I'm one of those people with difficulties with binocular vision. I normal vision is entirely 2D...no depth perception at all. Apparently I"ve never had it, and until I watched a 3D movie (at the age of 39) I never knew I was missing anything. Needless to say when I first experienced depth perception I just about fell out of my chair. While I haven't investigated trying to correct the vision problem, I certainly am a huge fan of 3D movies. On the plus side, from my perspective normal movies are just as good as real life.
Gamification is not a word. More importantly, depending if you use a hard 'a' sound (as in play) or a soft one (as in plan), you get a completely different view of what it's actually supposed to mean. Personally I like the soft a version instead.
PS If you don't understand, read more 40's detective fiction and pay attention to the slang.
Just a bit of statical analysis: 30,000 flights/day * 365.25 days/year*10 years = 110 million flights. 22 laptop fires 1 in 5 million odds of having your flight involved.
Apparently someone decided that they needed some press coverage, as I'm not buying it as a credible hazard.
I'd be interested to know what telecom gave the researchers the data. If I'd been a customer of that company, I sure wouldn't any longer.
I think I'll switch cell phone companies and phone numbers, just to become part of the churners.
While the parent is technically true, it's pretty much hogwash for the current discussion. The amount of current even a large shed roof can produce from solar cells is too small to worry about I^2*R loses. Use standard 10 gage wire, and you won't even have to use solid copper (most is copper coated aluminum). The only place you should worry about cable thickness is between battery and first fuse/circuit breaker.
Here's an idea: Develop a web browser extention that does a random web crawl. I don't mind letting my ISP sell marketeers, give to the government, keep on file, ect a clickstream that is 99% chaff and 1% my actuall surfing. Yes, I realize that if someone puts in enough effort and analysis, they could probably sift out the false signal, but it's that very effort that makes it cost prohibitive to do it across a broad scale. And of course there is always the defense: I didn't visit that web site, my computer constantly does a random walk of the internet. And to help keep the ISPs in line, it ups the volume of records they have to keep by 500 fold.
As for the other things such as IM's, emails, torrents, ect I can encrypt those should I feel the need. Yes, I could start using TOR, but it's slow and watching a web crawler do a random walk can be entertainment all by itself.
Actually there is legal theory and precedent that to be a contract the following must be true:
1) All contract provisions must be known to all parties before the parties can enter into a contract.
2) All parties bound by a contract must be eligible to enter into the contract.
3) Changes to a contract are only permissible if agreed to by all bound parties.
EULA's are not contracts, and contract law does not apply. Or at least not in 99.9% of the cases, as they are _agreements_ that companies attempt to apply after a purchase. Most are not enforcable, which Gateway is about to find out. Gateway was pretty stupid to try and insist that the agreement was in force, as it's trivial to show that the purchase took place before the agreement could have possibly come into existance. As long as the man sticks with the defective goods claims, the EULA can't be used against him.
But the worst thing about these EULA's is that companies themselves don't abid by them. Just try to return a piece of software to the manufacturer because you don't agree to it's EULA. Nearly all EULA's say they will provide a refund. I've tried to get Microsoft, Adobe, and EA to refund my money, and not one company would stand behind their agreement.
Personally I hope Gateway gets their ass handed to them.
One of the things that the article assumes is that removing meaningful abouts of CO2 from the atmosphere will reverse what most people call global warming (If you want a laugh, ask 10 random people what global warming is and what it's affects will be). Point of fact is that most our 'understanding' of global warming comes from computer models (the same computer models that can't yet predict the weather 10 days in advance, they can't predict ocean currents, they can't predict trade winds, they can't predict El Nino). I'm sure many evironmentalist will show you a computer model that shows that if we just remove all the CO2 from the air, the earth will be a nice comfortable place to live.
Before we spend a huge amount of money on removing CO2, more engieering needs to be done to show that it will do us any good.
