November 13, 2024
Crunchyroll 360
Plus an annual subscription saves around sixteen bucks over the monthly rate.
Though then I recalled that my last annual subscription ran out a few days earlier than I expected it to. A little research confirmed that, according to Crunchyroll itself,
Our subscription services are billed on a 30-day cycle (or 90 days, or 360 days), not a fixed rate. Since all months do not have exactly 30 days, the billing date can fluctuate, which can result in these changes.
Ah, now it makes sense. With the more typical month-to-month payment systems, we don't mind getting screwed over in February because the seven 31-day months will make up for it. The whole system is still more irrational than it needs to be.
If I ruled the world, I'd create a calendar of twelve 30-day months with four one-day festival days for the equinoxes and solstices, plus an extra day for the New Year. Then I'd shift the year forward ten days so that the Winter Solstice fell on New Year's Eve.
In ancient times, kings and emperors issued debt relief decrees on special occasions to win the loyalty of the masses. Given the complexities of modern economies, that wouldn't work today without creating all sorts of moral hazards.
I would stipulate that no rents or interest could be charged during those five festival days. This rule would not apply to all the common per diem expenses, only to rolling monthly and yearly accrued charges.
I'm sure it would take no time at all for retailers to come up with all sorts of "Interest free!" sales.
Oh, and I would get rid of Daylight Saving Time too.
Related posts
The relative time of day
Daylight Saving (waste of) Time
Labels: business, crunchyroll, geography, hidive, netflix, politics, science, streaming, technology
July 10, 2024
The relative time of day
If it is possible to quantify any aspect of Japanese society, an official body in Japan is bound to do it. That includes the time of day. Not only the clock time but the general divisions of the day in colloquial terms. We need only turn to the "Daily Time Subdivision Map" as defined by the Japan Meteorological Agency.
Whoa, 3:00 AM counts as dawn and 3:00 PM counts as evening? Well, in Japan, yes. Given the geography, this actually makes sense. The time zone for Japan is UTC +9:00. That's for the entire country, from Okinawa to Hokkaido. Moreover, Tokyo sits on the eastern edge of the meridian at 35 degrees north.
To that bit of geography, consider as well that Japan does not go on Summer Time (サマータイム). As a result, even in the middle of the summer, the sun rises over Tokyo as early as 4:30 AM and sets no later than 7:00 PM. In the middle of the winter, the sun rises before 7:00 AM and sets no earlier than 4:30 PM.
But 7:00 PM is pretty early in the evening compared to Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City is in the middle of the Mountain Time Zone at 40 degrees north and goes on Summer Time (MDT). At the height of the summer, the sun sets at a whopping 9:00 PM. Yet another reason I'm not a big fan of Daylight Saving Time.
Back during the go-go 1980s, when drinking with the boys after hours was de rigueur for every company man in Tokyo (and to a certain extent still is), a popular anecdote claimed that the typical salaryman preferred doing so under cover of the night. That was why Japan resisted going on Summer Time.
Midnight |
– |
3:00 AM |
Predawn |
To that bit of geography, consider as well that Japan does not go on Summer Time (サマータイム). As a result, even in the middle of the summer, the sun rises over Tokyo as early as 4:30 AM and sets no later than 7:00 PM. In the middle of the winter, the sun rises before 7:00 AM and sets no earlier than 4:30 PM.
But 7:00 PM is pretty early in the evening compared to Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City is in the middle of the Mountain Time Zone at 40 degrees north and goes on Summer Time (MDT). At the height of the summer, the sun sets at a whopping 9:00 PM. Yet another reason I'm not a big fan of Daylight Saving Time.
Back during the go-go 1980s, when drinking with the boys after hours was de rigueur for every company man in Tokyo (and to a certain extent still is), a popular anecdote claimed that the typical salaryman preferred doing so under cover of the night. That was why Japan resisted going on Summer Time.
Related posts
Crunchyroll 360
Daylight Saving (waste of) Time
Labels: geography, japan, japanese culture, politics, science, technology
October 21, 2023
Weather News
Aside from serious events that demand a more sober tone (like earthquakes), the presenters maintain a relentlessly upbeat attitude. Being easy on the eyes certainly helps as well (see the program guide).
The male co-anchors show up to talk shop and occasionally host a time slot but they are obviously not the main draws.
Hosted coverage begins at 5:00 AM JST and continues until 11:00 PM JST in six three-hour blocks: Morning, Sunshine, Coffee Time, Afternoon, Evening, and Moon. They will cover notable events like the recent annular eclipse and the Orionid meteor shower live.
Labels: geography, japanese culture, japanese tv, science, streaming, technology, television, weather
October 18, 2018
The problem child (4/7)
It there was a single piece of technology that marked where things started to go wrong between IBM and Microsoft, the final straw that convinced Bill Gates, "It's not you, it's—no, it is you," it was DOS 4.0. DOS 4.0 was released by IBM in 1988. Microsoft walked away from the relationship two years later.DOS 4.0 was at first greeted with great acclaim. Paul Somerson stated in the 27 September 1988 PC Magazine, "DOS 4.0 answers just about every major complaint about prior versions." But the glow faded fast. DOS 4.0 was soon causing more problems than it solved.
Asked John Dvorak in his 15 November 1988 Inside Track column,
Can't IBM do anything right? [DOS 4] is their baby, and it has so many bugs that we're told that we can expect to see 4.1 sooner than expected. I'd wait for 4.3 the way they are going.
In the 17 January 1989 issue, Ray Duncan rose to the defense of the OS, arguing that it was a victim of inflated expectations.
When IBM's DOS 4 first appeared, analysts and pundits hailed it as a major evolutionary step. A few weeks later, the same analysts and pundits came to their senses and there was a severe backlash. DOS 4 was subjected to a torrent of abuse for a handful of bugs no worse than those that accompanied the release of DOS 2 or 3.
But a little over a year later, Duncan took another opportunity to analyze the role of DOS 4.0 in what he saw now as the systematic undoing of IBM. In his 16 October 1990 Power Programming column, he succinctly summarized the beginning of the IBM's declining influence in the personal computer arena.
DOS 4 will probably merit a footnote in the history books as one of personal computing's major operating-system fiascos. The changes that appeared in PC-DOS 4 were entirely implemented by IBM, leaving Microsoft in the uncomfortable position of having to reverse-engineer the system in order to come up with a "generic" MS-DOS 4 that could be licensed to other OEMs. Users stayed away from DOS 4 in droves. As I am writing this, DOS 3.3 is still outselling DOS 4 by a significant margin.
As a result, Duncan reported later in the same issue,
By 1990, Microsoft had awakened from its preoccupation with OS/2, realized that DOS was still a cash cow, wrested control of DOS's development back from Boca Raton, and deployed famous software guru Gordon Letwin to recoup the damage done to DOS's reputation by DOS 4.
