Actually, the problem they've found is that NASA hasn't been very thorough in checking the condition of the RCC material on the ground before the shuttle flies. The investigation appears to be heading towards a "suspected" cause of some fault in the Leading-Edge RCC being missed during inspection, which happened to be hit by the flying foam.
The recommendation basically states that NASA must inspect the leading edge material better than they have doing - which up to now is basically go out and look at it and also tap on it to see if it "sounds" sound. NASA is apparently looking at CAT scans and/or some sort of XRAY technology to look for hidden faults.
Now as far as imagery goes, I think you might be right in that in a lot of cases if you have something wrong with the heat shield system there is very little you can do on orbit today. I do know NASA is reevaluating the option of flying some sort of heat shield repair kit.
I personally recommend (and point people toward) Yahooligans which is basically "Yahoo for kids". From there you can find lots of great stuff from all over the web. Hint: the buttons on the left refer to Yahooligan's own content, and the directory topics in the center go to a typical yahoo-style directory. Of course, you can also do a search on the main page.
This page is also a great location to set the browser home page to on computers in schools and other similar locations where the kids are likely to be the primary computer user.
1) 25 PIN MALE DB Connector (like would plug into the parallel port) - OR, probably easier, grab like a 6' or longer 25pin Parallel Printer or extension cable and chomp the end which doesn't plug into the computer off.
2) 8 superbright leds.
3) 8 10K resistors.
4) 8 2N2222 or other NPN transistors (Just go to radio shack and get a bulk package of "NPN switchint ransistors")
5) 8 "smaller" resistors. Like roughly 500 ohm, but be prepared to experiment with the value. Lower value=brighter, but if you go too low you will burn out the LED. There *IS* a formula for the smallest permitted value. I won't go into that here.
6) Perfboard to put it all on
7) 9 or 12V DC wall-mount supply (or similar).
A little background:
The parallel port on the PC has 8 outputs, on pins 2-9 of the 25 pin connector. The ground for these are on pins 18-25.
You can technically get away with just wiring the led directly to an output port, then to a resistor which then connects to the ground. Google for "parallel port led"
However, it is likely that you will need more current than the parallel port will provide. For this you can use a transistor to act as a solid state switch.
Here's a description of the schematic:
For each output pin:
1) Wire the output pin on the parallel port to one side of a 10K resistor.
2) Wire the other side of the 10K resistor to the base pin on the transistor.
3) Wire the emitter pin on the transistor to circuit ground.
4) Wire from the collector pin on the tranmitter to the pin closest to the "flat edge" on the LED.
5) Connect the other LED pin to the "smaller value" resistor.
6) Connect the remaining pin on the "smaller" value resistor to the + wire of the power supply.
ALSO, do the following:
1) Connect the ground pins (18-25) of the parallel port connector to the "circuit ground" mentioned above.
2) Connect the "-" wire of the power supply to the "circuit ground".
You can test this before plugging into the computer by plugging the DC adapter in and then jumpering between the + wire of the power supply and each output pin on the cable you are going to plug into the computer. The corresponding LED should light.
I'd recommend just doing the first led first to make sure everything works.
NOTE: YOU CAN BLOW OUT THE COMPUTER PORT IF YOU DO THIS WRONG. I HAVE NOT CHECKED THE ABOVE DESCRIPTION SO IT MIGHT BE WRONG AND MAY CAUSE THIS EVEN IF YOU FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS EXACTLY.
If you need more LEDS on a given output (like 2 or 3 to get enough light), you can just connect a LED/resistor pair in parallel with the existing one (all of the LEDS are connected to the transistor, all of the resistors are connected to the + power supply connection, and each led is connected to it's own resistor).
You basically drive this by outputting data to the parallel port. You output a single byte at a time - the most recent byte is what the leds are set to on or off. If you want to vary the brightness of the LED's you can actually do it by turning them on and off quickly in software. A simple timing loop which have the leds on 50% of the time would result in the leds being 50% dimmer than if they were just left on. Of course you have to do this fast enough so they don't "flicker" or blink.
I completely understand the reason why those clocks which use the 60hz (or 50Hz) AC as a timebase go slower. It only makes sense..
But could someone please explain to me how reducing the frequency of an electrical grid provides more power to the grid, assuming nothing else has changed? The article says they reduced the frequency to ensure they had enough power.... This kinda stuck my brain in an "Error does not compute" endless loop...
In the US at least, the powerline frequency is actually a function of how fast the generators are turning in the power plants - specifically 3600 RPM which comes out to 60 Revs/Sec or 60 Hz. The way I understand the article is that spinning the generators SLOWER results in more power? For some reason this seems counter-intuitive to me. What am I missing?
Not exactly a factory, but I highly recommend touring EBR-I (Experimental Breeder Reactor I) if you are anywhere near the INEEL Facility in Idaho. This is the coolest facility I've toured *ever*. For those of you who don't know, this is the place where electricity was first generated by nuclear power.
Let me preface this with I think we need to do *something* about the spam problem, so the first part of this is *not* saying we shouldn't regulate Spam.
The reason that junk Faxes are against the law is because of the problems people were having with coming to work and finding a $50 roll of thermal fax paper spewed from their fax machines covered with nothing but essentially the content of most spam we're seeing today. This is a very real cost that you can put a figure on, and very definately was more expensive for the recipient to deal with. I remember hearing some stories of fax machines being tied up for hours with junk faxes.
The problem with spam is that it is hard to put a measurable cost on it, at least for the couple that the average joe gets a day. Plus, regulation in the US will just move the problem overseas in a lot of cases.
That said, I'm convinced that there is a very real cost to spam. I run spamassassin and literally get 200-300 spam messages in my spam folder every day, plus another 20-30 or so which spamassassin didn't catch. Conversely, I get about 20 legitimate emails a day.
On the mail server for the ISP I am the sysadmin for, spamassassin tags 75% of the messages we recieve as spam. We just spent $4000 buying hardware for our new mail server. If we had 25% of the load, we could have probably gotten away with a $1000 mail server instead.
Not to mention the times that a spammer decides to dump 10,000 messages on us within a 1/2 hour taking our mail server down to a crawl.
