One thing you may want to add to your list of things you hate: accusing someone of igorance with a criticism that demonstrates far more ignorance than the comment you are critisizing.
Aircraft attitude-control systems use aerodynamic forces, not gyroscopic, to aim the nose in the desired direction. The gyros are for reference, not reaction.
No kidding? Really? Damn, no wonder I had to push on those pedel things and turn that wheel last time I was flying a plane. I was confused for a moment. Betcha I was talking about the artificial horizon. Ooops. Probably should've spelled that out. My bad.
Here's an experiment for you kids at home: Take the wheel off your bike. Hold on to both sides of the axle, and get someone to spin it for you. Try to rotate it. Every first grader has done that in science class (except in Kansas where the wheel doesn't exist because the Bible has the value of Pi wrong, and Man never evolved to calculate it better...). You most certainly can stabilize an object from rotational forced using three gyrosopes aligned to each axis.
Oh, and they're frequently used in missile guidance systems for stabilization, not just referance.
'Fraid he's right and you're not. You have exactly three perpendicular axes, so three thrust lines will do. To balance torque around each one, you have two fans per axis. Each fan pair can pull as well as push, so you do not need two fans per face. Three axes * 2 fans/axis = 6 fans.
'Fraid you're doing the same thing he did, assuming you've got to be able to control movement in three axis when maneuvering in 3-D. Obviously you've never tried it. I haven't in zero-g, obviously, but I have underwater. You need to be able to move along X, Y, and Z, plus rotate around those axis (yaw, pitch, roll). Otherwise you can't turn around. And notice in the diagrams there's a camera. Sucks if something interesting is happening behind it and it can't turn around.
You don't need two fans per face, that's true. But unless you have them equidistant from the center of gravity, you have stability and control issues. If you have them inline, spinning in opposite directions (one fan blade has its blades inverted), then you can cancel it out. But with only six, you need to vent the air for the opposite site through the device, with as little resistance as you get on the powered side. Tough to get right, but doable. Not much room for electronics in a sphere like that after you do, however. Six just can't do it. Hell, four can't do it in 2-D, because you still have X, Y, and orientation (three axis instead of six).
Look up Froude efficiency, and compare that of an air jet to a fan 4 cm across. Then compute the energy capacity of a volume of compressed air at 1000 PSI, and the same volume of NiMH battery. How long can each deliver 0.01 Newton of thrust? Show your work.
You're operating in a nearly frictionless environment. Efficiency isn't an issue. You need accuracy in thrust. Releasing compressed gas through an accurate valve is a lot more precise than issues with varying efficiency of a fan at different speeds, and compensating for spin-up time. But that's neither here nor there. Six gas jets, six fans, either way its simply not going to work.
Confucius say: Is better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
Maybe you oughta stop reading the fortune cookies, and think more about your posts.
Okay, not to throw a light of doubt on this, but I'm not so sure an A/C claiming to work at NASA throwing around some ideas should really be trusted.
Couple reasons:
1) The fans spinning wouldn't be an issue with a simple fixed-axis gyroscopic system like they use in airplanes for the horizon control.
2) You can't use one of those with six fans, that's the biggest proof that this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. To move around in a 2-d surface, you'd need fans to push it in each of the directions in 3-d space (6, unless you're reversing the fans, but that'd mean having air passages through the device, which uses up a lot of the interior space), PLUS you need fans to control orientation in space. Sure, you could use actuators on a system like the one I mentioned above to force it to turn against the interia of the gyroscopes, but if they were doing that, then the stability wouldn't be an issue would it?
There's pleanty of other ways to counteract the tendancy of the device to spin when the fans turn -- like doubling up on the fans, on axis, and spinning them in opposite directions. But that's twelve fans, and still doesn't solve the problem how how to adjuct yaw, pitch, and roll.
I dunno, I just don't find this post that likely to be real.
I also can't imagine that carrying compressed air really would be an issue. Weight isn't an issue, only mass. And anyone whose ever had the luck to see someone knock a valve off a scuba tank can tell you that mass to thrust, you can get a lot of oomph out of compressed gas, especially in a microgravity environment.
You'd think an engineer working on this would know the distinction.
This is really amazing. Scary, in some ways, though. I'm about ten pages away from finishing Diamond Age (and as such, I'm not reading any comments on this post in case anyone did something dumb like offhandedly say something that gives away the ending...), and much like Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson seems to have really hit the nail on the head, probably even more so than in Snow Crash.
What this article immediately makes me think, however, is what happens during the early stages of the "Diamond Age" where nanotech isn't widely used and available, where technologies like the security motes in "The Diamond Age" aren't available, and there's the possibility for extensive exploitation of the technology.
The referances in "Diamond Age" to the eastern-european terrorism and things like that seem to echo that feeling as well. This sort of nanotech is going to have far-flung effects on society, but there's going to likely be a really rocky road getting to a point where its so integrated into the way we interact with the world, that it no longer poses a security and safety threat.
Just as a heads up, in the last two weeks or so, the CVS tree has not been able to build for me on any RedHat 5.2 system -- the only functioning builds I've gotten are on RedHat 6.0 systems, so downloading the source may not help you.
The configure crap makes a LOT of assumptions right now, and doesn't actually know what library versions it actually needs, so its often times a real bitch to figure out what everyone at Mozilla seems to have upgraded on their systems that you haven't.
Updating imlib, gtk+ and gdk don't seem to have fixed the problem when I upgraded those yesterday (and promptly broke Gnome...), although the problem seems to come from imlib.
There are often wierd problems running with older system libraries, and things like that.
If you're going to delve into the dark and mysterious world of Mozilla building, here's a couple tips:
1) Run the most recent versions of everything. If that means upgrading to RedHat 6.0, you're probably going to have to do it. They're having similar issues supporting VC++ 5 and 6 under Windows, and the growing trend is build with the newest, and fix it later...
