Perhaps that's one of the reasons why Microsoft purchased Virtual PC. If you put enough horsepower into the problem (and the neXBox is going to have 3 64 bit processors) then my guess is that it could emulate it reasonably.
4H + O2 => 2H2O...twice as many hydrogens as oxygen but
Oxygen is 16 times more massive.
Oxygen has an atomic weight of 8, Hydrogen 1. Given there are two H per O, that should meen it is 4 times heavier.
Rocket engines are -very- efficient, but of course they have to push their own oxidizer along.
--I dont know how you define efficiency but in my aproximation having to lift 20x the payload mass because of extra fuel is an inefficency.
I'ts -not- fuel, it's oxidizer. I'm not sure why you say 20x, how do you calculate that figure?
-Going back to the previous point. Its not a matter of the price of oxygen, but the bulk that it causes to carry it. This results in hugely more complex lift vehical, which is... um... huge, and expensive.
The original poster -did- mention cost, so that's why I responded. I'm happy for it not to be a consideration.
You should read the following quote from Henry Spencer (one of -the- authorities on sci.space.tech)...
>ISTM, so long as you're
>travelling fast enough, low enough to have to worry about air friction, you
>should have enough air to operate the engine.
Actually, it's the other way around: providing enough air to operate the
engine guarantees serious structural problems and truly horrible thermal
problems. (NASA Langley's estimate was that a rocket-powered vehicle with
the same performance as the scramjet NASP would have about 2.5x the
takeoff mass, but half the dry mass, half the length, under half the
propellant cost, maximum aerodynamic loads 2-4x lower, and maximum heat
loads *orders of magnitude* lower.)
(see http://www.google.com.au/groups?q=scramjet+group:s ci.space.tech+author:Henry+author:Spencer&hl=en&lr =&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=H0EKvE.3Cz%40spsystems.ne t&rnum=2)
You may be right about the remaining points. I was working
from memory, and I'm no longer sure...
However I am inclined to believe Henry Spencer; as far as I can see scramjets are a waste of time. Just use plain old rocketry (or perhaps reusable rockets, if you can do it right. NASA can't. They couldn't organise a root in a brothel).
That's not entirely correct. The O2 is a third of the mass.
I'm not sure what relavence the % of Oxygen's mass is. The main point is that the mass doesn't matter if it is fuel/oxidizer mass. Typically you want -more- of it because it makes life so simple if you can have more powerful engines that consume it in large quantities.
Keep in mind that in addition to eliminating the weight of the 02, scramjets push such an amazing amount of air out the back that they are far more efficient than rocket engines.
Rocket engines are -very- efficient, but of course they have to push their own oxidizer along. How much oxidizer do you save by doing air breathing? Not much (according to those who know) and you have just added an amazing level of complexity. Instead of a simple rocket, you now have a complicated two types of engine system.
The main problem with space launches is the initial climb and acceleration, when you are pushing forward all of the craft's stages and fuel. By eliminating the 02, it translates into vastly, vastly smaller requirements.
Vastly smaller requirements for what? O2 which is amazingly cheap? Why bother?
Scramjets are far simpler than rocket engines. It would be much cheaper to build boosters that use a scramjet as a first stage as opposed to a rocket engine. The fuel savings, the increased payload, and the cheaper cost all make the scramjet a superior option.
They -may- be far simpler than rocket engines, but you still have to have a rocket anyway. You don't get very far up before you run out of oxygen to power a scramjet, much earlier (I think) than any separation occurs on a multistage rocket.
Fuel (oxidizer actually) savings are irrelavent - the cost is so little as to be laughable. There is no increased payload as the scramjet has to give up very quickly, and weighs quite a bit itself. I'm not sure why it would be any cheaper, as you had to build the rocket engine anyway. Now you have two engines to maintain instead of one.
"With a scramjet you only need half the fuel of a traditional rocket, as you burn oxygen from the atmosphere instead of carrying it all with you. Yes, a traditional rocket IS needed to get you out of the atmosphere, but using a scramjet for the initial acceleration would end up saving a lot of fuel, and hence weight."
