...from Houston, to watch it take off last week. Couldn't stay more than 10 days, and had to get back to work. Sad that it didn't launch while I could see it -- still, I'd rather it launch and recover *safely* than anything else. Also, there's a girl working the 7-11 at Cocoa Beach that has successfully called the scrubbed launches for *years* apparently. Maybe I should have called her before heading out east.
Great message! Good tone. A solid effort, and I agree wholeheartedly! Not enough people use "decree", I think.
Still, as I read it to our guys in the breakroom, none of us much care for the closer: "As it is, I am their worst foe"
Something missing, there. It lacks Zing. Also, it makes it sound like you're a FOE, just not a very effective one.
How about these for your next post?
As it is, "...I am their most strident foe!" -- sounds more opposed, I think. "...I am their worst nightmare!" -- works well if you're Stallone, or the Governator. "...I am diametrically opposed, sir, to their ruinous machinations!" -- 8^0 "...They will utterly rue the day!!!" -- Rue-age is always fun. "...They lost me when the Mac wouldn't support Apple II 6502 binaries" -- too Old School?
And, our favorite: "...They are dead to me." -- Nice, short, kinda "Goodfellows" like.:^)
Railguns are nice, and would work for materials that could stand the strain of a Super-G acceleration. Sadly, most people don't fit into that category.
I know! How about a maglev loop and a high mountain?
Evacuate most of the atmosphere from a track built as giant loop of pipe with a tail, something like the figure 6 (or 9, in Australia:^), except very, very large. Point the tail up the side of a tall mountain. Magnetically suspend the craft in the pipe, accelerate past escape velocity at a rate of 1-2Gs, then send it "up the tail" into space.
Possible? Could be! Safe? Who knows! Fun? You bet!
+1 to this. Extremely flexible. We do all of this, except for plain text passwords in tables. We highly recommend encrypting, or completely eliminating, plaintext passwords. Instead, create and store the required hashes (ssha, etc.) for various bits and pieces when you create a user, or the user changes their password.
That the power grid in this country would become a set of large antennas during a "carrington event" is an interesting problem. Inducted current would be tremendous. There would be fires, almost certainly, and blown transformers. Fusable links might help with the transformer issue, but I'm sure that some significant amount of transformer capability would be taken offline. Power stations would likely be immune from meltdown, but I don't know if standard trips would keep them all whole. Let's say that some 50% of the generating capacity (very generous), and 70% of the transformers (possibly low), were taken out by this event. A significant inconvenience, to be sure. Nothing that we, as individuals -- and as a society, could not handle. To assume, like the authors of this article, that the most powerful country in the world would simply roll-over is preposterous.
To propose, seriously, that "Modern Healthcare" would end in 72 hours when the emergency generators ran out of fuel -- this is ridiculous. The article's premise that modern civilization in our country would be thrown back to "third world" conditions is also completely without merit. Not to belittle the situation -- it would, in a word, suck. That said, we would rise to the occasion, I am sure of it.
Let's just, for a moment, reflect on how deep the fuel infrastructure is in this country. A power grid is not required for fuel distribution, though some level of power is required. Pumps that pump diesel can be run by generators, many refineries are capable of using their own product to generate power, and distribution of fuel to Hospitals and the like is a standard emergency procedure. Trains, tanker trucks, and ships continue to run. The transportation infrastructure would remain largely intact beyond the boundaries of very large metropolitan areas. The roads would continue to roll, and with it, teams of people working to fix the problem.
First, the plants, then the substations, then the cities and transmission lines. Would it be hard? Of course it would be hard. But we would continue to make it work, to adapt and overcome, and in the process make it better.
The e-vote balloting machines are very simple, and provide little opportunity for a user to "hack". There are no memory cards or USB ports. There are four buttons and a scrolling wheel. The machines are daisy-chained to a central hub which initializes the ballot on the machine, and records the completed ballots. The hubs are headless, and have no provision for voting for any individual or party. It would be a difficult proposition for any user to affect the system via the e-ballot machine, or the hub.
