What happens when someone straps tiny bombs onto a remotely controlled miniature replica of the B2 or some other bomber?
It's in the rules that all models must be to the
same scale (1/144), which is why nobody uses submarines as the models would be too small to be
practical. If you can build an RC airplane 3 inches long then go for it!
Is chapter 17, entitled Coca Cola. It seems that the system they designed that would store bombs en-masse and reliably deliver them
to the detonation point was partially inspired by the mechanism used in Coca-Cola vending machines
to handle bottles.
One thing that's interesting is that UK stores such as HMV, W.H Smith, Virgin etc. do not stock Region 1 disks in their UK
outlets. No doubt it's because they would be released earlier, cost less, have better content. etc. etc.
Strictly speaking, you can't retail non-region 2 disks in the UK as they haven't been checked by the British Board of Film Classification (British Board of Film Censorship), The Trading Standards Authority can therefore force a retailer to take them off the shelves. I know a guy who runs a Science Fiction/comic shop who had this happen to him.
According to this, two portable DVD players (Sony FX1's) sent to the Internation Space Station so astronauts could watch movies in their time off, where region hacked by a British company.
The station has an international crew, NASA just wanted them to be able to see movies in their native languages if they wanted. Doing it Holywood's way would have meant shipping up 5 identical machines.
I think it's time the tech community started asking a different question. What can the tech community do to damage the RIAA or render them irrelevant? And what are the best legal methods for kicking the RIAA where it hurts?
Howabout a completely secure, music download and playback system that's based on micropayments? This sounds like the RIAA's wet dream but if you think about it, you'll see this could do to them what Buffy's stake does to a vamp.
Music creators could then sell to fans directly,
both would get big-time financial gains by cutting out the middleman. The music industry's monopoly on distribution based on shipping little plastic disks would be broken and they'll be forced into a long, slow decline during which they can only make money by selling thir back-catalogue. Big, new acts won't go near them if they can make vastly more money on the outside.
Now the essential thing about this system is that it's freely available (GPL'd). If the RIAA get's a chance to introduce a propriatory system then it's game over. They'll still control
distribution and nothing will change.
As well as discovering Sodium, Potsassium and Magnesium and inventing electrolysis, he invented the Davy Safety Lamp in 1815.
At the time there where numerous coal mine explosions because miners lamps where igniting methane/air mixtures that where sometimes present in the mine, the safety lamp didn't do this. Davy refused to patent it as he said his interest was the welfare of miners.
It's use, together with steam pumping engines helped to vastly increase coal production and boost the 19th century British industrial revolution but that's another story.
As others have said, it belongs to the US government because the US paid to go get it.
Even the Apollo samples that where presented to foreign heads of state where really on permanent loan to those countries. The US government has never given away or sold any lunar material, so any for sale is either fake or stolen.
The only exception is a microscopic sample of lunar material was sold at Sotherby's a few years ago. However it was part of a couple of ounces of soil returned to earth by an unmanned Russian spacecraft. As the individual selling it had been presented with the sample by the Soviet government, it was perfectly OK for them to sell it.
You know, 30 years ago, if a sexy new alloy came along, people would be going on about the fantastic new uses it would have in the space program, deep sea exploration, more efficient aircraft engines or whatever. Today the fantastic new uses for this stuff are golf clubs and cell phone cases.
Am I the only person who finds this a bit depressing?
It occurred to me a while back that if things like copyright locked hard drives come to pass, then mainland China might become a source of open, alternate components. The capitolism-on-PCP that seems to operate there would jump at the chance of making large amounts of money from the (probably
large) demand for such devices.
Though of course it all depends on how the Chinese government would view it. However I suspect that if a company has the right Communist party connections, it can manufacture for export whatever the hell it likes, especially as the current piracy situation there suggests the Chinese government coulndn't give a flying f*** about the RIAA or MPAA. They're more interested in stamping on political dissent and Falung Gung.
