What they didn't mention was that one of the contestants pulled up alongside one of those trailers and started rolling the windows up & down... I told them they shouldn't just use volunteer brains to pilot the thing...
Most of the employers I've worked for wouldn't have a problem hiring an ex-Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, or Army, depending on their rate/MOS. It's mostly Marines who get the reputation of being more dangerous and less useful than ex-cons.
I've heard that there are 9 military support personnell for every soldier on the front-lines.
I've seen that number before, and it doesn't quite hold up - it basically assumes that only the m-16 carrying grunt is a 'solider on the front'. Which means the entire Navy, Air Force & Coast Guard are 'military support personnel'. Which isn't quite right.
I'm not even touching the clone thing. I'm just not gonna do it, really.
And if you really think it is ethics that's going to stop an individual from performing some questionable experiments, then... well, I really wish I could live in a nice little place like wherever you're from. There are plenty of people out there ( and plenty with the level of intelligence required ) willing to put aside their moral objections for either recognition or money.
But the AI thing... well, I think, given all of the thought (agreeably, a lot of it by a group of rather strange people) put into the negative impacts a computer mind could have on the world, I don't think any of the people likely to first develop a true AI (that is, either directly employed by the DOD or contractors) are going to do so without some rather extreme safeguards in place. (I'm talking completely isolated intranets, information to it (and, in good time, recommendations from) sneakernetted, and a static bomb strapped to the side of the mainframe with an enthusiastic 19 year old Marine with his hand by the trigger. Or, as William Gibson put it, 'Every AI... has the electromagentic equivalent of a shotgun strapped to its head.")
Okay, I lied. I do think that human clones will happen long before a true AI, but I don't think there is any walking around right now. Why? Because anyone willing to put all the effort into creating one is going to want recognition, of one kind or another. They'll probably wait until the baby is born so they can say it's healthy, blah blah blah, but I doubt they'd wait much past a few months.
I understand when people spell a rarely used word incorrectly. (electricity.) That's fine. What I don't understand is when you spell it "Nimh" in the title and "Nihm" in the text. Is posting that quickly so important that doing a bit of proofreading is impossible?
So it actually just saps useful work, motivation, and a willingness to solve problems, and converts it into additional mass to slow down everything else?
Well, look at it this way. This is a silly example, I know, but if you have ever played any Civilization - style game, you know that, in general, the societies that put the most towards scientific progress win. Of course, it ends up raising the bar - even a poor person in the UK or US today has far better housing, medical care, and food than a fairly prosperous tradesman of only a century or two ago... or of the middle (or in some case, even the upper) class in many third-world countries.
But, with the distrubution of wealth the way that it is, compared the top 1%, the bottom 20% will always look terrible.
It's more medical care than food. Assuming a dog of 100 lbs (which is larger than average), and assuming good-quality food, not Wal-Mart brand, you still wouldn't spend 500 dollars in a year, or 5 grand over the course of their life. Putting in all the vaccines, heartworm, flea & tick, and yearly physicals alone will almost hit that. And that's not counting all of the money that (a good percentage of) pet owners (and family members, too... and human doctors are so much more expensive) spend on the animal's last week of life.
I just put a much, much longer (and lighter, if I remember) wire to it, to decrease the whole spinning/dizzing/puking thing. Which worked great for about four weekends... on weekend five, though, the top wire snapped first, and then the bottom (although it may have been the other way around, it's been a long time) and it pulled up, up, and away... My dad and I spent a couple of hours searching for it in the woods behind the field I flew it in. Never found the poor thing.
After finding out about it's original design, I tried to get the li'l rocket out of his backpack... sadly, it joined most of the rest of my childhood action figures in pieces. (sigh)
I'd like to bet about a milllyun dollars that about five minutes after this scheme came into effect, somebody (okay, me) would be spamming the entire world with an email that included links to images like this
one, that
one, maybe even this
one, and because I'm a non-discriminatory irritant, this
one. And you convinently block them all yourself.
I think you're exactly wrong. In the short term, it probably doesn't matter. In the long run, though, it may make a big difference. For instance, Newtonian versus Einstienian kinetic energy formulae.
If the fastest object in your personal world is a galloping horse (or, well, an arrow), there's no real difference between the two. But when you construct a particle accelerator capable of moving electrons at.75c, there's a big, big difference.
b.) Don't understand, or choose not to understand, a near-ubiquitous geek pop-culture reference.
c.) Can ape pedantry when it was painfully, painfully obvious that the original poster was just trying to be funny. And unlike many Slashdot posts, actually succeeding.
However, the X-43A vehicle does indeed use hydrogen for its fuel. (Perhaps for that very reason?)
I would say so. The higher the (Fuel Mass)/(Thrust Generated) ratio, the smaller the payload for the same sized rocket. The Saturn V, probably the most efficient (in this sense) rocket ever built, still got less than five percent of its starting mass to orbit around the moon.
And what the heck is "hypersonic" compared to the older term, "super-sonic"?
Supersonic is Mach 1.0 to 4.9, Hypersonic is Mach 5.0+. I'm not an aerospace engineer, but I vaguely remember an article in Popular Science that talked about how over Mach 4, the airflow through the engine would disrupt combustion.
Concorde or no, a scramjet would be a much better space shuttle. Vastly cheaper, safer, and with a much better turnaround time. It still wouldn't be able to make it above low earth orbit, but I haven't seen any good ideas for something that will cheaply. (Well, except for the nuclear-powered rocket, but public/governmental paranoia over that will never let it fly.)
If by 'plans' you mean some twenty-thirty year lead time ideas of 2 hour flights from L.A. to Toyko, then, yeah. But it would require a pretty serious amount of money, and like Concorde, would probably never book enough seats to pay for the flights. If you thought 2000 was a lot for a ticket...
