There's been lots of discussion on/. about using scramjets as cheap earth to orbit vehicles. The big advantages they offer is that they don't need to carry their own oxidizers (for the in-atmosphere part of the flight, anyway) and if they're hooked up to a pair of wings you can fly it like a plane. The downside of course is that you can't use it from a standing start and another engine on board used solely to get it to scramjet speeds is just dead weight thereafter.
The project cost $800,000 according to that Sacramento guy, just to be destroyed in split of a second
It's more than NASA accomplished and it used a lot less money. I hope the next test will last longer.
What I don't get was why they felt they needed to accelerate the thing to mach 7.1 before starting the scramjet. They'll work at any supersonic speeds, right?
There are 10 Moscows in the US, as well as 5 Londons, 6 Bostons (and another in the UK), 11 Atlantas, 12 Genevas, 10 Berlins, 9 Romes, 3 Madrids, 10 Viennas, 12 Parises, 9 Warsaws, 2 Pragues, etc, etc, etc.
Granted, it's a rare case where two major cities have the same name, but text is cheap and clarification is never a bad thing.
Re:looking forward to the russian response...
on
Sklyarov Indicted
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· Score: 2
Tit for tat. Just start arresting any Adobe employees in Russia. Do it all at once and you could have quite a haul. Anyone here who cries foul at Russia for arresting US citizens for the actions of the company they work for while outside Russia is going to look really fscking stupid and hypocritical.
A 486 is fine for a command-line interface, but definitely not X. The minimum should be a Pentium with 32MB RAM
So get a Pentium. There's not exactly a big price difference between them anymore. Personally, I'd spring for P2's or K6's since they'll be easier to find, about the same price, and these things'll have to be upgraded eventually.
What pisses me off is that 10 years down the road they're going to say "Man, that Athlon 1.4GHz isn't worth the silicon it's printed on. Maybe we can use it for an X-terminal..."
Weren't there bad problems with peak-hour load across the company?
Very likely. In this case, you can upgrade your server or add another to the network. I've seen load-balancing software for thinclient Windoze servers, I imagine it exists for *Nix systems as well. It's a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to add 512MB of RAM to one server than to run around upgrading every single user's PC.
Someone told me that in the DSL center for Bellsouth in Atlanta they keep track of what the lag through their system is. If it ever gets more than 40ms, they start adding routers. Same principle.
There are lots of NC's that will run GNU/Linux for you. They are also a lot easier to maintain.
Usually more expensive, too. Check out IBM's thinclient lines. $500 and up, not even including the monitor. The upside of course is that you can get these pre-assembled and in any quantity, hard to do with 486SX machines. Overall, they're a good compromise between do-it-yourself dumb terminals and PC workstations.
As someone pointed out, build-it yourself generally sucks for any network with more than 20 computers or so. Finding antiquated parts in those quantities can be difficult. But for smaller networks, it's great. And as it happens, a smaller business or home or organization needing a small network is more likely to need to pinch pennies than a mega-conglomerate wih hundreds or thousands of machines, for whom such a setup would be too difficult.
I thought that I might never have to hear or read that word again. The bad memories of downed networks because some user unplugged his machine or knocked off the connector or removed the terminator are still way too fresh.
Why can't we all just get along without it? Splurge the eleven dollars for a 10/100 NIC and put in CAT 5.
No kidding. Chances are the CAT5 is already in place and it would be cheaper all around to get some old ISA 10base-T cards from a bargain bin than to rewire with BNC.
my employer suggested that I maintain a garage sale network as described, I'd find another job. Yes, X-windows terminals are a perfectly valid way to go, but put a halfway decent machine on the job. You and your users will be much happier.
Sure, for programming and other exotic uses for a computer. But if the only thing the users need to do is word processing, email, net browsing, and maybe a few other apps, then this is perfect. My last year in high school we experimented with setting up half a dozen thinclient library computers for internet access. And let me tell you, it was only about 10,000 times easier to keep those things running.
I don't think they've launched it yet, and in any event, do you honestly think a satellite like this would survive re-entry as anything more than tape measurer ashes and vaporized solar panels? De-orbiting objects ride in well into the double-digit Mach range, and I seriously doubt there's any components available at Radio Shanty ("You've got questions, we've got blank stares!")that could deal with those speeds in an atmosphere.
And since the design is done, they could probably pump out copies of this one for a dime a dozen. But they're letting other teams use the money on new designs, which is good too.
So, if you're aware of someone taking increasingly large doses of drugs, just stand by and let them OD?
Certainly not, but the point is that total apathy and noninvolvement is apparently the only way to keep from getting arrested nowadays. But it's only a matter of time before you get sued because you didn't help when you should have. Nice little catch-22.
The jury finds them "most likely" guilty, the Judge "maybe" gives a sentence, and the offenders "likely" do some time in a "hypothetical" jail.
You'd think that the whole pesky "burden of proof" thing would stymie the IAA's in court, but they seem to think statistics to be as good as a smoking gun. If the odds of my winning a lottery are a million to one and I buy a million tickets (over a period of several drawings) without ever winning, do I get to sue since statistically I should have won by now?
He did. He's pointing out that the record companies are claiming money lost due to piracy amounting to 5 times that of their total legit sales. "We're only getting 16% of what we should be getting!", which is patent nonsense. I download songs that I'd never get by paying $15-$20 for the CD.
Furthermore, even if their figures were remotely accurate, the willingness of people to ignore the middleman should tell the IAA's something about the flaw in their business model. High prices, total unwillingness to provide decent online service, legal wars raged against those who do, etc...
