Remember: Palladium can only work if every company joins the conspiracy. Some, maybe even a lot, won't.
This, IMHO, is why it won't succeed for the same reason cartels designed to artificially restrict supply sooner or later all fall appart. Initially, people might go for it. When an economic disadvantage is passed on to consumers - designing this, after all, isn't free, and developers who can't or won't pay the fees required to have their code "Certified" will be unable to develop for that market - and consumers of Palladium PC's will be unable to use their wares.
This will result in a incentive for a manufacturer of CPUs or motherboards to produce a non-Palladium product. People will move to those platforms for a variety of reasons, producing an incentive to produce non-palladium products, springing up a non-MS taxed industry. It probably would motivate a lot of busy people like me to start working on GPL products to fight against the mark of the beast. Sooner or later though, a hardware manufacturer will spring up to produce hardware to meet the demand. That's inevitable.
This, frankly, sickens me to think about. I'll become physically ill if Apple announces they're going to soil their OS X and Powerbooks with this platform.
I Got This Fucking Thorn In My Side
Oh My, It's A Mirage
I'm Tellin' Y'all It's a Sabotage
I'm suprised none of the conspiracy theorists on here haven't head a field day on this. Did you ever consider it might be a little suspicious this guy acting like this? I'd be really reluctant to expose my employer directly to legal problems like this unless I was POSITIVE there was going to be a problem, like, if we were in direct competition with my previous employer. Otherwise, who cares?
What if that guy was taping you, or is setting the company up for legal action down the road by his old company?
Getting legal advise here is like asking for tips on how to pick up women on slashdot. ask the pros, get legal counsel, you're a babe in woods if you don't have someone on retainer already. When I did lame-o contracts in college I had a contract lawyer, even. It doesn't cost that much.
No politician will spend the money on this until it's already too late. No amount of lobbying is going to change this, and the amount of money isn't even that large. IIRC some of the projects were only looking for a few million dollars. You don't need hordes of astronomers - you just need the automated equipment to locate and track asteroids in the sky. Much of the technology already exists, projects like NEAT and others have been very successful.
Until there is a major loss of life due to an impact, there isn't going to be an research. Just hope that you're not under it, that it's not mistaken for an "act of terrorism", triggering a thermonuclear war, and that it's not much bigger than a hundred meters or so, like this one. Unless, of course, you're willing to live like a pauper and do the work yourself. I'm not.
There really is little you can do. So don't worry about it. The odds aren't really that high, but you don't know when your number is going to come up, either. Hopefully China will put a base on the moon and play "mine's bigger than yours" to everyone's benefit.
Makes you wonder if all the hoopla surrounding SETI; all that computing power; and all that money might be better spent scanning the night sky for dark blobs that might end life HERE as opposed to looking for little green men on hopelessly far away stars.
If only it were that simple. As quite a few people have pointed out, hardware designs are orders of magnitude simpler. And the problem domain is so much smaller, limited to a single device. The inputs are finite and have no higher meaning to worry about. Some things which are easy in hardware, like CRCs, are hard in software.
Maybe, maybe not. I've been involved with very large and complicated hardware projects. I've also been involved in some very complicated software projects, and had success and disaster in each. The whole industry is moving to try and pack as much as possible onto a single chip, microcode, software and all. There is a completely different mindset that I've experienced working in software than working with hardware designs - and that's just it - the problem space is not simpler as you said, but it is much more -focused-. If you come to a HDL designer with marketdroid speak and fluffy cloud diagrams, you're going to get laughed at, because months will be wasted unless there is a very clear document detailing exactly what you want done. Such levels of detail would be called ludicruous in the software world, but they're also why software is so much better when completely done over: The problem space is much more focused and defined. (see the whole Mozilla affair).
If the software is too complicated, find a way to break it into smaller pieces, and then make those smaller pieces bulletproof. Build up until the system breaks, then solve that - rinse, lather, repeat. That's what the unix philosophy resolved around - smaller programs that could be made to work together, each piece solving some limited problem set and doing it extremely well. This is what goes on inside a digital design; it is also what I see in successful, solid software projects. IMHO.
Maybe I'm outta touch with reality.. but then again, I went from doing software to embedded systems and FPGAs because I couldn't handle the "Development cycle" I was being exposed to, and what was laughably being called "software engineering". To each their own.
This is one of the better comments on this thread. Until manufacturing figured out an assembly line that worked, understood proper tolerances and specifications, put in quality control - lots of other things sucked too, and sometimes sucked worse than software does today. It's a wonder some of the early internal combustion engines worked at all.
People who write software should take a piece of learning from those who write the code that becomes digital integrated circuits. Engineering those designs is just that - engineering - because a bug here or there is usually a very serious matter. Tremendous amounts of time are spent verifying your design works correctly. The same thing is true with most embedded systems as well, although those lines are getting blurred with system-on-chip development.
