User: nstrug

They're geeks, you're an asshole!

On: Geeks in Rolling Stone

Not quite sure how you can afford to own a car and still plead poverty...

Nick

Air Gun, etc.

On: Consumer Reports From Ages Past

Not to be pedantic but the V-1 motor was a pulsejet not a ramjet. A ramjet burns continuously and needs a very highspeed airflow to work. A pulsejet works at much slower speeds (it can be driven with a fan) and sounds like the world's largest machine gun.

Basically it works by spraying fuel into the body of the motor and igniting it with a spark plug. The air inlet at the front consists of reeds arranged like louvres which close when the air/fuel mixture detonates. As the presure wave subsides, they open again admitting more air from the forward air flow (or the fan if you're running this statically on the deck). Think of it as a internal combustion cylinder with an open end instead of a piston and a capacity of several thousand litres.

Nick

The POWs

On: Fighting the Techno-War

Because there is no such thing as a 'declariation of war'. It's a political myth. The US never declared war against Northern Vietnam, NATO never declared war against Iraq, the UK never declared war against Argentina.
Nick

Something new for Slashdot:

On: Blender v1.5 Manual

>now that /. runs on a much faster machine, why not add a module that runs every article through 'ispell'

I see English English/American English flamewars on the horizon...

:-)

Come on people!

On: "Open Source" Apple says "No" to Xanim

The problem as I see it is that Apple refuse to directly support Quicktime under non-Apple/MS platforms - and also refuse to let anone else support it. If they released a Quicktime player for linux/unix things would be fine. As it is I have no access to either a Mac or a windows PC (I run linux at home and work in an SGI/Solaris shop) so I can't watch the trailer. I have no choice. Simple as that. Nick

Splitting infinitives NOT considered harmful

On: UK Government dropping Key Escrow?

Agreed. This one was thought up by a bunch of extremely dull nineteenth century grammarians who thought that as the infinitive is not splittable in Latin (it's a single word), it shouldn't be splittable in English. Tossers.

Nick

If I were to use the subjunctive . . .

On: UK Government dropping Key Escrow?

But it would be imperative that you be proficient in its usage...

:-)

z french

On: 20 Linux events scheduled in France, March 19-21.

mvh,

Why are you being so gratuitously rude? Grow up and learn some manners.

Nick

I'm gonna get you little fishie!

On: Robotic Fish

Yeah, didn't Lister have two mechanical fish - Lennon and McCartney? And the cat broke his tooth trying to eat one...

Nick

Beowulf IS useful for many applications

On: PPC SMP Boxes

I concur - we run stuff on Origin 2000s and PCAs that could be easily (I won't say trivially) ported to MPI and run on Beowulf clusters - Image processing, neural net classification, atmospheric radiative transfer (RT) codes, canopy RT codes. Canopy ray tracing simulations...