Well, normally I won't help the troll, but there is a (small) amount of merit to his claim... especially with AR-16/M16 type rifles that fire from the closed-bolt position.
The problem is with slam-fire, and the fact that the firing pin in these rifles and similar models is "loose." The sudden stop of the bolt moving forward can cause firing pin to strike the primer with enough force that it can fire the round, a condition called "slam fire." This is why Colt switched the firing pin from steel to titanium early on with the AR-15.
Note that this is an extremely rare event, and not something one needs to worry about!
If there is a defect that prevents complete chambering, and a "slam fire" occurs, the nasty explosion thing can happen, though it won't usually send shrapnel in your direction, just in the direction away from the ejection port.
Now, I can tell you about catastrophic weapon failures... at Fort Drum we had a guy with some sand in the barrel of his M16. He squeezes the trigger for the first round when zeroing... KABOOOM! The rifle cracks all over the place, and this guy got one hell of a jolt. (but no injury.)
What happened was, the bullet pushed the sand in front of it, then ground to a halt about halfway down the barrel. The gas had nowhere to expand, and nowhere to vent... the weak point was at the meshed lock at the back of the barrel... the teeth of the barrel blew off, the bolt slammed back, and the gas pressure escaped into the receiver... and cracked the hell out of it.
Our machine shop on post was kind enough to cut the barrel in half so that it was cross-sectioned, you could see the fused sand, the bullet stuck behind it, and the cracks all through the rest of the weapon.
The soldier got an article 15 for failing to maintain his equipment.
Rule #3: Keep your finger OFF the trigger until you're on target and ready to fire.
Indeed. One of our thanksgiving rituals in my family is to get a whole bunch of firearms and shoot up some targets. I don't even have to think about it anymore... my finger isn't on the trigger when I'm not ready for the rifle to fire.
Oh, and a friend brought over his Thomson submachine gun... complete with drum magazine... wow that was fun to shoot. It's heavy... I can see why guys like Al Capone would fire it from the hip.
Drill Sergeant Hixon very quickly taught me not to call it a "gun"
Well, if it's an M16, it's a weapon or rifle. If it's an M249 or M60, it's a [machine] gun (and also a weapon). Drill sergeants never like to make that distinction, though, and you're better off just calling them all weapons, to avoid unnecessary push-ups.
If you're still on active duty, and get the chance, I strongly recommend the Unit Armorer's Course... Not that you want to be your Unit Armorer (the job sucks, and never passes command inspection with good marks) but the course sections on weapons is really nice.
What's your MOS? I was a 13F for 8 years up until earlier this month.
I certainly don't wish this on you or anybody else, but I'm sure your opinion would be different if your child were ever involved in a gun accident.
Well, *I* grew up with guns, knew how to use them from a young age, and knew what they were capable of. My parents impressed upon me the responsibility and respect one needs when one is handling a firearm, or in a location where firearms can be or are being handled.
I always had access to *my* rifle, since I was about 8. And you know, I never took it out without my father with me, and never did anything irresponsible with it when he wasn't around.
Personally, I don't plan on my kids being stupid around guns.
1) Think I'll be able to find another floppy drive for the PCjr?
Yeah, check the local thrift stores like Goodwill and St. Vincent de Paul's. I find all kinds of stuff at the one here.
2) Think if I buy an 5 1/4 drive I'll be able to run any of these games on a DOS emulator? I still have DOS 2.0 in boxes, but I'm counting on that PCjr not working forever. I also have an old 486 I could throw an old version of DOS on.
You might be able to use dosemu... and if you've got VMware, probably for sure... unless they use any PCjr specific features, of which I am not sure how many such features existed.
You plan on doing this with Linux or that other OS?
Um, sorry but you don't know what you're talking about. The first Castle Wolfenstein game was made by id Software and was called "Wolfenstein-3D."
Man! You had me laughing so hard I spit out of my nose. (Ewww!) I've got a copy of the original "Castle Wolfensten", written by Silas S. Warner, and published by MUSE. Your statement quoted above was a joke, right, or are you really that ignorant?
