Oh lordy. Do you know how much aging actors and actresses pay to hide the ravages of old age? The face-lifts, hair dye, and all?
I have a feeling that they will pay top dollar to Cameron to use this technology to make them look young again on the big screen.
I have a few notes on space combat, lasers, railguns, stealth, tactics, delta v, nuclear shaped charges, ship design, and whatnot on my website. I am not a Ph.D, but many of the people who contributed are.
And you will not find any damage model either. The programmer who writes and maintains Orbiter is a pacifist who will not allow any weapon handling functionally to be added to the codebase.
A plan by the European Parliament to restrict the power of national governments to disconnect illegal filesharers has been dumped to win agreement on new telecoms competition laws.
Long-running negotiations over the EU Telecoms Package were completed last night when MEPs agreed to drop amendments that would have made internet access a fundamental right.
After months of negotiations, the agreed package now demands only "appropriate, proportionate and necessary" measures can be taken to enforce copyright. There must be a possibility of judicial review for those disconnected, but not automatic court oversight.
Time to trot out this old but still pertinent quote again:
From "Life-Line" by Robert Heinlein (1938)
"Before we leave this matter I wish to comment on the theory implied by you, Mr. Weems, when you claimed damage to your client. There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit. That is all"
What is worse is that sociopathic CEOs are disproportionately selected because they are more effective at increasing a corporation's profits. So from a corporation's standpoint, they would want a good test for sociopaths so they could hire more.
After all, if corporation A does not hire a given sociopath, their competitors will, which would put them at a disadvanatage.
A related hypothesis is that politicians are disproportionately selected for sociopathy.
This gets more complicated, since any laws intended to restrict the freedom of sociopaths (as determined by a brain scan or other objective measure) would have to be written and passed by politicians.
It seems to me that it would be much more likely they'd pass laws outlawing such brain scans.
Samuel Francis argued that the problems of managerial state extend to issues of crime and justice. In 1992, he introduced the word âoeanarcho-tyrannyâ into the paleocon vocabulary. He once defined it this way: âoewe refuse to control real criminals (that's the anarchy) so we control the innocent (that's the tyranny).â
Basically they are suggesting that the WiMax people are lobbying Congress to delay the switch to DTV.
Their rival, Verizon, cannot deploy Verizon's 4G Long-Term Evolution wireless broadband network until the spectrum is freed up by the elimination of analog TV signals. The longer the delay, the more market penetration for WiMax, and the more trouble for Verizon.
No, mirrors will not work. The weapon will use internally a wide beam that is just barely under the intensity level that will damage the weapon's internal mirrors. At the barrel, the focusing mirror will focus the wide beam down to a searing pin-point on the hapless target.
The focused beam will be more than intense enough to defeat any mirror the target might be wearing.
I have some notes here:
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3l.html#laserpistol
Evernote is a similar application for several platforms. It too is touted as a "backup for your brain."
Its claim to fame is a nice OCR engine. Say you are at a wine tasting event and want to remember a particular wine. You pull out your cell phone, snap a shot of the label, and email it from your phone to your Evernote account. There, the photo goes through the OCR engine, and all recognizable words are added to the indexing.
Later you can do searches on those words to retrieve the image.
I'm curious as to the exact composition of this miracle Avgas replacement. Details seem to be sparse. Whenever I read about some marvelous new compound with superior performance and none of the drawbacks, my skepticism meter starts tingling.
The only drawbacks on Qt I see in the comments here is that the lib is too fat or that C++ is dead. Well, I have been quite productive coding in Python using the PyQt bindings for the Qt framework. And Python is available on most platforms.
Re:Widgets in QGraphicsView look *really* promisin
on
In-Depth With Qt 4.4
·
· Score: 1
Seconded. I had developed a hex grid map for a game using hex tiles to save space. I had previously coded the game map class in Visual Studio C++, and it was a huge clanking mess that took weeks to write and debug.
When I switched to the Qt framework and used the QGraphicsView, I ended up with a small class that took less than a day to write and debug. And even got extra functionality for free (like playing pieces that can be rotated on their axis).
