While there are many potential applications for scavenging vibration, the specific example cited in the post is poor. If you scavenge the energy expended to make a phone vibrate it will, of course, no longer vibrate. Sort of self defeating.
The trick is to identify sources of vibration that inherently useful. Could you, for instance, harness vibration from an internal combustion engine? If so, you would improve the entire system dramatically by eliminating the need for an alternator and reducing unwanted vibration with something more productive than pneumatics, hydraulics, rubber bumpers and foam.
Vibration is a profoundly complex matter. People devote entire careers to understanding and mitigating vibration. I have an engine in my car that has two "balance shafts". One of these shafts spins at 2x the speed of the crankshaft. I believe this is because a 90 deg V6 is an inherently unbalanced design. Yet engineers go to extraordinary lengths to mitigate this because the net benefits of the complete package outweigh the cost of creating a lot of additional rotating mass.
Such a war would involve the destruction of Islamic holy artifacts, such as mosques and holy cities. It would also involve the slaughter of Islamic leaders (and dictators don't count.) Finally, it would witness the enforced adoption of something other than Islam.
All of this is within our power. Nassiria can be erased from existence with a few hours effort. Every mosque in the Middle East could be precision bombed to dust. We could hunt down and execute every Moslem leader of consequence anywhere we care to.
None of the above has, is or will occur. Rational people know this. That's why the vision of multitudes of enraged Moslems descending on the western forces remains a vision. They know, as you do, that calling recent events a "war against Islam" is a hysterical stretch.
Keep stretching. The world is better off with you marginalizing yourself as much as you possibly can. The only damage that may attributed to you is the degree to which real atrocities against Islam are discounted as you fill the air with your noise. Rest assured, however, that ultimately the rational amongst us will still be able to tell the difference.
"FBCB2 software - which is architecturally compliant with the Defense Information Infrastructure Common Operating Environment"
Whether it's been implemented on >1 OS I dunno. But it's designed to be.
Re:precision timekeeping is real interesting stuff
on
The Future of Leap Seconds
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This is relatively prosaic stuff that's nonetheless at the limits of our current understanding.
So we don't know why the Earths rotation is slowing? I'll bet we do. It's probably the net result of several factors, most if not all of which are understood. The problem is that we have no way to collect enough data to predict the amount of slowing.
The orbit of our Moon is slowing growing larger also. Something to think about; which is more difficult? Speeding up the Earths rotation or stopping the Moon from running off?
Of course, the solution to all this is really big rockets, but we've got plenty of time for that.:)
Looks like it runs on many different systems. Given that it is platform agnostic, the GUI likely is a motif app and what you see is a X server running on winblows. Look here.
While some units have rather modern system that can graphically display locations of other troops, others rely on 10-year-old 5 channel receivers. Kind of odd when I can 12 channels on my civilian model (with admittedly lower spatial accuracy).
The fact that some units are using a "10-year-old 5 channel receiver" does not surprise or concern me in the least. The military has prerogatives other than "latest and greatest nifty stuff" when procuring equipment.
Those old units probably contain custom hardware to cope with un-obfuscating GPS signals for back when the signal was still (and could again) being obfuscated. Those devices survive generation after generation of soldiers who are expected to use the things in all combat environments. In other words, this is not some plastic Taiwanese el-cheapo GPS receiver you paid $300 for at wiggliesneatshit.com. Do you have any clue how much time and money it takes to build one-off mil-spec equipment in low volumes that the military routinely requires?
I've actually found detailed technical information about the unit you're talking about. It's here and it's a damned interesting read. For instance, does your spiffy little 12 channel unit happen to have any anti-jamming/spoofing features? Exactly how many artillery shell concussion shock waves will your unit survive while your crew is firing the ol' 155mm? The DoD is so happy with the things they are trying to extend the warranty!
The fact that some units have more modern equipment than others is a perfectly normal, healthy way to run a military. Some of you paying attention to our recent deployment to Iraq have learned that the Army's 4th Infantry Division has only just now arrived in theater. This happens to be the Army's "showcase" Division. If it's the latest, the 4th ID has got it. It's not that our government didn't want to deploy the 4th, but Turkey didn't cooperate and the whole outfit had to be floated around the Mediterranean. Basically, the most advanced ground force on Earth arrived just in time to become traffic cops. Meanwhile, the old fashioned 10-year-old PLGR units are probably exactly what the 3rd ID used to actually get the job done.
You show me someone astonished by military procurement practices and I'll show you an ignorant fool. The next time you have the urge to compare your knowledge of equipment/technology to that of a military, just assume your wrong and shut up.
