Not a bad idea. I was considering buying my wife a reader for her birthday, and was comparing kindle to nook. Came across lots of postings on various websites about jailbreaking the nook and turning it into a not-so-bad android-based tablet for less money than any of the (then) current offerings. Almost bought a nook to play with, but I simply cannot justify owning a tablet as well as a laptop _and_ smartphone (N8). Can't imagine anything what would fall through the cracks that a tablet would catch. It might be perfect for someone else tho
A while back our house had both dsl and cable, one dedicated to my wife's business, and one for my convenience. Both were run into dedicated old boxes running openbsd firewalls. Each box used the same intranet prefix (192.168.5.x), but one box was two and the other ten on our intranet. Under normal circumstances my network and my wife's were not wired together. Benefits were:
.
1) My major uploads/downloads would not slow down her business and vice versa.
2) My investigation of NSFW websites would never be traced back to her business (although I know there a better ways around that).
3) If her network was down, I could run a cat-5 to her switch from mine and change her gateway machine setting temporarily and she was back up, and vice-versa.
4) If (slim chance) either of the firewall machines were to be hacked, presumably the other would remain un-hacked, and available.
What tickles me is the idea that had they been able to get a bit more gravity the sisters could have stayed together. How happy they would have been!
Then again maybe each of them had precisely the right amount of gravity, but they were hurrying along far too quickly. Hence they could not live happily ever after. Take this lesson to heart, dear reader.
You are correct from the point of view of the payload. Running around the track does not in itself alter the energy content of the payload.
However, if one considers conservation of momentum on the entire track/payload system, the changing momentum of the payload requires a corresponding change in momentum of the track (bolted to earth?).
From the point of view of the track, we have, at each point on the track, a 7.2 MN impulse recurring at 1 hz. I was grasping for an easy way of quantifying the result of that. I guess that motion induced in the track by such impulses is likely to be a complicated combination of pressure waves (causing heating) and material mechanical response. The energy dissipated in these processes should be proportional to the impulse. My reasoning may be too simplistic, and my numbers wrong, but I remain convinced that changing momentum on the payload (at this scale) will involve a dissipation of large quantities of energy.
For the record, I expect that, if this scheme were tested, the payload, the track, or both would deform and/or melt long before the payload reached 10 km/s. I have burned my fingers on too many hammered nails to believe otherwise.
So if our radial force is 7.2 MN, and our track is (using round numbers) 6 km in circumference, and the payload is moving at a velocity of 6 km/s, so that it traverses once around the track in one second, the energy expended just to keep going in a circle is around 43 MJ, hence a power dissipation of > 43 MW.
Note that at 6 km/s, our payload energy is only at 36% of the launch energy, and assuming 43 MW of linear acceleration, we would require several minutes to achieve launch velocity.
In short, for accelerations lasting many hours, an enormous amount of power will be expended in preserving circular motion, and the efficiency will be lousy. Even if acceleration times are shortened, the amount of power needing to be dissipated will still be enormous.
Actually, railguns have velocity limitations based on friction between the rails and a conducting solid armature, or drag in a conducting plasma armature. AFAIK, no railgun has ever exceeded the performance of a multistage light gas gun. The best shot I know of was 6 km/s which is certainly a sub-orbital velocity.
The best bang for the buck I've found (and used) is the Echo Mia Midi PCI card. It is a pain getting it to work on Linux, but it will work there and I assume it is much more easily configured under Windows or on a Mac.
AFAIK all the songs at the site www.mauiruhisongs.com were recorded using that card [disclaimer: religious content], so you can listen there to get an idea of the quality of the sound.
Two channels in and two out are not enough for some though.
The only thing I don't see is talking about knowing where the machines are in the real world...
Seems to me they could run the algorithm backwards a couple of times using a known seismic event along with a few machines in a known location and find where you are.
The thing that bothers me is the implicit assumption that "deja vu" is an aberation of thought/experience.
In fact, my experience has been that I occasionally have vivid dreams that I can describe to others the morning after they occur, and several months or years later the conditions of the dream actually occur in real life. For me, then, deja vu is a real experience and not a mal-function of the brain. So too, it is proof to me of the time-unconstrained nature of the soul.
