OK, I just looked up some more stats, and apparently other coasters are indeed taller and faster... However, Millenium Force has a duration of 2m45s compared to around 30s for the competing coasters.
For those of you looking for the real thing, check out Cedar Point in Sandusky, OH. They have 15 roller coasters and 68 other rides. Cedar Point is home to the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world, the Millenium Force (310ft/94m max height and 93MPH/150KPH max speed). They are open from mid-May through Labor Day (early September). It's a little expensive at $42 (+$8 for parking) though.
As an avid roller coaster fan...
on
Robocoaster
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· Score: 3, Interesting
...part of the experience is the heights, the scenery you fly by, and so on. I suppose the riders of this could wear VR helmets, but that would be kinda cheap in comparison. Like playing a motorcycle arcade game versus doing the real thing.
This reminds me too much of Harrison Bergeron, a short story written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in 1961. In the story, people in the year 2081 who see well are required by the government to wear blurry glasses so that they see "like everyone else". Strong people are weighted down with bags of birdshot, and beautiful people were required to wear masks.
You know, some of the results from Googlism sound like lyrics from Soul Coughing... In particular, they remind me of the song "Casiotone Nation", which keeps saying "The five percent nation of [place random thing here]" among other things.
It seems I saw a couple of helmeted motorcyclists in Alabama
I rode through Alabama back in September or October with a friend... We were driving north up to Auburn from Tallahassee, FL -- took US-280 from Columbus, GA to Opelika and then I-85 to Auburn. We were wearing helmets. Pictures of my motorcycle here. Perhaps you saw us?:^)
I wonder how many people will get one of these jackets and forget to take it off when they get off their motorcycle... The rider starts walking away, then the sensing circuits in the jacket detect that the rider and motorcycle are getting further away, then PFFFFFFT, instant fat rider!:^)
Coincidentally, I actually rode my Honda Magna 750 motorcycle into work today...
I meet your unreferenced script, and up the ante with another!
Knock. Door opens. Landlady: Hello, Mr and Mrs Johnson? Mr Johnson: Yes, that's right. Yes. Landlady: Oh, come on in. Excuse me not shaking hands, I've just been putting a bit of lard on the cat's boils. (Door closes) Johnson: Thank you. Landlady: Oh, you must be tired. It's a long way from Coventry, isn't it? Johnson: Well, we usually reckon on five and a half hours and it took us six hours and 53 minutes, with the 25 minute stop at Frampton Cottrell to stretch our legs; and we had to wait half an hour to get onto the M5 at Droitwich. Landlady: Really? Johnson: Then there was a three mile queue just before Bridgewater on the A38. We usually come round on the B3339, you see, just before Bridgewater. Landlady: Yeah. Really? Johnson: We decided to risk it 'cause they always say they're going to widen it there. Yes, well just by the intersection there where the A372 joins up. There's plenty of room to widen it there, there's only grass verges. They could get another six feet, knock down that hospital. Then we took the coast road through Williton - we got all the Taunton traffic on the A358 from Crowcombe and Stogumber. Landlady: Well you must be dying for a cup of tea. Johnson: Well, wouldn't say no, long as it's warm and wet.
Or even what would be left of this civilization in three or four thousand years when no-one remembers who the presidents of the United States of America were, or what wars were fought and why... Even more interesting are the conclusions about our society that would be made from the inferences that future researchers may take from any possible small piece of evidence...
Kinda like in Logan's Run when Logan and Jessica happen upon the ruins of Washington, D.C. in the 23rd century. A memorable quote from the movie:
Jessica [looking at a tombstone]: "Beloved husband, beloved wife... I wonder what it means?"
While SETI@home will be using the Arecibo dish to observe the most significant 100 signals, wouldn't it suck for the intelligent signal was the 101st? If there are billions of signal candidates, I imagine the 101st signal is still interesting.
I also wonder if they are going to put the most interesting signals in the middle of their dish time, so that the operators have some warm up time... Putting the most interesting ones first might not be such a good idea if the engineers haven't had a chance to have their coffee/tea/etc. kick in.
But it's not cheap. A typical ride costs about $3 in American money. That compares to $1.50 in New York, about $1.30 in Paris, and a few cents in Moscow. If it *looks* cheap, you're probably comparing to other transport in the UK!
By "cheap", I meant the price to ride was cheaper than some engineering marvels charge for admission... However, I suppose it's infinitely more expensive than places with no admission charge.:^)
"Is there anyone besides me who likes to travel and look at engineering projects?... Does Slashdot have suggestions for destinations, or for web sites where people share their experiences."
