I think you're the closest so far.
In any system where you're you're depending on the incidence and reflection of particles for thrust, be they photons, ions or whoknowswhatsitrons, you can change the thrust vector by changing the direction of the plane of reflection. If you like, you can have multiple reflective surfaces and direct the reflection pretty much wherever you like. You'll end up with thrust in any direction you want, as long as the amount of energy impacting and reflecting is asymmetrical. That is, you don't get any thrust if you double-reflect back in the original direction of the particle flow (you emit as much as you soak up) but any other direction is cool, you'll get a push. Parabolic surfaces are useful when you have incidence at random angles, because the net reflection ends up all in one direction (think "rocket nozzles"). Flat plates are good for single angle systems, such as where you have a point source (the sun from some distance away).
I'd think that because of this a large parabolic shape for a solar sail would be best near terrestrial orbits, because the sun is so much bigger than the sail you'll get multiply-incident paths for the solar wind. Unless you have Pak protectors building it, of course, in which case all bets are off.
You know, the design for SpaceShipTwo is perilously close to the "Orient Express" concept. Besides lifting people into space, couldn't a suborbital trajectory be used for faster and more efficient intercontinental trips? Maybe this is the long-term value of this race. Forget SST, go ballistic.
Heinlein wrote extensively in his novels on the subject of aging, treating it as a syndrome that was inherently cureable, including the anhedonia (loss of the joy of life) that came from that multitude of minor pains that take up so much of your attention as you get older. Pain is terribly distracting, from minor itching all the way up to opiate-resistant terminal conditions. It's a lot of nerve noise. Anything that can solve the complex of symptoms that lead to age-related death will also have to deal with pain and anhedonia as well.
My experience is in investment banking and every single bank I've ever heard of write the majority of their buisiness-critical server-side apps in Java.
Strange, I have a background in investment banking too (well, managed funds) and in my experience it's been mostly a rather dispiriting mountain of endless bloody spreadsheet VBA. Granted this isn't server-side code per PP's reference, but it amounted to billions of dollars living exclusively on Excel. Reason? Bank rules said all development had to be offshore, but VBA was considered "just a few spreadsheet macros to be coded" and the coders for this could be sourced locally.
"Just a few macros" usually meant "just a few thousand lines of VBA code per spreadsheet". This was considered a good thing in a critical delivery cycle (i.e. "we'll get fined big time for noncompliance if it isn't in by next week").
So, in some compensation for having to expensively maintain a rather inelegant coding environment, they got to develop nice efficient relationships with certain agile coders, version control became irrelevant (code stayed with the document) and you could basically wrap the spreadsheet around a rock and throw it to the next company and they could read it (IDE stayed with the document, too). So there's a case of IT in the "real world" for you, enough to make a grown man cry.
But it works.
Oh that wasn't the whole environment, I'll admit -- there was also that outsourced/offshored Canadian application that ran absolutely rock solid and reliable as well. It ran on VMS.
I'm so very sorry to hear that! However if she just keeps her wrists together and makes sure the club face remains perpendicular off the tee, I'm sure it can be cured.
Australian SCA war archery uses more narrow blunted arrows that follow a better trajectory, and the heavy fighters (the ones with the rattan swords) must have "arrow mesh" on their helms during the war scenarios. Nothing quite as therapeutic as shooting arrows at your friends, unless it's hitting them with a rattan sword on their steel helm, hearing a loud "Bong" and having them say "Good, m'lord" and fall down. I miss that, it was a license to commit therapy.
OTOH it was a chance for me to build a replica brass astrolabe over two years then have people say "Wow, how cool is that?" instead of a more expected odd look and attempt to avoid eye contact with the crazy. Many people think this sort of participating re-enactment is just a costume party, but a lot treat it as a venue for serious research and there's a lot of organisation dedicated to encouraging that. Have a look at the aforementioned SCA web sites and chase down any of the research links there or references to the "Order of the Laurel".
It's also the only organisation where I can say "Hey, my wife is a Pelican" and not be in danger of picking up a Thorazine habit.
Besides, the game physics are exact and accurate, and the graphics are retinal, and you get an unlimited number of rezzes.
