So, not only will we get light, cheap, immensely strong conductors, we'll also have a good market-driven reason to get all that valuable carbon out of the atmosphere!
I know Douglas was notorious for missing publication deadlines, but this is ridiculous!
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Douglas Adams
English humorist & science fiction novelist (1952 - 2001)
Like all such things, there's a degree of subjectivity involved that might invalidate some of the choices.
I can imagine, for instance, that a 'watered down' podcast that's entertaining might be useful for someone only peripherally involved with security but who wants to keep a little across it.
(I wonder how many podcasters are going to take the risk of contacting the compiler to find out if their podcast was left off because it sucked?)
Only eventually... he started out by wondering why woodpeckers' eyes don't pop out. (The nictating membrane tightens just before impact, if you're interested...)
I had occasion to visit the office of a major oil company CEO in Melbourne (Australia) a few years ago, while it was being fitted out.
Along with the obvious requisites like the bedroom and the seperate airconditioning (he was the only person in the building allowed to smoke!), the windows were double-glazed and had a white-noise generator in between the panes to foil any sneaky lasers from other oil companies' CBD high-rises!
I was at first bemused at the expense of it all, but then I thought about the millions he'd get as salary, and the hundreds of millions affected by the decisions made in that office, and thought better of it...
Mobipocket has a scheme which allows ebooks to be read for a fixed time. When that expires, the ebook just becomes unreadable.
I've used an online library which used this with reasonable effectiveness. They had a fixed number of 'copies' (i.e. licences) for each book and only that many could be on loan at any one time. Once the loan term expired, that 'copy' became available for borrowing again, without requiring the previous borrower to do anything.
I never tried circumventing this by turning back clocks, etc., as it was on my PDA that was used for too many other purposes to stuff around this way!
Generally, I found it useful for the same reason I use a dead-tree-containing library: trying out books that I wasn't already fairly sure I'd like.
Cleary you dont use your dictionary enough or you wouldn't have said 'obtuse' where you really meant 'abstruse'!"
(Quickly pulls out PDA and scribbles both words in dictionary lookup)
Bugger. Well, don't I feel obtuse! 8-)}
On the images/formatted text issue; yes, a PDA screen is too small for that to be at all comfortable. I've done it, when that was the only option available, but the scrolling gets annoying very quickly.
Small(ish) images embed into ebooks fairly well, with those larger than screen size being shown as icons that open into a scrolling window (in the ereader program.)
Luckily, for the vast majority of fiction, it's the words and their order that are important, not their spatial configuration. pdf is almost exactly the wrong format for small screens!
I do virtually all my reading on my PDA (Palm T3, 1/2VGA) and have for the last couple of years.
This Sony device has some of the same advantages; potential for large number of books in hand and ability to buy books online at any time.
However, it still misses some of the point of an e-reader vs a dead-tree book!
Portability: it won't fit in my shirt pocket like the Palm does. Why is it the size of a dead-tree book? Because that's what people who haven't used ebooks much think that they want!
The paperback size is a compromise between having enough words to balance the effort and inconvenience of page turning, and having a reasonable thickness for an average-length book. When turning a page requires just a minimal thumb pressure, fewer words per page is less of a consideration.
Backlight: Sure, it shortens the battery life, but being able to read in bed without the light on is great. Or in any other environment where the light levels are low enough to cause your mother to worry about you going blind!
Dictionary: being able to tap on a word on the screen and have a dictionary entry pop up is so useful, especially with obtuse and erudite writers. I always _mean_ to go look up words, but with ereader and a 150,000 word dictionary loaded, I actually _do_!
Availability: my PDA is a general-purpose device and I use it as an alarm clock, an organiser, an MP3 player, a movie viewer, a calculator, a map (with BT GPSr), a note-taker, etc., etc. Because I use it so much, I always have it with me. Because I always have it with me, I always have my current book(s) and magazines available for those unexpected spare moments (or hours!) Since even a long novel is rarely more than 3-400kB, they really don't make much of a dent in a 1GB SD card.
I often hear fellow bibliophiles say that they wouldn't like an e-book reader because they really like the smell and feel of real paper, and the tactile experience of turning pages, and so on.
I imagine that their great-great grandparents thought that automotives were never going to be popular, because people would miss the feel of the reins and the clip-clop of the hooves...
The first time I used a friend's 128k RAM Macintosh, I noticed how busy the HD seemed to be.
After some poking around in the system, we found that we were in the topsy-turvy situation of having the OS running in RAM and all the applications running in the swap file on the HD!
As soon as he got rid of the silly voices and other frippery (cool, though!), it went back to behaving in a more sensible manner.
I think RAM prices have fallen faster than HD speeds have risen, so it has more impact than it used to to have applications requiring swap file space.
Re:If you build it, they will abuse it.
on
Patent Reviews Via Wiki
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
One of the best features of a wiki is that all the edits are visible. If there's consistent corruption of particular information damaging to a claim, then that's the information to look at!
