I'd like to see a mode that allows the fab printer to automatically plot a mold for an object. You could then use the mold to create copies from more durable plastic.
Or . . . offer a special easy-to-melt plastic "ink" so you can use the fab to create the forms for lost-wax casting. That way you can make molds for metal objects.
My college buddy's ferret had a fever once. Before it was over she evolved wings, grew a sixth digit on each paw, became super-intelligent and built an interociter which she used to summon a rescue saucer from a race of hyper-sapient star-ferrets.
As I recall, Hohman orbits are nice ellipses with body A at perisol and body B and aposol. You make a burn to get into it and out of it; the delta-v required is the difference in velocity between a body in a "circular" orbit at that radius and the velocity of a body in the elliptical orbit. If the planet happens to be at that point, you then just need to make another burn to get into orbit. Timing is important.
Even Hohman orbits are too "spendy" for chemically fueled rockets. Thus the complex back-and-forth gravity-assist paths that NASA probes take on the way to the outer planets, and the use of aerobreaking by Mars probes.
Other, faster transfers are possible. You just enter another sort of elliptical orbit whose path intersects earth's orbit when you leave it, and the destination planet's orbit at a time when the planet will be there. Of course, you have to have a spaceship capable of the much greater change in velocity to enter these orbits.
The linked-too documents suggest that the "mini mag" is not only fuel efficient (read: high Isp), but has a decent amount of thrust. This means it CAN make the drastic changes in velocity necessary.
This one is going to be built in orbit. It will never take off or land.
OTOH, the "fuel" pellets are going to be made of fissionable materials. I hope they point the nozzle in a direction that doesn't result in un-detonated bomblets burning up in the atmosphere.
This product isn't supposed to make your home PC green. It isn't being sold as a solution to global warming.
It's a self contained power system for situations where you need to power equipment in the field for an extended period.
I'd love to see civil emergency recovery teams outfitted with the components of an entire grid-independent information infrastructure. In the case of an earthquake or city-leveling hurricane, the teams would set up a parallel cell phone and data network. At first for emergency workers, later for civilians.
Where is the energy coming from to create those photons?
Since you're dealing with a photon drive, the reaction mass usage (as determined by the classic rocket equation) is going to be negligible for the speeds required for interplanetary travel.
In fact, I'm not sure what the reaction mass would be in this case.
But in any case, you're going to need a lot of energy to create that photon thrust. Great phrigging big reactors, which means great, great, phrigging big radiators since you don't have the luxury of a river to carry away your waste heat.
Antimatter might be a compact way to store the required energy, but converting the gamma rays from matter/antimatter reactions to electricity is going to require heat exchangers and great big radiators as well.
Well, anyway, scaling this up is going to involve several bears of a problem.
Also, please note that this "article" is a press release from the guy who made the invention.
Really, I'm getting to the point where I'd like to buy a plane ticket to fly out and personally dope-slap the jingoistic twits who assume that objecting unaccountable, unauthorized wiretaps is the same as wanting to ban all wiretaps. "Ooooh, oooh, you want to leave us defenseless!" Twits!
I'm in favor of email tracking, wiretaps, and all that . . . IF and ONLY IF there are safeguards, tracking, and accountability. The Bush administration -- hell, ANY administration -- will find ways to use and abuse the system, including for financial and political gain, if they don't have to ask permission and log every attempt. And they, the agencies who arrange the surveillance, and the companies whose infrastructure was hacked to allow it, should be held accountable if they break the rules.
There's something refreshingly honest about that, like a government putting WAR IS PEACE and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH on its buildings instead of pretending they're not a malevolent autocracy.
. . . we'd see giant terraforming spacecraft from competing interstellar coalitions laying down clouds of spores among the proto-planets in the hopes that life that arises on future worlds will be of their bio-tradition.
Republicans effectively controlled Congress for over a decade. They had the Congress and a "freedom loving" president in the White House for six years. Why didn't they stop this?
The Congress of the 1990s passed the law on the request of the Justice Department. Now we have a White House which treats the Justice Department like its bitch, authorized an admittedly illegal wiretapping program, and an AG (soon to be ex, thankfully) who thinks constitutional rights and protections are "quaint."
. . . first game convention -- ORIGINS '77 out on Staten Island -- and I didn't remember until I read this.
Man, have things changed.
Back then, RPGs were a minority presence. Historical miniatures games and boardgames were the thing. Roleplayers were considered immature and dweeby newcomers.
There were enough companies around to create a pretty packed and boisterous dealer's room. Avalon Hill was still its own company, and SPI, the juggernaut of well-produced brainy wargames, was still alive and vigorous.
