If you can point out the verb in that sentence, I will give you five dollars.
"used"
It's actually the noun that's missing. i.e Who or what used The Force(TM)?
Proper use of "have", modifies the tense of the verb to be present perfect tense. "Have" was missing, because I was trying to be mildly funny. (which obviously didn't work)
The "correct" way to utter the sentence is:
"He must have used The Force(TM) or something similar in nature."
There. The joke is dead. Are you happy now? (*sob*)
"hi, i have not yet seen something that was on TV like [twelve] months ago, so i will read a ton of comments about it, in the vain hope that no one will reveal anything"
Actually, the show was supposed to stop at Season 5. Then it was supposed to stop at Season 6. And on, and on, and on. Basically they go through this loop of "the show has been on the air long enough", then get overridden by their outstanding ratings.
Personally, I'm happy they didn't stop at Season 5. But Season 9?! That's getting a bit ridiculous.
Where you get the idea that you'd need smaller quantities for a NERVA, I'm not sure.
Where you get the idea that the nuclear bomb would have been produced over the course of a century instead of a decade (or shorter) I'm not sure.
Perhaps I'm not explaining myself very well. Consider it from this perspective:
- It took the Manhattan Project a bit over five years to go from fission was first achieved to dropping a bomb on Japan.
- If we assume NERVA style engines on the Vimanas, then we assume that the research into nuclear technology had already been done by the time the Atlantian/Indian war broke out.
- Since the ships were powered by nuclear fission, then the materials for a bomb would already be available.
The questions that must then be answered in that context are:
- How long did it supposedly take to develop nuclear technology? If it was a project that ran for 50-100's of years, then large stockpiles of nuclear materials could have existed.
- How many Vimanas existed at any given time? From what I know, it seems that only a few dozen nuclear craft may have existed. If the figures exceed that, then the theory about nuclear stockpiling falls apart.
There is no peacetime use for one, so Atlantis (the nation that allegedly dropped it) would already have been at war.
The texts say that the Atlantians dropped the bomb to escape Indian subjugation. If that is the case, and they had nuclear materials available, and there was sufficient time, then it is feasible that they developed a gun device as soon as they noticed they were losing the war. Still a lot of "ifs", but none beyond consideration.
The mines that supplied the materials,
Agreed. A point of research would be to see if there were any abandoned Indian mines that were later found to contain uranium. (This would not be an odd occurrence.)
the railways that transported ore to refineries
You're talking about a larger infrastructure than may have been used. Horse and mule teams as well as water shipping were reasonably well developed technologies by the start of the Bronze age. I see very little reason that mechanized railway systems would developed when obvious transportation methods already existed.
the power plants that ran machine shops
Again, you're thinking highly industrialized, with a distributed power grid. It would require more manpower and development resources, but why not produce power onsite? If you're not going to transmit it, there's very little need for converting mechanical power into electrical power, then back again. Just use turbines on site.
That still leaves the issue of the machine shop(s) themselves. Were they destroyed by the nuclear weapon?
the specialized tools used and the tools used to make those, are for the most part still here, and will be detectable by archaeologists for many centuries (and will still be found here and there for millenia).
There are a few possibilities:
1. The tools were destroyed along with the workshops.
2. The tools and the workshops were hidden in a "safe" area. (e.g. inside a mountain)
3. They exist but have been misidentified or have laid unfound.
It takes an industrial base to run a space program, or a technological war machine. Industrial infrastructures don't just vanish without a trace.
Indeed. But we are talking about a great deal of time. Over that period of time, many great structures, cities, and other archeological treasures have been lost through the course of history. People tear things down to build new things, structures collapse, stone erodes, etc. Archeology is always easiest when everyone who lived there died or left. For thriving civilizations, it can be quite difficult to find the proverbial needles in the haystack.
In any case, I'm making a lot of suppositions here. To sum up my thoughts: Yes, I think that the stories were probably exag
I seem to recall fairly well supported claims that a) the nuclear weapons program took a large fraction of the industrial base of the US to realize, and b) the Nazis didn't succeed in producing nuclear weapons largely because they didn't have a large enough industrual base.
