Interesting, and that makes a good argument for the use of the jet. But how high can that jet go, and how much fuel is it using? It still seems like the rocket would burn less fuel getting to orbital velocity starting off in the stratosphere than it does starting off on the ground. Even though it would start at 0m/s, there are simply less air molecules to run into.
For a long time I have wondered why we don't just use massive helium balloons to carry rockets much closer to space. Even if the balloon only gets a quarter of the way to orbit, it gets through the thickest air before the rocket fires.
Unless helium is more expensive than rocket fuel, but helium can be collected from alpha decay right, so it seems like it would be cheaper.
Even if it isn't feasible for big payloads, there are several high class hobbyist rockets out there that can reach 100k feet. Why not ride a balloon up to 70-80k, and then launch the rocket?
I actually enjoy reading product reviews, it satisfies that urge to consume, while at the same time keeping the products that I buy useful and at the best possible price.
For example, I recently needed a coffee maker, I spent months reading anything I could get my hands on about coffee makers. By the time I actually bought one, many of the earlier reviews I had read were for products not even on the market anymore. But the result is that I now know a lot about coffee makers, and I am very happy about the one I bought.
Now I don't expect everyone to be such an scrupulous shopper, but I wouldn't go so far as to call people like me less than sane just because we refuse to buy the first shiny thing that floats into our vision.
First I've heard about Cadmium in LCDs. Anyone know more? The wikipedia article says it's usually inhaled, but it's pretty vague as to how it causes problems.
The idea that because these people will have lots of (potential) money in the form of Facebook shares means that they're going to spark some kind of economic boom is ludicrous
Yes. I think a better idea is to ask where all this "new" money is coming from. Ultimately, it comes from average people, most of whom have no idea that their money is being used to buy Facebook stock. But the contractor whose bank is buying Facebook stock is not going to benefit at all from rich people playing in the rainforest or joyriding into space.
This is the reality of our economy, all of the wealth at the top comes from the bottom, but not all of the wealth at the top trickles down to the bottom.
Ok, so if I understand, the problem lies in the binary firmware blobs the ODM gets from the SoC maker, making it hell from that point on to install any distro lacking those drivers. And if they are included in the kernel without source code, it violates the kernel's GPL.
So the SoC maker doesn't violate the GPL, the ODM does, but the ODM never had the source to begin with.
I am beginning to understand what a mess the current fragmentation of designs has caused. I am glad there are people like you out there working towards bringing products to the market that preserve the spirit of true ownership, rather than feeling like a rented appliance. I have been monitoring the Rasberry pi site for months waiting to grab a one from the first batch, but I will be keeping an eye on Rhombus tech now too. The PCMCIA approach is one I have not seen before though, interesting.
That was a very informative post, but I have a couple questions: what exactly is GPL violating about the majority of the hardware out there? The ARM architecture isn't under any open license, so the only thing that could be in violation is the Android flavor they ship with it. And this shouldn't be a problem, if your mostly interested in wiping it and installing Debian. Or is the problem that current tablets are incapable of running a full blown distro without some custom coding beforehand?
This is a topic I am very ignorant about because I have never owned an Android device, but I'm curious, because I too would look for "Debian installability" when I finally go shop for a tablet.
Yup. This is why it seems like a waste of time to obsess over "proper" English. Words are like clothes, you mix and match and there isn't any right answer.
As for the article, I have easily noticed this in well over 34 women at my college, but only in a certain subset of people. Namely, those who want to sound like pop singers. It's the same class of people who tan. So I have my doubts about it creeping into American English in general.
Also, who scanned the article and thought, "Futurama is influencing American speech!?"
Yes but that won't happen quietly. The OWS movement is a perfect example of people who, according to the free market, should be cleaning toilets. But they don't see it that way. Likewise, the music business is becoming just as obsolete, except that they don't resist by camping out downtown, they resist by pushing legislation like SOPA and its' new alternative hard to the point of passing. This is dangerous, and requires us to have more than a indifferent attitude towards their plight.
In my opinion, most people who major in business do so because they don't really know what they want to do, and their family, school, and society tells them it is a viable option. Until the government stops giving loans to business majors, the problem belongs to all of us.
It's true, and I try to catch the artists I like (that still tour) whenever they come around. But I'm not talking about musicians, I'm taking about Music Business majors. They don't perform. Their entire career path depends on fitting in somewhere between the artist and the listener. And there are a lot more of them than you would imagine.
