In my experience with Java, it simply falls behind on startup. It takes far too long to load the interpreter, load the byte code, and get going. What Java needs to compete is a true compiler. I need to be able to take a program, compile it for the OS that I choose, and make a lean and mean native executable.
The Java zealots panic. That would destroy the cross-platform ability of Java. Wrong. It would destroy the cross-platform ability of that one executable - simply meaning that I can give the slower byte code to all the other platforms that I don't want to compile an executable for.
Others will quickly point out that there are programs that compile Java to native executables. That is true, but I said I wanted a lean and mean native executable. Because of Sun's licensing, it is not legal to make a native executable that only contains the parts of the Java that are needed to get the program running. You must include EVERYTHING in the native executable - meaning it is required by law to bloated and slow.
So, after all of that, I realize what the problem is. Sun needs to fire a few lawyers so we can legally compile our slow and bloated byte code into lean and mean native executables.
"Some of our employees, however bright they may be, have only a hazy idea about the rest of the world," he said."... and this is different from the rest of America how exactly?
Maybe he is claiming that all the non-M$ employees, however dim they may be, have only a hazy idea that there is a rest of the world.
I have mentioned this before at Slashdot and I'm always ridiculed for it. However, I greatly reduced my spam intake from well over 2,000 spams a day to well under 100 by simply blocking any email that contains a link to a server that I've put in my "that is a spam-advertised IP address" file. It isn't difficult to do. In fact, I make what I've written freely available on my website.
Every time I mention this, someone says, "Oh my God! You're going to block some good little Mom&Pop store because they share a server with a spammer!" If that is what you are thinking, you didn't read my previous paragraph. I block any email WITH A LINK TO A SERVER that is in my block list. I DO NOT block any email originating from a server in the block list.
As this article explains, the incentive is to remove the profit margin from spam. I think my method works better than kicking them off the server if my method was used by a majority of the Internet users. The reason is that my method hopes the spammers keep the same IP addresses. If you kick them off the server, they change IP addresses and I have to block the new one.
Why are these things on any sort of publicly accessable network? They should, at least, be on a private network that's physically separate from everything they don't absolutely need to talk to & firewalled all to hell.
You are assuming that the devices are in static locations. Many of the devices are portable. Doctors drag them into their office and plug them into the network. It is the same network that they plug their personal laptop into. It is the same laptop that they take home and surf the net with. It is the same net that infects the laptop that infects the hospital's network that infects the hospital's other hardware.
I am currently working in a hospital. I wonder if anyone has forwarded this item into the local IT newsgroup yet...
Don't we see this every year as the millions of employed college kids go off for summer vacation. I know that this drop is a lot higher than normal, but it seems that around every May the news reports a dramatic drop in IT jobs. Then, around every August, it reports a steep increase in IT jobs.
Would anyone care to share their real world experiences?
Before I had lasik surgery, I was spending about $600/yr for glasses and contacts. I could only use hard contacts and my glasses had to be custom made. I simply wanted to be able to get ordinary lenses in either contacts or glasses. I also wanted to wear sunglasses. My contacts gave me terrible headaches, so I rarely wore them. My glasses were far too thick for snap-on sunglasses. I couldn't afford another tinted pair of glasses.
I was told that it was reasonable to expect my vision to get down to around 50/20. After the surgery, my left eye was 20/20 and my right eye was 30/20. That was many years ago. I had a thorough eye exam last month and my left eye is still 20/20, but my right eye is 25/20.
Because I have gotten rid of both contacts and the terribly heavy glasses, I've been headache free since the surgery. The only downside to the whole thing was the cost. When I had it done, it was $5,000.
As for researching the surgeon... As I said, it was a long time ago that I got the surgery. I looked at the AMA's articles on the surgery and found that one of the two original surgeons who tested the process in the United States while it was awaiting approval was in my hometown. I chose him over the others around here. I later discovered that all of the other places actually sent you to him for the surgery - one lasik surgeon, but over 20 offices offering the surgery. I'm not sure how that all worked.
an you tell us what happened? I'm kinda pretty sure pot's never killed anyone ever.