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What they didn't mention was that one of the contestants pulled up alongside one of those trailers and started rolling the windows up & down... I told them they shouldn't just use volunteer brains to pilot the thing...
Most of the employers I've worked for wouldn't have a problem hiring an ex-Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, or Army, depending on their rate/MOS. It's mostly Marines who get the reputation of being more dangerous and less useful than ex-cons.
I've seen that number before, and it doesn't quite hold up - it basically assumes that only the m-16 carrying grunt is a 'solider on the front'. Which means the entire Navy, Air Force & Coast Guard are 'military support personnel'. Which isn't quite right.
And if you really think it is ethics that's going to stop an individual from performing some questionable experiments, then... well, I really wish I could live in a nice little place like wherever you're from. There are plenty of people out there ( and plenty with the level of intelligence required ) willing to put aside their moral objections for either recognition or money.
But the AI thing... well, I think, given all of the thought (agreeably, a lot of it by a group of rather strange people) put into the negative impacts a computer mind could have on the world, I don't think any of the people likely to first develop a true AI (that is, either directly employed by the DOD or contractors) are going to do so without some rather extreme safeguards in place. (I'm talking completely isolated intranets, information to it (and, in good time, recommendations from) sneakernetted, and a static bomb strapped to the side of the mainframe with an enthusiastic 19 year old Marine with his hand by the trigger. Or, as William Gibson put it, 'Every AI... has the electromagentic equivalent of a shotgun strapped to its head.")
Okay, I lied. I do think that human clones will happen long before a true AI, but I don't think there is any walking around right now. Why? Because anyone willing to put all the effort into creating one is going to want recognition, of one kind or another. They'll probably wait until the baby is born so they can say it's healthy, blah blah blah, but I doubt they'd wait much past a few months.
I understand when people spell a rarely used word incorrectly. (electricity.) That's fine. What I don't understand is when you spell it "Nimh" in the title and "Nihm" in the text. Is posting that quickly so important that doing a bit of proofreading is impossible?
A la the original game,"You threw the bomb out into the street? There are lots of people out there", "Yeah, but nobody we know" "or care about."
That's just beautiful.
So it actually just saps useful work, motivation, and a willingness to solve problems, and converts it into additional mass to slow down everything else?
Wouldn't that actually be four books?
But, with the distrubution of wealth the way that it is, compared the top 1%, the bottom 20% will always look terrible.
It's more medical care than food. Assuming a dog of 100 lbs (which is larger than average), and assuming good-quality food, not Wal-Mart brand, you still wouldn't spend 500 dollars in a year, or 5 grand over the course of their life. Putting in all the vaccines, heartworm, flea & tick, and yearly physicals alone will almost hit that. And that's not counting all of the money that (a good percentage of) pet owners (and family members, too... and human doctors are so much more expensive) spend on the animal's last week of life.
I just put a much, much longer (and lighter, if I remember) wire to it, to decrease the whole spinning/dizzing/puking thing. Which worked great for about four weekends... on weekend five, though, the top wire snapped first, and then the bottom (although it may have been the other way around, it's been a long time) and it pulled up, up, and away... My dad and I spent a couple of hours searching for it in the woods behind the field I flew it in. Never found the poor thing.
After finding out about it's original design, I tried to get the li'l rocket out of his backpack... sadly, it joined most of the rest of my childhood action figures in pieces. (sigh)
I'd like to bet about a milllyun dollars that about five minutes after this scheme came into effect, somebody (okay, me) would be spamming the entire world with an email that included links to images like this one, that one, maybe even this one, and because I'm a non-discriminatory irritant, this one. And you convinently block them all yourself.
I think you're exactly wrong. In the short term, it probably doesn't matter. In the long run, though, it may make a big difference. For instance, Newtonian versus Einstienian kinetic energy formulae.
If the fastest object in your personal world is a galloping horse (or, well, an arrow), there's no real difference between the two. But when you construct a particle accelerator capable of moving electrons at .75c, there's a big, big difference.
Perhaps that's the cause of the lost leap second. Although if that's the case, it's such a small shift it wouldn't matter in any case...
a.) Can't spell Beagle.
b.) Don't understand, or choose not to understand, a near-ubiquitous geek pop-culture reference. c.) Can ape pedantry when it was painfully, painfully obvious that the original poster was just trying to be funny. And unlike many Slashdot posts, actually succeeding.
Mmmmm..... dog... I mean... emergency rations...
Under the influence of enough mind-altering chemicals, most of it did make sense. Well, except for anything relating to the Sasquatches.
I would say so. The higher the (Fuel Mass)/(Thrust Generated) ratio, the smaller the payload for the same sized rocket. The Saturn V, probably the most efficient (in this sense) rocket ever built, still got less than five percent of its starting mass to orbit around the moon.
Citizen, it doesn't look like you have an Ultraviolet security clearance...
Supersonic is Mach 1.0 to 4.9, Hypersonic is Mach 5.0+. I'm not an aerospace engineer, but I vaguely remember an article in Popular Science that talked about how over Mach 4, the airflow through the engine would disrupt combustion.
Concorde or no, a scramjet would be a much better space shuttle. Vastly cheaper, safer, and with a much better turnaround time. It still wouldn't be able to make it above low earth orbit, but I haven't seen any good ideas for something that will cheaply. (Well, except for the nuclear-powered rocket, but public/governmental paranoia over that will never let it fly.)
If by 'plans' you mean some twenty-thirty year lead time ideas of 2 hour flights from L.A. to Toyko, then, yeah. But it would require a pretty serious amount of money, and like Concorde, would probably never book enough seats to pay for the flights. If you thought 2000 was a lot for a ticket...
Seems to be working fine here.