Exactly. That's what I had in mind when I made the post. For those who do not recognize the word "shipstones", They were the core technological advance which revolutionized all levels of industry and science in Robert A. Heinlein's Future History stories. They were of varying sizes but basically ultra high capacity high efficiency energy storage devices. One the size of a can of soda would probably run a car for a month. One the size of a gallon of milk would run a house for months. And ships would use them to power drives to reach the stars.
But the one that eerily predicted urban sprawl is "The Roads Must Roll" and it remains one of my favorite Heinlein stories. In it, the development of shipstones allowed them to replace reactors with solar cells, and they built moving roads which are similar to conveyor belts, but reaching between towns. Eventually there were multiple lanes of increasing speeds and even businesses like coffee shops built on the roads. The roofs were solar panels which charged shipstones, and the shipstones which were not used to keep the roads rolling were sold. The roads increased in length and communities grew between the endpoints until almost all of the population had shifted to live near a road.
Of course in modern day America, we're doing the same thing around Interstate Highways. At least we see it in the South. Cities send out spurs along the roads reaching towards the nearest directly connnected cities.
I had similar experiences with gifted class (1 hour a week while everyone else did something else...forget what). We had the Commodore CBM and PET machines in our school's library in the early 80s. We had an Atari then I got a TRS-80 (wanted a C64). So I learned programming in BASIC using goto's. There's a lot to be said for something like BASIC. Extremely simple language and syntax, so you have to write subroutines to do almost everything beyond basic math. Of course in college I studied FORTRAN then used C in a couple of math classes (though we only modified the instructor's code).
Problem is that during my teen years, I did no programming (more interested in other activities, especially the social kind involving girls.) I did just a bit during high school with Apple IIg's. BUt for 5 years or so I did nothing.
FORTRAN in college was a matter of logical thinking and organizing the process. If you can diagram it, you can code it. I learned diagramming and pseudocode.
And then I stopped.
Until years later when I decided I wanted to write programs again. Now it's all complicated. I've tried multiple times to get back into it. Primarily using C++, (visual c++ 6.0 then again with the newer express modules.)
Bottom line, I was not involved in programming during my teens, even though it is something that I am good at and get enjoyment from doing. If my dad had been skilled at it and shown interest in working on it with me, I might be a professional programmer right now. Instead of a lowly IT guy.
I don't think I could type as well, or use punctuation and grammar and even spell all the words right like you did, if I had my head so far up my ass as you obviously do.
The problem with nuclear is waste, which we currently have no way of disposal.
What we *NEED* is ultra efficient storage of energy. "Batteries" that can store the energy produced from sunlight and windmills and store it until it is needed at night. Trick is, their production needs to be lower environmental impact than nuclear.
Picture solar concentrators in orbit sending focused beams of intensified sunlight to solar stations on the planet surface which is converted and stored for use later.
Ok, so that comment didn't say what I wanted to say. My comment was directed at the father in the quote within the original submission. Please excuse my slipping into second person.
Dude, this guy's kid looks up to him, as a role model. The number one reason he wants to program is because his dad does it. By all means, give the kid the tools he needs to learn to program. Pick a language with lots of tutorials and books and wide acceptance (C or Java perhaps?). Get him to draw flowcharts or write pseudocode (people still do that?). Give him some fun problems to work out. Go over code with him. Show him ways to improve his code and explain the reasoning behind them. His interest in spending time with you will keep him at it until he's hooked on programming itself.
Linksys is not and has never been, IMO, suitable for use in anything larger than a home office. For hobbyists they're fun. For setting up networks for other people they're fine. Basically, any use where you plug it in, set the config and walk away.
Cascading Linksys hubs. Brrr. Failure.
Cisco bought Linksys. Hopefully, they'll improve the quality control. For business purposes, buy Cisco or one of their direct competitors. The quality level, in the end, will save you money.
That's what I mean. It starts off good. A single location for the OS configuration in the/etc folder. But the application configs are all over the place. Or they were a couple years ago (last time I looked)./etc/applications//.conf for global stuff and ~/applications//.conf for user stuff
The names are arbitrary and easily changed. I'm really talking about the concept. And it's more of a gripe towards application developers than a gripe towards the OS developers. And it happens across all platforms too, I'm not naive enough to believe otherwise.
Bottom line, Windows Registry was a huge step forward compared to the piles of.ini files in Windows. Some in the Windows folder, some in the program files/application folder, even some in the user profile. Registry provided standardization and organization where there wasn't any.
My point is that now it's time to move forward to a new setup, while retaining the ideas of standardization and organization.
You know what? I read that article. A lot of comments spring to mind but I just won't throw them out there. I have only one question. Where, in that article, does it mention a superconductor using a temperature below 1.9K? I am sure you can provide links that support that scientists can achieve temperatures below 1.9K.
