Well, I read both articles. The first seems naive in its complete analysis of why China may be going into space. Of course they have a military interest, just as the US had and continues to have. The second article begins by being a bit alarmist with talk of China developing the ability to accurately hit the US with nuclear weapons. What!?! Geeze, China already has long range missiles, and I'm sure their guidance systems are top-notch. Bringing up the spectre of nuclear war only serves to undermine the entire article.
Another point which shows a lack of understanding (or intentional obfuscation) of the US space program is this,
The problem is that the United States is not following a free market approach in space flight. NASA is still insisting on running its own space line, rather than going to the private sector for launch services, for example.
Ummm, NASA only developes manned launch vehicles, specifically the space shuttle. All the unmanned launch vehicles (Titan, Atlas, Delta, Pegasus) are developed and maintained by private companies which compete for launches. With the EELV program, the government (mostly the Air Force) has taken a much more hands-off approach in the development of these launch vehicles (Delta IV and Atlas V). Further, shuttle is mostly maintained by private companies; for the Orbital Space Plane in development, the intention is to build the manned section of the vehicle to sit atop one of these Heavy Lift Vehicles.
Finally, the government is still heavily involved with these unmanned vehicles, but it is the DOD, not NASA, that funds their development. NASA's budget is about $15 billion, have of which is for their manned and unmanned programs (the rest is for aviation stuff & general research). The DOD space budget is also $15 billion, $0 of which supports ISS or the shuttle. The DOD has funded the developments of just about every launch vehicle for the last 30 years, with the obvious exception of shuttle.
And the shuttle is a remarkable piece of technology, the likes of which we may not see again for 20+ years. A heavy-lift, man rated vehicle which launches as a rocket and lands like a plane. It's had some obvious problems, but NASA took a big bite (given the constraints imposed from the outside by non-engineers and DOD officials) and came up with a great system. Sadly, NASA has not had the chance to apply a lessons-learned to build a Shuttle II. Maintenance is too expensive, and our materials are much better now than 30 years ago,so Shuttle II would be 2-3X less expensive than Shuttle I. Reduce it's lift capability in half, and it'd be much more capable of fulfilling its core requirements.
injecting some market force into the space race sounds great, but the fact is, the field is wide open to anyone to develop a launch vehicle w/o government help. Many have tried and failed. A big reason the government has funded the development of every lauch vehicle in the US is simple-- it's not cost-effective to develope one without government help. When Teledisic wanted to luanch 243 satellites into low-earth orbit, do you think anything prevented them from going outside NASA? When Iridium and Globalstar launched their constellations, do you think NASA was involved in any way other than ensuring the safety of those on the ground?
There's so much more to space in this country than 99% of the population realizes. It is largely private, and guess what-- we've had more success with the pure NASA and DOD programs.
Back to the point. China obviously seeks to improve their use of space for commercial and military purposes. They see the US as dominant in space, and I'm sure they would like to have better communication and geo-location capabilities. Going to the moon seems to be more about prestige, and thinking 100 years ahead, not 10 years. Eventually, we will have outposts on Mars and the Moon, maybe even colonies.
As the Europens sailed off into the unkown 500 years ago, so to do the Chinese fly off into the unknown today. The fruits they bear will not be realized for decades, but the eventual impact is undeniable. I say good for China for pushing into a new frontier, and I hope the US also decides to push ahead into the unkown, despite its dangers.
Put another way, at $600 billion, that works out to about $3000 for every adult in the country. Our GNP is about $10 trillion, so if the telemarketing number is correct, telemarketers account for 6% of our GNP.
Honestly, I made up the $50K number; the industry itslef claims employment of about 6 million people. Do you believe that 5% of our workers are telemarketers? Do you have any.
Essentially, this number so obviousy fails the smell test that it's pathetic. It's sad that the media breathlessly report this number without considering its meaning for even a minute. Go find the industry study that details where the $600 billion number came from and read it, because the news outlets that you rely on obviously didn't.
They also claim 180 million sales transactions, which is probably correct. That means the average transaction is more than $3000! Do you know anyone who bought $3000 worth of stuff from a telemarketer?
Don't take this the wrong way, but if you believe that $600 billion number, you're a dope. Basically, if 1 division of MS uses telemarketing, they include ALL of MS' revenue as part of the "Telemarketing industry." At $50K/ employee, for that number to be true, they would have to have12 million employees!
Sometimes you have to be a bit skeptical and exercise your math skills. Don't believe everything you read.
Remember when singles ised to get "released?" I guess they still do, nut essentially, when an album came out, only a song or two would be released as a single, and everythinh else was album only.
I think the dair solution is this. No single sales of songs that haven't been released for up to 18 months. If you want to hear the 1 great track from the new album, wait till it's released as a single or buy the album. After 18 months (or whatever), the while thing is fair game. This is essentially a premium pricing policy, which is how many businesses operate. This enables artists to get the high margin sales on the front end, and cash in from the lesser fans later on.
Maybe Apple can give Madonna et. al. a conditional album-only release for the next year or so, but after that, only new albums can be album only. Otherwise, these artists may stay away from iTMS, and that would be a shame. Compromise is needed, and each side gives a little with this proposal.
Re:The Apple We All Know and Love
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I guess I wasn't clear on my last comment. All I meant was that we all value things differently. Some of us value specs for specs alone, some want their computer to look nice in the living room, some like to use a system they are familiar with, some value the system which their children volunteer to maintain, some value anything w/o Microsoft on the box. Depending on what's important, we'll make our buying decision.
I can't really understand the concept of there being a "wrong" choice in this context. Excuse the car analogy, but it's if we should all be buying the same car b/c one is better than the rest, and any other choice is "wrong."
Re:The Apple We All Know and Love
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I'll bite.
1) This argument is kinda silly at this point. Originally, it was brought up to point out that just because a company has small market share, it doesn't mean the company is succesful. In essence, the initial logical argument has been distorted by opponents and proponents to the point where it doesn't make sense. And you're completely wrong about the PowerMac case. Two optical drives, 4 hard drives, built-in Firewire, bluetooth, USB, modem, ethernet, WiFi plus 4 PCI slots and an AGP card with dual monitor support. What do you want to put in your computer?
