... from an aircraft that is not even made of metal, so practically invisible to radar.
Not being made of metal doesn't mean that it won't reflect Radar. If I remember correctly (and my Electromagnetics classes were a long time ago) it's the difference in permittivity between air and the aircraft material which causes the reflection of the radar wave. Most people think it has to be metal to reflect radar because metal does reflect radar so well.
If someone remembers otherwise, or has a reference, please post it.:-)
Computerfest used to have a great flea market, but these days, it's mainly been taken over by the "professional" PC vendors. Kinda sad really. You used to really see some neat stuff. I remember someone selling a MicroVax II in the early 1990s. There's still a flea market, but less and less of the neat old stuff, although if you dig hard there's still things to be found.
The next Computerfest is scheduled for August 25-26, 2001.
By my count, only two actors were "stars" (Guinness and Ford, and Ford not until later). What were you expecting?
Umm, if you think the only good acting comes from "stars" you really need to see more movies. Many of the "stars" are competent, but not outstanding. See many of the independent films out there these days. Of course, Sturgeon's Law applies here as well.
Ok, I'm confused. I use my TiVo pretty much the same way I used to use my VCR, it's just much more efficient at organizing and selecting the data (TV programs). When I recorded programs on my VCR, I fast-forwarded through most commercials, when I record them on my TiVo, I do the same.
Of particular interest to the advertising industry is the finding that the same percentage of
viewers skip through television commercials with PVRs as fast-forward through them with VCRs.
According to Mr. Wallace, that figure is around 25 percent in both cases.
So they're agreeing with my above statement?
About 900,000 PVRs will be in homes by the end of this year, and "in excess of 40 million
homes" will have them by the end of five years, according to Joshua Bernoff, Forrester Research
principal analyst. Mr. Bernoff recently predicted a 20 percent drop in the overall viewing level of
TV commercials within five years, attributing the falloff to the coming mass-market acceptance
of the PVR.
This would be true only if the the PVRs were not replacing VCRs in these peoples homes. I doubt that the folks buying PVRs do not already have a VCR. Perhaps they think that due to the increase in ease of use, more people with actually use them to "time-shift" (the blinking 12:00 effect)? If so, they should be happy that people will have the chance to see their commercials. Since people with PVRS are "watching more television", aren't they obviously exposed, albeit perhaps at high speed, to more commercials?
Milalwi
Re:optical detection sounds hard
on
Optical SETI
·
· Score: 1
Of course - and that's why the Seti League (http://www.setileague.org/) advocate lots of smaller dishes. Their argument is that while an
Arecibo size dish can look further, this comes at the cost of seeing a smaller area of the sky. Their favourite statistic is 'even if we're looking on the right frequency at the right time, there's a 99.999% chance that when the call comes in, we'll be looking the wrong way'.
When completed, Argus's 64 antennas will generate 2.56 gigabytes of data -- the equivalent of 4 CD-ROMs -- per second, and there's no economical physical connection that can carry that much data for any great distance, Ellingson said. So the engineers will process all the data just as it emerges from Argus, and throw away all but the most important signals. Ellingson's team of graduate students is building a mini-supercomputer out of PCs to process the data.
The "mini-supercomputer" mentioned above is, of course, a Beowulf cluster.
"To witness titanic events is always dangerous, usually painful, and often fatal ":
Nessus the Puppeter, after the crash of 'Lying Bastard' on the Ringworld.
from RINGWORLD by Larry Niven
Milalwi
Re:Are these real scientists here?
on
Non-Wet Water
·
· Score: 1
Tell me about it but it ain't the scientists. It's the damn reporter: 2 m/s is around 45 miles per hour and 1 cm is about a 0,4 inch. God, it's a
wonder some people manage to be so dumb!
Um, maybe you should check your math? 2 m/s is about 4.5 mph. 2 m/s == about 6.5 ft/s. For reference, 60 mph is 88 ft/s.
The first hint that all was not well came at about 2 a.m. on Saturday, US eastern time, in the
form of slow-loading pages. By 7 a.m. it was obvious that this was not a typical, easily-fixed,
reboot-the-database problem. The network operations people were paged, but did not respond. Uh-oh.
Um, does anyone else find this a little bit surprising? Network ops doesn't have an online monitoring system? They wait until things are down to respond? Shouldn't they have known about this problem much earlier?
I'd argue about the "altitude has not been a viable defense since 1960 when Francis Gary Powers had his U-2 shot out from underneath him." Since the SR-71 was designed after that and it's high altitude, as is the replacement for the U-2, the TR-1, and the F-15 has very, very good high altitude abilities, as do the Russian Su-27, MiG-31 and to a lesser extent the F-18 and MiG-29.
In addition, all of the planes you mention after the U-2 (except the TR-1) are high speed. Altitude alone is not nearly the defense that altitude plus high speed (in the case of the SR-71 and MiG-31, Mach 3 plus) is. By the time the missile gets to 70k feet, the plane is several miles away.