They should rather get out and go to some sort of medieval festival.
http://www.sca.org/ or http://www.sca.org.au/ if you're in Australia. Society for Creative Anachronism. Brilliant:Jerk ratio relatively high in favor of first term. Amazing what a bit of play-acting can do to drag skills out of you. Oh, and to remain on topic -- there's a fair component of serious archaeology and sociology study mixed in with the play acting. And some damn fine music.
Sails can be helpful, I've seen models for tall vertical turbines that are independent of wind direction (not independent of wind, however). And my old friend the Stirling cycle engine could still be useful here - exploit the temperature differential by dipping the cold-side heat exchanger of the engine in the stream of running water. Would work on warm days, no acreage of solar panels required. You don't need a huge temperature differential for them to work, although it would need some form of low-drag integration into the hull. Maybe just a few square meters of copper integrated into the bottom of the hull, a black surface for the hot end topside. I like Stirling engines...no fuel, just a temperature differential, sometimes a bit slow to start up. Cool technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine/
that could use this cluster for a better purpose than "playing around"?
Guys, a lot of useful pure research is mostly just playing around. Take a few ideas as a baseline to get you started, then play around until you reach that "hey, that's funny..." moment. Challenge the limits as a goal in itself, then see how things act on the edge, apply rules and discipline to your game when it gets interesting.
The only real difference between play and pure research is whether or not you keep a decent lab journal.
Exploit small temperature differentials over large thermal mass via Stirling cycle engine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine/) . Dig a hole in the ground in a sunny area and lay a large heat sink for the cold side. It only takes a few degrees difference, and if you pick a nice heat-conductive soil you can run for a very long time before you reach thermal saturation. Cost to run? Replace the bearings once every few years, perhaps.
i believe my next project will be developing a new ejection seat for my cube
I understand the old F-100 fighter ejection seats were pretty simple and easy to adapt, couple of wrenches and a bit of elbow grease and you'll have one you'd think was made by Recaro. With a bit of judicious circular routing of forms, you might be able to get a surplus jet assigned to you as a company car. Might have more potential than your cubicle ejection seat. Besides, they already come equipped with casters.
Can I suggest a Talkie Toaster with Artificial Intelligence it can program the coffee maker just what you need it to be. It knows. It always knows and will go on endlessly about it
but I must still step up and defend American (or rather drip/perc/etc) coffee
I may be unusual here, and Australian who defends American coffee. I don't mean Starbucks (burnt dishwater) but the day-to-day drip filter coffee served in most restaraunts in the US just signifies a different culture.
To start with, the coffee is necessarily weaker because the office culture tends toward having a fresh cup permanently affixed to your workspace, and drinking as much as that means you must moderate the content else your brain cells end up being felted. When the coffee is thus configured, the aroma becomes important -- a clear and subtle flavour that does not cause a sensory white-out. In that context, American coffee can be really quite good. Did that for a few years, working in California.
That said, my current recipe is for short black Macchiato, espresso with a dusting of milk foam and no sugar (the latter by necessity, being a diabetic. Artificial sweeteners are an unnecessary abomination).
Well, not from Apple. It's not hard to dig up the names, but I'd like just once to hear Apple just come out and say "we'd like to thank these guys for making it possible
The initial Macintosh computer (the "skinny Mac") had the signatures of the engineers who made it possible part of the casting of the machine, inside on the industrial-foam case.
Nice tribute, but it's a bit ironic that Apple didn't want you to get inside the box -- required a case-breaker and a special long-shaft Torx screwdriver.
I do a bit of work with large civil infrastructure organisations that run things such as roads, water, power. Some of the assets we're supporting will likely be around for over a hundred years, and they spend money on things like studies of projected longevity of installations. Real engineering stuff.
When ever I see a thread like this, I have to ask myself -- which operating system is most likely to be around in one form or another a century from now? Then ask -- how is it maintained? What business model is capable of supporting it? The best that I can come up with is that our descendants will still be reading threads like this.
Now go away, before I lose track of the decimal point on my slide rule.
