I know i know, far fetched consipracy theory -- but at least hear me out here:
first of all -- why did SONY release a linux kit? I mean, people might say "oh yeah there is a community for it" or "there is a demand for it." i disagree. we know that SONY makes no money on the kits -- they don't expect to sell that many, definitely not enough to recover the man-hours poured into it; so even if the kit itself, hardware wise, makes them a few bux, overall it's a losing proposition. especially considering it's a custom chip, so that's a LOT of coding and debugging to get the thing working.
however, what it DOES do is on all fronts kill any reason you might have to own a mod chip. i mean, every argument you throw their way withers away when there is a linux kit. you want to do home-brew software? sure -- get a linux kit. you want to learn how PS2 works b/c you are a enthusiest (sp?) ? -- get a linux kit. etc etc. From now on, whenever they crack down on mod chip suppliers, we as consumers will have no argument toward them, morally or in court, because all the legitimate uses of the mod chip has been covered already.
now back to M$. we know M$ loses more money per box than sony on the consoles. and when the mod chip business REALLY opens up (like for the PS1), oh boy will we see some profit figures bleed. They are already starting to legally crack down on mod-chip teams, and before they go-to court, it would be really nice for them to have some arguments (like sony above) lined up.
to do this "contest" thing would cost them chump change (200k max) -- versus getting their highly compensated programmers on this -- most probabbly knows little in the ways of LINUX anyhow. note the last part said "no hardware mods"... hmmmm....
again, just conspiracy theory here; but you have to admit -- there might be some very valid reason M$ would want to do this.
sigh... i guess 1/5 of a million dollars just don't have that "zing" or "cha-chin!" to it... hell... this is why we have enron scandals... 50 grand short and we are calling it "nearly"
yeah but mineral oil has fairly high viscocity compared with flourinert (granted -- flourinert gets sloshy at ~-60 deg, but that's a lot lower than most of you guys are willing to go anyway) besides, it's easier to clean up (flourinert) when you need to change out parts, etc
further more, the specific heat for mineral oil was something like 1/3 as much? can't remember the numbers so clearly anymore; point being -- there are some real good reasons why people do not put mineral oil through their semiconductor manufacturing equiment's cooling systems.
flourinert can build up static charges running through the tubing; and whet the charges get high enough, ZAP and there is a hole in your tube. (yes i speak from experience)
now, if you say "oh well at least it does not conduct electricity / short out my board" -- well, there is two problems with that: 1) thermally, your CPU will die, fast. 2) flourinert is damn expensive (~500 US / gal last i checked) -- having it leaking out of a hole onto the floor is not a good idea; 3) it is environmentally hazardous -- not that you might care -- but i'd figue i would mention it instead of having people wonder why there are locallized holes in the ozone layer above their neighborhood.
for the time and effort spent on this -- get some flourinert and just full-submerge your PC. a gallon is ~500 bux, cheaper if you buy more. Or hook up with somebody with access to some and buy used liquid for cheap;-) -- it's used in all sorts of high precision equipment(s)
If i wanted to go on a similar track and shoot myself into space: any advices you can give? like (possibly):
* russian space suit need modification in the crouch dept; * FAA apply-for-license bribe line phone number * titanium is best bought from these countries * books to read * what to do when mixing dangerous chemicals * how much $$ would it cost, what did you do wrong and how that could have saved you a couple million * spelling errors can be deadly when you are a rocket-scientist
In your opinion: did the "Rocket guy" title, the associated possibilities of extravagant success, world-shattering humiliation of failure (say, you pressed the button and nothing happened, for example) land you more, or less chicks? groupies? or sex in general?
Remember now -- this is the age before computers; i am certain this slide rule -- like all the other rediculous liquid-nitrogen cooled P4 reaching three and a half GHz -- is a compensatory device for... erm... certain shortcomings.
if you don't believe me on the "shortcoming" part -- ancidotal (sp?) evidence: Newton died a virgin.
Updating ANY daemon, service or software not directly related to the kernel or core libraries does not require reboot. Where the hell have you been?
