Actually at the right time, I believe you can run EME using only around 5 watts.
Of course, this means hooking a 70cm handheld ham radio to Arecibo's 432 MHz line feed. One of the other members of Cornell's ham radio club did a stint at Arecibo and during some downtime when they weren't using the dish they supposedly let him hook his HT up to the 432 MHz line feed to run some EME.
This was a LONG time ago so I could be wrong here.
Keep in mind that when close to an antenna, there is a phenomenon known as "near field gain reduction".
The inverse square law only applies when the antenna can be approximated as a point source. When you are close enough to the antenna that it no longer can be approximated as a point source to the observer, gain calculations go wacky.
(You can think of it as protection against the 1/R^2 term in the Friis transmission equation causing Pr to be greater than Pt, which would violate the law of conservation of energy - At a certain point, Gr and Gt decrease with decreasing R.)
I don't remember the exact number, but the near field boundary for Arecibo is insanely far from the dish. I think it's at least in the stratosphere. I'm fairly certain that you could even be standing on the surface of the dish and be safe during many operations.
The only thing CXM didn't have back then was automatic antenna rotator control for tracking satellites, which was added in subsequent years by undergrads to support Cornell's ICE CubeSat project - http://www.mae.cornell.edu/cubesat/.
Same here, I almost never use my license or radio equipment any more, but ham radio is what got me started on the path to becoming an RF engineer, and I still use that knowledge gained from being a ham on a regular basis as part of my job duties.
Hmm, I would have to read his book, and maybe the tone is different from reality, but Iacocca has donated a lot of money to diabetes research and has also convinced others to do the same.
We'll have to see on that... Keep in mind this isn't the first time a United States automaker has received a government bailout in the form of a loan.
That said, I have somewhat less confidence that Ford, GM, and Chrysler will be able to use that loan wisely (as opposed to the amazing job Iacocca did at turning around Chrysler using a government loan - IIRC that loan was repaid by Chrysler far earlier than required/expected.)
As to sustainable fusion - Sustainable fusion for the purposes of directly generating energy, where the energy output of the process is more than the energy in, is difficult and years away from being achieved.
Sustainable fusion for the purposes of generating neutrons (albeit at a net energy loss) is already here - look up the Farnsworth Fusor. Can't create energy but is routinely used as a neutron source.
I've always wondered if you couldn't solve the breakeven problem with a hybrid approach like this - a controllable neutron source (fusion) could potentially be used to make a more controllable (safe) or efficient fission system.
Here they're using it to burn waste (and do not appear to be generating power in the waste-burning phase?), but could it also be used to keep a power-generating fission reactor going long after fuel would normally be considered expended?
In the USA it's typically $absurd_amounts per kilobyte, or $15-40/month (depending on device) for an unlimited data plan.
Tethering typically requires a $40-60/month plan addon, while you can technically tether on the lower plan, if caught doing so the service provider can really nail you.
Also, many phones can't tether, and many US wireless service providers take measures to remove/disable tethering functions in phones. (BTW this is why I ditched Verizon - they delayed the Treo 650 for "network certification" issues, it turned out that the problem was that they wouldn't certify a phone that had Bluetooth DUN support - so when the T650 finally came out for Verizon the only difference between that and the Sprint version was the absence of BTDUN support. I ditched them when I was due for an upgrade and the phone I wanted was held up due to "network certification" issues.)
Yeah, DR was that year's paid expansion. Not sure if there was an unpaid that year (the last one I remember was NF?) with the exception of a major midsummer content patch. (When were mounts added - was that Cats, DR or a midyear patch?)
I completely forgot, but Mythic has a bit of a history with "Live Expansions".
Typically their cycle in DAoC would be a free "Expansion" during the late spring/early summer timeframe, with a paid expansion in the late fall/early winter timeframe.
Examples of free "Summer" expansions would be Foundations (housing) and New Frontiers, and sometimes major game mechanics patches (such as spellcrafting the year before Foundations). There were fewer of these than paid expansions.
The paid expansions were typically yearly up until the past year (or was it two years ago they stopped?), when instead of another DAoC expansion, WAR was released. The paid expansions were Shrouded Isles, Trials of Atlantis (which led to DAoC's demise), Catacombs, , and Labyrinth of the Minotaur.
Good point. In addition to the realm balance issues, the graphics requirements are one of the main reasons I stopped playing.
While my system was more than fast enough, a friends' system and his wife's couldn't play it acceptably even though their machines are great for WoW. My girlfriend's system is even more of an issue - She can just barely play WoW on it, there's no way she could play WAR without buying a new system in (at the very least) the $500-600+ price range.