2) The client.mk script, and makefiles aren't very reliable. If you keep blowing core, and aren't seeing lots of other reports about it (and tinderbox is green), blow away the tree, and repull a new copy. Dependancies don't work all the time, nor does make clean, and that seems to be the only reliable way to fix it. Sucks over a modem, huh? I'm suspecting that may be the problem here...
3) Sort of restating #1, but if you're running a stock RedHat 5.2, upgrade your glibc unless you've got a pile of ram. There's some issue with loading libraries multiple times that chows down LOTS of RAM on a stock 5.2 system.
4) When gdb asks you if you want to load all the symbols, *SAY NO* if you don't have a quarter gig of RAM or something. Trust me on this one.:)
Ummm... on most Mac's, the only part of MacOS that starts booting is the part thats in ROM, which is the equivalent of the BIOS on a PC.
You can get Linux to boot without a BIOS on a PC too, but why the hell would you want to? LinuxPPC can be installed with that init tool that lets you dual boot, or you can easily configure the machine to boot straight to Linux. I've run LinuxPPC on two different Macs after MacOS was removed from the system.
You might want to try calling BlueCross/Blue Shield. Here in Connecticut, they just added a "non-group, group plan" or some such thing. Basically you get the same prices and benefits as being on a group plan, even on an individual policy.
I don't know if that's a policy plan for just BCBSCT or if its something nation-wide through BCBS. Worth a shot though.
There IS no serious discussion about this. There is not and has never been. I'm shocked this would even be posted on here, thirty seconds of searching on the Internet turns up the fact that its a hoax. Its a version of the FCC modem tax hoax that also has been kicking around for over ten years.
Most of the e-mail forwards going around the Internet refer to Bill "602P" when they're talking about it.
The FCC actually put out a statement on it, the hoax had spread so far:
I hope this will stop the waste on here even discussing it. Maybe Andover should hire someone to check up on these silly stories on here before getting people all worked up.
The originator of this hoax was a lawyer here in the U.S. known for starting these hoaxes, unfortunately pre-coffee I can't think of his name, although anyone curious could probably find it with a few minutes searching on dejanews.com
So you reported the bugs to the owners, and you know enough about what you're looking for to find them.
Why didn't you go ahead and fix them then? If there's only a dozen or two, why not fix the ones in the drivers that aren't getting fixed? Just because someone else wrote it doesn't mean you can't fix it.
Even more important to the "why aren't most large species hemaphodites" is the problem of self-fertilization.
In evolutionary niches where species are prone to having problems finding mates (which is extremely rare), there is usually an evolved trait to compensate for it, such as the ability of some animals to change genders, from a fertile male to female. The risk to the gene pool is enormous for animals that are hermaphoroditic and fertile (which doesn't happen with most genetic flukes that produce hermaphrodites, which is why its not more common)
You're also limited in evolution to what changes happen naturally over time -- a species can't magically evolve to become hermaphroditic if the genes present in the species don't support a combination that results in a safe hermaphrodite where self-fertilization can't happen.
I haven't read the other three replies to your comment yet, so some of this may be covered by them. Slashdot is misbehaving this morning...
The idea that evolution can only be proven my mangling the scientific method is an idea that is pushed by many people who talk the talk without walking the walk. They've either not reserached or don't understand research into evolutionary theory. But arguing that point could be the content of an entire thesis, and is largely wasted on people who have decided their interpretation of other people's observations are better than the interpretation of the people making the observations. In a court of law, hearsay isn't allowed, but its generally practiced extensively by people arguing science.
A genetic progression could be mocked up by a greater intelligence. There are pleanty of schools of thought in philosophy that consider that point, and a few fringe "scientific" christian sects that believe that the Bible told the literal truth, and the fossil record is a progression back through time from the point of creation six thousand years ago. There is no way of proving or disproving that, however. If you consider that it could be in fact how things happen, however, and it is completely untestable, then the affect of it as a truth is irrelevant to those of us living within that "creation". Since science would then ALSO match reality, and would be a form of study and intepretation of the results of that form of creation, then the point that the fundamentalists miss is that such study would be the most sacred of studies. Plus the world is just really boring if you choose to believe that it was created this way. There's nothing to learn, and there's no amazement left.
Your understanding of cosmology matches your understanding of evolutionary theory. There's a lot of wishy-washyness where cosmology is concerned because its a lot of conjecture, much like religion. The difference is that that in cosmology, a scientist dreams up a possible solution and actually attempts to prove it or disprove it. In religion, someone dreams up a possible answer, and some people will believe him or her on blind faith and others just won't. There is no critical thinking involved.
Generally, however, the argument that a greater intelligence "had" to create the parameters of the universe and guide it to its current point is really a poor argument, because we're looking at the possibility of that happening from within the occurance itself. Sticking to forms of life as we know it, we can easily point to thousands of bodies within our solar system where it *didn't* work. We're not living in the middle ages here, we know those lights in the sky are stars and planets because we've been to some of them! (in the case of the planets, that is) Why would a higher intelligence create us here on a single planet in a universe so hostile to our form of life, where a misplaced asteroid could end all that work? Its just silly to even contemplate that!
If you want to stand firm in your belief that there is a higher external intelligence or non-random force guiding the development of things in our Univserse, isn't it better to do that within the boundaries of intelligent, critical thinking? Tell you what, get a book on quantum theory. There's a lot of holes in there that you can plug up with a "holier than thou" explanation.
Make believe there is a higher force manipulating things... from a scientific standpoint, you'd probably see that in inbalanced in quantum probabilities. Things happening a bit too often one way than another...
But if you consider that our intelligence has arisen from the interaction of billions of neurons in the brain, then that leaves another possibility for a "higher intelligence" -- as I said in the last paragraph, the *proven* effects of quantum mechanics is a place to look. Did you know that two particles, once they've been in contact with each other can manipulate their own probabilities over any distance instantaneously? You fire off two photons in opposite directions, wait a second, and polarize one of them, the other one will change as well, at the exact instant, even though they're then two seconds away by the speed of light. If the changing of states in billions of neurons in the human brain can give rise to our intelligence, do you suppose it could happen with a number of particles interacting in the universe so large there aren't numbers to match it? Maybe that's where your God lives. It would certainly give credance to the Christian belief that "god is everywhere".
