I remember touring the studios and transmitter site for WWVA 1170khz in Wheeling WV, back in 1965 or so. Water-cooled tubes were the norm, both in the audio and the RF chains.
[For those of you/.-ers not familiar with analog electronics, AM (amplitude modulated) signals generate lots of distortion when amplified. So the only efficient way to create a high-power (50kW) AM signal is to modulate the 50kW carrier signal with a 50kW audio signal. Fifty thousands watts is serious power, even today.]
But I don't recall the station engineers being especially concerned. IIRC, the tubes ran "upside down" (pins up, glass bottle down in the cooling water) and so long as the city water supply didn't give out, they were pretty sure their tubes would stay cool.
You gotta admire Darl and Mark and Chris. No, really, think about this...
Without presenting any evidence, or even quasi-evidence, just claims and lawsuits and a magical waving of the arms, they have managed to bring SCO from the verge of being de-listed by NASDAQ (share price under $1.00) to becoming a Wall Street darling, because the share price is now over $10.00.
I'll bet the actual IP of RCU, etc. has already been covered in Operating Systems Courses at dozens of Universities.
I just hope the poster survives long enough so the electrician can tell him what's in the "1-liter bottles".
Telephone systems used to use fuses embedded in a wooden housing, roughly the size of a felt-tip pen. Could those be the 220VAC equivalent, circa 1940-1950s?
It is at least arguable that under a regulated environment, with a guaranteed minimum profit margin, electrical suppliers would have an incentive to over-design the supply system to withstand "worst-case" (and above) demands.
In a de-regulated environment, the companies design for average (or slightly above average) demand, and if demand exceeds that, oh, well.
It's not as if their customers have a boat-load of alternatives, when the entire friggin' GRID goes out.
Having said that, I'd be a lot more pissed if I didn't live in Western PA, which seems to have missed the blackout, and if I cooled my house with AC, instead of trees, fans, and windows.
I'm sure the current incarnation of Heathkit doesn't really care, but I'll note that I really miss the days when computer geeks had to know the difference between NAND and NOR gates, and why that was important.
I agree... I tend to think that knowledge knows no boundaries, and so BioTech can start up in India, Argentina, Russia, or where-ever.
As one who is closer to retirement cabins than undergraduate school, I "hope" I can view this mostly from the consumer viewpoint, and hope it results in better medical care for me, as I enter my dotage.
Maybe, at some point, our "best and brightest" will go outside the US to get their final training, and then come back here to make the big bucks.
1) Biotech today is about where IT was in 1980 or so, finally having gathered enough momentum in the previous 30 years to be able to make an impact. My son enters Carnegie Mellon next month in MechE, and I'm hoping he gets interested in their MechE/BioTech double major.
The U.S. spends a ton of money on health care, and all us baby-boomer geezers are gonna be needing new hips, new shoulders, hearts, etc. in the next couple of decades.
2) Health Care. I don't see the barriers to entry that you do. Once removed from direct clinical care, health care positions don't differ all that much from positions in other service industries. Purchasing is purchasing, IT is IT, PR is PR, etc.
A large hospital in my area is building a new facility, and the plan is that all room-based IT will be wireless. I don't see medical operations flying a tech in from overseas when an access point goes down.
3) Education/Training. Positions at prestigious universities might be hard to come by, but lots of smaller 4-yr and community colleges are desparate for qualified faculty, as are many K-12 school districts, especially in areas with rapidly growing populations.
Don't scoff! For example, over the next few years, Florida law mandates that the student/teacher ratio be reduced to 25 (it's currently closer to 30). That alone will increase teaching positions by 17%, without considering population growth.
---
Addressing your question more generally, think of careers and occupations that require a physical presence: Sure, flipping burgers is one, but so is classroom instruction & training, fixing things that break, from plumbing to network hardware to automobiles.
And probably the last thing we'll see out-sourced overseas are governmental/legal functions, from the SCO lawyers to the IT Admin for your state, county, or city.
Here is their self-description from their own website:
Torchmark Corporation is a financial services holding company specializing in life and supplemental health insurance for "middle income" Americans through multiple distribution channels including direct response, exclusive and independent agencies.
Greetings,
Thank you for taking the time to contact me.
I receive a large volume of E-mails, phone calls, faxes and letters every week from concerned citizens like yourself. By following these simple steps, you will help me respond to your concerns in a more prompt and efficient manner. Please note that because of the high volume of E-mails I receive daily, it may take up to several weeks to receive a response.