Microsoft and IBM parted ways that year. Once there was no longer any need to pretend they liked each other in public, the gloves came off. PC Magazine editor-in-chief Bill Machrone reported in the 28 May 1991 issue that Microsoft's message at the System Strategy Seminar earlier that year was hard to miss:
Forget DOS. Forget OS/2. Forget LAN Manager. Forget NetWare. Forget Unix. But don't forget Windows. That's what Microsoft will ask you to do in the coming months and years.
The pieces puzzled over by the prognosticators for years now fell into place.
The next OS/2 from Microsoft will bear little resemblance to the versions we've seen to date. OS/2 3.0 will feature a "New Technology" (NT) kernel, full Windows support, portability, distributed processing, and POSIX support. The development team is headed by Dave Cutler, the guy formerly responsible for VMS at DEC.
OS/2 optimist William Zachmann heard the same message—"Forget about OS/2 2.0 and stick with Windows"—and fretted that "this Windows-centric outlook has led many to assert—incorrectly—that OS/2 is dead."
Well, those "many" were asserting correctly. As far as the PC consumer was concerned, OS/2 was dead. The death certificate was delivered a year later (though the undead OS/2 would wander the Earth for another decade).
A month later, John Dvorak observed in his 11 June 1991 Inside Track column that the feud between IBM and Microsoft "over the direction of the industry, over Microsoft's emphasis of Windows, and over DOS 4"
finally erupted in a Forbes article where the two companies clearly stated that they were in disagreement about direction. Gates said that he and Microsoft were largely responsible for the success of the IBM PC and today's hot computer market. He made it clear that IBM's contribution to the leadership was a mirage.
In his 15 October 1991 column, Dvorak pointed to the "infamous Bill Gates memo" first leaked by the San Jose Mercury News. "The memo criticizes IBM for providing Microsoft with lousy code and intimates that Microsoft is better off without IBM."IBM had hamstrung the DOS operating system long before DOS 4. In an truly ironic juxtaposition, the same 28 April 1992 issue that previewed Windows 3.1 in a cover story (and mentioned OS/2 2.0 in a much smaller font) also ran a letter from one Tim Paterson of Redmond, Washington.
Titled "IBM was the problem, not MS-DOS," Paterson objected to the "common misconception" that the designers of MS-DOS had "divided the first megabyte of memory into 640K RAM for the operating system and application and 384K reserved for hardware," creating the long-derided "barrier" that restricted memory access in MS-DOS to 640K RAM.
And who was this Tim Paterson to make such a claim?
As the sole designer of MS-DOS, Version 1.0, I did no such thing. The first computer that ran DOS could have a full megabyte of memory of DOS and applications. The system ROM occupied only the last 2K of the address space, but even that could be switched out after boot-up.
When Microsoft purchased DOS from Seattle Computer Products, Tim Paterson came along as part of the deal.
Those of us who lived with the 64K address space of the 8080/Z80 had learned our lesson. IBM, unfortunately, did not. They alone decided to build memory-mapped hardware right into the middle of our precious address space. I am mystified why anyone would consider this poor hardware design to be an aspect of DOS. DOS uses as much contiguous memory as can be made available.
Four years later, in the documentary Triumph of the Nerds, Steve Ballmer ruefully admitted that
Windows today is probably four years behind, three years behind where it would have been had we not danced with IBM for so long. Because the amount of split energy, split works, split IQ in the company cost our end customer real innovation in our product line.
Microsoft's successor to DOS 4.0 was a case in point. First reviewed in the July 1991 issue, PC Magazine would give DOS 5.0 a Product of the Year award.
Between 1990 and 1995, Windows 3.0 was followed by DOS 5.0, Windows 3.1, DOS 6.0, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows NT, and Windows 95. Microsoft was on a roll. IBM became an afterthought as a supplier of PC operating systems.
Though IBM did engineer some of the best laptops ever, before selling its entire PC division to Lenovo.
Requiescat in pace
Related posts
The future that wasn't (introduction)
The future that wasn't (1/7)
The future that wasn't (2/7)
The future that wasn't (3/7)
The future that wasn't (5/7)
The future that wasn't (6/7)
The future that wasn't (7/7)
The accidental standard
The grandfathers of DOS
Labels: business, computers, history, science, tech history, technology
October 11, 2018
Power in small packages
One proxy for Moore's Law these days is how small a package an HD video decoder can fit into. 4K media streaming devices from Amazon, Google, and Roku are not much bigger than an older USB flash drive. Boggles the mind.
The Roku Express (maxes out at a mere 1080p) isn't quite that small, about half the size of a proverbial pack of playing cards. But I am equally wowed by the power supply it comes with. It's one of those now ubiquitous 5V/2A wall units commonly used as cell phone chargers.
The DC output must be electrically isolated, else iPhone and Android users would be electrocuting themselves right and left. This normally requires a bulky transformer. Instead, the 120 VAC is rectified and an oscillator chip kicks the current frequency from 60 Hz to 100 KHz.
At those frequencies, the flyback transformer can be smaller than a dime.
With a high-voltage MOSFET driving the primary coil, the result is a switching power supply that draws almost no power on standby (the Roku doesn't have a physical switch or even a shut-down sequence) and is the size of my thumb.
The image above is the reference design for a switching 5V/2A power supply with variable 85-265 VAC input from Texas Instruments. The circuit diagram is posted on the TI website.
The Roku Express (maxes out at a mere 1080p) isn't quite that small, about half the size of a proverbial pack of playing cards. But I am equally wowed by the power supply it comes with. It's one of those now ubiquitous 5V/2A wall units commonly used as cell phone chargers.
The DC output must be electrically isolated, else iPhone and Android users would be electrocuting themselves right and left. This normally requires a bulky transformer. Instead, the 120 VAC is rectified and an oscillator chip kicks the current frequency from 60 Hz to 100 KHz.
At those frequencies, the flyback transformer can be smaller than a dime.
With a high-voltage MOSFET driving the primary coil, the result is a switching power supply that draws almost no power on standby (the Roku doesn't have a physical switch or even a shut-down sequence) and is the size of my thumb.
The image above is the reference design for a switching 5V/2A power supply with variable 85-265 VAC input from Texas Instruments. The circuit diagram is posted on the TI website.
Labels: roku, science, streaming, technology, television
August 30, 2018
The tortoise and the hare (2/7)
The challenge for journalists covering science and industry is to capture the state of a rapidly changing environment without forgetting they are taking pictures of moving objects. Reducing technology to snapshots in time masks all the action going on behind the scenes. Compared to the jack-rabbiting hare, the tortoise doesn't seem to be moving at all.
This was certainly true of software and hardware in the late 1980s. Gordon Moore devised his famous law in 1965. As with a standard exponential growth curve, the rate of change was barely perceptible at first. But by the 1990s, it was taking off like a rocket. The technology was evolving so fast that the real world appeared utterly unreal.
