I hope they've done all the sums involved with regards to moving the base of the cable around a bit, wouldn't want it to get severed by a LEO satellite.
They are planning on using a ocean based anchor for the base of the elevator, and are planning on moving it a couple of kilometers a day in order to avoid satellites and debris.
I think one of the places that they are currently considering is just off Perth Australia. I am ont sure about Cayambe, Equador, but they are looking for an Ocean based anchor point for the elevator so that the base can easily be moved to help it dodge satellites and debris. Additionally, it needs to be in a region of low lightning activity and low hurricane/intense winds, as intense weather activity could threaten the elevator, particularly during early phases of it's construction. For some of the criteria that would be used to find a anchor location, check out Edwards report.
Can you say "bullwhip the size of a planet"? I would NOT want to be beneath the path of that thing if it broke. The tsunamis would be interesting too.
Actually, there should not be too much of physical backlash or impact from it - the majority of the cable would burn up when entering the atmosphere. The main danger, as covered in the article and Edward's report, would be the danger from inhaling nano-tube particles. Some early results of rats exposed to nanotube inhalation have been pretty negative.
I predict that there will not be a space race, because the cost-benefit isn't acceptable yet. If this technology is only 2 years away (doubtful again), then there would be massive funding to accelerate the program if there was enough interest. Lack of interest now means that there is probably not going to be much interest when the nanotubes arrive.
One of the interesting points that Dr Edwards makes about the space elevator is the first one to build one has an exponential advantage over followers. This is primarily due to the fact that you can "spawn" off full-sized elevators off an existing one for a fraction of the cost of building a new one. If we don't have the plans and infrastructure in place to build an elevator as soon as it is a viable option, we may as well not even try - someone will have already beat us to the punch.
Actually, the space elevator in not projected to be "...so obscenely expensive..." Current estimates put the cost at IIRC $20 Billion, significantly less than the International Space Station, and not much more than NASA's current budget. And given that one space elevator can be used to spawn off other space elevators for significantly less cost, it is a means of accessing space with costs that go down dramatically as it expands, unlike rockets that seem to be fairly constant costs as number of launches increase.
You should read the documentation available for currently proposed designs - while sci-fi novels such as "{red|green|blue} mars" novels had designs that would "whip" around, the majority of the cable in the currently considered designs would burn up on reentry, with the exception of the lowest few miles that would fall into the ocean. The main danger from that would be the nano-tube particles that would result. The danger of those particles is currently not understood, but significantly less than a 100km cable whipping around the earth:)
Jeff, Thanks for posting information on Slashdot - downloaded Maestro, and am loving it!! With regards to the spam, the moderators have done a great job, as reading comments with a threshold of 4, I didn't even see the negative comments until I went back with a lower threshhold. I think your message came across loud and clear!
Reducing the size of the chip improves performance, reduces costs and can potentially cut energy consumption. In a nutshell, electrons have a shorter commute in 65-nanometer chips, so performance goes up. The gate length--the distance electrons travel to get from the source to the drain on a transistor and thereby flip the transistor on--drops from 50 nanometers to 35 nanometers in 65-nanometer chips.
However, it was my understanding that power consumption will often go up with smaller geometries as leakage current increases with the smaller gaters. Can anyone elaborate on this?
I think that is a very different issue from the original parent post that dealt with a rogue satellite that was burning swaths through cities, whether through misalignment issues, or due to malicious intent. The possibility of one satellite being taken over by malcontents and being used for the terrible sun-tan attack may be reasonable, and does not pose significant technological challenges beyond taking over the uplink to the satellite - once control is taken, it is just a matter of purposefully misaligning the transmitter.
On the other hand, the technical challenges of taking over a large number (> 5?) of satellites simultaneously, and managing to aim them within very tight parameters so that they can have a cumulative affect (assuming that there more than 2 or 3 satellites that can hit a given location on earth at once) seems to be within the realm of imagination, but not very likely.
The intensity of each power beam is restricted to 20%, or less, of the intensity of noontime sunlight. Each power beam can be safely received, for example, in an industrially zoned area.
Based on this, even if the lasers did go "strafing across the landscape" the biggest problem would be slightly darker tans or maybe one or two more cases a year of skin cancer:)
As far as I know, my grandmother is still using a PDP-11 to balance her checkbook, but last time I asked her about it was a year or two ago. She nicknamed it Deeno, which I thought was for Dinosaur, but was actually for Dean Martin. No, I am not kidding. She bought it back in the day for her tax services, programmed it in Dibol, and she owned the second PDP-11 in New Mexico, second only to a university in New Mexico, not sure which university though.
