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User: MichaelSmith

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  1. Re:Crystal radio on Nokia Developed Wireless Power-Harvesting Phones · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There was this guy I heard about who lived next door to an AM radio transmitter. The transmitter site was encircled by a cyclone wire fence which made a complete loop with the gates closed. Being an enterprising sort of chap he immediately saw the potential of this arrangement and went to work with power diodes and an inverter. Eventually he got found out because they weren't getting the range they expected and techs were sent in to find out why.

    As a very young geek I spent many a night tucked in bed listening to my crystal (actually geranium) radio. But I had a couple of metres of hookup wire for an antenna. This article talks about short wavelength stuff, but I still think you would need a lot of metal to collect a significant amount of power. MY cellphone charger supplies (I think) 300mA.

  2. Re:Perhaps it will BE ZFS just not BE CALLED ZFS on Apple Removes Nearly All Reference To ZFS · · Score: 2, Informative

    Its an nis + automount + zfs + nfs problem. I am a user of the system (not an administrator) so my information is incomplete. Basically we lost the ability to export deep subdirectories (say /path/to/user) from our zfs file system (which is physically on a raid array) via nfs.

    We retained the ability to export /path/to as a workaround. The way nis (yp) works in our setup is that it exports individual user directories as required.

  3. Re:Perhaps it will BE ZFS just not BE CALLED ZFS on Apple Removes Nearly All Reference To ZFS · · Score: 4, Interesting

    At my workplace we migrated to a brand new sun NFS server with ZFS and hit a critical bug in the first two weeks. If Sun can't get it right I don't expect others to.

  4. Re:Google's quantum leap on Ray Ozzie Calls Google Wave "Anti-Web" · · Score: 1

    Subversion is obsolete, superceded by distributed version control systems like git, bzr, and many others. I use git even when working with svn repositories, such is the usefulness of its added functionality. Regardless, even git has shortcomings that I can notice, such as a lack of UI support for diffing and managing formats other than text files. There's plenty of room for improvement in this area, and room for integration with undo functionality in conventional document editing applications.

    I also prefer distributed version control. But my employer likes centralised systems with built in DRM. If feels safer that way. DVCS is about removing central control. Not every application is going to like that.

  5. Re:Google's quantum leap on Ray Ozzie Calls Google Wave "Anti-Web" · · Score: 3, Informative

    But in the end you still have many copies of documents, and you're always trying to keep changes synced across them. This approach breaks down when you have multiple sources of change... conflict resolution will always jump up to bite you.

    There are already good solutions to this problem: it is called revision control and the Subversion system is a high-quality open source solution to most common version control / sharing scenarios. Visual Source Safe wishes that it could be as good as Subversion, but the open source crowd beat them to it.

    The problem with generic revision control systems is that rich document formats like odf and ms doc are not inherently mergeable without knowledge of file formats. Some tools (mercurial being one) can invoke external merge tools which in theory allow users to manually merge documents. But it never works as well as plain text source code.

  6. Re:Bet the Fremen didn't have to deal with patents on Frank Herbert's Moisture Traps May Be a Reality · · Score: 1

    Daily reprints a press release from the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart.

    So in a decade when these are ubiquitous and most of the world is a desert, suddenly the Fraunhofer Institute will announce they had a patent on this and anyone drinking the water will have to pay licensing fees.

    Great, just... great.

    What about all those sanctions on the use of technology in the Dune universe? There was a company with a monopoly on interstellar transport. There were also injunctions against information technology.

  7. Re:In the seminal science fiction book 'Dune on Frank Herbert's Moisture Traps May Be a Reality · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Please. Dune is fantasy, not science fiction.

    Well its not Ringworld, but then its not The Lord of the Rings either. Its between the two. Fantasy readers would probably say it is SF. SF readers would say the opposite.

  8. Re:I won't fly with a "Battle Hardened" pilot. on Computers Key To Air France Crash · · Score: 1

    Military pilots find it hard to change from "Achieve objective; fly hard and kill bad guys" to "Land passengers safely at all costs" mentality.

    "I don't think I'll ever get over Macho Grande." -- Ted Striker

    At least with the sort of crashes we have today nobody has to worry about picking the right day to give up sniffing glue.

  9. Re:What a bunch of crap on Computers Key To Air France Crash · · Score: 1

    I can think of many examples but one which comes to mind is a guy who built his own ultralight aircraft. You test ailerons by checking that the control surface comes up to meet the stick. He forgot that and hooked it up the wrong way. The first flight lasted as long as it took for the aileron to be used for the first roll correction. Landing was inverted, on the runway.

