Either you have a very skewed definition of space science, or you are merely an idiot. Apollo did very little in space science, which is why I am leaning towards idiot. But, with full knowledge that this is a troll, here we go.
"we spend as much on NASA as we do."
NASA spends 14 billion a year, in total. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2002/guide 02.html#Table_2_4). ISS is about 35% of that. But, if you look at the table, you will notice a surprising list of things we spend more money on: Veterans' Affairs, and Transportation, for instance. We spend TWICE on HUD what we do on NASA. Same with Education, and HHS gets 3 times as much. I am not arguing that NASA should be equated with any of these agencies, but just pointing out how insignificant the NASA budget really is.
Or, for a more influential stat, divide 14 billion into 1.6 trillion, and figure out the percentage of the annual budget that goes to NASA.
"Around the world, people starve and die of diseases that would be cured by a quick trip to an American doctor."
OK, more math: Assume half of the populations of China and India (probably a significant understatement) have problems that could be easily remedied in the United States. So, that's 1 billion people. If you can find a way to get them to the States, or provide continuing American quality medical care, for FOURTEEN DOLLARS A PERSON then more power to you, but you are missing your calling posting on slashdot. And this totally ignores the mess that is sub-Saharan Africa.
People starved and died before NASA, and they will continue to after NASA is a memory. That is LIFE. The United States ALREADY feeds the world. U.S. Pharmaceutical companies, love them or hate them, medicate the world. These facts are only true because of the research dollars the U.S. gov't has spent. Now, I'm no biologist, but I have heard from quite a few that there is potential in creating medicines in zero-g environments that will revolutionize medical care. I think that possibility might be worth.8 cents of the tax dollar.
"We haven't done anything of significance in space since the moon landings, and we won't in the near future, either."
This doesn't make much sense, frankly. Apollo brought us back some moon rocks, and we learned about lunar geology and some about the space environment and how to survive in it. Within the past 2 years we have discovered evidence of water oceans on Europa and, possibly, Ganymede and Callisto. Since 1990 we have discovered evidence of the movement of water on the Martian surface, we have discovered planets around other stars, imaged black holes, etc. Hubble, Chandra, and a whole host of smaller projects have made significant advances in our understanding of the universe. I haven't even gotten into NASA's Earth Science and Solar Science Programs. In the near future, Cassini/Huygens will get to Saturn and we will learn what is going on on Titan, including gathering evidence for or against the possibility of life in the atmospheric soup.
What of any of this is insignificant? Or is space science itself insignificant, which you don't say.
"Commercial interests will eventually take over..."
This part of this sentence I actually agree with, though the idea of a private concern building Hubble is so ludicrous that is doesn't even deserve comment. If we kill NASA in the near future, commercial interests will never take over. Period. The cost of space activity is too high for anything besides communications sats. This cost will not come down without a significant amount of research money being spent. Sure as hell the industry is not willing to spend those dollars, even if they were equipped for it. Without NASA, no one would do it, plain and simple.
Well, I hope this actually makes you think, though I doubt it. Idiot might have been a bit strong in the first paragraph, but I don't think you've actually put any time or effort into this opinion, so you merely sounded like an idiot instead of actually being one. I apologize.
The essential point you and many of the other posters this morning have missed is that the NASA budget is not a zero sum game, for two reasons:
1) The Space Station budget is ENTIRELY divorced from that of the Office of Space Science and the Office of Earth Science. Congress decreed that NASA had to fix ISS within the confines of the ISS program budget, and NASA has been doing that.
2) (this is the big one) Money not spent on Station WOULD NOT BE SPENT BY NASA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Congressional budgeting doesn't work like this. NASA fights with the Veterans Administration, EPA, and HUD for its dollars, so money not being sunk in the ISS hole would just as likely be sunk in the VA Hospital hole as go to NASA Science.
The trap in robotic missions is that they are then all you will ever get. NASA Does quite a few robotic missions, and most of them work. Try this link: http://spacescience.nasa.gov/missions/index.htm for the comprehensive list. Many scientists would be happy to just use robots forever, but NASA's mandate is broader than that.
NASA made an immense mistake in trying to sell ISS as a Science platform. It's true that, as originally designed, it would have been good for that. In truth, though, ISS is a massive engineering and design project. It is MUCH more complicated than a glorified Mir station. Nearly all of the work done on ISS has been groundbreaking in space engineering, and the knowledge generated is necessary to move the manned program forward.
