1. I believe (according to the article) the goal of US policy is preventing radio frequency (technical) interference with existing US GPS frequencies. These High Accuracy signals are separate from the main civilian ones and carry info that increases the signals' accuracy. 2. The assertion that US policy is to restrict availability of high accuracy civilian-available positioning devices is not mentioned in the article. However, I believe you are probably correct. High accuracy civilian GPS could be used by foreign military/terrorists for dastredly effects.
I have posted several questions to the site, including:
Who is providing launch services for Galileo systems? Ariane? If so, was the contract bid competitively or is a juggernaut of NASA proportions (using semi-governmental agencies for semi-commercial purposes)?
Who is manufacturing the actual satellites?
What will the standard resolution ("PRS") of the Galileo system be?
Is this agreement a treaty? It's happening at a 'summit'. Does this mean it will need to be ratified and carry the force of law in both the EU and the US?
The article states they will 'cooperate' on 'standards' for timings, etc.
Which exact EU body handles their standards?
Where will Galileo operational control center be based (which country)?
From a technical perspective, will the accuracy of a hand-held receiver that gets both GPS and Galileo signals be more accurate than existing GPS systems?
Will they cost tons because of different technologies between the systems so unified handhelds are unlikely?
If anyone can answer these questions, here is a good place to address them, methinks.
The DC-X (as explained in the book, "Lost In Space", about the debacle that IS NASA management) did not explode due to inherent problems with the design. While the program was semi-private, it was (Like Microsoft is alleged to do) badmouthed, FUD'd, and otherwise nearly killed, surviving on a shoestring...
Then, it flew nicely and NASA had to adjust the PR and change their tune so the teams running the Space Shuttle, the Delta rocket programs, Boeing/Lockheed ("United Space Alliance") no-bid monopoly didn't have to compete with a design that worked that they didn't control.
DC-X was then 'purchased' (taken over) by NASA and away from the engineers that had designed and built it, put in the hands of people with no experience base with the technology / platform, and then run through a set of "tests" that of course failed due to improper manual ground procedures followed by the improperly trained NASA 'ground staff'.
It was (supposedly) a great vehicle. It still is. DARPA took it over and (allegedly) has commissioned follow-on versions to explore the tech it developed. DARPA doesn't have the allegedly "backstabbing PHB weasels" (as some would contend NASA is rife with) to contend with, so maybe they'll use it.
I don't suppose anyone is working on similar processes for Gold, Silver, and other precious metals?
Of course, having bacteria that handle any specific metals would be handy. As I remember, cadmium is used pretty heavily in chip fabs, and having a process to remediate it might be very nice for the environment near current and former fabs.
The important thing to me seems to be how the metals are accumulated. it does no good if a bacteria accumulates a metal if we cannot extract the bacteria from the water / substance afterwards...
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
Communism in practice is a village commons that everyone owns, so no one owns it. This leads to everyone leaving their trash there, or exploiting it as much as possible. This isn't a problem with inexhaustable supplies, but the Central Problem of Economics is "Limited supplies being distributed to infinite wants".
My advocacy is simply for standard property rights laws, as exist now governing land, to be applied to oceanic areas as well as Space.
Historical precedent is that when a new island is found, someone or some government claims it. That claim takes precedent unless someone else comes in and lives on the land, or can make counterclaim to have other historical rights to it (it's in the center of an area they traditionally control, for instance). Whichever party invests the most time, effort, and/or capital in the land has a greater claim to it, thought this claim must be adjudicated and settled by a legal process or international negotiation (or war).
Ocean Property rights are helping now in the form of Marine Wildlife Sanctuaries, especially in Australia with their Great Barrier Reef.
The oceans are now ruled in a really COMMUNIST way - take what you want, everybody owns it together (thus no one has incentive to guard it).
It's killing ocean habitats around the world, leading to massive overfishing in some otherwise very, very fertile waters, and depriving us (as consumers) the opportunity of eating responsibly "farmed" fish (be that farm an area of ocean or a netted-off section somewhere, or a carefully monitored (for rogue fishing vessels) area of ocean.
How do we farm land? Land isn't free. Ocean shouldn't be either; Areas of ocean should be owned by countries and corporations for their long-term good, with laws about behavior in them (preserving species and diversity), and incentives to behave (long-term) responsibly in the Long term.
SPACE SHOULD BE LIKEWISE OWNED. All property should be owned or it will NOT be protected. If that ownership is national as a Park or Nature Preserve (specific areas of the moon, such as Apollo landing sites come to mind), great. If it is private, as is a mine or region (such as someone owning mining rights to Callisto), great.
The incentive in the land rush across the U.S. in the 1800's was to get the land and use it for commercial purposes. The first step in any market-based economic system is to establish property rights so people will make capital investments that improve the property. That kind of capital investment applies in space - an outpost or scientific instrumentation & observation station is the kind of thing that can earn people long-term dividends as the economy there grows.
If I make a mining claim on the moon, no one cares. If I spend money to go there on an exploration, find Gold, Platinum, or (even better yet) water, and want exclusive rights to mine it, I'm hosed. The next bozo nation that comes along can grab my claim and I'm out the exploration costs, which is a huge deal.
Abolish the Outer Space Treaty. Property rights everywhere make solid ecological and financial sense.
Pass laws allowing ownership of regions of offshore areas inside the 50-mile exclusion zone
Pass UN resolutions allowing for national ownership of regions of open ocean for purposes of wildlife conservation, regardless of proximity to landmass, so fish populations can regrow and be managed by supervised / regulated corporations.
Maybe this seems extreme, but I want reef fish to be around for my grandchildren (and I'm young) and I'm not confident that the system we have with killing off vast areas of ocean bottom with dragline/dragnet fishing won't leave us a dead, empty, uninteresting set of Earth oceans.
If it costs you 5 bucks a kilowatt hour to buy the power, you can only charge your customers 1 buck per kilowatt hour!
