Actually there is a way to get around the whole 'speed of light' issue - don't use light. Yea, the 'photonic computer' guys didn't think that one all the way through, did they?
Use electricity instead, have it run on little traces cut in silicon like the old days, but then seal the silicon in a dark ceramic casing so no light gets in, and put the whole thing in a computer case WITHOUT the clear panels - have to keep out the light.
Light is fast, no doubt, but it is measurably fast (186,000 miles per second, as I recall) - but regular electricity running in the dark across wires (or traces on silicon)... now that is 'hauling ass fast', also known as immeasurably fast. When you turn on a light by flipping a switch - the light takes a measurable amount of time to get to you, but when does the light actually turn on? The instant you flip that switch - ahhh, the magic of electricity running at immeasurable speeds over wire.
Think about it - every scientist in the past century has measured the speed of light - but how many have been able to measure the speed of electricity in a wire? None? Bingo!
And what kind of tools do they use to measure the speed of light? Electronic tools made with electricity running on wires? Bingo!
Actually I'm a Linux guy first, except on my game machine, my laptop, and my file server (all of which are running WinXP) - I have six machines at home (including the laptop) and none of them are Apples. I considered buying a Mac Mini, borrowed a friend's and couldn't get over the inconsistent key-combos (CTRL X/C/V for cut/copy/paste, and the different meanings assigned to the Home/page up/page down/end keys), the lack of multiple desktops, and the slightly 'off' feeling of the mouse (something wrong with it not accelerating as I moved it across the page, hard to describe but it felt too slow, too linear.)
Crazy thing is that while I am not a Microsoft fanboy, I like Windows as an operating system. I like Linux better for interacting with the outside world (IM / Firefox / office documents type work / database / just dinking around) but I do like and am quite comfortable within Windows.
Charge for undocumented, unsupported software? Who do they think they are, Microsoft?
But really, I see this as a good thing. If they are going to release it as a full retail release with documentation and actual support, then by all means put a price tag on it. It will only take one half hour phone call to support to burn through the $30 retail price, and in the scope of things the price vs additional functionality you will get from a Mac is a mind bending proposition.
They aren't living high on the hog by American standards - I didn't say they were. I said they are living like kings compared to the really poor people in the rest of the world. Hell - they live at least as good as the lower middle class in Russia - I spent enough time there living with a few middle class families to be an authority on the subject.
If someone has no job, hasn't had a job in two straight years, yet still owns a vehicle that they can drive when you want to, a television, microwave oven, more than one box that plays music/movies (ie, DVD player, VCR, CD player, walkman / ipod), cable television, and eat something other than potato / beet salad and pasta twenty nights a month, eat more than one kilogram of meat per month, drink more than a sixpack of any beverage that comes in cans per month... they are doing better than about 75% of the people I met while I was in Russia (and I met a LOT of people over the course of a few months.)
Doing good by American standards? No. Benchmarked against the rest of the world? Doing damn good.
What if the government made 'Posting to Slashdot under the alias Kazzahdrane' illegal tomorrow, justified as necessary for the public safety after doing significant studies, punishable by increasing your income tax rate to 90% of your gross and then another 35% of your net, forever? And they neglected to tell you that it was against the law, with the understanding that not knowing the law isn't a defense vs breaking the law?
With little more than a signature, the government has turned someone who never intended to be a criminal or lawbreaker - into just that, a criminal. Would you feel no shame breaking that law? Or would you feel it your unwritten write to break it and not be punished?
Sitting in a vehicle on an empty stretch of road, moving XXkph when the sign says YYkph isn't a sin, and it isn't a crime against nature or anything like that. It is a crime because of the above scenario, with the details changed, an increase in scope and a change of punishment. Moving a safe speed (but not the 'correct' speed) on a road makes you a criminal 'because I said so' (said by the same government.)
