Time shifting (record now - watch later) is legal. It's been upheld by the Supreme Court (Sony v. Universal City - Betamax case). So apply the time shifting principal to all media. If I have a friend who owns Shrek, I could watch it with him, or I can record his copy and watch it at a later point (time shifted viewing). I then apply the 'securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors' principal from the US Constitution. The current 'limited Times' is now appoximately 100 years....so I'll dispose of my time shifted material in another 90-100 years. So I'm legally using time shifted recordings for a reasonable and limited period of time. The only qualification is that one of my friends has a copy of something. But I've found plenty of friends. I also us this same principal when I rent a DVD ($1 at Albertson food stores).
The above has all the logical underpinnings of being totally legit, but only the time shifted viewing aspect has been tested at the Supreme court. The 'limit time' period is my interpretation, but I like to see/hear the thoughts from other people. Shoot I'll even read the opinion of the lawyers.
So basically Napster is providing a pay version of this, but there are other avenues, and plenty of them. Think iPods, Lyras, and other small portable and easy to connect storage. I actually stopped using Napster before they died because the connections where a lot slower than dragging and dropping to an external USB drive (I've only had 56k connections). So long Napster, we hardly knew ya).
Flex ATX is the next big standard. It will just take time to ramp up all the production. Look how long it took to transition from AT to ATX. I stuck with AT for a long time because of the case price (motherboard price was about the same). I always buy the cheap cases. I just don't want to spend the $20-$40 extra dollars for the 'new' case design. Now ATX cases are cheap and you have a hard time finding a motherboard that will work with an AT case anymore.
Now fast forward to today. I've been eyeing the smaller cases, but have been unwilling to buy one of the "Book PC's" which is typically a Flex ATX case. They wanted $100 for a case. With only a 150watt power supply to boot. But as of a month ago the Aopen flex ATX cases are in the $35-40 range, and I'm getting ready to make the leap. The remaining hurdle for the Flex cases is the availability of motherboards for the AMD line of processors. It is easy to find a flex ATX motherboard with the Intel 810 chipset, but you get cheap video with a poorly performing Celeron processor. Another minor drawback is that most of the current flex ATX cases/book PC's can only take a Pentium 1Gz because of heating and inadequate power supply wattage. Which will also kill idea of putting several hard drives inside the case too. Those drives take about 30-50 watts at startup time (each). I'd much rather have a Duron with a TNT2 or GeForce video card in the one available slot, but they aren't available yet. Nforce would be great for this application too, but they have just started to ship the full size boards. The "niche" flex ATX market will have to wait for probably another 6 months, but it will come.
Put simply, who wants to watch the DIVX movies on a computer screen? Sure it's fine at times, but it is so much better on my 32" TV set out in the living room. And which DVD players can play the DIVS movies? None that I know about. So I can play the DIVX (right from the HD), plus it's nice these days too since you can put an "old-warn-out" machine in the living room to watch DIVX and DVD. My personal machine is a Duron 700, Toshiba 2X DVD, and Riva TNT2 with S-Video output. Looks fantastic on the screen. The visually better quality movies look almost as good as the HDTV displays I see in stores. The machine is on 24/7 to play movies or 1000's of MP3's. Works great, I just wish I had and "old" book PC case instead of a mini-tower. But the wifey doesn't mind (or hasn't commented adversely....yet), so I wait a year or so before I upgrade. I'm running 4.1 now, but would like to also install a full Dolby 5.1 system now that some 5.1 cards are down to $30 or so. Remote would be a nice option, but since I'm watching movies, I don't really channel surf and I only have to set the volumn level once and all is well.
Combo Post: I just bought a house and wired it with Cat 5 cable to most of the rooms. I saw on the earlier post that people were running multiple Cat 5 cables to each room, but I think that is overkill. If I ever need another 'drop', I just add a cheap 10/100 switch and uplink it to the switch in my office. The only thing I would strongly suggest is an ethernet drop (or 2) in the kitchen. I've got an old Dell laptop (P-166) that I would love to put on the counter to do general surfing or email, but I didn't think of this when I was building the house. Caveat emptor. I'd also like to do VPN work from my kitchen to control the DVD/DIVX player in the living room to change movies or change the volumn levels. All sorts of neat ideas once you have computers in nearly every room. Now that the 120GB and 160GB drives are out, I've also started downloading the full DVD right to the HD. Just like MP3s all over again. Next year the 300GB drives will be out and I'll be able to have 200 or so DVD/DIVX movies on tap. Hint: if your ripping DVD movies right to the HD, use Smartripper and cut out only the movie and 1 Dolby sound track. Save several GB's of space by not including the additional sound tracks and subtitles that you'll never use anyway (a 5.1 sound track is 300-400MB for a two hour movie).
I recently ordered a 7 computer systems from computergeeks.com via UPS ground. 6 systems (monitors, etc) arrived very quickly (1 whole state over - CA to AZ), but the 7th was in limbo. The UPS tracking showed the package to have been scanned at all points up to Tucson (I'm in a town next door), but it never arrived at my door. I waited about 3 weeks (UPS doesn't exactly promise speedy delivery when selecting 'ground') then started a trace. UPS admitted guilt and kicked back cash to computergeeks to ship a new unit. I then had the fun of another week for computergeeks to get a shipment of something else, since the previous system was sold out (obviously not UPS's faulty). Everything worked out fine, but a little slow. I did get a free CD-RW out of the deal (not as compensation, it was just the latest machine computergeeks received and happened to cost the same). Overall I've had great luck with UPS ground, and I've order $thousands from online stores. I usually keep my purchase within the 5 surrounding states to minimize 'ground' time. I usually receive the packages in 1-3 days regardless of the 'ground option could take forever' clauses.
