We don't need to solve Quantum Mechanics here. Water is uncharged, so the number of protons and electrons have to balance. All I was doing was counting the protons.
Not in the UK, and probably not America either; inspite of what the politicians say.
I'm sure that's not how the UK government looks at it. For example, in the UK, there's two main taxes applying to cars. There's a yearly road tax that applies to all cars, and costs about $200 per car per year; but it varies on the class of the vehicle- big cars pay more. Then there's the fuel tax.
Approximately 10% of the fixed road tax pays for the maintainance and creation of the roads, the other 90% and all the fuel tax just goes into the governments coffers. The road tax bit is supposed to pay for the roads; but for the government it's all just money.
Bits are getting cheaper as technology improves, but so do most other commodities, though perhaps not as rapidly.
Yes, but is there a minimum cost per bit? If there is it must be very low- the capacity of a fiber is up to 10 terabits/s and 100 terabits/s may be possible. It costs $100s of millions to lay fiber, but it can carry the terabits for years.
Beyond a certain point, it's not worth charging per use. For example roads are a commodity in a pretty real sense; but we don't charge per use; even though a particular road can only carry a certain number of cars or lorries before requiring repair.
I'll express an unpopular opinion here: ultimately, bandwidth will have to be metered.
Historically, metering has been more expensive. It's easier to just control the size of the pipe, and comes to approximately the same thing. Besides, there's congestion control in the IP protocol that tends to give everyone a reasonably fair share.
Bandwidth is a commodity (I think it was the commoditization of bandwidth that is the part of the reason for the telecom collapse) like water or electricity: cheap, but not infinite.
Well, there's overcapacity right now, but that's probably a short term thing. Unlike water or electricity, bits are getting exponentially cheaper- we can fit more and more bits down a fiber- the fiber is the expensive part of the system, and boxes to handle twice the capacity is less than twice the cost. Beyond a certain point it's going to be too cheap to care. Also, the network equivalent of Moore's law says that the bandwidth in the middle of a network doubles every 9 months- this is a faster doubling than microprocessor speed.
If the Internet depended on "market forces," it wouldn't exist -- we'd be living in a world of multiple incompatible networks with users of any one network unable to communicate with those of others.
No! You're wrong. It would just be called something different and be more buggy. It would be called 'Microsoft Network 2000'; and you'd need to upgrade all your software every 2 or 3 years for a low, low price.
And if space exploration depends on "market forces," then you can kiss any chance you or your great-grandchildren have of ever getting off this planet goodbye.
I'm not so sure. I actually think that NASA kit is wayyyyyyyy overpriced. It's about 20x more expensive than Russian kit for example, and Russian wages are only 1/10 of American wages, so where's the extra factor of 2 gone? Hint: the Russian rockets are better; they optimised for cost. NASA hardware is optimised for votes.
And there is some evidence that the cost of space travel is actually much, much lower than it seems at the moment, a factor of 5 lower than the Ruskies looks achieveable to me in the next 5 years.
The biggest potential problem from a cell phone would be if it interfered with the GPS system. If that happens the pilots are well placed to diagnose the interference and turn off their phone, and the problem would go away. With a passenger, it's a bit more difficult to pinpoint.
Yeah, that's no biggee. In terms of distance it works better from high up because there's no trees in the way. 10,000 ft is only a couple of miles after all.
This may be almost a replacement for ISS. It's become fairly obvious that certain nations (*ahem Russia*) are intent on using the ISS as SpaceDisney, letting any jackass with $20M up there.
Well good for them! The Space Station is undermanned at the moment anyway- if the Ruskies can safely fund a temporary increase in the number of people- good for them!
So NASA might be trying to get their own space station back. ISS was really a political animal anyway (Congress loved the idea of unity or some similar crap).
Yeah, and the Russians will take the life support module back; and then see where you'd be. These devices cost billions to develop and Russians used off the shelf tech for the ISS; tech America didn't have. The Americans had nothing they could use; and would have spent many, many times more developing than it ended up costing. Half the ISS was launched by the Russians anyway.
