h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In the grand old Hootoo tradition, I feel it's time we started a thread like this...

Sorry. Couldn't help it

RF

well im gonna give it another half an hour, then i have to take a break as i have other worldy matters to attend to.
i will come away from the last 48 hrs with new knowlege.
the world is an opiniated place.
i need to not only improve my education but the form i use to convey meaning.
salt is broken down by the body and apparently re constituted for sweat.
that in order to prove you wrong, some would contradict their own knowlege.
there is way too much competition for master of the universe.
i need more guns.
i cant make sweat work better, but that doesnt matter as we will just build a new body.

i hope i brought you;
contravercy, laughter and hopefully an insite into the fact, it doesnt matter how smart/rich/whatever you are. life means absolutly nothing at all.

i think all life and even the gods if they exist are just a fleeting moment in the great chaos.
there really doesnt seem to be a reason to live, so i have chose my own.
whatever you want out of life....dont waste it.
GiGaBaNE (of the 13th zodiac)

Not helpful Freddy, but I do get the joke.

Gig doesn't though, and neither could he be expected to.

Move along folks, back to the other threads. Nothing to see here.

Well, it has confused the hell out of me!

>> as i have other worldy matters to attend to

?

We've enjoyed your company GiGaBaNE. All of us.

Thanks for visiting. Come back again some time.



B

lmao
not other-worldy
thougth because of that i shall leave you a cosmic afterthought.

i do not believe in ghosts, and yet i have actually seen 2.
one of which was before any chemical alteration of my brain.
i reckon that they are other creatures that are simply out of phase, pretty much but not as far as dark matter.
no i do not mean nutrinos.

has anyone also heard about these 'rods'
we can apparently only see them now because of fasc capture video.

mini alien ships?
i only say that because of an idea i have for remote security drones.

oh as to fibre optics.
i do happen to know a little about electronics, i served an nvq2 at vosper thornycroft, which may not be much but it enough to tell me that all electronic components can be emulated through optics without ANY electric in the system... how you create the light in the firstplace is another matter.

a puzzler i set myself was how to provide propulsion in a vacume without gas or other expulsives.
i have a theory i call the dark matter engine. now obviously if i talk about it here, its gonna get shot down.
i will however wait, like i normaly do until i can find a workable solution to an age old problem.

by the way, does anyone subscribe to the theory that all the matter in the big bang came from a tiny tear in reality, which on the other side is pure energy?
i dont know if i have worded it right, but it is a very common belief, or has been at some point in my lifetime...

sorry i meant fast. as in cameras with lots of FPS's

Very funny Freddy,

I've just spent the past hour helping Gig get all his threads into one place.

For all who care to continue talking to Gig here is the agreed upon thread:

F19585?thread=452068&post=5612043#p5612043

See you all there?


az

Oh, hi Gig.

Just thought I'd post this again here - is that okay?


az

What does it matter where we talk? We all have 'My Conversations' links.

I don't know enough about physics to comment on the other suggestions though.

Ben

Btw - ReddyFreddy has no more authority than any of us here. You can talk about what you like where you like with some vague kind of reference to being on topic. The Tolkein Thread had started drifting before you joined us in it. Just stick within the Terms and Condiditions, and you'll be fine.

carry on.
dont seem to make a differance though.
people have either got bored of me or carried on regardless.
nevermind, im just moning about cable styly dsl on the telewest thread.

havent bothered with the terms and conditions.
i belive if i am polite and constructive, i have as much right to my say as anyone else.
i aint got time to digress into less.

Well, thats a good enough start, it has to be said.

In fact, perhaps a lesson in there for all of us.

>> people have either got bored of me or carried on regardless.

It's Friday evening. They are probably out boozing and sluicing. I am about to log off myself.

Catch you later, and have a good weekend.

B

what is a weekend?
yeah i kinda forgot people do that.
ive never been in a nightclub in my life and i dont inted to till i can dance.

aaarrgh!

Gig can talk wherever he likes! We had just been talking about putting his various threads together onto one thread so that people might feel less confused about following what he had to say.

So I helped him by setting up a link.

And then RF started this thread.

I give up!


az

"oh as to fibre optics.
i do happen to know a little about electronics, i served an nvq2 at vosper thornycroft, which may not be much but it enough to tell me that all electronic components can be emulated through optics without ANY electric in the system... how you create the light in the firstplace is another matter."

Err... no, you don't know a little about electronics. I'm not *quite* as qualified in electronics and electronic theory as Hoovooloo is in chemical engineering, but suffice it to say that my resume is more than adequate.

