Is there anyone that can comment on the quality
of the image on the screen. I have started to
see digital projectors in South Africa as well.
At the moment they only use them for ads, and then
switch to film for the movie. My issues with the digital projectots is that the image brilliance (or light intensity) is far poorer then that of the film projectors. You can also notice the pixels which is far worse then artifacts on film. If this is the trend then I'll stop supporting cinemas. I only go for the quality image. Most of the time they mess up the sound system. If the image quality goes its no better then DVD with a home projector.
I was actually at the ATMEL seminar at Belvista Lodge in Bellville, South Africa, yesterday.:)
We had both AVR and ARM senior engineers there. Quite interresting. ATMEL is basically producing chips to target all the niche/price-sensitive markets. So the 7SAM and the AVR basically is
aimed at different segments of the market or totally different markets all together.
Well I for one would like to "reset the system":)
Unite all my fellow Aikidoka
and bring back the Samurai, but with the modern outlook
on life. Basically have a system (more like classes) of
peasants (commercial farmers), samurai (the law) and
doctors, scientists, physicists and engineers and maybe
a class of entertainers. Basically get rid of all those
"parasite professions". Then we can get closer to the
technological utopia of StarTrek:)
The biggest problem with cannibalism, is that you spread
certain diseases more easily. Things like Mad Cow Disease,
is an example, bus just similar things applied to humans.
If there is this Extinction Level Event (ELE) then we need
to ensure the gene-pool survive, I mean make use of it, to
get rid of AIDS. But then we are back at the level where
the NAZI's where and that is a loss in humanity no matter
how you look at it.
Arguably the strongest will survive, but the sum-of-the-parts
will be lower then the whole. The people we need to survive
is not necessarily the "strong". Nerds and geeks is what
we need, basically a lot of engineers (yup, I am an Engineer),
and then physical labor to build things quick or sacrifice
themselves for the greater good, like the firemen of Chernobyl.
Have you ever considered what will happen once there are no
people to look after Nuclear Power plants, I would imagine
in a countries like the USA these plants are geographically
so densely distributed that if one fails the fall-out will
trigger evacuations and thus failures of the others in close
proximity, ultimately leaving you with a cascading domino-effect.
The people that you will need to solve this type of problem is
not really the "strong". I would imagine, the "red-necks" will
probably have the highest change of survival but then humanity
will be gone, and we will be back in the dark ages.
I would imagine either things turnout or at least start to happen
as it did in the movies, Deep Impact (FEMA) and possibly a
messed up society as in Twelve Monkeys
or even Mad Max.
As an engineer my biggest problem, would be to effectively restart
our technology level in preferably less then 10 years. Else we might
loose it altogether. Knowledge transfer would be important, else we
might have a society like The Postman
or the TV series, Jerimaia.
The problem with most of today's technology is that the components are
extremely specialized, you need high-tech to replicate them, and most
parts are incremental improvements on a previous version. For example,
you need a C compiler, to compile the new-improved C compiler. Some technologies
are extremely recursive in this manner. So to the point that if a crucial
part is lost, it might be lost forever. Basically how many technologies,
can you start from ground principles ?
Things like a surface mount sintered Tantalum Cap, or a microprocessor,
or even a DVD reader, to learn new generations about reading, math, etc. Can you restore your
backups ? Maybe without the magnetic mantle we might have a huge EM pulse that messes up all
magnetically stored data.
If the step-function
input is too big, we might be back in the dark ages.
Ok one part of me feel like, yeah !!! But it is the transients before we
get there that scares me.
The question is more about what unexpected changes we should be concerned with.
I have posted another comment,
but it haven't really been noticed by anyone other then the moderators.
There is lots of links to futher info and pictures in it.
Basically there might be temperature changes due to this "little" change
that will affect things like plants and maybe insects. If only one critical
insect's reproduction cycle is interrupted it could have severe consequences.
The bee is such an insect. But there might be things like ants starting to
attack beehives as an food source. Extreme severe colds could suddenly
kill a lot of bees which means that the next season might suffer diminished
crop yield. This in turn mean less food supply and thus even greater
competition by insects and us to it. Imagine a small grain yield, attacked
by grasshoppers. Do you think we can really win that one.
This doesn't include the secondary affects by people. I mean once that
crap hits the fan society collapse. An easy way to notice that is simply
to notice how people change in a large power blackout. If you can't get
diesel or poison to fight the insects, the yields go down further.
If people want something bad enough they'll take it, once city dwellers
goes to occupy farmland we have real big problems. The infrastructure is
simply not there to support it, also those people don't have the experience
to produce food in large enough quantities let alone in the "new" environment.
Look at what is happening in Zimbabwe due to Robert Mugabe's farm resettlements.
