I've personally been attacked by a rabid bat..
on
Blaming The Bats
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· Score: 2, Interesting
No it wasn't a cow (they have bigger tails) or a person (which have no tails). I do have a sceintific background and I can tell the difference!
This was in Africa where normally bats will leave you alone and will fly away if they see people. This one looked a bit strange and when I walked past it dropped down onto me. Luckily for me it didn't bite and I managed to flip it off. The bat was obviously feverish and had the right symptoms.
I have a few old books here (1970s and early 1980s) which have simple games written in basic for Vic. Commodore, Sinclair etc. These are all simple one-page programs that are simple to type in and play, then the kids are encouraged to fiddle and extend the games.
Sure they're all crappy graphics but they were exciting "real" games in their day that a geek-kid of the day would be proud to show his friends. And programming such a game gave you a real option to extend your games.
These days you'd be laughed out of the school for showing such crap graphics. The amount of stuff you have to learn to program up a realistic alternative to XBox or whatever is too vast. It takes programming a game from being an afternoon's exercise to a 6 month learning course on 3d modelling etc.
If you want to encourage kids to experiment, you need to give them a more constrained environment where the feedback cycle is far better(eg. Lego Mindstorms).
Nobody minds you being different while you're performing. If the performance drops off then you better straighten up! Wall Street and boards of directors etc allow companies a pretty free reign until..... the returns flatten off or dip. Then things will tighten up/ become more conservative to make Wall St happy.
This all stinks of geese and golden eggs, but Wall Street's memory of positive indicators only extends to the last quarterly result.
Most www users are not geeks and cannot tell the boundary between their computer and the internet, let alone know how to drive a hosts file etc. Any advice of this form is completely useless to most www users. If the computer says "click on this" they will. Don't expect them to tell the difference between something from MS or the OS and a phishing scheme or other attack.
It is also not reasonable to say that people should know this stuff to use the www. Nonsense! Do you need to know the difference between a knit and purl stich to wear a sweater? Do you need to know what advance and retard are to drive a car? Why the hell should you know what a hosts file is to use the www?
The press release has enough buzzwords to give a corporate climber a bigger stiffy than Viagra. "Digital life", "global convergence"... Geez I better buy one so I'm corporately compliant!
There was once a semi-theory that GUI interfaces use would would cause us to grow one long finger (for mouse clicking) and cause one eye to get bigger and the other to disappear (since you only need one eye to look at a mionitor).
This is however countered by the more recent text messaging two-thumbed theory that we only need two thumbs and other fingers will waste away. Perhaps it is safe to assume that these trends change faster than evolution/intelligent design can change us, so we'll stay just as ugly as we ever were.
Silicon solar cells are still too damn expensive and power hungry to manufacture to be a useful mainstream generation tool. The only places they're really being used is where mainstream supply is not available/practical or where they are heavily subsidised for political/marketing ends. Increasing concentration to reduce the silicon are does reduce the amount of silicon and therefore potentially reduces the $ per W. However...
PV efficiency reduces significantly with increase in temperature (which is why you see solar racer folk pouring water on the PV panels). Thus just cranking up the sunlight by concentration does not give a linear increase in output. PV cells for concentration thus need to be made thicker and differently (to code with the extra current, heat sinking etc.) but hopefully the payback is still there.
Personally I think the PV quest is being approached incorrectly. There's too much emphasis on efficiency. Labs try to out % eachother and the big solar showcase is the solar race which is all about high efficiency cells.
What they should target is $ per Watt because that is the real hurdle to making PV viable. Who cares if it's only 5% efficient, so long as it is cheap? Tile your house with the stuff to get the area.
Intel has never had much success with products
on
Viiv Falls Flat
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· Score: 2, Insightful
While Intel has done very well with chipsets etc, they've never had much joy with products - though they've tried quite a few of these, from web cams to usb microscopes to whatever...
Sure there's a performance difference between crap gear and reasonable gear. There is far less performance difference between reasonable gear and the best gear. This applies to most sporting equipment. For example my $600 or so Sage fly rod is markedly better than a $50 Chinese bottom end job, but is probably not much better than a $200 rod or much worse than a $2000 rod.
If you're a Tiger woods then perhaps equipment that gives you an extra 1% edge is worth it, but most people would not tell the difference. The biggest success determining factors are ability and practice. Expensive kit does nothing unless you actually use it.
Marketers understand what drives buying for premium spending sports (golf, fly fishing,...). Most of the sportsmen don't have enough time to get out and practice sufficiently and feel a bit guilt about it. Being able to buy the toys helps alleviate that feeling of guilt rather than actually improving the game directly.
Optical interconnects could make for far more reliable connections between system components. Ribbon cables etc break easily, and are a real nightmare for assembly. OTOH, a few specks of dust in an optical connection could cause a lot of grief (reflection etc) making one wonder what the longterm prospects of shipping optically connected products are.
