>As long as the rays are sent in a straight line, it makes no difference.
Ah but that's the point they don't go in a straight line due to diffraction. Light doesn't go in a straight line, quite.
Light only goes in a straight line when the wavelength is small relative to the size of the emitter. In the case of a dish on the moon, with microwaves, diffraction limits the minimum size dish you can have there and still get a tight beam pattern on the earth.
Re:True, but the poles might get 24x7.
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Lunar Lasers
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The beaming antenna would have to be >10km high in order to send the beam back to the earth. And even then what about the half of the earth that can't see the moon at any given time?
Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction
on
Lunar Lasers
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· Score: 2
One design of a microwave antenna called a rectenna consists of a length of wire, a diode and a capacitor. It costs pence, and delivers 100 watts per square meter, 24x7x365.
Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction
on
Lunar Lasers
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· Score: 2
You can't rely on the solar energy on earth. The whole point about beamed power is that it is 24x7x365.25.
The problem with solar power on earth is that it isn't available at night. Large scale energy storage on earth is exceedingly non trivial; otherwise solar would be used more. In fact solar gives you the most power midday where you often need it the least.
Also, beamed power is available anywhere on earth. I live in the UK; trust me when I tell you that you don't get enough power in winter time from solar (ok, I lie slightly, one guy covered his entire roof, and I mean entire roof with solar panels, at some unspecified cost, probably in the high tens of thousands; he still needs a power grid connection at night; he just about breaks even energy wise, but monetarily- nope.)
Beamed power would actually break-even after about a decade of use, the studies show.
Re:This is a weapon of massless destruction
on
Lunar Lasers
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· Score: 2
IT IS NOT A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION. It is not even a weapon.
The beam only needs as much power/m^2 as a cell phone. You can stand right in it with no ill effects. Birds, aeroplanes can fly/sit through/in it without harm. Even if the beam 'slipped' nobody would notice much; the odd EMC problem is all, but realistically the beam would be switched off before it went anywhere.
Maybe if there was a hundred of them and they were all lined up to point at the same point on earth; but even then a thin layer of silver foil is all that is needed to defend against this extremely unlikely scenario.
Compare this to a microwave oven with 500-1000 per square foot. Turn that power down by 100 times. How warm does your food get?
Yes, but the power beaming antenna would have to be much bigger because the moon is much further away- and the antenna would have to be much more expensive because you have to steer it to point at the right points on earth due to the rotation of the earth; incidentally I've looked into steering mechanisms and whichever way you cut it, its very expensive.
The whole point about geosynchronous orbit is that it doesn't need steering because the satellite doesn't move relative to the earth- that plus the fact it gets twice the sunlight and hence twice the power.
There aren't really any dangers. The power density of the microwaves that the clued up people talk about are only the same as the power that is emitted by cellphones; you could stand in the beam with no protection and no problems at all.
There's no physical way to make the antennas focus be any tighter than that given the size of the antenna and the wavelength that is proposed; and the power delivered is limited by the size of the solar panels.
Re:Not to mention...
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Lunar Lasers
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· Score: 3, Informative
The orbit above the equator is at a quite significant angle to the shadow cast by the earth, due to the angle of dip of the rotation of the earth. That means that the shadow only intersects the geosynchronous orbit about twice per year.
IRC geosynchronous satellites only see darkness for about 40 minutes per year.
This contrasts rather sharply with nearly all points on the lunar surface which see darkness once per month for half the month.
But the good thing about it is that it is self limiting- you play the game, you reach the top, or you get bored and you stop.
The bad thing about EQ is that it was deliberately engineered to play slowly- it can take person-months to get to the highest levels- most normal games are about a man-week (30+ hours). I found it boring; too slow to level and arbitrary, but I have a friend who was really into it.
I think he's kicked his habit more or less now; but many people have had the habit for a year or so. I doubt that the same MMRPG idea will work with these eversmack heads a second time around nearly so well.
Real drugs don't get people habituated in the same way- people end up using more and more of the drug- with games this isn't so possible, although people may play it very intensively for a while; but eventually it won't be enough and they get bored.
Billionaire Andrew Beal of Beal aerospace tried this. NASA squished him flat with their subsidised programs, which they then arranged to fail. NASA doesn't want private space programs, or even their own programs taking money away from their pork barrel programs; or more accurately perhaps, the politicians that pay NASA don't want that.
