"English is pretty open into importing/incorporating any words (even abbreviations like WMD) in the language, but I don't believe most other languages on Earth are."
And partially explains why this exchange is taking place in English and not, oh say, French.
At 6pm EST, we know the following, there was a loss of telemetry channels from the left wing incidentally the same wing struck by a piece of external tank insulation on takeoff. furhter evidence suggests progressive loss of more telemetry and indications of rising temperatures. what this measns to me is that the impact of the insulation damaged one or more tiles, which then failed and allowed plasma and or aero forces to damage the wing structure. the wing eventually failed, the shuttle went asymmetric and broke up due to aero loads. Once breakup commenced it was probably over in a fraction of a second given the speed M18+.
>>In general, the business model to almost give away some piece of equipment >>and then afterwards cash in on the required consumables
You can thank King Gilette of disposable razor blade fame for this business model. Sell the razor itself cheaply then soak people for replacement blades. Mind you, almost immediately some enterprising soul started making a machine ( my G'dad had one ) to resharpen the "disposable" blades Of course there was no DMCA back then.
I assume that the $15B mentioned here was arrived at by simply grabbing NASA's budget numbers? It doesn't all go to the ISS or even to space. Most of it but not all. That first A in NASA stands for Aeronautics to the tune of about $1B more or less.
Of course train travel doesn't require you to get to the station three hours before departure to have you baggage fondled and feet probed. And thank god that shoe bomber guy didn't get creative and try a suppository bomb.
Funny nobody mentioned the Canadian turbo trains of years gone by. Powered by 8 Pratt&Whitney PT-6 ( Huey helicopter for an idea of the size ) engines. Problem was they were aircraft engines not specifically designed for service on land. Diferent dynamic environment so reliability suffered. Mind you with 8 of them you could lose one or two and still cruise along at 90 mph. Not really all that high speed, conventional just jet powered. There was a 747 style hump at the front for the driver and s small passenger area so you could sit behind the cab and see what was happening. A fun ride.
Anything with a "Mc" in it may get you their attention. Was a sushi restaurant in Sunnyvale, CA called "McSushi". One day they got a lawyer letter from you know who. Changed their name to "We Be Sushi".
So he wouldn't take no for an answer? What happened when you called security and/or the local law? Ostentatiously recording license plate numbers and demanding some Id has an interesting effect on such folks. Did you sign for the stuff? WOuldn't have were I you And, this is important, accepting gifts from a vendor has at least the appearance of corruption. You should never ever do this....
So let me see, M$ makes a product that almost seems designed to cause problems, fails to fix these problems when offered the chance and gets upset when their failure is publicized?
Excuse me while I shed a tear ( or not ).
The thing you have to understand is that the Canadian social welfare system has about reached the stage where there isn't a lot of room for anything else in the budget. Now of course in this country the usual suspects still have a sizeable defense budget to snipe at. In Canada however, defense spending is less than 1/3 ( per capita ) of
US levels and that excuse would last all of the couple of weeks it would take to spend the entire defense allocation. Consequently, in an effort to stave off the inevitable day when the public realises they can no longer be kept in the style to which they have become accustomed, gummint is shutting down things like TASCC unless of course the program in question is located in the province of Quebec.
As I sit here observing the back end of the P2P
horse disappearing over the net.hill, I am left
wondering just how long the record industry thinks
they can stall the inevitable. Sure they may be
able to have some sort of copy-protection scheme
built into drive specs but I'm not sure they'll be
able to count on it being universal. They might be
able to persuade Willy Gates to include something
in his OS but there are alternatives to that as
well.
I am also wondering whether the record industry
has carefully thought through the implications of
bringing up sales figures, profits and by extension
their accounting practices in open court.
Perhaps no one has explained to them that the net
was designed to survive Armageddon and should (
with difficulty ) be able to survive lawyers just
as well.
Re:The Challenger, a preventable disaster.
on
The Challenger
·
· Score: 1
Small correction. The techs, particularly the Morton Thiokol engineers, were against launching. It was the Pointy-Haired-Boss types who insisted on going ahead. Politics triumphant over science yet again and seven good folks dead as a result.
>>Precision: The distance to the Mars surface is 18.387563
Correct.
Precision = number of digits
Accuracy = closeness to correct answer
And on an engineering exam care to guess what mark your answer would get....
Zero, goose-egg, nada, bupkis!
Why?
Because you left off the units.
This is something that gets beaten into your consciousness early on in engineering school.
Now at least there is a spectacular example of
why the profs nag you about this.
Some years ago some doofus in a usenet group
( ca.politics IIRC ) was ranting about how the
hundreds of billions of dollars in NASA's yearly
budget would be better spent on . I don't imagine it made him too happy when
it was pointed out that NASA's yearly budget is
of the order of $12+Billion. In short, about what
the US public spends on cheesy poofs or makeup in
a year. 80-90% of that is space related.
