The temperatures involved are 500-900 degrees Celsius (depending on stage, type of feedstock, and desired end products), and in at least some cases (first stage), they are running moderate pressures (600 psi, a few tens of atmospheres. Nothing compared to the insane pressures needed for diamonds though.)
Mini-ITX motherboards are small and quite decent. Not as small as some of the PC104 solutions, but pretty small.
I believe the low-end ones are a little above $100 including CPU. A small Flex-ATX power supply runs $40. Smaller solutions (DC/DC power supplies plus 12V wallwart) run $70ish.
http://www.mini-itx.com/ has lots of Mini-ITX projects and info.
http://www.idot.com/ is a good place to get Mini-ITX goodies in the U.S.
"Out of interest, the formation of oil happens at temperatures of 100-140 degrees celcius (pressure is virtually irrelevant), which trandlates to 2000-5000 meters underground depending on local thermal gradients. Gas is generated at higher temperatures. "
Are you sure of this? If those numbers were true (100-140 degrees C is just above the boiling point of water) and pressure was irrelevant, it would be obscenely simple to turn biomass (grass clippings, etc.) into some form of petroleum product using simple solar methods. You probably wouldn't even need concentrated light - Even unconcentrated sunlight falling on a black surface that is somewhat insulated can boil water. (When I was a little kid, my dad installed solar hot water heating in our house. We had to be careful on sunny days because it was possible for *steam* to come out of one of our showerheads on sunny days. This was a basic "black panels with double paned glass overhead" system - No mirrors or other methods for concentrating the sunlight to achieve higher temperatures.)
Obviously, no one is doing such things. If your numbers are correct, why? (Which is why suspect that your numbers are incorrect.)
Shooting glasses? I don't think so
on
The Diamond Age
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Hardness != toughness
Hardness is a material's resistance to scratching. Diamonds are the hardest substance on earth in this regard.
Toughness is a material's resistance to breaking when stressed. Diamonds are NOT optimal in this regard. IIRC, diamonds (like most crystalline substances) shear quite easily along their crystal lattices. i.e. they are not in ANY way shatterproof. (This is how diamonds are usually cut - Sheared along their lattice planes.) A diamond will shatter easily if you hit it with a hammer.
It's the same reason one must be careful with silicon carbide tools (drill bits, etc.) - They're damned hard, but they tend to shatter easily.
Now a polycarbonate (nearly impossible to shatter - I can attest to this after having my eye saved by polycarb lenses from a hockey puck at a Cornell vs. Harvard game. Harvard players suck at hockey. The puck is supposed to go into the goal in front of you, not the upper row of the pepband to your left.) lens with a diamond coating might be interesting, although the problem is that the diamond coating might be entirely unsuitable as a coating due to its index of refraction - Many glasses are actually MORE scratch-prone than their primary material due to antireflective coatings. Diamond might have the exact opposite effect - Scratch resistance but WORSE reflection and glare.
Abrasives for industrial application were the FIRST place where synthetics were used. I believe the synthetics made the "old way" are called "popcorn diamonds" because of their unusual structure (Perfectly suitable for abrasives but not suitable for ANYTHING else.)
I don't think DeBeers has any presence whatsoever in the industrial abrasives market anymore, synthetics have been dominant in this field for a LONG time.
And the flaw in that plan...
on
The Diamond Age
·
· Score: 1
Is that the diamond makers are both dreaming of semiconductor applications.
In other words, the synthetic diamond companies have a fallback market.
DeBeers, on the other hand, can't produce diamonds consistent enough for semiconductor use. i.e. they're SOL in a situation like that.
It's not about transistor count
on
The Diamond Age
·
· Score: 1
It's about clock speed.
If your heat tolerance (and more importantly, your ability to remove heat from the CPU) is higher, then you can ramp up the clock rate. Significantly.
Personally, I think that while the materials themselves can stand the heat, there will be problems maintaining their semiconductor properties at high heat levels. (Already, silicon transistors stop functioning properly LONG before the silicon itself is at risk for melting.) They might work at somewhat higher temps, but probably not that much higher.
The real key will be that the CPU circuitry, if made from diamond, will be made of one of the best heatsink materials known to man. While temperature tolerance might not be improved much, a diamond-based semiconductor could dissipate far more heat while maintaining the same temperature.
I think the real key is not simply temperature tolerance, but the fact that diamond is one of the best conductors of heat in existence. Think copper is a good way to get heat from your CPU? Copper is nothing compared to diamond as far as heat conductivity goes.
