Believe it or not, "a single photon" isn't as small of an amount of light as you'd think.
In a study, 60% of participants were able to correctly identify a pulse of 90 "green" photons. Because only approximately 10% of the light that enters your eye ends up on your retina, that's just 9 photons required to trigger a neural response.
Because your retinas have approx. 350 rods in them, which sense light in a dark environment (and only in black & white), those 9 photons are spread across those 350, which can be interpreted to mean that parts of your eye are indeed responding to single photons.
Considering just how small of an amount of light/energy is contained within a single photon, this result is absolutely astonishing.
For more information regarding single photons, read up on the photoelectric effect. It's quite simple in concept, and its discovery by Einstein in 1905 conclusively confirmed the notion that light exists as a particle.
This paved the way to Quantum Physics, and won Einstein the Nobel prize in 1921.
I know Amtrak's gotten a good about of my money on account of how we've fucked up our airports post 9/11. They're more unsafe than ever.
Amtrak isn't exactly a bastion of "hassle-free" travel.
As far as national rail systems go, it's about on-par with what you'd expect from a 3rd-world nation.
In my city, there is Amtrak service twice a day. One train departs ridiculously early in the morning, and the other ridiculously late at night. There is absolutely no chance of arriving at your destination at a reasonable hour. Its rarely on-time (freight traffic takes priority on the majority of the line), and its slower and more expensive than driving (break-even will occur when gas hits around $5.50/gal).
The bus system is even more of a joke. Every so often, you hear about how the bus systems are intentionally bad, as to drive out minorities and the poor.... After trying to use it for my daily commute, I actually started to believe those rants. To replicate my 25-minute commute, I had to take 3 separate buses over about 90-120 minutes. If the bus was late, and you missed a connection, you're screwed.
In short, public transportation in America is appalling. Especially where I live in Virginia.
As a point of comparison, I visited Europe earlier this year, and took the train from Paris to Frankfurt. The ticket was reasonably priced (especially considering how much everything else costs there)... I walked into the train station 10 minutes before my departure. Got on the train (my "cheap" seat was nicer than what you'd find on a 1st-class flight), and was in Frankfurt (575 km away) in just under 4 hours. There are already plans in the works to bring this down to closer to 2 hours.
A tactile touchscreen? Perhaps something that gives a slight tap back whenever a keypress is registered?
Alternatively,a clear keyboard with a screen underneath it would allow for tactile feedback, as well as the advantages of a touchscreen board. The overlay could also be removed so that only the touchscreen is accessible....
Indeed. Windows update has always irritated me to no end, not to mention the fact that Microsoft has released numerous patches and/or updates that were "unsafe" to use. Service packs and IE updates are well-known to be buggy at first, and break compatibility with some applications.
Apple's system update app is pretty straightforward. It'd be nice if system updates didn't require a reboot, but I can live with that, given that they're somewhat infrequent.
Ubuntu seems to be the best, though. Every morning, a panel icon flashes if I have critical updates waiting. Click the icon, review the updates, and click install. Usually no reboot required. Works for every app, though I understand that Linux's package management paradigm will probably never be adopted on MacOS or Windows, given that it's unnecessarily complicated for those OSes.
Mac developers have a neat option to them in the form of sparkle, an Open-source framework that allows developers to very simply integrate an auto-update feature into their apps. It's arguably the most popular 3rd-party framework in use on MacOS, and most applications use it.
1700 to 4700 birds die in the windmill farm in Alameda County near the Altamont Pass. Now, that's a ridiculously vague number
Altamont pass has over 4900 windmills. Even on the upper-end of that estimate, it's less than one per year. That's fairly "infrequent"
Also, you're right that the estimate is "ridiculously vague". You can't draw conclusions based on data with a 50% margin of error. If you're getting that kind of error, there's something seriously wrong with your data.
To be fair, a glass-faced office building will kill far more birds than a windmill.
The "smacking birds out of the air" is due to birds flying into the windmills as if they were a stationary object. The blades don't spin nearly fast enough to do any "smacking."
Actually putting a number on the rate of bird deaths is somewhat controversial, as its fairly difficult to count them, given that it happens so infrequently.
