I completely disagree. You don't even need to listen to the lyrics to like the Beatles. The music itself is very interesting, and quite catchy.
On another note, how old are you that your grandfather listens to the Beatles?
Oh its catchy, but so it plenty of other music from that long ago. I kind of like Hendrix.
As for age, its not 1970 anymore, its 2010. That stuff's rapidly approaching half a century. In "the hood" thats well over 3 generations, even in the burbs thats at least two generations. Also not everyone fossilizes their musical tastes at age 18. You might be surprised how well some old guys (and gals) can/could rock out, however much it may embarrass their kids and grandkids listening to the same stuff, you're only as old and out of date as you decide to be.
There aren't all that many cultural reference points in Beatles songs. The lyrics are pretty-much timeless. That's part of how they managed to stay so popular. It's sorta like Pixar.
The fish can't see the ocean it swims in?
Started out singing folk rock love songs about chicks, end up doing hippie psychedelic tunes? Not having been there myself, this is pretty much how I've had both the 60s and the Beatles described to me. The influence on people living then must have been tremendous, but as a guy born a decade or two knowing how it all turns out is going to be a much different experience.
The pixar reference is hilarious, given that fish swims in the water of day care / heros marginalized by media / disposable plastic junk from China / nostalgia of the 50s / multiculturalism / PC everyone gets a trophy. Someone from a couple decades ago would probably have a total WTF moment, and I'd guess someone a couple decades from now will be equally WTF.
There's a lot more to cultural reference points than overt in your face Simpsons quotes from flash in the pan blockbuster movies and Simpsons parodies of momentarily popular TV shows and actors/actresses.
If you don't already own every Beatles album, I feel sorry for you.
Does borrowing your grandfathers copies count? They are interesting, but with the cultural reference points being half a century ago, they are kind of hard to relate to like the kids half a century related to them. One of those "you had to be there" moments.
Well AC, this is kind of like posting to/. claiming that your kids like petting zoos and you've heard that somebody named "goatse" has a nice picture and I wonder if you kind slashdotters would post a link for me and the kids.
Type in "tensile strength of steel", it gives you a table of mechanical properties for steel. Type in "tensile strength of aluminum", and it ignores the "tensile strength" and just gives you chemical info on Aluminum. Tried a few variations in syntax, and tried spelling it the British way, no luck. It's a useful tool, but the parser seems inconsistent, probably the worst thing a program can be.
Because its a bad question.
If you've got the cash, exotic alloys are available with exotic properties, but for the design purposes of someone whom doesn't know any better, HSLA steel is probably what they're talking about, without even knowing it. HSLA structural steels all specify a minimum of 50 ksi and most don't go a whole heck of a lot higher since they're made to be as cheap as possible while meeting the spec. So asking "the tensile strength of steel" a sloppy but mostly correct answer would be about 50 ksi. I would guess thats the answer you got? Yes I'm well aware that piano wire is several times stronger than HSLA, but I'm sure that by job or by pound, more structural calculations are done for things made of HSLA than for pianos...
Stainless Steel varies over a small range of about 60 to 100 KSI but aside from the weirdest stuff it hovers around 70 ksi. Claiming SS is around 70 ksi is sloppy because there are plenty of SS alloys that'll fail around 60 ksi, but assuming a realistic safety factor you'll probably live if you claim SS is 70 ksi. Your kitchen forks and spoons are probably about 20% lower and the space shuttle engine innards are probably about 20% higher but its a narrower range than you'd expect.
Aluminum? Theres about a thousand alloys for every possible purpose and they vary from darn near 10 ksi to darn near 100 ksi. There are probably even outliers outside that wide range. Its like when an accountant asks what you'd like a number to be, aluminum metallurgists can pretty much hook you up with whatever you'd like in that range, if you're willing to tolerate the other constraints. Its like, "how long is a piece of string"? The periodic table treatment is just a more polite way of replying that the question doesn't really have an answer.
(2) A 5-watt solar panel, of the cheaper amorphous variety, enough to keep up with the laptop's drain, is considerably larger than the laptop, so it's not going to be built-into the lid.
