One of the main problems with Hydrogen as a fuel is that it is really just an intermediate energy source.
There are no naturally occurring terrestrial sources of H2, so we have to manufacture it. The 2nd law of Thermodynamics says that any time we use energy to create energy, we're losing some energy. So the question is -- where does the energy to create the hydrogen come from?
Oil? We're back to the same pollution problems we had before, plus we'd use MORE oil than just burning it as a jet fuel.
Nuclear? That's probably the best solution, but we'd have to build new plants to create the energy, and then deal with the waste.
Wind or Solar? They are clean, but aren't economically viable yet. Who wants to pay $10,000 for a coast-coast flight?
Hydrogen doesn't really make economic sense yet, since most of the sources we could use to make it are either too expensive or are easier to use directly, without converting to hydrogen in the middle.
Then there are the storage problems. Hydrogen is a very low energy fuel, so the planes would have to carry a MUCH larger volume of it in order to achieve the same energy content. For airplanes, greater volume = greater energy costs.
How many people could a conventional 747 carry, if it was fueled by hydrogen - 4? 5?
What am I missing here? Why is this generating so much anticipation? Is it merely that they are going into much more detail than the somewhat feeble [imdb.com] version that came out several years back? (I don't recall such anticipation for that). Is it the people who are to be in it? Is it the fact that special effects have matured to a suitable stage to handle this subject matter? Is Pauley Shore doing a cameo?
Speaking as one who eagerly stood by with the remote last night, waiting to tape the preview as it came on, and watching my wife literally jump up and down in excitement when it did, this is a big thing.
This is the fantasy story that started a whole genre. Try and find a fantasy novel today that doesn't have _some_ type of resemblance to LOTR. It can be done, but it isn't easy. I started reading the books for the first time when I was 10, and I haven't stopped since. They are that good.
The reason everyone is so excited by this is that, as far as we've been able to determine, they're doing it right. The casting looks right. The look of the characters, of the land, of the people (elves, dwarves, hobbits, wizards), looks right. It looks like they're finally going to make this story get up, and walk out of the pages of the book, and work on the big screen.
In regard to casting, I think they made an excellent choice by NOT casting big stars -- this way the audience doesn't have a preconcieved notion of who the actors are, and can see them as only Tolkien's characters. In much the same way that Mark Hamill will always be Luke Skywalker, and Carrie Fisher will always be Princess Leia, I suspect that these actors will be typecast by this movie.
Another reason people are excited is that the state of special effects has finally arrived to the point where the special effects can be seamlessly integrated into the movie. We can watch Gandalf fighting the Balrog without being impressed by how real the Balrog looks, or by how impressively they were able to model the caverns. We've become used to seeing the impressive effects, and we can now watch them as part of the movie, without wondering how they're done, or being jarred by their unreality.
With regard to the screenplay, we already know that they've decided to take a bit of license with the story line, and increase Arwen's role (she's a lead character's love interest). They decided to do so because she really doesn't have much of a role in the story -- with the possible exception of Galadrial, no female character does. I personally don't think it'll be a big problem, and if it's the only concession they're making to the "normal" movie going public (as opposed to the geeks & uber geeks that are eagerly watching every move leading up to this production), I'll be happy.
I also recall a similar feeling before the release of "Dune", so I don't wanna get my hopes up too much.
Dune wasn't the same - I don't think we'll ever see a really good theatrical interpretation of Dune (the recent Sci-Fi channel series was pretty good, but I still think it missed a lot). The reason for that is that Dune is a very complex story. There is a lot of background, a lot of character development, and a different culture to assimilate. LOTR is essentially a good vs. evil story. The story line is very simple. We won't have to worry about extensive flashbacks, or narratives to explain complex plot points. There are good guys, and bad guys. The bad guys appears stronger, but the good guys eventually win in the end. That means that it will translate a heck of a lot better into a movie medium.
But we "overpaid" engineers are some of the people who would make good science and math teachers. We not only have the education to understand what we'd be teaching, but we have real-world experience to back it up.
If more engineers were financially able to become teachers (I'd lose my house) then there'd likely be a corresponding increase in the quality of science education in this country, which could lead to everyone having more comfortable lives.
Or don't you think that the average person would benefit from a better understanding of how the world works?
