Uh, don't forget the possibility of retreating blade stall, where the effective airspeed of the retreating blade (the blade going 'backwards' relative to the flight path), due to rotor rotation and relative wind, is low enough to cause it to stall. The rotor disc then tends to roll off in that direction (quite nastily).
see here
Yup. I use it quite extensively.
I quite simply *hate* Perl - Tcl is infinitely easier to read and understand old code.
I've just implemented a large image processing (production) system using Tcl as a 'glue' language - it's great string-processing and regex tools made life *much* easier than doung it in C or Java or something. (IMHO).
One thing I like about Tcl/Tk is the wide range of available extensions. If you need something, it's probably out there -- if not, it's pretty easy to write extensions of your own.
There are certain extensions I wouldn't be caught dead without:
Tclodbc (odbc interface - with odbc/odbc bridge from Easysoft, can also talk to Windoz DB's from unix)
Metakit (Nic lightweight embedded Db - no more using MySQL for a 100 line script)
TclX (Various things missing from base Tcl, including named pipes, etc.)
iTcl (Object-oriented Tcl, for those nice *big* complex apps)
A story I heard a few years ago (sounds very UL'ish) about the [DEA | DOA | CIA]. Growing a crop of [Coca | Marijuana] using captured [Mexican | Whoever] growers. They were using remote sensing of this controlled experimental crop to be able to determine when similar crops are ready for harvest, and how to detect them from aerial / satellite photography. Anyway - crop is almost ready for harvest - next batch of photos show -- no crop, no prisoners, and the first (?) US Government subsidized batch of whatever had disappeared across the border to Mexico.
I've just installed 4.1 on My Powerbook 3400 (Scratch installation, based on Debian Potato, kernel 2.2.19).
The 3400 has a nasty little Chips & Technologies 65550, and performance has always been so-so. With 4.1 (using the fb driver) it *smokes* (well.... for a pb3400).
Apart from some minor (self induced) stupidities with the new Xfree input layer, everything looks pretty good.
Was going to try it on my AMD workstation, but *still* no GLX for Riva 128:-(
NASA had a project built around a F111 during the late 70's / early 80's IIRC, called the MAW (Mission Adaptive Wing), which not only did variable geometry (sweep), but also had a (smoothly) variable camber airfoil for optimizing wing performance during different flight regimes. This would seem to be a natural progression of that concept.
The F111 was outfitted (again, IIRC) with a standard starboard wing, and the port wing was the MAW.
I don't know what ever became of the project, but last I saw the ship was sitting in pieces at Davis Monthan (storage) in Arizona.
Yeah, this *is* funny as hell, but just a few
points in Apple's defence:
(IIRC)
1. It was generally an overheating problem
(Mine used to get *incredibly* hot sometimes)
2. Precisely 1 (one) machine caught fire, and,
3. It was in Apple's posession at the time.
Now back to the lousy 'really/hot/ laptop' jokes.... . ..
As far as the fuel tank issue goes, aren't most tanks (as in propellant, etc.) filament wound? In which case they don't *strictly* need an autoclave (except maybe for some level of debulking), they mainly need some sort of curing oven.
If this new system works with existing resin systems and prepregs (esp. for low-cost mass production parts) it will be quite something.
The only thing that bothers me is with the *extremely* rapid cure, what happens to thermal and dimensional stability of the parts compared with a long ramp-up/ramp-down cure cycle?
Yeah, point taken, but I wasn't really comparing their missions,
just the technical and fiscal environments in which they were developed,
btw. If you *really* want something that will blow your mind (UAV related), try and
find some info on a little (!) DARPA project (long ago cancelled) called 'Q'.
Pretty impressive at first glance, but when you consider what it costs and the gazillions of dollars the USAF have thrown at it's development, (and the fact that it's wingspan is around that of a 737), it starts looking somewhat less impressive.
Actually, how about dumping the entire thing in a bath of Fluorinert (an electrically inert hydrocarbon (IIRC?) liquid) as used for cooling the Cray C90 amongst others.
