Pound is a unit of weight, and gram is a unit of mass.
My dad, who is from the Olden Days when people used pounds and inches, and an Engineer, says that there exists a "pound-mass" and a "pound-force" and the reader is expected to have the wit, depending on context, to distinguish between them.
What do they want to do when no one signs this? Fire every scientist? Not going to happen.
That sounds a lot like Collective Bargaining... That just proves these scientists are unionized PINKO COMMIES, probably terrorists, and deserve to be fired to make way for patriotic ones.
Maybe the ESA will take them on for the Aurora project?/me ducks.
With all due vile to the US for not going anywhere with manned spaceflight, it's not exactly like ESA, Russia or China have risen to the occasion. None of them have done a moon mission yet, and I doubt they'll try to leapfrog going straight for Mars.
Don't be so sure. The European Space Agency's Aurora programme includes sending people to Mars in 2030 and 2033 (and the Moon in 2024).
As a rocket engineer myself, I can reaffirm this statement. Given the catastrohpic and costly nature of rocketry failures, rocket scientists are extremely conservative folks.
There's quite a bit on the intarweb about the benefits of aerospike rocket engines. So how come no one uses them? It is all hype, or just conservatism?
As long as they piddle about with chemical rockets, they won't be doing much more than a very expensive, long and dangerous flag-planting exercise.
Von Braun et. al. were working on a nuclear rocket back in the day for such a mission. Just look up NERVA.
And before anyone jumps on the "danger radiation" bandwagon, I'm not advocating a nuclear rocket for getting from the earth's surface into earth orbit. It would be quite safe to build a reactor, launch it into orbit and to install it on the spacecraft there. It would be quite harmless having never have been taken critical for the first time.
The crew could easily be shielded. Think nuclear submarine. The craft could be much bigger than one chemically-powered. There could be additional shielding for protecting the crew from solar radiation. There would be extra living space, more scientific payload and it would be easier to insert into Mars orbit at the other end.
Fission reactors have been about for 60 years now. We know how to make them safe and efficient. It would be absolutely stupid not to use a nuclear reactor to go to Mars. They could have one designed, built and tested in under 5 years if they put their minds to it.
But they won't. They'll leave that to our grandchildren...
Years ago I recall a question from one of American high school students, "Do bears run on streets in Russia?" I thought that the person was kidding. No, this was a serious question.
Americans have always been pretty ignorant about the world outside the USA. Just look at their Foreign Policy.
Back in the early eighties, here in the UK, we used to have political satire TV programmes with such sketch titles as, "The President's Brain is Missing." Of course, now Ronald Reagan looks like Einstein compared to GW Bush.
Things keep getting worse before they're likely to get better.
Now with the intarweb, America gets to see how the world sees it, and we get to see how America sees us.
I fail to see why it is big news when the Chinese replicate a feat that was done nearly half a century ago by two other countries
It's big news because it's a sign of the times.
Rather than these things being the rare and exclusive preserve of the richest country in the world and it's arch-rival, this level of technological achievement is now becoming common place.
Hopefully, this is the beginning of a new era in human history, where scientific exploration of space is routine for most countries, but I haven't had my pills today.
And here in good old Blighty, let us not forget the frail, old Holocaust survivor who got arrested under Anti-Terrorism laws for shouting, "Nonsense," at a Labour Party conference.
Yes, well, every year since 1996 has been the Year of Desktop Linux for me, starting with olvwm on Slackware 2.x. Now I have Window Maker on Slackware 11.0.
I was at HP when they did this. They didn't make much of a secret that it was being done to try and drive people away from the company to reduce headcount. I suppose it worked to some extent, as many of the people that were "recalled" were working at remote locations where it was impossible for them to commute to an office location. Those people were effectively laid-off, and without getting the nice HP severance package normally received for the major lay-offs HP was doing at the time.
