Let's build DRM into those artificial neurons, so that the Man of the Future loses bladder control and convulsively vomits if he tries to access pirated media.
500 A.U. is more than 10 times the orbital radius of Pluto.
Remember the inverse square rule:
A companion star even 40 A.U. far out would be just an especially bright star. If it had the same luminosity as the Sun, it would appear 1/1600 as bright (.0625%).
The Tatooine scenario is still romantic fiction: Stars close enough to appear in the sky together as visible disks would probably be close enough that planets in orbit around them to have strange orbits.
These are stamps that people will buy and never use.
It's a money making venture.
Last year, the P.O. introduced a line of famous scietist stamps. Here and gone in a month or so. I was really hoping to get a booklet of Buckminster Fuller stamps.
When gasoline goes to $5.00 a gallon, it makes for a better garden shed than a Prius. Or a better place to sleep, if you bought your house with a interest-only loan.
* * *
So, is the Prius like a power plant in Sim City 2000? The second it hits 100,000 miles it falls apart?
Who made this crap up, the Club For Growth, the American Enterprise Institute, or the Hummer Fans of America?
. . . will go to the folks who supply the ink cartridges.
Seriously, this is good news. Cheap, low performance electronics could play a big role in "leapfrogging" in the developing world. Going straight from low-tech to whoa!-tech, leaving out the capital and infrastructure intensive middle.
Without colorfully decked out heroes to inspire patriotic thoughts, America's youth will now turn to video games, skate boards, meaningless text chatter and enormous quantities of junk food to fill the empty hole in their lives.
Hmmm?
Already doing that, are they?
Dang.
Well, perhaps we need to demoralize the younger set. We have an offer to kill Barney the Purple Dinosaur. Kids still like him, right?
. . . if you can sweep a problem under a rug -- or, in this case, bury it under some trash bags in a dumpster -- it doesn't show up on the Accounts Payable.
Or, put another way, externalities are for the next generation to deal with. Or ignore and pass along.
One bee reads "The Fountainhead," blabs about it to her hive sisters, and in a week all of them starve to death while arguing about who's really a pirate, the false doctrine of altruism, and the best way to privatize royal jelly production.
Well, actually, seriously, I'd hate to get a job at one of these places and then end up finding it tedious and hating it, the way I end up hating everything once I get into Type-A workaholic mode.
Rocket nerds in the audiance will probably be familiar with the "Estes Alpha," a simple beginner's kit.
There have actually been many versions, with and without plastic nose cone and fins. No die-hard collectors' set is complete without a "metric" Alpha, briefly produced in the 70s for educational purposes.
Now the instructions have both English and metric measurements . . . where measuring is required at all.
* * *
One model rocket measurement has been metric for going on four decades; the average thrust and total impulse figures for motors. Before 1968 or so, you'd save your paper route money for "A.8-4" or "B.8-2" motors, with an average thrust of.8 pounds. After the change to metric, these became A5-4 and B4-2 motors, with average thrust given in newtons.
Mr. Peabody was a neodog, uplifted in 2114. He stole the Wayback Machine to escape his oppressive masters (he was on lease to Halliburton Homeland Security Concepts, Ltd.) and settled in 1960s North America to take advantage of readily available weed and a lax attitude toward cross-species adoptions.
It is true that there are stars that are far more massive and brighter than the our sun.
However, while not "special" in any way, Sol is much larger than average, because the vast majority of stars are really small, dim red dwarfs.
White dolphins discovered in Hellas Basin!
on
New Mars Discoveries
·
· Score: 5, Funny
No. Not really. They're gone forever, starved to death and poisoned by pollution.
But maybe someday after Mars is terraformed* we'll have genetically engineered recreations that have the manufacturer's logo blazed on their flanks who swim along boats and squeak helpful shopping tips at the tourists.
Ever see attempts to represent computers in movies from the '50s and '60s?
Lots of obsession with punch cards, belief that big mainframes were omniscient, operators who were comic-relief hysterics.
In addition to being flat-out wrong, the lessons and morals we were supposed to learn were totally inane.
Obligatory "The Simpsons" Reference
on
A Spaceport In Ohio?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
MONORAIL!
Um, this is a dumb idea
As others have already noted, Ohio has two strokes against it:
It is substantially farther from the equator than Florida (and other proposed SW "spaceports").
There are heavily populated areas around and to the east of it it. Falling lower stages and strap-on boosters could end up mashing a house or highway or city block.
I wonder if there's a bandwagon effect in action. Cities in the SW are starting to get publicity for hosting space ports, so why not Ohio?
I can picture charming hucksters selling cities on space ports the way that con artist sold Springfield on thier monorail.
I can only hope that drives using this technology have Sub-Ether interfaces and processor boards hosting neural nets harvested from the brains of silicon life forms from Mercury.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's build DRM into those artificial neurons, so that the Man of the Future loses bladder control and convulsively vomits if he tries to access pirated media.
500 A.U. is more than 10 times the orbital radius of Pluto.
Remember the inverse square rule:
A companion star even 40 A.U. far out would be just an especially bright star. If it had the same luminosity as the Sun, it would appear 1/1600 as bright (.0625%).
The Tatooine scenario is still romantic fiction: Stars close enough to appear in the sky together as visible disks would probably be close enough that planets in orbit around them to have strange orbits.
These are stamps that people will buy and never use.
It's a money making venture.
Last year, the P.O. introduced a line of famous scietist stamps. Here and gone in a month or so. I was really hoping to get a booklet of Buckminster Fuller stamps.
I guess I'll have to settle for the Lobot.
