Thats because NASA has pretty much ceased to be a reasearch agency as it was originally intended (back in the NACA days) Nasa stopped doing step by step research (research one tech, then one based on the first one, then one based on the second one, etc) and moved to an all up vehicle design (build the entire vehicle with lots of new tech on it) because that was cheaper. The problem was if one tech failed, the whole vehicle was a pile of scrap. Now nasa contracts out to companies to design vehciles, funds them and never even gets to the stage of building them (X-33) Also NASA has the annoying culture of " Better is the enemy of good" once something works, it is assumed that it will work for the remainder of time with no need for improvements or upgrades. This had just started to turn around with the installation of the "glass cockpits" on the shuttles, finally upgrading the original computers from the 1980s (designed in the 70's) Forget about reliability testing. If you wanted the shuttles to be cheap and easy to use, the best way to do that is to repeadely test to failure all mission cricital components, and then improve those components, retest the new components to failure, impove the components, etc etc with periodic installations of tested and improved components. The shuttles were supposed to be reusable form the beginning, they shoudl be designed from the get go for servicability. Pretty much any component should be removable and replacable By this time there should be a fraction of the original components on the shuttle. If we were really interested in creating a robust reusable shuttle, this is what we should have done, and could still do.
Perhaps if the open source movement were to desing and implement a shuttle replacement, we might have a working replacement faster than if NASA were told they have to come up with a cheaper faster replacement.
IAARS, and the reason the limit it to the station and the hubble is because the hubble is a masive PR booster for NASA : Look what human in space can do, see we can service this telescope that takes all these pretty pictures. Not that I think thats a bad thing, since working on SM3b paid for my summer living expenses for 3 summers.
Apple releases some new hardware every 3-6 months. 970 rumors have been around for over a year now. Since apple refreshes each product in their lineup about every year, chances are, when you buy something, something better will come along with in 12 months, usually much less. So if you need it, buy it, and dont worry if the 970 comes out in a month, because by then there will be rumors that the 980, or whatever the next processor is is right around the corner so just wait a few months, at which time there will be rumors about the 990.... ad infinitum.
do you have anything at all with which to back that statement up? did the article not say that the plasma was on the order of 15000 degrees? Was my analysis of what would happen when somone touched said plasma somehow off the mark? Was my analysis that star trek style shileds with this tech are implausible not correct? If you really think i should be modded down, why not post with an account and subject yourself to said moderation.
well it has to withstand at least 14.7 pounds per square inch. So it needs at least that much energy. As for holding back a solid object, I would imagine it woudl be fairly easy to stick something sharp through, since it would have a very high pressure at the tip. Your force field would have to be capable of greater than atmospheric pressure, since otherwise there is no net force, an you could walk right into a vacuum (note: good idea for an airlock). If you can say up the pressure to withstand 2 atmospheres, your theoretical prisoner would have to push with a force of 14.7 psi on the force field in order to make his way through. (assuming he didnt get fried, energy is low enough etc.)
Yes, its a working force-field, unfortunately it uses a 15,000 degree plasma in the process. If you tried this in say a jail cell, you would fairly quickly cook the occupant. And if you could get around that, if the occupant touched the field, his finger would cease to exist. Not to mention that it can only be created when surrounded by a magnet, so star trek "shields" are still a long way off.
why is the total wealth generated by the textile industry decreasing? It certainly isnt because less and less clothes are being sold, people are hardly going naked. Its because prices of clothing are decreasing. This is not a benefit to the textile industry, but it is a benefit to the consumer. Because I can buy a six pack of socks for $10, I have more money that can be spent on other things, so there is no net loss to the economy, ony a new source of free cash that somone else can capitalize on.
Seriously, I was in nordstroms the other day (with the gf) and they had mens shirts on sale for $150 for a shirt! The shirt was probably made in india for $2 (tops) so the rest of it is profit to the various companies handling it along the way. Where is my benefit?
