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User: Agripa

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  1. Re:Citation Needed on ELF Knocks Down AM Towers To Save Earth, Intercoms · · Score: 1

    Ignoring the fact that we aren't very good conductors... at 5-6 feet tall, I doubt the human body can effectively absorb a lot of this relatively very-long-wavelength radiation.

    In addition to all of that, there's a reason EM radiation of longer wavelengths is called "non-ionizing". Hint: it's because it's incapable of ionizing anything.

    You still would not want to stick a finger or limb into the transmitter's tank coil. A ham power level transmitter tank coil makes a fine hot dog cooker in the AM band.

  2. Re:Lithium Ion Batteries on Apple Faces Inquiries In the EU On iPhone Accidents · · Score: 1

    Now contrast that with hybrid cars which almost-universally use the NiMH battery. Since space is no great concern, but safety is, they use the more-stable battery. NiMH also has the advantage of surviving the ~20 years that cars typically last, and also being environmentally neutral.

    The minimum battery size for a hybrid car is limited by the power density and not the energy density unless it is a plug-in hybrid. For a given power, NiMH batteries are more economical than the various lithium chemistries up until recently. I guess the lithium-iron-phosphate batteries may change this.

  3. Re:And what are they planning to use as a mask on Intel's Roadmap Includes 4nm Fab in 2022 · · Score: 1

    Oh, and given at those dimensions quantum noise (e^KT/q) will be greater in signal strength than a 1 or 0 level I am interested to see just how this works,

    Well, all you need to do is reduce the value of K...

    Unfortunately that is no longer possible because Boltzmann is dead.

  4. Re:It Makes Sense on Obstacles Near Emergency Exits Speed Evacuation · · Score: 1

    Excellent analogy. Reflected waves on mismatched transmission line is a beautiful analogy for the jostling that can happen as people try to squeeze past each other through a door.

    And matching an impedance by creating a reflected wave via an impedance discontinuity to cancel out the original reflection makes it an even better analogy.

  5. Re:Story? on Cameron's Avatar Trailer Posted · · Score: 1

    We have flying cars. They are called airplanes and helicopters.

    The political and economic problems are more significant than the engineering ones. If we did have a car which worked as well on the ground and in the air, it would face so many legal restrictions as to be unfeasible anyway.

  6. Re:But the beauty is on US Navy Tries To Turn Seawater Into Jet Fuel · · Score: 1

    Do we have electrical generators that are as efficient a electric motors?

    Absolutely. Generator and motor efficiency are both limited by the same winding resistance, friction, and magnetic hysteresis among other things.

    The coal, oil, gas, diesel, nuke power plants might not not 100% efficient from the fuel to electricity.

    Heat engines are limited by Carnot efficiency while electric motors and generators are not. Internal combustion engines are typically 20% efficient with a Carnot limit of 37%.

  7. Re:Watch out for loose cables! on How To Build a 100,000-Port Ethernet Switch · · Score: 1

    Were you going to install sentry guns above the drop ceiling also?

    "5 meters, man. 4, what the hell?"

  8. Re:38 C ain't that hot on AMD's Phenom II 965, 3.4GHz, 140 Watts, $245 · · Score: 1

    I really don't understand why anyone would buy the Phenom.

    AMD has inexpensive ECC support and less expensive motherboards and RAM if you use DDR2. For the difference in price for an equivalent Intel system, I bought a fast hardware RAID controller and 4 drives.

  9. Re:Heat & A/C on Chevy Volt Rated At 230 mpg In the City · · Score: 1

    And having driven in a friend's Dodge Caravan in the back seat, apparently the rear heaters are electric (not from the heater core), and kicks out heat much sooner than the front seats do (which are driven off the heater core).

    I have rather fond childhood memories of riding in the back of my parent's VW Bug on cold nights. The air cooled engine made for a fabulous heater.

    A direct electrically driven AC compressor would be far more efficient than coming off a gas engine directly alone, not including the gasoline engine is inefficient itself.

    Why would this be? Did you mean that a shaft driven alternator is significantly more efficient than a belt driven one?

  10. Re:Vaporware on Chevy Volt Rated At 230 mpg In the City · · Score: 1

    Read the link you posted: "we wash them out and refill them regularly", Just as I had predicted, these batteries have been refurbished.

    This is standard maintenance for base electrolyte wet cell batteries and it amounts to periodically replenishing the electrolyte because carbon dioxide from the atmosphere slowly neutralizes the sodium or potassium hydroxide electrolyte. The same can be done for wet cell NiCd cells. These cells also have to have periodic water additions because during charging some of the water gets disassociated and lost as hydrogen and oxygen gas. Recombination is not possible as with sealed maintenance-free cells because the required internal pressure is not compatible with conventional large cell designs.

    You could build an electric vehicle using NiFe cells but the charge time would be long (all night or longer) and the maintenance required would exclude it from casual consumers. They are however still used for offline and backup power systems in place of PbSO4 cells where long term service is required or economical.

    If only there were large format NiMH cells available in the US suitable for EV applications.

