. And if a load of corn has smut fungus on it, they just knock the smut off and throw it back on the conveyor belt. It takes pesticides and fungicides to stop pestilence in mass produced plants intended for human consumption, as well as fertilizers. An interesting article in Discover Magazine a couple months ago was called "The Nitrogen Bomb" (http://www.discover.com/apr_01/featbomb.html), detailing how our use of inorganic fertilizers on plants may be our undoing.
So go for the "organically" grown stuff? Sure, but it's still mass produced, though not to the same extent as commercially grown produce. Expect to pay more for it, though. Like I said, grow your own. Let loose praying mantises and ladybugs to eat other bugs, and fertilize it with the dung of the animals you won't eat. Or do like Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans and many other peoples do and fertilize it with your own dung.
But as I am an American living in a subdivision on the fringes of the city, in an insulated border between the bright lights and far unlit unknown, with all opinions provided and the future predecided, I will enjoy my vegetables fertilized with pure ammonium nitrate and phosphor-gypsum with trace amounts of uranium, and speed-ripened-with-ethylene-gas tomatoes, strawberries, bananas and genetically engineered seedless oranges, as well as American grown red meat raised on their own Soylent Green.
That is why some disciplines, such as engineering, have licensing tests. Upon finishing college, electrical engineers must take the FE exam before working for some employers, this is a comprehensive soup-to-nuts exam of what they have learned in college. Then later on in life, there is the more prestigious PE exam to become a professional engineer, which requires much more studying for, even though you're no longer in school. And these aren't "gimmie" certificates like those silly Microsoft certificates people like to paper their cubicle walls with, they're the type of credentials needed to design aircraft control systems and run nuclear power stations.
But in some engineering classes, they are a complete and total necessity. The professor allows the use of a formula sheet, consisting of one sheet of looseleaf paper only, hand written, no copying to reduce 4 pages of notes to fit on one page, and no worked examples, just the formulas we need. The calculator is used to compute things like four equations in three unknowns, where setting up a matrix and solving by hand would take the entire hour to do one problem. Of course, they increase the difficulty of the test, but I tend to do better on a difficult test where calculators and formula sheets are allowed than I would on a supposedly easy test where they aren't. But a completely open book, open notes test is the kiss of death, I routinely bomb those. It's all the frame of mind, writing out a formula sheet helped me to memorize the material, while being told the test was open book encouraged me not to study too hard, therefore I tanked on test day.
If you've used every function on your graphing calculator, you just might be an engineer...
I've always used a small fan as a white noise generator. They're cheaper than even el-cheapo nature sound machines. If you're lucky enough to live waaay down south where the lowest night time temperature is 85 degrees and 90% humidity, e.g. New Orleans, a window air conditioner works wonders to get to sleep. So does bus engines, railroad track noise, mobile home generators, slow rain falling on a tin roof, or any other constant sound.
Anything but a jet plane. I can't fall asleep for nothing on a plane. Someone pass the GHB, it's gonna be a long ride... to the runway to take off.
Computers usually need more than just 12 volts to operate, most power supplies output +12 volts, -12 volts (a difference of 24 volts), and +5 volts, plus whatever voltage conversion is done on the motherboard to get +3.3, +2.8 volts, etc. for the processor. All this is done with switching regulators.
In fact, all AC power supplies on all computers do an AC -> DC -> AC -> DC conversion via a high speed switching circuit. Ever wonder why a 400 watt computer power supply doesn't have a 20 lb. power transformer and soup can sized filter capacitors like an automotive battery charger of the same rating does? Once upon a time, they did, but improved power transistors did away with the need for a huge roll of wire wrapped around a heavy chunk of iron. The AC from the wall is converted directly to about 160 volts DC via a bridge rectifier and a couple capacitors. Then the 160 volts DC is converted back to AC via transistors, except at much higher frequencies, say 20 KHz. This 20 KHz AC can then be stepped down to +12, -12, and +5 volts via a much smaller transformer. It would take a great leap of electrical engineering understanding to understand why, but the higher the AC frequency, the smaller the transformer needed to step down voltage, and the smaller capacitors needed to filter the resulting lower voltage after rectification.
