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Comment: Re:Iron Man's Suit Defies Physics -- Mostly (Score 2, Interesting) 279

by John Carmack (#23266718) Attached to: The Science of Iron Man
Hydrogen peroxide powered rocket packs fly for around 30 seconds, because they have a specific impulse of around 125, meaning that one pound of propellant can make 125 pound-seconds of thrust, meaning that it takes about two pounds of propellant for every second you are in the air. Mass ratios are low for anything strapped to a human, so the exponential nature of the rocket equation can be safely ignored.

A pretty hot (both literally and figuratively) bipropellant rocket could manage about twice the specific impulse, and you could carry somewhat heavier tanks, but two minutes of flight on a rocket pack is probably about the upper limit with conventional propellants.

However, an actual jet pack that used atmospheric oxygen could have an Isp ten times higher, allowing theoretical flights of fifteen minutes or so. Here, it really is a matter of technical development, since jet engines have thrust to weight ratios too low to make it practical. There is movement on this technical front, but it will still take a while.

John Carmack
Handhelds

Driver issues plague HTC handhelds->

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes "The latest and greatest HTC SmartPhones and PocketPC's, including the TyTN II, are plagued with driver issues, namely missing or grossly underperforming video, touchscreen and camera drivers. After months of complaining to HTC and them hardly even acknowledging the issue, there is now even talk of a possible lawsuit to get HTC to fix the problems.

Affected devices include the "PDA of the year" HTC TyTN II (Kaiser, AT&T Tilt, T-Mobile MDA Vario III, Vodafone v1615), the "iPhone killers" HTC Touch / Touch Dual / Touch Cruise, the HTC Titan (Sprint Mogul, Verizon XV6800) and several other less known devices."

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Windows

The Worst Windows Features Ever->

Submitted by
Ed Albro, PC World
Ed Albro, PC World writes "Here at PC World, we've got a look in screenshots at 20 of the most egregiously annoying or disfunctional features ever built into a version of Windows. Topics span the years from the Windows 95's DriveSpace, with its unfortunate habit of making your data harder to recover, to some of the display and security excesses of Windows Vista. No. 1 in the Hall of Shame is the security nightmare known as Active X."
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Comment: Nothing can go wrong! (Score 4, Funny) 259

by Gurp (#15740195) Attached to: Hong Kong Using Children to Hunt for Piracy
Ok, so we're going to:

1) Force children, who no doubt understand teh intarwebs better than those in charge of this, to swear that they will search out piracy
2) Encourage said children and young adults to spend time searching for movies and warez
3) Wait for the reports to roll in.

Whoever thought this up is brilliant. This plan has no flaws. Why didn't my government think of this?

When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers. -- The Wall Street Journal

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