Cringely had a suggestion a year or two ago that all software have a label that describes the software's behavior - a 'Truth in Labeling' for software.
He pointed out that before standard nutrition labels were required on food, no one had a clue about what they were getting. (Now they do, they just don't care.)
His suggestion was to have a similar scheme that had several basic catagories along with a simple warning icon for each behavior. The idea was to make it simple enough so that a consumer who cared could look at the label and see 'Oh, it checks for updates' versus 'Oh, it phones home with my serial number' versus 'It tells people where I've been surfing.'
It seemed pretty well thought out to me, but alas, I can't find it on google right now. I leave it as an exercise for another reader....
Years ago, Bill McKibben taped _everything_ that ran on the local cable system during a 24 hour period, then proceeded to watch it all - 1700 hours worth.
My apologies for my sarcasm... after posting, I realized that when you said wildfires, you meant well fires - not the multi thousand acre monsters that most of us think of when we see the word 'wildfire.'
I'm not sure if liquid hydrogen could produce an appropriate oxygen deprivation type blast or not (I have my doubts, but I still have ten fingers and almost no explosives experience), but surely there would be far more cost effective ways to do it than by sacrificing a large, expensive UAV. The environmental impact of the explosive has to be negligible in the big picture of a well fire, and obtaining/storing/using liquid hydrogen must be orders of magnitude harder than a few sticks of dynamite.
Solar UAVs for spying would have a problem - if they're over the clouds, the camera sees nothing but clouds. If they're below the clouds, the solar panel sees nothing but clouds. Either way, it's not really that useful.
Clouds aren't the issue. There are lots of other ways to look at or listen to things than visible light. The problem with the solar version is payload. Helios had to be incredibly light to fly on solar power - it had a 247 ft wingspan, yet weighed only 1500 pounds. It broke up in flight two years ago. AV's Global Observer has a 1000 pound payload.
The hydrogen-powered UAV would be good for exploring hurricanes over a prolonged period of time, as it could sit in the clouds near the eye and just monitor stuff
For endurance you need high aspect ratio wings. Think U-2, think Steve Fossett's round the world flight. To survive in the clouds near a hurricane, you have to be built like a P-3 - short, stubby, stronger than hell wings. This thing might fly high over a hurricane, but it would never survive in one.
A potential civilian use for this kind of technology would be in fighting wildfires. The late Red Adair...
Red Adair fought well fires.
On the other hand, if you were to have a remote-control aircraft with a large amount of liquid hydrogen aboard, it could potentially have much the same effect (deprive the fire of oxygen) but with a lot less environmental impact.
Now there's a great idea. Starve the fire of oxygen by having all of the oxygen combine with a bunch of free hydrogen, creating nothing but water vapor... oh, and a little bit of heat. Heck, you could just use a KC-135 and dump raw gas or jet fuel on it for the same effect, no new technology needed.
They bought out RAV a few years ago and buried Linux support. After that things got even worse.
We switched to Vexira from Central Command. Midway through our contract, CC was kind enough to tell us we had to upgrade to their new software, and by the way, you have less than a week to do it. This was between Christmas and New Years. Did I say the the new software didn't support our existing OS? (RH 7.2, patches from Progeny.)
Every time we've used proprietary AV software we've gotten screwed.
My ISP doesn't block 25 outgoing but a few spam blacklists have my IP range on their "DSL/Cable/Dialup" listings so I send mail from my internal server through the ISP.
The result? No more "You're on a dynamic IP" bounce messages.
The other result:
"Connection error from smtp.comcast.net on port 25 (450 too frequent connects from 66.41.xxx.xx, please try again later.)"
If the reaction begins to cascade, the elements heat up and expand. This automatically seperates them and cools the stack back down.
IANANE, though the design does sound promising.
Promising as long as thousands and thousands and thousands of pebbles are manufactured to spec. I mean, they couldn't screw up the production of any of these pebbles, could they?
IIRC, Wired's article on these specifically mentioned the difficulty in making the pebbles perfectly.
but the only reason we are not seeing a massive reduction in the amount of foreign oil we depend on, or improved air is because of the stigma attached to the world "nuclear".
