You can still play the three notes of the chimes in a commercial
You could conceivably make a case for controlling even that. The NBC chimes consist of the notes G, E, C -- which, according to some sources, constituted an acronym for General Electric Corp which had an interest in NBC.
No, at least according to my cousin the doctor. His explanation:
The human brain is encased in several pounds of bone. The human fist is made of, basically, chicken drumsticks. Punch someone in the head too hard, and you'll break your fingers. Bare-knuckle boxers pulled their punches for that reason; the object was to deliver moderate hits to both the supraorbital ridges. Thanks to the heavy concentration of blood vessels in the head, the opponent would be blinded by blood, and the fight was over.
The boxing glove solidifies the fist to the point where a powerfully-built man can deliver a maximum-effort blow to the head without injuring himself. It changed boxing from a face-rearranging sport into a brain-damaging sport. Which gave boxing a better reputation than it deserves, because the brain damage usually doesn't show up right away; it waits years, and then they can blame it on Parkinson's disease or somesuch.
Couple of years ago I drove up to the outdoor box at my local PO, dropped in a fistful of bills, then drove to work. Few minutes later, I reached in my pocket and found the stamps I had meant to put on the envelopes.
I drove back to the PO and told the postmistress of my plight. She said "Go on out to the box. I'll send somebody." A clerk promptly showed up carrying an empty sack. She then unlocked the box and stood there for half an hour, in miserably cold weather, supervising me while I rooted through the bin for my envelopes. Meanwhile, she used the sack to receive mail from drivers who couldn't reach the box because I was in the way.
I found all but two of my bills. When I was done, the clerk checked their return addresses against my driver's license and I was on my way.
Two days later I received two envelopes, each containing a Xerox copy of one of my checks and a note saying I could retrieve them if I liked.
Oh, and if I drop a Netflix in that same box by about 10 AM, I get an email the same evening saying it's in Returned status and my next disk is on the way.
Good point -- but still, it will deliver all those coulombs on command. From a circuit analysis POV, a storage battery can be treated very accurately as a charge storage device. Externally, it differs from a capacitor only in that its voltage doesn't go up (much) with charge level.
If there is anything surprising here, it is that we made it all the way to 2009 before someone thought to conduct experiments on a matter as important to public safety as emergency exits.
We made it to 1942 before we even required emergency exits to open outward. Google "Cocoanut Grove Fire".
I remember when the first proof of an extra-solar planet was found, and people were amazed.
Well, maybe you were amazed. The existence of extra-solar planets has never been in serious doubt; we went a long time without finding any for the simple reason that they are extremely hard to detect. There were many supposed observations that fizzled out in experimental error, and that resulted in a lot of skepticism being attached to further finds. Now that we have the proper measurement techniques, the discoveries are coming at a rate of a dozen or more per year.
Look at it this way. Suppose you and I are standing on two mountaintops a few miles apart on a dark moonless night. I have a five-cell flashlight and one of those war-surplus searchlights they use to advertise new furniture stores. If I point the flashlight at you and turn it on, you'll see it easily.
Now suppose I point the searchlight at you and turn it on. Then I turn the flashlight on again -- or maybe I don't. Can you tell whether it's on or not?
That is approximately the problem involved in finding an extrasolar planet.
Well, you'll have to explain the logic behind that. You borrow money, you develop a product, you patent it, you pay the money back and you own the patent. You weren't "granted" anything: you took the risk by borrowing money, and you get the proceeds from the patent you gambled on.
Unless, of course, you fail to pay the loan back -- in which case you're bankrupt and the lender winds up owning the patent. Venture capitalist loan, government loan...what's the difference?
There was an article in Scientific American perhaps forty years ago about an experimental effort to make an unrideable bicycle. They tried mounting a flywheel on the front wheel axis, geared to spin backward and zero out the angular momentum, and a number of other tricks, none of which worked. I believe the one that finally did work was a geometry change involving the trail, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
Motorgliders have been around longer than that, but they are just as much "sporting goods" as a pure sailplane is. The auxiliary engine doesn't give you the freedom to travel long distances at will. It does two things: it saves you the $30-$60 it costs to get airborne behind a towplane, and it means that if you run out of thermals you can make it to an airport instead of landing in a farm field and calling someone to bring the trailer. If the weather isn't soarable, you aren't taking any trips.
My first thought was, Steve meant Windows 7 is designed to be virtually unusable as payback for all the complaints about Vista, but I might be biased.
Reminds me of when I broke a fibula in my first year of skiing. My doctor thought skiing was something only a dumbass would do, and told me I'd think so too by the time I got out of the cast. I came really close to asking him if he planned to set my leg backwards...
