My first "real" computer was a 486/66.
I bought it used, and it came with Windows 3.1 on it. After
firing it up and marvelling that people
actually paid money for such a piece of
crap, I went to the local bookstore and came
home with a book that included a Slackware
CD. Dunno what distro, but it would
have been an old one (3.0?). I've run Slackware
ever since.
I had no difficulty getting the thing going,
PPP, sound (an excellent excuse for boning
up on DSP!), the works. It ran fine in 8 MB RAM.
OK, except for Netscape, which page-thrashed for
about 2 minutes then ran fine. Upgrading
to 32 MB (the capacity of the motherboard)
cured that. Now I run a Pentium 3 with 768 MB RAM,
plugged in to ADSL.
The OS started as Slackware 8.0, but I've upgraded
many packages, and run a 2.4.20 kernel. It flies...
To this day I recommend
Slackware as a "sharp tools" distro - if you
know what you're doing, it's immensely powerful
and flexible. If you don't know what you're
doing, you're screwed.
FWIW, my most recent Slackware install was
Slackware 8.0 on
a Toshiba laptop that RedHat 7.3 (the company
standard) refused to install
on. It would get to about 3 packages before
the end, crash, reboot, say GRUB and sit there
staring at me. The PCMCIA network card
did all the right things, automagically. I had to fiddle a bit
with the X configuration to set up yet another
weird-ass laptop video card. Big deal.
It is not illegal in anyway to receive the data stream for the US government's weather satellites. I work with them everyday.
Yep. They are, in effect, a publis service
of the U.S. Government. Anybody who wants to
can receive their signals and do what they will
with them. The signal format itself is
based on the 1960s-era TIROS format, but
keeping it simple means that even dirt poor countries
can get weather satellite data.
I do my own: have a look
at some pretty (if a little stale)
pictures of mine. I wrote my
own sound card demodulator program.
Linux, of course...
R.P. stands for Rendell-Parrett,
the founders of one of the three stores
(Rendell-Parrett, The Ham Shack and something
to do with stereo audio) that merged many
moons ago to become the R.P.
Electronics we have today.
Am I showing my age when I remember
Rendell-Parrett on 4th Avenue and The Ham
Shack on Granville, just down from Davie?
The first merged R.P. Electronics store was on 4th
Avenue, near Arbutus. Now their
store is in Burnaby, near Brentwood Mall.
I find Cal's to be a crapshoot - lots of
just plain
junk (often with weird ideas of what it's worth),
but with the occasional gem, too. As
well as the usual approach to service,
i.e.
service grudgingly provided at gunpoint.
I liked Sayal in Toronto as well. Are
they still around? They had lots of neat
stuff and were well worth the trip out
to the wilds of Finch and Victoria Park.
Thanks to the Dot Bomb, computer surplus
is everywhere, in tonne lots. I want
other surplus stuff: radio goodies, test
equipment, and such. The pickings are
pretty thin there.
Man I love that place... anyone know of anything even REMOTELY similar in Vancouver?
I'm afraid the least worst in Vancouver is R.P.,
which carefully hides the
surplus
(what there is of it) in the back corner.
Satellite Pete went out of business years
ago. Sigh.
You can also save your pennies and go
to Boeing Surplus in Seattle. Radar used
to be a hoot, but are no longer open on Saturdays. Sigh again.
Saving more pennies and flying to Silicon Valley
for the weekend isn't as much fun as it
once was, unless you want tons
of surplus computer stuff.
I remember a short story - I wish I could remember the author - in which humans had relied on computers for so long, that they had
forgotton how to write and do math. A scientist reinvents mathematics using a pen and paper, and everyone is amazed because now they
will be able to build cheap spaceships as they no longer need those expensive computers.
Build a reflector. Grind the lens yourself and save beaucoup $$. Take your time and make it perfect. Every time he sees it he will think
"My son built this for me." and be grateful and proud. And you'll have something to pass to your son.
Obligatory addition: "...or daughter."
A common compromise these days is to build
a telescope with commercial optics and
a home-made mount. I built such a device
late last year: bought a 6 inch mirror and
diagonal from a local optics place and whomped
up a plywood-and-sonotube Dobsonian telescope.
