At the risk of enraging automatic supporters of bloated government programs like the old Space Shuttle, it doesn't surprise me that lean, privately funded space-exploitation outfits do so well.
I'm impressed by Elon Musk and his organizational and marketing abilities. That said, to give all credit to the success of the program to privatization is a little silly. The company is significantly funded by goverment funds albeit through progress payments on contracts.
Privatization didn't work that well with the Apollo lander. That was contracted to Grumman (simlar to the SpaceX contracts). Original LEM contract $350 million, final cost $2.2B
More reasonably, what you're seeing is a maturing of the technology. Submarines, once the unique province of governments, are now widely available from private vendors. Computers likewise.
Someone has to put in the "bloat" of basic research and it's rare for a private organization to invest in technology that will only yield results in 15+ years, if ever.
That's funny because I once called Dell tech support (I had some sort of onsite warranty at the time) to report that the fan in my laptop was broken. Pretty obvious, no air, CPU never about half speed, etc. etc..
After 2 1/2 hrs of online optimization of my Windows partition (which I rarely use) the tech finally got around to running the hardware diagnostic and, no surprise, the fan was broken - fixed the next day. Could have been off the phone in under 2 minutes.
I never thought I'd say this, but I suspect that the MBA's are correct. Yes, lots of international business is transacted in English. I've been in meetings in non-English speaking countries where all the participants spoke English fluently.
Yet, all other things being equal, if they could buy from someone who spoke their native language, they would. With the exception of truely multi-lingual people, generally people who grew up speaking two or more languages, you'll always be more comfortable in your mother tongue.
The only problem with that theory is that there are no more trusted sources for the products. Where are you going to get the switches, telco equipment, databases? India, China? Even if you look at the EU where some hope of sanity exists, many companies are multi-nationals so your only hope would be to buy the product through a European subsidiary and then export it to the US - good luck with that.
On the software side there may be open source alternatives, but for industrial strength infrastructure hardware there's nowhere to go. Even items like Android handsets have closed source "radio" software.
You see an article like this and wonder if there is a deeper motive. This is not really "news" it's sad for the family, but a huge number of people die, unheralded, in accidents every day. So, now look at the helicopter as an unmanned drone. If you can find an excuse to ban helicopters as being dangerous, then you can start to look for ways to put all non-government controlled model aircraft/drones under some sort of control. Even if you can't outright ban them, you can restrict the airspace, make sure that they don't fly anywhere near any location where they may be able to take photographs that embarass the government.
Maybe I'm overly paranoid, but I'm sure this will lead to calls for bans or some restrictions. It won't be effective this time, or the restrictions will be minor, but next time, or the time after they'll increase until they achieve the government objective of increase control over the people by removing civil liberties and information.
This is true of any airline and I don't really understand it. Overbook a flight and you have to give away flight coupons to get people to give up their seats or pay stiff penalties. Cancel a flight and you can stiff all the passengers without any compensation. Last flight out of Denver was cancelled for me on a Friday night (after a delay, etc. etc. so it was really late) - staffing problem not weather, etc. Rebooked me on a flight ON MONDAY. Finally got a flight midday on Saturday, but had to sit around in the airport and see if there were seats on each flight. Am I supposed to feel honoured that the airline paid for a night in a hotel and $20 of meal vouchers?
I now consider it an achievement if I get to my destination on the day (forget the time) I'm supposed to get there. Which airline I'm flying makes very little difference.
On the whole, I find that Ryanair get me there on the right day (and often close to the right time) more often than other airlines. That said, I haven't flown them all that much recently because there are other low-cost airlines that fly from closer airports. Once you include the cost and hassle of getting to an airport that's 100km out of town and you add up all the little extras Ryanair throws in, they're not as competitive as they once were.
Come on, even the IAEA is not making the claim that there were no deaths as a result of Chernobyl. Although the IAEA/WHO claim "only" a few thousand deaths it stupid to claim that there were none. Cleanup workers weren't the only people impacted (from IAEA - http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/features/chernobyl-15/cherno-faq.shtml)
No studies have been able to point to a direct link between Chernobyl and increased cancer risks or other health problems outside the immediately affected republics of Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian Federation.
My main point, that using exaggerated claims to make a point weakens, rather than strengthens your argument, remains.