To make a 12 volt power supply would require a redesign of the circuit, but the +12 volts DC would still have to be converted to 12 volts AC at 20 KHz, then back to +5 volts, +12 volts, and -12 volts, a difference of 24 volts, via a transformer and some diodes and small capacitors. You can't get 24 volts out of 12 volts without converting it to AC and stepping it up somewhere along the way.
I once had a math professor who pointed out that people often use their programmable calculators as PDAs, with phone numbers and class schedules and even "crib" stored as text files. He used one of those modified TI-85s with the external screen that could be placed on an overhead projector, and when I wanted to know where I could get a copy of the programs he used for his lectures, he let me use the link cable and his calculator, and along with the program I got several pages of crib from a physics class he didn't even teach...
That is why my professors always wanted groups of two on projects, no more, because in groups of three or more, there is always one person doing all the work, one person providing suggestions, and one person (or more) standing on the sidelines just basically observing and being a cheerleader. And if there was an odd man out, a lone nut, he worked by himself (ask me how I know... but actually I prefer it that way, I've had to carry my lab partner more than once, half the time they don't even show up, so I made damn sure the prof knew about it.)
There is a country-wide network of pneumatic tubes in place in the U.S. that is the subject of a conspiracy theory: The network of high pressure natural gas pipelines. Of course, the conspiracy theories involving the NSA and other secret organizations using the pipelines as a most secure method of sending top secret mail just ain't true, because no armored cars ever show up at the pumping stations, there is no security to speak of (outside of emergency response teams, and sherriff's deputies patrolling for vandals) that would hint of such activity.
Not to say that it couldn't happen, the technicians at the pumping stations regularly send things through the pipelines called "pigs" to the downstream station. Most gas pipelines are 24-36 inches in diameter, but some are a whopping 42 inches across- theoretically a person could travel through these, provided that they don't suffocate due to the lack of oxygen. The natural gas is compressed to 1000 PSI using huge centrifugal compressors, at one time they were powered by banks of locomotive diesel engines, but in modern times are powered by huge gas turbines which are basically modified jumbo jet engines. This pushes the gas through the pipes at about 10-20 miles per hour, hardly worth the effort of sending people or even mail.
Sometimes the pipeline companies store short-term reserves of gas in the pipelines by bringing the pressure up to 1500 PSI, a process called "packing", but this often causes blowouts- some quite spectacular, leaving black smoking craters in the ground with flames shooting hundreds of feet in the air. This is what the pigs are for- they are actually high tech devices called "smart pigs" that are used to inspect the welds and test for leaks and corrosion inside the pipelines. This is another drawback to using the natural gas infrastructure for delivering mail: If there is a blowout, there goes your mail, burned to ashes, or blasted out the broken pipeline like a giant cannon to end up who knows where.
Home Depot uses the pneumatic tube system in all its locations, even the spanking brand newest, the reason being that it is the fastest and most secure method of transferring the day's take from the cash registers to the vault in the back where it can be counted and deposited at the bank. This is supposed to cut down on robberies by not having to count the till at the front of the store in front of everybody, and since the tubes run at ceiling level, the pigs containing the cash couldn't easily be intercepted, even if someone were to go get a ladder and hacksaw and try to intercept it (presuming the store manager doesn't catch them), the vacuum would be broke and the pig wouldn't go anywhere.
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What about riots? When I was over there, riots were commonplace, hell, I thought that was their national sport. Nothing like being cooped up in un-airconditioned barracks with closed windows in the middle of summer as tear gas drifted by from nearby off-base riots. And it wasn't unusual to see the riot squad sitting under trees, leaning against their shields while playing Go (a board game) while anticipating the arrival of the students. It was usually the college students that started the riots, usually over things like the reunification of North and South Korea (like they could do anything about that) and almost always Yankee Go Home. (If Yankee did go home, the countries would re-unite- under communist rule, as the north would immediately overrun the south. Remember, the cold war is still definitely thriving quite well in Korea, and the war 50 years ago never officially ended, it was just a cease-fire.)
