The trio... have disassembled the important aluminum frames that hold the solid oxygen generators in place. Without these generators, people on the space station could certainly die...
Yeah, and without removing those brackets the O2 generators would be unavailable and people really would die. Though the article did not specifically mention it, I gathered that these bracket were shipping restraints that were removed when the O2 generators were delivered.
In order to survive the launch to orbit everything that goes into orbit is somehow secured to the spacecraft. People are strapped into their seats, small items are stowed in compartments, large items are bolted to the frame. This is as much for the benefit of the spacecraft as anything else; loose cargo flying about during multi-g acceleration can really ruin an astronaut's day.
I figure the brackets used for the table were shipping brackets from the launch of the O2 generators, and the foam used for the muffler was packing material from some other shipment.
(Side note: when the fire broke out on Mir, one of the many problems in fighting it was that the restraining brackets had never been removed from the fire extinguishers. They had to waste crucial seconds finding a wrench and freeing the fire extinguishers.)
Funny, I didn't think the "girlfriend" bit was
out of place... after all, a guy who pulls in this
kind of money probably throws it around just as
quickly and easily as he gets it. He probably has
no problem getting something recognizably female
and breathing to hang on his arm...
No, the part that got me was that he left for "dinner with his girlfrend and then back to her place" (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more!)
at 5:30PM, and was back home scamming away at
7:50PM. I figure that even for a teenage hacker who'd probably never kissed a girl before starting
his life of crime, this is a little quick!
The main reason for targeting commercial fuel cells at natural gas/propane applications has to do with fuel delivery infrastructure. Early adopters of new technology have enough problems as it is; the more potential problems the technology producer can head off, the more likely the technology is to be adopted.
If GE were to go straight to hydrogen fuel cells, they would be up against the problem of how to get the hydrogen fuel to the customers and how to store it once it's there (yes, I know that H2 is not much more dangerous than other volatile fuels like octane, but too many people think Hindenburg when they think Hydrogen).
The building trades are incredibly conservative when it comes to new technology; anything that is not tried and true entails the risk that the installer will at the very least have to service early glitches at their own expense, and at worst will have to tear out and replace the new stuff (also at their own expense). Remember Urea-Formaldehyde insulation? This was an expensive one for the construction industry to swallow. Polybutelene plumbing is another such example. If you approach the construction trades and say you have this great new machine, but that it requires an entirely new fuel infrastructure and plumbing methods and storage tanks to adopt, they'll turn their backs and walk away. Present them with the same machine and say that it uses mehtods they're already familiar with ("Standard propane or LNG fitting on one end, standard power connector on the other!") and they're much more likely to listen. If GE hopes to deploy these units in any kind of volume, they definitely have to get the building trades on board. They won't achieve the volumes necessary to drop the price if they only sell in onesies to the "green" segment of the population.
Notice one other thing: the design of the unit is *modular*. The propane or LNG goes through a fuel converter, which produces H2 that gets fed into the fuel cell! What this means is that once the early adoption period is past and this is a more mainstream technology, it would be cheap and easy to retrofit these units to use H2 (say, cracked from water) *directly*.
In other words, the marketing of this thing is brilliant. Use familiar tools and techniques and fuels now, but leave the door open for more exotic and cleaner possibilities later.
I work with the Linux/Alpha kernel development team at Compaq, and wish to point out that we have booted Linux on a GS system in the lab. It does have some rough edges, but at least the proof-of-concept is there. If anyone were to actually order one (or several) of these boxen to run Linux I'm sure we could adjust our priorities accordingly and deliver a full solution 8-)
As for Beowulf, in fact the current Linux port sort of does a "beowulf-in-a-box". We support SMP up to four processors. Above that and you run multiple instances of the OS in different "partitions" of CPU-sets. Again, if a business need arose to require supporting a single instance of Linux on a 32-processor system, we could probably make that happen ("Given enough money, all problems are shallow?" 8-) )
I do Linux development fulltime for Compaq Computer Corporation (I work for the Alpha division of what used to be Digital Equipment Corporation). Although I have the industry-standard employment agreement in which everything I produce on company time/resources belongs to the company, this has obviously not stopped me from writing and releasing GPL code.
The trick is to realize that (a) any contract can be renegotiated, either on a case-by-case basis or on a blanket basis, and (b) corporations are just as able as individuals to release GPL code.
For cases under (a) I typically go up my management chain, with a possible detour to corporate counsel, and request that I be able to release a particular piece of GPL code. The company has typically been very reasonable about granting such requests.
For cases under (b) it is possible for an individual to write code whose title and copyright revert to the corporation, then for the corporation to release said code under the GPL (or other open-source license. I worked on an SDK recently that was released under something resembling the BSD license).
I wish I still had my copy of "Off The Wall Street Journal" from 1981 (an April Fool's parody of a widely read business daily). An article on the front page discussed patent reform. In order to close the perceived "innovation gap" with Japan, the USPTO decided to revisit previously rejected patent applications and approve everything in sight (apropos to the current thread, the particular example I remember them describing was an "electric fork").
It must be hard to write good satire when the world constantly catches up with last year's joke...
By the way, don't tell anyone, but I own eight cats and I like to entertain them with a laser pointer; they love to chase the little dot around. Little did I know that in so doing I was violating U.S. Patent 5,443,036...
