I have a great deal of respect for his expertise, and his abilities. He's doing, or trying to do, something that is nigh on impossible (had to be said): communicate basic science to the complete fucking idiots we have in the US... like Palin.... so that they can understand it. Obviously, he underestimated their dedication to remains completely fucking stupid, but that's a different matter.
Anyone who's TA'd a remedial science class in college knows exactly what i'm talking about. And really, who gives a shit if he likes comedy, or thought he was funny enough to be a comedian? Humor is a benefit, not a deficit, especially when dealing with fucking idiots.
In the aftermath of World War II, Japanese officer Yukio Asano is charged by a US war crimes tribunal for torturing a US civilian. Asano had used the technique of “waterboarding” on the prisoner (see 1800 and After). The civilian was strapped to a stretcher with his feet in the air and head towards the floor, and water was poured over his face, causing him to gasp for air until he agreed to talk. Asano is convicted and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. Other Japanese officers and soldiers are also tried and convicted of war crimes that include waterboarding US prisoners. “All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators,” reporter Evan Wallach will later write. In 2006, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), discussing allegations of US waterboarding of terror suspects, will say in regards to the Asano case, “We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II.”
Quite frankly, the easy way to make people understand this is simple: throw them in a cell for a few years, or decades, and waterboard them every few days. Sure you say that you've done nothing wrong, but we won't really be sure for another 10-20 years now will we. All these sociopaths and sadists who don't think it's torture will be singing a different tune pretty quick. I bet before that time is up you confess to a whole hell of a lot of things.
Economy of scale is a pretty simply thing to understand, so i have to wonder like Ripley did if the average IQ around here dropped dramatically when you logged in. Perhaps you have trouble understanding it, which is why you can't fathom that someone else might, but cheer up bucko, maybe you can pull something else out of your ass... like your head.
As the OP asked:
Design of these things is a large portion of the budget. The mirrors are the main item where the manufacturing cost greatly outstrips the design and tooling costs (I think?). So why don't we make a half dozen of each of these of these things instead of just one?
What he is suggesting is economy of scale. If designing is a large enough portion of a projects budget, economy of scale works with smaller manufacturing batches (caveat: i'm not one of the designers or builders of Hubble...and i'd bet, neither are you).... but his question was a general question. Now, in this specific case, it looks like the mirrors were budgeted at ~5% of the overall budget.
Now, economy of scale isn't a magic wand... i'm not sure what shit you have covering your glasses, blocking your vision, or preventing you from comprehending the written word, but i never said that it was. It CAN work in small batches; it won't always... there ain't many real magic bullets around. But before you start criticizing someone for not understanding something you think they wrote, you might want to pull your head out of your ass and learn to understand what is actually written first.
I think the OP is asking why we don't try to use economies of scale to lower the cost while increasing the science capabilities we have available. It's a perfectly good question, one that ultimately is probably answered by "there's too many politicians who don't see value in science." Hubble's been up there ~25 years, and has only resolved a small portion of space. If we'd placed 5 of them up there all working on separate things, we'd still only have resolved a small portion of space, but it'd be 5 times what we have now.
Of course North Korea.... would do something about it.
Yes, but how effective is it to keep shooting missiles into the ocean? I mean, sure, it probably keeps a few fish up late at night, but other than that....
You and your dipshit friend below are too stupid to understand a cartoon i see. Not surprising, given the bent of your whining. Idiocracy wasn't a comedy, it was a documentary... one that you to inbreds are living up to.
Hint: A movement who's leading spokes-person is a vacuous Playboy Centerfold with no scientific knowledge should be a leading indicator that something is amiss. Huh. People will figure that out.
How's that working out so far? I think you have seriously underestimate how truly fucking stupid people are.
No, it proves you don't know what the whole "free speech" thing is about. Take a quarter and go buy a clue, because you haven't got one at the moment. Now, you could just as easily say that news organizations stifle your free speech when you want to report that the sky is actually pink and paisley, but what they're really doing is simply saying "you're a fucking idiot, begone."