In his 12 June 1990 Inside Track column, John Dvorak reported that a
Such predictions were gobsmacking unbelievable at the time. But the intel Dvorak got from Intel was spot-on. Released in 1999, The Pentium 3 had 9,500,000 transistors on board, a clock speed of 450 MHz, and cranked out 2,054 MIPS. The Pentium 4 topped 100,000,000 transistors in 2004. Multi-core CPUs today contain billions.
Once a slow-moving technology begins to pick up speed, the acceleration can catch bystanders by surprise. Just as when a much heralded technology begins to slow, it can quickly get stuck in the mud.
The most surprising things about the origins of the personal computer is that a lumbering entity like IBM brought the PC to market in so nimble a fashion. So quickly, in fact, that neither IBM nor Microsoft had time to develop its own operating system. Microsoft instead purchased the progenitor of MS-DOS from Seattle Computer Products.
Come the 1990s, a decade on, a new operating system was needed, a 32-bit OS for the 32-bit microprocessors that already dominated the market, that extended the memory address space from 1 MB to 4 GB. And it should come with a graphical user interface (GUI). OS/2 ticked off all the boxes. Obviously history was simply going to repeat itself.
Except that IBM viewed the accidental standard it had created as exactly that: an accident. A mistake, one it was not eager to repeat. Still, everybody expected another turn on a dime, a reboot of the personal computer industry once again engineered by the hit Hope and Crosby duo of Microsoft and IBM.
Everybody but Microsoft, it turned out.
Work on a GUI OS interface began at Microsoft in 1981. Windows had been in formal development since 1983, when Bill Gates recruited Scott McGregor, a key developer behind Xerox PARC's pioneering windowing system, and put him in charge of the project. That was four years prior to the release of OS/2 1.0.
This was certainly true of software and hardware in the late 1980s. Gordon Moore devised his famous law in 1965. As with a standard exponential growth curve, the rate of change was barely perceptible at first. But by the 1990s, it was taking off like a rocket. The technology was evolving so fast that the real world appeared utterly unreal.
In his 12 June 1990 Inside Track column, John Dvorak reported that a
two million transistor 586 will show up in 1992, and the 4-6 million 686 in 1996. By the year 2000, the expected technology breakthroughs will allow the company 100 million transistor on the 786. It will crank out 2 billion instructions per second [2,000 MIPS] at a clock speed of 250 MHz! Sheesh. The company confirms these assertions.
Such predictions were gobsmacking unbelievable at the time. But the intel Dvorak got from Intel was spot-on. Released in 1999, The Pentium 3 had 9,500,000 transistors on board, a clock speed of 450 MHz, and cranked out 2,054 MIPS. The Pentium 4 topped 100,000,000 transistors in 2004. Multi-core CPUs today contain billions.
 |
| (Click image to enlarge.) |
Once a slow-moving technology begins to pick up speed, the acceleration can catch bystanders by surprise. Just as when a much heralded technology begins to slow, it can quickly get stuck in the mud.
The most surprising things about the origins of the personal computer is that a lumbering entity like IBM brought the PC to market in so nimble a fashion. So quickly, in fact, that neither IBM nor Microsoft had time to develop its own operating system. Microsoft instead purchased the progenitor of MS-DOS from Seattle Computer Products.
Come the 1990s, a decade on, a new operating system was needed, a 32-bit OS for the 32-bit microprocessors that already dominated the market, that extended the memory address space from 1 MB to 4 GB. And it should come with a graphical user interface (GUI). OS/2 ticked off all the boxes. Obviously history was simply going to repeat itself.
Except that IBM viewed the accidental standard it had created as exactly that: an accident. A mistake, one it was not eager to repeat. Still, everybody expected another turn on a dime, a reboot of the personal computer industry once again engineered by the hit Hope and Crosby duo of Microsoft and IBM.
Everybody but Microsoft, it turned out.
Work on a GUI OS interface began at Microsoft in 1981. Windows had been in formal development since 1983, when Bill Gates recruited Scott McGregor, a key developer behind Xerox PARC's pioneering windowing system, and put him in charge of the project. That was four years prior to the release of OS/2 1.0.
Contrary to the lore that emerged later, the first 16-bit version of Windows was lauded by the press. In his 20 August 1985 pre-release review, PC Magazine editor Bill Machrone predicted that "Windows will become a powerful tool for power users, and it lays a solid groundwork for future generations of PC applications."
PC Magazine later praised Windows 1.0 in its "Best of 1985" issue. Machrone again described it as "a harbinger of the future," especially in the way it integrated device drivers into the operating system. In a featured 25 February 1986 product review, Jeff Duntemann called Windows "the face DOS will wear in the future."
PC Magazine later praised Windows 1.0 in its "Best of 1985" issue. Machrone again described it as "a harbinger of the future," especially in the way it integrated device drivers into the operating system. In a featured 25 February 1986 product review, Jeff Duntemann called Windows "the face DOS will wear in the future."
Indeed, DOS would wear that face until the release of Windows XP in 2001.
Holding Windows back from widespread consumer acceptance at the time was the hardware. To run well, Windows 1.0 required a maxed-out PC AT with an EGA card and monitor, which could almost double the price of an already pricey system.
But like the stubborn tortoise, Microsoft plodded along, releasing versions that first took advantage of the hybrid 16/32-bit 286 and then the fully 32-bit 386.
As Steve Ballmer recounted in Triumph of the Nerds, "I was the development manager for Windows 1.0 and we kept slogging and slogging to get things right for [Windows 3.0 in] 1990."
Microsoft was slogging in the right direction. The 15 March 1988 issue of PC Magazine inaugurated the "Pipeline" column that included a bestseller list focusing on business software and operating systems. The first list began as follows:
That third entry remains a surprise. Flying well below the radar, Windows had already established a sizable market presence. When Windows 3.0 debuted in May 1990, Microsoft finally had the consumer operating system it'd been looking for and a good idea of how fast that critter could run. It was time to press the pedal to the metal.
Consider a 30 April 1991 column in which Jim Seymour ranted about Microsoft changing the default keyboard shortcuts in Word 5.5 (DOS) to match those of the Windows interface. A change he points to is that ALT-F-O now launched the File Open dialog box. With the benefit of hindsight, ALT-F-O is an amazing example of forward thinking.
A quarter century later, ALT-F-O retains the same function in practically all Windows applications. In 1991, Microsoft committed itself to a future based on the Windows interface. And followed through.
But back in the 27 December 1988 issue, columnist Ray Duncan wasn't
Actually, it'd only take four more years for Windows 3.x to bury OS/2, selling forty times more copies than OS/2 had thus far in its entire existence.
But like the stubborn tortoise, Microsoft plodded along, releasing versions that first took advantage of the hybrid 16/32-bit 286 and then the fully 32-bit 386.
