Pretty simple, actually. Figure the mass of a coconut, height of the tree, and you can solve for the velocity of the coconut at impact, say five feet off the ground. I think for this one you'd ignore air resistance, but that's possible. You then know the impulse. Elasticity of the human heada is I'm sure well-known by know, so you can find out how the force would be spread out over time to produce the needed impulse. Heck, you might even be able to do this one on the back of an envelope.
Certainly a coconut is less reliable, but I don't recall anyone suggesting they use this research for assassination.
I wonder if the billions proposed to be spent on esoteric particle research would better be spent on applied materials science.
Well, the fields are closer than you think. "Esoteric particle research" boils down to a better understanding of quantum phenomena, which includes nailing down the band theory of solids (among other things)--very important in understanding how to make stuff adhere and cohere.
No, this doesn't have immediate application in the sense of "does material A or material B work better?" but it can help us answer the question "How do I design a material C to work the best?"
among other things that this crew is a little weary of new items such as "Phase Pistols" and "Transporters"
No kidding. Now, I have no idea how much Enterprise is going to play with the Star Trek canon (such as it is), but NCC-1701 was the first Federation ship with transporters that took seconds rather than minutes. Still felt like you were dying, but this time there was less chance that you actually did die.
The best example to disprove your hypothesis is car tires. If surface area were irrelevant it would not matter whether you had narrow or wide tires. A 1 inch wide tire and a 15 inch wide tire of the same material would acheive the same friction (and therefore acceleration/deceleration/turning power). This is obviously not true.
You're forgetting something: size of the contact patch. If you have narrower tires, to support the weight of the car you need to either have a longer contact patch (i.e. the tires would basically look flat--the bottom of the tire would be straight for a long distance) or higher pressure on the tires. Pretty simple: size of contact patch times tire pressure times four equals weight of the car.
I suppose that is one reason that MacOS 9 is still shipping on all of Apple's computers in addition to MacOS X
IIRC, isn't OS 9 still required for legacy support? It basically runs OS 9 as a process/VM on X, similar to Win16 on NT? I'd consider that a very big reason to keep shipping 9.
What I can't believe is how many people didn't apply the patch that protected against Code Red.
Microsoft claimed it was included in SP2. It wasn't. Yes, there's a bit of a complacent sysadmin problem here, but do you check to make sure that every single patch wrapped up in a service pack actually installed?
As other have pointed out, getting the cluster and getting it running isn't the hard part. Parallelizing your application, choosing a parallel library/utility, and coding to it will take a lot of time. A beowulf cluster is basically just a big bag of Linux boxen until you code specifically to it.
Of course, if the issue is just spending the funding fast, go right ahead. Don't expect results for a long time, though.
Re:weed out these guys
on
Whither OpenAL?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Can slashdot not report on these types of projects until they start producing somethings besides vapor
It's not vapour. You can check it out of their CVS today, compile it, install it. It's shipping with their games: Rune for example uses OpenAL. (Although, as an aside, I wish there were an installation option to use the system library for stuff like SDL and OpenAL rather than installing one just for the game).
If the evidence continues to build in the direction it has been pointing, the government of Afghanistan should be given 24 hours to decide whether it wants to be on the side of the community of law-abiding nations and hand bin Laden & Co. over to the US for trial, or whether it wants war.
24 hours nothing. The Taliban was warned months ago that if bin Laden was connected to any terrorist activity in the US, Afghanistan would be held responsible. This has been reiterated over and over in the past 24 hours: the US will draw no distinction between the terrorists and those harbouring them.
If bin Laden is confirmed as the culprit, there will be exactly zero additional warning before the US, NATO, and the world move against the Taliban.
No it is not! It is a rumour that has not been confirmed or even shown to be probable. That statement is less historical than Oliver Stone's movie JFK.
Um, in October 2000 Congress cleared the commanders of forces in the Pacific of all charges, on the basis that information was intentionally witheld from them. Check out the book "Day of Deceit"--you don't have to agree with the guy's conclusions, but he has a fair number of texts reproduced from documents he obtained under FOIA.
PS While I respect radio astronomers, your problems are not typical. We may simply have to accept that what's useful to us is harmful to you and the overall utility might trump some methods of research.
Take a look sometime. Radio astronomy allocations are miniscule. Last time I was at the VLA the problem was the Iridium was radiating out of band into the radio astronomy allocation, illegal practice and not neighbourly no matter whose spectrum you're smashing.
Most anime discs in the US are CSS free and Macrovision free and R0 unless otherwise required by the licensor. Manga Ent., who distributed GitS, is now Macrovisioning all their discs.
The movie rights to MMI have already been obtained by Miramax. I'm sure their disc will have CSS, Macrovision, R1, RCE, and contact poison for anyone trying to mess with them.
