Its not a problem of the actual signals degrading.
They get completely overpowered by the huge great big solar radio emitter, so that by the time they reach another starsystem, all thats resolvable is the signal from our sun itself.
Its like trying to find an individual pebble splash from orbit in the wake of a tidalwave.
Even if we pulled together every amp of radio power we had and transmitted, it would still be drowned out when it reached the other side.
In the future, we may be able to resolve the actual signals from nearby stars, but for longer distances, I think only a super nova/pulsar event would suffice for communication.
The guy *did* turn his airport off when asked, and was not even online when the officer returned and asked him to "Why don't you just close that up, sir, or use your computer elsewhere?"
Hey! you could have found the killer application for these new magnets.
Make boat/aircraft/travel cups out of them!
Now if your boat is attacked by a shark, your drink will stay on the table!
Thing is, I think this is a solution in search of a problem. Theres probably a greater magnetic field strength inside a fridge magnet than these things.
Whilst making plastics magnetic is cool, I would be more interested in running plastic circuit boards and components, which if I remember rightly is whats required for printing (ala inkjet) your own computers.
If this work can strengthen the electromagnetic field strengths inside these plastics, then we will be a step closer to this goal.
At this point, the field strength of these magnets does not even come close to the current magnetic/ceramic magents we have, so its uses would be extremely limited.
In the article, they say that they were ready to throw the batch away, but they had aquired magnetic properties over 3 months in storage.
Whilst we must obviously wait and see, it doesnt look likely at this point.
I think slash and the majority of other places are suffering from news shortages. Not much SCO stuff going around, MS has been done to death, and all people seem to be coming out with are press releases.
If you've got an interesting story for us all, by all means submit it.
Please dont sit around bitching about it, we are meant to have the Open Source ethos.
The quality of the front page is related to the quality of the submissions - shit in, shit out.
We all need to go hunt down some gems of stories and get them posted.
But thats the beauty, and the downside of Open Source/free solutions.
This guy is asking for our experiences, and pointers to locate a piece of code already written which will fulfill his requirements.
This is similar in a way to slashdot dupes, and patent prior art. If he reproduces code which already exists, then hes wasted 12 months doing something completely redundant.
Hopefully one of us will be able to suggest a path to an acceptable solution to his problem.
As it happens with this one, my thinking is "if it ain't broke...".
These users have reported that hitting the Karma works very well in solving this particular problem. They suggest holding it in your left hand, with the screen facing you, Karma on the startup screen. Proceed to clap it into your right palm, so that the rubber grip hits your palm, hard enough to make your palm slightly red and to hurt a little. They report that this should set the Karma working again. If not, try slightly harder each time.
Thats like taking a hammer to the PC when it won't boot, hang on... that gives me an idea;)
Your telling me that a quartz clock cannot keep accurate time in the frame your talking about?
On the scale of a day, where you can sync yourself in the mornings only, the quartz or other non atomic clock will not perform accurately enough?
GPS works because you can obtain your location based upon the timing signals of a number of FIXED POSITION satellites. Without knowing the locations of the reference points, you cannot determine your location. How pray tell do you expect to calculate your location using a time reference of unknown location?
What this may allow is fixed beacons (long term environmental sensors from another post) on hilltops and on city buildings which as well as linking to the GPS sats above, can also transmit their time signal/location to others, like the radio repeater cells around the world. This will give coverage in those areas where none is present now.
The smaller device will allow packaging into a more compact canister making impact/payload less.
I'm not knocking this innovation in atomic clock tech, and I think it has its uses, but placing it into every handheld device just because they can would be a folly.
The amotic clock scenario is only useful if it is in sync with them. Things will run perfectly for as long as your device has a battery. Consider after a battery drain event, if your local clock tells you its 8:01 and the once onboard the sat say 8:02 then you are thousands of miles off course.
Granted some applications require a time interval rather than a period, a race or competition for instance, but at the time scales required, quartz is usually good enough.
The best place I can see this in use is in remote spacecraft, or long duration environmental sensors where before, the size constraints, or power requirements of the larger device were prohibitive. The current timing systems using NTP etc are perfectly acceptable, and I do not see them changing for a great many years.
Slashdot Mirror
Its not a problem of the actual signals degrading.
They get completely overpowered by the huge great big solar radio emitter, so that by the time they reach another starsystem, all thats resolvable is the signal from our sun itself.
Its like trying to find an individual pebble splash from orbit in the wake of a tidalwave.
Even if we pulled together every amp of radio power we had and transmitted, it would still be drowned out when it reached the other side.
In the future, we may be able to resolve the actual signals from nearby stars, but for longer distances, I think only a super nova/pulsar event would suffice for communication.
I wonder if this news story has been released as a (forgive me) smokescreen to cover the bad press about the changes to this years firework show.
6 0&cid=10133401)
In the article, they describe using this year as a "test-run" for next years big birthday.
A poster earlier in the discussion mentioned something about this years show as being disappointing at best (http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1202
Hang on, by licensing the technology, no matter if free or not means that the company has to have Disney on the books somewhere.
Whether or not money is involved, its still a business exposure.
Or am I just being too cynical?
This book review is just perfect, considering the "How can I hack with google" story earlier today.
Quick, go rush out and buy it before the kiddies hack YOU!
Your missing out.
Jaws is absolutely electrifying on the big screen!
