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

GiGaBaNE it would be interested to know more about your analouge computer system.

you mentioned earlier about replacing the 1 0 system with the colours of light.

If you take the current system it would be no light or light. a digital system, can be error checked easily and so more stable.

If you devide the light up into colours you would be varying it from defined 1 0 to include other numbers as in the example of colour it would rely on the differnt frequecny/wavelength. An analouge system

how do you intend to create an anolouge computer system that would surpass the current digital one?

Gee. Why did I go out and miss all this?

Oh, yeah, it was to do a bit more on that $5,000,000 real-estate deal that's allowed me to retire with about four decades left in my active lifespan. Gee. What should I do with that cash? Should I take over a little country? No, I think maybe I'll actually help the world. And, despite your lack of cash, you can't have any of mine, gigabane.

It's nice to learn that someone else can ride a unicycle.

I'm disappointed I wasn't able to get into the salt discussion. I know I'm just an Anglo-Saxon scholar, but that one was so obviously absolutely wrong (not in the sense of "ooh, I don't want to believe that" but in the sense of "doesn't he have at least a little bit more fundamental knowledge of the universe than that?")

It's not a failure of imagination that's the problem with the achievement of your ideas by others; it's your lack of basic knowledge, the kind of knowledge that children develop playing in sandboxes.

digital is not perfect. it just improves quality of data.

notice the method of digital radio over the analoge air waves.
light is easier to seperate than sound.
hang on.its not digital
how can it be real digital when it is electric you shunt around a pc which is also analoge.

you could have spare colors for every command for parrity check
with millions of colors availible, we may not be able to distinguish but computers can.

>> And how precisely would [salt] do that without lacerating the stomach lining? Teleportation? Hyperspatial displacement? Quantum Tunnelling?

Shame on you Brother Felonious. Have you never heard of Leaky Gut Syndrome? Perhaps you should read the list of symptoms before you mock the afflicted.

nothign is perfect.

the medium of transmission for a signal be it sound or light is irrelevant.

you talk about us not bieng able to distinguish but a computer can. That means that you are talking about really small differnce in the tranmission, in analuge during transmission this can lead to a differnt value being received to that being sent due interference or degrdation.

The point of digital is that it is affect alot less by these changes during transmisson reception than a system that relies on the accuracy of the analuge system.

Well, I can start with the fundamental flaws in all this optical computer mumbo-jumbo, like:

1) How digital does not improve data, but degrades it... but ensures better transmission quality.
2) How this statement is utter nonsense: how can it be real digital when it is electric you shunt around a pc which is also analoge.
3) How in order to change colors on a light you need some kind of control device which would in this case be electronic and defeat the whole purpose of this device.

But then I'd be missing the big picture, and I hate to lose the big picture, so...

How exactly does making sweat stains smaller translate into a global financial empire and enough gratitude to be made king?

signal degradation is due to transmission bleed
transmission errors mostly occour like in parralel transfer by inherant flaws in the indavidual wires used in the transmission
all thes considerations go out the window when using single mode optic.
have some plans for multimode but working on the flaws i see first.


as to you and this bloody salt, dont you get the idea that you could use electron construction to make the components,
let them break down from salt, the containers are smaller and when they combine again still does the job.
just means a sodium contruct instead of a whol salt crystal..
is that enough?

GiGaBaNE (of the 13th zodiac)

Oh I am so disappointed when they turn out to be this easy.

Can't someone, somewhere, please, send me something DIFFICULT to debunk, just once?

"in matters like this the only limit i have is money."

No. Flat out, plain and simple, WRONG.

The limit you have is the laws of the physical universe outside your head. No amount of money will make heat spontaneously flow from a cold object to a hot one. The day you can prove otherwise is the day all concepts of money become obsolete. Like I said, I shalln't hold my breath.

Onto some detail, now that I've shown you to be a fantasist:

"i do have a job for you if you really do know about chemicals."

I told you mate, I've a degree in chemical engineering and over ten years' experience. Do you doubt that?

"obviously by now we have established i dont have the greatest education in the world"

You ain't whistlin' Dixie, boy.

"isotonic water, you understand the point of said invention"

Yes, *I* do. I'm prepared to bet folding money you don't, however.

"i have an idea for a drink that makes your sweat evaporate more quickly"

Interesting idea. So basically you have an idea involving either

(a) increasing the heat transfer coefficient of human skin without affecting any of its other, more biologically important properties OR
(b) changing the heat capacity of water OR
(c) arranging for the body to use an alternative solvent for the excretion of salts and as a surface coolant.

Obviously (a) is impractical. Skin is enormously complex, and its heat transfer coefficient is an emergent property unrelated to its biologically important ones. You cannot simply muck about with that property without seriously affecting many other systems such as the manufacture of vitamin E, to name just one.

(b) basically requires you to rewire the universe from the ground up with different laws, so I think we can safely leave that aside.

Which brings us onto (c), which reading of later posts I find is what you're suggesting.

However, you've made a basic error here, betraying your complete lack of any useful knowledge. You've assumed that, because alcohol evaporates easily, it would be good to sweat alcohol instead of water.

