1
I AM relieved by the lack of a Nazi space fortress as well.
Posted by: Mauser at Thu Aug 6 07:12:55 2015 (TJ7ih)
2
I dunno man, that black spot in the Northwestern quadrant has me worried.
Also...IS that the Northwestern quadrant? I mean the moon's tidally locked so do we reverse the far side or what?
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Aug 6 11:09:20 2015 (ohzj1)
I watch this happening over and over and I imaging to myself the moon stopping in the middle and exploding like it was hit by a beam from the death star.
I suspect there is much about the Brickmuppet's life that he has not yet shared with his readers. As Arthur Conan Doyle once said, it is "a story for which the world is not yet prepared."
Posted by: Siergen at Fri Aug 7 21:37:55 2015 (4pDXl)
Yeah, there's been a LOT of perfunctory posting recently.
As "blog" theoretically means Biographical log, for those interested, there is a disquisition on the banal reasons for this extended programming anomaly below the fold.
As compensation, here, courtesy of GATE, (this season's surprisingly enjoyable and intelligent fantasy) is Tuka, Chuka or possibly Tsuka.
However her name is transliterated, the art is by Otono Fei.
OK This is Neat
An old ad for the Seawolf amphibian variant that was aimed at military customers. I'm skeptical about the claim this you tuber made in the title, but I particularly like the boarding operation at 7:00 and "ninja mode" at 8:25.
1
I love Lakes, but knowing what I know now, I would prefer a Caravan on amphib floats.
Caravan is obviously a turboprop. If I'm reach enough to own and operate an airplane like that, I do not want to deal with pistons and avgas.
The payload is way better for Caravan. Duh.
It's easier to operate. Consider what it takes to dock a Seawolf or any other Lake in a marina. You basically can't do it, so it must be based on land.
It is possible that a Lake can take rougher seas, thanks to its higher free height (or what's proper English term for it - a "dead height"?). But personally I do not see it buying me a lot. If I have to feal with seas around Bahamas or, heaven forbid, Bermuda, I want a real flying boat. Heck, give me Be-200 in such case.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed Aug 5 23:03:41 2015 (RqRa5)
Post Title Goes In This Field: Remember, Post Titles Should Be Short, Only Two Or Three Words And Be Humorous If Appropriate And Possible, However, Above All They Should Be Relevant To The Topic Of The Associated Post. For Frack's Sake Don't Write A Whole Friccking Paragraph.AND DON'T FORGET THE POST TITLE! Thank You.Management.
How Much Will 150 Billion Dollars Buy?
Obviously, production and sales tax issues aside, one could purchase 150 billion of those sketchy Dollar Tree steaks. However, one would not be Iran, which is getting 150 billion in frozen assets freed up as part of the deal to...ummm....slow their acquisition of nukes.
That is a hell of a lot of planes. It's an especially large number of tankers, though if they are serious about power projection 4 fighters per tanker is not unrealistic...it just means the Iranians have given a lot of thought to logistics and other non-flashy assets an air-force needs.
The cost estimates come from Wikipedia and Global security and are WAGs only that don't take into account associated ordinance purchases, training or fuel costs. However, 18.5 billion leaves a lot of wiggle room for these and other pointy, sharp things before 150 billion is reached and its not like the 150 billion is their budget...it's extra.
A few things about this story.
Iran can't actually take delivery for a few years under the terms of the agreement and it's likely that most of the planes couldn't be built /delivered for some time anyway. However a chunk of the Chinese order (and possibly the Russian one as well) actually appears to be a preexisting order from 2007, which was frozen because of the sanctions, so its possible that some of the planes have been built and also conceivable that the ex-post facto nature of the arrangement could allow delivery sooner than normally allowed. That is unclear, but the deal is so full of unpleasantness that it is not beyond the realm of possibility.
This story itself is thinly sourced. It has popped up in a couple of places, but it seems to always refer back to the DEBKA story or a Wall Street Journal article currently behind a paywall. However, It is well within Iran's financial means and similar numbers of planes were being ordered in 2007 so it is very plausible.