Anyone who calls what is passed off for the majority of commercial, "professional" software development an engineered product is kidding themselves.
Why, particularly, do you 1) characterise "environmentalists" as a group and 2) set yourself in opposition to that group?
For a variety of reasons. One, it gets a rise out of people that take themselves too seriously. Two, by trade, I'm an engineer. No "environmentalist" I've ever heard of has ever spoken about the net daily energy consumption of the USA; Let alone the industrialized world; Furthermore, they do not mention there are NO alternatives (aside from Nuclear, and even that is doubtful) to mineral, fossil, oil reserves and consumption. These same people live in a society that is completely unsustainable, and most recycle to make themselves feel good whilst driving overpowered inefficient SUVs back and forth to work. It doesn't take a PhD. in thermodynamics to point out the problems there.
I make many broad generalizations, that's correct. I pattern my perceptions of reality on hard numbers, and those numbers are really depressing. The sad fact is we are destined to destroy our environment, and there is nothing that can be done about it. The only thing that CAN be done is to forge full steam ahead into researching new technologies that might help - not pipe dreams, but things like clean nuclear power. Nobody protests your American nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers running through international waters.
ALL diesel engines emit SOME level of particulate. By their design, a detonation based engine is going to produce carbon particulate. The information I quoted was meant as a starting point. Spend 10 minutes in google and you'll find more information than you can shake a stick at.
Show me ONE - just ONE study that proves that recycling paper and plastic bottles makes ANY energy sense - and let's remember to include the trucking energy and transport/collection energy. You won't find one. I've looked, feel free to correct me. It makes no sense to recycle. Just don't use the product in the first place. This goes to the crux of my arguement; No signifigant number of people in the USA are going to change their consumption patterns, e.g. suburbia and commuting - until it's too late.
Then we'll be fighting over the oil that's left.
More numbers. Less feel good recycling and "clean fuel" nonsense. If you want to make a difference, stop consuming petroleum. That's not possible, of course. How are these fields plowed? How are they harvested? How are they fertilized? Oil.
The crux of my arguement is this: It's not pollution, waste, mismanagement, or greed that will ruin our environment. Running out of energy reserves is going to be the end - biodisel isn't next, coal is. If you have lots of energy, all other problems go away. The "green" movement, and all of the "environmentalists", brainwashing children and being puppets to politicians, miss that fundamental point. It's about the energy, not the material.
Yeah, I'm ranting. You asked. Watch me when I'm not sober.
You can't hear the pump I use in operation. One, it's in a sealed box, and two, it's submersed in water. My case makes noise because I have a 120mm fan on the radiator, but that is much quieter than the fans it replaced. My next design won't make that necessary, and a 120mm fan at low voltage moves a lot of air at extremely low noise levels.
Water cooling is so effective you don't need a peltier. My setup currently runs a 1.2tbird @ 1.4 12C over ambient @ 1.85V. Peltier is interesting for overclocking to high levels, but there isn't much point anymore. At stock clock, the 1.2tbird runs at around 6C over ambient.
Peltier just sucks more juice (meaning more power supply cooling to be safe) and adds the added problem of worrying about condensation. Since a watercooled only setup can never go below ambient, no worries.
I've been running a reliable water cooled setup (including many moves, dropping upside down, upgrades, etc) for over 6 months now. It works great. I have install details written up for anyone who's interested. The noise went from deafening to a mild hum.
I'm currently gathering pieces for a passive watercooled setup (no fans) that handles cooling the video, system chip and processor. The power supply fan will be removed and replaced with a low-voltage 120mm top-mounted fan that runs silently with good airflow (for HD cooling as well).
Rather than mount the radiator inside the case, the radiator will be top mounted with a custom lexan mount. This moves the heat outside the system (closed box). In addition, the inside will be sound deadened with leftover Dynamat Extreme from my car stereo install. This should result in a cool looking, silent machine, with no compromises. It isn't going to be cheap though.
I love raining on environmentalist's parades. It turns out that diesel particulates are really, really bad for you - much more so than previously expected or understood. One researcher concluded there may be NO safe level of exposure to micro-fine particulates.
However, unlike most enviromentalists who ignore things like this (and I'm trolling a bit here, for sure) and worst, I never see quotes regarding what it would take to match any signifigant fraction of current raw energy consumption.
I'll take my CO2 from a fuel cell anyday. It'll all be moot once we start fighting over who gets the last of the oil, anyhow.
Re:Didn't here the E or T words..
on
Cradle to Cradle
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I can't believe that got modded up. Anyone who thinks that solar energy can provide energy at anywhere near the current consumption rate is insane. Look around you. Oil is millions of years of stored solar energy - current theories about bacteria in the earth's core aside - consuption of oil is exceeding discovery of new reserves 4:1.