Perhaps, though, science will be able to prove that I am mistaken. Let me sleep on that one.
As one who is approaching retirement and could probably retire today, I will say that AFAICT the joys of retirement are over-rated.
If you work in a job doing what you love, you can mostly forget even thinking about retirement, and leave it as a contingency for when your powers start failing. Granted, one must work in joyless jobs sometimes before getting into a career that matches the promptings of your heart. In that case, work as many jobs as needed to get past that point. Just remember that your goal is not to not have to work, but to reach a plateau where your work suits you.
IMHO life is not about getting to a finish line earliest, but rather about the fruit your presence here produces. It has been noted elsewhere that a tree that produces no fruit is only suitable for the fire.
I have used the (two input only) Echo Mia Midi card on Demudi Linux with Ardour. Setting up the driver was an ordeal (and not for the technically dis-inclined), but once installed and working, it performed flawlessly.
I have wondered if it were possible to install several such cards to get a more-than-two input configuration, but I have not tried it, nor am I convinced that Jack would do the right thing.
For now, iterative overdubbing works fine. To hear some of the results, check here [Disclaimer: Music is religious].
Okay, I googled a bit and found a paper that purports to calculate the effect.
It suggests that if you have two counter-rotating out-of-phase sinusoidally synchronous electromagnets with mu=100 and 60 amps through 10,000 turns of coils that you might see a fraction of a newton of force.
So the reasons you haven't seen this are:
a) The effect is small. b) No one has ever thought to set up this experiment.
The theory this is based on has produced some remarkable results in predicting the existence, mass and half-life of various elementary particles, so perhaps it is worth the trouble of setting up the unusual conditions necessary to test for the predicted gravitational effect.
If you are clever enough, perhaps you could find a way to validate the theory with your big-ass magnet. Otherwise, you shall be left wallowing in the invariant gravitation well in which you find yourself trapped.
And yet who cannot but marvel at the subtle humor of a creator who has endowed humans with the faculty of belief while at the same time denying them any rationale for exercising said faculty.
My own sense is that the intelligent believers have some understanding of the verse:
"Far above that which they attribute to Him is He"
After the big bang, After the stars coalesced, burned and exploded, Spewing dust of the various elements... After the dust condensed into planets, This planet formed.
And that dust, here, assembled itself into chemically active, Moving, speciating, reproducing organisms, Of which we are but a recent manifestation.
If we then extend the lifetimes our chemistry allows, We are still no more or less than the detritus Of long dead stars, Pretending to be something more.
And pride in the count of our years Is but a measure of our vanity.
Unless, of course, there were intent or design, And hence meaning, To our existing.
In the case of Slackware, the install and initial configuration is about the only thing that is easily accomplished and can be narrated in a small article. When one tries to do something more interesting, such as adding state-of-the-art hardware, patching the kernel for low-latency, or turning a slack-box into a media center or audio workstation, the writeup will quickly degenerate into an exposition of thousands of manual build/configuration steps requiring arcane and esoteric knowledge of the entire system, which will frighten away all but the most capable or most foolish (that would be me).
Don't get me wrong. I prefer slackware for my personal systems, mainly because, once setup, it is rock solid. Still I hesitate to try to wring new functionality from an install, as it invariably requires days of research, trial and error before I reach the new plateau of stability successfully. In fairness, I have to say that this is somewhat true of all distros, and if one has a particular task in mind, one should find the distro that is custom-configured for that task (hence I use DeMudi for my audio work, and OpenBSD for the firewall).
Otherwise, here is the rest of the review for you:
I browsed the web, it worked. I played some music, it worked. I sent some e-mail, it worked. I wrote and printed my resume from kword, it worked. I computed my mortgage payout in gnumeric, it worked. I downloaded pictures from my camera, it worked - except I had to figure out that "mount" thingy,
Actually, I am truly disappointed that SuicideGirls advertisements appear on Slashdot's front page. I find the site offensive as an objectification of women, and think it is socially detrimental as it fosters a focus on prurient interests.
