I got so sick and tired of people complaining about how the US is arrogant and how we aught to try to get along I wrote an essay on it on my own web site. Since it's mine, I can quote it in total:
Europe Pity poor Europe (NOTE TO AMERICANS: the UK is not Europe). What was once a collection of the most powerful states the world has ever seen has now been reduced to a bunch of whiners trying to have it all their way.
The latest craze is to claim how the USA is doing everything unilaterally and not asking anyone (i.e. Europe) their opinion. Listen carefully folks. What they're actually saying is "You are bad because you're putting your interests ahead of ours!" Well, duh.
As a great man once said, before complaining about the mote in your friend's eye be sure to first remove the beam in yours. The French are the most pitiful of the bunch. They made news all over the place when they pitched a fit over echelon. Want to know how France figured out we were listening to some of their conversations? We let everyone (everyone, not just our buddies) know they were bribing every third world official they could get their hands on to win international business contracts.
Then they start talking about the Kyoto treaty. Who the hell do you think was putting its entire auto industry out of business with clean air acts thirty years ago? A lot of European cars weren't brought over to the USA after 1969 because they didn't comply with even basic emission standards of the time. It took decades for the Europeans to set air quality standards as high as ours.
Then we start hearing about how we're part of the problem in the war on terrorism because we don't call the EU every time we think about scratching our ass. They'll do this with a straight face! Remember a few years ago when we did what they asked and let them try to handle the Balkans on their own? The result? Death camps we thought had gone out of style sixty years ago. A set of civil wars that made them long for the good old days when all it took to settle matters was an army of teenagers, a trench, and some machine guns. And we still had to go in and clean it up for them.
And what a mess that turned out to be. Think Johnson picking out Vietnamese targets on the White House lawn was bad? These poor airmen had to have targets approved by the politicians of six or seven different countries before they could drop a bomb. Europe had quite merrily dismantled their defense industries and military when the Sovs pulled up stakes from eastern Europe. The damned things were expensive! Of course, now they have to ask us for rides when they want to go help (cause trouble) somewhere in the world, but hey, that just shows you how unilateral and uncaring we are, making them hitch rides like that.
And don't start about how if we'd just be a little more sophisticated about things how it would all be a lot easier. The vast, vast majority of the problems the world is dealing with today were caused at root by Europeans and their policies.
Want to know why Africa can't find its way out of a paper sack with a map, compass and flashlight? That's what happens when a bunch of white guys with boats and guns get together (sometimes literally on a dark night) and draw lines on a map to suite themselves. How can anyone possibly be amazed? These borders were drawn specifically to cause internal strife and weak governments. They weren't, and aren't there to help. They were, and are, there to make Europeans money.
Asia only tossed the Europeans out when Japan showed them it was possible. Of course, before you think Japan is one of the "good guys" please remember that they were only interested in setting up their own little colonial empire. The only reason they're still not a problem is because we a) wrote their constitution for them (the one they wrote for themselves would've put Tojo back in business in two years) b) helped finance their country's reconstruction and c) sat on them all until the old soldiers literally faded away.
The only reason anybody cares about the middle east is they happen to be sitting on the largest, easiest-to-get-at oil reserves in the world. This fact alone is enough to enrage the entire Arabic intelligencia, who have been raised from birth with the myth of Islam as an irrisistable force historically destined to take over the entire planet. The roots of many of the Palestinians' problems go to the baldly self-serving and conflicting secret agreements the Europeans (and this time it includes the UK) made with all the parties involved in W.W.I. They sold shares for that particular bridge six times over to everyone and anyone interested.
Are we any better? Yes, but not much. We at least believe there are higher principles to be served. Most of us anyway. We don't pay enough attention to what our government and corporations are doing overseas, and a lot of us don't care even when we do. The rest of the world needs to realize that we don't trust our government any more than they do. The times in history when we did correspond roughly to the times in history when our government and industry caused the most trouble. We want to trust them, which is why we have to be taught and retaught that people who try that hard to be powerful are, at the very least, people who need to be watched very carefully.
