First off, LadyAda is awesome. I really don't need to say any more than that.
I've been wanting to make something like this for a while now. A year or two ago, I bought a big box of the same old Soviet 'vacuum fluorescent indicator' tubes, but I was always having trouble working out the hardware involved, especially the power supply. Using a boost converter is a great idea which might have occurred to me if I had had any experience with them at the time. (Other projects have since taken priority)
I haven't been keeping up with linux development all that much lately, but as I was looking at some of the graphs in the report, I started to become curious as to what the data might represent. For instance, the graph showing lines of code Added, Deleted, or Modified in the 2.6.x kernels. Did something get a massive re-write in 2.6.27?
I bought a commercial diamond-based thermal paste when I built my quadcore machine a couple years ago. I tested it by pushing a high-res scene through unbiased physical light renderer for a week. It never went above 38C running at 100% on all four cores. My older dualcore machine idles at 55C with ArcticSilver 5.
I was telling my little sister (A silversmith and jeweler) about it, and she said "Well duh, diamonds conduct heat like you wouldn't believe. It's basically the only stone you don't need to heatsink while soldering a ring because it doesn't hold heat long enough to damage it."
We used to have a RadioShack across the street...but it was little more than a place to buy gadgets and sign up for cellular service. There's one out towards the edge of town, but it's part of a TrueValue hardware store and we were lucky to find goddamn Hook-Up Wire, much less anything else. (In fact, it was little more than a RadioShelf) I'm actually amazed beyond words that they even carried any veroboard. The last time I saw a RadioShack that actually carried things like resistors and diodes was more than ten years ago.
RadioShack is an icon of my childhood. Growing up with a geek dad who was always tinkering and building, those blue-carded blisterpacks of RadioShack and Archer-branded components were everywhere. But frankly, even if RadioShack were still 'alive'...the vast majority of my electronics work is surface mount, and what components and supplies I don't order from China for fractions of a cent on the dollar, I order from Digi-Key. That said, it is still the 'End of An Era' as far as I'm concerned and really something the geek community should be mourning.
I've been running the RC as my primary OS since it came out. No problems with my games. In fact, some of them run even BETTER. And of course, now my dual DX10.1 videocards can now show off what they can do, unlike when I was running XP x64.
I can totally see the whole shift/ctrl thing coming into play in games eventually, I model 3D in Newtek Lightwave 3D and the interface makes use of "a" "A" and "^a", for instance. A large percentage of the commands are accessible from the keyboard through various means.
As far as games go, I'm a die-hard Keyboard/Mouse user on the computer. There are only two exceptions: Fighting games. For which I use a custom arcade stick I built. And Mecha games, which require uhm...a little 'more'. If the PC version of Mechwarrior 5 doesn't use a gimped console-oriented control scheme, I'm going to build a custom controller setup from military and aviation controls that will put the Steel Battalion controller to SHAME. COUNT ON IT.
Impossible-to-substantiate claims of long-term data integrity aside, it's an absurd concept.
A 'DVD that can be read for 1,000 years'? It will be nothing short of incredible if you can even read it in a HUNDRED years. I'm not saying their uber material and process won't etch rather more permanent 1s and 0s into the disc. I'm saying that even if each one comes WITH a DVD drive to archive with it (And at that price, they could.) the chances are still pretty slim that anyone could access the data in any meaningful way down the road. (And exactly what are you going to be archiving that you think will still be relevant or usable in a thousand years?)
In FIFTY years, you're going to have future geeks taking these quaint 12cm discs, doing a 3D scan of the material's structure, extracting the binary data, and sticking it in an antique computer emulation to view the content. The data will likely hold very little meaning whatsoever. They'll do it because it's clever and geeky, and then they'll post a writeup about it to their blog/the cybernetic hivemind/whatever, shortly before forgetting all about the discs and never accessing them again.
In a thousand years, you'll be lucky if someone thinks they'd make a good wind chime or something.
I would rather posit that the constant (in)breeding of stupid people is 'destroying local knowledge'. I was brought up before (Not by much) the internet and 'wikipedia as a verb', and at least in my case easy access to information SUPPLEMENTS what I know, and doesn't make me RELIANT on such technology. Of course, as society gets dumber and lazier as a whole, I have little doubt that instant access to information WILL replace actually having to know and remember stuff... But that's not the fault of the technology, it's the fault of modern civilization's end-run around natural selection.:P
I think I'm going to stick with my full-spectrum calibrated daylight CFLs for a bit longer, thanks.;[ Since I'm sure a 'more pleasant' spectrum has more to do with some sort of psychotic reaction to new technology and less to do with color-correct viewing or 'real light' as I like to call it.
