Is this thing just an out-dated, broken down piece of crap that people just can't let go of because of sentimentality?
No.
I have a 15 year old car that I'm rather fond of due to all the good times I've been through with it, but when the next major repair becomes necessary, it's going to the dump.
But on the way home from the dump, you can buy a replacement car. There is no Hubble replacement. No one would blink an eye about de-orbiting Hubble if there was something better up there.
1. $1-2 billion might not be a good investment for the Hubble. If that money is applied to the design of a replacement satellite, or possibly a replacement for the shuttles, then we might gain even more by NOT spending on the Hubble. It's a cost tradeoff issue, and is hardly a simple decision to make.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and in the meantime, we'll no longer have Hubble. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" really applies here. It's not like we can't work on a replacement shuttle, a next-gen Hubble, and the current Hubble at the same time. NASA's budget is paltry.
The anti-Bush rhetoric is getting old.
It won't be old until the scoundrel is out of power.
So, we're stuck with paying the $80 billion per year for the next few years.
The point being made here is that we're wasting money in Iraq. Sure, it's too late now to do anything about the money we've already spent, and the money we'll have to spend, but it's totally valid to point this out when a national treasure like Hubble is planned for de-orbitting.
At this point it does no good to complain about the extra money required for Iraq, since it's going there no matter what.
Bullshit. You complain when someone fucks up as bad as the President has so that they might learn, change their ways, or at the very least make it harder for them to foul things up worse. If you don't complain about the money, what's to stop him from asking for far more than is needed?
So, you're an anarchist. That's fine, but I'm not going to continue to argue with an anarchist.
I am not an anarchist. What gives you that idea?
You're a dumb-fuck who has to see things in absolutes. Either I'm absolutely for the rule of law, or I'm absolutely an anarchist (an extension of your earlier, "you either enforce all laws equally, or there are no laws"--are you really retarded enough to not see that's false?). Your pea-brain can't comprehend a system which is not 100% self-consistent. Laws are important, laws are integral to a working society. Sound like an anarchist? No? Just wait until you hear this: laws are not ends unto themselves. They are tools to an end. Unjust laws should not be enforced. Oops, all of the sudden I'm an anarchist, but only to a rigid fool such as yourself.
Are you still here? Didn't I tell you to go fuck yourself?
I agree. As I said though, it ain't fucking relevant. You can't choose to enforce some laws and not others based on whether they are "right" or not. Law is not about what is right or wrong.
Yes you can (well, you can't, but the police, judges, prosecutors, etc, can), it happens all the time. The question *is* relevant because the whole point in discussing Schwartz's incarceration is to point out how stupid the law is. That's the first step in changing the law. Your attitude is, "well, the law's the law." That's revolting.
No, I am NOT saying that. I am saying that a person who breaks a law should be punished as the law requires. If the law is unjust, the law should be changed. What is NOT right is for us to stop enforcing laws because we don't like them.
I disagree fully, a person should (should is a moral term, more on this below) not be punished under an unjust law. For you, it's more important to sacrifice people to ensure the consistency of the system. For me, the system serves the people, so the system must bend to ensure the just liberty of the people.
Get over your silly indignation.
My indignation is not silly. It's disgusting to argue that a person should be imprisoned for a stupid law. It's sick. And it's made moreso by the fact that every time an asshole with your attitude towards the law falls victim to such a law, they scream bloody murder about how wrong it is for them to be arrested/investigated/imprisoned/etc.
You and I both think the law is stupid. The difference is, I am capable of distinguishing between legality and morality. You are not.
No, the difference is you are a sociopath who thinks it's moral to punish someone under an unjust law. To separate the morality and legality of the system is merely to say that his imprisonment was completely legal, but the imprisonment was immoral. NO ONE has suggested the law was not executed exactly as it was written. What's at issue (which you keep dismissing by claiming it's not the issue) is whether it was moral, whether it was the sort of law that serves the people, like the US Government (and State and local governments under the Federal hierarchy) mandates. When you say such a law should be enforced, you are making a moral decision. Should is an opinion, and is predicated on your values (morality). You are saying it's more moral to uphold the law than it is immoral to unjustly imprison someone. You are a sick, pathetic man.
