Are you kidding? Have you read Carmack's logs? He's demonstrated a perfect example of how *NOT* to run a rocket program. Heck, he can't even make up his mind on what sort of propellants to use! He wrecks his craft every other test. Etc. It's embarassing; I feel bad for the guy.
Amateurs doing their own skilled experimentation are always welcome in this field, however, as they provide data that more limited/focused programs can't:-)
So perhaps we should judge them by their efforts, not by their successes relative to established agencies? Carmack may not be an Uber Rocket Engineer, but he's certainly an enthused one. Perhaps you should communicate with him and see if he's willing to listen to what you think he's doing wrong.
For myself, I'm actually rather astounded and very pleased by how well private spaceflight efforts are going at the moment. As long as they don't get legislatively strangled, I fully expect that some private company or another will have a human in orbit within the next few years. That'd be a helluva accomplishment that previously required the resources of a government, and it's not to be taken lightly. So as far as I'm concerned we should applaud efforts like Carmack's, for their addition to the body of knowledge, and not laugh at them.
I'm visualizing stale sweat, Catastrophic Ancient Body Odor, lubricant smells, the wonderful odor of ozone from electronics (just to add some spice:), and that oh-so-subtle "Somebody's Lived In This Suit Before" odor, which, of course, defies description unless you've experienced it. It can be catastrophically mind-altering:)
Ditto on the beer, but instead I have a 12" Quiznos TBG sub in front of me:) Pizza, meh:)/begin_flamewar Quiznos rules:)
In Bladerunner, it wasn't clones but humanoid androids who had the limited lifespans (by design, not a bug:) Clones weren't mentioned at all in the movie that I can remember.
I thought they actually increased it's density exponentially by transmutating elements, and that's why it was shrinking?
(recalled from some discussion or another years ago)
As to the scale, that's easy, just borrow Roseanne's, I'm sure it's calibrated in scientific notation:)
SB
Re:Wait a sec, this story isn't about "dark matter
on
Dark Matter Discovered
·
· Score: 1
That's hilarious:D and does have *some* truth to it... can't get much past teaching grade school science anymore without a good math grounding, at least linear alg and above, afaik
As a beside, that page isn't very friendly to the Konqueror web browser:
This presentation contains content that your browser may not be able to show properly. This presentation was optimized for more recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer.
If you would like to proceed anyway, click here.
and it comes out messy. I assume you haven't had time to convert it to proper html yet:) I might be able to help with that if I can ekk out some time.
Which is an interesting fact, but in general most people only encounter/ed "splinters of the true cross" thru those gentlepeoples most well known as "snake oil salesmen" of which we seem to currently have a large surplus of - which is normal,apparently, in today's culture.:)
I'd like to see better dating. If the dates coincided within a few hundred or maybe even a thousand years, I'd be convinced. Best I've seen so far is hundreds of thousands of years, which is way too much - but then we're well within dating error bars at 250 myo.
Even without the "focused shockwave" theory it's certainly possible that a large impact could have triggered eruptions elsewhere. It would almost certainly be much more powerful - and more localized - than the tsunami earthshift was.
Another interesting idea that I've read is that the Earth experienced an increased influx of impacts at the time (for whtever reason) and there were impacts all over the globe. It'd be interesting if we discovered another large crater formation dating about the same time...
Something to ponder...
Impact Calculator gives 1.17*10^7 megatons if I input something similar to Chixilcub, while estimates I've seen on the recent tsunami quake aren't anywhere near in agreement but orders of magnitude smaller - which gives us a scale anyway.:)
Agreed. I used to live in N. MN in the swampland (Iron Range) and I'm one of those people whom for whatever reason mosquit-woes consider Fine Dining:0
A.S.S.S. (lol) helps - doesn't eliminate the problem, for me at least, but it definitely reduced it. I'd put some Avon on one arm, and watch the other arm get covered quicker.
I've since moved to somewhere much drier. Mosquitoes? What mosquitoes?:-D
( Of course we have certain bluebottle-type flies who would make excellent torture implements.:( )
Thanks for the info. I'm going to get a chance to play with it in the next couple weeks (after I get done installing gentoo, that is:) - the hardware will be here any day now.
Any other tips? Also running nvidia cards, and I'll have a epox k8t800 chipset board. Other than that pretty much a vanilla P-ATA setup, at first anyways:)
I wasn't talking about nationwide rates; I was talking about a small midwestern town that was transformed into an echo of big city ghettoes. That's a little different:)
$400 billion defense budget. to kill people./ dont run off at the mouth about the good you people do when you spend far more doing ill.
Oh, shut up. If you think we're a sick country for having a well-funded military (ha!) then you should perhaps read some history.
Note that I didn't say I agreed totally with what our Wise and Benevolent Leaders are doing with our military, just that I think that anyone who criticizes military funding in this day and age is a shortsighted idiot.
