Oops. Well, looks like Tux/Camel didn't fare so well after all.
There were a total of four products with "XP" in the title, and none with "tux" of "camel" in the title, so for that side, I just used any linux / perl related product. Only two. They were:
#2 MS Plus! for Windows XP
#3 MS Windows XP Professional Upgrade
#47 MS Windows XP Home Edition
#57 SuSE Linux 7.2 Professional Edition
#79 Redhat 7.1 Delux Workstation
#97 MS Office XP Standard
Keep in mind that Windows XP isn't even out yet. These are preorders. And already it's at #3 and #47
Let's face it. You may not like MS. You may not like their products, but they DO outsell the "competition". AMD recognizes this and is moving to capitalize on it.
I'm not certain I like the whole "product number" instead of a clock speed thing. I understand WHY the're doing it and why they feel they have to, and I hope it works out well for them. But part of me thinks it smacks of the whole thing Cyrix tried to pull a few years ago. [shudder]
While I agree that there is one big problem with the credit card idea, (that minors CAN get them. In fact Visa is promoting credit cards for kids right now.).
First of all, anyone that can get a bank account these days can get a "credit card" for the purposes of this argument. Any Visa or Mastercard will do. And since every bank in the US that I'm aware of offers some kind of Visa or MC "check card" with a CC# that draws directly from your checking account, anyone can get one. No credit check is needed, because it's not credit. It's just a Visa or MC# that draws from your bank account rather than racking up a bill. Also, even if that weren't true... so what? So people without credit cards won't be able to get a hold of it. Neither will people without internet access. Should we say that these companies shouldn't be alowed to sell net porn unless they figure out a way to offer it to people without computers too? Remember this is "free", not nessisarily "Free" speach. I run pr0n sites for a living and I can think of no better way of screening minors. Lets say that some kid does have a credit card. Well, he/she choudln't get it on their own. They CAN have one, but in the states, a kid can't get a job without parental concent, let alone a bank account, credit card, etc. So if a kid is together enough to get all this stuff together, and sign up for a porn site account. Oh well. the kid's probably already close to 18 anyway. And if not, then I think the kid's got bigger problems that the parrents need to deal with. If a kid steals his mom's CC, then the porn is the least of the problems. If a kid is lying to their parents, forging signatures to get a job and a bank account... well, not only are there more serious problems there, but I'd almost say the kid earned it! Granted I'm not expecting that a six year old is doing these kinds of things, but c'mon, how many of us that enjoy porn waited until we were 18 if we had a choice? Weather it was the copy of penthouse you found on the side of the road, or your uncle jim's stash of dirty movies that you found, if you're the kind of person that's going to enjoy porn, I don't think there's much that's stopping people in today's society.
What many people still don't understand is that the doctors in NYC geared up for one of the worst catastrophy's in American history and then waited... and waited... and then had nothing to do.
Doctors don't treat the dead. I believe they only retrieved something like 5 or 10 living bodies from the pile. And that was all in the first 24 hours.
So in short, they never were busy. Every hospital in the tri state area geared up and expected to get flooded with casualties, but then, they never came. I guess after a day or so, hospitals started to stand down from their heightened state of alert. Now they've got time for research once again.
These bastards are already trying to profit off of this tragedy. Sometimes people make me sick. Everyone check out the popup ad on www.novus.com Then find an e-mail address on the site and let them know what you think of it. I know I already did in quite explicit detail...
When the first tower went down, it was unclear at first what happened.... All you could see was a cloud... that was what I feared it was a massive boi/chem cloud. It looks like it was just dust and debries from the tower collapsing now, but still, it's a real fear. I'm not far from there now in New Jersey...
I'm supprised nobody's thought of one of my favorite games of all time. No violence at all and a very similar permise: Robot Odyssey I. Someone above did mention Rockey's Boots (which I could have sworn was called Rockey's 'bots', but I never played it) and I'm/told/ was the predesesor to Rbot Odyssey I.
The idea, for those not familiar with the game was that you were stuck in a massive underground laberenth trying to escape through the 5 underground levels of Robotropolis. This was accomplished by wiring robots to solve various puzzles. Robots had "bumpers" for inputs, "thrusters" for propulsion, a "grabber" and an "antenna" for comunication with other robots. They could also be equiped with various types of sensors for interaction with opjects and things. First the puzzles were largley as simple as "go this way until you hit a wall then change direction to this way, then hit another wall and change direction to..." later, the game forced you to create highly intrecate and specialized robot circuit designes to do things such as actually communicate with other robots to work together to solve tasks.
There was no shooting, no killing. There was no way to die (unless you count your robots' battery's dying). The only way to "loose" was to loose one of your robots somewhere that you couldn't retrieve it. (just hope you saved shortly before that happened). There were "bad guys" of a sort, called sentries. But all they could do to you is intercept you and keep you from passing certain sections. While this game doesn't teach programng in the most traditional sence (i.e, no language) the premise is the same. Using logic in a fun way to get robots to do things. I don't see why the same thing couldn't be redone with C or PERL or Java or BASIC or VB or COBOL or Pascal, or anything rather than the circuits and logic gates that the origional used. I never did beat the origional and I still play it on a//e emulator from time to time.
Yes and no.