All American servicemembers who serve in Korea are required to take classes (often called Head-start) to learn the culture and language of the Koreans (or at least how to order a bottle of O.B. and haggle with the street vendors). The funny part is that the instructors often teach the language part of the classes with Korean grammar school textbooks (See Cho run... See Sun Yi catch Spot... See Cho and Sun Yi eat ka-gogi...) and all the children's textbooks have the same formalized style of grammar.
--
I-gu... Soju drinkee Kim-chi stinkee breath
Well, the link given above, at http://home.planet.nl/~mourits/koelkast/ doesn't work anymore (403-forbidden- reckon it got /.'ed so bad they had to slam the door??) but I've converted some scrounged stuff before, for example I have one of those old Hewlett Packard washing machine sized hard drives that I now use as a rolling tool cabinet/workbench out in my shed, and I knew a dude that used one as a bedside table. Stuffing newer computer parts into old cases is a popular case mod, e.g. AMD Thunderbird based hardware in an ancient Zenith case from the mid 80's, but my favorite thing to do is put computers where they weren't before. I'm not talking about embedded RTOS based Internet ready refrigerator with Bondi blue icemaker or other "modernized" crap like that, but rather taking used motherboard + related hardware and "converting" old technology while maintaining a retro look. I once gutted an old Betamax machine, stuffed it with an old Pentium 120 and first-gen ATI All-in-Wonder and put a DVD player where the tape slot was. I even retained all the original video in-outs, etc. But too bad I tore that one apart and ditched the old Betamax "skin", it would've made a bitchin' Tivo case mod. But I still have my first stereo, with a silver front, woodgrain sides, analog ruler-scale tuner, and 8-track player kicking around, and it's more than big enough for an ATX mobo. Hmmm... Retro looking Linux based MP3 player, anyone?
So basically, it's light emitting plastic. Is this the same technology found in the blinking watches, bracelets, etc. found at www.ravertoys.com, and in all those Indiglo(TM) or Limelight(TM) night lights?
Who remembers the Keyboard Condom? Are these being made anymore?
Screw all the uproar over second-hand cigarette smoke (anti's make that out to be more harmful than actually inhaling the smoke first hand). I have heard theories that if you smoke, you actually have a slightly less risk of cancer, because the "tar" from cigarette smoke actually forms a protective layer that blocks out particulates from smog. But I don't smoke. Not because it's unhealthy, but simply because it stinks. And I change my oil regularly on my truck, which I bought new 10 years ago, but now has over 150,000 miles on it, and it doesn't smoke either.
Use military hardware. Unfortunately, a bit out of reach to us civilians. The closest that would be within our reach would be the kind used by the automation and process control industry. Spill some coffee or some acid on it then pressure wash it and keep on typing. Even explosion proof models can be found. A quick search turned up www.daisydata.com Unfortunately, many of their designs use elastomer (chiclet) or membrane keys, which suck hardcore. Sure, they're nice for occasional use, such as programming in the dimensions of a part on a CNC milling machine, or setting the order you want your PLCs to switch, but you wouldn't want to code on these all day long.
What I'd like to see is a laptop with no keyboard at all, just a touch screen overlaying the LCD, sorta like a Palm, only a full sized full color one. Wacom makes LCD monitor/drawing tablet combos (see http://www.wacom.com/lcdtablets/index.cfm), but it's just an LCD monitor with a touch screen on top, and it's brutally expensive, since the touch screen itself has 256 levels of pressure sensitivity (how the %$#@& do they do that???) I want to see one with laptop hardware inside, and just 1 level of pressure sensitivity on the screen to keep the cost down, one that can use anything, even your finger to touch it, rather than working only with a special pen the way Palms and Wacom tablets do.
Rubber chiclet keyboards suck more, and flat membrane keyboards suck hardcore. I don't trust iBook keyboards either, since I walked by a display of them at a Sears store and every display model had warped or broken keyboards. Yeah, I know, they're subject to a little more abuse while on display at a department store than they would be at work/home, but at least it's a proving grounds of sorts. Maybe the new iBooks have better keyboards than the toilet seat iBooks.