I'm sure there are those who will argue about freedoms and consenting adults and such, but I always wonder where one should begin to draw the line on such things. Clearly many would object to advertisement to sites that promote bestiality or child pornography. I submit that if a site is not suitable for work, there should not be a damn hot link to it on Slashdot's front page.
If I were interested in porn, it is easy enough to find.
So call me a prude and mod me as flamebait, but I vainly hope that Slashdot will show a little bit of social responsibility.
Due to the latency between invention and delivery (and presupposing several generations of testing), I suspect that we will not see this in our lifetime.
The consolation is that it is commonly accepted that fashion models are over-rated, although I would need to perform direct testing to confirm that hypothesis.
Technology, industry and wealth are not necessarily zero-sum games.
If one technology is exported overseas, another may be developed to take its place. People who no longer work in an industry that has been outsourced will be available to develop and support new industries. The fact that your poor neighbor gets a little wealthier does not automatically make you poorer.
The genius of American business has always been in dreaming up new technologies, having the willingness to fail and try again at realizing them, and filtering the results through a (relatively) free market to eliminate all but the truly useful and beneficial ones.
To the extent that restrictive IP laws interfere with that process, I agree that there is a real danger.
Competition from the rest of the world could be regarded as a further filter on our technological development which forces us to reallocate effort from mature and commoditized technologies (with low margin) to into ones that are just emerging (high margin).
Personally, I would love it if we could create so many technologies and services that every working person in every country of the world could be as well off as a middle-class American. Perhaps that is too much to dream.
Okay, this is further off-topic, but the radio dial for changing stations (in every radio I dissected) was a variable capacitor, not a potentiometer. And OBTW, a potentiometer (when not referring to a measuring instrument) is the same thing as a variable resistor. Of course that was way before the advent of IC-based radios, in which case you may be somewhat correct. Then again, maybe your radio wasn't boxed in wood or made using tubes like mine.
And I bet you didn't have to walk to school uphill both ways like I did...
I'd rather they added some jet engines, exhaust vectoring, GPS, autopilot, collision avoidance system, and emergency parachute. Then I could see people using them.
Slashdot Mirror
Not a bad idea. I was considering buying my wife a reader for her birthday, and was comparing kindle to nook. Came across lots of postings on various websites about jailbreaking the nook and turning it into a not-so-bad android-based tablet for less money than any of the (then) current offerings. Almost bought a nook to play with, but I simply cannot justify owning a tablet as well as a laptop _and_ smartphone (N8). Can't imagine anything what would fall through the cracks that a tablet would catch. It might be perfect for someone else tho
.
1) My major uploads/downloads would not slow down her business and vice versa.
2) My investigation of NSFW websites would never be traced back to her business (although I know there a better ways around that).
3) If her network was down, I could run a cat-5 to her switch from mine and change her gateway machine setting temporarily and she was back up, and vice-versa.
4) If (slim chance) either of the firewall machines were to be hacked, presumably the other would remain un-hacked, and available.
Anyway, it worked for us.
I'm saving my vote for P.Ditty! (yes he's over 35 now).
He's a better entertainer than Reagan, a better businessman than Bush, and he's pretty adept at slogans and sound bytes.
Excellent point!
What tickles me is the idea that had they been able to get a bit more gravity the sisters could have stayed together. How happy they would have been!
Then again maybe each of them had precisely the right amount of gravity, but they were hurrying along far too quickly. Hence they could not live happily ever after. Take this lesson to heart, dear reader.
You are correct from the point of view of the payload. Running around the track does not in itself alter the energy content of the payload.
However, if one considers conservation of momentum on the entire track/payload system, the changing momentum of the payload requires a corresponding change in momentum of the track (bolted to earth?).
From the point of view of the track, we have, at each point on the track, a 7.2 MN impulse recurring at 1 hz. I was grasping for an easy way of quantifying the result of that. I guess that motion induced in the track by such impulses is likely to be a complicated combination of pressure waves (causing heating) and material mechanical response. The energy dissipated in these processes should be proportional to the impulse. My reasoning may be too simplistic, and my numbers wrong, but I remain convinced that changing momentum on the payload (at this scale) will involve a dissipation of large quantities of energy.