It's worse than that. The two sides of those same people are also demanding that media providers create excellence and then pretend that it's a commodity. Let's build up our fads to multibillion dollar scales and recoil in shock when they figure out you can afford much higher prices. Lets spend 99% of our entertainment dollars on 1% of it's creators, and then rebel when that 1% sees you for what you are; a bemused cash cow addicted to shiny, noisy things. They're not evil criminals. They're just competing for a bigger slice of your disposable income, leaving you with less to dispose of. Poor you.
I agree. We've been hearing of alternatives to silicon forever. Quit bragging about weird little nano-playthings you piece together with STEMs and show me the chips!
"Much more fun than the tedious work of building up a real democracy, as worked tolerably well in Germany and Japan after WWII."
While you deserve credit for acknowledging allied successes in Japan and Germany, your analogy has fundamental holes. In the case of Japan we attacked not only the Japanese military, but also their population and religious icon, the Emperor. We pulled their heads out of the theocratic sand and watched as the light slowly dawned. In the case of Germany, their living god killed himself, after we bombed the crap out of the population.
In Iraq, we chose to spare both the population and the theocracy. There is no hope for these people.
You are badly confused. You say that you read about the vulnerability somewhere on the web after the patch got applied. From this, you conclude that the problem was quickly fixed. How do you know how long the vulnerability existed prior to it appearing on the web? It may have been present for years for all you know...
...and probably this time too as they seem to have dropped off the media...
Bzzzt. Wrong. The fact that whatever media you are paying attention to is too inadequate to prevent this misunderstanding on your part tells me a great deal right off the bat.
Try to keep a longer attention span
I am. Here's my long term plan; every now and then we invade, wipe out whatever troublemaker regime has managed to evolve and then leave. Again. Has this not been the normal state of affairs throughout Iraqi history? Who are we to presume to change this?
we should pull out and fund a U.N. driven recovery
I completely disagree with you, but I must admit that I'd love to see this. The UN would end up in quagmire of tribal funds and factional conflicts as UN troops do their best not to offend anyone by actually defending themselves or imposing any order. Turkey would step all over Northern Iraq. Can you imagine the environmentally sensitive UN in charge of Iraqi oil reserves, exporting oil to the US? LOL. That would be fun to watch. You can bet the UN wouldn't hesitate to build it's a bunch of shiny new UN buildings though!
Concern for the fate of the Internet in Iraqi presumes that the place won't end up as another Muslim theocracy. It will, and you'll see about as much interest in things 20th century (other than weapons) from Iraq as you do from Iran.
Let the UN try to build out Iraqi Internet. Frankly I have no hope for the place and I'd rather we just get out. That's what the Muslim world wants anyhow. They're already blowing themselves up in Baghdad and slicing apart their returning exiles, in a mosque, in a holy city. Who needs this?
Lets get our POWs and leave. Screw finding WMD. The UN is a joke and trying to satisfy them with "proof" of WMD is pointless. Anything found will be discounted as American plants.
Target the suckas and zap the bejeezus out of 'em.
Transform that into a GPS coordinate, vector in a B1 and BOOM! We'll need to develop some appropriately sized weapons however. The current 500, 1000, 2000 lb units might produce a bit too much collateral damage in peace-time urban environments...
I built a multipage/multidisk system using Multiplan on a C64. The thing rolled up monthly sales figures into quarterly and yearly totals. It was a decent bit of software. Yes, it took a couple hours to do the rollup.:)
Payola is reason is this a non-issue. Oh, it still goes on. In the lofty world of Clearchannel, it's all about sponsoring contests and event promotion. Nothing quite so obvious as envelops of cash. What you hear on the radio is that which has been paid for by publishers. Nothing as trivial as obsolete CD players is going to interfere with this very long. A couple phone calls and there will be a shiny new player arriving promptly at a studio near you!
How do you cope with the shame and disgrace of having taken a large size dump all over your customers? Do you believe that you stand to acquire enough compensation to overcome the universal disgust felt about you?
"Leaving your front door wide open is a great idea, until someone you don't know walks through it."
Was this meant to be a point about the dangers of permitting government to access private information or about how free and open societies are inherently vulnerable to terrorists? While I'm fairly certain that in this context the author meant the former, one should note that it applies equally well to the latter. Ironic.
Slashdot Mirror
While there are many potential applications for scavenging vibration, the specific example cited in the post is poor. If you scavenge the energy expended to make a phone vibrate it will, of course, no longer vibrate. Sort of self defeating.
The trick is to identify sources of vibration that inherently useful. Could you, for instance, harness vibration from an internal combustion engine? If so, you would improve the entire system dramatically by eliminating the need for an alternator and reducing unwanted vibration with something more productive than pneumatics, hydraulics, rubber bumpers and foam.
