And I used to worked with one. I actually said out loud, once, "If you want to know what he looks like, open World Book Encyclopedia to "Neanderthal," and there's his picture!
...decocainized coca leaf extracts. (The favor of the coca leaf with the cocaine removed).... Stephan Co, in New Jersey... have an exclusive contract with Coca-Cola to provide the extract...
Hmmm... after they ship the extract off to Coke, what do they do with all that cocaine they extracted? Makes you wonder...
Are we talking about tracking items with RFID tags, and are talking about being able to track them once they've left the store?
Unless you have a scanner in your home and connect it to their network, I don't see why it would.
The year is 2015. Every citizen carries a Personal Identification Document with an RFID embedded. Every streetcorner in every city has an RFID reader. So does every airport and every highway.
Big Brother can find out where Citizen X is/was by searching the Citizen Locator database.
Now all we need is someone to figure out how many kilowatt-hours of electricity it took, and how many tons of carbon dioxide that generated, and how much that warmed up the Earth's atmosphere...
Why don't we all just switch to USB tokens for authentication?... It amazes me that more people don't use these things.
For that matter, why don't we have an open-source implementation of USB tokens? USB drives are cheap, and with free OS software, it would spread like wildfire.
Science Fiction Fan? Site Field Force? Small Formation Flyer? Space Frontier Foundation? Sundance Film Festival? Symptom Fault Fix? Systematic Feed Forward? --www.acronymfinder.com/
Senior Friend Finder? Structured Fax Format? Skate For Fun? Send From File? Scene File Format? --www.stands4.com
Hmmmm... turns out, there actually is data on animals (intentionally) and humans (accidentally) exposed to a vacuum.
You'd lose consciousness after about ten seconds
Your blood would NOT boil.
Your body would swell up to about twice its normal volume, but this could be constrained by an elastic body suit.
You'd want to open your mouth: If you tried to hold your breath, your lungs would balloon up and rupture.
Then there's the interesting case of a balloon ascent to 20 mi (32 km, near vacuum) in which the pilot lost pressurization only in his right glove. His hand swelled and became stiff and painful, but three hours after landing, his hand was back to normal, with no ill effects.
Yes! Better traffic lights is exactly what we need.
Traffic lights are everywhere, but most of them use old-fashioned timer cycles, which make you stop for a red light even if there are no cars to use the green.
And develop cheap, reliable solid-state intelligent traffic-light controllers, so every village and county can afford to upgrade to smarter traffic lights.
Power to the motorist! Rise above stupid traffic lights and take back the streets!
The question can be formulated this way: If an asteroid came whizzing close by, what is the probability it would hit the moon?
Well, the earth's diameter is four times the moon's, so the area it presents is sixteen times the moon's. Therefore the probability of hitting the earth is sixteen times that of hitting the moon, and we really should be at least 16 times as worried about earth impacts as moon impacts.
Further, the orbit of the moon is 60 times the size of the earth, so the area it presents is 3600 times the area the earth presents. If an asteroid comes whizzing through, inside the moon's orbit (an unlikely event in itself), its probability of missing is 3600 times it hitting the earth or the moon.
Back in the olden days, say pre-1960, if you wanted to keep something very cold you used a Dewar flask (pronounced DOO-er), which operated on the principle of "one layer of very good insulation." Namely, a vacuum. No gas to carry the heat away, so good insulation.
Then along came NASA and the space program, which needed to build insulation into the space capsules and the astronauts's space suits to protect them from the extreme cold of space. (Of course, here the insulation is to keep the cold *out* of the container, but the principle is the same.)
They decided putting astronauts into Dewar flasks just wouldn't work. 8^)
A different type of insulation was needed, and they came up with the idea of "lots of layers of pretty-good insulation". It worked surprisingly well, has been widely used ever since, and is the type of insulation mentioned in the article: alternate layers of aluminized mylar and fiberglass, enough of them (70 in this case) that the liquid hydrogen stays cold because very little heat is leaking in.
it goes to show, its not how big it is...its how well you use it!
... and how much it cost to build, and how fancy the instrumentation is, and what kind of software analyzes the data, basically how big your research grant is...
it goes to show, its not how big it is...its how well you use it!
... and how much it cost to build, and how fancy the instrumentation is, and what kind of computers and software analyzing the data...
size != complexity
Oh, and about that shuttle fuel thing -- that first 20% isn't just to lift the rest of it to 500 feet, it's also to accelerate it to whatever speed it's going at that point (100 mph or so upwards). Otherwise they could just build a 500 foot hill (biggest in Florida;-) to put the pad on and save all that fuel...
So, on top of the 500 foot hill you mount a really big spring that will accelerate the rocket to 100 mph. Done!
Slashdot Mirror
And I used to worked with one. I actually said out loud, once, "If you want to know what he looks like, open World Book Encyclopedia to "Neanderthal," and there's his picture!
"I am a pilot who flies my own small plane and prefer to simply keep my airspeed up to avoid stalling the wings, and keep the music in my headsets."
You're the kind of pilot I want in the cockpit when I'm travelling.
Not the kind of pilot who would say, "Um, dude, I think we might be stalling. Which music you wanna play in the wings?"
Today dns resolves, ping is answered, traceroute works, and their web page opens on my browser.
Applause to extel for hooking back up to the internet! (Or... maybe something else mysteriously happened?)
pbjones wrote: www.extel.com.au
dns www.extel.com.au
Host doesn't exist
Trace www.extel.com.au
failed, no such host
ping www.extel.com.au
Ping failed, no such host
Yeah, I can see why they're putting out press releases about their DSL services... their internet connectivity is pretty impressive.... NOT!
