NASA's budget is a drop in the bucket, approximately $15B. . .
damn. . . we just LOST half that amount in Iraq. (LOST, as in, "anybody seen my wallet?")
Hypersonic aerospace research is a good idea simply on its own merits, regardless of present applications. I certainly look forward to 90-minute sub-orbital shuttles from London to Tokyo, and being able to put things in orbit for less than $10,000/pound.
This is EXACTLY the kind of thing NASA is for. (not just pretty pictures from Hubble).
Private industry sure as hell ain't gonna do it. Why would they invest in this kind of technology when it's more profitable to stick you on a subsonic cattle-car, and charge you $2000 to fly to Europe in 10 hours?
Well, I do have to admit that I'm happy that Saddam is gone.
I'm also VERY happy that Chalabi was FINALLY outed for the scoundrel that he is.
Since Iraq does not now have 200,000 Iranian soldiers, and 150,000 dead US troops, it has gone FAR better than I imagined it ever would. However:
Also, in the fog of war, Saddam could have donated his WMD's to Al Qaida. That's the scariest thing in this whole Iraq deal. The WMD's may be found someday, but they may be found after they have blown up downtown NY.
If that's the case, then BUSH was an utter failure. Bush's aim was supposed to be preventing the WMD from falling into Al Qaeda's hands. By effectively creating the situation that allowed it to happen (there would have been no "fog of war" had there been no war) - Bush would be ultimately responsible. When Bush went in gung-ho with the military, it became HIS responsibility to control the situation on the ground. He had the option of sending many many more troops, or taking a bit longer to get the diplomatic support necessary to be better positioned to do little things like SEAL THE FREAKING BORDERS, and actually secure land as troops advanced instead of driving straight to Baghdad without really securing rear areas. When you're going in to bust a crack-house, you surround the place FIRST. You don't bust in the front door and let the bad guys get out the back door. He made the same mistake in Afghanistan, as well. If we weren't going to commit enough troops and resources to get the job done right, we should not have done it in the first place. Bush's incompetence has created a situation where (for those who believe in the WMD-fairy) the WMD could now very well be in bin Laden's hands.
This tells me that Bush and his team are really not interested in security, or freedom, or any of those lofty goals. They're interested in prolonging conflict, for profit. Fiscal and Political.
Saddam was a bad man and his sons were just as bad as he was.
Sure he was. There's also a lot of evidence now, that the man largely responsible both for most of the "dirt" on Saddam and his sons, but also bogus WMD claims, and also for the bogus Oil for Fraud claims, as well, (Ahmed Chalabi, and his relatives) is not only an embezzler ($300 million from a Jordanian bank), but a liar ("evul hackers broke into my computer and delted the evidence"), a murderer, a counterfieter, a thief, and an IRANIAN SPY, who passed intelligence our (civillian) DOPES (Feith, Pearl, Rove, etc) at the Pentagon trusted him with, to Tehran. This man was the centerpiece of the Bush Administration's case that we needed to go into Iraq - and much of what he told us directly, or had provided through what were made to look like other channels, were falsehoods, designed to getting him into a position of power inside Iraq, and the USs expense.
Now the GAO says that up to $8.8 Billion in reconstruction funds is MISSING. Thanks to the Republican Senators who lobbied to have accounting oversight removed from the Iraq funding. I say check Chalabi's pockets.
Orbit is more a function of speed than a function of lift or drag.
Exactly right.
One coule achieve orbit at "sea level" so long as one was going fast enough, could somehow maintaint that speed given the aerodynamic drag at that altitude, and encountered no terrain obstacles.
