This may sound stupid, but since the surface area of a disk increases with the square of the radius, increasing the radius of a CD only slightly has a huge impact on capacity... Quick back-of-the-envelope calculation:
120 mm disk: 11304mm^2 - 1625mm^2 hole = 9679mm^2 Your average CD or DVD
130 mm disk: 13266mm^2 - 1625mm^2 hole = 11641mm^2
Difference: 20.3%
140 mm disk: 15386mm^2 - 1625mm^2 hole = 13761mm^2
Difference: 42.7%
That still fits in a 5.25" bay. Add multiple layers for added effect.
I've got a Mac SE/30 in my closet. That's a 16MHz 68030 processor with 1MB RAM and 40MB HD. It runs Word 5.1 (the best version of word, IMHO) impeccably. It's even quite snappy at what it does.
A 68030 system with the above specs can surely be built for less than 50$. As a web terminal it's decent (albeit not so quick) but the 68K line is much faster now than it was 16 years ago. A sub-200$ laptop is a real possibility in the hardware department, all we need are coders willing to take the time to optimize their code for specific hardware. Unfortunately, in many places, they don't even take the time to teach assembler to CS students anymore.
My problem does not really come from p2p. I couldn't give two diddly squats about the latest Britney Spears or Eminem album. The problem comes from the following:
I have to pay a levy to copy my own CDs onto my iPod? Which is what's happening as it is, since all the music I have on my iPod was ripped from my collection. What about those blank CD's and DVDs that I do my data backups on?
I guess I'll just have to start borrowing CDs from friends and ripping them to get my money's worth.
Don't subscribe to Videotron, because they don't give a shit about my rights.
No kidding! That's why I switched to DSL. One of their silly "can't do that" rules: You can't use a router at home. Woops. That means I can't use Airport? Screw them, I said;)
I know, you can still plug in a router and they wouldn't notice, but it's a pain when you have to call support and they tell you to do this and that on your computer, etc when you're just calling to say their service is down. Actually, at one point in time, I had a desktop and laptop, and would swap the ethernet cable from one to another, no router. Got a call. "Hey you can't do that!" Apparently you're only licensed to plug the modem to ONE computer.
I paid a 25$ levy on my iPod because it was assumed that I pirate music. This money was supposedly sent to the artists, to compensate them. My iPod is full of CDs I own and ripped myself.
We have to pay double or even triple the price on our CD/DVD media because it is assumed that we pirate music. Again, this music is sent to the artists. Most of the stuff I burn is my own personal data.
So. The artists get paid, and the music swappers get sued. Where does the money go? With all these 'taxes' you would think it would be legal to download music. If it is not, then can I get my 25$ levy and the difference in recordable media prices back?
No it's not just you. Optical storage had the largest capacities of their time. They were also VERY expensive and VERY slow (that is, for R/W media) and most of them came in cartridges. Because they were so slow, these disks were only convenient for archiving.
I guess it all depends on the amount of work that goes into it. A simple "wrapper" to all the APIs can be built in 2 days (Apple did a demo of this at WWDC last year). I wouldn't expect someone to charge for this. But for more full-featured apps, I can see two things happening:
1. Some lone guy builds an app in his free time, and charges a few bucks for it. 2. Someone starts a Sourceforge project and gets a small team involved... 4-5 developers could build something outstanding in very little time (individually).
Personally I don't mind any of the alternatives, but from my experience, the 'open' projects are more stable because they don't rely on the mood of a single person.
True. And the conversion from mains to 5 or 12V could be much more efficient if the transformers used to convert the voltages had 0 resistance;)
And they could be much smaller.
Heck, you could fit your 120-to-5V transformer _inside_ your appliance;) or in the plug of your power cable... Or power bar. Or PSU in your computer.
Mix this with that battery that can charge in a minute from a few weeks back, and you have cars/iPods/Laptops that plug directly into the wall, charge instantly and don't heat up;) Speaking of which, since a lot of home fires are caused by a short that causes the electrical wires to heat up and burn through, a home wired with these would nearly eliminate the problem.
Zero-resistance is the holy grail of electrical systems. I really hope they can do it!
More efficient production too
on
Quantum Wires
·
· Score: 1
That, and it means that electromagnetic coils can be made much more efficient, thus increasing the power output of turbines for the same mechanical power input... That is, of course, if these nanotubes have the same properties as a metal wire, and can be rolled up into a coil;)
Re:EMR from high tension power lines?
on
Quantum Wires
·
· Score: 4, Informative
At same voltage and current, the electromagnetic radiation should stay the same. The advantage of reduced resistance though come in two points:
1. Lower losses in cables, so less power needs to be transmitted 2. Lower resistance means we can pump more power into them. This becomes handy in electromagnetics (example: maglev trains). Less energy is wasted in heat, and less cooling is required.
