In reality, the geostationary orbit is relatively unused.
Most activity happens much lower. In fact a lot of activity is in a relatively thin layer, as low as possible while avoiding drag from the athmosphere.
Also , think of the distribution of the space junk as a scaling law. Reducing the size with a factor x increases the number of particles with a factor y. you can make a lot of tiny particles from a cubic inch. Quick guess, to have the same kinetic energy as a bullet(3000km/h), a particle approaching with 60000km/h only needs 1/400th of the weight. To have the same impulse, it's 1/20th.
Lastly, we're not dealing with location but with trajectories. The changes of two particles colliding depend on their relative trajectories. If they are one mile apart and have the same speed, the chances of colliding are small, and the power of collision is small. If they have opposite speed, the chances are much bigger (imagine they cross each other each hour), and the power is much bigger.
For the benefit of the American schoolbooks, I'll try to summarize things on a postcard.
The US was desperate to get involved into WWII,
and was pressing Japan very hard to start a match.
Japan didn't consider themselves up to the full confrontation that was approaching, but maybe they could in one exceptional strike defang the US,and then from that position convince it that each continue to run its own business for the time being.
The strike would use its limited resources very effectively. It would be a delicate piece of art that would live in history(no kidding). That alone made it worthwile.
The US meanwhile needed two kickoffs, one with Japan and one with Germany. Luckily, Germany promised to play any challenger of Japan.
The US were restrained by a no-kickof rule.
It was allowed to do anything to convince others to a match, and it was allowed to do all it wanted during a match, but it was not allowed to kickoff the match.
When the Japanese kicked off the match with their beautiful movement they immediately saw it was not beautiful enough.
The US were surprised by the effectiveness of Japan's first movement, but their precautions limited the damage.
They had their two kickoffs and were now free to act.
The European match was a get-there-first kind of match. Capture as much of Europe as they can before the Russians take it. They did a reasonable job on that.
The match with the Japanese was a matter of where to stop. You don't get it for free, but the longer you go on, the more you capture.
It's indecent to go home with half a prize when you could 've gotten the whole prize. Especially when you consider what you already spent.
At the very last moment they have to really hurry things before Russia takes its share, but then with one last flash, they're home.
I don't think too many high up people got scared when they learned about Hiroshima. It was not tolerated. Real men aren't scared to use them "taboo weapons". And if they see that you're not a real man, you're not going to have a career.
Let's try look for other reasons.
- It was a very crude and indiscriminate weapon, you had to take out a whole city in order to hit a tank. That's a wasteful approach , and hard to defend. Mass carnage is much less acceptable now than it used to be.
- Nukes escalate easily to bigger weapons in retaliation.
- And it's got a plain bad reputation, which interferes with having the moral highground.
Well, as ideas go, it's not a bad start.
Right now , we have two things: proliferation increasing the chance of nuclear conflict, and the new generation of "manageable nukes", which could be used by the US against for example Iran or Syria.
If you take the hydrogen and burn it with air(80% nitrogen 20% oxygen) it will burn satisfactorily, but maybe the light will be too dim. If you take the original hydrogen and oxygen and recombine them, the reaction will be fastest - a tiny bright flame. Apparently they have an 'open air' combustion, but beef it up with part of the oxygen that was generated from the water.
Agreed , the value of the new thingy is that it's a pretty cool heater.
But just to put the umlaut on the i, in a closed system it's pretty hard to have inefficient heating. If the heat is not going out a chimney, yield is 100%. It's just that 30% of the heat is generated while splitting the water in hydrogen and oxygen. If this part of heat generation happens in the same location, there are no losses.
It's a bit of an entropy sin to take electricity to create heat though.
my memory might be off, but first, I thought the radiation that is hardest to shield is gamma radiation.
Because most radiation is coming from a precise direction, it's possible to construct the vessel so that human activity is all on one side. And storage, machinery, everything else is between the astronauts and the sun. So mass that is there anyway gets a second function.
Then, sleeping positions could be optimized. Sleeping in the direction of the sun would decrease the area that receives radiation. Sleeping locations would be places the places with the least radiation. Very local shielding (something the size of a big hat) could reduce the amount of radiation more.
Awake, there could also be a preference to work along the same axis. Places where a lot of time is spent get extra protection, or are placed where there is extra protection. This could be applied to 'room' size, but I'd considers locations the size of a seat.
I wonder what reduction in radiation can be achieved by just clever 'arrangements'. A factor 10? Probably less, but more than a factor 2.
Suppose the printer can steganographically introduce information in the text. It depends on the resolution you can achieve but...
Then you could
- add the id of the printer in decodable form, so that the sales document of the printer can be traced back from the document. Or the sales document of the printing head, depending where you squeeze in the technology.