There is an entire state of reality that we can't and wont ever be able to witness caused by the very laws of physics
There are numerous examples of evolution within species within the short span of time (hundred years or so) that its been watched for. Going back further using DNA sequencing can show a genetic progression among species going back tens and hundreds of centuries.
Anyone who denies the evidence exists is ignorant of the truth. Amazingly, I saw a science teacher on TV that supported the decision stating that there is no proof that evolution is a more valid theory than creationism. My guess is she was trying to seem more openminded than she was, and was probably a science teacher by assignment rather than training.
The simplest example of biological evolution is the progression in diseases like tuberculosis to strains that are antibiotic resistant.
The major valid criticism of evolution from a scientific standpoint stems from two problems. First is the fact that the majority of people who are taught evolution in highschool and many colleges are being taught evolution as it was understood half a century ago when there wasn't good scientific proof of evolution, and it was generally taught that evolution was a continuous smooth process from one species to another. Those earlier techings typically didn't cover the idea of the branching of species (more in this in a bit) and also don't discuss the problem that has plagued evolutionary theory since it began -- the tendancy towards over-speciation, or the naming of new species based on physical traits that are assumed to be important, but genetically are of no significance. Taught the way its typically taught, there are pleanty of holes in evolutionary theory, but the fault of that lies in the instructors and the writers of the textbooks being used.
A prime example of the problem with evolution typically leaving out the idea of branching species is in the realm of human evolution, where the public at large has been taught the textbook "ape to man" which doesn't match current findings or genetic research. Its now known that homo sapiens did not descend from Neandertal as is often taught. Its also generally accepted that the homo genus left africa on several occasions, only the most recent consisting of the direct predecessors of homo sapiens, a sub-species (our sub-species) that co-existed for millenia with species in our genus other than our own. That's been known and understood for twenty years, but the former explanation is still the one taught in schools.
The variation in races is just like the variation in looks among domesticated cats and dogs. Once environmental pressures relax and a species becomes "domesticated" where it is either controlling its environment or living in an environment where it doesn't directly experience evolutionary pressure, there is greater ability for the variation in the genetics of the species to express itself. Just as domesticating the dog resulted in one species that comes in many shapes, colors and sizes, the same is true of the self-domesticated homo sapiens. (Here's a bit of trivia, anyone know the other species that has been believed to have self-domesticated? There's one and its extinct now...)
Also consider that there are in fact *two* non-domesticated canine variants, the wolf and the dingo. The wolf is generally accepted to be the original genetic stock of the modern dog, which was domesticated and produced the wide varieties of breeds today. When a domesticated breed was introduced into Australia (where there were no examples of the original species) they reverted from their domestication, and resulted in a new physical form of a wild dog... that's why wolves generally all look alike, and dingos all generally look alike, but you go to the pet store and they all look different.
This -- even in its non-hyped up reality -- really turns my stomach. The fact that they could choose to remove evolution even from the recommended standardized testing or other requirements for teaching on account of the fact that the extremist Christian factions in the state have turned their attention from the evils of the Internet and the teletubbies to the easily demonstrable proofs that their fundamentalist teachings are plain wrong.
This is a really dangerous change to make in the schools curriculums. The intelligent students who are able to critically evaluate what they're being taught won't be affected. Most students aren't stupid enough to deny the validity of the scientific process -- even if they question the results. The real risk is to the bottom-of-the-rung students who are being raised by their television by parents who are poorly educated to say the least. These are the students who are going to grow up as equally ignorant and just continue repeating the process.
There are few enough parents doing a decent job raising their kids today, without the states stepping in to make the process of turning out mindless masses who's only care is where they're going to get their next beer and who's on the next WWF that much easier.
Maybe its time for the federal government to pass laws requiring a minimum standard education, since aparently some states seem to think its enough to just chuck the kids into a building for six or seven hours so their parents can work.
Not exactly. Kernel changes involving changes to existing modules is required by GPL.
Choosing to not compile a module and replacing it with a closed-source binary-only version is allowed, and a way I'd guess some companies may choose to go in the future to provide value-add.
And I don't necessarily think that's a *bad* thing.
Its been said over and over, but should keep being said:
Avoid to "must upgrade" urge, especially on production servers. If it works, it doesn't need fixing.
The idea that these are "stable" kernels is a misnomer, they're just tweaks and updates on the stable tree, and there's no guarantee they're actually stable. Example in point, one of my servers was experiencing pretty serious corruption using MySQL in the databases, whenever the load on the database got too high. System was running 2.2.5 SMP. Upgraded to 2.2.9/SMP and the problem went away. Pretty indicative of a problem in 2.2.5.
If you've got a production server, you run the same risk that 2.2.11 might cause a problem that you weren't having before. So think first before upgrading, and only do it if you're having specific problems. We don't want people to start claiming Linux is as instable as NT because of the occasional bad kernel release (like some of the pre-2.0.36 kernels!).
I'd bet he could get three or four times that as an advance on a book, if he's even remotely capable of putting words on paper. Then go for the movie deal.
Then Slashdot and Freshmeat could post articles about it, with links to the Amazon record for them, and can get free books and stuff! And pretend that's not what they're doing! Oh wait, this isn't the X10 thing.;)
J/K about the X10 thing... and no this isn't flaimbait, although I bet I get thwacked for it and lose a point or two.
Anyway, at least the scriptkiddies will have to come up with something more creative than "Free Kevin!" to stick on web pages. Maybe hack in links to X10.com!
Okay, I'm sure its not the case here, but what about the security implications of this? What protections, if any are there that the install disk this creates doesn't have malicious scripts in it?
What security precautions are in place on the server that hosts that CGI to keep someone from hacking *that* machine, and introducing a change the author doesn't know about to the CGI.
