Notice that you're commenting on contributed items (comments), not the FA itself. Turns out I know the guy who complained about "email message" - he might indeed be a bit of a Luddite, or at least more pedantic than I.
(A pedant is anyone who cares about at least one more detail than I do. Anyone who cares about one less detail than I do is a lazy slob, of course.)
Southern Ontario in summer is not a climate where evaporative cooling even works very well - yesterday here it was 29C and 65% humidity - dew point 22C - humidex 37 C.
At the moment it's 21C and 95% humidity, humidex 28 C - and a smog advisory and pouring rain. Yecch!
Not really, because the transfer of rights to record companies, managers, etc. is so common. Under the old model, the deck was well-stacked for the record company, because music recording publishing was a capital intensive business. And run by some pretty "interesting" characters at times.
Janis Ian has a number of interesting things to say - including who's getting the money from her record sales, and why.
...NASA was a part of the United States Air Force at the time, not a separate entity with its own (very limited ) budget.
--
Before you vote, get your facts straight!
Crashingly ironic signature, my friend. NASA is and has always been a civilian agency.
Wouldn't the unusual part of "cruel and unusual" come into play, more than the attainder clause?
More importantly, has any serious test of these monitoring devices been done? Say, lock them onto a hundred or so Slashdot readers with prizes, not penalties, for evading them? I bet there are plenty of holes in these systems.
The architecture of the ones in use appears to be a modified codeless telephone - take the mobile part (bracelet) far enough away from the base station and the base station dials for help. Strength rests on the tamper-proofness and un-spoofability of the mobile part.
GPS-based suggests an on-board GPS receiver. GPS test sets are commercially available - a modest local signal overrides the weak signal of the real satellites. The encoding is openly documented. A fixed-location GPS spoofer - says I'm always home - a GPS-savvy friend assures me is child's play for an FPGA expert (which he is). He said it would cost $100 or so. Relying on hardware that's exposed to a malicious user is just plain a bad idea.
One thing I like about Mal Reynolds (or Whedon) is that he doesn't scrupple to simply kill his enemies. At least two people in the TV series were killed under circumstances of being tied up and/or surrendered.
"Daddy, why'd you shoot that man in the back?"
"Well, son, it's like this: he's dead, and I'm alive, and that's the way I wanted to be."
I have a 1960's book by Werner von Braun, showing a number of (never-built) ideas. One was a single-person reentry that was a large (not huge) plastic bag filled with foam, a small rocket, and a parachute. (Probably a flotation device, too.)
The priciple is to use the foam bag as both an aerobrake and an ablative shield. The loading is light - one person plus suit and parachute. On the face of it, it looks feasible - the Chinese brought back satellites with oak heat shields, after all!
Obviously, it's a risky option... but if it worked, the extreme sport to end all! And, a bailout option (literally) from orbit that doesn't need the ISS.
I remember a Dean Ing story about an exoskeleton developed for logging... one of the (many) environmental issues with logging is the damage done by constructing logging roads. A walk-in walk-out machine could reduce this damage, and is also a tool for selective rather than clear-cut harvesting.
How do people live with that? You call a friend and say "I'll meet you at 5:00 pm" and they're in a different county with its own time zone? "Troup, you're an hour late!" "No boss, I live in X county, and I'm on time!"??? You take off from work early because the school bus runs on a different time? Sounds like @#$%ing chaos!
I gotta say that driving to work in the dark and driving home from work in the dark is not a prticularly gratifying experience. In fact it's downright depressing.
That's not a condition that can be much improved by diddling the clocks... I live in Ottawa, Canada, about 45N. Mid-winter sunrise is about 7:55 EST and sunset 4:25 EST. Now, you can make a big-enough offset that the sunrise is 12:55 PM and the sunset is 9:25 PM, if you really want to... but you can't make more daylight by playing with the clock.
The British tried double daylight savings time in 1968-1970 as an accident prevention mechanism, but the results were apparently inconclusive.
As for the energy use... surely this mostly impacts lighting energy? That's not a huge part of the energy budget, and with, as others have posted, office lights on 24/7, the reduction from clock games is likely unmeasurable. Back in WWII, when "play" meant "play outside", not "play X-box", that might have been different.
One of the never aired episodes, Heart of Gold has a scene where someone has a fancy laser pistol. At a critical moment, it is seen blinking "Low Battery". That's one of the best SF moments I've ever seen on a TV screen!
Bob Shaw wrote many stories, Light of Other Days is one. He did come to the realization that a scary amount of energy is stored. 1 square meter is exposed to about 1 kilowatt of energy - 10 kilowatt years is an impressive bang if you break the window. About 87,650 kWh, 7.5 x 10**10 calories. 1 kiloton is 10**12 calories, so about 100 tons of TNT equivalent. Sure, I'll hang that on my wall!
