Is it feasible/practical to create a vacuum for lift yet?
Instead of inflating a balloon with helium, do the materials exist to evacuate the air in a "balloon-like structure" (any structure with a large volume) to displace the air in the atmosphere and float the device through natural buoyancy? It seems this could use ballasts to adjust the elevation and whatnot. Could solar cells power it?
...will be the ping/lag. Like trying to play CPMA with someone in UAE.
Well, better than nothing.:)
The latency should be much, much better than current geosynchronous satellite options. I wouldn't expect balloon-based repeaters to have latency above 100ms. Compare that to WildBlue/Hughes with real-world latency of 1000-2500ms (they claim 500-750ms).
So Why not just use the existing Cell Towers to provide broadband?
Because it's very expensive and sometimes impossible to backhaul a connection to very rural cell towers. They are also expensive to construct and maintain and are a visual blight when you dot them all over the landscape.
Neat Idea, they should deploy these in rural america where verizon doesn't go and the comcast/at&t duopoly is fierce..
I wish the only issues were a duopoly. In many areas of the US, high-speed, low-latency Internet access is simply unavailable.
When it is available, the only current option is to spend $5-30k for telco "special construction charges" and $500+/month for a T1.
Consumer level satellite options (WildBlue, Hughes) have really tight bandwidth quotas and latency of 1-2seconds. The quota on the $100/month WildBlue "Professional" tier is 17GB down/month (30-day rolling cycle) and 5GB up with a $400 dish/modem purchase. Hughes has several tiers but you're out $700 for the dish/modem and $120-$500/month depending on the speed and bandwidth quotas you need.
Yet whenever any of these long-haul wireless and uav devices are discussed, the focus is on Africa. Why is that? I'll pay you the same or more than an African for the flexibility of living anywhere in the United States with a high-bandwidth, low-latency connection and I suspect a lot of other people would do so as well.
Because you'll be doing monte carlo simulations to hit that 80% house take when you don't need to go through all of that. You would be cheating.
Generate really good pseudorandom numbers and let the rules of the game and probabilities do the rest. Besides, you'll get caught eventually by people who record every single game and do the math.
If so, then you'd be doing yourself a favor by betting the patterns that are most likely to appear. Go download the number histories and do some nCk calculations to see the expected vs actual outcomes on odd/even combinations, distribution of the numbers, etc.. Yeah, you probably won't win but you'll considerably increase your chances by playing the numbers that come up more often.
Skip the top-loaded powerball or mega millions, go for the state lotto or five number games and do the calculations on returns. It's pretty ugly when you do the math but if you're going to play anyway, why not play to win?
Listen up, this guy knows what he's talking about.
There is a lot of collusion going on and the poker sites don't have much incentive to detect and stop it.
You guys can talk about probabilities and how meaningless tells may be, but when you see guys raising all-in with junk and winning consistently, it's not because they're lucky or donks whose day will come but because they often have shills communicating their down cards.
The bill that banned online gambling was spearheaded by Senator Frist (R-TN) who retired from politics immediately afterwards.
I wrote him a letter and he wrote me back with the same tired slogan that online gambling "frays the fabric of families".
Well, I don't know about that, but if that's true so does brick and mortar gambling and state-sponsored gambling/lotteries and he didn't seem to care about that. Nice payday for him, I guess, with a perpetual government pension to boot.
What if we could construct an initial segment of the power collector using conventional means (rockets, etc.) and begin beaming that power back to earth.
Then it seems like instead of having a "rectenna" on the ground, you have it on a cargo craft. The energy it captures is used to power it's ascent. Sort of like beaming up, it needs to stay in the path of the energy beam and can ride it all the way to the array.
Astronauts or automation then offload the payload, attach any materials for return to Earth, and the craft rides the beam back to Earth.
I suppose the questions are: 1) do we have technology that can convert electrical power into sufficient thrust to escape earth gravity and work in space 2) using that technology, how many watts of power does it take to lift a pound to escape velocity when you don't have to carry all of the fuel of conventional rocketry, just the energy capture and thrust conversion equipment. 3) how big of an array do we need to reach launch capabilities such that we can expand the array (let's say a lift capability of 1 ton). 4) what rockets do we need to put that array in place 5) profit!
