JB0

Depends who you ask. Majority opinion seems to be that the larger models are more reliable, though. (I wouldn't be surprised, given there's precious little room in the slimline for heatsinks or fans). 315843[/snapback] I have em both, they behave the same. I'd say the slim one is easier to drop or knock off of something as its light and small, that is why people think it isn't built as well. 316505[/snapback] Yah. I can see arguments either way, really. Long-term, the slimline should have a more reliable drive mech. One moving part to wear out instead of 3(raising/lowering the mech and opening/closing the tray are elminated, so you only have to worry about the laser tracking). But the older models should cool better. May be offset by more efficient chips, though. Less heat to start with. 316558[/snapback] yeah but who has these things long term... As soon as the PS3 comes out, I am going to can both my PS2s. 316591[/snapback] Me, for one. PS2 hasn't replaced the PS1 because, among other things, it isn't 100% compatible. There's slight glitches here and there, and exacerbations of other glitches, resulting in some game-crash issues. Are they uncommon? Sure. But they're there. And not everyone wants a PS3. Particularly if Kutaragi's ramblings about it being not affordable for households are accurate.

With all due respect, Isamu never even TOUCHED the Ghost. And Guld managed to kamikaze the ghost while his organs were being turned to jello by the intense g-forces of matching the maneuvers of a machine with no fleshy bits to damage. Just maintaining focus under those conditions would be near-impossible, much less fighting effectively. Guld managed to do both. As far as outlcassed and outpiloted... The way I recall things Guld was winning when they called a truce on Earth.

Depends who you ask. Majority opinion seems to be that the larger models are more reliable, though. (I wouldn't be surprised, given there's precious little room in the slimline for heatsinks or fans). 315843[/snapback] I have em both, they behave the same. I'd say the slim one is easier to drop or knock off of something as its light and small, that is why people think it isn't built as well. 316505[/snapback] Yah. I can see arguments either way, really. Long-term, the slimline should have a more reliable drive mech. One moving part to wear out instead of 3(raising/lowering the mech and opening/closing the tray are elminated, so you only have to worry about the laser tracking). But the older models should cool better. May be offset by more efficient chips, though. Less heat to start with.

rockets require MASSIVE amounts of fuel- getting into orbit is always going to require a lot of energy- doing it electrically may very well be safer than using explosive chemicals. Its easier to generate a flaming explosion than electricity, though. And I don't believe railguns are really very efficient devices(may be mistaken). That's an interesting point- one I'd not really thought about when thinking of rail-based launch systems. that sounds like a surmountable problem though. It may be surmountable. But you add a lot of mass for the EM shielding. Which in turn adds a lot of energy needed for an already power-hungry system. :'(

Maybe they're doing it that way on purpose? Trying to set a standard? It would be a pretty low tactic, could it be possible? 315622[/snapback] Quite likely, actually. A lot of people in the position to make the laws haven't quite gotten over the "games are for kids" attitude. Of course, the fact that the ratrings board is complaining about it indicates that at least some of them rcognize the fact. 315630[/snapback] For the record, the original Phantasmagoria by Sierra was banned outright from ever entering here (Australia) due to content. Duke Nukem 3D was withheld until the "adult" content was put behind a block that adults could access by paying money and getting a "code". GTA 3 was on sale here for 6 months until it's classification was revoked, and it was banned from sale until the game removed the visuals for whenever you recieved health from prositutues. Once that was done, it was re-released with MA-15+ however the content was still in the game.. you just had to unlock it with a code. What I'm reading says Duke Nukem was originally submitted with "adult mode" totally disabled, and there were hacks made to re-enable it. The publisher later submitted and got an unaltered version rated. And GTA3 was actually put out on shelves before it was rated. Take2 ASSUMED that it would get the same rating as GTA and GTA2, so when it was banned, they were left in deep poo. So that's the latest update on that, I suppose

Millia IS sexy. You're just a xenophobe.

Aww, c'mon. Bootleg translations are fun.

Why anyone would nominate a black rectangular prism with a red dot on the side for a "babe" of any sort is beyond me. Unless... YOU'VE BEEN LISTENING TO THE CD! SHE BRAINWASHED YOU!