Please keep in mind that I am trying to make it painfully clear that I am not claiming that pot killed anyone. I am referring to the influence of pot.
The first incident happened before I went to the school, but I learned about it because the memorial to the student was being removed to build a car lot. Some students were getting stoned on the water tower at night where they wouldn't be noticed by anyone. Once well stoned, one fell off.
The second incident happened while I was at school. A student was hunting with his father. The student was stoned and most people believe both the father and student were smoking pot and hunting at the same time. The student claims that his rifle just went off in his hands and shot his father.
Third incident happened while I was at the school, but to a student who had already graduated. He was smoking pot with buddies, volunteered to do a Taco Bell run, and promptly drove his motorcycle right into the side of a building at 40-50mph. It was a Ninja, so his position on the bike was such that he hit the building head-first. I don't know if he had a helmet on or not, but I assume he didn't.
Again, if you read what I posted earlier, I am only trying to state that the influence of ANY drug (including alcohol) impairs a person's capabilities. To compare drugs to video games would require comparing the influence of drugs to the influence of video games.
Oh, and there is not a single death attributable to marijuana in all of recorded history.
There are many (three in my high school alone) deaths attributable to the influence of marijuana. Only one in my high school had anything to do with driving, so your argument that stoned people drive slower doesn't cover all possible harm. Also, I made it important that I was discussing the influence of marijuana because it is rather obvious that video game violence harm would have to be the influence of the games - not death simply by playing games too long.
Walk down the street and you can find zillions of people who actually believe that pot kills. Same with video games.
You cannot simply equate pot to violent video games. People are harmed and killed under the influence of pot, or by someone else who is under the influence. If you want to equate pot to violent video games, you have to make the argument that after playing a violent video game, your capabilities are somehow impared while you are under the influence of the video game.
I think there is a short-term sensory influence of the video game, but I don't think it would impare anyone capabilities. For them to react in an overly violent manner, I would claim that they were violent to begin with and the game really had nothing to do with it.
I tried the YUM upgrade from FC1 to FC2. It worked the first time on a dirt-old Dell Optiplex, but I had to reinstall the printer, sound, and fiddle around with the X config file to get the optical wheel mouse to work. That X config stuff can easily be blamed on the jump from X11 to Xorg.
I tried it again on a newer Gateway E series. I couldn't get X to work no matter how much I fiddled with it. I eventually gave up, backed up my data files, and installed FC2 from scratch. It came up working just fine. The sound even works. This is the first time I've ever been able to have sound in more than one program at a time. Previously, nothing ever worked as advertised. I'd be listening to xmms and then a term window would want to beep and all sound went to hell.
Because much of the problem of going from FC1 to FC2 was with the X configuration, I expect that using yum to jump from FC2 to FC3 will be easier, but I wouldn't want to try jumping from FC1 to FC3 that way.
There is a fundamental difference between having your web censored by someone else and having it filtered by you (or your parents). I chose to filter the ads out of the websites I visit. I chose to filter the images out of emails I get. If I am censoring content for myself, it isn't really censorship. I think that is the reason this is a good idea. Parents can filter content without relying on a third party for censorship.
I think it goes a bit far to claim that this mutation has NEVER been found in humans. Sure, there may not be any popular hospitals with records of this mutation, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that this mutation happens about every 5-10 years in small areas all around the world.
For an example, there was a kid in my teeny little high school who had a muscular growth mutation. His muscles grew so much so fast that he had regular surgery to remove the excess lumps and knots of muscle. He didn't resemble a body builder. He looked like a mutation with lumps all over his body and scars where they had done surgery. I read this article and wondered if he has the same mutation.
You seem to have the idea that if we just keep adding antennas we can keep collecting energy, which is not the case because energy would not be conserved.
