You're a fool to give the Chinese government credit for suppresing their own people.
If the open source community was really so much in love with the idea of freedom, they'd be hard at work challenging Chinese restrictions and helping the Chinese people find ways around them and, ultimately, to eliminate the blocks and elect their own government.
A reviewer is pretty naive, or pretty greedy, not to imagine that the products manufacturers give him are not souped up in some fashion.
If the review doesn't say how the reviewer obtained the product, or if the review does say that the manufacturer provided the product, readers should just move on.
Bogus reviews are rampant in this industry. Anyone else remember the annual PC Magazine issue devoted to printers with reviews of a printer on the left-hand page and an ad from the manufacturer on the right-hand page?
The Soviets lost crews in Soyuz predecessors many years ago. The current craft has proven to be quite reliable.
Both Shuttle disaster can be attributable to failures in hardware that exists only to support the Shuttle. The O-rings exist only because the Shuttle design required strap-on boosters at launch. The Colombia disaster was caused by damage to the leading edge of a wing by ice at launch. If there is no wing, there is no wing to break.
Here's the deal with wings on spacecraft: Wings are just useless mass during launch and on orbit. The extra mass sucks fuel and adds no capabilities. During re-entry, wings function as a heat shield as the Shuttle assumes a nose-up posture-- not to provide life -- until the last few minutes. At that point, the nose is brought down and the Shuttle glides to a landing.
In theory, the wings allow the Shuttle some maneuverability during this part of the alnding. In reality, since it is a powerless glider, once they commit to a specific runway, they're not able to go around and come in again, much less fly off to another landing field.
In sum, the wings have added nothing at all to our capabilities in space. Neither will wings on a spaceplan.
Np spaceplane could simply "fly up to space". The wings, in fact, are useless in the launch phase. (More than useless, if you consider that they require extra design work to ensure the stablity of the entire craft.)
The only way anything can reach orbit is by travelling at orbital velocity. Rocket engines are the only propulsion we have that can power a vehicle to that speed. That's why people use them for space travel, not because there were "left over" German scientists at the end of World War Two.
It's worth noting the all spaceplanes would be boosted to orbit by conventional rocket booster.
The spaceplane notion is based on the idea that the wings permit maneuverability during the last few minutes of re-entry.
Spaceplanes would not fly back from space like an airplane, or as depicted in early science fiction. Like the Shuttle, they would enter the atmosphere with nose up at a high angle. The underside of the wings and the fuselage act as a heat shield, taking the full brunt of the dynamics of re-entry. It's only when that phase of re-entry is over that a spaceplane would pitch the nose down and begin to develop lift under the wings.
Fuel is not the major component a launch cost. Nor is it appropriate to argue that a rocket is inefficient because it uses more fuel than a 747 to get to the same altitude. Achieving altitude has nothing to do with achieving orbit. A 747 can fly forever and it will never, ever, fly much faster than 650 mph. Orbital velocity is approximately 18,000 mph. Rockets are the only thing that can do that.
We don't now, and likely will never, have any reason to have so many landing locations that a winged craft would be needed to take advantage. We launch from one place, and we come back to one or two places. I don't see that changing, or having a reason to change.
One goal of LEO travel should be to reduce the cost. I'm not convinced that going reusuable will do that. It hasn't in the case of the Shuttle. Why not focus on finding ways to reduce the cost of expendable launchers?
Space travel is about just that: traveling in space. Getting to and from Earth orbit is tantamount to taking the shuttle bus from the airport parking lot to the terminal to catch a flight. The purpose of the exercise is to go somewhere else, not shuttle in from the parking lot. Rather than work on the terminal and new destinations, NASA has spent the last 30+plus years re-inventing the parking lot shuttle.
I don't want NASA to propel new technology. I want NASA to propel people off the planet.
Yeah, but why even trying to build anything with wings? Or a reusable launcher for it? That's a waste of money.
