The solution is simple immerse the entire system in 3M Fluorinert cooling fluid. I'ts dielectric and inert and an excellent coolant if a tad pricey.
Of course the optimal solution is to oxygenate the Fluorinert and immerse the entire room in it (you can breath the stuff when it's oxygenated).
Sysadmin Day at Geekculture
on
Sysadmin Day. Yay.
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Geekculture has a tribute to the hot but evil 'Sissy' the Sysadmin from after Y2K (AY2K) at: http://www.geekculture.com/geekycomics/Aftery 2k/af tery2kmain.html
Anybody who can remember the Messerschmitt Me-163 Komet interceptor deployed by the Luftwaffe in WWII could contradict this. The Me-163 was a Hydrogen Peroxide rocket plane used later in the war. As the XCOR-Aerospace website notes:
Pilots reported the Komet to be "Superb! No other word can express the pleasurable sensation as I shot ever upwards into the sky" and "one of the most maneuverable airplanes ever built." But the marvelous little fighter was a misery on the ground.... Hypergolic [Hydrogen Peroxide] propellants can - and did - cause explosions. More Komets were lost to fueling explosions than enemy action.
The fueling of the Me-163 was the most dangerous phase of the launch procedure, and this was using a design by "Von Braun" grade Rocket Scientists!
As we all know, many of the critical components for computers are produced in Taiwan. If the nation itself shifts toward free software, Taiwanese computer producers will have a considerable interest in producing drivers for free OSes. In paticular, laptops might suddenly become more Linux compliant.
I saw a 10pm showing of AOTC in the LA area (I was going to see Spiderman but it sold out while I was in line) the theater was not appreciably crowded and there was no audience response during the film.
I could see why. The film isn't bad if you eliminate the actors (with the execptions of Lee, McGregor and the ever perky Portman) and concentrate on the backgrounds and battle scenes.
Since the film is entirely digital this is a straightforward proposition (eliminating Jar Jar is a bit harder but I'm sure ILM already has this script ready to run).
I'm one of those people who always carries his palm (actually a Handspring Visor) everywhere. I use it as a notepad, alarm clock, address book, map/GPS, e-book, ephemeris etc.... Could I use an equivalent amount of paper, I guess I could but the sheer volume of text and data would correspond to quite a few copies of War and Peace. And as of yet I haven't encountered any paper (maps or otherwise) that knows what time it is, or where it is at at any given time.
From my viewpoint the PDA has four advantages over a paper and pencil approach: 1.It provides the capacity to carry a relatively huge amount of data (16-128MB) in a small always acessible package. For example, I have to have a 300 page solicitation for proposals at hand every few months, a copy on my PDA is much handier than the inch thick Xerox. This has the enviable side effect that I always have reading material at all times, which is a real blessing while waiting in line for the airport, DMV, post office etc. 2.It is always there, meaning that I can enter notes, expenditures (Pocket Quicken rocks!), contacts and diet information immediately. This greatly reduces the paper clutter I have to deal with, and greatly increases my capacity to document all the little things which would otherwise trip me up. In the same manner, I can call up a lot more information immediately and at all times. 3.It exploits the synergies of the various functions of the PDA. It always knows what time it is (and synchronizes via NTP at every sync). When the GPS module is plugged in it knows where it is at. This can be exploited by applications such as AvantGo to provide the nearest theater playing a movie at a given time and provide instructions and a map. If you can do that with a pad of paper, I guess you stole the marauders map from Harry Potter. 4.It exploits the synergies with the PC. Not only can it transfer documents and web content automatically, and back up a full image of the palm on the PC but it can automatically transfer information in application specific format. Thus my Pocket Quicken on the palm updates my desktop Quicken and vice versa, allowing me to keep my ledger reconciled on a daily basis
I think that the Divx that he was referring to was the failed DVD extension marketed by Circuit City. The system employed encoded DVDs that required phone line activation to allow you to view them. The basic idea was the capacity to purchase DVDs cheaply and then essentially view them on a rental basis. Needless to say the technology tanked badly, so badly that the Divx compression scheme not only took the name without resistance, but the original technology is nearly forgotten.
