I realize that the money is not going into an equivalant program. I was just commenting on the fact that if we are going to spend a billion dollars, lets get a better system instead of preserving an old one.
Read Stunning Tard's link posted above as it gives some very good points about Hubble and its dependance on the Space Shuttle and manned flight. It is this dependance which causes the expense of the program to balloon out of sight.
All that other stuff in your post was just political venting.
Hubble has done exceptionally well. But it is an old horse, and instead of an expensive manned mission to fix it and keep it going for a few more years, I'd rather see the money put into a new telescope that incorporates all the lessons learned from Hubble. Namely, modules that can be replaced without a manned mission. I think we'd get a better value if we did something like that.
Re:Sounds like a piracy crackdown, not a ban.
on
China Bans 50 Games
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· Score: 1
You'l be fine as long as you don't hear/see more than a few words. The funniest joke (below) has been assembled by a team of professionals. Nobody was killed in the making of this joke, although one person was hospitalized after viewing several words at once.
So what's to stop one of the other manufacturer's from making their printer capable of accepting generic ink cartidges?
The consumer.
Since consumers will buy the lowest cost item without thinking of the maintenance costs, the manufacturers are forced to sell the cheapest thing out the door and then recover expenses with consumables. This is how the public wants it.
If any manufacturer made printers that were profitable at the register and let other companies make their consumables, they would suffer because the register price would be 50% higher than a similar "lock in" product. But they would still have to sell an appropriate number of units to turn a profit, which is hard to do if you price yourself out of the game (as far as the short sighted consumer is concerned).
In the end it is their design and they can make them as interoperable with generic components as they want.
I do disagree with laws that prevent third parties from reverse engineering components, though. That is just government propping up a failed business method. Same goes with the "regioning" thing. Get the government out of the business plan protection scheme and these bad ideas will go away (if the public at large wants them to).
Another example is soda. If a supermarket makes X profit off of a 2 liter, then another establishment sells 20 oz of the same liquid for twice the price of the 2 liter, I know most of my money is being wasted going to some guy's pocket.
Capitalism 101 - Sell at whatever the market will bear.
If people are willing to pay 4x for a product at another store, why should that store owner not get that money? If the store owner's prices were not what the market (the customers of that store) would bear, then the store owner would not sell many 20oz sodas and would be forced to lower the price to one that the market would bear.
You see the sign that says "No outside food"? They do capitalism, its just that most of their patrons are not willing to go somewhere else with less restrictive policies. So the market will bear such policies.
Simply put - if you don't think that a good or service is worth the price, don't buy it. There are many ways to watch movies. There are many bars in town.
As Rush (the band) said : "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
How is my personal denial of service to an establishment properly identfied if I must simply boycott the entire company?
Individuals will never succeed with a boycott. boycotts only work if a significant portion of the market gets involved. The best thing to do is to find an establishment that does not have restrictive policies and go there. Don't tell me they don't exist. I have found many little out of the way places started by people who were upset with the policies of competitors. You just have to look around a bit to find them.
So someone should make an open WiFi chipset. This could be done with a microcontroller, programmable logic device (PLD), and some discrete circuitry. Granted it would be larger than the 1 chip ASIC, but it would be open. Then this complaining business could come to a stop.
I would do it but I lack sufficient motivation;-).
Comercially successful == good (as far as the artist's economics are concerned).
As far as the artistic quality of the work, what is wrong with an artist producing some commercial works to pay the bills and then making some better music on another project?
This reminds me of a "Bloom County" cartoon where the TV newspeople are pondering the lack of anything going on. I belive the punchline was Tom Brokaw doing a segment called "Nothing: Is it Something?"
They probably don't care as long as their ratings stay up. Just do them a favor and set your cable/satellite box to SciFi on Friday. Then they can get paid and deliver some more episodes.
I had that situation as well. XML was the 'way it should be'. The problem was that we really did not know exactly what the product should do. A simple data recording program became a data processing program. I have since left and I do not know what has become of it.