If i remember correctly, on Solaris -- there is a way to install Solaris 9 over 8 without ever rebooting. This probabbly requires some jumping through the hoops to get working -- but i have heard evidence that it does works; I am not too sure if you have to come dow the ladder on run-levels during this; i would assume that you stay in 5 because otherwise it would be kinda pointless. if anybody knows for sure please feel free to correct me.
imagine that, 0 downtime even for OS upgrade. how is *that* for "welcome to the future?"
Sorry to be lame and reply to myself -- but i think it's better than being lame and keep a bunch of ideas mis-communicated.
1) Airbus 380 has wingspan of 79.8m -- and many airports (the stat was ~20% last i heard) cannot accomodate its size. by comparison, Boeing 747 has a wingspan of 64.4m
2) This proposed design has wingspan of over 88 (88.1?) meters. so if airbus 380 does not fit into some of today's airports, this will be having lots of troubles
3) the rate of new airports being built in the US is diminishing to a handful per year. Most metropolitan areas are surrounded by suburbs and new airports to accomodate new (bigger) planes is out of the question. this leaves us with a serious dilemma: our current airports do not fit these things, and there arn't any new airports here to take their place.
4) before anybody asks -- yes airports can be re-fitted. Chicago-midway, for example, is currently undergoing something like that. but even AFTER refitting, A380 will *still* not fit in ~5% of the airports. (something to do with runway length, gate width, etc etc that makes it economically or logistically impractical to refit) so i do not expect refit to be all that powerful a solution to our new one-wing design.
so... like the concord -- this might come off to be one of the vanity flights offered at only a few airports (for a different reason, of course) -- but it *would* make an excellent alternative if it could land on, say, water. so instead of cruise ships, we can ride THESE all day -- and maybe the top observation deck can be made with a glass ceiling dining room, etc etc. the possibilities are great for these planes -- but i just don't see it in people-carrying NY-Tokyo flights.
man, even the new airbus 380 has trouble landing in something like 20% of the airports cuz it's too big. and that's less than 80m wingspan! this sucker have over 88...
we will see... the US has ran out of room to build more airports (or we don't wanna or something) near metropolitan areas -- so there are virtually no new airports built that will accomodate these massive things.
I am assuming that the mil version will be bombers -- so you can just keep the trap doors on the civ. version too. whenever there are terrorists / annoying drunkard / people smoking in the bathroom -- just open a little trap door and "foop". done.
RGB is additive is fine -- but as for paper, RYB (red - yellow - blue) works just fine. just because CMY is subtractive is not reason enough that it's the dominant color space for paper.
i know somebody in the print business -- will find out and let you know.
1) RGB, or any other color space -- can create any color if you look at it from far enough. besides, even if panda can only see two primary colours like dogs -- the TV image will still look the same as real world -- unless they can see into beyond the visible spectrum (i do not think this is the case, by the way), because the TVs are calibrated for the visible spectrum, and any near-infrared / uv will come off totally screwed up. 2) our eyes have a magnitude more rods (brightness) than cones (color) -- unrelated, but FYI -- that's when it's really dark you can't see jack worth of color but still make out images 3) human cones respond to cyan, magenta (sp?), and yellow. do you know why paper prints uses CYMK as primary colours? ditto. 4) screens uses RGB for some other reason -- i don't remember right now, but it's either a) RGB is an easier color space to work with, or b) CYM phosphers were hard to come by. might be a combinaiton of both.
Back when original GeForce (NV-10) first came out?
do you know how nVidia (supposedly a respectable company) pulled 256 out of its you-know-where? this is quoted from Tomshardware:
Well, it took me some time to really understand that as well. First of all it isn't the price, Creative Labs are supposed to ship theirs for $249, but if you're in the right state with low tax it may still add up to $256. It should also not really be the memory interface, because this is only 128-bit wide. Some think that the usage of DDR ('double data rate') memory excuses the use of '256' for the memory interface, but that's in my humble opinion not quite all right. GeForce-cards with SDR- RAM would anyway not deserve the '256' then and the fact that data is transferred with the rising as well as falling edge of the memory clock does still not make it wider than 128-bit. The memory interface is anyway my critique-point number one, because it provides the boards equipped with SDR-RAM with a slower memory bandwidth than TNT2-Ultra-boards. GeForce's memory is currently clocked at 166 MHz, while TNT2-Ultra runs it at 183+ MHz and both chips have the same memory bus width of 128-bit. NVIDIA did not tell us the memory clock of the DDR-RAM card in our test, but I guess it's 166 MHz too, so that this card has at least 81% more memory bandwidth than TNT2-Ultra.