Things to look out for: Input into the system is via a scrolling wheel, not a touch screen, and this may initially confuse some of our older voters. Be sure that the voter knows to "check the box" with the select button, and not just scroll down and press the wheel (which does NOT select anything). Watch for voters that forget to press the "Cast Ballot" button before they leave, because an uncast, but registered, ballot causes several problems. The single most important thing is to have the voter check their final vote summary before pressing the "Cast Ballot" key. When the American flag waves, your vote is cast:^)
You, as a Precinct Judge, have a stack of paperwork to complete prior to opening the polls, and even more after closing the polls. Both you (as a Republican), and your Assistant (second-in-command, who is a Democrat), will open the sealed hubs and verify the total vote count of the machine (non-zero), serial number, and this election's vote count (zero). No less than 3 register tapes from each central hub will be run, and the total ballot count *will* match the exact number of signatures in the poll books AND the number of ballots assigned/cast by the voters -- or you will have to explain why (hence the problem with an un-cast ballot, above). Follow the checklist and instructions, and it will go smoothly. Try to keep a running total of poll signatures, and check it frequently with the hub ballot totals -- it will speed up reconciliation, later.
A copy of the register tape will stay in your permanent records, as well as a copy of the polling list and other germane documents. You can actually compare the register tape with the published precinct vote information in the paper the next day.
Note: I volunteer at our Harris County, TX, precinct. I am an assistant to our Precinct Judge, and have used/setup these machines for the last three years.
Okay, I've seen it twice already, and (damn!) have to go again with my wife tonight. I simply can not believe the talent and insight that Pixar brings to the medium.
GEEK ALERT
So, the thing that really stands out for me is the slight "involuntary" movement of the eyes when Mr. Incredible is listenting to his wife. It's about half-way through the film.
It's subtle. He's looking at her. Then, there's the smallest of movements of his eyes when she speaks...and he's looking at her. Seriously, he's watching her speak.
It's just so lifelike...a tiny, delicate detail... that it absolutely blows my mind. I got a cool chill when I noticed it, like the first time I saw 'Al' the toy collector, sleeping on the couch in Toy Story 2. So very "real", extremely cool.
And as for the preview for Cars, hey, I liked it! My son will probably enjoy it, he really digs that stuff!
Here's what I've always thought would be the perfect combination:
A "smart" cover/spine combination with several (think, like, 25 or so) pages of e-ink type flexible material bound into it, see: Link from Forgery on Slashdot
I'd like it to work like this:
You grab the book from the shelf and open it up. If you want to change subject matter, you select the new subject from the inside of the front cover, then close the book and open it again: like magic, it's the book you need at the same place you left it.
Here's how the pages work. Each page is bound into the spine, and refreshed according to your own selective algorithm.
Simple set: The first page is contents. Selecting a chapter sets the other pages to that chapter. Browse away!
Or: The book remembers where you stop reading. The middle page is set to your current page, other pages back and forth are set accordingly. When you get to the last page, flip back to the center to keep going.
Or: A catalog has each page set to an overview of the items in that section. Browse to the page you want, press a button, flip the the front: The whole book expands to that chapter.
Or: A newspaper has each section on the second-nth pages (First page is Front page material and index) Flip to the page and press the expand key. All of the pages are now that section - Read away.
I envision a system where you can electronically earmark pages, then group them together at the front or back of the book, add or remove pages, take e-notes on the page with a stylus using generic markup language and carry the notes along with you.
I'd like to see all the "MS SUCKS!!!" people in here sit down and write an app that does everything OutLook can do. Yes, it has its problems but you can patch it, just like everything else. Until there is another alternative, even a close one, people won't switch.
Newsflash: Some Companies Don't Use Outlook.
We don't. Why is that? Is it because we have a single app that does everything Outlook can do? No. Did management like it's scheduling? Yeah, they were impressed. But, I wan't hired to point, click, giggle, and approve everything Management wants to run. It's part of my job to build viable systems for my company. So, before we pop for a system, we audit the crap out of it: Outlook/Exchange doesn't even come close to cutting it, "features" or not.
