WWII wasn't the end of those experiments. I've seen tidbits about supersonic fighters with boundary-layer-eating "gloves" on the wings, and even an experimental glider with battery-powered pumps to do the work. The idea is still out there, but technologies like vortex generators are a lot more practical and are the sort of thing you actually find in use. -- Ancient Goth: Someone who overthrew the Roman Empire.
why do they call them genetic algorithms? It doesn't have a thing to do with DNA or RNA.
If we discover life that doesn't use DNA or RNA to transmit heritable information from generation to generation, would you deny that it has genetics?
The typical genetic algorithm uses numbers instead of nucleic acids, but it recombines and mutates its little numeric genes just the same. -- Ancient Goth: Someone who overthrew the Roman Empire.
I like 'em because you can solve problems that you can't even understand
If you can't understand the problem, how can you rate the fitness of the solutions or even determine the number of parameters in the parameter space? Genetic algorithms require the ability to determine how well each "individual" would do; if you don't understand the problem well enough to calculate a figure of merit for each one, you can't do GA. -- Ancient Goth: Someone who overthrew the Roman Empire.
I'm wondering how much is this % in current cars? I guess it's still well below 50%.
You'd be right. Typical BSFC (brake specific fuel consumption) is down around 0.45 or 0.50 pounds (mass) per horsepower-hour. Work out the conversions from gallons to pounds, from BTUs and horsepower-hours to joules, and you get figures not too far from 30% for the typical car. Diesels were reaching 40% some years ago.
Caterpillar was talking about a highly advanced diesel which would break the 50% thermal efficiency figure using insulated pistons and cylinder heads, an insulated exhaust system, a turbocharger operating at 70% efficiency and turbocompounding. I heard nothing since, and have no idea what happened to it; maybe the high combustion-chamber temperatures would have created too much NOx, and the Clean Air Act consigned it to the junkyard. If so, perhaps genetic algorithms can salvage the technology and bring us some benefits (and relief from OPEC price gouging) in the bargain. -- Ancient Goth: Someone who overthrew the Roman Empire.
The dimples on a golf ball make the boundary layer go turbulent. Under the conditions of flight of a golf ball (summed up by a dimensionless figure called the Reynolds number) a turbulent wake leaves less energy behind it than a laminar wake, and thus causes less drag on the ball.
This is due in no small part to the constraints of golf ball design (spherically symmetrical, to name the bigest). On larger objects and/or those which can actually be optimised for one direction of movement, laminar flow is usually better for cutting drag. On the other hand, it's possible that controlled turbulent flow might improve the drag figure of a car somewhat and at less cost than other means. Then you get into little details like the technical ability to produce a nice finish on a bumpy surface, customer acceptance... the best drag-reducing trick in the world won't save a drop of gas if nobody will buy a vehicle that uses it. -- Ancient Goth: Someone who overthrew the Roman Empire.
... by the time you pay off the engine, you'll break even with the gas money you're paying...
I'd bet otherwise. When the changes are as simple as varying the shape of the combustion chamber (which is just a casting), the timing of the fuel injection (which is electronic in a lot of the new diesels, and thus software-controlled) and the exhaust gas recirculation (also controlled by a servo valve) you're talking about next to zero added hardware and thus very little added cost. Most of the cost would be one-time expenses... like running the genetic algorithms to determine the best design and operating conditions. At worst, most of the hardware changes would be like the change from linear regulating power supplies to switchers. Today, switchers are pretty darn cheap and a lot more efficient. Believe me, these things would pay for themselves in short order. -- Ancient Goth: Someone who overthrew the Roman Empire.
Vaccines have been implicated as a potential cause of ill health in veterans of the 1991 Gulf War by an expert study.
The researchers found a link between ill health and multiple vaccinations - but only in military personal who had received their vaccinations during deployment.
Other recent science articles have identified physiological changes in GWS victims. Given that, it's awfully hard to dismiss it as "no such thing". (That is, if you're being honest.) -- This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Taco, Hemos, Roblimo etc. come away with an even bigger pile of money than they have now.