1
Most international arms dealing country actually don't like dealing with Iran due to their propensity of not paying their bills (this is even without sanction). Don't read too much into it. Iran have the habit of making headline screaming deals and then the deal fall apart 2-3 years down the line when their counterpart realize that they're not getting paid.
Posted by: BigFire at Thu Aug 6 08:16:54 2015 (pNmmq)
Compounding these problems is the fact that Microsoft can't count. This is either the thirteenth or the seventeenth edition of Windows depending on how one counts. Neither of those numbers is equal to 10.
It get's worse. As we all remember, following the new numbering system adopted after Vista, the last edition was Eight which means that in REALITY, we're discussing...
All of Microsoft's desperate obfuscations cannot save them from mockery by anonymous Touhou fans.
Back when I was working, when I was a senior engineer, I used to do a lot of interviewing. Coming up with reasonable questions is a pain, and one I used was "What is the most useless error message you've ever seen?"
My own answer was "Syntax error", a common error message from early compilers. Someone did better though: it was an error message from the first PC BIOS: "Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue."
But I do believe that your picture, if genuine, has topped them all.
2
Microsoft Basic on the TRS-80 Model 1 Level 1 had only three error messages: What?, How?, and Sorry.
But that machine had 4K each of ROM and RAM, so they had an excuse. Not so much these days.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wed Aug 5 02:16:13 2015 (PiXy!)
3
Hrm. Wikipedia says that Level 1 Basic was Tiny Basic plus changes by Radio Shack themselves, not Microsoft. Microsoft wrote Level 2 Basic for them later.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wed Aug 5 02:28:40 2015 (PiXy!)
4
I think those old PS/1 Keyboards were hot-pluggable, so that error message made a certain amount of sense. Plug in the Keyboard and press F1.
It does come in handy to still have wired keyboards and mice around. When I was rebuilding Himawari (Avoid Seagate drives) many things, even my BIOS could read my wireless USB Keyboard. Except the screen at the beginning of CHKDSK. Unless I wanted to sit through ANOTHER 8 hours while it failed, I have to have a keyboard I could plug in to kit a key to abort. (Likewise, an early version of the Seagate utility on a bootable CD couldn't read the wireless mouse.)
Posted by: Mauser at Wed Aug 5 05:12:45 2015 (TJ7ih)
Completely unconfirmed scuttlebut sourced to people who have claimed they talked to Rooster Teeth employees is that the third volume of RWBY will NOT premiere at RTX this year but that it is tentatively scheduled for late fall or early winter.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan—Six leading figures of the Pakistani Taliban pledged allegiance to the terror group ISIS, one of them claimed in an audio message released Tuesday.
(There is no word on their position regarding Lion hunting.)
However, the possibility of Pakistan straight up using their atomic weapons in a war is nontrivial. A lethal 12 hour long gunfight in an Indian border town has thrown tinder on the hot-plate that is India and Pakistan's relationship. This despite the fact that no lions were harmed during the incident.
Conditions are ripe for a crisis in this strained environment, even more so if a terrorist attack on Indian soil—such as Monday’s—is traced back to extremist groups supported by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). These rising tensions make crisis management more difficult and increase the risk of a conflict with nuclear dimensions.
Pakistan and India have been to war several times and Pakistan's statement that they consider battlefield nuclear weapons to be legitimate equalizers should certainly give one pause since once nukes start popping off all in a conflict where both sides have them, all sorts of nastiness is likely to ensue.
Here is an estimate of the soot cloud that would be generated by 100 nuclear weapons of 15 kiloton yield going off over cities.
The scale on the bottom measures reduction in watts per square meter.
These estimates tend to lean towards the pessimistic, however, this study assumes blast yields somewhere between approximately one half and one quarter those of the underground tests the countries have conducted and since both countries had stockpiles of around 100 weapons in 2011 (and have been building them up since) the number of blasts modeled is perhaps half what one would see in a real war. It concludes that growing seasons would be reduced between 10 days and a month in many parts of the world.