I'm hard pressed to come up with a workable, implementable solution which has any chance of working long term. Legislation has its problems. Technical solutions are a loosing battle on the filtering front. Economic solutions with advocate micropayments or similar (hashcash, etc) need to reach some sort of critical mass before they will help - but noone wants to implement them until they will. And so on.
There *has* to be a solution to this problem out there that someone hasn't come up with yet (or at least hasn't publicised properly).
I had a high school teacher that did this. Let me preface this with this was the first year in a brand new school building.
The teacher couldn't find an appropriately sized beaker or test tube so she used a chemistry bottle - I.E. one with a narrow neck.
She put powdered sugar in the bottom and poured the sulphuric acid in, and everything went as planned, until the carbon compressed in the narrow neck and got stuck - forming a plug.
Of course, the reaction was still going on in the bottom of the bottle - creating pressure along with additional carbon. Eventually the pressure built up enough to blow the previously-stuck carbon out, all over the ceiling and the front row of tables. Fortunately, noone got covered with hot acid.
Last time I was in that room I could *still* see the melted part of the fluorescent light fixture which was right above the expiriment (They replaced the blackened ceiling tile). I also remember that all year we'd get a chuckle whenever someone who was on that front row would open their science notebook and see a burnt hole in the middle of their pages.
Yes, I'd say that was a good learning experience...:)
Note: I haven't seen a cleanflicks film but have heard about them from others who have. Please read the following accordingly.
Clean Flicks takes a video owned by their customer, cuts a few specific chunks out of it, splices it back together (minus the chunks) and gives it back to the customer.
There has been no duplication of the video. In fact, the video has been legally purchased from a legal source. The only modification was the removal of the material, and perhaps a sticker stuck on the front of the tape to say "hey this isn't the full version, we've removed some stuff from it".
I can understand why a director might not like people messing with the content of their movies. What I don't understand is what leg the copyright holders think they have to stand on. If I buy a video and decide to cut chunks out of it before I watch it what business is it of the directors? Similarly, if I want to pay someone else to cut chunks out of it, again, what business is it of the directors?
I could possibly understand the complaint if CleanFlicks were marketing these as the uncut, unedited versions, but they aren't. In fact, they are being very up front about what they are doing. The cutting service is what they are in fact selling, not the videos themselves.
Personally, I think the studios/directors/etc. have brought this on themselves. Back when DVD's first were coming out, part of the selling points was that movie studios could release multiple copies of a movie on a DVD, say a edited-for-tv version and a regular version.
Where are the edited-for-tv versions? There are a LOT of movies I would buy if I could purchase a copy on DVD which was somewhat cleaned up. I'm sorry, I just don't need to see or hear some of the images and/or language which hollywood seems to feel they need to put in movies (I get enough of that reading slashdot).
Technically, providing a cleaned up version alongside the full version on a DVD shouldn't be a big issue. Putting a edited-for-tv soundtrack on a disk as an additional language track alongside the commentaries and the half-dozen languages wouldn't be a big thing space-wise. Likewise, I suspect that setting up some sort of automatic "play only these scenes" when in "edited" mode should be doable, although I'm not a DVD mastering expert.
Note that I'm not trying to say that noone should watch these things. What I am saying is that I would like to have a choice over whether I watch a complete, unedited version, or say a complete version but without every other word being something you wouldn't say in mixed company, or even a "hacked up for TV" version that I might dare recommend a family watch with their kids.
The only two options the studios have provided for me today is to watch the movie or to not watch the movie. Cleanflicks is trying to provide a third option for those who want it. If the studios would have provided this option via DVD or some other technology, CleanFlicks probably wouldn't even exist.
I also would submit that a lot of the people that buy movies from CleanFlicks probably wouldn't buy the same movies if they weren't edited for content. As a result, I suspect that CleanFlicks is probably *improving* the bottom line cash-wise for the directors and for the studios. How can this be a bad thing?
This is the type of "invention" which should be able to be patented.
Although all of us know how it works in concept, it isn't an obvious thing to come up with. Someone had to come up with the idea and do testing. I suspect they have to syncronize a flash behind each frame with the train so you don't just end up with a blur, etc. etc. etc.
*This* is what the patent system was invented for, not for use by people to protect their "I think I'll write a program to do X which is almost like everything else you've ever seen before".
How exactly is this supposed to help when the car is not in operation? The poster above obviously doesn't live in a very cold climate.
I live in Montana. It's not unheard of (or even unexpected) to have a week of weather where we don't get above zero (Farenheight) during the winter. I remember one winter where I had a half inch of ice accumulation on the floor under the driver's feet because of the snow being tracked in and then not being able to get the car hot enough to melt it during the short drive to work each day.
-40 F is not uncommon to see during the winter months.
At that temperature, things don't like to work at all.
That said, if it were me, I'd probably just try it and see if I had any problems. If I had cold-related problems, I might consider adding some sort of very small resistive heater to the case and hook it up so when I plug in the block heater in, it also turns on.
I'm the tech guy for a Wireless ISP, and when we mount equipment outside, we generally will buy a box with a small resistive heater element and a thermostat in it to turn it on when the box gets below 50-60 or so.
So exactly WHAT is the advantage of using UDP rather than TCP in this instance?
I of course don't know about the original poster's actual implementation.
I'm making the assumption timeclocks themselves are very lightweight (or thin) devices, CPU and memory wise.
The problem with TCP for a truly embedded application is that you have to play a lot of keep-state programming to implement even a minimal TCP stack.
A minimal UDP stack is much smaller. Everything you need to do with UDP is rather stateless.
Ignoring ARP and ICMP for a second (which is the same for TCP and UDP), sending a single message via UDP consists of encapsulating the packet and sending it. With TCP you have to send a SYN, then wait for a SYN-ACK, then send an ACK back (possibly containing data), and then you have to deal with closing the connection.
Maybe a better way to describe this is that UDP is a DATAGRAM protocol. I.E. you format a datagram and send it. By contrast TCP is designed for a mostly-reliable almost-serial-like stream, with congestion control, retransmission, etc. etc.
