I know that DC power transmission went out with Westinghouse's AC transmission, mostly because DC doesn't really work over significant distances. Would it still work over small distances, say in a house or apartment? (For the sake of argument, say that cable runs could be kept to a maximum of a hundred feet.)
Assuming that it can work like that, why isn't there DC power distribution alongside AC in many situations? We have so many damned wall warts that it'd be worth it to distribute, say, 24VDC and step it down to 12, 9 or 4.8124VDC. (Whatever's popular.)
Wouldn't it be more convenient to replace those clunky wall warts with cables designed to step down DC voltage?
Question is, what exactly is the hardware required to shift DC voltage? I know AC can use a pair of coils with differing winding counts (that's a transformer), but how do you step down DC voltage? And can it be done on the cheap-cheap, and in a small footprint?
The English department at the University of Connecticut occasionally offers English 217, "Studies in Literature and Culture: Science Fiction". Neato, eh? (The link is to the course syllabus.)
'Wilhelmina', to be pedantic. Yes, indeed, I'm a medium-rabid fan of the comics. If you get to the second volume, she takes off the scarf at one point as well.
The point, however, is that Mina goes outdoors during the day, never turns into a bat (or flock thereof) and never, ever demonstrates superhuman abilities of any sort. This is what made her so unique in the books, and this is what flew right over the studio execs' heads.
I can imagine it now...
Exec 1: Okay, good script, good script... except... Exec 2: The chick! She's too... whaddayacall it... Exec 1: English! Exec 2: Yeah. We were thinkin', maybe sexy her up a little. And give her vampire powers. 'Girl Power', y'know. Exec 1: I can totally see the concept. Totally. Pass that crackpipe. Exec 2: Here. Now, I think Quatermain needs to be made a little stronger. Get rid of that opium addiction crap---he's an action hero, fer fuck's sake!---and make him the leader. Connery won't stand for anything less. Exec 1: *snrk* Awesome. Alan Moore: [to self] Think of the paycheck. Think of the paycheck.
As for Aliens, you're right; it is disastrously flawed from that standpoint. But how often will you see a woman singlehandedly down the big bad, with not a single last-minute save, bit of advice or reassuring smile from the man-hero?
Maybe some day that'll all change, but I don't see it in the near future.
In 'Two Towers', when the Ents storm Isengard and break the dam, there's a sound that an Orc makes as the water rushes into the pits. It's the exact same sound a Gnoll from Warcraft III makes when it dies, sort of a weird yelping noise.
It's in the Extended version; I can't say if it's in the original.
It's not so bad! It's not so bad! Close your eyes and think of her as the 'Sum of All Fears' chick! I mean, it could be worse! They could have picked... someone else!... to be Susan Calvin. Who would be a worse pick! I can't think of one now, but there must be one!
[mumbling to myself in the corner, imagining asimov rolling in his grave]
I can't tell if you're complaining about the casting of Susan Calvin, or bemoaning that she was left out of the movie. I'll get to the former in a moment, but as for the latter---she's definitely in there, played by Bridget Moynihan.
Looking over her iMDB record, I gotta say I'm disappointed. Most folks've probably seen her as Jack Ryan's wife in 'The Sum of All Fears', where she looks medium-young. So, if you're complaining that the bitter, takes-no-shit-off-fools Susan Calvin we know and love from the stories will be nowhere in the movie... I'll bet that you're spot-on.
Has there been a strong female character in an SF or action flick not made into a sex object? The last one I can think of was Ripley, fer cryin' out loud!
Feh. I remember looking forward to the 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' movie, having been such a fan of the comics. "Oh, about that, dear chap. Mina's a vampire; we thought it would up sales. And she's not the leader of the team any more. We dropped that nasty opium-addict business from Quatermain and put him in charge. We think it'll sell like hotcakes, pip-pip."
Why is it that movies with strong female characters have to be chick flicks? Are men so easily threatened by a female character not (a) a sex object or (b) an object or ridicule?
I suppose Eowyn in 'Return of the King' was a start. Ironic, given how few women appear in the story.
Maybe 'Resident Evil', too. A little. Sorta. In that all the men get eaten, diced and set on fire.
... does this mean that, according to you, 'Lord of the Rings' was about wizards, elves, magic and so forth, and not really about the corrupting influence of power?
Does this mean that, according to you, 'X-Men' was about mutant kids who could Shoot Fire From Their Eyes or perhaps Read Your Every Thought, but had nothing whatsoever to do with intolerance and prejudice? (Sheesh, you'd have thought the little intro scene at the concentration camp would have clued you.)
Does this mean that, according to you, 'Planet of the Apes' (the original, not the crapulent-despite-Tim-Roth remake) was about traveling to a planet filled with monkeys and screaming a lot, and had nothing whatsoever to do with man's inhumanity to man?
