Fullerenes, sometimes called "buckyballs," are usually spherical molecules of carbon, named after the futurist R. Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome. The carbon atoms are arranged in pentagons and hexagons, so their structures can resemble a soccer ball. An important rule -- until now -- is that no two pentagons can touch, but are always surrounded by hexagons.
More interested about their experiements to put certain metals in buckyeyes for medical scanning. So is the idea of putting radioactive metals in fullerenes to 'insulate' what would normally be dangerous metals in the body?
The reason I have not bought a Mac is the same reason I have not ever bought a whole system: I don't want to plunk down over a grand for a new computer. For the last two decades I've always upgraded my machine by piece-mail. A new case, a new HD, a new mobo, a new video card.... So at every purchases it's only been a few hundred at most.
As a embedded developer for a big telecom that builds enterprise routers, I can vouch for this. We use ASICs on our interface blades that does the bulk of the layer 2 switching. A packet comes in on a port, it's source MAC and the port it came in on is put into RAM that's on the ASIC itself, and the packet is either fowarded if the DA is known or else it's flooded. Aging is also done by the ASIC. We have lots of custom code on the blades for handling limitations in the SDK, timing issues, and 'corner cases' but the bulk of the layer 2 switching is done by the ASIC. In fact, on our core router we can reboot the main processor card and not only will packets still forward on the same card, they'll even forward across the fabric to other cards. It would be unacceptable for us not to be able to forward traffic on a 24 gig port card to 6 port fiber 10gig at wire rate. The company who builds the ASIC we use is willing to listen to us as to what we want them to dedicate more transistors to in their next revision. It's a pretty good relationship.
Not to say we don't take network routers becoming more and more of a commodity seriously. Believe it or not raw speed isn't all we aim for in the future. Security features are what our customers seem to be more focused on wanting. A lot of it will be just in the software although looking at the featuers for the next ASIC revision there are some pretty good features for the layer 3 team.
The parent post mentioned support, which is VERY important to customers. As well as being able to offer a complete solution. I work in enterprise but the company I work for is very big and has hardware for various levels. So here the sales guy can come in and offer an enterprise solution: Two core routers and a few dozen edge routers. But then they offer a microwave WAN link. And wireless nodes as well. A customer wants to know that a single company can offer support for many different levels of their network.
Isn't that what the media does for everything now-a-days anyways? I mean look at the whole middle east ordeal. All you hear is death, death, and more death, then a bombing sprinkled in. I know a lot of bad things happen over there, but I'm sure there's other things they can talk about that relate to the topic. I mean I'm all for remembering our fallen for the cause, but like I said, there's more things to discuss. A lot of it has to deal with shock factor now.
I completely agree. Which is why I think TV news is worthless except to titillate emotions. Cable news is even worse since they have to be on that 24 hour cycle so they have to come up with even more useless filler. To the average person that mainstream news tries to capture, they only thing of the shuttle mission as, "I hope nothing bad happens like with Columbia." Except they won't remember the shuttle name. They aren't concerned with why it was sent up in the first place.
Of course I'll be glad to hear here what they -actually- do besides the routine of flying the shuttle and assuring safe return, but even more I'll be glad to hear why no media write about it.
Because shuttle flight is pretty mundane when it comes down to it. Not to take away the technical hurdles of every flight. I'm a bit more optimistic then others. Only because NASA has been so succesful in making shuttle launches seem so mundane do we all flip out when a disaster occurs and start questioning NASA's capabilities.
As far as mankind's position in space exporation, I think we're at this point: Study long term effects of weightlessness on humans. That's what the space station is for. Once mankind figures out a propulsion method to get to things quicker, or a way for the human psyche to contend with long term space travel, then we can set out farther then the moon.
You think they spent 12 days in space just looking at the thermal tiles? I know the main reason for the mission was to transfer supplies and a man to the ISS. Probably lots of other experiments as well. Unfortunately the news doesn't report on the mundane, just the dramatic, so you only hear about the possible problems with the tiles.
I don't consider myself courageous. Yet even right after the two disasters, I would have paid someone all the money I have in my checking account to go up on the next flight. I don't think I'm alone.