That's because they are being taught too late. A system of measurement, to be useful to a student (or even a practicing scientist,) needs to be an intuitive extension of their thought process. If they are just being introduced to the metric system in late grade school / early in high school, that is way too late for them - it is not 'how they think' so they have to do all the mental conversions in their head for every piece of data and quickly become overwhelmed with the 'on the fly conversions in their head' so they can't really apply any additional effort to getting the problems done.
Which of the following numbers does not belong?
1024 4096 32768 63356 131072 1048576
Yea, simple. To true software engineers that have been doing it for years, one of those numbers stands out like fingernails on a chalkboard, but to someone just learning about binary numbers they all look good. By having very young children learn to explore their world using metric units (ie, how heavy is this apple? becomes 250g, not half a pound. How fast are we driving? becomes 100kph, not 60mph. How tall am I? becomes 1m, not 3 feet) they do not have to try to apply measurements they haven't a clue about while trying to solve problems.
The answer isn't having them continue to apply the metric system after high-school - it is to have them start using the metric system long before they set foot in kindergarden.
It was really starting to sting, reading your post as I counted the two stacks of $1 bills I just picked up at the bank today so I could have a good time at the strip club tonight. Damn, I must be growing a conscience or something. Tell you what I am going to do - tonight I am only going to tip the Brazilian strippers, make up for what their relatives back home aren't earning.
Deal?
A Porsche Driving Yuppy (350z, actually, but who's counting)
But let's take this further. Imagine a future day in which _everyone_ is effectively "the idle rich". I don't know how such a society could come to exist, where no one had to provide labor, but somehow everything still functioned, but supposing for a moment that such a society could exist, I'm incredulous that the "poor" (cough!) would rebel against the upper classes with their material needs so very well met. I hate to tell you this, but you just described the bottom 10% of America. It came to exist because of dumb ass politically correct nancy-pants congress-people (mostly women, if I had to guess) pushed it through with the pussification of America, and it is financed by the 35% of your paycheck that disappears each month into the hungry jaws of the IRS. Travel abroad some day to some of the most advanced countries in the world (ie, like the country that put more rocketships into space than America did last year) and see some real poverty and get back to us. And yes if you had a million dollars in cash and walked through their neighborhood advertising the fact, the bottom 10% of America, effectively "the idle rich", would cut your throat in a heartbeat just to steal the cash and would laugh all the way to the bank after doing it.
Actually TFA's idea has merit, but if I was going to go through all that expense and work, I would have taken it one step farther and researched / built a heat exchanger like they use in nuclear reactors - the clorinated pool water stayes in a closed loop that runs through the heat exchanger and then back out to the pool, and in the other loop is a freshwater (or radiator fluid with anti-corrosive properties, or whatever best suits for liquid cooling computers) that cycles through the heat exchanger and then back to the computers.
The only additional expense / work would have been an additional pump for the closed loop on the computer side, and figuring out the heat exchanger. A small car radiator (for the pool loop) in a 55 gallon plastic trash can with in/out tubes for the computer loop (this makes it easy to add coolant to the computer loop) would have been a very good start. If the system ever needs a little help, just throw a ziploc bag full of ice-cubes into the trash can (a good way to keep the system up if the pool loop ever goes down, too.)
Then again everybody can be an armchair quarterback, I give the guy props for actually getting something done.
Look in your wallet. There are a bunch of plastic cards that do not have your picture on them. These are called 'credit cards' and they hold the answer to your questions. Any 1099 contractor that has managed to score a gig working for Google is going to be pulling down easily $100k per year (annualized calculation for a $75/hr bill rate, after the contract firm gets their cut) and assuming this isn't your first job out of college odds are you have a fiscal history that has enabled you (meaning you have credit, even if there's nothing in your checking account.)
Consider your credit cards a way to manage the peaks and valleys, pay them off fully when your paycheck comes in, and you will live a richer, fuller life.
