Read the specs here. Essentially, they spec a 25 rpm rotor speed at altitude (40k ft) and speed (420mph), with a 45k lbs payload and 2,500 mile range. At those speeds and altitudes the vast majority of the lift is generated by the airframe rather than the rotor. It's not really a gyroplane, more like a hybrid between fixed and gyro. As to why Boeing didn't do that, well, who knows. I mean, Hughes built the Spruce Goose, so it's not as if the big boys have never made foolish and wildly expensive trips down dead ends of engineering. I do know that others experimented with stopping the rotors entirely at altitude, but AFAIK the Cartercopters are the first to go with a greatly reduced rotor and lifting body at altitude. And they're patenting the hell out of it as they go so if it does work out they could have a nice monopoly.
CarterCopter a more likely V-22 replacement
on
Studies In Ornithopters
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I don't believe it will go quite as fast as the V-22, but mechanically it's a much simpler design, more of a morph between a gyrocopter and fixed wing. In the 2-engine variety it will do a true hover, and they expect it to scale up into the C-130 size range or so. And manned experimental versions have been flying for a year or two now, even at Oshkosh.
From Discover magazine, a biology study indicates the tonal orientation of their languge gives a large number of them perfect pitch. It also indicates that perfect pitch can be learned given the appropriate environment. So while the parent post may look like a troll, the moderator didn't do their research.
I have a friend at MIT and I have heard that graduates with an MS in EE from that school often start with $100k/yr salaries (I do not know these people). I found that hard to believe, and now that I work with graduates from those schools I find it *really* hard to believe, but perhaps it is true. I have seen enough bad managers here that it wouldn't surprise me
I've worked for 2 Harvard MBAs in my time, they were about the stupidest people I've ever known; both were able to run profitable businesses into the ground in record times, while we "uneducated" plebes protested (and eventually lost our jobs when the businesses went belly up or "downsized").
In the executive world, your credentials are generally more important than your competence.
This happened to my wife as well. Someone worked for 9mos in Las Vegas using her SSN, while she was living and working in Los Angeles. Beauty of it all; she didn't file taxes for about 4 years. The IRS lets you challenge data for 3 years, but beyond that they won't listen. Meanwhile, they hold onto data for as long as they want to collect. End result, even though it was quite clearly fraudulent, she ended up paying taxes on those earnings in Vegas. Fortunately it was a menial job, and she was also in menial work at the time, so the dollar figure was reasonably small.
Agreed. DisneyDefcon was not so fun. I got shut out of 2 talks on Friday, it did not make me a happy man. If they do continue to use the AP, the value of Blackhat will go up; I've never been shut out of a talk at Blackhat.
I was driving in from CA on Friday, arrived Vegas around 2pm. There were several squalls, some resulting in significant precipitation. And every bloody idiot on the road slowing down to 50mph. For the record, tempratures were mild this year. You thought this was hot, you shoulda been there in previous years. That damned tent they used to have on the roof was misery incarnate. The AC units could never get it much lower than a few degrees below ambient, and when ambient is pushing 100F, well... I've heard through a reliable source this was the last year on the contract at the Alexis, so hopefully they'll move the con to a more agreeable location. Prefereably not Vegas, but a better hotel in Vegas would be a start. Why anybody wants to hold a con in Vegas in July-August is beyond me. Hold cons in Vegas in winter, in the summer put them in Monterey or someplace nice.
I can't speak for an RC model, but I am a student pilot in the real deal. And it's hellishly touchy. Keeping it stabilized in moderate winds can be a real bitch, and the slightest control inputs are sufficient for control. Overcontrolling is a very easy and common mistake-and still the bane of my existence at over 30hrs dual instruction time. For about my first 10 hours or so I'd have been up shit creek without my CFI. Gives me a helluva lot of respect for Sikorsky, who was both designer and chief test pilot for his first models (and has some accident footage to prove it). Anyway, given the realative difficulty of controlling the beast when you're sitting in it and can feel the balance, I expect remotely controlling one without the feel factor is at least as hard, if not harder.