If flash linkers are banned under the DCMA, a lot of nifty applications for the game boy advance go straight out the window. Most notably, the Advance turns out to be a rather good e-book platform (see http://www.mqp.com/fun/gb.htm ). With a 128MB flash cartridge and a flash linker it could hold 200+ titles at one time while being considerably cheaper than the equivalent PalmOS solution.
If flashing and development by hackers continued a considerable number of similar apps might have been developed.
I just realized that the central premise of the show is that the travel to other planets is not achieved by large phallocentric rockets, but rather by the use of an aperture which when properly manipulated opens into a channel to the desired place. Very feminine imagery. Of course, when the guys figure out what it does, they freak out over it's power, hide it in a deep cave and mount a big iris over it to control access. Very Taliban imagery.
I guess this observation comes from watching Eve Ensler's V* Monologs on HBO last night.
For those of us who live in an urban center or anywhere near one, Amazon has been an complete disaster. The bulk of the small, quirky, bookstores which sold nearly 100% small/specialty press materials (esp. feminist bookstores) have been wiped off the map! These were communities which let you know which new quirky titles were comming out and allowed you to meet interesting people.
In exchange, with Amazon we get the transformation of the bookstore into a sweatshop, with customer service driven offshore, and the bulk of the jobs diverted to entry level manual labor. Read http://www.tnr.com/021901/cohn021901_print.html for the straight dope. This, and a minimal need to post a profit, allows them to undercut the true brick and mortar independent bookstores. Do you think the prices or the service will remain the same after Amazon drives the majority of the bookstores out?
I'm far from a Luddite, but when a 'new economy' company uses age-old robber baron tactics to wipe out a preferable if less high tech solution, I won't support it. I've lived in the hinterlands before (5 yrs in Rome NY land of no bookstores) and I know how liberating a Barnes and Noble is even if it is 50 miles away. But the toll on the culture is apalling in the urban centers.
If you need to get books at remote locations use Booksense.com, powells.com, and opamp.com, real bookstores with real booksellers.
Has Jon Katz been living in America, much less middle class America, for any amount of time? Americans don't buy things for reliability or even cost if there is sufficent hype, design, or sex associated with it. When is the last time that you saw a car commercial touting mileage? When is the last time a soda comercial advertised based on nutritional content? If reliability, practicality and cost were driving factors, we would all be drinking weatgrass and driving Honda Impacts. As a practical matter, much of the ascendancy of shite like M$ and AOL is a function of heavy advertisement, and early adoption by major sectors of the population, forcing one to maintain substandard systems for compatibility.
M$ and AOL most certainly do not provide Reliability or even consistency (I just spent 30 mins rebooting my win98 system 4 times after an install, so I could do my daily quicken update) and the price/performance ration of linux is infinitely greater than that of M$. Most of Middle America simply does not know better, or needs a critical bit of software (Word or Quicken for example). Better solutions arise in sectors that do not have monopoly control (Palm)or in sudden paradigm shifts when the alternative design is sufficently superior (Internet, GUI's) as to render the previous solution irrelavant.
Apple's problem isn't poor reliability, and isn't even lower price performance ratio, it's mainly the betamax factor. Betamax was technically superior, but was a propreitary technology under the control of a single corporation, Sony. VHS won out because multiple corporations could licence and produce the standard and Sony couldn't out-market the competition.
Apple missed the boat on clones and licencing, and is now stuck in a position where licencing would simply cannibalize their limited market share.
The visualization toolkit (VTK) (www.kitware.com) is a technical visualization tool with bindings to C++, tcl and Python. It is completely object oriented and modeled on a dataflow structure. You may well find it indispensable to visualize your results. VTK also provides an excellent model of how enginering data structures may be represented in a purely OO form. My personal experience in OO programming is primarily Python based with a strong emphasis on the use of mathematical operators to define objects and classes.