I just booted it on my IIgs (it still works) and it says Copyright 1981. This is interesting, because all the screenshots and docs I find say Copyright 1983.
Come a little closer so that I can smack you around with a clue-by-four.
Oh, and look here if you want to see it for the Commodore 64: http://www.desktopgames.co.uk/wolf/castlewolfenste in.html
One of the cheaper brands (Cendyne?) has had a 52X CD-RW (It's 52X read/write, 48X rewrite) at my local OfficeMax for a few months now.
Doesn't matter, though. I still use my trusty Memorex CRW-1622 that I bought 5 years or more ago. 37 minutes to burn a CD, but I have *never* gotten a coaster.:)
Of course, the reason I knew about the other brand of 52X burner mentioned above is because I've been eyeing a new burner for a few months now!
This far in the future they wouldn't have sparks because they wouldn't have electricity
Says who? Can anyone say that use of electricity will be abolished in the future? What will we replace it with?
Besides, maybe the sparks are produced by... say... hot metal, kinda like what you get when using an oxyacetylene welder. (No electricity there, mind you.)
because in a world where you can beam matter--beam it, mind you--from here to there, power obviously no longer lives in the wall and travels through wires
Right. Energy obviously just floats around in the atmosphere of the ship uncontained, and the computers and such just kind of suck it in when they need it.
Now here's the experiment: take any of the scripts from any of the subsequent rip...
Yeah, because we all know that Gene Roddenberry had nothing to do with TNG, and therefore it was most certainly a ripoff.
Personally, after reading through this discussion on Slashdot, I am more interested in quoting an insightful Bill Shatner rather than seeing Nemesis when all the die-hard Trekkies are out.
The rerun of DS9 on our local UPN affiliate is entertaining enough for me, and I don't need to worry about whether or not the script writers are doing Trek justice, or if they are just trying to rip off on the name of something created by a more clever young Roddenberry 30 years ago.
Would you, as a presumably anti-gun person, be willing to put a sign in your front yard "This house is gun free!" ? If not, you are reaping the benefits of allowing guns in the hands of lawful citizens. The crimnals do not know which household may or may not have a gun inside, and so may be less inclined to break in. You may not own one, but no one knows that but you.
A few years ago, some people tried this up in Portland. Needless to say, the signs came down rather quickly after all of their homes were broken into and burglarized.
Personally, I've always fancied the idea of putting a "this house is gun free!" sign in my lawn, then waiting up at night with my rifle. Of course, I can't do that because the would-be criminals have more rights than I do.
The flow of events:
(1) I put up the "gun free" sign. A legal exercise of free speech.
(2) I wait for someone to break into my house and enter it.
(3) I shoot him/her. (Legal if they are breaking into my house.
(4) I go to prison for committing two legal acts, that are, in combination, bad.
Report that elderly people are 50% more likely to commit suicide when they own a gun. [rochester.edu] - this one from a suicide-prevention research project at a university. Not involved in the gun / anti gun debate.
Well, suicide is perfectly legal. At least, here in Oregon.
4. I am probably subsidizing all that risky gun-owning, sports-car driving, chain smoking activity through higher taxes, higher insurance premiums, etc., to the tune of 35% of my gross income. And I'm not very happy about it.
And I am subisidzing the work-capable nonworking people through taxes, the treesitters through higher lumber prices, and probably in a few years, the organic-food whiners that insist on stupid food labels based on contrived information.
Practically, though, you don't see people being held accountable when their gun is stolen...
Perhaps that might be related to the idea that if my car is stolen and used to transport drugs, I don't get held accountable for that, either. Are you saying I should?
Don't get me wrong, if you leave a gun in a state where someone who is legitimately in your home, such as a child, can get it, load it if necessary, and fire it in a manner that is negigent or criminal, then the owner should bear the responsibility.
But, if someone breaks into my house (a crime), steals one of my guns (another crime), and uses it to kill someone (another crime), which of these should I be held accountable for?