They take the GPL'ed Slashcode, buy themselves some new hardware, get a new domain name and they're back up in a month.
Microsoft is left holding some hardware and a domain name. They don't own the code, and they don't own our comments.
Microsoft comes out REALLY bad in the court of public opinion (because the press will look very unkindly at this attempt to muzzle a First Amendment forum).
I'd love to see Microsoft do this, just to watch them blow another hole in their foot. -- This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
the Canadian Department of National Defense went to the war museum to pull out some artillery pieces for the Gulf War.
Unlike a 50-year-old crypto machine, a 50-year-old howitzer is still a weapon to be feared. Hell, I wouldn't want to face one from WWI. Today they make them out of stronger alloys and they have better range, but an artillery corpsman from 1945 would have no difficulty figuring out where to shove the shells in a modern machine (and vice versa). Sort of like automobile drivetrains; all the mechanical parts of a MY2000 engine would be easily recognized by a mechanic from 1950, especially if they were presented in context.
Sometimes people who live on Internet time with its hyper-rapid obsolescence need a reminder: some things are actually MATURE and (relatively) stable! -- This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
This is an enormous improvement over taking obsolete stuff and hiding it forever, or even worse, destroying it!
Believe me, if you've ever seen some of the really crufty, convoluted, undocumented, non-portable things I've seen, you'd realize that some software really does deserve to be put to rest. I include some targets of my own efforts in this category. When you started out in Z80 assembler and ported to 808x by translating the source, and worked up from there, with the occasional transplant of a piece of C here and there, with none of the file formats or algorithms documented... it's time to re-write from scratch if it's worth keeping at all. -- This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
M$ is not the worst company in the world. They didn't kill 16,000 people in Bhopal.
You are accusing Union Carbide of a crime resulting from criminal negligence. Unfortunately for your case, UC did not have control over their own facilities.
The Indian government mandates that the managers of foreign plants often be Indian nationals. In the case of the Union Carbide plant at Bhopal, this manager did not properly maintain the cooling system of the methyl isocyanate tank, nor was the flare stack (which is used for burning off dangerous gases) kept in a ready condition. When the cooling coils for the methyl isocyanate tank leaked water into the tank, the heat from the reaction of the chemical and the water caused it to heat and boil. The tank did not explode; it vented through its relief valves into a manifold routed to the flare stack. Had the flare stack been properly maintained, the chemical would have been burned off and little or no harm would have resulted. Because the flare stack was not operational, the chemical went up the stack, fell back to earth (as it is heavier than air), and the rest is history.
Why couldn't Union Carbide fire the incompetent manager who failed to insure that safety equipment was properly maintained? He was protected by the Indian government's mandatory hiring laws. Union Carbide was equally disadvantaged by other laws mandating that producers who fail to produce their products inside India lose patent and other protections; they had no choice but to build and operate a plant there, or face competition from their own products produced by unlicensed competitors given free rein by India's "home rule" laws. If anyone is to blame for the disaster at Bhopal, it is the Indian government. -- This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Staple's lousy web site claims "page not found" if you reject their cookies, but the URL ends in "cookieerror.asp". -- This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
But a propane torch!? First, isn't varnish flammable? Second, how would this help get bubbles out?
I believe he means that you use the torch (or heat gun, or maybe even hair dryer) to soften the varnish to the point where it is gooey. This will let you carefully remove foreign objects in the varnish. This removal will leave a blemish, but if you're adding another coat you'll smooth it out somewhat.
Burning shouldn't be an issue. If you even heat the varnish to the point where it begins to char (after it's dry you have to heat it enough to release flammable gases before it will burn, and this involves charring it), you've got it way too hot. If you do char it, you get to sand and re-finish that spot; fun, fun fun! -- This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
The reason I think it's a hard call is that I really think Microsoft has a legitimate claim that if they copyright something, and somehow it's on your site in violation of that copyright, somebody has to be responsible to take it down.