So if you're a European, please get over the fact you don't run the world any more. It's your own damned fault we do. If you're an American, please realize that what happens in the outside world is important and no, it's not so far away and yes, it does affect you and yes, you should, must, care.
I get sick of the dips that complain "it's just a game, turn unlimited ammo on", or "it's just a game, turn the flight model down some so I don't fly into the ground so much", or "it's just a game, turn the icons on so I can find the badguys".
It's not just a game, it's a simulation. We're here to learn what it might have been like to fly a WWII russian plane (Il-2 Sturmovik), or drive an F-1 race car, or fight squad combat. It lets us be a hero without worrying about getting ourselves killed. Pardon me for not wanting to cater to your inability to cope.
You want a game? Fine, go pick up Serious Sam or Crimson Skies or the latest Mario Brothers racing game. Leave the simulations to those of us that like mastering something that's difficult enough in real life, let alone inside a computer.
According to Aviation Week & Space Technology, the program is based on an improved Soyuz system aquired from the Russians and then improved on by the Chinese. Details are very murky (anyone with more information? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler?), so it could be a clone of Soyuz or it could be a big improvement. Nobody knows. I'll try to find a pic of their VAB. It looks exactly like a 3/5ths scale model of NASA's.
And don't make fun of them for gassing it up and lighting it off empty to test it. As related in a story on my web site, that's how NASA did it until the shuttle. And the only reason they didn't do it with the shuttle was because that system is so complex it couldn't be completely automated.
Soyuz was the manned part of the Russian's moon program, the part that actually worked. They've been using it with various improvements since the mid-60s. Makes you wonder, if NASA hadn't sold Nixon on the shuttle (New Tech! New Jobs!), would we still be flinging people into orbit using Apollo capsules and Saturn IB variants today?
Every corp I know (us included) are/is still running on Office 97 because of all the wonky MS licensing dealy-doos. Also because it'd cost the 501c3 non-profit I work for ~$20, $30k that we don't have.
With that in mind, I was wondering what folks thought of SO 6.0 vs. office 97, which is what it would replace around here (and lots of other places) if it's good enough. I have a feeling most "pro" reviews will only compare it v. XP.
Now, I'll admit I'm a fussy eater (seafood gives me the willies), but I guess I'd eat this if there was enough BBQ or Ketchup involved. As long as I didn't end up growing boobs or something (I'd never leave the capsule!)
My brother only eats cheese, hamburger, and bread (and has the colesterol to prove it). I really do think he'd starve unless he could freeze-dry McD's or something.
My dad ran the mobile launch vehicle system for NASA throughout the apollo era. He has a ton of stories, all of them funny, some of them are probably true. It was a real cowboy era, and the contractors were too busy getting the thing working than to worry about beauracratic gobbledygook. I post about one story a month. You can check them out in the archives of my site. Enjoy!
Working for a national non-profit organization that advocates for the mentally ill for six years has given me some extra insights into how people behave when they develop a serious mental illness, go off their meds, are having a crisis, etc. No, IANAP (I Am Not a Psychiatrist), but I've seen enough folks at our annual convention wobbling off their meds to know this kid is in trouble. Classic, classic signs of serious mental illness. I only hope he gets help while he's in jail. You just can't imagine what it's like to watch a brilliant person's brain rot away.
I once asked an airforce friend about military planes... did they have keys like cars (and many private airplanes)? He thought about it for awhile, and said nope, never could remember one. I asked him what kept people from climbing in them and driving off. He said the guy standing in front of it with an M-16 seemed to be a pretty good deterrent.
If I could only get one of those for my laptop, I wouldn't need insurance!
The problem with launching nuclear waste into space is that the stuff is heavy. Remember, it's made out of stuff higher than lead on the periodic table. We still measure the cost of launching stuff in the tens-of-thousands-of-dollars (US) per pound. You just can't put enough of it into space with one of today's rockets.
If you could get it up there cheap, then there's no better place for it. Send it on a collision course with the sun, and you'll never hear from it again.