I was going to try to make a case for TCP in the timeclock example where a larger machine is available. I just can't see a good reason for the TCP overhead in this app. I mean, what exactly are they going to be sending... Something like "Employee 308 clock in", which the server is going to say "Got it, employee 308"?
If you haven't written low-level embedded networking code you really don't realize how much overhead is in TCP. Heck, just to get a TCP session set up and torn down you need 7 packets:
--> SYN <-- SYN-ACK --> ACK
(Session Established)
<-- FIN --> ACK --> FIN <-- ACK
With UDP you only need 2 (1 each way) to send your message and get it acknowdged.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of TCP in the right places. Any message over the ~1400-1500 MTU size of a UDP packet should probably be sent via TCP.
My advice is to check out the HVAC contractors you use.
Almost every computer installation is going to produce heat. A lot of heat.
Typical HVAC people don't understand this for some reason. They look at the square footage and then do some calculations for how many BTU's they think they will need. I've several times in projects asked "you are aware that we're going to have a lot of computers in here and we need a LOT of cooling and almost no heating (if not even some cooling) in the winter.". In at least a couple of cases I got an answer of "oh yeah, we do this all the time", and then they proceeded to install a system obviously not engineered for our application. I.E. undersized during the summer, and no cooling (heating only) during the winter.
Even a typical 75W average 1U server throws 250 BTU/hr. A rack with ~40 of these is 10,000 BTU/hr. This is enough BTU's to raise the temp in a well-insulated 12x12 room 40 degrees or so.
Try putting 5 racks in.
For reference, a typical 120V window mount air conditioner is typically under 12,000 BTU's.
At some point you don't have to heat during the winter - just cool year round.
And in case I didn't mention this strongly enough to start with. Most HVAC contractors just don't get it. Make sure you get one that does.
I can't see anywhere else better to attach this, so I'll stick it here.
I have an RCA eBook. I'm starting to get to the point where I prefer to read via the ebook vs paper. The reasons?
* The ebook is readable in bed without any external light to disturb my significant other.
* I can read the hundreds (if not thousands) of books available for free on the internet from project Gutenberg and the like.
* I can load up 72MB worth of ebooks into the unit and as a result, not have to worry about not having something to read.
* It has a dictionary built in which is very helpful when you come across that word you go "what the heck is a....."? You just click on lookup and then the word.
* Although I haven't used it this way, you can do notes and annotations into the ebooks.
On the battery issue, I chose the REB1100 because it has 20-40 hours of battery life. I think that 20-40 is conservative.
I saw someone else mention that color was needed. Although I can think of some cases where color would be nice (biology texbooks, art textbooks, etc.), for "paperback" reading, give me a good readable monochrome screen any day.
The main gripes I have are related to the slightly flaky usb support, the lack of a slightly dimmer backlight selection (20% is too bright for reading with the lights off at night), and the @#*$ publishers which think that they can sell an encrypted ebook usable only on this device (which might have a couple of year lifetime) at the same price that a paperback (which I can loan and share and keep) sells for.
On that last point, I will say that there are some publishers out there that have figured out that encryption is not good. In fact baen books have figured out that giving away books is a good way to improve sales, even of the books you are giving away!
I really think that quite a few of the naysayers out there about the ebooks haven't had one to play with. No, attempting to read a book on a palmpilot doesn't count. You need a big enough screen to be able to get more than two readable words on a line.
Having a decent number of words-per-line and page is a good thing. It also helps if you have enough resolution to set a serif font which is easier to read. The other thing is that the REB has done well is to be ergonomically designed so that the page advance button is right under your thumb when you hold it. This is the other major problem when trying to use a palmpilot as a comparison - the advance buttons are definately not under your thumb when you hold it in a comfortable reading position.
On the device mentioned in the article, it looks like this screen helps increase the viewable area. If this is the case, then I think it will definately be an improvement. I'm not sure about the color though - except I do recall from my early computer days that green was somehow determined to be easier on your eyes than white. Perhaps someone else can come up with a reference.
That is exactly the attitude which prevents anyone from the Green or Libertarian or any other third party from being elected. There are too many people out there who think there are really only two choices and are afraid to vote "outside of the box".
I think the first thing we've got do do is to change our election system to something else where people can really vote their conscience instead of people voting such that "their vote can count".
I'll probably get modded down for being off-topic, but there is a very specific point you are missing:
A Pebble in the Sky is out of print. I couldn't buy it new if I wanted to.
Let me tell you what I would like. I would like to be able to go to the authors site and buy a copy of an ebook directly from them without paying a publisher. I think that a lot of the publishers in this country are as bad as the RIAA as far as exploiting authors. I want to be able to buy in such a way as to have the majority of my funds go to the author of the book.
But I digress. Back on the subject: In this specific situation, I don't see any option other than to buy used. In fact, the original poster said "I would have read it but I can't find a copy to read".
One more point. In the US, as far as I know (and I've been around quite a few libraries in roles other than a patron), there are no royalties paid to authors. In fact, in a lot of cases a not insignificant portion of the library's collection consist of "used" donated books which someone has purchased, read and then donated.
If you're seriously upset about the way that government is being run and the laws that are being passed, by all means get involved. The only way we're going to win this is by getting the people passing these laws out of office. Take an active stance on issues. Let you congressmen know how you feel. Consider running for office yourself (yes you can do that) or helping with a campaign, even if it just a local office or state senator/representative, etc..
Personally, I've found that the Libertarian party is the closest to how I do about the way things should be run - specifically that the government should keep their noses out of our lives. Their views may or may not be in line with yours. Do some research and figure out where you feel you're making a contribution. But get involved. If all you do is gripe on slashdot every once in a while you're not making an impact.
(2) None of these models are reversible. Put in a starting point of today's conditions, set the time increment to -1, and run the simulation backwards for 100 years. What comes out will be nothing like the world as it actually was in 1900. If we can't accuratly predict what happened in the past, how can we have any belief that the models tell us anything meaningful about the future?
