sirenoremac

Your profile says you are near El Paso. If you're planning to make your jump at skydive El Paso, contact me, and I'll help you get a hold of the dropzone etc. It's my home DZ and a very cool lottle place. If you wont be jumping there, disregard this message. Eric Cameron

bitter? I think it's just frustrating for a man with some serious education and authority in his field to have people on some internet forum srguing physics with him... I personally think it's funny, bu then, I'm not in his position :P

Nobody said inertia was a constant. However the inertia of any given body is constant. It is simply not a constant in the sense that C is a constant or pi is a constant. Just like mass, it remains constant for any given body. That is, assuming the body isn't intrinsically changing, as in gaining mass or losing mass.

My point was that it would cancel in relating two objects. Just a technicality really. You could do it either way, but gravity is a constant that would be in the equation for both objects, so it can be cancelled.

your answer now is conceptually correct, but your first answer about inertia was plain wrong. Inertia is the inherent resistance of an object to change in motion, as you said. If gravity were a force, this would mean that two objects then two objects of different masses would accelerate at different rates even in a vacuum due to inertia. But gravity is an acceleration. Weight is a force that is determined by multiplying an objects mass with the accleration of the gravity close to the earth. Therefore, as an objects mass increases, the force acting "down" on it due to gravity also increases. Hence, objects fall at the same rate in a vacuum. Terminal velocity is related strictly to an objects mass (since gravity is usually constant it cancels out, and you just need mass and not weight), surface area, and coefficient of drag. Nowhere in there does inertia enter into anything. Again, dont try to make it more complicated than it is. You could put inertias into calculations for terminal velocity, but they would go away and have no effect.

The Source editing system is incredible, but poorly documented. Mostly the best way to learn it is to just screw around with things until it works. The flexibility of what you can do is amazing, and its also just flat out purty. I'm working on my first real map for it right now. All custome texturing etc. Should be pretty cool.

RAID 0 has exactly the same amount of error tolerance as a single drive. Well, actually exactly half since you have twice the amount of mechanical parts. Hence having a secondary standalone big drive for most storage. RAID 1 is just a waste of money unless you have a system that must always have access to its data (i.e. a mainframe server). If you have documents that you absolutely cannot lose, it's foolish to have them in a single location anyway. Backup, backup, backup. And there are many cheaper ways to back things up then a RAID 1 mirror. Striping is great for performance. Just dont use it for sensitive storage.

Yeah, absolutely get some good cooling. That looks like a nice system. The only thing I would reccomend, and I say this again, is to run a RAID with your SATAs. The Raptor will already be pretty fast, but if you RAID two of them, Windows will take about 2 seconds to boot. Of course, it's pricy. Also, the statement about 36 gigs not being enough is very true, but if I were you, I'd go for two 36 Raptors for a RAID and a big IDE for mass storage if you think you're going to need it. You can always add a bigger HDD later of course. That Motherboard is a greeat choice, and an excellent value. However... It's a socket 939. The Athlon 64 3400+ only comes in a socket 754. The 3500+ is socket 939. So either go with the 3500+, or find a different mobo. I would suggest the former, as that motherboard is just about to sexy to pass up. Good luck! Eric Cameron

For low-mid range PCs, Kingston value RAM works great, as long as you dont try to OC it. Corsair Twinx is however, great RAM for ultra high performance. I personally think Crucial Ballistix is better, even though it doesnt clock as well, because it has straight two timings. That will compensate for quite a bit of core speed, enough to make it better than XMS when clocked right. But you pay a premium for either of these, and its one of those things that 99% of users can do without. My recommendation for a fairly cheap system that will run any games out there? First, AMD chip. MUCH cheaper than P4's and IMO better. I'd reccomend an XP 2500+ Barton. A little bit older... but it OCs 90% of the time to 3200+ with no problem. And it's only about $85. Second MSI, ABIT, or Gigabyte Motherboard. I dont like ASUS. Good company with excellent service, but I have had more of their boards fail on me... ABIT or MSI are both good. Gigabyte is a little cheaper, and just as good, but the manuals are poorly translated, and you cannot get a hold of the company no matter how hard you try. Just get a mobo that fits a socket 462 chip and has the features you want (i.e. AGP slot, onboard SATA/RAID, etc) Third: Video card. This one is a bit of a tough call and really depends on waht you are willing to spend. You could grab yourself a Radeon 9800 Pro or GeForce FX5900 for around $200, and run any game out right now pretty darned well. Or you could settle with something a little less zippy, but still DirectX 9 capable like the 9600 or 5700. These can both be found for ~$100. Do not get anything before the 9000 Radeon or 5000 GeForce, or it will not be DirectX 9 capable. Of course you could always go for the gusto and grab a GeForce 6800 Ultra or Radeon X850 XT but these'll run you close to $500. RAM. Like I said, you probably wont be needing XMS or Ballistix or anything like that. Just get some DDR-3200 from a major company such as Crucial, Corsair, or Kingston. You will probably want to go with two 512 sticks, because it is frequently cheaper, and allows for some more room in later decisions, such as running dual channel. But a gig stick will give you more room to expand. Kep in mind that a lot of Motherboards cannot have a gig in each slot, but rather have a maximum that is less than 1 gig times the number of slots (i.e. 4 slots on the mobo, but can only have three gigs). Hard Drive. Find something in the 120 to 200 GB range that is priced well. Be sure that it is 7200 RPM, and has at least an 8MB cache. If you plan to run only one drive, then SATA will not benefit you much, and can in fact be destructive. SATA cables are prone to higher error rates than IDE cables. Of course if you want some real performance, and for a fairly modest price, you can get two identical SATA drives and run them in a RAID 0, if your mobo has an onboard SATA/RAID controller (you can also get SATA/RAID conteoller cards). If you're going to splurge on one area, do this. You will prbably see a bigger general performance increase from this than anything else (games wont run faster, but they will load faster). Brands are not a huge deal here. I personally like Hitachi drives, but everyone has their own opinion. Most major brands are excellent and all have their pros and cons. Now you said that you wanted a P4 system, and I listed an Athlon based system. I genuinely believe that the Athlon is a better processor than the P4. Intel does a great job at giving themselves an image of immense superiority. One of the ways they do this is by chargin more for their processors. For example, an Athlon 64 3400+ costs about $220. A Pentium 4 3.4 (E) costs about $300. The Athlon is a 64 bit chip, which means forwards compatibility, and is a better performer for almost everything, especially gaming. So please, dont fall victim to Intels marketing. Think about your processor choice, and make an informed decision. Then buy an Athlon . Also, definitely buy from Newegg.com It is far and away the best place to get computer parts. Excellent site, excellent service, excellent warranties, and above all, excellent prices. It's hard to beat them on any front. Good luck building your machine. If you want any more help feel free to PM me. Eric Cameron

