For one thing (leaving the whole "begging the question" mistake aside), to send absolutely mind-bogglingly large amounts of data to the Grid. The bandwidth required is massive, and they use a combination of private, dedicated links and regular Internet connections to do it. (Read up on the LHC Grid; it's fascinating stuff!)
But yes, if this actually works in practice it's indeed exciting - while a room temperature superconductor is the Holy Grail of materials science, a 200 K superconductor is a great leap forward. A critical temperature of 200 K would make it possible to cool it with ordinary dry ice (CO2 sublimates at around 195 K) instead of LN2, which is much more expensive and difficult to handle.
So... I'm assuming harnessing New Wave Power off the coast of Oregon will be about dumping Adam & the Ants in the Pacific and attaching a generator and power cables to them? Hey, I'm for it! In fact... screw the turbine. And the cables...
Question: How was this a threat to the plane? Answer: It wasn't.
Unless you take the entire plane down, smuggling a bomb on board a plane is just moronic. If you're going to detonate a bomb that's only strong enough to kill maybe one or two people, why the FUCK would you do it in inside an airplane - one of the most secure locations you can find this side of a locked-down military base? Bragging rights? The thrill of it? The only threats that should even be considered in regards to airplane security are those that can bring the plane down, potentially killing everyone on board. Because that's the only thing that makes airplanes more vulnerable to acts of terrorism than any crowded location on the ground.
I'm starting to believe the knee-jerk faction that makes up way too much of the human population has some kind of airplane fetish...
The duplication of effort seems mostly like a penis-length contest, and while I think competition in all things is generally good, I'm not sure that this is really happening for any rational reason. There are better uses that the investment and satellite space could be put towards, than simply overlapping each other's navigation systems.
Actually, even though quite a lot of the aerospace industry is solely about countries comparing their orbital penises, this isn't one of those occasions - those are valid concerns. It's not about precision, it's reliability. We're seeing more and more critical systems switch over to satellite navigation (planes, boats, trucks, goods delivery systems in general, personal cars, even, as you say, tractors). You do not want your country's entire infrastructure in the hands of a single, potentially hostile, foreign power. Thus, every nation or block of nations with the resources to do so launches their own network. A world-wide cooperative effort, that won't be jammed/shut down in case of war/diplomatic catfights, would of course be optimal - but that's Just Not Going to Happen (TM). It ranks up there with the "if we just sit down and talk, we can all get along!" theory of conflict solution.
But I really wish ESA would adopt a more NASA-like policy for images and other probe data. I hold NASA in much higher esteem than ESA - not because of some sense of patriotism (hey, I live in Europe), but because with them people like me can more often than not actually get to see the results and access the raw data (and be able to use it for basically whatever purpose I see fit as well). ESA OTOH has a tendency to release only a few selected images, with lots of usage restrictions...
Or because they placed the damn thing a few kilometers from Copenhagen making sure to make it uninhabital should a meltdown occur..
No, in the astronomically unlikely event of a meltdown occurring, any activity would be contained by the containment structure.
But did you know why the Barsebäck plant was placed where it was? Danish lobbying. Yep, that's right. Back when it was built, the Danes wanted cheap nuclear power, but didn't have the infrastructure to build their own nuclear power plant. So they started lobbying Sweden to place it as close to Copenhagen as possible, so cables would be short and cheap and power losses kept to a minimum...
And of course, the later Danish political pressure to shut it down had absolutely nothing to do with economic interests, like supplying replacement coal power. No sir, nothing at all.
These are the same people who are shutting down perfectly good and safe nuclear reactors in favor of importing electric power from dirty Danish and Polish coal plants and (oh the irony) old Soviet graphite reactors in the Baltics. Oh, and did I mention that this has led to the country not having enough power to support peak demand during winter (politicians seem to be unable to grasp the difference between electric power and energy)? The only good thing in the whole mess is that their previous pipe dream goal ("nuclear free Sweden by 2010") has no chance of being met...
They are also the same people who have set the goal of "0 traffic deaths" - and honestly believe that they'll reach it.
