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Slashback

Slashback: Toast, Cube, Light 114

Posted by timothy from the blacksburg-va-and-knoxville-tn dept.
Slashing back tonight are bits and pieces on optical transistors; a genuine linux toaster; words from Nintendo's president on the real status of the Gamecube; and another potentially nice push in the world of digital archives. Please enjoy.

Larry Ellison, watch your back. meforpc writes: "More on LTSP (Linux terminal server project): Riverdale (www.riverdale.k12.or.us/linux) decided to make a 'poster child' to get the word out on their project; to do this Bryan Grimshaw made a Linux machine inside of a toaster oven. The idea behind the toaster is to show the ease of setting up a Linux terminal/server network. It's really cool and looks great. (I want one)."

"Oooh, that's one hot system! If you sell it, I hope the buyer doesn't get burned. Might this sort of thing have a Dark Side? Nice rack -- Smmmmmokin'!" Sigh. I've stopped now. The worst pun you can come up with will be rewarded with an official Slashdot groan of derision :)

Soon all will be optical. BdosError writes: "Scientists in Japan seem to have developed an optical transistor, as explained in this article, which I snipped from the Rapidly Changing Face of Computing newsletter. This could go nicely with the optical switching technology mentioned earlier, as it would eliminate the need to convert the electrical signals to/from optical. Plus, it would be a huge benefit for building fast systems which generate less heat in general.

Let's have no comments about the possibilities for a Beowulf cluster."

Well ... no more comments. But actually, why not? This sounds like a good thing for clustered research computers, no?

Of course, we'll see what hits shelves ... TheZalm writes: "The article about Gamecube being in danger is a misrepresentation of the facts. Hiroshi Yamauchi said only that he would reconsider his launch plan, and possibly place a small delay on the launch. See this article at IGN."

Of course, that's what Sega repeatedly said about the Dreamcast, too. The gamecube sounds cool, so I hope it arrives, but it's obviously coming into a hotly contested market.

Commemorating the banal and the momentous. fizban writes: "According to this AP news story, CNN plans to spend the next few years digitizing its entire video archive and making it available to the public over the internet. Excellent! Just think of the multimedia reports the kids of tomorrow will be able to make for their class projects..."

The article skirts the issue of licensing and payment; hopefully CNN will see fit to make at least some of its content free, but I'd be surprised it that's more than a sampling.

The progress may be mind-numbingly slow, but thanks to things like Project Gutenberg, ibiblio and the Internet Moving Image Archive, more and more free content is arriving for us to read, watch and use. ("And, he groused, "it would be nice if all images made with our tax dollars would be available online as well.")
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Slashback: Revenge More

Slashback: Revenge

Comments Filter:
  • The field of human entertainment depends on things going out of date. Almost all possible storylines have been thought of an implemented already at some point in human history, at least at a symbolic level. For new stories to be worthwhile then, they need to be new in a facile sense, not fundamentally new. They need to reflect and be of our times.

    However, the rate of technological advance is no longer affecting our culture as much as it did. Sure, technology is moving forward, but it does not affect society. Our quality of life is no different from someone in the 1950's. The law of diminishing returns is coming into play. If you have a job, car, health insurance and go on holiday twice a year, what more improvements can your lifestyle get? Very few.

    Combined with this, there is the effect of globalisation and multiculturalism, which should really be called monoculturalism. This means that society is becoming less varied, and people are becoming more and more similar. Therefore stories have a more global appeal - the latest hollywood blockbuster or remake appeals to someone in Shanghai just as much as someone in LA.

    So, before long every type of film will have been made, and all films will be derivatives (derivation being a very postmodern concept, and beloved of recent films). But extensive archiving will allow people to see this, and watch cheap archive footage just as fresh and relevant in 2020 as it is today.

    We have to make sure we don't kill the active film industry by suffocating it and overshadowing it with the better films of yesteryear.
    --

  • Wait a minute dude... (Score:3)

    by Tony Shepps ( 333 ) on Tuesday April 24, 2001 @05:40PM (#267124)
    Euroderf lives in northern Britain. He truly hasn't seen any advance since the 50s!
  • At a guess, it refers to stories that update or follow up on other stories recently posted. So any story people would be waiting for more info on (like the GameCube yoink rumor) can be wrapped up with a nice ending (hah).