See, we have a different view on the Web. An example: Since our first purchase of bsafe licenses from RSA labs, some 5 year years ago, we've run a secure inter- and intra-net for our clients and employees. Scheduling, Calendars, Mail, Document Sharing/Transfer, Routing, Storage, Directory Services, some B2B and Timesheets, Printing and PDF generation from Word Documents and Faxes.
As for bugs; well, we're always in development:^) We've had several minor security issues, some early ones were, like this, bounding checks that didn't. Some memory leaks in 3rd party libraries. A few browser issues. Harmless stuff. Never whacked a file, or accessed secure information without the consent of the user. Never. As lead developer, I can honestly claim that our product easily does more than Outlook, and is virtually browser independent (SSL the only requirement). (Of course, you could just shitcan my comment, because it's a Server app, and not a Win client app, and we don't sell it, and..and...:)
Anyway, I can walk the walk. So, let's talk the talk.
There is no excuse for shoddy code and poor design at the Enterprise level. None. There are tons of relatively inexpensive tools that take care of beginner mistakes (like bound checking) for you, and may I remind you Microsoft should not be a beginner. Where are the coding wizards that bloated the Doom egg into Excel? And don't even start to winge to me about "so many lines of code crap", either. I don't care how many lines you bloat into a product: if the design is poor, you're in for the big lose. And, make no mistake about it, the VBScript security concept is simply Nonexistent. A pathetic afterthought -- a late-night crapfest of coding that makes the I_Love_You virus read like Shakespeare.
To make matters worse, Microsoft leveraged the farm on the VB Concept. Every "application" has a backdoor^h^h^h(Screw it, it's a backdoor) propped open wider than than the fridge at an "All-you-can-drink" Mardi Gras party in the Big Easy.
Uh...Wait...My Spidey Senses are telling me that the party line at Microsoft is that all this scriptability is The Big Win for productivity! Really!! You can cut/paste/drag/drop/bone/fillet/chop bits between all your apps! Isn't that exciting? Huh? Don't you want to be able to execute arbitrary code from an Excel spreadsheet, popped open by an untrusted 3rd party.OCX, driven by an Access 02 database automagically opened in Word?!? MmmmBoy!!! Smell That Innovation!
Got some not-so-much-news for you guys. That mind-numbing stench isn't innovation. It's a deceptively high-minded concept for individual power users, visciously mangled by Microsoft's complete inexperience with the multi-user/internet like some lean ground beef chew toy tossed to a pack of rabid weasels. 99.99% of the world doesn't use it, doesn't want to use it, and couldn't care less about it. The 0.01% that recognize it's existence are about equally divided on the subject: Either they've already disabled VBScripting on their machines, or they're writing code to exploit the other 99.99%
Would you be happy with a caretaker for your house that leaves the key in the lock and puts up a sign that says "Gone Fishin' 'till Tuesday"? And they knew about it since they shoehorned basic scripting into Word 95. It is beyond my comprehension why people believe that scripting viruses "just happen", like they're some Normal price of doing business. You hear crap like "That Loser who wrote this virus should be shot!", or "We lost (m|b|tr)illions of dollars to Melissa/Zipped_Files/Good_Times, someone should pay!!!" And the folks never take the time to think
"Why was is so damn easy to do?"
Because they made it easy to do. I mean, LOOK AT THE CODE, folks. Melissa and it's ilk are hardly rocket science. I_Love_You.vbs isn't a freakin' masterpiece. It's a script that should never have been allowed to run. Where's the security!!! Aunt Sally and Uncle Bob didn't want to run it. They don't know VBScript from Shinola. Yet, it ran on their box. Without their consent. Without their knowledge. And whacked all their files and mailed all their friends -- who continued the cycle.
