Three comedians are shooting the breeze at the back of a nightclub after a late gig. They've heard one another's material so much, they've reached the point where they don't need to say the jokes anymore to amuse each other - they just need to refer to each joke by a number. "Number 37!" cracks the first comic, and the others break up. ""Number 53!" says the second guy, and they howl. Finally, it's the third comic's turn. "44!" he quips. He gets nothing. Crickets. "What?" he asks, "Isn't 44 funny?" "Sure, it's usually hilarious," they answer. "But the way you tell it..."
So, did you hear about virus #2451-23123.2134-A? I hear it's going to be a doozy!:-P
You do know that Wernher Von Braun went along with the plan to launch an Orion on the Saturn V, right?
Von Braun was intially skeptical of the Orion design, thinking it to be a fanciful idea. However, after he witnessed the Putt-Putt test, Von Braun changed his tune. He was still enamored with his chemical rockets for liftoff, but he began to envision the Orion being used as interplanetary transportation. Thus the Mini Orion was born. If things had gone as planned, the Orion would have been the space transport of the future. Sadly, the Saturn V program was shut down before the plan could be fully executed, and Von Braun resigned in disgust.
Cargo weight to Earth orbit of Saturn V was about 259,000 lbs, of Shuttle about 60,000 lbs (excluding Orbiter weight -- we're talking cargo you can leave in orbit)
This is a pointless distinction to make when you're comparing engines and raw lift ability. The Shuttle lifts more mass to orbit despite a lower liftoff mass. Period, end of story. The details over what's cargo and what's ship are completely ancillary to this discussion.
Sure, Shuttle-derived cargo designs that use e.g. engine pods rather than an orbiter can rival Saturn V's lift to LEO -- but then Saturn V derived designs exist to put much larger payloads in orbit -- eg the Saturn V-D (a 1968 MSFC design) had a payload of 720,000 lb to LEO, and a couple of other S-V derived designs went to a million pounds to LEO.
Granted. However, none of those designs went into production. Instead they were funnelled into the tech that built the Space Shuttle. And if we're going to compare studies, there was also the Sea Dragon study which would have taken 550 tonnes to orbit. Until these are built, there's no way to tell if any of them would have actually succeeded.
In comparison, we already know that the all the shuttle components work and can carry well over the cargo capacity of the SatV. Designing an HLV based on the shuttle components is thus a no-brainer.
To be sure. And introduces many known issues of its own (parallel vs inline stack, problems of large segmented solid boosters, unexpectedly short lifespan of a high pressure engine, etc).
If it weren't those issues, there would have been others. The entire point is to keep gaining experience. What's interesting is that the CEV and HLV crafts will simplify and eliminate several of the issues inherent in the shuttle design. For example, the parallel stack is outright eliminated. Replaced with a fully inline stack. The SSMEs will be treated as either disposable or limited lifespan components. The SRBs will have the latest in NASA's sealing technologies. So on and so forth.
Yes, many of those have been overcome (although they're still working on the problems of a parallel stack), but then Shuttle has had over 100 more flights and nearly 20 more years of flight experience than Saturn V (114 vs 13 and 24 vs 5).
It's not like it's been idle in that time, though. The Saturn V taught us how to build high powered LHOx engines that don't oscillate like they're on Red Bull. It also taught us how to use computer control, staging, and gave us engineering info on power curves. But that was all very basic stuff. The Shuttle has taught us so much more. As long as we learn from it rather than running off to build the next pie-in-the-sky vehicle (I'm looking at you X-33), the experience is far from wasted.
A follow-on vehicle -- which is long overdue -- needs to combine the lessons and technology of both Saturn and Shuttle.
You're right here. We should be sitting on a shiny new rocket platform that is both more powerful and capable of anything we've built before. Unfortunately, the pie-in-the-sky platforms are very much what killed it. NASA research thought they could leapfrog the economic cycle of the common rocket and move straight on to unproven technologies. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. And now we're in a pickle because we need a new spacecraft in a hurry. "Project Constellation" (aka CEV Program) at least moves us forward. Perhaps not as fast or as well as we should have, but it will get the job done, it will get it done fast, and it will get it done right.
