Note, that some people on the list did not sign the petition, if you know what I mean. Someone could have sat down with the parish directory, or my kids elementary school family book, or my employers phone directory, or my ham radio club mailing list, etc, and "helpfully" signed me up, to "save me the time of signing myself up". I think that is the real reason they are fighting the publicity, heck, I'd file suit if I learned someone put my name on that list of ignorant hillbillys, as that would obviously defame my reputation...
My applied E&M is a little rusty, but I recall that a material needs to be a conductor on the same spatial scale as the signal wavelength in order to reflect it. As this technology is small metal particles and the wavelength of a cell signal is about 1 foot, it seems unlikely the glass can cause significant signal dampening.
Yeah, and then there's the real problem with is dielectric heating more or less related to the loss tangent. Assuming 90% loss in the reflector layer, the dielectric heating is a problem not because 90% of the 600 mw cell phone will make the windshield hot, but because 90% of the cell phone signal will be heating the windshield instead of getting to the tower...
Don't forget its a 3D problem... the windshield might be a made of little metal particles, but if those particles are close enough to touch (likely) then the whole windshield is just a very lossy reflector, with dimensions on the order of "feet" as you say.
Finally, I don't think we have the technology to make these durable. Some fools and crooks might think its a great idea to have to replace the windshield every few years, but I don't. I'm talking about cd rot, bit rot, whatever you want to call it.
The battery can be removed once the vehicle's engine is running.
I encourage my enemies and opponents to try this... seriously though, you don't want to do that. Voltage regulators are not quite up to the star trek level required to safely survive that. The amount of damage done varies fairly randomly based on model and device, from nothing obvious, all the way up to complete permanent electrical system failure.
...Ford reintroduces the Model T! All new for 2010!
Maybe not Ford, but in about 30 seconds I found two places to buy new Model T / Model A parts. Not junkyard specials but newly manufactured for the classic enthusiast market.
Personally I'm tired of cookie cutter cars, and would pay good money for a new model T, just to have something unique. That strategy worked for the "new VW bug".
Re:The web server can finally serve large files
on
OpenBSD 4.6 Released
·
· Score: 1
When I looked at the release notes sent out by email, I saw this under "New functionality": "httpd(8) can now serve files larger than 2GB in size." I'm very surprised by this.
apache has been able to do that since 2.2. Of course, a web page larger than 2 gigs is a bug not a feature...
Large File Support
httpd is now built with support for files larger than 2GB on modern 32-bit Unix systems. Support for handling >2GB request bodies has also been added.
E-ink certainly *does* cause less eye-strain than LCDs -- that's the whole point of using it.
Ummm... No. I was unable to find anything on the internet that supports that claim. Nothing but marketing bs such as comparing e-ink to a flickery 40 Hz CRT, which makes little sense as no ebook readers use CRTs, or trying to distort the lack of e-ink displays with backlights into some bizarre twisted advantage over LCDs that can operate with or without backlights. I did see some simple audiophile-style hyperbole, vacuum tube e-ink with a green marker on the border makes my Mark Twain seem much more mellow and smooth when reading it compared to the harsh LCD screen, blah blah whatever...
I have seen E-ink displays in person. Very low contrast, Incredibly slow screen changes, battery does run pretty much forever, very dim dark displays due to lack of backlight.
Take an LCD, turn the brightness way down and/or shut off the backlight, turn the contrast way down, slow the processor so it takes at least a second to turn the page, and other than battery life no one could tell the difference.
They do definitely use less power. No question there. That is a good achievement.
For the sake of less eye strain, which should be a concern for children-oriented devices.
eink doesn't have less eyestrain or whatever, its still dark gray on light gray, just like the LCD, but it does use less power. They claim one year battery life for the LCD reader... with eink they could probably go a couple years... why bother.
However, if there were a quench along the line, the current would actually drop, not rise (resistance increases dramatically). An FCL seems to protect against a short, but during normal operation a transmission line IS a short. The issue isn't that the overall line is carrying too much current. The problem is that the point that overheated and quenched is carrying WAY too much current by several orders of magnitude, but the overall line is below design capacity.
