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High Power RocketCam Videos
HaveNoMouth writes "What happens when the founder of Xircom and his brother bolt a DV Camcorder to the side of a 200 lb. model rocket and press the red button? The incredible movies (with sound!) at Gates Bros. Rocketry tell the tale. The quality of these movies is by far the best I've seen from the "strap a camera to a flying toy" community. They have a nice gallery of still photos too.
If only everyone named Gates did stuff this cool."
Tens of thousands of USD is blown up in the air and converted into a couple of movies which can be shown on Slashdot so that we can make insightful comments like this?
and the site haven't been /.ed yet... :)
if only they could strap a DVcam to the desk pointing at the blinkenlights on their server as the poor thing gets slashdotted to hell and back
You know, since Carmack shares a love of the same hobby as these gentlemen, I wonder if this would interest him? I would say it might. And being that it might, I wonder if he would code a mini-cam for the Rocket Launcher in Doom III? Bullet-time eat your heart out!
Zech Harvey, MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA
You put movies with sound up on your site and someone links to it on Slashdot? The server goes down hard!
Actually, I'm impressed - I'm downloading one of the mpegs right now and getting it at a pretty good speed.
Russ
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
I guess it'd be an improvement over strapping someone to a rocket then hoping they survived the landing so they could tell you about it.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
So I build this nice, trim little single stage rocket (solid fuel), and my brother talks me into strapping another zero delay motor onto the bottom....it went fine until the tagged on motor lit the main motor....the rocket tumbled just for an instant, and when the main motor fired, the rocket was horizontal...it quickly made it to a nearby freeway and took out an aged Mustang. We figured since lunch was almost over we'd just as soon head back to the lab and quietly call it a day. A camera on that one would have shown one ticked off Mustang owner, I'm sure.
:)
Don't know if I have the nerve to sacrifice a DV camera...but maybe someone else's camera would be ok
While the on rocket cams are good, I think the tower ones are most impressive. I'm amazed the cameras still worked afterwards! Wow!
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
"What happens when...."
For one, JVC and Canon camcorder models mentioned in the site get shock certified at 0.6 Mach speed, with forces exceeding 1G. Wow!
"Do something man. Right now."
Is it really really neccessary to have a cheap shot at MS no matter how little the post might be related? Why don't we just have a default sig "Windoze sucks, Linux rulez."?
Just in case the posters read the comments: Please lash out at MS and other scapegoats ONLY when it is justified. (not too optimistic, since not all posters proofread the submissions or even read the articles, it seems... sigh...)
It's pretty offtopic, I know, but does anyone else here really wonder about Bill Gates? I mean, he is a geek, right? Would it be possible to hang out with the guy and have a good time chatting about different clever ways to approximate solutions to the travelling salesman problem?
Does the guy code?
Does he have other geek hobbies?
I mean, seriously. I think this is fascinating stuff. Whether we like it or not, HE'S ONE OF US (but maybe with a different economic perspective). Wouldn't it be interesting to get to know the other Bill Gates?
Oh, the videos of the rockets are OK too.
*rimshot*
What happens when the founder of Xircom and his brother bolt a DV Camcorder to the side of a 200 lb. model rocket and press the red button?
:)
You prove to NASA that it can be done cheaply?
-mo
I just watched the high res version of the on-board camera for Jayhawk...and it was awesome!! Beats NASA's attempt at strapping on a camera to a rocket, if you ask me.
Besides, it landed standing up. How cool is that?
---
Open Source Shirts
strap a camera to a flying toy and fly it into the showers at a local school
Get the best of both, people freaking out hilariously and lots of h4w7 n3kk1d gur1z 8-). You could even have it blow up afterward, but that would ruin the whole video thing.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
Whoa. Rocket cam. Cool. Very cool. It's like you're there man! up in the sky! a bird? a plane? No, just geeks like us! Up in the rocket! I can fly! Here I come space boy -- Watch me now!
Gonna slash and burn on impact though...nothing can survive what's about to hit the Gates' brothers overly generous web site.
I'm triply amazed! This is damn hot stuff, good quality video, and the site is still alive! Kudos to the Gates brothers!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
...I could finally yell, "Fly lunchbox, fly!"
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Exactly. It is extremely bizarre in cases like this where the thrill is obtained by just burning money and no brains or hack value (which they seem to be hunting for) involved at all. I believe this experiment could have been useful too - but atleast they failed to reveal that on the site. But naturally, it is their money and they can burn it anyway they want. As it must matter for them a lot: hack-value points from the local audience: void.
Wouldn't it be better and more rewarding to give the money to charity than to just blow up DV camcorders.
No.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Spending money at all on childish poverty will make no difference? These things have always been with us?
Er.. maybe they have always been with us *because* idiots like you propose spending no money.
I'd rather see these on prime-time TV than glorified remote-controlled chainsaws destroying each other... The views of the horizon gliding into place is absolutely breathtaking!
