. . . I would put in an easter egg that on random occasions causes the onboard speaker to broadcast stuff like "DIE CARBON UNITS!", "EXTERMINATE!" and "RESISTANCE IS USELESS."
. . . free market sophistry makes when you stretch it almost to the breaking point.
This comparison is NONSENSE. TOA details a case of a counter culture's home-brew counter measures being used to get around state censorship. It's not like Iranians went to Best Buy to buy a copy of Freedom Industries' new app.
Not every problem in the world is amenable to "free market" solutions. Deal with it.
Neal Stephenson's novel Anathem was inspired by the work and philosophy of the Long Now Foundation.
In brief: The narrator and many of the characters are members of a scholarly order which separates itself from the distractions of the outside world. Their monk-like existence is bound by many rules and rituals. Many of these center around the "winding" and tending of an immense clock.
Not a book for everyone, but I found it entertaining and intriguing.
" . . . half-million-gallon monthly supply of spy-plane fuels."
That's no mean trick. They condensed the stuff from the souls of mutilated cattle. The bovine victims stark terror at being lifted up into a saucer (in reality an airship coated with radium paint and filled with below-zero-ground state Helium) crewed by airmen dressed as alien "Greys" increased the fuel's specific impulse by nearly 30%.
Hey, you're assuming I DIDN'T try to fry my freak flag back east. I did. I tried. Really.
I embraced my hobbies and my freak flag by getting the hell out of New York. It made a big difference.
Mention I was into computers back east, and people assumed you worked for a bank or an insurance company. In Silicon Valley, they'd wonder what startup I came west to work for.
Mention you launched rockets back east: "Yeah, what kinda bomb ya putting in it? Why do you paint em for if they blow up?"
Mention rockets to a co-worker in the Silicon Forest: "Oh, what kind of instrumentation are you putting in it?"
Our old, now-closed Bay Area office had a lot of guys who were into SCUBA diving. The server naming scheme they implemented was "aquatic creature names."
My response: naming servers after fauna from the precambrian explosion, e.g.,
wiwaxia anomalocaris pikaia opabinia
I have illustrations of these in my cube, for co-workers who wonder what the hell is going on.
There's this football player from my High School who once smeared crap all over the bathroom of the fast food restaurant at which I was working . . . several minutes after he saw me sweeping the floors and repeatedly asked if I worked there.
Now, after twenty years of designing, building, and testing a Piranha-infested Lap Pool of Doom to torture the bastard in, I learn that he's probably already a Depends-clad imbecile. What's the sport in luring to his doom through a fiendish social engineering scheme a shaky feeb who probably earns a living waving around a Mattress Barn sign by the side of the road?
The Wikipedia entry says it can be tuned for an Isp of 3,000k seconds to 30,000k seconds.
A liquid fueled chemical rocket has an Isp of about 500 seconds. A really good fission thermal rocket, maybe 1000 seconds. The Deep Space 1 ion rocket could do 3.1k seconds.
How to turn this into usable numbers:
Find the exhaust velocity. Vex. Multiply the Isp by "g". So, your chemical rocket has an exhaust velocity of about 5 kps, and your VASIMIR 30 kps.
The figure out the velocity change you want. Vd.
Then:
M(o)/(M(o)+M(f)) = e^(Vd/Vex)
M(o) = Mass of spaceship without reaction mass M(f) = Mass of reaction mass e = natural log number, about 2.178
A Hohmann orbit trip to Mars orbit from Earth orbit without need for aerobreaking of the like might require 20 kps. Hohmann orbit to Mercury, 40 kps.
Drawback to ion drives and VASIMIR is a really, really low thrust. You might be better off with lower efficiency but higher thrust or you'll lose the fuel (uh, reaction mass) savings in consumables, and/or risks to your crew from flares.
The invisible hand of the market would not let us down like that. Its mighty transparent fingers must have been deflected from its course by some foul socialist sabotage.
I blame whomever is the current political threat to continued deregulation and corporate empowerment.
Slashdot Mirror
. . . I would put in an easter egg that on random occasions causes the onboard speaker to broadcast stuff like "DIE CARBON UNITS!", "EXTERMINATE!" and "RESISTANCE IS USELESS."
. . . free market sophistry makes when you stretch it almost to the breaking point.
This comparison is NONSENSE. TOA details a case of a counter culture's home-brew counter measures being used to get around state censorship. It's not like Iranians went to Best Buy to buy a copy of Freedom Industries' new app.
Not every problem in the world is amenable to "free market" solutions. Deal with it.
Neal Stephenson's novel Anathem was inspired by the work and philosophy of the Long Now Foundation.
In brief: The narrator and many of the characters are members of a scholarly order which separates itself from the distractions of the outside world. Their monk-like existence is bound by many rules and rituals. Many of these center around the "winding" and tending of an immense clock.
Not a book for everyone, but I found it entertaining and intriguing.
" . . . half-million-gallon monthly supply of spy-plane fuels."