Re:CoreImage/CoreVideo/CoreData/QuickTime/Sync
on
Tiger's 200 New Features
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The image units are really cool indeed. Not only will there be a standard for "filters" built into the OS, but every app will be able to use them (including AdobeCS, iPhoto, Office, etc) But where it becomes interesting is in the freeware domain. These image units greatly level the playing field. It will become excessively easy to build an image manipulation app in Cocoa that not only uses all these same filters (+ the third party ones) but also uses the hardware to its full potential (i.e. GPU-accelerated filters). Adobe will face some serious competition (specially if we look at PS Elements). I can also see The Gimp having a hard time competing on the Mac without some serious remodeling of their design philosophy.
In all, these new APIs will make it A LOT easier for the next killer-app(s) to be developed on OSX. And that, to me, is the biggest feature of Tiger.
Burn CDs or DVDs. Burners are very CPU sensitive. I've burned a DVDs before now, absent mindedly launched something like OpenOffice, and discovered the act has turned the DVD into an expensive coaster because the buffer was emptied.
I burn 8x DVDs on a single G4/466MHz system (using OSX) and never once have I burned a coaster because of system lag. In general, I'll feel the _other_ apps slow down if I'm taxing my computer too much; the burning always has the highest priority. I don't know if it's your OS or if OOo can actually lock the kernel out of working properly, but even when transcoding 11 videos to mpeg2 (avg CPU load of 13.xx in 'top') my burning has never skipped a bit.
Actually, ever since OSX has had burning capabilities built-in, we've been able to place a 'burn' button in finder windows. Don't know what they're referring to here.
Perhaps it's to program a dynamic-contents (a.k.a. spotlight-generated) folder to have that button while other folders don't?
Unfortunately, the lower the voltage, the higher the amperage you need to obtain the same wattage. P=V*I.
The problem becomes greater when you have resistance involved (such as your home wiring). P=R*I^2 which means that as the current increases, your wasted power increases by a power of 2. So for the example of your iBook, which probably takes about 75 watts in the worst case would require 6amps at 12V. Say you have a 1ohm resistance in the cabling between your 12V source and your iBook, you'll be wasting P=1*36=36 watts in heat in the cable alone. Which will increase the heat of your cable. Thus increasing its resistance even more. This is also the reason why power transmission lines use thousands of volts to transmit current to your home, and only there is it converted to 110/220
So while it would be nice to do without power bricks, it's just not feasible with our relatively high power requirements.
Actually I was at a movie theatre the other day and they had LED spotlights. they were computer controlled (red, green, blue and motion) and were very bright. Blinding even. Now I wouldn't illuminate a room with this, but for parties or disco nights, it would be great;)
In fact, it would go really well with that LED Disco dance floor from the article the other day...
That's 65 stations, on three lines and a half. Working pretty well, too. Mind you, I wouldn't go as fall as calling it 21st century technology just yet. I'll wait for 'pilot'-less full-blown, 24/7 underground mag-lev systems before commenting on that....
Here in Montreal, we've had a computerized subway system since 1969. Considering its safety record to date, I would say that there's a lot of precedent for computer-controlled transit, and that the "gadgetry" works.
As for the above posts: Yes, we only have a single "conductor". All he does is close the doors, and handles emergencies if there are any. There is generally only one or two 'gates' to any given metro station, while many entrances lead to them. Once you're in the subway system, it is assumed that you've paid your fare and that you may freely transfer from one line onto another.
Having done a research project on our subway system, the conclusion we came to was that most accidents were caused by human intervention. When the tracks are properly maintained (and they are), and barring any suicide attempts or medical emergencies, they are really reliable. All modern subway systems should be automated;)
I hear you. Last summer, my coin jar was overflowing so I decided to roll some change to bring it to the bank. I think I had nearly 150 bucks in there! These days, I routinely fill my wallet with 2-3 coins of each type, so every time I get to pay 2$ and 33 cents, it's that much less change in the jar;)
That, and I often swap some coins with my family when they need change for parkmeters or photocopies. And yet my jar is still full.
Yeah... In Canada, the 1$ bills have been taken out of circulation probably over a decade ago, and the 2$ bills were replaced maybe in '98-'99... Both were replaced by large coins, making everybody's pockets MUCH heavier... Odds are the clerk at the store was too young to remember even seeing those bills.
Or couldn't they build the equivalent of buffers to repeat the signal at defined intervals? Heck even if it slows down the signal propagation by 3 or 4, the increased speed in general would probably be worth it...