How is it my fault that someone breaks into my house, and steals my gun? Since I'm not allowed to mantrap my property, and local codes don't seem to allow me to fence my yard with concertina wire, what exactly am I supposed to do?
I believe the pro-gun ownership lobby has become too extreme defending the right to own assault weapons
Do you even know what an assault rifle is? If so, define it, in your own words.
Don't use the Brady bill's definition, either. There was no such thing as a "semi-automatic assult rifle" before Mrs. Brady and Bill Clinton invented the term.
Keep this in mind, too: In 1926, the government started machine gun registration. (Machine guns include real "assault rifles" like the Thomson submachine gun, full-auto or burst AR-15s/M16s, H&K MP-5s, etc.) Since then, only ONE legally owned machine gun has been used to commit a crime.
Interestingly enough, that ONE person who committed the crime was a cop.
My geek room is... well... I guess I'll start from the door and go counterclockwise...
Two cardboard boxes full of stuff that my wife and I haven't looked at since we moved here. (Yeah, I got a geek wife... geophysics major, woohoo!)
Next, a SparcStation 10 with external 4-drive SCSI box and a 20" monitor.
A CD rack with an assortment of blanks, burns, and originals, no music here.
A Calcomp digitizer pad.
This spot is the first corner we come to...
My computer desk, which currently has my homebuild K6-III/450 system (which runs great, thank you) and a 17" monitor. External modem, zip drive, and tons of cables, running Linux.
A bookshelf with some cardboard boxes in front of them. These are piled with things like floppy drives and I think there's a Macintosh in there somewhere...
In the next corner is an old coffee table with some actual living plants on it, and two windows that you can see out of. Underneath is a UPS, a power strip, several ethernet cables and a couple pairs of military boots that I haven't used since I was in the Army.
Next in line is a wooden cabinet with a Cisco ethernet switch and an HP DeskJet on top. The DeskJet is plugged into the network via a Lantronix print server.
Then comes my wife's K6-II/350 system running Win98SE, on a desk. To the left is a flatbed scanner.
Next is a bookshelf with technical manuals and a shelf full of SCSI cases.
The next wall contains a closet that is inaccessabled, but is full of things ranging from spare circuit boards to rifles.
The closet is inaccessable due to a pile of stuff that I need to get rid of before my wife complains too much, but consists of
+ Several Apple IIgs's + More apple stuff + Tons of 5 1/4 inch floppies + All kinds of crap...
Artillery does reach muzzle velocities that can exceed the speed of sound, but the time of flight at that speed is short.
The average velocity of the round is subsonic, and to put enough energy behind the round to have a supersonic average velocity is dangerous and unnecessary, not to mention prohibitive when considering a ton of other variables, too. (Tube length, wall thickness, weight, shockwave near crew members, etc.)
The military has been tracking projectiles for a long time. They had mortar tracking radar during the Vietnam War that could track the shell, predict its impact point, and more importantly, back calculate the launch point.
Ahh, you mean one of these. (Well, the Q37 is a little newer than Vietnam, but same idea)
I served for 3 years in target processing for the 10th Target Acquisition Detachment at Fort Drum. We happened to have two such radars.
Fun things, though you don't want to stand in front of one when it is radiating.
More info here. (and don't forget to look at it's younger brother, the Q36.)
If you start with, say, 20 lbs of supersonic projectile, and then you zap it with a laser, you still have 20 lbs of something moving with about the same average velocity as before.
First of all, I've never heard of any artillery system that can and does fire with supersonic speeds, and I was in the U.S. Army Field Artillery for 4 years.
Perhaps you could point an example of one that does?
(Or maybe you could figure out that accellerating a large mass that is 105 mm - 8 inches (16 inches for some naval guns) in a short tube to supersonic speeds is amazingly dangerous and not practical)
(or, just sit underneath the flight path of the shells and listen to them fly over. if you screw down the fuze and clamp a quarter into the shell body, they make a nice buzz)
maybe it's an explosive shell and the laser persuaded it to explode
Correct.