It's not enough to avoid the coasts, or big cities. Computers themselves where invented by Alan Turing with the sole purpose of recruiting the unsuspecting to the Homosexual Agenda! Same thing for Sendmail! So it would be best to smash your computer avoid e-mail and move to Montanna and live in a bunker.
As a straight geek one of my immediate barometers of a city or neighborhood is whether they carry Playboy, The Advocate, Dr. Dobbs and Circuit Cellar on the news stands. Basically, I'm looking for a tolerant, non-puritanical, tech literate population.
Frankly, I always look for a nearby gay enclave, its usually got all the best culture, great furniture and art, the most eclectic cuisine and in the case of West Hollywood the best tech bookstore in the LA area OPAMP books. But the main reason I like having a nearby gay enclave is that it repels moronic rednecks with ruthless efficency.
Yes it's the the DMMDA! By requiring all reentery vehicles to have GPS beacons and outlawing the use of missle defense circumvention devices or the very discussion of such devices, the DMMDA ends the debate over the effectiveness of missile defense by definition!
Remember when missile defense circumvention devices are outlawed, only outlaw nations will have missile defense circumvention devices.
Actually getting two small objects to fly close to each other isn't that big a problem, its known as orbital rendezvous and we've had that down cold since the '60s especially if the two objects are cooperating as was the case here.
The big problem is if one side isn't playing nice like not sending its trajectory with updates, or sending out hundreds of decoys. Again, the problem isn't insoluble most of the time. But that's the other pesky problem, it has to work the first time, everytime!
And of course, there's the other pesky cheat, which is to wrap the target in a bale of grass and send it over the mexican border. But that would be cheating!
The original source of the GPS Beacon information is here (http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2000/x01142000 _xbck0114.html) and http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/security/has1 80000.000/has180000_0.htm ) in essence a turbocharged Automatic Position Reporting System (APRS) is incorporated and supposedly "fuzzed up" to simulate X-Band radar that is not deployed at Kuaj.
NASA Blackjack GPS recievers can achieve 1 in accuracy (as per http://slashdot.org/articles/00/12/18/0023230.shtm l) and that is not using military p-code (the encrypted precision code available to the DOD) sequences. When you consider relative positioning it gets even better in that systematic errors in the carrier signal can be eliminated.
Even if we limit ourselves to a fast APRS beacon operating with P-Code accuracy we can construct a very accurate Kalman filter model once the test vehicle has exited the atmosphere. Remember, once we get out of the atmosphere the trajectory is purely deterministic, and each position and velocity fix derived from the GPS reciever refines the overall estimate of the trajectory (Check out section 9.7 of Fundamentals of Astrodynamics and Applications by D.A. Vallado for details). In this case, each fix refines the estimate of the trajectory and thus the predicted location of the target at the intercept point. This narrows the targets position to a very small range of positions and velocities for the kill vehicle to search (much smaller than that provided by x-band radar) to direct the kill vehicle towards. Does the kill vehicle have to handle the last few hundred meters? Probably so, but only after a huge leg up from the GPS beacon.
BTW: A related comment speculated that the target contained a GPS transmitter effectively making the unit a pseudolite. But then rejected the possibility since that would require an atomic clock. While I suspect that mouning a pseudolite beacon on the target would be guilding the lily, compact and lightwieght rubiduim atomic clocks are commonly available on the commercial market(http://www.temex.ch/mcmanu.htm)
It's not ESR naked...
It's Eric S. 'American Gigolo' Raymond, in a red velvet smoking jacket wearing a silk ascot sitting in an overstuffed chair in a room with red flocked velvet wallpaper, and red party bulbs for illumination. He's alternating between puffs on a cigar and samples his brandy sniffer. He then notices the camera and sets down the sniffer and in his best attempt at a Barry White voice...
Basically the geek version of John Candy's 'Johnny LaRue' character.
Now that's disturbing!
The real story here is that 3dfx achieved dominance back in the day and handed control over to marketing and bought STB. Their product declined as a result. In the mean time nvidia got their shit together and started pumping out excellent product with 6 month product generations. 3dfx responded with more marketing and got their ass handed to them.
