I was assuming that by "restore" he meant "make the original better," not "make a restored copy." I was also assuming that the process should be automated, which I just didn't see happening.
Nope, never done that with a photocopier, but I see how you could.
Lasers can't get inside features like hollowed-out areas (they can't control depth as well because they don't know the exact material properties inside the stone, and if it hit an unexpected soft spot, oops! there goes the whole thing.
A laser cutter would use much more energy to burn the material away than a conventional mill uses to just chip it.
If the machine can mill stone, it can mill wood. I've done it before, but you do have to be careful about the feedrate and small features or else you run the risk of splintering the wood.
I don't see how it could restore a wood carving though...
I can't, nor could someone that espouses evolution as fact.
Interesting, since I've had it explained to me before: it's left-over from when we were evolving.
>Q. Do other animals have appendices and if so do they serve a purpose?
>A. Yes in some animals like the rabbit and other herbivores the appendix is a fully formed working organ. It stores vegetable cellulose until it has been broken down and is fully digested. link (The next Q&A from that link has another possible explanation, but IMHO it's less likely because people who have an appendectomy don't seem to be affected.)
It makes a lot more sense (to me) that it's left over from the evolutionary process than saying that God simply making a whole bunch of animals with appendixes because he 'forgot' to take them out of animals that don't need them (us).
I live 60 miles from my work, an hour and a half or more each way in Dallas traffic. But my office just happens to be right off the north end of Addison Airport, and I've got eight acres of very flat land that could probably be converted into a short landing strip.
8 acres of land is pushing it in terms of taking off / landing a plane. This ultralight needs ~350 ft to land, and that's with an experienced pilot. If you don't get the hang of precision short-field landings, that number will increase. Also, the bigger the plane the longer the ground roll, so don't count on getting one of these in and out of such a small area.
We're going to need a new car soon... why not buy a plane instead? Is this even remotely worth considering? Or will the cost of jet fuel make it just an expensive hobby?
A used (30 years old) Cessna runs around the cost of an expensive car, and the maintenance is much more strict and expensive than for a car, so you'd probably do better with an ultralight or an aircraft that fits into this new class, for maintenance. Also, most small aircraft use 100LL fuel, not Jet A.
And am I just the sort of wannabe Top Gun that the "real" pilots would just as soon stay on the ground?
If you plan on buying an ultralight and flying it on your own without any training, then yes you are one of the people who pilots would rather keep grounded. If you want to go to the local airport and take lessons though, you might be surprised at how friendly the people are and how willing they are to talk to you and encourage you along your training. If you're really interested, just find a flight school and stop in. It can't hurt.
...And in an apparent act of copycat terrorism, the Polish Terrorist Organization has hijacked the Goodyear blimp. They have been bouncing off buildings in downtown Manhatten for the past 2 hours.
I don't know, after making it easier for people to fly the small, non-dangerous type of planes, maybe it will be made *much* harder to learn to fly the big ones...
Probably not. All planes operate on the same general principles; if you learn to fly on a small plane with yoke and pedals, it wouldn't be too hard to translate that up to an airliner (that's what the 9/11 terrorists did).
The only effect that I can see from making it more difficult to get a commercial multi-engine rating would be less pilots for the industry, and therefore higher ticket prices.
Maybe, maybe not... it al depends on how you use it. Try putting your elbow on the table and holding your hand steady in the air. Not so hard now, is it? Even holding that position for a while isn't that hard. Granted, it's harder than just resting it on the mouse that you already have, but I see no easy way around that without having a suspension system to hold your arm up. Now if you try standing up and holding your hand in place over the desk without steadying yourself, it's not so easy and it fatigues you a lot more.
And what happens when you want to type/relax/urinate? You put it down, lose your place in 3d space, and have to get it back to the same position to continue?
I would imagine that a good way to handle this problem would be to have a button on the mouse itself so that it only registers motion when you're holding the button down, analogous to how a regular mouse only registers motion when it's on the table. It may very well be annoying, but who really knows until someone tries it? I thought I'd hate scroll wheels before I'd used one, but after about 10 minutes I knew I'd never go back.
It's a nice hack, don't get me wrong, but there's a reason why helicopters use a 2 handed control system rather than a mouse. Doing it all with one hand just isn't very accurate, easy, or safe...
Very true. Helicopters encounter quite a bit of turbulence, and when they catch an updraft for example, the pilot's hand drops in relation to his/her body and that wouldn't be very easy safe or accurate at all. The difference is that when you're at your computer, most of the time you're on a pretty stable surface and so is the computer... so it's kind of a moot point.
