Now...I saw a thing on Discovery Channel about some retired NASA propulsion engineers that went over the negatives of the Hindenberg disaster and decided that it was the fabric doping (some aluminum compound) that caused the fire.
I've read something about this--cannot remember the source, but the fabric was a pretty screwed up combination. The guys who checked it out found some old samples from Germany. It was an alumininum powder paint over an iron oxide primer. That combination is the recipe for thermit. When exposed to heat, the aluminum swipes the oxygen from the iron, and you get a lot of heat, and eventually molten iron. They tested the samples for flammability. Very hot stuff.
The railroad companies still use thermit for welding rails together in the field.
It never was terribly clear what set the fzbric on fire, but once it caught, the hydrogen cells went along for the ride.
1) Customer sees link 2) Customer clicks on link 3) 8 million pop-up menus: "REGISTER YOUR VERSION OF REALPLAYER!!!" or "DOWNLOAD THE LATEST VERSION OF REALPLAYER!!!" or "CHECK OUT ALL THE NEW STUFF AT REAL.COM" 4) Customer gets fed up, downloads a different player.
I downloaded Realplayer on a couple of PCs (one at work, one home) and in both cases they were so obnoxious that I nuked them within a week. So far, I'm working with QT, but with all the reminder popups, there wasn't enough functionality to bother with.
noticed that many of the books have links to fatbrain.
I stopped buying at Amazon when I got their clueless response to my complaints on purchase circles. I've also been watching the book reviews here on/.
A look at the current book review shows that all but one point to fatbrain, and the exception is to a book not carried by any of the big sellers.
To those criticizing Cmdr. Taco for 'hypocrisy', it helps to have a shred of facts before lighting the flamethrowers..... BTW, the ACs who were most vehement, sure showing your moral courage.
Seems backwards to me... Edison always wanted DC for power distribution, but AC wond out because it is far less lossy. For a really long wire (i.e. power distribution line), the DC resistance is *way* higher than the AC impedance.
Sorry, I posted before coffee and didn't make the point clear. DC resistance made the local distribution inefficient, as you noted, but the Pac. Intertie is a high voltage DC running at very little current. My source was the IEEE Spectrum from a long time ago, (circa 1980 or so) but I'd be inclined to trust them. I believe at the voltages used, in this case the radiation losses from 60Hz are considerably higher than the resistance losses from DC.
OK, my EE speciality is not in power, but I've read some about it. One of the big problems with data over power lines is the sheer length of them. Case in point is the Pacific Intertie that runs between Washington and Southern California. The power types decided that even 60Hz was too inefficient to use because the long line would radiate too much power away. (They convert the power to high voltage DC for the Intertie and use great big inverters at the destination. DC doesn't have losses.)
Since this is supposed to be a highspeed connection, the only way to keep it going over long distances is to have a zillion little repeaters. I'm not sure of the distances involved, but I'd be surprised if you could get more than a few kilometers under ideal conditions. Probably need them every 100 meters in big cities. Wouldn't that be fun to build and maintain....
But I'm pleased to say that when we unveiled the name last month at an all-company meeting, a thousand employees stood up and gave the name a standing ovation.
Well, I was watching it on closed circuit TV at the Agilent plant in San Jose, and the reality was a little different....
Back when the split was coming, but we didn't have a name, the Powers That Be were overly coy about the name. A few people from another division did some digging and found a couple of names the Landor person had reserved the same day that they announced they had a (highly classified) name. These were Tessent and Kengent. This speculation came out in the SJ Mercury, and Tessent seemed to be the leader.
Some comments from a Walter Hewlett led us to think that we would get Tessent (Test and Measurment , get it?) that therw was widespread dread on the day it was to be announced. So, when Agilent was the name, the first thing I heard was a huge sigh of relief.
(I'm glad that Kengent never was taken seriously. Who knows what the Barbidahl division would do?)
When someone says life, everyone inmediately thinks it should be humanoids... it isn't necesarily that way...
Well, carbon based life forms don't have to be humanoid--I'm partial to space slugs myself.