Actually the boycott isn't all that hard. I haven't bought anything that gives revenue to the RIAA for over 5 years now, yet I listen to more music than ever. My sources of music are:
www.magnatune.com -> Indie music, DRM free, full length previews, easy downloads
www.cdbaby.com -> Indie music, great 'sounds like' recomendation, good prices
www.spun.com (or any other used CD source) -> for when I just have to have an RIAA artist. Buying used doesn't generate any more royalites for the RIAA.
Direct from the artist web sites
trading mix cds with friends
All in all, there is _so_ much music out there, that if you can't find something you like without paying the 'RIAA tax', you aren't trying.
Can't wait to see the 2nd part of the article
on
Is Vista a Trap?
·
· Score: 1
I'm waiting to see if the reporter writes a 2nd article, one titled, "Microsoft Cancelled my XP key and now I'm stuck." Of course with the BBC footing the bill for it, it's not likely that he'll be bothered by such tiny problems like a normal person doing an upgrade would be. Of all the reasons I won't be installing Vista for a long time, the fact that it's a one way trip is among the top 10. In general key activation, WGA, and all the associated crap means I won't be shelling out any money to Microsoft for a long time.
All of the comments about time travel, light cones, ect are a complete and utter waste of time. While the article doesn't do a very good job of explaining it, the light from the proposed super nova that will cause changes in the Pillars of Creation has already reached us. What hasn't reached us yet is the light from the changed Pillars of Creation. This difference is due to two factors, one small and one huge. The small one is that fact that the star that went nova is closer to us than the Pillars are. The largest factor is the difference in the progagation of the light from the super nova and that of the wave that will physically re-arrange the Pillars. A simple model is the light and sound from an explosion. You'll see the light flash before you hear the bang.
Why on earth would we want movies to get the difficulty of computer interfaces right? I for one don't want to have Jurasic Park turn into a 13 hour movie cause the 12 year old girl has to spend 10 hours looking up Unix command line codes. Just like nearly everything in movies, computers (their interfaces, their capabilities, their form, ect) are archetypes. They are concepts that let the movie tell it's story.
We should no more expect movies to show computers accurately than we expect them to show dragons that obey physics Try to make a 2 ton dragon flap it's wings for a take off, I dare you. As long as they serve to advance the plot, I could careless if the computer interface would work in the real world or not.
Landfill gas (approx 40% methane, 30% CO2, 18% N2, 2% O2) has been used for years as a fuel to run gas engines. The major problem is that it comes loaded with water (typically saturated) and siloxanes (forms SiO2 or glass during combustion). Pretty much it makes a very 2nd rate fuel. However with some cleaning, scrubbing, and some refrigeration, you can nearly everything except the methane, and sell it as natural gas (great fuel compared to gas or diesel). There are companies right now that do that very process. You can expect it to be a growth industry soon, as there are literally 1000's of sites that burn off methane as a waste product. Current technology can produce methane at about $2.30 gasoline equivalent gallon, hence it's likely to stay profitable for a long time to come.
Just to point out the obvious, Popular Mechanics is right to talk about the challenges posed by the so called hydrogen economy. To an Engineer, challenges = cost. A hydrogen economy isn't impossible, just more costly (and inconvienent) than society is currently willing to pay.
For my two cents, methane will likely be our next major transportation fuel. It's nearly as energy dense as diesel/gas, is highly renewable (generated by the tons in landfills and commercial farms), and only demands minor changes in standard combustion engines to burn. There are already companies out there that can take waste gas from landfills and produce LNG (basically liquified methane). See http://www.prometheus-energy.com/
It's disavantages are: crygenic liquid requiring special handling, and it still produces CO2 when it burns. The good news is that on a per therm basis, the CO2 produced from methane is much less than gas or diesel. It's not a absolute solution to the energy crisis, but a good middle step.
One of the things that it takes to make a valid contract are two identifiable parties. It's nearly impossible to prove who clicked a button.
