Posts by Yag
521 posts • joined Monday 11th October 2010 15:02 GMT
Licensed?
And I thought there were millenias-years-old prior art on the rectangle shape...
... And they probably does not sound empty when hit.
At least you did not went the cowardly anonymous way...
SO related :)
http://www.goominet.com/unspeakable-vault/vault/420/
Forgot about Shoggoth, did ya?
Indeed...
... and Matter/Antimatter reactors will pave the way for interstellar travel.
Perhaps we should start with mature technologies before switching to fusion?
"a rather clean way of disposing of nuclear weapons "
Erm... I hopes that he added "Once the rocket is far from earth gravity well"...
Project Orion was on the same line as those "Civil engineering nukes" - a good idea as long as you don't mind the radiations.
Disclaimer : Don't take me wrong - I'm not of the "nuky=baddy" team, and I'm in favor of the developpement of "clean" NTEs...
Good idea, in theory...
Trouble is that Hubble was never designed for this.
- The solar pannels will not be enough to power the craft once it's far from the sun (mars or jupiter far). The use of radioisotopic generators in most deep space missions is not for 50s-60s-nuclear-power nostalgia reasons...
- The antena was designed with a "few thousand kilometer" range in mind, not "few millions"
- Where the heck can we strap those boosters...
- ... and the structure of the poor thing may be teared apart by the thrust...
- ... and even if the structure resist, the optics may have a hard time.
etc, etc...
Indeed, you shall be able to take a nice medium range shot of the Earth, but the cost of the mission will be quite prohibitive for just a couple of photos.
About the banding...
You will notice that there's none in the previous US-centric shoot...
Seems like this one was a quick hack...
oh, by the way, here is the link :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/6806922559/in/set-72157627439487497/
"the first Suomi NPP Blue Marble image has had more than 3.1 million views as of February 1"
This is the actual proof that space still makes people dream...
Erm...
Getting sloppy, unefficient and wasteful may be the answer, unfortunately...
Looks at most state sponsored space agencies :s
???
You know, Humans are NOT the only life form on this planet. And let's hope it never happens...
There's some weird lifeforms that dine on sulfur and ignore oxygen in the deepest volcanic trenches of this planet you know...
HHGTTG citations...
... can only lead to upvotes :)
Not that boffin-minded...
But the trouble may be the tidal effect, which makes Io such an unpleasant sulfur-based volcanic place due to its closeness to Jupiter...
Posted in Facebook IPO: Boom or bubble?
Real money?
Do you speak about the few bytes in your bank's computers?
Or even banknotes under your matress?
Or even shiny and useless metals?
There's no such thing as "real" and "fake" money - Zimbabwe dollar may be state-sanctionned money, i'ld take Zinga toy-money instead.
obviously shopped...
...In order to hide the nazi moonbase!
Posted in Ukraine file-sharing site disappears
More related to the Megaupload/SOPA/PIPA case, but...
... got to share this one.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2508#comic
Mmmh...
"prosecutors copied selected data from the servers" + deletion of original data = Tampering all the way...
Or, at least, the "selected data" will only include illegal data while all the legitimate one will be deleted.
Nice one...
When life gives you lemons...
sell them as an IPO.
Well, to be fair...
Edward Teller made a major contribution on local warming of earth...
"The evidence is incontrovertible"
This kind of sentence should void any credential as a scientist...
Don Quijote mission?
It sounds like a hopeless plan :s
Dibs...
... on the tropical planet with those busty green amazons.
...
What do you mean by "praying mantis mating behavior"?
It is a glorious day...
for SCIENCE! :)
Logical explanation : you are downvoted because you are french, the historical ennemy of everything british :)
heck!
I'ld KILL for a cubicle instead of this 20-person-on-different-project-open-space bullshit I'm actually enduring...
Nukes - Killing may not be enough.
or
Nukes - Largest open space maker since 1945.
No battery needed
The USB port of the computer will supply enough power.
Lobbying is to Bribery as Sugar daddies are to Prositution.
Here, fixed for you...
ouch...