I've always wondered why semiconductor manufacturers didn't investigate placing a layer of synthetic diamond on top of their finished silicon in order to assist in transferring heat away from it. If used only for heat transfer, there's no need for it to be monocrystalline.
http://shop.infomercial.tv/home_and_garden/misc/ro bosweep/ - I see no disclaimer there.
The other links are on... www.roombacommunity.com, which has that disclaimer at the bottom of EVERY PAGE - It's a site dedicated to the Roomba that happened to take a look at a "competitor". So no surprise that the disclaimer is there, especially once you notice that the site has it on every single page.
It does exist, but it is nearly impossible to reproduce except under strictly controlled laboratory conditions.
Most of what people attribute to the "memory effect" are really symptoms of other problems (Improper overcharging, for example. Also cell reversal in multi-cell packs.)
There is a HUGE difference between using a handsfree kit and holding the phone in your hand. Both distraction-wise and your ability to control the car (both hands on the wheel vs. one). I've got personal experience with this - I feel very uncomfortable talking on my phone without handsfree while driving (Hence I don't do it.), meanwhile I find that I can easily keep my eyes on the road/mirrors and both hands on the wheel when using a handsfree kit.
It's a royal pain to get a DVD playback setup working well thanks to our friends at the MPAA. Bite me Valenti. Thankfully, once you've got the CSS problem licked, Linux rocks for DVD playback.
Also, the i8x0 onboard audio drivers suck. Both the ALSA ones and the kernel ones each have their own set of problems, and I have to keep switching between the two depending on what I'm doing on my Dell laptop.
HDTV - Check availability, and buy if you can
on
Buying a New TV?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Check to make sure that you're in an area with decent HD coverage.
This is pretty much any major metropolitan area except for NYC (Due to 9/11 knocking out all but one of the HD transmitters there.)
If you have a signal, HD is well worth it. Note: Even without an HD signal, an "HD-ready" TV with composite inputs can make for an AMAZING PC monitor for gaming, etc. In my case, I don't have an actual HDTV, I just feed my 18" LCD on my desktop using an HDTV tuner card in my PC. Sadly, I live in the NYC area which means only CBS and Fox for the time being.
The picture quality is worth it, even if you only use a PCI HDTV card and a good PC monitor. If you like CSI, think SERIOUSLY about getting HD, you don't know what you're missing out on until you've watched CSI in 1080i HD.
At work, there's only one network port in my cube. For whatever reason, the network port doesn't like it when a switch/hub is connected to it.
As a result, I have two options for transferring files between my work desktop and my own laptop:
a) Bring the laptop elsewhere to plug it in to the network b) Use my USB keychain drive
Take a guess which of the above I do most often.
I also use it to provide a Knoppix persistent home directory.
One thing
on
Assembly '03
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Having recently visited Skaven of FutureCrew's site, which linked to assembly.org - Is there a place to find the results of previous years' compos? assembly.org seems to have nothing but info on this years' event.:(
Chromatic dispersion (Different wavelengths traveling at different speeds) and modal dispersion (Different modes traveling at different speeds.) are two different mechanisms.
While eliminating modal dispersion won't eliminate chromatic dispersion, IIRC, modal dispersion is a MUCH larger effect than chromatic dispersion. (From what I recall from three years ago, it was an order of magnitude more - I'd have to dig up my old notebooks from my optics class.)
Also, there's no way to reverse modal dispersion, while chromatic dispersion can be reversed by using fiber of two different materials - One that causes longer wavelengths to travel faster, and a second one that causes longer wavelengths to travel slower, reversing the effects of dispersion in the first section of fiber.
Keep in mind that the Asterisk open-source PBX includes SIP gateway support.
And the phones that Robertson is selling are already tested and known to work with Asterisk. (These phones aren't new, although $130/pair is - They were $80-90+ per single unit last time I checked.)
It appears that SIPphone is a new service of some sort - As there's nothing new about the Grandstream BudgeTone phones except for the price (They used to be $80-90 each last I checked, Robertson is selling two for $129.99.
The hardware WILL work with other SIP services - I believe the BudgeTone is popular as a SIP client for use with the Asterisk open-source PBX software. In an Asterisk setup, you can use the phone as a normal PBX extension phone.
You are completely wrong that there is no power supply inside the computer. Given that the battery voltage can be anywhere from 3.0-3.2 volts/cell to 4.2 volts/cell, switching power supplies are required to maintain efficient regulation.
As I said before, 1.5 amp power supplies take up board space and COST MONEY. Given the razor-sharp margins in the PC world and low demand for 1394 devices for PCs due to Intel's marketing of their inferior technology (USB), 6-pin 1394 is a feature that is simply not worth the cost as far as selling laptops.
