Two wee flies in the ointment here. First off, it is not useful to be able to target your weapons on an unidentified foe, especially if they turn out not to be foe.
Second, while all this close-range dogfight stuff is all very well, most modern AAM-type weapons are designed to be fired with a stand-off distance that renders the target virtually invisible to the naked eye. So you might have trouble aiming by looking at it.
I've only seen one reference to Waba here, and none to SuperWaba or EWE. These are both Waba/Java derivatives, with SuperWaba in particular being a practical development tool for the Palm. EWE is apparently a variant for the WinCE platform, but I've not been there.
The maintainers of SuperWaba and EWE have got together and agreed on bridging code and hopefully eventual merging. Then once more code will run on Palm and WinCE platforms unchanged.
Why go to all this trouble? Size & speed. Waba drops much of the crud that is irrelevant on PDA-sized devices, and has a very, very tight VM in terms of code size and speed. It is a Java subset, so if your app runs out of poke you can try switching it to real Java - if you have the hardware resources on the device. It even runs in a browser and there's a demo on the homepage.
And yes, people are writing apps for it. There is even support software like app builders for those who don't use Jbuilder etc., tutorials, documentation yada yada.
A program called "Bored of The Rings" was produced for the BBC, Spectrum and Amstrad home computers many moons ago by Tolkien Games. These days it can be downloaded for emulators from here.
Oh, they did the real Tolkien Trilogy too, which can be downloaded separately via links from here. I just prefered the spoof.
I wanna built-in barcode scanner with no wires to tangle. I don't care whether it's software for the camera, CCD or laser. Every damn thing I buy except fresh fruit has a barcode on it. My receipt now has a barcode on it. I want to be able to scan the things and automate my shopping list. Sad, eh?
Vik:v)
Not all members-only [was Re:A few links]
on
Mining On The Moon
·
· Score: 3
Only some of the site is members-only. Much of it is still free to all, as is the main Artemis discussion list, the Moon Society site and the space news pages thereon.
If you've got a better idea on how to entice people into paying membership fees, maybe you could suggest it to them:)
Lower power displays than LCDs are already in the labs.
When they make it rechargeable, I'll be impressed. Coupled with some ultra-low power moletronics, this battery could last the next generation of CPU technology and displays all day if not far longer.
Absolutely. And we'll have some nicer tools to play with like 802.11b and Bluetooth. That way your average mug punter won't even need a phoneline - he just uses the card that talks to his digital camera and PDA.
I hope someone is working out the protocols for this. Very few people realise that the wireless Freenet is going to be as big - if not biger than - the internet we know today.
A few years ago, Artemis started a committee called the Microlander Committee to investigate what the smallest possible lander that could be put on the moon was. I know 'cos I asked the original question.
After much work, notably by Paul Blase, this committee acquired considerable aerospace know-how and transformed into TransOribtal.
As an aside, amongst the board members is Dr Richard Van Allen, he who the Van Allen belts are named after and who ran the Pioneer missions for NASA. This ain't no hoax.
The approval has been submitted, but certain aspects of the craft weren't to the regulatory body's liking. In particular, the inflatable sub-satellite was apparently construed as an untethered ICBM decoy.
Here in New Zealand we have Electronic Fund Transfer at Point Of Sale. It looks like a credit card, but it carries out transactions on your bank account in real time. Just about everyone uses them for anything from a car to a bottle of milk at the dairy. No chip, just a PIN and mag stripe.
Simple, effective, had it for years and it works. No need for silicon smart/dumb cards. And yes I can transfer money from my account to someone else's over the phone.
I was there at Wembly, many, many years ago when Public Enemy got booed off stage while playing as support. They tried to calm the crowd by throwing freebies (cigarettes, T-shirts, albums etc.) into the crowd, but the crowd THREW THEM BACK! Exit Public Enemy, stage left, with all haste.
In my personal opinion, they've not improved one iota. This has to be a desperate publicity stunt.
