The author sounds a bit cranky, like Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes, but the underlying point is good. I have encountered a particularly bad example of features interfering with simple tasks:
My university library replaced all the photocopiers with some fancy shrink/enlarge/collate/digitize/duplex models. In my mind, the one feature a photocopier should present is the ability to lay down a page, press a button, and get a copy. But no, these machines required you to enter the paper size, number of copies, and cropping options first. And then, once you copied one page, you had to do it all again for the next. I'm sure these machines are very efficient for a person who has some complex copy jobs and is trained properly, but they are inappropriate in a library where most people have simple tasks and will never use the same machine again.
In programming, I try to follow the theme of keeping simple things simple. In
my C++ class for a random number generator, you can initialize and seed the generator with no parameters. The code gets a seed from/dev/urandom or time() on its own, since that's what most people would do anyways. If someone wants to be more careful, they can do the seeding themselves, but software should always allow simple tasks to be performed easily.
More CPU power might not be a pressing need for home users, but in science and business there are plenty of applications that would benefit from CPU's running 1,000 times faster than today:
Scientific computing
Protein folding
Drug design and discovery
Materials modeling
Virtual tests of nuclear fission and fusion
Speech recognition and translation
More human-friendly computer interfaces
Animation and special effects (e.g., Pixar and Lord of the Rings)
Maybe some other readers can add to this list. We should appreciate what's possible today that was impractical 15 years ago and imagine what could become possible with another 1,000x speedup.
Many of these ideas are already embodied in
Magic Online, the digital facet of the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering.
Direct Sale of Virtual Objects - To start playing Magic Online, you have to buy the digital booster packs from the manufacturer. The price is the same as the paper version.
Conversion to the Real World - If you collect a full set of cards online, then you can redeem them for the paper version. Paper Magic cards commonly sell for $2 to $20 at stores or on eBay. There is a corresponding market for buying and selling the cards online.
Profiting from Economic Exchange Inside the Game - There is a system for trading cards between players. Unfortunately, it's rather awkward and inefficient. The manufacturer shows no interest in setting up an automated auction system -- they probably profit by making it easier to just buy more cards than to distribute the existing pool of cards more efficiently.
Populating the World - Because of differences in card rarities, it's impossible to redeem all of one's online cards into paper cards. Thus the manufacturer is guaranteed that more money goes into the game than can come out. Plus, many players find the online cards to be more fun and useful than the paper ones -- they never get worn, they are easy to sort, and there are always opponents ready for a game.
Legal Issues - There are tournaments running constantly online that pay out cards as prizes. So a player can acquire new cards just through skill and an entry fee. Eligibility is restricted in certain states, but this form of winning goods by playing cards seems to be viewed differently than poker or blackjack.
Security - Each player's account is password protected. The biggest source of fraud seems to be social engineering -- tricking someone into giving away their cards or password. There have been no reports of server break-ins, but if there were cases they would probably be handled more like bank robberies than hacking on a Diablo server.
I developed a technique for making
snapshows, or animated snapshots. The idea is to take a series of digital photographs from slightly different angles and link them into an animation (sample, sample). The effect is similar to "bullet-time" -- a picture with a little bit of motion and 3-D depth.
Snapshows require a format that can store a full-color animation of just a few frames long. GIF is out since it's limited to 8-bit color, and MPEG is too complicated and lossy. MNG worked just about right. The biggest problems were that the available editors were a bit weak and buggy and the only browser with MNG support was Mozilla. I hoped that MNG would catch on in the mainstream. Sad to hear that it's falling out of even Mozilla.
While the Columbia was in orbit, the Boeing engineers made a presentation to NASA about their prior tests of how much damage the foam might do.
Edward Tufte
has
analyzed the slides
and illustrated how not to present scientfic data. Basically, the actual foam chunk was far larger than anything they had used in testing. But poor wording and misleading statements obscured that important point.
Tufte also examined the Challenger evidence in his excellent book
Visual Explanations.
So at some point we'll have enough processing power to simulate faster than real time.
