There are lots of reasons, but two which you should be intimately familiar with as a computer professional are:
Latency and DoS attacks.
Even if the soldier is within 10 miles of the UAV, even if they use hardware instead of software, even if they reduce latency to the absolute minimum possible with today's technology, the soldier is still milliseconds behind in the actual action on site, and the equipment is milliseconds behind the soldier's reaction time.
Secondly, even with super secure communications, spread spectrum, frequency hopping, multiple parallel channels, etc there still exists a significant possibility that someone else could adversely affect the operation of the UAV with a fairly simple and cheap electronic circuit. Even if it only increased the latency by a few mS as the systems try to cope, employed at the right time in a battle, it could easily give the opposing force the window they need to disable the UAV. It wouldn't be easy to track down and bomb like the GPS jammers Iraq used in the beginning of the war since it would only need to be on for a few seconds at a time and could be carried.
Thievery:
If the motor locomotion system starts to allow use of privately obtained or funded cars, then not only will people start selling their own cars - people will start selling other people's cars
The only difference between your examples and organ sales is the degree of loss. If someone mugs me for my car or cash, I've lost nothing that can't be replaced - further I am insured. You might claim that organs are no different, but if I lose a liver, the best I can get is a used liver and a lifetime of anti rejection drugs. I can't buy new - I've lost something which cannot ever be fully replaced. I suppose you'd accept the fact that people may want to steal your liver just as much as they want to steal your car if in turn you can buy a liver? Would you feel safe walking around at night knowing that a mugger may be out for more than your wallet?
You did not discuss the other bad outcomes. If my liver is stolen and given to another person, and the police find that person - they are not going to remove it can give it back to me. That would cost 2-3 surgeries which would be a poor choice considering letting me have someone else would cost only one surgery.
Further, a car can sit in a parking lot for years with value only degrading a little bit, and it can easily be checked out for operation, safety, etc with no risk to the purchaser. Organs can sit around for perhaps a day or two, and cannot easily be verified for proper operation with no risk to the buyer.
It's hard for a crook to pass a bad vehicle off to a careful buyer. With private organ sales it would be much more risky to the buyer.
As far as socialism is concerned - surely you realize that a purely capitalistic system has its flaws? There is no single perfect system of wealth distribution - they all have drawbacks. In fact one should be careful not to recomend a particular mix as applicable to all governments and cultures. Currently American wealth is divided roughly 80-20. 80% of the privately owned wealth of the US is owned by 20% of the population, while the other 20% is owned by the remaining 80% of the population. Disregarding for a moment how that distribution was achieved, do you believe that it's a reasonable situation, and should not be considered when crafting laws/rules/regulations? One of the major downfalls of capitalism is the lack of income equity- unequal distribution of wealth. Any sound economy tries to provide income equity. Capitalism without some socialism will fail just as surely as socialism without some capitalism will fail. This is what causes revolutions - when the middle class wants what the upper class has, and enlists the lower class to change the system - then the upper class and middle class change positions, and the lower class ends back up where it started, despite promises from the middle class. See the history of the world.
-Adam
-Adam
Never trust hardware you can't see...
on
Hydra vs. Shredder
·
· Score: 3, Funny
The cluster resides in the server room of Pal Group of companies in Abu Dhabi. Author Chrilly Donninger will access it from the tournament hall using an Internet connection.
I know what the script kiddies will be doing this week...
If the medical system starts to allow use of privately obtained or funded organs, then not only will people start selling their own organs - people will start selling other people's organs.
Further, there is a good chance once that starts happening that 'bad organs' will get into the system. Yeah, it's great to get a liver - too bad you got a disease from it, or it doesn't work, etc.
There may be ways to tighten the rules somewhat - but there are too many bad doctors out their, nevermind bad people, who will play along with the system and slip something through without following the rules.
The idea that in order to give an organ you receive no monetary renumeration is a sound principle to prevent many problems.
In the near future this may be relaxed as medical professionals are able to more easily test and identify problems with random organs that come in the hospital. Until then, though, this system works about as well as possible.
There is very little information about this particular case, though, and I would like to know exactly how he jumped to the head of the list or dodged around it in order to get one sooner.