The lecture will be held Thursday, February 3, at 3:35 p.m. in the Life Sciences building, room 111. Main Campus 3300 South federal Street Chicago, Illinois 60616-3793 312.567.3000 Eric Cameron

Hehe, its a small world. Eric Cameron

Yup, Josh is my older brother. Eric Cameron

Most likely this is Last Days, which is a Rock and-Roll movie. http://imdb.com/title/tt0403217/ Scant information, but sounds interesting, especially if Van Sant is doing it. Elephant is an incredible movie. Eric Cameron

quick patch-job, and the sexiness meter increases ten-fold!!!

I opened that first pic and said the same thing. Then my roommate looked over and gave me a really worried look. I sat there confused until I realized that I was looking at a picture of a man.

Made my first jump on my sixteenth birthday, along with my bro-in-law who had just celebrated his eighteenth birthday (not my bro-in-law at the time). Best. Sport. Ever.

Yeah, I know you didn't get your rating. I was just implying that somebody at my dropzone also just got their rating, and I am going to try to bum a ride. He hasn't done any students yet. crappy weather tc. no real vieoguys right now. I'm going to try to start., but... we'll see. peace.

Hehe. sweet. Mike just got his tandem rating too, Clint. I'm gonna get him to take me for a jump. Should be fun

Woaaahhh... I can't agree with that. I'm a licensed 17 year old, and I can't find many DZs that will let me jump. Actually the only place I've been at all recently was Elsinore, and they were not about to think about letting me jump once they noticed my age on the form (and I certainly did not draw attention to it). It's a tough, tough world for us minors... *sighs deeply*...

I'm reasonably ceratin that it is photoshopped. look at the shadow on the hangar in the background and the man standing by it (whose shadow you can't see). the direction it is being cast would suggest that the sun is overhead and to the right, while the shadow of the plane would need the sun to be to the left. however it is still possibly real, these shadows are close enough that it could just be the angle that the hangar is at, etc. The other clue that it may be photoshopped is the top edge of the plane, (see my photo). It's hard to tell zoomed out, but if you get a little closer it's kind of a blurry mask... still could just be a smudge if the photo was scanned or a number of other things. But these two things in tandem (no pun intended) have me relatively convinced that it's faked. The shadow of the plane would obviously be difficult to fake (since you wouldn't have it in a real photo, at least not as nice as it is) but not impossible, and it is pretty crisp compared to the rest of the photo. Still there is some doubt in my mind that it may be real. Anyway I'll stop babbling.

Hey Jim, One thing I've noticed one your landings (although I haven't seen your last few) is that you tend to keep your legs high on landing (sitting in the harness), instead of standing into the landing, which means you will have to exert a lot of effort to stand-up (which you do) because your CG is back and so is the lift of the canopy (kind of) immediately at touch down. If you straighten your legs, your landings will be much easier. The little things can really make a difference. You may have already rectified this in your past few jumps, but again I've missed them. I'll make sure to watch your next few landings, and maybe get some video, and we can check out what else you could change. Blue skies man, Eric Cameron P.S. I won't be out to the DZ until 11-8, but I'll see you then.

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My dad and brother have been jumping since I was 7 years old, and I always used to hang out at the DZ with them. So when my 16th birthday came along I made my first jump. Then made my second jump. And my third. And so on.