Back when STB was purchased by 3dfx and Diamond by S3 everybody figured Nvidia was not long for the world, instead they are the last one standing.
If Nvidia tries the same thing they may last a bit longer, but not by much, either matrox or ati or even intel will get their shit together and hand them their ass.
The one problem is that GPU development is nearly as complex as CPU development and doesn't have anywhere near the profit margin. As a result Nvidia may try to up the price in response.
ISS Orbital Elements (TLE)
on
ISS Gets Wings
·
· Score: 1
Using any standard orbit tracking program such as pocketsat for the
palm and this TLE it is possible to determine the location of the ISS and
the associated Right Ascension and Declination
It could easily simulate a Furby or Mindstorms, and it creates
as well a million other interesting forms, if only for the eyes and ears.
In fact, says Pesce, the PS2 could well be seen as a spaceship for scouring
the universe of ideas.
First off, it is highly unlikely that the PS2 will ever simulate a Furby
or a Mindstorms kit, since both are trademarked properties of other corporations.
Since game development on PS2 is proprietary the range of visions and ideas
which will be cultivated will very limited and strictly corporate.
The PS2 isn't spaceship or even a bullet train, it's a roller coaster,
an exhilarating ride that follows a very specific course defined by the
builder and always ends up where you start. Closed source consoles
will be considerably limited in their subversive content since the corporation
licensing it will vet the content. Such content will be just about
as subversive and enlightening as network TV. Do you ever think that
"Panty Raider: From Here to Immaturity" will ever be released for the PS2,
much less the Quake skins for the two presidential tickets as per
Political Arena. In
comparison, PC gamers can modify and author their own games, learning to
program and becoming truly subversive.
Secondly, several commentators have noted that the Dreamcast (which
cost less than a million dollars in 1999) may be from a practical standpoint
a superior console (http://www.segaweb.com/features/ps2tech.html),
yet despite this fact, Dreamcast users seem to have not yet achieved the
digital nirvana predicted for PS2 users. It must be the trippy black and
blue case.
Admittedly, it is amusing to think of John Carmack as the Shaman of
the global village.
The platonic reality is that general purpose computers and the hackers
that use them are what is transforming society beyond recognition, computer
games are simply one of the most accessible and thus the most tangible
shadows on the cave wall. To extend the analogy past the breaking
point, the PS2 is a corporatist shadow puppet show on the cave wall.
Rifkin's The Age of Access is Very Relavant Here
on
The Leased Life?
·
· Score: 1
This issue is the central thesis of The Age of Access : The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where All of Life Is a Paid-For Experience by Jeremy Rifkin, ISBN 1585420182. I haven't had a chance to read it, but from an interview with the author it seems to directly address this issue. Rifkin argues that we are transitioning from owning tangible items to paying (continuously) for experiences, such as the experience of riding your leased Lexus. He argues that the salesmen now want to enter into ongoing relationships (rather than simply selling something to you free and clear, they want to sell servicing [Mr. Goodwrench], upgrades[Trade ins], and subscriptions[On Star]). He argues that there are many downsides and a few upsides. This article (http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151 ,12726,00.html) provides a good synopis of his arguement.
Monthly publications work under a different time constant than books, weekly or daily publications. The longer the time constant, the more the analysis takes into account the perspective provided by following the story over time.
NPR, The New York Times, The Economist, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and The Atlantic or Harpers, all have considerable overlap on the topics that they cover, but none of them obsoletes the others. The Economist or the New Yorker cannot hope to scoop NPR or the NYT, but it provides a far more strategic coverage with much deeper research than the latter outlets. The future of the computer magazine is to provide a strategic overview of trends and developments and provide a synthesis of disparate events. For example "The Way We Think" published in 1949 by Vanevar Bush is still an essential document on the web and personal computing. In much the same manner, "War is Virtual Hell" published in Wired #1 by Bruce Sterling is still as incisive as when it was published. Finally look up Alan Kays "Microelectronics and the Personal Computer" published on Scientific American in 1977 for an article which predicted roughly the next 15 years of PC development.