  11. Re:6 out of 11 is not "virtually every" on No Windows 7 XP Mode For Sony Vaio Z Owners · · Score: 1

    I have to admit this is one reason why I even now slightly favour AMD, at least I don't have to do research to avoid intentionally crippled CPUs.
    Though there is still the issue of mainboards that (claim to?) do not support ECC memory even though the memory controller does...

    I was very careful selecting an AMD motherboard for ECC support. All of the Asus motherboards I considered did but only the Gigabyte motherboards without integrated graphics supported ECC for some reason and none of the other manufacturers had it. With Intel it was a little easier since as far as I can tell they dropped all ECC support for anything not using a Xeon socket.

  12. Re:How sites can embrace the AdBlock model on Will Mainstream Media Embrace Adblockers? · · Score: 1

    While we are at it, we should ask the email direct marketeers to stop spamming.

  13. Re:No, you are wrong. on Feds At DefCon Alarmed After RFIDs Scanned · · Score: 1

    In NO state that I'm aware of are you permitted to carry concealed without some kind of licensing.

    Alaska and Vermont do not require any sort of license for concealed carry. One of them (I forget which) or both will issue one however for reciprocity purposes.

    A number of states have like Missouri relaxed restrictions on having a weapon in a vehicle with or without a concealed weapon permit.

  14. Re:Could be easily worse on FBI Nabs Chicago Transit Authority Radio Hacker · · Score: 1

    DFing a handheld radio operating intermittently in a big-city/urban environment would be nearly impossible. Five watts just doesn't carry well in concrete and steel canyons. That's why they put big antennas up on the top of tall buildings and use repeaters.

    The power level is not as important as the transmitting antenna and the environment. I have done transmitter hunting and hiding in the 6 meter, 2 meter, 70 centimeter, and 23 centimeter bands in worst case urban environments successfully. The most challenging aspect for finding a malicious signal is the typically low duty cycle and even that can be avoided if you get close enough and switch to hunting local oscillator leakage.

    I would agree that hunting someone knowledgeable in the art of transmitter hunting who does not want to get caught would be impossible short of luck. There are way too many things they can do to deliberately foil the hunters if they are aware.

  15. Re:Just interested in the batteries on Nissan Unveils All-Electric LEAF · · Score: 1

    There are no super durable lead acid batteries.

    Wet cell nickel cadmium or nickel iron work though. http://www.beutilityfree.com/ imports nickel iron batteries from China on a regular basis for solar applications.

  16. Re:FUD Farm on Nissan Unveils All-Electric LEAF · · Score: 1

    And maintenance is far less expensive for an EV, because it's far less complicated mechanically. If you'd done any research on the GM vehicle, you'd know that they basically rotated the tires. There are Priuses with over a hundred thousand miles that haven't needed new batteries. And the batteries will be less expensive too replace than putting in an entirely new engine, so you could literally keep the same car for decades if you kept it rust free.

    There are no worries about this. If GM can produce a car that requires removing the engine to replace the last spark plug, then they can do the same for their new electric vehicle.

  17. Re:Story Should Make Sense on Ridley Scott Directing Alien Prequel · · Score: 1

    And yes, after seeing the original Alien in an evening movie showing without knowing what it was really about ahead of time, I left the bathroom light on that night afterwards just in case. I'm sure I wasn't the only one.

    I saw it in a theater when I was 9 and had nightmares for weeks. I still do occasionally.

  18. Re:Who cares about the humans on Ridley Scott Directing Alien Prequel · · Score: 1

    Yes, but why redirect a commercial towing vehicle? Why not send a military ship? We know they could have as they sent the Sulaco in Aliens. The derelict wasn't going anywhere. I think your option one is far more likely.

    Sulaco is 57 years later. How long are cargo and military ships in service? Taking advantage of an existing refinery run allows for a great amount of plausible deniability. If you send a military ship, there are going to be questions before and even worse, later.

  19. Re:Who cares about the humans on Ridley Scott Directing Alien Prequel · · Score: 1

    There are lots of weak spots in the alien franchise... for example in aliens, after seventy-four years or so, had put a colony there that looked pretty new (twenty years?). That would make fifty years just sitting in the knowledge that there was something there.

    Also, the mere idea of putting the colony to get the aliens is just foolish. A lot of investment just to feed the beasts, without knowing if someone could survive enough to provide the data needed. Sending an appropriate ship full of Ashes, or mercenaries, or some of the weapons development scientists with prior knowledge would have been faster, cheaper, and with more probabilities of success and with out government intervention.

    On the original film, the fact that Ash was there and that it looked like that androids were relatively new and scarce seems to support that Weyland-Yutani knew something was there, but probably if they knew it was that dangerous they would have sent a better team. After all, if the ship lands but the aliens kill everyone before it can be sent back home there is no gain. Ash would be there probably as a "political officer" to put people in the "right track" and, in case things went wrong, to try to get the specimen back at all costs and/or kill everyone to avoid compromising the company.