I finally gave in and made a twitter account last week, and I already have four followers, none of whom are people I know online or off. Seems to me you get enough random followers no matter WHAT you do.;o
Funny, Battle.net was the reason I never played the Warcraft 3 collector's edition I bought. I installed it, tried to get into a multiplayer game, got 'placed' in a game full of Koreans, was wiped out before I even started collecting resources. Tried to join another game, something similar happened. LOVE your no-choice unavoidable automatic game matching system, assholes! I still want my $80 back.
Fuck it, I don't even like (traditional) RTS games anymore for about the same reason. (World in Conflict is awesome though) If they screw up Diablo III, I'll be REALLY pissed. I love Diable.
On the one hand, I find rape scenarios in eroge to be distasteful... But this is a slippery slope. Sooner or later, it's going to get to where anyone who doesn't like any given aspect of Japanese visual culture will be able to whip up a frenzy and browbeat Japan into submission over whatever it is. Like Korea's shit-fit over the NON-EXISTENT portrayal of Korea in Hetalia. Way to not even know what's going on, fuckers. Too bad the Japanese gave in and pulled the show... Oh wait, that wasn't good enough! They also tried to get the webcasts pulled. And crazy Koreans were sending death threats to the station, the studio, the mangaka, and really just about anyone they could get an address for.
Then there's UNICEF's war against 'sexual situations involving underaged characters'... Again, I find the more extreme end of the lolicon spectrum to be incredibly distasteful... But if they really wanted to pursue their fight to the smallest detail, that's pretty much all of anime. Since we all know 'anime 18' = 14-16.
I'm so glad we have all this free time to spend worrying about the well-being of cartoon characters and drawings, ever since we managed to completely abolish rape and child abuse. Oh, wait. We didn't.
Dear UNICEF and other nosey fuckers with too much time on their hands: Get your priorities straight, or someone even smarter than me is going to string your asses up and use you as a constitutional and judicial pinata.
Isn't the point of Windows 7 Starter Edition for it to be 'Windows for Grandma'? Browser, E-mail, Word Processor? Do you think anyone who has had their hands in the guts of their machine buys Windows XP Home? Vista Home? No? Then what's the big deal? Windows 7 Starter Edition is for those Other People(TM).
I'm still on the fence regarding Windows 7 in general. I'm running the RC on my primary machine, (Previously running Windows XP x64) and so far, I'm still not out of the 'new install' disorientation, when you're still running into things you've forgotten to install, or settings that aren't the way you like them, so I can't really speak to how it compares yet, but I don't immediately dislike it.
Some things I've certainly noticed: There are a lot of features that make the OS feel 'smarter' than it used to. My GPU acceleration in Photoshop CS4 actually WORKS. And h264/AVC video actually seems to play A LOT better now.
The fact of the matter is, my biggest issue at this point is that I can't find any decent themes/visual styles. (I prefer a subdued UI) And I can't even change the color of the overall window. Kinda pisses me off that I can make the Aero title bar any color I want, but the menubar and stuff are still blue. Other than that, and a lack of decent screensavers (And the SS not starting for some reason), I don't have much to complain about.
I have had no driver problems, and a few long-standing issues I was having were resolved by Windows actually automatically finding newer chipset drivers than available on the site of my motherboard mfg. And my Canon EOS 350D is actually recognized by windows now without having to hack together a driver to get the pictures off of it.
If you're under 50 and don't know the proper use of the terms 'Hard Drive' 'CPU' and 'Computer', you live under a rock. There's no excuse. EVERYONE has a computer these days. It is not comparable to owning a car but not knowing thing-one about maintaining it, it's like owning a car and not knowing that it isn't called a 'toaster oven'.
The worst part is— as posited in the article —there are most certainly people out there teaching these incorrect terms. There has to be. I've even heard people who've grown up with modern computers refer to hard drive space as 'memory'.
I had been getting these calls half a dozen times a day. Which is really amusing since I don't have any sort of vehicle. (Unless they want to sell me a service contract for my mountain bike.)
Of course, it dropped sharply four weeks after I added my number to the do not call list. But I'm glad to see that those fuckers are in for it now.
