Many of the courses, according to the online syllabi, strongly resemble the MIT courses I took. Many of faculty had
associations with MIT one way or the other.
These courses were to be taught in intensive one
month chunks, sort of the way the tech school
University of Phoenix teaches.
I guess the aim was to distill some of MIT without
its overhead.
An EMP pulse from a violent solar storm can
disrupt communications and power grids on earth.
Not that anyone in California would tell the difference:-)
When Seymour died in a Colorado car accident in
1996, he had just started another supercomputer company, named after his initials,
in Colorado Springs. Last year they shipped
a cluster-based system. Seymore had a history of
starting high performance companies (Control Data, Cray, Cray Reserch, SRC) and then parting from them.
When I was growing up, kids had other things to worry about such being drafted into an unpopular war, global thermonuclear war, and perpetual inflation and recession.
From this standpoint, the 1990s would seem to be a paradise for young people, yet they are more worried than ever.
Now you have to worry whther the kid next to you in class will shoot you dead.
can it do double-precision floating point?
on
FPGA Supercomputers
·
· Score: 1
Virtually every important scientific program wants
floating point. I've been in the business for some time, and boolean, integer, or ratios doesn't cut it.
So the game is (1) build the fastest FPUs you can and (2) figure out how to feed it data and sequence it fast enough.
Sex and death evolved about the same time,
3/4 a billion years ago. Before that, single
cells were immortal until starved, stressed,
or eaten. They did exchange some genetic material,
but not in the highly organized meiotic fashion
of multi-cellular organisms.
I wonder if this is a coincidence or inherent coonection between the two.
There are several myths about immortal humans until they discover sex- Adam & Eve, Gilgmesh, Sir Lancelot...
I suggest that presenting science as flashy toys
and videos may limit the spread of science.
First it makes it "kids stuff" which teenagers
and adults then shun.
Second, it makes science seem too easy.
Its a letdown when the real work of making
measurements, analysing data, and publishing papers occurs.
Third, it hides the real meaning of science- as
a way knowing things through repeatable observations. Science isn't entertainment like
sci-fi and fantasy.
On the other hand, I think there is a lot of
good in science-tainment.
First, it catches young minds who may eventually become
scientists or at least science literate.
Second, it forces the author to be really sure
about their material. I'm a firm believer if
you can't explain clearly what you do to your
spouse or children, then you probably don't
understand it well yourself.
Third, its fun when well done.
The alternatives are legion.
Besides holography mentioned a couple times already,
there are the concave mirror devices.
This is an extension of the "floating penny"
novelty device. There was an arcade video game
using this in the 1980s.
Another display is the 3D phospher screen,
just like in conventional TV. It is a cubical
stack of phospher screens. Phosphers are
illuminated by an intersecting pair of scanning
lasers. This device required new materials
of very transparent screen stacks and laser
triggered luminescing chemicals. A Stanford grad
student built a half-inch cube version of this
device in the mid-1990s. Then it went into
news oblivion.
Until 1980 the predominant graphics devices
were based on vectors. The premier vendor was
Tecktronix and graphics language was GKS.
These were descendents of oscilloscopes.
Vectors couldn't do shaded polygons very well.
The oscilloscope would start running into capacity
and speed problems for very compilcated line
images. About 1980, the cost of a megabyte of
screen memory fell below $20,000, allowing
affordable raster/pixel displays.
Fantazein sells a suspended image toy for $50-$100
in science toy stores. It is a row of LEDs on a
metronome rod. You can program up to five lines
of messages including the clock time. The text
appears to float in thin air.
And there is a another version where the LED rod
sweeps out a 360-degree disk.
Three world powers in 2050: USA, China and India.
All have growing, educated populations.
Americans dont make enough babies,
but they let in lots of immigrants.
Russia, Japan, and old Europe are dying because
they dont make many babies.
Organic merely means the main element is carbon
instead of silicon, plus whatever else you need
to throw in. Since Carbon and Silicon share the same
column in the Periodic Table of the Elements
you'd expect some overlapping chemical and
electrical properties.
