Re: Super Sonic

If you knew where to find all the hidden restart / save poles and knew how to get round all the special stages first time every time, it was entirely possible to have super sonic before the end of the first zone on Sonic 2. Then you could fly trough every level as super sonic without having the use any cheat codes.

Re: Friday 13th @ Matt Bryant

Using that analogy, imagine what would happen to that same billiard ball if it were hit by a grain of sand. It amounts to the same thing.

Re: Sounds risky

You don't say? ;) The engineering problems are substantial but these tests have shown that they may not be insurmountable. If it was going to be straightforward they'd already be flying by now.

@ Loyal Commenter

"Pure oxygen is, ironically, toxic."

Only at higher concentrations. Humans can breathe pure O2 just fine at lower pressure. US astronauts used pure O2 right up until the space shuttle was introduced and space suits for EVAs still use pure O2 .

Re: The leg weighs about 10lbs.

Assuming the info isn't readily available on Google (I can't be arsed to look either) you could simply dunk your leg in a small tank of water and weigh the water that it displaces. The human body has about the same density as water give or take.

re:Probably for its deformable terrain

I was thinking that. That game had fuck all else going for it....

Re: Break up BT

Um, do please correct me if I'm wrong but I belive it's already been done. Openreach was created in 2006 for precisely that reason.

Re: Not exactly

I'll be damned. You're quite right. They don't half look similar... My apologies sir!

Not exactly

The rocket in the linked vid is one by John Carmack's (the dude behind Doom and Quake) firm Armadillo Aerospace. It recently picked up NASA support as part of their Flight Opportunities Program but they're a low budget outfit not even remotely in the same league as Spacex.

Interesting article

I'm a big fan of Star Trek and sci-fi in general but it never ceases to amaze me the lengths some people are prepared to go to explain away discrepancies between episodes / series / films rather than just accept that it's ultimately all made up and subject to human error.

Re: Cables @tim#3

Really old copper cable would have been patched up a lot over the years so could have a load of ropey joints all along it's length. That said, with the speed difference you're talking about, it probably wasn't copper. There's still a lot of aluminium cable in the network and it's really crap for data. They always replace old ali with copper these days which leads to big speed increases for customers on the end of it.

Re: Its just you @ itzman

To you and other doubters here, I would wager that the man who founded and runs Spacex, a company that that has made multiple successful spacecraft launches to low earth orbit *might* be better placed than yourselves to decide whether it will or will not work.

Call me crazy but I think he'd have considered the enginnering challenges before going to the press.

Let's wait for more details shall we, hmm?

Re: tosh, again @Mystic Megabyte

Please GOD won't somebody think of the CHILDREN?!!!?!!!one!

Re: No anaglyph please

The raw images from the left and right cameras are on the NASA website. Download those and do the image processing yourself if it bothers you so much.

Re: next to an unshielded nuclear reactor

Not forgetting of course that it had the shit shaken out of it by rocket vibration and suffered massive g-forces during launch and landing. Spaceflight eletronics are very tough cookies.

Joe Schmoe didn't understand the benefits

It might also be that Joe Schmoe can't tell the difference between a normal (100 -200hz) and a high refresh (200hz +) panel even when they're sat next to each other in the showroom.

I'd defy anyone else to either.

Re: "We can't boil an ocean?"

Because then it would be obvious to all us scrubbers that they have no bloody idea what they're doing.

Re: RE: And no arguing. I'm right

Fair enough. I was being a grumpy bugger anyway. End of a long week.

RE: And no arguing. I'm right

Downvoted for pig headed arrogance. Your opinion is one voice among many. Unless you were joking, in which case, downvoted for not being funny. ;)

I agree that Skull was the worst though.

Scale doesn't always matter

The Colonel's secret recipe is a few lines of hand written text of a scrap of paper. Imagine how much it would be worth to the right buyer?

@kevin2011

Blimey! Pathetic you say? Look who's talking! I didn't realise there were Google+ fanbois now.

Am I missing some thing?

Uhh, yeah. The first six comments on this article.

Nukes don't need oxygen to work

So you'll be alright on that front. As to the rest, 100 nukes landing at the same time, within 20 miles of each other will result in quite a nice light show, a really big (but not especially deep) hole in the ground and pretty much feck all else.

Even 1000 nukes all hitting the same spot would only realease the engery equivalent of a moderate sized meteor strike. That sort of thing has happened quite a lot to both planets in the past with very little to show for it.

IMO you're quite right in thinking it'd be easier to alter mars or venus to suit our needs than to travel to planets around other stars but the amount of energy required to make any tangible long term difference will make your head spin.

There are lots of other proposed methods apart from chucking nukes at planets. Look up Terraforming if you're interested in finding out more :o)

Oh aye?

How would you design it then? 200 pair copper cable is the small fry, last mile stuff used to link directly to premises. Do you seriously expect telcos to run backup cables over seperate routes with seperate ducts, poles, cabs etc. Who do you think would end up paying for that eh?

AFAIK Spacex manufacture most of their own hardware. Engines, rocket bodies, tanks, spacecraft bodies and loads of other custom parts are assembed in SPACEXs own factories. There's plently of photos of them doing it on their website.

