These devices would be great for simplifying factory control systems. Consider a small refinery producing cooking oil, speciality lubricants, detergents, or other liquids. There are hundreds, if not thousands of valves, flow meters, temperature and pressure sensors, tank gauges, heating/cooling units, and so on. Aside from power, all these devices have at least a wire pair back to some central control position, often through some proprietary interface (sometimes several layers worth), usually a legacy from several factory refits back.
These devices would let you strip away all the legacy hardware to be replaced by a simple RS-232 interface to the RJ45 device, then CAT-5 and local network back to a software solution control system.
The upside: software replacement for hardware system, and generic interfaces throughout the factory!
I remember being in a crib and looking up at the lantern shaped night light on the wall over my crib. It held my interest, and I began to play with the cord hanging down below it. I felt the plug on the end of the cord and pulled it, so of course the light went out. Oops, need to put it back. My grip through the bars was not very good, so I changed position so my middle finger was between the prongs. I could then slide the plug sideways better to feel for the wall slot. It worked, but my middle finger got ALL BUZZY! Enough of that, so I pulled it out and tried again without electrocuting myself.
From album pictures later, I found I had lived there only for 6 months in 1957, putting me between 12 and 18 months old.
In 1958, again from album history, I remember watching TV (black and white, natch) and seeing a spellbinding show about a big robot, a guy in a silver suit, and some sort of space ship. I know it now as "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951).
These early memories are clear no doubt because they were so extraordinary and unique as to leave a lasting impression, but were also comprehensible to me as a child. These significant emotional events last because they were generally pleasant (the movie) or distinct (electrical shock vs other types of pain).
I suspect that events which were significant AND incomprehensible are major factors in adult phobias and other anxieties.
Actually, it was one of the jobs of the port authorities in Roman days to board and search arriving ships for books (among other things). The books would be "borrowed" and scribes would duplicate the book for the local library. This is part of how the Library of Alexandria became such a great repository of knowledge.
Roman Law did not have copyright rules. The author of a book worked out a deal with the publisher, and the publisher would scribe as many copies as he could before releasing the book. Once it was on the market, anybody could duplicate it, and did. In an age where perhaps 15% of the population could read, this was good enough.
Three issues: Politics, Performance, and Engineering...
No doubt the engineering was brilliant, and far ahead of it's time. If you check the specs of the modern B-2 Bomber, you will see almost the same dimentions, especially that of the wing angle. The YB-48 failed for poor engines, and the YB-49 update almost made the grade with jets, but not enough.
Performance in the this new layout suffered from two significant tendencies which were common enough in other aircraft, but obstacles in this application. First was the tendency for a "Dutch Roll." Think of a gutter ball rocking from side to side as it rolls down the bowling alley. The aircraft is seeking a stable position as it flys, but as it turns to one side, the drag from the other side (where the wing is relatively longer now) pulls it back, and over corrects. This can continue until it resembles the skate/snow board whiz doing the tube dance. The control system of the day could handle it, but the pilots had to stay on top of things. This in turn made life difficult for the bombadier. Modern fly-by-wire computer systems make this a non-issue.
The other, easily fatal, tendency in a flying wing is "Tumble." Regular aircraft can be made to tumble ass-over-tea-kettle only with some effort, and usually near stall speeds. Think of the air show types who climb vertically until they fall over on their back (maybe two tumbles worth) before regaining control on the way back down. The distance between the wing (center of gravity) and the tail surfaces (lever) make this hard to happen and easy to recover from, if you have the altitude.
On the other hand, the tumbles that the YB-48/49 folks had to deal with was like none they had dealt with before. Take a piece of stiff paper, cut off a 1 inch strip about 8 inches long, give it a slight curve hollow along the length, then drop it. It will tumble with rotation axis from tip to tip. Lacking a good lever (tail surface) to break the tumble, the test pilots found a way to recover using full aleron speed brake drag on one wing and max asymetric power on the other side. This was enough to dump them into a more regular spin (flat rotation like a frisbee), and they knew how to recover from that. Very, very scary, but modern fly-by-wire makes it a non-issue, too.
