After seeing what happenned with the AOL data release, and perusing through some of the scads of data myself, along with hearing about government requests for search terms from various companies, does anyone else think the time is right for a personal search engine?
No, such a search engine would never be able to store everything about the web the way Google or any other search engine does. Such an engine would never be able to spider the entire web and store the snippets needed to allow for such a comprehensive search. Such an engine would also never be immune to the government requesting information from your ISP about where you have gone, either.
However, such an engine might give you a bit more insulation from these intrusions into our online life, and perhaps with some P2P technology thrown into the mix, maybe some onion routing or similar - maybe these individual small search databases can be linked up to provide a more comprehensive search without revealing to anyone who is searching for what, from where, and when.
Even if each box was a simple server with a 100 gig storage, and even if you might have to wait a while for a search to complete, or batch searches together (maybe even scheduled searches or search alerting?) - isn't that inconvenience worth more than the privacy invasion we are now seeing?
The answer to your first question can be done - in fact, in food manufacturing, product defect checking/rejection are done everyday and at high-speed. I am sure they could figure out the bun/lettuce/tomatoe issues you propose (which are realistic). As far as grease is concerned, an automated system could easily take a sample of the grease and check things like disolved particle counts, color, and viscosity, compare it against a "use time", and depending on other parameters, change it out.
As far as custom-slotted/custom-prepped ingredients and supplies - this is already being done today in just about every food preparation business. Most foods for fast-food chains are already in bags or frozen, or in buckets, jars, and jugs. Some even hook up to nitrogen-pressurized delivery systems (think overhead squirters for ketchup/mustard/secret-sauce). What isn't can be changed so that it is. You do know that there are special machines for cutting chicken in "the Church's Way", right? That's right, in the chicken processing industry, you have chicken prep machines for the standard chicken cut, and then the "Church's Cut" - that is one glaring example of an industry changing the system to support another fast food chain. I am certain it is the same way with other players, especially big ones like McD's and such...
The self-cleaning grill thing would be easy to fix - just make the grills in the form of a segmented conveyor belt, and at the end of the line run them through a super-heated (+600 degree F) cleaning "oven" (just like a self-cleaning oven works), then maybe through a metal or nylon brush scrubbing system to remove any leftover ash (don't use teflon coatings, though - maybe you could make them out of cast-iron, with proper seasoning done, then just run them through a scrubbing system skipping the oven portion?).
As far as the fry vats are concerned, if you have your oil-supply chain worked out and running smoothly, just make the vats and the containers the oil comes in into a standard system that is delivered. Fresh oil comes in, the container/fryer is popped into place, and old oil/containers leave on the next pickup.
There are problems, and there are solutions to those problems, if we are just willing to think about them for a minute and implement the process needed.
You are right, yet interstingly enough over the past several years Food Television went from a bottom-of-the-barrel cable channel to one of the upper tier cable channels seemingly overnight.
It seems like cooking food has gone the same way as sports - easier and more palatable to watch it done rather than actually doing it...
Yes, you would need at least one person around to help when an emergency (like a customer slipping and falling) occurs and to mitigate damages. But that doesn't mean you need people everywhere...
A computer can't make sure the employees aren't being rude to customers,
This assumes there are employees to be rude to the customer...
that they're really washing their hands or that they're not spitting in someone's burger.
Provided an end-to-end burger manufacturing system with full-on automation and robotics (think of a Hyundai auto-assembly plant for burgers), and this can't happens. If they can build an automated car manufacturing factory that has few workers, they can do the same with burgers, it is just a matter of time, money, and need.
A computer won't notice if the guy at the register is acting nervous because he figured out a "foolproof" way to steal from the till.
Once again, there won't be a human at a till - there will be an order entry system using credit/debit cards at each table and a "counter", plus maybe a "credit-deposit" cash-taking "ATM" that you can feed cash into to build up an "in-store credit" to use to purchase food. No human handling money=No money to steal. If you are worried about the ATM deposit angle (after all, a guy with a truck and chain could conceivably take it), then just don't allow cash at all - DONE.
A computer will always have "a system" that can be exploited and you can bet employees will quickly figure out how.
Yes, and I am sure even with my self-described "perfect automation" system, there would be hackers seeking to get free burgers from the system. However, given this possibility, this is why you would still have a few people "on-duty" - doing monitoring of the system on-site. Perhaps a manager/customer-service rep for the Burger-o-Mat place, and an armed security guard. Keep the food making system behind 2-inch thick bulletproof plexi (give the people something to watch and ooh/ahh over), with a slot for "delivery". Firewall the order entry system, money exchange, and order fullfilment systems from each other (perhaps with intrusion detection systems and whatnot), and set-up a leased line or VPN back to the main office for order/materials/money tracking and exchange. Done right, you could make the system nearly impervious to theft (it would probably cost more to hack in than it would be worth in burgers). I am sure you would still get attempts from people with nothing better to do - sadly, the world isn't short of assholes screwing things up for the rest of us...
if a worker slacks off? Is the computer going to get frustrated, tell the employee off, and then eventually do the job itself?
Well, aside from the "doing the job itself" (don't worry, that is coming, too), maybe the system will have a log of what actually happenned (with video and everything) for review by the human bossman, and the worker would be reprimanded or fired. If so, you may ask "well, how could the computer do that?". It would take a bunch of tech and some good software design, but imagine the following:
Let's suppose the worker in question's only job is to cook the burgers. So, his tasks are to pull burger patties from the fridge, put them on the hot grille, then when they are done, transfer them to the prep station (for other workers to put on buns, mayo, etc). This is how this one small section could work:
First off, the computer would "know" where the employee is at via an RFID tracking system on their badge, with scanners at doors and/or in the ceiling tiles and such (similar to how warehouses track product and workers today). So, the computer could know when the worker moves between the fridge and the grille. There would also be a sensor in the fridge door, so the computer could know when the door opens and closes. A camera (or series of cameras) would be located to observe the path between the fridge and the grille. These camera view(s) are recorded by the system (but not analyzed). Another camera is placed above the grille looking down on it. The computer could instruct the individual working to pull out the hamburger patties if it knows it has orders to prep (from the order-entry system at the front) and there is empty space on the grill (it would know this via some edge detection and other vision software working on the grill camera to count disks/squares of patties - this system could also check for approximate "cook time" by measuring the time and density of the darkness of the patties as they cook). It would tell the worker to get the patties from the fridge, which would take a set amount of time. Given a certain percentage, it would know that once it has alerted the employee and the employee has hit the "acknowledge button" on the unit, that the employee would only have so much time to take to get to the fridge, open it up, pull out the patties, close the door, then return (and it could track this action via the RFID monitoring). The worker would put the patties on the grill (the computer would count them as well with the grill camera), and waits for them to get done. The computer could alert the worker when they are done (via timing and checking via the grill camera system), and tell them to move them to prep. It could verify that this happenned by seeing the patties come off the grill (using the imaging system over the grill), perhaps monitoring proper movement via RFID, and then monitoring whatever other cameras/sensors are located in the prep area as well. It would then instruct the employee to get more hamburger patties out as needed.
