...and will be hobbled to prevent more than three applications running concurrently.
Sounds like any other version of a Microsoft OS.
While parent is probably trolling, there is some truth to his statement. Windows just doesn't do so well when you load it down with programs (active or not). "Cache Thrash" is simply a way of life for Windows users; even those with gobs of memory. I've known people who have completely disabled the Windows cache because of these problems. Microsoft needs to rip out their VM and threading system, and redesign it for modern computers with 128+ megs of RAM.
The Unixes do it much better, but the programs do take slightly longer to run. I remember the first time I used a Solaris box. A puny Ultra 5, and it was absolutely kicking NT's ass on parallelism! I could have 7 or 8 "busy" programs, and my desktop would never become unresponsive! Mac OS X has made use of the same concept, expect that the window is double-buffered. The end result is that you never see an ugly unpainted window. Now if only Apple would fix the 101 ways to lock up finder.:-/
You attempted to discredit the very concept of quantum communication by invoking your knowledge of relativity. Eianstein himself, if he were here, would be the first to admit that Relativity is not set in stone and that there are still many 'holes' that are unaccounted for.
What the hell? I did no such thing as you acuse me of. I merely attempted to correct a poster on a misunderstanding of relativity, and we got on a tangent about acceleration/deceleration.
As for relativity, it has not been proven to be "wrong" about the universe. In fact, it holds up in every test we've put it through. As odd as it may sound, so has Quantum Mechanics. What *is* odd is that Quantum Mechanics appears to allow several methods for violating light speed (e.g. Quantum Tunneling), but none of them allow for information to be transferred faster than light (the core of relativity). Not even Quantum Entanglement allows for information to travel faster than light (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement).
Now, if you'd please take your trolling elsewhere.
Now from the car's perspective, the light is moving away from it at C, but it's moving forward at.5C, so the light is only getting closer to the observer at.5C.
That's not right. Space-time should dilate for a travel at.5 C, thus causing him to see light travel at the velocity c. In fact, the guy in the car has no way of knowing if he's moving or if the other guy is moving toward him.
To get your mental juices flowing, consider this: Is our star currently flying through space a near light speed? If it is, then we'd may need to decelerate to reach another star. But how does a space ship know if it's accelerating or decelerating? Maybe it really is accelerating toward the planet. Or maybe the ship is slowing down and allowing the planet to approach.
According to relativity, both these perspectives are equally valid. The only thing that distinguishes them is the observer's point of view.
A much more interesting question is what would have happened if NeXT had not got the crazy idea of making its own hardware systems and had come out as a 100% software O/S from the start.
Good idea! Too bad Jobs already thought of it. Anyone who's programmed for Mac OS X should instantly recognize all the NeXT APIs from back in those days. Nearly every API is *exactly* the same, right down to the byte length of the parameters. The only thing that's changed, is that the look of the widgets is far less "Unixy" than NeXT every was.
NeXT OS is not dead. It has merely evolved into a higher plain of existance.;-)
P.S. For laughs, try typing "man open" in the Terminal application. The man page should give you some nice background on how the command originated in NeXT OS.
Completely a Wild Ass Guess, but they probably need the space for the extra fuel in the case of a powered descent. Not to mention that an emergecy chute is probably packed in the nose now that they aren't planning to crush it. Having the chute in the back would require that the craft perform a 180 degree rotation before the chute could be deployed. Not exactly the best idea in an emergency.
Why are they even accessible on the internet? Seems like these should be in a secure private network unlikely to be attacked.
Who said they're on the internet? Consider the following scenario:
The Hospital PCs are connected to a primary server that backs up all data and managed the PCs.
The Primary Server has a leased line or occasional dial-up to transfer data to a state-wide backup and update site.
The backup and update site has firewalled internet access for a VPN to GE, and troubleshooting purposes.
GE communicates with customers via internet email. One clerk in a backroom opens an attachment with an RPC worm. Within a half-hour the entire chain is compromised.
Any question on why having a monosystem Windows network is a bad thing? Even ONE Unix server in there would help break the chain.
These people can't fly their ships without proper FAA (or local equivalent) approval. If the FAA doesn't think it's safe, it doesn't fly. That's why Armadillo is so far behind. The FAA wasn't pleased with their "crush-cone" design, forcing them to reengineer for a powered landing.
