In Britain we use millibars for the pressure setting in our altimeters. Europe uses hectopascals. Fortunately 1 millibar = 1 hectopascal, so why change? We do have the same knots/miles/feet thing though. One plane crash was due to the crew having loaded so many pounds of fuel when they should have loaded so many kilograms instead...!
There was a story recently how mobile phone transmitters can be used to detect stealth aircraft. There's also the story about how the first time a B2 made a flypast at the Farnborough Air Show, the USAF said they'd turn on a transponder and open some weapon bays so it could be seen on radar when they entered UK airspace. The RAF picked it up some time before they did that, while it was still in full stealth mode.
An F117 was shot down by the Serbs in March 1999. It was picked up by a Czech built radar system and shot down by anti-aircraft fire. (The pilot was rescued by US Special Forces) Google on F117 shot down to see what I mean.
A few years ago the company I work for (a small company in London) had, in the space of a year, two job applicants who claimed on their CV to be former MOSSAD agents...
They got to interview, but we never asked them what they'd done in MOSSAD, as if they told us they might have to kill us...!
I see these kids who spend all their fucking time playing an instrument, joining the debate team, being in the school play, playing three varsity sports, etc......Do stuff you *ENJOY* with your life. Fuck all else.
Maybe they *ENJOY* doing those things. Maybe they *ENJOY* playing instruments, debating, being in a play, or playing sport far more than you *ENJOY* sitting on your arse posting to Slashdot...
Maybe your rant is just a big bowl of sour grapes? That seems about right to me.
I was going to comment on Rover's turbine-engined car but you beat me to it. I think the reason it was never put into production was because they thought it wouldn't sell well enough (due to high running costs) to justify mass production.
Pity, as it was quite a cool thing for Rover to do (in 1950!), and what they got looked the same as a regular car. They built a few others including the sports car you mention, and apparently the Rover 2000 was originally designed to allow the turbine engine to be mounted inside. There was a TV programme about this a while ago, where they were talking with one of the people who worked on the car. Apparently, when they were driving on public roads and through towns, everywhere they went they would see people looking up - they'd heard the turbine, and were looking for the jet plane!
I think "Crime and Punishment by Fido Dogstoyevsky" is a good runner up in the best book category... (It's the book Grommit is reading in prison in "A Close Shave")
So what are your qualifications in the field of astronomy or biology? Or are you just bullshitting to sound big and clever?
My money is on the latter...
Re:Um, can you say September 11?
on
The Coming Air Age
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
Twat! Terrorists can steal a panel van, stuff it with high explosives, and park it next to a building, and do a whole shitload more damage than any light aircraft could ever do... Ask the IRA.
Actually I think you'll find that the fuel tax goes into the economy (and pays for road maintenance, etc) and NOT to the oil companies, and one of the reasons it's so high is to try and persuade people to use public transport more - which is a good thing...
There has been a case recently in the UK of people running their Diesel cars off cooking oil thus saving 40p per litre. Police set up a 'frying squad' to sniff out cars which smelt like mobile chip shops, and local supermarkets rationed sales of cooking oil.
I can nip down the supermarket and buy a bag of sugar for 54p (0.54GBP). This bag contains 1Kg of sugar. So 50g. of sugar would cost under 3p. So threepence worth of sugar would keep my 40 watt light bulb on for eight hours.
If electricty is charged at 6p per Kw/h (can't remember exactly, not got electricity bill on me) then the cost of lighting that 40w bulb is just under 2p. So there's not a lot in it!
However this is mere nitpicking and missing the point entirely. At the moment they're using sugar in the prototype. They intend to refine the bio-generator to use first carrots rather than pure sugar, and move on household waste. STUFF YOU THROW AWAY and is therefore worthless. At that point, the running cost is effectively zero.
So not only would this reduce the amount of rubbish thrown away by the average household, but it also reduces environmental damage done by power generation.
Some people say that weblogs are wonderful things as they give everyone a voice - well, everyone on the internet, that is, but the kind of people who say this don't believe people not on the internet count. The simple truth of the matter is that 99.999% of these people have nothing of any interest or value to say. Or look at it like this.
Once upon a time, people had diaries. Books of blank paper in which they would scribble down their tepid thoughts, worthless deeds, bad goth poetry (is there any other kind?) and stories about their cats. Then at the end of the day they'd close up the diary and shove it under the mattress, as it was all secret and they didn't want anyone to read it.
But now we have blogging and livejournals, and rather than writing all this stuff in a book and hiding it under the mattress, they publish this on the internet for all to see. How many terabytes of diskspace is taken up with bad goth poetry? How many servers does it take to hold everyone's wibblings about their bloody cats? How many gigawatts of electricity has to be generated to power the servers and the routers and all the infrastructure needed for these things to work? They're all just a terrible waste of resources! Remember this. Weblogs pollute the planet, physically and psychically. Just Say No!
