I think ground effect craft are the perfect cargo planes/boats of the future.
They are faster than boats and much more efficiant than planes. They do not need runaways. they can have wide bodies and large volume cargo holds.
Of course they can only go trough water, but you should not be using cargo planes over land anyway, you should be using high speed trains.
They say that Boeing and Airbus are both thinking of developing super large cargo planes, they should just stop and concentrate on ground effect craft.
I guess one of the costs of ground effect craft would be that naval navigation will have to change to allow for large fast low flying things, but that can be done.
Also maybe the flying boats can be made to fly higher to skip over things that are in the way.
Ok this explanation may be too siplistic, or just wrong but thats how i always explained this to myself:
It works because there is high pressure air between the ground (water) and the wing that pushes the plane up, just like it would if it were a hovercraft.
But while hovercrafts use fans to compress that air and keep it under pressure with skirts, the ground effect crafts use their speed and the shape of their wings to compress air under them.
The market is slowing down.
And it is also rapidly comoditizing itself.
which means sales are decreasing and margins are getting thinner. Not sure if its true but thats what the author meant.
yes but they used to track it. So their davice so made so it can track it, without the owner being able to do anything about it.
I had a small error but i think my points are correct - if they really cared about privacy they wouldnt have that functionality in their device to begin with. Or they would have it but give the owner a choice to turn it off.
The problem is that the owner does not have power over his own damn digital vcr. If he did then it would be much harder for the court to get that information.
The problem is that sonic blue were gathering the informastion to begin with.
Since they already have access to the info it is normal court procedure for the court to request that they preserve it if it may be evidence.
In the article a Sonic Blue manager is complaining "we are being asked to invade the privacy of our customers". No buddy- you are already doing that you are being asked to share the data.
As long as somebody is gathering your info your privacy is being invaded. It doesnt matter what their privacy statement says, because: a. you can never know if they follow it or not b. even if they follow it once there is a court order they have to turn it over.
Court orders and search warrants cannot be stopped by privacy statements.
There is no reason why a some tv device has to send information about the viewing habbits of the user. If you want privacy get one that doesnt.
The fact that there isnt one on the market only proves that companies dont really care about consumers that much.
By the way do you guys think that if someone figures out how to port linux on the Xbox it could be programmed to be an open source tv recorder? That would be nice.
Lately having open source devices has been the only way to ensure your privacy.
You do not know anything about bussiness people. You think if they get a 2% tax they'll shut up? Certainly not - they will keep the money and try to find other ways to charge us with improved services. Oh yeah and that 2% will slowly increase as well.
Oh sry i just read that you were kidding. Still a bad idea imo.
Ok you are talking science fiction here. You will have to lift a ton of machinery to be able to produce industrial quality metal from moon ore.
As far as getting food from the moon even if moon farming is possible i am sure it will require many tons of machinery.
Launching satelites from the moon? Do you know how much a mosfet factory wighs? Making a satelite requires the best of earth industry, you want it to be made from the moon with localy found minerals.
Everything you are talking about is long ways off.
And the 100 billion ISS boondogle is nothing compared to what a moonbase would cost.
I agree that NASA is very unlikely to make a cheaper vehicle though.
What is sitting in Gorky park was a prototype used for structural testing.
There is a fully functional prototype that flew one orbital mission before funding ran out and is currently mothballed somewhere in some hangar (probably not a ranway).
So i dont know where i was "totally ill-informed".
If congress really wanted to advance american know how they would put the money into universities, that would make all their discoveries and developments available to the public.
Currently the money goes to a couple of aerospace companies that keep all of their important developments in secret.
And all those advances in know how are so esoteric they are quite useless for most Americans.
The primary justafication for NASA's funding is to feed powerufl contractors. Luckily we can get some important science done as a byproduct of that.
With the ammount of money poured into NASA (especially the shuttle program) you'd think that the US would have found a cheap way to put things into space.
Instead the Russians still do things cheaper (and so far quite reliably) with their Energia rockets.
It is really hard to believe that those contractors are actually trying to make things cheaper.
Russia has the Buran. It looks like the american shuttle but it is larger and carries more cargo.
I think it has only flown once. After that they parked it on a runway and it has been there ever since AFAIK. I think one of the fuselage models used for testing is a tourist attraction in moscow.
The Russians dont use it because it is much cheaper to use their rockets.
I can understand what you are saying unfortunately ignorance can have a lot of inertia. But i think teachers can still help alot. When you toutgh those kids about antibiotics they did not forget everything when their parents told them germs dont exist. I am sure they still kept those things in the backs of their minds.