I'd think that dropping any tablet would cause catastrophic damage to it.
Don't drop it. Seriously, if you think you're going to drop the thing while it's outside of its case, then you have no business using one.
The same could be said with a laptop, I suppose, but laptops seem to have OK survivability.
The only difference between a laptop and tablet is that in tablet mode the entire computer is in one solid(ish) block - you won't break the screen mounts dropping it as you would if you dropped a laptop with its screen open. Of course you aren't supposed to drop them, but typically most laptops and portable devices are generally able to withstand a 3 foot drop onto concrete as a basic survivability test.
Tablets will be just as safe/vulnerable as current laptops. The only additional vulnerability is that the screen is more exposed to scratches.
Don't cut n paste, please, but here's a copy of my email to pr@weeklyreader.com:
Subject: BAS Alliance?
I recently read how Weekly Reader was going to help educate children and teens about copyright law from CNET, at http://news.com.com/Ferreting+out+copyright+scoffl aws/2100-1012_3-5303966.html.
I remember enjoying Weekly Reader when I was young, going over your website today has made me realize how much has changed over the years.
While I understand this is primarily a business decision, I want to urge you to reconsider distributing their supplement.
As a IT professional I am very familiar with the tactics the BSA and similar 'non-profit' organizations use to intimidate and deceive. While the company I work for is in compliance with current copyright laws, we must spend an inordinate amount of time and resources making certian that we can also prove we are in compliance.
I heartily encourage you to educate your readers on copyright laws, where they came from, what purpose they are meant to serve, and how they have changed and adapted over the decades to meet new challenges. I would strongly urge you against allowing the BSA to perform this education as I can assure you they are interested in how copyright protects copyright owners, and not how copyright also protects individuals and users of copyrighted works.
Thank you for your time and attention to this important matter!
Here's a PDF paper about the omni-directional treadmill with neat pictures and good description of how it works, what it's like to use it, and limitations (turning in place, crouching, sidestepping and a few other movements often cause stumbles)
To echo your sentiment, I too would like to see videos of all these in action, both with experienced users and users who have never been on it before.
"Well Jennings, it looks like your plan to overheat and break the STIS worked. Good work. Unfortunately this just only balances out the fact that the mirror was mishappen due to your negligence. We'll let you have a unix machine now - you don't have to try and work on Windows anymore as punishment for past deeds."
It appears that wxWidgets has matured since I last looked at it. I don't know enough about them to point out differences, but it appears that they perform much of the same functionality.
The license issue is interesting. Rather than go to a full BSD style license, they use a L-GPL with the exception that distributed binary dirivations can be distributed under the user's terms.
Currently QT is really the only substantial cross platform framework that really does well on Windows as well as Linux/bsd/etc.
However, QT is licensed such that Windows work cannot really be done for free. It may be open, but it certianly isn't free. This isn't a bad thing, but it is limiting.
VCF is not only free and open, but it is licensed under the BSD license, meaning that it can (and likely will) gain a much larger audience than QT simply because it can do (or will do) everything QT does, but without cost. One can even modify the code without releasing their proprietary changes which is a big plus for many companies. One of the reasons, I suspect, Apple took from FreeBSD instead of Linux when they needed to Unix-ify their OS was because of the freedom it gave them. (probably also because BSD had already fought its legal battles and was known to be copyright safe)
GTK and others really don't support windows and linux together as well as QT does.
From the Features:
The Visual Component Framework is a C++ application framework that offers a modern, clean, C++ architecture and is designed to be cross platform. The core framework is divided into three major libraries, the FoundationKit, the GraphicsKit, and the ApplicationKit. The FoundationKit provides basic services such as file access, streams, threads and synchronization primitives, and advanced RTTI features. The GraphicsKit provides a nice set of graphics classes for working with both image and vector graphics, and has built in support for the Anti-Grain Graphics library, as well as image loading services to facilitate loading various graphics formats. Finally, the ApplicationKit provides a rich set of GUI controls, use of the Model-View-Control pattern, property and component editors, undo/redo support, drag-and-drop, and clipboard services, application resources, and UI metrics and policy managers.