Re:How is this newsworthy ?
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Debian On DVD
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· Score: 1
We'll if this is NOT newsworthy, then why didn't you skip it when you read the appropriate title (highly appropriate given the usual Slashdot fair). And even more importantly, why did you bother responding with a non-newsworthy post to a 'alleged' non-newsworthy article? This (US centric) is called capitalism. Different people want different 'stuff'. Just cause you don't see a need for it doesn't mean it's not newsworthy. I actually read at a lower score level with this article, because me, myself, and I thought is was newsworthy, otherwise I would have never come across your 'non-newsworthy post'. Also, some of us administer many unix boxes and have servers with DVD drives (my last was a $28 unit from computergeeks.com - refurb - basically the same price as a CD-ROM drive - so I can't lose). I would much rather apt-get from a server/DVD-ROM than from the internet any day. Plus I myself, as an administrator and getting sick and tired of the bloated pile of CD-ROMs that I'm accumulating and would much prefer a single DVD over a pile of CDs, just like most people would prefer a CD over a pile of floppies. This is for reasons of storage and portability as much as disk-swapping during the installation process. So fine, go install Debian with a pile of 3000 floppies, but don't expect many of us capitalistic-self-centered-pigs to follow you.
Friday, October 26, 2001
We would like to apologize to visitors from Slashdot, along with the rest of our community, for the problems we have experienced with our server this morning. We are in the process of upgrading our server to accommodate the spike in requests. We thank everyone for both their interest, and their patience. For those interested in downloading code from the NASA Classics Collection, you should be aware that we are currently required to charge a fee for the software. We are working with the people from NASA to try to "open" this software to enable downloads without fees, at least for private, non-commercial use.
Just so I don't troll too terribly:)
Probably the most famous application they are releasing is the NASTRAN (NASa STRuctural ANalysis) System which most of us aerospace types are already using in the industry. They also released some composite and general structural design tools.
They also release numerous 2D and 3D aero flow tools.
The one that caught my eye: SCRAM - An Engineer's Tool for Prediction of Airframe Integrated Scramjet Performance.
The one-I-expected-to-be-there-but-wasn't: Planetary, interplanetary, and/or Mars multiple degree of freedom dynamic simulations. They gotta have a few of those, but apparently none were released.
I agree that most of the material is not a 'great secret'. But... in the engineering fields there is a great wealth of information that is obscure and not easily gathered, categorized, understood, disseminated, etc. Not even a good index exists in some cases. Simple engineering course work, like physics, math, statics, dynamics, etc are easy to find and there are multiple good books on the subject. Research type engineer, or leading, bleeding edge engineering is published in obscure journals or internal documents which are available through the right channels, but it is not something the average, or even professional will have easy access too. I know that NASA is slowly putting the old NACA and NASA tech notes, briefs, etc. online, but what I really want is a summary of similar tests so that I can quickly USE the information (something like Hoerner did many years ago with the NASA wind tunnel data). University professors are the next-best-thing and many of them love to write articles and publish their work. I often research some of my work online (rocket science, missile engineering) and come up empty handed, or only pointers to published works through a journal that I have to get 'manually' and wait a few weeks for the information. Since MIT is renown for their engineering department (particularly their aero department), I am somewhere between excited and ecstatic. Plus on the other hand, more 'free' information (it does appear it will be encumbered with copyrights) is ALWAYS a good thing for you, me, and the people at large. I just hope I'll be legally able to distribute this information to others without much hassle (which does appear to be the case, but since there no content yet, this may change).
Lifetime...ONLY 1500 HOURS...What??? That is way to short to be practical except for critical backup cases. I.e. this isn't going to be "mass produced". We aren't quite there yet.
Noise...72 dba at 1 meter. Where is all this noise coming from? Hydrogen leakes.
Yes they are old technology and the use of older-mature technology is going to continue into the future. EVERYTHING on a rocket or commercial plane is certified, validated, and/or qualified. The rocket business industry wide still has a 50/50 chance of succesfully flying a new rocket design. And this is the current state with using tried and true ancient technology. Orbital Science Corp. is still using Ni-Cad batteries in ALL their launch vehicles to this day because the cost of qualifying lighter and more powerful Li-Ion and Ni-Hyd batteries for flight is not something they can sell to a customer. Tried and true is the only way to run these type of companies. Weight is like gold on a rocket, but qualified and tested hardware makes the gold-high-tech-gizmo look like sand.
The airplane business is UNWILLING to go back to the test pilot days of the 50's and 60's. The stigma of losing a test pilot's life is far to big a liability anymore. Even if we had remote pilots, the companies are just not willing to risk half a billion in investment to try something bleeding edge. Even if the problem was a fluke, the political/consumer fallout is far to great a risk to attempt. Nobody is these two business' take risk lightly, and that is NOT going to change anytime soon.
Any oxidizer injection done to a scramjet design can also be done to a ducted ramjet design for a whole lot less money.