The hope of the Scramjet is; Obtain enough velocity while still within the atmosphere to attain orbital velocity, while overcoming drag via engine thrust. Of course, the vehicle will eventually run out of fuel, so the next aim is; At this altitude, obtain SURPLUS velocity, which can be used to gain altitude (no longer via aerodynamic lift, but through sheer newtonian momentum). As altitude is increased, there will be a point where there's not enough air to run the engine, yet there's still enough air to create drag. That drag, plus speed lost to attain altitude, will slow the vehicle down. If the engine produced enough surplus velocity, then, in theory, it could reach what we normally consider to be LEO (about 200 miles?). It's even theoretically possible to reach higher orbits, or even escape Earth's gravity altogether - if we can find a material that can stand the thermal loading during the attainment of this surplus velocity, and if we can carry enough fuel with us to burn. But outside of the realm of theory lie the cold hard facts that we don't have materials like that, so we'll probably just use rockets to attain higher altitudes.
In which case, it seems to make more sense to use the scramjet on a BOOST vehicle, and stick to a rocket upper-stage to propel your orbiter or payload. The scramjet booster should be recoverable, of course. So it's looking more and more like the future model of space flight is something like what Scaled Composites came up with:
A smaller Orbiter or Payload-type vehicle, rocket propelled, piggybacked on a larger booster vehicle. Probably also piggybacked on an even larger carrier. (say - a modified C-5, carrying a large booster to an altitude of say, like 60,000 feet or so (what's the C-5's service ceiling?) - Drop the vehicle, that uses an initial rocket boost, or perhaps turbofans, to get up to Mach 2-3, a Scramjet for mach 3-15 or so, then at a given altitude, release an upper-stage for orbital insertion and maneuvering. The Booster stage returns for recovery, as well as the carrier. The upper-stage vehicle doesn't really need to be reusable. Unless it's manned. The most expensive hardware would probably be the Booster vehicle. If the upper stage is manned, well, there's a lot of very expensive avionics and life-support stuff you'd want to recover and re-use. But we're no longer talking about something the size of the Shuttle. Not even the combined Booster/Upper-stage. I guess a C-5 could probably carry something that large, but since the Carrier is doing the bulk of the heavy-lifting that would otherwise have been done by the Shuttle's main engines and external tank, the Carrier shaves a bunch of mass off the Booster/upper-stage, which leaves a lot more capacity for payload.
Copyright law has been vague since it's inception in the Constitution. From the phrase ". . . For a limited time" - to the current "fair use" exceptions, there's never been a clear-cut definition for Intellectual Property.
A lot of people would agree that if some inventor, or writer, or artist, comes up with a truly unique idea, that benefits society as a whole, that that person should be able to be rewarded for their ingenuity. It's a simple idea that's just plain not so simple to put a solid wall around and define.
For example, the provisions in the 1996 American Telecom Act spell out Fair Use, which permits someone to copy copyrighted works freely for certain puposes. Parody and Satire, Journalistic quoting, and Educational, I believe as well (and I think that they made exceptions to the last one to prevent people from copying textbooks wholesale to preserve the monopoly-pricing model the textbook industry maintains). Somewhere along the way, it became acceptable to say, loan your freind a CD to listen to. That's iffy, and I'm sure there are record company executives who don't like that idea. But what about loaning the CD to your wife? What about burning a copy for your wife (when that became technically feasible for Joe Sixpack?) - well, it was allowed and accepted, as was rampant taping with cassetted tape, of LPs. As long as these tapes weren't being duplicated and sold en masse for profit, it was accepted. But then came Napster - and suddenly, it became very easy to share your favorite songs with 200,000 of your closest friends online, anonymously, and it was a "perfect" digital copy that did not degrade from generations like analog taping did.
One could argue as to whether this cut or enhanced record sales (most independent studies support that it enhanced sales - RIAA-funded studies generally blame the economic downturn on P2P file sharing though). That's beside the point. Copyright law made the record industry folks feel ENTITLED to a cut of every song distributed. The fact that music was now being distributed, and they didn't get a cut, made them unhappy. So they turned to "the letter of the law" and complained to politicians that if their currentl industry position was not preserved by law, then "people would become unemployed".
Back in those days, there was much discussion about "Buggy-whip manufacturers" and new distribution models made possible by the internet, making their old business model (and thus the whole record industry promotion and distribution chain) obsolete. That it was best for the "Free Market" if they were allowed to become extinct.