The industrial problem was centered around the production of sufficient fissile material, of sufficient purity. This effort was two-fold, and is represented in the single test and two bombs that were dropped.
As I said, the mining and purification are the biggest difficulties with nuclear technology. A massive industrial base was required because of the time crunch imposed by the war. If we're talking smaller quantities and research performed over a few decades, then it is perfectly feasible for fissable materials to be produced in a smaller industrial base. There's actually an article somewhere on the Internet that explains how to separate small quantities of U235 and U238 with a metal bucket and some muscle power. Just don't expect to live to a ripe old age.:-)
Either way, if you're proposing NERVA-style engines for aircraft, as you'd mentioned in your previous post, and a space program, you're going to need a _large_ industrial base to support it.
Why? How many traces currently exist of the V2 program? We certainly have the cultural aspect of the 50's sci-fi rockets resembling the V2. But could you produce a trace of a single V2 today? How about traces of a Saturn V? Lunar landers? Mercury Rockets?
The only traces of these things are in museums and in their cultural impact. If you keep in mind that the museums are a reflection of modern culture, what traces would remain? They certainly wouldn't be as far reaching as a launch pad that someone just "forgot" about. Such a pad would either have been destroyed in an attack, or torn down to make space for something else. Which, of course, assumes that someone bothered to build a launch pad in the first place. Retrofitting nuclear engines into a plane would mean that only a runway would be necessary. Runways erode, and may be mistaken for roads.
I'd actually have to say that super-structures (greek temples, pyramids, modern skyscrapers, etc.) are about the extent of what you could expect to survive a thriving civilization. Beyond that, you're looking for scraps of info. Abandoned airfields (which may or may not be airfields), cultural records, any sort of buried junkyard wreckage, etc.
Nor should you be. I'm merely bringing to light a piece of history worth some investigation. Even if these civilizations never achieved powered flight, their experiments into it are of great interest.
People have imagined and dreamt about powered flight long before it was ever invented so if indeed this is what these texts are describing then I'd look for some physical evidence to back up the text and indicate they're not just flights of fancy.
Perhaps what fascinates me the most about these stories, is that there are actual diagrams, models, and power-plant descriptions that we can understand and replicate today. Most forms of "legend" lack these sorts of details. In addition, there has been talk of large chunks of glass in the Indian desert. While I'm still trying to confirm the validity of these claims, existence of glass would certainly add weight to these stories.
Number 1 could just as easily be describing some kind of iron meteroite which impacted somewhere and killed a lot of people, that is certainly a more supportable conclusion than assuming evidence of Nuclear weaponary - maybe the people were washing themselves to wash off dust which was thrown up by the impact etc etc.
It's a possibility. Although, the stories seem to suggest that the enemy (atlantians?) intentionally wiped out the Indian tech base. Although it's certainly possible that it was a coincidence/act of God that the Indians mistakenly assigned to their foe.
Archaelogists have discovered a lot of things and can piece together a fairly coherent story of past civilisations and the route civilisation has taken to get where it is today, as we know from modern times
This is where we get into trouble. You see, we do have a pretty good understanding of how things progressed from the Roman Empire on. Further back from that, and it's all vague speculation. There are some things we are pretty sure about (e.g. the Sumarians invented the wheel) and there are some things that we're taking shots in the dark about. (e.g. did Sodom and Gomorra exist?) The reason why we don't know a lot of this stuff, is that all the ancient civilizations are dead. The Babylonians, the Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Romans, the Aztecs, the Incas, etc, etc, etc.
They're all lost to the sands of time, with many of their secrets and legends dying with them. The people who inhabit those parts of the world today, are actually the barbarians of the time. Thus we lack a clear picture of how things were in many areas of the ancient world.
Nuclear power doesn't evolve in a vaccuum and requires a massive infrastructure to manufacture the equipment and provide the necessary learning and research to know what to do with the equipment.
