Recent Comments

for the win.

I heard that most of the methane is generated in their gut and is expelled as burps rather than farts, a roof and partial walls with a gap at the bottom would probably do to collect most of the methane since it's lighter than air, then concentrate and compress into storage tanks.

You forgot to include Hindi.

Yeah, you should start working on that. Let me know how it goes.

Just wild guesses but:

2 people is below average

4-5 person households poop, pee, drink, andBATHE 4-5 times more than 1-2 person households

California is hotter than your locale

They are using conservative guesses

They are using very rough numbers

Reporters are stupid

Tiny hydroelectric household dams

...and "mainframes" covers all the different computers pre ~1975, like the CDC 6600 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_Data_Corporation#CDC_6600:_defining_supercomputing , earlier/smaller IBMs, etc, etc?

So in this poll, it's like the MITS Altair 8800 never happened in 1975? And none of the 8080/Z-80 CP/M systems mattered?

... An acre-foot is enough to supply two homes for a year.

Half an acre-foot is 162,926 gallons (per a couple of different online conversion programs). I'm in the Great Lakes area where we don't pay much for water and our house (two people) uses about 30,000 gallons/year. Even when we were watering a few new trees we only got to 40,000 gallons/year. We don't do anything special to conserve except the toilets are the low flush type and faucets/sinks have typical 2 gallons/minute aerators (flow restrictors).

What are they doing in San Diego to use 5x the water we use here?

Damn I'm glad I was bored and scrolled down to the blog section. :-)

Couple of questions...

Why no mention of other tuner options? Last time I looked the only reasonable choice were the HDHomeRuns, and they were pretty expensive for handling only two tuners. They pretty much had a monopoly on network attached tuners, and all the PCI cards were iffy. Then of course you get into MythTV v. XBMC v. WMCE v. MediaPortal, so I guess I see why you stuck to antennas.

Second, regarding mounting forces, my house's original antenna was on a vent pipe and caused leaks when it ripped off in a storm. Do I screw into my poor old roof to mount a base/mast, or hope my old metal faux chimney can take the stress?

My first two were mainframes:
#1: IBM 360/91
#2: CDC 6600

This not only discusses it, but has a link to the actual Phys Rev Letters paper. Jester (the blogger) thinks it may be a more mundane explanation than dark matter, but still an interesting one.

http://resonaances.blogspot.com/2014/09/dark-matter-or-pulsars-ams-hints-its.html

Let's just skip to the end-game why don't we.

I thought they were games consoles. 2600?

Yes, the 2600 was a game console. They also built arcade game machines.
Though what I'm talking about here is the Atari ST line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST

Ha ha! Hadn't even thought of that, but you're absolutely right. But more personally, I've had a hell of a time with some scripts just because of UTF8 issues. Annoying.

That's a not-so-subtle Slashcode dig, isn't it. :)

...or, you know, we could stop raising and eating quite so many of them. That could work too.

Just saying. (It's pretty accepted that the environmental damage from meat production is enormous compared to other protein sources.)

Last I checked Chicago, New York, and Pittsburgh all had digital channels on VHF-low. So the best advice is to check your area to see if you need VHF-low, not "unless you are in Alaska".

Methane detected from afar.
Methane not detected on ground.
Methane produced some distance above ground?

Not the best Haiku I've ever read, but highly on-topic, so there's that. Well-done.

It's quite possible to harvest all the excrement, put it into enclosed tanks, and use the methane to power generators and the like rather than just allowing it to escape into the atmosphere. Such projects seem to be more common with pigs than cows, probably because the former is so toxic and unpleasant to neighbors as well.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090610-pigs-video-ap.html

My question with cows is: What percentage of their methane emissions comes from decomposition of the solid waste? If significant portions of it is directly belched or farted into the air, it's going to be quite impractical to capture. Methane is lighter than air, so completely enclosing them inside a very tight-envelope building would work, but it would be extremely expensive to do.

Nope, still seeing the older site whether logged-in or anonymous. Could have been site problems.

Methane detected from afar.
Methane not detected on ground.

Methane produced some distance above ground?

Maybe a tiny lightweight probe that launches a balloon (or lightweight plane) is in order. It doesn't ever have to land (although couldn't the backside of those heatshields easily be made into some nice big antenna dishes?), it could be launched while the heatshield etc. continues its fall. They already have concepts and some work done on both. Suggested names: Cowboy 1, 2, ..., n, better than Fart Fairies (although I would not object to that so now I'm undecided) :D

I got hit with it today. Did they finally pull the switch?

The link they provide at top to return to Classic does NOTHING for me on IE 8. I have to copy/paste the URL to get to the classic interface.

Sorry for derail but it's not submission worthy or anything...

Yeah, I had second thoughts about my KDE fandom when I realized one of the main devs was behind OwnCloud (which I gave a fair shake and was wildly disappointed in).

