I don't think Osama could keep a straight face if he were to declare jihad on the "big wheel thing".
Firstly, thanks for making me laugh out loud and alerting my coworkers to the fact I'm not working. Secondly, yeah, it's really called "The London Eye", but everyone I know seems to call it the "Big Wheel Thing". Thirdly, it would mnake an awesome terrorist target as a)it looks like a giant bullseye and b) the way it is cantilevered out over the river means that, if it fell, it would land on top of the Ministry of Defence.
In fact, I might just do it myself, unless you pay me (puts pinky to corner of mouth)... One million Dollars!
I work for Transport for London (Transport Authority in London, UK, duh), and, after 9/11 my boss asked me to print out a huge map of the city and put a little sticky label over every "potential terrorist target". Buckingham Palace, Houses of Parliament, the big wheel thing, ministry of defence, big office blocks, army barracks, more palaces....
After three hours I was running out of sticky labels and was very scared.
But hey, look on the bright side, maybe it'll never happen!!!
NASA has been talking about going to Mars forever, but they keep pushing the year back...
Yeah, it's totally embarrassing. Imagine if someone from the sixties, say, got in a time machine to visit us in 2003.
"Where are all the spaceships?" he'd say. "Haven't you guys build a base on Mars yet?"
"Uh, no... but we are building one in Norway." The shame.
My first reaction to your comment was to post something saying how you were totally wrong, but then I read it again, and it's an interesting point.
Are you saying that this environment has existed in its curent state for so long that the species living in it have had more time to adapt to more and more specialised niches within it?
Whereas on land, where you get ice ages, meteorite strikes, etc, every so often, species have to adapt quickly, so therefore, in the long run, the less specialised species are at an advantage?
heh heh, it sounds just like where i used to live unbtila coupla weeks ago. (UK/London/South/Peckham) If I'd had a lawn there someone woulda peed on it. My car got broken into a week after I bought it. My stereo got nicked from out of my bedroom while I was still in the bedroom (the guy ran off pretty quick, tho - not expecting a big hairy naked geek to suddenly jump out of bed and start screaming at him like that).
Anyway,the point is, I dealt with it. I actually enjoyed living there. How rubbish do you have to be to get wound up by people peeing on your fake computer-generated lawn. Heck, I was playing Civilisation III last night and the Yanks enslaved hundreds of thousands of my citizens, and you didn't catch me complaining.
Nice one - I was going to post this link myself. Like someone else said, Hektor is really just a big plotter. Sure, there must have been some technical challenges to overcome, ut it's just a bigger version of something we've already got. Street Writer, on the other hand, is totally original AFAIK, and therefore is much much cooler.
Re:What about teachin them some math, physics and
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Wi-Fi Woods
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· Score: 1
It would be far more useful to me to know how to schedule my day effectively than how to hunt down game. Currently I can't do either, but I know which one would keep my boss happy.
Oh well. The agle my desk is, at least he can't see me spending all morning on/.
Isn't someone making a film of "I am Legend" as we speak? Starring Will Smith? Or is this old news?
Re:What about teachin them some math, physics and
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Wi-Fi Woods
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Yeah, when I was at school (we're talking early nineties) the problem with the way they taught computing was that they didn't integrate it into the rest of the curriculum, so you never actually got to use it in a real-life environment, meaning that it was impossible to learn. So you'd have the "technology" teacher, probably with a background in woodwork, saying 'Yes, so this is a spreadsheet. Er, if you had a ny data to process, you'd see how useful it was...' Meannwhile we're writing down all the results of our physics experimnts on a piece of soggy paper, with a biro. The best way to teach people to use computers is surely to get them to use computers to help them with somthing they were going to do anyway, like people use computers in real life. Not only would that help persuade the more technophobic kids that computers were actually there to make their lives easier, it would help combat that "I wanna learn web design! Yeah! I want my own website! Cool! I've got my own website, now I need some content!" phenomenon. Thanks for listening.
Re:Give them some digital cameras and GPS too.
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· Score: 1
I want that stuff! My office is like two blocks from a big sunny park. I want to do my work in the park. I WANT IT! I don't begrudge the kids having all these cool toys, but other people need them too.
"Any craft... will be limited to a crusing speed of about 0.1-0.2C by the specific impulse of their fuel"
It's been far too long since I read a non-fiction book with spaceships in it, but can't you (in theory) propel a spaceship by shining a very powerful light out of the back, using the photons themselves as the reaction mass? Then could you get nearer to c?
But the stick is only moving an inch or so and not very fast...
no, it's not moving very fast, but it is rather long, and the shrinkage is a fraction of the total length. Someone reading this must know enough about relativity to do the math? Please?? I mean, reading other comments, I can get the whole speed-of-sound waveform thing, but wouldn't the relativistic-shrinking thing have some effect?