I'd imagine the former. It might actually be worth making, though how the hell GP is proposing to get a quartz crystal large enough to carve a guitar out of I don't know.
The neat thing is that this thin-film solar technology (same concept as what NanoSolar are working on) can be used all over the place.
As long as you have a substrate that the film can adhere to, you can deposit the film onto just about anything.
Building materials come to mind as being the big area for this technology to expand into. Imagine if roofing materials were coated with these photovoltaic films.... The placement wouldn't be optimal, but it would be cheap enough that it wouldn't matter. You'd be killing two birds with one stone, and construction methods wouldn't have to change all that much.
Imagine that for $50-$100, a coat of this material could be added to the top of your (hybrid) car. You'd never be able to charge the entire battery on it, but you could easily top up the battery to squeeze in a few extra miles while the car is sitting in the lot.
Thin-film photovoltaics might not offer the best energy density, but their versatility and extreme low-cost make them look like the holy grail of solar technology.
Web applications are becoming more AJAX'y all the time, and they are not sequential at all.
The problem here is that AJAX is hideously inefficient.
The level of user-interaction achieved with an AJAX application is about on-par with what a Windows 3.1 app is capable of on a 386. Really, it's embarrassing. We don't need more cores. We need a better specification for webapps.
Ron Paul is about as close to a libertarian as you can get, and at some times has been.
Ron Paul is a states-rights activist, not a libertarian.
His political leanings have always very clearly favored a small federal government, with large state governments.
For whatever reason, a few states have always had fringe political groups supporting this set of ideals. Texas happens to be one such state, and Ron Paul happens to currently be leading that charge for them.
A saner course of action would be to vote for a small party, or express your disgust by not voting at all. Don't be part of the problem by keeping the duofascists in power.
The problem is that the US electoral system essentially credits this sort of behavior as a vote for the majority.
In a priority-based/IRV system, you could voice your disapproval by listing "Nader" as your first choice, and Obama as the second. If Nader fails to reach a majority, your vote is not wasted, and simply rolls over to your second choice.
Hear hear! Netflix are one of the only big businesses I've ever dealt with that treats their customers like humans.
I was absolutely shocked last year, when Netflix sent me a tiny postcard informing me that they were cutting my bill by $1/month.
These days, it's a pretty standard practice to lock customers in to multi-year contracts, and not pass on any price-cuts to existing customers. Kudos to Netflix for doing the honest thing. I also move around a lot, and they don't seem to have a problem with updating my address every few months to keep track of me, or suspending my account if I leave the country for an extended period.
Similarly, they're astonishingly trustworthy of their customers when it comes to lost or missing DVDs. If a DVD doesn't show up, or you get a bad disc (a rare occurrence, but not completely impossible), simply fill out a web form, and a new one will be on its way immediately. There's no inquisition, and no accusations of theft. They apologize and fix the problem right away.
On windows, the "winkey" has a number of extremely functional uses exclusively tied to the operating system (rather than applications)
Win + D shows the desktop. Hit it again, and your windows are restored. Not as swanky as Compiz or Expose, but gets the job done.
Win + E opens a file browser
Win + F opens the find file window
Win + L locks the screen
Win + R opens the "run" box
The only thing missing is a built-in shortcut to open a command prompt.
I also find myself using the context menu key quite a lot, as an alternative to mousing. This is especially useful when editing documents, or the like, and you don't know all of the keyboard shortcuts...
The system I built for myself for around $950 would easily be around $2500-$3000 if purchased from Apple, and I just don't have a few grand lying around (nor do I want that kind of credit card debt).
I doubt it.
The Mac Pro line uses mostly server/workstation-grade components. Although you might not require this, these components certainly do cost more. Last I checked, building a truly equivalent machine (eg. 8-core Intel Xeon) from parts cost about the same, if not more.
If you don't require a powerful workstation, you might indeed be better off building a machine on your own. However, the high-end workstation market is a pretty well-worn territory that Apple is currently dominating. Those machines have always been expensive, and always will be.
I've seen that phrase flung around lots over the past few weeks. Apart from being a general condescending phrase, what exactly does it even mean?
