Nasa built on the work on many other people, including, but not limited to the work of Goddard. To say that NASA invented everything themselves isn't fair either.
Sure, Rutan had the advantage of existing data from the X-15 program. But, his ideas went in entirely new directions, and created a craft that is unique and very forward thinking.
NASA has too much reliance on computers -- SS1 is a basic stick and rudder vehicle. This is why NASA can't do anything like this these days.
However, perhaps this is the "wake up call" NASA needs to bo "better, cheaper, faster" the correct way. Bravo to NASA for the Mars Rovers, etc., but double Bravo to the SS1 team for getting into space AT ALL on a very limited budget.
NASA is simply too top-heavy, beauracracy-wise. NASA could be slimmer, and stil maintain it's achievements. Consider that the majority of NASA's safety-failures were not engineer-related, but management-related, because management refused to listen to the objections of the engineers.
Let the smart guys run the show. The bottom-feeders always wind up working at the top, an that's why we have so many problems.
You're faced with two possbilities: Either you beleive that George W. Bush is both the stupidiest man on the face of the planet, and incredbily evil at the same time, or you beleive that he honestly thought we were in danger. I really don't see why it's no stretch at all to beleive the former, but you people won't even consider the later.
Actually, I did consider the later. However, here was the problem with that line of thinking:
UN weapons inspectors were all over Iraq searching for WMDs and found none. Itgoes to assume that any weapon and weapons program that well hidden would be equally diffciult to deploy -- in other words, if the ICBMS and the factories that built them are that invisible, lauching them would be one hell of a project. If launching them were easy, they'd be in plain sight.
Even the USA with all it's resources, has highly visible missile launching sites and General Dynamics, which builds such missles isn't exactly a hidden factory.
Bush, during his state of the union address, and Colin Powell's later presentation to the UN contained staggering figures of viral, nerve gas, and other weapons - all this stuff is not easily moved around and hidden. Consider the problems we have just transporting and disposing of nuclear waste. If he was moving this stuff every week, there certainly would have been some tremendous accident during the 15 years he'd had the stuff -- One big enough that we would have heard about it (ala Chernobyl). Are you telling me that Saddam has a better safety record than the US does?
Since the first Gulf War, Saddam was under intense scrutiny by both the US and the UN, and there were many economic sanctions against him. Are we supposed to believe that with so little contact with the outside world that he had the resources available that he could out-fox both our intelligence and the UN inspectors? Saddam should be some kind of amazing genius -- smarter than the combined forces against him?
Basically, once you start thinking about the CLAIMS of the Bush administration versus what actual evidence they had, it just didn't add up. If Saddam was such a clear and obvious threat, why was the rest of the world against this war?
We were asked to buy into a fantasy. Anybody with half a brain can figure out that it's false information. You listed many reasons why the war isn't a "bump in the polls" or "for oil" or any of the other popular conspiracy theories.
The fact of the matter is that we were lied to. We don't know why this country decided to attack Iraq. Maybe there is no reason. As you point out, the popular conspiracy theories make no sense. But your reason that he believed Iraq was a threat makes no sense either.
What scares me is that perhaps everyone in Washington D.C. is simply crazy, and there was no good reason other than what Donald Rumsfeld said. That "there were no good targets in Afghanistan", which is why they needed to attack Iraq.
The very plausible reason is that they wanted to attack someone for Sept. 11th, and they weren't getting anywhere in Afghanistan, so, they decided that Iraq was a better target.
Why? We'll probably never know the real truth. That's what sucks so much about this whole sorry situation is that the Bush people are smart enough not to write anything down. So there's no documentation trail to follow to find out, years from now, what's really going on behind those closed doors.
As the owner of http://www.obsolyte.com, which is running on one of these little boxes, I'd like to thank you for slashdotting my poor little server into the ground... However, I guess it's good test for the server to see if it can withstand it -- if it can, than I guess that's the box they are looking for in the "ask slashdot"....
It isn't just boy geeks who have the tendency to go "EEP!" and retreat to the warm glow of their computer when a member of the opposite sex talks to them!
Thank God. I thought I was the only one that screwed up. You've given me hope that maybe I'm actually a little normal.