You're correct about the models not necessarily being reversable - meaning that you can't predict history from the future. However, the correct method of verifying a simulation as correct is to verify the simulation results against known data. In the article, where it talks about the Anasazi, they describe writing the simulation and then letting it run through they years that they have data about the Anasazi (where the villiages are, the water availability, etc) and comparing it to reality. As described, they got quite close to reality. Villiages ending up in the same spot as reality over 50% of the time, etc. etc. etc.. Remember, it is very hard to determine the cause (or stimulus) from the effect without additional data. However, if the cause (stimulus) is known, the effect is usually fairly easy to guess.
If we were to try to build a model of today's history, you would want to build the model, seed it like the world was in the 1700's or earlier and let it run, and see how often it ended up correct. If it wasn't quite accurate, figure out where your model is wrong, fix, and repeat.
In the Asimov stories, what Hari Seldon was doing was to come up with a set of "formulas" (stored in the prime radiant) which accurately simulated history. The more accurate the formulas and the data you have, the more correct you are going to be. Hari and the members of the Foundation were constantly working on tweaks to better account for errors in the simulation. The hard part is dealing with the truly random influences. For instance, in the article when they talked about the Anasazi, they used real weather data instead of simulating it. I suspect if the weather data was simulated, the simulation would not have been as accurate on a year-to-year basis, although if the weather simulation was realistic enough I suspect that the outcome would have been similar.
Thinking back about Psychohistory as put forward by Asimov, I think that the only thing which really stretches for me is the accuracy (within a few months) of the events which he predicted-- taking into account the numerous variables which have such a rare occurance (such as an asteroid hitting a planet wiping everything out, or another major random event), that it would be throw the accuracy of small-scale events off. It seems logical that you can be accurate on a large scale on a simulation (over many thousands of years) or on a small scale (over a hundred years or so), but not both with the same simulation.
No matter how much ZZZ Pizza pays the Yellow Pages, they will still be listed far after AAAA Comedy Driving School.
(We won't mention that Driving Schools would very definately be listed prior to Pizza places, instead we'll assume you meant something like ZZZippy Ron's Driving School).
In the yellow pages you're right and your wrong.
In a category such as "Driving Schools", there are two independent pieces - the listings and the display ads. The Listings are usually in alphabetical order, sometimes by city. (Although I suspect some telephone directory publisher has at some point offered a premium "top of category" listing - but ignore that for a minute). Now the display ads in most directories are in order from largest to smallest. If you're the biggest ad in the section, you get first running in the section, or sometimes the choice of where you run. If you're the next biggest, you get second choice, etc.
Take a look at the display ads and note that they are most definately not in alphabetical order. Occasionally, you'll find a publisher will try to keep a smaller ad on the same page as the listing - but quite often not.
I think the key here is that there are definately pay per placement "prior arts". There are also definately prior arts related to almost anything computer related. The question here is whether the combination of using the "pay per placement" prior art with the "buy a keyword" prior art is both unique enought to be a valid patent, and also whether google's implentation differs enough from the overture prior art to require google to pay royalties to overture.
If you purchase keywords on overture and are one of the top 3 bidders, you appear on all the sites they listed including Netscape. I can confirm this as I have a couple of listings online w/overture. They do appear on the netscape page in the section "Partner Search Results". (I also buy space on google.)
I believe the results below are the google results. The Google results do not have any advertisement content in them.
So, when overture says "when you buy space here, you get on x and x and x and x, but if you buy space at google you only get on google", they are exactly correct.
Try looking at the url on the "partner search results" on netscape.
As the System Administrator for a regional ISP, I fully agree with the "Reboot, reconnect it should work now" philosophy. I'd have to say that a vast majority of the problems (for windows users anyways) is just a Windows OS that's decided that it didn't like being up as long as it has been. We use the term "Shut up and reboot" as Dogbert put so well in the dilbert strip available here.
We've also come up with a certain number of phrases to accurately describe certain customers. "Chronic Clue Vacuum Disease" is when they just plain can't get it even though you explain it to them a thousand times. "PEBKAC" is an acronym we use for "Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair" (you figure it out). And so on. Our latest is "Twelve o'clock flasher" which originated from the piece "Welcome to the Internet Helpdesk" which is available on mp3.com. Trust me, if you've ever dealt with the average internet customer, you want to listen to this and be prepared to be Rolling on the floor laughing.
To try to get back to the original poster's question, we use a CD which some company sells which has all the normal stuff on it - browser, email, etc. There are several companies out there which basically burn a CD with everything on it and have a automatic configurator which configures the customer's computer.
As far as what to support, generally we support all of the common web and email clients, and a couple of other select programs. If you have Netscape, IE, Outlook/Outlook Express, Pegasus mail, etc. we can help. Anything beyond the normal, then the customer is on their own. Generally we'll help to the point of "Ok, both Internet Exporer and Netscape works. I'm not sure why Opera won't work and we don't have that here to walk you through it".
That said, we're probably one of the unusual outfits which will at least try to help you with about any OS and/or software you want to use. We're a FreeBSD shop. The assistant sysadmin runs OpenBSD at home. Linux is probably our biggest hole, but we generally can provide enough information for someone to get Linux to work, and we do have people around who work with linux. Macs are another hole, but again, we can usually help someone through getting one on. And of course (unfortunately) we're well versed with getting Windows Machines on the net.
That great article about Scott Adams brainwashing Logitech executives into writing a mission statement... And then committing to put it to music. (Wayback machine version here.)
Makes you wonder how many of these anthems were as a result of some Dilbertism in the workplace... Hmmm.....
VCR's I can understand, some have the date in them for programmed recording. It's the mousepads one store was selling just before Y2K with big "Year 2000 Compliant" stickers on them that made me laugh.
Makes me wonder what a non-Y2K compliant mouse pad did at a millisecond past the end of 1999..... Or perhaps even a better question, how many people upgraded their mouse pads for fear of them not working after 1999.
Bad Combination
on
ORBZ Shuts Down
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I'll be interested in seeing the outcome of this and seeing what the facts of the case are.
I'm not sure how many of the slashdot crowd know this, but it was orbz policy not to stop testing a server when requested, unless requested in writing. If it was requested in writing, then they would stop testing the server and list them in orbz as an open relay.