The "display driver resolution" problem can easily be worked around with a bit of hardware enhancement. Compaq's TFT monitors have native pixel resolutions of up to 1280x1024, depending on the model. They also have internal circuitry which can accept signals at a variety of standard resolutions and map them to the native pixel resolution of the monitor.
Although this solution does not exploit the full capabilities of 200ppi screens, it does allow them to be useful until the new drivers and 32Mb video cards arrive.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, and without removing those brackets the O2 generators would be unavailable and people really would die. Though the article did not specifically mention it, I gathered that these bracket were shipping restraints that were removed when the O2 generators were delivered.
In order to survive the launch to orbit everything that goes into orbit is somehow secured to the spacecraft. People are strapped into their seats, small items are stowed in compartments, large items are bolted to the frame. This is as much for the benefit of the spacecraft as anything else; loose cargo flying about during multi-g acceleration can really ruin an astronaut's day.
I figure the brackets used for the table were shipping brackets from the launch of the O2 generators, and the foam used for the muffler was packing material from some other shipment.
(Side note: when the fire broke out on Mir, one of the many problems in fighting it was that the restraining brackets had never been removed from the fire extinguishers. They had to waste crucial seconds finding a wrench and freeing the fire extinguishers.)
Funny, I didn't think the "girlfriend" bit was out of place... after all, a guy who pulls in this kind of money probably throws it around just as quickly and easily as he gets it. He probably has no problem getting something recognizably female and breathing to hang on his arm... No, the part that got me was that he left for "dinner with his girlfrend and then back to her place" (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more!) at 5:30PM, and was back home scamming away at 7:50PM. I figure that even for a teenage hacker who'd probably never kissed a girl before starting his life of crime, this is a little quick!
The main reason for targeting commercial fuel cells at natural gas/propane applications has to do with fuel delivery infrastructure. Early adopters of new technology have enough problems as it is; the more potential problems the technology producer can head off, the more likely the technology is to be adopted.
If GE were to go straight to hydrogen fuel cells, they would be up against the problem of how to get the hydrogen fuel to the customers and how to store it once it's there (yes, I know that H2 is not much more dangerous than other volatile fuels like octane, but too many people think Hindenburg when they think Hydrogen).
The building trades are incredibly conservative when it comes to new technology; anything that is not tried and true entails the risk that the installer will at the very least have to service early glitches at their own expense, and at worst will have to tear out and replace the new stuff (also at their own expense). Remember Urea-Formaldehyde insulation? This was an expensive one for the construction industry to swallow. Polybutelene plumbing is another such example. If you approach the construction trades and say you have this great new machine, but that it requires an entirely new fuel infrastructure and plumbing methods and storage tanks to adopt, they'll turn their backs and walk away. Present them with the same machine and say that it uses mehtods they're already familiar with ("Standard propane or LNG fitting on one end, standard power connector on the other!") and they're much more likely to listen. If GE hopes to deploy these units in any kind of volume, they definitely have to get the building trades on board. They won't achieve the volumes necessary to drop the price if they only sell in onesies to the "green" segment of the population.
Notice one other thing: the design of the unit is *modular*. The propane or LNG goes through a fuel converter, which produces H2 that gets fed into the fuel cell! What this means is that once the early adoption period is past and this is a more mainstream technology, it would be cheap and easy to retrofit these units to use H2 (say, cracked from water) *directly*.
In other words, the marketing of this thing is brilliant. Use familiar tools and techniques and fuels now, but leave the door open for more exotic and cleaner possibilities later.
I, for one, am impressed.
As for Beowulf, in fact the current Linux port sort of does a "beowulf-in-a-box". We support SMP up to four processors. Above that and you run multiple instances of the OS in different "partitions" of CPU-sets. Again, if a business need arose to require supporting a single instance of Linux on a 32-processor system, we could probably make that happen ("Given enough money, all problems are shallow?" 8-) )
The trick is to realize that (a) any contract can be renegotiated, either on a case-by-case basis or on a blanket basis, and (b) corporations are just as able as individuals to release GPL code.
For cases under (a) I typically go up my management chain, with a possible detour to corporate counsel, and request that I be able to release a particular piece of GPL code. The company has typically been very reasonable about granting such requests.
For cases under (b) it is possible for an individual to write code whose title and copyright revert to the corporation, then for the corporation to release said code under the GPL (or other open-source license. I worked on an SDK recently that was released under something resembling the BSD license).
Interesting how this appeared the day after I received my beta copy of Corel Draw 9 for Linux...
It must be hard to write good satire when the world constantly catches up with last year's joke...
By the way, don't tell anyone, but I own eight cats and I like to entertain them with a laser pointer; they love to chase the little dot around. Little did I know that in so doing I was violating U.S. Patent 5,443,036...
The "display driver resolution" problem can easily be worked around with a bit of hardware enhancement. Compaq's TFT monitors have native pixel resolutions of up to 1280x1024, depending on the model. They also have internal circuitry which can accept signals at a variety of standard resolutions and map them to the native pixel resolution of the monitor.
Although this solution does not exploit the full capabilities of 200ppi screens, it does allow them to be useful until the new drivers and 32Mb video cards arrive.