A man was deprived of his freedom for being a geek and a white hat hacker. It's sick and anyone who defends such a system needs to be personally run through that system in order to cure their sociopathy.
Now, go fuck yourself, and be sure to turn yourself in and demand to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, if there's any law against self-fucking in your jurisdiction.
BUG 6397: "Save As..." dialog doesn't work properly under certa... BUG 6398: Lynx unexpectedly quits when Japanese text is... BUG 6399: When browsing tsunami relief site, users are arrested by the police... BUG 6400: Choosing "cyan" for visited links causes all links to show up as cyan...
>What Randal did shouldn't have landed him in jail, but it did.
Why shouldn't it have? It's a law like any other law. You break it, you suffer the consequences.
Because the consequences for what he did should not be jail, duh.
Whether or not the law is right is a different issue.
No, it's not a different issue, it's the WHOLE issue.
You ignorant sod, you are saying that a person should be deprived of their freedom for cracking passwords, not in any malicious way, and dutifully reporting the weakness to his employer. It should not be against the law, it should be up to Intel whether or not to fire and/or sue him for damages, but it's absolutely disgusting to hear someone advocating sending someone to jail for that.
I mean, come on -- do you really think it's that unreasonable to prosecute somebody who willfully misused corporate resources?
"Misuse corporate resources" is a vague term. Should you go to jail if you use the photocopier to copy your tax returns before running to the post office? No. Should you go to jail for using corporate resources to steal from your shareholders? Yes.
What if instead of cracking passwords he was wasting reams of paper making photocopies of his ass? Would you still think him all noble for going against the establishment?
You are a moron. I never said he was "noble for going against the establishment", nor did he "photocopy his ass" (what an absolutely ridiculous analogy--do you think photocopying your ass should land you in jail?). What I said was that it shouldn't have landed him in jail. What you have is Intel depriving a man of his liberty for showing them a flaw in their system. He didn't steal corporate resources, he didn't vandalize the files he had access too. He did scare Intel's corporate leaders. Boo!
You're fucking sick. I'll bet, just like Rush Limbaugh who rails for people who abuse drugs to go to jail, except for him, if you found your employer's corporate file share with the legal docs and employee records was prone to be accessed via WiFi and l0phtcrack from the Starbucks in the lobby, you'd decry the notion that what you did should land you in jail.
I mean this is no small way: Go fuck yourself. That goes double if you live under the jurisdiction of a law which makes said self-fucking illegal. Putting someone in jail is the second-worse thing our government can do to a person (well, maybe third, now that Gonzales is championing torture--in much the same, "I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just that it can be done," way that you are saying Randal Schwartz should have been sent to jail).
Yeah, Intel had a somewhat contradictory set of policies. On the one hand, he was charged with improving network security. On the other, he was told he couldn't do certain things. Where Randal went wrong was when he saw that the policies were contradictory and went ahead anyway. There is always another option which won't get you in trouble: stop what you're fucking doing, and get clarification from management. Being an arrogant ass, he didn't, and so he was arrested.
Being an arrogant ass shouldn't be illegal. What you're saying is, "Yes, parent poster, the law was wrong to put him in jail, therefore it was his fault for not recognizing that potentiality, and violating the stupid law."
The point isn't whether the law, as it stood (which was NOT clear until after the trial), made what he did a crime, it's whether that's a good and intelligent law. It isn't.
In such a situation, you get written clarification, or you quit your job. You do not break the law and then whine when you are sent to jail.
Way to miss the whole point. The point is that the system is unmoral/disagreeable/anti-the-little-guy/whatever related adjective you prefer. Your reply blames the victim and does nothing to address the problem. It's like saying (during the witch trial eras), "Well, that's what you get for having a birthmark and a pet black cat!"
What Randal did shouldn't have landed him in jail, but it did. He probably shouldn't have done it even if it was completely legal, but that doesn't mean he should be imprisoned for it!