I'd say have a look at the ICY DOCK MB559US (Or really anything from ICY DOCK, it all seems to be pretty good stuff.) it's an external enclosure that has USB 2.0 and eSATA, and supports SATA II 3gb/s drives. It's barely bigger than the drive itself, costs between $50 and $75, and additional drive trays can be had for $20. (Not as cheap as I'd like.) It's worth noting that they have several different versions to cover a range of different connection types. eSATA, USB 2.0, Firewire 400, Firewire 800... And the trays will also fit in their multibay internal enclosures, just in case you later decide you want one of those big media server jobbers to feed your screens.
I will admit I have no experience with the devices, but I seriously considered getting one a while back. For now I'm sticking with mass internal storage.
It's like banning violent videogames. It'll never work for two reasons:
1. The people who 'easily transition' from something like Paintball to actual violence would just as easily transition from EATING PANCAKES to violence. It's because they're CRAZY. 2. There are lots of people who play Paintball and stuff to work off violent, base, tail-brain, impulses so they DON'T end up throttling nth stupid person they have to deal with today.
People are still going to do it, and it's going to get to the point where they have to start locking up multiple offenders. So, geniuses, what does it mean when you start locking up dozens of otherwise normal and upstanding citizens and there's STILL SHOOTINGS?
If you want to ban a sport that's responsible for violent behavior, ban RUGBY.
Might as well just start rounding them up now. Making paintball and airsoft (Or SoftAir as they call it for reasons beyond understanding) illegal only serves to criminalize players. Because we all know, making something illegal for no good reason will not deter people in the least. (Look at marijuana.)
General rule of thumb: If no one in their right mind can think of a reason it should be illegal, your law is STUPID.
If this goes through, I just might have to take my blog down lest I face prosecution for, I don't know...WAR CRIMES. While most of my posts are benign, god help you if you piss me off that day. Insert sarcasm tags where you see fit, because I couldn't give a rat's ass.:P
This is only going to encourage him. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets behind such an initiative himself just 'for the lulz' as Anonymous would put it. Man, I will laugh so hard... XD
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First off, LadyAda is awesome. I really don't need to say any more than that.
I've been wanting to make something like this for a while now. A year or two ago, I bought a big box of the same old Soviet 'vacuum fluorescent indicator' tubes, but I was always having trouble working out the hardware involved, especially the power supply. Using a boost converter is a great idea which might have occurred to me if I had had any experience with them at the time. (Other projects have since taken priority)
My enclosure design wasn't quite as...ah, 'conservative' as a nice simple laser-cut plexiglass box though :) http://media.giantpachinkomachineofdoom.com/blog/2008-06/images/clockwip3.png
Now I'm going to have to take another try at it! :D
I haven't been keeping up with linux development all that much lately, but as I was looking at some of the graphs in the report, I started to become curious as to what the data might represent. For instance, the graph showing lines of code Added, Deleted, or Modified in the 2.6.x kernels. Did something get a massive re-write in 2.6.27?
Mmmm, Long Pig! Tastes just like chicken!
I bought a commercial diamond-based thermal paste when I built my quadcore machine a couple years ago. I tested it by pushing a high-res scene through unbiased physical light renderer for a week. It never went above 38C running at 100% on all four cores. My older dualcore machine idles at 55C with ArcticSilver 5.
Of course, the cooling of the quadcore certainly isn't hurt by the ridiculously large all-copper CPU cooler I put on it.
I was telling my little sister (A silversmith and jeweler) about it, and she said "Well duh, diamonds conduct heat like you wouldn't believe. It's basically the only stone you don't need to heatsink while soldering a ring because it doesn't hold heat long enough to damage it."
We used to have a RadioShack across the street...but it was little more than a place to buy gadgets and sign up for cellular service. There's one out towards the edge of town, but it's part of a TrueValue hardware store and we were lucky to find goddamn Hook-Up Wire, much less anything else. (In fact, it was little more than a RadioShelf) I'm actually amazed beyond words that they even carried any veroboard. The last time I saw a RadioShack that actually carried things like resistors and diodes was more than ten years ago.
RadioShack is an icon of my childhood. Growing up with a geek dad who was always tinkering and building, those blue-carded blisterpacks of RadioShack and Archer-branded components were everywhere. But frankly, even if RadioShack were still 'alive'...the vast majority of my electronics work is surface mount, and what components and supplies I don't order from China for fractions of a cent on the dollar, I order from Digi-Key. That said, it is still the 'End of An Era' as far as I'm concerned and really something the geek community should be mourning.
I've been running the RC as my primary OS since it came out. No problems with my games. In fact, some of them run even BETTER. And of course, now my dual DX10.1 videocards can now show off what they can do, unlike when I was running XP x64.