Six of one, half dozen of the other.
On the one hand, Microsoft claims copyright on the text. On the other hand, Microsoft allowed everyone in the world to download it, making no attempt whatsoever to restrict access to people who had previously signed an NDA. The validity of the "click-through NDA" is doubtful, because the use of WinZip to open self-extracting archives (and bypass any trojan or virus in the extraction code) is a very well-known procedure; indeed, this is a feature of the format. Since there were no technical measures taken to prevent users from doing this, the anti-circumvention clause of the justly-maligned DMCA is not applicable.
On to motive. Microsoft wants to restrict access to this information only to people who agree not to compete with Microsoft. In other words, to people who agree to give up their right to innovate and make products that do what Microsoft's do, but do it better, cheaper, or openly. And that, my friends, sucks the big one.
Offtopic WRT the DDoS: if it ame from Microsoft or from their astroturfers, we've got a new simile.
open-source advocates : Microsoft:: suppressive persons : Church of Scientology
-- This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Closing price of nickel on the London Metal Exchange (per http://nickelalloy.com/) yesterday was about $4.52/lb. Density of nickel is 8.9 g/cc, or 8900 kg/m^3. If you've got a 100 meter diameter chunk of 10% nickel-iron, this is 1028 million pounds of nickel. If you cut the spot price in half, it would be worth about 2.3 billion dollars (US) for that 100-meter chunk.
This is just for the nickel. The iron, and other constituents such as platinum-group metals, would also be salable for quite a bit if you made the effort to separate them. -- This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
According to my ex-GF the lawyer, one of the basic principles of tort law is "join everyone, claim everything". You can always have claims or defendants dismissed from the action, but if you don't name somebody at the outset you can't add them to the suit later absent some very special circumstances (it's hardly fair, even by biased legal principles, to have part of a case tried and then add defendants who weren't even notified at the beginning and were unable to have their interests represented). Chris should probably have his own lawyer pleading his case, and move to dismiss him from the action. Oh, did I mention IANAL? I just dated one for a couple of years. -- This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Also, they mention using Ariane V, which sounds really like an overkill to me, because the Ariane 5 is huge and expensive.
The error you're making is assuming that this probe would be the only spacecraft on the entire Ariane V rocket. The Ariane V usually carries whole constellations of satellites at a time, and there are carrier structures designed for exactly this purpose. (This is how most AMSAT birds get into orbit; they buy some of the excess payload capacity cheap, and the rocket flies with an extra satellite instead of inert ballast.) -- This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Even if it is a creative work, Chris Redd has re-written most of it (it's not the design studio's work any more), and most important of all, it was a work for hire and the client owns it (unless there was explicit contractual language to the contrary). Company X should eventually lose their shirt in court in a countersuit for frivolous prosecution. -- This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
...goods falling into earth's atmosphere would need to be assured of a safe reentry. High Gs and high temperatures would eliminate most inexpensive methods.
I beg to differ. The Chinese have returned probes with heat-shields composed of compressed walnut shells (if memory serves), the Russians have successfully tested inflatable heat shields for reusable probes, and most goods (especially electronics) can handle tens or hundreds of G's if properly packed. I think I remember some people investigating the prospects for returning Shuttle external tanks to Earth; I don't know what they planned to use for heat shielding, but if you spun one right the foam on the outside might do the job. Low-density objects decelerate without a whole lot of "heat loading", and their heat shields can be correspondingly simple; Shuttle's system is complicated because it's, well, a brick.
Returning stuff to Earth isn't difficult; getting people, equipment and any necessary raw materials into orbit in the first place is difficult. -- This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Highly dangerous, and/or toxic manufacturing and machine houses (chip and board fabricators, for example) could be moved off of the planet, reducing industrial and thermal waste on the planet. The fact that space is so huge (oh, really?) is enough to realize that there will be more than enough room.