It is logically impossible to simulate faster than real time. Suppose we build a simulator (hardware + software) that can carry out the calculations of physics in full detail. The amount of matter that this system can simulate must be smaller than the system itself or else the simulation must run slower than real time.
If the simulator could run faster than real time, then we could program it to simulate itself plus a little bit of something else. And that simulated simulator could simulate yet another simulator plus some more. In the end we would have a recursive simulator that also happens to perform an infinite amount of computation on the side. This is either an impossibility or a mind-bogglingly useful tool that I'd like to patent.
Of course you can get around the simulation speedup barrier by simplifying the simulated system. But the simulated system will lack the capabilities and magic of the real system. For example, in my solid-state device laboratory we can simulate the processing of device wafers (masking, photolithography, doping, etching, etc.). The software simplifies the actual atomic motions with equations of bulk diffusion. The modeled wafer lets us predict the properties from a fabrication recipe (much quicker than doing the fabrication), but it is useless for actually performing the calculations that the real wafer will do.
Good thought. The crystal structure of a
silicon
wafer is the same as a
carbon
diamond.
Germanium,
too, routinely grows in a diamond structure. But carbon also forms graphite, which is a sheetlike structure. Carbon nanotubes are essentially rolled up graphite sheets. But silicon and germanium are not stable in sheet structures, so they can't roll into nanotubes.
However, intense research of carbon is what led to the discovery of buckyballs and nanotubes. Perhaps there other cool forms of silicon which are yet to be discovered.
On a different topic, how do the NASA researchers propose to connect the nanotubes in a useful way? I can understand growing the tubes on a silicon wafer and filling in the surrounding space, but this just produces a bunch of parallel wires not a designed circuit.
Of course, maybe it's not possible to manufacture these cartridges more cheaply, for some technical reason that I don't understand.
The cartridge in your HP printer doesn't just hold ink, it also contains the inkjet print head. It's actually quite a high-tech achievement to spray miniscule ink droplets quickly and controllably. The nozzles are also prone to clogging from dust and dried ink. By including the print head on the ink jet cartridge, consumers end up simple replacing the critical component rather than dealing with maintenance.
By comparison, the rest of the printer hardware is fairly simple -- load paper, scan print head back and forth, interpret Postscript. Some third party manufacturer can't simply decide to sell cheaper cartridges because the cartridge includes an expensive (and probably well-patented) print head. You can buy cheap ink refill kits to simply inject inket into your old cartridge, but the quality will suffer as the nozzles degrade.
"Genetic 'mutation' is responsible for EVERYTHING, people."
Genes are responsible for everything? Like democracy came from a "democracy gene"? Currency emerged from a "money gene"? The Wright brothers were the first carriers of a "flight gene"? The Internet couldn't be invented until some scientist stood too close to a microwave and mutated an "HTTP gene"?
All these technologies came into being as a result of social and scientific development. Presumably we've all had the mental capacity for these things since prehistoric times, but it took communication and the cumulative work of generations to create them. This is in contrast with physiological changes like "mostly hairless body" that require genetic mutation, not just new ideas.
I think the conventional wisdom is that language was like these technologies -- early homo sapiens had the capacity, but it took time for grunts to be gradually refined into words. This research suggests that language wasn't possible until a special genetic change occurred, putting it in the same category as "most hairless body" mutation rather than the unleashing of a dormant capacity.
"But if you are the only person to have language, what good does it do you?"
Well, if it's a dominant trait then you'll pass it on to some of your offspring. Then they will be able to talk to you and each other, forming a stronger tribe that rapidly grows due to the power of group organization.
I can also imagine benefits from language even in a single person. When I write quickly, my handwriting is nearly illegible to anyone else. But the notes in my day planner and shopping list certainly improve my efficiency by augmenting memory alone.
Here is another form of spam that was new to me. Apparently some German pr0n site operators are filling
my guestbook
with bogus entries linked to their offerings. It seemed an odd way to advertise at first (who the heck visits
my site,
much less reads my guestbook;-), but now I realize that it helps their Google stats.