It works beautifully.
On my first test session in the back yard I saw
4 moons of Saturn and the Cassini Division,
plus Jupiter, the Orion Nebula, and the Pleiades.
I was delighted.
Oh, by the way: I built it for my Mom. She
lives out in the country and with lots
of clear, dark nights, you tend to become
something of an astronomer without even trying.
When I was there over Christmas we saw
a spectacular aurora.
Sounds like fun, they have a diversity problem they want you to solve. Its amazing that this day in age we are still this worried about
diversity, they probably got threatened by their network and/or the fcc. Anyways, I'm still going to apply, it's a good oppertunity.
For all the grousing about "political correctness",
don't forget that Cathy Rogers herself
is in the show because the network
(Channel 4)
wanted a female co-host to widen the demographics
a bit.
ISS' inclination is about 51 degrees, which is pretty big (ie, it's over 45 degrees off of the equatorial line). I don't remember what Columbia was
at, but that wasn't it. To get the Shuttle up to that declination from their orbit would have taken a buttload of fuel, or a lot of time, neither of
which were available.
ISS is indeed at 51 degrees, while STS-107 was
in a 39 degree orbit. ISS is in a slightly higher orbit, too. My usual source is
Celestrak.
It doesn't matter how much time you have: there is a minimum
delta V to change from one orbit to another. If you don't have it,
you don't go there. The Shuttle's on-orbit delta V
is very small.
Hubble, by the way, is in a higher orbit still, but
a 28 degree inclination. A Shuttle can
get there by launching
due east from Kennedy (28 degrees latitude)
with a reduced payload.
For the real dirt on all this orbit stuff,
my favourite reference remains
Fundamentals of Astrodynamics
by Bate, Mueller and White.
...laura
Re:Forgive the obvious question...
on
Superbowl XXXVII
·
· Score: 1
But what in the world is this doing on Slashdot? This is "News for
Nerds," folks.
Don't worry: not only did I carefully avoid
watching or listening to anything to do with the
moneygrubbingcommercialthingy...er, sporting event
today, I seem to be one of the few who isn't
even certain of its significance.
Me? I watched tonight's
episode of
da Vinci's Inquest.
Great stuff. Beats seeing a bunch of men
rolling around on the grass groping each others' butts.
Why is he doing the color filter thing when high resolution color CCDs are now availble? Is it for clairities sake or something?...
There are a variety of reasons. Colour
CCDs don't have the resolution that monochrome
ones do. Cost, which relates back
to the resolution. Sensitivity to light: monochrome
CCDs can be, and often are, optimized for
very low light.
With filters it is possible to zoom in on any spectral line you wish, like
the red hydrogen alpha line, or the blue-green oxygen line (produced by emission
nebulae, which is why the Orion Nebula looks greenish-grey).
Yeah, but, I just don't think Elvis sounds as good when he's been translated to French.
ROFLMAO: I have these visions of Elvis performing "Ca plane pour moi":
Wam! Bam!
Mon chat, splatch
Git sur mon lit
A bouffe sa langue
En buvant dans mon whisky...
People who did French in high school needn't worry:
the lyrics are nonsense.
There are probably MP3s and similar nasties floating
around the net if you want to hear it. Look for the original (by
Plastic Bertrand),
or Telex's bizarre cover. Telex
did Rock
Around The Clock on the same album. It sounds
like it was performed by drunk robots...
Saturn was at opposition last week, and thus
as close as it can get to Earth. However,
the view will be favourable until well in to
the new year (it starts to deteriorate
in April).
The rings will remain at about their
maximum tilt for a couple of years yet.
It's far from the all-or-nothing-one-night-in-a-lifetime
spectacle the science news folks would have
you believe. Try JPL's
Solar System Simulator to see
how slowly the rings change. Saturn's
29.5 year orbit, y'know.
I had an excellent view last
night while testing a new telescope,
and saw four moons while I was at it.
I expect to see the rings well until
2007 or so.
