Considering the ocean is only 7 miles deep (or 2.3 leagues) at its deepest, I will assume you are referring to the book "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" when you say "from 20,000 leagues", since it would be quite impossible for a squid to come from 20,000 leagues deep when that distance is greater than the Earth's diameter.
A 9mm Glock 17 can be fired underwater, but the range and penetration is extremely limited. A shotgun would be useless, except for blowing out your eardrums from the shockwave.
"what is the real difference between creating tools and using them"
Whoa, there. By that logic, we shouldn't be able to sue those evil companies that make those nasty guns. Are you saying that it's the USER, not the creator, that's at fault when a program or firearm is misused?! Preposterous!
"Who told you fusion won't generate any radioactive waste?"
Depends on the type of fusion. The kind most easily within our reach does produce some waste. Be darned if I can find info the different kinds of fusion now, but you can use different mixes of deuterium and tritium and other stuff. Some of these reactions produce no or only trace amounts of radioactive waste.
Solar, wind, hydro, thermal, etc. A large home solar system can power even a large house for everything except A/C and electric heating and cooking. Centralized wind or sun farms or dams (and natural gas appliances and heat pumps) can do the rest.
The only thing standing in solar's way is the large up-front cost.
#1 is NOT a technical problem, it's a political one. If the government does away with the stupid policy that prohibits converting and using the waste for other things, there would be no waste problem.
Wow, that's pretty ingenious! Thanks for the link. Only thing I don't like is the sleeve-bearing fan, which won't last long. I'm sure there are plenty of ball bearing 120mm fans you could replace it with, though.
I've stuck 4 7,200rpm IDE drives in a case... and promptly killed two of them within days. I had to add a rear exhaust fan to the case, a PCI slot blower, and I removed the blanking panels in front of the drives to get more airflow. The drives now stay merely warm to the touch (instead of HOT), and the drives have been fine ever since.
8 of those suckers are going to get toasty without plenty of auxilliary cooling.
Well, you see, when the ice melts and the Gulf stream turns into freshwater, the temperature of the buoys will read 13 degrees cooler than normal, and little lights will blink on a computer. But no-one will take it seriously, especially the vice president, until the helicopters freeze and crash because their fuel froze because it was -150*F, because a reverse funnel thing made air from space come down in a big hurricane thing only over land. THEN they'll relize there are these three big storms coming down and will destroy all life on earth, except the people in libraries in flooded New York and the guys walking around in Arctic gear. And even then it will suck because they have to burn books and cut the rope that the guys are hanging from, and then the wolves will attack when they try to get medicine from a ship floating in New York (except the water's frozen now), and after they get away from the wolves the frost forming on everything really fast will make them have to run as fast as they can back to the library. Finally the arctic dudes will make it to the library and the little kid with cancer is saved by an ambulance at the las minute, and everybody moves to Mexico to live in tent cities and these long hanger looking things, and the vice president (who's now President because of another helicopter crash) will admit he was wrong and Global Warming is bad, real bad, because now the guys in the space station can see that all of the US is now snow and ice.
That's why.
You also don't need to watch 'The Day After Tomorrow' now.
I don't think Mini-ITX is that great of a deal to begin with, pricewise. For less than $50 you can get a cheap uATX mobo with video/LAN/sound and for another $50 a 1.6GHz Duron. You'd spend at least that much on a slower VIA board+CPU. The only thing Mini-ITX buys you is silence and space.
"the lamps, dirt, and space needed for the plants to grow would be less efficient"
I'm inclined to agree, for a short mission. Except, they don't need to stock enough soil/nutrients/water etc for 5 years, because they can use and re-use the water and uh, human waste, over and over again, resulting in a semi-closed loop. Depending on how closed the loop is and how long they're out, there is some point where this becomes more efficient. I guess they've done the math.
Who cares about the laws of some puny earthbound government like the US. These guys are going to be in *space*, for crying out loud. Isn't that kind of like international waters?
At least explain why. Wet cell batteries vent (explosive) hydrogen when charging. That's why when you jumpstart a car you make the final connection to ground (earth) away from the battery. Too much hydrogen floating around the battery that a stray spark could ignite.
Sealed gel batteries, which to not vent, are fine indoors. That's what most UPSes use.
"Using an Inverter is a HIGHLY inefficient power source!"
Well, yeah, but since all of his computers and appliances and everything are designed to run off AC, you *need* an inverter to get AC out of your DC batteries.
Converting all his equipment to DC would be extremely complicated, not to mention prohibitively expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
"save attack by the squid from 20,000 leagues"
/., after all.
Considering the ocean is only 7 miles deep (or 2.3 leagues) at its deepest, I will assume you are referring to the book "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" when you say "from 20,000 leagues", since it would be quite impossible for a squid to come from 20,000 leagues deep when that distance is greater than the Earth's diameter.
Just trying to be precise. This IS
"it makes a regular phone call via sattelite"
Actually, IRIDIUM does 9600baud data. I doubt it's a voice call.
"They took last place overall"
... successfully completed an obstacle course, ... and won one of five awards - $1000 ..."
:)
WTF? TFA says that they completed the course while some of the other AUV's didn't -- and they won an award:
"Their robot, L.U.V.,
Please explain "last place". Thanks.
A 9mm Glock 17 can be fired underwater, but the range and penetration is extremely limited. A shotgun would be useless, except for blowing out your eardrums from the shockwave.