That's because the art directors of these movies are invariably mac-heads (aka creative types). Just as the graphic designers, video editors, music editors, and even the writers tend to use Macs... It's only OUTSIDE of the film industry that people use PC's... So the film industry, cloaked in their ivory towers, don't realise the rest of the world uses PCs.
I worked in TV for a few years... Everyone had a Mac where I was...
He spent millions painting on top of film when he did the animated Lord of the Rings in the early 80's (remember kids?), which was half-rotoscoped, half bizzare drug trip. But it was better than Cool World.
Anyhow, this is exactly what Ralph needs -- a way to film actors, and then make it sorta' look like a cartoon. I see it now, "American Pop 2"... oy.
Still, I spent a summer tracing from Super-8 onto paper and my results were less than spectacular, although my test film did get me some work back in the days of Liquid Television...
Maybe someone can come up with a really good creative application for this technology and I wish them good luck!
eBays's own policies PROHIBIT the sale of "digital only" materials. Their policies state that it has to be a phyiscial item for sale, hence there is a shipping charge standard on every sale form.
Why not target these sellers and just flood ebay with safehabor reports indicating that these people are violating ebay's policies?
Even if they ignore half of them, eBay will spend a considerable amount to check out these reports, which will ultimately make them call the experiment a failure.
I've always thought the saddest people in the world are like Paris Hilton. Unlike those of us who can dream that being wealthy, popular, or beautiful would make us happy; they know that they do not and have little left to look forward to.
Sorry, but my heart's not gonna' be bleeding for Paris Hilton when there are people in the US who have to bust their asses every day for minimum wage, and the large majority of humans on the planet would give their left arm to have 1/10th of her looks and money.
And no, I'm not bitter. But frankly, to have all that presitige and wealth and glamour, and your biggest concern is what your nails look like makes you the biggest waste of life on the planet. I'm not going to feel sorry for people like that, I'm going to despise people like that.
I'm better than those people in every way, but I'll bet no one's going to give me my own TV show.
And for the record, being wealthy, popular and beautiful *would* make me happy - because being poor, alone and ugly really, really sucks.
Oh, did you mean land humans on mars? I'd argue we don't have the technology now, much less 15 years ago. From where does your statement come? I'd like to see how you're going to keep humans alive for the trip to mars (and back). How you're going to launch this project. How you're going to launch on Mars to get humans back into space from that planet before returning to this planet.
Now now, give the poster a break. Consider that in a mere 9 year time during the 60's, we went from not being able to launch *anything* (the rockets all blew up on the pad), to landing 2 men on the moon and returning them safely to the Earth.
It's a given, that, with the same effort and financial expendature, would could have continued that explosive progress and have gone to Mars before the next decade had finished (essentially 1979).
However, by the time the 1970's rolled around, public intrested in the space program had waned, consider that Apollo 13 was hardly mentioned in the news until "Houston, we have a problem".
Von Braun *clearly* intended to go to Mars, he had the plans drawn up and he fully expected the US government to fund it, and that he would see it happen in his lifetime. Sadly, this did not happen.
Instead, we're the only economic superpower without a manned space program. Even China has (successfully) put more people in space in the last 2 years than we have.
People who ask this probably have a poor understanding of aviation history.
Let me ask you: Was the Wright brothers' plane a special purpose vehicle or a general lift vehicle?
Was the 'Spirit of St. Louis' scalable to larger flights with more people/cargo, or once it was proven that you could fly to France, did other people build craft that would do the job?
Was the Bell X-1 scaled up to accomodate more than just the test pilot?
Consider that breaking the sound barrier was first done in a rocket-plane, something that has NEVER been used for large passenger carrying craft. The Concorde flew Mach2 on jet engines, not rockets.
The purpose, as I see it, of SS1 and the X-Prize in general, is to spurr activity in this sector of engineering, which will hopefully lead to revolutionary new craft and even perhaps some new and exciting propulsion systems, advanced materials for absorbing and disappating heat, rapid prototyping, and more rugged avionics.
Once it's been proven that space can be reached relatively cheaply, it's only a matter of time before companies spring up to take advantage of this opportunity.
This vehicle is a test-craft, much like the original Wright-flyer. It's a proof of concept. It's the next step in aviation.