Solar energy in it's current form is not concentrated enough. Nobody has proposed a solution that can change that, and ALL environmentalist solutions don't discuss potenital yields vs. current consumption.
The planet is BIG. There is near infinite room to put garbage and waste, and there's so much aluminum and silica on this planet it will never come close to being all used. What will run out is the energy to process that material. Of course, it's easier to toss that can in a bin than it is to give up a car, now, isn't it.
Everything! is about energy. How much energy does X consume. If it takes less energy to throw something away, we should do that instead - because it's the energy consumption (oil, coal) that's ruining the environment.
The real environmental saviour is safe nuclear (fission and fusion) power. The lobby did a good job on that on in the 70's, though.
I'd like to see an energy comparison on which process is more efficient and what the total energy consumption from each was - including, for example, all the energy used to make those chemicals in use.
The point these people miss is that it isn't raw materials and gargage that does us in. It's going to be the supply of energy.
I'd like to know how, exactly, this is flamebait. Finder IS slow, and it IS annoying. Otherwise, I love OS X.. oh, wait, independant thought and dissention is bad around here. Oops!
No mention of updates to the slow-ass finder. Finder as an application is so slow, with large numbers of files and directories it's effectively useless. This isn't too bad, as I usually use the shell. When an application necessitates me using the finder though, it's infuriatingly slow compared to windows explorer.
I'm beginning to get annoyed, I've had my Tibook for a long time now (8 months?) and this issue still hasn't been addressed.
And yes, I run the maintenance files. That does nada. We'll see if there's any improvements tomorrow, but no mention either.
Most people have the ability to learn at least SOME of another language if they want to. Depending on your workplace, learning another language might be a powerful career move, too. I'm not going to trust some gadget to speak for me in a language I don't understand! What if your PDA got hacked? Hahaha.
Language is a product for person to person communication, and human communication is all about context, facial expressions, body language, and it is going to be a long long time before we get a babelfish. There won't be puffs of logic anytime soon! Hehe.
Just take a night class. They should teach more languages in public schools, or let students pick..
The unfortunate problem is that there is no current alternative to oil. If you look at the raw number of BTUs being consumed, there is nothing that will even come close. This is going to be a big issue for people to deal with. The alternative to oil currently isn't clean. It's coal. There's lots, and lots, and LOTS of coal. Coal, unfortunately, is nasty stuff, containing trace elements of just about everything.
Take a look around sometime, and just try an imagine the sheer volume of oil and the amount of energy it represents. The processing of energy drives our entire civilization, and in it's current form, that means the processing of oil.
The only other (currently) possible alternatives are nuclear technologies, be they fission, hot, or cold fusion. This is possibly the saviour of the planet, but the environmentalists are hell-bent to stop nuclear research and testing at all costs. Solar, wind, and wave power can make contributions but the infrastructure and maintenance required make these unrealistic alternatives.
Damn it! I'm sooo sick of people WHINING here on slashdot. Oh, wait. Slashdot. If you don't like their policies, DON'T USE THEIR SERVICE. If you live in a metro area, go find some high speed hookup, get 10, 20, or 50 guys together in a close area, and set up your own high-speed network. We did this when I was going through university and it worked great. I live in a rural area, and the only way I'll ever see broadband again is if I take it upon myself to fix the situtation. Let's see here - 30 guys paying in $50/mo gives you $1500/mo to buy a pipe from or maintain leases on equipment. Do you have twenty people in networking range? How much bandwidth would that get? Could you get more than 30? Who would pay more? How important is your suckage in the long term? Would getting a fat pipe to someone's house, remotely dling your pr0n^h^h^heducational videos via a slower connection, and doing SneakerNet runs suffice?
I thought that america was the land of the "can do" attitude, not the bend-over-and-take-it capital of the world. (and whine about it). Look at what the auzzies are doing to combat the horrible internet and communications rates over there - projects like Sydney Wireless and others in europe have gone so far as to start laying their own cable. Get out and talk to your neighbours, take the initiative.
It could very well be that the current model doesn't work, because that 1% of users is exceeding the cable companies cost. It could be that you don't even need that much internet connectivity if you establish a well-stocked neighbourhood peer-to-peer net. I know another solution some of the residence dwellers use here is their own 802.11 network that isn't routed onto the campus network, or campus-owned.
If you don't have time, then accept the services offered at the market rate.
Man, I'm in a bad mood this morning. No coffee. But if I see another one of these whining threads, I'm going to scream! Might as well post a anti-MPAA diatribe, follow it up with a spiderman-II article.
This is definately the way to go. Alternatively, you might get away with some low power VHF ham gear if there's nobody in the area to hunt you down and yell at you - but at 30mW, your broadcast range won't be very high either. The kit is going to be much cheaper than that anyhow, unless you have the gear already. You WILL lose some fidelity over the wired headphones though, don't kid yourself. Most people will never notice the difference.
