Basically as I understand it, this Jupiter thing is essentially the same rocket as the Ares V... Both would be heavy lift boosters in the Saturn V/Energia class... So while NASA wants to build an additional simplified Ares 1 that only lifts the crew module, the Jupiter people want to essentially put the crew module on top of the EDS and put it up in one shot - ala Saturn V...
But what is so different from Ares V and Jupiter? They both seem to use both SRB and Liquid rockets...
Basically it seems that they are against Ares 1 - for whatever reason, they don't like having the CEV on top of a modified SRB... But lets face it, the SRB's have essentially been flawless...
(Okay, I'll get modded down and pounced on by the "Don't you know that the SRB caused the Challenger to explode!" crowd. But if you think about that failure, the SRB was only the match. It cooked off the liquid propellent tank after gasses escaped through the o-ring... but Ares 1 won't have anything hooked up to its side... an o-ring leak would not be catastrophic... the cause of Challenger's problem was having an SRB NEXT TO the liquid propellent external tank... Isn't that what both Jupiter and Ares V are set up for? And if so, do you want the PEOPLE riding on that, or just the machine to take them to the moon???)
I'm with you on the whole NEA thing... I'm in CT and in my town, it is parochial schools that are the big private institutions. Big is a misnomer though, in general, in CT, we have a pretty good public school educational system. My sister used to live in KY, and back in those days, the issue was that people who could afford private school sent their kids there because the public schools were so bad. It created a two-tier educational system - one that was for the haves and one for the have-nots. Poor folks were guaranteed a bad public education, middle class and upper class kids went to private school and got a good education. Since the middle and upper class didn't use public education, it was no surprise that it wasn't funded properly. This is a recipe for disaster, with endemic poor populations stuck in poverty and the whole cycle built to feed on itself. That's what I'm fighting against. In my own town, the financing authority is controlled by a new majority - 5 people, 4 of whom do not have children, and the other who has kids in private school. The result? The lowest increase in 20 years to our budget. We have at least another year of this. They have no qualms about cutting our budget, because it doesn't affect them. Our town demographics support their political decision - the town is full of older, fixed income folks who don't want to spend a nickel on education. And since we are in an inner ring suburb, the urban poor are streaming into our town, bringing their kids with them, and the middle class that used to live here is either leaving or don't use the public education system. So it's inevitable we face funding issues and we will in the future. For me, with kids in the system, my choice was to stay and fight for public education, or boogie too, moving to one of the outer ring suburbs where public education is supported more freely. I have roots in my town, so I chose to fight. Perhaps its a lost cause. But that's the only one worth fighting for.
I'm a politician - making an ass of myself is an occupational hazard! But seriously, to your points... In my town, the same thing can be said of parishoners and students... But you've left out the fact that there are a LOT of people who don't go to church, but still support it financially, and you've left out the diocese support etc. At any rate - paying for your building is wonderful for you... But in the public school case, that ends up in the per pupil expense. Transportation for parochial schools is in the public schools per pupil expense, as we are mandated to provide it. Same for nursing, free and reduced lunch, social services, etc. All of that ends up in the public school per pupil expense and not in the parochial school's one. It's great your school requires certified teachers. The ones in my town don't. Some still have nuns as teachers or principals. They don't have teaching degrees. And they aren't paid anything like a market rate for their labor given their vow of poverty. As for the at risk kids, facts are facts. Severely handicapped kids are not served by parochial schools in my town. They don't begin to have the money for that. My district pays tens of thousands, in some cases far above $50k - we only get reimbursed by the state when we break that 50k barrier. There are NO handicapped kids that we make a "profit" on. This notion is fantasy. With regard to testing, parochial schools in my town do not get measured by our state in any way. They do the Iowa standardized tests. The public schools have to administer the state NCLB tests - they are harder and more comprehensive. We also have to report out on much more than just that - we cut everything by race, ethnicity, free and reduced lunch, and special needs. We report out on suspensions and expulsions by all the same items. We get regulated to death. Our parochial schools labor under no such restrictions. I agree that money doesn't fix things, and that throwing money at the problem doesn't work. But I could run one hell of a school system if I didn't have to adhere to all the state and federal mandates. But because I do, the comparison between parochial and public schools is apples and turnips. We'd have to have radical mandate changes on the public side just to bring it to apples and oranges!