OK, you're wrong. The individual states of the union are themselves republics
As are you. The individual states are whatever the hell they want to be, as long as they remain inside the bounds of the constitution. For example, up until 1860, South Carolina did not allow voting. They simply cast their electoral votes themselves, and that was that.
Are you nuts? Using the terms "SCO" "libel" and "personal gain" in the same sentence makes no sense. SCO is a company, not a person.
How can this be marked "Interesting" when people make such basic factual errors?
According to this link, my post was quite factual.
That being said, it's something called a "question", genius. It means that I don't know the answer, therefore I am soliciting the help of others with more knowledge of the subject. Look it up in a dictionary sometime. You'd be amazed at all the cool and interesting words you'll find.
I assume that the hypothetical object in near-sun orbit does not have much more surface on the side that shows away from the sun that on the side that faces the sun. (For a long cylindrical object this would not hold, but I assumed that we were talking about a somehow "football-field" shaped object that is flat rather than long.)
Ah, I think I see what you're saying. Basically if the surface area of the cooling section is equivalent to the surface area of the warming section, then there will be some difficulty in exhausting the heat fast enough to keep the cold side significantly colder than the warm side. Correct?
I did some research on this to find how NASA does it with the RTGs. It seems they extend vanes off the surface of the RTG to provide enough cooling (image). Conceivably, something similar could be done with the cooling cylinder of the engine(s). Instead of having a solid wall facing the rear, a cylinder with vanes could extend from the back of the station.
As long as we can provide enough cooling area to keep the cylinder(s) cool, we should have a very efficient engine. Even if we allow the rear area to reach 450K, that still gives our engine an efficiency rating of 50% ( (900-450)/900x100) = 50%); which is about 30% more efficient than the more fragile Solar Panels.
Thankfully, 900K isn't hard to deal with materials wise. Iron has a melting point of about 1800 Kelvin, which is quite good for the amount of thermal conductivity you're getting.
Now if you *really* want to go the mirrored route, we could build out station out of Tungsten (expensive!). With a melting point of 3700 Kelvin and more than twice the thermal conductivity, we can make the station far hotter than we could otherwise.
Just as a note: You will have a high temperature on the *dark* side, too, because you have vent off the excess heat. You simply cannot do that when the body's temperature is near zero.
Um... you're going to have to explain that to me, because I thought that's how Stirling engines *work*. With a suitable area to exhaust the heat, the temperature should drop more quickly on the cold side than you can exhaust heat into it.
As I understand it, the warm side should create a cold "shadow" directly behind itself, as all the rays from the Sun are striking the front side of the station. As long as the back side is able to maintain a sufficient area for heat disappation (and should have quite a volume), the rear area should stay cool. (Although the rear plate is going to get quite hot.)
Don't be such a troll. In the 8 computer * years I've been using linux I've only reinstalled twice, once to try debian over mandrake (that's a keeper!), and once because of a hardware problem.
In all that time, you've never had to do an upgrade install? Or are you still running the debian with no USB support? Or NVidia support? Or any other support for modern hardware, software, etc. I don't have to do that with my FreeBSD box. ALL the hardware I needed was supported when I made the install. I've seen no reason to upgrade to newer versions, because everything works just peachy.
<mutter>calling me a troll... ratsa fratsa... no good...</mutter>
Thanks for checking my calcs. I had two different calculations written in my notes and I couldn't remember which one was correct. Seems I should have gone with the more conservative one! Just to check, the calcs are as follows:
Earth gets 1.3kw/m^2 light fall off rate = 1/r^2 r = 1au
That still doesn't look right. But it checks against your answer.
Therefore, the correct power generation would be:
109.73m * 48.78m * 130kw/m^2 = 695.8mw
By the way, 100 times the wattage yields more that 3 times the temperature (4th power law). So you get about 900 K instead of 300 K on earth.
Actually, I think that's good news. As I suggested above, a Stirling engine in space may actually make the best choice for a power generation plant. The Stirling formula is:
(Temperature of the hot side - Temperature of the cold side)/Temp of hot side * 100
If we figure 900K on the hot side, and near absolute zero on the cold side (we'll say 100K for argument), then we can calculate the following efficiency:
(900K - 100K) / 900K * 100 = 88.8% efficient
Now, does anyone know how to calculate how much of the solar energy we could convert to heat by use of a black surface? And how much wattage per square meter is in constant 900K?