But let's get back to the magic '256'. I could hardly believe my ears when I was finally told what the '256' stands for. NVIDIA adds the 32-bit deep color, the 24-bit deep Z-buffer and the 8-bit stencil buffer of each rendering pipeline and multiplies it with 4, for each pipeline, which indeed ads up to 256. So far about the fantasy of marketing people, they are a very special breed indeed.
I am staying in the office waiting for the Star Trek trailer, on the excuse that 1) 7pm the carpool is lifted, and 2) it's only a "half hour" wait, and 3) office connection is about 1.8x that of the DSL at home.
I like what Eisenhower said. I think it made a lot of sense -- and it is true -- America has grown to be very arrogant over the years, in many ways that i will not be listing here.
At the mean time -- the pledge of allegiance, added with such a phrase, really does put stress on, i am sure, many people's minds. I, for one, dreaded those occations while in middle school. However, what is more worrisome is not necessarily the people who are made to say it when they do not want to -- they can just "watermelon" under their breath after all; it is, rather, the minds of children coaxed into the belief of God that way -- without ever knowing what it is like to be free to choose one's own religion(s).
side note -- this will have some serious consequences -- all of the bills we've got have "in god we trust" written on them. i highly doubt the new rainbow series (discussed before under "Greenbacks no more") will do without them.
But back to the Eisenhower thing. I think it is implemented in the wrong way. His intentions are good, but since then, the phrase has all but lost its meaning, because if it did not, my thread's parent will not be modded to 5:informative. In this vein of thought, i support taking "under God" out of the pledge. put somethig more... abstract in there, if they really wanted (words like "president", "dignity", "humility", "cheeseburgers", etc). maybe run a contest or something, like Maxim's caption contest. Winner gets a chance to go in a ring for a one on one to beat up Bin Laden whenever we capture him (or designate somebody like The Rock, for example. you guys figure it out).
Last piece of ramble: The most demoralizing aspect of this whole ordeal isn't really about what goes into a pledge, whatever. it's rather the fact that we have so little tolerance for eachother. For "land of the free," it is really hard to be "free" now-a-days without somebody complaining that you doing what you wanna do is violating their freedom in some fringe ways. maybe it should read... one nation under the principle of tolerance and forgiveness... ?
not the entire document is here, just the important stuff Eisenhower said:
We are particularly thankful to you for your part in the movement to have the words 'under God' added to our Pledge of Allegiance. These words will remind Americans that despite our great physical strength we must remain humble. They will help us to keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and moral principles which alone give dignity to man, and upon which our way of life is founded. For the contribution which your organization has made to this cause, we must be genuinely grateful.
heh... not that i want to use it for terroist purposes -- but there are some really neat properties about it.
1) not in the visible spectrum 2) really f* powerful -- compared with milliwatt laser pointers etc. this *burns* 3) does not pass though glass (good and bad) -- good - can burn holes through glass; bad - mirrors will cost ya.
too bad the power requirements means no reasonabbly portable units can be constructed and say, carried in a backpack (ala laser troops in Akira). might be able to mount it on a humvee though.
A person is guilty of the offence in subsection (1)(a) even if the act was not intended to cause such an effect, provided that a reasonable person could have anticipated that the act would have caused such an effect.
this means no more posting of links on slashdot linking to UK sites lest Taco becomes an international criminal.
somebody in UK, please write your queen about this.