The first part is true, but the part about a massive infrastructure is not. Mining Uranium and separating the U235 from U238 are the most difficult parts. Neither one requires a very large infrastructure if you're looking for small quantities. In fact, the Manhattan Project was really one small research facility combined with many great minds. If there hadn't been such a time crunch, it is feasible that the study of nuclear power could have been carried out over a generation or two in smaller labs.
With the right materials, I could easily build an atomic pile, even an atomic warhead. (I'd probably try for a gun device instead of an implosion device. Implosion is safer - less chance of accidental ignition, but lacks the outright simplicity of the gun devices.)
Even if all this stuff was here and real then where did it all go ? You would assume that with aeroplanes and spaceships the spread of such technology would be worldwide and very hard to destroy completely.
This is an assumption we base on the way modern society works. Yet ancient societies based most of their workforce around serving kings and emperors. If such craft existed, they would have been closely guarded secret
American Indian: Like Africa, I'm not aware of Dragon myths in the N.American continent. I suspect this is because of the decided lack of large reptiles, perhaps? Thats just a guess...
There were a few, although they were nowhere near as publicized as the "Thunderbird" (a very Pterodactyl-like creature).
Indeed. Solid metal ornaments that depict something fairly air-worthy. The Egyptian "bird" also appears to be something of an advanced glider design.
"There seems to be no doubt that Vimanas were powered by some sort of "anti-gravity." [...] It's easy to dismiss the whole lot as gibberish and gobbledegook.
It is something of a conundrum, as UFOologists (ahem) have latched onto these things and added their own screwy ideas about them. A more thoughtful look at the craft reveals a few more plausible explanations:
1. The texts describe nuclear weapons. i.e. "An incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as the thousand suns rose in all its splendour... An iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death, which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas.... the corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. The hair and nails fell out; pottery broke without apparent cause, and the birds turned white.... after a few hours all foodstuffs were infected.... to escape from this fire, the soldiers threw themselves in streams to wash themselves and their equipment..."
2. The Vinamas were "powered" by "careful heating of a yellowish mercury substance." If we believe that they had nuclear power, then nuclear rockets (similar to NERVA) seem likely. Especially if they were unconcerned about the fallout their engines produced.
3. "Vimanas took off vertically", as do rocket ships and Harrier jump jets.
4. "[A]nd were capable of hovering in the sky" It's difficult for me to tell if the author is talking about the same craft here. Supposedly the Hindu texts refer to quite a few different types of craft. Hovering ability could be achieved with a variety of methods: Ducted exhaust (like the Harrier), vertical flight profiles (like the DC-Y, "Delta-Clipper"), or lighter than air travel (hot air balloons, blimps, dirigibles, etc.)
If you are making theories based purely on a series of suppositions then I am disappointed the conclusion isn't even more fantastic !
Don't get me wrong. I don't suddenly believe in "anti-gravity" simply because of a few images that look like airplanes. However, I do think this is something worth investigating. There obviously existed a certain amount of knowledge of powered flight in the ancient world. Did they actually manage to construct these machines, or were they working on different theories based on birds as the Wright Brothers did?
It's certainly conceivable. Nuclear power was very easy to discover once the proper materials were found in sufficient quantities. (i.e. Pile up enough uranium of sufficient purity, and you've got a nuclear pile.) And flight was but a stone's throw away once the Holy Roman Empire stopped marking everyone as heretics. A great many lighter-than-air flights were performed in the 18th century, long before the Wright Bros. cracked powered flight.
Err... I thought only the Atlantian island capital was lost? Plato (supposedly) never claimed that the entire continent was lost. This has led many to suggest that the Americas were the lost continent of Atlantis. The island capital could have easily been lost in a disaster such as a tidal wave.
Ancient Hindu texts may confirm this theory, as they refer to great wars in arial and orbital machines. Some have suggested that their enemy was the Atlantians, who were actually the Aztecs. This has been corroborated by some pretty strange artifacts like these. It's hard to look at those and not believe that they're planes.
