It's simple. Those of us who are using a netbook to do office work while away from the office want and need to run exactly the same applications away from the office as we do within it. This generally means XP, or sometimes Vista. Tiny portables didn't typically run Linux when they were $2,000 and made of brushed aluminum. Outside of a few specific niches, there is no reason to expect that they will be used any differently just because they are $300 and made of plastic. They are naturally much more attractive at this price point, but that does not change much about what we want to do with them.
Note: I am writing this post from a Windows XP Acer Aspire One.
Ultimately, it's all down to what you need to do with the computer, no matter what size it is. I need to be able to operate on MS Office 2007 documents with zero compatibility issues. This means I have to run MS Office 2007. I have to run other software used in our office, which (outside of the server room) is 100% Windows XP. To use the management system, I must have IE7. While I put this netbook to a lot of other uses that do not require Windows, all the business-related purposes really DO require it. Now that netbooks are seen as an alternative to lugging around a 15" laptop rather than a toy or an "internet appliance", of course people are going to buy them with Windows on them. I have a nice 15" HP laptop, and I still went and bought the Aspire One because it was a better balance between portability and functionality.
Today, I used Word, Excel, and Powerpoint all within the span of one two-hour meeting. Netbooks are no longer the domain of the gadget freak and early adopter, they are increasingly becoming an alternative to aging (and much bulkier) laptops for business use.
It doesn't matter whether you refrain six weeks or two. Each time you go back, the honeymoon will get shorter and shittier. I've burned out enough happy chemical relationships to know. Fortunately, this keeps me from getting addicted to anything for very long:
- Caffeine is actually the worst in that regard. For me, I get the shakes at the six-cup-a-day level, but it can take me a couple years for that level to sneak up on me. - Nicotine goes from trippy to suck faster than a '73 Nova goes from F to E. I loved first hookah bar experience (though I puked), I loved the first two cigars. The rest has all been suck. - Alcohol: I once spent four months straight on a bender (and was gainfully employed the whole time, no I didn't have to drive), and I have no desire to repeat the experience. Dealing with the underlying problem was far more difficult than ceasing drinking. (But isn't that why we start in the first place?) - Cocaine I've never cared for. I have only tried it three or four times, but not once have I enjoyed the experience. It was neutral at best. If my life depended on staying awake another 30 minutes and someone offered it, then I'd probably accept it solely for its value as a stimulant. Otherwise I'll pass the tray to someone who actually likes the stuff. Why waste it? - Opiates are awesome... for a couple days. Then they suck too. The physical withdrawal effects are pretty nasty, but I've never gotten anywhere near them. They stop being fun long before that. By day 4 I'm saying "ugh, no more Vicodin (or opium tea, or morphine) plz." - Ecstasy builds a very rapid tolerance. More than twice a month and it's doing damage. More than once a week and it isn't even working properly. Last, but surely not least, the aptly-named "Suicide Tuesdays" SUCK! This is going to apply to some extent to all serotonergics.
I could go on, but either you don't care, or you know where to get this information anyhow (Erowid isn't a bad start).
Adrenaline junkies need bigger and bigger risks to get their high too, but somehow we package it and call it "X-Games" or "Jackass" and that makes it all OK.
But if I were a betting man, I would bet on light speed as the ultimate speed limit of the universe.
In a sense, you ARE a betting man, whether you intended to be or not. You have already "bet" enough of your resources (time, money, attention span, etc.) that you have decided it is not a good bet to specialize in developing FTL travel. For almost any individual, this is the winning move. Certainly it is unlikely to be done in our lifetimes. That does not mean SOMEONE shouldn't be investigating it. Maybe it ends up possible, maybe it doesn't, but we still learn something likely to have unexpected benefits.
They should be able to have communications -- just with ever-increasing latency simulating speed-of-light propagation delays on an actual voyage. At some point, bandwidth may fall off, and there will be the occasional bit of "space weather" to liven things up. It's not like a trip to Mars means instant cutoff from the world, but realtime communications would become problematic fairly quickly, and impractical not long after. Their communications should start looking more and more like e-mail every day.