It's a bit like a company. Does the person with the most money own the company if the other partner has less money but more IP? No...
You presumably mean Sun-Jupiter, yes, that's very stable. However the Earth-Sun L4/L5 isn't- partly because of Jupiter destabilising them; but also the Earths Moon has an effect- it's the biggest moon in the solar system (both percentage of the earth and by mass IRC); so it has a far bigger effect.
Sun and Jupiter are both massive enough and its moons small enough, that the other planets don't materially affect it's L points stability.
L4 and L5 are only stable if the solar system consisted of the Earth and the Sun.
Instead, IRC L4 and L5 aren't actually stable due to perturbations caused by the planets and the moon. I think objects drift away after 9 months or so- something of that order.
However there are orbits that are very much more stable around the L4 and L5 points, but even they need some small measure of station keeping to stay there- but it's very small.
Well, you can convert the hydrogen in water to dueterium (heavy water) which isn't radioactive. But if you leave it longer it goes to tritium; which is fairly radioactive. But the two step conversion takes an awful lot of radiation; it's not realistically going to be an issue.
Yeah, well I think that's the fun of it. It walks that line that demarcates known science; sometimes it falls over it, sometimes it doesn't. If you think about it, it's showing you where science is by drawing the boundary.
If you want 100% definite science- get a text book.
Depends, if they've switched off WEP and secured it with IPSEC, you should be waiting for perhaps a decade or two.
Re:So is it any better to have faster AGP?
on
Tackling AGP 8X
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· Score: 2
You can reduce the vertex list by pre-rendering a shape that is in front of another shape, and only updating it at a much slower rate; provided you don't overdo it, it can give much better frame rate; up to 20x in some cases (e.g. flight simulators).
So is it any better to have faster AGP?
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Tackling AGP 8X
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Well, a bit, sometimes; but mostly no.
First you have to realise that modern graphics cards have a tonne of on-board memory. The on-board memory is used to store the current view, another view that the card is rendering (which is switched to only when complete to avoid flicker) and the distance that each pixel is from the user (the z-buffer). It also stores flattened out texture maps that the graphics card rotates into place on the rendering buffer.
The texture maps usually take up the most memory, and they can change depending on the position of the player and even which direction he is looking in.
The position of the objects is sent every frame but shows less variability.
But the texture maps need to be transfered into the graphics card memory once before they can be rendered.
So this happens initially when the texture first appears, but after that its in the memory and it doesn't need resending after that until it is flushed if it is no longer in view and something else needs the space.
But just occasionally new textures are needed. For example sometimes in say, half-life I used to spin around and the screen would stop updating for maybe 1/8 of a second. What was happening was that the wrong textures were in the graphics card and they were being pushed down the AGP-1 pipe as fast as it could take it- not really fast enough- I'd often get a rocket launcher up me; the screen would have stopped updating for just a moment.
Of course now the graphics cards have more memory, the software may be written better so that textures get preloaded before they are needed, and probably most or all of a levels textures fits into the card buffer anyway. So all in all- little or no waiting when spinning around; and the AGP is now x4 as well so instead of 1/8 second we are looking at 1/32 worst case; only 32 milliseconds, which for a one-off jitter isn't perceptible.
John Carmack has talked about the idea of generating texture maps dynamically. If he were to implement this, then AGP would be much more important. Right now, precalculated, fixed texture maps are much more common in games. Bottom line- who cares about agp x8; it's like ata133 it makes no difference to nearly everyone.
Now would you prefer an OS that works easier over an OS that installs better?
Yes I would. Ok, my hardware is a bit non standard- (I'm using Sony Vaio). I really wanted to use debian on it, but a couple of hours fiddling with the woody install, and got absolutely nowhere.
I burnt a mandrake disk and stuffed it in my drive, and it installed no problem.
So, when the install is bad enough that even a reasonably experienced engineer can't install the software, then you know there's something wrong. Or perhaps it's the strange hardware, but then Mandrake loaded fine.
I don't care how it looks- text is fine, as long as it works. But if it doesn't install; there's something wrong.
