Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:FireWire iPod? (Score 1) 64

I still have access to industrial/aerospace test benches using FireWire. But of course they are quite legacy equipment, I would not plug a Mac running a modern version of MacOS into them. Backwards compatibility can always be a bit tricky with Macs (switches to 64 bits only and changes of CPU architectures did not help, of course).

Comment Microbes ? (Score 0) 37

I would like as much as anybody to find life elsewhere than on Earth, but Mars is not the place for this. Mars is cold and dead. Extremophiles live deep down the ocean ridges because there are hydrothermal vents that provide them energy and heat. Europa is a good candidate for life because there is liquid water under its crust, but also because there is a lot of energy transferred to it by Jupiter through tidal forces. There is nothing like this on Mars, it is seismically inert.

Comment Re:Because America is 30 years behind everyone els (Score 1) 136

Europe does have tap and pay, but they did not raise the limit to hundreds of euros (although it depends on the country, most of them have a 50 euro limit). And they introduced last year tap + PIN for higher amounts (it is being deployed in most of the countries right now).

Comment Re:There is a problem with the MOSFETs (Score 4, Informative) 70

They did comprehensive risk mitigation actions since last may :
- They tested every MOSFET lot identified at risk (International Rectifier n-MOSFETs generation 5, 6 and 7), in application conditions. They actually asked every subcontractor for every instrument and equipment on the spacecraft to send them remaining parts in their inventory.
- Because of temperature dependent effects and time dependent effects (mainly concerning annealing of total ionizing dose damage), they could only test up to the mission baseline total ionizing dose constraint. They found the tested parts were to be suitable for the mission, however since they only had a limited number of parts, they do not know the real margin they have, especially if the temperature conditions differ significantly from the baseline.
- So in order to monitor the parts degradation during the actual flight, they designed this summer what they call a "canary box": an equipment with the most sensitive lots of MOSFET onboard, with telemetry to actually measure the main electrical parameters that will degrade with total ionizing dose (mainly the gate-to-source voltage threshold).
- If they measure a higher than expected degradation on the canary box, they will implement mitigation actions (such as shutting down some instruments to limit their total ionizing dose degradation or heating them up to increase annealing)
In conclusion, they feel pretty safe to me...

Slashdot Top Deals

Thufir's a Harkonnen now.

Working...