As Steve Ballmer recounted in Triumph of the Nerds, "I was the development manager for Windows 1.0 and we kept slogging and slogging to get things right for [Windows 3.0 in] 1990."
Microsoft was slogging in the right direction. The 15 March 1988 issue of PC Magazine inaugurated the "Pipeline" column that included a bestseller list focusing on business software and operating systems. The first list began as follows:
1. Lotus 1-2-3 (DOS)
2. WordPerfect 4.2 (DOS)
3. Microsoft Windows 2.03
That third entry remains a surprise. Flying well below the radar, Windows had already established a sizable market presence. When Windows 3.0 debuted in May 1990, Microsoft finally had the consumer operating system it'd been looking for and a good idea of how fast that critter could run. It was time to press the pedal to the metal.
Consider a 30 April 1991 column in which Jim Seymour ranted about Microsoft changing the default keyboard shortcuts in Word 5.5 (DOS) to match those of the Windows interface. A change he points to is that ALT-F-O now launched the File Open dialog box. With the benefit of hindsight, ALT-F-O is an amazing example of forward thinking.
A quarter century later, ALT-F-O retains the same function in practically all Windows applications. In 1991, Microsoft committed itself to a future based on the Windows interface. And followed through.
But back in the 27 December 1988 issue, columnist Ray Duncan wasn't
ready to join either the "DOS is Dead" or the "DOS Forever" school of thought. I think it quite likely that OS/2's successors will eventually eclipse MS-DOS, but I suspect this will take a lot longer than anybody now imagines—perhaps ten years or more.
Actually, it'd only take four more years for Windows 3.x to bury OS/2, selling forty times more copies than OS/2 had thus far in its entire existence.
Related posts
The future that wasn't (introduction)
The future that wasn't (1/7)
The future that wasn't (3/7)
The future that wasn't (4/7)
The future that wasn't (5/7)
The future that wasn't (6/7)
The future that wasn't (7/7)
The accidental standard
The grandfathers of DOS
Labels: computers, history, science, tech history, technology
July 19, 2018
The future that wasn't
As the old Danish proverb (attributed to everyone from Niels Bohr to Yogi Berra) observes, "It's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future."
Forty years ago, a world-changing industry distilled out of the ether of human ingenuity. At the end of the 1970s, a Darwinistic fight for the survival of the technologically fittest seemed poised to crown CP/M and the Apple II as the king and queen of the micro-computer beasts.
And then a big asteroid called the Personal Computer slammed into Silicon Valley.
Unlike at the end of the Jurassic, when the smoke cleared, one very big dinosaur was still left standing. But IBM-Rex soon discovered that the underbrush was crawling with equally persistent critters, competing like crazy and nipping at its heels.
Fueling this frenzy was the knowledge that the meteor showers hadn't ended. Another big one was on the way. There was going to be a Next Big Thing. It was in the cards from the start. The rapid evolution of the CPU had obsoleted the 16-bit Intel 8088 only four years after the debut of the IBM PC.
In its haste to get a product to market, IBM used off-the-shelf parts and an operating system from Microsoft (that Microsoft hurried out and bought from Seattle Computer Products). Within a year, Compaq had reversed-engineered the IBM BIOS to produce a 100-percent IBM PC compatible computer.
With this accidental standard in place, it was off to the races.
Beginning with the Intel 8080 in 1974, personal computing has undergone a major technological consolidation at the beginning of each decade. The 1980s saw the emergence and dominance of DOS, culminating with Apple's famous 1984 commercial that (mistakenly) targeted IBM as "Big Brother."
Now the billion-dollar behemoths thrashed about trying to figure out what the Next Big Thing would be. They figured it out soon enough. The past was prelude, and a mutated amalgam of IBM and Microsoft were going to produce a 32-bit protected mode multitasking operating system that would soon rule the world.
Except OS/2 didn't. In the words of tech writer William Shakespeare, "It strutted and fretted its hour upon the stage. And then was heard no more."
Microsoft had toyed with Xenix (which it licensed from AT&T and eventually sold to SCO) and delved deeply into OS/2 development with IBM. In the end, Bill Gates chose to stick with Windows and maintained out-of-the-box backwards compatibility with MS-DOS for the next thirty years.
At the time, the consensus of option pointed to anything but that outcome. Right up until nobody could imagine any other result. Unfolding between 1988 and 1992, what makes this high-tech drama so fascinating is that the writers of the tale didn't know how it would end.
But now, a quarter-century later, we do.
Our time machine, thanks to Google Books, is PC Magazine. Over the next several months, I'll be hopping into that digital Tardis and zooming back to the recent past, following the story as its editors and commentators debated how the future—meaning the present day—was going to unfold.
And then a big asteroid called the Personal Computer slammed into Silicon Valley.
Unlike at the end of the Jurassic, when the smoke cleared, one very big dinosaur was still left standing. But IBM-Rex soon discovered that the underbrush was crawling with equally persistent critters, competing like crazy and nipping at its heels.
Fueling this frenzy was the knowledge that the meteor showers hadn't ended. Another big one was on the way. There was going to be a Next Big Thing. It was in the cards from the start. The rapid evolution of the CPU had obsoleted the 16-bit Intel 8088 only four years after the debut of the IBM PC.
In its haste to get a product to market, IBM used off-the-shelf parts and an operating system from Microsoft (that Microsoft hurried out and bought from Seattle Computer Products). Within a year, Compaq had reversed-engineered the IBM BIOS to produce a 100-percent IBM PC compatible computer.
With this accidental standard in place, it was off to the races.
Now the billion-dollar behemoths thrashed about trying to figure out what the Next Big Thing would be. They figured it out soon enough. The past was prelude, and a mutated amalgam of IBM and Microsoft were going to produce a 32-bit protected mode multitasking operating system that would soon rule the world.
Except OS/2 didn't. In the words of tech writer William Shakespeare, "It strutted and fretted its hour upon the stage. And then was heard no more."
Microsoft had toyed with Xenix (which it licensed from AT&T and eventually sold to SCO) and delved deeply into OS/2 development with IBM. In the end, Bill Gates chose to stick with Windows and maintained out-of-the-box backwards compatibility with MS-DOS for the next thirty years.
But now, a quarter-century later, we do.
Our time machine, thanks to Google Books, is PC Magazine. Over the next several months, I'll be hopping into that digital Tardis and zooming back to the recent past, following the story as its editors and commentators debated how the future—meaning the present day—was going to unfold.
Related posts
The future that wasn't (1/7)
The future that wasn't (2/7)
The future that wasn't (3/7)
The future that wasn't (4/7)
The future that wasn't (5/7)
The future that wasn't (6/7)
The future that wasn't (7/7)
The accidental standard
The grandfathers of DOS
Labels: economics, history, science, tech history, technology
February 22, 2018
Guardians of the Galaxy II
That's pretty much the end of the science. The laws of thermodynamics? Orbital mechanics? Fuhgeddaboudit. But we are served up some tried and true science fiction memes. And while I'm all for the-same-only-different, the conflict at the core of Guardians of the Galaxy II struck me as entirely recycled, too much the same and not at all different.