I've always thought the London Underground was a great engineering achievement... Fast transit, the fares are relatively cheap, and you get black nose hairs free of charge.:^)
Other engineering achievements I'd recommend would be the Petronas Towers in Malaysia (these are the tallest buildings in the world right now, and they have an interesting "bridge" between them); the Hoover Dam outside of Las Vegas, NV; and the Channel Tunnel. If you have a few million to spare, you could always contact Russia to visit the International Space Station. I'm sure other Slashdotters will think up many other sights to see...
If NASA has the attitude that having a space station that was 99% safe, instead of 99.99% safe, and relied on the skill of the residents astronauts to fix any problems, we'd have the dual torus in 2001, instead of a little tin can. Good luck getting that in today's wiffle world.
With all due respect, tell that to the three crew members who burned in the Apollo I pad fire or the seven who died in the Challenger disaster. While NASA has designed with 99.99% (or higher) reliability in mind the whole time, things still go wrong with the remaining 0.01%, and that ends up hurting the whole program. Congress cuts back funding when things blow up unexpectedly and people die.
Whenever NASA or anyone is doing something grandiose that has never been done before, there is an undefined amount of risk that you have to plan for. Having 99.99% reliability (or higher) is necessary in situations such as this to prevent catastrophe. However, once the system has been tested over and over, future systems can be designed more optimally by taking out redundancy where it is not needed. This is evident in many products, from cars to TVs -- they used to be made like tanks, but now they're made to be practically disposable.
Another important point to mention is that overall system reliability tends to be multiplicative. For instance, if 450 components that work in series together have component reliabilities of only 99%, the overall system reliability is 0.99^450 or 1%. With a 99.99% reliability, you would have a 95.6% reliable system (0.9999^450). Now imagine the Space Shuttle or ISS with millions and millions of parts. I will take 99.99% component reliability any day for something as complex as the these systems!
At some arbitrary point in the past, Accolade put Star Control 1 and 2 on CD-ROM. They even disabled the copy protection so you didn't need to consult the starmap each time you wanted to start the game. IIRC the boxed set was $20, purchasable at local mall game stores. Also, the folks at "The Pages of Now & Forever" put together a Star Control 2 buying guide...
That reminds me... OT, but did anybody ever buy the Ultima I-VI compilation on CD-ROM? I wanted that so badly. Was it everything an avid Ultima player dreamed about?
I'm using Phoenix in Linux but Mozilla in Mac OS X.
Let's not forget Chimera, the Mozilla-based native Cocoa web browser for OS X. It has had a lot of polish lately, and is quite usable for everyday browsing.
I will admit that it is not for everyone at this point though. In the past few weeks, it has crashed five times on me, mostly when closing tabs. Also, some preferences are currently missing, but have been added to the nightly builds (and thus the next released version when it comes out). It is considerably more responsive than Mozilla though, especially when displaying pages, creating and closing tabs, and scrolling through web pages with the keyboard.
This is a good idea if others imitate it: If these pages become interlinked with each other, not only can they motivate us and let us track our progress, they may also help us to keep each other up to date about 'good causes' -- there's more than the EFF, after all.
Not only that, but hyperlinking to each other will boost your rank on Google!:^)
Here's an idea. Tell the clerk you left it at home and they'll leave you alone. No one is forcing you to get one of these cards. It's not like their going to change the price just for you, and they can already tell what items are popular. Where's the harm?!
The problem with this approach is that it sound too much like what Wesley and Robin did in the ST:TNG episode The Game. Everybody was addicted to "the game" except for Wesley and Robin. At one point they had to wear non-functional game headsets to fool others into thinking they were hooked.
Although nobody is forcing you to get a shopping card, there is social pressure when everybody around you makes you feel bad for not having one (the original poster mentions this). We should not be exerting social pressures on each other for something as cheesy as a shopping card.
I still have one of those watches! Hmm... maybe it's time a buy a new one. The calculator watch I have is from Casio, I've only had to change the batteries maybe 3 times in the last 10 years. I think it actually locked up at one time when it's batteries were low.
I still own and wear a Casio Data Bank daily. Some tips for extending the durability and life of the watch are given below (I've had mine for 8 years, with only one battery change so far):
Replace the plastic watch band with a metal link wrist band. You will need a 22mm band, which is rare these days. For me, a roommate's brother had an old box full of wristbands, and I luckily found a 22mm black metal band. The plastic bands are crap and only last about two years before exceeding their limits of elasticity. With metal links you can bend them all around, and swap in more links if others go bad.