I have met scores of Music Business majors at my university. That's a four year bachelors degree which will run you around 50k. Thats a huge investment to make in an "outmoded business model".
Now I completely agree with your point, but it is important to keep in mind how powerful the lobbying of an entire industry on the verge of losing their careers can be. It's analogous to the entire health insurance industry drying up if a public option were introduced (And as we saw, it was defeated). So I guess what I'm saying is that if we don't have the robust safety nets in place to handle whole industries becoming obsolete, then we are going to constantly be fighting a bitter fight in congress as they each try to legislate themselves back into business. It's completely predictable, and frankly, understandable human behavior.
Wikipedia says they're claiming it has a wingspan of 26 meters. After reading the wikipedia entry, the whole thing looks like it was designed to be pretty disposable. Still a huge gaffe for the US though.
Yup, I'm from Illinois. And yes, I've been following the Blago news. It seems that part of the problem is that people become career politicians, and so they start looking at everything as a potential for making money.
If you had normal people running for office, and only serving for a few terms, I think the corruption would be drastically reduced.
Sounds to me like American goods were once like Chinese goods are becoming right now. Seriously, the jokes about Chinese goods being crap is showing its' age.
It pains me to think about it, but if I had to bet my pension on either the Americans or the Chinese building a successor to Voyager, I would go all in on the Chinese.
I actually like the traditional windows interface. I think it makes sense to have one small button for a large pop-up start menu, and I like having the task manager at the bottom of the screen which is the furthest away from my natural line of sight. I use KDE for the same reason, the UI decisions seem to be backed by more than just a need to look newer than the last version.
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Interesting, and that makes a good argument for the use of the jet. But how high can that jet go, and how much fuel is it using? It still seems like the rocket would burn less fuel getting to orbital velocity starting off in the stratosphere than it does starting off on the ground. Even though it would start at 0m/s, there are simply less air molecules to run into.
For a long time I have wondered why we don't just use massive helium balloons to carry rockets much closer to space. Even if the balloon only gets a quarter of the way to orbit, it gets through the thickest air before the rocket fires.
Unless helium is more expensive than rocket fuel, but helium can be collected from alpha decay right, so it seems like it would be cheaper.
Even if it isn't feasible for big payloads, there are several high class hobbyist rockets out there that can reach 100k feet. Why not ride a balloon up to 70-80k, and then launch the rocket?
UK citizens should build their own and point them at all the cameras. Instant privacy.
Good question. The article says nothing about what makes a reactor have a "lifetime". What keeps them from running them for hundreds of years?
I actually enjoy reading product reviews, it satisfies that urge to consume, while at the same time keeping the products that I buy useful and at the best possible price.
For example, I recently needed a coffee maker, I spent months reading anything I could get my hands on about coffee makers. By the time I actually bought one, many of the earlier reviews I had read were for products not even on the market anymore. But the result is that I now know a lot about coffee makers, and I am very happy about the one I bought.
Now I don't expect everyone to be such an scrupulous shopper, but I wouldn't go so far as to call people like me less than sane just because we refuse to buy the first shiny thing that floats into our vision.
First I've heard about Cadmium in LCDs. Anyone know more? The wikipedia article says it's usually inhaled, but it's pretty vague as to how it causes problems.
The idea that because these people will have lots of (potential) money in the form of Facebook shares means that they're going to spark some kind of economic boom is ludicrous
Yes. I think a better idea is to ask where all this "new" money is coming from. Ultimately, it comes from average people, most of whom have no idea that their money is being used to buy Facebook stock. But the contractor whose bank is buying Facebook stock is not going to benefit at all from rich people playing in the rainforest or joyriding into space.
This is the reality of our economy, all of the wealth at the top comes from the bottom, but not all of the wealth at the top trickles down to the bottom.
Ok, so if I understand, the problem lies in the binary firmware blobs the ODM gets from the SoC maker, making it hell from that point on to install any distro lacking those drivers. And if they are included in the kernel without source code, it violates the kernel's GPL.
So the SoC maker doesn't violate the GPL, the ODM does, but the ODM never had the source to begin with.
I am beginning to understand what a mess the current fragmentation of designs has caused. I am glad there are people like you out there working towards bringing products to the market that preserve the spirit of true ownership, rather than feeling like a rented appliance. I have been monitoring the Rasberry pi site for months waiting to grab a one from the first batch, but I will be keeping an eye on Rhombus tech now too. The PCMCIA approach is one I have not seen before though, interesting.
