According to this link "The most obviously interesting thing in the application is that compared to other ultracapacitors, this one has relatively small capacitance (31 Farads) but very high voltage (3500 V)".
No word on the size/weight of this 31F 3500V capacitor.
An electric fueling station would probably require a similar-diameter conductor around a thick rubber insulator (to handle the thousands of amperes of current), with a pebble-bed reactor in the same underground storage space as a gas station's underground fuel tank.
Or perhaps just a bank of the same capacitors in the underground storage space as those in the vehicles being charged.
If these capacitors are for real and their failure mode can be made roughly comparable to a ruptured gas tank then the so-called "hydrogen economy" is obsolete before it even gets off the ground.
My take on this whole "lose" vs. "loose" thing is that in the United States the importance of winning is so drummed into everyone's head that to some people losing is not only unthinkable but unspellable as well. If people would just loosen up it wouldn't be such a problem.
... you are right about resistance, but you forgot about SHIELDING
I noticed the same thing. I used to have a problem with a low-level hiss coming from my main speakers. Moving the equipment around would make the hiss louder or softer. At first I thought the problem was a bad solder connection on the RCA connectors in my preamp but resoldering those connections had no effect. That left the cables as the sole remaining suspect.
I then went to Radio Shack and got two pairs of their gold-plated RCA connectors - not because they were gold-plated but because the teflon dialectric in them won't melt when you solder to them - and made myself a pair of cables using some Belden 1192A microphone cable that I already had on hand. With these new cables there was no hiss whatsoever. I guess I shouldn't have been so suprised - the cheap audio cable I was using before offered maybe 50% shielding whereas the mic cable had 100% shielding.
My only regret is that I spent too much money on the Radio Shack connectors. Next time I'll find something less expensive.
First off, IAAAP (and I don't even play one on TV).
1) Under the current physics, light-speed travel is impossible. As you approach the speed of light, the energy required to accelerate you further approaches infinity.
I understand this is true if the energy or gravity providing the acceleration is in a different frame of reference than the mass being accelerated (think particle accelerator or plasma blob).
But my layman's question is.. what about a rocket?
In a rocket, the energy to accelerate the rocket is in the same frame of reference as the rocket itself. The rocket converts mass into energy which accelerates mass and sends it out the nozzle to provide thrust. As the rocket approaches the speed of light (from Earth's reference, for instance) it becomes heavier and harder to accelerate, but so does the mass upon which it relies to convert into energy to provide thrust. The propellent is also heavier. My guess is that this would all cancel out in such a way that an astronaut travelling inside the rocket would have no way of knowing how close to c he is travelling at without looking out the window.
Now my understanding is that from Earth's perspective the rocket could only reach c at the end of time, but my question is this: given a sufficiently efficient rocket engine, is this the case for the rocket and the astronaut? If the rocket were capable of constant acceleration (for the comfort of the astronaut, lets say an acceleration of G) how long, from the astronauts perspective, would it take for him to reach c?
And once he got there (and he could only know if he looked out the window or kept track of time) what's to stop him from going further? It may be the end of time on earth, but how old is the astronaut?
I loaded the pdf files into GIMP, specifying a 600dpi resolution, and "filled in the blanks" as if I was editing an image file. You'll need at least 256MB of RAM to do this - a 600dpi image file is huge - and you'll still use some swap, but it works. When you load the pdf into GIMP make sure you only load/edit/save one page at a time or you'll run out of RAM!
Although you can save the edited file as a pdf there really isn't much point to it because once GIMP converts the pdf to a bitmap format for editing that's the only way it can save it. Anyhow, once you're done editing, save the file in a format that your printer can handle (I use png with compression 9), then lpr it to your printer.
The only drawback to this technique is that you'll have one edited image file for each page of your 1040 and the total disk space required for all of the image files will be huge compared to that of the original pdf. For example, last year's entire 1040 pdf was 176K, whereas one page of that pdf, edited and saved as a png file, was 632K.
... specifically they couldn't downgrade my service (I love cable but I can't justify paying for it when I'm never home) to lifeline cable (network channels only) without killing my Roadrunner service. Had something to do with signal bleed and being on the very end of the line. It took two weeks to establish during which time I had no or very poor Roadrunner service and only lifeline cable service. So I took the full service back (no analog traps on the line) and it works great. Of course I'm also back to paying $73+ a month ($34 for cable, $34 for Roadrunner, $5 for local channels) and will be paying ~$90 when my specials run out.
