I think that I'd want the lan party to come to the Big Box.
(Cold cathodes?! HAH!)
I mean a Big Box vacuum tube computer could be a great educational tool! all the parts are human servicable size and it brings Das Blinken Lights back to the world of computing.
Run the cooling system and computer off diesel generators which are also emp proof and be the envy of your neighbours.
Also, I don't think ANYBODY has implemented an Ethernet card in valves before.
Cmon! You could even prevent people frying themselves by posting "You must have somebody with EE degree majoring in high voltage on your team before attempting these plans" in big friendly letters all over the plans.
an AC wrote In terms of military spending the US is so far ahead of anybody else. China is second and the US spends 12 times as much as China does. The US spends more than the next 13 biggest militaries in the world put together (that's more than China, Russia, the UK, France, Israel, North Korea and a whole load of others combined).
Yeah, it spins my head out that there's an organisation on the planet that spends 30 million dollars every single day.
On the other hand, fighting china is insane not because you couldn't win militarily, but because the economic fallout would destroy the world. Look at all the things made in china. China is the world's manufacturing plant. Most of our factories have been knocked down to make way for housing developments and malls. With that kind of market, not even SARS could check the growth of Chinese manufacturing.
Of course these folks believe that we could live without them, but I think that in a war you'd have to worry about the fact that the chinese manufacturing base is strong and healthy, while the western manufacturing base is in decline.
Tubes? If you can come up with the plans and parts list for a tube based computer and then post it as "build your own EMP proof computer!" You'd go into the hall of fame for sure! heck, I'm tempted to ask slashdot right now (I'll probably be rejected but you might have a shot.)
Actually, what would happen if somebody finds a mineral on mars that say can remember shapes, learn behaviours, and be formed into terrible weapons?
Yes it would increase funding, but ultimately all competition is about power. And some believe that power shared is power lost.
Heck the ability to land a person gently on another planet means that you are already a longtime member of the club that can launch spy-eyes into space and land bombs quite hard into major cities.
I say, tone down the rampant nationalism first and then when we discover a super-resource like bio-metal we can use it to make spaceships and not starfighters.
Either that or we'd better discover a peaceful planet to invade fast, so that we'd stop fighting amongst ourselves.
Beagle-2 has Rover-A up against the pit! Beagle-2 is charging!!!!
Oh that's got to hurt! Rover-A is ducking out of the way and giving Beagle-2 a quick whack with the rock abraision tool!
The cocky brit recovers but the solar panel is cracked. Yes that's right folks, the beagle-2 solar panel is definitely cracked, and has lost some of its power generating capabilities.
But wait! what's that under the ground??? the mole probe from beagle-2 is ripping up Rover-A's aluminium rocker bogie wheels!
Oh the humanity! they're joined together! they're rolling into the pit!
In the original space program when cost was no object, the idea was that you launched unmanned missions to see what there was to see and then send humans only when there was glory and really difficult science to do.
Maybe we should just scale up the programme - we're back in the unmanned phase and are going to send out swarms of probes until we find something to investigate that the probes CANNOT examine properley (ie we find life, or a big oil deposit, or a ruined city) and then and only then send people.
Hey, maybe if we sent enough small light probes we could have a scenario like the one in this online comic - everybody controls a probe of their very own as if it's a webcam with 20 min lag.
Ok, how about the gun doesn't make the foam cold enough. If you redo the experiment with brittle frozen foam, it shatters and the Ke goes into propelling the bits off at angles rather than being transferred into moving the tile.
Or how about the foam has internal gas in its pores and it hits the wing in near vacuume and bursts like a baloon, once again losing most of its mass to pieces that go off at an angle before the energy is transferred to the wing.
We end up chasing the foam manufacturer when we should be looking for a stronger, more damage tolorant leading edge surface.
Why are all the reports I've read on this been so vague about the experimental setup? they all say "foam shot at wing section... did we mention the wing section was made from fiberglass?"
From how far away was it shot? How cold was the wing section? What was the ambient air pressure?
In Joe Haldeman's forever war the soldiers are told that their suits are powered by a fist sized lump of plutonium. This is fine. It's small, relatively light and will keep running longer than they will live.
One soldier is killed, and their Squad leader radios the news up to the command ship. Command ship radios back to leave the body and proceed as planned. When they get about 30 miles from the body, a sudden shock startles them and they turn around to see a mushroom shaped puff of smoke beginning its ascent to the sky.
So I guess by that logic the way to beat terrorism is to send a couple of ordinary looking people who happen to be able to kill/sneak their way to the head of the terrorist network and perform an arrest.
Collosal underreaction.
Really, really difficult to do. Unless those agents are god or cyborgs or something.