Everyone with a passion for a particular academic subject, be it math, science, literature, language, social science, or even P.E. (which, if taught correctly, does require knowing more than just rules to a game) should consider teaching. Coding the new killer app isn't the only way to have an affect on our future.
I've often considered giving teaching a try, and the one thing which has consistantly held me back is that pesky salary thing. It's just not worth it at this point in my life to take a 50%-70% salary cut.
I think I'd really enjoy teaching, and perhaps more importantly, I think I'd be very good at it. I have a BSEE, with almost 10 years of industry experience, plus uncounted hours spent studying science and physics and building robots in my basement. I've spent time tutoring math and physics, and have always had positive responses from my students. I'm just not ready to lose my house, car, and lifestyle in order to be abused by students (and their parents) who didn't get a proper background to support a high school level science class.
Plus, don't forget that in addition to the huge salary cut I'd have to take, I'd also have to take some additional classes (no big deal), and then pay for the privilige of being allowed to teach for free for a year, in order to complete my teaching certificate.
So. While I'm waiting for society to wise up and make it easier for engineers or other scientists to even consider teaching, I indulge my wish to be involved in molding young minds by volunteering for FIRST Robotics Competition teams, and email mentoring of high school students.
One of the bonuses of an engineering degree is that sometimes you get paid to break things.
One of my college friends got a job with Detroit Edison when he graduated, and he started out in their destructive testing lab. Basically, his job was to find out what happens to certain materials (like a 2" x 2" x 6 ft long hunk of iron) if exposed to thousands of volts at hundreds of amps.
Some things just vaporized, others would explode, and a few were able to carry the current.
We were always trying to talk him into setting up a tour for us, so we could watch him blow stuff up, but he was never able to... Damn.
Another friend was hired by Ford to do crash testing. We did manage to visit her, and see the test sled, and some of the crashed vehicles, but she couldn't set up a crash for us to watch either. Double Damn.
Oh well - at least I got to hear good stories about it.
In my job, they get mad at me if I blow things up.
I'm still making a living (for a little while longer anyway) programming an Intel 8065 (A custom 16 bit microprocessor designed for Ford) in assembly language.
It's not much different than the computers you're all calling obsolete, aside from the fact that I don't have to worry about a display or keyboard (or even storage devices). My I/O are the sensors and actuators of the Navistar-International 7.3L Turbo Diesel "Powerstroke" engine. The current production version will attain 275 HP and 520 ft/lbs of torque in a Ford F350 with a manual transmission.
How's that for an output device?
So... is anyone else still making a living programming these "obsolete" computers?
Yeah - I'm still using mine too. I haven't seen anything yet that would tempt me to trade it in.
It performs all the appointment/phone book/notetaking duties that a PDA is required to do, has great battery life, a somewhat small but higher resolution screen than Palm devices, a KEYBOARD, a usable serial port (I'm an embedded systems programmer, and like having a full-function dumb terminal to communicate with my test equipment without having to carry a laptop around), and a full size PCMCIA port.
Plus, with the ability to run DOS shareware, I've got my choice of thousands of shareware games (old, but still fun to play) which make long boring meetings a lot more bearable.
It's also fairly indestructible. Over the three+ years I've owned it, mine has taken several dives from waist height onto concrete, with only slight case scratches to show for it.
Some of the newer HP CE devices looked nice - faster processors, color screens, etc., but none of them has proven to be actually as useful as my HP200LX.
I'd love to have the exact same device, (Hey! HP -- Are you listening?) with maybe a little sexier case (a bit thinner would be nice), a faster processor, and the ability to run Linux. A backlight would be a plus, but I wouldn't want to give up much battery life for it.
Until I see such a device, I'll likely hang onto my trusty old 200LX.
I can guess why they're not going to reprint the original Tom Swift series by Victor Appleton. Here's an excerpt I grabbed from the Project Gutenberg copy of "Tom Swift And His Aerial Warship".
"I should say So, Massa Tom!" added the colored man. "I done
did prognosticate dat some day de combustible material of which
dat shed am composed would conflaggrate--"
This type of language and attitude is endemic in the Tom Swift series. I remember being shocked a couple years ago when I reread one of my old copies.
