Posts by Remy Redert 535 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Mar 2007
And those strong indications have been getting stronger and stronger. Sooner or later someone's going to spot some of them Higgs bosons and then we'll be able to replicate the results and start working on practical applications. Expect anti-gravity within a few millennia!
Well, that depends on how powerful this drive is compared to other plasma drives already out there. The fact that it can use almost anything for fuel gives it a big advantage though. If you have to choose between using water or xenon for reaction mass, the former is considerably cheaper and easier to store in bulk quantities. The only reason not to use it is because mono-atomic hydrogen and oxygen have a tendency to eat almost anything they come into contact with over time.
I suspect this drive will mainly be used for station keeping and limited manoeuvring of stations, since it allows them to use what would otherwise be waste products. Conversely, most long range starships would probably have sufficient recycling in place that there wouldn't be any waste products to launch out the back if at all possible.
Except for the part where the balloon won't lose enough lift for that before it bursts due to internal overpressure. If the rate of climb drops to 0, you're already too late with your launch as the balloon has obviously burst.
They should know the pressure at which their helium balloon will burst so they can set the pressure and thus altitude for the launch a bit below that. You could use the rate of climb as a back-up to ensure that if the balloon doesn't make it to the target height for whatever reason and doesn't burst either, LOHAN will still launch.
Let me correct you on a few points, since you seem to have failed physics and/or orbital mechanics.
1) Capturing junk satellites and other debris is relatively easy. Yes, it's moving around at many kilometers per second but SO ARE YOU. Match orbits and you can just grab the debris while it's at nearly 0 relative velocity. If you know where the debris is and have the delta V to reach it, retrieval is trivially easy.
3) Fuel in this case is the wrong word. The one you're actually looking for is 'reaction mass'. You see, many of these satellites have to expend small amounts of reaction mass from time to time, for station keeping and avoiding collisions with one another. If you can refill that reaction mass you can significantly extend the useful life of a satellite. Of course satellites aren't designed to be refillable so... Good luck with that.
By that comparison, everyone who's wireless got snooped would have lost their connection while it was being snooped.
A better comparison would be you leaving pictures or letters out in the yard and someone taking pictures of them without your consent. Now you both have a copy of the text or image but no theft took place.
And you will find, as per the Mythbusters experiments, that a free falling bullet has a terminal velocity sufficiently low that they are very unlikely to cause serious harm, let alone kill anyone.
The problem isn't bullets (or in this case balsa wood trusses) falling straight down, it's the ones fired at an angle that drop from the skies with still sufficient speed and thus energy to penetrate the skin.
No, they've found that these devices could indeed pick up noise from LTE transmitters, but that 1) The devices are already designed to cope with significant amounts of noise, even on the same band and as such 2) Would only be noticeably bothered in very rare cases.
So there's no reason for them to care.
And that is why you would want to build your facility as deep underground as is feasible. Not only does it help protect against the inevitable small impacts, it also gives almost 100% protection from those nasty cosmic rays and other sources of radiation out there in space. Living long term on the surface of the moon seems like an excessively risky proposal.
That's 6 to 10 rounds a minute for a naval battleship sized gun. The smaller anti-missile guns will produce a lot less waste heat, be a lot smaller and thus take a lot less power to fire and recharge. You can expect the anti-missile versions to fire a couple of rounds per second.
Still not very high compared to currently CIWS solutions, but then railguns can be considerably more accurate so they won't have to spray 50 rounds at an inbound missile and hope one will hit.
This would be like when we switched to microUSB, manufacturers would no longer need to ship chargers which meant less cost, smaller packaging, etc. They never did deliver on that one either.
What will happen is that manufacturers will now start to ship 2 chargers. One wireless and one wired. And increase the price a load to compensate.
The assumption up until now was that a comet of its size, having been repeatedly passed by the sun in the past and becoming smaller in the process every time, would not survive such a close encounter with the sun.