Vibration is a profoundly complex matter. People devote entire careers to understanding and mitigating vibration. I have an engine in my car that has two "balance shafts". One of these shafts spins at 2x the speed of the crankshaft. I believe this is because a 90 deg V6 is an inherently unbalanced design. Yet engineers go to extraordinary lengths to mitigate this because the net benefits of the complete package outweigh the cost of creating a lot of additional rotating mass.
followed by a WAR against Islam
Such a war would involve the destruction of Islamic holy artifacts, such as mosques and holy cities. It would also involve the slaughter of Islamic leaders (and dictators don't count.) Finally, it would witness the enforced adoption of something other than Islam.
All of this is within our power. Nassiria can be erased from existence with a few hours effort. Every mosque in the Middle East could be precision bombed to dust. We could hunt down and execute every Moslem leader of consequence anywhere we care to.
None of the above has, is or will occur. Rational people know this. That's why the vision of multitudes of enraged Moslems descending on the western forces remains a vision. They know, as you do, that calling recent events a "war against Islam" is a hysterical stretch.
Keep stretching. The world is better off with you marginalizing yourself as much as you possibly can. The only damage that may attributed to you is the degree to which real atrocities against Islam are discounted as you fill the air with your noise. Rest assured, however, that ultimately the rational amongst us will still be able to tell the difference.
No no, it's SUVs.
Don't have time to go into the details, but trust me, it's those damn selfish Americans and their SUVs.
Everything is.
link
"FBCB2 software - which is architecturally compliant with the Defense Information Infrastructure Common Operating Environment"
Whether it's been implemented on >1 OS I dunno. But it's designed to be.
This is relatively prosaic stuff that's nonetheless at the limits of our current understanding.
:)
So we don't know why the Earths rotation is slowing? I'll bet we do. It's probably the net result of several factors, most if not all of which are understood. The problem is that we have no way to collect enough data to predict the amount of slowing.
The orbit of our Moon is slowing growing larger also. Something to think about; which is more difficult? Speeding up the Earths rotation or stopping the Moon from running off?
Of course, the solution to all this is really big rockets, but we've got plenty of time for that.
Can someone tell me what OS it's running on?
Looks like it runs on many different systems. Given that it is platform agnostic, the GUI likely is a motif app and what you see is a X server running on winblows. Look here.
But these people do.
1904 civilian deaths reported so far. Less than Kuwait lost when they were invaded, or the number killed in NY Tradecenter destruction.
Not bad.
pft.
While some units have rather modern system that can graphically display locations of other troops, others rely on 10-year-old 5 channel receivers. Kind of odd when I can 12 channels on my civilian model (with admittedly lower spatial accuracy).
The fact that some units are using a "10-year-old 5 channel receiver" does not surprise or concern me in the least. The military has prerogatives other than "latest and greatest nifty stuff" when procuring equipment.
Those old units probably contain custom hardware to cope with un-obfuscating GPS signals for back when the signal was still (and could again) being obfuscated. Those devices survive generation after generation of soldiers who are expected to use the things in all combat environments. In other words, this is not some plastic Taiwanese el-cheapo GPS receiver you paid $300 for at wiggliesneatshit.com. Do you have any clue how much time and money it takes to build one-off mil-spec equipment in low volumes that the military routinely requires?
I've actually found detailed technical information about the unit you're talking about. It's here and it's a damned interesting read. For instance, does your spiffy little 12 channel unit happen to have any anti-jamming/spoofing features? Exactly how many artillery shell concussion shock waves will your unit survive while your crew is firing the ol' 155mm? The DoD is so happy with the things they are trying to extend the warranty!
The fact that some units have more modern equipment than others is a perfectly normal, healthy way to run a military. Some of you paying attention to our recent deployment to Iraq have learned that the Army's 4th Infantry Division has only just now arrived in theater. This happens to be the Army's "showcase" Division. If it's the latest, the 4th ID has got it. It's not that our government didn't want to deploy the 4th, but Turkey didn't cooperate and the whole outfit had to be floated around the Mediterranean. Basically, the most advanced ground force on Earth arrived just in time to become traffic cops. Meanwhile, the old fashioned 10-year-old PLGR units are probably exactly what the 3rd ID used to actually get the job done.
You show me someone astonished by military procurement practices and I'll show you an ignorant fool. The next time you have the urge to compare your knowledge of equipment/technology to that of a military, just assume your wrong and shut up.
