Right, the parts don't have to survive all the way to the ground.
However, the part up to the point where extreme heat isn't generated any more is the worst part. That's the hardest part to survive both in terms of heat and aerodynamic stresses. Whatever survives that will probably survive until it hits the ground.
As for a crash landing, look at what happens when an airliner crash lands. It's often not survivable. With a wing blown off (like Columbia) you probably couldn't even call it a crash landing but just a crash. The astronauts would have to bail out or eject.
That sounds cool and it seems it would work to protect someone in case things go wrong.
The astronauts would have to spend all of liftoff and landing there to be protected. As we've seen with Challenger and Columbia there might not be much time to get into such a pod.
So what about the astronauts that *have* to be outside piloting the shuttle, monitoring guages and stuff? I suppose they're not really needed and it can be done automatically.
So I guess the only real problems would be size and weight. You could save some by omitting other safety gear, such as whatever is now used for bailing out and the suits worn during takeoff and landing. I guess it just might be doable.
The main problem I see is that if the shuttle is severely damaged like in this case there's no way it's going to maintain the correct orientation. Instead of hitting the black tiles the hottest air would hit some of the far less insulated white part or the windows. I doubt that's survivable.
Accomodating the forces of re-entering at any weird angle might be a problem too. Could they re-inforce things sufficiently without making the shuttle too heavy?
I don't think slowing down would be that hard. The shuttle will have to slow down a lot just from the atmosphere and some sort of parachute(s) could be added.
I'm sure that plenty of users would just stick with the defaults or even not know how to change them no matter how easy that is or how bad the defaults are. Therefore I do think you should find good defaults.
I also think that alowing users to change the colour scheme is a great idea.
What happens if someone just manually sets their own settings instead of using DHCP? Can they get on the net then without going through the redirection?
That was my first thought. XP resumes from hibernation very quickly. The only reason not to do this would be if instability and memory leaks progressively mess things when the system isn't rebooted frequently. XP seems stable enough that this isn't a problem. It might be an issue for applications though.
There's also suspend, and it can be almost instant. Suspend to RAM can use less than 5 watts. That's definitely acceptable for a home entertainment system. It's within the range of power used by TVs and VCRs when they're "OFF".
It's not handling it very gracefully with all the reboots and unpredictable behaviour. There's no excuse for that unless it's a problem in the computer or something that directly affects the computer, like power or thermal control.
What does the ID of the tower that you're connected to have to do with GPS? Sure, both can be used for locating you but using the tower is WAY less precise because one tower can cover a pretty large area.
You might not even be connected to the closest tower if for example it's overloaded and load balancing causes you to connect to a different one.
BTW Triangulation using cell towers could work but this isn't it either.
I've used an ArchosJukebox 6000 for a while with Win2000, XP and Linux and I never encountered that bug.
In device manager in Windows I could even enable or disable write caching on it. Perhaps the ISD200 (USB to IDE bridge IC) drivers did something right.
I suppose connecting 5V and 12V but not ground on the power cable might be bad. It could either damage the electronics because of weird voltage levels or perhaps draw lots of current through ground on the signal cable and damage things that weren't meant to take that current. Perhaps electrically connecting the drive case to the computer case would protect against this.
I don't think connecting 5V first vs. 12V first should cause any damage.
I said the phosphor smooths out flicker. I didn't mean that it totally removes it!
Sure a LED is a diode, but how are you going to provide a filtered DC supply to the LED without yet another diode (besides the capacitor)? I guess maybe you could use a LED and an inductor but the inductor would be more expensive than a diode and capacitor. Besides, some LEDs have very low maximum reverse voltages and can be damaged if this is exceeded.
The Internet started as a fairly closed and experimental system. It slowly became larger, more open, less experimental and used for more important things. This allowed problems to be worked out slowly and without risking too much.
Look at how things are now. The impact of IPv6 bugs could be horrendous!
A flurescent light flickers at twice the power line frequency, the same frequency as a LED on a full wave rectifier. However a fluorescent light uses phosphor which has some persistance and smooths out this flicker. A LED simply turns off when the current stops flowing so you get a lot more flicker.
You need a rectifier and a filter capacitor to stop a LED from flickering. A one diode half wave rectifier works too but requires a larger filter capacitor.
Probibly, eventually, manufacturers will be directed to provide "backdoors" much like cryptography schemes that the NSA et al have tried to push on the public.
Remember the Clipper Chip? Practically nobody wanted to use something like that so it simply disappeared. AFAIK several other countries (eg. France) have laws severely restricting cryptography.
(No it's not working and secure cyptography cannot be stopped.)
Those were my first thoughts too. I somehow can't imagine him being visionary or really caring about this. I assume he'd do this just for the political gain and I'd hate to see him get it.
However if the missions happen that's sufficiently good in and of itself and the fact some idiot got things moving is secondary.
Oh come on! Is there something wrong with Adobe not having a linux version of Photoshop? There's nothing inherently wrong/evil with what they're doing. If you really care a lot about this then vote with your money and avoid buying stuff from whoever doesn't support your favorite OS.
No, this has nothing to do with the frequency the power plant sends. I mean make the switching mode power supply run at a higher frequencies, MHz instead of KHz perhaps
Don't increased frequencies allow shrinking of electromagnetic components? Why not just increase the frequency?
