"She's an asshole though." Well, but, that is not against the law...
No, but fraud and harassment are. And this sounds like a pretty clear case of using a pseudonym in a fraudulent manner in order to harass an individual. I for one do NOT hope that the judgment is vacated.
Click here to fix the front page. (If you've been tricked into using that God-awful "beta" front page.) I haven't found a solution for the user page yet. Which is driving me up a *bleep*ing wall. I don't even understand what the new user page is trying to show me or why.
Yes, that's the last comment I posted. I already know that. How about something useful like, I dunno, the list of comments? Nope. Gotta click the right tab for that. Even that interface has been borked.
Please, Taco! Don't make changes just to make changes! The old site worked. Rather than make it work better, you're slowly making things worse and worse. With the forced addition of IDLE, you're even making it embarrassing to come here! (Don't forget to shut IDLE off in your preferences. That's the only category I have ever explicitly banned from the front page view. )
Please stop before Slashdot becomes completely unusable!
I'm not really sure why Strong Bad is referred to as "Indie". Telltale Games is the new kid on the block, but they are a fully staffed and funded studio. Not really the type of company you would think of as small-time "Indie" developers. Given the fact that they made their name by continuing a popular LucasArts franchise (Sam & Max), I'm even less inclined to think of them as independent.
Or is "Indie" destined to be the shareware company of tomorrow? (Anyone remember when Apogee and Epic were the small guys?)
So there's never been an artist with an album that was consistently good? REALLY?
Sure. But that doesn't mean it's not a fluke. e.g.
Real McCoy: Another Night - Practically every song on the CD was "good"*. They were all radio hits as well.
Real McCoy: One More Time - The title song was it. The rest of it was filler. And rather bad filler at that. All those morals they preached in the first album? Pfff. Out the window. We need a music video of two people having sex in a public bathroom so we can include it on the disc. Sales are going to go through the roof!
As you can imagine, the second album was nowhere near as popular as the first and ended up killing the band. No worries, though. The music industry always finds someone else to draw in, chew up, and spit out.
* Subjectively assuming that the listener likes this sort of music.
I agree completely. While I understand the point of a browser like this, I do think that forcing engines to be standards compliant is a better solution. My intent was not to endorse this sort of browser, but rather discuss how it might work in a practical manner.
That being said, there are a few circumstances where I can see multiple engines being of practical value. Those circumstances are when there are applications built on an engine-specific technology. e.g. a XUL application, a Mac Widget, a 3D Canvas app for Opera, or a Microsoft HTA. Those are edge cases though, and probably not worth developing an entire browser around.
Short version? Switch if you find the browser compelling (does an, but this doesn't substitute for actual browser case testing (it neither correctly nor completely covers the playing field.)
Hot on the heels of the article that complained about privacy in Safari 3.2, it seems like this browser really needs a central ratings server. i.e. The only point of a browser like this is to provide the use of a different rendering engine when no other engines will work correctly. Thus the ideal solution is not to make the user switch engines willy nilly. The ideal solution is for the browser to pull the ideal rendering engine from a database that matches sites against the ideal engine. If a site is unknown to the database, the browser attempts to detect what engine should be used for the site (rather difficult, and should probably default to something standards compliant like Gecko if it can't make a reasonable guess). If the user changes the engine, this should be reported back to the server. After a critical mass, this answer gets added to the central database.
Of course, such a scheme has some very concerning aspects. Particularly in the case of malware sites. When a new exploit becomes available for ANY of the engines, I could use a botnet to seed the default engine for a new malware site I deploy. Anyone using this super-browser would get infected if they visited my site. Anti-phishing technology might help, but it's almost guaranteed that some of the users will end up infected.
Glad you feel that way. I'll get a few post-event disclosures out of the way then:
1. Your IP address, browser, operating system, installed plugins, and physical location were logged by Google Analytics as soon as you hit Slashdot.
