> Also, maybe I've been watching Real Genius [imdb.com] a little too much, but I was always under the impression that a kilowatt laser wasn't that impressive.
Perhaps not, but I still think most of the world's statues could use a circular hole through their heads. Great symbolism..
>We need a single distribution. That's right. We need totally focused efforts.
In a sense this a political issue. If you think about it, this is sort of like the allies banding together during WW2 to fight a common enemy(Germany).
The problem I see with this is a lot like the allies after WW2. The various distros would work together to fight off the evil microsoft, win the fight, and then fall into bickering confusion as the alliance falls apart. We end up with a Linux Distro cold war.
I mean face it, trying to tell programmers (myself included) what to do is even worse than trying to herd cats. (I have 5 cats..)
I distinctly remember watching a show on Discovery Channel (I believe it was Invention) from several years ago about a guy in the US who drives to various fast food outlets to get used vegetable oil for his car. He said the only problem was that his car always smells like french fries. Here are a couple links to related stories that are more recent. July 2001 and October 2001
> Unfortunately, I have yet to see a power supply that comes with such a fan and provides the sensor feedback to go back to the motherboard.
Actually many of the Antec Truepower power supplies do include a lead for the internal fan to connect it to a sensor on the motherboard. Thought I'd point it out for your future needs:-) I'm using one in my Athlon XP now and I've found they are excellent power supplies.
Many modern power supplies (notably those from Antec or Enermax) actually have a lead coming off the fan inside that connects to one of the fan connectors on newer motherboards. That allows you to monitor the fan RPM in your power supply just like you monitor the case or cpu fans. It might be worth the extra money to purchase a high quality power supply if you having problems sleeping at night:-)
I was at Mardi Gras in New Orleans (lived there at the time) a few years ago and had a Canadian friend ask me if I knew why Canadian bills were all different colors. With a dead serious expression he said "So you can tell them apart when your drunk.." and walked off. Knowing his drinking habits, I've always got a personal chuckle that in his case I believe it.
>This kid is a walking advertisement for the Darwin Awards
True, but at the time, so were the Wright brothers and most of the other early inventors in the field of aeronautics (I mean, come on.. those things were actually supposed to fly!?! bah, man isn't meant to fly.. *grin*).. Stupidity and Ignorance are not the same thing. The kid obviously wasn't stupid and he very well could end up being an important player in the scientific world at some point.
This isn't to say what he did was smart or wise. Simply that doing "stupid" things doesn't make one stupid.
What bothers me about the whole situation is the huge pay cut. If they put you through a huge pay cut only to offer it back, how is this fair to you? Also, how do you know the same thing won't happen again if the economy migrates even farther south (i.e. tierra del fuego)? I guess my point is, the company seems like it's being a bit cheap and is only willing to pay up when the peasants start contemplating the torches and pitchforks. I'd rather be a happy minion at a new job than a pissed off, pitchfork wielding, low paid peasant who has show some loyalty to my existing company. Of course, I've worked mostly as a contractor until my current job..
True enough. But often, especially in physics, the crackpots turn out to be the ones who are right.
>Personally, I think both are crackpots. But if crackpots publish scientific papers, they still should follow the rules of academic conduct, because the rules of academic conduct ultimately are what helps us sort out the real crackpots from the forward thinkers.
As usual, spaceflightnow.com and space.com have better articles with more detail. These sites usually have space/shuttle/station information up very quickly so I tend to rely on them more.
Yes, I seem to recall a few examples of this in the 40's.. like.. oh.. Dresden.. Berlin.. Tokyo.. We effectively nuked those cities with conventional weapons partially because we didn't have the technology of now, and partially because the allied governments viewed them as "acceptable" losses. Nobody was innocent in these attitudes, the germans were just as bad the blitz.
>that this technology will actually reduce civilian casualties in the event of a war. Most of the misses by bombs and missiles from the US Air Force are due to the crews flying high enough to avoid antiaircraft fire.
Your analogy is a little flawed. He didn't determine how the system should operate, he simply implemented a bug fix. I would argue that he applied an open source concept to the public roadways.
As much as the average 'Joe' would like to think they can make decisions for the rest of the world, sometimes there are some things that experts know more about. And yes, sometimes bureacracy gets in the way - but just imagine if we allowed your average person on the street to dictate how a tcp/ip stack should be implemented, or what have you.