Now, instead of fantasising, engage your brain.

Sweat, like so much else in the body, is not a simple system. It is complex and multifunctional. The three most obvious functions are:
1. Cooling
2. Excretion of salts
3. Secretion of pheromones.

Now: how does sweat perform task 1.? Answer: by evaporation. Every fluid has a parameter known as latent heat of evaporation. This is a measure of how much energy you need to turn a kilogram of liquid into vapour at the same temperature. Looked at another way, it's a measure of how efficiently you can cool something by evaporating that fluid off it.

The value for water is 2258 kJ/kg. The value for ethanol is only 838 kJ/kg.

So imagine I - mark 1 Hom.Sap with unmodified, old-style water-secreting sweat glands - need to shift 2258 kJ of heat from my body. I need to sweat a litre of water.

You, however - Homo (probably) Gigger-brainensis with yer nano-fied alcohol-secreting glands - you, poor sod, need to sweat almost 2.7 litres of alcohol to achieve the same cooling effect.

Seems a retrograde step to me. You're actually suggesting we should sweat MORE. Plus you're suggesting we sweat a flammable, toxic substance. You know ethanol is toxic, right? Me, I think I'll stick to sweating good old fashioned, non-toxic, non-flammable, high-latent-heat-capacity water. But let me know when you get your idea working. I'll be the first to offer you a light...

Note, please, that this is not something you can address by any hand-waving talk about nano-tech. This is a basic *physical* parameter bound up in the way ethanol molecules work at the most basic level. NO amount of money, no matter how great, can change it, any more than you could change the value of the speed of light or the charge on an electron.

It is not my grasp on reality that is hindering me from leaping. It is my mastery of reality which allows me to look down from where I am to where you are, poking around in your toybox. Look up, read a book, get an education, and then, and only then, presume to think you've got something to offer the world.

If you're prepared to double my current salary (yeah, right...) I'd be prepared to give you a basic course in chemistry and physics which might allow you to grasp why your ideas are fantasist dross. However, in addition to my salary I would require you to pay off my mortgage, buy me two new snowboards and some of those Boa style boots with the wire instead of laces, plus furnish me with a new, state of the art PC with broadband internet connection upgraded at least every three months. If you're prepared to meet that requirement, drop by my personal space and we can talk. Until then, I don't think I have much more to say. In an ideal world I'd only work for people smarter than me. In the real world, I make do with working for people smart enough to realise how much smarter I am than them. You might reach that level, with my help, in about four years. Let me know.



H.

Actually I found the perfect answer to sweat stains yonks ago.

Nudity.

Do you know what I *really* like about Hoo? Apart from making me laugh out loud of course. It's his unassuming modesty.

B

Ok gigabane before i jsut stop reading all this rubbish, do you actuly know anything about low-level machine (how the computer actully works)

do you have any qualifictaion that will show that you have understood the concept?

i would be inclined to think that you don't so before you try to re-design it you should take a course, then you can see for your self the flaws and people won't have to waste their time pointing them out to you.


mabe extend this into the other subject areas you are talkin about as well?

>> The limit you have is the laws of the physical universe outside your head. <<

Now that's where YOU'RE wrong Hoo. Don't you even know the basics? There IS no physical universe outside your head. It's all just a pigment of your imagination. (What ARE you on?)

how can you argue against me when you are not even sure what u contest.

firstly, the money matter is purely to do with the amount of minds you can get concentrating on the task at hand.

second. i mentioned that alchohol happenes to evaporate quicker than water, i also said an alcohol like substance.

third and get this because it is the most important.
you are the one who understands that that particular formulae wouldnt work, you are the one who would be able to find (if it exists) the substance that would do a better job than salt (not the water).
and if it didnt exist then it would be people like you in combinations with other fields, that could possibly even create a new substance that would do the job. or are you saying right now in public that all the great minds of the world would look at this idea and fail to improve upon it until a working version could exist.
you are the conceited one.
i dont assume i can make it exist. you assume that no one can make it exist.

have i missed anything?

well you have actully failed to answer both of the 2 seperate questions i asked ... but ohwell

>> have i missed anything?

I haven't had as much fun here in *years*

a whole chunk of the syllabus apparently

"It's all just a pigment of your imagination"




pigment? Like, which pigment. Is it sort of a burnt sienna of his imagination? or maybe a yellow ochre?

More like sunset yellow fcf, or tartrazine

has anyone else thought to look at what a name like Gigabane might mean, i jsut die it accoured to me ...

well normally giga means something large or what ever times ten to the power of nine.

so lets look at Bane, according to dictionary.com it has meaninds relating to death and poison.



so does gigabane mean lots of death and misery?

It's a gaming monicker. A bane is a killer (as in the Ring being called Isildur's Bane in the Lord of the Rings), and giga is an indication that gigabane in his gaming mode considers himself to be quite exceptional. His real world name seems to be Malcolm. He's a PC gamer (windows, not Linux), his email address is -- oh. I better not do that.<winkeye) He claims to not be the better known Canadian gamer Gigabane, and I, for one, believe him. The Canadian one is apparently much better and certainly receives more attention on the web.