I think you see too much of a conspiracy. The multinats are not "creating boom-bust cycles" boom-bust cycles are the natural effect of seeking the cheapest labor to maximize profits. All the multinats are doing is seeking to maximize profit. This naturally results in boom-bust. Also note that as a result of the cycles american companies become higher quality and more efficient to compete with cheaper overseas products.
Where theres a skill, theres a way. Now there are indians who are farmilliar with technology, who know how to use a computer at the very least. They can now put this to work for native companies that will inevitably spring up. The United states as little as 100 years ago was just as much a third world country as any out there today. American workers got paid pennies per hour (even adjusting for inflation) There were no unions, there was no health care, there was no 40 hour work week, there were no child labor laws. The united states was essentially a third world country. And like many third world countries we got exploited by nations like france, and germany, and england. But in that exploitation we got currency and skills from europe, americans also woke up and realized that we were being exploited and demanded all the things we have today. We couldnt have woken up without the jobs to feed out children, so that we could afford to demand more rights and benefits and pay. Yes, the europeans turned elsewhere for labor, africa, china, south america, but we had already learned the skills to manufacture our own goods and provide our own services. Using homebrewed goods we weaned ourselves off of european goods and services. Just like india and china are doing today. Look at the growth rate of india, its been above 4% for 9 of the last 10 years back to 1979. Its Real GDP has essentially doubled since 1979. I hardly think that this is a "victim" of globalization.
3) becoming a scapegoat for a problem that could potentially cause your boss or boss boss to lose his job. (I didnt know it would start a fire, but my subordinate bob here did, and he didnt say anything.)
The US forign aid budget is 8.6 billion for Humanitarian assistance and international development and 6.7 billion for international security assistance. The 2003 budget was 2.1 trillion dollars, and of that 348 billion was allocated to national defense, 1.3 trillion was allocated to health care, medicare, social security, income security and veterans benefits. in 2002 the budget for the same social programs was 1.2 trillion. The budget was increased by ~120 billion dollars since last year. Keep in mind that the foriegn aid budget TOTAL was ~15 billion. Explain to me why that ~15 billion is needed for social programs when the budget for social programs was already increased by 120 billion in just the last year.
Please try to think of the long term. If america gets richer, all those poor people can get better jobs, better education, etc etc. One of the ways to make america richer is to find new markets for american products. If other countries were better off, they could buy more american products, which would mean more american jobs etc. We just spend 90 billion beating up on iraq. It is doubtful we will spend that much reparing it, but if we did, there are 23 million iraquis who would be willing to buy american products (if we do it right) Thats tens to hundreds of thousands of jobs in the US that help to give poor people money and health care.
There is a difference between knowing something, and knowing when to apply it. There is a further difference when there is a distinct incentive to minimize risk and danger. People are covering their asses now. How would people react if one of the engineers or managers said "Im not really surprised it caused that much damage, I knew all along, its just a simple equation, e=1/2mv^2" Well that opens him up for liability, if he knew all along, why the heck didnt he say something while columbia was still in space? Im sure people knew, but there was nothing that could be done, so they just had to cross their fingers, and now they have to cover their asses.
Heres the same billboard top 50 singles for this week, note the differences (for example miss independant comes in at 3 on apples chart, 22 on the bilboard chart)
Not people, consumers. Personally I wish news organizations would stop referring to citizens as consumers, as if they were some sort of swarm consuming all in their path. But the citizens you are referring to would clearly be labelled correctly as consumers.
Actually during and after the war I read mostly arab oriented news sources and i find they are just as biased as the american ones. One persons bias is one persons even handed and fair reporting. The trick is to realize that all news sources are biased, realize what that bias is and then decide if what they are saying makes sense objectively or not. To me it makes sense that saddam hussein would ally himself with any anti western movement that would have him, because both media sources, arab and western agree that saddam hussein wanted to beat the united states in any way possible. Second if i were in charge of iraq and i was faced with a much more powerful adversary, i would ally myself with whomever i could to defeat said enemy.