2. If you don't have adblock installed, your browser contacted doubleclick.net when you visited Slashdot and uploaded the unique id assigned to your browser. If you did not have a unique id, one was assigned to you. Additional information such as the site you are visiting, your browser, your plugins, your geographic location, and other information may have been collected during this transaction.
Don't all Google ad-blocks have 'ads by Google' on them?
Which would be after you give your information to them. Most other ad agencies don't even go as far as that!
And I do believe all YouTube videos viewed off-site have the YouTube watermark. Plus, Google Maps mashups tend to have 'Google Maps' in the bottom right corner.
Same thing. You've already connected to their servers and given up your info. Just because there are logos to promote brand recognition there, doesn't mean that you consented to give up your info to a third party or received disclosure that it was going to happen. Google Maps even goes so far as to give you a Terms of Use link *after* you've engaged their services! *gasp!*
I guess the question for you is: Would you feel better if the antiphishing technology had a "powered by Google" logo on it when it found a dangerous site? If so, I'm sure that's something that Apple would be willing to add. It won't do anything to better protect your privacy, though. It will merely give you a warm and fuzzy feeling.
I'm going to play devil's advocate for a moment and point out that such disclosure is getting harder and harder to comply with. Especially when the web is seen as a collection of cloud services. Should that piracy map viewer posted yesterday disclose to every user that they will connect to Google Maps for map data? Does every website disclose that you are downloading ads from Google or Doubleclick before you visit? Does your favorite web forum notify you that you'll be connecting to Youtube when users post videos?
Those examples convey far more sensitive information than this anti-phishing technology. Yet we don't even bat an eye. In fact, we praise them for such useful extensions to their services. Should web browsers thus play by different rules and be required to notify the user of a non-existent violation of privacy before they do something useful?
I'm not saying that some people don't feel slighted by this. I am saying that the web is evolving in ways that have already made this the norm rather than the exception. If you do feel slighted and wish to be excepted, you're probably going to have to get used to reconfiguring your browser in the same way you install adblock or flashblock.
They can and do kill people. And if this is allowed to continue, more and more people are going to die. On both sides.
I'm merely saddened your plan doesn't involve fixing any of Somalia's real problems. Just killing offenders.
My plan only addresses the short term issue: The piracy. That has to be dealt with immediately. Unchecked piracy will only result in the loss of more lives and cause economic problems on a world-wide scale.
Dealing with the political issues in Somalia is a more complex issue that lacks an immediate solution. I wish I could venture a good plan, but I do not understand the dynamics of the situation well enough to produce one. It's not like Somalia hasn't been receiving foreign aid:
By some reckonings, no other country save Israel has received such high levels of military and economic aid per capita; certainly no country has less to show for it. Even before its collapse into protracted civil war and anarchy in 1990, Somalia had earned a reputation as a graveyard of foreign aid, a land where aid projects were notoriously unsuccessful, and where high levels of foreign assistance helped to create an entirely unsustainable, corrupt and repressive state.
What do they do with our foreign aid workers? Why, they kidnap and kill them:
What would you have us do? I'm all for finding a peaceful solution if one can be arrived at. But as of this moment, there is an immediate problem people are dying or being threatened with death.
Food for thought: Isn't it interesting how the pirates can't afford food, but can always afford assault rifles? Perhaps there is more to their Robin Hood image than meets the eye.
"Launch Marine Assault to capture positively identified pirates" works just as well. It merely lacks that nice ring "blast them into next year" has.:-)
Your point is well taken. However, I still think Q-Ships are an answer. Q-Ships are the kind of bait that would cause pirates to identify themselves so that you can take action. Whether that be a matter of sinking them or capturing them, there's a good chance of it working. As a bonus, you'll start to give the pirates pause as they attempt to ascertain whether the ship they're about to attack is a real merchie or a Q-Ship.
For bonus points, borrow real merchant ships but crew them with naval officers and marines. That way NATO forces can move from ship to ship, leaving the pirates to further second-guess themselves. Is this merchie a trap? No way to know short of attempting attack.
