Posts by bombastic bob

Re: Amazing achievement

I'm guessing that imaging the sunlit side of Mercury requires some serious optical filtering to deal with the albedo compared with imaging the unlit side

2 words: pinhole camera. That should improve focus AND limit the amount of light on the sensor, to avoid some of the bad effects of super-bright light. As for the dark side, I guess you need variable arpeture or similar.

But you would also get shadowing on the sunny side. So you'd need both light and dark side images, and with its slow rotation (sidereal day is ~58 earth days long withy an ~88 earth day orbit) that';s not quite synchronized with its orbit, it would take a really long time (~170 earth days) to get both light-side and dark-side images. [apparently Venus' day is even longer and effectively the sun goes BACKWARDS with respect to the direction the stars go, as seen from the surface of the planet].

Re: Down here

depending upon the type of light, the right kind of pulse width modulated signal COULD make it 'beep',...

I once saw an interesting demonstration of 2 electric probes with a certain type of salt poured on them within a gas flame. The flame created ions, which were then exposed to high voltage PWM (apparently) and you could hear sounds coming out of the flame...

Re: If

the best they could do is what others have done, that is allowing the display of a standards-compliance logo of some kind. Example, USB. If you comply with the spec you can put the logo on your thngy. This lets people know that your product is standards compliant. Similarly, browsers and web sites could contain a logo, with some kind of 'lint' application and web site test suite to qualify them, and (of course) a method by which non-compliance (re: bugs and incorrect features) can be reported to the W3C in the case of gross 'violation'.

THAT might work. OK l[aw]yers would be involved but that's unfortunately the way things work in a society ruled by law. Not like you could send some thugs to their place of residence to send a message (and break a few arms).

Re: Playing with Chemicals that Go Bang

Actually there are a handful of specific elements that form compounds that generally go boom in the right conditions, usually those with covalent bonds that are difficult to form [but easy to break], along with plenty of Oxygen that is released in the process, plus fuel like carbon or sulfur. I wouldn't recommend trying any of that, being as I minored in chemistry and understand how dangerous most of them are to make. You often need to do the right thing in the right order at the right temperature (etc.) to avoid an unintended explosion.

Handling explosives (once created) requires expertise if you do not want to lose body parts. Any idiot with the right chemicals can possibly make them and probably blow himself to Mars in the process. It's kinda why home made fireworks aren't legal here.

even low-level stuff (like the 'joke' explosives made with nitrogen and iodine) could potentially do serious damage as it's almost impossible to stabilize when dry [from what I've read].

Why not include critical thinking as well?

what and upset big tech's evil plan?

MUAHAHAHAHAHA!

(brainwashing can be done on a much smaller budget... with more predictable results.)

Seriously though...

I had a linear algebra class in college. It was a lot like high school algebra II class, but more in depth. And statistics and probabilities define the core of nuclear physics where EVERYTHING is a probability, and is often measured in 'barns' (as in hitting the broad side of one). When you get above the noise level of entropy, the numbers start to look very consistent and predictable. It's how a fission reactor works, essentially, the probability of neutron reactions based on fission rate, fuel load, geometry, temperature, and neutron absorbing materials (and in many cases, fission products that emit them i.e. delayed neutrons).

It may simply be a mindset, not an actual knowledge deficiency, with linear algebra and probabilities defining it. Still if you can use matrices to calculate things based on probabilities, maybe THAT is what quantum computing would do best at?

Re: Emissions

When I ran the numbers a while back, water vapor has about 100 times the greenhouse effect of CO2

* CO2 is only about 0.04% of the atmosphere and is relatively stable, where water varies greatly and can be 1% OR MORE

* CO2 has a tiny absorption spectrum for IR radiation within the band of energies corresponding to temperatures found on earth. Water has an OBSERVABLY SIGNIFICANT IR absorption spectrum, and makes a HUGE difference on earth surface temperatures at night.

And so on.

Worrying about CO2 emissions as compared to WATER VAPOR is like picking up pennies and ignoring $100 bills

(then again I wouldn't worry about either - we cannot control water vapor and C02 pales by comarison, drowned out by the chaos that water adds to the normal weather cycles)

besides, the volume of hydrogen and the containers it would need for an aircraft would make it LESS FUEL EFFICIENT (based on cargo weight and humans on board) than using regular hydrocarbon jet fuel. Until we master hydrogen fusion in an aircraft engine, this will CONTINUE to be the case, because of the laws of physics and the properties of materials. If, however, a clever hydrate-based storage method is developed that can make this "no longer true", then I'll be wrong and you can laugh at me. Until then, hydrogen fueled planes are NOT practical.

The problem isn't the mass of the fuel, it's the container volume. Designing container volume of about 4 times (from an online source) the size of equivalent jet fuel tanks that ALSO have cryogenic insulation and some additional things to keep the H2 both liquid AND pressurized, and that's just the beginning.