Please explain this further. Given this scenario: I'm in a gym listening to my walkman. A guy by me is listening to the same station. A few others tune into the same station. Is there a point at which nobody else can tune in because there's no more energy on that signal? My idea is that each antenna will provide some energy. Just like putting a bunch of batteries in series to increase voltage or parallel to increase amperage (is that correct?) you can put each mini-antenna-power-kit in series or parralel. But, two of them together will provide half the power that they would provide independently, that definately wouldn't be a benefit.
You can find many pages with "Tesla transmit electricity". It was one of his more popular stunts. I have seen some pages that claim he powered a simple light bulb in London with a transmission tower in New York, but that seems a bit far-fetched to me.
As for picking up power on a small antenna, I may have the frequency wrong. It is my understanding that most cell phones work at 900 MHz. Is that true? If so, I saw a television program on TLC, Discovery Channel, or the like that was trying to warn about terrible cancer-causing cell phones. I didn't believe most of what they said, but they did an experiment where they put a 1/2" antenna on a multimeter and placed it about a foot from a cell phone that was 'in conversation' - not just idly waiting for a call. The multimeter showed a clear increase in voltage. How much? I don't know. It was certainly small.
Those two events made me think: Why can't we harness all the radio waves in the air for power? As you can see from the replies to my post so far, it appears that the antennas would need to be far larger than 1/2" to be effective and the use of such objects would essentially suck the radio waves out of the sky.
If you want to be very technical about it, we nearly have that. Most of the world is flooded with high-power radio signals. By "radio", I mean AM, FM, television, cell phone, GPS, and everything else.
Tesla proved, repeatedly, that those signals could be caught in an antenna and turned into basic AC power. However, transmitting AC power through the air would mean that the power companies could not control how much electricity you used. So, there was a lot of propoganda, using Thomas Edison as a mouthpiece, to convince the world at large that transmitting radio waves would destroy the world - even calling transmitted AC waves "the devil's science".
Now, we've built thousands of transmission towers. Why not tap into some of that power? Sure, you can't run a laptop on the power off one 900MHz antenna, but what if you had, say 500 of them in a little bundle? Even then, if you couldn't run the laptop off it, you could use the little power you did get to trickle charge the battery - making it last a lot longer.
Before you get freaky ideas of humping around 500 antennas on your back, take note that an effective 900MHz antenna can be as little as half and inch long. If you arrange them like spokes on a wheel, you would have a 1-inch wide disk. Now, the trick is to fit the electronics to convert the AC signal into the same small package.
I admit, this isn't the ultimate fuel source you requested, but it is a plentiful and untapped one.
I have heard "I'm a doctor", "I'm a judge", and "I'm a fireman" as excuses for blabbering on the phone in the middle of a movie, but never "I'm a parent." When I was kid, nobody had cell phones. I wonder how in the world my parents ever went to the movies without me - oh, wait, I remember. They left me with a responsible person and expected things to be OK when they returned.
For some reason I have a strange desire to teach someone 6502 assembly language.
Maybe you are simply a teacher. I'd say just do it. I avoided college for 10 years because I simply hated being a student. Then, my wife practically forced me to go so I could get my degree and start teaching. I admit that I hated the undergrad junk, but now I am much happier to be in an academic environment than hacking away in some company.
Also, there's the Internet. To this day, any search for my nick (kainaw) still turns up "Kainaw's Amiga Internet Guide" - a guide to getting an Amiga on the Internet when all we had was SLIP over dial-up. Maybe you could write a good guide to 6502 assembly and be surprised when someone calls you in the middle of the night with a strange assembly question.
Open Source is nice, but not necessary for most Java users. How many Java programmers are complaining, "Man, I could write the program I want to write if I could just change the source code for Java!" However, an Open License would be great. The primary drawback to writing a program in Java is that the runtime engine has to compile the program on the fly. There are programs to compile the program for specific operating systems, but they are required to inculde the entire Java runtime library set due to licensing restrictions. So, if you don't use something like port IO or Swing graphics in your program, it has to still be included in the executable. An open license would allow a Java programmer to compile an executable that is small and fast and generally competitive with a similar C/C++ program. That solves the complaint that I normally hear from Java programmers: "I could write that in Java, but who would use it since they have to figure out how to install the runtime engine, get the classpaths configured, and then open a command prompt or teach their system to figure out a.class file should be run by Java?"