I seriously doubt that a Q-Ship armed to the hilt and crewed by experienced naval personnel would fall into pirate hands. These guys are attacking with fishing boats for crying out loud! The problem isn't that our ships can't hold their own against the pirates. That much is stupidly simple. It's finding the pirates that's the problem. And these guys are even less sophisticated than other piracy organizations equipped with speedboats and cutters.
I mean, take a look at these guys. If someone would arm our merchies with a few mortars and sniper rifles, these pirates wouldn't be able to get their assault rifles within weapons range. But for some reason, today's governments think that armed merchies are a bad idea. So... Q-Ships. They'd kick ass.:-)
From what I've been hearing, it sounds like the biggest problem in defending against the Solmalian surge in piracy is that the pirates know where the US ships are and avoid them. They've taken to attacking farther and farther out from the coast, often impacting new shipping lanes when displaced by US warships.
Maybe I've been reading too much fiction, but am I the only one thinking: Q Ship?
1. Lure pirate in with tasty looking merchie.
2. Wait until pirate is within range and intentions are clear.
3. Throw the covers off the guns and blast them into next year.
"What kind of toxins are we being exposed too!!!11!"
Burned kerosene. If that bothers our poor environmentalist friends, then they might want to start a protest against Kerosene Lamps, portable stoves, home heating (primarily Japan, UK, and Ireland), and jet engines.
Which reminds me. Greenpeace has released a commercial decrying the toxicity of game consoles. It "stars" Mario, Master Chief, and Kratos. Trademarks for which they obviously don't have the rights. (Evidenced by the awful voice acting.) Worse yet, their claims are entirely specious, making bizarre and untrue claims about toxicity and lack of recycling. Hilarious in how bad it is, though.
I'm not a physicist, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that it has something to do with those heavy steel/concrete ties seen in the video. If you can provide more than 35 meganewtons of restraint, the rocket isn't going to go anywhere.
(Not to say that such logic is bleeding obvious./sarcasm)
Now for a real bit of discussion: Does anyone know how tall that test stand is. The thing appears to be HUGE! To the left of the stand you can see what appears to be power lines. An off-the-cuff approximation would suggest that the stand is 6 times taller than the lines. If we take a wild guess at the height of the lines (say, 15 feet?), we can guesstimate that the stand could easily be 90 feet or more in height!
That's impressive for a company who's only launch to date was an oversize firecracker in comparison to the rockets flown by their competitors. I honestly hope that what they learned with the Falcon 1 speeds development of the Falcon 9. A price war in the rocket industry would be awesome for long-term space access.
Because Gecko is developed by Mozilla for use in their browsers. Thus Gecko is "theirs". The Linux kernel however, is developed and "owned" by the Linux Foundation with contributions from companies like Red Hat.
Re:Examples are not nerdy
on
American Nerd
·
· Score: 1
Not when we were talking about the Atari and Commodore 64 computers. Kids saw them as game machines and thus they were cool. Parents thought that these machines were educational devices, but the kids knew better.
Now if you had an IBM PC or Apple II (which were a better experience for everything except games), then you were totally uncool. Especially since the Apple II had a reputation as a classroom computer.
Examples are not nerdy
on
American Nerd
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The Lord of the Rings became a multi-million dollar movie trilogy
Appreciation of Classic Fantasy != Nerd. There is the subculture who speak elvish and whatnot, but it's difficult to make the case that this makes them "nerds" rather than being classified as "geek" (American nomenclature), "otaku" (Japanese nomenclature), or simply obsessive fanatics.
the internet is now used by an incredible number of people
That might be considered nerdy if we were still living in the 90's. However, there is very little about today's computers that screams "nerd". Nerds are partly responsible for its success, but otherwise nerds are still in areas where we're a bit obsessive about the intellectual pursuits. (e.g. CompSci) At least now we tend to make a lot of money off of it.;-)
and computer games are no longer seen as being 'just for kids
Oh come on. All the cool kids had computer games in the 80s. That was far from the mark of a nerd. It was far more nerdy to brag about how you programmed your computer or calculator to compute Pi to the 100th decimal place. And in any case, computer gaming is on the decline in favor of more sophisticated game consoles.