Good calculations, but that's not the problem in your thinking. The problem lies in the fact that terminal velocity doesn't entirly apply to this scenereo. Terminal velocity keeps an object from accelerating beyond it within the atmosphere with only the earth's gravity to accelerate it. Unfortunatly, terminal velocity does not apply without the braking effect of the atmosphere acting on it. That is why meteors fall at very very high (read: much faster than terminal velocity) speeds. If something could only fall at terminal velocity , nothing would ever burn up in the atmosphere. In other words, with these theoretical explosivless bombs, all of there acceleration is done OUTSIDE the atmosphere, and hence they are able to accelerate to much greater speeds before the atmosphere acts on them. And even once they do impact the atmosphere, they will already be going so fast that the braking effect is negligable. Like a speeding frieght train hitting a tractor-trailor. Sure it will slow down, but it's still quite deadly. So yes, it is so. With enough force coming down on something, you won't just punch a hole in it, you'll obliterate it. Think of this, not as a bomb, but as a man made meteor. Yes, terminal velocity would kick in EVENTUALLY, but these bombs would have to be quite lite for them to decelerate to terminal velocity before they reached the ground. Okay, so now you've piqued my curiosity for the actual numbers...
The Meteor example I pointed out before is probably a bad example for our purposes, because those meteors don't (all) just rely on the earth's gravity for acceleration. Most already have a relative speed of many thousands of miles per hour before they ever get near the earth's gravity well.
Now, the article said that the bomber would be capable of delivering strikes from 60 miles+ let's just round that to 5000 ft per mile 5000 * 60 = 300,000 ft. Now let's round this again to 100,000 meters. I know it's not exact, but bear with me...
Now with an altitude of 100,000 meters, we simply use 9.8m/s^2 as our acceleration rate. This will give us a speed of 2243 meters per second at 0 feet. Keep in mind that this formula does not account for friction of the atmosphere. Now let's figure out how much force we're going to deliver, okay? The military uses 500 and 1000 lb bombs a s a sort of standard. These labels are for the entire bomb, not just the explosives. Typically half of that weight is explosives... So let's assume that they'll continue to use these denominations. Let's even go with the lighter one to support your argument. Now 500 Lbs is 227.27 Kgs Let's again round down to 225.
Now, let's recap:
We have our theoretical (frictionless) impact velocity:
2243 m/s
We have our mass:
225 Kgs
We have our altitude:
100,000 m
Now to calculate energy we use the formula:
mass * g * altitude where g = 9.8m/s^2
Using this we get:
220,500,000 joules, which according to your formula of 4200 Gigajoules per kilotonne is 0.0525 kilotonnes. Not much when you're thinking of things in nuclear proportions, but that is a hell of a lot when you consider that his is a single 500 pound bomb without a warhead.
Just for referance, the Hiroshima bomb had a yield of 20 kilotonnes.
Okay, by now half of you are thinking to yourselves that that's a big yield for a "conventional" weapon. And I'm sure a lot of you are still scratching your heads and saying "well what about the drag?" That's where Jovlinger is right. There *will* be drag acting upon the missile-meteor. Not only will it slow it down, but it is likley to reduce the mass of the bomb too, due to much of it's mass burning up on reentry. The only site I was able to find that deals at all with both of these paramaters (mass lost and drag that varies with variable atmospheric density) is here The test at the botom of the page is the most relavent one since it uses a 90 degree entry angle. However it is only a 100kg model. Even still, 66% of it's mass survives reentry and it impacts with 795 kilojoules... Keep in mind this is less than half of our theoretical meteor-missile. Now, what does all this mean? I havn't the foggiest idea. Is this weapon anywhere nuclear class? No. But these numbers, I believe are quite respectable for conventional weapons.
By the way, if none of this makes any sence to you, it's probably because I havn't slept in 36 hours, so if someone wants to try and translate this post into something more human readable, be my guest (:
Um.... yeah.
That's a great idea! In fact, here's his email address:
senator_wyden@exchange.senate.gov
I'm doing exactly that right now. Even just a couple dozen diffrent people all forwarding the mail that gets trapped by their spam filters will make his e-mail address practically useless. Sure he can set up his/own/ spam filters, but we all know that's not the point. And after all, we can do this. It's our first amendment right. We're making a statment. Who's with me?
There's a reason for that. She had to put on a bit of weight to fit the role for the movie. As a result, it made her look more like Lara Croft from the waist up, but she was a bit larger from the waist down. So she asked the producers / directors / whateverr of she could use a body double (ass double?) for ass shots so as to "not let down the fans". Basicy there are few (relativly) ass shots, because they had to make sure you couldn't tell a double was used, and hence it made it more difficult to do an ass shot. In the imortal words of Dave Bary "I swear, I am not making this up."
The AV8B Harrier (a jet capable of Verticle Takeoff and Landing (VTOL), hovering, etc through the use of steerable jet exhaust nozzels) uses considerably less fuel when taking off like a conventional airplane than it does when taking off verticly. So much less in fact (I couldn't find numbers) that VTOL is almost never used except for nessisary training and operational necesity. This is because in an atmosphere, we can take advantage of Bernoulli's Principal to give us lift. Remember, there are four forces of flight: thrust, drag, lift, and weight (or stall spin crash and burn as a CFI I once knew used to say). You seem to be forgetting weight and lift. We're not talking about climbing stairs vs climbing a ladder here. We're talking about lifting something up with nothing but thrust and induced lift, if you stop applying force, it's going to fall.