Skip the amorphous, if it was about cheap electricity, we'd send them a honda generator and be done with it.
8 inches on a side is too big? At a glance you can see its not exactly built to minimize surface area, I bet we could get this dude down to 50 sq inches if we tried a little bit. That would be re-arranged into 10 inches wide by 5 inches tall. Not a big deal.
Since we're trying to be green for the sake of being green, as opposed to economically sensible, theres no reason not to make the laptop extremely large and/or fold out panels.
My father's TRS-80 model 100 ran for about 50 to 100 hours on a set of off the shelf AA batteries.
If you assume the device will be "hopelessly" obsolete in 2 years, or half of them will be destroyed in accidents in 2 years, and maybe it only gets used a couple hours per week, and a modern device with a crude enough display technology might only draw a tenth the power, maybe a very large couple pound lithium battery could power a tablet for its useful life.
Your definition of work is apparently during a fraction of the attempts, a balloon will temporarily successfully float under ideal circumstances with an extremely small payload. Basically a martian mythbusters stunt. We'll send Kari up for some zero G shots, maybe blow something up purely for the heck of it at the end of the episode. Duct tape, lots of duct tape. Entertaining, but I don't think you can build a space program around it.
Almost, but not quite as useful, as deciding what rocket engine technology to use by googling for "star trek warp engine"
The problem is earth balloon payloads are very small to the point of uselessness, and momentarily just barely top out at the point where a Mars flight would have to begin...
You put in waypoints, tell it the altitude to fly, tell it to orbit about a point.... The only real problem is the power source, since it's not going to landing.
That, and the lack of a GPS constellation. Admittedly they could probably do "well enough" with inertial and ranging against the orbiter. And not much of a magnetic field for the compass. Gyros to the rescue, and I'm not talking about a greek sandwich. And the dust storms getting in the way of the star tracker.
Google for the difference between indicated air speed and ground speed. Thats the first problem.
The second problem is the X-Plane simulator guys claim that indicated air speed of about 50 miles per hour (referenced to earth sea level equivalent pressure) is about the same as 500 miles per hour actual air speed on Mars.
"First of all, the atmosphere is ONE PERCENT as thick on Mars as it is on earth... INDICATED airspeed is proportional the the square root of the air density, so the INDICATED airspeed is ONE TENTH the true airspeed."
So your ground speed has approximately nothing to do with your airspeed due to high winds. Then the low air pressure means on Mars it aerodynamically behaves like its about 1/10 earth air speed.
So the wind tunnel at 100 mph earth pressure provides the same feel as a plane flying 1000 mph Mars pressure. Then add some nice head or tail winds...
I'm no expert, but since the atmospheric pressure on Mars is so low propellers/balloons etc probably won't work very well.
Jet engines work pretty well at low pressure with some cooling issues. The killer is you need something that burns in mostly carbon dioxide (liquid fluorine?)
The killer for propellers is its just a rotating airfoil (like a helicopter blade) and the speed of sound drops with density. And classical prop designs are an utter failure when supersonic.
The killer for balloons is a completely different problem, the overall vehicle needs to be less dense than the atmosphere it displaces. Which is just barely possible to do on earth. Not going to work on Mars.
Flying on Mars is non-trivial. See the X-Plane guys
The vending machines recommend beverages after physical attributes of customers are picked up by sensors which allow the machines determine age, sex and other attributes, before offering a number of suggestions.
What if there are multiple people in the photo? For example, if two girls are standing in front of the machine, does it offer them one cup?
First of all, "one way" doesn't necessarily mean they die....
Second, we would have no shortage of volunteers for such a mission even if it did mean certain death
So, if you don't go, you won't necessarily die, and also there is no certain death down here on Earth? Umm, if you're under the impression that earth dwellers are immortal, I expect you'll be in for a big surprise in the next couple decades.
We should probably start sending supplies now rather than after they launch. People would probably be more optimistic if they didn't have to hope that the supplies get sent when they're already there.
