Well, I have a radio show to do today, and though it is usually a music show, I think I will talke a bit of time out to RANT! Anyone in the Cleveland area can tune to 91.1FM at noon. Anyone on the net can go to http://radio.cwru.edu/livefeed.html at 12EST.
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
To celebrate, I'm going up to the tallest tower I can find and drop large and small bowling balls off of it to reconfirm that all objects fall at the same rate!!!
P.S. Who is this Jesus shmoe that everyone is talking about? Never did anything for me.
P.P.S. Shabbat Shalom (Good Sabbath) and have a nice loooong Shabbos nap (the best type of nap there is):-)
The Intel Chip might have a higher MHz rating, but the fastest Athlon Chip will still cream it, especially in Floating Point perfromance. MHz for MHz, the Athlons are about 15%-20% faster than an Intel. I wish that they would hurry up with SMP Athlon boards. I am going to have to build a computing cluster soon, and I would LOVE to make it out of Dual Athlon Boards, but it appears that SMP Athlon Boards won't be out until Q2 or Q3 2000.:-(
Don't get rid of that IBM keyboard!! I love those things. They are built like tanks. They can almost take a direct nuclear strike and keep on clicking! They're great!
and lock up your daughters!!! It's BIG, BAD SCIENCE come to get us all and STEAL OUR SOULS!!!! And watch out, cause those EVIL corporations are gonna get us all. We are opening a PANDORA'S BOX we can never close.
Sheesh, what a bunch of reactionary crap based on a confused and frightened outlook. I hate to burst your bubble, but you never actually SAID anything in that whole tirade, John. Sure, you named lots of big concepts and all the "big fears" that every red-blooded American (my apologies to others) is supposed to have at merest mention of genetic (insert verb here)-ing, but is there really any solid basis for these? No! Instead of trying to prey off the fears of your audience, one should enlighten them with fact and allow them to decide for themselves. Heaven forbid that people think for themselves.
This is kind of off topic, but does anyone know when SMP Athlon boards are due out? My boss wants a Linux Computing Simulation Cluster, and I want to make it out of Dual/Quad Athlons.
I believe Isaac Asimov one said, "Science Fiction is not about Technology, it is stories about people involving Technology." Or at least something along those lines.
Oh man. I just installed the newest version of xscreensaver, with the xmatrix hack. I leave it running on my root window whilst I hack. Pretty damn shweet. If only it wouldn't take 90% of my CPU...
Oh, get it at http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/
Re:But not necessarily a physicist...
on
Time Doesn't Exist
·
· Score: 1
Actually, you bring up a good point that I didn't think of. Namely that physicists tend to not know what is news worthy. I know I find lots of things immensely interesting and fascinating, yet I am sure 95% of the geek population would find it boring, stupid, or incomprehensible. Oh well, their loss.:-)
Seriously, you do bring up a valid concern. I forgot to include the fact that to be a good science editor, one must be a good EDITOR.
Meaning no disrespect to Hemos, CmdrTaco, etc., etc., Slashdot realy needs a "science editor." Someone with an appreciable knowledge of science. This article is quite a heap of crap, from a scientific methedology standpoint (to say nothing of the lousy "physics" involved).
Anyway, most of the time, the/. editors put decent ideas and stories up, but from time to time, things like this get through. This story is filled with misinterpretations and omissions of quantum and general relativisitc theory.
One does not have to know evrything there is to know about all fields of science to determine what is valid, but one needs a basic understanding of each fields underlying principles as well as the use of scientific reasoning. These skills and knowledge one can learn from a decent undergraduate eduaction in the "hard sciences" (Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Astronomy, etc.). An undergradute eduaction in these fields is not the ONLY to recieve this knowledge, either. They are just the ones classically recognized as providing a decent platform onto which one can learn about other types of science. The anaylitical skills learned from these fields allow one to anaylize other's scientific arguments based upon their scientific merit and reasoning.
I would like to propose that, in particular, Physics gives an excellent background on other sciences as well as the needed training in scientific reasoning. Hey a guy can have a small bias can't he?:-) Anyway, the concepts learned in an undergraduate physics program have applications in almost every scientific and engineering field (uh oh, I said the dreaded E-word:-) One learns about the scientific method, Newtonian Mechanics, Thermodynamics and energy, Quantum Mechanics, Electricity and Magnatisim, Materials Physics, and Relativity. This stuff won't tell you everything there is to know about Biology, Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, or whatever, but it does get you quite a bit along the way.