At current transport costs of $5000/kg, you would not be able to afford a product assembled in space from raw materials made on Earth. Coming down is cheap (almost free), going up will cost you an arm and a leg... If you postulate raw materials from space (plastics from carbon and hydrogen found in comet cores, metals from asteroids or the Moon) you have to ask yourself how you get all the money to start all the mines, the chemical plants, the plastics plants, the semiconductor foundries, the LCD manufaturing plants, and everything else you need just to get the first complete product out of this pipeline. It's a huge investment, and definitely not going to go anywhere as long as there isn't a big market for such gear in orbit; it will be cheaper to ship finished product up than to ship up the infrastructure and then re-engineer everything to work under space conditions.
Waste can be stockpiled in designated areas, and if neccesary, shot into the sun, where it would be quickly neutralized and broken down. The sun would not be affected in the least from this, after all, it is just on huge fusion reactor.
That's silly. It takes far more energy to send something to the Sun than to send it out of the Solar System permanently (about 2.5 times as much delta-V), and mass, especially organic mass (toxic or not) is a rarity in space. It would make far more sense to run your waste through a plasma torch with some excess oxygen and sort through the simple molecules that result than to "throw it away" in the manner you propose. -- This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
No, hydrazine (N2H4) is made from ammonia (NH3) if I'm not mistaken. However, the ammonia is made from nitrogen and hydrogen using the Haber process, and the hydrogen is obtained from natural gas (CH4). Ultimately, hydrazine is made from fossil fuel. (Neither is it a particularly safe fuel itself; kerosene is far easier to handle and has very low toxicity.)
H202 is made some other way, isn't it?
By electrolysis of water using a particular anode material, if I'm not mistaken. (I'm not a chemist, I just play one on Slashdot.) -- This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Slashdot Mirror
WWII wasn't the end of those experiments. I've seen tidbits about supersonic fighters with boundary-layer-eating "gloves" on the wings, and even an experimental glider with battery-powered pumps to do the work. The idea is still out there, but technologies like vortex generators are a lot more practical and are the sort of thing you actually find in use.
--
Ancient Goth: Someone who overthrew the Roman Empire.
The typical genetic algorithm uses numbers instead of nucleic acids, but it recombines and mutates its little numeric genes just the same.
--
Ancient Goth: Someone who overthrew the Roman Empire.
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Ancient Goth: Someone who overthrew the Roman Empire.
Caterpillar was talking about a highly advanced diesel which would break the 50% thermal efficiency figure using insulated pistons and cylinder heads, an insulated exhaust system, a turbocharger operating at 70% efficiency and turbocompounding. I heard nothing since, and have no idea what happened to it; maybe the high combustion-chamber temperatures would have created too much NOx, and the Clean Air Act consigned it to the junkyard. If so, perhaps genetic algorithms can salvage the technology and bring us some benefits (and relief from OPEC price gouging) in the bargain.
--
Ancient Goth: Someone who overthrew the Roman Empire.
This is due in no small part to the constraints of golf ball design (spherically symmetrical, to name the bigest). On larger objects and/or those which can actually be optimised for one direction of movement, laminar flow is usually better for cutting drag. On the other hand, it's possible that controlled turbulent flow might improve the drag figure of a car somewhat and at less cost than other means. Then you get into little details like the technical ability to produce a nice finish on a bumpy surface, customer acceptance... the best drag-reducing trick in the world won't save a drop of gas if nobody will buy a vehicle that uses it.
--
Ancient Goth: Someone who overthrew the Roman Empire.
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Ancient Goth: Someone who overthrew the Roman Empire.
That's "acetylene", which is a lot easier to look up in a reference book if you're curious.
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Ancient Goth: Someone who overthrew the Roman Empire.
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Looks like #4 has already come true. See response 74.
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- Taco, Hemos, Roblimo etc. come away with an even bigger pile of money than they have now.
- They take the GPL'ed Slashcode, buy themselves some new hardware, get a new domain name and they're back up in a month.
- Microsoft is left holding some hardware and a domain name. They don't own the code, and they don't own our comments.