Classic simplistic thinking. How about an opinion from a Board of Education member for 7 years? Well, that's me. I've had the private/public school debate over and over again for years... Let's take a look at the per pupil expenses you quote. Is your private school a parochial school perhaps? If so, your per pupil expense is higher than 4k... the churches subsidize your school. But I'll grant its still lower. Why? Parochial school teachers need not be certified... I say again - THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE TEACHERS!!! In general, they are college grads, and some are certified and waiting for that higher paying public school job to open up. Others are on a religious mission - part of their pay is their dedication to faith, instead of money. And that is just the parochial side of the equation. Seriously disabled physically, emotionally, or mentally? Not welcome in the parochial schools ("Sorry, we just don't have the resources...") So they go to public school. It ROUTINELY costs $50k or more to educate one of these students. That's figured into the public school AVERAGE per pupil cost. Testing is next - public schools have to comply with NCLB - that means costly testing and test prep. And I haven't even talked about misbehavior issues... what about the public school student who is a nuisance in class. Nope, the public school kid can't just be kicked out. Unless they do something violently dangerous like bring a weapon to school. And when they do, we expel them, and then PAY A TUTOR to teach them 10 hours per week in their homes. Parochial schools? No way they pay for that. I've heard all these arguments before and I'm sure I'll continue to. But at the end of the day if the National Dept. of Education is ultimately dismantled by these voucher people, we'll have 2 kinds of schools - ones where kids learn, and a dumping ground for the rest. Draw the line where you want, but you WILL be leaving kids behind in such a system. Public schools BUILT the middle class in America. Now people want to dismantle them. But those of you who lust for such an outcome, just remember that the "pay it forward" model of public education will be lost forever. And probably the middle class with it.
I can't believe that in 88 posts, no one came up with the notion that the ballast tanks essentially become giant soup cauldrons...
No Soup For YOU! Come back - one year!
If the smartphone battle is shaping up as RIM vs Apple, why is it that everyone I know carries a Treo... I've seen all kinds from the 600/650 that is still Palm based to the 700WX and beyond... It is almost funny. All the executives at my office have the RIM machines - NONE of which they bought themselves... The people who don't rate a Blackberry for free from the company almost all buy either a generic cell phone, or more commonly, some kind of Treo...
This is nothing new. I got a ME degree from UCONN in the early 80's. My first class had a professor who barely spoke English. His first quote was "I teach you Engineering, You teach me Engrish". His second line (in broken English) was the classic "Look to your left, look to your right. Neither will be with you when you graduate" We assumed he meant ONE of them won't be there, but he turned out to be correct. 2/3 of the entry class flunked out or transferred to PolySci or some other squishy humanity degree. I graduated with a 2.7 cumulative - with a 3.5 cumulative in my non-engineering classes. My roommate was a ChemE who went to PolySci - he graduated with a 3.5... studied about half as much as I did. I ended up going to graduate school because the smarmy recruiters didn't think a B- average was good enough to be a real engineer... Got an MBA in IT and Finance... never looked back. It's too bad because I would have made a pretty good engineer - actually am a "Software Engineer" now... Bottom line is that the grade inflation that took hold of all the other disciplines never translated to the engineering schools... So even though my degree was probably 4 times harder to get, it didn't count for squat due to the costs of inflation. And now America is SCREAMING for more engineers...
If you are looking for a good piece of fiction on the Panopticon in modern times, you should give The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks. It is a trilogy and this is the first book, the second The Dark River came out this summer. It chronicles the lives of the last "travellers" who can move between this world and several other realms, the "Harlequins" who defend them, and their epic battle with the "Tabula" who are trying to build a real world Panopticon for the entire world, starting with certain cities like London/Berlin. One of the interesting things about the books is the way the current world, with all the automation, cameras, etc. are quickly becoming a real panopticon. The author, who puportedly lives "off the grid", touches on a lot of real world stuff and extrapolates fairly convincingly where it might lead in a short space of time. There are also interesting "other realms" one of which gives an interesting picture of what Hell might really be like. It wasn't so much as scary as it was without hope... probably as good a description of hell if I ever heard one. I've found the books intriguing and pretty much a "can't put them down until I'm done" kind of adventure.
Candice Daly, representing the American Electronics Association testified that companies she represents, including Google and Yahoo, were opposed to the legislation.
"They're very concerned about this particular piece of legislation," Daly said. "They don't see themselves as signing up for this seal."
Already typical slashdotters are crying censorship. Basically, Yahoo and Google can't possibly earn this type of seal, so they are opposed to it. But let's face it... it is voluntary for an ISP to sign up for the program, they only get fined if they sign up and don't deliver, and no one is forcing anyone to get this seal of approval. Meanwhile, for those people who don't want porn to come down their internet pipe, this is a valuable seal of approval, as they don't have to install net nannies and the like to keep their children from porn. So where exactly is the censorship when the program is optional, and those consumers signing up will obviously have a choice - ISPs that have the seal and ISPs that don't...