Personally I'd like to see more work done on SSTO, VTOVL and aerospike engines -- and have done ever since I read Bono and Gatland's book back around 1970.
I'm also a fan of SSTOs. Unfortunately, I don't think they're going to happen until there's a justifiable reason for developing one. The Space Shuttle was supposed to be an SSTO. It failed because it had to be upgraded to c
It may seem obvious, but I always wanted game producers to replace the Fake ads used in games like Duke 3D and Tekwar. While many of these ads were very cute, they tended to get extremely repetitive, thus reminding the player he's in a game. Put in a wide variety of real ads, and suddenly things get more interesting.
That being said, I wonder how Subway would respond if I blew up their virtual sign in virtual reality?
You almost have to feel sorry for Quayle. He was actually a very intelligent and capable individual, but he couldn't speak in public to save his life. Under Reagan's administration, NASA was given broad powers (led in part by George Bush) to develop a plan to get the space program back on track. Reagan knew it would be expensive, but he wasn't willing to throw away the existing investment in the Space Shuttle. Unfortuntately, Quayle wasn't able to maintain a hold on Congress during Bush's presidency. While part of it was the fact that Bush trusted Congress a little too much (not enough killer instinct there), one has to wonder if Quayle's inability to speak had something to do with it?
Some of his more famous quotes about the space program:
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit . . . Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
"For NASA, space is still a high priority."
"[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system."
I mean, those are soundbites that make me want to downright cringe. (His best one is his Hawaii bit. Watch the video to get the full experience.) If he spoke in front of Congress that way, it's no wonder they thought they could get away with murder. (Figuratively speaking.)
Interestingly enough, Quayle said that up until his time the Vice President was considered one of the main administration officials in charge of NASA. I don't know if that's true any more or not.
As far as I know, that's still the case. In fact, the Vice President regularly carries out a lot of the busy work that the President doesn't have time to handle personally. That makes the role an extremely important position and not the "find a dumb guy for the role so he won't take the presidency" role that much of the public believes it to be.:-)
Indeed. That "should" is supposed to be "shouldn't". I posted a correction in the replies.
The Space Shuttle was intended to be a straightforward transport for humans, while the Saturn V was to remain the primary method for lifting cargo. Instead, Nixon told NASA to use the Shuttle for everything because the Saturn V was going away.
It's interesting to note that the CEV is like what the shuttle was supposed to be (except lacking the original SSTO design) and the Shuttle Derived HLV will take the place of the Saturn V.
I think more likely, PCIe was introduced to make the fools with more money than sense go and buy new Mobos and graphics cards....
One of the greatest performance problems with graphics cards has always been bandwidth. Current generation PCIe adds a 25% increase in bandwidth over the fastest AGP ports on the market. (AGP 8x). It compares even more favorably with the more common AGP 4x ports.
So as long as you're looking to get maximum performance to run the latest games at their highest quality settings, then PCIe with a 7800 makes sense. If you're looking for occasional gaming sessions over AGP, then why not save yourself some dough and grab the cheaper, feature-complete 6800 instead? Your pocketbook will thank you, and it's doubtful you'd notice the difference.
Weird. Do you have a photo somewhere? I'd like to see how this box looks, and maybe figure out why it claims to be an Odyssey 2. (I'm guessing it's really and Odyssey 200, but maybe it was marketed in an odd fashion.):-)
In space, chairs are a hell of a lot easier to throw.
More like, "In space, it's a lot easier for a chair to throw you!" (No, not a Soviet Russia reference. More like a reference to basic, Newtonian physics.)
I'm not sure about that the shuttles have enough lifting power to take mr Ballmer up there though.
NASA has enough lift power, but they keep having to abort the launch due to unforseen pogo oscillations.:-P
Do you know who Hedy Lamarr was? If you were alive when Blazing Saddles was released, you were expected to. Not anymore, though. She's been lost to history.