....but who cares? Look at the newsgroup sci.space.tech to realise that the weight of the oxidizer (not fuel!) is largely irrelavent. If you put enough crap in to make a engine that can run from the air from a small amount of time (and rockets try to get out of the atmosphere as quickly as possible) then you've just spent a large part of your weight/complexity/management budget on not much.
Better to simply make the fuel and oxidizer tanks bigger (because fuel and oxidizer is -so- much a -tiny- part of a launch cost) and stick bigger engines on it.
"Hydro is also worth looking into if there is water nearby. Bonus points for useing a windmill to pump water back up to the resevior for reuse."
In which case you are using the water in the header tank as an energy storage device. Would it be better to store it in a chemical battery directly? My gut feeling is that there could be more losses moving water about.
When jobs requiring college degrees get outsourced it means a return to the middle ages, with a rich, talentless aristocracy, and a sea of poverty.
Except, of course, for those people in poorer countries who are prepared to move -up- out of their patch of the middle ages which they have been in for a loooong time.
Did you really think that a select group of countries could keep all the good jobs locked up for themselves forever?
"Polical reasons. If China unilaterally set up shop on the moon for mining, the rest of the world would be rightly up in arms. If they grabbed an asteroid who would care? (It might even assuage their anger over losing Taiwan!)"
They could even land the asteroid -on- Taiwan, which would also help them get over their anger. They may even be happy!
One of the interesting aspects of compulsory voting is that the political system is less likely to be captured by special interest groups.
In a non compulsory system, an active lobby group can often motivate their members to vote in a block, and have influence out of proportion to their size.
"I'm saying the principles matter more than the "law". By relying on the notion of POW, which incidentally doesn't have anything for non-uniformed people, you are basically creating a new category called "enemy combatants"."
Perhaps that's a consequence of the current Geneva Convention. Perhaps you should take it up with the ICRC as to what to do. I certainly don't know.
"You are circumventing the spirit of the law. What you are doing is not illegal but immoral, and against international norms. Only the UN, in particular the ICRC (Red Cross), can make that judgement. And based on their opinions, there is no such thing as "enemy combatant.""
Interesting. What do they classify people who are in this situation? Are there any laws that specify how they should be held/what conditions they should be treated under?
"What's my point? Well, you were talking about non-citizens in Guantanomo Bay but what about your own citizen (which is even worse, although the conditions aren't the same)?"
I'm not an American so Mr J. Padilla is not a fellow countryman. I am Australian, and there are two Australians
being held, and it doesn't seem very nice for them.
One of them has been in previous wars (according to his family). I don't hold any illusions at to the sort of things he
has been doing (such as killing people). What do I think should be done? I really have no idea.
"Yes it's fact. So what? "
You were the one who got grumpy about it. I'm just stating what the situation was, as a disinterested (look that word up!) observer.
"That is not even the point! I, as well as others like me, aren't arguing over whether they were shooting or not. Instead, the point is that these people are being held without charges, with almost no lawyers, etc. "
Your status -is- important. I believe you can hold POWs without access to lawyers (I think this is correct...). Are they spies? Are they something else? Is there a big table of different status vs. treatment when caputered? That's probably of more interest than all this waffle.
"That's a lame argument. Of course, no one knows what you think."
Then don't say that you do, in your previous argument. Say something like "if you mean this then I would disagree".
You seem very grumpy for someone who really doesn't know what I believe in.
"Besides, you don't know what I think either."
I never claimed to.
"However, based on your words, you seem to support the current position of the US government (namely, holding non-uniformed combatants forever and claiming them as "enemy combatants"). That seems to be your position..."
Nope. I'm fence sitting. I can see arguments both ways and don't really have enough information to make an informed decision/opinion. I cerntainly feel sorry for anyone who is imprisoned, but realise that some people have to be to protect others. I certainly hope that none of the current detainees are being held if it is not warrented.
My previous statements were just my reporting of what I see are some facts (i.e. the rules to be declared a POW, what state the people were detained in).
"BTW, do you know how to search one's past postings? I posted a good rebuttal a while ago with html links and I need to access that. Do you know how to search Slashdot for just my comments? "
You just click on your name in the main slashdot page....
"To be legally recognised as a POW according to the rules of the Geneva Convention...blah blah blah".
So lets analyse your statement, and hope that you construct your arguments better next time.
