A mars MISSION is easier than a moon BASE. One's a rocket, an orbiter and a lander, the other equates to vacuum-resistant living space for MUCH more staff, I'd assume a mining capability to generate fuel or consumables, assembling gear in a dusty zero-atmosphere area, the much larger issues of large-crew life support, getting all of the above into of the moon's gravity well during all stages of assembly, etc. Ball's in your court to explain how the complexity equation would even remotely be otherwise. Base vs. Mission. Not base vs. base. No redefining terms midgame.
We're *at* 30 years, not 50. And both Glenn and Bush seem to be talkin' short-term plans (less than 20 years). 50 years is not factual as a frame of reference. Semantic games that shift you to being in the right because of speculation are unrealistic, since it could be 33, 38 41, 54, 938, or never. I can't believe I'm having to point this out, but SPECULATION IS NOT FACT. Oh, and calling me a fool is ad homenim. You seem to do that a lot, checking prior posts. How sad. That's proof in my book that you're incapable of relying simply on the strength of your argument. Doing the attacks, and subsequent denying such acts are insults (which you do in a later paragraph) is typical of a dittohead, though. Are you one?
I need air. I need food. I don't need a trip to mars. Sad, but true. All my life, I've had opinions that'd likely make me the biggest proponent of space travel you'll ever meet, but I don't say 'need'. Burden of proof for the word 'need' is on you. Frankly, I'm getting to the point where I'm both uncertain if we'll ever get Out of Here and less certain that it matters. Out of Here, in my book, is actually attaining interstellar travel. As inhospitable as the nearby remotely-earthlike planets or moons are, Manifest Destiny is going to have to mean interstellar travel. Life anywhere else in our solar system is just too inhospitable to count as really 'living'. Even mars and venus would need an unimaginable amount of work to support life as we know it. Incidentally, I'm also of the opinion that, in the universe, life will turn out to be insanely common (if we ever learn) and intelligent life won't be that unlikely, but that's my opinion. Based on that, and a slowly-decreasing respect for humanity (we, as a species, lack control, class, etc) over the last few decades, I'm pretty ok with us not colonizing. The universe won't care, either way. Thinking we're unique resembles pre-copernican delusions of the true importance of humanity in the universe. All things considered, I'm most on your side with this argument. I want us Out There more than almost anything else. I just don't admit it's a NEED. And you insulted someone I respect AND questioned his committment to space-related things in the tawdry name of smearing his argument with a brush called partisanship. Saying we shouldn't go would be bad. Saying what he did say (mars direct) sounds like a desire to stand behind SOMETHING THAT HE BELIEVES CAN PASS that gets us back off our thumbs. A something that is politically more likely, by the way. I'd wager nobody's as frustrated as the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo generation of astronauts and engineers and technicians who are reaching the end of their lives without seeing a turnabout from how deeply space research has been cut. Then there's the space-research ROI. Ever seen the 7 dollar quote?
If something goes wrong anywhere in space, you're in Trouble with a capital T. But you've left out a point of complexity in your counterargument: I don't disagree trouble earth-to-moon is easier to help than earth-to-mars. I do disagree that anything is improved by adding the moon. The earth-to-moon notwithstanding, you're still stuck with a leg that goes from here to there (the MOON to MARS part). I feel that the odds of things being made worse with a moon-based midpoint are significant. Any mission servicing on the moon is inordinately tougher. Clean rooms, fuel sources, manpower, time-lag fo
Wow, enigma, you really shouldn't take so many red pills at once.
An astronaut talks about keeping things simple and you somehow turn this into political posturing. Further, you so invert the logic to even say "I guess politics wins out over safety of astronaut lives."
How does a 2 or 3 stop mission improve safety?
The only thing that'd make the irony thicker is if Glenn, instead of Shepp, were famous for the "everything was made by the lowest bidder" quote.
Incidentally, there are a lot of responses to the story showing the fuel costs make a 2 stop mission a bad idea. Add in stresses to hardware under takeoff and landing, dust and other unforseens on the moon and I agree with the senator: keep it simple. Redo apollo, with an orbiter and lander pair. Get there, get back.
After that, we can go to work on increasing budgets to prevent another 30 year lag before the next mission. The two are separate issues, though. Budget cuts and cancellations (bipartisan) have gotten us here.
Attn moderators: If this was a carefully researched rant, I'd support your moderating it up. But it isn't. There is a factual error (30 not 50 years), several unsupported declarations (need settlements, the lesser complexity of a moon COLONY vs. a mars RUN, a moonbase improves access to mars, and his safety vs. politics rant) and it *insults* a prominent figure just to declare partisan politics as the basis for Glenn's thinking. If the parent message doesn't deserve being modded down, not much does. Repeatedly, I've stepped up to defend space programs, and repeatedly I get notes from other pro-space types that say it's a waste of breath, since there seems to be something about space exploration stories that makes computer geeks into armchair rocket scientists. Please... prove 'em wrong.
A patch removing all of the code SCO claims were put in illegally would be a tacit admission...
First, let me sorta support you by saying a patch would not make the lawsuit go away. It could be (positively) construed as evidence that IBM took steps to eliminate further alleged damage as quickly as possible.
But there's no way a patch has to admit anything, tacitly or otherwise. The law doesn't work that way. The press release can reinforce this with the usual mumbles: IBM says: This is in no way an admission of flaws or errors, (and the FSF could add: this demonstrates that regardless of this or future claims, Linux will remain Free Software...)
Sounds like you sort of realize this, but job satisfaction as a pure motive is insanely overrated.
First, talk to musicians and ask them if they'd do anything differently. I have, and I've heard members of big-city symphonies talk of how the amount of practice and effort needed erodes their ability to 'enjoy' their favorite music. They make good money, at least. Talking to bar bands and others, the lifestyle gets old and the tough choices never get easier (family vs. career, commercialism vs. artistic purity, etc). On the other hand, people who love music but have a day job doing something else seem to retain that deep love for it.