I am sure other disciplines teach the analytical thought processes and most of the topics I mentioned. However, physics is the study of how everything works, so it is kind of broad:-)
Anyway, I'm sorry if I sound like a snot. I'm not trying to berate other sciences. I actually think that the skills any science teaches are essential in being able to discern what is valid and what is not, at least from a scientific viewpoint.
As you can probably tell, I am a physicist. I am at the Depatment of Physics at Case Western Reserve University. Email me if you want. It should be easy enough to figure out my real address. I'll get off my soapbox now:-).
I RUN the LIVE webcast of our LIVE broadcast signal at WRUW-FM in Cleveland, OH. WRUW is the campus station of Case Western Reserve Unieristy
Live webcasting is what I do. Check it out at the WRUW page. MP3 is definately the way to go. We have a 300 (clocked to 450) celeron and 128mb ram. It's on a dual board, so if we ever need more power, it'll be real simple. we've got a SB Ensoniq PCI soundcard that we feed our signal off or our airboard. We run Linux (duh:-),lame with some magic with named pipes and netcat and apache and we have as many streams as we want.
We also have an AudioActive hardware MP3 encoder, that the folks at Telos/Audioactive were kind enough to donate (They ROCK!). It encodes one signal (56kbps) and our server encodes another (24kbps).
I discovered that to the sound quality of 56k is comparable to a normal FM broadcast, so you really don't need a higher bitrate. The 24k stream is mono for modem users.
The biggest bottleneck is definately your bandwidth to the rest of the world. We are lucky enough at CWRU to have one of the worlds biggest ATM LANs. The 155MB/s of oncampus bandwidth is denfinately nice to have. We were on ethernet, and I was dreading possibility of crashing our Ethernet segment. Now with ATM, we can have unlimited on campus listeners (because more Case students have computers than radios:-) and our off campus bandwidth lets us have about 150 listeners from elsewhere. If you have more questions, please don't hesitate to email me. It should be pretty obvious as to what my email is:-)
I am still PISSED OFF that George Washington is on the back of the Jersey Quarter crossing the Delaware and not Kermit the Frog like in the commercial.:-P
Carl Sagan might have been the man who "brought science to the masses," but he was not the most respected in the scientific community. Why? Well, his experimental/academic research background was severly lacking.
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Of course, the web was invented by physicsts for JUST THIS PURPOSE. Back in the day at CERN, They wanted a way to share documentation across heterogeneous documentation systems. Tim Berners-Lee (I think that's his name) Came up with a subset of SGML known as HTML and the HTTP, ran a sever and client on a Next box, and Voila! In the begining it was just stuff like schedules, proposals, and budets and the like, but the Pre-prints are only a small leap in imagination.
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Seriously, see if you can get your folks to chip in for a laptop or something. It takes up like no space (the same amount of desktop space as a small monitor) and you can take it with you, very handy.
-- A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Yeas, PBS was originally created to bring "those types" of programs to the masses, but it has evolved to much more. PBS stations provide daytime educational programs, and locally produced programs that would never happen at a commercial TV station.
All in all, PBS and the local PBS station provide a nessicary resource to the public.
Besides, only SOME of PBS's money comes from the government. A good deal comes from private industry and viewer donations.
-- A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
> Native brain multitasking, DSP for sound analysis, etc, etc.
Don't underestimate that little grey blob of yours. It is quite powerful.
There was a Slashdot posting a while ago about a "task switcher" in your brain.
Your ears are already DSPs. That is how you distinguish high pitched tones form low pitched tones. Your choclea (sp?), inner ear, is made up of a bunch of hairs that resonate at the frequency of incoming sounds. They hear in the frequency domain, not the time domain, the FFT is computed naturally in "hardware". Also, your ear hears intensity on a logrithmic scale. Don't even get me started on the cool-ass things that your barin does with the STEREO signal from your two ears. Bin-aural hearing is totally bad-ass.
When you catch a baseball, your brain is actually doing differential calculus. It is a learned reaction, and it is all subconcious, but given the position and velocity of the ball, and knowing (instincively) the value of gravity, your brain anticipates the future location of the ball.
There are many examples like this of the computing power of the human brain.
-- A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
I love BNW, read it back in High School, scares the sh*t out of me. Aldous Huxley wan't too far off, and he wrote the thing in '32. 1984 was scary, but it wan't too much on target, the whole Totalitarian-Communisim winning thing was wrong (a good guess, but wrong).
BNW, however, sees the end of us beeing based upon capitalism and consumption. I think of how the "castes" are provided with "entertainment" and something inside me SCREAMS middle-class suburbia and mass-consumption/mass-media. Think 20-20, America's Funniest Videos, McDonald's, the latest greatest summer "blockbuster," or latest Hit-Of-The-Minute pop music crap.