What do you hear from Microsoft: "You have to stay Vigilant!" and "Those Devious Geniuses! They Struck Again!", and the popular "No System Is Ever Free Of Bugs" They crank up the spin-fest and fill Joe User's head with cheezy crap that sounds like it came off a bottle of cheap shampoo: "Upgrade, Set Options, Pray, Repeat!"
Harumph. It's been _years_ since the Python development team last sprung into action. Ever since Cleese and Idle took their poofter arses out of the mix, there's been less and less Python each and every year. Oh, I know what you're thinking: "Yes, it is spelled Python, but it's pronounced Throat-warbler Mangrove".
Poignantly, it is now time for the Penguin on your telly to explode...
No longer sell "Speed-O-Lite" Wheel Bearings at local Pep Boys.
Tensile strength of tube insufficient, centripetal force would disintegrate tube at suprisingly low speed.
Cost of tube of sufficient tensile strength to approach c: "Astronomical".
Electrical flux of moving tube sufficient to cause interruption of Art Bell show; mass hysteria about "Gosh darn space invaders" and "Damn gov't conspiracy" causes WWIII.
Trivially solving for E=Mc^2, Motor would have to impart near infinit amount of energy to accelerate tube of any mass to c.
Cost of near infinite amount of energy: "Pretty way up there", according to General Electric spokesperson.
Inability to anchor motor to counter torque of rotating wheel/tube.
Whistling of tube at near-c velocity could cause graviton wave, angering greys on nearby Alpha Centauri.
Imbalance of rotating assembly at any speed causes catastrophic failure.
Cost of near-c tube assembly hurtling through Earth's atmosphere, piercing the core like a toothpick through an olive, instantly vaporizing the surface and ending all life on the planet: "Priceless"
This is the future. The ability for anyone to submit a (good/ontopic/fun) question to (nobel prize winners/CEOs/past presidents/etc.), and have it answered, is by far and away the most impressive thing I've yet seen about this medium. Dr. Lederman, a big thank you for your time, consideration of the questions, and genuine answers. Rich, well done! Thanks for your effort. And, as usual, much coolness to/. Keep it up. ~.
Slashdot Mirror
...from Houston, to watch it take off last week. Couldn't stay more than 10 days, and had to get back to work. Sad that it didn't launch while I could see it -- still, I'd rather it launch and recover *safely* than anything else.
Also, there's a girl working the 7-11 at Cocoa Beach that has successfully called the scrubbed launches for *years* apparently. Maybe I should have called her before heading out east.
Great message! Good tone. A solid effort, and I agree wholeheartedly!
Not enough people use "decree", I think.
Still, as I read it to our guys in the breakroom, none of us much care for the closer:
"As it is, I am their worst foe"
Something missing, there. It lacks Zing.
Also, it makes it sound like you're a FOE, just not a very effective one.
How about these for your next post?
As it is,
"...I am their most strident foe!" -- sounds more opposed, I think.
"...I am their worst nightmare!" -- works well if you're Stallone, or the Governator.
"...I am diametrically opposed, sir, to their ruinous machinations!" -- 8^0
"...They will utterly rue the day!!!" -- Rue-age is always fun.
"...They lost me when the Mac wouldn't support Apple II 6502 binaries" -- too Old School?
And, our favorite: :^)
"...They are dead to me." -- Nice, short, kinda "Goodfellows" like.
Railguns are nice, and would work for materials that could stand the strain of a Super-G acceleration.
Sadly, most people don't fit into that category.
I know! How about a maglev loop and a high mountain?
Evacuate most of the atmosphere from a track built as giant loop of pipe with a tail, something like the figure 6 (or 9, in Australia :^), except very, very large. Point the tail up the side of a tall mountain. Magnetically suspend the craft in the pipe, accelerate past escape velocity at a rate of 1-2Gs, then send it "up the tail" into space.
Possible? Could be!
Safe? Who knows!
Fun? You bet!
+1 to this. Extremely flexible.
We do all of this, except for plain text passwords in tables.
We highly recommend encrypting, or completely eliminating, plaintext passwords. Instead, create and store the required hashes (ssha, etc.) for various bits and pieces when you create a user, or the user changes their password.
