Comments by "Scott Franco" (@scottfranco1962) on "New Mind" channel.

  1. There was an incident last century where they detected what the USA believed was a nuclear explosion in Africa. Nothing further came of that. Anyone know what happened there?
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  2. That sampling rate demo was worth the price of admission, well done. PCM or pulse code modulation should have nothing whatever to do with sampling. Pulse code modulation means to represent audio with simple on and off waveforms, ie., pure binary digital sampling. It was invented for the bell system, and means that instead of representing audio as a series of values, say 0-255 as for 8 bit sampling, you represent it as 0 or 1 values but represent the frequency information by increasing the frequency of the pulse transitions. There is no other meaning of the word "pulse", which is a digital term, not an analog one. PCM got hyjacked a as a general term for analog to digital convertion, perhaps because IBM-PCs used to be capable only of pulse code modulation of the speaker. There was not A/D converter, programs made all sounds via pure on/off waveforms or squarewaves, and there were even some programs that attempted to make crude speech via this method. I note that you are calling this PDM in the video, but, again, the word "pulse" is unambiguous. It does not mean A/D conversion. Sometime I would like to research when and perhaps why the term PCM got misappropriated.
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  3. Not true, EV1 started with lead-acid, then went to NMH later.
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  4. PS. The process of introducing lead free aviation fuels is currently underway. There are several unleaded fuels that are direct replacements for aviation gas.
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  5.  @TheWeepingCorpse  Then do tell.... what is being modulated about the pulse if not the width? As in what is PCM? If you look up the definition of PCM? Here is the wikipedia: "Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to digitally represent sampled analog signals. It is the standard form of digital audio in computers, compact discs, digital telephony and other digital audio applications. In a PCM stream, the amplitude of the analog signal is sampled regularly at uniform intervals, and each sample is quantized to the nearest value within a range of digital steps." Meaning that the value is "sampled regularly at uniform intervals" and " quantized to the nearest value" meaning fed through a A to D converter. What part of that is PULSE???????
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  6. Why doesn't it make more sense to add shielding (lead), especially since a smaller CPU die would use less shielding?
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  7. The import of flat memory model for the 80386 was that it got rid of the segmented model for programs larger than 64kb. In that amazingly stupid model, it was necessary even to custom design C programs just to run on the 8086-80286 CPUs, in the form of segmented declaration and management. This prevented, for example, a port of Unix onto the 8086-80286 CPUs. If they hadn't done that (introduced flat model), other CPUs would have taken over from Intel's CPU line, since microprocessors were taking over from Minicomputers and workstations. Intel initially embraced the segmented model as it prevented customers from easily migrating to other CPUs, since the programs would have to be redesigned, but with the rise of workstations based on RISC and 68k cpus, it became clear that it would prevent a lot of programs from being ported TO the 80x86 family just as it would prevent porting FROM the 80x86 family. It worked! 80x86 CPUs eventually killed off the workstation (and later server) market just based on cost. And this is long before the age of ARM.
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  8. "floating glass causes it to be level", well, the reference here is the Earth. Its not in fact level but highly curved. We only consider it flat because the curve is so slight at the small distances we are interested in.
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  9. One small note: GBAS, better known to pilots as LAAS, has gone absolutely nowhere with the FAA.
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  10. Lithium ferro-phosphates - wasn't she a Charlies angel?
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  11. Better living through chemistry.
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  12. Mars will eventually have small life forms. With all of the people traipsing across it, eventually some form of microbial life will escape and evolve to fit the environment.
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