When this (FERC Rule 888, aka the Mega-NoPR)was being discussed, one of my co-workers fought long and hard to have it on a private network. The powers-that-be, however, thought it was important that every Tom, Dick and Harry Power Marketer should be able to access the system at minimum cost, i.e., via the Internet. *sigh*
When this (FERC Rule 888, aka the Mega-NoPR)was being discussed, one of my co-workers fought long and hard to have it on a private network. The powers-that-be, however, thought it was important that every Tom, Dick and Harry Power Marketer should be able to access the system at minimum cost, i.e., via the Internet. *sigh*
Our current power grid can lose twenty percent or more power in transit.
Keeping a constant flow of liquid nitrogen is pittances compared to the enormous savings of a 25% increase in power distribution.
Where are you getting that number(25%)? In the studies I have done, modeling the transmission network down to the sub-transmission (roughly 34kV) I saw about 5% loss. I seriously doubt there's another 20% in the distribution network. Another 5%, maybe. After all, the distribution network is pretty much analogous to the "last mile" of data transmission. About 95% plus of the distance traveled along the electrical network is on the transmission(138kV and above, probably higher) system.
In this case, I imagine the lawyer is doing it pro bono (for free). It is typical in American pro bono cases, for the lawyer's percentage to be as high as 40%. Thus. 40% of 5 billion dollars - a hefty 2 billion. That should cover his costs rather nicely, with a few pennies left over.
Although you didn't say it, my inference is that you think "pro bono" means "for free". That is not the case:
From Dictionary.com:
pro bono adj.
Done without compensation for the public good: a lawyer's pro bono work.
[Latin pro bono (public), for the (public) good: pr, for + bon, ablative of bonum, the good.]
It is work for free. No contingency fee. (Which is what you described)
If it becomes a "portal", like AltaVista, msn.com, or any of the other "front page" sites, people will stop visiting it, and it will cease to be valuable to those who visit it.
Depending on what you think a portal is, they're already there.
Assuming "Portal" means "entry point", Yahoo was the first portal I came across. I liked it because it was clean, displayed quickly, and was very configurable. I could set up the news items in which I was interested, sports scores, weather, etc. You could set up multiple pages for various topics. All this in 1996.
Over the years, I have checked out other offerings, such as Altavista, CNN and others, but I have always come back to Yahoo's clean, easy-to-use interface and lack of "walling off".
It's still the first place I check when I get on the 'net.
If it were to be bought and converted to an MSN type of site, I would probably leave. I like that it is a portal in the sense of "Entry Point" with a multitude of links to the wide and varied 'net.
How many recursion before we run out of memory and CPU cycles?
I don't know. I do know, and perhaps someone who knows more can add to this, that in the 1970s IBM developed an OS named "VM/370". This OS was meant to run on System 370s and was "transparent". Meaning you could run one version of it under another. My understanding is that they wanted to see how deep they could do this... They got down, if my memory is correct, seven levels before the response made it unusable.
A fellow I knew used this (and some other things) to get access to the "CP DIRECTORY", which contained all the passwords to the system (in plaintext!). You out there somewhere Bert?
(All of the above is from memory, the facts may have eroded with time.)
Power systems in areas of igneous rock (gray) are the most vulnerable to the effects of intense geomagnetic activity because
the high resistance of the igneous rock encourages geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) to flow in the power transmission
lines situated above the rock.
There are 765kV lines in the midwest that are 100s of miles long, but they don't have significant problems with geomagnetic storm induced voltages. Similar lines in Canada, where there exists areas of igneous rock, had problems in 1989 during the last solar cycle.
Indeed, most of the problems with these magnetic storms occurs in the transformers. Transformers are non-linear devices and the DC voltage offset created by the storms force the transformers out of the linear part of their operating curves (saturation). This causes all kinds of problems, including localized heating of the transformer core and harmonic currents.
A bit of background. I work in the Electric Utility industry, so take my comments knowing that bias and that I might have a clue about this stuff. In any event, my comments are my own. My employer doesn't even know I read Slashdot.
But the construction of new power-generating plants and transmission lines to meet that demand has virtually ground to a standstill in the same period as companies wait to understand the effects of deregulation of the electric utility industry.
Not surprising, actually. However, the reasons for the delays are different for power plants than transmission lines. Power plants are being built these days, as companies react to the incredibly high prices of two summers ago. The market price for energy spiked at about $7-10k/MWh in summer of 1998, in part due to sellers defaulting on energy sales. Transmission lines are very hard to get built, in large part due to the "Not in my back yard" syndrome mentioned by another poster.
The imbalance threatens to grow even larger in coming months amid projections that electricity demand will grow 17 percent by 2007 as transmission capacity rises only 4 percent.
This is the real problem. There has been and continues to be very little incentive to build new transmission lines. Remember that in nearly all states (perhaps all, I am only aware of the states where we do business) the Transmission system is not being deregulated. As a result, the owners of transmission systems will only be compensated for their investment via the regulatory process.
Finally, I have to comment on this:
Byron noted that utilities can promise only 99.9 percent reliability--a figure that translates to about eight hours of blackouts a year--while high-tech firms stand to lose millions of dollars from a blackout lasting just a minute.
"We need 99.9999 percent reliability for e-commerce, and we need more flexibility from regulation to achieve that," he said.
