Yesterday while driving home I had Glenn Beck on the radio and he was interviewing some guy discussing Quantum bits, aka qubits. Unlike traditional bits which are binary and have a value of 0 or 1, qubits can have many values. This will greatly increase the power and speed of computing. Rather than trying to explain it myself, I found this online explanation.
What is a qubit? (quantum-inspire.com)
It remains to be seen how soon if ever this capability makes its way down to model railroad electronics, but its fun to think of the possibilities this will create.
As I recall, the measurements for Noah's Ark were given in cubits.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
MisterBeasleyAs I recall, the measurements for Noah's Ark were given in cubits.
Mark P.
Website: http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.comVideos: https://www.youtube.com/user/mabrunton
Are we going to get to the point we spend so much time perfecting and connecting computers and associated equipment we forget the part of the hobby that is about trains?
ndbprrwe forget the part of the hobby that is about trains?
greg - Philadelphia & Reading / Reading
We had someone post here, a couple of months ago, who was a systems programmer. He had developed a complete set of code to control a model locomotive to respond exactly as a prototype would, right down to different loading characteristics for MUed units. That is something that I confess appeals to me for operation, just like I prefer carefully prototype-detailed track that is carefully 'gleamed' to give a correct railhead shape (and, not incidentally, supports good electrical connection without micro-arcing damage, and can be maintained that way). I'm not even going to advocate for those things in a community where other members prefer knob-turning or track structure designed for utter structural reliability, or use screws in locomotive side rods for easy maintenance for reliable operation as priorities.
The thing is, there's room in the hobby for those to whom 'running trains' is not the major priority in miniature-world creation, or electronic optimization, or craftsmanship. That's fortunate to the many who build layouts optimized for still photography (without prototypically moving vehicles, people, etc.) where the only thing that runs are the trains.
One of the things very distantly promised by 'quantum computing' would be low-power AI modeling of a large number of interacting characters to 'run' the trains as if the crews were actual individuals. Instead of turning the knob, you might issue train orders and miniaturize their 'hooping up', and perhaps call tparticular 'employees' on the carpet it they oversped to maintain schedule or failed to go through the time to tie the train down... think of the "fun" with a simulated grievance procedure!
In other words, real railroad operation, not playing with toy trains or pretending to do switch problems with cards and a fast clock... not that there isn't abundant room for non-physicists to do both those things, and thoroughly enjoy it. (Well, maybe not so much in the latter case )
I can't even spel hexkisdessimal, let alone use it.
selectorI can't even spel hexkisdessimal, let alone use it.
But at least you're strong to the finich when you eats yer spinach...
Hell, it's just base 16, it's easily entered using a simple improvement of Touch-Tone (one more row, in fact it's on Japanese touch phone DTMF keyboards) and conveniently when the extra digits are A-F everything displays nicely on a 0-9 digital display (if we use a lowercase 'b')
Remember the old joke about the child asked if they could count -- sure: two three four five six seven eight nine ten jack queen king?
Hex is positional just like ten-finger counting, except that it goes by 16s. (That's important if you also use binary as in the inchworm song). So if I have 'ten' somethings and want to write it as a single digit, I need a special character. By convention this is the letter A. Eleven is then written B, fifteen is written F, and now sixteen is "one-zero"... 10, in digits.
Note immediately that if you were 65, your age written in hex is now 41. There are other advantages.
I'm sure there are modelers who are enthused about the possibilities with advancements in electronics. It's not my intention to dampen that enthusiasm. If that floats your boat, go for it. Speaking for myself, I don't want my miniature locos operating like the real thing. Last year I purchased the latest and greatest WOW sound decoder. One feature I quickly discovered was that to stop the train, it wasn't enough to simply turn the throttle down to zero. You had to simulateneously apply the break by pressing a function key. If you just turn the throttle off, the loco would coast to a stop. At a normal operating speed, it took 22 feet in HO scale for the loco to come to a stop. While that is how a real loco would respond, that is the last thing I want from my scale model locos. When I turn the throttle down, I want my loco to come to a stop. Fortunately, it was possible to disable this function and operate in a traditional mode. I exercised that option immediately and have had no desire to reenabling it.
Overmod selector I can't even spel hexkisdessimal, let alone use it. But at least you're strong to the finich when you eats yer spinach... Hell, it's just base 16, it's easily entered using a simple improvement of Touch-Tone (one more row, in fact it's on Japanese touch phone DTMF keyboards) and conveniently when the extra digits are A-F everything displays nicely on a 0-9 digital display (if we use a lowercase 'b') Remember the old joke about the child asked if they could count -- sure: two three four five six seven eight nine ten jack queen king? Hex is positional just like ten-finger counting, except that it goes by 16s. (That's important if you also use binary as in the inchworm song). So if I have 'ten' somethings and want to write it as a single digit, I need a special character. By convention this is the letter A. Eleven is then written B, fifteen is written F, and now sixteen is "one-zero"... 10, in digits. Note immediately that if you were 65, your age written in hex is now 41. There are other advantages. (Yes, I'm aware he was being humorous. Moi aussi.)
selector I can't even spel hexkisdessimal, let alone use it.
I was in seventh grade when the "new math" was introduced in 1963. Part of that was an introduction to binary and other bases. I'm guessing that was to prepare a generation for the computer age. Later, when I became a mainframe programmer, I was introduced to hexadecimal. The purpose of this base was that it was easier for humans to work in than binary and binary converted easily into hexadecimal. Four binary digits can be represented by a single hexadecimal digit. An 8 bit byte can thus be represented by two hexadecimal digits. Binary 10110110 converts to B6. That was useful when printing down the contents of memory in what was called a core dump. That became an outdate practice when memory increased exponentially and you would kill tree if you printed down the contents of the computer's memory.