â" IMMEDIATE ACTION ITEMS: To respond to your time sensitive concerns, please contact the Washington office or the state office in your area.
â" Legislative Comments: To respond to your concerns regarding a legislative matter, please include your complete name, address, and a daytime telephone number (optional). I will respond to your email by mail.
â" Scheduling Matters: Please contact our Washington office by faxing your request to our fax line (202) 228-1229.
â" Constituent Services: i.e. DC Tourism, Internships, Flag Requests, and Academy Nominations. Please access my website . I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Arlen Specter
To be fair, I haven't researched which committees that Sen. Hatch is on, which often determines who buy^H^H^H contributes to the campaigns.
In addition to Disney and AOL/TW, who do we see here? ... Medicine/Drugs: HealthSouth, Pfizer, Metabolife, Glaxo, SmithKline, Pharma R&M, Schering-Plough, Merck, and Sundown. ... Tech/Telecom: Qwest, AT&T, Novell, Oracle, Global Crossing, Verizon, SBC. ... You missed Viacom as a media company. ... Of the rest, I've never heard of Torchmark (kinda sounds like healthcare), and Bear Stears in a brokerage firm/ investment banker.
When he breaks down and cries before the full Senate and confesses his sins, he'll say he was high on drugs, brought on by an outrageous cellphone bill when he called all his sisters to cry over the end of "Nemo".
He'll then beg forgiveness, and be asked for another chance.
those annoying documents called the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
It's been a long time for this Baby-Boomer since I studied them in high school, but the phrases Innocent until proven guilty, unreasonable search and seizure, and due process of law seem to ring a bell.
"Ben, all that will come from flying that kite is you're going to get yerself kilt!"
"Now Alex, nobody's going to put all them wires up alongside every road, just to talk with their neighbors."
"Let me see if I understand you correctly, Mr. Ford. You want to build a factory to make motorized buckboards?"
"Linus, honey, come to bed now, please... Why don't you ask your advisor if you can change your thesis topic to Improving the Task-Switching Performance of OS/2?"
By the way, I don't disagree with you that it's the instructor's responsibility to detect and monitor the in-class exams. I don't see direct copying so often on in-class exams, but more often in assignments done outside of class. Which is why I (and most instructors I suspect) give little weight to out-of-class assignments. I remember my own days learning how to program, with Alan Perlis as the instructor. We learned from looking at each other's code, but we had to learn it by exam time.
I hope that "all students cheat" doesn't hold, since my oldest son is going off to university in August, and for the $$$ I'm spending, he better learn a couple of things on his own.
The 3-volume set of The Art of Computer Programming would do as a start for establishing prior art to anything implemented in the Linux kernel.
Over the last 30 years, any number of "Data Structures and Algorithms" books have been published.
I think that Linus himself has said that he modelled (not copied!) the orignal Linux of 10+ years ago on Andrew Tannebaum's Minix.
I've not looked in depth at the Linux kernel (if that's where the "violations" have occurred, SCO seems to be waffling on this) but what I've read about the various development versions indicates that the real programming effort goes into making everything work with everything else.
Occasionally, there are algorithmic-level discussions (such as with the scheduler), but most of the focus seems to be on "Patch X to Module Y breaks Functionality Z on Platform XYZ".
Any good MBA's out there to compare SCO/Caldera's financials vs IBM's? I'm hoping that on principle (and IBM has invested a lot in Linux/Open Source) that IBM doesn't settle, and doesn't just buy SCO out to settle the suit. A $10M/year legal bill for IBM to defend the SCO suit is (I think) a drop in IBM's bucket, but a big chunk of SCO's cash flow.
As someone else has noted, probably the worst outcome for SCO is if the case actually comes to trial, and they have to prove their claims.
Once I was going to put a splice in some household wiring, and I thought
I had deactivated the right circuit. Despite the little nip along the blade,
those wire cutters worked fine for years afterwards.
Then there was the time I thought my Triumph TR-7 was an SUV, and tried to
drive up my driveway through 8" of snow. (Note 1: they don't call Joseph
Lucas the Prince of Darkness for nothing.) (Note 2: Pulled the Triumph back
off the slope with my tractor, and onto the driveway the next morning, no harm, no foul.)
Thrilled to be running near the front, in 1979 I drove my Spitfire deep into
the lefthander before the carousel at Summit Point Raceway in West Virginia.
I didn't realize that my brake line had worn through , and so instead of
making the turn, I went straight ahead. Motor, tranny, and diff worked fine... in the new chassis/body.
