In space, you'd be correct though. If you could get the plane up to 50+K feet, that might be close enough to space to make it work, and yet close enough to Earth to have some atmosphere to fly in? Perhaps aerotowing with another plane could get it up to altitude, then let the solar panels and motors take over, as they'd produce more power up there?
Helios came pretty close to 100K feet. Our `Polar flyer' would be a lot less efficient, as the solar cells would have to be on a second, rotatable by almost 90 degrees, wing, adding lift and drag, and you'd have to always fly at approximately right angles to the sun, but if your goal was to make a plane that could stay aloft for many days, and didn't care that it only worked in certain places, it might be doable.
But as mentioned, down closer to the Earth, the atmospheric losses would be a killer up near the poles.
One problem is that above the arctic circle, it's more A hours crappy sunlight (during the `day') + ( 24 - A ) hours *really* crappy sunlight (during the `night'), thanks to the sun being so low on the horizon, even at high noon -- even if you do have the fancy second rotatable wing with all the solar cells on it so they can always face the sun as much as possible, while the main wing is always level (unless turning, of course, but when you want efficiency, you turn as little as is possible.)
Now, what might work would be going back to the normal `solar cells on the wing' method during the day, and rely on thermal or slope lift to keep you going during the night (but that might be seen as cheating.) Thermals usually peter out at night, but you might be able to find something that stays hot all the time -- like a nuclear plant, or perhaps it's cooling lake. And as for slope lift, wind often reverses direction at night around the coast, so it might be hit or miss, but the right slope would still work. That, and I'd hate to fly a plane that was obviously so hard and expensive to build so close to the ground, close to a slope...
The R/C slope (no motor at all!) world record is 36 hours. Good conditions, some modest solar panels (to recharge the RX and servos during the day), the right slope and plane and lots of planning could probably beat this record. If you decide that using slope lift is OK for your solar powered electric plane longevity flight, you could keep it going going for a very long time -- use the motor during the day once your batteries are charged, and at night use the slope lift, only using the motor if you get into trouble.
Yes, but it's perpetual crappy sunlight. Above the arctic circle, the sun never gets very high above the horizon, especially at night. And so it may go through many hundreds of miles of atmosphere, which makes it weaker -- compared to the dozens of miles it goes through near the equator -- and most of the atmosphere is hit in the last six or so miles.
And also the plane would have to fly at approximately right angles to the sun -- if not, the solar panels would be at an angle, and power would drop even more. (You couldn't make the solar panels able to rotate in that direction, because then they'd create massive amounts of drag and the plane would not fly.)
It might be possible to make a plane that takes advantage of the 24/7 sunlight to stay up 24/7 without large batteries, but it wouldn't be as easy as taking this plane and flying it up north. You'd have to design your plane totally differently, and it probably wouldn't be any easier than designing this plane was.
Or even better go a bit further than that during mid summer and then it makes no difference how fast you go because you'll be in 24 hour sunlight.
The problem with that idea is that as your latitude goes up, the angle of the sun goes down. It approaches 90 degrees at the equator, but it's much lower above the arctic circle. So solar cells on top of your plane will be *much* less efficient. You might be able to make a second giant `wing' of solar cells that you can adjust the angle of (but it generates no lift, so you still need your main wing), so it's nearly vertical to catch that sun at midnight above the arctic circle, but in that case you've greatly increased the weight and drag of the plane, and even then the sun you're picking up is greatly reduced in intensity because it's gone through lots and lots of atmosphere.
Storing energy is the key. You might be able to store it in batteries like these people have done, or store it in your altitude and just let it glide down at night -- but that would require a really efficient plane. This looks to be a really efficient plane, but it's obviously not quite efficient enough to do that.
That would be cool if they'd try to fly it across the Atlantic -- it would be the first electric plane to do so, and the first solar powered plane to do so. TAM 5 took 39 hours to cross the Atlantic, and this plane was up longer than that -- but it's a lot slower too. TAM 5 averaged about 48 mph, and I'll bet this plane is less than half that.