That's no mean trick. They condensed the stuff from the souls of mutilated cattle. The bovine victims stark terror at being lifted up into a saucer (in reality an airship coated with radium paint and filled with below-zero-ground state Helium) crewed by airmen dressed as alien "Greys" increased the fuel's specific impulse by nearly 30%.
. . . from whacking at straw men?
. . . if you can't shoot lasers out of it.
But seriously, I emailed the article to my parents; my father's vision is going because of MD.
We can make up for the lost tax revenue by selling them toilet paper at a 1000% mark up.
. . . to cause a world iron shortage.
Some scientists think the Earth is hollow, or 6,000 years old. They probably have alarmist YouTube videos as well.
Good guys in tan jackets, bad guys in chrome!
Of course, there were the really good guys who glowed white.
(Logged in this time.)
Hey, you're assuming I DIDN'T try to fry my freak flag back east. I did. I tried. Really.
I embraced my hobbies and my freak flag by getting the hell out of New York. It made a big difference.
Mention I was into computers back east, and people assumed you worked for a bank or an insurance company. In Silicon Valley, they'd wonder what startup I came west to work for.
Mention you launched rockets back east: "Yeah, what kinda bomb ya putting in it? Why do you paint em for if they blow up?"
Mention rockets to a co-worker in the Silicon Forest: "Oh, what kind of instrumentation are you putting in it?"
It's cultural, it's real.
Bigot! Someday we will rise up against our . . . uh, oh, never mind. Human here. Not an escaped replicant.
This isn't about sex . . . you're heavily invested in the brassiere and tampon industry, aren't you?
Our old, now-closed Bay Area office had a lot of guys who were into SCUBA diving. The server naming scheme they implemented was "aquatic creature names."
My response: naming servers after fauna from the precambrian explosion, e.g.,
wiwaxia
anomalocaris
pikaia
opabinia
I have illustrations of these in my cube, for co-workers who wonder what the hell is going on.
The Harbor Freight logo on the base was a dead give-away.
Damn.
There's this football player from my High School who once smeared crap all over the bathroom of the fast food restaurant at which I was working . . . several minutes after he saw me sweeping the floors and repeatedly asked if I worked there.
Now, after twenty years of designing, building, and testing a Piranha-infested Lap Pool of Doom to torture the bastard in, I learn that he's probably already a Depends-clad imbecile. What's the sport in luring to his doom through a fiendish social engineering scheme a shaky feeb who probably earns a living waving around a Mattress Barn sign by the side of the road?
Screw this "Now who's really surprised?" guff.
Screw the apologias for law-breaking, secrecy, and contempt for law.
Contact your REPRESENTATIVE and SENATORS:
http://www.conservativeusa.org/mega-cong.htm
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
Contact the WHITE HOUSE:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Demand an investigation. Drag the people responsible for this into the light. Publish the mail and meeting minutes. Make the records public.
Hold the bastards accountable.
I wish this, and other reversals of the misadministration's power grab, had happened earlier in the Bush regime.
But better late than never. Think of it as a legal shoe aimed at their head.
P.S. Everyone knows where to send their spare shoes, right?
Show 'em how you really feel.
. . . A Human Genome Interpreter Project.
See what happens when you post with a low-grade fever?
I managed to post the Isp without the extraneous "k"s down the page a bit.
The Wikipedia entry says it can be tuned for an Isp of 3,000k seconds to 30,000k seconds.
A liquid fueled chemical rocket has an Isp of about 500 seconds. A really good fission thermal rocket, maybe 1000 seconds. The Deep Space 1 ion rocket could do 3.1k seconds.
How to turn this into usable numbers:
Find the exhaust velocity. Vex. Multiply the Isp by "g". So, your chemical rocket has an exhaust velocity of about 5 kps, and your VASIMIR 30 kps.
The figure out the velocity change you want. Vd.
Then:
M(o)/(M(o)+M(f)) = e^(Vd/Vex)
M(o) = Mass of spaceship without reaction mass
M(f) = Mass of reaction mass
e = natural log number, about 2.178
A Hohmann orbit trip to Mars orbit from Earth orbit without need for aerobreaking of the like might require 20 kps. Hohmann orbit to Mercury, 40 kps.
Drawback to ion drives and VASIMIR is a really, really low thrust. You might be better off with lower efficiency but higher thrust or you'll lose the fuel (uh, reaction mass) savings in consumables, and/or risks to your crew from flares.
The same incorporates "variable specific impulse" so you have to use a range.
3,000 seconds is comparable to a ion motor.
30,000 seconds is better than the predicted Isp of the Orion nuke-bomb drive.
The invisible hand of the market would not let us down like that. Its mighty transparent fingers must have been deflected from its course by some foul socialist sabotage.
I blame whomever is the current political threat to continued deregulation and corporate empowerment.
. . . so that's what the kids are calling it these days.
I got in big trouble for waving my instrument in the wind.
Of course, with a string bass, swinging it on a dead calm day would be just as bad.
. . . will we get to see Garriot continue on to Planet X to get a blessing from Father Antos?
. . . the "Thoughtcrime" classification.
Who made this software? Someone who watches their "24" DVD set over and over?