We use foreign oil for transportation, not for electricity. Letting a thousand nukes bloom won't change that at all. If you want the security of freedom from foreign oil, the single quickest fix is improved mileage standards. Not nukes, not a little bit oil years away from delivery on the North Slope. All it takes is leadership. Too bad that's more than we have.
Nukes versus coal is worth a debate. But until we run transportation on electricity, or nuke generated hydrogen, nukes versus foreign oil is like arguing pickles versus Volkswagens.
A previous post did the math and said that these were about 20 times more powerful than your basic pointer laser.
Question - could you focus 20 of those generic laser pointers at the same spot on a plastic cup and melt it, or would the fact that the waves would not all be in sync diminish the effective power?
While the Bose articles are light on details, it seems that the Bose technology is not far different from other electronically controlled systems
Wrong.
The Cadillac system is a high tech spring and damper system. The trick is that the viscosity of the (very expensive) damping fluid can be controlled by the application of a magnetic field. <Buzzword warning> Nanotech stuff, I believe </buzzword> The suspension can change it's damping rate, but the wheel is still being moved by the springs.
The Bose system is using what they call a linear motor (think solenoid, but not limited to on or off) to control the wheel. This suspension can lift the wheel or push it down. It knows the difference between a spring compression due to a bump and a spring compression due to heavy braking or cornering, so it knows whether to resist the lift of the wheel or to let it rise.
So is this going to help us build an affordable robot that can navigate the yard in real time (think lawn mowing...) or a robot that can mow the lawn verrryyy slooowwwwwly?
I'm not trying to be funny... I'm really trying to get a feel for the usefulness of this in robotic nav.
Will this be useful in making differential GPS cheap enough that we can get the accuracy needed to have a robot know the boundaries of a yard and mow the lawn or sweep the driveway?
Slashdot Mirror
Cringely had a suggestion a year or two ago that all software have a label that describes the software's behavior - a 'Truth in Labeling' for software.
He pointed out that before standard nutrition labels were required on food, no one had a clue about what they were getting. (Now they do, they just don't care.)
His suggestion was to have a similar scheme that had several basic catagories along with a simple warning icon for each behavior. The idea was to make it simple enough so that a consumer who cared could look at the label and see 'Oh, it checks for updates' versus 'Oh, it phones home with my serial number' versus 'It tells people where I've been surfing.'
It seemed pretty well thought out to me, but alas, I can't find it on google right now. I leave it as an exercise for another reader....
Actually, it's only a flesh wound. I've seen worse.
We'll strip mine Mars later.
57 Terabytes and nothing on.
Then he spent 24 hours camping outside.
He wrote it up in 'The Age of Missing Information'. (Amazon link provided for the reviews, no sales connection.)
Great book, I recommend it.
Now excuse me, I need to get back to /. before I miss something.
All that data is just a coincidence.
Um... you're not an engineer, right?
My apologies for my sarcasm... after posting, I realized that when you said wildfires, you meant well fires - not the multi thousand acre monsters that most of us think of when we see the word 'wildfire.'
I'm not sure if liquid hydrogen could produce an appropriate oxygen deprivation type blast or not (I have my doubts, but I still have ten fingers and almost no explosives experience), but surely there would be far more cost effective ways to do it than by sacrificing a large, expensive UAV. The environmental impact of the explosive has to be negligible in the big picture of a well fire, and obtaining/storing/using liquid hydrogen must be orders of magnitude harder than a few sticks of dynamite.
Solar UAVs for spying would have a problem - if they're over the clouds, the camera sees nothing but clouds. If they're below the clouds, the solar panel sees nothing but clouds. Either way, it's not really that useful.
Clouds aren't the issue. There are lots of other ways to look at or listen to things than visible light. The problem with the solar version is payload. Helios had to be incredibly light to fly on solar power - it had a 247 ft wingspan, yet weighed only 1500 pounds. It broke up in flight two years ago. AV's Global Observer has a 1000 pound payload.
The hydrogen-powered UAV would be good for exploring hurricanes over a prolonged period of time, as it could sit in the clouds near the eye and just monitor stuff
For endurance you need high aspect ratio wings. Think U-2, think Steve Fossett's round the world flight. To survive in the clouds near a hurricane, you have to be built like a P-3 - short, stubby, stronger than hell wings. This thing might fly high over a hurricane, but it would never survive in one.
