Posts by Ru

"How to lift heavy materials"

The bulk of the cost is in getting the material into orbit. The ISS had to be assembled in space because its bleedin' enormous; far bigger than could be packed into any lift vehicle.

Deep space manned vehicles may probably also be assembled in orbit, of only because they too will be quite sizeable. They will not cost any less for all that.

Which LEO?

Orbital mechanics are tricky things. It could be very much like trying to catch an artillery shell in flight... a little impractical, and any satisfaction you might have from succeeding will be rather brief.

To extend an already daft analogy, its probably like a guy in Canada trying to catch artillery rounds being fired in Afghanistan. Chances of their orbits coming close are incredibly small, if only for safety reasons.

Re: Oh really?

There's a world of difference between something like a Nova, or a star reaching EOL and becoming a red giant and a star that could generate a coronal mass ejection capable of frying a magnetosphere-equipped planet that's a hundred million miles away.

A big blast like the Carrington event (1859? too lazy to look it up) would be quite bad enough, and apparently we get those every 500 years or so according to ice core isotope studies. Even that didn't set much on fire other than telegraph equipment. Going back even further, there'd be evidence of planet-toasting solar activity in ice cores (which would have a record of this sort of thing going back hundreds of thousands of years) and before that, in geological studies... seems like sun just doesn't do that sort of thing.

Having said that, go look up 'superflare stars'. Can't find much useful information about those, but they're capable of generating flares powerful enough to blast off a planet's ozone layer, turn midwinter temperatures into summer ones and have a good go at melting surface ice to boot... but even they couldn't torch a planet with an earthlike orbit.

"I'm just peeved that I lived a quiet life of simple virtue"

Let this be a terrible, terrible warning to all the rest of you considering frugality, virtue or a so-called "quiet life". You're all still doomed, but the rest of us will be having much more fun.

Up to a point, Lord Copper

Much of the modern day geopolitical mess is the result of stupid decisions by various superpowers over the past 100 years or more. US foreign policy during the cold war has a direct bearing on the events in places like the Middle East (following on from the good example of the Brits before them), South America, Mesoamerica, North Korea and so on.

They've done a fair amount to make the world a much darker place. I don't see this being fixable any time soon, especially using force.

Surely not quick *and* swift!

This is the first fruit of their union. It remains to be seen whether it succeeds. Nokia may not have "a year or so" so get their act in gear.

Ahh, that's easy.

You keep your stinking replicators off my intellectual property. Royalties are due for each and every instance of your space probe... one for every star in the galaxy, you say? You'd better have deep pockets.

"Dothing [sic] cap to Wikipeadia [sic]"

Don't explain the joke.

The followup may, just possibly, have been humourous in intent, too.

"Electric bikes, a poor greenies Prius"

Disagree. The risk of death on an electric bike is significantly higher than the risk when driving a Prius. Given the colossal carbon footprint of your average privileged westerner of the sort who can afford to own electric vehicles, the greater number of fatalities means that electric bikes are vastly more eco friendly.

"You failed to mention Fuduntu"

Perhaps because no-one has heard of it, or perhaps because no-one cares.

"It's alarming, to say the least, to see how Linux is diverging"

It has always been this way. There is nothing new here, it is merely better publicised and the userbase is larger.

"the only winner will be Microsoft"

Really? I'd say that Apple would be the primary beneficiaries. But ultimately, who cares? This "Linux" you speak of isn't a coherent entity or corporation. "Linux" does not care whether you like it or not. It will still exist if half the userbase poof out of existence. There's no share price to lose here, no army of devs who need paying. Arrogance and stubbornness? On whose part? Linus? Redhat management? the KDE project? How about Xorg? How about IBM? How about Android? Do you somehow believe that they're all working together with a common goal and agree to synchronise their stupidities? You're looking at the action of one player in a very large system. There is no one true "Linux", and it most certainly isn't embodied by Shuttleworth's creation.

"Can we /manipulate/ them?"

Well, that would depend very much on what we're looking at. The force of gravity varies depending on where you stand, but the underlying process that causes this is the same everywhere (as far as we can tell, anyway) and the rules that govern that process remain constant. Varying values of alpha could be the visible effects of some underlying mechanism in the same way, no?

What is rather more interesting to contemplate is whether this underlying phenomenon might represent a universal frame of reference, something which does not fit very well with our understanding (see also, relativity).

Up to a point...

A handful of productions I've been wanting to purchase recently are available either as Blu Ray or ITunes download. I've held of purchasing for now, because whilst the former is ultimately a dead-end format and generally inconveniently region locked (and awkward to rip, compared to DVD) I really don't want the hassle of iTunes given that I don't have a Mac.

"any sane, impartial evidence?"

Ahahahahahaaaha.

You must be new here. And by 'here' I mean "The Earth".

Given that ad hominem attacks and erring on the side of 'shrill' have proven to be such an effective means of politicking, why would anyone choose anything different? Science is *hard* and no-one care about the results it generates.

It is a surprising notion

Financial and Governmental agencies generally approach the issue from the other end, after all.

There are problems with that

(didn't someone ask this question on another thread? was it you?)

Todays example of why this isn't entirely practical will be: the Aurora. I don't believe anyone knows how to make a magnetic shield that will repulse all the constituents of a neutral plasma, like the solar wind. Some of those incoming ions are going to hit the shielded object. On earth, we're relatively protected by a hell of a lot of atmosphere (and get pretty auroral displays as a side effect), but that's a tricky thing to fit on a spacecraft.

Ultimately, radiation shielding requires lots of mass, and that's exactly what you don't want to be adding to a spacecraft.

Thomas who?

You know, the guy who stole all of Tesla's ideas and patented them?

"nobody has figured out what the implications will be"

What implications? People won't stop using mosquito nets overnight... the laser-based devices will be significantly more expensive, and significantly less reliable. I can see practical uses in fitting them to windows and doors in public buildings, eg. hospitals.

Worst case scenario? We're back to where we were before. Oh noes.

There's significantly higher risk in developing populations of insecticide resistant mosquito populations, as there's a clear advantage for mozzies who live to breeding age. There's no particular advantage to mosquitos who can pass through a laser barrier, except a slightly larger food source.

Your comment is as short sighted and ill-informed as the 'natural selection' guy. Presumably he's all in favour of cancelling all vaccination programs across the world and reintroducing smallpox, right? That would be *natural*.

"Complexphone" is a little more honest than "Smartphone"

But doesn't sound as sexy.

"Magnetic fields aren't heavy"

But the mechanisms to generate powerful ones certainly are. They're already operating on a tight power and weight budget... in the absense of warm, cheap superconducting wire popping up any time soon, magnets aren't going to help here.

"What about the other OS's "

But you won't be using those, and by your own admission they are tools with which you can circumvent this tracking system, and therefore pervert the course of justice. Or something.