In populated areas fixedwing can't go below 1000' (legally) but rotor can. I routinely fly between 500 and 1000' feet. I'd probably see one of these things in time but if I didn't it wouldn't be fun. Probably wouldn't damage the aircraft (unless I got real unlucky and a blade hit the camera itself) but it would surely scare the bejeezus out of me. Birds are bad enough, lots of little cameras in ballons does not sound fun.
Is worth a stop if you're going through TX. They've got a visitor center which is sort of an annoying combination of Disneyworld meets dumbed-down NASA, but the tours of the actual mission control center and such are quite cool. Also the Neutral Boyancy Lab is a blast. On the lawn out front they've got a Redstone rocket with a Mercury capsule up top, and also a Saturn V which is truly spectacular to walk beside (the various pieces would've been Apollo 18-20 but for the project cancellation).
FC Admins may feel otherwise
on
Opengroupware
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I sure do. The UI for FC is sweet, but the back end server is a mess. We migrated off to Lotus last year, because FC was so far behind the curve. From a user point of veiw FC was great, but from the admin side it could be extremely painful to deal with(for instance, client level mail filtering was just implemented in the last year, well after we migrated; they were way behind the curve on that one, so spam filtering was rather more difficult-the gateway could tag it but the client couldn't use that information to dump it somewhere). All that being said, for a small company or some such it might be useful still; the good part is the server end was generally fairly robust(though feature poor and several years behind modern) so the admin needs were infrequent.
I don't know what you're paying for long distance. But I can say that I've noted Vonage has considerably lower rates for long distance than I've found via standard telcos.
Ok, they're not paying your monthly fee. But as long as TiVo Inc. can keep coming up with cool PVR uses/features for the commercial makers and sponsors, said entities will be much less likely to sue TiVo into oblivion ala ReplayTV. So in a somewhat round-about way, they are paying a portion of your monthly fee, by simply allowing TiVo Inc. to continue to exist. Or perhaps more accurately they're running a protection racket against TiVo Inc., but I'm OK with that compromise for now. Better than shutting down my DTiVo.
I'm on board with other recs made in this thread (Boston, Zeppelin, Rush, Floyd), but I did notice one omission, so here it is:
Queensryche. The Warning, Operation Mindcrime, Rage for Order.
In that order. Overall the Warning is a great collection of songs, no real theme though. Mindcrime is a true concept album, ala Floyd, though musically not as tiptop. And Rage for Order is another excellent collection of songs, just not quite as good as Warning. They're still putting stuff out but I've not been terribly interested in their offerings post-Mindcrime.
I was one of the monkeys that awnser sos-appl, it was not at all uncommon to get folks who were either sheepish or indignant about that other s0s appl. Never did understand why they felt it was Apple's fault that somebody ran porn on the other line.
You jest, but some are indeed doing so. You see, TiVos in their natural state use dialup to an ISP for programming information. Some folks have their TiVos running over Vonage systems, so they are indeed doing exactly as you describe. Of course, the proper solution is to get a TurboNet card, but that costs money and time...
Well, mine's something of a hack as well, but I suppose it's a step up from a shell script...;-) I just threw together a quick webpage with the details, hope it helps.
I already am. Vonage runs $40/mo for unlimited calling within the US and Canada. I did the math, and found that I could double my DSL upload speeds (which was needed as the 1.5/128k ADSL connection I had was not quite enough upload) and slightly reduce my monthly telco/internet costs. Since I'm on DSL, I still had to keep a landline, but it's the uber cheap one ($13/mo), had I been on cable the savings would've been even better. I'm totally happy with it. I did need to setup queueing on my outbound router to prioritize VOIP (so somebody hammering my webserver wouldn't kill my phone) but on a normal home network the thing would be plug and play. For that matter, if your home servers are low load you probably wouldn't need to bother prioritizing at the router; I found packet loss in testing (having a freind hammer the server while we were on the phone) but it took me 3 weeks before I got around to setting up the router and we never had a problem in actual use. But I was more than happy to have an excuse to play with altq.;-)
True, but I dunno if NZ would turn him over. Their PM took a lot of crap last month for stating she didn't think the war would've happened with Gore at the helm(got a smack straight from the whitehouse on that one), and the country in general seems to think Bush is a cowboy and the US is on a bit of an imperialistic power grab. They refused to supply troops for the current expedition (unlike the the Aussies; my understanding is that the Aussie populace wasn't real keen on the idea but the gov pushed it anyway) and tend to be pretty critical of our current administration. So, the US would have to make an awful lot of noise and rattle a lot of sabers before NZ would turn him over. I seriously doubt this is anywhere close to enough.