*shudder*
-- A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I have a radio show to do today, and though it is usually a music show, I think I will talke a bit of time out to RANT!
Anyone in the Cleveland area can tune to 91.1FM at noon. Anyone on the net can go to http://radio.cwru.edu/livefeed.html at 12EST.
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Uh, dude, I WAS one of the nerds who set that thing up. Check my user info. :-)
... so you know what web server to get for Christmas. :-)
Isaac Newton!!
To celebrate, I'm going up to the tallest tower I can find and drop large and small bowling balls off of it to reconfirm that all objects fall at the same rate!!!
P.S. Who is this Jesus shmoe that everyone is talking about? Never did anything for me.
P.P.S. Shabbat Shalom (Good Sabbath) and have a nice loooong Shabbos nap (the best type of nap there is) :-)
It's not a different line, it's the same thing, DAMMIT! Stupid Marketing Propoganda, grrrrr!!!!!
The Intel Chip might have a higher MHz rating, but the fastest Athlon Chip will still cream it, especially in Floating Point perfromance. MHz for MHz, the Athlons are about 15%-20% faster than an Intel. I wish that they would hurry up with SMP Athlon boards. I am going to have to build a computing cluster soon, and I would LOVE to make it out of Dual Athlon Boards, but it appears that SMP Athlon Boards won't be out until Q2 or Q3 2000. :-(
Don't get rid of that IBM keyboard!! I love those things. They are built like tanks. They can almost take a direct nuclear strike and keep on clicking! They're great!
and lock up your daughters!!! It's BIG, BAD SCIENCE come to get us all and STEAL OUR SOULS!!!!
And watch out, cause those EVIL corporations are gonna get us all. We are opening a PANDORA'S BOX we can never close.
Sheesh, what a bunch of reactionary crap based on a confused and frightened outlook. I hate to burst your bubble, but you never actually SAID anything in that whole tirade, John. Sure, you named lots of big concepts and all the "big fears" that every red-blooded American (my apologies to others) is supposed to have at merest mention of genetic (insert verb here)-ing, but is there really any solid basis for these? No! Instead of trying to prey off the fears of your audience, one should enlighten them with fact and allow them to decide for themselves. Heaven forbid that people think for themselves.
You forgot 5.9 = Starbuck. Starbuck and Apollo were buddies in Battlestar Gallactica!!! Woo Hoo!!
This is kind of off topic, but does anyone know when SMP Athlon boards are due out? My boss wants a Linux Computing Simulation Cluster, and I want to make it out of Dual/Quad Athlons.
I believe Isaac Asimov one said, "Science Fiction is not about Technology, it is stories about people involving Technology." Or at least something along those lines.
Oh man. I just installed the newest version of xscreensaver, with the xmatrix hack. I leave it running on my root window whilst I hack. Pretty damn shweet. If only it wouldn't take 90% of my CPU...
Oh, get it at http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/
Actually, you bring up a good point that I didn't think of. Namely that physicists tend to not know what is news worthy. I know I find lots of things immensely interesting and fascinating, yet I am sure 95% of the geek population would find it boring, stupid, or incomprehensible. Oh well, their loss. :-)
Seriously, you do bring up a valid concern. I forgot to include the fact that to be a good science editor, one must be a good EDITOR.
Meaning no disrespect to Hemos, CmdrTaco, etc., etc., Slashdot realy needs a "science editor." Someone with an appreciable knowledge of science. This article is quite a heap of crap, from a scientific methedology standpoint (to say nothing of the lousy "physics" involved).
Anyway, most of the time, the /. editors put decent ideas and stories up, but from time to time, things like this get through. This story is filled with misinterpretations and omissions of quantum and general relativisitc theory.
One does not have to know evrything there is to know about all fields of science to determine what is valid, but one needs a basic understanding of each fields underlying principles as well as the use of scientific reasoning. These skills and knowledge one can learn from a decent undergraduate eduaction in the "hard sciences" (Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Astronomy, etc.). An undergradute eduaction in these fields is not the ONLY to recieve this knowledge, either. They are just the ones classically recognized as providing a decent platform onto which one can learn about other types of science. The anaylitical skills learned from these fields allow one to anaylize other's scientific arguments based upon their scientific merit and reasoning.
I would like to propose that, in particular, Physics gives an excellent background on other sciences as well as the needed training in scientific reasoning. Hey a guy can have a small bias can't he? :-) Anyway, the concepts learned in an undergraduate physics program have applications in almost every scientific and engineering field (uh oh, I said the dreaded E-word :-) One learns about the scientific method, Newtonian Mechanics, Thermodynamics and energy, Quantum Mechanics, Electricity and Magnatisim, Materials Physics, and Relativity. This stuff won't tell you everything there is to know about Biology, Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, or whatever, but it does get you quite a bit along the way.
