>> ^Ickster:

Technological questions aside, the economics will likely never work for scheduled flights. Concorde was scrapped because it was a money loser, not because it didn't work. I don't see anything here that suggests a ticket on this thing wouldn't be astronomically expensive.


Actually this is wrong. The Concorde did lose money at first, but then they did a survey asking people how much they thought a ticket from NYC to London on the Concorde would cost, and the results of the survey was that everyone thought it was more expensive than they were actually charging. So then they decided to charge a lot more for the tickets and market it as a "luxury" flight. This gimmick was successful - it became more profitable than any other division of BA.

It was retired after the famous crash while taking off in France. Even though that was it's only crash, after long investigation, and decline in first class passengers, they never brought it back.

I'm glad that many of them made it to museums, because the Concorde was a phenomenal piece of engineering.

I have no idea how well this Reaction Engine will work, but I hope to see it succeed.

Technological questions aside, the economics will likely never work for scheduled flights. Concorde was scrapped because it was a money loser, not because it didn't work. I don't see anything here that suggests a ticket on this thing wouldn't be astronomically expensive.

>> ^lv_hunter:

Looks like a scrap yard?


It's most likely Alang, a shipbreaking town in India. Old ships are driven ashore during high tide, then systematically dismantled for scrap. The two partially dismantled hulks beside it provide further evidence that this was an intentional beaching.

That's no lady driver...

>> ^shang:

Female Captains.... thinking they can parallel park.


...and no accident.

>> ^lv_hunter:

Looks like a scrap yard?

Looks like a scrap yard?

I agree. Bubba Feet is a terrible bounty hunter! If you're looking at nothing by the movies--the things that aren't just Bubba Feet fanfic--the only things he successfully does are to not get choked by Vader and to see the aluminum falcon in a mess of scrap metal.

And if it's something like spaghetti, now it burns inside those little grooves and you have to scrap out each one to try to keep it from sticking.

>> ^Payback:

>> ^spoco2:
We just bought a 2 year old Kia Grand Carnival (the Sedona in America), replacing our old 2002 Carnival that had it's engine die after a tiny bloody plastic T joint snapped causing the radiator water to spew onto the road instead of around the engine to cool it. This resulted in an engine that overheated very quickly and a system that was de-pressurised, and apparently not really able to be re-pressurised (don't tell me it could, I don't want to know that it was actually a cheap fix when we're told the engine was cactus... don't want to know we needlessly just paid out a chunk of money on a new car that we didn't need to).
Aaaanyway.
When I was looking into whether the engines in the new Carnivals are any good (apparently they are, Hyundai Lambda engines made in the US of A), I noticed they made a big deal on the wikipedia page about it having a timing CHAIN rather than belt, and wondered why this was a big thing.
Now I know <img class="smiley" src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/tongue.gif">

Here is me, NOT telling you it was a cheap fix, even if the engine seized from overheating after you ignored the "check engine" warning light. I also won't tell you that if it didn't come to a screeching, banging, violent halt, you probably could have "nursed" it home/to mechanic by waiting until it cooled down.
No sir, I REFUSE to tell you any of that.
I will tell you that if the reason it couldn't be pressurized was "a warped cylinder head" then ya, the engine is boned, but I'll avoid saying it would be about $2500 for a motor out of a auto wrecker (junk yard, used parts lot, etc) or even around $300 for a new cylinder head.


Well that's good to know (sort of). My wife was driving it at the time, and the check engine didn't come on, but it did come to a screeching, banging halt, with steam pouring out of the engine bay. To get an engine from one of these old ones rebuilt is around $4K (Australian), and that's about all the 2002 carnival is worth now, no-one wants to touch them. There's no point getting a 2nd hand engine from anywhere as there's not many to begin with, and they're just not reliable enough to spend the money on anyway.

So it was either a scrap yard for $500, or a trade in for $600. We had to be able to drive it in. Limped it in (still no check engine light on), handed it over, bid them good luck with it. We had told them the engine had blown up, but they were 'well, if you can drive it in, we'll give you $600 for it'. So it's not like we lied to them about the condition of the car. They'll scrap it for parts anyway.