Because conservatives hate anything Obama does. If Obama came out and said it's good to breath, there's a lot of conservatives who'd hold their breathe until they died; they are that fucking head-up-ass stupid. They complain about Cuba's prisons, yet do everything they can to defend gitmo. They're fucking idiot hypocrites.
Yes, it's called "basic accounting." I do realize there's a lot of people who know nothing about "basic accounting" or even "bookkeeping," but i can't help it if they would prefer to remain ignorant.
There is a specific, dedicated, social security tax. That tax money goes into a pooled account which is later used to pay out when people qualify. It ain't rocket science. There's nothing misleading about the language i use; people are not as stupid as you think. And my post wasn't to be condescending, it was to point out YET AGAIN, how some people (usually those who hate the government) mislead with bullshit.... just like you're trying to do. Conservatives and projection... they go hand in hand.
They can strike "allied" territory any time they want.... Seoul is within range of who knows how many NK arty batteries. If NK escalates their rhetorical bullshit into a hot incident, it will most likely be an arty barrage on the SK civilian population coinciding with an armored push into the DMZ. This entire missile thing is simple bluster, like the war parades of the old Soviet Union.
It won't be WW3 though. When we went into Iraq in 1990, the Iraqi military at that time was the 4th largest in the world. It was mostly current, and 1-gen back Soviet military hardware. It showed in the first few days to be completely inferior to ours. NK, at this time, is still using 1-gen back Soviet gear... 1-gen back as of 1951. Admittedly, they do have some current Soviet hardware...well, again, current as of 1951. We were still flying several prop driven WWII fighter aircraft against them at the time.
Don't get me wrong, their arty may be from the 50's, but if you lob a shell downrange and it explodes....well, that will delay Christmas for who ever is in the area of effect... but their armor most likely can be compromised with single LAW strikes, and we won't need to fly into their airspace (and their SAM coverage) to hit them with some very precision cruise missiles.
On top of that, they really don't have much in the way of allies. Hell, even China would rather they just shut up now days (which is you remember history, China was the reason NK wasn't overrun by the UN in short order the first time around). If they started a hot war, it would be a brutal few days if you live within 30-40 miles south of the DMZ, and then it would be much much worse if you lives north of the DMZ.... with no real end in sight.
Straight defense spending is about the same as social security being the program WITH A DEDICATED TAX THAT FUNDS IT PAID FOR BY WORKERS. Medicare also has THAT DEDICATED TAX SYSTEM. That defense spending is just what's in the defense budget, and doesn't include veterans, the nuclear arsenal, and interest on the debt made up of past military/war expenditures. All told, our "defense" spending purely on military oriented items is ~1 trillion a year.
BUT, here's the difference. social security are DEDICATED taxes. They are paid for by a tax that is collected ONLY because SS and Medicare exist. And i'll be honest, i think providing 40 million elderly a fixed income WHICH THEY PAID FOR WITH A DEDICATED TAX, and 65 million elderly and disabled medical services WHICH THEY PAID FOR WITH A DEDICATED TAX, to be a hell of a lot better use of money than giving billions to companies that produce weapons systems THAT DO NOT WORK.
I do think "idiot" is a good term for anyone who would rather piss away money on something THAT DOES NOT WORK rather than helping tens of millions of people with something that does, especially when THEY PAID FOR IT WITH A DEDICATED TAX.
So we're again back to, it takes a special kind of coward to waste money on FAILED military programs just to keep them from being scared of their shadow.
See, it's idiots like you i'm talking about. You have to show how much of a fucking idiot you are by conflating an attempt to negotiate with an egotistical sociopath (which in general will never work out well) to wasting trillions of dollars on COMPLETELY FUCKING USELESS SHIT just so cowards can feel safer than they actually are. I mean, seriously.. you can't be that fucking stupid really... can you?
The only thing that could make your comment even more fucking stupid would be if you were one of those idiots who constantly complain about government spending.