To facilitate cross platform functionality the VCF is is built using a system of peer interfaces that abstract away the various platform specific calls, with each peer tackling a specific service, such as as threading, file handling, windowing system controls, and so forth. These peer classes are also exposed, and can be used to get access to the lower level OS handles or primitives that they wrap, allowing the developer to write platform specific code if the need arises.
Finally, the VCF is flexible. While it is certainly designed to be a standalone application framework, it also aims, as much as possible, to cooperate with existing toolkits and/or frameworks. For example, if you have an MFC application, you can easily use just the GraphicsKit to make use of the more advanced features in it, as opposed to using the MFC CDC, CBrush, and CPen drawing classes.
I do a little bit of ultra marathon cycling on the side, so while I can sprint my main ability lies in distance with moderate speed (24 hour races, 100-500 mile races, etc).
Racing road cycles are designed to be very uncomfortable for simply tooling along. Only when you are putting out enough power to support your upper body while it's leaning over the handle bars are you comfortable. You don't generally want to support your entire body weight on your legs. Perhaps a better description could be:
Imagine you are fixed at the seat with a pivot. Imagine no handle bars. Now imagine putting out enough force in the pedals to support your upper body while it's extended over the bike. Your arms are really not holding anything, thye are for steering.
Lance armstrong cannot put out the 600W or so of power in that position. You'll see him and the other races rise out of the seat, and you'll see their arms completely tense up. At this point they are using gravity to as much advantage as possible, but it's not nearly enough. They are using their arms to to react against the handle bars in order to get the necessary force.
Now, if they were required to put out that amount of power during the entire race then the bicycle would be redically different - it wouldn't have a seat, for one thing. 99% of the race is in the seat, putting out a moderate amount of power within the pack. It's only the last 1% of the race that you see them using the bike in a way that it is not fully optimized for.
The helicopter ride is going to be flat out pedaling. There is no reason to make it so the rider is comfortable. A siting position, such as on a bike, would be useless. A standing position would be better, but I imagine for engineering reason (shorter drivetraing and shorter overall height) a horizontal position can be just as effective.
Gravity doesn't need to play a role if he's strapped in or has something to push against. The should straps provide all the 'gravity' he needs in the direction it needs to be applied.
I do wonder, however, if it would be better to place him vertically so he has a lower cross-section directly in the path of the downwards moving air. Perhaps he's placed in a non critical area where the air flow isn't needed...
The only reason you might get more power upright than recumbent is if you depend on gravity to force your body down so your legs have something (your weight) to react against.
However, to generate 500 watts of power you need more than just your weight to push against. The pilot will likely be strapped into place, or at least have some sort of harness or surface to push their shoulders against, and someplace to put their hands.
It's also possible, though not likely, that in a recumbent position the pilot could exert more energy with abdominal and arm muscles, since the torso would not necessarily be fixed on a seat.
Imagine 5 100W light bulbs. Now imagine converting that light and heat into enough physical force to lift 200 pounds of stuff off the ground. Very interesting challenge.
Dude! Your whole job is to FSCK disks? Wow, either you've got a few thousand servers your work with (google, perhaps? I can see a FSCK engineer working their cluster...) or really bad hardware/bad setup/bad administrators.
Quite frankly, I don't know if that would be a stressful job or not...
Anyone who has taken economics knows just how much control over the economy the president has:
Little to none.
The president can set the agenda a little bit for the government spending (fiscal policy) but ultimately its congress that decides how that works out.
The president has some affect on tax policies, but again that's done through congress. All he can do is make suggestions and threaten to veto - which is only so strong of a threat.
Further, economic policies that the president tries to set in motion will only affect the economy several years down the road. Alan Greenspan (chairman of the federal reserve, essentially the primary bank in the US upon which all other banks depend for various functions) makes changes to the economy in four different ways, and they affect the economy within 1-3 months. This is monetary policy. Fiscal policy, set by congress, may affect the economy as fast as one year, but often takes much longer.
Like many things in life, sometimes you take a fall because you made a major mistake, but more often you take the fall because something outside of your control occurred. The economy is cyclical. We haven't had a downturn since the early 90's, and we were overdue for one. The tech bubble made this one a bigger downturn than it needed to be or would have been.