Interestingly, this is almost exactly how sound was recorded onto film until the 1970s, maybe longer. A microphone was connected to a light source, which was pointed at a very specific part of the film (to the left of the images, before the sprocket holes). The light would vary with the sound.
On projection, a light would be shone through this track onto a photosensitive plate (hell it could've even been a solar cell of some sort). This would generate an electrical signal that, when amplified, created the sound for the film.
I'm old enough to remember seeing some of these films in the theater. Sometimes the film would get misaligned in the projector and you'd be able to see this track. Looked like a buzzing string turned sideways.
This is also why when you see an old film that's been spliced you see the cut before you hear the "pop" in the soundtrack. The sound is read in a different part of the projector, "downstream" of the image.
Slashdot Mirror
Europe
Pity poor Europe (NOTE TO AMERICANS: the UK is not Europe). What was once a collection of the most powerful states the world has ever seen has now been reduced to a bunch of whiners trying to have it all their way.
The latest craze is to claim how the USA is doing everything unilaterally and not asking anyone (i.e. Europe) their opinion. Listen carefully folks. What they're actually saying is "You are bad because you're putting your interests ahead of ours!" Well, duh.
As a great man once said, before complaining about the mote in your friend's eye be sure to first remove the beam in yours. The French are the most pitiful of the bunch. They made news all over the place when they pitched a fit over echelon. Want to know how France figured out we were listening to some of their conversations? We let everyone (everyone, not just our buddies) know they were bribing every third world official they could get their hands on to win international business contracts.
Then they start talking about the Kyoto treaty. Who the hell do you think was putting its entire auto industry out of business with clean air acts thirty years ago? A lot of European cars weren't brought over to the USA after 1969 because they didn't comply with even basic emission standards of the time. It took decades for the Europeans to set air quality standards as high as ours.
Then we start hearing about how we're part of the problem in the war on terrorism because we don't call the EU every time we think about scratching our ass. They'll do this with a straight face! Remember a few years ago when we did what they asked and let them try to handle the Balkans on their own? The result? Death camps we thought had gone out of style sixty years ago. A set of civil wars that made them long for the good old days when all it took to settle matters was an army of teenagers, a trench, and some machine guns. And we still had to go in and clean it up for them.
And what a mess that turned out to be. Think Johnson picking out Vietnamese targets on the White House lawn was bad? These poor airmen had to have targets approved by the politicians of six or seven different countries before they could drop a bomb. Europe had quite merrily dismantled their defense industries and military when the Sovs pulled up stakes from eastern Europe. The damned things were expensive! Of course, now they have to ask us for rides when they want to go help (cause trouble) somewhere in the world, but hey, that just shows you how unilateral and uncaring we are, making them hitch rides like that.
And don't start about how if we'd just be a little more sophisticated about things how it would all be a lot easier. The vast, vast majority of the problems the world is dealing with today were caused at root by Europeans and their policies.
Want to know why Africa can't find its way out of a paper sack with a map, compass and flashlight? That's what happens when a bunch of white guys with boats and guns get together (sometimes literally on a dark night) and draw lines on a map to suite themselves. How can anyone possibly be amazed? These borders were drawn specifically to cause internal strife and weak governments. They weren't, and aren't there to help. They were, and are, there to make Europeans money.
Asia only tossed the Europeans out when Japan showed them it was possible. Of course, before you think Japan is one of the "good guys" please remember that they were only interested in setting up their own little colonial empire. The only reason they're still not a problem is because we a) wrote their constitution for them (the one they wrote for themselves would've put Tojo back in business in two years) b) helped finance their country's reconstruction and c) sat on them all until the old soldiers literally faded away.
The only reason anybody cares about the middle east is they happen to be sitting on the largest, easiest-to-get-at oil reserves in the world. This fact alone is enough to enrage the entire Arabic intelligencia, who have been raised from birth with the myth of Islam as an irrisistable force historically destined to take over the entire planet. The roots of many of the Palestinians' problems go to the baldly self-serving and conflicting secret agreements the Europeans (and this time it includes the UK) made with all the parties involved in W.W.I. They sold shares for that particular bridge six times over to everyone and anyone interested.
