Reviewing current diatom papers teaches me they are being studied in connection with nanotechnology. A California research company (Scripps) has already tweaked the diatoms to assemble magnesium in place of silica. FYI, silica is the only component of fiber optic cables, and diatom filaments are 100 times smaller. The video presented a diatom doing something fiber optics cannot: bending light at a right angle. Put ‘em together for Mother Nature, though it did take her 4 billion years.
I had zero idea about any connection between diatoms and nanotechnology before today. Everything about them in this regard I just learned because I just showed up myself and I’m still looking around. My repeated mention of the two over the past year was coincidence, nothing deeper. I can see it all now, Florida hobbyist builds first nano-diatom supercomputer using Arduino chip, names it “Serendipity”, sells patent to China for $10 trillion, buys Oregon and rights to Harry Potter while kicking US president off my front lawn. HE knows what he can do with HIS deficit.
I’ve found a self-contained flash video player, so I’ll be watching flv movies (flv = flash videos) downloaded from YouTube. I effortlessly defeated the library download block the first time it got in my way, but I’m glad the block is there. It prevents the unwashed masses from continually wrecking the computers. Hint: don’t download them to the default folder because you can’t get at it and they’ve disabled the search icon. In the end, I find good old VPL still works the best. Even if in Win 8.1 it cannot be set to stay always on top.
One of the files I watched was home lab procedures to see if anything has changed much. Yes and no. The precautions are same as ever but you should see what they consider a home lab these days. Bill Gate’s home lab, maybe. Custom built counters with marble tops and slide-out microscope trays. Completely equipped with chemical cabinets and Bunsen burners. Home lab, my eye.
While you’re here, I spent the day at the library again. It was a lonely vigil, devoid of salesmen, middle-aged househusbands and divorced women who already know everything. I’ve calculated there is big money in an “Old Lecher’s Home”. This is a joint that allows only old men as tenants. Forget the Bible readings and canned bands, these old guys want strippers, beer, and babes, plus they got the money. Their ungrateful relations plugged them into the old folk’s home; this is merely giving them an alternative to the dreaded standard retirement home.
Trivia. There are only two countries in the world that don’t use the metric system. The United States and that eastern powerhouse, Burma. Special interest groups in the US have undermined the conversion process since day one. Nobody has a clue what Burma’s problem is.
Speaking of special interests, Time magazine made a quip to the effect you cannot have an information-based economy if all information is free. They were referring to the handful of teenagers who set the music world upside down by designing software that could be used for piracy. Gnutella, Napster, Limewire, BitTorrent. Most of the programmers were teenagers at the time. That brings back my question of, not how to program, but where did they learn what was not there, that it was possible, that it wasn’t prevented by the design, and most of all that it was not illegal until years after they made their millions?
Now that my favorite (Limewire) has been shut down by non-musicians, there is no reliable source of good free music. To those on the other side I remind you there is no evidence that piracy hurts music sales. Most who pirate would never spend the money in the first place. The last music I bought was a Juice Newton album in 1981.
Always remember, it is not musicians who suffer from piracy, but the bloated recording and distribution companies. I say those are the buggy whips of this century. But obviously they are powerful enough to hold back progress by enacting protection for their outdated business models. Their ancient empires are pre-computer era, they should get with it or go extinct.
Napster was easy to close down, for they had a centralized server. Limewire was decentralized but their headquarters was not. What is needed to design the next piracy site? You start with not giving the authorities and their bosses a stationary target. Begin analysis. In both cases above, the files were complete copies at both the source and destination computers, that is, there was an original and a copy. That is illegal. They were packetized during the transfer and reassembled at the destination site. My question is whether or not a copy exists while it is packetized?
You see the angle? If there is no original, there can be no copy. Packets floating around could hardly be copyrighted any more than letters of the alphabet. Would it be possible to find out at any given moment how much data is floating around on the cloud? The transfer is fast, but it is not instantaneous and one need only slow it down a little.
No given computer would be responsible for the upload, rather just one packet. Each active computer just gives the packet a boost to the extent the packets would disappear if by chance all computers were shut down at once. The software would not copy anything, but allow the music packets to float around without direction until somebody used, say, their e-mail protocol to reassemble them.
Barring that, you can always go to youTube and download the video. Then there is plenty of freeware to turn the audio portion into an MP3. It’s cumbersome but almost every worthwhile tune is in there. Love that Afroman video where the ambulance drivers steal his Budsicles and stomp his ass while he’s passed out.Here’s something. We’ve seen those neat model train displays with the guy hidden in the mountain flipping switches. Notice the train movements are not realistic. They stop and start too fast and move funny at slow speeds as the rheostats slide around. Enter the Arduino. Man, what a difference! When the camera was mounted level with the trains, it was authentic enough to be used for special effects. The programmer gave the joystick to kids who accurately rolled the tank cars and hopper cars into place first try. The train pulling away from sidings and changing tracks was completely real enough to fool anyone who didn’t know it was a toy. Plus, there was no chance of a train wreck, even if the power went off. Amazing. This is a still from the video, please be aware these is a miniature train set, not the bigger Lionel model.
[Author's note 2015-12-02: this train video is really impressive and it would be worth you while to try to find it. I'm too busy just now, but I encourage you to see this if you can.]
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