Of course, a whole new generation is coming into this discussion not knowing the past, and complaining about high unemployment. The economy is robust, and if you think 6% unemployment is high, consider that 5% is 'normal' and most economists agree that anything above or below 5% is bad for the economy. The last 1.x percent represents millions of people, certianly, but is not as bad as people like to think.
Go find out what the unemployment and inflation were in the 70s. Then go look at current unemployment and inflation in Europe. Then try to find the decades where Germany had inflation in the triple digits (yes, over 100% inflation)
The president is not driving the economic vehicle. All he gets to do is take the bad and spin it into good, and pretend the good came because of his hard work.
At the end of the day, it's the pilots (both of White Knight and SS1) who make the final go/no-go call, if after everything the pilot's feel it's unsafe then they don't go.
Of course Rutan keeps a few extra pilots around just in case the first one chooses not to go.
It's possible, but not practical. Sending an compressed DVD quality stream takes up a large fraction of a 100mbit connection. Sending an uncompressed stream would be significantly worse.
I meant uses, but we should certianly kick out the bad users as well.
Of course, getting rid of bad uses without affecting good uses is generally not practical, for some applications it is possible. Where you cannot get rid of the bad uses without affecting possible good uses then you can only rely on getting rid of bad users.
I am frequently imprecise with my wording, so I hope that this clears up the confusion.
I don't know about that. If you design and place a very powerful 2.4GHz emitter so it goes right up their Yagi, then I bet you could damage the receiver electronics of the bluetooth device they're using.
Kind of like sticking a carrot in the gun barrel and letting them blow it up themselves.
At least these are active attacks - you should be able to honeypot it very easily, or at the minimum detect attacks, and jam them if needed.
46 state attorneys general are warning P2P companies of dire, unnamed consequences for continuing to exist, 'At present, P2P software has too many times been hijacked by those who use it for illegal purposes to which the vast majority of our consumers do not wish to be exposed.'
Of course 'the vast majority of our consumers' agree with them - the consumers he is talking about are their consumers, ie those who use state attorney general services.
Read it again. Why talk about consumers? Why doesn't he instead mention the public interest? Because he's not conerned about the public interest (which he is supposed to protect). He's concerned about the interests of those who consume his services - in this case copyright holders.
Also notice how they are carefully going against service providers. They are simply going to settle with the ability to tap or access any information they want or need on these services without writing new laws or having to get court orders.
That's fine. I don't use these services anyway, and I'd use a non-centralized service long before I use a commercial or centralized service.
But let's not be blind. There are those who use these networks for terrorist activities and other activities which many (if not most) on this board would disagree with. It is worthwhile spending time to weed out the bad uses of these technologies so that we can still use the technology for good uses, instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Wet and soapy flying babies are very hard to catch in midair.
Ok, let's start counting search nodes to see whether Google is loved today:
Slashdot loves Google
Slashdot loves Google not
Slashdot loves Google
Slashdot loves Google not Results 1 - 10 of about 8,610 for slashdot loves google. (0.23 seconds)
Hrm. Even number of results. Therefore, today, Slashdot loves Google not.
Maybe tomorrow will be better, but I guess it depends on when they next update the index.
You evidently don't know why an AP has two antennas.
I guess I could say the same to you, however it occurred to me that there may in fact be a stupid manufacturer (or a very specialized use) that would make an AP in this way. I would appreciate a factual treatment on this claim of yours, since I want to know about these units and manufacturers - and either learn about the benefits, or stay as far away from them as possible.
Two antennas are used in a diversity situation. They are typically placed a fraction or multiple of one wavelength apart to help get good reception in the face of bad reflections (multi-path interference).
The upshot is that only one antenna is active at a time, and which antenna it is depends on the AP. Since they are dynamically switched I would expect the AP to be able to see wireless units on either isolated antenna as long as they don't transmit at the same time, which is something the AP should also regulate (look up the hidden node problem).
Depending on the AP, however, it may only be transmitting on one or the other antenna at any given time. Ideally it would assume that the antenna it uses for receiving from a particular unit would be the best to transmit from as well when speaking to a particular unit. If so, then it'll work fine with one antenna on each side of the wall. If not, then it's a cheap AP, and you simply use a whole AP in each area.
