Slashdot Mirror
Santa Meets NORAD, Tux Gets Lit Up For Xmas
runlvl0 writes "Once again, NORAD is tracking Santa Claus on his annual trip around the world via the NORAD Tracks Santa website. Oddly, as of 1900 GMT, Santa is taking a spin over the Persian Gulf. I guess that he's glad not to have to worry about "no-fly zones" this year." NORAD has been keeping an eye on our favorite present deliverer for a few years now. Elsewhere, pixelbeat writes "Michael Still created a lovely Tux in Xmas tree lights. The complete process from gimp to the final 707 lights was documented."
hmmm...guess I don't have a life, since I read slashdot during christmas...
:)
Maybe I should ask santa for a girlfriend
Merry christmas
Not mine ... a coworker sent it to me ... merry x-mas
-----
History of Santa Claus
1689--Spanish-German explorer Santa Claus discovers the North Pole, and establishes a small base camp.
1691--Because of harsh and meager living conditions, Claus' crew abandons him.
1692--Claus is rescued by the Viking ship Hvorfor. He returns to Europe, bringing some items along with him from the North Pole. He finds he is able to sell them quite easily, making a small profit.
1703--Claus saves up enough money to buy a small ship and crew, and returns to the North Pole. Upon arriving, he finds his base camp, half-buried but still intact.
1704--Claus returns to Europe with a shipload of North Pole artifacts, and is successful in selling them. He makes enough profit to increase his crew, and buys building materials to expand his polar base.
1705--Claus returns again to the North Pole, and builds quarters for him and his crew, and sets up the Polar Exports Company.
1716--After six shiploads of exports, the European market is flooded with polar artifacts, as well as the phony ones making charlatans rich. Seeing this decline, Claus decides to invest his money by starting a toy company in his native Germany.
1720--Claus Toys becomes the largest toy company in Germany, but only because of Claus' underhanded business dealings. (It was also rumored that Claus was dealing with enemy countries as well). Competitors urged government officials to begin an investigation.
1721--Enough evidence is found, and charges are drawn up against the Claus Toys Company. Claus himself refuses to release his records.
1722--The German Supreme Court finds Claus guilty of tax evasion and of treason. When news of this breaks, Claus' employees all turn against him and his company.
1723--Claus is exiled to Sicily, and shortly before leaving, he absconds with all of the company's funds.
1724--A search party is sent to the Mediterranean to recover the funds, however, Claus hears of this ahead of time, and he and his Sicilian wife flee for their lives. (Some say he went into Northern Africa, but it is generally assumed that this was only a ruse to lure the searchers off course. He is believed to have returned to his North Pole base).
1725--Claus II is born en route to the North Pole.
1725-1734--The Claus' lay low at the North Pole. Claus teaches his son the arts of toy making and business dealings.
1735--Rumor has it that Claus has hired Scandinavian builders to construct a castle for him at the North Pole, making use of almost half of the company funds.
1739--The castle is finished, and is one of the largest in the world. Claus II reaches his fifteenth birthday, and in the same year, Claus' wife dies, accidentally falling from a balcony in one of the castle's great halls.
1740--Claus, mourning his wife, becomes increasingly ill.
1745--Santa Claus II becomes of age, and begins taking care of the castle and of his sick father.
1747--Using the remaining company funds, Claus II builds a small city around the castle to attract workers and craftsmen.
1748--Word of the North Pole settlement reaches Europe. The Elves of Eastern Europe, quickly becoming political outcasts and striving for a better life, begin immigrating in waves to the North Pole.
1753--All the elves have left Eastern Europe and have become firmly established at the North Pole. Claus II begins his father's toy company once again, with an estimated 30,000 elves employed. Claus I dies, at age 89.
1755--The North Pole officially becomes a nation, and Claus II and his wife take the throne. The toy business continues to flourish, and the elves enjoy prosperity. Claus III is born.
1757--The great stables are built, and scientists are secretly hired by Claus II to begin an ambitious project--that of breeding and training reindeer to fly.
Sitting by my fireplace, shotgun in hand... I'm ready for the fat bastard this year, I tell ya...
This tool is great. Once Santa's near my region I'll be ready... I won't miss this year (damn reindeer startled me..!)
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
You can't have a civil discussion with an atheist. Atheists like to think of themselves as rational, but if you observe their behavior you'll find they
are anything but. They are full of anger and bitterness, and react with frightful outrage whenever they encounter someone with different views from
their own. Even people who think that atheism is a reasonable philosophy must admit that most atheists did not arrive at their point of view through
anything resembling a rational process. Rather, they are poorly socialized individuals who are lashing out angrily at anything which they perceive to be
valued by "mainstream" society. You really shouldn't take it personally. It is the result of an angry and profoundly unhappy psychological condition on
their part, not due to you or your Christian beliefs.