Stardom is a fading thing. Thresh was extremely well known back in the days of Quake I. (After all, he won Carmack's Ferrari!) But that was a LONG time ago in terms of computer gaming. Ten years ago, to be precise. The generation of gamers who are playing their XBox 360s don't even remember what it was like before we had 3D games. They've probably never even played Duke Nukem 3D, and most of them have no idea that it was based on (really cool, IMHO) 2D games. "Terminal Velocity", "Descent", "Commander Keen", and "Wacky Wheels" are just so much noise to them. "Wing Commander" is something that old fogies keep bringing up. And PC Gamer is just another game magazine, not the center of the gaming universe.
Face it. The gaming generation that made games happen has long been eclipsed by all the johnny-come-latelys. That is why no one seems to know about this stuff.
Poppycock. NASA never lied about the cost. What happened was that they constantly had to revise their figures as money was doled out piecemeal. The original estimates were based on a least-time to completion track for a technology that was very different from what finally flew. Nixon told NASA to meet the military's needs as well, and throw in the kitchen sink for good measure. The price went up. Then the funding was shifted around several times to stretch it out over more fiscal years. Since NASA couldn't build half a spaceplane and couldn't save the money until they needed it (federal regulations), the design had to change. The price went up.
Add in a few more of these major events during the Shuttle's design and development, and it's easy to see why the price of the Shuttle ballooned. When the government commits stupidity after stupidity, it's the taxpayers who pay for it, not the government.
Kuciwalker is right. NASA has no monopoly. Nearly all spaceflight is actually done by commercial interests. The problem with manned space flight is that it simply isn't profitable at the moment. Thus why no one does it.
Of course, when computers were first built, there wasn't much room for profit but it is my opinion that the competitive atmosphere of the computer market did more to facilitate cheap and common PCs than any government body did.
When computers were first built, the Military payed untold millions to have the machines constructed and operated. They didn't reach even the large business market until long after the Military was done funnelling money into the industry.
The same could have been true of the space industry, but it had its throat slit before all the R&D of the Gemini, Saturn, Apollo, and Orion programs could come to fruition.
If no one here is willing to deregulate spaceflight and offer NASA some real competition, how does anyone foresee proper market policing of NASA's spending and development?
What deregulation needs to happen? Privately owned spacecraft already fly. Mini-aerospace companies buy space on other people's crafts to fly equipment. X-Prize competitors are working to put people in orbit. I'm actually amazed at how little the FAA has interfered.
NASA to me was always a ploy to keep us aware of communism and the USSR.
Now that's just nonsense. NASA was developed to provide an environment for rocket development that the military couldn't provide. America was already falling WAY behind Russia in rocket technology. Putting aside the PR issues with smaller countries (many of whom might chose to join the USSR if they were perceived as being more powerful), there was the matter of keeping parity in ICBM technology. If that parity was lost, the nukes just might have started raining down.
Back when it was formed, NASA succeeded wildly in its endevours. But it was also given a free hand. Once Nixon was in office, all that ended. NASA was told to shut down operations and begin building a token space infrastructure. We'd fly up and come back down. Just to show the USSR that we still had the technology. Beyond that, he didn't care if space travel just went away altogether.
NASA is getting more money. President Bush has been slowly increasing their budget to cover the costs of CEV development and ongoing operations.
What NASA has traditionally needed is not more money per say, but more commitment. When Congress says they'll fund a new space vehicle, they need to continue funding the space vehicle until it is complete. When NASA says that they need two different vehicles for different tasks, the President should tell them to make a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none vehicle. When NASA has a perfectly good super-booster sitting on the pad with massive upgrades in the pipeline, the President shouldn't can the thing because he wants to get out of the space business.
As long as NASA can pick a direction and stay the course, they'll get something done. But constantly changing minds and shifting priorities will only lead to a whole lotta nothin'.
IIRC, Thresh was an asian kid who basically wiped the floor in the original Quake. A friend of mine claims to have met him online once. He says that the guy came barrelling in from a tower overhead, rocket jumps from one side of the structure to the other, firing a rocket downward at my poor, hapless friend in mid jump. The guy was good.
