I think that I'll hold off on a verdict until I read something written by someone who understands the steps involved and has the English to describe them.
Whatever the case I would expect that sending a search out from one's machine can be turned off, just as can be done now. If one is truly exercised or doesn't trust his favorite network monitoring tool, that bit of scope can be blocked or removed.
Out and about, I've heard no one mention anything even remotely related to any of this stuff. It's been, what, three, four days since a story in the mainstream media. In the same period, nothing in the way of news as to what may be happening in Congress about any of this. Last story I recall seeing was about one of the secret court judges, which got very little space in most newspapers. It's a dead issue.
The populace never glommed onto it; they flat out don't care, they are unable to care, about things they don't pay any attention to.
You've just brought up one of those inconvenient realities that are generally swept under the rug and don't make it into any kind of public discussion. I wasn't aware of this until the breast cancer gene thing a few years back and one link lead to another kind of thing. Holding health hostage may make for profit but not friends. Eventually enough enemies can overturn the idiocy. Well, we can hope. A bunch of complacent coupon clippers condemning people to death to help support their opulent lifestyle rather rubs me the wrong way.
It's not realistic, but I wouldn't mind if Canada repudiated the patents and stole the software, for instance.
(personal disclaimer - I've visited Ontario, city and province, thrice, and passed through twice, and have every time been amazed and humbled by how nicely I've been treated compared to the treatment I've seen Canadians put up with south of the border.)
A fine story. Got me wondering just how dense the dust was in a spiral arm, how great an effect on insolation. As I recall, not much but since the Sun itself is variable, then I suspect that the combo of lower Solar output and dust increases odds for extinction, which would conveniently explain those times that passing through an arm didn't result in extinctions. Never tracked down info on whether we could find out what the Solar output was during arm passages, though.
There is a tendency on the part of many to consider that designing, building, and maintaining structures in space to be a done deal - simply order up what you want and that's it. What we are finding after all these years is that prolonged exposure of materials to space is still often a matter of unforeseen consequences. While experimental work on Earth and various theories of how materials behave have been useful even if only to present the range of possibilities we are continually finding new behaviours.
We've long known of cold welding yet keep finding new ways it happens, and amongst differing materials we hadn't suspected of the behavior. Ditto embrittlement. Then there are the slew of changes owing to constant change in dimension owing to temperature, complicated when disparate materials are joined in some fashion, with accompanying changes in the materials' characteristics - tensile strength and so on. Then there's degradation of performance, such as with solar cells. So what the Boeing study is doing makes much sense. This is real space engineering and is about as geeky as it gets.
Although it would cost more to get there, it'd be nice to be able to boost the ISS into higher orbit. There are problems with that, one being zones of debris, the other the inner Van Allen belt. A good project would be to drain it. The station is in good position to do so. If that were started soon, it could be done about the time the station is scheduled for de-orbit, and would go a long way towards the argument for keeping it going - presuming that there are no major problems at the materials end.
Research. It's not a simple matter of setting up some stuff on a work bench. Experiments have to be packaged to fit space allotted, all relevant measures for power, environmental control, out-gassing and related containment all have to be worked out ahead of time before a project gets sent up. Last I looked there is a slew of interesting stuff in the pipeline. There are some projects where research has advanced enough for small-scale manufacture as well, for some materials and pharmaceuticals.
There are a lot of dormant satellites in GEO that are unusable, often due to being out of fuel to control attitude or because they need minor repair to antennas, gyros, and circuitry. If there were enterprise to develop and build manned and unmanned service vehicles, the ISS could be used as a service garage and gas station. Longer term, with it or it's successor, it would be in a good position to aid in dealing with processing of asteroid material - although that could perhaps be done as well in lunar orbit and on Luna's surface. Much boils down to "it depends." Point is, though, there is a lot of useful work that could be done _now_ that ISS would be suited for. Oh, and there's also the matter of using it as a base to aid in the removal of unwanted orbital debris, a task whose importance is difficult to overstate, collision odds notwithstanding.