Now, when breaks are needed/figured, the system could tell the user to go on break and order another employee to take his/her place. Via the RFID monitoring, it would know this was happenning. Similar changes in routine could be handled in a similar manner. The system would also know when break time was over and could call the employee back (maybe all the employees were bluetooth headsets, not just to recieve commands from the computer system, but also swift changeout for taking orders from customers in the drive-thru if the restaurant has one). It would know where the employee was, and if the employee comes back in time.
If not, then the system would know there was a problem - it could easily route another employee and shuffle the schedule around to keep everything flowing. Whether or not the errant employee returned, it would note it in the employee's file, and send an alert to the bossman for review. The boss could then review the log, any of the camera footage needed (both that from the grill area and the pathway ar
The main reason you won't see 12VDC at home (from outlets around the house) is because of resistance. In order to counter resistance in the circuit, you would need to increase the thickness (gauge) of the wire, because as you make the wire longer (and thinner), resistance goes up. Even a few ohms per 10 feet will kill you (voltage drop wise). If you don't believe me, measure the resistance of a thousand feet of one pair in a Cat5 spool. Run your ohm's law formula over that and check what the wattage is to drive 12 volts at one amp through that (extra credit if you can figure the voltage drop). Ultimately, it would end up being an unsafe solution. This is why we use AC, instead of DC, for power distribution (look into the history of DC vs AC in the Edison vs. Tesla/Westinghouse days, if you don't believe me).
What I could see happenning, though, is special small size switching transformers built into a standard electrical junction box, which are "smart" in some manner to know when a plug is plugged into them, which connects the switching transformer in, and that supplies, say, 12V at 10A or something to a common downconvertor system or something that all the other peripherals plug into (that, or each peripheral converts the 12VDC independently). In a way, I built something like this, once, for a desk I had: I hooked up an old Sun Computer pizza-box (Sparcstation?) powersupply and created a "bus" of electrical wires running under the desk, hooked up to screw terminal bus strips every so often. I ran the 12V, 5V, and ground lines via this bus along the length of the desk, so then I could get 12V, 7V, and 5V feeds from this system. Hooked up all my peripherals that had wall warts to the bus, and ran a "power on" green LED to the front of the desk for status. Worked pretty well.
You have identified that people are using search engines in a very strange way. Actually, not so strange, as John Brunner depicted such a service in his novel Shockwave Rider called Hearing Aid.
For those that don't know, the "Hearing Aid" service was depicted in Brunner's dystopia as a service people could call (via phone) and just talk, rant, pray, confess, tell, etc - and the service would never talk back, never judge - just listen. The caller would hang up when done, hopefully with a clearer conscience (or something). The book goes on to tell that it wasn't just a machine that picked up and "listened", but rather actual people, and that people who would call would try to get the "Hearing Aid" staffers to respond back, but they wouldn't - it was a feature of the service: a place you could call and confess your darkest sins or desires to a real human being without fear of retribution.
This is not really a new thing though, with people "confessing sins" or attempting to get salvation or understanding from a machine (or crys for help, etc) - look into the history of Joseph Weizenbaum's Eliza chatbot - reviewing the log's of the chat sessions between real people and the machine, Weizenbaum found that people would talk to the chatbot as if it were a real psychologist, which was understandable since this was how Eliza was designed to "respond as", like a psychologist talking to a patient. Although, in some cases, knowing that it was a machine they would even tell it things that they wouldn't even tell another human!
Oops - now it seems I should have read the rest of this thread - it seems that there are date/time stamps with the data, as someone has posted a list of searches with them. So - what are the timestamps for the "lookin' to kill ma wife...mmm, steak-and-cheese" searcher's terms? Are they in datetime order? If so, then it just becomes all the more weird why they would search for "poop" and "steak and cheese" right in the middle. Does anyone have an explanation for this (other than "they are stark raving looney", please)...
I am just trying to figure out how someone swaps back and forth between researching "death and violence", and then, right in the middle of such research, decides "yeah, let's look for 'poop'" or "yeah, 'steak and cheese', that'll do it!" - and then continues right on searching for more "death and violence".
I can only think of a few possibilities as to why this is - either someone else was searching at the same time using the same account (or, hopefully, multiple people, unless the "steak and cheese" caused them troubles with "poop" - eh), or these records are presented in nothing like date/time order.
Can anybody tell me if the data in the dump has more than two fields (all I have ever seen is an "id" field, and a "search terms" field listed)? Are there other fields in the data dump that indicate a date/time stamp or something so that the searches can be ordered by that?
If not, then it is very likely that these searches were simply dumped using the equivalent of "SELECT id, terms FROM table", with no ORDER BY (or equivalent) clause tacked on, and the results were returned in a non-defined order (which might be by record insert order, by random order, or by any other possible order - for SQL compliant databases, if you don't specify an ORDER BY clause, the returned order of a recordset is undefined, and could possibly be in a different order each time the query is run by the backend SQL engine). If that is the case, than this data become just a bit more meaningless, as one could not follow a searcher's "train of thought" to determine what they were going after.
This would have both good and bad consequences for the data as it stands - good in that it obsfuscates the data just a bit more which could conceivably help hide a searcher's intentions, but also bad in that it could make innocent intentions look more non-innocent, depending on how the result set is skewed...
Oh, ok - American fridges tend to be large monolithic structures (and when you get into Sub-Zero land, they seem to engulf the entire kitchen). A side of pork is fairly large - maybe you could do a half-side of a smaller pig (maybe something 15-20cm on a side)?
I agree with you on the cold smoke, but it is more difficult to "roll your own" smoker for that. It can be done similar to the method I described, but you would separate out the smoke generator from the smoking container with some corrugated metal ducting. It would really be redneck then (man, I am just thinking what it would look like, and realizing it would be like something from a junkyard).
If you are renting a place that has an outdoor area, and it is "yours" (that is, it isn't a common area), talk to your landlord, and find out if you can set up such a system. The nice thing about what I described is that it is very easy to set up and break down, and isn't too large (one or two 40 or 55 gallon drums aren't very big). Put it on a wheeled base, and you can easily move it out of the way. Might be difficult to move if you move places, unless you have a small pickup.
One thing I forgot to note - smokers (of any sort) eventually turn into ugly, nasty things, from the condensation of the creosote out of the smoke on the cooler surfaces. This stuff is ugly, gooey, nasty, and can be a bear to clean. Since you know about cold vs hot smoking, though, I can almost assume you know this...
