BTW, I'm not sure if you've heard this before, but it has been speculated that the military is already using stealth airships for cargo transport. More info on it here:
I wish I had more time to discuss this. Here are a couple of my thoughts:
I imagined the rigid airframes on the sides for stability. The lighter than air properties of that part of the hull would offset the weight in the center. Giving it a center of gravity like that makes it easy to keep it stable.
The actual lift power should probably be slightly lower than the entire weight of the craft. This would allow the engines to drive quick ascents and descents, giving the ship unparalleled maneuverability. It may seem a bit odd, but such a ship could actually perform a low altitude "sneak attack" through a valley or canyon. If it's discovered, it can quickly gain altitude and deploy fighters.
Making it slightly heavier than air makes the airdock simple. You have a platform to work on it, then land the thing right on the platform. No need to concern one's self with difficulties similar to removing a ship from the water.
Protection against weapons and nukes may have a little more "Sci-Fi-ish" answer. Mini-Magnetospheric Propulsion (M2P2) systems have been in development for space travel. A magnetic "balloon" surrounding the ship would help divert any incoming charged particles or projectiles. (Missiles are still best handled by advanced anti-missile systems.)
The idea of a "drop carrier" is a very interesting way to launch planes. (If not reminiscent of shows like Space Above and Beyond.) Unfortunately, that also means you'd need to be at high altitudes to launch fighters. I think you'd still need a deck catapult or JATO equipped craft for low altitude attacks.
70 knots is a tremendous speed! I hadn't considered that such a craft would be able to travel much faster than a wet carrier. Definitely makes for a deployment advantage. Your air carriers can be on the scene in less than half the time of your wet carriers!
Part of the reason for the lack of large airships may have been related to the lack of computer technology. A wet vessel will naturally sit in place. It's been designed so that its hull will shape the waves passing around it, thus making sure that applied thrust drives the ship in the correct direction. With an airship, you suddenly have to concern yourself with 6 degrees of freedom. That includes rotation; a very dangerous thing for such a large ship. Computers would be needed to precisely control the engines and helium levels so that the ship would stay stable. Without computers, you'd be talking about a tremendous man-effort to keep the ship afloat. Sailing a warship of the 18th century would pale in comparison!
There is truly nothing more terrifying than seeing a mile long airship deploy weapons and planes at you. Our shock and awe campaign on Bagdad would have been a hundred times more effective, even if they could only see it in the distance! Not to mention that the ship would have been able to better coordinate troops movements on the ground, provide close-in air support, and actually airlift the soldiers all the way to their destination!
That's all I can think of for now. Thanks for the chat!:-)
Better? The same NT that would swap an entire program to disk the moment it was minimized? Those of us on 2000 always felt sorry for our fellows on NT4. Every time they minimized their app server to get it out of the way, or switched to it to see the error log, their machine would die for about 2 minutes. NT better - that's a good one.
My God. It would have killed you to use an "if" statement, wouldn't it? Or more flexibly, a data structure or array. BASIC did have the DATA keyword for a reason you know...
Didn't your interpreter have a renum command? Mine did. If the program got too long, I'd just type "renum" and watch it all magically fix itself. And sub-routines were a good thing. as line numbers tended to be very fragile and prone to breaking. Of course, now every SciFi show in history now uses the term "subroutine". ARRRRGGHHHHH!!!
Newbs. Real computer users knew that you navigated and aimed by telling the computer how many units you wanted to move/aim in the X and Y directions. I'll bet you were all trying to enter absolute coordinates instead of relative coordinates, weren't you?
Are you sure? I though Gorilla.bas ran on GW-BASIC, and that was dropped in favour of QBASIC in DOS 5.
Unless Microsoft released it in DOS 4, I'm pretty sure. Gorilla.bas was NOT a true Basic program. It was very QBasic in its design, and made use of functions and the lack of line numbers. Besides, GW-BASIC would have been too slow. I *wrote* games for GWBASIC, and I can tell you that the screen update rate was not something you'd want to write home about. My TRON game worked pretty well though. I think I still have the print out around somewhere...
You wish is my command. Here's the source code plus there's a PALM version at the bottom of the list. In case you want to type it in yourself, SmallBASIC accepts traditional BASIC syntax. Someone event did a SmallBASIC port of Super Star Trek for you!