Slashdot Mirror
This may sound stupid, but since the surface area of a disk increases with the square of the radius, increasing the radius of a CD only slightly has a huge impact on capacity... Quick back-of-the-envelope calculation:
120 mm disk: 11304mm^2 - 1625mm^2 hole = 9679mm^2 Your average CD or DVD
130 mm disk: 13266mm^2 - 1625mm^2 hole = 11641mm^2 Difference: 20.3%
140 mm disk: 15386mm^2 - 1625mm^2 hole = 13761mm^2 Difference: 42.7%
That still fits in a 5.25" bay. Add multiple layers for added effect.
I've got a Mac SE/30 in my closet. That's a 16MHz 68030 processor with 1MB RAM and 40MB HD. It runs Word 5.1 (the best version of word, IMHO) impeccably. It's even quite snappy at what it does.
A 68030 system with the above specs can surely be built for less than 50$. As a web terminal it's decent (albeit not so quick) but the 68K line is much faster now than it was 16 years ago. A sub-200$ laptop is a real possibility in the hardware department, all we need are coders willing to take the time to optimize their code for specific hardware. Unfortunately, in many places, they don't even take the time to teach assembler to CS students anymore.
If Apple turned the 12" PB or iBook into a table, that would rock.
They already have. They call it a 17" PowerBook.
And how about building 3- or 4-story houses? ;)
At least allow for a backyard and some greenery...
Now I wouldn't want to imagine taking the bus during rush hour...
My problem does not really come from p2p. I couldn't give two diddly squats about the latest Britney Spears or Eminem album. The problem comes from the following:
I have to pay a levy to copy my own CDs onto my iPod? Which is what's happening as it is, since all the music I have on my iPod was ripped from my collection. What about those blank CD's and DVDs that I do my data backups on?
I guess I'll just have to start borrowing CDs from friends and ripping them to get my money's worth.
Don't subscribe to Videotron, because they don't give a shit about my rights.
;)
No kidding! That's why I switched to DSL. One of their silly "can't do that" rules: You can't use a router at home. Woops. That means I can't use Airport? Screw them, I said
I know, you can still plug in a router and they wouldn't notice, but it's a pain when you have to call support and they tell you to do this and that on your computer, etc when you're just calling to say their service is down. Actually, at one point in time, I had a desktop and laptop, and would swap the ethernet cable from one to another, no router. Got a call. "Hey you can't do that!" Apparently you're only licensed to plug the modem to ONE computer.
okay? let me get this straight:
I paid a 25$ levy on my iPod because it was assumed that I pirate music. This money was supposedly sent to the artists, to compensate them. My iPod is full of CDs I own and ripped myself.
We have to pay double or even triple the price on our CD/DVD media because it is assumed that we pirate music. Again, this music is sent to the artists. Most of the stuff I burn is my own personal data.
So. The artists get paid, and the music swappers get sued. Where does the money go? With all these 'taxes' you would think it would be legal to download music. If it is not, then can I get my 25$ levy and the difference in recordable media prices back?
No it's not just you. Optical storage had the largest capacities of their time. They were also VERY expensive and VERY slow (that is, for R/W media) and most of them came in cartridges.
Because they were so slow, these disks were only convenient for archiving.
I guess it all depends on the amount of work that goes into it. A simple "wrapper" to all the APIs can be built in 2 days (Apple did a demo of this at WWDC last year). I wouldn't expect someone to charge for this. But for more full-featured apps, I can see two things happening:
1. Some lone guy builds an app in his free time, and charges a few bucks for it.
2. Someone starts a Sourceforge project and gets a small team involved... 4-5 developers could build something outstanding in very little time (individually).
Personally I don't mind any of the alternatives, but from my experience, the 'open' projects are more stable because they don't rely on the mood of a single person.
True. And the conversion from mains to 5 or 12V could be much more efficient if the transformers used to convert the voltages had 0 resistance ;)
;) or in the plug of your power cable... Or power bar. Or PSU in your computer.
;)
And they could be much smaller.
Heck, you could fit your 120-to-5V transformer _inside_ your appliance
Mix this with that battery that can charge in a minute from a few weeks back, and you have cars/iPods/Laptops that plug directly into the wall, charge instantly and don't heat up
Speaking of which, since a lot of home fires are caused by a short that causes the electrical wires to heat up and burn through, a home wired with these would nearly eliminate the problem.
Zero-resistance is the holy grail of electrical systems. I really hope they can do it!
That, and it means that electromagnetic coils can be made much more efficient, thus increasing the power output of turbines for the same mechanical power input... That is, of course, if these nanotubes have the same properties as a metal wire, and can be rolled up into a coil ;)
At same voltage and current, the electromagnetic radiation should stay the same. The advantage of reduced resistance though come in two points:
1. Lower losses in cables, so less power needs to be transmitted
2. Lower resistance means we can pump more power into them. This becomes handy in electromagnetics (example: maglev trains). Less energy is wasted in heat, and less cooling is required.