I really expect more from these guys.
That the power grid in this country would become a set of large antennas during a "carrington event" is an interesting problem. Inducted current would be tremendous. There would be fires, almost certainly, and blown transformers. Fusable links might help with the transformer issue, but I'm sure that some significant amount of transformer capability would be taken offline. Power stations would likely be immune from meltdown, but I don't know if standard trips would keep them all whole. Let's say that some 50% of the generating capacity (very generous), and 70% of the transformers (possibly low), were taken out by this event. A significant inconvenience, to be sure. Nothing that we, as individuals -- and as a society, could not handle. To assume, like the authors of this article, that the most powerful country in the world would simply roll-over is preposterous.
To propose, seriously, that "Modern Healthcare" would end in 72 hours when the emergency generators ran out of fuel -- this is ridiculous. The article's premise that modern civilization in our country would be thrown back to "third world" conditions is also completely without merit. Not to belittle the situation -- it would, in a word, suck. That said, we would rise to the occasion, I am sure of it.
Let's just, for a moment, reflect on how deep the fuel infrastructure is in this country. A power grid is not required for fuel distribution, though some level of power is required. Pumps that pump diesel can be run by generators, many refineries are capable of using their own product to generate power, and distribution of fuel to Hospitals and the like is a standard emergency procedure. Trains, tanker trucks, and ships continue to run. The transportation infrastructure would remain largely intact beyond the boundaries of very large metropolitan areas. The roads would continue to roll, and with it, teams of people working to fix the problem.
First, the plants, then the substations, then the cities and transmission lines. Would it be hard? Of course it would be hard. But we would continue to make it work, to adapt and overcome, and in the process make it better.
The e-vote balloting machines are very simple, and provide little opportunity for a user to "hack". There are no memory cards or USB ports. There are four buttons and a scrolling wheel. The machines are daisy-chained to a central hub which initializes the ballot on the machine, and records the completed ballots. The hubs are headless, and have no provision for voting for any individual or party. It would be a difficult proposition for any user to affect the system via the e-ballot machine, or the hub.
:^)
Things to look out for:
Input into the system is via a scrolling wheel, not a touch screen, and this may initially confuse some of our older voters. Be sure that the voter knows to "check the box" with the select button, and not just scroll down and press the wheel (which does NOT select anything). Watch for voters that forget to press the "Cast Ballot" button before they leave, because an uncast, but registered, ballot causes several problems. The single most important thing is to have the voter check their final vote summary before pressing the "Cast Ballot" key. When the American flag waves, your vote is cast
You, as a Precinct Judge, have a stack of paperwork to complete prior to opening the polls, and even more after closing the polls. Both you (as a Republican), and your Assistant (second-in-command, who is a Democrat), will open the sealed hubs and verify the total vote count of the machine (non-zero), serial number, and this election's vote count (zero). No less than 3 register tapes from each central hub will be run, and the total ballot count *will* match the exact number of signatures in the poll books AND the number of ballots assigned/cast by the voters -- or you will have to explain why (hence the problem with an un-cast ballot, above). Follow the checklist and instructions, and it will go smoothly. Try to keep a running total of poll signatures, and check it frequently with the hub ballot totals -- it will speed up reconciliation, later.
A copy of the register tape will stay in your permanent records, as well as a copy of the polling list and other germane documents. You can actually compare the register tape with the published precinct vote information in the paper the next day.
Note: I volunteer at our Harris County, TX, precinct. I am an assistant to our Precinct Judge, and have used/setup these machines for the last three years.
COBOL?
IIRC, At least one scene scrolls the Apple II+ built-in ROM code in 6502 Assembly. No kidding.
Okay, I've seen it twice already, and (damn!) have to go again with my wife tonight. I simply can not believe the talent and insight that Pixar brings to the medium.
GEEK ALERT
So, the thing that really stands out for me is the slight "involuntary" movement of the eyes when Mr. Incredible is listenting to his wife. It's about half-way through the film.
