Probably depends on the shell. If the shell has fuel, propellant, or explosives in it, then the laser might cause that substance to heat up and explode. Or, the laser might simply vaporize part of the shell, causing its shape to change enough that its wind resistance changes, and its trajectory changes (even if it still hits something, that's probably better than it hitting the original target -- and if its wind resistance increases, it may slow down enough that it is falling straight down when it hits the ground). If the laser manages to mostly vaporize the shell, then the rapidly dispersing 20 lbs of metallic dust would have a hugely greater surface area, and would slow down to nothing almost instantly.
I'm not very widely read when it comes to SF, and I can honestly say I'd never heard of Charles Sheffield before I saw this article. Now that I know about him, though, I'll be sure to look him up at the bookstore.
As long as we're talking about SF authors, I can recommend two authors you may not have read: Alfred Bester and Greg Egan. Bester's two most well-known novels are The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination, which really are great classics from the 50s. Egan is a current writer; his books involve a lot of nanotech and quantum physics (some of it even comprehensible), like Permutation City and Diaspora, although I would really recommend Diaspora as his best book so far.
Why isn't this just a civil case? Presumably the cable company and the customers had a contract prohibiting this kind of behavior, and allowing for remedies in the event that one party violated the contract. What's the need for criminal charges here, exactly?
Re:Holloween must be boycott'ed
on
Howl-o-ween
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· Score: 2
I once saw, spraypainted in white paint on the side of a barn:
Well, some of us actually do have a conscience:) My lease ran out on my '99 Toyota Camry LE in June, and because the dealership was incompetent, I went somewhere else instead of extending the lease or buying the car. Instead I ended up getting a Honda Accord EX 4-cylinder sedan... and imagine my surprise when I found out it's a SULEV (Super Ultra Low Emission Vehicle), which is the second best class of emissions after ZEV (Zero Emissions Vehicle). I remember reading, later, that the SULEV Accord Sedan is apparently a California-only thing (I live in L.A.), so it might be something to do with CA's extremely strict emissions regulations. It's not a hybrid (I tried the Civic Hybrid, and it was nice, but didn't quite meet my needs), but it's nice to see that Honda has at least somewhat of a clue.
After thinking about my post above... Seems like it would be much easier to just take a decent digital camcorder and fly down the coast at a moderate rate of speed. Better continuous coverage, much much faster, and if the real purpose IS to look for breakwaters or illegal rockpiles, certainly a digital camcorder image would work for that.
1. He could have done this project in a less geeky way.
I wonder if there isn't some other motive here, requiring high-res images.
2. ???
(Like getting free publicity on Slashdot for using exclusively non-MS technology for a cool task, perhaps.....? Naaaaahhhh....)
So you think that the W3C has deprecated tables in the HTML spec? Because that's what "deprecated" means -- a tag in HTML can only reasonably be called "deprecated" if it's been defined that way by the W3C. If you use the word "deprecated," that tells readers that the W3C has defined tables as deprecated.
If you think that tables SHOULD be deprecated, that is an entirely different statement, with different meanings, than "Tables are deprecated." The funny part is, you had already said what you were trying to say when you said:
You should also be using divs and spans over tables.
Adding "Tables are deprecated" tells readers what I said above -- that the W3C has deprecated tables (which they have not).
People also need to stop blaming Windows for leaky apps that won't shut down properly.
But they can blame Windows for allowing such programs to run. In a properly designed OS, it doesn't matter what the process does -- when it quits, the OS should completely annihilate its memory space. The fact that Windows allows programs with memory leaks to affect the stability of the OS is what's inexcusable.
Okay, every time there's an OS X story on Slashdot, someone asks when they'll be able to use it on x86 hardware, and someone else responds and says, "Never!"
So here we have "the x86 version 6.0.2 of Darwin, the FreeBSD-based core of Mac OS X". Huh? Is it just the user interface part of OS X that there's no x86 version of? And exactly how much stuff does this "FreeBSD-based core" contain? Is it just a kernel, filesystem, and some basic utilities, or what?
So I wonder who exactly has tax jurisdiction over a purchase made by an individual in one state from a company in another state. Certainly if I buy something from a company in my own state, then the sales tax is only collected once. (At least, in theory.) If I buy something from another state, then my state will insist that I pay it taxes on the money I spent, and the other state will insist that the company I'm buying from pay sales tax on the merchandise it sold.
Since sales taxes are generally levied on the merchant (and the merchant passes that tax right on to the customer), it seems like the "logical" solution is that a company doing business in a state has to pay sales tax on every item it sells in that state, regardless of who it sells to or what state they're in. The person buying the item only pays sales tax insofar as they compensate the merchant for the sales tax that the merchant is legally required to pay.