We learned an invaluable lesson out of Vietnam. We learned that the Cold War was not going to be won on military might. Which eventually lead to the solution of bankrupting the USSR. (Something which would have eventually happened anyway, just much slower.) The part that hurts is that we learned the lesson at the cost of millions of lives. At that high of a price, we may as well have dropped a nuclear bomb.
Don't get me wrong. I do not have a particular position on the war. In fact, many South Vietnamese are very grateful for the work our troops did over there. But in the 20/20 hindsight of history, we can see what an incredible price the Cold War exacted. The desire not to return to such horrors is a strong incentive for the world to never fire their nuclear arsenals in anger.
Of course, there is the sticking point of Iran. There's a good chance a LOT of people in the Middle East could die should Iran gain nuclear weapons and decide to use them regionally. There's a fair likelihood that Iran would be glassed over in retribution, but the damage will have already been done. With a little luck and a lot of prayer, MAD will ensure that Iran never fires her weapons.
Thank you sir, you are my hero. (Even if you did just burst my balloon.:-P) Now I'm off to get some rest. By morning all the math should make sense again and I'm sure I'll be kicking myself with a "why didn't I see that?"
That would probably be why I said, "i.e. 100% conversion - losses to nuetrinos that cannot be captured". Apologies for mixing in the minus sign rather than spelling it out. As I mentioned previously, it's late and my frain is bried.;-)
Yeah, once. (Twice if you want to be pedantic.) Then never again. The whole point was that the display of force showed that the weapons were too dangerous to use. As long as the various sides have them pointed at each other, no one dares use them.
The only reason why the Cold War was so terrible was that the USA and the USSR were both waiting for the other to attack. Since neither one liked each other much (for both idealogical and practical reasons) the chance that an armed conflict would happen between the two powers was pretty darn high. Except that an armed conflict might precipitate into a nuclear war should either side feel backed into a corner.
Thus the reason why the US didn't win Vietnam. The chance of starting a nuclear war was too great to risk pressing the war to a conclusion. Which raised the (very legitimate) question of why we were even in the conflict to begin with.
If true, this is the 1940s all over again -- only on a larger scale
Not really. We've already done the whole Cold War/Mutually Assured Destruction thing. Our weapons are already far, far larger than we could ever deploy here on Earth. Making them that much bigger only makes them that much more useless. At best, the only real advantage would be that they could be scaled down.
Until we start looking at warfare on an interplanetary or interstellar scale, our existing nukes and possible antimatter warheads are going to sit in their silos and go unused. Or in the case of antimatter bombs, I simply hope they're not built. The idea of a large-scale antimatter warhead being prevented from detonation by mere magnetic fields maintained by the nearest power plant is not an appealing idea. Just disrupt the power infrastructure for long enough and we'll blow ourselves to kingdom come.:-/
Yeah, because NASA (and similar agencies around the world) have whopping piles of cash laying around for this.
Yeah, research dollars would never fund anything like that. Except when theydo.
Is it really so hard to click through the links?:-/
FWIW, there are quite a few antimatter engines on the drawing board. They're only missing one key component: Antimatter. And this new technology may be the key to providing it in spades. (Relatively speaking, of course.)
Why is everyone so hung up on an energy-positive reaction? Antimatter is the ultimate in fuel for space-propulsion as it produces the highest theoretical amount of energy for the least possible mass. (i.e. 100% conversion - losses to nuetrinos that cannot be captured) This plays well into the rocket formula, giving antimatter drives a specific impulse unattainable with other rocket methodologies. In fact, the far-flung future may see c-ships traveling the stars based on matter-antimatter drives.