Disable all beeping by switching to the calculator function and holding down the "Start/Stop" button for 2 seconds. This will make your battery last much longer than average. Also keep the use of light, alarm, and hourly chime functions to a minimum. I was able to get 5 years use on a single CR2016 watch battery.
Replace the standard Panasonic CR2016 battery with a CR2025. Yes, it's a thicker battery but it can be done. The watch casing will be a very tight fit when you try to close it, but it will work with a little force. The CR2016 has a nominal capacity of 90 mAh, while the CR2025 boasts a nominal capacity of 165 mAh. They are both 3V and 16mm in diameter, so the only difference is the capacity of the battery and the thickness (1.6mm thickness for the CR2016, vs. 2.5mm thickness for the CR2025). I expect roughly 8-9 years out of the CR2025.
Don't go swimming with your Data Bank. That's how I killed the first one when I was a kid. Ironically, the beeper it had wasn't working for years before that, and after submerging the watch the beeper worked again for a short while until the whole watch died.
As for the watch locking up, I have noticed this behavior when the orientation of the watch battery is not *perfect* during installation. Also, as the battery approaches the end of its life, the voltage drops off fairly rapidly (ah, the joy of lithium batteries), which could be the cause.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, I just looked up some more stats, and apparently other coasters are indeed taller and faster... However, Millenium Force has a duration of 2m45s compared to around 30s for the competing coasters.
For those of you looking for the real thing, check out Cedar Point in Sandusky, OH. They have 15 roller coasters and 68 other rides. Cedar Point is home to the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world, the Millenium Force (310ft/94m max height and 93MPH/150KPH max speed). They are open from mid-May through Labor Day (early September). It's a little expensive at $42 (+$8 for parking) though.
...part of the experience is the heights, the scenery you fly by, and so on. I suppose the riders of this could wear VR helmets, but that would be kinda cheap in comparison. Like playing a motorcycle arcade game versus doing the real thing.
This reminds me too much of Harrison Bergeron, a short story written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in 1961. In the story, people in the year 2081 who see well are required by the government to wear blurry glasses so that they see "like everyone else". Strong people are weighted down with bags of birdshot, and beautiful people were required to wear masks.
You know, some of the results from Googlism sound like lyrics from Soul Coughing... In particular, they remind me of the song "Casiotone Nation", which keeps saying "The five percent nation of [place random thing here]" among other things.
Does Froogle remind anyone else of those websites that show up when you misspell popular web addresses?
I wonder how many people will get one of these jackets and forget to take it off when they get off their motorcycle... The rider starts walking away, then the sensing circuits in the jacket detect that the rider and motorcycle are getting further away, then PFFFFFFT, instant fat rider! :^)
Coincidentally, I actually rode my Honda Magna 750 motorcycle into work today...
I meet your unreferenced script, and up the ante with another!
Knock. Door opens.
Landlady: Hello, Mr and Mrs Johnson?
Mr Johnson: Yes, that's right. Yes.
Landlady: Oh, come on in. Excuse me not shaking hands, I've just been putting a bit of lard on the cat's boils. (Door closes)
Johnson: Thank you.
Landlady: Oh, you must be tired. It's a long way from Coventry, isn't it?
Johnson: Well, we usually reckon on five and a half hours and it took us six hours and 53 minutes, with the 25 minute stop at Frampton Cottrell to stretch our legs; and we had to wait half an hour to get onto the M5 at Droitwich.
Landlady: Really?
Johnson: Then there was a three mile queue just before Bridgewater on the A38. We usually come round on the B3339, you see, just before Bridgewater.
Landlady: Yeah. Really?
Johnson: We decided to risk it 'cause they always say they're going to widen it there. Yes, well just by the intersection there where the A372 joins up. There's plenty of room to widen it there, there's only grass verges. They could get another six feet, knock down that hospital. Then we took the coast road through Williton - we got all the Taunton traffic on the A358 from Crowcombe and Stogumber.
Landlady: Well you must be dying for a cup of tea.
Johnson: Well, wouldn't say no, long as it's warm and wet.
Jessica [looking at a tombstone]: "Beloved husband, beloved wife... I wonder what it means?"
While SETI@home will be using the Arecibo dish to observe the most significant 100 signals, wouldn't it suck for the intelligent signal was the 101st? If there are billions of signal candidates, I imagine the 101st signal is still interesting.
