"But, back to our electric automobiles - in 1931, under the financing of Pierce-Arrow and George Westinghouse, a 1931 Pierce-Arrow was selected to be tested at the factory grounds in Buffalo, N.Y. The standard internal combustion engine was removed and an 80-H.P. 1800 r.p.m electric motor installed to the clutch and transmission. The A.C. motor measured 40 inches long and 30 inches in diameter and the power leads were left standing in the air - no external power source!"
The name of Nikola Tesla has been mentioned a few times already in this thread.
I just want to say: if you don't know or barely know something about this man, I really really recommend reading about him.
He's one of the greatest geniuses of the last few centuries. Called "The Father Of Physics" and "the man who invented the twentieth century".
Especially the latter is NO understatement. His list of inventions is huge and the combination of genius and being a workaholic (sleeping 3 hours per day) resulted in something over 700 patents on his name. He can even be related to over 1200 patents!
Although he is sadly barely mentioned in schoolbooks, he is the inventor of things like:
- The Inductor/AC motor - The Tesla Coil - The radio (a court ruled he was first, not Marconi!) - The AND logical gate - Wireless transfer of electricity - Tesla turbines (bladeless turbines) - X-ray tubes - Robotics - Fluorescent lamps - VTOL aircraft! - Polyphase systems - Remote control; he had a remote controlled boat in 1898!
And the really big bang is that it's very very likely that he managed to extract free energy from the vacuum/atmosphere.
Together with two other people, he has been riding a car for a week long... a silent car which had just an antenna system... reaching speeds in the order of 90 miles per hour.
He really was one of the most extraordinary persons to ever walk on this planet.
Sadly the problem was that, despite his genius, he was not a great business man. Money was always a problem and basically everyone (Edison, JP Morgan, etc.) tried to make money of this man who was so hard to make this a better world.
Now why is this man barely recognized for his achievements?
And why does he not have AT LEAST one Nobel Prize?!?
I understand your point, but at this moment right here it's more convenient than saying: go read these books:
DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences by Rick Strassman
Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution by Terence Mckenna
Heavenly Highs: Ayahuasca, Kava-Kava, DMT, and Other Plants of the Gods by Peter Stafford
The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching by Terence Mckenna
True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradis by Terence Mckenna
Instead I give a link to a very nice video from a presentation given by a very very very smart and articulate speaker. And yes, there are also dancing hamsters on the same website..
But in other words, don't generalize a medium. I know that YouTube is not always everything, but well.. would you refuse to read a newspaper just because it mentioned Britney or Paris once?!?
In fact, one of the most illegal substances, DMT (Dimethyltryptamine), is naturally present in our brain (possibly made in our pineal gland).
It gives amazing effects: "powerful entheogenic experiences including intense visuals, euphoria, even true hallucinations"
It possibly plays a role in dreaming and mystical experiences and it's NOT addictive. On YouTube there are some great videos about this subject, especially those by people like Terence McKenna:
However, I would also like to add that, with IT entering more and more areas of our lives, businesses and technology over the year, an "IT Engineer" is getting more and more cases in which responsibility is also a very important factor.
Examples that come to mind are:
- Guidance software for rocket/Space Shuttle - Control software for (nuclear) power plants - Embedded software in e.g. heart monitoring devices/pacemakers - Banking/stock market systems - Telecommunication systems (cell phone grids) etc. etc.
Software is not just running that fancy website with those cute hamsters.;)
But agreed, these are not the most common things one makes are a 'software engineer'.
In that sense I believer there are software engineers and 'software engineers' so to speak.
Just like Apple, Microsoft should be smart for the following version of Windows.
If they want to break with previous versions anyway, they should just pick an existing *nix foundations and write their won GUI on top of that.
It would really make the world much better IMHO.
Vista on this processor? not sure if it will run very well.
I mean, this CPU does one calculation at a knuckle-to-fingertip-at-lightspeed-speed pace, while I've recently overheard that the best way to accelerate Vista is actually 9.81 meters per second squared.
I'm confused.
Can anyone compare this with Library of Congress per Shakes?
So true, so true!
