Oh! the long hours of waiting for clear skies ....

Inquiring mids want to know ....

Will the wine / brandy / beer / pipe cleaner last untill the launch time ?

Will the staff be still able to do the launch ?

Is feared a shortage of spirits in Spain because of the bad weather ?

Compulsory for lorry drivers

It should be compulsory for lorry, bus, and other professional drivers. Especially if the transport is of dangerous substances.

Price drop

"Samsung reckons its enterprise SSD prospects are good, quoting Gartner numbers claiming worldwide SSD units and revenues for enterprise application will grow from 324,000 units and U$485m in 2009 to 6.3 million units and U$3.6bn in 2014."

Which means lowering the average price per drive from $1400+ to a more palatable $571

Burn, wallet, burn ...

New strorage paradigm ...

I think that the future storage will be of two types :

1 - Direct into PCI storage modules, allowing the speed of nearly direct system bus interface, as a substitute of actual disk drives. After all it is a waste of resources having to serialize your data requests, send them on a wire, to get them decoded to a memory, send the data back, and then copied to antoher memory.

Just interface the flash memory directly. Your processor will see its lower nGb of dram, and then a hige space of nGb of directly addressable flash memory. Get rid of the layers between them.

(Of course the devil is in the details)

2 - Add ons, of lower speed and/or bigger capacity and/or lower cost, as external modules, plugged in a bus a la usb or sd cards, and removable.

Albert Gonzalez.

Need root password ???

Excuse me, but if somebody has a root password, your problems mill be far more important than having a remote code execution by a stack overflow in Samba.

Plane modelling

Hi

You can use the X-Plane simulator to build and test a model of the plane, also with the simulation on how will fly from release 'till touchdown.

Is not a difficult program to use, and I'm sure that the owner (Austin) would be very happy to provide you with one copy, because of the publicity involved.

Is one of the few plane simulators that can be FAA certified, and I myself can assure you that the model of a CESSNA 1732 behaves exactly as the live one.

Bigger birds I dunno.

Albert.

Easy way to protect the phone

Just pop up a message asking the owner for permission BEFORE the software can be installed or uninstalled.

That way, the OWNER can decide if it is a transfer he asked for, or not, and act accordingly.

Just provide the adequate amount of information on the dialog box, please, and the options:

yes/not now:remind me later/never

My 2 cents

How to seal the space between the 2 glasses

For the device to work, you should try to apply a coating of oil to the inner glass. It will ( providing the oil don't freeze) seal and lubricate it.

Just one more test.

Weigth of the tether

To reduce the weigth of the tether, which is mostly the conductor metal, the only thing needed to do is reduce the conductor diameter.

To cope with the increased wire resistance, there are 2 alternatives ( non excluding)

1 - Use a better conductor ( gold ) or a superconductor (just find one that works at room temperatures)

2 - Increase the line voltage, as to reduce the intesnsity to carry the same power. Of course the isolation will have to be enhaced, but plasitc is a lot less dense, even more if is filled with vacuum bubbles.

Solar powered of course

The ships will be solar powered, as to stop automatically functioning when there are enough clouds.

On the other side, i don't like a bit the idea of pumping NaCl to the sky.

Salted farm fileds ?

How much time ?

The big question is:

How long has the nap to be to become productive ... without spendig the whole afternoon snoring ?

Between 5 and 10minutes, or 10' to 30', or between 30' and 1 hour ?

Sleeping minds want to know ...Viva la Siesta !

Warp speed

I'd like to resalt the fact that warp speed, as seen in Star Trek films, exceeds c, so there have to be different physics involved, thank you.

Primary, the branch that studies fictional physics.

Of course, that don't invalidates the professor's study, that is applicable to our very real world, and if I one day happen to be flying in a spaceship fast enough to nottice its effects, i'll fondly remeber him.

On the other way, there are far more bigger problems to get to such speed, as the acceleration needed would be far greater than the one my body would resist, for example, or the amount of energy involved to accelerate the ship.

One beer to a time well spent in an important problem, as I'm doing now.

Raid5, 6 or raidz5

If you need to use > 14TB of space for your data, you best be sure to have it really protected.

Not just a 'simultaneous 2 disk failure' proofed, 'but fire in the computer room' proofed.

So yes, a raid 6 + daily remote sync, and a big pipe.

That is, offsite.

Liquid coolant

Water ?

Why not use R410A or other non conductive, non toxic, non corrossive industrial refrigerant and rid themselves of the pipes. Just pump the coolant in one side of the stack, let it flow while evaporating and collect the resultant hot gas on the other side. No pipes, just small expanding holes etched in the surface of the bottom chip, one quick connect pipe socket in each side of the module, and you're ready to go.

Use one compressor for all paralel chips, and get the efficiencies in moving heat associated with het pump aircon systems.

