It does seem a little fast, but I'm not sure we're talking Shuttle-level complexity here. Basically this thing is a roller coaster ride without the track - it just goes up and then more or less glides back down again, right? (I could be very wrong about that, but the impression I had is that these flights aren't anywhere near as high or long as the Shuttle goes.)
Compared to the money they are spending (and thus funneling into the economy) to try to make this happen, the interest they get from a few $20k pre-flight ticket sales is hardly worth worrying about and is certainly nowhere near enough to cover their R&D costs.
I'm too chicken (and far, far too poor) to be one of the first people to go on a trip like this, but I'm very happy to see it being done. I'm 25 and have many childhood memories of how space was the future and how someday I'd get to visit the moon (maybe even live there) and all that. Somewhere along the line all of that kind of talk just ended and space faded from people's view. It has indeed been a sad thing to not have some kind of huge bigger-than-seems-possible goal to strive for as a nation or even as a species. I hope this new commercial space industry can bring some of the magic back.
The Rock is awesome. He mixes exactly the right amounts of camp and talent to make the best... "special" movies - the kind you sit down to enjoy with friends and an excessively large bucket of popcorn. Awww yeah. Movies that take themselves too seriously are boring.
OSX can learn by the bad example that Windows sets in terms of security, usability, stability, and well, just about everything else. Wait... In fact it seems like OSX has already learned those lessons!
Traditionally I think they do tend towards less government, but in my (rather uneducated) opinion, all government is interested in more of itself and so no one party can ever be trusted with reducing it or wholly thinking of rights and liberties. That's why we should elect people based on who they are individually and not which groups they pledge their allegiance to.
How many people engage in violence? How many eventually have sex and drink beer?
Doesn't it seem backwards to glorify violence and ignore sex when, by all accounts, almost everyone will eventually have sex and relatively few commit any violent crimes or any crimes at all (short of things like speeding)?
In any case, it is not the government's responsibility to babysit your babies. I hope you're not leaving the kids home alone when they're so young. In most places that's illegal and considered child endangerment or something like that. If you can't trust your babysitter or daycare to keep what you don't like off the TV, then you best find yourself a different caretaker.
And when it comes to knowing what's going to be on a given show, I know that my dish allows me to press the "info" button well before the show even airs to see the synopsis. If you can't be bothered to do that before sitting down with your kids to a nice wholesome sitcom, then you're just being lazy.
Basically, I agree. A government should be like an OS: it should govern the different peoples and resources, but it should not determine what content can be produced or consumed.
The chairman says this: "Fundamentally, the government should be trying to provide tools for parents to help them control what's coming into their living rooms and what their kids are exposed to."
Why? Shouldn't the parents just not buy products that don't offer them the controls they want? All TVs and desktop computers I've encountered have an off switch and there's nothing the government can do to get people to use them. How are more switches, knobs, dials, control panels, etc. going to help anything?
Seriously. Sometimes he sounds smart, but that's just because he says so much crap he's bound to say something intelligent now and then. It's a statistical thing.
Wait.. they did the whole women in the workplace thing in the past and I haven't once heard of an office wet t-shirt contest anyplace that I've worked. This clearly needs remedying...
I wonder how quickly a guy would get fired for hanging up posters on the office fridge advertising such an event? (As an aside, I wonder if it was a woman doing the organizing if there'd be any firing at all...)
This is true and a good point. Do any of them use databases, though? Most seem to just go after one guy at a time and rescue to occasional stranded cat.
This is part of one of the questions in the interview: "The open source community generally has problems encouraging women to participate."
Why is this seen as a problem? The open source community doesn't really try that hard to encourage *anyone* to participate regardless of gender or race or nationality. It just is what it is. Those who participate decide to do so on their own and there's virtually no barriers to doing so. The way that question is phrased it is almost as if there should be some kind of OSS organized effort to specifically attract women to the community. What would be gained by such a movement and why is it even implied to be necessary?