Whether it's because the whole screen should look SciFi / Fantasy / Whatever, or simply because users want something different, game interfaces have to be different from usual programs.
For me it's pretty simple: in addition to all the usual interface constraints, a game interface should help put me in the game world. The Freespace series did a pretty good job of it, with launcher screen, configuration options, keybindings, etc. all looking similar to each other and to, say, the mission briefing screen. The look was consistent and designed to feel like a part of the game world.
Now consider, say, Terminus, which features menu screens that look like a bad Smalltalk implementation crossed with ncurses. Garish colours and all, it just doesn't quite fit the universe. But it's not as bad as...
X:Beyond the Frontier does everything through a Windows dialog box. To change the configuration, you're thrown out of the fullscreen and play with standard Windows widgets. Not only do you lose association with the universe, you're given a very strong association with this universe, and Windows, and a whole bunch of other things.
Granted: it's a fair bit of work for both the artists and the programmers to design a "pretty" interface. But it does serve a purpose, and awfully nice when they can do it.
And, you know, Windows has been able to do it since Win95.
Actually I've had problems with that--the system sounds always work, of course (except for those of us who've turned the damned things off), and you almost always get one other source working, but I haven't been able to, for example, run WinAmp and play a game. This might be because one or the other is using DirectX, but I'm pretty sure some of the combinations I've tried haven't used DirectSound.
So it's not perfect; hopefully ALSA will catch up soon and Linux will be ahead of Windows in this respect. Certainly Windows has a slight edge right now, tho.
Lego killed itself when the pieces got so specialized around the mid-90s, that a set's pieces was tied inextricibly with what the set was supposed to build.
That's my biggest complaint as well. I always loved the space sets, because you could do just about anything with them. Unfortunately nowadays the space has the greatest number of overspecialized "one piece hull" pieces.
The Star Wars sets, on the other hand, look very impressive to me. They have very few specialty pieces. I just need some intelligent way to justify buying the $150 X-wing set...
I caught the "American Premiere" at the 2001 Anime Expo in Long Beach that happened this July. (If you were there, I was in the group of guys shouting "BLOOD!" at the top of our lungs in the front of the line.) I put "American Premiere" in quotes, because as I understand it, the movie was released well over a year ago in Japan, and has been seen extensively in the US in the form of fansubs.
Still, it was pretty fast turn-around between Japanese release and US home video.
I do have to point out, however, that AX was by no means the earliest legit showing of Blood in the US--JAFAX VI had it at the end of June.
For those looking to pick it up, be forewarned that it's pretty short (around 45 minutes of movie) and general consensus is that it's pretty, but the plot isn't particularly deep.
And here's a link for the Google-impaired, or http://www.cmgequipment.com/infinity2.html for the goatse.cx wary. They have a list of places to buy, or the Google search pops up some nice ones. Some stores have a broader colour selection than others.
For $20, I'll have to check one out--although it's not as useful for bopping someone on the head as a 4-D MagLite.
I wonder how much the new graphics, and special effect enhancements can make up for the weakness of the original story.
Really, it's far, far more than that. The official line is that the DVD is finishing the film. They're doing post on some footage that never got used, re-editing, and overall trying to do the film the way it was meant, rather than under the Christmas deadline. All-in-all, it should be a better, not just prettier, flick.
As an aside, the particular effect was one of the key 'reason for being' points of the movie Frequency.
Actually no. What's happening now is standard ionospheric skip, just on higher-than usual frequencies becuase of higher ionization levels. "Frequency" was about Long Delayed Echoes, where you'll pick up a transmission from years or even decades ago. LDE's still aren't fully explained; the difficulty of course is that in order to pick up a ten-year old signal you need either some sort of store-resend mechanism (aliens on the moon!) or the signal needs to travel a distance the same as to Proxima and back. And still be audible.
Heh, sort of reminds me of the bad old days when AMD would quote system cpomparisons using twice as much RAM as the Intel system, to artificially inflate their scores.
I presume you're talking about when AMD was still running K6 (classic) and Intel had just come out with the PII. AMD generally ran two comparision charts: one with the systems configured similarly (just swap out 200MHz PII with 200MHz K6) and one with the systems configured for the same price. The idea was "Look, we're pretty close clock-for-clock, but if you buy our stuff, you have enough money to really boost the performance." Neither benchmark is more valid than the other, so they ran both.
Forging is, at least for swords, superior to casting. I presume it has something to do with uneven cooling in a mold. Example: during the samurai years in Japan, doctors and other non-samurai who had to carry a sword for their work (doctors to perform amputations) but didn't rate the social standing of a sword would be given reverse-blade weapons. They were cast in the curved shape which normally is a result of forging the edge (as the edge is thinned by the hammer, it spreads out and thus is longer along the front side than the back, causing a curve), and the back side was sharpened. Did the job for chopping off someone's leg, but it would shatter in an all-out fight.