The only non-exploding shells I know of are smoke and chemical shells. Disabling the fuze in one of those is far better than letting it go, so even if that is the only effectt, it's better than normal operation.
Breaking it in two or poking a hole in it wouldn't be sufficient.
Poking a hole in it and superheating the payload pretty much disables it no matter what it's got inside. And it does have something inside. All artillery shells do. If they didn't have anything in them, they'd just bury themselves in the ground, and to do any damage to troops or equipment you'd have to be very accurate.
Let's examine what happens when you heat up some standard artillery payloads:
Conventional munitions-- High Explosives. Heating these up makes a big "boom" and lots of heat and shrapnel.
"Improved Conventional Munitions" (ICMs)-- Basically a bunch of grenades are loaded into the shell and ejected at the appropriate time in flight. These contain high explosive. Heating these up in the shell would be fatal to the shell.
Land Mines-- Yes, land mines can be deployed via artillery, and are kind of like ICMs but deploy tripwires after settling on the ground, rather than exploding. Same effect as ICMs when heated by a laser.
White Phosphorus-- Incendiary, reacts with atmosphere. Punching a hole in this shell would cause the payload to disperse prematurely, in-flight.
Smoke-- punching a hole in this might cause early dispersement of the payload, or a number of malfunctions.
Chemical weapons-- Heating these up could neutralize the payload.
Now, all artillery shells incorporate some kind of fuze (correct spelling in artillery context), and this is responsible for activating the payload. There are many fuzes that are used, including ones that activate on impact, activate after a delay after impact, activate at a specific time, and activate at a specific altitude, among others. Hitting the fuze with the laser could cause premature activation of the payload.
Now, believe me, on receiving end of artillery, even if all that could be done was to disable the payload, and you still had the shells coming in, it'd be much easier to deal with chunks of metal as opposed to the payloads inside them.
For more information, look here: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/155.htm
Apple ]['s, Commodore-64s, and MS-DOS-running PC clones -- all of which displayed nothing; it just (if you were lucky) silently locked up.
What Apple II's were you using? Most of the time, the II crashed at a BRK instruction, and dumped you into the monitor (debugger for you youngins) and dumped the machine address and registers at the time of the break. (Actually, the machine address plus 2, for technical reasons.) Some of the same info that Windows displays upon BSOD.
Yeah, well I was hanging out in the Sears on Bolt Street, when I heard about this party happening down on Breach Avenue. I got into my Colt and hammered my way down the street, with my hair-trigger reflexes in my fingers. I scoped out the target and got a grip on the situation. I squeezed my way into the crowd and set my sights on this girl. I locked and loaded my line, and came up to her and told her I could clean her bore. Needless to say, she slapped me with a magazine, and clipped my fun for the evening. Fortunately, I had the caliber to move on to the next range the day after, and soon I was rifling my way through the lanes. The alley was pretty cool, but I wasn't cocked until I saw the one of my dreams! The hunt was over, all I needed to do was hit the bullseye here. I saw her go into the powder room, and strategically positioned myself for her return. When she came out, I got a grip on my nervousness, and asked her to join me for some evening shooting. We played all night, then went back to my place. She asked me to show her the double-barrel. She chambered my round just fine, and I shot a load. I now knew the meaning of what it was like to be a sex pistol.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, normally I won't help the troll, but there is a (small) amount of merit to his claim... especially with AR-16/M16 type rifles that fire from the closed-bolt position.
The problem is with slam-fire, and the fact that the firing pin in these rifles and similar models is "loose." The sudden stop of the bolt moving forward can cause firing pin to strike the primer with enough force that it can fire the round, a condition called "slam fire." This is why Colt switched the firing pin from steel to titanium early on with the AR-15.
Note that this is an extremely rare event, and not something one needs to worry about!
If there is a defect that prevents complete chambering, and a "slam fire" occurs, the nasty explosion thing can happen, though it won't usually send shrapnel in your direction, just in the direction away from the ejection port.