I hate to be a stickler for detail (well, maybe hate is a strong word), but this particular deep space project uses a longer band
transmission then 8
Ghz...Pioneer's "Uplink was accomplished at
2110 MHz, while data transmission downlink was at 2292 MHz."
Blush. You're right. I stand corrected
on the frequency. Apollo hung out around
2280. Some hams with 2.3 GHz radios heard
some of the later Apollos from lunar orbit.
The atmospheric effects at S band
are nevertheless much the same as at X band,
i.e. nil.
I skimmed the article. It says that they were unable to lock on the signal using one of the largest radio antennae on the planet.
Any ideas if this was due to atmospheric distrubance (as well as distance, obviously...).
Unlikely. NASA deep space stuff is up around 8 GHz, where
atmospheric effects are minimal. No, the thing
is just too far away, and its signal just isn't strong enough.
So, when are we going to see plans for building a relay on the moon? Surely NASA's got to be looking into this. I'm not an
engineer, but surely they could build a permanent relay on the moon using solar panels for power...
What for?
In the present situation, it wouldn't make
any difference. Goldstone et al are out
in the middle of nowhere, and have no
significant radio interference problems.
The atmosphere isn't an issue at these
frequencies.
If I wanted to build the Proverbial
Really Big Radio Telescope I'd park it
at a Lagrange point. No gravity at all to worry
about, I could make it as big as I wanted,
and in a vacuum I could have all sorts of fun
making it out of improbable materials.
The main seelling point for a radio telescope
on the Moon would be interferometry, providing
a much longer baseline than any telescopes on
Earth could muster. Until we set up shop
on Mars...
It's proper to refer to organizations as either singular or plural.
As a somewhat-schizophrenic-over-language
Canadian, I use both. If it's singular,
I'm describing the monolithic entitity. If
it's plural, I'm emphasizing the people
who make up the monolithic entity.
Of course products aren't built to last. I
assume an MTBF of 2 years on all consumer
products, and budget for replacement, because
repair will be impossible or uneconomic.
Yes, they're disposable. There is no money
in making things that last.
If things last too long the manufacturers
will come up with some new "standard" that renders
the present installed base obsolete,
thus forcing people
to spend money. I have heard suggestions
that this was part of the push for both
CD audio and DVD video.
I have been pleasantly surprised,
but only a few times. One particularly good
result was
a cheap piece of crap VCR from Zellers
that I finally retired,
still going strong, when it
proved to have 4 Y2K bugs.
...laura, wondering how they would
handle VCRs with Y2K bugs in Soviet Russia
I'm not entirely up on complex math, but they want to know if it has a reccurring pattern.
No.
Pi was proven to be irrational long ago.
Pi was proven to be transcendental long ago too.
So not only can it not be expressed as any ratio of integers a/b, it cannot be the solution of
any poynomial equation with a finite number
of integer coefficients.
They aren't looking for repetition, because
it has long since been proven that there is
no repetition to be found.
Don't just look at it walk across it. Walk over it! The tour guides know their stuff, they'll tell you lots of intresting things about its
contruction: why it hasn't rusted away, how it supports itself, and how many rivets were used.
You can walk across on the sidewalk for free,
though it's a long way up and a long way down.
Not as much technical detail, but the view
can't be beat. The price is right too.
85% [wired.com] of their time is required for maintenance.
Very little hard science has been done due to construction delays and retrofitting many of the parts.
The editorial in the December issue of
Sky and Telescope grumbles
about this.
As the author put it,
30 years ago (i.e.Apollo 17) we had
three guys at the Moon, making discoveries. Now
we have three guys in low Earth orbit,
fixing things.
The newest Windows OS I support is Windows 98. That's right, my sister, my mom, and my dad all run Windows 98, so I support them. My brother-in-law and girlfriend run Windows XP, so they're out of luck. (No, they didn't blow $200-$400 on XP - it came for """free""" on their Dell & Fujitsu laptops.)
I agree. When non-technical users ask me
about such things, I point them to Windows 98 SE. Feature-rich enough
to be useful, and not too bloated. USB
that works.
Me? I'm typing this on a Linux box. Slackware
(of course...:-), kernel 2.4.10, plugged
in to ADSL, running on a Pentium
3 box made out of spare parts.
