I'm pretty sure the person you are responding to wasn't implying that Chinese was obsolete; rather they were saying that some Chinese names contain ancient symbols. Sort of like how you could (in theory) run into an english speaking person whose family is positively ancient; their first name might be entirely in ASCII characters, but their last name might contain ancient/obsolete letters/symbols, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86 (the combined AE symbol). Depending on what exactly you are using the names for, it may not be correct to translate an old symbol into a newer one.
The lasers that one typically talks about using to clean up space debris are powerful enough to outright vaporize paint flecks and other small junk. On larger bits it vaporizes a portion of the material, producing thrust and hopefully changing the orbit enough that the junk hits the atmosphere and burns up.
Well, if we detected the explosions on the surface of the planet, we might have evidence that intelligent life used to exist there.
But in theory they could be using an Orion type nuclear pulse rocket and we could detect those.
The (somewhat) sad thing for those of us that program is that the market price for software that isn't a custom built-to-order job is roughly $0.00. I haven't heard of any good solution to this either, though presumably some sort of "money first" or "money held in escrow" would work.
For a space elevator to be practical, we need a way to produce an extremely strong tether in huge lengths. Last I heard, the longest we were able to grow a carbon nanotube (which has roughly the required strength we need for the tether) was about an inch.
So in other words I don't think people have forgotten about the space elevator (or other alternative launch technologies), but they are waiting on improvements in material science.
Why would someone build a house in a cold climate whose pipes couldn't be drained by gravity alone?
My parents didn't even live in a cold climate, and our garage and house could be completely drained during the winter by gravity alone (with one underground exception) if need be.
No, there is a second limiting range, roughly 300 blocks or so. It is at this point that the chunk of land is taken out of memory and written to disk, so its state cannot change.
"Also, why take up valuable satellite and computer resources to track ice floes? If there is free time on those platforms, it is a failure of CIA management to properly schedule them for tasks that are a part of that agency's objectives."
I suspect that most spy satellites are in polar orbits, so that they cover the entire Earth's surface once every 24 hours, as the Earth rotates underneath them. Assuming this is the case, then most of the time the satellites will not be over an area that is of interest to the intelligence community, so scheduling scientific photographs during that period (assuming they happen to be over an area of scientific interest) makes use of a satellite that would otherwise be doing absolutely nothing.
As for taking up valuable computer resources, I don't think that is really a problem. The communication antennas cost the same if they are being used or if they are not being used, so the only real costs to taking these images are the electricity used to power the receivers and the ground-side servers that store the images, and the cost of any personnel-hours required to declassify an image. Frankly, they might have the entire declassification process automated: if the picture is not of a predefined sensitive location, lower its resolution and send it off to the scientists.
At my college they solved that problem in the computer science and engineering building by making the entire front wall a dry erase board, from carpet to ceiling.:)
We had already won the war of Independence several years prior to the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. There was no fear of foreign troops breaking down the doors. One of the reasons why they kept the meetings private was because they were only supposed to be improving and upgrading the Articles of Confederation, not crafting a new constitution.
My University uses Safe*Connect to make sure we're up to date and a few other things, I guess.
The reason I say "I guess" is because as soon as I heard that they would be requiring it to get onto the network I searched the web for a workaround, which was easy: just change your browser's user agent string to say that you are running Linux. They have to let systems that they don't have a client program for on the network, because otherwise they'd piss off every X-BOX 360 and PS3 user out there.
I think I remember the article saying that the hole would be 30 meters in length and have a diameter a little smaller than a pencil. That's not an insubstantial amount of energy, by any means.
The LHC uses a pulsed beam instead of a continuous one, so all the energy in a single pulse of the beam can drill a 30 meter hole though solid copper.
What they ended up doing is running the beam through a "fuzzifier" to make it's cross section larger, and then rapidly scanning it back and forth across a target of some very heat resistant material... either carbon or space shuttle tile type stuff. That way they're not blowing holes in their beam dump.
I recall reading about the energy dump they use when they're done with the beam, and how it "fuzzifies" the beam before letting hit the thermal dump.
The beam wouldn't blow a huge crater in the copper, it doesn't have that much power, but it is very tightly focused, so it would drill a small hole 30 meters deep.
"Catalytic converters were put onto cars which were already designed but, of course, not designed for the performance impact of the converter. THIS is what lead to the first major invasion of non-U.S. cars into the U.S. car market."
This implies that either the foreign auto-makers either had catalytic converters already designed in, or were able to quickly make changes to existing designs to incorporate converters. That means that the foreign automakers were better at being automakers than the domestic companies. "Poorly run companies loosing out on market-share and money"... isn't that how capitalism is supposed to go?
I should convince the DM to allow me to play a Witchalok character. I've been told that if I show up with a NPC class character I'd be forced to play it, so maybe.:)
"Two months ago, a satellite detected an object under the sands of the Sahara Desert.
An expedition was sent.
An ancient starship, buried in the sand. Deep inside the ruin was a single stone that will change the course of our history forever.
On the stone was etched a galactic map and a single word more ancient than the clans themselves:
Hiigara.
Our home."