As an additional exercise, try and find a copy of Disney's "Song of the South" on VHS.
I believe that embarassment of the US justice department is Keith's goal. I think he's hoping that press coverage of his asylum request will bring media attention to the story, and help his case. Here's some quotes from his "press release" to alt.religion.scientology about his asylum request:
Embarrassment will likely result for the US State Department
when it is forced to act in the thinly veiled interest of Scientology
and its long standing vendetta against Mr. Henson. Scientology is a
criminally convicted corporation in Canada and the Crown will also be embarrassed if it is asked to litigate in US and therefore Scientology
interests, to deny any petition for Refugee Status on Human Rights
Violations by a US Government component.
The full text of the "press release" can be read by following the above link. It's a pretty good synopsis of the entire story.
This is "Insightful"? The guy clearly didn't even read the article.
The "quantum computer" they're talking about isn't analagous to a PC, and may never be. As I understand the state of the technology today, a quantum computer would have to be purposefully built to solve a single problem, but once constructed, could solve the problem without actually examining the data. See this article about quantum bomb detection - it give an easier to understand example that describes the physics behind "conterfactual computation".
I ran across a paper recently (I wish I could remember where I originally saw it) that deals with a similar circumstance. The original was written in 1993 by Elitzur and Vaidman, and describes a method of what they call "counterfactual measurement", which can be used to determine whether or not a bomb is a dud without actually exploding it.
It took a bit of head scratching and squinting, but I did finally manage to figure out how the thing works.
It uses some of the same theory as I would expect the "quantum computer" to use. In this case, they use a bomb which has a trigger which is sensative to a single photon of light. A dud bomb will pass the photon, but a live bomb will stop it. The experiment shows how it is possible to detect, using quantum mechanics, whether a bomb is live or a dud, without actually exposing it to the photon of light, and thereby exploding it.
I'm sure this is a much simplified version of what they're planning for the computer, but it's described in terms that pretty much anyone can understand, even though it's not obvious at first.
When I worked for HP (several years ago) we provided one of our customers with a very nice web-based database interface that ran on a slackware distribution. We had to keep it sort of quiet among our co-workers, since we worked out of a sales office, and I'm sure that plenty of people would have loved an excuse to try and sell an HP-UX solution to the customer. Of course, the customer wouldn't have been interested in buying additional hardware for a solution that was implemented using obsolete (pronounced "free") equipment anyway.
Last I checked, the box was still running, even though the project was scrapped and the sysadmin moved to a different position over two years ago.
I didn't see this example anywhere in existing comments, even though it's been on slashdot before.
Dr. David Touretzky from Carnegie Mellon has compiled the DeCSS code into a variety of artistic expressions, including Haiku format, and a link to musicians using the DeCSS code as artistic elements in their music (including one who transposed the DeCSS code into DTMF tones and recorded it.)
This HAS to qualify in some manner as "expressive speech".
Sorry, but the sentence "Find the essential elements of creating good software, do them all of the time, and discard everything else." reminds me of a cartoon one of my co-workers had hanging in his cube before he got disgusted with our company and left for "greener pastures".
It depicts a lead programmer speaking to his team, and the caption reads "OK - you guys start coding and I'll go find out what they want".
I can't even imagine what management would do with the tenets of extreme programming. The company I work for has already laid off 1300 people in the past two months. I'm currently supporting software that took 10 people to support until our group was handed a new project. They want it to be exactly like the previous product, but with new hardware, new software, a new compiler, new test equipment, and an untested platform, written in a different language. But otherwise just like the old product. Oh - and one of the 1300 people laid off was the lead programmer who designed the old product.
I'm not bitter -- really. But I am going to drag out support for the old product as long as I can before I get thrown into design of the new product!
I just hope that this doesn't lead to some of the same type of problems we've been seeing when a non-native species is introduced to an ecosystem.
For example, I live in Michigan, and we've been having huge problems with the introduction of zebra mussels into the Great Lakes ecosystem. The zebra mussels came in as passengers on ships coming in through the St. Lawrence Seaway. The zebra mussels are not the only problem either -- this quote from The Wisconsin Sea Grant website gives some examples:
While the zebra mussel invasion and its immense impact on the Great Lakes ecosystem has focused attention on the issue, the introduction of nonindigenous (exotic) species is not a new problem. An estimated 130 nonindigenous species have been introduced to the Great Lakes, most of them arriving since the St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959. Several of these species -- including the sea lamprey, alewife, smelt, carp and milfoil -- have contributed to massive changes in Great Lakes fish and plant communities.