  10. Re:Pick your poison on Computers Key To Air France Crash · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The big difference is that glider pilots have to outland at least once to qualify. Qualified powered aircraft pilots will only outland in an emergency, hence the number of stuff ups.

  11. Re:Human limits on Computers Key To Air France Crash · · Score: 3, Informative

    Its early days yet. The pitot tube theory is being driven by the ACARS data. As more data is collected different theories may develop.

  12. Re:Give the pilot control! on Computers Key To Air France Crash · · Score: 1

    In an Airbus, if the pilot tries to perform such an action, the computer will say "I'm sorry Dave. I don't think I can do that."

    [citation please]

  13. Re:"convert regular 2D movies to 3D" on Acer To Launch 3D Notebook In October? · · Score: 1

    Maybe its a bit like those devices which claimed to convert mono sound to stereo.

  14. Re:WTH is a 3D Laptop??? on Acer To Launch 3D Notebook In October? · · Score: 1

    I suppose one of those projected keyboards could be considered a two dimensional computer. Does a reflected image have a third dimension? Maybe just on the order of the wavelength of light used.

  15. Re:Some information would be nice. on 7-inch Android Netbook From GNB · · Score: 1

    Ubuntu works okay for me on my eeepc 701, but I can see the advantage of running android to the average computer user.

  16. Re:Will we actually be able to buy these? on Printable, Rollable Solar Panels Could Go Anywhere · · Score: 1

    There's no need for them to offer panels to consumers; their business model is quite sound.

    The quality of their business plan is completely irrelevant to my reaction to my inability to purchase their product.

    Sounds like a good business to get into.

  17. Re:PalmOS emulation on Palm Pre Is Out, Time For Discussion · · Score: 1

    It would be good if I could import data (contacts, calendar) from a palmos system to the pre. I haven't seen anything about that so far. It would be good to have for me.

  18. Re:Do a search for 'young sex' or 'teen sex' on Microsoft's Bing Refuses Search Term "Sex" In India · · Score: 1

    Strange that they didn't just set SafeSearch to strict by default, then let people disable it. I confirmed that doing this filters "sex" from search results.

  19. Re:Should we let them launch? on China's First Mars Probe Ready To Launch · · Score: 1

    Guys I'm not sure we should let China fire a rocket after all what if it's secretly a weapon? They have no right to fire rockets while we're around!

    Well its actually the Russians firing the rockets. And the rockets they use are ICBMs. And they have been doing it for decades.

  20. Re:Nobody Knows on Could a Meteor Have Brought Down Air France 447? · · Score: 1

    The crew would only broadcast if they thought that would help them right then and there. Their first priority is to fly the plane.

    Surely not! If they're going down any sensible crew would radio their location so they could be picked up. And anecdotally, don't crashing pilots often report the details of their situation and systems failures right up to the moment they hit the ground?

    If you crash an A330 in the Atlantic you are not going to be picked up. The ocean landing scenario they show on the video inside the plane is designed for engine failures, but that hardly ever happens these days, especially during cruise. Structural and control failures and more likely to be the issue here. If that happens you are not going to be able to land.

  21. Re:Chinese Policy on Protecting the Apollo Landing Sites From Later Landings · · Score: 1

    Not really. The moon is very homogeneous. Drop an Airbus A330 into the Atlantic and you won't be able to tell the debris from the normal garbage which is floating around. Make a mess on the moon and you just spread it around more. The origin of it will still be obvious.

  22. Re:Nobody Knows on Could a Meteor Have Brought Down Air France 447? · · Score: 1

    Yep.

  23. Re:Nobody Knows on Could a Meteor Have Brought Down Air France 447? · · Score: 1

    Second, Between 35000 feet and the ground, there is plenty of time for the crew to broadcast a message. If I am not mistaken, you don't actually need to hold down a button while radioing anymore.

    The crew would only broadcast if they thought that would help them right then and there. Their first priority is to fly the plane.

  24. Re:Nobody Knows on Could a Meteor Have Brought Down Air France 447? · · Score: 1

    I have no idea on how vulnerable airliners are to unrecoverable spins.

    If you spin an A330 at 0.8 mach you are gone.

  25. Re:Nobody Knows on Could a Meteor Have Brought Down Air France 447? · · Score: 1

    It is possible they had the same problem as the aircraft in Western Australia. In that case the flight control system thought the aircraft was ascending sharply, so it initiated a steep descent. That happened in clear air so it was possible easy for the crew to work around the problem. But if you try it in turbulent air...