Absolutely. I remember when my home state (MD) said that the lottery would help reduce gambling by driving out the illegal numbers game, then proceeded to bring gambling to places that had never seen a numbers runner except on Starsky and Hutch. Of course, for a while our lottery also managed to lose money (but the ads were pretty.)
But mostly I hate standing in line behind some idiot buying three zillion numbers for all his friends and relations when all I want is a carton of milk. And the machines are pink, for God's sake!
I hate to repeat myself, but I guess I'm just not getting it: why shouldn't an asteroid skim the atmosphere? Isn't the most likely scenario something along the lines of a failed orbit, with the asteroid striking the top of the atmosphere at a shallow angle?
I just don't see any special reason to assume that a typical object will be angled sharply, and more reason to guess a shallow approach (which I am arbitrarily defining as angle less than, say, 30 degrees, with 90 degrees being a straight vetical crash). I'm still thinking that most collisions will involve, not objects aimed at Earth, but objects headed near Earth and pulled closer by our gravity -- but for a fast-mover, that pull is going to result in a shallow angle of approach, so shallow, in fact, that many will not even hit, but rather slingshot around us and keep going. Those that do hit would, I would think, have plenty of chances to bounce, break up, buffet, bank, and otherwise behave in a chaotic and unpredictable (although aliterative) fashion.
I'm also going based on a feeling that when I've seen meteor trails they've been long, which suggests to me transit through the upper atmosphere at a wide angle. I'm reasoning that if they tended to come straight down, then I'd see a dot, not a trail.
I agree. Thing is, I would wager that the odds are that any given asteroid would, in fact, at least begin to orbit.
Picture yourself as Joe Asteroid, bopping along through space at 2.7 zillion miles per. Over to your left there's a little blue marble. You feel strangely drawn towards it, and find yourself angling in its direction. Gradually your attraction increases, and your course becomes increasing curved toward this planet...
My feeling is that only a few fast moving rocks that happen to be headed straight for us (unlikely -- space is big) and slow-moving objects with little lateral velocity are likely to be pulled towards us sharply enough to drop straight down. Anything fast will be most likely to come in at yes, a glancing angle.
I'm guessing (based on figures that I pulled out of my ass) that's why there aren't very many killer asteroids -- most bounce off the atmosphere, or plow through the upper reaches and continue back into space, sadder and wiser chunks of rock.
Re:Grrr...100 _yards_ per hour!
on
Space Railroad
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· Score: 2
Alright, so a meter is 39.37" instead of 36". Big whoop. We're reading about the damned thing, not driving it. What are the odds that it actually travels at perxactly 300 fph? I've got a buck says that's a rounded figure anyway, quite likely rounded from 100 meters per hour (since I would also guess that the ISS is metric, what with the "I" and all.)
Yes, but I can imagine a legal approach akin to the sirens on emergency vehicles, and you can be required to get the hell out of the way. Police officers can cut through your yard in a pursuit, so perhaps police packets could cut through your network. Can't ham radio operators be ordered off the air under certain circumstances?
Hey, INAL either, but i can see a line of reasoning here.
Also, most government intelligence has to go through and review, briefing, debriefing, etc. before it can be used
Well, yes, but there's a point to some of that -- there's a higher need for accuracy at the White House than at the Weekly World News (although the "Stop Feeling Guilty the OJ Way" is great stuff.)
I'd be upset if the government didn't watch the news, of course, but I'd be equally upset if they didn't also use their own sources, and yes, review the data before acting on it. Reporters have been fooled too.
Mostly it's just sort of sad. I've had it done to me (a comment lifted from k5 and posted here, or maybe it was the other way around), and while it was kind of flattering it was also fairly pathetic. If you just think the comment was relevant, then it doesn't cost anything to attribute it.
Absolutely. My point lay rather with the "projected impact site" concept. I have doubts that it would be much more than a hemisphere.
Hell, when they predicted a water landing for Mir they were clearly playing the odds -- drop something anywhere in that hemisphere and it'll likely splash. It's like predicting a pavement impact if it falls in New York City.
Seems to me they pretty much go where they go and come from where they come, at whatever angle they happen to be. In fact, given the effect of Earth's gravity on a moving object, I'd think a curved, glancing trajectory rather more likely than a full-on dive toward Cleveland.
But maybe you're just not a micro-encephalic like me.:)
Seriously, though, even 10 meters is closer than most of us have had a bullet go by, and a hell of a lot closer than we'd like. Even though I live in Baltimore, I put down the paper when I hear even a distant shot. It's not so much the distance as it is the consequences, rather like the fact that a sidewalk feels perfectly safe, but most of us wouldn't use a bridge across the Grand Canyon if it were only three feet wide, with no rails.
The predicted impact location? You mean like "Earth"?
How much data did they have for Skylab? For Mir? And the best they could do was, "Someplace wet -- we hope." I don't really think they're going to say, "Quick! Lean to the left and it'll miss you!"
