Comment Re:No Independence (Score 1) 397
That's why you call it Independence Day, and we call it Thanksgiving.
Comment Re:Good money in UAV's. (Score 1) 259
Landing a UAV is easy. It's landing it in one piece that gets tricky!
Comment Re:Make darn sure the Feds don't mind! (Score 1) 259
A 12lb chunk of wood and metal flying at 100mph with a 14" blade spinning at 12,000rpm on the front isn't a toy. These things are model aircraft - calling them 'toys' completely trivializes the damage they can do when they hit things or, FSM forbid, people.
Don't take building and operating one of these models lightly. People have been seriously injured or even killed by them. The regulations that govern building and flying them are there for everyone's safety, and you can learn more about the U.S. regulations by going here: http://www.modelaircraft.org/
Don't take building and operating one of these models lightly. People have been seriously injured or even killed by them. The regulations that govern building and flying them are there for everyone's safety, and you can learn more about the U.S. regulations by going here: http://www.modelaircraft.org/
Comment Re: Expedition 18 to the ISS. Not 18 members. (Score 1) 171
I was just imagining the 'clown car' version of the Soyuz.
Comment How many crew members? (Score 1) 171
18 crew members? What, are they having some kind of party up there? Did somebody drop in unannounced?
Comment Re:Monopole magnets are not hard (Score 3, Funny) 104
Hey - you're not meant to complain about Slashdot Pole options!
Comment Re:Storm in a very, very tiny teacup (Score 1) 672
There are two distinct types of cosmic rays - low energy ones that are sourced from the sun, and the high energy ones that are sourced from the big guys on the universal block. So yes, there are different sources for both high and low energy cosmic rays. However, for the sake of this conversation all cosmic rays are considered high energy when compared to the measly energies our colliders can produce :)
Comment Re:Well, duh! (Score 1) 672
The matter goes nowhere. It is completely and utterly annihilated. Some radiation escapes from the event horizon of a black hole due to Hawking radiation, but it contains none of the information encoded in the original consumed matter or energy.
Comment Re:Well, duh! (Score 4, Interesting) 672
Heh - when you're talking about a black hole at or smaller than the size of an atomic nucleus it doesn't matter whether it's at the top of the atmosphere or at the center of the Earth. Matter at that scale is described as tenuous at best. You'd have to get somewhere like the center of the sun or denser before a collision would be anywhere near likely.
Comment Storm in a very, very tiny teacup (Score 4, Insightful) 672
The Sun in conjunction with the Earth's atmosphere has been colliding particles with WAY higher energies that the LHC could ever manage for billions of years now. As far as I know we've not been consumed by a mini black hole yet.
Comment Re:Maybe I am just lucky.... (Score 1) 688
Well, I have seen a bit of an effect but that might be because I work in Investment Banking.
Start Saving To Buy Your Space Shuttle Now 197
stoolpigeon writes "With the retirement of the shuttle drawing near, NASA has begun to plan for museums that may want a used orbiter of their own. The Orlando Sentinel reports that NASA issued an RFI to US educational institutions, science museums and other organizations to see if they would be interested in the orbiter while also able to cover the estimated $42 million cost of 'safeing' the shuttle and transporting it."
Comment Re:Slashdot ID (Score 1) 835
Pah.
Chicago Developing 'Suspicious Behavior' Monitoring System 294
narramissic writes "Over the past few years, Chicago's Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) has been blanketing the city with a network of thousands of video cameras in an effort to remotely keep track of emergencies in real time. Now, with the help of IBM, the network is getting some smarts. IBM software will analyze the video and ultimately 'recognize suspicious behavior,' says OEMC spokesman Kevin Smith. 'The challenge is going to be teaching computers to recognize the suspicious behavior,' said Smith. 'Once this is done this will be a very impressive city in terms of public safety.'"
SCO Blames Linux For Bankruptcy Filing 321
Stony Stevenson writes "SCO Group CEO Darl McBride is now claiming that competition from Linux was behind the company's filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 'In a court filing in support of SCO's bankruptcy petition, McBride noted that SCO's sales of Unix-based products "have been declining over the past several years." The slump, McBride said, "has been primarily attributable to significant competition from alternative operating systems, including Linux." McBride listed IBM, Red Hat, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems as distributors of Linux or other software that is "aggressively taking market share away from Unix.""