Now in a few thousand years when it comes back again, then we'll be able to get a really good understanding of just how these things work, because we can observe the same comet having another go at the sun.
Or we could develop decent spacecraft by then and go look it up with a probe while it's still far far away.
Don't know about the visa issue, but broadband over 12 miles is easy enough via either a wireless link or a semi-permanent cable. 12 miles of shallow fiber to a permanently anchored ship shouldn't cost that much compared to the cost of the ship itself.
Pirate radio broadcasts fall under international treaties wrt regulated radio broadcasting so are much easier to tackle, I suspect.
I see nothing illegal with what you describe. Of course if Samsung did decide to do this, nobody would buy Samsung TVs any more because they can get a TV from a competitor that doesn't insert ads when turned on.
TVC doesn't have any competitors yet. Once (if) the broadcasters catch up and start doing live IP broadcasts as well, TVC is likely to lose a lot of people because the broadcasters can do with less ads, better quality, etc. at the same profit margin
Of course if you squat in a house, the legitimate owner can't use it which doesn't happen in software piracy. More importantly, if the company that sold you your house goes broke, you don't suddenly lose access to your house. Similarly, you don't need to check in with said company every time you want to enter your house.
Rental is a bit closer, in that when the company renting you your house goes broke, you might be thrown out. Even then it won't happen suddenly and you don't have to ask said company for permission to use your house every time you want to go in.
As for stealing games. I find myself pirating games when I'm uncertain of a game's quality and there is no (reasonable) demo to try it with. Then yes, I will pirate the game to test it.
That is no mere exhaust plume, that is a cloud of rapidly expanding plasma, created where the air inside the railgun is pushed aside by the projectile and turned into plasma by the enormous electrical energy required to propel said projectile.
This heating in turn causes the very air itself to combust, oxidising the nitrogen in the air. Then there's the minute amounts of material being torn off the railgun's rail and the projectile itself in the process of firing and after exiting the barrel, you get a considerable shockwave from the supersonic projectile throwing up dust.
Indeed, the total energy transfer will be approximately the same. However because the chunks have a much larger total surface area, they will experience far more drag in the upper atmosphere and because they have a much smaller volume each compared to their surface area, will experience more severe and deeper heating.
So while the planet will receive the same amount of energy total, most of that energy will be wasted into the upper atmosphere as the chunks burn up instead of falling to the ground and killing people.
1 big rock == 1 big crater, lots of dust, dead people, etc.
hundreds of small rocks == Most burn up on entry, those that don't burn up completely leave a few small craters scattered across the landscape. Some people might get unlucky and get hurt in the process.
Absent: You meant the problem where you could bridge the electrical gap between the 2 antennae, causing a serious reduction in sensitivity? Because as far as I can see with the new design it still has 2 antennae and an electrical gap placed where it can be bridged to detune the antennae. And we're still dealing with antennae meant for different wavelengths so bridging the gap is likely to be a big nono still.
Ilgaz: Pick your android phone. Any android phone. Now instead of typing your request into the google bar that should be on your homepage, press the little microphone icon instead and issue your request in the same natural language you would have used for the iPhone.
Admittedly, it will not offer to call the nearest restaurant for you, but it will show you a list of Google search results including a link to the map so you can see where the nearest restaurant is. Apple has polished things a little and made some improvements to the functionality that the Google boys haven't yet but the big thing they're going on about with the natural language searching? Yeah. Google and Android were there first.
Once this stuff because well known and well researched enough, it might eventually become accepted. Especially if we can make it work reliably and quickly.
Start with applying it to addicts and overdosers, then gradually expand its use from there once we have a good handle on any side effects and risks associated with the meds.
Nokia vs Apple, Nokia wanted triple damages because they considered Apple's infringement of its patents to be will full (ie, they knew about the patents and then went and didn't license them anyyways).