I think this hydrazine thing is a red-herring. Think about it for a minute. So they say it's frozen, and in a really strong tank. But once that tank starts re-entering, the valves and hoses to it will be torn free. The heat of re-entry is going to unfreeze at least part of it. Now you've got venting ROCKET FUEL in the heat of a re-entry. I say at that point, the tank goes BOOM and there is nothing left... I think the real reason we are shooting this bird down is that it was launched in 2006 and has all our latest cool spy gadgets on it. We don't want them in an enemy's hands. So they cooked up this whole "hydrazine" problem to make it look like they are doing the world a favor. And they probably are. But I don't think its the hydrazine that is the problem here...
I watched too. The thing about Almaz that floored me was that the Russians were so paranoid about their station that they armed it. A 23mm cannon was attached to the station. According to the show, if any kind of satellite got too close, they would blast it with the cannon... The station could turn and swivel using gyros to keep a photographic target in sight, and could do the same thing with the cannon. They were afraid to fire it with men aboard, but they did fire the cannon with remote control. It worked and the station survived the vibrations caused by the cannon... Bottom line - the Russians were militarizing space before Ronnie ever conceived of Star Wars...
Actually, I don't think regulators would have a huge problem with this... Clearly the big guy on the block is Google at this point... Microsoft and Yahoo joining forces makes sense from a competitive point of view... Let's face it, MSN sucks, it has always sucked, and so it is a good merger from a business perspective too. The only thing I worry about here is if Yahoo just sort of "melts" under Microsoft's ownership, the same way Excite did when it got bought.
I'm a Mechanical Engineer. My sister once asked me what the difference was between a Civil Engineer and a Mechanical Engineer was... I said, "That's easy! Mechanical Engineers make weapons. Civil Engineers make targets." Does that make me a terrorist? Or just a good Military-Industrial Complexist?
You keep assuming that DEMAND is the thing driving the price. It is not - Have you ever been on the Mass Pike? Have you ever been on the Merritt? There are no lines. The prices are so high, due to the monopoly power of the government and the gas stations, that the only cars you see there are from far out of state... They don't know that gas is 30-40 cents (Sometimes 60-70 cents) per gallon more expensive than a gas station at the next exit. I've filled up ONCE IN MY LIFE at one of these stations - it was during a blizzard and was my only option. (I drove past stations on my way to the pike that were closed due to the storm) Other than that, people plan ahead and don't pay exorbitant prices for the gas. They trap the ones that don't know any better. Caveat Emptor? I guess you can look at it that way... but let me ask you one question - why do ALL the stations on the Mass Pike and the Merritt have to be the same brand? Answer me that... then you can talk about "perpetually crowded rest stops"... until you address that issue, you cannot talk about supply and demand as if it will create the correct equilibrium price... If you have significant barriers to entry (in this case, literal barriers in the form of toll plazas) and a one supplier per corridor model, you will inevitably drive the equillibrium price to a monopolistic one - one that maximizes profit for the supplier. If you have taken even one basic economics course, you know what I'm saying is true - monopoly power shifts the supply curve to a lower quantity sold at a higher price...
It's wonderful to talk about supply and demand curves like it was a free and open marketplace, but rest areas are no such thing. For instance, in the Northeast, the Mass Pike has rest areas every 25 miles, from Boston to Worcester... Those are heavily built areas, and there are plenty of places you could eat along the way, EXCEPT you have to get off the highway, pay the toll, eat/gas up, get back on the highway, take a ticket, etc... It is MUCH easier just to pull of at the rest stop. So sure, some of the higher price is driven by the convenience factor... but some of it is also driven by the fact that Gulf owns ALL the gas stations at Mass Pike rest areas. In Connecticut on the Merritt Parkway, Mobil owns ALL the gas stations. They don't even compete from one rest area to the next! The contract is awarded to the highest bidder, and the highest bidder gets ALL the rest areas. The government is then creating a defacto pseudo-monopoly on rest stop gasoline for a particular corridor. This is anti-competitive, and anti-consumer (oh wait, somehow "consumer" is a dirty word - call it "anti-citizen" instead)... It is supposed to look out for "we the people" but in this case, does what is good for itself, namely raise more money in the auction because of the monopoly factor, it awards one contract instead of many (as would happen if rest stops were auctioned indivicually) because that raises their revenue and makes their contract administration burden lighter (one contractor instead of many). And since you acknowledge that the government will waste that extra money instead of reducing my tax burden (heck - on the Mass Pike, they could reduce my TOLL!!!) it is of no use to allow the practice, and instead, voters should demand a contract award based on greatest value to society instead of greatest value to the monopoly creator - aka - the government.
