"On impact, each shell will shatter, and its grapefruit-sized probe will punch through the soil and separate into two parts. The lower part, called the forebody, will penetrate as far as 0.6 meters (about 2 feet) into the soil; the upper part of the probe, or the aftbody, will stay on the surface to radio data to the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, currently in orbit around Mars, which will then send the data to Earth."
If its good beer anywhere in the world what you're looking for, take a look at http://www.beerhunter.com/. Lots of reviews of beers and places to drink.
Re:"Ad campaign for a Brazilian internet company"?
on
Quickie Fu
·
· Score: 1
Well, you know us Brazilians only have one thing in mind........ Electrical cords!;)
You'd be surprised to learn how many nerds take up martial arts. Most of the more serious martial artists I've met over the years are also nerds, and I'm sure quite a number of them are reading this right now. Come to think of it, it was a fellow martial artist who first introduced me to Slashdot (hi Matthew!;)
I'm not so sure about this. Sure I would love to be able to play like Hendrix, but his style would be very awkward to follow, since good part of it relied on improvisation. I would prefer to have a system that continuously monitored and recognized my own talents, and worked to further improve on those.
Another great quote I forgot to mention is from the movie "The Exorcist III" (A surprisingly great horror flick, specially considering how bad "The Exorcist II" was). George C. Scott plays the detective going after a serial killer.
In one scene, he is meeting his childhood friend (now a priest) for a movie, and while in the lobby, the priest asks the detective why he just doesn't go home, and the detective says in typical George C. Scott quiet yet authoritively(sp?) angry fashion:
"My wife's mother is visiting, Father, and Tuesday she's cooking us a carp. It's a tasty fish, I'm not against it. But because it's supposedly filled with impurities, Mary's mother buys it alive, and for three days now it's been swimming in my bathtub. Up and down. Cleaning out the impurities. And I hate it. I can't stand the sight of it moving it's gills. Now, you're standing very close to me, Father. Have you noticed? Yes. I haven't had a bath in days. So I never go home until the carp is asleep. I'm afraid that if I see it while it's swimming, I'll kill it."
You're thinking of the wrong character. That was Sterling Hayden (General Jack D. Ripper), not George C. Scott (General "Buck" Turgidson). Scott was the general who is sleeping with his secretary at the begining of the movie.
General "Buck" Turgidson (Scott): Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless *distinguishable*, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.
President Merkin Muffley (Sellers): You're talking about mass murder, General, not war!
General "Buck" Turgidson (Scott): Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.
Yes you're right, I didn't read the whole article before (don't need to go into the name calling by the way). I was relying on what I saw on National Geographic (Or was it the Discovery Channel?). I clearly remember him mentioning going into the den, and I remember him mentioning that he didn't want to use any tranquilizer in order not to contaminate the samples.
But even in this case. So far, from all the high-impact tests that I've seen, I haven't seen a single test against high torque joint manipulation on the suit. Yes, the suit may be restricted to the natural range of motion, but how strong are these range limiters? Can they support the full power and weight of a charging grizzly on a lever as long as a leg? And what about torsional forces, such as taking a leg that is bent 90 degrees at the knee, then spinning it outwards? That is still within the "natural range of motion".
Yes, they do grab. It's not a full-fisted grab, but it is enough to pull harder than one can possibly imagined. I've seen bears pull branches off trees, and that was a much smaller black bear. Remember that the den is a VERY confined space. If the bear starts an attack in there, the guy's limbs will be pushed and pulled in all different directions.
I've seen this guys experiments. As impressive as they are, I am not convinced. If the guy was willing to attach himself to an inanimate object, then attach his arm to a truck, and had the truck pull the arm into some unnatural position without breaking it, then he might begin to convince me.