What I want verified is not if this process is energy efficient or not. I want to know if this process is several orders of magnitude more efficient than the current Fermilab and CERN processes.
Sure, you could use the antimatter to fuel some other reaction as you suggested, but then again we already have fission reactors which produce net positive energy.
Once again, antimatter catalyzation makes the fuel more efficient for its weight and thus plays well into the rocket formula.
Slashdot Mirror
No, but fraud and harassment are. And this sounds like a pretty clear case of using a pseudonym in a fraudulent manner in order to harass an individual. I for one do NOT hope that the judgment is vacated.
Click here to fix the front page. (If you've been tricked into using that God-awful "beta" front page.) I haven't found a solution for the user page yet. Which is driving me up a *bleep*ing wall. I don't even understand what the new user page is trying to show me or why.
Yes, that's the last comment I posted. I already know that. How about something useful like, I dunno, the list of comments? Nope. Gotta click the right tab for that. Even that interface has been borked.
Please, Taco! Don't make changes just to make changes! The old site worked. Rather than make it work better, you're slowly making things worse and worse. With the forced addition of IDLE, you're even making it embarrassing to come here! (Don't forget to shut IDLE off in your preferences. That's the only category I have ever explicitly banned from the front page view. )
Please stop before Slashdot becomes completely unusable!
I'm not really sure why Strong Bad is referred to as "Indie". Telltale Games is the new kid on the block, but they are a fully staffed and funded studio. Not really the type of company you would think of as small-time "Indie" developers. Given the fact that they made their name by continuing a popular LucasArts franchise (Sam & Max), I'm even less inclined to think of them as independent.
Or is "Indie" destined to be the shareware company of tomorrow? (Anyone remember when Apogee and Epic were the small guys?)
Sure. But that doesn't mean it's not a fluke. e.g.
Real McCoy: Another Night - Practically every song on the CD was "good"*. They were all radio hits as well.
Real McCoy: One More Time - The title song was it. The rest of it was filler. And rather bad filler at that. All those morals they preached in the first album? Pfff. Out the window. We need a music video of two people having sex in a public bathroom so we can include it on the disc. Sales are going to go through the roof!
As you can imagine, the second album was nowhere near as popular as the first and ended up killing the band. No worries, though. The music industry always finds someone else to draw in, chew up, and spit out.
* Subjectively assuming that the listener likes this sort of music.
I agree completely. While I understand the point of a browser like this, I do think that forcing engines to be standards compliant is a better solution. My intent was not to endorse this sort of browser, but rather discuss how it might work in a practical manner.
That being said, there are a few circumstances where I can see multiple engines being of practical value. Those circumstances are when there are applications built on an engine-specific technology. e.g. a XUL application, a Mac Widget, a 3D Canvas app for Opera, or a Microsoft HTA. Those are edge cases though, and probably not worth developing an entire browser around.
Hot on the heels of the article that complained about privacy in Safari 3.2, it seems like this browser really needs a central ratings server. i.e. The only point of a browser like this is to provide the use of a different rendering engine when no other engines will work correctly. Thus the ideal solution is not to make the user switch engines willy nilly. The ideal solution is for the browser to pull the ideal rendering engine from a database that matches sites against the ideal engine. If a site is unknown to the database, the browser attempts to detect what engine should be used for the site (rather difficult, and should probably default to something standards compliant like Gecko if it can't make a reasonable guess). If the user changes the engine, this should be reported back to the server. After a critical mass, this answer gets added to the central database.
Of course, such a scheme has some very concerning aspects. Particularly in the case of malware sites. When a new exploit becomes available for ANY of the engines, I could use a botnet to seed the default engine for a new malware site I deploy. Anyone using this super-browser would get infected if they visited my site. Anti-phishing technology might help, but it's almost guaranteed that some of the users will end up infected.