Second, there's the financial side. Money matters. If not to you, then to the people who'll be collecting your rent and selling you stuff.
Rather than dwelling on satisfaction only, find balance. You mentioned plumbing: If you're ok with the technical challenges and don't mind the dirt, plumbing is good work with steady demand and strong customer incentives to speak respectfully to you. You can work long hours and REALLY make bank (I supervised one union crew where the pipefitters were getting 5x their $40/hour pay by Sunday night), or just build a strong clientele and work 9-5 with a vicious additional fee to minimize off-hours calls. Likewise, there are profitable careers that are fairly painless, no matter what your talents or inclination. I'm lucky because most of the stuff I enjoy pays well. Had I not honed in on computer work, I could have stuck with engineering, or architecture. I'd even considered being a lawyer (but hated the idea of undergoing surgery to have my conscience removed, so no go there...). Still, the sheer joy I've felt during college philosophy lectures, or literature classes could have been a compelling thing if I ignored the whole MONEY thing. Instead, I just tell myself I might swerve more toward something loveable and low-paying once I get enough invested to guarantee a cushy retirement.
There are a zillion other ways that balancing money and satisfaction seems wisest: You can work your day job and subsidize artistic urges. My wife paid for her own bronze castings for her sculpture. Without our income level, that might be beyond her ability to spend. Strangely, being an executive AND an artist seems to give her double-plus charisma: she gets bonus points at work by people that want to pal up to an artist, and her artwork sells better because these successful executives buy & display pieces. Wierd, huh? As for me, my job's projects have peaks and lulls, and the lulls let me take several hours off midday to help at my kids' school, go fishing, or whatever. Good pay, an ok job, and flexibility are a great balance, in my book. Further, our jobs' higher pay lets us travel, invest more, and indulge on things we consider important.
Last of all, I watched my dad work for years in the public sector. Slaved away for so-so pay. Projects he spearheaded are named after people that donated volunteer effort or money to support these projects. None are named after him. All the work, none of the glory. It's a little thing, but it still matters. Had he picked a more lucrative career that he liked, then been a dedicated supporter of his favorite cause, he'd have gotten more credit.
So, don't choose between money and something you LOVE. It's not black and white. Go grey. If possible, pick a choice that's more lucrative, so long as you merely LIKE it. Nothing slaps the grin back on your face after a long week like a huge paycheck, or some gift to yourself like courtside Lakers tickets. And nothing saps the grin away faster than learning the low-pay job you hoped to love isn't what you expected.
He also might just have been (A) tired and (B) gun-shy.
It's like the guy who gets sent to sensitivity training and spends the next week apologizing for everything, even stuff that's not remotely insensitive.
Or trying to talk without saying 'um'... To rid our debate team of the habit, everyone in the room would loudly say 'um' any time it was said during practice debates. The result was hilarious: the person making the mistake would be so shaken up by having fifteen or twenty people all saying 'um', that they'd forget where they were. They'd hesitate. Brain would say 'fill in the space', and out would come the word 'um.' Man, talk about vicious feedback loops.
I doubt Avi cared nearly as much about age as he comes across by mentioning it constantly here. But his published remark obviously offended a LOT of people, considering the number JUST IN HIS PRECINCT that were offended. So, he's likely just caught in a day of overcompensating.
PS, Avi: my dad (an old fart that regularly works as a voting judge) forgives you.
Thanks for the reply. And a dead script is a lot more forgivable/understandable to me than thinking it was operator error. Wish I were going to sleep: root canal in the morning and the damn pain meds have me wired like I've had 42 cups of coffee. Tomorrow's going to be a loooong day.
If it helps diagnosing the script, I grabbed the mailto tag and emailed 'daddypants@slashdot.org' directly.
I know this is a bit offtopic, but I'm just hanging around, to see just how lame Slashdot's 'dupe' detection is. Some thoughts:
I liked GrodinTierce (571882) catching the humor of the word 'dupe' in the title, the fact that 30 minutes later it's still not being admitted as a dupe, and my gaffe of saying that a several-years-old story isn't news a month later.
Is 'Daddypants@slashdot.org' *ALWAYS* the mailto for the on-duty editor? That's fscking hysterical!
Oh, and I sincerely hope that somewhere out there is an unruly gang of viking-costumed monty-python impersonators singing 'Dupe dupe dupe dupe' to the 'spam' song.
Alterslash.org is like a nicotine patch for slashdot junkies who realize their addiction and are trying to quit.
Even sent two messages to the 'on duty editor'. Not that it matters, apparently. Considering this is like story 7 in a row or so for him, spanning the last several hours, I suspect it's bedtime for someone...
Not to sound like a broken record (even if slashdot regularly does), but it isn't news a month later, guys....
(1) The P2P community will reject the use of the ".MP3" suffix on the new DRM-crippled files. ".MP3" will continue to mean the full-featured format, and something else will be adopted (by informal consensus) to label the crippled files. Expect a new generation of P2P clients that will do this suffix-renaming automat
I nominate.mph
As in MPeg-Hobbled.
As in the sound someone makes when gagged/silenced.
Also, the sound heard a split second before hurling.
As with XP, TurboTax, Divx, and all the other hobbled stuff of the last 20 years, hurling is exactly how consumers seem to react to crap like this.
Consumers don't pay attention to most details, but they get attentive fast if the details are annoying. Corporations just refuse to learn that DRM business plans are like tar-pits.
I can't really meditate (or anything you've suggested) during the morning/evening commute. I end up being distracted by the traffic and forced to pay enough attention to avoid getting killed. And, if you're like me, the delays annoy you. So much for Relaxing...