Hmm. I still think a forward sweeping beam would be more efficient - remember, you want to catch what isn't caught on the first sweep and vaporize it again before it has time to fall (maybe it's a particularly tough little bugger to vaporize and takes some hits to reduce it ash). A perpendicular-to-travel beam wouldn't do so, as it only has one chance. Several perp-t-t beams wouldn't work either, unless you want to change your cutting height. Visualize it with grass under the plenum, and what the beams would have to cover while the mower moves forward at an unpredictable speed - and we might as well try to compensate for ground height variations if we're trying to design something like this - massproduced, the hardware would be cheap, it's the software that'll be a lot of fun:)
Several such sweeping beams might even work better. I'd have to think about the geometry a bit. One wants to cover everything within the mower plenum from as many angles as possible, yet not have overlap. Argh:)
Agreed about the extension cord... but one might as well think ahead, eh? lol@the cordless fad - dangitall, we REALLY need a breakthrough in amp-hour storage...
My only comment is that I don't donate to charities based on their secular or religious backgrounds. I think any charity that proclaims its ideology is doing so for political reasons and I find that distasteful.
What charities do you donate to, then? Every charity has an ideology, of one sort or another.
I'd criticise my government in a heartbeat. I think you'd do the same. That's the Australian way
and not the American way? You must read very little American media, internet or otherwise. We recently had this hotly contested election...
As someone above pointed out, this debate is pointless. Those who can and want to, will contribute. The private contributions will likely be close to what governments everywhere contribute. So what? Who gives a flying fuck where they come from as long as they are? Bickering like this is what keeps us from entering an adult stage as a species.
My hometown, when I was growing up, hadn't had a murder in some decades. It was still old-fashioned in that the worst you could expect, even as a kid as I was, was getting beaten up. Not knifed or shot. I used to bike or walk all the way across town at weird hours of the morning.
Nowadays I'd be nervous walking around there at night even carrying. There are armed officers at the High School doors.
Nostalgia? Yeah, I guess so:(
Seriously, there's a difference between nostalgia for past good times, and the pseudo-nostalgia of watching someplace that you loved go to hell in a handbasket. But the veil between the two can be pretty thin.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you kidding? Have you read Carmack's logs? He's demonstrated a perfect example of how *NOT* to run a rocket program. Heck, he can't even make up his mind on what sort of propellants to use! He wrecks his craft every other test. Etc. It's embarassing; I feel bad for the guy.
:-)
Amateurs doing their own skilled experimentation are always welcome in this field, however, as they provide data that more limited/focused programs can't
So perhaps we should judge them by their efforts, not by their successes relative to established agencies? Carmack may not be an Uber Rocket Engineer, but he's certainly an enthused one. Perhaps you should communicate with him and see if he's willing to listen to what you think he's doing wrong.
For myself, I'm actually rather astounded and very pleased by how well private spaceflight efforts are going at the moment. As long as they don't get legislatively strangled, I fully expect that some private company or another will have a human in orbit within the next few years. That'd be a helluva accomplishment that previously required the resources of a government, and it's not to be taken lightly. So as far as I'm concerned we should applaud efforts like Carmack's, for their addition to the body of knowledge, and not laugh at them.
Cheers,
SB
Incomprehensible? :-)
SB
Yeah, a billion simultaneous viewers would do that :)
SB
Yeah, where's the smell-o-vision plugin?
:), and that oh-so-subtle "Somebody's Lived In This Suit Before" odor, which, of course, defies description unless you've experienced it. It can be catastrophically mind-altering :)
:) Pizza, meh :) /begin_flamewar Quiznos rules :)
I'm visualizing stale sweat, Catastrophic Ancient Body Odor, lubricant smells, the wonderful odor of ozone from electronics (just to add some spice
Ditto on the beer, but instead I have a 12" Quiznos TBG sub in front of me
Cheers,
SB
In Bladerunner, it wasn't clones but humanoid androids who had the limited lifespans (by design, not a bug :) Clones weren't mentioned at all in the movie that I can remember.
Cheers,
SB
and wifi towers
Then there are places like remote Venezuala where it takes Michael Douglas ten years to find out the Doobie Brothers broke up.
Romancing The Stone?
Man, the world was a weird place when I was a kid, just like one of those science fiction novels.
Nay, it was just a looooong ways away...
SB
I thought they actually increased it's density exponentially by transmutating elements, and that's why it was shrinking?
:)
(recalled from some discussion or another years ago)
As to the scale, that's easy, just borrow Roseanne's, I'm sure it's calibrated in scientific notation
SB
That's hilarious :D and does have *some* truth to it... can't get much past teaching grade school science anymore without a good math grounding, at least linear alg and above, afaik
:) I might be able to help with that if I can ekk out some time.
As a beside, that page isn't very friendly to the Konqueror web browser:
This presentation contains content that your browser may not be able to show properly. This presentation was optimized for more recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer.
If you would like to proceed anyway, click here.
and it comes out messy. I assume you haven't had time to convert it to proper html yet
Cheers and how are you?
SB
Which is an interesting fact, but in general most people only encounter/ed "splinters of the true cross" thru those gentlepeoples most well known as "snake oil salesmen" of which we seem to currently have a large surplus of - which is normal,apparently, in today's culture. :)
SB
Agreed! :-D
SB
to read before discussion is archived. :)
Cheers,
SB
If I had mod points right now, I'd give'em all to you
SB
Luck doesn't favor anybody.
