Everything is made to be "disposable" these days, and it's slowly killing the planet. Meanwhile, the corporations are killing the economies by hiring the cheapest illegal (usually) labor they can find. This snowball is leading us to hell.
I am not an economist, but from what I hear, consumer spending is a big deal at least in the United States. Hell, consumers are charged with turning the economy around by spending heavily during the christmas season especially.
Corporations will make goods with intentionally small lifetime, we (as consumers) will buy more of these goods to replace the broken ones, so that the corporations can make more goods, so that we (as consumer)..... and so forth. Seems to me that this is a pretty bad spiral to base an economy on.
Mix this in with fiberoptics or cameras, and you can have your the paint display what is on the opposite side of the vehicle. You will effectively see through the vehicle.
btw, it would much faster to draw diagrams like scribbling on a piece of paper instead of finding shapes in libraries, dragging them onto the diagram area and adjusting its size and properties.
With electronic paper developments it would be neat to see actual desktop computers.
Imagine a sheet of e-paper with touch sensitive layer on top of it on an engineer's desk. The engineer uses a stilus to enter schematic diagrams and navigate the UI. A virtual keyboard program can be started for text entries.
This paradigm would work for a lot of things an average user would use a computer for: web surfing, e-mail, text processing. It would probably be a tough fit for multimedia and gaming, though.
to expand on a point... most technology-oriented fields, except for maybe comp-sci, need to have laboratory experience. In CS, a home computer setup can be your lab. In disciplines like engineering, biotech, chemistry, materials, and etc. one needs to have access to labs with expensive equipment in order to develop their skills.
There's nothing special about running digital signals over barbed wire as this article points out about half way through.
Quoting from the article:
Only four properties really affect the performance of most digital transmission structures. The "big four" transmission-line properties are impedance, delay, high-frequency loss, and crosstalk.
Crosstalk in a barbed-wire configuration is controlled by enforcing a large spacing between the pairs, as compared with the much smaller spacing between the individual wires of each pair. The glass case in Broadcom's demonstration was easily large enough to accommodate such spacing, so crosstalk wasn't a problem.
What about the high-frequency loss? It wasn't a problem either. The T4 system divides its data among the four pairs, so that each pair operates at only 25 Mbps. At that low frequency the skin-effect resistance of 4 ft of barbed wire is insignificant, and the overall high-frequency loss in the glass case at 25 Mbps was practically nil.
The signal delay is less on barbed wire than on an equivalent length of PVC-insulated Category 3 wiring, due to the use of an air dielectric between the barbed strands. This difference in delay was insignificant, however, because of the serial nature of the communications architecture.
Finally, if you consider the characteristic impedance, you find that this quantity is just a fixed number, such as 75 or 150V. For most cables, it varies little with frequency of 1 to 100 MHz, but it varies significantly with the spacing between the wires. You can intentionally set the spacing to create almost any impedance you want. Inside the glass case, the spacing between barbed strands was set to create an impedance of 100V --the same impedance as in the Category 3 UTP cabling on either side of the glass case. Thus, the case introduced no impedance discontinuity.
In summary, the barbed wire had zero impact on signal quality. The signals went through perfectly undistorted.
BEAM (Biology Electronics Aesthetics Mechanics) is a robot design phylosophy based on analog design (About BEAM) and advocating scouring for parts in old/broken equipment. Much of the designs use digital parts (inverters, NAND gates, etc), but exploit the analog properties of those parts to achieve intelligence. Some designs are extremely non-deterministic, and, arguable, show imergent behavior and learning. Many designs are also solar -powered, which makes the creatures self-sufficient.
Mark Tilden (the father of BEAM) and his robots have been featured in Discovery Channle programs.
But seriously, would you ever, ever, ever do a Star Trek anything again...
There was a TNG marathon on a couple of weeks ago (I think it was TNT) and he appeared in commercial breaks talking about the show. So, yes, he's doing things that are Star Trek somethings.