With Ryanair if you actually READ the T&C you can get a ticket at a decent price. They lay out all the items you could want and the cost for each of these. Bags (15kg or 20kg) price per extra kg (yes, that starts at 16 and 21). Didn't print out your boarding pass, they have a price (70Eur?) to do that for you. Baggage tag? Food on the flight, there's a cost for that. For everything other than the use of the seat (and the toilets, so far) there is an additional cost, and they list it - RTFM and don't complain because they are charging for something for which they CLEARLY stated they would charge you. The seat and the flight are usually OK.
If you're not going to read the T&C your going to get screwed. Same applies to Facebook (much more duplicitous, much more obnoxious), your ISP, mobile phone provider, etc. etc.
we can dance around the word "proven", but deaths there certainly have been.
What's really dumb is that you could have made your point without including that stupid statement as your first paragraph. Fossil fuels are currently killing people in fairly large number and have the potential, through climate change, to kill millions. Nuclear accidents are killing people, but improved technologies have the potential to limit this and nuclear power need not be "dirty" in normal use. None of that means we should decrease our investments in renewables.
Don't forget that violating the terms and conditions of a website is a felony in the US. Farting in church is just like farting everywhere else - turn round and stare at the person behind you.
Don't grind them up! Grasshoppers and locust are about the perfect junk food. An ideal junk food should crunch on the first bite and then be soft and squishy. Think any kind of cookie or biscuit, chocolate ice cream bars, even apples. That's a grasshopper for you. Deep fry it, coat with chile or other spices, crunch and enjoy.
The problem is that you need to make a car aerodynamic to make it either fuel efficient or to have a good electric range. The muscle cars were not particularly built with aerodynamics in mind - consume enough gas and you can overcome almost all air resistance.
What I find interesting is that there must be one, or at best a few, optimum aerodyamic designs. Eventually all efficient cars will have to adopt these shapes with, possibly, minor variations. That said, Tesla's and Prius's have two of the lowest cv's around and don't look much alike.
It's idiocy like this that causes software to suck so badly. Faced with a bug report that has the same symptoms as a previous solved bug, the issue is marked as "resolved".
It is possible to have events with broadly the same symptoms that actually have different underlying causes. (Although as others point out the timescale of the symptoms is massively different).
Especially since Sen. Wyden (D-OR) sent the question Clapper ahead of time.
"So that he would be prepared to answer, I sent the question to Director Clapperâ(TM)s office a day in advance. "
Clapper could easily have asked for clarification, so has no excuse fo suggesting that he misunderstood the question.
I think we can all agree that the FSF reached PETA "sea kittens" levels of batshit[...][
Unlike the MPAA, RIAA, etc. who have clearly waaay passed the batshit level, but have bought enough politicians that they get their agenda embeded in legislation.
I'll give it a shot:
Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to invade a soverign country (Iraq) that had nothing to do with the attack. The high end of the estimate for the death toll in Iraq is about same as the plague in England in the 1300's and 1400's.
Bush introduced the Patriot Act which can probably be described as "rights-trampling". Disagreeing with Bush (or any of the ruling powers) could get you labelled as an enemy combatant ("treason") and get you into Guantanamo Bay detention camp, with all habeas corpus rules suspended, and so, with no rights to a trial, you can be detained indefinitely - so as good as a beheading. Anyone disagreeing could expect to be vilified for example the Dixie Chicks, violence against organizations with connections to France.
Bush introduced the idea of "extraordinary rendition" where people (suspects?) were removed from one country to another, where they could be tortured.
Through his emissary Colin Powell, he was willing to lie to his allies at the UN to get his way.
Same plan, global scale.
Obama maintains these policies, either using the new powers less frequently or, probably, more discretely. Add to that Obama's lack of action on surveillance drones, right to kill citizens and non-citizens at his sayso.
The purpose of those in power is to stay in power. The details have changed with technology, but the basic plan is the same.
What's interesting, is that most collapses are STILL economic. What forced the Magna Carta signing was that the king was broke - yielding more power to the local leaders. The soviet union collapsed into smaller states because it didn't have enough money to hold the "union" together.