Put another way, as spooky as folks are on cellphones, the last thing I ever want to encounter in my subcompact car is some meditating SUV driver. Last time I was in ICU, I (ahem) enjoyed how painful and complex breathing is enough to last me forever.
OTOH, an audiobook changes the equation: instead of 'the sooner I get to work, the sooner I'm out of this traffic!', I get sucked into the story enough I subconsciously relax because each small delay guarantees a few more moments of the story. I don't rush as much. On late night drives, I stay awake better because the story keeps me awake. Instead of self-inflicted stress knots in my back and neck after the more unpleasant examples of these two scenarios, I usually get out of the car with a spring in my step.
And don't even get me started about audiobooks and kids. They love them, they're still able to stare out windows and daydream. Unlike a short 1 or 2-hour video, tens of hours of Harry Potter is different enough to spare my sanity while they listen to everything over and over and over...
One last vote for audiobooks: I like Tom Bombadil more now. When I read and reread the Hobbit, I'd skip Tom's singing. On the Audiobook, his rambling songs come alive. Storytelling's basis in oral tradition itself can be lost in books.
Re:How much space do they use for caching?
on
Google's Bigger Index
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
With 6 billion pages indexed and cached, and maybe an average of 50K per page (which is probably pretty conservative - it's probably twice that in some cases), that's nearly 30TB, IICIC!!!
The hard disk and RAID folks must LOVE Google....
30tb... at a buck a gig, those $30,000 sure do look appetizing to all the hard drive and raid makers.
Not!
Hell, even doing 2x or 3x this amount for server-class drives still leaves us talking lame amounts. Just one Hitachi/Sun 9980 Fiber Channel drive costs several times more than this.
Seriously, everything I've heard indicates that google's methods hinge on a lot of white boxes, each one covering a subset of the google data. Put another way, drivespace per server isn't the limiting factor. A distributed system with several hundred white box servers can't HELP but have tens of terabytes of storage, given drive capacities of tens and hundreds of gigs each.
A client just bought a Hitachi 9980. As sweet as the Hitachi arrays are, I thought it was the most horrendous waste of cash I'd ever seen, considering this client's more modest needs. THOSE are the customers that raid/drive makers love... all it takes is one IT guy with hardware lust who has the trust of a Fortune-500 firm.
You agree that sibsidizing poor people's phone lines is a tolerable subsidy, then bitch about voip tarrifs.
They're the same thing! If you're not paying the surcharge for a phone line because you exclusively use voip, you're hampering the subsidy.
So, what you end up believing is that poor people should get a bit of help affording their phones, but rich metropolitan technotypes with broadband and voip should be able to dodge their share of the tax.
Sounds to me like you're the one that's thick as a brick...
Don't worry about the surplus of computer people. They're leaving the field, or finding jobs that use computers plus something else. Such is the nature of things, I've decided. Now, this is all just opinion and impressions, but:
The first time I thought about career plans I shied away from CS because there was a boomlet going on (1984-ish). It faded, lots of people that went into computers without a good reason moved on. I took my minor in CS and shifted back...
The second time the market peaked/faded was in the early 90's. Again, a few years after the peak, people that picked the degree for easy money left the field.
The third boom I've been thru (the dot.com boom) is just enough over that I don't have to listen to every third wanker talk about their side job as a web designer. Thank god. CS enrollment is down at the local university, too.
I guess that means the next surge is maybe due in 2008, if you believe in cycles. I suspect that the dot-com era is not going to repeat. Irrational exhuberance (sp?) is another way of saying 'gold rush'. The trends do mean that I'll see stability and job-finding improve gradually for the next few years.
Passion, ability, and persistence are good for your career... greed alone doesn't make good career choices.
Wouldn't it be poetic if the outcome of SCO's market gaming were that IBM sued SCO for all assets, including that, then turned around and freed UNIX once and for all?
IBM?! Give up assets? IBM? Free Unix forever?
I grew up tracking the IBM antitrust news. IBM was cutthroat enough that I remember how Microsoft's geek-chic stature grew when they out-IBM'ed IBM. IBM was embracing-and-extending long before Microsoft was founded. They were (and are) pit bulls when it comes to marketing, consulting, patent-collecting, acquiring or conquering competitors, etc, etc, etc. In fact, the (delightfully) ruthless motives given in this thread for IBM carefully avoiding dismissal sound like the IBM I've known all my life. Handing the rope out for SCO to hang themselves is a tactic worthy of a Grisham novel, but entirely in-character for IBM.
So, um... which one of us has fallen into another dimension? 'Cuz you sure aren't talking about the IBM I know. IBM giving an asset away isn't poetic. I'd call it heart-stoppingly unimaginable.
Caveat: Am not a Comcast subscriber (CableOne). My brother has DirecTV, friends have Dish. I have a ReplayTV. So far, haven't found anyone using Tivo to compare with.
Both Digital Cable and Satellite require a decoder box. Same per month cost for additional receivers. However, my Digital cable guide sucks horrendously compared to DirecTV or Dish or ReplayTV. No picture-in-picture mechanism to allow me to see a thumbnail of current channel while scanning guide, lots of ads (3! they eat over 50% of the screen space!) and a horrible horrible user interface that shows 1 timeslot x 8 lines, compared to the 3x8 or better view that DirecTV guide has, that my ReplayTV has, etc. The digital cable box also has braindead programming. It loses current defaults a lot: I'll scan thru the guide, find something on channel 20 that might be interesting, select it...nah, don't want to watch that... hit the guide button and I'm back at the beginning of the list. Page-down, page-down, page-down (did I mention, it's not the fastest guide?) until I get to where I was, then start browsing again... find another prospect, select it, decide no,...Fsck! I'm back at the top of the guide again! I can work around this by using the 'single-channel mini-guide' that shows at screen bottom while watching a program, but that pretty much sucks as an alternative. I so completely hate the huge ads and the crappy guide that we're discontinuing digital cable in the next weeks. The guide is a hinderance, not a help, in my opinion.
