I think I pretty much addressed your comment in my original post when I said
One speculation might be that they made the suit not stretchy but just a fixed size that EXACTLY fits you. This way you have no pressure until you expand into the suit which then applies a counter force. Where I then went on to site what I surmised be the problems with that.
Now that said, your answer makes me rethink some of my objections. One of the objections was how to prevent tissue from swelling into the dead volumes once the ambient pressure on it removed. One answer I guess is to pressureize the suit statically--not dynamically. That is fill the suit with 16 psi and seal it. Don't allow the dead volume to change and this keep the pressure constant Can this be done? I doubt it. If the suit is sealed and pressurized then one has a problem if flexation would change the volume. In which case the suit becomes stiff about the maximum volume position in vacuum. So we can't use static pressure. Need to have a regulated pressure to allow the dead volume to change to get flexibility. But now we are back to a pressure suit.
So As I said I can't quite see how this escapes using a pressurized suit. MAybe the article is just misleading.
Those pressure helmets don't seal. They only work because they are pressurized to the same pressure as the ambient water pressure and thus don't need a true seal to hold out the water. And for the rest of your plan, you're basically back to a pressurized suit.
Okay if this is really the case, no DHCP network, then why does this same thing not happen when Laptops looking for DHCP addresses come in range of duke? For example, I would imagine that whenever there's a conference or perhaps when the student show up in september that all the laptops on campus are set to hunt for DHCP by default (since that's how one usually sets up wireless networks). Seems like you'd have the same sort of storm.
Programmed cell death (apoptosis) is normally considered a good thing. Cell death is the front line against Viruses, toxins, and other pathogens. When a cell is hopelessly invaded it will immediately try to kill itself or be told to kill itself by it's neighbors? Why? Well first single cells by themselves don't have much defense against stuff so when the jig is up there's no point in trying to live on. An inveded cell is a danger to it's neighbors since the virus will use it's machinery to replicate. Thus it's a mutually assured destruction strategy. And the first thing most bugs do on entering a host is attack the signals for apoptosis. Indeed Cancer is dangerous because it's immortal.
Thus it's interesting to find a way to override perhaps the most important response shared by cells in the body.
I can't say I'm an expert sure but it seems to me it's not symmetrical. Water, i.e. you, is not compressible, but the dissolved gasses and air spaces which are equilibrated to 16 PSi can expand. (when you go from 1->2atm->1 in scuba, the dissolved gasses are still mostly equilibrated to 16psi if it's quick, but you have to decomress if you wait long enough at 2atm. )
Even if you survived the air space expansion, You'd basically have the Bends in few minutes from the dissolved gas release I believe. In addition to the painful pressure they cause, expanded gasses can also do fun stuff like kill nerves.
I'm thinking this has some inherent drawbacks. With gas pressure regulation, the pressure inside the suite is the same regardless of whether you are inside the space capsule (at 16psi ambient pressure) or outside (at zero PSI ambient). It seems to me that if this thing is mechanically applying 16 PSI in vacuum then it must apply 32 PSI when inside the capsule. That's going to raise your blood pressure. Not by enough to be harmful, (after all scuba divers have the same). But more importantly, if you take our helmet off now you suffocate inside the space capusle. You suffocate first because you cannot physcally open your lungs with 32 PSI pressing on them in a 16psi atmosphere. And secondly even if you solved that, then you still have the problem of the 32 psi pressure making it harder to dissolve gas in your blood, so your cells cant get air or release CO2. And finally, if you took your kemet off then you have the extra 16 psi in your bloodstream pushing against the back of your eye-balls.
I wonder how they dealt with that?
One speculation might be that they made the suit not stretchy but just a fixed size that EXACTLY fits you. This way you have no pressure until you expand into the suit which then applies a counter force.
However I cant' see that actually being possible, and having any flexibility. If You expand even slightly your blood pressure will drop. it would have to fit everywhere exactly, down to the gonads. cause you'd get enormous swelling in any place there was no counter-force.