You'd be surprised at how much modern technology people take for granted is based on older inventions, and I'm not talking about the old space shuttle booster rocket = width of two ancient Roman horse's asses urban legend. Ever wondered why the numeric keypad is "inverted", i.e. 1,2,3 at the bottom, 4,5,6 in the middle, and 7,8,9 at the top? It was the most efficient way of arranging the levers in mechanical adding machines for the best fit in the smallest space, and the layout persisted for the same reason QWERTY keyboards did...
Lemme see here... Aimster is part of the AOL Instant Messaging, run by AOL, which is part of the AOL-Time-Warner conglomerate which also owns Warner Bros., a record label, which is no doubt a standing member of the RIAA? This sounds like they want to cut off their own nose to spite their face.
Everybody knows that the instant someone figures out how the universe works, it will cease to exist and be replaced with something even more unexplainable. (Of course, some theorize that this has already happened before at least once.)
"Greetings, slashdotters. Have a take, and don't suck. If you're not sure whether or not you suck, YOU DO... You heard about where Phillies center fielder Doug Glanville hit two home runs against former teammate Curt Schilling, who's pitching for Arizona? Two homers in one game? Not just anybody can hit two homers in a game off of Schilling. Mark McGwire, maybe. Sammy Sosa, maybe. Dude's like one of the top 10 pitchers in the league. Wanna know how he did it? Or rather WHY he did it? He says he once played a computer Dungeons and Dragons game with Schilling when they were kids, and Schilling offed his character. So he went for revenge. WHAT? Dude got WHACKED in a video game a long time ago, and he's carried a GRUDGE for THAT LONG? HA HA HA! What's YOUR take on that? Let's go to the phones..."
Caller: "All your baseball are..."
Rome: {basketball foul buzzer: BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!} "I thought I told you no more "All your base" crap! Get over it! It was funny the first day, no, the first ten minutes!"
And, of course, there's that old adage "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
And the fumes lend a rather sharp, artificial taste to hamburger meat. One needn't go further than the nearest Burker King for a sample of this.
Word o' advice for would-be vegetarians: Grow your own veggies. Don't buy pre-processed stuff. You think they inspect every last apple that goes into making applesauce? I bet there's some ground up worm there, too. And if a load of corn has smut fungus on it, they just knock the smut off and throw it back on the conveyor belt. It takes pesticides and fungicides to stop pestilence in mass produced plants intended for human consumption, as well as fertilizers. An interesting article in Discover Magazine a couple months ago was called "The Nitrogen Bomb" (http://www.discover.com/apr_01/featbomb.html), detailing how our use of inorganic fertilizers on plants may be our undoing.
So go for the "organically" grown stuff? Sure, but it's still mass produced, though not to the same extent as commercially grown produce. Expect to pay more for it, though. Like I said, grow your own. Let loose praying mantises and ladybugs to eat other bugs, and fertilize it with the dung of the animals you won't eat. Or do like Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans and many other peoples do and fertilize it with your own dung.
But as I am an American living in a subdivision on the fringes of the city, in an insulated border between the bright lights and far unlit unknown, with all opinions provided and the future predecided, I will enjoy my vegetables fertilized with pure ammonium nitrate and phosphor-gypsum with trace amounts of uranium, and speed-ripened-with-ethylene-gas tomatoes, strawberries, bananas and genetically engineered seedless oranges, as well as American grown red meat raised on their own Soylent Green.
That is why some disciplines, such as engineering, have licensing tests. Upon finishing college, electrical engineers must take the FE exam before working for some employers, this is a comprehensive soup-to-nuts exam of what they have learned in college. Then later on in life, there is the more prestigious PE exam to become a professional engineer, which requires much more studying for, even though you're no longer in school. And these aren't "gimmie" certificates like those silly Microsoft certificates people like to paper their cubicle walls with, they're the type of credentials needed to design aircraft control systems and run nuclear power stations.
If you've used every function on your graphing calculator, you just might be an engineer...