Two colleges are hoping to make computer science courses more attractive by including personal robots with the textbooks. Looking to boost enrollment in introductory computer science classes...
How about figuring out a way to get more girls to enroll into computer science classes?
Although that might be harder to figure out then robots.
As others have said, if you can hit print screen to save a frame then a program can be made to do it for the entire movie.
You know, this is just like the equivalant of saying that audio can always be copied because no matter how protected the data on the media is, you can always either hold a microphone up to the speaker or run the speaker output right back into the line-in.
With video and audio there will always be some stage where the material is in it's raw format and in a memory buffer. At that point it can be copied. This is of course assuming the protection is unbreakable which has yet be proven true for anything yet.
I wish space exploration was advancing faster. It seems sad that in this, the 21st century, the world's superpowers are still spending vast sums of money on killing other humans, instead of seeing what's beyond our own back yard. It's a really geeky thing to say I know, but I often wish I'd been born a few centuries later, and had the chance to live the Star Trek life. A lifetime of exploring space sounds great to me.
I know, it's a little frustrating when you realize how far apart things are in space. That, matched with the political pressure to constantly cut funding to NASA means you're going to get a lot of skepticism of space flight in general. It's not cheap, it's not easy. We've done orbital flights plenty of times, even put a space station up there. We were lucky to have a moon that was pretty close and we were able to land there. Past the moon though, everything is a lot farther apart. The next step would be a manned mission to Mars but the hurdles and amount of funding required to overcome them are so great that not many politicians think it's a wise place to spend money.
Although I understand people having problems with how much we spend on keeping the ISS functional, there is one very important reason of having it. So we can study the long term effects of weightlessness on people. Any sort of manned mission to another planet is going to have to face and overcome this problem, unless an spacecraft is made to generate it artificially.
One video on NASA's site shows the complete launch but no audio. The other shows just the first part of the launch but with audio(including the cool sound of the orbiter engines ingiting).
Yeah, I'm a little cynical of people who look at Rutan's excellent milestone in the private sector and then think the Shuttle and NASA are way behind the curve. As other's have noted, a sub-orbital parabolic flight is simply not on the same level as launching a shuttle, with a crew of 7 and plenty of cargo space, into orbit around the Earth. The energy required for the later is quite a bit more. And since that energy comes in the form of fuel that takes up most of the weight of the craft when loaded, the structural mechanics that go into the orbiter, external fuel tank, and two SRBs seem to simply be on a grander scale then Space Ship One.
Of course I'm not a rocket scientist so please feel free to point out the flaws in my observations.
Unless you are "fighting terror", an improperly conducted search will get thrown out by the courts and then the "bad guys" usually get a walk.
Why should there be an exception for "fighting terror?"
It is the mindset though. Look for more and more things to fall under the concept of 'fighting terror' as a way to get around due process and the Bill of Rights. I remember hearing some guy on NPR say some members of LA gangs were 'street terrorists'.
I understand where you're coming from. Both your comment on how Java is best for small programs and that many people stick to C/C++ because it's what they know.
I really do think one of the best insights a programmer can get is to take some C code and run it through a disassembler. Takes a little low-level background knowledge but I think one of the best insights a programmer can achieve is to understand exactly what the processor does from a line of code in C. Like the basic concept of calling a function. The memory address after the call is pushed on the stack and the instruction register of the processor is loaded with the memory address of the function entry point. Or when a function returns a value. How many people know the processor puts the return value in the accumulater register(on 80x86, it's EAX)? That sort of knowledge helps figure out how type-casting works and I think gives the programmer a much better knowledge about how the language actually works.
Re:Have you tried coding anything hard?
on
The End of Native Code?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I'm still not convinced. I work for a huge telecom company(think recent merger) which builds Enterprise-level network switches. We use C and C++. We have a 800mhz Freescale PPC to work with and 256mb of 333mhz DDR memory. On our edge routers that's it. On our core switches each blade has it's own PPC processor to interact with the switching ASIC from another company.
So we have decent processing power but I can't imagine trying to do what we do in Java. We basically analyze packet headers, figure out where they're suppose to go, and then copy the packet to the right port. If there was an integeral GUI component then I could see a point in Java. Automatic garbage collection would be nice but probably not worth the speed hit. We already have code in place to help from memory leaks occuring.