TSR had a medium sized booth. D&D back then was three small, brown-covered books packaged in a small white box. (REAL old timers had three brown-covered books in a small brown box.) I recall buying STAR EMPIRES, Chainmail, and The Dragon #13. Metamorphosis: Alpha was on sale, if I remember right.
Game Designer's Workshop introduced TRAVELLER, if I'm not mistaken. I didn't buy it, but I did pick up a copy of Triplanetary, their vector-movement spaceship wargame. Still have it!
I stopped by the FGU (Fantasy Games Unlimited) booth, a miniatures rules company just starting to do RPGs. They would become my first publisher a few years later.
I only remember two bits of programming. A very funny British guy described some roleplaying adventures in one. In another, the late Ernie Gygax, subbing for his dad, talked about stuff.
* * *
It's a lost world, really. The medium is the message, and these days the medium is the computer screen and keyboard / mouse interface. On one level gaming is more inclusive and social (there's GIRLS out there!); on the other, it's kind of antisocial and weird. Back in the day people physically gathered together and shared food. They may have smelled bad and been cranky and wonkish, but they actually left the house. Memorizing big thick rules manuals was an intellectual feat in itself. Some spent weeks painting hundreds of little figures all by themselves . . . none of this buying special surprise collector packs of pre-colored minis.
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Am I the only one who, on reading "Lego-like devices target developers" pictured clunky little robots chasing terrified geeks around their labs?
I'd like to see a mode that allows the fab printer to automatically plot a mold for an object. You could then use the mold to create copies from more durable plastic.
Or . . . offer a special easy-to-melt plastic "ink" so you can use the fab to create the forms for lost-wax casting. That way you can make molds for metal objects.
You know, so we can see how high up the energy level can be dialed before it hurts. And then turn it up a little more.
. . . its first piece of malware.
"He who has rediscovered his testicles."
There will be plenty of cranky weirdos willing to volunteer. Just don't tell them that the latency of their Internet connections will be god-awful.
I'd say I make up stuff like this for a living, but really it just about pays for my subscription to MAKE Magazine.
Egregious plug: The MacGuffin Alphabet
My college buddy's ferret had a fever once. Before it was over she evolved wings, grew a sixth digit on each paw, became super-intelligent and built an interociter which she used to summon a rescue saucer from a race of hyper-sapient star-ferrets.
I want to be a TSA guy at the Pittsburgh Spaceport!
I figure they can build it on the old slag heaps south of Squirrel Hill.
As I recall, Hohman orbits are nice ellipses with body A at perisol and body B and aposol. You make a burn to get into it and out of it; the delta-v required is the difference in velocity between a body in a "circular" orbit at that radius and the velocity of a body in the elliptical orbit. If the planet happens to be at that point, you then just need to make another burn to get into orbit. Timing is important.
Even Hohman orbits are too "spendy" for chemically fueled rockets. Thus the complex back-and-forth gravity-assist paths that NASA probes take on the way to the outer planets, and the use of aerobreaking by Mars probes.
Other, faster transfers are possible. You just enter another sort of elliptical orbit whose path intersects earth's orbit when you leave it, and the destination planet's orbit at a time when the planet will be there. Of course, you have to have a spaceship capable of the much greater change in velocity to enter these orbits.
The linked-too documents suggest that the "mini mag" is not only fuel efficient (read: high Isp), but has a decent amount of thrust. This means it CAN make the drastic changes in velocity necessary.
This one is going to be built in orbit. It will never take off or land.
OTOH, the "fuel" pellets are going to be made of fissionable materials. I hope they point the nozzle in a direction that doesn't result in un-detonated bomblets burning up in the atmosphere.
Nuclear weapons, yes.
Power sources, no.
There are plenty of probes and spy satellites that are powered by plutonium-laden RTGs.
Damnit, I haven't even used up all the cartridges that came with my Intel Core Duo!
This product isn't supposed to make your home PC green. It isn't being sold as a solution to global warming.
It's a self contained power system for situations where you need to power equipment in the field for an extended period.
I'd love to see civil emergency recovery teams outfitted with the components of an entire grid-independent information infrastructure. In the case of an earthquake or city-leveling hurricane, the teams would set up a parallel cell phone and data network. At first for emergency workers, later for civilians.
Just find a factory where they can make the cases out of recycled lead-laced Barbie doll heads.
Ahem. Seriously. Sure, this might cause some deals to fall through, but it's still a cheap price for a functional self-contained computer.
Also, with time you'll get learning economies and economies of scale coming into effect.
Where is the energy coming from to create those photons?
Since you're dealing with a photon drive, the reaction mass usage (as determined by the classic rocket equation) is going to be negligible for the speeds required for interplanetary travel.