It's not a simple matter of adding circuit traces. I can't remember if 1394 is 12V or 5V, either way, it requires a flyback (If 12v) or buck (if 5v) switching converter, considering that most laptops use Li-Ion cells in a 3-series-x-parallel config. (10.8v nominal, 3.6 per series cell, can go as high as 4.2v/cell and as low as 3.0-3.2ish I believe.
It's perfectly possible for multimode fiber to be glass and single-mode to be plastic. The difference is the diameter of the waveguide itself. Single-mode fibers (At least the waveguide portion, the total fiber is usually similar in thickness for structural reasons) are much thinner than multi-mode fibers, only allowing one waveguide "mode" to exist. (Hence single-mode). Each mode in a waveguide travels at slightly different velocities (Actually, in reality the light travels in the same speed, but certain modes travel longer distances due to the way they bounce within the waveguide), so multimode fiber suffers from pulse spreading since not all of the light travels the same distance.
Glass vs. plastic - Glass is always more transparent. As a result, singlemode fibers ARE usually made from glass since there's not much point in reducing pulse spreading if your attenuation is not reduced.
"The only thing that sucks is when a computer manufacturer puts a 4-pin FireWire port on a machine instead of a 6-pin port. (The difference being the two pins that perform termination power transfer.) I dunno why people ship 4-pin ports on computers when a device the size of a deck of cards has a 6-pin port. Go figure."
Simple. Said device is USING Firewire bus power and is not expected to provide it.
Meanwhile, in a portable computer, where power management is key, putting a 6-pin Firewire port means adding a 1.5-amp power supply. Power supplies capable of that much current take space, which is at a premium in laptops.
The nature of the USB protocol puts a LOT of complex burdens on the "host" - It's not capable of peer-to-peer communication like Firewire, there MUST be a controller somewhere, and USB controllers aren't simple devices.
i.e. it's not practical for a portable MP3 player to use USB keychains for storage due to the complexities involved in being a USB controller instead of an endpoint.
On the other hand, CompactFlash is quite easy to interface with, and would be easy to implement... Oh wait, people have been doing that in MP3 players for years. Look around and you'll find plenty of MP3 players that use CF for storage, even cheaper than USB keychains. Also there are Memory Stick and SD/MMC based players.
Slashdot Mirror
The temperatures involved are 500-900 degrees Celsius (depending on stage, type of feedstock, and desired end products), and in at least some cases (first stage), they are running moderate pressures (600 psi, a few tens of atmospheres. Nothing compared to the insane pressures needed for diamonds though.)
Mini-ITX motherboards are small and quite decent. Not as small as some of the PC104 solutions, but pretty small.
I believe the low-end ones are a little above $100 including CPU. A small Flex-ATX power supply runs $40. Smaller solutions (DC/DC power supplies plus 12V wallwart) run $70ish.
http://www.mini-itx.com/ has lots of Mini-ITX projects and info.
http://www.idot.com/ is a good place to get Mini-ITX goodies in the U.S.
"Out of interest, the formation of oil happens at temperatures of 100-140 degrees celcius (pressure is virtually irrelevant), which trandlates to 2000-5000 meters underground depending on local thermal gradients. Gas is generated at higher temperatures. "
Are you sure of this? If those numbers were true (100-140 degrees C is just above the boiling point of water) and pressure was irrelevant, it would be obscenely simple to turn biomass (grass clippings, etc.) into some form of petroleum product using simple solar methods. You probably wouldn't even need concentrated light - Even unconcentrated sunlight falling on a black surface that is somewhat insulated can boil water. (When I was a little kid, my dad installed solar hot water heating in our house. We had to be careful on sunny days because it was possible for *steam* to come out of one of our showerheads on sunny days. This was a basic "black panels with double paned glass overhead" system - No mirrors or other methods for concentrating the sunlight to achieve higher temperatures.)
Obviously, no one is doing such things. If your numbers are correct, why? (Which is why suspect that your numbers are incorrect.)
Hardness != toughness
Hardness is a material's resistance to scratching. Diamonds are the hardest substance on earth in this regard.
Toughness is a material's resistance to breaking when stressed. Diamonds are NOT optimal in this regard. IIRC, diamonds (like most crystalline substances) shear quite easily along their crystal lattices. i.e. they are not in ANY way shatterproof. (This is how diamonds are usually cut - Sheared along their lattice planes.) A diamond will shatter easily if you hit it with a hammer.
It's the same reason one must be careful with silicon carbide tools (drill bits, etc.) - They're damned hard, but they tend to shatter easily.