Keep in mind that in addition to paid expansions, Blizzard does add content for free too. (Think Ahn'Qiraj, for example.). Plus WAR has proven to have a lot of deficiencies that need to be corrected for it to be competitive... Although rather than add new classes (which always makes class balance harder) I wish they'd fix the existing major realm population and effectiveness balances - At least as of November, Destruction far outpopulated Order on nearly every server to a great deal because their classes simply had an edge... I made it to rank 15 or so before I got tired of Order getting constantly slaughtered in scenarios.
I'm sure WAR is going to see a paid expansion after a year or two, just like DAoC (Mythic's previous MMOG) saw quite a few, one of which managed to effectively destroy the game. (ooops)
Which is not so bad if done right, and if anything is potentially good.
I have no problem with QoS, what I have a problem with is "you used more than X bandwidth at 5 AM, we're going to penalize you even though no one else was using the network".
This was what Comcast was doing - If you used too much bandwidth, you got Sandvined, regardless of time of day. Also, the method Comcast used was highly intrusive.
Dropping BT traffic to the bottom of the priority bucket (but still allowing it to use all available bandwidth if no higher-priority traffic exists) is OK - hell I do it myself within my home network.
For whatever reason, ptt.gov closed at 11 AM Tuesday (Inauguration Day). Probably a policy/paperwork issue.
Similarly, the WH staff were not permitted access to their accounts until the President was inaugurated and officially President. The "official" start time of this was noon.
Not an IT problem, just a stupidly planned policy problem.
Problem is that Hulu doesn't use HTTP, they use RTMP (See TFA...) for the actual streaming.
For a while there were only Windows-based commercial programs (Replay Media Catcher and one other program), but now there is rtmpdump for other platforms - http://sourceforge.net/projects/rtmpdump/
It's pretty no-frills but their Hulu fetcher works. The documentation isn't the best, and the "quality" parameter to get_hulu is nonintuitive - 0 is the high quality 480p stream, 1 is the normal quality stream, 2 is an even lower quality stream you can't even normally watch via Hulu.
Some might say that while Amazon never moved their music service away from DRM (since it never had DRM in the first place), their opening of a music service without DRM could be considered a move away from DRM from Amazon since Unbox (Their movie service) has (or at least had) some pretty nasty DRM and existed for at least a year or two before Amazon MP3.
Amen to this. This issue is the only reason I rip Hulu videos instead of just viewing them directly. The ads aren't that intrusive and ripping is less convenient than putting up with a few ads.
The problem is that on my HTPC (An older machine, Athlon XP 2800+), the Flash-based player is unable to play back video at full speed. mplayer, on the other hand, plays back ripped Hulu videos with plenty of CPU to spare.
The broadcast flag only applies to OVER-THE-AIR ATSC broadcasts.
Cable systems are an entirely different story. Unlike the ATSC standards where the limit of DRM is the broadcast flag (which IS dead and buried), cable systems DO encrypt their signals and DO use DRM on 95%+ of their content, and most cable boxes force 5C encryption on their Firewire outputs and I'm guessing HDCP encryption on HDMI outputs (although most cable boxes currently available have component and not HDMI - this will probably change soon). About the only exception to the encryption on everything is that cable providers are legally forbidden from encrypting OTA broadcast feeds that they carry on their cable system. Cable (and satellite) DRM has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the ATSC broadcast flag.
I'm 90% certain you can do this with T-Mo, and 100% certain for AT&T (as I have done it with AT&T phones to obtain a backup in case of my primary failing).
Also, both T-Mo and AT&T sell some cheap Nokia prepaid phones that are from a model range that people have figured out the unlock code algorithm for, so you can unlock them without the carrier's cooperation (I have not done this though. I was close to doing so when my girlfriend was a T-Mo customer, but she was able to get out of it due to lack of service at her new home address and switch to AT&T.)
Yeah... I've historically been a big Seagate fan but with all the recent Seagate news I'm considering WD, even though when I was in high school they were one of the worst manufacturers you could buy a hard drive from. My high school had a bunch of Caviar 540 units, and they failed right and left.
Back then IBM's hard drives were considered the best drives available... They fell from grace quite quickly only 2-3 years later.
"100 watts average" Did you miss the part about the PCs being used for a benchmarking test? Benchmarking tests usually result in average power consumption equaling peak consumption for the duration of the test...
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Actually at the right time, I believe you can run EME using only around 5 watts.
Of course, this means hooking a 70cm handheld ham radio to Arecibo's 432 MHz line feed. One of the other members of Cornell's ham radio club did a stint at Arecibo and during some downtime when they weren't using the dish they supposedly let him hook his HT up to the 432 MHz line feed to run some EME.