At least at the temperatures we like, silicon based life forms are a challenge. While methane (CH4) is reasonably stable at 25C until someone lights a match, the equivalent silicon based compound, silane (SiH4), will spontaneously combust.
For life as we know it, it helps that CO2 is not considerably more stable than other carbon compounds. This isn't the case with silicon--SiO2 is a whole lot more stable than the others.
That leaves you needing a very cold, preferably oxygen free environment. It might be possible, but it's not the way to bet. (Yes, it also spoils the "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer!" joke in ST-TOS...)
* Titanium, as any metal, expands when heated: the planes had to have 'seams' in the wings that were closed when the sheetmetal expanded: the SR-71 leaked fuel (120 octane fuel) while parked on the runway! Actually, it was a special jet fuel, incredibly thick. A friend (who used to drive U2s back in the '50s, and has a son who drove SR71s) describes the leaks thusly: "It forms a drop, and the drop sloowwwlllyyy droops down until it breaks off. Then it starts again".
My nominations for the aerospace hacks: Apollo 13: building a CO2 scrubber from duct tape and report covers with the atsronaut's lives at stake is the epitomy of a hack. (The mission team assembled in a room with the goodies available in the spacecraft. They had to adapt the squarish Command module scrubber cartridge to the LM's round one.) For aircraft, I'll nominate the U2. Take a close look at a 3-view of the U2, espcially from the top. Repeat with the F104. Yup, the fastest, orneriest fighter of its age donated its fuselage to the U2. The Skunk works really knew how to build them well, and build them cheap.
the $3 long distance network access fee you are talking about isn't even something that is imposed by the phone company, but rather a sort of tax imposed by the feds.
So? The fee was a direct result of the breakup, and it came out of my (then-impoverished) wallet. I can't get enthusiastic about a fee^H^H^Htax imposed on the people who aren't using the service. Something about subsidizing those long distance savings for others really bugged me.
I think you are quite mistaken here. Phone rates have gone down dramatically, especially for long distance.
Aye, there's the rub. For many years, I had an almost nonexistant long distance need, and I was paying about $5 bucks a month for service. After the breakup, one of the key things implemented was an access fee for long distance. IIRC, I was paying an extra $3 bucks a month for the long distance service I wasn't using, even if I never called out of the area.
Yes, my long distance charges went down. However, my wallet was thinner for many years because of the breakup.
OTOH, breaking up MS wouldn't bother me so much...
I've been programming for about 25 years (at least, getting paid for it that long) and have had tendinitis/carpal/medial/ulnar nerve problems off and on for several years.
Soreness (horribly so) is generally a sign of tendinitis, but it's when fingers start to go numb, or tingle, that's when one of the tunnels are getting too crowded. I've had a few rounds of therapy, but the one that has helped the most has been re-learning how to type. My therapist/teacher was a pianist who had CTS and had to relearn, then discovered she could make a fair living helping geeks and nerds.
The basic method is described in _The Hand Book_ ISBN 1-884388-01-9, but the short summary is to use the largest muscles to do the job that you can. The catchphrase is to use hands "as paws, not claws". Your hands should be moving all over the keyboard, with the fingertips only moving up and down. I find it tough to do all the time, but it's usually OK.
I've had nerve damage (the mylograph method of determining this is one of the more uncomfortable methods of medical torture), but it's holding steady.
As far as equipment is concerned, some things will help, but bad technique is stronger than bad equipment. I have a few old pointing devices that didn't make the cut....
What has worked: The Microsoft "Classic" natural keyboard--have one at home and another at work on my workstation, as well as one of the smaller "elite" ones on a barely used computer at home. I find the Contour Mouse to be the best bet for me, mostly because I have really large hands and most desk rodents are too tiny. (The HP mice on workstations are horrible.) The backup computer has a Microsoft mouse--it's tolerable for a while. Other computers at work use standard keyboards and mice, and I get by.
BTW, going to voice recognition software can lead to a strained set of vocal cords. I was thinking of foot-rodents until I figured out that I'd be trading wrist problems for ankle problems....