- or you can add the id of the printer in a non encodable but verifiable form: once you have the printer, you can confirm it did print the document, but you cannot in any way trace back the printer.
- Obviously the information can be lost during all kinds of processing, unless other tools take care to preserve it. Take a copying machine.
- or you can add copyright information to a printed book so that the copying machine afterwards automatically calculates the royalties for copying, and adds extra info to the copy
- the copying machine can detect any kind of classified document or banknote, and flag it
- the copying machine can detect the parental advisory signs and refuse to copy unless you have adult rights
- the copying machine can be used selectively for spying because it detects classified documents and stores them.
- add a pgp signature to the document, signing the printfile, in the print.
Like it or not, there's a feel of peeking in future applications here. How about publicity panels with hidden messages? I'll stop now before it gets too silly.... a replacement for barcodes? What's the difference between that and a barcode? It's fully integrated.
Will further thought rapidly discount these ramblings ? Find out after these messages. Stay with us..
I have a Dell 5150. When I'm compiling, it acts like a cross between a notebook and a hovercraft. Ok, can't get rid of that. But when I'm editing, the CPU is not doing a lot, and when the environment is silent, like at home, it's much nicer if the cooler is not working more than necessary. The bios doesn't handle this well. When I start up, the fan is always running fairly high without reason.
I use a windows tool called i8kfangui to control it. First thing I do when i start is switch on and off fangui to bring down the fan speed.
This (virtual)article looks like a followup interview on a RedHat event mid june, where Fink talked about the possibility to run linux natively(as opposed to virtual). It got some coverage then, eg,
But seriously, Chomsky's facts are ok. And his statements are a lot more subtle than the above. But there are different selections of facts, and there are several ways to interpret the same facts, and he'll stick to one single way till he's solidly proven wrong. Which is not easy, because he's smart and methodical. And, because you're not dealing with hard sciences here. Theories still die with their owners in this part of science.
A simple example. You can conclude that the US has done an awful lot of nasty stuff, in an absolute sense. If you contrast that with the projected public image, that's shocking. But what if you divide this amount by its geopolitical weight? It's a very big player. That doesn't change the facts, but it changes the way you look at them.
I'd phrase the US gov involvement issue with the same cautious consideration.
But if i had to point out which issue is most in need of extra caution, I'd point to the clustering of answers surrounding 9/11 and answers about the aftermath.
- the white house was involved in 9/11 and PATRIOT act is bad.
- White house was not involved in 9/11 and PATRIOT act is acceptable.
- the white house is not explicitly targeting civil liberties and PATRIOT act is acceptable.
- the white house was not involved in 9/11 and they did not use the event to restrict civil liberties and to invade the middle east.
and, well, lots more. The white house lied itself into war, and they went to war for no good reason. The analyst Sam Gardiner approves of Bush's war. Stinnett thought Roosevelt did right.
Now don't jump to conclusions about my conclusions:)
That's a different sector, and I think that means it's ok to use the same name there.
But there are a lot of software packages called 'Vista' out there. I wonder how trademark registration resolves all that. None of the packages are an OS?
While the previous generation got kids so finally someone would be able to program the VCR, women finally wisened up. The VCR got set allright, but to the wrong program. Now the DVR does to this generation what the anticonception pill did to the previous generation. Independence.
The next step is parthenogenesis. Human males are now entering their last century before extinction.
- "where's the cube?" - "hurry up with those cubes!" - "i can't find it." - "next question! I want to win another cookie."
It's easy to say people were late discovering zero, but a neanderthal yelling "where's my !*#&*$?! brontosaurus steak?" (1) sure had a concept of absence of something. The concept of zero is about equations and using location of a digit in a number to indicate increasing amounts.
(1) in comics, it's almost mandatory that dinosaurs and neanderthals live in the same period.
Slashdot Mirror
In reality, the geostationary orbit is relatively unused.
Most activity happens much lower. In fact a lot of activity is in a relatively thin layer, as low as possible while avoiding drag from the athmosphere.
Also , think of the distribution of the space junk as a scaling law. Reducing the size with a factor x increases the number of particles with a factor y. you can make a lot of tiny particles from a cubic inch. Quick guess, to have the same kinetic energy as a bullet(3000km/h), a particle approaching with 60000km/h only needs 1/400th of the weight. To have the same impulse, it's 1/20th.
Lastly, we're not dealing with location but with trajectories. The changes of two particles colliding depend on their relative trajectories. If they are one mile apart and have the same speed, the chances of colliding are small, and the power of collision is small. If they have opposite speed, the chances are much bigger (imagine they cross each other each hour), and the power is much bigger.