This is *immensely* neat stuff - I once saw a television (operating) dumped in a tub of this stuff, incredibly weird sight.
Ah. In checking back through my bookmarks, I see something similar has been mentioned Here
VTK has some nice wrappers for various languages. I spent some time playing with the TCL/TK side of it, and it was great for quickly trying out ideas.
Another package that comes to mind is VIS5D.
See Somewhere here
>cosmonauts - who for luck urinate on the back tire of the bus that takes them to the launch pad
Actually, IIRC, the bus stops on the way to the launch pad at the exact spot at which Yuri Gagarin stopped to take a leak before his historic flight, and the cosmonauts then urinate on the {sidewalk | grass | tree | snow} at that point. Done for luck and in honour of Gagarin.
>Speculation: It's classification. We know that deformities exist and can be caused by >various factors (genetic, environment, etc). So saying it has characteristics of human and >chimpanzee is just speculation.
You tend (in palaeoanthropology and other fields) to have researchers called 'lumpers' and those called 'splitters'. The Leakeys are generally 'splitters', that is, they tend to create new species for new specimens if there is the *slightest* doubt as to their position within an existing group. Then there are the 'lumpers', who tend to dump everything into exisiting groups, explaining differences due to (as mentioned above) variations within a species, sexual dimorphism, etc -- the fact that the specimen in hand is probably *not* an average representative of the whole population. (Donald Johansen and co. -- he of 'Lucy' fame -- would probably fall into this category.)
Actually, this was planned *way* back.
The two Keck telescopes were not built simultaneously.
Keck I had seen first light and had already been in operation for quite a few years (IIRC)
before they started construction of Keck II beside it for the specific purpose of inteferometry.
The requirement for Linux is completely self-imposed - I am fairly clueless about development under windows. (I couldn't code my way out of a paper bag with Win32, and, quite frankly, I'd like to keep it that way).
Last time I looked at vgetty it was *nasty* - flaky as all hell and pretty much unmaintained for ages (has this changed at all?).
I ended up hacking together something using TCL/Expect ('cause I don't like perl) and for the CID stuff, xmessage, (a la JWZ).
I have yet to build the answering machine stuff, but so far vgetty's source looks rather obfuscated in areas.
Festival seems to be a nice way to go for this, both for messages (outgoing) and for
announcing callers. Only problem is that it needs a bit more than that old P100 that's
been sitting collecting dust! On my old NAT router/CallerID/testbed box (P133) it takes
around 10 seconds to put together a short phrase ("It's that annoying dickhead calling again").
> Another thing might just be to program very precise geometrical measurements into the
> bot. Go forward 10 feet, make a left turn, go forward 1 foot, left turn, forward 10 feet, etc.
Ah! a lawn-mowing robot programmed in LOGO.
I bet Seymour Papert never envisioned *that* as an application for his language!!
The same goes for fully composite aircraft.
Case in point - the Aerotek / Atlas developed 'ACE' all composite turboprop trainer
(very similar to the Pilatus PC9), had an effectively unlimited fatigue life.
Not too common, though, because very few aerospace mfgs are willing to commit to
pure composite airframes - they merely use composite panels on conventional structures or complete composite components, such as fins, ailerons, etc.
The only others around are homebuilts, and (with all due respect to their builders),
these are not always the best designed or built structures around!
Ah! there is one notable exception I almost missed: See here
REUTERS:
A new room-temperature superconductor has been developed by a US university.
"It's a breakthrough in electricity transmission" says it's creator, Dr IM Tryntafulyu,
"We've been testing it in outdoor transmission cables on our campus, and it seems to be working fine" reported Dr Tryntafulyu, from his laboratory in Pt. Barrow, Alaska.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, don't forget the possibility of retreating blade stall, where the effective airspeed of the retreating blade (the blade going 'backwards' relative to the flight path), due to rotor rotation and relative wind, is low enough to cause it to stall. The rotor disc then tends to roll off in that direction (quite nastily).
see here
Yup. I use it quite extensively.
I quite simply *hate* Perl - Tcl is infinitely easier to read and understand old code.