He later went on to work for PC Gamer, but he never really seemed to "get into" that job.
Thus my "don't hold your breath" sarcasm. I honestly do think that SpaceX will manage to produce cheaper rockets. The multi-million dollar question is, how much cheaper? Will they end up costing only slightly less than their competitors, or will they hit somewhere near their promised price range? Only time will tell.
Sourceforge only contains the scripts to reconfigure BSD. There's no non-unique software packages hosted there. All the downloads for the ISOs and packages occur through other sites. Go check their file downloads if you're still not sure. There's only about 5 megs of data.
A game based on trading will always be susceptible to people making real money trades.
Here's an odd thought... Why worry about the real life trades? I mean, it's still commerce. The buyer pays for an item (in this case virtual), and the seller provides it. AFAIK, there's no law against such trades, nor do I really see the big problem as long as the developers are not encouraging it. (Games where you have to pay real money for stuff just to keep up with the Joneses would definitely not be fun, so the developers need to not endorse the practice.)
Yeah, it's probably one of the stupider things to spend money on. But then we can't protect everyone from themselves.
Ah, my mistake. I was confusing what he was talking about with the new rendering scheme used in 1.6. I hadn't even realized that the features for Java 7 were being decided yet.:)
Re:Solving the GUI layout manager problem
on
NetBeans 5.0 Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I'm currently saving my pennies for one in nice condition. What do you think, should I grab the original Intelli or the Intelli II? I'm kind of leaning toward the original myself. Detachable controllers are nice, but the incompatibilities are annoying.
Now if only the Intellicart was still available.;-)
I'm just glad they're getting it off the ground. The Falcon I is mostly just a technology test. It can't fly payloads of any real interest as it simply doesn't have enough cargo capacity. The Falcon V, OTOH, could outright replace the Delta II for a fraction of the price. And if the proposed Falcon 9 ever happens (don't hold your breath), we could be looking at Space Shuttle sized cargos for only $78m! That's about as much as you pay for a Delta II once ground support, insurance, and payload integration costs are figured in. (SpaceX claims their prices include all these costs.)
Slashdot Mirror
And don't forget the Tomb Raider movie! He really screwed that one up!
*rolls eyes*
Three comedians are shooting the breeze at the back of a nightclub after a late gig. They've heard one another's material so much, they've reached the point where they don't need to say the jokes anymore to amuse each other - they just need to refer to each joke by a number. "Number 37!" cracks the first comic, and the others break up. ""Number 53!" says the second guy, and they howl. Finally, it's the third comic's turn. "44!" he quips. He gets nothing. Crickets. "What?" he asks, "Isn't 44 funny?" "Sure, it's usually hilarious," they answer. "But the way you tell it..."
:-P
So, did you hear about virus #2451-23123.2134-A? I hear it's going to be a doozy!
Hmmm...Project Orion...he's so dreamy...
*rolls eyes*
You do know that Wernher Von Braun went along with the plan to launch an Orion on the Saturn V, right?
Von Braun was intially skeptical of the Orion design, thinking it to be a fanciful idea. However, after he witnessed the Putt-Putt test, Von Braun changed his tune. He was still enamored with his chemical rockets for liftoff, but he began to envision the Orion being used as interplanetary transportation. Thus the Mini Orion was born. If things had gone as planned, the Orion would have been the space transport of the future. Sadly, the Saturn V program was shut down before the plan could be fully executed, and Von Braun resigned in disgust.
Cargo weight to Earth orbit of Saturn V was about 259,000 lbs, of Shuttle about 60,000 lbs (excluding Orbiter weight -- we're talking cargo you can leave in orbit)
This is a pointless distinction to make when you're comparing engines and raw lift ability. The Shuttle lifts more mass to orbit despite a lower liftoff mass. Period, end of story. The details over what's cargo and what's ship are completely ancillary to this discussion.
Sure, Shuttle-derived cargo designs that use e.g. engine pods rather than an orbiter can rival Saturn V's lift to LEO -- but then Saturn V derived designs exist to put much larger payloads in orbit -- eg the Saturn V-D (a 1968 MSFC design) had a payload of 720,000 lb to LEO, and a couple of other S-V derived designs went to a million pounds to LEO.