For now I'll delete the entries by hand, but if this increases it could get really annoying.
I agree that, in terms of image quality, digital cameras don't hold a candle to film. And analog tools for image manipulation are much richer than digital.
But, digital has the advantage of incredible convenience. I can shoot a picture, crop it, and post it online in 30 minutes. When making portraits, I can capture a dozen pictures and keep the best ones. And I can see the final image immediately and decide whether to try other poses. This introduces more spontaneity and experimentation into photography.
Also, digital lends itself better to certain creations, like animated snapshows
(example,
example,
tutorial).
So, digital cameras are inferior if you'll use them exactly like a film camera. But if you take advantage of the instant feedback and negligible cost-per-shot, digital can promote great creativity.
For those in the Midwest, the restored Metropolis is also showing in Ann Arbor, Michigan (are you listening CmdrTaco?) at the
Michigan
Theater. From their classic film series schedule:
Sound of Silents: METROPOLIS Digitally Restored Print! September 21 With live organ accompaniment September 22 With restored 60-piece orchestral soundtrack
It's a beautifully restored theater, built in the Roaring 20's, with gold trim, chandeliers, a balcony, and a pre-show organist.
Web-browsing used to being up a plethora of intelligent, well-written, interesting pages.... Now that everybody and their pet dingo are online, the quality of content has gone down dramatically; especially on unmoderated forums. Proper spelling and grammar have all but disappeared from the 'net.
Does the poor spelling of others make you spell worse? Do pet dingo pages prevent you from posting thoughtful essays? I'll buy that the average quality of the Web has gone down, but this should not decrease the number of good sites. As more people enter the Web community, the number of creative people people should actually increase.
Maybe we spend more time on the Web not because it is more mature, but we are more mature. In the early days I spent too much time looking at personal sites, reading comics, and watching fish cams. It took away from my other activities and left me with an icky "Dorito syndrome" feeling after a too-long session. Now I read just a few sites daily plus what's recommended to me by people I respect. And it's balanced by more time painting and programming, both of which get published to the Web. So my time spent online has gone down, but the quality of my contribution has gone up!
I know of what you speak. In high school, all my music was on cassette tapes. I later bought some of the same albums on CD, thinking the quality would be better. But actually I prefer the old tapes -- a bit softer, richer, and smoother.
But couldn't analog-like filters be applied to digital recordings? Sort of like when you watch Martha Stewart on TV -- they use a blurry lense to give the show a warm, fuzzy feeling. With the right tools, a director could modify the digital print to be soft, harsh, or distorted as the story dictates.
On the other hand, as an amateur artist I see the value of working with limited tools. I can paint more pleasingly with a sable paintbrush and watercolors than a mouse and Gimp. The old analog tools meld well with our analog minds and bodies.
In previous battles of the console wars, there was a lot of emphasis on bit counts -- from the original 8-bit NES to the 16 bit Super NES to the Nintendo 64. But the article says the GameCube processor is 32-bit.
Is this the dispelling of a bit width vs. performance myth?
Is Nintendo just filling in a gap in their NES(8)-SNES(16)-GCN(32)-N64(64) line?
Will Intel unveil a high-performing 300 MHz Pentium 5?
Pardon me if this is a dumb question, but do the common Linux distributions support this feature? I know that I can switch to a different console with CTRL-ALT-F6, but can I have multiple users' desktops running simultaneously?
LPG stands for Liquified Petroleum Gas. It's a mixture of propane and butane. The advantage of these gases is that it takes only a moderate pressure at ambient temperatures to convert them to liquids. Liquid fuel is great because it's compact and easy to transport.
Hydrogen, on the other hand, has a boiling point of 20 K at atmospheric pressure (a bone chilling -423 degrees F)! So tanks would need some serious insulation in addition to handling high pressure. Due to its smaller molecules, it also leaks easier than LNG.
The best way to store hydrogen is probably in a hydrogen-rich compound like methanol, which is liquid at ambient conditions. My research group, among many others, is studying ways to efficiently convert methanol to hydrogen + carbon dioxide + water at the point of use. This would allow us to fuel our cars, RV's, or cell phones with convenient methanol and then run hydrogen fuel cells.