Doh - when I think color "CCD", I tend to think of the cheap "interleaved with filters over element triads" CCDs - of course, on higher-end cameras, I would imagine that there would definitely be three separate CCD devices, each with its own independent filter. I suppose you could do something similar with the cheaper CCD, but there would have to be some weird stuff done in software to (maybe even at the firmware level) to treat the independent triads as individual elements, and also to preserve/enhance the resolution of the output.
As far as a B&W LCD is concerned, sometimes you just want high-resolution text or graphics, without color getting in the way. If you don't remember what a Hercules card looked like with a matched monitor, then you don't know what monochrome output really means. Believe me, it can be both beautiful and easy on the eyes. Furthermore, today it should be cheap to do (versus back in the day when such a setup was damn expensive)...
So it is checking a processes' code hash against an already stored hash - if you could (in some manner) take a copy of that code, mod it, compute the hash, then very quickly store both the new hash and your changes at the same time, in theory you could get your change in place before the system even knew it. Of course, if the process in question was self-modifying, and the system knew the hashes for each of those different "versions", things become more tricky, but not impossible.
Bah - this is why I run Linux at home, I am soooo tired of this bull - it is also why I am getting back into 8-bit machines (currently playing around with my Tandy Color Computer 3, and later I am restoring an Altair 8800 I managed to snag). Nah, it ain't glitzy or glamorous, but it definitely is way more fun and interesting than constantly fighting against a machine which despises you (the machine I refer to here being the corporate/social/governmental oligarchy that seems to be devouring the world). Interestingly, even with what I am doing on my 8-bit machines, I still run into old-school copy protection schemes. A guy I worked with getting a game on my CoCo is working on a system for the CatWeasel card that sounds pretty slick - essentially a very modular interface to the card to allow analysis and backup of data from any level - from raw flux transitions on the floppy/disk side on up to the real data (via a series of software emulation modules that do the conversion, chained in series) as the controller would present it. Should be an interesting bit of kit when he has it done...
Actually, salt curing a pork belly isn't that difficult, nor does it take long or much room. Basically, you use a lot of salt and other spices (and sugars), rub it all over/around the belly in a large plastic bag, and let it sit in your fridge for a few days. After that, it is cured, and you can slice it and cook it as you like.
If you want to smoke it after curing it, once again, you don't need a lot of space - you can make a simple smoker out of old charcoal grille (Weber or similar round grill) and a (get a clean one that has only been used for food or feed storage - DO NOT USE ONE THAT HAS BEEN USED FOR CHEMICAL STORAGE) 55 gallon drum (stainless if you can find and afford it). Chop the legs down on the grille (leave enough room for air circulation. Put it on the ground and lay some bricks/blocks around it to support the drum. Cut the drum in "half" (actually, cut the bottom off one-third of the way up - this is your "lid", the rest is the "body"). The bottom half of the drum become the "lid", the upper half becomes the "body". Weld some handles onto the body and lid (you can weld, right?), and weld a guide flange or series of guide plates around the upper edge of the body so you can sit the cover back on. Poke (burn) a few holes in the bottom (top?) of the lid to let out excess smoke, and fix some eyehooks on the underside (bolt them on). Get some stainless steel skewers or long hooks and bend them to shape to hook the belly(s) on, then hook these to the underside of the "lid". Get your charcoal going, add your soaked wood chips (apple, cherry, or hickory are best for pork - or combine for flavor - whatever you use, don't use green wood or woods high in resin like pine unless you like bitterness), set the body down on the bricks and put the lid (with hanging bellies) on top. Keep your temperature at about 150-200 degrees and "run it" for a few hours (more or less depending on taste).
Wait for the neighbors to come...
Note that this won't kill (all) the bacteria - if you run it hotter, you will cook your meat more, but the idea here is to get flavor, because you are going to be frying this stuff later anyhow. Once you are done smoking your belly(s), let them cool back down, then put them back in the fridge for a couple day. After that, cut, cook, serve and enjoy! Alternatively, if you aren't handy, don't have the time, or don't feel like being a redneck, you can buy smokers that are basically the same kind of design as mentioned above - just be prepared to spend some money. Also note that you can smoke other meats and poultry this way as well - smoked turkey for Thanksgiving is a wonderful alternative to the oven (up the temperature a bit and cook it longer - you may want to also "pre-cook" the bird in the oven as well). BTW - only do this if you have your own backyard - this doesn't work out well at an apartment complex or on a balcony...
a TV is instant-on. In 15 seconds, I'm already browsing for shows. PC? Turn it on, then go get coffee while everything initializes.
Just how slow is that box you call a PC? Granted, PC's aren't "instant-on" like the home computers of old (/me hugs his CoCo), but they aren't nearly as slow to boot up as they were. I would say a minute at most for most machines to start up and get to a login screen. Most of the issue is the speed of the hard drive and the number of drivers and such being loaded. Cut back on the drivers and other modules being loaded, switch to CF media or similar for your boot partition, and things should be much faster. Better yet, just leave the thing on during the day, and only boot it in the morning (you might be able to find a motherboard that can do this automatically). Or, how about just being a tad patient?
I have a TV, a VCR, and a DVD. Media PC couldn't play the VCR tapes anyway, and frankly browsing through my shelves of DVDs is no slower than digging through menu trees to find the files if I ripped them to a drive.
Only if you don't set up your Media PC system properly. Rip the VCR tapes via a tuner card (for those tapes which you archived shows off TV, say), or buy DVD's of the movies (if you have the money), then rip them to your fileserver. Your fileserver backend should consist of a database with some metadata fields to help you index it all, and pointer fields to the actual VOB/MPG files. Add a frontend browser web server system (or standalone application or plugin for your favorite viewer app). Yeah, you might have to do some coding here (though I am sure by now plenty of people have coded and released open source apps just like this). You will only have to dig through menu trees if you are truely lazy with your initial setup.
A TV with VCR and DVD is a No brainer. Kids can run them without any reasonable likelihood of destruction. No driver issues, compatibility issues, no mysteriousness: Turn it on, insert media, watch.
Yes, a standard setup is a "no-brainer", but if you set up the system properly, and keep it locked away, there should be even less a chance of destruction with a Media PC, simply because there won't be any physical media for the kiddies to "destroy". Keep the controls on the remote and GUI stupid-simple (take a look at how digital cable-boxes do it, or TIVO), and even a kid will be able to figure it out (can't say the same for adults - but there are retarded people in every generation, unfortunately).
TV resolution is retarded for using any computer function. Even Hi-def TVs are nice, but they're not 1920x1280 like the top end computer monitor.