No, I think they're saying that "The average consumer has just figured out that they don't need a 3GHz processor that dissapates 1.21 gigawatts of heat!":-)
On another note, does anyone know what the heck this is? It says Celeron, but it also says FPGA. Does anyone know which is it? I found it the other day when looking for FPGA books, and it's been puzzling me ever since.
Indeed. The Internet2 consists of a super-set of technologies that are currently independent from the existing internet. i.e. The two networks are connected, but not all internet applications are compatible with Internet 2. Which is really too bad. I'd love to use a pipeline or two.
How do you know? I heard him say it, and I admit it was pretty funny. But he is the Commander in Chief, and is briefed on everything that might be relevant to the country, it's economy, and it's security. Seeing as he's probably not one to have used "The Internet" much, he may not have realized (in the split second that he uttered it) how silly "internets" sounds to the common person.
Or maybe he just screwed up. He wasn't "wrong", though.:-)
So...what if this new 'internet' isn't using the same protocol to communicate as the current one is?
Actually, that was sort of the point of the first Internet. It took incompatible networks and allowed them to interoperate via an "in-between" protocol. This "feature" of the internet is why you see so much cruft in sendmail. It used to have to deal with address like "Starbase773!BubbaShrimp!Blake8!Bob@bitnet.net"!!!
Odd as it may sound, it's often easier getting DSL and Cable in rural areas. I have quite a good DSL plan in my Wisconsin home. And my town is only about 10,000 strong!
More importantly, it's staunchly liberal (if you're from WI, you must have heard the term People's Republic of Madison, right?), which isn't exactly a hallmark of rural America.
Yes, I'm well aware of that fact. It's quite annoying that most of the state is conservative, but Dane county decides elections.
OTOH, people can do what I did: Live in an outlying area, and travel to Madison as needed. My actual home is near the Wisconsin Dells area, which isn't too bad of a drive to Madison. Although, since we got a StarBucks, a Big Mikes (best subs ANYWHERE! Only in Wisconsin!), and a SuperWalmart (two, actually) in my area, I haven't seen as much need to go to Madison.:-)
I think you misunderstand. $50,000 in rural areas is a lot like $85,000+ in cities. If you're making $50,000 in the city, then you may find a better life in the rural areas anyway.
I think you pretty well summed it up. I'd only like to add one point about Health Care. Your average doctor in many rural areas is actually quite a bit better than your average city ***k-up doctor. They take the time to listen, and actually care about properly treating you. City doctors tend to be far too busy to do the same (with the exception of some private practices.)
As "world-class doctors", most of those are located at Universities anyway. You know, like the University of Wisconsin or the Mayo Clinic of Minnesota.
People so often fool themselves into thinking that life in the country has got to suck. It only sucks if you really like living in an apartment, walking to your destination, and having things open 24x7.
You're not listening. EVERYTHING is cheaper. I actually know of rural people who have a LOT more tech stuff than their city counterparts. Plus they have lots of land, large houses, easy driving access to restaurants, 2+ cars (usually a car + truck, or minivan + car), etc.
Wisconsinites have a pretty good life, let me tell you.
You do realize that Madison, Wisconsin was selected the "Best Place to Live" by Money Magazine? It generally shows up at the top of such charts (e.g.: Best Places to Live) Part of the reason these are the best places to live is that we have access to much of the same stuff as the city, but at lower cost. Yes, we've got StarBucks, Borders, Barnes & Noble, Malls, great ethnic foods, Marshall Fields, nice diner restaurants, technology stores coming out of the wazoo, etc., etc., etc.
I don't think the idea is to pay Americans the same wage as Indians. I think the idea is to have the same effective cost per employee. The fact that Indians are half-way around the world tends to result in a lot of hidden costs. These hidden costs add up and make an Indian worker just as expensive as a cheap American worker.
Slashdot Mirror
Err... five bucks. [I] Can't seem to type today. :-)
If you can point out the verb in that sentence, I will give you five dollars.
;-)
"used"
It's actually the noun that's missing. i.e Who or what used The Force(TM)?