Finally, I can't see how this works around your head. If the suit is not pressurized then how do you maintain 16psi pressure on the face? Sure you could have the person breath through a regulator. But the face itself would not have pressure on it.
Obviously I don't understand how this thing works or can work.
Does this statistic underline or undermine the argument that integrating and bundling IE with Windows harmed the competition? The answer to that has wide ramifications. Not just for MS. Depending on how you define markets, someday things like the Iphone may face the same questions. However the Iphone will have atleast one advantage, since it was bundled with Safari from Day one, when it was not yet a dominant player, it cannot be argued that Apple abused a monopoly position move into a new technology area.
The exception proves the rule. That's another phrase that sometimes is hard to understand. If there were never exceptions to a rule then it's essential a natural law not a keen insight. Rules of thumb are insights.
"you become what you hate". It's an amazingly true expression borne out again and again. People in their zeal to defeat an enemy they hate because of what they do, tend to gradually adopt the enemy's tactics. E.g. to "defeat" the soviet union in the cold war we became more totalitarian. To defeat the enemies of freedom, kidnappers and torturers, GWB has asked us to sacrifice civil liberties and set up guantanamo.
THis happens at the personal level too not just in the drama of nations.
One might even suspect Google finds it must sometimes adopt dubious tactics in order to quash what it sees a s Evil.
Stallman appears to be on the same road in his obsession to counter microsofts.
Kafaka's principle is hard to avoid. And when an entity feels threaten, feels it might loose or be seriously damaged it feels the ends justify the means. SOmetimes its' neccessary to stay with ones principles and tough out the assualt, rather than lose those principles.
VMware's association with intel brings to mind some questions related to Trusted Computing. Now setting aside whether or not you like trusted computing, it does enable some valuable applications so it's going to happen. Now is all the implementations I've seen described there is a progressive trust is creates as each layer of the os-middle-ware-applications-data validates the next layer is unaltered. And all this starts with some trusted boot loader.
it's difficult to see anyway that around not having this seed trust be in some piece of unalterable hardware. And even though they are not doing trusted computing I would specualte that apple puts in a few hardware doo-dads so the software can validate it's running on apple hardware. (they may not be taking advantage of this yet but I bet it's lurking).
So then since it's likely that intel will be making the trusted computing hardware, will they grant the ability to emulate the hardware to their VM?
Regardless of how you feel about MS hegemony, there is a certain practical logic to the argument that a naked PC is sort of a wink to piracy. Yes the owner might transferring over a legal copy of an OS purchased elsewhere. But realistically that's a tiny number. It's always a tricky argument to navigate. When is manufacturing lock picking tools a crime? They do have legitimate uses too. The argument is delicate because we've seen it abused, like with the arguments against the VCR, and these days, DVD ripping. One could go on and find all shades of grey (are people who write trojans and viruses committing crimes?)
In any case, there are other models for dealing with this issue that can be argued both for and against, though if we accept that it is a grey then are logical compromises. Namely system like the canadian model where taxes are paid on media and the proceeds, iirc, go to some recognized royalty distribution system. This anticipates that a lot of ripped music should have been paid for and was not, while also recognizing we can't criminalize everything, and simultaneously not over burdening legitimate use.
So how about if china were to impose a levy on all new PC's sold naked. The money would be shared out among a consortium of major OS makers. GNU/Linux should have a place at that table. I'm not quite sure in what form. But one could I think find some way to assist GNU/linux development even if there is no one recognized authority.
If at some point Linux became a major fraction of OS in China it would also make sense to stop that policy. No longer could one argue that naked PCs are piracy tools.
Read the article. The features they describe are ones we read about here on slashdot (apple design patents). Ones for rotary gestures and such. This does not mean it's an iphone or a nano. I'll note that if you have watched the multi-touch demos from that guy whose famous for them (what's his name?) and who consults for apple, his MENUs are not bars but sectored circles and you call them up with a spiral gesture. Another apple design patent was for senstitive places around the edge of a screen that are flush with the screen. That is to say physical buttons associated with the edge of a screen.