Well, I try not to let my faith get involved in slashdot, but.... awfully good timing for a once-in-history type event, huh? Maybe, just maybe, nature was set in motion by someone who really wanted to see Moses get across and the Egyptians get destroyed?
"even in geosynchronous orbit over a country like Japan"
If the planetary scientist you worked with gave you this part, he/she must not be a very good planetary scientist. Geosynch orbits are over the equator. Period. No geosynch over Japan. No Chinese sats in orbit over DC. The Equator. This is why Direct TV and other sat dishes have to point south.
Must be half my posts are used correcting this error.....
As I recall, President Carter killed the neutron bomb project because it made war too tempting. The ramifications of a war should not be lowered - if anything they should be raised. When that's the case, war (especially within your own borders) becomes much less palatable, and therefore the risk of war is reduced...
For those of you who aren't from the DC area, St. Elizabeth's Hospital (for whom Dr. Kollar-Kotelly was once chief legal counsel) is DC's mental institution. Seems like she's got plenty of the right kind of experience to me...
Actually.... they are not trespassing. Overflight was a concept settled in the 1950's, by the Soviets of all people, when Sputnik was orbiting.
And this is a good thing. Without overflight then every satellite would be "trespassing," as even the geosynchronous birds travel over countries on the way to their permanent orbits.
I guess I am kind of confused. Wouldn't this require everyone on the grid to essentially have fiber to the curb? A 56k modem is slow enough, without also being used to support Taco's Diablo binges... which brings me to my second question. I mean, sure this would be a wonderful thing for SETI crunching and other scientific endeavours, but what about:
1) Somebody eating up a whole bunch of processing time to brute force cyptographic codes and
2) Somebody eating up a whole bunch of processing time trying desperately to frag that very last guy in quake VII?
Will the processing power be so immense that it won't fill up?
ummm.... if you had checked the link (even just run your mouse over it) you would have noticed that he was speaking of Atlanta, GA, home of atlantans, and not Atlantis, Disney, home of the AtlantIans.
take your time.............
Without the Shuttle, how would Americans get into space? With 40 year old technology, the way the Russians do? Remember that we will never know how much Mir or the Soyuz programs cost, because it was swallowed in the communist regime. Who knows, compared to Mir, ISS might be a bargain!
Furthermore, the US cares a whole lot about little things like, i dunno, SAFETY that the Russians don't give a damn about. You think I am overstating things, read "Dragonfly" by Bryan Burrough. NASA comes off as the bureaucratic mess that it probably is, but you'll think twice before claiming the Russians have a "sensible space policy."
But, it's easy to pick on NASA. After all, it is a government agency. But before you rant about NASA inefficiency, think about your own code. What happens if there's a bug? Well, you fix it. And send out a patch. ISS has THREE MILLION lines of code, and any bug could be a complete disaster. So ALL of that code has to be checked and rechecked.
In sum, working in space is HARD. Many times harder than any environment on the ground, even
a corporate cubicle. If you ever get the chance to go into space, you will be relying on all the "whooping it up" that NASA is doing. Or you will be flying in a 40 year old Russian deathtrap. The choice is yours, but I hope you choose the deathtrap.
Also, I can't recall a single e-mail I've gotten from the University for fund-raising, etc on this account. That could be because it's run by the alumni association and not by the University proper. I am curious, though. I don't see a single post (in my admittedly hasting browsing) that says anyone has actually received a U-spam from their institution... just bitterly cynical people who assume it will happen. Has anyone actually *had* a problem with this?
I'm a space policy grad student, and we hear about McCurdy a lot. He might not be an engineer, but he knows the space business. I don't think there was too much dilution for him.
B
the laser would not lose intensity (1/r^2) like the Sun's radiation does. As long as the beam is not blocked/refracted/etc by "stuff" in between, the laser should work essentially forever.
There are LOTS of possibilities and what ifs.That's why it's called a Free market! This whole thread seems to be one long bit of FUD, IMHO.
It's ok, the internet has survived thus far. Even freeNapster is still alive. And the world appears to be in one piece still, even after the election of W. Sweet dreams, everyone.
I love your enthusiasm! However, there is one major barrier to your space enthusiasts utopia... getting there. Developing the kind of cheap launch vehicle that is needed is not a matter of engineering, but of basic research. That kind of research is not done by private companies. There is too high a risk that it won't pay off. Until launch costs are brought down, however, the private sector will not be able to have the kind of impact that you are hoping for. The only way in the States to get the launch breakthrough is to fund NASA, the NSF, the DoD, and other research agencies in the Fed Gov't.