Mildly off topic, don't ever read anything on how to detect errors in compression. I used to work with MPEG codecs and I can't watch most of the movies on the net.. I can imagine what learning to detect mp3 artifacts does:).
The only thing that would be better is if you designed or bought a small digital transmitter and decoder with a 16bit x 44.1kHz bandwidth. These units might exist out there if you look, but every single one of the stand-alone FM units (aside from quality kit like the Ramsey unit) blow chunks because of frequency drift or intermittant static. The other problem is batteries go dead, I listen to music all day when I'm at work.
FWIW my solution at work is to stream to my notebook and then listen off it.
Don't like it, don't look at pr0n. Don't want your kids to look at pr0n, then watch your kids. What goes on between consenting adults and or a photographer is none of the state's business. If you need the state to babysit your children, then don't have them. You should be a big boy and be able to restrain yourself, and the GOD FORBID glance at a 18 year old's breast isn't going to kill you.
Some people might find the bible an incredibly sexist, violent, and inappropriate for minors piece of material, too. Same can be said for just about everything. You think it's wrong? Fine, but don't deny me the fun.
What's wrong with sex anyway? - it's part of the human experience, like it or not. Most cultures have figured that one out by now. I don't understand the problem. If I find something repulsive, I just don't look at it. Easy.
This assumes you have the requisite intelligence and aptitude for the position. It's possible you don't, and that always sucks. Generally speaking, any position requires a background. I know one guy who graduated the year before me in EE went to work for Electronic Arts (Hi Jess, if you're reading this). A background in physics and calculus was a definate asset. If you don't have this background, you'll have to get it. Start reading.
Nobody will listen to you right off though, even if you have a degree. So save up some money to live off of, move back home, live in a slum, and sacrifice six months or a year of your life becoming a master game programmer. Write code to demonstrate physical principles. Make some AI demos. Write some catchy action games (no, some stupid thing won't cut it anymore). Get on the mailing lists. Compete in competitions. Get networking, the kind without cables. No, this isn't easy. Yes, you have to live poor. Yes, it will be worth it. In short, go learn, and make time to get the skills you need.
This is all extremely obvious, but if you aren't willing to put the time into it, it's unlikely you'll be able to handle the pressures of game development in the real world, because it's not all roses. Of course, doing that if you have other obligations like a wife or kids is damn near impossible, but that's a job hazard, since 14+ hour days with unpaid overtime are the norm due to horrible management and design practices in the software world. That's another rant, though.
I think that is where a lot of the problem is coming from - there is a blur between programming and engineering now in IT, and that's allowing a lot of people who have no clue to sneak through bad interview processes and get jobs where they don't perform.
A poster above commented they should have gone to medical school. I'm thanking the gods I did an EE degree instead of a CS degree, it was brutal getting through, but my options are much more diverse than some of my friends who have CS or BA backgrounds working in IT. There's a big market right now for people who can work with embedded systems and do RTOS development, and I can't see that going away anytime soon. There's a barrier to entry though, as most embedded/FPGA jobs require a BSEE as a bare minimum.
I have a TiBook with 512m. Windows 2000 is barely, barely usable with this configuration. In short, it stinks. I use it for some digital logic tools you can't get for windows on the road (and a PC at work). Do NOT get a TiBook thinking VirtualPC will work.. the native stuff is so much better.
Coal fired plants abound. But they're a joke compared to the pollution that'll be generated if you need to run the transportation infrastructure off of electrics. Your average car easily uses around 100kW of power (in terms of energy production from gasoline). A performance car could easily double that, and a truck even moreso. Generating that much power from coal would blacken the skies.
Aluminum and metals are a rare exception and then only in some cases. I'm not an idiot. The aluminum cans are actually debateable too, IF you have to drive them yourself to a recycling facility instead of collecting them in one location.
Flamingly wrong? Show me some numbers that show me that recycling paper or plastic make any kind of energy sense. Recycling paper is STUPID. Burn it, bury it, and plant a new tree. Recycling plastic is stupid. Use less, or re-use what you have, and if you really care about the environment, reduce your consumption of petroleum products any way you can - because once they're used up, we're going to start burning coal.
My point is (and yes, I like to get people fired up) is that most of the time, it makes SENSE to throw things away. Residential waste is a small fraction of the garbage produced anyhow - industrial waste is a exponentially larger problem. If you need to use more energy (oil), then you're probably just shuffling the pollution around than doing any good. Thermodynamics is dismal stuff.
And, relative to other concerns facing our world - specifically, reducing petroleum consumption to a sustainable level, and/or finding a real alternative (and hint, solar and wind don't come close), recycling an aluminum can is a joke that just makes people feel better about driving their SUV back and forth between the suburbs and work.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember: Palladium can only work if every company joins the conspiracy. Some, maybe even a lot, won't.