There's 4 things a successful strike needs... a launch, flight, targeting, and detonation. We've seen they can launch, they're so-so at best on flight, their targeting is so bad about the only thing they can hit at the moment is the ocean (and usually no where near where they wanted). Detonation... well, i suppose it depends on if those nuclear bomb tests that ended up not being nuclear were actually supposed to be or not. Either way, they can complete the easiest step, and it goes downhill fast for the harder things.
The best they could legitimately do is claim their test was successful because that's where they meant to hit the ocean. That doesn't mean their politicians won't try to scare people, and some of our politicians won't start running around with their heads up their ass being cowards.
Because idiots keep saying every penny we spend on the military is a good thing, even when it's trillions of dollars wasted for shit. The "lefts" tolerance for idiots, and lies, is slightly less than the gullible cowards of the "right."
Hell, I'll take a system with a 20% chance of working over nothing, if it can be improved over time.
From the article:
Despite years of tinkering and vows to fix technical shortcomings, the system's performance has gotten worse, not better, since testing began in 1999. Of the eight tests held since GMD became operational in 2004, five have been failures.
So the difference is... people on the right want to piss away large amounts of money on useless things to help them from being scared of their own shadow, while people on the left want something that actually works. Must be hell going through life as a coward.
Lets see how good of an idea they think it was after they dredge up some prehistoric radioactive dinosaur with an appetite for Japanese food.... or cities.
I remember one of the first tests they did with one of their anti-missle systems. For the test, they concluded it was a successful hit because it only missed by 157 miles.
Are you REALLY sure you want them to try to precision drop an asteroid from space?
I still find it odd that only ~70 years after WWII that there are so many incredibly ignorant people in the world who have either never learned, or forgotten about, everything leading up to WWII, and can't see the similarities in what is happening right now. http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/27/...
Except they really didn't, unless you don't have the ability to actually read and understand that article. I get it though, some people like you only have time for that 5 second bumper sticker talking point, and not near enough time to actually engage your brain and use it to think.
Slashdot Mirror
You clearly haven't been listening to republicans the last 20+ years.
Simulated turtles all the way down, obviously.
I have a great deal of respect for his expertise, and his abilities. He's doing, or trying to do, something that is nigh on impossible (had to be said): communicate basic science to the complete fucking idiots we have in the US... like Palin.... so that they can understand it. Obviously, he underestimated their dedication to remains completely fucking stupid, but that's a different matter.
Anyone who's TA'd a remedial science class in college knows exactly what i'm talking about. And really, who gives a shit if he likes comedy, or thought he was funny enough to be a comedian? Humor is a benefit, not a deficit, especially when dealing with fucking idiots.
the sheep got (more) scared.
Then it's a good thing we're only talking about waterboarding.
http://www.public-access-proje...
http://www.historycommons.org/...
In the aftermath of World War II, Japanese officer Yukio Asano is charged by a US war crimes tribunal for torturing a US civilian. Asano had used the technique of “waterboarding” on the prisoner (see 1800 and After). The civilian was strapped to a stretcher with his feet in the air and head towards the floor, and water was poured over his face, causing him to gasp for air until he agreed to talk. Asano is convicted and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. Other Japanese officers and soldiers are also tried and convicted of war crimes that include waterboarding US prisoners. “All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators,” reporter Evan Wallach will later write. In 2006, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), discussing allegations of US waterboarding of terror suspects, will say in regards to the Asano case, “We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II.”
Quite frankly, the easy way to make people understand this is simple: throw them in a cell for a few years, or decades, and waterboard them every few days. Sure you say that you've done nothing wrong, but we won't really be sure for another 10-20 years now will we. All these sociopaths and sadists who don't think it's torture will be singing a different tune pretty quick. I bet before that time is up you confess to a whole hell of a lot of things.
A quick call to tech support gave them the idea to make sure the device was turned on.
As the OP asked:
Design of these things is a large portion of the budget. The mirrors are the main item where the manufacturing cost greatly outstrips the design and tooling costs (I think?). So why don't we make a half dozen of each of these of these things instead of just one?
