WolfWithoutAClause (162946) sez: "Atmospheric drag is a square law on speed. The drag has to be overcome by spending fuel unless you plan on leaving the atmosphere, but doing that means the scramjet stops working... it's all a bit self defeating really."
Square on speed, reduced by the atmospheric pressure at a given altitude. The operating altitude of the scramjet for this flight is 60 km. That's well above almost all atmosphere. There's only enough for the scramjet due to the high speed.
"And then there's the slight problem of a sonic boom- didn't you learn anything from the commercial failure of Concorde? And that only went at mach 2.2."
There won't be enough air to carry the boom down from 60 km. And I doubt anyone expects such a craft to operate at those speeds near the ground.
"Wait a minute. For starters, a lot of "NASA work" is done by contractors. I dunno what the breakdown is, but I'd guess that majority of NASA's funding goes to contractors. Which are private companies."
NASA conducts research. They invent things. They patent those inventions. Contractors build things to spec.
"Microprocessors? What did NASA do for microprocessors aside from adapting them to space travel? What could they possibly sell to a terrestrial company?"
You could, of course, look it up on the USPTO site to see what they'd patented. But let's make it easier and restrict it to those things which were actually successfully spun off. NASA has a program office, a magazine, and a web site spcefically for seeing that spinoff happen. You can search it yourself to find out what companies did what with which ideas/patents: http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinselect.html
"Cryogenics? Yeah, that's real feasible and salable."
The production and handling of liquid gases? You're damn right it is. Most hospitals rely on it. What did you think the word means, freezing the heads of dead people?
"I don't have a clue about medical telemetry, but I haven't heard of "remote surgeons" existing on the Shuttle, that's for sure."
You're right, you don't. The word refers to the collection, coding and transmission of medically related data. "telemetry" = tele + metry = "far" + "measuring".
"As for improvements in systems analysis software, it's possible, but I have no idea what you're referring to."
If I got one and say, 40 or 80 years from now one of my descendents noticed they had moved on to some other technology and didn't migrate me, they could sue. I would like that to be my legacy.
Because they spammed me, that's why. So, I'm not very forgiving. Deal.
A55M0NKEY (554964) sez: "Landing in Sasquatchewan was unfortunate because that Canadian province is home to the last remaining breeding pair of Bigfootses."
We prefer YETI-AMERICANS, you insensitive clod! And it's not my fault they won't ship Viagra out here with an address of "Tundra, Second rock on right".
Blacksburg Electronic Village (www.bev.net) was started IIRC as an experimental community ISP for the town surrounding Virginia Tech. Although they maintain some email supply and a few other services, they got out of the ISP stuff years ago. How they did what they did and why is available from them. They offer their experience to others, including providing business oriented info.
Had NASA been allowed to sell and license its patents like a normal company on just 4 of the things it improved on during the 70's, microprocessors, cryogenics, medical telemetry and systems analysis software, it would have made 450% profit between the start of the Mercury project and the end of Apollo. Instead, we got the spinoffs which are fine for improved quality of life, and the companies that bought the patents made some money which is fine for some peoples' living standards, but the program itself suffered.
Want to get to Mars? Fund an aerospace skunkworks with NASA level funding and let them keep the profits from the inventions. And keep the damn adminimonsters out of it; let the engineers run it.
RCO (597148) sez:"...soooo, why don't you come over to my place and I'll show you my Telescope..." The sad part is, they will actually mean it, I know, I've done it."
It's only sad if you're not doing it right. I did. Hence, there is my son, Orion.
Can someone please tell me who is specified as the people authorized to track software pirates?
When we pulled off the various Usenet Death Penalties, all sorts of media called us "vigilantes". Only Rob Pegoraro from the Washington Post seemed to understand that the word means "someone who assumes or usurps a power invested in a recognized authority". Since there is no one specified as responsible for tracking software pirates via P2P (although there are reporting agencies like BSA, and although publishers CAN undertake this on their own, no one is specified as the authority) then they are NOT vigilantes. Even the EFF got this wrong, and they're the ones that need to be most right about it.
Regardless of methodology, these are not vigilantes, these are just volunteers, same as anti-spammers.
