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User: ImWithBrilliant

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  1. Re:Up in the air: F-35, $1T on Engineers Plan The Most Expensive Object Ever Built (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    It's just not a single object like CVN-78 .

  2. Re:Try Floor Stickers on Ask Slashdot: Local Navigation Assistance For the Elderly? · · Score: 1

    Bingo! Smart floor/wall lights that react to his bluetooth proximity. Keep the battery drain out of the smartphone and put the smarts into the lighted arrows that have wired power. Software in the lighting can deduce his coming/going direction.

  3. Why? on New Russian Laboratory To Study Mammoth Cloning · · Score: 1

    Are they low in cholesterol?

  4. identity is for the rest of your life on US Office of Personnel Management Hacked Again · · Score: 1

    Only 18 months of monitoring from this, and 24 from Anthem. Keep your 2017 schedule open.

  5. Re:"Braking Hard Alert" on DoT Proposes Mandating Vehicle-To-Vehicle Communications · · Score: 1

    You got it - there's no safety benefit to transmitting even anonymous identifying information any further than the braking distance of another car, which then appropriately value-enhances before relaying onward. Suddenly this is a very tricky protocol with a lot vetting/demonstration before acceptance.

  6. Re:Plan C: on Autonomous Car Ethics: If a Crash Is Unavoidable, What Does It Hit? · · Score: 1

    Exactly either use high tech such as comms or just KISS and STAY IN YOUR LANE - tire friction is highest straight-on and you have a higher legal protection.

  7. Re:Paper and US Postal Service on Slashdot Asks: How Do You Pay Your Taxes? · · Score: 1

    The Target breach made it a clean sweep on me, except for Federal. I am required to deal with Uncle Sam, and there are no contractual controls over the intermediaries. Federal endorsement and encouragement of this parasitic industry is unethical and a wasteful drag on the economy. About a decade ago Virginia had a wonderful web submission process but that was replaced by no-edit pdf's at both state and federal. It's only recently changed to editable forms and I still cannot electronically submit them short sharing my personal information with a non-privacy-act third party.

  8. Re:Is "impact" such a bad thing? on Power Cables' UV Flashes Apparently Frighten Animals · · Score: 1

    "Impacting" bald eagles before they "impact" a wind turbine blade would be a good thing.

  9. Re:If evolution is true... on Why Are Some Hell-Bent On Teaching Intelligent Design? · · Score: 1

    Read further, where they get wives from the non-chosen. Omitting details like this because it was obvious to storytellers and scribes is not uncommon.

  10. Re:WWII glider yank-recovery on CIA: Flying Skyhook Wasn't Just For James Bond, It Actually Rescued Agents · · Score: 1

    Yeah, for any number of reasons much of the pickup gear delivered to England was removed, pre-Normandy, and few tow pilots trained. It wasn't until post-Market Garden that the European theater got serious about glider recovery, probably because they were needed for the last big operation to cross the Rhine. Burma used snatch pickup a lot, Pacific and Arctic a little; Med was offered to recover out of Siciliy but declined. I would love to talk or write to your glider pilot for the when, where, and how many he witnessed. My research has stagnated. PM to lg_glidr on the army air forces forum, http://forum.armyairforces.com/tt.aspx?forumid=162

  11. Re:WWII glider yank-recovery on CIA: Flying Skyhook Wasn't Just For James Bond, It Actually Rescued Agents · · Score: 1

    Do you have any records of gliders damaged by snatch pickup? An overused towline would, on rare occasion, snap while the glider was still on the ground, and go through the plexiglass windscreen, making the pilot duck. Only in the Dec '48 Greenland rescue did this happen to an airborne glider for an exciting return into the snow. http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/Stranded.html

  12. it was called snatch pickup on CIA: Flying Skyhook Wasn't Just For James Bond, It Actually Rescued Agents · · Score: 1

    I’ll be driving the author of that article next week to the annual WWII glider pilot’s reunion. It was called snatch pickup or “the snatch”. About 1-in-8 WWII gliders were launched this way: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA516653 The tow plane’s winch grew out of airmail pickup in the Alleghenies, with the goal posts first used by the Marines in 1927 (there’s a display at the National Museum of the Marine Corps). The physics of a 1946 launch of a 25,000-lb cargo glider into flight: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-3584.2009.00190.x/abstract A towed variation retreived telemetry tapes off tracking ships after rocket shots in the 1950’s, and a mid-air version caught spy satellite film. Today only aerial-towed banners are picked up this way.