Slashdot Mirror
I know i know, far fetched consipracy theory -- but at least hear me out here:
first of all -- why did SONY release a linux kit? I mean, people might say "oh yeah there is a community for it" or "there is a demand for it." i disagree. we know that SONY makes no money on the kits -- they don't expect to sell that many, definitely not enough to recover the man-hours poured into it; so even if the kit itself, hardware wise, makes them a few bux, overall it's a losing proposition. especially considering it's a custom chip, so that's a LOT of coding and debugging to get the thing working.
however, what it DOES do is on all fronts kill any reason you might have to own a mod chip. i mean, every argument you throw their way withers away when there is a linux kit. you want to do home-brew software? sure -- get a linux kit. you want to learn how PS2 works b/c you are a enthusiest (sp?) ? -- get a linux kit. etc etc. From now on, whenever they crack down on mod chip suppliers, we as consumers will have no argument toward them, morally or in court, because all the legitimate uses of the mod chip has been covered already.
now back to M$. we know M$ loses more money per box than sony on the consoles. and when the mod chip business REALLY opens up (like for the PS1), oh boy will we see some profit figures bleed. They are already starting to legally crack down on mod-chip teams, and before they go-to court, it would be really nice for them to have some arguments (like sony above) lined up.
to do this "contest" thing would cost them chump change (200k max) -- versus getting their highly compensated programmers on this -- most probabbly knows little in the ways of LINUX anyhow. note the last part said "no hardware mods"... hmmmm....
again, just conspiracy theory here; but you have to admit -- there might be some very valid reason M$ would want to do this.
sigh... i guess 1/5 of a million dollars just don't have that "zing" or "cha-chin!" to it...
hell... this is why we have enron scandals... 50 grand short and we are calling it "nearly"
yeah but mineral oil has fairly high viscocity compared with flourinert (granted -- flourinert gets sloshy at ~-60 deg, but that's a lot lower than most of you guys are willing to go anyway) besides, it's easier to clean up (flourinert) when you need to change out parts, etc
further more, the specific heat for mineral oil was something like 1/3 as much? can't remember the numbers so clearly anymore; point being -- there are some real good reasons why people do not put mineral oil through their semiconductor manufacturing equiment's cooling systems.
flourinert can build up static charges running through the tubing; and whet the charges get high enough, ZAP and there is a hole in your tube. (yes i speak from experience)
now, if you say "oh well at least it does not conduct electricity / short out my board" -- well, there is two problems with that: 1) thermally, your CPU will die, fast. 2) flourinert is damn expensive (~500 US / gal last i checked) -- having it leaking out of a hole onto the floor is not a good idea; 3) it is environmentally hazardous -- not that you might care -- but i'd figue i would mention it instead of having people wonder why there are locallized holes in the ozone layer above their neighborhood.
for the time and effort spent on this -- get some flourinert and just full-submerge your PC. a gallon is ~500 bux, cheaper if you buy more. Or hook up with somebody with access to some and buy used liquid for cheap ;-) -- it's used in all sorts of high precision equipment(s)
If i wanted to go on a similar track and shoot myself into space: any advices you can give? like (possibly):
* russian space suit need modification in the crouch dept;
* FAA apply-for-license bribe line phone number
* titanium is best bought from these countries
* books to read
* what to do when mixing dangerous chemicals
* how much $$ would it cost, what did you do wrong and how that could have saved you a couple million
* spelling errors can be deadly when you are a rocket-scientist
etc
In your opinion: did the "Rocket guy" title, the associated possibilities of extravagant success, world-shattering humiliation of failure (say, you pressed the button and nothing happened, for example) land you more, or less chicks? groupies? or sex in general?
I mean, this is really cool and all -- but i am sure this is violating an EULA somewhere. ;-) Just be glad that GE is not all up on the M$ behaviors
Remember now -- this is the age before computers; i am certain this slide rule -- like all the other rediculous liquid-nitrogen cooled P4 reaching three and a half GHz -- is a compensatory device for... erm... certain shortcomings.
if you don't believe me on the "shortcoming" part -- ancidotal (sp?) evidence: Newton died a virgin.
a small off-topic muse here, but man i wish women comes with 2-month personal support for $60.
whenever she throws a fit because you answered "does this dress make me look fat" etc you call up a 800 number, wait 45 min on the line, and viola.
in fact, they (women) should come with man pages. sigh...