I agree wholehartedly. Maximum PC is ruthlessly objective in their reviews and are quite willing to frag major advertisers. They have an intensive orientation toward hardware with a stress on overclocking. Their editorial content is intended for a monthly release, providing prognosies on future development, comprehensive comparisons of available technology, and usefull tutorials. They have an excellent sense of humor and no pretensions, making them the opposite of Wired. The same company produces a lower level but hilarious sister publication called PC Accelerator , think Maximum PC meets MAXIM meets Mad!
Slashdot Mirror
The solution is simple immerse the entire system in 3M Fluorinert cooling fluid. I'ts dielectric and inert and an excellent coolant if a tad pricey.
Of course the optimal solution is to oxygenate the Fluorinert and immerse the entire room in it (you can breath the stuff when it's oxygenated).
Geekculture has a tribute to the hot but evil 'Sissy' the Sysadmin from after Y2K (AY2K) at:y 2k/af tery2kmain.html
http://www.geekculture.com/geekycomics/After
Anybody who can remember the Messerschmitt Me-163 Komet interceptor deployed by the Luftwaffe in WWII could contradict this. The Me-163 was a Hydrogen Peroxide rocket plane used later in the war. As the XCOR-Aerospace website notes:
... Hypergolic [Hydrogen Peroxide] propellants can - and did - cause explosions. More Komets were lost to fueling explosions than enemy action.
Pilots reported the Komet to be "Superb! No other word can express the pleasurable sensation as I shot ever upwards into the sky" and "one of the most maneuverable airplanes ever built." But the marvelous little fighter was a misery on the ground.
The fueling of the Me-163 was the most dangerous phase of the launch procedure, and this was using a design by "Von Braun" grade Rocket Scientists!
As we all know, many of the critical components for computers are produced in Taiwan. If the nation itself shifts toward free software, Taiwanese computer producers will have a considerable interest in producing drivers for free OSes. In paticular, laptops might suddenly become more Linux compliant.
I saw a 10pm showing of AOTC in the LA area (I was going to see Spiderman but it sold out while I was in line) the theater was not appreciably crowded and there was no audience response during the film.
I could see why. The film isn't bad if you eliminate the actors (with the execptions of Lee, McGregor and the ever perky Portman) and concentrate on the backgrounds and battle scenes.
Since the film is entirely digital this is a straightforward proposition (eliminating Jar Jar is a bit harder but I'm sure ILM already has this script ready to run).
I'm one of those people who always carries his palm (actually a Handspring Visor) everywhere. I use it as a notepad, alarm clock, address book, map/GPS, e-book, ephemeris etc. ... Could I use an equivalent amount of paper, I guess I could but the sheer volume of text and data would correspond to quite a few copies of War and Peace. And as of yet I haven't encountered any paper (maps or otherwise) that knows what time it is, or where it is at at any given time.
From my viewpoint the PDA has four advantages over a paper and pencil approach:
1.It provides the capacity to carry a relatively huge amount of data (16-128MB) in a small always acessible package. For example, I have to have a 300 page solicitation for proposals at hand every few months, a copy on my PDA is much handier than the inch thick Xerox. This has the enviable side effect that I always have reading material at all times, which is a real blessing while waiting in line for the airport, DMV, post office etc.
2.It is always there, meaning that I can enter notes, expenditures (Pocket Quicken rocks!), contacts and diet information immediately. This greatly reduces the paper clutter I have to deal with, and greatly increases my capacity to document all the little things which would otherwise trip me up. In the same manner, I can call up a lot more information immediately and at all times.
3.It exploits the synergies of the various functions of the PDA. It always knows what time it is (and synchronizes via NTP at every sync). When the GPS module is plugged in it knows where it is at. This can be exploited by applications such as AvantGo to provide the nearest theater playing a movie at a given time and provide instructions and a map. If you can do that with a pad of paper, I guess you stole the marauders map from Harry Potter.
