because architecture is about creating buildings, which by definition need to have an inside and an outside [...]. Whereas a sculpture has no such constraints
Which is why you can make a sculpture of a Klein bottle, while you cannot e.g. make a building of one...
It's barely argued at all. His line seems to be:
A lot of people don't value freedom of software that much, therefore anyone who does should stop.
No, the way I interpret the article, his line is: "we should stop pretending free software can be a full replacement for commercial software".
While I do not agree completely, he has a point. Maybe free software offers you whatever forms of freedom (these have been discussed enough), but they are frequently less user-friendly. Some are a true replacement, but not all, imho. This need be no surprise because commercial software needs to appeal to the user to defeat the competition. Free software needs not, people write it because they want to.
Electromagnetical phenomena travel at the speed of light, which is equal to 1/sqrt((epsilon x mu)), with epsilon and mu material constants of the surrounding material. In vacuum (and approx also air) this is 3e8m/s. To compare other material parameters an epsilon_r and mu_r are defined, relative to those of vacuum.
Most other materials have a mu_r=1 (except ferrites etc), but an eps_r which can be very different. For silicon this eps_r is about 12, therefore the speed of light/electrical signals in silicon is sqrt(12)=3.5 times lower than in air.
When the distance traveled becomes of the order of magnetude of the wavelength things can become problematic. For a 3GHz processor this is about 3.10^8/3.10^9/3.5=0.03m, or 3 cms. This effect will soon start to play. Another problem would be race conditions, i.e. different signals should moreless take equally long to reach their destination or you get into trouble. All of this a bit intuitive, hope anyone will correct possible mistakes, I am no expert in semiconductor technology...
If you just want a radio station in your home it would seem to make more sense to use a Carrier Current transmitter.
Indeed, but probably his goal was to use it outside too. For in-house applications you can use the same technology as used by (unlicensed) wireless headphones and the like.
What I don't really understand is why this is news? Maybe FM transmitters are cool for your average geek, but any self-respecting HAM should know how to build one, be it from a kit or own design. And so far I assumed every HAM also knew not to do it because it is illegal (i.e.: not covered by the amateur license). What is new about this?
Also, your math is wrong. Omnidirectional signals degrade with distance cubed, not squared
No way! Onmi signals (power) decay with distance squared. Field strength decays linear with distance.
and focused linear signals don't degrade at all, in theory (think perfect laser). In practice of course perfectly focused signals are impossible. Also obstacles in the signal's path (such as the atmosphere) degrade the signal, but not necessarily with a simple polynomial function of distance.
I have the feeling you don't know what you are talking about. 'Focused signals' do not exist at large distances. Any radiating structure (a dipole, a dish, a laser... anything) may have a well contained near field, but at a large distance all of them follow the square law. This 'perfect laser' doesn't exist, even not in theory. Just try to imagine what would happen at the edges of the beam. In practice a laser beam (aka gaussian beam) has a gaussian profile, and a gaussial far field.
Admittedly, 'a large distance' is somewhat vague, but clearly after 20 miles (as in the example) you are in the far field. The GP was completely correct about the example, and 'better results' means a better receiver, as it is able to pick weaker signals out of the noise. Miles/watt is indeed a crappy unit, afaik.
You are probably right about the Voyager using less power per mile (in so far that unit makes sense anyway), but a big difference is the noise. Space is rather cold. When listening to space ships, with these gigantic parabolic dishes, you pick up little noise so the signals can be very weak. Here on earth there is a lot of man-made noise (depending on the frequency you are using) and also thermal background noise because the earth is hot compared to space. (I wrote a fairly easy to grasp article on this topic)
... oh dear now everybody knows what cool phones we will se selling shortly. Oh my, maybe they even delay the purchase of a new phone to get one of our cool ones. And these may not even include all the features that are mentioned in the powerpoint slides, because hey, they are unofficial. WE never released these, they were stolen. Oh my lord, all this free advertising we now get, it isn't fair...
In the Challenger accident (1986) there was no problem with the tiles. The main investigator of this accident was no less than Feymnan himself. He traced the problem back to an O-ring (gasket) that became too brittle due to the extreme cold. All of this is described very nicely in part two of his autobiography What Do You Care What Other People Think?.
Really guys, we know EVERYBODY likes pizza. But to go saying that pizza's are more likely to be stolen than laptops (like 1/2 of the current posters do) is something I highly doubt. In dorms, at the univ, wherever...
And anyway, no-one said you should leave your laptop unattended when it is inside this pizza box. Where I live people don't break into cars to steal pizza boxes, but they _do_ to steal laptops.