2) Hmmm, I don't think sliced bread is an operating system, but here goes. OS X is an excellent OS. It's not the be-all end-all, and it has advantages & disadvantages compared to PCs or Linux. Let's point out a couple things. iBooks start at $1000, eMacs sell for less. Quicktime nag screens suck, no doubt there. Then again, Quicktime Pro is one of the best software values on any platform, it's easy, it's powerful and it works. Macs suck for games (so I here), crush Linux for ease of use, are far easier than PCs to network (I've spent 10x more time getting my Mom's Windows network to work than it I've collectively spent on mine), and have a much higher proportion of good software than either Linux or Windows. Ya, the hardware costs more upfront. But the OS is rock-solid, easy to use, and quite powerful.
3) Apple's friendly? Well, they have a nice image, no doubt. But really, I've never heard any defend Apple by calling them friendly.
4) Where's the myth?
5) Not really a myth. Some stuff doesn't work. Every digital camera, flash card reader, mouse, trackball, tablet, monitor and drive I've plugged in has just worked. I had to install the driver for my printer, and for the USB-serial adapter I needed for some legacy devices that I used on my PowerMac 7200 in 1999 & earlier. Webcam support supposedly sucks, and well-intentioned webmasters who think they are clever (effectively) go out of their way to break non-WinExplorer browsers. Other than that, I rarely have problems. In fact, at one point I had my well-upgraded (new hard drive, upgraded RAM, WiFi card, Zip Drive) Lombard Powerbook G3, circa 1998, running for 5 weeks straight. Not a world's record, but pretty good.
Your last point is your best. Why do we support Apple? Well, because they make very good products that work, and a certain segment of the population thinks it's the best value out there. We're all different, and make judgements based on other criteria. No one's right, no one's wrong, we're all free to do as we wish.
Well, the first amendment guarantees freedom of the press. Excepting broadcasters due to the scarcity of spectrum, that means the government cannot compel publications to print or not print anything. The article actually discusses a Florida law guaranteeing right-of-reply on 1st amendment grounds.
Essentially, passage of this law necessitates government intrusion into the editorial process. Instead of the publisher deciding what is appropriate to print, a government official (judge ot bureaucrat) will make that decision. So long, freedom of the press!
Anyways, the 1st amendment absolutely guarantees you the right to say (just about) anything you wish; but it does not provide you with the resources to do so. You are free to publish your own response, but requiring your adversary to pay for that cost is the opposite of what the 1st amendment guarantees.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
In essence, the government is prohibited from exercising editorial control over the media. Seems like a good idea to me! Say whatever you want, but don't expect those who disagree with you to publicize your views.
The Slashdot headline is misleading, this is far from set in stone. The Council of Europ has only influence, it has no legislative authoriity. There already is Right-of-Reply for most print publicaitons in Europe, but some countries, such as Great Britian, have not enacted those laws.
This is just a suggestion of an influential body. The proposal may be accepted in part or in whole by all, some or none of the European member countries.
Personally, I hope it dies a painful death, and maybe the Europeans can eliminate right of reply all around. Print and the internet aren't TV-- there's no scarcity involved. This just sounds like a bureacratic (sp!) nightmare, a feel-good proposal that has the government meddle where there is no need.
Thank goodness for the 1st amendment, which keeps silly laws like this (we have other kinds of silly laws) out of the USA.
Agreed. What a lot of the general interest publications is the difference between defect-free theroetical strength and real-world strength. Metals are also very strong if defect-free, but you can't produce them in any sort of bulk.
This seems like a really clever approadh; all the press has focused on the "unobtanium" properties of the perfect, 100% continuous nanotube fiber. This really "feels"like a real world solution-- 60% nanotube, 100-meter lengths. This is the biggest science story of the year.
OK, I'll buy that as a plausible soluttion, although I don't necessarily agree.
But wait, why are you worried about NASA wasting my tax dollars? You pay nothing and get to see the shuttle launches! Whatta deal. The flip side is, the US will probably spend $XX on space technology and research, and if NASA funding drops, the AF budget will probably rise-- as it is, the DoD space budget is about the same size as all of NASA. It doesn't affect your solution, it's just something to think about.
Well, let's see how the software does; it's notoriously difficult to design rocket software.
But, I gather the greatest stresses will be on the computer hardware, as 10 G's will put a meaningful load on the parts, not to mention vibrational loads. And rockets are difficult to begin with. Here's hoping it works.
That's a good point, and it plays into it. But in light of that, the obvious solution would be to ban NASA from conducting manned spaceflight. Maybe there's a middle ground there, but then it starts to get complicated. And if NASA abandons manned space, it would be at least 5 years before anyone else got there (orbital spaceflight, that is) if NASA gave support to the newcomers. If it had to be done from scratch, it would take much longer.
So, what do you think is the best way to promote private, manned spaceflight? And how long do you think it will take to get back to where we are (i.e, hotel in space)?
Geeze, I didn't mean to be a NASA apologist. I was just trying to point out that from a scientific value standpoint, it was better to have 4 succesful missions and one failure than 1 or 2 succesful missions and no failures if the cost was the same. From a political standpoint, it's a lot worse.
I also didn't mean to imply that anyone who criticizes NASA is a NASA-hater; rather, I was just pointing out that true NASA haters will always find something wrong with the program. On the other side of the coin, there's the no-cost-is-too-high crowd, who insist after every mishap that it would have been avoided if only it were not underfunded, and we need to throw money at the problem. Of course, most people do not belong to either group, but these two groups (along with the NASA-is-[Dan-]Golden crowd when things go well) pretty well dominate the national conversation. This is not true so much when things go well (when NASA is essentially out of the news), but is certainly the case after any high profile accident; this includes the shuttle tragedies as well as problems with the Mars missions and Hubble.
Neither NASA nor the US Government is preventing anyone else from pursuing manned space flight, they just are not supporting any private companies to develop manned flight projects. As soon as a someone else gets themselves into space, that monopoly will end. Maybe a private company will develop a space plane that can sit atop Atlas V or Delta IV, or maybe something will grow out of the X-Prize. If someone thinks it's profitable, they're welcome to give it a try. Manned space flight is difficult enough that no private company has put a man in space, and only one other government (hopefully 2 soon) has managed to do it.
Is it pork-barrel? Maybe. Is it a monopoly? Yup. Is it a government mandated monpoly? No. There are plenty of government mandated pork-barrel monopolies you can take a swing at, such as the military, possibly the post office, the social security system, etc. So, I think NASA doesn't deserve all the lumps it takes on the whole monopoly thing.