I can totally see the whole shift/ctrl thing coming into play in games eventually, I model 3D in Newtek Lightwave 3D and the interface makes use of "a" "A" and "^a", for instance. A large percentage of the commands are accessible from the keyboard through various means.
As far as games go, I'm a die-hard Keyboard/Mouse user on the computer. There are only two exceptions: Fighting games. For which I use a custom arcade stick I built. And Mecha games, which require uhm...a little 'more'. If the PC version of Mechwarrior 5 doesn't use a gimped console-oriented control scheme, I'm going to build a custom controller setup from military and aviation controls that will put the Steel Battalion controller to SHAME. COUNT ON IT.
Impossible-to-substantiate claims of long-term data integrity aside, it's an absurd concept.
A 'DVD that can be read for 1,000 years'? It will be nothing short of incredible if you can even read it in a HUNDRED years. I'm not saying their uber material and process won't etch rather more permanent 1s and 0s into the disc. I'm saying that even if each one comes WITH a DVD drive to archive with it (And at that price, they could.) the chances are still pretty slim that anyone could access the data in any meaningful way down the road. (And exactly what are you going to be archiving that you think will still be relevant or usable in a thousand years?)
In FIFTY years, you're going to have future geeks taking these quaint 12cm discs, doing a 3D scan of the material's structure, extracting the binary data, and sticking it in an antique computer emulation to view the content. The data will likely hold very little meaning whatsoever. They'll do it because it's clever and geeky, and then they'll post a writeup about it to their blog/the cybernetic hivemind/whatever, shortly before forgetting all about the discs and never accessing them again.
In a thousand years, you'll be lucky if someone thinks they'd make a good wind chime or something.
I would rather posit that the constant (in)breeding of stupid people is 'destroying local knowledge'. I was brought up before (Not by much) the internet and 'wikipedia as a verb', and at least in my case easy access to information SUPPLEMENTS what I know, and doesn't make me RELIANT on such technology. Of course, as society gets dumber and lazier as a whole, I have little doubt that instant access to information WILL replace actually having to know and remember stuff... But that's not the fault of the technology, it's the fault of modern civilization's end-run around natural selection. :P
I think I'm going to stick with my full-spectrum calibrated daylight CFLs for a bit longer, thanks. ;[ Since I'm sure a 'more pleasant' spectrum has more to do with some sort of psychotic reaction to new technology and less to do with color-correct viewing or 'real light' as I like to call it.
I finally gave in and made a twitter account last week, and I already have four followers, none of whom are people I know online or off. Seems to me you get enough random followers no matter WHAT you do. ;o
Somewhere in a box under my desk, I have an old book about programming arcade-style games on the C64. It includes all sorts of code examples :D
*sigh* Diablo. Of course, I didn't SEE a typo before I hit 'Submit'. ;
Funny, Battle.net was the reason I never played the Warcraft 3 collector's edition I bought. I installed it, tried to get into a multiplayer game, got 'placed' in a game full of Koreans, was wiped out before I even started collecting resources. Tried to join another game, something similar happened. LOVE your no-choice unavoidable automatic game matching system, assholes! I still want my $80 back.
Fuck it, I don't even like (traditional) RTS games anymore for about the same reason. (World in Conflict is awesome though) If they screw up Diablo III, I'll be REALLY pissed. I love Diable.
On the one hand, I find rape scenarios in eroge to be distasteful... But this is a slippery slope. Sooner or later, it's going to get to where anyone who doesn't like any given aspect of Japanese visual culture will be able to whip up a frenzy and browbeat Japan into submission over whatever it is. Like Korea's shit-fit over the NON-EXISTENT portrayal of Korea in Hetalia. Way to not even know what's going on, fuckers. Too bad the Japanese gave in and pulled the show... Oh wait, that wasn't good enough! They also tried to get the webcasts pulled. And crazy Koreans were sending death threats to the station, the studio, the mangaka, and really just about anyone they could get an address for.
Then there's UNICEF's war against 'sexual situations involving underaged characters'... Again, I find the more extreme end of the lolicon spectrum to be incredibly distasteful... But if they really wanted to pursue their fight to the smallest detail, that's pretty much all of anime. Since we all know 'anime 18' = 14-16.
I'm so glad we have all this free time to spend worrying about the well-being of cartoon characters and drawings, ever since we managed to completely abolish rape and child abuse. Oh, wait. We didn't.
Dear UNICEF and other nosey fuckers with too much time on their hands: Get your priorities straight, or someone even smarter than me is going to string your asses up and use you as a constitutional and judicial pinata.