Plasma magic is still vaporware (pun intended). It may or may not get fielded, but for certain the volumn production stuff and the workhorses for the industry for the next 10 years will be something else. You and me both might wish for the funding levels from the 50's and 60's, and for another Apollo program, but I'm not holding my breath.
Am I the only one to think that the Scramjets are of limited use. They've been developing these systems for 15 years now, and still have very little to show for their efforts. But lets say they actually get a working full-scale prototype. What are you going to do with them?
Jetliner?: So instead of carrying an oxidizer, we carry along extra deadweight motors to get us up to the required speed and altitude necessary to fly the airplane without melting. This helps how??? Most of the cost of a commercial aircraft is the engines. We want to double up on engines with half the motors being dead-weight at any point in the flight?
Missiles?: This would have to be a staged vehicle. Some of the lowest sub-orbital rockets with more than one stage eject the first stage at 45000 ft (most stage higher). So how many SECONDS will the scramjet burn before it runs out of atmosphere? Plus at these burnout altitudes you then throw the engine away - costly.
Aero heating: If you can reach these velocities, why not just do a sub-orbital ballistic shot. Save the drag energy by poping into space. Why continue to incure the drag and heating when space is a few 10-thousand's of feet away?
About the only application where these make sense is in ballistic defense. You can loiter for maybe 10-50 seconds in the atmosphere and get some extra time to do target discrimination before you go in for the kill. But throttle-able ducted rockets are being developed simulateously that will probably also fill this roll for a whole lot less money.
My bets. Hydrogen peroxide mono- and bi-propellant motors and the ducted rockets (solid or liquid propellant using supersonic rammed air for the oxidizer). Both systems are being developed and FIELDED as we speak. Both are practical in some applications.
Actually fluorescent lamps are not quite as efficient as LED. Fluorescents use roughly 25-30% less energy than incandescent, but LED's only use 50% less energy per lumen (same broadcast angles). Here's a link.
The more durable comment is certainly true, plus the long life. They are NOT cheaper per lumen, however. LED lightly is quite an order of magnitude in cost above incandescent and probably 2-4 times higher than flourescent. In summary, use fluorescent lamps for now where applicable and use the new-fangled LED lightly for robust, super-long-term, and small applications (laptops, flashlights, car dash lights, etc.). But in a few years.....practically everything will move to LED's.
For crying out loud, do the math people. Silicon cells are not made out of gold, platinum, or diamonds. Sand I tell ya. So why are they expensive. Because it takes ENERGY, chemicals, and labor to produce them. For the energy challenged, energy = oil,coal etc. For the typical 1st world country, it takes 15-25 years to break even. Which also happens to coincide with the life expectancy of the solar panels. Where these devices make sense is when you are NOT 50ft from a major power artery. The reason you don't have one in your neighborhood (not all of you I realize, just most of the whiners), is because you live 50 ft from a major power artery (which also took time, energy and chemicals to install). This is commonly refered to as infrastructure.
Here is a link to a sight that SELLS lots of solar equipment. But they don't sell you a line. They will tell you right up front that solar energy is not a good 'get out of jail free' card. They also have good prices (no I don't work for them or even own stock:)
http://www.windsun.com
You city dwellers that want to actual help, instead of just verbalize you ignorance can do one of several things.
1. Buy solar panels and a grid tie system to 'help' out the local power company.
2. Buy a bank of lead acid batteries and an inverter and use grid power only during off peak hours and your own juice during peak hours.
3. Don't use electricity during peak hours, period.
4. Shut up, sit back, learn, and do something constructive with your life.
What country developed the technology for solar cells? Who is the leader in MOSFET, IGBT technology? Who for microprocessor technology? Lead acid battery technology? (other batteries just don't cut it for cost and efficiency) In short, what country is slowly making solar technology affordable for everyone? If nothing else, what country should be getting the extra green house gas producing credits for making the solar panels and electronics for the Domincan Republic (not that I believe the green house gas arguments anyway). The free market economy is working people. When we do run out of oil (no time soon) then the price of oil generated electricity will skyrocket....solar panels will be the cheap alternative....peace on earth will break out...the tree huggers will find something else to whine about.
Slightly off topic. The reasons I don't buy the green house gas malarkey:
1) I'm an aero engineer. I've seen the code used to produce these models. When they can start telling me the weather next month, I MIGHT start to believe their 10 year predictions. Yes I know the difference between climate and weather.
2) Islands like Wake Island in the Pacific are only a few feet above sea level. The highest point of the island (actual 3 islands) is 22 feet. A big wave can wash right over the entire island. This island and the Marshal Islands will be some of the first things to go under if the sea level rises. So what happened during the 20th century. Nada, zilch. I've been to some of these islands and have seen them with my own eyes.
What is it with Slashdot and the tree huggers. Is VA an arm of Greenpeace or what? BTW I love trees and consider myself an environmentally friendly guy, but not to the point of a frontal lobotomy.
I thought both Vaidhyanathan's article and Tim_the_minstrel's response were both highly informative and spot-on. My take on Vaidhyanathan's comment about Jefferson's "he would have gotten a kick out of Napster" was refering to another Jefferson quote: "The tree of Liberty should be sprinkled from time to time with the blood of patriots." (Sorry if I butchered the quote slightly.) I think Jefferson would have liked the spirit and the fight surrounding Napster. Some of Jefferson's and other patriot's actions were not exactly legal at the time either!