Still don't believe me, look at some numbers. Or do a search on Google for harrier VTOL fuel consumption.
Secondly, the X-15 (for which eight Air Force Pilots were awarded Astronauts wings as they entered the official minimum altitude for "space") was launched from under the wing of a B-52. And this was a program that started in he late fifties! Also, when the Shutle lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California, it's transported piggyback style back to Kennedy Space center in Florida by a specially modified NASA Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. They have "launched" orbiters this way before for the purposes of approach and landing testing, so there must not be any unreasonable risks in seperation at those speeds / altitudes or with massive craft like those.
For your third point... um... either way, verticle or not, you're going to reach *vast* speeds and move huge amounts of air. One way or another, you want as aerodynamic a design as you can reasonably build.
Your fourth point... We definatly would not have been able to, if we had to strap a saturn V to a jet. But with a starting point of 60,000+ Ft, and 600+ MPH before you even light the engines, you don't need that large a rocket to push you the rest of the way, especially with more modern techlology tht we have today.
I think what was ment by "...The ISS is _it_..." was that the ISS is the pinacle of what we will be able to achieve in space (not the best reusable launch platform) unless we get a more effecient / faster turn-around / simpler reusable launch system. Of course *I* could be the one mistaken here.
The irony here is that there is a chance that your over cautiousness may have contributed to the failure. Athlon systems are *very* sensitive to power fluctuations. Your seven fans may have overstressed the system and caused the CPU to quit prematurely. Just an outside chance, but what kind of power supply were you using?
And if you are wondering why so many space probes are failing, it's because of faster, better, cheaper. It does not work. You can't make something better by cutting back funding.
Actually, I believe that you are misunderstanding what "Faster, better, cheaper" is all about.
NASA has a policy that manned and unmanned research have two diffrent priorities. Failure is unacceptable for manned exploration. Not so for unmanned exploration. The reason is simple. It costs more to "gaurentee" something to be fail-proof.
Now, "Faster, better, cheaper" takes this theory to the extream. The theory is simple enough. Develop realy cheap probes instead of realy expensive ones. This way you get more of them out. As a side benefit, you can reduce time it takes to develop said probes. The "better" part isn't that the quality of the probes as compared to higher budget probes. It's the fact that you can have 10 or more probe programs for the price of one. Hence, you will gather more data. Even if some of them fail! For example:
If it costs $60 Billion to develop a probe with a 99.995% chance of working flawlessly and it costs $2 Billion to develop a prove with a 95% chance of working flawlessly. Which would you rather have:
1 $60 Billion probe that probably won't fail.
30 $2 Billion probes that are likley to have at least one failure.
~10 $2 Billion probes w/ likleyhood of failure + money left in the budget for other projects.
Now, perhaps I misunderstand "Faster, better, chaeper." But I'm sure someone will set me straight if I do.
"Obviously a major malfunction." I believe, were the LC's exact words.
I still remember it like it was yesterday. Probably mostly because of how imfamous it's become, though. Though definatly because of how it affected me. I was only 6 when it happened. The teacher I would have the next year, for Fourth grade was another alternate. I still keep in touch with her, she's still very much involved with promoting the space program through school, and she still has the same feelings your teacher had.
Actually, NASA does operate on a tripple redundant backup principal.
It's what they call "Fail operational/fail safe".
I'm not 100% sure that this is true on conduits to the ET or SRBs, as not 100% familliar with that particular subsystem of the STS, but I do know that at least on the orbiter the theory works something like this:
All critcal systems, such as the main engines, computer, etc have two backups. The term "Fail operational / Fail safe" comes from the theory that if ONE component fails, you're not just safe to land, But your still safe to opperate and complete the mission. If TWO components fail, THEN you're only good for one thing any more: Coming home. Because NASA doctrine says that if you are ever down to one component keeping you going, the risk is too great, and you are to immidiatly return, unless the risk of return is greater (i.e., nasty crosswind components at the first available landing site).
Shuttle Main engines (The three big ones at the bottom / rear of the orbiter) have failed on takeoff before. There is a procedure for this. They just push back MECO (Main Engine Cut Off) farther into the flight. In other words, they burn the remaining two engines longer, to acchieve the same, or at least a diffrent, though still acceptable orbit. If TWO engines fail, however. The mission is aborted, as you will need that last engine TO abort with. Depending on where in the takeoff stage they are, they might decide on an Abort Once Around (One low orbit to put them on approach back to the US), or a Trans Atlantic Abort (Abort to I believe Germany or N. Africa), etc. Forgive me if I have the procedural names wrong, as it's been a looooong time since I studied such things. My point is, that NASA DOES use these things. Although I don't know that they use such things on ET / SRB components specifically, it wouldn't totally supprise me if they didn't use tripple redundancy on these components. After all, for most of the components involved in takeoff, you don't need "Fail Operational / Fail Safe". Because if there is one failure, you're going to abort no matter what, anyway. So all you need is the "Fail Safe" half of that.
Sure. I have a couple of thoughts.
1) If you are being redirected to a URL from a registration page where you entered your SSN and password, how are you doing so anonymously? There would be some kind of server log to back up the fact that you signed in, and when you signed in. Otherwise you could vote as many times as you like.
2) Assuming there really was some way to redirect ANONYMOUSLY, how would you keep people from simply going to that page WITHOUT registering? By only letting them come rom their registration page? But then you know where they came from, and hence who they are.