The originating company has a different problem as they can never say 'that's not our software' where as the end user can always say 'I never clicked on that button, I'm not bound by the contract.'
Of course if you want to see how much companies believe in their EULA call one up and ask for a refund because you don't agree to the EULA. They all say 'If you don't wish to be bound by this agreement, return the product for a full refund.' Which contradicts the return policy of most software outlets by the way, and should be done directly with the company, not the place you bought it from, as it's not their fault. Good luck by the way, I've tried it with Microsoft, Mathworks, and HP. Not one company would issue a refund.
I don't watch TV much, so I could care less about identifying the TV shows. But what I really would like is an app that would accurately identify mp3 files and apply artist, track #, ect. I've tried a few of the availible programs such as Replay Music and their accuracy is horrid. Maybe Google can do it better. Of course the other use I see for this is identifying music in movies and older TV shows. Newer TV shows do a great job of identifying music, but some older shows (season 1 of The Wire) have great music clips that aren't named in the credits.
wind limits on rocket lauches
on
Pluto Probe Delayed
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Wind limits on rocket lauches are a combination of several things, just as most complex engineering problems.
The structural forces placed on the structure from side winds are negligible when compared to the acceleration forces due to lauch.
For the most part, it's not the final trajectory of the payload that sets them, as secondary burns and mid-course corrections are more than adequate to correct any small variation in the launch vector.
More importantly is stablity of the rocket under side forces. Because of a rocket's tall slender build, the center of mass is far away from point of thrust (the engine nozzles). Any small horizontal motion of the center of mass with respect to the point of thrust can quickly lead to tumbling. It's this control problem that really determines the launch limits. A rocket is inherently unstable and requires dynamic control, typically small engines around the periphery of the main nozzle that can swivel to provide righting moment. As with any real control system there are limits to the perturbation it can handle, and this is translated into wind speed limits.
SimpleMu can be found at:
http://simplemu.onlineroleplay.com/
It has a free version and a paid version, with only marginal differences between the two. I used the free version for two months to make sure I liked the program enough to buy it, but after that had no problem paying the license. One of it's pluses is that the keyboard shortcuts are similar to TinyFugue.
TinyFugue has been a unix standard for ages, availible at many locations. I've yet to find a good KDE/Gnome port, but the good old text version is more than adequate.
SCO has an interesting website set up to further their scheme with the licensing. It's found at
http://www.sco.com/support/registration/
and it lets you create accounts and other fun things to waste their time. I was also given an email address by their clueless phone staff: sas@sco.com I don't know if it's actually valid or not, but phone support claimed it belonged to the sales staff.
Linux will be used as _the_ operating system to control an future satellite launched by the Naval Post Graduate school. Linux will not just be used to control just one experiment or a laptop in the shuttle, it is going to be running the entire satellite.
Yes, the hardware is very modest (486 processor) because of the availibity of space tested hardware and radiation tolerance. However, it's rather exciting that an entire satellite will be controlled with Linux, both in orbit, and at the ground station. See this PDF paper for details of this project. http://www.sp.nps.navy.mil/npsat1/techni cal/SSC02- I-4_Paper.pdf
Mathematica|Maple vs Matlab == Theory vs Practice
on
Mathematica vs. Matlab?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
As a graduate student, I use all three packages on a frequent basis. Here is a quick decision tree that models how I decide which to use: 1) Is the problem symbolic or numeric?
numeric -> Matlab
symbolic -> Mathematica
symbolic & pretty graphs needed -> Maple
2) Do I need to write a program to do the calculations?
yes -> matlab
no -> any
Matlab has a great debugger. you can step through your program single step, into/out of sub programs, or until breakpoint. Mousing over a variable displays it's current value. I find it so useful, that even if I'm doing something in C/C++, I will write most of it in Matlab just to use the debugger, then cut/paste the routines into the project.