  • With all due respect, so what? If the film industry is contributing nothing new, who cares if it's killed off? If it is contributing something new, then there's nothing to fear and the industry will thrive. Either way, what's the problem?

    Even better, perhaps there would be a metaphorical culling of the herd in which the worthless would die off and the worthwhile live on. Who could object to that? Even if your theories are valid (and I'm not at all sure that they are) the end result looks good to me.

  • High maintenance item. You just wouldn't believe how much bread they burn through.
  • Euroderf strikes again.

    Well, the quality of *your* life might be the same as it would have been in the 1950's but mine is sure a heck of a lot better.

    Without medical advances I'd have likely died once if not twice. I also lead a much more comfortable life thanks to widespread electrification & air conditioning. Then there's social progress - my little sister is a senior executive at a major firm, were it not for social changes she'd have led a much more limited professional life. Of course as a gay man my social life would have been pretty limited too.

    In the 1950's I would have lived in a segregated world by race & national origin. I'd likely have never been more then a hundred kilometers from where I was born. Communication was slow & expensive. Medicine & nutrition were a mere shadow of what they are today. Education was typically limited to HS & then consisted mostly of rote memorization. Opportunities were based on ones family & connections first & foremost, individual skills second.

    Sure we've not escaped that a 100% but we're leaps & bounds beyond where we were two and a half generations ago.

    As to the rate of advance by most estimates it's increasing. Social Scientists, Engineers, Theoreticians all agree the world is evolving faster & more fundamentally now for more people then it ever has before.

    Mono-culturalism? That's hardly happening. Yes there are traits that are becoming widespread, increasing religious & ethnic tolerance (clearly still issues but less then they have been before outstanding counterexamples notwithstanding.) Democracy, greater freedom, increased opportunity, rising expectations, these are indeed becoming common. Indeed in 1950 half of the world was under or just out from fascism, imperialism, dictatorship or colonialism. Is moving beyond this a terrible thing, some oppressive mono-culturalism?

    Since mid-century there's been a tidal wave of knowledge & communication. Exposure to new ideas, synthesis & synergy, hybridization & exploration to a breadth & depth never seen before in human history.

    Sure one can find Coca Cola in 80 nations, however it's in 50 variations. Indigenous cultures are taking ideas & examples from other parts of the world and refashioning them into local interpretations, forming cross-cultural mélanges never seen before.

    Euroderf delights in playing the nayseyer, asserting nothing has progressed since (depending on his posting) the Stone Age or the 15th century. Frankly the fact that he's doing so on /. only makes his trolling more pathetic - if he truly believed any of his guff he'd be off in a backwoods shack somewhere.

    (By the way, 'derivative' is not a "postmodern concept" - if nothing else you demonstrate your shocking ignorance of history & culture by making these asinine statements)

    Finally while it's true that the ever expanding body of previous work provides a growing cultural resource it by no means kills today's material. Do we fear ancient Greek or Japanese material? Are 11th century Scandinavian epics crushing Hollywood or Bollywood? Nonsense. Rather times change & while the human condition remains eternal modern interpretations always have a place.

    Euroderf - I said it before & I'll say it again - your trolling is tiresome. If you truly believed anything you said you'd have offed yourself by now. As you remain you're clearly just trying to get a rise out of folks, and not very well at it.

    Please, before throwing out half-baked assertions and ridiculous statements at least get a gloss on what oyou're trying to talk about.

    ps Anyone modding this please look up Euroderfs posting history - he's been pulling this same stunt over & over again, trolling for attention. Mod if if you want to but at least do so knowledgably.

  • Why video. Wouldn't it be worthwhile starting with text and stills. It's ridiculous that you can't search for news stories older than the life of the web. Libraries have decades worth of newspapers available for searching - why can't this be put on the web?