Re:But can a rat brain post dupe stories?
on
Rat Brains Fly Planes
·
· Score: 5, Funny
What do you know - it was October last year. Thought my memory of the article was rather too fuzzy to be from just two months ago. Fourteen months it is then.
Wait, I just thought of something - since duplicate stories are "dupes", this is the proof we've always wanted that Slashdot's main page really is full of tripe!
But can a rat brain post dupe stories?
on
Rat Brains Fly Planes
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Oh yes. Pirates are as active as ever. Only nowadays they have machine guns and RPGs instead of blunderbusses and cannons... Just read IMB's Weekly Piracy Report for an idea of how active and how dangerous modern pirates are.
While vertical axis wind generators aren't new - the Soviets utilized vertical designs for the most part - this design is. Wind power usually isn't practical or environmental for large-scale deployment (land usage/kW is too high), and I expect this design won't change that, but it could make wind an even better choice for microgrids. Shame the article reads like Yet Another Slashvertisment (someone wants venture capital I guess) - I'd like some more details.
Thermite is how I would go about it as well. However, I believe it can be done safely - you just have to
1) Use a minimal amount of thermite.
2) Properly isolate the booby-trapped drive.
1) would just require a bit of experimentation on old dead drives. I believe you can get away with using fairly little thermite (although some overkill doesn't hurt) - you don't have to melt the entire hard drive, casing and all, you just have to scorch the platters beyond recovery. 2) should also be quite doable - since we're not talking excessive amounts of thermite here, I think a 5 1/4"-sized ceramic mount/casing for a regular 3 1/2" drive would work. It just has to be isolated enough to make sure the rest of the computer doesn't burst into flames and burn the house down.
'course, using an external drive would make it even easier...
Anyone up for a summer electronics/pyrotechnics project?:)
A cold finger shouldn't be usable, and that will keep them all attached!
No it won't. All it would do is make the fingerprint systems a pain in the ass to use in cold weather (and unusable by smokers, the elderly, and all the other people with blood circulation problems). To defeat it, OTOH, you'd just have to warm the chopped off finger (on a warm surface or in your hand or armpit or whatever) before applying it to the scanner...
A bit icky, yes, but I think we can safely assume that the person who's capable of chopping people's fingers off just to steal their property isn't the overly squeamish type.
OK people, why does the EU use '.' as the thousandth's place separater instead of ','? It's really stupid. How can you tell if 10.000 is 10,000 or ten point zero zero zero?? It's totally ambiguous! Oh sure, the CONTEXT, right, because scientists and engineers love figuring out the order of magnitude of a number based on it's context.
First, as I really really hope you are aware, Europe is not a single hegemonous country, and neither is the EU (despite their attempts to make it so). Thus, customs will differ between countries.
Second, how is "." for decimal places and "," for separators any less ambiguous? (if you must know, I prefer no separators myself)
On topic: kudos to ESA! Although I severely doubt that we'll find any ETs, projects like these almost always get a lot of beneficial scientific data as a bonus... and if not, you at least get a few pretty pictures out of it;-)
Hm, let's see here: * Fans are screaming after the original, non-Special Edition version. * Lucas admits he's never going to release the original version.
So, the only way to get the original trilogy, on a decent medium (VHS doesn't count, Laserdisc isn't an option for 99% of the people out there) is through... piracy?
Now, here comes the big irony: * Lucas releases the Star Wars SE DVDs early, over fear for piracy concerns.
Start taking population density, GNP/GDP and last but not least the definition of "large city" into account and you'll see that that argument doesn't quite hold water:
US population density: 31 people / km^2 Swedish population density: 20 people / km^2 (source: Wikipedia)
US GDP: USD 10,881,609 M Swedish GDP: USD 300,795 M (source: Wikipedia once again)
A small fee would be alright with me. The big problem with that kind of material isn't the cost of distribution anyway - it's the availability and source format. Digitizing into a proper (open) format takes care of the latter. The former however is where a global database would really shine... imagine being able to get archive footage from say, the Russian state television's archives just as easily as downloading a movie from Kazaa - private interest aside, just imagine what it could do in research and education...