Ok, so the WMD issue was a bugaboo, im not debating that, in fact I believed rom the beginning that iraq didnt have any WMD. Youre not showing me the proof that bush was behind 9/11 so that he could invade afghanistan and then iraq in order to get iraqs oil. Even without WMD as a reason to invade iraq, getting rid of saddam was good national security policy for the US, since even if he didnt have WMD now, he could very easily serve as a base for conventional terrorist operations against the US and other western countries. Again, show me the smoking gun that proves bush was behind 9/11 and ill buy your story.
You'll never know how US administration was influenced by American mafia disappointed as Cuba separated. Or inlfuenced with drug deelers. Or with illegal weapon traders.
Or aliens from beyond the moon being held in area 51. Methinks you read too much weekly world news.
if you destroy the cities, and thus the warmaking abilities of the enemy, you can just roll them over and take the huge swathes of land that reman biotic. With nuclear weapons, even the areas away from the cities would be uninhabitable due to fallout contamination in the soil, not so with rocks. Were not talking about 2 km wide planet busting asteroids here. Were talking about maybe 20-30 m size ones capable of destroying a city, but not destroying the atmosphere of the earth. The earth gets hit by these size asteroids on a relatively frequent basis (~100-200 yrs) without ill affects to the life on the planet. These size rocks are not even big enough to kick significant amounts of dust into the stratosphere, so using large amounts of them would probably have an effect on the climate on the order of less than a year, similar to the mt pinatubo eruption.
why would any nation with the technology to go to the moon and hurl rocks at us not just use nuclear weapons instead?
1:Rocks do not produce radioactive fallout, so a destroyed area could be immediately claimed, without waiting thousands of years for the ground to stop glowing. 2: Rocks are easier to develop than nuclear weapons
3:Its easier to find rocket fuel than it is to find weapons grade plutonium
4:Landing people on the moon would get you much more prestige and good will than exploding a nuclear weapon, and by the time they realize what youre up to, its too late.
The only problem with your logic is that it fails to account for unexpected discoveries. The original reason that people colonized america was that there were rumors of large amounts of gold here that could be easily exploited for huge profit. This was mostly false, however the colonists did find tobacco, maize, timber, cotton and furs that could be easily and profitably exported back to the old world. This was not one of the original reasons to settle, but ultimately was one of the best. We dont know what we can find to export until we get there.
Slashdot Mirror
Thats because NASA has pretty much ceased to be a reasearch agency as it was originally intended (back in the NACA days) Nasa stopped doing step by step research (research one tech, then one based on the first one, then one based on the second one, etc) and moved to an all up vehicle design (build the entire vehicle with lots of new tech on it) because that was cheaper. The problem was if one tech failed, the whole vehicle was a pile of scrap. Now nasa contracts out to companies to design vehciles, funds them and never even gets to the stage of building them (X-33) Also NASA has the annoying culture of " Better is the enemy of good" once something works, it is assumed that it will work for the remainder of time with no need for improvements or upgrades. This had just started to turn around with the installation of the "glass cockpits" on the shuttles, finally upgrading the original computers from the 1980s (designed in the 70's) Forget about reliability testing. If you wanted the shuttles to be cheap and easy to use, the best way to do that is to repeadely test to failure all mission cricital components, and then improve those components, retest the new components to failure, impove the components, etc etc with periodic installations of tested and improved components. The shuttles were supposed to be reusable form the beginning, they shoudl be designed from the get go for servicability. Pretty much any component should be removable and replacable By this time there should be a fraction of the original components on the shuttle. If we were really interested in creating a robust reusable shuttle, this is what we should have done, and could still do.