In short, XML is fine for some applications. But for others it is a real beast. Knowing that there is no 1 solution to everything is the first step to enlightenment.
The problem is that when the sun is out, the pupil is contracted to block much of the energy. At nighttime, the pupil is dialated to allow more light in, which compounds the laser problem.
I agree that some handheld laser briefly flashing across a cockpit is not a danger. But a laser pointer can cause damage to the eye, especially at night. There was post with a link on the previous slashdot thread which showed that a laser pointer generates a light intensity about 100 the times that of the sun on a typical eye.
Considering how windshields on airplanes are on the top of the plane, shining lasers at them probably won't blind them, and they won't crash
Think about this. If the pilot can see the ground from the cockpit (and they can), then someone on the ground can shine a laser in their eye. Your assumption is that the plane was directly overhead. The plane was on approach to a nearby airport and was at very low altitude. One can easily see inside the cockpit from various angles around the plane.
This will likely be settled and the guy will receive minimal if any jail time. But the gov't has to show that it is addressing this issue.
but i dont believe that a god exists, although i cant prove it
You don't have to. It's up to everyone else to prove God exists. The only way to prove something does not exist is to be able to observe all points in the universe.
That's the wonderful thing about being athiest and seeing to world for what it is. You live with the things you can prove, you try to model the things you don't. Not knowing something is simply a reason for more research.
I've found that it's reliable for the most part, but when you run into something that's wrong, it's really wrong.
If it is reliable for the 'most part', then it is not reliable at all. If I am looking for information on a topic, I can't rely on a source that is mostly correct. This is the reason that you always check your facts with other sources. Using an unreliable source as a primary source or to verify information is essentially a waste of time.
I use Wikipedia only for casual information. I would never cite it.
Most costal properties already have flood insurance. Good luck finding your insurance agent after this disater, tho.
This could be the next Lex Luthor plot. Instead of triggering the San Andreas to get beachfront property in Nevada, he could trigger the landslide and buy cheap, devastated land on the US east coast.
Remember that.02% of GDP is what the government provides. This does not include all the money that individuals and private organizations will contribute.
Why does everyone expect the government to do everything? They are very inefficient, especially when it comes to distributing money. If you don't like how much money your government is giving, then start your own fundraising campaing. I have - I tell everyone I talk to about it to give to the Red Cross. It takes about 5 minutes and if only 1 in 10 people in this country gave $10, you are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.
Spread the word and _do_ something. Don't just sit there and complain.
I agree on this. I believe the way the war was waged was not appropriate for liberating the country. I like the Afghanistan model of providing the heavy metal, but letting the indigenous people do most of the fighting. But I also realize that fighting a semi-organized mob and a well organized and armed military are two different projects. Still, the Iraqi people should have been more involved in their liberation.
Also, the Iraqi people have tried to shake Saddam off (after Gulf War 1), but they put down and killed. This was the best opportunity we had to go in and free them. They were ready for it and willing to fight. Unfortuneately, Bush Sr. made the wrong call here by not getting involved then. I believe he was faced with a tough situation and did not want to get involved in something like what we have now.
The road to true democracy and freedom is a long one. Think for a moment about how long it took for us (Americans) to recognize that _all_ people are equal (around 150 years). Think about how far we still have to go. This war is just the beginning, but without a beginning, there will be no end.
Slashdot Mirror
I realize that the money is not going into an equivalant program. I was just commenting on the fact that if we are going to spend a billion dollars, lets get a better system instead of preserving an old one.
Read Stunning Tard's link posted above as it gives some very good points about Hubble and its dependance on the Space Shuttle and manned flight. It is this dependance which causes the expense of the program to balloon out of sight.
All that other stuff in your post was just political venting.
Hubble has done exceptionally well. But it is an old horse, and instead of an expensive manned mission to fix it and keep it going for a few more years, I'd rather see the money put into a new telescope that incorporates all the lessons learned from Hubble. Namely, modules that can be replaced without a manned mission. I think we'd get a better value if we did something like that.
This is pretty close.
and what could Apple provide that one of the other big 3 don't already?