Matlab also has very good low-level read/write routines for reading data into it. This can be a huge plus if you need to automate your data input. Matlab is very well supported for collecting data from many types of devices, rather than typing everything in by hand.
3) Am I analyzing numbers to discover new relationships or applying data to known formulas/algorithms?
Discover New -> Complex -> Maple
-> Simple -> Matlab
data into formula -> Matlab
Matlab has very good data fitting for standard curves (polynomial, exponential, trig). I find it just general enough to be what I need in 99% of the time. Maple is a wiz at finding symbolic fits to data with complex relationship, but is much more difficult to use.
As you can see, I end up using Matlab for about 95% of my work. Between it's easy programablity, shallow learning curve, simularity to C (you can literally copy the guts of a c/c++ program, use search and replace to correct the operators, and have it run in matlab). With the symbolic tool box it nearly equals Maple for symbolic power (it actually uses the Maple symbolic engine, go figure), and the debugger is top-notch. Matlab has very good documentation, and great electronic documentation. It has above average support from the company, and the matlab newsgroup is active and generally produces intelligent solutions/comments. There are any number of 3rd party books written about matlab (the best, imho, is Mastering Matlab) to help as well.
As for your license strategy, I'd suggest a site license for Matlab and a small number of Maple licenses for people that actually do the symbolic computation (if anyone). Giving everyone access to Matlab makes it easy to share work, share graphs, ect.
Other posters have stated the obvious: heat pipes are nothing new, they have been around in industrial capacities at least since the 60's. The papers I've read indicate that the original development was done for satellites, to move heat from electronics modules to the skin where fins were used to radiate the heat into space. Heat pipes are quite robust, in general. The article gave no detail about why these new devices are 'smart', so I suspect it's used as a buzz word to grab attention. While the heat pipes aren't particular smart, applying them to CPU cooling is a good idea. I wish I had thought of it. However, even more interesting is the size. If I were to design a cooling system using these, I'd use a flexible ribbon to move the heat up to the back plane of the screen. This has the ideal characteristic of having a large radiating area that's rarely covered up. Back of the envelope calculations show that you can cool a typical CPU by 40 degrees (130F to 90F) with only 4.5F increase in the back plane temperature. This idea is even more attractive for metal cased laptops. However, I suspect that their use will be more general, extending to desktops: imagine completely passive CPU cooling - no fan, no pump, just a heat pipe the case. I'll be interested to see if this idea makes it into general use, or whether our pc manufacturers are too hide bound to change.
I noticed once again that the UK price is about 2/3 the US cost. So it's cheaper to buy the book in the UK, and have it air-mailed across the pond than it is to buy the new book here in the states. This is not an isolated incident, but a systematic one. As a Masters student, I regularly find that UK textbooks are frequently about 1/2 the US price.
This smacks of price fixing by the publishing industry, akin to what we see the movie industry doing with movies. Can anyone comment on how prices for US books are set and how much business they lose to people using the Internet to shop internationally?
The heater is in there for a very good purpose: condensation. The theory (and it work well) is that the case (and every thing inside it) slightly warmer than room temp, idealy 85F to 115F. This will prevent any condensation from forming inside the case. This and increased air-flow is all that is needed to use standard PC equipment in sailboats. I've built a wooden case that uses a strip heater controled by a normal house thermostat to maintain the temperature inside the case. The wooden case has single-cell foam layered on the bottom and supporting the monitor for shock absorbtion. Works great, lasts a long time.
Some how I doubt that this will create any new treaties or other international agreements. It will some make lawyers richer, just like every other bone-headed lawsuit does.
What it will do is create a new web annoyance, the User license for reading this information. It will read somewhat like a software license, in that it will say:
- by reading this you hold us harmless for everything under the sun, including killing small mammals, cutting down rainforests, slander, libel, or trashing your computer through the use of Microsoft products.
- if you still want to do something silly like sue us after you read this license, you must do so under the laws of in courts located at , and further, even if you win, you agree by reading this to pay my legal expenses.