Basically, this would mean that the TV execs would have to pay the director to wave his right for his movie to not be interupted by commercials. Otherwise, the movies would not be shown at all, and neither side wants that- particularly the director.
Doesn't sound like really understand the technology. At the corporation I work for the standard is for WEP to be disabled, because it is garbage. According to what you say their network is insecure, but they run IPSEC on top of this, and the security should be very good indeed.
BTW... the problem with lower frequency radars us that they are not as precise.
It's not that so much I think; the resolution is perfectly adequate from a positioning sense. It's more that it's nearly impossible to tell one type of plane from another at low frequencies- the plane gets blurred into one dot and you don't know whether it's a bomber or a fighter.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, if it's that self aware it will know about the backdoor and remove it ;-)
We don't need to solve Quantum Mechanics here. Water is uncharged, so the number of protons and electrons have to balance. All I was doing was counting the protons.
I'm sure that's not how the UK government looks at it. For example, in the UK, there's two main taxes applying to cars. There's a yearly road tax that applies to all cars, and costs about $200 per car per year; but it varies on the class of the vehicle- big cars pay more. Then there's the fuel tax.
Approximately 10% of the fixed road tax pays for the maintainance and creation of the roads, the other 90% and all the fuel tax just goes into the governments coffers. The road tax bit is supposed to pay for the roads; but for the government it's all just money.
Well, it's 10 but it's 1 on each hydrogen atom, 8 on the oxygen.
Yes, but is there a minimum cost per bit? If there is it must be very low- the capacity of a fiber is up to 10 terabits/s and 100 terabits/s may be possible. It costs $100s of millions to lay fiber, but it can carry the terabits for years.
Beyond a certain point, it's not worth charging per use. For example roads are a commodity in a pretty real sense; but we don't charge per use; even though a particular road can only carry a certain number of cars or lorries before requiring repair.
Historically, metering has been more expensive. It's easier to just control the size of the pipe, and comes to approximately the same thing. Besides, there's congestion control in the IP protocol that tends to give everyone a reasonably fair share.
Bandwidth is a commodity (I think it was the commoditization of bandwidth that is the part of the reason for the telecom collapse) like water or electricity: cheap, but not infinite.
Well, there's overcapacity right now, but that's probably a short term thing. Unlike water or electricity, bits are getting exponentially cheaper- we can fit more and more bits down a fiber- the fiber is the expensive part of the system, and boxes to handle twice the capacity is less than twice the cost. Beyond a certain point it's going to be too cheap to care. Also, the network equivalent of Moore's law says that the bandwidth in the middle of a network doubles every 9 months- this is a faster doubling than microprocessor speed.
No! You're wrong. It would just be called something different and be more buggy. It would be called 'Microsoft Network 2000'; and you'd need to upgrade all your software every 2 or 3 years for a low, low price.
And if space exploration depends on "market forces," then you can kiss any chance you or your great-grandchildren have of ever getting off this planet goodbye.
I'm not so sure. I actually think that NASA kit is wayyyyyyyy overpriced. It's about 20x more expensive than Russian kit for example, and Russian wages are only 1/10 of American wages, so where's the extra factor of 2 gone? Hint: the Russian rockets are better; they optimised for cost. NASA hardware is optimised for votes.
And there is some evidence that the cost of space travel is actually much, much lower than it seems at the moment, a factor of 5 lower than the Ruskies looks achieveable to me in the next 5 years.
The biggest potential problem from a cell phone would be if it interfered with the GPS system. If that happens the pilots are well placed to diagnose the interference and turn off their phone, and the problem would go away. With a passenger, it's a bit more difficult to pinpoint.
Yeah, that's no biggee. In terms of distance it works better from high up because there's no trees in the way. 10,000 ft is only a couple of miles after all.
Well good for them! The Space Station is undermanned at the moment anyway- if the Ruskies can safely fund a temporary increase in the number of people- good for them!
So NASA might be trying to get their own space station back. ISS was really a political animal anyway (Congress loved the idea of unity or some similar crap).