Those kinds of details could help reduce the screen area needed to support a full-featured phone and perhaps get it dow to a nano-sized thing. Too small to be a real internet broswer device but large enough to pan through a contact list.
anyhow those design patents have been out there for a long time. SO some ones discovering them does not make it news or mean there's a new product.
On the other hand apple needs a response to the two sided phone/music players from samsung. those are ipod-nano killers since even though they are larger than a nano, you could argue that the music player is actually smaller as long as you planned to have a cell phone in your pocket anyhow. A nano sized phone would kill that.
ggod point. That's what's going on with the NY times ads for new cars and Vodka. So the real insight here is that there are ads where staring time makes sense. Time to imprint a meme. and ads which are about actual sales or at least boots in the door. the metrics being presented here don't serve both kinds.
What actually happened is that sites started splitting up content over 10 or 20 pages, alla ad-view-generating tech sites today. Prepare for unending mazes of content to make you stay much longer on one web site. This sounds like a new needed firefox plug in. Content-re-aggregator. Detects multiple page articles and re-assembles them into one page or at least pre-loads them all. It does not actually have to detect anything. in manual mode you tell it when to re-aggregate, in ultra-dumb mode maybe you even show it where the "next" button is. Then wham. Re-aggregates the content, strips out the ads and replaces them with google-ads. Cha Ching.
What matters is not page views or page durations but redirects to pay-sites. That's the value of any site from an advertisers point of view. When I read the NY times I spend a long time there but I'm not likely to be shopping and even if I was in a mood to shop the probability they happen to show me an ad for something I'm interested in is close to nil. Plus the adds they tend to show there are delux flash moving ads or big long columns.
Now when I go to google and type in "blow up dolls" or Airline miles or 629 investments or some purchase worthy topic, I read the ads. Not only that but the ads are short. so I don't spend much time. But I click through a dozen of them into tabs in a few seconds.
When I watch you tube, how long to I look at the ads? probably not at all--I scroll then off screen. But I do see the adds on the leader of the video. But that's only a few second on a 5 minute video. A good and focused 5 seconds yes. Even subject worthy 5 seconds. But not 5 minutes.
I noticed that the requirements all so call for sealed, anerobic operation. That means no air-breathing fuel cells or combustion systems. Thus gasoline + O2 is out, as is hydrogen+02. additionally it means any reactions that produce gas (e.g. c02) are not allowed either.
part of the weight is going to be the power conversion and switching to handle load profiles. It's not clear if the weight includes the wearable harness. Presumbaly the harness has to include a heat shield and other safety features (fire/explosion safety and armoring agains pucture.
My original calculations were a teeny bit off. the goal is 4kg not 4.5 kg.
if the 8MJ/KG batteries were used then this would require about 0.75 Kg of battery mass. so that leaves up to 3.25KG for packaging/safety/conversion/ harness.
from the DOD site: "Demonstrate a wearable electric power system providing 96 hours of equipment operation at less than half the current weight. The power system should attach to a garment (vest) and provide 20W average electric power for 96 hours with peak power requirements of up to 200W for short periods. All components, including the generation, storage, electronics, and connections must weigh 4kg or less, including the attachment system. The total minimum energy required is 1920 W-hr (20W * 96hr)."
The call is incredibly poorly worded but it appears the current weight is 9Kg (about 20 pound, not the 40 pounds states in the article linked to)
1920 W-hr is about 6 MJoules and if we assume that means 4.5 KG then that's 1.5MJ/Kg.
currently Mg-hydride (with Li) gets over 8Mj/Kg. So you could win this contest right now using those, assuming the pulse-power requirments are achievable. http://www.energyadvocate.com/fw64.htm
to put this in perspective, as to what is ultimately possible to achieve in a quasi theoretical limit: Gasoline holds about 44 Mjoules / Kg. So a perfect electrical conversion from gasoline would be only 5 fold more than what is available now.
Slashdot Mirror
good points. Or maybe they have a quick release tensioner about the torso like a ski boot?