I remember reading a Popular Science article on the new features of the
DD(X) project, one of which is the railgun. According to the article the
railgun would fire a 40 pound projectile (about 18.2 kg) with a Mach 8 muzzle
velocity and Mach 7 velocity at the target. A quick calculation (setting speed
of sound a 343 m/s):
KE = ½ (18.2 kg) (2401 m/s)^2 = 52.46 MJ
KE = ½ (18.2 kg) (2744 m/s)^2 = 68.52 MJ
Which compares much more favorably as a weapon system. Derived values can easily be obtain close to these numbers
We'll take the average range, 225 nmi, for the calculations. Of course we can't
just convert 225 straight to meters, since a nautical mile is a bit over 15%
longer than a standard mile (about 6076 feet). After converting to miles we can
go to meters (or go straight from nmi to meters, if your calculator has a bunch
of built-in conversion factors):
1nmi = 1.151mi
225nmi (1.151nmi / mi) = 258.975mi
1mi = 1.609km = 1609m
x = (258.975mi) (1609m / mi) = 416690.775m
Real Value: 416700 m
Dividing by the time (6 min / 360 sec):
Vx = 416700m / 360s = 1157.5 m/s
Which s a far more appropriate velocity for a kinetic kill weapon. However,
this is only part of the velocity. The railgun fires in a parabolic arc,
getting almost 95 miles up. Assuming the Earth is flat, and the projectile is
launched and lands at the same height, this part of the velocity component is
easy to calculate. In theory the projectile reaches its maximum height half way
through the journey, or at 3 min - 180 s. We can put this into the gravity-displacement
equation to determine the speed. A height of 95 miles (500,000 feet) is about
152400 m.
h = -4.9t2 + vt -> v = (h / t) + 4.9t
Vy = (152400m/ 180s) + (4.9 m/s2)(180s)
= 1728.67 m/s
Now we can combine the two velocity components to determine the actual velocity, by Pythagorean Theorem.
VT = sqrt(1157.5^2 + 1728.67^2) = 2080.41 m/s
Which is much closer to the Mach 7 value that the Navy
claims the projectile hits at. Using this value to calculate the kinetic
energy:
In 2007, the US Navy demonstrated a railgun prototype. It used about 8 megajoules, but the full scale weapon is designed to use 64 megajoules. By way of comparison, current conventional naval 5-inch guns have the equivalent of 9 megajoules of muzzle energy. The full scale weapon will have a range of 200 to 250 nautical miles, as compared to less than 15 nautical miles for a 5-inch gun. The PR handout said the full scale weapon will have "the punch of a Tomahawk cruise missile", or be the equivalent of "hitting a target with a Ford Taurus at 380 mph." It will also travel the 200-250 nautical miles to the target in about six minutes, as opposed to 8 for a Tomahawk cruise missile. At the peak of its ballistic trajectory, the projectile will reach an altitude of 500,000 feet, or about 95 miles, actually exiting the Earth's atmosphere.
When you let hardcore artists design an interface, they'll design what's most efficient for them : an obscure interface where absolutely every function is a short-cut and available at the finger tips. The hardcore artists will be able to use it blindingly fast. The problem will be that they're going to be the only able to actually use the software, because they'll be the only ones to whom the keyboard short-cuts make a sense.
Well, there are pros and cons.
The philosophy of Blender is "one hand on the keyboard, the other on the mouse."
Once you've memorized the short-cuts, it is amazing how fast you can model. It took me about five days of pounding my head against the wall until on the sixth day the Blender interface was suddenly easy to use. I love it.
Slashdot Mirror
Somebody should make a cutesy "Hello Kitty" version of a Mi-Go to be the logo and mascot for Meego.
Oh lordy. Do you know how much aging actors and actresses pay to hide the ravages of old age? The face-lifts, hair dye, and all? I have a feeling that they will pay top dollar to Cameron to use this technology to make them look young again on the big screen.