I can't remember - does the HDTV standard even go up to 1280 (I thought 1080i was the highest)? Even so, a good XGA or SXGA DLP system (rear or front projected) is more than enough for TV-based entertainment (actually, my wife would say a 9" B&W set would be more than enough, but we won't ask her). You will have plenty of resolution for web-based browsing and game playing, plus movie watching, on your HTPC with that kind of a setup. If this still isn't enough, and you have the cash, go with a dual (or if you are really rich - quad) tiled-projector setup and a multi-head card. Of course, this setup moves you out of the "Media PC" realm and into the "Large Network Ops Center" category...heh.
the 'setup' of a typically-comfortable tv-viewing home theater is rarely conducive (IMO) to getting productive work done in most contexts
The office is for work, the living room (or bedroom, if you prefer) is for fun and relaxation. About the only "work" you should ever think about doing with a Media PC setup is posting the occasional Slashdot comment or reading/replying to an email or two. Of course, if you have a large-screen projector setup (or even a decent size LCD or Plasma), you can do real "work" with it. I mean, at my work we seem to get along fine with such a similar setup when we have meetings in our conference room and such, and t
You don't see a whole lot of large format black and white digital work
Do they even make B&W digital backs? Actually, in some manner they probably do (if only for x-ray imaging, perhaps). I am not a photographer by any means, but I wonder if CCD (or similar) digital imaging devices have the same problem that LCDs do today - the fact that you can't get certain types (or sizes) due to them not being popular anymore. I mean, at one time you could get very nice, high-resolution B&W LCD screens, as well as smaller, medium resolution TFT color screens - used on laptops and such at one time. Today, they are almost impossible to find (barebones only, and you have to buy a metric ton).
You can't buy such laptops anymore because they are considered "obsolete" by the larger market, even if you really want a very small and simple laptop. Are digital backs/ccd image sensors the same way, or are a lot of formats readily available because they are popular among professionals and other users?
Specifically, buy a 5p or a 6p. If you need postscript (say you use Linux), you will need the PS SIMM. I believe the model numbers for the ones that shipped with the SIMM was the 5mp or 6mp. There are also multiple feed tray version (mv series?). I have also heard the Laserjet 2100 series is nice. Look for a low pagecount (under 50,000 if you can swing it - but these printers are workhorses, they will last for a long time).
I picked up my 6p used for $100.00. I added a refilled toner cartridge for another $70.00. That was about 3 years ago and I still haven't run out of toner. I later added extra RAM and the Postscript SIMMs. Not too long back I picked up a 5mp (with RAM and PS SIMM!) at Goodwill for $15.00! It works perfectly, and had a good toner cartridge and even a bit of paper loaded. Not bad for a Goodwill find.
You can find these printers surplus on Ebay. As I have noted, I have also found them at Goodwill. There are many resources on the Net detailing how to refurbish/repair these beasts if needed. Add on a networkable print buffer (I have found these surplus for $5.00 before), and you are set. You will never need another printer again (as long as you are doing black and white) - these things run seemingly forever. Best of all, you will spend well under $300.00 - if you do it right, you might spend under $100.00.
Believe me, it is worth it. If you are frustrated with your ink jet printer for any reason - take this route, and buy an older used Laserjet...
Now, let us suppose the simulation of particles it does according to known physics is complete (I know it isn't).
When I said "complete", I really meant "complete", and I also know that this isn't (currently) attainable, if it ever is (maybe with quantum computing, but maybe not). I have known about chaos since I first encountered it studying fractal algorithms as a high school student in 1989 or so (played around with them on an Apple IIe and a Tandy Color Computer 3).
I am not trying to discount you here, everything you said is true and complete. I just wanted to make it clear that I am aware of these effects, and that I was simply proposing a thought experiment, given a set of suppositions assumed to be true for the sake of the argument...
...and game development, if we (meaning the Linux community and gamers) really wanted it to. I have posted about this before. I wish I could start it myself, but I have too many personal projects as it is, plus I don't have the "clout" to really get this off the ground.
Basically, you build a Live CD/DVD distro that is "cut down" enough to include everything needed to run the game OS and game, providing for everything needed for playing any game developed for the system. Include on this distro a standard set of tools and libraries to develop games with which can play on the distro as well. When the distro is booted, if it is the "demo" distro, have it show a simple graphical menu to let you 1) Drop into the demo game (something simple like "Frozen Bubble"), 2) the game development system (base it on a couple of languages and libraries - Python/C, SDL/PyGame/PyOpenGL, etc), 3) install to hard drive. If it is a "game distro", have it run the game directly, but leave a way to explain and pop out of the game to the same menu, perhaps also including instructions with the game on how to do this.
The other step is critical: Provide a "reference hardware platform" for the same distribution. This could be a set of hardware specs, but ideally it would also be a device you could sell. These specs should not be the most "up-to-date", but rather specs for hardware that is "known good" to the Linux community. Include notes and other information with the download of the ISO and on the website (perhaps included in the dev environment as well) explicitly stating where to get the specs, perhaps what they are, and that there is no guarantee that the distro will run as well or at all on any hardware outside of the reference spec. Provide this spec so that others can build the hardware platforms for game playing and development (maybe they could then certify that their systems are "to spec" and get a sticker or such, or they go be "better than spec" and certify that the run properly or such).
It wouldn't prevent people from "rolling their own console" if they followed the spec, or you could sell them a "spec console" for a price, which would include the console, controllers, and distro. In a way, this could become the "Linux Console Gaming" revolution. Keeping everything open source (code and specifications), while selling reference consoles and certification agreements to those wanting to sell custom consoles based on the specification, could be a viable business. You would have to periodically re-certify hardware as it became obsolete or hard to find on the market (and as drivers were developed for it for Linux - perhaps the business could be a part of the dev effort for drivers?) - perhaps every 6 months or a year.
That's the basics - a free business idea for anyone that wants to pick it up. There are plenty of live CD/DVD distros out there to base things on. The really hard part is coming up with the specs once you have a working distro/dev environment. Once you have decided on the specs, and you have the distro, roll it out on the web and announce it here, then sit back and see what happens. If the bite is big enough, work on that reference hardware platform, and start selling it...
Imagine this - you are being raided (home, work, doesn't matter) for whatever reason...
"This is the BSA - take your hands off your keyboard and back away!" the raiders alert everyone - however, since they can't be everywhere at once...
Tap, tap, tappity-tap - with your foot on the floor, or your knuckles on the desk - and "ZOT!" (or maybe "BOOM!", depending on how you rig it) - there goes the hard drive...
Ok, maybe this is VERY far fetched, and really wouldn't work as well as I described (might make a good plot device for a movie, though) - but is it really improbable (granted, it could also be done using a microphone, etc)?...
particle simulation using traditional laws of physics. This will allow it to do computational molecular dynamics on the small scale or universe modeling on the large scale.
