The parent is being rather glib with the facts to slag Musk. According to Wikipedia, in early 2000, X.com bought Confinity, which included the PayPal service. In early 2001, X.com changed its name to PayPal. Musk was a co-founder of X.com and therefore PayPal.
Here is a link to the paper regarding a method to test the theory. It was presented at the 41st AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference & Exhibit, Tucson, Arizona, 10-13 July, 2005.
In pertinent part, regarding Sandia's magnet referenced in the article...
"From the discussion in Section 3.1 it has become clear that a large magnetic field is needed to produce an appreciable Heim-Lorentz force. In addition, Eq. (9) shows that the velocity of the electrons in the current loop must be large. Pulsed magnets can reach very high magnetic field strengths up to 60 T (Sandia Laboratories), and initially it was thought that these magnets could be used to provide the magnetic field to generating the Heim-Lorentz force needed for field propulsion. Regarding the equation for the Heim-Lorentz force, however, a high velocity of the electrons in the coil is needed. It is not sure that using a pulsed magnetic field this can be achieved in an effective way, since during the pulse period electrons need to be quickly accelerated to the speed vc of the Cooper pairs, see below. The effectiveness of a pulsed magnet system depends critically on the ratio of pulse time and acceleration time. Furthermore, it is not clear how a rapidly time-varying Heim-Lorentz force would act on the structure of the spacecraft. A more detailed analysis would have to be carried out. At present, the usage of steady magnetic fields is preferred."
12 bits of information per pixel is a common standard for video. 8 bits per pixel for detail (grayscale). 8 bits every two pixels for color. Some video uses 8 bits every 4 pixels for color and it still looks great.
The human eye sees detail information a lot better than color information.
Re:General Questions about Adventure Games
on
Ask Sid Meier
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Sid just released an adventure game himself. Sid Meier's Pirates. A really fun game.
The game originally was created by Sid in order to break the mold of adventure games, as Sid thought the genre to be very unoriginal.
It still is not clear to me whether these laws impact community-run services. All of the referenced articles and the Slashdot responses are running 'round and 'round this central issue.
I agree with the notion that government shouldn't compete with private industry. However, Americans have banded together to do certain things from time-to-time outside of government auspices.
Some games, such as Starcraft, rely on mouse "click and drag" input more than keyboard output. It looks as if this outfit spent comparatively less time on the mouse ergonomics versus the keyboard ergonomics.
The best mouse input that I have used was on an old TI laptop, with a detachable small thumb trackball at a ~60% angle off the side. After getting used to this trackball, it was an incredibly accurate input as well. I have used a flat thumb trackball, as does the controller in the article, but this isn't nearly as comfortable for repetitive game use.
The pointer used in some laptop keyboards nowadays isn't any good for gaming and the touchpads are attrocious. The mini-thumb joysticks seem to hurt my thumb when used repetitively and aren't very accurate.
Dial-up service in the US is very cheap and the cost differential between dial-up and high-speed is rather large. If you pay less than $10 a month for dial-up, you may make do with it instead of moving to the $40 a month high speed service.
I would be interested in knowing how expensive dial-up service is in these "competitor" countries.
You are correct that the current version of the Falcon V only has a reusable first stage and not a reusable second stage. However, Musk has stated that he will work on second stage (i.e., the capsule) reusability in order to enable manned flights. This fulfills the rule set forth by Bigelow.
This prize appears custom-tailored for a win on a Falcon V, a new rocket aiming for first flight in 2005 carrying a Bigelow Aerospace test module. The Falcon V is manufactured by SpaceX, Elon Musk's new rocket firm. Assuming that the Falcon V is a successful rocket, all of the prize rules are within the design capabilities of the Falcon V.
This appears to be part of Bigelow's demonstration to Musk that he will have a sufficient private market should Musk invest in designing a capsule plus ground infrastructure. Look at it as $50 million cash plus hundreds of millions in solid follow-on business. The prize reduces the risk of Musk's business case, which is important since the technical challenges of a capsule are certainly non-trivial.
I think the size of American TVs is an important factor and the willingness and ability to spend big chunks of disposable income to purchase new electronics. If you look through an electronics store in Europe (FNAC, for example), the TV section has maybe a dozen models, maybe one or two plasma HD sets. Compare to any Best Buy in the States with maybe 100 models, a third of which are HD.
If you are buying a 25 inch TV set, then HDTV is a waste of your time and money. If you are buying a 50 inch TV set, it's a whole 'nuther proposition entirely.
HDTV uptake is being led by the US and Japan, followed by Korea, Canada, and Australia.
HDTV is certainly ready for primetime, just perhaps not this particular set-top box that not many people use. The author was probably disappointed because he hadn't viewed HDTV with a good set-top box before reviewing the unit.
The majority of network primetime shows are in HD and there's lots of sports in HD. By the way, HD sports is amazing. For the last year and a half or so, I've been getting 10 or so HD stations on RCN/Starpower cable with a Motorola set top box. Very few problems.
Lately, the internet has been substituting for TV for me, but the TV that I watch contains a lot of HD content.
More than that, if you are an American citizen (a human being, a company organized in the US, or a company for which ownership control is American), your launches are regulated by the US, no matter where you launch your vehicle.
Slashdot Mirror
Fracking has been used for more than a half century. It is by no means "such a recent practice."
Your best bet is Clark Lindsay's RLV and Space Transport News.
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php
You are right that Bigelow Aerospace isn't very press-savvy. But they seem to be remedying that problem slowly.
About 2.5 hours from now, the module will phone home and we will get a better sense of how the module is doing. Here are some additional resources...
i s-1_launch.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5173388.stm
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/060712_genes
http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigelow_Aerospace
The parent is being rather glib with the facts to slag Musk. According to Wikipedia, in early 2000, X.com bought Confinity, which included the PayPal service. In early 2001, X.com changed its name to PayPal. Musk was a co-founder of X.com and therefore PayPal.