At the very least, the situation might resemble the current one with DVD player region coding. The makers would pay lip service to hardware copyright enforcement, but quietly make it known that it can be disabled with a jumper in order to boost sales of their hard drives which would otherwise have little to recommend them over ones made by the big, mainstream manufactures.
The U-570 had a history more bizarre than any movie. She was actually captured in 1941 by an aircraft. The captain raised the white flag after the sub was damaged by depth charges from an RAF Hudson. The aircraft circled her for several hours until Royal Navy and Canadian Navy ships arrived although by that time the crew had destroyed all the crypto stuff.
She was eventually brought back to the UK, renamed HMS Graph and comissioned into the Royal Navy. She did several combat patrols but never managed to sink anything. Around the end of the war, she ran aground on a Scottish Island and was abandoned.
Bulk samples of Wierd Elements
on
Periodic Table Table
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
A while back I was looking around for a kilo of
Tungsten for a paperweight/curiosity as it seems
to be the densest stuff you can get that's neither
radioactive nor hyper-expensive. It's 19.25g/cc
which is a lot considering lead is 11.34g/cc. A
1 kg block is going to be about 3x4x4 cm. It seems
to worth about US$200 a kg.
The Viking spacecraft which made the
first successful landings on Mars in 1976, took
pictures of the surroundings using scanning cameras that where remarkably similar to this.
Re:Titanium is also very flexible.
on
The Sexiest Metal
·
· Score: 1
Nitinol is quite widely available from the sort of places that supply cool scientific novilities. I got a length from the shop in the London Science Museum a couple of years back.
Somebody was even selling a bathtub toy boat that had a nitinol wire 'motor'. You put an icecube in a slot in the boat and the temperature difference between that and the bath water allowed the wire to function as a crude heat engine.
Re:Its funny our attitude about success...
on
Soviet Moon Rocket
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Add to that
1st Picture of the far side of the moon. 1st Soft moon landing and picture from the lunar surface 1st Picture from the surface of Venus 1st Soft landing on Mars. 1st Spacewalk
It get's better. The reason the Germans adopted Enigma in the first place was they discovered that
the British and French had comprehensively smashed all their codes in WW-1, they where thus keen to adopt new technology to prevent this happening again.
It could be argued that history is actually repeating itself twice.
I suppose I better submit the obligitory comment to a Pioneer 10 story, that is the oldest functioning spacecraft is actually Pioneer 6. This was launched on the 16th of December 1965 and orbits the sun, roughly midway between Earth and Mars. It was last contacted in 2000.
Story
Deep-space spacecraft tend to me much longer lived than Earth orbiting ones as they aren't subject to Van-Allen radiation, nasty atomic oxygen effects plus the thermal cycling stresses
you get from going from sunshine into shadow and back into sunshine every obit.
I saw these advertised in Sky and Telescopt
in the mid 80's. It's a good idea. Spending all night behind a telescopy must get pretty chilly if
you're checking out the winter constellations.
Similarily, heated motorcycle clothing that plugs into the bike's electrics has also been around for years
(AFIK, World War One pilots where the first to try this out).
The real showstopper with general use clothing is the need for a battery to replace power from a bike or airplane. As battery technology has not radically surged forward in the last year or two, this jacket sounds a complete gimmick.
A few years ago, I remember seeing the details for
building electronic fireflies. It's a simple circuit; a bulb driven by an oscilator that is influenced by a light sensor.
Build a bunch of them and set them going. After
a period of blinking at different times, they gradually get into step.
Googling with appropriate keywords ought to bring
up more details.
If you really want to have a go at hacking cars, check out one called a Locost. It first featured in a book published in the UK called "How to Build your own Sports Car for 250 Pounds". You need basic wielding and metalwork skills and a scrap vehicle to supply the engine and transmission but it's quite straightforward, 17 year old's have built these things for school projects.