4.It exploits the synergies with the PC. Not only can it transfer documents and web content automatically, and back up a full image of the palm on the PC but it can automatically transfer information in application specific format. Thus my Pocket Quicken on the palm updates my desktop Quicken and vice versa, allowing me to keep my ledger reconciled on a daily basis
I think that the Divx that he was referring to was the failed DVD extension marketed by Circuit City. The system employed encoded DVDs that required phone line activation to allow you to view them. The basic idea was the capacity to purchase DVDs cheaply and then essentially view them on a rental basis. Needless to say the technology tanked badly, so badly that the Divx compression scheme not only took the name without resistance, but the original technology is nearly forgotten.
If flash linkers are banned under the DCMA, a lot of nifty applications for the game boy advance go straight out the window. Most notably, the Advance turns out to be a rather good e-book platform (see http://www.mqp.com/fun/gb.htm ). With a 128MB flash cartridge and a flash linker it could hold 200+ titles at one time while being considerably cheaper than the equivalent PalmOS solution.
If flashing and development by hackers continued a considerable number of similar apps might have been developed.
I just realized that the central premise of the show is that the travel to other planets is not achieved by large phallocentric rockets, but rather by the use of an aperture which when properly manipulated opens into a channel to the desired place. Very feminine imagery. Of course, when the guys figure out what it does, they freak out over it's power, hide it in a deep cave and mount a big iris over it to control access. Very Taliban imagery.
I guess this observation comes from watching Eve Ensler's V* Monologs on HBO last night.
For those of us who live in an urban center or anywhere near one, Amazon has been an complete disaster. The bulk of the small, quirky, bookstores which sold nearly 100% small/specialty press materials (esp. feminist bookstores) have been wiped off the map! These were communities which let you know which new quirky titles were comming out and allowed you to meet interesting people.
In exchange, with Amazon we get the transformation of the bookstore into a sweatshop, with customer service driven offshore, and the bulk of the jobs diverted to entry level manual labor. Read http://www.tnr.com/021901/cohn021901_print.html for the straight dope. This, and a minimal need to post a profit, allows them to undercut the true brick and mortar independent bookstores. Do you think the prices or the service will remain the same after Amazon drives the majority of the bookstores out?
I'm far from a Luddite, but when a 'new economy' company uses age-old robber baron tactics to wipe out a preferable if less high tech solution, I won't support it. I've lived in the hinterlands before (5 yrs in Rome NY land of no bookstores) and I know how liberating a Barnes and Noble is even if it is 50 miles away. But the toll on the culture is apalling in the urban centers.
If you need to get books at remote locations use Booksense.com, powells.com, and opamp.com, real bookstores with real booksellers.
Has Jon Katz been living in America, much less middle class America, for any amount of time? Americans don't buy things for reliability or even cost if there is sufficent hype, design, or sex associated with it. When is the last time that you saw a car commercial touting mileage? When is the last time a soda comercial advertised based on nutritional content? If reliability, practicality and cost were driving factors, we would all be drinking weatgrass and driving Honda Impacts. As a practical matter, much of the ascendancy of shite like M$ and AOL is a function of heavy advertisement, and early adoption by major sectors of the population, forcing one to maintain substandard systems for compatibility.
M$ and AOL most certainly do not provide Reliability or even consistency (I just spent 30 mins rebooting my win98 system 4 times after an install, so I could do my daily quicken update) and the price/performance ration of linux is infinitely greater than that of M$. Most of Middle America simply does not know better, or needs a critical bit of software (Word or Quicken for example). Better solutions arise in sectors that do not have monopoly control (Palm)or in sudden paradigm shifts when the alternative design is sufficently superior (Internet, GUI's) as to render the previous solution irrelavant.
Apple's problem isn't poor reliability, and isn't even lower price performance ratio, it's mainly the betamax factor. Betamax was technically superior, but was a propreitary technology under the control of a single corporation, Sony. VHS won out because multiple corporations could licence and produce the standard and Sony couldn't out-market the competition.
Apple missed the boat on clones and licencing, and is now stuck in a position where licencing would simply cannibalize their limited market share.