I have TWC Roadrunner only. I don't pay for cable service of any kind. And eventually TWC got tired of sending guys over to replace traps so they just took all of the damn things out and I haven't had any problems since.
(And BTW I have no idea what is or isn't on the cable as far as TV channels are concerned. I'd rather have rock-solid Internet access than get caught finding out and have to have those damn traps put back on.)
first off the film is incredible. the theatre here showing it was selling out every showing, including the matinees, something ive never seen. at the end the audience gave some nice loud applause.
Hmm, as an American who just saw the matinee, I can make the exact same observation.
My take: Half of the film was 99% true. The 1% that may be questionable will be used by those who don't like Moore to discredit the remaining 99%.
For those who don't like Moore the other half will be used to dismiss the entire movie as propaganda. For those who like him, the other half was exquisitely entertaining. For me, the most hilarious ROTFLMAO part of the film was the footage of Bush on the aircraft carrier - the combination of that footage along with the '70's pop tune (which included a line in its lyric that could be interpreted as Bush feeling amazed that he was on the carrier and not Gore) that totally and completely emasculated the image that the footage was originally intended to protray by the Bush administration.
And please use the proper terminology. This isn't a part of the conservative playbook. Its part of the playbook of the neo-conservatives or, if you actually look at their policies and match it up to traditional political parties, the fascists.
In HTML:
And please use the proper terminology. This isn't a part of the conservative playbook. Its part of the playbook of the neo-conservatives or, if you actually look at their policies and match it up to traditional political parties,
the fascists.
/. used to render just fine for me in Mozilla. Then, about a month or two ago, the browser quit rendering the icons at/. - whereever there's a graphic I get the broken icon symbol instead of the icon itself. Right clicking and selecting "View Image" gets a page that says:
400 Bad Request
Your client has issued a malformed or illegal request.
Thing is, I went back and tried earlier Mozilla builds that used to render/. just fine but they also have the same image rendering problem, so something has changed with/., not Mozilla. It appears that for some reason images.slashdot.org doesn't want to send images to Mozilla browsers. On the other hand, Firebird renders/. just fine for me.
"Streaming Radio" via FM
on
Who Needs Radio?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
For some time I'd given up listening to mainstream music on FM stations. I can't stand listening to the same songs over and over when they aren't playing five or six ads in a row or some DJ isn't rambling on about something or other. I'd listen to NPR and some college stations in the area, but that was about it.
Then, several weeks ago, I decided to hook up my TV antenna to my stereo at home so that I could pick up one of the college stations I listen to in the car and after doing so I carefully scanned the band to see if there were any stations I could pick up with the TV antenna that I couldn't get in the truck. Sure enough, I found 104.1 KMFR, and it wasn't all that weak either. Turns out, it was a new FM station that first went on the air in 2002! I was suprised to find it because I figured that all of the available spectrum space in the San Antonio metro area was already claimed but what the guy who set up KMFR did was get a license to serve a rural community about 40 miles south of San Antonio (Pearsall) and then built a 100,000 watt station that "just happens" to reach San Antonio. (All of the station's ads are for San Antonio businesses.)
What's really interesting about KMFR is that it's a high power FM station fed by a PC (or dedicated PC-like device) that randomly picks songs (in KMFR's case, classic rock) to play along with commercials and station promos. The format is two or three songs, one 15 or 30 second spot, 5 second station promo (My favorite: "KMFR, a marginally profitable enterprise of Radio Tuna, Limited) and then another two or three songs, etc, etc.
There's no DJ or studio. About 1/3 of the commercials, all of which are done by the same announcer without background music or other special effects, are aimed at potential advertisers and provide the station's phone number. One time I called that number and got the owner's personal answering machine. I looked in the phonebook for KMFR but there's no listing so apparently KMFR is run by one guy out of his house! (To quote some of the ads:.. "We've recently added a high dollar answering machine so you can now call us anytime!".. "Call and talk to the big man himself!".. "How can KMFR make any money with so few ads? The answer is: Low overhead!")
While I find it refreshing to find a commercial station that plays a very wide playlist (they even play John Lennon's "Imagine"!) with very little interruption, I'm also concerned that it has the same lack of public service capabilities as the remotely controlled Clear Channel stations.
Time Warner Cable, the second biggest cable firm after Comcast Corp., is expected to announce on Monday that it's boosting maximum download speeds by 50% to 3 megabits per second. The speed hike takes effect Oct. 1 at no extra cost to Time Warner's broadband subscribers.