With "millions of dollars" I'd indeed either outsource the thing almost completely or take the cash and enjoy life.
$80K a year.. basically you can stop working.
It's an amazing piece of engineering. Let's not forget that F1 cars have a complete engineering team present to swap engine, tires and transmission $frequently, while this car has to handle the power and last more than a few hours.
Slashdot Mirror
The spice expands consciousness! :D
Apparently, the story can be summarized as:
"But, back to our electric automobiles - in 1931, under the financing of Pierce-Arrow and George Westinghouse, a 1931 Pierce-Arrow was selected to be tested at the factory grounds in Buffalo, N.Y. The standard internal combustion engine was removed and an 80-H.P. 1800 r.p.m electric motor installed to the clutch and transmission. The A.C. motor measured 40 inches long and 30 inches in diameter and the power leads were left standing in the air - no external power
source!"
http://uncletaz.com/library/scimath/tesla/teslacar.html
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Tesla's_Pierce-Arrow
http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1062
http://waterpoweredcar.com/teslascar.html
http://www.tfcbooks.com/teslafaq/q&a_016.htm
http://keelynet.com/energy/teslcar.htm
http://keelynet.com/energy/teslafe1.htm
"What utter rubbish"
He was definitely on to something, e.g.:
http://home.earthlink.net/~drestinblack/generator.htm
I am only saying what I said because I am talking about Tesla. If there's one person who could have done it, it is him.
The name of Nikola Tesla has been mentioned a few times already in this thread.
I just want to say: if you don't know or barely know something about this man, I really really recommend reading about him.
He's one of the greatest geniuses of the last few centuries. Called "The Father Of Physics" and "the man who invented the twentieth century".
Especially the latter is NO understatement. His list of inventions is huge and the combination of genius and being a workaholic (sleeping 3 hours per day) resulted in something over 700 patents on his name. He can even be related to over 1200 patents!
Although he is sadly barely mentioned in schoolbooks, he is the inventor of things like:
- The Inductor/AC motor
- The Tesla Coil
- The radio (a court ruled he was first, not Marconi!)
- The AND logical gate
- Wireless transfer of electricity
- Tesla turbines (bladeless turbines)
- X-ray tubes
- Robotics
- Fluorescent lamps
- VTOL aircraft!
- Polyphase systems
- Remote control; he had a remote controlled boat in 1898!
This list is NOT COMPLETE
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
And the really big bang is that it's very very likely that he managed to extract free energy from the vacuum/atmosphere.
Together with two other people, he has been riding a car for a week long... a silent car which had just an antenna system... reaching speeds in the order of 90 miles per hour.
He really was one of the most extraordinary persons to ever walk on this planet.
Sadly the problem was that, despite his genius, he was not a great business man. Money was always a problem and basically everyone (Edison, JP Morgan, etc.) tried to make money of this man who was so hard to make this a better world.
Now why is this man barely recognized for his achievements?
And why does he not have AT LEAST one Nobel Prize?!?
Interesting interview:
The Tesla Conspiracy: Mark DeMucha Part 1 of 11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzxvhA72vGI
Here's your pizza with extra sausage - Conan O'Brien :D
Yes, there are statistics, neural networks, genetic algorithms, clustering/distance measures, etc.
:)
:))
I might call it "the best PRACTICAL/APPLIED book on machine learning ever written".
For a more theoretical approach, this book is quite nice: Machine Learning, Tom Mitchell, McGraw Hill, 1997.
( http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom/mlbook.html )
(Btw: great signature.
Listen everyone! What you hear might be a human female, quietly lurking at Slashdot.
:P :P :P
Sshhhhhhh..
It's a rare sound that is hard to detect, be quiet!
You're definitely not the only one. First thing I did after seeing this news title in the RSS feed was to wonder: is the data secure?!?
http://xkcd.com/87/
> Let me in!
< In Soviet Russia, zone forbids YOU.
> SUdo let me in
< Okay
[ http://xkcd.com/149/ ]
Very nice summary! I own the book and I must say that it's very nice and accessible.
The examples are practical and described quite well, even if ones math skills are not that great.
And the example in Python are almost looking pseudo-code like, even if one has little to no Python skills, the language is not a huge barrier.
