I worked for Rockwell's Space Systems Dvision (now Boeing) at the time when the RFPs for the X-33 were delivered to NASA. Rockwell's approach was to use already tested and working technologies. The result was a craft that looked much like the current shuttle except for the fact that it was unmanned. This project would have provided an incremental step in the advancement of reusable space craft with a very good price tag.
Lockeed's design was a radical step using very raw technologies, one of which was the the aerospike which was designed by Rocketdyne, another former Rockwell now Boeing entity. When Lockeed's win was announced, many at Rcokwell/Boeing felt that Lockeed's design would never work given the time and budget constraints. Over time we heard of various set-backs with Lockeed's X-33. There was even a rumor back in 1999 that if Lockeed screwed up again with X-33, NASA would kill it and would move towards a new project that was basically a major upgrade of the existing shuttle which would entail complete rewrites of all the flight control software and redesigns of internal systems. This was great news at the now Boeings Space Systems division (renamed to Reusable Launch Systems) since that would mean doubling the programming and systems staff since the original software/systems would still be maintained.
--Don't mind me, I just spent the last 2 hours in alt.beer
My point is that if someone blows up a gay pub, then they should be punished. I don't see how not liking homosexuals should add to the penalty. The crime on its own warrants a severe punishment. Whether or not the person just likes to blow stuff up, disagrees with the sale/consumption of alcohol, thinks the paint on the walls and the trim don't match, or hates gays shouldn't matter. The fact that the person was able to take explosives and destroy property/lives makes that person a danger to society. The reason behind it should not matter.
--Don't mind me, I just spent the last 2 hours in alt.beer
To me, Hate Crime Laws are just like Thought Crimes. The procescutor is trying to convict a person based on what the suspect was thinking. And to me, that is a slippery slope we should not start down.
If someone kills another and murder one is the conviction, throw the book at the suspect. There should be no room to add more of a sentence for what the suspect was thinking.
--Don't mind me, I just spent the last 2 hours in alt.beer
So what you're saying is that the Justice department is enganged in a long-running, massive campaign to falsify crime statistics.
I don't seem to remember saying anything about false. My beef is with the oatmeal-brained people that see a stat and say, "See, these group is bad, and thus deserve less freedom." That is not how an enlightened society should behave. Of course you could say that we are not enlightened, which seems to be the case, but our government has an obligation to treat all people with equal freedoms, not just those who don't fit into a statistic. The stat I would really like to see is the anual income of the people commiting murders. I think that would be a more telling stat. But not one in which I would support the mantra of the Dead Kennedys song, Kill the Poor
If the NT servers in your care crashed 8 times more often than the Linux ones, would you not show greater attention to the NT servers?
So now you are equating people with machines? People deserve better.
So tell me, if your genetic makeup placed you into a group that was more likely you commit crimes, would you thank the cop that harrasses you since he is making your life safer? Of course not, saying yes would be lying.
So by your logic anyone born with dark skin should be happy to be pulled over for no reason since it is for the better good.
What a bunch of horse puckey
Clearly you are a TROLL, but some trolls need to be exposed to the light of day. I am sure that stats could be manipluated to make any group of people look bad. It is clear that no matter how many times that the Trading freedom for safty quote is used, people just don't get it. Do you SWB agree or disagree with the sentiments put forth by Benjiman Franklin?
Unlike most (all?) other power districts after the deregulation, the Dept. of Water and Power in LA actually brought older power plants back online. This district has power to spare and sells off the excess to other power districts.
The other districts cut back on plans to build more plants because they no longer had a guaranteed customer base. The feeling was that competing power companies would take up the slack, but that never happened. Derugulation was supposed to make it possible to buy power from competing companies and cause prices to drop. Originnaly I had hoped to buy my power from a greener power company, but I was lazy and never switched.
A couple of years ago they did a very comprehensive, well designed study on the issue of Second Hand Smoke. Much to their displeasure and horror, they found that it caused no harm at all. They tried to bury the report. When the British press, though constant hounding, embarrassed them into publicizing their results, they issued a press release. In the body of the release they admitted that the tiny increases they found were not at all statistically significant, but they outright lied in the headline.
