Although I would love it if Access4less.net paid me for this, I have no affiliation either.
I've used them as my primary ISP for almost a year. If you can configure a dial-up account, they are a rock-solid, V.92 provider. Phone support charges are $5 per incident (Ive never called), and free email support (which has been snappy both times I used it). If you need a secondary dial-up, or a primary, Id recommend Access4less.
You can use 355/113 as an approximation for pi, which yields 3.14159292035 (etc). It begins to differ from pi in the seventh place (a difference of approximately 2.66e-7). Not too shabby for many uses.
Are you sure? Can you prove it? Because, actually, I believe we do know how to build at least the heatshields.
Since I began work at Lockheed Martin (back then it was Martin Marietta), we have made a number of heatshields. If you go to the article linked to above, you will see a picture of the aeroshell. The white cone is one of the backshells we completed for the Mars Exploration Rover missions about this time last year. (The ablator is actually gray, they painted it in Denver.)
A cursory examination of informal records and pictures shows that we've been building them for many of NASA's planetary probes, going back to the Viking probes. I have no doubt that we could make at least Apollo Command Module-class heatshields.
This should make ion engines such as these much more useful for space exploration. If all you need is a little push to get you from one manifold to another, ion engines sound perfect for facilitating a nice surf on the Interplanatary Superhighway!
Before he wrote LoTR, he worked on the Oxford English Dictionary. Someone corrected him once, and he replied that he had changed his mind since he wrote the dictionary.
I read last year that Rudolf Diesel actually developed the engine so that it would be useful in undeveloped regions where they would have to use alternative fuels such as biodiesel.
Dr. Rudolf Diesel first developed the diesel engine in 1895 with the full intention of running it on a variety of fuels, including vegetable oil. Diesel demonstrated his engine at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 using peanut oil as fuel. In 1911 he stated "The diesel engine can be fed with vegetable oils and would help considerably in the development of agriculture of the countries which use it." In 1912, Diesel said "the use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today. But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time." Since Diesel's time, the design of the diesel engine has been modified so it can run on the cheapest fuel available: petroleum "diesel" fuel.
Fans, and their sometimes obsessive love for fiction such as Star Trek, is possibly even more associated with the program than the actual shows, Gene Roddenberry, you, or the rest of the cast. Even to the point where documentaries and fiction are written in reaction to (or extension of) the original fiction. In that vein, did you see Galaxy Quest? What did you think?
Everyone should be familiar with the actual workings of democracy from grade school. Back then we called it "majority rules!" And while it was frequently invoked, I remember that it was favored most by the popular and those who tended to think and move in herds. It usually resulted in mediocre results, such as when we voted to go to the park because neither the Museum of Art nor the Zoo commanded a majority.
It discriminated against minorities, by which I mean me and all the other nerds.
Later, those memories provided me with an empathetic understanding of why the Founding Fathers disdained democracy as "mob rule". Their answer to decentralization was to allow natural and historic subdivisions to appoint "subject matter experts" whose opinions and activities were closely monitored. And who were subject to recall if their performance demanded it.
That model was largely diminished following the War Between the States, and had all but disappeared due to the centralizing effects of the Great Depression, the New Deal and two World Wars. Information became hidden, and to a large degree, controlled. The media of transmittal -- the Post Office, the Newspapers, Radio and Television networks -- all became more and more indistiguishable from each other. The information available to citizens became remarkably homogeneous.
All that is changing.
I do not believe that we should attempt to use technology to "democratize" our society. Certainly not by making it easy to vote, online, on each and every question. The inevitable combination of the slashdot effect and online voting in such a scenario is frightening in its implications. Instead, we should harness the technologies at hand to increase the understanding of the citizens and enhance their oversight of our public servants.
For too long they have had the freedom to do what they want without having to account for their positions or their actions. The limitations imposed upon them by our Constitution have been ignored so long that it is now acceptable for people who have sworn to uphold and defend the rights protected therein to routinely advocate their elimination! The current president is on record many times decrying the Bill of Rights as "radical" and even "maybe too radical".
I believe that such positions will be swept away as technology returns to us the tools to pick good public servants, and to adequately monitor their actions. We have already seen some successes along these lines. The public outcry against the "Know Your Customer" campaign comes to mind, as does the spread of strong encryption and the awareness of privacy rights. These are the appropriate roles for technology. Enhancing the intelligence and oversight of the electorate. Not chaning the means by which people announce their wishes. There is no way to satisfy them . . . that is the nature of wanting. Not by allowing fluid majorities to redistribute the accumulated wealth of society . . . in such an arrangement, someone will always suffer. I do not believe a wholesale change is required; I think we should make our government work as designed, and our technolgy is an important tool to make that happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Although I would love it if Access4less.net paid me for this, I have no affiliation either.