"According to this new decision by the FCC, any speech that is grossly offensive, whether or not it has anything to do with sex or excretion, is 'profane.'"
I find that assertion to be grossly offensive.
Will someone please report to 445 12th Street SW Washington, DC, and padlock the doors? We can't be having publically funded agencies issuing profanity.
Will the FCC be issuing us each a new set of morals so that there will be no confusion as to what we each personally find offensive?
My ex's favorite saying in such cases was "Do something, even if it's wrong." There are few things you can't quit.
My own take on such things is from Kurt Vonnegut: "Strange travel suggestions are dancing lessons from god." I usually take them. Some times it's not to my benefit, but I'm always glad I did it.
... Dr. Charles Gerba and the BBC science news staff eating their lunches off of toilet seats.
Number of germs and bacteria is not nearly as relevant as which ones. Of course you're going to get a bunch of rhinovirus on desks and keyboards. People breathe. But on toilet seats you're going to get E. coli. In the right place, inside your intestines, they're just dandy. Eat some, and you're in for a world of hurt.
Of course the germs were there. They've always been there. A reasonably healthy person carries just as many and spreads them around, and is not suddenly susceptible to something just because someone counted them.
The article was ridiculous, sensationalistic, half-science, and I blame BBC far more for that than Dr. Gerba. They've been leaning this way for years now. They making more factual errors, and not correcting them, but worse, they're writing it more like tabloids.
"So what do you do when they end? Immortalise them online."
I'm glad to see more and more of them immortalized in Nick at Nite, etc. I've compared the reruns (not just my memory of them) with the new shows, and usually prefer the former. They had 52 minute hours, unlike today's 44 minutes. So they were heavily censored. Most of what's on today that would have been censored then is gratuitous.
As for the "Why is this newsworthy" whining: STUFF FOR NERDS. I'm a MacGyver fan. You can't get much nerdier.
"Yeah, I've switched to compact fluorescent lights in parts of the house for efficiency reasons, but I try to pair them with incandescent bulbs in fixtures near reading areas. I figure, half the efficiency benefit is better than none, and the reduction in flicker is essential. I try to let natural light into the room when I'm looking at the monitor, but I'm careful to balance the contrast and avoid glare. If it's nighttime and I need light other than the monitor, I use an incandescent on a resistive dimmer (never a triac dimmer, they flicker too)."
I've found some people are more sensitive to the flicker. They tend to be the same people that when they chew something crunchy while looking at the TV, they see the picture jump and flicker. When I talk about this people either get excited because it happens to them, or have no clue what I mean. (And yes, it was a real science experiment done in a real lab. We used carrots.)
Different from being able to perceive the flicker, people wtih ADD seem to be adversely affected. This came to be as an informal observation shared by many school teachers around the US: when the kids on Ritalin start having problems, turn off the over head lights and open the curtains. Well, their informal observation was right. In ADD, fluourescent light makes reaction times slow down and heart rate speed up (which, when it occurs during focused attention, like the video game I had them playing, means that the strength of the attention is decreasing).
I only realized a few days ago my wife had replaced one of three bulbs in the dining room light with a fluourescent bulb type. That's where I do my modeling. I hadn;t noticed it, which I usually do when they're alone. Perhaps the other bulbs do mask it enough. Thanks.
"More spin by the idiots in Marketing in an attempt to sell more crap."
That's pretty much what I meant.
1. Utility Computing 2. ????? 3. Profit!
And it will, while some newbies buy the line and the software, and by the time they've figured it out the marketoids will be back under their rock plotting the next bogousity.
"True, but no one ever said the dish has to be nailed into anything. I have seen satellite dishes in apartments and townhouses sitting outside the back door and on patios. As long as there's line of sight to the southern sky and you have more than just a closet rented, it's likely you can get a dish installed."
You're quite right. I recall a Comacst commercial showing a (soon to be ex-) dish user with his dish (very badly) taped on poles and those sunk in a block of concrete. Having installed dishes back when they were 10 to 14 feet in diameter, I could probably whack something like that together nowdays that's work fine. The question remains though, is there a handy patio etc. to put it on, and would it violate some landlord's "unsightly" rules? Some crackerbox apartment buildings have but two windows facing out for a whole apartment, not a sill to set something on, and a fine view of the neighbors outside wall.
