If you design a ship to carry humans, you're also going to design it to carry food and water (the latter will likely be needed for radiation shielding on any interplanetary journey, apart from its usual purpose).
What it doesn't need to carry is fuel for the return journey, any rover vehicles and supplies used for the duration of the stay, scientific instrumentation and equipment, construction materials, or anything else that's not strictly necessary for the survival and well-being of the crew.
This is exactly how we could get to Mars safely and economically: by landing as much materiel as possible via unmanned missions, prior to sending humans onboard a craft specifically designed to carry nothing else.
That's interesting. I just installed one of the new 800-MHz FSB 3.0 GHz models, overclocked it to 3.3 GHz, and it still never seems to exceed 40 degrees C with the OEM heat sink. I wonder where all that juice is going?
I'm a ham, and I don't think this is a troll. It brings up a very valid point about the relative merits of two different communications paradigms.
HF ("short wave") communications certainly lacks the strategic and commercial importance it once had. It's always been a relatively-noisy, unreliable, and bandwidth-constrained way to communicate, and nowadays, HF is used primarily as a backup for satellite and long-haul microwave circuits. We could live without if we had to.
If, by sacrificing the entire HF radio spectrum, we could actually wire every home in the USA for economical broadband Internet access, I honestly wouldn't oppose it. Amateur Radio operators and commercial/military/governmental HF operators alike should realize the truth: we can't shy away from the technological, economic, and social potential of universal broadband Internet connectivity because of the lamentations of a few modern-day buggy-whip manufacturers.
Now, as a disclaimer, I will say that I don't believe that power-line distribution makes sense for broadband Internet. The power companies have spent the last hundred years optimizing their network to ship 60-Hz sine waves around, and trying to shovel data through a network like that is bound to be more trouble than, say, running fiber to every curb in America.
Yeah, actually, it did. Look at a long-term IBM stock graph sometime. Today, IBM makes a fortune from PC-based software and services... much more than they'd ever have made as the sole steward of a now-obsolete platform.
Just because they no longer own the PC platform's schematics and BIOS source code doesn't mean they can't build a large portion of their business on it.
Eventually, Microsoft will have to make an analogous adjustment to their thinking.
Re:Is this a C# or a .NET problem?
on
Hijacking .NET
·
· Score: 4, Informative
In C++ the compiler will not let you access private methods or variables
Ridiculous.
class hidden { private:
int frotz;
int ozmoo; };
class hack_o_matic { public:
int frotz;
int ozmoo; };
int main(void) {
hidden H;
hack_o_matic *V = (hack_o_matic *) (ampersand) H;
printf("Hidden frotz member = %d",V->frotz); }
The poster above who pointed out that both the review and its subject are goofy is correct. Data-hiding is an OOP convention, not a security feature.
C++ is a particularly good example (for values of 'good' that approximate 'horribly broken'), because the only way you can expose a class's public functionality is through a declaration of the entire class that includes all of its private members, which can subsequently be accessed through pointer hacks like the above. If you want to hide data for security purposes, as opposed to hiding data for design purposes, you have no choice but to use wrappers.
This method won't work until DVDs store info about the area of focus, and can pan&scan on-the-fly, to any ratio your player wants to put it in.
Which they've actually always been able to do. That's why your DVD player's setup menu has a preference field for the selection of 'full screen' or 'widescreen'. Widescreen DVDs that offer P&S-on-the-fly support will play back in fullscreen mode if you set up your player that way.
However, very few discs have taken advantage of the P&S-on-the-fly feature. I'm not sure why; it may be because the telecine P&S process has more options available than the automatic feature provides, like zooming.
The original pressing of the Last Temptation of Christ DVD actually enabled this feature by mistake. Viewers with the fullscreen option turned on were rewarded with a corrupted P&S picture (well, more corrupted than usual). I imagine they've fixed this by now.
Just always remember to use the bound-limited versions of library calls, i.e. snprintf vs. sprintf
I just wrote a whole vsprintf() implementation from the ground up because I didn't know there was already a "_vsnprintf()" function in the RTL (MSVC 6 in my case). When the hell did they add that?
(Yes, as a matter of fact, I do live in a cave...)
For example pilots based in japan would fly to korea to go shopping. It was a waste of money.
Training. Pilots live (and sometimes die) by the number of hours they've accumulated. Those runs to Korea (which is a weird place to go shopping if you're already in Japan) do serve a purpose, even if it's not obvious.
Actually, I can see a tiny bit of desktop icon burn-in on my otherwise-awesome Samsung 170T under certain, very obscure conditions.