And that leaves the politics. The heavy bomber mission was to deliver the B2 (IIRC) thermonuclear device to the bad guys as fast as possible. The later models, like the MK53, were dinky compared to the B2, which was the first production H-Bomb. The one at the Air Force Museum I saw next to the B-36 was about 7 ft in diameter, nearly 15 feet long, and weighed about 20,000 pounds. Compare this to the Mk 6, an atomic, not thermonuclear, bomb. The aircraft delivering the B2 had to carry 2 bombs (20 tons) over 5000 miles. It was a squeaker in the YB-49, which had the (dis)advantage of using a new, unproven design, and had at least one skeleton in its political closet, Tumble. The B-36 was a more regular design holding 80,000 lbs in a bomb bay larger than a Greyhound bus! Whatever skullduggery went on between Northrup, Convair, and the Government, the B-36 made more sense soley becaues it seemed more sensible. Not that is was, just that those who had only money, performance, and production in mind thought so.
So, is the flag part of the program bitstream, or just in a header somewhere? If I set my TIVO to skip the first 2 seconds (or 2 milliseconds) of the program intro, and so skip the header, will I have an "unlocked" recording?
Or how about playing one TIVO to a second TIVO through an XOR filter to turn off the bitstream flag?
Dateline: Suburbia -- Joe and Jane Blow still had no comment as the jury was debating the testimony of this complicated computer technology lawsuit. The combined RIAA and Microsoft suit against the Blow family for piracy began after insurance investigators duly reported the recovery of the Blow's computer files and music collection after their home and contents had been destroyed by fire.
"I was smart enough to back up my XP disk, other software, and my entire CD collection as MP3's, and store it in another location for safety," said Ms. Blow during the trial. "But when I tried to call MicroSoft support to sort out the installation of XP on a different computer than the original purchase, they were less than helpful. I even explained about the fire and everything. But no, they have to go to court, seize my system and all the backup software and music, then have the gall to charge me with piracy! I paid for all of this once already! Why can't I use my stuff?"
Mr. Blow had no comment about the seizure of his 60+ disk strong DVD collection of Russ Myers, John Holmes, and Hentai videos, also allegedly duplicates of the original purchased disks.
11. Defendants are to remove all symbols, indictia, the letters "CD", and other designations from their Charlie Pride music collection, in any format, which indicate or suggest any compliance whatsoever with the Phillips/Sony technical standards for the Compact Disk ((TM)) recording format.
Yep, probably a typo -- 30 meters/sec, or about 60 knots/66 mph is more like it.
This looks like a common EOD technique of using a small charge water cannon to disrupt the detonator of a suspicious package. The cannon is a tube loaded with about a liter/quart of water. An M-80/shotgun shell type of charge is set off, forcing the water at very high speed onto, and into, the package. Unless a motion sensor can react and fire in less than about 1/5000 second, the firing mechanism is crushed or shredded. This takes care of tilt sensors (mercury switches, etc) and spring loaded triggers. Without electrical power, blasting caps are useless. Fulminated mercury mechanical detonators become safe because the striking mechanism is now bent beyond use.
As most mines have mechanical triggers, smashing the device faster than the trigger can activate will usually neutralize the device. Electrally powered magentic and capacitance sensors usually require some sensor comparison against a target profile, by which time the hammer would have crushed the detonator.
This is the life I live now! My job as a weather forecaster and computer geek graduated into becoming management in charge of technique development. I get taskings like "make a new tool to forecast frost probability." These become codes and scripts which dip into our "9 GB Fresh Daily!" Oracle database to crank out tailored products for various customers.