Albert Gonzalez

Re:`C/C++'', which goes to zero as C goes to infinity

Dear AC

I'm so sorry to have to correct you.

lim c/c++ when c -> infinite = 1

and not 0

Thank you very much, and have a nice weekend.

Going the Apple way

I was mulling the possibility of moving our small office to apple hardware, because of the 'Just Works' moniker, and the (at least on paper), perceived good value of the iMac i7 machines.

Of clourse, that would pave the way to purchase Apple software, and use iPhones

Then, as the decision times are looming ... the tide of reports of faulty hardware ( DOA iMacs ), bad customer experience, and closed environement for the sotware is making me reconsider the whole thing.

Probably we'll continue as we are now, purchasing build to order PCs from our friendly local store, with Debian, and perhaps, money permiting, some of those 30in HP displays, which, after all, is the MOST important part of any interactive computer (servers and embedded do not need no stinkin' displays)

Pitty, i was willing to play with a Snow Leopard .... and face it against a penguin ... but seems the Leopard has defaulted.

Re: 450 vs 900 GeVs

Dear Dan 10

Gev is a measure of energy. So when you make a colision with two beams in oposite directions the energy adds, irrespective of the velocity.

Of course, the relative velocities will allways be less than c, for every of the 3 points of observation ( 2 beams + stationary observator)

If you want to take into consideration velocities, instead of energies, then the relative times MUST be contemplated, as the time will be slower for the beams than for the ground.

And THIS is the best part of a very high velocity (energy) collision, the time in the collision will be slowed, so boffins can actually measure something.

Hope I explained myself.

Nuclear air turbines

You 'just' need to use the nuclear fuel to heat the air inside the combustion chamber of the turbine.

Also, it can use the turbine to move a small electric generator, wich can be used to start the rotation of the engine, if the initial airspeed isn't up to it.

Really easy to test, just 1 moving part, very very long endurance ( as long as the fuel is hot enough )

~ £20K for a PPL ?

In Spain a PPL license costs about € 8K

Including classes, taxes and plane rental.

I know because I asked last month, after having a couple of practical lessons in a cessna 172.

If the cost is ~ £20K in the UK, you will save money coming to Barcelona for 'holidays' , and returning with an european PPL

(The US PPL license isn't fully recognized in Spain by AENA, because in the US is way more cheap )

Mayan calendar error

I'd also like to point thet the mayan canendar and ours are sifted 208 years, so the Mayan calendar will end in 2200, and not in 2012.

Power supply

Already invented :

Just use a tiny cell that converts sugar to electricity : ie : a fuell cell.

Waste products : HEAT, water & CO2 Easily absorved and disposed by the body.

Can be optimized for faily constant temperature, humidity and sugar concentration.

Just throttle BT traffic

Tittle says it all. Also disable youtube, and video downloads, and you'll have more free BW than now.

One incentive to bring back jobs

At last, one incentive that the beancounters will understand, and possibly use when deciding which way can reduce costs.

This will also have the benefice of beign a good PR stunt, as the company will be seen supporting local workers.

Not all news have to be bad.

Little Bobby Tables

The tittle says it all.

for those that need a clue, check :

http://xkcd.com/327/

Regenerative Braking

The huge energy saving from an electric car comes from regenerative braking.

In an open road, where you almost don't have to brake, there isn't nay gain, but while driving in a city, you will get a big gain when braking for all those semaphore lights.

In an ICE, the kinetic energy will be just dissipated as heat.

In an ICE, the engine will consume power while at the red light.

Also there is a far better way to storing power : flywheel. Just isn't as cool and adaptable as batteries. You have to design the car around the flywheel, and not the other way. There are other difficulties with a flywheel, but are all solvable with the current technology and some cunning.

The only problem is that you need a 1'8m wide, 500kg flywheel at 15.000 rpm to store a fuel tank of energy. I made the numbers.

Poke, Poke, Poke

Yup, you can write an app loader in basic that will be able to load apps and execute them, in binary form.... that will access the filesystem, and possibly other phone resources.

Also, there MAY be a way to use a buffer overflow inside the emulator to execute some code natively in the iPhone, so a malicious program may:

1 - Load a payload inside the emulator and break it to execute the payload as an iPhone program, and NO as a C64 program

2 - Once the payload is executing as an iPhone app, it may do a lot fo nasty things, only limited by the ability of the iPhone Security ( ehem ... )

So yes, may seem an overkill, but the emulator MAY be a vector to the phone.

Send umbrella to L1

Send a giant umbrella to L1, and orbiting that point will reduce the amount of heat the earth recives.

If it is remote controllable, you can adjust the size of it, to equalize for changing circumstances.

Completely reversibe effect.

A winterday too cold ? Use the remote and let some more sun, honey.

