Look at how many idiot drivers fail to see emergency vehicles with lights and sirens blaring, and tell me that they'll notice loud pipes./QUOTE
REPLY
In the past few years a popular German auto maker ran a series of commercials where their car was operated on a noise city street. Traffic. Construction. Emergency vehicles. "Cars that go boom"(loud music, if you can call that music.)
The windows go up and complete silence. A hand turns of the gain on the onboard sound system and Bach or Brahms comes pouring out of the TV set. Lovely. Cars marketed by playing up the fact that you are isolated from the driving environment as much as possible. Coming soon will be blinders to go with the ear-plugs. Wait...they are here..see many cars with narrow windows, big pillars, heavy window tinting and "wings" added on that all cause problems for driver visibility.
Add to that many car magazines that cater the "luxury and performance segment" will rate a car LOWER if you are not sufficiently soundproofed, as outside annoyances like Police, Fire, and EMS sires, will seriously fuck up your driving experience when they impinge upon your enjoyment of a 5000000 watt 30 speaker Dolby DTS digital 70.1 surround sound system. [Numerical exadurations intentional]
Anyhow, to the point, auto makers and car enthusiasts are turning their cars into boxes where they can be blind and deaf while motoring about.
When you want quite and blind get yourself a coffin and get out of the fucking car before you put other motorists or pedestrians into their own coffins.
Being the guy that contradicted the first poster, I'll say this.
4% is a small chunk in relative terms.
When one considers the absolute measure of oil consumption (in millions of barrels of oil) that 4% is quite significant (let's see you personaly use that much oil in your lifetime.)
My position is that in relative terms that oil is not a significant fuel for electrical production in the United States.
-Solar -Hydroelectric -Wind -Tidal -Bio-fuels (I know..right now they burn as much energy in production as you get out of the final product) -Nuclear (In some countries)
In the USA this is not true. Coal, Hydro, Nukes, Wind, Solar. Oil is used in abundance in the US for transportation, consumer goods(petrochemicals into plastics) food (fertilizers, fuel for farm machines, petrochemicals to package food, more fuel to deliver California lettuce to the new england states, natural gas for cooking [thank you science-news blogs for the education on this subject]).
Compared to Coal and Hydro plants oil fired plants generate very little electrical power. With the possible arrival of natural gas fired mini-plants generating lower volumes of power closer to the loads(cities) one may see a reversal of the current situation though. But, one must consider that natural gas oil, but it is a fossil fuel.
* The truth about finding cars (and yes, even your DRM crippled Holywood Movie) for under $500!
OMFG! What a bargain!
* How to instantly locate hundreds of DRM crippled Holywood Movies being sold right now in your area...without having to talk to a dealer or a broker.
Broker? Blockbuster?
* How to track down DRM crippled Holywood Movies that have been repossessed or siezed by the government...and snatch them up for pennies on the dollar!
Seized from evil creatures with peg legs, steel hooks for hands, and eye patches?
* How you can find your DRM crippled Holywood Movie on the Internet
Hell, I do this already(netflix, not BT or USNET like you criminals thought!)
* How you can make anyone selling DRM crippled Holywood Movies drop their price by thousands!
You: The grenade would fall faster than the person, but not because of density - density doesn't play into it. It's because of less air resistance, which may have a little to do with the density, but a lot more to do with the shape.
Reply:
A grenade made of aerojel will fall much slower than one made of steel with an explosive core. Sure, shape is a factor. So is density. Gravity dosen't give a squat about density. Unfortunately the ability of a projectile to penetrate a fluid (like air) does depend greatly upon density (as well as shape.) This is why heavy bullets have a greater balistic coefeccient than lighter bullets of the same shape. They have more mass, therefore more interta, and will tend to penetrate a fluid with less loss of energy than a less dense bullet.
