I've got some old radio gear from the military, and when you're dealing with a 300w uhf transmitter that needs to go into an unpressurized area of an aircraft, you have to go down this same road, because it needs to be AIR-tight (to a large pressure differential), not just WATER-tight.

One unit I have here is a tube type amp. Tubes are NOT efficient. Their solution was to make a hermetically sealed case (complete with pressure gauge and what looks like a bicycle tube valve on the outside. A part of the inside is a heat exchanger, and a fan runs internally to circulate air around in the case. There's a 1x1 hole in the back for intake, and 1x1 hole on the bottom for exhaust. That, along with about 24 1/4" bolts and a large gasket, allows this amp to remain sealed, pressurized, and cooled at 30,000 ft. Note that while there was a fan on the inside exchanger, the unit itself had no external moving parts. The slot you dropped the radio into in the aircraft supplied the moving air into and out of those external holes for the external side of the exchanger.

The old motorola maxtraks were mostly solid-state, but used tubes for their internal PA amp. Instead of a heat exchanger, they used passive radiation for cooling. The power transistors that inverted the AC to run the tubes were bolted onto the sides, were completely covered, but were attached to a large chunk of slightly finned aluminum. It didn't radiate very efficiently, but they didn't generate a LOT of heat, and the plates had a relatively large surface area, so it was enough.

The tubes on the back were a very different story. Normally you cool tubes with air convection, or in much larger applications, with a built-in water jacket. These were placed sideways in the back, and a LARGE hunk of aluminum fitted over them. The inside of the aluminum was curved to wrap around the outer 1/2 of the tube, and be in contact with it. The outside of the aluminum had many large, durable fins. So these tubes were kept cool by passive radiation.

Those maxtraks were made to be tossed (literally) into the back of a squad car and go on high speed joyrides without damage. They were tanks, and used NO air circulation.

I doubt you can use an air exchanger like in my first example, but there it is for reference in case you can use it. You're more likely to go with the second example, and just use a sealed case with a large passive heatsink. You could also just go with the heat pipe and radiator you have for the CPU already, and move that part of it out from the middle a bit, and run the exchanger line(s) out of the main enclosure, exposing the radiator to the outside. That would be fairly easy to waterproof, but most of those exchangers are made of copper and may not fare well when exposed to water. You will also need some sort of a screen / filter to keep the fins clean. The maxtraks didn't care about that, their fins were large plated aluminum, and spaced far apart. Much more durable than a modern heat pump radiator.

You could take inspiration from any modern day solid state amplifier. Even the audio amps would be worth a look, though they don't actually deal with anywhere near as much heat dissipation. (efficiency can get pretty high at audio frequency, and VERY poor at high radio frequency, making good cooling necessary) Many designs use extruded aluminum with fins on the top and two sides. Salvage a chassis off a burned up audio or rf amplifier like this, and go from there. Waterproofing the enclosure will probably be your bigger challenge than cooling.

pictures, or it didn't happen.

You sure you didn't mean http://xkcd.com/538/ ?

(so much wisdom in xkcd...)

So, we've gone from a society where "only rich old white men could vote" to a society where "only rich old white men can get elected".

This is improvement?

thankfully someone turned this one right-side-up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

But as the months have passed, it has come under increasing pressure from U.S. companies to make a ruling.

So nice to see the government only getting off their butts when a company demands they get back to work....

Don't expect them to get it perfect the first time. And depending on their age, don't start them off with what you'd consider the best final approach. You're in a school, treat it like any other learning experience.

Just using passwords may be a new experience for some of them. Start with the basics. I wouldn't focus too much to start with on "strong passwords", they can work on that later. For now, work on selecting a password they can remember, NOT sharing their password, and changing their password as needed.

Once they've spent some time on that and feel more comfortable with it and don't feel like the world is going to explode if they forget their password, move on to password security. Using stronger, longer passwords, using different passwords in different places, password managers, advoiding and dealing with a password lockout, password resetting, etc.

This is just one of those "things they should have taught us in school", treat it as such. Like time/money management, basic cooking, resume writing / job huting etc.

I can see other issues, like not being able to use it while in a cab or bus

I really don't see that as a problem. Very few text messages are so urgent they cannot wait a little while.

But how would you like to find yourself on a bus that's been hijacked by a wacko with a gun or knife, (happens from time to time) and no be able to call 911 until he decides to let the bus stop?

My suspicion is that they will simply not bother discriminating.

Every GPS I've laid my hands on in the past two years has had a motion-lockout enabled on it. (all garmin... maybe it's a Garmin thing?) It won't let you into most of the menus while it senses it's in motion. So me as the passenger, trying to plug in the destination, I have to dig through the menus to find the option and disable it. (I think they bury it on purpose)

One that's off, all the gps functions return to normal and it can be used while in motion. I can't imagine them doing it any differently on a cell phone. Just a matter of not giving the owner the option to disable it.

I wonder how that'll get along with the "any cell phone must be able to dial 911 even if it has no service and is locked" law? They got that one supported by all the manufacturers, and this wlll probably require a similar amount of effort to pull off.