Thats odd, my uncle died from lung cancer caused by cigarette smoke and he never smoked! His secretary, however, was a chain smoker.
Another strange note is that I heard the exact same story but with pot smoke inserted instead of second hand smoke. Could this be an Urban Legend (tm)?
I have seen this comment here before and I never really gave it much thought. But I guess that is a potential weakness.
Ok, how about this one. The voter will be shown a unique number that the voter has to write down for use later if they want to check their vote online. No one would pay money for a hand written number that could match an unknown entry. Of course the entry would be anonymous.
A co-worker and I have been discussing a viable electronic voting scheme.
We would like to see a system that would still have the voter go to a polling place. The voter would go into a booth and make their vote electronically. The voting hardware would print out 2 copies of what was selected. On the paper would be a machine readable version of the vote, like a bar code and a human readable version. It also would have a unique number for use later. The voter then must compare the electronic vote and the paper. If all is OK, the voter tells the machine to submit the vote. The voter must then give one copy to the poll person which would place it into a ballot box. At a later date, the voter would be able to go to a web site that would allow the voter to enter the unique number to verify that their vote is in the system.
Random sampling of the paper outputs, both bar-code for speed and human for extreme cases, could be done as a check on the system.
This system would have the speed the electronic proponants want, and it would have a hard copy for the luddite folks.
Geez.. I got an 8 year old who loves to play UT. And just started teaching him on the basics of programing..:) He already is the guy at school who helps the other kids with the computer stuff... He used to think nerd and geek were bad names, now he wants to be/is one..
I think it should be the duty for/.'ers to be fruitful and mutiply. We have genes worth passing on.
Troll or not, I am tried at hearing these canuks only claim to fame, "We burned the White House, eh."
What have you done since 1812? A war, by the way, the US WON. Canada should be thankful (or pissed) that the US did not take all of your northern wasteland.
This is sort of like the "Burning Man festival". That started off as a underground party in the middle of the desert. It was run by no one, you just had to show up and party. Now you have to pay to get in and there are some corps who sponser it.... YECK
That was a powerful story. (If true:) Cops can be HUGE DICKS. Once they get their mind set that you are "bad", then there is nothing you can do but pay the price...
In a previous life, I worked for a large areospace firm which hails from the same area as MS. When I started the job I had to piss for them asa well as have a background check done for Secret clearence. I did not like either, but I gave in.
A few years down the road, they wanted me to apply for Top Secret clearence so I could work on "black" projects. This required me signing a form that gave up my doctor patient privacy which basically opens up my medical records. This clearence also would have sent FBI agents out interviewing my neighbors, family, former teachers, friends, you name it. All this so I could work on a job to which I could only sneakernet software into, not talk about, and receive no extra money! I told them NO. Since then I have moved on vowing never to become an aerospace flunky again...:)
I have always thought about what it would take to build a program like one of those old doctor programs, but one that would post to a newgroup or IRC channel. I know this has been done, but not very convincingly. This program would remember who it talked to and about what. It could pick on key words being talked about and got out on the net to "learn" about it before posting. If something good enough could be developed, it would be fun to watch a few of these have a conversation and see how far they could take it.
The best thing about python is Zope. It is quite an impressive Open Sourcetool. Even though I am a C/perl fan, I was forced to figure out some python/Zope stuff at work and found Zope quite usable. Unless I am out of touch, I have not heard of any perl equivelent.
Slashdot Mirror
Lockeed's design was a radical step using very raw technologies, one of which was the the aerospike which was designed by Rocketdyne, another former Rockwell now Boeing entity. When Lockeed's win was announced, many at Rcokwell/Boeing felt that Lockeed's design would never work given the time and budget constraints. Over time we heard of various set-backs with Lockeed's X-33. There was even a rumor back in 1999 that if Lockeed screwed up again with X-33, NASA would kill it and would move towards a new project that was basically a major upgrade of the existing shuttle which would entail complete rewrites of all the flight control software and redesigns of internal systems. This was great news at the now Boeings Space Systems division (renamed to Reusable Launch Systems) since that would mean doubling the programming and systems staff since the original software/systems would still be maintained.