I have a few notes on space combat, lasers, railguns, stealth, tactics, delta v, nuclear shaped charges, ship design, and whatnot on my website. I am not a Ph.D, but many of the people who contributed are.
Atomic Rockets (index)
Space War: Introduction
Space War: Detection
Space War: Weapons Intro
Space War: Weapons: Conventional
Space War: Weapons: Exotic
Space War: Defenses
Space War: Warship Design
Space War: Strategy and Tactics
And you will not find any damage model either. The programmer who writes and maintains Orbiter is a pacifist who will not allow any weapon handling functionally to be added to the codebase.
Not just The Space Merchants. From Technovelgy
Not to mention Sir Arthur C. Clarke's short story The Food of the Gods
This is just one of the many pitfalls when trying to localize your software.
Does Your Code Pass The Turkey Test?
A plan by the European Parliament to restrict the power of national governments to disconnect illegal filesharers has been dumped to win agreement on new telecoms competition laws.
Long-running negotiations over the EU Telecoms Package were completed last night when MEPs agreed to drop amendments that would have made internet access a fundamental right.
After months of negotiations, the agreed package now demands only "appropriate, proportionate and necessary" measures can be taken to enforce copyright. There must be a possibility of judicial review for those disconnected, but not automatic court oversight.
Time to trot out this old but still pertinent quote again:
From "Life-Line" by Robert Heinlein (1938)
"Before we leave this matter I wish to comment on the theory implied by you, Mr. Weems, when you claimed damage to your client. There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit. That is all"
What is worse is that sociopathic CEOs are disproportionately selected because they are more effective at increasing a corporation's profits. So from a corporation's standpoint, they would want a good test for sociopaths so they could hire more.
After all, if corporation A does not hire a given sociopath, their competitors will, which would put them at a disadvanatage.
A related hypothesis is that politicians are disproportionately selected for sociopathy. This gets more complicated, since any laws intended to restrict the freedom of sociopaths (as determined by a brain scan or other objective measure) would have to be written and passed by politicians.
It seems to me that it would be much more likely they'd pass laws outlawing such brain scans.
From April 11, 2008. Not 2009, 2008
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=new-drug-protects-against-radiation-damage
Spiral Arms Did Not Cause Climate Change on Earth
A new map of the Milky Way galaxy proves that the sun's motion through the spiral arms could not have caused a well-known climate-change cycle.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23763/
Why did they need to erase everything that had happened? Answer: to become free of the arthritic horror of Backwards Compatibility.
Samuel Todd Francis mentioned a similar concept: Anarcho-tyranny.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Francis#Anarcho-tyranny
Samuel Francis argued that the problems of managerial state extend to issues of crime and justice. In 1992, he introduced the word âoeanarcho-tyrannyâ into the paleocon vocabulary. He once defined it this way: âoewe refuse to control real criminals (that's the anarchy) so we control the innocent (that's the tyranny).â
I RTFA, but I'm still a bit snowjobbed because it's pretty light on detail.
There are more details at the following links:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/01/university-of-texas-at-austin-proposes.html
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/01/how-long-until-there-is-capable-fusion.html
Basically they are suggesting that the WiMax people are lobbying Congress to delay the switch to DTV.
Their rival, Verizon, cannot deploy Verizon's 4G Long-Term Evolution wireless broadband network until the spectrum is freed up by the elimination of analog TV signals. The longer the delay, the more market penetration for WiMax, and the more trouble for Verizon.
No, mirrors will not work. The weapon will use internally a wide beam that is just barely under the intensity level that will damage the weapon's internal mirrors. At the barrel, the focusing mirror will focus the wide beam down to a searing pin-point on the hapless target. The focused beam will be more than intense enough to defeat any mirror the target might be wearing. I have some notes here: http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3l.html#laserpistol
Evernote is a similar application for several platforms. It too is touted as a "backup for your brain."
Its claim to fame is a nice OCR engine. Say you are at a wine tasting event and want to remember a particular wine. You pull out your cell phone, snap a shot of the label, and email it from your phone to your Evernote account. There, the photo goes through the OCR engine, and all recognizable words are added to the indexing.
