Broader Linux adoption is a good thing and all, but I really don't see how this one merits to a Slashdot story. Goverment shops switching to Linux in small steps, China's friendly stance and store chain usages are all old news.
Recent story with the frontpage article in Washington Post about Spanish goverment offices that started mass conversion of 100 000 PCs to Linux was news. This one isn't.
I wonder how the laser could do this. This is indeed the most technicaly challenging part of the task. I visit military exhibitions regularly but I never heard of a system that could work against targets of that size (projectile). Even tracking rockets is very difficult and they're way bigger and emit a lot of detectable heat.
My guess is that in their setup the targeting system knew from where exactly the gun fired. In a real-life war this is usually not the case. So until the tracking is reliable (and not easily fooled), this sounds entirely vaporware.
Casemod stories need their own icon
on
Case Mod Collection
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
So I can finally disable them.
Not that I find them entirely stupid, but it's a bit like if music news site reported new musicans' hairdos: funny for one time or two, but childish and boring if done on a regular basis.
If you think SPARC laptop is weird, Tadpole done an HP-UX laptop earlier. It's called PrecisionBook, runs on 160MHz PA-7300LC RISC CPU and is pretty featureful.
No, absolutely not. The fan in a PC PSU doesn't cool the transformer. It cools the transistor that raises frequency of the source current, so you can make the transformer smaller and lighter (and cheaper).
In my country (Russia) the voltage of public electrical network has been raised twice (from 127V to 220V) some decades ago. 220V to 127V transformers very in every home to power older equipment. Such a transformer - 1500 Watts, about half a bigger than an ATX PSU - was barely warm at full load.
But with today's technology the more complex high-frequency design is a lot cheaper, I guess.
CPUs and cases without fans are not very rare among brandname boxes (Compaq, for example), but I've yet to see a fanless PC PSU.
Is it really that hard make? I don't mind it to be heavier or more expensive - the reliability (no moving parts) and noise level are much more important in a lot of cases (pun intended:)
I was thinking about building one myself: old-style with a huge transformer, but then I heard that some powerful ATX PSUs can have their fans disconnected under reduced load. Can anyone clarify?
As Grechko - a famous Russian cosmonaut, said in his interview, the primary reason for not sending a manned moon mission was lack of perspective: "OK, we'll get there, what then?". It would be roughly as expensive as building an orbital station - which proven to be a good choice (much better, I think).
At the time, Shuttle was the only technology to bring stuff (read: enemy satellites) back to Earth. If not mlilitary reasons, Buran would never be built - just because of its the cost.
Technically, Buran was far superior (it was designed much later), yet not enough economically effective to survive in the new times.
BTW, in 70s, one Russian scientist did a research that showed a real possibility of Shuttle dropping an atomic bomb from a very low orbit. This triggered some significant changes in our defence structures.
Quite a while ago Microsoft released a nice patch called 'Outlook security update' for Outlook 2000 that recognized and blocked any executable code. This was a true sysadmin's relief: once you have it on users' machines, you're safe as it just couldn't be turned off. But you needed an SR1 service pack for MS Office installed to apply it. And once Office XP was out, the SR1 magically disappeared from Microsoft's download section.
The very good thing about working half-time is that you can actually grow professionally FASTER and in a DIRECTION YOU WANT. Just because you have time to learn and explore new things you don't normally have at work.
After working for a while in support and system administration, I realized that it's not for me, and got excited about building database-driven websites. I couldn't count on a developer's position in a company of the same level and with comparable pay, so I took part-time and started to develop for a non-profit but popular project, doing a lot of learning.
Several months later, as I gained more experience and stuff done, I was able to get another part-time job as a web-developer for a fairly known site, with good pay (from the hr/$ point of view), while keeping my support/sysadming position.
Now I'm planning to finally stop doing support stuff and just do web development for most of my time, which I really enjoy. It seems, migration couldn't go smoother.
How about Creative Nomad Jukebox?
on
MP3 Recorders?
·
· Score: 1
http://www.nomadworld.com/products/jukebox/
This thing is able to record to WAV files on internal HDD (6G, upgradeble to 20G), and has various quality settings (sapmle rate, bits per sample), so the file size can be much reduced if you care about space more than quality.