From what friends say, DirecTV and Dish integration with their built-in DVR devices is crisp and righteous. Infrared control connections like mine with Replay work about 95% of the time. Sometimes I miss a program due to the Replay not doing it's little Infrared thang, but rarely enough that I might still recommend the separate PVR if there was a near-term chance of changing providers: a DirecTivo cannot work without DirecTv, and a DishPVR is similarly single-minded.
Video on demand: sounds cool. We sure don't have that here. How widespread is that and when will it roll out to BF Nowhere?!
If everything seems equal and getting cable gets you $10 off a cablemodem connection, that might be an advantage over DSL. Total cost is worth at least glancing at here, since DSL and cablemodems are about the same in uptime/quality.
Cable company buried their cable 3 inches below ground thru my back yard. Phone is down at least a few feet. But which one whines loudest about not being taken seriously as a Utility? Cable guys. A word to the cable industry: if you want to be taken seriously, stop being so cheap and do things up to the phone or power company's standards. Act like a utility!
Even with a HUGE cable bill and a DVR, I don't have time to sit around scanning guides to find stuff to preprogram to watch. If I don't preprogram it, when I finally get an hour to unwind in front of the TV, I generally can't find anything good. My PVR is polluted with my daughter's favorite shows (and I'm NOT going to argue that issue). So I'm ditching half the movie channels, the digital package, etc. And we're trying out Netflix. Between that and the 30 non-digital cable channels, I'll be more certain to see What I want, When I want to.
Fadeouts: it takes some HORRENDOUS stormage to take out DirecTV signal. Seldom lasts long, but sometimes thick snow will kill signal until you climb up and wipe the dish clean. My digital cable garbles more often, to be honest. And unlike Satellite, if your cable provider is lazy/cheap, you can't fix the signal problems. We cancelled the wireless cable because their HBO
Oh, and the come-back-please offers alone make it worth the experimenting. A year ago I called to cancel a land-based alternative we have called 'wireless cable'; they offered to shave $8 off our bill per month. A friend regularly gets calls to resubscribe to his cable company. I'd be amazed if DirecTV didn't do the same. And my brother saved $400 when he upgraded his DirecTV hardware by cancelling his account. Existing account price for adding receivers was triple the come-back offer's total for 3 receivers and he got 3 months free deluxe programming.
(snipped Damien Neil's rant on book prices, swerving onto college meal plans)
At my college, it was a dollars-for-points system. They didn't even adjust the points to some wierd scale to mask the ratio: $1.06 paid in advance on the meal plan was worth $1 of cafeteria food. Also, no refunds on remaining balances. What a ripoff! So, we found ways to balance the ledger: anything that could be eaten before stepping up to the cash register *was*. We'd guzzle 'Free' refills on soda. Or misidentify items to the clerk (Nah, I only ordered a medium).
To stay on topic, I haven't seen mention of Dover books. Had 3 times that a prof used a dover book ($8 instead of $65, one time). Also, Alibris.com is DA BOMB for used books. Getting last-year's edition can save you some money. Bookswaps: primo. A friend at a bigger University can sometimes find used texts cheaply (or get them on a full-semester checkout from their library!), if you're one of 6 students in a junior/senior class in something obscure. Back before the September that never ended, I even bought a book or two off Usenet.
Oh, and a particularly lame Pascal textbook (in the 1980's) that priced out at 16 cents a page? I photocopied it ALL, then took the book back for a refund. Strangely, doing this just once cured me of being cheap. For ten bucks, I learned, I could have a smaller form factor, a hard binding, and a 2nd color used for highlighting key details that the photocopies lost.
See? College teaches you all sorts of useful things. Only a few during class, though.
Wasting my time to collect info and not even caring if it is valid... that's yet another reason it annoys me.
Some related thoughts, in case any newspaper reads this or cares: every subscriber-only paper that comes up under news.google is ignored by me. None of them yet have been realistic on one-time-use pricing, none of them take me to a page that DEFAULTS to showing me subscription cost for my request (so I'm forced to waste time to find out). Hell, I even stopped using my local city's online paper when they started wanting another $7/mo. for hobbled online access (in addtion to the fees for a dead-trees edition!)
Oh, and I sure would bitch about a new rope. If I'm going to hang, an old, old ratty rope that might break... that's the ticket.
So, since there's such a high likelihood of bad PR for Open Source, why don't we try to get *good* PR instead by stepping up and putting in measures to stop this.
I mean, as much as I despise SCO, the virus author rates lower in my book.
Once things are cleaned up, we can put out a nice press release that says something to the effect of "As much as we dislike SCO, we wanted to keep SCO focussed on their court case. When (not if) they lose in court, there should be no ambiguity. SCO didn't lose because they were distracted, or reviled. They lost because they were evil^h^h^h^h wrong."
a circulating e-mail scam that claims that people will lose their FDIC bank account insurance because they are suspected of violating the Patriot Act unless they confirm their bank account information with a website. The scammers then use the already documented bug in IE that allows a site in Pakistan to get 'www.fdic.gov' to appear in the URL bar
Man, talk about irony. The Patriot Act is indirectly responsible for a scam that could be funding terrorist anti-American factions. This is even funnier than the Bush/Cheney administration's 'drugs=bad, arab oil=good' dichotomy...
(disclaimer: yes, I'm aware it could be pro-American pakistanis behind this fraud. Heck, they're obviously capitalists and have the ethical flexibility to do well in American corporate boardrooms.)