When gasoline goes to $5.00 a gallon, it makes for a better garden shed than a Prius. Or a better place to sleep, if you bought your house with a interest-only loan.
* * *
So, is the Prius like a power plant in Sim City 2000? The second it hits 100,000 miles it falls apart?
Who made this crap up, the Club For Growth, the American Enterprise Institute, or the Hummer Fans of America?
Oh yeah.
In The Minority Report, Tom Cruise's character has in his apartment an cereal box with talking, singing cartoon characters.
. . . will go to the folks who supply the ink cartridges.
Seriously, this is good news. Cheap, low performance electronics could play a big role in "leapfrogging" in the developing world. Going straight from low-tech to whoa!-tech, leaving out the capital and infrastructure intensive middle.
Our sinister plans are coming along just fine.
Without colorfully decked out heroes to inspire patriotic thoughts, America's youth will now turn to video games, skate boards, meaningless text chatter and enormous quantities of junk food to fill the empty hole in their lives.
Hmmm?
Already doing that, are they?
Dang.
Well, perhaps we need to demoralize the younger set. We have an offer to kill Barney the Purple Dinosaur. Kids still like him, right?
Wait, the KIDS want us to kill him?
That's it. I'm going back to Eddoria.
. . . if you can sweep a problem under a rug -- or, in this case, bury it under some trash bags in a dumpster -- it doesn't show up on the Accounts Payable.
Or, put another way, externalities are for the next generation to deal with. Or ignore and pass along.
One bee reads "The Fountainhead," blabs about it to her hive sisters, and in a week all of them starve to death while arguing about who's really a pirate, the false doctrine of altruism, and the best way to privatize royal jelly production.
I jammed a butter knife into a 220v circuit when I was a toddler and became a diembodied electromagnetic life-force with super powers.
Other than a morbid fear of lightning rods and antistatic wrist-straps, it pretty much rocks.
. . . witty, and profound, but the announcement that the free bagels and donuts we get every Friday have arrived.
Just think, if only one percent of those billions of new universes repeat our time-stream, this joyous moment will be repeated . . .
whoa, they maple bars this morning. I'm out of here. Priorities . . .
Ginny doesn't die.
Ever.
"Attention first years! This is the Griffindor house ghost, Gyrating Ginny."
" . . . flights THROUGH the Aurora Borealis."
I hope Branson screens his passengers carefully, because everything I know about Science and Comics says they're going to come back with super powers.
Is the world ready for Team Virgin and assorted super-villains?
You know the drill:
while(!$goodthink)
{
print "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH\n";
print "WAR IS PEACE \n";
print "LOVE IS HATE\n";
print "Public access equals government censorship\n";
checkGoodthink();
}
. . . that damn annoying hum.
I AM a rocket scientist!
Well, actually, seriously, I'd hate to get a job at one of these places and then end up finding it tedious and hating it, the way I end up hating everything once I get into Type-A workaholic mode.
Rocket nerds in the audiance will probably be familiar with the "Estes Alpha," a simple beginner's kit.
.8 pounds. After the change to metric, these became A5-4 and B4-2 motors, with average thrust given in newtons.
There have actually been many versions, with and without plastic nose cone and fins. No die-hard collectors' set is complete without a "metric" Alpha, briefly produced in the 70s for educational purposes.
Now the instructions have both English and metric measurements . . . where measuring is required at all.
* * *
One model rocket measurement has been metric for going on four decades; the average thrust and total impulse figures for motors. Before 1968 or so, you'd save your paper route money for "A.8-4" or "B.8-2" motors, with an average thrust of
Mmmmm, newtons.
. . . he can rip a celluloid "W" off of his chest and throw it at his opponents?
Well, I guess we're thoroughly screwed. No way Dubya will heed his father's advice to use his powers only for good.
Mr. Peabody was a neodog, uplifted in 2114. He stole the Wayback Machine to escape his oppressive masters (he was on lease to Halliburton Homeland Security Concepts, Ltd.) and settled in 1960s North America to take advantage of readily available weed and a lax attitude toward cross-species adoptions.
It is true that there are stars that are far more massive and brighter than the our sun.
However, while not "special" in any way, Sol is much larger than average, because the vast majority of stars are really small, dim red dwarfs.
No. Not really. They're gone forever, starved to death and poisoned by pollution.
But maybe someday after Mars is terraformed* we'll have genetically engineered recreations that have the manufacturer's logo blazed on their flanks who swim along boats and squeak helpful shopping tips at the tourists.
Stefan
* By Halliburton, so bring a respirator.
If the hideous shit doesn't hit the fan until 2050 then we're not responsible!
PARTY ON! WOO WOO WOO!
Ever see attempts to represent computers in movies from the '50s and '60s?
Lots of obsession with punch cards, belief that big mainframes were omniscient, operators who were comic-relief hysterics.
In addition to being flat-out wrong, the lessons and morals we were supposed to learn were totally inane.
MONORAIL!
Um, this is a dumb idea
As others have already noted, Ohio has two strokes against it:
It is substantially farther from the equator than Florida (and other proposed SW "spaceports").
There are heavily populated areas around and to the east of it it. Falling lower stages and strap-on boosters could end up mashing a house or highway or city block.
I wonder if there's a bandwagon effect in action. Cities in the SW are starting to get publicity for hosting space ports, so why not Ohio?
I can picture charming hucksters selling cities on space ports the way that con artist sold Springfield on thier monorail.
Quantum . . . Vortex . . . Cores
I mean, dang, that name rocks!
I can only hope that drives using this technology have Sub-Ether interfaces and processor boards hosting neural nets harvested from the brains of silicon life forms from Mercury.