When you pay $15 for a 10-15 song CD, you own something. You can stick it in your pocket, look at the liner notes, make it into a coaster...
But with this plan, what do you "own"? How do you put your hand on a bitstream?
You don't "own" anything. You've been licensed something, that may or may not be encumbered by overbearing licensing terms.
What's magical about $1 as being the benchmark between "cheap bastard" and "music lover"? I can see as how it's the difference between "making some money" and "making more money", but they're (where they=Apple or whoever wants me to shell out this much for music) certainly not going to get any of my $1's.
It didn't crash on me, but there were about three months there where I couldn't talk to half my contacts because of the ICQ2GO bug.
That sucked, and in a product I paid for, it was not acceptable.
Was it Trillian's fault? No. But they needed to show the sort of rapid update capacity I saw last year (where the bugs would be patched before I noticed them), rather than waiting.
And wondering.
And waiting.
I love Trillian. It's supacool. But there's no way I would run a business on it.
I think they do a reasonably good job with rating (say) dishwashers. However, I know that they don't know anything about bicycles (which I know a heck of a lot about), so I'm not convinced they are as expert as they present themselves to be on other things.
I've also never been satisfied with their apprehension of the idea of "good user interface". They don't do a good job rating or reporting ease of use on a lot of stuff.
The question is not whether IM is a killer app. (it is absurdly useful)
The question is is anybody going to be dense enough to pay $zillions to deploy it in a corporate environment?
If they are, they're dumb. Jabber works good. It's not like the Office suite (Excel does stuff for me that OpenOffice just doesn't do yet). IM is simple. It's well understood. And it's been implemnented, Free. (beer speech)
I've posted at great length on this topic. Mostly rebutting people who say "Well NASA should have done SOMETHING!"
That presupposes that NASA was actually aware of a problem. In hindsight, it's extremely easy to say that they should have understood the extent of the damage to the spacecraft, but there was simply no way to do that.
Now we can argue all day about whether NASA SHOULD have the resources to inspect vehicles on orbit, but that would involve lots of wrangling about NASA's absurdly small budget, which has been wasted on an outdated launch system (STS) and a useless space station.
That horse left the barn in about 1989.
Now, we are accepting for purposes of this discussion that the damage occured on launch.
They went with their best estimate of the damage. They have seen similar problems before, with no substantial effect on the ship's safety. Going out and looking at the damage was impossible, and equipping future missions to do such things would be folly. It is not possible to prepare for every eventuality.
If by hypercooling you meant that they could have turned the orbiter doors-up and allowed the bottom surface to cool down, well, gosh, you just bought almost an extra ten seconds. Maybe. It doesn't really matter if you throw an ice cube or a splash of water on a hot griddle: Both are gonna turn to steam really fast. Multiply that temperature by about 10 and you're getting closer to the Shuttle's reentry temp.
As far as landing at night, that's just absurd.
The real solution to the problem is to have the facilities for rapid launch of space vehicles. No, that doesn't mean we should keep another Shuttle stack on the back burner in the event of a catastrophe. That means we should be funding the hell out of the X-Prize competitors to get the best possible putting-people-into-and-out-of-space-fast machines.
The Shuttle design was a political compromise. We are now seeing the costs of that compromise. It's not the right tool for the job.
Yes, I am a student. And a scientist. And an engineer. That means that I have a more than passing familiarity first with the systems in question, and second with the problems they're trying to solve. That doesn't mean I'm smarter than anybody else, but I am a lot better informed than, say, any journalist on God's green earth.
I'm NOT proud of our space program. I think it's a joke, and I'm the biggest space advocate you're likely to find.
STS was an iffy design that has been stretched far beyond its useful lifespan. The ISS is just a platform to do nothing, unless and until we get a vehicle that can stay up there for crew recovery.
So, no, I'm NOT proud of our space program. I'm eager to see our country make a commitment to the manned exploration of space...but I don't see it happening.
Landing...at night. Ummm...what the hell are you talking about? Do you seriously believe that the radiant energy from the sun amounts to a hill of beans compared to the kinetic energy of a projectile going that fast? Hell, with your logic, let's just send a manned mission to land on the sun. It'll work fine...we just have to go at night.
I think to hypercool the wing, you'd have to use some dilithium crystals or something.
In other words, you haven't the vaguest notion of what you're talking about.
NASA can't do science with ISS, because NASA is too busy shooting Shuttles than in building next-generation launch and recovery vehicles.
