How many birds have been killed by cars in the last 20 years? Or airplanes? Or pollution? Or hunting? This really doesn't seem like a big problem to me. Humans must kill to survive, whether it's plants or animals or whatever. Sure it would be nice to minimize the number of bird deaths, but the bottom line is that the natural law is survival of the fittest, and if it comes down to us or them, I'll side with us.
PICs have loads of onboard A/D converters. There are lots of reference designs available. Yes you have to program them in assembly but it's actually very easy to learn as there are only something like 30 instructions. Programmers are cheap, the devlopment environment is free, and Microchip pretty much gives the chips away. Anyway it would be a good project for learning a lot of electronic and computer engineering.
I can't find any mentions of seed nodes here, I guess they don't plan on hosting one. That makes it kind of hard to use until you get some of your friends to use it too... Anybody feel like throwing out some MUTE node IP addresses so we can test this bitch?
Connect Thermister to PIC. Write PIC code to A/D convert the thermister once in a while and dump the output to the parallel port. Write a program that reads the parallel port data and dumps it to a file. Done.
If you want to get really fancy you could try using the serial port or the USB port.
Ditto that. I run BlackBox on my PowerMac 7500 w/800x600 screen. It's very real-estate efficient. It's also very fast, which makes it good for slow computers. The same could be said of other WMs, but few are as fast AND as pretty as BB et al. There are several BlackBox clones that also work well.
A guy in my graduating class wrote a simple protected mode ia32 OS called HalOS for his senior project. Took him a couple of months to get something together that booted and ran a few simple text mode apps.
There's no black magic involved in writing an OS. It's mostly about implementing documented standards. Although it can also be about implementing undocumented standards, thats a bitch. It's especially easy when you don't have things like backwards compatibility to worry about.
Of course, writing a GOOD OS is another ball of wax.
You know, it's not just SCO UNIX customers that should have contingency plans in case SCO folds. Lets say hypothetically that SCO loses the case, declares bankruptcy, and liquidates their assets... Now what happenes to every other System V derivitive OS, like AIX, Solaris, etc? Seems like a lot of uncertainty. I think it would be prudent for any organization that uses any Sys-V type UNIX to have a contingency plan, just in case.
According to GE specifications, the system is comprised of one or more "computers" running an "operating system" and a "graphical user interface" (XWin == GUI nyaaah!)
According to further documents, this computer's "operating system" was running some kind of "software program".
C'mon guys, if it was running Windows and it BSoD'ed, then it might be worth mentioning. Other than that I don't see why we should be pointing out what OS it's running. The failure could have been caused by any piece of hardware, software, sabotage, or some combination thereof.
One other distinct possibility is that UO-14's solar cells are working at a significantly reduced capacity. Space is a harsh environment, and I wouldn't be suprised if they've crapped out, thus preventing the bird from operating it's transmitter, even in full sunlight.
I'm not sure of the electrical details behind the decision to turn off UO-14. I believe they had already been switching it off in darkness for some time. The only details they give is that one of the cells in the battery failed, possibly as a short circuit. This would prevent the satellite from operating, even in full sunlight, since the battery would short out the solar panels and consume all of their power. What presumably happened to AO-7 is that eventually the short circuit in the batteries burned itself out, creating an open circuit, which allowed the panels to power the bird once again. This could possibly happen to UO-14 tomorrow, or in 21 years, or never.
It's a sad day for the Amateur Radio Satellite Service. Our birds are shitting the bed left and right. AO-40 is only quasi-operational on whacky bands, UO-14 and AO-27 are gone. RS-12/13 is gone. AO-10 finally died for good.
Actually, can we confirm that AO-27 is dead? According to the latest AMSAT Weekly Satellite Report, it's still operational.
The Saudi-Sats are both working, I made QSOs on both SO-41 and SO-50 over the summer. AO-7 is still back from the dead, which is really quite amazing. And at least AO-40 is semi-operational. I really need to get some 1.2 and 2.4 ghz equipment.
Phh, IBM has a reputation for being a very litigious company that isn't afraid to sue smaller competitors to death, a lot like MS. They just don't take as much shit for it because they're in a very different position than MS is. Most people wouldn't call that kind of reputation "good", and it's certainly bad for SCO, which in this case is good for us.
I wasn't exactly clear. We did do quite a bit with Linux. I was trying to get him to use NetBSD as the secondary OS, but he chose QNX instead. We also fooled around with Tru64 'nix and Windows NT a bit.
It didn't cause the Jovan equivilent of Coronal Mass Ejections, it just left a pock mark in the clouds.
Think about what you just said. Now thing about the mass of the sun. Now think about how FSKING HOT THE SUN IS! An object would have to be FSKING HUGE just to NOT BURN UP a million miles away from the sun! Jupiter would evaporate and get blown away by the solar wind before it ever got close.
And again, there's the whole "We probably would have seen it coming" thing. Any object THAT LARGE would be visible for quite some time (like years) before it hit the sun, giving us ample warning about it. Plus it's gravitational pull would probably fuck up the Earth's orbit.
Nothing's impossible, but you're probably better off buying a Megabucks ticket then waiting for an object large than Jupiter to smash into the sun un-noticed.
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How many birds have been killed by cars in the last 20 years? Or airplanes? Or pollution? Or hunting? This really doesn't seem like a big problem to me. Humans must kill to survive, whether it's plants or animals or whatever. Sure it would be nice to minimize the number of bird deaths, but the bottom line is that the natural law is survival of the fittest, and if it comes down to us or them, I'll side with us.