First, he was, as you note, a regular character. It wasn't just a guest appearance.
That's a big difference, but I don't see how it's key. It also wouldn't make a lot of sense (putting a future character into the show would cause too many problems. Dr. Soong has some potential though...).
Second, it made sense in terms of the story.
I don't think it did. With Miles and Keiko it made more sense, but with Worf, in the series finale of ST:TNG, Worf and Troi were dating.
Even if there had been no Worf from TNG, it would have made sense for them to invent the character for DS9.
Not really. If you *wanted* a Klingon arc to the story, any ol' Klingon would do. They also wanted Ensign Ro to play the part that became Kira, why would you have needed Worf and not Trag or Krang or something?
The key difference (if you want one) is that Enterprise appears to need a gimmicky episode, while DS9 didn't. Remember the tribbles episode? It was a fun aside. The current season of Enterprise is pretty good, really more in line with what I was expecting when the show first came out. I don't think it needs a gimmick, but if they're going to do one, I hope that at least it works.
Is apple going to switch to X.org, since most everyone else has already? or are they sticking with XFree86 for the long run? What kinds of compatibility issues will develop as a result of that?
If XFree86 is as doomed as it looks, there's really no reason for Apple to stick with it, and plenty of reason for them to switch, which is the same boat all the Linux (and BSD and pretty much anything which uses XFree86) distros are in. This changeover isn't something that has to happen in unison.
If the FCC was truly all about supporting large networks, they would allow them to appeal to the ever-increasing moral decadence of our society completely unharrassed.
But that's exactly what the FCC *is* allowing them to do. Showing a nipple in a non-pornographic fashion is not decadence, but dumbing down America *is*.
These fines are actually *worse* than just letting the corporations off the hook, because they are punishing them not for doing anything wrong, but send the message that you better watch what you say. Very chilling.
As far as size and weight go, if they planned on using an RTG on the probe, they would have designed the probe around it. They wouldn't have any problem designing the probe around the RTG and making it fit.
No doubt it can be done, but the effects it has on the probe (ie: what additional science can you do with the extended mission vs. the costs (including the science you *can't* do because you no longer have the space/weight/cost)).
So temperature on the surface will not be a problem. With the probe insulated and the RTG producing the amount of heat that it does, it would still require a radiator to prevent from overheating.
I'm not convinced of this aspect (extending the mission much, while doing the same amount of science). All the heat is in a small radioactive core, which is entombed in lead (so it can be launched). How do you get the heat to the rest of the probe fast enough to counter the 70K atmosphere without melting the lead? Then you must distribute the heat well enough to keep parts from freezing, other parts from melting, and then insulate the whole thing to keep it warm (but not so insulated that your instruments are useless).
So now we've got extra mass of an RTG, clever plumbing to transfer the heat (without compromising the integrity of the lead casing), and some exceptional insulation?
I'm also unconvinced of your claims regarding using a radiator, due to the lack of a medium in space to transfer the heat to. RTG's have radiators, so I wonder that they don't radiate photons (black body radiation)? If so, wouldn't the added radiation through thermal transfer be an issue?
So really, I still doubt an RTG would have been much use.
A RTG would do just fine. They last such a long time that power wouldn't be an issue. Cassini gets its power from a RTG, and so did the Voyager craft. The Voyager craft have been operating for over 27 years now.
What I'm thinking about is weight, volume, and the ability to keep the spacecraft warm enough to operate. Cassini's RTG is about the size of a person (don't know the weight, but I have to imagine it weighs a *lot* more than a person) and provides under 900W of power. Without doing any calculation, I don't see 900W (imagine about 9 100W lightbulbs) keeping a VW-sized object warm enough to operate exposed to a 70K environment. In fact, I don't even think the RTG unit could keep its own temperature above freezing.
So, I stand by what I've said, I don't think an RTG would have been much use.
The thing about the early episodes is that they were really more science fiction oriented, while the later were more drama.
I never cared much at all for the Klingon episodes, nor for any of the "who's in love with who this week" sludge. The better episodes of the later seasons were better than the episodes of the first two seasons, but they also brought a lot of dreck of their own.