You are either lucky or a rebate mole. Keeping track is not always enough. I followed the t-mobile Rebate mole? Cute. No, I just buy a lot of loss-leader items.
As for T-Mobile, funny that you should mention them -- as they're the big `not paying their rebate' people that I'm dealing with right now. Though in my case, the problem was originally that `the rebate doesn't apply to phones bought at Wal-Mart' -- but the rebate form I filled out did not say this. The print-it-out one did, but the online version did not. And then their tactic switched -- they say they already paid the rebate. And when I asked `paid to who?'... they just ignore me.
Moral: photocopy everything AND SEND BY REGISTERED MAIL! I don't think registerred mail is worth the trouble, unless it's a really big rebate.
I should start paying attention to whether I get them back. Yes, you should. I've had a number of cases where I didn't get my rebates, and so I called them, and either 1) they magically found it, or 2) they wanted me to send in copies of my copies, and I got my rebate. I've only had a handful of cases where I didn't get my rebates, and it couldn't be blamed on me (like sending it in too late.)
Personally, I keep an Excel (well, oocalc) spreadsheet of all my rebates, what, where, how much, when sent in, when to check, when received, etc. It's quite helpful. (Wow! I just added up my `how much' field -- $1723.)
wow. So you never considered what is essentially the purpose of the court system as the purpose of the court system? I can pretty obviously not factor your opinions in the future. No, I never considered that ambulance chasers might actually (indirectly) save lives. I said nothing about the court system at all, just personal injury lawyers. Feel free to read my post again -- it's only a few words, so it shouldn't take long.
I can pretty obviously not factor your opinions in the future. Yes, that might be best.
There is no such thing as a "routine flight". Well, OK... perhaps routine means something different to you, or perhaps your instructor drilled it into your head to expect trouble in every flight. Sounds like a good policy.
But you do have to be aware that 99+% of all flights end up being uneventful, and were expected to be that way (even if the pilot always plans for the worst.) I'll bet he filed flight plans for his world-record attempts, but like many other pilots, if he's just flying down to the next city to get some lunch, he might not. Sure, everybody should, but not everybody does.
Hell, he could have at least phoned a friend, or one of the guys in the tower and given them a rough idea idea of where he'd be headed. You're not looking for an argument here, are you? Any time you go out, it's not a bad idea to tell somebody where you're going, be it in a plane, boat, car or on foot. At least that's what my wife tells me. But I draw the line at walking down the street to check the mail!
For
VFR flights, flight plans are optional and very often not filed for (what are expected to be) routine flights.
I don't know anything about this particular case, but his plane is probably equipped with an ELT which would probably be going off if he crashed. Unless he crashed really hard and broke the ELT too. (Crashing in water is another popular way of stopping them from working...)
Hopefully it's all much ado about nothing and he's just landed somewhere (normally) and is enjoying the local scenery, unaware that he's lost... though I guess that's unlikely at this point.
9.11.2 Cardholder Identification
A merchant must not refuse to complete a MasterCard card transaction solely
because a cardholder who has complied with the conditions for presentment
of a card at the POI refuses to provide additional identification information,
except as specifically permitted or required by the Standards. A merchant may
require additional identification from the cardholder if the information is
required to complete the transaction, such as for shipping purposes. A
merchant in a country or region that supports use of the MasterCard Address
Verification Service (AVS) may require the cardholder's ZIP or postal code to
complete a cardholder-activated terminal (CAT) transaction, or the cardholder's
address and ZIP or postal code to complete a mail order, phone order, or e-commerce transaction.
... of course, the key words are `solely' and `except as specifically permitted or required by the Standards', and I can't find much on other possible standards that may apply.
But either way, even if the written rules require that they not require ID, they ignore it at will. And your complaint will probably result in the vendor being sent a letter saying `don't do that!' and nothing else. Which the vendor will probably ignore, and nothing will change. Perhaps if lots of people complained at once something might change, but just one person? I doubt it.