The oldest version of DOS I've booted on
this box is PC-DOS 3.3. It goes like crazy, but has odd notions about how much memory is installed
(768 MB was mainframe stuff in 1987), and
can't figure out the 30 GB hard drive at all.
On all but the smallest, oldest machines, I've moved to booting Linux off floppies for initial system setup and checkout, regardless of what OS the system will eventually run.
The only real exception to this now is a
crappy old 386 laptop that came with 2 MB of RAM,
in a weird package I've never seen before or since.
With no upgrades possible, it runs MS-DOS 5.0
to log GPS data.
I was under the impression that radiation was only dangerous to organic life forms. How could it damage machines?
There are several mechanisms.
Radiation neutralizes the stored
charge in EPROMs. This is the same mechanism
as erasing them with UV light. At one time
people just didn't use them in space applications,
but have now found that you can if you're
careful, and don't leave them in space
too long. Flash is still generally
off-limits.
Radiation can alter the characteristics of
semiconductor junctions.
Radiation can alter the characteristics
of passive components.
This is incorrect; the closest star is Proxima Centauri; 4.24 LY.
Alpha Centauri C (to use a more official designation)
is indeed marginally closer to us than Alpha Centauri
A and B. But at absolute magnitude 15 you would have to
be just about standing on it to see it.
I can't see much exitement in going all
that way just to see a red dwarf...
Slashdot Mirror
My first "real" computer was a 486/66. I bought it used, and it came with Windows 3.1 on it. After firing it up and marvelling that people actually paid money for such a piece of crap, I went to the local bookstore and came home with a book that included a Slackware CD. Dunno what distro, but it would have been an old one (3.0?). I've run Slackware ever since.
I had no difficulty getting the thing going, PPP, sound (an excellent excuse for boning up on DSP!), the works. It ran fine in 8 MB RAM. OK, except for Netscape, which page-thrashed for about 2 minutes then ran fine. Upgrading to 32 MB (the capacity of the motherboard) cured that. Now I run a Pentium 3 with 768 MB RAM, plugged in to ADSL. The OS started as Slackware 8.0, but I've upgraded many packages, and run a 2.4.20 kernel. It flies...
To this day I recommend Slackware as a "sharp tools" distro - if you know what you're doing, it's immensely powerful and flexible. If you don't know what you're doing, you're screwed.
FWIW, my most recent Slackware install was Slackware 8.0 on a Toshiba laptop that RedHat 7.3 (the company standard) refused to install on. It would get to about 3 packages before the end, crash, reboot, say GRUB and sit there staring at me. The PCMCIA network card did all the right things, automagically. I had to fiddle a bit with the X configuration to set up yet another weird-ass laptop video card. Big deal.
Thanks, Patrick. Well done!
...laura
Yep. They are, in effect, a publis service of the U.S. Government. Anybody who wants to can receive their signals and do what they will with them. The signal format itself is based on the 1960s-era TIROS format, but keeping it simple means that even dirt poor countries can get weather satellite data.
I do my own: have a look at some pretty (if a little stale) pictures of mine. I wrote my own sound card demodulator program. Linux, of course...
...laura
R.P. stands for Rendell-Parrett, the founders of one of the three stores (Rendell-Parrett, The Ham Shack and something to do with stereo audio) that merged many moons ago to become the R.P. Electronics we have today. Am I showing my age when I remember Rendell-Parrett on 4th Avenue and The Ham Shack on Granville, just down from Davie? The first merged R.P. Electronics store was on 4th Avenue, near Arbutus. Now their store is in Burnaby, near Brentwood Mall.
I find Cal's to be a crapshoot - lots of just plain junk (often with weird ideas of what it's worth), but with the occasional gem, too. As well as the usual approach to service, i.e. service grudgingly provided at gunpoint.
I liked Sayal in Toronto as well. Are they still around? They had lots of neat stuff and were well worth the trip out to the wilds of Finch and Victoria Park.
Thanks to the Dot Bomb, computer surplus is everywhere, in tonne lots. I want other surplus stuff: radio goodies, test equipment, and such. The pickings are pretty thin there.
...laura
I'm afraid the least worst in Vancouver is R.P., which carefully hides the surplus (what there is of it) in the back corner. Satellite Pete went out of business years ago. Sigh.