I learned a little today. I learned that copyrights (and probably patents) should NOT be considered property at all. OR if they were to be considered property, they are NOT the property of the original authors, but of the public at large, with a limited distribution right granted to the original author(s). This is a fantastic concept and we all should push this topic as well as the more established ideas surrounding the Napster and point-to-point distribution services.
This is not trivial. The INITIAL quantities may be trivial, but the overall impact should be considered tremendous from two standpoints. 1) The first steps in getting the gubmnt to use GPL type software. 2) We (US centric taxpayers) will start saving money.
It's not like we should expect the whole gubmnt to start using StarOffice in one stroke. ANY step towards using it is great. I know some people say that StarOffice does not fit their bill, but for the majority, it is all they need. I (an engineer) have been able to take my work stuff home and fire up StarOffice and get it to function practically perfectly. Once the people in the DOD start using and the product and working exclusively in StarOffice documents, they will find it to be perfectly acceptable. The DOD might also start to push the StarOffice document format as the "official" format for submitting proposals, ROMS, etc., which will start pushing StarOffice down to the defense contractor level too. This is GREAT!
In this case, the part that failed was from a private company. Orbital Science Corp. puts together the Pegasus vehicle. They also performed the integration of the Hyper-X vehicle onto the Pegasus 1st stage rocket. Certainly the Hyper-X vehicle was designed by NASA, but it was flown on a private vehicle which certainly is "blended" research.
As a side note, I think/. needs to lift up companies like Orbital. I see a constant barrage of comments about privitization of space, company X, Y, Z, is doing this-and-that. But I rarely see mention of the efforts of OSC, which is the closest thing to a private space company.
The laws are giving us insight into our country
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Killing Video Games
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In many ways it is like the gun issue. Lets legislate everyone to death because of a few bad apples who MAY have been affected by such-and-such. I can't remember the quote or the source, but one of the founding fathers stated that this government was only workable under a Christian nation. Now I know many of you might object to the Christian part, but look at what is going on around the US. Parents and guardians are letting there kids run wild and they eventually end up in trouble, which doesn't really surprize many people. Then we blame something, ANYTHING else because the people don't want to take responsibility for their own kids, and probably aren't taking responsibility for their own action either. The result is law, upon law, upon law.
Somewhere I read that the Federal registry was one volumn up until about 1860 or so. We now add a whole stack of volumns every year to the registry. Some single laws are a whole volumn by themselves. And you are responsible for every law, which is of course impossible, even for the blood sucking lawyers. I think I can see why you need a moral based people in our Republic. Either ingrain the morals into the people, or force it upon them with Stalinistic tactics. The parents and guardians are not performing their duties, and are looking for the heavy hand of government to wave their magic wand and "fix" the problem that they are causing. All the while admitting that it might not solve the problem, but we have to do SOMETHING!
Many post are stating the loss of this case because 2600 is a bunch of hackers. The NRA has consistently supported criminals in many of their cases to overthrow bad laws. They typically rejoice if they can support some individual that is not a criminal. We can't just give up and think the judges will throw out the case regardless of merit. This was a good reponse and there are still more avenues to pursue. Stay the course. D#mn the torpedoes, full speed ahead...
Some great stuff that tickled me. Some arguements are mainstream stuff that have been discussed with this case. Others are kinda new.
No one can use DeCSS to "shut off navigational systems on airplanes or shut down smoke detectors in public buildings." By itself, DeCSS does not even perform any infringing activity. A person can use DeCSS to do only one thing -- access the content on a DVD.
There is no First Amendment precedent establishing that a "causal link" between publication of speech and its "improper use" justifies the imposition of intermediate scrutiny.
Under the "Turner" standard, the burden rests upon the government to "demonstrate that the recited harms are real, not merely conjectural, and that the regulation will in fact alleviate these harms in a direct and material way.
A prohibition on using copy machines to make fair use could not be answered under today's First Amendment law with the retort that one can hire monks to scribe the relevant passages.
With due credit to the aforementioned and linked article.
Overall they really hit on the "fair use" derivation of the 1st Amendment, which I think is a proper tactic. Fair use isn't too useful if it ain't useful.:>
Actual Tempest is the name of a room designed to thwart electronic spying. Usually used in the sense of "tempest room". It basically is a room which is a gaussian sphere, i.e. all metal, including metal contacts around the perimeter of the door. You can't scan wired keyboards and mice. You can however scan RF transmitting devices such as monitors. It is quite easy to sync a signal from a monitor from quite some distance away and literally be able to see what the user is displaying on their screen. So the defense industry uses tempest rooms to shield the electrical transmissions from the computers.
RE: That's not what it says
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Fire and Ice
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But a hydrate is (in this case) methane which happens to be surrounded by water molecules so it is indeed 'ice' surrounding the methane. You might consider it contaminated ice. Plus the article that was linked actually used ice in the title, so it isn't exactly a/. problem. This of course doesn't mean that FUD shouldn't be applied to/. titles in general.:)
But to keep this on topic. If microbes are responsible for the formation of the methane, why isn't there a method to get the methane directly from the microbes work? There is plenty of organic waste available. That would seem to be the bigger story since melting the ice to get to the methane you have to pass through that nasty latent heat of fusion barrier. Or drag the ice to warmer climates.