PICs have loads of onboard A/D converters. There are lots of reference designs available. Yes you have to program them in assembly but it's actually very easy to learn as there are only something like 30 instructions. Programmers are cheap, the devlopment environment is free, and Microchip pretty much gives the chips away. Anyway it would be a good project for learning a lot of electronic and computer engineering.
http://www.microchip.com
Only if you were too un-leet to burn your own EPROMS
We already have a perfectly good standard, it's called Open Firmware.
Sorry. Too many people are saying that OBOS is a waste. I just had to throw in another short-sighted knee-jerk reaction.
would be insanely jealous.
I can't find any mentions of seed nodes here, I guess they don't plan on hosting one. That makes it kind of hard to use until you get some of your friends to use it too... Anybody feel like throwing out some MUTE node IP addresses so we can test this bitch?
Oh but we ARE monkeys, and the sequence will reveal that.
Connect Thermister to PIC. Write PIC code to A/D convert the thermister once in a while and dump the output to the parallel port. Write a program that reads the parallel port data and dumps it to a file. Done.
If you want to get really fancy you could try using the serial port or the USB port.
Ditto that. I run BlackBox on my PowerMac 7500 w/800x600 screen. It's very real-estate efficient. It's also very fast, which makes it good for slow computers. The same could be said of other WMs, but few are as fast AND as pretty as BB et al. There are several BlackBox clones that also work well.
May you live in interesting times.
A guy in my graduating class wrote a simple protected mode ia32 OS called HalOS for his senior project. Took him a couple of months to get something together that booted and ran a few simple text mode apps.
There's no black magic involved in writing an OS. It's mostly about implementing documented standards. Although it can also be about implementing undocumented standards, thats a bitch. It's especially easy when you don't have things like backwards compatibility to worry about.
Of course, writing a GOOD OS is another ball of wax.
Except that there was no rejoicing.
Because nobody cared.
Because MMPOGs are stupid.
You know, it's not just SCO UNIX customers that should have contingency plans in case SCO folds. Lets say hypothetically that SCO loses the case, declares bankruptcy, and liquidates their assets... Now what happenes to every other System V derivitive OS, like AIX, Solaris, etc? Seems like a lot of uncertainty. I think it would be prudent for any organization that uses any Sys-V type UNIX to have a contingency plan, just in case.
According to GE specifications, the system is comprised of one or more "computers" running an "operating system" and a "graphical user interface" (XWin == GUI nyaaah!)
According to further documents, this computer's "operating system" was running some kind of "software program".
C'mon guys, if it was running Windows and it BSoD'ed, then it might be worth mentioning. Other than that I don't see why we should be pointing out what OS it's running. The failure could have been caused by any piece of hardware, software, sabotage, or some combination thereof.
Modulate the laser beam with data and create an ultra-long distance laser data link. Of course ultra-long distance is a relative term... YMMV
One other distinct possibility is that UO-14's solar cells are working at a significantly reduced capacity. Space is a harsh environment, and I wouldn't be suprised if they've crapped out, thus preventing the bird from operating it's transmitter, even in full sunlight.
Yes, that was AO-7.
I'm not sure of the electrical details behind the decision to turn off UO-14. I believe they had already been switching it off in darkness for some time. The only details they give is that one of the cells in the battery failed, possibly as a short circuit. This would prevent the satellite from operating, even in full sunlight, since the battery would short out the solar panels and consume all of their power. What presumably happened to AO-7 is that eventually the short circuit in the batteries burned itself out, creating an open circuit, which allowed the panels to power the bird once again. This could possibly happen to UO-14 tomorrow, or in 21 years, or never.
You don't, it craps out after 71999.
It's a sad day for the Amateur Radio Satellite Service. Our birds are shitting the bed left and right. AO-40 is only quasi-operational on whacky bands, UO-14 and AO-27 are gone. RS-12/13 is gone. AO-10 finally died for good.
Actually, can we confirm that AO-27 is dead? According to the latest AMSAT Weekly Satellite Report, it's still operational.
The Saudi-Sats are both working, I made QSOs on both SO-41 and SO-50 over the summer.
AO-7 is still back from the dead, which is really quite amazing. And at least AO-40 is semi-operational. I really need to get some 1.2 and 2.4 ghz equipment.
Phh, IBM has a reputation for being a very litigious company that isn't afraid to sue smaller competitors to death, a lot like MS. They just don't take as much shit for it because they're in a very different position than MS is. Most people wouldn't call that kind of reputation "good", and it's certainly bad for SCO, which in this case is good for us.
I wasn't exactly clear. We did do quite a bit with Linux. I was trying to get him to use NetBSD as the secondary OS, but he chose QNX instead. We also fooled around with Tru64 'nix and Windows NT a bit.
If you wanted to port it to a non-MMU architecture, you would be working with some excellently structured and commented choice source code.
It didn't cause the Jovan equivilent of Coronal Mass Ejections, it just left a pock mark in the clouds.
Think about what you just said. Now thing about the mass of the sun. Now think about how FSKING HOT THE SUN IS! An object would have to be FSKING HUGE just to NOT BURN UP a million miles away from the sun! Jupiter would evaporate and get blown away by the solar wind before it ever got close.
And again, there's the whole "We probably would have seen it coming" thing. Any object THAT LARGE would be visible for quite some time (like years) before it hit the sun, giving us ample warning about it. Plus it's gravitational pull would probably fuck up the Earth's orbit.
Nothing's impossible, but you're probably better off buying a Megabucks ticket then waiting for an object large than Jupiter to smash into the sun un-noticed.
Then I'll buy one.
Maybe tekken 2 as well.