Now china has working satellite kill weapons no doubt many other will follow (if they don't have them already). How many countries would want to risk their power infrastructure being vulnerable to someone pressing a launch button thousands of miles away with no risk to themselves whatsoever?
Can't use it in a storm. Can't use it when heading into the wind - can't tack with a kite. Can't use it when theres no wind.
Also in the video it seemed to be moving around a lot on its mounting pole when furled up even in the slight breeze. How you'd unfurl it in a strong wind without damage to it or its cables I shudder to think.
Maybe we've discovered the nub of the problem - if jordan had been edited by a proper editor I wouldn't be surprised if he'd been told to cut a boatload of the padding and get to the friggin point, but because its his wife she wouldn't want to upset him and so just made minor amendments and suggestions etc...
Or will he actually manage to do something Jordan never managed - an ending? I gave up at volume 7 , I just couldn't take any more tedious filler prose that you could tell the author was using to pad just so he could produce as many volumes (and make as much $$$$) as possible. Even Tolstoy eventually knew when it was time to wrap it up and no one could accuse him of having had writers block.
Any animal that couldn't tell the difference between another animal and a rock or between different types of animals would soon become some carnivores dinner or fall off a cliff. Why would anyone (least of all supposedly intelligent researchers) find this ability to differentiate objects surprising? I'd imagine you'd probably have to go much further down the evolutionary tree to find an animal that couldn't do this.
The speed of sound goes DOWN with reducing density , not up. Theres no way the speed in an almost vacuum could be hundreds of times higher than at sea level. Even in rock it only manages a few km/s. Perhaps the author meant 100m/s but even then I'd be suspicious since in intersteller space the gas molecules rarely touch each other so theres no physical way for sound to propagate anyway.
I just don't see how its possible just from looking at the numbers themselves unless you're selecting from a pre-known selection of algorithms and comparing expected results with actual output from the generator given a specific seed. If you don't know the algo then you could be making educated guesses for literally years and still not work out the algorithm.
"Remember also that it was a single purpose computer."
It was built for a single purpose , but it wasn't hardwired for that purpose , it was programmable. In theory its CPU could have played chess instead (though the memory limitations would probably preclude that).
The tsar bomb wasn't neutron bomb , it was a 50 megaton nuke.
"Pop Quiz: Do you want to be there with a weapon that's never been rigorously tested, whose characteristics aren't fully understood, or do you want one that was and is?"
Pop answer: after a nuclear war that used the bomb in question I don't think I or anyone else would be left around to care.
"if you cannot understand the difference between the precise delivery of a 1 Kiloton tactical weapon and a county-destroying 50 Megaton Tsar Bomba then further discussion would seem moot."
If you can't even RTFA to find out what whats actually being discussed - ie why would the russians bother to test a nuke that large - then you're correct , this discussion is moot.
"If you just make the biggest weapon you can and assume 'it's enough' you'll be dropping huge ordinance and risking large amounts of collateral damage"
Sorry , is there a nuke that doesn't have a large amount of collateral damage? What , you think someone would worry that "hey , we can bomb moscow and kill 10 million , but we don't want to damage the little town 10 miles east". Gimme a break.
"Or to be fired by artillery cannons (at one time). But you need to know *what it will do*. How close to friendly units can it be used?"
The fact that anyone seriously considered battlefield nukes makes me really wonder about the average IQ level in the US military.
"Forget the anti-nuke hippy mentality for a bit and think about the situation for crying out loud"
Its nothing about a hippy mentality , its a case of trying to find any logic in the military mentality of fine tuning a weapon thats the most unsubtle and non discriminating thing thats ever been divised. Its a bit like going to a rock concert and making sure all the mice are removed in case any of their squeaking disturbs the music.
"They're testing the effects of shockwaves, which types of light and how much of them are emitted in the blast, what exactly goes on (at the visible and molecular level) in the milliseconds after detonation"
Who the hell cares? The whole point of a nuke is that it lays waste to a few hundred square miles. Why would they argue the toss about the effect of the shockwave if its going to flatten everything anyway?? As for light , err , I think we can assume there'll be plenty of gamma rays & x rays to nicely fry any living organism in the blast area. Isn't that enough FFS??
"Up to 7200 passengers/hour per lane, the equivalent of a 3 lane highway"
Ok , lets do some maths here. Lets say the cars will be half full on average, so thats 2 people per car , so thats 3600 cars per hour per lane so that'd be one car per second. Hmm , whats wrong with this picture? Post some real statistics instead of some manufacturers wishful thinking marketing hype.