In any event, `solely' gives them a pretty big out. All a vendor would have to say is that `Our policy requires that we check ID on all credit card and check transactions' and then by refusing to provide ID, you're violating their policy, and they can refuse to take your card and it follows the letter of the Mastercard rules. (It would weaken their case if they only checked ID on some transactions, of course.)
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the vendors to change their policies regarding this. Chargebacks are expensive.
That's a nice anecdote you gave, but it doesn't actually prove anything.
And you have not shown what I said to be true. My position is `the policy used to be that you could not even ask for ID (though we'd quickly ignore that aspect of the policy if we were suspicious about a given transaction) -- now the policy allows it.' The PDF given (which wasn't there when I started my post) even confirms this -- you can ask for ID. It also says you can't *require* an ID, but I'll bet merchants ignore that all the time. And I wonder just how much strength this policy has -- and does Mastercard, American Express, Discover, etc. have similar policies?
As for people confusing their policies with law, that's nothing new. The proper response is usually to just nod and get on with your life, because 1) you're not going to convince them that they're wrong and 2) even if you do, it doesn't change anything.
Every merchant account contract I've signed or read explicitly prohibits this. I know this used to be prohibited in the past, but I'm pretty sure merchant contracts have changed in the last fifteen years or so (it's been that long since I've been involved in taking credit card payments.)
In any event, if I recall correctly, if you (a business) took a credit card, and looked up it's number in the books (yes, they mailed out actual books) of stolen cards, and it wasn't there, then you got your money, even if the card was stolen or used by somebody else. If something seemed suspicious, and you called in to verify the card, and then they said it was stolen, you even got a reward -- some for the business, and some for the employee. As long as you looked it up in the books, any fraud was paid for by the credit card company.
Things are very different now. Now cards are checked in real time, and even if you check a card and it's valid, you can still get a chargeback if it turns out to be stolen later. So at some point between then and now, they started permitting (requiring?) that you check ID with credit card purchases.
In short, in the past, things were much more friendly to the business.
A cheaper way of effectively doing the same thing would be to, say, post a strong hash of the document to a usenet Of course, today's strong hash is tomorrow's weak hash.
And you're not the only one who did things like this. Though in your specific case, you'd have to be able to provide some proof for it to be used as prior art (which might be difficult to find in your specific case, but lots of proof for other cases is certainly out there.)
And anything that does anything bad is a virus (even if it's really a worm, or just a `click on me and I'll format your harddrive' piece of malware)... yes, I've seen that mindset.
I think I'll stick with the original definition, even if some Windows users have decided to misuse the term.
In many places, such as in Pennsylvania, often the state troopers will give a +15 MPH leeway
Must be a PA thing.
In Texas, I've gotten perhaps 6 speeding tickets in the 20 years I've been driving, and the fastest I ever got a ticket for was 13 mph over, and the lowest was 6 mph over.
(Yes, I was quite surprised by the 6 mph one.)
in particular Vascar (timing), has a +10 MPH leeway For a 25 mph actual speed, 10 mph is a huge error. But then again, I'm guessing that police officers in general don't know how to propagate errors -- if they did, perhaps they'd be scientists or engineers rather than cops. Of course, I know how, and I do computers rather than science, but I did get my degree in Physics. I hated propagating errors, though it really wasn't that hard.
I'd imagine similar is true for high-bandwidth users... many of them have figured out how far they can push it. I doubt it.
Most people don't measure their bandwidth usage at all. At least with speeding, you have a speedometer to look at, and the police officer tells you how fast you were going either way. Does Comcast tell you how many GB you used last month when they cut you off? (probably.) Do you talk with your friends and say `I got busted for 500 GB!' `I didn't get busted for 400 GB!' `The actual limit must be somewhere in between!' That, and Comcast probably has historical data to work with -- yes, you used too much data this month, but last month you used far less, so we'll let this month slide... cops don't usually have this option, unless they were following you for a while.