Imagine this situation. The guy is laying on his chest, with his arm on at about a 90 degree angle with the hand pointing towards his feet and the palms pointing upwards (a very natural position for someone laying on their chest). Then the bear puts its weight over the guy's shoulder or anywhere near the upper arm, grabs the hand, then pulls it upwards. Can you imagine the amount of torque that would place on the elbow and shoulder?
This whole bear suit deal reminds me of an experiment that was done with white sharks some years back. They were trying to develop this "shark proof" suit made from a very tuff metal mesh. They had successfully tested against smaller sharks, and had tested in the lab against penetration by a sharp blade driven at a force equivalent to a great white's jaws. So they put it on a test dummy, put some pieces of very bloody meat in there for bait, then threw it near a great white. The suit remained intact, yet the dummy was torn to bits by the ferocity of the attack.
I saw this one on National Geographic. The guy basically wants to go into a grizzly den, and take some blood samples while the bear is hibernating.
The two main problems I see with this are.
1 - He has no mobility whatsoever in that suit. He can hardly walk, and forget about standing up after falling down. If the bear moves while he is in there, he will be trapped. Even if the bear doesn't move, there is a very good chance that he will be trapped.
2 - The suit may resist a bear's punch and claws, but the guy is still vunerable at the joints. If the bear grabs his arm, and pulls it around his back or up and over his head, there is one broken arm right there. Same thing can happen to his legs. I wouldn't want a grizzly playing lever with my leg, or putting its whole weight over my bent arm, no matter what I'm wearing or how invincible I feel.
Yet I wouldn't mind one of those the next time I go skiing. Tree? What tree?:)
You are talking about a basic autonomous robot that can move around by itself. I'm talking about something that can find the enemy robot among all the other moving objects in the arena, can defend itself against the enemy's weapon, even though it doesn't know what that weapon will be until just before the match, can deploy its own weapon at the proper timing and at the correct range, and can avoid all of the arena's traps and hazards. See the difference?
The problem with having it as an autonomous competition would be the cost. Having autonomous robots compete in soccer, table tennis, and so on is okay, since all the robots survive at the end. But in an event such as BattleBots, the objective is to destroy the opponent.
If they were to make it autonomous, most of the competitors could not afford to build them, and those few who could both afford and design such machines, would not be willing to send it to the arena to be torn to pieces by some other robot (or arena hazard).
By keeping it relatively cheap to compete, you encourage people of all backgrounds and ages to enter. The teams are as varied as they come. There are teams of folks who produce industrial robots for a living; teams who produce Hollywood animatronics for movies such as Men In Black, Mighty Joe Young, Gremlins II; mom-and-pop teams; and even one robot built by an early-teenage girl.
I would prefer if they kept the format of the competition as it is, and simply added an autonomous class for those few who could afford it.
Well. At 64kbps, you get about 2 minutes of MP3 per megabyte. So the "disks" can take between 1Y:218D:8H:00M:00S and 41Y:312D:18H:40M:00S worth of music, not including leap years.
:)
-- Joao "a cup of espresso, a free few minutes, a spreadsheet, and a visit to slashdot is what mornings are all about" de Souza
> Boston is climbing that ladder too. Right now, > the average price per square foot of office > space in Boston is higher than Manhattan's. > That's saying something. The average 1 bedroom > rental is around $800/mo.
Actually, Manhattan is still way higher than that, I'm afraid. I'm being forced to move, and have been looking for a new apartment for the past couple of weeks. Any 500 square foot studio in any halfway decent neighborhood costs about $1000/mo. One bedrooms start at around $1500. Yes, there are a few one-bedrooms cheaper than that, but in most of those the bedroom is actually smaller than my queen-sized bed (I actually measured it), or in really bad areas to live in. If you want an apartment with some basic luxuries, such as elevator access, or air conditioning, or dishwasher, or laundry room in the same building, then we're talking over $2000/mo very easily. And that is nowhere near the prices if you want to be in one of the better neighborhoods.
This is why there is a great exodus of young professionals moving to Brooklyn, and commuting to Manhattan. Larger apartments, quieter, really good food, and much cheaper.