"Uses 50% less energy per passenger km than "light" rail, 66% less than a car"
Post some studies proving that , because frankly that sounds like rubbish.
Oh please. How many times has this Jetsons style rubbish be proposed by people with their head in the clouds? This sort of system is incredibly inefficient not only in power (you don't have economies of scale in the drivetrain or the weight of the vehicle compared to passengers carried) but in the control system and , if they're to be truly flexible , the amount of real estate it would take up. You've bascially got cars on rails except without the flexibility of a car.
The whole point of railed vehicles is MASS transit to specific destinations. Trams do this better than buses and a damn site better than that 1960s The Future Is Now type of nonsense you linked to above.
..he'd have put the video & ROM at the bottom of memory and let general purpose memory start from wherever this finished. That way general memory could just continue on up no matter how much you put in instead of having to dick about with a load of page switching nonsense to avoid the top 384K if you had more than 1Meg...
"TFA says while the computer is powered off. Not partially booted, not on, off."
It might say that but I suspect its wrong. Would be interesting to see if it would still work with no battery in the machine and no mains power to it. Somehow I doubt it.
It does make me smile when I hear about french intellectuals getting upset about a few english words becoming common in french (eg: le weekend) when about 20% of common english words are of french/norman origin. I wonder how many of them know that french has influenced english far more than english will ever influence the french language.
As "she" was spoken? I think you'll find the terminology for an inanimate object in English is "it" (with a few exceptions). So for someone who makes such an obvious grammatical mistake why should we trust your opinions on the language at all?
Unless you were just making some desperate attempt to be politically correct.
Slashdot Mirror
Now china has working satellite kill weapons no doubt many other will follow (if they don't have them already). How many countries would want to risk their power infrastructure being vulnerable to someone pressing a launch button thousands of miles away with no risk to themselves whatsoever?
As someone else has pointed out , how can you tack without a keel? The kite will just pull the ship sideways.
Can't use it in a storm.
Can't use it when heading into the wind - can't tack with a kite.
Can't use it when theres no wind.
Also in the video it seemed to be moving around a lot on its mounting pole when furled up even in the slight breeze. How you'd unfurl it in a strong wind without damage to it or its cables I shudder to think.
Every other book since book 4 was going to be "the last book" according to or rumoured by Jordan at some point.
So whats the 10% of crud itself that presumably isn't crud?
I like details as much as anyone , but there comes a point where you just want the trivia kicked into touch for a while and the story to move on.
Maybe we've discovered the nub of the problem - if jordan had been edited by a proper editor I wouldn't be surprised if he'd been told to cut a boatload of the padding and get to the friggin point, but because its his wife she wouldn't want to upset him and so just made minor amendments and suggestions etc...
Or will he actually manage to do something Jordan never managed - an ending? I gave up at volume 7 , I just couldn't take any more tedious filler prose that you could tell the author was using to pad just so he could produce as many volumes (and make as much $$$$) as possible. Even Tolstoy eventually knew when it was time to wrap it up and no one could accuse him of having had writers block.
Any animal that couldn't tell the difference between another animal and a rock or between different types of animals would soon become some carnivores dinner or fall off a cliff. Why would anyone (least of all supposedly intelligent researchers) find this ability to differentiate objects surprising? I'd imagine you'd probably have to go much further down the evolutionary tree to find an animal that couldn't do this.
>No, it goes up.
Sorry you're wrong. Look up the speeds of sound in various mediums such as air, water and rock if you have any doubts.
The speed of sound goes DOWN with reducing density , not up. Theres no way the speed in an almost vacuum could be hundreds of times higher than at sea level. Even in rock it only manages a few km/s. Perhaps the author meant 100m/s but even then I'd be suspicious since in intersteller space the gas molecules rarely touch each other so theres no physical way for sound to propagate anyway.
I just don't see how its possible just from looking at the numbers themselves unless you're selecting from a pre-known selection of algorithms and comparing expected results with actual output from the generator given a specific seed. If you don't know the algo then you could be making educated guesses for literally years and still not work out the algorithm.
"Remember also that it was a single purpose computer."
It was built for a single purpose , but it wasn't hardwired for that purpose , it was programmable. In theory its CPU could have played chess instead (though the memory limitations would probably preclude that).
