Most SUVs I see driving down the highway aren't carrying any more cargo (including passengers) than a Cessna 172 is capable of carrying. Or even a C-152, for that matter. And those aren't exactly state of the art in light aircraft design. Most SUVs are only carrying the driver and a bag or briefcase, and maybe one passenger.
I'm comparing real land vehicles with real aircraft. You're the one who wants to create artificial comparisons by requiring that both vehicles weigh the same and have the same drag coefficient. Heck, I'll even stipulate properly inflated tires on the SUV, the aircraft will still get better mileage.
Maybe you've never seen one; you would know this if you looked at the one you claim to posess
Here, I'll quote from my old license, issued by the Canada Dept of Transport:
"PRIVATE PILOT LICENCE/LICENCE DE PILOTE PRIVE"
and "This licence is valid only for the period specified in the licence validation certificate [...] which must accompany this licence." -- which would be the medical certificate.
It also says "This licence is valid for:" and "ALL TYPES OF CLASS 1 AEROPLANES OF 4,000 LBS. OR LESS" (and the same in French), with plenty of room for additional endorsements.
Class 1 is "Single engine land", on up to Class 9 which is "Single and multi-engine land and sea".
Oh, and the issue date is 03/06/86. Now go teach your grandmother to suck eggs.
I didn't mean that the air regs are identical for all types and classes of aircraft, obviously that's ridiculous, but the regs regarding classification of airspace, communications procedures, etc, are the same.
However, in the original context I was talking about what a pilot (any kind) needs to know, and what is tested on the written exams, and rather than "air regulations" I should have included things like meteorology and navigation as well as radio procedure, air space rules, etc.
Airplane, Single-Engine, and Land are all ratings that can apply to a license. If somebody is licensed to fly airplanes, helicopters, gyrocopters and gliders with multiple engines (okay, except gliders), on land or sea, are you really going to string it out to PP-AHGGSMLS ??
And then what if he gets his balloon rating?
The air regulations are the same for all, and knowing them is a large part of what the license is about (at least at the PP level). Demonstrated skill in the handling of a particular aircraft is part of it too, of course, but PPL is a nice generic abbreviation that covers those licensed to fly airplanes or helicopters or autogyros or balloons, whether they "land" on land or water.
When driving on a flat road at a constant speed, doesn't the lion's share of the fuel go on overcoming air resistance?
Depends how fast you're going. Rolling resistance (mostly making the tires flex, but also bearings, gears, transmission losses, etc) uses up a fair bit of fuel too.
Besides, how much of your driving time is spent driving through Kansas? (Joke. I know Kansas isn't perfectly flat. There are at least two hills.;-)
It's a physics based fact that keeping a mass, such as an air car, airborne consumes more energy than a ground based rolling car.
No, it isn't.
There are far too many variables involved to make such a blanket statement: L/D ratio of the aircraft, mass, rolling resistance and air drag of the ground vehicle, terrain, speeds, stopping and starting, etc, etc.
As an extreme example, consider what kind of gas mileage a glider gets, even counting whatever gas is used to tow (or propel, for a motor-glider) it to altitude. Compare that to an SUV with under-inflated tires. Even a (non-gliding) Cessna gets better gas mileage than an SUV (I don't recall the exact numbers of the top of my head, aircraft fuel consumption is listed in gallons (or sometimes pounds) per hour.)
Now, something that relies on a fan instead of a wing for lift probably will have higher consumption, but you're blanket statement is simply false.
How are they going to prevent people from flying over private property?
They're not. At 500 feet above the highest obstacle, (1000 feet over a built up area), the skies are open (subject to air traffic regs). If you don't want people flying over your property, you'll have to apply to the FAA to declare your property restricted airspace. Good luck.
(Below the above altitudes, you can report such aircraft to the FAA, unless they're on approach to or departure from an airport.)
(Oh, and if you feel like just putting up a 500 foot tower to raise the "floor", better make sure you've got approval, lest the FAA declare it a hazard to navigation and make you take it down.)
Since you're picking nits, the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) was renamed to just the Lunar Module (LM, but still pronounced "lem") shortly before the first lunar flights.
Don't know why -- maybe to save ink, for all I know -- but LM is the correct terminology for the actual lunar flight era. Cute graphics on integrated circuits aside.
The original developer can't do that (retroactively decide that the GPL is invalid and demand license fees from everyone he distributed software to), for several reasons.
