For all we know, modern silicon-based CPUs already have some (very) dim, glimmering cognitive awareness of sorts. We really do not know. It is completely unfounded for anyone to claim that it has not happened yet (or likewise that it has happened) if we don't even have a clue what it really is or how to measure its existence. Heck, it's so elusive we don't even have a rational definition for it.
I think your assertion that my computer may have some sort of cognitive awareness stretches the bounds of common sense. I'm a programmer; I write deterministic code, which executed by a deterministic operating system, which on its lowest level is supplying bits to a piece of silicon on which are etched a few million switches, each of which will respond to those bits in a deterministic fashion. My computer has no cognitive awareness at all -- it does exactly what it's told, even if I tell it to do something obviously stupid (like execute a SQL statement like "delete from IMPORTANT_TABLE" without a where clause). It'll even turn itself off when I tell it to.
I'm much more interested in some of the quantum computing concepts that have come across Slashdot. Their downside appears to be that they are non-deterministic, so sometimes 2+2 will equal 3.999999835301. With a complex enough set of basic programs, enough random decisions could be made to get somewhere the programmer didn't tell the program to go. Then, I'll wonder if the computer knows what it's doing.
If we know exactly what the machine is doing, it must not be sentient. If we don't know for sure, there's room for doubt. So it's just like you said: "The problem is not that we can't "re-create it". In fact we might have already. The problem is that we can't measure it." I think sentience, by definition, is a non-measurable quantity. The only possible values seem to be zero, unknown, and Human.
It's not the people who work with programming and want to "break out" of it. The problem is with the hordes of scientists and engineers who don't know how to program.
Oddly enough, this is exactly what got me into a programming job. Some 15+ years ago, I was part of a group that Texas Instruments put through school to become Computer-Aided Draftsmen. But because I had a tendency to hack about, I ended up becoming the programmer for the group, writing AutoLisp add-ons for AutoCAD. The other guys were more interested in the drafting, and were happy to let me keep hacking around.
Two big differences between me and the submitter, though:
* The AS degree I got represents a tiny fraction of his PhD investment, and
Q: What about underground or independent student publications? Are they protected from censorship? A: Absolutely. Although public schools can establish reasonable restrictions as to the time, place and manner of distribution of underground publications, they cannot absolutely forbid their distribution on school grounds. Like school-sponsored publications that are forums, a school must show substantial disruption before they can censor an independent publication.
For me, that decision came about three years too late. My senior year, in 1985, I published an underground newspaper at my small-town school. I used my dad's typewriter, made copies at a copy place in another town, and passed out only a handful of copies to my friends. That was Wednesday.
Friday morning, I was called into the principal's office. He had a copy on his desk, with my name written on the front (in the receptionist's handwriting, strangely enough). He tried to get me to divulge the identity of the other contributor. I refused that request, but his threat to expel me if I printed another issue. I think that was the time I spent three days in in-school suspension, too.
A friend of mine's dad, a lawyer, advised me that two months from graduation isn't the best time to rock the boat.
In the end:
* The journalism teacher, who had no involvement in my adventure, was fired/quit.
* The school rules were rewritten to explicity ban underground newspapers.
* The principal never figured out who wrote the article.
* The girl he blamed, a fellow senior, got a kick out of being thought the co-conspirator.
* The girl who actually wrote the article (which exhorted students to listen to their teachers), a sophomore, moved to a private school.
* The principal retired a couple of years later.
I'll have to scan and transcribe the paper someday... but my 18-year-old earnest ramblings about teens and sex look a lot different through these 38-year-old eyes.
Foo: Iraq... so that the people there have things that tax paying American citizens don't even have Bar: Many Iraqis have the freedom of a pine box
I doubt it... I don't think pine trees grow in Iraq. I'm still trying to figure out what Iraqis get that we don't have, other than fear and knowledge. The fear: that they'll get blown up by an insurgent's bomb at any time. The knowledge: they've traded random disappearances of individuals under Saddam for random killings of dozens under the US.
It's already known that some mosquitos target specific species. I've seen this in action on my horses -- they can be covered in LARGE mosquitos, while I remain relatively bite-free. That doesn't stop me from trying to kill as many of them as I can.
Of course, one reason these mosquitos can survive on horses is because horses are big and tough, whereas I am small and wimpy. When the horse walks off, the mosquitos that get left behind sometimes decide they should try a little human in their diet... and it HURTS, with the result that the mosquito in question gets splattered. Darwinian selection at work.
