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User: Been+There,+Done+Tha

Been+There,+Done+Tha's activity in the archive.

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  1. No letter, this time... on Salon on the Red Hat IPO Eligibility · · Score: 1

    I keep getting those letters from e*trade, for IPOs in companies I wouldn't touch with the proverbial 'ten foot pole'.

    Funny thing, I don't remember receiving one for Red Hat...

  2. Problem is the network, NOT 'the last mile'. on Feature: The Broadband Wars · · Score: 1

    Imagine it, everyone has fiber right into their P3.

    Problem is, the sum of everyone's fiber would vastly exceed the capacity of the networks' to handle it. Laying the 'last few feet of fiber' into your house and to your pc is cheap, compared to the cost of building the network capacity. That's why cheap fiber can't be 'allowed'. It would grind the networks and switches into the ground.

    The game designers would build games that run at fiber speeds and web sites would offer realtime streaming audio and video. Indeed, You would set up a video camera at home, feed the output through your PC and monitor your place in a window on your desk top, all day, every day. etc. Until the pipe fills up and everything seems to come to a hault.

  3. Re:Magpulse... on Super Shielded PC Cases · · Score: 1

    All the cables need to be twisted pairs, much like the phone company uses. This way the EMP (almost) cancels itself out.

  4. Re:Long Before Sim City on Planned Constuction of Orbiting Microwave Power Station · · Score: 1

    Sorry for the confusion. No, the receiving end does not need to do that much concentrating. The problem is at the transmission end, where the designs that I've seen concentrate power at a single point to beam it down to earth. Multiple concentrators with multiple transmitters is a possibility, but you start to add a lot of weight.

  5. Long Before Sim City on Planned Constuction of Orbiting Microwave Power Station · · Score: 2

    The Arthur D. Little (consulting) Company first championed this idea back in the 1970s, long before Sim City.

    Probably the best place to prototype microwave power transmision would be at the Straight of Belle Ilse, in Canada, between the Island of Newfoundland and Labrador. Vast quantities of hydro-electric power are going undeveloped in Labrador because there is no way to transfer it across the 20 miles of the Straight. Undersea cables won't work because icebergs drag across the bottom of the Straight in winter. Tunneling is prohibitavely expensive due to the hard rock.

    The biggest problem, however, relates to concentrating the power, from whatever source, just before creating the microwave beam. You have lots of megawatts all going through a single point. Any resistance at all -- and you quickly heat your concentrator and vaporize it.