>> ^Jinx:

also, survivors of realllly long falls typically hit the ground lying flat (apparently). You know, so all the bones in your legs don't suddenly end up trying to occupy the same space as your liver, intestines, lungs, heart...all that shit that kinda keeps you alive basically.
I was also told once that even in short falls often somebody who is drunk or unconscious comes away with less injuries than somebody who is alert and awake, altho I think on balance I'd rather break and arm or a wrist than fall on my head.


Watched a show documenting a tornado sucking a guy out of his house and him surviving being throw like a mile or two away with bruises and scraps, no broken bones that I recall and no major injuries. Supposedly he walked home.

Their answer for him surviving was that he was knocked out as soon as the tornado got a hold of him, something in the house bashed him in the head and knocked him out or whatever.

Now their reason for him being basically unharmed is that because he was young and knocked out, his tendons and musculature weren't holding his bones rigid like you would when you fell by instinct. And since he was young his bones had flexibility, like bones are meant to, they will flex instead of break when there's nothing holding them rigid or fixed.

So he hit and rolled and rolled but because he was out cold he never reacted to the force and tried to control yourself by holding yourself rigid and trying to grab or hold to stop yourself.

So, I'd say what you've heard is probably true. And I don't think anyone would be able to survive unscathed like that guy did if they were alert when it happened...because you would react to the pain and force of the blows...especially if you were unable to see due to the crap blowing around.

One God? Er, which one would that be? 21 major religions exist today -not counting the hundreds that have been scrapped- so who has the "proof" that theirs is the "true" god? How anyone, not brainwashed from birth or on death row, can believe in such an obviously man made concept of god is beyond rational, free thinking, logical, and intelligent humans. We want to live in the 21st century and not be taken back to the bronze age.

>> ^MonkeySpank:

The entire concept of selling you a product with a verbiage that your personal copy/account can become obsolete any time Blizzard feels like you have broken the EULA seems draconian to me. I am surprised there hasn't been a class action against these MMO firms. If I want to sell my WOW account, I don't see why Blizzard needs to be involved. Last time I sold my car, I didn't recall the manufacturer canceling the warranty or reprocessing the car. Activision/Blizzard and EA have some sordid lawyers, and they'll keep on pushing micro-transactions while barring the rightful owners of the purchased product from doing the same. Assholes!


I don't know. Look at it like this. You go to Chuck E. Cheese and buy 50 bucks worth of tokens. First thing you do is go over to the skeet shoot and climb up the ramp and start dropping the balls in by hand so you always get max points.

Chuck E Cheese has obvious rules you have to play by, like "don't climb on stuff that shouldn't be climbed on" and the general way to play a game. They can kick you out and tell you to never come back and now you have a handful of tickets and tokens that are only good there at Chuck E Cheese.


Blizzard is on the hook for storing and preserving the integrity of their game. Versus with a car, the manufacturers have no obligation to your vehicle....you have to maintain it, register it, etc. Blizzard does all of that because by the very nature of the MMO, without it you wouldn't have a game worth playing. Everyone would be cheating, modifying their characters, creating new ones from scrap and generally making any mechanics of the game worthless beyond maximum damage, maximum run speed, and GM locked commands. You could do anything if they didn't preserve the character content and reign in abuse. Plus your stuff only has value because they do this. And they do this because without it, the game would be shit.

I mean I guess if you setup your own blizzard server and maintained the game integrity, you could make an argument that you should be able to sell things without their stopping you. Since you are on the hook for whatever trouble it causes on your server....but otherwise you are making them responsible for the person you sell it to, plus you both hold them responsible for making access to these characters possible. And you hold them responsible for making sure their fraud system doesn't detect someone across the world now logging into your accounts.....etc etc. All for free. Hell they don't even move a character to another server for free..they charge stupid money for that kind of stuff.

FYI: http://www.darkhorizons.com/news/23388/syfy-partly-scraps-blood-chrome

http://www.superherohype.com/news/articles/169933-the-first-trailer-for-battlestar-galactica-blood-a-chrome has a mirror too.

>> ^rychan:

Impressive.
I'm especially amazed by the skip that they mostly skip over -- going from a soup of scrap metal which must contain huge amounts of impurities to a soup of stainless steel with precise makeup. Is there some sort of density based filtering?


That's the part where they add the blood of the innocents to make the metal pure.

Impressive.

I'm especially amazed by the skip that they mostly skip over -- going from a soup of scrap metal which must contain huge amounts of impurities to a soup of stainless steel with precise makeup. Is there some sort of density based filtering?