So, as an administrator you had the choice between being tested and being blacklisted even if your server had never relayed a single piece of mail. It was also typical of users of orbz to submit every ip address of every mail server they received mail from regardless of it being spam or not. This was encouraged by the orbz administrator. I'm assuming that this policy, in combination with the fact that the testing caused Denial of Service for certain users might be what caused this suit. If you know you are causing a Denial of Service problem and you don't stop especially if you are requested to do so, I'd suspect that is actionable. Ian's inflexibility as to the policy of either testing (and putting up with the DoS if you were a Notes user) or being blacklisted seems like a bad idea if you rephrase it like "Either you let me crash your server or I'll blacklist you", which might be what the people on the other side are thinking.
Again. This is just my guess. I'm really interested in seeing the facts come to light in relation to this. I suspect that the fact that there was a fix available might be a way out for Ian, but I'll be watching with interest.
Slashdot Mirror
The recommendation basically states that NASA must inspect the leading edge material better than they have doing - which up to now is basically go out and look at it and also tap on it to see if it "sounds" sound. NASA is apparently looking at CAT scans and/or some sort of XRAY technology to look for hidden faults.
Now as far as imagery goes, I think you might be right in that in a lot of cases if you have something wrong with the heat shield system there is very little you can do on orbit today. I do know NASA is reevaluating the option of flying some sort of heat shield repair kit.
This page is also a great location to set the browser home page to on computers in schools and other similar locations where the kids are likely to be the primary computer user.
All you need are the following:
1) 25 PIN MALE DB Connector (like would plug into the parallel port) - OR, probably easier, grab like a 6' or longer 25pin Parallel Printer or extension cable and chomp the end which doesn't plug into the computer off.
2) 8 superbright leds.
3) 8 10K resistors.
4) 8 2N2222 or other NPN transistors (Just go to radio shack and get a bulk package of "NPN switchint ransistors")
5) 8 "smaller" resistors. Like roughly 500 ohm, but be prepared to experiment with the value. Lower value=brighter, but if you go too low you will burn out the LED. There *IS* a formula for the smallest permitted value. I won't go into that here.
6) Perfboard to put it all on
7) 9 or 12V DC wall-mount supply (or similar).
A little background:
The parallel port on the PC has 8 outputs, on pins 2-9 of the 25 pin connector. The ground for these are on pins 18-25.
You can technically get away with just wiring the led directly to an output port, then to a resistor which then connects to the ground. Google for "parallel port led"
However, it is likely that you will need more current than the parallel port will provide. For this you can use a transistor to act as a solid state switch.
Here's a description of the schematic:
For each output pin:
1) Wire the output pin on the parallel port to one side of a 10K resistor.
2) Wire the other side of the 10K resistor to the base pin on the transistor.
3) Wire the emitter pin on the transistor to circuit ground.
4) Wire from the collector pin on the tranmitter to the pin closest to the "flat edge" on the LED.
5) Connect the other LED pin to the "smaller value" resistor.
6) Connect the remaining pin on the "smaller" value resistor to the + wire of the power supply.
ALSO, do the following:
1) Connect the ground pins (18-25) of the parallel port connector to the "circuit ground" mentioned above.
2) Connect the "-" wire of the power supply to the "circuit ground".
You can test this before plugging into the computer by plugging the DC adapter in and then jumpering between the + wire of the power supply and each output pin on the cable you are going to plug into the computer. The corresponding LED should light.
I'd recommend just doing the first led first to make sure everything works.
NOTE: YOU CAN BLOW OUT THE COMPUTER PORT IF YOU DO THIS WRONG. I HAVE NOT CHECKED THE ABOVE DESCRIPTION SO IT MIGHT BE WRONG AND MAY CAUSE THIS EVEN IF YOU FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS EXACTLY.
If you need more LEDS on a given output (like 2 or 3 to get enough light), you can just connect a LED/resistor pair in parallel with the existing one (all of the LEDS are connected to the transistor, all of the resistors are connected to the + power supply connection, and each led is connected to it's own resistor).
You basically drive this by outputting data to the parallel port. You output a single byte at a time - the most recent byte is what the leds are set to on or off.
If you want to vary the brightness of the LED's you can actually do it by turning them on and off quickly in software. A simple timing loop which have the leds on 50% of the time would result in the leds being 50% dimmer than if they were just left on. Of course you have to do this fast enough so they don't "flicker" or blink.
I completely understand the reason why those clocks which use the 60hz (or 50Hz) AC as a timebase go slower. It only makes sense..
But could someone please explain to me how reducing the frequency of an electrical grid provides more power to the grid, assuming nothing else has changed? The article says they reduced the frequency to ensure they had enough power.... This kinda stuck my brain in an "Error does not compute" endless loop...
In the US at least, the powerline frequency is actually a function of how fast the generators are turning in the power plants - specifically 3600 RPM which comes out to 60 Revs/Sec or 60 Hz. The way I understand the article is that spinning the generators SLOWER results in more power? For some reason this seems counter-intuitive to me. What am I missing?
Not exactly a factory, but I highly recommend touring EBR-I (Experimental Breeder Reactor I) if you are anywhere near the INEEL Facility in Idaho. This is the coolest facility I've toured *ever*. For those of you who don't know, this is the place where electricity was first generated by nuclear power.
The reason that junk Faxes are against the law is because of the problems people were having with coming to work and finding a $50 roll of thermal fax paper spewed from their fax machines covered with nothing but essentially the content of most spam we're seeing today. This is a very real cost that you can put a figure on, and very definately was more expensive for the recipient to deal with. I remember hearing some stories of fax machines being tied up for hours with junk faxes.
The problem with spam is that it is hard to put a measurable cost on it, at least for the couple that the average joe gets a day. Plus, regulation in the US will just move the problem overseas in a lot of cases.
That said, I'm convinced that there is a very real cost to spam. I run spamassassin and literally get 200-300 spam messages in my spam folder every day, plus another 20-30 or so which spamassassin didn't catch. Conversely, I get about 20 legitimate emails a day.