The last dinosaurs, I'm sure, fought like hell to survive in the face of a radical change of their environment. They were dinosaurs, ill suited to survival in that environment, to be sure. But they were still huge, strong, and powerful. As the RIAA is today.
IP laws are a legal fiction, and they tend to not be easy for most people to grasp as a basic right. The loose wording leaves a lot open for interpretation. The obvious answer is to tighten up the legaleese, in a fair and equitable way, which allows Market Forces to work to drive the market in whichever direction the new technology allows. But the guys in Metallica still want their gold-plated swimming pool. ANd their lawyers are going to fight like hell to keep the legal environment tilted in their favor.
The bad news is - neither American political party is at all interested in reforming the situation.
And please don't give me this 'it doesn't cost them any money for me to share songs or TV' stuff.
Why not? Because it's a perfectly valid refutation of your argument?
Copying is not theft. Yes, it's illegal. Nobody disagrees with you on that. Law is Law. But it's also illegal in Maryland to drive your car at night without a horse preceeding it by at least 90 feet carrying a lantern.
Same reason rich white guys in their BMWz don't get pulled over for speeding at the same rate as black guys driving old beat up cadillacs.
Same reason the IRS tends not to audit the high-end white-collar criminals with tax shelters in Barbados as much as Joe Sixpack, who may have done some work on a freind's room addition in trade for some cash under the table.
Same reason you get your ass handed to you if you drive with a straight-pipe welded in place of your catalytic converter, while the power company belches filth all over your neighborhood.
The little-guy is always the easier target. It's called "going after the low-hanging fruit".
I can't see how (as the article posits) this could be caused by cooling of either the air, or the earth's crust, or even the "gravitational shielding effect of the moon". Or even a "cancelling out" or destructive interference of the two gravitational signals from the Sun and the Moon along the same line.
Such changes should easily be measured EACH DAY when the earth eclipses the sun.
But it has to be something about the interaction of three gravitational signals, because the effect is only observed when the three objects (earth moon sun) are lined up precisely. We apparently can't measure this effect every 28 days when the moon near-misses the sun.
I used to work on a server data replication product.
There are many tales to tell about this debacle (I think the vendor has long since cancelled or put it on maintenance mode) - but there was a point where we raised our price from $250/server to $5000/server, and the ONLY change in the product was a name change. No new features were added. Hell, we didn't even update the GUI. Saled jumped 20% that quarter. (unfortunately it was not to be sustained).
The reasoning was, the Market didn't take us seriously at $250/server because all of our competitors were priced in the $5000/server range.
Note to Real; MAYBE if you reduced your per-track price to a dime, and MAYBE if you gave me a membership that guaranteed this price for 10 years for unlimited number of downloads, I'd consider it.
But considering the piss poor quality of your video product, that's a very big maybe.
Why would you think customers will pay for worthless crap?
Retired General Wesley Clark wrote a brilliant article several months ago about how a perfect example of a democratized Muslim nation already exists.
Turkey.
This nation was THE HEART AND SOUL of the Islamic Empire that Osama Bin Laden is trying to re-create. Through careful diplomacy, and years of patient effort, they became our closest ally in the region (Israel notwithstanding).
We did not "bomb them to freedom", or economically reconstruct them, or enforce western ideals onto them. That is why Iraq is a complete and utter failure. We learned a successful model in Turkey, and refused to apply that knowledge to Iraq. Some will say that Saddam was an impossible problem for this approach. That's Ahmed Chalabi, close Bush ally, and IRANIAN SPY talking.
The GOP occupation of NYC is not just designed to exploit 9/11. It is a careful and deliberate attempt to provoke protest. Preferably large, frightening, unruly protest. The more masturbatory rage they can stir up in the city, the louder they'll be laughing on their way back to the white house.
Of course, you're exactly right. But you'll never convince "them" of it.
