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Re: OT: There goes the Solar neighborhood...literally
by Jack 31 Mar '05

31 Mar '05

--- David Nicol <davidnicol(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 17:56:35 -0600, Oren Beck > <oren_beck(a)hotmail.com> wrote: > ... > > > Has anyone else read Gerard O'Neil's "The High > Frontier" > http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/189652267X/tipjartransactioA/ I'll have to check it out. > > My reccomendation for an ion rocket is to use iron. > Choose a suitable > iron asteroid, > set up camp in it, accelerate your iron ions and > fling them out one > way, save enough > mass to decelerate after you get wherever you're > going, but the > question of where > the energy to do all the ion accelerating comes from > is still up in the air. Well, one way would be to use a nuclear fission reactor. Alternatively, a more conventional power plant should work. The main problem is the amount of fuel needed to power everything. Brian D. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site! http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/

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Re: Date Dunce
by Uncle Jim 30 Mar '05

30 Mar '05

Hi, On Tue, Mar 29, 2005 at 05:09:29PM -0600, Oren Beck wrote: > To really take this as a point of constructive discourse could anyone > here suggest > mail software that uses something other than local system time? I understand weird system configurations because I often do it myself. But I can't conceive the convoluted configuration you must have where accurate local system time is a bad thing and just the mail software should get time from somewhere else. Understanding your setup sounds like a good "computer game" so please tell me what you have. -- Jim

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Re: Dune Parody skit. Was RE: whitewigs
by Brian Kelsay 30 Mar '05

30 Mar '05

I'd say at the very least that the lines I left below are part of your problem. See the -800? That puts you in the wrong time zone. Whether that is due to your settings w/ hotmail from zip or user location in prefs. or due to settings in Thunderbird if you are using it to connect to hotmail as a relay agent, we don't know. Brian Kelsay >>> "Oren Beck" <oren_beck(a)hotmail.com> 03/22/05 08:01PM >>> Really? Or shall we consider that no one posting to a Lug list needs NTP! A dedicated army of Open Source time observers will happily inform you of an out of sync condition. <big snip> >Received: from kclug.org ([139.146.133.42]) by mc11-f36.hotmail.com with >Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.211); Tue, 22 Mar 2005 10:33:09 -0800

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OT: There goes the Solar neighborhood...literally
by Jack 30 Mar '05

30 Mar '05

Ok, this is way OT, but ... they're making black holes in the lab now. Let's hope they don't let one out. :'o http://news.com.com/In+labs+high-speed+collisions%2C+things+just+vanish/210… While they say they are different from the matter gobbling killer black holes, I'm not sure I buy the story completely. This accelorator is used by my old alma mater in NY and I was studying this field there. Never got a chance to do any experiments with it though. It seems to me they are similar types of blackholes, but due to the tiny mass they are not dangerous and if they'd stop and think about it a bit they might even get some insight into why massive blackholes decay over time. As it is likely that this type of black hole is created on a massive scale in the creation of killer blackholes. Now if only there was an efficient way of generating these mini "blackholes" we might be able to make a powerful engine for interstellar travel, although I suspect one could take the accelerator and make an effective engine out of it. If the accelerator can propel gold atoms to >.99 lightspeed that should be enough to propel a spacecraft at relativistic speeds. Of course this thing is quite large and I'm not sure what the fuel requirements would be. Maybe we could use something like tin instead of gold. ;') (sorry about the OT post, but this was just a fun and cool subject.) Brian D. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site! http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/

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Re: Date Dunce
by Brian Kelsay 30 Mar '05

30 Mar '05

Jim, he has a dead mobo battery and an electrical system put together with bailing wire and scotch tape. The "time server" is a crusty old Casio on his wrist that is off by over a year, 2 hrs and 34 minutes. He connects to the net by means of a pringles can aimed by Mark I eyeball at a satellite just barely above the ecliptic with a slight wobble. Brian Kelsay >>> Uncle Jim <> 03/30/05 03:02AM >>> Hi, On Tue, Mar 29, 2005 at 05:09:29PM -0600, Oren Beck wrote: > To really take this as a point of constructive discourse could anyone > here suggest > mail software that uses something other than local system time? I understand weird system configurations because I often do it myself. But I can't conceive the convoluted configuration you must have where accurate local system time is a bad thing and just the mail software should get time from somewhere else. Understanding your setup sounds like a good "computer game" so please tell me what you have.