Samsung may be suing over FRAND patents, but they could also have some patents specific to Apple's 3g implementation that weren't included in patent pools because they work as extras or add-ons to base 3g?
No. This is not in fact how a Halon system works. What you're describing is a CO2, Nitrogen or similar noble gas system. Halon works by chemically binding the free radicals as they occur inside the fire, similar to how oxygen reacts with them. This effectively poisons a fire while (in a properly designed system) remaining far below immediately toxic levels.
Halon 1211 is typically only used in hand extinguishers because of its higher toxicity compared to Halon 1301, which is used in room flooding systems. Toxicity of the latter is almost exclusively caused by reactions at very high temperatures which shouldn't occur in your typical server room fire because the Halon system will put the fire out before it gets that hot. Breathing gear is only required when reentering the room because of the combustion products and the side effects of the halon 1301 (Which include giddiness and impaired perception. Not things you want when inspecting fire damages, especially not if there might still be a risk of reignition)
So staying in a room when the halon flood system activates, while disorienting, is unlikely to actually be very hazardous to your health. That said, the BofH's system is probably dumping enough halon in there to flood out the oxygen. Never trust a system designed and operated by the BofH and his PFY.
You are aware that spinning sections are in fact the only reasonably easy to do approach to generating long term artificial gravity in space? There's plenty of fiction in Space Odyssey 2001 but the spinning artificial gravity section is not.
Other examples of the same used in fiction can be found in at least Babylon 5 and PlanetES. Others can probably provide more examples
Better solution. Put a nuclear rocket engine in orbit, fly to Mars in about a month, less if it happens to be in a favourable position at a time. This also helps reduce the risks from radiation, micro-meteorites and various random failures as a result of equipment decaying over time.
Actually, put 2 nuclear rocket engines in orbit, so that if the first suffers a failure while it's idling in Mars orbit, the second can come to the rescue. Use SpaceX's cheap rocket lift capability to put the required parts and the manpower needed to build it in orbit and you can probably have one for the same cost as the planned return to the moon.
Yes and no. You are effectively covered because you can in fact dispute the charge with your credit card company.
You aren't covered because Paypal will then freeze your account, all the money in it and send you a bill for the amount you disputed + fees. I've personally had to take them to court over this when they refused to refund a fraudulent transaction, I had my bank pull it and they froze my account and sent me a bill. Small claims court here in the Netherlands found them in the wrong and gave them a 100 euro fine for every day my account was frozen, starting 14 days after the judgement was passed.
You mean the air planes typically flying at kilometer or more above the ground? You know, a good distance away from the Lightsquared 4G implementation?
Some supplement may be necessary for landing guidance, like ILS and its radio beacons.
So no, this really won't be a problem for the next gen air traffic control systems. Especially since those GPS systems haven't been deployed yet and as such have absolutely no reason not to have sufficient filters.
You mean the 3 TEPCO employees who died in the earthquake? Can't really blame the nuclear reactor for a crane collapsing on people.
100,000 people, most of which can return to their homes before the end of 2012, with the damaged reactors under control and clean up under way in the areas that were contaminated with radioactive isotopes that haven't already decayed to nothing.
School children going to nearby schools where the radiation count is 5 times the prior legal limit? Source please? Nothing I can find substantiates this at all.
Yes, it will eventually suffer from a decaying orbit and burn up in the atmosphere.
However we'd like to continue spaceflight for the next few thousand years, not get stuck on the planet because there's too much debris in orbit to get there safely. Once debris reaches the tipping point, it's entirely possible that large parts of Earth orbit become nigh impossible to traverse for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Even then, getting to root from user space is going to be a lot harder for the malware writers. I'm not going to say that they won't manage sooner or later anyways, just that it'll hopefully be easier to closer the gaps there, contain the malware to userspace where it can be relatively easily cleaned up.