I rather hope that IBM goes after a gag order to prevent SCO from further maligning IBM's AIX business.
I'm actually starting to wonder if the Judge won't do it himself. SCO has been releasing every minor thing in their favor about the case to the press. This has a very negative effect on IBM's business. Given that the judge has not been favorable to SCOs claims, he might just decide to gag them.
While I agree with what you're saying, this change does have me a bit fearful. College curriculums have been slowly dumbed down as companies demand trained code monkeys from these institutions, instead of highly educated individuals with free-thinking ability. The result is that too many of today's college grads couldn't find a binary tree structure if it bit them in the ass. They just put one line of code after another and work on tying their shoes. The problem is, I could hire a fourteen year old to do the same thing.
As for degrees as job qualifications, this is seriously beginning to irk me. On one hand, companies supposedly want the best and brightest employee possible. On the other hand, they shirk the guy who's got the experience, the knowledge, and the proven ability but no degree, for some degreed idiot who doesn't know the first thing about software development.
Of course, these are the same companies that think that more warm bodies == faster development. In their never-ending pursuit for more warm bodies, they've outsourced to more warm bodies in India so that they can get even more warm bodies for the same price! Next they'll cut costs by going for more cold bodies!
Maybe Google will finally teach the business world something about proper engineering. Then again, maybe not.
NASA has a wide variety of plans on the drawing boards for antimatter engines. One of them (utilizing antimatter-enhanced fission) is being constructed by NASA as we speak.
Sort of. The primary difference I see is that Blu-Ray is claiming their disks can be opened for random writing. This is a smidge different than the sequential session-at-once of CD-RWs. (Don't know a damn thing about DVD-RWs.)
Am I to understand that it allows for disk rewriting, much in the same way that VCR Cartridges can be overwritten? If that's the case, this represents a huge leap forward for consumer optical disks.
Slashdot Mirror
...and will be hobbled to prevent more than three applications running concurrently.
:-/
Sounds like any other version of a Microsoft OS.
While parent is probably trolling, there is some truth to his statement. Windows just doesn't do so well when you load it down with programs (active or not). "Cache Thrash" is simply a way of life for Windows users; even those with gobs of memory. I've known people who have completely disabled the Windows cache because of these problems. Microsoft needs to rip out their VM and threading system, and redesign it for modern computers with 128+ megs of RAM.
The Unixes do it much better, but the programs do take slightly longer to run. I remember the first time I used a Solaris box. A puny Ultra 5, and it was absolutely kicking NT's ass on parallelism! I could have 7 or 8 "busy" programs, and my desktop would never become unresponsive! Mac OS X has made use of the same concept, expect that the window is double-buffered. The end result is that you never see an ugly unpainted window. Now if only Apple would fix the 101 ways to lock up finder.
You attempted to discredit the very concept of quantum communication by invoking your knowledge of relativity. Eianstein himself, if he were here, would be the first to admit that Relativity is not set in stone and that there are still many 'holes' that are unaccounted for.
What the hell? I did no such thing as you acuse me of. I merely attempted to correct a poster on a misunderstanding of relativity, and we got on a tangent about acceleration/deceleration.
As for relativity, it has not been proven to be "wrong" about the universe. In fact, it holds up in every test we've put it through. As odd as it may sound, so has Quantum Mechanics. What *is* odd is that Quantum Mechanics appears to allow several methods for violating light speed (e.g. Quantum Tunneling), but none of them allow for information to be transferred faster than light (the core of relativity). Not even Quantum Entanglement allows for information to travel faster than light (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement
Now, if you'd please take your trolling elsewhere.
What were you expecting? A complete history of the world? ;-)
There's no such thing as deceleration, it's just acceleration in another direction :P
:-)
Sure there is. Deceleration is acceleration to cancel out velocity relative to a different point of reference.
You're right. I'm sorry, I misread your post as "the car sees the light travel at 0.5c". Carry on. :-)
Now from the car's perspective, the light is moving away from it at C, but it's moving forward at .5C, so the light is only getting closer to the observer at .5C.