I suspect you're illustrating a point, but let's pretend you aren't. Sorry if this is offtopic, but sometimes I need to respond to an inaccurate post with real data. Either either your numbers are off, or your units are.
Here in Illinois, we get power from Commonwealth Edison. The summer rates are (direct link HERE):
Summer Months (June 15th to Sept. 15th):
For all kilowatt-hours: 8.275 cents
Other Months:
For the first 400 kilowatt-hours: 8.275 cents
For all over 400 kilowatt-hours: 6.208 cents
SO: 5 BUCKS per kilowatt hour is a bit steep, as is 1 buck.
But, a Megawatt hour is 1000 *.008275 = $8.275. A $1 / MWh rate is way-way-way cheap !
I heard on NPR that the Enron fscks were charging Calif. consumers up to $250 per megawatt hour. That's about 25 times more expensive than here in Illinois.
This is a strong argument for well-managed deregulation; let some real economists work on this. I believe The Economist might have some good opinions about how to make this regulatory mess work. Regulation of monopolies (like power and SBC DSL / Voice) is always an exercise in big-dog-fight scepticism.
So, California: Good luck with that. I hope you succeed, since we have SBC Ameritech here in Illinois, too, and I hate the fsckers monopolistic arguably anti-competitive practices here just as much as y'all probably do.
I read a really cool sci-fi story once where there was a big earthquake coming, everybody believed it and moved east of the line (into Nevada) and waited.
The big day came, the earthquake happened, and... it was the Eastern part that fell into the ocean. The western sliver remained, newborn cliffs towering above a freshly minted surf far below, having swallowed the rest of the U.S.
Maybe those of us in Chicago ought to have life rafts, too (grin).
A note about my Greek Bus experience that might apply here:
After experiencing the Greek (specifically, on Crete) bus system, I made up a new phrase and use it occassionally to describe the actions of my 2-year-old toddler: Having The Mind Of A Greek Bus Driver.
This translates to, "Not knowing what you're going to do until AFTER you've done it".
The bus driver sometimes stops, sometimes he doesn't, and you have to wait until after he was supposed to stop to find out what the decision was, even if you ask him first or try to flag him down.
I'm sure this concept is not new but it accurately describes some toddler behavior.
I agree that the planet approached the sun very quickly. Great observation. I might postulate that the eclipse duration could be explained by an eccentric orbit (sorry I don't remember the orbital mechanics graphic they put in the movie though).
Okay, here's PITCH BLACK MOVIE's presumption (I don't have the game, so no comment on that): A moon around a gas giant around a binary system, right? The binary suns are almost always separated enough in the sky to produce continuous daytime, or illuminating the gas giant's atmosphere enough to generate very bright reflected light.
Let's refine this. The GG (gas giant) orbits a binary system. All orbits are in the same plane otherwise the eclipses are too long betweentimes (hundreds or thousands of years not tens). The two stars orbit a common center of mass; the GG orbits that mass at a farther distance. QUESTION FOR ASTROPHYSICS PEOPLE:Is there any mechanism tending to circularize an orbit other than collision with objects? Would another planets' gravity circularize a highly eccentric orbit?
Anyway, The GG orbits, the Gas Giant's Moon (GGM) always has both stars in the sky or GG shine from both suns. EXCEPT when the GG aligns with both suns, and the GGM is in line as well. The duration of the eclipse would be determined by:
eccentricity of GG
eccentricity of GGM around GG
apparent diameter of GG in GGM's sky;
apparent diameter of each sun in GG's sky
inclination of the orbital plane of GGM around GG
orbital inclination of GG around StarA and StarB
Is there a way to make the eclipse last 10 hours in such a system?
We can presume main sequence stars.
Here's another ASTROPHYSICS QUESTIONIn a system with where two G2 stars like our Sol orbit each other at a typical binary star system distance (whatever that is? say something like Mercury-diameter), what is the orbital distance where the same solar energy as Earth receives?
I would guess very close to our current orbit. Let's see... Radiation decreases with the square of the distance, so I think it's 1.17 AU's (sqrt 30000 km; y=sqrt(x^2 / 2). Someone please check my math here...?
What is the average (emperically measured) sun-to-sun distance in a binary system? Has this been measured / averaged?
Tivo pushed a 2-minute 'preview of'/'making of' 'Chronicles of Riddick' out to my Tivo unit this last Sunday as per their normal marketing arrangements.
It claims (IIRC) that the movie starts where the quite good action sci-fi adventure 'Pitch Black' left off. The character played by Vin Diesel was apparently too intriquing to let go, and a numbered sequel (a la` Pitch Black II) was probably too ordinary.
I admit the universe presented in Pitch Black is interesting. They got a good bit of science right in that they used a planetary eclipse for the mating time, which is unusual enough to be a natural idea. I would have liked to see some vegetation to support this biological system, but on the whole it seemed pretty good.
The spacecraft, the concept of a prison ship, this is pretty normal stuff, but I like the concept of either electromechanichal or biologically enhanced eyesight as a mini-superpower, given present technology trends this seems reasonable given the rest of their technology structures.
If anyone has a further comment on the hard-sci-fi tech aspect of these movies, please post, I am interested if they conform to the almost-reasonable traditions of Niven and Asimov.
assumed it would be won by a reusable capsule...solidfueled rockets
The X Prize requires a certain percentage of liftoff mass be re-used in the two flights. I would presume that liftoff mass means the mass at the time the craft touched the earth the last time before ascending (thus would count both SpaceShipOne and WhiteKnight (although WhiteKnight is an aircraft and is completely reused).
Technically, refilling a SRB (Solid Rocket Booster) with new fuel could be done and comply with ther requirements. However, I would presume there is a limit to the number of times this can occur due to dynamic airframe stress fractures and heat-induced stresses in the SRB structure. Anyone know of such limits? How often are the SRBs for the Space Shuttle reused? Is the SRB's exhaust nozzle replaced or is it reused as well? Is it complex or is it an open tube?