In an actual Mars mission, their communications will degrade in a fairly predictable manner (aside from space weather). Why not factor that into the experiment?
I know a few electrical engineers that could probably do this in their sleep, and make it fit in an Altoids tin. Find someone like that, hire him under contract so you can enforce an NDA, then run some prototype PCBs locally where the turnaround time is fairly minimal. Once you have a design that works, then you go to various (probably Chinese) companies for bids with full plans and part lists already in hand. Hopefully you will be able to complete the software end yourself, as this is where you will have to continually tweak and upgrade. The hardware shouldn't change unless some of your parts become unavailable or excessively expensive.
Make sure you know what your primary requirements are -- remember the "good, cheap, fast, choose any two" rule applies here. Know where you want to stand on the balance of the three.
All it takes to re-contour the F and J keys is to pop them off and roll the edge up with a hot, flat piece of metal (a butter knife and a stove works just fine) or a soldering iron. This is how I re-index the U and H keys on keyboards I Dvoracize by rearrangement. Yeah I still look after all these years. I figure that isn't going to change. It also really screws with other people trying to use the computer, if they're used to looking at their hands.
This can be done several times before the plastic gets too thin to roll up a new lip, unless you use a soldering iron, which displaces plastic from a narrower area and therefore goes deeper. Even so, if you're wearing the letters off the keys, you can swap in some other letterless keys if the current home keys won't endure another heating.
Simply put, a "black" paint with 20% reflectivity is not black, it is gray (unless they are counting wavelengths outside the visible range). Still, it is not the radiation hitting the outside of the car that heats it up so much as the color of the interior. Take a black car with a white interior, and a white car with a black interior, put them both in the sun and see which one heats up faster. Light gets in through the glass, and if it remains light it can also get out through the glass. Once absorbed and re-radiated in the infrared, it no longer can.
If you really want to keep cars cooler, ban black interiors, not black paint. Then make them all park in the shade.
Better yet, 10 devices working 10 different targets. When one is found that is particularly interesting, the other nine drop what they're doing and chip in.
Sometimes the $299 model is the Windows model. The Asus Aspire One with 1 GB of RAM, a 160 GB drive and XP cost me $299 + shipping. I chose to forego the 6-cell battery for $30 extra because I don't need it and it screws up the form factor (I can hear the poor 6-cell Aspires saying "it's not a tumor"). The Linux offering was the Flash-only model, and it was only $20 or $30 less. I didn't buy it for price anyhow -- I already had an HP NC6220 which cost me not a whole lot more, but I wanted something a little less painful to tote around. Netbooks are not exactly pocketable, but they're getting surprisingly close. Maybe if I wore cargo pants.
I find that it's slowish (not that I expected otherwise) but far more than an "internet appliance". When hooked up to an external monitor such as my 20" Samsung (which the Aspire One happily drives at 1600x1200) it is quite easy to forget that this is supposed to be a stripped-down machine. Instead, it just feels a bit old. For a machine I can hold in one hand and operate with the other, this is a fair trade. There is nothing I need to do on a Windows portable that I cannot do. Some things are a bit painful due to the limited screen size, but I find that to be the case even with 15 inch laptops. And of course, the lack of an optical drive can be a nuisance at times, but I rarely need to read a CD or DVD on the road. All this really does is solidify the netbook's place as a "second computer" for most people or families, which is really the right niche for it anyhow.
Incorrect. Texting while driving is also illegal. If the operator used speech-to-text to send it and did not have to touch the phone, that might be an interesting gray area, but as it stands now the only exemption is for "push to talk" systems, and that expires in 2011.