Glad you feel that way. I'll get a few post-event disclosures out of the way then:
1. Your IP address, browser, operating system, installed plugins, and physical location were logged by Google Analytics as soon as you hit Slashdot.
2. If you don't have adblock installed, your browser contacted doubleclick.net when you visited Slashdot and uploaded the unique id assigned to your browser. If you did not have a unique id, one was assigned to you. Additional information such as the site you are visiting, your browser, your plugins, your geographic location, and other information may have been collected during this transaction.
Hope that helps!
Which would be after you give your information to them. Most other ad agencies don't even go as far as that!
Same thing. You've already connected to their servers and given up your info. Just because there are logos to promote brand recognition there, doesn't mean that you consented to give up your info to a third party or received disclosure that it was going to happen. Google Maps even goes so far as to give you a Terms of Use link *after* you've engaged their services! *gasp!*
I guess the question for you is: Would you feel better if the antiphishing technology had a "powered by Google" logo on it when it found a dangerous site? If so, I'm sure that's something that Apple would be willing to add. It won't do anything to better protect your privacy, though. It will merely give you a warm and fuzzy feeling.
I'm going to play devil's advocate for a moment and point out that such disclosure is getting harder and harder to comply with. Especially when the web is seen as a collection of cloud services. Should that piracy map viewer posted yesterday disclose to every user that they will connect to Google Maps for map data? Does every website disclose that you are downloading ads from Google or Doubleclick before you visit? Does your favorite web forum notify you that you'll be connecting to Youtube when users post videos?
Those examples convey far more sensitive information than this anti-phishing technology. Yet we don't even bat an eye. In fact, we praise them for such useful extensions to their services. Should web browsers thus play by different rules and be required to notify the user of a non-existent violation of privacy before they do something useful?
I'm not saying that some people don't feel slighted by this. I am saying that the web is evolving in ways that have already made this the norm rather than the exception. If you do feel slighted and wish to be excepted, you're probably going to have to get used to reconfiguring your browser in the same way you install adblock or flashblock.
Sadly, this is incorrect:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21842522-1702,00.html
http://article.wn.com/view/2008/10/23/Pirates_to_kill_crew_on_arms_ship_if_NATO_ships_attack/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1572236/Somali-pirates-threaten-to-kill-tanker-crew.html
They can and do kill people. And if this is allowed to continue, more and more people are going to die. On both sides.
My plan only addresses the short term issue: The piracy. That has to be dealt with immediately. Unchecked piracy will only result in the loss of more lives and cause economic problems on a world-wide scale.
Dealing with the political issues in Somalia is a more complex issue that lacks an immediate solution. I wish I could venture a good plan, but I do not understand the dynamics of the situation well enough to produce one. It's not like Somalia hasn't been receiving foreign aid:
What do they do with our foreign aid workers? Why, they kidnap and kill them:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/world/africa/06briefs-6FOREIGNAIDW_BRF.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081105/wl_afp/somaliaunrestreliefkidnap_081105183945
http://www.patronusanalytical.com/files/Somali%20Aid%20Worker%20Murdered.php
http://www.pr-inside.com/somali-aid-worker-killed-witnesses-say-r904499.htm
What would you have us do? I'm all for finding a peaceful solution if one can be arrived at. But as of this moment, there is an immediate problem people are dying or being threatened with death.
Food for thought: Isn't it interesting how the pirates can't afford food, but can always afford assault rifles? Perhaps there is more to their Robin Hood image than meets the eye.
"Launch Marine Assault to capture positively identified pirates" works just as well. It merely lacks that nice ring "blast them into next year" has. :-)
Your point is well taken. However, I still think Q-Ships are an answer. Q-Ships are the kind of bait that would cause pirates to identify themselves so that you can take action. Whether that be a matter of sinking them or capturing them, there's a good chance of it working. As a bonus, you'll start to give the pirates pause as they attempt to ascertain whether the ship they're about to attack is a real merchie or a Q-Ship.