A pink console.
I heard about that world's funniest joke.
You'l be fine as long as you don't hear/see more than a few words. The funniest joke (below) has been assembled by a team of professionals. Nobody was killed in the making of this joke, although one person was hospitalized after viewing several words at once.
Joker: My dog has no nose.
Audience: How does it smell?
Joker: Awful!
So what's to stop one of the other manufacturer's from making their printer capable of accepting generic ink cartidges?
The consumer.
Since consumers will buy the lowest cost item without thinking of the maintenance costs, the manufacturers are forced to sell the cheapest thing out the door and then recover expenses with consumables. This is how the public wants it.
If any manufacturer made printers that were profitable at the register and let other companies make their consumables, they would suffer because the register price would be 50% higher than a similar "lock in" product. But they would still have to sell an appropriate number of units to turn a profit, which is hard to do if you price yourself out of the game (as far as the short sighted consumer is concerned).
In the end it is their design and they can make them as interoperable with generic components as they want.
I do disagree with laws that prevent third parties from reverse engineering components, though. That is just government propping up a failed business method. Same goes with the "regioning" thing. Get the government out of the business plan protection scheme and these bad ideas will go away (if the public at large wants them to).
Another example is soda. If a supermarket makes X profit off of a 2 liter, then another establishment sells 20 oz of the same liquid for twice the price of the 2 liter, I know most of my money is being wasted going to some guy's pocket.
Capitalism 101 - Sell at whatever the market will bear.
If people are willing to pay 4x for a product at another store, why should that store owner not get that money? If the store owner's prices were not what the market (the customers of that store) would bear, then the store owner would not sell many 20oz sodas and would be forced to lower the price to one that the market would bear.
You see the sign that says "No outside food"? They do capitalism, its just that most of their patrons are not willing to go somewhere else with less restrictive policies. So the market will bear such policies.
Simply put - if you don't think that a good or service is worth the price, don't buy it. There are many ways to watch movies. There are many bars in town.
As Rush (the band) said : "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
How is my personal denial of service to an establishment properly identfied if I must simply boycott the entire company?
Individuals will never succeed with a boycott. boycotts only work if a significant portion of the market gets involved. The best thing to do is to find an establishment that does not have restrictive policies and go there. Don't tell me they don't exist. I have found many little out of the way places started by people who were upset with the policies of competitors. You just have to look around a bit to find them.
So someone should make an open WiFi chipset. This could be done with a microcontroller, programmable logic device (PLD), and some discrete circuitry. Granted it would be larger than the 1 chip ASIC, but it would be open. Then this complaining business could come to a stop.
I would do it but I lack sufficient motivation
Comercially successful == good (as far as the artist's economics are concerned).
As far as the artistic quality of the work, what is wrong with an artist producing some commercial works to pay the bills and then making some better music on another project?
This reminds me of a "Bloom County" cartoon where the TV newspeople are pondering the lack of anything going on. I belive the punchline was Tom Brokaw doing a segment called "Nothing: Is it Something?"
Is good news?
Don't forget that TiVo collects "marketing data", so be sure to record it!
They probably don't care as long as their ratings stay up. Just do them a favor and set your cable/satellite box to SciFi on Friday. Then they can get paid and deliver some more episodes.
I had that situation as well. XML was the 'way it should be'. The problem was that we really did not know exactly what the product should do. A simple data recording program became a data processing program. I have since left and I do not know what has become of it.
In short, XML is fine for some applications. But for others it is a real beast. Knowing that there is no 1 solution to everything is the first step to enlightenment.
Me, I can't usually eat 'em 'cause my girlfriend's a vegetarian. Which more or less makes me a vegetarian, but I sure love the taste of a good burger.
You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in France?
This reminds me of a Simpson's episode (Homerpalloza), where Smithers is congratulating Mr. Burns for his purchase of "TicketMaster".
Smithers : "... Who'd have thought that people would pay a 100% service fee?"