Someone else pointed out that the Constitution says that Congress has the power to levy taxes. However the Constitution does not say that the states cannot also have that power in some form. Can anyone shed some light on this?
Re:All Saddam's email are belong to us!
on
Saddam's Inbox Hacked
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· Score: 3, Funny
Yeah... whenever you're trying to remember which of two forms an AYB quote takes, just think about which one has more grammatical errors, and that's your quote.:)
1-Popularity (more people use it because more people use it, vicious circle), 2-Cheap ass hardware (you get what you pay for), and better CD management (but the floppy thing is lamer than a one-legged lemur). Oh, and 4-Wheely mice
Three, sir.
Re:I don't really get blogs...
on
Blogger Hacked
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· Score: 2
Well, Slashdot didn't even start off as a blog, as I understand it -- it was a place for Taco to post interesting news stories, and then discuss them. A blog is more of a personal journal, talking about your life, as opposed to news in the world at large (or even in several small communities at large).
I mean, I'm sure there are blogs out there which blur the line between "pure blog" and "news & discussion site" (Slashdot's journal system has begun to do this a bit, although since the journals are hidden a couple of levels down from the front page, it's still primarily what I'd call a news & discussion site).
That's a good point -- there's undoubtedly a significant amount of selective evidence when it comes to annoying cellphone usage. Nobody remembers the guy who talked quietly on his cellphone and was unobtrustive; everyone remembers the irritating jerk who was shouting his conversation at the top of his lungs.
It would be interesting to do some actual scientific survey of the topic -- go to a public area where people tend to use cellphones a lot, and measure the ambient noise levels, individual noise generated by each person (using a directional mike to pick up just them), and so forth. I'd be willing to bet the number of overly-loud speakers is lower than most people would claim.
Something just occurred to me: maybe some of the irritation factor is due to the nature of phone conversations. If you're sitting near someone and they're talking on a cellphone, you can only hear their half of the conversation. As a result, what you get is a disjointed, hard-to-understand stream of words. This is psychologically annoying because your brain is trying to fill in the gaps, or because there's a period of noise (the person talking) followed by silence (the person listening to the other person), followed by more noise (the person responding to something you didn't hear). The length of each burst of noise and silence is essentially random, due to the nature of conversation.
Even when my wife is talking on the phone at home, I get a tiny bit annoyed, not because she's making noise, but because I want to know what she's talking about, or who she's talking to. Overall, people talking on cellphones don't bother me (although there is that occasional weirdness when someone's on a cellphone but I can't see the phone because of the visual angle between us, and I think they're talking to themselves).
Slashdot Mirror
Probably depends on the shell. If the shell has fuel, propellant, or explosives in it, then the laser might cause that substance to heat up and explode. Or, the laser might simply vaporize part of the shell, causing its shape to change enough that its wind resistance changes, and its trajectory changes (even if it still hits something, that's probably better than it hitting the original target -- and if its wind resistance increases, it may slow down enough that it is falling straight down when it hits the ground). If the laser manages to mostly vaporize the shell, then the rapidly dispersing 20 lbs of metallic dust would have a hugely greater surface area, and would slow down to nothing almost instantly.
I'm not very widely read when it comes to SF, and I can honestly say I'd never heard of Charles Sheffield before I saw this article. Now that I know about him, though, I'll be sure to look him up at the bookstore.
As long as we're talking about SF authors, I can recommend two authors you may not have read: Alfred Bester and Greg Egan. Bester's two most well-known novels are The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination, which really are great classics from the 50s. Egan is a current writer; his books involve a lot of nanotech and quantum physics (some of it even comprehensible), like Permutation City and Diaspora, although I would really recommend Diaspora as his best book so far.
Why isn't this just a civil case? Presumably the cable company and the customers had a contract prohibiting this kind of behavior, and allowing for remedies in the event that one party violated the contract. What's the need for criminal charges here, exactly?
I once saw, spraypainted in white paint on the side of a barn:
WORSHIP SATIN
Well, some of us actually do have a conscience :) My lease ran out on my '99 Toyota Camry LE in June, and because the dealership was incompetent, I went somewhere else instead of extending the lease or buying the car. Instead I ended up getting a Honda Accord EX 4-cylinder sedan... and imagine my surprise when I found out it's a SULEV (Super Ultra Low Emission Vehicle), which is the second best class of emissions after ZEV (Zero Emissions Vehicle). I remember reading, later, that the SULEV Accord Sedan is apparently a California-only thing (I live in L.A.), so it might be something to do with CA's extremely strict emissions regulations. It's not a hybrid (I tried the Civic Hybrid, and it was nice, but didn't quite meet my needs), but it's nice to see that Honda has at least somewhat of a clue.