Firstly, didn't they just measure the speed of gravity and find it to be equal to c?
Secondly, the faster something moves, the shorter it gets, due to relativistic effects. It's really tiny, like, the Apollo rockets got something like 0.0000001 mm shorter (haven't got the figures, you get the point) at maximum velocity, but this means as you move the stick the stick gets shorter, precise shrinkige a function of the speed you move it and the length of the stick.<br> So, it could well be (er, someone do the math for me, please) that the stick shrinks by the same amount you move it, meaning that the corresponding movement at the other end is delayed.<br>Maybe?
Re. slower than light travel - if you get fast enough (i.e. a sizable fraction of c), then, even if it takes dacedes to get where you're going, time dilation will mean that far less time passes for the crew of a spacecraft - so, if you're going fast enough, a trip of 90 light-years, say, could be accomplished within the natural lifetime of the crew without FTL travel.
The reason we need manned missions is because sending people into space is cooler and more exciting than sending robots into space. Why should robots get all the fun?
"..when someone is in the car with me and I'm talking to them, I don't have any problem paying attention to the road. I haven't quite figured that out yet."
Also, when someone is in the car with you, they know when to shut up. As the passenger, you're not going to say anything requiring an in-depth response whilst the driver is attempting a complex manouver.
Why not stick with the physical interfaces for cellphone, stereo, etc, but DRIVE using guesture recognition? How cool would it be to just have to point in the direction you wanted to go? Okay, not that cool, but I still like the idea
yeah, but in the case of a bullet hitting a plank of wood and the wood gaining motion, the bullet loses KE and transfers it to the plank. Gold is claiming that the photon is bounced off the sail with the same energy with which it hit it - ie no transfer. IANAP but the part I don't understand is the part of the diagram saying "The sail is a perfect mirror". Surely such a thing does not really exist? Perfect?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think Osama could keep a straight face if he were to declare jihad on the "big wheel thing".
Firstly, thanks for making me laugh out loud and alerting my coworkers to the fact I'm not working.
Secondly, yeah, it's really called "The London Eye", but everyone I know seems to call it the "Big Wheel Thing".
Thirdly, it would mnake an awesome terrorist target as a)it looks like a giant bullseye and
b) the way it is cantilevered out over the river means that, if it fell, it would land on top of the Ministry of Defence.
In fact, I might just do it myself, unless you pay me (puts pinky to corner of mouth)... One million Dollars!
yeah, shit, I wonder where I left it...
I work for Transport for London (Transport Authority in London, UK, duh), and, after 9/11 my boss asked me to print out a huge map of the city and put a little sticky label over every "potential terrorist target". Buckingham Palace, Houses of Parliament, the big wheel thing, ministry of defence, big office blocks, army barracks, more palaces....
After three hours I was running out of sticky labels and was very scared.
But hey, look on the bright side, maybe it'll never happen!!!
NASA has been talking about going to Mars forever, but they keep pushing the year back...
Yeah, it's totally embarrassing. Imagine if someone from the sixties, say, got in a time machine to visit us in 2003.
"Where are all the spaceships?" he'd say. "Haven't you guys build a base on Mars yet?"
"Uh, no... but we are building one in Norway."
The shame.
My first reaction to your comment was to post something saying how you were totally wrong, but then I read it again, and it's an interesting point.
Are you saying that this environment has existed in its curent state for so long that the species living in it have had more time to adapt to more and more specialised niches within it?
Whereas on land, where you get ice ages, meteorite strikes, etc, every so often, species have to adapt quickly, so therefore, in the long run, the less specialised species are at an advantage?
If you were saying that, then I agree with you.
Yeah, I was wondering how those NASA guys are gonna deal with the giant talking bears, too. Those guys can tear through steel like paper.
Any unorthodox method of sending a message is important
Nice, that would include the spreadsheet I put together to translate ASCII into a string of x'es and spaces to append to email sign-offs. like:
Love,
Snugglebunny
xx x xx xx xxx xx xx xxx x xxx xx xxx x xx xxx
NB: The above example doesn't mean anything, it's just an example
heh heh, it sounds just like where i used to live unbtila coupla weeks ago. (UK/London/South/Peckham) If I'd had a lawn there someone woulda peed on it. My car got broken into a week after I bought it. My stereo got nicked from out of my bedroom while I was still in the bedroom (the guy ran off pretty quick, tho - not expecting a big hairy naked geek to suddenly jump out of bed and start screaming at him like that).