Probably the most dramatic hardware failure was when I went for a couple
of years without firing up my 1500W HF ham radio amplifier (Ten-Tec Titan
II). The one with the 2.5 KV power supply? Let me assure you that all that
voltage hitting dried out electrolytic caps makes for a spectacular light
and smoke display. Maybe this doesn't count though... while the RF
deck was OK (fail-safe resistor immolated), the PS itself needed a lot of
work.
For Sony, this probably makes good business sense. 19" and smaller CRTs are
very much a commodity product nowadays. You can buy a complete 19" TV for
US$100, and I suspect that more CRTs go in to TVs than computer monitors.
The price competition has to be fierce, and the "small" (<= 21") CRT segment
of the market is very price sensitive.
CRTs are very far along the "experience curve", and so further reductions
in manufacturing costs are difficult to achieve. LCDs are still in the early
phase of their life-cycle. I think Sony has decided to ride the cost curve
of LCDs down, and not put any more resources into a dying market like CRTs.
Much like 30-40 years ago, the "smart" manufacturers of vacuum tubes exited
the manufacturing end of that market, outsourced to the remaining producers,
and concentrated on semiconductors.
One of the more publicized aspects of your return to "normal society" was
your campaign to retain (or regain) your amateur radio license.
Not having followed every detail of your situation, was that just a part
of your overall effort, or do you wish to use your amateur radio license
in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
One hot bitch is enough for me.
I don't think the problem is the medium, it's getting adequate heat transfer fron the CPU die to the heat dissipation mechanism.
An AMD Barton Core CPU measures about 3/16 x 1/2 inches, and I'll assume a Pentium 2.5GHz measures about the same.
However much heat the CPU generates, it has to be rapidly dissipated, or the core temperature will exceed its design limits.
Air cooling systems achieve this by dissipating the heat to numerous fins, which is then moved from the chassis by fans.
Water cooling systems transfer the heat from the CPU to a cooling system that is cooled by a liquid.
In either case, the limiting factor is the ability to transfer the heat from that 3/16 x 1/2 (3/32nd in^2) of surface area on the top of the CPU.
I remember touring the studios and transmitter site for WWVA 1170khz in Wheeling WV, back in 1965 or so. Water-cooled tubes were the norm, both in the audio and the RF chains.
/.-ers not familiar with analog electronics, AM (amplitude modulated) signals generate lots of distortion when amplified. So the only efficient way to create a high-power (50kW) AM signal is to modulate the 50kW carrier signal with a 50kW audio signal. Fifty thousands watts is serious power, even today.]
[For those of you
But I don't recall the station engineers being especially concerned. IIRC, the tubes ran "upside down" (pins up, glass bottle down in the cooling water) and so long as the city water supply didn't give out, they were pretty sure their tubes would stay cool.
You gotta admire Darl and Mark and Chris. No, really, think about this...
Without presenting any evidence, or even quasi-evidence, just claims and lawsuits and a magical waving of the arms, they have managed to bring SCO from the verge of being de-listed by NASDAQ (share price under $1.00) to becoming a Wall Street darling, because the share price is now over $10.00.
I'll bet the actual IP of RCU, etc. has already been covered in Operating Systems Courses at dozens of Universities.
SCO must be right.
After all, any halfway competent programmer could code RCU, NUMA, and SMP into 100K lines of code, max.
If the code takes a million lines, it must have been done by the SCO Coders.
Apologies to previous or current SCO coders... I know you could have done it in fewer lines, but you had to include all those annoying (C) IBM lines.
I just hope the poster survives long enough so the electrician can tell him what's in the "1-liter bottles".
Telephone systems used to use fuses embedded in a wooden housing, roughly the size of a felt-tip pen. Could those be the 220VAC equivalent, circa 1940-1950s?
It is at least arguable that under a regulated environment, with a guaranteed minimum profit margin, electrical suppliers would have an incentive to over-design the supply system to withstand "worst-case" (and above) demands.
In a de-regulated environment, the companies design for average (or slightly above average) demand, and if demand exceeds that, oh, well.
It's not as if their customers have a boat-load of alternatives, when the entire friggin' GRID goes out.
Having said that, I'd be a lot more pissed if I didn't live in Western PA, which seems to have missed the blackout, and if I cooled my house with AC, instead of trees, fans, and windows.
Back in the 60s and 70s, I went right up their product line, starting with a DX60A, then a HW101, and finally a SB301/SB401.