SF must be about people, else it's cold and sterile. We may ooh and aah over the shiny lights, but we're not really moved by them. It's ridiculous to assert that these stories exist in a vacuum, that they don't draw on our perceptions of ourselves, each other, our surroundings.
I'm not entirely sure what you'd consider visionary. A major thesis underlying Vinge's work is that there is a point in the medium-range future, beyond which we cannot by definition see. Most of this stories sort of dance around this point.
Again, I'm not entirely sure what you'd consider visionary.
And here I thought it was about ever more-intrusive advertising as a backdrop for technological short-cutting of basic civil rights in the name of safety and expedience.
Silly me. Clearly it was about psychics floating in a fishtank.
Dude, everyone knows that the Martians were wiped out by Dr Moreau's anthrax-based hybrid virus. Oh, sure, all the Martians officially died of "the common cold", and all those Londoners officially died of Martians, but who are you going to believe, the British or your latest edition of the "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" penny-dreadful picturebook?
What about New York's third aqueduct? It's been in the works since (I think) the sixties or so, and each government manages not to cut funding for it. Unlike Los Angeles, which just keeps eating up more and more water, New York actually planned for the future, and now isn't going to have huge water-shortage problems. They planned for the future on a decades-long scale, and it paid off.
See, even if it made a decent movie, it was a pale imitation of the comics, which are actual literature, a brilliantly-researched synthesis. Bah. Who wants to see Mina turn into bats when we can see that wonderfully tense moment when Quatermain first sees her scar; who cares how good the Jekyll/Hyde CG is if Hyde doesn't eventually bugger the Invisible Man to death for his betrayal?
Mmm. Going to go read the original two series again. Mmm.
Also some Barbershop Pirates, a terrible production of "Speare!" (the compressed works of Shakespeare)... a supercilious desk clerk ("I'm not the pirate you're looking for"), the arms-dealing former lemonade salesman and the donning of a large augered tofu block as headwear.
Oh! And the use of baggy pirate pants to store everything.
Fruit from a poisoned tree? Fruit from a posisoned tree?
Gee, that's real sweet of you. Conceptualizing a person as an inert plant, existing solely to produce fodder for someone/something else to eat. Oh, and if they get an abortion---and manage not to get blown up in a clinic bombing or murdered by the enraged ex-father---they're now a poisoned tree!
Mmm. Can you smell the Christian love and fellowship up in here?
(a) I didn't actually say the postal system/phone system comment at the Q&A. Note that I didn't say I did. My question was on the proliferation of 'value-added' crapware.
(b) So, wait, just because someone speaks at an event, they're relevant, smart and right? Shit, someone needs to slip the President a memo on this one!
If growing up means that I can't criticize the stupid, the irrelevant and the foolish, then boy, am I glad to be a kid.
Excellent breakdown there. I wonder, though, if all these tendencies flow from the same source; is it really possible to have one or two, but not the other? Have you ever seen a geek who never had any really, really wacky personality quirks, aka dorkiness? Maybe there's a reason so many geeks are in SCA, fencing, LARPs, etc.
I remember Esther Dyson speaking at SIGGRAPH 2002 in San Antonio. She talked about how DNS was the first truly global, flat address space where everyone could have their own little plot of land, so to speak.
Apparently she'd never heard of (a) the postal system, or (b) the phone system. Both of which reach much further than the internet does.
I actually got up and asked her about all this 'value-added' crap we're being sold; asked her exactly why it's being sold to people who've shown no interest in it whatsoever. Eh, it was more than a year ago, and the exact memory grows faint. Point is, I did a Q at a several thousand person Q&A, and pimp-slapped Esther Dyson.
Bah. She never seemed relevant to me. A remainder from the era of 'cyber' and 'HotWired' and the internet buzz pre-1997.
The real number line isn't compact in the standard topology (the one with open intervals as its basis elements); any finite set in a discrete topology is compact; in the real number line, any closed and bounded set is compact...
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of DC power conversion technologies...
I know that DC power transmission went out with Westinghouse's AC transmission, mostly because DC doesn't really work over significant distances. Would it still work over small distances, say in a house or apartment? (For the sake of argument, say that cable runs could be kept to a maximum of a hundred feet.)
Assuming that it can work like that, why isn't there DC power distribution alongside AC in many situations? We have so many damned wall warts that it'd be worth it to distribute, say, 24VDC and step it down to 12, 9 or 4.8124VDC. (Whatever's popular.)
Wouldn't it be more convenient to replace those clunky wall warts with cables designed to step down DC voltage?
Question is, what exactly is the hardware required to shift DC voltage? I know AC can use a pair of coils with differing winding counts (that's a transformer), but how do you step down DC voltage? And can it be done on the cheap-cheap, and in a small footprint?