I'm sure that nobody thought that there would be this much ecological impacts from opening a passageway for transportation into the Great Lakes.
I'm not saying that GM salmon are a non-native species exactly, or that the problems we may see will be the same as when non-native species are introduced into an ecosystem (check out www.invasivespecies.gov to see what other problems that has caused). I'm just saying that we've already seen unexpected problems that occur from playing with the environment, and in most cases, we end up with serious problems.
Just because the FDA hasn't found any problems with this yet doesn't mean it's safe. Genetic engineering is a fairly new science, and I don't believe that we've seen all the possible consequences that may come from it yet. I really think we need to spend more time studying the environment and possible interactions before we do anything which can't be undone.
Have you ever stuck your hand out the car window at speed? Did you notice that the angle of attack drastically changes the forces of the air on your hand? Now look at your hand. Does it look like an airfoil?
It's pretty obvious from this simple test that the angle of attack is far more important than the Bernoulli effect in creating lift. It's also been pointed out a number of times,(Try this for example) but somehow hasn't found its way into the science textbooks yet.
My favorite tech support story comes from a co-worker. He was just out of college, manning the tech support phones and got a call from a user who couldn't see her screen. After all the usual discussions about checking for power, making sure the computer was on, playing with contrast & brightness, he finally discovered her problem.
The sunlight coming in through the window next to her workstation was too bright, and she couldn't see through the glare. His reply?
"Lady, I can do a lot of things, but I can't move the sun for you".
Some of my friends were testing a Magellan GPS while fishing. It reported that their fishing boat, using an electric trolling motor, was going at speeds of over 200 MPH.
Needless to say, they soon exchanged it for a Garmin.
I got to play with one of the ones at the University of Illionis-Chicago's Electronic Visualization Laboratory about five years ago. I was considering going there for a graduate degree and took a tour to check out the facilities.
Boy do they have cool stuff there!
The best part was when I got to play with a CAVE . It's a cube about 10ft square with 3D projections on three walls and the floor, which really gives you a feeling of immersion. My favorite program was the cathedral, which imitated the interior of a cathedral (who'd have guessed?). You could "walk" around the interior, which was mostly bare, except for a stairway leading up towards the roof. The stairs had no railing, and I had trouble getting up to the top without falling off. The person who was giving the tour told me that most people's favorite thing was to climb to the top, and then jump off, so I tried it. It's almost as good as a roller coaster! I really got a feeling of falling, as I watched the walls go by, and the floor zoom up at me.
Unfortunately, (well, not really) I got offered a job with Hewlett Packard, and decided to buy a house and have a life instead of being a poor student and playing with really cool geek toys.
I have a set of i-glasses , but they don't even come close to the CAVE in terms of immersion.
Hmmm. I should pull the i-glasses back out of the box and try playing with them again. The only game I ever liked with them was Descent, because it actually worked in 3D. It was pretty neat to strafe around a corner, and be able to see the corner wall with one eye, and an enemy ship with the other eye.
Do any other/.ers have i-glasses? What games do you like to play with them?
I don't think these are all that new - there have been flat panel speakers around for years. The only thing I see diffrent about these is that they don't require the supporting framework that the current ones require.
For something really cool, sometimes you have to look at older technology, like the plasma speakers described here.
The idea is that the shape/size of a flame can be influenced by a high voltage signal, and the resulting changes in the flame are broadcast as a high fidelity sound. Here's a quote from the above site
"It is really simple. It is a modulated RF power amp with a controlled ionic discharge.
By modulating the oscillator with the audio signal the flame size changed and so the air pressure changed also . You hear the sound directly through the air without modulating a
diaphragm.
So there are no moving parts, no distortion and none of the problems other tweeters have."
There's not much bass to these, but boy are they cool looking!
And, as an added bonus, you get to play with nifty Tesla coil technology.
So - is it just me, or did Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, just make it possible for the "Good Times" virus to work as advertised -- in all of it's myriad variations!