But don't take my word for it; listen to what Beal said:
It's probably not true that Europe is ahead because they have a standard system; as far as I can tell, they are ahead because it became fashionable in the boom of the late 80's in London particularly to have a cell phone; partly because it was a way of doing more business for the brokers- it quickly became a status symbol. A fairly affordable it became too as it grew rapidly among the city and top businessmen and filtered its way down to basically everyone.
The fashion made the economics look better, and that in turn drove more manufacturers to enter the market and compete, driving the price down further.
The other feature that killed off the other mostly non-digital systems was security. After the 'squidgy' tape loads of people would only get digital, particularly Prince Charles- and the GSM phones were a convenient digital standard to go for at that time.
Britain is an ideal place for cell phones- the population density is pretty high, so less cells are required; most people I know have a cell phone in britain. Many of them don't have a fixed line at all anymore.
Incidentally, there IS a satellite phone system- Iridium, last time I checked it was very expensive, didn't work indoors or in cities, had low quality; and the handsets are really heavy.
It's not like Red Hat released it deliberately, they've admitted they screwed up- everyone else was working on the fixes; right now its a race between the script kiddies and the fix grownups.
>Of course, there are some folks out there who won't patch their system. For those people, advisories like this don't help at all.
That's their problem. But:
>But then, if you're running anything important, you should take the time to learn how to properly
>configure and maintain the system. Trying to hide known exploits from the public only serves to make
>things more difficult and dangerous for those of us who DO know what we're doing.
No. Actually it depends on how well known the vulnerability is in the wild. If it's not well known then the chances of your box being rooted is very small. Right now there is total knowledge- the only thing that people can do is remove this service; assuming they are awake right now- heaven knows what people in India are going to do- their boxes are going to be seriously at risk.
>In other words, if you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't be using a computer.
Yep, you, me and anyone else without true omniscience shouldn't be using a computer. Hardly a practical position is it?
I think that the shuttle needs to be privatised. But who would take it?
The way you sell it is to give a guaranteed launch contract i.e. all the dough the government would have paid out anyway for the next few years as a sweetner.
After the contract has run out, then the company will either have made the shuttle cheap enough to continue to fly, or THEY will shut the shuttle down. Either way the government has clean hands... and their favourite boondoggle the ISS can continue on and give something to launch TO.
It also gets the government out of the launch platform business- which is deeply unprofitable right now anyway for them; but that's Ok, the current contractors in the US can keep on launching fine; they're growing atleast.
I do really pay for PEAK bandwidth. If they can't support that much bandwidth at all then I sue. Of course they only guarantee a best effort service, so I can't sue if I can't get it most of the time.
In the agreement I signed there are some statements about selling the service on- if I violate that, then they can kick me off; and if you're really blatant they WILL come looking for you.
But I think that the ISPs ought to be sliding to a position where, say 5% of my bandwidth I can use all day everyday with no restrictions. For example, if I want to use 25kbps of 500kbps for VOIP, then they should reserve it for me- but if I'm not using it then they can use it for normal best effort traffic. It doesn't really cost them anything- they already allocate that much bandwidth for me anyway in practice.
But that's the future, VOIP works best with IPv6 and MPLS which we don't have right now. However, provided nobody breaks their agreement the internet approximates to that with the current IP protocols, because slow start, exponential back off and other algorithms in the congestion protocols back off to give everyone a fair percentage.
Yes, but as I pointed out- is an executeable good?
There is no way to know that. Unless they block ALL executables (yeah right, that would imply no packages for Linux, no patches etc.) then they can't block the bad stuff.
Nope. Just because you don't understand a packet on mathematics doesn't mean you get to drop it. That kind of firewall would break, well, everything really, in subtle and not so subtle ways.
Don't forget that pictures can be embedded into executables, and encrypted; even if it wasn't encrypted there's currently no reliable way to filter for porn automatically; even the courts can't decide what constitutes it!
The difference is that the original author still has a legal copy of the source code, and a licence to use it in almost any way they see fit (except that if the author wants to close source it, the GPL won't let him do that).
The FSF though, in theory, could close source it. However you could get them to sign a contract forbidding them from doing that when you sign it across.
True; the two are not necessarily incompatible. However, you only have to look at the success of Microsoft, with extremely mediocre software.
It seem self evident to me that Microsoft deliberately minimises the quality of their software to improve their profits. Over time their quality has improved, but that has never been the main point of their software; their only point is to make money.
>Even if you have great OPEN source software, you will never have a great PROFIT.
Look at IBM. By using Linux they can improve their profitability.
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>As long as the rays are sent in a straight line, it makes no difference.
Ah but that's the point they don't go in a straight line due to diffraction. Light doesn't go in a straight line, quite.
