Sorry for the outage!

[scott]

As many of you might have noticed, I accidentally broke the discussion board for about 3 hours today (~3p - 6p MST). Sorry about that! It should be working now...

Just to let you know, I broke the code while implementing a new feature called password protected topics. Based on the votes for a member's only area, I will probably be adding one soon; and I plan to allow password protected topics in that area as well.

Basically, members will be able to send me a password, and I will post a topic in the members area which is protected by that password. Anyone desiring access will need to get the password form the topic owner...

This will be a good way for members to control the list of other users with whom they share their most sensitive ideas (if they so choose...)

I hope that most people will continue use the public General Discussion forum for most of their posts. But I think that adding the members only forum and the password protected topics will be nice additions...

What do you think?

Thanks,
Scott

[jim_mich]

Sounds great to me. After spending about five hour reading all the post on this board, I got a new idea inspired by one of the posts here. It is so simple (to me at least) that I hesitate to post about it. If it really does work I would like to hide the idea for a little while until I could give it a proper launch. But I also would like verification as to the soundness of the idea before spending effort to build it.

I know that I'm new and uknown here, but I am not new to this type of reasearch. I've been at it for a few years. I don't really know most of you yet. Who here has the knowledge and understanding to critique my idea?

It is an underwater chain on sprockets with floats type of idea.

[Patrick]

Hi Scott; sounds like a great idea.

Hi Jim Mich; welcome to the board!

For the underwater idea; you will probably get good feedback from Murilo and Mikhail among others.
I would recommend reading Simaneks' website prior to experimenting so that you get a good grounding in some basic premises for devices that do not work and why. You can find his site with a web search.
Hope you have good success in your research efforts.
--Patrick

[Jonathan]

I like it, scott.
Jim Mich, I know maths and physics, but am not usually good with the bouyancy engines. I also make stupid maths mistakes from time to time, there is one here now that I haven't fixed yet (few minutes), but am interested in helping if I can.

[jim_mich]

Patrick,

Thanks for pointing me to Simaneks' excellent website. Much of what he has I have seen before elsewhere, but some was new to me. I have not read all yet, but will get back there in due time.

Thanks again.