--grendel drago
The English department at the University of Connecticut occasionally offers English 217, "Studies in Literature and Culture: Science Fiction". Neato, eh? (The link is to the course syllabus.)
--grendel drago
'Wilhelmina', to be pedantic. Yes, indeed, I'm a medium-rabid fan of the comics. If you get to the second volume, she takes off the scarf at one point as well.
The point, however, is that Mina goes outdoors during the day, never turns into a bat (or flock thereof) and never, ever demonstrates superhuman abilities of any sort. This is what made her so unique in the books, and this is what flew right over the studio execs' heads.
I can imagine it now...
Exec 1: Okay, good script, good script... except...
Exec 2: The chick! She's too... whaddayacall it...
Exec 1: English!
Exec 2: Yeah. We were thinkin', maybe sexy her up a little. And give her vampire powers. 'Girl Power', y'know.
Exec 1: I can totally see the concept. Totally. Pass that crackpipe.
Exec 2: Here. Now, I think Quatermain needs to be made a little stronger. Get rid of that opium addiction crap---he's an action hero, fer fuck's sake!---and make him the leader. Connery won't stand for anything less.
Exec 1: *snrk* Awesome.
Alan Moore: [to self] Think of the paycheck. Think of the paycheck.
As for Aliens, you're right; it is disastrously flawed from that standpoint. But how often will you see a woman singlehandedly down the big bad, with not a single last-minute save, bit of advice or reassuring smile from the man-hero?
Maybe some day that'll all change, but I don't see it in the near future.
--grendel drago
Eh, people say 'realistic' when they mean 'vivid'. In anything by SF/fantasy, they're equivalent.
--grendel drago
In 'Two Towers', when the Ents storm Isengard and break the dam, there's a sound that an Orc makes as the water rushes into the pits. It's the exact same sound a Gnoll from Warcraft III makes when it dies, sort of a weird yelping noise.
It's in the Extended version; I can't say if it's in the original.
--grendel drago
It's not so bad! It's not so bad! Close your eyes and think of her as the 'Sum of All Fears' chick! I mean, it could be worse! They could have picked... someone else!... to be Susan Calvin. Who would be a worse pick! I can't think of one now, but there must be one!
[mumbling to myself in the corner, imagining asimov rolling in his grave]
--grendel drago
I can't tell if you're complaining about the casting of Susan Calvin, or bemoaning that she was left out of the movie. I'll get to the former in a moment, but as for the latter---she's definitely in there, played by Bridget Moynihan.
Looking over her iMDB record, I gotta say I'm disappointed. Most folks've probably seen her as Jack Ryan's wife in 'The Sum of All Fears', where she looks medium-young. So, if you're complaining that the bitter, takes-no-shit-off-fools Susan Calvin we know and love from the stories will be nowhere in the movie... I'll bet that you're spot-on.
Has there been a strong female character in an SF or action flick not made into a sex object? The last one I can think of was Ripley, fer cryin' out loud!
Feh. I remember looking forward to the 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' movie, having been such a fan of the comics. "Oh, about that, dear chap. Mina's a vampire; we thought it would up sales. And she's not the leader of the team any more. We dropped that nasty opium-addict business from Quatermain and put him in charge. We think it'll sell like hotcakes, pip-pip."
Why is it that movies with strong female characters have to be chick flicks? Are men so easily threatened by a female character not (a) a sex object or (b) an object or ridicule?
I suppose Eowyn in 'Return of the King' was a start. Ironic, given how few women appear in the story.
Maybe 'Resident Evil', too. A little. Sorta. In that all the men get eaten, diced and set on fire.
--grendel drago
... does this mean that, according to you, 'Lord of the Rings' was about wizards, elves, magic and so forth, and not really about the corrupting influence of power?
Does this mean that, according to you, 'X-Men' was about mutant kids who could Shoot Fire From Their Eyes or perhaps Read Your Every Thought, but had nothing whatsoever to do with intolerance and prejudice? (Sheesh, you'd have thought the little intro scene at the concentration camp would have clued you.)
Does this mean that, according to you, 'Planet of the Apes' (the original, not the crapulent-despite-Tim-Roth remake) was about traveling to a planet filled with monkeys and screaming a lot, and had nothing whatsoever to do with man's inhumanity to man?
SF must be about people, else it's cold and sterile. We may ooh and aah over the shiny lights, but we're not really moved by them. It's ridiculous to assert that these stories exist in a vacuum, that they don't draw on our perceptions of ourselves, each other, our surroundings.
Sheesh.
--grendel drago
Might want to start with Ian M. Banks or Vernor Vinge.
I'm not entirely sure what you'd consider visionary. A major thesis underlying Vinge's work is that there is a point in the medium-range future, beyond which we cannot by definition see. Most of this stories sort of dance around this point.