HEIL FOCKER!

Appears I have a suitor. NYAHAHAHA! *uploads full picture of grown-up Komillia, in all its crappy low-res glory*

I think its that he doesn't like valkgirls.

Ah, but in prison you don't propose after successfully stopping the shanking. ... Now MAX, he had some issues. That or a SERIOUS overabundance of hormones. It's pretty much exactly 30cm to a foot. *checks* Yup, the liner notes say 71. NEver noticed that before. Macross Compendium says 171, however. Yah. I think he loses a foot and a half with a haircut, though...

As a devout mechanical pencil user, I have to say... They still leave graphite powder behind. And you can break the lead fairly easily. So you've eliminated wood shavings and eraser turds, but not all debris. The ballpoint pen is the only truly clean writing utensil that I know of. And it has to be pressurized to work in space. Fisher's "space pen" went a few steps beyond what was needed for the task by making the ink so versatile. But that may have been a side effect of making it not spray out when the ball wasn't rolling. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle wrote a book called Footfall where space elephants attack the Earth ( Yeah I know, nutty plot) Anyway the humans on Earth launch and attack cruiser thats build on like a giant iron plate of metal. And underneath it they detonate nukes in progressive stages to get the thing into orbit. Obviously they were in a dire situation and the environmental fallout was less of a worry due to the killer elephants, however I read somewhere that the theory in practice was sound. That you wouldn't have to worry about weight at all. You just keeping detonating nukes under that plate. Maybe one of the guys who read the book more recently than me, or one of the guys who is better at math/physics could tell me Niven and Pournelle were full of it, or if that was a viable though toxic way into space. It's viable, and not even that dirty. Not very efficient, though. The third law of motion doesn't care whare the force comes from, just that it exists. The US government was actually looking into atomic rockets before nukes became a bad thing. Change the nukes out for chemical explosives and confine them in a chamber to focus and direct the force of the explosion and you've got... a rocket engine. Fallout is really only an issue if you're blowing the bombs up on the ground, as the vast majority of it is irradiated dirt. The amount of material the bomb itself sheds is negligible. Moreso if you're using fusion instead of fission. An airburst with a fusion weapon can be considered clean. *sighs* Metal Gear Solid did NOT invent the rail gun. And hell, Rex's rail gun wasn't even capable of intercontinental firing, if you paid attention to the game. Much less orbital insertion. You airdrop a Metal Gear into enemy territory, or march it in from a neighboring US-controlled facility, and fire the rail gun from there. The strategy hasn't changed with time, only the delivery mechanism. The first 3 Metal Gears* fired conventional missiles with rocket engines, Rex fired thrusterless warheads with a radar-absorbant shell. That was the only signifigant diffrence. *GBColor's Metal Gear: Ghost Babel{known in the USA as Metal Gear Solid, because Konami likes to confuse people} added another mech to the family tree between the Mk2 and Rex. A. Rail guns requires MASSIVE amounts of electricity. B. You'll quite likely fry any electronics you try to send up with a rail gun due to the EMP generated in the barrel.

You are an M7 fan, YOU are the homosexual. *I should note that I hate using the word "homosexual" as an insult. It just fit as a response here. 316255[/snapback] OMGWTFGNO!!!! Millia didn't have any angst issues. ... Well, aside from the whole "I'M GONNA KILL YOU BECAUSE YOU BEAT ME AT VIDEO GAMES!" thing. That was probably the most screwed-up courtship in history.

That could be argued as a test, I suppose. Wasn't what I was thinking of, though. 316249[/snapback] I know, but trying to make sense out of M7 is like trying to argue Michael Jackson's case for adopting children. 316251[/snapback] *chuckles*

That could be argued as a test, I suppose. Wasn't what I was thinking of, though.

A. I know that. It's some kind ramjet on steroids. B. Anyone know where I can find any info on that concept. It seemed like an interesting one, but I don't know what that idea is called. 316174[/snapback] Sorry, it sounded like you were presenting scramjet as the name of the ship. Anyways... a scramjet is just a high-speed variant of the ramjet. It burns in faster environments than a standard ramjet does. Part of the reason it was dropped may have been that it's not a single-engine atmospheric solution. Ramjets and scramjets don't work in a subsonic environment, necessitating the addition of a conventional jet engine to get them past mach 1 before they're ignited. Afraid I dunno where to find any info on the concept vehicle. ... Random google search for scramjet shuttle replacement gives me this... http://www.csa.com/hottopics/newshuttle/overview.php Which mentions a shuttle replacement named the X-33.