The US has the same plan. Most economists agree that stimulating the economy (tax and spend) is the way to recover from the current US recession, but those in power, beholden to a VERY small number of liege lords, or major campaign contributors refuse to go against the wishes of their masters.
Other collapses are environmental, see just about any civilization that relied exclusively on irrigation and so "salted" their own fields, vs human induced climate change.
History is a spiral, currently the spiral is expanding, but it still repeats.
I miss the hovercrafts that used to cross the English Channel. Very cool machines that would make you throw up in anything but the calmest seas - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A02u03xhpPw . Victims of the EuroStar and other circumstances. You want fast, you go by train, you want low-cost, you go by ferry.
Re:I believe I speak for a dozen people when I say
on
Amtrak Upgrades Wi-Fi
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· Score: 1
People don't understand how large and empty most of the US is.
The rest of the country languishes because everything is so far apart. Do you want to spend days on a train to get from Chicago to LA, or do you want to spend 4-5 hours on a plane? Even high speed rail can't beat a jet. In the Northeast the density of cities plus the ability to work/talk/move around on a train trumps the cost and hassle of air travel, elsewhere not so much.
"Hello air travel? It's train travel... you win."
Let's look at that. Say, Salt Lake City to Denver. If you live in, say LakeWood, CO you have, probably a 2 hour drive to the airport, you need to be there 90 minutes ahead of departure, 90 minute flight, so 2 hours by the time you disembark and get to your rental car, 30 minutes into the city center. 7.5 hrs. Assuming a track following I70, high speed rail would pick you up in Lakewood, it would probably take about the same time, but maybe up to 8, or 8.5 hrs to drop you in the city center. I do that anytime - and so would MANY others. I don't have to have an anal probe, or turn off all electronics occasionally. I can get some work done (using the WIFI) in a comfortable seat and get a decent, if not gourmet meal.
Trains will work, and work well, on any corridor less than about 600 miles ESPECIALLY in the relatively unpopulated areas where airports can be hours of driving away.
Re:I believe I speak for a dozen people when I say
on
Amtrak Upgrades Wi-Fi
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Amtrak gets very little money compared to the airlines. All the airports are built and staffed with public funds. The airlines pay "landing fees". The FAA including controllers are on the public payroll.
Part of the problem with trains is there's very little political graft involved. You get an airport, you get tax money to build it, maintain it, etc. etc. etc. Looks good on your political resume. With a train, you get a (relatively) small station and then 600 miles of track - most of which is not in your district. The only reason you'd ever support that is if you put the public good first, and that's not about to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
At the risk of enraging automatic supporters of bloated government programs like the old Space Shuttle, it doesn't surprise me that lean, privately funded space-exploitation outfits do so well.
I'm impressed by Elon Musk and his organizational and marketing abilities. That said, to give all credit to the success of the program to privatization is a little silly. The company is significantly funded by goverment funds albeit through progress payments on contracts.
Privatization didn't work that well with the Apollo lander. That was contracted to Grumman (simlar to the SpaceX contracts). Original LEM contract $350 million, final cost $2.2B
More reasonably, what you're seeing is a maturing of the technology. Submarines, once the unique province of governments, are now widely available from private vendors. Computers likewise.
Someone has to put in the "bloat" of basic research and it's rare for a private organization to invest in technology that will only yield results in 15+ years, if ever.
That's funny because I once called Dell tech support (I had some sort of onsite warranty at the time) to report that the fan in my laptop was broken. Pretty obvious, no air, CPU never about half speed, etc. etc..
After 2 1/2 hrs of online optimization of my Windows partition (which I rarely use) the tech finally got around to running the hardware diagnostic and, no surprise, the fan was broken - fixed the next day. Could have been off the phone in under 2 minutes.
I never thought I'd say this, but I suspect that the MBA's are correct. Yes, lots of international business is transacted in English. I've been in meetings in non-English speaking countries where all the participants spoke English fluently.
Yet, all other things being equal, if they could buy from someone who spoke their native language, they would. With the exception of truely multi-lingual people, generally people who grew up speaking two or more languages, you'll always be more comfortable in your mother tongue.
The only problem with that theory is that there are no more trusted sources for the products. Where are you going to get the switches, telco equipment, databases? India, China? Even if you look at the EU where some hope of sanity exists, many companies are multi-nationals so your only hope would be to buy the product through a European subsidiary and then export it to the US - good luck with that.