Bottom line: surgery works, but there's a lot you can do before it comes necessary. My aunt lives in the wilds of southern Michigan and had to have both wrists done simultaneously. She said it was, er, interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
Now...I saw a thing on Discovery Channel about some retired NASA propulsion engineers that went over the negatives of the Hindenberg disaster and decided that it was the fabric doping (some aluminum compound) that caused the fire.
I've read something about this--cannot remember the source, but the fabric was a pretty screwed up combination. The guys who checked it out found some old samples from Germany. It was an alumininum powder paint over an iron oxide primer. That combination is the recipe for thermit. When exposed to heat, the aluminum swipes the oxygen from the iron, and you get a lot of heat, and eventually molten iron. They tested the samples for flammability. Very hot stuff.
The railroad companies still use thermit for welding rails together in the field.
It never was terribly clear what set the fzbric on fire, but once it caught, the hydrogen cells went along for the ride.
Pete
1) Customer sees link
2) Customer clicks on link
3) 8 million pop-up menus: "REGISTER YOUR VERSION OF REALPLAYER!!!" or
"DOWNLOAD THE LATEST VERSION OF REALPLAYER!!!" or "CHECK OUT ALL
THE NEW STUFF AT REAL.COM"
4) Customer gets fed up, downloads a different player.
I downloaded Realplayer on a couple of PCs (one at work, one home) and in both cases they were so obnoxious that I nuked them within a week. So far, I'm working with QT, but with all the reminder popups, there wasn't enough functionality to bother with.
If I see a link to a Real-only clip, I'll pass.
noticed that many of the books have links to fatbrain.
/.
I stopped buying at Amazon when I got their clueless response to my complaints on purchase circles. I've also been watching the book reviews here on
A look at the current book review shows that all but one point to fatbrain, and the exception is to a book not carried by any of the big sellers.
To those criticizing Cmdr. Taco for 'hypocrisy', it helps to have a shred of facts before lighting the flamethrowers..... BTW, the ACs who were most vehement, sure showing your moral courage.
Pete
Seems backwards to me... Edison always wanted DC for power distribution, but AC wond out because it is far less lossy. For a really long wire (i.e. power distribution line), the DC resistance is *way* higher than the AC impedance.
Sorry, I posted before coffee and didn't make the point clear. DC resistance made the local distribution inefficient, as you noted, but the Pac. Intertie is a high voltage DC running at very little current. My source was the IEEE Spectrum from a long time ago, (circa 1980 or so) but I'd be inclined to trust them. I believe at the voltages used, in this case the radiation losses from 60Hz are considerably higher than the resistance losses from DC.
OK, my EE speciality is not in power, but I've read some about it. One of the big problems with data over power lines is the sheer length of them. Case in point is the Pacific Intertie that runs between Washington and Southern California. The power types decided that even 60Hz was too inefficient to use because the long line would radiate too much power away. (They convert the power to high voltage DC for the Intertie and use great big inverters at the destination. DC doesn't have losses.)
Since this is supposed to be a highspeed connection, the only way to keep it going over long distances is to have a zillion little repeaters. I'm not sure of the distances involved, but I'd be surprised if you could get more than a few kilometers under ideal conditions. Probably need them every 100 meters in big cities. Wouldn't that be fun to build and maintain....
But I'm pleased to say that when we unveiled the name last month at an all-company meeting, a thousand employees stood up and gave the name a standing ovation.
Well, I was watching it on closed circuit TV at the Agilent plant in San Jose, and the reality was a little different....
Back when the split was coming, but we didn't have a name, the Powers That Be were overly coy about the name. A few people from another division did some digging and found a couple of names the Landor person had reserved the same day that they announced they had a (highly classified) name. These were Tessent and Kengent. This speculation came out in the SJ Mercury, and Tessent seemed to be the leader.
Some comments from a Walter Hewlett led us to think that we would get Tessent (Test and Measurment , get it?) that therw was widespread dread on the day it was to be announced. So, when Agilent was the name, the first thing I heard was a huge sigh of relief.
(I'm glad that Kengent never was taken seriously. Who knows what the Barbidahl division would do?)
Pete Brooks
When someone says life, everyone inmediately thinks it should be humanoids... it isn't necesarily that way...
Well, carbon based life forms don't have to be humanoid--I'm partial to space slugs myself.