On the mail server for the ISP I am the sysadmin for, spamassassin tags 75% of the messages we recieve as spam. We just spent $4000 buying hardware for our new mail server. If we had 25% of the load, we could have probably gotten away with a $1000 mail server instead.
Not to mention the times that a spammer decides to dump 10,000 messages on us within a 1/2 hour taking our mail server down to a crawl.
I'm hard pressed to come up with a workable, implementable solution which has any chance of working long term. Legislation has its problems. Technical solutions are a loosing battle on the filtering front. Economic solutions with advocate micropayments or similar (hashcash, etc) need to reach some sort of critical mass before they will help - but noone wants to implement them until they will. And so on.
There *has* to be a solution to this problem out there that someone hasn't come up with yet (or at least hasn't publicised properly).
The teacher couldn't find an appropriately sized beaker or test tube so she used a chemistry bottle - I.E. one with a narrow neck.
She put powdered sugar in the bottom and poured the sulphuric acid in, and everything went as planned, until the carbon compressed in the narrow neck and got stuck - forming a plug.
Of course, the reaction was still going on in the bottom of the bottle - creating pressure along with additional carbon. Eventually the pressure built up enough to blow the previously-stuck carbon out, all over the ceiling and the front row of tables. Fortunately, noone got covered with hot acid.
Last time I was in that room I could *still* see the melted part of the fluorescent light fixture which was right above the expiriment (They replaced the blackened ceiling tile). I also remember that all year we'd get a chuckle whenever someone who was on that front row would open their science notebook and see a burnt hole in the middle of their pages.
Yes, I'd say that was a good learning experience... :)
Almost instant (like 10 minute) issuance.
Trusted by 99% or so of in-use browsers (IE>=5.0, Netscape>=4.x, AOL>=5, Opera>=5).
Works great. Highly recommended.
Note: I haven't seen a cleanflicks film but have heard about them from others who have. Please read the following accordingly.
Clean Flicks takes a video owned by their customer, cuts a few specific chunks out of it, splices it back together (minus the chunks) and gives it back to the customer.
There has been no duplication of the video. In fact, the video has been legally purchased from a legal source. The only modification was the removal of the material, and perhaps a sticker stuck on the front of the tape to say "hey this isn't the full version, we've removed some stuff from it".
I can understand why a director might not like people messing with the content of their movies. What I don't understand is what leg the copyright holders think they have to stand on. If I buy a video and decide to cut chunks out of it before I watch it what business is it of the directors? Similarly, if I want to pay someone else to cut chunks out of it, again, what business is it of the directors?
I could possibly understand the complaint if CleanFlicks were marketing these as the uncut, unedited versions, but they aren't. In fact, they are being very up front about what they are doing. The cutting service is what they are in fact selling, not the videos themselves.
Personally, I think the studios/directors/etc. have brought this on themselves. Back when DVD's first were coming out, part of the selling points was that movie studios could release multiple copies of a movie on a DVD, say a edited-for-tv version and a regular version.
Where are the edited-for-tv versions? There are a LOT of movies I would buy if I could purchase a copy on DVD which was somewhat cleaned up. I'm sorry, I just don't need to see or hear some of the images and/or language which hollywood seems to feel they need to put in movies (I get enough of that reading slashdot).
Technically, providing a cleaned up version alongside the full version on a DVD shouldn't be a big issue. Putting a edited-for-tv soundtrack on a disk as an additional language track alongside the commentaries and the half-dozen languages wouldn't be a big thing space-wise. Likewise, I suspect that setting up some sort of automatic "play only these scenes" when in "edited" mode should be doable, although I'm not a DVD mastering expert.
Note that I'm not trying to say that noone should watch these things. What I am saying is that I would like to have a choice over whether I watch a complete, unedited version, or say a complete version but without every other word being something you wouldn't say in mixed company, or even a "hacked up for TV" version that I might dare recommend a family watch with their kids.
The only two options the studios have provided for me today is to watch the movie or to not watch the movie. Cleanflicks is trying to provide a third option for those who want it. If the studios would have provided this option via DVD or some other technology, CleanFlicks probably wouldn't even exist.
I also would submit that a lot of the people that buy movies from CleanFlicks probably wouldn't buy the same movies if they weren't edited for content. As a result, I suspect that CleanFlicks is probably *improving* the bottom line cash-wise for the directors and for the studios. How can this be a bad thing?
Although all of us know how it works in concept, it isn't an obvious thing to come up with. Someone had to come up with the idea and do testing. I suspect they have to syncronize a flash behind each frame with the train so you don't just end up with a blur, etc. etc. etc.
*This* is what the patent system was invented for, not for use by people to protect their "I think I'll write a program to do X which is almost like everything else you've ever seen before".
How exactly is this supposed to help when the car is not in operation? The poster above obviously doesn't live in a very cold climate.
I live in Montana. It's not unheard of (or even unexpected) to have a week of weather where we don't get above zero (Farenheight) during the winter. I remember one winter where I had a half inch of ice accumulation on the floor under the driver's feet because of the snow being tracked in and then not being able to get the car hot enough to melt it during the short drive to work each day.
-40 F is not uncommon to see during the winter months.
At that temperature, things don't like to work at all.
That said, if it were me, I'd probably just try it and see if I had any problems. If I had cold-related problems, I might consider adding some sort of very small resistive heater to the case and hook it up so when I plug in the block heater in, it also turns on.
I'm the tech guy for a Wireless ISP, and when we mount equipment outside, we generally will buy a box with a small resistive heater element and a thermostat in it to turn it on when the box gets below 50-60 or so.
I of course don't know about the original poster's actual implementation.
I'm making the assumption timeclocks themselves are very lightweight (or thin) devices, CPU and memory wise.
The problem with TCP for a truly embedded application is that you have to play a lot of keep-state programming to implement even a minimal TCP stack.
A minimal UDP stack is much smaller. Everything you need to do with UDP is rather stateless.
Ignoring ARP and ICMP for a second (which is the same for TCP and UDP), sending a single message via UDP consists of encapsulating the packet and sending it. With TCP you have to send a SYN, then wait for a SYN-ACK, then send an ACK back (possibly containing data), and then you have to deal with closing the connection.