A potential civilian use for this kind of technology would be in fighting wildfires. The late Red Adair...
Red Adair fought well fires.
On the other hand, if you were to have a remote-control aircraft with a large amount of liquid hydrogen aboard, it could potentially have much the same effect (deprive the fire of oxygen) but with a lot less environmental impact.
Now there's a great idea. Starve the fire of oxygen by having all of the oxygen combine with a bunch of free hydrogen, creating nothing but water vapor... oh, and a little bit of heat. Heck, you could just use a KC-135 and dump raw gas or jet fuel on it for the same effect, no new technology needed.
We switched to Vexira from Central Command. Midway through our contract, CC was kind enough to tell us we had to upgrade to their new software, and by the way, you have less than a week to do it. This was between Christmas and New Years. Did I say the the new software didn't support our existing OS? (RH 7.2, patches from Progeny.)
Every time we've used proprietary AV software we've gotten screwed.
Solution: apt-get install clamav.
My ISP doesn't block 25 outgoing but a few spam blacklists have my IP range on their "DSL/Cable/Dialup" listings so I send mail from my internal server through the ISP.
The result? No more "You're on a dynamic IP" bounce messages.
The other result:
"Connection error from smtp.comcast.net on port 25 (450 too frequent connects from 66.41.xxx.xx, please try again later.)"
Either way, you're screwed.
He'll clearly identify himself as a sponsered part of your conversation, though. No confusing him with a real, unbiased friend.
IANANE, though the design does sound promising.
Promising as long as thousands and thousands and thousands of pebbles are manufactured to spec. I mean, they couldn't screw up the production of any of these pebbles, could they?
IIRC, Wired's article on these specifically mentioned the difficulty in making the pebbles perfectly.
Nice rear view mirror you have there.
The last estimate I read was that ANWR oil might reduce our dependance on foreign oil from 62% to 60%. BFD.
There isn't enough oil on US territory to take care of the foreign dependency. Of course, if Iraq and Iran were part of the U.S.... oh, never mind.
We use foreign oil for transportation, not for electricity. Letting a thousand nukes bloom won't change that at all. If you want the security of freedom from foreign oil, the single quickest fix is improved mileage standards. Not nukes, not a little bit oil years away from delivery on the North Slope. All it takes is leadership. Too bad that's more than we have.
Nukes versus coal is worth a debate. But until we run transportation on electricity, or nuke generated hydrogen, nukes versus foreign oil is like arguing pickles versus Volkswagens.
The particle is four nanometers - billionths of a meter - in diameter. Individual atoms of lead and sulfur can be resolved in the image.
I'm a big fan of solar power, but lead based paint seems like a non-starter to me. Bummer.
A previous post did the math and said that these were about 20 times more powerful than your basic pointer laser.
Question - could you focus 20 of those generic laser pointers at the same spot on a plastic cup and melt it, or would the fact that the waves would not all be in sync diminish the effective power?
Maybe I'll give up and join the Borg.
I've got three MACs at one address. What am I supposed to do, make up an apartment number for each one?
rm -Rf /* <ent
Wrong.
The Cadillac system is a high tech spring and damper system. The trick is that the viscosity of the (very expensive) damping fluid can be controlled by the application of a magnetic field. <Buzzword warning> Nanotech stuff, I believe </buzzword> The suspension can change it's damping rate, but the wheel is still being moved by the springs.
The Bose system is using what they call a linear motor (think solenoid, but not limited to on or off) to control the wheel. This suspension can lift the wheel or push it down. It knows the difference between a spring compression due to a bump and a spring compression due to heavy braking or cornering, so it knows whether to resist the lift of the wheel or to let it rise.
Cool stuff, if you ask me.
Sure, there's MySQL etc, but if you have to have Access, you have to have Windows.
Two recievers or two transmitters? I thought diff GPS used a second TX at a fixed location so that errors could be calculated and removed.
I'm not trying to be funny... I'm really trying to get a feel for the usefulness of this in robotic nav.
Will this be useful in making differential GPS cheap enough that we can get the accuracy needed to have a robot know the boundaries of a yard and mow the lawn or sweep the driveway?