For the record, I expect that, if this scheme were tested, the payload, the track, or both would deform and/or melt long before the payload reached 10 km/s. I have burned my fingers on too many hammered nails to believe otherwise.
So if our radial force is 7.2 MN, and our track is (using round numbers) 6 km in circumference, and the payload is moving at a velocity of 6 km/s, so that it traverses once around the track in one second, the energy expended just to keep going in a circle is around 43 MJ, hence a power dissipation of > 43 MW.
Note that at 6 km/s, our payload energy is only at 36% of the launch energy, and assuming 43 MW of linear acceleration, we would require several minutes to achieve launch velocity.
In short, for accelerations lasting many hours, an enormous amount of power will be expended in preserving circular motion, and the efficiency will be lousy. Even if acceleration times are shortened, the amount of power needing to be dissipated will still be enormous.
...Rail guns don't suffer from this limitation...
Actually, railguns have velocity limitations based on friction between the rails and a conducting solid armature, or drag in a conducting plasma armature. AFAIK, no railgun has ever exceeded the performance of a multistage light gas gun. The best shot I know of was 6 km/s which is certainly a sub-orbital velocity.
Coilguns will not have this same problem.
The best bang for the buck I've found (and used) is the Echo Mia Midi PCI card. It is a pain getting it to work on Linux, but it will work there and I assume it is much more easily configured under Windows or on a Mac.
AFAIK all the songs at the site www.mauiruhisongs.com were recorded using that card [disclaimer: religious content], so you can listen there to get an idea of the quality of the sound.
Two channels in and two out are not enough for some though.
Seems to me they could run the algorithm backwards a couple of times using a known seismic event along with a few machines in a known location and find where you are.
Oh no... something else to be paranoid about.
FWIW
In fact, my experience has been that I occasionally have vivid dreams that I can describe to others the morning after they occur, and several months or years later the conditions of the dream actually occur in real life. For me, then, deja vu is a real experience and not a mal-function of the brain. So too, it is proof to me of the time-unconstrained nature of the soul.
Perhaps, though, science will be able to prove that I am mistaken. Let me sleep on that one.
Actually, I will be escaping from this dimension shortly after my 70th birthday. My children will be following some twenty or so years thereafter.
I'm not sure I will be able to take my little dog with me, though.
As one who is approaching retirement and could probably retire today, I will say that AFAICT the joys of retirement are over-rated.
If you work in a job doing what you love, you can mostly forget even thinking about retirement, and leave it as a contingency for when your powers start failing. Granted, one must work in joyless jobs sometimes before getting into a career that matches the promptings of your heart. In that case, work as many jobs as needed to get past that point. Just remember that your goal is not to not have to work, but to reach a plateau where your work suits you.
IMHO life is not about getting to a finish line earliest, but rather about the fruit your presence here produces. It has been noted elsewhere that a tree that produces no fruit is only suitable for the fire.
I have used the (two input only) Echo Mia Midi card on Demudi Linux with Ardour. Setting up the driver was an ordeal (and not for the technically dis-inclined), but once installed and working, it performed flawlessly.
I have wondered if it were possible to install several such cards to get a more-than-two input configuration, but I have not tried it, nor am I convinced that Jack would do the right thing.
For now, iterative overdubbing works fine. To hear some of the results, check here [Disclaimer: Music is religious].
Okay, I googled a bit and found a paper that purports to calculate the effect.
It suggests that if you have two counter-rotating out-of-phase sinusoidally synchronous electromagnets with mu=100 and 60 amps through 10,000 turns of coils that you might see a fraction of a newton of force.
So the reasons you haven't seen this are:
a) The effect is small.
b) No one has ever thought to set up this experiment.
The theory this is based on has produced some remarkable results in predicting the existence, mass and half-life of various elementary particles, so perhaps it is worth the trouble of setting up the unusual conditions necessary to test for the predicted gravitational effect.
If you are clever enough, perhaps you could find a way to validate the theory with your big-ass magnet. Otherwise, you shall be left wallowing in the invariant gravitation well in which you find yourself trapped.