On the software side there may be open source alternatives, but for industrial strength infrastructure hardware there's nowhere to go. Even items like Android handsets have closed source "radio" software.
You see an article like this and wonder if there is a deeper motive. This is not really "news" it's sad for the family, but a huge number of people die, unheralded, in accidents every day. So, now look at the helicopter as an unmanned drone. If you can find an excuse to ban helicopters as being dangerous, then you can start to look for ways to put all non-government controlled model aircraft/drones under some sort of control. Even if you can't outright ban them, you can restrict the airspace, make sure that they don't fly anywhere near any location where they may be able to take photographs that embarass the government.
Maybe I'm overly paranoid, but I'm sure this will lead to calls for bans or some restrictions. It won't be effective this time, or the restrictions will be minor, but next time, or the time after they'll increase until they achieve the government objective of increase control over the people by removing civil liberties and information.
This is true of any airline and I don't really understand it. Overbook a flight and you have to give away flight coupons to get people to give up their seats or pay stiff penalties. Cancel a flight and you can stiff all the passengers without any compensation. Last flight out of Denver was cancelled for me on a Friday night (after a delay, etc. etc. so it was really late) - staffing problem not weather, etc. Rebooked me on a flight ON MONDAY. Finally got a flight midday on Saturday, but had to sit around in the airport and see if there were seats on each flight. Am I supposed to feel honoured that the airline paid for a night in a hotel and $20 of meal vouchers?
I now consider it an achievement if I get to my destination on the day (forget the time) I'm supposed to get there. Which airline I'm flying makes very little difference.
On the whole, I find that Ryanair get me there on the right day (and often close to the right time) more often than other airlines. That said, I haven't flown them all that much recently because there are other low-cost airlines that fly from closer airports. Once you include the cost and hassle of getting to an airport that's 100km out of town and you add up all the little extras Ryanair throws in, they're not as competitive as they once were.
No studies have been able to point to a direct link between Chernobyl and increased cancer risks or other health problems outside the immediately affected republics of Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian Federation.
My main point, that using exaggerated claims to make a point weakens, rather than strengthens your argument, remains.
The "lost" bag was found and is due to be delivered... Does this mean that they didn't start looking for it until the Tweet showed up?
With Ryanair if you actually READ the T&C you can get a ticket at a decent price. They lay out all the items you could want and the cost for each of these. Bags (15kg or 20kg) price per extra kg (yes, that starts at 16 and 21). Didn't print out your boarding pass, they have a price (70Eur?) to do that for you. Baggage tag? Food on the flight, there's a cost for that. For everything other than the use of the seat (and the toilets, so far) there is an additional cost, and they list it - RTFM and don't complain because they are charging for something for which they CLEARLY stated they would charge you. The seat and the flight are usually OK.
If you're not going to read the T&C your going to get screwed. Same applies to Facebook (much more duplicitous, much more obnoxious), your ISP, mobile phone provider, etc. etc.
Chernobyl Death Toll: 985,000
http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-book-concludes-chernobyl-death-toll-985-000-mostly-from-cancer/20908
we can dance around the word "proven", but deaths there certainly have been.
What's really dumb is that you could have made your point without including that stupid statement as your first paragraph. Fossil fuels are currently killing people in fairly large number and have the potential, through climate change, to kill millions. Nuclear accidents are killing people, but improved technologies have the potential to limit this and nuclear power need not be "dirty" in normal use. None of that means we should decrease our investments in renewables.
Don't forget that violating the terms and conditions of a website is a felony in the US. Farting in church is just like farting everywhere else - turn round and stare at the person behind you.
Don't grind them up! Grasshoppers and locust are about the perfect junk food. An ideal junk food should crunch on the first bite and then be soft and squishy. Think any kind of cookie or biscuit, chocolate ice cream bars, even apples. That's a grasshopper for you. Deep fry it, coat with chile or other spices, crunch and enjoy.
The problem is that you need to make a car aerodynamic to make it either fuel efficient or to have a good electric range. The muscle cars were not particularly built with aerodynamics in mind - consume enough gas and you can overcome almost all air resistance.
