There was an SF short story many years ago about the ultimate computer chess game, played when the machines had achieved the ability to play a perfect game. The moves:
A high-school classmate of mine made one with no fabrication whatsoever -- merely a little deceit.
We had a history teacher who had serious delusions of adequacy...you know the type. He invited us to bring in historical artifacts for Show & Tell, and a band member brought in a stand meant for a large musical instrument, a big shiny tubular brass thing on a tripod...which he described as a "Byzantine trench mortar."
Mr. Perkins was very impressed, especially by the kid's assurances that it had been carefully deactivated by a weapons technician.
New development this afternoon: Another federal judge here in Colorado handed down another injunction against the no-call list, arguing that it's unconstitutional because it exempts charities.
A sonic "boom" is really a double crack, more of a BABOOM. Two principal shock waves propagate out from the airplane, one from the nose and one from the tail. The airflow goes through an abrupt pressure rise as it crosses the first wave, and an abrupt drop at the second, and each wave creates a percussive sound as it passes an observer. This muffling idea is likely some kind of phase-adjusting arrangement that partially cancels the waves out.
Just one more attack on the little pleasures of life, like the proposal to develop a gasless bean.
When Number of the Beast came out, the rambling pace, the constant harping on minor points and the losses of continuity caused quite a few people to speculate that he was pretty badly over the hill in the cognitive department. Then there was a report that he had an organic ailment that mimics senility, and was under treatment for it, and another book (I forget which one) came out looking somewhat better. Then The Cat Who Walked Through Walls appeared, looking very much like NotB.
Nothing surprising about "newly-discovered writings" or "newly-edited notes" leading to postumous publication, though; hell, Papa Hemingway blew his brains out in 1961 and he's still publishing a novel every five or six years.
The "Wisconsin Ducks" are indeed still around, with quite a large fleet of the machines...and there are four or five other businesses around the country doing the same thing on a smaller scale.
The DUKW wouldn't make much of a personal vehicle, though: it's basically a 6x6 GM truck with 15 forward speeds and a boat hull, and you have to load it up with 30-odd tourists to make it economically feasible.
There was a small machine built in Germany in the Sixties called the Amphicar, that didn't sell very well. It was an unimpressive car, and a worse boat.
That would be tough. You'd have to use the cooling water in a preheat mode, exchanging with cold water entering the heater; most of the time the heater tank is at 140F, which is hotter than the computer water.
Agreed...(almost) every computer is ultimately air-cooled, but water makes it relatively easy to transfer large amounts of heat from the small heat-transfer surface of a CPU to the much larger transfer surface of a big radiator.
Hey, how about using the coolant loop (about 100F on my Koolance system) to heat the waterbed (about 90)?
That used to be the stock-in-trade of the National Enquirer and similar papers. When a large airplane crashed, the whole paper would be taken up by grisly shots of firemen scooping body remnants out of the wreckage; car accidents that produced a decapitation or an impalement would get a single shot.
Their revenues were pretty limited in those days because the papers were only sold at the grubby newsstand downtown next to the bus station, along with the jerkoff books. The business was revolutionized when some mobbed-up guys bought the papers and switched to the current format to get them into grocery stores.
None of those come close to the fighter pilot helmets with a fluorescent light shining in the pilot's face to keep him from seeing anything...well, OK, the dog.
The FCC preempted ZONING restrictions, not covenants. Covenants are a contractual issue over which the FCC has no control. If you bought a house with a no-antenna covenant, you signed a contract not to erect an antenna.
Congress preempted covenants against TV and DBS antennas in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, but it ignored amateur radio because the same voters who want TV antennas don't want ham antennas next door. The ARRL campaigns for relief, but good luck.
First we had hams living in Mom's basement; then the real estate industry invented restrictive covenants that ban ham antennas; and now the same demographic is doing Linux downstairs...
Drag goes up with Mach number, not down. The rate of increase peaks just before Mach 1, but it never becomes negative.
Drag does decrease with altitude, since it increases with density. The density at 52,000 feet is about 14% of sea level, so the drag is indeed quite a bit lower. Still, an object as big and light as a chunk of foam will decelerate VERY quickly. Consider that an ordinary parachute decelerates from about 200 mph down to 20 mph in a couple of hundred feet, and that's with the weight of a human attached to it.
The aerospace company I work for ran into that issue thirty years ago when we came to Denver. We don't often bother with that exam either, and the local PE society complained. So we sent them a nice letter saying we would be glad to comply with the rules, and would they please send a copy of the sample test, four hundred membership applications, and the schedule for their next officer election?
Last I heard, the FCC EMI requirements for home computers were tighter than for business machines, so your home machine wouldn't hit the cheap crappy TV on your neighbor's side of the sheetrock.
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There was an SF short story many years ago about the ultimate computer chess game, played when the machines had achieved the ability to play a perfect game. The moves:
White: P-K4
Black: Resigns
rj
"Die Mark -- gut! Die Franc -- gut! Die Euro -- Scheiss!"
--Jolly elderly waiter in Koblenz, 2002
rj
A high-school classmate of mine made one with no fabrication whatsoever -- merely a little deceit.
