Damn straight. On the other hand, it's worth pointing out that even the earliest aircraft were generally good for more than one trip... the Wright brothers managed quite a few hops in Kitty Hawk. Early spacecraft (being designed by a gov't committee) did not have this characteristic.
Isn't it interesting, though, that the earliest private spacecraft have all had the characteristic of being reusable? Oh, wait... that was a condition of the Ansari X-Prize competition, wasn't it?
As the operator of a couple of small e-commerce sites, I can tell you flat-out that having to pony up for such software would be the difference between being able to keep those sites running, and having to pull the plug on them.
Never mind the increased cost to my customers of just the taxes themselves. While this might not be the death of e-commerce, it would certainly result in a dramatic narrowing of the online marketplace. Not a good result, any way you look at it (unless through the rapacious eyes of taxing authorities and legislatures...).
If you're looking for a place to purchase mead online, try Liquid Solutions - they have a great selection, and will ship anyplace in the US that's legal.
Of course - indeed, I make a fair amount of mead myself. I have some 25 gallons sitting in carboys right now, plus probably another 10-15 in kegs or bottles.:-)
Although, IMHO, those who make mead according to winemaking procedures (sufliting, acidifying, and generally chemical-ing), are doing their meads a grave disservice. Mead is its own beast, and deserves to be made as such, rather than as an oddball beer or wine.
Only place in the world it's actually legal to distill alcohol for personal use is in New Zealand. Lucky bastards... maybe that's why they have a reputation with the sheep, though.
In New York we have the subway which is way better then getting around with a car, and is pollution free.
Uh, pollution free? So the energy to move those stinking mashed-together masses of huddled humanity from even smellier point A to point B is generated by, what, magic potions?
Absent the taxpayer subsidies inherent in all mass transit schemes, the most economical means to get your physical self from one place to another with reasonable safety is the automobile. (And, no, the highways are not a subsidy - their costs are more than covered by fuel consumption taxes.)
Never mind the convenience of not having to wait for a "scheduled" ride, and the fact that it's darned hard to get mugged, raped, etc. while en route in an automobile. Your magically-powered utopian subway features all of those exciting options plus the wonderful aroma of well-aged urine.
To generalize: You want to fix the government? Ban money.
Well, that's a little extreme - kind of like blowing your head off because your hair's become dirty.
No, to fix the gov't, all that's necessary is to DRASTICALLY reduce taxation, to the level that it can only conduct the business of keeping its people safe from the application of force or fraud, foreign or domestic. That'd do it.
In the case of the US gov't, that would mean elimination of the nanny state, elimination of foreign aid AND domestic pork-barrel spending, and (sad though it would make me, personally) elimination of programs such as NASA. Pitch overboard all of the ballast that drags down the ship of state, and trim it down to the essential functions of national (not global!) defense, and a functional court system.
Of course, none of this will happen in the real world, so the best we can hope for is a holding action...
As for NASA, I've long since come to the firm conclusion that space is too critical to be left to the thumb-fingered dolts that gov't service attracts -- so best to privatize it anyway. If you must fund it through gov't action, at least do it through incentive prizes, instead of cost-plus contracts awarded on the basis of Senate committee position. (e.g.: US $20B to the first organization to send a manned craft to Mars - and return them...)
The Shuttle telemetry and communications system is run through a set of line-of-sight antennas (scroll about halfway down). It seems reasonable to guess that the moment of communications loss corresponds with either a catastrophic event directly impacting the communications system, or with a catastrophic uncontrolled roll that threw the antenna in use out of line-of-sight with the downlink facility in use at the time of the disaster.
Of course, if that were the moment at which, say, the wing separated from the fuselage, then the remainder of the craft would have immediately yawed severely to the left, exposing the antenna systems, crew cabin and everything else to the ungentle mercies of the plasma field, which would account for the nearly simultaneous loss of all comms.
To continue this line of speculation, the aerodynamic forces that the remainder of the craft would have been exposed to in this unplanned manuever probably would have been sufficient to cause it to break up further within a very short period of time.
The fact that scorched human remains have been recovered suggests that the crew cabin was compromised at high enough altitude and airspeed to expose its contents to re-entry heating, but that it stayed relatively intact until some later point in its trajectory. The recovery of the nearly-intact nose cone adds further possible details to this scenario.
Agreed it's tragic, but it's not going to change the world...
I beg to differ.
Thinking about the great sweep of history, 500-1000 years from now, the thing that will be remebered most about the XXth century in human history will be our first, faltering steps away from our planet. If this accident interrupts that process in any significant way in the XXIst century, it will indeed alter the history of mankind.