    I figure the company knew enough to put Ash on board Nostromo and deliberately placed them in a position of having to investigate the ship on LV-426 knowing that the crew would possibly or likely be killed. Taking advantage of an already planned refinery run just makes deniability easier. Once Nostromo is overdue, why admit to what happened? Conceal responsibility, let the ship be declared missing, and move on.

    50 years later a different division gets involved with terraforming LV-426 without knowing anything about its sinister history and when it becomes marginally habitable just shy of 74 years, open colony construction begins. "We call it a shake-'n-bake colony. Takes decades."

    Burke only investigates after hearing the story from the recently found Riply. Presumably he somehow finds some coordinates and enough to make the bioweapons connection. He uses the already existing colony project to investigate while maintaining deniability and then contact is lost, again. Queue the 20 miles of bad road that is Aliens.

    I have Foster's book and sometimes dream scripts and castings. Maybe I'm in the wrong business. Most Hollywood plots and movies are dreck.

  20. Re:Who cares about the humans on Ridley Scott Directing Alien Prequel · · Score: 1

    Ripley expected to be back for her daughter's birthday (per the director's cut) and the Marines all pretty much acted the way their current counterparts would when shipping out for a short mission. ("We get back without you, I'll tell your folks.") It's pretty clear that there's FTL involved, even if for whatever reason people have to sleep through it. The idea of a relativistic interstellar culture such as you describe is an interesting one, and I think there's fertile ground for storytelling there, but the Alien universe isn't it.

    Hicks said it was 17 days before they would be declared overdue. Presumably that leaves say 3 more days of investigation and a 2 week travel time between Earth or wherever the Sulaco started from in human space and LV-426. Nostromo with the refinery was still months away from human space when they stopped at LV-426 so presumably either Nostromo was slow or there had been 57 years of FTL improvements. Either way travel time between stars ranges from weeks to months.

    Even if you figure that the speed difference between Nostromo and Sulaco was because of technology improvements over 57 years, hibernation would still be useful, routine, and available for shorter missions. If your ships are faster you are just going to travel further. Your range is your speed times your mission duration and the later only depends on your crew endurance and supplies.

    In Aliens communications with the colony are reportedly cut off but that does not necessarily mean FTL communications. Alien 3 had FTL communications but I would just throw that movie out along with Alien Resurrection.

    Calling the soldiers "Colonial Marines" also sounds like something from the age of sail. Travel time then was weeks to months and the fastest method of communication was to send a ship.

    I tend to ignore Alien Resurrection. I figure in that movie ships and communications moved at the speed of plot.

  21. Re:What if.... on School System Considers Jamming Students' Phones · · Score: 1

    I'm trying to figure out how the jammer costs $5k in the first place. It's not exactly difficult to design a white noise generator in the 1900 mhz band. $5k sounds more like the cost of a basic version of what you're talking about.

    It is both more effective for a given output power and more selective if the jammer targets specific cell phone channels plus you still have to deal with multiple cellular bands. I am not sure of what would be necessary for jamming CDMA or related systems though. How much processing gain do they have? They would tend to spread any uncorrelated jamming signal into the noise floor.

  22. Re:And *specifically*, you need to read on Could Cyber-Terrorists Provoke Nuclear Attacks? · · Score: 1

    However, the reflection of the blast off the snow made the actual yield appear larger to the satellites.

    Plus lighting the macadam blacktop parking lot on fire significantly raised the measured residual heat. In the book you had the satellites reporting 150 kilotons and the local witnesses reporting a significantly smaller blast but almost everybody assumed the later were mistaken or in shock.

  23. Re:I'm looking forward to the speed increase. on Western Digital Announces 1TB Mobile HD · · Score: 1

    First, there are likely to be more platters / read + write heads that can work in parallel.

    The head to head displacement is much greater than the track pitch so tracking is done via embedded servo and only one head can be reading or writing at a time. There were articles in trade magazines a couple years ago discussing the use of a piezoelectric or other actuator for each head to improve setting time which in theory could allow parallel reads and writes but I am not aware that it was put into use.

  24. The Hollywood Version on Six Men Endure 105-Day Mars Flight Simulator · · Score: 1

    [making video diary entry] I do not like the men on this spaceship. They are uncouth and fail to appreciate my better qualities. I have something of value to contribute to this mission if they would only recognize it. Today over lunch I tried to improve morale and build a sense of camaraderie among the men by holding a humorous, round-robin discussion of the early days of the mission. My overtures were brutally rejected. These men do not want a happy ship. They are deeply sick and try to compensate by making me feel miserable. Last week was my birthday. Nobody even said "happy birthday" to me. Someday this tape will be played and then they'll feel sorry.

  25. Re:Vague impression? on Germanium Diodes Mean Progress Toward Silicon-Chip Lasers · · Score: 1

    Germanium also fabricates better PNP transistor than silicon so for a while, high performance complimentary circuits used PNP germanium transistors with NPN silicon ones. I have a whole reel of 1N270 germanium diodes which come in handy sometimes.

    Ultimately though the increased leakage and lower peak junction temperature made germanium obsolete for most applications.