You don't know what they are most likely thinking, you're just using an image that was developed in your head through the media or whatever experiences you've had to paint a picture that most comfortably fits your view of the world. And that picture is that they are unreasonable and insane -- freaks. That in itself is part of the problem that the United States is facing right now.
Islam "officials" have long established that suicide bombers are not martyrs and do not go to heaven. So, some groups are training these people to think otherwise. Trying to eradicate those groups with force has obviously failed, so why not try to understand the motivation for their hatered and find some common ground. Because the US knows that it will continue to earn hatred and vengeance of those who they attack in retribution and their allies. It's a spiral of violence that is self-propetuating.
Unfortunatelly most of the public agrees with you, and non-violent alternatives will be brushed aside as not having enough impact to correct the situation in the public's eye. I mean, broadcasting a boring summit or a debate is much less fun than showing bombs drop.
That's right, they are probably not willing to sit down and talk anymore. Why is that, do you think?
I am thinking that the United States has screwed them over one way or another to the point that they feel that terror is the only option.
For example, the US financed and trained Afghani militants to fight agains the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan. Once the Soviets pulled out, they turned the militias on themselves. The country is still in ruines and in civil unrest.
Plus, I don't think the US would sit down with them even if there were willing. The US pulled out of a conference on racism just to make a statement. So, instead of sitting down and arguing things out in hopes of finding a common ground, the US effectively ignores them.
What would be an appropriate response to that? Invasion?
Just answering a rhetorical question.... Remember the USSR and their campaign in Afghanistan. A huge world power fighting guerillas fortified in the mountains and loosing miserably.
Sane people don't use terrorism, and fanaticals and the insane don't care about consequences.
I agree with the rest of your response, but I don't think it's right to dismiss whoever did this as insane because that simply perpetuates the idea that these people are impossible to reason with, which is not true. Desperate is probably what these people are. If the United States and its allies are going to retaliate with more force it will just perpetuate the violence further down the spiral. I am not condoning these acts of terrorism, but the world power should be the one to rise above this and find a solution other than violence.
This sort of telepresence idea would be good for a project like HAL -- a "child" computer program being raised using speech by Ai in Israel. Speech itself is not much of a sensory input to experience the world through compared with touch and vision, and yes, moving the whole system around would be a pain.
Yes, that is exactly why giant monsters, natural disasters, riots, military coups in movies usually take place in huge cities. Hollywood seems to play to a subconscious desire for their destruction.
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I am not an economist, but from what I hear, consumer spending is a big deal at least in the United States. Hell, consumers are charged with turning the economy around by spending heavily during the christmas season especially.
Corporations will make goods with intentionally small lifetime, we (as consumers) will buy more of these goods to replace the broken ones, so that the corporations can make more goods, so that we (as consumer)..... and so forth. Seems to me that this is a pretty bad spiral to base an economy on.
A titanium based hair gel of course! :O Search this page for "titanium".
The article also says, "Canada's Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia has the highest tides in the world, at about 39 feet. "
Mix this in with fiberoptics or cameras, and you can have your the paint display what is on the opposite side of the vehicle. You will effectively see through the vehicle.
Data transfer rate of SATA physical layer is 1.5Gb/s. See page 37 of the SATA spec.
IBM's name is on the front page of the SATA specification.
btw, it would much faster to draw diagrams like scribbling on a piece of paper instead of finding shapes in libraries, dragging them onto the diagram area and adjusting its size and properties.
Imagine a sheet of e-paper with touch sensitive layer on top of it on an engineer's desk. The engineer uses a stilus to enter schematic diagrams and navigate the UI. A virtual keyboard program can be started for text entries.
This paradigm would work for a lot of things an average user would use a computer for: web surfing, e-mail, text processing. It would probably be a tough fit for multimedia and gaming, though.
to expand on a point... most technology-oriented fields, except for maybe comp-sci, need to have laboratory experience. In CS, a home computer setup can be your lab. In disciplines like engineering, biotech, chemistry, materials, and etc. one needs to have access to labs with expensive equipment in order to develop their skills.