There are alternate technologies for starting diesels, but the "starting handle" has been obsolete for a long time. It was, if I recall correctly, an option on 1970's Russian-build Ladas. That was a surprise, as I hadn't then seen one since the early 60's.
Of course, with the return of crank starting comes "motorman's elbow" and other over-use disorders.
Slashdot Mirror
(A pedant is anyone who cares about at least one more detail than I do. Anyone who cares about one less detail than I do is a lazy slob, of course.)
Ultima Ratio Regnum - the last argument of kings.
Lame, eh?
Southern Ontario in summer is not a climate where evaporative cooling even works very well - yesterday here it was 29C and 65% humidity - dew point 22C - humidex 37 C. At the moment it's 21C and 95% humidity, humidex 28 C - and a smog advisory and pouring rain. Yecch!
Never a -1 lame available when you need one!
Janis Ian has a number of interesting things to say - including who's getting the money from her record sales, and why.
I once glued some keys together with a spill from a fried egg sandwich.
Crashingly ironic signature, my friend. NASA is and has always been a civilian agency.
More importantly, has any serious test of these monitoring devices been done? Say, lock them onto a hundred or so Slashdot readers with prizes, not penalties, for evading them? I bet there are plenty of holes in these systems.
The architecture of the ones in use appears to be a modified codeless telephone - take the mobile part (bracelet) far enough away from the base station and the base station dials for help. Strength rests on the tamper-proofness and un-spoofability of the mobile part.
GPS-based suggests an on-board GPS receiver. GPS test sets are commercially available - a modest local signal overrides the weak signal of the real satellites. The encoding is openly documented. A fixed-location GPS spoofer - says I'm always home - a GPS-savvy friend assures me is child's play for an FPGA expert (which he is). He said it would cost $100 or so. Relying on hardware that's exposed to a malicious user is just plain a bad idea.
"Daddy, why'd you shoot that man in the back?"
"Well, son, it's like this: he's dead, and I'm alive, and that's the way I wanted to be."
The priciple is to use the foam bag as both an aerobrake and an ablative shield. The loading is light - one person plus suit and parachute. On the face of it, it looks feasible - the Chinese brought back satellites with oak heat shields, after all!
Obviously, it's a risky option ... but if it worked, the extreme sport to end all! And, a bailout option (literally) from orbit that doesn't need the ISS.
I remember a Dean Ing story about an exoskeleton developed for logging ... one of the (many) environmental issues with logging is the damage done by constructing logging roads. A walk-in walk-out machine could reduce this damage, and is also a tool for selective rather than clear-cut harvesting.
That's not a condition that can be much improved by diddling the clocks ... I live in Ottawa, Canada, about 45N. Mid-winter sunrise is about 7:55 EST and sunset 4:25 EST. Now, you can make a big-enough offset that the sunrise is 12:55 PM and the sunset is 9:25 PM, if you really want to ... but you can't make more daylight by playing with the clock.
The British tried double daylight savings time in 1968-1970 as an accident prevention mechanism, but the results were apparently inconclusive.
As for the energy use ... surely this mostly impacts lighting energy? That's not a huge part of the energy budget, and with, as others have posted, office lights on 24/7, the reduction from clock games is likely unmeasurable. Back in WWII, when "play" meant "play outside", not "play X-box", that might have been different.
I thought that the story was about restricting private persons from registering .US domains.
But then, I own a .ca domain.
If it doesn't move, pick it up.
If it's too big to pick up, paint it.
So, if someone is carrying a portable device, salute them... and expect to be ordered to carry it for them.
I learned that the military definitions are: portable means it has a handle on top mobile means it fits in a three-ton truck
One of the never aired episodes, Heart of Gold has a scene where someone has a fancy laser pistol. At a critical moment, it is seen blinking "Low Battery". That's one of the best SF moments I've ever seen on a TV screen!
I've got a Logitech 3-button ADB mouse, from my old MacX days. No wheel, though.
Bob Shaw wrote many stories, Light of Other Days is one. He did come to the realization that a scary amount of energy is stored. 1 square meter is exposed to about 1 kilowatt of energy - 10 kilowatt years is an impressive bang if you break the window. About 87,650 kWh, 7.5 x 10**10 calories. 1 kiloton is 10**12 calories, so about 100 tons of TNT equivalent. Sure, I'll hang that on my wall!
Strangely, there's no big trading volume today, so no one is very scared by this.
Now, if we could only engineer a virus that causes good spelling, punctuation, and grammar...
XSLT is capable of being even more intuitive than LISP. What a fun language.
There's no moderation for Sssh. Someone might take you seriously. So I had to post instead of moderate.
Of course, with the return of crank starting comes "motorman's elbow" and other over-use disorders.