Cheers... I've had a few replies of that nature myself already. Somebody else up above was talking about how hard it would be to get FAA clearance for testing the things. On the contrary, I rather expect the FAA could care less. Of course, the NZCAA might care, but that's another topic...
Hope all is well down there. We're back up here for the time being, my halfassed jobhunt didn't garner any immediate results.
I know. But you don't really need them, because you don't go around starting shit and sticking your noses in where they don't belong just because a few local rich guys want some more cash. You also have the best roads I've ever driven on. Damned fantastic, the only time they sucked was when there were crews making 'em better. Try that in the US; our roads for the most part haven't had significant upgrades since the '50s. My wife got sick while we were there on holiday, we saw several docs, no insurance, cost us $40nzd a pop. Prescription meds, around $10nzd. By comparison, no insurance up here would run you around $60-100usd, and you'd be lucky to walk away from the meds at less than $40usd. It seems to me that you may pay slightly more in taxes than we working stiffs up here (IIRC middle class down there are around 39%, up here it's probably around 30% unless you pay big bucks to a CPA), but you get a helluva lot more services for it. Smart. Me, I pay taxes so's we can build smartbombs to lob at folks who have oil that Haliburton wants^H^H^H^H Evildoers Who Hate Our Freedom (TM). Dumb.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/5/18265.html
Read the specs here. Essentially, they spec a 25 rpm rotor speed at altitude (40k ft) and speed (420mph), with a 45k lbs payload and 2,500 mile range. At those speeds and altitudes the vast majority of the lift is generated by the airframe rather than the rotor. It's not really a gyroplane, more like a hybrid between fixed and gyro. As to why Boeing didn't do that, well, who knows. I mean, Hughes built the Spruce Goose, so it's not as if the big boys have never made foolish and wildly expensive trips down dead ends of engineering. I do know that others experimented with stopping the rotors entirely at altitude, but AFAIK the Cartercopters are the first to go with a greatly reduced rotor and lifting body at altitude. And they're patenting the hell out of it as they go so if it does work out they could have a nice monopoly.
CarterCopter
I don't believe it will go quite as fast as the V-22, but mechanically it's a much simpler design, more of a morph between a gyrocopter and fixed wing. In the 2-engine variety it will do a true hover, and they expect it to scale up into the C-130 size range or so. And manned experimental versions have been flying for a year or two now, even at Oshkosh.
War was beginning...
Nothing quite so enjoyable as flogging an expired equine mammal on a quiet Thursday afternoon...
From Discover magazine, a biology study indicates the tonal orientation of their languge gives a large number of them perfect pitch. It also indicates that perfect pitch can be learned given the appropriate environment. So while the parent post may look like a troll, the moderator didn't do their research.
I've worked for 2 Harvard MBAs in my time, they were about the stupidest people I've ever known; both were able to run profitable businesses into the ground in record times, while we "uneducated" plebes protested (and eventually lost our jobs when the businesses went belly up or "downsized").
In the executive world, your credentials are generally more important than your competence.
This happened to my wife as well. Someone worked for 9mos in Las Vegas using her SSN, while she was living and working in Los Angeles. Beauty of it all; she didn't file taxes for about 4 years. The IRS lets you challenge data for 3 years, but beyond that they won't listen. Meanwhile, they hold onto data for as long as they want to collect. End result, even though it was quite clearly fraudulent, she ended up paying taxes on those earnings in Vegas. Fortunately it was a menial job, and she was also in menial work at the time, so the dollar figure was reasonably small.