This, IMHO, is why it won't succeed for the same reason cartels designed to artificially restrict supply sooner or later all fall appart. Initially, people might go for it. When an economic disadvantage is passed on to consumers - designing this, after all, isn't free, and developers who can't or won't pay the fees required to have their code "Certified" will be unable to develop for that market - and consumers of Palladium PC's will be unable to use their wares.
This will result in a incentive for a manufacturer of CPUs or motherboards to produce a non-Palladium product. People will move to those platforms for a variety of reasons, producing an incentive to produce non-palladium products, springing up a non-MS taxed industry. It probably would motivate a lot of busy people like me to start working on GPL products to fight against the mark of the beast. Sooner or later though, a hardware manufacturer will spring up to produce hardware to meet the demand. That's inevitable.
This, frankly, sickens me to think about. I'll become physically ill if Apple announces they're going to soil their OS X and Powerbooks with this platform.
I Got This Fucking Thorn In My Side Oh My, It's A Mirage I'm Tellin' Y'all It's a Sabotage
I'm suprised none of the conspiracy theorists on here haven't head a field day on this. Did you ever consider it might be a little suspicious this guy acting like this? I'd be really reluctant to expose my employer directly to legal problems like this unless I was POSITIVE there was going to be a problem, like, if we were in direct competition with my previous employer. Otherwise, who cares?
What if that guy was taping you, or is setting the company up for legal action down the road by his old company?
Getting legal advise here is like asking for tips on how to pick up women on slashdot. ask the pros, get legal counsel, you're a babe in woods if you don't have someone on retainer already. When I did lame-o contracts in college I had a contract lawyer, even. It doesn't cost that much.
No politician will spend the money on this until it's already too late. No amount of lobbying is going to change this, and the amount of money isn't even that large. IIRC some of the projects were only looking for a few million dollars. You don't need hordes of astronomers - you just need the automated equipment to locate and track asteroids in the sky. Much of the technology already exists, projects like NEAT and others have been very successful.
Until there is a major loss of life due to an impact, there isn't going to be an research. Just hope that you're not under it, that it's not mistaken for an "act of terrorism", triggering a thermonuclear war, and that it's not much bigger than a hundred meters or so, like this one. Unless, of course, you're willing to live like a pauper and do the work yourself. I'm not.
There really is little you can do. So don't worry about it. The odds aren't really that high, but you don't know when your number is going to come up, either. Hopefully China will put a base on the moon and play "mine's bigger than yours" to everyone's benefit.
Makes you wonder if all the hoopla surrounding SETI; all that computing power; and all that money might be better spent scanning the night sky for dark blobs that might end life HERE as opposed to looking for little green men on hopelessly far away stars.
If only it were that simple. As quite a few people have pointed out, hardware designs are orders of magnitude simpler. And the problem domain is so much smaller, limited to a single device. The inputs are finite and have no higher meaning to worry about. Some things which are easy in hardware, like CRCs, are hard in software.
Maybe, maybe not. I've been involved with very large and complicated hardware projects. I've also been involved in some very complicated software projects, and had success and disaster in each. The whole industry is moving to try and pack as much as possible onto a single chip, microcode, software and all. There is a completely different mindset that I've experienced working in software than working with hardware designs - and that's just it - the problem space is not simpler as you said, but it is much more -focused-. If you come to a HDL designer with marketdroid speak and fluffy cloud diagrams, you're going to get laughed at, because months will be wasted unless there is a very clear document detailing exactly what you want done. Such levels of detail would be called ludicruous in the software world, but they're also why software is so much better when completely done over: The problem space is much more focused and defined. (see the whole Mozilla affair).
If the software is too complicated, find a way to break it into smaller pieces, and then make those smaller pieces bulletproof. Build up until the system breaks, then solve that - rinse, lather, repeat. That's what the unix philosophy resolved around - smaller programs that could be made to work together, each piece solving some limited problem set and doing it extremely well. This is what goes on inside a digital design; it is also what I see in successful, solid software projects. IMHO.
Maybe I'm outta touch with reality.. but then again, I went from doing software to embedded systems and FPGAs because I couldn't handle the "Development cycle" I was being exposed to, and what was laughably being called "software engineering". To each their own.
This is one of the better comments on this thread. Until manufacturing figured out an assembly line that worked, understood proper tolerances and specifications, put in quality control - lots of other things sucked too, and sometimes sucked worse than software does today. It's a wonder some of the early internal combustion engines worked at all.
People who write software should take a piece of learning from those who write the code that becomes digital integrated circuits. Engineering those designs is just that - engineering - because a bug here or there is usually a very serious matter. Tremendous amounts of time are spent verifying your design works correctly. The same thing is true with most embedded systems as well, although those lines are getting blurred with system-on-chip development.
Anyone who calls what is passed off for the majority of commercial, "professional" software development an engineered product is kidding themselves.