The government builds a highway, and then opens a rest area. They sell restaurant/gas/convenience store space to the highest bidder. Then the company that leases the space charges more for a Big Mac or a gallon of gas than in the city. Everybody's a winner - except the consumer.
They should take that spectrum, and award it based on the public good that will come of it. How low a price will you charge for the services you provide for that spectrum... not how much can we, the government, make off of it.
I know of a similar theory to explain why mammals moved back to the sea... (Whales, dolphins, etc) The theory is that the whales were so pissed off at the mosquitos, that they went into the sea just to get a little relief. They stayed there too long, and so their arms and legs turned into fins and flippers. In case anybody is wondering who proposed the theory, well it was me. And no I don't have any scientific evidence to back it up. But it is certainly more plausible than the theory being discussed regarding the dinosaurs...
This may be true philosophically, but practically, it is exactly the opposite... You only hear about power grid problems and blackout/brownouts in the SUMMER, when A/C loads are high... Solar is an EXCELLENT power source in that scenario, as the higher the solar load, the more you need A/C, and the more solar energy you can collect...
I skimmed TFA but didn't see anything that discussed charge/discharge cycles... It might be a wonderful technology, but if it can't be cycled much, then it wouldn't be of much use...
They'll probably assume that the lobsters had built and run the machine. They'll deduce that the lobsters had an advanced society because of the burials that were made, and the artifacts that were put in there (like the rubber bands that held the claws shut, the plastic tablecloth that was used as a burial shroud, etc.). They'll assume that the lobsters used the machine to calculate various astronomical phenomenon, and they'll use the angles of your foundations to conclude that since one of the walls directly bisected the sunrise on both the winter and summer solstice, they had an advanced knowledge. They'll come to believe that humans were simply a plague of unintelligent mammals that overwhelmed the advanced lobster race, as the lobster's thirst for more and more energy caused them to use fossil fuels at an alarming rate and cook off the oceans... In such an environment, the lobsters, for obvious reasons, could not survive, thus the humans (and the cockroaches, of course) eventually overwhelmed the advanced lobster society...
It is important to realize that the radiation deaths at Hiroshima were mostly caused by direct exposure to the radioactivity of the bomb blast itself, NOT from "fallout" as most people commonly believe. This is due to the fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were airbursts of the weapons - they detonated 2000 feet or more above the surface. When this happens, the atomic blast destroys more buildings and causes more destruction over a larger area than had the bomb been dropped to ground level. This was intentional, as the goal of the bombing was to inflict as much damage as possible. But the side affect of this was that very little fallout was generated. Typically fallout is created when an atomic (or thermonuclear) weapon explodes in a ground burst. In a ground burst, the soil, rocks, building materials, etc. that are not vaporized are turned into ash that becomes radioactive due to the direct exposure. The ash is then swept up in the mushroom cloud and dispersed over a wide area. Chernobyl was far and away more dangerous with respect to fallout, because the radioactive core burned and spread really bad isotopes that would not happen to such a great degree with either a ground or airburst of a nuclear weapon. But then again, as has been pointed out, Chernobyl was an example of a bad idea gone worse - a flawed design, with no pressure dome, and human operation intentionally creating a dangerous situation not fully understood. Modern, Western nuclear reactors could never have the same kind of accident...
This is a really interesting point, one I'd never considered in quite that way... I remember the Star Trek episode that posited the idea that Edith Keilor could have forestalled the entry of the US into WWII... It never quite made sense to me - somehow she stopped Pearl Harbor? Or that somehow her peace ideas would have made Americans choose NOT to go to war with Japan afterwards... It is unlikely.
Anyway, I remember a sociology class I took in college that showed a survey of Americans right after the end of WWII on what they thought, at that time, should have been done with the bomb. A miniscule percentage said we should not have used the A-bomb on Japan, and the vast majority said we should have. But the interesting point of the survey was that some 8% of Americans believed we should have continued to drop atomic bombs on Japan, even AFTER THEY HAD SURRENDERED... That 1 out of 15 Americans would believe such a thing at that time points out just how pissed off Americans were at that point... WWII touched virtually every home, with either a relative dying or being wounded, or certainly a neighbor who suffered such a fate... It is VERY likely that had one atomic bomb not stopped the war in Europe, we would have continued to drop bombs on them until they did surrender. Remember, the plants that were built to manufacture the uranium and plutonium for the bombs weren't built to build one or two bombs... they were built to build hundreds, if not, THOUSANDS of A-Bombs...