If you're do careful work and follow all the instructions there's no problem getting the car
cartified for road use in the UK. Not sure what the US legal situation would be though.
During the 80's it was proposed to launch MX ICBM's out of the back of a converted cargo plane.
The idea was that aircraft would be always in the air over the US and so be virtually impossible to knock out in a Soviet first strike. Thankfully it was dropped.
Launching satellites from aircraft has been looked at many times over the years. The advantages aren't really the speed and height boost from the plane, but rather the fact you don't need and expensive launch pad and you can launch from a point on the Earth that's optimal for the orbit you're aiming at. Also rocket engine efficiency suffers quite a bit if the air pressure is much different to the pressure the engine is designed to operate in. By launching from an aircraft, you can use engines optimised to work in low-pressure/vacuum and not worry about them chugging in the thick, lower atmosphere.
Until now, only the Pegasus people have got it to work, their problem is that the size of the aircraft limits the size of the rocket which in turn means they can only carry small satellites.
Not at all! Check out the second-hand CD dealers.
Buying second hand means none of your money
goes to the RIAA because they've already been paid for that particular disk.
I buy a lot of CD's from Second Spin (www.secondspin.com). I'm not endorsing them in particular; there are plenty of other sellers. However they have an OK range, prices are good and they offer an exceptionally sweet deal on postage to the UK. You can forget the jewel case and just have the CD and inlay's sent. Saves about 75% on postage costs which would otherwise wipe out a lot of the savings from buying from the US.
Slashdot Mirror
It's in the rules that all models must be to the same scale (1/144), which is why nobody uses submarines as the models would be too small to be practical. If you can build an RC airplane 3 inches long then go for it!
Is chapter 17, entitled Coca Cola. It seems that the system they designed that would store bombs en-masse and reliably deliver them to the detonation point was partially inspired by the mechanism used in Coca-Cola vending machines to handle bottles.
Strictly speaking, you can't retail non-region 2 disks in the UK as they haven't been checked by the British Board of Film Classification (British Board of Film Censorship), The Trading Standards Authority can therefore force a retailer to take them off the shelves. I know a guy who runs a Science Fiction/comic shop who had this happen to him.
The station has an international crew, NASA just wanted them to be able to see movies in their native languages if they wanted. Doing it Holywood's way would have meant shipping up 5 identical machines.
Howabout a completely secure, music download and playback system that's based on micropayments? This sounds like the RIAA's wet dream but if you think about it, you'll see this could do to them what Buffy's stake does to a vamp.
Music creators could then sell to fans directly, both would get big-time financial gains by cutting out the middleman. The music industry's monopoly on distribution based on shipping little plastic disks would be broken and they'll be forced into a long, slow decline during which they can only make money by selling thir back-catalogue. Big, new acts won't go near them if they can make vastly more money on the outside.
Now the essential thing about this system is that it's freely available (GPL'd). If the RIAA get's a chance to introduce a propriatory system then it's game over. They'll still control distribution and nothing will change.
At the time there where numerous coal mine explosions because miners lamps where igniting methane/air mixtures that where sometimes present in the mine, the safety lamp didn't do this. Davy refused to patent it as he said his interest was the welfare of miners.
It's use, together with steam pumping engines helped to vastly increase coal production and boost the 19th century British industrial revolution but that's another story.
Even the Apollo samples that where presented to foreign heads of state where really on permanent loan to those countries. The US government has never given away or sold any lunar material, so any for sale is either fake or stolen.
The only exception is a microscopic sample of lunar material was sold at Sotherby's a few years ago. However it was part of a couple of ounces of soil returned to earth by an unmanned Russian spacecraft. As the individual selling it had been presented with the sample by the Soviet government, it was perfectly OK for them to sell it.
Am I the only person who finds this a bit depressing?