Just because a lot of money has been spent on a project, that is not reason enough to continue to spend money on that project
Depends on how much more it'll take to launch the damn thing. I agree, it's not the world's most useful satellite, but it's here. If we put it into storage it'll take $13M to make it usable again. If it takes less than, say, $30M to launch it, then we're talking about another 15% to actually get some use out of the thing.
Slashdot Mirror
A Ramjet works at mach 1 to 5 or 6, Scramjets take over from there. So the mach 7.1 is perfectly justified.
There's been lots of discussion on /. about using scramjets as cheap earth to orbit vehicles. The big advantages they offer is that they don't need to carry their own oxidizers (for the in-atmosphere part of the flight, anyway) and if they're hooked up to a pair of wings you can fly it like a plane. The downside of course is that you can't use it from a standing start and another engine on board used solely to get it to scramjet speeds is just dead weight thereafter.
It's more than NASA accomplished and it used a lot less money. I hope the next test will last longer.
What I don't get was why they felt they needed to accelerate the thing to mach 7.1 before starting the scramjet. They'll work at any supersonic speeds, right?
Granted, it's a rare case where two major cities have the same name, but text is cheap and clarification is never a bad thing.
Tit for tat. Just start arresting any Adobe employees in Russia. Do it all at once and you could have quite a haul. Anyone here who cries foul at Russia for arresting US citizens for the actions of the company they work for while outside Russia is going to look really fscking stupid and hypocritical.
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IBM marketspeak
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For big companies, NC's are the way to go.
I agree wholeheartedly.
So get a Pentium. There's not exactly a big price difference between them anymore. Personally, I'd spring for P2's or K6's since they'll be easier to find, about the same price, and these things'll have to be upgraded eventually.
What pisses me off is that 10 years down the road they're going to say "Man, that Athlon 1.4GHz isn't worth the silicon it's printed on. Maybe we can use it for an X-terminal..."
Very likely. In this case, you can upgrade your server or add another to the network. I've seen load-balancing software for thinclient Windoze servers, I imagine it exists for *Nix systems as well. It's a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to add 512MB of RAM to one server than to run around upgrading every single user's PC.
Someone told me that in the DSL center for Bellsouth in Atlanta they keep track of what the lag through their system is. If it ever gets more than 40ms, they start adding routers. Same principle.
Usually more expensive, too. Check out IBM's thinclient lines. $500 and up, not even including the monitor. The upside of course is that you can get these pre-assembled and in any quantity, hard to do with 486SX machines. Overall, they're a good compromise between do-it-yourself dumb terminals and PC workstations.
As someone pointed out, build-it yourself generally sucks for any network with more than 20 computers or so. Finding antiquated parts in those quantities can be difficult. But for smaller networks, it's great. And as it happens, a smaller business or home or organization needing a small network is more likely to need to pinch pennies than a mega-conglomerate wih hundreds or thousands of machines, for whom such a setup would be too difficult.
Well, you could probably slap a "Pentium III Inside" label on the 486SX and most poeple wouldn't know the difference.
Ha, ha. They didn't say to use cheapo equipment for web servers, just user desktops for simple users.
Why can't we all just get along without it? Splurge the eleven dollars for a 10/100 NIC and put in CAT 5.
No kidding. Chances are the CAT5 is already in place and it would be cheaper all around to get some old ISA 10base-T cards from a bargain bin than to rewire with BNC.
my employer suggested that I maintain a garage sale network as described, I'd find another job. Yes, X-windows terminals are a perfectly valid way to go, but put a halfway decent machine on the job. You and your users will be much happier.
Sure, for programming and other exotic uses for a computer. But if the only thing the users need to do is word processing, email, net browsing, and maybe a few other apps, then this is perfect. My last year in high school we experimented with setting up half a dozen thinclient library computers for internet access. And let me tell you, it was only about 10,000 times easier to keep those things running.
Well, they're still overpriced. Likely due to the low demand for space-capable solar panels.
I don't think they've launched it yet, and in any event, do you honestly think a satellite like this would survive re-entry as anything more than tape measurer ashes and vaporized solar panels? De-orbiting objects ride in well into the double-digit Mach range, and I seriously doubt there's any components available at Radio Shanty ("You've got questions, we've got blank stares!")that could deal with those speeds in an atmosphere.
And since the design is done, they could probably pump out copies of this one for a dime a dozen. But they're letting other teams use the money on new designs, which is good too.
Radio Shanty: You've got questions, we've got blank stares.
I have certainly put my CD-R to not-so-legitimate use, but one thing I've never done was burn an audio cd.
Tell it to Dmitry.
Yes, that was copyright cirumvention, not just a mere copyright violation, but it's the same piece of legislation governing both cases.
Certainly not, but the point is that total apathy and noninvolvement is apparently the only way to keep from getting arrested nowadays. But it's only a matter of time before you get sued because you didn't help when you should have. Nice little catch-22.
We have to! It's for the children!
You'd think that the whole pesky "burden of proof" thing would stymie the IAA's in court, but they seem to think statistics to be as good as a smoking gun. If the odds of my winning a lottery are a million to one and I buy a million tickets (over a period of several drawings) without ever winning, do I get to sue since statistically I should have won by now?
Furthermore, even if their figures were remotely accurate, the willingness of people to ignore the middleman should tell the IAA's something about the flaw in their business model. High prices, total unwillingness to provide decent online service, legal wars raged against those who do, etc...
Depends on how much more it'll take to launch the damn thing. I agree, it's not the world's most useful satellite, but it's here. If we put it into storage it'll take $13M to make it usable again. If it takes less than, say, $30M to launch it, then we're talking about another 15% to actually get some use out of the thing.
"He wanted to go to the Holodeck!"