Terminal velocity is the speed a thing is going when the force of gravity pulling down is equal to the force of drag pushing up (0 net force = no acceleration, ie constant velocity). The force due to drag at high altitudes is very low because there's not much air that high, which means there's not much to keep gravity from accelerating the sky diver. As he descends and the air gets thicker he will decelerate back to subsonic speeds because terminal velocity is lower at lower altitudes (all else being constant).
A common myth related to terminal velocity is that terminal velocity is a constant rate that all objects fall at. That's not true because drag factors into terminal velocity and different things are more or less aerodynamic. A person skydiving spread-eagle falls slower than a person diving streamlined, and a bullet will fall back down at about the same speed it was going when it was fired.
Anyone who needs/wants more processing power is dumping the electricity down the non-productive heat drain (e.g. gamers) or pursuits which will never produce anything of use (e.g. SETI@HOME).
What about CAD, or complicated simulations? Are you saying that modern methods of research and engineering don't produce anything of use?!?
The processors have been more than sufficient for a decade or more... If the old software/hardware works fine then be comfortable with it. Do not easily accept that upgrading is a requirement.
Yeah, and automotive technology has been more than sufficient for 80 years or more; who really needs to got more than 50 mph, or have air conditioning? I'm not really sure what your even complaining about. Are you trying to say spending resources on having fun is unethical, and that there's no point in increasing the standard of living? And what does any of that have to do with parallel processing?
Duramax engines are made by DMAX, which is a joint venture between GM and Isuzu. They aren't related to the Chevy big block, which is a gasoline engine (there are differences between the Diesel cycle and the Otto cycle other than what fuel they use.)
From the article, these planets are between 5 and 25 times as massive as the Earth. These planets are notable because they orbit a star that is about the same temperature and mass as the Sun, the planets themselves are of unknown composition.
The video game industry isn't the only one posting losses recently, so this doesn't seem like a big deal at all. That and these consoles are four years old, it's not surprising to see sales dip.
You might want to go read about heat pumps. What the article describes is perfectly possible, using heat pumps for heating and cooling is very common in temperate climates.
With these new mice, when I want to click I have to lift my finger up from the surface of the mouse and then press down (if the video in the article is indicative of how it functions). I think constantly lifting my finger would become tiring.
How is it that you manage to type if you can't bear the strain of lifting your fingers off the home row?
But most people have two eyes, and the parallax between them gives the third dimension.
That's almost completely wrong, the grandparent poster knows what he's talking about. Binocular vision is only useful for depth perception within about a foot or two of your face, beyond that and the difference between what your eyes see is too small to matter. Depth perception is almost entirely unconscious mental processing that's informed by cues like relative position, relative size, clarity and so on.
The reason you have two eyes is because of bilateral symmetry and a wide field of vision is useful. Think about rabbits, their eyes have almost no overlapping field of vision, but they manage just fine in 3d space.
It's time to bring some facts to this thread. Monetary policy is complicated, most people don't understand it, and impassioned hyperbolizing isn't helpful.
..the Fed (by printing money and giving it to them at zero percent even if it destroys the dollar)
The Federal Reserve does not print money. Maybe you were speaking metaphorically, but you're still wrong. The Federal Reserve can influence interest rates, and it can change the size of the the money supply by issuing and recalling treasury bills and by adjusting the reserve requirement.. Those functions allow the Fed to alter the price of money, but that's not equivalent to printing more money.
I was reading earlier this week the U.S. now has the greatest income inequality in the world except for Singapore and Hong Kong which are tiny city states
Well you read wrong. Equality of income distribution is quantified by the Gini coefficient. Wealth is less evenly distributed in the US than many places (ie Europe), but there's more than 40 countries ahead of us. China and Mexico for instance. See this map for more detail.
For anyone whose interested, the Planet Money blog and podcast is a great place to start. Their reporting and research is done by actual economists rather than ideologues and talking heads, and they explain why things are the way they are and how they got there. Like I said, our current financial situation is kinda FUBAR, but approaching it with a level head and trying to understand what's really going on is better than getting angry and playing the blame game.
