The potential for someone getting hurt with an electrical disruption device (especially a 2 foot spear!) is much higher. This is passive so it doesn't involve any risk to those in the fleeing vehicle. If someone is driving at 100mph it might actually be more dangerous to just shut their vehicle off and have them lose control at that speed. Plus, it wouldn't have any affect on pre-computer vehicles, (ok so not a lot of those speeding around....)
Spielberg was 'bitten' by this not becuase he was responsible for the copy-protection but becuase his movie will now not be able to be reviewed by the critics in time to allow them to vote on it for their film awards. This means that his film will not have a chance of winning their film awards and looses any chance of the revenue boost that it would entail.
To moderators; Please at least RTFA before you mod and don't just moderate based upon authoritative sounding posts.:)
I'm not sure I understand your signature. If taken at face value, your quote indicates that you believe that it is possible to possess everything there is, everywhere. If you genuinely believe that, you need a looong physics lesson.
If you are merely making a veiled criticism of greed and various similar themes as portrayed in movies and television shows, then it's really not very clear.
If on the third hand you were just making a quirky, personalized comment to individualize yourself amidst the teeming masses, then what the hell are you picking on his sig for?
I didn't think of that either. I was trying to avoid the issues with using microwaves to beam the energy down to the planet, thus the long extension cord....
Interesting, thanks for the response to my not so serious question. I had never considered that aspect before. We (humans) really need to get serious about understanding exactly how this planet works down to the smallest detail. Then we can understand the impact of how we interact with the planet (and solar system!) and how best to mitigate the problems that we cause. i.e. I had never thought of solar power satellites as potentially having negative environmental consequences from their use.
"In short there is no form of energy that we can extract from nature that doesn't alter in some way (large or small) the natural energy flows and balance in nature."
Well, hypothetically....
What about solar electric generating satellites in geostationary orbits that don't come between the Earth and the Sun, and that transmit their electricity to Earth via superconducting cables running down a space elevator tower? Huh? What about that?
It is not something to dynamically interact with you during an entire round of fighting, but apparently something that you will program to practice a specific move or punch on. It was designed to give you more realistic interaction and target than a punching bag and to be safer than practicing on a sparing partner.
Slashdot actually has a search function built-in! There is a little search box down in the lower left of the webpage that anyone can use. It is especially usefull when searching for dupes. Check out this example:
They believe that the object was a Taurid. A quick Google shows their speed about 65000 mph, which translates to 29 kps. I bet the 2 kps difference comes from the moon's relative speed at the impact.
Why is this modded flamebait? This is all factual and on-topic. The GP asked why the Beagle project didn't ask NASA for design assistance. My answer is that the head of the project believed that their technology was better than NASA's, and went so far as to brag about it.
In 2000, Pillinger pilloried the NASA rovers as "much less scientifically accomplished." Unlike them, he told a meeting of British scientists, "Beagle 2 won't be going sightseeing."
My comment about the funding/time difficulties of the project is also factual, its not really disputed that this is one of the root causes of the failure of the mission. They simply didn't have the time or money to test critical components of the mission.
This is brand new, the first possible sighting of this lander.
I think you are confusing this with reports of finding the crash site of the Mars Polar Lander that were later thought to be in doubt after more images of the same site.
As I understand it, if the Europeans sent 1,000 probes, it would still cost less than the US sending one.
Either you are seriously misinformed or your math skills need some work.
The cost of the Beagle 2 mission is believed to be somewhere around 70-80 million dollars. Once it went over budget they stopped talking about how much it actually cost. It failed. This is not counting its free launch and ride to Mars.
The cost of the NASA twin rovers mission was something like 600 million dollars, or 300 million each. That includes the costs of building the rocketship to get them to Mars. The rovers are still doing science on Mars.
"I don't see why they didn't just ask the US how we landed two probes successfully."
Because the guy in charge of the project, Professor Pillinger, was too busy bragging about how his probe was so superior to NASA designs.
This was not designed as a cooperative test of differing landing systems. The Beagle 2 project was seriously underfunded and just too short on time to properly test all of their systems.