At least at the temperatures we like, silicon based life forms are a challenge. While methane (CH4) is reasonably stable at 25C until someone lights a match, the equivalent silicon based compound, silane (SiH4), will spontaneously combust.
For life as we know it, it helps that CO2 is not considerably more stable than other carbon compounds. This isn't the case with silicon--SiO2 is a whole lot more stable than the others.
That leaves you needing a very cold, preferably oxygen free environment. It might be possible, but it's not the way to bet. (Yes, it also spoils the "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer!" joke in ST-TOS...)
Pete Brooks
* Titanium, as any metal, expands when heated: the planes had to have 'seams' in the wings
that were closed when the sheetmetal expanded: the SR-71 leaked fuel (120 octane fuel)
while parked on the runway!
Actually, it was a special jet fuel, incredibly thick. A friend (who used to drive U2s back in the '50s, and has a son who drove SR71s) describes the leaks thusly: "It forms a drop, and the drop sloowwwlllyyy droops down until it breaks off. Then it starts again".
My nominations for the aerospace hacks: Apollo 13: building a CO2 scrubber from duct tape and report covers with the atsronaut's lives at stake is the epitomy of a hack. (The mission team assembled in a room with the goodies available in the spacecraft. They had to adapt the squarish Command module scrubber cartridge to the LM's round one.)
For aircraft, I'll nominate the U2. Take a close look at a 3-view of the U2, espcially from the top. Repeat with the F104. Yup, the fastest, orneriest fighter of its age donated its fuselage to the U2. The Skunk works really knew how to build them well, and build them cheap.
Pete
the $3 long distance network access fee you are talking about isn't even something that is imposed by the phone company, but rather a sort of tax imposed by the feds.
So? The fee was a direct result of the breakup, and it came out of my (then-impoverished) wallet. I can't get enthusiastic about a fee^H^H^Htax imposed on the people who aren't using the service. Something about subsidizing those long distance savings for others really bugged me.
Pete
Aye, there's the rub. For many years, I had an almost nonexistant long distance need, and I was paying about $5 bucks a month for service. After the breakup, one of the key things implemented was an access fee for long distance. IIRC, I was paying an extra $3 bucks a month for the long distance service I wasn't using, even if I never called out of the area.
Yes, my long distance charges went down. However, my wallet was thinner for many years because of the breakup.
OTOH, breaking up MS wouldn't bother me so much...
Pete Brooks
Soreness (horribly so) is generally a sign of tendinitis, but it's when fingers start to go numb, or tingle, that's when one of the tunnels are getting too crowded. I've had a few rounds of therapy, but the one that has helped the most has been re-learning how to type. My therapist/teacher was a pianist who had CTS and had to relearn, then discovered she could make a fair living helping geeks and nerds.
The basic method is described in _The Hand Book_ ISBN 1-884388-01-9, but the short summary is to use the largest muscles to do the job that you can. The catchphrase is to use hands "as paws, not claws". Your hands should be moving all over the keyboard, with the fingertips only moving up and down. I find it tough to do all the time, but it's usually OK.
I've had nerve damage (the mylograph method of determining this is one of the more uncomfortable methods of medical torture), but it's holding steady.
As far as equipment is concerned, some things will help, but bad technique is stronger than bad equipment. I have a few old pointing devices that didn't make the cut....
What has worked: The Microsoft "Classic" natural keyboard--have one at home and another at work on my workstation, as well as one of the smaller "elite" ones on a barely used computer at home. I find the Contour Mouse to be the best bet for me, mostly because I have really large hands and most desk rodents are too tiny. (The HP mice on workstations are horrible.) The backup computer has a Microsoft mouse--it's tolerable for a while. Other computers at work use standard keyboards and mice, and I get by.
BTW, going to voice recognition software can lead to a strained set of vocal cords. I was thinking of foot-rodents until I figured out that I'd be trading wrist problems for ankle problems....
Bottom line: surgery works, but there's a lot you can do before it comes necessary. My aunt lives in the wilds of southern Michigan and had to have both wrists done simultaneously. She said it was, er, interesting.
Pete (got no sig worth noting)