Smoke emissions of 100 lowyield urban explosions in a regional nuclear conflict would generate substantial globalscale climate anomalies, although not as large as in previous "nuclear winterâ€scenarios for a full-scale war (11, 12). However, indirect effects on surface land temperatures, precipitation rates, and growing season lengths (see figure, page1225) would be likely to degrade agricultural productivity to an extent that historically has led to famines in Africa, India, and Japan after the 1783 1784 Laki eruption (13) or in the northeastern United States and Europe after the Tambora eruption of 1815
This does not include estimates of ozone layer depletion which might persist for as much as 5 years. These models should be taken with a grain of salt of course, but it is apparent that if India and Pakistan go at it full on it would cause problems worldwide.
There has been little coverage of the deteriorating situation between the two nations in the U.S. media which is remarkable given that many of the hypothetically targeted cities in the studies contain zoos, which in turn might contain....lions.
Fortunately, no negative impact upon any lions is considered imminent, hence the lack of interest by the media.
Ukranian 'rebels' are reportedly building a dirty bomb, ie: a conventional explosive laced with radioactive substances to increase its lethality, or at least fear inducing effect. Like everything coming out of the confused region this should be treated with some skepticism, especially since the media has determined that it does not merit extensive coverage despite the fact that, if true it would be an obvious threat to the proud people eating lions of Kiev.
1
With respect to the scale on the map: Doesn't earth, in the daylight, get something on the order of 500-1000 W/m^2? (I know it's 1000 W/m^2 in orbit above the atmosphere) Would a 0.01 W/m^2 haze layer be noticeable without instruments?
(Obviously better not to have that happen than have it happen, but it seems to me that the main effects of nuclear weapons that need to be worried about are very much in the target area. i.e. The world won't be turning into a cinder: The targets will be turning into a cinder, and we can't really expect western handwringing over the end of the world to deter other countries (much less crazy ones like NK or Pakistan.).)
Posted by: EccentricOrbit at Mon Aug 3 07:14:44 2015 (GtPd7)
2
PS: Your CAPTCHA seems to be stuck on asking the same question over and over.
Posted by: EccentricOrbit at Mon Aug 3 07:15:41 2015 (GtPd7)
Doesn't earth, in the daylight, get something on the order of 500-1000 W/m^2? (I know it's 1000 W/m^2 in orbit above the atmosphere) Would a 0.01 W/m^2 haze layer be noticeable without instruments?
I honestly don't know. I doubt that 0.01 would register against Chinese factory emissions, but I think 0.1 (which also appears in places on the.gif) might be relevant.
The study has the exchange take place in late winter early spring, which is bad for the northern hemisphere since even a tiny reduction in wattage to the surface would reduce snowmelt and warming, so, the timing is probably worst case. There is some affect in the southern hemisphere as well.
I suspect these nuclear winter scenarios are sexed up, a bit but the fact that the number of and yield of the bombs was so minimalist for a full war between the two countries. (I'd figure 150-200 detonations of 40-100 kilotons) that the low estimates might correct for any oversestimation in effects.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Mon Aug 3 07:39:32 2015 (1zM3A)
Even if the captcha isn't cycling, for the time being it's still enough to exclude all the spambots.
Jim Dunnigan's "Quick and Dirty Guide to War" is excellent and has been updated several times since it came out. It makes for chilling reading.
When it was originally written (1990?) it said the most likely place for a nuclear exchange was between India and Pakistan, following this scenario:
A new serious border war breaks out between the two nations, and India's military prevails. Indian military units enter Pakistan and head for the major cities. Pakistan then uses nukes in its own territory to stop the Indian invasion.
India then bombs Pakistan in retaliation and it eventually escalates to a city-swapping duel.
I can't really argue with that scenario; it makes too much sense to me. And until Iran completes its arsenal and makes good on its threat to nuke Israel, this scenario still seems like the highest probability of nuclear war on the planet.
That Comment Problem
I've been informed that people not logged into Mee.nu have been getting the following message when they attempt to comment:
COMMENT REJECTED BY AKISMET
I inquired to Pixy as to why my commentors were being harassed by what appeared to be an obscure Egyptian god.
Pixy informed me that he was able to acquire the services of the Egyptian god of what translates very loosely as spam busting for a remarkably reasonable rate.