This was a LONG time ago so I could be wrong here.
Keep in mind that when close to an antenna, there is a phenomenon known as "near field gain reduction".
The inverse square law only applies when the antenna can be approximated as a point source. When you are close enough to the antenna that it no longer can be approximated as a point source to the observer, gain calculations go wacky.
(You can think of it as protection against the 1/R^2 term in the Friis transmission equation causing Pr to be greater than Pt, which would violate the law of conservation of energy - At a certain point, Gr and Gt decrease with decreasing R.)
I don't remember the exact number, but the near field boundary for Arecibo is insanely far from the dish. I think it's at least in the stratosphere. I'm fairly certain that you could even be standing on the surface of the dish and be safe during many operations.
In which case, Cornell's W2CXM station had the same capability back in 2002.
http://w2cxm.mae.cornell.edu/clubstation.html
The only thing CXM didn't have back then was automatic antenna rotator control for tracking satellites, which was added in subsequent years by undergrads to support Cornell's ICE CubeSat project - http://www.mae.cornell.edu/cubesat/.
Same here, I almost never use my license or radio equipment any more, but ham radio is what got me started on the path to becoming an RF engineer, and I still use that knowledge gained from being a ham on a regular basis as part of my job duties.
Technically, your amateur radio license is the "permission".
You DO have a license from the FCC (or equivalent regulatory body in your country), right?
Hmm, I would have to read his book, and maybe the tone is different from reality, but Iacocca has donated a lot of money to diabetes research and has also convinced others to do the same.
We'll have to see on that... Keep in mind this isn't the first time a United States automaker has received a government bailout in the form of a loan.
That said, I have somewhat less confidence that Ford, GM, and Chrysler will be able to use that loan wisely (as opposed to the amazing job Iacocca did at turning around Chrysler using a government loan - IIRC that loan was repaid by Chrysler far earlier than required/expected.)
As to sustainable fusion - Sustainable fusion for the purposes of directly generating energy, where the energy output of the process is more than the energy in, is difficult and years away from being achieved.
Sustainable fusion for the purposes of generating neutrons (albeit at a net energy loss) is already here - look up the Farnsworth Fusor. Can't create energy but is routinely used as a neutron source.
I've always wondered if you couldn't solve the breakeven problem with a hybrid approach like this - a controllable neutron source (fusion) could potentially be used to make a more controllable (safe) or efficient fission system.
Here they're using it to burn waste (and do not appear to be generating power in the waste-burning phase?), but could it also be used to keep a power-generating fission reactor going long after fuel would normally be considered expended?
In the USA it's typically $absurd_amounts per kilobyte, or $15-40/month (depending on device) for an unlimited data plan.
Tethering typically requires a $40-60/month plan addon, while you can technically tether on the lower plan, if caught doing so the service provider can really nail you.
Also, many phones can't tether, and many US wireless service providers take measures to remove/disable tethering functions in phones. (BTW this is why I ditched Verizon - they delayed the Treo 650 for "network certification" issues, it turned out that the problem was that they wouldn't certify a phone that had Bluetooth DUN support - so when the T650 finally came out for Verizon the only difference between that and the Sprint version was the absence of BTDUN support. I ditched them when I was due for an upgrade and the phone I wanted was held up due to "network certification" issues.)
Ah, that's it.
Yeah, DR was that year's paid expansion. Not sure if there was an unpaid that year (the last one I remember was NF?) with the exception of a major midsummer content patch. (When were mounts added - was that Cats, DR or a midyear patch?)
grr somehow one of my entries got deleted, there was an expansion whose name I can't remember between Cats and LoTM.
I completely forgot, but Mythic has a bit of a history with "Live Expansions".
Typically their cycle in DAoC would be a free "Expansion" during the late spring/early summer timeframe, with a paid expansion in the late fall/early winter timeframe.
Examples of free "Summer" expansions would be Foundations (housing) and New Frontiers, and sometimes major game mechanics patches (such as spellcrafting the year before Foundations). There were fewer of these than paid expansions.
The paid expansions were typically yearly up until the past year (or was it two years ago they stopped?), when instead of another DAoC expansion, WAR was released. The paid expansions were Shrouded Isles, Trials of Atlantis (which led to DAoC's demise), Catacombs, , and Labyrinth of the Minotaur.
Good point. In addition to the realm balance issues, the graphics requirements are one of the main reasons I stopped playing.
While my system was more than fast enough, a friends' system and his wife's couldn't play it acceptably even though their machines are great for WoW. My girlfriend's system is even more of an issue - She can just barely play WoW on it, there's no way she could play WAR without buying a new system in (at the very least) the $500-600+ price range.