Rather than insulting random folks, why not provide some evidence to back up your claim?
I agree that some of the Apple fanboys are a bit crazy... However, there also seems to be a fairly large body of evidence showing that Apple's machines have historically had a far greater longevity than their PC counterparts.
If we want to throw around anecdotal evidence, I've got a 450Mhz G4 from around 1999. It still runs well, on OSX 10.4, on the original hardware (plus a bit more RAM). Even Final Cut Pro is perfectly usable for tasks that don't require extensive amounts of encoding.
Not to drift too far offtopic either, but Apple's machines have been reasonably price-competitive ever since the Intel switch. Price out a machine with similar specs to a Macbook or Mac Pro from Dell.
Just to throw out an example, take Dell. "Sell low-cost custom-assembled computers directly over the Internet" basicly sums up the whole original business idea
.
Not to be pedantic, but Dell have been around since 1984, and their original business model revolved around selling custom-build high-end machines through the mail (at reduced costs, due to the low overhead associated with such a model, as well as the fact that it was the only way they could compete with IBM and Compaq). The shift to selling low-end machines via the Internet didn't come until the mid to late 90s.
Your point does still hold, however, as Dell were the first company to actually make that business model successful. According to Wikipedia, the company grossed $73 million in its first year.
Slashdot Mirror
Believe it or not, "a single photon" isn't as small of an amount of light as you'd think.
In a study, 60% of participants were able to correctly identify a pulse of 90 "green" photons. Because only approximately 10% of the light that enters your eye ends up on your retina, that's just 9 photons required to trigger a neural response.
Because your retinas have approx. 350 rods in them, which sense light in a dark environment (and only in black & white), those 9 photons are spread across those 350, which can be interpreted to mean that parts of your eye are indeed responding to single photons.
Considering just how small of an amount of light/energy is contained within a single photon, this result is absolutely astonishing.
For more information regarding single photons, read up on the photoelectric effect. It's quite simple in concept, and its discovery by Einstein in 1905 conclusively confirmed the notion that light exists as a particle.
This paved the way to Quantum Physics, and won Einstein the Nobel prize in 1921.
I know Amtrak's gotten a good about of my money on account of how we've fucked up our airports post 9/11. They're more unsafe than ever.
Amtrak isn't exactly a bastion of "hassle-free" travel.
As far as national rail systems go, it's about on-par with what you'd expect from a 3rd-world nation.
In my city, there is Amtrak service twice a day. One train departs ridiculously early in the morning, and the other ridiculously late at night. There is absolutely no chance of arriving at your destination at a reasonable hour. Its rarely on-time (freight traffic takes priority on the majority of the line), and its slower and more expensive than driving (break-even will occur when gas hits around $5.50/gal).
The bus system is even more of a joke. Every so often, you hear about how the bus systems are intentionally bad, as to drive out minorities and the poor.... After trying to use it for my daily commute, I actually started to believe those rants. To replicate my 25-minute commute, I had to take 3 separate buses over about 90-120 minutes. If the bus was late, and you missed a connection, you're screwed.
In short, public transportation in America is appalling. Especially where I live in Virginia.
As a point of comparison, I visited Europe earlier this year, and took the train from Paris to Frankfurt. The ticket was reasonably priced (especially considering how much everything else costs there)... I walked into the train station 10 minutes before my departure. Got on the train (my "cheap" seat was nicer than what you'd find on a 1st-class flight), and was in Frankfurt (575 km away) in just under 4 hours. There are already plans in the works to bring this down to closer to 2 hours.
However, if you use the word "mashup" you're probably a jerk.
Hmm... I guess I'd better find a new way to prepare potatoes if I want to preserve my social status...
I don't think that head-on collisions at speed are terribly common, or even all that survivable in a normal car.
A tactile touchscreen? Perhaps something that gives a slight tap back whenever a keypress is registered?
Alternatively,a clear keyboard with a screen underneath it would allow for tactile feedback, as well as the advantages of a touchscreen board. The overlay could also be removed so that only the touchscreen is accessible....