So, you are correct in saying that it may not work for some APs (though I'd be interested in finding out which ones it don't run the algorithm correctly), but it should work fine for most APs.
Slashdot Mirror
There are lots of reasons, but two which you should be intimately familiar with as a computer professional are:
Latency and DoS attacks.
Even if the soldier is within 10 miles of the UAV, even if they use hardware instead of software, even if they reduce latency to the absolute minimum possible with today's technology, the soldier is still milliseconds behind in the actual action on site, and the equipment is milliseconds behind the soldier's reaction time.
Secondly, even with super secure communications, spread spectrum, frequency hopping, multiple parallel channels, etc there still exists a significant possibility that someone else could adversely affect the operation of the UAV with a fairly simple and cheap electronic circuit. Even if it only increased the latency by a few mS as the systems try to cope, employed at the right time in a battle, it could easily give the opposing force the window they need to disable the UAV. It wouldn't be easy to track down and bomb like the GPS jammers Iraq used in the beginning of the war since it would only need to be on for a few seconds at a time and could be carried.
-Adam
The fact that the airport express cost $30 more ($129 vs $99) and cannot be powered by the computer seems to limit its usefulness.
It's going to be tethered to something - either your internet connection (next to a plug) or to your computer (next to a usb port).
It's not for everybody, for every use. But it is likely to be a commercial success.
-Adam
The first unit will cost you $10,000 and take three months to develop. The first manufacturing order of 1,000 units will cost about $100 each.
Contact me if interested.
-Adam
Thievery:
If the motor locomotion system starts to allow use of privately obtained or funded cars, then not only will people start selling their own cars - people will start selling other people's cars
The only difference between your examples and organ sales is the degree of loss. If someone mugs me for my car or cash, I've lost nothing that can't be replaced - further I am insured. You might claim that organs are no different, but if I lose a liver, the best I can get is a used liver and a lifetime of anti rejection drugs. I can't buy new - I've lost something which cannot ever be fully replaced. I suppose you'd accept the fact that people may want to steal your liver just as much as they want to steal your car if in turn you can buy a liver? Would you feel safe walking around at night knowing that a mugger may be out for more than your wallet?
You did not discuss the other bad outcomes. If my liver is stolen and given to another person, and the police find that person - they are not going to remove it can give it back to me. That would cost 2-3 surgeries which would be a poor choice considering letting me have someone else would cost only one surgery.
Further, a car can sit in a parking lot for years with value only degrading a little bit, and it can easily be checked out for operation, safety, etc with no risk to the purchaser. Organs can sit around for perhaps a day or two, and cannot easily be verified for proper operation with no risk to the buyer.
It's hard for a crook to pass a bad vehicle off to a careful buyer. With private organ sales it would be much more risky to the buyer.
As far as socialism is concerned - surely you realize that a purely capitalistic system has its flaws? There is no single perfect system of wealth distribution - they all have drawbacks. In fact one should be careful not to recomend a particular mix as applicable to all governments and cultures. Currently American wealth is divided roughly 80-20. 80% of the privately owned wealth of the US is owned by 20% of the population, while the other 20% is owned by the remaining 80% of the population. Disregarding for a moment how that distribution was achieved, do you believe that it's a reasonable situation, and should not be considered when crafting laws/rules/regulations? One of the major downfalls of capitalism is the lack of income equity- unequal distribution of wealth. Any sound economy tries to provide income equity. Capitalism without some socialism will fail just as surely as socialism without some capitalism will fail. This is what causes revolutions - when the middle class wants what the upper class has, and enlists the lower class to change the system - then the upper class and middle class change positions, and the lower class ends back up where it started, despite promises from the middle class. See the history of the world.
-Adam -Adam
The cluster resides in the server room of Pal Group of companies in Abu Dhabi. Author Chrilly Donninger will access it from the tournament hall using an Internet connection.
I know what the script kiddies will be doing this week...
-Adam
Are you sure they're Candian? The entire website is in Feet/Miles/Inches! Not a meter in sight!
;-)
I dunno. Sounds like we have a couple of american defectors doing the work up there... Time to bring those traiters back.