I think its a good idea, but for security's sake, everyone should probably double check the install discs, or if you're not fairly confident you could spot something malicious, use the RedHat-standard boot disc.
Sure most of the install stuff runs from binaries/scripts on the install media itself, but there's no reason a malicious script couldn't be tacked onto the end of whatever starts the install program. IMHO, this is a problem with RedHat in general, since they tend to use a more complex boot process, between the boot disk being FAT, to the fact that most systems end up booting initially from a ramdisk, and so on. It makes it much more complex to keep close tabs on what the system did during the install, and how that install process works.
Geek chicks are the best out there. They're usually just enough warped to be interesting, usually really smart (big plus in my book!), and usually pretty cute -- much more so, in my experience, than another segregated group of women... And confirming a couple other comments, I've known a lot of women who rather enjoyed men talking about their hardware:)
Can't beat Angelina Joli in Hackers (as pathetic as the movie was!);)
Seriously though, its all in your attitude! There are the introverted geeks who may not have the most active of social lives, but there are certainly the extroverted geeks out there that are very sociable, and have no trouble meeting like-minded women.
Reminds me of a little essay about tradeshow... *ahem* "action"... I read after Web98. Can't remember who wrote it off the top of my head though.
Ah see, now you definately aren't going to get any. All five probably read slashdot, and they're probably busy right now figuring out who you are, and which of them were the four you were talking about so they can snub you.:)
Actually, if you read that site, you'll find that in MOST cases you can NOT have dual citizenship. In certain individual cases the US Government will allow the recognition of dual-citizenship, but in the majority they do not.
The point of that site is saying as long as you're careful about it, it doesn't really matter. But its generally not a good idea to pass off a Canadian passport upon entry to the US if you're a US citizen, and vice versa. If you had true dual citizenship, you could use either citizenship at any time.
The point being that a lot of these "fake" countries -- and I'm not saying this one is this way -- are used as ways to "get back" at the US government, either in claiming to be able to live in the US but not live by its laws (like paying taxes) or other things. In that regard many are like cults, in that their primary intent is to thumb their collective noses at the countries that people are truely citizens of. If you were born in the US to canadian parents, yeah, maybe the US will let you keep dual citizenship (but I know a bunch of people who have been forced to choose), but in a B.S. case like this, if you tried using that citizenship in any way, I'd guess the weight of the US Government would come crashing down upon you.
This is nothing new, there's at least a half dozen other "global citizen" type scams that have been going on for years on the Internet. Usually they have you pay a stragely large amount of money for a passport and citizenship documents that wouldn't be recognized as legal proof of age at a movie theater, much less at any customs or immagration point in the world.
Its just stupid moneymaking schemes, or cult-like practices in some cases.
Lets see what do you get for your money (depending on how you push the issue with the government):
1) Useless passport and citizenship paperwork that won't be recognized by anyone.
or
2) You (at least in the US) revoke your US citizenship (you can't have dual citizenship in the US past the age of 18) and you learn REAL fast what a plus it really is in the world to be a US citizen.
I think you make a valid point. 2.2. has been the most inconsistant series of kernels I've run through on any of my machines since the late.99's WAY back when.
Example in point: I was getting random data corruption with every version of MySQL I've tried on a Dual Pentium II server under 2.2.5.
Upgraded to 2.2.9, and the problem was fixed. That's a pretty glaring problem, IMHO.
I have a machine at home that refused to run 2.2.7 or 2.2.8, 2.2.9 worked fine. I think there's an inherant problem with the even-stable odd-developer way of versioning things, that being that bug fixes in the even numbered kernels are never properly tested in a development-series before they come out as a new revision on an even number kernel. If 2.2.5 causes data corruption, it shouldn't have been released as a stable kernel, but with only two forks in the development, there's no other way to do it.
What really should happen is there should be a development tree, a stable current version, and a more formalized wider-distributed testing version of the next stable version other than the AC patches, so a new "stable" version isn't presented as the "new stable kernel" because it simply ISN'T.
Fragmentation IS a concern, and it may already be happening. In the article on here yesterday or Monday about SGI's new Linux servers, I pointed out that they specifically mentioned two specific changes to the kernel -- a replacement TCP/IP stack and more efficient NFS code.
I asked if anyone had seen a mention of these on the kernel mailing list. There was no replies suggesting that there has been any contribution by SGI to the stock kernel of those technologies.
So there's a bit of fragmentation there. What happens if software starts needing a particular NFS implementation, or a particular TCP/IP implementation. Already you see packages coming out for RedHat that are a bitch to install on non RedHat systems. Hell, IBM's viavoice stuff they released a while back bombed out on non-RedHat 6.0 systems.
As time progresses this is only going to get worse. The work being done to define a standard base of libraries doesn't enforce application vendors to build against only those libraries -- particularly since (AFAIK) the compilers usually link against the most recent ones on the system, and most if not all distributions will have more than just those base libraries on them.
Under Windows you occasionally see that problem too, with differing versions of DLL's getting mixed up, overwritten, or lost and the general instability that results. What happens when more applications start coming out requiring versions of the system libraries that aren't necessarily compatible with each other? Are we going to end up with 100 meg of differing libc/glibc libraries on a Linux system? Even with a system like RPM, that's a real pain to keep track of, particularly when you're building new software.
Has this been addressed by anyone? It'd seem its an issue for things like Gnome and KDE. If its March 2000, and I've recently upgraded by Gnome and now have GTK 2.0 on my system, will the binary of Communicator 5.0 I'm running still work? Switching to GTK 1.2 broke most of the older apps I had.
Using the typical is-linux-read-for-the-masses example, would my Grandmother be able to straighten out that mess? Hell no!
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One thing you may want to add to your list of things you hate: accusing someone of igorance with a criticism that demonstrates far more ignorance than the comment you are critisizing.
Aircraft attitude-control systems use aerodynamic forces, not gyroscopic, to aim the nose in the desired direction. The gyros are for
reference, not reaction.
