I believe Stern Pinball is the only remaining one; they come out with a couple of different games each year. A couple of friends of mine have companies that sell and service machines (Chicagoland and California); I'm not sure how much is new ones vs. old but I've played a fair number of the newer machines and they're pretty nice (better in my opinion than the Pinball 2000 stuff that Williams was trying). The Simpsons Pinball Party and The Lord Of The Rings ones (both Stern) are pretty impressive still.
Stern Pinball is the largest pinball manufacturer and produces about three new games a year. AC/DC is Stern's latest release. While Stern has been around for a long time, several other companies have started up recently.
Jersey Jack Pinball is about to go into production of Wizard of Oz in mid march. They've put a lot into this game and it's looking amazing. It's a wide body game with a 26" LCD, dual upper playfields, tons of toys, and a whole lot more.
Retro Pinball has begun shipping a reproduction of the Gottlieb's 1967 King of Diamonds built using modern technology.
John Popadiuk is working on a couple of small run, custom pinball machines for the high end collector market. The two games are Magic Girl and Ben Heck's Zombie Adventureland
Pinball appears to be making something of a comeback and it looks like 2012 could be one of the best years for pinball in a long time.
Nope, I don't do much graphics work. But when I do I use a mouse instead of the trackpad. I have better control over a mouse than I do with a trackpad.
You don't need a right button mod. All you need to do is hold down ctrl while clicking on the track pad. That's the equivilent of a right mouse click. I use it all the time on my powerbook.
The OSX version is still in beta testing. I don't know if it will be in future releases or not, but I sure hope so. However, you can run the older version in classic or download the beta from:
http://www.pacifict.com/FreeStuff.html
I've been playing with the beta for a few minutes now and I like what I see so far.
There's a page2 rumor over at Macrumors.com that ogg support will be added into Quicktime and iTunes at MWSF. With ogg support in both Quicktime and iTunes it's likely that the iPod software will be updated to play ogg files.
Because that assumes that you only drive in California. Which isn't a bad assumption for most people in California. However, a good chunk of my driving is cross country. I may put 5,000 miles on my car in california and another 10,000 miles out of state in a year. I'm sure that there are many other people in my situation.
Yea you are absolutely correct. I just figured that I'd leave out the pressure thrust correction. I didn't want to get into all of that and everything else I did was perfectly ideal anyways. Oh, and long live SPAD!
It's little g, 9.8m/s^2. Isp is defined as the total impulse per unit of propellant weight on Earth. It's basically a rating system to tell us how efficent a particular rocket system is with respect to it's fuel. We use weight because that's what you get when you stick something on a scale on Earth.
Let me define a few things real quick
It=total Impulse=Thrust*Time [N-s]
F=Thrust [N]
t= time [s]
Mp=Propellant Mass [kg]
dMp/dt=Propllant mass flow rate [kg/s]
Wp=Propellant weight [N]
Isp=It/Wp=F*t/(Mp*g)
which if you solve for F in terms of Isp you get:
F=Isp*Mp*g/t
Then, you have Newton's law: F=dP/dt=d(mv)/dt which for a constat exit velocity you get:
F=Ve*dMp/dt
which for a constant mass flow can be written as:
F=Ve*Mp/t
Setting the two equations for thrust together you get:
F=Isp*Mp*g/t=Ve*Mp/t
which if you cancel out the Mp/t on both sides of the equation you get that:
Ve=Isp*g.
One of the real nice things about using Isp is that it's one of the few things that is the same in both EE and metric because it's units are seconds. For more info on this I recomend Chapter 2 from 'Rocket Propulsion Elements' by George Sutton and for a more advanced look at this stuff check out 'Space Propulsion Analysis and Design' By Humble, Henry and Larson. Both books can be purchased through Amazon or other large book sellers.
Sorry, I keep seeing this misconception about Ion engines and it's bugging me. Ion drives do not have exit velocities anywhere near the speed of light. The absolute best Ion engines on the drawing board have a maximum Isp below 10,000s. The conversion between exit velocity and Isp is simple Ve=Isp*g so the best engines even on the drawing board have exit velocities no greater then 100,000 m/s while the speed of light is roughly 30,000,000 m/s. Production engines like the one on Deep Space One have Isps closer to 3,000s.