I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet but Kenneth Stanley did some interesting work at the University of Texas on NEAT, Neuro Evolution of Augmenting Topologies. He and others have expanded this in several directions including things like Compositional Pattern Producing Networks (CPPNs) that can be joined together into a larger network.
I actually just signed up for Safari to read the chapter in AI Techniques for Game Programming on NEAT and some other approaches.
I also found that the books by Gerald Edelman (Neural Darwinism, A Universe of Consciousness, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, et al) provide a refreshing look at the biological foundations.
Rural areas with rolling hills and trees have really limited options with regard to high-speed Internet access. Line of sight just wasn't one of nature's design goals. It's really difficult to have a cottage high-tech industry without the infrastructure to support it and the population density simply isn't there for the telcos to have any incentive to build it out.
Your best bet is Wildblue with 750-1500ms latency and 256kbps upload speed. You get used to it but forget sharing say a vmware image or uploading anything of substantial size. If you spend the time to do it, you also face rate-limiting from WildBlue once you pass a bandwidth threshold. Let us not forget wiping the snow off the dish, throwing a trash bag over the lnb when it rains, and wiggling the dish when you lose signal.
Sure, rural users can try to order a T1 but since the wired infrastructure isn't built out (else the telco would be offering high-speed services), you can bet on "special construction charges" of at least $4k on top of the $500/month service charge. ISDN? Same issue.
What about getting a ham radio license? That's fine and all, provided you don't ever use encryption, don't mind people intercepting your data, and remember to identify your station periodically.
The truth is that more than half of the country simply cannot acquire high-speed Internet access for a reasonable rate.
Slashdot Mirror
The Canopy equipment is pricy. Why use it when you can get Ubiquiti NanoStations for $40-$80? Isn't Canopy 10x that price?
There's NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies (NEAT) largely by Ken Stanley. There are extensions to that like HyperNEAT and Compositional Pattern Producing Networks (CPPNs).
I am interested in other approaches too...
Great observation.
Oh, what happened?
Is this another application of the Wiener filter?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiener_filter
Holographic fringe patterns were my first thought too.
mod parent up!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jUBbCgMWmE
What kind of name is that anyhow? Kumar? What is that five o's or two u's?
Be sure to edge before you leave...
Is it feasible/practical to create a vacuum for lift yet? Instead of inflating a balloon with helium, do the materials exist to evacuate the air in a "balloon-like structure" (any structure with a large volume) to displace the air in the atmosphere and float the device through natural buoyancy? It seems this could use ballasts to adjust the elevation and whatnot. Could solar cells power it?
...will be the ping/lag. Like trying to play CPMA with someone in UAE.
Well, better than nothing. :)
The latency should be much, much better than current geosynchronous satellite options. I wouldn't expect balloon-based repeaters to have latency above 100ms. Compare that to WildBlue/Hughes with real-world latency of 1000-2500ms (they claim 500-750ms).
So Why not just use the existing Cell Towers to provide broadband?
Because it's very expensive and sometimes impossible to backhaul a connection to very rural cell towers. They are also expensive to construct and maintain and are a visual blight when you dot them all over the landscape.
Neat Idea, they should deploy these in rural america where verizon doesn't go and the comcast/at&t duopoly is fierce..
I wish the only issues were a duopoly. In many areas of the US, high-speed, low-latency Internet access is simply unavailable.
When it is available, the only current option is to spend $5-30k for telco "special construction charges" and $500+/month for a T1.
Consumer level satellite options (WildBlue, Hughes) have really tight bandwidth quotas and latency of 1-2seconds. The quota on the $100/month WildBlue "Professional" tier is 17GB down/month (30-day rolling cycle) and 5GB up with a $400 dish/modem purchase. Hughes has several tiers but you're out $700 for the dish/modem and $120-$500/month depending on the speed and bandwidth quotas you need.
Yet whenever any of these long-haul wireless and uav devices are discussed, the focus is on Africa. Why is that? I'll pay you the same or more than an African for the flexibility of living anywhere in the United States with a high-bandwidth, low-latency connection and I suspect a lot of other people would do so as well.
The only "legitimate business interest" in owning a domain name is for the intarweb.
Pick a different domain name...
hahahaha, ain't that the truth.
Because you'll be doing monte carlo simulations to hit that 80% house take when you don't need to go through all of that. You would be cheating.