All the above is amenable to fairly straightforward engineering analysis. The gross difficulty is that those in charge of the purse strings tend to be not only ignorant of the issues, resistant to learning about them, and pursuing various agendas that are not based fully in reality, but rather on emotion, religion, graft, and other assorted idiocy.
It's one thing to have an intelligent discussion of varying views and priorities based on science and engineering realities; it's another entirely to make sweeping pronunciamentos that stem from un-examined and un-supportable supposition and prejudice.
And yes, for various reasons, I think the Chinese should have been, and should now be, included. There are certainly some risks but I think they're higher for the exclusion. Realistically it may be too late. Damage has been done and not so easily made good.
The decision on when to de-orbit ISS - and of any dismantling beforehand - ought to be an engineering decision.
Spot on. Several others have made good posts about proper use of Kickstarter, but you got the essence.
I've got very little money to put to a project, generally enough for a copy of the game or CD and the like every month or so; I've gotten good return on four, three are in progress - and all late, and one appears to be dead. I'm satisfied with the outcomes. It helped that I well understood what patronage is and was what I consider a KS campaign to be.
There's one project, Tangiers, where the communication has been fantastic, so well above and beyond any expectation that it alone in some ways has already returned my hopes for the project. They've even published work schedule and financials. Another, Lifeless Planet, is well beyond schedule yet I have no qualms. As for Leisure Suit Larry, well, hey, it's Larry, better than ever, and came with a Linux version - even tho the devs repeatedly said they would not release a Linux version.
From what I understand of it, Kickstarter is a great resource and mechanism for all concerned.
As for the Subotai/CLANG thing, while I'm chary of hindsight and all, it seems almost a willful failure of comprehension coupled with unrealistic planning on their part. To me, their parting post is.... lame. Makes me glad I'm not into sword fighting. And for the rewards, if I still had my smithy stuff, I could make me own blades. I'd miss the parties, tho.
"If I wanted to brew a Stella or a Guinness, I'm doubtful that I could create anything that could pass as "close enough"."
Precise recipes may not be available. Basic recipes for type are. With some care and practice, you can get close enough. Even better, you can alter recipes and their brewing to conform more closely to your own likings.
With a Guinness style, for example, you can sour around 3% of the batch with lacto-bacillus and add it back to get that characteristic tang, but the strains of the critter influence the flavor. Although Guinness is one of my favorite brews and what I usually order when I can afford to go out for a pint, I've long ago reached the point that a good basic range of stouts is my preference at the house, in addition to other ales and the occasional lager.
If you need exact, buy commercial. If you can enjoy well-made close to type, homebrew is just fine. Also, each batch will be a little different no matter what; to me that's part of the enjoyment (unless I really screw something up. Even then, it's pretty hard to brew something that isn't drinkable. Unless you're one of those who won't sanitize and won't follow directions.)
As others have pointed out, three safeties failed. It was not a triple fail-safe, but quadruple. The meaning of the term 'fail-safe' is that in the event of some accident that every single element of the firing chain will fail to "off" and cannot be re-enabled. That last switch, IIRC, was the one that would have sent the signal to close the switch to release the now-charged capacitors that power the circuit that fires the individual squibs in the plastic explosive surrounding the core. That certainly qualifies as a close call. You can go look all this up if you like. All the basic info was still available last time I looked, about ten years back.
The _story_ is old but Jones got documented verification of the story which is why this is news.
If memory serves, after this close call the entire "fail-safe" system was re-designed to work like it was supposed to and then tested seven ways to Sunday and all devices were re-built with the new gear. The new system got called Permissive Action Link, I think. It's a little late to call my cousin who flew BUFFs for most of the '70s, so folks can look it up themselves.
If that's the worst you're getting from life, you're riding high. The again, whatever you're high on is doing you a gross disservice for you to state Linux users can't view YouTube and other videos. Heck, I can watch stuff on Netflix on Linux also.