This monitor is about 8 months old.
The burn-in effect is barely visible when I pick up the invisibility ring in Quake 1, of all things. It's completely unnoticeable under any other conditions.
So, presumably the FETs in an LCD are subject to uneven aging effects. Unlike the effects mentioned in the article, this definitely isn't a backlighting issue.
Those web forums usually aren't archived by Google (or anyone else), so they have no sense of permanence. Newbies ask the same questions over and over, not because they're clueless newbies, but because any knowledge posted on web forums is effectively lost to posterity.
I really hate to see Usenet replaced by a million different proprietary variations of UBB. Usenet, along with its centralized Deja/Google archive, was a good idea, and we should've stuck with it and made it work.
Re:you can't beowulf outside of Linux
on
Implementing VisiCalc
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Just so everyone knows, this required 90 minutes of cassette tape for one kilobyte of data
Nope. The Apple's cassette port used Manchester-encoded data at 1200 bps (the same speed as the Commodore 64's floppy drive).
A couple of friends and I used audio amplifier chips to simulate rudimentary 1200-bps half-duplex modems with the Apple cassette ports. Like everything else on that machine, there really weren't many limits to the I/O hacking possibilities.
The cool thing about the old LaserJet iron is that you can buy accessories for them on eBay -- like RAM, PostScript cartridges, and duplexers -- for about a penny on the dollar.
My LaserJet 4si would've probably cost me $6,000 if I'd bought it with all the options it has now. Even today, reliable duplex printers aren't all that cheap, so the 4si is still more than worth the electricity it sucks down.
The noise is generated by remnants from the big bang
A myth, for the most part. It's generated primarily in the front-end amplifier of the TV tuner by virtue of the fact that its temperature is above absolute zero.
All dissipative (resistive) elements, whether active or passive, generate thermal, or Johnson, noise. The noise power is expressed in watts as Pn=KTB, where K = the Boltzman constant, T is the temperature in degrees Kelvin, and B is the bandwidth you're looking at. TV signals occupy several megahertz' worth of bandwidth, so even the smallest amount of noise in the front end will dominate the noise from atmospheric and celestial sources.
You can prove this by disconnecting the antenna. Even if you short the TV's antenna terminals with a paper clip, neither the audio nor the video noise will change much.
Yeah, but just try debugging or modding SMD stuff. It's practically impossible. I personally miss the the gradual disappearing of through-hole work, because I could debug it and fix/mod it. Can't do anything interesting with SMD.
I'm glad I wasn't convinced of that before I tried my first hobby SMD design project. SMD boards are great -- you can hand-solder chips with 0.65mm lead pitch without too much grief, and unlike most garden-variety through-hole PCBs, you have access to every component and connection from the top of the board. For RF work, SMD combines the convenience and tweakability of dead-bug construction with the professionalism and neatness of PCBs.
It probably won't be too long before many types of chips and discrete components are available only in SMD. The more interesting RF chips are already unavailable in DIP packages. This is one of those generational changes, like the transition from vacuum tubes to solid-state technology, that you'll just have to deal with if you want to stay current in the hobby.
The only way to make things better is to organize into a group that can 'collectively' work towards our goals. Until we figure that out, we're screwed.
Tell me: what is your union going to do besides make foreign labor even more attractive?
... is about the only electronics surplus outfit in the Seattle area, as far as I'm aware.
In fact, Vetco is about the only decent electronic-component reseller of any kind around here, now that Future-Active Electronics has wisely decided that only Canadians are interested in buying electronic parts.
The last time I was in Vetco, they were planning to expand their overall component inventory greatly to pick up some of the slack from the former Active Electronics store just up the road. Go buy some stuff from them now so they don't vanish too!
Sounds like a classic death spiral
on
Salon Asks for Help
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Shyeah. Like I'm going to subscribe to a magazine that I suspect is going to expire before my subscription does.
It's hard to feel too sympathetic for Salon. With all of their moaning and groaning about overhead, you'd think they had to cut down dead trees, slice them up and cover them with ink, and mail them, or something. ("Oh, wait. You mean like every other magazine in the history of journalism?")
Dr. Darwin called -- he wants to cancel his subscription.
Slashdot Mirror
How does it overcome language barriers?
:)
Probably because CQ DE KE5FX QRZ RST 599 73 makes about as much sense in Afrikaans as it does in English.
If you design a ship to carry humans, you're also going to design it to carry food and water (the latter will likely be needed for radiation shielding on any interplanetary journey, apart from its usual purpose).