Those who would fight it the most are the automakers. First, who would be liable when the autopilot fucks up? Second, if these could be made to drive themselves when you're in them, they can just as easily drive themselves when you're NOT in them -- at which point it becomes unnecessary for most people to own a car. They can call for a cab (strategically parked a mile or two away) any time they want. This means no driveways and parking lots full of cars sitting idle all day, thus fewer car sales overall. How many fewer cars would we need if the same car that drove you to work could be driving someone else to work half an hour later? How much smaller could the parking lots be?
Time is money. Do something that frees up my time, and it is worth some amount of money. The less I make, the less I am willing to pay others to do something I can do. If an oil change costs $12 for oil and parts, or $30 to have someone do it at a while-U-wait shop, or $40 to have someone do it at my office while I'm working, guess which option I choose? It's the $40 option unless I can somehow make productive use of Jiffy Lube time. It's worth it to get home earlier, it's worth it to know it will just be done when I need the car next, and it's worth it for the feeling that I'm somehow multitasking even though someone else is working on my car.
The FixCarNow van comes around our complex every Thursday. His prices are about 30% higher than most garages. He still gets plenty of business anyhow, because he is freeing up valuable time. It's not all that bad a deal for him either -- it takes about the same amount of time to change the oil no matter where he is, and he is only driving to one work site a day. Heavier work does take longer, but if it's excessive he'll turn it down or ask to wait until the following week when he can bring the proper tools for the job. Sometimes he might have someone bring him the tools, if the job is worth it. I try to give him advance notice and have parts in advance (I have a semi-exotic car, parts aren't expensive but they usually aren't in stock either), and if he doesn't want to take a job at all, no problem. I wasn't expecting him to do it that day anyhow, so I can still make other accommodations. If I did want something done this Thursday, I have his business card and would just call him.
Now if I weren't working, I would choose to save $28 and do it myself. Put enough people like me out of work, and FixCarNow goes under too, no matter how good their service is. People just can't afford them.
People who drive 90 minutes to save $10 put little value on their time, unless they are incorporating it into a trip they needed to make anyhow. These big box stores position themselves so people don't have to drive 90 minutes, or at least so they can do it on the way home from work or on the way to the movies or while the car is getting a tune-up. Then they go and squander this time-value added by hard-selling the extras -- at some point we realize the balance has tipped and it is once again worth it to go elsewhere. Problem is, "elsewhere" may have gone under by then.
Most cars now have "steer with one finger" power steering (except at the low end where there is none at all -- this is not about those cars). This is great when trying to park, or trying to maneuver around a stopped car in creeping traffic. It's not so great when it allows or even encourages drivers to steer beyond the capabilities of the car without even realizing it. A few cars have "power assist" which backs off as speed increases. Not only does this reduce the load on the engine when it is most needed, it also gives a better feel for the road. Tires will perform noticeable shenanigans when they are near their grip limit, and it really helps to be able to feel those cues and not have them dampened out by a "helpful" power assist. It is still possible to get in trouble, say by turning the wheels then flooring it to induce a spin, but returning the feel of the road to the wheel would go a long way toward helping drivers who WANT to drive well.
The next step would be to reduce sound insulation. While tuning out the world is nice at some level, it is not necessarily safe or prudent for drivers to lose an entire sense for dealing with the world. This would have the side effect of reducing weight, but I'm not sure how significant a savings that would be. If this is not deemed desirable, perhaps have a system that listens for sirens and can pump the external noise through the radio when necessary. I see lots of people in their little sensory deprivation chambers on wheels not pulling over for ambulances and fire trucks until the last second, because they can't hear them coming.
I have to second the AC's comment -- the best cigar I have ever had came from Nicaragua. I heard they use rum in the curing process (whether on themselves or on the leaves, I do not know), which leads to much of the mellowness.
Cuban cigars mostly survive on the fact that they're embargoed in the U.S., and thus a status symbol.
It doesn't hurt that the SM57 can be had for under $100 and is nearly indestructible. There is no fragile cage over the element (that's what the SM58 is for), and though the reproduction is colored, it is generally adequate onstage. They also Just Work, every time. I have personally switched to using a Sennheiser MD-421U for these jobs, but they cost at least three times as much and aren't nearly as bulletproof (mostly because of the stupid clip design).