A close friend of mine bought a top of the line G4 system (DVD burner, LCD, etc). Great machine except he kept having the machine shut down automagically. Returned the machine several times and finally got the repair crew to replicate the shutdowns when he sent his LCD monitor along with the machine. Repair shop sent the monitor back to Apple and they returned it and said it was in perfect shape. Further investigation reveal the power button on the LCD monitor (whole system power, not just LCD power) was extremely sensitive to static and/or magnetic forces. Basically he could come within 1/8 to 1/4 inch of the power button and it would shutdown. Extremly bad, but Apple is resisting his complaints so far. He loves the machine other than this annoying habit. The repair shopped hooked the machine to a regular monitor and everything was just fine. So buyer beware until Apple addresses this problem.
Maxtor must have beat M$ into submission for the volumn pricing since they already are doing the server for "free". This is another stimulus/response from M$ that we are observing and can only help BSD/Linux/WinXX/free market/customers/etc. Competition is certainly at the very heart of the American dream and we are seeing it live! Right now! Another company (IBM/Fujitsu/etc) will be able to come out with a different version of a server using open source software and be able to beat Maxtor, or force Maxtor to revert back to FreeBSD. The bottom line is that Maxtor has the freedom to choose, and it gives the open source movement a message that it still must perform up to the current standards or it will be left behind.
I hate to sound too uppity, but the question was for screen cards that are "obvious 'can't go wrong' choices?" Most of the suggestions I have read are for the newest, coolest, bestest card to get, but NOT slam dunk choices. I think the 'can't go wrong' choice would have to be a S3 Virge system or a Matrox Millenium. If the question was expanded to be the 'can't go wrong 3D cards' then the answer would be TNT, TNT2, or Matrox G200. For 'leading, bleeding, KEEEeeewwwwlllll' cards I would have to say: 'may the Force be with you'. Wink, wink, nod, nod....
Slashdot Mirror
Time shifting (record now - watch later) is legal. It's been upheld by the Supreme Court (Sony v. Universal City - Betamax case). So apply the time shifting principal to all media. If I have a friend who owns Shrek, I could watch it with him, or I can record his copy and watch it at a later point (time shifted viewing). I then apply the 'securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors' principal from the US Constitution. The current 'limited Times' is now appoximately 100 years....so I'll dispose of my time shifted material in another 90-100 years. So I'm legally using time shifted recordings for a reasonable and limited period of time. The only qualification is that one of my friends has a copy of something. But I've found plenty of friends. I also us this same principal when I rent a DVD ($1 at Albertson food stores).
The above has all the logical underpinnings of being totally legit, but only the time shifted viewing aspect has been tested at the Supreme court. The 'limit time' period is my interpretation, but I like to see/hear the thoughts from other people. Shoot I'll even read the opinion of the lawyers.
So basically Napster is providing a pay version of this, but there are other avenues, and plenty of them. Think iPods, Lyras, and other small portable and easy to connect storage. I actually stopped using Napster before they died because the connections where a lot slower than dragging and dropping to an external USB drive (I've only had 56k connections). So long Napster, we hardly knew ya).
Now fast forward to today. I've been eyeing the smaller cases, but have been unwilling to buy one of the "Book PC's" which is typically a Flex ATX case. They wanted $100 for a case. With only a 150watt power supply to boot. But as of a month ago the Aopen flex ATX cases are in the $35-40 range, and I'm getting ready to make the leap. The remaining hurdle for the Flex cases is the availability of motherboards for the AMD line of processors. It is easy to find a flex ATX motherboard with the Intel 810 chipset, but you get cheap video with a poorly performing Celeron processor. Another minor drawback is that most of the current flex ATX cases/book PC's can only take a Pentium 1Gz because of heating and inadequate power supply wattage. Which will also kill idea of putting several hard drives inside the case too. Those drives take about 30-50 watts at startup time (each). I'd much rather have a Duron with a TNT2 or GeForce video card in the one available slot, but they aren't available yet. Nforce would be great for this application too, but they have just started to ship the full size boards. The "niche" flex ATX market will have to wait for probably another 6 months, but it will come.
So summary. Wait a little, it is coming.
Put simply, who wants to watch the DIVX movies on a computer screen? Sure it's fine at times, but it is so much better on my 32" TV set out in the living room. And which DVD players can play the DIVS movies? None that I know about. So I can play the DIVX (right from the HD), plus it's nice these days too since you can put an "old-warn-out" machine in the living room to watch DIVX and DVD. My personal machine is a Duron 700, Toshiba 2X DVD, and Riva TNT2 with S-Video output. Looks fantastic on the screen. The visually better quality movies look almost as good as the HDTV displays I see in stores. The machine is on 24/7 to play movies or 1000's of MP3's. Works great, I just wish I had and "old" book PC case instead of a mini-tower. But the wifey doesn't mind (or hasn't commented adversely....yet), so I wait a year or so before I upgrade. I'm running 4.1 now, but would like to also install a full Dolby 5.1 system now that some 5.1 cards are down to $30 or so. Remote would be a nice option, but since I'm watching movies, I don't really channel surf and I only have to set the volumn level once and all is well. Combo Post: I just bought a house and wired it with Cat 5 cable to most of the rooms. I saw on the earlier post that people were running multiple Cat 5 cables to each room, but I think that is overkill. If I ever need another 'drop', I just add a cheap 10/100 switch and uplink it to the switch in my office. The only thing I would strongly suggest is an ethernet drop (or 2) in the kitchen. I've got an old Dell laptop (P-166) that I would love to put on the counter to do general surfing or email, but I didn't think of this when I was building the house. Caveat emptor. I'd also like to do VPN work from my kitchen to control the DVD/DIVX player in the living room to change movies or change the volumn levels. All sorts of neat ideas once you have computers in nearly every room. Now that the 120GB and 160GB drives are out, I've also started downloading the full DVD right to the HD. Just like MP3s all over again. Next year the 300GB drives will be out and I'll be able to have 200 or so DVD/DIVX movies on tap. Hint: if your ripping DVD movies right to the HD, use Smartripper and cut out only the movie and 1 Dolby sound track. Save several GB's of space by not including the additional sound tracks and subtitles that you'll never use anyway (a 5.1 sound track is 300-400MB for a two hour movie).