At least he'll be using his own plane, so the only life he's risking in this situation is his own and maybe one or two willing others. Part of the reason why the FAA is over-sensative over what's going on within commerical airplanes is because if the unthinkable random frequency collision were to happen, it might cause an instrument to give a wrong reading to the pilot and the result would be hundreds of people being killed. That's rather high stakes to be guessing...
Being a student pilot myself (35 hrs cumulative flight time), I really doubt that he's taking any significant risk at all. As it says in the article, it is up to the PIC (pilot-in-command) to decide whether or not to allow the use of personal electronic devices, and just looking over at his laptop while flying poses just about no risk. On a cross-country flights (100+mi), there's maps to be examined, air traffic controllers to contact, radio stations to tune into to verify your location, a flight computer to use (think complicated slide rule), passengers to talk to, and increasingly, GPS units to play with. He's been a pilot for 35 or so years, so I'm sure he'll set up everything on the ground and get it working before he ever starts the plane's engine, so just looking over to the laptop to check signal strength and connect to the internet shouldn't take any more concentration than looking at a sectional chart to make sure he's outside the local airspace.
As to the equipment interfering with the instruments, small aircraft have instruments based mostly on mechanical parts. Heck, some of them don't even use electricity to spin the gyroscopes. Additionally, I'm sure he's flown in this area before and therefore is familiar witht he terrain - every pilot I know has flown over his/her home numerous times:-) Commercial aircraft use more sensitive electronic gauges, but my opinion is that they're robust enough to handle the interference from PED's; even if there's a problem, though, teh pilots are trained to fly using much less equipment than the plane actually has. Most people don't realize how much redundancy is build right into the regulations.
Bottom line, I agree that the FAA is being oversensitive, and I'm very curious about how this all turns out.
>The recent letter signed by a group of interests seeking a hearing (which we too support) is a case in point. It states:
>>"While we agree with the need to penalize those who intentionally cause Copyright infringement, we are concerned..."
>Those who accept the core purpose of the bill ought to come forth with constructive and concrete suggestions, not hypothetical and peripheral concerns. Why? The men and women of the music community and their families - and other content creators - deserve action. We can't afford paralysis.
So he's claiming that these companies now have the responsibility of rewording the proposal? I thought that was the politicians's job.
>So please look carefully at this legislation. And please do not let perfection be the enemy of the good or tangential excuses be the enemy of common sense defense of property rights. Too much is at stake.
Whooo!!!! OMFG he doesn't understand ANYTHING about the legal process, does he? A misplaced comma can completely change the meaning of an english sentence, and in the context of a law, that can make all the difference in the world! Even worse is when the intent of a bill can be misinterpreted because it was hurried through the red tape without being completely looked over! I sure hope this guy never decides to practice law.
My only other gripe about the response letter is where he calls P2P pirating "identical" to stealing from the record stores. Well, that and all the 1 & 2-sentence paragraphs, but I tend to do the same thing when I'm writing on a short timeline;-)
- My first thought would be to put a lens over the end of the gun to focus it. Maybe with a focal length of around 10-50 feet; you could probably even use a cheap lens from a disposable camera or similar to accomplish this. I admit that I'm no expert on the matter, but a little google-ing should turn up some help.
- Get a laser gun. I've been to places that use lasers instead of IR, and people show up all the time with their own equipment and whup my butt all over the place.
- Go paintballing, it's much more realistic than any IR / laser game, and you get the "force feedback" effect that's absent with light-based games.
When I built my potato guns, I didn't like how unreliable those stupid piezo-electric grill igniters were, so I decided to use a camera flash circuit (hey hey!) to build the charge. The spark points that I'd made from pieces of solder kept burning out, so I tried using a spark plug. That wasn't working either, so I ran the output through an ignition coil, and bam! It works every time now! I realized afterwards that I could have just done this without the flash circuit, but it works so well I haven't bothered to try it out.
I got the idea from an introductory electronics course at college where we modified a disposable camera to work when the lights went out, but students in the class kept zapping themselves on the capacitors. Oh the possibilities were endless! We'd hook these things up to people's doorknobs, the bathroom sinks, their chairs (never got that one to work, people weren't THAT dumb;-)).
Flyback ransformers certainly rock.
... this part of the article rubs me the wrong way: In collaboration with Cornell University in New York, Hoffman has built a virtual reality programme that is a simulation of the events of 9/11 designed to desensitise the patient to the events of that day.