There's also a team at work that's working on a network management program all in Java. One PC to control an entire network of switches and computers through SNMP. There's been issues with GUI control placement across platforms. The thing is a resource hog and it's recommended to have at least a gig of memory or more. And even though it's programmed in Java and has touted as cross platform compatible it's developed and tested in Windows and hence runs best in it. And besides, how much more cost effective can you get then a cheap PC running Windows?
I still see embedded applications being dominated by lower-level code for a while. An engineer I worked with left the company for a job working on medical devices. Development is in C++.
We're at the peak of the windowing environment. We can make the windows look as pretty as we want but it's not going to change how we work with our applications. And hence any new display of those windows will eventually wear off and we'll feel the same about working with our computers that we did 10 years ago.
My first accelerated video card was the Diamond Speedstar 24x as well. It featured a Western Digital chip. Included a fast bit-block(blitter) but wasn't as fast at vectors or line drawing as S3's 911. I'd say the 911 was the first mainstream accelerator for PCs. What kept me and others away from it was that it required expensive VRAM and the bus transfers when the card was in standard VGA modes were incredibly slow so some DOS games would run like a dog even with a fast processor.
Flood insurance in this country is handled by the federal government. Even if you purchase your policy through a private agency, they're simply the go between. Try to purchase flood insurance with the same coverage and deductible through several agencies and they'll quote you around the same price.
Because the feds handle all flood insurance, does that mean they are more liable for handling flood protection measures, NO's levees in this instance, then they would be handling other infrastructure?
I think that's too simplistic. The federal government cares way too much about PR then to allow racist beliefs in a few top officials to over power what the country thinks of them. In any deficit of the feds I think incompetance is the main factor.
Slashdot Mirror
Fullerenes, sometimes called "buckyballs," are usually spherical molecules of carbon, named after the futurist R. Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome. The carbon atoms are arranged in pentagons and hexagons, so their structures can resemble a soccer ball. An important rule -- until now -- is that no two pentagons can touch, but are always surrounded by hexagons.
More interested about their experiements to put certain metals in buckyeyes for medical scanning. So is the idea of putting radioactive metals in fullerenes to 'insulate' what would normally be dangerous metals in the body?
The reason I have not bought a Mac is the same reason I have not ever bought a whole system: I don't want to plunk down over a grand for a new computer. For the last two decades I've always upgraded my machine by piece-mail. A new case, a new HD, a new mobo, a new video card.... So at every purchases it's only been a few hundred at most.
As a embedded developer for a big telecom that builds enterprise routers, I can vouch for this. We use ASICs on our interface blades that does the bulk of the layer 2 switching. A packet comes in on a port, it's source MAC and the port it came in on is put into RAM that's on the ASIC itself, and the packet is either fowarded if the DA is known or else it's flooded. Aging is also done by the ASIC. We have lots of custom code on the blades for handling limitations in the SDK, timing issues, and 'corner cases' but the bulk of the layer 2 switching is done by the ASIC. In fact, on our core router we can reboot the main processor card and not only will packets still forward on the same card, they'll even forward across the fabric to other cards. It would be unacceptable for us not to be able to forward traffic on a 24 gig port card to 6 port fiber 10gig at wire rate. The company who builds the ASIC we use is willing to listen to us as to what we want them to dedicate more transistors to in their next revision. It's a pretty good relationship.
Not to say we don't take network routers becoming more and more of a commodity seriously. Believe it or not raw speed isn't all we aim for in the future. Security features are what our customers seem to be more focused on wanting. A lot of it will be just in the software although looking at the featuers for the next ASIC revision there are some pretty good features for the layer 3 team.
The parent post mentioned support, which is VERY important to customers. As well as being able to offer a complete solution. I work in enterprise but the company I work for is very big and has hardware for various levels. So here the sales guy can come in and offer an enterprise solution: Two core routers and a few dozen edge routers. But then they offer a microwave WAN link. And wireless nodes as well. A customer wants to know that a single company can offer support for many different levels of their network.