No kidding? Really? Damn, no wonder I had to push on those pedel things and turn that wheel last time I was flying a plane. I was confused for a moment. Betcha I was talking about the artificial horizon. Ooops. Probably should've spelled that out. My bad.
Here's an experiment for you kids at home: Take the wheel off your bike. Hold on to both sides of the axle, and get someone to spin it for you. Try to rotate it. Every first grader has done that in science class (except in Kansas where the wheel doesn't exist because the Bible has the value of Pi wrong, and Man never evolved to calculate it better...). You most certainly can stabilize an object from rotational forced using three gyrosopes aligned to each axis.
Oh, and they're frequently used in missile guidance systems for stabilization, not just referance.
'Fraid he's right and you're not. You have exactly three perpendicular axes, so three thrust lines will do. To balance torque around each
one, you have two fans per axis. Each fan pair can pull as well as push, so you do not need two fans per face. Three axes * 2 fans/axis = 6
fans.
'Fraid you're doing the same thing he did, assuming you've got to be able to control movement in three axis when maneuvering in 3-D. Obviously you've never tried it. I haven't in zero-g, obviously, but I have underwater. You need to be able to move along X, Y, and Z, plus rotate around those axis (yaw, pitch, roll). Otherwise you can't turn around. And notice in the diagrams there's a camera. Sucks if something interesting is happening behind it and it can't turn around.
You don't need two fans per face, that's true. But unless you have them equidistant from the center of gravity, you have stability and control issues. If you have them inline, spinning in opposite directions (one fan blade has its blades inverted), then you can cancel it out. But with only six, you need to vent the air for the opposite site through the device, with as little resistance as you get on the powered side. Tough to get right, but doable. Not much room for electronics in a sphere like that after you do, however. Six just can't do it. Hell, four can't do it in 2-D, because you still have X, Y, and orientation (three axis instead of six).
Look up Froude efficiency, and compare that of an air jet to a fan 4 cm across. Then compute the energy capacity of a volume of
compressed air at 1000 PSI, and the same volume of NiMH battery. How long can each deliver 0.01 Newton of thrust? Show your work.
You're operating in a nearly frictionless environment. Efficiency isn't an issue. You need accuracy in thrust. Releasing compressed gas through an accurate valve is a lot more precise than issues with varying efficiency of a fan at different speeds, and compensating for spin-up time. But that's neither here nor there. Six gas jets, six fans, either way its simply not going to work.
Confucius say: Is better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
Maybe you oughta stop reading the fortune cookies, and think more about your posts.
Okay, not to throw a light of doubt on this, but I'm not so sure an A/C claiming to work at NASA throwing around some ideas should really be trusted.
Couple reasons:
1) The fans spinning wouldn't be an issue with a simple fixed-axis gyroscopic system like they use in airplanes for the horizon control.
2) You can't use one of those with six fans, that's the biggest proof that this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. To move around in a 2-d surface, you'd need fans to push it in each of the directions in 3-d space (6, unless you're reversing the fans, but that'd mean having air passages through the device, which uses up a lot of the interior space), PLUS you need fans to control orientation in space. Sure, you could use actuators on a system like the one I mentioned above to force it to turn against the interia of the gyroscopes, but if they were doing that, then the stability wouldn't be an issue would it?
There's pleanty of other ways to counteract the tendancy of the device to spin when the fans turn -- like doubling up on the fans, on axis, and spinning them in opposite directions. But that's twelve fans, and still doesn't solve the problem how how to adjuct yaw, pitch, and roll.
I dunno, I just don't find this post that likely to be real.
I also can't imagine that carrying compressed air really would be an issue. Weight isn't an issue, only mass. And anyone whose ever had the luck to see someone knock a valve off a scuba tank can tell you that mass to thrust, you can get a lot of oomph out of compressed gas, especially in a microgravity environment.
You'd think an engineer working on this would know the distinction.
This is really amazing. Scary, in some ways, though. I'm about ten pages away from finishing Diamond Age (and as such, I'm not reading any comments on this post in case anyone did something dumb like offhandedly say something that gives away the ending...), and much like Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson seems to have really hit the nail on the head, probably even more so than in Snow Crash.
What this article immediately makes me think, however, is what happens during the early stages of the "Diamond Age" where nanotech isn't widely used and available, where technologies like the security motes in "The Diamond Age" aren't available, and there's the possibility for extensive exploitation of the technology.
The referances in "Diamond Age" to the eastern-european terrorism and things like that seem to echo that feeling as well. This sort of nanotech is going to have far-flung effects on society, but there's going to likely be a really rocky road getting to a point where its so integrated into the way we interact with the world, that it no longer poses a security and safety threat.
Just as a heads up, in the last two weeks or so, the CVS tree has not been able to build for me on any RedHat 5.2 system -- the only functioning builds I've gotten are on RedHat 6.0 systems, so downloading the source may not help you.
:)
The configure crap makes a LOT of assumptions right now, and doesn't actually know what library versions it actually needs, so its often times a real bitch to figure out what everyone at Mozilla seems to have upgraded on their systems that you haven't.
Updating imlib, gtk+ and gdk don't seem to have fixed the problem when I upgraded those yesterday (and promptly broke Gnome...), although the problem seems to come from imlib.
There are often wierd problems running with older system libraries, and things like that.
If you're going to delve into the dark and mysterious world of Mozilla building, here's a couple tips:
1) Run the most recent versions of everything. If that means upgrading to RedHat 6.0, you're probably going to have to do it. They're having similar issues supporting VC++ 5 and 6 under Windows, and the growing trend is build with the newest, and fix it later...
2) The client.mk script, and makefiles aren't very reliable. If you keep blowing core, and aren't seeing lots of other reports about it (and tinderbox is green), blow away the tree, and repull a new copy. Dependancies don't work all the time, nor does make clean, and that seems to be the only reliable way to fix it. Sucks over a modem, huh? I'm suspecting that may be the problem here...
