It's doubtful that they could get their big vehicle together and working by the end of the year. John has said if Rutan fails they might make a push (ie, work on it more than the current 2 days a week and evenings) to get done by the end of the year for an attempt.
According to John there is no other team even close, and I believe him.
Talk about relevant. CmdrTaco should take to heart the comment about poor search. The search capabilities of Slashdot are absolutely terrible. You can't specify any options, like searching just artitle titles, article content, or comments. Heaven forbid you want to search for two words together, you can't do it.
Now, when I need to search Slashdot now I just go to Google and do "site:slashdot.org (query)" and pray that something relevant comes up.
Come on Slashdot, upgrade that search function already!
Heh, reminds me of my high school days. We used to have some Pentium 150s (brand new back then!) back in high school that ran Linux and X for our Computer Architecture class.
I had a friend in that class and we'd surreptitiously log into each other's machine remotely and start running as many copies of the Swarms screen saver. You could actually run the screen saver on the root window, so your desktop could have the swarms running around as a wallpaper. We used to be able to get a fair number of em running before the other person would notice their compile times taking really long and start an arms race to see who could grind the other's computer to a halt the fastest.
What I never got is why don't they just add an AUX mini-din input on the front of the stereo? You could then just plug a simple cable directly from the iPod/Portable CD/MP3 player into the stereo. It seems like such a simple idea instead of messing with those damn cassette adapters and the quality loss from broadcasting on FM.
Actually, it's kind of funny that they encountered this issue. John Carmack predicted it last week in his weekly update (second to last paragraph):
Speaking of next week... I think Space Ship One has good odds of success in the single-person-to-100km flight. I only see two real issues they may hit: The extended burn above the atmosphere may run into some control issues as the nozzle ablates, which will be hard to correct with only cold gas attitude jets. This would be a fairly benign failure, with the pilot just shutting off the main engine if he can't hold the trajectory.
Hydrogen peroxide is a perfectly legitimate fuel for what they are trying to accomplish. They only need to get to suborbital velocities, and the safety factor of not sitting on thousands of pounds of explosives makes H2O2 a pretty good choice if you ask me.
And I'm sorry, but I don't think your "neighborhood physicists" have much standing to critisize what Mr. Carmack is doing. I don't see them out there building any rockets. It's easy to sit back and snipe at people who are actually doing something while you lean back in your armchair and guzzle beer.
I have an earlier Netgear product (RT314). It's actually a rebranded Zytel product, so this trick may not work on other models.
However, it was possible to edit the firmware in a binary editor. There was a checksum in the firmware, but you could fix it. You needed to connect a serial cable to the management port. When you made a change and uploaded the new firmware to the router and rebooted, the router would helpfully tell you what the old checksum was and what it expected the new checksum to be. You could then just search for the old checksum string and replace it with the new one the router calculated for you.
Pretty easy to do. And allowed you to run some of the newer Zytel firmware on the Netgear boxes.
Yeah. Stupid reality crap is destroying TV. They wonder why ratings for male 18-24 year olds has gone way down? It's partly because of all the crappy reality shows. I don't know any guys in this age range who watch those reality shows. Make some decent scripted shows and maybe we'll start watching more.
Nah, it was really the sniper rifle that made you untouchable in the original UT. You had a crosshair in unzoomed mode that was perfectly acurate even if you were jumping and twisting around in mid air. Once you got good with that thing, it was often one bullet head shot kills.
Arg, he also needs to just pick one color for each filesystem. I mean, he must want to torture his audience by constantly switching the colors and then making the legend so tiny and mucked up by JPEG artifacts, that one can't tell which bar goes to which filesystem.
Not true. The Redbook (OpenGL Programming Guide) uses GLU or GLUT for input, so it is operating system independent. It also happens to be one of the best books for learning OpenGL.
There is a free (quasi-legal) copy of an old version located online. I'd recommend getting the newest version, 4, because it is updated for OpenGL 1.4.
Yeah, the fact that they don't provide direct links to the pages also throws my paranoia into overdrive. This is the link that you get when you search for Slashdot:
I live right next to a university and I can see at least 15 different access points on any given day from my wireless link. I use it for internet access to the university and I can definatly tell when my neighbors are using their own LAN cause it causes a lot of packet drop outs. Not to mention about half of those APs have "linksys" as their SSID with no WEP enabled.
It gets better during the summer when a lot of the students around me leave and shut off their APs.
I've been following Armadillo about every week on their news page for the past year. I like their dedication and method of building a ship.
They have however spent a lot of time dealing with engine issues. They've already had to go from a 90% peroxide monopropellent design to a 50% peroxide/methanol mixed-monoprop because FNC (one of the few companies that make 90% peroxide) wasn't willing to sell it to them. They've spent a lot more time dealing with designing the engines than they anticipated. Just goes to show, rocket engine design is not simple!
Other issues include how to get the thing back on the ground safely. They initally planned to use a big ass parachute to land it, but they found out that this really restricts them in terms of getting a launch license. Because there is a possiblity for such huge range drift with the parachute design (thus endangering public safety since it can land in a huge footprint) that they've now had to think about doing a powered landing using the engines. This of course, leaves much less room for error on landing. An alternative would be to have the pilot bail out and parachute down while the ship lands by itself, but again this adds complexity.
Although I'd love to see them win, the fact is, Rutan is way ahead of them in terms of testing and having a working prototype ship. Basically SS1 is the favorite by quite a bit as of now.
Slashdot Mirror
It's doubtful that they could get their big vehicle together and working by the end of the year. John has said if Rutan fails they might make a push (ie, work on it more than the current 2 days a week and evenings) to get done by the end of the year for an attempt.
According to John there is no other team even close, and I believe him.