Nah, if your whiz bang super coms are broken you just do the "lost patrol drill," just as you would normally with a broken radio. You'll get picked up, issued new equipment and sent back in.
Cool. Internet via Fed Ex. Sure beats downloading the daily snapshot over dialup.
In the news iD sofware fails to release doom3 playable demo before today's internetsnapshot goes gold. Stocks plummet and flaming monkeys burst from slashdotters butts at the news.
finding-the-silver-lining-in-numerous-black-clouds
on
Copyright Defeats?
·
· Score: 1, Troll
We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we know that it was they that scorched the sky. At the time we were dependent on companies playing nice with copyright and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an IP source as abundant as freeware, shareware, the public domain, GPL, and expiring copyrights and patents. Throughout human history, we have been dependent on goodwill to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. A PC's harddrive attached to the internet consumes more electricity than a 120-volt battery and serves more than 25,000 Kazaa files per day. Combined with a form of CD burner, we have found all the free content and software the world could ever need. There are fields, endless fields, where PC are no longer being used to word process company reports. They trade files. For the longest time I wouldn't believe it, and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watch them rip the contents of CDs so they could be turned into MP3s for portable players. And standing there, facing the pure horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is the Matrix? Pirated. The Matrix is a computer generated dream which has probably been videotaped through the analogue hole so many times that 9 out of 10 people watching it will be seeing the backs of heads moving along the bottom edge of the screen, and the words "Distributor Sample Only! Not For Public Exhibition!" scrolling across the top.
Some games just move your eyeball down an imaginary line running out of the end of your gun. gives the impression of zoom because the center of the turning circle is still your body. All distance calculations are handled normally for your camera eye position.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, you pose an interesting question - How would a modern probe made from advanced materials fare?
We've got a little time to finance the construction of one before venus comes back into a good position for launch.
and then sell them as nostalgia jewelry.
Just so long as you didn't buy them for $2k in this century, you should be fine.
___________________________________
The Spiders are coming
Read all about it here
___________________________________
The spiders are coming
I think that I'd want the lan party to come to the Big Box.
(Cold cathodes?! HAH!)
I mean a Big Box vacuum tube computer could be a great educational tool! all the parts are human servicable size and it brings Das Blinken Lights back to the world of computing.
And there's also the danger-cool factor that if the Cooling System Fails There's 60 seconds before self destruct.
Run the cooling system and computer off diesel generators which are also emp proof and be the envy of your neighbours.
Also, I don't think ANYBODY has implemented an Ethernet card in valves before.
Cmon! You could even prevent people frying themselves by posting "You must have somebody with EE degree majoring in high voltage on your team before attempting these plans" in big friendly letters all over the plans.
It'll be fun.
an AC wrote In terms of military spending the US is so far ahead of anybody else. China is second and the US spends 12 times as much as China does. The US spends more than the next 13 biggest militaries in the world put together (that's more than China, Russia, the UK, France, Israel, North Korea and a whole load of others combined).
Yeah, it spins my head out that there's an organisation on the planet that spends 30 million dollars every single day.
On the other hand, fighting china is insane not because you couldn't win militarily, but because the economic fallout would destroy the world. Look at all the things made in china. China is the world's manufacturing plant. Most of our factories have been knocked down to make way for housing developments and malls. With that kind of market, not even SARS could check the growth of Chinese manufacturing.
Of course these folks believe that we could live without them, but I think that in a war you'd have to worry about the fact that the chinese manufacturing base is strong and healthy, while the western manufacturing base is in decline.
I think you're thinking of China...
but as for strongest military, that would be USA by a nose.
Pity we don't have The Spiders yet.
Tubes? If you can come up with the plans and parts list for a tube based computer and then post it as "build your own EMP proof computer!" You'd go into the hall of fame for sure!
heck, I'm tempted to ask slashdot right now (I'll probably be rejected but you might have a shot.)
...Goodnight!
"Mom! this stereograph doesn't work! there's a rock in the middle that doesn't pop up."
"Hmmm... Well junior, that's because in the second photo that rock has grown little legs and moved to over there... Hey!"
Actually, what would happen if somebody finds a mineral on mars that say can remember shapes, learn behaviours, and be formed into terrible weapons?
Yes it would increase funding, but ultimately all competition is about power. And some believe that power shared is power lost.
Heck the ability to land a person gently on another planet means that you are already a longtime member of the club that can launch spy-eyes into space and land bombs quite hard into major cities.
I say, tone down the rampant nationalism first and then when we discover a super-resource like bio-metal we can use it to make spaceships and not starfighters.
Either that or we'd better discover a peaceful planet to invade fast, so that we'd stop fighting amongst ourselves.
Especially since the Rovers A and B will be bringing foam.
See the bit about hubcaps.