Could they get close enough to the ISS to EVA to it, since according to some other posts, they didn't have a docking ring?
I don't think so, no. In order to reach the ISS, they'd have to either start out in a closely-matched orbit and burn a little bit of OMS fuel, or burn one hell of a lot of OMS fuel to reach the correct orbit.
I don't know that the OMS fuel tanks even have the capacity to carry enough fuel for a radical orbit change (a NASA site lists 1000 fps delta-V), and I'd think it would be inadvisable to have that much fuel onboard, even if they could.
Uhm, it looks to me like this is the "they're on their way home" story, not a "they've returned safely story." Note the time stamp, too -- perfectly appropriate story to post 48 minutes prior to the scheduled landing.
I'm no fan of the anti-nuclear Luddite mob, but this statement jumped out at me:
In reality, a person can be exposed to and inhale a fair amount of plutonium and not show any symptoms for years.
Whoa, way wrong there, friend. Inhaled plutonium releases massive quantities of alpha radiation, resulting in radiation sickness and death (by pulmonary edema -- drowning in the fluid released by the damaged lungs) in short order (a matter of days, at the outside). In addition, neutrons from plutonium particles ionize tissue, transmuting its atoms into isotopes which are, themselves, radioactive.
The dosage required to cause these effects is less than 100 milligrams. A "lungful" of rocket fuel would presumably be a quantity greater than 100 mg.
Of course, this assumes a weaponized (finely powdered) form of PuO2; plutonium in the reactors used in spacecraft power units is pelletized and heavily shielded -- and would not devolve to a weapon-like powder under even the worst possible launch mishap.
Riiight. The stock market collapsed due to US v. Microsoft. Not because idiot investors were pumping their retirement savings into Pets.com and certainly not because of the accounting shenanigans going on at corporations like Enron and WorldCom.
Please note, I did not claim that the Clintonistas caused the collapse -- just the US v. Microsoft kicked off the (much-needed!) re-assessment of tech stock valuations. If you don't believe me, please review the relevant history; MSFT took a dive when Penfield-Jackson's judgement was announced, putting some drag on the rest of the tech market. As the tech stocks declined, investors finally started paying appropriately close attention to the financials of their holdings, and bailed.
Without the poisonous influence of the DoJ's meddling, the stock market would still have declined, but perhaps with a softer landing (and less serious impact on those companies which were marginal, but should have been able to pull out of their dives).
Oh, and the current 'War on Terrorism' is producing a much better ROI? We've got a bunch of guys who might have something to do with Al-Qaeda locked up in Cuba, but terrorist attacks continue unabated.
Erhm, where in the US have these terrorist attacks taken place? Certainly, there have been attacks overseas, but we have not seen anything new here (unless you count the anthrax attacks, which are arguably linked to Iraq, rather than al Qaeda). Knock wood, our forces have been wildly successful at preventing a repeat of 9-11.
I'm not a fan of everything Bush has done, but to accuse him of failing to "win" the war on terrorism when there have been no further attacks in the US seems like a huge stretch.
Yes, I know that this has strayed off-topic, but your arguments are simply too specious to ignore.
...while dropping the ball on terrorism leading to the biggest US-based attack in history...
Excuse me? Which President had bin Laden offered to him and refused the offer? Which President timed responses to terrorism explicitly to distract Congressional votes on impeachment? Which President wasted $2 million missles on $10 tents? Which President put into place politically-correct "fast-track" visas for our friends, the Saudis?
Crimus, learn a little history before mindlessly spouting the DNC's nonsense.
Feh. Dumbasses.
Hmmm... I only see one dumbass here -- posting as an AC.
Here's a good link to answer the original question.
Diffferent students will learn in radically different ways. Where one person could sit down with a good text and come away with a working knowledge of a language, another person will achieve the same only with a full immersion program.
That said, the closer you can come to complete immersion, the better off you'll be. I'd suggest (just for fun) setting your computer's localization to the language you want to learn. You'll quickly learn a few bits of vocabulary from the translated menus, etc. Of course, if your target language has a radically different alphabet, you'll probably want to Google up a guide to sounding it out. (Arabic and Thai still stop me dead here...)
Next, I'd go looking for some newspapers in your target language published online. You'll doubtless find plenty of cognates (words with similar sounds and meanings across two languages) to words you know, and you'll have an opportunity to start getting an idea of grammar.
You'll probably want to Google for a dictionary for your target language, too -- there are good ones available for every language I've ever tried.