-Adam
If the medical system starts to allow use of privately obtained or funded organs, then not only will people start selling their own organs - people will start selling other people's organs.
Further, there is a good chance once that starts happening that 'bad organs' will get into the system. Yeah, it's great to get a liver - too bad you got a disease from it, or it doesn't work, etc.
There may be ways to tighten the rules somewhat - but there are too many bad doctors out their, nevermind bad people, who will play along with the system and slip something through without following the rules.
The idea that in order to give an organ you receive no monetary renumeration is a sound principle to prevent many problems.
In the near future this may be relaxed as medical professionals are able to more easily test and identify problems with random organs that come in the hospital. Until then, though, this system works about as well as possible.
There is very little information about this particular case, though, and I would like to know exactly how he jumped to the head of the list or dodged around it in order to get one sooner.
-Adam
I'd think that dropping any tablet would cause catastrophic damage to it.
Don't drop it. Seriously, if you think you're going to drop the thing while it's outside of its case, then you have no business using one.
The same could be said with a laptop, I suppose, but laptops seem to have OK survivability.
The only difference between a laptop and tablet is that in tablet mode the entire computer is in one solid(ish) block - you won't break the screen mounts dropping it as you would if you dropped a laptop with its screen open. Of course you aren't supposed to drop them, but typically most laptops and portable devices are generally able to withstand a 3 foot drop onto concrete as a basic survivability test.
Tablets will be just as safe/vulnerable as current laptops. The only additional vulnerability is that the screen is more exposed to scratches.
-Adam
Why would people buy an Apple tablet PC when they could have a P-P-P-Powerbook for practically free, and with all the ability of a tablet?
-Adam
Don't cut n paste, please, but here's a copy of my email to pr@weeklyreader.com:
l aws/2100-1012_3-5303966.html .
Subject: BAS Alliance?
I recently read how Weekly Reader was going to help educate children and teens about copyright law from CNET, at http://news.com.com/Ferreting+out+copyright+scoff
I remember enjoying Weekly Reader when I was young, going over your website today has made me realize how much has changed over the years.
While I understand this is primarily a business decision, I want to urge you to reconsider distributing their supplement.
As a IT professional I am very familiar with the tactics the BSA and similar 'non-profit' organizations use to intimidate and deceive. While the company I work for is in compliance with current copyright laws, we must spend an inordinate amount of time and resources making certian that we can also prove we are in compliance.
I heartily encourage you to educate your readers on copyright laws, where they came from, what purpose they are meant to serve, and how they have changed and adapted over the decades to meet new challenges. I would strongly urge you against allowing the BSA to perform this education as I can assure you they are interested in how copyright protects copyright owners, and not how copyright also protects individuals and users of copyrighted works.
Thank you for your time and attention to this important matter!
-Adam
Here's a PDF paper about the omni-directional treadmill with neat pictures and good description of how it works, what it's like to use it, and limitations (turning in place, crouching, sidestepping and a few other movements often cause stumbles)
To echo your sentiment, I too would like to see videos of all these in action, both with experienced users and users who have never been on it before.
-Adam
"Well Jennings, it looks like your plan to overheat and break the STIS worked. Good work. Unfortunately this just only balances out the fact that the mirror was mishappen due to your negligence. We'll let you have a unix machine now - you don't have to try and work on Windows anymore as punishment for past deeds."
-Adam
It appears that wxWidgets has matured since I last looked at it. I don't know enough about them to point out differences, but it appears that they perform much of the same functionality.
The license issue is interesting. Rather than go to a full BSD style license, they use a L-GPL with the exception that distributed binary dirivations can be distributed under the user's terms.
-Adam
However, QT is licensed such that Windows work cannot really be done for free. It may be open, but it certianly isn't free. This isn't a bad thing, but it is limiting.
VCF is not only free and open, but it is licensed under the BSD license, meaning that it can (and likely will) gain a much larger audience than QT simply because it can do (or will do) everything QT does, but without cost. One can even modify the code without releasing their proprietary changes which is a big plus for many companies. One of the reasons, I suspect, Apple took from FreeBSD instead of Linux when they needed to Unix-ify their OS was because of the freedom it gave them. (probably also because BSD had already fought its legal battles and was known to be copyright safe)
GTK and others really don't support windows and linux together as well as QT does.