Life in space will actually be a lot better once people rid themselves of their understandable attraction to planets. The sheer efficiency of life in space, unencumbered by the demands of a grounded existance, will ultimately make it the preferred lifestyle. That's a long way off, but to say that life requires a "sphere" is simply incorrect.
Aside from the obvious and redundant cracks about various political figures (and I'm surprised no one has mentioned Gates yet), there seems to be one overriding theme to the responses... So what?
NASA should take some pride in this response. Those astronauts are undertaking a voyage as deadly as any in history, but the unmitigated success of the US Space Program has reduced public reaction to little more than a yawn.
This will probably be the prevailing opinion for a long time. "We are living on the Moon? So what? We got there a long time ago. We are living on Mars? Great, we should send George W. Bush III out there! But seriously, so what? We are already living on the moon!"
It certainly is fun to be a cynic, deriding everyone else's achievements and laughing at how witty and smart we are. Just try and remember the date when you grandchildren ask when people first started to live in space...
the "crowdedness" of Earth has nothing to do with space travel. Sorry. The shuttle costs about $10000 per pound to life something to orbit. Slash that by 10^4.... and you get $1. Such a capability is entirely beyond our means now, but assuming we can do it... if the average person weighs 100 lbs, that's a $100 person. How many people would we need to ship off someplace to reduce the overcrowding of earth? Each million people would cost 100 million dollars. How many millions would have to go?
All the math is the long way of saying that shipping people off planet will never be the solution to Eath's overcrowding...
B
I read an interview with Lucas where he explained the 12 parsecs thing. Apparently, Kessel is in the middle of a "black hole cluster." The path to get in is very circuitous because a pilot has to skirt all the event horizons. The more powerful (i.e. fast) a ship is, the closer it can come to the event horizons without being pulled in. The Millenium Falcon is SO FAST that it can straighten out the run enough to bring its distance under 12 parsecs.
The big question is whether the explanation came before or after the apparent mistake:)
B
There is a law similar to what you are talking about, actually. I forget it's name, but Congress passed a law saying that any rider to a bill must be "germane" to the substance of the bill. No more environmental riders on DoD budgets, etc. The problem is that everyone on the Hill ignores it.
As frustrating as it is to see so little done on Capitol Hill, the truth is that without riders even less would get done. Politics is the art of compromise. A good bill will have things that the President likes and that he doesn't like. It is up to him to decide whether the good outweighs the bad. That is the responsibility of the executive. Yes, it is frustrating. Yes, it leads to idiotic bills and political arguments. But the ability to force the President to compromise is essential to amintaining the balance of powers. I share your frustrations, but voting on a bill purely on it's merits is, unfortunately, not the solution.
B
Complement to Cryptonomicon
on
The Code Book
·
· Score: 1
Cryptonomicon got me interested in cryptography, but I didn't understand a lot of the details. I picked up the Code Book on a whim, and it couldn't have been more perfect. I suggest this book to anyone who wants to know the history of cryptography, or to anyone feeling a little out of sorts after Cryptonomicon.
I'm too tired to go through the 8 million responses and see if somebody has already mentioned this, but... apparently a company has patented a particular orbit. Since an orbit is in essence just a mathematical formula, what if I were to patent the error formula? Then everytime one of these idiotic public opinion polls comes out at least I could be compensated....
I have a hard time dealing with all the Mac/Linux/Unix/Windows flame wars that occur all the time. Are we now going to have Palm/Visor/iPaq flame wars.
To be honest, I think this post is OK because it is actually comparing the two products in a meaningful way. I can see, however, it leading to "The Palm is buggy and totally useless" posts or "Who wants colors in a PDA, I just want it to work well" posts. Seems like everything turns into a me vs. them flame war...
It's been interesting to see my parents' reaction to Napster. My mother at one point referred to it as "anarchist," which really cracked me up until I thought about it. She has a point, however. Napster (and Gnutella) are a bunch of people doing what they want regardless of existing law (be it correct or not, I don't want to get into that debate). I made my father a John Denver CD from Napstered mp3s in a spate of feeling guilty about breaking his old turntable. He is really glad to have the music back, but he is still pretty nervous when it is playing. Kind of like he is afraid he will get caught. All of this goes to show that while the world is still run by boomers, Napster will never really become an accepted mainstream critter, and the corporations will continue to win legal battles.