Proper use of "have", modifies the tense of the verb to be present perfect tense. "Have" was missing, because I was trying to be mildly funny. (which obviously didn't work)
The "correct" way to utter the sentence is:
"He must have used The Force(TM) or something similar in nature."
There. The joke is dead. Are you happy now? (*sob*)
And where's my five buck?!
A wise man without a shift key once said:
"hi, i have not yet seen something that was on TV like [twelve] months ago, so i will read a ton of comments about it, in the vain hope that no one will reveal anything"
How did he type "TV"? (*scratches head*)
Must of used The Force(TM) or something.
Actually, the show was supposed to stop at Season 5. Then it was supposed to stop at Season 6. And on, and on, and on. Basically they go through this loop of "the show has been on the air long enough", then get overridden by their outstanding ratings.
Personally, I'm happy they didn't stop at Season 5. But Season 9?! That's getting a bit ridiculous.
Where you get the idea that you'd need smaller quantities for a NERVA, I'm not sure.
Where you get the idea that the nuclear bomb would have been produced over the course of a century instead of a decade (or shorter) I'm not sure.
Perhaps I'm not explaining myself very well. Consider it from this perspective:
- It took the Manhattan Project a bit over five years to go from fission was first achieved to dropping a bomb on Japan.
- If we assume NERVA style engines on the Vimanas, then we assume that the research into nuclear technology had already been done by the time the Atlantian/Indian war broke out.
- Since the ships were powered by nuclear fission, then the materials for a bomb would already be available.
The questions that must then be answered in that context are:
- How long did it supposedly take to develop nuclear technology? If it was a project that ran for 50-100's of years, then large stockpiles of nuclear materials could have existed.
- How many Vimanas existed at any given time? From what I know, it seems that only a few dozen nuclear craft may have existed. If the figures exceed that, then the theory about nuclear stockpiling falls apart.
There is no peacetime use for one, so Atlantis (the nation that allegedly dropped it) would already have been at war.
The texts say that the Atlantians dropped the bomb to escape Indian subjugation. If that is the case, and they had nuclear materials available, and there was sufficient time, then it is feasible that they developed a gun device as soon as they noticed they were losing the war. Still a lot of "ifs", but none beyond consideration.
The mines that supplied the materials,
Agreed. A point of research would be to see if there were any abandoned Indian mines that were later found to contain uranium. (This would not be an odd occurrence.)
the railways that transported ore to refineries
You're talking about a larger infrastructure than may have been used. Horse and mule teams as well as water shipping were reasonably well developed technologies by the start of the Bronze age. I see very little reason that mechanized railway systems would developed when obvious transportation methods already existed.
the power plants that ran machine shops
Again, you're thinking highly industrialized, with a distributed power grid. It would require more manpower and development resources, but why not produce power onsite? If you're not going to transmit it, there's very little need for converting mechanical power into electrical power, then back again. Just use turbines on site.
That still leaves the issue of the machine shop(s) themselves. Were they destroyed by the nuclear weapon?
the specialized tools used and the tools used to make those, are for the most part still here, and will be detectable by archaeologists for many centuries (and will still be found here and there for millenia).
There are a few possibilities:
1. The tools were destroyed along with the workshops.
2. The tools and the workshops were hidden in a "safe" area. (e.g. inside a mountain)
3. They exist but have been misidentified or have laid unfound.
It takes an industrial base to run a space program, or a technological war machine. Industrial infrastructures don't just vanish without a trace.
Indeed. But we are talking about a great deal of time. Over that period of time, many great structures, cities, and other archeological treasures have been lost through the course of history. People tear things down to build new things, structures collapse, stone erodes, etc. Archeology is always easiest when everyone who lived there died or left. For thriving civilizations, it can be quite difficult to find the proverbial needles in the haystack.