For bonus points, borrow real merchant ships but crew them with naval officers and marines. That way NATO forces can move from ship to ship, leaving the pirates to further second-guess themselves. Is this merchie a trap? No way to know short of attempting attack.
I seriously doubt that a Q-Ship armed to the hilt and crewed by experienced naval personnel would fall into pirate hands. These guys are attacking with fishing boats for crying out loud! The problem isn't that our ships can't hold their own against the pirates. That much is stupidly simple. It's finding the pirates that's the problem. And these guys are even less sophisticated than other piracy organizations equipped with speedboats and cutters.
I mean, take a look at these guys. If someone would arm our merchies with a few mortars and sniper rifles, these pirates wouldn't be able to get their assault rifles within weapons range. But for some reason, today's governments think that armed merchies are a bad idea. So... Q-Ships. They'd kick ass. :-)
From what I've been hearing, it sounds like the biggest problem in defending against the Solmalian surge in piracy is that the pirates know where the US ships are and avoid them. They've taken to attacking farther and farther out from the coast, often impacting new shipping lanes when displaced by US warships.
Maybe I've been reading too much fiction, but am I the only one thinking: Q Ship?
1. Lure pirate in with tasty looking merchie.
2. Wait until pirate is within range and intentions are clear.
3. Throw the covers off the guns and blast them into next year.
4. ???
5. Profit!!!
(Well, the merchies do anyway.)
Burned kerosene. If that bothers our poor environmentalist friends, then they might want to start a protest against Kerosene Lamps, portable stoves, home heating (primarily Japan, UK, and Ireland), and jet engines.
Which reminds me. Greenpeace has released a commercial decrying the toxicity of game consoles. It "stars" Mario, Master Chief, and Kratos. Trademarks for which they obviously don't have the rights. (Evidenced by the awful voice acting.) Worse yet, their claims are entirely specious, making bizarre and untrue claims about toxicity and lack of recycling. Hilarious in how bad it is, though.
I'm not a physicist, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that it has something to do with those heavy steel/concrete ties seen in the video. If you can provide more than 35 meganewtons of restraint, the rocket isn't going to go anywhere.
(Not to say that such logic is bleeding obvious. /sarcasm)
Now for a real bit of discussion: Does anyone know how tall that test stand is. The thing appears to be HUGE! To the left of the stand you can see what appears to be power lines. An off-the-cuff approximation would suggest that the stand is 6 times taller than the lines. If we take a wild guess at the height of the lines (say, 15 feet?), we can guesstimate that the stand could easily be 90 feet or more in height!
That's impressive for a company who's only launch to date was an oversize firecracker in comparison to the rockets flown by their competitors. I honestly hope that what they learned with the Falcon 1 speeds development of the Falcon 9. A price war in the rocket industry would be awesome for long-term space access.
Because Gecko is developed by Mozilla for use in their browsers. Thus Gecko is "theirs". The Linux kernel however, is developed and "owned" by the Linux Foundation with contributions from companies like Red Hat.
Not when we were talking about the Atari and Commodore 64 computers. Kids saw them as game machines and thus they were cool. Parents thought that these machines were educational devices, but the kids knew better.
Now if you had an IBM PC or Apple II (which were a better experience for everything except games), then you were totally uncool. Especially since the Apple II had a reputation as a classroom computer.
Appreciation of Classic Fantasy != Nerd. There is the subculture who speak elvish and whatnot, but it's difficult to make the case that this makes them "nerds" rather than being classified as "geek" (American nomenclature), "otaku" (Japanese nomenclature), or simply obsessive fanatics.
That might be considered nerdy if we were still living in the 90's. However, there is very little about today's computers that screams "nerd". Nerds are partly responsible for its success, but otherwise nerds are still in areas where we're a bit obsessive about the intellectual pursuits. (e.g. CompSci) At least now we tend to make a lot of money off of it. ;-)
Oh come on. All the cool kids had computer games in the 80s. That was far from the mark of a nerd. It was far more nerdy to brag about how you programmed your computer or calculator to compute Pi to the 100th decimal place. And in any case, computer gaming is on the decline in favor of more sophisticated game consoles.