In other words the Kim Stanley Robinson "Red Mars" scenario. Gradually launch a whole small town up there, and get as much running without live human presence as possible. And massive over launching, if atmospheric cryostill #7 tips over on landing, no biggie.
Then use live people onsite to build the medium size town, etc.
Other than windows and office, the rest of the company is about as profitable as any other stereotypical.com.
Moving embedded systems from one data table to another is irrelevant, its not like they'll ever make money.
Standard slashdot car analogy: doesn't matter if I categorize my latest car repair tools purchase under "hobby expense" or "automotive:maintenance" or "medical:mental health/stress reduction" its still crapping out the same amount of cash.
What do TV watching habits have to do with anything?
Its an obvious example of how targeted ads are an inevitable result of consuming targeted media.
Doesn't matter if its watching oprah or going to oprah.com in FF, you're going to see chick products in the ads. I think people pretty much understand thats how it works on TV, but the original poster seems surprised thats how it works on a website.
OK interesting that could work. There are some obvious race conditions. To switch back from wii input to mythtv input on the TV I'd need to select the mythtv input on the mythtv... well I suppose if anything is seen from the wiimote, I could send an IR blast to switch the TV's input. Except adjusting volume on the amplifier. Plenty of if then to program in...
Slashdot Mirror
More long lasting influence than the Rolling Stones? I don't think so.
Black Sabbath (decades of metal)? Led Zeppelin (maybe)? KISS (decade or two of hair bands)? The Chemical Brothers (maybe)?
I completely disagree. You don't even need to listen to the lyrics to like the Beatles. The music itself is very interesting, and quite catchy.
On another note, how old are you that your grandfather listens to the Beatles?
Oh its catchy, but so it plenty of other music from that long ago. I kind of like Hendrix.
As for age, its not 1970 anymore, its 2010. That stuff's rapidly approaching half a century. In "the hood" thats well over 3 generations, even in the burbs thats at least two generations. Also not everyone fossilizes their musical tastes at age 18. You might be surprised how well some old guys (and gals) can/could rock out, however much it may embarrass their kids and grandkids listening to the same stuff, you're only as old and out of date as you decide to be.
There aren't all that many cultural reference points in Beatles songs. The lyrics are pretty-much timeless. That's part of how they managed to stay so popular. It's sorta like Pixar.
The fish can't see the ocean it swims in?
Started out singing folk rock love songs about chicks, end up doing hippie psychedelic tunes? Not having been there myself, this is pretty much how I've had both the 60s and the Beatles described to me. The influence on people living then must have been tremendous, but as a guy born a decade or two knowing how it all turns out is going to be a much different experience.
The pixar reference is hilarious, given that fish swims in the water of day care / heros marginalized by media / disposable plastic junk from China / nostalgia of the 50s / multiculturalism / PC everyone gets a trophy. Someone from a couple decades ago would probably have a total WTF moment, and I'd guess someone a couple decades from now will be equally WTF.
There's a lot more to cultural reference points than overt in your face Simpsons quotes from flash in the pan blockbuster movies and Simpsons parodies of momentarily popular TV shows and actors/actresses.
If you don't already own every Beatles album, I feel sorry for you.
Does borrowing your grandfathers copies count? They are interesting, but with the cultural reference points being half a century ago, they are kind of hard to relate to like the kids half a century related to them. One of those "you had to be there" moments.
Well AC, this is kind of like posting to /. claiming that your kids like petting zoos and you've heard that somebody named "goatse" has a nice picture and I wonder if you kind slashdotters would post a link for me and the kids.
Type in "tensile strength of steel", it gives you a table of mechanical properties for steel. Type in "tensile strength of aluminum", and it ignores the "tensile strength" and just gives you chemical info on Aluminum. Tried a few variations in syntax, and tried spelling it the British way, no luck. It's a useful tool, but the parser seems inconsistent, probably the worst thing a program can be.
Because its a bad question.