Not ment to be a flame, just pointing out what (I believe to be) a flaw in your logic. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't see any obvious way of maintaining anonymitty(sp?) AND making sure that the user SHOULD be voting.
Okay, I know I'm going to rile up a lot of people here, but I'm truly not flaming, trolling or whatever. I realy do feel that this is the "best" solution.
This past election was the second election I voted in and the first presidential election. I voted in Ocean County, NJ.
They use computers there.
They don't run windows. They don't run Linux. They don't run BSD, or any other general computer OS. They are dedicated voting machines with dedicated hardware and software built in to the microcontroler. Much like your VCR is a computer, but it only does one thing. Your Microwave oven has a computer in it, but it doesn't run Linux or a MS OS either.
The layout they used on this machine was simple. A bunch of buttons (similar to the kind under the plastic panel on your microwave, not the kind of buttons on your keyboard) under a paper overlay under a protective clear plastic sheet. There were probably hundreds of buttons, but only a few are ever used at a time, depending on the requirements of the individual election. Oh yes and there are LED lights next to each button, which holes in the paper so the proper LEDs could shine through.. There was also a keyboard (laid out alphabeticly) to enter write-in votes. This whole setup was perhaps 3'x3' or 4'x4' and took up the front "wall" of the voting booth.
I don't know how the machine OUTPUTS votes, (hard drive, print out, network, etc.) but everything I saw looked fairly straight forward, simple and easy to me. I didn't hear about anyone getting confused in my community. there were PLENTY of elderly voters and I was standing in line at the polling station for a while. The only confusion was over what lines to stand in (there were seperate lines to check your voter ID card and lines for the voting machine, in addition to splitting up lines by first letters of last names for check-in.)
Now, here's my take on how something like this should be designed:
The modularity of the paper overlay is a good idea and can be retained. Either that, or use expensive touch screens. Either is fine, and if cost is not an issue, I believe that touch screens would PROBABLY be a better plan since paper can (concievably) shift or slide. The important part here is that the layout (since either can be dynamic from election to election) needs to be CARFULY considered for each election.
The OS:
- Should NOT be Linux.
- Should NOT be BSD.
- Should NOT be Solaris
- Should not be Windows.
It should NOT HAVE an "OS" in the traditional sence of the term at all! It should have a simple "dumb interface" like a VCR, digital watch, phone, microwave, etc. When is the last time your Microwave "crashed"? If it's EVER happened, I'm sure it's happened less to you than any general computing OS you've ever used. Linux has crashed on me, Windows has crashed on me, Macs have crashed on me. My VCR? Hardware has failed (motors) but the software end of it has to my knowlege never failed.
Also, as to open source... this is a more touchy subject. I do agree that the code (probably C. the Elevator Principal applies perfectly to this situation.) does need to be audited make the source redily available. But I don't see any particular reason that it can't be developed by a private party / company/ whatever.
Several other people brought up concerns about "What if" people obtained the source code, edited it to their liking and installed it on the voting machines. Well, this isn't a problem with dedicated hardware/software on a microcontroler. When is the last time you heard of someone changine the software on their VCR? And without opening the thing up and breaking out the solder gun? And with people (Election officials) that don't want them to do this standing around watching to make sure they don't do this? In any concievable situation where this would be insecure, ANY method (pencil and paper for example) would be insecure due to the amount of corruption it would require. If anything, this might make coruption a little more dificult to pull off since it would require someone with in depth technical know-how AND would almost certainly take a conspiricy rather than a lone nut to rig votes.
Now for the other end of the equation. I believe (due to the companies mentioned) that they want to use a PC type of archetecture. I don't see why. It's insecure, unstable, and too generalized for the task at hand. Life support machines don't run Windows. Missle Guidance Systems don't run BSD. Power Plants don't Run MacOS. Why should this?
Now, I understand that this being/. and all, that one is expected to bash Microsoft.
I think this is lame.
Do I like Microsoft? Not particularly. Do I think they are evil? Only their business practices. But their software is the best thing out there for the home user. For the software I want to run, they and Apple are the only game in town. My web sites, however all run under Red Hat. I wouldn't DREAM of running any kind of site that recieved decent amounts of traffic under NT. However, why is Linux a good choice for VOTING MACHINES? Pick the right tool for the job people. PCs in general simply aren't cut out to going something like this. There's a reason it's called "general computing" because these machines have to be Jacks of all trades. The trade off is that they don't realy master any of those trades. They crash, they're often slower than a dedicated machine for the same task, etc.
Computers are not nessisarily bad for voting. In fact I encourage the use of computers. However, don't use general computers. Don't do this half assed. Don't try to shoe horn in the wrong tool for the job. Use a dedicated hardware/software solution.
According to at least one site, the private recountd already have declared Gore the winner. I have no idea the accuracy of this site though as this site is, of course biased. But if the numbers are what they apear to be, then a terrible injustice has occoured. I don't support Bush, but I support the US constitution. If he was rightfuly voted into office, then baring anything that would warrent an impeachment and a rightful removal from office, I WILL support him as my President. But if the info on that site is true, I don't know how or why the American people will stand for it. there must be a way to be sure the rightful President takes office.
While all the advantages you pointed out are 100% true, and in this application, I happen to think portrait orientation is just plain neat, there are a few reasons that I wonder about the wisdom of choosing it.
