It was launched in December 2006 but almost immediately lost power and cannot be controlled. It carried a sophisticated and secret imaging sensor but the satellite's central computer failed shortly after launch.
I guess that's why they can't use the thrusters. I wonder how much this piece of junk cost, and how much money was taken from health care and education just to fund it. Why repair it when we can show other people how we blow stuff up? So, would you rather take another $1.8 billion dollars to have the same incompetents build a satelite repair-robot or just take a few dozen million and risk the setback of loosing a shuttle while having the same incompetents try to catch the thing in low earth orbit and bring it safely back to earth? Personally I think we should just launch a little satelite with big thrusters and a grapple of some sort to glomp onto the defective uuber-satelite and adjust its orbit so it'll land on US soil, but what do I know?
While quite entertaiing that movie has almost nothing to do with math. If those are the kind of writers we're expecting to see back in business geeks can go back to not caring.
I liken this to a cell phone company which, when it is running low on capacity, listens in on calls and randomly drops conversations in languages other than english since they're probably discussing something illegal anyway.
If you drop the plane out of orbit it'll accelerate at 9.8 m/s/s or so until it hits atmosphere dense enough to appreciably slow it by friction. By then it'll probably be going pretty fast. After reaching this point in the atmosphere it will quickly deccelerate to terminal velocity for a paper airplane. So ten seconds at mach 7 is probably good enough.
As an American I can only speak for myself, but I think that the image France, as a whole, presents to the world conflicts with America's national philosophy, both perceived, declared, and most of the individual interpretations of it each and every American has. Love, hate, or don't care about America, I think you can agree that such differences of opinion are likely to cause animosity at times. This article is a good example of that where a judge, presumably representing the interests of French law created for and by the French people, made a decision that seems downright un-American: fining a company for deciding to eat the cost of shipping as a way of providing good customer service.
Now, my personal experience is that many French, and people claiming to be, I know and have associated with in America are amoral jerks and if I didn't stop to think about it I'd probably just assume some correlation. Visiting France it didn't get much better until I got out of Paris. In Paris people tried to rip me off, people would pretend I wasn't there, and generally did all the things one does when confronted by a tourist too many. There were notable exceptions, and when I got to less touristy places the people improved to about the level of New Yorkers, but, if someone's only experience with the French is an occaisional article highlighting how different the continental mindset is, a few disgruntled expats, maybe a trip to Paris in his youth, and parodies of Clouseau characters it doesn't seem that surprising that people might have a low opinion.
For personal use, I guess, nothing, but when businesses dump 100,000+ lines into an excel spreadsheet for reporting purposes it has a tendency to get messy.
I was unable to turn up any particularly compelling citations, so I'll just point you to the wikipedia article on the subject which includes a few references that would point to the fact that, as of 1974, for financial documents, media announcements, official reports and statistics, etc. the accepted meaning of, "billion" is, in the UK, 10^9.
I guess the million-million thing you've observed is just an informality akin to how american children, were in my experience, and perhaps still are, spared the dissection and vicissitudes of most of the curriculum until secondary education.
Considering the fact that the UK officially stopped using the long scale in 1974 and 1,000,000,000 seconds is approximately 30 years, I'm pretty sure it's an, "American" billion.
Not quite. Last I checked you have to pay the fee for, " space shifting" or, "media shifting", or whatever the marketting department calls, "mandatory us ripping it for you."
AFAICT TFA didn't mention a specific price, but... can you afford the new corneas when you're the 1 in 1,000,000 on whom they botch the surgery, though? I'll stick to contacts, thank you!
OK, so, at its peak this shower's going to dump approximately 1 meteor into the arctic every 36 seconds. The arctic is ~14 million sq km or roughly 14 trillion sq meters and your average gulfstream five is 100 sq meters seen from the top. The chance of getting hit is going to be something like 1 to 140 billion per meteor. Since the flight's ten hours long that's going to be 1,000 meteors total, giving a worst case scenario of something like 1:714,285,000 against. I'd be willing to risk that. Anyone got an extra ticket? Gulfstream Vs are usually catered.
It's a gross oversimplification, but, in a general way, modern politics works like this: Whoever buys the most ad time wins. Thus, barring a killer issue like gay marriage, whoever has the richest supporters wins.