How about this: give me something that will ATTRACT and then KILL the mosquitoes. Preferably, something like this.
Tell me, what natural process on Mars would make the wind patterns look old? Rain? Footprints? Dunebuggies? A hundred years from now, I bet they still look "new", whatever that's supposed to mean.
No, you're thinking of Earth's airless, weather-free moon. On Mars, the atmosphere, while thin, blows dust around in massive storms. Nothing stays pristine; rather, everything gets covered in dust. That's what makes the object looks so unusual. I can hardly wait until they investigate further (unless of course they crack it open and a horde of deadly Martian mosquitos heads for Earth, in which case I can wait just fine).
So the NASA team has been poking around the planet for more than a(n Earth) year, right? Most of the surprises happened months ago... now it's just a matter of finding something to do until the batteries quit holding their charge. Looking at the heat shield doesn't seem like a very revealing bit of science -- more of a "gee look how far we've come" sort of cool thing.
Then they get a picture of a big freaking rock with a bunch of wierd holes, sitting there in the middle of a windblown plain. Not covered in dust like everything else... even the wind patterns in the dust around it look new.
What do you think the first guy to get that picture said when he looked, and then looked again, and realized that this wasn't going to be just another day on Mars?
OK, so speculation is that it's a meteorite - OK, but this was found on a large plain.. what are the odds that a meteor could hit a planet and not leave a crater? Wouldn't the gravity of Mars cause it to increase velocity?
One scenario is that the rock hit Mars a gazillion years ago. Wind storms filled the area with Mars dust. Over the eons, the weather patterns changed, and now the wind storms are blowing the dust out of the area... uncovering the rock.
Though the thing sure looks a lot like a dehydrated Martian to me. Just add water!
It's a shame, I'd rather people not have to learn such hard lessons from experience of hardship that I see coming like a train down the tracks.
Yep. But at least I was able to benefit from it. I figured if Kerry won, stocks would slide short-term, but long-term they'd rebound with sound fiscal policy. If Bush won, stocks would spike sharply, then long-term they'd slip on Bush's cut-and-spend philosophy. Bush won, so I was able to take out a loan on my 401(k) (which is basically a "sell") in December just before the stock market peaked. I'll pay it off (a "buy") over the long term, as stock prices slide. Sell high, buy low, in no particular order.
Greedy bastards. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. At least there was no conflict of interest in the voting booth: I didn't vote for either one.
The US Presidential election is over, now we see the following: Employment again tanks
Trust me, I'm the last person on Slashdot who would hold up Bush for anything but ridicule, but the employment numbers are still going up... for now. In the last year, employment almost recovered the 2+ million jobs lost since Bush took office. Granted, those are false numbers, pumped up by unsupportable tax cuts that are making states go broke. I suspect that Bush supporters may have even hired people as an under-the-radar campaign contribution (but try finding proof of such a tinfoil concept).
But at the moment, of all the things we can bash Bush with, employment isn't one of them. Check back in a couple of months, though.
Funny you should mention that. While driving around in Dallas, we passed by a pawn shop that had a help wanted sign for an "eBay Consultant", or some such. Looks like they're still online: Home > eBay Stores > Uncle Dan's Pawn Shop, but they don't have much listed. I suspect they wanted someone to work for little of nothing, in return for 'net access or something like that.
A third point comes to mind: Why wasn't the link coralized by the submitter or the editor? http://www.igrill.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/
Well, it's too late, now. From the above link:
Error: 503 Service Unavailable www.igrill.co.uk: Resource temporarily unavailable
I viewed all the pages already (love that Slashdot Subscription), and it's pretty cool. Not a lot of huge pix, but when I saw that he was actually using it for hosting, I knew it would soon be toasting instead. I've scrounged them from my cache, but I'm sure there are others in a better position to mirror than myself.
If I'm looking at the right data -- a big if -- it looks like the dataset includes some underwater topography, at least to a certain depth. Or is it just that the radar reflects differently from the water, giving the illusion of depth?