I also wonder if they are going to put the most interesting signals in the middle of their dish time, so that the operators have some warm up time... Putting the most interesting ones first might not be such a good idea if the engineers haven't had a chance to have their coffee/tea/etc. kick in.
Other engineering achievements I'd recommend would be the Petronas Towers in Malaysia (these are the tallest buildings in the world right now, and they have an interesting "bridge" between them); the Hoover Dam outside of Las Vegas, NV; and the Channel Tunnel. If you have a few million to spare, you could always contact Russia to visit the International Space Station. I'm sure other Slashdotters will think up many other sights to see...
Great info. Thanks for the reply!
Whenever NASA or anyone is doing something grandiose that has never been done before, there is an undefined amount of risk that you have to plan for. Having 99.99% reliability (or higher) is necessary in situations such as this to prevent catastrophe. However, once the system has been tested over and over, future systems can be designed more optimally by taking out redundancy where it is not needed. This is evident in many products, from cars to TVs -- they used to be made like tanks, but now they're made to be practically disposable.
Another important point to mention is that overall system reliability tends to be multiplicative. For instance, if 450 components that work in series together have component reliabilities of only 99%, the overall system reliability is 0.99^450 or 1%. With a 99.99% reliability, you would have a 95.6% reliable system (0.9999^450). Now imagine the Space Shuttle or ISS with millions and millions of parts. I will take 99.99% component reliability any day for something as complex as the these systems!
At some arbitrary point in the past, Accolade put Star Control 1 and 2 on CD-ROM. They even disabled the copy protection so you didn't need to consult the starmap each time you wanted to start the game. IIRC the boxed set was $20, purchasable at local mall game stores. Also, the folks at "The Pages of Now & Forever" put together a Star Control 2 buying guide...
That reminds me... OT, but did anybody ever buy the Ultima I-VI compilation on CD-ROM? I wanted that so badly. Was it everything an avid Ultima player dreamed about?
How about "Award"? Hmm, maybe not... "AMI"! Nah, that won't work either...
Perhaps Tom Cruise would like a face transplant... He has worn a mask in four recent movies -- Mission Impossible, Minority Report, Eyes Wide Shut, and Vanilla Sky. Something out of the ordinary is afoot...
Seriously though, I think this will be a great breakthrough for people with facial scarring that is not reparable by conventional means.
I will admit that it is not for everyone at this point though. In the past few weeks, it has crashed five times on me, mostly when closing tabs. Also, some preferences are currently missing, but have been added to the nightly builds (and thus the next released version when it comes out). It is considerably more responsive than Mozilla though, especially when displaying pages, creating and closing tabs, and scrolling through web pages with the keyboard.
Although nobody is forcing you to get a shopping card, there is social pressure when everybody around you makes you feel bad for not having one (the original poster mentions this). We should not be exerting social pressures on each other for something as cheesy as a shopping card.
- Replace the plastic watch band with a metal link wrist band. You will need a 22mm band, which is rare these days. For me, a roommate's brother had an old box full of wristbands, and I luckily found a 22mm black metal band. The plastic bands are crap and only last about two years before exceeding their limits of elasticity. With metal links you can bend them all around, and swap in more links if others go bad.
- Disable all beeping by switching to the calculator function and holding down the "Start/Stop" button for 2 seconds. This will make your battery last much longer than average. Also keep the use of light, alarm, and hourly chime functions to a minimum. I was able to get 5 years use on a single CR2016 watch battery.
- Replace the standard Panasonic CR2016 battery with a CR2025. Yes, it's a thicker battery but it can be done. The watch casing will be a very tight fit when you try to close it, but it will work with a little force. The CR2016 has a nominal capacity of 90 mAh, while the CR2025 boasts a nominal capacity of 165 mAh. They are both 3V and 16mm in diameter, so the only difference is the capacity of the battery and the thickness (1.6mm thickness for the CR2016, vs. 2.5mm thickness for the CR2025). I expect roughly 8-9 years out of the CR2025.
- Don't go swimming with your Data Bank. That's how I killed the first one when I was a kid. Ironically, the beeper it had wasn't working for years before that, and after submerging the watch the beeper worked again for a short while until the whole watch died.
As for the watch locking up, I have noticed this behavior when the orientation of the watch battery is not *perfect* during installation. Also, as the battery approaches the end of its life, the voltage drops off fairly rapidly (ah, the joy of lithium batteries), which could be the cause.I heard that you strongly opposed the Sci-Fi channel re-release of the 1965 movie Incubus, which is entirely in Esperanto. If so, why?