What materials have critical temperatures below 1.9K. And does that matter? If you can get true superconductivity at 4.2K with solid Mercury, what reason would you have to go lower? Since, based on the arguments posted to my response, there is 0% thermal loss in all superconductors, it would seem excessive to try to go lower. Is there another factor?
For the *unwashed masses* tabs is the only positive feature of FF. Now IE7 has it. Without a strong feature to attract the non-geek crowd, FF has a tough road. They have to beat IE on features performance, interface and reliability. I really do appreciate FF and Opera and so forth, mainly because they're causing steep competition. I switched to FF1.x over IE6, though there were 3rd party browsers based on IE6 engine which blew FF out of the water, mainly because I liked the ad blocker. IE7 has a smooth interface, very well designed, and adopted almost all of the features I appreciated from FF.
Bottom line, competition is making all of the browsers better. I'm no longer an early adopter. I try to patch and set configurations for security. From this point forward I only change browsers when a new feature forces me to. (Currently using IE7.)
You obviously didn't deal much with Win 3.x. Registry is much better than config files scattered throughout. I wouldn't mind if it were replaced, but it needs to be a step forward, not back. Linux still has config files scattered in a zillion different places. It would be nice if all configs went into an organized hierarchy. XML files located in a couple of standardized locations. As in one location for machine level configs, and one location each for user level configs.
But yeah, that you can pass two light beams through each other and emerge without loss of signal shows that the "radio interference story" the public has been fed is a lie.
Can I have those brain cells back? You're trying to say that light does not interfere, and therefore radio does not either?
EM interference isn't like a fullback blocking a defensive back out of the way. All EM waves are subject to interference. The signal picked up by a receiver is the sum of all the signals that it reads. If you broadcast two sine wave signals that are inverse to each other the receiver will see a flat line signal. If you shine two lights at a receiver and one is red, the other blue, the receiver will see purple light. (really need pictures)
The 'fiction' is that interference permanently mangles the signals. It does not, it only requires more sophisticated processing to pull out the component signals.
Are the servers in question inward or outward facing? If inward then push the trusted cert, if outward, spend the bucks to get an internal CA set up wich has its root with one of the trusted CA's.
Or educate your users. Provide instructions for your users to add your CA as a trusted one.
As a US Citizen, living in a friendly foreign country, I would like to note that not all postal systems pride themselves on speed and honesty. There are tales of Christmas time electronics purchases arriving looking normal, but with the bottom of the box opened, the box emptied, the packing replaced and the bottom resealed.
The melting point came from the wiki on liquid metals.
Having recently looked into heatsinks/cooling fans/water cooling systems at Tom's Hardware, I'd go so far as to say if you can run your computer full blast and peak temperature settles at anything less than 70C, you've got a good system. The best heatsink/fan combos were at about 72C, IIRC. The water cooling systems were obviously cooler but I don't think they got down to 50.
As a less pricey possibility, has anyone looked into brine cooling systems (using a water-based solution instead of plain water for better thermal transfer)? And do water cooling systems use pure water or tapwater?
Kids spend most of the time watching the teacher, looking out the windows, talking to their neighbors, walking between classes, etc. Adults at workstations stay put for hours at a time. Get back to me in 10 years or sooner if you develop a back problem...once they start you become intimately familiar with ergonomic design.
You just debunked the obvious choices, while leaving three choices remaining.
1. Stay with the mouse (very intuitive interface) 2. Touchscreen 3. Some sort of eyeball tracking interface.
I think games will stick with mouse/trackball for a bit.
I am heartened to see that I am not the only one with an aversion to fingerprints on LCD's. Wasn't a problem with old CRT monitors. A paper towel with windex would sort it out in seconds. But LCD's are plastic coated and the coating gets discolored easily, and they just don't put cleaning instructions out there any more.
Political and cultural forces determine what is taught in our classrooms (I'm assuming a mostly , and if left up to the majority, our children will be taught creationism, at least in the "Bible Belt" and the rest of the South. Which is why I propose to take the discussion out of the school, so that my children can be taught correctly. And by this I mean to give them both sides of the story and let them make an informed decision regarding what they believe.
Locally installed, browser based software. Sounds like a hybrid. I think we should use whatever locally installed productivity suite we want to or what the company provides. The focus should be on open document formats and ways of sharing documents online.
That would be a PERFECT superconductor. Oh, guess what? 1.9 Kelvin isn't going to get you a perfect superconductor. Probably the closest we have seen, but not perfect.
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Exactly. That's what I had in mind when I made the post. For those who do not recognize the word "shipstones", They were the core technological advance which revolutionized all levels of industry and science in Robert A. Heinlein's Future History stories. They were of varying sizes but basically ultra high capacity high efficiency energy storage devices. One the size of a can of soda would probably run a car for a month. One the size of a gallon of milk would run a house for months. And ships would use them to power drives to reach the stars.