I suspect that there will be more need for accountability than there is with, say, wikipedia, but just having the facts unearthed by an army of interested persons will be valuable.
The mere fact of having some prior art or other pertinent information on the wiki won't be 'make or break', but an idea of what factors need independent verification should add enormous value to the Patent Office's research.
Wireless is handy for a few reasons, but there's still the issue of powering all those wireless devices.
USB is great because it's a) universal and b) able to power and charge quite a range of small devices.
Drop your PDA or ipod into a cradle and get a fast connection that's also charging your batteries.
When and if inductive charging (think Braun toothbrushes) becomes widespread, then maybe wireless will become sensible for most devices.
I think we mean different things by "embedded"...
You mean an ETX card with an x86 running at 100s of MHz, I mean an 8 or 16 bit microcontroller with 16k of flash and 4k of RAM in it.
Here in Oz, at least, MCU code is far more likely to be written by an electronics engineer than a programmer. Mind you, the same engineer probably designed the circuit, built the prototype, wrote the documentation, wrote the Windows interface software, designed the case, swept the floor, cleaned the toilet...
In Australia, there seem to be many cases of technicians being hired for non-design jobs who then progress to doing some code maintenance, then end up in design if they show an aptitude for it.
(There's others who've hired programmers and try very hard to keep them away from their embedded designs, since your typical CompSci grad thinks a MB of compiled code is compact!)
So, I'd suggest equipping your students with the sort of skills that will get them a foot in the door of companies doing embedded design, and suggest that they get a couple of cheap design kits for popular MCUs to play with in their own time.
Re:Can this article be even more pretentios?
on
One Small Breath For Man
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
One of the prime differences between doing this on Earth and on the Moon is that vacuum is more plentiful on Luna than it is on Terra.
This lowers the temperature required to disassociate the SiO2, making the engineering sufficiently feasible.
Well, that's what _this_ group says to the funding body within NASA, anyway!
As with any other use of mobile phones or VOIP via laptops, the real need is for education about AGC!
Once people finally get the idea that talking at a normal level works just as well as shouting into the phone, the annoyance factor becomes no worse than any other quiet conversation around you.
With cellphones, part of the problem is that there's no foldback to the earpiece, so there's no feedback assuring you that your voice is being heard. Do VOIP clients do this better? I know the one I use via an ATA and a standard DECT phone does, but I don't often use the PC for VOIP calls.
I also don't frequent wi-fi hotspots much (other than mine!); do VOIP users speak too loudly the way most cellphone users do?
VOIP instead of cellphones might prove to be the lesser of two evils for airline communications!
It's hard to imagine a similar situation in another industry.
Windows comes with IE pre-installed, so another browser has to be sought out, downloaded and installed to supplant it. Where else does this sort of edge apply?
It would be like buying a TV from a vendor with a huge market share which only has their affiliated station(s) pre-programmed into it, with a fairly complicated method of re-tuning being required to pick up other channels.
So, it's hard to see what valid lessons can be learned from such an unusual situation.
Slashdot Mirror
Voila! No more global warming!
8-)}
Douglas Adams
English humorist & science fiction novelist (1952 - 2001)
I can imagine, for instance, that a 'watered down' podcast that's entertaining might be useful for someone only peripherally involved with security but who wants to keep a little across it.
(I wonder how many podcasters are going to take the risk of contacting the compiler to find out if their podcast was left off because it sucked?)
Only eventually... he started out by wondering why woodpeckers' eyes don't pop out. (The nictating membrane tightens just before impact, if you're interested...)
Now, if it was a green laser, with a visible beam, that would be cool!
Mind you, you'd have to put a '1' in front of the price tag...
Along with the obvious requisites like the bedroom and the seperate airconditioning (he was the only person in the building allowed to smoke!), the windows were double-glazed and had a white-noise generator in between the panes to foil any sneaky lasers from other oil companies' CBD high-rises!
I was at first bemused at the expense of it all, but then I thought about the millions he'd get as salary, and the hundreds of millions affected by the decisions made in that office, and thought better of it...
I've used an online library which used this with reasonable effectiveness. They had a fixed number of 'copies' (i.e. licences) for each book and only that many could be on loan at any one time. Once the loan term expired, that 'copy' became available for borrowing again, without requiring the previous borrower to do anything.
I never tried circumventing this by turning back clocks, etc., as it was on my PDA that was used for too many other purposes to stuff around this way!
Generally, I found it useful for the same reason I use a dead-tree-containing library: trying out books that I wasn't already fairly sure I'd like.
Bugger. Well, don't I feel obtuse! 8-)}
On the images/formatted text issue; yes, a PDA screen is too small for that to be at all comfortable. I've done it, when that was the only option available, but the scrolling gets annoying very quickly.
Small(ish) images embed into ebooks fairly well, with those larger than screen size being shown as icons that open into a scrolling window (in the ereader program.)