Light only goes in a straight line when the wavelength is small relative to the size of the emitter. In the case of a dish on the moon, with microwaves, diffraction limits the minimum size dish you can have there and still get a tight beam pattern on the earth.
The beaming antenna would have to be >10km high in order to send the beam back to the earth. And even then what about the half of the earth that can't see the moon at any given time?
One design of a microwave antenna called a rectenna consists of a length of wire, a diode and a capacitor. It costs pence, and delivers 100 watts per square meter, 24x7x365.
You can't rely on the solar energy on earth. The whole point about beamed power is that it is 24x7x365.25.
The problem with solar power on earth is that it isn't available at night. Large scale energy storage on earth is exceedingly non trivial; otherwise solar would be used more. In fact solar gives you the most power midday where you often need it the least.
Also, beamed power is available anywhere on earth. I live in the UK; trust me when I tell you that you don't get enough power in winter time from solar (ok, I lie slightly, one guy covered his entire roof, and I mean entire roof with solar panels, at some unspecified cost, probably in the high tens of thousands; he still needs a power grid connection at night; he just about breaks even energy wise, but monetarily- nope.)
Beamed power would actually break-even after about a decade of use, the studies show.
IT IS NOT A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION. It is not even a weapon.
The beam only needs as much power/m^2 as a cell phone. You can stand right in it with no ill effects. Birds, aeroplanes can fly/sit through/in it without harm. Even if the beam 'slipped' nobody would notice much; the odd EMC problem is all, but realistically the beam would be switched off before it went anywhere.
Maybe if there was a hundred of them and they were all lined up to point at the same point on earth; but even then a thin layer of silver foil is all that is needed to defend against this extremely unlikely scenario.
Compare this to a microwave oven with 500-1000 per square foot. Turn that power down by 100 times. How warm does your food get?
Yes, but the power beaming antenna would have to be much bigger because the moon is much further away- and the antenna would have to be much more expensive because you have to steer it to point at the right points on earth due to the rotation of the earth; incidentally I've looked into steering mechanisms and whichever way you cut it, its very expensive.
The whole point about geosynchronous orbit is that it doesn't need steering because the satellite doesn't move relative to the earth- that plus the fact it gets twice the sunlight and hence twice the power.
There aren't really any dangers. The power density of the microwaves that the clued up people talk about are only the same as the power that is emitted by cellphones; you could stand in the beam with no protection and no problems at all.
There's no physical way to make the antennas focus be any tighter than that given the size of the antenna and the wavelength that is proposed; and the power delivered is limited by the size of the solar panels.
The orbit above the equator is at a quite significant angle to the shadow cast by the earth, due to the angle of dip of the rotation of the earth. That means that the shadow only intersects the geosynchronous orbit about twice per year.
IRC geosynchronous satellites only see darkness for about 40 minutes per year.
This contrasts rather sharply with nearly all points on the lunar surface which see darkness once per month for half the month.
Wasted? I think a new network would be expected to be big enough for a few years, otherwise that would be a waste.
The rule of thumb in a network such as this is that the bandwidth needed doubles every 9 months.
Therefore the prediction from the rule of thumb is that this network will suffice for about 4 years and then it will be full.
It looks sufficient to me, but it's not too much bandwidth by any means.
Windows 95 has the minute of silence built-in with every reboot.
But the good thing about it is that it is self limiting- you play the game, you reach the top, or you get bored and you stop.
The bad thing about EQ is that it was deliberately engineered to play slowly- it can take person-months to get to the highest levels- most normal games are about a man-week (30+ hours). I found it boring; too slow to level and arbitrary, but I have a friend who was really into it.
I think he's kicked his habit more or less now; but many people have had the habit for a year or so. I doubt that the same MMRPG idea will work with these eversmack heads a second time around nearly so well.
Real drugs don't get people habituated in the same way- people end up using more and more of the drug- with games this isn't so possible, although people may play it very intensively for a while; but eventually it won't be enough and they get bored.
But don't take my word for it; listen to what Beal said:
Beal Aerospace closes
John Glenn didn't pay his way; he doesn't count. Otherwise, you could argue Gagarin was the first space tourist.
Unlikely to be able to take it indoors with you. The wheels are going to get muddy- people hate muddy wheel tracks on their carpet.
That's a good one!
ROTFLMAO
It's probably not true that Europe is ahead because they have a standard system; as far as I can tell, they are ahead because it became fashionable in the boom of the late 80's in London particularly to have a cell phone; partly because it was a way of doing more business for the brokers- it quickly became a status symbol. A fairly affordable it became too as it grew rapidly among the city and top businessmen and filtered its way down to basically everyone.