I recently ordered a 7 computer systems from computergeeks.com via UPS ground. 6 systems (monitors, etc) arrived very quickly (1 whole state over - CA to AZ), but the 7th was in limbo. The UPS tracking showed the package to have been scanned at all points up to Tucson (I'm in a town next door), but it never arrived at my door. I waited about 3 weeks (UPS doesn't exactly promise speedy delivery when selecting 'ground') then started a trace. UPS admitted guilt and kicked back cash to computergeeks to ship a new unit. I then had the fun of another week for computergeeks to get a shipment of something else, since the previous system was sold out (obviously not UPS's faulty). Everything worked out fine, but a little slow. I did get a free CD-RW out of the deal (not as compensation, it was just the latest machine computergeeks received and happened to cost the same). Overall I've had great luck with UPS ground, and I've order $thousands from online stores. I usually keep my purchase within the 5 surrounding states to minimize 'ground' time. I usually receive the packages in 1-3 days regardless of the 'ground option could take forever' clauses.
Sorry. On first attempt I screwed up HTML format
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=21012&cid=2
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=21012&cid=223
We'll if this is NOT newsworthy, then why didn't you skip it when you read the appropriate title (highly appropriate given the usual Slashdot fair). And even more importantly, why did you bother responding with a non-newsworthy post to a 'alleged' non-newsworthy article? This (US centric) is called capitalism. Different people want different 'stuff'. Just cause you don't see a need for it doesn't mean it's not newsworthy. I actually read at a lower score level with this article, because me, myself, and I thought is was newsworthy, otherwise I would have never come across your 'non-newsworthy post'. Also, some of us administer many unix boxes and have servers with DVD drives (my last was a $28 unit from computergeeks.com - refurb - basically the same price as a CD-ROM drive - so I can't lose). I would much rather apt-get from a server/DVD-ROM than from the internet any day. Plus I myself, as an administrator and getting sick and tired of the bloated pile of CD-ROMs that I'm accumulating and would much prefer a single DVD over a pile of CDs, just like most people would prefer a CD over a pile of floppies. This is for reasons of storage and portability as much as disk-swapping during the installation process. So fine, go install Debian with a pile of 3000 floppies, but don't expect many of us capitalistic-self-centered-pigs to follow you.
We would like to apologize to visitors from Slashdot, along with the rest of our community, for the problems we have experienced with our server this morning. We are in the process of upgrading our server to accommodate the spike in requests. We thank everyone for both their interest, and their patience. For those interested in downloading code from the NASA Classics Collection, you should be aware that we are currently required to charge a fee for the software. We are working with the people from NASA to try to "open" this software to enable downloads without fees, at least for private, non-commercial use.
Just so I don't troll too terribly
Probably the most famous application they are releasing is the NASTRAN (NASa STRuctural ANalysis) System which most of us aerospace types are already using in the industry. They also released some composite and general structural design tools.
They also release numerous 2D and 3D aero flow tools.
The one that caught my eye: SCRAM - An Engineer's Tool for Prediction of Airframe Integrated Scramjet Performance.
The one-I-expected-to-be-there-but-wasn't: Planetary, interplanetary, and/or Mars multiple degree of freedom dynamic simulations. They gotta have a few of those, but apparently none were released.
I agree that most of the material is not a 'great secret'. But... in the engineering fields there is a great wealth of information that is obscure and not easily gathered, categorized, understood, disseminated, etc. Not even a good index exists in some cases. Simple engineering course work, like physics, math, statics, dynamics, etc are easy to find and there are multiple good books on the subject. Research type engineer, or leading, bleeding edge engineering is published in obscure journals or internal documents which are available through the right channels, but it is not something the average, or even professional will have easy access too. I know that NASA is slowly putting the old NACA and NASA tech notes, briefs, etc. online, but what I really want is a summary of similar tests so that I can quickly USE the information (something like Hoerner did many years ago with the NASA wind tunnel data). University professors are the next-best-thing and many of them love to write articles and publish their work. I often research some of my work online (rocket science, missile engineering) and come up empty handed, or only pointers to published works through a journal that I have to get 'manually' and wait a few weeks for the information. Since MIT is renown for their engineering department (particularly their aero department), I am somewhere between excited and ecstatic. Plus on the other hand, more 'free' information (it does appear it will be encumbered with copyrights) is ALWAYS a good thing for you, me, and the people at large. I just hope I'll be legally able to distribute this information to others without much hassle (which does appear to be the case, but since there no content yet, this may change).
Cost...Much more than you want to know.