And if nothing else, imagine if Rutan offered a kit version, like the Long EZ, that you could purchase for... say... 20 million.
I'd start saving my pennies if I were you.
Also please remember that once upon a time, flying by jet was horribly expensive compared to prop-aircraft, hence the term "jet set" to describe rich people.
Eventually, development in this area reduced the cost of flying by jet, and now, you can hop a plane to just about anywhere in the world for a reasonable amount.
Space travel or Suborbital travel will start out expensive, but over time, as there is more development, it will eventually get cheaper.
I think FEDEX will invest in such a system before airlines do, but if you can get a package from NYC to Hong Kong in 3 hours, it's only a matter of time before companies start trying to get their executives from NYC to Hong Kong in 3 hours.
SS1 is the start of all this. It's not meant to be the final design of a larger craft any more than the X-1 was the final design for some larger supersonic craft.
Instead, SS1 is the stepping stone for design work to bring us that larger suborbital craft, that may be based on entirely different technology.
Yes, I'm the one selling it of course. I know nothing about it, but it's been sitting in my closet for a zillion years. Looks pretty complete to me. Go ahead, it's nostalgia!
Yes, great, what a comfort. That is, until a mugger cuts off your hand to use your id to make purchases.
Don't think this isn't going to happen. It has already happened with Cash Machines that use thumbprints. Some people started losing their thumbs as a result of this wonderful security measure....
Have you guys heard of "Stealth Marketing"? 60 Minutes covered it a few months back, but basically, imagine this scenario.
You're walking down times square, and a pretty couple with exotic accents, who look and act like tourists asks you to take their photo. They hand you their digital camera. You notice it's one you've never seen or heard of before, so you snap the photo, and then ask about it, and they proceed to tell you how cool this camera is.
You've just been 'Stealth Marketed' -- the tourists are fake, actors hired to stand in Times Square asking people to take their photo.
You're sitting in Starbucks and you see a guy playing a cool game on his laptop. Pretty soon, he's letting you try the game and you're hooked. Turns out he's also an actor hired to sit in the coffee shop and get people to try the game.
This looks to me like a Stealth Marketing campaign diliberately directed at the Slashdot crowd. Note the post came from "SomeRobotGuy", who, I'll bet, is also in on this gag.
The server was supposed to get slashdotted to hell and not work properly, as that lends an air of credibility to the hack.
You're all part of a campaign directed at people like us who read Slashdot, ArsTechnica, HardOCP, and Wired. Chances are this site will make the rounds on all the hardcore tech sites, and if it makes a few people consider buying a Mini-Cooper, then the Stealth Marketing guys have done their job.
Believe me, this won't be the last time you're "hacked" by Marketing types who are getting more clever about how to direct an advertising campaign at you without you even realising you're being advertised to.
Consider the XserveG5 -- uses less power than a similar Intel box and is cooler-running. What Pixar will save over the long run in electricity bills alone is probably worth the upgrade.
Doesn't make a difference if you're running 1 or 5 machines in your house, but it does make a signifigant difference if you're running 500 or machines.
Mir lasted 5 times longer than it was supposed to, the ISS lasted 5 times LESS longer than it was supposed to.
Understand there are differences between the way the Russians do space programs and the way Americans do.
Early on, for example, the Americans had trouble writing down notes while in space. Ball-point pens didn't work, as the ink, in zero-G, didn't flow. This made working the checklists of hundreds of items difficult.
Thus, NASA developed, at a cost of over a million dollars, a pen with a pressurized cartridge to force the ink out regardless of the position it's in. You've probably seen this pen in novelty stores and in staples as "The Pen That Writes Upisde-Down and Underwater"...
The Russians used a pencil.
This is WHY Mir lasted so long and the ISS is falling apart.
John Perry Barlow had written extensively about the Quickdraw leak from Apple. Particularly funny was the FBI agent trying to comprehend that the "stolen" code didn't mean that Apple didn't have it anymore. He was thinking of code like a physical object, like when your car is stolen, you need to get it back, because it's gone and no longer in your driveway.
He couldn't quite grasp that "stolen" code still existed at Apple, and Apple still had access to the code, even though it was "stolen".