Indeed. Windows update has always irritated me to no end, not to mention the fact that Microsoft has released numerous patches and/or updates that were "unsafe" to use. Service packs and IE updates are well-known to be buggy at first, and break compatibility with some applications.
Apple's system update app is pretty straightforward. It'd be nice if system updates didn't require a reboot, but I can live with that, given that they're somewhat infrequent.
Ubuntu seems to be the best, though. Every morning, a panel icon flashes if I have critical updates waiting. Click the icon, review the updates, and click install. Usually no reboot required. Works for every app, though I understand that Linux's package management paradigm will probably never be adopted on MacOS or Windows, given that it's unnecessarily complicated for those OSes.
Mac developers have a neat option to them in the form of sparkle, an Open-source framework that allows developers to very simply integrate an auto-update feature into their apps. It's arguably the most popular 3rd-party framework in use on MacOS, and most applications use it.
1700 to 4700 birds die in the windmill farm in Alameda County near the Altamont Pass. Now, that's a ridiculously vague number
Altamont pass has over 4900 windmills. Even on the upper-end of that estimate, it's less than one per year. That's fairly "infrequent"
Also, you're right that the estimate is "ridiculously vague". You can't draw conclusions based on data with a 50% margin of error. If you're getting that kind of error, there's something seriously wrong with your data.
Windmills smack birds out of the air.
To be fair, a glass-faced office building will kill far more birds than a windmill.
The "smacking birds out of the air" is due to birds flying into the windmills as if they were a stationary object. The blades don't spin nearly fast enough to do any "smacking."
Actually putting a number on the rate of bird deaths is somewhat controversial, as its fairly difficult to count them, given that it happens so infrequently.
I'd imagine the former. It might actually be worth making, though how the hell GP is proposing to get a quartz crystal large enough to carve a guitar out of I don't know.
The government can help you out with that.
Granted, it's not quartz, but I think it might work.
The neat thing is that this thin-film solar technology (same concept as what NanoSolar are working on) can be used all over the place.
As long as you have a substrate that the film can adhere to, you can deposit the film onto just about anything.
Building materials come to mind as being the big area for this technology to expand into. Imagine if roofing materials were coated with these photovoltaic films.... The placement wouldn't be optimal, but it would be cheap enough that it wouldn't matter. You'd be killing two birds with one stone, and construction methods wouldn't have to change all that much.
Imagine that for $50-$100, a coat of this material could be added to the top of your (hybrid) car. You'd never be able to charge the entire battery on it, but you could easily top up the battery to squeeze in a few extra miles while the car is sitting in the lot.
Thin-film photovoltaics might not offer the best energy density, but their versatility and extreme low-cost make them look like the holy grail of solar technology.
Or if they're really cruel, they could include some Philip Glass.
Nobody quite does mindlessly repetitive 12-minute songs played at breakneck speeds like Glass does...
Web applications are becoming more AJAX'y all the time, and they are not sequential at all.
The problem here is that AJAX is hideously inefficient.
The level of user-interaction achieved with an AJAX application is about on-par with what a Windows 3.1 app is capable of on a 386. Really, it's embarrassing. We don't need more cores. We need a better specification for webapps.
Hm. I didn't believe you at first, but it does appear to be true that big LCD panels are hideously inefficient.
Although a 19" LCD will easily draw far less power than a 19" CRT (about 1/3), the same doesn't appear to hold true for big TVs.
Does anybody know why this is? It seems extremely counterintuitive.
So since I don't watch the boob tube
Obligatory
Ron Paul is about as close to a libertarian as you can get, and at some times has been.
Ron Paul is a states-rights activist, not a libertarian.
His political leanings have always very clearly favored a small federal government, with large state governments.
For whatever reason, a few states have always had fringe political groups supporting this set of ideals. Texas happens to be one such state, and Ron Paul happens to currently be leading that charge for them.
A saner course of action would be to vote for a small party, or express your disgust by not voting at all. Don't be part of the problem by keeping the duofascists in power.
The problem is that the US electoral system essentially credits this sort of behavior as a vote for the majority.
In a priority-based/IRV system, you could voice your disapproval by listing "Nader" as your first choice, and Obama as the second. If Nader fails to reach a majority, your vote is not wasted, and simply rolls over to your second choice.