The US was desperate to get involved into WWII, and was pressing Japan very hard to start a match. Japan didn't consider themselves up to the full confrontation that was approaching, but maybe they could in one exceptional strike defang the US ,and then from that position convince it that each continue to run its own business for the time being.
The strike would use its limited resources very effectively. It would be a delicate piece of art that would live in history(no kidding). That alone made it worthwile.
The US meanwhile needed two kickoffs, one with Japan and one with Germany. Luckily, Germany promised to play any challenger of Japan.
The US were restrained by a no-kickof rule.
It was allowed to do anything to convince others to a match, and it was allowed to do all it wanted during a match, but it was not allowed to kickoff the match.
When the Japanese kicked off the match with their beautiful movement they immediately saw it was not beautiful enough. The US were surprised by the effectiveness of Japan's first movement, but their precautions limited the damage. They had their two kickoffs and were now free to act.
The European match was a get-there-first kind of match. Capture as much of Europe as they can before the Russians take it. They did a reasonable job on that.
The match with the Japanese was a matter of where to stop. You don't get it for free, but the longer you go on, the more you capture. It's indecent to go home with half a prize when you could 've gotten the whole prize. Especially when you consider what you already spent. At the very last moment they have to really hurry things before Russia takes its share, but then with one last flash, they're home.
And the conquered lived happily ever after.
Still too long. But I've seen worse.
Nice job.
I tend to think the same, but it's useful to create at least one alternative view of history
- US succeeds in creating atomic bomb
- US uses it at the first chance it gets.
- Other countries see the carnage, and in one voice yell "how much for one of those?"
- USSR has atomic bomb by 1949
- US has H-bomb by 1952
- USSR has H-bomb by 1953.
- 1962 US and USSR destroy each other and allies in nuclear war.
17 years, not bad for speed. In reality of course, they got very lucky and survived without a scratch.
I don't think too many high up people got scared when they learned about Hiroshima. It was not tolerated.
Real men aren't scared to use them "taboo weapons".
And if they see that you're not a real man, you're not going to have a career.
Let's try look for other reasons.
- It was a very crude and indiscriminate weapon, you had to take out a whole city in order to hit a tank.
That's a wasteful approach , and hard to defend. Mass carnage is much less acceptable now than it used to be.
- Nukes escalate easily to bigger weapons in retaliation.
- And it's got a plain bad reputation, which interferes with having the moral highground.
Well, as ideas go, it's not a bad start.
Right now , we have two things: proliferation increasing the chance of nuclear conflict, and the new generation of "manageable nukes", which could be used by the US against for example Iran or Syria.
Gojira.
The 1954 movie Gojira,
which became famous in its shorter, neutralized 1956 version as
Godzilla.
what you actually calculated is still relevant.
imagine a box with a flame on top of it. You calculated what part of the heat comes from the flame, and what fraction comes out of the box.
One would prefer a lot of degrees from the flame on top of a cool box, over a box with a lot of degrees, with a little candle on top of it.
enforce a law that puts all people on a methane maximizing diet? Did you think of the health hazards this will bring? Will you still take the subway?
just turn up the heat a bit more and it will dry up again.
No, wait..
If you take the hydrogen and burn it with air(80% nitrogen 20% oxygen) it will burn satisfactorily, but maybe the light will be too dim.
If you take the original hydrogen and oxygen and recombine them, the reaction will be fastest - a tiny bright flame.
Apparently they have an 'open air' combustion, but beef it up with part of the oxygen that was generated from the water.
Agreed , the value of the new thingy is that it's a pretty cool heater.
But just to put the umlaut on the i, in a closed system it's pretty hard to have inefficient heating. If the heat is not going out a chimney, yield is 100%. It's just that 30% of the heat is generated while splitting the water in hydrogen and oxygen. If this part of heat generation happens in the same location, there are no losses.
It's a bit of an entropy sin to take electricity to create heat though.
my memory might be off, but first, I thought the radiation that is hardest to shield is gamma radiation.
Because most radiation is coming from a precise direction, it's possible to construct the vessel so that human activity is all on one side. And storage, machinery, everything else is between the astronauts and the sun. So mass that is there anyway gets a second function.
Then, sleeping positions could be optimized. Sleeping in the direction of the sun would decrease the area that receives radiation. Sleeping locations would be places the places with the least radiation. Very local shielding (something the size of a big hat) could reduce the amount of radiation more.
Awake, there could also be a preference to work along the same axis. Places where a lot of time is spent get extra protection, or are placed where there is extra protection. This could be applied to 'room' size, but I'd considers locations the size of a seat.
I wonder what reduction in radiation can be achieved by just clever 'arrangements'. A factor 10? Probably less, but more than a factor 2.
Suppose the printer can steganographically introduce information in the text. It depends on the resolution you can achieve but...