Slashdot Mirror
For one thing (leaving the whole "begging the question" mistake aside), to send absolutely mind-bogglingly large amounts of data to the Grid. The bandwidth required is massive, and they use a combination of private, dedicated links and regular Internet connections to do it.
(Read up on the LHC Grid; it's fascinating stuff!)
O RLY?
But yes, if this actually works in practice it's indeed exciting - while a room temperature superconductor is the Holy Grail of materials science, a 200 K superconductor is a great leap forward. A critical temperature of 200 K would make it possible to cool it with ordinary dry ice (CO2 sublimates at around 195 K) instead of LN2, which is much more expensive and difficult to handle.
So... I'm assuming harnessing New Wave Power off the coast of Oregon will be about dumping Adam & the Ants in the Pacific and attaching a generator and power cables to them? Hey, I'm for it! In fact... screw the turbine. And the cables...
Question: How was this a threat to the plane?
Answer: It wasn't.
Unless you take the entire plane down, smuggling a bomb on board a plane is just moronic. If you're going to detonate a bomb that's only strong enough to kill maybe one or two people, why the FUCK would you do it in inside an airplane - one of the most secure locations you can find this side of a locked-down military base? Bragging rights? The thrill of it?
The only threats that should even be considered in regards to airplane security are those that can bring the plane down, potentially killing everyone on board. Because that's the only thing that makes airplanes more vulnerable to acts of terrorism than any crowded location on the ground.
I'm starting to believe the knee-jerk faction that makes up way too much of the human population has some kind of airplane fetish...
Actually, even though quite a lot of the aerospace industry is solely about countries comparing their orbital penises, this isn't one of those occasions - those are valid concerns. It's not about precision, it's reliability. We're seeing more and more critical systems switch over to satellite navigation (planes, boats, trucks, goods delivery systems in general, personal cars, even, as you say, tractors). You do not want your country's entire infrastructure in the hands of a single, potentially hostile, foreign power. Thus, every nation or block of nations with the resources to do so launches their own network.
A world-wide cooperative effort, that won't be jammed/shut down in case of war/diplomatic catfights, would of course be optimal - but that's Just Not Going to Happen (TM). It ranks up there with the "if we just sit down and talk, we can all get along!" theory of conflict solution.
Ah, you're referring to that old saying: "In the land of the blind, the man with the Geiger counter is king"
But I really wish ESA would adopt a more NASA-like policy for images and other probe data. I hold NASA in much higher esteem than ESA - not because of some sense of patriotism (hey, I live in Europe), but because with them people like me can more often than not actually get to see the results and access the raw data (and be able to use it for basically whatever purpose I see fit as well). ESA OTOH has a tendency to release only a few selected images, with lots of usage restrictions...
No, in the astronomically unlikely event of a meltdown occurring, any activity would be contained by the containment structure.
But did you know why the Barsebäck plant was placed where it was? Danish lobbying. Yep, that's right. Back when it was built, the Danes wanted cheap nuclear power, but didn't have the infrastructure to build their own nuclear power plant. So they started lobbying Sweden to place it as close to Copenhagen as possible, so cables would be short and cheap and power losses kept to a minimum...
And of course, the later Danish political pressure to shut it down had absolutely nothing to do with economic interests, like supplying replacement coal power. No sir, nothing at all.
These are the same people who are shutting down perfectly good and safe nuclear reactors in favor of importing electric power from dirty Danish and Polish coal plants and (oh the irony) old Soviet graphite reactors in the Baltics. Oh, and did I mention that this has led to the country not having enough power to support peak demand during winter (politicians seem to be unable to grasp the difference between electric power and energy)? The only good thing in the whole mess is that their previous pipe dream goal ("nuclear free Sweden by 2010") has no chance of being met...
They are also the same people who have set the goal of "0 traffic deaths" - and honestly believe that they'll reach it.
There's truly nothing to see here. Move along.
Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex
What do you know - it was October last year. Thought my memory of the article was rather too fuzzy to be from just two months ago. Fourteen months it is then.
Wait, I just thought of something - since duplicate stories are "dupes", this is the proof we've always wanted that Slashdot's main page really is full of tripe!
What do you know - it's a triple!
At least it's 2 months old this time and not still on the main page...
So... does that make Microsoft a hive of scrum and villainy?
Oh yes. Pirates are as active as ever. Only nowadays they have machine guns and RPGs instead of blunderbusses and cannons...
Just read IMB's Weekly Piracy Report for an idea of how active and how dangerous modern pirates are.
I bow to your superior knowledge. :)
That's what I get for speaking out with only a superficial knowledge of turbine design I guess...
While vertical axis wind generators aren't new - the Soviets utilized vertical designs for the most part - this design is. Wind power usually isn't practical or environmental for large-scale deployment (land usage/kW is too high), and I expect this design won't change that, but it could make wind an even better choice for microgrids.
Shame the article reads like Yet Another Slashvertisment (someone wants venture capital I guess) - I'd like some more details.
Because it's not How The Internets Work (tm). If this is illegal, you better start suing major ISPs for caching content sent to their customers...
1) would just require a bit of experimentation on old dead drives. I believe you can get away with using fairly little thermite (although some overkill doesn't hurt) - you don't have to melt the entire hard drive, casing and all, you just have to scorch the platters beyond recovery.
2) should also be quite doable - since we're not talking excessive amounts of thermite here, I think a 5 1/4"-sized ceramic mount/casing for a regular 3 1/2" drive would work. It just has to be isolated enough to make sure the rest of the computer doesn't burst into flames and burn the house down.
'course, using an external drive would make it even easier...
Anyone up for a summer electronics/pyrotechnics project?
No it won't. All it would do is make the fingerprint systems a pain in the ass to use in cold weather (and unusable by smokers, the elderly, and all the other people with blood circulation problems). To defeat it, OTOH, you'd just have to warm the chopped off finger (on a warm surface or in your hand or armpit or whatever) before applying it to the scanner...
A bit icky, yes, but I think we can safely assume that the person who's capable of chopping people's fingers off just to steal their property isn't the overly squeamish type.
(Alternate) Textbook disclaimers.
If I had a kid in school in that area, I would so stick some of those in his books...
First, as I really really hope you are aware, Europe is not a single hegemonous country, and neither is the EU (despite their attempts to make it so). Thus, customs will differ between countries.
Second, how is "." for decimal places and "," for separators any less ambiguous?
(if you must know, I prefer no separators myself)
On topic: kudos to ESA! Although I severely doubt that we'll find any ETs, projects like these almost always get a lot of beneficial scientific data as a bonus... and if not, you at least get a few pretty pictures out of it
Hm, let's see here:
* Fans are screaming after the original, non-Special Edition version.
* Lucas admits he's never going to release the original version.
So, the only way to get the original trilogy, on a decent medium (VHS doesn't count, Laserdisc isn't an option for 99% of the people out there) is through... piracy?
Now, here comes the big irony:
* Lucas releases the Star Wars SE DVDs early, over fear for piracy concerns.
Way to go Lucas!
... you're assuming that EU politicians are less corrupt than their American counterparts. As an EU citizen i can assure you that this isn't the case.
Start taking population density, GNP/GDP and last but not least the definition of "large city" into account and you'll see that that argument doesn't quite hold water:
US population density: 31 people / km^2
Swedish population density: 20 people / km^2
(source: Wikipedia)
US GDP: USD 10,881,609 M
Swedish GDP: USD 300,795 M
(source: Wikipedia once again)
A small fee would be alright with me. The big problem with that kind of material isn't the cost of distribution anyway - it's the availability and source format. Digitizing into a proper (open) format takes care of the latter. The former however is where a global database would really shine... imagine being able to get archive footage from say, the Russian state television's archives just as easily as downloading a movie from Kazaa - private interest aside, just imagine what it could do in research and education...