Which reminds me, closer to topic: I believe many of the secrets of Masamune and other 16th-century master smiths are lost to this day. It's amazing how much fascinating technology we no longer have available.
I hate to push you back over to Cartoon Network, but Outlaw Star is really some of the best TV sci-fi I've ever seen. The characters are interesting and well-rounded and the plot just keeps on churning to the finish line. It's unpretentious, solidly done entertainment.
Expanding out to DVD's, Gasaraki, also done by Sunrise (Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop) is seriously cool; hope CN gets a chance to pick that one up and give it broader exposure.
Dark Angel has looked pretty intriguing to me, although I haven't delved into it, and of course B5 and Crusade reruns are always good.
Is anyone doing reruns of Nowhere Man? (Does anyone besides me remember the show?)
Re:Its interesting that Internal...
on
Breaking Windows
·
· Score: 1
Take a look at Drummond's Renegades of the Empire. Alex St. John wound up leaving Microsoft to form WildTangent after Chrome bit the big one. Just one example; I'm sure there's more.
Lessee...$30 for LSL's nine-CD pack (or however many it was then), $15 on GIMP 1.0.
$170 one-time expense CD burner
$50/month DSL, plus $2.foo for "make broadband users bully public libraries into installing censorware" tax. Download new distros, apps, etc.
I'm serious about the DSL--I could probably live with dialup if I weren't a download junkie--our line was always busy with the 56k. For just the occasional game demo or something, I could probably do without, but I've gotta have my updates!
Slashdot Mirror
Certainly a coconut is less reliable, but I don't recall anyone suggesting they use this research for assassination.
Well, the fields are closer than you think. "Esoteric particle research" boils down to a better understanding of quantum phenomena, which includes nailing down the band theory of solids (among other things)--very important in understanding how to make stuff adhere and cohere.
No, this doesn't have immediate application in the sense of "does material A or material B work better?" but it can help us answer the question "How do I design a material C to work the best?"
No kidding. Now, I have no idea how much Enterprise is going to play with the Star Trek canon (such as it is), but NCC-1701 was the first Federation ship with transporters that took seconds rather than minutes. Still felt like you were dying, but this time there was less chance that you actually did die.
You're forgetting something: size of the contact patch. If you have narrower tires, to support the weight of the car you need to either have a longer contact patch (i.e. the tires would basically look flat--the bottom of the tire would be straight for a long distance) or higher pressure on the tires. Pretty simple: size of contact patch times tire pressure times four equals weight of the car.
IIRC, isn't OS 9 still required for legacy support? It basically runs OS 9 as a process/VM on X, similar to Win16 on NT? I'd consider that a very big reason to keep shipping 9.
Microsoft claimed it was included in SP2. It wasn't. Yes, there's a bit of a complacent sysadmin problem here, but do you check to make sure that every single patch wrapped up in a service pack actually installed?
Of course, if the issue is just spending the funding fast, go right ahead. Don't expect results for a long time, though.
It's not vapour. You can check it out of their CVS today, compile it, install it. It's shipping with their games: Rune for example uses OpenAL. (Although, as an aside, I wish there were an installation option to use the system library for stuff like SDL and OpenAL rather than installing one just for the game).
24 hours nothing. The Taliban was warned months ago that if bin Laden was connected to any terrorist activity in the US, Afghanistan would be held responsible. This has been reiterated over and over in the past 24 hours: the US will draw no distinction between the terrorists and those harbouring them.
If bin Laden is confirmed as the culprit, there will be exactly zero additional warning before the US, NATO, and the world move against the Taliban.
No it is not! It is a rumour that has not been confirmed or even shown to be probable. That statement is less historical than Oliver Stone's movie JFK.
Um, in October 2000 Congress cleared the commanders of forces in the Pacific of all charges, on the basis that information was intentionally witheld from them. Check out the book "Day of Deceit"--you don't have to agree with the guy's conclusions, but he has a fair number of texts reproduced from documents he obtained under FOIA.
Take a look sometime. Radio astronomy allocations are miniscule. Last time I was at the VLA the problem was the Iridium was radiating out of band into the radio astronomy allocation, illegal practice and not neighbourly no matter whose spectrum you're smashing.
The movie rights to MMI have already been obtained by Miramax. I'm sure their disc will have CSS, Macrovision, R1, RCE, and contact poison for anyone trying to mess with them.