In any case, I'm making a lot of suppositions here. To sum up my thoughts: Yes, I think that the stories were probably exag
I know what you're referring to. From Wikipedia:
As I said, the mining and purification are the biggest difficulties with nuclear technology. A massive industrial base was required because of the time crunch imposed by the war. If we're talking smaller quantities and research performed over a few decades, then it is perfectly feasible for fissable materials to be produced in a smaller industrial base. There's actually an article somewhere on the Internet that explains how to separate small quantities of U235 and U238 with a metal bucket and some muscle power. Just don't expect to live to a ripe old age.
Either way, if you're proposing NERVA-style engines for aircraft, as you'd mentioned in your previous post, and a space program, you're going to need a _large_ industrial base to support it.
Why? How many traces currently exist of the V2 program? We certainly have the cultural aspect of the 50's sci-fi rockets resembling the V2. But could you produce a trace of a single V2 today? How about traces of a Saturn V? Lunar landers? Mercury Rockets?
The only traces of these things are in museums and in their cultural impact. If you keep in mind that the museums are a reflection of modern culture, what traces would remain? They certainly wouldn't be as far reaching as a launch pad that someone just "forgot" about. Such a pad would either have been destroyed in an attack, or torn down to make space for something else. Which, of course, assumes that someone bothered to build a launch pad in the first place. Retrofitting nuclear engines into a plane would mean that only a runway would be necessary. Runways erode, and may be mistaken for roads.
I'd actually have to say that super-structures (greek temples, pyramids, modern skyscrapers, etc.) are about the extent of what you could expect to survive a thriving civilization. Beyond that, you're looking for scraps of info. Abandoned airfields (which may or may not be airfields), cultural records, any sort of buried junkyard wreckage, etc.
I'm afraid I'm just not convinced
Nor should you be. I'm merely bringing to light a piece of history worth some investigation. Even if these civilizations never achieved powered flight, their experiments into it are of great interest.
People have imagined and dreamt about powered flight long before it was ever invented so if indeed this is what these texts are describing then I'd look for some physical evidence to back up the text and indicate they're not just flights of fancy.
Perhaps what fascinates me the most about these stories, is that there are actual diagrams, models, and power-plant descriptions that we can understand and replicate today. Most forms of "legend" lack these sorts of details. In addition, there has been talk of large chunks of glass in the Indian desert. While I'm still trying to confirm the validity of these claims, existence of glass would certainly add weight to these stories.
Number 1 could just as easily be describing some kind of iron meteroite which impacted somewhere and killed a lot of people, that is certainly a more supportable conclusion than assuming evidence of Nuclear weaponary - maybe the people were washing themselves to wash off dust which was thrown up by the impact etc etc.
It's a possibility. Although, the stories seem to suggest that the enemy (atlantians?) intentionally wiped out the Indian tech base. Although it's certainly possible that it was a coincidence/act of God that the Indians mistakenly assigned to their foe.
Archaelogists have discovered a lot of things and can piece together a fairly coherent story of past civilisations and the route civilisation has taken to get where it is today, as we know from modern times
This is where we get into trouble. You see, we do have a pretty good understanding of how things progressed from the Roman Empire on. Further back from that, and it's all vague speculation. There are some things we are pretty sure about (e.g. the Sumarians invented the wheel) and there are some things that we're taking shots in the dark about. (e.g. did Sodom and Gomorra exist?) The reason why we don't know a lot of this stuff, is that all the ancient civilizations are dead. The Babylonians, the Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Romans, the Aztecs, the Incas, etc, etc, etc.
They're all lost to the sands of time, with many of their secrets and legends dying with them. The people who inhabit those parts of the world today, are actually the barbarians of the time. Thus we lack a clear picture of how things were in many areas of the ancient world.
Nuclear power doesn't evolve in a vaccuum and requires a massive infrastructure to manufacture the equipment and provide the necessary learning and research to know what to do with the equipment.
The first part is true, but the part about a massive infrastructure is not. Mining Uranium and separating the U235 from U238 are the most difficult parts. Neither one requires a very large infrastructure if you're looking for small quantities. In fact, the Manhattan Project was really one small research facility combined with many great minds. If there hadn't been such a time crunch, it is feasible that the study of nuclear power could have been carried out over a generation or two in smaller labs.