I noticed about three days ago that my download speed on RoadRunner in San Antonio went from about 240 KB/s to 360 KB/s and was wondering what the deal was.
I keep hearing that, but i find nothing to back it up. The only explanation i can come up with is that those who make that assertion are so blinded by the ultra-conservative mass media that they can't tell the difference between super-liberal and just not ultra-conservative.
During the Iraq war I didn't know if I was listening to National Public Radio or National Pentagon Radio.
If you're an American whose well off, secure and happy with themselves and their life you're more likely to see it as a plot device.
On the other hand, if you're struggling to raise a kid on two minimum wage jobs and lost 30 pounds making your own "single cell protein complex" in your kitchen 'cause you can't afford junk food then you have a damn near 100% chance of seeing yourself as one of The Man's 120V Duracells.
Operate your own smtp server. Deny relaying for domains that don't resolve and for mail not bound for your domain.
I'd love to do this myself, but I don't have a static IP.
But more to the point, I've been using the same *.rr.com address since I got my cable modem three years ago, and I might get a spam email once every few weeks. Usually the header is in Chinese. My email address is even Google-able (though its location is obscure).
Either roadrunner is using blocklists on their mail servers (if so I'd like to know) or it's because I don't hand over my email address to third parties I don't trust and I don't leave my email address unobfuscated on usenet or public mailing lists.
Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes! They've got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses! And what's with all the carrots? What do they need such good eyesight for anyway?
Thanks.
After all this time I thought I had it beaten for good, but now I can't get that damn song out of my head.
In 20 minutes it will be another song from that damn episode.
About two years ago I started having problems with it, so I took it to a repair shop to have it cleaned and fixed.
The technician told me that there was nothing wrong with my printer and that it didn't really need to be cleaned. In fact, judging by the page counter he said that it was still brand spanking new. The problem was that my toner cartridge (the one it came with originally) had worn out. He also said something along the lines of "it must be nice to have such a fine printer that you never use."
Personally, I've had none of the problems you've mentioned with my 900 MHz Spread-Spectrum Sony. Audio quality is better than many corded phones and range is a city block. The only downside is that I'm lucky to get 2 hours talk time out of it as opposed to the 6 hours Sony claims it's capable of (which in my case may be because it needs a new Ni-Cd pack).
The problem here is, you're browsing society at +5. The average 19th century house was built with the same surly, I-could-give-a-rat attitude that you find in many modern subcontractors. Or it was a bunch of logs thrown together, or even a construction based primarily on dirt. Not surprisingly, the average 19th century house is now rubble.
I then proceeded to give him the address of the store I was in. Only then did he get the joke.
On another occasion when I was asked for my last name I said "Cash" and I looked over at the screen as he entered "Cash" into the last name field and up popped the "Johnny Cash" account.
Another foolproof (and currently expensive) way to avoid detection is to amplify the signal from the antenna to a point where it can suitably be fed into an analog-to-digital converter where it can be decoded digitally. This, in essence, is a software radio. No telltale signals of any sort are emitted at all.
That's precisely how the local oscillator is detected - it leaks back up the antenna and is radiated.
If you're paranoid you can build your own receiver and have it use a non-standard IF frequency. It would really jack up the price of the receiver as you would not be able to take advantage of cheap off-the-shelf components - you'd have to design something akin to the transistor radios of the '60s and '70s which were packed full of individual transisors as opposed to today's designs which use one or two ICs.
The reason this works is because 10.7 MHz is such a common IF, meaning that the internal oscillator runs at either (FM station frequency)+10.7 MHz or (FM station frequency)-10.7 MHz
Slashdot Mirror
According to this link "The most obviously interesting thing in the application is that compared to other ultracapacitors, this one has relatively small capacitance (31 Farads) but very high voltage (3500 V)".
No word on the size/weight of this 31F 3500V capacitor.
Or perhaps just a bank of the same capacitors in the underground storage space as those in the vehicles being charged.
If these capacitors are for real and their failure mode can be made roughly comparable to a ruptured gas tank then the so-called "hydrogen economy" is obsolete before it even gets off the ground.
My take on this whole "lose" vs. "loose" thing is that in the United States the importance of winning is so drummed into everyone's head that to some people losing is not only unthinkable but unspellable as well. If people would just loosen up it wouldn't be such a problem.