I don't know any hobbyist crime hunters, so I suspect that something like this is going to be pretty hard to come by. I know of people who listen to police scanners and such, but that's a bit different than a part time vigilante who also happens to be a software developer. But, hey, the world's a big place. You never know.:-)
The lack of a monthly fee is the *only* reason I even tried Guild Wars. I've avoided all the MMORPGs mostly out of a fear I might like one and get sucked into yet another monthly bill that I didn't need. With Guild Wars, that isn't a risk at all. Not only that, it's actually pretty fun and very nice to look at! Although I admit I haven't played it in the last several weeks, I don't feel bad about that, because I'm not wasting money by not playing it. The obsession I had for the first week or so after getting the game more than paid for itself, so I feel I got my fun out of the deal and can freely go back whenever I have more time - be that tomorrow or 3 weeks from now. That's a huge bonus, in my book.
Additionally, I very much support their model as it encourages them to produce a fun game that you want to buy expansion packs and such for. They can't just sit back, get lazy, and let the money flow in each month. They have to actually keep working to improve the experience and build on it so that current customers will become future customers of their next release. That should do a much better job of encouraging innovation and quality into the future than a monthly-fee-based system would.
I have not had health insurance for almost 2 years. I've solved several little things in that time using procedures suggested on the web. It's been immensely useful and as a result I've saved a ton of money by not running to the doctor with every little thing that crops up. (As an added bonus, it feels really good to heal yourself.)
There's a pretty obvious difference between the hocus-pocus stuff like ear candling or channeling my inner pyramid and legitimate health advice. Mostly it just comes down to getting to know what household chemicals can be safely used to treat simple things and then learning how to apply them correctly. Sure there's a lot of crap out there, but it's pretty easy to see what has a chance of working vs. the stuff that doesn't even sound real.
I had never heard of MySpace until, by coincidence, I read this story about the site yesterday. To hear that it was sold for millions of dollars surprised me, to say the least. I went to check it out yesterday and, while I didn't spend much time with it, it seemed there wasn't anything that could be done without signing up for a profile first! It hurts us, precious!
Offtopic? The government tends to screw up most things it touches and the idea that it wants to grope the net even more than it already does is slightly annoying/disturbing - especially from the department of homeland security!
"We must censor the internet or else the terrorists will crash a web server into the White House! Think of the children on tours!"
Slashdot Mirror
It does seem a little fast, but I'm not sure we're talking Shuttle-level complexity here. Basically this thing is a roller coaster ride without the track - it just goes up and then more or less glides back down again, right? (I could be very wrong about that, but the impression I had is that these flights aren't anywhere near as high or long as the Shuttle goes.)
Compared to the money they are spending (and thus funneling into the economy) to try to make this happen, the interest they get from a few $20k pre-flight ticket sales is hardly worth worrying about and is certainly nowhere near enough to cover their R&D costs.
I'm too chicken (and far, far too poor) to be one of the first people to go on a trip like this, but I'm very happy to see it being done. I'm 25 and have many childhood memories of how space was the future and how someday I'd get to visit the moon (maybe even live there) and all that. Somewhere along the line all of that kind of talk just ended and space faded from people's view. It has indeed been a sad thing to not have some kind of huge bigger-than-seems-possible goal to strive for as a nation or even as a species. I hope this new commercial space industry can bring some of the magic back.
The Rock is awesome. He mixes exactly the right amounts of camp and talent to make the best... "special" movies - the kind you sit down to enjoy with friends and an excessively large bucket of popcorn. Awww yeah. Movies that take themselves too seriously are boring.
The dad is probably old and we all know email is for old people.
Has Patrick had anything come down on him over this or has he avoided threats of lawsuits and such?
"Don't speed."
Oh come on, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!
OSX can learn by the bad example that Windows sets in terms of security, usability, stability, and well, just about everything else. Wait... In fact it seems like OSX has already learned those lessons!
Traditionally I think they do tend towards less government, but in my (rather uneducated) opinion, all government is interested in more of itself and so no one party can ever be trusted with reducing it or wholly thinking of rights and liberties. That's why we should elect people based on who they are individually and not which groups they pledge their allegiance to.
How many people engage in violence? How many eventually have sex and drink beer?
Doesn't it seem backwards to glorify violence and ignore sex when, by all accounts, almost everyone will eventually have sex and relatively few commit any violent crimes or any crimes at all (short of things like speeding)?
In any case, it is not the government's responsibility to babysit your babies. I hope you're not leaving the kids home alone when they're so young. In most places that's illegal and considered child endangerment or something like that. If you can't trust your babysitter or daycare to keep what you don't like off the TV, then you best find yourself a different caretaker.