About your cd: read this msg:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=93941&cid=8062 268
No vested interest anywhere in all this. not my post, not personally using mandrake, etc. Just puttin' 2 and 2 together, if you would. Mandrake is just the install I recommend to everyone curious about linux.
That said, let me know if the fix works or not.
The worm is also called "Bagel" and "Beagle." The writer has included the word "beagle" throughout the code, but antivirus researchers have tweaked the name to avoid calling it what the writer presumably named it.
What, is the worm's creator going to come forward and sue the antivirus companies for trademark infringement?
Or is this a "nyaa nyaa we're not going to call it what you wanted us to call it" thing?
Personally, I think the virus was first reported by a team of outsourced/offshore virus hunters, and language issues caused the name to be garbled. Or is that Gerbil'd.
heh... the sequel to the Bork-alator... the Bagel-ator:
Hamstersonally, I mink the virus was bird aboarded by a stream of outforced / off-bore virus buntings, and language tissues horsed the name to be gerbiled.
My nephew got a Mr-Microphone gadget *last* christmas that included on-the-fly electronic voice alteration. It'd do everything from gravelly chainsmoker to hot-chick and grandma. So... Add that in to a gamer's headset, so even a squeaky kid can alter his voice to sound like his on-screen personna. Problem solved.
(unless you're a dog!)
Oh, and hopefully this will serve as prior art, in case anyone goes all Patent happy someday.
First, let me try to avoid a flamefest by saying I agree with your basic premise. There are risks and we need to accept them. However, I take exception with:
Give me 50 skilled people, a dependable nuclear reactor and enough gear to get started and I'll make Mars a safe place for human life inside of a decade. If something breaks, I'll fix it. If we run out of spare parts, we'll mill new ones. If a few of us die, well, we'll mourn them and move on.
I know construction, farming, materials, physics, software, electronics, auto mechanics, welding, etc.
And you can never ignore that little pair in the middle: physics and materials.
Your speech reminds me of a classic Star Trek TNG episode ('The Ensigns of Command', ep 49 or 50), where Data explains to a handful of colonists how bravery doesn't matter against a vastly superior amount of force. 'You'll just be dead.'
That's the sort of 'I know I'm in over my head' awareness that rocket science inspires in me. It requires planning, design, failsafes, testing, and a LOT of attention to how easily things can become lethally wrong if materials fail due to hard vacuum or extremes of heat or cold. The more I know (and that ain't much), the more I gain a deep, abiding trust that leaving earth really is tough shit. And living in a semihard, inhospitable vacuum, without agriculture or oxygen makes a colonization infinitely harder.
Pioneers? Not enough! Bravery? Vacuums don't care how brave you are. Willpower alone will not colonize space. When something goes horribly wrong out a *year* from earth, someone won't get a second chance. They'll just be dead. And an alien planet changes all the dynamics: There'll be no way out of crop failure due to trace materials in the soil, a cave/residence's porosity 'inhaling' all the colony's air, or whatever.
The only difference between a lost Mars colony and the folks on Star Trek's Tau Cigna V: We'll know. We'll sing some nice ballads about your bravery. And I repeat that I feel it's worth the risk: I just modded UP someone that reminded us that a grim call to Antartica got 5000 volunteers. I agree we've got to try, to strive, and to balance the risks and accept the loss of life it'll take. But it'll take engineering feats well beyond what we did for Apollo.
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Wow, enigma, you really shouldn't take so many red pills at once.
An astronaut talks about keeping things simple and you somehow turn this into political posturing. Further, you so invert the logic to even say "I guess politics wins out over safety of astronaut lives."
How does a 2 or 3 stop mission improve safety?
The only thing that'd make the irony thicker is if Glenn, instead of Shepp, were famous for the "everything was made by the lowest bidder" quote.
Incidentally, there are a lot of responses to the story showing the fuel costs make a 2 stop mission a bad idea. Add in stresses to hardware under takeoff and landing, dust and other unforseens on the moon and I agree with the senator: keep it simple. Redo apollo, with an orbiter and lander pair. Get there, get back.
After that, we can go to work on increasing budgets to prevent another 30 year lag before the next mission. The two are separate issues, though. Budget cuts and cancellations (bipartisan) have gotten us here.
Attn moderators: If this was a carefully researched rant, I'd support your moderating it up. But it isn't. There is a factual error (30 not 50 years), several unsupported declarations (need settlements, the lesser complexity of a moon COLONY vs. a mars RUN, a moonbase improves access to mars, and his safety vs. politics rant) and it *insults* a prominent figure just to declare partisan politics as the basis for Glenn's thinking. If the parent message doesn't deserve being modded down, not much does. Repeatedly, I've stepped up to defend space programs, and repeatedly I get notes from other pro-space types that say it's a waste of breath, since there seems to be something about space exploration stories that makes computer geeks into armchair rocket scientists. Please... prove 'em wrong.
But there's no way a patch has to admit anything, tacitly or otherwise. The law doesn't work that way. The press release can reinforce this with the usual mumbles: IBM says: This is in no way an admission of flaws or errors, (and the FSF could add: this demonstrates that regardless of this or future claims, Linux will remain Free Software...)
First, talk to musicians and ask them if they'd do anything differently. I have, and I've heard members of big-city symphonies talk of how the amount of practice and effort needed erodes their ability to 'enjoy' their favorite music. They make good money, at least. Talking to bar bands and others, the lifestyle gets old and the tough choices never get easier (family vs. career, commercialism vs. artistic purity, etc). On the other hand, people who love music but have a day job doing something else seem to retain that deep love for it.
Second, there's the financial side. Money matters. If not to you, then to the people who'll be collecting your rent and selling you stuff.