Your "breakthrough" idea that light can be split into an infinite number of wavelengths isn't particularly impressive, mostly because, if it were relevant at all, we wouldn't need to use optics at all, since electricity can do the same thing. We can change electricity's properties to have an infinite number of voltages, wavelengths, or amperages, so why should we muck around with optics? Both move at the speed of light.

The reason we don't use electronic devices in this way (usually... I'm not going into analog computers, synchros, servos, or other electromechanical devices at this time) is because it doesn't matter what the level is unless it means something to us, and we can manipulate it.

That's what transistors are all about. They are switches. We can write programs that determine when the switch is turned on and turned off. As switches, they only have two states: on and off. So we turn all our programming into a binary code of 1s and 0s to correspond to that, then feed it into the machine and see what it comes back with.

Experimentation is ongoing

You could put all the optics together you want, but it all comes down to one basic question: what is your switch?

Even if you did have a switch, all you'd have is on and off. Which is not an improvement on the current situation.

In addition, transistors are the more appropriate tool than optics for computing functions because:

1) Reliability. A particle of dust won't crash them.
2) Miniaturization. We have no technology to put 10 billion optical lenses (and their switching mechanisms) on a thin wafer. And it could never be as simple as etching on glass.
3) Ease of manufacture. It basically is as simple as etching on silicon.

Research is ongoing into 3 and 4 state transistors, which would have an obvious increase in computing power. Research into this area might, over the long term, yield increasing numbers of states, allowing for a bit to carry exponentially more data (rather than 0-1, it could carry 0-15 or beyond). That is the direction science is already going, and is the direction that will actually yield results. There is no way you will get an optical computer chip completed, and there is no reason why anyone would ever want it.

i didnt say an infinate nummer. i sai at one point several thousand and at onother point over amillion.
either way it does not matter, i never said infinate.
electric may move as fast as light in a multi mode, but i doubt so in a single mode fibre.
i am pretty sure flat out light is faster than electric.
pluss the fact heat is becoming a real problem in the electronics market.
add that to the frequency increase which will eventually be a real harm to life.

i am sure that there would need to be a 'power light' runing with the data track so the manipulation could occour.
white light could possibly be used trough prism tech to isolate the appropriate colors.
so the three legged jobbie that increases the current could be emulated in this fassion.
also if any mechanical movement was required, then maybe we could use the white lite to generate heat to power said things.
also, i think i have heard of some sort of light powered fan or something, from what i remember it small enough to put into the hand in a little class casing like a snow orniment.
but light made it move.
please someone must know what i am refering to???
a fixed resistor should be real easy to emulate

i also didnt say anything about a chip, obviously we are not ready for fibreobti IC's when they are an evolution of electronics in practice.

im talking about a large array to start with like the old valve or even steam computers.

"i didnt say an infinate nummer. i sai at one point several thousand and at onother point over amillion.
either way it does not matter, i never said infinate." - Several thousand, a million, infinite, it doesn't matter. You can split light into an infinite number of colors/wavelengths. It just doesn't do you any good.

"electric may move as fast as light in a multi mode, but i doubt so in a single mode fibre.
i am pretty sure flat out light is faster than electric." - Electricity moves at the speed of light. So, not coincidentally, does light. You might be misunderstanding some things you heard about propagation delays... but any optical system would also have that delay.

"pluss the fact heat is becoming a real problem in the electronics market." - It's been a real problem all along, but we've solved it readily enough. And will continue to do so. Anyway, a property of light is heat, so an optical system would have a similar problem.

"i am sure that there would need to be a 'power light' runing with the data track so the manipulation could occour." - Adding an extra bit does not suddenly create an interaction according to preset rules. Imagine I gave you eight number digits, but didn't tell you what to do with them. Then imagine I gave you a ninth digit, but still didn't tell you what to do with them. That's what your 'power light' would accomplish.

"i am sure that there would need to be a 'power light' runing with the data track so the manipulation could occour.
white light could possibly be used trough prism tech to isolate the appropriate colors.
so the three legged jobbie that increases the current could be emulated in this fassion." - The "three-legged jobbie" being a transistor? What controls the prism?

"also, i think i have heard of some sort of light powered fan or something, from what i remember it small enough to put into the hand in a little class casing like a snow orniment.
but light made it move." - What's your point?


"a fixed resistor should be real easy to emulate" - Why would you need a resistor in an optical system?

"i also didnt say anything about a chip, obviously we are not ready for fibreobti IC's when they are an evolution of electronics in practice.

im talking about a large array to start with like the old valve or even steam computers."

And the benefit of having an optical computer the size of a warehouse would be... ?

The answer is: A moot point and a pipe dream until you come up with a control mechanism for the switching. And that control mechanism would have to have lower power demands and faster propagation times than electronics.