Well, there are a lot of reasons thing go wrong. Landing a spacecraft on a different planet is inherently difficult, and when you read about how MER-1 and MER-2 will land, it's amazing that they can work at all.
The flip side is that. After Mars Ovserver spectatularly failed in 1993 ("Martians"), NASA started to go with faster, cheaper, better. The idea was, instead of a single $1 billion mission every 5 years with with 90% chance of success, why not 2 $200 million missions every two years, with an 80% chance of success. Everyone loves this idea when it works (Pathfinder), but when a cheap spacecraft fails, the public doesn't care if it cost $10 million or $10 billion, all we know is that NASA is wasting money.
So, the answer is, NASA has hit some bad luck. But the idea of faster, cheaper, better is ultimately a cost-effective one, so if we can solve these software problems (I mean, can't someone independently design a landing simulator?), and NASA can get 80-90%, we'll be getting a lot more science for the dollar. But NASA-haters will always have some missions to point to as a "waste" of money, and try to cut funding as it's mismanaged; other space junkies will insst that anything under 100% is unacceptble, and costs should double to move from 80% to 100%. I don't which attitude is more damaging.
NASA has a "good" track record since Observer, unfortunately, the highest profile missions have generally failed. If MER-1, and MER-2 are both succesful, and SIRTF flies this summer, then everyone should get off of NASA unmanned program's back for a while.
Bluetooth was supposed to rock because it was going to be cheap. But that hasn't happened, WiFi is cheaper. Bluetooth was supposed to add $5 to the cost of the device. If that held true, they would have sold a lot of Bluetooth DigiCams, Printers, mice, keyboards, etc. Sure, it's not ideal for any of these things, but I'd pay $10 to have Bluetooth on my Digicam.
But it's expensive, so it hasn't worked out. Cost is the only real barrier to adoption-- many will gladly pay $10/ device to eliminate wires, but $50 is not a good value proposition. Lower the price, and we'll use it.
Actually, the launch itself is a low strain-rate event. The acceleration is only on the order of 3-5 g's, and the strains due to this are small. The vibrational loads are obviously important, and this could play a role; but the strain-rate at impact is many orders of magnitude higher than it is while attached to the external tank.
Of course, a foam that is stronger is better for keeping it attached, in general. I think the proposed solution, cover the bipod area with a metal frame, is a good solution. In addition, space launch hardware is cleared through process control-- that is, the machinists and other workers have to follow very rigid procedures for manufacturing the hardware. If they know what kind of problems to avoid, they will avoid them. If they are working on something in which problems are either considered not possible, or not important, then the employees will not let this things go.
In short, now that there is a greater awareness of the bipod area and foam insulation in general, this proble will not happen again. The trick is to anticipate these things before they happen.
Of course you can't test everything, that's not what I proposed. The fact is, NASA knew that foam was falling off the external tank; they knew that it hit tiles, and it seems fair to analyze the possibilites of it hitting other leading edges. NASA had originally planned to do tests of larger chunks of foam, but decided they were not necessary.
You propose tests based on your knowledge of what events might occur. That's why they shoot birds into jet engines and cockpit windows. I guarantee that they also either a) shoot birds into the wing and nose, or b) have done analyses that show these are much less critical than a bird hitting the cockpit window. You can rule out a bird hitting a passenger window head-on-- but I bet they've done some glancing blow tests.
So, where is the analysis that shows hitting the tile is worse than hitting the leading edge, which the engineers at NASA knew was a more critical area? If they didn't have that analysis (maybe they did), then they should have done the tests.
And my guess is, someone has figured out what objects/ animals could possibly fly into the engines, and they have done tests or anaylsis which addresses that.
1) Materials are stronger at higher strain rates; essentially, the foam can probably remain elastic to much higher stresses when it is being deformed quickly, in a case such as this. To know more, you would want to do a series of high-strain rate tests on the foam to measure it's basic properties. In hindsight, choosing a foam with poor high-strain-rate performance should have been a requirement.
2) The piece of foam they fired was so big that it probably acted as a constriant; essentially, a piece of foam being confined laaterally will have greater apparent strength than one that is not. When a very small piece of foam is fired, this effect would not be present. Scale is important, beyond just increased mass causing increased damage.
It seems so obvious now, but I hadn't thought of these things before. Ideally, NASA would've conducted tests long ago with many sizes of foam hitting many parts of the shuttle, instead of abandoning the tests after seemingly benign results, in addition to basic experiments-- tests of the confined and unconfined foam.
Hey, this is not a knock on the way GWB was elected, but do not mistake the actions of this administration for the intent of our nation as a whole.
First, we more people voted for Al Gore than GWB. GWB is president not b/c of a corrupt Supreme Court and absentee ballot shenanigans, but rather b/c 1) the Palm Beach County butterfly ballot, and 2) Al lost his home state voting. Yikes.
Second, the GWB we elected is not the GWB now in office. I really don't think he wanted to project American power; I don't think he was lying when he derided Clinton for using the military for "nation building." Rather, Cheney, a neo-con, ran the transition team, put many of his like-minded allies in key posts (Wolfowitz & Rumsfeld are only the most obvious) and heavily influenced the foreign policy. After 9/11, GWB really did change, and I think he believes it's his duty to use American power to defend americans. Now, many think this is a bass-ackward approrach.
So, I ask the rest of the world, wait until November 2004 to judge how American policy has changed. If we re-elect GWB, all is fair; if we kick him out, give it a couple years and we'll return to the Nixon/Ford/Carter/Bush I/Clinton moderate foreign policy that has ruled America for most of the last 35 years.
Ah, but that assumes a very limited view of our space program. There's a rocket launch somewhere around the world nearly every week. Check out Spaceflight Now to see what's on tap. Now, it's not trivial to launch any rocket, manned or unmanned. But they could certainly speed up processing of a Delta II or Atlas II and load it with the essentials. It would be extremely difficult to pull the whole thing off.
For example, a Delta II launched the GPS IIR-8 satellite on January 29. I imagine that if they knew Columbia was doomed, they could've prepared a rescue package of food, water, etc. Of course, you'd have to design or modify an appropriate capsule, program the avionics so it would get there, and figure out how to get in on board. Someone at the AF would be peeved at getting their launch bumped, but if it was feasible, they would step aside.
That's just one scenario. Launches from Russia, Vandenburg or South America may or may not be viable. In the meantime, they could get Atlantis prepped for launch in a quick, sensible fashion. BTW, Atlantis would not necessarily been as susceptible to the same problem, since it uses a new external tank design.