NOTE: Scaled has not released the reuse percentage for its flights. I would presume due to the design that their percentage is going to be very, very high, with only fuel / consumables being replaced and probably a couple of spare parts here and there.
NOTE: I am also presuming there is only one WhiteKnight aircraft; if they had to use two WhiteKnight aircraft then they would not comply with X-Prize requirements (methinks, IMHO), since it is part of the 'launch system'.
BUT: I humbly predict that when Solaris is opened, people will pour through the code and find (a) many old security holes, unpatched, and (b) many new security holes, due to the number of eyes on the code.
This will probably result in:
Frequent patching for a while;
Frequent security alerts for a while;
Many hacks into existing unpatched systems;
Cross-polination of good (security and other) ideas from Solaris into xxxBSD and Linux;
Gradual settling down of security problems to even lower numbers than before.
This is not a dire prediction - Solaris is already Pretty Damned Secure - and it'll be an unmitigated Good Thing once the initial flurry of patches come through. I'm just concerned for the interim timeframe when "Security Through Obscurity" goes away and hasn't yet been replaced by "Security Through Code Quality".
Real implications of cheap solar power
on
Solar Cells Get Boost
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Let's look at what the real implications of cheap solar power are:
Vast reduction in cost of electrical power
reduction in demand for coal products to approx. 5% of current usage due to solar plants supplying grid (excess produced by nuclear);
immense pressure to develop better batteries for use by cars;
demand for tech to turn electrical power plus (whatever) ingredients into natural gas (cars powered by methane emit only CO2, not other nasty stuff, plus infrastructure there - existing cars can run on natural gas for $300 conversion kit);
vast diminishment of political and economic wealth of many arab and persian) nations plus Russia, Venezuela, and some african countries;
vast reduction in demand for hydro power in Northwest, hydro dams that are not useful for irrigation & flood control are torn down;
home power kits still possible, but since 50% of cost of off-grid solar-cell electrical is electronics (not the cells), this isn't a major factor for most people;
Feel free to fill in your implications as replies, or refute these... -- Kevin J. Rice
Tivo 1: upgraded to 160 hours (weaknees.com = 2 x 80 GB = 160 GB of drives, one tuner each, $400.
Tivo 2: same, $400, etc.
Total, that's 7 * 160 GB = 1120 GB = 1.12 TB, 7 tuners. Next, home media option, connects all the tivos and you can watch any show recorded on any tivo from any other tivo. Cost, $15 month? something like that.
Total cost: 7 * 400 = $2800. Installation difficulty: minor. Certainly not worth $9k.
The 7 tuners are so that you, the ordinary democratic or independent or republican or... voter can watch the debacle that is Donald Rumsfeld resigning in disgrace, on CNN, ABC, ComedyCentral (best coverage!), MSNBC, PBS, CSPAN, and TheWeatherChannel.
Then, you can live the moment over and over again, watching from different angles, getting voiceovers from multiple perspectives. For instance, if you were completely bereft of common sense, you could watch the Pro-Bush FOX coverage. Or, you could watch PBS interview 12 people that have resigned in disgrace and an analysis of how things really work. Or, you could put on The Weather Channel and find out if it's sunny where Rumsfeld will be going home to sit in his backyard, a useless shell of a man.
This was my intention when (above) I mentioned railgun launches. Since most of the mass we want in orbit is (at present) consumables and other commodity products, this would do fine for EM launches.
A competition featuring the best railgun designs (open to all university engineering students especially) would stimulate development of this area. I am convinced the military has versions of this they are not mentioning, but the civilian world should have some capabilities here too.
This is a fairly simple project to build for an engineering department, and would combine the disciplines of mechanical, power, and computer engineering departments to get things right. Further, if groups of engineers in a city wanted to build such a device, this would be a possible thing to try.
A note about manned launches using EM / railgun / mass driver technologies. In physics class in high school we worked out that it was nearly impossible to build a railgun / EM launch vehicle that would achieve orbital velocity and carry a manned payload. The G-force limit of 12 G's prohibits acceleration to mach 25+ in a reasonable ground distance (it's way too long geographically to build).
This competition would be easy to run (at some gunnery range, out over an ocean, etc.). Military radar could track the payloads. Bonus points could include if the payloads were recoverable, and more bonus points if the payloads contained inert liquids that would simulate liquid O2 in density.
COD DELIVERY / PAY BY THE KILO: NASA shall pay by the kilogram for goods delivered to the ISS. The price shall start at $5000 per kilogram for the first 100,000 kilograms delivered. No contract required, cash on delivery (COD). Goods desired can be any consumable and capital goods including liquid O2, liquid H2, military MRE's.
RAIL GUN: Competition using railguns. Projectiles of various sizes in different classifications (class 1 = 1 kg, class 2 = 2 kg, class 10 = 10 kg, etc.). Prizes for longest distance, highest altitude, largest mass * altitude, most number of shots in 15 minutes, combinations of above, for each class.
HIGHEST ISP: prizes for the highest ISP (standard impulse) per year's competition. Minimum Delta-V applies.
OPEN AUCTION: Working on Experience Curve theory, NASA must purchase launch capability without specifying vehicle specs, and must do so in an open-outcry auction (delivery of this payload to this location (orbit), bidder must pay insurance). Payment to be made after sucessful delivery to specified orbit. Each launch shall be bid separately and compeitively. NASA will trust-fund guarantee at least a specific number of auctions will be held each year for the next 3 years to assist industry planning.
NASA shall make available, for a nominal fee of $1, launch services in the form of tracking and telemetry recording/transmission, to any private launch company that has a previously proven launch capability up to an altitude of 100,000 feet.