The only thing you'll get out of it is a hearty "I told you so". And that still won't change their minds.
. . . it was that any statement made that was opposed to a left/liberal person's beliefs was automatically labelled as hate speach.
IMO - this was the Left's fatal mistake in the 1990's, after they began to regain control of the country (or rather, wrest control from the fascists), they got a taste of power, and took a small dose of fascism themselves. The whole PC movement was highly offensive to a lot of people in the mainstream. While most mainstreamers aren't one to use the "N" word, they were deeply disturbed by the witch-hunt against counter-feminists, and closet-neanderthals. They lost sight completely of the principle of "I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death, your right to say it." Surely, this comprised only a few radical activists on the Left - but it discredited the entire movement, as right-wing radio hosts painted a picture of a Socialist future where jack-booted thugs would come along and beat you for telling Polack jokes.
The progressive movement has not yet recovered, and they've really not made any progress against this. The progressive movement really needs to think about it's own survival, and disavow the radical element. Or they'll create a future 180-degrees out of phase with what they were hoping for.
. . . um, yeah, after he arranged through connections, to get some low-income housing condemned so that the taxpayers could build him a new stadium.
Yup, George Bush. Poster-boy for the Free Market. Never got a leg up from insiders, cronies, or political corruption. Never made a dime from us taxpayers. Never got a job based on connections lubed by daddy. uh hun.
When the Republicans hire groups of people to call-in numbers of Democratic phone canvassers in order to jam their switchboards so they cannot do their legally acceptable job of campaigning - isn't this the same thing?
The Director of the New Hampshire Republican Party has just plead guilty on charges stemming from this 2002 telephone-hacking denial of service. http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_s howfast.ht ml?article=41491
Just not on roads built with my tax dollars. Just not on airplanes owned by private companies.
Feel free to purchase as much land as you want, and hike across that terrain any time of day or night without showing anyone your ID. Go ahead. I don't care. Neither does anyone else.
Just because the 9/11 hijackers all had valid IDs, and the TSA fucked up and allowed them to board the planes (even the ones on terrorist watch lists) does not mean that in principle, ID checking prevents terrorism. It would be nice if that principle worked. It will never work if it's not given a chance.
And before you jump in with the "almost 3000" figure from 9/11, that was a one-time event.
Almost 3000, but it could very easily have been far more. Had the planes collided perhaps an hour later, more workers would have been in those buildings. Had the planes collided at LOWER points in the towers, more occupants would have been trapped above the impact point. 9/11 could have been much worse.
Point taken, though, about how passengers on a hijacked plane won't allow 9/11 to happen again.
Unless the hijackers manage to get onto the flight deck, and behind the newly upgraded doors, so the passengers can't pull a flight 93 and bash down the door with a drink-cart. . .
Put the $2 million/year annual budget for FIRE towards ITER? And ITER wants to build a $5 billion plant? That'll work. We'll have that baby paid off in 2500 years flat!
Funny, it's usually the Republicans who value "user fee" type taxes (as opposed to "rob the rich to build roads and schools" type taxes), and therefore, toll booths, and therefore, the kind of big-brother monitoring you're talking about.
While "communist" states like California, which has no toll roads (well, only one that I'm aware of) would have no such monitoring of an individual's travels.
Slashdot Mirror
sadly, 9/11 changed everything.
IIRC, the UK govt asked them for data owned by suspected terrorists, and they willingly forked it over.
There's a post here about child pornography. I can't support an embargo on anonymity or immunity there. No way, no how.
But "suspected terrorist" is a very loosely defined word. Senator Kennedy might agree with me on this point.
The guy from the RObot Suit article yesterday said he was inspired by watching Giant Robot shows on Japanese TV.
NASA's budget is a drop in the bucket, approximately $15B. . .
damn. . . we just LOST half that amount in Iraq. (LOST, as in, "anybody seen my wallet?")