Later you can do searches on those words to retrieve the image.
review: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/21/extend-your-brain-with-evernote-private-beta-invites/
I'm curious as to the exact composition of this miracle Avgas replacement. Details seem to be sparse. Whenever I read about some marvelous new compound with superior performance and none of the drawbacks, my skepticism meter starts tingling.
Seconded. I had developed a hex grid map for a game using hex tiles to save space. I had previously coded the game map class in Visual Studio C++, and it was a huge clanking mess that took weeks to write and debug. When I switched to the Qt framework and used the QGraphicsView, I ended up with a small class that took less than a day to write and debug. And even got extra functionality for free (like playing pieces that can be rotated on their axis).
From here
Thomas Rigby told me this:
I remember reading a Popular Science article on the new features of the DD(X) project, one of which is the railgun. According to the article the railgun would fire a 40 pound projectile (about 18.2 kg) with a Mach 8 muzzle velocity and Mach 7 velocity at the target. A quick calculation (setting speed of sound a 343 m/s):
KE = ½ (18.2 kg) (2401 m/s)^2 = 52.46 MJ
KE = ½ (18.2 kg) (2744 m/s)^2 = 68.52 MJ
Which compares much more favorably as a weapon system. Derived values can easily be obtain close to these numbers
We'll take the average range, 225 nmi, for the calculations. Of course we can't just convert 225 straight to meters, since a nautical mile is a bit over 15% longer than a standard mile (about 6076 feet). After converting to miles we can go to meters (or go straight from nmi to meters, if your calculator has a bunch of built-in conversion factors):
1nmi = 1.151mi
225nmi (1.151nmi / mi) = 258.975mi
1mi = 1.609km = 1609m
x = (258.975mi) (1609m / mi) = 416690.775m
Real Value: 416700 m
Dividing by the time (6 min / 360 sec):
Vx = 416700m / 360s = 1157.5 m/s
Which s a far more appropriate velocity for a kinetic kill weapon. However, this is only part of the velocity. The railgun fires in a parabolic arc, getting almost 95 miles up. Assuming the Earth is flat, and the projectile is launched and lands at the same height, this part of the velocity component is easy to calculate. In theory the projectile reaches its maximum height half way through the journey, or at 3 min - 180 s. We can put this into the gravity-displacement equation to determine the speed. A height of 95 miles (500,000 feet) is about 152400 m.
h = -4.9t2 + vt -> v = (h / t) + 4.9t
Vy = (152400m / 180s) + (4.9 m/s2)(180s)
= 1728.67 m/s
Now we can combine the two velocity components to determine the actual velocity, by Pythagorean Theorem.
VT = sqrt(1157.5^2 + 1728.67^2) = 2080.41 m/s
Which is much closer to the Mach 7 value that the Navy claims the projectile hits at. Using this value to calculate the kinetic energy:
KE = ½ (18.2 kg) (2080 m/s)^2 approximately 39 MJ
In 2007, the US Navy demonstrated a railgun prototype. It used about 8 megajoules, but the full scale weapon is designed to use 64 megajoules. By way of comparison, current conventional naval 5-inch guns have the equivalent of 9 megajoules of muzzle energy. The full scale weapon will have a range of 200 to 250 nautical miles, as compared to less than 15 nautical miles for a 5-inch gun. The PR handout said the full scale weapon will have "the punch of a Tomahawk cruise missile", or be the equivalent of "hitting a target with a Ford Taurus at 380 mph." It will also travel the 200-250 nautical miles to the target in about six minutes, as opposed to 8 for a Tomahawk cruise missile. At the peak of its ballistic trajectory, the projectile will reach an altitude of 500,000 feet, or about 95 miles, actually exiting the Earth's atmosphere.
We shall see if these rosy predictions pan out.
Well, there are pros and cons.
The philosophy of Blender is "one hand on the keyboard, the other on the mouse."
Once you've memorized the short-cuts, it is amazing how fast you can model. It took me about five days of pounding my head against the wall until on the sixth day the Blender interface was suddenly easy to use. I love it.