Now that said, your answer makes me rethink some of my objections. One of the objections was how to prevent tissue from swelling into the dead volumes once the ambient pressure on it removed. One answer I guess is to pressureize the suit statically--not dynamically. That is fill the suit with 16 psi and seal it. Don't allow the dead volume to change and this keep the pressure constant Can this be done? I doubt it. If the suit is sealed and pressurized then one has a problem if flexation would change the volume. In which case the suit becomes stiff about the maximum volume position in vacuum. So we can't use static pressure. Need to have a regulated pressure to allow the dead volume to change to get flexibility. But now we are back to a pressure suit.
So As I said I can't quite see how this escapes using a pressurized suit. MAybe the article is just misleading.
Those pressure helmets don't seal. They only work because they are pressurized to the same pressure as the ambient water pressure and thus don't need a true seal to hold out the water. And for the rest of your plan, you're basically back to a pressurized suit.
Okay if this is really the case, no DHCP network, then why does this same thing not happen when Laptops looking for DHCP addresses come in range of duke? For example, I would imagine that whenever there's a conference or perhaps when the student show up in september that all the laptops on campus are set to hunt for DHCP by default (since that's how one usually sets up wireless networks). Seems like you'd have the same sort of storm.
Programmed cell death (apoptosis) is normally considered a good thing. Cell death is the front line against Viruses, toxins, and other pathogens. When a cell is hopelessly invaded it will immediately try to kill itself or be told to kill itself by it's neighbors? Why? Well first single cells by themselves don't have much defense against stuff so when the jig is up there's no point in trying to live on. An inveded cell is a danger to it's neighbors since the virus will use it's machinery to replicate. Thus it's a mutually assured destruction strategy. And the first thing most bugs do on entering a host is attack the signals for apoptosis. Indeed Cancer is dangerous because it's immortal.
Thus it's interesting to find a way to override perhaps the most important response shared by cells in the body.
I can't say I'm an expert sure but it seems to me it's not symmetrical. Water, i.e. you, is not compressible, but the dissolved gasses and air spaces which are equilibrated to 16 PSi can expand. (when you go from 1->2atm->1 in scuba, the dissolved gasses are still mostly equilibrated to 16psi if it's quick, but you have to decomress if you wait long enough at 2atm. )
Even if you survived the air space expansion, You'd basically have the Bends in few minutes from the dissolved gas release I believe. In addition to the painful pressure they cause, expanded gasses can also do fun stuff like kill nerves.
How can it possibly make a seal to part of the person? If no seal then the limbs are pressurized too.
I'm thinking this has some inherent drawbacks. With gas pressure regulation, the pressure inside the suite is the same regardless of whether you are inside the space capsule (at 16psi ambient pressure) or outside (at zero PSI ambient). It seems to me that if this thing is mechanically applying 16 PSI in vacuum then it must apply 32 PSI when inside the capsule. That's going to raise your blood pressure. Not by enough to be harmful, (after all scuba divers have the same). But more importantly, if you take our helmet off now you suffocate inside the space capusle. You suffocate first because you cannot physcally open your lungs with 32 PSI pressing on them in a 16psi atmosphere. And secondly even if you solved that, then you still have the problem of the 32 psi pressure making it harder to dissolve gas in your blood, so your cells cant get air or release CO2. And finally, if you took your kemet off then you have the extra 16 psi in your bloodstream pushing against the back of your eye-balls.
I wonder how they dealt with that?
One speculation might be that they made the suit not stretchy but just a fixed size that EXACTLY fits you. This way you have no pressure until you expand into the suit which then applies a counter force.
However I cant' see that actually being possible, and having any flexibility. If You expand even slightly your blood pressure will drop. it would have to fit everywhere exactly, down to the gonads. cause you'd get enormous swelling in any place there was no counter-force.
Finally, I can't see how this works around your head. If the suit is not pressurized then how do you maintain 16psi pressure on the face? Sure you could have the person breath through a regulator. But the face itself would not have pressure on it.
Obviously I don't understand how this thing works or can work.
