True, but the Earth is very big and the ISS flies less than 200 miles above it; so you can only see it when it flies within a few hundred miles of straight over your head. Also, the light has to be just right. Its only visible when the sun is not shining where you are, but is shining on the station. That's why the best time to see any satellites is near dusk or dawn. The point of the article is that conditions will be just right more often than usual this month, giving us less than amateur astronomers (especially people living in cloudy areas) a better chance of seeing it.
I went to http://www.n2yo.com/ and found that it will be flying straight over my head and be very bright in a couple of days.
That's exactly what I don't understand.
A meteor the size of a large caliber bullet blows a 12 inch hole in the ground and is still intact? You'd think it would get pulverized into dust in the process.
Just ask a cook
Its like taking a steak that's frozen solid and throwing it on a BBQ with ten pounds of blazing hot charcoal. One minute on each side, and the outside will almost be burnt. Try to eat it though, and you realize the inside is still raw and cold, probably partially frozen still.
Amen. A lot of people also like to blame new tech for these kinds of problems.
Have we really become a society that believes that the only way to prevent anti-social or anti-productive behavior is to use tech and patents to make it impossible?
If a company doesn't like what people are doing during their meetings, they should consider why people aren't paying attention (maybe the meeting wasn't necessary) and if they determine that the employees really are out of line, punish them.
These days, we've adopted this concept that you can't punish people for incompetence or negligence, as long as society didn't do anything to prevent the person from doing what they did.
Trust me, within a few years, you're going to see the first murderer use the defense that they are not at fault because society allowed them to purchase the weapon, or a child-molester who says "neither she, nor her parents did anything to prevent me from having sex with her, If this 10 yr old didn't want to have sex, she should have said so, or her parents shouldn't have sent her to summer camp.
That explains why the last time I called 911 (I was in a building), they pressed me for an address. When I told them my phone had GPS, they said it was easier for them if I gave them the address myself.
Here here. They don't even blink an eye about handing the bankers billions of dollars. But they can't agree on any spending that would actually benifit our country. OK, its arguable as to whether space exploration is prudent right now. But the Republicans in congress are saying that expanding and repairing our worn out infrastructure is a total waste of money. No, they insist that if we just hand it out to the people who still have money, then magically, it will somehow help those of us who don't. What they are actually doing is called looting. They realize that they have driven us to the verge of collapse, and now they are just trying to horde as much as they can so they can come through the depression ahead of everyone else. They're getting kind of desperate right now because they are realizing that their $5 billion will only be worth $500 million in a few years.
I don't know how old you are, but I'm guessing you weren't born yet in the early 80s, when the shuttle first started flying. Trust me, a modern iPhone would out perform a 4 x 6 x 2ft mainframe from that time. I'm sure that the first shuttle had less computing power than the computer that I'm using right now. And GPS hadn't even started to be implemented yet. Yet our ICBMs could hit targets within a couple hundred yards on the other side of the world.
I'm just guessing here, but I would think it is basically a turbojet engine with an afterburner (which dumps extra fuel into the exhaust for extra thrust) which has already been used reliably on most fighters for decades, and has archived MACH 3 at very high altitude. But this one starts dumping oxygen into the exhaust as well, when the engine starts to become starved of oxygen.
Actually, the major drawback of traditional afterburners is that they are very inefficient because there is not much oxygen left in the exhaust. Adding oxygen would make them more efficient, and theoretically allow them to work even in a vacuum.
Then give your blood to the Red Cross. They are a non-profit organization.
Yes, as R2.0 points out, they do pay their electric bill, they pay their employees, they pay for the equipment they use, and every other cost of doing business; and they do charge hospitals for the blood, to cover these costs. "Non-profit" doesn't mean that no one makes a profit (for example, the employees deserve to profit from their time and effort), it only means that the company itself doesn't make a profit. In other words, nobody is getting paid simply because they own the place, even though they don't do anything.
The one place where profit is likely to be made on your blood, is at the hospital. They most likely charge you more than the Red Cross charges them for the blood, but hospitals make sure they make a profit on everything. What's the alternative? Don't give blood, and let people bleed to death to teach the evil hospitals a lesson? Yeah That'll teach 'em.
Very informative and clarifying explanation. However, after reading it, all I can think about is how much fun I could have with a bunch of nitroglycerin and Viagra.