My point is, there is more than one solution to the problem. My guess is that in the future, they'll make any non-ISS mission have provisions for an extended orbital stay if necessary, and a procedure will be developed for quickly resupplying any stranded crew. It's a work in progress.
I never bought that a rescue mission wasn't possible. If they knew that Columbia would burn up, they would've found a solution. 1,000,000 engineers across the country, including all 10,000+ Aerospace engineers in this country would have been working on solutions. We would've figured it out, and it would have been much more clever than the limited scenario they have reightfully been exploring.
Basically, all the engineers did their jobs, but they were making assumptions about how others would do their jobs, and what the options were.
One team analyzed the foam impact. They didn't think it would be serious, but there was some uncertainty. In general, rocket engineers, especially those working for NASA and the Air Force, are paid to make conservative analyses and decisions. So, if they were operating in a vacuum, the engineers would likely have requested better test data on foam impact of different parts, and better assessment of the damage.
Now, these engineers believed that getting better foam impact test data was unlikely. So they didn't ask for it. They had already made the 1st assessment that it was OK (based on un-wetted foam hitting tiles), even though they probably knew this wasn't a conservative analysis. So they asked for photos, to improve their assessment. Someone at NASA decided photos were not necessary since the intial analysis made it look like Columbia was OK. Plus, these managers assumed that the photographs would not be helpful, but that was based on 1) capabilities of a few years ago, and 2) probably what was unclassified; could an NRO spy satellite have taken pictures? Plus, the NASA manager has it in his head that a rescue is impossible anyways, so why push the issue?
I also wonder whether the foam-impact engineers knew about the piece that detached? Probably not. I'm sure someone had all the info, but it probably sounded like, "The foam impact analysis said there was no problem. Therefore this object is probably just ice."
And the point CAIB keeps hitting on, NASA got comfortable with risks b/c they turned out to be OK. But when you aim for 99.9% reliability, it should preclude using flight history to clear anomalies until the anomaly has occured 1000 times. NASA should've always been looking at objects neat STS.
All in all, it's a tough nut to crack. It took a lot to bring down Columbia, a sequence of events that took over 2 weeks to play out. Like Apollo 1, the biggest failure was probably a lack of imagination, and not realizing what our capabilities really are. The Shuttle is a true engineering marvel, on par with the great construction projects, and light-years ahead of any Stealth bomber (which cost almost as much as a shuttle!), aircraft carrier, dumb booster or any race car. The shuttle is a global asset, and the improvements we make to it will reep rewards for decades to come.
Well, this one doesn't steer; the article says it's just a protoype, to figure out how these thing will move on the surface. No need to instrument this kind of prototype.
And they'll figure out positional data, probably not in real time. I imagine once they design (if they design) a real martian tumbleweed, it will have gyros and accelerometers to determine velocity, it will use time of day to determine it's position relative to the sun, at night it can check the stars. Every chance it gets, it will probably upload data to the orbiting Mars Observer, and use that as an additional reference point. It'd be good to have some real-time way for the tumbleweed to throw on the brakes if it got too close to a large crater.
If I were designing it, I'd design it so it could have 3 speeds-- stopped, slow and fast. Fast if you're in a big boring plain. Slow when things get interesting. And stopped if you need to figure stuff out, or wait for the wind to change. In addition, I'd try to land the thing close to the middle of nothing, (at least the 1st one), to practice and get back some data. You may be able to launch many at a time, depending on the size, obviously. Even then, you'd want to activate one at a time if there were no other constraints.
I checked out the website they had; unfortunately, it was just a bunch of pictures. But this seems promising, and hopefully their prototype and testing will help aid in the development of a working Martian Tumbleweed.
It's a good point, (the NYT article discusses total real-time surveillence, and this is not sensible with satellites, unless you have a large, maybe 1km, pixel size) but you're missing some key details.
First of all, a lot of these images are shot of hostile territory, and we can't fly over them. Think N. Korea, China, Russia, etc.
Second, if 1mm pixel resolution existed, why would you use it to shoot an area 200km x 200km? If you needed that much detail, you'd zoom in. If you wanted an overview, you'd zoom out. What technology you'd use doesn't affect that.
If you used a plane to shoot a 200km x 200km area at 1mm resolution, it'd take up just as much space, although bandwidth is more abundant at the lower altitudes. Even with that, at 3 bytes/ pixel * 200km * 200km * 1,000,000 mm/km *1,000,000 mm/km * 1 pixel/mm^2, that's a big number, 120,000 Terabytes! So you could use 240 500TB cartridges to take these pictures at a 1mm resolution. That amount of data of unwieldy at any altitude!
Finally, as far as using satellite photos of pedestrian locations (LAX, Washington DC, etc) that we could image using airplanes, I think it's more a matter of cost and convenience. For one-time site surveys, an airplane is clearly the way to go. But for sites that need to be re-imaged daily (highway and building construction, coastal erosion, etc), satellite imaging is probably both easier and cheaper.
1) Zion is real 2) Zion is another level of the Matrix 3) Zion is real, but Neo is now stuck in a Matrix that simulates Zion.
I have no idea which one it is, but I hope it is (1), because (2) seems like too much of a cop-out (the whole movie was fake! Well, Of course the movie is fake, but the premise of the movie is that it's a fantasy. Get it! Get it!). (3) would be interesting, but I don't think it could really fit in with the Matrix universe.
Now, before Neo goes all pssing-out, he makes a comment, "Something's different this time," puts his hand up and all the squiddies blow up. So what's different? Is he now tapped into the computer mind? Or has he just realized that Zion is part of the matrix, and this is how he blows up the squiddies. But, maybe he didn't destroy them, maybe the other ship sent an EM charge-- that's unclear. We're supposed to think he stops them, but it might be a case of bait-and-switch.
Here's my theory. Whether Zion is real or not is mostly irrelevant. Neo is experiencing Deja Vu, and he makes a connection to his last 5 lives. Suddenly, as he's about to be killed by the squiddies, he realizes that something is different from the last 5 lives. What's different-- Agent Smith! He didn't have the same transformation in the Zion 1.0-5.0, but it's different this time. Maybe the last 5 times, Neo picks his survivors (how many people are left from the two ships Neo is with), and they restart Zion.