The delivery fees are ludicrous... The channel is not THAT expensive to cross...
I'm looking forward...
... the .facepalm, .bullshit and other .brainless
"Cloud storage outfit Filesonic disabling file sharing features."
Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this Battle sta... erm, strong arm of the law.
Great idea!
I'm looking forward the next step, the Ident-I-Eeze card...
Posted in Nuke support in UK hits record high
It's... complicated.
More or less radioactive material is not the only relevant information - the actual activity of the material and the kind of radiation emited are major informations.
- The half life for uranium 235 - eg. the time needed for half of it to decay to some kind of Thorium and one alpha radiation - is 700 millions years.
- The thorium 231 from the decay of the uranium is ALSO radioactive, and have a half life of about a single day, yielding some proactinium-231 and a beta ray.
- The proactinium then decay (half life of 32,760 years) to actinium 227 and 'nother alpha ray most of the times, which then decay to... etc, etc
Those decays and the overall age of the universe explains why U235 is only roughly 1% of the natural occuring uranium. Most of it is U238, which have a half life of. 4 and a half billion year.
Uranium itself is not that dangerous radiation-wise (it's still a toxic metal, same as mercury or lead), it was used for centuries for glazing yellow glass and is even sometime used as a... radiation shell against more active elements.
Fissions products, on the other hand, are significantly more active.
For example, the half life of the well known Caesium 137 is a measly 30 years. This means that Caesium is actually 230 000 times more radioactive than the uranium 235, uranium 235 which was only 1% of the extracted uranium.
Even worse, the dreaded Iodine-131 have a 8 DAYS half life... But in this case, the very short half life may also a boon - it quickly decay to stable elements and stop posing a radioactive threat...
I'm sure you can now figure why swapping 1 ton of uranium for 1 ton of highly active fission products is not that a good idea...
(NOTE : I'm not a nuclear phycisist, there is certainly some errors in this text, in which case I'ld love to have a better analysis from a professional)
Posted in Nuke support in UK hits record high
Foresight...
Did you also bought enough petrol to fuel it for the next 25 years?
Did you also bought weapons and hired some mercs to protect your investment?
Yeah, you're ready, indeed...
eek!
First read that as "Where the hell are the patents?"
I should stop reading all those patent-trolling related articles...
Feels deja-vu...
"compromised brokerage accounts were used to purchase shares held by the pair at ramped-up (artificially inflated) prices."
Isn't it the modus operandi for Twitter/Groupon/Facebook IPOs?
It's in gibberish.
Those initials were choosen BECAUSE they don't refer to neither french (would be TUC) nor english (UCT)
Posted in French get unlimited mobile for €20
Do not forget that the price is not only set according to the cost, but also according to how much people can pay for it...
According to Wikipedia (I know...), the median household in France is double the income in Estonia, so it is not really a surprise.
Posted in French get unlimited mobile for €20
1 - It's still one or a couple of dirt cheap mobile communication years
2 - It will drive the prices waaaaaaay down
Posted in French get unlimited mobile for €20
"Just sent the cancellation letter."
I hope your bluff works, you may lose your current phone number...
For reference, in France, in order to keep the phone number, you should NOT cancel by yourself, but instead retrieve the RIO (Relevé d'Identité Operateur - an unified ID) via a simple phone call to 3179 with your cell phone, then supply this number to your new provider - the new provider will cancel your current contract.
Posted in French get unlimited mobile for €20
Already too late...
My soon to be former operator was *harassing* me every week for the last two month in order to peddle a new locked-in contract... Strangely, this gave me the motivation to leave ASAP :)
Already signed in for switching from 2 hours/no SMS at 26 euros to the ultra-cheap 1 hours/60 sms for 2 euro per month...
Now, let's hope Free won't screw it somehow...
You're welcome, but actually...
I discovered this crazy movie thanks to those forums...
Now that all loose loops are closed, the Guide can collapses in on itself.
Farewell HADOPI
We'll miss you, your inefficiencies and your waste of taxpayer money...
NOT!
As long as they don't answer...
"Let there be light"...