Hmm - this is interesting in and of itself. What I mean by this, is that here is a very specialize (and I assume, Turing complete) computer, doing one particular job, and doing it amazingly well. Now, let us suppose the simulation of particles it does according to known physics is complete (I know it isn't). If it were, then in theory it could model a very small subset of the Universe at the atomic level. Let us suppose you could scale this simulation up to an area the size of the computer (elsewhere in this discussion on/., someone noted you could buy a board for your computer that had a version of this machine - a specialized PPU add-in card, if you will) - let's say 1 cubic meter for sake of the discussion. Now, suposing all of this was true - could this specialized computer simulate (at a slower rate, to be sure) an entire generalized computer (a full scale UTM)?
I argue that it could, easily. In theory, it could even simulate a human (albeit one bunched up into a ball, or one under a meter tall). How close are we to this? Hard to say, but we (humans) did recently simulate an entire virus (though only for a few femtoseconds IIRC) modelled from atomic particle interactions (and learning a heck of a lot in the process).
Now, if a specialized processor, simpler in scope than a more generalized processor (like comparing a DSP to a full CPU, although things are blurring, so the analogy might not fit), can simulate the more generalized processor, how much simpler can those instructions be on the generalized processor?
Stephen Wolfram has a clue - and none of this would suprise him. It certainly doesn't surprise me...
...what makes you think that we (here on earth) will be the first (in the Universe)? How would you (or any one of us) know whether this hasn't already occurred (ie, a technological singularity has already happenned elsewhere in the Universe, and we have been "isolated" in some manner to prevent us from doing the same, or at least limiting our spread should we get lucky).
The honest answer is "we don't know", and that we should continue on (for whatever that means) doing what we do...
I am glad you said this. I am not an engineer either. When I heard that things were epoxied, my first thought was "WTF?", but then I reconsidered, thinking that there are some damn strong epoxies out there, and provided things were done right (ie, proper epoxy, curing, and material prep was done), then epoxy might work.
Then I heard about the size of the panel...
Now, perhaps had the bolts being used all been prepped right (I hesitate to call them bolts - aren't they more like long threaded rod or similar? Bolts have heads), and the holes prepped right, and the spacing was correct (I would think a one foot grid, maybe slightly larger), and the right epoxy used, and the curing done properly...
That is a lot to do right and so much to do wrong. For a 3 ton panel, glued into place...
I have JB-Welded a bunch of stuff in my life, and seen it used in areas I wouldn't think it would work, yet it did. Under tremendous vibration and heat (think broken aluminium cover on a diesel engine blower), for 20 years before it cracked again (and when it did, it was in a different spot!). Even so, this redneck would never think that JB-Welding (or any other epoxy) a 3 ton suspended panel would be a really good idea...
Slashdot Mirror
No, such a search engine would never be able to store everything about the web the way Google or any other search engine does. Such an engine would never be able to spider the entire web and store the snippets needed to allow for such a comprehensive search. Such an engine would also never be immune to the government requesting information from your ISP about where you have gone, either.
However, such an engine might give you a bit more insulation from these intrusions into our online life, and perhaps with some P2P technology thrown into the mix, maybe some onion routing or similar - maybe these individual small search databases can be linked up to provide a more comprehensive search without revealing to anyone who is searching for what, from where, and when.
Even if each box was a simple server with a 100 gig storage, and even if you might have to wait a while for a search to complete, or batch searches together (maybe even scheduled searches or search alerting?) - isn't that inconvenience worth more than the privacy invasion we are now seeing?
As far as custom-slotted/custom-prepped ingredients and supplies - this is already being done today in just about every food preparation business. Most foods for fast-food chains are already in bags or frozen, or in buckets, jars, and jugs. Some even hook up to nitrogen-pressurized delivery systems (think overhead squirters for ketchup/mustard/secret-sauce). What isn't can be changed so that it is. You do know that there are special machines for cutting chicken in "the Church's Way", right? That's right, in the chicken processing industry, you have chicken prep machines for the standard chicken cut, and then the "Church's Cut" - that is one glaring example of an industry changing the system to support another fast food chain. I am certain it is the same way with other players, especially big ones like McD's and such...
As far as the fry vats are concerned, if you have your oil-supply chain worked out and running smoothly, just make the vats and the containers the oil comes in into a standard system that is delivered. Fresh oil comes in, the container/fryer is popped into place, and old oil/containers leave on the next pickup.
There are problems, and there are solutions to those problems, if we are just willing to think about them for a minute and implement the process needed.
It seems like cooking food has gone the same way as sports - easier and more palatable to watch it done rather than actually doing it...
A computer can't make sure the employees aren't being rude to customers,
This assumes there are employees to be rude to the customer...
that they're really washing their hands or that they're not spitting in someone's burger.
Provided an end-to-end burger manufacturing system with full-on automation and robotics (think of a Hyundai auto-assembly plant for burgers), and this can't happens. If they can build an automated car manufacturing factory that has few workers, they can do the same with burgers, it is just a matter of time, money, and need.
A computer won't notice if the guy at the register is acting nervous because he figured out a "foolproof" way to steal from the till.
Once again, there won't be a human at a till - there will be an order entry system using credit/debit cards at each table and a "counter", plus maybe a "credit-deposit" cash-taking "ATM" that you can feed cash into to build up an "in-store credit" to use to purchase food. No human handling money=No money to steal. If you are worried about the ATM deposit angle (after all, a guy with a truck and chain could conceivably take it), then just don't allow cash at all - DONE.
A computer will always have "a system" that can be exploited and you can bet employees will quickly figure out how.
Yes, and I am sure even with my self-described "perfect automation" system, there would be hackers seeking to get free burgers from the system. However, given this possibility, this is why you would still have a few people "on-duty" - doing monitoring of the system on-site. Perhaps a manager/customer-service rep for the Burger-o-Mat place, and an armed security guard. Keep the food making system behind 2-inch thick bulletproof plexi (give the people something to watch and ooh/ahh over), with a slot for "delivery". Firewall the order entry system, money exchange, and order fullfilment systems from each other (perhaps with intrusion detection systems and whatnot), and set-up a leased line or VPN back to the main office for order/materials/money tracking and exchange. Done right, you could make the system nearly impervious to theft (it would probably cost more to hack in than it would be worth in burgers). I am sure you would still get attempts from people with nothing better to do - sadly, the world isn't short of assholes screwing things up for the rest of us...