That or consider converting to Russian Orthodox, and marry a nice Russian woman to help you learn the ways of your new religion. One of those 'ways' is celebrating Christmas on January 7th, meaning you get the triple bonus of a) buying all the Christmas decorations at 90% off, b) you get two more weeks to pick up gifts without facing the Christmas rush, and c)... hey, nice new wife to replace the old one. Works for me.
Silly question, but what does FDISK do (from the command line, and you may have to get creative) to these thumbdrives? One more thing you might try if that fails - burn the new SuSE Linux Desktop 10.1 to DVD (get the boot DVD iso) and boot your machine off that, then pop in the thumbdrive - see if maybe something in YAST will let you remove the existing low-level partitions and then make it a single FAT32 partition.
I agree with you - that auto-run software is the first thing I avoid when looking at new flash drives.
Q. Can I remove U3 technology from my USB drive? A. Yes. To remove the U3 technology from the drive, simply go to the U3 Launchpad and, under Settings, select U3 Launchpad settings and click Uninstall. This will completely remove the U3 Launchpad from the drive.
I still won't buy a flash drive with this auto-run crap on it, simply because I don't trust them not to stealth install some spyware or rootkit or something (yea Sony, I'm looking at you) - but according to Sandisk it can be removed from the drive.
OP : What did the/. guys say? Me : They said if you eat healthy foods like fresh fruits and veggies, and give up caffeine, salt, fatty foods, spicy / hot foods, tobacco, sugar and meat - you should be fine. OP : So basically I'm fucked. Me : Pretty much, yea.
Come on man, it was an honest question - he even asked it twice in case he wasn't clear enough the first time. What are the jobs you are listing, and what kind of money (base salary plus whatever the median is for bonus for that grade paid out last year - that's fairly easy to compare across the board.)
For a Senior DB2 DBA - someone that has been a DBA since before 2000 (that's 6+ years, plus I'm going to assume you are requiring at least a Bachelor's degree) - or even for a mid-level DBA (2-4 years experience, plus a four year degree) - what kind of numbers are we talking? It really does matter, and nobody here knows you or your company so it's not like it is confidential.
Just a note - I have found that yaw'ing is bad for the spindle bearings in hard drives. My experience shows that by not moving the laptop while the drive is spinning (regular desktops too) your hard drive will last longer. For a feeling of why, remember those toy gyroscopes you had as a kid... the resistance the gyroscope gave you to changing the direction of the axis - now envision a 5400rpm gyroscope. Same thing.
Put the laptop on a hard flat surface. Turn on. Use. Turn off. Move laptop. Hard drive lasts almost forever.
I've seen it a hundred times, and the guys that come crying to me about crashed drives are the same ones that wouldn't listen when I barked at them about picking up their laptops while running, swinging them under their arm and walking them all over the office.
Funny you should mention that. I have a VMware session that boots a SuSE 10.1 boot dvd iso (which is on the hard drive, and is wicked fast.) Keep a hand full of files in a web-mail account attached to a draft email so I can grab them when I start it up (ie, favorites list, background images, adblock settings, etc.)
Turn off the box and the entire thing vanishes as if it never existed.
(Sad thing is that I don't actually do anything worthy of note - but if I did, I would be all set.) Honestly the only reason I do it is because I like using the KDE interface and FireFox, this setup runs pretty damn fast, and if I bork the system (which hasn't happened yet) all it takes is a reboot of the VM and I am back in business.
What if they apply the things they learn to 'lighter than air' ships, aka really big blimps. The upper third of those things would make incredible solar arrays given the appropriate cells were light enough, no need for batteries if they spend most of their time a thousand feet in the air (or higher), could use electric motors to propel themselves, much less friction to overcome than big boats, and if large enough could have fairly large payloads. I think there was reference to doing something like this in Snow Crash, but he didn't put a positive spin on the idea.
Given the need to produce 14,000 hp to move the monster ships at 17 knots, I wonder if this kind of thing would now be finally fiscally viable (and if not now, shortly.)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually there is a way to get around the whole 'speed of light' issue - don't use light.