It's subtle. He's looking at her. Then, there's the smallest of movements of his eyes when she speaks...and he's looking at her. Seriously, he's watching her speak.
It's just so lifelike...a tiny, delicate detail... that it absolutely blows my mind. I got a cool chill when I noticed it, like the first time I saw 'Al' the toy collector, sleeping on the couch in Toy Story 2. So very "real", extremely cool.
And as for the preview for Cars, hey, I liked it! My son will probably enjoy it, he really digs that stuff!
Here's what I've always thought would be the perfect combination:
A "smart" cover/spine combination with several (think, like, 25 or so) pages of e-ink type flexible material bound into it, see: Link from Forgery on Slashdot
I'd like it to work like this:
You grab the book from the shelf and open it up. If you want to change subject matter, you select the new subject from the inside of the front cover, then close the book and open it again: like magic, it's the book you need at the same place you left it.
Here's how the pages work. Each page is bound into the spine, and refreshed according to your own selective algorithm.
Simple set: The first page is contents. Selecting a chapter sets the other pages to that chapter. Browse away!
Or: The book remembers where you stop reading. The middle page is set to your current page, other pages back and forth are set accordingly. When you get to the last page, flip back to the center to keep going.
Or: A catalog has each page set to an overview of the items in that section. Browse to the page you want, press a button, flip the the front: The whole book expands to that chapter.
Or: A newspaper has each section on the second-nth pages (First page is Front page material and index) Flip to the page and press the expand key. All of the pages are now that section - Read away.
I envision a system where you can electronically earmark pages, then group them together at the front or back of the book, add or remove pages, take e-notes on the page with a stylus using generic markup language and carry the notes along with you.
(Okay, I'm a little excited about this stuff)
Newsflash: Some Companies Don't Use Outlook.
We don't. Why is that? Is it because we have a single app that does everything Outlook can do? No. Did management like it's scheduling? Yeah, they were impressed. But, I wan't hired to point, click, giggle, and approve everything Management wants to run. It's part of my job to build viable systems for my company. So, before we pop for a system, we audit the crap out of it: Outlook/Exchange doesn't even come close to cutting it, "features" or not.
See, we have a different view on the Web. An example: Since our first purchase of bsafe licenses from RSA labs, some 5 year years ago, we've run a secure inter- and intra-net for our clients and employees. Scheduling, Calendars, Mail, Document Sharing/Transfer, Routing, Storage, Directory Services, some B2B and Timesheets, Printing and PDF generation from Word Documents and Faxes.
As for bugs; well, we're always in development :^) We've had several minor security issues, some early ones were, like this, bounding checks that didn't. Some memory leaks in 3rd party libraries. A few browser issues. Harmless stuff. Never whacked a file, or accessed secure information without the consent of the user. Never. As lead developer, I can honestly claim that our product easily does more than Outlook, and is virtually browser independent (SSL the only requirement). (Of course, you could just shitcan my comment, because it's a Server app, and not a Win client app, and we don't sell it, and..and...:)
Anyway, I can walk the walk. So, let's talk the talk.
There is no excuse for shoddy code and poor design at the Enterprise level. None. There are tons of relatively inexpensive tools that take care of beginner mistakes (like bound checking) for you, and may I remind you Microsoft should not be a beginner. Where are the coding wizards that bloated the Doom egg into Excel? And don't even start to winge to me about "so many lines of code crap", either. I don't care how many lines you bloat into a product: if the design is poor, you're in for the big lose. And, make no mistake about it, the VBScript security concept is simply Nonexistent. A pathetic afterthought -- a late-night crapfest of coding that makes the I_Love_You virus read like Shakespeare.
To make matters worse, Microsoft leveraged the farm on the VB Concept. Every "application" has a backdoor^h^h^h(Screw it, it's a backdoor) propped open wider than than the fridge at an "All-you-can-drink" Mardi Gras party in the Big Easy.
