Sure, I hear words like "arses" roll off people's tongues all the time.
I also like the GP's suggestion that an acronym like RSS sounds complex: really simple syndication. Complex and simple wouldn't happen to be antonyms, would they?
And I love the way the GGP called the submitter a "crack rock smoking monkey" and got modded +4: insightful. Not that it was a bad post. It seems the nazi mods missed it, is all.
Regarding its transparency, I've got a feeling it's about as transparent as fiberglass, which, while the individual fibers are transparent, when you lay them together, the net effect of each fiber refracting light in a different direction gives you a sheer cloth, less so the thicker you weave it. Still, I think you're right about eventually seeing carbon-fiber replaced by nanotubes in applications where strength-to-weight is critical, as long as we don't find out that it causes cancer or clogs your capillaries or makes you Celine Dion music or one of the other horrors commonly associated with new products.
Joe sixpack doesn't have a freaking clue what the word "normalized" means, either. The closest he can come is to guess it's a new reality TV show where they take geeks and give them makeovers to make them "normal."
The article stated the goal was 100 GPa (gigapascals...a measure of stress) tensile strength. The parent mentions the highest measured strength to date comes from a single-walled nanotube that bore 63 GPa (double-walled will theoretically hold more). To give you a comparison, I've pulled ultimate tensile strengths of common materials from matweb.com (note these are in MPa, not GPa, so the goal is 100,000 MPa)
Molded Nylon - 75 MPa
Plain carbon steel - 450 MPa
4130 Cromoly steel - 1110 MPa
Dupont Kevlar 49 - 3620 MPa
Carbon Fiber - 4000 MPa (approx)
As you can see, carbon fiber is about 4% as strong as the target, which tells you two things: First, nanotubes kick butt. Second, this elevator is not right around the corner. Sure they're getting good at making individual fibers, but the weave will not carry the same stress as the individual fibers, and we have to find a way to work around that.
Walmart attempts to create the same scene of panic and confusion on the day after Thanksgiving (harvest related holiday about a month before Christmas for those not familiar). They always have some computer bundle or TV or DVD player for some outrageously low price and stack a few hundred (or thousand if it's DVD players) up in the center of the store. Doors for the day and people push and shove their way to the stack. Apparently either everyone's gotten their DVD player by now or people got tired of getting bruised while shopping, because this year there was probably around 100 TV's and several hundred DVD players still stacked up when I went in a couple days later. I still haven't heard of anyone beating someone with a chair for cutting in line though.
Fine then, try this example: I still play Commander Keen, Civilization, Wolfenstein, Mario Bros (emulated), and Stunt Drivers (an older driving game). Their graphics suck by modern standards (though Stunt Drivers was pretty sweet in its day), but I love these games, and I can't be wrong. Therefore, we can deduce that lousy graphics don't ruin a game.
I'm sure the risk isn't hardly worth thinking about, but I've read taht some satellites are turned narrow side on during meteor showers to reduce risks of any kind of damage. I also noticed that the Perseids peak on Friday. I was wondering if anyone has any insight on considerations that might be made in light of the proximity of dates. Is it completely not worth worrying about, is it a calculated risk, or is there already enough shielding in place in anticipation of dust encountered during the interplanetary flight?
I suppose it would be disappointing for the MRO to reach orbit, only to find out their nice new telescope has pockmarks on the lens/mirror
I took the initiative in creating the Internet. ~Al Gore (courtesy of snopes.com)
For your reference. I honestly don't think that sounds any more intelligent. In fact, the choice of business major lingo (took the initiative) almost makes it sound dumber.
Gladly! Sure it didn't turn out as good as originally expected, and it will be a welcome reversion to capsule systems like those we used well into the 1970's. It might have helped if NASA hadn't payed any attention to the environmentalists belly-aching about the use of asbestos in the external tank foam and switching to a weaker material. It would've been great if people without engineering background had not been allowed to make the decision to launch Challenger that fateful morning, but a lot of learning has come from the program and no other space agency (even Canada's), has come close to the amount of activity the US has performed in space with the help of the shuttle. Mir was a very good long term project, a point of pride for Russia, and a valuable precursor to the ISS, but they spent nearly as much effort repairing things on that station as we have on the shuttle, and it's utility was limited by what could fit in a Soyuz or Progress capsule. The space shuttle isn't just cool. It's crazy cool.