Anything but a jet plane. I can't fall asleep for nothing on a plane. Someone pass the GHB, it's gonna be a long ride... to the runway to take off.
In fact, all AC power supplies on all computers do an AC -> DC -> AC -> DC conversion via a high speed switching circuit. Ever wonder why a 400 watt computer power supply doesn't have a 20 lb. power transformer and soup can sized filter capacitors like an automotive battery charger of the same rating does? Once upon a time, they did, but improved power transistors did away with the need for a huge roll of wire wrapped around a heavy chunk of iron. The AC from the wall is converted directly to about 160 volts DC via a bridge rectifier and a couple capacitors. Then the 160 volts DC is converted back to AC via transistors, except at much higher frequencies, say 20 KHz. This 20 KHz AC can then be stepped down to +12, -12, and +5 volts via a much smaller transformer. It would take a great leap of electrical engineering understanding to understand why, but the higher the AC frequency, the smaller the transformer needed to step down voltage, and the smaller capacitors needed to filter the resulting lower voltage after rectification.
To make a 12 volt power supply would require a redesign of the circuit, but the +12 volts DC would still have to be converted to 12 volts AC at 20 KHz, then back to +5 volts, +12 volts, and -12 volts, a difference of 24 volts, via a transformer and some diodes and small capacitors. You can't get 24 volts out of 12 volts without converting it to AC and stepping it up somewhere along the way.
Forget your grandfathers' 8086, here's a dusty, late cold-war relic: Raise your hand if you still remember GEOS for the Commodore 64.
I once had a math professor who pointed out that people often use their programmable calculators as PDAs, with phone numbers and class schedules and even "crib" stored as text files. He used one of those modified TI-85s with the external screen that could be placed on an overhead projector, and when I wanted to know where I could get a copy of the programs he used for his lectures, he let me use the link cable and his calculator, and along with the program I got several pages of crib from a physics class he didn't even teach...
That is why my professors always wanted groups of two on projects, no more, because in groups of three or more, there is always one person doing all the work, one person providing suggestions, and one person (or more) standing on the sidelines just basically observing and being a cheerleader. And if there was an odd man out, a lone nut, he worked by himself (ask me how I know... but actually I prefer it that way, I've had to carry my lab partner more than once, half the time they don't even show up, so I made damn sure the prof knew about it.)
Not to say that it couldn't happen, the technicians at the pumping stations regularly send things through the pipelines called "pigs" to the downstream station. Most gas pipelines are 24-36 inches in diameter, but some are a whopping 42 inches across- theoretically a person could travel through these, provided that they don't suffocate due to the lack of oxygen. The natural gas is compressed to 1000 PSI using huge centrifugal compressors, at one time they were powered by banks of locomotive diesel engines, but in modern times are powered by huge gas turbines which are basically modified jumbo jet engines. This pushes the gas through the pipes at about 10-20 miles per hour, hardly worth the effort of sending people or even mail.
Sometimes the pipeline companies store short-term reserves of gas in the pipelines by bringing the pressure up to 1500 PSI, a process called "packing", but this often causes blowouts- some quite spectacular, leaving black smoking craters in the ground with flames shooting hundreds of feet in the air. This is what the pigs are for- they are actually high tech devices called "smart pigs" that are used to inspect the welds and test for leaks and corrosion inside the pipelines. This is another drawback to using the natural gas infrastructure for delivering mail: If there is a blowout, there goes your mail, burned to ashes, or blasted out the broken pipeline like a giant cannon to end up who knows where.
Home Depot uses the pneumatic tube system in all its locations, even the spanking brand newest, the reason being that it is the fastest and most secure method of transferring the day's take from the cash registers to the vault in the back where it can be counted and deposited at the bank. This is supposed to cut down on robberies by not having to count the till at the front of the store in front of everybody, and since the tubes run at ceiling level, the pigs containing the cash couldn't easily be intercepted, even if someone were to go get a ladder and hacksaw and try to intercept it (presuming the store manager doesn't catch them), the vacuum would be broke and the pig wouldn't go anywhere.