Anyway, 'grats and all for the trolling. Boring evening chez Mom's basement?
I first saw this circa 1990 in an excerpt from rec.humor.funny on GEnie. Netfunny is the Web version, posted by the original editor, Brad Templeton (interesting fellow, he); copyrights run from 1987-2008. I've tried to find the earliest version but with little success, since dates are not often given at the many sites of quotations a search returns. Of all the versions I've read, this one seems the best but it may simply be because it's the first one I saw, however the phrasing is the simplest, the arrangement the more effective.
Anyway, Europa seems a fine place to explore. The one-way "me, too" thing is so much horse apples; the crowd sourcing of research is novel to me. If humans go, unless it's part of a large expedition that's taking a five-year run or so at the moons of Jupiter and Saturn for example, wait for a decent fusion drive, stay under g, with a trip time of months not years - then come back. (And as for Mars One, I think the more difficult aspects will be production of food (Vegans aside, meat will be needed, earthworms and chickens, so take along a starter kit of Earth soils) and replacement parts. Likely gonna need some vitamins, although trace minerals ought to be available from the land.)
Netflix works fine on Ubuntu, just have to install netflix-desktop: https://launchpad.net/netflix-desktop I've been using it since last Fall and am still on crutches, so no hoop jumping.
I'm aware of other services and alternative sources for entertainment programming and merely suggested this. De gustibus and all that. While I do have a few principles I'm too old to be a purist about many things; I don't give a rat's patoot if Netflix supports Linux or not (although I'd rather they did.) Right now being able to watch a movie or TV show on the OS of my choosing by selecting Netflix Desktop from a drop-down menu is what I care about.
Using Secunia's Personal Software Inspector can make things easier; it now will download and install most updates for applications. In my XP vm the only one that I recall having to manually do was Adobe Reader. The Flash browser plugins were automagic but took a couple of tries. I also manually check and install MSE, personal preference.
For Windows updates I use IE to go to the Microsoft update page - for whatever reasons I don't care for the fully automated Win update.
I only keep the XP vm around for a few programs that I rarely run and to help out a few people that still run it. I no longer need it for Netflix since having it on my Ubuntu desktop using Compholio's patch of Wine.
When I was in school, many of my teachers were veterans, not a few combat. The guy who taught high school civics was adamant about the right to speak and the right to vote. He offered some examples from his life, though none quite as stark as your grandfather's.
Circa '52 I spent a morning walking around Dachau. The gallows, ovens, and human-skin lampshade made a lasting impression that got only reinforced as I got older and learned more of what happened there and, by extension, the kinds of thinking that led to such places.
Fear may be the mind killer, but to be unable to speak freely is a soul killer and of benefit only to the tyrant.
Yeah, I got caught by that. I've got a couple of gmail accounts, one for the real me, a few for throwaway newsletters and such. Initially the real account had a nickname, but somewhere along the way I used my full real meat name and it stuck. (I'm not real swift at all this stuff, obviously, and not immune to mistakes or the carelessness arising from being in a hurry.)
For several reasons I thought I wanted a + account; now I'm doubly stuck, with my real name on + and on my prime gmail.
Mostly it's not a big deal, but I have real reason to prefer pseudonymity to prevent the off-chance of a couple of bad actors from an earlier life tracking me down and causing problems. Too late; even if I canceled and deleted everything and tried to start over, with my luck I'd screw it up anyway.
Two things needed - strong AI and good robotic vision. The latter is coming along nicely, all told. As for the former, no. However, for many things an adequate AI would be sufficient. For a slew of simple tasks (what seem simple to us) it's a toss-up. Some things would only require good programming, which is to my mind rare but possible now.
An example might be a robotic lawn mower; with decent sensors and enough logic to avoid running over children, pets, rocks, etc., it could be done now. Two problems, liability and why the fuck do we need big useless expanses of grass - let it go to native species and plant gardens, food and floral.