The Saturn V first stage and Musk's Falcon rockets use Kerosene-like fuel because of physical tank size and atmospheric resistance. If you can make a taller rocket that has no air resistance, like in space, hydrogen makes more sense for mass-to-thrust. But the tanks still have to be 4 times bigger, so you lose something in the materials used to construct the rocket, not to mention the cryogenics.

Re: *looks around quiet, crowded theater* FIRE FIRE FIRE!

this "yelling FIRE in a crowded theater" trope example is SO hackneyed it should NEVER be mentioned again.

Re: anti-mask assholes

(see icon)

Re: Virus distributing framework

According to a quick online search, the Apache Cordova Framework appears to be an enhanced wrapping of WebView that provides better hardware access, or something like that.

Whether or not it embeds ad-slinging is completely different. In theory ANY application _COULD_ sling ads if it wanted to, and WebView is one mechanism by which it could do so.

It's probably not something _I_ would use, but it is an open source framework. If there are security holes they need to be patched. As for 'push' style updates, the mechanism by which they are done is independent of them being done in the FIRST place. Seeing as the application is using HTML it would be possible to do this kind of 'push' update without going through a complete re-install of the application via the Anroid APK handlers. As such it is a stealthy way of cramming WHATEVER THEY WANT onto your phone.

Perhaps a future Android OS can include a security feature to limit this possibility. But as HTML files are NOT "executable" (and yet they ARE with 'web apps'), I do not see a way of stopping this 'security workaround' from being used by potential malware.

so keeping such applications from accessing your financial info and location may be the only way to put the brakes on this.

Re: Monetization

It's more reason to hang onto and maintain an OLD car that runs on GASOLINE, has NO integrated navi-guessionsystem, and behaves as you would expect it to when you work the controls. You MIGHT even be able to work on it YOURSELF.

Re: Throwing out DST

in 1973 the USA kept dailight savings time for an entire year. I walked to school. No problem.

In 1974 and 1975 I went to a high school that had "split session" and Freshmen had school from 12:00 to 4:30 (or something like that). I walked home in the dark during the winter. No problem.

Actually it was not THAT dark in either case. but as I recall, the cars had their headlights on.

besides, most parents are like "helicopter parents" these days, and drive their kids to school. The local private school near my house has the expected traffic jams as the expected times because of it. Fortunately there's a way to drive around it if I ever need to.

Re: Comms relays?

LaGrange points are still too close to Earth for this to be practical

You sure about that? The Greek/Trojan points [L4,L5] in Mars' orbit would probably do nicely.

Re: Waste

honestly, the hardware cost difference between an android-capable ARM-based device and a microcontroller board probably favors the ARM-based device. And getting a touch screen to work with a microcontroller (let alone serve up ads) might be cost prohibitive on its own.

Re: It's a hurricane?

also you have fastest spinning at the equator, and in the 'hurricane region' the differences in speed (over small latitude changes) are the highest. So you also have slow vs fast air, coupled with (probable) liquid core, solar heating, and not a whole lot of possible things to slow it down (like land masses and a relatively thinner atmosphere that you find on Earth).

And the discoloration of the red spot may affect temperature of things it 'shadows'. be of a different mass than the rest of the atmosphere, etc. etc. all contributing to its formation and behavior.

Re: More of this ahead.

maybe you need a built-in "bird zapper" (or just an owl statue, or bunch of spikes) to keep birds from harassing otherwise defenseless drones.

Maybe some wires with a few thousand volts in them, easily snapped but also easily replaced, so that a tangled zapped bird would just fall away. The drone could self-detect the need to replace the defensive electrical wires. I doubt the bird-brains would ever learn, though. I bet it would be an ongoing development, anti-bird defenses.

(animals do it to one another, atacking and defending, so what's the difference if BOTS do it too?)

(other options might include angry noises that drive birds away)

Re: Why?

as long as you have power available on copper, you can send data by fiber and it will most likely be a MUCH smaller cable, and apparently more resilient to age and even bending and vibration [using polymer], and the one thing that makes the most sense in a vehicle: LIGHTER WEIGHT (and probably lower cost).

And copper can be expensive. So if fiber is cheaper, between the window and lock controls and the car computer [for example], with a bendy cable going into the doors from the car's frame, you need to be able to handle repeated bending, vibration, moisture, heat, cold, and other things that make wires go bad. And, probably , GLASS fiber optics. But maybe not polymer.

And again, copper is expensive. And relatively heavy. So yeah.

Re: Muppets

makes you wonder which came first, the pig-boar or the bullfrog...

Once again, this *KIND* of argument has been going on since the Civil Rights movement.

Private property opened to the public is not the same as private property that is "private". And in the virtual world of teh intarwebs, this would include web sites.

Civil rights legislation controls what private property and private business owners can do when it comes to public spaces. This has been tested in the courts for decades.

The question is not whether a law restricts freedom. The point of civil rightrs legislation is to allow for equal access to the public spaces. The freedom of the owner of the public space is being restricted in order to PREVENT that owner from restricting the freedom of those who want to access it.

Might as well be a racial minority man sitting at the counter in a 1950's diner in Mississippi.