BTW, if you had actually RTFA or watched the videos, you would know that they recover the rockets using parachutes - which keeps the camcorders from breaking apart when the rockets reacquaint themselves with terra firma.
If you really believe your own bullshit, what are you doing with a computer and an internet connection? For what you spend every month on your internet connection alone you could feed a starving child in Uganda for a year! I mean, really! Shame on you (and me)!
We should be volunteering at our local soup kitchens and donating all our spare cash to feed those poor starving children in some nameless backwater instead of surfing the web, watching TV, and playing with our modded Xboxes. After all, /. user number 601843 says so!
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
People have always murdered each other and always will. Let's stop wasting MY (MY, MY, MY!) TAX MONEY on cops.
I hope the monkey cameraman is ok! So what are the laws on space? Can just anybody who wants to ( i.e. has enough cash ) build a rocket and go to space. Supposing, of course the materials to build said spacecraft were not in the several hundred million to billion range? Furthermore, can one send a monkey up? To test things on. In a Zero G environment. I mean, anyone can go up in the air right? With an ultralite, or circus cannon, without a pilots license. Does one need a Space license?
There's a sneaky ad in the "Related info" box.
As if having a page wide, animated and fucking annoying SourceForge ad at the top of the page, now they've started cramming ads down our throats.
So they aren't allowed to have a hobby now? Who are you to tell or even suggest how and where they spend their money?
If you'd have taken the trouble to take a look at the site and the video's, you'd have seen that the object they tried to achieve wasn't blowing up camcorders, it was to send one up in a rocket and bring it down in one piece. Which they did.
As for the "gain" they got out of it... as anyone with a similar hobby knows, it is not about cheap thrills, but about the thrill of personal achievement. And as anyone who has experienced that kind of thrill will attest: it is something worth spending money on.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
no text0x
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Bill Gates doesn't do anything cool.
/. reader, he must be told.
As he is an active
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
With the camera sticking out of the side? Many, many rockets have been totally destroyed from just losing one fin. This series of rockets had a whole fairing bigger than a grapefruit protruding from it and it never tumbled. (except the one which had a parachute failure.)
no kidding. the HERRD0KT0R FUND FOR BLOWING UP CRAP has been bone dry ever since the dotcom bubble burst.
people, give to charities now! without your support, the only people who'll be able to blow stuff up are people like the Gates brothers.
i'd give to this charity myself, but you know, i'd rather spend money on computers and stuff so i can spend my time bitching and moaning about things, instead of dedicating my resources to anything productive. like a job. so i can make money. to blow stuff up.
Was there poverty before money?
Ultimately, possesion is what leads to poverty. It also leads to having an economy. If you ask me the jury's still out, but in Western Civilization, inventing shit, finding new ways to do things, and getting rich is "morally right." Cultures that don't hold those values get disappeared by Western Civilization. Our whole "way of life" is in part predicated on greed. It's the Invisible Hand that Adam Smith was all on about.
The problem, though, is how do you get people to share without, well, completely redistributing wealth and resources? And why shouldn't there be poor people? If you're lazy, shouldn't you be poor?
These questions have been debated for centuries, and we still have poverty. We suck.
Firstly this has no scientific value at all.
Secondly, I am not proposing an anti-technological anti-progress position here. It is quite simple, these people are *burning* money for no other reason than there own individualistic selfish satisfaction. And yes, the fuel costs money as does the destroyed rockets, ruined camcorders (lets face it how long can they really last) and all to stick look-at-me videos on the internet.
I am merely stating that when you look around at the world (and the Internet has been enormously useful in helping us to do just that) you see repressive states, anti-democractic regimes, torture, poverty, starvation and unhappiness.
When you start to think you as a nation have absolutely no responsibilies to the rest of the globe (ie as America so often does) then there is a very real danger in the growth of terrorist organisations and anti-american sentiment growing. And if this is allowed to grow unchecked *no* amount of American hegemony or military muscle is going to stop it. This is a political problem and requires sensitivity to the problems of the world.
I fear that the Internet as an advert for the sheer unadulturated self-satisified and selfish behaviour of Americans will be the last thing you as a nation need at the moment. But then maybe its true that you *really* don't care and don't want to know...
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
I'm curious to know: Do you have to get permission to launch these things? or is it a free-for-all
Is there some sort of height limit?
What about the UK (where I live)?
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Have you actually *read* The Wealth of Nations? Do you think that Adam Smith was proposing completely unchecked market economics???
Er... No.
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
It's always like this:
If someone suggests that we start caring about people, or even try to be less egoistic, he's a 'liberal'.
And I don't even find 'liberal' derogatory, is that baad, Mr. Right-wing?
Since you people seem to use it as an insult.
Meep.
I thought it was a site that welcomed interesting thoughts and comments and valued the American values of debate and democracy.
Or maybe I was wrong.
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
I agree. but you can imagine the networks getting hold of it and making the rockets hit each other "for the 12-18 male demographic."