Anyway,the point is, I dealt with it. I actually enjoyed living there. How rubbish do you have to be to get wound up by people peeing on your fake computer-generated lawn. Heck, I was playing Civilisation III last night and the Yanks enslaved hundreds of thousands of my citizens, and you didn't catch me complaining.
Nice one - I was going to post this link myself.
Like someone else said, Hektor is really just a big plotter. Sure, there must have been some technical challenges to overcome, ut it's just a bigger version of something we've already got.
Street Writer, on the other hand, is totally original AFAIK, and therefore is much much cooler.
It would be far more useful to me to know how to schedule my day effectively than how to hunt down game. Currently I can't do either, but I know which one would keep my boss happy.
/.
Oh well. The agle my desk is, at least he can't see me spending all morning on
Isn't someone making a film of "I am Legend" as we speak? Starring Will Smith? Or is this old news?
Yeah, when I was at school (we're talking early nineties) the problem with the way they taught computing was that they didn't integrate it into the rest of the curriculum, so you never actually got to use it in a real-life environment, meaning that it was impossible to learn.
So you'd have the "technology" teacher, probably with a background in woodwork, saying 'Yes, so this is a spreadsheet. Er, if you had a ny data to process, you'd see how useful it was...'
Meannwhile we're writing down all the results of our physics experimnts on a piece of soggy paper, with a biro.
The best way to teach people to use computers is surely to get them to use computers to help them with somthing they were going to do anyway, like people use computers in real life. Not only would that help persuade the more technophobic kids that computers were actually there to make their lives easier, it would help combat that "I wanna learn web design! Yeah! I want my own website! Cool! I've got my own website, now I need some content!" phenomenon.
Thanks for listening.
I want that stuff! My office is like two blocks from a big sunny park. I want to do my work in the park. I WANT IT!
I don't begrudge the kids having all these cool toys, but other people need them too.
"...but from a long distance one would see a superposition of all those signals for different TV and radio stations, i.e. noise."
Ummm, has someone told those SETI guys this? Maybe that's why we haven't found anything yet...
"Any craft... will be limited to a crusing speed of about 0.1-0.2C by the specific impulse of their fuel"
It's been far too long since I read a non-fiction book with spaceships in it, but can't you (in theory) propel a spaceship by shining a very powerful light out of the back, using the photons themselves as the reaction mass? Then could you get nearer to c?
There is no such thing as a perfectly rigid body.
huhuhuhuhuhu...
Shut up, Butthead! I said Shut up!
But the stick is only moving an inch or so and not very fast...
no, it's not moving very fast, but it is rather long, and the shrinkage is a fraction of the total length. Someone reading this must know enough about relativity to do the math? Please??
I mean, reading other comments, I can get the whole speed-of-sound waveform thing, but wouldn't the relativistic-shrinking thing have some effect?
Firstly, didn't they just measure the speed of gravity and find it to be equal to c?
Secondly, the faster something moves, the shorter it gets, due to relativistic effects. It's really tiny, like, the Apollo rockets got something like 0.0000001 mm shorter (haven't got the figures, you get the point) at maximum velocity, but this means as you move the stick the stick gets shorter, precise shrinkige a function of the speed you move it and the length of the stick.<br>
So, it could well be (er, someone do the math for me, please) that the stick shrinks by the same amount you move it, meaning that the corresponding movement at the other end is delayed.<br>Maybe?
Wouldn't that mean that all the text on one side of the screen would come out backwards?
How useful is that?
Re. slower than light travel - if you get fast enough (i.e. a sizable fraction of c), then, even if it takes dacedes to get where you're going, time dilation will mean that far less time passes for the crew of a spacecraft - so, if you're going fast enough, a trip of 90 light-years, say, could be accomplished within the natural lifetime of the crew without FTL travel.
The reason we need manned missions is because sending people into space is cooler and more exciting than sending robots into space.
Why should robots get all the fun?
"..when someone is in the car with me and I'm talking to them, I don't have any problem paying attention to the road. I haven't quite figured that out yet." Also, when someone is in the car with you, they know when to shut up. As the passenger, you're not going to say anything requiring an in-depth response whilst the driver is attempting a complex manouver.
Why not stick with the physical interfaces for cellphone, stereo, etc, but DRIVE using guesture recognition? How cool would it be to just have to point in the direction you wanted to go? Okay, not that cool, but I still like the idea
"Anyone got the facilities?" Er, yeah. Space.
yeah, but in the case of a bullet hitting a plank of wood and the wood gaining motion, the bullet loses KE and transfers it to the plank. Gold is claiming that the photon is bounced off the sail with the same energy with which it hit it - ie no transfer. IANAP but the part I don't understand is the part of the diagram saying "The sail is a perfect mirror". Surely such a thing does not really exist? Perfect?