    --
  • This guy only has two.
  • If he wants to live in the 50's, then he needs to visit this page [lileks.com].
  • I believe that's his point. If Ecclesiastes didn't exist, then he would be able to take credit for it.
  • Do you realize that the whole world is now aware that your education was substandard?
  • I agree. Shameful that Shakespeare is still available, because it just overshadows everything made since then.

    Silly idea that because something is great something else sucks a little bit more. Creativity isn't a zero sum game.
  • You trolls won't get a rise out of me!
  • No, they are expensive because of the higher energy costs. They aren't as efficient because you are constrained to follow their GPL Open Doors Licence. Oooh, I'm gonna get a grilled over that one!
  • I just hope the GameCube will be priced so it is afforable in Canada. Since most companies decide on a US price and then decide the Canadian price of the product based on the exchange rate, some stuff is rediculously expensive over here. If they can get a $230 (Canadian dollar) price tag on it, along with the choice of modem or ethernet adapter, then I reckon it will sell like hot-cakes - the important thing is to price it much less than the Playstation 2.

    What Nintendo generally has going for them are a bunch of family orientated titles with enough playability and attraction to please most people. It is always surprising how enjoyable some Nintendo games are, inspite of their lack of blood.
  • for that Linux box in a toaster:

    TOASTY!

  • You are a meta-dork.
  • With all these "witty" comments after each story, timothy is starting to sound like the Locker Gnome. Here's a hint guys: very few people are any good at riffing. Just because Dennis Miller and Jerry Seinfeld and the cast of MST3K are funny, it doesn't mean that your half-ironic puns and fast-paced delivery of malformed jokes is worth reading.

    I'm sure timothy is a very nice person, it's just that his special take on stories always fall flat.
  • Yeah, but they can also raise a lot of dough...

    Kevin Fox
    --
  • Hell, he probably has a Lucas refrigerator. No wonder he thinks things haven't gotten better in 50 years. Poor sod.

  • Toaster (Score:1)

    by rawg ( 23000 )
    I worked for a company once building Linux appliance servers. For Comdex one year we were going to give away a toaster.appliance. We even did a webpage for it. (didn't even make it on slashdot). I still have the web page running over here [c0de.net]. It was cool.
    --
    _|_
  • What's funny about this comment is that the Linux server toaster was built by a high school class that's learning about Linux. RTFA next time, troll!

  • I think Nintendo's only trying to gauge how they will price the NGC. Yamauchi has been frank about precious few release details, but console pricing is TBA in late May. This IGN update [ign.com] even points out that the price announce date is 5 days after E3.

    They have a lot to consider. If the "all games, no CD/DVD" approach appeals to the general public, then Nintendo can afford to price the NGC as high as is competitive. If it gets a lukewarm response at E3 (for that or any other reason), they may try to fight a price war with Sony and MS, focusing on price in their marketing. That's a major factor with parents, if not with us wealthy geeks.

    Even Yamauchi's announcements that NGC will be delayed in order to secure adequate chip supplies hint that pricing is still likely unsure within Nintendo. When (not if) NEC agrees to Nintendo's pricing for the Flipper chip, Nintendo will price the NGC.

    Regardless, I'm getting an NGC for the Zeldariotroid games: Zelda, Mario, Metroid. Kids will buy it for Pokemon. Nintendo understands killer apps just as well as MS.

    < tofuhead >
    --

  • "They only have six plots, but they swap them around a bit."
    - George Orwell, 1984

  • That's what it means: the stories are supposed to be follow-ups, related items, updates, etc. I don't know how the CNN story fits this, but the rest definitely look familiar.

  • CNN used (still does?) to sell CDs of the TOP 100 story of the previous year. I bought the first one for 1993 and it was just a bunch of minute long video clips of CNN coverage of top evnents. I think they where in Real format, but I'm not sure.

    So, they already got a bunch of the clips 'digatized' and I guess they are just moving that kind of service onto the web.

  • "Martin Garbus, a lawyer representing the Mitchell estate, said he asked eBay to take the books off the site and asked Houghton Mifflin to get advance copies back from reviewers."