The kicker for mobile robots is sufficiently cheap available power. Energy is key.
Now then, we never really fully absorbed all the jobs lost to automotive automation going back to the 70's - close, but not fully. What's coming down the pike is several magnitudes larger; by mid-century 'first world' countries will lose between 1/3 and 1/2 of jobs to robots and automation. There is no way that can be absorbed by any means.
There are limits here. The number of jobs and new jobs in new businesses will be far less than the labor pool. History is no guide here, and we've had few real cases anyway. (I haven't seen good documentation but we don't seem to have a good count of number of people who starved or suicided due to the Industrial Revolution, for example.)
Some people are at their limits as to what they can learn how to do and do well enough to be considered employable. This percentage will only increase. The number of jobs available for those who are amenable to re-training will be less than needed; for creativity to flourish there must be support - a hunger-weakened homeless person is not going to magically chisel an award-winning sculpture.
Hmm. Given rising population, costliness of meat production, maybe we will get used to a lot of soy meat with a slight almond flavor; problem solved.
Given the real problems that will need to be addressed especially in light of an economic model incapable of doing so, it's going to be interesting. Even so, I think what BMW and Baxter are doing is wonderful, nifty stuff. The battle, if that's how some will structure it, is not between robots and humans competing for jobs; it's about how we organize ourselves as a functioning community versus feudal patterns of valuation and recompense.
Thanks for the link; I'd completely forgotten Barbell and her sisters, although I knew of Albacore. Freidman is now on my list, as is Polmar. I just got two books using a gift certificate to Amazon - The Ice Diaries by Capt. Wm. Anderson - an update to Nautilus 90 North; and Unknown Waters, an account of the under-ice Siberian coastal survey of the Queenfish (SSN-651) by Capt. Alfred McLaren. Remarkable stuff, exploration in the grand tradition, Cold-War derring-do, and all in essentially uncharted waters under the ice. The latter bit particularly gives me the willies.
I didn't dig around for extant photos of control rooms of the past fifty years and brief poking around on Wikipedia and the disappointing museum page for Bonefish (but I'm very glad she was saved) wasn't helpful, but if memory serves from some pics I've seen and a few documentaries there are no seats except for the ordinary watch-standers but not for OOD, exec, nor captain. (Although I think I recall there being a pull-out stool or two by the nav plot.) At any rate, hardly Star Trek material.
When walking, just walk. When sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.
--Old Zen
"People confuse music with background noise and get uncomfortable when there is silence." That, or flip the TV on automatically when entering a room, not to watch, but for the whatever. It's as though they can't stand to be alone with themselves. I find that a bit scary. I'm not so pure, though; I'll sometimes put on a side while doing stuff around the pad.
I'm rooting for the kid. Just make sure he's getting in the daily dozens or such, otherwise let him play.
That's odd, I'd long thought there was still a difference between career and careen.
Well, that's alright. As English contracts, a smaller vocabulary is easier to carry around; I've lost thousands of words since the 70's and I feel lighter.
To add to what DerekLyons has posted, the cep (circular error probable, used to be written as C.E.P.) for an RV on the Trident II D5 with a W88 is given as 300-400ft. If memory serves that's considered effective against hardened targets.
Last I knew they incinerated most of the stockpile. If memory serves, one such incinerator was on Johnston Island, another in Idaho. By incinerate I don't mean burn, like what you do on the outdoor grill, but burn the living shit out of, like at 3,500-5000F or so.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that I'll hold off on a verdict until I read something written by someone who understands the steps involved and has the English to describe them.
Whatever the case I would expect that sending a search out from one's machine can be turned off, just as can be done now. If one is truly exercised or doesn't trust his favorite network monitoring tool, that bit of scope can be blocked or removed.