Talk about relevant. CmdrTaco should take to heart the comment about poor search. The search capabilities of Slashdot are absolutely terrible. You can't specify any options, like searching just artitle titles, article content, or comments. Heaven forbid you want to search for two words together, you can't do it.
Now, when I need to search Slashdot now I just go to Google and do "site:slashdot.org (query)" and pray that something relevant comes up.
Come on Slashdot, upgrade that search function already!
Ship in international waters with a large broadcasting tower.
Bart: What are those guys doing?
Homer: They're broadcasting Major League Baseball with implied oral consent instead of express written consent.
Heh, reminds me of my high school days. We used to have some Pentium 150s (brand new back then!) back in high school that ran Linux and X for our Computer Architecture class.
I had a friend in that class and we'd surreptitiously log into each other's machine remotely and start running as many copies of the Swarms screen saver. You could actually run the screen saver on the root window, so your desktop could have the swarms running around as a wallpaper. We used to be able to get a fair number of em running before the other person would notice their compile times taking really long and start an arms race to see who could grind the other's computer to a halt the fastest.
What I never got is why don't they just add an AUX mini-din input on the front of the stereo? You could then just plug a simple cable directly from the iPod/Portable CD/MP3 player into the stereo. It seems like such a simple idea instead of messing with those damn cassette adapters and the quality loss from broadcasting on FM.
Actually Pixar did that as one of their first projects. It was pretty impressive back in the day. It's still not too shabby.
Hey! I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!
Hydrogen peroxide is a perfectly legitimate fuel for what they are trying to accomplish. They only need to get to suborbital velocities, and the safety factor of not sitting on thousands of pounds of explosives makes H2O2 a pretty good choice if you ask me.
And I'm sorry, but I don't think your "neighborhood physicists" have much standing to critisize what Mr. Carmack is doing. I don't see them out there building any rockets. It's easy to sit back and snipe at people who are actually doing something while you lean back in your armchair and guzzle beer.
Oops, didn't mean to post that last comment anonymously. Meant to check the No Karma Bonus box instead.
I have an earlier Netgear product (RT314). It's actually a rebranded Zytel product, so this trick may not work on other models.
However, it was possible to edit the firmware in a binary editor. There was a checksum in the firmware, but you could fix it. You needed to connect a serial cable to the management port. When you made a change and uploaded the new firmware to the router and rebooted, the router would helpfully tell you what the old checksum was and what it expected the new checksum to be. You could then just search for the old checksum string and replace it with the new one the router calculated for you.
Pretty easy to do. And allowed you to run some of the newer Zytel firmware on the Netgear boxes.
Can't this simply be corrected via software? Just decay the other colors as well to keep the color calibration the same.
Yeah. Stupid reality crap is destroying TV. They wonder why ratings for male 18-24 year olds has gone way down? It's partly because of all the crappy reality shows. I don't know any guys in this age range who watch those reality shows. Make some decent scripted shows and maybe we'll start watching more.
Yah, wish UPN would pick up Angel like they did with Buffy. It's a quality show, sucks to see it going out so soon.
Nah, it was really the sniper rifle that made you untouchable in the original UT. You had a crosshair in unzoomed mode that was perfectly acurate even if you were jumping and twisting around in mid air. Once you got good with that thing, it was often one bullet head shot kills.
Arg, he also needs to just pick one color for each filesystem. I mean, he must want to torture his audience by constantly switching the colors and then making the legend so tiny and mucked up by JPEG artifacts, that one can't tell which bar goes to which filesystem.
Not true. The Redbook (OpenGL Programming Guide) uses GLU or GLUT for input, so it is operating system independent. It also happens to be one of the best books for learning OpenGL.
There is a free (quasi-legal) copy of an old version located online. I'd recommend getting the newest version, 4, because it is updated for OpenGL 1.4.
I was about to post the same thing. How the hell can they have an article about the damn technique and not even include the friggin name?
You can use POSIX via Windows Services for Unix.
So basically they can track whatever pages you go to.
I have a 14 dbi parabolic antenna on my wireless device and I still pick up a ton of signals from other APs besides the one I'm aimed at.
The directional antenna definately helps, but it won't solve all the problems.
I live right next to a university and I can see at least 15 different access points on any given day from my wireless link. I use it for internet access to the university and I can definatly tell when my neighbors are using their own LAN cause it causes a lot of packet drop outs. Not to mention about half of those APs have "linksys" as their SSID with no WEP enabled.
It gets better during the summer when a lot of the students around me leave and shut off their APs.
Yep, if it was good enough for Yuri Gagarin, it should be good enough for the X-Prize.
I agree. Love the updates each week. I'm thinking about getting one of the T-shirts too, they're pretty cool.
I've been following Armadillo about every week on their news page for the past year. I like their dedication and method of building a ship.
They have however spent a lot of time dealing with engine issues. They've already had to go from a 90% peroxide monopropellent design to a 50% peroxide/methanol mixed-monoprop because FNC (one of the few companies that make 90% peroxide) wasn't willing to sell it to them. They've spent a lot more time dealing with designing the engines than they anticipated. Just goes to show, rocket engine design is not simple!
Other issues include how to get the thing back on the ground safely. They initally planned to use a big ass parachute to land it, but they found out that this really restricts them in terms of getting a launch license. Because there is a possiblity for such huge range drift with the parachute design (thus endangering public safety since it can land in a huge footprint) that they've now had to think about doing a powered landing using the engines. This of course, leaves much less room for error on landing. An alternative would be to have the pilot bail out and parachute down while the ship lands by itself, but again this adds complexity.
Although I'd love to see them win, the fact is, Rutan is way ahead of them in terms of testing and having a working prototype ship. Basically SS1 is the favorite by quite a bit as of now.