Well, aside from the "doing the job itself" (don't worry, that is coming, too), maybe the system will have a log of what actually happenned (with video and everything) for review by the human bossman, and the worker would be reprimanded or fired. If so, you may ask "well, how could the computer do that?". It would take a bunch of tech and some good software design, but imagine the following:
Let's suppose the worker in question's only job is to cook the burgers. So, his tasks are to pull burger patties from the fridge, put them on the hot grille, then when they are done, transfer them to the prep station (for other workers to put on buns, mayo, etc). This is how this one small section could work:
First off, the computer would "know" where the employee is at via an RFID tracking system on their badge, with scanners at doors and/or in the ceiling tiles and such (similar to how warehouses track product and workers today). So, the computer could know when the worker moves between the fridge and the grille. There would also be a sensor in the fridge door, so the computer could know when the door opens and closes. A camera (or series of cameras) would be located to observe the path between the fridge and the grille. These camera view(s) are recorded by the system (but not analyzed). Another camera is placed above the grille looking down on it. The computer could instruct the individual working to pull out the hamburger patties if it knows it has orders to prep (from the order-entry system at the front) and there is empty space on the grill (it would know this via some edge detection and other vision software working on the grill camera to count disks/squares of patties - this system could also check for approximate "cook time" by measuring the time and density of the darkness of the patties as they cook). It would tell the worker to get the patties from the fridge, which would take a set amount of time. Given a certain percentage, it would know that once it has alerted the employee and the employee has hit the "acknowledge button" on the unit, that the employee would only have so much time to take to get to the fridge, open it up, pull out the patties, close the door, then return (and it could track this action via the RFID monitoring). The worker would put the patties on the grill (the computer would count them as well with the grill camera), and waits for them to get done. The computer could alert the worker when they are done (via timing and checking via the grill camera system), and tell them to move them to prep. It could verify that this happenned by seeing the patties come off the grill (using the imaging system over the grill), perhaps monitoring proper movement via RFID, and then monitoring whatever other cameras/sensors are located in the prep area as well. It would then instruct the employee to get more hamburger patties out as needed.
Now, when breaks are needed/figured, the system could tell the user to go on break and order another employee to take his/her place. Via the RFID monitoring, it would know this was happenning. Similar changes in routine could be handled in a similar manner. The system would also know when break time was over and could call the employee back (maybe all the employees were bluetooth headsets, not just to recieve commands from the computer system, but also swift changeout for taking orders from customers in the drive-thru if the restaurant has one). It would know where the employee was, and if the employee comes back in time.
If not, then the system would know there was a problem - it could easily route another employee and shuffle the schedule around to keep everything flowing. Whether or not the errant employee returned, it would note it in the employee's file, and send an alert to the bossman for review. The boss could then review the log, any of the camera footage needed (both that from the grill area and the pathway ar
There's nothing like working on a phone line at the junction box on your house with bare hands, then the phone rings - zzzzt!! Yow!
Except perhaps getting shocked by 110VAC, or the distributor/coil on your car...ouch!
What I could see happenning, though, is special small size switching transformers built into a standard electrical junction box, which are "smart" in some manner to know when a plug is plugged into them, which connects the switching transformer in, and that supplies, say, 12V at 10A or something to a common downconvertor system or something that all the other peripherals plug into (that, or each peripheral converts the 12VDC independently). In a way, I built something like this, once, for a desk I had: I hooked up an old Sun Computer pizza-box (Sparcstation?) powersupply and created a "bus" of electrical wires running under the desk, hooked up to screw terminal bus strips every so often. I ran the 12V, 5V, and ground lines via this bus along the length of the desk, so then I could get 12V, 7V, and 5V feeds from this system. Hooked up all my peripherals that had wall warts to the bus, and ran a "power on" green LED to the front of the desk for status. Worked pretty well.
STEAK AND CHEESE!!!
STEAK AND CHEESE!!!
STEAK AND CHEESE!!!
STEAK AND CHEESE!!!
For those that don't know, the "Hearing Aid" service was depicted in Brunner's dystopia as a service people could call (via phone) and just talk, rant, pray, confess, tell, etc - and the service would never talk back, never judge - just listen. The caller would hang up when done, hopefully with a clearer conscience (or something). The book goes on to tell that it wasn't just a machine that picked up and "listened", but rather actual people, and that people who would call would try to get the "Hearing Aid" staffers to respond back, but they wouldn't - it was a feature of the service: a place you could call and confess your darkest sins or desires to a real human being without fear of retribution.
This is not really a new thing though, with people "confessing sins" or attempting to get salvation or understanding from a machine (or crys for help, etc) - look into the history of Joseph Weizenbaum's Eliza chatbot - reviewing the log's of the chat sessions between real people and the machine, Weizenbaum found that people would talk to the chatbot as if it were a real psychologist, which was understandable since this was how Eliza was designed to "respond as", like a psychologist talking to a patient. Although, in some cases, knowing that it was a machine they would even tell it things that they wouldn't even tell another human!
Are search engines now the new form of "Eliza"?
Oops - now it seems I should have read the rest of this thread - it seems that there are date/time stamps with the data, as someone has posted a list of searches with them. So - what are the timestamps for the "lookin' to kill ma wife...mmm, steak-and-cheese" searcher's terms? Are they in datetime order? If so, then it just becomes all the more weird why they would search for "poop" and "steak and cheese" right in the middle. Does anyone have an explanation for this (other than "they are stark raving looney", please)...
I can only think of a few possibilities as to why this is - either someone else was searching at the same time using the same account (or, hopefully, multiple people, unless the "steak and cheese" caused them troubles with "poop" - eh), or these records are presented in nothing like date/time order.
Can anybody tell me if the data in the dump has more than two fields (all I have ever seen is an "id" field, and a "search terms" field listed)? Are there other fields in the data dump that indicate a date/time stamp or something so that the searches can be ordered by that?
If not, then it is very likely that these searches were simply dumped using the equivalent of "SELECT id, terms FROM table", with no ORDER BY (or equivalent) clause tacked on, and the results were returned in a non-defined order (which might be by record insert order, by random order, or by any other possible order - for SQL compliant databases, if you don't specify an ORDER BY clause, the returned order of a recordset is undefined, and could possibly be in a different order each time the query is run by the backend SQL engine). If that is the case, than this data become just a bit more meaningless, as one could not follow a searcher's "train of thought" to determine what they were going after.
This would have both good and bad consequences for the data as it stands - good in that it obsfuscates the data just a bit more which could conceivably help hide a searcher's intentions, but also bad in that it could make innocent intentions look more non-innocent, depending on how the result set is skewed...
I agree with you on the cold smoke, but it is more difficult to "roll your own" smoker for that. It can be done similar to the method I described, but you would separate out the smoke generator from the smoking container with some corrugated metal ducting. It would really be redneck then (man, I am just thinking what it would look like, and realizing it would be like something from a junkyard).
If you are renting a place that has an outdoor area, and it is "yours" (that is, it isn't a common area), talk to your landlord, and find out if you can set up such a system. The nice thing about what I described is that it is very easy to set up and break down, and isn't too large (one or two 40 or 55 gallon drums aren't very big). Put it on a wheeled base, and you can easily move it out of the way. Might be difficult to move if you move places, unless you have a small pickup.