Where's the support and discussion? We're being granted the chance to act now for once. If we pass this up, we'll just ensure more frustrating stories on yro.slashdot.org.
I don't support you because I don't believe that the state should be funding scientific research
Then you don't really support science, because the state, in it's various forms, plays a critical role in science. The reason is that, if left to "free enterprise", no one wants to be the one to spend the money on research that will benefit everyone (including their competitors). Free enterprise is good for engineering and invention, but really bad for science.
Or put another way, you don't get Fermilab and Hubble (or even the Internet) without the state.
Just a moment while I get my old PowerBook so I can upload the virus to the alien ship.
Bastards keep trying to take them over so they can communicate around the Earth (they traveled like 6 million light-years to get here and they didn't know the Earth was round?).
Does this affect my broadband connection? Noooo. I don't even know why I bother...
What? Isn't Unreal good enough for you? There's also Doom III, and, um, Free Cell, and Super Free Cell, and that pong game with Tux.
(hint: think "funny", not "troll". I know there are other games for linux, like that one where you squash bill gates as he tries to install Windows all over the place, and there's also neko, and vi...)
How could you go from defending different forms of entertainment as valid ("Different strokes for different folks") and then end up criticising people's choice to watch television?
I said people will like different forms of entertainment, I didn't say all such forms were equal.
From a strictly scientific point of view, it doesn't appear that a glider would be very useful. It would be a great engineering project, and definitely a cool project, but it wouldn't yield much (comparatively) in the way of science.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this thing just an out-dated, broken down piece of crap that people just can't let go of because of sentimentality?
No.
I have a 15 year old car that I'm rather fond of due to all the good times I've been through with it, but when the next major repair becomes necessary, it's going to the dump.
But on the way home from the dump, you can buy a replacement car. There is no Hubble replacement. No one would blink an eye about de-orbiting Hubble if there was something better up there.
1. $1-2 billion might not be a good investment for the Hubble. If that money is applied to the design of a replacement satellite, or possibly a replacement for the shuttles, then we might gain even more by NOT spending on the Hubble. It's a cost tradeoff issue, and is hardly a simple decision to make.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and in the meantime, we'll no longer have Hubble. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" really applies here. It's not like we can't work on a replacement shuttle, a next-gen Hubble, and the current Hubble at the same time. NASA's budget is paltry.
The anti-Bush rhetoric is getting old.
It won't be old until the scoundrel is out of power.
So, we're stuck with paying the $80 billion per year for the next few years.
The point being made here is that we're wasting money in Iraq. Sure, it's too late now to do anything about the money we've already spent, and the money we'll have to spend, but it's totally valid to point this out when a national treasure like Hubble is planned for de-orbitting.
At this point it does no good to complain about the extra money required for Iraq, since it's going there no matter what.
Bullshit. You complain when someone fucks up as bad as the President has so that they might learn, change their ways, or at the very least make it harder for them to foul things up worse. If you don't complain about the money, what's to stop him from asking for far more than is needed?
something posted on MacSlash several days ago
You mean yesterday?
So, you're an anarchist. That's fine, but I'm not going to continue to argue with an anarchist.
I am not an anarchist. What gives you that idea?
You're a dumb-fuck who has to see things in absolutes. Either I'm absolutely for the rule of law, or I'm absolutely an anarchist (an extension of your earlier, "you either enforce all laws equally, or there are no laws"--are you really retarded enough to not see that's false?). Your pea-brain can't comprehend a system which is not 100% self-consistent. Laws are important, laws are integral to a working society. Sound like an anarchist? No? Just wait until you hear this: laws are not ends unto themselves. They are tools to an end. Unjust laws should not be enforced. Oops, all of the sudden I'm an anarchist, but only to a rigid fool such as yourself.
Are you still here? Didn't I tell you to go fuck yourself?
I agree. As I said though, it ain't fucking relevant. You can't choose to enforce some laws and not others based on whether they are "right" or not. Law is not about what is right or wrong.
