Forget diesel, I want a grease powered car! Those fancypants Detroit automakers and Texas oil drillers may think they have a hold on the American market. They may think the American people are too stupid to convert to cheaper, cleaner, more efficient technologies already proven overseas, but we'll prove them wrong. Pull up to a McDonalds and siphon some fuel from the Fry-O-Lator, that'll show 'em.
Assuming that this is a simialar system to the wire taps used on the soviets in the 80s, the taps are set on the cable, and pods with nuclear reactors are placed alongside. The pods are carried in submarine torpedo tubes, and record massive ammounts of data onto tape drives. When the drives are getting full (or need to be checked) the pod containing the tapes is retrieved by a submarine and a new one is placed on the ocean floor, and connected to the power pod. This is not a system meant to let the government eavesdrop in real time by any means.
The australian space program has a web site
here that has a blurb about the new contract. Looking through the site's old news and programs, it looks like this new merger with Russia is far from the Australian excursion into space. They've launched several satelites, and done small scale research for quite a while. The new contract will expand their operations significantly however.
The evolution of Human-Computer interface
on
Review of a 3D LCD
·
· Score: 4
Finally, there is effective research being done, to make computers, as Douglas Adams (RIP) would have put it, more than typewriters with televisions in front of them. By combining a 3D display with the 3D sensory technology in development by companies like Sensable people can interact with a genuine multidimensional, immersive computer environment. Beyond the prOn possibilities of merging the technologies (fondle-able images anyone?) is a whole new world of design. Though I can't see the displays improving word processing or programming much, designing products on a 3D screen, touching them in virtual space, and printing them on 3D printers offer a whole new world of simple product development. Converse is already using a 3D printing and fax system to design shoes in boston, and give their factories in Asia models to work from.
About 3 years ago, I had the privelege of trying out a neurological interface system that was being developed by a private company in massechusetts. The system was being demonstrated through a two dimesional skiing game. The user put his finger in a sort of sensor tube, with electrodes along its length, and the skier changed direction according to their muscular twitches. The actual orientation of the controller finger didn't matter, but after a few minutes, you found that by thinking "left, left," really hard, your body would actually make the skier move. The tech was pretty cool, and, simialar to this NASA program, a way to interface the human mind more closely to a machine.
Unfortunately for this program, the ski program differs greatly from flying a combat, or even civilian aircraft. Since so many muscle movements are involuntary (what if the pilot sneezes?) The type of close interface provided by a neuromuscular interface is not ideal for an immediate reactive function. In the Apache gunship, a combat helicopter used extensively by the army, in-helmet sensors track the pilot's eye movements for hands free targeting. However, because the weapons don't automatically deploy, the gunner/pilot must consciously fire, and there is a buffer between the eye interface, dangerous consequences. A direct link flight system as examined in the article lacks a requirement for conscious authentication, and in my opinion, therefore makes the aircraft far too volatile, and prone to accidental adjustment. I know I sent the skier crashing into the trees more than once!
I think that many posters fail to understand that we're talking a looooong time in the future. The primary reason to make the switch then is that the x86 intel clones are all CISC proccesors, which is an archaic and limited architecture, destined to grow bigger and more power-hungry over time. Apple made the switch to RISC with the original PPC 601 chip, which was a great idea. What started off with a compromise on lower chips (Wozniak spent the money without Jobs' permission, and they went with the then-slower motorola 68000s) has led to an early adoption of a superior technology. AMD and Intel don't have any RISC chips in the wings, and Motorola and IBM are producing speed upgrades all the time. In the future, their experience and knowlege of RISC design will let them gain greater market share, and Linux users, as early adopters, can no doubt appreciate the gains that come with experience.
P.S. Contrary to some earlier posts, it IS possible to buy apple motherboards, and PowerPC daughtercards. I built a frankenmac that runs 4 604e proccessors, out of an old Daystar motherboard and some daughtercards that cost me $50 apiece. I call it the Beast, and it rocks my world. I'd love to drop Linux onto it, but that couldn't utilize the multiple processors. Oh well!
there is an article on this very topic. It contains the point of view of the Opengroup folks, who notably have not attacked apple for trademark infringement. Because of that, the article argues, they must be sanctioning apple's use of the term UNIX. Frankly, I think that this is not a subject worth contending, because regardless of whether it's a *nix or not, OSX is an ugly operating system with some extremely powerful software behind it. Once somebody makes it look a bit more professional, I'll jump at the chance for such a slick, *nix based system. If only it were as easy to customize as Linux....
I'm reluctant to submit the trigger hotmail, because it's not very nice to crash people's e-mail servers unless they deserve it. However, it only takes a couple of hours to make one in hotmail. Just have20-30 accounts, all of which forward to each other, and send an e-mail to one with a note to CC to your target. There are elegant programs to do this, too, but I like the idea of using simple accounts.