I would've found it curious that he picked on of the narrowest points on the St. Johns.. The river is pretty wide through most of it's length. i.e. Where I-295 crosses it in Jax it's over 3 miles.. But he picked a "demo" location that was a fraction of that.
If you're going to build a robot, make it useful! (Hey! Bring me a beer!)
I saw this on the local (Orlando) news last night. A guy at UF built a beer opening robot (ABOR) as part of a project/competition. Some amusing ideas. Here's a link to a story about it: Robots
Judging by the route and proximity to well travelled areas/buildings, the monorail in Las Vegas could actually be successful.
Now, for that to happen they need to look at the Skyway project in Jacksonville (also by bombardier) and do EVERYTHING differently. Jax's monorail is too slow, short, and inconvenient. It also doesn't connect the stadium/arena areas to downtown. If they had that connection, it theoretically could be valuable.
Just my opinion.
Re:Bad Math
on
Lunar Power
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
True, but you could trim down the number of solar cells needed by at least half if you put orbital solar collectors at Lagrange points 4 and 5. Those two are stable so they'd require no (little) position keeping fuel or thrusters and they'd be in full sunlight all of the time. The same concepts of microwaving the energy would still apply. Probably more effecient to "beam" the power to a substation in Geosync orbit and then have it been a concentrated microwave signal to a specific point on the planet.
On the efficiency side, you don't necessarily need photovoltaic cells. Some of the solar plants on earth use mirrors to heat water which then turns a turbine. Something similar could be used in space.
Slashdot Mirror
> Also, maybe I've been watching Real Genius [imdb.com] a little too much, but I was always under the impression that a kilowatt laser wasn't that impressive.
Perhaps not, but I still think most of the world's statues could use a circular hole through their heads. Great symbolism..
>We need a single distribution. That's right. We need totally focused efforts.
In a sense this a political issue. If you think about it, this is sort of like the allies banding together during WW2 to fight a common enemy(Germany).
The problem I see with this is a lot like the allies after WW2. The various distros would work together to fight off the evil microsoft, win the fight, and then fall into bickering confusion as the alliance falls apart. We end up with a Linux Distro cold war.
I mean face it, trying to tell programmers (myself included) what to do is even worse than trying to herd cats. (I have 5 cats..)
I distinctly remember watching a show on Discovery Channel (I believe it was Invention) from several years ago about a guy in the US who drives to various fast food outlets to get used vegetable oil for his car. He said the only problem was that his car always smells like french fries. Here are a couple links to related stories that are more recent. July 2001 and October 2001
> Russia should be commended for trying a cool idea. reusing ICBM's and creating cheap spacecraft seems like a good idea...Too bad
I agree however I should point out that we do this too except with cruise missiles. Several smaller US satellites have been launched that way.
I was just thinking this.. imagine what was lost when the library of Alexandria burnt.
> Unfortunately, I have yet to see a power supply that comes with such a fan and provides the sensor feedback to go back to the motherboard.
:-) I'm using one in my Athlon XP now and I've found they are excellent power supplies.
Actually many of the Antec Truepower power supplies do include a lead for the internal fan to connect it to a sensor on the motherboard. Thought I'd point it out for your future needs
Many modern power supplies (notably those from Antec or Enermax) actually have a lead coming off the fan inside that connects to one of the fan connectors on newer motherboards. That allows you to monitor the fan RPM in your power supply just like you monitor the case or cpu fans. It might be worth the extra money to purchase a high quality power supply if you having problems sleeping at night :-)
I was at Mardi Gras in New Orleans (lived there at the time) a few years ago and had a Canadian friend ask me if I knew why Canadian bills were all different colors. With a dead serious expression he said "So you can tell them apart when your drunk.." and walked off. Knowing his drinking habits, I've always got a personal chuckle that in his case I believe it.
Here in Orlando, we've actually started getting radio advertisements for this phone with camera capabilities clearly stated in the ad.
> any reasons why this is an impossible or crazy thing to do ??
Umm.. well short of a water cooling solution you're going to have serious cooling issues trying this..
My bios has support for case intrusion but I've never tried to implement it. I'm using a MSI KT333 (ARU version) motherboard with AMI bios.