The image units are really cool indeed. Not only will there be a standard for "filters" built into the OS, but every app will be able to use them (including AdobeCS, iPhoto, Office, etc)
But where it becomes interesting is in the freeware domain. These image units greatly level the playing field. It will become excessively easy to build an image manipulation app in Cocoa that not only uses all these same filters (+ the third party ones) but also uses the hardware to its full potential (i.e. GPU-accelerated filters). Adobe will face some serious competition (specially if we look at PS Elements). I can also see The Gimp having a hard time competing on the Mac without some serious remodeling of their design philosophy.
In all, these new APIs will make it A LOT easier for the next killer-app(s) to be developed on OSX. And that, to me, is the biggest feature of Tiger.
Burn CDs or DVDs. Burners are very CPU sensitive. I've burned a DVDs before now, absent mindedly launched something like OpenOffice, and discovered the act has turned the DVD into an expensive coaster because the buffer was emptied.
I burn 8x DVDs on a single G4/466MHz system (using OSX) and never once have I burned a coaster because of system lag. In general, I'll feel the _other_ apps slow down if I'm taxing my computer too much; the burning always has the highest priority.
I don't know if it's your OS or if OOo can actually lock the kernel out of working properly, but even when transcoding 11 videos to mpeg2 (avg CPU load of 13.xx in 'top') my burning has never skipped a bit.
Actually, ever since OSX has had burning capabilities built-in, we've been able to place a 'burn' button in finder windows. Don't know what they're referring to here.
Perhaps it's to program a dynamic-contents (a.k.a. spotlight-generated) folder to have that button while other folders don't?
Unfortunately, the lower the voltage, the higher the amperage you need to obtain the same wattage. P=V*I.
The problem becomes greater when you have resistance involved (such as your home wiring). P=R*I^2 which means that as the current increases, your wasted power increases by a power of 2. So for the example of your iBook, which probably takes about 75 watts in the worst case would require 6amps at 12V. Say you have a 1ohm resistance in the cabling between your 12V source and your iBook, you'll be wasting P=1*36=36 watts in heat in the cable alone. Which will increase the heat of your cable. Thus increasing its resistance even more. This is also the reason why power transmission lines use thousands of volts to transmit current to your home, and only there is it converted to 110/220
So while it would be nice to do without power bricks, it's just not feasible with our relatively high power requirements.
Actually I was at a movie theatre the other day and they had LED spotlights. they were computer controlled (red, green, blue and motion) and were very bright. Blinding even. Now I wouldn't illuminate a room with this, but for parties or disco nights, it would be great ;)
In fact, it would go really well with that LED Disco dance floor from the article the other day...
Heh. We've had our metro line since 1966 ;)
That's 65 stations, on three lines and a half. Working pretty well, too. Mind you, I wouldn't go as fall as calling it 21st century technology just yet. I'll wait for 'pilot'-less full-blown, 24/7 underground mag-lev systems before commenting on that....
Linky
Here in Montreal, we've had a computerized subway system since 1969. Considering its safety record to date, I would say that there's a lot of precedent for computer-controlled transit, and that the "gadgetry" works.
;)
As for the above posts:
Yes, we only have a single "conductor". All he does is close the doors, and handles emergencies if there are any. There is generally only one or two 'gates' to any given metro station, while many entrances lead to them. Once you're in the subway system, it is assumed that you've paid your fare and that you may freely transfer from one line onto another.
Having done a research project on our subway system, the conclusion we came to was that most accidents were caused by human intervention. When the tracks are properly maintained (and they are), and barring any suicide attempts or medical emergencies, they are really reliable. All modern subway systems should be automated
Just my 0.02$ worth...
I'm sorry, but that sounds like a really cheap microphone placed in a shopping mall or train station.
I hear you. Last summer, my coin jar was overflowing so I decided to roll some change to bring it to the bank. I think I had nearly 150 bucks in there! These days, I routinely fill my wallet with 2-3 coins of each type, so every time I get to pay 2$ and 33 cents, it's that much less change in the jar ;)
That, and I often swap some coins with my family when they need change for parkmeters or photocopies. And yet my jar is still full.
Well, my interest was piqued, so I looked up the release dates of our various coins...
Toonie: 1996
Loonie: 1987
So my memory was WAY off base here. We've had our loonies for almost 20 years already!
Source
Yeah I heard about that too. Might as well start carrying coin pouches again, like the good old days ;)
Yeah... In Canada, the 1$ bills have been taken out of circulation probably over a decade ago, and the 2$ bills were replaced maybe in '98-'99...
Both were replaced by large coins, making everybody's pockets MUCH heavier...
Odds are the clerk at the store was too young to remember even seeing those bills.
Or couldn't they build the equivalent of buffers to repeat the signal at defined intervals? Heck even if it slows down the signal propagation by 3 or 4, the increased speed in general would probably be worth it...