The DVD is just a convenient way to distribute the movies. Sure, there are much better ways for you to store and use it at home, but for many people today, discs are still the best way for them to purchase the media. For years, the first thing I have done with any CD I have bought is copy it onto my hard drive and burn a hard copy. Then I put the original away and, hopefully, never touch it again. But if my HD crashes, someone steals my disc, or I scratch it - I pull out the pristine original and copy it again. Of course, copy protection has made that sometimes more difficult these days. Who can blame them, they didn't sell you the right to listen to their music for the rest of your life, on any piece of equipment you please. That would be like Ford selling you a car, and telling you that, as long as you keep maintaining it, you can drive it for the rest of your life - oh, wait, those stupid bastards actually do that, no wonder the American car industry is doing so poorly.
It's not the best solution for everyone, but many people still want to purchase a hard copy of their media. One thing many slash-dotters may not be aware of is, there are still a lot of people who don't own computers, and many don't have high speed internet.
I remember all the talk ten years ago about the "paperless society," but I still see just as much paper as ever. Same thing with plastic discs, just because we have alternatives, that doesn't mean nobody needs the old technology.
BTW, I don't like to order things off the internet, I would prefer to go down to the store, pay cash, hand them a flash drive, and take my movie home on it. But I don't know of any store that allows that.
But to tell most people that they need to purchase additional equipment; they balk at that. People always do that. For example, a cable company advertises service for $50 a month, then tells you that you will need to spend $60 (once) for a cable modem. Or a satellite company offers TV service for $50 per month, but requires you to spend $150 or more for the satellite equipment. Of course you will need certain equipment. for example, you can't use cable or satellite unless you have a TV, and you can't use the internet unless you have a computer.
Personally, I prefer to buy my own equipment to renting it. If you get cable television, and need a cable box, the cable company will rent it you for 5-10 dollars per month, that's $60-$120 per year, on the other hand, if you get cable internet, you will need to pay $60 once for a cable modem that will last for years, and will likely be useful even if you switch companies.
In my opinion, the reason many people bitch about having to buy additional equipment is that we live in a world ruled by credit, instead of money. More people say "give it to me now, and I'll pay for it forever," and less people are saying "I'll pay for it now, and own it forever."
Here in the US, we have had a system that allows the public to write the law for decades, at least at the state and local level. In some states they are called propositions, and in some, issues. If enough people (with the help of a special interest group, of course) can get enough signatures, they can get an issue on the ballot to be voted on. These issues are almost a way for the majority to impose their will upon a minority group. Often, it will be some kind of tax upon a minority group, which will reduce the tax burden on the majority. Or, it will be some sort of restriction on what people can do on their own property, because the majority of their neighbors don't like it.
If you have a pet peeve that the legislature won't touch because they don't want to piss off a large portion of their electorate, or because it is outside of the scope of their power, just get it on the ballot and get more people to vote for it than against it.
Clearly, your problem is that your wife does not have a job, or you are taking on far to much of the responsibilities at home. If a wife, or husband, in a household with at least two small children (I am assuming there are at least two, since you used the plural, and that they are young because I can't see you taking fifteen year olds to work with you) has time to sit around watching you write code (an activity considerably less exciting than watching paint dry) they are blessed with much more free time than any of the parents of young children that I know. Actually, if you are a parent and have that kind of free time, good for you. Just don't waste it like that. You're going to piss off the majority of parents who use their free time to do things like catching up on their sleep, or getting a haircut, or watching a movie, or changing the oil in their car.
A friend of mine just got a laptop with Vista from Circuit City. It is slow to boot, and Vista keeps warning him that he has viruses or spyware (these are not internet pop-ups, they are OS warning messages that appear even when IE is not open, but they all lead to websites trying to sell some kind of security software) even though it came with a 60 day trial of Norton Internet Security (which is properly installed and updated, I checked). I told him that it was probably the crap that Circuit City had included with the installation CD. I wanted to tell him to copy someones "true" MS Windows Vista CD, or download an ISO, and use his CD key to activate it, but wasn't sure if his key would work with a regular version of Vista.
So my question is: would this work or not? And, could there be a problem loading the OEM specific drivers he would need from the installation disc, without actually installing from the disk.
PS: He was later able to solve the warning message issues by reporting the problem to Microsoft. They installed an "update" which basically disabled most of the bloatware. So it looks like Microsoft is working to rid people of the crap that that their vendors are adding to their software. A very good idea in my opinion.