I bet dollars to donuts that news sites were going down on 9/11, but the sites where you can see chicks going down on each other were just fine that day. >;-)
You know, I remember reading somewhere that Danni Ashe of Danni's Hard Drive [Link to your own porn, you wankers] fame was giving lectures on high-availability websites somewhere. Can't remember where I read it though. Could just have been invited by geeks who thought she might give the lecture with her tits out...!
Better still, get a wind-up radio such as the Freeplay ones. Then you don't need to worry about batteries, as you can run them off solar power if outdoors on a sunny day, or just wind them up every so often.
I've got one of the AM/FM models and it's quite good and saves having to get batteries. They also do shortwave models.
What happened to that? Did it ever happen, or did people come to their senses and realise that expecting people to play text adventure games which involved typing precise phrases on a fucking numeric keypad was an idiotic idea?
Personally, I've got nothing against text adventures, and even wrote some which are still floating around the internet to my eternal shame. But then again I don't take daguerrotypes or ride a penny farthing to the charabanc station. They're in the past...
What would be really cool would be if the display can monitor the position of your eyes and modify the display accordingly, so as you move your head, or shift slightly sideways, it automatically adjusts so that you still get the perfect 3d display.
I remember the incredibly dire BBC coverage of Pathfinder. It was hosted by comedian/chat-show host Clive Anderton and was embarrasingly bad. Upper-class twit of the year Anderton kept comparing the Pathfinder to a toy truck and having a jolly old chuckle about the whole thing, and the few scientists and astronomers on the programme looked increasingly horrified and ashamed as the programme went on.
Once upon a time the BBC would have treated such a thing with respect, but that was a travesty and showed just how dumbed down they had become. In the five years since, science programming on the BBC has not improved.
If it wasn't for Patrick Moore's long running programme "The Sky At Night" there would be no astronomy programming on British TV at all.
Slashdot Mirror
In Britain we use millibars for the pressure setting in our altimeters. Europe uses hectopascals. Fortunately 1 millibar = 1 hectopascal, so why change?
We do have the same knots/miles/feet thing though.
One plane crash was due to the crew having loaded so many pounds of fuel when they should have loaded so many kilograms instead...!
There was a story recently how mobile phone transmitters can be used to detect stealth aircraft.
There's also the story about how the first time a B2 made a flypast at the Farnborough Air Show, the USAF said they'd turn on a transponder and open some weapon bays so it could be seen on radar when they entered UK airspace.
The RAF picked it up some time before they did that, while it was still in full stealth mode.
No, the original poster does NOT mean the U2.
An F117 was shot down by the Serbs in March 1999.
It was picked up by a Czech built radar system and shot down by anti-aircraft fire.
(The pilot was rescued by US Special Forces)
Google on F117 shot down to see what I mean.
A few years ago the company I work for (a small company in London) had, in the space of a year, two job applicants who claimed on their CV to be former MOSSAD agents...
They got to interview, but we never asked them what they'd done in MOSSAD, as if they told us they might have to kill us...!
I see these kids who spend all their fucking time playing an instrument, joining the debate team, being in the school play, playing three varsity sports, etc... ...Do stuff you *ENJOY* with your life. Fuck all else.
Maybe they *ENJOY* doing those things.
Maybe they *ENJOY* playing instruments, debating, being in a play, or playing sport far more than you *ENJOY* sitting on your arse posting to Slashdot...
Maybe your rant is just a big bowl of sour grapes? That seems about right to me.
GET IT IN WRITING on where you'll be assigned and what your duties will be.
Yeah, 'cos everyone knows that geeks need to have special treatment and are better than everyone else...
I was going to comment on Rover's turbine-engined car but you beat me to it. I think the reason it was never put into production was because they thought it wouldn't sell well enough (due to high running costs) to justify mass production.
Pity, as it was quite a cool thing for Rover to do (in 1950!), and what they got looked the same as a regular car. They built a few others including the sports car you mention, and apparently the Rover 2000 was originally designed to allow the turbine engine to be mounted inside.
There was a TV programme about this a while ago, where they were talking with one of the people who worked on the car. Apparently, when they were driving on public roads and through towns, everywhere they went they would see people looking up - they'd heard the turbine, and were looking for the jet plane!
I think "Crime and Punishment by Fido Dogstoyevsky" is a good runner up in the best book category...
(It's the book Grommit is reading in prison in "A Close Shave")
And in Baxter's Moonseed Venus explodes!
So what are your qualifications in the field of astronomy or biology? Or are you just bullshitting to sound big and clever?
My money is on the latter...