So i definately think that teachers can help, even if the parents are resisting.
The US really has to improve their school education.
We have probably the best university education in the world, and one of the worst public education systems in the industrialized world.
It is a side of the great inequality ruling american society - just as we have a huge disparity between rich and poor, we have a great disparity between people with good and bad education.
I dont know if people realize how problematic this is. Having large numbers of badly educated people is just asking for civil unrest. And we can really do better in the richest and most powerful nation on earth.
Of course there are communities in the states that will strongly resist education. But that pressure will be getting very weak because the internet erode the power of local authority centers.
Sure they fixed everything after their viruses reached the tv news.
But seriously if you are the largest software company in the world you should have known that having your email client automaticaly execute anything it receieves is not a good idea.
That is a really strange complaint comming from TV executives.
My favourite sitcom "News Radio" was always in trouble and was cancelled because the characters were too mean to each other.
And now my favourite animation show (yes i think the current futurama shows are a bit better than the current simpsons shows) is getting cancelled because the characters are too mean.
Thats really bizarre. First of all the characters werent really mean in either one of those show (ok maybe except bender but even he was showed goodness of heart in the godfellas episode).
Second of all it makes you wonder do TV stations consider it their duty to build up the morals of their audience trough tv shows? And if so why is that coming from FOX that brought us numerous car chase shows, police reality shows, accident and disasters where people die shows, one (or two was it?) numerous women begging to be married to some millionare schnuck shows, and lets not forget the trivia show where the host is famous for insulting the contestants.
Its like if somebody asked a committee "what would you title a mix between science fiction and romance?"
Anyways could be agood book never read it. But its fun judging a book without even seeing its cover:)
"whats the chance that NASA would try a solar sail if the russians fail? " - almost certain.
Having good american engineering succeed where the Russians failed should be just the kind of story that NASA could use to get funding from politicians.
Now if the Russians were succesful... i doubt NASA will touch solar sails in a loong time. No politician wants to pay for the honor of trailing the russians.
Slashdot Mirror
I think ground effect craft are the perfect cargo planes/boats of the future.
They are faster than boats and much more efficiant than planes. They do not need runaways. they can have wide bodies and large volume cargo holds.
Of course they can only go trough water, but you should not be using cargo planes over land anyway, you should be using high speed trains.
They say that Boeing and Airbus are both thinking of developing super large cargo planes, they should just stop and concentrate on ground effect craft.
I guess one of the costs of ground effect craft would be that naval navigation will have to change to allow for large fast low flying things, but that can be done.
Also maybe the flying boats can be made to fly higher to skip over things that are in the way.
those things are fast enough to avoid storms.
Ok this explanation may be too siplistic, or just wrong but thats how i always explained this to myself:
It works because there is high pressure air between the ground (water) and the wing that pushes the plane up, just like it would if it were a hovercraft.
But while hovercrafts use fans to compress that air and keep it under pressure with skirts, the ground effect crafts use their speed and the shape of their wings to compress air under them.
The market is slowing down. And it is also rapidly comoditizing itself. which means sales are decreasing and margins are getting thinner. Not sure if its true but thats what the author meant.
Otherwise the court order would be pointless.
yes but they used to track it. So their davice so made so it can track it, without the owner being able to do anything about it.
I had a small error but i think my points are correct - if they really cared about privacy they wouldnt have that functionality in their device to begin with. Or they would have it but give the owner a choice to turn it off.
The problem is that the owner does not have power over his own damn digital vcr. If he did then it would be much harder for the court to get that information.
The problem is that sonic blue were gathering the informastion to begin with.
Since they already have access to the info it is normal court procedure for the court to request that they preserve it if it may be evidence.
In the article a Sonic Blue manager is complaining "we are being asked to invade the privacy of our customers". No buddy- you are already doing that you are being asked to share the data.
As long as somebody is gathering your info your privacy is being invaded. It doesnt matter what their privacy statement says, because:
a. you can never know if they follow it or not
b. even if they follow it once there is a court order they have to turn it over.
Court orders and search warrants cannot be stopped by privacy statements.
There is no reason why a some tv device has to send information about the viewing habbits of the user. If you want privacy get one that doesnt.
The fact that there isnt one on the market only proves that companies dont really care about consumers that much.
By the way do you guys think that if someone figures out how to port linux on the Xbox it could be programmed to be an open source tv recorder? That would be nice.
Lately having open source devices has been the only way to ensure your privacy.