The fashion made the economics look better, and that in turn drove more manufacturers to enter the market and compete, driving the price down further.
The other feature that killed off the other mostly non-digital systems was security. After the 'squidgy' tape loads of people would only get digital, particularly Prince Charles- and the GSM phones were a convenient digital standard to go for at that time.
Britain is an ideal place for cell phones- the population density is pretty high, so less cells are required; most people I know have a cell phone in britain. Many of them don't have a fixed line at all anymore.
Incidentally, there IS a satellite phone system- Iridium, last time I checked it was very expensive, didn't work indoors or in cities, had low quality; and the handsets are really heavy.
The military loves them.
It's not like Red Hat released it deliberately, they've admitted they screwed up- everyone else was working on the fixes; right now its a race between the script kiddies and the fix grownups.
>Of course, there are some folks out there who won't patch their system. For those people, advisories like this don't help at all.
That's their problem. But:
>But then, if you're running anything important, you should take the time to learn how to properly
>configure and maintain the system. Trying to hide known exploits from the public only serves to make
>things more difficult and dangerous for those of us who DO know what we're doing.
No. Actually it depends on how well known the vulnerability is in the wild. If it's not well known then the chances of your box being rooted is very small. Right now there is total knowledge- the only thing that people can do is remove this service; assuming they are awake right now- heaven knows what people in India are going to do- their boxes are going to be seriously at risk.
>In other words, if you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't be using a computer.
Yep, you, me and anyone else without true omniscience shouldn't be using a computer. Hardly a practical position is it?
I think that the shuttle needs to be privatised. But who would take it?
The way you sell it is to give a guaranteed launch contract i.e. all the dough the government would have paid out anyway for the next few years as a sweetner.
After the contract has run out, then the company will either have made the shuttle cheap enough to continue to fly, or THEY will shut the shuttle down. Either way the government has clean hands... and their favourite boondoggle the ISS can continue on and give something to launch TO.
It also gets the government out of the launch platform business- which is deeply unprofitable right now anyway for them; but that's Ok, the current contractors in the US can keep on launching fine; they're growing atleast.
I do really pay for PEAK bandwidth. If they can't support that much bandwidth at all then I sue. Of course they only guarantee a best effort service, so I can't sue if I can't get it most of the time.
In the agreement I signed there are some statements about selling the service on- if I violate that, then they can kick me off; and if you're really blatant they WILL come looking for you.
But I think that the ISPs ought to be sliding to a position where, say 5% of my bandwidth I can use all day everyday with no restrictions. For example, if I want to use 25kbps of 500kbps for VOIP, then they should reserve it for me- but if I'm not using it then they can use it for normal best effort traffic. It doesn't really cost them anything- they already allocate that much bandwidth for me anyway in practice.
But that's the future, VOIP works best with IPv6 and MPLS which we don't have right now. However, provided nobody breaks their agreement the internet approximates to that with the current IP protocols, because slow start, exponential back off and other algorithms in the congestion protocols back off to give everyone a fair percentage.
Yes, but as I pointed out- is an executeable good?
There is no way to know that. Unless they block ALL executables (yeah right, that would imply no packages for Linux, no patches etc.) then they can't block the bad stuff.
Wonder what they do about international phone calls- all you'd have to do is dial up an international ISP, or your mate's server.
Presumably they can tap the phone line if they suspect you.
Nope. Just because you don't understand a packet on mathematics doesn't mean you get to drop it. That kind of firewall would break, well, everything really, in subtle and not so subtle ways.
Don't forget that pictures can be embedded into executables, and encrypted; even if it wasn't encrypted there's currently no reliable way to filter for porn automatically; even the courts can't decide what constitutes it!
According to Relativity, faster than light comms can give NEGATIVE ping times!
;-)
Now that I like...
Know anyone selling Ansible by any chance?
The difference is that the original author still has a legal copy of the source code, and a licence to use it in almost any way they see fit (except that if the author wants to close source it, the GPL won't let him do that).
The FSF though, in theory, could close source it. However you could get them to sign a contract forbidding them from doing that when you sign it across.
True; the two are not necessarily incompatible. However, you only have to look at the success of Microsoft, with extremely mediocre software.
It seem self evident to me that Microsoft deliberately minimises the quality of their software to improve their profits. Over time their quality has improved, but that has never been the main point of their software; their only point is to make money.
>Even if you have great OPEN source software, you will never have a great PROFIT.
Look at IBM. By using Linux they can improve their profitability.