3) Sort of restating #1, but if you're running a stock RedHat 5.2, upgrade your glibc unless you've got a pile of ram. There's some issue with loading libraries multiple times that chows down LOTS of RAM on a stock 5.2 system.
4) When gdb asks you if you want to load all the symbols, *SAY NO* if you don't have a quarter gig of RAM or something. Trust me on this one.
Ummm... on most Mac's, the only part of MacOS that starts booting is the part thats in ROM, which is the equivalent of the BIOS on a PC.
You can get Linux to boot without a BIOS on a PC too, but why the hell would you want to? LinuxPPC can be installed with that init tool that lets you dual boot, or you can easily configure the machine to boot straight to Linux. I've run LinuxPPC on two different Macs after MacOS was removed from the system.
You might want to try calling BlueCross/Blue Shield. Here in Connecticut, they just added a "non-group, group plan" or some such thing. Basically you get the same prices and benefits as being on a group plan, even on an individual policy.
I don't know if that's a policy plan for just BCBSCT or if its something nation-wide through BCBS. Worth a shot though.
There IS no serious discussion about this. There is not and has never been. I'm shocked this would even be posted on here, thirty seconds of searching on the Internet turns up the fact that its a hoax. Its a version of the FCC modem tax hoax that also has been kicking around for over ten years.
l
Most of the e-mail forwards going around the Internet refer to Bill "602P" when they're talking about it.
The FCC actually put out a statement on it, the hoax had spread so far:
http://www.fcc.g ov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Factsheets/nominute.htm
I hope this will stop the waste on here even discussing it. Maybe Andover should hire someone to check up on these silly stories on here before getting people all worked up.
The originator of this hoax was a lawyer here in the U.S. known for starting these hoaxes, unfortunately pre-coffee I can't think of his name, although anyone curious could probably find it with a few minutes searching on dejanews.com
So you reported the bugs to the owners, and you know enough about what you're looking for to find them.
Why didn't you go ahead and fix them then? If there's only a dozen or two, why not fix the ones in the drivers that aren't getting fixed? Just because someone else wrote it doesn't mean you can't fix it.
Even more important to the "why aren't most large species hemaphodites" is the problem of self-fertilization.
In evolutionary niches where species are prone to having problems finding mates (which is extremely rare), there is usually an evolved trait to compensate for it, such as the ability of some animals to change genders, from a fertile male to female. The risk to the gene pool is enormous for animals that are hermaphoroditic and fertile (which doesn't happen with most genetic flukes that produce hermaphrodites, which is why its not more common)
You're also limited in evolution to what changes happen naturally over time -- a species can't magically evolve to become hermaphroditic if the genes present in the species don't support a combination that results in a safe hermaphrodite where self-fertilization can't happen.
I haven't read the other three replies to your comment yet, so some of this may be covered by them. Slashdot is misbehaving this morning...
The idea that evolution can only be proven my mangling the scientific method is an idea that is pushed by many people who talk the talk without walking the walk. They've either not reserached or don't understand research into evolutionary theory. But arguing that point could be the content of an entire thesis, and is largely wasted on people who have decided their interpretation of other people's observations are better than the interpretation of the people making the observations. In a court of law, hearsay isn't allowed, but its generally practiced extensively by people arguing science.
A genetic progression could be mocked up by a greater intelligence. There are pleanty of schools of thought in philosophy that consider that point, and a few fringe "scientific" christian sects that believe that the Bible told the literal truth, and the fossil record is a progression back through time from the point of creation six thousand years ago. There is no way of proving or disproving that, however. If you consider that it could be in fact how things happen, however, and it is completely untestable, then the affect of it as a truth is irrelevant to those of us living within that "creation". Since science would then ALSO match reality, and would be a form of study and intepretation of the results of that form of creation, then the point that the fundamentalists miss is that such study would be the most sacred of studies. Plus the world is just really boring if you choose to believe that it was created this way. There's nothing to learn, and there's no amazement left.
Your understanding of cosmology matches your understanding of evolutionary theory. There's a lot of wishy-washyness where cosmology is concerned because its a lot of conjecture, much like religion. The difference is that that in cosmology, a scientist dreams up a possible solution and actually attempts to prove it or disprove it. In religion, someone dreams up a possible answer, and some people will believe him or her on blind faith and others just won't. There is no critical thinking involved.
Generally, however, the argument that a greater intelligence "had" to create the parameters of the universe and guide it to its current point is really a poor argument, because we're looking at the possibility of that happening from within the occurance itself. Sticking to forms of life as we know it, we can easily point to thousands of bodies within our solar system where it *didn't* work. We're not living in the middle ages here, we know those lights in the sky are stars and planets because we've been to some of them! (in the case of the planets, that is) Why would a higher intelligence create us here on a single planet in a universe so hostile to our form of life, where a misplaced asteroid could end all that work? Its just silly to even contemplate that!
If you want to stand firm in your belief that there is a higher external intelligence or non-random force guiding the development of things in our Univserse, isn't it better to do that within the boundaries of intelligent, critical thinking? Tell you what, get a book on quantum theory. There's a lot of holes in there that you can plug up with a "holier than thou" explanation.
Make believe there is a higher force manipulating things... from a scientific standpoint, you'd probably see that in inbalanced in quantum probabilities. Things happening a bit too often one way than another...
But if you consider that our intelligence has arisen from the interaction of billions of neurons in the brain, then that leaves another possibility for a "higher intelligence" -- as I said in the last paragraph, the *proven* effects of quantum mechanics is a place to look. Did you know that two particles, once they've been in contact with each other can manipulate their own probabilities over any distance instantaneously? You fire off two photons in opposite directions, wait a second, and polarize one of them, the other one will change as well, at the exact instant, even though they're then two seconds away by the speed of light. If the changing of states in billions of neurons in the human brain can give rise to our intelligence, do you suppose it could happen with a number of particles interacting in the universe so large there aren't numbers to match it? Maybe that's where your God lives. It would certainly give credance to the Christian belief that "god is everywhere".