Fact: Everyone that didn't vote for Millia is a homosexual. Runners-up are Vanessa and Misa.

You forgot that the protoculture ruins in Macross 7 would only open if there was proof that the zentradi had been sucessfully reintegrated into protoculture society(or something remarkably close to the protoculture, like humans). But that may have been an intentional omission as opposed to an oversight on your part.

Not really. Neither of the shuttles we've lost died due to age. One was a rocket being flown in an out-of-spec environment that failed to operate properly(hence why it wasn't spec'ed for that weather). The other was a chunk of foam that hit the heat shield at a relatve velocity of something like mach 20 and ripped a hole right through it. Stopping that chunk of foam would've been a major accomplishment for high-quality tank armor, never mind a heat shield that was never intended to take impacts at all. A. Scramjet is a kind of engine, not a ship. B. Like all the other replacement concepts, it got scrapped at one point or another.

I see. So you're saying that the US can print lots of bills, trade them for natural resources, and everyone wins? Not quite. But to a degree. Yes, they would be. Of course, we have little companies like Intel ensuring we've got something worth trading for. Not really. Economics = witchcraft.

Actually, the pen was freely developed by an independent company. And was developed to solve major problems with penccil shavings and eraser turds in a 0G environment. Rather than staying in teh sharpener, or falling politely to the floor, they drift through the air, until they A. are inhaled, B. get stuck in someone's sye, or C. drift into electrical parts and cause a short. That's why Russia and NASA BOTH bought space pens once they were available. The average item often doesn't work in space. Except only one fork is properly equipped to keep the spagetthi from floating off it between your plate and mouth. For that matter, only one plate is properly equipped to keep spagetthi on it. ... Actually, I think spaghetti in and of itself is not available in space. And underthinking it results in a lot of problems because you neglect to consider that things don't alway swork the same once you remove gravity. Has your GameBoy undergone a decade of testing to ensure long-term reliability in extreme environments including, but not limited to, rapid temperature shifts and irradiation? Is your home theater system quadruple-redundant so that if there's a catastrophic failure it continues to function normally? Is EITHER device something you would trust with your life? If you cannot answer yes to all three of the above, than the shuttle computer is superior to whatever it's being compared to for the task at hand. Furthermore, the shuttle computer has more than enough power to do EVERYTHING IT NEEDS TO DO. You do not upgrade a computer merely because you can. You upgrade because you NEED MORE POWER THAN YOU HAVE. Could they be running quad dual-core Opterons with the latest and greatest 64-bit OS in the shuttle? Sure. Would they use even a fraction of the available power? Not a chance. Are the odds good that the system could fail during a mission, leaving the crew up the proverbial creek? You bet your ass they are.

The hell? We haven't been on the gold standard for decades, at least. Fact: In the modern world, MONEY HAS NO ACTUAL VALUE. IT REPRESENTS NOTHING. That's why there's exchange rates. Because the only "value" it has is the ability to buy products in the nation that issued it. And that only works because the nation that issued a given currency passed laws making said currency "legal tender for all debts public and private." Which it had to do because no one wanted to take the non-gold-standard money. The modern dollar/peso/yen/whatever is little more than monopoly money, the only REAL diffrences being the quality of the paper used and who owns the presses.

I grant the sizing is about right on the first one, but there's no actual letters there.

Purely friction. Well... you're still within the atmosphere well after the balloon ceases to be an effective lift device. Remember, the balloon only lifts because helium is less dense than air, not because it is a magical negative-gravity source. As you get higher, the air gets thinner. Eventually it's the same desnity as the helium balloon. And then your balloon starts expanding, and eventually pops. And there's not a whole lot of lift there to start with. Balloons only work with relatively light objects. Of couse, going up isn't the fun part. It's coming down that matters, and no balloon in the world is gonna help that.