I can tell you from experience that the "full" "service" that you receive in most Oregon gas stations varies from poor to horrid. And, yes, you can drive across the Columbia River into Washington State and save a bit. (Of course, comparing one state's gas prices to another's is rather like comparing their cigarette prices - there are so many taxes, fees and regulations that apply to each that the pricing strategies become far from transparent.)
To drive this comment back on topic, I would reiterate the observation that law-enforcement users have been exempted from this regulation; as usual, they look out for their own -- and to hell with the poor schlump who's just trying to protect his family from a burglar.
The First Amendment is clearly misunderstood, not only by my beknighted Senator (I've already sent him a message...), but also by the majority of you spam-defending knuckleheads.
Quoting from memory, it states that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."
The First Amemdment does not force me to provide you a stage from which to speak! Get that through your yammerhead skull, and then think about the implications as far as spam is concerned. Under the First Amendment, Congress can't prevent spammers from writing an e-mail, or even sending it to folks who have told you that they want to hear from you.
When you invade my in-box, you are, as others have noted, committing criminal tresspass. It's really just that simple.
...a founder who has the same absolute assuredness that what he's doing is the right thing as Hitler had...
Just had to pull that comment out for comment. You're actually comparing Bill Gates, who has earned success by the individual choices of millions to Adolph Hitler, who gained his (short-lived) success through the killing of millions? Huh.
I don't like government meddling in business...
Oh, really? Looks like you're willing to unleash the uniquely coercive power of government to meddle in those businesses that bother you...
To rephrase a WWII-themed quote, since you bring it up -- "When they came for the IBMers, I did not speak for them. Then they came for the Microsofties, and again I did not speak for them. When they came for me... there was no one left to speak for me."
To put it another, simpler way: "Any government big enough to give you anything you want is big enough to take away everything you've got."
Think carefully before you unleash the beast... it's not particularly discriminating, once it's had a taste of blood.
Just a quick aside: the Browne campaign refused the Federal matching funds that they had access to. On principle -- imagine that!
How can all of the other candidates talk about reducing taxpayer burdens, while pickpocketing taxpayers to pay for their campaigns (or wishing that they could)???
As for your reasons for supporting the goron -- oh, puh-lease. Matthew Shepard's killers are being prosecuted -- for murder. Abortion is and should be a matter of personal morals, not gov't decrees. And Microsoft's success is hard-earned -- and will not be cured by a Federal Department of Software Innovation.
The catchy saying "information wants to be free" is just a semantic re-phrasing of the somewhat older saying, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
From first principles: I own myself. I own anything I produce. If I produce a work of fine sculpture, it is mine to dispose of as I please: I can sell it, keep it, destroy it -- completely my choice.
The same applies, without even a shade of difference to a non-tangible product of my creation. Whether it's a poem, a song, or an operating system, I own what I create. The only difference that does apply is in the ease of disposing of that property; I can generally reproduce it more efficiently than I could a sculpture, but that does not change the nature of my ownership.
Gov't's only legitimate role in society is to protect the persons and property of its citizens. (Accurately describing the limits of this role was the pure genius of the American Revolutionaries.) It is, therefore, completely correct for the gov't to prevent the theft of my property -- tangible or intellectual. Indeed, that is the sole obligation of a legitimate gov't.
Sweeping aside intellectual property rights would represent nothing less than the wholesale nationalization of our brains... and the universal enslavement of our creative abilities. (Slavery to each other is morally equivalent to slavery to a single master -- and as a practical matter, someone's sitting on the Politburo, calling the shots.)
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Damn straight. On the other hand, it's worth pointing out that even the earliest aircraft were generally good for more than one trip... the Wright brothers managed quite a few hops in Kitty Hawk. Early spacecraft (being designed by a gov't committee) did not have this characteristic.
Isn't it interesting, though, that the earliest private spacecraft have all had the characteristic of being reusable? Oh, wait... that was a condition of the Ansari X-Prize competition, wasn't it?
As the operator of a couple of small e-commerce sites, I can tell you flat-out that having to pony up for such software would be the difference between being able to keep those sites running, and having to pull the plug on them.
Never mind the increased cost to my customers of just the taxes themselves. While this might not be the death of e-commerce, it would certainly result in a dramatic narrowing of the online marketplace. Not a good result, any way you look at it (unless through the rapacious eyes of taxing authorities and legislatures...).
My Linux box is mostly there to sneer at, so I haven't gotten around to setting up anything over there yet.