The good stuff (and there is some good stuff) gets short shrift, though it is worth sticking around for.
But first, let's venture back in time to 1965 and the second Star Trek pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," a dang good piece of cinematic science fiction for the era (notable for its lack of both monsters and miniskirts).
Gary Mitchell (Gary Lockwood) is the same sort of supercharged human "god" as Kurt Russell's "Ego" (though Gary gets there much quicker). His rule-the-universe end game is the same too. Star Trek returned to this plot device over and again. You'd think that in the process of amassing all the knowledge of creation, these "gods" would learn a thing or two.
Lucifer is about a dysfunctional (very Greco-Roman) family that functions, also true of Guardians of the Galaxy II. Despite being such a weird bunch, the way they connect to each other says a lot about the human condition.
But I don't include Ego in that group, despite the familial connection. He adds nothing to the mix, and finally turns into a by-the-numbers supervillain.
In the end, Captain Kirk buries Gary Mitchell's divine ambitions under a big rock. Ego meets a similar fate. The screwed up sibling rivalry between Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gillan) pays off better than the screwed up father-son relationship between Ego and Chris Pratt's Peter Quill.
Indeed, Nebula's relentless pursuit of Gamora is a sideshow that could have been the main attraction.
The movie begins with an act of pure MacGuffinry, Rocket stealing some "batteries" from a bunch of hilariously condescending and (literally) gilded aliens (who apparently all descended from Niles Crane) with no concept of the sunk cost fallacy.
It would have been nice to tie these pair of obsessive quests together into a deeper message. Instead, Ayesha is reduced to playing the relentless paperboy from Better Off Dead, hounding John Cusack with cries of "I want my two dollars!"
The even better story lurking in wings of this movie focuses on the father-son relationship between Peter and Yondu (Michael Rooker), the space pirate who "kidnapped" him and then thought better of turning him over to his real father (Ego).
But like every other laudable element of the movie, it is swamped by volume of digitized material hitting the screen in every frame.
In the end, what's good about Guardians of the Galaxy II manages to surmount the overly busy script and the tidal waves of CGI. Please, Hollywood, just because you can fill every square inch of the screen with 3D SFX doesn't mean you should. Give the audience some moments of calm, a respite now and then to let the story to sink in
But now with all the big backstories dealt with, I can only hope that the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise turns into a goofier version of Firefly. Joss Whedon should be available.
Labels: movie reviews, movies, science, science fiction
January 11, 2018
Taking electricity for granted
We don't tend to think about where the modern conveniences of life come from until they stop coming. Earlier this year, Rocky Mountain Power was having difficulty keeping the lights on in my neighborhood. A breaker kept tripping where the overhead lines go underground.
These breakers are basically explosive bolts. They are LOUD. A mile away and it sounds like a thunderclap.
Because light and electricity move at speeds instantaneous to human senses, count the seconds between a flash of lightning and the thunderclap, divide by five, and that's how many many miles away it was.
In this case, the same thing in reverse. The lights would go out, then a few seconds later, BOOM!
They seem to have figured out the problem because it's happened only once since. (I was at work but one of my clocks doesn't have a battery backup.) Though I did get a couple of these handy units just in case.
And where does my electricity come from? Well, the company-owned net generation capacity is 10,894 megawatts from 72 generating plants, distributed over 16,500 miles of transmission lines via 900 substations.
And where does Rocky Mountain Power comes from? Turns out, it's a division of PacifiCorp, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway Energy. Thanks Warren!
These breakers are basically explosive bolts. They are LOUD. A mile away and it sounds like a thunderclap.
In this case, the same thing in reverse. The lights would go out, then a few seconds later, BOOM!
They seem to have figured out the problem because it's happened only once since. (I was at work but one of my clocks doesn't have a battery backup.) Though I did get a couple of these handy units just in case.
And where does my electricity come from? Well, the company-owned net generation capacity is 10,894 megawatts from 72 generating plants, distributed over 16,500 miles of transmission lines via 900 substations.
Coal-fueled facilities - 10
Hydroelectric facilities - 41
Natural gas facilities - 7
Wind facilities - 13
Geothermal facilities - 1
And where does Rocky Mountain Power comes from? Turns out, it's a division of PacifiCorp, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway Energy. Thanks Warren!
Labels: deep thoughts, science, technology
December 28, 2017
Taking time for granted
To be in the presence of a real person who made calendars and almanacs was to Renka a revelation. She could easily imagine such things being printed. But the creation of the calendars was well beyond her grasp. It had never occurred to her that somebody actually made them every year.
Frankly, it's still a mystery where time comes from, though we have learned how to measure it with great accuracy.
The creation of accurate calendars was key to the scientific revolution. Commissioned to create a better calendar, Copernicus ended up rejecting the Ptolemaic model of the solar system in favor of the heliocentric, which Galileo then confirmed with his observations of Jupiter and its moons.
Galileo also created the first pendulum clock. The invention of precision chronometers is documented in Longitude, Dava Sobel's fascinating biography of the 18th century clockmaker John Harrison.
If I want to know the time, I glance at the bottom right of my screen. If I want to know when Daylight Saving Time kicks in, I google it. It's all thanks to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the keeper of the atomic clock. Yes, somebody is in charge of time. Good thing, too.
Though I wish the people in charge of time would get rid of Daylight Saving Time. Alas, that'd take an act of Congress.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, hisho, science, technology
December 03, 2017
Weather Vane (4)
After mulling it over for a while, I decided to translate "Fuushin" as "Weather Vane." See my explanation here.
Unlike their cousins the honeybees, the rest of the bumblebee hive does not overwinter with the queen. With no need to stockpile honey, they are not useful as honey producers. However, they are bred for use in agriculture as pollinators.
Although female bumblebees can sting repeatedly, ignore them and they will ignore you.
Of course, bumblebees in our world don't need a yaboku tree to reproduce. As far as that goes, while new plant species come from yaboku trees (as documented in "Blue Orchid"), pollination is a component of sexual reproduction.
This suggests that the flora of the Twelve Kingdoms at least partially follows the biological rules of to our world.
Unlike their cousins the honeybees, the rest of the bumblebee hive does not overwinter with the queen. With no need to stockpile honey, they are not useful as honey producers. However, they are bred for use in agriculture as pollinators.
Although female bumblebees can sting repeatedly, ignore them and they will ignore you.
Of course, bumblebees in our world don't need a yaboku tree to reproduce. As far as that goes, while new plant species come from yaboku trees (as documented in "Blue Orchid"), pollination is a component of sexual reproduction.