I remember reading an article once where an electrostatic field was introduced against a hot surface in air; apparently the heat ionised the air near the hot surface, making it act as a better insulator than non-ionised air in that case. I think this boundary layer inhibited the flow of air somehow - kind of a localised greenhouse effect, maybe. So perhaps a couple of milliwatts did have the effect of cooling the surface dramatically. The electrostatic field wasn't used as an actual heat pump, but an enabler that allowed the heat to escape the surface easier by radiation and convection. Kind of a "farenjitsu".
The solution can be managed via FAA flight certification regs. The kill switch can be within the autopilot, with logic to shut fuel supply at any point up to the point of no return on a runway. After that point, it could be used to lockout override on the autopilot, such that the programmed flight plan cannot be overridden until time for gear down. Might take a while to retrofit, and there'd be all that certification noise with foreign aircraft, but an initiative based on international cooperation (there is such a thing as international law, and it does have some use) and a commonly-accepted technology by aircraft manufacturers and certification authorities might give the solution a certain amount of traction in a global domain.
Having said that, I think it's a bad dose of mass-medicine and I don't particularly like it. My reason? As noted by others in this thread, they ain't a' gonna use airplanes next time. Read your Spider Robinson, and deduce the next target.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course when the whacko extremists are the only ones still dieing of cancers it'll be because of a gov conspiracy to kill them off.
Think of it as evolution in action.
At least Ireland did
You're either for us or a Guiness.
I'd think that because of this a large parabolic shape for a solar sail would be best near terrestrial orbits, because the sun is so much bigger than the sail you'll get multiply-incident paths for the solar wind. Unless you have Pak protectors building it, of course, in which case all bets are off.
You know, the design for SpaceShipTwo is perilously close to the "Orient Express" concept. Besides lifting people into space, couldn't a suborbital trajectory be used for faster and more efficient intercontinental trips? Maybe this is the long-term value of this race. Forget SST, go ballistic.
That car will get old and rusty...
Cars aren't people. Eggs aren't people. There are no acceptable metaphors or similies for people that involve comparing them with objects.
"Strong mind, strong body. Take your choice." - Rodney Rude
Heinlein wrote extensively in his novels on the subject of aging, treating it as a syndrome that was inherently cureable, including the anhedonia (loss of the joy of life) that came from that multitude of minor pains that take up so much of your attention as you get older. Pain is terribly distracting, from minor itching all the way up to opiate-resistant terminal conditions. It's a lot of nerve noise. Anything that can solve the complex of symptoms that lead to age-related death will also have to deal with pain and anhedonia as well.
My experience is in investment banking and every single bank I've ever heard of write the majority of their buisiness-critical server-side apps in Java.
Strange, I have a background in investment banking too (well, managed funds) and in my experience it's been mostly a rather dispiriting mountain of endless bloody spreadsheet VBA. Granted this isn't server-side code per PP's reference, but it amounted to billions of dollars living exclusively on Excel. Reason? Bank rules said all development had to be offshore, but VBA was considered "just a few spreadsheet macros to be coded" and the coders for this could be sourced locally.
"Just a few macros" usually meant "just a few thousand lines of VBA code per spreadsheet". This was considered a good thing in a critical delivery cycle (i.e. "we'll get fined big time for noncompliance if it isn't in by next week").
So, in some compensation for having to expensively maintain a rather inelegant coding environment, they got to develop nice efficient relationships with certain agile coders, version control became irrelevant (code stayed with the document) and you could basically wrap the spreadsheet around a rock and throw it to the next company and they could read it (IDE stayed with the document, too). So there's a case of IT in the "real world" for you, enough to make a grown man cry.
But it works.
Oh that wasn't the whole environment, I'll admit -- there was also that outsourced/offshored Canadian application that ran absolutely rock solid and reliable as well. It ran on VMS.
I'm so very sorry to hear that! However if she just keeps her wrists together and makes sure the club face remains perpendicular off the tee, I'm sure it can be cured.
OTOH it was a chance for me to build a replica brass astrolabe over two years then have people say "Wow, how cool is that?" instead of a more expected odd look and attempt to avoid eye contact with the crazy. Many people think this sort of participating re-enactment is just a costume party, but a lot treat it as a venue for serious research and there's a lot of organisation dedicated to encouraging that. Have a look at the aforementioned SCA web sites and chase down any of the research links there or references to the "Order of the Laurel".