If Jeb gets very low and doesn't like his chances, he could try his damndest to pull up and clear the cliff edge, giving him another chance to release his parachute.
The way I interpreted the article: he doesn't have a parachute. So first time right...
But that begs the question: why can't I get fullspeed (10Mbps) to my neighbor, if we are both on the same ISP? I can understand this peering argument to have merit when you're crossing ISP borders, but why doesn't the ISP let me get the full benefit of the technology to people in the same subnet?
Why are you so sure this is technologically possible? I can imagine the upstream bandwidth is limited by design because thie meets market demand. This is the case for e.g. DSL too.
Instead of having one ULTIMATE explanation, which the original author 'restores' continuously, we could have 'alternative' pages for each topic.
Readers would be able to rate these (like on Amazon 'was this review useful to you?'). When you search for an item, only the top three or so would be shown, with a link to see all of them.
Imho this would NOT lead to an abundancy of pages, because for non-controversial topics no-one would be urged to give an alternative explation for e.g. 'DNA base pairs'. For controversial topics, alternative viewpoints would exist next to each other, instead of intertwining and damaging each other.
I can imagine people love their 'wikibaby' so much, and try to restore it every time, but hopefully no-one would go so far as to intentionally destroy others work for the sake of it (e.g. to decrase its rating). Besides, destroying others' work is also possible today.
First, crystals are excellent oscillators. If you apply a small enough metal oxide to them, you can also make semiconductors. Sugar makes excellent crystals. I've not tried, but I can't see any obvious reason why you couldn't make a sugar-based transistor.
Actually, I don't think crystal oscillators are in the critical path of making computers from candy. They offer a high resonant frequency and good enough stability, but you could as well run a PC from an LC-oscillator. Yes, one cycle may be longer than another, but that's not critical.
You have no obvious reason why you couldn't make a sugar-based transistor? Well transistors are made from semiconducting material. I am no materials specialist, but I highly doublt sugar is a semiconductor. And even if a small FET-operation would be detectable by applying a gate, I doubt it would be capable of amplification - the first requirement for making your crystal oscillator run.
Moreover, because of the low conductivity I attribute to confectionary, you cannot even make the wiring. Let alone complex circuits. A nice idea, but no-go, as far as I know.
BTW, this Bourbaki guy is very interesting. Especially since he is not a real person. It was just a joke invented by a group of famous mathematicians. Under this name they wrote a number of very good books on methematics. A Wikipedia link.
Z
Seriously: what else would you have liked instead?
on
Prime Obsession
·
· Score: 1
... if you don't know (immediately), how can you expect them to know?
Can you please read my post again... the part about "Hollywood History of the World" in particular. I was referring to how in almost every Hollywood movie, the Americans are there to save the day/make the sacrifice. The major hollywood movie about Enigma wasn't about the Poles or Bletchley park, but a US submarine.
Ok, in that case, please accept my apologies. I interpreted you statement as "You should not believe what Hollywood movies say [assuming they give credit to Turing], because actually the Americans cracked the Enigma". I have only read books on the topic, never saw the movie you're referring to. I should have known better than to think the Polish, French and Brittish contributions could not be overshadowed in any such movie... Naive indeed.
That is twice now they hav saved Europe's ass. Being the first to break the German's Enigma machine and now this.
Double-check your Hollywood History of the World, dude. You'll find it was a bunch of Americans.
Look who's talking. It was a Polish guy named Rejewski who first cracked it (partly). Other countries (including Germany) tought it was impossible, so they didn't even try. Rejewski's breaktrough was not enough, tough, and Poland cooperated with the French, who had inside information from a German traitor, called Thillo-Schmidt. After this they cooperated with the English, Bletchley park, Turing etc.
I may have some details wrong here, but NO WAY the Americans cracked the Enigma. I would inform myself better before making such claims at others. Read 'The Code book' by Simon Singh, or any other book covering the history of the cracking of the enigma. Read the above posts. In case YOU are right, at least you're the only one who knows.
You may even discover something that gives you insight into the inner workings of a dearly departed. Something that they had not the strength to disclose to you in life, or perhaps that they did not think worth mentioning
or perhaps that you don't need or want to know. If they really wanted you to know, they would better not rely on technology, but 'plant' a diary for you to find.
[Farmers] just check the date on their calendar that is painted on the wall (painted, since it remains identical from year to year), and then they check what the Gregorian Date is, to see if it is planting day yet. The Gregorian Calendar does not cease to exist, it just isn't ordinarily used. Except by hicks.