Sigh. It's true. In the TV business the product is not the show that is sold to the viewers; the product is the viewers who are sold to the advertisers.
Just move to Sweden!
Here they tax the hell out of everybody.
An old woman living in an old house in an attractive area can't afford to buy a dish washer because that would increase her property tax by about $250 _yearly_. Great!
"Being Rude to Foriegners" by the French Government
And the follow-up in the "Government" series - "Things I Don't Know Much About" by George W. Bush
This sounds very similar to the premise of October Sky , a brilliant movie based on a true story about some school kids (from a coal mining town)getting obsessed with rockets and blowing things up in the process; and how ultimately this passion helps them get out of the unescapable coaltown. On of 'em actually made it to NASA. However , all this was sans cameras. So where are these guys going to land up ?
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
Piglet was firmly taped to a display firework rocket (one of those damn huge ones), head facing the sky before being fired into the sky. Can you say "Pigs in Spaaaaaaace!" ;) :)
I wish we could have had a Piglets eye view of it, we kept finding bits of piglet in nearby streets for days
Why are so many slashdotters so seemingly terrified of a critical question about one of the site posts?
Must we really be robots being fed this information or can we actually say something critical occassionally without the need for abuse?
No-one seems to be proposing outlawing hobbies, and frankly I don't propose to, however some hobbies make less sense than others, for example Saddam presumably thinks he has every right to indulge in his 'hobbies' so why are you American's so keen to stop him? Oh right, yeah, because he is a *threat* to the world, he is 'evil'... oh I see claims to a moral position when it suits the *Americans*....
Or would it be ok if he strapped DV cameras to his rockets and posted them to Slashdot?
Does raise the interesting question of this very useful rocket technology information being posted where Saddam can find it easily ...
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
I'm sorry, but I'm thinking of those FoxTrot comics where Marcus and Jason attach the video camera to the rocket which upsets the balance and it flies straight at them. Something along those lines happaned to me once.
Wouldn't it be better and more rewarding to give away your money to charity than to sell electronica, like at locarecords.com?
Perhaps we should stop buying music. Especially electronica. All those expensive synthesizers.
How can anybody buy or sell entertainment when the children are starving?
You did get an eyeball going to your site - was that the purpose of this troll?
The site exceeded its bandwidth limit.
There's a difference, you know.
(Talk about knee-jerk reactionaries.... or is that just 'jerk' reactionaries...)
I must say, The least Billy could do is launch a remote controlled space shuttle into orbit and rendevous with the ISS. He could have a camera beam his face to an lcd on the front so he could pull up to one of the viewports and scare the astronauts.
What amazes me is that the video camera can still record footage succesfully given the enormous g-forces sustained at takeoff. The clarity of video appears unaffected.
I would have at least expected a bit of flicker as the tape strains, or the motor backtracks a little or something...
Very cool.
Yes; we should be acting like spoilt little children, to as much of an extent as our pocketbooks will permit.
.
It is, after all, the American dream
Kid-proof tablet..
And as I have said previously, I am not anti-technological nor anti-progess, merely I believe we need to be more sensitive to issues. Rather than, wow a rocket that has a DV camera, gosh, wow, amazing. Yeah right.. amazing waste of money... hardly creative and hardly useful either...
And I have not said stop buying things. The purpose of the post was to raise a dissenting voice and say, hey, maybe this isn't all that great, is that *so* bad??
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
"...very useful rocket technology information being posted where Saddam can find it easily ..."
Oh, grow UP!
The sheer arrogance of your assumption that Saddam needs to learn about rockets from a model rocketry post on Slashdot... simply mind BOGGLING.
You, sir, need a reality check. One that doesn't bounce.
Yeah, it's lots of fun dissing Bill. But Slashdot will get more kudos in the wider world if it restricts it's criticism of Microsoft to situations where it's really justified.
I can't believe you are comparing rocketry videos with using chemical weapons on your own people. When I was in school, you could tell a debate was degenerating when someone made an analogy to Hitler. Today, it is Saddam.
Congratulations on resorting to the last refuge of a desperate debater. Only took you 50 minutes from your first post.
And I assume you have the credentials to back up this claim? Please tell me which university has granted you a degree in rocket science or aerospace engineering.
It is quite simple, these people are *burning* money for no other reason than there own individualistic selfish satisfaction.
It's their money to burn. Maybe the people who do these kinds of things also tend to be socially-conscious people who donate a sizeable chunk of time and/or money to the Good Cause Du Jour. Besides, hobbies, individualism and fun are bad because...?
I am merely stating that when you look around at the world (and the Internet has been enormously useful in helping us to do just that) you see repressive states, anti-democractic regimes, torture, poverty, starvation and unhappiness.
And what exactly do you suggest we do about this? I mean it - if you have the solutions to these problems, speak up! People have been trying to solve these problems for literally thousands of years - if you know how to solve them, well...the Nobel Peace Prize awaits!
When you start to think you as a nation have absolutely no responsibilies to the rest of the globe (ie as America so often does)...