For comparison purposes the best Isp from a chemical rocket system in use is pretty much Lox/H2 which gives you an Ispvac in the 460s range.
But why shouldn't people expect there computers to just work? You expect your car to just work and it's on the same level of complexity that a computer is. People who have been running PCs for a few years are so used to windows and the insecurities that running windows brings that they don't expect their computers to just work.
Not everyone is an expert at being a sys admin nor should they have to be. Going back to the car analogy, we don't expect everyone who drives to be a mechanic. We need to stop just accepting that windows sucks and demand that Microsoft start dealing with these issues or switch to something that actually works. Let's face it, 90% of the population doesn't need windows.
I ran windows for a long time. Started on x86 hardware using MS-DOS 3.something. I finally gave up after windows XP came out. Each version of windows is just slower and more bloated then the last. I tried linux for a couple of months, but it just wasn't my cup of tea for my desktop. But even linux just works. Once it was up and running I never had any issues with it.
Last year I sat down in front of an OSX box. A week or so later I bought my first Mac ever, a powerbook. This is by far the best computer that I've ever owned. I've had it for just over a year now and I haven't had a single problem with it. The only thing I did was upgrade it to 10.3 from 10.2 and that went perfectly. I have never had to deal with malicious email. Every new virus that goes around I don't catch. I don't have any driver problems. Everything on my computer just works.
To sum up this rant, if we can't expect windows to just work then why in the hell should we use it?
One of the cool things about Apple Care is that you can chage your mind at anytime and get at least get a partial refund. If you've bought it within the past 30 days you can get a full refund.
7. Cancellation
You may cancel this Plan at any time for any reason. If you purchased the Plan in the United States or Canada, cancel by sending written notice to AppleCare Administration, P.O. Box 149125, Austin, TX 78714-9125, U.S. Your notice must be accompanied by a copy of your proof of purchase of the Plan. Unless state law provides otherwise, if you cancel within 30 days of your Plan purchase, or receipt of these Terms and Conditions, whichever occurs later, you will receive a full refund less the value of any service provided under the Plan; if you cancel more than 30 days after your receipt of this Plan, you will receive a pro-rata refund of the Plan's original purchase price, less (i) a cancellation fee of U.S. $25 or 10 percent of the pro-rata amount, whichever is less, and (ii) the value of any service provided to you under the Plan. Unless state law provides otherwise, Apple may cancel this Plan if service parts for the Covered Equipment become unavailable, upon 30 days' written notice. If Apple cancels this Plan, you will receive a pro-rata refund for the Plan's unexpired term. For Plans purchased and enrolled/activated outside the U.S. or Canada, please contact the regional Apple subsidiary for the country of purchase.
With regard to issues number 1 and 5 have you sent in a bug report to Apple about these? Apple's very good about fixing problems with their software quickly. But like all software developers they need user input to track down problems.
The Jury is still out on cryogenic fuels. For all the performance improvement of Liquid hydrogen and oxygen, you make up for it in insulation to prevent icing.
Often you don't bother to insulate the LOx tanks because you can just keep pumping it in the tanks as it boils off (shuttle and Atlas are exceptions). The ice just falls a way as the rocket lifts off. Look at a video of a rocket launching, you'll see ice all over the place. To insulate the hydrogen you put it inside of the LOx tank, and separate them with a vacuum. Vacuums weigh nothing, so there's no insulation mass to make any difference. The insulation isn't why people are looking at kerosene
The reason people are looking at LOx / kerosene (really RP-1 is more common) is because performance isn't always the driving factor. Kerosene / RP-1 engines are cheaper to work with, and cost is always a factor. Sometimes it's cheaper to build a bigger rocket that's powered by Kerosene then to use H2 and build a smaller rocket.
Space craft and aircraft are extremely closely related through aerodynamics. Basically with a plane you have a fluid flowing over a wing, this produces lift. With a rocket engine you have a fluid moving through a nozzle which produces thrust. While on the surface they sound like two totally different problems, the much of the underlying aerodynamics / physics is the same. Both problems deal with a compressible fluid flowing around different surfaces. The two are so closely related that aerodynamics is almost always a prerequisite for any rocket propulsion course.