Whether there is fruitful research to be done (again) in MEO is a different question. Me, I think Mars is a hell of a lot more interesting than Earth orbit.
And it's true, whether or not you read it on slashdot. The fallacy of appealing to authority also works in reverse: The source of a comment does not indicate its validity.
Well, it's certainly possible. And carbon nanotubes have been made, in smallish samples. But, the logistics of how to build something that freakin' long are seriously non-trivial.
I also don't think it will be possible to build this from the ground up. I believe it will be necessary to build in space and bring the cable down to the socket on Earth.
Now this is important. Budget serious money for a good light system. You can start with the rather-big-flashlight-attached-to-handlebars jobs, but if you're doing any amount of riding after dark you're going to need something that a) is rechargeable and b) throws more photons.
VistaLite has a good selection, and I've abused their products with no ill effects. I think that the flashing LED taillight is sufficient for nighttime rear visibility and is/really/ rugged. Then you'll need something to go up front.
Silly poncy Europeans. Everybody knows that here in civilization, we measure things in Neutral Buoyancy Labs. The interesting thing is, the derivative unit for pressure (asston per square Neutral Buoyancy Lab) is, at unity, pretty close to atmospheric pressure.
I think that $10bn number, and the 15 year horizon, are absurdly optimistic. There are LOTS of non-trivial problems to solve before we get a space elevator.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, um, skippy, I don't think he was talking about typing.
Go ahead and design an air-breathing single-stage-to-orbit reusable launch vehicle, then we'll talk.
When you pay $15 for a 10-15 song CD, you own something. You can stick it in your pocket, look at the liner notes, make it into a coaster...
But with this plan, what do you "own"? How do you put your hand on a bitstream?
You don't "own" anything. You've been licensed something, that may or may not be encumbered by overbearing licensing terms.
What's magical about $1 as being the benchmark between "cheap bastard" and "music lover"? I can see as how it's the difference between "making some money" and "making more money", but they're (where they=Apple or whoever wants me to shell out this much for music) certainly not going to get any of my $1's.
It didn't crash on me, but there were about three months there where I couldn't talk to half my contacts because of the ICQ2GO bug.
That sucked, and in a product I paid for, it was not acceptable.
Was it Trillian's fault? No. But they needed to show the sort of rapid update capacity I saw last year (where the bugs would be patched before I noticed them), rather than waiting.
And wondering.
And waiting.
I love Trillian. It's supacool. But there's no way I would run a business on it.
Can you give me some citations on this? I don't disbelieve you, but I'd like to see more info.
Thanks!
Don't get too excited about CU.
I think they do a reasonably good job with rating (say) dishwashers. However, I know that they don't know anything about bicycles (which I know a heck of a lot about), so I'm not convinced they are as expert as they present themselves to be on other things.
I've also never been satisfied with their apprehension of the idea of "good user interface". They don't do a good job rating or reporting ease of use on a lot of stuff.
Just my $.02.
The question is not whether IM is a killer app. (it is absurdly useful)
The question is is anybody going to be dense enough to pay $zillions to deploy it in a corporate environment?
If they are, they're dumb. Jabber works good. It's not like the Office suite (Excel does stuff for me that OpenOffice just doesn't do yet). IM is simple. It's well understood. And it's been implemnented, Free. (beer speech)
How do you prove a negative? How do you prove that no, we don't have any copies of MS Office around here?
And why the hell am I now guilty until proven innocent?
That, my friend, is the problem.
Come on! If you can't get the government to enforce your store-bought laws, why would you buy it in the first place?
In other words, yours is a very pretty thought...that has nothing to do with reality.
Gosh, it's almost like MS is a predatory monopoly, uninterested in the desires of their customers.
Oh, wait.
I've posted at great length on this topic. Mostly rebutting people who say "Well NASA should have done SOMETHING!"
That presupposes that NASA was actually aware of a problem. In hindsight, it's extremely easy to say that they should have understood the extent of the damage to the spacecraft, but there was simply no way to do that.
Now we can argue all day about whether NASA SHOULD have the resources to inspect vehicles on orbit, but that would involve lots of wrangling about NASA's absurdly small budget, which has been wasted on an outdated launch system (STS) and a useless space station.
That horse left the barn in about 1989.
Now, we are accepting for purposes of this discussion that the damage occured on launch.
They went with their best estimate of the damage. They have seen similar problems before, with no substantial effect on the ship's safety. Going out and looking at the damage was impossible, and equipping future missions to do such things would be folly. It is not possible to prepare for every eventuality.