What he is suggesting is economy of scale. If designing is a large enough portion of a projects budget, economy of scale works with smaller manufacturing batches (caveat: i'm not one of the designers or builders of Hubble...and i'd bet, neither are you).... but his question was a general question. Now, in this specific case, it looks like the mirrors were budgeted at ~5% of the overall budget.
Now, economy of scale isn't a magic wand... i'm not sure what shit you have covering your glasses, blocking your vision, or preventing you from comprehending the written word, but i never said that it was. It CAN work in small batches; it won't always... there ain't many real magic bullets around. But before you start criticizing someone for not understanding something you think they wrote, you might want to pull your head out of your ass and learn to understand what is actually written first.
I think the OP is asking why we don't try to use economies of scale to lower the cost while increasing the science capabilities we have available. It's a perfectly good question, one that ultimately is probably answered by "there's too many politicians who don't see value in science." Hubble's been up there ~25 years, and has only resolved a small portion of space. If we'd placed 5 of them up there all working on separate things, we'd still only have resolved a small portion of space, but it'd be 5 times what we have now.
Of course North Korea.... would do something about it.
Yes, but how effective is it to keep shooting missiles into the ocean? I mean, sure, it probably keeps a few fish up late at night, but other than that....
You and your dipshit friend below are too stupid to understand a cartoon i see. Not surprising, given the bent of your whining. Idiocracy wasn't a comedy, it was a documentary... one that you to inbreds are living up to.
Hint: A movement who's leading spokes-person is a vacuous Playboy Centerfold with no scientific knowledge should be a leading indicator that something is amiss. Huh. People will figure that out.
How's that working out so far? I think you have seriously underestimate how truly fucking stupid people are.
No, it proves you don't know what the whole "free speech" thing is about. Take a quarter and go buy a clue, because you haven't got one at the moment. Now, you could just as easily say that news organizations stifle your free speech when you want to report that the sky is actually pink and paisley, but what they're really doing is simply saying "you're a fucking idiot, begone."
http://xkcd.com/1357/
Because conservatives hate anything Obama does. If Obama came out and said it's good to breath, there's a lot of conservatives who'd hold their breathe until they died; they are that fucking head-up-ass stupid. They complain about Cuba's prisons, yet do everything they can to defend gitmo. They're fucking idiot hypocrites.
Yes, it's called "basic accounting." I do realize there's a lot of people who know nothing about "basic accounting" or even "bookkeeping," but i can't help it if they would prefer to remain ignorant.
There is a specific, dedicated, social security tax. That tax money goes into a pooled account which is later used to pay out when people qualify. It ain't rocket science. There's nothing misleading about the language i use; people are not as stupid as you think. And my post wasn't to be condescending, it was to point out YET AGAIN, how some people (usually those who hate the government) mislead with bullshit.... just like you're trying to do. Conservatives and projection... they go hand in hand.
They can strike "allied" territory any time they want.... Seoul is within range of who knows how many NK arty batteries. If NK escalates their rhetorical bullshit into a hot incident, it will most likely be an arty barrage on the SK civilian population coinciding with an armored push into the DMZ. This entire missile thing is simple bluster, like the war parades of the old Soviet Union.
It won't be WW3 though. When we went into Iraq in 1990, the Iraqi military at that time was the 4th largest in the world. It was mostly current, and 1-gen back Soviet military hardware. It showed in the first few days to be completely inferior to ours. NK, at this time, is still using 1-gen back Soviet gear... 1-gen back as of 1951. Admittedly, they do have some current Soviet hardware...well, again, current as of 1951. We were still flying several prop driven WWII fighter aircraft against them at the time.
Don't get me wrong, their arty may be from the 50's, but if you lob a shell downrange and it explodes....well, that will delay Christmas for who ever is in the area of effect... but their armor most likely can be compromised with single LAW strikes, and we won't need to fly into their airspace (and their SAM coverage) to hit them with some very precision cruise missiles.