One thing I forgot to note - smokers (of any sort) eventually turn into ugly, nasty things, from the condensation of the creosote out of the smoke on the cooler surfaces. This stuff is ugly, gooey, nasty, and can be a bear to clean. Since you know about cold vs hot smoking, though, I can almost assume you know this...
As far as a B&W LCD is concerned, sometimes you just want high-resolution text or graphics, without color getting in the way. If you don't remember what a Hercules card looked like with a matched monitor, then you don't know what monochrome output really means. Believe me, it can be both beautiful and easy on the eyes. Furthermore, today it should be cheap to do (versus back in the day when such a setup was damn expensive)...
Bah - this is why I run Linux at home, I am soooo tired of this bull - it is also why I am getting back into 8-bit machines (currently playing around with my Tandy Color Computer 3, and later I am restoring an Altair 8800 I managed to snag). Nah, it ain't glitzy or glamorous, but it definitely is way more fun and interesting than constantly fighting against a machine which despises you (the machine I refer to here being the corporate/social/governmental oligarchy that seems to be devouring the world). Interestingly, even with what I am doing on my 8-bit machines, I still run into old-school copy protection schemes. A guy I worked with getting a game on my CoCo is working on a system for the CatWeasel card that sounds pretty slick - essentially a very modular interface to the card to allow analysis and backup of data from any level - from raw flux transitions on the floppy/disk side on up to the real data (via a series of software emulation modules that do the conversion, chained in series) as the controller would present it. Should be an interesting bit of kit when he has it done...
If you want to smoke it after curing it, once again, you don't need a lot of space - you can make a simple smoker out of old charcoal grille (Weber or similar round grill) and a (get a clean one that has only been used for food or feed storage - DO NOT USE ONE THAT HAS BEEN USED FOR CHEMICAL STORAGE) 55 gallon drum (stainless if you can find and afford it). Chop the legs down on the grille (leave enough room for air circulation. Put it on the ground and lay some bricks/blocks around it to support the drum. Cut the drum in "half" (actually, cut the bottom off one-third of the way up - this is your "lid", the rest is the "body"). The bottom half of the drum become the "lid", the upper half becomes the "body". Weld some handles onto the body and lid (you can weld, right?), and weld a guide flange or series of guide plates around the upper edge of the body so you can sit the cover back on. Poke (burn) a few holes in the bottom (top?) of the lid to let out excess smoke, and fix some eyehooks on the underside (bolt them on). Get some stainless steel skewers or long hooks and bend them to shape to hook the belly(s) on, then hook these to the underside of the "lid". Get your charcoal going, add your soaked wood chips (apple, cherry, or hickory are best for pork - or combine for flavor - whatever you use, don't use green wood or woods high in resin like pine unless you like bitterness), set the body down on the bricks and put the lid (with hanging bellies) on top. Keep your temperature at about 150-200 degrees and "run it" for a few hours (more or less depending on taste).
Wait for the neighbors to come...
Note that this won't kill (all) the bacteria - if you run it hotter, you will cook your meat more, but the idea here is to get flavor, because you are going to be frying this stuff later anyhow. Once you are done smoking your belly(s), let them cool back down, then put them back in the fridge for a couple day. After that, cut, cook, serve and enjoy! Alternatively, if you aren't handy, don't have the time, or don't feel like being a redneck, you can buy smokers that are basically the same kind of design as mentioned above - just be prepared to spend some money. Also note that you can smoke other meats and poultry this way as well - smoked turkey for Thanksgiving is a wonderful alternative to the oven (up the temperature a bit and cook it longer - you may want to also "pre-cook" the bird in the oven as well). BTW - only do this if you have your own backyard - this doesn't work out well at an apartment complex or on a balcony...
Just how slow is that box you call a PC? Granted, PC's aren't "instant-on" like the home computers of old (/me hugs his CoCo), but they aren't nearly as slow to boot up as they were. I would say a minute at most for most machines to start up and get to a login screen. Most of the issue is the speed of the hard drive and the number of drivers and such being loaded. Cut back on the drivers and other modules being loaded, switch to CF media or similar for your boot partition, and things should be much faster. Better yet, just leave the thing on during the day, and only boot it in the morning (you might be able to find a motherboard that can do this automatically). Or, how about just being a tad patient?
I have a TV, a VCR, and a DVD. Media PC couldn't play the VCR tapes anyway, and frankly browsing through my shelves of DVDs is no slower than digging through menu trees to find the files if I ripped them to a drive.
Only if you don't set up your Media PC system properly. Rip the VCR tapes via a tuner card (for those tapes which you archived shows off TV, say), or buy DVD's of the movies (if you have the money), then rip them to your fileserver. Your fileserver backend should consist of a database with some metadata fields to help you index it all, and pointer fields to the actual VOB/MPG files. Add a frontend browser web server system (or standalone application or plugin for your favorite viewer app). Yeah, you might have to do some coding here (though I am sure by now plenty of people have coded and released open source apps just like this). You will only have to dig through menu trees if you are truely lazy with your initial setup.
A TV with VCR and DVD is a No brainer. Kids can run them without any reasonable likelihood of destruction. No driver issues, compatibility issues, no mysteriousness: Turn it on, insert media, watch.
Yes, a standard setup is a "no-brainer", but if you set up the system properly, and keep it locked away, there should be even less a chance of destruction with a Media PC, simply because there won't be any physical media for the kiddies to "destroy". Keep the controls on the remote and GUI stupid-simple (take a look at how digital cable-boxes do it, or TIVO), and even a kid will be able to figure it out (can't say the same for adults - but there are retarded people in every generation, unfortunately).
TV resolution is retarded for using any computer function. Even Hi-def TVs are nice, but they're not 1920x1280 like the top end computer monitor.
I can't remember - does the HDTV standard even go up to 1280 (I thought 1080i was the highest)? Even so, a good XGA or SXGA DLP system (rear or front projected) is more than enough for TV-based entertainment (actually, my wife would say a 9" B&W set would be more than enough, but we won't ask her). You will have plenty of resolution for web-based browsing and game playing, plus movie watching, on your HTPC with that kind of a setup. If this still isn't enough, and you have the cash, go with a dual (or if you are really rich - quad) tiled-projector setup and a multi-head card. Of course, this setup moves you out of the "Media PC" realm and into the "Large Network Ops Center" category...heh.
the 'setup' of a typically-comfortable tv-viewing home theater is rarely conducive (IMO) to getting productive work done in most contexts
The office is for work, the living room (or bedroom, if you prefer) is for fun and relaxation. About the only "work" you should ever think about doing with a Media PC setup is posting the occasional Slashdot comment or reading/replying to an email or two. Of course, if you have a large-screen projector setup (or even a decent size LCD or Plasma), you can do real "work" with it. I mean, at my work we seem to get along fine with such a similar setup when we have meetings in our conference room and such, and t
Do they even make B&W digital backs? Actually, in some manner they probably do (if only for x-ray imaging, perhaps). I am not a photographer by any means, but I wonder if CCD (or similar) digital imaging devices have the same problem that LCDs do today - the fact that you can't get certain types (or sizes) due to them not being popular anymore. I mean, at one time you could get very nice, high-resolution B&W LCD screens, as well as smaller, medium resolution TFT color screens - used on laptops and such at one time. Today, they are almost impossible to find (barebones only, and you have to buy a metric ton).