Rather than dwelling on satisfaction only, find balance. You mentioned plumbing: If you're ok with the technical challenges and don't mind the dirt, plumbing is good work with steady demand and strong customer incentives to speak respectfully to you. You can work long hours and REALLY make bank (I supervised one union crew where the pipefitters were getting 5x their $40/hour pay by Sunday night), or just build a strong clientele and work 9-5 with a vicious additional fee to minimize off-hours calls. Likewise, there are profitable careers that are fairly painless, no matter what your talents or inclination. I'm lucky because most of the stuff I enjoy pays well. Had I not honed in on computer work, I could have stuck with engineering, or architecture. I'd even considered being a lawyer (but hated the idea of undergoing surgery to have my conscience removed, so no go there...). Still, the sheer joy I've felt during college philosophy lectures, or literature classes could have been a compelling thing if I ignored the whole MONEY thing. Instead, I just tell myself I might swerve more toward something loveable and low-paying once I get enough invested to guarantee a cushy retirement.
There are a zillion other ways that balancing money and satisfaction seems wisest: You can work your day job and subsidize artistic urges. My wife paid for her own bronze castings for her sculpture. Without our income level, that might be beyond her ability to spend. Strangely, being an executive AND an artist seems to give her double-plus charisma: she gets bonus points at work by people that want to pal up to an artist, and her artwork sells better because these successful executives buy & display pieces. Wierd, huh? As for me, my job's projects have peaks and lulls, and the lulls let me take several hours off midday to help at my kids' school, go fishing, or whatever. Good pay, an ok job, and flexibility are a great balance, in my book. Further, our jobs' higher pay lets us travel, invest more, and indulge on things we consider important.
Last of all, I watched my dad work for years in the public sector. Slaved away for so-so pay. Projects he spearheaded are named after people that donated volunteer effort or money to support these projects. None are named after him. All the work, none of the glory. It's a little thing, but it still matters. Had he picked a more lucrative career that he liked, then been a dedicated supporter of his favorite cause, he'd have gotten more credit.
So, don't choose between money and something you LOVE. It's not black and white. Go grey. If possible, pick a choice that's more lucrative, so long as you merely LIKE it. Nothing slaps the grin back on your face after a long week like a huge paycheck, or some gift to yourself like courtside Lakers tickets. And nothing saps the grin away faster than learning the low-pay job you hoped to love isn't what you expected.
Love it. Wish I had some mod points...
He also might just have been (A) tired and (B) gun-shy.
It's like the guy who gets sent to sensitivity training and spends the next week apologizing for everything, even stuff that's not remotely insensitive.
Or trying to talk without saying 'um'... To rid our debate team of the habit, everyone in the room would loudly say 'um' any time it was said during practice debates. The result was hilarious: the person making the mistake would be so shaken up by having fifteen or twenty people all saying 'um', that they'd forget where they were. They'd hesitate. Brain would say 'fill in the space', and out would come the word 'um.' Man, talk about vicious feedback loops.
I doubt Avi cared nearly as much about age as he comes across by mentioning it constantly here. But his published remark obviously offended a LOT of people, considering the number JUST IN HIS PRECINCT that were offended. So, he's likely just caught in a day of overcompensating.
PS, Avi: my dad (an old fart that regularly works as a voting judge) forgives you.
If it helps diagnosing the script, I grabbed the mailto tag and emailed 'daddypants@slashdot.org' directly.
I liked GrodinTierce (571882) catching the humor of the word 'dupe' in the title, the fact that 30 minutes later it's still not being admitted as a dupe, and my gaffe of saying that a several-years-old story isn't news a month later.
Is 'Daddypants@slashdot.org' *ALWAYS* the mailto for the on-duty editor? That's fscking hysterical!
Oh, and I sincerely hope that somewhere out there is an unruly gang of viking-costumed monty-python impersonators singing 'Dupe dupe dupe dupe' to the 'spam' song.
Alterslash.org is like a nicotine patch for slashdot junkies who realize their addiction and are trying to quit.
Dupe dupe dupe dupe dupe!
3 24 3&mode=nested
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/02/115
Even sent two messages to the 'on duty editor'. Not that it matters, apparently. Considering this is like story 7 in a row or so for him, spanning the last several hours, I suspect it's bedtime for someone...
Not to sound like a broken record (even if slashdot regularly does), but it isn't news a month later, guys....
As in MPeg-Hobbled.
As in the sound someone makes when gagged/silenced.
Also, the sound heard a split second before hurling.
As with XP, TurboTax, Divx, and all the other hobbled stuff of the last 20 years, hurling is exactly how consumers seem to react to crap like this.
Consumers don't pay attention to most details, but they get attentive fast if the details are annoying. Corporations just refuse to learn that DRM business plans are like tar-pits.
I can't really meditate (or anything you've suggested) during the morning/evening commute. I end up being distracted by the traffic and forced to pay enough attention to avoid getting killed. And, if you're like me, the delays annoy you. So much for Relaxing...
Put another way, as spooky as folks are on cellphones, the last thing I ever want to encounter in my subcompact car is some meditating SUV driver. Last time I was in ICU, I (ahem) enjoyed how painful and complex breathing is enough to last me forever.
OTOH, an audiobook changes the equation: instead of 'the sooner I get to work, the sooner I'm out of this traffic!', I get sucked into the story enough I subconsciously relax because each small delay guarantees a few more moments of the story. I don't rush as much. On late night drives, I stay awake better because the story keeps me awake. Instead of self-inflicted stress knots in my back and neck after the more unpleasant examples of these two scenarios, I usually get out of the car with a spring in my step.
And don't even get me started about audiobooks and kids. They love them, they're still able to stare out windows and daydream. Unlike a short 1 or 2-hour video, tens of hours of Harry Potter is different enough to spare my sanity while they listen to everything over and over and over...