The dramatic increase in resistance means a sudden dramatic voltage drop across the cable. The "TX side" says I'm gonna give you power at exactly 1 megavolt. The "rx side" goes into alert and tells the TX side to shut down if it gets less than 0.999 megavolts. "undervoltage alert condition". It's an interesting control theory problem, you want the feedback fast to prevent damage, and smart enough to understand how capacitance and inductance affect the voltage on the far side. Only a couple miles long means they can shut off the current about as fast as a transistor can switch (pretty fast). How to deal with a transmission line that's 2000 miles long would be interesting.
Its actually pretty simple for superconductor lines because "no resistance" means "no voltage drop" under normal conditions, more or less.
I wonder if you can quench a tiny sliver so small that an electrical arc forms across the quenched region due to the voltage drop across the high resistance... That could hurt...
You'll actually get reactance (imaginary part of impedance, specifically inductance in this case), not resistance. But you don't actually lose energy through reactance like you do resistance (no power is converted to heat) unless there's another magnetic field to interfere. So yes, you could put AC through a superconductor. There's just little reason to when you have very little resistance and DC is usually easier to deal with.
No, AC is easier to deal with because transformers are simpler than what amount to really big semiconductor VFDs.
The real gain, is you spend megabucks on insulation for the highest voltage the line will experience. On AC, thats the peak voltage of the sinewave. But the DC equivalent of an AC current is the RMS, and it's only about 71% of the peak (well, exactly its 1/2**.5) So that means you can push about 30% higher voltage thru a DC cable before it arcs over, and because P=E**2/R you get the square of 30% more power...
There are also some other issues, but in general, you can push about twice as many watts thru a cable at DC than thru it at AC.
Since the cost of the cable is huge compared to the cost of the station gear, it makes sense to double your capacity by using DC.
Texas is currently (as of when I checked the page) using 35.3 GW.
Hmm OK. My BS meter is kind of tingling... its possible, but for 25 million TX citizens, plus or minus some illegals, that's like 1500 watts average on a cool weekday midday... Ya'll have a lot of aluminum refineries down there on the ranch?
I seriously hope someone is fired or loses a contract over this.
It seems a silly idea to fire somebody just after having invested $(whatever_this_snafu_is_supposed_to_have_cost) into his education.
Disagree... Obviously that file was being maintained by hand, BS press releases about scripts to the contrary. So the failure was at the management level for allowing such a crazy working procedure with no testing infrastructure at all. The only "education" the peon got was "typos cause problems", not exactly a Nobel prize winning contribution to human knowledge (although in comparison to a recent winner...) Since management doesn't make mistakes, and someone has to be the fall guy... the excuse will probably be "procedure stated no typos allowed".
You're safe only if your part of the grid neither imports nor exports more than a small percentage of the total power in play.
Luckily the interchange is only 5 GW... which only requires maybe one percent of the eastern and western plants to generate. TX on the other hand is probably screwed, that is probably like 5/6 their generating capacity (Don't really know, but how many plants can little ole TX have, anyway?)
Actually, if you read the article, sounds like they're wiring it "delta" as opposed to "wye" so any individual cut merely reroutes around the long way... And yes I am very well aware that "delta" and "wye" means something very specific w/ regards to three phase power, I was just using the names for topological reference.
Take a game without ruberband racing like Gran Turisimo,
GT1 did not rubberband, GT2 did rubberband. Version 2 sucked. Of course that was about ten years ago on my PS1 so I may misremember. In GT1 you could optimize your car to leave competitors in the dust. That was half "the game". In GT2, the competitors were magically always 99% your speed, no matter how optimized or unoptimized your car. That made it just another race game.
It turns out you need to clean the mirrors frequently, which requires water, which requires energy to bring in since there is little in the desert. It's a big problem.
Oh spare me... a prison chain gang wearing french maid outfits and carrying giant pink feather dusters is not going to drink more than 10% of their body weight per nights work. I can tell you've never been in a desert, it gets freaking cold out there at night due to the low dew point.
The Wikipedia article glosses over the CF that would likely occur during island synchronization.