"How about the fact that an American citizen, Jose Padilla, has been jailed with almost no contact with his lawyers and family for the last year or so?"
I can tell it's supposed to be a question, because it's got a question mark on the end, but other than that I'm not sure what you are actually asking. Perhaps you are saying that it's sad for him and his family. I would agree. I don't know much more about the case. Perhaps you should provide more detail next time. Or ask a question.
"Claiming people aren't wearing uniforms is a cop-out."
No, claiming that people aren't wearing uniforms is a statement of fact. There's really not much more to it than that.
"When you are dealing with situations like this, what matters is not the details but the principles."
The legal system tends to be based on principles, but has to deal with details. That's why they present evidence at trials. Details such as "was this person shooting at others?" are important. I'm not sure what the rules of evidence should be in this situation (because IANAL).
"It's too bad that you don't think that jailing someone without trial (likely forever), without charges, with little contact with lawyers is acceptable."
You don't know what I think. You certainly can't assume
that I think that based on my previous statements (I'll presume:-) that you meant to say "unacceptable").
"People who subscribe to your view will never be satsified with anything."
People who subscribe to -my- view (and not your fantasy land made up version of what you -think- my view is) would be satisfied sometimes, because I know that I am.
...and please note that I still haven't said what I think of this situation.
To be a POW you have to have been captured wearing a recognisable uniform, and be part of an established fighting force of a government.
I suspect that many of the people captured met neither condition.
No, slower than that:-). Currently the slowest iMac is a 1 GHz G4. The iBooks are slower at 800MHz G3. If you restricted clones to 600Mhz G3 machines you could create a viable industry.
Apple could allow clones to be created, and survive. All they would have to do is allow cloners to produce computers that didn't compete against Apple.
They could do this by requiring the licensees to only produce machines that ran at 1/2 the speed of current machines (plenty fast enough for Point of sale systems, routers, firewalls for example).
Either that or licence a particular design with an Apple supplied chip that would never go above a certain speed.
North Korea is a terrorist state (run by a man who planned bombing missions against other SE Asian leaders), and is funded by drug running (specially modified ships plying the Australian coastline), and they have missiles.
How much longer before they have -really- long range missiles, or are happy to sell them to other states?
What if the people of Saudi Arabia overthrow their rather unpleasant overlords and install a nice rich Isamlic republic? Do you think they might like to buy some missiles from North Korea?
Please define your terms. For me, a piece of software that works on lots of different architectures is lilkey to have been tested in all sorts of interesting ways that hackers working on a single architecture won't have thought about.
NetBSD runs on big and little endian machines. It runs on 32 and 64 bit machines. Just those two alone would affect a lot of poorly written code, and cause the O/S to be revised into robustness.
It may be less efficient (if you can't take specific hardware features into account), but I'm happy to sacrifice a small amount of speed for the knowledge of running reliable software....now if only I -was- running NetBSD:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I tried "proctologist", but it's a pretty shitty joke.
Perhaps that's one of the reasons why Microsoft purchased Virtual PC. If you put enough horsepower into the problem (and the neXBox is going to have 3 64 bit processors) then my guess is that it could emulate it reasonably.
Ah! Those damn neutrons! Thanks for the correction.
Oxygen has an atomic weight of 8, Hydrogen 1. Given there are two H per O, that should meen it is 4 times heavier.
Rocket engines are -very- efficient, but of course they have to push their own oxidizer along. --I dont know how you define efficiency but in my aproximation having to lift 20x the payload mass because of extra fuel is an inefficency.
I'ts -not- fuel, it's oxidizer. I'm not sure why you say 20x, how do you calculate that figure?
-Going back to the previous point. Its not a matter of the price of oxygen, but the bulk that it causes to carry it. This results in hugely more complex lift vehical, which is... um... huge, and expensive. The original poster -did- mention cost, so that's why I responded. I'm happy for it not to be a consideration.
(see http://www.google.com.au/groups?q=scramjet+group:You should read the following quote from Henry Spencer (one of -the- authorities on sci.space.tech)...
You may be right about the remaining points. I was working from memory, and I'm no longer sure...
However I am inclined to believe Henry Spencer; as far as I can see scramjets are a waste of time. Just use plain old rocketry (or perhaps reusable rockets, if you can do it right. NASA can't. They couldn't organise a root in a brothel).