Granted. However, none of those designs went into production. Instead they were funnelled into the tech that built the Space Shuttle. And if we're going to compare studies, there was also the Sea Dragon study which would have taken 550 tonnes to orbit. Until these are built, there's no way to tell if any of them would have actually succeeded.
In comparison, we already know that the all the shuttle components work and can carry well over the cargo capacity of the SatV. Designing an HLV based on the shuttle components is thus a no-brainer.
To be sure. And introduces many known issues of its own (parallel vs inline stack, problems of large segmented solid boosters, unexpectedly short lifespan of a high pressure engine, etc).
If it weren't those issues, there would have been others. The entire point is to keep gaining experience. What's interesting is that the CEV and HLV crafts will simplify and eliminate several of the issues inherent in the shuttle design. For example, the parallel stack is outright eliminated. Replaced with a fully inline stack. The SSMEs will be treated as either disposable or limited lifespan components. The SRBs will have the latest in NASA's sealing technologies. So on and so forth.
Yes, many of those have been overcome (although they're still working on the problems of a parallel stack), but then Shuttle has had over 100 more flights and nearly 20 more years of flight experience than Saturn V (114 vs 13 and 24 vs 5).
It's not like it's been idle in that time, though. The Saturn V taught us how to build high powered LHOx engines that don't oscillate like they're on Red Bull. It also taught us how to use computer control, staging, and gave us engineering info on power curves. But that was all very basic stuff. The Shuttle has taught us so much more. As long as we learn from it rather than running off to build the next pie-in-the-sky vehicle (I'm looking at you X-33), the experience is far from wasted.
A follow-on vehicle -- which is long overdue -- needs to combine the lessons and technology of both Saturn and Shuttle.
You're right here. We should be sitting on a shiny new rocket platform that is both more powerful and capable of anything we've built before. Unfortunately, the pie-in-the-sky platforms are very much what killed it. NASA research thought they could leapfrog the economic cycle of the common rocket and move straight on to unproven technologies. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. And now we're in a pickle because we need a new spacecraft in a hurry. "Project Constellation" (aka CEV Program) at least moves us forward. Perhaps not as fast or as well as we should have, but it will get the job done, it will get it done fast, and it will get it done right.
Personally I'd like to see more work done on SSTO, VTOVL and aerospike engines -- and have done ever since I read Bono and Gatland's book back around 1970.
I'm also a fan of SSTOs. Unfortunately, I don't think they're going to happen until there's a justifiable reason for developing one. The Space Shuttle was supposed to be an SSTO. It failed because it had to be upgraded to c
It may seem obvious, but I always wanted game producers to replace the Fake ads used in games like Duke 3D and Tekwar. While many of these ads were very cute, they tended to get extremely repetitive, thus reminding the player he's in a game. Put in a wide variety of real ads, and suddenly things get more interesting.
That being said, I wonder how Subway would respond if I blew up their virtual sign in virtual reality?
How to tell you're on Slashdot, tip #3012:
:-P
When Hedy Lamarr's technical achievements are mentioned first, and her acting achievements are brushed off in passing.
Some of his more famous quotes about the space program:
I mean, those are soundbites that make me want to downright cringe. (His best one is his Hawaii bit. Watch the video to get the full experience.) If he spoke in front of Congress that way, it's no wonder they thought they could get away with murder. (Figuratively speaking.)
Interestingly enough, Quayle said that up until his time the Vice President was considered one of the main administration officials in charge of NASA. I don't know if that's true any more or not.
As far as I know, that's still the case. In fact, the Vice President regularly carries out a lot of the busy work that the President doesn't have time to handle personally. That makes the role an extremely important position and not the "find a dumb guy for the role so he won't take the presidency" role that much of the public believes it to be.
Indeed. That "should" is supposed to be "shouldn't". I posted a correction in the replies.
The Space Shuttle was intended to be a straightforward transport for humans, while the Saturn V was to remain the primary method for lifting cargo. Instead, Nixon told NASA to use the Shuttle for everything because the Saturn V was going away.