I have a 4-letter name as well, which is a very common name in any Portuguese speaking country. Needless to say, the.com.net.org versions of the domain were taken by the time I thought about registering it. Since the names were registered, but not being used, I decided to ask if the owners wouldn't mind selling it. The prices they were asking were more than my computer plus my car combined! Geez.
Through my search for a good domain name, just about 2/3rds of the good names I tried were being held by cybersquatters.
Eventually, I registered some silly name, and like you was immediately contacted by people offering to develop my site, including the site's name on their message. So yes, they do have some way to trace any new registrations coming in.
Yeah. I'm Brazilian as well, and we have several different brands of Guarana soft drink. The stuff tastes like water with a LOT of sugar added. Yet it doesn't have nearly as much caffeine as a good'ole cup of Brazilian coffee!:)
On the other hand, guarana root, available as a bitter powder, has enough caffeine to make cocaine feel like kids' candy.
Later, -- Joao (That's Portuguese for "he who never sleeps")
I understand their need to make a living. Yet, they don't mention anything about it being for statistical purposes. Also, anytime I see the "annual income" box in a web form, it is an optional field, but theirs is required.
I tried to set-up an account just to see what they're all about. For a company that is so interested in the users' privicy, they sure ask you a lot of personal questions. For example, why would they need to know people's income?
BTW, what are the chances of/. running a email redirecting service? I wouldn't mind paying 50 bucks or so to support/. while getting an "@slashdot.org" address.:)
Slashdot Mirror
From their mission page - http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds2/missio n/mission.html
"On impact, each shell will shatter, and its grapefruit-sized probe will punch through the soil and separate into two parts. The lower part, called the forebody, will penetrate as far as 0.6 meters (about 2 feet) into the soil; the upper part of the probe, or the aftbody, will stay on the surface to radio data to the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, currently in orbit around Mars, which will then send the data to Earth."
If its good beer anywhere in the world what you're looking for, take a look at http://www.beerhunter.com/. Lots of reviews of beers and places to drink.
Well, you know us Brazilians only have one thing in mind........ Electrical cords! ;)
You'd be surprised to learn how many nerds take up martial arts. Most of the more serious martial artists I've met over the years are also nerds, and I'm sure quite a number of them are reading this right now. Come to think of it, it was a fellow martial artist who first introduced me to Slashdot (hi Matthew! ;)
Later,
--
Joao de Souza - co-moderator - rec.martial-arts.moderated
I'm not so sure about this. Sure I would love to be able to play like Hendrix, but his style would be very awkward to follow, since good part of it relied on improvisation. I would prefer to have a system that continuously monitored and recognized my own talents, and worked to further improve on those.
[Python character="Gumby"]
Doctor! Doctor!!! My brane hurts!
[/Python]
--
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." - Douglas Adams (as Ford Perfect)
The Y files! ;)
"So Bob, how many centimeters are there in an inch anyway?"
"Geez, I don't know. 'round 3, I guess."
"Okay then. 3 it is."
:)
Another great quote I forgot to mention is from the movie "The Exorcist III" (A surprisingly great horror flick, specially considering how bad "The Exorcist II" was). George C. Scott plays the detective going after a serial killer.
In one scene, he is meeting his childhood friend (now a priest) for a movie, and while in the lobby, the priest asks the detective why he just doesn't go home, and the detective says in typical George C. Scott quiet yet authoritively(sp?) angry fashion:
"My wife's mother is visiting, Father, and Tuesday she's cooking us a carp. It's a tasty fish, I'm not against it. But because it's supposedly filled with impurities, Mary's mother buys it alive, and for three days now it's been swimming in my bathtub. Up and down. Cleaning out the impurities. And I hate it. I can't stand the sight of it moving it's gills. Now, you're standing very close to me, Father. Have you noticed? Yes. I haven't had a bath in days. So I never go home until the carp is asleep. I'm afraid that if I see it while it's swimming, I'll kill it."