Uh...Wait...My Spidey Senses are telling me that the party line at Microsoft is that all this scriptability is The Big Win for productivity! Really!! You can cut/paste/drag/drop/bone/fillet/chop bits between all your apps! Isn't that exciting? Huh? Don't you want to be able to execute arbitrary code from an Excel spreadsheet, popped open by an untrusted 3rd party .OCX, driven by an Access 02 database automagically opened in Word?!? MmmmBoy!!! Smell That Innovation!
Got some not-so-much-news for you guys. That mind-numbing stench isn't innovation. It's a deceptively high-minded concept for individual power users, visciously mangled by Microsoft's complete inexperience with the multi-user/internet like some lean ground beef chew toy tossed to a pack of rabid weasels. 99.99% of the world doesn't use it, doesn't want to use it, and couldn't care less about it. The 0.01% that recognize it's existence are about equally divided on the subject: Either they've already disabled VBScripting on their machines, or they're writing code to exploit the other 99.99%
Would you be happy with a caretaker for your house that leaves the key in the lock and puts up a sign that says "Gone Fishin' 'till Tuesday"? And they knew about it since they shoehorned basic scripting into Word 95. It is beyond my comprehension why people believe that scripting viruses "just happen", like they're some Normal price of doing business. You hear crap like "That Loser who wrote this virus should be shot!", or "We lost (m|b|tr)illions of dollars to Melissa/Zipped_Files/Good_Times, someone should pay!!!" And the folks never take the time to think
"Why was is so damn easy to do?"
Because they made it easy to do. I mean, LOOK AT THE CODE, folks. Melissa and it's ilk are hardly rocket science. I_Love_You.vbs isn't a freakin' masterpiece. It's a script that should never have been allowed to run. Where's the security!!! Aunt Sally and Uncle Bob didn't want to run it. They don't know VBScript from Shinola. Yet, it ran on their box. Without their consent. Without their knowledge. And whacked all their files and mailed all their friends -- who continued the cycle.
What do you hear from Microsoft: "You have to stay Vigilant!" and "Those Devious Geniuses! They Struck Again!", and the popular "No System Is Ever Free Of Bugs" They crank up the spin-fest and fill Joe User's head with cheezy crap that sounds like it came off a bottle of cheap shampoo: "Upgrade, Set Options, Pray, Repeat!"
It never, ever had to be that way...
Thanks for listening...
Poignantly, it is now time for the Penguin on your telly to explode...
Pick any reason, or several :^)
No longer sell "Speed-O-Lite" Wheel Bearings at local Pep Boys.
Tensile strength of tube insufficient, centripetal force would disintegrate tube at suprisingly low speed.
Cost of tube of sufficient tensile strength to approach c: "Astronomical".
Electrical flux of moving tube sufficient to cause interruption of Art Bell show; mass hysteria about "Gosh darn space invaders" and "Damn gov't conspiracy" causes WWIII.
Trivially solving for E=Mc^2, Motor would have to impart near infinit amount of energy to accelerate tube of any mass to c.
Cost of near infinite amount of energy: "Pretty way up there", according to General Electric spokesperson.
Inability to anchor motor to counter torque of rotating wheel/tube.
Whistling of tube at near-c velocity could cause graviton wave, angering greys on nearby Alpha Centauri.
Imbalance of rotating assembly at any speed causes catastrophic failure.
Cost of near-c tube assembly hurtling through Earth's atmosphere, piercing the core like a toothpick through an olive, instantly vaporizing the surface and ending all life on the planet: "Priceless"
Don't try this at home.
It's been running on my box for months now, and I get about 4 hits a week, usually from some compromised box in .cz or .ru
Get it at freshmeat, you won't regret it.
Note: No electrons were harmed during the sending of this message.
This is the future. The ability for anyone to submit a (good/ontopic/fun) question to (nobel prize winners/CEOs/past presidents/etc.), and have it answered, is by far and away the most impressive thing I've yet seen about this medium. Dr. Lederman, a big thank you for your time, consideration of the questions, and genuine answers. Rich, well done! Thanks for your effort. And, as usual, much coolness to /. Keep it up. ~.