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Basically as I understand it, this Jupiter thing is essentially the same rocket as the Ares V... Both would be heavy lift boosters in the Saturn V/Energia class... So while NASA wants to build an additional simplified Ares 1 that only lifts the crew module, the Jupiter people want to essentially put the crew module on top of the EDS and put it up in one shot - ala Saturn V... But what is so different from Ares V and Jupiter? They both seem to use both SRB and Liquid rockets... Basically it seems that they are against Ares 1 - for whatever reason, they don't like having the CEV on top of a modified SRB... But lets face it, the SRB's have essentially been flawless... (Okay, I'll get modded down and pounced on by the "Don't you know that the SRB caused the Challenger to explode!" crowd. But if you think about that failure, the SRB was only the match. It cooked off the liquid propellent tank after gasses escaped through the o-ring... but Ares 1 won't have anything hooked up to its side... an o-ring leak would not be catastrophic... the cause of Challenger's problem was having an SRB NEXT TO the liquid propellent external tank... Isn't that what both Jupiter and Ares V are set up for? And if so, do you want the PEOPLE riding on that, or just the machine to take them to the moon???)
I'm with you on the whole NEA thing... I'm in CT and in my town, it is parochial schools that are the big private institutions. Big is a misnomer though, in general, in CT, we have a pretty good public school educational system. My sister used to live in KY, and back in those days, the issue was that people who could afford private school sent their kids there because the public schools were so bad. It created a two-tier educational system - one that was for the haves and one for the have-nots. Poor folks were guaranteed a bad public education, middle class and upper class kids went to private school and got a good education. Since the middle and upper class didn't use public education, it was no surprise that it wasn't funded properly. This is a recipe for disaster, with endemic poor populations stuck in poverty and the whole cycle built to feed on itself. That's what I'm fighting against. In my own town, the financing authority is controlled by a new majority - 5 people, 4 of whom do not have children, and the other who has kids in private school. The result? The lowest increase in 20 years to our budget. We have at least another year of this. They have no qualms about cutting our budget, because it doesn't affect them. Our town demographics support their political decision - the town is full of older, fixed income folks who don't want to spend a nickel on education. And since we are in an inner ring suburb, the urban poor are streaming into our town, bringing their kids with them, and the middle class that used to live here is either leaving or don't use the public education system. So it's inevitable we face funding issues and we will in the future. For me, with kids in the system, my choice was to stay and fight for public education, or boogie too, moving to one of the outer ring suburbs where public education is supported more freely. I have roots in my town, so I chose to fight. Perhaps its a lost cause. But that's the only one worth fighting for.
I'm a politician - making an ass of myself is an occupational hazard! But seriously, to your points... In my town, the same thing can be said of parishoners and students... But you've left out the fact that there are a LOT of people who don't go to church, but still support it financially, and you've left out the diocese support etc. At any rate - paying for your building is wonderful for you... But in the public school case, that ends up in the per pupil expense. Transportation for parochial schools is in the public schools per pupil expense, as we are mandated to provide it. Same for nursing, free and reduced lunch, social services, etc. All of that ends up in the public school per pupil expense and not in the parochial school's one. It's great your school requires certified teachers. The ones in my town don't. Some still have nuns as teachers or principals. They don't have teaching degrees. And they aren't paid anything like a market rate for their labor given their vow of poverty. As for the at risk kids, facts are facts. Severely handicapped kids are not served by parochial schools in my town. They don't begin to have the money for that. My district pays tens of thousands, in some cases far above $50k - we only get reimbursed by the state when we break that 50k barrier. There are NO handicapped kids that we make a "profit" on. This notion is fantasy. With regard to testing, parochial schools in my town do not get measured by our state in any way. They do the Iowa standardized tests. The public schools have to administer the state NCLB tests - they are harder and more comprehensive. We also have to report out on much more than just that - we cut everything by race, ethnicity, free and reduced lunch, and special needs. We report out on suspensions and expulsions by all the same items. We get regulated to death. Our parochial schools labor under no such restrictions. I agree that money doesn't fix things, and that throwing money at the problem doesn't work. But I could run one hell of a school system if I didn't have to adhere to all the state and federal mandates. But because I do, the comparison between parochial and public schools is apples and turnips. We'd have to have radical mandate changes on the public side just to bring it to apples and oranges!