A couple of my friends and I have used a novel, and, most system admins tell me, extremely annoying method to get rid of SPAM. We have set up a web of auto reply and auto forward accounts in our workplaces and free websites accross the net, so that all any one of us has to do is send a CC of the solicitation to a hotmail address, and set the chain in motion. hotmail forwards to a whole bunch of accounts, which auto reply and forward to each other, every time sending a carbon copy to the sender. Usually it stops when one of the accounts maxes out its disk space, which can take quite a while. checking server logs and account statistics, I'd guess that anyone that mails me gets a deluge of about 45,000 e-mails in a minute. odd, but the same place usually doesn't e-mail twice.....
Though I am not a professional, I have provided tech support to my relatives and neighbors for many years. My favorite anectote was when my mother, (who used to program punchcards) decided that she had broken the internet. While she was vaccuuming the family room, she knocked out the ethernet cable supporting our household LAN. When none of our computers could connect, she called in tears, thinking she knocked out the WWW!
I think people generally forget that "Moore's Law" was an off the cuff optimistic guess made in an interview with Electronics Magazine in 1965. He was pretty lucky with his guess, which has held generally true for the last 35 years. The guess of exponential growth fit in really nicely with the growing industry, and emergence of the microchip in everyday life. Greater demand meant greater research, and lower prices, spurring even greater demand. However, I see a set of different factors greatly slowing that cycle.
First, as Moore said in the interview, the limits of the medium. Sub-atomic transistors are still pretty far on the horizon, and our current designs can't get much smaller.
Second, a factor Moore didn't mention, the eventual market saturation. There is no radical new application on the horizon for the microchip to cause its continued spread at such a great rate. Sure, we all like to get faster, and faster computers, but most people already have somthing that works. Unless a new market opens, investment will slow, as will research, and the entire cycle will slow.
A friend of mine got a preview model, which tanked. He nagged some tech guys at the company and they essentially told him that the software wasn't ready, and under no circumstances should he trust it to retain his information safely. Not much of a confidence builder, eh?
I personally believe that palm had the right idea. If it's going to be an organizer, make it as simple as possible. no command lines, no wacky software widgets.
My Apple newton is still working fine, crash free since '96. It surfs the web, reads REAL handwriting, and stores personal info. Isn't that enough?
Cheap, efficient power vs. the A-bomb
on
Fission in a Box
·
· Score: 2
I see a number of technologies in development that could easily give pebble beds a run for their money. The waste products of nuclear reactions, and massive strides in technology neccesary to make them more feasible on a large scale make fission a somewhat unremarkable, and unlikely choice for the powerplant of the future.
A number of power companies and research groups, under a Department of Energy initiative, are testing Solar Two -- the world's most technically advanced solar energy power plant -- in the California desert. It works like this: A 300-foot-high central receiver captures energy reflected by more than 1,900 surrounding mirrors and uses it to heat molten salt, which is, in turn, stored until it is needed to generate electricity. Solar Two, which was connected to California's grid in 1996, can itself power 10,000 homes, and alarger-scale commercial plant based on it could handle as many as 200,000.
Southern California Edison is already testing microturbines: small, clean-burning natural-gas power plants that cost a relatively inexpensive $25,000 to $200,000 to build, depending on size. Microturbines could be plopped in the middle of a city to serve a few thousand customers in the immediate area.
In whales, waves are being used to generate power for a small town. The generators are little more than small turbines and cement tubes, and were built at a very low cost.
In comparison to all of these already implemented technologies, pebble beds, which have been batted around and dismissed since the 80s, don't seem like reasonable options.
My biggest complaint about Hollywood is that they don't seem to understand the difference between Hackers and Crackers. Oh well. When I tell people I decrypt DVDs, they usually look at me like I'm going to kill them, so I guess that misunderstanding of intent is common. My favorite depiction of hackers/crackers is in the movie "Sneakers" with Robert Redford. Along with a whole bunch of comical thievery and hijinks, the main characters manage to secure a piece of hardware which can decrypt almost anything. They promptly bankrupt the republican party via the bank.
-OK Scotty, very funny, now beam me my pants.
Why doesn't anybody remember Notes from the Hellmouth? Of course there are kids out there who are oppressed and alienated in their high schools every day. I know that nobody likes to remember Jon Katz's article, and that it is very painful to read, but it has a great deal of relevance to this subject. Ashcroft's move to blame the games is absolutely ridiculous. The schools are the problem.
WoW!!!! you've inspired me to return to my favorite game of all time....daleks! I found an old copy on my mac classic a coupla days ago. I was almost overpowered by the awesomeness of the game. Stricken by the inescapable urge to sonic screwdriver, I even wrote daleks for the TI calculator yesterday. Great set of links.