The interesting features for me would be the following:
impact in an artic or antartic area where vaporization of large amounts of ice could possibly change global albedo (reflectiveness) as well as add water to oceans;
if impact is known about in advance, and predicted to occur in a populated area, would we force people to leave at gunpoint or just 'strongly urge' them to leave;
would an impact collapse popular cave destinations or mineshafts?
would detonating a large nuke at the point of impact, immediately before the impact, do anything constructive?
I wonder about whether it would be possible to knock the moon a bit off its orbit by applying thousands of pounds of thrust to it.
No. Remember Newton's 3 laws of motion:
Force = mass * acceleration,
objects in motion stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force, and
never fight a land war in asia.
In order to push the moon, you'd have to (a) apply force to the moon by pushing it somehow, and (b) have enough force to appreciably affect a mass the size of a small planet (our moon is very large, about 1/6th the mass of the Earth). Thus, 10 guys jumping up off the surface (at 100 pounds apiece, that's 2000 pounds of thrust) will not appreciably affect the orbit of the moon.
Now, the above discussion of putting a huge mass driver on the moon that throws 1 kg objects at.75 c (way-way-way-way^25 unreasonably complex and expensive) was interesting. Let's have the goal of moving the Moon enough to detect it (let's say an orbit 1 meter higher than the current one). To do that would require a delta-v (change in velocity) of the entire mass of the moon... of Lots and Lots. Someone want to help me with the math here?
As a middle aged engineer that is still coding (I'm 37), I find it a continuing battle to remain technical. It is easier to resist after this much practice, but the temptation to move to management is always there.
HP had this trouble; IBM did too. Their products were failing and their people unsatisfied because the only path to advancement from a coding geek was to managing coding geeks. They formed a career path for engineers. The elite of this group are called 'fellows' that can do what they want. Everybody's happy.
Managment inevitably comprises meetings, reports, schedules, documentation, coordination, and personnel management. This usually swamps anyone doing it just for the technical architect roles it provides. I've thought, "Hey, Power! I could make the major decisions for my team and we could design things right for a change!"
If your passion is in the arts of engineering design - making tradeoffs between size / cost / complexity / reliability / beauty / functionality - you have learned something about yourself. If you mostly like meeting with people and making decisions, that's fine too.
It sounds like you want to get more technical again. Great. If you have any technical oversight role, go to the design team and start talking and (more importantly) start listening to what they actually do. Look at the code. Ask lots of questions. Reduce the complexity from the mind-numbing to the, "Yah, I can see that.".
If you cannot do this at your current position, you always find a position that lets you do that, and let them train you. Or, you cna get a masters in computer science, starting with night classes so you don't have to give up your day job (something online, maybe).
The other, possibly best option in my book, is to find a subject you're interested in deeply that has an open-source project associated with it, start building it, look around, and use your talents for engineering and management together to help the project out. If you know how to create docs, do. If you know how to created lists of features that are organized well, do. If you know how to code in that language, or want to learn, pick a small feature you'd like to see, and do it, submit the code. Importantly: DON'T GET DISCOURAGED IF YOUR CODE SUCKES TO BEGIN WITH. It probably will. The project may not accept your code, but that's fine. Think about why it worked, or didn't, and do it again.
Most important is to find your PASSION. What excites you? Learn about it. If you know lots of things and want to share, try contributing to Wikipedia.org, or Wikibooks.org, etc. If you love teaching one on one, there's lots of volunteer organizations you can try it with, but beware that it can have lots of tedium, too.
Like the weather, everyplace has just about the same amount of suckiness. The trick is to find which place lets you do the things you most like to do regardless of the technical, management, and emotional overhead costs ('weather').
I used to live and work in Des Moines, Iowa and in Leavenworth, Kansas. I was a programmer and consultant in both places, and found the work interesting and mostly cutting edge, with some exceptions. If I didn't want to live in an urban / suburban school district, I could have moved a whole 10 miles out of town and gotten a nice farm with horses, a field, etc. Of course, horses require maintenance too, so beware of extra jobs you take on if you move to a "farm" and have 'pets' of cattle, goats, sheep, horses, chickens, etc.
Note that if you choose Des Moines, you'll probably find a lot of jobs are in the insurance industry (no, I don't know why). Lots and Lots of insurance there. If you don't mind working in the industry, it's a pretty nice place to be.
Likewise, you could live near Kansas City and definitely live somewhere rural. Topeka, Kansas is a decent sized town and you'd find some high tech there in the form of sysadmin work.
I'm sure the same goes wherever you live in the U.S., that medium sized towns offer quite a lot of opportunity for rural living, some small commute of 15-20 minutes, and a decent medium/high tech job.
Oh - and let's not forget University towns like Ames IA, Iowa City, Lawrence KS, Omaha NE, Lincoln NE, Champaign IL, etc. They have lots of high tech jobs but quite a bit of rural opportunity.
Of course they're scams / humor sites, but they look really real!
I'm somewhat surprised by these, too. I believe they're encouraging people to commit a felony (identity theft), as well as fraud (not paying debts). I believe this may mean they are engaging in a criminal conspiracy, even if they don't know the other parties to the conspiracy. IANAL, someone please review and respond?
You optimize a building. you can put a hotel, restaurants, shopping mall, movie theater, subway stop, elevators, condos etc in and you get revenue streams from it. it's great for seeing who can make the most money and why. Of course, this is for bigger kids (2nd grade minimum, probably 4th grade is better).
The other one is Sim Safari, which optimizes a game reserve. you can put in a variety of animals, but you need to buy services of a game specialist, guide, build a hut, hire drivers, etc. The fun part is that you get to learn what animals can live together (it's designed to be very educational without being too in-your-face about it).
I liked it, too, but I liked sim tower more.
Sim city was pretty good. My dad was a city manager and he loved the idea of it because it simulated all the strange things that could happen in municipal planning. Of course, Godzilla walking thru town is possible in the game but not real life, but even in the game it is rare. Most of the problems are bad street design, lack of firefighters, etc.
