<div>I'd love to go to a Maker Fair with this group.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>John : )<br><br></div>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 10:14 AM, Tomasz Rola <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rtomek@ceti.pl">rtomek@ceti.pl</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT:#ccc 1px solid;MARGIN:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;PADDING-LEFT:1ex" class="gmail_quote">On Sat, 10 Mar 2012, spike wrote:<br><br>[...]<br>
<div class="im">> I presented the question this evening to a friend who is a processor<br>> hipster, and he assured me there are plenty of processors available whose<br>> power use is so low, I would be unlikely to need to resort to heat transfer<br>
> heroics. So then my task was to convince him that I really like heat<br>> transfer heroics.<br><br></div>Cool. If you'd like to play more with this, maybe overclocking some big<br>multicore cpu would satiate you :-).<br>
<br>[...]<br>
<div class="im">> drops below about 2C. I think GIMPS would be a good application: very<br>> calculation intensive, doesn't require a lot of I/O, and if for whatever<br>> reason there is no I/O available for months at a time, it stores the work it<br>
> has done. We could have them grind away on 100 megadigit primes, for which<br>> the EFF 150kUSD prize is still out there. Of course it wouldn't pay for the<br>> electricity used, since it would cost about 8 cents for each candidate, and<br>
> the mathematical expectation is just over one cent each, but it would be<br>> cool anyway:<br>><br>> <a href="https://www.eff.org/awards/coop" target="_blank">https://www.eff.org/awards/coop</a><br><br></div>
Yes, primes, very sexy. I like them, too. Even without a prize.<br>
<div class="im"><br>> Tomasz, there is something I need to explain. Back in the 80s, before there<br>> were all that many computer applications, those of us who were into that<br>> kind of thing used to build up fast computers, by finding the fastest<br>
> processor board available, overclocking it, getting the fastest memory<br>> available, the biggest disk drive, some of which held a thousandth as much<br>> as a five dollar keychain drive today, assuming one had plenty of extra<br>
> money to spend on it, and connect it all up to a 15 inch color monitor.<br>> Then we were in tall cotton, my young friends. We were hot stuff, the bees<br>> knees. It was a natural geek version of having a hopped up car. Of course<br>
> we still didn't really have any good applications for the machines in those<br>> days.<br><br></div>Yes, those were great days, in many ways. However, I would say there was<br>nice soft back then, and even more important, people wanting to play with<br>
it. My definition of nice soft... well, let's say Common Lisp and<br>Smalltalk fit the definition and leave it there. Now, there is all kind of<br>computing power you'd want, but people program in languages like Java or<br>
Visual Basic, and I cannot see this as cool.<br><br>OTOH, I can see how it is always about making things from elements. Making<br>hopped up cars, DIY computers or software from parts. The rest is in<br>details, but general rule seems to stay the same.<br>
<div class="im"><br>> But it is making me nuts to think of processors going into the trash,<br>> when they could be salvaged perhaps and put to work doing something,<br>> even if useless.<br><br></div>I'm afraid you can't help it. I think about a decade ago, things were<br>
designed in more hack-friendly manner - like first models of iPaq PDAs<br>which had JTAG interface, so it was possible to reprogram their flash<br>even after bricking them. But I guess those days are over now. Myself, I<br>
simply got used to thinking of those devices as cement bricks. Once their<br>software cannot be updated, they are as dead as if they browned out.<br><br>BTW, it is possible electronics is or will be designed in such a way, that<br>
after, say, five years something will pop and brown anyway. You know, just<br>to be sure you upgrade to "better" thing. Unless you eke out more money<br>in a shop, in which case you may get "unenhanced" version that will last<br>
ten years.<br><br>Thanks to computing entering mainstream consciousness, not many people<br>care about hackability anymore. Selling products (and bringing money home)<br>is important and since business always grows on throwing old stuff away,<br>
there is no point in reusing old product. Primes? What's this? Are they<br>sold? If not, either they don't exist or are unimportant enough for the<br>public to care.<br>
<div class="im HOEnZb"><br>Regards,<br>Tomasz Rola<br><br>--<br>** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **<br>** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **<br>
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **<br>** **<br>** Tomasz Rola mailto:<a href="mailto:tomasz_rola@bigfoot.com">tomasz_rola@bigfoot.com</a> **<br>
</div>
<div class="HOEnZb">
<div class="h5">_______________________________________________<br>extropy-chat mailing list<br><a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a><br><a href="http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat" target="_blank">http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat</a><br>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br>