Yes you can (well, you can't, but the police, judges, prosecutors, etc, can), it happens all the time. The question *is* relevant because the whole point in discussing Schwartz's incarceration is to point out how stupid the law is. That's the first step in changing the law. Your attitude is, "well, the law's the law." That's revolting.
No, I am NOT saying that. I am saying that a person who breaks a law should be punished as the law requires. If the law is unjust, the law should be changed. What is NOT right is for us to stop enforcing laws because we don't like them.
I disagree fully, a person should (should is a moral term, more on this below) not be punished under an unjust law. For you, it's more important to sacrifice people to ensure the consistency of the system. For me, the system serves the people, so the system must bend to ensure the just liberty of the people.
Get over your silly indignation.
My indignation is not silly. It's disgusting to argue that a person should be imprisoned for a stupid law. It's sick. And it's made moreso by the fact that every time an asshole with your attitude towards the law falls victim to such a law, they scream bloody murder about how wrong it is for them to be arrested/investigated/imprisoned/etc.
You and I both think the law is stupid. The difference is, I am capable of distinguishing between legality and morality. You are not.
No, the difference is you are a sociopath who thinks it's moral to punish someone under an unjust law. To separate the morality and legality of the system is merely to say that his imprisonment was completely legal, but the imprisonment was immoral. NO ONE has suggested the law was not executed exactly as it was written. What's at issue (which you keep dismissing by claiming it's not the issue) is whether it was moral, whether it was the sort of law that serves the people, like the US Government (and State and local governments under the Federal hierarchy) mandates. When you say such a law should be enforced, you are making a moral decision. Should is an opinion, and is predicated on your values (morality). You are saying it's more moral to uphold the law than it is immoral to unjustly imprison someone. You are a sick, pathetic man.
A man was deprived of his freedom for being a geek and a white hat hacker. It's sick and anyone who defends such a system needs to be personally run through that system in order to cure their sociopathy.
Now, go fuck yourself, and be sure to turn yourself in and demand to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, if there's any law against self-fucking in your jurisdiction.
BUG 6397: "Save As..." dialog doesn't work properly under certa...
BUG 6398: Lynx unexpectedly quits when Japanese text is...
BUG 6399: When browsing tsunami relief site, users are arrested by the police...
BUG 6400: Choosing "cyan" for visited links causes all links to show up as cyan...
>What Randal did shouldn't have landed him in jail, but it did.
Why shouldn't it have? It's a law like any other law. You break it, you suffer the consequences.
Because the consequences for what he did should not be jail, duh.
Whether or not the law is right is a different issue.
No, it's not a different issue, it's the WHOLE issue.
You ignorant sod, you are saying that a person should be deprived of their freedom for cracking passwords, not in any malicious way, and dutifully reporting the weakness to his employer. It should not be against the law, it should be up to Intel whether or not to fire and/or sue him for damages, but it's absolutely disgusting to hear someone advocating sending someone to jail for that.
I mean, come on -- do you really think it's that unreasonable to prosecute somebody who willfully misused corporate resources?
"Misuse corporate resources" is a vague term. Should you go to jail if you use the photocopier to copy your tax returns before running to the post office? No. Should you go to jail for using corporate resources to steal from your shareholders? Yes.
What if instead of cracking passwords he was wasting reams of paper making photocopies of his ass? Would you still think him all noble for going against the establishment?
You are a moron. I never said he was "noble for going against the establishment", nor did he "photocopy his ass" (what an absolutely ridiculous analogy--do you think photocopying your ass should land you in jail?). What I said was that it shouldn't have landed him in jail. What you have is Intel depriving a man of his liberty for showing them a flaw in their system. He didn't steal corporate resources, he didn't vandalize the files he had access too. He did scare Intel's corporate leaders. Boo!
You're fucking sick. I'll bet, just like Rush Limbaugh who rails for people who abuse drugs to go to jail, except for him, if you found your employer's corporate file share with the legal docs and employee records was prone to be accessed via WiFi and l0phtcrack from the Starbucks in the lobby, you'd decry the notion that what you did should land you in jail.