Hypersonic aerospace research is a good idea simply on its own merits, regardless of present applications. I certainly look forward to 90-minute sub-orbital shuttles from London to Tokyo, and being able to put things in orbit for less than $10,000/pound.
This is EXACTLY the kind of thing NASA is for. (not just pretty pictures from Hubble).
Private industry sure as hell ain't gonna do it. Why would they invest in this kind of technology when it's more profitable to stick you on a subsonic cattle-car, and charge you $2000 to fly to Europe in 10 hours?
Well, I do have to admit that I'm happy that Saddam is gone.
I'm also VERY happy that Chalabi was FINALLY outed for the scoundrel that he is.
Since Iraq does not now have 200,000 Iranian soldiers, and 150,000 dead US troops, it has gone FAR better than I imagined it ever would. However:
Also, in the fog of war, Saddam could have donated his WMD's to Al Qaida. That's the scariest thing in this whole Iraq deal. The WMD's may be found someday, but they may be found after they have blown up downtown NY.
If that's the case, then BUSH was an utter failure. Bush's aim was supposed to be preventing the WMD from falling into Al Qaeda's hands. By effectively creating the situation that allowed it to happen (there would have been no "fog of war" had there been no war) - Bush would be ultimately responsible. When Bush went in gung-ho with the military, it became HIS responsibility to control the situation on the ground. He had the option of sending many many more troops, or taking a bit longer to get the diplomatic support necessary to be better positioned to do little things like SEAL THE FREAKING BORDERS, and actually secure land as troops advanced instead of driving straight to Baghdad without really securing rear areas.
When you're going in to bust a crack-house, you surround the place FIRST. You don't bust in the front door and let the bad guys get out the back door.
He made the same mistake in Afghanistan, as well.
If we weren't going to commit enough troops and resources to get the job done right, we should not have done it in the first place. Bush's incompetence has created a situation where (for those who believe in the WMD-fairy) the WMD could now very well be in bin Laden's hands.
This tells me that Bush and his team are really not interested in security, or freedom, or any of those lofty goals. They're interested in prolonging conflict, for profit. Fiscal and Political.
Saddam was a bad man and his sons were just as bad as he was.
Sure he was. There's also a lot of evidence now, that the man largely responsible both for most of the "dirt" on Saddam and his sons, but also bogus WMD claims, and also for the bogus Oil for Fraud claims, as well, (Ahmed Chalabi, and his relatives) is not only an embezzler ($300 million from a Jordanian bank), but a liar ("evul hackers broke into my computer and delted the evidence"), a murderer, a counterfieter, a thief, and an IRANIAN SPY, who passed intelligence our (civillian) DOPES (Feith, Pearl, Rove, etc) at the Pentagon trusted him with, to Tehran. This man was the centerpiece of the Bush Administration's case that we needed to go into Iraq - and much of what he told us directly, or had provided through what were made to look like other channels, were falsehoods, designed to getting him into a position of power inside Iraq, and the USs expense.
Now the GAO says that up to $8.8 Billion in reconstruction funds is MISSING. Thanks to the Republican Senators who lobbied to have accounting oversight removed from the Iraq funding. I say check Chalabi's pockets.
Orbit is more a function of speed than a function of lift or drag.
Exactly right.
One coule achieve orbit at "sea level" so long as one was going fast enough, could somehow maintaint that speed given the aerodynamic drag at that altitude, and encountered no terrain obstacles.
The hope of the Scramjet is;
Obtain enough velocity while still within the atmosphere to attain orbital velocity, while overcoming drag via engine thrust. Of course, the vehicle will eventually run out of fuel, so the next aim is;
At this altitude, obtain SURPLUS velocity, which can be used to gain altitude (no longer via aerodynamic lift, but through sheer newtonian momentum). As altitude is increased, there will be a point where there's not enough air to run the engine, yet there's still enough air to create drag. That drag, plus speed lost to attain altitude, will slow the vehicle down. If the engine produced enough surplus velocity, then, in theory, it could reach what we normally consider to be LEO (about 200 miles?). It's even theoretically possible to reach higher orbits, or even escape Earth's gravity altogether - if we can find a material that can stand the thermal loading during the attainment of this surplus velocity, and if we can carry enough fuel with us to burn. But outside of the realm of theory lie the cold hard facts that we don't have materials like that, so we'll probably just use rockets to attain higher altitudes.