In the UK, we have laws against such practices. It's called Constructive Dismissal, and even the threat of taking your employer to court usually gets you a substantial out-of-court settlement. If it goes to court and they are found guilty, it's much more expensive for them in many ways.
Before you start ranting about us pinko commie Brits, just remember, we have the least worker-friendly labour laws in Europe, but Germany seems to have a higher standard of living.
I'm glad I don't live and work in the USA. My life is too short to sacrifice on the high altar of corporatism.
I've always enjoyed AMD's products... I don't know if it's some force from above, but whenever I deal with any Intel system, it "feels" slower. I'm not saying that it is, just doesn't feel as snappy.
That's because intel's front side bus architecture, off chip memory controller and inefficient caches hinder performance, especially under heavy multitasking. You'll also note that multiprocessor (i.e. multicore) intel systems scale very poorly as the number of cores (or processors) goes up compared with AMD processors which have a more sophisticated design.
As code becomes more parallel as a matter of course, we'll see these effects becoming more important. Next year, intel is bringing out a more AMD-like NUMA architecture (new processors, chipsets and motherboards) to try to address these issues. AMD has a 5 year headstart.
No, most people don't use CFLs, I know people who don't have a single CFL in their homes.
You're in the USA. You only just found out about global warming. You're about to build a new BWR. You still don't have social healthcare. You sound a lot like Swampy.
Back in 1996, just after I started my job at the nuclear power station, it was the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. Greenpeace supporters lined the approach road on that morning, all dressed up in their costumes, all jolly and friendly, and one enthusiastically handed me a leaflet about the future being "solar."
That very evening I wrote an equally enthusiastic letter to the address on the leaflet asking to see their calculations regarding the amount of power they expected to get from the sun. I got back bigger, shinier leaflets. No maths. Nothing.
In first year Astrophysics, for homework, one of the 5-minute questions was "estimate the solar flux at the earth's surface."
To the nearest two significant figures, I estimated it at 1.0kW/square metre. That's about right.
How do you propose to fuel the whole planet, all the people, the animals, plants and the weather with that?
I thought that if you were MCSE (Minesweeper Certified Solitaire Expert) you could define uptime as infinite as long as you rebooted once a week on a Sunday night as planned.
Conservation is important, but it is not enough on its own. Our requirement for energy keeps increasing despite conservation. We need better, cleaner ways of making the energy we require.
You don't understand the nuclear waste issue. It's far too complex to explain fully here. Needless to say, there are useful things that can be done with it that hysterical "environmentalists" have made politically impossible.
By the way, I'm in the UK. We do our nuclear power in a far more safe and responsible way than the USA. During my extensive training, I was utterly horrified to hear how you do things in the USA. Just recently I heard that you guys are going to build a new BWR power station. It's 2007. Why on earth is anyone even thinking about BWRs? They were a bad idea 50 years ago.
I was referring to your sarcastic rhetorical question regarding the storage of nuclear waste.
We all know that tidal, wind, wave etc. are better than coal. Nuclear is better than all of them put together. There just isn't enough "renewable" energy available.
I have a Physics degree and worked as a Reactor Physics Engineer for nearly 5 years, so I know a little bit about the subject.
Nuclear fusion, of course, would be the best, but it's still a few years away.
Slashdot Mirror
Pound is a unit of weight, and gram is a unit of mass.
My dad, who is from the Olden Days when people used pounds and inches, and an Engineer, says that there exists a "pound-mass" and a "pound-force" and the reader is expected to have the wit, depending on context, to distinguish between them.
What's wrong with a bowl of water and a drop of washing-up liquid?
What do they want to do when no one signs this? Fire every scientist? Not going to happen.
That sounds a lot like Collective Bargaining... That just proves these scientists are unionized PINKO COMMIES, probably terrorists, and deserve to be fired to make way for patriotic ones.
Maybe the ESA will take them on for the Aurora project? /me ducks.