I'm not sure what relavence the % of Oxygen's mass is. The main point is that the mass doesn't matter if it is fuel/oxidizer mass. Typically you want -more- of it because it makes life so simple if you can have more powerful engines that consume it in large quantities.
Keep in mind that in addition to eliminating the weight of the 02, scramjets push such an amazing amount of air out the back that they are far more efficient than rocket engines.
Rocket engines are -very- efficient, but of course they have to push their own oxidizer along. How much oxidizer do you save by doing air breathing? Not much (according to those who know) and you have just added an amazing level of complexity. Instead of a simple rocket, you now have a complicated two types of engine system.
The main problem with space launches is the initial climb and acceleration, when you are pushing forward all of the craft's stages and fuel. By eliminating the 02, it translates into vastly, vastly smaller requirements.
Vastly smaller requirements for what? O2 which is amazingly cheap? Why bother?
Scramjets are far simpler than rocket engines. It would be much cheaper to build boosters that use a scramjet as a first stage as opposed to a rocket engine. The fuel savings, the increased payload, and the cheaper cost all make the scramjet a superior option.
They -may- be far simpler than rocket engines, but you still have to have a rocket anyway. You don't get very far up before you run out of oxygen to power a scramjet, much earlier (I think) than any separation occurs on a multistage rocket.
Fuel (oxidizer actually) savings are irrelavent - the cost is so little as to be laughable. There is no increased payload as the scramjet has to give up very quickly, and weighs quite a bit itself. I'm not sure why it would be any cheaper, as you had to build the rocket engine anyway. Now you have two engines to maintain instead of one.
Better to simply make the fuel and oxidizer tanks bigger (because fuel and oxidizer is -so- much a -tiny- part of a launch cost) and stick bigger engines on it.
In which case you are using the water in the header tank as an energy storage device. Would it be better to store it in a chemical battery directly? My gut feeling is that there could be more losses moving water about.
Except, of course, for those people in poorer countries who are prepared to move -up- out of their patch of the middle ages which they have been in for a loooong time.
Did you really think that a select group of countries could keep all the good jobs locked up for themselves forever?
*cough* ... the loss of his -hand-... The rest of his arm was very much attached.
I was hoping for three...
They could even land the asteroid -on- Taiwan, which would also help them get over their anger. They may even be happy!
It took me a while to realise, but Joy of Tech has a cartoon of Darl himself! (see cartoon 506).
One of the interesting aspects of compulsory voting is that the political system is less likely to be captured by special interest groups.
In a non compulsory system, an active lobby group can often motivate their members to vote in a block, and have influence out of proportion to their size.
Perhaps that's a consequence of the current Geneva Convention. Perhaps you should take it up with the ICRC as to what to do. I certainly don't know.
"You are circumventing the spirit of the law. What you are doing is not illegal but immoral, and against international norms. Only the UN, in particular the ICRC (Red Cross), can make that judgement. And based on their opinions, there is no such thing as "enemy combatant.""
Interesting. What do they classify people who are in this situation? Are there any laws that specify how they should be held/what conditions they should be treated under?
"What's my point? Well, you were talking about non-citizens in Guantanomo Bay but what about your own citizen (which is even worse, although the conditions aren't the same)?"
I'm not an American so Mr J. Padilla is not a fellow countryman. I am Australian, and there are two Australians being held, and it doesn't seem very nice for them.
One of them has been in previous wars (according to his family). I don't hold any illusions at to the sort of things he has been doing (such as killing people). What do I think should be done? I really have no idea.
"Yes it's fact. So what? "
You were the one who got grumpy about it. I'm just stating what the situation was, as a disinterested (look that word up!) observer.
"That is not even the point! I, as well as others like me, aren't arguing over whether they were shooting or not. Instead, the point is that these people are being held without charges, with almost no lawyers, etc. "
Your status -is- important. I believe you can hold POWs without access to lawyers (I think this is correct...). Are they spies? Are they something else? Is there a big table of different status vs. treatment when caputered? That's probably of more interest than all this waffle.
"That's a lame argument. Of course, no one knows what you think."
Then don't say that you do, in your previous argument. Say something like "if you mean this then I would disagree". You seem very grumpy for someone who really doesn't know what I believe in.