Also the Wikipedia fails to discuss various interesting circular failure loops during a long slow painful restart... the machine shop can't sharpen the cutter blades because the shop has no power and the employees all froze to death in the winter anyway. That means the coal plant can't dig the coal, which is OK since they have no power to run the lights and conveyors anyway. So, the diesel locomotive has no coal to pull to the coal plant, which is OK since the electricity to run the communication block system, switches, and fuel tank pumps all have no power anyway. Which means the coal plant has no coal to burn, but thats OK since they have no power to run the conveyors or the condensate pumps or the feedwater pumps or even just operate the valves anyway. Which explains why the machine shop, way back in step number one, has no electricity...
Riots in the inner cities would remove a lot of demand, making it easier, on the other hand, riots could kill key personnel and destroy key equipment. My guess is riots would have little effect outside their local area.
Its interesting to ponder, if it was all shut off, how long it would take to turn it all back on. My educated yet inexperienced estimate would be at least two weeks.
Slightly better than 50/50 odds that you'll meet an English speaking German. Stupid people, old people, and little kids excluded, its probably much higher, perhaps 3/4.
"English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic invaders from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the Netherlands."
Common ancestry helps when learning the language. Although you'll never get the English to admit it, old English is just a gutter version of old German, long since evolved apart.
Slashdot Mirror
So... my only real religious belief is in the Streisand effect, so someone please provide a torrent and a wikileaks link to the list of names.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Note, that some people on the list did not sign the petition, if you know what I mean. Someone could have sat down with the parish directory, or my kids elementary school family book, or my employers phone directory, or my ham radio club mailing list, etc, and "helpfully" signed me up, to "save me the time of signing myself up". I think that is the real reason they are fighting the publicity, heck, I'd file suit if I learned someone put my name on that list of ignorant hillbillys, as that would obviously defame my reputation...
My applied E&M is a little rusty, but I recall that a material needs to be a conductor on the same spatial scale as the signal wavelength in order to reflect it. As this technology is small metal particles and the wavelength of a cell signal is about 1 foot, it seems unlikely the glass can cause significant signal dampening.
Yeah, and then there's the real problem with is dielectric heating more or less related to the loss tangent. Assuming 90% loss in the reflector layer, the dielectric heating is a problem not because 90% of the 600 mw cell phone will make the windshield hot, but because 90% of the cell phone signal will be heating the windshield instead of getting to the tower...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_heating
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_tangent
Don't forget its a 3D problem... the windshield might be a made of little metal particles, but if those particles are close enough to touch (likely) then the whole windshield is just a very lossy reflector, with dimensions on the order of "feet" as you say.
Finally, I don't think we have the technology to make these durable. Some fools and crooks might think its a great idea to have to replace the windshield every few years, but I don't. I'm talking about cd rot, bit rot, whatever you want to call it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_Rot
So, yes, it really does suck, for many reasons.
The battery can be removed once the vehicle's engine is running.
I encourage my enemies and opponents to try this... seriously though, you don't want to do that. Voltage regulators are not quite up to the star trek level required to safely survive that. The amount of damage done varies fairly randomly based on model and device, from nothing obvious, all the way up to complete permanent electrical system failure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_dump
As the FT says,
"The device is quite small..."
Seriously though, at 96 pixels by 128 pixels, your artistic achievement is merely going to look like this |
Or, this being slashdot, perhaps only '
Considering I can buy a 1TB drive for less than $100
Even in a size that fits in a pocket?
1e12 * 8 / 320e3 / 60 / 60 / 24 = 290 days
Even on slashdot, people wash their pants more often than every 290 days (i hope)
You think that math is troubling? I'm still trying to figure out how to divide a group of 16 people into thirds without staining the carpet.
Considering its a lossy mp3 compression test, 16/3 = 5 is close enough for most people not to notice.
...Ford reintroduces the Model T! All new for 2010!
Maybe not Ford, but in about 30 seconds I found two places to buy new Model T / Model A parts. Not junkyard specials but newly manufactured for the classic enthusiast market.
http://www.superiorglassworks.com/Ford-Model-T.html
http://www.rootlieb.com/html_files/ma_spd_kit/ma_spd_kt.html
Personally I'm tired of cookie cutter cars, and would pay good money for a new model T, just to have something unique. That strategy worked for the "new VW bug".