It sure is annoying to get penis enlargement and online Phd ads, but at least you dont lose any data because of them.
The truth is that many people are losing data because of spam. They aren't losing data that is already on their computer, but data they want to get in incoming emails. Many good emails are accidentally deleted by spam blockers as well as the human who is trying to quickly parse out the good from the bad. That is one of the rarely discussed spam problems.
There are a lot of responses about the anonymous public stealing images, movies, code, etc... What about using the distribution technology only inside the company? How many computers does Pixar have - including every single PC on the business side? Would there be a benefit in distributing calculations over all the PCs in the company in the manner that other distribution algorithms use (like the SETI@Home example)? In this scenario, they may get some extra number crunching for little cost.
The website blurs the line between discussing the automatic conversion of 2D movies (like the ones I have sitting by my DVD player right now) and 3D movies recorded in a standard 2D format DVD. I have no problem believing that a 3D movie encoded into a standard DVD can be viewed in full 3D. However, I was curious about the 'patented technology', so I went to the USPTO site and read
the patent.
It appears from the patent that the result of conversion from 2D to 3D is that it will take various 'objects' in the 2D image, outline them, and raise them off the screen. I have a strong feeling that you will get a Duke Nuk'em 3D image out of it, not the 3D you'd expect for the price of the 3D monitor and their converter system. I can't see that catching on.
Even if the frequency was constant, wouldn't there still be a doppler effect due to the Earths spin while listening with SETIs ground based dish? Now, compound that with the source having a doppler effect and you have two instances of a doppler effect...right?
The SETI@Home project doesn't claim that Earth-source radio transmissions are completely void of doppler effect. The point is that off-planet sources have a specific doppler effect caused by the spin of the Earth. So, you look for that specific change in frequency in a signal, ignoring all the other changes. It is like looking at a hundred cards racing down the road and trying to pick out the one that slows down at a specific rate, understanding that all the others are speeding up and slowing down also.
Does anyone know anything more about "possible radio transmissions from a distant planet"? TIA
I didn't find a real answer to this in a quick scan of the replies, so I figure I'll give it a shot...
I assume you know that SETI@home is parsing a vast collection of radio transmissions and hoping to find one from off-planet. When you download it and run it, you get a batch of transmissions and your computer will try to find a specific pattern in the mess. It is looking a single signal that initially has a steep decline in frequency. Then it levels out at one frequency. Then it goes into another steep decline. Why?
If a signal is broadcast from Earth, it stays at about the same frequency all the time. If it is brodcast from, say, Uranus, the spin of the Earth will cause a doppler effect. Start with your antenna being on the 'dark side' of the Earth. That is the side opposite the transmission. As it spins around and starts to pick up the transmission, it will be travelling very fast into the signal - causing the frequency to be increased. The relative speed going into the frequency will decrease as the Earth continues to spin. When you start heading back to the dark side, you will move away from the signal, causing the frequency to drop.
So, all SETI@home is really doing is looking for a doppler effect that matches the speed of the spin of the Earth. Such signals have been found. When they are found, the SETI people hunt down the source. Sometimes it is domestic (a weird situation where a signal bounces just right off a mountain or two). Sometimes it is one of our distant space explorers. Sometimes it is a star. So far, none have been from possible intelligent life - especially those domestic ones.
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In my experience with Java, it simply falls behind on startup. It takes far too long to load the interpreter, load the byte code, and get going. What Java needs to compete is a true compiler. I need to be able to take a program, compile it for the OS that I choose, and make a lean and mean native executable.