For me it's pretty simple: in addition to all the usual interface constraints, a game interface should help put me in the game world. The Freespace series did a pretty good job of it, with launcher screen, configuration options, keybindings, etc. all looking similar to each other and to, say, the mission briefing screen. The look was consistent and designed to feel like a part of the game world.
Now consider, say, Terminus, which features menu screens that look like a bad Smalltalk implementation crossed with ncurses. Garish colours and all, it just doesn't quite fit the universe. But it's not as bad as...
X:Beyond the Frontier does everything through a Windows dialog box. To change the configuration, you're thrown out of the fullscreen and play with standard Windows widgets. Not only do you lose association with the universe, you're given a very strong association with this universe, and Windows, and a whole bunch of other things.
Granted: it's a fair bit of work for both the artists and the programmers to design a "pretty" interface. But it does serve a purpose, and awfully nice when they can do it.
Actually I've had problems with that--the system sounds always work, of course (except for those of us who've turned the damned things off), and you almost always get one other source working, but I haven't been able to, for example, run WinAmp and play a game. This might be because one or the other is using DirectX, but I'm pretty sure some of the combinations I've tried haven't used DirectSound.
So it's not perfect; hopefully ALSA will catch up soon and Linux will be ahead of Windows in this respect. Certainly Windows has a slight edge right now, tho.
That's my biggest complaint as well. I always loved the space sets, because you could do just about anything with them. Unfortunately nowadays the space has the greatest number of overspecialized "one piece hull" pieces.
The Star Wars sets, on the other hand, look very impressive to me. They have very few specialty pieces. I just need some intelligent way to justify buying the $150 X-wing set...
Still, it was pretty fast turn-around between Japanese release and US home video.
I do have to point out, however, that AX was by no means the earliest legit showing of Blood in the US--JAFAX VI had it at the end of June.
For those looking to pick it up, be forewarned that it's pretty short (around 45 minutes of movie) and general consensus is that it's pretty, but the plot isn't particularly deep.
Memory in the canonical sense, not the technical sense. As in remembering Usenet of yesteryear.
For $20, I'll have to check one out--although it's not as useful for bopping someone on the head as a 4-D MagLite.
Oh, they also seem to have lanterns--coooool.
Really, it's far, far more than that. The official line is that the DVD is finishing the film. They're doing post on some footage that never got used, re-editing, and overall trying to do the film the way it was meant, rather than under the Christmas deadline. All-in-all, it should be a better, not just prettier, flick.
As an aside, the particular effect was one of the key 'reason for being' points of the movie Frequency.
Actually no. What's happening now is standard ionospheric skip, just on higher-than usual frequencies becuase of higher ionization levels. "Frequency" was about Long Delayed Echoes, where you'll pick up a transmission from years or even decades ago. LDE's still aren't fully explained; the difficulty of course is that in order to pick up a ten-year old signal you need either some sort of store-resend mechanism (aliens on the moon!) or the signal needs to travel a distance the same as to Proxima and back. And still be audible.
Heh, sort of reminds me of the bad old days when AMD would quote system cpomparisons using twice as much RAM as the Intel system, to artificially inflate their scores.
I presume you're talking about when AMD was still running K6 (classic) and Intel had just come out with the PII. AMD generally ran two comparision charts: one with the systems configured similarly (just swap out 200MHz PII with 200MHz K6) and one with the systems configured for the same price. The idea was "Look, we're pretty close clock-for-clock, but if you buy our stuff, you have enough money to really boost the performance." Neither benchmark is more valid than the other, so they ran both.
Which reminds me, closer to topic: I believe many of the secrets of Masamune and other 16th-century master smiths are lost to this day. It's amazing how much fascinating technology we no longer have available.
I hate to push you back over to Cartoon Network, but Outlaw Star is really some of the best TV sci-fi I've ever seen. The characters are interesting and well-rounded and the plot just keeps on churning to the finish line. It's unpretentious, solidly done entertainment. Expanding out to DVD's, Gasaraki, also done by Sunrise (Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop) is seriously cool; hope CN gets a chance to pick that one up and give it broader exposure. Dark Angel has looked pretty intriguing to me, although I haven't delved into it, and of course B5 and Crusade reruns are always good. Is anyone doing reruns of Nowhere Man? (Does anyone besides me remember the show?)
Take a look at Drummond's Renegades of the Empire. Alex St. John wound up leaving Microsoft to form WildTangent after Chrome bit the big one. Just one example; I'm sure there's more.
$170 one-time expense CD burner
$50/month DSL, plus $2.foo for "make broadband users bully public libraries into installing censorware" tax. Download new distros, apps, etc.
I'm serious about the DSL--I could probably live with dialup if I weren't a download junkie--our line was always busy with the 56k. For just the occasional game demo or something, I could probably do without, but I've gotta have my updates!