It's interesting to note that the CEV is like what the shuttle was supposed to be (except lacking the original SSTO design) and the Shuttle Derived HLV will take the place of the Saturn V.
I think more likely, PCIe was introduced to make the fools with more money than sense go and buy new Mobos and graphics cards....
One of the greatest performance problems with graphics cards has always been bandwidth. Current generation PCIe adds a 25% increase in bandwidth over the fastest AGP ports on the market. (AGP 8x). It compares even more favorably with the more common AGP 4x ports.
So as long as you're looking to get maximum performance to run the latest games at their highest quality settings, then PCIe with a 7800 makes sense. If you're looking for occasional gaming sessions over AGP, then why not save yourself some dough and grab the cheaper, feature-complete 6800 instead? Your pocketbook will thank you, and it's doubtful you'd notice the difference.
Weird. Do you have a photo somewhere? I'd like to see how this box looks, and maybe figure out why it claims to be an Odyssey 2. (I'm guessing it's really and Odyssey 200, but maybe it was marketed in an odd fashion.) :-)
In space, chairs are a hell of a lot easier to throw.
:-P
More like, "In space, it's a lot easier for a chair to throw you!" (No, not a Soviet Russia reference. More like a reference to basic, Newtonian physics.)
I'm not sure about that the shuttles have enough lifting power to take mr Ballmer up there though.
NASA has enough lift power, but they keep having to abort the launch due to unforseen pogo oscillations.
s/President should tell them/President should't tell them/g :-))
s/per say/per se/g (Per Mr. Coward.
Do you know who Hedy Lamarr was? If you were alive when Blazing Saddles was released, you were expected to. Not anymore, though. She's been lost to history.
Stardom is a fading thing. Thresh was extremely well known back in the days of Quake I. (After all, he won Carmack's Ferrari!) But that was a LONG time ago in terms of computer gaming. Ten years ago, to be precise. The generation of gamers who are playing their XBox 360s don't even remember what it was like before we had 3D games. They've probably never even played Duke Nukem 3D, and most of them have no idea that it was based on (really cool, IMHO) 2D games. "Terminal Velocity", "Descent", "Commander Keen", and "Wacky Wheels" are just so much noise to them. "Wing Commander" is something that old fogies keep bringing up. And PC Gamer is just another game magazine, not the center of the gaming universe.
Face it. The gaming generation that made games happen has long been eclipsed by all the johnny-come-latelys. That is why no one seems to know about this stuff.
Poppycock. NASA never lied about the cost. What happened was that they constantly had to revise their figures as money was doled out piecemeal. The original estimates were based on a least-time to completion track for a technology that was very different from what finally flew. Nixon told NASA to meet the military's needs as well, and throw in the kitchen sink for good measure. The price went up. Then the funding was shifted around several times to stretch it out over more fiscal years. Since NASA couldn't build half a spaceplane and couldn't save the money until they needed it (federal regulations), the design had to change. The price went up.
Add in a few more of these major events during the Shuttle's design and development, and it's easy to see why the price of the Shuttle ballooned. When the government commits stupidity after stupidity, it's the taxpayers who pay for it, not the government.
Kuciwalker is right. NASA has no monopoly. Nearly all spaceflight is actually done by commercial interests. The problem with manned space flight is that it simply isn't profitable at the moment. Thus why no one does it.
Of course, when computers were first built, there wasn't much room for profit but it is my opinion that the competitive atmosphere of the computer market did more to facilitate cheap and common PCs than any government body did.
When computers were first built, the Military payed untold millions to have the machines constructed and operated. They didn't reach even the large business market until long after the Military was done funnelling money into the industry.
The same could have been true of the space industry, but it had its throat slit before all the R&D of the Gemini, Saturn, Apollo, and Orion programs could come to fruition.
If no one here is willing to deregulate spaceflight and offer NASA some real competition, how does anyone foresee proper market policing of NASA's spending and development?