In other words: introduce a new calendar and try to calculate the old date to know what time it is. I also fail to understand why people would appreciate to go to work on other hours, depending on where they live (because the time is the same everywhere on the planet). With all due respect: a joke gotten out of hand, of which the creator should have realised it is ridiculous. Alternative is NOT always better. The only ones this idea is good for (as parent pointed out) is for computers, who ironically are also best at recalculating dates...
The wavelength of cell phones frequencies are of the order of magnitude of 10-30 cm in vacuum. In any other material, they are lower (by reasonable factors, depending on the material, e.g. 3).
Now I am not saying there cannot possibly be any bad effect, but I would be highly surprised if these waves brought DNA (very small, microns or so?) into resonance.
Optical frequencies are orders of magnitude away from cell phone frequencies, UV even more.
What are the car 'radars' that Dr. English speaks of? As far as I know, radar (and laser) detectors don't broadcast anything, they simply detect certain frequencies.
What you are talking about are speedgun detectors, I assume (not sure, because here in Europe they are not very popular)?. The radars in the article are probably collision avoidance radars. The real stuff, transmitting and receiving signals to detect cars in front (slowing down). For my master's thesis I made an antenna for such a system operating at 26GHz.
Some guys like Windows. They like its interface. But like RMS, they demand freedom. Freedom, you know? In this world of the business-friendly "Open Source" movement, people seem to have forgotten this concept, the concept that motivated hackers to create a free UNIX in the first place.
My experience is that a lot of linux users also have an (illegal) copy of Windows. "So why would you need an OSS replacement for windows? It is already there". They do not realise that this is stealing. Even from yout worst enemy, be it M$ or someone else, stealing is wrong. Wine and ReactOS offer a legal alternative. And a cool one.
When you want something: either pay for it, or be happy someone gives you something because they like to. And don't tell these people what to do: they owe you nothing
For my money [...] they could just stick to blocks and maybe some other robot enabling componentry.
Maybe the problem is their stuff is built to last. Parents give their old sets to their kids (and buy them some new ones, of course, but only a few). After some generations, families are saturated with the 'classic' LEGO stuff. Maybe they make all these theme packs, games etc to revive interest in an otherwise saturated market.
Slashdot Mirror
because architecture is about creating buildings, which by definition need to have an inside and an outside [...]. Whereas a sculpture has no such constraints
Which is why you can make a sculpture of a Klein bottle, while you cannot e.g. make a building of one...
A lot of people don't value freedom of software that much, therefore anyone who does should stop.
No, the way I interpret the article, his line is: "we should stop pretending free software can be a full replacement for commercial software".
While I do not agree completely, he has a point. Maybe free software offers you whatever forms of freedom (these have been discussed enough), but they are frequently less user-friendly. Some are a true replacement, but not all, imho. This need be no surprise because commercial software needs to appeal to the user to defeat the competition. Free software needs not, people write it because they want to.
Z
In vacuum (and approx also air) this is 3e8m/s. To compare other material parameters an epsilon_r and mu_r are defined, relative to those of vacuum.
Most other materials have a mu_r=1 (except ferrites etc), but an eps_r which can be very different. For silicon this eps_r is about 12, therefore the speed of light/electrical signals in silicon is sqrt(12)=3.5 times lower than in air.
When the distance traveled becomes of the order of magnetude of the wavelength things can become problematic. For a 3GHz processor this is about 3.10^8/3.10^9/3.5=0.03m, or 3 cms. This effect will soon start to play. Another problem would be race conditions, i.e. different signals should moreless take equally long to reach their destination or you get into trouble.
All of this a bit intuitive, hope anyone will correct possible mistakes, I am no expert in semiconductor technology...
Z
If you just want a radio station in your home it would seem to make more sense to use a Carrier Current transmitter.
Indeed, but probably his goal was to use it outside too. For in-house applications you can use the same technology as used by (unlicensed) wireless headphones and the like.
What I don't really understand is why this is news? Maybe FM transmitters are cool for your average geek, but any self-respecting HAM should know how to build one, be it from a kit or own design. And so far I assumed every HAM also knew not to do it because it is illegal (i.e.: not covered by the amateur license).
What is new about this?
Z
Who needs the Red Scare when you can have the Blue SOD?..
Also, your math is wrong. Omnidirectional signals degrade with distance cubed, not squared
No way! Onmi signals (power) decay with distance squared. Field strength decays linear with distance.
and focused linear signals don't degrade at all, in theory (think perfect laser). In practice of course perfectly focused signals are impossible. Also obstacles in the signal's path (such as the atmosphere) degrade the signal, but not necessarily with a simple polynomial function of distance.