I noticed the same thing. I used to have a problem with a low-level hiss coming from my main speakers. Moving the equipment around would make the hiss louder or softer. At first I thought the problem was a bad solder connection on the RCA connectors in my preamp but resoldering those connections had no effect. That left the cables as the sole remaining suspect.
I then went to Radio Shack and got two pairs of their gold-plated RCA connectors - not because they were gold-plated but because the teflon dialectric in them won't melt when you solder to them - and made myself a pair of cables using some Belden 1192A microphone cable that I already had on hand. With these new cables there was no hiss whatsoever. I guess I shouldn't have been so suprised - the cheap audio cable I was using before offered maybe 50% shielding whereas the mic cable had 100% shielding.
My only regret is that I spent too much money on the Radio Shack connectors. Next time I'll find something less expensive.
First off, IAAAP (and I don't even play one on TV).
I understand this is true if the energy or gravity providing the acceleration is in a different frame of reference than the mass being accelerated (think particle accelerator or plasma blob).
But my layman's question is .. what about a rocket?
In a rocket, the energy to accelerate the rocket is in the same frame of reference as the rocket itself. The rocket converts mass into energy which accelerates mass and sends it out the nozzle to provide thrust. As the rocket approaches the speed of light (from Earth's reference, for instance) it becomes heavier and harder to accelerate, but so does the mass upon which it relies to convert into energy to provide thrust. The propellent is also heavier. My guess is that this would all cancel out in such a way that an astronaut travelling inside the rocket would have no way of knowing how close to c he is travelling at without looking out the window.
Now my understanding is that from Earth's perspective the rocket could only reach c at the end of time, but my question is this: given a sufficiently efficient rocket engine, is this the case for the rocket and the astronaut? If the rocket were capable of constant acceleration (for the comfort of the astronaut, lets say an acceleration of G) how long, from the astronauts perspective, would it take for him to reach c?
And once he got there (and he could only know if he looked out the window or kept track of time) what's to stop him from going further? It may be the end of time on earth, but how old is the astronaut?
I loaded the pdf files into GIMP, specifying a 600dpi resolution, and "filled in the blanks" as if I was editing an image file. You'll need at least 256MB of RAM to do this - a 600dpi image file is huge - and you'll still use some swap, but it works. When you load the pdf into GIMP make sure you only load/edit/save one page at a time or you'll run out of RAM!
Although you can save the edited file as a pdf there really isn't much point to it because once GIMP converts the pdf to a bitmap format for editing that's the only way it can save it. Anyhow, once you're done editing, save the file in a format that your printer can handle (I use png with compression 9), then lpr it to your printer.
The only drawback to this technique is that you'll have one edited image file for each page of your 1040 and the total disk space required for all of the image files will be huge compared to that of the original pdf. For example, last year's entire 1040 pdf was 176K, whereas one page of that pdf, edited and saved as a png file, was 632K.
I have TWC Roadrunner only. I don't pay for cable service of any kind. And eventually TWC got tired of sending guys over to replace traps so they just took all of the damn things out and I haven't had any problems since.
(And BTW I have no idea what is or isn't on the cable as far as TV channels are concerned. I'd rather have rock-solid Internet access than get caught finding out and have to have those damn traps put back on.)
My take: Half of the film was 99% true. The 1% that may be questionable will be used by those who don't like Moore to discredit the remaining 99%.
For those who don't like Moore the other half will be used to dismiss the entire movie as propaganda. For those who like him, the other half was exquisitely entertaining. For me, the most hilarious ROTFLMAO part of the film was the footage of Bush on the aircraft carrier - the combination of that footage along with the '70's pop tune (which included a line in its lyric that could be interpreted as Bush feeling amazed that he was on the carrier and not Gore) that totally and completely emasculated the image that the footage was originally intended to protray by the Bush administration.
In HTML: That's the dirty secret of the whole situation.
Which was implemented by "Credit Card" Republicans.
Parent post should be +5, Insightful, IMHO.
For some time I'd given up listening to mainstream music on FM stations. I can't stand listening to the same songs over and over when they aren't playing five or six ads in a row or some DJ isn't rambling on about something or other. I'd listen to NPR and some college stations in the area, but that was about it.
Then, several weeks ago, I decided to hook up my TV antenna to my stereo at home so that I could pick up one of the college stations I listen to in the car and after doing so I carefully scanned the band to see if there were any stations I could pick up with the TV antenna that I couldn't get in the truck. Sure enough, I found 104.1 KMFR, and it wasn't all that weak either. Turns out, it was a new FM station that first went on the air in 2002! I was suprised to find it because I figured that all of the available spectrum space in the San Antonio metro area was already claimed but what the guy who set up KMFR did was get a license to serve a rural community about 40 miles south of San Antonio (Pearsall) and then built a 100,000 watt station that "just happens" to reach San Antonio. (All of the station's ads are for San Antonio businesses.)