I can see other issues, like not being able to use it while in a cab or bus. But waaaah all you want about that, you shouldn't have used your phone illegally in the first place, endangering the lives of others. That's just part of your punishment.

I'll forgo my mod pts today to make a comment on this I've been wanting to say.

The problem is the first time you fly with an airline you have no idea how crammed they are versus the competition.

What they really ought to be mandated to do is provide physical examples of their seating and storage at the terminal. No more of this guesswork as to what's going to fit in the bin, what's going to fit under the seat, whether or not SirEatsAlot can squeeze into a cattle class seat without "spilling over". No questions as to whether or not my knees can clear the seat in front of me. Seats shown with seat in front in reclining position with a "this is what your fellow passenger is allowed to do to you" sign.

This is mainly an issue of not being able to see the product before paying for it and only after your purchase is non-returnable. This ought to already be illegal. You ought to be able to sit down in a demo seat at the terminal, get out your laptop, realize there is NO space to use it, say "screw that!", get a refund, and get up and walk to the terminal across the way and rebook on another airline.

Our entire government seems to think the constitution can be superseded by any other law whatsoever

That's just what I was thinking. It seesm they're arguing "Now that we have the patriot act on the books and it allows this, the constitution doesn't count.'"

Wait, what?

quoting the report:

"a person s negligent if he does something that a reasonably careful person would not do in the same situation or fails to do somethign that a reasonably careful person would do in the asme situation". ...
"to establish the crime of vehicular manslaughter, the People would be required to prove that Wood's encroachment into the bicycle lane, nuder the circumstances, was negligent." ...
"the fact that Wood did not apply his brakes or swerve to avoid the collision indicates that he did not see or notice Olin until the moment of impact." ...
"Wood's entry of 'Yes I...' followed by '][\NOKKO' is also consisten with him utilizing his MDC at the time of collision" ...
"Based on all of these circumstances, the People cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Wood's momentary distraction in the perfomance of his duties constituted a failure to use reasonable care"

So... he was negligent, he was negligent, he was neglegent. But in summary, he wasn't negligent. Either that or texting while driving isn't negligent. Which I'm pretty sure has gone onto the books in most states by now. If he felt he had to respond immedidately to a message with obvious indications of serious urgency (such as keywords like "bro") he should have done like the same advice he would have given anyone else while ticketing them for texting while driving, "next time, pull over and do your texting from the shoulder".

I also found this particularly insulting in the latter part of the report:

"It is significant to note that the driver in the vehicle directly behind Wood's patrol vehicle, Andrwe McCown, also failed to see Olin in the bicycle lane prior to the collision"

Look back at the witness accouns and see "something equally significant that we aren't going to mention again":

Ashley McCown was the passenger in that vehicle. (the one following Woods patrol car) She stated that she noticed Olin in the bicycle lane prior to the collision"

Of course the driver of the following car didn't see Olin, he doesn't have xray vision to look through the patrol car, his passenger is in the correct place to see around into the right bicycle lane. It look s like the person writing that report was making a number of stretches trying to justify not pressing charges?

Someone with more time on their hands needs to type up and post that report online in searchable format. I can't help but wonder if they deliberately put it up in image format to meet their legal requirements without making it easily quoteable and searchable...

there's really very little difference between optimizing audio and video. back-culling polygons and all that magic to increase framerate by lowering processing overhead. Same thing with audio. It's just that it hasn't really been taken very seriously in the past.

When Marathon came out, it had "ambient sounds" that changed as you moved in relation to their source. They were also in stereo. (these were new, no other fps had it) Sound effects from map features, weapons, and ordinance were adapted based on distance from you and were also in stereo. Sadly, lery little has changed since then.

In other words, it's ok to place this directly agains the wall, because the shape ensures it cannot be placed agains the wall. Well done.

That's actually completely accurate. Towers do tend to get placed under desks, or more commonly, in a corner where the desk meets the wall. Ventillatoin back there is crap, and the system overheats. So rather than make another case that will just generate a lot more support calls and broken harware in warranty, they just made it physically impossible to keep installing it like retard.

y'know... for their retarded customers ;)

Knowing your customer is key to a successful business.

But all sarcasm aside, I do like the new design. I'm a mac fan but I can see some thought went into this both for functionality and for original and interesting design. Even if they fail at both, at least they're trying. It's not just another boring beige / black box.

I think the biggest concern for me though would be how much floor space this is going to take up, plus how little or zero space there is to set anything on it. I don't even think you could set the keyboard aside on it without risking it falling over. And imagine the users setting drinks on top of it! At least with a box, if you knock your drink over, it's on the floor. HERE.... it can drain your entire soda into the mobo ports (back) or fan intake. (front) I think that will be the biggest problem this case has, getting users out of the habbit of setting things on top of their case.

Look at the top of any manned rocket. see that "mini rocket" looking thing strapped to the top? that's an "escape tower". It IS a mini rocket. if there's a catastrophic faulure on a rocket massive enough to go to the moon, you REALLY don't want it hitting dirt before it explodes. The cabin module separates from the top with explosive bolts, and the escape tower pulls them a distance away from the main rocket and after awhile a parachute goes off.

Probaby still a heck of a close call though, being so close to the rocket when it blows up. But you still have a chance.