I found an interesting article with mention of the origin of NORAD tracking Santa..
Apparently, it was quite by accident.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
And then /. lit up Michael Still's computer in a blaze of HTTP.
Ton of pictures on a personal webpage?
This guy better be glad this was posted at 3am on Christmas morning or he would have been Slashdotted 40 times over by now.....
Perhaps he has a chance at surviving?
wow, I'd love to know the Pulse Repetition Frequency on the radar NORAD is using for it's 'track santa' gif....
Ummm, err, say what, now?
The birth of Christ should be looked upon as the first day our true eternal salvation was given to us. It's not about the money, it's about love and forgiveness.
How about a mirror for those Tux pics ?
Nothing at the site now.
Tux Gets Lit Up For Xmas
Oh, poor Tux. I mean, I know Linux hasn't won over the desktop front yet, but alcohol is NOT the answer, dear penguin!
<starts planning intervention>
"Each time you smile, it'll only last awhile. Life may be scary, but it's only temporary."
We can't find Osama, but at least we can locate Santa.
Glad to see our priorities are in order.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each.
.001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.
Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks.
This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second--3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousands tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them---Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).
600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance-this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.
Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in
Have a Merry Christmas!
1998--A scandal erupts when Claus VII is reported to have oral sex with a 24-year old elf intern. Both of them deny sexual relations, while the North Pole media blows it all out of proportion. Due to the nature of Communism, Claus VII is not impeached.[added by me]
2002--Communism fails utterly at the North Pole due to the nature of the elves. Claus VII, flying clockwise around the earth making the Christmas rounds, collides with Anti-Claus, who was flying counterclockwise. A huge explosion and blinding flash of light occurs, leading scientists to believe that they annihilated each other.
2007--The North Pole becomes a democracy, run wholly by the elves. Christmas is no longer commercialized or exploited. Happiness is finally achieved throughout the kingdom.
2011--It is discovered that Claus VII did not die in the explosion, but merely made it appear so. From there he went to live in the Bahamas. He is later found, dead of a heart attack, in a jacuzzi with two and a half dozen nymphets.
Merry Christmas!
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
funny how NORAD couldn't see any of da "highjacked" planes on 9/11. were they asleep or in coma?
The same reason parents won't tell their kids that jesus and god are not real... to do so would make controlling their childrens' behavior much harder. Gotta have those supernatural rewards and punishments in order to get the kids to behave.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
[...] Tux Gets Lit Up For Xmas.
I'm pretty well lit up myshelf, I thank you.
but there is no "Santa" doing that either.
This is lameass please the public shit, but not the kind that might actually be of some significance like finding.. oh i dunno.. TERRORISTS?
Burn my money Uncle Sam cause soon enough you'll be burning too
In the time honored tradition of /. mirroring, I've created a mirror of the christmas-tree-lights tux:i n/christmas-twinkletux.html
http://bleeat.com/~quentins/www.stillhq.com/cgi-b
The original site uses PNGs for all of the photos, only adding to the server's pain! I've converted them to JPGs, in an attempt to save bandwidth.
--Quentin
Another miracle of the chistmas season! As of 1:11 AM PST, that site is not slashdotted! Woot, Halleluiah, Amen, and what not.
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
I find this post extremly offensive. This should be erased from slashdot. Why do you post this stuff here? Why doesn't anyone stop it? You are a racist, and a homophobe. Your crap is not wanted. Go away. You are not welcome.
NORAD uses .rm format.
That's funny.
Making you load spyware to see their content.
Shit!!! I was reading Slashdot when midnight rolled around.
Sadly, due to the current national threat level, Santa has been asked not to fly over France.
"Derp de derp."
and it damn well doesn't look like the fucking moon.
Its just after 3 CST and the geazer is already done and asleep. Why can't UPS be that fast?
Maybe another solution may be to try a negative approach. Given the idea is to display at night, light up the background and Tux's stomach with white lights, fill in the feet with yellow ones, and then outline the arms, eyes, and other features with white. As long as the area it's displayed in is not too lit up and the other lights aren't overwhelming, the darkness should fill in naturally for the black areas. Or maybe not...
may as well be me:
As for the Tux lights...
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Yeah, your parents did a great job with you, Scroogeboy. You're all just a big shiny, happy group of people, aren't'cha?
Well, while you're busy picking the wax out of your ears and glowering over the hypocrisies of the season, know this: God, in His infinite wisdom, which infinitely surpasses my own, loves you anyway.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Cheer up. Go eat a turkey. I guarantee you that if you do one, it will lead to the other ...
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
you know hwat would be realy good?
:)
.. .. "hears somethign you may
:)
If such posts as this or any other world holiday
related ones posted at a time *rlevent* GMT +12.