Mr. Burns : "Yes, it's a wonderful arrangement that ensures a healthy mix between the rich and the ignorant."
The ignorant masses provide manual labor and a steady revenue stream for the business owners. It is as simple as that.
The problem is that when the sun is out, the pupil is contracted to block much of the energy. At nighttime, the pupil is dialated to allow more light in, which compounds the laser problem.
I agree that some handheld laser briefly flashing across a cockpit is not a danger. But a laser pointer can cause damage to the eye, especially at night. There was post with a link on the previous slashdot thread which showed that a laser pointer generates a light intensity about 100 the times that of the sun on a typical eye.
Considering how windshields on airplanes are on the top of the plane, shining lasers at them probably won't blind them, and they won't crash
Think about this. If the pilot can see the ground from the cockpit (and they can), then someone on the ground can shine a laser in their eye. Your assumption is that the plane was directly overhead. The plane was on approach to a nearby airport and was at very low altitude. One can easily see inside the cockpit from various angles around the plane.
This will likely be settled and the guy will receive minimal if any jail time. But the gov't has to show that it is addressing this issue.
but i dont believe that a god exists, although i cant prove it
You don't have to. It's up to everyone else to prove God exists. The only way to prove something does not exist is to be able to observe all points in the universe.
That's the wonderful thing about being athiest and seeing to world for what it is. You live with the things you can prove, you try to model the things you don't. Not knowing something is simply a reason for more research.
I've found that it's reliable for the most part, but when you run into something that's wrong, it's really wrong.
If it is reliable for the 'most part', then it is not reliable at all. If I am looking for information on a topic, I can't rely on a source that is mostly correct. This is the reason that you always check your facts with other sources. Using an unreliable source as a primary source or to verify information is essentially a waste of time.
I use Wikipedia only for casual information. I would never cite it.
Most costal properties already have flood insurance. Good luck finding your insurance agent after this disater, tho.
This could be the next Lex Luthor plot. Instead of triggering the San Andreas to get beachfront property in Nevada, he could trigger the landslide and buy cheap, devastated land on the US east coast.
Remember that .02% of GDP is what the government provides. This does not include all the money that individuals and private organizations will contribute.
Why does everyone expect the government to do everything? They are very inefficient, especially when it comes to distributing money. If you don't like how much money your government is giving, then start your own fundraising campaing. I have - I tell everyone I talk to about it to give to the Red Cross. It takes about 5 minutes and if only 1 in 10 people in this country gave $10, you are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.
Spread the word and _do_ something. Don't just sit there and complain.
I agree on this. I believe the way the war was waged was not appropriate for liberating the country. I like the Afghanistan model of providing the heavy metal, but letting the indigenous people do most of the fighting. But I also realize that fighting a semi-organized mob and a well organized and armed military are two different projects. Still, the Iraqi people should have been more involved in their liberation.
Also, the Iraqi people have tried to shake Saddam off (after Gulf War 1), but they put down and killed. This was the best opportunity we had to go in and free them. They were ready for it and willing to fight. Unfortuneately, Bush Sr. made the wrong call here by not getting involved then. I believe he was faced with a tough situation and did not want to get involved in something like what we have now.
The road to true democracy and freedom is a long one. Think for a moment about how long it took for us (Americans) to recognize that _all_ people are equal (around 150 years). Think about how far we still have to go. This war is just the beginning, but without a beginning, there will be no end.
The U.S. will donate $35 million. Let's see...
$35000000 - amount committed to help victims
100000 - conservative death toll
= $350 - spent to aid each victim
$147000000,000 - spent on war in Iraq
17000 - rough number of Iraqis killed
= $8,647,058 - spent to kill each Iraqi
I'm ashamed to be an American. Call me a troll if you want, but these numbers are sickening.
$147,000,000,000 - spent on war in Iraq
25,000,000 - number of people freed from dictator
= $5880 - spent to free an individual
I'm proud to be an American. Call me a troll if you want, but at least I know my country _did_ something.
This just means that they will find the enemy's latrines instead of the enemy. After that, it is just a waiting game.