Though of course it all depends on how the Chinese government would view it. However I suspect that if a company has the right Communist party connections, it can manufacture for export whatever the hell it likes, especially as the current piracy situation there suggests the Chinese government coulndn't give a flying f*** about the RIAA or MPAA. They're more interested in stamping on political dissent and Falung Gung.
At the very least, the situation might resemble the current one with DVD player region coding. The makers would pay lip service to hardware copyright enforcement, but quietly make it known that it can be disabled with a jumper in order to boost sales of their hard drives which would otherwise have little to recommend them over ones made by the big, mainstream manufactures.
The U-570 had a history more bizarre than any movie. She was actually captured in 1941 by an aircraft. The captain raised the white flag after the sub was damaged by depth charges from an RAF Hudson. The aircraft circled her for several hours until Royal Navy and Canadian Navy ships arrived although by that time the crew had destroyed all the crypto stuff.
She was eventually brought back to the UK, renamed HMS Graph and comissioned into the Royal Navy. She did several combat patrols but never managed to sink anything. Around the end of the war, she ran aground on a Scottish Island and was abandoned.
link
Anybody got any ideas where to get some from?
See reference
sort of places that supply cool scientific novilities. I got a length from the shop in the
London Science Museum a couple of years back.
Somebody was even selling a bathtub toy boat that
had a nitinol wire 'motor'. You put an icecube in
a slot in the boat and the temperature difference between that and
the bath water allowed the wire to function as a
crude heat engine.
I believe the venue for the speech was in the Gate's building (paid for by you-know-who).
Why not a 5th version. An audio only
radio show?
(Somebody who misses Geeks in Space)
Add to that
1st Picture of the far side of the moon.
1st Soft moon landing and picture from the lunar surface
1st Picture from the surface of Venus
1st Soft landing on Mars.
1st Spacewalk
It could be argued that history is actually repeating itself twice.
Unfortunately, the email nobody@nowhere.com has already been used.
Catmeat
(A female military officer from Azerbijan, earning $150K a year in the field of customer relations)
Deep-space spacecraft tend to me much longer lived than Earth orbiting ones as they aren't subject to Van-Allen radiation, nasty atomic oxygen effects plus the thermal cycling stresses you get from going from sunshine into shadow and back into sunshine every obit.
The real showstopper with general use clothing is the need for a battery to replace power from a bike or airplane. As battery technology has not radically surged forward in the last year or two, this jacket sounds a complete gimmick.
Build a bunch of them and set them going. After a period of blinking at different times, they gradually get into step.
Googling with appropriate keywords ought to bring up more details.
During the late 80's, there was a large warehouse under the flightpath into London Heathrow. Painted on the roof was Next Time, Fly KLM.
If you're do careful work and follow all the instructions there's no problem getting the car cartified for road use in the UK. Not sure what the US legal situation would be though.
http://www.locostcarclub.co.uk/
The idea was that aircraft would be always in the air over the US and so be virtually impossible to knock out in a Soviet first strike. Thankfully it was dropped.
Launching satellites from aircraft has been looked at many times over the years. The advantages aren't really the speed and height boost from the plane, but rather the fact you don't need and expensive launch pad and you can launch from a point on the Earth that's optimal for the orbit you're aiming at. Also rocket engine efficiency suffers quite a bit if the air pressure is much different to the pressure the engine is designed to operate in. By launching from an aircraft, you can use engines optimised to work in low-pressure/vacuum and not worry about them chugging in the thick, lower atmosphere.
Until now, only the Pegasus people have got it to work, their problem is that the size of the aircraft limits the size of the rocket which in turn means they can only carry small satellites.
I buy a lot of CD's from Second Spin (www.secondspin.com). I'm not endorsing them in particular; there are plenty of other sellers. However they have an OK range, prices are good and they offer an exceptionally sweet deal on postage to the UK. You can forget the jewel case and just have the CD and inlay's sent. Saves about 75% on postage costs which would otherwise wipe out a lot of the savings from buying from the US.