First off, HTML optimization. In an ideal world, all webmasters would author their HTML so that it would render correctly at any resolution and aspect ratio. However we do NOT live in an ideal world. I run at 1024x768 and I see pages every day that look like hell because the author obviously didn't think to check it on anything but 800x600 or 640x480.
Secondly, I don't see why one would want to break from a "dominant" standard. There comes a point where it is more trouble to reinvent something than it is worth. I suppose it won't ruffle any feathers since the target audience of this device will be almost exclusivly people with little to no computer experience, but still, something bothers me about the fact that almost everything out there today is written for a horizontal aspect ratio.
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Oops. Well, looks like Tux/Camel didn't fare so well after all.
There were a total of four products with "XP" in the title, and none with "tux" of "camel" in the title, so for that side, I just used any linux / perl related product. Only two. They were:
#2 MS Plus! for Windows XP
#3 MS Windows XP Professional Upgrade
#47 MS Windows XP Home Edition
#57 SuSE Linux 7.2 Professional Edition
#79 Redhat 7.1 Delux Workstation
#97 MS Office XP Standard
Keep in mind that Windows XP isn't even out yet. These are preorders. And already it's at #3 and #47
Let's face it. You may not like MS. You may not like their products, but they DO outsell the "competition". AMD recognizes this and is moving to capitalize on it.
I'm not certain I like the whole "product number" instead of a clock speed thing. I understand WHY the're doing it and why they feel they have to, and I hope it works out well for them. But part of me thinks it smacks of the whole thing Cyrix tried to pull a few years ago. [shudder]
While I agree that there is one big problem with the credit card idea, (that minors CAN get them. In fact Visa is promoting credit cards for kids right now.). First of all, anyone that can get a bank account these days can get a "credit card" for the purposes of this argument. Any Visa or Mastercard will do. And since every bank in the US that I'm aware of offers some kind of Visa or MC "check card" with a CC# that draws directly from your checking account, anyone can get one. No credit check is needed, because it's not credit. It's just a Visa or MC# that draws from your bank account rather than racking up a bill. Also, even if that weren't true... so what? So people without credit cards won't be able to get a hold of it. Neither will people without internet access. Should we say that these companies shouldn't be alowed to sell net porn unless they figure out a way to offer it to people without computers too? Remember this is "free", not nessisarily "Free" speach. I run pr0n sites for a living and I can think of no better way of screening minors. Lets say that some kid does have a credit card. Well, he/she choudln't get it on their own. They CAN have one, but in the states, a kid can't get a job without parental concent, let alone a bank account, credit card, etc. So if a kid is together enough to get all this stuff together, and sign up for a porn site account. Oh well. the kid's probably already close to 18 anyway. And if not, then I think the kid's got bigger problems that the parrents need to deal with. If a kid steals his mom's CC, then the porn is the least of the problems. If a kid is lying to their parents, forging signatures to get a job and a bank account... well, not only are there more serious problems there, but I'd almost say the kid earned it! Granted I'm not expecting that a six year old is doing these kinds of things, but c'mon, how many of us that enjoy porn waited until we were 18 if we had a choice? Weather it was the copy of penthouse you found on the side of the road, or your uncle jim's stash of dirty movies that you found, if you're the kind of person that's going to enjoy porn, I don't think there's much that's stopping people in today's society.
What many people still don't understand is that the doctors in NYC geared up for one of the worst catastrophy's in American history and then waited... and waited... and then had nothing to do.
Doctors don't treat the dead. I believe they only retrieved something like 5 or 10 living bodies from the pile. And that was all in the first 24 hours.
So in short, they never were busy. Every hospital in the tri state area geared up and expected to get flooded with casualties, but then, they never came. I guess after a day or so, hospitals started to stand down from their heightened state of alert. Now they've got time for research once again.
These bastards are already trying to profit off of this tragedy. Sometimes people make me sick. Everyone check out the popup ad on www.novus.com Then find an e-mail address on the site and let them know what you think of it. I know I already did in quite explicit detail...
When the first tower went down, it was unclear at first what happened.... All you could see was a cloud... that was what I feared it was a massive boi/chem cloud. It looks like it was just dust and debries from the tower collapsing now, but still, it's a real fear. I'm not far from there now in New Jersey...
I'm supprised nobody's thought of one of my favorite games of all time. No violence at all and a very similar permise: Robot Odyssey I. Someone above did mention Rockey's Boots (which I could have sworn was called Rockey's 'bots', but I never played it) and I'm /told/ was the predesesor to Rbot Odyssey I.
//e emulator from time to time.
The idea, for those not familiar with the game was that you were stuck in a massive underground laberenth trying to escape through the 5 underground levels of Robotropolis. This was accomplished by wiring robots to solve various puzzles. Robots had "bumpers" for inputs, "thrusters" for propulsion, a "grabber" and an "antenna" for comunication with other robots. They could also be equiped with various types of sensors for interaction with opjects and things. First the puzzles were largley as simple as "go this way until you hit a wall then change direction to this way, then hit another wall and change direction to..." later, the game forced you to create highly intrecate and specialized robot circuit designes to do things such as actually communicate with other robots to work together to solve tasks.