You're right. We don't. Since when did the US (or any other nation) become the world's police force/janitors/feeders/saviours? Why should we have to clean up the messes made by others? Everybody bitches when the US doesn't get involved, then they bitch when the US does get involved. Make up your fucking minds already!
...Resentment caused by the US getting involved and trying to help someone somewhere (regardless of whether said attempts to help were unsuccessful and/or directed at the wrong people or places - nobody ever said the US was perfect, at least nobody who's sane).
And if this is allowed to grow unchecked *no* amount of American hegemony or military muscle is going to stop it.
Hear hear! Personally I'd like to see the US withdraw from the UN and tell them to find another country to hold their parties in, then withdraw all military forces to US soil, to be used only to totally annihilate any nation that invades the country or blows up parts of it. Then tell the rest of the world to go clean up their own damn mess.
But then maybe its true that you *really* don't care and don't want to know...
<sarcasm>You're right. I don't care and I don't want to know. I just want to watch cool videos of big penis-shaped rockets being fired into the air, and speculate on how big of a payload they could carry to blow up schools and hospitals in some third-world starving hellhole.</sarcasm>
(jlanthripp, posting anonymously because of the bleeding heart socialists with mod points)
for flushing an American company that actually produces something exciting down the bandwidth toilet...
503 Service Unavailable
The requested URL Bandwidth is temporarily unavailable.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
I don't think you can use "American values" and "debate and democracy" in the same sentence anymore. Or maybe just democracy, you can still debate all you want as long as you just debate and don't act.
And no, I'm not trolling, I really think democracy left gradually without anyone noticing.
In my opinion, Scientology is a cult you should avoid.
Knowledge is useful. *Even* from Slashdot!
Isn't it lovely to complain ... about other people.
Giving liberals a bad name.
Must have! Must want! Soon!
Yep, I think Bush is a lousy debater as well. Just because I disagree with david@LOCArecords does not mean I like Bush, or American nationalism for that matter. To me Bush calls to mind the phrase "the revenge of the C students".
maybe some idle billionaire really want to visit the upper lower atmosphere and be willing to pay top dollar because the tv coverage will be good for PR. mmmmm a business opportunity presents itself, might pop down the patent office this afternoon...
this sig steers like a cow. and i can prove it
Alternative download sites ??
What happens when?... it gets slashdotted! Help them out, slashdot!
Anybody get a mirror? Maybe slashdot should think about providing mirrors of small time operators' sites when an article like this is posted. We all *know* the poor little guy is going to get slashdotted. At best, he can't show his girlfriend/ dad/ best friends what he is up to. At worst, he gets a hefty bandwidth bill from his ISP. Linking to IBM etc is another thing, but surely slashdot could show a bit of community spirit and responsibility and offer a mirror before posting up articles with links to little guys?
heheh..
I bet PETA would love if i took a cat and straped it to the rocket.
503 Service Unavailable
The requested URL Bandwidth is temporarily unavailable.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
Microsoft sets course for Jupiter
Microsoft Corp will today announce further details of its Jupiter project to componentize and integrate its e-business server family, including Content Management Server 2002, Commerce Server 2002, and BizTalk Server 2002.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Yes, I know divx is smaller. But you have no idea how painful a pain in the, um, what a hassle divx is for some (read OS X) people to deal with. And, personally, I think the quality of divx is somewhere around that of real video, not the purtiest horse in the stable. Naw, they would get /.ed no matter what format they use, so why not the best?
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
Maybe she should pay attention to his tax form and into deductions in particular...
Why do people spend tons of money on case mods? there is no real use to the freakin thing!!
because it's a hobby!!
come on!! everyone needs a hobby, some peoples hobbies are just a litte more expensive then others!
This is just as childish as anyone else who has a hobby
on a side note, I saw these guys launch at LDRS in Amarillo, these guys rockets kicked some SERIOUS ass!! and if you happen to watch the video's rarely destroy a rocket
here it is:: www.gbrocketry.com/movie_theater.htm+&hl=en&start= 1&ie=UTF-8
http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:FfdE9ICFkdQC
But the movies are not cached... so you must wait until the slashdot effect passes...
I was there.
And why shouldn't there be poor people? If you're lazy, shouldn't you be poor?
:P
Very true... if there's equal opportunity. If Dubya's daddy wasn't a wealthy man, I'm pretty sure he'd be crawling in a gutter right now, instead of playing Wargames.
If someone's unwilling to work, they should be poor. If someone works 12 hours a day for minimum wage, they shouldn't be.
But then again, I guess I'm just a European communist.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
LDRS in Amarillo , More LDRS Photos and Gates Brothers Rocket at LDRS Other sites VERY MASSIVE ROCKET another link
Beats me ;)
This is just as childish as anyone else who has a hobby on a side note, I saw these guys launch at LDRS in Amarillo, these guys rockets kicked some SERIOUS ass!! and if you happen to watch the video's rarely destroy a rocket
True. I guess it's just too hard to imagine myself in the same league of money wasting. My original point was however, that it would have been interesting to read some bit more analytical results of the experiments. I'm sure these guys have already a lot to share on the subject. Anyway, it was dull whining from me. I guess I am having a bad hair day. :)
Damn right. That was not the intent either.