For those of you who aren't familiar with them, naked mole rats are pretty weird in a bunch of other ways
They lack the neurotransmitter that lets them feel pain, which is evolutionarily unique as far as I know. Their respiratory systems are adapted to handle the high concentrations of CO2 that build up in their burrows. Their metabolic rate is 2/3 of other similarly sized rodents, and they can slow it even further in times of need.
Their behavior is even weirder. The colonies (200-300 in population) are organized eusocialy, ie in the same manner as a bee or ant colony. There in one queen, with a harem of 3-4 males that produce all the offspring for the entire colony. Like ants, naked mole rats form separate castes for diggers, soldiers, etc. Oh, and to top it all off their front teeth are on the outside of their mouths to help them dig.
According to the rules of open source... all derivative works must also be open source
"The rules of open source" is about as vague a term as "the rules of good sportsmanship". The content of Wikipedia is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License which only requires that you attribute Wikipedia and share any adaptations of it under the same license.
For those who don't know, the OP is referring to pumpkin chunking. It's a competition to see whose machine can throw a pumpkin the farthest. There are separate categories for catapults, trebuchets and cannons, and there are annual competitions and championships all over the world.
If someone's crops get pollinated with the patented strain, even unintentionally just by wind from a neighboring field, then he can be sued by the inventor and subjected to license fees.
Can you provide a citation for this, or are you parroting something you read in someone else's comment one time?
I'm genuinely curious, this objection is brought up in every GM food article, but I've never actually seen in mentioned in a newspaper or magazine article.
The article says it can only go 12.5 mph. An ordinary person on a bicycle can go faster than that on a bicycle without breaking a sweat. The segway is at least more maneuverable than a bicycle at slow speeds; while this thing has no redeeming value at all.
Wired ethernet. Not only is it vastly more secure, it's also an order of magnitude or two faster than wireless.
Comments like this show up in nearly every thread about wifi, and it's about time people stop modding them up. Ethernet is not a direct substitute for wireless networking. If it was, wifi never would have been invented.
The advantages of wireless are pretty obvious, and the disadvantages are pretty minimal. The 600 Mbits/sec an n-router provides is more than enough for most uses, and most people don't actually need unbreakable encryption.
Of course wired LAN is still relevant, but suggesting everyone revert just because is trite and pointless.
Who cares if their vision is not quite the same as ours!
The newly seeing adults might, once they get over the shock and realize they still can't get a driver's license, engage in sports or many other everyday activities to the same extent as normally sighted people.
Just because we've made progress doesn't mean there isn't more to be done.
Even tho i personally think its all rather stupid. I see alot of people who enjoy sports.
But they are not the types of people who will sit and play a pc game for several hours.
The Madden and NCAA football franchises are among the hugest game franchises ever, and from what I've seen they're popular with people who enjoy playing and watching real football. Multiplayer sports games in general are a major segment of the video game market, so there's no reason to believe there would be no interest in sports MMOs.
How about going outside and playing actual baseball? Wouldn't that be more fun?
You could (and people do) say the same thing about Guitar Hero. Playing guitar well is hard, and so is playing real baseball. Guitar Hero proved that people can have fun with a simplified version of a real life hobby if the learning curve is easy enough and the interface is a close enough approximation of the real thing. In fact, pretty much every video game ever simulates something you could do in real life if it were so inconvenient, dangerous, or time consuming.
Just because a game doesn't appeal to you, doesn't mean someone else can't have fun with it.
My Oxford American Dictionary has four definitions for "censor" and another for censorship. This event isn't an example of the one definition you chose.
Slashdot Mirror
trying to keep it in the bathtub without telling your wife probably isn't going to turn out well...
Unless you're into that kind of thing, in which case it'll turn out great!