Now, I can tell you about catastrophic weapon failures... at Fort Drum we had a guy with some sand in the barrel of his M16. He squeezes the trigger for the first round when zeroing... KABOOOM! The rifle cracks all over the place, and this guy got one hell of a jolt. (but no injury.)
What happened was, the bullet pushed the sand in front of it, then ground to a halt about halfway down the barrel. The gas had nowhere to expand, and nowhere to vent... the weak point was at the meshed lock at the back of the barrel... the teeth of the barrel blew off, the bolt slammed back, and the gas pressure escaped into the receiver... and cracked the hell out of it.
Our machine shop on post was kind enough to cut the barrel in half so that it was cross-sectioned, you could see the fused sand, the bullet stuck behind it, and the cracks all through the rest of the weapon.
The soldier got an article 15 for failing to maintain his equipment.
Rule #3: Keep your finger OFF the trigger until you're on target and ready to fire.
Indeed. One of our thanksgiving rituals in my family is to get a whole bunch of firearms and shoot up some targets. I don't even have to think about it anymore... my finger isn't on the trigger when I'm not ready for the rifle to fire.
Oh, and a friend brought over his Thomson submachine gun... complete with drum magazine... wow that was fun to shoot. It's heavy... I can see why guys like Al Capone would fire it from the hip.
Drill Sergeant Hixon very quickly taught me not to call it a "gun"
Well, if it's an M16, it's a weapon or rifle. If it's an M249 or M60, it's a [machine] gun (and also a weapon). Drill sergeants never like to make that distinction, though, and you're better off just calling them all weapons, to avoid unnecessary push-ups.
If you're still on active duty, and get the chance, I strongly recommend the Unit Armorer's Course... Not that you want to be your Unit Armorer (the job sucks, and never passes command inspection with good marks) but the course sections on weapons is really nice.
What's your MOS? I was a 13F for 8 years up until earlier this month.
they have the highest high school graduation rate in the US
That could easily be explained as "they have lower standards for graduation."
I certainly don't wish this on you or anybody else, but I'm sure your opinion would be different if your child were ever involved in a gun accident.
Well, *I* grew up with guns, knew how to use them from a young age, and knew what they were capable of. My parents impressed upon me the responsibility and respect one needs when one is handling a firearm, or in a location where firearms can be or are being handled.
I always had access to *my* rifle, since I was about 8. And you know, I never took it out without my father with me, and never did anything irresponsible with it when he wasn't around.
Personally, I don't plan on my kids being stupid around guns.
Seeing that if you have a gun in your house you are more likely to kill a family member than a criminal
Care to quote your statistical source?
Heh. I think it's a hobby for some people to take their mod points and burn them hitting me -1 five times in a row.
9 27 118
It seems they've been developing new hobbies regarding you, lately:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=48400&cid=4
This should take you there.
I've gotten hit with the 5 mod downs before, as well... of course, I know who did it. The only person on my "freaks" list.
1) Think I'll be able to find another floppy drive for the PCjr?
Yeah, check the local thrift stores like Goodwill and St. Vincent de Paul's. I find all kinds of stuff at the one here.
2) Think if I buy an 5 1/4 drive I'll be able to run any of these games on a DOS emulator? I still have DOS 2.0 in boxes, but I'm counting on that PCjr not working forever. I also have an old 486 I could throw an old version of DOS on.
You might be able to use dosemu... and if you've got VMware, probably for sure... unless they use any PCjr specific features, of which I am not sure how many such features existed.
You plan on doing this with Linux or that other OS?
Um, sorry but you don't know what you're talking about. The first Castle Wolfenstein game was made by id Software and was called "Wolfenstein-3D."
e in.html
Man! You had me laughing so hard I spit out of my nose. (Ewww!) I've got a copy of the original "Castle Wolfensten", written by Silas S. Warner, and published by MUSE. Your statement quoted above was a joke, right, or are you really that ignorant?
I just booted it on my IIgs (it still works) and it says Copyright 1981. This is interesting, because all the screenshots and docs I find say Copyright 1983.
Come a little closer so that I can smack you around with a clue-by-four.