"If it were over a populated area, like Baghdad, it would have basically flattened it," said Gareth Williams, associate director of the International Astronomical Union Minor Planet Center in Boston, Massachusetts, "but our calculations show that one fragment, about the size of a grapefruit, would hit Blackwulf square in the face, killing him instantly"
If that were the standard, then SuperBowl ads would go for about a dime a minute. Except maybe for coupon deals, I don't think any advertiser in any medium has a fucking clue whether or not any ad or campaign is really working. Whether or not people see the ad is, at least, quantifiable, but actual sales depend on things well beyond the ad campaign.
Like the man said, "I know that half my ad budget is being wasted -- but I have no idea which half."
I believe you, BUT did they do those things while they were managers, or before they were promoted?
It's a real problem, one that both IBM and many school systems face: how do you reward your best people? Traditionally, they get promoted, and one often finds that great researchers then become competent administrators (if you're lucky). You've lost a PhD and gained an MBA. Similarly many teachers become principals and are lost to the classroom.
IBM came up with Fellowships for these guys -- recognition and money, but they can still get their hands dirty. Some school systems are creating titles like "Master Teacher", and giving them some authority to buck the system but letting them continue to teach.
You can file Freedom of Information Act requests, but I believe you need to specify what you want and pay for copying and retrieval costs. Walking in and saying, "I'd like everything you knew 30 years ago" is a little broad, unless you really want to be buried in back issues of National Geographic and Clogski: The Journal of Albanian Plumbing
I agree with you that duping music you own is perfectly legitimate, but your statement that
You cannot "Rip" unless you have already purchased the product.
went a good deal further and is simply unsupportable. If I am standing in a house, one possibility is that is my house, but others include my being there as a guest or my having broken in through a window.
It's been a while since I studied this sort of thing, and I don't recall any notation for it available from a standard PC keyboard, but what we need here is not "rip = own", but rather "rip is a superset of own". I can rip CD's I own, and I agree that's what Apple probably meant (they are, after all, also a software company and probably want to protect their own IP assets) but I can also rip CD's that I have borrowed from the library, borrowed from a friend, or am about to sell as used without destroying the ripped copy. The first is fair use, the others are not.
That said, I must repeat what i have often said before: scale has been a tremendous factor here. A little sharing among friends has been going on since home recording became possible, and the RIAA didn't really object. It really wasn't enough to worry about, and their noses weren't being rubbed in it. Widespread Internet sharing, OTOH, upped both the scale and the visibility beyond the point that it was reasonable to expect the RIAA to pretend not to see it. Whether or not it actually reduces sales isn't the point -- the point is that it began to be so flagrant as to be insulting. Pee into a bush at night and a cop might tell you to zip it up and go home, but pee on his car in broad daylight and you can expect to be arrested.
The problem is for Student Three, who comes along after Two's been fired. "Oh, another one of those University Zero grads, eh? Round file for that resume!"
Slashdot Mirror
But mostly I hate standing in line behind some idiot buying three zillion numbers for all his friends and relations when all I want is a carton of milk. And the machines are pink, for God's sake!
I just don't see any special reason to assume that a typical object will be angled sharply, and more reason to guess a shallow approach (which I am arbitrarily defining as angle less than, say, 30 degrees, with 90 degrees being a straight vetical crash). I'm still thinking that most collisions will involve, not objects aimed at Earth, but objects headed near Earth and pulled closer by our gravity -- but for a fast-mover, that pull is going to result in a shallow angle of approach, so shallow, in fact, that many will not even hit, but rather slingshot around us and keep going. Those that do hit would, I would think, have plenty of chances to bounce, break up, buffet, bank, and otherwise behave in a chaotic and unpredictable (although aliterative) fashion.
I'm also going based on a feeling that when I've seen meteor trails they've been long, which suggests to me transit through the upper atmosphere at a wide angle. I'm reasoning that if they tended to come straight down, then I'd see a dot, not a trail.
Picture yourself as Joe Asteroid, bopping along through space at 2.7 zillion miles per. Over to your left there's a little blue marble. You feel strangely drawn towards it, and find yourself angling in its direction. Gradually your attraction increases, and your course becomes increasing curved toward this planet...
My feeling is that only a few fast moving rocks that happen to be headed straight for us (unlikely -- space is big) and slow-moving objects with little lateral velocity are likely to be pulled towards us sharply enough to drop straight down. Anything fast will be most likely to come in at yes, a glancing angle.
I'm guessing (based on figures that I pulled out of my ass) that's why there aren't very many killer asteroids -- most bounce off the atmosphere, or plow through the upper reaches and continue back into space, sadder and wiser chunks of rock.
First day here, huh?