First is "promissory estoppel". The initial distribution and license grant is an implicit promise not to sue the recipient; even if the developer secretly didn't think the GPL valid, he acted as though he did, and the recipient has to assume that the developer/distributor was acting in good faith. The law provides that the recipient is still entitled to that even if the original developer changes his mind about the license. The developer is "estopped" (prevented) from a successful suit because of the implicit promise he made in the first place. The courts won't help you unfairly renege on a promise.
Secondly, if the original developer argues that he interpreted or intended the GPL to mean something other than what it plainly says on its face, he is still out of luck. The courts generally hold that in cases where the parties legitimately disagree over the meaning of a contract or license clause (ie, where the clause is genuinely ambiguous, not merely that one party is trying to argue that "black" really meant "white"), that the interpretation will favor the party other than the one which drew up the contract. In this case again, it would be the recipient of the software.
I think you're going to great pains to come up with a scenario that, in fact, would actually get thrown out of court for reasons entirely unrelated to the GPL itself.
Not so much your mind compensating (which to implies a software process) as the way neurons work. Neurons are optimized to detect change, so they'll "tune out" a signal that they're saturated with, to the point where if that signal disappears they'll respond as though they were receiving a signal.
One cause of tinnitus (ringing in the ears), is when a hair cell (sensor) stops sending its signal . That's also why the sudden cessation of a background noise will get your attention.
Optically, think of it as your white balance getting messed up. Another example of this is divers who take underwater photos (without flash to compensate for the water filter the red out of the sunlight), then wonder why the developed picture is much more blue than they remember everything.
It's a kind of chromatic aberration. The eye has a rather simple lens structure, and so can't focus different wavelengths at exactly the same point, and can't focus really short wavelengths (the violet end) at all. You see a purple blur around UV lights because some of the light is simply out of focus.
(There's some scatter effect too if the light is bright enough, of course, and UV lights are typically used in an otherwise dark room so the scatter is more obvious. But even in a lit room you'll see some blur or haze.)
I'd mod you up insightful but I've already commented here.
That was exactly my first thought -- waving your arms around is bloody tiring. Heck, I like to have my mouse tracking set so I can pretty much move the cursor from one side of the screen to the other by just flexing my fingers, the heel of my palm pretty much rests in one spot (and in a different spot when using the keyboard).
By your own examples, if you can live on the Moon, you can (probably -- there are some hazards the Moon doesn't have) live on Mars. Since the Moon is much much closer and easier to get to, shouldn't we prove out the technologies there first?
Zubrin is an idiot. (And I and others have had this discussion with him.)
Playing spaceman in a fancy clubhouse^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H simulated Mars base out in the Canadian Arctic or in Utah won't teach you what you'll need to know to survive in an environment where the gravity is different, where there's essentially no atmosphere, where the radiation levels are higher, and where you can't phone for medevac if things go seriously wrong.
Living in a base on the Moon will.
and we've been there before.
Unless your name is Armstrong, Aldrin, Conrad, Bean, Shephard, Mitchell, Scott, Irwin, Young, Duke, Cernan or Schmitt (and some of those are dead), you haven't. And most of those (at least, the ones I've talked with) think we should go back to the Moon first.
Seriously. If you're RMAing a drive because it's dead, there ain't no magic appliance that's going to bring it back to life long enough to erase (read "overwrite", because that's what really happens) the data.
And no external magnet is going to erase it either. Well, not short of the kind of magnets they use for MRI scans.
If you just want to make sure the drive is unreadable before disposing of it, use a drill press.
Homemade Sandwich: 104 Cal from Sodium, 310 Calories Total = 33.5% from Sodium Their Sandwich: 65 Cal from Soduim, 210 Calories Total = 31% from Sodium
What the heck are you talking about?! Sodium has no calories. Calories come from carbs (carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen), fat (carbon, hydrogen, and less oxygen), and protein (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen).
Calories from sodium? Man, that'd be one exciting sandwich! (Ever seen elemental sodium burn?)
Slashdot Mirror
Troll?
Flamebait, maybe, although it was actually supposed to be funny.
Sigh, subtle humor is too often lost on the average moderator.
Most SUVs I see driving down the highway aren't carrying any more cargo (including passengers) than a Cessna 172 is capable of carrying. Or even a C-152, for that matter. And those aren't exactly state of the art in light aircraft design. Most SUVs are only carrying the driver and a bag or briefcase, and maybe one passenger.
I'm comparing real land vehicles with real aircraft. You're the one who wants to create artificial comparisons by requiring that both vehicles weigh the same and have the same drag coefficient. Heck, I'll even stipulate properly inflated tires on the SUV, the aircraft will still get better mileage.