Of course. 612 seconds ought to be enough for anyone. I keep telling my girlfriend that, I even remind her that it's enough time for a complete half-time report, with time to spare for her to go to the fridge and get me another beer, but she just refuses to see things logically.
Too bad more of these experts didn't choose to contribute to the relevant Wikipedia entries, and link back to their own sites. Personally, I like checking out the external links on an entry, both to for verifiability, and for more in-depth information.
You say there's no precendent they have to conform to - not true, we have pretty strong consumer laws in the UK I was talking about the US -- (IANB). We DON'T have strong consumer laws in the US, and until the courts make it absolutely clear that a certain line of reasoning is not acceptable, it's open season.
IANAL, and IANB(ritish), but what I'm wondering is if the legal situation in the UK encourages businesses to exploit such loopholes in order to avoid their responsibilities like it does in the US.
Obviously, in some situations, they have every right to argue that they won't fix your problem if you've changed operating systems. But in this country, businesses are encouraged to push such limitations as far as they can because if they are proven wrong, there are very few negative consequences.
If YOU hire a lawyer, and YOU take them to court, and YOU take dozens of hours of your own time to sue them in small claims court, you will probably win. BUT, their lawyers will make it very hard because they know that, even though they have a poor case, they will get paid, even if they lose. Whereas your lawyer has to worry that he won't make a dime if you lose (either you hired one of those lawyers who advertise that "we don't get paid, unless you get paid," or they are worried that you just won't pay them, and you don't have enough money to be worth suing.
If you do win, the defendant will have to do the repair they should have done, and they will PROBABLY have to pay your legal fees, but good luck getting money for all of your wasted time (or for that matter, as a reward for the monetary risk you took in order to sue them).
They are hoping that you would rather take the hit for a few hundred dollars, than deal with all that shit.
Now look at it from their point of view. There is no precedent that they have to conform to, so they can argue ignorance (in reference to the aforementioned car analogy, I'm sure that the whole after market car stereo thing has been used as an excuse to not repair things unrelated, but someone eventually beat them in court, setting a precedent, so they don't use that argument anymore). They know that most of their customers don't have the resources to fight them. They know that if they they lose in court, they will basically just be forced to do what they should have done in the first place. It's like walking into a store knowing that if you steal something, you probably won't be caught, but if you are, the worst the cops will do is make you pay for the merchandise you took.
True, but the Earth is very big and the ISS flies less than 200 miles above it; so you can only see it when it flies within a few hundred miles of straight over your head. Also, the light has to be just right. Its only visible when the sun is not shining where you are, but is shining on the station. That's why the best time to see any satellites is near dusk or dawn. The point of the article is that conditions will be just right more often than usual this month, giving us less than amateur astronomers (especially people living in cloudy areas) a better chance of seeing it.
I went to http://www.n2yo.com/ and found that it will be flying straight over my head and be very bright in a couple of days.
That's exactly what I don't understand.
A meteor the size of a large caliber bullet blows a 12 inch hole in the ground and is still intact? You'd think it would get pulverized into dust in the process.
Just ask a cook
Its like taking a steak that's frozen solid and throwing it on a BBQ with ten pounds of blazing hot charcoal. One minute on each side, and the outside will almost be burnt. Try to eat it though, and you realize the inside is still raw and cold, probably partially frozen still.
You're right. "Never trust a computer." : ) I learned that the hard way with ATMs.
Amen. A lot of people also like to blame new tech for these kinds of problems.
Have we really become a society that believes that the only way to prevent anti-social or anti-productive behavior is to use tech and patents to make it impossible?
If a company doesn't like what people are doing during their meetings, they should consider why people aren't paying attention (maybe the meeting wasn't necessary) and if they determine that the employees really are out of line, punish them.
These days, we've adopted this concept that you can't punish people for incompetence or negligence, as long as society didn't do anything to prevent the person from doing what they did. Trust me, within a few years, you're going to see the first murderer use the defense that they are not at fault because society allowed them to purchase the weapon, or a child-molester who says "neither she, nor her parents did anything to prevent me from having sex with her, If this 10 yr old didn't want to have sex, she should have said so, or her parents shouldn't have sent her to summer camp.
That explains why the last time I called 911 (I was in a building), they pressed me for an address. When I told them my phone had GPS, they said it was easier for them if I gave them the address myself.