I've just implemented a large image processing (production) system
using Tcl as a 'glue' language - it's great string-processing and regex tools made life *much* easier than doung it in C or Java or something. (IMHO).
One thing I like about Tcl/Tk is the wide range of available extensions.
If you need something, it's probably out there -- if not, it's pretty easy to write extensions of your own.
There are certain extensions I wouldn't be caught dead without:
Tclodbc (odbc interface - with odbc/odbc bridge from Easysoft, can also talk to Windoz DB's from unix)
Metakit (Nic lightweight embedded Db - no more using MySQL for a 100 line script)
TclX (Various things missing from base Tcl, including named pipes, etc.)
iTcl (Object-oriented Tcl, for those nice *big* complex apps)
When I first read that, I parsed it as:
"Apple dumps core".
Man... I gotta go get some more coffee
As for the video capturing, here are a few places to start:
Video for Linux resources
Video for Linux mailing list - archives
A story I heard a few years ago (sounds very UL'ish) about the [DEA | DOA | CIA].
Growing a crop of [Coca | Marijuana] using captured [Mexican | Whoever] growers.
They were using remote sensing of this controlled experimental crop to be able to determine when
similar crops are ready for harvest, and how to detect them from aerial / satellite photography.
Anyway - crop is almost ready for harvest - next batch of photos show --
no crop, no prisoners, and the first (?) US Government subsidized batch of whatever had disappeared
across the border to Mexico.
I've just installed 4.1 on My Powerbook 3400 (Scratch installation, based on Debian Potato, kernel 2.2.19). The 3400 has a nasty little Chips & Technologies 65550, and performance has always been so-so. :-(
With 4.1 (using the fb driver) it *smokes* (well.... for a pb3400).
Apart from some minor (self induced) stupidities with the new Xfree input layer, everything looks pretty good.
Was going to try it on my AMD workstation, but *still* no GLX for Riva 128
Ahh.. I guess time for a new graphics card..
NASA had a project built around a F111
during the late 70's / early 80's IIRC, called the MAW (Mission Adaptive Wing),
which not only did variable geometry (sweep),
but also had a (smoothly) variable camber airfoil
for optimizing wing performance during different flight regimes.
This would seem to be a natural progression of that concept.
The F111 was outfitted (again, IIRC) with a standard
starboard wing, and the port wing was the MAW.
I don't know what ever became of the project,
but last I saw the ship was sitting in pieces
at Davis Monthan (storage) in Arizona.
I agree,
But These are where to look:
Discovery Channel MUAV page
Aerovironment's Black Widow
Black Widow development (pdf)
Yeah, this *is* funny as hell, but just a few
/hot/ laptop' jokes.... . . .
points in Apple's defence:
(IIRC)
1. It was generally an overheating problem
(Mine used to get *incredibly* hot sometimes)
2. Precisely 1 (one) machine caught fire, and,
3. It was in Apple's posession at the time.
Now back to the lousy 'really
As far as the fuel tank issue goes, aren't most tanks (as in propellant, etc.)
filament wound? In which case they don't *strictly* need
an autoclave (except maybe for some level of debulking),
they mainly need some sort of curing oven.
If this new system works with existing resin systems and prepregs
(esp. for low-cost mass production parts) it will be quite something.
The only thing that bothers me is with the *extremely* rapid cure, what
happens to thermal and dimensional stability of the parts compared with a long
ramp-up/ramp-down cure cycle?
Yeah, point taken, but I wasn't really comparing their missions,
just the technical and fiscal environments in which they were developed,
btw. If you *really* want something that will blow your mind (UAV related), try and
find some info on a little (!) DARPA project (long ago cancelled) called 'Q'.
Pretty impressive at first glance,
but when you consider what it costs
and the gazillions of dollars the USAF have thrown at it's development,
(and the fact that it's wingspan is around that of a 737), it starts looking
somewhat less impressive.
For some contrast, check out These guys
Actually, how about dumping the entire thing in
a bath of Fluorinert (an electrically inert hydrocarbon (IIRC?) liquid)
as used for cooling the Cray C90 amongst others.