Too hot on the beach? Hack your way for a beautiful seaside eclipse.

Multiple practical uses

1 - Fire on command weapon, where you have a small EM generator (laser/uW), accumulating energy between 2 mirrors, and when ready to shot, open one of them.

2 - Modulator for powerful EM beams ( such as used in communications )

3 - Shutter/dimmer for spectacular lights, just found a way to stop that 5kw without powering down the bulb. At last will be able to use cheap arc bulbs.

4 - Sun shades for the windows (if made big enough).

DIY hipobaric chamber

Get a piece of concrete pipe big enough for your needs, put a thick ( > 30mm) metacrilate circle on both ends, one end attached with some flexible cement (poliuretane may be a good choice, the other end justa a rubber ring.

On the fixed plate, insert a fitting, and ask your local air conditioning guy to lend the vacuum pump to evacuate the air.

Envelope the concrete with plastic film to seal it.

When ready to go, insert model into chamber, engage the pump, hold the rubber ring end until pressure starts to drop and observe the effects from a safe distance.

If the chamber can be smaller, a bottle with a big mouth may be easier.

You can also evacuate air with pirotechnically assisted methods, bur are trickier.

And for the electronics, i reaffirm myself that a HTC Dream / Hero is the way to go, beacuse it has it all included and tested, so you ONLY need to write the software (he he he).

Albert.

Re:How to slow your computer down to a crawl

Hi Michael

Yes, I use KDE in a production environement, and because of the age of my machine (4 yrs old), i had to disable all desktop effects when i upgraded from KDE 3.5.9 to KDE 4.2.

Once they are disabled, the system works very well, but not as snappy as with xfce.

Is your choice, but the glint don't add to productivity, and the speed improvement is very big.

Of course, you can always use another wm.

Albert.

Technical data:

Energy :

To get energy to the electronics in the plane, you can use a pair of small propeller blades attached to a pair of dinamos, that will recharge a small battery, so you will use the dinamos as a way to reduce the amount of kinetic energy, and power the electronics and, possibly, actuators.

Excess energy to heat the electronics enclosure.

Computer control:

As a computer control, you can use an HTC Dream, with android, that has accelerometer, magnetic field sensor, wifi, gps, compass, video camera, is fully hackable, and you have the source code. Should be relatively easy to hack a usb device to control the surfaces of the plane, using PWM and electromagnets. Log all data to the 8Gb microSD card, that propably will survive a fatal crash, flushing the filesystem every 1s. The program for controlling the surfaces don't need to be too sophisticated, as will be using closed loop sevos with the set points controlled by the GPS. The accelerometer can be used as the D paramenter in a PID algorithm.

Stability of the system can be easy to verify with a couple of equations, if needed, but much more fun to launch the plane from the roof.

Altitude sensor:

In addition to the GPS and accelerometer on the phone, you can use a small balloon, that will activate a switch when the outside air pressure drops enough.

Separation device:

Use an electromagnet inside the plane, attached to a piece of iron hanging from the balloon, that will be unpowered on command from the phone and will use the mechanical altitude sensor as a failsafe (serial installation). D Cell battery powered.

Recommended design flow:

1 - Specify hardware needed for the system.

( Just draw a diagram with names. )

2 - Calculate hardware weigth.

( Group all the parts, and put them into a kitchen scale. )

3 - Calculate wing span for plane + 2 x hardware weigth.

4 - Model airplane in X-Plane simulator, while the computer hack is preparing the programs, and the HW hack is preparing the rest of the hardware.

5 - Evaluate total payload weigth, and size balloon acordingly.

6 - Build aircraft.

7 - Test fly it.

8 - Remove possible problems.

9 - Get BAA permissions.

10 - Send the plane.

My 2 cents.

Image monopoly

I'm a usual cultural traveler, i've found myself in the follwing situations:

In Scotland, there are public galleries (SNG), where you can look at the pictures, but NOT photograph them. You can ONLY purchase reproductions in the shop, if they're there.

In France (Louvre), you can make all photographs you want, and ALSO purchase the reproductions.

So the question is :

Can I make photographs of the picture ?

If the answer is yes, then nobody can complain because of copyrighted photographs.

If the answer is NO, then should be a way to obtain reproductions ( for a nominal fee) or a way to download them for FREE in digital format.

My 2 very irritated cents.

Reversed logos

Prior Art

Just compare the guinness logo and the Ireland Republic harp.... they're just mirrored so they aren't the same thing.

Albert.

I'm wiling to let my desktop TRIPLE that time

As the title said, i'll be grateful if my desktop can become fully functional in 3 seconds. So I'll be able to do a halt at nigth after backups, and not having to cope with an uptime of months because of the wasted time in the morning.

I'ts time we get rid of the compressed kernel image, and start using more compiled in drivers. Memory and disk are cheap enough.