Here is a link to the paper regarding a method to test the theory. It was presented at the 41st AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference & Exhibit, Tucson, Arizona, 10-13 July, 2005.
I AA2005-4321Letter.pdf
http://www.hpcc-space.de/publications/documents/A
In pertinent part, regarding Sandia's magnet referenced in the article...
"From the discussion in Section 3.1 it has become clear that a large magnetic field is needed to produce an appreciable Heim-Lorentz force. In addition, Eq. (9) shows that the velocity of the electrons in the current loop must be large. Pulsed magnets can reach very high magnetic field strengths up to 60 T (Sandia Laboratories), and initially it was thought that these magnets could be used to provide the magnetic field to generating the Heim-Lorentz force needed for field propulsion. Regarding the equation for the Heim-Lorentz force, however, a high velocity of the electrons in the coil is needed. It is not sure that using a pulsed magnetic field this can be achieved in an effective way, since during the pulse period electrons need to be quickly accelerated to the speed vc of the Cooper pairs, see below. The effectiveness of a pulsed magnet system depends critically on the ratio of pulse time and acceleration time. Furthermore, it is not clear how a rapidly time-varying Heim-Lorentz force would act on the structure of the spacecraft. A more detailed analysis would have to be carried out. At present, the usage of steady magnetic fields is preferred."
12 bits of information per pixel is a common standard for video. 8 bits per pixel for detail (grayscale). 8 bits every two pixels for color. Some video uses 8 bits every 4 pixels for color and it still looks great.
The human eye sees detail information a lot better than color information.
Sid just released an adventure game himself. Sid Meier's Pirates. A really fun game. The game originally was created by Sid in order to break the mold of adventure games, as Sid thought the genre to be very unoriginal.
...to post some cool links. Here's Nature's Quicktime video of the sheets being produced (coral cache).
8 15/full/050815-8.html
t a-utd081505.php
http://www.nature.com.nyud.net:8090/news/2005/050
And the official press release from UT Dallas...
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/uo
Well, they're flying a white elephant anyway, so what's an additional couple million?
Obviously, these large libraries have a number of books in other lanugages, including French.
In any event, I'm sure that Google would be ecstatic to digitize the French national library's stacks, if given a chance to pitch the idea.
It still is not clear to me whether these laws impact community-run services. All of the referenced articles and the Slashdot responses are running 'round and 'round this central issue.
I agree with the notion that government shouldn't compete with private industry. However, Americans have banded together to do certain things from time-to-time outside of government auspices.
Some games, such as Starcraft, rely on mouse "click and drag" input more than keyboard output. It looks as if this outfit spent comparatively less time on the mouse ergonomics versus the keyboard ergonomics.
The best mouse input that I have used was on an old TI laptop, with a detachable small thumb trackball at a ~60% angle off the side. After getting used to this trackball, it was an incredibly accurate input as well. I have used a flat thumb trackball, as does the controller in the article, but this isn't nearly as comfortable for repetitive game use.
The pointer used in some laptop keyboards nowadays isn't any good for gaming and the touchpads are attrocious. The mini-thumb joysticks seem to hurt my thumb when used repetitively and aren't very accurate.
Dial-up service in the US is very cheap and the cost differential between dial-up and high-speed is rather large. If you pay less than $10 a month for dial-up, you may make do with it instead of moving to the $40 a month high speed service.
I would be interested in knowing how expensive dial-up service is in these "competitor" countries.
You are correct that the current version of the Falcon V only has a reusable first stage and not a reusable second stage. However, Musk has stated that he will work on second stage (i.e., the capsule) reusability in order to enable manned flights. This fulfills the rule set forth by Bigelow.
This prize appears custom-tailored for a win on a Falcon V, a new rocket aiming for first flight in 2005 carrying a Bigelow Aerospace test module. The Falcon V is manufactured by SpaceX, Elon Musk's new rocket firm. Assuming that the Falcon V is a successful rocket, all of the prize rules are within the design capabilities of the Falcon V.
This appears to be part of Bigelow's demonstration to Musk that he will have a sufficient private market should Musk invest in designing a capsule plus ground infrastructure. Look at it as $50 million cash plus hundreds of millions in solid follow-on business. The prize reduces the risk of Musk's business case, which is important since the technical challenges of a capsule are certainly non-trivial.
I think the size of American TVs is an important factor and the willingness and ability to spend big chunks of disposable income to purchase new electronics. If you look through an electronics store in Europe (FNAC, for example), the TV section has maybe a dozen models, maybe one or two plasma HD sets. Compare to any Best Buy in the States with maybe 100 models, a third of which are HD.
If you are buying a 25 inch TV set, then HDTV is a waste of your time and money. If you are buying a 50 inch TV set, it's a whole 'nuther proposition entirely.
HDTV uptake is being led by the US and Japan, followed by Korea, Canada, and Australia.
HDTV is certainly ready for primetime, just perhaps not this particular set-top box that not many people use. The author was probably disappointed because he hadn't viewed HDTV with a good set-top box before reviewing the unit.
The majority of network primetime shows are in HD and there's lots of sports in HD. By the way, HD sports is amazing. For the last year and a half or so, I've been getting 10 or so HD stations on RCN/Starpower cable with a Motorola set top box. Very few problems.
Lately, the internet has been substituting for TV for me, but the TV that I watch contains a lot of HD content.
More than that, if you are an American citizen (a human being, a company organized in the US, or a company for which ownership control is American), your launches are regulated by the US, no matter where you launch your vehicle.