You have an interesting point, but reading the information provided by your link, it seems to support the supposition that the SGI portion at least will be considered fair use - according to SGI's open letter, it was:
All together, these three small code fragments comprised no more than 200 lines out of the more than one million lines of our overall contributions to Linux.
and
The three code fragments had been inadvertently included and in fact were redundant from the start. We found better replacements providing the same functionality already available in the Linux kernel.
and to top it off,
Notably, it appears that most or all of the System V code fragments we found had previously been placed in the public domain, meaning it is very doubtful that the SCO Group has any proprietary claim to these code fragments in any case.
Basically, this means that of the four possible reasons for something to be considered fair use, it meets three (it is an insignificant portion of the whole, it is not even useful code as it is redundant with other code, and its nature as a copyrighted work is questionable because there are other versions release to the public domain). Basically, it sounds like three strikes, when one strike would have been enough.
I think the scariest statistic from the article is:
Microsoft's total research and development budget -- $4.7 billion in 2003, $4.3 billion in 2002 and $4.4 billion in 2001 -- is estimated to be more than all the rest of the software industry spends together. Each year, Microsoft gives away about $100 million of that to universities.
In comparison, according to the National Science Foundation, computer science department expenditures at all universities and colleges from all sources for 2001 was less than $1 billion.
Basically, 10 percent of all computer science department expenditures at all universities and colleges from all sources for 2001 was funded by Microsoft. This is corporate sponsorship, and, presumably, influence on a major scale that is shocking. I don't see how this could be over-stated enough.
I liked how O'Reilly managed to compare Microsoft to Mordor and Mill Gates to Sauron with a rather deft comment:
The question is what kind of operating system it will be -- a "one ring to rule them all" OS like Windows, or a "small pieces loosely joined" OS like Linux and the existing suite of internet and web technologies.
It is an accurate representation, as Windows does provide a more rigid framework, yet allows for so many more interpretations!
It includes a growing number of freely distributed applications, such as OpenOffice, a Microsoft Office clone, and
Mozilla, a Web browser that can perform basic workplace tasks.
Just what basic workplace tasks does Mozilla do? Browse the web? Handle e-mail? Basically do the things that we would expect of a Web browser. Seems the author was a bit vaque on what Mozilla is capable of.
Oye - a single mistype manages to completely mangle my sentence. Your are correct, druids would be more in line with the UK, and would be quite out of place on Mars given the lack of abundant (or any?) life. Thanks for the catch.
This story is also discussed on CNN.com Science & Space with a more interesting title: Eight-eyed robot blasts off for Mars. Basically covers the same information, but mentions a few more details about the probe: "A NASA robot packed with eight cameras, geology instruments and super-rugged wheels roared into space on Tuesday," It also refers to the rovers as "druids" â" is this a Star Wars reference or what? Finally, it mentions the fact that, according to Nagin Cox of JPL "Mars is closer to the Earth than it has been in 73,000 years. "
The text of SCO's response sounds like a junior high student wrote it:
Copyrights and patents are protection against strangers. Contracts are what you use against parties you have relationships with. From a legal standpoint, contracts end up being far stronger than anything you could do with copyrights.
Normally, press releases try to sound businesslike and professional - the use of "you" in this announcement makes it sound like an entreaty to the reader to "please take our side, please believe us!" For me, it ended up making the press release sound rushed, unprofessional, and like they are starting to loose their cool.
My sister works on the Avatar technology that is mentioned in this article (at Haptek), and I must say that it is pretty stunning in real life. I haven't seen it on the handhelds, but using it on the PC is pretty damn good looking - much higher res and more believable mouth movement for speech than I have seen anywhere else. And I must say that it is always fun to have it try and pronounce impossible words:) When I first saw it, it definitely made me flash to "Snow Crash".
It doesn't have a PCI connector, but it does have a PMC connector. The PMC connector is a PCI Mezzanine Connector often used in rack-mount systems. There are adapter cards that will allow for a PCI card to plug into the PMC slot. The adapter is a pin to pin mapping - no ICs.