I know a few women who would probably like to see both of their butt cheeks collapse.
Here here. They don't even blink an eye about handing the bankers billions of dollars. But they can't agree on any spending that would actually benifit our country. OK, its arguable as to whether space exploration is prudent right now. But the Republicans in congress are saying that expanding and repairing our worn out infrastructure is a total waste of money. No, they insist that if we just hand it out to the people who still have money, then magically, it will somehow help those of us who don't. What they are actually doing is called looting. They realize that they have driven us to the verge of collapse, and now they are just trying to horde as much as they can so they can come through the depression ahead of everyone else. They're getting kind of desperate right now because they are realizing that their $5 billion will only be worth $500 million in a few years.
Having a backup is a good idea. But there is no reason to think that it would be difficult, or even inconvenient, to provide that.
I don't know how old you are, but I'm guessing you weren't born yet in the early 80s, when the shuttle first started flying. Trust me, a modern iPhone would out perform a 4 x 6 x 2ft mainframe from that time. I'm sure that the first shuttle had less computing power than the computer that I'm using right now. And GPS hadn't even started to be implemented yet. Yet our ICBMs could hit targets within a couple hundred yards on the other side of the world.
I'm just guessing here, but I would think it is basically a turbojet engine with an afterburner (which dumps extra fuel into the exhaust for extra thrust) which has already been used reliably on most fighters for decades, and has archived MACH 3 at very high altitude. But this one starts dumping oxygen into the exhaust as well, when the engine starts to become starved of oxygen. Actually, the major drawback of traditional afterburners is that they are very inefficient because there is not much oxygen left in the exhaust. Adding oxygen would make them more efficient, and theoretically allow them to work even in a vacuum.
I hope you guys are being sarcastic. Yes a lot of hippies put themselves into "space" before USSR or NASA did it for real.
Then give your blood to the Red Cross. They are a non-profit organization.
Yes, as R2.0 points out, they do pay their electric bill, they pay their employees, they pay for the equipment they use, and every other cost of doing business; and they do charge hospitals for the blood, to cover these costs. "Non-profit" doesn't mean that no one makes a profit (for example, the employees deserve to profit from their time and effort), it only means that the company itself doesn't make a profit. In other words, nobody is getting paid simply because they own the place, even though they don't do anything.
The one place where profit is likely to be made on your blood, is at the hospital. They most likely charge you more than the Red Cross charges them for the blood, but hospitals make sure they make a profit on everything. What's the alternative? Don't give blood, and let people bleed to death to teach the evil hospitals a lesson? Yeah That'll teach 'em.
Very informative and clarifying explanation. However, after reading it, all I can think about is how much fun I could have with a bunch of nitroglycerin and Viagra.
The DVD is just a convenient way to distribute the movies. Sure, there are much better ways for you to store and use it at home, but for many people today, discs are still the best way for them to purchase the media. For years, the first thing I have done with any CD I have bought is copy it onto my hard drive and burn a hard copy. Then I put the original away and, hopefully, never touch it again. But if my HD crashes, someone steals my disc, or I scratch it - I pull out the pristine original and copy it again. Of course, copy protection has made that sometimes more difficult these days. Who can blame them, they didn't sell you the right to listen to their music for the rest of your life, on any piece of equipment you please. That would be like Ford selling you a car, and telling you that, as long as you keep maintaining it, you can drive it for the rest of your life - oh, wait, those stupid bastards actually do that, no wonder the American car industry is doing so poorly.
It's not the best solution for everyone, but many people still want to purchase a hard copy of their media. One thing many slash-dotters may not be aware of is, there are still a lot of people who don't own computers, and many don't have high speed internet.
I remember all the talk ten years ago about the "paperless society," but I still see just as much paper as ever. Same thing with plastic discs, just because we have alternatives, that doesn't mean nobody needs the old technology.
BTW, I don't like to order things off the internet, I would prefer to go down to the store, pay cash, hand them a flash drive, and take my movie home on it. But I don't know of any store that allows that.
130,000 yen. How many US half-cents is that?
Personally, I prefer to buy my own equipment to renting it. If you get cable television, and need a cable box, the cable company will rent it you for 5-10 dollars per month, that's $60-$120 per year, on the other hand, if you get cable internet, you will need to pay $60 once for a cable modem that will last for years, and will likely be useful even if you switch companies.