    Um, as in the Martin Garbus of the DeCSS trial? How can this guy work as counsel both for defendant in a case like DeCSS, but plaintiff in this case...??
  • Libraries have decades worth of newspapers available for searching - why can't this be put on the web?

    People are trying, but AFAIK it's all going to be (sigh) proprietary, pay-per-use access. A large company, UMI, owns the rights to a bunch of microfilm reels of newspapers like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Christian Science Monitor, going back to the 1880s in some cases. The goal over the next few years is to get these pieces of microfilm scanned, do OCR on the readable portions, hand-correct certain bits, and put all the OCRed text+images into a Bloody Huge Database. Preview at http://www.infolearning.com:8090/promo/histNews/sl d001.html [infolearning.com] in case anyone is really interested. That is only a fraction of what they've got in their 'base; we've been shipping them ~10G of processed data every week.

    Of course, they're going to be charging a nominal leg for this service, and marketing it to universities and other large institutions instead of individual subscribers. Public libraries maybe if the libraries have decent funding.

    (All the heavy lifting here is being done by several hundred workers in India and Mexico, natch.)

  • The first slashback, if I recall, was a couple of follow ups to stories posted previously on slashdot. timothy coined the term to refer to the follow up, and the word and format became popular very quickly - it was a great way to let /.'ers know how things turned out on some of the more interesting stories. It caught on and became a regular item with its own icon. Cool idea, and it's use has broadened slightly to include not only direct follow ups to stories, but more information or different directions from the subjects of other stories (lots of optical info lately, here's another blurb about optical stuff).
  • Note that optical logic gates are not completely new. Check out section 5.9.3.3, "The NOLM [Non-Linear Optical Loop Mirror] as a Logic Gate", in IBM's redbook [ibm.com] "Understanding Optical Communications".

    Also note that they have not created optical logic gates in this article, but optical transistors. However, if they are truly analagous to electrical transistors, then they can be put together to make logic gates. I have no knowledge of which technology is more appropriate (if either) for making large scale optical "integrated circuits".

    Incidentally, I definitely recommend that (free as in beer) book to anyone looking for a overview of optics and optical networking for the technical non-optical-engineer. It's a couple of years and old, and so a couple of years out of date, but still accurate in most ways.

    -Puk
  • Get real. Awareness is key to progress. The more people that hear about it the more that are likely to to contact the creator of the idea to see how to do it else where.

    Oh and by the way. What's the difference between saying put Tab A in Slot B in person and saying it in a video or an online document.

    Get over your need to see people sweat and toil. It's a disgusting fetish.

    The Linux toaster is simply to demonstrate the simplicity.

    Just what makes you think he's isn't teaching Linux.

    Besides QNX blows Linux and BSD out of the water.
  • How about a robot butler and jobs with a manditory minimum of 11 months of vacation. Replicators, and phasers and robotic poontang. Now thats a future we can all get behind!
  • Who said Euroderf is still living in the 50s? he's living in the 17th century. For the benefit of our American cousins let me render his sig into comprehensible English:

    1690 - Never forget.FTP.

    1690 is the year 1690

    1690 - Never Forget is usual rendered as "Rem 1690" Remember 1690, 1690 being the date of the Battle of the Boyne were the new Dutch (and Protestant) King of England defeated the old Scottish (and Catholic) King Of England in a battle in Ireland.

    Links here: google listing for 1690 [google.com]

    FTP does not stand for File Transfer Protocol but the more pointed Fuck The Pope.

    Links here: google listing for Fuck The Pope [google.com]

    He may be a North Briton (ie Scottish) - he certainly supports a Scottish football team, but he may also be a Protestant from Northern Ireland.
  • Something is very wrong with your bread. And you. Are you a cold blooded reptile?

    My P4 system idles at 30 degrees, and peaks under heavy load at about 40 degrees. I have never seen or heard of a P4 system in my life which was above about 45 degrees.

    Water to shower is something closer to 100 degrees and bread needs something even higher to toast.

    Therefore, I can conclude that you are not human, you do not eat typical bread, or you really enjoy lightly toasted bread and/or cold showers.
  • When I was starting high school the only computer I had to work on was the single Apple ][e in the library.

