One of my top requests for any of these cable types is that they be splittable, without having to buy a $300 powered splitter to accomplish the task. A receiver with multiple HD inputs switchable to multiple HD outputs would do the trick, but I don't know if any exist... (Anyone?)
I have an HD television for daytime use and an HD front-projector for nighttime use, and it is a pain to synchronize all the source connections, because most sources (and most receivers) only have one high-quality output.
For those who need to buy splitters anyway, here are some links I dug up:
10. The moon was actually injection-molded.
9. The hill is the remains of an ancient alien rail-gun launcher.
8. Iapetus, in a fit of sibling jealousy, has attempted to grow its own rings.
7. Percival Lowell accidentally based his sketches on the wrong planet.
6. This is the planet from Kim Stanley Robinson's "A Short, Sharp Shock", without the oceans.
5. The moon was tectonically separated aeons ago from Vallis Marineris.
4. This is the solar system's frenulum.
3. Ringworld deorbited here.
2. Not much, just loosening its belt after the holidays.
Just memorize the 13th root of every 100-digit number in existence. Sheesh.
Let's just think about this for a minute.
100-digit numbers will fall between 10^99 and 10^100. Thirteenth-roots of such numbers will lie between 10^(99 / 13) and 10^(100 / 13), or in the range [41246264.. 49238826]. That's about 8 million possibilities, and the distribution is far from linear.
But it's linear enough that the first nine digits of the 100-digit number yield a unique possibility for a root. And the last digit of the root will be the same as the last digit of the 100-digit number, because (N mod 10) always equals (N^13 mod 10). So the problem can be tackled from both ends, with the middle digits of the root being the hardest.
Of course, if the audience members are clued in, they can still beat the mental calculator hands down. Type the first nine digits, take the thirteenth root, and start reading off the digits; round up slightly to make the eighth significant digit match the final digit of the 100-digit number. Done.
A college professor of mine taught us how to square 3-digit numbers in our head in seconds using tricks like this; he was able to multiply arbitrary 5-digit numbers in his head, and often performed this onstage. And for the curious, yes, I do actually have a life outside slashdot.:-)
It's a good idea in theory, but there's the small problem of someone has to go to the top of the building/object to anchor the ribbon in the first place.
Hot-air balloons (manned or unmanned) should do the trick for the next generation or two of the technology. After that, intermediate (~1000km) lengths could be tested by tethering two satellites together and letting tidal forces pull the ribbon taut.
Then comes the real Space Elevator, and after that, once we get cocky, we can try lowering an Elevator from the Earth to the Sun, for cheap power... Geothermal, eat your heart out.
My latest credit card bill showed two charges from Skype, though I've never heard of them before (or used their services, to my knowledge)... Two separate charges, each for $32.34, on the same day.
This may not technically be on topic, but I'm hoping someone might be able to shed light on what might have caused this, apart from credit card theft/fraud. Anyone? (Help!) Thanks!
I'm one of the lucky few who picked up the 30" Cinema Display, with the NVidia 6800 graphics card. In 10.3.5, I would get frequent kernel panics when booting, that seemed to be related to the NVidia driver. (I installed the drivers from the disk that came with the 6800).
When this happened, I would have to remove the 6800 card, plug in my old card (ATI 9600 Pro), restart (at half-resolution on the 30"), shut down, plug in the NVidia card, and restart at half-res, which would work around the kernel panic.
Now, in 10.3.6, the system automatically switches to half-res while booting, which at least prevents the kernel panic. I hope they find a better fix though.
The kicker is that the left half of my new 30" display is about 25% dimmer than the right half.:/ A bad backlight inverter, seemingly; hopefully it will be fixable because the monitor has NO DEAD PIXELS (out of over 4 million!!) One takes the good with the bad, I guess:-)
Or lack of parachutes, for that matter. I'd like to see a skydiving competition where divers try to minimize their descent speed using this effect; i.e. alternately dive headfirst to attain maximum speed, then glide in an arc (converting vertical speed to lateral speed) and see how much this can slow the overall descent.
Also, I wonder what the minimum equipment would be (e.g. small wings) to transiently slow to zero vertical speed? If this could be perfectly controlled, one could land without a parachute at all (although the lateral speed might be prohibitive).