Don't worry about the carbon dioxide from that reaction. The methanol would presumably come from biomass or nuclear/solar-powered synthesis that consumes carbon dioxide. The carbon is just a carrier for the hydrogen, and there is no net CO2 pollution.
While I agree that we must soon carry on and be productive despite attempts to destroy our nation, closing schools and businesses today makes good sense. There could be tens of thousands of deaths from these attacks. That makes it quite probable that you or a coworker just lost a friend or relative. Even those who aren't effected directly are understandably upset and shocked. We need a time without school or work for reflection and mourning.
I maintain a fairly popular open source random number generator,
Mersenne Twister. My reasons for producing and supporting open source software include:
Payback for software I use
The best OS I've found to run simulations for my research is Linux. I'm indebted to the writers of the kernel, the GNU tools, gcc, plotutils, NEdit and much more. These were free to me monetarily, but writing software allows me to repay in kind.
Idealism of free (beer)
Software or information that costs $0.00 is infinitely better than that which costs $0.01. It can be copied, shared, and disbursed without hindrance. This openness leads to more users, which in turn promotes the development of better software. Free software is also far more useful. Consider how the growth of the US would be hampered if our interstates were privately owned toll roads rather than free-to-use public property.
Self expression
My job title is not computer scientist or network administrator, but computer programming is a valuable skill I possess. I write software as an outlet for my imagination and get pleasure from having my work appreciated by others.
Volunteerism
Many of us want to improve our society as a whole. I volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, the Detroit Project, and other charitable activities. Writing open source software is a way to help others escape from bad software and corporate greed.
I use my NEC laptop as my primary system for programming, web browsing, and gaming. It's a Pentium 233 MHz with 1024x768 TFT screen, 128 MB RAM, and a 5 GB hard drive. In my search for an affordable but reliable computer I found that NEC's are built tough (but rather weighty) and well supported by Linux. I got it used for $1000 two years ago, plus $100 for a Xircom modem. Today similar systems go on ebay for around $400.
I'd recommend going for the 13" 1024x768 screen if you'll be using the laptop a lot. Bigger is too expensive and smaller just doesn't give enough real estate. My Linux partition is happy at 3 GB, but if you want to play games in Windows you'll want another 3 GB at least. For the processor, 233 MHz is tolerable for programming and playing Starcraft, but more demanding applications would be much happier at >400 MHz. The touchpad on my NEC is pretty good, but adding a Logitech wheel mouse is much nicer for longer sessions.
New warnings for C code that may have undefined semantics because of violations of sequence point rules in the C standard (such as a = a++;, a[n] = b[n++]; and a[i++] = i;), included in -Wall.
I'm glad to hear that this warning has been added. I maintain an open source
random number generator
and the generation routine ran incorrectly when compiled with gcc-2.96. Fortunately a user ran the verification tests and figured out that my routines relied on a certain sequence of a[i++]=i evaluations. All the compilers that I had tested with used the same sequence, but the C standard leaves it implementation-dependent.
If a certain program raises these warnings, then it's best to know so it can be fixed. Otherwise it's likely to compile wrong on certain systems.
I just bought a new Dell Precision 420 six weeks ago. Customized it with Red Hat Linux instead of Microsoft Windows right from the Web order form. It took a minute to find that option and it was only offered on certain models, but once I did it knocked about $350 off the price! (Out of $3,000 total; it's dual processor + 512 MB RAM.) Plus it saved me the time of partioning, installing, and tweaking the setup myself.
I was feeling kind of good about supporting Red Hat and a Linux-friendly Dell. Too bad they're cutting their offerings.
The c|net artice says that Dell will continue to offer Linux on workstations. What exactly is the difference between a "workstation" and a "desktop", other than being toward the bigger/faster/more expensive end of the spectrum?