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty sure the person you are responding to wasn't implying that Chinese was obsolete; rather they were saying that some Chinese names contain ancient symbols. Sort of like how you could (in theory) run into an english speaking person whose family is positively ancient; their first name might be entirely in ASCII characters, but their last name might contain ancient/obsolete letters/symbols, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86 (the combined AE symbol). Depending on what exactly you are using the names for, it may not be correct to translate an old symbol into a newer one.
High strength to weight ratio, I believe.
With an umbrella on it, to ensure it doesn't overfill.
This is in Washington State; it never stops raining.
It involves lots of U-turns.
The lasers that one typically talks about using to clean up space debris are powerful enough to outright vaporize paint flecks and other small junk. On larger bits it vaporizes a portion of the material, producing thrust and hopefully changing the orbit enough that the junk hits the atmosphere and burns up.
Well, if we detected the explosions on the surface of the planet, we might have evidence that intelligent life used to exist there. But in theory they could be using an Orion type nuclear pulse rocket and we could detect those.
The (somewhat) sad thing for those of us that program is that the market price for software that isn't a custom built-to-order job is roughly $0.00. I haven't heard of any good solution to this either, though presumably some sort of "money first" or "money held in escrow" would work.
For a space elevator to be practical, we need a way to produce an extremely strong tether in huge lengths. Last I heard, the longest we were able to grow a carbon nanotube (which has roughly the required strength we need for the tether) was about an inch. So in other words I don't think people have forgotten about the space elevator (or other alternative launch technologies), but they are waiting on improvements in material science.
Why would someone build a house in a cold climate whose pipes couldn't be drained by gravity alone? My parents didn't even live in a cold climate, and our garage and house could be completely drained during the winter by gravity alone (with one underground exception) if need be.
No, there is a second limiting range, roughly 300 blocks or so. It is at this point that the chunk of land is taken out of memory and written to disk, so its state cannot change.
It is called "voting".
Seriously, get a like minded group of people together and work to change the law(s) you don't like.
I suspect that most spy satellites are in polar orbits, so that they cover the entire Earth's surface once every 24 hours, as the Earth rotates underneath them. Assuming this is the case, then most of the time the satellites will not be over an area that is of interest to the intelligence community, so scheduling scientific photographs during that period (assuming they happen to be over an area of scientific interest) makes use of a satellite that would otherwise be doing absolutely nothing.
As for taking up valuable computer resources, I don't think that is really a problem. The communication antennas cost the same if they are being used or if they are not being used, so the only real costs to taking these images are the electricity used to power the receivers and the ground-side servers that store the images, and the cost of any personnel-hours required to declassify an image. Frankly, they might have the entire declassification process automated: if the picture is not of a predefined sensitive location, lower its resolution and send it off to the scientists.
At my college they solved that problem in the computer science and engineering building by making the entire front wall a dry erase board, from carpet to ceiling. :)
Oh look, another bigot who has to resort to name calling and vague appeals to "Americanism". Color me surprised.
We had already won the war of Independence several years prior to the creation of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. There was no fear of foreign troops breaking down the doors. One of the reasons why they kept the meetings private was because they were only supposed to be improving and upgrading the Articles of Confederation, not crafting a new constitution.
Ummm, "Sci-Fi jargon"?
"Terra" is from "Terra Firma", see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Firma
My University uses Safe*Connect to make sure we're up to date and a few other things, I guess.
The reason I say "I guess" is because as soon as I heard that they would be requiring it to get onto the network I searched the web for a workaround, which was easy: just change your browser's user agent string to say that you are running Linux. They have to let systems that they don't have a client program for on the network, because otherwise they'd piss off every X-BOX 360 and PS3 user out there.
I think I remember the article saying that the hole would be 30 meters in length and have a diameter a little smaller than a pencil. That's not an insubstantial amount of energy, by any means.
The LHC uses a pulsed beam instead of a continuous one, so all the energy in a single pulse of the beam can drill a 30 meter hole though solid copper.
What they ended up doing is running the beam through a "fuzzifier" to make it's cross section larger, and then rapidly scanning it back and forth across a target of some very heat resistant material... either carbon or space shuttle tile type stuff. That way they're not blowing holes in their beam dump.
I recall reading about the energy dump they use when they're done with the beam, and how it "fuzzifies" the beam before letting hit the thermal dump.
The beam wouldn't blow a huge crater in the copper, it doesn't have that much power, but it is very tightly focused, so it would drill a small hole 30 meters deep.
"Catalytic converters were put onto cars which were already designed but, of course, not designed for the performance impact of the converter. THIS is what lead to the first major invasion of non-U.S. cars into the U.S. car market."
This implies that either the foreign auto-makers either had catalytic converters already designed in, or were able to quickly make changes to existing designs to incorporate converters. That means that the foreign automakers were better at being automakers than the domestic companies. "Poorly run companies loosing out on market-share and money"... isn't that how capitalism is supposed to go?
I should convince the DM to allow me to play a Witchalok character. I've been told that if I show up with a NPC class character I'd be forced to play it, so maybe. :)
Sea-Tac stands for "Seattle-Tacoma", as in Washington state, not New York.
Hey, were you watching the news yesterday?
"Two months ago, a satellite detected an object under the sands of the Sahara Desert.
An expedition was sent.
An ancient starship, buried in the sand. Deep inside the ruin was a single stone that will change the course of our history forever.
On the stone was etched a galactic map and a single word more ancient than the clans themselves:
Hiigara.
Our home."