Now, kick the frequency up a few notches and we can have indoor dishes plopped on the set like a big fat rabbit ears, and nobody has to worry about it again. By that time, I expect all broadcast to be pay-per-view on demand, but that's a different kettle of cookies to run up the flagpole.
Everything I needed to know about terraforming I learned in kindergarten: You're not allowed to play in the neighbor's sandbox (whether nor not there's anyone home) as long as you keep pooping in your own. Nobody gets to terraform Mars until they can prove they can terraform Earth for the better, instead of for the worse. I think that's a fair test of both capability and intent, with the side benefits of a cleaner sandbox for everyone and a much better idea of what's being done wrong (and thus by whom).
O'Keefe is to NASA as Sculley was to Apple: a professional administrator attempting to run something by sheer professionalism and politics that they obviously know far too little about to create themselves. NASA is a scientific engineering project. It requires science and engineering people to run it. Scientists and engineers got us to the moon. Scientists and engineers will get us to Mars, administrators and politicians won't. Administrators and politicians should give the money, shut up, stand back, and let the people who know how to make things go make them go.
"We choose to go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard." -- A politician who gave the order, got the money, and got out of the way.
"My god, Thiokol, what do you want me to do, wait until April?" -- A NASA professional administrator, January 28, 1986, more concerned about launch schedules than frozen O-rings.
Slashdot Mirror
chewtoy-11 (448560) sez: "Are you using Internet over Power Lines technology?"
Could be. I saw the modems for sale at CompUSA in New Haven CT.
WolfWithoutAClause (162946) sez: "Atmospheric drag is a square law on speed. The drag has to be overcome by spending fuel unless you plan on leaving the atmosphere, but doing that means the scramjet stops working... it's all a bit self defeating really."
Square on speed, reduced by the atmospheric pressure at a given altitude. The operating altitude of the scramjet for this flight is 60 km. That's well above almost all atmosphere. There's only enough for the scramjet due to the high speed.
"And then there's the slight problem of a sonic boom- didn't you learn anything from the commercial failure of Concorde? And that only went at mach 2.2."
There won't be enough air to carry the boom down from 60 km. And I doubt anyone expects such a craft to operate at those speeds near the ground.
...everything with an RFID that happens to be able to fit in my microwave oven will eventually fall into it.
news.google.com
Haven't switched since they started it.
OFFTOPIC??
tits == GIFs?
Breasts and pictures of them?
That may be one of the most all-pervading associations ever concocted by human minds, and all thanks to the net.
It may be a lot of things, including utterly failing at being obvious humor, but it's as off topic "definition" is to the subject "dictionary".
Officer, arrest that person and take away his moderator's license. He has obviously not had the proper training.
Oh, and here:
Use as needed.
"Wait a minute. For starters, a lot of "NASA work" is done by contractors. I dunno what the breakdown is, but I'd guess that majority of NASA's funding goes to contractors. Which are private companies."
NASA conducts research. They invent things. They patent those inventions. Contractors build things to spec.
"Microprocessors? What did NASA do for microprocessors aside from adapting them to space travel? What could they possibly sell to a terrestrial company?"
You could, of course, look it up on the USPTO site to see what they'd patented. But let's make it easier and restrict it to those things which were actually successfully spun off. NASA has a program office, a magazine, and a web site spcefically for seeing that spinoff happen. You can search it yourself to find out what companies did what with which ideas/patents: http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinselect.html
"Cryogenics? Yeah, that's real feasible and salable."
The production and handling of liquid gases? You're damn right it is. Most hospitals rely on it. What did you think the word means, freezing the heads of dead people?
"I don't have a clue about medical telemetry, but I haven't heard of "remote surgeons" existing on the Shuttle, that's for sure."
You're right, you don't. The word refers to the collection, coding and transmission of medically related data. "telemetry" = tele + metry = "far" + "measuring".
"As for improvements in systems analysis software, it's possible, but I have no idea what you're referring to."
I see a pattern here.
If I got one and say, 40 or 80 years from now one of my descendents noticed they had moved on to some other technology and didn't migrate me, they could sue. I would like that to be my legacy.
Because they spammed me, that's why. So, I'm not very forgiving. Deal.