Yes, it is a rootkit. It's modifying the kernel space to hide directories from the user. That's not what a rootkit [definition] does. It might be one part of what many rootkits do, but it's not the purpose of a rootkit.
The purpose of a rootkit is to let you get back in easily later, or once you're in, to let you get `root' easily. The Bioshock SecuROM thing *is* a rootkit -- the service it installs is there to let the SecuROM stuff run as a privileged account, and that's what rootkits do (it's also what things like `su' do.) But merely hiding a directory doesn't make it a rootkit. (It's probably still malware, but a different kind of malware.)
Rootkits often do attempt to hide themselves, but merely hiding yourself doesn't make you a rootkit.
"Linux: The only operating system the NSA doesn't 0wn." Clever, but who do you think developed SELinux, included in the 2.6 kernel source tree?
pwned.
Not that the NSA really cares about some movie pirate who got busted, and just because they wrote something useful for Linux and had it included in the kernel, that doesn't mean they're going to go write monitoring software for you too.
Now, a $100 fine atop 5 months in jail doesn't seem excessive to me, but the felony rap making him unemployable does. Having the `indirect' penalties assigned to you for a crime being much worse than the `official penalties' is hardly a new thing.
By `indirect' I mean things like not being able to get a good job, being shunned/tormented/killed by people merely because you're a registered sex offender, etc.
By `direct' I mean going to jail, paying fines, probation, even having to register as a sex offender.
ShieldW0lf, you're a fucking retard! Vulgar abuse is not defamatory. Thus you can't win a libel suit against me for calling you a fucking retard It's not quite that simple. The reference you gave says that `mere abuse' is not libelous. But merely being vulgar doesn't make the libelous non-libelous.
I could call you a `convicted fucking child molester', and unless you actually had been convicted of child molestation, I could be guilty of libel or slander. If it was clear that I said it as a joke, or I was just throwing random insults at you, it probably wouldn't be libel/slander. But if I'm serious, and I mean it, then merely having the word `fucking' in there won't save my legal ass.
As for `fucking retard', `retard' is a lot more ambiguous than `convicted child molester' and therefore harder to show/prove/disprove, but depending on the context, you could still be successfully sued for libel or slander. Fortunately, in this case, it's clear that you're joking and so you're probably safe.:)
Of course, I'm thinking of US law here. I'm guessing that other countries are similar, but I don't know for sure.
Slashdot Mirror
To many, `open source' simply means the source is available. And it is.
Helios came pretty close to 100K feet. Our `Polar flyer' would be a lot less efficient, as the solar cells would have to be on a second, rotatable by almost 90 degrees, wing, adding lift and drag, and you'd have to always fly at approximately right angles to the sun, but if your goal was to make a plane that could stay aloft for many days, and didn't care that it only worked in certain places, it might be doable.
But as mentioned, down closer to the Earth, the atmospheric losses would be a killer up near the poles.
Now, what might work would be going back to the normal `solar cells on the wing' method during the day, and rely on thermal or slope lift to keep you going during the night (but that might be seen as cheating.) Thermals usually peter out at night, but you might be able to find something that stays hot all the time -- like a nuclear plant, or perhaps it's cooling lake. And as for slope lift, wind often reverses direction at night around the coast, so it might be hit or miss, but the right slope would still work. That, and I'd hate to fly a plane that was obviously so hard and expensive to build so close to the ground, close to a slope
The R/C slope (no motor at all!) world record is 36 hours. Good conditions, some modest solar panels (to recharge the RX and servos during the day), the right slope and plane and lots of planning could probably beat this record. If you decide that using slope lift is OK for your solar powered electric plane longevity flight, you could keep it going going for a very long time -- use the motor during the day once your batteries are charged, and at night use the slope lift, only using the motor if you get into trouble.