The downside of having GE plants make their own pesitices is that they don't do it very well. The plant expends its energies on making pesticides, and not corn. So the yeild drops. So you need to plant more corn, clear more land, use more water, more agrichemicals...
Oh, and the "natural" pesticide is still in the corn when you harvest it. Bummer.
Vik:v)
Blimps contravein missle treaties!
on
Space Blimps
·
· Score: 2
I have discovered through my work with TransOrbital Inc. on our lunar orbiter due for launch in December that putting an inflatable up is an administrative nightmare. You see, they get classed as deployabe, untethered ICBM decoys due to some short-sighted treaty wording. Daft, eh?
The way around it is for people to use the lowest version number of GLIBC/libSVGA etc. rather than the latest we-are-the-dogs-bollox version shipping on Freshmeat. It never ceases to amaze me how the compilers of distros seem to go out of their way to make the latest version of the code incompatible with the stable version. Take RH6.x for example, when you were hard pushed to find any new software because it was all in V4.0 RPMs whether it needed the V4.0 features to be installed or not! That was only fixed by RH eventually releasing a V4 compatible RH6.x RPM.
check_www is a series of scripts and filters that I created under the GPL last year to automatically advise me of when web pages change, popping up alert boxes and pre-loaded browsers as apropriate. It includes filters to remove unwanted constantly changing information and search for terms. It is available on http://olliver.family.gen.nz/check_www.tgz
Ironically, I was alerted to this article by it.
Vik:v)
I take it a lot of people here haven't seen it yet? It is brutal!
Yes, the losers go home in several storage crates, after the flames have been put out that is. Four large "house robots" see to it that any wussy behaviour, hesitation, or 'bot failure is rewarded by, say, being impaled on a robot-wielded drill, grilled over a flame pit, hoisted overhead for all to see and finally dumped into The Pit Of Oblivion in a cloud of smoke.
There's an open source renderer -Povray - that does better quality output than anything else.
It needs a GPL modeller, and I've put a bit of work into Giram. It's not bad, but it needs more work by better GTK+ programmers than I. Runs on Linux & BSD. Help. Please.
Vik:v)
Re:DNA does not mean genetic - Read before ranting
on
Superconducting DNA
·
· Score: 2
Argh! I must check The Vault! How did they gain access to mein secret Hitler DNA sample?:-P
The exact workings haven't, and don't need to be for the purposes of this rough calculation. We know what a neuron does, and we know how many there are in the brain. We know how hard it is to make an artificial neuron, so we can provide a good guess at how big a molecular scale computing device with the same capabilities could be.
We don't need to worry about specialist areas like quantum computing - I'm only setting an upper limit on size here, based on the AI section in Drexler's "Engines of Creation"
Rememebr that we're talking a very, very small device here. To cool a Pentium chip of several square centimetres area to 1K would take a reasonable amount of machinery, say about 6 filing cabinet drawers worth.
But to do the same to a volume less than 1 cubic millimetre? That could be done inside a desktop case. 1 cubic mm of DNA is a hell of a lot of circuitry. At a molecular scale you can reproduce the functionality of the human brain in a few cc's - if you can keep it cold.
Vik:v)
DNA does not mean genetic - Read before ranting
on
Superconducting DNA
·
· Score: 3
Before people go off on a tangent thinking that DNA here is used as a genetic material, be advised that it is not.
The concept of using DNA for structural purposes is about as different from genetics as using mortar is to building seashells.
The DNA is only sequenced to stick to itself, not to create or emulate any gene. It is quite likely that the "genetic" content of DNA used in this manner is garbage in the genetic context. The prime requirement in fact is that the DNA used for structural purposes will not interact with anything other than the target it is to join to.
Last I heard, Roton had paid Kern County off (see http://www.bakersfield.com/local/Story/264980p-248 599c.html). Then there was a small matter of an additional $775 servicing fee or somesuch, which got tacked on to the bill. As soon as they were told of this, Roton coughed up that too.
So it looks like it's not going down just yet, but the US government will soon launch phase 2 of the "let's keep space a government place" campaign by going after the 2001 taxes. Pricks.