What happens when the founder of Xircom and his brother bolt a DV Camcorder to the side of a 200 lb. model rocket and press the red button?
They have to get a new web hosting provider because the old one gets slashdotted, blames them for the outage, and kicks them out?
link to photos of GB rockets at LDRS
Really this is like the 10th time in the past two weeks you guys have hosed someone's site. You should start asking permission before you post someone's site here.
> Oh and hang on. Bush compares Saddam with... er... hang on... right yeah.. Hitler...
:)
:)
Hmm. Let's run through the list.
- enourmous support from own people during economic depression resulting from sanctions due to previous lost war? CHECK
- gasses own people, along ethnic lines? CHECK
- develops military strength, while trying to pretend otherwise? CHECK Ok, ok, that's under debate
- tolerates no dissention in his ranks? CHECK
Now let's compare/contrast the model rocketry gang along the same lines
I've been seeing these films on Roadrunner vs Coyote, though they look a little chalky.
...but I'll bite. What you are proposing is that people who work in making DV camcorders and model rockets become unemployed, so we can give them as charity the money we currently waste in such expensive toys?
Right wingers try to label these causes "liberal" because they want to force through their agenda - which is to let you send up rockets and keep guns, but to stop you from having:
- Extra-marital sex
- Non-missionary-position sex
- Gay sex
- Mood altering substances other than alcohol and tobacco
And from:- Questioning US foreign policy
- Questioning the right of people to run the govt. because they have a lot of money
- Asking awkward questions, full stop.
Trying to get people to confuse liberalism with left wing social activism is a well tested Republican technique.Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
It is quite simple, these people are *burning* money for no other reason than there own individualistic selfish satisfaction.
A frickload of things and discoveries have been made thanks to someone's selfish interest throughout History.
One if the nominations for the prestigious (or facrcical depending on your POV) Turner Prize was a video taken with a camera strapped to a toy helicopter which buzzed BBC Broadcasting House in London. According to The Guardian it 'had at least two art world glitterati spluttering on their Jimmy Choo shoes'
Maybe the Gates Brothers should try for next years prize?
"I deny nothing, but doubt everything." Lord Byron
"If only everyone named Gates did stuff this cool."
:)
What? Windows for Warheads?
heh. I particularly enjoyed this part.
Hear hear! Personally I'd like to see the US withdraw from the UN and tell them to find another country to hold their parties in, then withdraw all military forces to US soil, to be used only to totally annihilate any nation that invades the country or blows up parts of it. Then tell the rest of the world to go clean up their own damn mess.
Right on... I'll just happily move into that underground bunker I've been constructing in my backyard when the fallout makes the surface totally uninhabitable.... Maybe I'd better bone up on my plate welding skills to thicken the walls some more...
-- El Sacarino tiene gusto de la chocha
Hey! Look over there! *point* I see a poor child starving!
Honestly, if you really cared about those kids you'd be out there giving all your money to those little critters instead of sitting in your comfy chair whining about everybody being so insensitive.
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
When the founder of Xircom can't afford some decent bandwidth.
No, a libertarian is a very particular kind of US right-wing liberal. Libertarians believe that their personal freedom is more important than things like equality of opportunity, and have a restricted notion of what constitutes harm to other people (basically they tend to have the right-wing extreme insistence on property rights.)
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
This gives a new meaning to bowel endoscopy.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
... he's one of us and everyone else is jealous of the fact that not only did he have the skills but the business sense to cash in on it all?
Oh, thats right, the whole struggling 'artist' concept applies- it's good to suffer the injustices of the majority for your craft....
By definition, if it weights over 1500 grams, it is NOT a model rocket. Their web server is /.'d, so I can't read their details. Assuming their rocket really has a lift off weight of 200 lbs., it is going to require a substantial motor of that would clearly put it into the high power class.
Back in the 1970s, Estes rocket corpi neroc.h tml
had a model on which mounted a Super 8mm
movie camera. Ah, those were the days!
http://www.paratech-parachutes.com/Estes/c
If only everyone named Gates did stuff this cool.
Yeah..... sadly, all Bill Gates does is donate hundreds of millions of dollars to finance vaccinations for children in third-world countries who otherwise wouldn't receive them. But then again, not everybody named Gates can put their fortunes to such practical use......
</sarcasm>
http://www.joereger.com/detail_fs.joe?eventid=810
Descent II had guided missiles since the Doom II times man !!
It was the upgrade to the homing missiles from Descent.
You could see them in the cockpit, or in the main display if you wished.