Anyways, since the scene w/ the architect is clearly designed to shake things and make you look at the Matrix (esp. The Oracle) in a new light, it's very cleverly designed for repeat viewing. I bet Reloaded would have made a lot more sense if we we knew the 6.0 thing at the start.
I read both articles. The whiny tone of Collegis' response cannot be missed. They acknowledge that they refused to talk about the case, then attack the newspaper for running the story without trying to tell both sides of it? Ridiculous. If the media worked this way, anytime some sleezebag wanted to keep a story out of the news, all they have to do is refuse to talk?
Slashdot Mirror
Another point which shows a lack of understanding (or intentional obfuscation) of the US space program is this,
Ummm, NASA only developes manned launch vehicles, specifically the space shuttle. All the unmanned launch vehicles (Titan, Atlas, Delta, Pegasus) are developed and maintained by private companies which compete for launches. With the EELV program, the government (mostly the Air Force) has taken a much more hands-off approach in the development of these launch vehicles (Delta IV and Atlas V). Further, shuttle is mostly maintained by private companies; for the Orbital Space Plane in development, the intention is to build the manned section of the vehicle to sit atop one of these Heavy Lift Vehicles.Finally, the government is still heavily involved with these unmanned vehicles, but it is the DOD, not NASA, that funds their development. NASA's budget is about $15 billion, have of which is for their manned and unmanned programs (the rest is for aviation stuff & general research). The DOD space budget is also $15 billion, $0 of which supports ISS or the shuttle. The DOD has funded the developments of just about every launch vehicle for the last 30 years, with the obvious exception of shuttle.
And the shuttle is a remarkable piece of technology, the likes of which we may not see again for 20+ years. A heavy-lift, man rated vehicle which launches as a rocket and lands like a plane. It's had some obvious problems, but NASA took a big bite (given the constraints imposed from the outside by non-engineers and DOD officials) and came up with a great system. Sadly, NASA has not had the chance to apply a lessons-learned to build a Shuttle II. Maintenance is too expensive, and our materials are much better now than 30 years ago,so Shuttle II would be 2-3X less expensive than Shuttle I. Reduce it's lift capability in half, and it'd be much more capable of fulfilling its core requirements.
injecting some market force into the space race sounds great, but the fact is, the field is wide open to anyone to develop a launch vehicle w/o government help. Many have tried and failed. A big reason the government has funded the development of every lauch vehicle in the US is simple-- it's not cost-effective to develope one without government help. When Teledisic wanted to luanch 243 satellites into low-earth orbit, do you think anything prevented them from going outside NASA? When Iridium and Globalstar launched their constellations, do you think NASA was involved in any way other than ensuring the safety of those on the ground?
There's so much more to space in this country than 99% of the population realizes. It is largely private, and guess what-- we've had more success with the pure NASA and DOD programs.
Back to the point. China obviously seeks to improve their use of space for commercial and military purposes. They see the US as dominant in space, and I'm sure they would like to have better communication and geo-location capabilities. Going to the moon seems to be more about prestige, and thinking 100 years ahead, not 10 years. Eventually, we will have outposts on Mars and the Moon, maybe even colonies.
As the Europens sailed off into the unkown 500 years ago, so to do the Chinese fly off into the unknown today. The fruits they bear will not be realized for decades, but the eventual impact is undeniable. I say good for China for pushing into a new frontier, and I hope the US also decides to push ahead into the unkown, despite its dangers.
Put another way, at $600 billion, that works out to about $3000 for every adult in the country. Our GNP is about $10 trillion, so if the telemarketing number is correct, telemarketers account for 6% of our GNP.
Honestly, I made up the $50K number; the industry itslef claims employment of about 6 million people. Do you believe that 5% of our workers are telemarketers? Do you have any.
Essentially, this number so obviousy fails the smell test that it's pathetic. It's sad that the media breathlessly report this number without considering its meaning for even a minute. Go find the industry study that details where the $600 billion number came from and read it, because the news outlets that you rely on obviously didn't.
They also claim 180 million sales transactions, which is probably correct. That means the average transaction is more than $3000! Do you know anyone who bought $3000 worth of stuff from a telemarketer?
Story
I doubt telemarketing is responsible for anywhere close to 6% of our total economic output. Believe what you will, but I don't buy the industry BS.
Don't take this the wrong way, but if you believe that $600 billion number, you're a dope. Basically, if 1 division of MS uses telemarketing, they include ALL of MS' revenue as part of the "Telemarketing industry." At $50K/ employee, for that number to be true, they would have to have12 million employees!
Sometimes you have to be a bit skeptical and exercise your math skills. Don't believe everything you read.
Remember when singles ised to get "released?" I guess they still do, nut essentially, when an album came out, only a song or two would be released as a single, and everythinh else was album only.
I think the dair solution is this. No single sales of songs that haven't been released for up to 18 months. If you want to hear the 1 great track from the new album, wait till it's released as a single or buy the album. After 18 months (or whatever), the while thing is fair game. This is essentially a premium pricing policy, which is how many businesses operate. This enables artists to get the high margin sales on the front end, and cash in from the lesser fans later on.
Maybe Apple can give Madonna et. al. a conditional album-only release for the next year or so, but after that, only new albums can be album only. Otherwise, these artists may stay away from iTMS, and that would be a shame. Compromise is needed, and each side gives a little with this proposal.
I guess I wasn't clear on my last comment. All I meant was that we all value things differently. Some of us value specs for specs alone, some want their computer to look nice in the living room, some like to use a system they are familiar with, some value the system which their children volunteer to maintain, some value anything w/o Microsoft on the box. Depending on what's important, we'll make our buying decision.
I can't really understand the concept of there being a "wrong" choice in this context. Excuse the car analogy, but it's if we should all be buying the same car b/c one is better than the rest, and any other choice is "wrong."
I'll bite.
1) This argument is kinda silly at this point. Originally, it was brought up to point out that just because a company has small market share, it doesn't mean the company is succesful. In essence, the initial logical argument has been distorted by opponents and proponents to the point where it doesn't make sense. And you're completely wrong about the PowerMac case. Two optical drives, 4 hard drives, built-in Firewire, bluetooth, USB, modem, ethernet, WiFi plus 4 PCI slots and an AGP card with dual monitor support. What do you want to put in your computer?