... now that is 'hauling ass fast', also known as immeasurably fast. When you turn on a light by flipping a switch - the light takes a measurable amount of time to get to you, but when does the light actually turn on? The instant you flip that switch - ahhh, the magic of electricity running at immeasurable speeds over wire.
Yea, the 'photonic computer' guys didn't think that one all the way through, did they?
Use electricity instead, have it run on little traces cut in silicon like the old days, but then seal the silicon in a dark ceramic casing so no light gets in, and put the whole thing in a computer case WITHOUT the clear panels - have to keep out the light.
Light is fast, no doubt, but it is measurably fast (186,000 miles per second, as I recall) - but regular electricity running in the dark across wires (or traces on silicon)
Think about it - every scientist in the past century has measured the speed of light - but how many have been able to measure the speed of electricity in a wire?
None?
Bingo!
And what kind of tools do they use to measure the speed of light?
Electronic tools made with electricity running on wires?
Bingo!
Actually I'm a Linux guy first, except on my game machine, my laptop, and my file server (all of which are running WinXP) - I have six machines at home (including the laptop) and none of them are Apples. I considered buying a Mac Mini, borrowed a friend's and couldn't get over the inconsistent key-combos (CTRL X/C/V for cut/copy/paste, and the different meanings assigned to the Home/page up/page down/end keys), the lack of multiple desktops, and the slightly 'off' feeling of the mouse (something wrong with it not accelerating as I moved it across the page, hard to describe but it felt too slow, too linear.)
Crazy thing is that while I am not a Microsoft fanboy, I like Windows as an operating system. I like Linux better for interacting with the outside world (IM / Firefox / office documents type work / database / just dinking around) but I do like and am quite comfortable within Windows.
Charge for undocumented, unsupported software? Who do they think they are, Microsoft?
But really, I see this as a good thing. If they are going to release it as a full retail release with documentation and actual support, then by all means put a price tag on it. It will only take one half hour phone call to support to burn through the $30 retail price, and in the scope of things the price vs additional functionality you will get from a Mac is a mind bending proposition.
That response dusted off a few funny memories ... esp the cobol one from bash.
Hehe, new innovation. Yea. Luckily that whole 'tattoos on humans to track them' is just crazy sensationalism.
It could never happen in reality.
Sorry you got annoyed. We'll try not to let it happen again.
(Tagging your ass with an RFID is the government's wet dream. Anybody that thinks otherwise is deluding themselves.)
They aren't living high on the hog by American standards - I didn't say they were. I said they are living like kings compared to the really poor people in the rest of the world. Hell - they live at least as good as the lower middle class in Russia - I spent enough time there living with a few middle class families to be an authority on the subject.
... they are doing better than about 75% of the people I met while I was in Russia (and I met a LOT of people over the course of a few months.)
If someone has no job, hasn't had a job in two straight years, yet still owns a vehicle that they can drive when you want to, a television, microwave oven, more than one box that plays music/movies (ie, DVD player, VCR, CD player, walkman / ipod), cable television, and eat something other than potato / beet salad and pasta twenty nights a month, eat more than one kilogram of meat per month, drink more than a sixpack of any beverage that comes in cans per month
Doing good by American standards? No. Benchmarked against the rest of the world? Doing damn good.
What if the government made 'Posting to Slashdot under the alias Kazzahdrane' illegal tomorrow, justified as necessary for the public safety after doing significant studies, punishable by increasing your income tax rate to 90% of your gross and then another 35% of your net, forever?
And they neglected to tell you that it was against the law, with the understanding that not knowing the law isn't a defense vs breaking the law?
With little more than a signature, the government has turned someone who never intended to be a criminal or lawbreaker - into just that, a criminal. Would you feel no shame breaking that law? Or would you feel it your unwritten write to break it and not be punished?