Bill Lerach and his pondscum assault lawyers in San Diego have found yet another target for their pay-me-and-this-will-go-away shystering. These are some of the folks who watch the stock market and when there is a downturn, find someone who is dissatisfied and sue on their behalf. One year they made something like $250 Million doing this. Of course the folks they sued on behalf of got nothing anything like that amount.
Am I the only one who remembers the joke about Microsoft going into the furniture biz....
Seems one day the Redmond PR machine called a press conference to announce that they were going into the e.furniture biz. That morning select high profile members of the MS community had woken up to find an advance copy of the new MS Hotseat on their front doorstep. It soon turned out that the collective response was to yawn and go back to bed. Intrigued, the media started inquiring as to the reason for the lack of interest. One Dalton Nebish of Park City, Utah, well known pencil necked geek and M$ adherent, encapsulated the community's thoughts quite neatly by stating that
"This is nothing revolutionary or even new, I mean its not like its the first time Microsoft has shipped a shrink-wrapped stool sample"
The actual NASA budget was more of the order of
10-12Billion as it happens. Not sure where the
5+ Billion figure came from.
To put that into perspective the average yearly spending on potato chips or pizza or makeup is of the order of $8Billion/year for each item last time I looked.
The NASA budget is however discretionary spending and therefore gets scrutinised far more deeply than does the 2/3 of the budget that is on autopilot and cannot be touched ( which does not include the defence budget by the way ).
Yeah, its just a piece of hardware but it embodies the dreams of a lot of folks who devoted their working lives to the space program and of a couple of generations of kids with stars in their eyes.
It should also be remembered that Pioneer and its brethren were designed and built by guys in white shirts, narrow ties, pocket protectors and horn rim glasses.
The computer museum at Nasa Ames in California has
a Zuse machine ( circa 1943 or 1994 going by memory ). It has a surprisingly art-decoish look to it.
Seems to me there was once a saying to the effect:
"DOS ain't done"
"'til LOTUS won't run"
Plus ca change.
Plus, c'est la meme chose.
or
Some things never change.
Mind you, being caught breaking things
on purpose right now might be a tad
dangerous for M$.
Slashdot Mirror
"English is pretty open into importing/incorporating any words (even abbreviations like WMD) in the language, but I don't believe most other languages on Earth are."
And partially explains why this exchange is taking place in English and not, oh say, French.
IBM
At 6pm EST, we know the following,
there was a loss of telemetry channels from the left wing incidentally the same wing struck by a piece of external tank insulation on takeoff.
furhter evidence suggests progressive loss of more telemetry and indications of rising temperatures.
what this measns to me is that the impact of the insulation damaged one or more tiles, which then failed and allowed plasma and or aero forces to damage the wing structure. the wing eventually failed, the shuttle went asymmetric and broke up due to aero loads. Once breakup commenced it was probably over in a fraction of a second given the speed M18+.
IBM
>>In general, the business model to almost give away some piece of equipment
>>and then afterwards cash in on the required consumables
You can thank King Gilette of disposable razor blade fame for this business model.
Sell the razor itself cheaply then soak people for replacement blades.
Mind you, almost immediately some enterprising soul started making a machine ( my G'dad had one ) to resharpen the "disposable" blades
Of course there was no DMCA back then.
I assume that the $15B mentioned here was arrived at by simply grabbing NASA's budget numbers?
It doesn't all go to the ISS or even to space.
Most of it but not all. That first A in NASA stands
for Aeronautics to the tune of about $1B more or less.
Will Smith is entertaining but as R. Daneel Olivaw
he just doesn't fit.
R Daneel is much too dark a figure for Smith to do
believably.
I guess they don't make the handy, dandy little
Junior Fluidics set one of my MechE course labs had
back in the 70's. Still extra credit for effort.
Of course train travel doesn't require you to get to the station three hours before departure to have you baggage fondled and feet probed. And thank god that shoe bomber guy didn't get creative and try a suppository bomb.
Funny nobody mentioned the Canadian turbo trains of years gone by.
Powered by 8 Pratt&Whitney PT-6 ( Huey helicopter
for an idea of the size ) engines.
Problem was they were aircraft engines not specifically designed for service on land.
Diferent dynamic environment so reliability suffered.
Mind you with 8 of them you could lose one or two and still cruise along at 90 mph. Not really all that high speed, conventional just jet powered.
There was a 747 style hump at the front for the driver and s small passenger area so you could sit behind the cab and see what was happening.
A fun ride.
Anything with a "Mc" in it may get you their attention.
Was a sushi restaurant in Sunnyvale, CA called
"McSushi".
One day they got a lawyer letter from you know who.
Changed their name to "We Be Sushi".
So he wouldn't take no for an answer?
What happened when you called security and/or the
local law? Ostentatiously recording license plate
numbers and demanding some Id has an interesting
effect on such folks.