I went to http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.p hp, and zoomed in on the local fishing hole (Cedar Creek Lake, near Gun Barrel City, Texas). After picking the appropriate layers (Elevation/SRTM 30m Shaded Relief, turn off the bogus GTOPO60 layer), I could see a pebbly texture where the lake was. The texture looked more realistic on the mud flats on the north end of the lake. Turn on Hydrography/Streams, and you can see where the creek used to be (more or less). Turn on Hydrography/Waterbodies, and the lake is filled in (good for getting your bearings).
Interestingly, though, there are some dropouts visible in the elevation data under the lake. They don't seem related to depth. I wonder if a party barge on water causes a strange echo?
Works on coastal areas, too. However, since the pebbly texture looks the same for the whole area of Matagorda Beach that I looked at, I suspect I'm not seeing anything but a false echo a few feet below the surface.
Why in hell did you stupid moderators mod the parent insightful?
I think it's a glitch in the system... I've already been given 10 mod points this week. Christmas bonus? Whatever... I'll just be sure to fulfill my destiny to moderate as stupidly as possible. I'll post the links to the posts I moderate in my journal, if you'd care to bit^W complain about my mad mod skillz.
While the ability to receive a very weak signal is always interesting (and exciting for QRPP operators), converting results into "miles per watt" is an absolutely useless way to express results!!
The whiner goes on to say:
At 1.5 MHz data in CCIR Thirteenth Plenary Assembly (vol VI report 264-3 p 108) shows attenuation increases ~10 dB when path length goes from 500 km to 1000 km. Doubling skywave path length at 500 km when at 1.5 MHz increases loss 10dB, NOT 3 dB. Doubling distance again (same frequency) from 1000 km to 2000 km results in an additional ~15 db loss! 2000 km to 4000 km is about 22 dB more loss. This is based on measured data.
While most of the numbers leave me with a blank look, one thing is clear: the poster missed the point. The accomplishment is cool because of the geek factor, not because it's going to lead to a new radio in your car. Therefore, the measurement of the achievement doesn't *have* to be "useful".
Is it possible to connect them the other way round and use the Selectric as the keyboard for your computer?
As I recall, there was no feedback at all from the Selectric back to the driver. We couldn't even tell whether the character had been received -- hence the delay loop. Or we may have built the delay into the hardware, I'm not sure. But I'm pretty sure there wasn't a way to use the Selectric as a keyboard -- at least, not our model.
We did this in the '80s
on
A USB Typewriter?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I say we, but it was really my dad (an electronics technician) and my stepmom (a computer programmer) who did it. They took the TRS-80 parallel port output, which was a slow, simple 8 data lines and a clock, and connected it to an IBM Selectric.
The Selectric was already wired to accept electronic input, but not in ASCII. It expected tilt-and-rotate codes, which were directly transmitted to the golf ball shaped typing element. To translate the TRS-80's ASCII to tilt/rotate codes, my parents drew up a table of equivalents. Then, my dad came up with a way to logically combine the TRS-80's output with values stored in an EPROM to get the tilt/rotate codes.
I ended up using the computer for my typing class homework. Fortunately, the teacher didn't mind that I was writing BASIC programs like this:
10 A$ = "THE QUICK BROWN DOG ATE THE LAZY FOX" 20 FOR I% = 1 TO LEN(A$) 30 POKE addr, ASC(MID$(A$, I%, 1)) 35 some sort of delay for the ball to get repositioned 40 NEXT
I thought I was getting away with something... but my teacher wisely realized that I was actually doing more typing by hacking around than I would have been if I'd used the actual typewriter.
After 'borrowing' random goods from my house at will for months at a time, and disabling the lock on the window so they can sneak back any time they want to borrow something else.
Well, I have three kids. If anything came up missing I'd never know -- I'd just assume one of the kids lost it. When it magically returned, there would be great rejoicing.
Though after reading the story, and your comment, I think the CCC has a thing for my left socks.
f I search for a specific brand, all the other brands saying "me too" piss me off. when searching for an official accessory, I don't want to see the million third-party companies selling shoddy rip-offs.
Then Google AdWords is doing you a huge favor! If you enter "Geico", and you see an ad for "AAA Fly-By-Night Auto Insurance & V1a6ra Outlet", you know that they think it's appropriate to buy Geico's name. As an informed consumer, you can then make an informed choice.
Another example: I just did a Google search on "Amazon". The AdWords bar gave me two Amazon affiliates and some outfit called "superelectronics.com". I now know that "superelectronics.com" (or "freesuperelectronics.com", which is where the redirect actually points) should be avoided.