If i remember correctly, on Solaris -- there is a way to install Solaris 9 over 8 without ever rebooting. This probabbly requires some jumping through the hoops to get working -- but i have heard evidence that it does works; I am not too sure if you have to come dow the ladder on run-levels during this; i would assume that you stay in 5 because otherwise it would be kinda pointless. if anybody knows for sure please feel free to correct me.
imagine that, 0 downtime even for OS upgrade. how is *that* for "welcome to the future?"
they were comparing to Airbus 380s with 480 CRT screens behind every seat.
Sorry to be lame and reply to myself -- but i think it's better than being lame and keep a bunch of ideas mis-communicated.
1) Airbus 380 has wingspan of 79.8m -- and many airports (the stat was ~20% last i heard) cannot accomodate its size. by comparison, Boeing 747 has a wingspan of 64.4m
2) This proposed design has wingspan of over 88 (88.1?) meters. so if airbus 380 does not fit into some of today's airports, this will be having lots of troubles
3) the rate of new airports being built in the US is diminishing to a handful per year. Most metropolitan areas are surrounded by suburbs and new airports to accomodate new (bigger) planes is out of the question. this leaves us with a serious dilemma: our current airports do not fit these things, and there arn't any new airports here to take their place.
4) before anybody asks -- yes airports can be re-fitted. Chicago-midway, for example, is currently undergoing something like that. but even AFTER refitting, A380 will *still* not fit in ~5% of the airports. (something to do with runway length, gate width, etc etc that makes it economically or logistically impractical to refit) so i do not expect refit to be all that powerful a solution to our new one-wing design.
so... like the concord -- this might come off to be one of the vanity flights offered at only a few airports (for a different reason, of course) -- but it *would* make an excellent alternative if it could land on, say, water. so instead of cruise ships, we can ride THESE all day -- and maybe the top observation deck can be made with a glass ceiling dining room, etc etc. the possibilities are great for these planes -- but i just don't see it in people-carrying NY-Tokyo flights.
try here
man, even the new airbus 380 has trouble landing in something like 20% of the airports cuz it's too big. and that's less than 80m wingspan! this sucker have over 88...
we will see... the US has ran out of room to build more airports (or we don't wanna or something) near metropolitan areas -- so there are virtually no new airports built that will accomodate these massive things.
I am assuming that the mil version will be bombers -- so you can just keep the trap doors on the civ. version too. whenever there are terrorists / annoying drunkard / people smoking in the bathroom -- just open a little trap door and "foop". done.
*disagree*
RGB is additive is fine -- but as for paper, RYB (red - yellow - blue) works just fine. just because CMY is subtractive is not reason enough that it's the dominant color space for paper.
i know somebody in the print business -- will find out and let you know.
1) RGB, or any other color space -- can create any color if you look at it from far enough. besides, even if panda can only see two primary colours like dogs -- the TV image will still look the same as real world -- unless they can see into beyond the visible spectrum (i do not think this is the case, by the way), because the TVs are calibrated for the visible spectrum, and any near-infrared / uv will come off totally screwed up.
2) our eyes have a magnitude more rods (brightness) than cones (color) -- unrelated, but FYI -- that's when it's really dark you can't see jack worth of color but still make out images
3) human cones respond to cyan, magenta (sp?), and yellow. do you know why paper prints uses CYMK as primary colours? ditto.
4) screens uses RGB for some other reason -- i don't remember right now, but it's either a) RGB is an easier color space to work with, or b) CYM phosphers were hard to come by. might be a combinaiton of both.
Back when original GeForce (NV-10) first came out?
do you know how nVidia (supposedly a respectable company) pulled 256 out of its you-know-where? this is quoted from Tomshardware:
Well, it took me some time to really understand that as well. First of all it isn't the price, Creative Labs are supposed to ship theirs for $249, but if you're in the right state with low tax it may still add up to $256. It should also not really be the memory interface, because this is only 128-bit wide. Some think that the usage of DDR ('double data rate') memory excuses the use of '256' for the memory interface, but that's in my humble opinion not quite all right. GeForce-cards with SDR- RAM would anyway not deserve the '256' then and the fact that data is transferred with the rising as well as falling edge of the memory clock does still not make it wider than 128-bit. The memory interface is anyway my critique-point number one, because it provides the boards equipped with SDR-RAM with a slower memory bandwidth than TNT2-Ultra-boards. GeForce's memory is currently clocked at 166 MHz, while TNT2-Ultra runs it at 183+ MHz and both chips have the same memory bus width of 128-bit. NVIDIA did not tell us the memory clock of the DDR-RAM card in our test, but I guess it's 166 MHz too, so that this card has at least 81% more memory bandwidth than TNT2-Ultra.