We can get as many people as we want to into and out of orbit using capsules. We know how to give them some cross-range capability (Apollo had it). It just amkes no sense to me that NASA is still trying to turn airplanes into spacecraft. Their incompetence and shortsightedness is threatening the continuing existence of human space travel. (Not that NASA has actually travelled anywhere in space in the last 30 years.)
Unless you want to drag really long cables with you everywhere, Internet's only chance to supplant radio is to use wireless technology to broadcast packets via...radio.
Not all radio broadcasting is intended to sell you music. Not all radio broadcasting music are trying to sell you something. I live within range of 3 great public stations. Each of them broadcasts mix of music and news that I like, so I never listen to commercial stations. I stopped that around age 14.
>>...isn't one of the ideas behind the orbital space plane program the fact that our current space program is getting more unsafe through the use of 20-year-old equipment.
No. The idea behind the prbital space plane is find a way for NASA to shovel money to a few big quasi-monopolies.
NASA's been trying to put wings on spacecraft for decades. They've spent bilions and they still don't know how to do it. There's no guarantee that a space plane will be any safer than the Shuttle. Remember, old technology didn't crash the Colombia.
There are other, cheaper, ways to get people to and from orbit. We've been able to do that, safely, for more than 40 years. Since we know how to do that, we ought to concentrate on going someplace in space (where wings are pointless, obviously) rather than some useless technical chimera like the orbital space plane.
Technology dosn't achieve "abundance", whatever the author means by that loaded word.
The ability to acquire, most often, to purchase, creates abundance. For example, Henry Ford's cars created a social evolution in the U.S because he was able to sell them at a price that many people could afford. Technology, combined with alterations in the social structure of production, can reduce the costs of getting a product to market, but the market still must have the means and the will to acquire it.
Thw owners of technology will only be motivated to reproduce it in "abundance" when the market is prepared to reward them acceptably. (RMS legions, please note that sentence deliberately avoids the use of the words "sell" and "pay_. Free software is reproduced because developers find their reward in the software market what when their code is made free.)
Setting the right compiler options for your hardware can make a small difference. Most people, though, don;t have a clue about setting compiler options.
Hardware itself makes a much greater difference. Any OS running on a Pentium 4 3 gHz with a large UDMA133 drive and a $500 video card will be faster than the same OS running on a 486SX-25 an ancient drive and a $35 video card. One would think that's obvious.
Most of these so-called performamce tests are silly. One guy finds Thing A is faster on his hardware than Thing B. Doesn't mean that will happen on my hardware.
The real test is you, and that's subjective. If its fast enough for you, it's fast enough.
I agree, strongly, with your point about guns, but the argument that cars are tools, not weapons, smells of more than a bit of sophism
A baseball bat isn't a weapon, either, until you whack someone on their head with it. When a tool is used as a weapon, intentionally or accidentally, then we have every reason to consider it a weapon.
No, I mean some of my direct ancestors were hung and burned at the stake during the reformation in what is now southern Germany for religous beliefs that offended the locals. Eventually, the rest of them escaped down the Rhine and migrated to the colonies from Rotterdam.
So, I can personally attest to the wonders of European culture.
My ancestors didn't come to North America to apply their brilliant European education (They didn't have one; being farmers, Europeans didn't think they were worth educating.) They came here so they wouldn't be persecuted by intolerant bigots.
From the time I've spent there, I know liars and ill-educated ravers like you aren't representative. But, whenever I think of Europe, I think of racism, suffering, war, cynicism, and love of state, all taking their toll on the rest of the world.
Europe is a great place to visit -- lots of old buildings built by all those old kings and dictators --but a better place to leave.
>i>Because other countries don't play fair, we shouldn't be expected to either?
Who defines fair? Should we "play fair" with a country that is oppressing and killing its own citizens? Should we "play fair" with another democracy that has treaty and commercial ties with a country we consider a threat? Should we "play fair" with any country if that means imposing harsh and unwelcome burdens on our own, or its, citizens?
A countries foreign policy, especially in a democracy, is obligated to work for the best interests of the citizens of that country. Sometimes those interests conflict with what some people think is moral behavior. But, is it moral for any democratic leader to give his or her personal sense or morality precedence over the interests of the country as a whole?