From the Features:
-Adam
I do a little bit of ultra marathon cycling on the side, so while I can sprint my main ability lies in distance with moderate speed (24 hour races, 100-500 mile races, etc).
Racing road cycles are designed to be very uncomfortable for simply tooling along. Only when you are putting out enough power to support your upper body while it's leaning over the handle bars are you comfortable. You don't generally want to support your entire body weight on your legs. Perhaps a better description could be:
Imagine you are fixed at the seat with a pivot. Imagine no handle bars. Now imagine putting out enough force in the pedals to support your upper body while it's extended over the bike. Your arms are really not holding anything, thye are for steering.
Lance armstrong cannot put out the 600W or so of power in that position. You'll see him and the other races rise out of the seat, and you'll see their arms completely tense up. At this point they are using gravity to as much advantage as possible, but it's not nearly enough. They are using their arms to to react against the handle bars in order to get the necessary force.
Now, if they were required to put out that amount of power during the entire race then the bicycle would be redically different - it wouldn't have a seat, for one thing. 99% of the race is in the seat, putting out a moderate amount of power within the pack. It's only the last 1% of the race that you see them using the bike in a way that it is not fully optimized for.
The helicopter ride is going to be flat out pedaling. There is no reason to make it so the rider is comfortable. A siting position, such as on a bike, would be useless. A standing position would be better, but I imagine for engineering reason (shorter drivetraing and shorter overall height) a horizontal position can be just as effective.
Gravity doesn't need to play a role if he's strapped in or has something to push against. The should straps provide all the 'gravity' he needs in the direction it needs to be applied.
I do wonder, however, if it would be better to place him vertically so he has a lower cross-section directly in the path of the downwards moving air. Perhaps he's placed in a non critical area where the air flow isn't needed...
-Adam
The only reason you might get more power upright than recumbent is if you depend on gravity to force your body down so your legs have something (your weight) to react against.
However, to generate 500 watts of power you need more than just your weight to push against. The pilot will likely be strapped into place, or at least have some sort of harness or surface to push their shoulders against, and someplace to put their hands.
It's also possible, though not likely, that in a recumbent position the pilot could exert more energy with abdominal and arm muscles, since the torso would not necessarily be fixed on a seat.
Imagine 5 100W light bulbs. Now imagine converting that light and heat into enough physical force to lift 200 pounds of stuff off the ground. Very interesting challenge.
-Adam
MY FSCKING JOB
Dude! Your whole job is to FSCK disks? Wow, either you've got a few thousand servers your work with (google, perhaps? I can see a FSCK engineer working their cluster...) or really bad hardware/bad setup/bad administrators.
Quite frankly, I don't know if that would be a stressful job or not...
-Adam
Anyone who has taken economics knows just how much control over the economy the president has:
Little to none.
The president can set the agenda a little bit for the government spending (fiscal policy) but ultimately its congress that decides how that works out.
The president has some affect on tax policies, but again that's done through congress. All he can do is make suggestions and threaten to veto - which is only so strong of a threat.
Further, economic policies that the president tries to set in motion will only affect the economy several years down the road. Alan Greenspan (chairman of the federal reserve, essentially the primary bank in the US upon which all other banks depend for various functions) makes changes to the economy in four different ways, and they affect the economy within 1-3 months. This is monetary policy. Fiscal policy, set by congress, may affect the economy as fast as one year, but often takes much longer.
Like many things in life, sometimes you take a fall because you made a major mistake, but more often you take the fall because something outside of your control occurred. The economy is cyclical. We haven't had a downturn since the early 90's, and we were overdue for one. The tech bubble made this one a bigger downturn than it needed to be or would have been.
Of course, a whole new generation is coming into this discussion not knowing the past, and complaining about high unemployment. The economy is robust, and if you think 6% unemployment is high, consider that 5% is 'normal' and most economists agree that anything above or below 5% is bad for the economy. The last 1.x percent represents millions of people, certianly, but is not as bad as people like to think.