You can also save your pennies and go to Boeing Surplus in Seattle. Radar used to be a hoot, but are no longer open on Saturdays. Sigh again.
Saving more pennies and flying to Silicon Valley for the weekend isn't as much fun as it once was, unless you want tons of surplus computer stuff.
...laura
The Feeling of Power. By Isaac Asimov.
...laura
Slackware is my favourite tool for this too. I always carry a boot and root disk with me, just in case I have problems booting off the CDROM.
The system you get includes lots of PCI and /proc stuff, just the ticket for
exploring alien hardware before deciding
what to load on it.
...laura
Obligatory addition: "...or daughter."
A common compromise these days is to build a telescope with commercial optics and a home-made mount. I built such a device late last year: bought a 6 inch mirror and diagonal from a local optics place and whomped up a plywood-and-sonotube Dobsonian telescope. It works beautifully.
On my first test session in the back yard I saw 4 moons of Saturn and the Cassini Division, plus Jupiter, the Orion Nebula, and the Pleiades. I was delighted.
Oh, by the way: I built it for my Mom. She lives out in the country and with lots of clear, dark nights, you tend to become something of an astronomer without even trying. When I was there over Christmas we saw a spectacular aurora.
...laura
For all the grousing about "political correctness", don't forget that Cathy Rogers herself is in the show because the network (Channel 4) wanted a female co-host to widen the demographics a bit.
...laura
ISS is indeed at 51 degrees, while STS-107 was in a 39 degree orbit. ISS is in a slightly higher orbit, too. My usual source is Celestrak. It doesn't matter how much time you have: there is a minimum delta V to change from one orbit to another. If you don't have it, you don't go there. The Shuttle's on-orbit delta V is very small.
Hubble, by the way, is in a higher orbit still, but a 28 degree inclination. A Shuttle can get there by launching due east from Kennedy (28 degrees latitude) with a reduced payload.
For the real dirt on all this orbit stuff, my favourite reference remains Fundamentals of Astrodynamics by Bate, Mueller and White.
...laura
Don't worry: not only did I carefully avoid watching or listening to anything to do with the moneygrubbingcommercialthingy...er, sporting event today, I seem to be one of the few who isn't even certain of its significance.
Me? I watched tonight's episode of da Vinci's Inquest. Great stuff. Beats seeing a bunch of men rolling around on the grass groping each others' butts.
...laura, blissfully unaware
I always thought the Teletubbies were the gay heartthrobs. Oh well. The Bananas hang out with teddy bears, for what it's worth.
...laura
There are a variety of reasons. Colour CCDs don't have the resolution that monochrome ones do. Cost, which relates back to the resolution. Sensitivity to light: monochrome CCDs can be, and often are, optimized for very low light.
With filters it is possible to zoom in on any spectral line you wish, like the red hydrogen alpha line, or the blue-green oxygen line (produced by emission nebulae, which is why the Orion Nebula looks greenish-grey).
...laura
ROFLMAO: I have these visions of Elvis performing "Ca plane pour moi":
People who did French in high school needn't worry: the lyrics are nonsense.
There are probably MP3s and similar nasties floating around the net if you want to hear it. Look for the original (by Plastic Bertrand), or Telex's bizarre cover. Telex did Rock Around The Clock on the same album. It sounds like it was performed by drunk robots...
...laura
Yep, those do look kinda familiar.
Saturn was at opposition last week, and thus as close as it can get to Earth. However, the view will be favourable until well in to the new year (it starts to deteriorate in April).
The rings will remain at about their maximum tilt for a couple of years yet. It's far from the all-or-nothing-one-night-in-a-lifetime spectacle the science news folks would have you believe. Try JPL's Solar System Simulator to see how slowly the rings change. Saturn's 29.5 year orbit, y'know.
I had an excellent view last night while testing a new telescope, and saw four moons while I was at it. I expect to see the rings well until 2007 or so.
...laura
Blush. You're right. I stand corrected on the frequency. Apollo hung out around 2280. Some hams with 2.3 GHz radios heard some of the later Apollos from lunar orbit.