Performance is only a small part of the issue. You have to look at the TCO of running viruses to appreciate Windows properly. With Linux it is far harder to run a virus and you've got to train all your users to chmod etc. With Windows it's much eaiser, just double click or drag and drop. Now that saves you a bundle in IT tech support when people ask "how do I install virus X on my PC. Further, with Windows you get a lot more choice. You can get a wide selection of popular viruses from easy to download sources. Linux is pretty short on choice, so if you switch to Linux you're limiting choice which is UnAmerican.
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This was in Africa where normally bats will leave you alone and will fly away if they see people. This one looked a bit strange and when I walked past it dropped down onto me. Luckily for me it didn't bite and I managed to flip it off. The bat was obviously feverish and had the right symptoms.
Sure they're all crappy graphics but they were exciting "real" games in their day that a geek-kid of the day would be proud to show his friends. And programming such a game gave you a real option to extend your games.
These days you'd be laughed out of the school for showing such crap graphics. The amount of stuff you have to learn to program up a realistic alternative to XBox or whatever is too vast. It takes programming a game from being an afternoon's exercise to a 6 month learning course on 3d modelling etc.
If you want to encourage kids to experiment, you need to give them a more constrained environment where the feedback cycle is far better(eg. Lego Mindstorms).
This all stinks of geese and golden eggs, but Wall Street's memory of positive indicators only extends to the last quarterly result.
So far many/most large to-Linux migrations have been from some Unix-like or big-iron OS. Very few have been from-Microsoft.
There was much confiusion between PCI and PCMCIA. What chance does Joe Average stand with Wii vs Wifi?
Most www users are not geeks and cannot tell the boundary between their computer and the internet, let alone know how to drive a hosts file etc. Any advice of this form is completely useless to most www users. If the computer says "click on this" they will. Don't expect them to tell the difference between something from MS or the OS and a phishing scheme or other attack.
It is also not reasonable to say that people should know this stuff to use the www. Nonsense! Do you need to know the difference between a knit and purl stich to wear a sweater? Do you need to know what advance and retard are to drive a car? Why the hell should you know what a hosts file is to use the www?
you can see. Them little fibre optic camera gizzmos have been around for at least 30 years.
How do they get a 20k saving per patient? They must be selective in what they're quoting because most surgical procedures cost way less than 20k.
the monitor watches you!
OTOH it would be fun to be able to hack Bush and make him say dumb things in public.... but nobody would notice.
The press release has enough buzzwords to give a corporate climber a bigger stiffy than Viagra. "Digital life", "global convergence"... Geez I better buy one so I'm corporately compliant!
This is however countered by the more recent text messaging two-thumbed theory that we only need two thumbs and other fingers will waste away. Perhaps it is safe to assume that these trends change faster than evolution/intelligent design can change us, so we'll stay just as ugly as we ever were.
How long to the next dot.bomb bubble?
PV efficiency reduces significantly with increase in temperature (which is why you see solar racer folk pouring water on the PV panels). Thus just cranking up the sunlight by concentration does not give a linear increase in output. PV cells for concentration thus need to be made thicker and differently (to code with the extra current, heat sinking etc.) but hopefully the payback is still there.
Personally I think the PV quest is being approached incorrectly. There's too much emphasis on efficiency. Labs try to out % eachother and the big solar showcase is the solar race which is all about high efficiency cells.
What they should target is $ per Watt because that is the real hurdle to making PV viable. Who cares if it's only 5% efficient, so long as it is cheap? Tile your house with the stuff to get the area.
Moral of the story kids: Oil was bad for the dinos and it will be bad for us too.
but I don't have a choice
While Intel has done very well with chipsets etc, they've never had much joy with products - though they've tried quite a few of these, from web cams to usb microscopes to whatever...
Or maybe Ballmer was just practicing for his King Kong/monkey boy gig?
Make that the perpendicular half!
If it is female you have exactly FA chance of ever understanding it...
If you're a Tiger woods then perhaps equipment that gives you an extra 1% edge is worth it, but most people would not tell the difference. The biggest success determining factors are ability and practice. Expensive kit does nothing unless you actually use it.
Marketers understand what drives buying for premium spending sports (golf, fly fishing,...). Most of the sportsmen don't have enough time to get out and practice sufficiently and feel a bit guilt about it. Being able to buy the toys helps alleviate that feeling of guilt rather than actually improving the game directly.
were the result of misspelled Google pr0n searches gone bad!
Optical interconnects could make for far more reliable connections between system components. Ribbon cables etc break easily, and are a real nightmare for assembly. OTOH, a few specks of dust in an optical connection could cause a lot of grief (reflection etc) making one wonder what the longterm prospects of shipping optically connected products are.
Performance is only a small part of the issue. You have to look at the TCO of running viruses to appreciate Windows properly. With Linux it is far harder to run a virus and you've got to train all your users to chmod etc. With Windows it's much eaiser, just double click or drag and drop. Now that saves you a bundle in IT tech support when people ask "how do I install virus X on my PC. Further, with Windows you get a lot more choice. You can get a wide selection of popular viruses from easy to download sources. Linux is pretty short on choice, so if you switch to Linux you're limiting choice which is UnAmerican.
The gcc bug adds value by looking after you. That's gotta be a win for GNU.