One last vote for audiobooks: I like Tom Bombadil more now. When I read and reread the Hobbit, I'd skip Tom's singing. On the Audiobook, his rambling songs come alive. Storytelling's basis in oral tradition itself can be lost in books.
Not!
Hell, even doing 2x or 3x this amount for server-class drives still leaves us talking lame amounts. Just one Hitachi/Sun 9980 Fiber Channel drive costs several times more than this.
Seriously, everything I've heard indicates that google's methods hinge on a lot of white boxes, each one covering a subset of the google data. Put another way, drivespace per server isn't the limiting factor. A distributed system with several hundred white box servers can't HELP but have tens of terabytes of storage, given drive capacities of tens and hundreds of gigs each.
A client just bought a Hitachi 9980. As sweet as the Hitachi arrays are, I thought it was the most horrendous waste of cash I'd ever seen, considering this client's more modest needs. THOSE are the customers that raid/drive makers love... all it takes is one IT guy with hardware lust who has the trust of a Fortune-500 firm.
You agree that sibsidizing poor people's phone lines is a tolerable subsidy, then bitch about voip tarrifs.
They're the same thing! If you're not paying the surcharge for a phone line because you exclusively use voip, you're hampering the subsidy.
So, what you end up believing is that poor people should get a bit of help affording their phones, but rich metropolitan technotypes with broadband and voip should be able to dodge their share of the tax.
Sounds to me like you're the one that's thick as a brick...
The first time I thought about career plans I shied away from CS because there was a boomlet going on (1984-ish). It faded, lots of people that went into computers without a good reason moved on. I took my minor in CS and shifted back...
The second time the market peaked/faded was in the early 90's. Again, a few years after the peak, people that picked the degree for easy money left the field.
The third boom I've been thru (the dot.com boom) is just enough over that I don't have to listen to every third wanker talk about their side job as a web designer. Thank god. CS enrollment is down at the local university, too.
I guess that means the next surge is maybe due in 2008, if you believe in cycles. I suspect that the dot-com era is not going to repeat. Irrational exhuberance (sp?) is another way of saying 'gold rush'. The trends do mean that I'll see stability and job-finding improve gradually for the next few years.
Passion, ability, and persistence are good for your career... greed alone doesn't make good career choices.
I grew up tracking the IBM antitrust news. IBM was cutthroat enough that I remember how Microsoft's geek-chic stature grew when they out-IBM'ed IBM. IBM was embracing-and-extending long before Microsoft was founded. They were (and are) pit bulls when it comes to marketing, consulting, patent-collecting, acquiring or conquering competitors, etc, etc, etc. In fact, the (delightfully) ruthless motives given in this thread for IBM carefully avoiding dismissal sound like the IBM I've known all my life. Handing the rope out for SCO to hang themselves is a tactic worthy of a Grisham novel, but entirely in-character for IBM.
So, um... which one of us has fallen into another dimension? 'Cuz you sure aren't talking about the IBM I know. IBM giving an asset away isn't poetic. I'd call it heart-stoppingly unimaginable.
- Both Digital Cable and Satellite require a decoder box. Same per month cost for additional receivers. However, my Digital cable guide sucks horrendously compared to DirecTV or Dish or ReplayTV. No picture-in-picture mechanism to allow me to see a thumbnail of current channel while scanning guide, lots of ads (3! they eat over 50% of the screen space!) and a horrible horrible user interface that shows 1 timeslot x 8 lines, compared to the 3x8 or better view that DirecTV guide has, that my ReplayTV has, etc. The digital cable box also has braindead programming. It loses current defaults a lot: I'll scan thru the guide, find something on channel 20 that might be interesting, select it...nah, don't want to watch that... hit the guide button and I'm back at the beginning of the list. Page-down, page-down, page-down (did I mention, it's not the fastest guide?) until I get to where I was, then start browsing again... find another prospect, select it, decide no,
...Fsck! I'm back at the top of the guide again! I can work around this by using the 'single-channel mini-guide' that shows at screen bottom while watching a program, but that pretty much sucks as an alternative. I so completely hate the huge ads and the crappy guide that we're discontinuing digital cable in the next weeks. The guide is a hinderance, not a help, in my opinion.
- From what friends say, DirecTV and Dish integration with their built-in DVR devices is crisp and righteous. Infrared control connections like mine with Replay work about 95% of the time. Sometimes I miss a program due to the Replay not doing it's little Infrared thang, but rarely enough that I might still recommend the separate PVR if there was a near-term chance of changing providers: a DirecTivo cannot work without DirecTv, and a DishPVR is similarly single-minded.
- Video on demand: sounds cool. We sure don't have that here. How widespread is that and when will it roll out to BF Nowhere?!
- If everything seems equal and getting cable gets you $10 off a cablemodem connection, that might be an advantage over DSL. Total cost is worth at least glancing at here, since DSL and cablemodems are about the same in uptime/quality.
- Cable company buried their cable 3 inches below ground thru my back yard. Phone is down at least a few feet. But which one whines loudest about not being taken seriously as a Utility? Cable guys. A word to the cable industry: if you want to be taken seriously, stop being so cheap and do things up to the phone or power company's standards. Act like a utility!
- Even with a HUGE cable bill and a DVR, I don't have time to sit around scanning guides to find stuff to preprogram to watch. If I don't preprogram it, when I finally get an hour to unwind in front of the TV, I generally can't find anything good. My PVR is polluted with my daughter's favorite shows (and I'm NOT going to argue that issue). So I'm ditching half the movie channels, the digital package, etc. And we're trying out Netflix. Between that and the 30 non-digital cable channels, I'll be more certain to see What I want, When I want to.