With all due vile to the US for not going anywhere with manned spaceflight, it's not exactly like ESA, Russia or China have risen to the occasion. None of them have done a moon mission yet, and I doubt they'll try to leapfrog going straight for Mars.
Don't be so sure. The European Space Agency's Aurora programme includes sending people to Mars in 2030 and 2033 (and the Moon in 2024).
As a rocket engineer myself, I can reaffirm this statement. Given the catastrohpic and costly nature of rocketry failures, rocket scientists are extremely conservative folks.
There's quite a bit on the intarweb about the benefits of aerospike rocket engines. So how come no one uses them? It is all hype, or just conservatism?
As long as they piddle about with chemical rockets, they won't be doing much more than a very expensive, long and dangerous flag-planting exercise.
Von Braun et. al. were working on a nuclear rocket back in the day for such a mission. Just look up NERVA.
And before anyone jumps on the "danger radiation" bandwagon, I'm not advocating a nuclear rocket for getting from the earth's surface into earth orbit. It would be quite safe to build a reactor, launch it into orbit and to install it on the spacecraft there. It would be quite harmless having never have been taken critical for the first time.
The crew could easily be shielded. Think nuclear submarine. The craft could be much bigger than one chemically-powered. There could be additional shielding for protecting the crew from solar radiation. There would be extra living space, more scientific payload and it would be easier to insert into Mars orbit at the other end.
Fission reactors have been about for 60 years now. We know how to make them safe and efficient. It would be absolutely stupid not to use a nuclear reactor to go to Mars. They could have one designed, built and tested in under 5 years if they put their minds to it.
But they won't. They'll leave that to our grandchildren...
Years ago I recall a question from one of American high school students, "Do bears run on streets in Russia?" I thought that the person was kidding. No, this was a serious question.
Americans have always been pretty ignorant about the world outside the USA. Just look at their Foreign Policy.
Back in the early eighties, here in the UK, we used to have political satire TV programmes with such sketch titles as, "The President's Brain is Missing." Of course, now Ronald Reagan looks like Einstein compared to GW Bush.
Things keep getting worse before they're likely to get better.
Now with the intarweb, America gets to see how the world sees it, and we get to see how America sees us.
Oh mate, when can we have some good old-fashioned guitar-based rock? Never mind your disco pop-music monorail, here's 2 4 6 8 Motorway Rock on!
I fail to see why it is big news when the Chinese replicate a feat that was done nearly half a century ago by two other countries
It's big news because it's a sign of the times.
Rather than these things being the rare and exclusive preserve of the richest country in the world and it's arch-rival, this level of technological achievement is now becoming common place.
Hopefully, this is the beginning of a new era in human history, where scientific exploration of space is routine for most countries, but I haven't had my pills today.
Russia has lots of oil and gas. In fact, it could hold Western Europe to ransom with the gas tap.
Perhaps it might need "liberating?"
/me sighs resignedly.
Hmm..... I suppose I'd pay $3 for Vista.
More fool you. At current exchange rates, I could buy half a pint of beer at the pub along the road with that sort of money.
And here in good old Blighty, let us not forget the frail, old Holocaust survivor who got arrested under Anti-Terrorism laws for shouting, "Nonsense," at a Labour Party conference.
Keep on rockin' in the Free World.
This is a personal tragedy for Kasparov, but dangerous for the rest of the world too.
It beggars belief...
These are not just PHBs we are talking about here, these are British Public Sector PHBs.
Yes, well, every year since 1996 has been the Year of Desktop Linux for me, starting with olvwm on Slackware 2.x. Now I have Window Maker on Slackware 11.0.
I was at HP when they did this. They didn't make much of a secret that it was being done to try and drive people away from the company to reduce headcount. I suppose it worked to some extent, as many of the people that were "recalled" were working at remote locations where it was impossible for them to commute to an office location. Those people were effectively laid-off, and without getting the nice HP severance package normally received for the major lay-offs HP was doing at the time.