Out and about, I've heard no one mention anything even remotely related to any of this stuff. It's been, what, three, four days since a story in the mainstream media. In the same period, nothing in the way of news as to what may be happening in Congress about any of this. Last story I recall seeing was about one of the secret court judges, which got very little space in most newspapers. It's a dead issue.
The populace never glommed onto it; they flat out don't care, they are unable to care, about things they don't pay any attention to.
"The next frontier in computing is parallel processing, and we will be treading ground already walked decades ago by supercomputers"
or by the transputer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer which was exciting stuff in the 80s, and still used today.
You've just brought up one of those inconvenient realities that are generally swept under the rug and don't make it into any kind of public discussion. I wasn't aware of this until the breast cancer gene thing a few years back and one link lead to another kind of thing. Holding health hostage may make for profit but not friends. Eventually enough enemies can overturn the idiocy. Well, we can hope. A bunch of complacent coupon clippers condemning people to death to help support their opulent lifestyle rather rubs me the wrong way.
It's not realistic, but I wouldn't mind if Canada repudiated the patents and stole the software, for instance.
(personal disclaimer - I've visited Ontario, city and province, thrice, and passed through twice, and have every time been amazed and humbled by how nicely I've been treated compared to the treatment I've seen Canadians put up with south of the border.)
A fine story. Got me wondering just how dense the dust was in a spiral arm, how great an effect on insolation. As I recall, not much but since the Sun itself is variable, then I suspect that the combo of lower Solar output and dust increases odds for extinction, which would conveniently explain those times that passing through an arm didn't result in extinctions. Never tracked down info on whether we could find out what the Solar output was during arm passages, though.
There is a tendency on the part of many to consider that designing, building, and maintaining structures in space to be a done deal - simply order up what you want and that's it. What we are finding after all these years is that prolonged exposure of materials to space is still often a matter of unforeseen consequences. While experimental work on Earth and various theories of how materials behave have been useful even if only to present the range of possibilities we are continually finding new behaviours.
We've long known of cold welding yet keep finding new ways it happens, and amongst differing materials we hadn't suspected of the behavior. Ditto embrittlement. Then there are the slew of changes owing to constant change in dimension owing to temperature, complicated when disparate materials are joined in some fashion, with accompanying changes in the materials' characteristics - tensile strength and so on. Then there's degradation of performance, such as with solar cells. So what the Boeing study is doing makes much sense. This is real space engineering and is about as geeky as it gets.
Although it would cost more to get there, it'd be nice to be able to boost the ISS into higher orbit. There are problems with that, one being zones of debris, the other the inner Van Allen belt. A good project would be to drain it. The station is in good position to do so. If that were started soon, it could be done about the time the station is scheduled for de-orbit, and would go a long way towards the argument for keeping it going - presuming that there are no major problems at the materials end.
Research. It's not a simple matter of setting up some stuff on a work bench. Experiments have to be packaged to fit space allotted, all relevant measures for power, environmental control, out-gassing and related containment all have to be worked out ahead of time before a project gets sent up. Last I looked there is a slew of interesting stuff in the pipeline. There are some projects where research has advanced enough for small-scale manufacture as well, for some materials and pharmaceuticals.
There are a lot of dormant satellites in GEO that are unusable, often due to being out of fuel to control attitude or because they need minor repair to antennas, gyros, and circuitry. If there were enterprise to develop and build manned and unmanned service vehicles, the ISS could be used as a service garage and gas station. Longer term, with it or it's successor, it would be in a good position to aid in dealing with processing of asteroid material - although that could perhaps be done as well in lunar orbit and on Luna's surface. Much boils down to "it depends." Point is, though, there is a lot of useful work that could be done _now_ that ISS would be suited for. Oh, and there's also the matter of using it as a base to aid in the removal of unwanted orbital debris, a task whose importance is difficult to overstate, collision odds notwithstanding.
All the above is amenable to fairly straightforward engineering analysis. The gross difficulty is that those in charge of the purse strings tend to be not only ignorant of the issues, resistant to learning about them, and pursuing various agendas that are not based fully in reality, but rather on emotion, religion, graft, and other assorted idiocy.