Well, when moot is elected president in 2012 or something, I guess we'll know if it's safe or not.
Isn't the point of Windows 7 Starter Edition for it to be 'Windows for Grandma'? Browser, E-mail, Word Processor? Do you think anyone who has had their hands in the guts of their machine buys Windows XP Home? Vista Home? No? Then what's the big deal? Windows 7 Starter Edition is for those Other People(TM).
I'm still on the fence regarding Windows 7 in general. I'm running the RC on my primary machine, (Previously running Windows XP x64) and so far, I'm still not out of the 'new install' disorientation, when you're still running into things you've forgotten to install, or settings that aren't the way you like them, so I can't really speak to how it compares yet, but I don't immediately dislike it.
Some things I've certainly noticed: There are a lot of features that make the OS feel 'smarter' than it used to. My GPU acceleration in Photoshop CS4 actually WORKS. And h264/AVC video actually seems to play A LOT better now.
The fact of the matter is, my biggest issue at this point is that I can't find any decent themes/visual styles. (I prefer a subdued UI) And I can't even change the color of the overall window. Kinda pisses me off that I can make the Aero title bar any color I want, but the menubar and stuff are still blue. Other than that, and a lack of decent screensavers (And the SS not starting for some reason), I don't have much to complain about.
I have had no driver problems, and a few long-standing issues I was having were resolved by Windows actually automatically finding newer chipset drivers than available on the site of my motherboard mfg. And my Canon EOS 350D is actually recognized by windows now without having to hack together a driver to get the pictures off of it.
If you're under 50 and don't know the proper use of the terms 'Hard Drive' 'CPU' and 'Computer', you live under a rock. There's no excuse. EVERYONE has a computer these days. It is not comparable to owning a car but not knowing thing-one about maintaining it, it's like owning a car and not knowing that it isn't called a 'toaster oven'.
The worst part is— as posited in the article —there are most certainly people out there teaching these incorrect terms. There has to be. I've even heard people who've grown up with modern computers refer to hard drive space as 'memory'.
It makes no sense to me whatsoever.
I had been getting these calls half a dozen times a day. Which is really amusing since I don't have any sort of vehicle. (Unless they want to sell me a service contract for my mountain bike.)
Of course, it dropped sharply four weeks after I added my number to the do not call list. But I'm glad to see that those fuckers are in for it now.
I'd say have a look at the ICY DOCK MB559US (Or really anything from ICY DOCK, it all seems to be pretty good stuff.) it's an external enclosure that has USB 2.0 and eSATA, and supports SATA II 3gb/s drives. It's barely bigger than the drive itself, costs between $50 and $75, and additional drive trays can be had for $20. (Not as cheap as I'd like.) It's worth noting that they have several different versions to cover a range of different connection types. eSATA, USB 2.0, Firewire 400, Firewire 800... And the trays will also fit in their multibay internal enclosures, just in case you later decide you want one of those big media server jobbers to feed your screens.
I will admit I have no experience with the devices, but I seriously considered getting one a while back. For now I'm sticking with mass internal storage.
It's like banning violent videogames. It'll never work for two reasons:
1. The people who 'easily transition' from something like Paintball to actual violence would just as easily transition from EATING PANCAKES to violence. It's because they're CRAZY.
2. There are lots of people who play Paintball and stuff to work off violent, base, tail-brain, impulses so they DON'T end up throttling nth stupid person they have to deal with today.
People are still going to do it, and it's going to get to the point where they have to start locking up multiple offenders. So, geniuses, what does it mean when you start locking up dozens of otherwise normal and upstanding citizens and there's STILL SHOOTINGS?
If you want to ban a sport that's responsible for violent behavior, ban RUGBY.
Wait wait wait, I just had a thought. Doesn't this technically outlaw the use of NERF WEAPONS as well? What the FUCK Germany??
Might as well just start rounding them up now. Making paintball and airsoft (Or SoftAir as they call it for reasons beyond understanding) illegal only serves to criminalize players. Because we all know, making something illegal for no good reason will not deter people in the least. (Look at marijuana.)
General rule of thumb: If no one in their right mind can think of a reason it should be illegal, your law is STUPID.
If this goes through, I just might have to take my blog down lest I face prosecution for, I don't know...WAR CRIMES. While most of my posts are benign, god help you if you piss me off that day. Insert sarcasm tags where you see fit, because I couldn't give a rat's ass. :P
This is only going to encourage him. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets behind such an initiative himself just 'for the lulz' as Anonymous would put it. Man, I will laugh so hard... XD