The $150M Roton need to continue wouldn't even pay for the shuttle toilets. At this rate, the first private, reusable spacecraft is going to have cyrillic script on the side.
Slashdot Mirror
Two wee flies in the ointment here. First off, it is not useful to be able to target your weapons on an unidentified foe, especially if they turn out not to be foe.
:v)
Second, while all this close-range dogfight stuff is all very well, most modern AAM-type weapons are designed to be fired with a stand-off distance that renders the target virtually invisible to the naked eye. So you might have trouble aiming by looking at it.
Vik
I've only seen one reference to Waba here, and none to SuperWaba or EWE. These are both Waba/Java derivatives, with SuperWaba in particular being a practical development tool for the Palm. EWE is apparently a variant for the WinCE platform, but I've not been there.
:v)
The maintainers of SuperWaba and EWE have got together and agreed on bridging code and hopefully eventual merging. Then once more code will run on Palm and WinCE platforms unchanged.
Why go to all this trouble? Size & speed. Waba drops much of the crud that is irrelevant on PDA-sized devices, and has a very, very tight VM in terms of code size and speed. It is a Java subset, so if your app runs out of poke you can try switching it to real Java - if you have the hardware resources on the device. It even runs in a browser and there's a demo on the homepage.
And yes, people are writing apps for it. There is even support software like app builders for those who don't use Jbuilder etc., tutorials, documentation yada yada.
Oh, and the VM is Open Source.
Vik
A program called "Bored of The Rings" was produced for the BBC, Spectrum and Amstrad home computers many moons ago by Tolkien Games. These days it can be downloaded for emulators from here.
:v)
Oh, they did the real Tolkien Trilogy too, which can be downloaded separately via links from here. I just prefered the spoof.
Vik
I wanna built-in barcode scanner with no wires to tangle. I don't care whether it's software for the camera, CCD or laser. Every damn thing I buy except fresh fruit has a barcode on it. My receipt now has a barcode on it. I want to be able to scan the things and automate my shopping list. Sad, eh?
:v)
Vik
Only some of the site is members-only. Much of it is still free to all, as is the main Artemis discussion list, the Moon Society site and the space news pages thereon.
:)
:v)
If you've got a better idea on how to entice people into paying membership fees, maybe you could suggest it to them
Vik
Lower power displays than LCDs are already in the labs.
:v)
When they make it rechargeable, I'll be impressed. Coupled with some ultra-low power moletronics, this battery could last the next generation of CPU technology and displays all day if not far longer.
2006 for the protoypes, I reckon...
Vik
Absolutely. And we'll have some nicer tools to play with like 802.11b and Bluetooth. That way your average mug punter won't even need a phoneline - he just uses the card that talks to his digital camera and PDA.
:v)
I hope someone is working out the protocols for this. Very few people realise that the wireless Freenet is going to be as big - if not biger than - the internet we know today.
Vik
A few years ago, Artemis started a committee called the Microlander Committee to investigate what the smallest possible lander that could be put on the moon was. I know 'cos I asked the original question.
:v)
After much work, notably by Paul Blase, this committee acquired considerable aerospace know-how and transformed into TransOribtal.
As an aside, amongst the board members is Dr Richard Van Allen, he who the Van Allen belts are named after and who ran the Pioneer missions for NASA. This ain't no hoax.
Vik
We're going to orbit TraliBlazer over the poles like Clementine & Prospector did. This doesn't really need any more fuel than an equatorial orbit.
:v)
Vik
The approval has been submitted, but certain aspects of the craft weren't to the regulatory body's liking. In particular, the inflatable sub-satellite was apparently construed as an untethered ICBM decoy.
:v)
Bureacracy is even dumber than you think!
Vik
Here in New Zealand we have Electronic Fund Transfer at Point Of Sale. It looks like a credit card, but it carries out transactions on your bank account in real time. Just about everyone uses them for anything from a car to a bottle of milk at the dairy. No chip, just a PIN and mag stripe.