... a replacement for barcodes? What's the difference between that and a barcode? It's fully integrated.
Then you could
- add the id of the printer in decodable form, so that the sales document of the printer can be traced back from the document. Or the sales document of the printing head, depending where you squeeze in the technology.
- or you can add the id of the printer in a non encodable but verifiable form: once you have the printer, you can confirm it did print the document, but you cannot in any way trace back the printer.
- Obviously the information can be lost during all kinds of processing, unless other tools take care to preserve it. Take a copying machine.
- or you can add copyright information to a printed book so that the copying machine afterwards automatically calculates the royalties for copying, and adds extra info to the copy
- the copying machine can detect any kind of classified document or banknote, and flag it
- the copying machine can detect the parental advisory signs and refuse to copy unless you have adult rights
- the copying machine can be used selectively for spying because it detects classified documents and stores them.
- add a pgp signature to the document, signing the printfile, in the print.
Like it or not, there's a feel of peeking in future applications here. How about publicity panels with hidden messages? I'll stop now before it gets too silly.
Will further thought rapidly discount these ramblings ? Find out after these messages. Stay with us..
It's not a solution, but it improves life:
I have a Dell 5150. When I'm compiling, it acts like a cross between a notebook and a hovercraft. Ok, can't get rid of that. But when I'm editing, the CPU is not doing a lot, and when the environment is silent, like at home, it's much nicer if the cooler is not working more than necessary. The bios doesn't handle this well. When I start up, the fan is always running fairly high without reason.
I use a windows tool called i8kfangui to control it. First thing I do when i start is switch on and off fangui to bring down the fan speed.
This (virtual)article looks like a followup interview on a RedHat event mid june, where Fink talked about the possibility to run linux natively(as opposed to virtual). It got some coverage then, eg ,
5 /0613linux2.html">here.
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/linux/200
Yahoo news has the new interview. It's mentioned in one of the first posts here.
The time it took the article to hit my red Digital Imprimatur button? A few seconds.
... lots of work.
Modifier: the time it takes till I get to the bottom of it? Uh,
My backup key would be the joke that is referred to in Monty Python's Killer Joke.
if you do :
USA government = bad
then surprise surprise:
USA government == bad
kidding...
But seriously, Chomsky's facts are ok. And his statements are a lot more subtle than the above. But there are different selections of facts, and there are several ways to interpret the same facts, and he'll stick to one single way till he's solidly proven wrong. Which is not easy, because he's smart and methodical. And, because you're not dealing with hard sciences here. Theories still die with their owners in this part of science.
A simple example. You can conclude that the US has done an awful lot of nasty stuff, in an absolute sense. If you contrast that with the projected public image, that's shocking. But what if you divide this amount by its geopolitical weight? It's a very big player. That doesn't change the facts, but it changes the way you look at them.
I'd phrase the US gov involvement issue with the same cautious consideration.
:)
But if i had to point out which issue is most in need of extra caution, I'd point to the clustering of answers surrounding 9/11 and answers about the aftermath.
- the white house was involved in 9/11 and PATRIOT act is bad.
- White house was not involved in 9/11 and PATRIOT act is acceptable.
- the white house is not explicitly targeting civil liberties and PATRIOT act is acceptable.
- the white house was not involved in 9/11 and they did not use the event to restrict civil liberties and to invade the middle east.
and, well, lots more. The white house lied itself into war, and they went to war for no good reason. The analyst Sam Gardiner approves of Bush's war. Stinnett thought Roosevelt did right.
Now don't jump to conclusions about my conclusions
That's a different sector, and I think that means it's ok to use the same name there.
But there are a lot of software packages called 'Vista' out there. I wonder how trademark registration resolves all that.
None of the packages are an OS?
I guess that means I'd better remove that cool animated gif somebody sent me, about a naked captain Kirk reciting poems to a kitten.
While the previous generation got kids so finally someone would be able to program the VCR, women finally wisened up. The VCR got set allright, but to the wrong program. Now the DVR does to this generation what the anticonception pill did to the previous generation. Independence.
The next step is parthenogenesis. Human males are now entering their last century before extinction.
that's an idea, maybe we can extract energy from stupidity . Now let me see, we'd need a high density storage capability then...
a quick study shows that one third of all slashdot headlines are nonsense.
And another third is inaccurate or overblown.
- "where's the cube?"
- "hurry up with those cubes!"
- "i can't find it."
- "next question! I want to win another cookie."
It's easy to say people were late discovering zero, but a neanderthal yelling "where's my !*#&*$?! brontosaurus steak?" (1) sure had a concept of absence of something. The concept of zero is about equations and using location of a digit in a number to indicate increasing amounts.
(1) in comics, it's almost mandatory that dinosaurs and neanderthals live in the same period.