But the one that eerily predicted urban sprawl is "The Roads Must Roll" and it remains one of my favorite Heinlein stories. In it, the development of shipstones allowed them to replace reactors with solar cells, and they built moving roads which are similar to conveyor belts, but reaching between towns. Eventually there were multiple lanes of increasing speeds and even businesses like coffee shops built on the roads. The roofs were solar panels which charged shipstones, and the shipstones which were not used to keep the roads rolling were sold. The roads increased in length and communities grew between the endpoints until almost all of the population had shifted to live near a road.
Of course in modern day America, we're doing the same thing around Interstate Highways. At least we see it in the South. Cities send out spurs along the roads reaching towards the nearest directly connnected cities.
Great stuff. Written about 50 years ago, IIRC.
I had similar experiences with gifted class (1 hour a week while everyone else did something else...forget what). We had the Commodore CBM and PET machines in our school's library in the early 80s. We had an Atari then I got a TRS-80 (wanted a C64). So I learned programming in BASIC using goto's. There's a lot to be said for something like BASIC. Extremely simple language and syntax, so you have to write subroutines to do almost everything beyond basic math. Of course in college I studied FORTRAN then used C in a couple of math classes (though we only modified the instructor's code).
Problem is that during my teen years, I did no programming (more interested in other activities, especially the social kind involving girls.) I did just a bit during high school with Apple IIg's. BUt for 5 years or so I did nothing.
FORTRAN in college was a matter of logical thinking and organizing the process. If you can diagram it, you can code it. I learned diagramming and pseudocode.
And then I stopped.
Until years later when I decided I wanted to write programs again. Now it's all complicated. I've tried multiple times to get back into it. Primarily using C++, (visual c++ 6.0 then again with the newer express modules.)
Bottom line, I was not involved in programming during my teens, even though it is something that I am good at and get enjoyment from doing. If my dad had been skilled at it and shown interest in working on it with me, I might be a professional programmer right now. Instead of a lowly IT guy.
Redneck is derogatory in the same way that towelhead is. Neither being racist. Both being prejudiced.
I don't think I could type as well, or use punctuation and grammar and even spell all the words right like you did, if I had my head so far up my ass as you obviously do.
The problem with nuclear is waste, which we currently have no way of disposal.
What we *NEED* is ultra efficient storage of energy. "Batteries" that can store the energy produced from sunlight and windmills and store it until it is needed at night. Trick is, their production needs to be lower environmental impact than nuclear.
Picture solar concentrators in orbit sending focused beams of intensified sunlight to solar stations on the planet surface which is converted and stored for use later.
Ok, so that comment didn't say what I wanted to say. My comment was directed at the father in the quote within the original submission. Please excuse my slipping into second person.
Dude, this guy's kid looks up to him, as a role model. The number one reason he wants to program is because his dad does it. By all means, give the kid the tools he needs to learn to program. Pick a language with lots of tutorials and books and wide acceptance (C or Java perhaps?). Get him to draw flowcharts or write pseudocode (people still do that?). Give him some fun problems to work out. Go over code with him. Show him ways to improve his code and explain the reasoning behind them. His interest in spending time with you will keep him at it until he's hooked on programming itself.
Linksys is not and has never been, IMO, suitable for use in anything larger than a home office. For hobbyists they're fun. For setting up networks for other people they're fine. Basically, any use where you plug it in, set the config and walk away.
Cascading Linksys hubs. Brrr. Failure.
Cisco bought Linksys. Hopefully, they'll improve the quality control. For business purposes, buy Cisco or one of their direct competitors. The quality level, in the end, will save you money.
That's what I mean. It starts off good. A single location for the OS configuration in the /etc folder. But the application configs are all over the place. Or they were a couple years ago (last time I looked). /etc/applications//.conf for global stuff
and ~/applications//.conf for user stuff
The names are arbitrary and easily changed. I'm really talking about the concept. And it's more of a gripe towards application developers than a gripe towards the OS developers. And it happens across all platforms too, I'm not naive enough to believe otherwise.
Bottom line, Windows Registry was a huge step forward compared to the piles of .ini files in Windows. Some in the Windows folder, some in the program files/application folder, even some in the user profile. Registry provided standardization and organization where there wasn't any.
My point is that now it's time to move forward to a new setup, while retaining the ideas of standardization and organization.
You know what? I read that article. A lot of comments spring to mind but I just won't throw them out there. I have only one question. Where, in that article, does it mention a superconductor using a temperature below 1.9K? I am sure you can provide links that support that scientists can achieve temperatures below 1.9K.