Slashdot Mirror
My university library replaced all the photocopiers with some fancy shrink/enlarge/collate/digitize/duplex models. In my mind, the one feature a photocopier should present is the ability to lay down a page, press a button, and get a copy. But no, these machines required you to enter the paper size, number of copies, and cropping options first. And then, once you copied one page, you had to do it all again for the next. I'm sure these machines are very efficient for a person who has some complex copy jobs and is trained properly, but they are inappropriate in a library where most people have simple tasks and will never use the same machine again.
In programming, I try to follow the theme of keeping simple things simple. In my C++ class for a random number generator, you can initialize and seed the generator with no parameters. The code gets a seed from /dev/urandom or time() on its own, since that's what most people would do anyways. If someone wants to be more careful, they can do the seeding themselves, but software should always allow simple tasks to be performed easily.
AlpineR
- Scientific computing
- Protein folding
- Drug design and discovery
- Materials modeling
- Virtual tests of nuclear fission and fusion
- Speech recognition and translation
- More human-friendly computer interfaces
- Animation and special effects (e.g., Pixar and Lord of the Rings)
Maybe some other readers can add to this list. We should appreciate what's possible today that was impractical 15 years ago and imagine what could become possible with another 1,000x speedup.AlpineR
- Direct Sale of Virtual Objects - To start playing Magic Online, you have to buy the digital booster packs from the manufacturer. The price is the same as the paper version.
- Conversion to the Real World - If you collect a full set of cards online, then you can redeem them for the paper version. Paper Magic cards commonly sell for $2 to $20 at stores or on eBay. There is a corresponding market for buying and selling the cards online.
- Profiting from Economic Exchange Inside the Game - There is a system for trading cards between players. Unfortunately, it's rather awkward and inefficient. The manufacturer shows no interest in setting up an automated auction system -- they probably profit by making it easier to just buy more cards than to distribute the existing pool of cards more efficiently.
- Populating the World - Because of differences in card rarities, it's impossible to redeem all of one's online cards into paper cards. Thus the manufacturer is guaranteed that more money goes into the game than can come out. Plus, many players find the online cards to be more fun and useful than the paper ones -- they never get worn, they are easy to sort, and there are always opponents ready for a game.
- Legal Issues - There are tournaments running constantly online that pay out cards as prizes. So a player can acquire new cards just through skill and an entry fee. Eligibility is restricted in certain states, but this form of winning goods by playing cards seems to be viewed differently than poker or blackjack.
- Security - Each player's account is password protected. The biggest source of fraud seems to be social engineering -- tricking someone into giving away their cards or password. There have been no reports of server break-ins, but if there were cases they would probably be handled more like bank robberies than hacking on a Diablo server.
AlpineRI developed a technique for making snapshows, or animated snapshots. The idea is to take a series of digital photographs from slightly different angles and link them into an animation (sample, sample). The effect is similar to "bullet-time" -- a picture with a little bit of motion and 3-D depth.
Snapshows require a format that can store a full-color animation of just a few frames long. GIF is out since it's limited to 8-bit color, and MPEG is too complicated and lossy. MNG worked just about right. The biggest problems were that the available editors were a bit weak and buggy and the only browser with MNG support was Mozilla. I hoped that MNG would catch on in the mainstream. Sad to hear that it's falling out of even Mozilla.
AlpineR
Tufte also examined the Challenger evidence in his excellent book Visual Explanations.
AlpineR
It is logically impossible to simulate faster than real time. Suppose we build a simulator (hardware + software) that can carry out the calculations of physics in full detail. The amount of matter that this system can simulate must be smaller than the system itself or else the simulation must run slower than real time.
If the simulator could run faster than real time, then we could program it to simulate itself plus a little bit of something else. And that simulated simulator could simulate yet another simulator plus some more. In the end we would have a recursive simulator that also happens to perform an infinite amount of computation on the side. This is either an impossibility or a mind-bogglingly useful tool that I'd like to patent.