When I looked at the release notes sent out by email, I saw this under "New functionality":
"httpd(8) can now serve files larger than 2GB in size."
I'm very surprised by this.
apache has been able to do that since 2.2. Of course, a web page larger than 2 gigs is a bug not a feature...
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/new_features_2_2.html
Large File Support
httpd is now built with support for files larger than 2GB on modern 32-bit Unix systems. Support for handling >2GB request bodies has also been added.
And have the Li-Ion battery to power all that in the form of a hat.
No, a propeller on top of a beanie hat
My contention is that, since Star Trek is in The Future (tm), if it got the science 100% right, then we too would already be in The Future (tm).
Big difference between predicting and accomplishing.
E-ink certainly *does* cause less eye-strain than LCDs -- that's the whole point of using it.
Ummm... No. I was unable to find anything on the internet that supports that claim. Nothing but marketing bs such as comparing e-ink to a flickery 40 Hz CRT, which makes little sense as no ebook readers use CRTs, or trying to distort the lack of e-ink displays with backlights into some bizarre twisted advantage over LCDs that can operate with or without backlights. I did see some simple audiophile-style hyperbole, vacuum tube e-ink with a green marker on the border makes my Mark Twain seem much more mellow and smooth when reading it compared to the harsh LCD screen, blah blah whatever...
I have seen E-ink displays in person. Very low contrast, Incredibly slow screen changes, battery does run pretty much forever, very dim dark displays due to lack of backlight.
Take an LCD, turn the brightness way down and/or shut off the backlight, turn the contrast way down, slow the processor so it takes at least a second to turn the page, and other than battery life no one could tell the difference.
They do definitely use less power. No question there. That is a good achievement.
For the sake of less eye strain, which should be a concern for children-oriented devices.
eink doesn't have less eyestrain or whatever, its still dark gray on light gray, just like the LCD, but it does use less power. They claim one year battery life for the LCD reader... with eink they could probably go a couple years... why bother.
Somebody please hack it to contain the complete works of Project Gutenberg, or at least a worthwhile subset.
However, if there were a quench along the line, the current would actually drop, not rise (resistance increases dramatically). An FCL seems to protect against a short, but during normal operation a transmission line IS a short. The issue isn't that the overall line is carrying too much current. The problem is that the point that overheated and quenched is carrying WAY too much current by several orders of magnitude, but the overall line is below design capacity.
The dramatic increase in resistance means a sudden dramatic voltage drop across the cable. The "TX side" says I'm gonna give you power at exactly 1 megavolt. The "rx side" goes into alert and tells the TX side to shut down if it gets less than 0.999 megavolts. "undervoltage alert condition". It's an interesting control theory problem, you want the feedback fast to prevent damage, and smart enough to understand how capacitance and inductance affect the voltage on the far side. Only a couple miles long means they can shut off the current about as fast as a transistor can switch (pretty fast). How to deal with a transmission line that's 2000 miles long would be interesting.
Its actually pretty simple for superconductor lines because "no resistance" means "no voltage drop" under normal conditions, more or less.
I wonder if you can quench a tiny sliver so small that an electrical arc forms across the quenched region due to the voltage drop across the high resistance... That could hurt...
You'll actually get reactance (imaginary part of impedance, specifically inductance in this case), not resistance. But you don't actually lose energy through reactance like you do resistance (no power is converted to heat) unless there's another magnetic field to interfere. So yes, you could put AC through a superconductor. There's just little reason to when you have very little resistance and DC is usually easier to deal with.
No, AC is easier to deal with because transformers are simpler than what amount to really big semiconductor VFDs.
The real gain, is you spend megabucks on insulation for the highest voltage the line will experience. On AC, thats the peak voltage of the sinewave. But the DC equivalent of an AC current is the RMS, and it's only about 71% of the peak (well, exactly its 1/2**.5) So that means you can push about 30% higher voltage thru a DC cable before it arcs over, and because P=E**2/R you get the square of 30% more power...
There are also some other issues, but in general, you can push about twice as many watts thru a cable at DC than thru it at AC.