Why, particularly, do you 1) characterise "environmentalists" as a group and 2) set yourself in opposition to that group?
For a variety of reasons. One, it gets a rise out of people that take themselves too seriously. Two, by trade, I'm an engineer. No "environmentalist" I've ever heard of has ever spoken about the net daily energy consumption of the USA; Let alone the industrialized world; Furthermore, they do not mention there are NO alternatives (aside from Nuclear, and even that is doubtful) to mineral, fossil, oil reserves and consumption. These same people live in a society that is completely unsustainable, and most recycle to make themselves feel good whilst driving overpowered inefficient SUVs back and forth to work. It doesn't take a PhD. in thermodynamics to point out the problems there.
I make many broad generalizations, that's correct. I pattern my perceptions of reality on hard numbers, and those numbers are really depressing. The sad fact is we are destined to destroy our environment, and there is nothing that can be done about it. The only thing that CAN be done is to forge full steam ahead into researching new technologies that might help - not pipe dreams, but things like clean nuclear power. Nobody protests your American nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers running through international waters.
ALL diesel engines emit SOME level of particulate. By their design, a detonation based engine is going to produce carbon particulate. The information I quoted was meant as a starting point. Spend 10 minutes in google and you'll find more information than you can shake a stick at.
Show me ONE - just ONE study that proves that recycling paper and plastic bottles makes ANY energy sense - and let's remember to include the trucking energy and transport/collection energy. You won't find one. I've looked, feel free to correct me. It makes no sense to recycle. Just don't use the product in the first place. This goes to the crux of my arguement; No signifigant number of people in the USA are going to change their consumption patterns, e.g. suburbia and commuting - until it's too late.
Then we'll be fighting over the oil that's left.
More numbers. Less feel good recycling and "clean fuel" nonsense. If you want to make a difference, stop consuming petroleum. That's not possible, of course. How are these fields plowed? How are they harvested? How are they fertilized? Oil.
The crux of my arguement is this: It's not pollution, waste, mismanagement, or greed that will ruin our environment. Running out of energy reserves is going to be the end - biodisel isn't next, coal is. If you have lots of energy, all other problems go away. The "green" movement, and all of the "environmentalists", brainwashing children and being puppets to politicians, miss that fundamental point. It's about the energy, not the material.
Yeah, I'm ranting. You asked. Watch me when I'm not sober.
You can't hear the pump I use in operation. One, it's in a sealed box, and two, it's submersed in water. My case makes noise because I have a 120mm fan on the radiator, but that is much quieter than the fans it replaced. My next design won't make that necessary, and a 120mm fan at low voltage moves a lot of air at extremely low noise levels.
Relax.
It'll work for 15 minutes. Then the water will start to pick up ions off whatever exposed metal is there, and then you're finished :).
Water cooling is so effective you don't need a peltier. My setup currently runs a 1.2tbird @ 1.4 12C over ambient @ 1.85V. Peltier is interesting for overclocking to high levels, but there isn't much point anymore. At stock clock, the 1.2tbird runs at around 6C over ambient.
Peltier just sucks more juice (meaning more power supply cooling to be safe) and adds the added problem of worrying about condensation. Since a watercooled only setup can never go below ambient, no worries.
I've been running a reliable water cooled setup (including many moves, dropping upside down, upgrades, etc) for over 6 months now. It works great. I have install details written up for anyone who's interested. The noise went from deafening to a mild hum.
I'm currently gathering pieces for a passive watercooled setup (no fans) that handles cooling the video, system chip and processor. The power supply fan will be removed and replaced with a low-voltage 120mm top-mounted fan that runs silently with good airflow (for HD cooling as well).
Rather than mount the radiator inside the case, the radiator will be top mounted with a custom lexan mount. This moves the heat outside the system (closed box). In addition, the inside will be sound deadened with leftover Dynamat Extreme from my car stereo install. This should result in a cool looking, silent machine, with no compromises. It isn't going to be cheap though.
I love raining on environmentalist's parades. It turns out that diesel particulates are really, really bad for you - much more so than previously expected or understood. One researcher concluded there may be NO safe level of exposure to micro-fine particulates.
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However, unlike most enviromentalists who ignore things like this (and I'm trolling a bit here, for sure) and worst, I never see quotes regarding what it would take to match any signifigant fraction of current raw energy consumption.
Good reading:
http://www.ems.org/diesel/facts.html
http://www.google.ca/search?q=diesel+particulat
I'll take my CO2 from a fuel cell anyday. It'll all be moot once we start fighting over who gets the last of the oil, anyhow.
I can't believe that got modded up. Anyone who thinks that solar energy can provide energy at anywhere near the current consumption rate is insane. Look around you. Oil is millions of years of stored solar energy - current theories about bacteria in the earth's core aside - consuption of oil is exceeding discovery of new reserves 4:1.