Of course you can get around the simulation speedup barrier by simplifying the simulated system. But the simulated system will lack the capabilities and magic of the real system. For example, in my solid-state device laboratory we can simulate the processing of device wafers (masking, photolithography, doping, etching, etc.). The software simplifies the actual atomic motions with equations of bulk diffusion. The modeled wafer lets us predict the properties from a fabrication recipe (much quicker than doing the fabrication), but it is useless for actually performing the calculations that the real wafer will do.
AlpineR
However, intense research of carbon is what led to the discovery of buckyballs and nanotubes. Perhaps there other cool forms of silicon which are yet to be discovered.
On a different topic, how do the NASA researchers propose to connect the nanotubes in a useful way? I can understand growing the tubes on a silicon wafer and filling in the surrounding space, but this just produces a bunch of parallel wires not a designed circuit.
AlpineR
The cartridge in your HP printer doesn't just hold ink, it also contains the inkjet print head. It's actually quite a high-tech achievement to spray miniscule ink droplets quickly and controllably. The nozzles are also prone to clogging from dust and dried ink. By including the print head on the ink jet cartridge, consumers end up simple replacing the critical component rather than dealing with maintenance.
By comparison, the rest of the printer hardware is fairly simple -- load paper, scan print head back and forth, interpret Postscript. Some third party manufacturer can't simply decide to sell cheaper cartridges because the cartridge includes an expensive (and probably well-patented) print head. You can buy cheap ink refill kits to simply inject inket into your old cartridge, but the quality will suffer as the nozzles degrade.
AlpineR
Genes are responsible for everything? Like democracy came from a "democracy gene"? Currency emerged from a "money gene"? The Wright brothers were the first carriers of a "flight gene"? The Internet couldn't be invented until some scientist stood too close to a microwave and mutated an "HTTP gene"?
All these technologies came into being as a result of social and scientific development. Presumably we've all had the mental capacity for these things since prehistoric times, but it took communication and the cumulative work of generations to create them. This is in contrast with physiological changes like "mostly hairless body" that require genetic mutation, not just new ideas.
I think the conventional wisdom is that language was like these technologies -- early homo sapiens had the capacity, but it took time for grunts to be gradually refined into words. This research suggests that language wasn't possible until a special genetic change occurred, putting it in the same category as "most hairless body" mutation rather than the unleashing of a dormant capacity.
AlpineR
Well, if it's a dominant trait then you'll pass it on to some of your offspring. Then they will be able to talk to you and each other, forming a stronger tribe that rapidly grows due to the power of group organization.
I can also imagine benefits from language even in a single person. When I write quickly, my handwriting is nearly illegible to anyone else. But the notes in my day planner and shopping list certainly improve my efficiency by augmenting memory alone.
AlpineR
For now I'll delete the entries by hand, but if this increases it could get really annoying.
AlpineR
But, digital has the advantage of incredible convenience. I can shoot a picture, crop it, and post it online in 30 minutes. When making portraits, I can capture a dozen pictures and keep the best ones. And I can see the final image immediately and decide whether to try other poses. This introduces more spontaneity and experimentation into photography.
Also, digital lends itself better to certain creations, like animated snapshows (example, example, tutorial).
So, digital cameras are inferior if you'll use them exactly like a film camera. But if you take advantage of the instant feedback and negligible cost-per-shot, digital can promote great creativity.
AlpineR
Sound of Silents: METROPOLIS Digitally Restored Print!
September 21 With live organ accompaniment
September 22 With restored 60-piece orchestral soundtrack
It's a beautifully restored theater, built in the Roaring 20's, with gold trim, chandeliers, a balcony, and a pre-show organist.
AlpineR
Maybe we spend more time on the Web not because it is more mature, but we are more mature. In the early days I spent too much time looking at personal sites, reading comics, and watching fish cams. It took away from my other activities and left me with an icky "Dorito syndrome" feeling after a too-long session. Now I read just a few sites daily plus what's recommended to me by people I respect. And it's balanced by more time painting and programming, both of which get published to the Web. So my time spent online has gone down, but the quality of my contribution has gone up!