Classic simplistic thinking. How about an opinion from a Board of Education member for 7 years? Well, that's me. I've had the private/public school debate over and over again for years... Let's take a look at the per pupil expenses you quote. Is your private school a parochial school perhaps? If so, your per pupil expense is higher than 4k... the churches subsidize your school. But I'll grant its still lower. Why? Parochial school teachers need not be certified... I say again - THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE TEACHERS!!! In general, they are college grads, and some are certified and waiting for that higher paying public school job to open up. Others are on a religious mission - part of their pay is their dedication to faith, instead of money. And that is just the parochial side of the equation. Seriously disabled physically, emotionally, or mentally? Not welcome in the parochial schools ("Sorry, we just don't have the resources...") So they go to public school. It ROUTINELY costs $50k or more to educate one of these students. That's figured into the public school AVERAGE per pupil cost. Testing is next - public schools have to comply with NCLB - that means costly testing and test prep. And I haven't even talked about misbehavior issues... what about the public school student who is a nuisance in class. Nope, the public school kid can't just be kicked out. Unless they do something violently dangerous like bring a weapon to school. And when they do, we expel them, and then PAY A TUTOR to teach them 10 hours per week in their homes. Parochial schools? No way they pay for that. I've heard all these arguments before and I'm sure I'll continue to. But at the end of the day if the National Dept. of Education is ultimately dismantled by these voucher people, we'll have 2 kinds of schools - ones where kids learn, and a dumping ground for the rest. Draw the line where you want, but you WILL be leaving kids behind in such a system. Public schools BUILT the middle class in America. Now people want to dismantle them. But those of you who lust for such an outcome, just remember that the "pay it forward" model of public education will be lost forever. And probably the middle class with it.
I can't believe that in 88 posts, no one came up with the notion that the ballast tanks essentially become giant soup cauldrons... No Soup For YOU! Come back - one year!
If the smartphone battle is shaping up as RIM vs Apple, why is it that everyone I know carries a Treo... I've seen all kinds from the 600/650 that is still Palm based to the 700WX and beyond... It is almost funny. All the executives at my office have the RIM machines - NONE of which they bought themselves... The people who don't rate a Blackberry for free from the company almost all buy either a generic cell phone, or more commonly, some kind of Treo...
This is nothing new. I got a ME degree from UCONN in the early 80's. My first class had a professor who barely spoke English. His first quote was "I teach you Engineering, You teach me Engrish". His second line (in broken English) was the classic "Look to your left, look to your right. Neither will be with you when you graduate" We assumed he meant ONE of them won't be there, but he turned out to be correct. 2/3 of the entry class flunked out or transferred to PolySci or some other squishy humanity degree. I graduated with a 2.7 cumulative - with a 3.5 cumulative in my non-engineering classes. My roommate was a ChemE who went to PolySci - he graduated with a 3.5... studied about half as much as I did. I ended up going to graduate school because the smarmy recruiters didn't think a B- average was good enough to be a real engineer... Got an MBA in IT and Finance... never looked back. It's too bad because I would have made a pretty good engineer - actually am a "Software Engineer" now... Bottom line is that the grade inflation that took hold of all the other disciplines never translated to the engineering schools... So even though my degree was probably 4 times harder to get, it didn't count for squat due to the costs of inflation. And now America is SCREAMING for more engineers...
If you are looking for a good piece of fiction on the Panopticon in modern times, you should give The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks. It is a trilogy and this is the first book, the second The Dark River came out this summer. It chronicles the lives of the last "travellers" who can move between this world and several other realms, the "Harlequins" who defend them, and their epic battle with the "Tabula" who are trying to build a real world Panopticon for the entire world, starting with certain cities like London/Berlin. One of the interesting things about the books is the way the current world, with all the automation, cameras, etc. are quickly becoming a real panopticon. The author, who puportedly lives "off the grid", touches on a lot of real world stuff and extrapolates fairly convincingly where it might lead in a short space of time. There are also interesting "other realms" one of which gives an interesting picture of what Hell might really be like. It wasn't so much as scary as it was without hope... probably as good a description of hell if I ever heard one. I've found the books intriguing and pretty much a "can't put them down until I'm done" kind of adventure.
Candice Daly, representing the American Electronics Association testified that companies she represents, including Google and Yahoo, were opposed to the legislation. "They're very concerned about this particular piece of legislation," Daly said. "They don't see themselves as signing up for this seal."
Already typical slashdotters are crying censorship. Basically, Yahoo and Google can't possibly earn this type of seal, so they are opposed to it. But let's face it... it is voluntary for an ISP to sign up for the program, they only get fined if they sign up and don't deliver, and no one is forcing anyone to get this seal of approval. Meanwhile, for those people who don't want porn to come down their internet pipe, this is a valuable seal of approval, as they don't have to install net nannies and the like to keep their children from porn. So where exactly is the censorship when the program is optional, and those consumers signing up will obviously have a choice - ISPs that have the seal and ISPs that don't...