In the UK, we have laws against such practices. It's called Constructive Dismissal, and even the threat of taking your employer to court usually gets you a substantial out-of-court settlement. If it goes to court and they are found guilty, it's much more expensive for them in many ways.
Before you start ranting about us pinko commie Brits, just remember, we have the least worker-friendly labour laws in Europe, but Germany seems to have a higher standard of living.
I'm glad I don't live and work in the USA. My life is too short to sacrifice on the high altar of corporatism.
I've always enjoyed AMD's products... I don't know if it's some force from above, but whenever I deal with any Intel system, it "feels" slower. I'm not saying that it is, just doesn't feel as snappy.
That's because intel's front side bus architecture, off chip memory controller and inefficient caches hinder performance, especially under heavy multitasking. You'll also note that multiprocessor (i.e. multicore) intel systems scale very poorly as the number of cores (or processors) goes up compared with AMD processors which have a more sophisticated design.
As code becomes more parallel as a matter of course, we'll see these effects becoming more important. Next year, intel is bringing out a more AMD-like NUMA architecture (new processors, chipsets and motherboards) to try to address these issues. AMD has a 5 year headstart.
I've been read Vogon poetry that was less nauseating than that line.
I think you just coined a new term for pointy-haired management speak.
In the Navy,
Your bunk will have fleas,
In the Navy,
There will be mould on the cheese,
etc.
Why is that disturbing or surprising at all?
One might expect, or even hope, that people subject to oppressive regimes might flee abroad to escape to a better life, not to perpetuate the misery.
When I was a child, I used to think that being subservient, obedient and unquestioning of authority was "good."
Perhaps that is one part of human nature that helps to perpetuate the misery?
No, most people don't use CFLs, I know people who don't have a single CFL in their homes.
You're in the USA. You only just found out about global warming. You're about to build a new BWR. You still don't have social healthcare. You sound a lot like Swampy.
Back in 1996, just after I started my job at the nuclear power station, it was the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. Greenpeace supporters lined the approach road on that morning, all dressed up in their costumes, all jolly and friendly, and one enthusiastically handed me a leaflet about the future being "solar."
That very evening I wrote an equally enthusiastic letter to the address on the leaflet asking to see their calculations regarding the amount of power they expected to get from the sun. I got back bigger, shinier leaflets. No maths. Nothing.
In first year Astrophysics, for homework, one of the 5-minute questions was "estimate the solar flux at the earth's surface."
To the nearest two significant figures, I estimated it at 1.0kW/square metre. That's about right.
How do you propose to fuel the whole planet, all the people, the animals, plants and the weather with that?
I thought that if you were MCSE (Minesweeper Certified Solitaire Expert) you could define uptime as infinite as long as you rebooted once a week on a Sunday night as planned.
Dude, we've all done the energy-saving lightbulbs thing, and I don't use intel processors.
It is human nature to want to discover new things and to progress. We will not do it with cutbacks and 19th century technology.
No, conservation is the best.
Conservation is important, but it is not enough on its own. Our requirement for energy keeps increasing despite conservation. We need better, cleaner ways of making the energy we require.
You don't understand the nuclear waste issue. It's far too complex to explain fully here. Needless to say, there are useful things that can be done with it that hysterical "environmentalists" have made politically impossible.
By the way, I'm in the UK. We do our nuclear power in a far more safe and responsible way than the USA. During my extensive training, I was utterly horrified to hear how you do things in the USA. Just recently I heard that you guys are going to build a new BWR power station. It's 2007. Why on earth is anyone even thinking about BWRs? They were a bad idea 50 years ago.
I was referring to your sarcastic rhetorical question regarding the storage of nuclear waste.
We all know that tidal, wind, wave etc. are better than coal. Nuclear is better than all of them put together. There just isn't enough "renewable" energy available.
I have a Physics degree and worked as a Reactor Physics Engineer for nearly 5 years, so I know a little bit about the subject.
Nuclear fusion, of course, would be the best, but it's still a few years away.