Basically people without skills are given farmland, they simply cannot produce
food on a large scale. As soon as that happens, you end up with people dieing
from hunger. Or basically you diminish
the population's immunity to diseases, then suddenly plagues start to spread
much easier. Imagine a new out break of the Bird Flu
with not enough resources to "manage" it and a population more susceptible to
disease. There is one out now as I am writing this.
These are all things that no "modern human" has experienced before, maybe that
is what happened to the people from Atlantis or the Mayans.
Are we prepared, do we even have enough time still left to prepare ?
I am more concerned about the Bees, if the bees
cannot relay information to other bees, they cannot
pollinate plants and we will all be out of food.
There is already large scale starvation in some parts
of the world. What will be the effect if say America
starts to experience a food shortage. Or most likely
Europe, they are far more heavily over populated
compared to their area and farming size, additionally
they are close to the northern polar cap. Slight
changes might have huge effects.
First of all can we really expect the GPS system still to function
once the magnetic mantle is gone ? To get a understanding of how
GPS receivers work look at,
GPS-X-02007 (This is a mirror since the u-Blox site needs you to
register before you can access their tutorials.) Basically the signal
received on Earth at the GPS receiver's antenna is a few dB below the
(Thermal) Noise Floor. My question is, once the magnetoshere is gone,
what will the Noise Floor look like ? If they predict blackouts, etc
it means pretty severe and thus I believe most GPS receivers will probably
not get the fix. Then you are lost. Also GPS receivers needs to be updated
frequently to compensate for drift in their location. In an more sever
RF environment in space what will be the effects on these RF links ?
I could easily conjure up a lot of unpredictable EMC related issues
with Satellites due to Electromagnetic Winds.
Once the GPS system fails it will have repercussions on everything that
depends on it. Hmmm, NTP for one. Some utility companies even use it
to monitor electric load on the powergrid, the mass movement of charge,
etc. Most complex control systems are useless without accurate inputs.
So how big was the "margin-of-error" people designed in that lowest-bidder
control systems for that Nuclear Power Plants ? If you look at what
happened at Chernobyl with
un-self-sustained Nuclear Powerplants you have to start worrying.
If that is not enough to worry about, what will the effects be on the
worlds international food supply ? I think we have all started to notice
the "Weird" weather. Zetatalk
(of Planet X fame) has
nice pictures
correlating the changes in the magnetic field with changes in temperature.
I mean evolution happens over millennia can a significant part of the
Earth's food supply handle a severe step-function input,
and what will the transient response be like ?
Also have a look at these:
http://www-ssg.sr.unh.edu/406/Review/rev6.html
http://ds9.ssl.berkeley.edu/LWS_GEMS/movies/6magne t.mov
http://ds9.ssl.berkeley.edu/LWS_GEMS/movies/6sec6. mov
I would just like to advertize pekwm. http://pekwm.org/
I needed a window manager that I could modify to basically do things the way I needed them to be. More of an information terminal / kiosk environment.
After searching and going through all the WM's at http://xwinman.org/, someone on a LUG pointed me to pekwm. I dropped WindowMaker and never looked back. These days it is the first thing I install on an new installation.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there anyone that can comment on the quality of the image on the screen. I have started to see digital projectors in South Africa as well. At the moment they only use them for ads, and then switch to film for the movie. My issues with the digital projectots is that the image brilliance (or light intensity) is far poorer then that of the film projectors. You can also notice the pixels which is far worse then artifacts on film. If this is the trend then I'll stop supporting cinemas. I only go for the quality image. Most of the time they mess up the sound system. If the image quality goes its no better then DVD with a home projector.
I was actually at the ATMEL seminar at Belvista Lodge in Bellville, South Africa, yesterday. :)
We had both AVR and ARM senior engineers there. Quite interresting. ATMEL is basically producing chips to target all the niche/price-sensitive markets. So the 7SAM and the AVR basically is
aimed at different segments of the market or totally different markets all together.
The biggest problem with cannibalism, is that you spread certain diseases more easily. Things like Mad Cow Disease, is an example, bus just similar things applied to humans. If there is this Extinction Level Event (ELE) then we need to ensure the gene-pool survive, I mean make use of it, to get rid of AIDS. But then we are back at the level where the NAZI's where and that is a loss in humanity no matter how you look at it.
Arguably the strongest will survive, but the sum-of-the-parts will be lower then the whole. The people we need to survive is not necessarily the "strong". Nerds and geeks is what we need, basically a lot of engineers (yup, I am an Engineer), and then physical labor to build things quick or sacrifice themselves for the greater good, like the firemen of Chernobyl. Have you ever considered what will happen once there are no people to look after Nuclear Power plants, I would imagine in a countries like the USA these plants are geographically so densely distributed that if one fails the fall-out will trigger evacuations and thus failures of the others in close proximity, ultimately leaving you with a cascading domino-effect.