The CPU board, that has all of the main components on it, is an 16 layer board. It comes with 8 - 3.125 gigabit capable transceivers (used as 4 gigabit fiber, two HSSDC2/Infiniband and two Serial ATA), 128 MBytes of DDR, 2 PS/2, 2 Serial Ports, Parallel Port, FireWire, two PCCard/PCMCIA slots, Compact Flash interface (for configuration and file system) PMC slot, BDM and Trace ports, JTAG port, AC97 audio codec and a kitchen sink.
The Power-I/O board, that has the TFT, most of the I/O and the majority of power regulation, is an 8 layer board, and has a 640x480 TFT, 14 I/O buttons, a multitude of LEDs and a small prototyping area underneath the TFT.
Included with the kit is a 1GB microdrive, 2 fiber cables, 2 serial cables, an HSSDC2 cable, a serial ATA cable, two flavors of firewire, a Parallel Cable 4 programming cable, Xilinx ISE software, Chipscope ILA Pro, and on and on.
In addition, I would like to say that this was an exciting project to work on - between the gigabit transceivers, the DDR and the high density of components on the board, this was the hardest board I've designed (I did the majority of the schematics and parts of the layout).
Altera's Excalibur chip with the ARM processor is basically dead. When it came out, it had pages of errata, the processor was hacked onto the edge of the chip, from what I have heard they have excess inventory they can't sell, and they have not been talking about it for months. Pretty much dead in the water as far as I can tell.
The Gibson MaGIC technology is implemented using a Xilinx Sparten-IIE FPGA, as noted in this press release. From this release it sounds like they choose an FPGA to enable reprogramming capabilities to implement different effects, as well as allowing them to license the technology to other music manufacturers. This article also mentions that there will be a 30 to 30,000 increase in data and control transfer rates compared to MIDI. Not too shabby.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope they've done all the sums involved with regards to moving the base of the cable around a bit, wouldn't want it to get severed by a LEO satellite.
They are planning on using a ocean based anchor for the base of the elevator, and are planning on moving it a couple of kilometers a day in order to avoid satellites and debris.I think one of the places that they are currently considering is just off Perth Australia. I am ont sure about Cayambe, Equador, but they are looking for an Ocean based anchor point for the elevator so that the base can easily be moved to help it dodge satellites and debris. Additionally, it needs to be in a region of low lightning activity and low hurricane/intense winds, as intense weather activity could threaten the elevator, particularly during early phases of it's construction. For some of the criteria that would be used to find a anchor location, check out Edwards report.
Can you say "bullwhip the size of a planet"? I would NOT want to be beneath the path of that thing if it broke. The tsunamis would be interesting too.
Actually, there should not be too much of physical backlash or impact from it - the majority of the cable would burn up when entering the atmosphere. The main danger, as covered in the article and Edward's report, would be the danger from inhaling nano-tube particles. Some early results of rats exposed to nanotube inhalation have been pretty negative.I predict that there will not be a space race, because the cost-benefit isn't acceptable yet. If this technology is only 2 years away (doubtful again), then there would be massive funding to accelerate the program if there was enough interest. Lack of interest now means that there is probably not going to be much interest when the nanotubes arrive.
One of the interesting points that Dr Edwards makes about the space elevator is the first one to build one has an exponential advantage over followers. This is primarily due to the fact that you can "spawn" off full-sized elevators off an existing one for a fraction of the cost of building a new one. If we don't have the plans and infrastructure in place to build an elevator as soon as it is a viable option, we may as well not even try - someone will have already beat us to the punch.Actually, the space elevator in not projected to be "...so obscenely expensive..." Current estimates put the cost at IIRC $20 Billion, significantly less than the International Space Station, and not much more than NASA's current budget. And given that one space elevator can be used to spawn off other space elevators for significantly less cost, it is a means of accessing space with costs that go down dramatically as it expands, unlike rockets that seem to be fairly constant costs as number of launches increase.
You should read the documentation available for currently proposed designs - while sci-fi novels such as "{red|green|blue} mars" novels had designs that would "whip" around, the majority of the cable in the currently considered designs would burn up on reentry, with the exception of the lowest few miles that would fall into the ocean. The main danger from that would be the nano-tube particles that would result. The danger of those particles is currently not understood, but significantly less than a 100km cable whipping around the earth :)
Jeff, Thanks for posting information on Slashdot - downloaded Maestro, and am loving it!! With regards to the spam, the moderators have done a great job, as reading comments with a threshold of 4, I didn't even see the negative comments until I went back with a lower threshhold. I think your message came across loud and clear!
thanks, brandidoI think that is a very different issue from the original parent post that dealt with a rogue satellite that was burning swaths through cities, whether through misalignment issues, or due to malicious intent. The possibility of one satellite being taken over by malcontents and being used for the terrible sun-tan attack may be reasonable, and does not pose significant technological challenges beyond taking over the uplink to the satellite - once control is taken, it is just a matter of purposefully misaligning the transmitter.
