I believe that the time to fire is more likely dominated by the maintenance issues - making sure that the rails are perfectly straight, the warhead is correctly placed, etc. If you're off by even a little bit that sucker could destroy the railgun on the way out, costing you millions and making it inoperative until you're back home.
Think you're right. If I remember correctly, railguns are extremely nasty to themselves, due mainly to electrical arcing and the damage it does to the rails. There'd have to be a LOT of recalibration after a shot to make sure that the next shot doesn't detroy the area and/or send the projectile off in unexpected directions.
If we're very, VERY lucky, that's the Editors making a really clever point about the information technology discussed in the book. I've got $20 on "no, it's just a fuck-up".
Well, at least he can't possibly fsck it up as much as he fscked up Solaris... I hope. Christ! Clooney works on that, too?!? No wonder Sun couldn't give those DVDs away.
Especially if you use something like C++ you know perfectly well how the resulting code will behave.
I am not a programmer. I learned everything I know about programming from jokes going around the internet, like the "How to shoot yourself in the foot with different programming languages" one. The entry in that for C++ reads something like
C++
You accidently create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying "That's me, over there." Something doesn't quite agree with your post, though I'll be damned if I can tell what it is.
From this typing mistake, we can conclude that the grandparent in fact engages in improper relations with rutabaga.
Ah, if by this you mean that the forglewhoops have been dabbling in string theory again, and that Kansas will outlaw such frippery if paid enough by Gill Bates, I totally agree!
The man is clearly prone to gender essentialism, and is probably something like a "Men's Movement" member.
I think that saying someone is clearly prone to some behavior or another, based on their slashdot posts, is probably a hasty diagnosis based on very little evidence. People tend to post things similar to what have got good responses in the past. Saying that this will inform their opinions, or that the posts accurately reflect their opinions is (to me) a specious argument. I'd have to be convinced.
Smolin himself has not been research active in a long time. And it is unlikely that he understands enough mathematics to judge string theory - like most people.
Not sure what you mean by "research active". His contributions to xarchiv (many published in hack journals like Physical Review and The Journal of Quantum Gravity) are prolific as recently as 2006 and 2004 (noticeable lack of submissions in 2005). And I would NOT call him mathematically illiterate, even in an "esoteric" field like string theory. (Yes, I am a physicist.)
I doubt that even if you include every texture and animation and sound file in what they call "source code " that it would be this much. Smells fishy.
That's the new SmellOVision part of SL. The odors are open-source, too, but their code takes up far more space than all of the rest of it put together.
Haha. I was just joking. I actually use mine by drilling through the case, and making and breaking a couple of connections between the motherboard and three "C" cells hooked in series with paperclips. Manually, beeyotch. Real men type in raw binary without the keyboard. But I appreciate the thought.
Typing this on an Acer laptop. Sure glad I wiped the thing immediately and put linux on. So far I've really liked the laptop, but Acer is one company which gives you "restore" DVDs which contain a disk image and which wipe everything else off if you want to use them to reinstall Windows. Hate that.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that the time to fire is more likely dominated by the maintenance issues - making sure that the rails are perfectly straight, the warhead is correctly placed, etc. If you're off by even a little bit that sucker could destroy the railgun on the way out, costing you millions and making it inoperative until you're back home.
Think you're right. If I remember correctly, railguns are extremely nasty to themselves, due mainly to electrical arcing and the damage it does to the rails. There'd have to be a LOT of recalibration after a shot to make sure that the next shot doesn't detroy the area and/or send the projectile off in unexpected directions.
Why is this posted to IT?
If we're very, VERY lucky, that's the Editors making a really clever point about the information technology discussed in the book. I've got $20 on "no, it's just a fuck-up".
Maybe. On the other hand, Wired is filled with stuff like "Wired, Tired, Expired". Surely vapid crap like that has got to loosen up the tubes somehow.
I am not a programmer. I learned everything I know about programming from jokes going around the internet, like the "How to shoot yourself in the foot with different programming languages" one. The entry in that for C++ reads something like
C++
You accidently create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying "That's me, over there." Something doesn't quite agree with your post, though I'll be damned if I can tell what it is.
program Hello_world
### The following is the canonical 'Hello World' program implemented in fortress ###
load fortran77
print *,"Hello World"
fortress.obfuscate
end program Hello_world
From this typing mistake, we can conclude that the grandparent in fact engages in improper relations with rutabaga.
Ah, if by this you mean that the forglewhoops have been dabbling in string theory again, and that Kansas will outlaw such frippery if paid enough by Gill Bates, I totally agree!
In a hundred years, programmers will be using a language that's completely unrecognizable to modern users -- and it will be called "Fortran".
The man is clearly prone to gender essentialism, and is probably something like a "Men's Movement" member.
I think that saying someone is clearly prone to some behavior or another, based on their slashdot posts, is probably a hasty diagnosis based on very little evidence. People tend to post things similar to what have got good responses in the past. Saying that this will inform their opinions, or that the posts accurately reflect their opinions is (to me) a specious argument. I'd have to be convinced.
(so saith the bitter, suspect devil's-advocate)
Smolin himself has not been research active in a long time. And it is unlikely that he understands enough mathematics to judge string theory - like most people.
Not sure what you mean by "research active". His contributions to xarchiv (many published in hack journals like Physical Review and The Journal of Quantum Gravity) are prolific as recently as 2006 and 2004 (noticeable lack of submissions in 2005). And I would NOT call him mathematically illiterate, even in an "esoteric" field like string theory. (Yes, I am a physicist.)
I think all the posts missed the fact that they claim to have a "Fortan" compiler, which is a misspelling. It's just too bad it wasn't that funny.
Foxmarks is one of the most useful things EVER.
I'd like to have the ability to save sessions rather than having to bookmark all the tabs and re-opening them again.
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2324/ works for me.
Welcome to Petoria!
I'm not even mentiioning the portable version I carry with all of my extensions on it.
Well, thank goodness for that.
I asked for a hand crank, instead I get some yo-yo thing. Humpfh.
My god! I think you may have just read your father's mind!
(kidding, kidding. Couldn't resist)
120000 years? 0.003%? I see that kids these days have no concept of math. 120000 years is about 19 times as old as the earth is! ;)
bad 90's palm* flashbacks {shudder}
.. If you DARE.
Lotion, man. Lotion.
* asterisk was parent's original. You can look it up . .
Yeah, you know, because that's *the* biggest complaint you see on enthusiast/overclocker message boards. Exploding capacitors.
Run one of the more demanding versions of Vista, and good luck NOT seeing crap explode.
http://www.justfuckinggoogleit.com/search.pl?query =the+world+is+google's+bitch :)
I doubt that even if you include every texture and animation and sound file in what they call "source code " that it would be this much. Smells fishy.
That's the new SmellOVision part of SL. The odors are open-source, too, but their code takes up far more space than all of the rest of it put together.
Brilliant :)
Haha. I was just joking. I actually use mine by drilling through the case, and making and breaking a couple of connections between the motherboard and three "C" cells hooked in series with paperclips. Manually, beeyotch. Real men type in raw binary without the keyboard. But I appreciate the thought.
Typing this on an Acer laptop. Sure glad I wiped the thing immediately and put linux on. So far I've really liked the laptop, but Acer is one company which gives you "restore" DVDs which contain a disk image and which wipe everything else off if you want to use them to reinstall Windows. Hate that.
If she's merely a starlet, isn't it probable that this is all just a publicity stunt to help thrust herself into full-blown stardom?
I think it's the guy who was doing the thrusting into the starlet. And why not?!?