There was no shooting, no killing. There was no way to die (unless you count your robots' battery's dying). The only way to "loose" was to loose one of your robots somewhere that you couldn't retrieve it. (just hope you saved shortly before that happened). There were "bad guys" of a sort, called sentries. But all they could do to you is intercept you and keep you from passing certain sections. While this game doesn't teach programng in the most traditional sence (i.e, no language) the premise is the same. Using logic in a fun way to get robots to do things. I don't see why the same thing couldn't be redone with C or PERL or Java or BASIC or VB or COBOL or Pascal, or anything rather than the circuits and logic gates that the origional used. I never did beat the origional and I still play it on a
Why is this giving me a lameness filter? When I added this line, it stopped. The new slashcode is quite odd...
Good calculations, but that's not the problem in your thinking. The problem lies in the fact that terminal velocity doesn't entirly apply to this scenereo. Terminal velocity keeps an object from accelerating beyond it within the atmosphere with only the earth's gravity to accelerate it. Unfortunatly, terminal velocity does not apply without the braking effect of the atmosphere acting on it. That is why meteors fall at very very high (read: much faster than terminal velocity) speeds. If something could only fall at terminal velocity , nothing would ever burn up in the atmosphere. In other words, with these theoretical explosivless bombs, all of there acceleration is done OUTSIDE the atmosphere, and hence they are able to accelerate to much greater speeds before the atmosphere acts on them. And even once they do impact the atmosphere, they will already be going so fast that the braking effect is negligable. Like a speeding frieght train hitting a tractor-trailor. Sure it will slow down, but it's still quite deadly. So yes, it is so. With enough force coming down on something, you won't just punch a hole in it, you'll obliterate it. Think of this, not as a bomb, but as a man made meteor. Yes, terminal velocity would kick in EVENTUALLY, but these bombs would have to be quite lite for them to decelerate to terminal velocity before they reached the ground. Okay, so now you've piqued my curiosity for the actual numbers...
The Meteor example I pointed out before is probably a bad example for our purposes, because those meteors don't (all) just rely on the earth's gravity for acceleration. Most already have a relative speed of many thousands of miles per hour before they ever get near the earth's gravity well.
Now, the article said that the bomber would be capable of delivering strikes from 60 miles+ let's just round that to 5000 ft per mile 5000 * 60 = 300,000 ft. Now let's round this again to 100,000 meters. I know it's not exact, but bear with me...
Now with an altitude of 100,000 meters, we simply use 9.8m/s^2 as our acceleration rate. This will give us a speed of 2243 meters per second at 0 feet. Keep in mind that this formula does not account for friction of the atmosphere. Now let's figure out how much force we're going to deliver, okay? The military uses 500 and 1000 lb bombs a s a sort of standard. These labels are for the entire bomb, not just the explosives. Typically half of that weight is explosives... So let's assume that they'll continue to use these denominations. Let's even go with the lighter one to support your argument. Now 500 Lbs is 227.27 Kgs Let's again round down to 225.
Now, let's recap:
We have our theoretical (frictionless) impact velocity:
2243 m/s
We have our mass:
225 Kgs
We have our altitude:
100,000 m
Now to calculate energy we use the formula:
mass * g * altitude where g = 9.8m/s^2
Using this we get:
220,500,000 joules, which according to your formula of 4200 Gigajoules per kilotonne is 0.0525 kilotonnes. Not much when you're thinking of things in nuclear proportions, but that is a hell of a lot when you consider that his is a single 500 pound bomb without a warhead.
Just for referance, the Hiroshima bomb had a yield of 20 kilotonnes.
Okay, by now half of you are thinking to yourselves that that's a big yield for a "conventional" weapon. And I'm sure a lot of you are still scratching your heads and saying "well what about the drag?" That's where Jovlinger is right. There *will* be drag acting upon the missile-meteor. Not only will it slow it down, but it is likley to reduce the mass of the bomb too, due to much of it's mass burning up on reentry. The only site I was able to find that deals at all with both of these paramaters (mass lost and drag that varies with variable atmospheric density) is here The test at the botom of the page is the most relavent one since it uses a 90 degree entry angle. However it is only a 100kg model. Even still, 66% of it's mass survives reentry and it impacts with 795 kilojoules... Keep in mind this is less than half of our theoretical meteor-missile. Now, what does all this mean? I havn't the foggiest idea. Is this weapon anywhere nuclear class? No. But these numbers, I believe are quite respectable for conventional weapons. By the way, if none of this makes any sence to you, it's probably because I havn't slept in 36 hours, so if someone wants to try and translate this post into something more human readable, be my guest ( :
Um.... yeah.
But wait, it's not April first any more...
Oh well.
http://goatse.cx
I know that if that showed up in *my* mailbox, I'd be a wee bit irked.
senator_wyden@exchange.senate.gov
I'm doing exactly that right now. Even just a couple dozen diffrent people all forwarding the mail that gets trapped by their spam filters will make his e-mail address practically useless. Sure he can set up his /own/ spam filters, but we all know that's not the point. And after all, we can do this. It's our first amendment right. We're making a statment. Who's with me?
There's a reason for that. She had to put on a bit of weight to fit the role for the movie. As a result, it made her look more like Lara Croft from the waist up, but she was a bit larger from the waist down. So she asked the producers / directors / whateverr of she could use a body double (ass double?) for ass shots so as to "not let down the fans". Basicy there are few (relativly) ass shots, because they had to make sure you couldn't tell a double was used, and hence it made it more difficult to do an ass shot. In the imortal words of Dave Bary "I swear, I am not making this up."