On the other hand, the technical challenges of taking over a large number (> 5?) of satellites simultaneously, and managing to aim them within very tight parameters so that they can have a cumulative affect (assuming that there more than 2 or 3 satellites that can hit a given location on earth at once) seems to be within the realm of imagination, but not very likely.
As far as I know, my grandmother is still using a PDP-11 to balance her checkbook, but last time I asked her about it was a year or two ago. She nicknamed it Deeno, which I thought was for Dinosaur, but was actually for Dean Martin. No, I am not kidding. She bought it back in the day for her tax services, programmed it in Dibol, and she owned the second PDP-11 in New Mexico, second only to a university in New Mexico, not sure which university though.
Please, don't mod this funny, I am serious!With a reference to So Big, worst to come and windows, all in one article, I was sure that it was referring to the previous article about Longhorn :)
Oye - a single mistype manages to completely mangle my sentence. Your are correct, druids would be more in line with the UK, and would be quite out of place on Mars given the lack of abundant (or any?) life. Thanks for the catch.
This story is also discussed on CNN.com Science & Space with a more interesting title: Eight-eyed robot blasts off for Mars. Basically covers the same information, but mentions a few more details about the probe: "A NASA robot packed with eight cameras, geology instruments and super-rugged wheels roared into space on Tuesday," It also refers to the rovers as "druids" â" is this a Star Wars reference or what? Finally, it mentions the fact that, according to Nagin Cox of JPL "Mars is closer to the Earth than it has been in 73,000 years. "
My sister works on the Avatar technology that is mentioned in this article (at Haptek), and I must say that it is pretty stunning in real life. I haven't seen it on the handhelds, but using it on the PC is pretty damn good looking - much higher res and more believable mouth movement for speech than I have seen anywhere else. And I must say that it is always fun to have it try and pronounce impossible words :) When I first saw it, it definitely made me flash to "Snow Crash".
It doesn't have a PCI connector, but it does have a PMC connector. The PMC connector is a PCI Mezzanine Connector often used in rack-mount systems. There are adapter cards that will allow for a PCI card to plug into the PMC slot. The adapter is a pin to pin mapping - no ICs.
The CPU board, that has all of the main components on it, is an 16 layer board. It comes with 8 - 3.125 gigabit capable transceivers (used as 4 gigabit fiber, two HSSDC2/Infiniband and two Serial ATA), 128 MBytes of DDR, 2 PS/2, 2 Serial Ports, Parallel Port, FireWire, two PCCard/PCMCIA slots, Compact Flash interface (for configuration and file system) PMC slot, BDM and Trace ports, JTAG port, AC97 audio codec and a kitchen sink.
The Power-I/O board, that has the TFT, most of the I/O and the majority of power regulation, is an 8 layer board, and has a 640x480 TFT, 14 I/O buttons, a multitude of LEDs and a small prototyping area underneath the TFT.
Included with the kit is a 1GB microdrive, 2 fiber cables, 2 serial cables, an HSSDC2 cable, a serial ATA cable, two flavors of firewire, a Parallel Cable 4 programming cable, Xilinx ISE software, Chipscope ILA Pro, and on and on.In addition, I would like to say that this was an exciting project to work on - between the gigabit transceivers, the DDR and the high density of components on the board, this was the hardest board I've designed (I did the majority of the schematics and parts of the layout).
Altera's Excalibur chip with the ARM processor is basically dead. When it came out, it had pages of errata, the processor was hacked onto the edge of the chip, from what I have heard they have excess inventory they can't sell, and they have not been talking about it for months. Pretty much dead in the water as far as I can tell.
The Gibson MaGIC technology is implemented using a Xilinx Sparten-IIE FPGA, as noted in this press release. From this release it sounds like they choose an FPGA to enable reprogramming capabilities to implement different effects, as well as allowing them to license the technology to other music manufacturers. This article also mentions that there will be a 30 to 30,000 increase in data and control transfer rates compared to MIDI. Not too shabby.