Interesting? No more interesting than any other raving lunatic on a street corner.
Then the Federal Government should keep its fucking nose out of education affairs!
Amen, brother.
Good luck!
Although, IMHO, those who make mead according to winemaking procedures (sufliting, acidifying, and generally chemical-ing), are doing their meads a grave disservice. Mead is its own beast, and deserves to be made as such, rather than as an oddball beer or wine.
Only place in the world it's actually legal to distill alcohol for personal use is in New Zealand. Lucky bastards... maybe that's why they have a reputation with the sheep, though.
Absent the taxpayer subsidies inherent in all mass transit schemes, the most economical means to get your physical self from one place to another with reasonable safety is the automobile. (And, no, the highways are not a subsidy - their costs are more than covered by fuel consumption taxes.)
Never mind the convenience of not having to wait for a "scheduled" ride, and the fact that it's darned hard to get mugged, raped, etc. while en route in an automobile. Your magically-powered utopian subway features all of those exciting options plus the wonderful aroma of well-aged urine.
Mass transit. Feh.
No, to fix the gov't, all that's necessary is to DRASTICALLY reduce taxation, to the level that it can only conduct the business of keeping its people safe from the application of force or fraud, foreign or domestic. That'd do it.
In the case of the US gov't, that would mean elimination of the nanny state, elimination of foreign aid AND domestic pork-barrel spending, and (sad though it would make me, personally) elimination of programs such as NASA. Pitch overboard all of the ballast that drags down the ship of state, and trim it down to the essential functions of national (not global!) defense, and a functional court system.
Of course, none of this will happen in the real world, so the best we can hope for is a holding action...
As for NASA, I've long since come to the firm conclusion that space is too critical to be left to the thumb-fingered dolts that gov't service attracts -- so best to privatize it anyway. If you must fund it through gov't action, at least do it through incentive prizes, instead of cost-plus contracts awarded on the basis of Senate committee position. (e.g.: US $20B to the first organization to send a manned craft to Mars - and return them...)
Feh. Oh well, one can dream...
Okay, so it's nit-picky.
Of course, if that were the moment at which, say, the wing separated from the fuselage, then the remainder of the craft would have immediately yawed severely to the left, exposing the antenna systems, crew cabin and everything else to the ungentle mercies of the plasma field, which would account for the nearly simultaneous loss of all comms.
To continue this line of speculation, the aerodynamic forces that the remainder of the craft would have been exposed to in this unplanned manuever probably would have been sufficient to cause it to break up further within a very short period of time.
The fact that scorched human remains have been recovered suggests that the crew cabin was compromised at high enough altitude and airspeed to expose its contents to re-entry heating, but that it stayed relatively intact until some later point in its trajectory. The recovery of the nearly-intact nose cone adds further possible details to this scenario.
Thinking about the great sweep of history, 500-1000 years from now, the thing that will be remebered most about the XXth century in human history will be our first, faltering steps away from our planet. If this accident interrupts that process in any significant way in the XXIst century, it will indeed alter the history of mankind.
I don't know that the OMS fuel tanks even have the capacity to carry enough fuel for a radical orbit change (a NASA site lists 1000 fps delta-V), and I'd think it would be inadvisable to have that much fuel onboard, even if they could.
Uhm, it looks to me like this is the "they're on their way home" story, not a "they've returned safely story." Note the time stamp, too -- perfectly appropriate story to post 48 minutes prior to the scheduled landing.
The dosage required to cause these effects is less than 100 milligrams. A "lungful" of rocket fuel would presumably be a quantity greater than 100 mg.
Of course, this assumes a weaponized (finely powdered) form of PuO2; plutonium in the reactors used in spacecraft power units is pelletized and heavily shielded -- and would not devolve to a weapon-like powder under even the worst possible launch mishap.
Without the poisonous influence of the DoJ's meddling, the stock market would still have declined, but perhaps with a softer landing (and less serious impact on those companies which were marginal, but should have been able to pull out of their dives).
Erhm, where in the US have these terrorist attacks taken place? Certainly, there have been attacks overseas, but we have not seen anything new here (unless you count the anthrax attacks, which are arguably linked to Iraq, rather than al Qaeda). Knock wood, our forces have been wildly successful at preventing a repeat of 9-11.I'm not a fan of everything Bush has done, but to accuse him of failing to "win" the war on terrorism when there have been no further attacks in the US seems like a huge stretch.
Yes, I know that this has strayed off-topic, but your arguments are simply too specious to ignore.
