The way I understand it (though it's been 6 years since I took thermodynamics) is that temperature is dE/dS (rate of change in energy / rate of change in entropy). If your entropy is constant (like for a single atom?) then T is directly proportional to E and you can use the units interchangeably, like you said.
With this in mind, if you define temperature by the rest energy of a hydrogen atom, then meat thermometers would be a little difficult to figure out, wouldn't they?
Hopefully I'm not too off base here... it's amazing how quickly you lose this stuff when you don't use it every day.;-)
0 degrees - the energy at which a hydrogen atom is at rest. 1 degree would be the energy at which hydrogen is one quantum state higher than rest.
By saying "degrees" I take it you are referring to temperature... but energy is NOT the same thing as temperature, even though they are often linked. I believe you're thinking of something more along the lines of electron-volts (eV). The "volt" is what you'd need to re-define in order to normalize your energy scale with respect to this bound electron.
However, some people might find that saying "the nearest gas station is about 1x10^15 distances away" a tad bit inconvenient. Atoms are pretty "fuzzy" anyway so the only length you can go by is the bohr radius, which is an oversimplification of the actual probalistic structure of a hydrogen atom. But if we want to develop units from the atomic scale, wouldn't it be better to define length as the distance travelled by light in a vacuum during the time it takes hydrogen to "vibrate" once?
As for the hydrogen's rest energy, well that is essentially defined by its mass (times speed of light squared). So maybe it's better to define a hydrogen atom as having a mass unit of 1 and then derive energy from that. Hmmm.... wait a minute, hydrogen is just a proton and an electron. Electrons have negligible mass compared to a proton. Why don't we just call the mass of a proton "1 mass unit," that makes more sense because the proton is even more fundamental than hydrogen. If you think that's the best idea, then you're in luck, because that unit of measure has already been invented! The atomic mass! Well, sort of, since a proton has an atomic mass of 1.0073, and when you add the atomic mass of an electron, you get a value slightly higher than the atomic mass of the whole hydrogen atom... damn it. So really, no matter what you do, it's hard to define units that are completely "fundamental." So might as well just make them in terms of stuff that humans can understand, like feet, stones, and most importantly, imperial pints.
CMM = "Capability Maturity Model." It's a certification like ISO9000 but it's geared toward software development.
Here is a PDF file containing CMM level descriptions and probably more than you needed to know. If you don't like PDF then just search google for "capability maturity model".
The vast majority of software companies aren't even at CMM level 2. My company (a consulting firm) has been puruing CMM level 3 for a year now, and there is a LOT involved, we've had to change a lot of processes-- among them is having a formal QA process. U.S. government generally doesn't consider anybody below CMM level 3 when looking to outsource software... at least for high profile projects.
The article basically said it was good if you lived in a small place such as an apartment or didn't have kids, but if you need to do heavy duty cleaning, the 'bot wasn't gonna repalce your standard vac.
And that would be perfect for me (lazy bachelor that I am) since I could set this thing to vacuum a different large room every day when I leave for work, on a rotation. In theory, the dirt would never build up to the point where I need to do the heavy-duty vacuum--or at least not a FULL run with the big vac. All I'd have to worry about is the stairs occasionally, using my other vac.
Plus, I just want to tell people that my robot does the cleaning-- I mean it's 2002 already. We're officially in The Future now. If only it talked... but I guess the mod scene hasn't begun on this thing yet.
If somebody makes a speech add-on, I'd just make it say "dammit!" every time it bumped into a wall or piece of furniture. And perhaps make R2D2 noises in the mean time.
Almost everybody in the EDI field sort of stumbled their way into it accidentally.:-) I used to be the primary EDI guy where I worked a few years ago, but I haven't touched it since. I think I can still look at an unparsed 850 (X12) transaction set and tell you what's on it without thinking about it, and writing a program to parse all those nested loops is pretty fun. I can probably belch out a 997 FA after chugging a pint of beer. That would impress a very small number of people, unfortunately.
But I also know a lot about PC's (served time doing desktop support) and a little networking.