Did you sign for the stuff? WOuldn't have were I
you
And, this is important, accepting gifts from a
vendor has at least the appearance of corruption.
You should never ever do this....
So let me see, M$ makes a product that almost seems designed to cause problems, fails to fix these problems when offered the chance and gets upset when their failure is publicized?
Excuse me while I shed a tear ( or not ).
Did i imagine it or did another moderately large commodity h/w supplier ( oh say, Compaq ) announce something similar just the other day
The thing you have to understand is that the Canadian social welfare system has about reached the stage where there isn't a lot of room for anything else in the budget. Now of course in this country the usual suspects still have a sizeable defense budget to snipe at. In Canada however, defense spending is less than 1/3 ( per capita ) of US levels and that excuse would last all of the couple of weeks it would take to spend the entire defense allocation. Consequently, in an effort to stave off the inevitable day when the public realises they can no longer be kept in the style to which they have become accustomed, gummint is shutting down things like TASCC unless of course the program in question is located in the province of Quebec.
"near Kingston, Ontario"? Sort of like Boston is "near" Baltimore?
As I sit here observing the back end of the P2P horse disappearing over the net.hill, I am left wondering just how long the record industry thinks they can stall the inevitable. Sure they may be able to have some sort of copy-protection scheme built into drive specs but I'm not sure they'll be able to count on it being universal. They might be able to persuade Willy Gates to include something in his OS but there are alternatives to that as well. I am also wondering whether the record industry has carefully thought through the implications of bringing up sales figures, profits and by extension their accounting practices in open court. Perhaps no one has explained to them that the net was designed to survive Armageddon and should ( with difficulty ) be able to survive lawyers just as well.
Small correction. The techs, particularly the Morton Thiokol engineers, were against launching. It was the Pointy-Haired-Boss types who insisted on going ahead. Politics triumphant over science yet again and seven good folks dead as a result.
>>Precision: The distance to the Mars surface is 18.387563
Correct.
Precision = number of digits
Accuracy = closeness to correct answer
And on an engineering exam care to guess what mark your answer would get....
Zero, goose-egg, nada, bupkis!
Why?
Because you left off the units.
This is something that gets beaten into your consciousness early on in engineering school.
Now at least there is a spectacular example of
why the profs nag you about this.
Some years ago some doofus in a usenet group ( ca.politics IIRC ) was ranting about how the hundreds of billions of dollars in NASA's yearly budget would be better spent on . I don't imagine it made him too happy when it was pointed out that NASA's yearly budget is of the order of $12+Billion. In short, about what the US public spends on cheesy poofs or makeup in a year. 80-90% of that is space related.
Bill Lerach and his pondscum assault lawyers in San Diego have found yet another target for their pay-me-and-this-will-go-away shystering. These are some of the folks who watch the stock market and when there is a downturn, find someone who is dissatisfied and sue on their behalf. One year they made something like $250 Million doing this. Of course the folks they sued on behalf of got nothing anything like that amount.
Am I the only one who remembers the joke about Microsoft going into the furniture biz.... Seems one day the Redmond PR machine called a press conference to announce that they were going into the e.furniture biz. That morning select high profile members of the MS community had woken up to find an advance copy of the new MS Hotseat on their front doorstep. It soon turned out that the collective response was to yawn and go back to bed. Intrigued, the media started inquiring as to the reason for the lack of interest. One Dalton Nebish of Park City, Utah, well known pencil necked geek and M$ adherent, encapsulated the community's thoughts quite neatly by stating that "This is nothing revolutionary or even new, I mean its not like its the first time Microsoft has shipped a shrink-wrapped stool sample"
The actual NASA budget was more of the order of 10-12Billion as it happens. Not sure where the 5+ Billion figure came from. To put that into perspective the average yearly spending on potato chips or pizza or makeup is of the order of $8Billion/year for each item last time I looked. The NASA budget is however discretionary spending and therefore gets scrutinised far more deeply than does the 2/3 of the budget that is on autopilot and cannot be touched ( which does not include the defence budget by the way ).
Yeah, its just a piece of hardware but it embodies the dreams of a lot of folks who devoted their working lives to the space program and of a couple of generations of kids with stars in their eyes. It should also be remembered that Pioneer and its brethren were designed and built by guys in white shirts, narrow ties, pocket protectors and horn rim glasses.
The computer museum at Nasa Ames in California has a Zuse machine ( circa 1943 or 1994 going by memory ). It has a surprisingly art-decoish look to it.
"Shithouse" may be pushing it but there are folks around with the surname Outhouse. Has anybody tried that on some of these idiotware implementations?
Seems to me there was once a saying to the effect: "DOS ain't done" "'til LOTUS won't run" Plus ca change. Plus, c'est la meme chose. or Some things never change. Mind you, being caught breaking things on purpose right now might be a tad dangerous for M$.