Working on it: Xprize
IAARS, and the reason the limit it to the station and the hubble is because the hubble is a masive PR booster for NASA : Look what human in space can do, see we can service this telescope that takes all these pretty pictures. Not that I think thats a bad thing, since working on SM3b paid for my summer living expenses for 3 summers.
Apple releases some new hardware every 3-6 months. 970 rumors have been around for over a year now. Since apple refreshes each product in their lineup about every year, chances are, when you buy something, something better will come along with in 12 months, usually much less. So if you need it, buy it, and dont worry if the 970 comes out in a month, because by then there will be rumors that the 980, or whatever the next processor is is right around the corner so just wait a few months, at which time there will be rumors about the 990.... ad infinitum.
do you have anything at all with which to back that statement up? did the article not say that the plasma was on the order of 15000 degrees? Was my analysis of what would happen when somone touched said plasma somehow off the mark? Was my analysis that star trek style shileds with this tech are implausible not correct? If you really think i should be modded down, why not post with an account and subject yourself to said moderation.
well it has to withstand at least 14.7 pounds per square inch. So it needs at least that much energy. As for holding back a solid object, I would imagine it woudl be fairly easy to stick something sharp through, since it would have a very high pressure at the tip. Your force field would have to be capable of greater than atmospheric pressure, since otherwise there is no net force, an you could walk right into a vacuum (note: good idea for an airlock). If you can say up the pressure to withstand 2 atmospheres, your theoretical prisoner would have to push with a force of 14.7 psi on the force field in order to make his way through. (assuming he didnt get fried, energy is low enough etc.)
Yes, its a working force-field, unfortunately it uses a 15,000 degree plasma in the process. If you tried this in say a jail cell, you would fairly quickly cook the occupant. And if you could get around that, if the occupant touched the field, his finger would cease to exist. Not to mention that it can only be created when surrounded by a magnet, so star trek "shields" are still a long way off.
we all know men never go shopping alone.
except to radio shack and best buy
why is the total wealth generated by the textile industry decreasing? It certainly isnt because less and less clothes are being sold, people are hardly going naked. Its because prices of clothing are decreasing. This is not a benefit to the textile industry, but it is a benefit to the consumer. Because I can buy a six pack of socks for $10, I have more money that can be spent on other things, so there is no net loss to the economy, ony a new source of free cash that somone else can capitalize on.
Seriously, I was in nordstroms the other day (with the gf) and they had mens shirts on sale for $150 for a shirt! The shirt was probably made in india for $2 (tops) so the rest of it is profit to the various companies handling it along the way. Where is my benefit?
I think you see too much of a conspiracy. The multinats are not "creating boom-bust cycles" boom-bust cycles are the natural effect of seeking the cheapest labor to maximize profits. All the multinats are doing is seeking to maximize profit. This naturally results in boom-bust. Also note that as a result of the cycles american companies become higher quality and more efficient to compete with cheaper overseas products.
Where theres a skill, theres a way. Now there are indians who are farmilliar with technology, who know how to use a computer at the very least. They can now put this to work for native companies that will inevitably spring up. The United states as little as 100 years ago was just as much a third world country as any out there today. American workers got paid pennies per hour (even adjusting for inflation) There were no unions, there was no health care, there was no 40 hour work week, there were no child labor laws. The united states was essentially a third world country. And like many third world countries we got exploited by nations like france, and germany, and england. But in that exploitation we got currency and skills from europe, americans also woke up and realized that we were being exploited and demanded all the things we have today. We couldnt have woken up without the jobs to feed out children, so that we could afford to demand more rights and benefits and pay. Yes, the europeans turned elsewhere for labor, africa, china, south america, but we had already learned the skills to manufacture our own goods and provide our own services. Using homebrewed goods we weaned ourselves off of european goods and services. Just like india and china are doing today. Look at the growth rate of india, its been above 4% for 9 of the last 10 years back to 1979. Its Real GDP has essentially doubled since 1979. I hardly think that this is a "victim" of globalization.