Very funny Scotty, now beam me my pants.
Slashdot Mirror
Forget diesel, I want a grease powered car! Those fancypants Detroit automakers and Texas oil drillers may think they have a hold on the American market. They may think the American people are too stupid to convert to cheaper, cleaner, more efficient technologies already proven overseas, but we'll prove them wrong. Pull up to a McDonalds and siphon some fuel from the Fry-O-Lator, that'll show 'em.
Assuming that this is a simialar system to the wire taps used on the soviets in the 80s, the taps are set on the cable, and pods with nuclear reactors are placed alongside. The pods are carried in submarine torpedo tubes, and record massive ammounts of data onto tape drives. When the drives are getting full (or need to be checked) the pod containing the tapes is retrieved by a submarine and a new one is placed on the ocean floor, and connected to the power pod. This is not a system meant to let the government eavesdrop in real time by any means.
The australian space program has a web site here that has a blurb about the new contract. Looking through the site's old news and programs, it looks like this new merger with Russia is far from the Australian excursion into space. They've launched several satelites, and done small scale research for quite a while. The new contract will expand their operations significantly however.
Finally, there is effective research being done, to make computers, as Douglas Adams (RIP) would have put it, more than typewriters with televisions in front of them. By combining a 3D display with the 3D sensory technology in development by companies like Sensable people can interact with a genuine multidimensional, immersive computer environment. Beyond the prOn possibilities of merging the technologies (fondle-able images anyone?) is a whole new world of design. Though I can't see the displays improving word processing or programming much, designing products on a 3D screen, touching them in virtual space, and printing them on 3D printers offer a whole new world of simple product development. Converse is already using a 3D printing and fax system to design shoes in boston, and give their factories in Asia models to work from.
About 3 years ago, I had the privelege of trying out a neurological interface system that was being developed by a private company in massechusetts. The system was being demonstrated through a two dimesional skiing game. The user put his finger in a sort of sensor tube, with electrodes along its length, and the skier changed direction according to their muscular twitches. The actual orientation of the controller finger didn't matter, but after a few minutes, you found that by thinking "left, left," really hard, your body would actually make the skier move. The tech was pretty cool, and, simialar to this NASA program, a way to interface the human mind more closely to a machine.
Unfortunately for this program, the ski program differs greatly from flying a combat, or even civilian aircraft. Since so many muscle movements are involuntary (what if the pilot sneezes?) The type of close interface provided by a neuromuscular interface is not ideal for an immediate reactive function. In the Apache gunship, a combat helicopter used extensively by the army, in-helmet sensors track the pilot's eye movements for hands free targeting. However, because the weapons don't automatically deploy, the gunner/pilot must consciously fire, and there is a buffer between the eye interface, dangerous consequences. A direct link flight system as examined in the article lacks a requirement for conscious authentication, and in my opinion, therefore makes the aircraft far too volatile, and prone to accidental adjustment. I know I sent the skier crashing into the trees more than once!
I think that many posters fail to understand that we're talking a looooong time in the future. The primary reason to make the switch then is that the x86 intel clones are all CISC proccesors, which is an archaic and limited architecture, destined to grow bigger and more power-hungry over time. Apple made the switch to RISC with the original PPC 601 chip, which was a great idea. What started off with a compromise on lower chips (Wozniak spent the money without Jobs' permission, and they went with the then-slower motorola 68000s) has led to an early adoption of a superior technology. AMD and Intel don't have any RISC chips in the wings, and Motorola and IBM are producing speed upgrades all the time. In the future, their experience and knowlege of RISC design will let them gain greater market share, and Linux users, as early adopters, can no doubt appreciate the gains that come with experience.
P.S. Contrary to some earlier posts, it IS possible to buy apple motherboards, and PowerPC daughtercards. I built a frankenmac that runs 4 604e proccessors, out of an old Daystar motherboard and some daughtercards that cost me $50 apiece. I call it the Beast, and it rocks my world. I'd love to drop Linux onto it, but that couldn't utilize the multiple processors. Oh well!
there is an article on this very topic. It contains the point of view of the Opengroup folks, who notably have not attacked apple for trademark infringement. Because of that, the article argues, they must be sanctioning apple's use of the term UNIX. Frankly, I think that this is not a subject worth contending, because regardless of whether it's a *nix or not, OSX is an ugly operating system with some extremely powerful software behind it. Once somebody makes it look a bit more professional, I'll jump at the chance for such a slick, *nix based system. If only it were as easy to customize as Linux....
I'm reluctant to submit the trigger hotmail, because it's not very nice to crash people's e-mail servers unless they deserve it. However, it only takes a couple of hours to make one in hotmail. Just have20-30 accounts, all of which forward to each other, and send an e-mail to one with a note to CC to your target. There are elegant programs to do this, too, but I like the idea of using simple accounts.