Slashdot Mirror
There are no naturally occurring terrestrial sources of H2, so we have to manufacture it. The 2nd law of Thermodynamics says that any time we use energy to create energy, we're losing some energy. So the question is -- where does the energy to create the hydrogen come from?
Oil? We're back to the same pollution problems we had before, plus we'd use MORE oil than just burning it as a jet fuel.
Nuclear? That's probably the best solution, but we'd have to build new plants to create the energy, and then deal with the waste.
Wind or Solar? They are clean, but aren't economically viable yet. Who wants to pay $10,000 for a coast-coast flight?
Hydrogen doesn't really make economic sense yet, since most of the sources we could use to make it are either too expensive or are easier to use directly, without converting to hydrogen in the middle.
Then there are the storage problems. Hydrogen is a very low energy fuel, so the planes would have to carry a MUCH larger volume of it in order to achieve the same energy content. For airplanes, greater volume = greater energy costs.
How many people could a conventional 747 carry, if it was fueled by hydrogen - 4? 5?
Speaking as one who eagerly stood by with the remote last night, waiting to tape the preview as it came on, and watching my wife literally jump up and down in excitement when it did, this is a big thing.
This is the fantasy story that started a whole genre. Try and find a fantasy novel today that doesn't have _some_ type of resemblance to LOTR. It can be done, but it isn't easy. I started reading the books for the first time when I was 10, and I haven't stopped since. They are that good.
The reason everyone is so excited by this is that, as far as we've been able to determine, they're doing it right. The casting looks right. The look of the characters, of the land, of the people (elves, dwarves, hobbits, wizards), looks right. It looks like they're finally going to make this story get up, and walk out of the pages of the book, and work on the big screen.
In regard to casting, I think they made an excellent choice by NOT casting big stars -- this way the audience doesn't have a preconcieved notion of who the actors are, and can see them as only Tolkien's characters. In much the same way that Mark Hamill will always be Luke Skywalker, and Carrie Fisher will always be Princess Leia, I suspect that these actors will be typecast by this movie.
Another reason people are excited is that the state of special effects has finally arrived to the point where the special effects can be seamlessly integrated into the movie. We can watch Gandalf fighting the Balrog without being impressed by how real the Balrog looks, or by how impressively they were able to model the caverns. We've become used to seeing the impressive effects, and we can now watch them as part of the movie, without wondering how they're done, or being jarred by their unreality.
With regard to the screenplay, we already know that they've decided to take a bit of license with the story line, and increase Arwen's role (she's a lead character's love interest). They decided to do so because she really doesn't have much of a role in the story -- with the possible exception of Galadrial, no female character does. I personally don't think it'll be a big problem, and if it's the only concession they're making to the "normal" movie going public (as opposed to the geeks & uber geeks that are eagerly watching every move leading up to this production), I'll be happy.
I also recall a similar feeling before the release of "Dune", so I don't wanna get my hopes up too much.
Dune wasn't the same - I don't think we'll ever see a really good theatrical interpretation of Dune (the recent Sci-Fi channel series was pretty good, but I still think it missed a lot). The reason for that is that Dune is a very complex story. There is a lot of background, a lot of character development, and a different culture to assimilate. LOTR is essentially a good vs. evil story. The story line is very simple. We won't have to worry about extensive flashbacks, or narratives to explain complex plot points. There are good guys, and bad guys. The bad guys appears stronger, but the good guys eventually win in the end. That means that it will translate a heck of a lot better into a movie medium.
I'm really looking forward to this movie.
If more engineers were financially able to become teachers (I'd lose my house) then there'd likely be a corresponding increase in the quality of science education in this country, which could lead to everyone having more comfortable lives.
Or don't you think that the average person would benefit from a better understanding of how the world works?
I've often considered giving teaching a try, and the one thing which has consistantly held me back is that pesky salary thing. It's just not worth it at this point in my life to take a 50%-70% salary cut.
I think I'd really enjoy teaching, and perhaps more importantly, I think I'd be very good at it. I have a BSEE, with almost 10 years of industry experience, plus uncounted hours spent studying science and physics and building robots in my basement. I've spent time tutoring math and physics, and have always had positive responses from my students. I'm just not ready to lose my house, car, and lifestyle in order to be abused by students (and their parents) who didn't get a proper background to support a high school level science class.