So that it was able to be read for those of us who arnt in GMT -7 time zones
Its so fun wakeing up at 4PM Xmas afternoon
or newyars day and reading all the "Christmas
is nearly hear", "Newyears day will start soon",
"Happy halloween"
want to read before the hollidays start"
maybe the option to make them stick so they stay around till relvent time GMT -12
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
Tar ball us, every one!
"HONOR OF BEST POST EVAR!!!!"
Ever has 2 e's.
"Important Stuff:
Please try to keep posts on topic."...
Conveniently, you didn't post this bit from the FAQ:
If You Can't Be Deep, Be Funny: If you don't have something truly developing to the topic, some humor is welcome. Humor is lacking in our lives and will continue to be promoted. Remember though, what rips your sides out may be completely inane to somebody else.
(posted without karma bonus as this is off-topic and should be moderated as such. Not sure that all the peeps with mod-points are aware of this blurb as a lot of funny comments have been modded as off-topic lately.)
"Derp de derp."
And here was me thinking it was referring to the evil SCO plot to set Tux on fire...
No thanks
Eating meat is for the less evolved peons
you cocksmoking cum sponge
ANAL filth IS dirty TO all PEOPLE of COLOR
Flattered, but I don't swing that way. I'm sure a Google search will get you placed into the right community, tho.
Why the hell would norad need to track santa? Are we going to intercept him with one of those shiney icbm's or starwars project lasers?
"Hey joe, lookie here, there's one heck of a fast moving dot on the screen"
"It isn't confimed by anyone, shoot er' down"
*somewhere over the pacific*
Ho ho ho, ZAP, BANG! *several seconds later, a 9 cooked reigndeer, 1 cooked fat guy and a slegh fall through some poor youngsters roof*
Besides that, with all the bad FUD creating news lately, does anyone really trust a crazy man in a sleigh dressed in red passing out packages who can somehow travel faster than the speed of light? Seriously, he COULD be a terrorist, and all those shiney packages COULD be filled with anthrax, or nukes, or something else far more poisinous to the planet, like PS2's or televisions.
And then, everyone sits down to a nice dinner of diseased feedlotted, poisioned food(aspartame, Monosodium glutamate, carnageenan, http://www.ideatown.com/ntxa/index.html for the list) and talk amongst themselves. This is why we have outbreaks every year, undercooked meat gets on the table, people eat it and catch whatever the poor animal had at the feedlot in china. This is also why they are getting worse year by year, antibiotics injected into your animals daily when they are sick will make an infection that's resistant to those antibiotics. So celebrating good ol' jolly saint nick has some pretty bad effects, far worse a toll than some terrorists crashing planes into buildings imo.
Then of course, kids rip open playstations or televisions or gamecubes or other toys, never things that they really need like books, electronics kits, free hug cards from their parents or in some cases, computers w/ internet connections. Instead of going out and experiencing life they sit at home and play games or watch TV and poison themselves on junk food. The sugary candy of entertainment.
But that's just my bitching, don't mind the madman. Even though I'm right and you all know it I'll be neatly ignored because you're all, unlike me, sluts to convenience. I'm happy this year because I'v got family who sent me cards and remembered I existed, and everyone in my family is in one piece. Some kids don't care, or don't even know their parents because they work 14 hours a day all week and the kids never get to see them. Others take them for granted, and they don't give enough hugs.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
funny, i think neitzcshe made a good case that christianity _Is_ 'anger and bitterness', incarnate.
while i can see your point as quite possibly true...
i think theres enough repressed hate instilled in christianity over the millenia to say that this is not relavant to your goal--the depreciation of the validity of atheism...
hate after all appears to currently be a part of the human situation currently...coulnd't we just admit this fact and then, keeping it in mind, continue trying to find reason?
-ps i'm not an atheist.
"there's no such thing as a foxhole in an atheist"
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Ringo R0X
cock tease
International music star Esteban has made a guitar for all of us. It's a very a high quality instrument (I actually saw this guitar in Wal-mart and can vouche for its quality) that we can learn to play the one and only real music genre... Flamenco
Truly a slashdot icon.
Are you on crack cocaine?? The birth of christ is no more important to human history than the birth of snoopy! Heck, at least people still believe snoopy is real.
Oh no! Somebody call the 'WAAAAAH'bulance!
Seriously man, who the hell cares, read the FAQ (I think)
Taco clearly states this is an american site, intended for americans, if you have beef with timezones; tough shit.
Somebody has to say it, posts are posted at a *rlevent* time for americans.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
If you never heard this music, try to get it. It's very beautiful.