"Besides, you don't know what I think either."
I never claimed to.
"However, based on your words, you seem to support the current position of the US government (namely, holding non-uniformed combatants forever and claiming them as "enemy combatants"). That seems to be your position..."
Nope. I'm fence sitting. I can see arguments both ways and don't really have enough information to make an informed decision/opinion. I cerntainly feel sorry for anyone who is imprisoned, but realise that some people have to be to protect others. I certainly hope that none of the current detainees are being held if it is not warrented.
My previous statements were just my reporting of what I see are some facts (i.e. the rules to be declared a POW, what state the people were detained in).
"BTW, do you know how to search one's past postings? I posted a good rebuttal a while ago with html links and I need to access that. Do you know how to search Slashdot for just my comments? "
You just click on your name in the main slashdot page....
"To be legally recognised as a POW according to the rules of the Geneva Convention...blah blah blah".
So lets analyse your statement, and hope that you construct your arguments better next time.
"How about the fact that an American citizen, Jose Padilla, has been jailed with almost no contact with his lawyers and family for the last year or so?"
I can tell it's supposed to be a question, because it's got a question mark on the end, but other than that I'm not sure what you are actually asking. Perhaps you are saying that it's sad for him and his family. I would agree. I don't know much more about the case. Perhaps you should provide more detail next time. Or ask a question.
"Claiming people aren't wearing uniforms is a cop-out."
No, claiming that people aren't wearing uniforms is a statement of fact. There's really not much more to it than that.
"When you are dealing with situations like this, what matters is not the details but the principles."
The legal system tends to be based on principles, but has to deal with details. That's why they present evidence at trials. Details such as "was this person shooting at others?" are important. I'm not sure what the rules of evidence should be in this situation (because IANAL).
"It's too bad that you don't think that jailing someone without trial (likely forever), without charges, with little contact with lawyers is acceptable."
You don't know what I think. You certainly can't assume that I think that based on my previous statements (I'll presume :-) that you meant to say "unacceptable").
"People who subscribe to your view will never be satsified with anything."
People who subscribe to -my- view (and not your fantasy land made up version of what you -think- my view is) would be satisfied sometimes, because I know that I am.
To be a POW you have to have been captured wearing a recognisable uniform, and be part of an established fighting force of a government.
I suspect that many of the people captured met neither condition.
No, slower than that :-). Currently the slowest iMac is a 1 GHz G4. The iBooks are slower at 800MHz G3. If you restricted clones to 600Mhz G3 machines you could create a viable industry.
Apple could allow clones to be created, and survive. All they would have to do is allow cloners to produce computers that didn't compete against Apple.
They could do this by requiring the licensees to only produce machines that ran at 1/2 the speed of current machines (plenty fast enough for Point of sale systems, routers, firewalls for example).
Either that or licence a particular design with an Apple supplied chip that would never go above a certain speed.
My guess is that the intelligence of the population would be normally distributed around the mean, so mean~= median.
How much longer before they have -really- long range missiles, or are happy to sell them to other states?
What if the people of Saudi Arabia overthrow their rather unpleasant overlords and install a nice rich Isamlic republic? Do you think they might like to buy some missiles from North Korea?
Hey! I've trademarked "End Of Post."!
From what I've heard about Mr Limbaugh, it seems to me that people like Osama bin Laden are really just his Islamic counterpart.
Not interested in proper debate, evidence or good will to others. They just enjoy their own beliefs, and despise everything else.
"So, you watch to see if the joke "leaks out" into the world. If so, and if you maintained other security, then your crypto has been broken."
I'm not sure that's a good plan.
Microsoft had windows 3.1 as the encrypted joke, and look where we have ended up!
Please define your terms. For me, a piece of software that works on lots of different architectures is lilkey to have been tested in all sorts of interesting ways that hackers working on a single architecture won't have thought about. NetBSD runs on big and little endian machines. It runs on 32 and 64 bit machines. Just those two alone would affect a lot of poorly written code, and cause the O/S to be revised into robustness. It may be less efficient (if you can't take specific hardware features into account), but I'm happy to sacrifice a small amount of speed for the knowledge of running reliable software. ...now if only I -was- running NetBSD :-)
11!