Twat! Terrorists can steal a panel van, stuff it with high explosives, and park it next to a building, and do a whole shitload more damage than any light aircraft could ever do... Ask the IRA.
Fuckwits like you are killing general aviation.
Actually I think you'll find that the fuel tax goes into the economy (and pays for road maintenance, etc) and NOT to the oil companies, and one of the reasons it's so high is to try and persuade people to use public transport more - which is a good thing...
There has been a case recently in the UK of people running their Diesel cars off cooking oil thus saving 40p per litre. Police set up a 'frying squad' to sniff out cars which smelt like mobile chip shops, and local supermarkets rationed sales of cooking oil.
It's quite ingenious, though highly illegal...
It really fucking does...
What's the price of 50g. of sugar?
I can nip down the supermarket and buy a bag of sugar for 54p (0.54GBP). This bag contains 1Kg of sugar. So 50g. of sugar would cost under 3p.
So threepence worth of sugar would keep my 40 watt light bulb on for eight hours.
If electricty is charged at 6p per Kw/h (can't remember exactly, not got electricity bill on me) then the cost of lighting that 40w bulb is just under 2p. So there's not a lot in it!
However this is mere nitpicking and missing the point entirely. At the moment they're using sugar in the prototype. They intend to refine the bio-generator to use first carrots rather than pure sugar, and move on household waste. STUFF YOU THROW AWAY and is therefore worthless. At that point, the running cost is effectively zero.
So not only would this reduce the amount of rubbish thrown away by the average household, but it also reduces environmental damage done by power generation.
Just don't throw your old antibiotics in it!
Some people say that weblogs are wonderful things as they give everyone a voice - well, everyone on the internet, that is, but the kind of people who say this don't believe people not on the internet count.
The simple truth of the matter is that 99.999% of these people have nothing of any interest or value to say.
Or look at it like this.
Once upon a time, people had diaries. Books of blank paper in which they would scribble down their tepid thoughts, worthless deeds, bad goth poetry (is there any other kind?) and stories about their cats. Then at the end of the day they'd close up the diary and shove it under the mattress, as it was all secret and they didn't want anyone to read it.
But now we have blogging and livejournals, and rather than writing all this stuff in a book and hiding it under the mattress, they publish this on the internet for all to see.
How many terabytes of diskspace is taken up with bad goth poetry? How many servers does it take to hold everyone's wibblings about their bloody cats?
How many gigawatts of electricity has to be generated to power the servers and the routers and all the infrastructure needed for these things to work?
They're all just a terrible waste of resources!
Remember this. Weblogs pollute the planet, physically and psychically. Just Say No!
Actually the Buckaroo Banzai quote goes:-
"Where are we going?"
"Planet Ten!"
"When are we going?"
"Real Soon!"
I bet dollars to donuts that news sites were going down on 9/11, but the sites where you can see chicks going down on each other were just fine that day. >;-)
You know, I remember reading somewhere that Danni Ashe of Danni's Hard Drive [Link to your own porn, you wankers] fame was giving lectures on high-availability websites somewhere. Can't remember where I read it though.
Could just have been invited by geeks who thought she might give the lecture with her tits out...!
Better still, get a wind-up radio such as the Freeplay ones. Then you don't need to worry about batteries, as you can run them off solar power if outdoors on a sunny day, or just wind them up every so often.
I've got one of the AM/FM models and it's quite good and saves having to get batteries. They also do shortwave models.
SAUSAGES
Did anyone ever come across this press release from two years ago.
What happened to that? Did it ever happen, or did people come to their senses and realise that expecting people to play text adventure games which involved typing precise phrases on a fucking numeric keypad was an idiotic idea?
Personally, I've got nothing against text adventures, and even wrote some which are still floating around the internet to my eternal shame. But then again I don't take daguerrotypes or ride a penny farthing to the charabanc station. They're in the past...
What would be really cool would be if the display can monitor the position of your eyes and modify the display accordingly, so as you move your head, or shift slightly sideways, it automatically adjusts so that you still get the perfect 3d display.
I remember the incredibly dire BBC coverage of Pathfinder. It was hosted by comedian/chat-show host Clive Anderton and was embarrasingly bad. Upper-class twit of the year Anderton kept comparing the Pathfinder to a toy truck and having a jolly old chuckle about the whole thing, and the few scientists and astronomers on the programme looked increasingly horrified and ashamed as the programme went on.
Once upon a time the BBC would have treated such a thing with respect, but that was a travesty and showed just how dumbed down they had become. In the five years since, science programming on the BBC has not improved.
If it wasn't for Patrick Moore's long running programme "The Sky At Night" there would be no astronomy programming on British TV at all.
There's a reason that people wear padding and helmets in (American) football...
Because they're too wussy to play Rugby?