Oh my, those were the days, my friends.
KQ3T
how long before the Heath Company sues about using the name Cantenna , which goes back at least to the 1960s?
As one who is closer to retirement cabins than undergraduate school, I "hope" I can view this mostly from the consumer viewpoint, and hope it results in better medical care for me, as I enter my dotage.
Maybe, at some point, our "best and brightest" will go outside the US to get their final training, and then come back here to make the big bucks.
1) Biotech today is about where IT was in 1980 or so, finally having gathered enough momentum in the previous 30 years to be able to make an impact. My son enters Carnegie Mellon next month in MechE, and I'm hoping he gets interested in their MechE/BioTech double major.
The U.S. spends a ton of money on health care, and all us baby-boomer geezers are gonna be needing new hips, new shoulders, hearts, etc. in the next couple of decades.
2) Health Care. I don't see the barriers to entry that you do. Once removed from direct clinical care, health care positions don't differ all that much from positions in other service industries. Purchasing is purchasing, IT is IT, PR is PR, etc.
A large hospital in my area is building a new facility, and the plan is that all room-based IT will be wireless. I don't see medical operations flying a tech in from overseas when an access point goes down.
3) Education/Training. Positions at prestigious universities might be hard to come by, but lots of smaller 4-yr and community colleges are desparate for qualified faculty, as are many K-12 school districts, especially in areas with rapidly growing populations.
Don't scoff! For example, over the next few years, Florida law mandates that the student/teacher ratio be reduced to 25 (it's currently closer to 30). That alone will increase teaching positions by 17%, without considering population growth.
---
Addressing your question more generally, think of careers and occupations that require a physical presence: Sure, flipping burgers is one, but so is classroom instruction & training, fixing things that break, from plumbing to network hardware to automobiles.
And probably the last thing we'll see out-sourced overseas are governmental/legal functions, from the SCO lawyers to the IT Admin for your state, county, or city.
Here is their self-description from their own website: Torchmark Corporation is a financial services holding company specializing in life and supplemental health insurance for "middle income" Americans through multiple distribution channels including direct response, exclusive and independent agencies.
Greetings, Thank you for taking the time to contact me. I receive a large volume of E-mails, phone calls, faxes and letters every week from concerned citizens like yourself. By following these simple steps, you will help me respond to your concerns in a more prompt and efficient manner. Please note that because of the high volume of E-mails I receive daily, it may take up to several weeks to receive a response. â" IMMEDIATE ACTION ITEMS: To respond to your time sensitive concerns, please contact the Washington office or the state office in your area. â" Legislative Comments: To respond to your concerns regarding a legislative matter, please include your complete name, address, and a daytime telephone number (optional). I will respond to your email by mail. â" Scheduling Matters: Please contact our Washington office by faxing your request to our fax line (202) 228-1229. â" Constituent Services: i.e. DC Tourism, Internships, Flag Requests, and Academy Nominations. Please access my website . I look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, Arlen Specter
To be fair, I haven't researched which committees that Sen. Hatch is on, which often determines who buy^H^H^H contributes to the campaigns.
... Medicine/Drugs: HealthSouth, Pfizer, Metabolife, Glaxo, SmithKline, Pharma R&M, Schering-Plough, Merck, and Sundown.
... Tech/Telecom: Qwest, AT&T, Novell, Oracle, Global Crossing, Verizon, SBC.
... You missed Viacom as a media company.
... Of the rest, I've never heard of Torchmark (kinda sounds like healthcare), and Bear Stears in a brokerage firm/ investment banker.
In addition to Disney and AOL/TW, who do we see here?
When he breaks down and cries before the full Senate and confesses his sins, he'll say he was high on drugs, brought on by an outrageous cellphone bill when he called all his sisters to cry over the end of "Nemo".
He'll then beg forgiveness, and be asked for another chance.
AFAIK, every House and Senate member can be reached thru the websites for their respective branches:
www.house.gov
www.senate.gov
those annoying documents called the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
It's been a long time for this Baby-Boomer since I studied them in high school, but the phrases Innocent until proven guilty, unreasonable search and seizure, and due process of law seem to ring a bell.
"Ben, all that will come from flying that kite is you're going to get yerself kilt!"
"Now Alex, nobody's going to put all them wires up alongside every road, just to talk with their neighbors."
"Let me see if I understand you correctly, Mr. Ford. You want to build a factory to make motorized buckboards?"
"Linus, honey, come to bed now, please... Why don't you ask your advisor if you can change your thesis topic to Improving the Task-Switching Performance of OS/2?"