With the right materials, I could easily build an atomic pile, even an atomic warhead. (I'd probably try for a gun device instead of an implosion device. Implosion is safer - less chance of accidental ignition, but lacks the outright simplicity of the gun devices.)
Even if all this stuff was here and real then where did it all go ? You would assume that with aeroplanes and spaceships the spread of such technology would be worldwide and very hard to destroy completely.
This is an assumption we base on the way modern society works. Yet ancient societies based most of their workforce around serving kings and emperors. If such craft existed, they would have been closely guarded secret
American Indian: Like Africa, I'm not aware of Dragon myths in the N.American continent. I suspect this is because of the decided lack of large reptiles, perhaps? Thats just a guess...
There were a few, although they were nowhere near as publicized as the "Thunderbird" (a very Pterodactyl-like creature).
They're just ornaments
Indeed. Solid metal ornaments that depict something fairly air-worthy. The Egyptian "bird" also appears to be something of an advanced glider design.
"There seems to be no doubt that Vimanas were powered by some sort of "anti-gravity."
[...]
It's easy to dismiss the whole lot as gibberish and gobbledegook.
It is something of a conundrum, as UFOologists (ahem) have latched onto these things and added their own screwy ideas about them. A more thoughtful look at the craft reveals a few more plausible explanations:
1. The texts describe nuclear weapons. i.e. "An incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as the thousand suns rose in all its splendour... An iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death, which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas.... the corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. The hair and nails fell out; pottery broke without apparent cause, and the birds turned white.... after a few hours all foodstuffs were infected.... to escape from this fire, the soldiers threw themselves in streams to wash themselves and their equipment..."
2. The Vinamas were "powered" by "careful heating of a yellowish mercury substance." If we believe that they had nuclear power, then nuclear rockets (similar to NERVA) seem likely. Especially if they were unconcerned about the fallout their engines produced.
3. "Vimanas took off vertically", as do rocket ships and Harrier jump jets.
4. "[A]nd were capable of hovering in the sky" It's difficult for me to tell if the author is talking about the same craft here. Supposedly the Hindu texts refer to quite a few different types of craft. Hovering ability could be achieved with a variety of methods: Ducted exhaust (like the Harrier), vertical flight profiles (like the DC-Y, "Delta-Clipper"), or lighter than air travel (hot air balloons, blimps, dirigibles, etc.)
If you are making theories based purely on a series of suppositions then I am disappointed the conclusion isn't even more fantastic !
Don't get me wrong. I don't suddenly believe in "anti-gravity" simply because of a few images that look like airplanes. However, I do think this is something worth investigating. There obviously existed a certain amount of knowledge of powered flight in the ancient world. Did they actually manage to construct these machines, or were they working on different theories based on birds as the Wright Brothers did?
It's certainly conceivable. Nuclear power was very easy to discover once the proper materials were found in sufficient quantities. (i.e. Pile up enough uranium of sufficient purity, and you've got a nuclear pile.) And flight was but a stone's throw away once the Holy Roman Empire stopped marking everyone as heretics. A great many lighter-than-air flights were performed in the 18th century, long before the Wright Bros. cracked powered flight.
Another fun link.
Tell me that does not look like a Huey.
Err... I thought only the Atlantian island capital was lost? Plato (supposedly) never claimed that the entire continent was lost. This has led many to suggest that the Americas were the lost continent of Atlantis. The island capital could have easily been lost in a disaster such as a tidal wave.
Ancient Hindu texts may confirm this theory, as they refer to great wars in arial and orbital machines. Some have suggested that their enemy was the Atlantians, who were actually the Aztecs. This has been corroborated by some pretty strange artifacts like these. It's hard to look at those and not believe that they're planes.
Not for dissipation on CPUs. Intel measures it in Watts for some reason. (Probably because that's how much energy is being wasted.)