And of course someone will find a way to make lawyers richer and waste the time of everyone involved, because devious business people have nothing better to do.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm one of those people with difficulties with binocular vision. I normal vision is entirely 2D...no depth perception at all. Apparently I"ve never had it, and until I watched a 3D movie (at the age of 39) I never knew I was missing anything. Needless to say when I first experienced depth perception I just about fell out of my chair. While I haven't investigated trying to correct the vision problem, I certainly am a huge fan of 3D movies. On the plus side, from my perspective normal movies are just as good as real life.
Gamification is not a word. More importantly, depending if you use a hard 'a' sound (as in play) or a soft one (as in plan), you get a completely different view of what it's actually supposed to mean. Personally I like the soft a version instead.
PS If you don't understand, read more 40's detective fiction and pay attention to the slang.
Just a bit of statical analysis:
30,000 flights/day * 365.25 days/year*10 years = 110 million flights.
22 laptop fires
1 in 5 million odds of having your flight involved.
Apparently someone decided that they needed some press coverage, as I'm not buying it as a credible hazard.
I'd be interested to know what telecom gave the researchers the data. If I'd been a customer of that company, I sure wouldn't any longer. I think I'll switch cell phone companies and phone numbers, just to become part of the churners.
While the parent is technically true, it's pretty much hogwash for the current discussion. The amount of current even a large shed roof can produce from solar cells is too small to worry about I^2*R loses. Use standard 10 gage wire, and you won't even have to use solid copper (most is copper coated aluminum). The only place you should worry about cable thickness is between battery and first fuse/circuit breaker.
Here's an idea: Develop a web browser extention that does a random web crawl. I don't mind letting my ISP sell marketeers, give to the government, keep on file, ect a clickstream that is 99% chaff and 1% my actuall surfing. Yes, I realize that if someone puts in enough effort and analysis, they could probably sift out the false signal, but it's that very effort that makes it cost prohibitive to do it across a broad scale. And of course there is always the defense: I didn't visit that web site, my computer constantly does a random walk of the internet. And to help keep the ISPs in line, it ups the volume of records they have to keep by 500 fold.
As for the other things such as IM's, emails, torrents, ect I can encrypt those should I feel the need. Yes, I could start using TOR, but it's slow and watching a web crawler do a random walk can be entertainment all by itself.
Actually there is legal theory and precedent that to be a contract the following must be true:
1) All contract provisions must be known to all parties before the parties can enter into a contract.
2) All parties bound by a contract must be eligible to enter into the contract.
3) Changes to a contract are only permissible if agreed to by all bound parties.
EULA's are not contracts, and contract law does not apply. Or at least not in 99.9% of the cases, as they are _agreements_ that companies attempt to apply after a purchase. Most are not enforcable, which Gateway is about to find out. Gateway was pretty stupid to try and insist that the agreement was in force, as it's trivial to show that the purchase took place before the agreement could have possibly come into existance. As long as the man sticks with the defective goods claims, the EULA can't be used against him.
But the worst thing about these EULA's is that companies themselves don't abid by them. Just try to return a piece of software to the manufacturer because you don't agree to it's EULA. Nearly all EULA's say they will provide a refund. I've tried to get Microsoft, Adobe, and EA to refund my money, and not one company would stand behind their agreement.
Personally I hope Gateway gets their ass handed to them.
One of the things that the article assumes is that removing meaningful abouts of CO2 from the atmosphere will reverse what most people call global warming (If you want a laugh, ask 10 random people what global warming is and what it's affects will be). Point of fact is that most our 'understanding' of global warming comes from computer models (the same computer models that can't yet predict the weather 10 days in advance, they can't predict ocean currents, they can't predict trade winds, they can't predict El Nino). I'm sure many evironmentalist will show you a computer model that shows that if we just remove all the CO2 from the air, the earth will be a nice comfortable place to live. Before we spend a huge amount of money on removing CO2, more engieering needs to be done to show that it will do us any good.