You may remember from school that Columbus lost a 1/3 of his ships on his initial voyage. Magellan lost 4 out of 5. One of the Wright brothers was killed in a plane crash. Exploring man's limits and those of his technology is often dangerous, and if we can't accept that fact, we're bound to get stuck hard, go nowhere, and learn nothing.
Which is flawed because intelligent design isn't necessarily exclusive of evolution. The literally interpreted, seven day version of creation is, but evolutionary creation is a perfectly acceptable theory in most Christian traditions.
And if we let writers with proven "talent" approach the idea, we just end up with more movies like Armageddon. I'm afraid it's a lose-lose situation and they should drop the whole idea.
ASME members might have seen the engineering comics being published by the society. I guess the effort is nice, but I'd doubt it accomplishes anything. Any kid who really is interested in things of a technical nature is probably going to be reading Popular Science or something like that at the age these comics are geared toward, and any kid who's not will say "You mean Thomas Edison couldn't fly?" and go back to betting they're life on a career in the NFL.
Right, because such a big part of Christianity involves strip searching babies and 70 year old ladies at airports, and paying record companies ridiculous prices for rock-n-roll. I'm sure you remember the Bible story about how God smote Ramsees giving clay tablets of Psalm 23 to all his friends without paying King David. I'm afraid your argument doesn't support your apparent position.
No jet fighter flies at Mach 4 (and 3000 miles/hour is about Mach 5 at the only altitudes where aircraft have gone that fast). The fastest is MIG 25 Foxbat, which flies at around Mach 3, a tiny bit slower than an SR-71. The Mach 6-capable X-15 and the Mach 10 X-45 flew on sunny days. All of these craft fly at these speeds at well over 30,000 feet, which places them above nearly all of the weather. None of them needs a thermal protection system anywhere nearly as exotic and as a result as delicate as the space shuttle (the expansion joints in the SR-71's titanium skin won't handle re-entry, and they get parked inside when it rains, anyway). Most importantly, I personally can't recall the last time a space shuttle broke up in the rain.
You can bash NASA all you want, but that won't change the fact that the shuttle performs pretty well for its complexity and the now apparent fact that it was an excessive endeavor (no pun intended) for the available funding and technology.
It doesn't need legal merit (unless, perhaps if UT were filing the suit). The UT servers are privately owned, and the network privately administrated. It's laughable that the dating service would even try to claim that they have a right to say how the school runs it's network. Even accounting for the difference between a publicly funded university and you or me, consider if a court ruled that your personal use of spam filtering software was unconstitutional, or worse, that Microsoft could legally require you to use Windows. I know I'd be furious.
Ah yes! FERPA. That's the one that says that my school can't give a photocopy of my own transcript directly to me. Instead I have to wait until they're done processing the grades for the semester and go through their formal process and forget about the job application I needed it for. Or maybe they just used FERPA as an excuse to get their $3 processing fee.
No, I'm not bitter, just pissed off. Sure there is some legitimacy behind FERPA, but at times it seems like one of those stupid rules like Title IX, the auditors for which told my high school physics teacher he had to take down his posters of Einstein, Maxwell, Newton, and Pauling, or else put up a lot more posters of Marie Curie.
In addition to the other comments that have been made so far, universities generally have terms of use associated with using their network resources. I, for one, am glad that my school (U of Portland) blocks much of the unsolicited email that is sent here.
The bleeding hearts can complain all they want about the Active Denial System, but they're self-righteous whining will never change one simple fact: a little burn is way better than getting shot. And if dispersing a really ugly civillian crowd that could potentially turn deadly, potentially blinding a few people is a heck of a lot better option than mowing them down with MG's.
Mildly funny, but I will point out for the more serious NASA-haters that the rovers have been going for over a year and a half (6 times their "warranty"), discovered quite a bit about Martian geology and weather, provided a strong PR boost through the quality of their images, and are still going. Meanwhile, piggybacked Beagle crashed, and the Mars Express itself, which entered orbit around the same time the rovers landed, is still practically pulling it's pants on.