Slashdot Mirror
Many of the courses, according to the online syllabi, strongly resemble the MIT courses I took. Many of faculty had associations with MIT one way or the other. These courses were to be taught in intensive one month chunks, sort of the way the tech school University of Phoenix teaches. I guess the aim was to distill some of MIT without its overhead.
An EMP pulse from a violent solar storm can disrupt communications and power grids on earth. Not that anyone in California would tell the difference :-)
It was a feeder for Phil Greenspun's web incubators. I guess he was the main funder and these businesses aren't as robust as last year.
When Seymour died in a Colorado car accident in 1996, he had just started another supercomputer company, named after his initials, in Colorado Springs. Last year they shipped a cluster-based system. Seymore had a history of starting high performance companies (Control Data, Cray, Cray Reserch, SRC) and then parting from them.
When I was growing up, kids had other things to worry about such being drafted into an unpopular war, global thermonuclear war, and perpetual inflation and recession. From this standpoint, the 1990s would seem to be a paradise for young people, yet they are more worried than ever. Now you have to worry whther the kid next to you in class will shoot you dead.
Virtually every important scientific program wants floating point. I've been in the business for some time, and boolean, integer, or ratios doesn't cut it. So the game is (1) build the fastest FPUs you can and (2) figure out how to feed it data and sequence it fast enough.
Sex and death evolved about the same time, 3/4 a billion years ago. Before that, single cells were immortal until starved, stressed, or eaten. They did exchange some genetic material, but not in the highly organized meiotic fashion of multi-cellular organisms.
...
I wonder if this is a coincidence or inherent coonection between the two.
There are several myths about immortal humans until they discover sex- Adam & Eve, Gilgmesh, Sir Lancelot
If I believed every self-published press release from an obscure startup ...
I suggest that presenting science as flashy toys and videos may limit the spread of science.
First it makes it "kids stuff" which teenagers and adults then shun.
Second, it makes science seem too easy. Its a letdown when the real work of making measurements, analysing data, and publishing papers occurs.
Third, it hides the real meaning of science- as a way knowing things through repeatable observations. Science isn't entertainment like sci-fi and fantasy.
On the other hand, I think there is a lot of good in science-tainment.
First, it catches young minds who may eventually become scientists or at least science literate.
Second, it forces the author to be really sure about their material. I'm a firm believer if you can't explain clearly what you do to your spouse or children, then you probably don't understand it well yourself.
Third, its fun when well done.
The alternatives are legion.
Besides holography mentioned a couple times already,
there are the concave mirror devices.
This is an extension of the "floating penny"
novelty device. There was an arcade video game
using this in the 1980s.
Another display is the 3D phospher screen,
just like in conventional TV. It is a cubical
stack of phospher screens. Phosphers are
illuminated by an intersecting pair of scanning
lasers. This device required new materials
of very transparent screen stacks and laser
triggered luminescing chemicals. A Stanford grad
student built a half-inch cube version of this
device in the mid-1990s. Then it went into
news oblivion.
Until 1980 the predominant graphics devices
were based on vectors. The premier vendor was
Tecktronix and graphics language was GKS.
These were descendents of oscilloscopes.
Vectors couldn't do shaded polygons very well.
The oscilloscope would start running into capacity
and speed problems for very compilcated line
images. About 1980, the cost of a megabyte of
screen memory fell below $20,000, allowing
affordable raster/pixel displays.
Fantazein sells a suspended image toy for $50-$100 in science toy stores. It is a row of LEDs on a metronome rod. You can program up to five lines of messages including the clock time. The text appears to float in thin air. And there is a another version where the LED rod sweeps out a 360-degree disk.
Three world powers in 2050: USA, China and India.
All have growing, educated populations.
Americans dont make enough babies,
but they let in lots of immigrants.
Russia, Japan, and old Europe are dying because
they dont make many babies.
Try as I must, I cant seem to keep these Katz
posts off slash-rot.
Organic merely means the main element is carbon
instead of silicon, plus whatever else you need
to throw in. Since Carbon and Silicon share the same
column in the Periodic Table of the Elements
you'd expect some overlapping chemical and
electrical properties.
Don't forget object-oriented, net-enabled
COBOL to go along with it.