I'll finally be able to rent all of the Aliens movies and watch them without leaving the room.
Since when is fear something that needs curing? And if it's so bad why do we make horror movies? Or play hide and seek in the graveyard at night?
Does this statistic underline or undermine the argument that integrating and bundling IE with Windows harmed the competition? The answer to that has wide ramifications. Not just for MS. Depending on how you define markets, someday things like the Iphone may face the same questions. However the Iphone will have atleast one advantage, since it was bundled with Safari from Day one, when it was not yet a dominant player, it cannot be argued that Apple abused a monopoly position move into a new technology area.
The exception proves the rule.
That's another phrase that sometimes is hard to understand. If there were never exceptions to a rule then it's essential a natural law not a keen insight. Rules of thumb are insights.
"you become what you hate".
It's an amazingly true expression borne out again and again. People in their zeal to defeat an enemy they hate because of what they do, tend to gradually adopt the enemy's tactics. E.g. to "defeat" the soviet union in the cold war we became more totalitarian. To defeat the enemies of freedom, kidnappers and torturers, GWB has asked us to sacrifice civil liberties and set up guantanamo.
THis happens at the personal level too not just in the drama of nations.
One might even suspect Google finds it must sometimes adopt dubious tactics in order to quash what it sees a s Evil.
Stallman appears to be on the same road in his obsession to counter microsofts.
Kafaka's principle is hard to avoid. And when an entity feels threaten, feels it might loose or be seriously damaged it feels the ends justify the means. SOmetimes its' neccessary to stay with ones principles and tough out the assualt, rather than lose those principles.
Transactions.
real and secure electronic banking. Electronic voting. All sorts of commerce.
Not sure if you are joking, but we all know how the intel compilers slow down code for AMDs.
VMware's association with intel brings to mind some questions related to Trusted Computing. Now setting aside whether or not you like trusted computing, it does enable some valuable applications so it's going to happen. Now is all the implementations I've seen described there is a progressive trust is creates as each layer of the os-middle-ware-applications-data validates the next layer is unaltered. And all this starts with some trusted boot loader.
it's difficult to see anyway that around not having this seed trust be in some piece of unalterable hardware. And even though they are not doing trusted computing I would specualte that apple puts in a few hardware doo-dads so the software can validate it's running on apple hardware. (they may not be taking advantage of this yet but I bet it's lurking).
So then since it's likely that intel will be making the trusted computing hardware, will they grant the ability to emulate the hardware to their VM?
Regardless of how you feel about MS hegemony, there is a certain practical logic to the argument that a naked PC is sort of a wink to piracy. Yes the owner might transferring over a legal copy of an OS purchased elsewhere. But realistically that's a tiny number. It's always a tricky argument to navigate. When is manufacturing lock picking tools a crime? They do have legitimate uses too. The argument is delicate because we've seen it abused, like with the arguments against the VCR, and these days, DVD ripping. One could go on and find all shades of grey (are people who write trojans and viruses committing crimes?)
In any case, there are other models for dealing with this issue that can be argued both for and against, though if we accept that it is a grey then are logical compromises. Namely system like the canadian model where taxes are paid on media and the proceeds, iirc, go to some recognized royalty distribution system. This anticipates that a lot of ripped music should have been paid for and was not, while also recognizing we can't criminalize everything, and simultaneously not over burdening legitimate use.
So how about if china were to impose a levy on all new PC's sold naked. The money would be shared out among a consortium of major OS makers. GNU/Linux should have a place at that table. I'm not quite sure in what form. But one could I think find some way to assist GNU/linux development even if there is no one recognized authority.
If at some point Linux became a major fraction of OS in China it would also make sense to stop that policy. No longer could one argue that naked PCs are piracy tools.
Read the article. The features they describe are ones we read about here on slashdot (apple design patents). Ones for rotary gestures and such. This does not mean it's an iphone or a nano. I'll note that if you have watched the multi-touch demos from that guy whose famous for them (what's his name?) and who consults for apple, his MENUs are not bars but sectored circles and you call them up with a spiral gesture. Another apple design patent was for senstitive places around the edge of a screen that are flush with the screen. That is to say physical buttons associated with the edge of a screen.