If you think that tables SHOULD be deprecated, that is an entirely different statement, with different meanings, than "Tables are deprecated." The funny part is, you had already said what you were trying to say when you said:
Adding "Tables are deprecated" tells readers what I said above -- that the W3C has deprecated tables (which they have not).Oh, you consider them to be deprecated. Well, that's quite a different statement from, "Tables are deprecated," isn't it?
So, you need Microsoft's permission to sell their software.
:) )
But selling Microsoft software to someone is an act of evil and cruelty.
Therefore, the only ones who would do this are evil villains (preferably cartoonish supervillains).
Evil villains aren't known for getting permission to perpetrate their evil acts.
So, I don't really see a problem here... except maybe that selling software is a kind of wussy villainous act, compared to, say, blocking out the sun.
(I'm taking bets on how many moderators miss the joke and mark this as a "troll" or "flamebait".
Okay, every time there's an OS X story on Slashdot, someone asks when they'll be able to use it on x86 hardware, and someone else responds and says, "Never!"
So here we have "the x86 version 6.0.2 of Darwin, the FreeBSD-based core of Mac OS X". Huh? Is it just the user interface part of OS X that there's no x86 version of? And exactly how much stuff does this "FreeBSD-based core" contain? Is it just a kernel, filesystem, and some basic utilities, or what?
So I wonder who exactly has tax jurisdiction over a purchase made by an individual in one state from a company in another state. Certainly if I buy something from a company in my own state, then the sales tax is only collected once. (At least, in theory.) If I buy something from another state, then my state will insist that I pay it taxes on the money I spent, and the other state will insist that the company I'm buying from pay sales tax on the merchandise it sold.
Since sales taxes are generally levied on the merchant (and the merchant passes that tax right on to the customer), it seems like the "logical" solution is that a company doing business in a state has to pay sales tax on every item it sells in that state, regardless of who it sells to or what state they're in. The person buying the item only pays sales tax insofar as they compensate the merchant for the sales tax that the merchant is legally required to pay.
Someone else pointed out that the Constitution says that Congress has the power to levy taxes. However the Constitution does not say that the states cannot also have that power in some form. Can anyone shed some light on this?
Yeah... whenever you're trying to remember which of two forms an AYB quote takes, just think about which one has more grammatical errors, and that's your quote. :)
Heh, I was just hoping for a +1 Funny for the Monty Python reference :)
Well, Slashdot didn't even start off as a blog, as I understand it -- it was a place for Taco to post interesting news stories, and then discuss them. A blog is more of a personal journal, talking about your life, as opposed to news in the world at large (or even in several small communities at large).
I mean, I'm sure there are blogs out there which blur the line between "pure blog" and "news & discussion site" (Slashdot's journal system has begun to do this a bit, although since the journals are hidden a couple of levels down from the front page, it's still primarily what I'd call a news & discussion site).
That's a good point -- there's undoubtedly a significant amount of selective evidence when it comes to annoying cellphone usage. Nobody remembers the guy who talked quietly on his cellphone and was unobtrustive; everyone remembers the irritating jerk who was shouting his conversation at the top of his lungs.
It would be interesting to do some actual scientific survey of the topic -- go to a public area where people tend to use cellphones a lot, and measure the ambient noise levels, individual noise generated by each person (using a directional mike to pick up just them), and so forth. I'd be willing to bet the number of overly-loud speakers is lower than most people would claim.
Something just occurred to me: maybe some of the irritation factor is due to the nature of phone conversations. If you're sitting near someone and they're talking on a cellphone, you can only hear their half of the conversation. As a result, what you get is a disjointed, hard-to-understand stream of words. This is psychologically annoying because your brain is trying to fill in the gaps, or because there's a period of noise (the person talking) followed by silence (the person listening to the other person), followed by more noise (the person responding to something you didn't hear). The length of each burst of noise and silence is essentially random, due to the nature of conversation.
Even when my wife is talking on the phone at home, I get a tiny bit annoyed, not because she's making noise, but because I want to know what she's talking about, or who she's talking to. Overall, people talking on cellphones don't bother me (although there is that occasional weirdness when someone's on a cellphone but I can't see the phone because of the visual angle between us, and I think they're talking to themselves).
Just a thought.
Registrar Told To Stop Direct-Mail Scare-Tactics
Letter: Dear domain name owner: BOO!
Owner: EEP! *thud*
Imagine the chaos in troll-land if Stephen King outlasts BSD.