I mean this is no small way: Go fuck yourself. That goes double if you live under the jurisdiction of a law which makes said self-fucking illegal. Putting someone in jail is the second-worse thing our government can do to a person (well, maybe third, now that Gonzales is championing torture--in much the same, "I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just that it can be done," way that you are saying Randal Schwartz should have been sent to jail).
Yeah, Intel had a somewhat contradictory set of policies. On the one hand, he was charged with improving network security. On the other, he was told he couldn't do certain things. Where Randal went wrong was when he saw that the policies were contradictory and went ahead anyway. There is always another option which won't get you in trouble: stop what you're fucking doing, and get clarification from management. Being an arrogant ass, he didn't, and so he was arrested.
Being an arrogant ass shouldn't be illegal. What you're saying is, "Yes, parent poster, the law was wrong to put him in jail, therefore it was his fault for not recognizing that potentiality, and violating the stupid law."
The point isn't whether the law, as it stood (which was NOT clear until after the trial), made what he did a crime, it's whether that's a good and intelligent law. It isn't.
In such a situation, you get written clarification, or you quit your job. You do not break the law and then whine when you are sent to jail.
Way to miss the whole point. The point is that the system is unmoral/disagreeable/anti-the-little-guy/whatever related adjective you prefer. Your reply blames the victim and does nothing to address the problem. It's like saying (during the witch trial eras), "Well, that's what you get for having a birthmark and a pet black cat!"
What Randal did shouldn't have landed him in jail, but it did. He probably shouldn't have done it even if it was completely legal, but that doesn't mean he should be imprisoned for it!
Two key differences.
Which aren't "key" differences.
First, he was, as you note, a regular character. It wasn't just a guest appearance.
That's a big difference, but I don't see how it's key. It also wouldn't make a lot of sense (putting a future character into the show would cause too many problems. Dr. Soong has some potential though...).
Second, it made sense in terms of the story.
I don't think it did. With Miles and Keiko it made more sense, but with Worf, in the series finale of ST:TNG, Worf and Troi were dating.
Even if there had been no Worf from TNG, it would have made sense for them to invent the character for DS9.
Not really. If you *wanted* a Klingon arc to the story, any ol' Klingon would do. They also wanted Ensign Ro to play the part that became Kira, why would you have needed Worf and not Trag or Krang or something?
The key difference (if you want one) is that Enterprise appears to need a gimmicky episode, while DS9 didn't. Remember the tribbles episode? It was a fun aside. The current season of Enterprise is pretty good, really more in line with what I was expecting when the show first came out. I don't think it needs a gimmick, but if they're going to do one, I hope that at least it works.
Yeah, the one where behind the curtains, the Macintosh team confronts Bill Gates over an NEC running Windows?
And then the big Bill Gates head and...
"Waaatch out, you might get what you're after."
Is apple going to switch to X.org, since most everyone else has already? or are they sticking with XFree86 for the long run? What kinds of compatibility issues will develop as a result of that?
If XFree86 is as doomed as it looks, there's really no reason for Apple to stick with it, and plenty of reason for them to switch, which is the same boat all the Linux (and BSD and pretty much anything which uses XFree86) distros are in. This changeover isn't something that has to happen in unison.
So, I really wouldn't worry myself about it.
If the FCC was truly all about supporting large networks, they would allow them to appeal to the ever-increasing moral decadence of our society completely unharrassed.
But that's exactly what the FCC *is* allowing them to do. Showing a nipple in a non-pornographic fashion is not decadence, but dumbing down America *is*.
These fines are actually *worse* than just letting the corporations off the hook, because they are punishing them not for doing anything wrong, but send the message that you better watch what you say. Very chilling.
As far as size and weight go, if they planned on using an RTG on the probe, they would have designed the probe around it. They wouldn't have any problem designing the probe around the RTG and making it fit.
No doubt it can be done, but the effects it has on the probe (ie: what additional science can you do with the extended mission vs. the costs (including the science you *can't* do because you no longer have the space/weight/cost)).
So temperature on the surface will not be a problem. With the probe insulated and the RTG producing the amount of heat that it does, it would still require a radiator to prevent from overheating.