It's true that rockets predate the airplane by at least several hundred years. But early rockets were just a bunch of gun powder in a tube with a fuse. Yes, there was a lot of experimentation to figure out how to make a rocket fly and to predict where it went. But frankly early rockets never had much control or accuracy. It wasn't until the field of aerodynamics that we really started to understand how the internals of a chemical rocket worked. While rocket's my use a "brute force" method to accomplish their goals, the design of the rockets themselves relies heavily upon aerodynamics.
iPod
No Ogg, but mp3/AAC
USB 2.0 and firewire
10gig, 20gig, 40gig
No optical inputs yet
FM radio is a yes: iFM
Microphone not really
USB harddrive Yes, both PC and Mac
Upgradable Firmware Yes
I get about a battery life of about 8-9 with my iPod
The iRiver iHP-120 has the best audio quality? says who?
And Yes, they can drive larger headphones (i do it all the time)
The only place that the iRiver iHP-120 really has the iPod beat is in battery life, and audio inputs. To those who have an iRiver do you really get 15hrs?
3. The Ion Drive
(already proven, power being ramped up monthly by orders of magnitude, will open up solar system for exploration, mineral harvesting, golden age begun...)
Ion thrusters actually are rapidly becoming the engine of choice for deep space missions. The only problem with them is that they are low thrust so you can't use it for an application that needs a quick boost. However for planet hopping where you can get away with long burn times and low thrust they're ideal. They're really nice because you can power them off of solar cells, such as with Deep Space 1. Plus they smaller then conventional chemical rockets, and can go faster!
Current research at NASA and other institutions is taking Ion Thrusters to power levels up to 30 kW with an Isp up to around 15,000-s. So while not being ramped up by an order of magnitude every few months, they are increasing by an order of magnitude every few years at the current rate. The problem that everyone is running into is the power supply for them. 30kW is a lot of juice, and if you bump that up to 300kW you're in need of a nuclear power plant.
Well, except that you can use the modem pool if you have a mac/linux/windows98/ect. You cannot use this service if you have mac/linux/windows98/ ect. I know that there are plenty of services that my college fees pay for that I don't use. But I could use any of those services if I wanted to. The problem I have with this is that there are people who are paying for a service that they cannot use unless they switch to a 2K/XP box.
Of particular interest: Is this service accessible on all computing platforms (i.e. Windows and Macintosh) and different types of Internet connections?
With the current pilot program being tested this spring, the service is only available to Windows 2000 and XP users. With the addition of certain software, it will also run on Macintosh computers.
Does this mean that Napster is going to be porting its service over to OSX? I haven't heard anything about that until now.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe Stern Pinball is the only remaining one; they come out with a couple of different games each year. A couple of friends of mine have companies that sell and service machines (Chicagoland and California); I'm not sure how much is new ones vs. old but I've played a fair number of the newer machines and they're pretty nice (better in my opinion than the Pinball 2000 stuff that Williams was trying). The Simpsons Pinball Party and The Lord Of The Rings ones (both Stern) are pretty impressive still.
Stern Pinball is the largest pinball manufacturer and produces about three new games a year. AC/DC is Stern's latest release. While Stern has been around for a long time, several other companies have started up recently.
Jersey Jack Pinball is about to go into production of Wizard of Oz in mid march. They've put a lot into this game and it's looking amazing. It's a wide body game with a 26" LCD, dual upper playfields, tons of toys, and a whole lot more.
Retro Pinball has begun shipping a reproduction of the Gottlieb's 1967 King of Diamonds built using modern technology.
MarsaPlay's New Canasta has been available in the Spanish market for a couple of years now.
John Popadiuk is working on a couple of small run, custom pinball machines for the high end collector market. The two games are Magic Girl and Ben Heck's Zombie Adventureland
Pinball appears to be making something of a comeback and it looks like 2012 could be one of the best years for pinball in a long time.
To open a link in a new tab in OSX it's Apple-click on both safari and Firefox.
Nope, I don't do much graphics work. But when I do I use a mouse instead of the trackpad. I have better control over a mouse than I do with a trackpad.
You don't need a right button mod. All you need to do is hold down ctrl while clicking on the track pad. That's the equivilent of a right mouse click. I use it all the time on my powerbook.
http://www.pacifict.com/FreeStuff.html
I've been playing with the beta for a few minutes now and I like what I see so far.