If you've got the cash, exotic alloys are available with exotic properties, but for the design purposes of someone whom doesn't know any better, HSLA steel is probably what they're talking about, without even knowing it. HSLA structural steels all specify a minimum of 50 ksi and most don't go a whole heck of a lot higher since they're made to be as cheap as possible while meeting the spec. So asking "the tensile strength of steel" a sloppy but mostly correct answer would be about 50 ksi. I would guess thats the answer you got? Yes I'm well aware that piano wire is several times stronger than HSLA, but I'm sure that by job or by pound, more structural calculations are done for things made of HSLA than for pianos...
Stainless Steel varies over a small range of about 60 to 100 KSI but aside from the weirdest stuff it hovers around 70 ksi. Claiming SS is around 70 ksi is sloppy because there are plenty of SS alloys that'll fail around 60 ksi, but assuming a realistic safety factor you'll probably live if you claim SS is 70 ksi. Your kitchen forks and spoons are probably about 20% lower and the space shuttle engine innards are probably about 20% higher but its a narrower range than you'd expect.
Aluminum? Theres about a thousand alloys for every possible purpose and they vary from darn near 10 ksi to darn near 100 ksi. There are probably even outliers outside that wide range. Its like when an accountant asks what you'd like a number to be, aluminum metallurgists can pretty much hook you up with whatever you'd like in that range, if you're willing to tolerate the other constraints. Its like, "how long is a piece of string"? The periodic table treatment is just a more polite way of replying that the question doesn't really have an answer.
(2) A 5-watt solar panel, of the cheaper amorphous variety, enough to keep up with the laptop's drain, is considerably larger than the laptop,
so it's not going to be built-into the lid.
Skip the amorphous, if it was about cheap electricity, we'd send them a honda generator and be done with it.
http://www.batterystuff.com/solar-chargers/SP-5.html
8 inches on a side is too big? At a glance you can see its not exactly built to minimize surface area, I bet we could get this dude down to 50 sq inches if we tried a little bit. That would be re-arranged into 10 inches wide by 5 inches tall. Not a big deal.
Since we're trying to be green for the sake of being green, as opposed to economically sensible, theres no reason not to make the laptop extremely large and/or fold out panels.
My father's TRS-80 model 100 ran for about 50 to 100 hours on a set of off the shelf AA batteries.
If you assume the device will be "hopelessly" obsolete in 2 years, or half of them will be destroyed in accidents in 2 years, and maybe it only gets used a couple hours per week, and a modern device with a crude enough display technology might only draw a tenth the power, maybe a very large couple pound lithium battery could power a tablet for its useful life.
Your definition of work is apparently during a fraction of the attempts, a balloon will temporarily successfully float under ideal circumstances with an extremely small payload. Basically a martian mythbusters stunt. We'll send Kari up for some zero G shots, maybe blow something up purely for the heck of it at the end of the episode. Duct tape, lots of duct tape. Entertaining, but I don't think you can build a space program around it.
My definition of work is somewhat stricter.
Almost, but not quite as useful, as deciding what rocket engine technology to use by googling for "star trek warp engine"
The problem is earth balloon payloads are very small to the point of uselessness, and momentarily just barely top out at the point where a Mars flight would have to begin ...
You put in waypoints, tell it the altitude to fly, tell it to orbit about a point .... The only real problem is the power source, since it's not going to landing.
That, and the lack of a GPS constellation. Admittedly they could probably do "well enough" with inertial and ranging against the orbiter. And not much of a magnetic field for the compass. Gyros to the rescue, and I'm not talking about a greek sandwich. And the dust storms getting in the way of the star tracker.
Google for the difference between indicated air speed and ground speed. Thats the first problem.
The second problem is the X-Plane simulator guys claim that indicated air speed of about 50 miles per hour (referenced to earth sea level equivalent pressure) is about the same as 500 miles per hour actual air speed on Mars.
http://www.x-plane.com/adventures/mars.html
"First of all, the atmosphere is ONE PERCENT as thick on Mars as it is on earth... INDICATED airspeed is proportional the the square root of the air density, so the INDICATED airspeed is ONE TENTH the true airspeed."