Don't rule out plain old cheapness and ubiquity when it comes to gear choices.
You could use a small flash drive in place of a CD when you need to distribute copies of whatever -- a Powerpoint, a demo, a document. Just like a CD, don't expect to get it back. Encourage the recipient to re-use it and pass it on. There are plenty of times when data is too big for e-mail, but not so big it would exceed the size of a 64 MB flash drive.
It could be interesting to play all three members of each base triplet simultaneously, in three different octaves, one "chord" after another. This might even help researchers listen for specific amino acid combinations, which some people might find easier than reading row upon row of CCATGCCAAGAT.
The triplets might also be translated into different chords not directly related to the A minor 7 chord (A C E G). This would help when two bases of a triplet are the same, as it is generally more difficult to hear pure octaves as distinct tones than it is to hear differing pitch classes, but not so difficult to tell, say, F7 from G7. Synonymous base triplets could be assigned different inversions of the same chord. For those lacking a sense of absolute pitch (most of you -- and it's not always the blessing it might seem), a pedal tone could give a point of reference while having no direct relation to the data.
Assign common amino acid sequences to harmonious chord sequences, and unusual combinations would jump out at the listener. Once again, researchers could listen for "clams" instead of having to read strings of letters on a screen or page. I know not everything is a coding sequence, so other methods of translation might be necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
It's simple. Those of us who are using a netbook to do office work while away from the office want and need to run exactly the same applications away from the office as we do within it. This generally means XP, or sometimes Vista. Tiny portables didn't typically run Linux when they were $2,000 and made of brushed aluminum. Outside of a few specific niches, there is no reason to expect that they will be used any differently just because they are $300 and made of plastic. They are naturally much more attractive at this price point, but that does not change much about what we want to do with them.
Mal-2
Note: I am writing this post from a Windows XP Acer Aspire One.
Ultimately, it's all down to what you need to do with the computer, no matter what size it is. I need to be able to operate on MS Office 2007 documents with zero compatibility issues. This means I have to run MS Office 2007. I have to run other software used in our office, which (outside of the server room) is 100% Windows XP. To use the management system, I must have IE7. While I put this netbook to a lot of other uses that do not require Windows, all the business-related purposes really DO require it. Now that netbooks are seen as an alternative to lugging around a 15" laptop rather than a toy or an "internet appliance", of course people are going to buy them with Windows on them. I have a nice 15" HP laptop, and I still went and bought the Aspire One because it was a better balance between portability and functionality.
Today, I used Word, Excel, and Powerpoint all within the span of one two-hour meeting. Netbooks are no longer the domain of the gadget freak and early adopter, they are increasingly becoming an alternative to aging (and much bulkier) laptops for business use.
Mal-2
It doesn't matter whether you refrain six weeks or two. Each time you go back, the honeymoon will get shorter and shittier. I've burned out enough happy chemical relationships to know. Fortunately, this keeps me from getting addicted to anything for very long:
- Caffeine is actually the worst in that regard. For me, I get the shakes at the six-cup-a-day level, but it can take me a couple years for that level to sneak up on me.
- Nicotine goes from trippy to suck faster than a '73 Nova goes from F to E. I loved first hookah bar experience (though I puked), I loved the first two cigars. The rest has all been suck.
- Alcohol: I once spent four months straight on a bender (and was gainfully employed the whole time, no I didn't have to drive), and I have no desire to repeat the experience. Dealing with the underlying problem was far more difficult than ceasing drinking. (But isn't that why we start in the first place?)
- Cocaine I've never cared for. I have only tried it three or four times, but not once have I enjoyed the experience. It was neutral at best. If my life depended on staying awake another 30 minutes and someone offered it, then I'd probably accept it solely for its value as a stimulant. Otherwise I'll pass the tray to someone who actually likes the stuff. Why waste it?