That was a very informative post, but I have a couple questions: what exactly is GPL violating about the majority of the hardware out there? The ARM architecture isn't under any open license, so the only thing that could be in violation is the Android flavor they ship with it. And this shouldn't be a problem, if your mostly interested in wiping it and installing Debian. Or is the problem that current tablets are incapable of running a full blown distro without some custom coding beforehand?
This is a topic I am very ignorant about because I have never owned an Android device, but I'm curious, because I too would look for "Debian installability" when I finally go shop for a tablet.
All I can say is, they better sterilize the hell out of this thing. And then do it again.
The last thing I want is for them to find life, but be uncertain about whether or not it came from earth, a repeat of the Surveyor incident.
Thank you so much for that video! I just youtubed it to my pedantic friend who linguists over everything, he was less than impressed.
Yup. This is why it seems like a waste of time to obsess over "proper" English. Words are like clothes, you mix and match and there isn't any right answer.
As for the article, I have easily noticed this in well over 34 women at my college, but only in a certain subset of people. Namely, those who want to sound like pop singers. It's the same class of people who tan. So I have my doubts about it creeping into American English in general.
Also, who scanned the article and thought, "Futurama is influencing American speech!?"
Yes but that won't happen quietly. The OWS movement is a perfect example of people who, according to the free market, should be cleaning toilets. But they don't see it that way. Likewise, the music business is becoming just as obsolete, except that they don't resist by camping out downtown, they resist by pushing legislation like SOPA and its' new alternative hard to the point of passing. This is dangerous, and requires us to have more than a indifferent attitude towards their plight.
In my opinion, most people who major in business do so because they don't really know what they want to do, and their family, school, and society tells them it is a viable option. Until the government stops giving loans to business majors, the problem belongs to all of us.
It's true, and I try to catch the artists I like (that still tour) whenever they come around. But I'm not talking about musicians, I'm taking about Music Business majors. They don't perform. Their entire career path depends on fitting in somewhere between the artist and the listener. And there are a lot more of them than you would imagine.
I have met scores of Music Business majors at my university. That's a four year bachelors degree which will run you around 50k. Thats a huge investment to make in an "outmoded business model".
Now I completely agree with your point, but it is important to keep in mind how powerful the lobbying of an entire industry on the verge of losing their careers can be. It's analogous to the entire health insurance industry drying up if a public option were introduced (And as we saw, it was defeated). So I guess what I'm saying is that if we don't have the robust safety nets in place to handle whole industries becoming obsolete, then we are going to constantly be fighting a bitter fight in congress as they each try to legislate themselves back into business. It's completely predictable, and frankly, understandable human behavior.
Wikipedia says they're claiming it has a wingspan of 26 meters. After reading the wikipedia entry, the whole thing looks like it was designed to be pretty disposable. Still a huge gaffe for the US though.
Yup, I'm from Illinois. And yes, I've been following the Blago news. It seems that part of the problem is that people become career politicians, and so they start looking at everything as a potential for making money.
If you had normal people running for office, and only serving for a few terms, I think the corruption would be drastically reduced.
I store all my cloud data in a Truecrypt image. It can grow dynamically, and according to them it's about a protected as you can get.
Sounds to me like American goods were once like Chinese goods are becoming right now. Seriously, the jokes about Chinese goods being crap is showing its' age.
It pains me to think about it, but if I had to bet my pension on either the Americans or the Chinese building a successor to Voyager, I would go all in on the Chinese.
I wish. This will never happen in my state, as we sell our senate seats at auction. But it's nice to see there is some hope left elsewhere.
I just built a kernel specifically without the bluetooth modules in an attempt to save power on my laptop. Damn you progress.
I actually like the traditional windows interface. I think it makes sense to have one small button for a large pop-up start menu, and I like having the task manager at the bottom of the screen which is the furthest away from my natural line of sight. I use KDE for the same reason, the UI decisions seem to be backed by more than just a need to look newer than the last version.
...the one I blog on, write articles for TIME magazine on, and use to prepare photos and other illustrations that go with my writing
Whew.....for a second I thought you actually managed to do work on a tablet.
If you haven't ever watched gattaca, I highly recommend it. It deals with this exact same topic.
The more serious question is not predicting sports futures, but whether or not to allow parents to customize their children by selection.
"Well, doctor, we'd like the one that is as trustworthy, smart, obedient, attractive, sociable and athletic as our genes can possibly allow."
Did you mean an 31337 comp-sci program?