And it was the first real 3D game before Quake. What a great game.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
"If only everyone named Gates did stuff this cool." Come on people grow up. Oh...and check the facts. Truth is that out of all the big moneymakers in the tech industries, Bill Gates does more good stuff with his money than any of the other richy rich children out there. Just check out the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I know some people who work there and they do some truly excellent stuff. Maybe not the flash of of a camera, but i'm sure the MILLIONS of people positively affected by this Foundation think it's at least as cool. p.s. This reply typed on my powerbook, via the Chimera browser.
I wish slashdot would simply stop posting links.
There was also a Tribes 1 mod that allowed you to deploy a base station which you could load with various missle types (my favorite was the one that exploded in poison gas) and then fly them around the map. You had to put them on the ground or on a structure, and you could only carry one missle ata time, so they had to be near an inventory station. My brother and I found a bug which allowed you to delpoy them on these floating, mid-air platforms with inventory stations. He'd fly a bomber waaaay up into the sky, I'd jump out, deploy the platform, fall to my death. He'd fly above the platform, jump out onto it, then set up a transporter. I'd respawn in the base, set up the other transporter, and wind up on the base in the sky. Then we'd set up missle stations and fly around destroying things. The best was when you had a missle in the air and you saw a scout car (really fast one-man vehicles). They were the same speed as the missles (except for one type) and catching them was a challenge. Occasionally, we'd get three people flying missles around. It took about 4 minutes to gain air superiority over most of the map. It took about 8 minutes for the other team to find our base in the sky and blow it up (or try, we'd defend it pretty well).
Anyway, flying missles around is great in CTF-type FPS games, especially when they have ultra-large, indoor/outdoor maps like in Tribes -- it gives the game a "Gulf War" flavor.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
If I were them I'd start worrying about over-zealous lawyers coming after them for damages. The worrying thing is, the lawyer might have a case. I mean if hundreds of US are repeatedly pointing out to slashdot how irresponsible/lazy it is of them to not at least give warning, knowing that a slashdotting is imminent...
I'm serious! The lawyer might have a leg to stand on. And I'm sure slashdot doesn't really want to end up spending what meagre money it has on lawyers of it's own.
Not that I or you think that they'd be justified. Put your stuff up in public, no fault of anyone else if an interested crowd shows up. Bah, I'm just trying to scare them into it.
Giving a warning WOULD be a courteous thing to do.
Slashdot hosts text, and the few images it feels it needs for the UI, which are cached by most browsers. It needs beefy database and application servers, but the bandwidth is relatively low.
Slashdot's 'content', what people come for, is all hosted by other people. It almost always is full of multimedia. They pay the real bandwidth costs.
In this business, at sufficient scales, bandwidth approaches 100% of the costs, the servers nearly factor out. So, Slashdot offers a service to its readers for almost nothing by passing on the content costs to the sites it links to.
Don't get me wrong, the slashdot infrastructure is well-done, it's highly available and you do need good capacity to handle the user base it has, but it couldn't be profitable if it had to pay for all the bandwidth the 'Slashdot-experience' requires.
Now, if they had caches for 'gold-level' subscribers, that might be profitable, say at a hundred bucks a year.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Dude. this is slashdot. you don't have to read the article to be an expert.
;-)
By the way, it was brilliant how you refuted my arguments simply by positing that I never read the article. And I don't know how you inferred what you did in the part before the ???
For the record, my point is: The same forces which creates so many of the good things in civilization also ensures there will be bad things, and that bad things will happen if an individual sees a compelling enough good to offset the badness.
Take for example that time-bomb oil tanker two miles underwater off the coast of Spain. That's a bad thing. But before it sank, it was good. It would create wealth and add value for so many people along the way, as it gets unloaded, refined, distributed, sold, and combusted.
We all get in our cars in the morning and drive to work, knowing that by doing so, we guarantee that eventually things like this oil tanker disaster-in-the-works are bound to happen. So on the one hand we have the "good thing" of being highly mobile and the freedom that brings. And essentially the Western World has decided that we'd rather have cars and run the risk of a huge ecological disaster than NOT drive cars, and NOT run the risk of a huge ecological disaster.
The ways society justifies or rationalizes that decision-making process are many, but a really important one (possibly paramount) is Capitalism. We do things for no other reason than they will create wealth. They need not perform a useful function, creating wealth is utility in and of itself. It seems innocent enough, but a lot of it has "hidden costs", or at least costs that the capitalist won't have to pay directly, because they'll get some big government bailout or corporate welfare or special law passed, like this thing shielding Eli Lilly from lawsuits because they used mercury in their injections. See, the immunization of children represents a "good thing," they used a mercury preservative because it was cheaper, which had a "hidden cost" that didn't show up on the balance sheet at first. And now society is stepping in, to shield Eli Lilly from paying that hidden cost, because we've decided that we'd rather have Eli Lilly around in the future to create more value than to make them pay for their "oops." Which wasn't really an "oops", except in the sense of "oops, we got caught." Monsanto, GE, the S&L bailout... It's pretty obvious why we have poverty. If I could stop paying to clean up other people's messes, things might change. But that might put thousands of decent, hard-working people out of good-paying American jobs, and we can't have that!