- Fadeouts: it takes some HORRENDOUS stormage to take out DirecTV signal. Seldom lasts long, but sometimes thick snow will kill signal until you climb up and wipe the dish clean. My digital cable garbles more often, to be honest. And unlike Satellite, if your cable provider is lazy/cheap, you can't fix the signal problems. We cancelled the wireless cable because their HBO
Oh, and the come-back-please offers alone make it worth the experimenting. A year ago I called to cancel a land-based alternative we have called 'wireless cable'; they offered to shave $8 off our bill per month. A friend regularly gets calls to resubscribe to his cable company. I'd be amazed if DirecTV didn't do the same. And my brother saved $400 when he upgraded his DirecTV hardware by cancelling his account. Existing account price for adding receivers was triple the come-back offer's total for 3 receivers and he got 3 months free deluxe programming.At my college, it was a dollars-for-points system. They didn't even adjust the points to some wierd scale to mask the ratio: $1.06 paid in advance on the meal plan was worth $1 of cafeteria food. Also, no refunds on remaining balances. What a ripoff! So, we found ways to balance the ledger: anything that could be eaten before stepping up to the cash register *was*. We'd guzzle 'Free' refills on soda. Or misidentify items to the clerk (Nah, I only ordered a medium).
To stay on topic, I haven't seen mention of Dover books. Had 3 times that a prof used a dover book ($8 instead of $65, one time). Also, Alibris.com is DA BOMB for used books. Getting last-year's edition can save you some money. Bookswaps: primo. A friend at a bigger University can sometimes find used texts cheaply (or get them on a full-semester checkout from their library!), if you're one of 6 students in a junior/senior class in something obscure. Back before the September that never ended, I even bought a book or two off Usenet.
Oh, and a particularly lame Pascal textbook (in the 1980's) that priced out at 16 cents a page? I photocopied it ALL, then took the book back for a refund. Strangely, doing this just once cured me of being cheap. For ten bucks, I learned, I could have a smaller form factor, a hard binding, and a 2nd color used for highlighting key details that the photocopies lost.
See? College teaches you all sorts of useful things. Only a few during class, though.
Wasting my time to collect info and not even caring if it is valid... that's yet another reason it annoys me. Some related thoughts, in case any newspaper reads this or cares: every subscriber-only paper that comes up under news.google is ignored by me. None of them yet have been realistic on one-time-use pricing, none of them take me to a page that DEFAULTS to showing me subscription cost for my request (so I'm forced to waste time to find out). Hell, I even stopped using my local city's online paper when they started wanting another $7/mo. for hobbled online access (in addtion to the fees for a dead-trees edition!) Oh, and I sure would bitch about a new rope. If I'm going to hang, an old, old ratty rope that might break... that's the ticket.
I mean, as much as I despise SCO, the virus author rates lower in my book.
Once things are cleaned up, we can put out a nice press release that says something to the effect of "As much as we dislike SCO, we wanted to keep SCO focussed on their court case. When (not if) they lose in court, there should be no ambiguity. SCO didn't lose because they were distracted, or reviled. They lost because they were evil^h^h^h^h wrong."
Man, talk about irony. The Patriot Act is indirectly responsible for a scam that could be funding terrorist anti-American factions. This is even funnier than the Bush/Cheney administration's 'drugs=bad, arab oil=good' dichotomy...
(disclaimer: yes, I'm aware it could be pro-American pakistanis behind this fraud. Heck, they're obviously capitalists and have the ethical flexibility to do well in American corporate boardrooms.)
About your cd: read this msg: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=93941&cid=8062 268
No vested interest anywhere in all this. not my post, not personally using mandrake, etc. Just puttin' 2 and 2 together, if you would. Mandrake is just the install I recommend to everyone curious about linux.
That said, let me know if the fix works or not.
heh... the sequel to the Bork-alator... the Bagel-ator:
Hamstersonally, I mink the virus was bird aboarded by a stream of outforced / off-bore virus buntings, and language tissues horsed the name to be gerbiled.
My nephew got a Mr-Microphone gadget *last* christmas that included on-the-fly electronic voice alteration. It'd do everything from gravelly chainsmoker to hot-chick and grandma. So... Add that in to a gamer's headset, so even a squeaky kid can alter his voice to sound like his on-screen personna. Problem solved.
(unless you're a dog!)
Oh, and hopefully this will serve as prior art, in case anyone goes all Patent happy someday.
And you can never ignore that little pair in the middle: physics and materials.
Your speech reminds me of a classic Star Trek TNG episode ('The Ensigns of Command', ep 49 or 50), where Data explains to a handful of colonists how bravery doesn't matter against a vastly superior amount of force. 'You'll just be dead.'
That's the sort of 'I know I'm in over my head' awareness that rocket science inspires in me. It requires planning, design, failsafes, testing, and a LOT of attention to how easily things can become lethally wrong if materials fail due to hard vacuum or extremes of heat or cold. The more I know (and that ain't much), the more I gain a deep, abiding trust that leaving earth really is tough shit. And living in a semihard, inhospitable vacuum, without agriculture or oxygen makes a colonization infinitely harder.
Pioneers? Not enough! Bravery? Vacuums don't care how brave you are. Willpower alone will not colonize space. When something goes horribly wrong out a *year* from earth, someone won't get a second chance. They'll just be dead. And an alien planet changes all the dynamics: There'll be no way out of crop failure due to trace materials in the soil, a cave/residence's porosity 'inhaling' all the colony's air, or whatever.
The only difference between a lost Mars colony and the folks on Star Trek's Tau Cigna V: We'll know. We'll sing some nice ballads about your bravery. And I repeat that I feel it's worth the risk: I just modded UP someone that reminded us that a grim call to Antartica got 5000 volunteers. I agree we've got to try, to strive, and to balance the risks and accept the loss of life it'll take. But it'll take engineering feats well beyond what we did for Apollo.