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The Jet Fighter Laser Cannon
fahrbot-bot sends in a Register piece about DARPA issuing the penultimate contract for what is intended to be a jet-mounted laser cannon. The Reg outdoes itself in a BOTEC involving downsizing to shark scale. "The US military will shortly issue a brace of contracts for 'refrigerator sized' laser blaster cannons. One of the deals will see a full-power ground prototype built which will be the final stage prior to America's first raygun-equipped jet fighter. ... If it scales down far enough, this would seem to put handheld HELL-guns within an order of magnitude of the striking power offered by conventional small-arms. A 9mm pistol bullet has about 750 joules muzzle energy: a 5kg portable HELL-ray weapon would put out this much energy in a blast less than a second long. ... A dolphin can carry a human being weighing up to 100kg along for a ride. A thoroughbred shark in good training can surely match this. Thus, we seem to be looking at practicable head-[laser] output in the 20-kilowatt range."
OK, so did they also let the ultimate contract, or do they now award to the second-best bidder?
I stand corrected. Actually, I'm sitting down.
P226
"Ultimate" doesn't even mean "awesome", it means last or final. People use it to describe something impressive as saying that it's the final thing or the peak, that nothing can go beyond it.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
On slashdot, you're allowed to take a word, find a longer word that sounds a bit like at and assume it's just a cleverer synonym of the original word. If anyone calls you on it, you just whine about languages evolving.
I'd expect an illuminary like you to know that.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The future looks dire.
With the world economy in the toilet, all-time record in unemployment, massive desertification, energy shortage, more than 1 billion starving, epidemics of malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis, global warming, what we really really need is the ultimate super cool weapon. Way to go, USA!