Why do I suddenly get the rather disturbing image of a priest in a super hero costume with underpants outside his clothes?
*shudder*
movies actually :)
Never really got into watching regular TV.
The guy *did* turn his airport off when asked, and was not even online when the officer returned and asked him to
"Why don't you just close that up, sir, or use your computer elsewhere?"
this stinks!
But can we still download skins for these rockets?
Hey! you could have found the killer application for these new magnets.
Make boat/aircraft/travel cups out of them!
Now if your boat is attacked by a shark, your drink will stay on the table!
Thing is, I think this is a solution in search of a problem. Theres probably a greater magnetic field strength inside a fridge magnet than these things.
Whilst making plastics magnetic is cool, I would be more interested in running plastic circuit boards and components, which if I remember rightly is whats required for printing (ala inkjet) your own computers.
If this work can strengthen the electromagnetic field strengths inside these plastics, then we will be a step closer to this goal.
At this point, the field strength of these magnets does not even come close to the current magnetic/ceramic magents we have, so its uses would be extremely limited.
In the article, they say that they were ready to throw the batch away, but they had aquired magnetic properties over 3 months in storage.
Whilst we must obviously wait and see, it doesnt look likely at this point.
Duncan,
I think slash and the majority of other places are suffering from news shortages. Not much SCO stuff going around, MS has been done to death, and all people seem to be coming out with are press releases.
If you've got an interesting story for us all, by all means submit it.
Please dont sit around bitching about it, we are meant to have the Open Source ethos.
The quality of the front page is related to the quality of the submissions - shit in, shit out.
We all need to go hunt down some gems of stories and get them posted.
But thats the beauty, and the downside of Open Source/free solutions.
This guy is asking for our experiences, and pointers to locate a piece of code already written which will fulfill his requirements.
This is similar in a way to slashdot dupes, and patent prior art. If he reproduces code which already exists, then hes wasted 12 months doing something completely redundant.
Hopefully one of us will be able to suggest a path to an acceptable solution to his problem.
As it happens with this one, my thinking is "if it ain't broke...".
Just to add to this, I just looked back, timothy did a massive stint from 5pm Sunday afternoon, to 11:39 Monday morning.
Nearly 19hours on the go, and we wonder why all the dupes and errors come from...
I think its because Timothy has been posting articles for the last 13hours.
First story posted was 21:00 last night (Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering) to this one at 10:18 (The Exit Interview).
The poor guy needs a break.
Is anyone brave enough to go wake Taco up?
Would a couple of European editors really be that difficult? (maybe there are already some, I'm just speculating)
Could you flagellate yourself in private please, some of us are trying to eat lunch here.
You already can produce a cheap clone of anything!
I D=2
You could keep your china safely packaged away, and put your nice copies up on the shelf.
I don't think they would be usable in this version (prototypes are like stiff rubber from what I understand), but give it a few more years.
http://www.zcorp.com/products/printersdetail.asp?
*sues you for unlicensed use of a cognac glass*
It does, but as a rule of thumb, having to force devices in, banging or whollop them is bad.
I understand the logic, but it still makes me wince when I see something like that occuring.
Its almost as bad as touching the monitor with greasy fingers....
All I can say is OMG.
;)
These users have reported that hitting the Karma works very well in solving this particular problem. They suggest holding it in your left hand, with the screen facing you, Karma on the startup screen. Proceed to clap it into your right palm, so that the rubber grip hits your palm, hard enough to make your palm slightly red and to hurt a little. They report that this should set the Karma working again. If not, try slightly harder each time.
Thats like taking a hammer to the PC when it won't boot, hang on... that gives me an idea
Slight mistake in the wording, but my point remains.
Your position is established by collating the timing data from signals from a number of known locations.
You cannot use your atomic signal no matter how precise as long as your position is unknown.
Your telling me that a quartz clock cannot keep accurate time in the frame your talking about?
On the scale of a day, where you can sync yourself in the mornings only, the quartz or other non atomic clock will not perform accurately enough?
GPS works because you can obtain your location based upon the timing signals of a number of FIXED POSITION satellites. Without knowing the locations of the reference points, you cannot determine your location. How pray tell do you expect to calculate your location using a time reference of unknown location?
What this may allow is fixed beacons (long term environmental sensors from another post) on hilltops and on city buildings which as well as linking to the GPS sats above, can also transmit their time signal/location to others, like the radio repeater cells around the world. This will give coverage in those areas where none is present now.
The smaller device will allow packaging into a more compact canister making impact/payload less.
I'm not knocking this innovation in atomic clock tech, and I think it has its uses, but placing it into every handheld device just because they can would be a folly.
I'm going to bed.
Enterprise, one to beam up.
Wow, I even previewed that one.
Time for either new glasses, or a visit to the quack!
Of course, I meant Atomic.
The amotic clock scenario is only useful if it is in sync with them. Things will run perfectly for as long as your device has a battery.
Consider after a battery drain event, if your local clock tells you its 8:01 and the once onboard the sat say 8:02 then you are thousands of miles off course.
Granted some applications require a time interval rather than a period, a race or competition for instance, but at the time scales required, quartz is usually good enough.
The best place I can see this in use is in remote spacecraft, or long duration environmental sensors where before, the size constraints, or power requirements of the larger device were prohibitive.
The current timing systems using NTP etc are perfectly acceptable, and I do not see them changing for a great many years.