Solar energy in it's current form is not concentrated enough. Nobody has proposed a solution that can change that, and ALL environmentalist solutions don't discuss potenital yields vs. current consumption.
The planet is BIG. There is near infinite room to put garbage and waste, and there's so much aluminum and silica on this planet it will never come close to being all used. What will run out is the energy to process that material. Of course, it's easier to toss that can in a bin than it is to give up a car, now, isn't it.
Everything! is about energy. How much energy does X consume. If it takes less energy to throw something away, we should do that instead - because it's the energy consumption (oil, coal) that's ruining the environment.
The real environmental saviour is safe nuclear (fission and fusion) power. The lobby did a good job on that on in the 70's, though.
Energy.. or thermodynamics.
I'd like to see an energy comparison on which process is more efficient and what the total energy consumption from each was - including, for example, all the energy used to make those chemicals in use.
The point these people miss is that it isn't raw materials and gargage that does us in. It's going to be the supply of energy.
I'd like to know how, exactly, this is flamebait. Finder IS slow, and it IS annoying. Otherwise, I love OS X.. oh, wait, independant thought and dissention is bad around here. Oops!
No mention of updates to the slow-ass finder. Finder as an application is so slow, with large numbers of files and directories it's effectively useless. This isn't too bad, as I usually use the shell. When an application necessitates me using the finder though, it's infuriatingly slow compared to windows explorer.
I'm beginning to get annoyed, I've had my Tibook for a long time now (8 months?) and this issue still hasn't been addressed.
And yes, I run the maintenance files. That does nada. We'll see if there's any improvements tomorrow, but no mention either.
Most people have the ability to learn at least SOME of another language if they want to. Depending on your workplace, learning another language might be a powerful career move, too. I'm not going to trust some gadget to speak for me in a language I don't understand! What if your PDA got hacked? Hahaha.
Language is a product for person to person communication, and human communication is all about context, facial expressions, body language, and it is going to be a long long time before we get a babelfish. There won't be puffs of logic anytime soon! Hehe.
Just take a night class. They should teach more languages in public schools, or let students pick..
The unfortunate problem is that there is no current alternative to oil. If you look at the raw number of BTUs being consumed, there is nothing that will even come close. This is going to be a big issue for people to deal with. The alternative to oil currently isn't clean. It's coal. There's lots, and lots, and LOTS of coal. Coal, unfortunately, is nasty stuff, containing trace elements of just about everything.
Take a look around sometime, and just try an imagine the sheer volume of oil and the amount of energy it represents. The processing of energy drives our entire civilization, and in it's current form, that means the processing of oil.
The only other (currently) possible alternatives are nuclear technologies, be they fission, hot, or cold fusion. This is possibly the saviour of the planet, but the environmentalists are hell-bent to stop nuclear research and testing at all costs. Solar, wind, and wave power can make contributions but the infrastructure and maintenance required make these unrealistic alternatives.
Thermodynamics is harsh stuff.
Damn it! I'm sooo sick of people WHINING here on slashdot. Oh, wait. Slashdot. If you don't like their policies, DON'T USE THEIR SERVICE. If you live in a metro area, go find some high speed hookup, get 10, 20, or 50 guys together in a close area, and set up your own high-speed network. We did this when I was going through university and it worked great. I live in a rural area, and the only way I'll ever see broadband again is if I take it upon myself to fix the situtation. Let's see here - 30 guys paying in $50/mo gives you $1500/mo to buy a pipe from or maintain leases on equipment. Do you have twenty people in networking range? How much bandwidth would that get? Could you get more than 30? Who would pay more? How important is your suckage in the long term? Would getting a fat pipe to someone's house, remotely dling your pr0n^h^h^heducational videos via a slower connection, and doing SneakerNet runs suffice?
I thought that america was the land of the "can do" attitude, not the bend-over-and-take-it capital of the world. (and whine about it). Look at what the auzzies are doing to combat the horrible internet and communications rates over there - projects like Sydney Wireless and others in europe have gone so far as to start laying their own cable. Get out and talk to your neighbours, take the initiative.
It could very well be that the current model doesn't work, because that 1% of users is exceeding the cable companies cost. It could be that you don't even need that much internet connectivity if you establish a well-stocked neighbourhood peer-to-peer net. I know another solution some of the residence dwellers use here is their own 802.11 network that isn't routed onto the campus network, or campus-owned.
If you don't have time, then accept the services offered at the market rate.
Man, I'm in a bad mood this morning. No coffee. But if I see another one of these whining threads, I'm going to scream! Might as well post a anti-MPAA diatribe, follow it up with a spiderman-II article.
This is definately the way to go. Alternatively, you might get away with some low power VHF ham gear if there's nobody in the area to hunt you down and yell at you - but at 30mW, your broadcast range won't be very high either. The kit is going to be much cheaper than that anyhow, unless you have the gear already. You WILL lose some fidelity over the wired headphones though, don't kid yourself. Most people will never notice the difference.