Luckily, for the vast majority of fiction, it's the words and their order that are important, not their spatial configuration. pdf is almost exactly the wrong format for small screens!
This Sony device has some of the same advantages; potential for large number of books in hand and ability to buy books online at any time.
However, it still misses some of the point of an e-reader vs a dead-tree book!
Portability: it won't fit in my shirt pocket like the Palm does. Why is it the size of a dead-tree book? Because that's what people who haven't used ebooks much think that they want!
The paperback size is a compromise between having enough words to balance the effort and inconvenience of page turning, and having a reasonable thickness for an average-length book. When turning a page requires just a minimal thumb pressure, fewer words per page is less of a consideration.
Backlight: Sure, it shortens the battery life, but being able to read in bed without the light on is great. Or in any other environment where the light levels are low enough to cause your mother to worry about you going blind!
Dictionary: being able to tap on a word on the screen and have a dictionary entry pop up is so useful, especially with obtuse and erudite writers. I always _mean_ to go look up words, but with ereader and a 150,000 word dictionary loaded, I actually _do_!
Availability: my PDA is a general-purpose device and I use it as an alarm clock, an organiser, an MP3 player, a movie viewer, a calculator, a map (with BT GPSr), a note-taker, etc., etc. Because I use it so much, I always have it with me. Because I always have it with me, I always have my current book(s) and magazines available for those unexpected spare moments (or hours!) Since even a long novel is rarely more than 3-400kB, they really don't make much of a dent in a 1GB SD card.
I often hear fellow bibliophiles say that they wouldn't like an e-book reader because they really like the smell and feel of real paper, and the tactile experience of turning pages, and so on.
I imagine that their great-great grandparents thought that automotives were never going to be popular, because people would miss the feel of the reins and the clip-clop of the hooves...
After some poking around in the system, we found that we were in the topsy-turvy situation of having the OS running in RAM and all the applications running in the swap file on the HD!
As soon as he got rid of the silly voices and other frippery (cool, though!), it went back to behaving in a more sensible manner.
I think RAM prices have fallen faster than HD speeds have risen, so it has more impact than it used to to have applications requiring swap file space.
I suspect that there will be more need for accountability than there is with, say, wikipedia, but just having the facts unearthed by an army of interested persons will be valuable.
The mere fact of having some prior art or other pertinent information on the wiki won't be 'make or break', but an idea of what factors need independent verification should add enormous value to the Patent Office's research.
These days, no turbo button, so I'm stuck at a crawling 3GHz...
USB is great because it's a) universal and b) able to power and charge quite a range of small devices.
Drop your PDA or ipod into a cradle and get a fast connection that's also charging your batteries.
When and if inductive charging (think Braun toothbrushes) becomes widespread, then maybe wireless will become sensible for most devices.
I think we mean different things by "embedded"...
You mean an ETX card with an x86 running at 100s of MHz, I mean an 8 or 16 bit microcontroller with 16k of flash and 4k of RAM in it.
Here in Oz, at least, MCU code is far more likely to be written by an electronics engineer than a programmer. Mind you, the same engineer probably designed the circuit, built the prototype, wrote the documentation, wrote the Windows interface software, designed the case, swept the floor, cleaned the toilet...
(There's others who've hired programmers and try very hard to keep them away from their embedded designs, since your typical CompSci grad thinks a MB of compiled code is compact!)
So, I'd suggest equipping your students with the sort of skills that will get them a foot in the door of companies doing embedded design, and suggest that they get a couple of cheap design kits for popular MCUs to play with in their own time.
This lowers the temperature required to disassociate the SiO2, making the engineering sufficiently feasible.
Well, that's what _this_ group says to the funding body within NASA, anyway!
And if you repeatedly harvest grains with human genes in them, does that make you a cereal killer?
Once people finally get the idea that talking at a normal level works just as well as shouting into the phone, the annoyance factor becomes no worse than any other quiet conversation around you.
With cellphones, part of the problem is that there's no foldback to the earpiece, so there's no feedback assuring you that your voice is being heard. Do VOIP clients do this better? I know the one I use via an ATA and a standard DECT phone does, but I don't often use the PC for VOIP calls.
I also don't frequent wi-fi hotspots much (other than mine!); do VOIP users speak too loudly the way most cellphone users do?
VOIP instead of cellphones might prove to be the lesser of two evils for airline communications!
This is the best-kept secret since Halo 3!
There are only twelve types of BG spinoffs.
I'm so glad that I gave up TV watching a few years ago...
Windows comes with IE pre-installed, so another browser has to be sought out, downloaded and installed to supplant it. Where else does this sort of edge apply?
It would be like buying a TV from a vendor with a huge market share which only has their affiliated station(s) pre-programmed into it, with a fairly complicated method of re-tuning being required to pick up other channels.
So, it's hard to see what valid lessons can be learned from such an unusual situation.