The interrelatedness of things is a big thing to teach. The fact that any large system involving many competing interests has multiple solutions, and sometimes the fact that people disagree or that they don't work perfectly is normal.
Lots of uneducated people all around the world (not just in the U.S.) think that there are simple solutions to the world's problems, and the Sim games show that this isn't true and, intuitively, why not.
I would like to assist with this process of free dissemination of information. If anyone has a suggestion how I might do that, please post here. I'm a normal user with an always-on DSL connection, run a normal webserver, and would like to assist with this.
Slashdot Mirror
1. I believe (according to the article) the goal of US policy is preventing radio frequency (technical) interference with existing US GPS frequencies. These High Accuracy signals are separate from the main civilian ones and carry info that increases the signals' accuracy.
2. The assertion that US policy is to restrict availability of high accuracy civilian-available positioning devices is not mentioned in the article. However, I believe you are probably correct. High accuracy civilian GPS could be used by foreign military/terrorists for dastredly effects.
I have posted several questions to the site, including:
If anyone can answer these questions, here is a good place to address them, methinks.
-- Kevin J. Rice
The DC-X (as explained in the book, "Lost In Space", about the debacle that IS NASA management) did not explode due to inherent problems with the design. While the program was semi-private, it was (Like Microsoft is alleged to do) badmouthed, FUD'd, and otherwise nearly killed, surviving on a shoestring...
Then, it flew nicely and NASA had to adjust the PR and change their tune so the teams running the Space Shuttle, the Delta rocket programs, Boeing/Lockheed ("United Space Alliance") no-bid monopoly didn't have to compete with a design that worked that they didn't control.
DC-X was then 'purchased' (taken over) by NASA and away from the engineers that had designed and built it, put in the hands of people with no experience base with the technology / platform, and then run through a set of "tests" that of course failed due to improper manual ground procedures followed by the improperly trained NASA 'ground staff'.
It was (supposedly) a great vehicle. It still is. DARPA took it over and (allegedly) has commissioned follow-on versions to explore the tech it developed. DARPA doesn't have the allegedly "backstabbing PHB weasels" (as some would contend NASA is rife with) to contend with, so maybe they'll use it.
All my info is from the aforementioned 'Lost In Space" book (link is here
I don't suppose anyone is working on similar processes for Gold, Silver, and other precious metals?
Of course, having bacteria that handle any specific metals would be handy. As I remember, cadmium is used pretty heavily in chip fabs, and having a process to remediate it might be very nice for the environment near current and former fabs.
The important thing to me seems to be how the metals are accumulated. it does no good if a bacteria accumulates a metal if we cannot extract the bacteria from the water / substance afterwards...
-- Kevin J. Rice
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
Communism in practice is a village commons that everyone owns, so no one owns it. This leads to everyone leaving their trash there, or exploiting it as much as possible. This isn't a problem with inexhaustable supplies, but the Central Problem of Economics is "Limited supplies being distributed to infinite wants".
My advocacy is simply for standard property rights laws, as exist now governing land, to be applied to oceanic areas as well as Space.
Historical precedent is that when a new island is found, someone or some government claims it. That claim takes precedent unless someone else comes in and lives on the land, or can make counterclaim to have other historical rights to it (it's in the center of an area they traditionally control, for instance). Whichever party invests the most time, effort, and/or capital in the land has a greater claim to it, thought this claim must be adjudicated and settled by a legal process or international negotiation (or war).
Such is the case with the Asteroid EROS. The legal arguments are fascinating. Link is here to the Eros Project.
-- Kevin
The oceans are now ruled in a really COMMUNIST way - take what you want, everybody owns it together (thus no one has incentive to guard it).
It's killing ocean habitats around the world, leading to massive overfishing in some otherwise very, very fertile waters, and depriving us (as consumers) the opportunity of eating responsibly "farmed" fish (be that farm an area of ocean or a netted-off section somewhere, or a carefully monitored (for rogue fishing vessels) area of ocean.
How do we farm land? Land isn't free. Ocean shouldn't be either; Areas of ocean should be owned by countries and corporations for their long-term good, with laws about behavior in them (preserving species and diversity), and incentives to behave (long-term) responsibly in the Long term.
SPACE SHOULD BE LIKEWISE OWNED. All property should be owned or it will NOT be protected. If that ownership is national as a Park or Nature Preserve (specific areas of the moon, such as Apollo landing sites come to mind), great. If it is private, as is a mine or region (such as someone owning mining rights to Callisto), great.
The incentive in the land rush across the U.S. in the 1800's was to get the land and use it for commercial purposes. The first step in any market-based economic system is to establish property rights so people will make capital investments that improve the property. That kind of capital investment applies in space - an outpost or scientific instrumentation & observation station is the kind of thing that can earn people long-term dividends as the economy there grows.
If I make a mining claim on the moon, no one cares.
If I spend money to go there on an exploration, find Gold, Platinum, or (even better yet) water, and want exclusive rights to mine it, I'm hosed. The next bozo nation that comes along can grab my claim and I'm out the exploration costs, which is a huge deal.
Maybe this seems extreme, but I want reef fish to be around for my grandchildren (and I'm young) and I'm not confident that the system we have with killing off vast areas of ocean bottom with dragline/dragnet fishing won't leave us a dead, empty, uninteresting set of Earth oceans.
-- Kevin J. Rice
If it costs you 5 bucks a kilowatt hour to buy the power, you can only charge your customers 1 buck per kilowatt hour!
:
.008275 = $8.275.
I suspect you're illustrating a point, but let's pretend you aren't. Sorry if this is offtopic, but sometimes I need to respond to an inaccurate post with real data. Either either your numbers are off, or your units are.
Here in Illinois, we get power from Commonwealth Edison. The summer rates are (direct link HERE):
Summer Months (June 15th to Sept. 15th):
For all kilowatt-hours: 8.275 cents
Other Months
For the first 400 kilowatt-hours: 8.275 cents
For all over 400 kilowatt-hours: 6.208 cents
SO: 5 BUCKS per kilowatt hour is a bit steep, as is 1 buck.