:v)
Simple, effective, had it for years and it works. No need for silicon smart/dumb cards. And yes I can transfer money from my account to someone else's over the phone.
Vik
Vik :v)
I was there at Wembly, many, many years ago when Public Enemy got booed off stage while playing as support. They tried to calm the crowd by throwing freebies (cigarettes, T-shirts, albums etc.) into the crowd, but the crowd THREW THEM BACK! Exit Public Enemy, stage left, with all haste.
:v)
In my personal opinion, they've not improved one iota. This has to be a desperate publicity stunt.
Vik
Oh, and the "natural" pesticide is still in the corn when you harvest it. Bummer.
Vik :v)
I have discovered through my work with TransOrbital Inc. on our lunar orbiter due for launch in December that putting an inflatable up is an administrative nightmare. You see, they get classed as deployabe, untethered ICBM decoys due to some short-sighted treaty wording. Daft, eh?
:v)
Vik
The way around it is for people to use the lowest version number of GLIBC/libSVGA etc. rather than the latest we-are-the-dogs-bollox version shipping on Freshmeat. It never ceases to amaze me how the compilers of distros seem to go out of their way to make the latest version of the code incompatible with the stable version. Take RH6.x for example, when you were hard pushed to find any new software because it was all in V4.0 RPMs whether it needed the V4.0 features to be installed or not! That was only fixed by RH eventually releasing a V4 compatible RH6.x RPM.
:v)
Vik
check_www is a series of scripts and filters that I created under the GPL last year to automatically advise me of when web pages change, popping up alert boxes and pre-loaded browsers as apropriate. It includes filters to remove unwanted constantly changing information and search for terms. It is available on http://olliver.family.gen.nz/check_www.tgz Ironically, I was alerted to this article by it. Vik :v)
Yes, the losers go home in several storage crates, after the flames have been put out that is. Four large "house robots" see to it that any wussy behaviour, hesitation, or 'bot failure is rewarded by, say, being impaled on a robot-wielded drill, grilled over a flame pit, hoisted overhead for all to see and finally dumped into The Pit Of Oblivion in a cloud of smoke.
The taking of prisoners is not permitted.
Vik :v)
It needs a GPL modeller, and I've put a bit of work into Giram. It's not bad, but it needs more work by better GTK+ programmers than I. Runs on Linux & BSD. Help. Please.
Vik :v)
Vik
We don't need to worry about specialist areas like quantum computing - I'm only setting an upper limit on size here, based on the AI section in Drexler's "Engines of Creation"
Vik :v)
Rememebr that we're talking a very, very small device here. To cool a Pentium chip of several square centimetres area to 1K would take a reasonable amount of machinery, say about 6 filing cabinet drawers worth.
:v)
But to do the same to a volume less than 1 cubic millimetre? That could be done inside a desktop case. 1 cubic mm of DNA is a hell of a lot of circuitry. At a molecular scale you can reproduce the functionality of the human brain in a few cc's - if you can keep it cold.
Vik
The concept of using DNA for structural purposes is about as different from genetics as using mortar is to building seashells.
The DNA is only sequenced to stick to itself, not to create or emulate any gene. It is quite likely that the "genetic" content of DNA used in this manner is garbage in the genetic context. The prime requirement in fact is that the DNA used for structural purposes will not interact with anything other than the target it is to join to.
Vik :v)
Just download any DNA PDB file and use pdb2pov on it. Vik :v)
Last I heard, Roton had paid Kern County off (see http://www.bakersfield.com/local/Story/264980p-248 599c.html). Then there was a small matter of an additional $775 servicing fee or somesuch, which got tacked on to the bill. As soon as they were told of this, Roton coughed up that too.
:v)
So it looks like it's not going down just yet, but the US government will soon launch phase 2 of the "let's keep space a government place" campaign by going after the 2001 taxes. Pricks.
The $150M Roton need to continue wouldn't even pay for the shuttle toilets. At this rate, the first private, reusable spacecraft is going to have cyrillic script on the side.
Vik