Of course, there are always those people out there who think a little blue pill in their car insurance bill is a Good Thing...
So not only do you get air to breath, you get materials with which to build your base.
Set up a base running this process, add a Lunar beanstalk to L1, and you have a cheap source of material for building items in Earth orbit.
I noticed this as well. If a moon base with this technology is established, might it be economical not just to throw the Ti up to L1, but down to Earth? A quick search on titianium mining turns up a whole lot of problems with current terrestrial methods, primarily because the most economic method involves strip-mining with all its environmental degradation. Seems like we'd be better off sending large chunks of Ti through the atmosphere into the desert for future retrieval.
An interesting side note: the article discusses " the Ilmenox process, named after the process' ability to produce oxygen from the lunar mineral ilmenite." But Ilmenite isn't just a lunar material; it's named for a Russian mountain range. In Soviet Russia, Titanium mines YOU!
Foo: i'm glad they did this. honestly i like ms stuff and hell i'm glad they came out with a toolbar so i dont have to download one from google or anyone else. they designed the os, the browser - they probably know best when designing this add-in toolbar.
Bar: This isn't astro turf at all....
Damn straight it ain't. Only a real fool would write their entire message, including the acronyms MS and OS, in lowercase.
Using proprietary technology, the IDI reactor is a stainless steel sphere filled with heavy water and, at its center, a small bubble of deuterium (heavy hydrogen). Sound waves cause the bubble, first to expand greatly, followed by its collapse to a fraction of its original size, all at the rate of thousands of times a second.
How, exactly, is this "proprietary technology" supposed to help with research into new fusion methods? I know they have to make money, but does the $250k price tag include a license that if the researcher finds an improvement that builds on the proprietary part, the improvement belongs to Impulse Devices?
Well, it's not as bad as some bozo patenting my DNA, I guess...
Slashdot Mirror
For all we know, modern silicon-based CPUs already have some (very) dim, glimmering cognitive awareness of sorts. We really do not know. It is completely unfounded for anyone to claim that it has not happened yet (or likewise that it has happened) if we don't even have a clue what it really is or how to measure its existence. Heck, it's so elusive we don't even have a rational definition for it.
I think your assertion that my computer may have some sort of cognitive awareness stretches the bounds of common sense. I'm a programmer; I write deterministic code, which executed by a deterministic operating system, which on its lowest level is supplying bits to a piece of silicon on which are etched a few million switches, each of which will respond to those bits in a deterministic fashion. My computer has no cognitive awareness at all -- it does exactly what it's told, even if I tell it to do something obviously stupid (like execute a SQL statement like "delete from IMPORTANT_TABLE" without a where clause). It'll even turn itself off when I tell it to.
I'm much more interested in some of the quantum computing concepts that have come across Slashdot. Their downside appears to be that they are non-deterministic, so sometimes 2+2 will equal 3.999999835301. With a complex enough set of basic programs, enough random decisions could be made to get somewhere the programmer didn't tell the program to go. Then, I'll wonder if the computer knows what it's doing.
If we know exactly what the machine is doing, it must not be sentient. If we don't know for sure, there's room for doubt. So it's just like you said: "The problem is not that we can't "re-create it". In fact we might have already. The problem is that we can't measure it." I think sentience, by definition, is a non-measurable quantity. The only possible values seem to be zero, unknown, and Human.
You can call Bush a chimp, a liar, a baby-killer and get modded "insightful", but dare to criticize his critics, and you get modded into oblivion.
Probably because the three assertions you mentioned are indisputable facts, especially the first one.
(/me ducks)
It's not the people who work with programming and want to "break out" of it. The problem is with the hordes of scientists and engineers who don't know how to program.
Oddly enough, this is exactly what got me into a programming job. Some 15+ years ago, I was part of a group that Texas Instruments put through school to become Computer-Aided Draftsmen. But because I had a tendency to hack about, I ended up becoming the programmer for the group, writing AutoLisp add-ons for AutoCAD. The other guys were more interested in the drafting, and were happy to let me keep hacking around.
Two big differences between me and the submitter, though:
* The AS degree I got represents a tiny fraction of his PhD investment, and
* I wanted to be a programmer in the first place.
Q: What about underground or independent student publications? Are they protected from censorship?