    -Legion

  • I imagine it depends on who's paying him.

    -Legion

  • The cynic might say linux toasters are great at taking prepared dough, but a few of them burn it quickly
  • connected to and controlled by linux. Now *that* would be cool. set a cron job to 'cat toast /dev/toaster' every morning at breakfast. :)
  • Can you imagine a Beowulf clister of these [k12.or.us]
  • RTFA next time, troll!

    This happens so much that it suprises me that the "slashdot effect" actually exists sometimes.

    Ah well,

    oojah
    --
  • I know what would happen to him.



    He'd turn into a cracker.

  • simple enough if placed in a loop. All that remains is a method of refreshing the signal. To this end, I thought of taking a gas laser, pumped to just a few photons below the point it will lase, and use it as the terminator of the loop. In this way, it gets a refresh on each loop

    Good idea. A material that slows down light (such as this one [cuny.edu]; thanks ultrabot2k1), used as a delay line, gives you optical DRAM. Just make sure you don't try to take your idea into outer space.

    Or you could just make optical SRAM by using these optical transistors (a D latch/flipflop is two NOTs and a mux).

  • Duh, Them kids should stay out of riverdale!

    --Moose
  • The gamecube sounds cool, so I hope it arrives, but it's obviously coming into a hotly contested market.

    It won't be hotly contested if all the competitors keep dropping out. Right now I count one contestant: the PS2. Xbox and Gamecube are both vapour. Dreamcast is toast. Indrema's vapour-toast. Am I missing a half-dozen next-generation consoles, here, or what? (It's entirely possible I'm missing something, so please point it out -- but there really aren't that many new consoles on the way or here, are there?)

    -Erf C.

  • Really. This thing is just a toaster oven with the guts of a not so up to spec computer placed inside it. And then all of a sudden its a linux toaster oven. No it's not, it's a cleverly designed case. What I was expecting, and would be cool, would be some real embedded linux allowing the user log on it remotely, open the toaster door, place (maybe with some basic grabbing doohickey) the item wished to be toasted inside, and heat accordingly.
    But alas, I will have to wait another day for such a lazy invention. I already have my coffee machine automated, however, so the first person to make a REMOTE ADMISTRATABLE toaster oven, pleace notify me, and it will quickly join my cron.daily file :-)
  • A cynical Slashdot reader would say that Slashdot's own non-editors continually prove that information doesn't need to be accurate, relevant, new, informative, or worthwhile in order to be treated as news. Ideas are always recycled here. The discussion responses vary widely, often resulting in innovative or additional content each time.

    But to take an even more dry view, even if everything that can happen, has happened, as in your US Patent clerk mentality, people would still have the option of rehashing the past anyway.

    ===

  • Subject: Newbie needs help
    Newsgroups: alt.linux.install

    I can't get linux to install on my toaster.
    Can any one help me?

    It has always been the joke in the past but now
    that there is a realy a linux toaster we need to start a new joke for those light days on the nntp.

    I recomend the founding of a non-profit org that will make sure that Linux is always on the cutting edge of silly hardware so that we will always have something to post on those aformentioned light days.

    I could use a linux powered cigarette lighter.
    mount /dev/flame /mnt/fire
  • This idea of making anything run linux isn't new. Some of my friends used to do that kind of stuff, but they more often tried to make bongs. A bong in a kitchen appliance such as discussed above could really get you toasted. I guess that Linux system would be great for Usenet flame wars. It doesn't look like it can burn a CD though, although some luddite twit will probably put one in to try it out.
  • what linus would say if someone installed him in a toaster?
  • Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
    Well, I think so Brain, but how are we going to install Linux on an electric can opener?