Terminal velocity is the speed a thing is going when the force of gravity pulling down is equal to the force of drag pushing up (0 net force = no acceleration, ie constant velocity). The force due to drag at high altitudes is very low because there's not much air that high, which means there's not much to keep gravity from accelerating the sky diver. As he descends and the air gets thicker he will decelerate back to subsonic speeds because terminal velocity is lower at lower altitudes (all else being constant).
A common myth related to terminal velocity is that terminal velocity is a constant rate that all objects fall at. That's not true because drag factors into terminal velocity and different things are more or less aerodynamic. A person skydiving spread-eagle falls slower than a person diving streamlined, and a bullet will fall back down at about the same speed it was going when it was fired.
Anyone who needs/wants more processing power is dumping the electricity down the non-productive heat drain (e.g. gamers) or pursuits which will never produce anything of use (e.g. SETI@HOME).
What about CAD, or complicated simulations? Are you saying that modern methods of research and engineering don't produce anything of use?!?
The processors have been more than sufficient for a decade or more ... If the old software/hardware works fine then be comfortable with it. Do not easily accept that upgrading is a requirement.
Yeah, and automotive technology has been more than sufficient for 80 years or more; who really needs to got more than 50 mph, or have air conditioning? I'm not really sure what your even complaining about. Are you trying to say spending resources on having fun is unethical, and that there's no point in increasing the standard of living? And what does any of that have to do with parallel processing?
Duramax engines are made by DMAX, which is a joint venture between GM and Isuzu. They aren't related to the Chevy big block, which is a gasoline engine (there are differences between the Diesel cycle and the Otto cycle other than what fuel they use.)
Yeah... It's probably a cynical prediction...
I think you've confused cynicism with optimism :p
From the article, these planets are between 5 and 25 times as massive as the Earth. These planets are notable because they orbit a star that is about the same temperature and mass as the Sun, the planets themselves are of unknown composition.
The video game industry isn't the only one posting losses recently, so this doesn't seem like a big deal at all. That and these consoles are four years old, it's not surprising to see sales dip.
You might want to go read about heat pumps. What the article describes is perfectly possible, using heat pumps for heating and cooling is very common in temperate climates.
With these new mice, when I want to click I have to lift my finger up from the surface of the mouse and then press down (if the video in the article is indicative of how it functions). I think constantly lifting my finger would become tiring.
How is it that you manage to type if you can't bear the strain of lifting your fingers off the home row?
But most people have two eyes, and the parallax between them gives the third dimension.
That's almost completely wrong, the grandparent poster knows what he's talking about. Binocular vision is only useful for depth perception within about a foot or two of your face, beyond that and the difference between what your eyes see is too small to matter. Depth perception is almost entirely unconscious mental processing that's informed by cues like relative position, relative size, clarity and so on.
The reason you have two eyes is because of bilateral symmetry and a wide field of vision is useful. Think about rabbits, their eyes have almost no overlapping field of vision, but they manage just fine in 3d space.
..the Fed (by printing money and giving it to them at zero percent even if it destroys the dollar)
The Federal Reserve does not print money. Maybe you were speaking metaphorically, but you're still wrong. The Federal Reserve can influence interest rates, and it can change the size of the the money supply by issuing and recalling treasury bills and by adjusting the reserve requirement.. Those functions allow the Fed to alter the price of money, but that's not equivalent to printing more money.
I was reading earlier this week the U.S. now has the greatest income inequality in the world except for Singapore and Hong Kong which are tiny city states
Well you read wrong. Equality of income distribution is quantified by the Gini coefficient. Wealth is less evenly distributed in the US than many places (ie Europe), but there's more than 40 countries ahead of us. China and Mexico for instance. See this map for more detail.
For anyone whose interested, the Planet Money blog and podcast is a great place to start. Their reporting and research is done by actual economists rather than ideologues and talking heads, and they explain why things are the way they are and how they got there. Like I said, our current financial situation is kinda FUBAR, but approaching it with a level head and trying to understand what's really going on is better than getting angry and playing the blame game.
Though to be fair, that race course was a mixture of twists, turns and hills.
To be fair, normal roads are a mixture of twists, turns and hills.