This is *immensely* neat stuff - I once saw a television (operating) dumped in a tub of this stuff, incredibly weird sight.
Ah. In checking back through my bookmarks, I see something similar has been mentioned Here
VTK has some nice wrappers for various languages.
I spent some time playing with the TCL/TK side of it, and it was great for quickly trying out ideas.
Another package that comes to mind is VIS5D.
See Somewhere here
>cosmonauts - who for luck urinate on the back tire of the bus that takes them to the launch pad
Actually, IIRC, the bus stops on the way to the launch pad at the exact spot
at which Yuri Gagarin stopped to take a leak before his historic flight, and the cosmonauts then urinate on the {sidewalk | grass | tree | snow} at that point.
Done for luck and in honour of Gagarin.
>Speculation: It's classification. We know that deformities exist and can be caused by
>various factors (genetic, environment, etc). So saying it has characteristics of human and
>chimpanzee is just speculation.
You tend (in palaeoanthropology and other fields) to have researchers called 'lumpers' and
those called 'splitters'. The Leakeys are generally 'splitters', that is, they tend to
create new species for new specimens if there is the *slightest* doubt as to their position
within an existing group. Then there are the 'lumpers', who tend to dump everything
into exisiting groups, explaining differences due to (as mentioned above)
variations within a species, sexual dimorphism, etc -- the fact that the specimen
in hand is probably *not* an average representative of the whole population.
(Donald Johansen and co. -- he of 'Lucy' fame -- would probably fall into this
category.)
Actually, this was planned *way* back.
The two Keck telescopes were not built simultaneously.
Keck I had seen first light and had already been in operation for quite a few years (IIRC)
before they started construction of Keck II beside it for the specific purpose of inteferometry.
Check out 'Scientific Applications on Linux' Here
A much-underrated directory of apps for linux.
The requirement for Linux is completely self-imposed - I am fairly clueless about development under windows. (I couldn't code my way out of a paper bag with Win32, and, quite frankly, I'd like to keep it that way).
Last time I looked at vgetty it was *nasty* - flaky as all hell and pretty much unmaintained
for ages (has this changed at all?).
I ended up hacking together something using TCL/Expect ('cause I don't like perl)
and for the CID stuff, xmessage, (a la JWZ).
I have yet to build the answering machine stuff, but so far vgetty's source looks rather obfuscated in areas.
Festival seems to be a nice way to go for this, both for messages (outgoing) and for
announcing callers. Only problem is that it needs a bit more than that old P100 that's
been sitting collecting dust! On my old NAT router/CallerID/testbed box (P133) it takes
around 10 seconds to put together a short phrase ("It's that annoying dickhead calling again").
> Another thing might just be to program very precise geometrical measurements into the
> bot. Go forward 10 feet, make a left turn, go forward 1 foot, left turn, forward 10 feet, etc.
Ah! a lawn-mowing robot programmed in LOGO.
I bet Seymour Papert never envisioned *that* as an application for his language!!
2001-04-08 02:30:00 splat! (~sh)
The same goes for fully composite aircraft.
Case in point - the Aerotek / Atlas developed 'ACE' all composite turboprop trainer
(very similar to the Pilatus PC9), had an effectively unlimited fatigue life.
Not too common, though, because very few aerospace mfgs are willing to commit to
pure composite airframes - they merely use composite panels on conventional structures
or complete composite components, such as fins, ailerons, etc.
The only others around are homebuilts, and (with all due respect to their builders),
these are not always the best designed or built structures around!
Ah! there is one notable exception I almost missed: See here
REUTERS: A new room-temperature superconductor has been developed by a US university.
"It's a breakthrough in electricity transmission" says it's creator, Dr IM Tryntafulyu,
"We've been testing it in outdoor transmission cables on our campus, and it seems to be working fine"
reported Dr Tryntafulyu, from his laboratory in Pt. Barrow, Alaska.
Wow!
Open source SDI!
RMS and National Defense!