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Comment Re:Rock Rainbows? (Score 0) 341

If you read the arictle you may notice that the planet doesn't get a sunset due to it having a captured rotation:

From the article:
"it is so close to its sun that its orbit is like the Moon around Earth. One face is always pointed towards its sun."

ie no sunset - sorry

Comment Re:on the road charging? (Score 0) 586

When I drive I generally don't drive 100% of the time at full throttle. Being at a constant velocity all you need to do is overcome drag. This will obvious depend on the car but you know they will be working hard to being this down so at 50mph you may find that you only need 1/4 throttle which means the 5HP generator will keep you nice and topped up. Then at zero throttle you are making a net gain.

All this means is that the maths is much more complicated that your model and depending on the journey a 5HP generator could add significatly more range.

As for the car emissions standards they measure percentage of certains harmful gases not absolute volume. So a small car with a "bad" emissions can easily be much less harmful to the environment than a large engine vehicle that pushes out massive volumes of exhaust gases which results in the "good" car emiting more harmful gas than the "bad" small car. At which point a 5HP generator is not so bad for the environment as say the 150HP engine you are replacing.

Games

Turning Classic Literary Works Into Games 93

Adventure Classic Gaming is running an interview with Chris Tolworthy, an indie game designer who is working on a project to make video games out of various literary classics. His decision to develop these kinds of games was sparked by a desire to reach out to gamers who want more "serious" subject matter, as well as finding an audience among people you would find in a book store, rather than a game store. Tolworthy has already released one game, an adaptation of Les Misérables, and has almost finished Dante's Divine Comedy. After that is done, he'll move on to other works, including Theogeny, by Hesiod, and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, aiming for two or three releases a year. He said, "I try to keep as close as possible to the original text. When I create a game I simply go through the book and adapt it chapter by chapter. As far as possible all my puzzles are based on ideas in the original book. So my Dante's Inferno is a lot closer to the book than EA Games' Dante's Inferno that changes Dante into a warrior with a giant scythe! Although I stick closely to the story, I would find it boring to only give the straight text, so my games always give a different twist. For example, I show Les Miserables from the point of view of a minor character who dies early on. In my Divine Comedy I show other points of view as well as Dante's, and they don't see things the same way. Really, what I'm doing is what theater directors do when they put a Shakespeare play into a modern setting. It's the exact same story, but presented in a new way."

Comment Re:I have experince with this. (Score 0) 533

Being pedantic won't this need an 8 bit graphics card? 16 bit ISA came along with the 80286 didn't it?

That said you can certainly get EGA and if you are lucky you might find an 8bit VGA card (back then VGA was new I remember my parents amstrad 2086 (had a 8086 processor at 8Mhz but boasted VGA graphics and a 640x480 display!) so it should be possible.

Comment Re:I read the "answers", now I feel for you.. (Score 0) 370

I agree most do not seem to grasp the nature of the question.

Why can manufacturers make high resolution LCD screens for laptops but do not use these screens to produce similar desktop LCD screens?

Maybe it is to artificialy boost the laptop market?

The smallest pixel size I have seen if from the libretto U100 screen, 7.1 inches and 1280 x 768, so why can't I have a 15 inch LCD screen at the same pixel size? ie 2540 x 1536

Comment probablity (Score 0) 884

I thought that you can't use this kind of probablity questions when you already know the outcome of the last 100 years of air travel. This kind of calculations as I udnerstand it is only valid for predicting future events.

So while in the next hundred years it is 1/20 (or whatever the result of the calculation is depending on how detailed you go) of a meteor and aircraft collision, you can't then say well we have already been flying for a hundred years so we a pretty due a collision.

So given it hasn't happened yet it remains increadibly unlikley that there will be a meteor vs aircraft collision.

Or did I miss something - I am sure you will tell me if I have.

Government

Submission + - Online Age Verification

ArcadiaAlex writes: The UK government is looking at a bill that requires e-commerce site that sell age restricted products (knives, alcohol, tabaco, fireworks and pornography) to have a robust age verification system. This has been reported a while ago by the BBC. While this is current in the UK this is a global problem. How does anyone make sure that they are not breaking the law by selling any of these products to a minor in a foreign country?

What solutions have you seen or used successfully?

Comment Re:Seems Pretty Inefficient (Score 0) 197

I have to say that launching a shuttle while very cool in concept and very handy for returning large objects from orbit, but given how little that was used is about the heaviest solution I think you could imagine to lift a few astronauts to the space station.

I think the weight of the russian capsule with the added weight of the solid rockets, plus a few spares in case of failure would still come in as a lighter option than lifting a shuttle.

This of course will change with the new Orion as it is back to the light weight capsule idea (as is required to leave low earth orbit)

Comment Space Junk (Score 0) 96

Has anyone else noticed that in the aritcle they mention "The ballute is jettisoned from the spacecraft once the desired capture orbit is achieved, the company said."

Do we need any more litter in space - especially earth orbit?

We all think of balloons being filled with light than air gasses, but in this case they will want both low compressed volume and low weight for takeoff. So it may well be that they use liquid Helium - in which case would they hang around in orbit - once the drag of the ship is gone might they bounce off the atmosphere as they are still moving at orbital velocity.

Even if they go sub orbital velocity they are still intact balloons at the edge of space and they are not going to sink down the planet easily(presumably they will be quite strong).

I am sure they will think of it - but it would just be nice to see them mention retrieval/disposal with the increasing amount of junk in space these days...

Idle

Submission + - Chimpanzees exchange meat for sex (bbc.co.uk)

the_therapist writes: "A team from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, studied chimps in the Tai Forest reserve in Ivory Coast and discovered that chimpanzees enter into "deals" whereby they exchange meat for sex.

Among the findings are that "male chimps that are willing to share the proceeds of their hunting expeditions mate twice as often as their more selfish counterparts". They also found this to be "a long-term exchange, so males continue to share their catch with females when they are not fertile, copulating with them when they are"."

Idle

Submission + - Vulcan AB to attend Trek premiere

S-4'N3 writes: I was shocked to hear about this first from my wife reading me an article from our local newspaper as opposed to seeing this headlining slashdot. Apparently, Vulcan Alberta lost the bid to host the world premiere of the new Star Trek flick. Most likely, because they don't have a movie theatre. But with the help of Leonard Nimoy, residents of the middle-of-nowhere town will be flown to a special showing in Calgary. Most logical indeed

Comment Aliens (Score 2, Funny) 156

Was Rimmer right after all?

Lister: Your explanation for anything slightly peculiar is aliens, isn't it? You lose your keys, it's aliens. A picture falls off the wall, it's aliens. That time we used up a whole bog roll in a day, you thought that was aliens as well.
Rimmer: Well we didn't use it all, Lister. Who did?
Lister: Rimmer, ALIENS used our bog roll?
Rimmer: Just cause they're aliens doesn't mean to say they don't have to visit the little boys' room. Only they probably do something weird and alien-esque, like it comes out of the top of their heads or something.
Lister: Well I wouldn't like to be stuck behind one in a cinema.

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