Generate really good pseudorandom numbers and let the rules of the game and probabilities do the rest. Besides, you'll get caught eventually by people who record every single game and do the math.
If so, then you'd be doing yourself a favor by betting the patterns that are most likely to appear. Go download the number histories and do some nCk calculations to see the expected vs actual outcomes on odd/even combinations, distribution of the numbers, etc.. Yeah, you probably won't win but you'll considerably increase your chances by playing the numbers that come up more often.
Skip the top-loaded powerball or mega millions, go for the state lotto or five number games and do the calculations on returns. It's pretty ugly when you do the math but if you're going to play anyway, why not play to win?
Listen up, this guy knows what he's talking about.
There is a lot of collusion going on and the poker sites don't have much incentive to detect and stop it.
You guys can talk about probabilities and how meaningless tells may be, but when you see guys raising all-in with junk and winning consistently, it's not because they're lucky or donks whose day will come but because they often have shills communicating their down cards.
The bill that banned online gambling was spearheaded by Senator Frist (R-TN) who retired from politics immediately afterwards.
I wrote him a letter and he wrote me back with the same tired slogan that online gambling "frays the fabric of families".
Well, I don't know about that, but if that's true so does brick and mortar gambling and state-sponsored gambling/lotteries and he didn't seem to care about that. Nice payday for him, I guess, with a perpetual government pension to boot.
I should have become a politician.
Except the atoms that I'm borrowing to live will be reconstituted in other life. In effect, I will be reincarnated as many different lifeforms.
Given a choice between continuing that cycle and either having my brain sit in a jar of formaldahyde (or sliced up into slides), I'll take the former.
lol
What if we could construct an initial segment of the power collector using conventional means (rockets, etc.) and begin beaming that power back to earth.
Then it seems like instead of having a "rectenna" on the ground, you have it on a cargo craft. The energy it captures is used to power it's ascent. Sort of like beaming up, it needs to stay in the path of the energy beam and can ride it all the way to the array.
Astronauts or automation then offload the payload, attach any materials for return to Earth, and the craft rides the beam back to Earth.
I suppose the questions are:
1) do we have technology that can convert electrical power into sufficient thrust to escape earth gravity and work in space
2) using that technology, how many watts of power does it take to lift a pound to escape velocity when you don't have to carry all of the fuel of conventional rocketry, just the energy capture and thrust conversion equipment.
3) how big of an array do we need to reach launch capabilities such that we can expand the array (let's say a lift capability of 1 ton).
4) what rockets do we need to put that array in place
5) profit!
Afterwards, we don't need rockets.
I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet but Kenneth Stanley did some interesting work at the University of Texas on NEAT, Neuro Evolution of Augmenting Topologies. He and others have expanded this in several directions including things like Compositional Pattern Producing Networks (CPPNs) that can be joined together into a larger network.
I actually just signed up for Safari to read the chapter in AI Techniques for Game Programming on NEAT and some other approaches.
I also found that the books by Gerald Edelman (Neural Darwinism, A Universe of Consciousness, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, et al) provide a refreshing look at the biological foundations.
Finally!
Rural areas with rolling hills and trees have really limited options with regard to high-speed Internet access. Line of sight just wasn't one of nature's design goals. It's really difficult to have a cottage high-tech industry without the infrastructure to support it and the population density simply isn't there for the telcos to have any incentive to build it out.
Your best bet is Wildblue with 750-1500ms latency and 256kbps upload speed. You get used to it but forget sharing say a vmware image or uploading anything of substantial size. If you spend the time to do it, you also face rate-limiting from WildBlue once you pass a bandwidth threshold. Let us not forget wiping the snow off the dish, throwing a trash bag over the lnb when it rains, and wiggling the dish when you lose signal.
Sure, rural users can try to order a T1 but since the wired infrastructure isn't built out (else the telco would be offering high-speed services), you can bet on "special construction charges" of at least $4k on top of the $500/month service charge. ISDN? Same issue.
What about getting a ham radio license? That's fine and all, provided you don't ever use encryption, don't mind people intercepting your data, and remember to identify your station periodically.
The truth is that more than half of the country simply cannot acquire high-speed Internet access for a reasonable rate.
Don't worry scrote. There are plenty of 'tards out there living really kick ass lives. My first wife was 'tarded. She's a pilot now.