This suggests that the flora of the Twelve Kingdoms at least partially follows the biological rules of to our world.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, hisho, science
November 19, 2017
Weather Vane (2)
In traditional Chinese culture, qi (ki in Japanese) is characterized as a vital "life force" that permeates every living thing.
On page 305, Suiga refers to Kakei using the second person pronoun anta, a familiar form of anata. Neither is appropriate when addressing a social superior (even today). I discuss the subject at length here.
An intercalary month is a leap month inserted into a calendar year to make the calendar follow the seasons or moon phases. The Buddhist calendar adds both an intercalary day and month on a regular cycle.
The traditional East Asian lunisolar calendar is divided into 24 "solar terms."
At the end of this chapter, in his example about the rice harvest, Choukou is referring to the 13th solar term (立秋), which begins around August 7 and ends around August 23, and the 14th solar term (処暑), which begins around August 23 and ends around September 7.
Making things more confusing, the eighth month in the Gregorian calendar is the seventh month in the lunisolar calendar. This is why the O-bon festival is held in July or August, depending on whether the region follows the lunisolar or the Gregorian calendar.
On page 305, Suiga refers to Kakei using the second person pronoun anta, a familiar form of anata. Neither is appropriate when addressing a social superior (even today). I discuss the subject at length here.
An intercalary month is a leap month inserted into a calendar year to make the calendar follow the seasons or moon phases. The Buddhist calendar adds both an intercalary day and month on a regular cycle.
The traditional East Asian lunisolar calendar is divided into 24 "solar terms."
At the end of this chapter, in his example about the rice harvest, Choukou is referring to the 13th solar term (立秋), which begins around August 7 and ends around August 23, and the 14th solar term (処暑), which begins around August 23 and ends around September 7.
Making things more confusing, the eighth month in the Gregorian calendar is the seventh month in the lunisolar calendar. This is why the O-bon festival is held in July or August, depending on whether the region follows the lunisolar or the Gregorian calendar.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, chinese, hisho, science
November 09, 2017
Too super for their own good
At least when Godzilla wrecks Tokyo (which he does as less a "villain" than a force of nature, like a typhoon or earthquake), he has to work at it. And you can't help but appreciate all those scale models being crushed underfoot. Somebody actually made them! With glue and paint and balsa wood! Amazing!
Though Godzilla wears out his welcome pretty fast too.
Otherwise, inflicting billions of dollars of CGI property damage on a major metropolitan area simply isn't entertaining. I mean, it really isn't. It's depressing when it isn't dull. The inputs—the millions of dollars and zillions of credits scrolling by at the end of the film—don't come close to equaling the outputs.
In my bubblegum entertainment classroom, getting a passable grade in science fiction and fantasy means the screenwriter has to at least respect the laws of thermodynamics. Okay, he doesn't have to be totally constrained by them. But putting limits on how big, how fast, and how strong forces writers to get creative.
The latest Wonder Woman gets the balance pretty much right, as focused human effort can force her into a literal crouch. I've gained a new appreciation for the old Bill Bixby Hulk series. Even pumped up and painted green, Lou Ferrigno is a real person constrained on screen by 1970s television technology.
Batman and Ironman (supposedly) only rely on technology, but technologies that too often violate the basic laws of motion too. Same problem with giant robots.
Ironman still contributes to large scale urban renewal projects (though mostly because of the people he hangs out with). And Batman still ends up facing off against vaudevillian bad guys with motivations borrowed from the goofier side of the Bond spectrum, except that Christopher Nolan expects us to take them seriously.
Sorry. Can't. No matter how much he underexposes the film (and Nolan actually shoots on film).
Patlabor gets it right too. I usually avoid the mecha genre because of the basic science issues. Patlabor succeeds because 1) it takes a big team to keep one "labor" operational; 2) the batteries run down pretty quickly; 3) they go to great lengths to limit collateral damage; 4) they don't take themselves too seriously.
In other words, Patlabor demonstrates a healthy respect for the laws of thermodynamics. And common sense.
Hey, we're fighting crime with giant robots! How whacked out is that?
One nice point of the original Star Trek was the constant search for "dilithium." The series since have posited that the magical "antimatter" fuel is "free." Which is boring. A big reason for the opening of Japan in 1854 was the need for refueling stations. Lots of dramatic possibilities in that simple requirement.
Despite the scientific silliness, at least Tony Stark works hard on the hardware and isn't stone-faced about everything, which makes him enjoyable to hang with for a couple of hours. The same can't be said for whoever's been cast to play Batman since Adam West retired from the role.The repartee between Chris Pine's Steve Trevor and Gal Gadot's Diana in Wonder Woman is reminiscent of classic 1930's screwball comedies. Setting the story within a known historical context and populating that world with one superhero also contributed to making it the best in the genre.
On that score, Deadpool cranked the sarcasm and fourth-wall-breaking knobs up to eleven. I'm not sure it's sustainable but Deadpool also demonstrates how "small" budgets make for better movies ("small" being bigger than any other movie studio on the planet). A smart script gets way better mileage than more CGI.
One of the running jokes in Deadpool is that they couldn't afford any of the big superheroes, so all they get is a couple of sidekicks. Ryan Reynolds, who stars and produces, reportedly insisted on keeping things (relatively) small. Here's to hoping he can keep the superness of the sequel similarly in check.
Related posts
Lois & Clark
The Big Bad
Reframing the mainframe plot
Labels: fantasy, movies, pop culture, science, science fiction, superhero, thinking about writing
September 17, 2017
Blue Orchid (3)
The water-channeling properties of the beech tree is called "stemflow."
Stemflow is the flow of intercepted water down the trunk or stem of a plant. Stemflow, along with throughfall, is responsible for the transferal of precipitation and nutrients from the canopy to the soil. In tropical rain forests, where this kind of flow can be substantial, erosion gullies can form at the base of the trunk. However, in more temperate climates stemflow levels are low and have little erosional power.
The Japanese chinquapin is Castanopsis cuspidata. The camphor tree is Cinnamomum camphora, "a large evergreen tree that grows 60 to 100 feet tall. The leaves have a glossy, waxy appearance and smell of camphor when crushed." The Chinese hackberry is Celtis sinensis.
The ranka is a made-up word, created from the kanji for egg/ovum (卵) and fruit (果).
Labels: 12 kingdoms, hisho, language, science, translations
September 10, 2017
Blue Orchid (2)
A rike (里家) is a foster/retirement home for orphans and the aged. In A Thousand Leagues of Wind, Youko goes undercover at a rike to further her education. Shoukei ends up at a rike after her family is killed in a coup, and is nearly killed herself when the people find out who she is.