SB
I'd like to see better dating. If the dates coincided within a few hundred or maybe even a thousand years, I'd be convinced. Best I've seen so far is hundreds of thousands of years, which is way too much - but then we're well within dating error bars at 250 myo.
:)
Even without the "focused shockwave" theory it's certainly possible that a large impact could have triggered eruptions elsewhere. It would almost certainly be much more powerful - and more localized - than the tsunami earthshift was.
Another interesting idea that I've read is that the Earth experienced an increased influx of impacts at the time (for whtever reason) and there were impacts all over the globe. It'd be interesting if we discovered another large crater formation dating about the same time...
Something to ponder...
Impact Calculator gives 1.17*10^7 megatons if I input something similar to Chixilcub, while estimates I've seen on the recent tsunami quake aren't anywhere near in agreement but orders of magnitude smaller - which gives us a scale anyway.
SB
Agreed. I used to live in N. MN in the swampland (Iron Range) and I'm one of those people whom for whatever reason mosquit-woes consider Fine Dining :0
:-D
:( )
A.S.S.S. (lol) helps - doesn't eliminate the problem, for me at least, but it definitely reduced it. I'd put some Avon on one arm, and watch the other arm get covered quicker.
I've since moved to somewhere much drier. Mosquitoes? What mosquitoes?
( Of course we have certain bluebottle-type flies who would make excellent torture implements.
Don't even get me started on ticks.
SB
O' Big Brother, where art thou?
:)
Behind you
SB
sorry, a mind control laser made me do it
What would be the point? The technology to do this is already available all over the world; heck, most of it is actually manufactured elsewhere.
Sigh.
SB
Thanks for the info. I'm going to get a chance to play with it in the next couple weeks (after I get done installing gentoo, that is :) - the hardware will be here any day now.
:)
Any other tips? Also running nvidia cards, and I'll have a epox k8t800 chipset board. Other than that pretty much a vanilla P-ATA setup, at first anyways
cheers,
SB
I wasn't talking about nationwide rates; I was talking about a small midwestern town that was transformed into an echo of big city ghettoes. That's a little different
SB
I think that probably insults those who dedicate their lives to helping others, whatever "ideology" they follow (remember, we all have our own).
I have to confess tho that I can't see any point to what you are arguing. Does it matter so much to you that you have a wear it on your sleeve?
SB
$400 billion defense budget. to kill people./
dont run off at the mouth about the good you people do when you spend far more doing ill.
Oh, shut up. If you think we're a sick country for having a well-funded military (ha!) then you should perhaps read some history.
Note that I didn't say I agreed totally with what our Wise and Benevolent Leaders are doing with our military, just that I think that anyone who criticizes military funding in this day and age is a shortsighted idiot.
Happy New Years,
SB
Hmm. I still think a forward sweeping beam would be more efficient - remember, you want to catch what isn't caught on the first sweep and vaporize it again before it has time to fall (maybe it's a particularly tough little bugger to vaporize and takes some hits to reduce it ash). A perpendicular-to-travel beam wouldn't do so, as it only has one chance. Several perp-t-t beams wouldn't work either, unless you want to change your cutting height. Visualize it with grass under the plenum, and what the beams would have to cover while the mower moves forward at an unpredictable speed - and we might as well try to compensate for ground height variations if we're trying to design something like this - massproduced, the hardware would be cheap, it's the software that'll be a lot of fun :)
:)
Several such sweeping beams might even work better. I'd have to think about the geometry a bit. One wants to cover everything within the mower plenum from as many angles as possible, yet not have overlap. Argh
Agreed about the extension cord... but one might as well think ahead, eh? lol@the cordless fad - dangitall, we REALLY need a breakthrough in amp-hour storage...
Cheers!!
SB
My only comment is that I don't donate to charities based on their secular or religious backgrounds. I think any charity that proclaims its ideology is doing so for political reasons and I find that distasteful.
What charities do you donate to, then? Every charity has an ideology, of one sort or another.
I'd criticise my government in a heartbeat. I think you'd do the same. That's the Australian way
and not the American way? You must read very little American media, internet or otherwise. We recently had this hotly contested election...
As someone above pointed out, this debate is pointless. Those who can and want to, will contribute. The private contributions will likely be close to what governments everywhere contribute. So what? Who gives a flying fuck where they come from as long as they are? Bickering like this is what keeps us from entering an adult stage as a species.
Yeesh.
SB
It's not always a nostalgia filter.
:(
My hometown, when I was growing up, hadn't had a murder in some decades. It was still old-fashioned in that the worst you could expect, even as a kid as I was, was getting beaten up. Not knifed or shot. I used to bike or walk all the way across town at weird hours of the morning.
Nowadays I'd be nervous walking around there at night even carrying. There are armed officers at the High School doors.
Nostalgia? Yeah, I guess so
Seriously, there's a difference between nostalgia for past good times, and the pseudo-nostalgia of watching someplace that you loved go to hell in a handbasket. But the veil between the two can be pretty thin.
SB