In which case, it seems to make more sense to use the scramjet on a BOOST vehicle, and stick to a rocket upper-stage to propel your orbiter or payload. The scramjet booster should be recoverable, of course. So it's looking more and more like the future model of space flight is something like what Scaled Composites came up with:
A smaller Orbiter or Payload-type vehicle, rocket propelled, piggybacked on a larger booster vehicle. Probably also piggybacked on an even larger carrier.
(say - a modified C-5, carrying a large booster to an altitude of say, like 60,000 feet or so (what's the C-5's service ceiling?) - Drop the vehicle, that uses an initial rocket boost, or perhaps turbofans, to get up to Mach 2-3, a Scramjet for mach 3-15 or so, then at a given altitude, release an upper-stage for orbital insertion and maneuvering. The Booster stage returns for recovery, as well as the carrier. The upper-stage vehicle doesn't really need to be reusable. Unless it's manned. The most expensive hardware would probably be the Booster vehicle. If the upper stage is manned, well, there's a lot of very expensive avionics and life-support stuff you'd want to recover and re-use. But we're no longer talking about something the size of the Shuttle. Not even the combined Booster/Upper-stage. I guess a C-5 could probably carry something that large, but since the Carrier is doing the bulk of the heavy-lifting that would otherwise have been done by the Shuttle's main engines and external tank, the Carrier shaves a bunch of mass off the Booster/upper-stage, which leaves a lot more capacity for payload.
You're confused about something, and that's okay.
Here's way.
Copyright law has been vague since it's inception in the Constitution. From the phrase ". . . For a limited time" - to the current "fair use" exceptions, there's never been a clear-cut definition for Intellectual Property.
A lot of people would agree that if some inventor, or writer, or artist, comes up with a truly unique idea, that benefits society as a whole, that that person should be able to be rewarded for their ingenuity.
It's a simple idea that's just plain not so simple to put a solid wall around and define.
For example, the provisions in the 1996 American Telecom Act spell out Fair Use, which permits someone to copy copyrighted works freely for certain puposes. Parody and Satire, Journalistic quoting, and Educational, I believe as well (and I think that they made exceptions to the last one to prevent people from copying textbooks wholesale to preserve the monopoly-pricing model the textbook industry maintains). Somewhere along the way, it became acceptable to say, loan your freind a CD to listen to. That's iffy, and I'm sure there are record company executives who don't like that idea. But what about loaning the CD to your wife? What about burning a copy for your wife (when that became technically feasible for Joe Sixpack?) - well, it was allowed and accepted, as was rampant taping with cassetted tape, of LPs. As long as these tapes weren't being duplicated and sold en masse for profit, it was accepted. But then came Napster - and suddenly, it became very easy to share your favorite songs with 200,000 of your closest friends online, anonymously, and it was a "perfect" digital copy that did not degrade from generations like analog taping did.
One could argue as to whether this cut or enhanced record sales (most independent studies support that it enhanced sales - RIAA-funded studies generally blame the economic downturn on P2P file sharing though). That's beside the point. Copyright law made the record industry folks feel ENTITLED to a cut of every song distributed. The fact that music was now being distributed, and they didn't get a cut, made them unhappy. So they turned to "the letter of the law" and complained to politicians that if their currentl industry position was not preserved by law, then "people would become unemployed".
Back in those days, there was much discussion about "Buggy-whip manufacturers" and new distribution models made possible by the internet, making their old business model (and thus the whole record industry promotion and distribution chain) obsolete. That it was best for the "Free Market" if they were allowed to become extinct.