I have the feeling you don't know what you are talking about. 'Focused signals' do not exist at large distances. Any radiating structure (a dipole, a dish, a laser... anything) may have a well contained near field, but at a large distance all of them follow the square law. This 'perfect laser' doesn't exist, even not in theory. Just try to imagine what would happen at the edges of the beam. In practice a laser beam (aka gaussian beam) has a gaussian profile, and a gaussial far field. Admittedly, 'a large distance' is somewhat vague, but clearly after 20 miles (as in the example) you are in the far field.
The GP was completely correct about the example, and 'better results' means a better receiver, as it is able to pick weaker signals out of the noise. Miles/watt is indeed a crappy unit, afaik.
Z
You are probably right about the Voyager using less power per mile (in so far that unit makes sense anyway), but a big difference is the noise.
Space is rather cold. When listening to space ships, with these gigantic parabolic dishes, you pick up little noise so the signals can be very weak. Here on earth there is a lot of man-made noise (depending on the frequency you are using) and also thermal background noise because the earth is hot compared to space. (I wrote a fairly easy to grasp article on this topic)
I am still impressed bij this guy.
Z
... oh dear now everybody knows what cool phones we will se selling shortly. Oh my, maybe they even delay the purchase of a new phone to get one of our cool ones. And these may not even include all the features that are mentioned in the powerpoint slides, because hey, they are unofficial. WE never released these, they were stolen. Oh my lord, all this free advertising we now get, it isn't fair...
In the Challenger accident (1986) there was no problem with the tiles. The main investigator of this accident was no less than Feymnan himself. He traced the problem back to an O-ring (gasket) that became too brittle due to the extreme cold. All of this is described very nicely in part two of his autobiography What Do You Care What Other People Think?.
Z
Really guys, we know EVERYBODY likes pizza. But to go saying that pizza's are more likely to be stolen than laptops (like 1/2 of the current posters do) is something I highly doubt. In dorms, at the univ, wherever...
And anyway, no-one said you should leave your laptop unattended when it is inside this pizza box. Where I live people don't break into cars to steal pizza boxes, but they _do_ to steal laptops.
Z
If Jeb gets very low and doesn't like his chances, he could try his damndest to pull up and clear the cliff edge, giving him another chance to release his parachute.
The way I interpreted the article: he doesn't have a parachute. So first time right...
Z
But that begs the question: why can't I get fullspeed (10Mbps) to my neighbor, if we are both on the same ISP? I can understand this peering argument to have merit when you're crossing ISP borders, but why doesn't the ISP let me get the full benefit of the technology to people in the same subnet?
Why are you so sure this is technologically possible? I can imagine the upstream bandwidth is limited by design because thie meets market demand. This is the case for e.g. DSL too.
Z
Instead of having one ULTIMATE explanation, which the original author 'restores' continuously, we could have 'alternative' pages for each topic.
Readers would be able to rate these (like on Amazon 'was this review useful to you?'). When you search for an item, only the top three or so would be shown, with a link to see all of them.
Imho this would NOT lead to an abundancy of pages, because for non-controversial topics no-one would be urged to give an alternative explation for e.g. 'DNA base pairs'. For controversial topics, alternative viewpoints would exist next to each other, instead of intertwining and damaging each other. I can imagine people love their 'wikibaby' so much, and try to restore it every time, but hopefully no-one would go so far as to intentionally destroy others work for the sake of it (e.g. to decrase its rating). Besides, destroying others' work is also possible today.
Z
First, crystals are excellent oscillators. If you apply a small enough metal oxide to them, you can also make semiconductors. Sugar makes excellent crystals. I've not tried, but I can't see any obvious reason why you couldn't make a sugar-based transistor.
Actually, I don't think crystal oscillators are in the critical path of making computers from candy. They offer a high resonant frequency and good enough stability, but you could as well run a PC from an LC-oscillator. Yes, one cycle may be longer than another, but that's not critical.
You have no obvious reason why you couldn't make a sugar-based transistor? Well transistors are made from semiconducting material. I am no materials specialist, but I highly doublt sugar is a semiconductor. And even if a small FET-operation would be detectable by applying a gate, I doubt it would be capable of amplification - the first requirement for making your crystal oscillator run.
Moreover, because of the low conductivity I attribute to confectionary, you cannot even make the wiring. Let alone complex circuits. A nice idea, but no-go, as far as I know.