Even funnier was the the group responsible called themselves the New Prometheus Leauge (Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man). The FBI agent referred to them as the New Prothesis League.
I don't think the culprits were *ever* caught, although it spurned the FBI into launching their computer crimes division into overdrive, ultimately resulting in the infamous "Operation Sundevil", which netted among other things the "Manual for Computer Crime", also known as "Cyberpunk" by Steve Jackson Games, a paper and pencil RPG.
The problem is that totally unimaginative people are holding the purse-strings. They don't want to gamble on something they haven't seen before. They want to sell something they know has already sold once before.
That's why you don't get big budget "new" movies, you get sequel after sequel of The Matrix 6, Charlies Angles 3, Scooby Doo 2, etc., and the crap just gets churned out, but they know they can market it because the auideince for that crap is pre-existing.
Lord of the Rings was such a fluke because there's no way that should have gotten done, or done as well as it was, via the Hollywood system. Because Hollywood crushes creativity, it eschews original thought, and it despises anything it can't reference as something else.
When you're committing millions of dollars before even a frame of film is shot, the boardroom people want to be comfortable about it by knowing it's really something they can already relate to. That's why Gene Roddenbury had to "sell" Star Trek as "Wagon Train to the Stars", and couch it in relation to a Western, which was the TV staple of the 60's.
Unless you can make your "new idea" seem like *exactly* something everyone has seen before, you'll never get funding for your production. You've got a better chance of winning the lottery and self-producing it.
And that, my friend, is why there's only crap on TV and Movies. Because Hollywood hates "new ideas".
Slashdot Mirror
Nasa built on the work on many other people, including, but not limited to the work of Goddard. To say that NASA invented everything themselves isn't fair either.
Sure, Rutan had the advantage of existing data from the X-15 program. But, his ideas went in entirely new directions, and created a craft that is unique and very forward thinking.
NASA has too much reliance on computers -- SS1 is a basic stick and rudder vehicle. This is why NASA can't do anything like this these days.
However, perhaps this is the "wake up call" NASA needs to bo "better, cheaper, faster" the correct way. Bravo to NASA for the Mars Rovers, etc., but double Bravo to the SS1 team for getting into space AT ALL on a very limited budget.
NASA is simply too top-heavy, beauracracy-wise. NASA could be slimmer, and stil maintain it's achievements. Consider that the majority of NASA's safety-failures were not engineer-related, but management-related, because management refused to listen to the objections of the engineers.
Let the smart guys run the show. The bottom-feeders always wind up working at the top, an that's why we have so many problems.
You're faced with two possbilities: Either you beleive that George W. Bush is both the stupidiest man on the face of the planet, and incredbily evil at the same time, or you beleive that he honestly thought we were in danger. I really don't see why it's no stretch at all to beleive the former, but you people won't even consider the later.
Actually, I did consider the later. However, here was the problem with that line of thinking:
UN weapons inspectors were all over Iraq searching for WMDs and found none. Itgoes to assume that any weapon and weapons program that well hidden would be equally diffciult to deploy -- in other words, if the ICBMS and the factories that built them are that invisible, lauching them would be one hell of a project. If launching them were easy, they'd be in plain sight.
Even the USA with all it's resources, has highly visible missile launching sites and General Dynamics, which builds such missles isn't exactly a hidden factory.
Bush, during his state of the union address, and Colin Powell's later presentation to the UN contained staggering figures of viral, nerve gas, and other weapons - all this stuff is not easily moved around and hidden. Consider the problems we have just transporting and disposing of nuclear waste. If he was moving this stuff every week, there certainly would have been some tremendous accident during the 15 years he'd had the stuff -- One big enough that we would have heard about it (ala Chernobyl). Are you telling me that Saddam has a better safety record than the US does?
Since the first Gulf War, Saddam was under intense scrutiny by both the US and the UN, and there were many economic sanctions against him. Are we supposed to believe that with so little contact with the outside world that he had the resources available that he could out-fox both our intelligence and the UN inspectors? Saddam should be some kind of amazing genius -- smarter than the combined forces against him?
Basically, once you start thinking about the CLAIMS of the Bush administration versus what actual evidence they had, it just didn't add up. If Saddam was such a clear and obvious threat, why was the rest of the world against this war?