There is an entire state of reality that we can't and wont ever be able to witness caused by the very laws of physics
There are numerous examples of evolution within species within the short span of time (hundred years or so) that its been watched for. Going back further using DNA sequencing can show a genetic progression among species going back tens and hundreds of centuries.
Anyone who denies the evidence exists is ignorant of the truth. Amazingly, I saw a science teacher on TV that supported the decision stating that there is no proof that evolution is a more valid theory than creationism. My guess is she was trying to seem more openminded than she was, and was probably a science teacher by assignment rather than training.
The simplest example of biological evolution is the progression in diseases like tuberculosis to strains that are antibiotic resistant.
The major valid criticism of evolution from a scientific standpoint stems from two problems. First is the fact that the majority of people who are taught evolution in highschool and many colleges are being taught evolution as it was understood half a century ago when there wasn't good scientific proof of evolution, and it was generally taught that evolution was a continuous smooth process from one species to another. Those earlier techings typically didn't cover the idea of the branching of species (more in this in a bit) and also don't discuss the problem that has plagued evolutionary theory since it began -- the tendancy towards over-speciation, or the naming of new species based on physical traits that are assumed to be important, but genetically are of no significance. Taught the way its typically taught, there are pleanty of holes in evolutionary theory, but the fault of that lies in the instructors and the writers of the textbooks being used.
A prime example of the problem with evolution typically leaving out the idea of branching species is in the realm of human evolution, where the public at large has been taught the textbook "ape to man" which doesn't match current findings or genetic research. Its now known that homo sapiens did not descend from Neandertal as is often taught. Its also generally accepted that the homo genus left africa on several occasions, only the most recent consisting of the direct predecessors of homo sapiens, a sub-species (our sub-species) that co-existed for millenia with species in our genus other than our own. That's been known and understood for twenty years, but the former explanation is still the one taught in schools.
The variation in races is just like the variation in looks among domesticated cats and dogs. Once environmental pressures relax and a species becomes "domesticated" where it is either controlling its environment or living in an environment where it doesn't directly experience evolutionary pressure, there is greater ability for the variation in the genetics of the species to express itself. Just as domesticating the dog resulted in one species that comes in many shapes, colors and sizes, the same is true of the self-domesticated homo sapiens. (Here's a bit of trivia, anyone know the other species that has been believed to have self-domesticated? There's one and its extinct now...)
Also consider that there are in fact *two* non-domesticated canine variants, the wolf and the dingo. The wolf is generally accepted to be the original genetic stock of the modern dog, which was domesticated and produced the wide varieties of breeds today. When a domesticated breed was introduced into Australia (where there were no examples of the original species) they reverted from their domestication, and resulted in a new physical form of a wild dog... that's why wolves generally all look alike, and dingos all generally look alike, but you go to the pet store and they all look different.
Too bad no one in Kansas will ever know that.
This -- even in its non-hyped up reality -- really turns my stomach. The fact that they could choose to remove evolution even from the recommended standardized testing or other requirements for teaching on account of the fact that the extremist Christian factions in the state have turned their attention from the evils of the Internet and the teletubbies to the easily demonstrable proofs that their fundamentalist teachings are plain wrong.
This is a really dangerous change to make in the schools curriculums. The intelligent students who are able to critically evaluate what they're being taught won't be affected. Most students aren't stupid enough to deny the validity of the scientific process -- even if they question the results. The real risk is to the bottom-of-the-rung students who are being raised by their television by parents who are poorly educated to say the least. These are the students who are going to grow up as equally ignorant and just continue repeating the process.
There are few enough parents doing a decent job raising their kids today, without the states stepping in to make the process of turning out mindless masses who's only care is where they're going to get their next beer and who's on the next WWF that much easier.
Maybe its time for the federal government to pass laws requiring a minimum standard education, since aparently some states seem to think its enough to just chuck the kids into a building for six or seven hours so their parents can work.
Not exactly. Kernel changes involving changes to existing modules is required by GPL.
Choosing to not compile a module and replacing it with a closed-source binary-only version is allowed, and a way I'd guess some companies may choose to go in the future to provide value-add.
And I don't necessarily think that's a *bad* thing.
Its been said over and over, but should keep being said:
Avoid to "must upgrade" urge, especially on production servers. If it works, it doesn't need fixing.
The idea that these are "stable" kernels is a misnomer, they're just tweaks and updates on the stable tree, and there's no guarantee they're actually stable. Example in point, one of my servers was experiencing pretty serious corruption using MySQL in the databases, whenever the load on the database got too high. System was running 2.2.5 SMP. Upgraded to 2.2.9/SMP and the problem went away. Pretty indicative of a problem in 2.2.5.
If you've got a production server, you run the same risk that 2.2.11 might cause a problem that you weren't having before. So think first before upgrading, and only do it if you're having specific problems. We don't want people to start claiming Linux is as instable as NT because of the occasional bad kernel release (like some of the pre-2.0.36 kernels!).
I'd bet he could get three or four times that as an advance on a book, if he's even remotely capable of putting words on paper. Then go for the movie deal.
;)
Then Slashdot and Freshmeat could post articles about it, with links to the Amazon record for them, and can get free books and stuff! And pretend that's not what they're doing! Oh wait, this isn't the X10 thing.
J/K about the X10 thing... and no this isn't flaimbait, although I bet I get thwacked for it and lose a point or two.
Anyway, at least the scriptkiddies will have to come up with something more creative than "Free Kevin!" to stick on web pages. Maybe hack in links to X10.com!
I'd certainly buy his book...
Okay, I'm sure its not the case here, but what about the security implications of this? What protections, if any are there that the install disk this creates doesn't have malicious scripts in it?
What security precautions are in place on the server that hosts that CGI to keep someone from hacking *that* machine, and introducing a change the author doesn't know about to the CGI.