Maybe you've never seen one; you would know this if you looked at the one you claim to posess
Here, I'll quote from my old license, issued by the Canada Dept of Transport:
"PRIVATE PILOT LICENCE/LICENCE DE PILOTE PRIVE"
and "This licence is valid only for the period specified in the licence validation certificate [...] which must accompany this licence." -- which would be the medical certificate.
It also says "This licence is valid for:" and "ALL TYPES OF CLASS 1 AEROPLANES OF 4,000 LBS. OR LESS" (and the same in French), with plenty of room for additional endorsements.
Class 1 is "Single engine land", on up to Class 9 which is "Single and multi-engine land and sea".
Oh, and the issue date is 03/06/86. Now go teach your grandmother to suck eggs.
I didn't mean that the air regs are identical for all types and classes of aircraft, obviously that's ridiculous, but the regs regarding classification of airspace, communications procedures, etc, are the same.
However, in the original context I was talking about what a pilot (any kind) needs to know, and what is tested on the written exams, and rather than "air regulations" I should have included things like meteorology and navigation as well as radio procedure, air space rules, etc.
Actually, Orion is tested. I've got video of an Orion prototype launching itself and flying to some considerable altitude.
Mind, that was done with conventional explosives, not nukes, but nuclear explosives are hardly a neglected area of research.
Not that I'd want the asteroid interceptor to be the first live trial, of course.
Airplane, Single-Engine, and Land are all ratings that can apply to a license. If somebody is licensed to fly airplanes, helicopters, gyrocopters and gliders with multiple engines (okay, except gliders), on land or sea, are you really going to string it out to PP-AHGGSMLS ??
And then what if he gets his balloon rating?
The air regulations are the same for all, and knowing them is a large part of what the license is about (at least at the PP level). Demonstrated skill in the handling of a particular aircraft is part of it too, of course, but PPL is a nice generic abbreviation that covers those licensed to fly airplanes or helicopters or autogyros or balloons, whether they "land" on land or water.
Yeah, but below 400 feet you're within shotgun range...
"I thought it was a really big duck, honest!"
When driving on a flat road at a constant speed, doesn't the lion's share of the fuel go on overcoming air resistance?
;-)
Depends how fast you're going. Rolling resistance (mostly making the tires flex, but also bearings, gears, transmission losses, etc) uses up a fair bit of fuel too.
Besides, how much of your driving time is spent driving through Kansas? (Joke. I know Kansas isn't perfectly flat. There are at least two hills.
Then howcome the abbreviation is PPL (Private Pilot's License), not PPC? Or maybe it's different in Canada (where I got mine).
And yes, I assumed he meant he let his medical or currency lapse. Same here, although I still consider myself a licensed (not "certificated") pilot.
It's a physics based fact that keeping a mass, such as an air car, airborne consumes more energy than a ground based rolling car.
No, it isn't.
There are far too many variables involved to make such a blanket statement: L/D ratio of the aircraft, mass, rolling resistance and air drag of the ground vehicle, terrain, speeds, stopping and starting, etc, etc.
As an extreme example, consider what kind of gas mileage a glider gets, even counting whatever gas is used to tow (or propel, for a motor-glider) it to altitude. Compare that to an SUV with under-inflated tires. Even a (non-gliding) Cessna gets better gas mileage than an SUV (I don't recall the exact numbers of the top of my head, aircraft fuel consumption is listed in gallons (or sometimes pounds) per hour.)
Now, something that relies on a fan instead of a wing for lift probably will have higher consumption, but you're blanket statement is simply false.
How are they going to prevent people from flying over private property?
They're not. At 500 feet above the highest obstacle, (1000 feet over a built up area), the skies are open (subject to air traffic regs). If you don't want people flying over your property, you'll have to apply to the FAA to declare your property restricted airspace. Good luck.
(Below the above altitudes, you can report such aircraft to the FAA, unless they're on approach to or departure from an airport.)
(Oh, and if you feel like just putting up a 500 foot tower to raise the "floor", better make sure you've got approval, lest the FAA declare it a hazard to navigation and make you take it down.)
Since you're picking nits, the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) was renamed to just the Lunar Module (LM, but still pronounced "lem") shortly before the first lunar flights.
Don't know why -- maybe to save ink, for all I know -- but LM is the correct terminology for the actual lunar flight era. Cute graphics on integrated circuits aside.
[1] AFAIK there is nothing to stop the owner of some code both relieasing under the GPL and simultaneously licensing it for commercial use for money.