For those of you who aren't familiar with them, naked mole rats are pretty weird in a bunch of other ways
They lack the neurotransmitter that lets them feel pain, which is evolutionarily unique as far as I know. Their respiratory systems are adapted to handle the high concentrations of CO2 that build up in their burrows. Their metabolic rate is 2/3 of other similarly sized rodents, and they can slow it even further in times of need.
Their behavior is even weirder. The colonies (200-300 in population) are organized eusocialy, ie in the same manner as a bee or ant colony. There in one queen, with a harem of 3-4 males that produce all the offspring for the entire colony. Like ants, naked mole rats form separate castes for diggers, soldiers, etc. Oh, and to top it all off their front teeth are on the outside of their mouths to help them dig.
According to the rules of open source... all derivative works must also be open source
"The rules of open source" is about as vague a term as "the rules of good sportsmanship". The content of Wikipedia is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License which only requires that you attribute Wikipedia and share any adaptations of it under the same license.
For those who don't know, the OP is referring to pumpkin chunking. It's a competition to see whose machine can throw a pumpkin the farthest. There are separate categories for catapults, trebuchets and cannons, and there are annual competitions and championships all over the world.
If someone's crops get pollinated with the patented strain, even unintentionally just by wind from a neighboring field, then he can be sued by the inventor and subjected to license fees.
Can you provide a citation for this, or are you parroting something you read in someone else's comment one time?
I'm genuinely curious, this objection is brought up in every GM food article, but I've never actually seen in mentioned in a newspaper or magazine article.
The article says it can only go 12.5 mph. An ordinary person on a bicycle can go faster than that on a bicycle without breaking a sweat. The segway is at least more maneuverable than a bicycle at slow speeds; while this thing has no redeeming value at all.
In flight school, you weren't flying a supermaneuverable jet with vectored thrust.
Wired ethernet. Not only is it vastly more secure, it's also an order of magnitude or two faster than wireless.
Comments like this show up in nearly every thread about wifi, and it's about time people stop modding them up. Ethernet is not a direct substitute for wireless networking. If it was, wifi never would have been invented.
The advantages of wireless are pretty obvious, and the disadvantages are pretty minimal. The 600 Mbits/sec an n-router provides is more than enough for most uses, and most people don't actually need unbreakable encryption.
Of course wired LAN is still relevant, but suggesting everyone revert just because is trite and pointless.
I've been using the Snow Leopard developer preview for the past couple months, and Adobe CS3 is working fine.
There's a difference between not working and not being officially supported.
Who cares if their vision is not quite the same as ours!
The newly seeing adults might, once they get over the shock and realize they still can't get a driver's license, engage in sports or many other everyday activities to the same extent as normally sighted people.
Just because we've made progress doesn't mean there isn't more to be done.
Even tho i personally think its all rather stupid. I see alot of people who enjoy sports. But they are not the types of people who will sit and play a pc game for several hours.
The Madden and NCAA football franchises are among the hugest game franchises ever, and from what I've seen they're popular with people who enjoy playing and watching real football. Multiplayer sports games in general are a major segment of the video game market, so there's no reason to believe there would be no interest in sports MMOs.
How about going outside and playing actual baseball? Wouldn't that be more fun?
You could (and people do) say the same thing about Guitar Hero. Playing guitar well is hard, and so is playing real baseball. Guitar Hero proved that people can have fun with a simplified version of a real life hobby if the learning curve is easy enough and the interface is a close enough approximation of the real thing. In fact, pretty much every video game ever simulates something you could do in real life if it were so inconvenient, dangerous, or time consuming.
Just because a game doesn't appeal to you, doesn't mean someone else can't have fun with it.
I've been listening "in 10 years we'll have X awesome technology", but time come and go and nothing has changed
If you haven't noticed any technological advancement since 1999, perhaps you should try opening your eyes sometime.
My Oxford American Dictionary has four definitions for "censor" and another for censorship. This event isn't an example of the one definition you chose.
What's your point again?