What about non-line-isolated battery chargers? When you're supplying power to the laptop you need isolation, but you don't if you're just charging the battery. These could be extremely small and light.
Linear voltage regulators like the 7805 are cheap, easy to use and amazingly resilient (eg. protected against short circuits and overheating) but they have their disadvantages.
The main disadvantage is heat. If you want a lot of power, especially if there is a large voltage drop, you'll need heat sink bigger and much heavier than a small switch mode converter you could use instead.
You also couldn't get 5V from 6V with a 7805. The dropout voltage is 2V, meaning you need at least 7V to get 5V. There are special low-dropout alternatives that can get 5V off 6V or even less.
440 volts won't provide a long enough arc. Use a big Tesla Coil instead. Then store the power in a big high voltage capacitor, and use inverters and transformers. I bet the codes don't talk about this.;)
Slashdot Mirror
Why are they putting support for this in the browser? For web page background music and advertising jingles?
However, the part up to the point where extreme heat isn't generated any more is the worst part. That's the hardest part to survive both in terms of heat and aerodynamic stresses. Whatever survives that will probably survive until it hits the ground.
As for a crash landing, look at what happens when an airliner crash lands. It's often not survivable. With a wing blown off (like Columbia) you probably couldn't even call it a crash landing but just a crash. The astronauts would have to bail out or eject.
The astronauts would have to spend all of liftoff and landing there to be protected. As we've seen with Challenger and Columbia there might not be much time to get into such a pod.
So what about the astronauts that *have* to be outside piloting the shuttle, monitoring guages and stuff? I suppose they're not really needed and it can be done automatically.
So I guess the only real problems would be size and weight. You could save some by omitting other safety gear, such as whatever is now used for bailing out and the suits worn during takeoff and landing. I guess it just might be doable.
Accomodating the forces of re-entering at any weird angle might be a problem too. Could they re-inforce things sufficiently without making the shuttle too heavy?
I don't think slowing down would be that hard. The shuttle will have to slow down a lot just from the atmosphere and some sort of parachute(s) could be added.
I also think that alowing users to change the colour scheme is a great idea.
What happens if someone just manually sets their own settings instead of using DHCP? Can they get on the net then without going through the redirection?
There's also suspend, and it can be almost instant. Suspend to RAM can use less than 5 watts. That's definitely acceptable for a home entertainment system. It's within the range of power used by TVs and VCRs when they're "OFF".
It's not handling it very gracefully with all the reboots and unpredictable behaviour. There's no excuse for that unless it's a problem in the computer or something that directly affects the computer, like power or thermal control.
I'm curious about the technical details. I bet it didn't use a microprocessor but discrete logic. Do you know what it used? Did you ever look inside?
You might not even be connected to the closest tower if for example it's overloaded and load balancing causes you to connect to a different one.
BTW Triangulation using cell towers could work but this isn't it either.
Don't they at least deserve some credit for not being Microsoft?
In device manager in Windows I could even enable or disable write caching on it. Perhaps the ISD200 (USB to IDE bridge IC) drivers did something right.
I don't think connecting 5V first vs. 12V first should cause any damage.
Sure a LED is a diode, but how are you going to provide a filtered DC supply to the LED without yet another diode (besides the capacitor)? I guess maybe you could use a LED and an inductor but the inductor would be more expensive than a diode and capacitor. Besides, some LEDs have very low maximum reverse voltages and can be damaged if this is exceeded.
Look at how things are now. The impact of IPv6 bugs could be horrendous!
You need a rectifier and a filter capacitor to stop a LED from flickering. A one diode half wave rectifier works too but requires a larger filter capacitor.
If you have an FX5900 have a license for the FX5900 BIOS, not the FX5950 Ultra BIOS. I'm pretty sure it could be said that you're pirating the BIOS.
Remember the Clipper Chip? Practically nobody wanted to use something like that so it simply disappeared. AFAIK several other countries (eg. France) have laws severely restricting cryptography.
(No it's not working and secure cyptography cannot be stopped.)
However if the missions happen that's sufficiently good in and of itself and the fact some idiot got things moving is secondary.
Oh come on! Is there something wrong with Adobe not having a linux version of Photoshop? There's nothing inherently wrong/evil with what they're doing. If you really care a lot about this then vote with your money and avoid buying stuff from whoever doesn't support your favorite OS.
No, this has nothing to do with the frequency the power plant sends. I mean make the switching mode power supply run at a higher frequencies, MHz instead of KHz perhaps
What about non-line-isolated battery chargers? When you're supplying power to the laptop you need isolation, but you don't if you're just charging the battery. These could be extremely small and light.
The main disadvantage is heat. If you want a lot of power, especially if there is a large voltage drop, you'll need heat sink bigger and much heavier than a small switch mode converter you could use instead.
You also couldn't get 5V from 6V with a 7805. The dropout voltage is 2V, meaning you need at least 7V to get 5V. There are special low-dropout alternatives that can get 5V off 6V or even less.
How efficient are laptop batteries though? (How much power do you have to put in per power you get out?)
440 volts won't provide a long enough arc. Use a big Tesla Coil instead. Then store the power in a big high voltage capacitor, and use inverters and transformers. I bet the codes don't talk about this. ;)