If by hypercooling you meant that they could have turned the orbiter doors-up and allowed the bottom surface to cool down, well, gosh, you just bought almost an extra ten seconds. Maybe. It doesn't really matter if you throw an ice cube or a splash of water on a hot griddle: Both are gonna turn to steam really fast. Multiply that temperature by about 10 and you're getting closer to the Shuttle's reentry temp.
As far as landing at night, that's just absurd.
The real solution to the problem is to have the facilities for rapid launch of space vehicles. No, that doesn't mean we should keep another Shuttle stack on the back burner in the event of a catastrophe. That means we should be funding the hell out of the X-Prize competitors to get the best possible putting-people-into-and-out-of-space-fast machines.
The Shuttle design was a political compromise. We are now seeing the costs of that compromise. It's not the right tool for the job.
Yes, I am a student. And a scientist. And an engineer. That means that I have a more than passing familiarity first with the systems in question, and second with the problems they're trying to solve. That doesn't mean I'm smarter than anybody else, but I am a lot better informed than, say, any journalist on God's green earth.
I'm NOT proud of our space program. I think it's a joke, and I'm the biggest space advocate you're likely to find.
STS was an iffy design that has been stretched far beyond its useful lifespan. The ISS is just a platform to do nothing, unless and until we get a vehicle that can stay up there for crew recovery.
So, no, I'm NOT proud of our space program. I'm eager to see our country make a commitment to the manned exploration of space...but I don't see it happening.
Nighttime landing.
Landing...at night. Ummm...what the hell are you talking about? Do you seriously believe that the radiant energy from the sun amounts to a hill of beans compared to the kinetic energy of a projectile going that fast? Hell, with your logic, let's just send a manned mission to land on the sun. It'll work fine...we just have to go at night.
I think to hypercool the wing, you'd have to use some dilithium crystals or something.
In other words, you haven't the vaguest notion of what you're talking about.
He's right on target.
NASA can't do science with ISS, because NASA is too busy shooting Shuttles than in building next-generation launch and recovery vehicles.
Whether there is fruitful research to be done (again) in MEO is a different question. Me, I think Mars is a hell of a lot more interesting than Earth orbit.
And it's true, whether or not you read it on slashdot. The fallacy of appealing to authority also works in reverse: The source of a comment does not indicate its validity.
Me, I'm an equal opportunity lecher.
We like girls, all kinds of girls
From Annie to Veronica...
Throw away your keyboard and start chiseling your messages in stone, you elitist troll.
Who the hell appointed YOU the arbiter of artistic ability?
Well, it's certainly possible. And carbon nanotubes have been made, in smallish samples. But, the logistics of how to build something that freakin' long are seriously non-trivial.
I also don't think it will be possible to build this from the ground up. I believe it will be necessary to build in space and bring the cable down to the socket on Earth.
Fair enough.
/really/ rugged. Then you'll need something to go up front.
Now this is important. Budget serious money for a good light system. You can start with the rather-big-flashlight-attached-to-handlebars jobs, but if you're doing any amount of riding after dark you're going to need something that a) is rechargeable and b) throws more photons.
VistaLite has a good selection, and I've abused their products with no ill effects. I think that the flashing LED taillight is sufficient for nighttime rear visibility and is
Good luck.
Silly poncy Europeans. Everybody knows that here in civilization, we measure things in Neutral Buoyancy Labs. The interesting thing is, the derivative unit for pressure (asston per square Neutral Buoyancy Lab) is, at unity, pretty close to atmospheric pressure.
Furlongs per fortnight...gimme a break.
I think that $10bn number, and the 15 year horizon, are absurdly optimistic. There are LOTS of non-trivial problems to solve before we get a space elevator.
Just my opinion.
Uh, somebody bought it, from SAAB, in the first place, right?
SAAB doesn't care about resale values.
oooh, I'm glad I have my speakers turned off. Smart me.
Well, dude, if it's any consolation, I still laugh out loud every time I watch that movie. It's one of the great pieces of net.humor.
So, funk the mods. It just don' matter.
Ugly website.
Prettier car.
Check it out.
Oh, I concur that different is good.
But I can't say I agree. I keep looking at them, and they keep looking at a caricature of a car. Something drawn by a six year old.
I'm glad you like your car, and I'd be the last person to tell you your car sucks...
But I don't like 'em. At all.