The last dinosaurs, I'm sure, fought like hell to survive in the face of a radical change of their environment. They were dinosaurs, ill suited to survival in that environment, to be sure. But they were still huge, strong, and powerful. As the RIAA is today.
IP laws are a legal fiction, and they tend to not be easy for most people to grasp as a basic right. The loose wording leaves a lot open for interpretation. The obvious answer is to tighten up the legaleese, in a fair and equitable way, which allows Market Forces to work to drive the market in whichever direction the new technology allows.
But the guys in Metallica still want their gold-plated swimming pool. ANd their lawyers are going to fight like hell to keep the legal environment tilted in their favor.
The bad news is - neither American political party is at all interested in reforming the situation.
And please don't give me this 'it doesn't cost them any money for me to share songs or TV' stuff.
Why not? Because it's a perfectly valid refutation of your argument?
Copying is not theft. Yes, it's illegal. Nobody disagrees with you on that. Law is Law. But it's also illegal in Maryland to drive your car at night without a horse preceeding it by at least 90 feet carrying a lantern.
Same reason rich white guys in their BMWz don't get pulled over for speeding at the same rate as black guys driving old beat up cadillacs.
Same reason the IRS tends not to audit the high-end white-collar criminals with tax shelters in Barbados as much as Joe Sixpack, who may have done some work on a freind's room addition in trade for some cash under the table.
Same reason you get your ass handed to you if you drive with a straight-pipe welded in place of your catalytic converter, while the power company belches filth all over your neighborhood.
The little-guy is always the easier target. It's called "going after the low-hanging fruit".
Yeah, like Europa (attempt no landing there.. . )
I can't see how (as the article posits) this could be caused by cooling of either the air, or the earth's crust, or even the "gravitational shielding effect of the moon".
Or even a "cancelling out" or destructive interference of the two gravitational signals from the Sun and the Moon along the same line.
Such changes should easily be measured EACH DAY when the earth eclipses the sun.
But it has to be something about the interaction of three gravitational signals, because the effect is only observed when the three objects (earth moon sun) are lined up precisely. We apparently can't measure this effect every 28 days when the moon near-misses the sun.
I used to work on a server data replication product.
There are many tales to tell about this debacle (I think the vendor has long since cancelled or put it on maintenance mode) - but there was a point where we raised our price from $250/server to $5000/server, and the ONLY change in the product was a name change. No new features were added. Hell, we didn't even update the GUI. Saled jumped 20% that quarter. (unfortunately it was not to be sustained).
The reasoning was, the Market didn't take us seriously at $250/server because all of our competitors were priced in the $5000/server range.
For a demonstration of the effectivness of a No Fly List, see:
The effectiveness of any Blog's "No Post List".
Note to Real;
MAYBE if you reduced your per-track price to a dime, and MAYBE if you gave me a membership that guaranteed this price for 10 years for unlimited number of downloads, I'd consider it.
But considering the piss poor quality of your video product, that's a very big maybe.
Why would you think customers will pay for worthless crap?
Retired General Wesley Clark wrote a brilliant article several months ago about how a perfect example of a democratized Muslim nation already exists.
Turkey.
This nation was THE HEART AND SOUL of the Islamic Empire that Osama Bin Laden is trying to re-create.
Through careful diplomacy, and years of patient effort, they became our closest ally in the region (Israel notwithstanding).
We did not "bomb them to freedom", or economically reconstruct them, or enforce western ideals onto them. That is why Iraq is a complete and utter failure. We learned a successful model in Turkey, and refused to apply that knowledge to Iraq. Some will say that Saddam was an impossible problem for this approach. That's Ahmed Chalabi, close Bush ally, and IRANIAN SPY talking.
I can't wait for a digital reprisal of Ari Fleisher's 2001 declaration that "People have to watch what they say and watch what they do."
. . . never mind Mayor Bloomberg's assertion that Free Speech is a privilege, not a right. . .