We had a history teacher who had serious delusions of adequacy...you know the type. He invited us to bring in historical artifacts for Show & Tell, and a band member brought in a stand meant for a large musical instrument, a big shiny tubular brass thing on a tripod...which he described as a "Byzantine trench mortar."
Mr. Perkins was very impressed, especially by the kid's assurances that it had been carefully deactivated by a weapons technician.
rj
New development this afternoon: Another federal judge here in Colorado handed down another injunction against the no-call list, arguing that it's unconstitutional because it exempts charities.
rj
It would be equally accurate to assert that about the Wright Flyer. It had no wheels, and was catapult launched.
rj
His name wasn't Edward Teller. Don't you read the media? It was Edward Tellerfatherofthehydrogenbomb.
rj
(a)About like close-by thunder; (b)Something less.
rj
A sonic "boom" is really a double crack, more of a BABOOM. Two principal shock waves propagate out from the airplane, one from the nose and one from the tail. The airflow goes through an abrupt pressure rise as it crosses the first wave, and an abrupt drop at the second, and each wave creates a percussive sound as it passes an observer. This muffling idea is likely some kind of phase-adjusting arrangement that partially cancels the waves out.
Just one more attack on the little pleasures of life, like the proposal to develop a gasless bean.
rj
sub-sonic bullets in the black ops arsenal At your local sporting goods store, too. They include .22LR and .45 Auto.
rj
When Number of the Beast came out, the rambling pace, the constant harping on minor points and the losses of continuity caused quite a few people to speculate that he was pretty badly over the hill in the cognitive department. Then there was a report that he had an organic ailment that mimics senility, and was under treatment for it, and another book (I forget which one) came out looking somewhat better. Then The Cat Who Walked Through Walls appeared, looking very much like NotB.
Nothing surprising about "newly-discovered writings" or "newly-edited notes" leading to postumous publication, though; hell, Papa Hemingway blew his brains out in 1961 and he's still publishing a novel every five or six years.
The "Wisconsin Ducks" are indeed still around, with quite a large fleet of the machines...and there are four or five other businesses around the country doing the same thing on a smaller scale.
The DUKW wouldn't make much of a personal vehicle, though: it's basically a 6x6 GM truck with 15 forward speeds and a boat hull, and you have to load it up with 30-odd tourists to make it economically feasible.
There was a small machine built in Germany in the Sixties called the Amphicar, that didn't sell very well. It was an unimpressive car, and a worse boat.
rj
That would be tough. You'd have to use the cooling water in a preheat mode, exchanging with cold water entering the heater; most of the time the heater tank is at 140F, which is hotter than the computer water.
rj
Agreed...(almost) every computer is ultimately air-cooled, but water makes it relatively easy to transfer large amounts of heat from the small heat-transfer surface of a CPU to the much larger transfer surface of a big radiator.
Hey, how about using the coolant loop (about 100F on my Koolance system) to heat the waterbed (about 90)?
rj
Like right here...
rj
That used to be the stock-in-trade of the National Enquirer and similar papers. When a large airplane crashed, the whole paper would be taken up by grisly shots of firemen scooping body remnants out of the wreckage; car accidents that produced a decapitation or an impalement would get a single shot.
Their revenues were pretty limited in those days because the papers were only sold at the grubby newsstand downtown next to the bus station, along with the jerkoff books. The business was revolutionized when some mobbed-up guys bought the papers and switched to the current format to get them into grocery stores.
rj
None of those come close to the fighter pilot helmets with a fluorescent light shining in the pilot's face to keep him from seeing anything...well, OK, the dog.
rj
The FCC preempted ZONING restrictions, not covenants. Covenants are a contractual issue over which the FCC has no control. If you bought a house with a no-antenna covenant, you signed a contract not to erect an antenna.
Congress preempted covenants against TV and DBS antennas in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, but it ignored amateur radio because the same voters who want TV antennas don't want ham antennas next door. The ARRL campaigns for relief, but good luck.
rj NY0F
First we had hams living in Mom's basement; then the real estate industry invented restrictive covenants that ban ham antennas; and now the same demographic is doing Linux downstairs...
rj
Ummm... force fields are all over the place. Around a magnet, between the plates of a capacitor, around your neighborhood planet...
rj
Drag goes up with Mach number, not down. The rate of increase peaks just before Mach 1, but it never becomes negative.
Drag does decrease with altitude, since it increases with density. The density at 52,000 feet is about 14% of sea level, so the drag is indeed quite a bit lower. Still, an object as big and light as a chunk of foam will decelerate VERY quickly. Consider that an ordinary parachute decelerates from about 200 mph down to 20 mph in a couple of hundred feet, and that's with the weight of a human attached to it.
rj
Why yes, that is US policy...it's a bit easier to get people to go into danger if you don't make a habit of abandoning them.
rj
Hey, people routinely put food in that shelf at the back end of the grocery cart, where they also put kids in diapers...you gotta have faith.
rj
The aerospace company I work for ran into that issue thirty years ago when we came to Denver. We don't often bother with that exam either, and the local PE society complained. So we sent them a nice letter saying we would be glad to comply with the rules, and would they please send a copy of the sample test, four hundred membership applications, and the schedule for their next officer election?
Haven't heard from them since.
rj
rj
A kid in a King Tiger.
rj