There are however plenty of analogue alternatives if theres no DAB coverage. Whats the alternative to iPlayer from the BBC?
The tsar bomb wasn't neutron bomb , it was a 50 megaton nuke.
"Pop Quiz: Do you want to be there with a weapon that's never been rigorously tested, whose characteristics aren't fully understood, or do you want one that was and is?"
Pop answer: after a nuclear war that used the bomb in question I don't think I or anyone else would be left around to care.
"if you cannot understand the difference between the precise delivery of a 1 Kiloton tactical weapon and a county-destroying 50 Megaton Tsar Bomba then further discussion would seem moot."
If you can't even RTFA to find out what whats actually being discussed - ie why would the russians bother to test a nuke that large - then you're correct , this discussion is moot.
"If you just make the biggest weapon you can and assume 'it's enough' you'll be dropping huge ordinance and risking large amounts of collateral damage"
Sorry , is there a nuke that doesn't have a large amount of collateral damage? What , you think someone would worry that "hey , we can bomb moscow and kill 10 million , but we don't want to damage the little town 10 miles east". Gimme a break.
"Or to be fired by artillery cannons (at one time). But you need to know *what it will do*. How close to friendly units can it be used?"
The fact that anyone seriously considered battlefield nukes makes me really wonder about the average IQ level in the US military.
"Forget the anti-nuke hippy mentality for a bit and think about the situation for crying out loud"
Its nothing about a hippy mentality , its a case of trying to find any logic in the military mentality of fine tuning a weapon thats the most unsubtle and non discriminating thing thats ever been divised. Its a bit like going to a rock concert and making sure all the mice are removed in case any of their squeaking disturbs the music.
"They're testing the effects of shockwaves, which types of light and how much of them are emitted in the blast, what exactly goes on (at the visible and molecular level) in the milliseconds after detonation"
Who the hell cares? The whole point of a nuke is that it lays waste to a few hundred square miles. Why would they argue the toss about the effect of the shockwave if its going to flatten everything anyway?? As for light , err , I think we can assume there'll be plenty of gamma rays & x rays to nicely fry any living organism in the blast area. Isn't that enough FFS??
"Up to 7200 passengers/hour per lane, the equivalent of a 3 lane highway"
Ok , lets do some maths here. Lets say the cars will be half full on average, so thats 2 people per car , so thats 3600 cars per hour per lane so that'd be one car per second. Hmm , whats wrong with this picture? Post some real statistics instead of some manufacturers wishful thinking marketing hype.
"Uses 50% less energy per passenger km than "light" rail, 66% less than a car"
Post some studies proving that , because frankly that sounds like rubbish.
>http://www.atsltd.co.uk/prt/spec/
Oh please. How many times has this Jetsons style rubbish be proposed by people with their head in the clouds? This sort of system is incredibly inefficient not only in power (you don't have economies of scale in the drivetrain or the weight of the vehicle compared to passengers carried) but in the control system and , if they're to be truly flexible , the amount of real estate it would take up. You've bascially got cars on rails except without the flexibility of a car.
The whole point of railed vehicles is MASS transit to specific destinations. Trams do this better than buses and a damn site better than that 1960s The Future Is Now type of nonsense you linked to above.
..he'd have put the video & ROM at the bottom of memory and let general purpose memory start from wherever this finished. That way general memory could just continue on up no matter how much you put in instead of having to dick about with a load of page switching nonsense to avoid the top 384K if you had more than 1Meg...
"TFA says while the computer is powered off. Not partially booted, not on, off."
It might say that but I suspect its wrong. Would be interesting to see if it would still work with no battery in the machine and no mains power to it. Somehow I doubt it.
It does make me smile when I hear about french intellectuals getting upset about a few english words becoming common in french (eg: le weekend) when about 20% of common english words are of french/norman origin. I wonder how many of them know that french has influenced english far more than english will ever influence the french language.
As "she" was spoken? I think you'll find the terminology for an inanimate object in English is "it" (with a few exceptions). So for someone who makes such an obvious grammatical mistake why should we trust your opinions on the language at all?
Unless you were just making some desperate attempt to be politically correct.
>The abortionist doctor at least has a chance to dodge the bullet.
Yeah , if he's superman.
>The 'biomass' that the doctor is removing has no such chance.
Blah blah blah... same old same old
Tell that to the abortionist doctors who've been shot.