Like me, you're probably going to learn more about the beech tree from this story than you ever expected. My own research aligns well with the author's descriptions. For example:
Like me, you're probably going to learn more about the beech tree from this story than you ever expected. My own research aligns well with the author's descriptions. For example:
When milled into larger boards, beech tends to have more knots and defects than birch. Beech is more likely to suffer from decay than birch; it also may show mineral discoloration or "spalding," which is a type of decay or fungus.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, hisho, science, translations
September 03, 2017
Blue Orchid (1)
The seed production cycle of the beech tree is known as "masting." Yields during an abundant year can be 80 percent higher than in a low year. Oak trees have a similar masting cycle.
In northern India, a particular species of bamboo flowers all at once every 48 years. The sudden abundance of bamboo seeds causes the rat population to explode. Once the rats have eaten their way through the bamboo, they turn on the granaries and paddy fields.
In the past, this phenomenon triggered famines. Now the cycles can be calculated and anticipated, but it's still a big problem every half-century.
Under the feudal system, a fief was "granted by an overlord to a vassal who held it in return for a form of feudal allegiance and service." In the Twelve Kingdoms, income from the fief pays a civil servant's salary. Apparently, he is also responsible for the wages of his subordinates.
A yaboku tree (野木) is the wild version of a riboku tree (里木). There are two types of yaboku: yaboku from which plants and trees are born, and yaboku from which animals are born. See chapter 53 of Shadow of the Moon.
In northern India, a particular species of bamboo flowers all at once every 48 years. The sudden abundance of bamboo seeds causes the rat population to explode. Once the rats have eaten their way through the bamboo, they turn on the granaries and paddy fields.
In the past, this phenomenon triggered famines. Now the cycles can be calculated and anticipated, but it's still a big problem every half-century.
Under the feudal system, a fief was "granted by an overlord to a vassal who held it in return for a form of feudal allegiance and service." In the Twelve Kingdoms, income from the fief pays a civil servant's salary. Apparently, he is also responsible for the wages of his subordinates.
A yaboku tree (野木) is the wild version of a riboku tree (里木). There are two types of yaboku: yaboku from which plants and trees are born, and yaboku from which animals are born. See chapter 53 of Shadow of the Moon.
Labels: 12 kingdoms, hisho, science, translations
June 29, 2017
Feeling (too good) about ourselves
The junk science that became the self-esteem movement, by which a bit of common sense was turned into a politically-funded cult, is an old story with a few new cast members. Over half a century ago, Nobel Prize winner Irving Langmuir observed that scientists (and politicians) can trick themselves into
Recently in the Guardian, Will Storr took a closer look at California's [self-esteem] task force that spawned the whole crazy fad. He reports that the credibility of the of the nascent movement
The actual language used to describe the "lie" is considerably harsher. But it didn't matter. At the height of the self-esteem movement, the task force had "five publicists working full time" telling politicians (and Oprah) what they wanted to hear.
Tackling the subject in greater depth, Jesse Singal concludes in his recent New York magazine article,
As far as that goes, the self-esteem movement is one fad that never made it to Asia. As Lenora Chu points out,
It's still common practice for Japanese high schools to rank students by test performance—and post the rankings in public. University entrance exam results are also posted in public, although using a numerical code known only to the student instead of a name.
In Japan, it all does come down to "grit," which has been at the core of Japanese education for a century. Known as gaman (noun, "patience, perseverance, self-denial") and ganbaru (verb, "to persist, to stand firm, to try one's best"), if you fail, it's because you didn't ganbaru enough.
As Singal notes, this sort of magical thinking can be just as problematic. But I think it is ultimately a lot more practical than the self-esteem approach. "Showing up (on time)" really is half the battle won.
false results by a lack of understanding about what human beings can do to themselves in the way of being led astray by subjective effects, wishful thinking, or threshold interactions.
Recently in the Guardian, Will Storr took a closer look at California's [self-esteem] task force that spawned the whole crazy fad. He reports that the credibility of the of the nascent movement
turned largely on a single fact: that, in 1988, the esteemed professors of the University of California had analyzed the data and confirmed his hunch. The only problem was, they hadn't. When I tracked down one renegade task force member, he described what happened as "a lie."
The actual language used to describe the "lie" is considerably harsher. But it didn't matter. At the height of the self-esteem movement, the task force had "five publicists working full time" telling politicians (and Oprah) what they wanted to hear.
Tackling the subject in greater depth, Jesse Singal concludes in his recent New York magazine article,
Maybe the biggest problem here, whether one is discussing the waning self-esteem craze or the possibly burgeoning "grit" one, is the basic idea that some behavioral-science eureka moment will, on its own, do all or much of the work of solving big problems in education or the justice system or any other area rife with inequities.
As far as that goes, the self-esteem movement is one fad that never made it to Asia. As Lenora Chu points out,
"Self-esteem" doesn't exist in the Chinese lexicon, at least not in the way Americans use it. In China, a child's regard for herself is rarely as important as [are] stark evaluations of performance. Almost as if child-rearing were an Olympic sport, the Chinese rank children on everything from work ethic to Chinese character recognition and musical skill.
It's still common practice for Japanese high schools to rank students by test performance—and post the rankings in public. University entrance exam results are also posted in public, although using a numerical code known only to the student instead of a name.
In Japan, it all does come down to "grit," which has been at the core of Japanese education for a century. Known as gaman (noun, "patience, perseverance, self-denial") and ganbaru (verb, "to persist, to stand firm, to try one's best"), if you fail, it's because you didn't ganbaru enough.
As Singal notes, this sort of magical thinking can be just as problematic. But I think it is ultimately a lot more practical than the self-esteem approach. "Showing up (on time)" really is half the battle won.
Related posts
Dragon Zakura
Perseverance makes perfect
Labels: education, japanese culture, science, social studies
June 01, 2017
The tall and short of it
Height is a genetic puzzle. For the males in my family, averaging was the result, not Mendelian selection: shorter than the tall parent, taller than the short parent. Then there are tall/short combinations that produce tall offspring and tall parents who produce taller children.
Average height in Japan over the past century demonstrates the importance of environmental factors. And having leveled off since 1960, the importance of genetics, though Yankees pitcher Masahiro Tanaka (6' 3") and Anne Watanabe (5' 9") handily beat regression to the mean.
Once a country climbs high enough up Maslow's hierarchy, genes do up to 80 percent of the heavy lifting (so say the geneticists). Over 423 genetic regions are connected to height and they mix and match in ways that are hard to predict.
Scientists like to study identical and fraternal twins to tease such things out. I would recommend studying haafu: the offspring of a Japanese parent and not-Japanese (non-Asian) parent.
There's an analogy here to how "Japanese" the child appears. Masao Kusakari, for example, regularly plays Japanese characters in NHK historical dramas. But I wouldn't have otherwise guessed that Risa Stegmayer has a Japanese mother (other than her speaking fluent Japanese).