It just seems too "Clockwork Orange" to me...:-/
I have the exact same gripe about AOL's AIM software. I was extremely annoyed when I discovered that it was spontaneously stealing focus away from other programs while I was doing other things. I switched as soon as I got an audio/video advertisement.
This reminds me of the idea I had for a case mod a few months ago. A storm knocked down a lamp post and I acquired the light fixture. I thought of turning it into a case mod, but only after deciding I had no use for it and giving it to a friend. He's since put it in his room as the world's largest "reading lamp."
I wish I'd turned it into a computer so that i could say 'hey look at my website! I already have one of these in my room!'
I've never heard of buying land on the moon or mars, but I wouldn't do it unless it was dirt cheap because I don't think I'd be able to do anything with it. Also, I'd be afraid that it would be ruled invalid by the time it became useful. The only thing it would be good for is framing the deed and saying "hey lookit this, I own part of the moon!"
I don't think that this will stand up in court because it just doesn't make sense. I know that's not the best reason in the world (or off it), but it's just my gut feeling. The first thing that came to my mind when I read that he had claimed the asteroid was that old Duck Dodgers cartoon where Daffy Duck claims planet X in the name of the earth while Marvin Martian claims it in the name of Mars. Bottom line, this could be a dangerous precedent if it is ruled in his favor.
How far can this go? Can I claim to own the Milky Way?
No. Our solar system and therefore the earth and even this asteroid are in the Milky Way, so if you claimed it, he'd probably sue you too;-)
I, for one, would be seriously surprised if anyone at Microsoft uses this to build a better system. I could see if this research was used for security outfits to track B&Es, but even that's a little loosey-goosey, IMHO.
I'd be really surprised too, because in the FAQ they say that they'd rather M$ fix the problems before releasing software so they wouldn't have to do this sort of thing.
Come now, doesn't this remind you of the RIAA's amnesty offer?
Nope. This seems legit to me. If you're good enough to hack/crack/phreak illegally without getting caught, then you should be able to make arrangements to not be caught for this too.
Slashdot Mirror
I was assuming that by "restore" he meant "make the original better," not "make a restored copy." I was also assuming that the process should be automated, which I just didn't see happening.
Nope, never done that with a photocopier, but I see how you could.
Conventional millers are cheaper.
Lasers can't get inside features like hollowed-out areas (they can't control depth as well because they don't know the exact material properties inside the stone, and if it hit an unexpected soft spot, oops! there goes the whole thing.
A laser cutter would use much more energy to burn the material away than a conventional mill uses to just chip it.
Hope this helps.
If the machine can mill stone, it can mill wood. I've done it before, but you do have to be careful about the feedrate and small features or else you run the risk of splintering the wood.
I don't see how it could restore a wood carving though...
I can't, nor could someone that espouses evolution as fact.
Interesting, since I've had it explained to me before: it's left-over from when we were evolving.
>Q. Do other animals have appendices and if so do they serve a purpose?
>A. Yes in some animals like the rabbit and other herbivores the appendix is a fully formed working organ. It stores vegetable cellulose until it has been broken down and is fully digested. link (The next Q&A from that link has another possible explanation, but IMHO it's less likely because people who have an appendectomy don't seem to be affected.)
It makes a lot more sense (to me) that it's left over from the evolutionary process than saying that God simply making a whole bunch of animals with appendixes because he 'forgot' to take them out of animals that don't need them (us).
Well, how would you explain why I have an appendix?
I live 60 miles from my work, an hour and a half or more each way in Dallas traffic. But my office just happens to be right off the north end of Addison Airport, and I've got eight acres of very flat land that could probably be converted into a short landing strip.
8 acres of land is pushing it in terms of taking off / landing a plane. This ultralight needs ~350 ft to land, and that's with an experienced pilot. If you don't get the hang of precision short-field landings, that number will increase. Also, the bigger the plane the longer the ground roll, so don't count on getting one of these in and out of such a small area.
We're going to need a new car soon... why not buy a plane instead? Is this even remotely worth considering? Or will the cost of jet fuel make it just an expensive hobby?
A used (30 years old) Cessna runs around the cost of an expensive car, and the maintenance is much more strict and expensive than for a car, so you'd probably do better with an ultralight or an aircraft that fits into this new class, for maintenance. Also, most small aircraft use 100LL fuel, not Jet A.
And am I just the sort of wannabe Top Gun that the "real" pilots would just as soon stay on the ground?
If you plan on buying an ultralight and flying it on your own without any training, then yes you are one of the people who pilots would rather keep grounded. If you want to go to the local airport and take lessons though, you might be surprised at how friendly the people are and how willing they are to talk to you and encourage you along your training. If you're really interested, just find a flight school and stop in. It can't hurt.