Alright, so a meter is 39.37" instead of 36". Big whoop. We're reading about the damned thing, not driving it. What are the odds that it actually travels at perxactly 300 fph? I've got a buck says that's a rounded figure anyway, quite likely rounded from 100 meters per hour (since I would also guess that the ISS is metric, what with the "I" and all.)
Hey, INAL either, but i can see a line of reasoning here.
Well, yes, but there's a point to some of that -- there's a higher need for accuracy at the White House than at the Weekly World News (although the "Stop Feeling Guilty the OJ Way" is great stuff.)
I'd be upset if the government didn't watch the news, of course, but I'd be equally upset if they didn't also use their own sources, and yes, review the data before acting on it. Reporters have been fooled too.
So you're saying that you didn't inhale?
which was in response to your
(assuming I've got the cast of characters right. With a couple people in the same thread posting AC it gets a little confusing.)
The above definition is, of course, from Dictionary.com
Mostly it's just sort of sad. I've had it done to me (a comment lifted from k5 and posted here, or maybe it was the other way around), and while it was kind of flattering it was also fairly pathetic. If you just think the comment was relevant, then it doesn't cost anything to attribute it.
Wow, must be either tough tourists or wimpy wolves up there!
Hell, when they predicted a water landing for Mir they were clearly playing the odds -- drop something anywhere in that hemisphere and it'll likely splash. It's like predicting a pavement impact if it falls in New York City.
Why?
Seems to me they pretty much go where they go and come from where they come, at whatever angle they happen to be. In fact, given the effect of Earth's gravity on a moving object, I'd think a curved, glancing trajectory rather more likely than a full-on dive toward Cleveland.
Seriously, though, even 10 meters is closer than most of us have had a bullet go by, and a hell of a lot closer than we'd like. Even though I live in Baltimore, I put down the paper when I hear even a distant shot. It's not so much the distance as it is the consequences, rather like the fact that a sidewalk feels perfectly safe, but most of us wouldn't use a bridge across the Grand Canyon if it were only three feet wide, with no rails.
Imagine a bullet passing within two feet of my tiny little head. Is that close? Yup!
Same as before, or maybe less. Look around you. Would you want the sight of a naked /.'er to be your last vision?
How much data did they have for Skylab? For Mir? And the best they could do was, "Someplace wet -- we hope." I don't really think they're going to say, "Quick! Lean to the left and it'll miss you!"
Better?
Never said much? Christ, "Make a deal!" -- that's three quarters of the dialog they gave him.
If that were the standard, then SuperBowl ads would go for about a dime a minute. Except maybe for coupon deals, I don't think any advertiser in any medium has a fucking clue whether or not any ad or campaign is really working. Whether or not people see the ad is, at least, quantifiable, but actual sales depend on things well beyond the ad campaign.
Like the man said, "I know that half my ad budget is being wasted -- but I have no idea which half."
It's a real problem, one that both IBM and many school systems face: how do you reward your best people? Traditionally, they get promoted, and one often finds that great researchers then become competent administrators (if you're lucky). You've lost a PhD and gained an MBA. Similarly many teachers become principals and are lost to the classroom.
IBM came up with Fellowships for these guys -- recognition and money, but they can still get their hands dirty. Some school systems are creating titles like "Master Teacher", and giving them some authority to buck the system but letting them continue to teach.
They almost always are, aren't they? Hell, this time it really was "for the kids".
You can file Freedom of Information Act requests, but I believe you need to specify what you want and pay for copying and retrieval costs. Walking in and saying, "I'd like everything you knew 30 years ago" is a little broad, unless you really want to be buried in back issues of National Geographic and Clogski: The Journal of Albanian Plumbing
went a good deal further and is simply unsupportable. If I am standing in a house, one possibility is that is my house, but others include my being there as a guest or my having broken in through a window.
It's been a while since I studied this sort of thing, and I don't recall any notation for it available from a standard PC keyboard, but what we need here is not "rip = own", but rather "rip is a superset of own". I can rip CD's I own, and I agree that's what Apple probably meant (they are, after all, also a software company and probably want to protect their own IP assets) but I can also rip CD's that I have borrowed from the library, borrowed from a friend, or am about to sell as used without destroying the ripped copy. The first is fair use, the others are not.
That said, I must repeat what i have often said before: scale has been a tremendous factor here. A little sharing among friends has been going on since home recording became possible, and the RIAA didn't really object. It really wasn't enough to worry about, and their noses weren't being rubbed in it. Widespread Internet sharing, OTOH, upped both the scale and the visibility beyond the point that it was reasonable to expect the RIAA to pretend not to see it. Whether or not it actually reduces sales isn't the point -- the point is that it began to be so flagrant as to be insulting. Pee into a bush at night and a cop might tell you to zip it up and go home, but pee on his car in broad daylight and you can expect to be arrested.
The problem is for Student Three, who comes along after Two's been fired. "Oh, another one of those University Zero grads, eh? Round file for that resume!"