>> The act of being world's only superpower doesn't have some sort of moral responsibility that comes with it?
No more or no less than for any other nation. Are weak countries any less morally responsible for their behavior?
For people that have spawned most of the evils in the world, European arrogance these days astounds me.
(Unless, of, course, you think Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Milosevic, Hitler, Mussolini, the Romanovs, Napoleon, etc., etc., were good.)
There's a reason why people still leave Europe to livein the U.S. but not the other way around. Thanks God my ancestors got out before even more of them were hung and burned by good church-going Europeans.
Except for my throw-away Yahoo address, none of my addresses have been active for more than a year. That, I'm sure, accounts for the relative lack of spam I receive. Interestingly, before that I worked for an outfit with a global presence and I can't recall seeing a single piece of spam in my office inbox.
Yeah, but you can't delete all those salesmen. I'd much rather press a key than get out of my chair to answer the door.
I have one well-protected address I give to people whose mail I don't want to miss. That's all I use it for and, so far, it gets very little spam. I'm quite willing to empty the mailboxes of the other accounts, sight unseen, when they get out of hand.
Name me any country that chooses its allies based on their moral character. That's a pollyanish belief. A country's foreign policy is intended to protect and advance the interests of thsat country, not turn the world into a better place.
So I don't accept your criticism that secret aid to nondemocratic states is smoehow hypocritical and is cause for complete comdemnation of the U.S. It's not a Sunday School world, and the U.S. doesn't have the job of spreading flowers and honey everywhere. The first job of U.S. foreign policy is to protect the interests of the U.S. It's the same in every country.
Don't blame you, then. Odd, though, I use 3 different addresses, subscribe to a number of mailing lists, and only get about 30 spams a day. Most of those go to a Yahoo mailbox that I empty without even opening.
Did I claim totalitarian states were always terrorists? You used that word, not me.
Totalitarian states remain in power by creating and maintaining a military, police and internal intelligence structure that is strong enough to eliminate any possiblity of internal revolt (which is what normal people will do otherwise). To justify this police state and the expenditures needed to keep it working, these state create the myth that they are threatened by the U.S. and other democracies. And, sometimes they play their cards incorrectly (like Saddam) and go too far.
North Korea is a prime example of such posturing. They've used the lie of an impending U.S. invasion for 50 years to convince their citizens that they have no choice but to live in such deprivation.
And, of course, that's how Soviet leaders remained in power for 70 years.
Go read what Hannah Arendt has to say about totalitarian regimes.
...the US likes to hold itself up as some sort of moral leader in the world.
No, the U.S. doesn't do that. Many people like to slander the country in that manner, but it is almost always an obvious attempt to divert their own country's attention from the real problems they face.
It's hard to look genuinely like a moral leader while you're secretly supporting all the things you say you're against.
Nice try. You assert that the U.S. acts as a "moral leader" and then you make the completely unsubstantiated assertion that the U.S. is "secretly supporting" all kinds of evil thing. IN other words, a lie.
Like any government, the U.S. attempts to have a foreign policy that supports what that particular administration sees as in the best interest of the country. Not the best interests of its neighbors, friends or enemies. Not some kind of moral imperative that all Americans secretly adhere to.
People unfairly hold the U.S. to a different standard than other countries. If a French corporate executive wines and dines Arab oil potentates in order to get cheaper oil (not an uncommon occurence) no one says a word. If an American company does the same thing for the same reason, its accused of spreading the Amrican "hegemony". People can't have it both ways.
Slashdot Mirror
You're a fool to give the Chinese government credit for suppresing their own people.
If the open source community was really so much in love with the idea of freedom, they'd be hard at work challenging Chinese restrictions and helping the Chinese people find ways around them and, ultimately, to eliminate the blocks and elect their own government.
Someone can be honest and wrong at the same time.
A FAQ entry posted by Person A may be erroneous, yet go unchallenged.