The visualization toolkit (VTK) (www.kitware.com) is a technical visualization tool with bindings to C++, tcl and Python. It is completely object oriented and modeled on a dataflow structure. You may well find it indispensable to visualize your results. VTK also provides an excellent model of how enginering data structures may be represented in a purely OO form. My personal experience in OO programming is primarily Python based with a strong emphasis on the use of mathematical operators to define objects and classes.
The one time I got to see Adm. Grace Murray Hopper the primary thing I remember her saying is:
-You don't manange soldiers into a battle, you lead them.
This is a battle and we need a leader not a manager.
It's not enough to avoid the coasts, or big cities. Computers themselves where invented by Alan Turing with the sole purpose of recruiting the unsuspecting to the Homosexual Agenda! Same thing for Sendmail! So it would be best to smash your computer avoid e-mail and move to Montanna and live in a bunker.
As a straight geek one of my immediate barometers of a city or neighborhood is whether they carry Playboy, The Advocate, Dr. Dobbs and Circuit Cellar on the news stands. Basically, I'm looking for a tolerant, non-puritanical, tech literate population.
Frankly, I always look for a nearby gay enclave, its usually got all the best culture, great furniture and art, the most eclectic cuisine and in the case of West Hollywood the best tech bookstore in the LA area OPAMP books. But the main reason I like having a nearby gay enclave is that it repels moronic rednecks with ruthless efficency.
Yes it's the the DMMDA! By requiring all reentery vehicles to have GPS beacons and outlawing the use of missle defense circumvention devices or the very discussion of such devices, the DMMDA ends the debate over the effectiveness of missile defense by definition!
Remember when missile defense circumvention devices are outlawed, only outlaw nations will have missile defense circumvention devices.
Good answer, wrong question.
Actually getting two small objects to fly close to each other isn't that big a problem, its known as orbital rendezvous and we've had that down cold since the '60s especially if the two objects are cooperating as was the case here.
The big problem is if one side isn't playing nice like not sending its trajectory with updates, or sending out hundreds of decoys. Again, the problem isn't insoluble most of the time. But that's the other pesky problem, it has to work the first time, everytime!
And of course, there's the other pesky cheat, which is to wrap the target in a bale of grass and send it over the mexican border. But that would be cheating!
The original source of the GPS Beacon information is here (http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2000/x01142000 _xbck0114.html) and http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/security/has1 80000.000/has180000_0.htm ) in essence a turbocharged Automatic Position Reporting System (APRS) is incorporated and supposedly "fuzzed up" to simulate X-Band radar that is not deployed at Kuaj.
m l) and that is not using military p-code (the encrypted precision code available to the DOD) sequences. When you consider relative positioning it gets even better in that systematic errors in the carrier signal can be eliminated.
NASA Blackjack GPS recievers can achieve 1 in accuracy (as per http://slashdot.org/articles/00/12/18/0023230.sht
Even if we limit ourselves to a fast APRS beacon operating with P-Code accuracy we can construct a very accurate Kalman filter model once the test vehicle has exited the atmosphere. Remember, once we get out of the atmosphere the trajectory is purely deterministic, and each position and velocity fix derived from the GPS reciever refines the overall estimate of the trajectory (Check out section 9.7 of Fundamentals of Astrodynamics and Applications by D.A. Vallado for details). In this case, each fix refines the estimate of the trajectory and thus the predicted location of the target at the intercept point. This narrows the targets position to a very small range of positions and velocities for the kill vehicle to search (much smaller than that provided by x-band radar) to direct the kill vehicle towards. Does the kill vehicle have to handle the last few hundred meters? Probably so, but only after a huge leg up from the GPS beacon.
BTW: A related comment speculated that the target contained a GPS transmitter effectively making the unit a pseudolite. But then rejected the possibility since that would require an atomic clock. While I suspect that mouning a pseudolite beacon on the target would be guilding the lily, compact and lightwieght rubiduim atomic clocks are commonly available on the commercial market(http://www.temex.ch/mcmanu.htm)
It's not ESR naked... It's Eric S. 'American Gigolo' Raymond, in a red velvet smoking jacket wearing a silk ascot sitting in an overstuffed chair in a room with red flocked velvet wallpaper, and red party bulbs for illumination. He's alternating between puffs on a cigar and samples his brandy sniffer. He then notices the camera and sets down the sniffer and in his best attempt at a Barry White voice... Basically the geek version of John Candy's 'Johnny LaRue' character. Now that's disturbing!