What you mean "we" Kimosabi?
Secondly, the X-15 (for which eight Air Force Pilots were awarded Astronauts wings as they entered the official minimum altitude for "space") was launched from under the wing of a B-52. And this was a program that started in he late fifties! Also, when the Shutle lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California, it's transported piggyback style back to Kennedy Space center in Florida by a specially modified NASA Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. They have "launched" orbiters this way before for the purposes of approach and landing testing, so there must not be any unreasonable risks in seperation at those speeds / altitudes or with massive craft like those.
For your third point... um... either way, verticle or not, you're going to reach *vast* speeds and move huge amounts of air. One way or another, you want as aerodynamic a design as you can reasonably build.
Your fourth point... We definatly would not have been able to, if we had to strap a saturn V to a jet. But with a starting point of 60,000+ Ft, and 600+ MPH before you even light the engines, you don't need that large a rocket to push you the rest of the way, especially with more modern techlology tht we have today.
I think what was ment by "...The ISS is _it_..." was that the ISS is the pinacle of what we will be able to achieve in space (not the best reusable launch platform) unless we get a more effecient / faster turn-around / simpler reusable launch system. Of course *I* could be the one mistaken here.
I wish I had mod points right now. Someone please mod this up, this guy brings up an interesting point.
The irony here is that there is a chance that your over cautiousness may have contributed to the failure. Athlon systems are *very* sensitive to power fluctuations. Your seven fans may have overstressed the system and caused the CPU to quit prematurely. Just an outside chance, but what kind of power supply were you using?
Raspberry! There's only one... man, who whoud DARE gove me the Raspberry... LONESTAR!!! - Dark Helmet Sorry, I just had to. ( 8
Actually, I believe that you are misunderstanding what "Faster, better, cheaper" is all about.
NASA has a policy that manned and unmanned research have two diffrent priorities. Failure is unacceptable for manned exploration. Not so for unmanned exploration. The reason is simple. It costs more to "gaurentee" something to be fail-proof.
Now, "Faster, better, cheaper" takes this theory to the extream. The theory is simple enough. Develop realy cheap probes instead of realy expensive ones. This way you get more of them out. As a side benefit, you can reduce time it takes to develop said probes. The "better" part isn't that the quality of the probes as compared to higher budget probes. It's the fact that you can have 10 or more probe programs for the price of one. Hence, you will gather more data. Even if some of them fail! For example:
If it costs $60 Billion to develop a probe with a 99.995% chance of working flawlessly and it costs $2 Billion to develop a prove with a 95% chance of working flawlessly. Which would you rather have:
Now, perhaps I misunderstand "Faster, better, chaeper." But I'm sure someone will set me straight if I do.
I still remember it like it was yesterday. Probably mostly because of how imfamous it's become, though. Though definatly because of how it affected me. I was only 6 when it happened. The teacher I would have the next year, for Fourth grade was another alternate. I still keep in touch with her, she's still very much involved with promoting the space program through school, and she still has the same feelings your teacher had.
It's what they call "Fail operational/fail safe". I'm not 100% sure that this is true on conduits to the ET or SRBs, as not 100% familliar with that particular subsystem of the STS, but I do know that at least on the orbiter the theory works something like this:
All critcal systems, such as the main engines, computer, etc have two backups. The term "Fail operational / Fail safe" comes from the theory that if ONE component fails, you're not just safe to land, But your still safe to opperate and complete the mission. If TWO components fail, THEN you're only good for one thing any more: Coming home. Because NASA doctrine says that if you are ever down to one component keeping you going, the risk is too great, and you are to immidiatly return, unless the risk of return is greater (i.e., nasty crosswind components at the first available landing site).
Shuttle Main engines (The three big ones at the bottom / rear of the orbiter) have failed on takeoff before. There is a procedure for this. They just push back MECO (Main Engine Cut Off) farther into the flight. In other words, they burn the remaining two engines longer, to acchieve the same, or at least a diffrent, though still acceptable orbit. If TWO engines fail, however. The mission is aborted, as you will need that last engine TO abort with. Depending on where in the takeoff stage they are, they might decide on an Abort Once Around (One low orbit to put them on approach back to the US), or a Trans Atlantic Abort (Abort to I believe Germany or N. Africa), etc. Forgive me if I have the procedural names wrong, as it's been a looooong time since I studied such things. My point is, that NASA DOES use these things. Although I don't know that they use such things on ET / SRB components specifically, it wouldn't totally supprise me if they didn't use tripple redundancy on these components. After all, for most of the components involved in takeoff, you don't need "Fail Operational / Fail Safe". Because if there is one failure, you're going to abort no matter what, anyway. So all you need is the "Fail Safe" half of that.
Sure. I have a couple of thoughts. 1) If you are being redirected to a URL from a registration page where you entered your SSN and password, how are you doing so anonymously? There would be some kind of server log to back up the fact that you signed in, and when you signed in. Otherwise you could vote as many times as you like. 2) Assuming there really was some way to redirect ANONYMOUSLY, how would you keep people from simply going to that page WITHOUT registering? By only letting them come rom their registration page? But then you know where they came from, and hence who they are. Not ment to be a flame, just pointing out what (I believe to be) a flaw in your logic. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't see any obvious way of maintaining anonymitty(sp?) AND making sure that the user SHOULD be voting.
This past election was the second election I voted in and the first presidential election. I voted in Ocean County, NJ.