It's also the only organisation where I can say "Hey, my wife is a Pelican" and not be in danger of picking up a Thorazine habit.
Besides, the game physics are exact and accurate, and the graphics are retinal, and you get an unlimited number of rezzes.
-- Colossus, The Forbin Project
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that".
HAL 9000 -- 2001 - A Space Oddessy
http://www.sca.org/ or http://www.sca.org.au/ if you're in Australia. Society for Creative Anachronism. Brilliant:Jerk ratio relatively high in favor of first term. Amazing what a bit of play-acting can do to drag skills out of you. Oh, and to remain on topic -- there's a fair component of serious archaeology and sociology study mixed in with the play acting. And some damn fine music.
And pie.
Tough read past that point but you can make it if you mind your P's and Q's.
Sails can be helpful, I've seen models for tall vertical turbines that are independent of wind direction (not independent of wind, however). And my old friend the Stirling cycle engine could still be useful here - exploit the temperature differential by dipping the cold-side heat exchanger of the engine in the stream of running water. Would work on warm days, no acreage of solar panels required. You don't need a huge temperature differential for them to work, although it would need some form of low-drag integration into the hull. Maybe just a few square meters of copper integrated into the bottom of the hull, a black surface for the hot end topside. I like Stirling engines...no fuel, just a temperature differential, sometimes a bit slow to start up. Cool technology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine/
that could use this cluster for a better purpose than "playing around"?
Guys, a lot of useful pure research is mostly just playing around. Take a few ideas as a baseline to get you started, then play around until you reach that "hey, that's funny..." moment. Challenge the limits as a goal in itself, then see how things act on the edge, apply rules and discipline to your game when it gets interesting.
The only real difference between play and pure research is whether or not you keep a decent lab journal.
Exploit small temperature differentials over large thermal mass via Stirling cycle engine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine/) . Dig a hole in the ground in a sunny area and lay a large heat sink for the cold side. It only takes a few degrees difference, and if you pick a nice heat-conductive soil you can run for a very long time before you reach thermal saturation. Cost to run? Replace the bearings once every few years, perhaps.
I understand the old F-100 fighter ejection seats were pretty simple and easy to adapt, couple of wrenches and a bit of elbow grease and you'll have one you'd think was made by Recaro. With a bit of judicious circular routing of forms, you might be able to get a surplus jet assigned to you as a company car. Might have more potential than your cubicle ejection seat. Besides, they already come equipped with casters.
So THAT's where Clippy went. Dear gods.
I may be unusual here, and Australian who defends American coffee. I don't mean Starbucks (burnt dishwater) but the day-to-day drip filter coffee served in most restaraunts in the US just signifies a different culture.
To start with, the coffee is necessarily weaker because the office culture tends toward having a fresh cup permanently affixed to your workspace, and drinking as much as that means you must moderate the content else your brain cells end up being felted. When the coffee is thus configured, the aroma becomes important -- a clear and subtle flavour that does not cause a sensory white-out. In that context, American coffee can be really quite good. Did that for a few years, working in California.
That said, my current recipe is for short black Macchiato, espresso with a dusting of milk foam and no sugar (the latter by necessity, being a diabetic. Artificial sweeteners are an unnecessary abomination).
The initial Macintosh computer (the "skinny Mac") had the signatures of the engineers who made it possible part of the casting of the machine, inside on the industrial-foam case.
Nice tribute, but it's a bit ironic that Apple didn't want you to get inside the box -- required a case-breaker and a special long-shaft Torx screwdriver.
There, fixed that for you.
"You supply the story -- I'll supply the war!"
When ever I see a thread like this, I have to ask myself -- which operating system is most likely to be around in one form or another a century from now? Then ask -- how is it maintained? What business model is capable of supporting it? The best that I can come up with is that our descendants will still be reading threads like this.
Now go away, before I lose track of the decimal point on my slide rule.
If you tap peoples' phones for good reasons, pretty soon you'll be tapping them for bad ones.
There's more than one place to fit a lever.
Having said that, I think it's a bad dose of mass-medicine and I don't particularly like it. My reason? As noted by others in this thread, they ain't a' gonna use airplanes next time. Read your Spider Robinson, and deduce the next target.