Quoting from the article:
Only four properties really affect the performance of most digital transmission structures. The "big four" transmission-line properties are impedance, delay, high-frequency loss, and crosstalk.
Crosstalk in a barbed-wire configuration is controlled by enforcing a large spacing between the pairs, as compared with the much smaller spacing between the individual wires of each pair. The glass case in Broadcom's demonstration was easily large enough to accommodate such spacing, so crosstalk wasn't a problem.
What about the high-frequency loss? It wasn't a problem either. The T4 system divides its data among the four pairs, so that each pair operates at only 25 Mbps. At that low frequency the skin-effect resistance of 4 ft of barbed wire is insignificant, and the overall high-frequency loss in the glass case at 25 Mbps was practically nil.
The signal delay is less on barbed wire than on an equivalent length of PVC-insulated Category 3 wiring, due to the use of an air dielectric between the barbed strands. This difference in delay was insignificant, however, because of the serial nature of the communications architecture.
Finally, if you consider the characteristic impedance, you find that this quantity is just a fixed number, such as 75 or 150V. For most cables, it varies little with frequency of 1 to 100 MHz, but it varies significantly with the spacing between the wires. You can intentionally set the spacing to create almost any impedance you want. Inside the glass case, the spacing between barbed strands was set to create an impedance of 100V --the same impedance as in the Category 3 UTP cabling on either side of the glass case. Thus, the case introduced no impedance discontinuity.
In summary, the barbed wire had zero impact on signal quality. The signals went through perfectly undistorted.
There are lots of plans around the Web to build any kind of mp3 player you can wish. One of the sites that consolidates links to mp3 projects is here.
Mark Tilden (the father of BEAM) and his robots have been featured in Discovery Channle programs.
There was a TNG marathon on a couple of weeks ago (I think it was TNT) and he appeared in commercial breaks talking about the show. So, yes, he's doing things that are Star Trek somethings.
Islam "officials" have long established that suicide bombers are not martyrs and do not go to heaven. So, some groups are training these people to think otherwise. Trying to eradicate those groups with force has obviously failed, so why not try to understand the motivation for their hatered and find some common ground. Because the US knows that it will continue to earn hatred and vengeance of those who they attack in retribution and their allies. It's a spiral of violence that is self-propetuating.
Unfortunatelly most of the public agrees with you, and non-violent alternatives will be brushed aside as not having enough impact to correct the situation in the public's eye. I mean, broadcasting a boring summit or a debate is much less fun than showing bombs drop.
I am thinking that the United States has screwed them over one way or another to the point that they feel that terror is the only option.
For example, the US financed and trained Afghani militants to fight agains the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan. Once the Soviets pulled out, they turned the militias on themselves. The country is still in ruines and in civil unrest.
Plus, I don't think the US would sit down with them even if there were willing. The US pulled out of a conference on racism just to make a statement. So, instead of sitting down and arguing things out in hopes of finding a common ground, the US effectively ignores them.
Just answering a rhetorical question.... Remember the USSR and their campaign in Afghanistan. A huge world power fighting guerillas fortified in the mountains and loosing miserably.
Sane people don't use terrorism, and fanaticals and the insane don't care about consequences.
I agree with the rest of your response, but I don't think it's right to dismiss whoever did this as insane because that simply perpetuates the idea that these people are impossible to reason with, which is not true. Desperate is probably what these people are. If the United States and its allies are going to retaliate with more force it will just perpetuate the violence further down the spiral. I am not condoning these acts of terrorism, but the world power should be the one to rise above this and find a solution other than violence.
This sort of telepresence idea would be good for a project like HAL -- a "child" computer program being raised using speech by Ai in Israel. Speech itself is not much of a sensory input to experience the world through compared with touch and vision, and yes, moving the whole system around would be a pain.
Yes, that is exactly why giant monsters, natural disasters, riots, military coups in movies usually take place in huge cities. Hollywood seems to play to a subconscious desire for their destruction.