Your XT still works?! My Laser Turbo XT (with 8MHz Turbo mode!) had a failure in its massive 40 MEG hard drive. The drive was so big, that it had to be spit into a 30 MEG C: drive and a 10 MEG D: drive. Of course, by then I was upgrading from my 486DX2 w/4MB of RAM to my P120 w/16MB of RAM. Made all those P90 w/8MB fools jealous.:-D
Sorry to say this dude, but YOU FAIL IT. The Star Trek game was from the 60 & 70s. The Trench game was invented in the late 70s, early 80s. QBasic with its Gorilla.bas and Nibbles.bas didn't come around until MSDOS 5.0, sometime early in the 90s.
(rolls eyes) I've got an Ultra 10 already. It's not a big deal. Besides, it's supposed to run on JDS, which I ALSO already have. I just have to figure out who I can snag a copy from. Gosling never got back to me on my server idea, and I accidentally insulted Amy Fowler last time I spoke with her. (Sorry Amy!) Other than that, most of the guys I know are trenches guys who probably don't have access to the technology. Drats. Maybe I could make one of their sales people think that I'm looking to buy JDS for a company of 500,000 employees...
Ok, who remembers the Star Trek game from Dartmouth? You know, the one where you got to enter coordinates to move the ship to, then fire photons and phasers at Klingons? You could even consult the library computer! Failing that, who remembers coding the "trench" game?
The "answer" was given here. It basically amounts to more weight == more thrust required. A fair enough stance, but I still don't buy it. I *still* think that a rigid airship is the way to go for a truly large vessel.
Hey, since you seem to have spoken with quite a few airship designers, let me pose a question to you. One of my dream ideas has always been to build a carrier in the sky. The way I figure it, the sides of the deck would be lined with large rigid frame balloons that would provide buoyancy for the craft. With its entire weight lightened, it could then use turbofans built into the bottom of the craft to provide the actual lift power. These turbofans would be powered by the onboard nuclear reactors. (Who else would need an aircraft carrier other than the miliatary?) I'm still thinking about how forward thrust would be applied, but it could be accomplished by building the turbofans to "tip".
Even if such a craft were feasible, I'm not sure what it would offer over the Navy's current carriers, but it would certainly be an interesting project.
You'll note that their approach is two pronged. The Java Server System (formerly SunONE, JavaONE is a conference) is the server side counterpart to the Java Desktop System. That way Sun can maintain their lead in the server arena AND go after the desktops. It would be foolish for them to give up their existing, lucrative markets.
AMD64 and Itanic are threatening Sun's bread and butter. That's why they're trying to get their ducks in a row so they can attack the low end. Managers usually want to stick with a single provider for all software and hardware. If Sun can provide everything top to bottom, they'll be a much more attractive option.
Slashdot Mirror
+1 Funny? How strange. Never thought of myself as much of a comedian. *shrug*
I am still planning to stick with RHL9, for a while at least. How many others are planning to do the same?
Looking at JDS myself.
BTW, I'm not sure if you've heard this before, but it has been speculated that the military is already using stealth airships for cargo transport. More info on it here:
y /black_triangle_020805.html
:-)
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technolog
Interesting stuff.
That's all I can think of for now. Thanks for the chat!
Stupid design. NT was better.
Better? The same NT that would swap an entire program to disk the moment it was minimized? Those of us on 2000 always felt sorry for our fellows on NT4. Every time they minimized their app server to get it out of the way, or switched to it to see the error log, their machine would die for about 2 minutes. NT better - that's a good one.
I never realized how much I hated 1 base indexes. Here's the fixed version:Sorry about the lack of caps. Chipmunk BASIC keeps converting them all to lower case. (Grrr... I wish someone would port SmallBASIC to the Mac.)
My God. It would have killed you to use an "if" statement, wouldn't it? Or more flexibly, a data structure or array. BASIC did have the DATA keyword for a reason you know...
What do I look like, your mother? Use Google!
Here is the ROM:
http://www.trs-80.com/trs80-3m.htm
Here is the emulator:
http://www.trs-80.com/trs80-e.htm
Right here:
. bas
http://www.basicguru.com/files/abc/abc9903/canyon
Everyone punched this game into their computers since it was so easy to code.
BTW, the library computer had a calculator to figure out where you were going. :-)
Didn't your interpreter have a renum command? Mine did. If the program got too long, I'd just type "renum" and watch it all magically fix itself. And sub-routines were a good thing. as line numbers tended to be very fragile and prone to breaking. Of course, now every SciFi show in history now uses the term "subroutine". ARRRRGGHHHHH!!!
Newbs. Real computer users knew that you navigated and aimed by telling the computer how many units you wanted to move/aim in the X and Y directions. I'll bet you were all trying to enter absolute coordinates instead of relative coordinates, weren't you?