The real story here is that 3dfx achieved dominance back in the day and handed control over to marketing and bought STB. Their product declined as a result. In the mean time nvidia got their shit together and started pumping out excellent product with 6 month product generations. 3dfx responded with more marketing and got their ass handed to them. Back when STB was purchased by 3dfx and Diamond by S3 everybody figured Nvidia was not long for the world, instead they are the last one standing. If Nvidia tries the same thing they may last a bit longer, but not by much, either matrox or ati or even intel will get their shit together and hand them their ass. The one problem is that GPU development is nearly as complex as CPU development and doesn't have anywhere near the profit margin. As a result Nvidia may try to up the price in response.
ISS (ZARYA)
.00072247 00000-0 74580-3 0 3516
1 25544U 98067A 00341.21245003
2 25544 51.5761 345.8697 0004856 209.0218 200.2223 15.64105677116881
Using any standard orbit tracking program such as pocketsat for the
palm and this TLE it is possible to determine the location of the ISS and
the associated Right Ascension and Declination
Secondly, several commentators have noted that the Dreamcast (which cost less than a million dollars in 1999) may be from a practical standpoint a superior console (http://www.segaweb.com/features/ps2tech.html), yet despite this fact, Dreamcast users seem to have not yet achieved the digital nirvana predicted for PS2 users. It must be the trippy black and blue case.
Admittedly, it is amusing to think of John Carmack as the Shaman of the global village.
The platonic reality is that general purpose computers and the hackers that use them are what is transforming society beyond recognition, computer games are simply one of the most accessible and thus the most tangible shadows on the cave wall. To extend the analogy past the breaking point, the PS2 is a corporatist shadow puppet show on the cave wall.
This issue is the central thesis of The Age of Access : The New Culture of Hypercapitalism, Where All of Life Is a Paid-For Experience by Jeremy Rifkin, ISBN 1585420182. I haven't had a chance to read it, but from an interview with the author it seems to directly address this issue. Rifkin argues that we are transitioning from owning tangible items to paying (continuously) for experiences, such as the experience of riding your leased Lexus. He argues that the salesmen now want to enter into ongoing relationships (rather than simply selling something to you free and clear, they want to sell servicing [Mr. Goodwrench], upgrades[Trade ins], and subscriptions[On Star]). He argues that there are many downsides and a few upsides. This article (http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151 ,12726,00.html) provides a good synopis of his arguement.
Monthly publications work under a different time constant than books, weekly or daily publications. The longer the time constant, the more the analysis takes into account the perspective provided by following the story over time.
NPR, The New York Times, The Economist, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and The Atlantic or Harpers, all have considerable overlap on the topics that they cover, but none of them obsoletes the others. The Economist or the New Yorker cannot hope to scoop NPR or the NYT, but it provides a far more strategic coverage with much deeper research than the latter outlets.
The future of the computer magazine is to provide a strategic overview of trends and developments and provide a synthesis of disparate events. For example "The Way We Think" published in 1949 by Vanevar Bush is still an essential document on the web and personal computing. In much the same manner, "War is Virtual Hell" published in Wired #1 by Bruce Sterling is still as incisive as when it was published. Finally look up Alan Kays "Microelectronics and the Personal Computer" published on Scientific American in 1977 for an article which predicted roughly the next 15 years of PC development.
I agree wholehartedly. Maximum PC is ruthlessly objective in their reviews and are quite willing to frag major advertisers. They have an intensive orientation toward hardware with a stress on overclocking. Their editorial content is intended for a monthly release, providing prognosies on future development, comprehensive comparisons of available technology, and usefull tutorials. They have an excellent sense of humor and no pretensions, making them the opposite of Wired.
The same company produces a lower level but hilarious sister publication called PC Accelerator , think Maximum PC meets MAXIM meets Mad!