And when it comes to knowing what's going to be on a given show, I know that my dish allows me to press the "info" button well before the show even airs to see the synopsis. If you can't be bothered to do that before sitting down with your kids to a nice wholesome sitcom, then you're just being lazy.
Basically, I agree. A government should be like an OS: it should govern the different peoples and resources, but it should not determine what content can be produced or consumed.
The chairman says this: "Fundamentally, the government should be trying to provide tools for parents to help them control what's coming into their living rooms and what their kids are exposed to."
Why? Shouldn't the parents just not buy products that don't offer them the controls they want? All TVs and desktop computers I've encountered have an off switch and there's nothing the government can do to get people to use them. How are more switches, knobs, dials, control panels, etc. going to help anything?
Seriously. Sometimes he sounds smart, but that's just because he says so much crap he's bound to say something intelligent now and then. It's a statistical thing.
Your wisdom has opened my eyes!
Wait.. they did the whole women in the workplace thing in the past and I haven't once heard of an office wet t-shirt contest anyplace that I've worked. This clearly needs remedying...
I wonder how quickly a guy would get fired for hanging up posters on the office fridge advertising such an event? (As an aside, I wonder if it was a woman doing the organizing if there'd be any firing at all...)
This is true and a good point. Do any of them use databases, though? Most seem to just go after one guy at a time and rescue to occasional stranded cat.
This is part of one of the questions in the interview: "The open source community generally has problems encouraging women to participate."
Why is this seen as a problem? The open source community doesn't really try that hard to encourage *anyone* to participate regardless of gender or race or nationality. It just is what it is. Those who participate decide to do so on their own and there's virtually no barriers to doing so. The way that question is phrased it is almost as if there should be some kind of OSS organized effort to specifically attract women to the community. What would be gained by such a movement and why is it even implied to be necessary?
I don't know any hobbyist crime hunters, so I suspect that something like this is going to be pretty hard to come by. I know of people who listen to police scanners and such, but that's a bit different than a part time vigilante who also happens to be a software developer. But, hey, the world's a big place. You never know. :-)
The lack of a monthly fee is the *only* reason I even tried Guild Wars. I've avoided all the MMORPGs mostly out of a fear I might like one and get sucked into yet another monthly bill that I didn't need. With Guild Wars, that isn't a risk at all. Not only that, it's actually pretty fun and very nice to look at! Although I admit I haven't played it in the last several weeks, I don't feel bad about that, because I'm not wasting money by not playing it. The obsession I had for the first week or so after getting the game more than paid for itself, so I feel I got my fun out of the deal and can freely go back whenever I have more time - be that tomorrow or 3 weeks from now. That's a huge bonus, in my book.
Additionally, I very much support their model as it encourages them to produce a fun game that you want to buy expansion packs and such for. They can't just sit back, get lazy, and let the money flow in each month. They have to actually keep working to improve the experience and build on it so that current customers will become future customers of their next release. That should do a much better job of encouraging innovation and quality into the future than a monthly-fee-based system would.
I have not had health insurance for almost 2 years. I've solved several little things in that time using procedures suggested on the web. It's been immensely useful and as a result I've saved a ton of money by not running to the doctor with every little thing that crops up. (As an added bonus, it feels really good to heal yourself.)
There's a pretty obvious difference between the hocus-pocus stuff like ear candling or channeling my inner pyramid and legitimate health advice. Mostly it just comes down to getting to know what household chemicals can be safely used to treat simple things and then learning how to apply them correctly. Sure there's a lot of crap out there, but it's pretty easy to see what has a chance of working vs. the stuff that doesn't even sound real.
I had never heard of MySpace until, by coincidence, I read this story about the site yesterday. To hear that it was sold for millions of dollars surprised me, to say the least. I went to check it out yesterday and, while I didn't spend much time with it, it seemed there wasn't anything that could be done without signing up for a profile first! It hurts us, precious!
Offtopic? The government tends to screw up most things it touches and the idea that it wants to grope the net even more than it already does is slightly annoying/disturbing - especially from the department of homeland security!
"We must censor the internet or else the terrorists will crash a web server into the White House! Think of the children on tours!"
Of course!
There goes the neighborhood...
Or.. "Starscape."
She uses her powers for AWESOME, of course!