You're thinking of the wrong character. That was Sterling Hayden (General Jack D. Ripper), not George C. Scott (General "Buck" Turgidson). Scott was the general who is sleeping with his secretary at the begining of the movie.
General "Buck" Turgidson (Scott): Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless *distinguishable*, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.
President Merkin Muffley (Sellers): You're talking about mass murder, General, not war!
General "Buck" Turgidson (Scott): Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.
Gino wrote:
;)
>
> here is a link to the real time telemetry
> of the orbiter.
Oh great. Now we're about to slashdot the orbiter!
Yes you're right, I didn't read the whole article before (don't need to go into the name calling by the way). I was relying on what I saw on National Geographic (Or was it the Discovery Channel?). I clearly remember him mentioning going into the den, and I remember him mentioning that he didn't want to use any tranquilizer in order not to contaminate the samples.
But even in this case. So far, from all the high-impact tests that I've seen, I haven't seen a single test against high torque joint manipulation on the suit. Yes, the suit may be restricted to the natural range of motion, but how strong are these range limiters? Can they support the full power and weight of a charging grizzly on a lever as long as a leg? And what about torsional forces, such as taking a leg that is bent 90 degrees at the knee, then spinning it outwards? That is still within the "natural range of motion".
Yes, they do grab. It's not a full-fisted grab, but it is enough to pull harder than one can possibly imagined. I've seen bears pull branches off trees, and that was a much smaller black bear. Remember that the den is a VERY confined space. If the bear starts an attack in there, the guy's limbs will be pushed and pulled in all different directions.
I've seen this guys experiments. As impressive as they are, I am not convinced. If the guy was willing to attach himself to an inanimate object, then attach his arm to a truck, and had the truck pull the arm into some unnatural position without breaking it, then he might begin to convince me.
Imagine this situation. The guy is laying on his chest, with his arm on at about a 90 degree angle with the hand pointing towards his feet and the palms pointing upwards (a very natural position for someone laying on their chest). Then the bear puts its weight over the guy's shoulder or anywhere near the upper arm, grabs the hand, then pulls it upwards. Can you imagine the amount of torque that would place on the elbow and shoulder?
This whole bear suit deal reminds me of an experiment that was done with white sharks some years back. They were trying to develop this "shark proof" suit made from a very tuff metal mesh. They had successfully tested against smaller sharks, and had tested in the lab against penetration by a sharp blade driven at a force equivalent to a great white's jaws. So they put it on a test dummy, put some pieces of very bloody meat in there for bait, then threw it near a great white. The suit remained intact, yet the dummy was torn to bits by the ferocity of the attack.
I saw this one on National Geographic. The guy basically wants to go into a grizzly den, and take some blood samples while the bear is hibernating.
:)
The two main problems I see with this are.
1 - He has no mobility whatsoever in that suit. He can hardly walk, and forget about standing up after falling down. If the bear moves while he is in there, he will be trapped. Even if the bear doesn't move, there is a very good chance that he will be trapped.
2 - The suit may resist a bear's punch and claws, but the guy is still vunerable at the joints. If the bear grabs his arm, and pulls it around his back or up and over his head, there is one broken arm right there. Same thing can happen to his legs. I wouldn't want a grizzly playing lever with my leg, or putting its whole weight over my bent arm, no matter what I'm wearing or how invincible I feel.
Yet I wouldn't mind one of those the next time I go skiing. Tree? What tree?
Move a sailboat over 400 miles, in heavy seas, in under 10 hours? Get the picture?
You are talking about a basic autonomous robot that can move around by itself. I'm talking about something that can find the enemy robot among all the other moving objects in the arena, can defend itself against the enemy's weapon, even though it doesn't know what that weapon will be until just before the match, can deploy its own weapon at the proper timing and at the correct range, and can avoid all of the arena's traps and hazards. See the difference?