But, as far as the game goes . . . unless the player is considerably denser than the grenade there is a problem with the realism of the physics engine (assuming that when one "drops" a grenade it's not actualy THROWN [IE: given a velocity vector that is diffrent from the player who "drops" the grenade])
With the announcement of the pending retirement of Atlantis the Ancients have filed a formal complaint. When interviewed the Atlantian spokesperson is quoted as saying "Silly bastards they don't need to retire Atlantis. Get three fully charged ZPMs and Atlantis will be spaceworthy again."
When we contacted the facility manager at the Airforce facility at Cheyeane Mountain CO the existance of Atlantis (and stargates, Goual'd, Asgard, whatever they are) was explained as being the result of "people [are] spending too much time watching tv. Particularly that Wormhole Extreme crap."
OK, so they have plans for dealing with a nuclear strike. But what about the aftermath? What's their plan for dealing with a psychopathic terrorist wearing a Guy Fawkes mask?
Oddly enough, most gun violence in the USA is perpetrated by men who have been previously convicted of felonies. Being convicted of a felony crime is a disqualifying condition for legal gun ownership. But, hey, if you're planning on pulling a car-jacking or a drive-by(both crimes with victims) being a convicted felon in posession of a firearm(a "victimless crime") is no big deal.
The problem with US gun control is that we keep adding on new laws and fail to simply enforce the ones we have.
If a species is overly specilized to a flourish in a certain envorment, and that enviroment changes the specalist species becomes extint.
Think DINOSAUR.
Once the enviroment that they specialized for was disrupted the generalists(mamals) became the dominant force in the animal kingdom.
The fact that those best fit for survival to the age of sexual maturity are the ones that survive is one of the cornerstones of evoution.
Did the over-night change in the enviroment of the earth following the great meteor impacts mean the end of life on earth? Hell no. Life (by adapting) can slog right on through fast-onset changes, be they a global warming (been there, done that), global cooling (ice ages, been there done that) or terrible ecological disasters (huge meteors, wicked volcanic activity, etc...again..life has been there, done that, and gone on rocking the world.)
Bill and Steve and crew continue to bully the planet.
DUDE! Watch it, don't piss them off or they'll "fucking bury that [planet], I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill [Earth]."
To land on an asteroid you have to speed up your space probe to a speed that's within a few FPS (Feet Per Second) of your target asteroid, as well as get your probe going in the same direction. Can't meet your 1000 MPH asteroid while you travel at 100 MPH. That's like hitting a wall at 900 MPH.
Now that's not so hard to do that we'd never consider doing it (in fact we[humans] have done it.)
Here's the catch. Once your spacecraft/probe is flying at the same speed and in the same direction as the rock you want to ride on, why bother with the landing? Rocks go through space on and on because they are in an orbit, and will follow that orbit till pushed out of orbit (gravity, impact, thrust from a drive.) Your spacecraft/probe will also stay in the same orbit until it is pushed out of that orbit.
So, now that we have some super-simplified physics we can get to the point.
If you're going to burn a certain amount fuel to put your craft into a certain orbit it'll stay in that orbit. It dosen't make a diffrence if it's sharing that orbit with a rock or going solo. Trying to set up an elaborate ballet between your probe and another body is a risk that's not needed (unless your goal is to study those bodies found in space.)
As far as protection from radiation goes, spacecraft have spent decades (Voyager craft) in space with radiation shielding integrated into them certainly seems like enough that we don't need to use asteroids (of unknown composition) for radiation shielding.
As far as the use of landing on asteroids, there's a whole hell of a lot that we don't know about them. It is worthwhile to make these landings for the sake of learning about our solar system. (Not looking for a debate on funding for space science vs spending elsewhere.)
I used to play some AOL premium games. They billed you by the hour. There's sure to be something like that out there that's OFF the AOL network. Or why not play a free game?
Okay, that works for a FIXED aplication. I made an asumption on portability, or at least some ease in relocation and a minimal impact on the enviroment. Having to dig a small bomb shelter for the flywheel and shroud could piss off the enviromental types.
Those will be cool when we have lightweight cheap materials we can use to shroud a flywheel. Why shroud them? Two reasons.