The Java zealots panic. That would destroy the cross-platform ability of Java. Wrong. It would destroy the cross-platform ability of that one executable - simply meaning that I can give the slower byte code to all the other platforms that I don't want to compile an executable for.
Others will quickly point out that there are programs that compile Java to native executables. That is true, but I said I wanted a lean and mean native executable. Because of Sun's licensing, it is not legal to make a native executable that only contains the parts of the Java that are needed to get the program running. You must include EVERYTHING in the native executable - meaning it is required by law to bloated and slow.
So, after all of that, I realize what the problem is. Sun needs to fire a few lawyers so we can legally compile our slow and bloated byte code into lean and mean native executables.
"Some of our employees, however bright they may be, have only a hazy idea about the rest of the world," he said." ... and this is different from the rest of America how exactly?
Maybe he is claiming that all the non-M$ employees, however dim they may be, have only a hazy idea that there is a rest of the world.
I have mentioned this before at Slashdot and I'm always ridiculed for it. However, I greatly reduced my spam intake from well over 2,000 spams a day to well under 100 by simply blocking any email that contains a link to a server that I've put in my "that is a spam-advertised IP address" file. It isn't difficult to do. In fact, I make what I've written freely available on my website.
Every time I mention this, someone says, "Oh my God! You're going to block some good little Mom&Pop store because they share a server with a spammer!" If that is what you are thinking, you didn't read my previous paragraph. I block any email WITH A LINK TO A SERVER that is in my block list. I DO NOT block any email originating from a server in the block list.
As this article explains, the incentive is to remove the profit margin from spam. I think my method works better than kicking them off the server if my method was used by a majority of the Internet users. The reason is that my method hopes the spammers keep the same IP addresses. If you kick them off the server, they change IP addresses and I have to block the new one.
Why are these things on any sort of publicly accessable network? They should, at least, be on a private network that's physically separate from everything they don't absolutely need to talk to & firewalled all to hell.
You are assuming that the devices are in static locations. Many of the devices are portable. Doctors drag them into their office and plug them into the network. It is the same network that they plug their personal laptop into. It is the same laptop that they take home and surf the net with. It is the same net that infects the laptop that infects the hospital's network that infects the hospital's other hardware.
I am currently working in a hospital. I wonder if anyone has forwarded this item into the local IT newsgroup yet...
Don't we see this every year as the millions of employed college kids go off for summer vacation. I know that this drop is a lot higher than normal, but it seems that around every May the news reports a dramatic drop in IT jobs. Then, around every August, it reports a steep increase in IT jobs.
Would anyone care to share their real world experiences?
Before I had lasik surgery, I was spending about $600/yr for glasses and contacts. I could only use hard contacts and my glasses had to be custom made. I simply wanted to be able to get ordinary lenses in either contacts or glasses. I also wanted to wear sunglasses. My contacts gave me terrible headaches, so I rarely wore them. My glasses were far too thick for snap-on sunglasses. I couldn't afford another tinted pair of glasses.
I was told that it was reasonable to expect my vision to get down to around 50/20. After the surgery, my left eye was 20/20 and my right eye was 30/20. That was many years ago. I had a thorough eye exam last month and my left eye is still 20/20, but my right eye is 25/20.
Because I have gotten rid of both contacts and the terribly heavy glasses, I've been headache free since the surgery. The only downside to the whole thing was the cost. When I had it done, it was $5,000.
As for researching the surgeon... As I said, it was a long time ago that I got the surgery. I looked at the AMA's articles on the surgery and found that one of the two original surgeons who tested the process in the United States while it was awaiting approval was in my hometown. I chose him over the others around here. I later discovered that all of the other places actually sent you to him for the surgery - one lasik surgeon, but over 20 offices offering the surgery. I'm not sure how that all worked.
an you tell us what happened? I'm kinda pretty sure pot's never killed anyone ever.
Please keep in mind that I am trying to make it painfully clear that I am not claiming that pot killed anyone. I am referring to the influence of pot.