It's one thing to have an intelligent discussion of varying views and priorities based on science and engineering realities; it's another entirely to make sweeping pronunciamentos that stem from un-examined and un-supportable supposition and prejudice.
And yes, for various reasons, I think the Chinese should have been, and should now be, included. There are certainly some risks but I think they're higher for the exclusion. Realistically it may be too late. Damage has been done and not so easily made good.
The decision on when to de-orbit ISS - and of any dismantling beforehand - ought to be an engineering decision.
Spot on. Several others have made good posts about proper use of Kickstarter, but you got the essence.
I've got very little money to put to a project, generally enough for a copy of the game or CD and the like every month or so; I've gotten good return on four, three are in progress - and all late, and one appears to be dead. I'm satisfied with the outcomes. It helped that I well understood what patronage is and was what I consider a KS campaign to be.
There's one project, Tangiers, where the communication has been fantastic, so well above and beyond any expectation that it alone in some ways has already returned my hopes for the project. They've even published work schedule and financials. Another, Lifeless Planet, is well beyond schedule yet I have no qualms. As for Leisure Suit Larry, well, hey, it's Larry, better than ever, and came with a Linux version - even tho the devs repeatedly said they would not release a Linux version.
From what I understand of it, Kickstarter is a great resource and mechanism for all concerned.
As for the Subotai/CLANG thing, while I'm chary of hindsight and all, it seems almost a willful failure of comprehension coupled with unrealistic planning on their part. To me, their parting post is.... lame. Makes me glad I'm not into sword fighting. And for the rewards, if I still had my smithy stuff, I could make me own blades. I'd miss the parties, tho.
"If I wanted to brew a Stella or a Guinness, I'm doubtful that I could create anything that could pass as "close enough"."
Precise recipes may not be available. Basic recipes for type are. With some care and practice, you can get close enough. Even better, you can alter recipes and their brewing to conform more closely to your own likings.
With a Guinness style, for example, you can sour around 3% of the batch with lacto-bacillus and add it back to get that characteristic tang, but the strains of the critter influence the flavor. Although Guinness is one of my favorite brews and what I usually order when I can afford to go out for a pint, I've long ago reached the point that a good basic range of stouts is my preference at the house, in addition to other ales and the occasional lager.
If you need exact, buy commercial. If you can enjoy well-made close to type, homebrew is just fine. Also, each batch will be a little different no matter what; to me that's part of the enjoyment (unless I really screw something up. Even then, it's pretty hard to brew something that isn't drinkable. Unless you're one of those who won't sanitize and won't follow directions.)
Good linked story, thank you. Worth the reading for those interested.
As others have pointed out, three safeties failed. It was not a triple fail-safe, but quadruple. The meaning of the term 'fail-safe' is that in the event of some accident that every single element of the firing chain will fail to "off" and cannot be re-enabled. That last switch, IIRC, was the one that would have sent the signal to close the switch to release the now-charged capacitors that power the circuit that fires the individual squibs in the plastic explosive surrounding the core. That certainly qualifies as a close call. You can go look all this up if you like. All the basic info was still available last time I looked, about ten years back.
The _story_ is old but Jones got documented verification of the story which is why this is news.
If memory serves, after this close call the entire "fail-safe" system was re-designed to work like it was supposed to and then tested seven ways to Sunday and all devices were re-built with the new gear. The new system got called Permissive Action Link, I think. It's a little late to call my cousin who flew BUFFs for most of the '70s, so folks can look it up themselves.
"Until Linux users can view YouTube, life sucks."
If that's the worst you're getting from life, you're riding high. The again, whatever you're high on is doing you a gross disservice for you to state Linux users can't view YouTube and other videos. Heck, I can watch stuff on Netflix on Linux also.