Blowing up a payload or putting it into a useless orbit is a failure. Those things scare away customers; look at Japan and their H2 rockets. Catching problems before launch and avoiding having to write off a payload makes customers happy.
An update on Spacex's website gives the apparent cause of the damage:
"Posted December 19, 2005 at 4:40 p.m. California time: Here is the apparent cause of structural damage (further analysis may change the conclusion):
Due to high winds, we placed the countdown on hold and began draining the fuel tank. As we drained fuel from the 1st stage tank, a faulty pressurization valve caused a vacuum condition in the tank. This caused a fuel tank barrel section to deform and suck inward. It is important to note that the root cause is an electrical fault with a valve, not structural design.
At this point, it appears that no other damage was sustained to the vehicle or the satellite. The rocket will be lowered down this afternoon and placed in its hangar for further inspection.
--- Elon ---"
While you do, indeed, have to push X amount of stuff downward to move upward, nothing says that has to be 'fuel', as in, the stuff powering the pushing does not have to be the same stuff that you are throwing out the back. Maybe it's air you merely accelerated, at least for the first part of the trip, maybe it's a load of highly compressed dirt you fling downward using electrity. Dirt is free, and electricity is cheap.
So you realize that the 'fuel mass fraction' issue is related to how much fuel it takes to get to orbit right, not about how to get from one point in space to another? That's why you talked about flinging stuff downward?
Hmmm. Let's think about this cheap dirt/electricity idea.
A report complete with lots and lots of brain numbing formulas (at least to my simple brain) that describes trying to optimize a mass driver design for use as space propulsion or on the moon can be found here:
Their optimized lightweight design was capable of flinging out a 10.5 kg mass with an acceleration of 1,000 G, four times a second. So this should be able to lift a 40,000 kg space ship at 1g. Oh but we still need our fuel, in this case 'cheap electricity'. So now you also need to lift the mass of the huge nuclear plant that you will need to generate all of that 'cheap' electricity to power the mass driver. (Or were you going to be unreeling an extension cord back to the Three Gorges Dam and getting your cheap electricity from there?) How big was the mass driver needed to accomplish this? It came in at 500 meters long and weighed over 3 million kg with the powerplant. And let's not forget that we need to also lift the mass of the dirt that we are going to be shooting out....
A mass driver could never lift itself let alone the spaceship that it was supposed to be pushing.
Right now, we have neither the ability to cause significant pollution, nor the capability to avoid it, so it's doubly moot.
Try telling that to NASA the next time that they are about to shift the orbit of the Shuttle or the ISS because of a possible collision with debris in orbit. I sure they will be relieved to find out that it doesn't really matter and they don't need to bother. And the astronauts that have been on orbit during collisions with debris will probably be doubly relieved to find that it was just an insignificant event and nothing to worry about.
"There is a force that exists, and people are being screwed."
What force, gravity? Dark Energy?
Does Linksys have some monopoly on the ability to build routers? No, anyone is welcome to start building a competing product at any time for a lesser price. The fact that no one has may be evidence that in fact this is still a very good value. Who are we to say how much is a reasonable profit for Linksys to make off of these routers? What if they have determined that their support costs for the Linux routers are higher than normal and they have raised their prices solely to be able to continue to offer the product? What if the choice was between no Linux version or a version priced $20 more? Did they screw you by giving you the choice of paying the extra money to pay for the item instead of taking away the choice entirely?
You also seem to think that they have some nefarious scheme built into the release dates of the different models. Was there in fact any gap between the availability of the old models and the new ones? Or a significant gap between the release of the new regular and Linux versions, or was that just a misunderstanding in the news reporting? I saw posts in the last Slashdot discussion about this that stated even back then that there was in fact a separate Linux model available, so this is not a new fact. If Linksys wanted to maximize their profits, don't you think that they would've released the higher priced model first?? And even if there was a gap, don't you think that it might have been due to any number of legitimate reasons? Maybe their Art department did the work for one version before the other. Maybe their QA department finished testing one version before the other. Who knows. Who cares.
They released the Linux version, which's all that matters. If you don't want to buy it great; but you're not being screwed by Linksys.