Sitting in a vehicle on an empty stretch of road, moving XXkph when the sign says YYkph isn't a sin, and it isn't a crime against nature or anything like that. It is a crime because of the above scenario, with the details changed, an increase in scope and a change of punishment. Moving a safe speed (but not the 'correct' speed) on a road makes you a criminal 'because I said so' (said by the same government.)
That's because they are being taught too late. A system of measurement, to be useful to a student (or even a practicing scientist,) needs to be an intuitive extension of their thought process. If they are just being introduced to the metric system in late grade school / early in high school, that is way too late for them - it is not 'how they think' so they have to do all the mental conversions in their head for every piece of data and quickly become overwhelmed with the 'on the fly conversions in their head' so they can't really apply any additional effort to getting the problems done.
Which of the following numbers does not belong?
1024
4096
32768
63356
131072
1048576
Yea, simple. To true software engineers that have been doing it for years, one of those numbers stands out like fingernails on a chalkboard, but to someone just learning about binary numbers they all look good. By having very young children learn to explore their world using metric units (ie, how heavy is this apple? becomes 250g, not half a pound. How fast are we driving? becomes 100kph, not 60mph. How tall am I? becomes 1m, not 3 feet) they do not have to try to apply measurements they haven't a clue about while trying to solve problems.
The answer isn't having them continue to apply the metric system after high-school - it is to have them start using the metric system long before they set foot in kindergarden.
Friends and family are highly over-rated.
Move to where the money is, and you will get new friends. I assure you.
It was really starting to sting, reading your post as I counted the two stacks of $1 bills I just picked up at the bank today so I could have a good time at the strip club tonight.
Damn, I must be growing a conscience or something. Tell you what I am going to do - tonight I am only going to tip the Brazilian strippers, make up for what their relatives back home aren't earning.
Deal?
A Porsche Driving Yuppy
(350z, actually, but who's counting)
Shit man you don't have to wait a century for that scenario - that's what we have TODAY.
Actually TFA's idea has merit, but if I was going to go through all that expense and work, I would have taken it one step farther and researched / built a heat exchanger like they use in nuclear reactors - the clorinated pool water stayes in a closed loop that runs through the heat exchanger and then back out to the pool, and in the other loop is a freshwater (or radiator fluid with anti-corrosive properties, or whatever best suits for liquid cooling computers) that cycles through the heat exchanger and then back to the computers.
The only additional expense / work would have been an additional pump for the closed loop on the computer side, and figuring out the heat exchanger. A small car radiator (for the pool loop) in a 55 gallon plastic trash can with in/out tubes for the computer loop (this makes it easy to add coolant to the computer loop) would have been a very good start. If the system ever needs a little help, just throw a ziploc bag full of ice-cubes into the trash can (a good way to keep the system up if the pool loop ever goes down, too.)
Then again everybody can be an armchair quarterback, I give the guy props for actually getting something done.
Look in your wallet. There are a bunch of plastic cards that do not have your picture on them. These are called 'credit cards' and they hold the answer to your questions.
... hey, nice new wife to replace the old one. Works for me.
Any 1099 contractor that has managed to score a gig working for Google is going to be pulling down easily $100k per year (annualized calculation for a $75/hr bill rate, after the contract firm gets their cut) and assuming this isn't your first job out of college odds are you have a fiscal history that has enabled you (meaning you have credit, even if there's nothing in your checking account.)
Consider your credit cards a way to manage the peaks and valleys, pay them off fully when your paycheck comes in, and you will live a richer, fuller life.
That or consider converting to Russian Orthodox, and marry a nice Russian woman to help you learn the ways of your new religion. One of those 'ways' is celebrating Christmas on January 7th, meaning you get the triple bonus of a) buying all the Christmas decorations at 90% off, b) you get two more weeks to pick up gifts without facing the Christmas rush, and c)
That's the thing about California - they have the best government money can buy.
Silly question, but what does FDISK do (from the command line, and you may have to get creative) to these thumbdrives?