Plus, don't forget that in addition to the huge salary cut I'd have to take, I'd also have to take some additional classes (no big deal), and then pay for the privilige of being allowed to teach for free for a year, in order to complete my teaching certificate.
So. While I'm waiting for society to wise up and make it easier for engineers or other scientists to even consider teaching, I indulge my wish to be involved in molding young minds by volunteering for FIRST Robotics Competition teams, and email mentoring of high school students.
One of my college friends got a job with Detroit Edison when he graduated, and he started out in their destructive testing lab. Basically, his job was to find out what happens to certain materials (like a 2" x 2" x 6 ft long hunk of iron) if exposed to thousands of volts at hundreds of amps.
Some things just vaporized, others would explode, and a few were able to carry the current.
We were always trying to talk him into setting up a tour for us, so we could watch him blow stuff up, but he was never able to... Damn.
Another friend was hired by Ford to do crash testing. We did manage to visit her, and see the test sled, and some of the crashed vehicles, but she couldn't set up a crash for us to watch either. Double Damn.
Oh well - at least I got to hear good stories about it.
In my job, they get mad at me if I blow things up.
It's not much different than the computers you're all calling obsolete, aside from the fact that I don't have to worry about a display or keyboard (or even storage devices). My I/O are the sensors and actuators of the Navistar-International 7.3L Turbo Diesel "Powerstroke" engine. The current production version will attain 275 HP and 520 ft/lbs of torque in a Ford F350 with a manual transmission.
How's that for an output device?
So... is anyone else still making a living programming these "obsolete" computers?
Your source seems to have missed the first column of the finishing times for the first place entry.
It performs all the appointment/phone book/notetaking duties that a PDA is required to do, has great battery life, a somewhat small but higher resolution screen than Palm devices, a KEYBOARD, a usable serial port (I'm an embedded systems programmer, and like having a full-function dumb terminal to communicate with my test equipment without having to carry a laptop around), and a full size PCMCIA port.
Plus, with the ability to run DOS shareware, I've got my choice of thousands of shareware games (old, but still fun to play) which make long boring meetings a lot more bearable.
It's also fairly indestructible. Over the three+ years I've owned it, mine has taken several dives from waist height onto concrete, with only slight case scratches to show for it.
Some of the newer HP CE devices looked nice - faster processors, color screens, etc., but none of them has proven to be actually as useful as my HP200LX.
I'd love to have the exact same device, (Hey! HP -- Are you listening?) with maybe a little sexier case (a bit thinner would be nice), a faster processor, and the ability to run Linux. A backlight would be a plus, but I wouldn't want to give up much battery life for it.
Until I see such a device, I'll likely hang onto my trusty old 200LX.
This type of language and attitude is endemic in the Tom Swift series. I remember being shocked a couple years ago when I reread one of my old copies.
As an additional exercise, try and find a copy of Disney's "Song of the South" on VHS.
I've been thinking about grabbing a set of them for my brother-in-law (he's 14).
The full text of the "press release" can be read by following the above link. It's a pretty good synopsis of the entire story.
The "quantum computer" they're talking about isn't analagous to a PC, and may never be. As I understand the state of the technology today, a quantum computer would have to be purposefully built to solve a single problem, but once constructed, could solve the problem without actually examining the data. See this article about quantum bomb detection - it give an easier to understand example that describes the physics behind "conterfactual computation".
Doesn't anyone actually check these things before moderation?
It took a bit of head scratching and squinting, but I did finally manage to figure out how the thing works.
It uses some of the same theory as I would expect the "quantum computer" to use. In this case, they use a bomb which has a trigger which is sensative to a single photon of light. A dud bomb will pass the photon, but a live bomb will stop it. The experiment shows how it is possible to detect, using quantum mechanics, whether a bomb is live or a dud, without actually exposing it to the photon of light, and thereby exploding it.
I'm sure this is a much simplified version of what they're planning for the computer, but it's described in terms that pretty much anyone can understand, even though it's not obvious at first.
Where do I sign up?
Last I checked, the box was still running, even though the project was scrapped and the sysadmin moved to a different position over two years ago.