The only major low point is battery life (it would eat 4 AAs in about 3 hours or less). But it takes in 12V DC, so if I were him, I'd supplement it with something like small lead-acid battery (like one used in motorcycles) - and sure it'd handle all-night field recording sessions with no problem.
Internal employees must have less brutal ways to copy the information than stealing laptops, not to mention the CDs. But if it was a low-paid guard or janitor...
As it has been previously noted on Slashdot, Zvezda has a SPARC and NASA modules have 386. Can't tell much about NASA systems, but the Russian company MCST, which supplies SPARC systems for space and military needs, works closely with Sun and maintains SunOS source code. So on Zvezda it's probably some adapted version of SunOS. And on NASA I guess a QNX system. Can anyone clarify?
Tairan, you're absolutely right. Baikonur is now in another country - Kazakhstan, and is leased to Russia. We have our own launching facilities at Plesetsk and Kapustin Yar, which have been used quite heavily, even in Soviet era, when Baikonur was in the same country. I can't tell you exactly why Zvezda was launched from Kazakhstan, but very probably this is because Baikonur is much better located for the orbit Zvezda has to be put on.
I remember reading a book on cell communication where following problem with usage in airplaines has been mentioned. When a mobile phone moves from an area served with one base station ("tower") to another, a rather complex operation of passing control is accomplished, called "handover". It may be handled OK at the speed of a car, but at 1000Mph it can screw the cell service systems up, especially older analog ones.
1. This can't be a general way of communication for subs because it's not applicabe in when the sea is covered with ice. 2. In any other case, why not to release some small radio rx/tx unit from the sub, connected with a strong cord, flowing on the surface or flying in the air? It can even be a sattellite communication, which is hardly trackable.
P.S. There've been registered cases of ultrasonic underwater communication up to 1000 miles, so detection is is more than easy. Ultrasonic data transmition is also an old news.
Slashdot Mirror
Broader Linux adoption is a good thing and all, but I really don't see how this one merits to a Slashdot story. Goverment shops switching to Linux in small steps, China's friendly stance and store chain usages are all old news.
Recent story with the frontpage article in Washington Post about Spanish goverment offices that started mass conversion of 100 000 PCs to Linux was news. This one isn't.
I bet future missiles will detect the lasers and take evasive action.
I wonder how the laser could do this. This is indeed the most technicaly challenging part of the task. I visit military exhibitions regularly but I never heard of a system that could work against targets of that size (projectile). Even tracking rockets is very difficult and they're way bigger and emit a lot of detectable heat.
My guess is that in their setup the targeting system knew from where exactly the gun fired. In a real-life war this is usually not the case. So until the tracking is reliable (and not easily fooled), this sounds entirely vaporware.
So I can finally disable them.
Not that I find them entirely stupid, but it's a bit like if music news site reported new musicans' hairdos: funny for one time or two, but childish and boring if done on a regular basis.
If you think SPARC laptop is weird, Tadpole done an HP-UX laptop earlier. It's called PrecisionBook, runs on 160MHz PA-7300LC RISC CPU and is pretty featureful.
;(
Too bad Ebay search for it yilded no results
No, absolutely not. The fan in a PC PSU doesn't cool the transformer. It cools the transistor that raises frequency of the source current, so you can make the transformer smaller and lighter (and cheaper).
In my country (Russia) the voltage of public electrical network has been raised twice (from 127V to 220V) some decades ago. 220V to 127V transformers very in every home to power older equipment. Such a transformer - 1500 Watts, about half a bigger than an ATX PSU - was barely warm at full load.
But with today's technology the more complex high-frequency design is a lot cheaper, I guess.
CPUs and cases without fans are not very rare among brandname boxes (Compaq, for example), but I've yet to see a fanless PC PSU.
:)
Is it really that hard make? I don't mind it to be heavier or more expensive - the reliability (no moving parts) and noise level are much more important in a lot of cases (pun intended
I was thinking about building one myself: old-style with a huge transformer, but then I heard that some powerful ATX PSUs can have their fans disconnected under reduced load. Can anyone clarify?
They weren't doing it in Russia. While they were physically in Russia, this is not where the action has taken place.
It's quite common to search for a docunment from which you memorize an exact, particular phrase.