The atmospheric effects at S band are nevertheless much the same as at X band, i.e. nil.
...laura
Unlikely. NASA deep space stuff is up around 8 GHz, where atmospheric effects are minimal. No, the thing is just too far away, and its signal just isn't strong enough.
What for?
In the present situation, it wouldn't make any difference. Goldstone et al are out in the middle of nowhere, and have no significant radio interference problems. The atmosphere isn't an issue at these frequencies.
If I wanted to build the Proverbial Really Big Radio Telescope I'd park it at a Lagrange point. No gravity at all to worry about, I could make it as big as I wanted, and in a vacuum I could have all sorts of fun making it out of improbable materials.
The main seelling point for a radio telescope on the Moon would be interferometry, providing a much longer baseline than any telescopes on Earth could muster. Until we set up shop on Mars...
...laura
As a somewhat-schizophrenic-over-language Canadian, I use both. If it's singular, I'm describing the monolithic entitity. If it's plural, I'm emphasizing the people who make up the monolithic entity.
...laura
I think you're thinking of 1972, actually, the last leap year that started on a Saturday.
Don't laugh: I've actually seen this workaround a number of times since then!
...laura
Of course products aren't built to last. I assume an MTBF of 2 years on all consumer products, and budget for replacement, because repair will be impossible or uneconomic. Yes, they're disposable. There is no money in making things that last.
If things last too long the manufacturers will come up with some new "standard" that renders the present installed base obsolete, thus forcing people to spend money. I have heard suggestions that this was part of the push for both CD audio and DVD video.
I have been pleasantly surprised, but only a few times. One particularly good result was a cheap piece of crap VCR from Zellers that I finally retired, still going strong, when it proved to have 4 Y2K bugs.
...laura, wondering how they would handle VCRs with Y2K bugs in Soviet Russia
No.
Pi was proven to be irrational long ago. Pi was proven to be transcendental long ago too.
So not only can it not be expressed as any ratio of integers a/b, it cannot be the solution of any poynomial equation with a finite number of integer coefficients.
They aren't looking for repetition, because it has long since been proven that there is no repetition to be found.
...laura
You can walk across on the sidewalk for free, though it's a long way up and a long way down. Not as much technical detail, but the view can't be beat. The price is right too.
On vacation last April I also hit the radio telescope at Parkes, and the Siding Spring Observatory. Much fun. Got some great pictures of The Dish.
...laura
The editorial in the December issue of Sky and Telescope grumbles about this. As the author put it, 30 years ago (i.e. Apollo 17) we had three guys at the Moon, making discoveries. Now we have three guys in low Earth orbit, fixing things.
Sigh.
...laura
I agree. When non-technical users ask me about such things, I point them to Windows 98 SE. Feature-rich enough to be useful, and not too bloated. USB that works.
Me? I'm typing this on a Linux box. Slackware (of course... :-), kernel 2.4.10, plugged
in to ADSL, running on a Pentium
3 box made out of spare parts.
The oldest version of DOS I've booted on this box is PC-DOS 3.3. It goes like crazy, but has odd notions about how much memory is installed (768 MB was mainframe stuff in 1987), and can't figure out the 30 GB hard drive at all.
On all but the smallest, oldest machines, I've moved to booting Linux off floppies for initial system setup and checkout, regardless of what OS the system will eventually run. The only real exception to this now is a crappy old 386 laptop that came with 2 MB of RAM, in a weird package I've never seen before or since. With no upgrades possible, it runs MS-DOS 5.0 to log GPS data.
...laura
There are several mechanisms.
Radiation neutralizes the stored charge in EPROMs. This is the same mechanism as erasing them with UV light. At one time people just didn't use them in space applications, but have now found that you can if you're careful, and don't leave them in space too long. Flash is still generally off-limits.
Radiation can alter the characteristics of semiconductor junctions.
Radiation can alter the characteristics of passive components.
And so on...
...laura
Alpha Centauri C (to use a more official designation) is indeed marginally closer to us than Alpha Centauri A and B. But at absolute magnitude 15 you would have to be just about standing on it to see it.
I can't see much exitement in going all that way just to see a red dwarf...
...laura