I've never understood the whole dBi to range conversion. I know it's not direct, but how do you figure it out? I'm going to try and put up a link between my parent's store and their house, a distance of just under half a mile. The house sits up on a hill, and I think I can get a straight shot from the roof of one building to the roof of the other. There might be a tree or two in the way. What should I expect to use? What problems will I encounter?
Well, you're not going to be right next to the microwave emitter when it fires. By the time it gets 300 km up into LEO where the ship would first encounter it, the beam would be [from TFA] the same size as the sail which [also from TFA] is about a hundred meters in diameter.
Quick! Someone with skillz work out what the per-square-meter power of a 100 meter diameter beam that originated with 60 MW emitter and traveled 300 km would be. And I apologize for the poor construction of that sentance.
Um, thanks, but I don't think that we are, as a collective, quite so stupid that we couldn't figure that out based on the GP. Of course, if people are reading this through a translator, it could get ugly, so maybe your explanation is warranted. It's early yet, so I'll just troll until the caffeine comes online.
People are making unauthorized copies, but that is not stealing, it is copyright infringement.
You're right, my error. Still, the point stands, modified for the appropriate violation of law. Or is that violation of the appropriate law? Whatever.
What we need is a different system of distribution all together, one that has appeals to the sensibilities of both producer and consumer. For those without sensibilities, move along, there's nothing here for you to see. For the rest, I offer this shameless plug to my somewhat dated (last October) blog post on the subject. At any rate, theft is not the answer, no matter what you think of the people owning the goods.
Did I miss something? What does the color of the houses have to do with development of OSS? Furthermore, with all the trees, it's mostly green around here. We're also known as being blue on the political map, though closer examination shows that to be in the metro area, with Eastern Oregon being mostly red. Still, I don't see your point.
Question: Will the 1.26 GHz P-III perform better or worse than the 1.25 GHz G4? Assume you're running XP, as that's what you stated, and what most consumer-grade-consumers would run.
Any idea how the Mini stacks up (I know, don't do that) against boxes produced by people OTHER than Apple? If this is a carrot for switchers, you'd think there would be a bunch of published comparisons to Intel-based boxen.
I'm currently running Suse 9.1 on an IBM Thinkpad with a 1.6 GHz Celeron. It's definitely not a speed demon, but it gets me by just fine. And it runs laps around the P-II/300 Compaq Armada that my wife runs XP on (shudder). So, when thinking of purchasing another computer, what should we expect out of this Mac Mini versus either of the machines we already have?
And telling me how I'm going to be able to run Half Life at over 60 fps while simultaneously ripping bootlegged movies to DVD and serving up pr0n over my DSL line on an $800 box cobbled together with parts at Fry's doesn't help at all. I have no interest in doing any of those things. Having a good, solid platform for general purpose computing that doesn't catch every strain of Martian Death Flu that comes along appeals to me. Computing in the mainstream appeals to my wife. The Mac is a good compromise. The Mini is a good price competitor. But where should we set our expectations when bringing one home?
I suppose if you wanted a cluster of two (for redundancy and failover as well as minimal process distribution), one port each would work fine, particularly considering that the 10/100 ports would be client-facing.
I think you're talking about SMIT, which, from what little I've used it, is a handy tool. I have no idea what its data files are like on the back end. I always assumed they were standard config files.
The same thing you're going to do for people, machinery, and vegetation: import it. Nitrogen is one of those things that we don't lose a lot of with our use of it (growing plants, breathing), as it's essentially a buffer gas where we humans are concerned. Plants think otherwise about it, but I think they just utilize it rather than modify it (not completely clear on this point). And, if you import a couple metric tons of hydrogen, you can use the oxygen on dear Luna to create water.
I didn't say that there were all the components necessary on the moon to create a self-sustaining environment, just that we could do it. And, for the record, there's not a lot of nitrogen on Mars, either.
Note that I'm not so much arguing against your basic concept, just the extremity of your original statement.
While I understand what you're saying about the moon lacking natural resources, it's not necessarily true that there's no way to get a self-sustaining colony there. It just means that we have to do a lot of the "heavy lifting" of the construction ourselves, including creation of an atmosphere trap (bubble or can or whatever), gardens, etc. The moon itself is essentially a large platform of unrefined resources (Silicon, Oxygen, Iron, Aluminum, etc.) with a huge import of solar energy (around 1300 W/sq.m). With raw resources, energy, and a hell of a lot of engineering talent, you can build about anything you want. The only other ingredient you need is willpower.