We were asked to buy into a fantasy. Anybody with half a brain can figure out that it's false information. You listed many reasons why the war isn't a "bump in the polls" or "for oil" or any of the other popular conspiracy theories.
The fact of the matter is that we were lied to. We don't know why this country decided to attack Iraq. Maybe there is no reason. As you point out, the popular conspiracy theories make no sense. But your reason that he believed Iraq was a threat makes no sense either.
What scares me is that perhaps everyone in Washington D.C. is simply crazy, and there was no good reason other than what Donald Rumsfeld said. That "there were no good targets in Afghanistan", which is why they needed to attack Iraq.
The very plausible reason is that they wanted to attack someone for Sept. 11th, and they weren't getting anywhere in Afghanistan, so, they decided that Iraq was a better target.
Why? We'll probably never know the real truth. That's what sucks so much about this whole sorry situation is that the Bush people are smart enough not to write anything down. So there's no documentation trail to follow to find out, years from now, what's really going on behind those closed doors.
As the owner of http://www.obsolyte.com, which is running on one of these little boxes, I'd like to thank you for slashdotting my poor little server into the ground... However, I guess it's good test for the server to see if it can withstand it -- if it can, than I guess that's the box they are looking for in the "ask slashdot"....
It isn't just boy geeks who have the tendency to go "EEP!" and retreat to the warm glow of their computer when a member of the opposite sex talks to them!
Thank God. I thought I was the only one that screwed up. You've given me hope that maybe I'm actually a little normal.
That's because the art directors of these movies are invariably mac-heads (aka creative types). Just as the graphic designers, video editors, music editors, and even the writers tend to use Macs... It's only OUTSIDE of the film industry that people use PC's... So the film industry, cloaked in their ivory towers, don't realise the rest of the world uses PCs.
I worked in TV for a few years... Everyone had a Mac where I was...
He spent millions painting on top of film when he did the animated Lord of the Rings in the early 80's (remember kids?), which was half-rotoscoped, half bizzare drug trip. But it was better than Cool World.
Anyhow, this is exactly what Ralph needs -- a way to film actors, and then make it sorta' look like a cartoon. I see it now, "American Pop 2"... oy.
Still, I spent a summer tracing from Super-8 onto paper and my results were less than spectacular, although my test film did get me some work back in the days of Liquid Television...
Maybe someone can come up with a really good creative application for this technology and I wish them good luck!
eBays's own policies PROHIBIT the sale of "digital only" materials. Their policies state that it has to be a phyiscial item for sale, hence there is a shipping charge standard on every sale form.
Why not target these sellers and just flood ebay with safehabor reports indicating that these people are violating ebay's policies?
Even if they ignore half of them, eBay will spend a considerable amount to check out these reports, which will ultimately make them call the experiment a failure.
I've always thought the saddest people in the world are like Paris Hilton. Unlike those of us who can dream that being wealthy, popular, or beautiful would make us happy; they know that they do not and have little left to look forward to.
Sorry, but my heart's not gonna' be bleeding for Paris Hilton when there are people in the US who have to bust their asses every day for minimum wage, and the large majority of humans on the planet would give their left arm to have 1/10th of her looks and money.
And no, I'm not bitter. But frankly, to have all that presitige and wealth and glamour, and your biggest concern is what your nails look like makes you the biggest waste of life on the planet. I'm not going to feel sorry for people like that, I'm going to despise people like that.
I'm better than those people in every way, but I'll bet no one's going to give me my own TV show.
And for the record, being wealthy, popular and beautiful *would* make me happy - because being poor, alone and ugly really, really sucks.
White Knight is in the air.... Less than 1 hour to go to 50,000 ft. drop time, afterwards the 80 sec. blast into space...
Go Baby Go!
Godspeed Mike Melville!
Hey Ridley, you got any Beeman's?
Yeah, I think I got a stick.
Loan me some, will you? I'll pay you back later.
Fair enough...
(And if you don't know what that's from, you don't deserve to be on Slashdot!)
Oh, did you mean land humans on mars? I'd argue we don't have the technology now, much less 15 years ago. From where does your statement come? I'd like to see how you're going to keep humans alive for the trip to mars (and back). How you're going to launch this project. How you're going to launch on Mars to get humans back into space from that planet before returning to this planet.