In fact, I'm not sure what the reaction mass would be in this case.
But in any case, you're going to need a lot of energy to create that photon thrust. Great phrigging big reactors, which means great, great, phrigging big radiators since you don't have the luxury of a river to carry away your waste heat.
Antimatter might be a compact way to store the required energy, but converting the gamma rays from matter/antimatter reactions to electricity is going to require heat exchangers and great big radiators as well.
Well, anyway, scaling this up is going to involve several bears of a problem.
Also, please note that this "article" is a press release from the guy who made the invention.
Thanks for saving me the trouble.
Really, I'm getting to the point where I'd like to buy a plane ticket to fly out and personally dope-slap the jingoistic twits who assume that objecting unaccountable, unauthorized wiretaps is the same as wanting to ban all wiretaps. "Ooooh, oooh, you want to leave us defenseless!" Twits!
I'm in favor of email tracking, wiretaps, and all that . . . IF and ONLY IF there are safeguards, tracking, and accountability. The Bush administration -- hell, ANY administration -- will find ways to use and abuse the system, including for financial and political gain, if they don't have to ask permission and log every attempt. And they, the agencies who arrange the surveillance, and the companies whose infrastructure was hacked to allow it, should be held accountable if they break the rules.
I think I liked things better when data mining projects had the huevos to use as their logo an ominous Illuminati symbol scanning the globe.
There's something refreshingly honest about that, like a government putting WAR IS PEACE and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH on its buildings instead of pretending they're not a malevolent autocracy.
. . . we'd see giant terraforming spacecraft from competing interstellar coalitions laying down clouds of spores among the proto-planets in the hopes that life that arises on future worlds will be of their bio-tradition.
Well, not really, but it's cool to think of.
Opteron?
Xeon?
Why do these top of the line processors sound like character names from crummy 1980-vintage cartoons about giant robots who talk like street thugs?
"I'm calling you out Xeon! You will be defeated and all Processaria will bow before my superior power stats!"
"You're a fool if you believe those benchmarks Opteron! The true power is Inside!" (duh-Dah-dumm!)
Republicans effectively controlled Congress for over a decade. They had the Congress and a "freedom loving" president in the White House for six years. Why didn't they stop this?
The Congress of the 1990s passed the law on the request of the Justice Department. Now we have a White House which treats the Justice Department like its bitch, authorized an admittedly illegal wiretapping program, and an AG (soon to be ex, thankfully) who thinks constitutional rights and protections are "quaint."
I'll take Hillary any day.
We need to see how companies can hold up during a zombie infestation.
." BLAMMM!
"Awww, man, it's just a little bite. Let me finish this backup and .
" . . . this seat-back pocket is full of core files."
Maybe I'm thinking of a different son?
I'm not talking about E. Gary Gygax, the D&D inventor, but one of his sons.
. . . first game convention -- ORIGINS '77 out on Staten Island -- and I didn't remember until I read this.
Man, have things changed.
Back then, RPGs were a minority presence. Historical miniatures games and boardgames were the thing. Roleplayers were considered immature and dweeby newcomers.
There were enough companies around to create a pretty packed and boisterous dealer's room. Avalon Hill was still its own company, and SPI, the juggernaut of well-produced brainy wargames, was still alive and vigorous.
TSR had a medium sized booth. D&D back then was three small, brown-covered books packaged in a small white box. (REAL old timers had three brown-covered books in a small brown box.) I recall buying STAR EMPIRES, Chainmail, and The Dragon #13. Metamorphosis: Alpha was on sale, if I remember right.
Game Designer's Workshop introduced TRAVELLER, if I'm not mistaken. I didn't buy it, but I did pick up a copy of Triplanetary, their vector-movement spaceship wargame. Still have it!
I stopped by the FGU (Fantasy Games Unlimited) booth, a miniatures rules company just starting to do RPGs. They would become my first publisher a few years later.
I only remember two bits of programming. A very funny British guy described some roleplaying adventures in one. In another, the late Ernie Gygax, subbing for his dad, talked about stuff.
* * *
It's a lost world, really. The medium is the message, and these days the medium is the computer screen and keyboard / mouse interface. On one level gaming is more inclusive and social (there's GIRLS out there!); on the other, it's kind of antisocial and weird. Back in the day people physically gathered together and shared food. They may have smelled bad and been cranky and wonkish, but they actually left the house. Memorizing big thick rules manuals was an intellectual feat in itself. Some spent weeks painting hundreds of little figures all by themselves . . . none of this buying special surprise collector packs of pre-colored minis.
Nurse? NURSE! Where's my dentures?