There are probably a million off the shelf components that they buy in, but the ULA does that too and I'm pretty sure they don't list the entire staff of a parts manufacuturer any more than SPACEX do.

It must really suck only being able to see the world in black and white.

Only if the bit of junk is in the same orbit as the station otherwise the relative velocity could even be a lot higher than 17k +

GIYF

From their website:

"BT Engage IT is a part of BT Group. We provide consultancy, Unified Communications, managed ICT services and complete computing services for medium and large organisations. Helpdesks, hardware maintenance, staging and configuration, application delivery, high availability data, data back-up and managed print services are available. We can also supply an infrastructure audit report with recommendations for optimisation."

Ok I'll bite...

I agree there are some tree huggy medieval village types out there and they probably won't like it. They can fuck off back to the woods and go live in a Yurt for all I care.

The thing is, the momentum behind the current environmental movent has pretty much fuck all to do with them and a lot more to do with ever increasing mountains of evidence leading more rational people to the inescapable conclusion that we really do have a collective impact on the world around us and we are responsible for the consequences.

Anybody who dismisses that fact is as much on the fringe as the tree huggers IMHO.

I reckon the ones that chose to do that....

...are still busy researching. As soon as I started looking at the subject I reaslised just how much there is to learn. I may feel qualified to comment in say three of four years.

Maybe.

Sanctimonious fuckwits eh?

Pot? Kettle? Just sayin'

If they have any sense at all....

They'll reprocess the spent fuel rods. I'm a bit spotty on the details but IIRC around 99% by mass of the spent fuel rod can be reused. The other 1% are (admittedly rather nasty) fission products that need to go into storage in a nuclear waste facility where they can decay naturally into heavy metals like lead.

It's not ideal, but not as bad as the popular myth that there are vast qauntities of the stuff produced every year.

Overkill

In my experience only the most hardened audiophiles or people who work with audio on a professional basis listening on very expensive equipment can truly tell the difference between 16 bit 44khz CD quality and anything higher. I'm pretty sure the original developers of CDs could have set a higher standard if they'd wanted but it wasn't deemed necessary.

@Dave 15

You might want to replace your car stereo then. My CD collection works fine in the car, every single one. I've had some of those discs for 15 years and they've picked up their share of smudges and scratches in that time. CDs have got pretty sophisticated error correction built in. I've never come across a vinyl record that had that ;)

re: sigh

a) Searching for and buying music using the Amazon 1 click buy button is just as convenient as any download store I've ever used IMHO.

b) People still like to have physical media when they've paid money for it. You can't put a downoad on display on a shelf and a hard copy is always more secure / robust than a download. Ok, it might not be the mainstream for much longer but CDs aren't going anywhere for a long time. FACT*

* the kind of fact I just made up to try and add emphasis

Re: geeky trivia

That would be Flicky wouldn't it? It was Sonic Team's first game IIRC

Big buildings, or perhaps...

...a ship? 50m+ is a tiddler by warship standards. Besides, there have been mechanisms in place on ships to compensate for bobbing in the water since at least the First World War and probably even before then. Wind deviation might be an issue, I don't know, but we aren't talking about golf balls here. These slugs are going to be pretty dense so will be pretty resistant to being blown about by wind.

Right on!

Because Intel would never stoop to such levels would they?

*cough* pentium 4 */cough*

I'm sticking up for John Arthur on this one

The relative velocities in different bits of junk in LEO are vastly different to GEO. Objects in GEO all have to be in an equatorial orbit, in the same direction as the rotation of the earth and at the same velocity in order to maintain their relative position above the ground.

Objects in LEO are under no such constraint, the can be in polar orbits, equatorial orbits and every inclination between.

I'd say there is a lot more danger of objects colliding destructively when they're flying perpendicular to each other than from objects that are all moving in the same direction at the same speed. Even when launcing new GEO satellites the rocket has to match speed and direction for the same reasons so there's still very little chance of a collsion.

The Pendulum Rocket Fallacy

You may wat to look it up. It goes against common sense but it explains why your suggestion won't work.

Also, sticks on fireworks and the like work by aerodynamic forces. With so little air at those altitudes they'd be no point having one.

Big and clever, perhaps not...

Satisfying? Absolutely!

Right on! Bloody scientists! What do they know?

Ok then, since it's so obvious, what's making the marks disappear in winter then hmm?

To all those suggesting BBC4 should be axed

Ah yes, the old "I don't watch it, so why should anyone else want to?" agument being trotted out I see. We as a nation are privileged to have a broadcaster that is bound by its charter to produce programming that doesn't neccessarily appeal to the lowest common denominator. There's a significant portion of the population that isn't interested in soaps, imported US sitcoms, and the umpteeth edition of Britains Got Talent!

Besides, 8m people is a pretty good viewing figure for £55m when you consider that BBC1 has a budget of £1.2 BILLION for 47m weekly viewers on average, ITV1 £850m for 38m viewers and channel 4 £600m for 35m viewers.

8 million entertained boffins and nerds for £55 million quid. I say that's a bargain.

The old ones are the best ones...

... now you owe my whole team new keyboards!

@ john smith 19

You might want to review your history too - Gagarin Flew in 1961. That's why there was all that guff last week about it being the 50th aniversary of his flght. You're probably thinking of Sputnik, although that was in 1957.