Thank you! Doing a Google Search only confused me more, since a lot of people apparently refer to it as "FPGA". Glad to have that mystery solved. :-)
No, I think they're saying that "The average consumer has just figured out that they don't need a 3GHz processor that dissapates 1.21 gigawatts of heat!" :-)
On another note, does anyone know what the heck this is? It says Celeron, but it also says FPGA. Does anyone know which is it? I found it the other day when looking for FPGA books, and it's been puzzling me ever since.
Indeed. The Internet2 consists of a super-set of technologies that are currently independent from the existing internet. i.e. The two networks are connected, but not all internet applications are compatible with Internet 2. Which is really too bad. I'd love to use a pipeline or two.
How do you know? I heard him say it, and I admit it was pretty funny. But he is the Commander in Chief, and is briefed on everything that might be relevant to the country, it's economy, and it's security. Seeing as he's probably not one to have used "The Internet" much, he may not have realized (in the split second that he uttered it) how silly "internets" sounds to the common person.
:-)
Or maybe he just screwed up. He wasn't "wrong", though.
You know, THERE IS A SECOND INTERNET. Has everyone already forgotten about Internet 2?!?
So...what if this new 'internet' isn't using the same protocol to communicate as the current one is?
!
Actually, that was sort of the point of the first Internet. It took incompatible networks and allowed them to interoperate via an "in-between" protocol. This "feature" of the internet is why you see so much cruft in sendmail. It used to have to deal with address like "Starbase773!BubbaShrimp!Blake8!Bob@bitnet.net"!!
Odd as it may sound, it's often easier getting DSL and Cable in rural areas. I have quite a good DSL plan in my Wisconsin home. And my town is only about 10,000 strong!
More importantly, it's staunchly liberal (if you're from WI, you must have heard the term People's Republic of Madison, right?), which isn't exactly a hallmark of rural America.
:-)
Yes, I'm well aware of that fact. It's quite annoying that most of the state is conservative, but Dane county decides elections.
OTOH, people can do what I did: Live in an outlying area, and travel to Madison as needed. My actual home is near the Wisconsin Dells area, which isn't too bad of a drive to Madison. Although, since we got a StarBucks, a Big Mikes (best subs ANYWHERE! Only in Wisconsin!), and a SuperWalmart (two, actually) in my area, I haven't seen as much need to go to Madison.
I think you misunderstand. $50,000 in rural areas is a lot like $85,000+ in cities. If you're making $50,000 in the city, then you may find a better life in the rural areas anyway.
I think you pretty well summed it up. I'd only like to add one point about Health Care. Your average doctor in many rural areas is actually quite a bit better than your average city ***k-up doctor. They take the time to listen, and actually care about properly treating you. City doctors tend to be far too busy to do the same (with the exception of some private practices.)
As "world-class doctors", most of those are located at Universities anyway. You know, like the University of Wisconsin or the Mayo Clinic of Minnesota.
People so often fool themselves into thinking that life in the country has got to suck. It only sucks if you really like living in an apartment, walking to your destination, and having things open 24x7.
You're not listening. EVERYTHING is cheaper. I actually know of rural people who have a LOT more tech stuff than their city counterparts. Plus they have lots of land, large houses, easy driving access to restaurants, 2+ cars (usually a car + truck, or minivan + car), etc.
Wisconsinites have a pretty good life, let me tell you.
You do realize that Madison, Wisconsin was selected the "Best Place to Live" by Money Magazine? It generally shows up at the top of such charts (e.g.: Best Places to Live) Part of the reason these are the best places to live is that we have access to much of the same stuff as the city, but at lower cost. Yes, we've got StarBucks, Borders, Barnes & Noble, Malls, great ethnic foods, Marshall Fields, nice diner restaurants, technology stores coming out of the wazoo, etc., etc., etc.
I don't think the idea is to pay Americans the same wage as Indians. I think the idea is to have the same effective cost per employee. The fact that Indians are half-way around the world tends to result in a lot of hidden costs. These hidden costs add up and make an Indian worker just as expensive as a cheap American worker.