The first incident happened before I went to the school, but I learned about it because the memorial to the student was being removed to build a car lot. Some students were getting stoned on the water tower at night where they wouldn't be noticed by anyone. Once well stoned, one fell off.
The second incident happened while I was at school. A student was hunting with his father. The student was stoned and most people believe both the father and student were smoking pot and hunting at the same time. The student claims that his rifle just went off in his hands and shot his father.
Third incident happened while I was at the school, but to a student who had already graduated. He was smoking pot with buddies, volunteered to do a Taco Bell run, and promptly drove his motorcycle right into the side of a building at 40-50mph. It was a Ninja, so his position on the bike was such that he hit the building head-first. I don't know if he had a helmet on or not, but I assume he didn't.
Again, if you read what I posted earlier, I am only trying to state that the influence of ANY drug (including alcohol) impairs a person's capabilities. To compare drugs to video games would require comparing the influence of drugs to the influence of video games.
Oh, and there is not a single death attributable to marijuana in all of recorded history.
There are many (three in my high school alone) deaths attributable to the influence of marijuana. Only one in my high school had anything to do with driving, so your argument that stoned people drive slower doesn't cover all possible harm. Also, I made it important that I was discussing the influence of marijuana because it is rather obvious that video game violence harm would have to be the influence of the games - not death simply by playing games too long.
Walk down the street and you can find zillions of people who actually believe that pot kills. Same with video games.
You cannot simply equate pot to violent video games. People are harmed and killed under the influence of pot, or by someone else who is under the influence. If you want to equate pot to violent video games, you have to make the argument that after playing a violent video game, your capabilities are somehow impared while you are under the influence of the video game.
I think there is a short-term sensory influence of the video game, but I don't think it would impare anyone capabilities. For them to react in an overly violent manner, I would claim that they were violent to begin with and the game really had nothing to do with it.
what's the best solution for upgrading?
I tried the YUM upgrade from FC1 to FC2. It worked the first time on a dirt-old Dell Optiplex, but I had to reinstall the printer, sound, and fiddle around with the X config file to get the optical wheel mouse to work. That X config stuff can easily be blamed on the jump from X11 to Xorg.
I tried it again on a newer Gateway E series. I couldn't get X to work no matter how much I fiddled with it. I eventually gave up, backed up my data files, and installed FC2 from scratch. It came up working just fine. The sound even works. This is the first time I've ever been able to have sound in more than one program at a time. Previously, nothing ever worked as advertised. I'd be listening to xmms and then a term window would want to beep and all sound went to hell.
Because much of the problem of going from FC1 to FC2 was with the X configuration, I expect that using yum to jump from FC2 to FC3 will be easier, but I wouldn't want to try jumping from FC1 to FC3 that way.
Damn. Hit a single < as you submit and you lose a whole paragrah... What I meant was:
I always thought it was obvious.
286... 386... 486... 586... No, Penta=5, so Pentium. Now, why didn't they call the Pentium II Sexium?
And yes, for the mega-geeks, I do know that I'm mixing the Greek Penta prefix with the Latin Sex prefix, but Hexium just isn't as funny.
I always thought it was obvious.
And yes, for the mega-geeks, I do know that I'm mixing the Greek Penta prefix with the Latin Sex prefix, but Hexium just isn't as funny.
There is a fundamental difference between having your web censored by someone else and having it filtered by you (or your parents). I chose to filter the ads out of the websites I visit. I chose to filter the images out of emails I get. If I am censoring content for myself, it isn't really censorship. I think that is the reason this is a good idea. Parents can filter content without relying on a third party for censorship.
I think it goes a bit far to claim that this mutation has NEVER been found in humans. Sure, there may not be any popular hospitals with records of this mutation, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that this mutation happens about every 5-10 years in small areas all around the world.
For an example, there was a kid in my teeny little high school who had a muscular growth mutation. His muscles grew so much so fast that he had regular surgery to remove the excess lumps and knots of muscle. He didn't resemble a body builder. He looked like a mutation with lumps all over his body and scars where they had done surgery. I read this article and wondered if he has the same mutation.