Anyway, 'grats and all for the trolling. Boring evening chez Mom's basement?
when i die, i'd like to go peacefully.
in my sleep.
like my grandfather.
not screaming,
like the passengers in his car...
http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/93q1/carwreck.html
I first saw this circa 1990 in an excerpt from rec.humor.funny on GEnie. Netfunny is the Web version, posted by the original editor, Brad Templeton (interesting fellow, he); copyrights run from 1987-2008. I've tried to find the earliest version but with little success, since dates are not often given at the many sites of quotations a search returns. Of all the versions I've read, this one seems the best but it may simply be because it's the first one I saw, however the phrasing is the simplest, the arrangement the more effective.
Anyway, Europa seems a fine place to explore. The one-way "me, too" thing is so much horse apples; the crowd sourcing of research is novel to me. If humans go, unless it's part of a large expedition that's taking a five-year run or so at the moons of Jupiter and Saturn for example, wait for a decent fusion drive, stay under g, with a trip time of months not years - then come back. (And as for Mars One, I think the more difficult aspects will be production of food (Vegans aside, meat will be needed, earthworms and chickens, so take along a starter kit of Earth soils) and replacement parts. Likely gonna need some vitamins, although trace minerals ought to be available from the land.)
Netflix works fine on Ubuntu, just have to install netflix-desktop: https://launchpad.net/netflix-desktop I've been using it since last Fall and am still on crutches, so no hoop jumping.
I'm aware of other services and alternative sources for entertainment programming and merely suggested this. De gustibus and all that. While I do have a few principles I'm too old to be a purist about many things; I don't give a rat's patoot if Netflix supports Linux or not (although I'd rather they did.) Right now being able to watch a movie or TV show on the OS of my choosing by selecting Netflix Desktop from a drop-down menu is what I care about.
Or use the XP mode of Zorin OS.
Using Secunia's Personal Software Inspector can make things easier; it now will download and install most updates for applications. In my XP vm the only one that I recall having to manually do was Adobe Reader. The Flash browser plugins were automagic but took a couple of tries. I also manually check and install MSE, personal preference.
For Windows updates I use IE to go to the Microsoft update page - for whatever reasons I don't care for the fully automated Win update.
I only keep the XP vm around for a few programs that I rarely run and to help out a few people that still run it. I no longer need it for Netflix since having it on my Ubuntu desktop using Compholio's patch of Wine.
Amen, and thank you.
When I was in school, many of my teachers were veterans, not a few combat. The guy who taught high school civics was adamant about the right to speak and the right to vote. He offered some examples from his life, though none quite as stark as your grandfather's.
Circa '52 I spent a morning walking around Dachau. The gallows, ovens, and human-skin lampshade made a lasting impression that got only reinforced as I got older and learned more of what happened there and, by extension, the kinds of thinking that led to such places.
Fear may be the mind killer, but to be unable to speak freely is a soul killer and of benefit only to the tyrant.
Yeah, I got caught by that. I've got a couple of gmail accounts, one for the real me, a few for throwaway newsletters and such. Initially the real account had a nickname, but somewhere along the way I used my full real meat name and it stuck. (I'm not real swift at all this stuff, obviously, and not immune to mistakes or the carelessness arising from being in a hurry.)
For several reasons I thought I wanted a + account; now I'm doubly stuck, with my real name on + and on my prime gmail.
Mostly it's not a big deal, but I have real reason to prefer pseudonymity to prevent the off-chance of a couple of bad actors from an earlier life tracking me down and causing problems. Too late; even if I canceled and deleted everything and tried to start over, with my luck I'd screw it up anyway.
Two things needed - strong AI and good robotic vision. The latter is coming along nicely, all told. As for the former, no. However, for many things an adequate AI would be sufficient. For a slew of simple tasks (what seem simple to us) it's a toss-up. Some things would only require good programming, which is to my mind rare but possible now.
An example might be a robotic lawn mower; with decent sensors and enough logic to avoid running over children, pets, rocks, etc., it could be done now. Two problems, liability and why the fuck do we need big useless expanses of grass - let it go to native species and plant gardens, food and floral.