Interesting about the GNOME story; I had actually been thinking of the bared down to the bone new interfaces of Microsoft and Google and Apple, where it doesn't look as if you can do a damn thing until you manage to stumble/click over the right mystery pixels. All the acreage of 1080 and higher resolutions (RETINA RETINA RETINA RETINA) and they can't spare a few millimeters for a god damn menu any more. GMail and Hotmail/whateveritscallednow are the worst, next to maybe "Metro".

Same reason I still love LibreOffice until they get around to sticking us in the back and aping the still-useless freaking ribbon interface, which I continue to work around on a daily basis.

The first computer I ever used was a Thomson TO7: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=11. Not as bad as people may tell. Good light pen. Keyboard could be painful for the finger tips if you typed a lot.

Then we also had one Exelvision. Could be this EXL 100: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=123. I remember the terrible infrared connection of the keyboard. I did not like it.

Thanks for the input.

Intel GPU is smooth sailing all the way because they have free stack.

I've been sticking to Intel for that very reason and I can confirm.

Interesting - I hadn't realized who was behind Owncloud. That makes me look at it a bit more circumspect, though. Isn't the joke that the Gnome team is trying to reduce the entire interface down to one single button, and then disactivating the button by default because it confuses the users?

This is just a blog post, OK, but here's my warning to the devs at KDE: I use KDE because I like configurability and tweakability, and I'm more than intelligent enough to handle the system's supposed "complexity" all by myself. I'm a grown-up, in fact. Take away the tweakability and I stop using KDE, as simple as that. Concentrate your effort on promoting and creating better quality apps instead, and fix bugs, and reduce the resource requirements by making the code more efficient. Those are big challenges, obviously - not nearly as fun as pissing around with some widgets and color schemes in this endless masturbation cycle called UI development.

I guess the very first was the Radio Shack TRS-80 - but that was just 2-3 visits. The first system I spent any real time with was the Apple II's in the school lab. Certainly that's where I did my first coding...

Sol.

Let's all vote for Sirius, ok?

My first computing memories are typing programs into an Atari 800.

Choose 1.

• Heinlein

LMFTFY

Tick all which apply:

• Waterfall
• JAD
• RAD
• Agile
• Scrum
• Cowboy
• Feature driven development
• Design for test
• Spiral
• Wheel and spoke
• RUP
• XP
• Bugger off I code alone

Jolt!
Wow. I actually miss Jolt now. I could not have survived uni without it.

Nothing actually.. I thought they were games consoles. 2600?

I can turn on a computer
I am on the Windows 8 dev team
I have created web pages
I can develop software
I can assemble a PC
I can dual boot install linux or BSD
I can design and build circuits
I have a STEM degree
I have a STEM double degree
I contribute to the Linux Kernel

In order from lowest to highest they are ranked. Choose one.

My first was the Plato instructional system running on a CDC Cyber mainframe.

TIDUS! CLOUD! Ok. We can all see where this is going so I will stop now

Meh.Why bother. Firefly came and knocked Farscape off the podium. Oh well. Next idea!

Rocks
Rules
is a legend
is awesome!
Marry me!
Is mine!!!! (Only 1 vote allowed)
... is your father. Noooi²ooooo!!
is the only one
is my hero

1 Java is king and will not be dethroned
2. Anything but Java, thanks Oracle
3. PHP because they will get it right one day
4. Perl as the only sane survivor
5. C# because ah ha ah ha ahhh I just needed a good laugh
6. Assembler because by then we will all be coding gods
7. Brian's code-by-number

What's your problem with Atari computers? I started out with a C64 (actually used a CBM before, but that wasn't mine) and then went to own several Atari ST machines. I used those until Atari went out of business.
(Yes, they went out of business. The Atari that exists today has noting in common with the Atari back then, except for the name.)

Nice to see a vote for the big iron. For me mainframe came last. Last of all of the machines listed that I have used.

Wow. Blast from the past. These machines were excellent. Very sad that they didn't survive.

Seriously?

Amazing experience! Learned so much, prepared me for a long career.

I remember my dad bringing home a VIC-20 when I was quite small (4ish?) -- we eventually "upgraded" to the Commodore 64, and I'd say it shaped, early on, what would become my perception of certain truths about technology (namely, that I would ever be enslaved to the entertainment value they possess).

My teacher was the 'computer guy', although I didn't know it at the time. We started by practicing typing on printed out keyboards. Hours spent playing a river survival game taught me most computer basics. This gave me incentive to learn more about computers which eventually led to a life using them.

Thank you Mr Harris.

Our school had a single TRS-80 for AP students to use so I started there but got a C-64 for Christmas that year. So really I did all my early learning on Commodore equipment (eventually I ended up with an Amiga-2000 as well).