What it doesn't need to carry is fuel for the return journey, any rover vehicles and supplies used for the duration of the stay, scientific instrumentation and equipment, construction materials, or anything else that's not strictly necessary for the survival and well-being of the crew.
Not offtopic at all.
This is exactly how we could get to Mars safely and economically: by landing as much materiel as possible via unmanned missions, prior to sending humans onboard a craft specifically designed to carry nothing else.
... isn't even worthy of the title "junk science." It's been debunked thoroughly.
That's interesting. I just installed one of the new 800-MHz FSB 3.0 GHz models, overclocked it to 3.3 GHz, and it still never seems to exceed 40 degrees C with the OEM heat sink. I wonder where all that juice is going?
Fine. When they start shooting down satellites, we can turn off the BPL service.
I'm a ham, and I don't think this is a troll. It brings up a very valid point about the relative merits of two different communications paradigms.
HF ("short wave") communications certainly lacks the strategic and commercial importance it once had. It's always been a relatively-noisy, unreliable, and bandwidth-constrained way to communicate, and nowadays, HF is used primarily as a backup for satellite and long-haul microwave circuits. We could live without if we had to.
If, by sacrificing the entire HF radio spectrum, we could actually wire every home in the USA for economical broadband Internet access, I honestly wouldn't oppose it. Amateur Radio operators and commercial/military/governmental HF operators alike should realize the truth: we can't shy away from the technological, economic, and social potential of universal broadband Internet connectivity because of the lamentations of a few modern-day buggy-whip manufacturers.
Now, as a disclaimer, I will say that I don't believe that power-line distribution makes sense for broadband Internet. The power companies have spent the last hundred years optimizing their network to ship 60-Hz sine waves around, and trying to shovel data through a network like that is bound to be more trouble than, say, running fiber to every curb in America.
Can someone tell me how, exactly, lead that's locked up in CRT glass can possibly leach into the water supply?
I mean, we're not exactly talking soluble salts here, are we?
David Boies is a smart man, and surely he or his legal team would have thought of this
When's the last time he won a case?
Worked so well for IBM, didn't it. [/sarcasm]
Yeah, actually, it did. Look at a long-term IBM stock graph sometime. Today, IBM makes a fortune from PC-based software and services... much more than they'd ever have made as the sole steward of a now-obsolete platform.
Just because they no longer own the PC platform's schematics and BIOS source code doesn't mean they can't build a large portion of their business on it.
Eventually, Microsoft will have to make an analogous adjustment to their thinking.
In C++ the compiler will not let you access private methods or variables
Ridiculous.
class hidden
{
private:
int frotz;
int ozmoo;
};
class hack_o_matic
{
public:
int frotz;
int ozmoo;
};
int main(void)
{
hidden H;
hack_o_matic *V = (hack_o_matic *) (ampersand) H;
printf("Hidden frotz member = %d",V->frotz);
}
The poster above who pointed out that both the review and its subject are goofy is correct. Data-hiding is an OOP convention, not a security feature.
C++ is a particularly good example (for values of 'good' that approximate 'horribly broken'), because the only way you can expose a class's public functionality is through a declaration of the entire class that includes all of its private members, which can subsequently be accessed through pointer hacks like the above. If you want to hide data for security purposes, as opposed to hiding data for design purposes, you have no choice but to use wrappers.
This method won't work until DVDs store info about the area of focus, and can pan&scan on-the-fly, to any ratio your player wants to put it in.
Which they've actually always been able to do. That's why your DVD player's setup menu has a preference field for the selection of 'full screen' or 'widescreen'. Widescreen DVDs that offer P&S-on-the-fly support will play back in fullscreen mode if you set up your player that way.
However, very few discs have taken advantage of the P&S-on-the-fly feature. I'm not sure why; it may be because the telecine P&S process has more options available than the automatic feature provides, like zooming.
The original pressing of the Last Temptation of Christ DVD actually enabled this feature by mistake. Viewers with the fullscreen option turned on were rewarded with a corrupted P&S picture (well, more corrupted than usual). I imagine they've fixed this by now.
Just always remember to use the bound-limited versions of library calls, i.e. snprintf vs. sprintf
I just wrote a whole vsprintf() implementation from the ground up because I didn't know there was already a "_vsnprintf()" function in the RTL (MSVC 6 in my case). When the hell did they add that?
(Yes, as a matter of fact, I do live in a cave...)
For example pilots based in japan would fly to korea to go shopping. It was a waste of money.