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Matterafact, the proximity-fuzed antiaircraft shells of WW2 had a vacuum tube in them.
rj
...that when somebody came up to you out of the blue and invited you to a party, all you had to worry about was Amway.
rj
A touch-screen panel would work just peachy for that too, but MSFS is the one with the great big market. Personally, I run FlightGear.
rj
I think MS Flight Sim users would love a configurable touch-screen instrument panel, but MS has canned its MSFS development team, so forget that.
rj
You could conceivably make a case for controlling even that. The NBC chimes consist of the notes G, E, C -- which, according to some sources, constituted an acronym for General Electric Corp which had an interest in NBC.
rj
Yes.
and the gloves reduce the risk
No, at least according to my cousin the doctor. His explanation:
The human brain is encased in several pounds of bone. The human fist is made of, basically, chicken drumsticks. Punch someone in the head too hard, and you'll break your fingers. Bare-knuckle boxers pulled their punches for that reason; the object was to deliver moderate hits to both the supraorbital ridges. Thanks to the heavy concentration of blood vessels in the head, the opponent would be blinded by blood, and the fight was over.
The boxing glove solidifies the fist to the point where a powerfully-built man can deliver a maximum-effort blow to the head without injuring himself. It changed boxing from a face-rearranging sport into a brain-damaging sport. Which gave boxing a better reputation than it deserves, because the brain damage usually doesn't show up right away; it waits years, and then they can blame it on Parkinson's disease or somesuch.
rj
I'll second that.
Couple of years ago I drove up to the outdoor box at my local PO, dropped in a fistful of bills, then drove to work. Few minutes later, I reached in my pocket and found the stamps I had meant to put on the envelopes.
I drove back to the PO and told the postmistress of my plight. She said "Go on out to the box. I'll send somebody." A clerk promptly showed up carrying an empty sack. She then unlocked the box and stood there for half an hour, in miserably cold weather, supervising me while I rooted through the bin for my envelopes. Meanwhile, she used the sack to receive mail from drivers who couldn't reach the box because I was in the way.
I found all but two of my bills. When I was done, the clerk checked their return addresses against my driver's license and I was on my way.
Two days later I received two envelopes, each containing a Xerox copy of one of my checks and a note saying I could retrieve them if I liked.
Oh, and if I drop a Netflix in that same box by about 10 AM, I get an email the same evening saying it's in Returned status and my next disk is on the way.
What a bunch of lazy-ass losers.
rj
Good point -- but still, it will deliver all those coulombs on command. From a circuit analysis POV, a storage battery can be treated very accurately as a charge storage device. Externally, it differs from a capacitor only in that its voltage doesn't go up (much) with charge level.
rj
Your typical Diehard stores about a quarter million of them.
And it's charge, not current.
rj
...to a nonexistent address and see if she asks for directions.
rj
We made it to 1942 before we even required emergency exits to open outward. Google "Cocoanut Grove Fire".
rj
...I just told my Electronics 1001 students about the tube testers they used to have at Seven-Eleven. I'll have a 12AU6 and a Slurpee, please. rj
Perhaps you'd prefer Scientific American: http://preview.tinyurl.com/lvnqa3
rj
It can be put more succinctly:
Some societies knowingly sentence their criminals to be gang-raped.
Others don't.
rj
Well, maybe you were amazed. The existence of extra-solar planets has never been in serious doubt; we went a long time without finding any for the simple reason that they are extremely hard to detect. There were many supposed observations that fizzled out in experimental error, and that resulted in a lot of skepticism being attached to further finds. Now that we have the proper measurement techniques, the discoveries are coming at a rate of a dozen or more per year.
Look at it this way. Suppose you and I are standing on two mountaintops a few miles apart on a dark moonless night. I have a five-cell flashlight and one of those war-surplus searchlights they use to advertise new furniture stores. If I point the flashlight at you and turn it on, you'll see it easily.
Now suppose I point the searchlight at you and turn it on. Then I turn the flashlight on again -- or maybe I don't. Can you tell whether it's on or not?
That is approximately the problem involved in finding an extrasolar planet.
rj
Perhaps it would help if you thought of the pilot as a sysadmin.
rj
Snrk... http://preview.tinyurl.com/obgg5l
rj
Or figure out how to make a successful landing in a river when the engines fill up with birds...
rj
Well, you'll have to explain the logic behind that. You borrow money, you develop a product, you patent it, you pay the money back and you own the patent. You weren't "granted" anything: you took the risk by borrowing money, and you get the proceeds from the patent you gambled on.
Unless, of course, you fail to pay the loan back -- in which case you're bankrupt and the lender winds up owning the patent. Venture capitalist loan, government loan...what's the difference?
rj
That would seem to be a fairly accurate definition of "patent"...
rj
Which is why we have a MicroCenter hereabouts...
rj
And the lack of people who have the foggiest notion of what a radio shack is...
rj
rj
Motorgliders have been around longer than that, but they are just as much "sporting goods" as a pure sailplane is. The auxiliary engine doesn't give you the freedom to travel long distances at will. It does two things: it saves you the $30-$60 it costs to get airborne behind a towplane, and it means that if you run out of thermals you can make it to an airport instead of landing in a farm field and calling someone to bring the trailer. If the weather isn't soarable, you aren't taking any trips.
rj
Reminds me of when I broke a fibula in my first year of skiing. My doctor thought skiing was something only a dumbass would do, and told me I'd think so too by the time I got out of the cast. I came really close to asking him if he planned to set my leg backwards...
rj