Dropping the unit would be a method. Hmm, guilty of dropping the unit?
Chances are pretty good that the DMCA will have already been violated by the time the package arrives at your door. "Fra-gi-le... that must be Italian!"
Do we really need more space? Why not a 20,000 rpm spindle? We need SPEED. If we wanted space, we'd just get additional drives.
Standard "correct me if I'm wrong but be nice" disclaimer here...
It seems to me that greater arial density of the data on each platter means that you'd get more data going coming through the pipe on each rotation vs. a smaller capacity drive that has lower data density.
So a 320GB drive would be pumping out more data per rotation than an older 80GB drive-- therefore, a 7200 rpm drive would have faster linear throughput (though not necessarily faster access times) than the 80GB drive.
I don't have any math here to back this up-- but it probably explains why my 80GB Western Digital (with 8MB buffer) outperforms my RAID 0 setup of dual 20GB IBM drives. I don't think it's all from the big cache but I'm getting roughly 50%-100% better real-world throughput out of the single WD drive (measured in the time required to load a bigass wav file into Soundforge). There are probably other factors involved (cpu utilization, crappy RAID drivers, etc) but I think arial density has a lot to do with it.
This also means that the lower-capacity versions of the 320GB drive will be the same speed as the 320 -- they'll have the same arial density, but fewer platters.
I wonder what the arial density (expressed in capacity per platter) would have to be for a 7200rpm drive to reach the theoretical maximum throughput of ATA133? I could figure it out, but I don't really feel like doing math right now.
do these new drives spin the disc really fast or use some kind of multi-write technology? The article didn't mention it (as I can see)
A 40X writer doesn't spin the disc any faster than a single-laser 40X reader would.
I had a kenwood "52X" drive that actually spun the disc at about 16X and had multiple beam pickup... much quieter, very fast, but didn't last very long. Now it's unusable because it gets so hot, and won't read half my CDR's.
But imagine downloading Toy Story 3 or something to your PC... not as a pre-rendered movie, but as a real-time scripted 3D engine with a soundtrack. Run it in whatever resolution you are able to. Use your own camera angles.
Or play a realtime version of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, but walk around the "set" in realtime with the characters or just keep the camera focused on Aki's bizznoobies.
I'm waiting for the amusing day when the graphics card in my machine is more powerful than the 'main' processor.
They already have been, for several years now (otherwise why even bother?) But we're only talking about certain types of operations, which obviously run much faster on specialized processors rather than general-purpose cpu's. But if you use the number of transistors as a basis of comparison, well the R300 has twice as many transistors as a Pentium-4 chip.
When I finally get aDSL next month (via DFITL, new fiber technology from Bellsouth) it'll be fiber to the curb, and then about 50 feet of cat-5 into my house. In theory, the bottleneck in my connection would be my Linksys router... but that's assuming Bellsouth doesn't limit my speed to 1.5Mbps anyway. Unfortunately I think it's capped in the new card they swap into the optical node outside.
It's never failed when recording any channel off of DirecTV satellite.
I don't know if it's the same technology but here's what it does: records the show, and after it's stopped (or powered off by the sat receiver) the VCR travels back through the tape and marks the commercials. It may not be using cue tones, but whatever it is (alien mind-rays?) it's worked perfectly every time I've recorded anything. On UPN, FOX, TLC, WB, ABC, etc.
Not sure about Starband, but I've been investigating DirecPC (DirecWay) and the best way to explain their FAP is the "leaky bucket" analogy.
Basically, a Satellite connection is essentially a 56k connection that's burstable to 350k. OK, it's not really that simple.
You have a water bucket, and you can get water out of it at 350k, but water is only trickling in at 56k. After the bucket is empty, you're only getting data as fast as the bucket is being refilled. If you wait 8 or 9 hours, your bucket is full again. If you use Satellite return, instead of phone-line return stream, your upstream bandwidth also counts toward your FAP.