Training. Pilots live (and sometimes die) by the number of hours they've accumulated. Those runs to Korea (which is a weird place to go shopping if you're already in Japan) do serve a purpose, even if it's not obvious.
Actually, I can see a tiny bit of desktop icon burn-in on my otherwise-awesome Samsung 170T under certain, very obscure conditions.
This monitor is about 8 months old.
The burn-in effect is barely visible when I pick up the invisibility ring in Quake 1, of all things. It's completely unnoticeable under any other conditions.
So, presumably the FETs in an LCD are subject to uneven aging effects. Unlike the effects mentioned in the article, this definitely isn't a backlighting issue.
The complexity of programming has been pretty constant since FORTRAN was adopted over assembler.
Man, there is no way I'd buy that. Ever see a copy of K&R sitting next to Stroustrup on the shelf?
Those web forums usually aren't archived by Google (or anyone else), so they have no sense of permanence. Newbies ask the same questions over and over, not because they're clueless newbies, but because any knowledge posted on web forums is effectively lost to posterity.
I really hate to see Usenet replaced by a million different proprietary variations of UBB. Usenet, along with its centralized Deja/Google archive, was a good idea, and we should've stuck with it and made it work.
Just so everyone knows, this required 90 minutes of cassette tape for one kilobyte of data
Nope. The Apple's cassette port used Manchester-encoded data at 1200 bps (the same speed as the Commodore 64's floppy drive).
A couple of friends and I used audio amplifier chips to simulate rudimentary 1200-bps half-duplex modems with the Apple cassette ports. Like everything else on that machine, there really weren't many limits to the I/O hacking possibilities.
The cool thing about the old LaserJet iron is that you can buy accessories for them on eBay -- like RAM, PostScript cartridges, and duplexers -- for about a penny on the dollar.
My LaserJet 4si would've probably cost me $6,000 if I'd bought it with all the options it has now. Even today, reliable duplex printers aren't all that cheap, so the 4si is still more than worth the electricity it sucks down.
The noise is generated by remnants from the big bang
A myth, for the most part. It's generated primarily in the front-end amplifier of the TV tuner by virtue of the fact that its temperature is above absolute zero.
All dissipative (resistive) elements, whether active or passive, generate thermal, or Johnson, noise. The noise power is expressed in watts as
Pn=KTB, where K = the Boltzman constant, T is the temperature in degrees Kelvin, and B is the bandwidth you're looking at. TV signals occupy several megahertz' worth of bandwidth, so even the smallest amount of noise in the front end will dominate the noise from atmospheric and celestial sources.
You can prove this by disconnecting the antenna. Even if you short the TV's antenna terminals with a paper clip, neither the audio nor the video noise will change much.
Yeah, but just try debugging or modding SMD stuff. It's practically impossible.
I personally miss the the gradual disappearing of through-hole work, because I could debug it and fix/mod it. Can't do anything interesting with SMD.
I'm glad I wasn't convinced of that before I tried my first hobby SMD design project. SMD boards are great -- you can hand-solder chips with 0.65mm lead pitch without too much grief, and unlike most garden-variety through-hole PCBs, you have access to every component and connection from the top of the board. For RF work, SMD combines the convenience and tweakability of dead-bug construction with the professionalism and neatness of PCBs.
It probably won't be too long before many types of chips and discrete components are available only in SMD. The more interesting RF chips are already unavailable in DIP packages. This is one of those generational changes, like the transition from vacuum tubes to solid-state technology, that you'll just have to deal with if you want to stay current in the hobby.
The only way to make things better is to organize into a group that can 'collectively' work towards our goals. Until we figure that out, we're screwed.
Tell me: what is your union going to do besides make foreign labor even more attractive?
... is about the only electronics surplus outfit in the Seattle area, as far as I'm aware.
In fact, Vetco is about the only decent electronic-component reseller of any kind around here, now that Future-Active Electronics has wisely decided that only Canadians are interested in buying electronic parts.
The last time I was in Vetco, they were planning to expand their overall component inventory greatly to pick up some of the slack from the former Active Electronics store just up the road. Go buy some stuff from them now so they don't vanish too!
Shyeah. Like I'm going to subscribe to a magazine that I suspect is going to expire before my subscription does.
It's hard to feel too sympathetic for Salon. With all of their moaning and groaning about overhead, you'd think they had to cut down dead trees, slice them up and cover them with ink, and mail them, or something. ("Oh, wait. You mean like every other magazine in the history of journalism?")
Dr. Darwin called -- he wants to cancel his subscription.