...And in an apparent act of copycat terrorism, the Polish Terrorist Organization has hijacked the Goodyear blimp. They have been bouncing off buildings in downtown Manhatten for the past 2 hours.
I don't know, after making it easier for people to fly the small, non-dangerous type of planes, maybe it will be made *much* harder to learn to fly the big ones...
Probably not. All planes operate on the same general principles; if you learn to fly on a small plane with yoke and pedals, it wouldn't be too hard to translate that up to an airliner (that's what the 9/11 terrorists did).
The only effect that I can see from making it more difficult to get a commercial multi-engine rating would be less pilots for the industry, and therefore higher ticket prices.
...is surely the problem with all these designs?
Maybe, maybe not... it al depends on how you use it. Try putting your elbow on the table and holding your hand steady in the air. Not so hard now, is it? Even holding that position for a while isn't that hard. Granted, it's harder than just resting it on the mouse that you already have, but I see no easy way around that without having a suspension system to hold your arm up. Now if you try standing up and holding your hand in place over the desk without steadying yourself, it's not so easy and it fatigues you a lot more.
And what happens when you want to type/relax/urinate? You put it down, lose your place in 3d space, and have to get it back to the same position to continue?
I would imagine that a good way to handle this problem would be to have a button on the mouse itself so that it only registers motion when you're holding the button down, analogous to how a regular mouse only registers motion when it's on the table. It may very well be annoying, but who really knows until someone tries it? I thought I'd hate scroll wheels before I'd used one, but after about 10 minutes I knew I'd never go back.
It's a nice hack, don't get me wrong, but there's a reason why helicopters use a 2 handed control system rather than a mouse. Doing it all with one hand just isn't very accurate, easy, or safe...
Very true. Helicopters encounter quite a bit of turbulence, and when they catch an updraft for example, the pilot's hand drops in relation to his/her body and that wouldn't be very easy safe or accurate at all. The difference is that when you're at your computer, most of the time you're on a pretty stable surface and so is the computer... so it's kind of a moot point.
At least he'll be using his own plane, so the only life he's risking in this situation is his own and maybe one or two willing others. Part of the reason why the FAA is over-sensative over what's going on within commerical airplanes is because if the unthinkable random frequency collision were to happen, it might cause an instrument to give a wrong reading to the pilot and the result would be hundreds of people being killed. That's rather high stakes to be guessing...
:-) Commercial aircraft use more sensitive electronic gauges, but my opinion is that they're robust enough to handle the interference from PED's; even if there's a problem, though, teh pilots are trained to fly using much less equipment than the plane actually has. Most people don't realize how much redundancy is build right into the regulations.
Being a student pilot myself (35 hrs cumulative flight time), I really doubt that he's taking any significant risk at all. As it says in the article, it is up to the PIC (pilot-in-command) to decide whether or not to allow the use of personal electronic devices, and just looking over at his laptop while flying poses just about no risk. On a cross-country flights (100+mi), there's maps to be examined, air traffic controllers to contact, radio stations to tune into to verify your location, a flight computer to use (think complicated slide rule), passengers to talk to, and increasingly, GPS units to play with. He's been a pilot for 35 or so years, so I'm sure he'll set up everything on the ground and get it working before he ever starts the plane's engine, so just looking over to the laptop to check signal strength and connect to the internet shouldn't take any more concentration than looking at a sectional chart to make sure he's outside the local airspace.
As to the equipment interfering with the instruments, small aircraft have instruments based mostly on mechanical parts. Heck, some of them don't even use electricity to spin the gyroscopes. Additionally, I'm sure he's flown in this area before and therefore is familiar witht he terrain - every pilot I know has flown over his/her home numerous times
Bottom line, I agree that the FAA is being oversensitive, and I'm very curious about how this all turns out.
Anywho, back to work.
Lifting body? With that kind of speed and that duration of flight, you don't need much lift.
Heh, I was just lucky enough to get the second dirty comment in before the rest of you perverts read the story.
Stocks soar in the interactive porn industry.
>The recent letter signed by a group of interests seeking a hearing (which we too support) is a case in point. It states:
;-)
>>"While we agree with the need to penalize those who intentionally cause Copyright infringement, we are concerned..."
>Those who accept the core purpose of the bill ought to come forth with constructive and concrete suggestions, not hypothetical and peripheral concerns. Why? The men and women of the music community and their families - and other content creators - deserve action. We can't afford paralysis.