Isn't that what the media does for everything now-a-days anyways? I mean look at the whole middle east ordeal. All you hear is death, death, and more death, then a bombing sprinkled in. I know a lot of bad things happen over there, but I'm sure there's other things they can talk about that relate to the topic. I mean I'm all for remembering our fallen for the cause, but like I said, there's more things to discuss. A lot of it has to deal with shock factor now.
I completely agree. Which is why I think TV news is worthless except to titillate emotions. Cable news is even worse since they have to be on that 24 hour cycle so they have to come up with even more useless filler. To the average person that mainstream news tries to capture, they only thing of the shuttle mission as, "I hope nothing bad happens like with Columbia." Except they won't remember the shuttle name. They aren't concerned with why it was sent up in the first place.
Of course I'll be glad to hear here what they -actually- do besides the routine of flying the shuttle and assuring safe return, but even more I'll be glad to hear why no media write about it.
Because shuttle flight is pretty mundane when it comes down to it. Not to take away the technical hurdles of every flight. I'm a bit more optimistic then others. Only because NASA has been so succesful in making shuttle launches seem so mundane do we all flip out when a disaster occurs and start questioning NASA's capabilities.
As far as mankind's position in space exporation, I think we're at this point: Study long term effects of weightlessness on humans. That's what the space station is for. Once mankind figures out a propulsion method to get to things quicker, or a way for the human psyche to contend with long term space travel, then we can set out farther then the moon.
That just shows you value MONEY over other things in life. You sir are PETTY.
I would have offered my first born if I had any kids.
You think they spent 12 days in space just looking at the thermal tiles? I know the main reason for the mission was to transfer supplies and a man to the ISS. Probably lots of other experiments as well. Unfortunately the news doesn't report on the mundane, just the dramatic, so you only hear about the possible problems with the tiles.
I don't consider myself courageous. Yet even right after the two disasters, I would have paid someone all the money I have in my checking account to go up on the next flight. I don't think I'm alone.
Two colleges are hoping to make computer science courses more attractive by including personal robots with the textbooks. Looking to boost enrollment in introductory computer science classes...
How about figuring out a way to get more girls to enroll into computer science classes?
Although that might be harder to figure out then robots.
As others have said, if you can hit print screen to save a frame then a program can be made to do it for the entire movie.
You know, this is just like the equivalant of saying that audio can always be copied because no matter how protected the data on the media is, you can always either hold a microphone up to the speaker or run the speaker output right back into the line-in.
With video and audio there will always be some stage where the material is in it's raw format and in a memory buffer. At that point it can be copied. This is of course assuming the protection is unbreakable which has yet be proven true for anything yet.
I wish space exploration was advancing faster. It seems sad that in this, the 21st century, the world's superpowers are still spending vast sums of money on killing other humans, instead of seeing what's beyond our own back yard. It's a really geeky thing to say I know, but I often wish I'd been born a few centuries later, and had the chance to live the Star Trek life. A lifetime of exploring space sounds great to me.
I know, it's a little frustrating when you realize how far apart things are in space. That, matched with the political pressure to constantly cut funding to NASA means you're going to get a lot of skepticism of space flight in general. It's not cheap, it's not easy. We've done orbital flights plenty of times, even put a space station up there. We were lucky to have a moon that was pretty close and we were able to land there. Past the moon though, everything is a lot farther apart. The next step would be a manned mission to Mars but the hurdles and amount of funding required to overcome them are so great that not many politicians think it's a wise place to spend money.
Although I understand people having problems with how much we spend on keeping the ISS functional, there is one very important reason of having it. So we can study the long term effects of weightlessness on people. Any sort of manned mission to another planet is going to have to face and overcome this problem, unless an spacecraft is made to generate it artificially.
http://www.emergencyemail.org/nasawang3.asp
One video on NASA's site shows the complete launch but no audio. The other shows just the first part of the launch but with audio(including the cool sound of the orbiter engines ingiting).
Yeah, I'm a little cynical of people who look at Rutan's excellent milestone in the private sector and then think the Shuttle and NASA are way behind the curve. As other's have noted, a sub-orbital parabolic flight is simply not on the same level as launching a shuttle, with a crew of 7 and plenty of cargo space, into orbit around the Earth. The energy required for the later is quite a bit more. And since that energy comes in the form of fuel that takes up most of the weight of the craft when loaded, the structural mechanics that go into the orbiter, external fuel tank, and two SRBs seem to simply be on a grander scale then Space Ship One.