But let's get back to the magic '256'. I could hardly believe my ears when I was finally told what the '256' stands for. NVIDIA adds the 32-bit deep color, the 24-bit deep Z-buffer and the 8-bit stencil buffer of each rendering pipeline and multiplies it with 4, for each pipeline, which indeed ads up to 256. So far about the fantasy of marketing people, they are a very special breed indeed.
I am staying in the office waiting for the Star Trek trailer, on the excuse that
1) 7pm the carpool is lifted, and
2) it's only a "half hour" wait, and
3) office connection is about 1.8x that of the DSL at home.
i am so glad there is no "pathetic loser" mod.
i think it's actually "nonymous"
I like what Eisenhower said. I think it made a lot of sense -- and it is true -- America has grown to be very arrogant over the years, in many ways that i will not be listing here.
... one nation under the principle of tolerance and forgiveness ... ?
At the mean time -- the pledge of allegiance, added with such a phrase, really does put stress on, i am sure, many people's minds. I, for one, dreaded those occations while in middle school. However, what is more worrisome is not necessarily the people who are made to say it when they do not want to -- they can just "watermelon" under their breath after all; it is, rather, the minds of children coaxed into the belief of God that way -- without ever knowing what it is like to be free to choose one's own religion(s).
side note -- this will have some serious consequences -- all of the bills we've got have "in god we trust" written on them. i highly doubt the new rainbow series (discussed before under "Greenbacks no more") will do without them.
But back to the Eisenhower thing. I think it is implemented in the wrong way. His intentions are good, but since then, the phrase has all but lost its meaning, because if it did not, my thread's parent will not be modded to 5:informative. In this vein of thought, i support taking "under God" out of the pledge. put somethig more... abstract in there, if they really wanted (words like "president", "dignity", "humility", "cheeseburgers", etc). maybe run a contest or something, like Maxim's caption contest. Winner gets a chance to go in a ring for a one on one to beat up Bin Laden whenever we capture him (or designate somebody like The Rock, for example. you guys figure it out).
Last piece of ramble: The most demoralizing aspect of this whole ordeal isn't really about what goes into a pledge, whatever. it's rather the fact that we have so little tolerance for eachother. For "land of the free," it is really hard to be "free" now-a-days without somebody complaining that you doing what you wanna do is violating their freedom in some fringe ways. maybe it should read
Earthlink have a bandwidth cap, so...
not the entire document is here, just the important stuff Eisenhower said:
We are particularly thankful to you for your part in the movement to have the words 'under God' added to our Pledge of Allegiance. These words will remind Americans that despite our great physical strength we must remain humble. They will help us to keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and moral principles which alone give dignity to man, and upon which our way of life is founded. For the contribution which your organization has made to this cause, we must be genuinely grateful.
heh... not that i want to use it for terroist purposes -- but there are some really neat properties about it.
1) not in the visible spectrum
2) really f* powerful -- compared with milliwatt laser pointers etc. this *burns*
3) does not pass though glass (good and bad) -- good - can burn holes through glass; bad - mirrors will cost ya.
too bad the power requirements means no reasonabbly portable units can be constructed and say, carried in a backpack (ala laser troops in Akira). might be able to mount it on a humvee though.
Read the damn file! it reads:
A person is guilty of the offence in subsection (1)(a) even if the act was not intended to cause such an effect, provided that a reasonable person could have anticipated that the act would have caused such an effect.
this means no more posting of links on slashdot linking to UK sites lest Taco becomes an international criminal.
somebody in UK, please write your queen about this.