But, a Megawatt hour is 1000 *
A $1 / MWh rate is way-way-way cheap !
I heard on NPR that the Enron fscks were charging Calif. consumers up to $250 per megawatt hour. That's about 25 times more expensive than here in Illinois.
This is a strong argument for well-managed deregulation; let some real economists work on this. I believe The Economist might have some good opinions about how to make this regulatory mess work. Regulation of monopolies (like power and SBC DSL / Voice) is always an exercise in big-dog-fight scepticism.
So, California: Good luck with that. I hope you succeed, since we have SBC Ameritech here in Illinois, too, and I hate the fsckers monopolistic arguably anti-competitive practices here just as much as y'all probably do.
I read a really cool sci-fi story once where there was a big earthquake coming, everybody believed it and moved east of the line (into Nevada) and waited.
The big day came, the earthquake happened, and
Maybe those of us in Chicago ought to have life rafts, too (grin).
-- Kevin Rice
A note about my Greek Bus experience that might apply here:
After experiencing the Greek (specifically, on Crete) bus system, I made up a new phrase and use it occassionally to describe the actions of my 2-year-old toddler: Having The Mind Of A Greek Bus Driver.
This translates to, "Not knowing what you're going to do until AFTER you've done it".
The bus driver sometimes stops, sometimes he doesn't, and you have to wait until after he was supposed to stop to find out what the decision was, even if you ask him first or try to flag him down.
I'm sure this concept is not new but it accurately describes some toddler behavior.
-- Kevin Rice
- Are any of the released packages neato super keen simulations of stuff?
- Where exactly IS Nasa Ames?
- What areas of technology do they focus on?
- Are they part of creating the generic space probe operating system software that the Mars Rovers were saying was such a good thing?
- Can ordinary Schmo's like me contribute to any projects or are they so esoteric and strange it would be useless?
-- Kevin J. Ricejustanyone.com
I agree that the planet approached the sun very quickly. Great observation. I might postulate that the eclipse duration could be explained by an eccentric orbit (sorry I don't remember the orbital mechanics graphic they put in the movie though).
Okay, here's PITCH BLACK MOVIE's presumption (I don't have the game, so no comment on that): A moon around a gas giant around a binary system, right? The binary suns are almost always separated enough in the sky to produce continuous daytime, or illuminating the gas giant's atmosphere enough to generate very bright reflected light.
Let's refine this. The GG (gas giant) orbits a binary system. All orbits are in the same plane otherwise the eclipses are too long betweentimes (hundreds or thousands of years not tens). The two stars orbit a common center of mass; the GG orbits that mass at a farther distance. QUESTION FOR ASTROPHYSICS PEOPLE:Is there any mechanism tending to circularize an orbit other than collision with objects? Would another planets' gravity circularize a highly eccentric orbit?
Anyway, The GG orbits, the Gas Giant's Moon (GGM) always has both stars in the sky or GG shine from both suns. EXCEPT when the GG aligns with both suns, and the GGM is in line as well. The duration of the eclipse would be determined by:
- eccentricity of GG
- eccentricity of GGM around GG
- apparent diameter of GG in GGM's sky;
- apparent diameter of each sun in GG's sky
- inclination of the orbital plane of GGM around GG
- orbital inclination of GG around StarA and StarB
Is there a way to make the eclipse last 10 hours in such a system?We can presume main sequence stars.
Here's another ASTROPHYSICS QUESTIONIn a system with where two G2 stars like our Sol orbit each other at a typical binary star system distance (whatever that is? say something like Mercury-diameter), what is the orbital distance where the same solar energy as Earth receives?
I would guess very close to our current orbit. Let's see... Radiation decreases with the square of the distance, so I think it's 1.17 AU's (sqrt 30000 km; y=sqrt(x^2 / 2). Someone please check my math here...?
What is the average (emperically measured) sun-to-sun distance in a binary system? Has this been measured / averaged?
-- Kevin Rice
JustAnyone.com
Tivo pushed a 2-minute 'preview of'/'making of' 'Chronicles of Riddick' out to my Tivo unit this last Sunday as per their normal marketing arrangements.
It claims (IIRC) that the movie starts where the quite good action sci-fi adventure 'Pitch Black' left off. The character played by Vin Diesel was apparently too intriquing to let go, and a numbered sequel (a la` Pitch Black II) was probably too ordinary.
I admit the universe presented in Pitch Black is interesting. They got a good bit of science right in that they used a planetary eclipse for the mating time, which is unusual enough to be a natural idea. I would have liked to see some vegetation to support this biological system, but on the whole it seemed pretty good.
The spacecraft, the concept of a prison ship, this is pretty normal stuff, but I like the concept of either electromechanichal or biologically enhanced eyesight as a mini-superpower, given present technology trends this seems reasonable given the rest of their technology structures.
If anyone has a further comment on the hard-sci-fi tech aspect of these movies, please post, I am interested if they conform to the almost-reasonable traditions of Niven and Asimov.
-- Kevin J. Rice
Justanyone.com
assumed it would be won by a reusable capsule...solidfueled rockets
The X Prize requires a certain percentage of liftoff mass be re-used in the two flights. I would presume that liftoff mass means the mass at the time the craft touched the earth the last time before ascending (thus would count both SpaceShipOne and WhiteKnight (although WhiteKnight is an aircraft and is completely reused).
Technically, refilling a SRB (Solid Rocket Booster) with new fuel could be done and comply with ther requirements. However, I would presume there is a limit to the number of times this can occur due to dynamic airframe stress fractures and heat-induced stresses in the SRB structure. Anyone know of such limits? How often are the SRBs for the Space Shuttle reused? Is the SRB's exhaust nozzle replaced or is it reused as well? Is it complex or is it an open tube?