Keep in mind that in addition to paid expansions, Blizzard does add content for free too. (Think Ahn'Qiraj, for example.). Plus WAR has proven to have a lot of deficiencies that need to be corrected for it to be competitive... Although rather than add new classes (which always makes class balance harder) I wish they'd fix the existing major realm population and effectiveness balances - At least as of November, Destruction far outpopulated Order on nearly every server to a great deal because their classes simply had an edge... I made it to rank 15 or so before I got tired of Order getting constantly slaughtered in scenarios.
I'm sure WAR is going to see a paid expansion after a year or two, just like DAoC (Mythic's previous MMOG) saw quite a few, one of which managed to effectively destroy the game. (ooops)
Which is not so bad if done right, and if anything is potentially good.
I have no problem with QoS, what I have a problem with is "you used more than X bandwidth at 5 AM, we're going to penalize you even though no one else was using the network".
This was what Comcast was doing - If you used too much bandwidth, you got Sandvined, regardless of time of day. Also, the method Comcast used was highly intrusive.
Dropping BT traffic to the bottom of the priority bucket (but still allowing it to use all available bandwidth if no higher-priority traffic exists) is OK - hell I do it myself within my home network.
It sounds like more of a paperwork issue.
For whatever reason, ptt.gov closed at 11 AM Tuesday (Inauguration Day). Probably a policy/paperwork issue.
Similarly, the WH staff were not permitted access to their accounts until the President was inaugurated and officially President. The "official" start time of this was noon.
Not an IT problem, just a stupidly planned policy problem.
Problem is that Hulu doesn't use HTTP, they use RTMP (See TFA...) for the actual streaming.
For a while there were only Windows-based commercial programs (Replay Media Catcher and one other program), but now there is rtmpdump for other platforms - http://sourceforge.net/projects/rtmpdump/
It's pretty no-frills but their Hulu fetcher works. The documentation isn't the best, and the "quality" parameter to get_hulu is nonintuitive - 0 is the high quality 480p stream, 1 is the normal quality stream, 2 is an even lower quality stream you can't even normally watch via Hulu.
Some might say that while Amazon never moved their music service away from DRM (since it never had DRM in the first place), their opening of a music service without DRM could be considered a move away from DRM from Amazon since Unbox (Their movie service) has (or at least had) some pretty nasty DRM and existed for at least a year or two before Amazon MP3.
Amen to this. This issue is the only reason I rip Hulu videos instead of just viewing them directly. The ads aren't that intrusive and ripping is less convenient than putting up with a few ads.
The problem is that on my HTPC (An older machine, Athlon XP 2800+), the Flash-based player is unable to play back video at full speed. mplayer, on the other hand, plays back ripped Hulu videos with plenty of CPU to spare.
The broadcast flag only applies to OVER-THE-AIR ATSC broadcasts.
Cable systems are an entirely different story. Unlike the ATSC standards where the limit of DRM is the broadcast flag (which IS dead and buried), cable systems DO encrypt their signals and DO use DRM on 95%+ of their content, and most cable boxes force 5C encryption on their Firewire outputs and I'm guessing HDCP encryption on HDMI outputs (although most cable boxes currently available have component and not HDMI - this will probably change soon). About the only exception to the encryption on everything is that cable providers are legally forbidden from encrypting OTA broadcast feeds that they carry on their cable system. Cable (and satellite) DRM has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the ATSC broadcast flag.
I'm 90% certain you can do this with T-Mo, and 100% certain for AT&T (as I have done it with AT&T phones to obtain a backup in case of my primary failing).
Also, both T-Mo and AT&T sell some cheap Nokia prepaid phones that are from a model range that people have figured out the unlock code algorithm for, so you can unlock them without the carrier's cooperation (I have not done this though. I was close to doing so when my girlfriend was a T-Mo customer, but she was able to get out of it due to lack of service at her new home address and switch to AT&T.)
Core memory is making a comeback (sort of) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoresistive_Random_Access_Memory
Yeah... I've historically been a big Seagate fan but with all the recent Seagate news I'm considering WD, even though when I was in high school they were one of the worst manufacturers you could buy a hard drive from. My high school had a bunch of Caviar 540 units, and they failed right and left.
Back then IBM's hard drives were considered the best drives available... They fell from grace quite quickly only 2-3 years later.
Pirate Open Source software from BitTorrent???
wtf? Someone didn't read TFA...
"100 watts average"
Did you miss the part about the PCs being used for a benchmarking test? Benchmarking tests usually result in average power consumption equaling peak consumption for the duration of the test...