You are quite correct. See MySQL, Qt (TrollTech), and others for concrete examples.
The original developer can't do that (retroactively decide that the GPL is invalid and demand license fees from everyone he distributed software to), for several reasons.
First is "promissory estoppel". The initial distribution and license grant is an implicit promise not to sue the recipient; even if the developer secretly didn't think the GPL valid, he acted as though he did, and the recipient has to assume that the developer/distributor was acting in good faith. The law provides that the recipient is still entitled to that even if the original developer changes his mind about the license. The developer is "estopped" (prevented) from a successful suit because of the implicit promise he made in the first place. The courts won't help you unfairly renege on a promise.
Secondly, if the original developer argues that he interpreted or intended the GPL to mean something other than what it plainly says on its face, he is still out of luck. The courts generally hold that in cases where the parties legitimately disagree over the meaning of a contract or license clause (ie, where the clause is genuinely ambiguous, not merely that one party is trying to argue that "black" really meant "white"), that the interpretation will favor the party other than the one which drew up the contract. In this case again, it would be the recipient of the software.
I think you're going to great pains to come up with a scenario that, in fact, would actually get thrown out of court for reasons entirely unrelated to the GPL itself.
Not so much your mind compensating (which to implies a software process) as the way neurons work. Neurons are optimized to detect change, so they'll "tune out" a signal that they're saturated with, to the point where if that signal disappears they'll respond as though they were receiving a signal.
One cause of tinnitus (ringing in the ears), is when a hair cell (sensor) stops sending its signal . That's also why the sudden cessation of a background noise will get your attention.
Optically, think of it as your white balance getting messed up. Another example of this is divers who take underwater photos (without flash to compensate for the water filter the red out of the sunlight), then wonder why the developed picture is much more blue than they remember everything.
It's a kind of chromatic aberration. The eye has a rather simple lens structure, and so can't focus different wavelengths at exactly the same point, and can't focus really short wavelengths (the violet end) at all. You see a purple blur around UV lights because some of the light is simply out of focus.
(There's some scatter effect too if the light is bright enough, of course, and UV lights are typically used in an otherwise dark room so the scatter is more obvious. But even in a lit room you'll see some blur or haze.)
I'd mod you up insightful but I've already commented here.
That was exactly my first thought -- waving your arms around is bloody tiring. Heck, I like to have my mouse tracking set so I can pretty much move the cursor from one side of the screen to the other by just flexing my fingers, the heel of my palm pretty much rests in one spot (and in a different spot when using the keyboard).
the Apple solution: it will only come with one glove.
Correction: a mitten.
You prove my point.
By your own examples, if you can live on the Moon, you can (probably -- there are some hazards the Moon doesn't have) live on Mars. Since the Moon is much much closer and easier to get to, shouldn't we prove out the technologies there first?
That depends. When were you last on the Moon?
Zubrin is an idiot. (And I and others have had this discussion with him.)
Playing spaceman in a fancy clubhouse^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H simulated Mars base out in the Canadian Arctic or in Utah won't teach you what you'll need to know to survive in an environment where the gravity is different, where there's essentially no atmosphere, where the radiation levels are higher, and where you can't phone for medevac if things go seriously wrong.
Living in a base on the Moon will.
and we've been there before.
Unless your name is Armstrong, Aldrin, Conrad, Bean, Shephard, Mitchell, Scott, Irwin, Young, Duke, Cernan or Schmitt (and some of those are dead), you haven't. And most of those (at least, the ones I've talked with) think we should go back to the Moon first.
For a long time, it has been bad netiquette to critisize other people's grammar and spelling.
I think you mean "criticize".
Seriously. If you're RMAing a drive because it's dead, there ain't no magic appliance that's going to bring it back to life long enough to erase (read "overwrite", because that's what really happens) the data.
And no external magnet is going to erase it either. Well, not short of the kind of magnets they use for MRI scans.
If you just want to make sure the drive is unreadable before disposing of it, use a drill press.
Homemade Sandwich: 104 Cal from Sodium, 310 Calories Total = 33.5% from Sodium
Their Sandwich: 65 Cal from Soduim, 210 Calories Total = 31% from Sodium
What the heck are you talking about?! Sodium has no calories. Calories come from carbs (carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen), fat (carbon, hydrogen, and less oxygen), and protein (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen).
Calories from sodium? Man, that'd be one exciting sandwich! (Ever seen elemental sodium burn?)
You know, I'm sure, that Caller ID can be faked.