Actually the boycott isn't all that hard. I haven't bought anything that gives revenue to the RIAA for over 5 years now, yet I listen to more music than ever. My sources of music are: www.magnatune.com -> Indie music, DRM free, full length previews, easy downloads www.cdbaby.com -> Indie music, great 'sounds like' recomendation, good prices www.spun.com (or any other used CD source) -> for when I just have to have an RIAA artist. Buying used doesn't generate any more royalites for the RIAA. Direct from the artist web sites trading mix cds with friends All in all, there is _so_ much music out there, that if you can't find something you like without paying the 'RIAA tax', you aren't trying.
I'm waiting to see if the reporter writes a 2nd article, one titled, "Microsoft Cancelled my XP key and now I'm stuck." Of course with the BBC footing the bill for it, it's not likely that he'll be bothered by such tiny problems like a normal person doing an upgrade would be. Of all the reasons I won't be installing Vista for a long time, the fact that it's a one way trip is among the top 10. In general key activation, WGA, and all the associated crap means I won't be shelling out any money to Microsoft for a long time.
All of the comments about time travel, light cones, ect are a complete and utter waste of time. While the article doesn't do a very good job of explaining it, the light from the proposed super nova that will cause changes in the Pillars of Creation has already reached us. What hasn't reached us yet is the light from the changed Pillars of Creation. This difference is due to two factors, one small and one huge. The small one is that fact that the star that went nova is closer to us than the Pillars are. The largest factor is the difference in the progagation of the light from the super nova and that of the wave that will physically re-arrange the Pillars. A simple model is the light and sound from an explosion. You'll see the light flash before you hear the bang.
Why on earth would we want movies to get the difficulty of computer interfaces right? I for one don't want to have Jurasic Park turn into a 13 hour movie cause the 12 year old girl has to spend 10 hours looking up Unix command line codes. Just like nearly everything in movies, computers (their interfaces, their capabilities, their form, ect) are archetypes. They are concepts that let the movie tell it's story. We should no more expect movies to show computers accurately than we expect them to show dragons that obey physics Try to make a 2 ton dragon flap it's wings for a take off, I dare you. As long as they serve to advance the plot, I could careless if the computer interface would work in the real world or not.
Landfill gas (approx 40% methane, 30% CO2, 18% N2, 2% O2) has been used for years as a fuel to run gas engines. The major problem is that it comes loaded with water (typically saturated) and siloxanes (forms SiO2 or glass during combustion). Pretty much it makes a very 2nd rate fuel. However with some cleaning, scrubbing, and some refrigeration, you can nearly everything except the methane, and sell it as natural gas (great fuel compared to gas or diesel). There are companies right now that do that very process. You can expect it to be a growth industry soon, as there are literally 1000's of sites that burn off methane as a waste product. Current technology can produce methane at about $2.30 gasoline equivalent gallon, hence it's likely to stay profitable for a long time to come.
Just to point out the obvious, Popular Mechanics is right to talk about the challenges posed by the so called hydrogen economy. To an Engineer, challenges = cost. A hydrogen economy isn't impossible, just more costly (and inconvienent) than society is currently willing to pay.
For my two cents, methane will likely be our next major transportation fuel. It's nearly as energy dense as diesel/gas, is highly renewable (generated by the tons in landfills and commercial farms), and only demands minor changes in standard combustion engines to burn. There are already companies out there that can take waste gas from landfills and produce LNG (basically liquified methane). See http://www.prometheus-energy.com/
It's disavantages are: crygenic liquid requiring special handling, and it still produces CO2 when it burns. The good news is that on a per therm basis, the CO2 produced from methane is much less than gas or diesel. It's not a absolute solution to the energy crisis, but a good middle step.
The originating company has a different problem as they can never say 'that's not our software' where as the end user can always say 'I never clicked on that button, I'm not bound by the contract.'