You seem to have the idea that if we just keep adding antennas we can keep collecting energy, which is not the case because energy would not be conserved.
Please explain this further. Given this scenario: I'm in a gym listening to my walkman. A guy by me is listening to the same station. A few others tune into the same station. Is there a point at which nobody else can tune in because there's no more energy on that signal? My idea is that each antenna will provide some energy. Just like putting a bunch of batteries in series to increase voltage or parallel to increase amperage (is that correct?) you can put each mini-antenna-power-kit in series or parralel. But, two of them together will provide half the power that they would provide independently, that definately wouldn't be a benefit.
You can find many pages with "Tesla transmit electricity". It was one of his more popular stunts. I have seen some pages that claim he powered a simple light bulb in London with a transmission tower in New York, but that seems a bit far-fetched to me.
As for picking up power on a small antenna, I may have the frequency wrong. It is my understanding that most cell phones work at 900 MHz. Is that true? If so, I saw a television program on TLC, Discovery Channel, or the like that was trying to warn about terrible cancer-causing cell phones. I didn't believe most of what they said, but they did an experiment where they put a 1/2" antenna on a multimeter and placed it about a foot from a cell phone that was 'in conversation' - not just idly waiting for a call. The multimeter showed a clear increase in voltage. How much? I don't know. It was certainly small.
Those two events made me think: Why can't we harness all the radio waves in the air for power? As you can see from the replies to my post so far, it appears that the antennas would need to be far larger than 1/2" to be effective and the use of such objects would essentially suck the radio waves out of the sky.
If you want to be very technical about it, we nearly have that. Most of the world is flooded with high-power radio signals. By "radio", I mean AM, FM, television, cell phone, GPS, and everything else.
Tesla proved, repeatedly, that those signals could be caught in an antenna and turned into basic AC power. However, transmitting AC power through the air would mean that the power companies could not control how much electricity you used. So, there was a lot of propoganda, using Thomas Edison as a mouthpiece, to convince the world at large that transmitting radio waves would destroy the world - even calling transmitted AC waves "the devil's science".
Now, we've built thousands of transmission towers. Why not tap into some of that power? Sure, you can't run a laptop on the power off one 900MHz antenna, but what if you had, say 500 of them in a little bundle? Even then, if you couldn't run the laptop off it, you could use the little power you did get to trickle charge the battery - making it last a lot longer.
Before you get freaky ideas of humping around 500 antennas on your back, take note that an effective 900MHz antenna can be as little as half and inch long. If you arrange them like spokes on a wheel, you would have a 1-inch wide disk. Now, the trick is to fit the electronics to convert the AC signal into the same small package.
I admit, this isn't the ultimate fuel source you requested, but it is a plentiful and untapped one.
I'm a parent.
I have heard "I'm a doctor", "I'm a judge", and "I'm a fireman" as excuses for blabbering on the phone in the middle of a movie, but never "I'm a parent." When I was kid, nobody had cell phones. I wonder how in the world my parents ever went to the movies without me - oh, wait, I remember. They left me with a responsible person and expected things to be OK when they returned.
For some reason I have a strange desire to teach someone 6502 assembly language.
Maybe you are simply a teacher. I'd say just do it. I avoided college for 10 years because I simply hated being a student. Then, my wife practically forced me to go so I could get my degree and start teaching. I admit that I hated the undergrad junk, but now I am much happier to be in an academic environment than hacking away in some company.
Also, there's the Internet. To this day, any search for my nick (kainaw) still turns up "Kainaw's Amiga Internet Guide" - a guide to getting an Amiga on the Internet when all we had was SLIP over dial-up. Maybe you could write a good guide to 6502 assembly and be surprised when someone calls you in the middle of the night with a strange assembly question.