- Microsoft comes out REALLY bad in the court of public opinion (because the press will look very unkindly at this attempt to muzzle a First Amendment forum).
I'd love to see Microsoft do this, just to watch them blow another hole in their foot.--
This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Sometimes people who live on Internet time with its hyper-rapid obsolescence need a reminder: some things are actually MATURE and (relatively) stable!
--
This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
... has obviously been to HTML Hell and back.
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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
The Indian government mandates that the managers of foreign plants often be Indian nationals. In the case of the Union Carbide plant at Bhopal, this manager did not properly maintain the cooling system of the methyl isocyanate tank, nor was the flare stack (which is used for burning off dangerous gases) kept in a ready condition. When the cooling coils for the methyl isocyanate tank leaked water into the tank, the heat from the reaction of the chemical and the water caused it to heat and boil. The tank did not explode; it vented through its relief valves into a manifold routed to the flare stack. Had the flare stack been properly maintained, the chemical would have been burned off and little or no harm would have resulted. Because the flare stack was not operational, the chemical went up the stack, fell back to earth (as it is heavier than air), and the rest is history.
Why couldn't Union Carbide fire the incompetent manager who failed to insure that safety equipment was properly maintained? He was protected by the Indian government's mandatory hiring laws. Union Carbide was equally disadvantaged by other laws mandating that producers who fail to produce their products inside India lose patent and other protections; they had no choice but to build and operate a plant there, or face competition from their own products produced by unlicensed competitors given free rein by India's "home rule" laws. If anyone is to blame for the disaster at Bhopal, it is the Indian government.
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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Staple's lousy web site claims "page not found" if you reject their cookies, but the URL ends in "cookieerror.asp".
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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Burning shouldn't be an issue. If you even heat the varnish to the point where it begins to char (after it's dry you have to heat it enough to release flammable gases before it will burn, and this involves charring it), you've got it way too hot. If you do char it, you get to sand and re-finish that spot; fun, fun fun!
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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
(See this link after Friday 12 May.)
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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
On the one hand, Microsoft claims copyright on the text. On the other hand, Microsoft allowed everyone in the world to download it, making no attempt whatsoever to restrict access to people who had previously signed an NDA. The validity of the "click-through NDA" is doubtful, because the use of WinZip to open self-extracting archives (and bypass any trojan or virus in the extraction code) is a very well-known procedure; indeed, this is a feature of the format. Since there were no technical measures taken to prevent users from doing this, the anti-circumvention clause of the justly-maligned DMCA is not applicable.
On to motive. Microsoft wants to restrict access to this information only to people who agree not to compete with Microsoft. In other words, to people who agree to give up their right to innovate and make products that do what Microsoft's do, but do it better, cheaper, or openly. And that, my friends, sucks the big one.
Offtopic WRT the DDoS: if it ame from Microsoft or from their astroturfers, we've got a new simile.
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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
This is just for the nickel. The iron, and other constituents such as platinum-group metals, would also be salable for quite a bit if you made the effort to separate them.
--
This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
According to my ex-GF the lawyer, one of the basic principles of tort law is "join everyone, claim everything". You can always have claims or defendants dismissed from the action, but if you don't name somebody at the outset you can't add them to the suit later absent some very special circumstances (it's hardly fair, even by biased legal principles, to have part of a case tried and then add defendants who weren't even notified at the beginning and were unable to have their interests represented). Chris should probably have his own lawyer pleading his case, and move to dismiss him from the action. Oh, did I mention IANAL? I just dated one for a couple of years.
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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Even if it is a creative work, Chris Redd has re-written most of it (it's not the design studio's work any more), and most important of all, it was a work for hire and the client owns it (unless there was explicit contractual language to the contrary). Company X should eventually lose their shirt in court in a countersuit for frivolous prosecution.
--
This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
Returning stuff to Earth isn't difficult; getting people, equipment and any necessary raw materials into orbit in the first place is difficult.
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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic
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This post made from 100% post-consumer recycled magnetic