B
Slashdot Mirror
Either you have a very skewed definition of space science, or you are merely an idiot. Apollo did very little in space science, which is why I am leaning towards idiot. But, with full knowledge that this is a troll, here we go.
e 02.html#Table_2_4). ISS is about 35% of that. But, if you look at the table, you will notice a surprising list of things we spend more money on: Veterans' Affairs, and Transportation, for instance. We spend TWICE on HUD what we do on NASA. Same with Education, and HHS gets 3 times as much. I am not arguing that NASA should be equated with any of these agencies, but just pointing out how insignificant the NASA budget really is.
.8 cents of the tax dollar.
"we spend as much on NASA as we do."
NASA spends 14 billion a year, in total. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2002/guid
Or, for a more influential stat, divide 14 billion into 1.6 trillion, and figure out the percentage of the annual budget that goes to NASA.
"Around the world, people starve and die of diseases that would be cured by a quick trip to an American doctor."
OK, more math: Assume half of the populations of China and India (probably a significant understatement) have problems that could be easily remedied in the United States. So, that's 1 billion people. If you can find a way to get them to the States, or provide continuing American quality medical care, for FOURTEEN DOLLARS A PERSON then more power to you, but you are missing your calling posting on slashdot. And this totally ignores the mess that is sub-Saharan Africa.
People starved and died before NASA, and they will continue to after NASA is a memory. That is LIFE. The United States ALREADY feeds the world. U.S. Pharmaceutical companies, love them or hate them, medicate the world. These facts are only true because of the research dollars the U.S. gov't has spent. Now, I'm no biologist, but I have heard from quite a few that there is potential in creating medicines in zero-g environments that will revolutionize medical care. I think that possibility might be worth
"We haven't done anything of significance in space since the moon landings, and we won't in the near future, either."
This doesn't make much sense, frankly. Apollo brought us back some moon rocks, and we learned about lunar geology and some about the space environment and how to survive in it. Within the past 2 years we have discovered evidence of water oceans on Europa and, possibly, Ganymede and Callisto. Since 1990 we have discovered evidence of the movement of water on the Martian surface, we have discovered planets around other stars, imaged black holes, etc. Hubble, Chandra, and a whole host of smaller projects have made significant advances in our understanding of the universe. I haven't even gotten into NASA's Earth Science and Solar Science Programs. In the near future, Cassini/Huygens will get to Saturn and we will learn what is going on on Titan, including gathering evidence for or against the possibility of life in the atmospheric soup.
What of any of this is insignificant? Or is space science itself insignificant, which you don't say.
"Commercial interests will eventually take over..."
This part of this sentence I actually agree with, though the idea of a private concern building Hubble is so ludicrous that is doesn't even deserve comment. If we kill NASA in the near future, commercial interests will never take over. Period. The cost of space activity is too high for anything besides communications sats. This cost will not come down without a significant amount of research money being spent. Sure as hell the industry is not willing to spend those dollars, even if they were equipped for it. Without NASA, no one would do it, plain and simple.
Well, I hope this actually makes you think, though I doubt it. Idiot might have been a bit strong in the first paragraph, but I don't think you've actually put any time or effort into this opinion, so you merely sounded like an idiot instead of actually being one. I apologize.
The essential point you and many of the other posters this morning have missed is that the NASA budget is not a zero sum game, for two reasons:
1) The Space Station budget is ENTIRELY divorced from that of the Office of Space Science and the Office of Earth Science. Congress decreed that NASA had to fix ISS within the confines of the ISS program budget, and NASA has been doing that.
2) (this is the big one) Money not spent on Station WOULD NOT BE SPENT BY NASA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Congressional budgeting doesn't work like this. NASA fights with the Veterans Administration, EPA, and HUD for its dollars, so money not being sunk in the ISS hole would just as likely be sunk in the VA Hospital hole as go to NASA Science.
The trap in robotic missions is that they are then all you will ever get. NASA Does quite a few robotic missions, and most of them work. Try this link: http://spacescience.nasa.gov/missions/index.htm for the comprehensive list. Many scientists would be happy to just use robots forever, but NASA's mandate is broader than that.
NASA made an immense mistake in trying to sell ISS as a Science platform. It's true that, as originally designed, it would have been good for that. In truth, though, ISS is a massive engineering and design project. It is MUCH more complicated than a glorified Mir station. Nearly all of the work done on ISS has been groundbreaking in space engineering, and the knowledge generated is necessary to move the manned program forward.
Well, I try not to let my faith get involved in slashdot, but.... awfully good timing for a once-in-history type event, huh? Maybe, just maybe, nature was set in motion by someone who really wanted to see Moses get across and the Egyptians get destroyed?