Oh, and look here if you want to see it for the Commodore 64: http://www.desktopgames.co.uk/wolf/castlewolfenst
I believe I still *have* my Colecovision. If I do, I have a bunch of games for it, and the expansion box that lets you play Atari 2600 games on it.
Yeah, it was good for single player.
Playing online sucked, though. Gotta be the only game in the world where high ping/packet loss increased your chances of winning.
When someone's connection started to go sour, everyone else saw their tank jittering and disappearing, and it was impossible to hit.
Then, the rampant cheating began...
I quit playing after that.
The original 2-D Castle Wolfenstein, and others from the 8-bit famed Apple/Commodore/Atari machines.
The Zork series on 5 1/4 disks.
Original Ultima series games.
Those are the true collectables.
(first post?)
I agree. I thought it was a bit ridiculous, as well.
Gimme a break... a bobblehead of the CEO? I find that hard to believe, unless it's a company that makes bobbleheads... then it might be true.
One of the cheaper brands (Cendyne?) has had a 52X CD-RW (It's 52X read/write, 48X rewrite) at my local OfficeMax for a few months now.
:)
Doesn't matter, though. I still use my trusty Memorex CRW-1622 that I bought 5 years or more ago. 37 minutes to burn a CD, but I have *never* gotten a coaster.
Of course, the reason I knew about the other brand of 52X burner mentioned above is because I've been eyeing a new burner for a few months now!
This far in the future they wouldn't have sparks because they wouldn't have electricity
Says who? Can anyone say that use of electricity will be abolished in the future? What will we replace it with?
Besides, maybe the sparks are produced by... say... hot metal, kinda like what you get when using an oxyacetylene welder. (No electricity there, mind you.)
because in a world where you can beam matter--beam it, mind you--from here to there, power obviously no longer lives in the wall and travels through wires
Right. Energy obviously just floats around in the atmosphere of the ship uncontained, and the computers and such just kind of suck it in when they need it.
Uh huh.
Now here's the experiment: take any of the scripts from any of the subsequent rip...
Yeah, because we all know that Gene Roddenberry had nothing to do with TNG, and therefore it was most certainly a ripoff.
Personally, after reading through this discussion on Slashdot, I am more interested in quoting an insightful Bill Shatner rather than seeing Nemesis when all the die-hard Trekkies are out.
The rerun of DS9 on our local UPN affiliate is entertaining enough for me, and I don't need to worry about whether or not the script writers are doing Trek justice, or if they are just trying to rip off on the name of something created by a more clever young Roddenberry 30 years ago.
Of course here in occupied Aztlan you'd be doing a public service to your community.
So, do you consider yourself an occipier, or occupied?
Would you, as a presumably anti-gun person, be willing to put a sign in your front yard "This house is gun free!" ?
If not, you are reaping the benefits of allowing guns in the hands of lawful citizens. The crimnals do not know which household may or may not have a gun inside, and so may be less inclined to break in. You may not own one, but no one knows that but you.
A few years ago, some people tried this up in Portland. Needless to say, the signs came down rather quickly after all of their homes were broken into and burglarized.
Personally, I've always fancied the idea of putting a "this house is gun free!" sign in my lawn, then waiting up at night with my rifle. Of course, I can't do that because the would-be criminals have more rights than I do.
The flow of events:
(1) I put up the "gun free" sign. A legal exercise of free speech.
(2) I wait for someone to break into my house and enter it.
(3) I shoot him/her. (Legal if they are breaking into my house.
(4) I go to prison for committing two legal acts, that are, in combination, bad.
Report that elderly people are 50% more likely to commit suicide when they own a gun. [rochester.edu] - this one from a suicide-prevention research project at a university. Not involved in the gun / anti gun debate.
Well, suicide is perfectly legal. At least, here in Oregon.
4. I am probably subsidizing all that risky gun-owning, sports-car driving, chain smoking activity through higher taxes, higher insurance premiums, etc., to the tune of 35% of my gross income. And I'm not very happy about it.