    Bryan Grimshaw made a Linux machine inside of a toaster oven. The idea behind the toaster is to show the ease of setting up a Linux terminal/server network

    And what, pray was the point in taking a perfectly good toaster-oven which could have quite happily been used to make toast and roast small items, and turn it into a stupid-looking computer case?
    None! None at all...
    How does this show kids how to set up a terminal/server network?
    It doesn't! It's just completely pointless and stupid!
    A small while ago when you could come up with any crazy idea for using the internet and have people throw money at you, people were going on and on about how in the Internet Future you'd have the internet on your toaster and the internet on your fridge blah blah blah. This is just the same. Hey! We can do Linux on a watch! Well big deal! A watch is a device for keeping the time. It doesn't need to run Linux or any other operating system for that matter. It has a mechanism. This is all it needs. A toaster just needs to be able to make toast and switch off when the toast reaches the required setting. It doesn't need to be computerised, it just needs simple electrics. A fridge just needs to keep things cold. It only needs a pump and a temperature sensor - simple electics.
    I don't want any of my household appliances on the internet, or running Linux, just because some geeks think it's cool, thank you very much... It's just so unnecessary!
    Oh, and by the way. It's not cool at all. It's stupid and sad.


    Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
  • So you're either saying that your p4 runs at refrigerator temperatures (30-45 farenheit), or you shower in boiling water (100 Celsius).

    You don't work for NASA by any chance, do you?
  • that I submitted the story on the optical transistor [physicsweb.org] (a different link) on Friday night. Woo hoo.

    --
  • This really doesn't seem like the coolest computer case I've ever seen, but it does bring a whole new meaning to "frying your processor".

  • If you have a job, car, health insurance and go on holiday twice a year, what more improvements can your lifestyle get? How about just the car, the insurance and the holidays?



  • My next project is to . . . build a Macintosh computer into a toaster, one small difference, the heating coils would stay in and on full power.

    The all new Fry mac.


    I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.

  • Has anyone got a hold of a development machine and put Linux on it yet? I would love to ping or telnet to that thing.

  • Question:
    Has anyone wondered exactly what "Slashback" means? I would expect it to be updates to previous stories on Slashdot... but it seems to be more like longer quickies or simply a cluster of a handful of submissions.
    Any of the old-timers remember the meaning of slashback?

    This ain't a troll or anything... it's an honest question!
  • and all films will be derivatives (derivation being a very postmodern concept

    I wouldn't say that. For example 'Dr. Faustus' a 17th Century play by Christopher Marlowe was derived from several variations on an old German myth and some other interpretations of those myths. Heaps of Shakespeare was based on other stuff (Antony + Cleopatra has alot taken almost word for word from Plutarch's works). And all this about 'every possible storyline being taken' is a bit of nonesense in my mind. The only century in which art has not had many new and exciting experiments conducted is this one, and that is because it has just started. Everyone at every point in history thinks that there is somthing special about their particular point and that in 'these days' some point has been reached which has never been reached before, and the continuity of life proves them wrong*.

    *grossly paraphrased from Tolstoy

  • re: the CNN archive - the Movie and Music interests will want to charge in any way possible for anything they can get their hands on.

    For example, if you have a figure skater performing to a bit of music, someone will want a license fee. Or a news story with a movie clip in it. Same thing.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip


  • Thanks for the link! I understand now. 'been a long time since I've had to think about electrons...


    ---

  • Heh? What is "electricity propagation" and how is it different the electron mobility in a field, which I thought was electricity, er, current flow, whatever... i've been outta college for 10 years...


    ---
  • Well, I think it boils down to two things, how fast it takes for a voltage to get from one side of a conductor to another, this is what I referred to as propagation. This is what is important in computers and other high frequency electronics.

    I'm not buying that. Point me to a reference that says "electriciy propogation" doesn't have to do with electron mobility, and the electron mobility is a "few inches per hour".

    Somethings smells fishy.


    ---
  • Shouldn't a toaster be running an Athalon?

  • Get a life. These people obviously know exactly how to teach kids and have a good time. Maybe your shorts are in a knot, because you have a hard time building a server in a regular case? If you might bother, take a look at the rest of this web site you would find out that these people do great things with/for LINUX.

  • Mod this one up, please. Thanks.

  • Optical processors need optical storage.