A55M0NKEY (554964) sez: "Landing in Sasquatchewan was unfortunate because that Canadian province is home to the last remaining breeding pair of Bigfootses."
We prefer YETI-AMERICANS, you insensitive clod! And it's not my fault they won't ship Viagra out here with an address of "Tundra, Second rock on right".
[must..... not..... post......]
G1FZ d00d!!!!!!111!!
Sorry, I tried. 15 years of positive reinforcement is tough to overcome.
Blacksburg Electronic Village (www.bev.net) was started IIRC as an experimental community ISP for the town surrounding Virginia Tech. Although they maintain some email supply and a few other services, they got out of the ISP stuff years ago. How they did what they did and why is available from them. They offer their experience to others, including providing business oriented info.
Had NASA been allowed to sell and license its patents like a normal company on just 4 of the things it improved on during the 70's, microprocessors, cryogenics, medical telemetry and systems analysis software, it would have made 450% profit between the start of the Mercury project and the end of Apollo. Instead, we got the spinoffs which are fine for improved quality of life, and the companies that bought the patents made some money which is fine for some peoples' living standards, but the program itself suffered.
Want to get to Mars? Fund an aerospace skunkworks with NASA level funding and let them keep the profits from the inventions. And keep the damn adminimonsters out of it; let the engineers run it.
RCO (597148) sez:"...soooo, why don't you come over to my place and I'll show you my Telescope..." The sad part is, they will actually mean it, I know, I've done it."
It's only sad if you're not doing it right. I did. Hence, there is my son, Orion.
Can someone please tell me who is specified as the people authorized to track software pirates?
When we pulled off the various Usenet Death Penalties, all sorts of media called us "vigilantes". Only Rob Pegoraro from the Washington Post seemed to understand that the word means "someone who assumes or usurps a power invested in a recognized authority". Since there is no one specified as responsible for tracking software pirates via P2P (although there are reporting agencies like BSA, and although publishers CAN undertake this on their own, no one is specified as the authority) then they are NOT vigilantes. Even the EFF got this wrong, and they're the ones that need to be most right about it.
Regardless of methodology, these are not vigilantes, these are just volunteers, same as anti-spammers.
"According to this new decision by the FCC, any speech that is grossly offensive, whether or not it has anything to do with sex or excretion, is 'profane.'"
I find that assertion to be grossly offensive.
Will someone please report to 445 12th Street SW
Washington, DC, and padlock the doors? We can't be having publically funded agencies issuing profanity.
Will the FCC be issuing us each a new set of morals so that there will be no confusion as to what we each personally find offensive?
My ex's favorite saying in such cases was "Do something, even if it's wrong." There are few things you can't quit.
My own take on such things is from Kurt Vonnegut: "Strange travel suggestions are dancing lessons from god." I usually take them. Some times it's not to my benefit, but I'm always glad I did it.
"We're all going to die eventually."
I would greatly prefer to die suddenly. That "eventually" business sounds like a real drag.
... Dr. Charles Gerba and the BBC science news staff eating their lunches off of toilet seats.
Number of germs and bacteria is not nearly as relevant as which ones. Of course you're going to get a bunch of rhinovirus on desks and keyboards. People breathe. But on toilet seats you're going to get E. coli. In the right place, inside your intestines, they're just dandy. Eat some, and you're in for a world of hurt.
Of course the germs were there. They've always been there. A reasonably healthy person carries just as many and spreads them around, and is not suddenly susceptible to something just because someone counted them.
The article was ridiculous, sensationalistic, half-science, and I blame BBC far more for that than Dr. Gerba. They've been leaning this way for years now. They making more factual errors, and not correcting them, but worse, they're writing it more like tabloids.
"So what do you do when they end? Immortalise them online."
I'm glad to see more and more of them immortalized in Nick at Nite, etc. I've compared the reruns (not just my memory of them) with the new shows, and usually prefer the former. They had 52 minute hours, unlike today's 44 minutes. So they were heavily censored. Most of what's on today that would have been censored then is gratuitous.
As for the "Why is this newsworthy" whining: STUFF FOR NERDS. I'm a MacGyver fan. You can't get much nerdier.