Lifetime...ONLY 1500 HOURS...What??? That is way to short to be practical except for critical backup cases. I.e. this isn't going to be "mass produced". We aren't quite there yet.
Noise...72 dba at 1 meter. Where is all this noise coming from? Hydrogen leakes.
Yes they are old technology and the use of older-mature technology is going to continue into the future. EVERYTHING on a rocket or commercial plane is certified, validated, and/or qualified. The rocket business industry wide still has a 50/50 chance of succesfully flying a new rocket design. And this is the current state with using tried and true ancient technology. Orbital Science Corp. is still using Ni-Cad batteries in ALL their launch vehicles to this day because the cost of qualifying lighter and more powerful Li-Ion and Ni-Hyd batteries for flight is not something they can sell to a customer. Tried and true is the only way to run these type of companies. Weight is like gold on a rocket, but qualified and tested hardware makes the gold-high-tech-gizmo look like sand.
The airplane business is UNWILLING to go back to the test pilot days of the 50's and 60's. The stigma of losing a test pilot's life is far to big a liability anymore. Even if we had remote pilots, the companies are just not willing to risk half a billion in investment to try something bleeding edge. Even if the problem was a fluke, the political/consumer fallout is far to great a risk to attempt. Nobody is these two business' take risk lightly, and that is NOT going to change anytime soon.
Any oxidizer injection done to a scramjet design can also be done to a ducted ramjet design for a whole lot less money.
Plasma magic is still vaporware (pun intended). It may or may not get fielded, but for certain the volumn production stuff and the workhorses for the industry for the next 10 years will be something else. You and me both might wish for the funding levels from the 50's and 60's, and for another Apollo program, but I'm not holding my breath.
Jetliner?: So instead of carrying an oxidizer, we carry along extra deadweight motors to get us up to the required speed and altitude necessary to fly the airplane without melting. This helps how??? Most of the cost of a commercial aircraft is the engines. We want to double up on engines with half the motors being dead-weight at any point in the flight?
Missiles?: This would have to be a staged vehicle. Some of the lowest sub-orbital rockets with more than one stage eject the first stage at 45000 ft (most stage higher). So how many SECONDS will the scramjet burn before it runs out of atmosphere? Plus at these burnout altitudes you then throw the engine away - costly.
Aero heating: If you can reach these velocities, why not just do a sub-orbital ballistic shot. Save the drag energy by poping into space. Why continue to incure the drag and heating when space is a few 10-thousand's of feet away?
About the only application where these make sense is in ballistic defense. You can loiter for maybe 10-50 seconds in the atmosphere and get some extra time to do target discrimination before you go in for the kill. But throttle-able ducted rockets are being developed simulateously that will probably also fill this roll for a whole lot less money.
My bets. Hydrogen peroxide mono- and bi-propellant motors and the ducted rockets (solid or liquid propellant using supersonic rammed air for the oxidizer). Both systems are being developed and FIELDED as we speak. Both are practical in some applications.
And yes, I am a rocket scientist (retired).
NOT_goatcx_really
The more durable comment is certainly true, plus the long life. They are NOT cheaper per lumen, however. LED lightly is quite an order of magnitude in cost above incandescent and probably 2-4 times higher than flourescent. In summary, use fluorescent lamps for now where applicable and use the new-fangled LED lightly for robust, super-long-term, and small applications (laptops, flashlights, car dash lights, etc.). But in a few years.....practically everything will move to LED's.
http://www.windsun.com
You city dwellers that want to actual help, instead of just verbalize you ignorance can do one of several things.
1. Buy solar panels and a grid tie system to 'help' out the local power company.
2. Buy a bank of lead acid batteries and an inverter and use grid power only during off peak hours and your own juice during peak hours.
3. Don't use electricity during peak hours, period.
4. Shut up, sit back, learn, and do something constructive with your life.
What country developed the technology for solar cells? Who is the leader in MOSFET, IGBT technology? Who for microprocessor technology? Lead acid battery technology? (other batteries just don't cut it for cost and efficiency) In short, what country is slowly making solar technology affordable for everyone? If nothing else, what country should be getting the extra green house gas producing credits for making the solar panels and electronics for the Domincan Republic (not that I believe the green house gas arguments anyway). The free market economy is working people. When we do run out of oil (no time soon) then the price of oil generated electricity will skyrocket....solar panels will be the cheap alternative....peace on earth will break out...the tree huggers will find something else to whine about.
Slightly off topic. The reasons I don't buy the green house gas malarkey:
1) I'm an aero engineer. I've seen the code used to produce these models. When they can start telling me the weather next month, I MIGHT start to believe their 10 year predictions. Yes I know the difference between climate and weather.
2) Islands like Wake Island in the Pacific are only a few feet above sea level. The highest point of the island (actual 3 islands) is 22 feet. A big wave can wash right over the entire island. This island and the Marshal Islands will be some of the first things to go under if the sea level rises. So what happened during the 20th century. Nada, zilch. I've been to some of these islands and have seen them with my own eyes.
What is it with Slashdot and the tree huggers. Is VA an arm of Greenpeace or what? BTW I love trees and consider myself an environmentally friendly guy, but not to the point of a frontal lobotomy.
I learned a little today. I learned that copyrights (and probably patents) should NOT be considered property at all. OR if they were to be considered property, they are NOT the property of the original authors, but of the public at large, with a limited distribution right granted to the original author(s). This is a fantastic concept and we all should push this topic as well as the more established ideas surrounding the Napster and point-to-point distribution services.