Z
BTW, this Bourbaki guy is very interesting. Especially since he is not a real person. It was just a joke invented by a group of famous mathematicians. Under this name they wrote a number of very good books on methematics. A Wikipedia link.
Z
... if you don't know (immediately), how can you expect them to know?
Z
Can you please read my post again... the part about "Hollywood History of the World" in particular. I was referring to how in almost every Hollywood movie, the Americans are there to save the day/make the sacrifice. The major hollywood movie about Enigma wasn't about the Poles or Bletchley park, but a US submarine.
Ok, in that case, please accept my apologies. I interpreted you statement as "You should not believe what Hollywood movies say [assuming they give credit to Turing], because actually the Americans cracked the Enigma".
I have only read books on the topic, never saw the movie you're referring to. I should have known better than to think the Polish, French and Brittish contributions could not be overshadowed in any such movie... Naive indeed.
Z
That is twice now they hav saved Europe's ass. Being the first to break the German's Enigma machine and now this.
Double-check your Hollywood History of the World, dude. You'll find it was a bunch of Americans.
Look who's talking.
It was a Polish guy named Rejewski who first cracked it (partly). Other countries (including Germany) tought it was impossible, so they didn't even try. Rejewski's breaktrough was not enough, tough, and Poland cooperated with the French, who had inside information from a German traitor, called Thillo-Schmidt. After this they cooperated with the English, Bletchley park, Turing etc.
I may have some details wrong here, but NO WAY the Americans cracked the Enigma. I would inform myself better before making such claims at others. Read 'The Code book' by Simon Singh, or any other book covering the history of the cracking of the enigma. Read the above posts. In case YOU are right, at least you're the only one who knows.
Z
You may even discover something that gives you insight into the inner workings of a dearly departed. Something that they had not the strength to disclose to you in life, or perhaps that they did not think worth mentioning
or perhaps that you don't need or want to know.
If they really wanted you to know, they would better not rely on technology, but 'plant' a diary for you to find.
Z
[Farmers] just check the date on their calendar that is painted on the wall (painted, since it remains identical from year to year), and then they check what the Gregorian Date is, to see if it is planting day yet. The Gregorian Calendar does not cease to exist, it just isn't ordinarily used. Except by hicks.
In other words: introduce a new calendar and try to calculate the old date to know what time it is. I also fail to understand why people would appreciate to go to work on other hours, depending on where they live (because the time is the same everywhere on the planet). With all due respect: a joke gotten out of hand, of which the creator should have realised it is ridiculous. Alternative is NOT always better. The only ones this idea is good for (as parent pointed out) is for computers, who ironically are also best at recalculating dates...
Z
The wavelength of cell phones frequencies are of the order of magnitude of 10-30 cm in vacuum. In any other material, they are lower (by reasonable factors, depending on the material, e.g. 3). Now I am not saying there cannot possibly be any bad effect, but I would be highly surprised if these waves brought DNA (very small, microns or so?) into resonance.
Optical frequencies are orders of magnitude away from cell phone frequencies, UV even more.
Z (didn't read TFA)
Does this mean the "make configure" checks will be shorter, because stuff if standardized? Or where will this be visible for end-users?
Z
What are the car 'radars' that Dr. English speaks of? As far as I know, radar (and laser) detectors don't broadcast anything, they simply detect certain frequencies.
What you are talking about are speedgun detectors, I assume (not sure, because here in Europe they are not very popular)?. The radars in the article are probably collision avoidance radars. The real stuff, transmitting and receiving signals to detect cars in front (slowing down). For my master's thesis I made an antenna for such a system operating at 26GHz.
Z
Some guys like Windows. They like its interface. But like RMS, they demand freedom. Freedom, you know? In this world of the business-friendly "Open Source" movement, people seem to have forgotten this concept, the concept that motivated hackers to create a free UNIX in the first place.
My experience is that a lot of linux users also have an (illegal) copy of Windows. "So why would you need an OSS replacement for windows? It is already there". They do not realise that this is stealing. Even from yout worst enemy, be it M$ or someone else, stealing is wrong. Wine and ReactOS offer a legal alternative. And a cool one. When you want something: either pay for it, or be happy someone gives you something because they like to. And don't tell these people what to do: they owe you nothing
Z
For my money [...] they could just stick to blocks and maybe some other robot enabling componentry.
Maybe the problem is their stuff is built to last.
Parents give their old sets to their kids (and buy them some new ones, of course, but only a few). After some generations, families are saturated with the 'classic' LEGO stuff. Maybe they make all these theme packs, games etc to revive interest in an otherwise saturated market.