In my opinion, the reason many people bitch about having to buy additional equipment is that we live in a world ruled by credit, instead of money. More people say "give it to me now, and I'll pay for it forever," and less people are saying "I'll pay for it now, and own it forever."
Here in the US, we have had a system that allows the public to write the law for decades, at least at the state and local level. In some states they are called propositions, and in some, issues. If enough people (with the help of a special interest group, of course) can get enough signatures, they can get an issue on the ballot to be voted on. These issues are almost a way for the majority to impose their will upon a minority group. Often, it will be some kind of tax upon a minority group, which will reduce the tax burden on the majority. Or, it will be some sort of restriction on what people can do on their own property, because the majority of their neighbors don't like it.
If you have a pet peeve that the legislature won't touch because they don't want to piss off a large portion of their electorate, or because it is outside of the scope of their power, just get it on the ballot and get more people to vote for it than against it.
43 years away? Nah Fusion is just ten years away. Always has been, always will be.
Clearly, your problem is that your wife does not have a job, or you are taking on far to much of the responsibilities at home. If a wife, or husband, in a household with at least two small children (I am assuming there are at least two, since you used the plural, and that they are young because I can't see you taking fifteen year olds to work with you) has time to sit around watching you write code (an activity considerably less exciting than watching paint dry) they are blessed with much more free time than any of the parents of young children that I know. Actually, if you are a parent and have that kind of free time, good for you. Just don't waste it like that. You're going to piss off the majority of parents who use their free time to do things like catching up on their sleep, or getting a haircut, or watching a movie, or changing the oil in their car.
A friend of mine just got a laptop with Vista from Circuit City. It is slow to boot, and Vista keeps warning him that he has viruses or spyware (these are not internet pop-ups, they are OS warning messages that appear even when IE is not open, but they all lead to websites trying to sell some kind of security software) even though it came with a 60 day trial of Norton Internet Security (which is properly installed and updated, I checked). I told him that it was probably the crap that Circuit City had included with the installation CD. I wanted to tell him to copy someones "true" MS Windows Vista CD, or download an ISO, and use his CD key to activate it, but wasn't sure if his key would work with a regular version of Vista.
So my question is: would this work or not? And, could there be a problem loading the OEM specific drivers he would need from the installation disc, without actually installing from the disk.
PS: He was later able to solve the warning message issues by reporting the problem to Microsoft. They installed an "update" which basically disabled most of the bloatware. So it looks like Microsoft is working to rid people of the crap that that their vendors are adding to their software. A very good idea in my opinion.
Too bad more of these experts didn't choose to contribute to the relevant Wikipedia entries, and link back to their own sites. Personally, I like checking out the external links on an entry, both to for verifiability, and for more in-depth information.
IANAL, and IANB(ritish), but what I'm wondering is if the legal situation in the UK encourages businesses to exploit such loopholes in order to avoid their responsibilities like it does in the US.
Obviously, in some situations, they have every right to argue that they won't fix your problem if you've changed operating systems. But in this country, businesses are encouraged to push such limitations as far as they can because if they are proven wrong, there are very few negative consequences.
If YOU hire a lawyer, and YOU take them to court, and YOU take dozens of hours of your own time to sue them in small claims court, you will probably win. BUT, their lawyers will make it very hard because they know that, even though they have a poor case, they will get paid, even if they lose. Whereas your lawyer has to worry that he won't make a dime if you lose (either you hired one of those lawyers who advertise that "we don't get paid, unless you get paid," or they are worried that you just won't pay them, and you don't have enough money to be worth suing.
If you do win, the defendant will have to do the repair they should have done, and they will PROBABLY have to pay your legal fees, but good luck getting money for all of your wasted time (or for that matter, as a reward for the monetary risk you took in order to sue them).
They are hoping that you would rather take the hit for a few hundred dollars, than deal with all that shit.
Now look at it from their point of view. There is no precedent that they have to conform to, so they can argue ignorance (in reference to the aforementioned car analogy, I'm sure that the whole after market car stereo thing has been used as an excuse to not repair things unrelated, but someone eventually beat them in court, setting a precedent, so they don't use that argument anymore). They know that most of their customers don't have the resources to fight them. They know that if they they lose in court, they will basically just be forced to do what they should have done in the first place.
It's like walking into a store knowing that if you steal something, you probably won't be caught, but if you are, the worst the cops will do is make you pay for the merchandise you took.