>This kid is a walking advertisement for the Darwin Awards
True, but at the time, so were the Wright brothers and most of the other early inventors in the field of aeronautics (I mean, come on.. those things were actually supposed to fly!?! bah, man isn't meant to fly.. *grin*).. Stupidity and Ignorance are not the same thing. The kid obviously wasn't stupid and he very well could end up being an important player in the scientific world at some point.
This isn't to say what he did was smart or wise. Simply that doing "stupid" things doesn't make one stupid.
What bothers me about the whole situation is the huge pay cut. If they put you through a huge pay cut only to offer it back, how is this fair to you? Also, how do you know the same thing won't happen again if the economy migrates even farther south (i.e. tierra del fuego)? I guess my point is, the company seems like it's being a bit cheap and is only willing to pay up when the peasants start contemplating the torches and pitchforks. I'd rather be a happy minion at a new job than a pissed off, pitchfork wielding, low paid peasant who has show some loyalty to my existing company. Of course, I've worked mostly as a contractor until my current job..
True enough. But often, especially in physics, the crackpots turn out to be the ones who are right.
>Personally, I think both are crackpots. But if crackpots publish scientific papers, they still should follow the rules of academic conduct, because the rules of academic conduct ultimately are what helps us sort out the real crackpots from the forward thinkers.
True, and Space.com used to broadcast Nasa TV in both windows and realplayer formats but they dropped that too which annoyed me as a Linux user.
As usual, spaceflightnow.com and space.com have better articles with more detail. These sites usually have space/shuttle/station information up very quickly so I tend to rely on them more.
> to pour into Houston, Huntsville, Canaveral et al. I can smell the pork from here.
Well, as an aerospace engineering student at the University of Central Florida I can safely say I'd enjoy a taste of that pig. (UCF's in Orlando)
Yes, I seem to recall a few examples of this in the 40's.. like.. oh.. Dresden.. Berlin.. Tokyo.. We effectively nuked those cities with conventional weapons partially because we didn't have the technology of now, and partially because the allied governments viewed them as "acceptable" losses. Nobody was innocent in these attitudes, the germans were just as bad the blitz.
>that this technology will actually reduce civilian casualties in the event of a war. Most of the misses by bombs and missiles from the US Air Force are due to the crews flying high enough to avoid antiaircraft fire.
Your analogy is a little flawed. He didn't determine how the system should operate, he simply implemented a bug fix. I would argue that he applied an open source concept to the public roadways.
As much as the average 'Joe' would like to think they can make decisions for the rest of the world, sometimes there are some things that experts know more about. And yes, sometimes bureacracy gets in the way - but just imagine if we allowed your average person on the street to dictate how a tcp/ip stack should be implemented, or what have you.
I would've found it curious that he picked on of the narrowest points on the St. Johns.. The river is pretty wide through most of it's length. i.e. Where I-295 crosses it in Jax it's over 3 miles.. But he picked a "demo" location that was a fraction of that.
If you're going to build a robot, make it useful! (Hey! Bring me a beer!)
I saw this on the local (Orlando) news last night. A guy at UF built a beer opening robot (ABOR) as part of a project/competition. Some amusing ideas. Here's a link to a story about it: Robots
Cnet's news.com has an interesting story Here.
It includes some interesting tidbits although nothing unexpected.
Judging by the route and proximity to well travelled areas/buildings, the monorail in Las Vegas could actually be successful.
Now, for that to happen they need to look at the Skyway project in Jacksonville (also by bombardier) and do EVERYTHING differently. Jax's monorail is too slow, short, and inconvenient. It also doesn't connect the stadium/arena areas to downtown. If they had that connection, it theoretically could be valuable.
Just my opinion.
True, but you could trim down the number of solar cells needed by at least half if you put orbital solar collectors at Lagrange points 4 and 5. Those two are stable so they'd require no (little) position keeping fuel or thrusters and they'd be in full sunlight all of the time. The same concepts of microwaving the energy would still apply. Probably more effecient to "beam" the power to a substation in Geosync orbit and then have it been a concentrated microwave signal to a specific point on the planet.
On the efficiency side, you don't necessarily need photovoltaic cells. Some of the solar plants on earth use mirrors to heat water which then turns a turbine. Something similar could be used in space.
I'd be impressed if it was a maglev.. Of course then your power bills would be a b*tch. :-)