It's not like we should expect the whole gubmnt to start using StarOffice in one stroke. ANY step towards using it is great. I know some people say that StarOffice does not fit their bill, but for the majority, it is all they need. I (an engineer) have been able to take my work stuff home and fire up StarOffice and get it to function practically perfectly. Once the people in the DOD start using and the product and working exclusively in StarOffice documents, they will find it to be perfectly acceptable. The DOD might also start to push the StarOffice document format as the "official" format for submitting proposals, ROMS, etc., which will start pushing StarOffice down to the defense contractor level too. This is GREAT!
As a side note, I think /. needs to lift up companies like Orbital. I see a constant barrage of comments about privitization of space, company X, Y, Z, is doing this-and-that. But I rarely see mention of the efforts of OSC, which is the closest thing to a private space company.
Somewhere I read that the Federal registry was one volumn up until about 1860 or so. We now add a whole stack of volumns every year to the registry. Some single laws are a whole volumn by themselves. And you are responsible for every law, which is of course impossible, even for the blood sucking lawyers. I think I can see why you need a moral based people in our Republic. Either ingrain the morals into the people, or force it upon them with Stalinistic tactics. The parents and guardians are not performing their duties, and are looking for the heavy hand of government to wave their magic wand and "fix" the problem that they are causing. All the while admitting that it might not solve the problem, but we have to do SOMETHING!
Many post are stating the loss of this case because 2600 is a bunch of hackers. The NRA has consistently supported criminals in many of their cases to overthrow bad laws. They typically rejoice if they can support some individual that is not a criminal. We can't just give up and think the judges will throw out the case regardless of merit. This was a good reponse and there are still more avenues to pursue. Stay the course. D#mn the torpedoes, full speed ahead...
No one can use DeCSS to "shut off navigational systems on airplanes or shut down smoke detectors in public buildings." By itself, DeCSS does not even perform any infringing activity. A person can use DeCSS to do only one thing -- access the content on a DVD.
There is no First Amendment precedent establishing that a "causal link" between publication of speech and its "improper use" justifies the imposition of intermediate scrutiny.
Under the "Turner" standard, the burden rests upon the government to "demonstrate that the recited harms are real, not merely conjectural, and that the regulation will in fact alleviate these harms in a direct and material way.
A prohibition on using copy machines to make fair use could not be answered under today's First Amendment law with the retort that one can hire monks to scribe the relevant passages.
With due credit to the aforementioned and linked article.
Overall they really hit on the "fair use" derivation of the 1st Amendment, which I think is a proper tactic. Fair use isn't too useful if it ain't useful. :>
Actual Tempest is the name of a room designed to thwart electronic spying. Usually used in the sense of "tempest room". It basically is a room which is a gaussian sphere, i.e. all metal, including metal contacts around the perimeter of the door. You can't scan wired keyboards and mice. You can however scan RF transmitting devices such as monitors. It is quite easy to sync a signal from a monitor from quite some distance away and literally be able to see what the user is displaying on their screen. So the defense industry uses tempest rooms to shield the electrical transmissions from the computers.
But to keep this on topic. If microbes are responsible for the formation of the methane, why isn't there a method to get the methane directly from the microbes work? There is plenty of organic waste available. That would seem to be the bigger story since melting the ice to get to the methane you have to pass through that nasty latent heat of fusion barrier. Or drag the ice to warmer climates.
A close friend of mine bought a top of the line G4 system (DVD burner, LCD, etc). Great machine except he kept having the machine shut down automagically. Returned the machine several times and finally got the repair crew to replicate the shutdowns when he sent his LCD monitor along with the machine. Repair shop sent the monitor back to Apple and they returned it and said it was in perfect shape. Further investigation reveal the power button on the LCD monitor (whole system power, not just LCD power) was extremely sensitive to static and/or magnetic forces. Basically he could come within 1/8 to 1/4 inch of the power button and it would shutdown. Extremly bad, but Apple is resisting his complaints so far. He loves the machine other than this annoying habit. The repair shopped hooked the machine to a regular monitor and everything was just fine. So buyer beware until Apple addresses this problem.
Maxtor must have beat M$ into submission for the volumn pricing since they already are doing the server for "free". This is another stimulus/response from M$ that we are observing and can only help BSD/Linux/WinXX/free market/customers/etc. Competition is certainly at the very heart of the American dream and we are seeing it live! Right now! Another company (IBM/Fujitsu/etc) will be able to come out with a different version of a server using open source software and be able to beat Maxtor, or force Maxtor to revert back to FreeBSD. The bottom line is that Maxtor has the freedom to choose, and it gives the open source movement a message that it still must perform up to the current standards or it will be left behind.
I hate to sound too uppity, but the question was for screen cards that are "obvious 'can't go wrong' choices?" Most of the suggestions I have read are for the newest, coolest, bestest card to get, but NOT slam dunk choices. I think the 'can't go wrong' choice would have to be a S3 Virge system or a Matrox Millenium. If the question was expanded to be the 'can't go wrong 3D cards' then the answer would be TNT, TNT2, or Matrox G200. For 'leading, bleeding, KEEEeeewwwwlllll' cards I would have to say: 'may the Force be with you'. Wink, wink, nod, nod....