One more thing you might try if that fails - burn the new SuSE Linux Desktop 10.1 to DVD (get the boot DVD iso) and boot your machine off that, then pop in the thumbdrive - see if maybe something in YAST will let you remove the existing low-level partitions and then make it a single FAT32 partition.
I agree with you - that auto-run software is the first thing I avoid when looking at new flash drives.
Q. Can I remove U3 technology from my USB drive?
A. Yes. To remove the U3 technology from the drive, simply go to the U3 Launchpad and, under Settings, select U3 Launchpad settings and click Uninstall. This will completely remove the U3 Launchpad from the drive.
I still won't buy a flash drive with this auto-run crap on it, simply because I don't trust them not to stealth install some spyware or rootkit or something (yea Sony, I'm looking at you) - but according to Sandisk it can be removed from the drive.
OP : What did the /. guys say?
Me : They said if you eat healthy foods like fresh fruits and veggies, and give up caffeine, salt, fatty foods, spicy / hot foods, tobacco, sugar and meat - you should be fine.
OP : So basically I'm fucked.
Me : Pretty much, yea.
I'd agree with you, but for the simple fact that when a surgeon says to a doctor 'I'm a surgeon' - the doctor doesn't laugh in his face.
That said - if you are going for an advanced degree, go MS/CS.
Silly question - but why doesn't Sony just take all their PS3's for the first release and sell ALL of them direct via ebay?
The submitter may need to read up on Hanlon a little.
Never attribute to malice,
that which is easily explained by stupidity.
- Hanlon's Razor
Come on man, it was an honest question - he even asked it twice in case he wasn't clear enough the first time.
What are the jobs you are listing, and what kind of money (base salary plus whatever the median is for bonus for that grade paid out last year - that's fairly easy to compare across the board.)
For a Senior DB2 DBA - someone that has been a DBA since before 2000 (that's 6+ years, plus I'm going to assume you are requiring at least a Bachelor's degree) - or even for a mid-level DBA (2-4 years experience, plus a four year degree) - what kind of numbers are we talking? It really does matter, and nobody here knows you or your company so it's not like it is confidential.
Just a note - I have found that yaw'ing is bad for the spindle bearings in hard drives. ... the resistance the gyroscope gave you to changing the direction of the axis - now envision a 5400rpm gyroscope. Same thing.
My experience shows that by not moving the laptop while the drive is spinning (regular desktops too) your hard drive will last longer. For a feeling of why, remember those toy gyroscopes you had as a kid
Put the laptop on a hard flat surface.
Turn on.
Use.
Turn off.
Move laptop.
Hard drive lasts almost forever.
I've seen it a hundred times, and the guys that come crying to me about crashed drives are the same ones that wouldn't listen when I barked at them about picking up their laptops while running, swinging them under their arm and walking them all over the office.
Funny you should mention that.
I have a VMware session that boots a SuSE 10.1 boot dvd iso (which is on the hard drive, and is wicked fast.)
Keep a hand full of files in a web-mail account attached to a draft email so I can grab them when I start it up (ie, favorites list, background images, adblock settings, etc.)
Turn off the box and the entire thing vanishes as if it never existed.
(Sad thing is that I don't actually do anything worthy of note - but if I did, I would be all set.)
Honestly the only reason I do it is because I like using the KDE interface and FireFox, this setup runs pretty damn fast, and if I bork the system (which hasn't happened yet) all it takes is a reboot of the VM and I am back in business.
What if they apply the things they learn to 'lighter than air' ships, aka really big blimps. The upper third of those things would make incredible solar arrays given the appropriate cells were light enough, no need for batteries if they spend most of their time a thousand feet in the air (or higher), could use electric motors to propel themselves, much less friction to overcome than big boats, and if large enough could have fairly large payloads. I think there was reference to doing something like this in Snow Crash, but he didn't put a positive spin on the idea.
Given the need to produce 14,000 hp to move the monster ships at 17 knots, I wonder if this kind of thing would now be finally fiscally viable (and if not now, shortly.)