Lemme see if I can remember how to do this in basic:Hmm... Yep, that looks about right. You should get an array that counts from 1-10, 10 times over.
Are you sure? I though Gorilla.bas ran on GW-BASIC, and that was dropped in favour of QBASIC in DOS 5.
Unless Microsoft released it in DOS 4, I'm pretty sure. Gorilla.bas was NOT a true Basic program. It was very QBasic in its design, and made use of functions and the lack of line numbers. Besides, GW-BASIC would have been too slow. I *wrote* games for GWBASIC, and I can tell you that the screen update rate was not something you'd want to write home about. My TRON game worked pretty well though. I think I still have the print out around somewhere...
Do yourself a favor will you? Use a GOSUB!
You wish is my command. Here's the source code plus there's a PALM version at the bottom of the list. In case you want to type it in yourself, SmallBASIC accepts traditional BASIC syntax. Someone event did a SmallBASIC port of Super Star Trek for you!
Your XT still works?! My Laser Turbo XT (with 8MHz Turbo mode!) had a failure in its massive 40 MEG hard drive. The drive was so big, that it had to be spit into a 30 MEG C: drive and a 10 MEG D: drive. Of course, by then I was upgrading from my 486DX2 w/4MB of RAM to my P120 w/16MB of RAM. Made all those P90 w/8MB fools jealous. :-D
Sorry to say this dude, but YOU FAIL IT. The Star Trek game was from the 60 & 70s. The Trench game was invented in the late 70s, early 80s. QBasic with its Gorilla.bas and Nibbles.bas didn't come around until MSDOS 5.0, sometime early in the 90s.
Errm...
10 LET A$ = RANDOM$ * 10
15 LET B$ = ""
20 PRINT "GUESS A NUMBER BETWEEN 1-10: ";
30 INKEY$ B$
40 IF B$ <> A$ THEN PRINT "WRONG" ELSE PRINT "CORRECT"
50 GOTO 10
SAVE "RANDOM.BAS"
RUN
Wow. Didn't know I could still do that...
(rolls eyes) I've got an Ultra 10 already. It's not a big deal. Besides, it's supposed to run on JDS, which I ALSO already have. I just have to figure out who I can snag a copy from. Gosling never got back to me on my server idea, and I accidentally insulted Amy Fowler last time I spoke with her. (Sorry Amy!) Other than that, most of the guys I know are trenches guys who probably don't have access to the technology. Drats. Maybe I could make one of their sales people think that I'm looking to buy JDS for a company of 500,000 employees...
Ok, who remembers the Star Trek game from Dartmouth? You know, the one where you got to enter coordinates to move the ship to, then fire photons and phasers at Klingons? You could even consult the library computer! Failing that, who remembers coding the "trench" game?
| * |
| * |
| * |
| * |
|* |
| |
| |
*BOOM* YOU CRASHED. TRY AGAIN? [Y/N]
The "answer" was given here. It basically amounts to more weight == more thrust required. A fair enough stance, but I still don't buy it. I *still* think that a rigid airship is the way to go for a truly large vessel.
Hey, since you seem to have spoken with quite a few airship designers, let me pose a question to you. One of my dream ideas has always been to build a carrier in the sky. The way I figure it, the sides of the deck would be lined with large rigid frame balloons that would provide buoyancy for the craft. With its entire weight lightened, it could then use turbofans built into the bottom of the craft to provide the actual lift power. These turbofans would be powered by the onboard nuclear reactors. (Who else would need an aircraft carrier other than the miliatary?) I'm still thinking about how forward thrust would be applied, but it could be accomplished by building the turbofans to "tip".
Even if such a craft were feasible, I'm not sure what it would offer over the Navy's current carriers, but it would certainly be an interesting project.
Dammit! Hurry up and ship it, will you?!
:-D
err...
Please? With sugar on top?
Ok, so what are my chances of the getting the guys I know in the Java development section of getting me a test build?
You'll note that their approach is two pronged. The Java Server System (formerly SunONE, JavaONE is a conference) is the server side counterpart to the Java Desktop System. That way Sun can maintain their lead in the server arena AND go after the desktops. It would be foolish for them to give up their existing, lucrative markets.
AMD64 and Itanic are threatening Sun's bread and butter. That's why they're trying to get their ducks in a row so they can attack the low end. Managers usually want to stick with a single provider for all software and hardware. If Sun can provide everything top to bottom, they'll be a much more attractive option.