In one fell swoop, you demonstrate your ignorance and deny the existence of a man's life's work. You might have done some research first.
I'm stunned that ignorance is modded insightful.
And yet who cannot but marvel at the subtle humor of a creator who has endowed humans with the faculty of belief while at the same time denying them any rationale for exercising said faculty.
My own sense is that the intelligent believers have some understanding of the verse:
"Far above that which they attribute to Him is He"
After the big bang,
After the stars coalesced, burned and exploded,
Spewing dust of the various elements...
After the dust condensed into planets,
This planet formed.
And that dust, here, assembled itself into chemically active,
Moving, speciating, reproducing organisms,
Of which we are but a recent manifestation.
If we then extend the lifetimes our chemistry allows,
We are still no more or less than the detritus
Of long dead stars,
Pretending to be something more.
And pride in the count of our years
Is but a measure of our vanity.
Unless, of course, there were intent or design,
And hence meaning,
To our existing.
Don't get me wrong. I prefer slackware for my personal systems, mainly because, once setup, it is rock solid. Still I hesitate to try to wring new functionality from an install, as it invariably requires days of research, trial and error before I reach the new plateau of stability successfully. In fairness, I have to say that this is somewhat true of all distros, and if one has a particular task in mind, one should find the distro that is custom-configured for that task (hence I use DeMudi for my audio work, and OpenBSD for the firewall).
Otherwise, here is the rest of the review for you:
I browsed the web, it worked.
I played some music, it worked.
I sent some e-mail, it worked.
I wrote and printed my resume from kword, it worked.
I computed my mortgage payout in gnumeric, it worked.
I downloaded pictures from my camera, it worked - except I had to figure out that "mount" thingy,
... so you get the idea.
Actually, I am truly disappointed that SuicideGirls advertisements appear on Slashdot's front page. I find the site offensive as an objectification of women, and think it is socially detrimental as it fosters a focus on prurient interests.
I'm sure there are those who will argue about freedoms and consenting adults and such, but I always wonder where one should begin to draw the line on such things. Clearly many would object to advertisement to sites that promote bestiality or child pornography. I submit that if a site is not suitable for work, there should not be a damn hot link to it on Slashdot's front page.
If I were interested in porn, it is easy enough to find.
So call me a prude and mod me as flamebait, but I vainly hope that Slashdot will show a little bit of social responsibility.
Due to the latency between invention and delivery (and presupposing several generations of testing), I suspect that we will not see this in our lifetime.
The consolation is that it is commonly accepted that fashion models are over-rated, although I would need to perform direct testing to confirm that hypothesis.
Technology, industry and wealth are not necessarily zero-sum games.
If one technology is exported overseas, another may be developed to take its place. People who no longer work in an industry that has been outsourced will be available to develop and support new industries. The fact that your poor neighbor gets a little wealthier does not automatically make you poorer.
The genius of American business has always been in dreaming up new technologies, having the willingness to fail and try again at realizing them, and filtering the results through a (relatively) free market to eliminate all but the truly useful and beneficial ones.
To the extent that restrictive IP laws interfere with that process, I agree that there is a real danger.
Competition from the rest of the world could be regarded as a further filter on our technological development which forces us to reallocate effort from mature and commoditized technologies (with low margin) to into ones that are just emerging (high margin).
Personally, I would love it if we could create so many technologies and services that every working person in every country of the world could be as well off as a middle-class American. Perhaps that is too much to dream.
Okay, this is further off-topic, but the radio dial for changing stations (in every radio I dissected) was a variable capacitor, not a potentiometer. And OBTW, a potentiometer (when not referring to a measuring instrument) is the same thing as a variable resistor. Of course that was way before the advent of IC-based radios, in which case you may be somewhat correct. Then again, maybe your radio wasn't boxed in wood or made using tubes like mine.
And I bet you didn't have to walk to school uphill both ways like I did...
(-1 crotchety)
I'd rather they added some jet engines, exhaust vectoring, GPS, autopilot, collision avoidance system, and emergency parachute. Then I could see people using them.
Yep, we're just waiting for someone who knows what step two is:
2) ???