  13. James Bond script already? on Is an International Nuclear Fuelbank a Good Idea? · · Score: 1

    Sounds like a real-world honeypot for evil geniuses.

  14. Re:And as usual... on Patch Makes Certain Skin Cancers Disappear · · Score: 1

    Maybe the preventative application of a patch saves skin from any damage in the first place!

  15. " Predator-type UAV" from 60,000ft??? on Why Drones Could Be the Future of Missile Defense · · Score: 1

    Predator ceiling is 25,000ft according to wikipedia; only the recently canceled Global Hawk flies at 60,000ft. Methinks this is an attempt to revive a canceled program.

  16. Re:stretching on Scientists Study How Little Exercise You Need · · Score: 1

    One summer I was doing 5mi/day without (serious) stretching. That fall soccer season started 12 years of Iliotibial band syndrome, ending only after a combined effort of heavy anti-inflammatory, physical therapy, and acupuncture. I can still feel it coming on if I lay off the daily stretching, so it's a lifetime of recovery for me. I wouldn't wish that pain I experienced on anyone.

  17. Re:Congresspeople doing favors for donors on US Research Open Access In Peril · · Score: 1

    governmental agency lobbying? I'm pretty sure it is unlawful already.

  18. airline software on How Google's Autonomous Vehicles Work · · Score: 2

    the impressive math to prove that airline software operates correctly, obviating the familiar testing found in most software development efforts, is also not popularly recognized.

  19. kids music easy? on Ask They Might Be Giants About Almost 30 Years of Music · · Score: 2

    Y'all started out with adult crowd and somehow got into kid's songs. (My daughter's a big fan). Which is easier: songs for the alphabet, math, or science?

  20. went with Dell on Ask Slashdot: Clusters On the Cheap? · · Score: 1

    I had to use Windows and Monte Carlo my sim "locally". I sat two Optiplex 790s w/ 3.4GHz i7-quad cores on a rack shelf for under $3000. Their small form factor is a sweet chassis (can't say that about their Precision desktop). I moved the boot disk into the optical drive's bay, and installed a sub-$190 3TB 3.5" drive internally. No power supply for a serious graphics card but native is good enough for my sim. Many-hour runs are 20-25% shorter than my older X9650 and E5540 so I'm happy.

  21. Re:damage on When Did Irene Stop Being a Hurricane? · · Score: 2

    For me in Virginia, the damage continues to accrue at $30/day for gas in the generator. 48 hours after it hit, exactly half of all traffic lights in the county were dark, with only three places to even buy gas.

  22. Never broadside on Chinese Researchers Propose Asteroid Deflection Mission · · Score: 1

    A broadside trajectory sounds spectacular and does the greatest benefit, but any error at all is a miss. There's no way to fly enough sensing gear, thruster fuel, etc for a hyper-high speed, broadside intercept. There can also be unpredictable out-gassing shifting Apophis' course. Rather, going up the tailpipe matches vectors so the time of intercept can be off by a lot more.

  23. Re:I don't get it... on DARPA Loses Contact With Hypersonic Glider · · Score: 1

    Technically no, other than testing, development, and integration, a payload is a payload. However nukes involve military infrastructure and there's treaty protocols like international observers and bases were nukes are supposed to be and not supposed to be. For instance Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral are where ballistic launches always occur. Violating these "norms" is an "escalation in tensions" and also means the other sides can do it too. Not tantamount to war, but a clear step away from controlling all the possible mistakes associated with nukes. So as long as this hypersonic glider is never associated with or launches from a known nuke site, PGS thinks that all the other players will treat it as yet another weapon in our inventory and not a destabilizing game changer. Tomahawks have been down this path for decades.

  24. about tides on No Moon Needed For Extraterrestrial Life · · Score: 1

    a twice-daily tide from a binary system like ours could have a significant influence on vertebrate development. I bet there's a lot of inverts out there awaiting discovery, but it's a lot harder to evolve critters the rest of us would find interesting.

  25. WWII Cargo Glider Snatch Pickup winch on Do Tools Ever 'Die?' · · Score: 1

    I know a guy who was trying to recreate a CG-4A cargo glider snatch pickup for a Normandy anniversary, but couldn't find the necessary winch to fly in the pickup tow plane. He could use the All American Aviation model 80, model 120, or I'd like to see the model 160 winch. Blue prints are supposedly in the Smithsonian but none have existed for decades.