Go find out what the unemployment and inflation were in the 70s. Then go look at current unemployment and inflation in Europe. Then try to find the decades where Germany had inflation in the triple digits (yes, over 100% inflation)
The president is not driving the economic vehicle. All he gets to do is take the bad and spin it into good, and pretend the good came because of his hard work.
-Adam
At the end of the day, it's the pilots (both of White Knight and SS1) who make the final go/no-go call, if after everything the pilot's feel it's unsafe then they don't go.
Of course Rutan keeps a few extra pilots around just in case the first one chooses not to go.
-Adam
It's possible, but not practical. Sending an compressed DVD quality stream takes up a large fraction of a 100mbit connection. Sending an uncompressed stream would be significantly worse.
-Adam
I'm sure you meant 'users', right?
I meant uses, but we should certianly kick out the bad users as well.
Of course, getting rid of bad uses without affecting good uses is generally not practical, for some applications it is possible. Where you cannot get rid of the bad uses without affecting possible good uses then you can only rely on getting rid of bad users.
I am frequently imprecise with my wording, so I hope that this clears up the confusion.
-Adam
I don't know about that. If you design and place a very powerful 2.4GHz emitter so it goes right up their Yagi, then I bet you could damage the receiver electronics of the bluetooth device they're using.
Kind of like sticking a carrot in the gun barrel and letting them blow it up themselves.
At least these are active attacks - you should be able to honeypot it very easily, or at the minimum detect attacks, and jam them if needed.
-Adam
46 state attorneys general are warning P2P companies of dire, unnamed consequences for continuing to exist, 'At present, P2P software has too many times been hijacked by those who use it for illegal purposes to which the vast majority of our consumers do not wish to be exposed.'
Of course 'the vast majority of our consumers' agree with them - the consumers he is talking about are their consumers, ie those who use state attorney general services.
Read it again. Why talk about consumers? Why doesn't he instead mention the public interest? Because he's not conerned about the public interest (which he is supposed to protect). He's concerned about the interests of those who consume his services - in this case copyright holders.
Also notice how they are carefully going against service providers. They are simply going to settle with the ability to tap or access any information they want or need on these services without writing new laws or having to get court orders.
That's fine. I don't use these services anyway, and I'd use a non-centralized service long before I use a commercial or centralized service.
But let's not be blind. There are those who use these networks for terrorist activities and other activities which many (if not most) on this board would disagree with. It is worthwhile spending time to weed out the bad uses of these technologies so that we can still use the technology for good uses, instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Wet and soapy flying babies are very hard to catch in midair.
-Adam
Ok, let's start counting search nodes to see whether Google is loved today:
Slashdot loves Google
Slashdot loves Google not
Slashdot loves Google
Slashdot loves Google not
Results 1 - 10 of about 8,610 for slashdot loves google. (0.23 seconds)
Hrm. Even number of results. Therefore, today, Slashdot loves Google not.
Maybe tomorrow will be better, but I guess it depends on when they next update the index.
-Adam
You evidently don't know why an AP has two antennas.
I guess I could say the same to you, however it occurred to me that there may in fact be a stupid manufacturer (or a very specialized use) that would make an AP in this way. I would appreciate a factual treatment on this claim of yours, since I want to know about these units and manufacturers - and either learn about the benefits, or stay as far away from them as possible.
Two antennas are used in a diversity situation. They are typically placed a fraction or multiple of one wavelength apart to help get good reception in the face of bad reflections (multi-path interference).
You might be able to understand the technology better with this page on The Proper Use of Diversity Antennas To Mitigate Multi-Path Interference
The upshot is that only one antenna is active at a time, and which antenna it is depends on the AP. Since they are dynamically switched I would expect the AP to be able to see wireless units on either isolated antenna as long as they don't transmit at the same time, which is something the AP should also regulate (look up the hidden node problem).
Depending on the AP, however, it may only be transmitting on one or the other antenna at any given time. Ideally it would assume that the antenna it uses for receiving from a particular unit would be the best to transmit from as well when speaking to a particular unit. If so, then it'll work fine with one antenna on each side of the wall. If not, then it's a cheap AP, and you simply use a whole AP in each area.
So, you are correct in saying that it may not work for some APs (though I'd be interested in finding out which ones it don't run the algorithm correctly), but it should work fine for most APs.
-Adam