A: Absolutely. Although public schools can establish reasonable restrictions as to the time, place and manner of distribution of underground publications, they cannot absolutely forbid their distribution on school grounds. Like school-sponsored publications that are forums, a school must show substantial disruption before they can censor an independent publication.
For me, that decision came about three years too late. My senior year, in 1985, I published an underground newspaper at my small-town school. I used my dad's typewriter, made copies at a copy place in another town, and passed out only a handful of copies to my friends. That was Wednesday.
Friday morning, I was called into the principal's office. He had a copy on his desk, with my name written on the front (in the receptionist's handwriting, strangely enough). He tried to get me to divulge the identity of the other contributor. I refused that request, but his threat to expel me if I printed another issue. I think that was the time I spent three days in in-school suspension, too.
A friend of mine's dad, a lawyer, advised me that two months from graduation isn't the best time to rock the boat.
In the end:
* The journalism teacher, who had no involvement in my adventure, was fired/quit.
* The school rules were rewritten to explicity ban underground newspapers.
* The principal never figured out who wrote the article.
* The girl he blamed, a fellow senior, got a kick out of being thought the co-conspirator.
* The girl who actually wrote the article (which exhorted students to listen to their teachers), a sophomore, moved to a private school.
* The principal retired a couple of years later.
I'll have to scan and transcribe the paper someday... but my 18-year-old earnest ramblings about teens and sex look a lot different through these 38-year-old eyes.
Foo: Iraq... so that the people there have things that tax paying American citizens don't even have
Bar: Many Iraqis have the freedom of a pine box
I doubt it... I don't think pine trees grow in Iraq. I'm still trying to figure out what Iraqis get that we don't have, other than fear and knowledge. The fear: that they'll get blown up by an insurgent's bomb at any time. The knowledge: they've traded random disappearances of individuals under Saddam for random killings of dozens under the US.
It's already known that some mosquitos target specific species. I've seen this in action on my horses -- they can be covered in LARGE mosquitos, while I remain relatively bite-free. That doesn't stop me from trying to kill as many of them as I can.
Of course, one reason these mosquitos can survive on horses is because horses are big and tough, whereas I am small and wimpy. When the horse walks off, the mosquitos that get left behind sometimes decide they should try a little human in their diet... and it HURTS, with the result that the mosquito in question gets splattered. Darwinian selection at work.
How about this: give me something that will ATTRACT and then KILL the mosquitoes. Preferably, something like this.
Dehydrated Martians?
You've been reading Stephen Lawhead's "Dream Thief", haven't you?
No, Chuck Jones' Hare-way to the Stars .
Tell me, what natural process on Mars would make the wind patterns look old? Rain? Footprints? Dunebuggies?
A hundred years from now, I bet they still look "new", whatever that's supposed to mean.
No, you're thinking of Earth's airless, weather-free moon. On Mars, the atmosphere, while thin, blows dust around in massive storms. Nothing stays pristine; rather, everything gets covered in dust. That's what makes the object looks so unusual. I can hardly wait until they investigate further (unless of course they crack it open and a horde of deadly Martian mosquitos heads for Earth, in which case I can wait just fine).
So the NASA team has been poking around the planet for more than a(n Earth) year, right? Most of the surprises happened months ago... now it's just a matter of finding something to do until the batteries quit holding their charge. Looking at the heat shield doesn't seem like a very revealing bit of science -- more of a "gee look how far we've come" sort of cool thing.
Then they get a picture of a big freaking rock with a bunch of wierd holes, sitting there in the middle of a windblown plain. Not covered in dust like everything else... even the wind patterns in the dust around it look new.
What do you think the first guy to get that picture said when he looked, and then looked again, and realized that this wasn't going to be just another day on Mars?
OK, so speculation is that it's a meteorite - OK, but this was found on a large plain.. what are the odds that a meteor could hit a planet and not leave a crater? Wouldn't the gravity of Mars cause it to increase velocity?
One scenario is that the rock hit Mars a gazillion years ago. Wind storms filled the area with Mars dust. Over the eons, the weather patterns changed, and now the wind storms are blowing the dust out of the area... uncovering the rock.
Though the thing sure looks a lot like a dehydrated Martian to me. Just add water!
It's a shame, I'd rather people not have to learn such hard lessons from experience of hardship that I see coming like a train down the tracks.