Ahhhh, that kind of reliabililty is going to require (at least) on-site back-up generators. One hundred percent reliable == Infinitely expensive.
Some (hopefully) useful links:
NERC NERC was formed following the 1966 Northeast US blackout.
Slashdot Mirror
Hell, that's true for my Win98SE (P2-400/448MB) box.
You think I might have too many things starting up?
Milalwi
Milalwi
If someone remembers otherwise, or has a reference, please post it. :-)
If I was wrong, I never said this!
Milalwi
I will be missing it, too, for (I think) the first time in about 12 years. Family stuff.
Milalwi
The next Computerfest is scheduled for August 25-26, 2001.
Milalwi
Milalwi
Milalwi
Milalwi
Of course, the data requirements are high...
The "mini-supercomputer" mentioned above is, of course, a Beowulf cluster.Milalwi
Milalwi
They did screw up the cm->in conversion, though.
Milalwi
It's not like a good monitoring system is hard to find.
Milalwi
Milalwi
Ooops, wrong rule...
This is the correct FERC rule.
Milalwi
When this (FERC Rule 888, aka the Mega-NoPR)was being discussed, one of my co-workers fought long and hard to have it on a private network. The powers-that-be, however, thought it was important that every Tom, Dick and Harry Power Marketer should be able to access the system at minimum cost, i.e., via the Internet. *sigh*
Milalwi
Where are you getting that number(25%)? In the studies I have done, modeling the transmission network down to the sub-transmission (roughly 34kV) I saw about 5% loss. I seriously doubt there's another 20% in the distribution network. Another 5%, maybe. After all, the distribution network is pretty much analogous to the "last mile" of data transmission. About 95% plus of the distance traveled along the electrical network is on the transmission(138kV and above, probably higher) system.
Although you didn't say it, my inference is that you think "pro bono" means "for free". That is not the case:
From Dictionary.com:
pro bono
adj.
Done without compensation for the public good: a lawyer's pro bono work.
[Latin pro bono (public), for the (public) good: pr, for + bon, ablative of bonum, the good.]
It is work for free. No contingency fee. (Which is what you described)
Milalwi
Depending on what you think a portal is, they're already there.
Assuming "Portal" means "entry point", Yahoo was the first portal I came across. I liked it because it was clean, displayed quickly, and was very configurable. I could set up the news items in which I was interested, sports scores, weather, etc. You could set up multiple pages for various topics. All this in 1996.
Over the years, I have checked out other offerings, such as Altavista, CNN and others, but I have always come back to Yahoo's clean, easy-to-use interface and lack of "walling off". It's still the first place I check when I get on the 'net.
If it were to be bought and converted to an MSN type of site, I would probably leave. I like that it is a portal in the sense of "Entry Point" with a multitude of links to the wide and varied 'net.
Is anybody working on a "My DMOZ"?
Milalwi
A fellow I knew used this (and some other things) to get access to the "CP DIRECTORY", which contained all the passwords to the system (in plaintext!). You out there somewhere Bert?
(All of the above is from memory, the facts may have eroded with time.)
Milalwi
No. It's both.
Quoting from the above link:
There are 765kV lines in the midwest that are 100s of miles long, but they don't have significant problems with geomagnetic storm induced voltages. Similar lines in Canada, where there exists areas of igneous rock, had problems in 1989 during the last solar cycle.
Indeed, most of the problems with these magnetic storms occurs in the transformers. Transformers are non-linear devices and the DC voltage offset created by the storms force the transformers out of the linear part of their operating curves (saturation). This causes all kinds of problems, including localized heating of the transformer core and harmonic currents.
A bit of background. I work in the Electric Utility industry, so take my comments knowing that bias and that I might have a clue about this stuff. In any event, my comments are my own. My employer doesn't even know I read Slashdot.
Not surprising, actually. However, the reasons for the delays are different for power plants than transmission lines. Power plants are being built these days, as companies react to the incredibly high prices of two summers ago. The market price for energy spiked at about $7-10k/MWh in summer of 1998, in part due to sellers defaulting on energy sales. Transmission lines are very hard to get built, in large part due to the "Not in my back yard" syndrome mentioned by another poster.
This is the real problem. There has been and continues to be very little incentive to build new transmission lines. Remember that in nearly all states (perhaps all, I am only aware of the states where we do business) the Transmission system is not being deregulated. As a result, the owners of transmission systems will only be compensated for their investment via the regulatory process.
Finally, I have to comment on this:
- Byron noted that utilities can promise only 99.9 percent reliability--a figure that translates to about eight hours of blackouts a year--while high-tech firms stand to lose millions of dollars from a blackout lasting just a minute.
Ahhhh, that kind of reliabililty is going to require (at least) on-site back-up generators. One hundred percent reliable == Infinitely expensive."We need 99.9999 percent reliability for e-commerce, and we need more flexibility from regulation to achieve that," he said.
Some (hopefully) useful links:
NERC NERC was formed following the 1966 Northeast US blackout.
Public Utility Home Page
The misc.industry.utilities.electric newsgroup homepage.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Milalwi
(First time poster, long time reader.)