There's a page2 rumor over at Macrumors.com that ogg support will be added into Quicktime and iTunes at MWSF. With ogg support in both Quicktime and iTunes it's likely that the iPod software will be updated to play ogg files.
Because that assumes that you only drive in California. Which isn't a bad assumption for most people in California. However, a good chunk of my driving is cross country. I may put 5,000 miles on my car in california and another 10,000 miles out of state in a year. I'm sure that there are many other people in my situation.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/05/voting.p roblems.ap/index.html
Yea you are absolutely correct. I just figured that I'd leave out the pressure thrust correction. I didn't want to get into all of that and everything else I did was perfectly ideal anyways. Oh, and long live SPAD!
Let me define a few things real quick
It=total Impulse=Thrust*Time [N-s]
F=Thrust [N]
t= time [s]
Mp=Propellant Mass [kg]
dMp/dt=Propllant mass flow rate [kg/s]
Wp=Propellant weight [N]
Isp=It/Wp=F*t/(Mp*g)
which if you solve for F in terms of Isp you get:
F=Isp*Mp*g/t
Then, you have Newton's law: F=dP/dt=d(mv)/dt which for a constat exit velocity you get:
F=Ve*dMp/dt
which for a constant mass flow can be written as:
F=Ve*Mp/t
Setting the two equations for thrust together you get:
F=Isp*Mp*g/t=Ve*Mp/t
which if you cancel out the Mp/t on both sides of the equation you get that:
Ve=Isp*g.
One of the real nice things about using Isp is that it's one of the few things that is the same in both EE and metric because it's units are seconds. For more info on this I recomend Chapter 2 from 'Rocket Propulsion Elements' by George Sutton and for a more advanced look at this stuff check out 'Space Propulsion Analysis and Design' By Humble, Henry and Larson. Both books can be purchased through Amazon or other large book sellers.
Yep, it was a typo.
Because I made a typo and put 30,000,000 m/s instead of 300,000,000 m/s I'm a troll?
For comparison purposes the best Isp from a chemical rocket system in use is pretty much Lox/H2 which gives you an Ispvac in the 460s range.
More info here: http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/tech/ionpropfaq.html
And yes, I am a rocket scientist.
Thanks,
Physicsnerd
Not everyone is an expert at being a sys admin nor should they have to be. Going back to the car analogy, we don't expect everyone who drives to be a mechanic. We need to stop just accepting that windows sucks and demand that Microsoft start dealing with these issues or switch to something that actually works. Let's face it, 90% of the population doesn't need windows.
I ran windows for a long time. Started on x86 hardware using MS-DOS 3.something. I finally gave up after windows XP came out. Each version of windows is just slower and more bloated then the last. I tried linux for a couple of months, but it just wasn't my cup of tea for my desktop. But even linux just works. Once it was up and running I never had any issues with it.
Last year I sat down in front of an OSX box. A week or so later I bought my first Mac ever, a powerbook. This is by far the best computer that I've ever owned. I've had it for just over a year now and I haven't had a single problem with it. The only thing I did was upgrade it to 10.3 from 10.2 and that went perfectly. I have never had to deal with malicious email. Every new virus that goes around I don't catch. I don't have any driver problems. Everything on my computer just works.
To sum up this rant, if we can't expect windows to just work then why in the hell should we use it?
From the terms and conditions at http://www.apple.com/support/products/proplan_term s.html
7. Cancellation
You may cancel this Plan at any time for any reason. If you purchased the Plan in the United States or Canada, cancel by sending written notice to AppleCare Administration, P.O. Box 149125, Austin, TX 78714-9125, U.S. Your notice must be accompanied by a copy of your proof of purchase of the Plan. Unless state law provides otherwise, if you cancel within 30 days of your Plan purchase, or receipt of these Terms and Conditions, whichever occurs later, you will receive a full refund less the value of any service provided under the Plan; if you cancel more than 30 days after your receipt of this Plan, you will receive a pro-rata refund of the Plan's original purchase price, less (i) a cancellation fee of U.S. $25 or 10 percent of the pro-rata amount, whichever is less, and (ii) the value of any service provided to you under the Plan. Unless state law provides otherwise, Apple may cancel this Plan if service parts for the Covered Equipment become unavailable, upon 30 days' written notice. If Apple cancels this Plan, you will receive a pro-rata refund for the Plan's unexpired term. For Plans purchased and enrolled/activated outside the U.S. or Canada, please contact the regional Apple subsidiary for the country of purchase.