Now now, give the poster a break. Consider that in a mere 9 year time during the 60's, we went from not being able to launch *anything* (the rockets all blew up on the pad), to landing 2 men on the moon and returning them safely to the Earth.
It's a given, that, with the same effort and financial expendature, would could have continued that explosive progress and have gone to Mars before the next decade had finished (essentially 1979).
However, by the time the 1970's rolled around, public intrested in the space program had waned, consider that Apollo 13 was hardly mentioned in the news until "Houston, we have a problem".
Von Braun *clearly* intended to go to Mars, he had the plans drawn up and he fully expected the US government to fund it, and that he would see it happen in his lifetime. Sadly, this did not happen.
Instead, we're the only economic superpower without a manned space program. Even China has (successfully) put more people in space in the last 2 years than we have.
People who ask this probably have a poor understanding of aviation history.
... say... 20 million.
Let me ask you:
Was the Wright brothers' plane a special purpose vehicle or a general lift vehicle?
Was the 'Spirit of St. Louis' scalable to larger flights with more people/cargo, or once it was proven that you could fly to France, did other people build craft that would do the job?
Was the Bell X-1 scaled up to accomodate more than just the test pilot?
Consider that breaking the sound barrier was first done in a rocket-plane, something that has NEVER been used for large passenger carrying craft. The Concorde flew Mach2 on jet engines, not rockets.
The purpose, as I see it, of SS1 and the X-Prize in general, is to spurr activity in this sector of engineering, which will hopefully lead to revolutionary new craft and even perhaps some new and exciting propulsion systems, advanced materials for absorbing and disappating heat, rapid prototyping, and more rugged avionics.
Once it's been proven that space can be reached relatively cheaply, it's only a matter of time before companies spring up to take advantage of this opportunity.
This vehicle is a test-craft, much like the original Wright-flyer. It's a proof of concept. It's the next step in aviation.
And if nothing else, imagine if Rutan offered a kit version, like the Long EZ, that you could purchase for
I'd start saving my pennies if I were you.
Also please remember that once upon a time, flying by jet was horribly expensive compared to prop-aircraft, hence the term "jet set" to describe rich people.
Eventually, development in this area reduced the cost of flying by jet, and now, you can hop a plane to just about anywhere in the world for a reasonable amount.
Space travel or Suborbital travel will start out expensive, but over time, as there is more development, it will eventually get cheaper.
I think FEDEX will invest in such a system before airlines do, but if you can get a package from NYC to Hong Kong in 3 hours, it's only a matter of time before companies start trying to get their executives from NYC to Hong Kong in 3 hours.
SS1 is the start of all this. It's not meant to be the final design of a larger craft any more than the X-1 was the final design for some larger supersonic craft.
Instead, SS1 is the stepping stone for design work to bring us that larger suborbital craft, that may be based on entirely different technology.
I hope this answers your question.
I thought SG-1 discovered Atlantis? BTW: I think this is my first post as a "first" post!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=4610&item=4127896097
Yes, I'm the one selling it of course. I know nothing about it, but it's been sitting in my closet for a zillion years. Looks pretty complete to me. Go ahead, it's nostalgia!
Step 1) Get Yourself and 25,000 metric tons of steel into space.
Step 2) Start Welding.
Step 3) ??????
Step 4) PROFIT!
That's it! I'm buying a Mac!
"The more I use Windows, the more I love my Commodore 64"
Yes, great, what a comfort. That is, until a mugger cuts off your hand to use your id to make purchases.
Don't think this isn't going to happen. It has already happened with Cash Machines that use thumbprints. Some people started losing their thumbs as a result of this wonderful security measure....
Have you guys heard of "Stealth Marketing"? 60 Minutes covered it a few months back, but basically, imagine this scenario.
You're walking down times square, and a pretty couple with exotic accents, who look and act like tourists asks you to take their photo. They hand you their digital camera. You notice it's one you've never seen or heard of before, so you snap the photo, and then ask about it, and they proceed to tell you how cool this camera is.
You've just been 'Stealth Marketed' -- the tourists are fake, actors hired to stand in Times Square asking people to take their photo.