You can't buy such laptops anymore because they are considered "obsolete" by the larger market, even if you really want a very small and simple laptop. Are digital backs/ccd image sensors the same way, or are a lot of formats readily available because they are popular among professionals and other users?
I picked up my 6p used for $100.00. I added a refilled toner cartridge for another $70.00. That was about 3 years ago and I still haven't run out of toner. I later added extra RAM and the Postscript SIMMs. Not too long back I picked up a 5mp (with RAM and PS SIMM!) at Goodwill for $15.00! It works perfectly, and had a good toner cartridge and even a bit of paper loaded. Not bad for a Goodwill find.
You can find these printers surplus on Ebay. As I have noted, I have also found them at Goodwill. There are many resources on the Net detailing how to refurbish/repair these beasts if needed. Add on a networkable print buffer (I have found these surplus for $5.00 before), and you are set. You will never need another printer again (as long as you are doing black and white) - these things run seemingly forever. Best of all, you will spend well under $300.00 - if you do it right, you might spend under $100.00.
Believe me, it is worth it. If you are frustrated with your ink jet printer for any reason - take this route, and buy an older used Laserjet...
Now, let us suppose the simulation of particles it does according to known physics is complete (I know it isn't).
When I said "complete", I really meant "complete", and I also know that this isn't (currently) attainable, if it ever is (maybe with quantum computing, but maybe not). I have known about chaos since I first encountered it studying fractal algorithms as a high school student in 1989 or so (played around with them on an Apple IIe and a Tandy Color Computer 3).
I am not trying to discount you here, everything you said is true and complete. I just wanted to make it clear that I am aware of these effects, and that I was simply proposing a thought experiment, given a set of suppositions assumed to be true for the sake of the argument...
Basically, you build a Live CD/DVD distro that is "cut down" enough to include everything needed to run the game OS and game, providing for everything needed for playing any game developed for the system. Include on this distro a standard set of tools and libraries to develop games with which can play on the distro as well. When the distro is booted, if it is the "demo" distro, have it show a simple graphical menu to let you 1) Drop into the demo game (something simple like "Frozen Bubble"), 2) the game development system (base it on a couple of languages and libraries - Python/C, SDL/PyGame/PyOpenGL, etc), 3) install to hard drive. If it is a "game distro", have it run the game directly, but leave a way to explain and pop out of the game to the same menu, perhaps also including instructions with the game on how to do this.
The other step is critical: Provide a "reference hardware platform" for the same distribution. This could be a set of hardware specs, but ideally it would also be a device you could sell. These specs should not be the most "up-to-date", but rather specs for hardware that is "known good" to the Linux community. Include notes and other information with the download of the ISO and on the website (perhaps included in the dev environment as well) explicitly stating where to get the specs, perhaps what they are, and that there is no guarantee that the distro will run as well or at all on any hardware outside of the reference spec. Provide this spec so that others can build the hardware platforms for game playing and development (maybe they could then certify that their systems are "to spec" and get a sticker or such, or they go be "better than spec" and certify that the run properly or such).
It wouldn't prevent people from "rolling their own console" if they followed the spec, or you could sell them a "spec console" for a price, which would include the console, controllers, and distro. In a way, this could become the "Linux Console Gaming" revolution. Keeping everything open source (code and specifications), while selling reference consoles and certification agreements to those wanting to sell custom consoles based on the specification, could be a viable business. You would have to periodically re-certify hardware as it became obsolete or hard to find on the market (and as drivers were developed for it for Linux - perhaps the business could be a part of the dev effort for drivers?) - perhaps every 6 months or a year.
That's the basics - a free business idea for anyone that wants to pick it up. There are plenty of live CD/DVD distros out there to base things on. The really hard part is coming up with the specs once you have a working distro/dev environment. Once you have decided on the specs, and you have the distro, roll it out on the web and announce it here, then sit back and see what happens. If the bite is big enough, work on that reference hardware platform, and start selling it...
"This is the BSA - take your hands off your keyboard and back away!" the raiders alert everyone - however, since they can't be everywhere at once...
Tap, tap, tappity-tap - with your foot on the floor, or your knuckles on the desk - and "ZOT!" (or maybe "BOOM!", depending on how you rig it) - there goes the hard drive...
Ok, maybe this is VERY far fetched, and really wouldn't work as well as I described (might make a good plot device for a movie, though) - but is it really improbable (granted, it could also be done using a microphone, etc)?...
Hmm - this is interesting in and of itself. What I mean by this, is that here is a very specialize (and I assume, Turing complete) computer, doing one particular job, and doing it amazingly well. Now, let us suppose the simulation of particles it does according to known physics is complete (I know it isn't). If it were, then in theory it could model a very small subset of the Universe at the atomic level. Let us suppose you could scale this simulation up to an area the size of the computer (elsewhere in this discussion on
I argue that it could, easily. In theory, it could even simulate a human (albeit one bunched up into a ball, or one under a meter tall). How close are we to this? Hard to say, but we (humans) did recently simulate an entire virus (though only for a few femtoseconds IIRC) modelled from atomic particle interactions (and learning a heck of a lot in the process).
Now, if a specialized processor, simpler in scope than a more generalized processor (like comparing a DSP to a full CPU, although things are blurring, so the analogy might not fit), can simulate the more generalized processor, how much simpler can those instructions be on the generalized processor?
Stephen Wolfram has a clue - and none of this would suprise him. It certainly doesn't surprise me...
The honest answer is "we don't know", and that we should continue on (for whatever that means) doing what we do...
Then I heard about the size of the panel...
Now, perhaps had the bolts being used all been prepped right (I hesitate to call them bolts - aren't they more like long threaded rod or similar? Bolts have heads), and the holes prepped right, and the spacing was correct (I would think a one foot grid, maybe slightly larger), and the right epoxy used, and the curing done properly...
That is a lot to do right and so much to do wrong. For a 3 ton panel, glued into place...
I have JB-Welded a bunch of stuff in my life, and seen it used in areas I wouldn't think it would work, yet it did. Under tremendous vibration and heat (think broken aluminium cover on a diesel engine blower), for 20 years before it cracked again (and when it did, it was in a different spot!). Even so, this redneck would never think that JB-Welding (or any other epoxy) a 3 ton suspended panel would be a really good idea...