Of course I'm not a rocket scientist so please feel free to point out the flaws in my observations.
Unless you are "fighting terror", an improperly conducted search will get thrown out by the courts and then the "bad guys" usually get a walk.
Why should there be an exception for "fighting terror?"
It is the mindset though. Look for more and more things to fall under the concept of 'fighting terror' as a way to get around due process and the Bill of Rights. I remember hearing some guy on NPR say some members of LA gangs were 'street terrorists'.
I understand where you're coming from. Both your comment on how Java is best for small programs and that many people stick to C/C++ because it's what they know.
I really do think one of the best insights a programmer can get is to take some C code and run it through a disassembler. Takes a little low-level background knowledge but I think one of the best insights a programmer can achieve is to understand exactly what the processor does from a line of code in C. Like the basic concept of calling a function. The memory address after the call is pushed on the stack and the instruction register of the processor is loaded with the memory address of the function entry point. Or when a function returns a value. How many people know the processor puts the return value in the accumulater register(on 80x86, it's EAX)? That sort of knowledge helps figure out how type-casting works and I think gives the programmer a much better knowledge about how the language actually works.
I'm still not convinced. I work for a huge telecom company(think recent merger) which builds Enterprise-level network switches. We use C and C++. We have a 800mhz Freescale PPC to work with and 256mb of 333mhz DDR memory. On our edge routers that's it. On our core switches each blade has it's own PPC processor to interact with the switching ASIC from another company.
So we have decent processing power but I can't imagine trying to do what we do in Java. We basically analyze packet headers, figure out where they're suppose to go, and then copy the packet to the right port. If there was an integeral GUI component then I could see a point in Java. Automatic garbage collection would be nice but probably not worth the speed hit. We already have code in place to help from memory leaks occuring.
There's also a team at work that's working on a network management program all in Java. One PC to control an entire network of switches and computers through SNMP. There's been issues with GUI control placement across platforms. The thing is a resource hog and it's recommended to have at least a gig of memory or more. And even though it's programmed in Java and has touted as cross platform compatible it's developed and tested in Windows and hence runs best in it. And besides, how much more cost effective can you get then a cheap PC running Windows?
I still see embedded applications being dominated by lower-level code for a while. An engineer I worked with left the company for a job working on medical devices. Development is in C++.
We're at the peak of the windowing environment. We can make the windows look as pretty as we want but it's not going to change how we work with our applications. And hence any new display of those windows will eventually wear off and we'll feel the same about working with our computers that we did 10 years ago.
Why can't they accelerate it to Mach 5+ and have it go up? Why do they have to start from a huge height and drop it into the ground?
SimGene?
If these Yahoo's thought they were doing the "Right thing" it speaks volumes about the DHS hiring policies and procedures.
Who do you think are the type of people who'd WANT to become this type of an enforcer in the first place?
My first accelerated video card was the Diamond Speedstar 24x as well. It featured a Western Digital chip. Included a fast bit-block(blitter) but wasn't as fast at vectors or line drawing as S3's 911. I'd say the 911 was the first mainstream accelerator for PCs. What kept me and others away from it was that it required expensive VRAM and the bus transfers when the card was in standard VGA modes were incredibly slow so some DOS games would run like a dog even with a fast processor.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050901/pl_nm/weather_ katrina_funding_dc
Flood insurance in this country is handled by the federal government. Even if you purchase your policy through a private agency, they're simply the go between. Try to purchase flood insurance with the same coverage and deductible through several agencies and they'll quote you around the same price.
Because the feds handle all flood insurance, does that mean they are more liable for handling flood protection measures, NO's levees in this instance, then they would be handling other infrastructure?
I'm just curious what people think.
According to this, the Bush administration's cut in fundings DID hamper strengthening levees. Seems like a pretty straight cause and effect relation.
I think that's too simplistic. The federal government cares way too much about PR then to allow racist beliefs in a few top officials to over power what the country thinks of them. In any deficit of the feds I think incompetance is the main factor.