Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Time for laser guns (Score 1) 154

Close range laser systems we have since a decade.
Especially Germany and Austria.

Those are not suitable against hypersonic missiles, but work well against grenades and ordinary bazooka like missiles.

They are neither impractical nor expensive. They are fixed mounted to defend a base, yes, that is it. Actually we have some on trucks ... but that is basically only to quickly change the position inside or around a base.

Comment Re:Time for laser guns (Score 1) 154

the faster you are going one direction, the more acceleration required to change it.
Nope.
You failed at physics.

The acceleration is the same: s = 1/2 a * t^2, or v = a * t ... depending what you want to calculate.

Perhaps you mean something different? The faster you are reaching the target, and the closer you are, and realize you miss: the more abrupt (hence higher acceleration) your course reaction needs to be.

Comment Re:Time for laser guns (Score 1) 154

The SR 71 flew Mach 3, not Mach 5.

And a turning radius that big is utter nonsense. The turn is basically determined by how much g-forces the pilot wants to take, for how long. In case of the SR 71, the limiting factor is the size of the wings, they are to small for tight curves.

See: https://aviation.stackexchange... Check the accepted answer (the first answer has a math error)

When flown with the maximum allowable load factor of 1.5 g at 80.000 ft (48Â bank), the turn radius at Mach 3.2 (equivalent to v = 953.3 m/s in 80.000 ft) will be 83.5 km. To be more precise, you will need to add the effects of earth rotation, but for now I leave this away. As you can see, the turn will still need 163 km or 103.7 miles, but not the distance from San Francisco to Seattle which is more than 6 times bigger.

However you are right here: Hypersonic weapons are unlikely to really be maneuverable.
But then again wrong here: They are also unlikely to be very accurate.
They are super accurate for fixed targets like buildings, e.g. hospitals, bridges, oil refineries and such :-(

Comment Re:What now? (Score 1) 27

Well,

yesterday I stumbled over about 10 job offers, where Figma knowledge was required.
And it was clear from context what it is ...

It is actually not that common that companies do a multi billion IPO and have "nothing".

Comment Re:Despite being called a macbook (Score 1) 89

Stream the phone UI to a AppleTV or similar and connect a bluetooth keyboard.
Bonus GeekPoints if the "Mouse Pad App" still runs and the screen of your phone works as touch pad.

Why would one not want macOS on an iPad/iPhone? The GUI can still stay iOS mostly, but what is wrong in running Eclipse on an iPhone?

Comment Re:How about a Linux distro (Score 1) 66

For this inconvenience, the gods of operation systems invented a few things to lighten your burden:
- directories, which have names, and can hold vast amounts of files, with names, and subdirectories with names, which could for example include a version number or name
- a PATH variable, that could point to the executables in such a directory, inconveniently that one is usually called .../bin instead of .../exe - but well, one can adapt, right?
- a LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable, or similar, if PATH is not good enough to load helpers/DLLs and such
- shell scripts, that can set PATH etc. or alias commands if you want to switch quickly
- local .my_tool directories and a help script/command to launch your problematic environment, based on what is configured there ... that is for example what Ruby does

Sorry, there is one thing: you want to run your old Python 2.x Python scrip under 3.y? Well, then you have to port it. Just like I have to port my 1989 K&R C program to my 2025 C++ compiler.

If you have other problems with "old" Versions of "tool X", and are not able to fix installation directories, sym links, PATH and/or LD_LIBRARY_PATH and have a helper script, then fooling around with computers is your wrong hobby.

Try gardening. Or watch stars at night ... something like that.

Comment Re:I like that we are going to burn our entire wor (Score 1) 76

A mega watt hour goes for $4 or so ...
So it would be $800 in total.

Unless they paid a phantasy price to boost the company in question.

I did not read the original article, I would not wonder if the summary is grossly wrong or misleading, and Google bought 200MW production capacity and that could equal to some 100 million dollars.

Comment Re: I like that we are going to burn our entire wo (Score 1) 76

So even if you have miraculous electricity you're still going to be belching heat into the atmosphere.
Just like any heat engine is doing right now.
And in relation of the heat trapping of CO2 and CH4 and water vapour: that is somewhere 10 or 20 digits behind the decimal point. In other words: completely irrelevant.

Comment With less computational power than your phone ... (Score 4, Interesting) 163

a) one once snickered that a Saturn V and all the modules on top had less computing power than a washing machine. That was in the 1990s ... assuming a washing machine runs on a 86x88 derivate
b) a phone as a smart phone as many people have has more computing power than the 1990s Cray super computers

Or looking at the time when the Apollo program was running: a phone has more computing power than all the computers combined on the planet had at that time.

What kind of "primitive" computer they settled for is an interesting read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Comment Re:nope, also rust people (Score 1) 116

Well,

That "harsh definition" collapses when the "unsafe" code has no bugs.

The point is that the safe code is guaranteed to not have certain kinds of bugs.

So, we have either 10,000 unsafe lines of C, or 9995 safe lines if XYZ, and 5 lines where the XYZ code has to access real physical memory by using real physical memory addresses.

And that would usually be the "registers" of the memory mapped device for which it is the driver.

Slashdot Top Deals

This place just isn't big enough for all of us. We've got to find a way off this planet.

Working...