So your ground speed has approximately nothing to do with your airspeed due to high winds. Then the low air pressure means on Mars it aerodynamically behaves like its about 1/10 earth air speed.
So the wind tunnel at 100 mph earth pressure provides the same feel as a plane flying 1000 mph Mars pressure. Then add some nice head or tail winds...
I'm no expert, but since the atmospheric pressure on Mars is so low propellers/balloons etc probably won't work very well.
Jet engines work pretty well at low pressure with some cooling issues. The killer is you need something that burns in mostly carbon dioxide (liquid fluorine?)
The killer for propellers is its just a rotating airfoil (like a helicopter blade) and the speed of sound drops with density. And classical prop designs are an utter failure when supersonic.
The killer for balloons is a completely different problem, the overall vehicle needs to be less dense than the atmosphere it displaces. Which is just barely possible to do on earth. Not going to work on Mars.
Flying on Mars is non-trivial. See the X-Plane guys
http://www.x-plane.com/adventures/mars.html
The vending machines recommend beverages after physical attributes of customers are picked up by sensors which allow the machines determine age, sex and other attributes, before offering a number of suggestions.
What if there are multiple people in the photo? For example, if two girls are standing in front of the machine, does it offer them one cup?
Regardless of your age, sex, or other characteristics, the machines always produce a beverage almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
US version sticks to slightly diluted high fructose corn syrup.
First of all, "one way" doesn't necessarily mean they die. ...
Second, we would have no shortage of volunteers for such a mission even if it did mean certain death
So, if you don't go, you won't necessarily die, and also there is no certain death down here on Earth?
Umm, if you're under the impression that earth dwellers are immortal, I expect you'll be in for a big surprise in the next couple decades.
We should probably start sending supplies now rather than after they launch. People would probably be more optimistic if they didn't have to hope that the supplies get sent when they're already there.
In other words the Kim Stanley Robinson "Red Mars" scenario. Gradually launch a whole small town up there, and get as much running without live human presence as possible. And massive over launching, if atmospheric cryostill #7 tips over on landing, no biggie.
Then use live people onsite to build the medium size town, etc.
Other than windows and office, the rest of the company is about as profitable as any other stereotypical .com.
Moving embedded systems from one data table to another is irrelevant, its not like they'll ever make money.
Standard slashdot car analogy: doesn't matter if I categorize my latest car repair tools purchase under "hobby expense" or "automotive:maintenance" or "medical:mental health/stress reduction" its still crapping out the same amount of cash.
What do TV watching habits have to do with anything?
Its an obvious example of how targeted ads are an inevitable result of consuming targeted media.
Doesn't matter if its watching oprah or going to oprah.com in FF, you're going to see chick products in the ads. I think people pretty much understand thats how it works on TV, but the original poster seems surprised thats how it works on a website.
This is a product I paid GOOD MONEY FOR. I'm PAYING to be bullied, essentially.
They're stealing the patented business patented model from the airlines!
Thats too much of an upgrade to keep calling it a Television. How about... a "telescreen" ? There is some prior art, err, literature...
OK interesting that could work.
There are some obvious race conditions. To switch back from wii input to mythtv input on the TV I'd need to select the mythtv input on the mythtv... well I suppose if anything is seen from the wiimote, I could send an IR blast to switch the TV's input. Except adjusting volume on the amplifier. Plenty of if then to program in...
Not as hideously corrupt or confusing as you might imagine:
The spokesperson said some of the changes were the result of embedded systems products being moved from EDD to Server & Tools
Isn't it all basically shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic anyway?
An esoteric form of art perhaps, but a piece of well written code is a thing of beauty.
Both are so rare, so they must be valuable.
Anyone else think Pixar might be the geek Mecca? Do they do tours?
Sounds very much like those whom worship the idea of being a game programmer, while knowing nothing of the working conditions.
Not saying the conclusion (run! its a sweatshop!) is identical, just saying it sounds creepily similar.
All we need is a slashvertisement for a 2 year AA degree in "computer animation" "as advertised on cable TV" and the circle will be complete...