Are we any better? Yes, but not much. We at least believe there are higher principles to be served. Most of us anyway. We don't pay enough attention to what our government and corporations are doing overseas, and a lot of us don't care even when we do. The rest of the world needs to realize that we don't trust our government any more than they do. The times in history when we did correspond roughly to the times in history when our government and industry caused the most trouble. We want to trust them, which is why we have to be taught and retaught that people who try that hard to be powerful are, at the very least, people who need to be watched very carefully.
So if you're a European, please get over the fact you don't run the world any more. It's your own damned fault we do. If you're an American, please realize that what happens in the outside world is important and no, it's not so far away and yes, it does affect you and yes, you should, must, care.
And please, stop whining and just get on with it.
It's not just a game, it's a simulation. We're here to learn what it might have been like to fly a WWII russian plane (Il-2 Sturmovik), or drive an F-1 race car, or fight squad combat. It lets us be a hero without worrying about getting ourselves killed. Pardon me for not wanting to cater to your inability to cope.
You want a game? Fine, go pick up Serious Sam or Crimson Skies or the latest Mario Brothers racing game. Leave the simulations to those of us that like mastering something that's difficult enough in real life, let alone inside a computer.
And just stop whining about it.
And don't make fun of them for gassing it up and lighting it off empty to test it. As related in a story on my web site, that's how NASA did it until the shuttle. And the only reason they didn't do it with the shuttle was because that system is so complex it couldn't be completely automated.
Soyuz was the manned part of the Russian's moon program, the part that actually worked. They've been using it with various improvements since the mid-60s. Makes you wonder, if NASA hadn't sold Nixon on the shuttle (New Tech! New Jobs!), would we still be flinging people into orbit using Apollo capsules and Saturn IB variants today?
Every corp I know (us included) are/is still running on Office 97 because of all the wonky MS licensing dealy-doos. Also because it'd cost the 501c3 non-profit I work for ~$20, $30k that we don't have.
With that in mind, I was wondering what folks thought of SO 6.0 vs. office 97, which is what it would replace around here (and lots of other places) if it's good enough. I have a feeling most "pro" reviews will only compare it v. XP.
My brother only eats cheese, hamburger, and bread (and has the colesterol to prove it). I really do think he'd starve unless he could freeze-dry McD's or something.
My dad ran the mobile launch vehicle system for NASA throughout the apollo era. He has a ton of stories, all of them funny, some of them are probably true. It was a real cowboy era, and the contractors were too busy getting the thing working than to worry about beauracratic gobbledygook. I post about one story a month. You can check them out in the archives of my site. Enjoy!
Working for a national non-profit organization that advocates for the mentally ill for six years has given me some extra insights into how people behave when they develop a serious mental illness, go off their meds, are having a crisis, etc. No, IANAP (I Am Not a Psychiatrist), but I've seen enough folks at our annual convention wobbling off their meds to know this kid is in trouble. Classic, classic signs of serious mental illness. I only hope he gets help while he's in jail. You just can't imagine what it's like to watch a brilliant person's brain rot away.
If I could only get one of those for my laptop, I wouldn't need insurance!
And don't forget, sometimes the slash editors like a story so much they'll post it twice so we don't miss it! Can't beat that service with a stick!
Am I the only person that sees a striking resemblance to this thing and John Crichton's ship on Farscape?
If you could get it up there cheap, then there's no better place for it. Send it on a collision course with the sun, and you'll never hear from it again.
It's just getting it up there that's the problem.
Just getting rid of the damned phone line would be great. My wife trips over it, my cats chew it, I forget about it. Big pain.
On projection, a light would be shone through this track onto a photosensitive plate (hell it could've even been a solar cell of some sort). This would generate an electrical signal that, when amplified, created the sound for the film.
I'm old enough to remember seeing some of these films in the theater. Sometimes the film would get misaligned in the projector and you'd be able to see this track. Looked like a buzzing string turned sideways.
This is also why when you see an old film that's been spliced you see the cut before you hear the "pop" in the soundtrack. The sound is read in a different part of the projector, "downstream" of the image.