I think this hydrazine thing is a red-herring. Think about it for a minute. So they say it's frozen, and in a really strong tank. But once that tank starts re-entering, the valves and hoses to it will be torn free. The heat of re-entry is going to unfreeze at least part of it. Now you've got venting ROCKET FUEL in the heat of a re-entry. I say at that point, the tank goes BOOM and there is nothing left... I think the real reason we are shooting this bird down is that it was launched in 2006 and has all our latest cool spy gadgets on it. We don't want them in an enemy's hands. So they cooked up this whole "hydrazine" problem to make it look like they are doing the world a favor. And they probably are. But I don't think its the hydrazine that is the problem here...
I watched too. The thing about Almaz that floored me was that the Russians were so paranoid about their station that they armed it. A 23mm cannon was attached to the station. According to the show, if any kind of satellite got too close, they would blast it with the cannon... The station could turn and swivel using gyros to keep a photographic target in sight, and could do the same thing with the cannon. They were afraid to fire it with men aboard, but they did fire the cannon with remote control. It worked and the station survived the vibrations caused by the cannon... Bottom line - the Russians were militarizing space before Ronnie ever conceived of Star Wars...
Actually, I don't think regulators would have a huge problem with this... Clearly the big guy on the block is Google at this point... Microsoft and Yahoo joining forces makes sense from a competitive point of view... Let's face it, MSN sucks, it has always sucked, and so it is a good merger from a business perspective too. The only thing I worry about here is if Yahoo just sort of "melts" under Microsoft's ownership, the same way Excite did when it got bought.
Except in this case the Federal Gov't doesn't send in Elliot Ness... It sends in... well... nobody.
I'm a Mechanical Engineer. My sister once asked me what the difference was between a Civil Engineer and a Mechanical Engineer was... I said, "That's easy! Mechanical Engineers make weapons. Civil Engineers make targets." Does that make me a terrorist? Or just a good Military-Industrial Complexist?
How does a Geiger counter monitor air?
You keep assuming that DEMAND is the thing driving the price. It is not - Have you ever been on the Mass Pike? Have you ever been on the Merritt? There are no lines. The prices are so high, due to the monopoly power of the government and the gas stations, that the only cars you see there are from far out of state... They don't know that gas is 30-40 cents (Sometimes 60-70 cents) per gallon more expensive than a gas station at the next exit. I've filled up ONCE IN MY LIFE at one of these stations - it was during a blizzard and was my only option. (I drove past stations on my way to the pike that were closed due to the storm) Other than that, people plan ahead and don't pay exorbitant prices for the gas. They trap the ones that don't know any better. Caveat Emptor? I guess you can look at it that way... but let me ask you one question - why do ALL the stations on the Mass Pike and the Merritt have to be the same brand? Answer me that... then you can talk about "perpetually crowded rest stops"... until you address that issue, you cannot talk about supply and demand as if it will create the correct equilibrium price... If you have significant barriers to entry (in this case, literal barriers in the form of toll plazas) and a one supplier per corridor model, you will inevitably drive the equillibrium price to a monopolistic one - one that maximizes profit for the supplier. If you have taken even one basic economics course, you know what I'm saying is true - monopoly power shifts the supply curve to a lower quantity sold at a higher price...
It's wonderful to talk about supply and demand curves like it was a free and open marketplace, but rest areas are no such thing. For instance, in the Northeast, the Mass Pike has rest areas every 25 miles, from Boston to Worcester... Those are heavily built areas, and there are plenty of places you could eat along the way, EXCEPT you have to get off the highway, pay the toll, eat/gas up, get back on the highway, take a ticket, etc... It is MUCH easier just to pull of at the rest stop. So sure, some of the higher price is driven by the convenience factor... but some of it is also driven by the fact that Gulf owns ALL the gas stations at Mass Pike rest areas. In Connecticut on the Merritt Parkway, Mobil owns ALL the gas stations. They don't even compete from one rest area to the next! The contract is awarded to the highest bidder, and the highest bidder gets ALL the rest areas. The government is then creating a defacto pseudo-monopoly on rest stop gasoline for a particular corridor. This is anti-competitive, and anti-consumer (oh wait, somehow "consumer" is a dirty word - call it "anti-citizen" instead)... It is supposed to look out for "we the people" but in this case, does what is good for itself, namely raise more money in the auction because of the monopoly factor, it awards one contract instead of many (as would happen if rest stops were auctioned indivicually) because that raises their revenue and makes their contract administration burden lighter (one contractor instead of many). And since you acknowledge that the government will waste that extra money instead of reducing my tax burden (heck - on the Mass Pike, they could reduce my TOLL!!!) it is of no use to allow the practice, and instead, voters should demand a contract award based on greatest value to society instead of greatest value to the monopoly creator - aka - the government.