- Opiates are awesome... for a couple days. Then they suck too. The physical withdrawal effects are pretty nasty, but I've never gotten anywhere near them. They stop being fun long before that. By day 4 I'm saying "ugh, no more Vicodin (or opium tea, or morphine) plz."
- Ecstasy builds a very rapid tolerance. More than twice a month and it's doing damage. More than once a week and it isn't even working properly. Last, but surely not least, the aptly-named "Suicide Tuesdays" SUCK! This is going to apply to some extent to all serotonergics.
I could go on, but either you don't care, or you know where to get this information anyhow (Erowid isn't a bad start).
Adrenaline junkies need bigger and bigger risks to get their high too, but somehow we package it and call it "X-Games" or "Jackass" and that makes it all OK.
Mal-2
In a sense, you ARE a betting man, whether you intended to be or not. You have already "bet" enough of your resources (time, money, attention span, etc.) that you have decided it is not a good bet to specialize in developing FTL travel. For almost any individual, this is the winning move. Certainly it is unlikely to be done in our lifetimes. That does not mean SOMEONE shouldn't be investigating it. Maybe it ends up possible, maybe it doesn't, but we still learn something likely to have unexpected benefits.
Mal-2
They should be able to have communications -- just with ever-increasing latency simulating speed-of-light propagation delays on an actual voyage. At some point, bandwidth may fall off, and there will be the occasional bit of "space weather" to liven things up. It's not like a trip to Mars means instant cutoff from the world, but realtime communications would become problematic fairly quickly, and impractical not long after. Their communications should start looking more and more like e-mail every day.
In an actual Mars mission, their communications will degrade in a fairly predictable manner (aside from space weather). Why not factor that into the experiment?
Mal-2
It fits in my pocket... luckily I already had extra-large pockets... for... uhm... maybe this wasn't such a great pickup line.
Mal-2
I know a few electrical engineers that could probably do this in their sleep, and make it fit in an Altoids tin. Find someone like that, hire him under contract so you can enforce an NDA, then run some prototype PCBs locally where the turnaround time is fairly minimal. Once you have a design that works, then you go to various (probably Chinese) companies for bids with full plans and part lists already in hand. Hopefully you will be able to complete the software end yourself, as this is where you will have to continually tweak and upgrade. The hardware shouldn't change unless some of your parts become unavailable or excessively expensive.
Make sure you know what your primary requirements are -- remember the "good, cheap, fast, choose any two" rule applies here. Know where you want to stand on the balance of the three.
Mal-2
All it takes to re-contour the F and J keys is to pop them off and roll the edge up with a hot, flat piece of metal (a butter knife and a stove works just fine) or a soldering iron. This is how I re-index the U and H keys on keyboards I Dvoracize by rearrangement. Yeah I still look after all these years. I figure that isn't going to change. It also really screws with other people trying to use the computer, if they're used to looking at their hands.
This can be done several times before the plastic gets too thin to roll up a new lip, unless you use a soldering iron, which displaces plastic from a narrower area and therefore goes deeper. Even so, if you're wearing the letters off the keys, you can swap in some other letterless keys if the current home keys won't endure another heating.
Mal-2
Simply put, a "black" paint with 20% reflectivity is not black, it is gray (unless they are counting wavelengths outside the visible range). Still, it is not the radiation hitting the outside of the car that heats it up so much as the color of the interior. Take a black car with a white interior, and a white car with a black interior, put them both in the sun and see which one heats up faster. Light gets in through the glass, and if it remains light it can also get out through the glass. Once absorbed and re-radiated in the infrared, it no longer can.
If you really want to keep cars cooler, ban black interiors, not black paint. Then make them all park in the shade.
Mal-2
Wait, wasn't I doing this with my Palm, like 7 years ago? It had craptacular range, but that's hardly a major engineering problem.
