I havent seen this posted by anyone else so I thought I would add it to the list. Tacked onto the end of on of their later books (might be Lucifers Hammer or Footfall) Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle cover a story about how the Berlin wall came down.
I'll try to recap the main points:
They (and a lot of sci-fi writers) werent happy with the way that NASA was heading after the end of the Apollo missions.
Niven and Pournelle decided to get a bunch of sci-fi writers together to come up with ideas that they could present to the US government.
They had their brain storming session and produced a set of ideas that they presented to the Reagan administration.
Reagan had his science advisors check them out. They said they would work.
This led directly into SDI (StarWar project).
Russia could not afford to follow suit and announce their own project. And from that point Russia had to find a new way to live with the US.
Part of this new way included the fall of the Berlin wall.
Since this is all from memory I have probably got a few points wrong. But it was well worth reading as it showed that a few people in the right place at the right time can achieve what they sent out to.
my attention span is too... Wow! That sunset is a beautiful colour! What's for tea? What was I typing this for anyway?
42, thats it. That always answers my questions.
For a tenth of the cost we can cover several square miles of the nevada desert with solar arrays. This will produce ten times the power without the problems of beaming the power back to the ground.
This will also avoid the problems of the orbiting solar arrays regularly being hit of the collection of space junk that we have deposited in orbit over the years.
Now if these were feeding power to city sized orbiting habitats then it might be a much more interesting idea.
Working for the company that manufactures "Brighton" rock this information will allow us to start work nice and early on our patent suit against these heinious people who are trying to steal our IP for placing long continuous threads through the length of a cylinder.
... the Wingamn Warrior by Logitech.
Unfortunately they dont sell them any more (why?). But they had a 360' dial that controlled turning leaving the joystick (left & right) available for strafing. Makes the circle-strafe technique a piece of piss.
The problem I had was trying to get drivers to work with newer games. The ones they supplied for games of the time (Doom, etc.) were excellent and gave a definite advantage over mouse or keyboard using opponents.
Re:how do you see what you are pointing at?
on
Head-Mounted Mouse
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· Score: 1
You would have to be an Owl or Goldie Hawn ("Death Becomes Her") to manage this one without an ensuing trip to casualty (or a morgue).
If they did it with a "Vincent Price" overlay then you could extract the original soundtrack & the "Vincent Price" overlay as well.
Sounds like you're getting two for the price of 1 if they did this.
In just the same way that sci-fi fans got NASA to name one of the early shuttles after the Enterprise will Winnie the Pooh fans get one of these named after Tigger?
I remember seeing a bit on Tomorrows World (UK) about a plastic sheet that would channel ambient light to its edges. I'm sure it worked because of a dye (orange?) added to the plastic.
The take they had on this was to place efficient but expensive solar cells on the edges of the plastic for more cost effective electricity production.
Wouldnt the fibers need to be open to the ambient light to work. If they are contained within a screen wouldnt this stop the required light from reaching them in the first place.
Thought: Does this just work for visible light or would it work for other wavelengths? (x-ray, etc)
Could this be used as radiation shielding with the fibers intercepting, for example, a laser and re-radiating the energy harmlessly away from the shield.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you never heard of Gary Rothwell? Or any of the raving nutters that came after him?
There are very few of the motorcycle stunts from MI2 that I havent seen with my own eyes.
Smith & Wesson hold the copyright on the "Point & Click" user interface.
The only problem with it is that it tends to leave a GUI mess!
I havent seen this posted by anyone else so I thought I would add it to the list. Tacked onto the end of on of their later books (might be Lucifers Hammer or Footfall) Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle cover a story about how the Berlin wall came down.
I'll try to recap the main points:
They (and a lot of sci-fi writers) werent happy with the way that NASA was heading after the end of the Apollo missions.
Niven and Pournelle decided to get a bunch of sci-fi writers together to come up with ideas that they could present to the US government.
They had their brain storming session and produced a set of ideas that they presented to the Reagan administration.
Reagan had his science advisors check them out. They said they would work.
This led directly into SDI (StarWar project).
Russia could not afford to follow suit and announce their own project. And from that point Russia had to find a new way to live with the US.
Part of this new way included the fall of the Berlin wall.
Since this is all from memory I have probably got a few points wrong. But it was well worth reading as it showed that a few people in the right place at the right time can achieve what they sent out to.
You know what you're smoking when you roll your own.
my attention span is too ... Wow! That sunset is a beautiful colour! What's for tea? What was I typing this for anyway?
42, thats it. That always answers my questions.
For a tenth of the cost we can cover several square miles of the nevada desert with solar arrays. This will produce ten times the power without the problems of beaming the power back to the ground.
:)
This will also avoid the problems of the orbiting solar arrays regularly being hit of the collection of space junk that we have deposited in orbit over the years.
Now if these were feeding power to city sized orbiting habitats then it might be a much more interesting idea.
Just imagine a bemoth fluster of these!
What you have to remember is that Duct tape is like the Force.
It has a light side, and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
Working for the company that manufactures "Brighton" rock this information will allow us to start work nice and early on our patent suit against these heinious people who are trying to steal our IP for placing long continuous threads through the length of a cylinder.
We have now gone from users suffering pained wrists from CTS to users dropping dead when their neck swells up from using one of these.
... the Wingamn Warrior by Logitech.
Unfortunately they dont sell them any more (why?). But they had a 360' dial that controlled turning leaving the joystick (left & right) available for strafing. Makes the circle-strafe technique a piece of piss.
The problem I had was trying to get drivers to work with newer games. The ones they supplied for games of the time (Doom, etc.) were excellent and gave a definite advantage over mouse or keyboard using opponents.
You would have to be an Owl or Goldie Hawn ("Death Becomes Her") to manage this one without an ensuing trip to casualty (or a morgue).
...Tyson got to look the way he does. He must have been a beta tester for one of these.
If the human brain was simple enough for us to understand, we wouldn't be able to.
Cant remember who said it, sorry.
If they did it with a "Vincent Price" overlay then you could extract the original soundtrack & the "Vincent Price" overlay as well.
Sounds like you're getting two for the price of 1 if they did this.
In just the same way that sci-fi fans got NASA to name one of the early shuttles after the Enterprise will Winnie the Pooh fans get one of these named after Tigger?
I remember seeing a bit on Tomorrows World (UK) about a plastic sheet that would channel ambient light to its edges. I'm sure it worked because of a dye (orange?) added to the plastic.
The take they had on this was to place efficient but expensive solar cells on the edges of the plastic for more cost effective electricity production.
Wouldnt the fibers need to be open to the ambient light to work. If they are contained within a screen wouldnt this stop the required light from reaching them in the first place.
Thought: Does this just work for visible light or would it work for other wavelengths? (x-ray, etc)
Could this be used as radiation shielding with the fibers intercepting, for example, a laser and re-radiating the energy harmlessly away from the shield.