Dr. David Touretzky from Carnegie Mellon has compiled the DeCSS code into a variety of artistic expressions, including Haiku format, and a link to musicians using the DeCSS code as artistic elements in their music (including one who transposed the DeCSS code into DTMF tones and recorded it.)
This HAS to qualify in some manner as "expressive speech".
It depicts a lead programmer speaking to his team, and the caption reads "OK - you guys start coding and I'll go find out what they want".
I can't even imagine what management would do with the tenets of extreme programming. The company I work for has already laid off 1300 people in the past two months. I'm currently supporting software that took 10 people to support until our group was handed a new project. They want it to be exactly like the previous product, but with new hardware, new software, a new compiler, new test equipment, and an untested platform, written in a different language. But otherwise just like the old product. Oh - and one of the 1300 people laid off was the lead programmer who designed the old product.
I'm not bitter -- really. But I am going to drag out support for the old product as long as I can before I get thrown into design of the new product!
For example, I live in Michigan, and we've been having huge problems with the introduction of zebra mussels into the Great Lakes ecosystem. The zebra mussels came in as passengers on ships coming in through the St. Lawrence Seaway. The zebra mussels are not the only problem either -- this quote from The Wisconsin Sea Grant website gives some examples:
I'm sure that nobody thought that there would be this much ecological impacts from opening a passageway for transportation into the Great Lakes.
I'm not saying that GM salmon are a non-native species exactly, or that the problems we may see will be the same as when non-native species are introduced into an ecosystem (check out www.invasivespecies.gov to see what other problems that has caused). I'm just saying that we've already seen unexpected problems that occur from playing with the environment, and in most cases, we end up with serious problems.
Just because the FDA hasn't found any problems with this yet doesn't mean it's safe. Genetic engineering is a fairly new science, and I don't believe that we've seen all the possible consequences that may come from it yet. I really think we need to spend more time studying the environment and possible interactions before we do anything which can't be undone.
It's pretty obvious from this simple test that the angle of attack is far more important than the Bernoulli effect in creating lift. It's also been pointed out a number of times,(Try this for example) but somehow hasn't found its way into the science textbooks yet.
Sorry, it's really not big news.
The sunlight coming in through the window next to her workstation was too bright, and she couldn't see through the glare. His reply?
"Lady, I can do a lot of things, but I can't move the sun for you".
Some of my friends were testing a Magellan GPS while fishing. It reported that their fishing boat, using an electric trolling motor, was going at speeds of over 200 MPH. Needless to say, they soon exchanged it for a Garmin.
Boy do they have cool stuff there!
The best part was when I got to play with a CAVE . It's a cube about 10ft square with 3D projections on three walls and the floor, which really gives you a feeling of immersion. My favorite program was the cathedral, which imitated the interior of a cathedral (who'd have guessed?). You could "walk" around the interior, which was mostly bare, except for a stairway leading up towards the roof. The stairs had no railing, and I had trouble getting up to the top without falling off. The person who was giving the tour told me that most people's favorite thing was to climb to the top, and then jump off, so I tried it. It's almost as good as a roller coaster! I really got a feeling of falling, as I watched the walls go by, and the floor zoom up at me.
Unfortunately, (well, not really) I got offered a job with Hewlett Packard, and decided to buy a house and have a life instead of being a poor student and playing with really cool geek toys.
I have a set of i-glasses , but they don't even come close to the CAVE in terms of immersion.
Hmmm. I should pull the i-glasses back out of the box and try playing with them again. The only game I ever liked with them was Descent, because it actually worked in 3D. It was pretty neat to strafe around a corner, and be able to see the corner wall with one eye, and an enemy ship with the other eye.
Do any other /.ers have i-glasses? What games do you like to play with them?
For something really cool, sometimes you have to look at older technology, like the plasma speakers described here.
The idea is that the shape/size of a flame can be influenced by a high voltage signal, and the resulting changes in the flame are broadcast as a high fidelity sound. Here's a quote from the above site
There's not much bass to these, but boy are they cool looking!And, as an added bonus, you get to play with nifty Tesla coil technology.
These are true Geek Speakers.
So - is it just me, or did Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, just make it possible for the "Good Times" virus to work as advertised -- in all of it's myriad variations!