Mal-2
Better yet, 10 devices working 10 different targets. When one is found that is particularly interesting, the other nine drop what they're doing and chip in.
Mal-2
Sometimes the $299 model is the Windows model. The Asus Aspire One with 1 GB of RAM, a 160 GB drive and XP cost me $299 + shipping. I chose to forego the 6-cell battery for $30 extra because I don't need it and it screws up the form factor (I can hear the poor 6-cell Aspires saying "it's not a tumor"). The Linux offering was the Flash-only model, and it was only $20 or $30 less. I didn't buy it for price anyhow -- I already had an HP NC6220 which cost me not a whole lot more, but I wanted something a little less painful to tote around. Netbooks are not exactly pocketable, but they're getting surprisingly close. Maybe if I wore cargo pants.
I find that it's slowish (not that I expected otherwise) but far more than an "internet appliance". When hooked up to an external monitor such as my 20" Samsung (which the Aspire One happily drives at 1600x1200) it is quite easy to forget that this is supposed to be a stripped-down machine. Instead, it just feels a bit old. For a machine I can hold in one hand and operate with the other, this is a fair trade. There is nothing I need to do on a Windows portable that I cannot do. Some things are a bit painful due to the limited screen size, but I find that to be the case even with 15 inch laptops. And of course, the lack of an optical drive can be a nuisance at times, but I rarely need to read a CD or DVD on the road. All this really does is solidify the netbook's place as a "second computer" for most people or families, which is really the right niche for it anyhow.
Mal-2
Incorrect. Texting while driving is also illegal. If the operator used speech-to-text to send it and did not have to touch the phone, that might be an interesting gray area, but as it stands now the only exemption is for "push to talk" systems, and that expires in 2011.
Mal-2
Maybe those who fear death the most are religious because it offers some hope of immortality?
Mal-2
Those who would fight it the most are the automakers. First, who would be liable when the autopilot fucks up? Second, if these could be made to drive themselves when you're in them, they can just as easily drive themselves when you're NOT in them -- at which point it becomes unnecessary for most people to own a car. They can call for a cab (strategically parked a mile or two away) any time they want. This means no driveways and parking lots full of cars sitting idle all day, thus fewer car sales overall. How many fewer cars would we need if the same car that drove you to work could be driving someone else to work half an hour later? How much smaller could the parking lots be?
Mal-2
Time is money. Do something that frees up my time, and it is worth some amount of money. The less I make, the less I am willing to pay others to do something I can do. If an oil change costs $12 for oil and parts, or $30 to have someone do it at a while-U-wait shop, or $40 to have someone do it at my office while I'm working, guess which option I choose? It's the $40 option unless I can somehow make productive use of Jiffy Lube time. It's worth it to get home earlier, it's worth it to know it will just be done when I need the car next, and it's worth it for the feeling that I'm somehow multitasking even though someone else is working on my car.
The FixCarNow van comes around our complex every Thursday. His prices are about 30% higher than most garages. He still gets plenty of business anyhow, because he is freeing up valuable time. It's not all that bad a deal for him either -- it takes about the same amount of time to change the oil no matter where he is, and he is only driving to one work site a day. Heavier work does take longer, but if it's excessive he'll turn it down or ask to wait until the following week when he can bring the proper tools for the job. Sometimes he might have someone bring him the tools, if the job is worth it. I try to give him advance notice and have parts in advance (I have a semi-exotic car, parts aren't expensive but they usually aren't in stock either), and if he doesn't want to take a job at all, no problem. I wasn't expecting him to do it that day anyhow, so I can still make other accommodations. If I did want something done this Thursday, I have his business card and would just call him.
Now if I weren't working, I would choose to save $28 and do it myself. Put enough people like me out of work, and FixCarNow goes under too, no matter how good their service is. People just can't afford them.