The kicker for mobile robots is sufficiently cheap available power. Energy is key.
Now then, we never really fully absorbed all the jobs lost to automotive automation going back to the 70's - close, but not fully. What's coming down the pike is several magnitudes larger; by mid-century 'first world' countries will lose between 1/3 and 1/2 of jobs to robots and automation. There is no way that can be absorbed by any means.
There are limits here. The number of jobs and new jobs in new businesses will be far less than the labor pool. History is no guide here, and we've had few real cases anyway. (I haven't seen good documentation but we don't seem to have a good count of number of people who starved or suicided due to the Industrial Revolution, for example.)
Some people are at their limits as to what they can learn how to do and do well enough to be considered employable. This percentage will only increase. The number of jobs available for those who are amenable to re-training will be less than needed; for creativity to flourish there must be support - a hunger-weakened homeless person is not going to magically chisel an award-winning sculpture.
Hmm. Given rising population, costliness of meat production, maybe we will get used to a lot of soy meat with a slight almond flavor; problem solved.
Given the real problems that will need to be addressed especially in light of an economic model incapable of doing so, it's going to be interesting. Even so, I think what BMW and Baxter are doing is wonderful, nifty stuff. The battle, if that's how some will structure it, is not between robots and humans competing for jobs; it's about how we organize ourselves as a functioning community versus feudal patterns of valuation and recompense.
Ah, my lapse. Tnx.
Thanks for the link; I'd completely forgotten Barbell and her sisters, although I knew of Albacore. Freidman is now on my list, as is Polmar. I just got two books using a gift certificate to Amazon - The Ice Diaries by Capt. Wm. Anderson - an update to Nautilus 90 North; and Unknown Waters, an account of the under-ice Siberian coastal survey of the Queenfish (SSN-651) by Capt. Alfred McLaren. Remarkable stuff, exploration in the grand tradition, Cold-War derring-do, and all in essentially uncharted waters under the ice. The latter bit particularly gives me the willies.
I didn't dig around for extant photos of control rooms of the past fifty years and brief poking around on Wikipedia and the disappointing museum page for Bonefish (but I'm very glad she was saved) wasn't helpful, but if memory serves from some pics I've seen and a few documentaries there are no seats except for the ordinary watch-standers but not for OOD, exec, nor captain. (Although I think I recall there being a pull-out stool or two by the nav plot.) At any rate, hardly Star Trek material.
When walking, just walk.
When sitting, just sit.
Above all, don't wobble.
--Old Zen
"People confuse music with background noise and get uncomfortable when there is silence." That, or flip the TV on automatically when entering a room, not to watch, but for the whatever. It's as though they can't stand to be alone with themselves. I find that a bit scary. I'm not so pure, though; I'll sometimes put on a side while doing stuff around the pad.
I'm rooting for the kid. Just make sure he's getting in the daily dozens or such, otherwise let him play.
"People can easily find ways to entertain themselves or create work and ways to keep busy -- IF they have enough resources to allow those activities."
In a nutshell. Tnx.
That's odd, I'd long thought there was still a difference between career and careen.
Well, that's alright. As English contracts, a smaller vocabulary is easier to carry around; I've lost thousands of words since the 70's and I feel lighter.
Got a chuckle from your comment, thanks for that.
To add to what DerekLyons has posted, the cep (circular error probable, used to be written as C.E.P.) for an RV on the Trident II D5 with a W88 is given as 300-400ft. If memory serves that's considered effective against hardened targets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGM-133_Trident_II gives 143 consecutive successful test flights
https://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/slbm/d-5.htm
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/W88.html
Last I knew they incinerated most of the stockpile. If memory serves, one such incinerator was on Johnston Island, another in Idaho. By incinerate I don't mean burn, like what you do on the outdoor grill, but burn the living shit out of, like at 3,500-5000F or so.