"and they'd be great for drug smuggling"
Shhh! Don't tell them... you'll blow our cover!
Erm, no, sorry: http://home.sprynet.com/~frfrog/shotgun.htm
"what is the real difference between creating tools and using them"
Whoa, there. By that logic, we shouldn't be able to sue those evil companies that make those nasty guns. Are you saying that it's the USER, not the creator, that's at fault when a program or firearm is misused?! Preposterous!
[/sarcasm]
"Who told you fusion won't generate any radioactive waste?"
Depends on the type of fusion. The kind most easily within our reach does produce some waste. Be darned if I can find info the different kinds of fusion now, but you can use different mixes of deuterium and tritium and other stuff. Some of these reactions produce no or only trace amounts of radioactive waste.
Solar, wind, hydro, thermal, etc. A large home solar system can power even a large house for everything except A/C and electric heating and cooking. Centralized wind or sun farms or dams (and natural gas appliances and heat pumps) can do the rest.
The only thing standing in solar's way is the large up-front cost.
Fusion would be cool too, though.
#1 is NOT a technical problem, it's a political one. If the government does away with the stupid policy that prohibits converting and using the waste for other things, there would be no waste problem.
Wow, that's pretty ingenious! Thanks for the link. Only thing I don't like is the sleeve-bearing fan, which won't last long. I'm sure there are plenty of ball bearing 120mm fans you could replace it with, though.
I've stuck 4 7,200rpm IDE drives in a case... and promptly killed two of them within days. I had to add a rear exhaust fan to the case, a PCI slot blower, and I removed the blanking panels in front of the drives to get more airflow. The drives now stay merely warm to the touch (instead of HOT), and the drives have been fine ever since.
8 of those suckers are going to get toasty without plenty of auxilliary cooling.
Well, you see, when the ice melts and the Gulf stream turns into freshwater, the temperature of the buoys will read 13 degrees cooler than normal, and little lights will blink on a computer. But no-one will take it seriously, especially the vice president, until the helicopters freeze and crash because their fuel froze because it was -150*F, because a reverse funnel thing made air from space come down in a big hurricane thing only over land. THEN they'll relize there are these three big storms coming down and will destroy all life on earth, except the people in libraries in flooded New York and the guys walking around in Arctic gear. And even then it will suck because they have to burn books and cut the rope that the guys are hanging from, and then the wolves will attack when they try to get medicine from a ship floating in New York (except the water's frozen now), and after they get away from the wolves the frost forming on everything really fast will make them have to run as fast as they can back to the library. Finally the arctic dudes will make it to the library and the little kid with cancer is saved by an ambulance at the las minute, and everybody moves to Mexico to live in tent cities and these long hanger looking things, and the vice president (who's now President because of another helicopter crash) will admit he was wrong and Global Warming is bad, real bad, because now the guys in the space station can see that all of the US is now snow and ice.
That's why.
You also don't need to watch 'The Day After Tomorrow' now.
And since banking and shopping are generally non-work-related activities, that's exactly why employers would block SSL/port 443.
"I know it screws up the schemas"
Dude, you've been doing too much work with LDAP. I think the word you wanted was "schemes".
"DubyasBra"
/. put the space there)
George wears a bra!?
(Yeah, I know
"And as for silence and space... that is the whole point of mini ITX"
:)
Yep. Which is why I said "So, I don't think it's about price" in my original post.
I don't think Mini-ITX is that great of a deal to begin with, pricewise. For less than $50 you can get a cheap uATX mobo with video/LAN/sound and for another $50 a 1.6GHz Duron. You'd spend at least that much on a slower VIA board+CPU. The only thing Mini-ITX buys you is silence and space.
So, I don't think it's about price.
"the lamps, dirt, and space needed for the plants to grow would be less efficient"
I'm inclined to agree, for a short mission. Except, they don't need to stock enough soil/nutrients/water etc for 5 years, because they can use and re-use the water and uh, human waste, over and over again, resulting in a semi-closed loop. Depending on how closed the loop is and how long they're out, there is some point where this becomes more efficient. I guess they've done the math.
Who cares about the laws of some puny earthbound government like the US. These guys are going to be in *space*, for crying out loud. Isn't that kind of like international waters?
Actually, it's potassium iodiDE, not iodiNe, that you take to prevent your thyroid from absorbing radioactive iodine from nuclear fallout.
"It tastes like shit" ...which is why the government issues fruit flavored Kool-Aid-type-mix with soldier's rations, to cover up the taste.
Don't drink iodine-treated water for more than a day or two in emergency situations, though. It does bad stuff to your system after a while.
"Dont put car batteries inside your home."
At least explain why. Wet cell batteries vent (explosive) hydrogen when charging. That's why when you jumpstart a car you make the final connection to ground (earth) away from the battery. Too much hydrogen floating around the battery that a stray spark could ignite.
Sealed gel batteries, which to not vent, are fine indoors. That's what most UPSes use.
"Inverter ... power source"
Oh yeah, and an inverter is not a power *source*, anyway. It just converts existing DC (from battery, solar, wind, hydro, etc) to AC.
"Using an Inverter is a HIGHLY inefficient power source!"
Well, yeah, but since all of his computers and appliances and everything are designed to run off AC, you *need* an inverter to get AC out of your DC batteries.
Converting all his equipment to DC would be extremely complicated, not to mention prohibitively expensive.