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Re: OT: There goes the Solar neighborhood...literally
by Brian Kelsay 30 Mar '05

30 Mar '05

Later, it was found that the janitor had the missing gold in his pocket. He stated, "hey, they just leave this gold stuff lying around, what do they expect?" >>> Jack wrote: > Ok, this is way OT, but ... > they're making black holes in the lab now. Let's hope > they don't let one out. :'o > > http://news.com.com/In+labs+high-speed+collisions%2C+things+just+vanish/210… > > Brian Kelsay

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Re: OT: There goes the Solar neighborhood...literally
by Jack 30 Mar '05

30 Mar '05

--- Oren Beck <oren_beck(a)hotmail.com> wrote: > Jack wrote: > > Ok, this is way OT, but ... > > they're making black holes in the lab now. Let's > hope > > they don't let one out. :'o > > > > > http://news.com.com/In+labs+high-speed+collisions%2C+things+just+vanish/210… > > ... > > Is it OT if the control software or modeling tools > are Open Source? Perhaps the engine design can be rendered on a Linux server farm? > ... > > Now does anyone on this list have the real maths > background to offer > some intelligent > comments on which of us is on or off track here. Well what equation set are you looking for here? I've had most every Math offered at an undergrad level, and have several deggrees in Math. Tell me what equation you're looking for and I can probably give it to you, or look it up in one of my reference books or derive it if not there. Provided it is a known equation. Of course, some equations are not "solveable" and I would probably have to resort to Engineering Math tricks (ie polynomial solutions) to come up with a "solution" to the equation(s). I'm quite certain that one could take the Brookhaven accelerator and place it in a spacecraft and achieve relativistic speeds. I would need to know the mass of it and the volume of possible output to calculate a final velocity. However, simply saying that it is possible to do doesn't imply it is practical or even doable from a "cost" perspective. It might well cost $100 Trillion dollars to equip such a spacecraft, not to mention it would be probably a mile long. However, you must remember that a spacecraft that leaves orbit burning fuel at a constant rate will create a craft travelling at a constant rate of acceleration. No drag. The only thing preventing such a craft from reaching lightspeed is the effect of energy increase necessary as you approach lightspeed. I have no doubt that a particle accelerator is capable of propelling a vehicle to .6C to .8C, but they are real expensive babys and the amount of fuel needed might not be realistic. However, if we could find a way to mass produce metallic Hydrogen then we might have something. By the way Voyager is using this basic principle on a very small scale. Ion propulsion, and Voyager is still accelerating and got a nice boost from several heavenly bodies. Voyager will continue to accelerate for many many years, until the radioisotopic material decays sufficiently. Might be an interesting math problem to calculate the final velocity of Voyager. Brian D. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site! http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/

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Re: OT: There goes the Solar neighborhood...literally
by Brian Kelsay 29 Mar '05

29 Mar '05

How about if we could use it to get rid of trash and nuclear waste? Then again, we could just send that stuff to the sun. Brian Kelsay >>> Jack <> 03/29/05 09:44AM >>> Ok, this is way OT, but ... they're making black holes in the lab now. Let's hope they don't let one out. :'o

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Re: High await numbers
by Jack 29 Mar '05

29 Mar '05

1) How long as this been happening? Is it something new? Something just noticed? Something that has always been? 2) What does cfdisk/fdisk say about your partitions? Could you post a "screenshot" of fdisk stats on the drive? Brian D. --- Jonathan Hutchins <hutchins(a)tarcanfel.org> wrote: > I'm getting very suspicious numbers for the average > wait time on my swap > partition (hda3). The iostat -x output doesn't look > very good wrapped for > email, but I'm seeing await over 3000 ms, and svctm > over 2000. What's really > surprising about this is that the system is using > the swap partition, but > doesn't seem to be actively swapping - vmstat shows > 0 si/so most of the time. > > Smart monitoring daemon isn't reporting any problems > with the drive, and fsck > doesn't show any errors. > > I did read somewhere that Redhat's iostat sometimes > produces anamolous > readings, but the other readings on the drive look > reasonable. > > Anybody have ideas on how I can pursue this issue > further? > _______________________________________________ > Kclug mailing list > Kclug(a)kclug.org > http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Make Yahoo! your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

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High await numbers
by Jonathan Hutchins 29 Mar '05

29 Mar '05

I'm getting very suspicious numbers for the average wait time on my swap partition (hda3). The iostat -x output doesn't look very good wrapped for email, but I'm seeing await over 3000 ms, and svctm over 2000. What's really surprising about this is that the system is using the swap partition, but doesn't seem to be actively swapping - vmstat shows 0 si/so most of the time. Smart monitoring daemon isn't reporting any problems with the drive, and fsck doesn't show any errors. I did read somewhere that Redhat's iostat sometimes produces anamolous readings, but the other readings on the drive look reasonable. Anybody have ideas on how I can pursue this issue further?

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