That and they're still hoping to hit it big with their songwriting career, maybe tour the country in a beat up old vanagon... and still be able to provide for the grankids.
Try to cut down on the hand signals. I've noticed a certian few of those can be very effective at increasing the anger/frustration of nearby motorists.
Think sodium metal or any explosive really, that is keister stashed until the terrorist gets to the lavatory. Keister stashed? Slashdot, you teach me something new every single day! Somehow the idea of a terrorist trying to keister stash a significant quantity of sodium metal (which is not explosive so much as pyrophoric... ) signifcantly brightened my day.
Slashdot Mirror
... and what if [we] don't want to be fixed?
Weren't, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn]the perpetual motion guys[/url] mostly british too?
At 80 milliwatts per square meter you'd be looking at less than the difference asking for extra starch at the cleaners gives you.
While quite entertaiing that movie has almost nothing to do with math. If those are the kind of writers we're expecting to see back in business geeks can go back to not caring.
Perhaps matriculating at Harvard doesn't garantee the best education, but just getting in is quite an honor.
I liken this to a cell phone company which, when it is running low on capacity, listens in on calls and randomly drops conversations in languages other than english since they're probably discussing something illegal anyway.
Isn't this a form of unauthorized wiretapping?
If you drop the plane out of orbit it'll accelerate at 9.8 m/s/s or so until it hits atmosphere dense enough to appreciably slow it by friction. By then it'll probably be going pretty fast. After reaching this point in the atmosphere it will quickly deccelerate to terminal velocity for a paper airplane. So ten seconds at mach 7 is probably good enough.
Now, my personal experience is that many French, and people claiming to be, I know and have associated with in America are amoral jerks and if I didn't stop to think about it I'd probably just assume some correlation. Visiting France it didn't get much better until I got out of Paris. In Paris people tried to rip me off, people would pretend I wasn't there, and generally did all the things one does when confronted by a tourist too many. There were notable exceptions, and when I got to less touristy places the people improved to about the level of New Yorkers, but, if someone's only experience with the French is an occaisional article highlighting how different the continental mindset is, a few disgruntled expats, maybe a trip to Paris in his youth, and parodies of Clouseau characters it doesn't seem that surprising that people might have a low opinion.
For personal use, I guess, nothing, but when businesses dump 100,000+ lines into an excel spreadsheet for reporting purposes it has a tendency to get messy.
I guess the million-million thing you've observed is just an informality akin to how american children, were in my experience, and perhaps still are, spared the dissection and vicissitudes of most of the curriculum until secondary education.
Considering the fact that the UK officially stopped using the long scale in 1974 and 1,000,000,000 seconds is approximately 30 years, I'm pretty sure it's an, "American" billion.
Well, some of those 2,999 were very big money makers.
Not quite. Last I checked you have to pay the fee for, " space shifting" or, "media shifting", or whatever the marketting department calls, "mandatory us ripping it for you."
Drat, where are mod points when you need 'em? +2 funny plz.
AFAICT TFA didn't mention a specific price, but... can you afford the new corneas when you're the 1 in 1,000,000 on whom they botch the surgery, though? I'll stick to contacts, thank you!
Because he can?
OK, so, at its peak this shower's going to dump approximately 1 meteor into the arctic every 36 seconds. The arctic is ~14 million sq km or roughly 14 trillion sq meters and your average gulfstream five is 100 sq meters seen from the top. The chance of getting hit is going to be something like 1 to 140 billion per meteor. Since the flight's ten hours long that's going to be 1,000 meteors total, giving a worst case scenario of something like 1:714,285,000 against. I'd be willing to risk that. Anyone got an extra ticket? Gulfstream Vs are usually catered.
Somebody please tell the politicians that.
It's a gross oversimplification, but, in a general way, modern politics works like this: Whoever buys the most ad time wins. Thus, barring a killer issue like gay marriage, whoever has the richest supporters wins.
That and they're still hoping to hit it big with their songwriting career, maybe tour the country in a beat up old vanagon... and still be able to provide for the grankids.
Try to cut down on the hand signals. I've noticed a certian few of those can be very effective at increasing the anger/frustration of nearby motorists.