Of course if you want to see how much companies believe in their EULA call one up and ask for a refund because you don't agree to the EULA. They all say 'If you don't wish to be bound by this agreement, return the product for a full refund.' Which contradicts the return policy of most software outlets by the way, and should be done directly with the company, not the place you bought it from, as it's not their fault. Good luck by the way, I've tried it with Microsoft, Mathworks, and HP. Not one company would issue a refund.
I don't watch TV much, so I could care less about identifying the TV shows. But what I really would like is an app that would accurately identify mp3 files and apply artist, track #, ect. I've tried a few of the availible programs such as Replay Music and their accuracy is horrid. Maybe Google can do it better. Of course the other use I see for this is identifying music in movies and older TV shows. Newer TV shows do a great job of identifying music, but some older shows (season 1 of The Wire) have great music clips that aren't named in the credits.
Wind limits on rocket lauches are a combination of several things, just as most complex engineering problems.
The structural forces placed on the structure from side winds are negligible when compared to the acceleration forces due to lauch.
For the most part, it's not the final trajectory of the payload that sets them, as secondary burns and mid-course corrections are more than adequate to correct any small variation in the launch vector.
More importantly is stablity of the rocket under side forces. Because of a rocket's tall slender build, the center of mass is far away from point of thrust (the engine nozzles). Any small horizontal motion of the center of mass with respect to the point of thrust can quickly lead to tumbling. It's this control problem that really determines the launch limits. A rocket is inherently unstable and requires dynamic control, typically small engines around the periphery of the main nozzle that can swivel to provide righting moment. As with any real control system there are limits to the perturbation it can handle, and this is translated into wind speed limits.
SimpleMu can be found at: http://simplemu.onlineroleplay.com/ It has a free version and a paid version, with only marginal differences between the two. I used the free version for two months to make sure I liked the program enough to buy it, but after that had no problem paying the license. One of it's pluses is that the keyboard shortcuts are similar to TinyFugue. TinyFugue has been a unix standard for ages, availible at many locations. I've yet to find a good KDE/Gnome port, but the good old text version is more than adequate.
SCO has an interesting website set up to further their scheme with the licensing. It's found at http://www.sco.com/support/registration/ and it lets you create accounts and other fun things to waste their time. I was also given an email address by their clueless phone staff: sas@sco.com I don't know if it's actually valid or not, but phone support claimed it belonged to the sales staff.
Linux will be used as _the_ operating system to control an future satellite launched by the Naval Post Graduate school. Linux will not just be used to control just one experiment or a laptop in the shuttle, it is going to be running the entire satellite.i cal/SSC02- I-4_Paper.pdf
Yes, the hardware is very modest (486 processor) because of the availibity of space tested hardware and radiation tolerance. However, it's rather exciting that an entire satellite will be controlled with Linux, both in orbit, and at the ground station. See this PDF paper for details of this project.
http://www.sp.nps.navy.mil/npsat1/techn
As a graduate student, I use all three packages on a frequent basis. Here is a quick decision tree that models how I decide which to use:
1) Is the problem symbolic or numeric?
numeric -> Matlab
symbolic -> Mathematica
symbolic & pretty graphs needed -> Maple
2) Do I need to write a program to do the calculations?
yes -> matlab
no -> any
Matlab has a great debugger. you can step through your program single step, into/out of sub programs, or until breakpoint. Mousing over a variable displays it's current value. I find it so useful, that even if I'm doing something in C/C++, I will write most of it in Matlab just to use the debugger, then cut/paste the routines into the project.
Matlab also has very good low-level read/write routines for reading data into it. This can be a huge plus if you need to automate your data input. Matlab is very well supported for collecting data from many types of devices, rather than typing everything in by hand.
3) Am I analyzing numbers to discover new relationships or applying data to known formulas/algorithms?