On top of that, they really don't have much in the way of allies. Hell, even China would rather they just shut up now days (which is you remember history, China was the reason NK wasn't overrun by the UN in short order the first time around). If they started a hot war, it would be a brutal few days if you live within 30-40 miles south of the DMZ, and then it would be much much worse if you lives north of the DMZ.... with no real end in sight.
Straight defense spending is about the same as social security being the program WITH A DEDICATED TAX THAT FUNDS IT PAID FOR BY WORKERS. Medicare also has THAT DEDICATED TAX SYSTEM. That defense spending is just what's in the defense budget, and doesn't include veterans, the nuclear arsenal, and interest on the debt made up of past military/war expenditures. All told, our "defense" spending purely on military oriented items is ~1 trillion a year.
BUT, here's the difference. social security are DEDICATED taxes. They are paid for by a tax that is collected ONLY because SS and Medicare exist. And i'll be honest, i think providing 40 million elderly a fixed income WHICH THEY PAID FOR WITH A DEDICATED TAX, and 65 million elderly and disabled medical services WHICH THEY PAID FOR WITH A DEDICATED TAX, to be a hell of a lot better use of money than giving billions to companies that produce weapons systems THAT DO NOT WORK.
I do think "idiot" is a good term for anyone who would rather piss away money on something THAT DOES NOT WORK rather than helping tens of millions of people with something that does, especially when THEY PAID FOR IT WITH A DEDICATED TAX.
So we're again back to, it takes a special kind of coward to waste money on FAILED military programs just to keep them from being scared of their shadow.
See, it's idiots like you i'm talking about. You have to show how much of a fucking idiot you are by conflating an attempt to negotiate with an egotistical sociopath (which in general will never work out well) to wasting trillions of dollars on COMPLETELY FUCKING USELESS SHIT just so cowards can feel safer than they actually are. I mean, seriously.. you can't be that fucking stupid really... can you?
The only thing that could make your comment even more fucking stupid would be if you were one of those idiots who constantly complain about government spending.
There's 4 things a successful strike needs... a launch, flight, targeting, and detonation. We've seen they can launch, they're so-so at best on flight, their targeting is so bad about the only thing they can hit at the moment is the ocean (and usually no where near where they wanted). Detonation... well, i suppose it depends on if those nuclear bomb tests that ended up not being nuclear were actually supposed to be or not. Either way, they can complete the easiest step, and it goes downhill fast for the harder things.
The best they could legitimately do is claim their test was successful because that's where they meant to hit the ocean. That doesn't mean their politicians won't try to scare people, and some of our politicians won't start running around with their heads up their ass being cowards.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/...
Hell, I'll take a system with a 20% chance of working over nothing, if it can be improved over time.
From the article:
Despite years of tinkering and vows to fix technical shortcomings, the system's performance has gotten worse, not better, since testing began in 1999. Of the eight tests held since GMD became operational in 2004, five have been failures.
So the difference is... people on the right want to piss away large amounts of money on useless things to help them from being scared of their own shadow, while people on the left want something that actually works. Must be hell going through life as a coward.
Lets see how good of an idea they think it was after they dredge up some prehistoric radioactive dinosaur with an appetite for Japanese food.... or cities.
I remember one of the first tests they did with one of their anti-missle systems. For the test, they concluded it was a successful hit because it only missed by 157 miles.
Are you REALLY sure you want them to try to precision drop an asteroid from space?
I think you're fucking wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I still find it odd that only ~70 years after WWII that there are so many incredibly ignorant people in the world who have either never learned, or forgotten about, everything leading up to WWII, and can't see the similarities in what is happening right now. http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/27/...
Except they really didn't, unless you don't have the ability to actually read and understand that article. I get it though, some people like you only have time for that 5 second bumper sticker talking point, and not near enough time to actually engage your brain and use it to think.
I have to admit, today was the first time i heard about Ted being him. I suppose Ted should be glad that his last name isn't santorum.