I am sure other disciplines teach the analytical thought processes and most of the topics I mentioned. However, physics is the study of how everything works, so it is kind of broad :-)
Anyway, I'm sorry if I sound like a snot. I'm not trying to berate other sciences. I actually think that the skills any science teaches are essential in being able to discern what is valid and what is not, at least from a scientific viewpoint.
As you can probably tell, I am a physicist. I am at the Depatment of Physics at Case Western Reserve University. Email me if you want. It should be easy enough to figure out my real address. I'll get off my soapbox now :-).
Live webcasting is what I do. Check it out at the WRUW page. MP3 is definately the way to go. We have a 300 (clocked to 450) celeron and 128mb ram. It's on a dual board, so if we ever need more power, it'll be real simple. we've got a SB Ensoniq PCI soundcard that we feed our signal off or our airboard. We run Linux (duh :-),lame with some magic with named pipes and netcat and apache and we have as many streams as we want.
We also have an AudioActive hardware MP3 encoder, that the folks at Telos/Audioactive were kind enough to donate (They ROCK!). It encodes one signal (56kbps) and our server encodes another (24kbps).
I discovered that to the sound quality of 56k is comparable to a normal FM broadcast, so you really don't need a higher bitrate. The 24k stream is mono for modem users.
The biggest bottleneck is definately your bandwidth to the rest of the world. We are lucky enough at CWRU to have one of the worlds biggest ATM LANs. The 155MB/s of oncampus bandwidth is denfinately nice to have. We were on ethernet, and I was dreading possibility of crashing our Ethernet segment. Now with ATM, we can have unlimited on campus listeners (because more Case students have computers than radios :-) and our off campus bandwidth lets us have about 150 listeners from elsewhere. If you have more questions, please don't hesitate to email me. It should be pretty obvious as to what my email is :-)
I am still PISSED OFF that George Washington is on the back of the Jersey Quarter crossing the Delaware and not Kermit the Frog like in the commercial. :-P
Check it out at http://www.calcaria.net/ Linux looks pretty good on it. I am actually thinking of buying a Psion 5, but I can't find a supplier. :-(
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Preprints KICK ASS!!
Of course, the web was invented by physicsts for JUST THIS PURPOSE. Back in the day at CERN, They wanted a way to share documentation across heterogeneous documentation systems. Tim Berners-Lee (I think that's his name) Came up with a subset of SGML known as HTML and the HTTP, ran a sever and client on a Next box, and Voila! In the begining it was just stuff like schedules, proposals, and budets and the like, but the Pre-prints are only a small leap in imagination.
A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
-- A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Seriously, see if you can get your folks to chip in for a laptop or something. It takes up like no space (the same amount of desktop space as a small monitor) and you can take it with you, very handy.
-- A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
To make a more important point...
Yeas, PBS was originally created to bring "those types" of programs to the masses, but it has evolved to much more. PBS stations provide daytime educational programs, and locally produced programs that would never happen at a commercial TV station.
All in all, PBS and the local PBS station provide a nessicary resource to the public.
Besides, only SOME of PBS's money comes from the government. A good deal comes from private industry and viewer donations.
-- A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
> Native brain multitasking, DSP for sound analysis, etc, etc.
Don't underestimate that little grey blob of yours. It is quite powerful.
There was a Slashdot posting a while ago about a "task switcher" in your brain.
Your ears are already DSPs. That is how you distinguish high pitched tones form low pitched tones. Your choclea (sp?), inner ear, is made up of a bunch of hairs that resonate at the frequency of incoming sounds. They hear in the frequency domain, not the time domain, the FFT is computed naturally in "hardware". Also, your ear hears intensity on a logrithmic scale. Don't even get me started on the cool-ass things that your barin does with the STEREO signal from your two ears. Bin-aural hearing is totally bad-ass.
When you catch a baseball, your brain is actually doing differential calculus. It is a learned reaction, and it is all subconcious, but given the position and velocity of the ball, and knowing (instincively) the value of gravity, your brain anticipates the future location of the ball.
There are many examples like this of the computing power of the human brain.
-- A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
BNW, however, sees the end of us beeing based upon capitalism and consumption. I think of how the "castes" are provided with "entertainment" and something inside me SCREAMS middle-class suburbia and mass-consumption/mass-media. Think 20-20, America's Funniest Videos, McDonald's, the latest greatest summer "blockbuster," or latest Hit-Of-The-Minute pop music crap.
*shudder*
-- A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."