I'm not convinced of this aspect (extending the mission much, while doing the same amount of science). All the heat is in a small radioactive core, which is entombed in lead (so it can be launched). How do you get the heat to the rest of the probe fast enough to counter the 70K atmosphere without melting the lead? Then you must distribute the heat well enough to keep parts from freezing, other parts from melting, and then insulate the whole thing to keep it warm (but not so insulated that your instruments are useless).
So now we've got extra mass of an RTG, clever plumbing to transfer the heat (without compromising the integrity of the lead casing), and some exceptional insulation?
I'm also unconvinced of your claims regarding using a radiator, due to the lack of a medium in space to transfer the heat to. RTG's have radiators, so I wonder that they don't radiate photons (black body radiation)? If so, wouldn't the added radiation through thermal transfer be an issue?
So really, I still doubt an RTG would have been much use.
A RTG would do just fine. They last such a long time that power wouldn't be an issue. Cassini gets its power from a RTG, and so did the Voyager craft. The Voyager craft have been operating for over 27 years now.
What I'm thinking about is weight, volume, and the ability to keep the spacecraft warm enough to operate. Cassini's RTG is about the size of a person (don't know the weight, but I have to imagine it weighs a *lot* more than a person) and provides under 900W of power. Without doing any calculation, I don't see 900W (imagine about 9 100W lightbulbs) keeping a VW-sized object warm enough to operate exposed to a 70K environment. In fact, I don't even think the RTG unit could keep its own temperature above freezing.
So, I stand by what I've said, I don't think an RTG would have been much use.
to all three fans. ... TURN OFF YOUR LIGHTS! [darksky.org]
--
Please help preserve the night sky
Reading your sig, I'd think you'd be more sympathetic to those dedicated few who devote their time and interest into lost causes.
The thing about the early episodes is that they were really more science fiction oriented, while the later were more drama.
I never cared much at all for the Klingon episodes, nor for any of the "who's in love with who this week" sludge. The better episodes of the later seasons were better than the episodes of the first two seasons, but they also brought a lot of dreck of their own.
Where's the support and discussion? We're being granted the chance to act now for once. If we pass this up, we'll just ensure more frustrating stories on yro.slashdot.org.
I don't support you because I don't believe that the state should be funding scientific research
Then you don't really support science, because the state, in it's various forms, plays a critical role in science. The reason is that, if left to "free enterprise", no one wants to be the one to spend the money on research that will benefit everyone (including their competitors). Free enterprise is good for engineering and invention, but really bad for science.
Or put another way, you don't get Fermilab and Hubble (or even the Internet) without the state.
Do I have to do everything around here?
Just a moment while I get my old PowerBook so I can upload the virus to the alien ship.
Bastards keep trying to take them over so they can communicate around the Earth (they traveled like 6 million light-years to get here and they didn't know the Earth was round?).
Does this affect my broadband connection? Noooo. I don't even know why I bother...
He's also carrying the plans for our ultimate weapon. If the rebels get a hold of it, we're doomed!
Tell the millions of gamers out there about it.
What? Isn't Unreal good enough for you? There's also Doom III, and, um, Free Cell, and Super Free Cell, and that pong game with Tux.
(hint: think "funny", not "troll". I know there are other games for linux, like that one where you squash bill gates as he tries to install Windows all over the place, and there's also neko, and vi...)
I dunno... You're the one who had the links handy enough to have the first post not modded to oblivion.
This on a Star Wars story on Slashdot. Those links had to be real handy, I'm guessing memorized.
Seems to me like a case of the cape calling the helmet black!
For starters, I have no interest in spending my money on something that makes me "nicer".
That's exceedingly obvious.
How could you go from defending different forms of entertainment as valid ("Different strokes for different folks") and then end up criticising people's choice to watch television?
I said people will like different forms of entertainment, I didn't say all such forms were equal.
From a strictly scientific point of view, it doesn't appear that a glider would be very useful. It would be a great engineering project, and definitely a cool project, but it wouldn't yield much (comparatively) in the way of science.