The government builds a highway, and then opens a rest area. They sell restaurant/gas/convenience store space to the highest bidder. Then the company that leases the space charges more for a Big Mac or a gallon of gas than in the city. Everybody's a winner - except the consumer.
They should take that spectrum, and award it based on the public good that will come of it. How low a price will you charge for the services you provide for that spectrum... not how much can we, the government, make off of it.
I know of a similar theory to explain why mammals moved back to the sea... (Whales, dolphins, etc) The theory is that the whales were so pissed off at the mosquitos, that they went into the sea just to get a little relief. They stayed there too long, and so their arms and legs turned into fins and flippers. In case anybody is wondering who proposed the theory, well it was me. And no I don't have any scientific evidence to back it up. But it is certainly more plausible than the theory being discussed regarding the dinosaurs...
This may be true philosophically, but practically, it is exactly the opposite... You only hear about power grid problems and blackout/brownouts in the SUMMER, when A/C loads are high... Solar is an EXCELLENT power source in that scenario, as the higher the solar load, the more you need A/C, and the more solar energy you can collect...
I skimmed TFA but didn't see anything that discussed charge/discharge cycles... It might be a wonderful technology, but if it can't be cycled much, then it wouldn't be of much use...
They'll probably assume that the lobsters had built and run the machine. They'll deduce that the lobsters had an advanced society because of the burials that were made, and the artifacts that were put in there (like the rubber bands that held the claws shut, the plastic tablecloth that was used as a burial shroud, etc.). They'll assume that the lobsters used the machine to calculate various astronomical phenomenon, and they'll use the angles of your foundations to conclude that since one of the walls directly bisected the sunrise on both the winter and summer solstice, they had an advanced knowledge. They'll come to believe that humans were simply a plague of unintelligent mammals that overwhelmed the advanced lobster race, as the lobster's thirst for more and more energy caused them to use fossil fuels at an alarming rate and cook off the oceans... In such an environment, the lobsters, for obvious reasons, could not survive, thus the humans (and the cockroaches, of course) eventually overwhelmed the advanced lobster society...
I for one, welcome our lobster overlords...
It is important to realize that the radiation deaths at Hiroshima were mostly caused by direct exposure to the radioactivity of the bomb blast itself, NOT from "fallout" as most people commonly believe. This is due to the fact that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were airbursts of the weapons - they detonated 2000 feet or more above the surface. When this happens, the atomic blast destroys more buildings and causes more destruction over a larger area than had the bomb been dropped to ground level. This was intentional, as the goal of the bombing was to inflict as much damage as possible. But the side affect of this was that very little fallout was generated. Typically fallout is created when an atomic (or thermonuclear) weapon explodes in a ground burst. In a ground burst, the soil, rocks, building materials, etc. that are not vaporized are turned into ash that becomes radioactive due to the direct exposure. The ash is then swept up in the mushroom cloud and dispersed over a wide area. Chernobyl was far and away more dangerous with respect to fallout, because the radioactive core burned and spread really bad isotopes that would not happen to such a great degree with either a ground or airburst of a nuclear weapon. But then again, as has been pointed out, Chernobyl was an example of a bad idea gone worse - a flawed design, with no pressure dome, and human operation intentionally creating a dangerous situation not fully understood. Modern, Western nuclear reactors could never have the same kind of accident...
Are there any female drivers and if there are, do they do their makeup in the rear view mirror while driving? (ducking and running for cover)
This is a really interesting point, one I'd never considered in quite that way... I remember the Star Trek episode that posited the idea that Edith Keilor could have forestalled the entry of the US into WWII... It never quite made sense to me - somehow she stopped Pearl Harbor? Or that somehow her peace ideas would have made Americans choose NOT to go to war with Japan afterwards... It is unlikely.
Anyway, I remember a sociology class I took in college that showed a survey of Americans right after the end of WWII on what they thought, at that time, should have been done with the bomb. A miniscule percentage said we should not have used the A-bomb on Japan, and the vast majority said we should have. But the interesting point of the survey was that some 8% of Americans believed we should have continued to drop atomic bombs on Japan, even AFTER THEY HAD SURRENDERED... That 1 out of 15 Americans would believe such a thing at that time points out just how pissed off Americans were at that point... WWII touched virtually every home, with either a relative dying or being wounded, or certainly a neighbor who suffered such a fate... It is VERY likely that had one atomic bomb not stopped the war in Europe, we would have continued to drop bombs on them until they did surrender. Remember, the plants that were built to manufacture the uranium and plutonium for the bombs weren't built to build one or two bombs... they were built to build hundreds, if not, THOUSANDS of A-Bombs...