My solution: the remains of 2 weeks of cat excrement. Anybody that gets something outta my garbage is gonna pay a hefty stanky price.
Agreed. DisneyDefcon was not so fun. I got shut out of 2 talks on Friday, it did not make me a happy man. If they do continue to use the AP, the value of Blackhat will go up; I've never been shut out of a talk at Blackhat.
I was driving in from CA on Friday, arrived Vegas around 2pm. There were several squalls, some resulting in significant precipitation. And every bloody idiot on the road slowing down to 50mph. For the record, tempratures were mild this year. You thought this was hot, you shoulda been there in previous years. That damned tent they used to have on the roof was misery incarnate. The AC units could never get it much lower than a few degrees below ambient, and when ambient is pushing 100F, well... I've heard through a reliable source this was the last year on the contract at the Alexis, so hopefully they'll move the con to a more agreeable location. Prefereably not Vegas, but a better hotel in Vegas would be a start. Why anybody wants to hold a con in Vegas in July-August is beyond me. Hold cons in Vegas in winter, in the summer put them in Monterey or someplace nice.
I can't speak for an RC model, but I am a student pilot in the real deal. And it's hellishly touchy. Keeping it stabilized in moderate winds can be a real bitch, and the slightest control inputs are sufficient for control. Overcontrolling is a very easy and common mistake-and still the bane of my existence at over 30hrs dual instruction time. For about my first 10 hours or so I'd have been up shit creek without my CFI. Gives me a helluva lot of respect for Sikorsky, who was both designer and chief test pilot for his first models (and has some accident footage to prove it). Anyway, given the realative difficulty of controlling the beast when you're sitting in it and can feel the balance, I expect remotely controlling one without the feel factor is at least as hard, if not harder.
In populated areas fixedwing can't go below 1000' (legally) but rotor can. I routinely fly between 500 and 1000' feet. I'd probably see one of these things in time but if I didn't it wouldn't be fun. Probably wouldn't damage the aircraft (unless I got real unlucky and a blade hit the camera itself) but it would surely scare the bejeezus out of me. Birds are bad enough, lots of little cameras in ballons does not sound fun.
Is worth a stop if you're going through TX. They've got a visitor center which is sort of an annoying combination of Disneyworld meets dumbed-down NASA, but the tours of the actual mission control center and such are quite cool. Also the Neutral Boyancy Lab is a blast. On the lawn out front they've got a Redstone rocket with a Mercury capsule up top, and also a Saturn V which is truly spectacular to walk beside (the various pieces would've been Apollo 18-20 but for the project cancellation).
I sure do. The UI for FC is sweet, but the back end server is a mess. We migrated off to Lotus last year, because FC was so far behind the curve. From a user point of veiw FC was great, but from the admin side it could be extremely painful to deal with(for instance, client level mail filtering was just implemented in the last year, well after we migrated; they were way behind the curve on that one, so spam filtering was rather more difficult-the gateway could tag it but the client couldn't use that information to dump it somewhere). All that being said, for a small company or some such it might be useful still; the good part is the server end was generally fairly robust(though feature poor and several years behind modern) so the admin needs were infrequent.
I don't know what you're paying for long distance. But I can say that I've noted Vonage has considerably lower rates for long distance than I've found via standard telcos.
Ok, they're not paying your monthly fee. But as long as TiVo Inc. can keep coming up with cool PVR uses/features for the commercial makers and sponsors, said entities will be much less likely to sue TiVo into oblivion ala ReplayTV. So in a somewhat round-about way, they are paying a portion of your monthly fee, by simply allowing TiVo Inc. to continue to exist. Or perhaps more accurately they're running a protection racket against TiVo Inc., but I'm OK with that compromise for now. Better than shutting down my DTiVo.