Not to undermine the ESA's achievements of course. Express is a completely different mission and it's data will be equally as valuable as the rovers in the long run. ESA also did a great job with the Hguyen's probe.
13 megs? Ha! NASA had a panorama from the Mars rovers that I clicked on without first checking the size. 30 MB! It was big enough that my computer froze up for about 10 minutes after I clicked the zoom button, while Firefox rendered it.
Haha! Sorry, I'm not laughing at you, Tim Fraser. I'm afraid I don't get the reference. I'm laughing at the fact that you were clearly making a joke, and you got modded "Informative" twice.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Except I was thinking "audio stream" instead of podcast. It's more descriptive.
Sure, I hear words like "arses" roll off people's tongues all the time.
I also like the GP's suggestion that an acronym like RSS sounds complex: really simple syndication. Complex and simple wouldn't happen to be antonyms, would they?
And I love the way the GGP called the submitter a "crack rock smoking monkey" and got modded +4: insightful. Not that it was a bad post. It seems the nazi mods missed it, is all.
Courtesy Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Why "neologize" at all? Do we really need stupid catch phrases for the press like blog and podcast?
Regarding its transparency, I've got a feeling it's about as transparent as fiberglass, which, while the individual fibers are transparent, when you lay them together, the net effect of each fiber refracting light in a different direction gives you a sheer cloth, less so the thicker you weave it. Still, I think you're right about eventually seeing carbon-fiber replaced by nanotubes in applications where strength-to-weight is critical, as long as we don't find out that it causes cancer or clogs your capillaries or makes you Celine Dion music or one of the other horrors commonly associated with new products.
Joe sixpack doesn't have a freaking clue what the word "normalized" means, either. The closest he can come is to guess it's a new reality TV show where they take geeks and give them makeovers to make them "normal."
- Molded Nylon - 75 MPa
- Plain carbon steel - 450 MPa
- 4130 Cromoly steel - 1110 MPa
- Dupont Kevlar 49 - 3620 MPa
- Carbon Fiber - 4000 MPa (approx)
As you can see, carbon fiber is about 4% as strong as the target, which tells you two things: First, nanotubes kick butt. Second, this elevator is not right around the corner. Sure they're getting good at making individual fibers, but the weave will not carry the same stress as the individual fibers, and we have to find a way to work around that.It happens to me all the time
Walmart attempts to create the same scene of panic and confusion on the day after Thanksgiving (harvest related holiday about a month before Christmas for those not familiar). They always have some computer bundle or TV or DVD player for some outrageously low price and stack a few hundred (or thousand if it's DVD players) up in the center of the store. Doors for the day and people push and shove their way to the stack. Apparently either everyone's gotten their DVD player by now or people got tired of getting bruised while shopping, because this year there was probably around 100 TV's and several hundred DVD players still stacked up when I went in a couple days later. I still haven't heard of anyone beating someone with a chair for cutting in line though.
The computers were 4 years old, and most of them probably needed new batteries. That bumps the price up to $150 right there.
Fine then, try this example: I still play Commander Keen, Civilization, Wolfenstein, Mario Bros (emulated), and Stunt Drivers (an older driving game). Their graphics suck by modern standards (though Stunt Drivers was pretty sweet in its day), but I love these games, and I can't be wrong. Therefore, we can deduce that lousy graphics don't ruin a game.
I'm sure the risk isn't hardly worth thinking about, but I've read taht some satellites are turned narrow side on during meteor showers to reduce risks of any kind of damage. I also noticed that the Perseids peak on Friday. I was wondering if anyone has any insight on considerations that might be made in light of the proximity of dates. Is it completely not worth worrying about, is it a calculated risk, or is there already enough shielding in place in anticipation of dust encountered during the interplanetary flight?
I suppose it would be disappointing for the MRO to reach orbit, only to find out their nice new telescope has pockmarks on the lens/mirror
You may remember from school that Columbus lost a 1/3 of his ships on his initial voyage. Magellan lost 4 out of 5. One of the Wright brothers was killed in a plane crash. Exploring man's limits and those of his technology is often dangerous, and if we can't accept that fact, we're bound to get stuck hard, go nowhere, and learn nothing.