I've used them as my primary ISP for almost a year. If you can configure a dial-up account, they are a rock-solid, V.92 provider. Phone support charges are $5 per incident (Ive never called), and free email support (which has been snappy both times I used it). If you need a secondary dial-up, or a primary, Id recommend Access4less.
You can use 355/113 as an approximation for pi, which yields 3.14159292035 (etc). It begins to differ from pi in the seventh place (a difference of approximately 2.66e-7). Not too shabby for many uses.
Ciao,
Dan
Are you sure? Can you prove it? Because, actually, I believe we do know how to build at least the heatshields.
Since I began work at Lockheed Martin (back then it was Martin Marietta), we have made a number of heatshields. If you go to the article linked to above, you will see a picture of the aeroshell. The white cone is one of the backshells we completed for the Mars Exploration Rover missions about this time last year. (The ablator is actually gray, they painted it in Denver.)
A cursory examination of informal records and pictures shows that we've been building them for many of NASA's planetary probes, going back to the Viking probes. I have no doubt that we could make at least Apollo Command Module-class heatshields.
dm
This should make ion engines such as these much more useful for space exploration. If all you need is a little push to get you from one manifold to another, ion engines sound perfect for facilitating a nice surf on the Interplanatary Superhighway!
Before he wrote LoTR, he worked on the Oxford English Dictionary. Someone corrected him once, and he replied that he had changed his mind since he wrote the dictionary.
I read last year that Rudolf Diesel actually developed the engine so that it would be useful in undeveloped regions where they would have to use alternative fuels such as biodiesel.
According to this website:
Mr. Shatner,
Fans, and their sometimes obsessive love for fiction such as Star Trek, is possibly even more associated with the program than the actual shows, Gene Roddenberry, you, or the rest of the cast. Even to the point where documentaries and fiction are written in reaction to (or extension of) the original fiction. In that vein, did you see Galaxy Quest? What did you think?
Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick two.
The U. S. Constitution prohibits the several States from imposing duties on items imported from other States.
I don't think it was so bad: nobody asked if we could imagine a beowulf cluster of Cathy Rogers . . .
I once read that if the body collapses under its own gravity into a more-or-less spherical shape, then it's a planet.
Everyone should be familiar with the actual workings of democracy from grade school. Back then we called it "majority rules!" And while it was frequently invoked, I remember that it was favored most by the popular and those who tended to think and move in herds. It usually resulted in mediocre results, such as when we voted to go to the park because neither the Museum of Art nor the Zoo commanded a majority.
It discriminated against minorities, by which I mean me and all the other nerds.
Later, those memories provided me with an empathetic understanding of why the Founding Fathers disdained democracy as "mob rule". Their answer to decentralization was to allow natural and historic subdivisions to appoint "subject matter experts" whose opinions and activities were closely monitored. And who were subject to recall if their performance demanded it.
That model was largely diminished following the War Between the States, and had all but disappeared due to the centralizing effects of the Great Depression, the New Deal and two World Wars. Information became hidden, and to a large degree, controlled. The media of transmittal -- the Post Office, the Newspapers, Radio and Television networks -- all became more and more indistiguishable from each other. The information available to citizens became remarkably homogeneous.
All that is changing.
I do not believe that we should attempt to use technology to "democratize" our society. Certainly not by making it easy to vote, online, on each and every question. The inevitable combination of the slashdot effect and online voting in such a scenario is frightening in its implications. Instead, we should harness the technologies at hand to increase the understanding of the citizens and enhance their oversight of our public servants.
For too long they have had the freedom to do what they want without having to account for their positions or their actions. The limitations imposed upon them by our Constitution have been ignored so long that it is now acceptable for people who have sworn to uphold and defend the rights protected therein to routinely advocate their elimination! The current president is on record many times decrying the Bill of Rights as "radical" and even "maybe too radical".
I believe that such positions will be swept away as technology returns to us the tools to pick good public servants, and to adequately monitor their actions. We have already seen some successes along these lines. The public outcry against the "Know Your Customer" campaign comes to mind, as does the spread of strong encryption and the awareness of privacy rights. These are the appropriate roles for technology. Enhancing the intelligence and oversight of the electorate. Not chaning the means by which people announce their wishes. There is no way to satisfy them . . . that is the nature of wanting. Not by allowing fluid majorities to redistribute the accumulated wealth of society . . . in such an arrangement, someone will always suffer. I do not believe a wholesale change is required; I think we should make our government work as designed, and our technolgy is an important tool to make that happen.