Again, I'm not entirely sure what you'd consider visionary.
--grendel drago
And here I thought it was about ever more-intrusive advertising as a backdrop for technological short-cutting of basic civil rights in the name of safety and expedience.
Silly me. Clearly it was about psychics floating in a fishtank.
--grendel drago
Dude, everyone knows that the Martians were wiped out by Dr Moreau's anthrax-based hybrid virus. Oh, sure, all the Martians officially died of "the common cold", and all those Londoners officially died of Martians, but who are you going to believe, the British or your latest edition of the "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" penny-dreadful picturebook?
--grendel drago
It's argued that the Big Dig is a project which, despite its achievments, is no better than the construction of a gigantic metal wang.
Space exploration is (a) researchy, and (b) not morally equivalent to the construction of a gigantic metal wang.
--grendel drago
What about New York's third aqueduct? It's been in the works since (I think) the sixties or so, and each government manages not to cut funding for it. Unlike Los Angeles, which just keeps eating up more and more water, New York actually planned for the future, and now isn't going to have huge water-shortage problems. They planned for the future on a decades-long scale, and it paid off.
(You may have seen the aqueduct in "Die Hard 3".)
--grendel drago
You took the words right out...
See, even if it made a decent movie, it was a pale imitation of the comics, which are actual literature, a brilliantly-researched synthesis. Bah. Who wants to see Mina turn into bats when we can see that wonderfully tense moment when Quatermain first sees her scar; who cares how good the Jekyll/Hyde CG is if Hyde doesn't eventually bugger the Invisible Man to death for his betrayal?
Mmm. Going to go read the original two series again. Mmm.
Also some Barbershop Pirates, a terrible production of "Speare!" (the compressed works of Shakespeare)... a supercilious desk clerk ("I'm not the pirate you're looking for"), the arms-dealing former lemonade salesman and the donning of a large augered tofu block as headwear.
Oh! And the use of baggy pirate pants to store everything.
Oh! And musical numbers. Many musical numbers.
--grendel drago
Well, if you refrain from doing anything useful, interesting or exciting with the new kernel, it'll be just as good as Trusted Computing. And cheaper!
--grendel drago
What does it stand for? Is it something to do with X's direct rendering drivers? Why would it be a character device?
--grendel drago
I think I want to have your babies. Pardon me while I set about constructing a Jovian womb for that purpose.
*putter*
--grendel drago
Fruit from a poisoned tree? Fruit from a posisoned tree?
Gee, that's real sweet of you. Conceptualizing a person as an inert plant, existing solely to produce fodder for someone/something else to eat. Oh, and if they get an abortion---and manage not to get blown up in a clinic bombing or murdered by the enraged ex-father---they're now a poisoned tree!
Mmm. Can you smell the Christian love and fellowship up in here?
--grendel drago
(a) I didn't actually say the postal system/phone system comment at the Q&A. Note that I didn't say I did. My question was on the proliferation of 'value-added' crapware.
(b) So, wait, just because someone speaks at an event, they're relevant, smart and right? Shit, someone needs to slip the President a memo on this one!
If growing up means that I can't criticize the stupid, the irrelevant and the foolish, then boy, am I glad to be a kid.
*still pissing into the wind*
--grendel drago
Excellent breakdown there. I wonder, though, if all these tendencies flow from the same source; is it really possible to have one or two, but not the other? Have you ever seen a geek who never had any really, really wacky personality quirks, aka dorkiness? Maybe there's a reason so many geeks are in SCA, fencing, LARPs, etc.
--grendel drago
I remember Esther Dyson speaking at SIGGRAPH 2002 in San Antonio. She talked about how DNS was the first truly global, flat address space where everyone could have their own little plot of land, so to speak.
Apparently she'd never heard of (a) the postal system, or (b) the phone system. Both of which reach much further than the internet does.
I actually got up and asked her about all this 'value-added' crap we're being sold; asked her exactly why it's being sold to people who've shown no interest in it whatsoever. Eh, it was more than a year ago, and the exact memory grows faint. Point is, I did a Q at a several thousand person Q&A, and pimp-slapped Esther Dyson.
Bah. She never seemed relevant to me. A remainder from the era of 'cyber' and 'HotWired' and the internet buzz pre-1997.
--grendel drago
Wouldn't that be 'isotropically'?
--grendel drago
Why is that funny?
The real number line isn't compact in the standard topology (the one with open intervals as its basis elements); any finite set in a discrete topology is compact; in the real number line, any closed and bounded set is compact...
--grendel drago
Hmm. So, the red/green symbol is undefined, eh? Well, let's just follow the pointer from the 'red/green' symbol.
segmentation fault (core dumped)
%$DGS^& NO CARRIER
Thanks a lot, you insensitive clod!
--grendel drago