First is drag. Can't have resistance from air slowing down your wheel. Keep it in an evacuated container.
Second is saftey. If you want to store a meaningful bit of power you'll either need alot of mass or rotational velocity, or both even. Now, think of what happen is there's a defect in your high-speed high-mass flywheel and its parts decide to take seperate vacations. Did you think FRAGMENTATION GRENADE? Good, go to the head of the class. You need to keep potentialy dangerous fast-moving high-density bits from coming into contact with people and things that people value.
Another problem with flywheels of any significant mass or speed is the gyroscope effect. But, that's not as big a deal as finding a wonder-material to protect the flywheel from the atmosphere, and us from the flywheel.
Also found on the internet: " The piezoelectric generator is a much more efficient way of converting wind energy on a small scale than the conventional generators that create energy for the national power grid from wind turbines.
A conventional generator that used a 10-cm turbine would convert only 1 per cent of the available wind energy directly into electricity. A piezoelectric generator ups that to 18 per cent, which is comparable to the average efficiency of the best large-scale windmills, says Priya. "
Slashdot Mirror
You whippersnappers with your Ikari warriors, guns and grenades. Back in our day we had to use pointy sticks and ride on the backs of airborne ostriches!
Sounds alot like the "Padlock View" that was introduced to most of the gaming world by Falcon 3.0.
It's an old (and often missing) friend in the world of Aerial Warfare.
One must remember that MSN and IE both have the same company behind them. Microsoft.
Firefox and Google are completely separate corp. entities.
Thus is the major difference.
When everyone uses Google Internet Explorer (as opposed to Microsoft IE) we can talk about any monopolistic practices Googles is getting up to.
QUOTE
/QUOTE
Look at how many idiot drivers fail to see emergency vehicles with lights and sirens blaring, and tell me that they'll notice loud pipes.
REPLY
In the past few years a popular German auto maker ran a series of commercials where their car was operated on a noise city street. Traffic. Construction. Emergency vehicles. "Cars that go boom"(loud music, if you can call that music.)
The windows go up and complete silence. A hand turns of the gain on the onboard sound system and Bach or Brahms comes pouring out of the TV set. Lovely. Cars marketed by playing up the fact that you are isolated from the driving environment as much as possible. Coming soon will be blinders to go with the ear-plugs. Wait...they are here..see many cars with narrow windows, big pillars, heavy window tinting and "wings" added on that all cause problems for driver visibility.
Add to that many car magazines that cater the "luxury and performance segment" will rate a car LOWER if you are not sufficiently soundproofed, as outside annoyances like Police, Fire, and EMS sires, will seriously fuck up your driving experience when they impinge upon your enjoyment of a 5000000 watt 30 speaker Dolby DTS digital 70.1 surround sound system. [Numerical exadurations intentional]
Anyhow, to the point, auto makers and car enthusiasts are turning their cars into boxes where they can be blind and deaf while motoring about.
When you want quite and blind get yourself a coffin and get out of the fucking car before you put other motorists or pedestrians into their own coffins.
Being the guy that contradicted the first poster, I'll say this.
4% is a small chunk in relative terms.
When one considers the absolute measure of oil consumption (in millions of barrels of oil) that 4% is quite significant (let's see you personaly use that much oil in your lifetime.)
My position is that in relative terms that oil is not a significant fuel for electrical production in the United States.
cheap clean electricity sources to power it:
-Solar
-Hydroelectric
-Wind
-Tidal
-Bio-fuels (I know..right now they burn as much energy in production as you get out of the final product)
-Nuclear (In some countries)
In the USA this is not true. Coal, Hydro, Nukes, Wind, Solar. Oil is used in abundance in the US for transportation, consumer goods(petrochemicals into plastics) food (fertilizers, fuel for farm machines, petrochemicals to package food, more fuel to deliver California lettuce to the new england states, natural gas for cooking [thank you science-news blogs for the education on this subject]).