AlpineR
But couldn't analog-like filters be applied to digital recordings? Sort of like when you watch Martha Stewart on TV -- they use a blurry lense to give the show a warm, fuzzy feeling. With the right tools, a director could modify the digital print to be soft, harsh, or distorted as the story dictates.
On the other hand, as an amateur artist I see the value of working with limited tools. I can paint more pleasingly with a sable paintbrush and watercolors than a mouse and Gimp. The old analog tools meld well with our analog minds and bodies.
AlpineR
- Since stand-alone HDTV's are so damn expensive
- While DVD players are common in new computers
- And I have a computer anyway
- With a nice, high resolution monitor
Is it possible, now or in the near future, to watch DVD's or play Game Cube at HDTV resolution through a desktop computer?AlpineR
Is this the dispelling of a bit width vs. performance myth?
Is Nintendo just filling in a gap in their NES(8)-SNES(16)-GCN(32)-N64(64) line?
Will Intel unveil a high-performing 300 MHz Pentium 5?
AlpineR
AlpineR
Hydrogen, on the other hand, has a boiling point of 20 K at atmospheric pressure (a bone chilling -423 degrees F)! So tanks would need some serious insulation in addition to handling high pressure. Due to its smaller molecules, it also leaks easier than LNG.
The best way to store hydrogen is probably in a hydrogen-rich compound like methanol, which is liquid at ambient conditions. My research group, among many others, is studying ways to efficiently convert methanol to hydrogen + carbon dioxide + water at the point of use. This would allow us to fuel our cars, RV's, or cell phones with convenient methanol and then run hydrogen fuel cells.
Don't worry about the carbon dioxide from that reaction. The methanol would presumably come from biomass or nuclear/solar-powered synthesis that consumes carbon dioxide. The carbon is just a carrier for the hydrogen, and there is no net CO2 pollution.
AlpineR
AlpineR
- Payback for software I use
- Idealism of free (beer)
- Self expression
- Volunteerism
AlpineRThe best OS I've found to run simulations for my research is Linux. I'm indebted to the writers of the kernel, the GNU tools, gcc, plotutils, NEdit and much more. These were free to me monetarily, but writing software allows me to repay in kind.
Software or information that costs $0.00 is infinitely better than that which costs $0.01. It can be copied, shared, and disbursed without hindrance. This openness leads to more users, which in turn promotes the development of better software. Free software is also far more useful. Consider how the growth of the US would be hampered if our interstates were privately owned toll roads rather than free-to-use public property.
My job title is not computer scientist or network administrator, but computer programming is a valuable skill I possess. I write software as an outlet for my imagination and get pleasure from having my work appreciated by others.
Many of us want to improve our society as a whole. I volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, the Detroit Project, and other charitable activities. Writing open source software is a way to help others escape from bad software and corporate greed.
Fight fire with fire
AlpineR
I'd recommend going for the 13" 1024x768 screen if you'll be using the laptop a lot. Bigger is too expensive and smaller just doesn't give enough real estate. My Linux partition is happy at 3 GB, but if you want to play games in Windows you'll want another 3 GB at least. For the processor, 233 MHz is tolerable for programming and playing Starcraft, but more demanding applications would be much happier at >400 MHz. The touchpad on my NEC is pretty good, but adding a Logitech wheel mouse is much nicer for longer sessions.
AlpineR
I'm glad to hear that this warning has been added. I maintain an open source random number generator and the generation routine ran incorrectly when compiled with gcc-2.96. Fortunately a user ran the verification tests and figured out that my routines relied on a certain sequence of a[i++]=i evaluations. All the compilers that I had tested with used the same sequence, but the C standard leaves it implementation-dependent.
If a certain program raises these warnings, then it's best to know so it can be fixed. Otherwise it's likely to compile wrong on certain systems.
AlpineR
I was feeling kind of good about supporting Red Hat and a Linux-friendly Dell. Too bad they're cutting their offerings.
The c|net artice says that Dell will continue to offer Linux on workstations. What exactly is the difference between a "workstation" and a "desktop", other than being toward the bigger/faster/more expensive end of the spectrum?
AlpineR