We learned an invaluable lesson out of Vietnam. We learned that the Cold War was not going to be won on military might. Which eventually lead to the solution of bankrupting the USSR. (Something which would have eventually happened anyway, just much slower.) The part that hurts is that we learned the lesson at the cost of millions of lives. At that high of a price, we may as well have dropped a nuclear bomb.
Don't get me wrong. I do not have a particular position on the war. In fact, many South Vietnamese are very grateful for the work our troops did over there. But in the 20/20 hindsight of history, we can see what an incredible price the Cold War exacted. The desire not to return to such horrors is a strong incentive for the world to never fire their nuclear arsenals in anger.
Of course, there is the sticking point of Iran. There's a good chance a LOT of people in the Middle East could die should Iran gain nuclear weapons and decide to use them regionally. There's a fair likelihood that Iran would be glassed over in retribution, but the damage will have already been done. With a little luck and a lot of prayer, MAD will ensure that Iran never fires her weapons.
Thank you sir, you are my hero. (Even if you did just burst my balloon. :-P) Now I'm off to get some rest. By morning all the math should make sense again and I'm sure I'll be kicking myself with a "why didn't I see that?"
Thanks again! It really is appreciated. :-)
That would probably be why I said, "i.e. 100% conversion - losses to nuetrinos that cannot be captured". Apologies for mixing in the minus sign rather than spelling it out. As I mentioned previously, it's late and my frain is bried. ;-)
Yeah, once. (Twice if you want to be pedantic.) Then never again. The whole point was that the display of force showed that the weapons were too dangerous to use. As long as the various sides have them pointed at each other, no one dares use them.
The only reason why the Cold War was so terrible was that the USA and the USSR were both waiting for the other to attack. Since neither one liked each other much (for both idealogical and practical reasons) the chance that an armed conflict would happen between the two powers was pretty darn high. Except that an armed conflict might precipitate into a nuclear war should either side feel backed into a corner.
Thus the reason why the US didn't win Vietnam. The chance of starting a nuclear war was too great to risk pressing the war to a conclusion. Which raised the (very legitimate) question of why we were even in the conflict to begin with.
Not really. We've already done the whole Cold War/Mutually Assured Destruction thing. Our weapons are already far, far larger than we could ever deploy here on Earth. Making them that much bigger only makes them that much more useless. At best, the only real advantage would be that they could be scaled down.
Until we start looking at warfare on an interplanetary or interstellar scale, our existing nukes and possible antimatter warheads are going to sit in their silos and go unused. Or in the case of antimatter bombs, I simply hope they're not built. The idea of a large-scale antimatter warhead being prevented from detonation by mere magnetic fields maintained by the nearest power plant is not an appealing idea. Just disrupt the power infrastructure for long enough and we'll blow ourselves to kingdom come. :-/
Yeah, research dollars would never fund anything like that. Except when they do.
Is it really so hard to click through the links? :-/
FWIW, there are quite a few antimatter engines on the drawing board. They're only missing one key component: Antimatter. And this new technology may be the key to providing it in spades. (Relatively speaking, of course.)
Why is everyone so hung up on an energy-positive reaction? Antimatter is the ultimate in fuel for space-propulsion as it produces the highest theoretical amount of energy for the least possible mass. (i.e. 100% conversion - losses to nuetrinos that cannot be captured) This plays well into the rocket formula, giving antimatter drives a specific impulse unattainable with other rocket methodologies. In fact, the far-flung future may see c-ships traveling the stars based on matter-antimatter drives.
What I want verified is not if this process is energy efficient or not. I want to know if this process is several orders of magnitude more efficient than the current Fermilab and CERN processes.
Once again, antimatter catalyzation makes the fuel more efficient for its weight and thus plays well into the rocket formula.