Do you have a contract with someone requiring you to buy these devices no matter what the cost is? No? Well, you're not being screwed then. Linksys decided to change their prices and features, presumably in response to market pressures. That's thier right. If you don't like it, don't buy any more from them; that's your right. Don't bitch that you're being screwed, or even worse, try and include others in your rant and declare that we all got screwed - that's just idiotic.
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A little dart is going to be a LOT cheaper than a helicopter. Even the LAPD only has a limited number of copters.
The potential for someone getting hurt with an electrical disruption device (especially a 2 foot spear!) is much higher. This is passive so it doesn't involve any risk to those in the fleeing vehicle. If someone is driving at 100mph it might actually be more dangerous to just shut their vehicle off and have them lose control at that speed. Plus, it wouldn't have any affect on pre-computer vehicles, (ok so not a lot of those speeding around....)
Props for replying! I think we have all done it, I know I have. I mostly posted becuase the mods keep agreeing with you... :)
Spielberg was 'bitten' by this not becuase he was responsible for the copy-protection but becuase his movie will now not be able to be reviewed by the critics in time to allow them to vote on it for their film awards. This means that his film will not have a chance of winning their film awards and looses any chance of the revenue boost that it would entail.
To moderators; Please at least RTFA before you mod and don't just moderate based upon authoritative sounding posts. :)
I'm not sure I understand your signature. If taken at face value, your quote indicates that you believe that it is possible to possess everything there is, everywhere. If you genuinely believe that, you need a looong physics lesson.
If you are merely making a veiled criticism of greed and various similar themes as portrayed in movies and television shows, then it's really not very clear.
If on the third hand you were just making a quirky, personalized comment to individualize yourself amidst the teeming masses, then what the hell are you picking on his sig for?
I didn't think of that either. I was trying to avoid the issues with using microwaves to beam the energy down to the planet, thus the long extension cord....
Interesting, thanks for the response to my not so serious question. I had never considered that aspect before. We (humans) really need to get serious about understanding exactly how this planet works down to the smallest detail. Then we can understand the impact of how we interact with the planet (and solar system!) and how best to mitigate the problems that we cause. i.e. I had never thought of solar power satellites as potentially having negative environmental consequences from their use.
Well, hypothetically....
What about solar electric generating satellites in geostationary orbits that don't come between the Earth and the Sun, and that transmit their electricity to Earth via superconducting cables running down a space elevator tower? Huh? What about that?
What about as aerial cruise ships? Why cruise over boring open ocean when you can cruise over beautiful countryside?
http://sdtandroids.com/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabinde x=0&tabid=1
It is not something to dynamically interact with you during an entire round of fighting, but apparently something that you will program to practice a specific move or punch on. It was designed to give you more realistic interaction and target than a punching bag and to be safer than practicing on a sparing partner.
Slashdot actually has a search function built-in! There is a little search box down in the lower left of the webpage that anyone can use. It is especially usefull when searching for dupes. Check out this example:
http://science.slashdot.org/search.pl?query=stardu st
You can see that this very story was posted twice already on the 22nd, not to mention all of the older references.
They believe that the object was a Taurid. A quick Google shows their speed about 65000 mph, which translates to 29 kps. I bet the 2 kps difference comes from the moon's relative speed at the impact.
There are a number of packages that can utilize .rar files. I am partial to ZipGenius:
http://www.zipgenius.it/index_eng.htm
Free (like drinking your friend's beer) and supports every compression type I have ever seen on a Windows platform. And no nagging or guilt!
My comment about the funding/time difficulties of the project is also factual, its not really disputed that this is one of the root causes of the failure of the mission. They simply didn't have the time or money to test critical components of the mission.
I think you are confusing this with reports of finding the crash site of the Mars Polar Lander that were later thought to be in doubt after more images of the same site.
The cost of the Beagle 2 mission is believed to be somewhere around 70-80 million dollars. Once it went over budget they stopped talking about how much it actually cost. It failed. This is not counting its free launch and ride to Mars.
The cost of the NASA twin rovers mission was something like 600 million dollars, or 300 million each. That includes the costs of building the rocketship to get them to Mars. The rovers are still doing science on Mars.