On the other hand, a FAQ entry might be completely accurate and still be "edited" by any number of people who, mistakenly, think it's wrong.
Accuracy and correctness aren'tdetermined by popular opinion.
Why should I trust a "user-modified" FAW?
Wasn't there some guy a some years ago who tied a bunch of helium balloons to his lawn chair and soon found himself a few miles high?
A reviewer is pretty naive, or pretty greedy, not to imagine that the products manufacturers give him are not souped up in some fashion.
If the review doesn't say how the reviewer obtained the product, or if the review does say that the manufacturer provided the product, readers should just move on.
Bogus reviews are rampant in this industry. Anyone else remember the annual PC Magazine issue devoted to printers with reviews of a printer on the left-hand page and an ad from the manufacturer on the right-hand page?
The Soviets lost crews in Soyuz predecessors many years ago. The current craft has proven to be quite reliable.
Both Shuttle disaster can be attributable to failures in hardware that exists only to support the Shuttle. The O-rings exist only because the Shuttle design required strap-on boosters at launch. The Colombia disaster was caused by damage to the leading edge of a wing by ice at launch. If there is no wing, there is no wing to break.
Here's the deal with wings on spacecraft: Wings are just useless mass during launch and on orbit. The extra mass sucks fuel and adds no capabilities. During re-entry, wings function as a heat shield as the Shuttle assumes a nose-up posture-- not to provide life -- until the last few minutes. At that point, the nose is brought down and the Shuttle glides to a landing.
In theory, the wings allow the Shuttle some maneuverability during this part of the alnding. In reality, since it is a powerless glider, once they commit to a specific runway, they're not able to go around and come in again, much less fly off to another landing field.
In sum, the wings have added nothing at all to our capabilities in space. Neither will wings on a spaceplan.
Np spaceplane could simply "fly up to space". The wings, in fact, are useless in the launch phase. (More than useless, if you consider that they require extra design work to ensure the stablity of the entire craft.)
The only way anything can reach orbit is by travelling at orbital velocity. Rocket engines are the only propulsion we have that can power a vehicle to that speed. That's why people use them for space travel, not because there were "left over" German scientists at the end of World War Two.
It's worth noting the all spaceplanes would be boosted to orbit by conventional rocket booster.
The spaceplane notion is based on the idea that the wings permit maneuverability during the last few minutes of re-entry.
Spaceplanes would not fly back from space like an airplane, or as depicted in early science fiction. Like the Shuttle, they would enter the atmosphere with nose up at a high angle. The underside of the wings and the fuselage act as a heat shield, taking the full brunt of the dynamics of re-entry. It's only when that phase of re-entry is over that a spaceplane would pitch the nose down and begin to develop lift under the wings.
Fuel is not the major component a launch cost. Nor is it appropriate to argue that a rocket is inefficient because it uses more fuel than a 747 to get to the same altitude. Achieving altitude has nothing to do with achieving orbit. A 747 can fly forever and it will never, ever, fly much faster than 650 mph. Orbital velocity is approximately 18,000 mph. Rockets are the only thing that can do that.
We don't now, and likely will never, have any reason to have so many landing locations that a winged craft would be needed to take advantage. We launch from one place, and we come back to one or two places. I don't see that changing, or having a reason to change.
One goal of LEO travel should be to reduce the cost. I'm not convinced that going reusuable will do that. It hasn't in the case of the Shuttle. Why not focus on finding ways to reduce the cost of expendable launchers?
Space travel is about just that: traveling in space. Getting to and from Earth orbit is tantamount to taking the shuttle bus from the airport parking lot to the terminal to catch a flight. The purpose of the exercise is to go somewhere else, not shuttle in from the parking lot. Rather than work on the terminal and new destinations, NASA has spent the last 30+plus years re-inventing the parking lot shuttle.
I don't want NASA to propel new technology. I want NASA to propel people off the planet.
Yeah, but why even trying to build anything with wings? Or a reusable launcher for it? That's a waste of money.