"...to name [things] after the second person who discovered them. Because Euler probably got there first."
I had the wrenching experience of hearing the books-on-tape version of "The Fabric of the Cosmos", wherein Euler's name is repeatedly mispronounced "Yooler". What is this universe coming to, indeed.. (Also, Alan Guth's last name was mispronounced to rhyme with "fluff".)
In the Windows operating system, there's a 32-bit routine that returns the processor speed in Hz.
However, the largest number a 32-bit value can represent is 4.29 billion; in other words, 4.29 GHz. This imposes an absolute speed limit for Intel processors, because clearly Intel is unwilling to break backwards compatibility with their obsolescent x86 architecture. So they are putting the brakes on now, so they can coast slowly toward this upper limit.
Pity. I would have liked to see the creative ways people could find ways to make software run slow on a 50GHz processor. (Then again, perhaps that software already exists, under the moniker of Microsoft Word?)
Slashdot Mirror
..Last Post?
One of my top requests for any of these cable types is that they be splittable, without having to buy a $300 powered splitter to accomplish the task. A receiver with multiple HD inputs switchable to multiple HD outputs would do the trick, but I don't know if any exist... (Anyone?)
I have an HD television for daytime use and an HD front-projector for nighttime use, and it is a pain to synchronize all the source connections, because most sources (and most receivers) only have one high-quality output.
For those who need to buy splitters anyway, here are some links I dug up:
Component Video Splitter
HDMI Splitter
DVI Splitter
it's a Starbucks. They really ARE everywhere.
Makes sense. I've never had any coffee at Starbucks that wasn't charred to a crisp.
10. The moon was actually injection-molded.
9. The hill is the remains of an ancient alien rail-gun launcher.
8. Iapetus, in a fit of sibling jealousy, has attempted to grow its own rings.
7. Percival Lowell accidentally based his sketches on the wrong planet.
6. This is the planet from Kim Stanley Robinson's "A Short, Sharp Shock", without the oceans.
5. The moon was tectonically separated aeons ago from Vallis Marineris.
4. This is the solar system's frenulum.
3. Ringworld deorbited here.
2. Not much, just loosening its belt after the holidays.
and..
1. That's No Moon...
How about a dvd burner? That has some pretty damn good resolution.
The parent deserves to be taken seriously... Might it be possible to produce meaningful interference patterns using a DVD burner?
On two-sided DVD's, then, one could burn one's own holographic label on the front...That would be a very cool hack.
...perfect for espresso machines.
True, caffeine's totally potent when it's radioactive...
Did you happen to go to Harvey Mudd College?
Why yes, class of '94. And of course, the professor is Art Benjamin. Did you go there too?
if you're going to mention Professor Benjamin you mind as well use his name :)
:-)
:-)
You beat me to it. (Retroactively.) Sorry Art.
P.S. Try solving one of these in eleven seconds.
Just memorize the 13th root of every 100-digit number in existence. Sheesh.
.. 49238826]. That's about 8 million possibilities, and the distribution is far from linear.
:-)
Let's just think about this for a minute.
100-digit numbers will fall between 10^99 and 10^100. Thirteenth-roots of such numbers will lie between 10^(99 / 13) and 10^(100 / 13), or in the range [41246264
But it's linear enough that the first nine digits of the 100-digit number yield a unique possibility for a root. And the last digit of the root will be the same as the last digit of the 100-digit number, because (N mod 10) always equals (N^13 mod 10). So the problem can be tackled from both ends, with the middle digits of the root being the hardest.
Of course, if the audience members are clued in, they can still beat the mental calculator hands down. Type the first nine digits, take the thirteenth root, and start reading off the digits; round up slightly to make the eighth significant digit match the final digit of the 100-digit number. Done.
A college professor of mine taught us how to square 3-digit numbers in our head in seconds using tricks like this; he was able to multiply arbitrary 5-digit numbers in his head, and often performed this onstage. And for the curious, yes, I do actually have a life outside slashdot.
No Adspace: There will be no place to put banner ads, so the thing will never be profitable.
Are you kidding?? the WHOLE THING is one great big banner! That's over 40,000km of linear advertising space!
