Re: Hawaii you say
They do that in NZ but its only a few places that are sufficiently remote to prevent interlopers getting there.
8318 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Jun 2009
Its not just getting it a bit wrong - even entering the water safely can result in thermal shock as the water is bloody cold all year round there. I was in Lake Garda a while back and the water by the shore was 20C or more but the following week a bloke dived off a boat and and wasnt seen again for a couple of days.
I had an old Cossard Dual Beam all valve oscilloscope that I dropped a screw on and of course it slipped through an air hole. It weighed about 80lbs so I unplugged it and sat on the floor and took the case off, located the screw and then caught my cuff on something and managed to discharge the HT capacitor of its 4kv (IIRC) and launched the thing about 12' across the room tearing a few intercostal muscles. The scope survived its trip seemingly unharmed! It was still working 20 years later when I got rid of it.
Used to use a Calcomp 8 pen plotter about 6' wide for chip layout. Hypnotic to watch and a pen would almost always run out when you needed a plot in a hurry - they were made of brass so you could only guess how much ink was in them by how heavy they felt.
Spent a rather unpleasant time on evening when it ate my tie and had to wait for the security guard to do his rounds and set me free!
I'm currently trying to build some documentation that shows how Fuzix works. Basically hyperlinking the code with explanations. Perhaps not the best place to start as there's a lot of cpu dependent code. Its quite an eye opener and I hope it will be a useful educational tool. I may move onto Linux when done.
The brain runs on around 20W and even thinking really hard doesnt increase the load much though its obviously pretty hard to work out its power consumption as stressing the brain excites the body as well though fMRI scans indicate the bits that are running hot at any one moment they can as yet measure calorifically I believe.
Brains have evolved so they born with structures that can perform certain tasks very efficiently, evolution has also managed to work out ways so that their start up state is such that it will probably start to perform its intended task from 'birth'. Even small brains (<200 neuron ones from nematode worms) are capable of learning from the off and reproducing them in code can achieve surprising results using simple training methods.
The programming of brains is both structural and the setting of initial states somehow - chicks dont learn to eat they learn to eat effectively being programmed to eat, move and later on fuck and look after their young but all animals seem to have a degree of pre-programming (which may be purely morphological for some requirements) and others actions are controlled by hormones and I'd bet there's bits of ROM all over the place too. Epigenetics suggests things can be programmed by inheritable changes to methylisation of genes. Brains do learn, and how, but their is far more programming in there at bootup than simple* PhD students can get a grip on. The mining of the existing brains and nervous systems is far bigger a task than any company should be allowed to exploit (and patent FFS) and really needs something like an open source version of the genome project
I still remember the horror of trying to eat pasta that had been cooked at 16000 ft up Kilimanjaro several hours before the midnight start of the final ascent. It achieved a consistency of extractal dente in that it was impossible to chew and then stuck to your teeth sufficiently well to pull them out should you wish to speak!
"and leaving them lying around is in itself pollution." I really dont want to work for you if your business acumen leads your to not maintaining or replacing your main source of income.
I've heard some really pathetic stuff against PV but the worst has to be 'the steel supports only last the lifetime of the cells and somehow you cant just unscrew a weary old panel and stick anew one on'.