The people that you will need to solve this type of problem is not really the "strong". I would imagine, the "red-necks" will probably have the highest change of survival but then humanity will be gone, and we will be back in the dark ages.
I would imagine either things turnout or at least start to happen as it did in the movies, Deep Impact (FEMA) and possibly a messed up society as in Twelve Monkeys or even Mad Max.
As an engineer my biggest problem, would be to effectively restart our technology level in preferably less then 10 years. Else we might loose it altogether. Knowledge transfer would be important, else we might have a society like The Postman or the TV series, Jerimaia. The problem with most of today's technology is that the components are extremely specialized, you need high-tech to replicate them, and most parts are incremental improvements on a previous version. For example, you need a C compiler, to compile the new-improved C compiler. Some technologies are extremely recursive in this manner. So to the point that if a crucial part is lost, it might be lost forever. Basically how many technologies, can you start from ground principles ?
Things like a surface mount sintered Tantalum Cap, or a microprocessor, or even a DVD reader, to learn new generations about reading, math, etc. Can you restore your backups ? Maybe without the magnetic mantle we might have a huge EM pulse that messes up all magnetically stored data. If the step-function input is too big, we might be back in the dark ages.
Ok one part of me feel like, yeah !!! But it is the transients before we get there that scares me.
The bee is such an insect. But there might be things like ants starting to attack beehives as an food source. Extreme severe colds could suddenly kill a lot of bees which means that the next season might suffer diminished crop yield. This in turn mean less food supply and thus even greater competition by insects and us to it. Imagine a small grain yield, attacked by grasshoppers. Do you think we can really win that one.
This doesn't include the secondary affects by people. I mean once that crap hits the fan society collapse. An easy way to notice that is simply to notice how people change in a large power blackout. If you can't get diesel or poison to fight the insects, the yields go down further. If people want something bad enough they'll take it, once city dwellers goes to occupy farmland we have real big problems. The infrastructure is simply not there to support it, also those people don't have the experience to produce food in large enough quantities let alone in the "new" environment.
Look at what is happening in Zimbabwe due to Robert Mugabe's farm resettlements. Basically people without skills are given farmland, they simply cannot produce food on a large scale. As soon as that happens, you end up with people dieing from hunger. Or basically you diminish the population's immunity to diseases, then suddenly plagues start to spread much easier. Imagine a new out break of the Bird Flu with not enough resources to "manage" it and a population more susceptible to disease. There is one out now as I am writing this.
These are all things that no "modern human" has experienced before, maybe that is what happened to the people from Atlantis or the Mayans. Are we prepared, do we even have enough time still left to prepare ?
I am more concerned about the Bees, if the bees cannot relay information to other bees, they cannot pollinate plants and we will all be out of food. There is already large scale starvation in some parts of the world. What will be the effect if say America starts to experience a food shortage. Or most likely Europe, they are far more heavily over populated compared to their area and farming size, additionally they are close to the northern polar cap. Slight changes might have huge effects.
oops, ...Also GPS receivers needs...
that should read ...Also, GPS satellites needs...
Once the GPS system fails it will have repercussions on everything that depends on it. Hmmm, NTP for one. Some utility companies even use it to monitor electric load on the powergrid, the mass movement of charge, etc. Most complex control systems are useless without accurate inputs. So how big was the "margin-of-error" people designed in that lowest-bidder control systems for that Nuclear Power Plants ? If you look at what happened at Chernobyl with un-self-sustained Nuclear Powerplants you have to start worrying.
If that is not enough to worry about, what will the effects be on the worlds international food supply ? I think we have all started to notice the "Weird" weather. Zetatalk (of Planet X fame) has nice pictures correlating the changes in the magnetic field with changes in temperature. I mean evolution happens over millennia can a significant part of the Earth's food supply handle a severe step-function input, and what will the transient response be like ?
Also have a look at these:e t.mov. mov
http://www-ssg.sr.unh.edu/406/Review/rev6.html
http://ds9.ssl.berkeley.edu/LWS_GEMS/movies/6magn
http://ds9.ssl.berkeley.edu/LWS_GEMS/movies/6sec6
I would just like to advertize pekwm.
http://pekwm.org/
I needed a window manager that I could modify to
basically do things the way I needed them to be.
More of an information terminal / kiosk environment.
After searching and going through all the WM's
at http://xwinman.org/, someone on a LUG pointed
me to pekwm. I dropped WindowMaker and never looked back. These days it is the first thing I
install on an new installation.