.5 C, thus causing him to see light travel at the velocity c. In fact, the guy in the car has no way of knowing if he's moving or if the other guy is moving toward him.
That's not right. Space-time should dilate for a travel at
To get your mental juices flowing, consider this: Is our star currently flying through space a near light speed? If it is, then we'd may need to decelerate to reach another star. But how does a space ship know if it's accelerating or decelerating? Maybe it really is accelerating toward the planet. Or maybe the ship is slowing down and allowing the planet to approach.
According to relativity, both these perspectives are equally valid. The only thing that distinguishes them is the observer's point of view.
A much more interesting question is what would have happened if NeXT had not got the crazy idea of making its own hardware systems and had come out as a 100% software O/S from the start.
;-)
Good idea! Too bad Jobs already thought of it. Anyone who's programmed for Mac OS X should instantly recognize all the NeXT APIs from back in those days. Nearly every API is *exactly* the same, right down to the byte length of the parameters. The only thing that's changed, is that the look of the widgets is far less "Unixy" than NeXT every was.
NeXT OS is not dead. It has merely evolved into a higher plain of existance.
P.S. For laughs, try typing "man open" in the Terminal application. The man page should give you some nice background on how the command originated in NeXT OS.
Completely a Wild Ass Guess, but they probably need the space for the extra fuel in the case of a powered descent. Not to mention that an emergecy chute is probably packed in the nose now that they aren't planning to crush it. Having the chute in the back would require that the craft perform a 180 degree rotation before the chute could be deployed. Not exactly the best idea in an emergency.
Why are they even accessible on the internet? Seems like these should be in a secure private network unlikely to be attacked.
Who said they're on the internet? Consider the following scenario:
The Hospital PCs are connected to a primary server that backs up all data and managed the PCs.
The Primary Server has a leased line or occasional dial-up to transfer data to a state-wide backup and update site.
The backup and update site has firewalled internet access for a VPN to GE, and troubleshooting purposes.
GE communicates with customers via internet email. One clerk in a backroom opens an attachment with an RPC worm. Within a half-hour the entire chain is compromised.
Any question on why having a monosystem Windows network is a bad thing? Even ONE Unix server in there would help break the chain.
These people can't fly their ships without proper FAA (or local equivalent) approval. If the FAA doesn't think it's safe, it doesn't fly. That's why Armadillo is so far behind. The FAA wasn't pleased with their "crush-cone" design, forcing them to reengineer for a powered landing.
OK, you're wrong. The individual states of the union are themselves republics
As are you. The individual states are whatever the hell they want to be, as long as they remain inside the bounds of the constitution. For example, up until 1860, South Carolina did not allow voting. They simply cast their electoral votes themselves, and that was that.
Of course, in practice, each state is a republic.
Are you nuts? Using the terms "SCO" "libel" and "personal gain" in the same sentence makes no sense. SCO is a company, not a person.
How can this be marked "Interesting" when people make such basic factual errors?
According to this link, my post was quite factual.
That being said, it's something called a "question", genius. It means that I don't know the answer, therefore I am soliciting the help of others with more knowledge of the subject. Look it up in a dictionary sometime. You'd be amazed at all the cool and interesting words you'll find.
Somebody cue Reba MacIntire for this gentleman!
"Oh, she looks out the window and wonders again; Is there life out there..."
You Fiend! Making people type "www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992461" when you could have just linked there! The horror, the horror! ;-)
I did! I did see the Puttee Tat! I did!
I have the oddest feeling of Deja Vu. Haven't we seen this story before? Like two weeks ago?
I assume that the hypothetical object in near-sun orbit does not have much more surface on the side that shows away from the sun that on the side that faces the sun. (For a long cylindrical object this would not hold, but I assumed that we were talking about a somehow "football-field" shaped object that is flat rather than long.)
Ah, I think I see what you're saying. Basically if the surface area of the cooling section is equivalent to the surface area of the warming section, then there will be some difficulty in exhausting the heat fast enough to keep the cold side significantly colder than the warm side. Correct?
I did some research on this to find how NASA does it with the RTGs. It seems they extend vanes off the surface of the RTG to provide enough cooling (image). Conceivably, something similar could be done with the cooling cylinder of the engine(s). Instead of having a solid wall facing the rear, a cylinder with vanes could extend from the back of the station.