With regard to issues number 1 and 5 have you sent in a bug report to Apple about these? Apple's very good about fixing problems with their software quickly. But like all software developers they need user input to track down problems.
SpaceShipOne uses a N2O/HTPB hybrid rocket motor. See http://www.spacedev.com/newsite/templates/subpage3 _article.php?pid=411&subNav=11&subSel=3
Minor details...
Often you don't bother to insulate the LOx tanks because you can just keep pumping it in the tanks as it boils off (shuttle and Atlas are exceptions). The ice just falls a way as the rocket lifts off. Look at a video of a rocket launching, you'll see ice all over the place. To insulate the hydrogen you put it inside of the LOx tank, and separate them with a vacuum. Vacuums weigh nothing, so there's no insulation mass to make any difference. The insulation isn't why people are looking at kerosene
The reason people are looking at LOx / kerosene (really RP-1 is more common) is because performance isn't always the driving factor. Kerosene / RP-1 engines are cheaper to work with, and cost is always a factor. Sometimes it's cheaper to build a bigger rocket that's powered by Kerosene then to use H2 and build a smaller rocket.
It's true that rockets predate the airplane by at least several hundred years. But early rockets were just a bunch of gun powder in a tube with a fuse. Yes, there was a lot of experimentation to figure out how to make a rocket fly and to predict where it went. But frankly early rockets never had much control or accuracy. It wasn't until the field of aerodynamics that we really started to understand how the internals of a chemical rocket worked. While rocket's my use a "brute force" method to accomplish their goals, the design of the rockets themselves relies heavily upon aerodynamics.
iPod
No Ogg, but mp3/AAC
USB 2.0 and firewire
10gig, 20gig, 40gig
No optical inputs yet
FM radio is a yes: iFM
Microphone not really
USB harddrive Yes, both PC and Mac
Upgradable Firmware Yes
I get about a battery life of about 8-9 with my iPod
The iRiver iHP-120 has the best audio quality? says who?
And Yes, they can drive larger headphones (i do it all the time)
The only place that the iRiver iHP-120 really has the iPod beat is in battery life, and audio inputs. To those who have an iRiver do you really get 15hrs?
Ion thrusters actually are rapidly becoming the engine of choice for deep space missions. The only problem with them is that they are low thrust so you can't use it for an application that needs a quick boost. However for planet hopping where you can get away with long burn times and low thrust they're ideal. They're really nice because you can power them off of solar cells, such as with Deep Space 1. Plus they smaller then conventional chemical rockets, and can go faster!
More info here: http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/
Plus they're flight proven. DS1 used the NSTAR 30cm Ion Thruster which had a maximum power input of about 2.3 kW.
http://www.boeing.com/ids/edd/ep.html
Current research at NASA and other institutions is taking Ion Thrusters to power levels up to 30 kW with an Isp up to around 15,000-s. So while not being ramped up by an order of magnitude every few months, they are increasing by an order of magnitude every few years at the current rate. The problem that everyone is running into is the power supply for them. 30kW is a lot of juice, and if you bump that up to 300kW you're in need of a nuclear power plant.
Well, except that you can use the modem pool if you have a mac/linux/windows98/ect. You cannot use this service if you have mac/linux/windows98/ ect. I know that there are plenty of services that my college fees pay for that I don't use. But I could use any of those services if I wanted to. The problem I have with this is that there are people who are paying for a service that they cannot use unless they switch to a 2K/XP box.
http://live.psu.edu/story/4583p
Of particular interest:
Is this service accessible on all computing platforms (i.e. Windows and Macintosh) and different types of Internet connections?
With the current pilot program being tested this spring, the service is only available to Windows 2000 and XP users. With the addition of certain software, it will also run on Macintosh computers.
Does this mean that Napster is going to be porting its service over to OSX? I haven't heard anything about that until now.