I'll save you all the rants about code walk throughs and other such guy-in-charge type stuff and concentrate on the "How to be a Manager" items:
1. Twaddle Filter: You are the interface between the people who want something, although they might not know what, and the people who can make it happen. If your tasker types aren't clear on what they want, it's up to you to either drag it out of them, or use your team (and politics?) to tell them what they actually want. Look past the tasking and concentrate on the output. If you can corner them into telling you what they NEED (vs. want), you're off to a good start. It will change, to be sure, but now it's negotiation to improve, not disappointment at having failed to "understand."
2. Defender of the Faith: Yeah, it sounds like BS, but teamwork revolves around a team, and you must make it so to suit your needs. If upper management dumps on you, stand up and remind them why you do what you do -- serve the customer to profit the company. Likewise, if your team has cranio-rectal inversion, let them know that fun's fun, but paychecks are week-to-week. You want milk from the cow? Feed, protect, and care for it!
3. Calmer of Ruffled Feathers: People skills! Stay on top of who's (not) talking to who, both above and below you. If you can find a way to treat problems as opportunities, you will put your self in the good graces / esteem of the fixee. This can dull the blade of cutthroat politics if you have the misfortune of dealing with that sort of thing. If it continues, at least you're collecting blackmail ^H^H^H^H motivation brownie points.
4. Skill Sharpener: Projects and urgencies permitting, beg, borrow, blackmail, or cajole anyone who can serve you into coughing up $$ for training. Whether it's SmartForce CBT modules or $40 toward getting a new copy of "Pearl for Dummies," grab it and use it. Document your people's training courses for those annual reviews and raises.
5. Self Defense: Some must reading for management above and beyond the usual "Sun Tzu - The Art of War" and "Book of Five Rings" stuff:
The Art of Deception by Nicholas Capaldi is by far the best guide ever for beating the worst office politician, used car salesman, or oily customer rep to ever cross you path at their own game. Read it. Live it. Prosper!
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These devices would be great for simplifying factory control systems. Consider a small refinery producing cooking oil, speciality lubricants, detergents, or other liquids. There are hundreds, if not thousands of valves, flow meters, temperature and pressure sensors, tank gauges, heating/cooling units, and so on. Aside from power, all these devices have at least a wire pair back to some central control position, often through some proprietary interface (sometimes several layers worth), usually a legacy from several factory refits back.
These devices would let you strip away all the legacy hardware to be replaced by a simple RS-232 interface to the RJ45 device, then CAT-5 and local network back to a software solution control system.
The upside: software replacement for hardware system, and generic interfaces throughout the factory!
Yes, it is just the thing for my Beowulf cluster of Vic-20's I've had lying around!
I remember being in a crib and looking up at the lantern shaped night light on the wall over my crib. It held my interest, and I began to play with the cord hanging down below it. I felt the plug on the end of the cord and pulled it, so of course the light went out. Oops, need to put it back. My grip through the bars was not very good, so I changed position so my middle finger was between the prongs. I could then slide the plug sideways better to feel for the wall slot. It worked, but my middle finger got ALL BUZZY! Enough of that, so I pulled it out and tried again without electrocuting myself.
From album pictures later, I found I had lived there only for 6 months in 1957, putting me between 12 and 18 months old.
In 1958, again from album history, I remember watching TV (black and white, natch) and seeing a spellbinding show about a big robot, a guy in a silver suit, and some sort of space ship. I know it now as "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951).
These early memories are clear no doubt because they were so extraordinary and unique as to leave a lasting impression, but were also comprehensible to me as a child. These significant emotional events last because they were generally pleasant (the movie) or distinct (electrical shock vs other types of pain).
I suspect that events which were significant AND incomprehensible are major factors in adult phobias and other anxieties.
OK - 1 Watt = 4.19 calories
.21 degrees Celcius.
So 900,000 W / 4.19 = 214,797 calories
1 calorie warms 1 gram of water 1 degree Celcius
So 900 Kw would raise 1000 Kg of water
Even if the fuel had half the heat capacity as water, it would still serve as a huge heat sink for the laser.