Now a polycarbonate (nearly impossible to shatter - I can attest to this after having my eye saved by polycarb lenses from a hockey puck at a Cornell vs. Harvard game. Harvard players suck at hockey. The puck is supposed to go into the goal in front of you, not the upper row of the pepband to your left.) lens with a diamond coating might be interesting, although the problem is that the diamond coating might be entirely unsuitable as a coating due to its index of refraction - Many glasses are actually MORE scratch-prone than their primary material due to antireflective coatings. Diamond might have the exact opposite effect - Scratch resistance but WORSE reflection and glare.
Abrasives for industrial application were the FIRST place where synthetics were used. I believe the synthetics made the "old way" are called "popcorn diamonds" because of their unusual structure (Perfectly suitable for abrasives but not suitable for ANYTHING else.)
I don't think DeBeers has any presence whatsoever in the industrial abrasives market anymore, synthetics have been dominant in this field for a LONG time.
Is that the diamond makers are both dreaming of semiconductor applications.
In other words, the synthetic diamond companies have a fallback market.
DeBeers, on the other hand, can't produce diamonds consistent enough for semiconductor use. i.e. they're SOL in a situation like that.
It's about clock speed.
If your heat tolerance (and more importantly, your ability to remove heat from the CPU) is higher, then you can ramp up the clock rate. Significantly.
Personally, I think that while the materials themselves can stand the heat, there will be problems maintaining their semiconductor properties at high heat levels. (Already, silicon transistors stop functioning properly LONG before the silicon itself is at risk for melting.) They might work at somewhat higher temps, but probably not that much higher.
The real key will be that the CPU circuitry, if made from diamond, will be made of one of the best heatsink materials known to man. While temperature tolerance might not be improved much, a diamond-based semiconductor could dissipate far more heat while maintaining the same temperature.
Out of curiosity, where did you order/buy those gems?
I think the real key is not simply temperature tolerance, but the fact that diamond is one of the best conductors of heat in existence. Think copper is a good way to get heat from your CPU? Copper is nothing compared to diamond as far as heat conductivity goes.
I've always wondered why semiconductor manufacturers didn't investigate placing a layer of synthetic diamond on top of their finished silicon in order to assist in transferring heat away from it. If used only for heat transfer, there's no need for it to be monocrystalline.
http://shop.infomercial.tv/home_and_garden/misc/ro bosweep/ - I see no disclaimer there.
The other links are on... www.roombacommunity.com, which has that disclaimer at the bottom of EVERY PAGE - It's a site dedicated to the Roomba that happened to take a look at a "competitor". So no surprise that the disclaimer is there, especially once you notice that the site has it on every single page.
I can't - "LinDVD, InterVideo's Linux software DVD player, is currently available only to manufacturers for evaluation and integration."
One wonders if it might only be vaporware that doesn't really exist.
It does exist, but it is nearly impossible to reproduce except under strictly controlled laboratory conditions.
Most of what people attribute to the "memory effect" are really symptoms of other problems (Improper overcharging, for example. Also cell reversal in multi-cell packs.)
Bullshit
There is a HUGE difference between using a handsfree kit and holding the phone in your hand. Both distraction-wise and your ability to control the car (both hands on the wheel vs. one). I've got personal experience with this - I feel very uncomfortable talking on my phone without handsfree while driving (Hence I don't do it.), meanwhile I find that I can easily keep my eyes on the road/mirrors and both hands on the wheel when using a handsfree kit.
It's a royal pain to get a DVD playback setup working well thanks to our friends at the MPAA. Bite me Valenti. Thankfully, once you've got the CSS problem licked, Linux rocks for DVD playback.
Also, the i8x0 onboard audio drivers suck. Both the ALSA ones and the kernel ones each have their own set of problems, and I have to keep switching between the two depending on what I'm doing on my Dell laptop.
Check to make sure that you're in an area with decent HD coverage.
This is pretty much any major metropolitan area except for NYC (Due to 9/11 knocking out all but one of the HD transmitters there.)
If you have a signal, HD is well worth it. Note: Even without an HD signal, an "HD-ready" TV with composite inputs can make for an AMAZING PC monitor for gaming, etc. In my case, I don't have an actual HDTV, I just feed my 18" LCD on my desktop using an HDTV tuner card in my PC. Sadly, I live in the NYC area which means only CBS and Fox for the time being.
The picture quality is worth it, even if you only use a PCI HDTV card and a good PC monitor. If you like CSI, think SERIOUSLY about getting HD, you don't know what you're missing out on until you've watched CSI in 1080i HD.
At work, there's only one network port in my cube. For whatever reason, the network port doesn't like it when a switch/hub is connected to it.