What deregulation needs to happen? Privately owned spacecraft already fly. Mini-aerospace companies buy space on other people's crafts to fly equipment. X-Prize competitors are working to put people in orbit. I'm actually amazed at how little the FAA has interfered.
NASA to me was always a ploy to keep us aware of communism and the USSR.
Now that's just nonsense. NASA was developed to provide an environment for rocket development that the military couldn't provide. America was already falling WAY behind Russia in rocket technology. Putting aside the PR issues with smaller countries (many of whom might chose to join the USSR if they were perceived as being more powerful), there was the matter of keeping parity in ICBM technology. If that parity was lost, the nukes just might have started raining down.
Back when it was formed, NASA succeeded wildly in its endevours. But it was also given a free hand. Once Nixon was in office, all that ended. NASA was told to shut down operations and begin building a token space infrastructure. We'd fly up and come back down. Just to show the USSR that we still had the technology. Beyond that, he didn't care if space travel just went away altogether.
NASA just needs more money
NASA is getting more money. President Bush has been slowly increasing their budget to cover the costs of CEV development and ongoing operations.
What NASA has traditionally needed is not more money per say, but more commitment. When Congress says they'll fund a new space vehicle, they need to continue funding the space vehicle until it is complete. When NASA says that they need two different vehicles for different tasks, the President should tell them to make a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none vehicle. When NASA has a perfectly good super-booster sitting on the pad with massive upgrades in the pipeline, the President shouldn't can the thing because he wants to get out of the space business.
As long as NASA can pick a direction and stay the course, they'll get something done. But constantly changing minds and shifting priorities will only lead to a whole lotta nothin'.
And what'dya know? Wikipedia has an article.
IIRC, Thresh was an asian kid who basically wiped the floor in the original Quake. A friend of mine claims to have met him online once. He says that the guy came barrelling in from a tower overhead, rocket jumps from one side of the structure to the other, firing a rocket downward at my poor, hapless friend in mid jump. The guy was good.
He later went on to work for PC Gamer, but he never really seemed to "get into" that job.
Thus my "don't hold your breath" sarcasm. I honestly do think that SpaceX will manage to produce cheaper rockets. The multi-million dollar question is, how much cheaper? Will they end up costing only slightly less than their competitors, or will they hit somewhere near their promised price range? Only time will tell.
Sourceforge only contains the scripts to reconfigure BSD. There's no non-unique software packages hosted there. All the downloads for the ISOs and packages occur through other sites. Go check their file downloads if you're still not sure. There's only about 5 megs of data.
A game based on trading will always be susceptible to people making real money trades.
Here's an odd thought... Why worry about the real life trades? I mean, it's still commerce. The buyer pays for an item (in this case virtual), and the seller provides it. AFAIK, there's no law against such trades, nor do I really see the big problem as long as the developers are not encouraging it. (Games where you have to pay real money for stuff just to keep up with the Joneses would definitely not be fun, so the developers need to not endorse the practice.)
Yeah, it's probably one of the stupider things to spend money on. But then we can't protect everyone from themselves.
Ah, my mistake. I was confusing what he was talking about with the new rendering scheme used in 1.6. I hadn't even realized that the features for Java 7 were being decided yet. :)
Better yet, you can try it for yourself:
https://mustang.dev.java.net/
The sourcecode is also available under a non-contamination agreement.
The Desktop features of Mustang are documented here.
I'm currently saving my pennies for one in nice condition. What do you think, should I grab the original Intelli or the Intelli II? I'm kind of leaning toward the original myself. Detachable controllers are nice, but the incompatibilities are annoying.
;-)
Now if only the Intellicart was still available.
I'm just glad they're getting it off the ground. The Falcon I is mostly just a technology test. It can't fly payloads of any real interest as it simply doesn't have enough cargo capacity. The Falcon V, OTOH, could outright replace the Delta II for a fraction of the price. And if the proposed Falcon 9 ever happens (don't hold your breath), we could be looking at Space Shuttle sized cargos for only $78m! That's about as much as you pay for a Delta II once ground support, insurance, and payload integration costs are figured in. (SpaceX claims their prices include all these costs.)