Well, such an e-mail would give reasonable grounds for the police to subsequently seize and search all of the back-ups to confirm wether or not those e-mails are indeed fake. Then if it turns out they're not fake they'll have obtained legal evidence against the lot of them.
Unless NI went around cryptographically signing all their e-mails (And their encryption keys weren't nicked in this attack), there is no way easy and certain way for anyone to confirm wether or not a given e-mail is genuine without going through the back-ups to find it. The offline back-ups, that is.
Safe harbour provisions.
He as a service provider cannot be held accountable for the actions of his users. If they do, they could just as well hold Microsoft accountable for any crimes coordinated over MSN or Hotmail.
If running the IRC server was all he did, the arrest is unwarranted and he should sue their pants off. Also, if he was running it competently, there are no logs to find, because IRC servers do not normally log conversations or connections.
Do you think any other encryption was different in its beginning implementations? Of course not. We're still finding implementation flaws from time to time in every modern encryption scheme.
And then we plug them and we keep looking for more of them, in the hope that we can find them and plug them before someone malicious manages to find one and abuse it. This particular one sounds like an implementation flaw that really should never have happened. The detector should never fall over to normal measurements during the key transmission sequence.
Darwin awards do not require the recipient to perform his stunt unaided. They do require that no innocent bystanders are injured.
Of course the man is disqualified from a full Darwin award for the simple reason that he's already reproduced, I propose an honourable mention to the man.
Now on to things less likely to annoy the moderatrix.
Can anyone find out with who the idea of self-burial for good luck originated? They need to be informed that clearly, self-burial is a bad luck charm. Look at how bad this guy's luck became after burying himself after all.
And because Elon Musk is afraid of that too, he's keeping a majority share in the company. If the shareholders disagree, his vote alone will push whatever he wants to do through any ways.
As for it being premature, we should have started with serious space exploration well over 2 decades ago, when we had the technology to put a nuclear reactor in orbit and use a NERVA to get to and from Mars in a month or two.
There is one major difference between opening port X for a given IPv6 address and forwarding port X for a NATed IPv4 address. You can only do the latter once, which means you are shit out of luck if two computers/devices on your network want to use the same port to receive inbound connections.
Not much of a problem for most programs, as they can switch ports, but want to play the same game on the internet with 2 people on a LAN? One of the people on the LAN must host, otherwise the other person can't join. Is the game using a peer to peer approach? Well, you just got screwed over because now it'll never work.
Hardly, while the PR in the case of Fukushima failed pretty badly, the actual damage done was limited and the majority of the information they had (what little it was) was in fact made pubic as soon as they could do so.
I'm not sure if there is a parallel here at all... When did last someone lose 100 million people worth of data? In a hack that seems to have lasted for days and took days more before any real information was disclosed?
This is an unprecedented level of fail.
If you established that a pregnant sheep is a sheep which bears 1 lamb, then yes, this makes sense.
Of course that would be silly with animals that have a high chance of giving birth to twins or triplets and you would instead say that a pregnant sheep is any sheep which bears any number of lambs. Now your pregnancy rate is down to normal again.
If you had an understanding with the system admin/tech guys, surely you could just unplug the motherboard, showing a complete non-boot and then store the undamaged machine just in case you ever need a temporary machine or want to see a computer burst into flames because you applied 230v AC to the motherboard and CPU?
Have the boffins in question considered anything with, say, hydrogen atoms in it? Like the water supply the astronauts will have to bring with them? Surprisingly good shield against both neutron and high velocity particle radiation.
Alternatively, there are a number of plastics out on the market that are quite efficient at stopping these types of radiation as well. No need to go all the way to high powered electromagnetic fields to stop a little radiation.
While EA and Bioware can enforce whatever rules they want on their forums, if they're going to ban people from playing (singleplayer) games for forum infractions, I do want to see them dragged to the courts to defend their T&Cs and DRM.
Claim physical damages equal to the cost of the game and emotional/mental damages as ridiculously high as you can go.
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