Maybe a better way to describe this is that UDP is a DATAGRAM protocol. I.E. you format a datagram and send it. By contrast TCP is designed for a mostly-reliable almost-serial-like stream, with congestion control, retransmission, etc. etc.
I was going to try to make a case for TCP in the timeclock example where a larger machine is available. I just can't see a good reason for the TCP overhead in this app. I mean, what exactly are they going to be sending... Something like "Employee 308 clock in", which the server is going to say "Got it, employee 308"?
If you haven't written low-level embedded networking code you really don't realize how much overhead is in TCP. Heck, just to get a TCP session set up and torn down you need 7 packets:
--> SYN
<-- SYN-ACK
--> ACK
(Session Established)
<-- FIN
--> ACK
--> FIN
<-- ACK
With UDP you only need 2 (1 each way) to send your message and get it acknowdged.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of TCP in the right places. Any message over the ~1400-1500 MTU size of a UDP packet should probably be sent via TCP.
Almost every computer installation is going to produce heat. A lot of heat.
Typical HVAC people don't understand this for some reason. They look at the square footage and then do some calculations for how many BTU's they think they will need. I've several times in projects asked "you are aware that we're going to have a lot of computers in here and we need a LOT of cooling and almost no heating (if not even some cooling) in the winter.". In at least a couple of cases I got an answer of "oh yeah, we do this all the time", and then they proceeded to install a system obviously not engineered for our application. I.E. undersized during the summer, and no cooling (heating only) during the winter.
Even a typical 75W average 1U server throws 250 BTU/hr. A rack with ~40 of these is 10,000 BTU/hr. This is enough BTU's to raise the temp in a well-insulated 12x12 room 40 degrees or so. Try putting 5 racks in.
For reference, a typical 120V window mount air conditioner is typically under 12,000 BTU's.
At some point you don't have to heat during the winter - just cool year round.
And in case I didn't mention this strongly enough to start with. Most HVAC contractors just don't get it. Make sure you get one that does.
I have an RCA eBook. I'm starting to get to the point where I prefer to read via the ebook vs paper. The reasons?
* The ebook is readable in bed without any external light to disturb my significant other.
* I can read the hundreds (if not thousands) of books available for free on the internet from project Gutenberg and the like.
* I can load up 72MB worth of ebooks into the unit and as a result, not have to worry about not having something to read.
* It has a dictionary built in which is very helpful when you come across that word you go "what the heck is a ....."? You just click on lookup and then the word.
* Although I haven't used it this way, you can do notes and annotations into the ebooks.
On the battery issue, I chose the REB1100 because it has 20-40 hours of battery life. I think that 20-40 is conservative.
I saw someone else mention that color was needed. Although I can think of some cases where color would be nice (biology texbooks, art textbooks, etc.), for "paperback" reading, give me a good readable monochrome screen any day.
The main gripes I have are related to the slightly flaky usb support, the lack of a slightly dimmer backlight selection (20% is too bright for reading with the lights off at night), and the @#*$ publishers which think that they can sell an encrypted ebook usable only on this device (which might have a couple of year lifetime) at the same price that a paperback (which I can loan and share and keep) sells for.
On that last point, I will say that there are some publishers out there that have figured out that encryption is not good. In fact baen books have figured out that giving away books is a good way to improve sales, even of the books you are giving away!
I really think that quite a few of the naysayers out there about the ebooks haven't had one to play with.
No,
attempting
to read
a book on
a palmpilot
doesn't count.
You need
a big enough
screen
to be
able to
get more
than two
readable
words on
a line.
Having a decent number of words-per-line and page is a good thing. It also helps if you have enough resolution to set a serif font which is easier to read. The other thing is that the REB has done well is to be ergonomically designed so that the page advance button is right under your thumb when you hold it. This is the other major problem when trying to use a palmpilot as a comparison - the advance buttons are definately not under your thumb when you hold it in a comfortable reading position.
On the device mentioned in the article, it looks like this screen helps increase the viewable area. If this is the case, then I think it will definately be an improvement. I'm not sure about the color though - except I do recall from my early computer days that green was somehow determined to be easier on your eyes than white. Perhaps someone else can come up with a reference.
I think the first thing we've got do do is to change our election system to something else where people can really vote their conscience instead of people voting such that "their vote can count".
A Pebble in the Sky is out of print. I couldn't buy it new if I wanted to.
Let me tell you what I would like. I would like to be able to go to the authors site and buy a copy of an ebook directly from them without paying a publisher. I think that a lot of the publishers in this country are as bad as the RIAA as far as exploiting authors. I want to be able to buy in such a way as to have the majority of my funds go to the author of the book.
But I digress. Back on the subject: In this specific situation, I don't see any option other than to buy used. In fact, the original poster said "I would have read it but I can't find a copy to read".
One more point. In the US, as far as I know (and I've been around quite a few libraries in roles other than a patron), there are no royalties paid to authors. In fact, in a lot of cases a not insignificant portion of the library's collection consist of "used" donated books which someone has purchased, read and then donated.
I was pleasantly surprised to see the Libertarian Party release a press release entitled "New copyright protection bill would turn government into entertainment 'rent-a-cop'" talking about the CBDTPA, and basically pounding a million holes in it, in typical libertarian-style.
I just noticed that the party is also yelling about the campaign finance reform law. Cool.
If you're seriously upset about the way that government is being run and the laws that are being passed, by all means get involved. The only way we're going to win this is by getting the people passing these laws out of office. Take an active stance on issues. Let you congressmen know how you feel. Consider running for office yourself (yes you can do that) or helping with a campaign, even if it just a local office or state senator/representative, etc..
Personally, I've found that the Libertarian party is the closest to how I do about the way things should be run - specifically that the government should keep their noses out of our lives. Their views may or may not be in line with yours. Do some research and figure out where you feel you're making a contribution. But get involved. If all you do is gripe on slashdot every once in a while you're not making an impact.