This is all probably nothing new to you, since you've read Adam Smith.
peace bro
Wouldn't it be better and more rewarding to give the money to charity than to just blow up DV camcorders. This seems enormously childish and selfish for no gain *except* the feeling of burning money for nothing but a cheap thrill.
damn hippies.
nah.. not more rewarding. now go hug a tree and eat some granola.
rockets are cooler than charities. at least you know where your cash is going.
Heres a snap from a model rocket pointed downwards whilest in flight from a Kodak DC20.
/. before.
In-Flight
This looks similar to the Kite photography that was on
From Steve's Digicams website
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
You have an ID in the thousands and just noticed that sites linked to from Slashdot have a tendency to be "hosed"? Are you often told that you are very perceptive? ;-)
I think that we all know when that happened.
Right.. and tell me again why is it that Bin Laden attacked the US.. oh yeah and they've done a great job of catching him haven't they...
God. Some of you are so stupid it makes me want to puke. American arrogance will only lead to more attacks, more terrorism and more helplessness from America.
Your nukes are no use if you haven't got anyone to point them at.
And how about declining to post if the recipient of the slashdotting decides they don't wan't to be down for 2 days?
A warning means nothing, is the site owner supposed to go buy/install/configure $500,000 worth of machinery so that a million snot-nose geeks can get their rocket picture jollies?
Slash has never once shown the slightest interest in being "responsible". It won't start now and it never will. I hope they do get sued out of existance on day because of it. It's only fair. They've put down at least one site every day it's been in existance!
Yeah lets compare.. with a President who *Stole* the election from the American people...
Yeah interesting eh?
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
It appears that we've managed to slashdot the page. Maybe we can see it next month!
Here's another site with videos from both low and high power rockets:
www.videorocketry.com
(videos available Here)
One prime candidate for a low power camera is the discontinued Intel Play Digital Movie Creator. You record video onto a chip and upload to your PC via USB. I believe I saw this camera resurface at Toys R Us under the manufacturer name "Digital Blue". Anyone?
Here is an example of the Intel camera at work in an off-the-shelf Estes rocket with a payload bay added
And here is a rocket with Gumby as the pilot.
Another example of how Slashdot can be a denial of service attack
If you don't want people to look at your website, don't make it public.
/., they don't have to ask anyone's permission before linking to your site. A similar situation is, if someone finds a cool web site, they don't have to ask permission before forwarding the URL to their friends (even though that might cause it to be forwarded on to thousands more people)
If you DO make it public, and a lot of people suddenly look at it, and as a result you exceed your bandwidth/transfer-limit/server-specs limitations, this means one of two things:
(1) Your site has become, at least temporarily, far more popular than you anticipated! Hooray!! Now to call the ISP...
(2) You can't afford to be popular, so you probably shouldn't have made it so public. You, the server administrator, made a mistake. Perhaps you should have required a password to access the resources.
If someone runs their own web page, like
If someone makes your server so popular that you can't handle it, that's really not their problem.
-=Ivan
So... DDOS attacks are bad, but slashdot is without blame. Hmmm.....
This might get modded as a troll or whatever, but I don't care. Moderators, do your worst.
I prefer the capitalist model: That $700 (or whatever) DV cam was designed by a team of engineers, tested by a group of consumers, packaged and sold by JVC, and manufactured using hundreds of components from all over. Each motor, lens, PCB, etc. all has vast amounts of engineering behind it. Then JVC sells this camera to distributors, who truck it to your local Best Buy or whatever electronics shop, where it is put on the shelves and sold at the register.
My point is, that a $700 camera has untold thousands of people getting paid for its development, manufacture, and sale. Many of these people have kids and grandchildren, who will no doubt contribute to the charities you speak. They got paid from the sale of that $700 camera.
Some people tend to forget that money spent in the great engine of capitalism can improve the lives of thousands, where a pittance of direct aid might improve the life of a few if it's not siphoned off by a corrupt government.
Granted, I'm not telling you to stop donating to Your Favorite Charity, but keep in mind there are other ways to help.
my US$0.02
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
I built the SR-71 as well, and you're not kidding about the time. Mine went straight into retirement as a static display...no guts :)
One:
What are your qualifications in saying that?
Two:
The Gates brothers have been doing a lot of research type stuff, simply because many of their rockets are so big. A copule of examples off the top of my head:
Three:
Why does that matter? It's their money, they get to do whatever they feel like with them. Again, what's your own status here? Do you have a hobby? How come you own a computer and use it to post to slashdot instead of "doing something useful"?
"*burning* money for no other reason than there own individualistic selfish satisfaction" is a pretty good definition of the word hobby. (Not that they're the only ones enjoying it, I was there at LDRS and saw their flights, and I had a really good time.)