And also the plane would have to fly at approximately right angles to the sun -- if not, the solar panels would be at an angle, and power would drop even more. (You couldn't make the solar panels able to rotate in that direction, because then they'd create massive amounts of drag and the plane would not fly.)
It might be possible to make a plane that takes advantage of the 24/7 sunlight to stay up 24/7 without large batteries, but it wouldn't be as easy as taking this plane and flying it up north. You'd have to design your plane totally differently, and it probably wouldn't be any easier than designing this plane was.
Storing energy is the key. You might be able to store it in batteries like these people have done, or store it in your altitude and just let it glide down at night -- but that would require a really efficient plane. This looks to be a really efficient plane, but it's obviously not quite efficient enough to do that.
That would be cool if they'd try to fly it across the Atlantic -- it would be the first electric plane to do so, and the first solar powered plane to do so. TAM 5 took 39 hours to cross the Atlantic, and this plane was up longer than that -- but it's a lot slower too. TAM 5 averaged about 48 mph, and I'll bet this plane is less than half that.
Personally, I keep an Excel (well, oocalc) spreadsheet of all my rebates, what, where, how much, when sent in, when to check, when received, etc. It's quite helpful. (Wow! I just added up my `how much' field -- $1723.)
No, I never considered that ambulance chasers might actually (indirectly) save lives. I said nothing about the court system at all, just personal injury lawyers. Feel free to read my post again -- it's only a few words, so it shouldn't take long. I can pretty obviously not factor your opinions in the future. Yes, that might be best.
Or Mansquito.
Doesn't mean they're not scum, however. Any lives they save are a fortunate side-effect from their primary goal -- to extract money.
Of course, if the crash is bad enough, it might be destroyed rather than automatically go off. Or if he crashes into a lake
Or maybe he just landed at his destination and is enjoying some coffee at a local cafe, and turns on the news to find that he's missing ...
It's too early to tell.
Hell, he could have at least phoned a friend, or one of the guys in the tower and given them a rough idea idea of where he'd be headed. You're not looking for an argument here, are you? Any time you go out, it's not a bad idea to tell somebody where you're going, be it in a plane, boat, car or on foot. At least that's what my wife tells me. But I draw the line at walking down the street to check the mail!But you do have to be aware that 99+% of all flights end up being uneventful, and were expected to be that way (even if the pilot always plans for the worst.) I'll bet he filed flight plans for his world-record attempts, but like many other pilots, if he's just flying down to the next city to get some lunch, he might not. Sure, everybody should, but not everybody does.
I don't know anything about this particular case, but his plane is probably equipped with an ELT which would probably be going off if he crashed. Unless he crashed really hard and broke the ELT too. (Crashing in water is another popular way of stopping them from working
Hopefully it's all much ado about nothing and he's just landed somewhere (normally) and is enjoying the local scenery, unaware that he's lost ... though I guess that's unlikely at this point.
But either way, even if the written rules require that they not require ID, they ignore it at will. And your complaint will probably result in the vendor being sent a letter saying `don't do that!' and nothing else. Which the vendor will probably ignore, and nothing will change. Perhaps if lots of people complained at once something might change, but just one person? I doubt it.
In any event, `solely' gives them a pretty big out. All a vendor would have to say is that `Our policy requires that we check ID on all credit card and check transactions' and then by refusing to provide ID, you're violating their policy, and they can refuse to take your card and it follows the letter of the Mastercard rules. (It would weaken their case if they only checked ID on some transactions, of course.)
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the vendors to change their policies regarding this. Chargebacks are expensive.
And you have not shown what I said to be true. My position is `the policy used to be that you could not even ask for ID (though we'd quickly ignore that aspect of the policy if we were suspicious about a given transaction) -- now the policy allows it.' The PDF given (which wasn't there when I started my post) even confirms this -- you can ask for ID. It also says you can't *require* an ID, but I'll bet merchants ignore that all the time. And I wonder just how much strength this policy has -- and does Mastercard, American Express, Discover, etc. have similar policies?