:).
Mildly off topic, don't ever read anything on how to detect errors in compression. I used to work with MPEG codecs and I can't watch most of the movies on the net.. I can imagine what learning to detect mp3 artifacts does
The only thing that would be better is if you designed or bought a small digital transmitter and decoder with a 16bit x 44.1kHz bandwidth. These units might exist out there if you look, but every single one of the stand-alone FM units (aside from quality kit like the Ramsey unit) blow chunks because of frequency drift or intermittant static. The other problem is batteries go dead, I listen to music all day when I'm at work.
FWIW my solution at work is to stream to my notebook and then listen off it.
Don't like it, don't look at pr0n. Don't want your kids to look at pr0n, then watch your kids. What goes on between consenting adults and or a photographer is none of the state's business. If you need the state to babysit your children, then don't have them. You should be a big boy and be able to restrain yourself, and the GOD FORBID glance at a 18 year old's breast isn't going to kill you.
Some people might find the bible an incredibly sexist, violent, and inappropriate for minors piece of material, too. Same can be said for just about everything. You think it's wrong? Fine, but don't deny me the fun.
What's wrong with sex anyway? - it's part of the human experience, like it or not. Most cultures have figured that one out by now. I don't understand the problem. If I find something repulsive, I just don't look at it. Easy.
So you want to be a:
This assumes you have the requisite intelligence and aptitude for the position. It's possible you don't, and that always sucks. Generally speaking, any position requires a background. I know one guy who graduated the year before me in EE went to work for Electronic Arts (Hi Jess, if you're reading this). A background in physics and calculus was a definate asset. If you don't have this background, you'll have to get it. Start reading.
Nobody will listen to you right off though, even if you have a degree. So save up some money to live off of, move back home, live in a slum, and sacrifice six months or a year of your life becoming a master game programmer. Write code to demonstrate physical principles. Make some AI demos. Write some catchy action games (no, some stupid thing won't cut it anymore). Get on the mailing lists. Compete in competitions. Get networking, the kind without cables. No, this isn't easy. Yes, you have to live poor. Yes, it will be worth it. In short, go learn, and make time to get the skills you need.
This is all extremely obvious, but if you aren't willing to put the time into it, it's unlikely you'll be able to handle the pressures of game development in the real world, because it's not all roses. Of course, doing that if you have other obligations like a wife or kids is damn near impossible, but that's a job hazard, since 14+ hour days with unpaid overtime are the norm due to horrible management and design practices in the software world. That's another rant, though.
Have fun :).
I think that is where a lot of the problem is coming from - there is a blur between programming and engineering now in IT, and that's allowing a lot of people who have no clue to sneak through bad interview processes and get jobs where they don't perform.
A poster above commented they should have gone to medical school. I'm thanking the gods I did an EE degree instead of a CS degree, it was brutal getting through, but my options are much more diverse than some of my friends who have CS or BA backgrounds working in IT. There's a big market right now for people who can work with embedded systems and do RTOS development, and I can't see that going away anytime soon. There's a barrier to entry though, as most embedded/FPGA jobs require a BSEE as a bare minimum.
I have a TiBook with 512m. Windows 2000 is barely, barely usable with this configuration. In short, it stinks. I use it for some digital logic tools you can't get for windows on the road (and a PC at work). Do NOT get a TiBook thinking VirtualPC will work.. the native stuff is so much better.
Coal fired plants abound. But they're a joke compared to the pollution that'll be generated if you need to run the transportation infrastructure off of electrics. Your average car easily uses around 100kW of power (in terms of energy production from gasoline). A performance car could easily double that, and a truck even moreso. Generating that much power from coal would blacken the skies.
Aluminum and metals are a rare exception and then only in some cases. I'm not an idiot. The aluminum cans are actually debateable too, IF you have to drive them yourself to a recycling facility instead of collecting them in one location.
Flamingly wrong? Show me some numbers that show me that recycling paper or plastic make any kind of energy sense. Recycling paper is STUPID. Burn it, bury it, and plant a new tree. Recycling plastic is stupid. Use less, or re-use what you have, and if you really care about the environment, reduce your consumption of petroleum products any way you can - because once they're used up, we're going to start burning coal.
My point is (and yes, I like to get people fired up) is that most of the time, it makes SENSE to throw things away. Residential waste is a small fraction of the garbage produced anyhow - industrial waste is a exponentially larger problem. If you need to use more energy (oil), then you're probably just shuffling the pollution around than doing any good. Thermodynamics is dismal stuff.
And, relative to other concerns facing our world - specifically, reducing petroleum consumption to a sustainable level, and/or finding a real alternative (and hint, solar and wind don't come close), recycling an aluminum can is a joke that just makes people feel better about driving their SUV back and forth between the suburbs and work.