--Don't mind me, I just spent the last 2 hours in alt.beer
--Don't mind me, I just spent the last 2 hours in alt.beer
If someone kills another and murder one is the conviction, throw the book at the suspect. There should be no room to add more of a sentence for what the suspect was thinking.
--Don't mind me, I just spent the last 2 hours in alt.beer
I don't seem to remember saying anything about false. My beef is with the oatmeal-brained people that see a stat and say, "See, these group is bad, and thus deserve less freedom." That is not how an enlightened society should behave. Of course you could say that we are not enlightened, which seems to be the case, but our government has an obligation to treat all people with equal freedoms, not just those who don't fit into a statistic. The stat I would really like to see is the anual income of the people commiting murders. I think that would be a more telling stat. But not one in which I would support the mantra of the Dead Kennedys song, Kill the Poor
If the NT servers in your care crashed 8 times more often than the Linux ones, would you not show greater attention to the NT servers?
So now you are equating people with machines? People deserve better.
So tell me, if your genetic makeup placed you into a group that was more likely you commit crimes, would you thank the cop that harrasses you since he is making your life safer? Of course not, saying yes would be lying.
What a bunch of horse puckey
Clearly you are a TROLL, but some trolls need to be exposed to the light of day. I am sure that stats could be manipluated to make any group of people look bad. It is clear that no matter how many times that the Trading freedom for safty quote is used, people just don't get it. Do you SWB agree or disagree with the sentiments put forth by Benjiman Franklin?
The other districts cut back on plans to build more plants because they no longer had a guaranteed customer base. The feeling was that competing power companies would take up the slack, but that never happened. Derugulation was supposed to make it possible to buy power from competing companies and cause prices to drop. Originnaly I had hoped to buy my power from a greener power company, but I was lazy and never switched.
Thats odd, my uncle died from lung cancer caused by cigarette smoke and he never smoked! His secretary, however, was a chain smoker.
Another strange note is that I heard the exact same story but with pot smoke inserted instead of second hand smoke. Could this be an Urban Legend (tm)?
Ok, how about this one. The voter will be shown a unique number that the voter has to write down for use later if they want to check their vote online. No one would pay money for a hand written number that could match an unknown entry. Of course the entry would be anonymous.
We would like to see a system that would still have the voter go to a polling place. The voter would go into a booth and make their vote electronically. The voting hardware would print out 2 copies of what was selected. On the paper would be a machine readable version of the vote, like a bar code and a human readable version. It also would have a unique number for use later. The voter then must compare the electronic vote and the paper. If all is OK, the voter tells the machine to submit the vote. The voter must then give one copy to the poll person which would place it into a ballot box. At a later date, the voter would be able to go to a web site that would allow the voter to enter the unique number to verify that their vote is in the system.
Random sampling of the paper outputs, both bar-code for speed and human for extreme cases, could be done as a check on the system.
This system would have the speed the electronic proponants want, and it would have a hard copy for the luddite folks.
I think it should be the duty for /.'ers to be fruitful and mutiply. We have genes worth passing on.
What have you done since 1812? A war, by the way, the US WON. Canada should be thankful (or pissed) that the US did not take all of your northern wasteland.
A few years down the road, they wanted me to apply for Top Secret clearence so I could work on "black" projects. This required me signing a form that gave up my doctor patient privacy which basically opens up my medical records. This clearence also would have sent FBI agents out interviewing my neighbors, family, former teachers, friends, you name it. All this so I could work on a job to which I could only sneakernet software into, not talk about, and receive no extra money! I told them NO. Since then I have moved on vowing never to become an aerospace flunky again... :)
A term like this can really date someone.. :)
I have always thought about what it would take to build a program like one of those old doctor programs, but one that would post to a newgroup or IRC channel. I know this has been done, but not very convincingly. This program would remember who it talked to and about what. It could pick on key words being talked about and got out on the net to "learn" about it before posting. If something good enough could be developed, it would be fun to watch a few of these have a conversation and see how far they could take it.