As for people confusing their policies with law, that's nothing new. The proper response is usually to just nod and get on with your life, because 1) you're not going to convince them that they're wrong and 2) even if you do, it doesn't change anything.
In any event, if I recall correctly, if you (a business) took a credit card, and looked up it's number in the books (yes, they mailed out actual books) of stolen cards, and it wasn't there, then you got your money, even if the card was stolen or used by somebody else. If something seemed suspicious, and you called in to verify the card, and then they said it was stolen, you even got a reward -- some for the business, and some for the employee. As long as you looked it up in the books, any fraud was paid for by the credit card company.
Things are very different now. Now cards are checked in real time, and even if you check a card and it's valid, you can still get a chargeback if it turns out to be stolen later. So at some point between then and now, they started permitting (requiring?) that you check ID with credit card purchases.
In short, in the past, things were much more friendly to the business.
Just post the document itself to Usenet.
Hopefully google and friends will fight and win.
To be more precise, a rootkit helps you to `maintain root' -- often, part of that is letting you back in later.
I think I'll stick with the original definition, even if some Windows users have decided to misuse the term.
In Texas, I've gotten perhaps 6 speeding tickets in the 20 years I've been driving, and the fastest I ever got a ticket for was 13 mph over, and the lowest was 6 mph over.
(Yes, I was quite surprised by the 6 mph one.)
in particular Vascar (timing), has a +10 MPH leeway For a 25 mph actual speed, 10 mph is a huge error. But then again, I'm guessing that police officers in general don't know how to propagate errors -- if they did, perhaps they'd be scientists or engineers rather than cops. Of course, I know how, and I do computers rather than science, but I did get my degree in Physics. I hated propagating errors, though it really wasn't that hard. I'd imagine similar is true for high-bandwidth usersMost people don't measure their bandwidth usage at all. At least with speeding, you have a speedometer to look at, and the police officer tells you how fast you were going either way. Does Comcast tell you how many GB you used last month when they cut you off? (probably.) Do you talk with your friends and say `I got busted for 500 GB!' `I didn't get busted for 400 GB!' `The actual limit must be somewhere in between!' That, and Comcast probably has historical data to work with -- yes, you used too much data this month, but last month you used far less, so we'll let this month slide ... cops don't usually have this option, unless they were following you for a while.
The purpose of a rootkit is to let you get back in easily later, or once you're in, to let you get `root' easily. The Bioshock SecuROM thing *is* a rootkit -- the service it installs is there to let the SecuROM stuff run as a privileged account, and that's what rootkits do (it's also what things like `su' do.) But merely hiding a directory doesn't make it a rootkit. (It's probably still malware, but a different kind of malware.)
Rootkits often do attempt to hide themselves, but merely hiding yourself doesn't make you a rootkit.
pwned.
Not that the NSA really cares about some movie pirate who got busted, and just because they wrote something useful for Linux and had it included in the kernel, that doesn't mean they're going to go write monitoring software for you too.
By `indirect' I mean things like not being able to get a good job, being shunned/tormented/killed by people merely because you're a registered sex offender, etc.
By `direct' I mean going to jail, paying fines, probation, even having to register as a sex offender.
I could call you a `convicted fucking child molester', and unless you actually had been convicted of child molestation, I could be guilty of libel or slander. If it was clear that I said it as a joke, or I was just throwing random insults at you, it probably wouldn't be libel/slander. But if I'm serious, and I mean it, then merely having the word `fucking' in there won't save my legal ass.
As for `fucking retard', `retard' is a lot more ambiguous than `convicted child molester' and therefore harder to show/prove/disprove, but depending on the context, you could still be successfully sued for libel or slander. Fortunately, in this case, it's clear that you're joking and so you're probably safe. :)
Of course, I'm thinking of US law here. I'm guessing that other countries are similar, but I don't know for sure.