People who drive 90 minutes to save $10 put little value on their time, unless they are incorporating it into a trip they needed to make anyhow. These big box stores position themselves so people don't have to drive 90 minutes, or at least so they can do it on the way home from work or on the way to the movies or while the car is getting a tune-up. Then they go and squander this time-value added by hard-selling the extras -- at some point we realize the balance has tipped and it is once again worth it to go elsewhere. Problem is, "elsewhere" may have gone under by then.
Mal-2
Most cars now have "steer with one finger" power steering (except at the low end where there is none at all -- this is not about those cars). This is great when trying to park, or trying to maneuver around a stopped car in creeping traffic. It's not so great when it allows or even encourages drivers to steer beyond the capabilities of the car without even realizing it. A few cars have "power assist" which backs off as speed increases. Not only does this reduce the load on the engine when it is most needed, it also gives a better feel for the road. Tires will perform noticeable shenanigans when they are near their grip limit, and it really helps to be able to feel those cues and not have them dampened out by a "helpful" power assist. It is still possible to get in trouble, say by turning the wheels then flooring it to induce a spin, but returning the feel of the road to the wheel would go a long way toward helping drivers who WANT to drive well.
The next step would be to reduce sound insulation. While tuning out the world is nice at some level, it is not necessarily safe or prudent for drivers to lose an entire sense for dealing with the world. This would have the side effect of reducing weight, but I'm not sure how significant a savings that would be. If this is not deemed desirable, perhaps have a system that listens for sirens and can pump the external noise through the radio when necessary. I see lots of people in their little sensory deprivation chambers on wheels not pulling over for ambulances and fire trucks until the last second, because they can't hear them coming.
Mal-2
I have to second the AC's comment -- the best cigar I have ever had came from Nicaragua. I heard they use rum in the curing process (whether on themselves or on the leaves, I do not know), which leads to much of the mellowness.
Cuban cigars mostly survive on the fact that they're embargoed in the U.S., and thus a status symbol.
Mal-2
It doesn't hurt that the SM57 can be had for under $100 and is nearly indestructible. There is no fragile cage over the element (that's what the SM58 is for), and though the reproduction is colored, it is generally adequate onstage. They also Just Work, every time. I have personally switched to using a Sennheiser MD-421U for these jobs, but they cost at least three times as much and aren't nearly as bulletproof (mostly because of the stupid clip design).
Don't rule out plain old cheapness and ubiquity when it comes to gear choices.
Mal-2
You could use a small flash drive in place of a CD when you need to distribute copies of whatever -- a Powerpoint, a demo, a document. Just like a CD, don't expect to get it back. Encourage the recipient to re-use it and pass it on. There are plenty of times when data is too big for e-mail, but not so big it would exceed the size of a 64 MB flash drive.
Mal-2
Teledildonics will always be [ahem] a growth industry...
Mal-2
Don't they know the Ancient Ones are confined to the center of the Pentagon? Now they'll make their escape, one tiny piece at a time!
Mal-2
It could be interesting to play all three members of each base triplet simultaneously, in three different octaves, one "chord" after another. This might even help researchers listen for specific amino acid combinations, which some people might find easier than reading row upon row of CCATGCCAAGAT.
The triplets might also be translated into different chords not directly related to the A minor 7 chord (A C E G). This would help when two bases of a triplet are the same, as it is generally more difficult to hear pure octaves as distinct tones than it is to hear differing pitch classes, but not so difficult to tell, say, F7 from G7. Synonymous base triplets could be assigned different inversions of the same chord. For those lacking a sense of absolute pitch (most of you -- and it's not always the blessing it might seem), a pedal tone could give a point of reference while having no direct relation to the data.
Assign common amino acid sequences to harmonious chord sequences, and unusual combinations would jump out at the listener. Once again, researchers could listen for "clams" instead of having to read strings of letters on a screen or page. I know not everything is a coding sequence, so other methods of translation might be necessary.
Mal-2
Frank Zappa was WAY ahead of you on this one. Enjoy!
Mal-2
He was watching the LIONS? They should pay him!
Mal-2