My theory is that "averaging" kicks in when similarly functioning genes are mirrored at the same loci on both chromosomes in the pair. But if there's a null set on one of the chromosomes, the height genes take over.
Masao Kusakari is six feet tall (his father was an American GI killed during the Korean War), way above average for a Japanese born in 1950. Rangers pitcher Yu Darvish (Iranian father) is a towering six-feet-five.
But the award for comedic contrast goes to Jun Soejima, a presenter on Asa-Ichi, NHK's morning chat show. He hosts the Sugowaza Q (スゴ技Ｑ) segment with Yumiko Udou, a Japanese woman of average height.
Jun Soejima (American father, Japanese mother) is six-foot-five. Wikipedia adds that his Afro adds eight inches, and also says that he traveled abroad only last year and doesn't speak English. In other words, height aside, a typical Japanese (yes, he played basketball in college).
Sugowaza Q translates roughly as "Super Skills IQ," about smarter ways to do common household activities like cooking.
Average height in Japan over the past century demonstrates the importance of environmental factors. And having leveled off since 1960, the importance of genetics, though Yankees pitcher Masahiro Tanaka (6' 3") and Anne Watanabe (5' 9") handily beat regression to the mean.
Once a country climbs high enough up Maslow's hierarchy, genes do up to 80 percent of the heavy lifting (so say the geneticists). Over 423 genetic regions are connected to height and they mix and match in ways that are hard to predict.
Scientists like to study identical and fraternal twins to tease such things out. I would recommend studying haafu: the offspring of a Japanese parent and not-Japanese (non-Asian) parent.
There's an analogy here to how "Japanese" the child appears. Masao Kusakari, for example, regularly plays Japanese characters in NHK historical dramas. But I wouldn't have otherwise guessed that Risa Stegmayer has a Japanese mother (other than her speaking fluent Japanese).
My theory is that "averaging" kicks in when similarly functioning genes are mirrored at the same loci on both chromosomes in the pair. But if there's a null set on one of the chromosomes, the height genes take over.
Masao Kusakari is six feet tall (his father was an American GI killed during the Korean War), way above average for a Japanese born in 1950. Rangers pitcher Yu Darvish (Iranian father) is a towering six-feet-five.
But the award for comedic contrast goes to Jun Soejima, a presenter on Asa-Ichi, NHK's morning chat show. He hosts the Sugowaza Q (スゴ技Ｑ) segment with Yumiko Udou, a Japanese woman of average height.
Jun Soejima (American father, Japanese mother) is six-foot-five. Wikipedia adds that his Afro adds eight inches, and also says that he traveled abroad only last year and doesn't speak English. In other words, height aside, a typical Japanese (yes, he played basketball in college).
Sugowaza Q translates roughly as "Super Skills IQ," about smarter ways to do common household activities like cooking.
Labels: japanese tv, medicine, nhk, science, social studies, sports
February 02, 2017
The Wile E. Coyote Slinky
There's a scene in every Wile E. Coyote cartoon where he scampers pell-mell off the edge of a cliff. Still running in mid-air, he hangs there in space for a couple of seconds with that "Oh, crap!" look on his face before plummeting to the ground.
Well, that same effect can be duplicated with a Slinky.
The "Newtonian illusion" here is that our brains treat the top and bottom of the Slinky as a single object, rather than as two separate parts of an "information system."
My common sense tells me the top and bottom of the Slinky are accelerating towards the center of mass at the same time the center of mass is accelerating downward. The bottom of the Slinky won't move until the center of mass catches up with it.
Looking at the video, though, the "information theory" explanation makes sense (even if it doesn't make any common sense) because the bottom of the Slinky simply isn't moving.
Likewise, gymnastics wouldn't be so physically and aesthetically compelling if we only saw the gymnast's bouncing center of mass, and not the gymnast's body rotating around the center of mass.
Well, that same effect can be duplicated with a Slinky.
The "Newtonian illusion" here is that our brains treat the top and bottom of the Slinky as a single object, rather than as two separate parts of an "information system."
The information that the top end has been dropped can't propagate down the Slinky any faster than the speed of sound in the Slinky (the speed at which waves propagate down it), so there's a delay before the bottom end "knows" it's been dropped. But it's surprising to see how long the delay is.
My common sense tells me the top and bottom of the Slinky are accelerating towards the center of mass at the same time the center of mass is accelerating downward. The bottom of the Slinky won't move until the center of mass catches up with it.
Looking at the video, though, the "information theory" explanation makes sense (even if it doesn't make any common sense) because the bottom of the Slinky simply isn't moving.
Likewise, gymnastics wouldn't be so physically and aesthetically compelling if we only saw the gymnast's bouncing center of mass, and not the gymnast's body rotating around the center of mass.
Labels: science, technology
January 12, 2017
Moore's law illustrated (II)
From PC Magazine in the early 1980s. Remember, these are kilo-bytes, one K being equal to 1024 bytes.
At the above prices, adjusted for inflation, 4 GB (giga-bytes) of RAM in 1982 would cost 22 million dollars and the memory card would be bigger than a regulation basketball court. Today 4 GB costs twenty bucks and is about the size of your thumb. Moore's law in action.
Thanks to giant magnetoresistance technology (GMR), which won its inventors the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics, the price/performance curve of hard disks has been no less staggering (also called Kryder's law).
Back in 1982, a 5 MB (mega-bytes) hard disk cost $1995. Accounting for inflation, $1995 compounds to $4975 in 2016 dollars. By comparison, a 500 GB hard disk today goes for one percent of the price, holds 100,000 times as much data, and is at least 1000 times faster.
As slow as those old 8088 and 80286 CPUs were, they often weren't slow enough. Back in the day, a figure you always checked on a computer's spec sheet was its wait states. That is, how long the CPU just sat there twiddling its thumbs waiting for other stuff to get done.
At the above prices, adjusted for inflation, 4 GB (giga-bytes) of RAM in 1982 would cost 22 million dollars and the memory card would be bigger than a regulation basketball court. Today 4 GB costs twenty bucks and is about the size of your thumb. Moore's law in action.
Thanks to giant magnetoresistance technology (GMR), which won its inventors the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics, the price/performance curve of hard disks has been no less staggering (also called Kryder's law).
Back in 1982, a 5 MB (mega-bytes) hard disk cost $1995. Accounting for inflation, $1995 compounds to $4975 in 2016 dollars. By comparison, a 500 GB hard disk today goes for one percent of the price, holds 100,000 times as much data, and is at least 1000 times faster.
As slow as those old 8088 and 80286 CPUs were, they often weren't slow enough. Back in the day, a figure you always checked on a computer's spec sheet was its wait states. That is, how long the CPU just sat there twiddling its thumbs waiting for other stuff to get done.
Related posts
Moore's law illustrated (I)
The accidental standard
MS-DOS at 30
The tortoise and the hare
Labels: computers, science, tech history, technology