NOTE: Scaled has not released the reuse percentage for its flights. I would presume due to the design that their percentage is going to be very, very high, with only fuel / consumables being replaced and probably a couple of spare parts here and there.
NOTE: I am also presuming there is only one WhiteKnight aircraft; if they had to use two WhiteKnight aircraft then they would not comply with X-Prize requirements (methinks, IMHO), since it is part of the 'launch system'.
--Kevin at justanyone daaaaahhht cahhhhmm
Please don't flame me! I love Solaris!
BUT: I humbly predict that when Solaris is opened, people will pour through the code and find (a) many old security holes, unpatched, and (b) many new security holes, due to the number of eyes on the code.
This will probably result in:
- Frequent patching for a while;
- Frequent security alerts for a while;
- Many hacks into existing unpatched systems;
- Cross-polination of good (security and other) ideas from Solaris into xxxBSD and Linux;
- Gradual settling down of security problems to even lower numbers than before.
This is not a dire prediction - Solaris is already Pretty Damned Secure - and it'll be an unmitigated Good Thing once the initial flurry of patches come through. I'm just concerned for the interim timeframe when "Security Through Obscurity" goes away and hasn't yet been replaced by "Security Through Code Quality".--Kevin (at justanyone dooooooooootttt cooooommmmmmm).
- Vast reduction in cost of electrical power
- reduction in demand for coal products to approx. 5% of current usage due to solar plants supplying grid (excess produced by nuclear);
- immense pressure to develop better batteries for use by cars;
- demand for tech to turn electrical power plus (whatever) ingredients into natural gas (cars powered by methane emit only CO2, not other nasty stuff, plus infrastructure there - existing cars can run on natural gas for $300 conversion kit);
- vast diminishment of political and economic wealth of many arab and persian) nations plus Russia, Venezuela, and some african countries;
- vast reduction in demand for hydro power in Northwest, hydro dams that are not useful for irrigation & flood control are torn down;
- home power kits still possible, but since 50% of cost of off-grid solar-cell electrical is electronics (not the cells), this isn't a major factor for most people;
Feel free to fill in your implications as replies, or refute these...-- Kevin J. Rice
Total, that's 7 * 160 GB = 1120 GB = 1.12 TB, 7 tuners.
Next, home media option, connects all the tivos and you can watch any show recorded on any tivo from any other tivo. Cost, $15 month? something like that.
Total cost: 7 * 400 = $2800. Installation difficulty: minor.
Certainly not worth $9k.
-- Kevin Rice
The 7 tuners are so that you, the ordinary democratic or independent or republican or
Then, you can live the moment over and over again, watching from different angles, getting voiceovers from multiple perspectives. For instance, if you were completely bereft of common sense, you could watch the Pro-Bush FOX coverage. Or, you could watch PBS interview 12 people that have resigned in disgrace and an analysis of how things really work. Or, you could put on The Weather Channel and find out if it's sunny where Rumsfeld will be going home to sit in his backyard, a useless shell of a man.
Let's move on.
This was my intention when (above) I mentioned railgun launches. Since most of the mass we want in orbit is (at present) consumables and other commodity products, this would do fine for EM launches.
A competition featuring the best railgun designs (open to all university engineering students especially) would stimulate development of this area. I am convinced the military has versions of this they are not mentioning, but the civilian world should have some capabilities here too.
This is a fairly simple project to build for an engineering department, and would combine the disciplines of mechanical, power, and computer engineering departments to get things right. Further, if groups of engineers in a city wanted to build such a device, this would be a possible thing to try.
A note about manned launches using EM / railgun / mass driver technologies. In physics class in high school we worked out that it was nearly impossible to build a railgun / EM launch vehicle that would achieve orbital velocity and carry a manned payload. The G-force limit of 12 G's prohibits acceleration to mach 25+ in a reasonable ground distance (it's way too long geographically to build).
This competition would be easy to run (at some gunnery range, out over an ocean, etc.). Military radar could track the payloads. Bonus points could include if the payloads were recoverable, and more bonus points if the payloads contained inert liquids that would simulate liquid O2 in density.
- COD DELIVERY / PAY BY THE KILO: NASA shall pay by the kilogram for goods delivered to the ISS. The price shall start at $5000 per kilogram for the first 100,000 kilograms delivered. No contract required, cash on delivery (COD). Goods desired can be any consumable and capital goods including liquid O2, liquid H2, military MRE's.
- RAIL GUN: Competition using railguns. Projectiles of various sizes in different classifications (class 1 = 1 kg, class 2 = 2 kg, class 10 = 10 kg, etc.). Prizes for longest distance, highest altitude, largest mass * altitude, most number of shots in 15 minutes, combinations of above, for each class.
- HIGHEST ISP: prizes for the highest ISP (standard impulse) per year's competition. Minimum Delta-V applies.
- OPEN AUCTION: Working on Experience Curve theory, NASA must purchase launch capability without specifying vehicle specs, and must do so in an open-outcry auction (delivery of this payload to this location (orbit), bidder must pay insurance). Payment to be made after sucessful delivery to specified orbit. Each launch shall be bid separately and compeitively. NASA will trust-fund guarantee at least a specific number of auctions will be held each year for the next 3 years to assist industry planning.
- NASA shall make available, for a nominal fee of $1, launch services in the form of tracking and telemetry recording/transmission, to any private launch company that has a previously proven launch capability up to an altitude of 100,000 feet.
Just some ideas here.-- Kevin J. Rice
- impact in an artic or antartic area where vaporization of large amounts of ice could possibly change global albedo (reflectiveness) as well as add water to oceans;
- if impact is known about in advance, and predicted to occur in a populated area, would we force people to leave at gunpoint or just 'strongly urge' them to leave;
- would an impact collapse popular cave destinations or mineshafts?
- would detonating a large nuke at the point of impact, immediately before the impact, do anything constructive?
just some ideas...I wonder about whether it would be possible to knock the moon a bit off its orbit by applying thousands of pounds of thrust to it.