5 stars out of 5!
The reviews at amazing are also quite quite good:
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/0596529325/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1_cm_cr_acr_txt?_encoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
23 ratings at this moment, 20x5 stars, 1x4 star, 1x3 star.
I recently heard a nice way to help put these large numbers in perspective.
The following time is the time it would take to pay of the following amounts at a rate of 1 dollar per second:
1 million = 11.57 days
1 billion = 31.71 years
1 trillion = 31,710 years
So at 1 dollar per second, it would take 301,243 years to pay back that 9.5 trillion dollar debt.
That war was lost a long long time ago. The losing party, called 'common sense', is sadly not so common anymore now.
I understand your point, but at this moment right here it's more convenient than saying: go read these books:
DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences by Rick Strassman
Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution by Terence Mckenna
Heavenly Highs: Ayahuasca, Kava-Kava, DMT, and Other Plants of the Gods by Peter Stafford
The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching by Terence Mckenna
True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradis by Terence Mckenna
Instead I give a link to a very nice video from a presentation given by a very very very smart and articulate speaker. And yes, there are also dancing hamsters on the same website..
But in other words, don't generalize a medium. I know that YouTube is not always everything, but well.. would you refuse to read a newspaper just because it mentioned Britney or Paris once?!?
So true, so true.
In fact, one of the most illegal substances, DMT (Dimethyltryptamine), is naturally present in our brain (possibly made in our pineal gland).
It gives amazing effects: "powerful entheogenic experiences including intense visuals, euphoria, even true hallucinations"
It possibly plays a role in dreaming and mystical experiences and it's NOT addictive. On YouTube there are some great videos about this subject, especially those by people like Terence McKenna:
Terence McKenna, Culture is your operating system: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arh_raWjYDM
And you're telling me that it's a trap now that the sharks with lasers have us in their sight??!?
Save thy self!
That's no moon!
(sorry, obligatory..)
In general I tend to agree with your point.
;)
However, I would also like to add that, with IT entering more and more areas of our lives, businesses and technology over the year, an "IT Engineer" is getting more and more cases in which responsibility is also a very important factor.
Examples that come to mind are:
- Guidance software for rocket/Space Shuttle
- Control software for (nuclear) power plants
- Embedded software in e.g. heart monitoring devices/pacemakers
- Banking/stock market systems
- Telecommunication systems (cell phone grids)
etc. etc.
Software is not just running that fancy website with those cute hamsters.
But agreed, these are not the most common things one makes are a 'software engineer'.
In that sense I believer there are software engineers and 'software engineers' so to speak.
Just like Apple, Microsoft should be smart for the following version of Windows. If they want to break with previous versions anyway, they should just pick an existing *nix foundations and write their won GUI on top of that. It would really make the world much better IMHO.
Vista on this processor? not sure if it will run very well.
I mean, this CPU does one calculation at a knuckle-to-fingertip-at-lightspeed-speed pace, while I've recently overheard that the best way to accelerate Vista is actually 9.81 meters per second squared.
I'm confused.
Can anyone compare this with Library of Congress per Shakes?
So true, so true! With "millions of dollars" I'd indeed either outsource the thing almost completely or take the cash and enjoy life. $80K a year.. basically you can stop working.
They feed it through special tubes!
The tubes were leaking!
Tagged: 'noclip'
The first things that came to mind when I read "Virgin America Uses Linux to Entertain Inflight" were:
:S
"So they are holding an install party?"
and
"Hackers on a plane!"
Time to wake up and get some coffee.
YouTube linkage of Top Gear episode:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hEZc4JMMsk
Also, check the _insane_ acceleration of this car.
150 to 280 km/h in 6 seconds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIdghsUFcXo
Which is a part out of 'Flat out in a Bugatti Veyron':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddBrgMHrg7E
It's an amazing piece of engineering. Let's not forget that F1 cars have a complete engineering team present to swap engine, tires and transmission $frequently, while this car has to handle the power and last more than a few hours.
Doesn't every cube worker know that there's a wide range of special products for 'cube warfare' available?
http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/warfare/