I think its a good idea, but for security's sake, everyone should probably double check the install discs, or if you're not fairly confident you could spot something malicious, use the RedHat-standard boot disc.
Sure most of the install stuff runs from binaries/scripts on the install media itself, but there's no reason a malicious script couldn't be tacked onto the end of whatever starts the install program. IMHO, this is a problem with RedHat in general, since they tend to use a more complex boot process, between the boot disk being FAT, to the fact that most systems end up booting initially from a ramdisk, and so on. It makes it much more complex to keep close tabs on what the system did during the install, and how that install process works.
There's lots of them. One of my best friends is one, but she is getting married in less than a month, so another one bites the dust. ;)
Do they care to comment? How about care to get a cup of coffee?
:)
Heh... its been my experience that geek women tend to live anywhere other than where I'm living.
Ah, you kids have it all mixed up.
:)
;)
Geek chicks are the best out there. They're usually just enough warped to be interesting, usually really smart (big plus in my book!), and usually pretty cute -- much more so, in my experience, than another segregated group of women... And confirming a couple other comments, I've known a lot of women who rather enjoyed men talking about their hardware
Can't beat Angelina Joli in Hackers (as pathetic as the movie was!)
Seriously though, its all in your attitude! There are the introverted geeks who may not have the most active of social lives, but there are certainly the extroverted geeks out there that are very sociable, and have no trouble meeting like-minded women.
Reminds me of a little essay about tradeshow... *ahem* "action"... I read after Web98. Can't remember who wrote it off the top of my head though.
Just remember, its not the size of your score that impresses the women...
Ah see, now you definately aren't going to get any. All five probably read slashdot, and they're probably busy right now figuring out who you are, and which of them were the four you were talking about so they can snub you. :)
Actually, if you read that site, you'll find that in MOST cases you can NOT have dual citizenship. In certain individual cases the US Government will allow the recognition of dual-citizenship, but in the majority they do not.
The point of that site is saying as long as you're careful about it, it doesn't really matter. But its generally not a good idea to pass off a Canadian passport upon entry to the US if you're a US citizen, and vice versa. If you had true dual citizenship, you could use either citizenship at any time.
The point being that a lot of these "fake" countries -- and I'm not saying this one is this way -- are used as ways to "get back" at the US government, either in claiming to be able to live in the US but not live by its laws (like paying taxes) or other things. In that regard many are like cults, in that their primary intent is to thumb their collective noses at the countries that people are truely citizens of. If you were born in the US to canadian parents, yeah, maybe the US will let you keep dual citizenship (but I know a bunch of people who have been forced to choose), but in a B.S. case like this, if you tried using that citizenship in any way, I'd guess the weight of the US Government would come crashing down upon you.
This is nothing new, there's at least a half dozen other "global citizen" type scams that have been going on for years on the Internet. Usually they have you pay a stragely large amount of money for a passport and citizenship documents that wouldn't be recognized as legal proof of age at a movie theater, much less at any customs or immagration point in the world.
Its just stupid moneymaking schemes, or cult-like practices in some cases.
Lets see what do you get for your money (depending on how you push the issue with the government):
1) Useless passport and citizenship paperwork that won't be recognized by anyone.
or
2) You (at least in the US) revoke your US citizenship (you can't have dual citizenship in the US past the age of 18) and you learn REAL fast what a plus it really is in the world to be a US citizen.
I think you make a valid point. 2.2. has been the most inconsistant series of kernels I've run through on any of my machines since the late .99's WAY back when.
Example in point: I was getting random data corruption with every version of MySQL I've tried on a Dual Pentium II server under 2.2.5.
Upgraded to 2.2.9, and the problem was fixed. That's a pretty glaring problem, IMHO.
I have a machine at home that refused to run 2.2.7 or 2.2.8, 2.2.9 worked fine. I think there's an inherant problem with the even-stable odd-developer way of versioning things, that being that bug fixes in the even numbered kernels are never properly tested in a development-series before they come out as a new revision on an even number kernel. If 2.2.5 causes data corruption, it shouldn't have been released as a stable kernel, but with only two forks in the development, there's no other way to do it.
What really should happen is there should be a development tree, a stable current version, and a more formalized wider-distributed testing version of the next stable version other than the AC patches, so a new "stable" version isn't presented as the "new stable kernel" because it simply ISN'T.
Fragmentation IS a concern, and it may already be happening. In the article on here yesterday or Monday about SGI's new Linux servers, I pointed out that they specifically mentioned two specific changes to the kernel -- a replacement TCP/IP stack and more efficient NFS code.
I asked if anyone had seen a mention of these on the kernel mailing list. There was no replies suggesting that there has been any contribution by SGI to the stock kernel of those technologies.
So there's a bit of fragmentation there. What happens if software starts needing a particular NFS implementation, or a particular TCP/IP implementation. Already you see packages coming out for RedHat that are a bitch to install on non RedHat systems. Hell, IBM's viavoice stuff they released a while back bombed out on non-RedHat 6.0 systems.
As time progresses this is only going to get worse. The work being done to define a standard base of libraries doesn't enforce application vendors to build against only those libraries -- particularly since (AFAIK) the compilers usually link against the most recent ones on the system, and most if not all distributions will have more than just those base libraries on them.
Under Windows you occasionally see that problem too, with differing versions of DLL's getting mixed up, overwritten, or lost and the general instability that results. What happens when more applications start coming out requiring versions of the system libraries that aren't necessarily compatible with each other? Are we going to end up with 100 meg of differing libc/glibc libraries on a Linux system? Even with a system like RPM, that's a real pain to keep track of, particularly when you're building new software.
Has this been addressed by anyone? It'd seem its an issue for things like Gnome and KDE. If its March 2000, and I've recently upgraded by Gnome and now have GTK 2.0 on my system, will the binary of Communicator 5.0 I'm running still work? Switching to GTK 1.2 broke most of the older apps I had.
Using the typical is-linux-read-for-the-masses example, would my Grandmother be able to straighten out that mess? Hell no!