What's really interesting about KMFR is that it's a high power FM station fed by a PC (or dedicated PC-like device) that randomly picks songs (in KMFR's case, classic rock) to play along with commercials and station promos. The format is two or three songs, one 15 or 30 second spot, 5 second station promo (My favorite: "KMFR, a marginally profitable enterprise of Radio Tuna, Limited) and then another two or three songs, etc, etc.
There's no DJ or studio. About 1/3 of the commercials, all of which are done by the same announcer without background music or other special effects, are aimed at potential advertisers and provide the station's phone number. One time I called that number and got the owner's personal answering machine. I looked in the phonebook for KMFR but there's no listing so apparently KMFR is run by one guy out of his house! (To quote some of the ads: .. "We've recently added a high dollar answering machine so you can now call us anytime!" .. "Call and talk to the big man himself!" .. "How can KMFR make any money with so few ads? The answer is: Low overhead!")
While I find it refreshing to find a commercial station that plays a very wide playlist (they even play John Lennon's "Imagine"!) with very little interruption, I'm also concerned that it has the same lack of public service capabilities as the remotely controlled Clear Channel stations.
During the Iraq war I didn't know if I was listening to National Public Radio or National Pentagon Radio.
If you're an American whose well off, secure and happy with themselves and their life you're more likely to see it as a plot device.
On the other hand, if you're struggling to raise a kid on two minimum wage jobs and lost 30 pounds making your own "single cell protein complex" in your kitchen 'cause you can't afford junk food then you have a damn near 100% chance of seeing yourself as one of The Man's 120V Duracells.
I'd love to do this myself, but I don't have a static IP.
But more to the point, I've been using the same *.rr.com address since I got my cable modem three years ago, and I might get a spam email once every few weeks. Usually the header is in Chinese. My email address is even Google-able (though its location is obscure).
Either roadrunner is using blocklists on their mail servers (if so I'd like to know) or it's because I don't hand over my email address to third parties I don't trust and I don't leave my email address unobfuscated on usenet or public mailing lists.
Thanks.
After all this time I thought I had it beaten for good, but now I can't get that damn song out of my head.
In 20 minutes it will be another song from that damn episode.
Most .. demonic .. episode .. ever!
I bought an HP LJ4 new back in 1996.
About two years ago I started having problems with it, so I took it to a repair shop to have it cleaned and fixed.
The technician told me that there was nothing wrong with my printer and that it didn't really need to be cleaned. In fact, judging by the page counter he said that it was still brand spanking new. The problem was that my toner cartridge (the one it came with originally) had worn out. He also said something along the lines of "it must be nice to have such a fine printer that you never use."
Personally, I've had none of the problems you've mentioned with my 900 MHz Spread-Spectrum Sony. Audio quality is better than many corded phones and range is a city block. The only downside is that I'm lucky to get 2 hours talk time out of it as opposed to the 6 hours Sony claims it's capable of (which in my case may be because it needs a new Ni-Cd pack).
Fine.
diff society_then_+5 society_now_+5
He still makes his point.
"Shack. S-h-a-q."
"And your first name?"
"Rat. R-h-a-t-t."
"And your address?"
I then proceeded to give him the address of the store I was in. Only then did he get the joke.
On another occasion when I was asked for my last name I said "Cash" and I looked over at the screen as he entered "Cash" into the last name field and up popped the "Johnny Cash" account.
Another foolproof (and currently expensive) way to avoid detection is to amplify the signal from the antenna to a point where it can suitably be fed into an analog-to-digital converter where it can be decoded digitally. This, in essence, is a software radio. No telltale signals of any sort are emitted at all.
If you're paranoid you can build your own receiver and have it use a non-standard IF frequency. It would really jack up the price of the receiver as you would not be able to take advantage of cheap off-the-shelf components - you'd have to design something akin to the transistor radios of the '60s and '70s which were packed full of individual transisors as opposed to today's designs which use one or two ICs.
The reason this works is because 10.7 MHz is such a common IF, meaning that the internal oscillator runs at either (FM station frequency)+10.7 MHz or (FM station frequency)-10.7 MHz