DirecWay I think has a 180MB "bucket" during peak times. I've also seen DirecWay users, with properly tweaked connections, getting 1.5 megabit or greater download speeds (meaning that FAP will approach quickly!) rather than only 350k.
Go to www.broadbandreports.com and visit the satellite forums. People are constantly posting their current speeds, settings, etc, as well as their thoughts on the service.
True, in the same sense that the dark side of the earth also gets very little sunlight.
It's just that a moon's day is about 28 days long compared to the earth's 24 hours. The same side of the moon always faces earth but it's not always dark. By putting solar collectors on opposite sides of the moon, you guarantee that one will always be in sunlight (except for those pesky lunar eclipses).
Oh, I forgot, the game producers are so afraid of realism that they removed the possibility to crash into buildings, once that was done IRL.
That option is turned off by default in FS2002, but you can easily turn it back on.
Re:We Are Alone - Other Planets are Uninhabitable
on
42 Worlds in 32 Days
·
· Score: 2
Our single moon, and its size create unique seasonal and environmental conditions. There are other rare occurances, which when multiplied together, make alien human life non existent in our Universe.
That's not valid logic. Let me sum up your logic for you:
--There is life on earth (true) --Life on earth was influenced by a number of complex conditions (true) --Therefore, life can only exist on Earth or planets exactly like earth
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. That's like saying "bananas are yellow, and we can eat bananas, therefore nothing in the world is edible unless it is yellow."
In fact, there may be complex conditions at other planets with intelligent life, and if they came to Earth, they'd wonder how life ever formed on earth without the same conditions the aliens had on their planet.
Slashdot Mirror
The way I understand it (though it's been 6 years since I took thermodynamics) is that temperature is dE/dS (rate of change in energy / rate of change in entropy).
;-)
If your entropy is constant (like for a single atom?) then T is directly proportional to E and you can use the units interchangeably, like you said.
With this in mind, if you define temperature by the rest energy of a hydrogen atom, then meat thermometers would be a little difficult to figure out, wouldn't they?
Hopefully I'm not too off base here... it's amazing how quickly you lose this stuff when you don't use it every day.
0 degrees - the energy at which a hydrogen atom is at rest. 1 degree would be the energy at which hydrogen is one quantum state higher than rest.
By saying "degrees" I take it you are referring to temperature... but energy is NOT the same thing as temperature, even though they are often linked. I believe you're thinking of something more along the lines of electron-volts (eV). The "volt" is what you'd need to re-define in order to normalize your energy scale with respect to this bound electron.
However, some people might find that saying "the nearest gas station is about 1x10^15 distances away" a tad bit inconvenient. Atoms are pretty "fuzzy" anyway so the only length you can go by is the bohr radius, which is an oversimplification of the actual probalistic structure of a hydrogen atom. But if we want to develop units from the atomic scale, wouldn't it be better to define length as the distance travelled by light in a vacuum during the time it takes hydrogen to "vibrate" once?
As for the hydrogen's rest energy, well that is essentially defined by its mass (times speed of light squared). So maybe it's better to define a hydrogen atom as having a mass unit of 1 and then derive energy from that.
Hmmm.... wait a minute, hydrogen is just a proton and an electron. Electrons have negligible mass compared to a proton. Why don't we just call the mass of a proton "1 mass unit," that makes more sense because the proton is even more fundamental than hydrogen.
If you think that's the best idea, then you're in luck, because that unit of measure has already been invented! The atomic mass! Well, sort of, since a proton has an atomic mass of 1.0073, and when you add the atomic mass of an electron, you get a value slightly higher than the atomic mass of the whole hydrogen atom... damn it. So really, no matter what you do, it's hard to define units that are completely "fundamental." So might as well just make them in terms of stuff that humans can understand, like feet, stones, and most importantly, imperial pints.
I'm getting lightheaded just reading this thread now.
Put head between knees.... deep breaths....
CMM = "Capability Maturity Model." It's a certification like ISO9000 but it's geared toward software development.
Here is a PDF file containing CMM level descriptions and probably more than you needed to know. If you don't like PDF then just search google for "capability maturity model".