Oh, right, so different from the "Do-whatever-you-want-and-someone-else-will-pay-f
Okay, I'm only going to say this once, so pay attention: When the economy is booming, the gov't skims its half of the action and its revenues boom along with the economy. When the economy crashes (in this instance, due to an overinflated tech bubble -- pricked by Clinton's Injustice Department and their pursuit of the Evil Bill Gates©), gov't revenues crash as well. I focus on the revenue side of things, as Federal outlays vary over time in only one direction -- up. Only the rate of increase changes under different leadership, and Clinton's crew pushed that ball ever to the upward direction.
Excuse me? Which President had bin Laden offered to him and refused the offer? Which President timed responses to terrorism explicitly to distract Congressional votes on impeachment? Which President wasted $2 million missles on $10 tents? Which President put into place politically-correct "fast-track" visas for our friends, the Saudis?
Crimus, learn a little history before mindlessly spouting the DNC's nonsense.
Hmmm... I only see one dumbass here -- posting as an AC.
That said, the closer you can come to complete immersion, the better off you'll be. I'd suggest (just for fun) setting your computer's localization to the language you want to learn. You'll quickly learn a few bits of vocabulary from the translated menus, etc. Of course, if your target language has a radically different alphabet, you'll probably want to Google up a guide to sounding it out. (Arabic and Thai still stop me dead here...)
Next, I'd go looking for some newspapers in your target language published online. You'll doubtless find plenty of cognates (words with similar sounds and meanings across two languages) to words you know, and you'll have an opportunity to start getting an idea of grammar.
You'll probably want to Google for a dictionary for your target language, too -- there are good ones available for every language I've ever tried.
Good luck -- this is a great project!
To drive this comment back on topic, I would reiterate the observation that law-enforcement users have been exempted from this regulation; as usual, they look out for their own -- and to hell with the poor schlump who's just trying to protect his family from a burglar.
I just clicked away about $100 in ill-gotten gains from spammer's accounts.
And here I thought getting their accounts nuked was activism enough!
Quoting from memory, it states that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."
The First Amemdment does not force me to provide you a stage from which to speak! Get that through your yammerhead skull, and then think about the implications as far as spam is concerned. Under the First Amendment, Congress can't prevent spammers from writing an e-mail, or even sending it to folks who have told you that they want to hear from you.
When you invade my in-box, you are, as others have noted, committing criminal tresspass. It's really just that simple.
Just had to pull that comment out for comment. You're actually comparing Bill Gates, who has earned success by the individual choices of millions to Adolph Hitler, who gained his (short-lived) success through the killing of millions? Huh.
Oh, really? Looks like you're willing to unleash the uniquely coercive power of government to meddle in those businesses that bother you...
To rephrase a WWII-themed quote, since you bring it up -- "When they came for the IBMers, I did not speak for them. Then they came for the Microsofties, and again I did not speak for them. When they came for me... there was no one left to speak for me."
To put it another, simpler way: "Any government big enough to give you anything you want is big enough to take away everything you've got."
Think carefully before you unleash the beast... it's not particularly discriminating, once it's had a taste of blood.
How can all of the other candidates talk about reducing taxpayer burdens, while pickpocketing taxpayers to pay for their campaigns (or wishing that they could)???
As for your reasons for supporting the goron -- oh, puh-lease. Matthew Shepard's killers are being prosecuted -- for murder. Abortion is and should be a matter of personal morals, not gov't decrees. And Microsoft's success is hard-earned -- and will not be cured by a Federal Department of Software Innovation.
From first principles: I own myself. I own anything I produce. If I produce a work of fine sculpture, it is mine to dispose of as I please: I can sell it, keep it, destroy it -- completely my choice.
The same applies, without even a shade of difference to a non-tangible product of my creation. Whether it's a poem, a song, or an operating system, I own what I create. The only difference that does apply is in the ease of disposing of that property; I can generally reproduce it more efficiently than I could a sculpture, but that does not change the nature of my ownership.
Gov't's only legitimate role in society is to protect the persons and property of its citizens. (Accurately describing the limits of this role was the pure genius of the American Revolutionaries.) It is, therefore, completely correct for the gov't to prevent the theft of my property -- tangible or intellectual. Indeed, that is the sole obligation of a legitimate gov't.
Sweeping aside intellectual property rights would represent nothing less than the wholesale nationalization of our brains... and the universal enslavement of our creative abilities. (Slavery to each other is morally equivalent to slavery to a single master -- and as a practical matter, someone's sitting on the Politburo, calling the shots.)
I choose not to be a slave -- or a slaveholder.