The Night Santa Went Crazy
by Al Yankovic
Down in the workshop all the elves were makin' toys
For the good Gentile girls and the good Gentile boys
When the boss busted in, nearly scared 'em half to death
Had a rifle in his hands and cheap whiskey on his breath
From his beard to his boots he was covered with ammo
Like a big fat drunk disgruntled Yuletide Rambo
And he smiled as he said with a twinkle in his eye,
"Merry Christmas to all - now you're all gonna die!"
The night Santa went crazy
The night St. Nick went insane
Realized he'd been gettin' a raw deal
Something finally must have snapped in his brain
Well, the workshop is gone now, he decided to bomb it
Everywhere you'll find pieces of Cupid and Comet
And he tied up his helpers and he held the elves hostage
And he ground up poor Rudolph into reindeer sausage
He got Dancer and Prancer with an old German Luger
And he slashed up Dasher just like Freddy Krueger
And he picked up a flamethrower and he barbequed Blitzen
And he took a big bite and said, "It tastes just like chicken!"
The night Santa went crazy
The night Kris Kringle went nuts
Now you can't hardly walk around the North Pole
Without steppin' in reindeer guts
There's the National Guard and the F.B.I.
There's a van from the Eyewitness News
And helicopters circlin' 'round in the sky
And the bullets are flyin', the body count's risin'
And everyone's dyin' to know, oh Santa, why?
My my my my my my
You used to be such a jolly guy
Yes, Virginia, now Santa's doin' time
In a federal prison for his infamous crime
Hey, little friend, now don't you cry no more tears
He'll be out with good behavior in 700 more years
But now Vixen's in therapy and Donner's still nervous
And the elves all got jobs working for the postal service
And they say Mrs. Clause, she's on the phone every night
With her lawyer negotiating the movie rights
They're talkin' bout - the night Santa went crazy
The night St. Nicholas flipped
Broke his back for some milk and cookies
Sounds to me like he was tired of gettin' gypped
Wo, the night Santa went crazy
The night St. Nick went insane
Realized he's gettin' a raw deal
Something finally must have snapped in his brain
Wo, something finally must have snapped in his brain
Tell ya, something finally must have snapped... in his brain
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
if he suddenly disappears off the radar in southern california, you'll know why.
*installs a harpoon gun on his roof*
yeaah biiiiitch.
Man, all you americans need a break from being american.
:)
I had a look at that site and it offered pictures from warplanes to children in order to paint them in colors.
The rest of the world hates america and that is the best thing about this christmas
Go write some virii on your linux boxen!
Well....almost. The "Santa being tracked by NORAD" thing was mentioned last night on a weather forecast broadcast by Tacoma,WA PBS station KBTC at 7pm PST (though these are provided for them by completely rubbish local Fox affiliate Q13, Seattle). As they were talking about Santa flying over an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, the really rather wonky computer animation of this alleged event locked up, and popped up a giant gray box stating, "Real Player has lost connection to the server", etc. Then everything went blue! Waaaah-ha-ha! I could hardly believe my eyes as the forecaster stammered onto the weather, apologizing for the problems....
I don't think you can rely on NORAD. They can't even track airliners out of Logan on rogue filght-paths.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
...thanks to an overzealous, trigger-happy soldier manning one of the SAM batteries in place in Washington DC due to the "Code Orange."
Sorry, kids, but it seems that a sleigh and eight reindeer have a very similar radar signature to a 767 piloted by extremist Muslims.
is a clear violation of separation between church and state.
I hope ACLU sues them.
The real reason that NORAD tracks Santa is because the CIA decided in 1974 that the US should do all it can to protect Santa from terrorists.
Imagine teacher's reaction when little Billy starts telling this to other kids. It's as self-perpetuating as these things get.
Ladies and Gentlemen... We got him.
"WAAAAHmblulance!" hah!
anyway, well yeah, it's an american site, maybe not just "intended for americans".
but it's being developed/hosted/dreamed up/supported/produced in the us, is sufficient reason for it to have a us time zone
were i reading a site hosted in japan or great britain or russia...i wouldn't be complaining about the time zone. sheesh.
merry christmas!
"Santa" is actually an aircraft being flown by Al Qaeda pilots planning to crash into the REAL Santa - assuming he isn't shot down first by the anti-aircraft missiles being deployed around Washington and elsewhere to protect Bush's cowardly ass.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I don't think you can rely on NORAD.
Hey, if you couldn't rely on NORAD, they wouldn't keep the Stargate there.
(By the way, did you see the Has Santa Changed? page on the website? Looks like Santa stopped to pose with Carter at NORAD in 2002. Hmm...)
Carthago delenda est!
KILL MY MOM YOU ARE SUCH A FAG. OH WELL, TIME TO TAKE ANOTHER SHIT DOWN YOUR THROAT.
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Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.
Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.
Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.