ROBOT WARS!
Beagle-2 has Rover-A up against the pit! Beagle-2 is charging!!!!
Oh that's got to hurt! Rover-A is ducking out of the way and giving Beagle-2 a quick whack with the rock abraision tool!
The cocky brit recovers but the solar panel is cracked. Yes that's right folks, the beagle-2 solar panel is definitely cracked, and has lost some of its power generating capabilities.
But wait! what's that under the ground??? the mole probe from beagle-2 is ripping up Rover-A's aluminium rocker bogie wheels!
Oh the humanity! they're joined together! they're rolling into the pit!
Where's the ref bots???
In the original space program when cost was no object, the idea was that you launched unmanned missions to see what there was to see and then send humans only when there was glory and really difficult science to do.
Maybe we should just scale up the programme - we're back in the unmanned phase and are going to send out swarms of probes until we find something to investigate that the probes CANNOT examine properley (ie we find life, or a big oil deposit, or a ruined city) and then and only then send people.
Hey, maybe if we sent enough small light probes we could have a scenario like the one in this online comic - everybody controls a probe of their very own as if it's a webcam with 20 min lag.
Ok, how about the gun doesn't make the foam cold enough. If you redo the experiment with brittle frozen foam, it shatters and the Ke goes into propelling the bits off at angles rather than being transferred into moving the tile.
Or how about the foam has internal gas in its pores and it hits the wing in near vacuume and bursts like a baloon, once again losing most of its mass to pieces that go off at an angle before the energy is transferred to the wing.
We end up chasing the foam manufacturer when we should be looking for a stronger, more damage tolorant leading edge surface.
Why send troops into battle to play networked pong when you can send the spiders.
The thing I love most about this online comic is how the USA's halucinogen bearing bomber is called "the easter bunny."
Can you imagine looking into the operators console of one of those bullets to see it refresh with a picture of your own butt! yeowch!
Why are all the reports I've read on this been so vague about the experimental setup? they all say "foam shot at wing section... did we mention the wing section was made from fiberglass?"
From how far away was it shot? How cold was the wing section? What was the ambient air pressure?
What was the foam shot out of??!?
In Joe Haldeman's forever war the soldiers are told that their suits are powered by a fist sized lump of plutonium. This is fine. It's small, relatively light and will keep running longer than they will live.
One soldier is killed, and their Squad leader radios the news up to the command ship. Command ship radios back to leave the body and proceed as planned. When they get about 30 miles from the body, a sudden shock startles them and they turn around to see a mushroom shaped puff of smoke beginning its ascent to the sky.
So I guess by that logic the way to beat terrorism is to send a couple of ordinary looking people who happen to be able to kill/sneak their way to the head of the terrorist network and perform an arrest.
Collosal underreaction.
Really, really difficult to do. Unless those agents are god or cyborgs or something.
(metal tentacles wrap around armour...)
Help me!
Help me!
(plasma cutter thingy opens up hatch)
Oh my god somebody help me!
Arrgh! No!
Aieeeeeeeeeeeee!
Nah, if your whiz bang super coms are broken you just do the "lost patrol drill," just as you would normally with a broken radio. You'll get picked up, issued new equipment and sent back in.
Resistance is Futile.
Cool. Internet via Fed Ex. Sure beats downloading the daily snapshot over dialup.
In the news
iD sofware fails to release doom3 playable demo before today's internetsnapshot goes gold. Stocks plummet and flaming monkeys burst from slashdotters butts at the news.
We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we know that it was they that scorched the sky. At the time we were dependent on companies playing nice with copyright and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an IP source as abundant as freeware, shareware, the public domain, GPL, and expiring copyrights and patents. Throughout human history, we have been dependent on goodwill to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony. A PC's harddrive attached to the internet consumes more electricity than a 120-volt battery and serves more than 25,000 Kazaa files per day. Combined with a form of CD burner, we have found all the free content and software the world could ever need. There are fields, endless fields, where PC are no longer being used to word process company reports. They trade files. For the longest time I wouldn't believe it, and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watch them rip the contents of CDs so they could be turned into MP3s for portable players. And standing there, facing the pure horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is the Matrix? Pirated. The Matrix is a computer generated dream which has probably been videotaped through the analogue hole so many times that 9 out of 10 people watching it will be seeing the backs of heads moving along the bottom edge of the screen, and the words "Distributor Sample Only! Not For Public Exhibition!" scrolling across the top.
OPERATION DARK STORM IS GO!
The Spiders
Highly recommended. Innovative take on the changing face of war.
Some games just move your eyeball down an imaginary line running out of the end of your gun. gives the impression of zoom because the center of the turning circle is still your body. All distance calculations are handled normally for your camera eye position.