We can get as many people as we want to into and out of orbit using capsules. We know how to give them some cross-range capability (Apollo had it). It just amkes no sense to me that NASA is still trying to turn airplanes into spacecraft. Their incompetence and shortsightedness is threatening the continuing existence of human space travel. (Not that NASA has actually travelled anywhere in space in the last 30 years.)
Unless you want to drag really long cables with you everywhere, Internet's only chance to supplant radio is to use wireless technology to broadcast packets via...radio.
Not all radio broadcasting is intended to sell you music. Not all radio broadcasting music are trying to sell you something. I live within range of 3 great public stations. Each of them broadcasts mix of music and news that I like, so I never listen to commercial stations. I stopped that around age 14.
>> ...isn't one of the ideas behind the orbital space plane program the fact that our current space program is getting more unsafe through the use of 20-year-old equipment.
No. The idea behind the prbital space plane is find a way for NASA to shovel money to a few big quasi-monopolies.
NASA's been trying to put wings on spacecraft for decades. They've spent bilions and they still don't know how to do it. There's no guarantee that a space plane will be any safer than the Shuttle. Remember, old technology didn't crash the Colombia.
There are other, cheaper, ways to get people to and from orbit. We've been able to do that, safely, for more than 40 years. Since we know how to do that, we ought to concentrate on going someplace in space (where wings are pointless, obviously) rather than some useless technical chimera like the orbital space plane.
Technology dosn't achieve "abundance", whatever the author means by that loaded word.
The ability to acquire, most often, to purchase, creates abundance. For example, Henry Ford's cars created a social evolution in the U.S because he was able to sell them at a price that many people could afford. Technology, combined with alterations in the social structure of production, can reduce the costs of getting a product to market, but the market still must have the means and the will to acquire it.
Thw owners of technology will only be motivated to reproduce it in "abundance" when the market is prepared to reward them acceptably. (RMS legions, please note that sentence deliberately avoids the use of the words "sell" and "pay_. Free software is reproduced because developers find their reward in the software market what when their code is made free.)
Setting the right compiler options for your hardware can make a small difference. Most people, though, don;t have a clue about setting compiler options.
Hardware itself makes a much greater difference. Any OS running on a Pentium 4 3 gHz with a large UDMA133 drive and a $500 video card will be faster than the same OS running on a 486SX-25 an ancient drive and a $35 video card. One would think that's obvious.
Most of these so-called performamce tests are silly. One guy finds Thing A is faster on his hardware than Thing B. Doesn't mean that will happen on my hardware.
The real test is you, and that's subjective. If its fast enough for you, it's fast enough.
I agree, strongly, with your point about guns, but the argument that cars are tools, not weapons, smells of more than a bit of sophism
A baseball bat isn't a weapon, either, until you whack someone on their head with it. When a tool is used as a weapon, intentionally or accidentally, then we have every reason to consider it a weapon.
Anyone know if AOL reserves the right to do this as part of their terms of use? Last I looked, MS does with Windows.
No, I mean some of my direct ancestors were hung and burned at the stake during the reformation in what is now southern Germany for religous beliefs that offended the locals. Eventually, the rest of them escaped down the Rhine and migrated to the colonies from Rotterdam.
So, I can personally attest to the wonders of European culture.
My ancestors didn't come to North America to apply their brilliant European education (They didn't have one; being farmers, Europeans didn't think they were worth educating.) They came here so they wouldn't be persecuted by intolerant bigots.
From the time I've spent there, I know liars and ill-educated ravers like you aren't representative. But, whenever I think of Europe, I think of racism, suffering, war, cynicism, and love of state, all taking their toll on the rest of the world.
Europe is a great place to visit -- lots of old buildings built by all those old kings and dictators --but a better place to leave.
>i>Because other countries don't play fair, we shouldn't be expected to either?
Who defines fair? Should we "play fair" with a country that is oppressing and killing its own citizens? Should we "play fair" with another democracy that has treaty and commercial ties with a country we consider a threat? Should we "play fair" with any country if that means imposing harsh and unwelcome burdens on our own, or its, citizens?