Discover New -> Complex -> Maple
-> Simple -> Matlab
data into formula -> Matlab
Matlab has very good data fitting for standard curves (polynomial, exponential, trig). I find it just general enough to be what I need in 99% of the time. Maple is a wiz at finding symbolic fits to data with complex relationship, but is much more difficult to use.
As you can see, I end up using Matlab for about 95% of my work. Between it's easy programablity, shallow learning curve, simularity to C (you can literally copy the guts of a c/c++ program, use search and replace to correct the operators, and have it run in matlab). With the symbolic tool box it nearly equals Maple for symbolic power (it actually uses the Maple symbolic engine, go figure), and the debugger is top-notch. Matlab has very good documentation, and great electronic documentation. It has above average support from the company, and the matlab newsgroup is active and generally produces intelligent solutions/comments. There are any number of 3rd party books written about matlab (the best, imho, is Mastering Matlab) to help as well.
As for your license strategy, I'd suggest a site license for Matlab and a small number of Maple licenses for people that actually do the symbolic computation (if anyone). Giving everyone access to Matlab makes it easy to share work, share graphs, ect.
Other posters have stated the obvious: heat pipes are nothing new, they have been around in industrial capacities at least since the 60's. The papers I've read indicate that the original development was done for satellites, to move heat from electronics modules to the skin where fins were used to radiate the heat into space. Heat pipes are quite robust, in general.
The article gave no detail about why these new devices are 'smart', so I suspect it's used as a buzz word to grab attention. While the heat pipes aren't particular smart, applying them to CPU cooling is a good idea. I wish I had thought of it.
However, even more interesting is the size. If I were to design a cooling system using these, I'd use a flexible ribbon to move the heat up to the back plane of the screen. This has the ideal characteristic of having a large radiating area that's rarely covered up. Back of the envelope calculations show that you can cool a typical CPU by 40 degrees (130F to 90F) with only 4.5F increase in the back plane temperature. This idea is even more attractive for metal cased laptops.
However, I suspect that their use will be more general, extending to desktops: imagine completely passive CPU cooling - no fan, no pump, just a heat pipe the case.
I'll be interested to see if this idea makes it into general use, or whether our pc manufacturers are too hide bound to change.
Using one of my favorite shopping bots to price this book,
i sb n=0130910139
http://www.bestbookdeal.com/cgi-bin/prices.cgi?
I noticed once again that the UK price is about 2/3 the US cost. So it's cheaper to buy the book in the UK, and have it air-mailed across the pond than it is to buy the new book here in the states. This is not an isolated incident, but a systematic one. As a Masters student, I regularly find that UK textbooks are frequently about 1/2 the US price.
This smacks of price fixing by the publishing industry, akin to what we see the movie industry doing with movies.
Can anyone comment on how prices for US books are set and how much business they lose to people using the Internet to shop internationally?
The heater is in there for a very good purpose: condensation. The theory (and it work well) is that the case (and every thing inside it) slightly warmer than room temp, idealy 85F to 115F. This will prevent any condensation from forming inside the case. This and increased air-flow is all that is needed to use standard PC equipment in sailboats. I've built a wooden case that uses a strip heater controled by a normal house thermostat to maintain the temperature inside the case. The wooden case has single-cell foam layered on the bottom and supporting the monitor for shock absorbtion. Works great, lasts a long time.
Some how I doubt that this will create any new treaties or other international agreements. It will some make lawyers richer, just like every other bone-headed lawsuit does. What it will do is create a new web annoyance, the User license for reading this information. It will read somewhat like a software license, in that it will say: - by reading this you hold us harmless for everything under the sun, including killing small mammals, cutting down rainforests, slander, libel, or trashing your computer through the use of Microsoft products. - if you still want to do something silly like sue us after you read this license, you must do so under the laws of in courts located at , and further, even if you win, you agree by reading this to pay my legal expenses. And of course someone will find a way to make lawyers richer and waste the time of everyone involved, because devious business people have nothing better to do.