And I am subisidzing the work-capable nonworking people through taxes, the treesitters through higher lumber prices, and probably in a few years, the organic-food whiners that insist on stupid food labels based on contrived information.
But hey, this is America.
Practically, though, you don't see people being held accountable when their gun is stolen...
Perhaps that might be related to the idea that if my car is stolen and used to transport drugs, I don't get held accountable for that, either. Are you saying I should?
Don't get me wrong, if you leave a gun in a state where someone who is legitimately in your home, such as a child, can get it, load it if necessary, and fire it in a manner that is negigent or criminal, then the owner should bear the responsibility.
But, if someone breaks into my house (a crime), steals one of my guns (another crime), and uses it to kill someone (another crime), which of these should I be held accountable for?
How is it my fault that someone breaks into my house, and steals my gun? Since I'm not allowed to mantrap my property, and local codes don't seem to allow me to fence my yard with concertina wire, what exactly am I supposed to do?
I believe the pro-gun ownership lobby has become too extreme defending the right to own assault weapons
Do you even know what an assault rifle is? If so, define it, in your own words.
Don't use the Brady bill's definition, either. There was no such thing as a "semi-automatic assult rifle" before Mrs. Brady and Bill Clinton invented the term.
Keep this in mind, too: In 1926, the government started machine gun registration. (Machine guns include real "assault rifles" like the Thomson submachine gun, full-auto or burst AR-15s/M16s, H&K MP-5s, etc.) Since then, only ONE legally owned machine gun has been used to commit a crime.
Interestingly enough, that ONE person who committed the crime was a cop.
Go figure.
My geek room is... well... I guess I'll start from the door and go counterclockwise...
Two cardboard boxes full of stuff that my wife and I haven't looked at since we moved here. (Yeah, I got a geek wife... geophysics major, woohoo!)
Next, a SparcStation 10 with external 4-drive SCSI box and a 20" monitor.
A CD rack with an assortment of blanks, burns, and originals, no music here.
A Calcomp digitizer pad.
This spot is the first corner we come to...
My computer desk, which currently has my homebuild K6-III/450 system (which runs great, thank you) and a 17" monitor. External modem, zip drive, and tons of cables, running Linux.
A bookshelf with some cardboard boxes in front of them. These are piled with things like floppy drives and I think there's a Macintosh in there somewhere...
In the next corner is an old coffee table with some actual living plants on it, and two windows that you can see out of. Underneath is a UPS, a power strip, several ethernet cables and a couple pairs of military boots that I haven't used since I was in the Army.
Next in line is a wooden cabinet with a Cisco ethernet switch and an HP DeskJet on top. The DeskJet is plugged into the network via a Lantronix print server.
Then comes my wife's K6-II/350 system running Win98SE, on a desk. To the left is a flatbed scanner.
Next is a bookshelf with technical manuals and a shelf full of SCSI cases.
The next wall contains a closet that is inaccessabled, but is full of things ranging from spare circuit boards to rifles.
The closet is inaccessable due to a pile of stuff that I need to get rid of before my wife complains too much, but consists of
+ Several Apple IIgs's
+ More apple stuff
+ Tons of 5 1/4 inch floppies
+ All kinds of crap...
Quick clarification to my post:
Artillery does reach muzzle velocities that can exceed the speed of sound, but the time of flight at that speed is short.
The average velocity of the round is subsonic, and to put enough energy behind the round to have a supersonic average velocity is dangerous and unnecessary, not to mention prohibitive when considering a ton of other variables, too. (Tube length, wall thickness, weight, shockwave near crew members, etc.)
The military has been tracking projectiles for a long time. They had mortar tracking radar during the Vietnam War that could track the shell, predict its impact point, and more importantly, back calculate the launch point.
Ahh, you mean one of these. (Well, the Q37 is a little newer than Vietnam, but same idea)
I served for 3 years in target processing for the 10th Target Acquisition Detachment at Fort Drum. We happened to have two such radars.
Fun things, though you don't want to stand in front of one when it is radiating.
More info here. (and don't forget to look at it's younger brother, the Q36.)