They use computers there.
They don't run windows. They don't run Linux. They don't run BSD, or any other general computer OS. They are dedicated voting machines with dedicated hardware and software built in to the microcontroler. Much like your VCR is a computer, but it only does one thing. Your Microwave oven has a computer in it, but it doesn't run Linux or a MS OS either.
The layout they used on this machine was simple. A bunch of buttons (similar to the kind under the plastic panel on your microwave, not the kind of buttons on your keyboard) under a paper overlay under a protective clear plastic sheet. There were probably hundreds of buttons, but only a few are ever used at a time, depending on the requirements of the individual election. Oh yes and there are LED lights next to each button, which holes in the paper so the proper LEDs could shine through.. There was also a keyboard (laid out alphabeticly) to enter write-in votes. This whole setup was perhaps 3'x3' or 4'x4' and took up the front "wall" of the voting booth.
I don't know how the machine OUTPUTS votes, (hard drive, print out, network, etc.) but everything I saw looked fairly straight forward, simple and easy to me. I didn't hear about anyone getting confused in my community. there were PLENTY of elderly voters and I was standing in line at the polling station for a while. The only confusion was over what lines to stand in (there were seperate lines to check your voter ID card and lines for the voting machine, in addition to splitting up lines by first letters of last names for check-in.)
Now, here's my take on how something like this should be designed:
The modularity of the paper overlay is a good idea and can be retained. Either that, or use expensive touch screens. Either is fine, and if cost is not an issue, I believe that touch screens would PROBABLY be a better plan since paper can (concievably) shift or slide. The important part here is that the layout (since either can be dynamic from election to election) needs to be CARFULY considered for each election.
The OS:
- Should NOT be Linux.
- Should NOT be BSD.
- Should NOT be Solaris
- Should not be Windows.
It should NOT HAVE an "OS" in the traditional sence of the term at all! It should have a simple "dumb interface" like a VCR, digital watch, phone, microwave, etc. When is the last time your Microwave "crashed"? If it's EVER happened, I'm sure it's happened less to you than any general computing OS you've ever used. Linux has crashed on me, Windows has crashed on me, Macs have crashed on me. My VCR? Hardware has failed (motors) but the software end of it has to my knowlege never failed.
Also, as to open source... this is a more touchy subject. I do agree that the code (probably C. the Elevator Principal applies perfectly to this situation.) does need to be audited make the source redily available. But I don't see any particular reason that it can't be developed by a private party / company/ whatever.
Several other people brought up concerns about "What if" people obtained the source code, edited it to their liking and installed it on the voting machines. Well, this isn't a problem with dedicated hardware/software on a microcontroler. When is the last time you heard of someone changine the software on their VCR? And without opening the thing up and breaking out the solder gun? And with people (Election officials) that don't want them to do this standing around watching to make sure they don't do this? In any concievable situation where this would be insecure, ANY method (pencil and paper for example) would be insecure due to the amount of corruption it would require. If anything, this might make coruption a little more dificult to pull off since it would require someone with in depth technical know-how AND would almost certainly take a conspiricy rather than a lone nut to rig votes.
Now for the other end of the equation. I believe (due to the companies mentioned) that they want to use a PC type of archetecture. I don't see why. It's insecure, unstable, and too generalized for the task at hand. Life support machines don't run Windows. Missle Guidance Systems don't run BSD. Power Plants don't Run MacOS. Why should this?
Now, I understand that this being /. and all, that one is expected to bash Microsoft.
I think this is lame.
Do I like Microsoft? Not particularly. Do I think they are evil? Only their business practices. But their software is the best thing out there for the home user. For the software I want to run, they and Apple are the only game in town. My web sites, however all run under Red Hat. I wouldn't DREAM of running any kind of site that recieved decent amounts of traffic under NT. However, why is Linux a good choice for VOTING MACHINES? Pick the right tool for the job people. PCs in general simply aren't cut out to going something like this. There's a reason it's called "general computing" because these machines have to be Jacks of all trades. The trade off is that they don't realy master any of those trades. They crash, they're often slower than a dedicated machine for the same task, etc.
Computers are not nessisarily bad for voting. In fact I encourage the use of computers. However, don't use general computers. Don't do this half assed. Don't try to shoe horn in the wrong tool for the job. Use a dedicated hardware/software solution.
According to at least one site, the private recountd already have declared Gore the winner. I have no idea the accuracy of this site though as this site is, of course biased. But if the numbers are what they apear to be, then a terrible injustice has occoured. I don't support Bush, but I support the US constitution. If he was rightfuly voted into office, then baring anything that would warrent an impeachment and a rightful removal from office, I WILL support him as my President. But if the info on that site is true, I don't know how or why the American people will stand for it. there must be a way to be sure the rightful President takes office.
First off, HTML optimization. In an ideal world, all webmasters would author their HTML so that it would render correctly at any resolution and aspect ratio. However we do NOT live in an ideal world. I run at 1024x768 and I see pages every day that look like hell because the author obviously didn't think to check it on anything but 800x600 or 640x480.
Secondly, I don't see why one would want to break from a "dominant" standard. There comes a point where it is more trouble to reinvent something than it is worth. I suppose it won't ruffle any feathers since the target audience of this device will be almost exclusivly people with little to no computer experience, but still, something bothers me about the fact that almost everything out there today is written for a horizontal aspect ratio.