What materials have critical temperatures below 1.9K. And does that matter? If you can get true superconductivity at 4.2K with solid Mercury, what reason would you have to go lower? Since, based on the arguments posted to my response, there is 0% thermal loss in all superconductors, it would seem excessive to try to go lower. Is there another factor?
For the *unwashed masses* tabs is the only positive feature of FF. Now IE7 has it. Without a strong feature to attract the non-geek crowd, FF has a tough road. They have to beat IE on features performance, interface and reliability. I really do appreciate FF and Opera and so forth, mainly because they're causing steep competition. I switched to FF1.x over IE6, though there were 3rd party browsers based on IE6 engine which blew FF out of the water, mainly because I liked the ad blocker. IE7 has a smooth interface, very well designed, and adopted almost all of the features I appreciated from FF.
Bottom line, competition is making all of the browsers better. I'm no longer an early adopter. I try to patch and set configurations for security. From this point forward I only change browsers when a new feature forces me to. (Currently using IE7.)
ugly data Bastille called the Windows Registry.
You obviously didn't deal much with Win 3.x. Registry is much better than config files scattered throughout. I wouldn't mind if it were replaced, but it needs to be a step forward, not back. Linux still has config files scattered in a zillion different places. It would be nice if all configs went into an organized hierarchy. XML files located in a couple of standardized locations. As in one location for machine level configs, and one location each for user level configs.
But yeah, that you can pass two light beams through each other and emerge without loss of signal shows that the "radio interference story" the public has been fed is a lie.
Can I have those brain cells back? You're trying to say that light does not interfere, and therefore radio does not either?
EM interference isn't like a fullback blocking a defensive back out of the way. All EM waves are subject to interference. The signal picked up by a receiver is the sum of all the signals that it reads. If you broadcast two sine wave signals that are inverse to each other the receiver will see a flat line signal. If you shine two lights at a receiver and one is red, the other blue, the receiver will see purple light. (really need pictures)
The 'fiction' is that interference permanently mangles the signals. It does not, it only requires more sophisticated processing to pull out the component signals.
Are the servers in question inward or outward facing? If inward then push the trusted cert, if outward, spend the bucks to get an internal CA set up wich has its root with one of the trusted CA's.
Or educate your users. Provide instructions for your users to add your CA as a trusted one.
As a US Citizen, living in a friendly foreign country, I would like to note that not all postal systems pride themselves on speed and honesty. There are tales of Christmas time electronics purchases arriving looking normal, but with the bottom of the box opened, the box emptied, the packing replaced and the bottom resealed.
The melting point came from the wiki on liquid metals.
Having recently looked into heatsinks/cooling fans/water cooling systems at Tom's Hardware, I'd go so far as to say if you can run your computer full blast and peak temperature settles at anything less than 70C, you've got a good system. The best heatsink/fan combos were at about 72C, IIRC. The water cooling systems were obviously cooler but I don't think they got down to 50.
As a less pricey possibility, has anyone looked into brine cooling systems (using a water-based solution instead of plain water for better thermal transfer)? And do water cooling systems use pure water or tapwater?
Sorry, it was an obligatory use of "42". My vague reference was too vague.
Kids spend most of the time watching the teacher, looking out the windows, talking to their neighbors, walking between classes, etc. Adults at workstations stay put for hours at a time. Get back to me in 10 years or sooner if you develop a back problem...once they start you become intimately familiar with ergonomic design.
You just debunked the obvious choices, while leaving three choices remaining.
1. Stay with the mouse (very intuitive interface)
2. Touchscreen
3. Some sort of eyeball tracking interface.
I think games will stick with mouse/trackball for a bit.
I am heartened to see that I am not the only one with an aversion to fingerprints on LCD's. Wasn't a problem with old CRT monitors. A paper towel with windex would sort it out in seconds. But LCD's are plastic coated and the coating gets discolored easily, and they just don't put cleaning instructions out there any more.
"[M]ake sure you are providing the best service and marketing properly..."
Nicely said.
Political and cultural forces determine what is taught in our classrooms (I'm assuming a mostly , and if left up to the majority, our children will be taught creationism, at least in the "Bible Belt" and the rest of the South. Which is why I propose to take the discussion out of the school, so that my children can be taught correctly. And by this I mean to give them both sides of the story and let them make an informed decision regarding what they believe.
:) Hmmm. I was about to reply, but realized there was a reference in there.
Locally installed, browser based software. Sounds like a hybrid. I think we should use whatever locally installed productivity suite we want to or what the company provides. The focus should be on open document formats and ways of sharing documents online.
That would be a PERFECT superconductor. Oh, guess what? 1.9 Kelvin isn't going to get you a perfect superconductor. Probably the closest we have seen, but not perfect.
Have we gone below 42 Kelvin yet?