    You mean like CD-ROMs? :)

    It is interesting, but I have a few questions, like how would you read the data back out? How would you make these things tiny enough?
    -

  • Too bad I sold my SFP stock, I didn't know it was going to be slashdotted.
    -
  • Great, now my computer is running on the speed of light. How do I overclock that?

    Just how fast do you think electricity travels? Its already approximately the speed of light.

    And it already takes about a nanosecond for light/electricity to go the distance of your motherboard, which has to be taken account for in design.
    -

  • What is "electricity propagation" and how is it different the electron mobility in a field, which I thought was electricity, er, current flow, whatever... i've been outta college for 10 years...

    Well, I think it boils down to two things, how fast it takes for a voltage to get from one side of a conductor to another, this is what I referred to as propagation. This is what is important in computers and other high frequency electronics.

    Then there is the actual current flow of electrons, which is really slow in comparision, like a few inches per hour in a normal curcuit. This is mostly acedemic.

    Either way, you can't really say "electricity" is slower than light, in any meaningful way.
    -

  • I'm not buying that. Point me to a reference that says "electriciy propogation" doesn't have to do with electron mobility, and the electron mobility is a "few inches per hour".

    Propagation was my term, I use it to refer to the transfer of energy.

    Here, read this.

    Link [amasci.com]

    My original point was just that electrical energy already travels about at the speed of light. Various things can affect this speed, just as light passing through various materials will change speed. "Electricity" is an abused term, used to refer to lots of things.
    -

  • Thanks for the link! No problem, that's a pretty good site.
    -
  • compared to light electricity travels relatively slowly, thats why people are interested in optical computers, because they offer enormously faster speeds.

    I'm sorry, but that is just not correct. Electricity propagation velocity is very close to the speed of light in the atmosphere. If you are talking about electron flow, that is much slower, on the order of a few inches per hour. I think it is safe to assume we are talking about propagation velocity here.

    Do some research, it's an interesting subject. The reason light holds promise is because we can modulate a lot more data into it, not because it propagates much faster.
    -

  • This project started off as a joke with my high school network administration class. They are learning how to install and manage Linux terminal servers using the K12LTSP distribution.

    We wrote linked list toy programs in Pascal on a crappy Macintosh. Lucky bastard.

  • Asshole, the linux toaster was built by students. Students of a teacher TEACHING Linux. Dumbass.
  • Give the kids a break, they're in highschool. What cool things have YOU done?
  • they should focus on putting these babies inside of REFRIGERATORS!!! mini ones, that come with college dorms. That way we could overclock the HELL out of them...
  • So I guess when you make a cd, you really are 'burning' it.

    So what if puns are the lowest form of comedy,
    You laughed didn't you?
  • Great, now my computer is running on the speed of light. How do I overclock that?

    You think the DMCA took all the fun out of computing, just wait for the laws of physics!
  • Looks like it's time to drag the Hello Kitty Vibrator [geocities.com] out again. Just so you know, Kitty's head goes in first.
  • That chip that was supposed to be a webserver?
    It was just a tiny little chip that had a built in Http server. I was actually thinking about buying one if they were going to produce them
  • Well why not take it a little further and suggest that everyone spend their time picking up garbage and teaching illiterate people to read? For christ sake, calm down a little. There's nothing wrong with someone having a little fun and trying to do something crazy.
  • Cool- I wonder if Mr. Nelson is really Doc Brown? I wonder if Mr. Nelson/Doc Brown has perfected the Flux capacitor yet... I sent in my down payment and I'm waiting. I've got the car and everything.

    He better not treat me like those Libyan terrorists. I think I might know the difference between a Flux Capacitor and an Atom bomb made out of pinball machine parts. I've almost got enough money for the Mr. Fusion option.

    I wonder if the principal still calls everyone Slackers. It would make sense if they used Slackware instead of the K12LTP distro thingie.

    And Biff-- aka Butthead?

  • We hacked loderunner on Apple IIe's, lucky you, luckier him.
  • aka Bill Gates
  • Not compared to WinTel.

    I just cut two slots into the side of my Enlight case, right above my heatsink/fan attached to my P-IV. There's just enough room to slide in two pieces of bread. Right before my shower, I load it up and connect to Seti@Home. I emerge from the shower to the pleasing scent of warm toast.