Open Source is nice, but not necessary for most Java users. How many Java programmers are complaining, "Man, I could write the program I want to write if I could just change the source code for Java!" However, an Open License would be great. The primary drawback to writing a program in Java is that the runtime engine has to compile the program on the fly. There are programs to compile the program for specific operating systems, but they are required to inculde the entire Java runtime library set due to licensing restrictions. So, if you don't use something like port IO or Swing graphics in your program, it has to still be included in the executable. An open license would allow a Java programmer to compile an executable that is small and fast and generally competitive with a similar C/C++ program. That solves the complaint that I normally hear from Java programmers: "I could write that in Java, but who would use it since they have to figure out how to install the runtime engine, get the classpaths configured, and then open a command prompt or teach their system to figure out a .class file should be run by Java?"
It sure is annoying to get penis enlargement and online Phd ads, but at least you dont lose any data because of them.
The truth is that many people are losing data because of spam. They aren't losing data that is already on their computer, but data they want to get in incoming emails. Many good emails are accidentally deleted by spam blockers as well as the human who is trying to quickly parse out the good from the bad. That is one of the rarely discussed spam problems.
There are a lot of responses about the anonymous public stealing images, movies, code, etc... What about using the distribution technology only inside the company? How many computers does Pixar have - including every single PC on the business side? Would there be a benefit in distributing calculations over all the PCs in the company in the manner that other distribution algorithms use (like the SETI@Home example)? In this scenario, they may get some extra number crunching for little cost.
The website blurs the line between discussing the automatic conversion of 2D movies (like the ones I have sitting by my DVD player right now) and 3D movies recorded in a standard 2D format DVD. I have no problem believing that a 3D movie encoded into a standard DVD can be viewed in full 3D. However, I was curious about the 'patented technology', so I went to the USPTO site and read the patent. It appears from the patent that the result of conversion from 2D to 3D is that it will take various 'objects' in the 2D image, outline them, and raise them off the screen. I have a strong feeling that you will get a Duke Nuk'em 3D image out of it, not the 3D you'd expect for the price of the 3D monitor and their converter system. I can't see that catching on.
Even if the frequency was constant, wouldn't there still be a doppler effect due to the Earths spin while listening with SETIs ground based dish? Now, compound that with the source having a doppler effect and you have two instances of a doppler effect...right?
The SETI@Home project doesn't claim that Earth-source radio transmissions are completely void of doppler effect. The point is that off-planet sources have a specific doppler effect caused by the spin of the Earth. So, you look for that specific change in frequency in a signal, ignoring all the other changes. It is like looking at a hundred cards racing down the road and trying to pick out the one that slows down at a specific rate, understanding that all the others are speeding up and slowing down also.
Does anyone know anything more about "possible radio transmissions from a distant planet"? TIA
I didn't find a real answer to this in a quick scan of the replies, so I figure I'll give it a shot...
I assume you know that SETI@home is parsing a vast collection of radio transmissions and hoping to find one from off-planet. When you download it and run it, you get a batch of transmissions and your computer will try to find a specific pattern in the mess. It is looking a single signal that initially has a steep decline in frequency. Then it levels out at one frequency. Then it goes into another steep decline. Why?
If a signal is broadcast from Earth, it stays at about the same frequency all the time. If it is brodcast from, say, Uranus, the spin of the Earth will cause a doppler effect. Start with your antenna being on the 'dark side' of the Earth. That is the side opposite the transmission. As it spins around and starts to pick up the transmission, it will be travelling very fast into the signal - causing the frequency to be increased. The relative speed going into the frequency will decrease as the Earth continues to spin. When you start heading back to the dark side, you will move away from the signal, causing the frequency to drop.
So, all SETI@home is really doing is looking for a doppler effect that matches the speed of the spin of the Earth. Such signals have been found. When they are found, the SETI people hunt down the source. Sometimes it is domestic (a weird situation where a signal bounces just right off a mountain or two). Sometimes it is one of our distant space explorers. Sometimes it is a star. So far, none have been from possible intelligent life - especially those domestic ones.