Which is flawed because intelligent design isn't necessarily exclusive of evolution. The literally interpreted, seven day version of creation is, but evolutionary creation is a perfectly acceptable theory in most Christian traditions.
And if we let writers with proven "talent" approach the idea, we just end up with more movies like Armageddon. I'm afraid it's a lose-lose situation and they should drop the whole idea.
ASME members might have seen the engineering comics being published by the society. I guess the effort is nice, but I'd doubt it accomplishes anything. Any kid who really is interested in things of a technical nature is probably going to be reading Popular Science or something like that at the age these comics are geared toward, and any kid who's not will say "You mean Thomas Edison couldn't fly?" and go back to betting they're life on a career in the NFL.
Right, because such a big part of Christianity involves strip searching babies and 70 year old ladies at airports, and paying record companies ridiculous prices for rock-n-roll. I'm sure you remember the Bible story about how God smote Ramsees giving clay tablets of Psalm 23 to all his friends without paying King David. I'm afraid your argument doesn't support your apparent position.
No jet fighter flies at Mach 4 (and 3000 miles/hour is about Mach 5 at the only altitudes where aircraft have gone that fast). The fastest is MIG 25 Foxbat, which flies at around Mach 3, a tiny bit slower than an SR-71. The Mach 6-capable X-15 and the Mach 10 X-45 flew on sunny days. All of these craft fly at these speeds at well over 30,000 feet, which places them above nearly all of the weather. None of them needs a thermal protection system anywhere nearly as exotic and as a result as delicate as the space shuttle (the expansion joints in the SR-71's titanium skin won't handle re-entry, and they get parked inside when it rains, anyway). Most importantly, I personally can't recall the last time a space shuttle broke up in the rain.
You can bash NASA all you want, but that won't change the fact that the shuttle performs pretty well for its complexity and the now apparent fact that it was an excessive endeavor (no pun intended) for the available funding and technology.
It doesn't need legal merit (unless, perhaps if UT were filing the suit). The UT servers are privately owned, and the network privately administrated. It's laughable that the dating service would even try to claim that they have a right to say how the school runs it's network. Even accounting for the difference between a publicly funded university and you or me, consider if a court ruled that your personal use of spam filtering software was unconstitutional, or worse, that Microsoft could legally require you to use Windows. I know I'd be furious.
Ah yes! FERPA. That's the one that says that my school can't give a photocopy of my own transcript directly to me. Instead I have to wait until they're done processing the grades for the semester and go through their formal process and forget about the job application I needed it for. Or maybe they just used FERPA as an excuse to get their $3 processing fee.
No, I'm not bitter, just pissed off. Sure there is some legitimacy behind FERPA, but at times it seems like one of those stupid rules like Title IX, the auditors for which told my high school physics teacher he had to take down his posters of Einstein, Maxwell, Newton, and Pauling, or else put up a lot more posters of Marie Curie.
In addition to the other comments that have been made so far, universities generally have terms of use associated with using their network resources. I, for one, am glad that my school (U of Portland) blocks much of the unsolicited email that is sent here.
The bleeding hearts can complain all they want about the Active Denial System, but they're self-righteous whining will never change one simple fact: a little burn is way better than getting shot. And if dispersing a really ugly civillian crowd that could potentially turn deadly, potentially blinding a few people is a heck of a lot better option than mowing them down with MG's.
Mildly funny, but I will point out for the more serious NASA-haters that the rovers have been going for over a year and a half (6 times their "warranty"), discovered quite a bit about Martian geology and weather, provided a strong PR boost through the quality of their images, and are still going. Meanwhile, piggybacked Beagle crashed, and the Mars Express itself, which entered orbit around the same time the rovers landed, is still practically pulling it's pants on.
Not to undermine the ESA's achievements of course. Express is a completely different mission and it's data will be equally as valuable as the rovers in the long run. ESA also did a great job with the Hguyen's probe.
13 megs? Ha! NASA had a panorama from the Mars rovers that I clicked on without first checking the size. 30 MB! It was big enough that my computer froze up for about 10 minutes after I clicked the zoom button, while Firefox rendered it.
Haha! Sorry, I'm not laughing at you, Tim Fraser. I'm afraid I don't get the reference. I'm laughing at the fact that you were clearly making a joke, and you got modded "Informative" twice.