A couple of my friends and I have used a novel, and, most system admins tell me, extremely annoying method to get rid of SPAM. We have set up a web of auto reply and auto forward accounts in our workplaces and free websites accross the net, so that all any one of us has to do is send a CC of the solicitation to a hotmail address, and set the chain in motion. hotmail forwards to a whole bunch of accounts, which auto reply and forward to each other, every time sending a carbon copy to the sender. Usually it stops when one of the accounts maxes out its disk space, which can take quite a while. checking server logs and account statistics, I'd guess that anyone that mails me gets a deluge of about 45,000 e-mails in a minute. odd, but the same place usually doesn't e-mail twice.....
Though I am not a professional, I have provided tech support to my relatives and neighbors for many years. My favorite anectote was when my mother, (who used to program punchcards) decided that she had broken the internet. While she was vaccuuming the family room, she knocked out the ethernet cable supporting our household LAN. When none of our computers could connect, she called in tears, thinking she knocked out the WWW!
I think people generally forget that "Moore's Law" was an off the cuff optimistic guess made in an interview with Electronics Magazine in 1965. He was pretty lucky with his guess, which has held generally true for the last 35 years. The guess of exponential growth fit in really nicely with the growing industry, and emergence of the microchip in everyday life. Greater demand meant greater research, and lower prices, spurring even greater demand. However, I see a set of different factors greatly slowing that cycle. First, as Moore said in the interview, the limits of the medium. Sub-atomic transistors are still pretty far on the horizon, and our current designs can't get much smaller. Second, a factor Moore didn't mention, the eventual market saturation. There is no radical new application on the horizon for the microchip to cause its continued spread at such a great rate. Sure, we all like to get faster, and faster computers, but most people already have somthing that works. Unless a new market opens, investment will slow, as will research, and the entire cycle will slow.
A friend of mine got a preview model, which tanked. He nagged some tech guys at the company and they essentially told him that the software wasn't ready, and under no circumstances should he trust it to retain his information safely. Not much of a confidence builder, eh?
I personally believe that palm had the right idea. If it's going to be an organizer, make it as simple as possible. no command lines, no wacky software widgets.
My Apple newton is still working fine, crash free since '96. It surfs the web, reads REAL handwriting, and stores personal info. Isn't that enough?
I see a number of technologies in development that could easily give pebble beds a run for their money. The waste products of nuclear reactions, and massive strides in technology neccesary to make them more feasible on a large scale make fission a somewhat unremarkable, and unlikely choice for the powerplant of the future.
A number of power companies and research groups, under a Department of Energy initiative, are testing Solar Two -- the world's most technically advanced solar energy power plant -- in the California desert. It works like this: A 300-foot-high central receiver captures energy reflected by more than 1,900 surrounding mirrors and uses it to heat molten salt, which is, in turn, stored until it is needed to generate electricity. Solar Two, which was connected to California's grid in 1996, can itself power 10,000 homes, and alarger-scale commercial plant based on it could handle as many as 200,000.
Southern California Edison is already testing microturbines: small, clean-burning natural-gas power plants that cost a relatively inexpensive $25,000 to $200,000 to build, depending on size. Microturbines could be plopped in the middle of a city to serve a few thousand customers in the immediate area.
In whales, waves are being used to generate power for a small town. The generators are little more than small turbines and cement tubes, and were built at a very low cost.
In comparison to all of these already implemented technologies, pebble beds, which have been batted around and dismissed since the 80s, don't seem like reasonable options.
I have been tracking the Movie's development on the web. Looks Excelent. Very Funny Scotty, now beam me some pants.
My biggest complaint about Hollywood is that they don't seem to understand the difference between Hackers and Crackers. Oh well. When I tell people I decrypt DVDs, they usually look at me like I'm going to kill them, so I guess that misunderstanding of intent is common. My favorite depiction of hackers/crackers is in the movie "Sneakers" with Robert Redford. Along with a whole bunch of comical thievery and hijinks, the main characters manage to secure a piece of hardware which can decrypt almost anything. They promptly bankrupt the republican party via the bank. -OK Scotty, very funny, now beam me my pants.
Why doesn't anybody remember Notes from the Hellmouth? Of course there are kids out there who are oppressed and alienated in their high schools every day. I know that nobody likes to remember Jon Katz's article, and that it is very painful to read, but it has a great deal of relevance to this subject. Ashcroft's move to blame the games is absolutely ridiculous. The schools are the problem.
WoW!!!! you've inspired me to return to my favorite game of all time....daleks! I found an old copy on my mac classic a coupla days ago. I was almost overpowered by the awesomeness of the game. Stricken by the inescapable urge to sonic screwdriver, I even wrote daleks for the TI calculator yesterday. Great set of links. Very funny Scotty, now beam me my pants.