A countries foreign policy, especially in a democracy, is obligated to work for the best interests of the citizens of that country. Sometimes those interests conflict with what some people think is moral behavior. But, is it moral for any democratic leader to give his or her personal sense or morality precedence over the interests of the country as a whole?
>> The act of being world's only superpower doesn't have some sort of moral responsibility that comes with it?
No more or no less than for any other nation. Are weak countries any less morally responsible for their behavior?
Glad I helped you learn about yourself.
For people that have spawned most of the evils in the world, European arrogance these days astounds me.
(Unless, of, course, you think Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Milosevic, Hitler, Mussolini, the Romanovs, Napoleon, etc., etc., were good.)
There's a reason why people still leave Europe to livein the U.S. but not the other way around. Thanks God my ancestors got out before even more of them were hung and burned by good church-going Europeans.
Except for my throw-away Yahoo address, none of my addresses have been active for more than a year. That, I'm sure, accounts for the relative lack of spam I receive. Interestingly, before that I worked for an outfit with a global presence and I can't recall seeing a single piece of spam in my office inbox.
Yeah, but you can't delete all those salesmen. I'd much rather press a key than get out of my chair to answer the door.
I have one well-protected address I give to people whose mail I don't want to miss. That's all I use it for and, so far, it gets very little spam. I'm quite willing to empty the mailboxes of the other accounts, sight unseen, when they get out of hand.
Name me any country that chooses its allies based on their moral character. That's a pollyanish belief. A country's foreign policy is intended to protect and advance the interests of thsat country, not turn the world into a better place.
So I don't accept your criticism that secret aid to nondemocratic states is smoehow hypocritical and is cause for complete comdemnation of the U.S. It's not a Sunday School world, and the U.S. doesn't have the job of spreading flowers and honey everywhere. The first job of U.S. foreign policy is to protect the interests of the U.S. It's the same in every country.
Don't blame you, then. Odd, though, I use 3 different addresses, subscribe to a number of mailing lists, and only get about 30 spams a day. Most of those go to a Yahoo mailbox that I empty without even opening.
Wrong.
Did I claim totalitarian states were always terrorists? You used that word, not me.
Totalitarian states remain in power by creating and maintaining a military, police and internal intelligence structure that is strong enough to eliminate any possiblity of internal revolt (which is what normal people will do otherwise). To justify this police state and the expenditures needed to keep it working, these state create the myth that they are threatened by the U.S. and other democracies. And, sometimes they play their cards incorrectly (like Saddam) and go too far.
North Korea is a prime example of such posturing. They've used the lie of an impending U.S. invasion for 50 years to convince their citizens that they have no choice but to live in such deprivation.
And, of course, that's how Soviet leaders remained in power for 70 years.
Go read what Hannah Arendt has to say about totalitarian regimes.
More incoherence. No surprise. Your sense of history seems to have come from comic books and screeds published by professional know-nothing lefties.
...the US likes to hold itself up as some sort of moral leader in the world.
No, the U.S. doesn't do that. Many people like to slander the country in that manner, but it is almost always an obvious attempt to divert their own country's attention from the real problems they face.
It's hard to look genuinely like a moral leader while you're secretly supporting all the things you say you're against.
Nice try. You assert that the U.S. acts as a "moral leader" and then you make the completely unsubstantiated assertion that the U.S. is "secretly supporting" all kinds of evil thing. IN other words, a lie.
Like any government, the U.S. attempts to have a foreign policy that supports what that particular administration sees as in the best interest of the country. Not the best interests of its neighbors, friends or enemies. Not some kind of moral imperative that all Americans secretly adhere to.
People unfairly hold the U.S. to a different standard than other countries. If a French corporate executive wines and dines Arab oil potentates in order to get cheaper oil (not an uncommon occurence) no one says a word. If an American company does the same thing for the same reason, its accused of spreading the Amrican "hegemony". People can't have it both ways.
Unless, of course, they're hypocrites.