"even in geosynchronous orbit over a country like Japan"
If the planetary scientist you worked with gave you this part, he/she must not be a very good planetary scientist. Geosynch orbits are over the equator. Period. No geosynch over Japan. No Chinese sats in orbit over DC. The Equator. This is why Direct TV and other sat dishes have to point south.
Must be half my posts are used correcting this error.....
As I recall, President Carter killed the neutron bomb project because it made war too tempting. The ramifications of a war should not be lowered - if anything they should be raised. When that's the case, war (especially within your own borders) becomes much less palatable, and therefore the risk of war is reduced...
For those of you who aren't from the DC area, St. Elizabeth's Hospital (for whom Dr. Kollar-Kotelly was once chief legal counsel) is DC's mental institution. Seems like she's got plenty of the right kind of experience to me...
Actually.... they are not trespassing. Overflight was a concept settled in the 1950's, by the Soviets of all people, when Sputnik was orbiting.
And this is a good thing. Without overflight then every satellite would be "trespassing," as even the geosynchronous birds travel over countries on the way to their permanent orbits.
I guess I am kind of confused. Wouldn't this require everyone on the grid to essentially have fiber to the curb? A 56k modem is slow enough, without also being used to support Taco's Diablo binges... which brings me to my second question. I mean, sure this would be a wonderful thing for SETI crunching and other scientific endeavours, but what about:
1) Somebody eating up a whole bunch of processing time to brute force cyptographic codes and
2) Somebody eating up a whole bunch of processing time trying desperately to frag that very last guy in quake VII?
Will the processing power be so immense that it won't fill up?
ummm.... if you had checked the link (even just run your mouse over it) you would have noticed that he was speaking of Atlanta, GA, home of atlantans, and not Atlantis, Disney, home of the AtlantIans. take your time.............
Another beautifully uninformed slashdot rant.
Without the Shuttle, how would Americans get into space? With 40 year old technology, the way the Russians do? Remember that we will never know how much Mir or the Soyuz programs cost, because it was swallowed in the communist regime. Who knows, compared to Mir, ISS might be a bargain!
Furthermore, the US cares a whole lot about little things like, i dunno, SAFETY that the Russians don't give a damn about. You think I am overstating things, read "Dragonfly" by Bryan Burrough. NASA comes off as the bureaucratic mess that it probably is, but you'll think twice before claiming the Russians have a "sensible space policy."
But, it's easy to pick on NASA. After all, it is a government agency. But before you rant about NASA inefficiency, think about your own code. What happens if there's a bug? Well, you fix it. And send out a patch. ISS has THREE MILLION lines of code, and any bug could be a complete disaster. So ALL of that code has to be checked and rechecked.
In sum, working in space is HARD. Many times harder than any environment on the ground, even
a corporate cubicle. If you ever get the chance to go into space, you will be relying on all the "whooping it up" that NASA is doing. Or you will be flying in a 40 year old Russian deathtrap. The choice is yours, but I hope you choose the deathtrap.
I was gonna mention this, but thanks Dan :)
Also, I can't recall a single e-mail I've gotten from the University for fund-raising, etc on this account. That could be because it's run by the alumni association and not by the University proper. I am curious, though. I don't see a single post (in my admittedly hasting browsing) that says anyone has actually received a U-spam from their institution... just bitterly cynical people who assume it will happen. Has anyone actually *had* a problem with this?
I'm a space policy grad student, and we hear about McCurdy a lot. He might not be an engineer, but he knows the space business. I don't think there was too much dilution for him. B
the laser would not lose intensity (1/r^2) like the Sun's radiation does. As long as the beam is not blocked/refracted/etc by "stuff" in between, the laser should work essentially forever.
'YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS'
;)
2001-03-17 05:29:18
Nothing to honor St Patrick's day like a rain of fire and metal
PS: Dear moderators, modding down my guess will NOT improve your chances
RedHat were to be bought by Microsoft?
Slashdot was to be bought by AOLTimeWarner
There are LOTS of possibilities and what ifs.That's why it's called a Free market! This whole thread seems to be one long bit of FUD, IMHO.
It's ok, the internet has survived thus far. Even freeNapster is still alive. And the world appears to be in one piece still, even after the election of W. Sweet dreams, everyone.
I love your enthusiasm! However, there is one major barrier to your space enthusiasts utopia... getting there. Developing the kind of cheap launch vehicle that is needed is not a matter of engineering, but of basic research. That kind of research is not done by private companies. There is too high a risk that it won't pay off. Until launch costs are brought down, however, the private sector will not be able to have the kind of impact that you are hoping for. The only way in the States to get the launch breakthrough is to fund NASA, the NSF, the DoD, and other research agencies in the Fed Gov't.