2) Hmmm, I don't think sliced bread is an operating system, but here goes. OS X is an excellent OS. It's not the be-all end-all, and it has advantages & disadvantages compared to PCs or Linux. Let's point out a couple things. iBooks start at $1000, eMacs sell for less. Quicktime nag screens suck, no doubt there. Then again, Quicktime Pro is one of the best software values on any platform, it's easy, it's powerful and it works. Macs suck for games (so I here), crush Linux for ease of use, are far easier than PCs to network (I've spent 10x more time getting my Mom's Windows network to work than it I've collectively spent on mine), and have a much higher proportion of good software than either Linux or Windows. Ya, the hardware costs more upfront. But the OS is rock-solid, easy to use, and quite powerful.
3) Apple's friendly? Well, they have a nice image, no doubt. But really, I've never heard any defend Apple by calling them friendly.
4) Where's the myth?
5) Not really a myth. Some stuff doesn't work. Every digital camera, flash card reader, mouse, trackball, tablet, monitor and drive I've plugged in has just worked. I had to install the driver for my printer, and for the USB-serial adapter I needed for some legacy devices that I used on my PowerMac 7200 in 1999 & earlier. Webcam support supposedly sucks, and well-intentioned webmasters who think they are clever (effectively) go out of their way to break non-WinExplorer browsers. Other than that, I rarely have problems. In fact, at one point I had my well-upgraded (new hard drive, upgraded RAM, WiFi card, Zip Drive) Lombard Powerbook G3, circa 1998, running for 5 weeks straight. Not a world's record, but pretty good.
Your last point is your best. Why do we support Apple? Well, because they make very good products that work, and a certain segment of the population thinks it's the best value out there. We're all different, and make judgements based on other criteria. No one's right, no one's wrong, we're all free to do as we wish.
Essentially, passage of this law necessitates government intrusion into the editorial process. Instead of the publisher deciding what is appropriate to print, a government official (judge ot bureaucrat) will make that decision. So long, freedom of the press!
Anyways, the 1st amendment absolutely guarantees you the right to say (just about) anything you wish; but it does not provide you with the resources to do so. You are free to publish your own response, but requiring your adversary to pay for that cost is the opposite of what the 1st amendment guarantees.
In essence, the government is prohibited from exercising editorial control over the media. Seems like a good idea to me! Say whatever you want, but don't expect those who disagree with you to publicize your views.The Slashdot headline is misleading, this is far from set in stone. The Council of Europ has only influence, it has no legislative authoriity. There already is Right-of-Reply for most print publicaitons in Europe, but some countries, such as Great Britian, have not enacted those laws.
This is just a suggestion of an influential body. The proposal may be accepted in part or in whole by all, some or none of the European member countries.
Personally, I hope it dies a painful death, and maybe the Europeans can eliminate right of reply all around. Print and the internet aren't TV-- there's no scarcity involved. This just sounds like a bureacratic (sp!) nightmare, a feel-good proposal that has the government meddle where there is no need.
Thank goodness for the 1st amendment, which keeps silly laws like this (we have other kinds of silly laws) out of the USA.
Agreed. What a lot of the general interest publications is the difference between defect-free theroetical strength and real-world strength. Metals are also very strong if defect-free, but you can't produce them in any sort of bulk.
This seems like a really clever approadh; all the press has focused on the "unobtanium" properties of the perfect, 100% continuous nanotube fiber. This really "feels"like a real world solution-- 60% nanotube, 100-meter lengths. This is the biggest science story of the year.
**Please excuse my use of "quotes."
OK, I'll buy that as a plausible soluttion, although I don't necessarily agree.
But wait, why are you worried about NASA wasting my tax dollars? You pay nothing and get to see the shuttle launches! Whatta deal. The flip side is, the US will probably spend $XX on space technology and research, and if NASA funding drops, the AF budget will probably rise-- as it is, the DoD space budget is about the same size as all of NASA. It doesn't affect your solution, it's just something to think about.
But, I gather the greatest stresses will be on the computer hardware, as 10 G's will put a meaningful load on the parts, not to mention vibrational loads. And rockets are difficult to begin with. Here's hoping it works.
That's a good point, and it plays into it. But in light of that, the obvious solution would be to ban NASA from conducting manned spaceflight. Maybe there's a middle ground there, but then it starts to get complicated. And if NASA abandons manned space, it would be at least 5 years before anyone else got there (orbital spaceflight, that is) if NASA gave support to the newcomers. If it had to be done from scratch, it would take much longer.
So, what do you think is the best way to promote private, manned spaceflight? And how long do you think it will take to get back to where we are (i.e, hotel in space)?
Geeze, I didn't mean to be a NASA apologist. I was just trying to point out that from a scientific value standpoint, it was better to have 4 succesful missions and one failure than 1 or 2 succesful missions and no failures if the cost was the same. From a political standpoint, it's a lot worse.
I also didn't mean to imply that anyone who criticizes NASA is a NASA-hater; rather, I was just pointing out that true NASA haters will always find something wrong with the program. On the other side of the coin, there's the no-cost-is-too-high crowd, who insist after every mishap that it would have been avoided if only it were not underfunded, and we need to throw money at the problem. Of course, most people do not belong to either group, but these two groups (along with the NASA-is-[Dan-]Golden crowd when things go well) pretty well dominate the national conversation. This is not true so much when things go well (when NASA is essentially out of the news), but is certainly the case after any high profile accident; this includes the shuttle tragedies as well as problems with the Mars missions and Hubble.
Neither NASA nor the US Government is preventing anyone else from pursuing manned space flight, they just are not supporting any private companies to develop manned flight projects. As soon as a someone else gets themselves into space, that monopoly will end. Maybe a private company will develop a space plane that can sit atop Atlas V or Delta IV, or maybe something will grow out of the X-Prize. If someone thinks it's profitable, they're welcome to give it a try. Manned space flight is difficult enough that no private company has put a man in space, and only one other government (hopefully 2 soon) has managed to do it.
Is it pork-barrel? Maybe. Is it a monopoly? Yup. Is it a government mandated monpoly? No. There are plenty of government mandated pork-barrel monopolies you can take a swing at, such as the military, possibly the post office, the social security system, etc. So, I think NASA doesn't deserve all the lumps it takes on the whole monopoly thing.
Well, there are a lot of reasons thing go wrong. Landing a spacecraft on a different planet is inherently difficult, and when you read about how MER-1 and MER-2 will land, it's amazing that they can work at all.