Hmmm... after they ship the extract off to Coke, what do they do with all that cocaine they extracted? Makes you wonder...
Your scheme will not be active until 2018.
:P
I was talking about 2015.
I'll have to ask my periodontist about that. He also juggles snakes... [ducks]
Unless you have a scanner in your home and connect it to their network, I don't see why it would.
The year is 2015. Every citizen carries a Personal Identification Document with an RFID embedded. Every streetcorner in every city has an RFID reader. So does every airport and every highway.
Big Brother can find out where Citizen X is/was by searching the Citizen Locator database.
Now all we need is someone to figure out how many kilowatt-hours of electricity it took, and how many tons of carbon dioxide that generated, and how much that warmed up the Earth's atmosphere...
they're not confident they will find gas stations
:p
make that GRASS stations...
Just after the explosion:
D'oh!
Why don't we all just switch to USB tokens for authentication? ... It amazes me that more people don't use these things.
For that matter, why don't we have an open-source implementation of USB tokens? USB drives are cheap, and with free OS software, it would spread like wildfire.
[Insert obligatory Beowolf joke here]
Science Fiction Fan?
Site Field Force?
Small Formation Flyer?
Space Frontier Foundation?
Sundance Film Festival?
Symptom Fault Fix?
Systematic Feed Forward?
--www.acronymfinder.com/
Senior Friend Finder?
Structured Fax Format?
Skate For Fun?
Send From File?
Scene File Format?
--www.stands4.com
Hmmmm... turns out, there actually is data on animals (intentionally) and humans (accidentally) exposed to a vacuum.
- You'd lose consciousness after about ten seconds
- Your blood would NOT boil.
- Your body would swell up to about twice its normal volume, but this could be constrained by an elastic body suit.
- You'd want to open your mouth: If you tried to hold your breath, your lungs would balloon up and rupture.
Then there's the interesting case of a balloon ascent to 20 mi (32 km, near vacuum) in which the pilot lost pressurization only in his right glove. His hand swelled and became stiff and painful, but three hours after landing, his hand was back to normal, with no ill effects.Details of all this here
(and huge copper hooks to remove people stuck)
Huh?
WTF?
If I vote a straight Democratic ticket in step 1, why isn't Kerry already SELECTED in step 2?
This is user-interface design at its worst.
Yes! Better traffic lights is exactly what we need.
Traffic lights are everywhere, but most of them use old-fashioned timer cycles, which make you stop for a red light even if there are no cars to use the green.
Sensors! Install sensors everywhere! Cheap, reliable solid-state sensors.
And develop cheap, reliable solid-state intelligent traffic-light controllers, so every village and county can afford to upgrade to smarter traffic lights.
Power to the motorist! Rise above stupid traffic lights and take back the streets!
The question can be formulated this way: If an asteroid came whizzing close by, what is the probability it would hit the moon?
Well, the earth's diameter is four times the moon's, so the area it presents is sixteen times the moon's. Therefore the probability of hitting the earth is sixteen times that of hitting the moon, and we really should be at least 16 times as worried about earth impacts as moon impacts.
Further, the orbit of the moon is 60 times the size of the earth, so the area it presents is 3600 times the area the earth presents. If an asteroid comes whizzing through, inside the moon's orbit (an unlikely event in itself), its probability of missing is 3600 times it hitting the earth or the moon.
Back in the olden days, say pre-1960, if you wanted to keep something very cold you used a Dewar flask (pronounced DOO-er), which operated on the principle of "one layer of very good insulation." Namely, a vacuum. No gas to carry the heat away, so good insulation.
Then along came NASA and the space program, which needed to build insulation into the space capsules and the astronauts's space suits to protect them from the extreme cold of space. (Of course, here the insulation is to keep the cold *out* of the container, but the principle is the same.)
They decided putting astronauts into Dewar flasks just wouldn't work. 8^)
A different type of insulation was needed, and they came up with the idea of "lots of layers of pretty-good insulation". It worked surprisingly well, has been widely used ever since, and is the type of insulation mentioned in the article: alternate layers of aluminized mylar and fiberglass, enough of them (70 in this case) that the liquid hydrogen stays cold because very little heat is leaking in.
Fifteen BILLION? No way. More like $82 MILLION. A lot of money, but let's keep our decimal point in the right place.
Free cost-of-living calculator here [American Institute for Economic Research]
I used to trust tape backups. I felt all warm and cozy knowing that my sysop was making daily, weekly, and monthly tape backups.
Then came a time to restore an old project from a backup tape.
Funny, the tape drive couldn't read the tape. And this was the same drive that wrote it! A large, expensive (several $k), high-grade tape drive.
OK, must be the tape. We'll get the other tape from off-site storage. (Time goes by and the tape is fetched.) Funny, this tape can't be read either.
Sysop: I don't know what's happening. I tried to read both tapes several times, and they just can't be read!
Me: Well, didn't you try reading the tapes after you wrote them?
Sysop: Nooo...
Me: Don't you restore from backup tapes just to test them?
Sysop: Gee, no, we never tried that.
Me (pulling hair): Then how are you going to restore this old project I have to work on?
Sysop: I can't.
So, on top of the 500 foot hill you mount a really big spring that will accelerate the rocket to 100 mph. Done!
Los Angeles ... trains...don't ... connect to the airport ....
They do too! Take a free (as in beer) shuttle to the Green Line, transfer to anywhere in the subway system.