You're sitting in Starbucks and you see a guy playing a cool game on his laptop. Pretty soon, he's letting you try the game and you're hooked. Turns out he's also an actor hired to sit in the coffee shop and get people to try the game.
This looks to me like a Stealth Marketing campaign diliberately directed at the Slashdot crowd. Note the post came from "SomeRobotGuy", who, I'll bet, is also in on this gag.
The server was supposed to get slashdotted to hell and not work properly, as that lends an air of credibility to the hack.
You're all part of a campaign directed at people like us who read Slashdot, ArsTechnica, HardOCP, and Wired. Chances are this site will make the rounds on all the hardcore tech sites, and if it makes a few people consider buying a Mini-Cooper, then the Stealth Marketing guys have done their job.
Believe me, this won't be the last time you're "hacked" by Marketing types who are getting more clever about how to direct an advertising campaign at you without you even realising you're being advertised to.
Consider the XserveG5 -- uses less power than a similar Intel box and is cooler-running. What Pixar will save over the long run in electricity bills alone is probably worth the upgrade.
Doesn't make a difference if you're running 1 or 5 machines in your house, but it does make a signifigant difference if you're running 500 or machines.
Shado.mobile
Now, that might be a cool URL after all. I say we also register a TLD named "Alpha" so we can have moonbase.alpha
Hrmmm. You think Gerry Anderson would mind?
How about 'Lectronimo from the Jetsons?
A friend of mine and I used to trade tapes with this guy. Of course he's working on a Giant Robot -- he's an ANIME FANBOY....
Mir lasted 5 times longer than it was supposed to, the ISS lasted 5 times LESS longer than it was supposed to.
Understand there are differences between the way the Russians do space programs and the way Americans do.
Early on, for example, the Americans had trouble writing down notes while in space. Ball-point pens didn't work, as the ink, in zero-G, didn't flow. This made working the checklists of hundreds of items difficult.
Thus, NASA developed, at a cost of over a million dollars, a pen with a pressurized cartridge to force the ink out regardless of the position it's in. You've probably seen this pen in novelty stores and in staples as "The Pen That Writes Upisde-Down and Underwater"...
The Russians used a pencil.
This is WHY Mir lasted so long and the ISS is falling apart.
(sigh)
John Perry Barlow had written extensively about the Quickdraw leak from Apple. Particularly funny was the FBI agent trying to comprehend that the "stolen" code didn't mean that Apple didn't have it anymore. He was thinking of code like a physical object, like when your car is stolen, you need to get it back, because it's gone and no longer in your driveway.
He couldn't quite grasp that "stolen" code still existed at Apple, and Apple still had access to the code, even though it was "stolen".
Even funnier was the the group responsible called themselves the New Prometheus Leauge (Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man). The FBI agent referred to them as the New Prothesis League.
I don't think the culprits were *ever* caught, although it spurned the FBI into launching their computer crimes division into overdrive, ultimately resulting in the infamous "Operation Sundevil", which netted among other things the "Manual for Computer Crime", also known as "Cyberpunk" by Steve Jackson Games, a paper and pencil RPG.
The problem is that totally unimaginative people are holding the purse-strings. They don't want to gamble on something they haven't seen before. They want to sell something they know has already sold once before.
That's why you don't get big budget "new" movies, you get sequel after sequel of The Matrix 6, Charlies Angles 3, Scooby Doo 2, etc., and the crap just gets churned out, but they know they can market it because the auideince for that crap is pre-existing.
Lord of the Rings was such a fluke because there's no way that should have gotten done, or done as well as it was, via the Hollywood system. Because Hollywood crushes creativity, it eschews original thought, and it despises anything it can't reference as something else.
When you're committing millions of dollars before even a frame of film is shot, the boardroom people want to be comfortable about it by knowing it's really something they can already relate to. That's why Gene Roddenbury had to "sell" Star Trek as "Wagon Train to the Stars", and couch it in relation to a Western, which was the TV staple of the 60's.
Unless you can make your "new idea" seem like *exactly* something everyone has seen before, you'll never get funding for your production. You've got a better chance of winning the lottery and self-producing it.
And that, my friend, is why there's only crap on TV and Movies. Because Hollywood hates "new ideas".