Yep. But at least I was able to benefit from it. I figured if Kerry won, stocks would slide short-term, but long-term they'd rebound with sound fiscal policy. If Bush won, stocks would spike sharply, then long-term they'd slip on Bush's cut-and-spend philosophy. Bush won, so I was able to take out a loan on my 401(k) (which is basically a "sell") in December just before the stock market peaked. I'll pay it off (a "buy") over the long term, as stock prices slide. Sell high, buy low, in no particular order.
Greedy bastards. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. At least there was no conflict of interest in the voting booth: I didn't vote for either one.
The US Presidential election is over, now we see the following:
Employment again tanks
Trust me, I'm the last person on Slashdot who would hold up Bush for anything but ridicule, but the employment numbers are still going up... for now. In the last year, employment almost recovered the 2+ million jobs lost since Bush took office. Granted, those are false numbers, pumped up by unsupportable tax cuts that are making states go broke. I suspect that Bush supporters may have even hired people as an under-the-radar campaign contribution (but try finding proof of such a tinfoil concept).
But at the moment, of all the things we can bash Bush with, employment isn't one of them. Check back in a couple of months, though.
21st century pawn shop
Funny you should mention that. While driving around in Dallas, we passed by a pawn shop that had a help wanted sign for an "eBay Consultant", or some such. Looks like they're still online: Home > eBay Stores > Uncle Dan's Pawn Shop, but they don't have much listed. I suspect they wanted someone to work for little of nothing, in return for 'net access or something like that.
Can someone please find the creature responsible for "Internet Zones" and beat him to death with a large wooden mallet?
I heard the last person to implement such a mind-bogglingly dumb Windows "feature" had to marry Bill Gates.
Maybe Bill would take on the developer of the Internet Zones "feature" as a mistress?
A third point comes to mind:
Why wasn't the link coralized by the submitter or the editor?
http://www.igrill.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/
Well, it's too late, now. From the above link:
Error: 503 Service Unavailable
www.igrill.co.uk: Resource temporarily unavailable
I viewed all the pages already (love that Slashdot Subscription), and it's pretty cool. Not a lot of huge pix, but when I saw that he was actually using it for hosting, I knew it would soon be toasting instead. I've scrounged them from my cache, but I'm sure there are others in a better position to mirror than myself.
If I'm looking at the right data -- a big if -- it looks like the dataset includes some underwater topography, at least to a certain depth. Or is it just that the radar reflects differently from the water, giving the illusion of depth?
p hp, and zoomed in on the local fishing hole (Cedar Creek Lake, near Gun Barrel City, Texas). After picking the appropriate layers (Elevation/SRTM 30m Shaded Relief, turn off the bogus GTOPO60 layer), I could see a pebbly texture where the lake was. The texture looked more realistic on the mud flats on the north end of the lake. Turn on Hydrography/Streams, and you can see where the creek used to be (more or less). Turn on Hydrography/Waterbodies, and the lake is filled in (good for getting your bearings).
I went to http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.
Interestingly, though, there are some dropouts visible in the elevation data under the lake. They don't seem related to depth. I wonder if a party barge on water causes a strange echo?
Works on coastal areas, too. However, since the pebbly texture looks the same for the whole area of Matagorda Beach that I looked at, I suspect I'm not seeing anything but a false echo a few feet below the surface.
Why in hell did you stupid moderators mod the parent insightful?
I think it's a glitch in the system... I've already been given 10 mod points this week. Christmas bonus? Whatever... I'll just be sure to fulfill my destiny to moderate as stupidly as possible. I'll post the links to the posts I moderate in my journal, if you'd care to bit^W complain about my mad mod skillz.
From the comments at the article site:
While the ability to receive a very weak signal is always interesting (and exciting for QRPP operators), converting results into "miles per watt" is an absolutely useless way to express results!!
The whiner goes on to say:
At 1.5 MHz data in CCIR Thirteenth Plenary Assembly (vol VI report 264-3 p 108) shows attenuation increases ~10 dB when path length goes from 500 km to 1000 km. Doubling skywave path length at 500 km when at 1.5 MHz increases loss 10dB, NOT 3 dB. Doubling distance again (same frequency) from 1000 km to 2000 km results in an additional ~15 db loss! 2000 km to 4000 km is about 22 dB more loss. This is based on measured data.
While most of the numbers leave me with a blank look, one thing is clear: the poster missed the point. The accomplishment is cool because of the geek factor, not because it's going to lead to a new radio in your car. Therefore, the measurement of the achievement doesn't *have* to be "useful".