The flip side is that. After Mars Ovserver spectatularly failed in 1993 ("Martians"), NASA started to go with faster, cheaper, better. The idea was, instead of a single $1 billion mission every 5 years with with 90% chance of success, why not 2 $200 million missions every two years, with an 80% chance of success. Everyone loves this idea when it works (Pathfinder), but when a cheap spacecraft fails, the public doesn't care if it cost $10 million or $10 billion, all we know is that NASA is wasting money.
So, the answer is, NASA has hit some bad luck. But the idea of faster, cheaper, better is ultimately a cost-effective one, so if we can solve these software problems (I mean, can't someone independently design a landing simulator?), and NASA can get 80-90%, we'll be getting a lot more science for the dollar. But NASA-haters will always have some missions to point to as a "waste" of money, and try to cut funding as it's mismanaged; other space junkies will insst that anything under 100% is unacceptble, and costs should double to move from 80% to 100%. I don't which attitude is more damaging.
NASA has a "good" track record since Observer, unfortunately, the highest profile missions have generally failed. If MER-1, and MER-2 are both succesful, and SIRTF flies this summer, then everyone should get off of NASA unmanned program's back for a while.
But it's expensive, so it hasn't worked out. Cost is the only real barrier to adoption-- many will gladly pay $10/ device to eliminate wires, but $50 is not a good value proposition. Lower the price, and we'll use it.
Actually, the launch itself is a low strain-rate event. The acceleration is only on the order of 3-5 g's, and the strains due to this are small. The vibrational loads are obviously important, and this could play a role; but the strain-rate at impact is many orders of magnitude higher than it is while attached to the external tank.
Of course, a foam that is stronger is better for keeping it attached, in general. I think the proposed solution, cover the bipod area with a metal frame, is a good solution. In addition, space launch hardware is cleared through process control-- that is, the machinists and other workers have to follow very rigid procedures for manufacturing the hardware. If they know what kind of problems to avoid, they will avoid them. If they are working on something in which problems are either considered not possible, or not important, then the employees will not let this things go.
In short, now that there is a greater awareness of the bipod area and foam insulation in general, this proble will not happen again. The trick is to anticipate these things before they happen.
Of course you can't test everything, that's not what I proposed. The fact is, NASA knew that foam was falling off the external tank; they knew that it hit tiles, and it seems fair to analyze the possibilites of it hitting other leading edges. NASA had originally planned to do tests of larger chunks of foam, but decided they were not necessary.
You propose tests based on your knowledge of what events might occur. That's why they shoot birds into jet engines and cockpit windows. I guarantee that they also either a) shoot birds into the wing and nose, or b) have done analyses that show these are much less critical than a bird hitting the cockpit window. You can rule out a bird hitting a passenger window head-on-- but I bet they've done some glancing blow tests.
So, where is the analysis that shows hitting the tile is worse than hitting the leading edge, which the engineers at NASA knew was a more critical area? If they didn't have that analysis (maybe they did), then they should have done the tests.
And my guess is, someone has figured out what objects/ animals could possibly fly into the engines, and they have done tests or anaylsis which addresses that.
Well, there are a couple things at play here:
1) Materials are stronger at higher strain rates; essentially, the foam can probably remain elastic to much higher stresses when it is being deformed quickly, in a case such as this. To know more, you would want to do a series of high-strain rate tests on the foam to measure it's basic properties. In hindsight, choosing a foam with poor high-strain-rate performance should have been a requirement.
2) The piece of foam they fired was so big that it probably acted as a constriant; essentially, a piece of foam being confined laaterally will have greater apparent strength than one that is not. When a very small piece of foam is fired, this effect would not be present. Scale is important, beyond just increased mass causing increased damage.
It seems so obvious now, but I hadn't thought of these things before. Ideally, NASA would've conducted tests long ago with many sizes of foam hitting many parts of the shuttle, instead of abandoning the tests after seemingly benign results, in addition to basic experiments-- tests of the confined and unconfined foam.
Hey, this is not a knock on the way GWB was elected, but do not mistake the actions of this administration for the intent of our nation as a whole.
First, we more people voted for Al Gore than GWB. GWB is president not b/c of a corrupt Supreme Court and absentee ballot shenanigans, but rather b/c 1) the Palm Beach County butterfly ballot, and 2) Al lost his home state voting. Yikes.
Second, the GWB we elected is not the GWB now in office. I really don't think he wanted to project American power; I don't think he was lying when he derided Clinton for using the military for "nation building." Rather, Cheney, a neo-con, ran the transition team, put many of his like-minded allies in key posts (Wolfowitz & Rumsfeld are only the most obvious) and heavily influenced the foreign policy. After 9/11, GWB really did change, and I think he believes it's his duty to use American power to defend americans. Now, many think this is a bass-ackward approrach.
So, I ask the rest of the world, wait until November 2004 to judge how American policy has changed. If we re-elect GWB, all is fair; if we kick him out, give it a couple years and we'll return to the Nixon/Ford/Carter/Bush I/Clinton moderate foreign policy that has ruled America for most of the last 35 years.
Ah, but that assumes a very limited view of our space program. There's a rocket launch somewhere around the world nearly every week. Check out Spaceflight Now to see what's on tap. Now, it's not trivial to launch any rocket, manned or unmanned. But they could certainly speed up processing of a Delta II or Atlas II and load it with the essentials. It would be extremely difficult to pull the whole thing off.
For example, a Delta II launched the GPS IIR-8 satellite on January 29. I imagine that if they knew Columbia was doomed, they could've prepared a rescue package of food, water, etc. Of course, you'd have to design or modify an appropriate capsule, program the avionics so it would get there, and figure out how to get in on board. Someone at the AF would be peeved at getting their launch bumped, but if it was feasible, they would step aside.
That's just one scenario. Launches from Russia, Vandenburg or South America may or may not be viable. In the meantime, they could get Atlantis prepped for launch in a quick, sensible fashion. BTW, Atlantis would not necessarily been as susceptible to the same problem, since it uses a new external tank design.
My point is, there is more than one solution to the problem. My guess is that in the future, they'll make any non-ISS mission have provisions for an extended orbital stay if necessary, and a procedure will be developed for quickly resupplying any stranded crew. It's a work in progress.
I never bought that a rescue mission wasn't possible. If they knew that Columbia would burn up, they would've found a solution. 1,000,000 engineers across the country, including all 10,000+ Aerospace engineers in this country would have been working on solutions. We would've figured it out, and it would have been much more clever than the limited scenario they have reightfully been exploring.