Does it strike anyone that, given Carmack's open blogging about his trial-and-error development of a vertical takeoff/vertical landing rocket, as well as software (at the bottom) for some of his control functions, that Bezos may be throwing some high-grade engineering talent at a proven concept? If I had a pot of money and a big plot of land, I might do the same thing. For that matter, he could be padding a nest for Carmack and crew to incubate their eggs in.
Okay, please help me understand this. I've just discovered that my TiVo screwed up and chose What Not To Wear over the first episode of Battlestar Galactica. So, I want to go get the episode off the net if I can.
I understand the theory behind Bittorrent, and think it's a great bit of technology, but have never bothered to do much with it because most of the content seems to be stuff I don't care about (until now). So I go searching for tonight's episode to download ("33"). What I find is a bunch of files named something like "battlestar.galactica.1x04.WS.(X)SVCD.torrent." What the hell is that? What's "Fanta?" I downloaded Azureus from SourceForge, but haven't unpacked it yet. Maybe that will explain a few things. The best thing I could figure is that tonight's episode was two hours long, and one of the files listed seemed to be about twice the size of the rest. But that's a horrible way to go shopping for content. What's the deal?
If you're referring to the lack of apostrophe to make it posessive, you're mistaken. It drives me nuts, too, but it really is "Starbucks" and not "Starbuck's."
"Iron meteorites", also called "irons", are usually just one big blob of iron-nickel (Fe-Ni) metal, as if it came from a industrial refinery without shaping. The alloy ranges from 5% to 62% nickel from meteorite to meteorite, with an average of 10% nickel. Cobalt averages about 0.5%, and other metals such as the platinum group metals, gallium, and germanium are dissolved in the Fe-Ni metal. (Fe is the chemical symbol for iron.) While most "irons" are pure or nearly pure metal, the technical definition of an "iron" includes metal meteorites with up to 30% mineral inclusions such as sulfides, metal oxides and silicates. The irons represent the cores of former planetoids.
Much like those "home equity line of credit" mailers that come to my house, looking like a check payable to me, saying "You are automatically qualified for up to $$56,234.89 OR MORE!!"
I hate those things, but more than that I hate the idea that the scheme works well enough that they keep doing it.
"There's a sucker born every minute." -- PT Barnum
"The thing that scares the shit out of me is when I realize that half of all people are of below average intelligence." -- Dennis Leary
Slashdot Mirror
Think solar panels and a wireless transceiver...
I've never understood the whole dBi to range conversion. I know it's not direct, but how do you figure it out? I'm going to try and put up a link between my parent's store and their house, a distance of just under half a mile. The house sits up on a hill, and I think I can get a straight shot from the roof of one building to the roof of the other. There might be a tree or two in the way. What should I expect to use? What problems will I encounter?
Well, at least you'd know which way the thing was pointed...
Quick! Someone with skillz work out what the per-square-meter power of a 100 meter diameter beam that originated with 60 MW emitter and traveled 300 km would be. And I apologize for the poor construction of that sentance.
Um, thanks, but I don't think that we are, as a collective, quite so stupid that we couldn't figure that out based on the GP. Of course, if people are reading this through a translator, it could get ugly, so maybe your explanation is warranted. It's early yet, so I'll just troll until the caffeine comes online.
A true geek will wait until these get to under $500 and use one of them. Until then, a Dremel works.
FreeGeek
Hence the seat. Too lazy to stand on the pegs.
People are making unauthorized copies, but that is not stealing, it is copyright infringement. You're right, my error. Still, the point stands, modified for the appropriate violation of law. Or is that violation of the appropriate law? Whatever.
What we need is a different system of distribution all together, one that has appeals to the sensibilities of both producer and consumer. For those without sensibilities, move along, there's nothing here for you to see. For the rest, I offer this shameless plug to my somewhat dated (last October) blog post on the subject. At any rate, theft is not the answer, no matter what you think of the people owning the goods.
Did I miss something? What does the color of the houses have to do with development of OSS? Furthermore, with all the trees, it's mostly green around here. We're also known as being blue on the political map, though closer examination shows that to be in the metro area, with Eastern Oregon being mostly red. Still, I don't see your point.
Since I live in Portland, this could be good for future prospects in the employment-in-interesting-jobs arena.
Question: Will the 1.26 GHz P-III perform better or worse than the 1.25 GHz G4? Assume you're running XP, as that's what you stated, and what most consumer-grade-consumers would run.