Compared to Coal and Hydro plants oil fired plants generate very little electrical power. With the possible arrival of natural gas fired mini-plants generating lower volumes of power closer to the loads(cities) one may see a reversal of the current situation though. But, one must consider that natural gas oil, but it is a fossil fuel.
Inside you'll learn...
...without having to talk to a dealer or a broker.
...and snatch them up for pennies on the dollar!
* The truth about finding cars (and yes, even your DRM crippled Holywood Movie) for under $500!
OMFG! What a bargain!
* How to instantly locate hundreds of DRM crippled Holywood Movies being sold right now in your area
Broker? Blockbuster?
* How to track down DRM crippled Holywood Movies that have been repossessed or siezed by the government
Seized from evil creatures with peg legs, steel hooks for hands, and eye patches?
* How you can find your DRM crippled Holywood Movie on the Internet
Hell, I do this already(netflix, not BT or USNET like you criminals thought!)
* How you can make anyone selling DRM crippled Holywood Movies drop their price by thousands!
At gunpoint?
* And much, much more!
Do tell!
You:
The grenade would fall faster than the person, but not because of density - density doesn't play into it. It's because of less air resistance, which may have a little to do with the density, but a lot more to do with the shape.
Reply:
A grenade made of aerojel will fall much slower than one made of steel with an explosive core. Sure, shape is a factor. So is density. Gravity dosen't give a squat about density. Unfortunately the ability of a projectile to penetrate a fluid (like air) does depend greatly upon density (as well as shape.) This is why heavy bullets have a greater balistic coefeccient than lighter bullets of the same shape. They have more mass, therefore more interta, and will tend to penetrate a fluid with less loss of energy than a less dense bullet.
But, as far as the game goes . . . unless the player is considerably denser than the grenade there is a problem with the realism of the physics engine (assuming that when one "drops" a grenade it's not actualy THROWN [IE: given a velocity vector that is diffrent from the player who "drops" the grenade])
Re:Man...
(Score:1)
by Reignking (832642) Alter Relationship on Friday March 10, @10:19PM (#14896288)
Can I be the Skin of Evil?
RELPY:
YOU BASTARD YOU KILLED THE HOT BLONDE! (Yar, Tasha)
With the announcement of the pending retirement of Atlantis the Ancients have filed a formal complaint. When interviewed the Atlantian spokesperson is quoted as saying "Silly bastards they don't need to retire Atlantis. Get three fully charged ZPMs and Atlantis will be spaceworthy again." When we contacted the facility manager at the Airforce facility at Cheyeane Mountain CO the existance of Atlantis (and stargates, Goual'd, Asgard, whatever they are) was explained as being the result of "people [are] spending too much time watching tv. Particularly that Wormhole Extreme crap."
This is a great idea. I'll patent it right away.
OK, so they have plans for dealing with a nuclear strike. But what about the aftermath? What's their plan for dealing with a psychopathic terrorist wearing a Guy Fawkes mask?
Easy, they call The DOCTOR.
alt.binaries.multimedia.mp3.audiobooks.fiction
alt.binaries.multimedia.mp3.audiobooks.sci-fi
alt.binaries.multimedia.mp3.audiobooks.mystery
alt.binaries.multimedia.mp3.audiobooks.spokenword
Oddly enough, most gun violence in the USA is perpetrated by men who have been previously convicted of felonies. Being convicted of a felony crime is a disqualifying condition for legal gun ownership. But, hey, if you're planning on pulling a car-jacking or a drive-by(both crimes with victims) being a convicted felon in posession of a firearm(a "victimless crime") is no big deal.
The problem with US gun control is that we keep adding on new laws and fail to simply enforce the ones we have.
When *that* happens, species just get wiped out.
Uhm, this IS part of evolution.
ADAPT OR DIE.
If a species is overly specilized to a flourish in a certain envorment, and that enviroment changes the specalist species becomes extint.
Think DINOSAUR.
Once the enviroment that they specialized for was disrupted the generalists(mamals) became the dominant force in the animal kingdom.
The fact that those best fit for survival to the age of sexual maturity are the ones that survive is one of the cornerstones of evoution.