I'm on board with other recs made in this thread (Boston, Zeppelin, Rush, Floyd), but I did notice one omission, so here it is:
Queensryche. The Warning, Operation Mindcrime, Rage for Order.
In that order. Overall the Warning is a great collection of songs, no real theme though. Mindcrime is a true concept album, ala Floyd, though musically not as tiptop. And Rage for Order is another excellent collection of songs, just not quite as good as Warning. They're still putting stuff out but I've not been terribly interested in their offerings post-Mindcrime.
Bill Would Let FBI Police File-Sharing
This is what happens when you let Mahir write the headlines...
I know what they mean, but I still have mental images of the "FBI Police" sitting around eating donuts and p2p-ing porn...
I was one of the monkeys that awnser sos-appl, it was not at all uncommon to get folks who were either sheepish or indignant about that other s0s appl. Never did understand why they felt it was Apple's fault that somebody ran porn on the other line.
You jest, but some are indeed doing so. You see, TiVos in their natural state use dialup to an ISP for programming information. Some folks have their TiVos running over Vonage systems, so they are indeed doing exactly as you describe. Of course, the proper solution is to get a TurboNet card, but that costs money and time...
Well, mine's something of a hack as well, but I suppose it's a step up from a shell script... ;-) I just threw together a quick webpage with the details, hope it helps.
I already am. Vonage runs $40/mo for unlimited calling within the US and Canada. I did the math, and found that I could double my DSL upload speeds (which was needed as the 1.5/128k ADSL connection I had was not quite enough upload) and slightly reduce my monthly telco/internet costs. Since I'm on DSL, I still had to keep a landline, but it's the uber cheap one ($13/mo), had I been on cable the savings would've been even better. I'm totally happy with it. I did need to setup queueing on my outbound router to prioritize VOIP (so somebody hammering my webserver wouldn't kill my phone) but on a normal home network the thing would be plug and play. For that matter, if your home servers are low load you probably wouldn't need to bother prioritizing at the router; I found packet loss in testing (having a freind hammer the server while we were on the phone) but it took me 3 weeks before I got around to setting up the router and we never had a problem in actual use. But I was more than happy to have an excuse to play with altq. ;-)
True, but I dunno if NZ would turn him over. Their PM took a lot of crap last month for stating she didn't think the war would've happened with Gore at the helm(got a smack straight from the whitehouse on that one), and the country in general seems to think Bush is a cowboy and the US is on a bit of an imperialistic power grab. They refused to supply troops for the current expedition (unlike the the Aussies; my understanding is that the Aussie populace wasn't real keen on the idea but the gov pushed it anyway) and tend to be pretty critical of our current administration. So, the US would have to make an awful lot of noise and rattle a lot of sabers before NZ would turn him over. I seriously doubt this is anywhere close to enough.
Cheers... I've had a few replies of that nature myself already. Somebody else up above was talking about how hard it would be to get FAA clearance for testing the things. On the contrary, I rather expect the FAA could care less. Of course, the NZCAA might care, but that's another topic...
Hope all is well down there. We're back up here for the time being, my halfassed jobhunt didn't garner any immediate results.
I know. But you don't really need them, because you don't go around starting shit and sticking your noses in where they don't belong just because a few local rich guys want some more cash. You also have the best roads I've ever driven on. Damned fantastic, the only time they sucked was when there were crews making 'em better. Try that in the US; our roads for the most part haven't had significant upgrades since the '50s. My wife got sick while we were there on holiday, we saw several docs, no insurance, cost us $40nzd a pop. Prescription meds, around $10nzd. By comparison, no insurance up here would run you around $60-100usd, and you'd be lucky to walk away from the meds at less than $40usd. It seems to me that you may pay slightly more in taxes than we working stiffs up here (IIRC middle class down there are around 39%, up here it's probably around 30% unless you pay big bucks to a CPA), but you get a helluva lot more services for it. Smart. Me, I pay taxes so's we can build smartbombs to lob at folks who have oil that Haliburton wants^H^H^H^H Evildoers Who Hate Our Freedom (TM). Dumb.