The vast majority of software companies aren't even at CMM level 2. My company (a consulting firm) has been puruing CMM level 3 for a year now, and there is a LOT involved, we've had to change a lot of processes-- among them is having a formal QA process. U.S. government generally doesn't consider anybody below CMM level 3 when looking to outsource software... at least for high profile projects.
He even remarked to one of his students that he had come up with an idea that would, "ensure the domination of German music in the 20th century."
And all we got was Rammstein...
The article basically said it was good if you lived in a small place such as an apartment or didn't have kids, but if you need to do heavy duty cleaning, the 'bot wasn't gonna repalce your standard vac.
And that would be perfect for me (lazy bachelor that I am) since I could set this thing to vacuum a different large room every day when I leave for work, on a rotation. In theory, the dirt would never build up to the point where I need to do the heavy-duty vacuum--or at least not a FULL run with the big vac. All I'd have to worry about is the stairs occasionally, using my other vac.
Plus, I just want to tell people that my robot does the cleaning-- I mean it's 2002 already. We're officially in The Future now. If only it talked... but I guess the mod scene hasn't begun on this thing yet.
If somebody makes a speech add-on, I'd just make it say "dammit!" every time it bumped into a wall or piece of furniture. And perhaps make R2D2 noises in the mean time.
How many EDI people know PC's? Networks?
:-)
Almost everybody in the EDI field sort of stumbled their way into it accidentally.
I used to be the primary EDI guy where I worked a few years ago, but I haven't touched it since. I think I can still look at an unparsed 850 (X12) transaction set and tell you what's on it without thinking about it, and writing a program to parse all those nested loops is pretty fun. I can probably belch out a 997 FA after chugging a pint of beer. That would impress a very small number of people, unfortunately.
But I also know a lot about PC's (served time doing desktop support) and a little networking.
Dropping the unit would be a method. Hmm, guilty of dropping the unit?
Chances are pretty good that the DMCA will have already been violated by the time the package arrives at your door.
"Fra-gi-le... that must be Italian!"
Do we really need more space? Why not a 20,000 rpm spindle? We need SPEED. If we wanted space, we'd just get additional drives.
Standard "correct me if I'm wrong but be nice" disclaimer here...
It seems to me that greater arial density of the data on each platter means that you'd get more data going coming through the pipe on each rotation vs. a smaller capacity drive that has lower data density.
So a 320GB drive would be pumping out more data per rotation than an older 80GB drive-- therefore, a 7200 rpm drive would have faster linear throughput (though not necessarily faster access times) than the 80GB drive.
I don't have any math here to back this up-- but it probably explains why my 80GB Western Digital (with 8MB buffer) outperforms my RAID 0 setup of dual 20GB IBM drives. I don't think it's all from the big cache but I'm getting roughly 50%-100% better real-world throughput out of the single WD drive (measured in the time required to load a bigass wav file into Soundforge). There are probably other factors involved (cpu utilization, crappy RAID drivers, etc) but I think arial density has a lot to do with it.
This also means that the lower-capacity versions of the 320GB drive will be the same speed as the 320 -- they'll have the same arial density, but fewer platters.
I wonder what the arial density (expressed in capacity per platter) would have to be for a 7200rpm drive to reach the theoretical maximum throughput of ATA133? I could figure it out, but I don't really feel like doing math right now.
do these new drives spin the disc really fast or use some kind of multi-write technology? The article didn't mention it (as I can see)
A 40X writer doesn't spin the disc any faster than a single-laser 40X reader would.
I had a kenwood "52X" drive that actually spun the disc at about 16X and had multiple beam pickup... much quieter, very fast, but didn't last very long. Now it's unusable because it gets so hot, and won't read half my CDR's.
But imagine downloading Toy Story 3 or something to your PC... not as a pre-rendered movie, but as a real-time scripted 3D engine with a soundtrack. Run it in whatever resolution you are able to. Use your own camera angles.
Or play a realtime version of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, but walk around the "set" in realtime with the characters or just keep the camera focused on Aki's bizznoobies.