The question, though, becomes one of global ink supply...
It's a good idea in theory, but there's the small problem of someone has to go to the top of the building/object to anchor the ribbon in the first place.
Hot-air balloons (manned or unmanned) should do the trick for the next generation or two of the technology. After that, intermediate (~1000km) lengths could be tested by tethering two satellites together and letting tidal forces pull the ribbon taut.
Then comes the real Space Elevator, and after that, once we get cocky, we can try lowering an Elevator from the Earth to the Sun, for cheap power... Geothermal, eat your heart out.
a Salt Shaker.
My latest credit card bill showed two charges from Skype, though I've never heard of them before (or used their services, to my knowledge)... Two separate charges, each for $32.34, on the same day.
This may not technically be on topic, but I'm hoping someone might be able to shed light on what might have caused this, apart from credit card theft/fraud. Anyone? (Help!) Thanks!
I'm one of the lucky few who picked up the 30" Cinema Display, with the NVidia 6800 graphics card. In 10.3.5, I would get frequent kernel panics when booting, that seemed to be related to the NVidia driver. (I installed the drivers from the disk that came with the 6800).
:/ A bad backlight inverter, seemingly; hopefully it will be fixable because the monitor has NO DEAD PIXELS (out of over 4 million!!) One takes the good with the bad, I guess :-)
When this happened, I would have to remove the 6800 card, plug in my old card (ATI 9600 Pro), restart (at half-resolution on the 30"), shut down, plug in the NVidia card, and restart at half-res, which would work around the kernel panic.
Now, in 10.3.6, the system automatically switches to half-res while booting, which at least prevents the kernel panic. I hope they find a better fix though.
The kicker is that the left half of my new 30" display is about 25% dimmer than the right half.
I wonder if this will spur a "Blu-ray" variant of corn.
You mean, "Blu Corn?" Or perhaps, "Endian Corn?"
Either way, watch out for getting bits stuck in your teeth.
Or lack of parachutes, for that matter. I'd like to see a skydiving competition where divers try to minimize their descent speed using this effect; i.e. alternately dive headfirst to attain maximum speed, then glide in an arc (converting vertical speed to lateral speed) and see how much this can slow the overall descent.
Also, I wonder what the minimum equipment would be (e.g. small wings) to transiently slow to zero vertical speed? If this could be perfectly controlled, one could land without a parachute at all (although the lateral speed might be prohibitive).
Why Paper beats Rock, but is defeated by Scissors?
Quite right, it wasn't really Tom Edison that invented the light bulb, it was his assistant, a native american, Many Hands.
Not only that, but it only required 1/3 of him to screw in a light bulb.
Geyhole
Why not Keyhoooooooooole?
What kind of OS would require a full week to boot on CURRENT hardware...
Oh yeah. It's called Longhorn.
"...to name [things] after the second person who discovered them. Because Euler probably got there first."
I had the wrenching experience of hearing the books-on-tape version of "The Fabric of the Cosmos", wherein Euler's name is repeatedly mispronounced "Yooler". What is this universe coming to, indeed.. (Also, Alan Guth's last name was mispronounced to rhyme with "fluff".)
Incidentally, my favorite equation happens to be:
2 + 2 = 5.
(For sufficiently high values of 2.)
where's the caffeine?
Dunno about you, but my piss certainly has quite a lot of caffeine in it.
Incidentally, this whole thread is starting to remind me of Kopi Luwak coffee. Those two companies definitely need to get together...
The "example" image shows the upper left corner as "Seeing Limited", but it's not clear what that means. Not the human eye, obviously? Anybody know?
More caviar for everyone!
In the Windows operating system, there's a 32-bit routine that returns the processor speed in Hz.
However, the largest number a 32-bit value can represent is 4.29 billion; in other words, 4.29 GHz. This imposes an absolute speed limit for Intel processors, because clearly Intel is unwilling to break backwards compatibility with their obsolescent x86 architecture. So they are putting the brakes on now, so they can coast slowly toward this upper limit.
Pity. I would have liked to see the creative ways people could find ways to make software run slow on a 50GHz processor. (Then again, perhaps that software already exists, under the moniker of Microsoft Word?)