You do not know anything about bussiness people. You think if they get a 2% tax they'll shut up? Certainly not - they will keep the money and try to find other ways to charge us with improved services. Oh yeah and that 2% will slowly increase as well.
Oh sry i just read that you were kidding. Still a bad idea imo.
that is just logicaly impossible.
"Forget you Ted"
sending people is more expensive but it gets you more funding as well.
Ok you are talking science fiction here. You will have to lift a ton of machinery to be able to produce industrial quality metal from moon ore.
As far as getting food from the moon even if moon farming is possible i am sure it will require many tons of machinery.
Launching satelites from the moon? Do you know how much a mosfet factory wighs? Making a satelite requires the best of earth industry, you want it to be made from the moon with localy found minerals.
Everything you are talking about is long ways off.
And the 100 billion ISS boondogle is nothing compared to what a moonbase would cost.
I agree that NASA is very unlikely to make a cheaper vehicle though.
What is sitting in Gorky park was a prototype used for structural testing.
There is a fully functional prototype that flew one orbital mission before funding ran out and is currently mothballed somewhere in some hangar (probably not a ranway).
So i dont know where i was "totally ill-informed".
A moon station would cost many times what a space station does.
If congress really wanted to advance american know how they would put the money into universities, that would make all their discoveries and developments available to the public.
Currently the money goes to a couple of aerospace companies that keep all of their important developments in secret.
And all those advances in know how are so esoteric they are quite useless for most Americans.
The primary justafication for NASA's funding is to feed powerufl contractors. Luckily we can get some important science done as a byproduct of that.
With the ammount of money poured into NASA (especially the shuttle program) you'd think that the US would have found a cheap way to put things into space.
Instead the Russians still do things cheaper (and so far quite reliably) with their Energia rockets.
It is really hard to believe that those contractors are actually trying to make things cheaper.
Russia has the Buran. It looks like the american shuttle but it is larger and carries more cargo.
I think it has only flown once. After that they parked it on a runway and it has been there ever since AFAIK. I think one of the fuselage models used for testing is a tourist attraction in moscow.
The Russians dont use it because it is much cheaper to use their rockets.
I can understand what you are saying unfortunately ignorance can have a lot of inertia. But i think teachers can still help alot. When you toutgh those kids about antibiotics they did not forget everything when their parents told them germs dont exist. I am sure they still kept those things in the backs of their minds.
So i definately think that teachers can help, even if the parents are resisting.
The US really has to improve their school education.
We have probably the best university education in the world, and one of the worst public education systems in the industrialized world.
It is a side of the great inequality ruling american society - just as we have a huge disparity between rich and poor, we have a great disparity between people with good and bad education.
I dont know if people realize how problematic this is. Having large numbers of badly educated people is just asking for civil unrest. And we can really do better in the richest and most powerful nation on earth.
Of course there are communities in the states that will strongly resist education. But that pressure will be getting very weak because the internet erode the power of local authority centers.
Sure they fixed everything after their viruses reached the tv news.
But seriously if you are the largest software company in the world you should have known that having your email client automaticaly execute anything it receieves is not a good idea.
That is a really strange complaint comming from TV executives.
My favourite sitcom "News Radio" was always in trouble and was cancelled because the characters were too mean to each other.
And now my favourite animation show (yes i think the current futurama shows are a bit better than the current simpsons shows) is getting cancelled because the characters are too mean.
Thats really bizarre. First of all the characters werent really mean in either one of those show (ok maybe except bender but even he was showed goodness of heart in the godfellas episode).
Second of all it makes you wonder do TV stations consider it their duty to build up the morals of their audience trough tv shows? And if so why is that coming from FOX that brought us numerous car chase shows, police reality shows, accident and disasters where people die shows, one (or two was it?) numerous women begging to be married to some millionare schnuck shows, and lets not forget the trivia show where the host is famous for insulting the contestants.
sigh
no wonder scifi has such bad rep in literature. What sucks is the good sci fi authors actually have to suffer for that.
Its like if somebody asked a committee "what would you title a mix between science fiction and romance?" Anyways could be agood book never read it. But its fun judging a book without even seeing its cover :)
"whats the chance that NASA would try a solar sail if the russians fail? " - almost certain.
... i doubt NASA will touch solar sails in a loong time. No politician wants to pay for the honor of trailing the russians.
Having good american engineering succeed where the Russians failed should be just the kind of story that NASA could use to get funding from politicians.
Now if the Russians were succesful
The reason why youcould say that digital is better for starwars, is that a large part of the movie was rendered in digital anyway.
But for movies that film real life, digital projection is terrible - it shows a great reduction in quality.