The Physics of Space Battles

From the article:

“Enemies could come at your ship from any direction in space, which means that you would want to react, strike, and counterattack in any direction. So, you would either have to mount weaponry all around your starfighter, put the weapons on gimbals so that they could rapidly point in any direction, or make the fighter maneuverable enough that it could rapidly point in any direction. Gimbals would be a bad option, because they would introduce points of increased vulnerability, unless they could be very well-armored. I conclude that the big ships would have many weapons, pointed in many directions; the small ships would have a few weapons, with the main weapon systems pointed in one direction.”

Dubious Dubai…

Interesting article on the construction of buildings in Dubai that have been scrapped due to the economy…

Mysterious light above Norway

Wow.

source:

View from the top of the tallest building in the world…

o_O

The History of the Internet

Pretty cool article.

Digital Distraction Hierarchy

DIY Rail Gun

I want to build one!

Mythbusters lights 1,000,000 match heads at once

The boy who heard too much

 

“John Defanno” was actually a 15-year-old boy named Matthew Weigman — a fat, lonely blind kid who lived with his mom in a working-class neighborhood of East Boston. In person, Weigman was a shy and awkward teenager with a shaved head who spent his days holed up in his room, often talking for up to 20 hours a day on free telephone chat lines. On the phone, he became “Lil’ Hacker,” the most skilled member of a small band of telephone pranksters known as “phreaks.” To punish Danielle, who had pissed him off on a chat line, Weigman had phoned 911 and posed as a psycho, rigging his caller ID to make it look like the emergency call was coming from inside Danielle’s home. It’s a trick known as “swatting” — mobilizing SWAT teams to exact revenge on your enemies — and phreakers like Weigman have used it to trigger some 200 false raids in dozens of cities nationwide.

“When I was a kid, a prank was calling in a pizza to a neighbor’s house,” says Kevin Kolbye, an FBI assistant special agent in charge who has investigated the phreaks. “Today it’s this.”

more here:

 

There is some strong language in there, but otherwise well worth the read.

First Flapping, Two-Winged Aircraft Takes Flight

 

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