I haven't thought about Wasteland in a long time! Thanks for bringing that back to the top of my consciousness.
I have played Mafia through the complete storyline at least 3 times. I only played Vice City through the stories once, but I've wasted hours and hours roaming around the city, speeding in cars, smashing things with the fire truck, and mixing it up with law enforcement.
I have a few really old games that I keep coming back to every so often. Rocket Jockey (only installs on Win95, so I have to keep a virtual machine running), Colonization (ditto, but an old Sid Meier effort), and even Star Flight (have to have a DOS VM for that. It came on two floppies!). The graphics and sound limitations start to wear on you after a while on those last two, but they're still good for some old-school fun.
Absolutely correct, and that's the important point.
This supply is not burning 1 kW all the time it sits there. It is providing exactly the same amount of power as your current power supply does. The only thing that it offers you is more headroom if you suddenly need to use your USB arc-welder.
And with efficiencies of close to 90%, these types of switching power supplies don't heat your room up when they run. Your processor and video card do, though.
One useful thing may be simulating the impacts of hypervelocity debris on orbiting or interplanetary spacecraft. This is something that is very difficult to do in a controlled manner, and the topic of lots of interest for those who design, build and operate spacecraft.
But I wouldn't want to leave the impression that HAARP is pure science and nothing more, when it does appear to have profound military applications which, if misused, could seriously fuck up the world.
You do understand, of course, that even when upgraded to the planned full array, HAARP will put into the ionosphere over Alaska only a tiny fraction of the radio power that lightning injects more or less continuously all over the planet.
Nobody is running around worrying that lightning will make the sky fall.
Re:Something good may yet come out of this
on
Out of Gas
·
· Score: 1
I have found that most Europeans don't really understand how BIG America really is.
Take Great Britain, where many posts like the parent come from. The UK has 60 million people living in an area of 244,000 sq km. The US has 290 million people spread across 9.6 million sq km. The UK is slightly smaller than the state of Oregon.
It takes lots of roads and energy to move people and goods around in the US. We have 6.3 million km of highways, while the UK has 371,000 km. [CIA World Factbook].
You can't just build a public transportation infrastructure that connects all of those people to where they need to go. You lose some economies of scale when people are more spread out.
Yes, Americans use more energy than the average European (more driving by necessity, bigger houses, more consumption -- also more production per capita), and we could certainly stand to see some improvement. But direct comparisons to Europe just don't apply.
Also, since this thread is really about oil, note that the per capita use of oil in the UK is about 10.4 bbl per year, while in the US it is 24.7 bbl per year. We are only using slightly more than twice the OIL per capita (and that's not just gasoline, that's everything you make from refining crude).
Whatever happened to the standard bodies who are supposed to prevent this?
The problem with standards bodies is that they often move so slowly that either a technology is left to languish for 10 years while a standard is argued, or somebody gets impatient and puts their own proposed standard into silicon and takes over the market, thereby forcing competitors to build their own incompatible systems based on their own proposed standard.
This is a well-recognized issue, and it has been a problem with 56k modems, Wi-Fi, recordable DVDs and -- very recently -- UWB (ultra-wideband)... just to name a few.
Actually, the market largely solved the DVD format war by brilliantly cooking up drives that could record ALL of the formats. That removed the "which to use?" barrier preventing widespread adoption. This is much better than what happened with K56Flex and X2 modems, which were incompatible 56k technologies. Eventually the standard incorporated aspects of both and everyone needed a firmware update.
So, your standards bodies exist, but they are struggling to be effective in a real-world marketplace.
Re:But the point is...?
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Next, can we still transmit a signal back if we have to take a probe that far underwater?
This caught my attention in the article, because they say they want to stay under the ice and use the "type of powerful transmitter used by submarines".
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, because submarines typically only transmit at high frequencies via satellite. These frequencies won't go through water, let alone kilometers of ice.
Now, if they mean very-low-frequency (VLF) transmissions, which are used to talk to submarines (but not back the other way) while they are underwater, then there is another problem. Europa is immersed in Jupiter's powerful magnetic field, and those VLF frequencies will not be able to escape that field to make it back to Earth.
So I wonder just how well-thought-out this proposed mission really is.
I knew about it, as did many other people. But you have to realize that coding theory is a pretty funny and insular field.
You have that right. When I was at MIT in 1996, I took a course in coding theory. It was not a regular part of the curriculum for electrical engineers concentrating in communications. It was a special course, which was only taught that one time. We discussed turbo codes.
I soon came to realize why: coding theory is stuck halfway between comm theory and mathematics, and the mathematics (field theory, for one) is much more abstract than what engineers usually see.
It really takes a special kind of communications engineer to get into coding theory to any kind of depth, and most mathematicians couldn't care less about it... which makes it insular indeed.
And let's hope that the Air Force doesn't unduly influence the design again, by insisting it be an airplane.
One of the biggest design challenges with the shuttle is the fact that it has wings and has to glide. That makes it almost impossible to protect against the heat of reentry, to carry any real amount of cargo, or to go to very many places in orbit. I mean, just look at the thing: it looks kind of like an airplane, but it also looks like it wants to fall out of the sky... which it does every time they land it -- deadstick, steep and fast.
A return to a design based on a capsule for crew transport and a separate system for heavy lift makes much more sense, now that the ISS exists.
The engineering challenges are much simpler with these designs, and even 30 years of technological advances since the Shuttle was designed have not made space planes easier to build (witness the cancellation of the X-33 and X-34 due to persistent engineering issues). Tying up more money in systems like the Shuttle that are filled with engineering compromises from hell is not a wise move when we could be pushing back toward the Moon and Mars in simpler, safer, more reliable designs.