Today, the over-clockers and the case modders probably continue on the idea that whatever is sold commercially can be improved upon.
Kudos to the Dayton Hamvention and amateur radio operators everywhere.
73,
Dave KQ3T
By the way, I don't disagree with you that it's the instructor's responsibility to detect and monitor the in-class exams. I don't see direct copying so often on in-class exams, but more often in assignments done outside of class. Which is why I (and most instructors I suspect) give little weight to out-of-class assignments. I remember my own days learning how to program, with Alan Perlis as the instructor. We learned from looking at each other's code, but we had to learn it by exam time.
I hope that "all students cheat" doesn't hold, since my oldest son is going off to university in August, and for the $$$ I'm spending, he better learn a couple of things on his own.
The 3-volume set of The Art of Computer Programming would do as a start for establishing prior art to anything implemented in the Linux kernel.
Over the last 30 years, any number of "Data Structures and Algorithms" books have been published.
I think that Linus himself has said that he modelled (not copied!) the orignal Linux of 10+ years ago on Andrew Tannebaum's Minix.
I've not looked in depth at the Linux kernel (if that's where the "violations" have occurred, SCO seems to be waffling on this) but what I've read about the various development versions indicates that the real programming effort goes into making everything work with everything else.
Occasionally, there are algorithmic-level discussions (such as with the scheduler), but most of the focus seems to be on "Patch X to Module Y breaks Functionality Z on Platform XYZ".
Any good MBA's out there to compare SCO/Caldera's financials vs IBM's? I'm hoping that on principle (and IBM has invested a lot in Linux/Open Source) that IBM doesn't settle, and doesn't just buy SCO out to settle the suit. A $10M/year legal bill for IBM to defend the SCO suit is (I think) a drop in IBM's bucket, but a big chunk of SCO's cash flow. As someone else has noted, probably the worst outcome for SCO is if the case actually comes to trial, and they have to prove their claims.
Usually, the best clue to "shared-source" assignments is the incorrect implementation of the algorithm.
Another clue is the common use of non-obvious variable names, such as outer_index_1, inner_index_2, instead of i and j.
I find it much easier to notice these sorts of things on exams if I grade everyone's Question 1 first, then everyone's Question 2 next, etc.
You did say hardware, didn't you?
Once I was going to put a splice in some household wiring, and I thought I had deactivated the right circuit. Despite the little nip along the blade, those wire cutters worked fine for years afterwards.
Then there was the time I thought my Triumph TR-7 was an SUV, and tried to drive up my driveway through 8" of snow. (Note 1: they don't call Joseph Lucas the Prince of Darkness for nothing.) (Note 2: Pulled the Triumph back off the slope with my tractor, and onto the driveway the next morning, no harm, no foul.)
Thrilled to be running near the front, in 1979 I drove my Spitfire deep into the lefthander before the carousel at Summit Point Raceway in West Virginia. I didn't realize that my brake line had worn through , and so instead of making the turn, I went straight ahead. Motor, tranny, and diff worked fine... in the new chassis/body.
Probably the most dramatic hardware failure was when I went for a couple of years without firing up my 1500W HF ham radio amplifier (Ten-Tec Titan II). The one with the 2.5 KV power supply? Let me assure you that all that voltage hitting dried out electrolytic caps makes for a spectacular light and smoke display. Maybe this doesn't count though... while the RF deck was OK (fail-safe resistor immolated), the PS itself needed a lot of work.
For Sony, this probably makes good business sense. 19" and smaller CRTs are very much a commodity product nowadays. You can buy a complete 19" TV for US$100, and I suspect that more CRTs go in to TVs than computer monitors. The price competition has to be fierce, and the "small" (<= 21") CRT segment of the market is very price sensitive.
CRTs are very far along the "experience curve", and so further reductions in manufacturing costs are difficult to achieve. LCDs are still in the early phase of their life-cycle. I think Sony has decided to ride the cost curve of LCDs down, and not put any more resources into a dying market like CRTs.
Much like 30-40 years ago, the "smart" manufacturers of vacuum tubes exited the manufacturing end of that market, outsourced to the remaining producers, and concentrated on semiconductors.
Kevin,
One of the more publicized aspects of your return to "normal society" was your campaign to retain (or regain) your amateur radio license.
Not having followed every detail of your situation, was that just a part of your overall effort, or do you wish to use your amateur radio license in the future.
73,
Dave KQ3T