Not to mention the fact you got to shag the farmers daughter after you washed up ;-)
3) becoming a scapegoat for a problem that could potentially cause your boss or boss boss to lose his job. (I didnt know it would start a fire, but my subordinate bob here did, and he didnt say anything.)
Please try to think of the long term. If america gets richer, all those poor people can get better jobs, better education, etc etc. One of the ways to make america richer is to find new markets for american products. If other countries were better off, they could buy more american products, which would mean more american jobs etc. We just spend 90 billion beating up on iraq. It is doubtful we will spend that much reparing it, but if we did, there are 23 million iraquis who would be willing to buy american products (if we do it right) Thats tens to hundreds of thousands of jobs in the US that help to give poor people money and health care.
There is a difference between knowing something, and knowing when to apply it. There is a further difference when there is a distinct incentive to minimize risk and danger. People are covering their asses now. How would people react if one of the engineers or managers said "Im not really surprised it caused that much damage, I knew all along, its just a simple equation, e=1/2mv^2" Well that opens him up for liability, if he knew all along, why the heck didnt he say something while columbia was still in space? Im sure people knew, but there was nothing that could be done, so they just had to cross their fingers, and now they have to cover their asses.
1= lid closed
0= lid open
Its digital!
Heres the same billboard top 50 singles for this week, note the differences (for example miss independant comes in at 3 on apples chart, 22 on the bilboard chart)
Not people, consumers. Personally I wish news organizations would stop referring to citizens as consumers, as if they were some sort of swarm consuming all in their path. But the citizens you are referring to would clearly be labelled correctly as consumers.
Is this why they stopped producing anything more than millions of colors sometime in the mid 90's?
Actually during and after the war I read mostly arab oriented news sources and i find they are just as biased as the american ones. One persons bias is one persons even handed and fair reporting. The trick is to realize that all news sources are biased, realize what that bias is and then decide if what they are saying makes sense objectively or not. To me it makes sense that saddam hussein would ally himself with any anti western movement that would have him, because both media sources, arab and western agree that saddam hussein wanted to beat the united states in any way possible. Second if i were in charge of iraq and i was faced with a much more powerful adversary, i would ally myself with whomever i could to defeat said enemy.
You'll never know how US administration was influenced by American mafia disappointed as Cuba separated. Or inlfuenced with drug deelers. Or with illegal weapon traders.
Or aliens from beyond the moon being held in area 51. Methinks you read too much weekly world news.
if you destroy the cities, and thus the warmaking abilities of the enemy, you can just roll them over and take the huge swathes of land that reman biotic. With nuclear weapons, even the areas away from the cities would be uninhabitable due to fallout contamination in the soil, not so with rocks. Were not talking about 2 km wide planet busting asteroids here. Were talking about maybe 20-30 m size ones capable of destroying a city, but not destroying the atmosphere of the earth. The earth gets hit by these size asteroids on a relatively frequent basis (~100-200 yrs) without ill affects to the life on the planet. These size rocks are not even big enough to kick significant amounts of dust into the stratosphere, so using large amounts of them would probably have an effect on the climate on the order of less than a year, similar to the mt pinatubo eruption.
1:Rocks do not produce radioactive fallout, so a destroyed area could be immediately claimed, without waiting thousands of years for the ground to stop glowing.
2: Rocks are easier to develop than nuclear weapons
3:Its easier to find rocket fuel than it is to find weapons grade plutonium
4:Landing people on the moon would get you much more prestige and good will than exploding a nuclear weapon, and by the time they realize what youre up to, its too late.
The only problem with your logic is that it fails to account for unexpected discoveries. The original reason that people colonized america was that there were rumors of large amounts of gold here that could be easily exploited for huge profit. This was mostly false, however the colonists did find tobacco, maize, timber, cotton and furs that could be easily and profitably exported back to the old world. This was not one of the original reasons to settle, but ultimately was one of the best. We dont know what we can find to export until we get there.