Yeah, and the Russians will take the life support module back; and then see where you'd be. These devices cost billions to develop and Russians used off the shelf tech for the ISS; tech America didn't have. The Americans had nothing they could use; and would have spent many, many times more developing than it ended up costing. Half the ISS was launched by the Russians anyway.
It's a bit like a company. Does the person with the most money own the company if the other partner has less money but more IP? No...
Sun and Jupiter are both massive enough and its moons small enough, that the other planets don't materially affect it's L points stability.
It's called S L A S H D O T ;-)
I guess you ultimately get what you pay for ;-)
Instead, IRC L4 and L5 aren't actually stable due to perturbations caused by the planets and the moon. I think objects drift away after 9 months or so- something of that order.
However there are orbits that are very much more stable around the L4 and L5 points, but even they need some small measure of station keeping to stay there- but it's very small.
Well, you can convert the hydrogen in water to dueterium (heavy water) which isn't radioactive. But if you leave it longer it goes to tritium; which is fairly radioactive. But the two step conversion takes an awful lot of radiation; it's not realistically going to be an issue.
It probably will, eventually. Just don't expect NASA to build it.
If you want 100% definite science- get a text book.
Or, if the call rate is low, a cell phone could work...
Depends, if they've switched off WEP and secured it with IPSEC, you should be waiting for perhaps a decade or two.
You can reduce the vertex list by pre-rendering a shape that is in front of another shape, and only updating it at a much slower rate; provided you don't overdo it, it can give much better frame rate; up to 20x in some cases (e.g. flight simulators).
The texture maps usually take up the most memory, and they can change depending on the position of the player and even which direction he is looking in.
The position of the objects is sent every frame but shows less variability.
But the texture maps need to be transfered into the graphics card memory once before they can be rendered.
So this happens initially when the texture first appears, but after that its in the memory and it doesn't need resending after that until it is flushed if it is no longer in view and something else needs the space.
But just occasionally new textures are needed. For example sometimes in say, half-life I used to spin around and the screen would stop updating for maybe 1/8 of a second. What was happening was that the wrong textures were in the graphics card and they were being pushed down the AGP-1 pipe as fast as it could take it- not really fast enough- I'd often get a rocket launcher up me; the screen would have stopped updating for just a moment.
Of course now the graphics cards have more memory, the software may be written better so that textures get preloaded before they are needed, and probably most or all of a levels textures fits into the card buffer anyway. So all in all- little or no waiting when spinning around; and the AGP is now x4 as well so instead of 1/8 second we are looking at 1/32 worst case; only 32 milliseconds, which for a one-off jitter isn't perceptible.
John Carmack has talked about the idea of generating texture maps dynamically. If he were to implement this, then AGP would be much more important. Right now, precalculated, fixed texture maps are much more common in games. Bottom line- who cares about agp x8; it's like ata133 it makes no difference to nearly everyone.
Yes I would. Ok, my hardware is a bit non standard- (I'm using Sony Vaio). I really wanted to use debian on it, but a couple of hours fiddling with the woody install, and got absolutely nowhere.
I burnt a mandrake disk and stuffed it in my drive, and it installed no problem.
So, when the install is bad enough that even a reasonably experienced engineer can't install the software, then you know there's something wrong. Or perhaps it's the strange hardware, but then Mandrake loaded fine.
I don't care how it looks- text is fine, as long as it works. But if it doesn't install; there's something wrong.
You mean "waive" not "wave". n.b. Whole sentences please. ;-)
Basically, this would mean that the TV execs would have to pay the director to wave his right for his movie to not be interupted by commercials. Otherwise, the movies would not be shown at all, and neither side wants that- particularly the director.
Doesn't sound like really understand the technology. At the corporation I work for the standard is for WEP to be disabled, because it is garbage. According to what you say their network is insecure, but they run IPSEC on top of this, and the security should be very good indeed.
It's not that so much I think; the resolution is perfectly adequate from a positioning sense. It's more that it's nearly impossible to tell one type of plane from another at low frequencies- the plane gets blurred into one dot and you don't know whether it's a bomber or a fighter.