You're correct about the models not necessarily being reversable - meaning that you can't predict history from the future. However, the correct method of verifying a simulation as correct is to verify the simulation results against known data. In the article, where it talks about the Anasazi, they describe writing the simulation and then letting it run through they years that they have data about the Anasazi (where the villiages are, the water availability, etc) and comparing it to reality. As described, they got quite close to reality. Villiages ending up in the same spot as reality over 50% of the time, etc. etc. etc.. Remember, it is very hard to determine the cause (or stimulus) from the effect without additional data. However, if the cause (stimulus) is known, the effect is usually fairly easy to guess.
If we were to try to build a model of today's history, you would want to build the model, seed it like the world was in the 1700's or earlier and let it run, and see how often it ended up correct. If it wasn't quite accurate, figure out where your model is wrong, fix, and repeat.
In the Asimov stories, what Hari Seldon was doing was to come up with a set of "formulas" (stored in the prime radiant) which accurately simulated history. The more accurate the formulas and the data you have, the more correct you are going to be. Hari and the members of the Foundation were constantly working on tweaks to better account for errors in the simulation. The hard part is dealing with the truly random influences. For instance, in the article when they talked about the Anasazi, they used real weather data instead of simulating it. I suspect if the weather data was simulated, the simulation would not have been as accurate on a year-to-year basis, although if the weather simulation was realistic enough I suspect that the outcome would have been similar.
Thinking back about Psychohistory as put forward by Asimov, I think that the only thing which really stretches for me is the accuracy (within a few months) of the events which he predicted-- taking into account the numerous variables which have such a rare occurance (such as an asteroid hitting a planet wiping everything out, or another major random event), that it would be throw the accuracy of small-scale events off. It seems logical that you can be accurate on a large scale on a simulation (over many thousands of years) or on a small scale (over a hundred years or so), but not both with the same simulation.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0345335635
It is quite a good story, actually.
(We won't mention that Driving Schools would very definately be listed prior to Pizza places, instead we'll assume you meant something like ZZZippy Ron's Driving School).
In the yellow pages you're right and your wrong.
In a category such as "Driving Schools", there are two independent pieces - the listings and the display ads. The Listings are usually in alphabetical order, sometimes by city. (Although I suspect some telephone directory publisher has at some point offered a premium "top of category" listing - but ignore that for a minute). Now the display ads in most directories are in order from largest to smallest. If you're the biggest ad in the section, you get first running in the section, or sometimes the choice of where you run. If you're the next biggest, you get second choice, etc.
Take a look at the display ads and note that they are most definately not in alphabetical order. Occasionally, you'll find a publisher will try to keep a smaller ad on the same page as the listing - but quite often not.
I think the key here is that there are definately pay per placement "prior arts". There are also definately prior arts related to almost anything computer related. The question here is whether the combination of using the "pay per placement" prior art with the "buy a keyword" prior art is both unique enought to be a valid patent, and also whether google's implentation differs enough from the overture prior art to require google to pay royalties to overture.
If you purchase keywords on overture and are one of the top 3 bidders, you appear on all the sites they listed including Netscape. I can confirm this as I have a couple of listings online w/overture. They do appear on the netscape page in the section "Partner Search Results". (I also buy space on google.)
I believe the results below are the google results. The Google results do not have any advertisement content in them.
So, when overture says "when you buy space here, you get on x and x and x and x, but if you buy space at google you only get on google", they are exactly correct.
Try looking at the url on the "partner search results" on netscape.
We've also come up with a certain number of phrases to accurately describe certain customers. "Chronic Clue Vacuum Disease" is when they just plain can't get it even though you explain it to them a thousand times. "PEBKAC" is an acronym we use for "Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair" (you figure it out). And so on. Our latest is "Twelve o'clock flasher" which originated from the piece "Welcome to the Internet Helpdesk" which is available on mp3.com. Trust me, if you've ever dealt with the average internet customer, you want to listen to this and be prepared to be Rolling on the floor laughing.
To try to get back to the original poster's question, we use a CD which some company sells which has all the normal stuff on it - browser, email, etc. There are several companies out there which basically burn a CD with everything on it and have a automatic configurator which configures the customer's computer.
As far as what to support, generally we support all of the common web and email clients, and a couple of other select programs. If you have Netscape, IE, Outlook/Outlook Express, Pegasus mail, etc. we can help. Anything beyond the normal, then the customer is on their own. Generally we'll help to the point of "Ok, both Internet Exporer and Netscape works. I'm not sure why Opera won't work and we don't have that here to walk you through it".
That said, we're probably one of the unusual outfits which will at least try to help you with about any OS and/or software you want to use. We're a FreeBSD shop. The assistant sysadmin runs OpenBSD at home. Linux is probably our biggest hole, but we generally can provide enough information for someone to get Linux to work, and we do have people around who work with linux. Macs are another hole, but again, we can usually help someone through getting one on. And of course (unfortunately) we're well versed with getting Windows Machines on the net.
Makes you wonder how many of these anthems were as a result of some Dilbertism in the workplace... Hmmm.....
Makes me wonder what a non-Y2K compliant mouse pad did at a millisecond past the end of 1999..... Or perhaps even a better question, how many people upgraded their mouse pads for fear of them not working after 1999.
I'm not sure how many of the slashdot crowd know this, but it was orbz policy not to stop testing a server when requested, unless requested in writing. If it was requested in writing, then they would stop testing the server and list them in orbz as an open relay.
So, as an administrator you had the choice between being tested and being blacklisted even if your server had never relayed a single piece of mail. It was also typical of users of orbz to submit every ip address of every mail server they received mail from regardless of it being spam or not. This was encouraged by the orbz administrator. I'm assuming that this policy, in combination with the fact that the testing caused Denial of Service for certain users might be what caused this suit. If you know you are causing a Denial of Service problem and you don't stop especially if you are requested to do so, I'd suspect that is actionable. Ian's inflexibility as to the policy of either testing (and putting up with the DoS if you were a Notes user) or being blacklisted seems like a bad idea if you rephrase it like "Either you let me crash your server or I'll blacklist you", which might be what the people on the other side are thinking.
Again. This is just my guess. I'm really interested in seeing the facts come to light in relation to this. I suspect that the fact that there was a fix available might be a way out for Ian, but I'll be watching with interest.