"Yeah, I've switched to compact fluorescent lights in parts of the house for efficiency reasons, but I try to pair them with incandescent bulbs in fixtures near reading areas. I figure, half the efficiency benefit is better than none, and the reduction in flicker is essential. I try to let natural light into the room when I'm looking at the monitor, but I'm careful to balance the contrast and avoid glare. If it's nighttime and I need light other than the monitor, I use an incandescent on a resistive dimmer (never a triac dimmer, they flicker too)."
I've found some people are more sensitive to the flicker. They tend to be the same people that when they chew something crunchy while looking at the TV, they see the picture jump and flicker. When I talk about this people either get excited because it happens to them, or have no clue what I mean. (And yes, it was a real science experiment done in a real lab. We used carrots.)
Different from being able to perceive the flicker, people wtih ADD seem to be adversely affected. This came to be as an informal observation shared by many school teachers around the US: when the kids on Ritalin start having problems, turn off the over head lights and open the curtains. Well, their informal observation was right. In ADD, fluourescent light makes reaction times slow down and heart rate speed up (which, when it occurs during focused attention, like the video game I had them playing, means that the strength of the attention is decreasing).
I only realized a few days ago my wife had replaced one of three bulbs in the dining room light with a fluourescent bulb type. That's where I do my modeling. I hadn;t noticed it, which I usually do when they're alone. Perhaps the other bulbs do mask it enough. Thanks.
"More spin by the idiots in Marketing in an attempt to sell more crap."
That's pretty much what I meant.
1. Utility Computing
2. ?????
3. Profit!
And it will, while some newbies buy the line and the software, and by the time they've figured it out the marketoids will be back under their rock plotting the next bogousity.
"True, but no one ever said the dish has to be nailed into anything. I have seen satellite dishes in apartments and townhouses sitting outside the back door and on patios. As long as there's line of sight to the southern sky and you have more than just a closet rented, it's likely you can get a dish installed."
You're quite right. I recall a Comacst commercial showing a (soon to be ex-) dish user with his dish (very badly) taped on poles and those sunk in a block of concrete. Having installed dishes back when they were 10 to 14 feet in diameter, I could probably whack something like that together nowdays that's work fine. The question remains though, is there a handy patio etc. to put it on, and would it violate some landlord's "unsightly" rules? Some crackerbox apartment buildings have but two windows facing out for a whole apartment, not a sill to set something on, and a fine view of the neighbors outside wall.
Now, kick the frequency up a few notches and we can have indoor dishes plopped on the set like a big fat rabbit ears, and nobody has to worry about it again. By that time, I expect all broadcast to be pay-per-view on demand, but that's a different kettle of cookies to run up the flagpole.
Off topic my ass. When I think about the term "utility computing" I think about yet another fad term for yet another fad.
Flamebait, OK, if you don't think sarcasm is called for. (I happen to believe it's appropriate). Off topic, no way.
"I'm curious to find out what developers and IT professionals..."
IANAd&ITp. Why should that stop me? This is Slashdot.
"When you hear the term 'Utility Computing', what do you think?"
"Dot Com Gold Rush"
"Metrosexual"
"Virtual Storefront"
"Macarena"
"Electronic Village"
"Disco"
Everything I needed to know about terraforming I learned in kindergarten: You're not allowed to play in the neighbor's sandbox (whether nor not there's anyone home) as long as you keep pooping in your own. Nobody gets to terraform Mars until they can prove they can terraform Earth for the better, instead of for the worse. I think that's a fair test of both capability and intent, with the side benefits of a cleaner sandbox for everyone and a much better idea of what's being done wrong (and thus by whom).
O'Keefe is to NASA as Sculley was to Apple: a professional administrator attempting to run something by sheer professionalism and politics that they obviously know far too little about to create themselves. NASA is a scientific engineering project. It requires science and engineering people to run it. Scientists and engineers got us to the moon. Scientists and engineers will get us to Mars, administrators and politicians won't. Administrators and politicians should give the money, shut up, stand back, and let the people who know how to make things go make them go.
"We choose to go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard." -- A politician who gave the order, got the money, and got out of the way.
"My god, Thiokol, what do you want me to do, wait until April?" -- A NASA professional administrator, January 28, 1986, more concerned about launch schedules than frozen O-rings.