No. Remember Newton's 3 laws of motion:
- Force = mass * acceleration,
- objects in motion stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force, and
- never fight a land war in asia.
In order to push the moon, you'd have to (a) apply force to the moon by pushing it somehow, and (b) have enough force to appreciably affect a mass the size of a small planet (our moon is very large, about 1/6th the mass of the Earth). Thus, 10 guys jumping up off the surface (at 100 pounds apiece, that's 2000 pounds of thrust) will not appreciably affect the orbit of the moon.Now, the above discussion of putting a huge mass driver on the moon that throws 1 kg objects at
Lots of zeros involved.
As a middle aged engineer that is still coding (I'm 37), I find it a continuing battle to remain technical. It is easier to resist after this much practice, but the temptation to move to management is always there.
HP had this trouble; IBM did too. Their products were failing and their people unsatisfied because the only path to advancement from a coding geek was to managing coding geeks. They formed a career path for engineers. The elite of this group are called 'fellows' that can do what they want. Everybody's happy.
Managment inevitably comprises meetings, reports, schedules, documentation, coordination, and personnel management. This usually swamps anyone doing it just for the technical architect roles it provides. I've thought, "Hey, Power! I could make the major decisions for my team and we could design things right for a change!"
If your passion is in the arts of engineering design - making tradeoffs between size / cost / complexity / reliability / beauty / functionality - you have learned something about yourself. If you mostly like meeting with people and making decisions, that's fine too.
It sounds like you want to get more technical again. Great. If you have any technical oversight role, go to the design team and start talking and (more importantly) start listening to what they actually do. Look at the code. Ask lots of questions. Reduce the complexity from the mind-numbing to the, "Yah, I can see that.".
If you cannot do this at your current position, you always find a position that lets you do that, and let them train you. Or, you cna get a masters in computer science, starting with night classes so you don't have to give up your day job (something online, maybe).
The other, possibly best option in my book, is to find a subject you're interested in deeply that has an open-source project associated with it, start building it, look around, and use your talents for engineering and management together to help the project out. If you know how to create docs, do. If you know how to created lists of features that are organized well, do. If you know how to code in that language, or want to learn, pick a small feature you'd like to see, and do it, submit the code. Importantly: DON'T GET DISCOURAGED IF YOUR CODE SUCKES TO BEGIN WITH. It probably will. The project may not accept your code, but that's fine. Think about why it worked, or didn't, and do it again.
Most important is to find your PASSION. What excites you? Learn about it. If you know lots of things and want to share, try contributing to Wikipedia.org, or Wikibooks.org, etc. If you love teaching one on one, there's lots of volunteer organizations you can try it with, but beware that it can have lots of tedium, too.
Like the weather, everyplace has just about the same amount of suckiness. The trick is to find which place lets you do the things you most like to do regardless of the technical, management, and emotional overhead costs ('weather').
Hello:
I used to live and work in Des Moines, Iowa and in Leavenworth, Kansas. I was a programmer and consultant in both places, and found the work interesting and mostly cutting edge, with some exceptions. If I didn't want to live in an urban / suburban school district, I could have moved a whole 10 miles out of town and gotten a nice farm with horses, a field, etc. Of course, horses require maintenance too, so beware of extra jobs you take on if you move to a "farm" and have 'pets' of cattle, goats, sheep, horses, chickens, etc.
Note that if you choose Des Moines, you'll probably find a lot of jobs are in the insurance industry (no, I don't know why). Lots and Lots of insurance there. If you don't mind working in the industry, it's a pretty nice place to be.
Likewise, you could live near Kansas City and definitely live somewhere rural. Topeka, Kansas is a decent sized town and you'd find some high tech there in the form of sysadmin work.
I'm sure the same goes wherever you live in the U.S., that medium sized towns offer quite a lot of opportunity for rural living, some small commute of 15-20 minutes, and a decent medium/high tech job.
Oh - and let's not forget University towns like Ames IA, Iowa City, Lawrence KS, Omaha NE, Lincoln NE, Champaign IL, etc. They have lots of high tech jobs but quite a bit of rural opportunity.
Of course they're scams / humor sites, but they look really real!
I'm somewhat surprised by these, too. I believe they're encouraging people to commit a felony (identity theft), as well as fraud (not paying debts). I believe this may mean they are engaging in a criminal conspiracy, even if they don't know the other parties to the conspiracy. IANAL, someone please review and respond?
Here's some links:
Sim Tower is kind of old but it's very good.
You optimize a building. you can put a hotel, restaurants, shopping mall, movie theater, subway stop, elevators, condos etc in and you get revenue streams from it. it's great for seeing who can make the most money and why. Of course, this is for bigger kids (2nd grade minimum, probably 4th grade is better).
The other one is Sim Safari, which optimizes a game reserve. you can put in a variety of animals, but you need to buy services of a game specialist, guide, build a hut, hire drivers, etc. The fun part is that you get to learn what animals can live together (it's designed to be very educational without being too in-your-face about it).
I liked it, too, but I liked sim tower more.
Sim city was pretty good. My dad was a city manager and he loved the idea of it because it simulated all the strange things that could happen in municipal planning. Of course, Godzilla walking thru town is possible in the game but not real life, but even in the game it is rare. Most of the problems are bad street design, lack of firefighters, etc.
The interrelatedness of things is a big thing to teach. The fact that any large system involving many competing interests has multiple solutions, and sometimes the fact that people disagree or that they don't work perfectly is normal.
Lots of uneducated people all around the world (not just in the U.S.) think that there are simple solutions to the world's problems, and the Sim games show that this isn't true and, intuitively, why not.
Hello:
How (specifically) can I help?
I would like to assist with this process of free dissemination of information. If anyone has a suggestion how I might do that, please post here. I'm a normal user with an always-on DSL connection, run a normal webserver, and would like to assist with this.
-- Kevin J. Rice