Expanding your query with synonyms isn't a big problem for search engine and somewhere I remember seeing such a feature.
And in Russian, we call it little differently: 'papa' and 'mama' ;)
As Grechko - a famous Russian cosmonaut, said in his interview, the primary reason for not sending a manned moon mission was lack of perspective: "OK, we'll get there, what then?". It would be roughly as expensive as building an orbital station - which proven to be a good choice (much better, I think).
At the time, Shuttle was the only technology to bring stuff (read: enemy satellites) back to Earth. If not mlilitary reasons, Buran would never be built - just because of its the cost.
Technically, Buran was far superior (it was designed much later), yet not enough economically effective to survive in the new times.
BTW, in 70s, one Russian scientist did a research that showed a real possibility of Shuttle dropping an atomic bomb from a very low orbit. This triggered some significant changes in our defence structures.
Quite a while ago Microsoft released a nice patch called 'Outlook security update' for Outlook 2000 that recognized and blocked any executable code. This was a true sysadmin's relief: once you have it on users' machines, you're safe as it just couldn't be turned off. But you needed an SR1 service pack for MS Office installed to apply it. And once Office XP was out, the SR1 magically disappeared from Microsoft's download section.
The very good thing about working half-time is that you can actually grow professionally FASTER and in a DIRECTION YOU WANT. Just because you have time to learn and explore new things you don't normally have at work.
After working for a while in support and system administration, I realized that it's not for me, and got excited about building database-driven websites. I couldn't count on a developer's position in a company of the same level and with comparable pay, so I took part-time and started to develop for a non-profit but popular project, doing a lot of learning.
Several months later, as I gained more experience and stuff done, I was able to get another part-time job as a web-developer for a fairly known site, with good pay (from the hr/$ point of view), while keeping my support/sysadming position.
Now I'm planning to finally stop doing support stuff and just do web development for most of my time, which I really enjoy. It seems, migration couldn't go smoother.
http://www.nomadworld.com/products/jukebox/
This thing is able to record to WAV files on internal HDD (6G, upgradeble to 20G), and has various quality settings (sapmle rate, bits per sample), so the file size can be much reduced if you care about space more than quality.
The only major low point is battery life (it would eat 4 AAs in about 3 hours or less). But it takes in 12V DC, so if I were him, I'd supplement it with something like small lead-acid battery (like one used in motorcycles) - and sure it'd handle all-night field recording sessions with no problem.
I own this thing and it really rocks.
Internal employees must have less brutal ways to copy the information than stealing laptops, not to mention the CDs. But if it was a low-paid guard or janitor...
As it has been previously noted on Slashdot, Zvezda has a SPARC and NASA modules have 386. Can't tell much about NASA systems, but the Russian company MCST, which supplies SPARC systems for space and military needs, works closely with Sun and maintains SunOS source code. So on Zvezda it's probably some adapted version of SunOS. And on NASA I guess a QNX system. Can anyone clarify?
Everything you wanted to know on Russian space program, but were afraid to ask :)
BTW, in Russian 'star' means old. There're even famous anekdote based on this play of words. Naming has always been a problem :)
Tairan, you're absolutely right. Baikonur is now in another country - Kazakhstan, and is leased to Russia. We have our own launching facilities at Plesetsk and Kapustin Yar, which have been used quite heavily, even in Soviet era, when Baikonur was in the same country. I can't tell you exactly why Zvezda was launched from Kazakhstan, but very probably this is because Baikonur is much better located for the orbit Zvezda has to be put on.
I'd love to see that some sport competition! How about, say, motorized soccer?
I remember reading a book on cell communication where following problem with usage in airplaines has been mentioned.
When a mobile phone moves from an area served with one base station ("tower") to another, a rather complex operation of passing control is accomplished, called "handover". It may be handled OK at the speed of a car, but at 1000Mph it can screw the cell service systems up, especially older analog ones.
2. In any other case, why not to release some small radio rx/tx unit from the sub, connected with a strong cord, flowing on the surface or flying in the air? It can even be a sattellite communication, which is hardly trackable.
P.S. There've been registered cases of ultrasonic underwater communication up to 1000 miles, so detection is is more than easy. Ultrasonic data transmition is also an old news.