    Some people get upset that their 1.5GHz runs at 750MHz. Others make toast.

    Ewige Blumenkraft!
  • What ever happened to the video game companies anyhow?

    What did we have before PSX came out? Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, NeoGeo, 3DO... It used to be that Video Game companies made the video game machines... Now it seems that the video game companies are the only ones NOT comming up with consoles.

    And while I'm at it... it seems Nintendo cares less about the established market, and has their own monopoly on the portable game market... GB color, a game boy you tilt to control the game, etc. If the Virtual Boy was in color they'd have already taken over in the not-yet-existant future 3D market. I think it's good that nintendo is forward looking, rather than complacent.
  • So you're saying you don't "tilt the game boy to control the game" ?
  • Mac OS X is bloated, incomplete, slow, and unstable... Does that sound anything like NeXT?

    XFce is small, quick, intuative, and completly functional. Now what does that remind you of?
  • You all havw a right to spend your resources any way you want, but a Linux server in a toaster isn't a good way to do it in my opinion.

    If you want to promote Linux, take the time and instead of praising your geekly glory by making a photogenic linux toaster that will get you linked on slashdot and will slashdot your linux toaster anyway, go teach some kids some linux.

    Teaching is unglamorous, dull and frustrating work, nowhere near as entertaining as making a Linux toaster.

    But a lot more useful way to pass your free time.

  • Now if you could only use the toaster dials to change the CPU clock and FSB speed. Forget Abit's SoftMenu, now we have physical controls!
  • "a game boy you tilt to control the game"

    that's actually the game that has the tilt mechanism built into it. you can play the game in a regular gameboy. HUZZAH.

  • "And while I'm at it... it seems Nintendo cares less about the established market, and has their own monopoly on the portable game market... GB color, a game boy you tilt to control the game, etc. If the Virtual Boy was in color..." No, i didn't say that, but the way you worded this indicated that Nintendo had created a seperate gameboy system that you tilt to control the game. I was just making sure you were aware that the control mechanism was in the new game itself and not in a new gameboy system. I wouldn't want anyone to go into their local retailer and get laughed at by the 16 year old store clerk when they're looking for one of those new-fangled tiltin' gameboys.


  • Education was typically limited to HS & then consisted mostly of rote memorization.

    It appears to me that we're falling back into the rote memorization trap. At least in Virginia, the unnatural emphasis on the SOL (Standards of Learning) tests has pushed teachers back into drilling their students on the test material. IMHO the worst thing that the SOL tests could have been perverted into is just this sort of emphasis on a narrow band of knowledge in order to pass the SOLs so the state funds your school. The teachers and students should not have access to the test materials a priori, and the teachers should not be allowed to spend classtime drilling the students specifically to pass the test. The test and its results should accurately reflect the abilities of the students, not their ability to regurgitate factoids or the ability of the teacher to drill info into their heads long enough to pass.


  • Bryan Grimshaw made a Linux machine inside of a toaster oven.

    Shit with the demise of Slackware, Stormix, Easel, Corel Linux... The similarity is astonishing. Linux is toast.. or to be politically correct its only worth running on toasters take your pick.

    wanna root me? [antioffline.com] (powered by OpenBSD!)

  • So, before long every type of film will have been made, and all films will be derivatives

    Yes, but whatever you do, don't parody one of the worst books ever written [yahoo.com]...

    --Blair

    P.S. The phrase "there's nothing new under the sun" comes from Ecclesiastes. I.e., your thesis is 2,000 years old.
  • Actually it is possible to slow down light [cuny.edu]. Granted, this we're still a few years away from seeing any usable applications for this technology, but it's still a pretty cool concept.
  • Wow, so you can run a computer outside of it's case... big fscking deal. Now if this did something like setting my toast time and temp, I'd be impressed. Especially if I could do it from my WAP phone. Sounds to me like a waste of a perfectly good pizza warmer.
  • Sorry, SGI already has a computer in a toaster-like shell. The O2.

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