Those kinds of details could help reduce the screen area needed to support a full-featured phone and perhaps get it dow to a nano-sized thing. Too small to be a real internet broswer device but large enough to pan through a contact list.
anyhow those design patents have been out there for a long time. SO some ones discovering them does not make it news or mean there's a new product.
On the other hand apple needs a response to the two sided phone/music players from samsung. those are ipod-nano killers since even though they are larger than a nano, you could argue that the music player is actually smaller as long as you planned to have a cell phone in your pocket anyhow. A nano sized phone would kill that.
ggod point. That's what's going on with the NY times ads for new cars and Vodka. So the real insight here is that there are ads where staring time makes sense. Time to imprint a meme. and ads which are about actual sales or at least boots in the door. the metrics being presented here don't serve both kinds.
What matters is not page views or page durations but redirects to pay-sites. That's the value of any site from an advertisers point of view. When I read the NY times I spend a long time there but I'm not likely to be shopping and even if I was in a mood to shop the probability they happen to show me an ad for something I'm interested in is close to nil. Plus the adds they tend to show there are delux flash moving ads or big long columns.
Now when I go to google and type in "blow up dolls" or Airline miles or 629 investments or some purchase worthy topic, I read the ads. Not only that but the ads are short. so I don't spend much time. But I click through a dozen of them into tabs in a few seconds.
When I watch you tube, how long to I look at the ads? probably not at all--I scroll then off screen. But I do see the adds on the leader of the video. But that's only a few second on a 5 minute video. A good and focused 5 seconds yes. Even subject worthy 5 seconds. But not 5 minutes.
This is gonna go over like a led archos.
Contest rules so no radio nucleotides
I noticed that the requirements all so call for sealed, anerobic operation. That means no air-breathing fuel cells or combustion systems. Thus gasoline + O2 is out, as is hydrogen+02. additionally it means any reactions that produce gas (e.g. c02) are not allowed either.
part of the weight is going to be the power conversion and switching to handle load profiles. It's not clear if the weight includes the wearable harness. Presumbaly the harness has to include a heat shield and other safety features (fire/explosion safety and armoring agains pucture.
My original calculations were a teeny bit off. the goal is 4kg not 4.5 kg.
if the 8MJ/KG batteries were used then this would require about 0.75 Kg of battery mass. so that leaves up to 3.25KG for packaging/safety/conversion/ harness.
first the TFA is wrong. the goal is to cut the weight by only a factor of 2.
http://www.dod.mil/ddre/prize/rules_doc.html
from the DOD site:
"Demonstrate a wearable electric power system providing 96 hours of equipment operation at less than half the current weight. The power system should attach to a garment (vest) and provide 20W average electric power for 96 hours with peak power requirements of up to 200W for short periods. All components, including the generation, storage, electronics, and connections must weigh 4kg or less, including the attachment system. The total minimum energy required is 1920 W-hr (20W * 96hr)."
The call is incredibly poorly worded but it appears the current weight is 9Kg (about 20 pound, not the 40 pounds states in the article linked to)
1920 W-hr is about 6 MJoules and if we assume that means 4.5 KG then that's 1.5MJ/Kg.
currently Mg-hydride (with Li) gets over 8Mj/Kg. So you could win this contest right now using those, assuming the pulse-power requirments are achievable.
http://www.energyadvocate.com/fw64.htm
to put this in perspective, as to what is ultimately possible to achieve in a quasi theoretical limit: Gasoline holds about 44 Mjoules / Kg. So a perfect electrical conversion from gasoline would be only 5 fold more than what is available now.
The book had a lot more instances of catch-22
1) You could only "see" Major Major Major when he was not in. If he was in you could not see him, until later, when he was out.
2) The italian police were not permitted to tell those they arrested what they had been charged with.
Kid's these days! How many slashdotters don't know what Catch-22 is?