Actually, it was one of the jobs of the port authorities in Roman days to board and search arriving ships for books (among other things). The books would be "borrowed" and scribes would duplicate the book for the local library. This is part of how the Library of Alexandria became such a great repository of knowledge.
Roman Law did not have copyright rules. The author of a book worked out a deal with the publisher, and the publisher would scribe as many copies as he could before releasing the book. Once it was on the market, anybody could duplicate it, and did. In an age where perhaps 15% of the population could read, this was good enough.
Three issues: Politics, Performance, and Engineering...
No doubt the engineering was brilliant, and far ahead of it's time. If you check the specs of the modern B-2 Bomber, you will see almost the same dimentions, especially that of the wing angle. The YB-48 failed for poor engines, and the YB-49 update almost made the grade with jets, but not enough.
Performance in the this new layout suffered from two significant tendencies which were common enough in other aircraft, but obstacles in this application. First was the tendency for a "Dutch Roll." Think of a gutter ball rocking from side to side as it rolls down the bowling alley. The aircraft is seeking a stable position as it flys, but as it turns to one side, the drag from the other side (where the wing is relatively longer now) pulls it back, and over corrects. This can continue until it resembles the skate/snow board whiz doing the tube dance. The control system of the day could handle it, but the pilots had to stay on top of things. This in turn made life difficult for the bombadier. Modern fly-by-wire computer systems make this a non-issue.
The other, easily fatal, tendency in a flying wing is "Tumble." Regular aircraft can be made to tumble ass-over-tea-kettle only with some effort, and usually near stall speeds. Think of the air show types who climb vertically until they fall over on their back (maybe two tumbles worth) before regaining control on the way back down. The distance between the wing (center of gravity) and the tail surfaces (lever) make this hard to happen and easy to recover from, if you have the altitude.
On the other hand, the tumbles that the YB-48/49 folks had to deal with was like none they had dealt with before. Take a piece of stiff paper, cut off a 1 inch strip about 8 inches long, give it a slight curve hollow along the length, then drop it. It will tumble with rotation axis from tip to tip. Lacking a good lever (tail surface) to break the tumble, the test pilots found a way to recover using full aleron speed brake drag on one wing and max asymetric power on the other side. This was enough to dump them into a more regular spin (flat rotation like a frisbee), and they knew how to recover from that. Very, very scary, but modern fly-by-wire makes it a non-issue, too.
And that leaves the politics. The heavy bomber mission was to deliver the B2 (IIRC) thermonuclear device to the bad guys as fast as possible. The later models, like the MK53, were dinky compared to the B2, which was the first production H-Bomb. The one at the Air Force Museum I saw next to the B-36 was about 7 ft in diameter, nearly 15 feet long, and weighed about 20,000 pounds. Compare this to the Mk 6, an atomic, not thermonuclear, bomb. The aircraft delivering the B2 had to carry 2 bombs (20 tons) over 5000 miles. It was a squeaker in the YB-49, which had the (dis)advantage of using a new, unproven design, and had at least one skeleton in its political closet, Tumble. The B-36 was a more regular design holding 80,000 lbs in a bomb bay larger than a Greyhound bus! Whatever skullduggery went on between Northrup, Convair, and the Government, the B-36 made more sense soley becaues it seemed more sensible. Not that is was, just that those who had only money, performance, and production in mind thought so.
So, is the flag part of the program bitstream, or just in a header somewhere? If I set my TIVO to skip the first 2 seconds (or 2 milliseconds) of the program intro, and so skip the header, will I have an "unlocked" recording?
Or how about playing one TIVO to a second TIVO through an XOR filter to turn off the bitstream flag?
Etc, etc... ad nauseum
Dateline: Suburbia -- Joe and Jane Blow still had no comment as the jury was debating the testimony of this complicated computer technology lawsuit. The combined RIAA and Microsoft suit against the Blow family for piracy began after insurance investigators duly reported the recovery of the Blow's computer files and music collection after their home and contents had been destroyed by fire.