As long as we can provide enough cooling area to keep the cylinder(s) cool, we should have a very efficient engine. Even if we allow the rear area to reach 450K, that still gives our engine an efficiency rating of 50% ( (900-450)/900x100) = 50%); which is about 30% more efficient than the more fragile Solar Panels.
Thankfully, 900K isn't hard to deal with materials wise. Iron has a melting point of about 1800 Kelvin, which is quite good for the amount of thermal conductivity you're getting.
Now if you *really* want to go the mirrored route, we could build out station out of Tungsten (expensive!). With a melting point of 3700 Kelvin and more than twice the thermal conductivity, we can make the station far hotter than we could otherwise.
Just as a note: You will have a high temperature on the *dark* side, too, because you have vent off the excess heat. You simply cannot do that when the body's temperature is near zero.
Um... you're going to have to explain that to me, because I thought that's how Stirling engines *work*. With a suitable area to exhaust the heat, the temperature should drop more quickly on the cold side than you can exhaust heat into it.
As I understand it, the warm side should create a cold "shadow" directly behind itself, as all the rays from the Sun are striking the front side of the station. As long as the back side is able to maintain a sufficient area for heat disappation (and should have quite a volume), the rear area should stay cool. (Although the rear plate is going to get quite hot.)
It seems some threads never die.
Don't be such a troll. In the 8 computer * years I've been using linux I've only reinstalled twice, once to try debian over mandrake (that's a keeper!), and once because of a hardware problem.
In all that time, you've never had to do an upgrade install? Or are you still running the debian with no USB support? Or NVidia support? Or any other support for modern hardware, software, etc. I don't have to do that with my FreeBSD box. ALL the hardware I needed was supported when I made the install. I've seen no reason to upgrade to newer versions, because everything works just peachy.
<mutter>calling me a troll... ratsa fratsa... no good...</mutter>
Therefore, the correct power generation would be: By the way, 100 times the wattage yields more that 3 times the temperature (4th power law). So you get about 900 K instead of 300 K on earth.
Actually, I think that's good news. As I suggested above, a Stirling engine in space may actually make the best choice for a power generation plant. The Stirling formula is:If we figure 900K on the hot side, and near absolute zero on the cold side (we'll say 100K for argument), then we can calculate the following efficiency:Now, does anyone know how to calculate how much of the solar energy we could convert to heat by use of a black surface? And how much wattage per square meter is in constant 900K?
I rather hope that IBM goes after a gag order to prevent SCO from further maligning IBM's AIX business.
I'm actually starting to wonder if the Judge won't do it himself. SCO has been releasing every minor thing in their favor about the case to the press. This has a very negative effect on IBM's business. Given that the judge has not been favorable to SCOs claims, he might just decide to gag them.
While I agree with what you're saying, this change does have me a bit fearful. College curriculums have been slowly dumbed down as companies demand trained code monkeys from these institutions, instead of highly educated individuals with free-thinking ability. The result is that too many of today's college grads couldn't find a binary tree structure if it bit them in the ass. They just put one line of code after another and work on tying their shoes. The problem is, I could hire a fourteen year old to do the same thing.
As for degrees as job qualifications, this is seriously beginning to irk me. On one hand, companies supposedly want the best and brightest employee possible. On the other hand, they shirk the guy who's got the experience, the knowledge, and the proven ability but no degree, for some degreed idiot who doesn't know the first thing about software development.
Of course, these are the same companies that think that more warm bodies == faster development. In their never-ending pursuit for more warm bodies, they've outsourced to more warm bodies in India so that they can get even more warm bodies for the same price! Next they'll cut costs by going for more cold bodies!
Maybe Google will finally teach the business world something about proper engineering. Then again, maybe not.
*Ahem* From my post:
NASA has a wide variety of plans on the drawing boards for antimatter engines. One of them (utilizing antimatter-enhanced fission) is being constructed by NASA as we speak.
Sort of. The primary difference I see is that Blu-Ray is claiming their disks can be opened for random writing. This is a smidge different than the sequential session-at-once of CD-RWs. (Don't know a damn thing about DVD-RWs.)
Am I to understand that it allows for disk rewriting, much in the same way that VCR Cartridges can be overwritten? If that's the case, this represents a huge leap forward for consumer optical disks.