I think NASA got the better deal.
This was not designed as a cooperative test of differing landing systems. The Beagle 2 project was seriously underfunded and just too short on time to properly test all of their systems.
Clearly we need to send Professor Pillinger to Afganistan. I bet NASA will buy him a ticket there...
Blowing up a payload or putting it into a useless orbit is a failure. Those things scare away customers; look at Japan and their H2 rockets. Catching problems before launch and avoiding having to write off a payload makes customers happy.
So you realize that the 'fuel mass fraction' issue is related to how much fuel it takes to get to orbit right, not about how to get from one point in space to another? That's why you talked about flinging stuff downward?
Hmmm. Let's think about this cheap dirt/electricity idea.
A report complete with lots and lots of brain numbing formulas (at least to my simple brain) that describes trying to optimize a mass driver design for use as space propulsion or on the moon can be found here:
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettl ement/spaceres/III-3.html
Their optimized lightweight design was capable of flinging out a 10.5 kg mass with an acceleration of 1,000 G, four times a second. So this should be able to lift a 40,000 kg space ship at 1g. Oh but we still need our fuel, in this case 'cheap electricity'. So now you also need to lift the mass of the huge nuclear plant that you will need to generate all of that 'cheap' electricity to power the mass driver. (Or were you going to be unreeling an extension cord back to the Three Gorges Dam and getting your cheap electricity from there?) How big was the mass driver needed to accomplish this? It came in at 500 meters long and weighed over 3 million kg with the powerplant. And let's not forget that we need to also lift the mass of the dirt that we are going to be shooting out....
A mass driver could never lift itself let alone the spaceship that it was supposed to be pushing.
Go Dirt! Hooray for cheap electricity!
http://armadilloaerospace.com/
Try telling that to NASA the next time that they are about to shift the orbit of the Shuttle or the ISS because of a possible collision with debris in orbit. I sure they will be relieved to find out that it doesn't really matter and they don't need to bother. And the astronauts that have been on orbit during collisions with debris will probably be doubly relieved to find that it was just an insignificant event and nothing to worry about.
some links:
NASA Orbital Debris Program Office : http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/y /gallarypage/sts7crack.jpg y /gallarypage/ldefpanel.jpg
picture of damage to the shuttle front window:
http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/photogaller
picture of a panel that was left in orbit for over 5 years and then brought back for examination:
http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/photogaller
"There is a force that exists, and people are being screwed."
What force, gravity? Dark Energy?
Does Linksys have some monopoly on the ability to build routers? No, anyone is welcome to start building a competing product at any time for a lesser price. The fact that no one has may be evidence that in fact this is still a very good value. Who are we to say how much is a reasonable profit for Linksys to make off of these routers? What if they have determined that their support costs for the Linux routers are higher than normal and they have raised their prices solely to be able to continue to offer the product? What if the choice was between no Linux version or a version priced $20 more? Did they screw you by giving you the choice of paying the extra money to pay for the item instead of taking away the choice entirely?
You also seem to think that they have some nefarious scheme built into the release dates of the different models. Was there in fact any gap between the availability of the old models and the new ones? Or a significant gap between the release of the new regular and Linux versions, or was that just a misunderstanding in the news reporting? I saw posts in the last Slashdot discussion about this that stated even back then that there was in fact a separate Linux model available, so this is not a new fact. If Linksys wanted to maximize their profits, don't you think that they would've released the higher priced model first?? And even if there was a gap, don't you think that it might have been due to any number of legitimate reasons? Maybe their Art department did the work for one version before the other. Maybe their QA department finished testing one version before the other. Who knows. Who cares.
They released the Linux version, which's all that matters. If you don't want to buy it great; but you're not being screwed by Linksys.
Do you have a contract with someone requiring you to buy these devices no matter what the cost is? No? Well, you're not being screwed then. Linksys decided to change their prices and features, presumably in response to market pressures. That's thier right. If you don't like it, don't buy any more from them; that's your right. Don't bitch that you're being screwed, or even worse, try and include others in your rant and declare that we all got screwed - that's just idiotic.