Is it possible to connect them the other way round and use the Selectric as the keyboard for your computer?
As I recall, there was no feedback at all from the Selectric back to the driver. We couldn't even tell whether the character had been received -- hence the delay loop. Or we may have built the delay into the hardware, I'm not sure. But I'm pretty sure there wasn't a way to use the Selectric as a keyboard -- at least, not our model.
I say we, but it was really my dad (an electronics technician) and my stepmom (a computer programmer) who did it. They took the TRS-80 parallel port output, which was a slow, simple 8 data lines and a clock, and connected it to an IBM Selectric.
The Selectric was already wired to accept electronic input, but not in ASCII. It expected tilt-and-rotate codes, which were directly transmitted to the golf ball shaped typing element. To translate the TRS-80's ASCII to tilt/rotate codes, my parents drew up a table of equivalents. Then, my dad came up with a way to logically combine the TRS-80's output with values stored in an EPROM to get the tilt/rotate codes.
I ended up using the computer for my typing class homework. Fortunately, the teacher didn't mind that I was writing BASIC programs like this:
10 A$ = "THE QUICK BROWN DOG ATE THE LAZY FOX"
20 FOR I% = 1 TO LEN(A$)
30 POKE addr, ASC(MID$(A$, I%, 1))
35 some sort of delay for the ball to get repositioned
40 NEXT
I thought I was getting away with something... but my teacher wisely realized that I was actually doing more typing by hacking around than I would have been if I'd used the actual typewriter.
After 'borrowing' random goods from my house at will for months at a time, and disabling the lock on the window so they can sneak back any time they want to borrow something else.
Well, I have three kids. If anything came up missing I'd never know -- I'd just assume one of the kids lost it. When it magically returned, there would be great rejoicing.
Though after reading the story, and your comment, I think the CCC has a thing for my left socks.
f I search for a specific brand, all the other brands saying "me too" piss me off. when searching for an official accessory, I don't want to see the million third-party companies selling shoddy rip-offs.
Then Google AdWords is doing you a huge favor! If you enter "Geico", and you see an ad for "AAA Fly-By-Night Auto Insurance & V1a6ra Outlet", you know that they think it's appropriate to buy Geico's name. As an informed consumer, you can then make an informed choice.
Another example: I just did a Google search on "Amazon". The AdWords bar gave me two Amazon affiliates and some outfit called "superelectronics.com". I now know that "superelectronics.com" (or "freesuperelectronics.com", which is where the redirect actually points) should be avoided.
Of course, there are always those people out there who think a little blue pill in their car insurance bill is a Good Thing...
So not only do you get air to breath, you get materials with which to build your base.
Set up a base running this process, add a Lunar beanstalk to L1, and you have a cheap source of material for building items in Earth orbit.
I noticed this as well. If a moon base with this technology is established, might it be economical not just to throw the Ti up to L1, but down to Earth? A quick search on titianium mining turns up a whole lot of problems with current terrestrial methods, primarily because the most economic method involves strip-mining with all its environmental degradation. Seems like we'd be better off sending large chunks of Ti through the atmosphere into the desert for future retrieval.
An interesting side note: the article discusses " the Ilmenox process, named after the process' ability to produce oxygen from the lunar mineral ilmenite." But Ilmenite isn't just a lunar material; it's named for a Russian mountain range. In Soviet Russia, Titanium mines YOU!
Foo: i'm glad they did this. honestly i like ms stuff and hell i'm glad they came out with a toolbar so i dont have to download one from google or anyone else. they designed the os, the browser - they probably know best when designing this add-in toolbar.
Bar: This isn't astro turf at all....
Damn straight it ain't. Only a real fool would write their entire message, including the acronyms MS and OS, in lowercase.
Using proprietary technology, the IDI reactor is a stainless steel sphere filled with heavy water and, at its center, a small bubble of deuterium (heavy hydrogen). Sound waves cause the bubble, first to expand greatly, followed by its collapse to a fraction of its original size, all at the rate of thousands of times a second.
How, exactly, is this "proprietary technology" supposed to help with research into new fusion methods? I know they have to make money, but does the $250k price tag include a license that if the researcher finds an improvement that builds on the proprietary part, the improvement belongs to Impulse Devices?
Well, it's not as bad as some bozo patenting my DNA, I guess...