So he's claiming that these companies now have the responsibility of rewording the proposal? I thought that was the politicians's job.
>So please look carefully at this legislation. And please do not let perfection be the enemy of the good or tangential excuses be the enemy of common sense defense of property rights. Too much is at stake.
Whooo!!!! OMFG he doesn't understand ANYTHING about the legal process, does he? A misplaced comma can completely change the meaning of an english sentence, and in the context of a law, that can make all the difference in the world! Even worse is when the intent of a bill can be misinterpreted because it was hurried through the red tape without being completely looked over! I sure hope this guy never decides to practice law.
My only other gripe about the response letter is where he calls P2P pirating "identical" to stealing from the record stores. Well, that and all the 1 & 2-sentence paragraphs, but I tend to do the same thing when I'm writing on a short timeline
- My first thought would be to put a lens over the end of the gun to focus it. Maybe with a focal length of around 10-50 feet; you could probably even use a cheap lens from a disposable camera or similar to accomplish this. I admit that I'm no expert on the matter, but a little google-ing should turn up some help.
- Get a laser gun. I've been to places that use lasers instead of IR, and people show up all the time with their own equipment and whup my butt all over the place.
- Go paintballing, it's much more realistic than any IR / laser game, and you get the "force feedback" effect that's absent with light-based games.
Alright, who's the moron who modded the parent "Informative"?
When I built my potato guns, I didn't like how unreliable those stupid piezo-electric grill igniters were, so I decided to use a camera flash circuit (hey hey!) to build the charge. The spark points that I'd made from pieces of solder kept burning out, so I tried using a spark plug. That wasn't working either, so I ran the output through an ignition coil, and bam! It works every time now! I realized afterwards that I could have just done this without the flash circuit, but it works so well I haven't bothered to try it out. ;-)).
I got the idea from an introductory electronics course at college where we modified a disposable camera to work when the lights went out, but students in the class kept zapping themselves on the capacitors. Oh the possibilities were endless! We'd hook these things up to people's doorknobs, the bathroom sinks, their chairs (never got that one to work, people weren't THAT dumb
Flyback ransformers certainly rock.
Does it run Linux? If so, I'm afraid of it. I wouldn't want a malicious penguin taking over control.
Ohh! I think I get it now! :)
Thanks for the clarification
... this part of the article rubs me the wrong way: :-/
In collaboration with Cornell University in New York, Hoffman has built a virtual reality programme that is a simulation of the events of 9/11 designed to desensitise the patient to the events of that day.
It just seems too "Clockwork Orange" to me...
I have the exact same gripe about AOL's AIM software. I was extremely annoyed when I discovered that it was spontaneously stealing focus away from other programs while I was doing other things. I switched as soon as I got an audio/video advertisement.
This reminds me of the idea I had for a case mod a few months ago. A storm knocked down a lamp post and I acquired the light fixture. I thought of turning it into a case mod, but only after deciding I had no use for it and giving it to a friend. He's since put it in his room as the world's largest "reading lamp."
I wish I'd turned it into a computer so that i could say 'hey look at my website! I already have one of these in my room!'
. . . isn't the first time always free?? ;-)
In this case it's the first 3 times, but close enough
I've never heard of buying land on the moon or mars, but I wouldn't do it unless it was dirt cheap because I don't think I'd be able to do anything with it. Also, I'd be afraid that it would be ruled invalid by the time it became useful. The only thing it would be good for is framing the deed and saying "hey lookit this, I own part of the moon!"
;-)
I don't think that this will stand up in court because it just doesn't make sense. I know that's not the best reason in the world (or off it), but it's just my gut feeling. The first thing that came to my mind when I read that he had claimed the asteroid was that old Duck Dodgers cartoon where Daffy Duck claims planet X in the name of the earth while Marvin Martian claims it in the name of Mars. Bottom line, this could be a dangerous precedent if it is ruled in his favor.
How far can this go? Can I claim to own the Milky Way?
No. Our solar system and therefore the earth and even this asteroid are in the Milky Way, so if you claimed it, he'd probably sue you too
I, for one, would be seriously surprised if anyone at Microsoft uses this to build a better system. I could see if this research was used for security outfits to track B&Es, but even that's a little loosey-goosey, IMHO.
I'd be really surprised too, because in the FAQ they say that they'd rather M$ fix the problems before releasing software so they wouldn't have to do this sort of thing.
Come now, doesn't this remind you of the RIAA's amnesty offer?
Nope. This seems legit to me. If you're good enough to hack/crack/phreak illegally without getting caught, then you should be able to make arrangements to not be caught for this too.