That's right, your horizontal velocity, relative to the air in the atmosphere (on average) is zero. Your vertical velocity would be stupidly high, tho...
Plus, if you're travelling in a circle, you have angular speed, not horizontal velocity.
Apologies for the lack of detail, it's been a long time since I covered this in A-level Physics, I remember having this drummed into me then, though.
Basically, if you're at 100km on a space elevator you are stationary wrt the ground, however, if you are in orbit around the earth at that height under your own steam (if that's in fact possible), you are travelling a hella lot faster...
Although if you're jumping from a space elevator, you won't have any horizontal speed (relative to the surface of the earth). This only comes into effect if you have boosted yourself into an orbit lower than geosynchronous, where horizontal speed is needed to keep you falling round the curve of the earth (and not into it). The closer to GEO you get, the less horizontal speed you need (relative to the surface of the earth) to stay there.
In The Fountains of Paradise, Clarke discusses the effect of falling of the space elevator at points both above and below geosync by two unlucky, very minor characters...
WinXP has numerous usability improvements over 2000, the look-and-feel being only one of the least signigicant ones.
While this is true, they are just that - usability improvements, there really isn't a lot between 2000 and XP that a few enterprising (open source?) programmers couldn't have come up with, maybe an overlay for explorer.exe a la Litestep could have handled these:
Date and time can be synchronized with NTP servers (2000 only synchronized with the domain controller, IIRC)
This was in fact possible on Win32 right down to Win95 (I believe), via the net time command. A bit unintuitive, sure, but surely not to geeks-like-us?
There is the switch user thing - your wife can check her e-mail while you are downloading something - Apple even copied this one (there is always a first time for everything).
True, that rotating cube thing that you get with Quartz Extreme is fairly stylish, though:)
There is remote desktop (and yes, its server side works better than VNC, at least on Windows).
However 2000 (Server) had full-blown Terminal Services, of which Remote Desktop is a pared-down shadow. This allows for virtual desktop sessions (two, out of the box), as well as someone sitting at the computer to be using it. So to paraphrase your earlier sentence, I can be downloading something on an rdesktop session from another computer (anywhere in the world, in fact), while my wife is checking her email. A Windows multi-user system? Surely not! This is the primary reason I run Win2k Server at home. And, as long as you don't want to play any games on it, a P-III 550 with just over a half-gig of RAM will do this just fine..
There is sub-pixel anti-aliasing for LCD displays
You got me there:)
*snip*
I'm not really bashing Microsoft, it's just that releasing XP (or NT 5.1 as Microsoft refer to it internally), seemed like a bit of a cynical move, and they haven't really progressed from there in the last four years, have they? In fact I don't actually run Linux natively at home, just a VM (I don't have a lot of time on my hands at home, computer-wise, due to family n stuff), but I consider myself at home in a CLI environment. ANd yes, I do realise that Linux could handle many of the things I've been talking up 2k Server about..
I'm not even bashing XP, I use it (at work), and it does have a (very) few advantages over Win2k, but I'd like to see it running as well as Win2k Server on the system I use at home
Possible solution to your problem exist though:
-Downgrade, actually an upgrade, your OS to Win2000.
Well said, it seems that many slahdotters are nobbling their computers with XP (NT 5.1) ( a very small and bloated step up from Win2k (NT 5.0) )
I've been happily using Win2k since 2000, when I had it installed on a Pentium 233 (still seemed pretty responsive, even on that)
I'll probably set up Win2k Server (TS would be handy from work), but I haven't had the time to spend all evening as well as all day in front of a computer much (my first kid is due in four days : )
Slashdot Mirror
That's right, your horizontal velocity, relative to the air in the atmosphere (on average) is zero. Your vertical velocity would be stupidly high, tho...
Plus, if you're travelling in a circle, you have angular speed, not horizontal velocity.
Apologies for the lack of detail, it's been a long time since I covered this in A-level Physics, I remember having this drummed into me then, though.
Basically, if you're at 100km on a space elevator you are stationary wrt the ground, however, if you are in orbit around the earth at that height under your own steam (if that's in fact possible), you are travelling a hella lot faster...
Although if you're jumping from a space elevator, you won't have any horizontal speed (relative to the surface of the earth). This only comes into effect if you have boosted yourself into an orbit lower than geosynchronous, where horizontal speed is needed to keep you falling round the curve of the earth (and not into it). The closer to GEO you get, the less horizontal speed you need (relative to the surface of the earth) to stay there.
In The Fountains of Paradise, Clarke discusses the effect of falling of the space elevator at points both above and below geosync by two unlucky, very minor characters...
WinXP has numerous usability improvements over 2000, the look-and-feel being only one of the least signigicant ones.
While this is true, they are just that - usability improvements, there really isn't a lot between 2000 and XP that a few enterprising (open source?) programmers couldn't have come up with, maybe an overlay for explorer.exe a la Litestep could have handled these:
Date and time can be synchronized with NTP servers (2000 only synchronized with the domain controller, IIRC)
This was in fact possible on Win32 right down to Win95 (I believe), via the net time command. A bit unintuitive, sure, but surely not to geeks-like-us?
There is the switch user thing - your wife can check her e-mail while you are downloading something - Apple even copied this one (there is always a first time for everything).
True, that rotating cube thing that you get with Quartz Extreme is fairly stylish, though :)
There is remote desktop (and yes, its server side works better than VNC, at least on Windows).
However 2000 (Server) had full-blown Terminal Services, of which Remote Desktop is a pared-down shadow. This allows for virtual desktop sessions (two, out of the box), as well as someone sitting at the computer to be using it. So to paraphrase your earlier sentence, I can be downloading something on an rdesktop session from another computer (anywhere in the world, in fact), while my wife is checking her email. A Windows multi-user system? Surely not! This is the primary reason I run Win2k Server at home. And, as long as you don't want to play any games on it, a P-III 550 with just over a half-gig of RAM will do this just fine..
There is sub-pixel anti-aliasing for LCD displays
You got me there :)
*snip*
I'm not really bashing Microsoft, it's just that releasing XP (or NT 5.1 as Microsoft refer to it internally), seemed like a bit of a cynical move, and they haven't really progressed from there in the last four years, have they? In fact I don't actually run Linux natively at home, just a VM (I don't have a lot of time on my hands at home, computer-wise, due to family n stuff), but I consider myself at home in a CLI environment. ANd yes, I do realise that Linux could handle many of the things I've been talking up 2k Server about..
I'm not even bashing XP, I use it (at work), and it does have a (very) few advantages over Win2k, but I'd like to see it running as well as Win2k Server on the system I use at home
Just my tuppence, anyway
Jerry
...Unless your X server has crashed and you wish to get back to a command prompt, of course. But we all knew that, didnt we?
You should be glad there's a text file in \winnt\system32\drivers\etc, rather than some funky dialog box
Well said, it seems that many slahdotters are nobbling their computers with XP (NT 5.1) ( a very small and bloated step up from Win2k (NT 5.0) )
I've been happily using Win2k since 2000, when I had it installed on a Pentium 233 (still seemed pretty responsive, even on that)
I'll probably set up Win2k Server (TS would be handy from work), but I haven't had the time to spend all evening as well as all day in front of a computer much (my first kid is due in four days : )
JezzaThat didn't work last time did it? Fox News and family connections got him into power last time...