I'm waiting for the amusing day when the graphics card in my machine is more powerful than the 'main' processor.
They already have been, for several years now (otherwise why even bother?)
But we're only talking about certain types of operations, which obviously run much faster on specialized processors rather than general-purpose cpu's. But if you use the number of transistors as a basis of comparison, well the R300 has twice as many transistors as a Pentium-4 chip.
Isn't "available as a freelance blah blah" the same thing as "unemployed?"
I smell another motive here... what a convenient way to tell the world, and potential employers, about all your Mad SkillZ.
When I finally get aDSL next month (via DFITL, new fiber technology from Bellsouth) it'll be fiber to the curb, and then about 50 feet of cat-5 into my house. In theory, the bottleneck in my connection would be my Linksys router... but that's assuming Bellsouth doesn't limit my speed to 1.5Mbps anyway. Unfortunately I think it's capped in the new card they swap into the optical node outside.
How convincing would it really be to have an average slashdotter outrunning two or three physically fit supermodel actors/actresses?
Didn't The Onion come and talk to you a while back?
I think the largest telescope that could possibly be built would be "Ludicrous Size."
Actually, physics won't allow you to use "unlimited bandwidth."
It's never failed when recording any channel off of DirecTV satellite.
I don't know if it's the same technology but here's what it does: records the show, and after it's stopped (or powered off by the sat receiver) the VCR travels back through the tape and marks the commercials. It may not be using cue tones, but whatever it is (alien mind-rays?) it's worked perfectly every time I've recorded anything. On UPN, FOX, TLC, WB, ABC, etc.
Not sure about Starband, but I've been investigating DirecPC (DirecWay) and the best way to explain their FAP is the "leaky bucket" analogy.
Basically, a Satellite connection is essentially a 56k connection that's burstable to 350k. OK, it's not really that simple.
You have a water bucket, and you can get water out of it at 350k, but water is only trickling in at 56k. After the bucket is empty, you're only getting data as fast as the bucket is being refilled. If you wait 8 or 9 hours, your bucket is full again. If you use Satellite return, instead of phone-line return stream, your upstream bandwidth also counts toward your FAP.
DirecWay I think has a 180MB "bucket" during peak times. I've also seen DirecWay users, with properly tweaked connections, getting 1.5 megabit or greater download speeds (meaning that FAP will approach quickly!) rather than only 350k.
Go to www.broadbandreports.com and visit the satellite forums. People are constantly posting their current speeds, settings, etc, as well as their thoughts on the service.
But first we'll need androids, town crier types, shouting out: #1 Sim City 10,000 #2 Photoshop 9 #3 ... And a queue of people following behind.
And the mIRC users will need to be issued a large trout.
True, in the same sense that the dark side of the earth also gets very little sunlight.
It's just that a moon's day is about 28 days long compared to the earth's 24 hours. The same side of the moon always faces earth but it's not always dark. By putting solar collectors on opposite sides of the moon, you guarantee that one will always be in sunlight (except for those pesky lunar eclipses).
C++ isn't that old. C, yes, but C++ is one of the newer languages.
Yes... C++ extended the old, crusty C language and brought it right into the 1980's.
Oh, I forgot, the game producers are so afraid of realism that they removed the possibility to crash into buildings, once that was done IRL.
That option is turned off by default in FS2002, but you can easily turn it back on.
Our single moon, and its size create unique seasonal and environmental conditions. There are other rare occurances, which when multiplied together, make alien human life non existent in our Universe.
That's not valid logic. Let me sum up your logic for you:
--There is life on earth (true)
--Life on earth was influenced by a number of complex conditions (true)
--Therefore, life can only exist on Earth or planets exactly like earth
That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. That's like saying "bananas are yellow, and we can eat bananas, therefore nothing in the world is edible unless it is yellow."
In fact, there may be complex conditions at other planets with intelligent life, and if they came to Earth, they'd wonder how life ever formed on earth without the same conditions the aliens had on their planet.