I'm currently running Suse 9.1 on an IBM Thinkpad with a 1.6 GHz Celeron. It's definitely not a speed demon, but it gets me by just fine. And it runs laps around the P-II/300 Compaq Armada that my wife runs XP on (shudder). So, when thinking of purchasing another computer, what should we expect out of this Mac Mini versus either of the machines we already have?
And telling me how I'm going to be able to run Half Life at over 60 fps while simultaneously ripping bootlegged movies to DVD and serving up pr0n over my DSL line on an $800 box cobbled together with parts at Fry's doesn't help at all. I have no interest in doing any of those things. Having a good, solid platform for general purpose computing that doesn't catch every strain of Martian Death Flu that comes along appeals to me. Computing in the mainstream appeals to my wife. The Mac is a good compromise. The Mini is a good price competitor. But where should we set our expectations when bringing one home?
I suppose if you wanted a cluster of two (for redundancy and failover as well as minimal process distribution), one port each would work fine, particularly considering that the 10/100 ports would be client-facing.
I think you're talking about SMIT, which, from what little I've used it, is a handy tool. I have no idea what its data files are like on the back end. I always assumed they were standard config files.
In Nebraska, only old people...
The same thing you're going to do for people, machinery, and vegetation: import it. Nitrogen is one of those things that we don't lose a lot of with our use of it (growing plants, breathing), as it's essentially a buffer gas where we humans are concerned. Plants think otherwise about it, but I think they just utilize it rather than modify it (not completely clear on this point). And, if you import a couple metric tons of hydrogen, you can use the oxygen on dear Luna to create water.
I didn't say that there were all the components necessary on the moon to create a self-sustaining environment, just that we could do it. And, for the record, there's not a lot of nitrogen on Mars, either.
Note that I'm not so much arguing against your basic concept, just the extremity of your original statement.
While I understand what you're saying about the moon lacking natural resources, it's not necessarily true that there's no way to get a self-sustaining colony there. It just means that we have to do a lot of the "heavy lifting" of the construction ourselves, including creation of an atmosphere trap (bubble or can or whatever), gardens, etc. The moon itself is essentially a large platform of unrefined resources (Silicon, Oxygen, Iron, Aluminum, etc.) with a huge import of solar energy (around 1300 W/sq.m). With raw resources, energy, and a hell of a lot of engineering talent, you can build about anything you want. The only other ingredient you need is willpower.
Does it strike anyone that, given Carmack's open blogging about his trial-and-error development of a vertical takeoff/vertical landing rocket, as well as software (at the bottom) for some of his control functions, that Bezos may be throwing some high-grade engineering talent at a proven concept? If I had a pot of money and a big plot of land, I might do the same thing. For that matter, he could be padding a nest for Carmack and crew to incubate their eggs in.
Fortran is big in the mathematic field. There's lots of math in rocketry.
Okay, please help me understand this. I've just discovered that my TiVo screwed up and chose What Not To Wear over the first episode of Battlestar Galactica. So, I want to go get the episode off the net if I can.
I understand the theory behind Bittorrent, and think it's a great bit of technology, but have never bothered to do much with it because most of the content seems to be stuff I don't care about (until now). So I go searching for tonight's episode to download ("33"). What I find is a bunch of files named something like "battlestar.galactica.1x04.WS.(X)SVCD.torrent." What the hell is that? What's "Fanta?" I downloaded Azureus from SourceForge, but haven't unpacked it yet. Maybe that will explain a few things. The best thing I could figure is that tonight's episode was two hours long, and one of the files listed seemed to be about twice the size of the rest. But that's a horrible way to go shopping for content. What's the deal?
If you're referring to the lack of apostrophe to make it posessive, you're mistaken. It drives me nuts, too, but it really is "Starbucks" and not "Starbuck's."
"Iron meteorites", also called "irons", are usually just one big blob of iron-nickel (Fe-Ni) metal, as if it came from a industrial refinery without shaping. The alloy ranges from 5% to 62% nickel from meteorite to meteorite, with an average of 10% nickel. Cobalt averages about 0.5%, and other metals such as the platinum group metals, gallium, and germanium are dissolved in the Fe-Ni metal. (Fe is the chemical symbol for iron.) While most "irons" are pure or nearly pure metal, the technical definition of an "iron" includes metal meteorites with up to 30% mineral inclusions such as sulfides, metal oxides and silicates. The irons represent the cores of former planetoids.
"There's a sucker born every minute." -- PT Barnum
"The thing that scares the shit out of me is when I realize that half of all people are of below average intelligence." -- Dennis Leary