"I was smart enough to back up my XP disk, other software, and my entire CD collection as MP3's, and store it in another location for safety," said Ms. Blow during the trial. "But when I tried to call MicroSoft support to sort out the installation of XP on a different computer than the original purchase, they were less than helpful. I even explained about the fire and everything. But no, they have to go to court, seize my system and all the backup software and music, then have the gall to charge me with piracy! I paid for all of this once already! Why can't I use my stuff?"
Mr. Blow had no comment about the seizure of his 60+ disk strong DVD collection of Russ Myers, John Holmes, and Hentai videos, also allegedly duplicates of the original purchased disks.
11. Defendants are to remove all symbols, indictia, the letters "CD", and other designations from their Charlie Pride music collection, in any format, which indicate or suggest any compliance whatsoever with the Phillips/Sony technical standards for the Compact Disk ((TM)) recording format.
Yep, probably a typo -- 30 meters/sec, or about 60 knots/66 mph is more like it.
This looks like a common EOD technique of using a small charge water cannon to disrupt the detonator of a suspicious package. The cannon is a tube loaded with about a liter/quart of water. An M-80/shotgun shell type of charge is set off, forcing the water at very high speed onto, and into, the package. Unless a motion sensor can react and fire in less than about 1/5000 second, the firing mechanism is crushed or shredded. This takes care of tilt sensors (mercury switches, etc) and spring loaded triggers. Without electrical power, blasting caps are useless. Fulminated mercury mechanical detonators become safe because the striking mechanism is now bent beyond use.
As most mines have mechanical triggers, smashing the device faster than the trigger can activate will usually neutralize the device. Electrally powered magentic and capacitance sensors usually require some sensor comparison against a target profile, by which time the hammer would have crushed the detonator.
This is the life I live now! My job as a weather forecaster and computer geek graduated into becoming management in charge of technique development. I get taskings like "make a new tool to forecast frost probability." These become codes and scripts which dip into our "9 GB Fresh Daily!" Oracle database to crank out tailored products for various customers.
I'll save you all the rants about code walk throughs and other such guy-in-charge type stuff and concentrate on the "How to be a Manager" items:
1. Twaddle Filter: You are the interface between the people who want something, although they might not know what, and the people who can make it happen. If your tasker types aren't clear on what they want, it's up to you to either drag it out of them, or use your team (and politics?) to tell them what they actually want. Look past the tasking and concentrate on the output. If you can corner them into telling you what they NEED (vs. want), you're off to a good start. It will change, to be sure, but now it's negotiation to improve, not disappointment at having failed to "understand."
2. Defender of the Faith: Yeah, it sounds like BS, but teamwork revolves around a team, and you must make it so to suit your needs. If upper management dumps on you, stand up and remind them why you do what you do -- serve the customer to profit the company. Likewise, if your team has cranio-rectal inversion, let them know that fun's fun, but paychecks are week-to-week. You want milk from the cow? Feed, protect, and care for it!
3. Calmer of Ruffled Feathers: People skills! Stay on top of who's (not) talking to who, both above and below you. If you can find a way to treat problems as opportunities, you will put your self in the good graces / esteem of the fixee. This can dull the blade of cutthroat politics if you have the misfortune of dealing with that sort of thing. If it continues, at least you're collecting blackmail ^H^H^H^H motivation brownie points.
4. Skill Sharpener: Projects and urgencies permitting, beg, borrow, blackmail, or cajole anyone who can serve you into coughing up $$ for training. Whether it's SmartForce CBT modules or $40 toward getting a new copy of "Pearl for Dummies," grab it and use it. Document your people's training courses for those annual reviews and raises.
5. Self Defense: Some must reading for management above and beyond the usual "Sun Tzu - The Art of War" and "Book of Five Rings" stuff:
The Art of Deception by Nicholas Capaldi is by far the best guide ever for beating the worst office politician, used car salesman, or oily customer rep to ever cross you path at their own game. Read it. Live it. Prosper!