As a result, I have two options for transferring files between my work desktop and my own laptop:
a) Bring the laptop elsewhere to plug it in to the network
b) Use my USB keychain drive
Take a guess which of the above I do most often.
I also use it to provide a Knoppix persistent home directory.
Having recently visited Skaven of FutureCrew's site, which linked to assembly.org - Is there a place to find the results of previous years' compos? assembly.org seems to have nothing but info on this years' event. :(
Chromatic dispersion (Different wavelengths traveling at different speeds) and modal dispersion (Different modes traveling at different speeds.) are two different mechanisms.
While eliminating modal dispersion won't eliminate chromatic dispersion, IIRC, modal dispersion is a MUCH larger effect than chromatic dispersion. (From what I recall from three years ago, it was an order of magnitude more - I'd have to dig up my old notebooks from my optics class.)
Also, there's no way to reverse modal dispersion, while chromatic dispersion can be reversed by using fiber of two different materials - One that causes longer wavelengths to travel faster, and a second one that causes longer wavelengths to travel slower, reversing the effects of dispersion in the first section of fiber.
Keep in mind that the Asterisk open-source PBX includes SIP gateway support.
And the phones that Robertson is selling are already tested and known to work with Asterisk. (These phones aren't new, although $130/pair is - They were $80-90+ per single unit last time I checked.)
It appears that SIPphone is a new service of some sort - As there's nothing new about the Grandstream BudgeTone phones except for the price (They used to be $80-90 each last I checked, Robertson is selling two for $129.99.
The hardware WILL work with other SIP services - I believe the BudgeTone is popular as a SIP client for use with the Asterisk open-source PBX software. In an Asterisk setup, you can use the phone as a normal PBX extension phone.
You are completely wrong that there is no power supply inside the computer. Given that the battery voltage can be anywhere from 3.0-3.2 volts/cell to 4.2 volts/cell, switching power supplies are required to maintain efficient regulation.
As I said before, 1.5 amp power supplies take up board space and COST MONEY. Given the razor-sharp margins in the PC world and low demand for 1394 devices for PCs due to Intel's marketing of their inferior technology (USB), 6-pin 1394 is a feature that is simply not worth the cost as far as selling laptops.
It's not a simple matter of adding circuit traces. I can't remember if 1394 is 12V or 5V, either way, it requires a flyback (If 12v) or buck (if 5v) switching converter, considering that most laptops use Li-Ion cells in a 3-series-x-parallel config. (10.8v nominal, 3.6 per series cell, can go as high as 4.2v/cell and as low as 3.0-3.2ish I believe.
It's perfectly possible for multimode fiber to be glass and single-mode to be plastic. The difference is the diameter of the waveguide itself. Single-mode fibers (At least the waveguide portion, the total fiber is usually similar in thickness for structural reasons) are much thinner than multi-mode fibers, only allowing one waveguide "mode" to exist. (Hence single-mode). Each mode in a waveguide travels at slightly different velocities (Actually, in reality the light travels in the same speed, but certain modes travel longer distances due to the way they bounce within the waveguide), so multimode fiber suffers from pulse spreading since not all of the light travels the same distance.
Glass vs. plastic - Glass is always more transparent. As a result, singlemode fibers ARE usually made from glass since there's not much point in reducing pulse spreading if your attenuation is not reduced.
Neither does this Gateway player.
What matters is that the iPod supports SBP-2, the standard for Firewire storage devices.
The Gateway player uses the USB Storage Protocol.
Same idea, different buses.
Yes, the iPod doesn't support IDE. But in an external device, that is not relevant in ANY way. Period.
"The only thing that sucks is when a computer manufacturer puts a 4-pin FireWire port on a machine instead of a 6-pin port. (The difference being the two pins that perform termination power transfer.) I dunno why people ship 4-pin ports on computers when a device the size of a deck of cards has a 6-pin port. Go figure."
Simple. Said device is USING Firewire bus power and is not expected to provide it.
Meanwhile, in a portable computer, where power management is key, putting a 6-pin Firewire port means adding a 1.5-amp power supply. Power supplies capable of that much current take space, which is at a premium in laptops.
The nature of the USB protocol puts a LOT of complex burdens on the "host" - It's not capable of peer-to-peer communication like Firewire, there MUST be a controller somewhere, and USB controllers aren't simple devices.
i.e. it's not practical for a portable MP3 player to use USB keychains for storage due to the complexities involved in being a USB controller instead of an endpoint.
On the other hand, CompactFlash is quite easy to interface with, and would be easy to implement... Oh wait, people have been doing that in MP3 players for years. Look around and you'll find plenty of MP3 players that use CF for storage, even cheaper than USB keychains. Also there are Memory Stick and SD/MMC based players.