Did the over-night change in the enviroment of the earth following the great meteor impacts mean the end of life on earth? Hell no. Life (by adapting) can slog right on through fast-onset changes, be they a global warming (been there, done that), global cooling (ice ages, been there done that) or terrible ecological disasters (huge meteors, wicked volcanic activity, etc...again..life has been there, done that, and gone on rocking the world.)
I think slashdot is about as pro-microsoft in the color schemes as it is pro "Cow Jones" UID#615566.
Bill and Steve and crew continue to bully the planet.
DUDE! Watch it, don't piss them off or they'll "fucking bury that [planet], I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to fucking kill [Earth]."
To land on an asteroid you have to speed up your space probe to a speed that's within a few FPS (Feet Per Second) of your target asteroid, as well as get your probe going in the same direction. Can't meet your 1000 MPH asteroid while you travel at 100 MPH. That's like hitting a wall at 900 MPH.
Now that's not so hard to do that we'd never consider doing it (in fact we[humans] have done it.)
Here's the catch. Once your spacecraft/probe is flying at the same speed and in the same direction as the rock you want to ride on, why bother with the landing? Rocks go through space on and on because they are in an orbit, and will follow that orbit till pushed out of orbit (gravity, impact, thrust from a drive.) Your spacecraft/probe will also stay in the same orbit until it is pushed out of that orbit.
So, now that we have some super-simplified physics we can get to the point.
If you're going to burn a certain amount fuel to put your craft into a certain orbit it'll stay in that orbit. It dosen't make a diffrence if it's sharing that orbit with a rock or going solo. Trying to set up an elaborate ballet between your probe and another body is a risk that's not needed (unless your goal is to study those bodies found in space.)
As far as protection from radiation goes, spacecraft have spent decades (Voyager craft) in space with radiation shielding integrated into them certainly seems like enough that we don't need to use asteroids (of unknown composition) for radiation shielding.
As far as the use of landing on asteroids, there's a whole hell of a lot that we don't know about them. It is worthwhile to make these landings for the sake of learning about our solar system. (Not looking for a debate on funding for space science vs spending elsewhere.)
It won't. It's a peon not a drone! Let it go after the lumber and gold and we'll be just fine. Get the drones when you're looking for the good stuff.
I used to play some AOL premium games. They billed you by the hour. There's sure to be something like that out there that's OFF the AOL network. Or why not play a free game?
"basically you could bury them"
Okay, that works for a FIXED aplication. I made an asumption on portability, or at least some ease in relocation and a minimal impact on the enviroment. Having to dig a small bomb shelter for the flywheel and shroud could piss off the enviromental types.
RE Flywheel
Those will be cool when we have lightweight cheap materials we can use to shroud a flywheel. Why shroud them? Two reasons.
First is drag. Can't have resistance from air slowing down your wheel. Keep it in an evacuated container.
Second is saftey. If you want to store a meaningful bit of power you'll either need alot of mass or rotational velocity, or both even. Now, think of what happen is there's a defect in your high-speed high-mass flywheel and its parts decide to take seperate vacations. Did you think FRAGMENTATION GRENADE? Good, go to the head of the class. You need to keep potentialy dangerous fast-moving high-density bits from coming into contact with people and things that people value.
Another problem with flywheels of any significant mass or speed is the gyroscope effect. But, that's not as big a deal as finding a wonder-material to protect the flywheel from the atmosphere, and us from the flywheel.
IDEA! Put windmils behind the air-outputs from our computer cooling fans and use the energy to power more cpu cooling fans to spin more windmills....
(it's a joke, laugh.)
Also found on the internet: " The piezoelectric generator is a much more efficient way of converting wind energy on a small scale than the conventional generators that create energy for the national power grid from wind turbines.
A conventional generator that used a 10-cm turbine would convert only 1 per cent of the available wind energy directly into electricity. A piezoelectric generator ups that to 18 per cent, which is comparable to the average efficiency of the best large-scale windmills, says Priya. "