The GOP occupation of NYC is not just designed to exploit 9/11. It is a careful and deliberate attempt to provoke protest. Preferably large, frightening, unruly protest. The more masturbatory rage they can stir up in the city, the louder they'll be laughing on their way back to the white house.
Of course, you're exactly right.
But you'll never convince "them" of it.
The only thing you'll get out of it is a hearty "I told you so". And that still won't change their minds.
. . . it was that any statement made that was opposed to a left/liberal person's beliefs was automatically labelled as hate speach.
IMO - this was the Left's fatal mistake in the 1990's, after they began to regain control of the country (or rather, wrest control from the fascists), they got a taste of power, and took a small dose of fascism themselves. The whole PC movement was highly offensive to a lot of people in the mainstream. While most mainstreamers aren't one to use the "N" word, they were deeply disturbed by the witch-hunt against counter-feminists, and closet-neanderthals. They lost sight completely of the principle of "I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death, your right to say it." Surely, this comprised only a few radical activists on the Left - but it discredited the entire movement, as right-wing radio hosts painted a picture of a Socialist future where jack-booted thugs would come along and beat you for telling Polack jokes.
The progressive movement has not yet recovered, and they've really not made any progress against this. The progressive movement really needs to think about it's own survival, and disavow the radical element. Or they'll create a future 180-degrees out of phase with what they were hoping for.
also known as a successful investment.
. . . um, yeah, after he arranged through connections, to get some low-income housing condemned so that the taxpayers could build him a new stadium.
Yup, George Bush. Poster-boy for the Free Market. Never got a leg up from insiders, cronies, or political corruption. Never made a dime from us taxpayers. Never got a job based on connections lubed by daddy. uh hun.
When the Republicans hire groups of people to call-in numbers of Democratic phone canvassers in order to jam their switchboards so they cannot do their legally acceptable job of campaigning - isn't this the same thing?
s howfast.ht ml?article=41491
The Director of the New Hampshire Republican Party has just plead guilty on charges stemming from this 2002 telephone-hacking denial of service.
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_
RICH=cut corners on security and quality to make the bean counters happy, to pay for teenage daughters' nose-job, and the new jaguar.
You can travel anonymously.
Just not on roads built with my tax dollars.
Just not on airplanes owned by private companies.
Feel free to purchase as much land as you want, and hike across that terrain any time of day or night without showing anyone your ID. Go ahead. I don't care. Neither does anyone else.
Just because the 9/11 hijackers all had valid IDs, and the TSA fucked up and allowed them to board the planes (even the ones on terrorist watch lists) does not mean that in principle, ID checking prevents terrorism. It would be nice if that principle worked. It will never work if it's not given a chance.
And before you jump in with the "almost 3000" figure from 9/11, that was a one-time event.
Almost 3000, but it could very easily have been far more.
Had the planes collided perhaps an hour later, more workers would have been in those buildings. Had the planes collided at LOWER points in the towers, more occupants would have been trapped above the impact point.
9/11 could have been much worse.
Point taken, though, about how passengers on a hijacked plane won't allow 9/11 to happen again.
Unless the hijackers manage to get onto the flight deck, and behind the newly upgraded doors, so the passengers can't pull a flight 93 and bash down the door with a drink-cart. . .
Vice President Dick Cheney, head of the presidential task force studying our energy needs, favors building new nuclear power plants..
. . . yeah, and I heard Ronald McDonald just put the Hamburgler in charge of loss-prevention.
Put the $2 million/year annual budget for FIRE towards ITER? And ITER wants to build a $5 billion plant? That'll work. We'll have that baby paid off in 2500 years flat!
. . . just want to say; $200 Billion for Iraq.
There. I said it.
Norway harbors terrorists?
Let's bomb 'em.
Funny, it's usually the Republicans who value "user fee" type taxes (as opposed to "rob the rich to build roads and schools" type taxes), and therefore, toll booths, and therefore, the kind of big-brother monitoring you're talking about.
While "communist" states like California, which has no toll roads (well, only one that I'm aware of) would have no such monitoring of an individual's travels.