Since the cost of the cable is huge compared to the cost of the station gear, it makes sense to double your capacity by using DC.
Texas is currently (as of when I checked the page) using 35.3 GW.
Hmm OK. My BS meter is kind of tingling... its possible, but for 25 million TX citizens, plus or minus some illegals, that's like 1500 watts average on a cool weekday midday... Ya'll have a lot of aluminum refineries down there on the ranch?
I seriously hope someone is fired or loses a contract over this.
It seems a silly idea to fire somebody just after having invested $(whatever_this_snafu_is_supposed_to_have_cost) into his education.
Disagree... Obviously that file was being maintained by hand, BS press releases about scripts to the contrary. So the failure was at the management level for allowing such a crazy working procedure with no testing infrastructure at all. The only "education" the peon got was "typos cause problems", not exactly a Nobel prize winning contribution to human knowledge (although in comparison to a recent winner...) Since management doesn't make mistakes, and someone has to be the fall guy... the excuse will probably be "procedure stated no typos allowed".
Yup - just think about what would happen if any part of this conduit warmed up - talk about a MASSIVE heat dump!
Thats what FCL's are for
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_current_limiter
You're safe only if your part of the grid neither imports nor exports more than a small percentage of the total power in play.
Luckily the interchange is only 5 GW... which only requires maybe one percent of the eastern and western plants to generate. TX on the other hand is probably screwed, that is probably like 5/6 their generating capacity (Don't really know, but how many plants can little ole TX have, anyway?)
Central Point of Failure.
Actually, if you read the article, sounds like they're wiring it "delta" as opposed to "wye" so any individual cut merely reroutes around the long way... And yes I am very well aware that "delta" and "wye" means something very specific w/ regards to three phase power, I was just using the names for topological reference.
Take a game without ruberband racing like Gran Turisimo,
GT1 did not rubberband, GT2 did rubberband. Version 2 sucked. Of course that was about ten years ago on my PS1 so I may misremember. In GT1 you could optimize your car to leave competitors in the dust. That was half "the game". In GT2, the competitors were magically always 99% your speed, no matter how optimized or unoptimized your car. That made it just another race game.
It turns out you need to clean the mirrors frequently, which requires water, which requires energy to bring in since there is little in the desert. It's a big problem.
Oh spare me... a prison chain gang wearing french maid outfits and carrying giant pink feather dusters is not going to drink more than 10% of their body weight per nights work. I can tell you've never been in a desert, it gets freaking cold out there at night due to the low dew point.
5. Wind ... have a tendency to kill birds
I'm sure KFC thanks god every day for windmills distracting the tree huggers from their restaurants.
A rapid education into the follies of black start capability are in order...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start
The Wikipedia article glosses over the CF that would likely occur during island synchronization.
Also the Wikipedia fails to discuss various interesting circular failure loops during a long slow painful restart... the machine shop can't sharpen the cutter blades because the shop has no power and the employees all froze to death in the winter anyway. That means the coal plant can't dig the coal, which is OK since they have no power to run the lights and conveyors anyway. So, the diesel locomotive has no coal to pull to the coal plant, which is OK since the electricity to run the communication block system, switches, and fuel tank pumps all have no power anyway. Which means the coal plant has no coal to burn, but thats OK since they have no power to run the conveyors or the condensate pumps or the feedwater pumps or even just operate the valves anyway. Which explains why the machine shop, way back in step number one, has no electricity...
Riots in the inner cities would remove a lot of demand, making it easier, on the other hand, riots could kill key personnel and destroy key equipment. My guess is riots would have little effect outside their local area.
Its interesting to ponder, if it was all shut off, how long it would take to turn it all back on. My educated yet inexperienced estimate would be at least two weeks.
Do most German people really understand enough English that using their computer in English is acceptable?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Germany
Main foreign language(s) English (51%)
Slightly better than 50/50 odds that you'll meet an English speaking German. Stupid people, old people, and little kids excluded, its probably much higher, perhaps 3/4.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_English
"English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic invaders from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the Netherlands."
Common ancestry helps when learning the language. Although you'll never get the English to admit it, old English is just a gutter version of old German, long since evolved apart.