Actually, that's wrong. Sorry.
Life in space will actually be a lot better once people rid themselves of their understandable attraction to planets. The sheer efficiency of life in space, unencumbered by the demands of a grounded existance, will ultimately make it the preferred lifestyle. That's a long way off, but to say that life requires a "sphere" is simply incorrect.
Aside from the obvious and redundant cracks about various political figures (and I'm surprised no one has mentioned Gates yet), there seems to be one overriding theme to the responses... So what?
NASA should take some pride in this response. Those astronauts are undertaking a voyage as deadly as any in history, but the unmitigated success of the US Space Program has reduced public reaction to little more than a yawn.
This will probably be the prevailing opinion for a long time. "We are living on the Moon? So what? We got there a long time ago. We are living on Mars? Great, we should send George W. Bush III out there! But seriously, so what? We are already living on the moon!"
It certainly is fun to be a cynic, deriding everyone else's achievements and laughing at how witty and smart we are. Just try and remember the date when you grandchildren ask when people first started to live in space...
B
the "crowdedness" of Earth has nothing to do with space travel. Sorry. The shuttle costs about $10000 per pound to life something to orbit. Slash that by 10^4.... and you get $1. Such a capability is entirely beyond our means now, but assuming we can do it... if the average person weighs 100 lbs, that's a $100 person. How many people would we need to ship off someplace to reduce the overcrowding of earth? Each million people would cost 100 million dollars. How many millions would have to go?
All the math is the long way of saying that shipping people off planet will never be the solution to Eath's overcrowding...
B
I read an interview with Lucas where he explained the 12 parsecs thing. Apparently, Kessel is in the middle of a "black hole cluster." The path to get in is very circuitous because a pilot has to skirt all the event horizons. The more powerful (i.e. fast) a ship is, the closer it can come to the event horizons without being pulled in. The Millenium Falcon is SO FAST that it can straighten out the run enough to bring its distance under 12 parsecs.
The big question is whether the explanation came before or after the apparent mistake :)
B
There is a law similar to what you are talking about, actually. I forget it's name, but Congress passed a law saying that any rider to a bill must be "germane" to the substance of the bill. No more environmental riders on DoD budgets, etc. The problem is that everyone on the Hill ignores it.
As frustrating as it is to see so little done on Capitol Hill, the truth is that without riders even less would get done. Politics is the art of compromise. A good bill will have things that the President likes and that he doesn't like. It is up to him to decide whether the good outweighs the bad. That is the responsibility of the executive. Yes, it is frustrating. Yes, it leads to idiotic bills and political arguments. But the ability to force the President to compromise is essential to amintaining the balance of powers. I share your frustrations, but voting on a bill purely on it's merits is, unfortunately, not the solution. B
Cryptonomicon got me interested in cryptography, but I didn't understand a lot of the details. I picked up the Code Book on a whim, and it couldn't have been more perfect. I suggest this book to anyone who wants to know the history of cryptography, or to anyone feeling a little out of sorts after Cryptonomicon.
I'm too tired to go through the 8 million responses and see if somebody has already mentioned this, but... apparently a company has patented a particular orbit. Since an orbit is in essence just a mathematical formula, what if I were to patent the error formula? Then everytime one of these idiotic public opinion polls comes out at least I could be compensated....
Dear God...
I have a hard time dealing with all the Mac/Linux/Unix/Windows flame wars that occur all the time. Are we now going to have Palm/Visor/iPaq flame wars.
To be honest, I think this post is OK because it is actually comparing the two products in a meaningful way. I can see, however, it leading to "The Palm is buggy and totally useless" posts or "Who wants colors in a PDA, I just want it to work well" posts. Seems like everything turns into a me vs. them flame war...
BIt's been interesting to see my parents' reaction to Napster. My mother at one point referred to it as "anarchist," which really cracked me up until I thought about it. She has a point, however. Napster (and Gnutella) are a bunch of people doing what they want regardless of existing law (be it correct or not, I don't want to get into that debate). I made my father a John Denver CD from Napstered mp3s in a spate of feeling guilty about breaking his old turntable. He is really glad to have the music back, but he is still pretty nervous when it is playing. Kind of like he is afraid he will get caught. All of this goes to show that while the world is still run by boomers, Napster will never really become an accepted mainstream critter, and the corporations will continue to win legal battles. B