The problem with having it as an autonomous competition would be the cost. Having autonomous robots compete in soccer, table tennis, and so on is okay, since all the robots survive at the end. But in an event such as BattleBots, the objective is to destroy the opponent.
If they were to make it autonomous, most of the competitors could not afford to build them, and those few who could both afford and design such machines, would not be willing to send it to the arena to be torn to pieces by some other robot (or arena hazard).
By keeping it relatively cheap to compete, you encourage people of all backgrounds and ages to enter. The teams are as varied as they come. There are teams of folks who produce industrial robots for a living; teams who produce Hollywood animatronics for movies such as Men In Black, Mighty Joe Young, Gremlins II; mom-and-pop teams; and even one robot built by an early-teenage girl.
I would prefer if they kept the format of the competition as it is, and simply added an autonomous class for those few who could afford it.
Later.
Well. At 64kbps, you get about 2 minutes of MP3 per megabyte. So the "disks" can take between 1Y:218D:8H:00M:00S and 41Y:312D:18H:40M:00S worth of music, not including leap years.
:)
--
Joao "a cup of espresso, a free few minutes, a spreadsheet, and a visit to slashdot is what mornings are all about" de Souza
Woodie (nevyn@nowhere.net) wrote:
> Boston is climbing that ladder too. Right now,
> the average price per square foot of office
> space in Boston is higher than Manhattan's.
> That's saying something. The average 1 bedroom
> rental is around $800/mo.
Actually, Manhattan is still way higher than that, I'm afraid. I'm being forced to move, and have been looking for a new apartment for the past couple of weeks. Any 500 square foot studio in any halfway decent neighborhood costs about $1000/mo. One bedrooms start at around $1500. Yes, there are a few one-bedrooms cheaper than that, but in most of those the bedroom is actually smaller than my queen-sized bed (I actually measured it), or in really bad areas to live in. If you want an apartment with some basic luxuries, such as elevator access, or air conditioning, or dishwasher, or laundry room in the same building, then we're talking over $2000/mo very easily. And that is nowhere near the prices if you want to be in one of the better neighborhoods.
This is why there is a great exodus of young professionals moving to Brooklyn, and commuting to Manhattan. Larger apartments, quieter, really good food, and much cheaper.
Later.
I have a 4-letter name as well, which is a very common name in any Portuguese speaking country. Needless to say, the .com.net.org versions of the domain were taken by the time I thought about registering it. Since the names were registered, but not being used, I decided to ask if the owners wouldn't mind selling it. The prices they were asking were more than my computer plus my car combined! Geez.
Through my search for a good domain name, just about 2/3rds of the good names I tried were being held by cybersquatters.
Eventually, I registered some silly name, and like you was immediately contacted by people offering to develop my site, including the site's name on their message. So yes, they do have some way to trace any new registrations coming in.
Later.
Yeah. I'm Brazilian as well, and we have several different brands of Guarana soft drink. The stuff tastes like water with a LOT of sugar added. Yet it doesn't have nearly as much caffeine as a good'ole cup of Brazilian coffee! :)
On the other hand, guarana root, available as a bitter powder, has enough caffeine to make cocaine feel like kids' candy.
Later,
--
Joao (That's Portuguese for "he who never sleeps")
I have seen those in several video equipment stores here in NYC, usually in the $500 to $600 range.
Here is one example.
Later.
I understand their need to make a living. Yet, they don't mention anything about it being for statistical purposes. Also, anytime I see the "annual income" box in a web form, it is an optional field, but theirs is required.
I tried to set-up an account just to see what they're all about. For a company that is so interested in the users' privicy, they sure ask you a lot of personal questions. For example, why would they need to know people's income?
/. running a email redirecting service? I wouldn't mind paying 50 bucks or so to support /. while getting an "@slashdot.org" address. :)
BTW, what are the chances of