If you start with, say, 20 lbs of supersonic projectile, and then you zap it with a laser, you still have 20 lbs of something moving with about the same average velocity as before.
First of all, I've never heard of any artillery system that can and does fire with supersonic speeds, and I was in the U.S. Army Field Artillery for 4 years.
Perhaps you could point an example of one that does?
(Or maybe you could figure out that accellerating a large mass that is 105 mm - 8 inches (16 inches for some naval guns) in a short tube to supersonic speeds is amazingly dangerous and not practical)
(or, just sit underneath the flight path of the shells and listen to them fly over. if you screw down the fuze and clamp a quarter into the shell body, they make a nice buzz)
maybe it's an explosive shell and the laser persuaded it to explode
Correct.
The only non-exploding shells I know of are smoke and chemical shells. Disabling the fuze in one of those is far better than letting it go, so even if that is the only effectt, it's better than normal operation.
Breaking it in two or poking a hole in it wouldn't be sufficient.
Poking a hole in it and superheating the payload pretty much disables it no matter what it's got inside. And it does have something inside. All artillery shells do. If they didn't have anything in them, they'd just bury themselves in the ground, and to do any damage to troops or equipment you'd have to be very accurate.
Let's examine what happens when you heat up some standard artillery payloads:
Conventional munitions-- High Explosives. Heating these up makes a big "boom" and lots of heat and shrapnel.
"Improved Conventional Munitions" (ICMs)-- Basically a bunch of grenades are loaded into the shell and ejected at the appropriate time in flight. These contain high explosive. Heating these up in the shell would be fatal to the shell.
Land Mines-- Yes, land mines can be deployed via artillery, and are kind of like ICMs but deploy tripwires after settling on the ground, rather than exploding. Same effect as ICMs when heated by a laser.
White Phosphorus-- Incendiary, reacts with atmosphere. Punching a hole in this shell would cause the payload to disperse prematurely, in-flight.
Smoke-- punching a hole in this might cause early dispersement of the payload, or a number of malfunctions.
Chemical weapons-- Heating these up could neutralize the payload.
Now, all artillery shells incorporate some kind of fuze (correct spelling in artillery context), and this is responsible for activating the payload. There are many fuzes that are used, including ones that activate on impact, activate after a delay after impact, activate at a specific time, and activate at a specific altitude, among others. Hitting the fuze with the laser could cause premature activation of the payload.
Now, believe me, on receiving end of artillery, even if all that could be done was to disable the payload, and you still had the shells coming in, it'd be much easier to deal with chunks of metal as opposed to the payloads inside them.
For more information, look here: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/155.htm
Apple ]['s, Commodore-64s, and MS-DOS-running PC clones -- all of which displayed nothing; it just (if you were lucky) silently locked up.
What Apple II's were you using? Most of the time, the II crashed at a BRK instruction, and dumped you into the monitor (debugger for you youngins) and dumped the machine address and registers at the time of the break. (Actually, the machine address plus 2, for technical reasons.)
Some of the same info that Windows displays upon BSOD.
Yeah, well I was hanging out in the Sears on Bolt Street, when I heard about this party happening down on Breach Avenue. I got into my Colt and hammered my way down the street, with my hair-trigger reflexes in my fingers. I scoped out the target and got a grip on the situation. I squeezed my way into the crowd and set my sights on this girl. I locked and loaded my line, and came up to her and told her I could clean her bore. Needless to say, she slapped me with a magazine, and clipped my fun for the evening. Fortunately, I had the caliber to move on to the next range the day after, and soon I was rifling my way through the lanes. The alley was pretty cool, but I wasn't cocked until I saw the one of my dreams! The hunt was over, all I needed to do was hit the bullseye here. I saw her go into the powder room, and strategically positioned myself for her return. When she came out, I got a grip on my nervousness, and asked her to join me for some evening shooting. We played all night, then went back to my place. She asked me to show her the double-barrel. She chambered my round just fine, and I shot a load. I now knew the meaning of what it was like to be a sex pistol.