Basically, all the engineers did their jobs, but they were making assumptions about how others would do their jobs, and what the options were.
One team analyzed the foam impact. They didn't think it would be serious, but there was some uncertainty. In general, rocket engineers, especially those working for NASA and the Air Force, are paid to make conservative analyses and decisions. So, if they were operating in a vacuum, the engineers would likely have requested better test data on foam impact of different parts, and better assessment of the damage.
Now, these engineers believed that getting better foam impact test data was unlikely. So they didn't ask for it. They had already made the 1st assessment that it was OK (based on un-wetted foam hitting tiles), even though they probably knew this wasn't a conservative analysis. So they asked for photos, to improve their assessment. Someone at NASA decided photos were not necessary since the intial analysis made it look like Columbia was OK. Plus, these managers assumed that the photographs would not be helpful, but that was based on 1) capabilities of a few years ago, and 2) probably what was unclassified; could an NRO spy satellite have taken pictures? Plus, the NASA manager has it in his head that a rescue is impossible anyways, so why push the issue?
I also wonder whether the foam-impact engineers knew about the piece that detached? Probably not. I'm sure someone had all the info, but it probably sounded like, "The foam impact analysis said there was no problem. Therefore this object is probably just ice."
And the point CAIB keeps hitting on, NASA got comfortable with risks b/c they turned out to be OK. But when you aim for 99.9% reliability, it should preclude using flight history to clear anomalies until the anomaly has occured 1000 times. NASA should've always been looking at objects neat STS.
All in all, it's a tough nut to crack. It took a lot to bring down Columbia, a sequence of events that took over 2 weeks to play out. Like Apollo 1, the biggest failure was probably a lack of imagination, and not realizing what our capabilities really are. The Shuttle is a true engineering marvel, on par with the great construction projects, and light-years ahead of any Stealth bomber (which cost almost as much as a shuttle!), aircraft carrier, dumb booster or any race car. The shuttle is a global asset, and the improvements we make to it will reep rewards for decades to come.
Well, this one doesn't steer; the article says it's just a protoype, to figure out how these thing will move on the surface. No need to instrument this kind of prototype.
And they'll figure out positional data, probably not in real time. I imagine once they design (if they design) a real martian tumbleweed, it will have gyros and accelerometers to determine velocity, it will use time of day to determine it's position relative to the sun, at night it can check the stars. Every chance it gets, it will probably upload data to the orbiting Mars Observer, and use that as an additional reference point. It'd be good to have some real-time way for the tumbleweed to throw on the brakes if it got too close to a large crater.
If I were designing it, I'd design it so it could have 3 speeds-- stopped, slow and fast. Fast if you're in a big boring plain. Slow when things get interesting. And stopped if you need to figure stuff out, or wait for the wind to change. In addition, I'd try to land the thing close to the middle of nothing, (at least the 1st one), to practice and get back some data. You may be able to launch many at a time, depending on the size, obviously. Even then, you'd want to activate one at a time if there were no other constraints.
I checked out the website they had; unfortunately, it was just a bunch of pictures. But this seems promising, and hopefully their prototype and testing will help aid in the development of a working Martian Tumbleweed.
It's a good point, (the NYT article discusses total real-time surveillence, and this is not sensible with satellites, unless you have a large, maybe 1km, pixel size) but you're missing some key details.
First of all, a lot of these images are shot of hostile territory, and we can't fly over them. Think N. Korea, China, Russia, etc.
Second, if 1mm pixel resolution existed, why would you use it to shoot an area 200km x 200km? If you needed that much detail, you'd zoom in. If you wanted an overview, you'd zoom out. What technology you'd use doesn't affect that.
If you used a plane to shoot a 200km x 200km area at 1mm resolution, it'd take up just as much space, although bandwidth is more abundant at the lower altitudes. Even with that, at 3 bytes/ pixel * 200km * 200km * 1,000,000 mm/km *1,000,000 mm/km * 1 pixel/mm^2, that's a big number, 120,000 Terabytes! So you could use 240 500TB cartridges to take these pictures at a 1mm resolution. That amount of data of unwieldy at any altitude!
Finally, as far as using satellite photos of pedestrian locations (LAX, Washington DC, etc) that we could image using airplanes, I think it's more a matter of cost and convenience. For one-time site surveys, an airplane is clearly the way to go. But for sites that need to be re-imaged daily (highway and building construction, coastal erosion, etc), satellite imaging is probably both easier and cheaper.
OK, SPOILER!!!!
I see 3 possibilites for Zion:
1) Zion is real
2) Zion is another level of the Matrix
3) Zion is real, but Neo is now stuck in a Matrix that simulates Zion.
I have no idea which one it is, but I hope it is (1), because (2) seems like too much of a cop-out (the whole movie was fake! Well, Of course the movie is fake, but the premise of the movie is that it's a fantasy. Get it! Get it!). (3) would be interesting, but I don't think it could really fit in with the Matrix universe.
Now, before Neo goes all pssing-out, he makes a comment, "Something's different this time," puts his hand up and all the squiddies blow up. So what's different? Is he now tapped into the computer mind? Or has he just realized that Zion is part of the matrix, and this is how he blows up the squiddies. But, maybe he didn't destroy them, maybe the other ship sent an EM charge-- that's unclear. We're supposed to think he stops them, but it might be a case of bait-and-switch.
Here's my theory. Whether Zion is real or not is mostly irrelevant. Neo is experiencing Deja Vu, and he makes a connection to his last 5 lives. Suddenly, as he's about to be killed by the squiddies, he realizes that something is different from the last 5 lives. What's different-- Agent Smith! He didn't have the same transformation in the Zion 1.0-5.0, but it's different this time. Maybe the last 5 times, Neo picks his survivors (how many people are left from the two ships Neo is with), and they restart Zion.
Anyways, since the scene w/ the architect is clearly designed to shake things and make you look at the Matrix (esp. The Oracle) in a new light, it's very cleverly designed for repeat viewing. I bet Reloaded would have made a lot more sense if we we knew the 6.0 thing at the start.
I read both articles. The whiny tone of Collegis' response cannot be missed. They acknowledge that they refused to talk about the case, then attack the newspaper for running the story without trying to tell both sides of it? Ridiculous. If the media worked this way, anytime some sleezebag wanted to keep a story out of the news, all they have to do is refuse to talk?