I fly rockets too, though not at their level (I'm level 2, biggest rocket is 4" by about six feet, highest altitude about 4400 feet), and it certainly is an expensive hobby, but it's one that really drives you to do things you never thought you could. And there's a lot of undiscovered goodness in between what the HPR industry does and the "real space industry". These things actually will make a difference in making spaceflight affordable.
"An object declared as type _Bool is large enough to store the values 0 and 1." -- 6.1.2.5, C99 standard.
Your article is no longer an article because of the slashdot effect
Links to movies on Slashdot's main page?
Duck and cover!
*server explodes*
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
I stumbled across this thread. You guys really need to get a life. Normally I wouldn't take the time to respond. Life's too short. But Shhheeeeesh! C'mon guys. Get out there and smell the flowers! (Pansies excepted).
Anonymous Coward
PS I am giggling to myself that this posting is going to elicit about 100 responses. Giggling because I won't be around to read them... you guys are going to be reading each other's responses while I am out having a good time.
Thats modded up as fun, but its insightful too. Perhaps the original poster should have given a months cable bill to a charity instead of posting on slashdot?
Your definition was tending towards the libertarian aspect of liberalism -- the "keep your laws off my body" sort of thing under the umbrella of "civil libertarianism." This IS very different from libertarianism in the American sense, which one friend described as "mutant Republicanism."
Liberalism goes beyond these prohibitions to impose affirmative obligations on society, as you note, and thus liberals tend to approve of government intervention to effectuate justice. This ranges from affirmative application of civil rights laws (desegregation, etc.) to welfare to social security to medicare and so on. (The older conservatives get the more sound these latter entitlements seem to them.)
I like the ring of "free-market liberal," intended to emphasize individual/group rights without the cloying overgoverning of socialism.
OK, I may as well admit that I turned 51 last October. As a kid growing up during the 1950's and 1960's, I watched "The Twentieth Century", narrated by Walter Cronkite. The series ran 1957..1967. It was a popular science show.
The intro to the program every week was... a filmclip taken from the side of a rocket as it was launched. The film was a bit grainy. The rocket was stabilized by spinning around the long axis. You could get dizzy watching it. I'd love to be able to get my hands on one of those broadcasts today.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
I live near Seattle, and a close family member of mine works at Microsoft. I'm working at a pizza joint right now while I'm in college, and Bill Gates has showed up a couple times with his wife in the past couple years. We all know it's him because of his credit card and his amazing likeness to himself. He didn't have any armed security guards or cheuffers. He drives a nice sportscar. Both times he sat with his wife in a semi-private booth near the back. We're not even close to an upper-class pizza restaurant and we're kind of far from his home in Medina or his Redmond home (about 10 miles), so I'm not sure why he came here twice (while I've been working here, apparently he's been here five or six times at least).. maybe some kind of function at the university.
My family member who works at Microsoft said he's a pretty down to earth guy and he drives his own car without security guards around him. He has a bunch of nice expensive cars and has a tendency to not come to complete stops at stop signs.
And if anyone's wondering, he and his wife ordered a medium mushrooms, onions, and sausage with extra sauce the first time I was there (I nabbed his receipt). The second time I think he ordered a supreme. He tipped $2 I think but we're not exactly full-service so that's better than 98% of customers. And I didn't nab his credit card number. =(
This is the same argument as war is good for the economy as it means we have to build lots of stuff, smash it up and then build it again... and of course full employment too...
There are *other* human values. For instance some poor kid in Pakistan might be working 12 hours a day in a stinking hot factory poking wires inside the camera but so you can pay a measly $700. That is *not* so great.
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
Your nukes are no use if you haven't got anyone to point them at.
Damn, you're right. So I say we nuke everone else in the world and them take over.
How do you like THEM apples?
You'll have to explain this arrogance you speak of. I personally have done no disservice to anyone or anything from another country. Come to think of it, I haven't even really interracted with anyone from any other country than my own. So where do you get off inferring that we're all arrogant here?
We'll get Bin Laden. Sooner or later. So what's your point? That we're not nuking the entire country to get one guy? Excuse the fuck out of me. Then again, if *I* were king...
Yes, when you're not getting anywhere with your main argument, it's a good strategy to distract everybody by veering off into a good old anti-American rant.. Stick with the tried and true.
Please help me understand why you are so steamed about these guys and their rocket videos, when 90% of the net is crammed with porn, video games, stolen music, ads, etc. How does any of that help world hunger? And how does locarecords.com help stop starvation and poverty for that matter? Seems like you just have a bunch of artists who are making music for their own individualistic selfish satisfaction, and for other people to waste time listening to music when they could be rising up against anti-democratic regimes. The bandwidth costs money as does the destroyed guitar strings, ruined synthesizers (lets face it how long can they really last) and all to stick look-at-me albums on the internet.
and put here the key/link
... faster BogoMIPS calculations (yes, it now boots 2 seconds faster than
it used to: we're considering changing the name from "Linux" to "InstaBOOT"
-- Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.26
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