Unfortunately, this had unforeseen consequences as the contract required that all mee.nu users be registered as "Members of the Temple" and those who are not member be registered as "Unaffiliated". Fortunately, none of our commentors were sent to Duat before the issue was discovered (except for Wonderduck...He got better).
Pixy has made arrangements so that non-menuvians can comment by presenting offerings of hieroglyphics via captcha. Note that since Egyptian gods have not been in the deity business since the abdication of Nectanebo the second, and in any event, as this is "payment" for admission to a secular web service, it is not actually considered apostay.
Anyway...The comments should be fixed and we have captcha now.
Art by Abusoru, who, to the best of our knowledge, has at no point denied this is a representation of Akismet...and that's good enough for us.
1
Indeed we do have captcha. I like this kind better than the distorted text kind, and I like it a lot better than the "echo back the advertising motto" kind.
Hobby Space News of the commercial space industry A Babe In The Universe Rather Eclectic Cosmology Encyclopedia Astronautica Superb spacecraft resource The Unwanted Blog Scott Lowther blogs about forgotten aerospace projects and sells amazingly informative articles on the same. Also, there are cats. Transterrestrial Musings Commentary on Infinity...and beyond! Colony WorldsSpace colonization news! The Alternate Energy Blog It's a blog about alternate energy (DUH!) Next Big Future Brian Wang: Tracking our progress to the FUTURE. Nuclear Green Charles Barton, who seems to be either a cool curmudgeon, or a rational hippy, talks about energy policy and the terrible environmental consequences of not going nuclear Energy From Thorium Focuses on the merits of thorium cycle nuclear reactors WizBang Current events commentary...with a wiz and a bang The Gates of Vienna Tenaciously studying a very old war The Anchoress insightful blogging, presumably from the catacombs Murdoc Online"Howling Mad Murdoc" has a millblog...golly! EaglespeakMaritime security matters Commander Salamander Fullbore blackshoe blogging! Belmont Club Richard Fernandez blogs on current events BaldilocksUnderstated and interesting blog on current events The Dissident Frogman French bi-lingual current events blog The "Moderate" VoiceI don't think that word means what they think it does....but this lefty blog is a worthy read nonetheless. Meryl Yourish News, Jews and Meryls' Views Classical Values Eric Scheie blogs about the culture war and its incompatibility with our republic. Jerry Pournell: Chaos ManorOne of Science fictions greats blogs on futurism, current events, technology and wisdom A Distant Soil The website of Colleen Dorans' superb fantasy comic, includes a blog focused on the comic industry, creator issues and human rights. John C. Wright The Sci-Fi/ Fantasy writer muses on a wide range of topics. Now Read This! The founder of the UK Comics Creators Guild blogs on comics past and present. The Rambling Rebuilder Charity, relief work, roleplaying games Rats NestThe Art and rantings of Vince Riley Gorilla Daze Allan Harvey, UK based cartoonist and comics historian has a comicophillic blog! Pulpjunkie Tim Driscoll reviews old movies, silents and talkies, classics and clunkers. Suburban Banshee Just like a suburban Leprechaun....but taller, more dangerous and a certified genius. Satharn's Musings Through TimeThe Crazy Catlady of The Barony of Tir Ysgithr アニ・ノート(Ani-Nouto) Thoughtful, curmudgeonly, otakuism that pulls no punches and suffers no fools. Chizumatic Stephen Den Beste analyzes anime...with a microscope, a slide rule and a tricorder. Wonderduck Anime, Formula One Racing, Sad Girls in Snow...Duck Triumphalism Beta Waffle What will likely be the most thoroughly tested waffle evah! Zoopraxiscope Too In this thrilling sequel to Zoopraxiscope, Don, Middle American Man of Mystery, keeps tabs on anime, orchids, and absurdities. Mahou Meido MeganekkoUbu blogs on Anime, computer games and other non-vital interests Twentysided More geekery than you can shake a stick at Shoplifting in the Marketplace of Ideas Sounds like Plaigarism...but isn't Ambient IronyAll Meenuvians Praise the lathe of the maker! Hail Pixy!!