Exactly right. AT&T deserves to be shutdown completely and made an example of.
You do realize just how many times this has already been done, right?
Microsoft may consider it worthwhile to throw money at developers to keep them from working for google.
Don't tell that to Ballmer. He'll start pelting his developers (developers developers) with nickels whenever they walk by.
Hear hear! Netflix are one of the only big businesses I've ever dealt with that treats their customers like humans.
I was absolutely shocked last year, when Netflix sent me a tiny postcard informing me that they were cutting my bill by $1/month.
These days, it's a pretty standard practice to lock customers in to multi-year contracts, and not pass on any price-cuts to existing customers. Kudos to Netflix for doing the honest thing. I also move around a lot, and they don't seem to have a problem with updating my address every few months to keep track of me, or suspending my account if I leave the country for an extended period.
Similarly, they're astonishingly trustworthy of their customers when it comes to lost or missing DVDs. If a DVD doesn't show up, or you get a bad disc (a rare occurrence, but not completely impossible), simply fill out a web form, and a new one will be on its way immediately. There's no inquisition, and no accusations of theft. They apologize and fix the problem right away.
On windows, the "winkey" has a number of extremely functional uses exclusively tied to the operating system (rather than applications)
Win + D shows the desktop. Hit it again, and your windows are restored. Not as swanky as Compiz or Expose, but gets the job done.
Win + E opens a file browser
Win + F opens the find file window
Win + L locks the screen
Win + R opens the "run" box
The only thing missing is a built-in shortcut to open a command prompt.
I also find myself using the context menu key quite a lot, as an alternative to mousing. This is especially useful when editing documents, or the like, and you don't know all of the keyboard shortcuts...
It is good example of a little too much Kool Aid I think.
I reiterate my original question. How the fuck doe Kool Aid relate to what we're talking about?
The system I built for myself for around $950 would easily be around $2500-$3000 if purchased from Apple, and I just don't have a few grand lying around (nor do I want that kind of credit card debt).
I doubt it.
The Mac Pro line uses mostly server/workstation-grade components. Although you might not require this, these components certainly do cost more. Last I checked, building a truly equivalent machine (eg. 8-core Intel Xeon) from parts cost about the same, if not more.
If you don't require a powerful workstation, you might indeed be better off building a machine on your own. However, the high-end workstation market is a pretty well-worn territory that Apple is currently dominating. Those machines have always been expensive, and always will be.
Haven't needed torx drivers in ages.
I always remember Compaq being the ones who used them most frequently.
A small philips-head should be all that you need on most machines. A RAM upgrade on a current-generation iMac takes about 30 seconds to complete.
Drink much kool aid?
Seriously, dude. What the fuck?
I've seen that phrase flung around lots over the past few weeks. Apart from being a general condescending phrase, what exactly does it even mean?
Rather than insulting random folks, why not provide some evidence to back up your claim?
I agree that some of the Apple fanboys are a bit crazy... However, there also seems to be a fairly large body of evidence showing that Apple's machines have historically had a far greater longevity than their PC counterparts.
If we want to throw around anecdotal evidence, I've got a 450Mhz G4 from around 1999. It still runs well, on OSX 10.4, on the original hardware (plus a bit more RAM). Even Final Cut Pro is perfectly usable for tasks that don't require extensive amounts of encoding.
Not to drift too far offtopic either, but Apple's machines have been reasonably price-competitive ever since the Intel switch. Price out a machine with similar specs to a Macbook or Mac Pro from Dell.
Just to throw out an example, take Dell. "Sell low-cost custom-assembled computers directly over the Internet" basicly sums up the whole original business idea
.
Not to be pedantic, but Dell have been around since 1984, and their original business model revolved around selling custom-build high-end machines through the mail (at reduced costs, due to the low overhead associated with such a model, as well as the fact that it was the only way they could compete with IBM and Compaq). The shift to selling low-end machines via the Internet didn't come until the mid to late 90s.
Your point does still hold, however, as Dell were the first company to actually make that business model successful. According to Wikipedia, the company grossed $73 million in its first year.