You have a valid concern. I hope that they have designed this spacecraft to tolerate radiation doses far beyond what they expect to see over the course of the next solar cycle (its a 10 year trip!).
Remember the Japanese Mars orbiter that eventually failed to enter orbit, largely because it got nuked by coronal mass ejections? During a 10 year trip spanning solar maximum, the Rosetta spacecraft can expect to be hit dead-on by several CME's. The dose -- and the damage -- is cumulative.
Let's hope they didn't skimp on shielding and rad-hard electronics or the thing will just limp on by when it comes time for comet rendezvous.
Slashdot Mirror
I have played Mafia through the complete storyline at least 3 times. I only played Vice City through the stories once, but I've wasted hours and hours roaming around the city, speeding in cars, smashing things with the fire truck, and mixing it up with law enforcement.
I have a few really old games that I keep coming back to every so often. Rocket Jockey (only installs on Win95, so I have to keep a virtual machine running), Colonization (ditto, but an old Sid Meier effort), and even Star Flight (have to have a DOS VM for that. It came on two floppies!). The graphics and sound limitations start to wear on you after a while on those last two, but they're still good for some old-school fun.
This supply is not burning 1 kW all the time it sits there. It is providing exactly the same amount of power as your current power supply does. The only thing that it offers you is more headroom if you suddenly need to use your USB arc-welder.
And with efficiencies of close to 90%, these types of switching power supplies don't heat your room up when they run. Your processor and video card do, though.
One useful thing may be simulating the impacts of hypervelocity debris on orbiting or interplanetary spacecraft. This is something that is very difficult to do in a controlled manner, and the topic of lots of interest for those who design, build and operate spacecraft.
Take Great Britain, where many posts like the parent come from. The UK has 60 million people living in an area of 244,000 sq km. The US has 290 million people spread across 9.6 million sq km. The UK is slightly smaller than the state of Oregon.
It takes lots of roads and energy to move people and goods around in the US. We have 6.3 million km of highways, while the UK has 371,000 km. [CIA World Factbook].
You can't just build a public transportation infrastructure that connects all of those people to where they need to go. You lose some economies of scale when people are more spread out.
Yes, Americans use more energy than the average European (more driving by necessity, bigger houses, more consumption -- also more production per capita), and we could certainly stand to see some improvement. But direct comparisons to Europe just don't apply.
Also, since this thread is really about oil, note that the per capita use of oil in the UK is about 10.4 bbl per year, while in the US it is 24.7 bbl per year. We are only using slightly more than twice the OIL per capita (and that's not just gasoline, that's everything you make from refining crude).
This is a well-recognized issue, and it has been a problem with 56k modems, Wi-Fi, recordable DVDs and -- very recently -- UWB (ultra-wideband)... just to name a few.
Actually, the market largely solved the DVD format war by brilliantly cooking up drives that could record ALL of the formats. That removed the "which to use?" barrier preventing widespread adoption. This is much better than what happened with K56Flex and X2 modems, which were incompatible 56k technologies. Eventually the standard incorporated aspects of both and everyone needed a firmware update.
So, your standards bodies exist, but they are struggling to be effective in a real-world marketplace.
This doesn't make a lot of sense to me, because submarines typically only transmit at high frequencies via satellite. These frequencies won't go through water, let alone kilometers of ice.
Now, if they mean very-low-frequency (VLF) transmissions, which are used to talk to submarines (but not back the other way) while they are underwater, then there is another problem. Europa is immersed in Jupiter's powerful magnetic field, and those VLF frequencies will not be able to escape that field to make it back to Earth.
So I wonder just how well-thought-out this proposed mission really is.
You have that right. When I was at MIT in 1996, I took a course in coding theory. It was not a regular part of the curriculum for electrical engineers concentrating in communications. It was a special course, which was only taught that one time. We discussed turbo codes.
I soon came to realize why: coding theory is stuck halfway between comm theory and mathematics, and the mathematics (field theory, for one) is much more abstract than what engineers usually see.
It really takes a special kind of communications engineer to get into coding theory to any kind of depth, and most mathematicians couldn't care less about it... which makes it insular indeed.
One of the biggest design challenges with the shuttle is the fact that it has wings and has to glide. That makes it almost impossible to protect against the heat of reentry, to carry any real amount of cargo, or to go to very many places in orbit. I mean, just look at the thing: it looks kind of like an airplane, but it also looks like it wants to fall out of the sky... which it does every time they land it -- deadstick, steep and fast.
A return to a design based on a capsule for crew transport and a separate system for heavy lift makes much more sense, now that the ISS exists.
The engineering challenges are much simpler with these designs, and even 30 years of technological advances since the Shuttle was designed have not made space planes easier to build (witness the cancellation of the X-33 and X-34 due to persistent engineering issues). Tying up more money in systems like the Shuttle that are filled with engineering compromises from hell is not a wise move when we could be pushing back toward the Moon and Mars in simpler, safer, more reliable designs.
You have a valid concern. I hope that they have designed this spacecraft to tolerate radiation doses far beyond what they expect to see over the course of the next solar cycle (its a 10 year trip!). Remember the Japanese Mars orbiter that eventually failed to enter orbit, largely because it got nuked by coronal mass ejections? During a 10 year trip spanning solar maximum, the Rosetta spacecraft can expect to be hit dead-on by several CME's. The dose -- and the damage -- is cumulative. Let's hope they didn't skimp on shielding and rad-hard electronics or the thing will just limp on by when it comes time for comet rendezvous.