It's worse than that. The two sides of those same people are also demanding that media providers create excellence and then pretend that it's a commodity. Let's build up our fads to multibillion dollar scales and recoil in shock when they figure out you can afford much higher prices. Lets spend 99% of our entertainment dollars on 1% of it's creators, and then rebel when that 1% sees you for what you are; a bemused cash cow addicted to shiny, noisy things. They're not evil criminals. They're just competing for a bigger slice of your disposable income, leaving you with less to dispose of. Poor you.
...on how backwards you happen to be.
Has Intel done anything this cool?
How about creating the first microprocessor? That cool enough for you?
I agree. We've been hearing of alternatives to silicon forever. Quit bragging about weird little nano-playthings you piece together with STEMs and show me the chips!
"Much more fun than the tedious work of building up a real democracy, as worked tolerably well in Germany and Japan after WWII."
While you deserve credit for acknowledging allied successes in Japan and Germany, your analogy has fundamental holes. In the case of Japan we attacked not only the Japanese military, but also their population and religious icon, the Emperor. We pulled their heads out of the theocratic sand and watched as the light slowly dawned. In the case of Germany, their living god killed himself, after we bombed the crap out of the population.
In Iraq, we chose to spare both the population and the theocracy. There is no hope for these people.
You are badly confused. You say that you read about the vulnerability somewhere on the web after the patch got applied. From this, you conclude that the problem was quickly fixed. How do you know how long the vulnerability existed prior to it appearing on the web? It may have been present for years for all you know...
...and probably this time too as they seem to have dropped off the media...
Bzzzt. Wrong. The fact that whatever media you are paying attention to is too inadequate to prevent this misunderstanding on your part tells me a great deal right off the bat.
Try to keep a longer attention span
I am. Here's my long term plan; every now and then we invade, wipe out whatever troublemaker regime has managed to evolve and then leave. Again. Has this not been the normal state of affairs throughout Iraqi history? Who are we to presume to change this?
we should pull out and fund a U.N. driven recovery
I completely disagree with you, but I must admit that I'd love to see this. The UN would end up in quagmire of tribal funds and factional conflicts as UN troops do their best not to offend anyone by actually defending themselves or imposing any order. Turkey would step all over Northern Iraq. Can you imagine the environmentally sensitive UN in charge of Iraqi oil reserves, exporting oil to the US? LOL. That would be fun to watch. You can bet the UN wouldn't hesitate to build it's a bunch of shiny new UN buildings though!
Concern for the fate of the Internet in Iraqi presumes that the place won't end up as another Muslim theocracy. It will, and you'll see about as much interest in things 20th century (other than weapons) from Iraq as you do from Iran.
Let the UN try to build out Iraqi Internet. Frankly I have no hope for the place and I'd rather we just get out. That's what the Muslim world wants anyhow. They're already blowing themselves up in Baghdad and slicing apart their returning exiles, in a mosque, in a holy city. Who needs this?
Lets get our POWs and leave. Screw finding WMD. The UN is a joke and trying to satisfy them with "proof" of WMD is pointless. Anything found will be discounted as American plants.
Time to go.
Target the suckas and zap the bejeezus out of 'em.
Transform that into a GPS coordinate, vector in a B1 and BOOM! We'll need to develop some appropriately sized weapons however. The current 500, 1000, 2000 lb units might produce a bit too much collateral damage in peace-time urban environments...
I built a multipage/multidisk system using Multiplan on a C64. The thing rolled up monthly sales figures into quarterly and yearly totals. It was a decent bit of software. Yes, it took a couple hours to do the rollup. :)
Is this type of IP-grab and clampdown on free speech is unique to Xtra or is it slowly pervading the whole industry, right across the globe?
At what point did free speech become global?
Payola is reason is this a non-issue. Oh, it still goes on. In the lofty world of Clearchannel, it's all about sponsoring contests and event promotion. Nothing quite so obvious as envelops of cash. What you hear on the radio is that which has been paid for by publishers. Nothing as trivial as obsolete CD players is going to interfere with this very long. A couple phone calls and there will be a shiny new player arriving promptly at a studio near you!
How does the AG shut down foreign sites? Iraqi child porn sites are obviously in jeopardy, but beyond that I'm not sure the AG has much power...
How do you cope with the shame and disgrace of having taken a large size dump all over your customers? Do you believe that you stand to acquire enough compensation to overcome the universal disgust felt about you?
"Leaving your front door wide open is a great idea, until someone you don't know walks through it."
Was this meant to be a point about the dangers of permitting government to access private information or about how free and open societies are inherently vulnerable to terrorists? While I'm fairly certain that in this context the author meant the former, one should note that it applies equally well to the latter. Ironic.