What I find interesting is that there must be one, or at best a few, optimum aerodyamic designs. Eventually all efficient cars will have to adopt these shapes with, possibly, minor variations. That said, Tesla's and Prius's have two of the lowest cv's around and don't look much alike.
Couple times per year?
You must not read many threads here on Slashdot, because there seems to be an obligatory link in every story.
Citation Needed! http://xkcd.com/285/
It's idiocy like this that causes software to suck so badly. Faced with a bug report that has the same symptoms as a previous solved bug, the issue is marked as "resolved".
It is possible to have events with broadly the same symptoms that actually have different underlying causes. (Although as others point out the timescale of the symptoms is massively different).
I'd pay for a subscription if it gave me access to, and the ability to delete, any information they have that references me.
Come on, it's a simple error anyone could make. He just confused Facebook with the MPAA, RIAA, etc.
Especially since Sen. Wyden (D-OR) sent the question Clapper ahead of time. "So that he would be prepared to answer, I sent the question to Director Clapperâ(TM)s office a day in advance. " Clapper could easily have asked for clarification, so has no excuse fo suggesting that he misunderstood the question.
I think we can all agree that the FSF reached PETA "sea kittens" levels of batshit[...][
Unlike the MPAA, RIAA, etc. who have clearly waaay passed the batshit level, but have bought enough politicians that they get their agenda embeded in legislation.
I'll give it a shot: Bush used 9/11 as an excuse to invade a soverign country (Iraq) that had nothing to do with the attack. The high end of the estimate for the death toll in Iraq is about same as the plague in England in the 1300's and 1400's. Bush introduced the Patriot Act which can probably be described as "rights-trampling". Disagreeing with Bush (or any of the ruling powers) could get you labelled as an enemy combatant ("treason") and get you into Guantanamo Bay detention camp, with all habeas corpus rules suspended, and so, with no rights to a trial, you can be detained indefinitely - so as good as a beheading. Anyone disagreeing could expect to be vilified for example the Dixie Chicks, violence against organizations with connections to France. Bush introduced the idea of "extraordinary rendition" where people (suspects?) were removed from one country to another, where they could be tortured. Through his emissary Colin Powell, he was willing to lie to his allies at the UN to get his way. Same plan, global scale. Obama maintains these policies, either using the new powers less frequently or, probably, more discretely. Add to that Obama's lack of action on surveillance drones, right to kill citizens and non-citizens at his sayso. The purpose of those in power is to stay in power. The details have changed with technology, but the basic plan is the same. What's interesting, is that most collapses are STILL economic. What forced the Magna Carta signing was that the king was broke - yielding more power to the local leaders. The soviet union collapsed into smaller states because it didn't have enough money to hold the "union" together. The US has the same plan. Most economists agree that stimulating the economy (tax and spend) is the way to recover from the current US recession, but those in power, beholden to a VERY small number of liege lords, or major campaign contributors refuse to go against the wishes of their masters. Other collapses are environmental, see just about any civilization that relied exclusively on irrigation and so "salted" their own fields, vs human induced climate change. History is a spiral, currently the spiral is expanding, but it still repeats.
Like Obama after the Bushes?
No embedded capital S in Eurostar. (Why do Americans always do this?) Also plural of hovercraft is "hovercraft".
Hovercraft? Hovercrafts? Hmm.
"Dear sir. I would like to order your Lone Star Hovercraft, plus another Lone Star hovercraft".
Hoverscraft (or HoversCraft)? (As in CourtsMartial?) It's all fun and games on SlashDot.
I miss the hovercrafts that used to cross the English Channel. Very cool machines that would make you throw up in anything but the calmest seas - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A02u03xhpPw . Victims of the EuroStar and other circumstances. You want fast, you go by train, you want low-cost, you go by ferry.
People don't understand how large and empty most of the US is.
The rest of the country languishes because everything is so far apart. Do you want to spend days on a train to get from Chicago to LA, or do you want to spend 4-5 hours on a plane? Even high speed rail can't beat a jet. In the Northeast the density of cities plus the ability to work/talk/move around on a train trumps the cost and hassle of air travel, elsewhere not so much.
"Hello air travel? It's train travel... you win."
Let's look at that. Say, Salt Lake City to Denver. If you live in, say LakeWood, CO you have, probably a 2 hour drive to the airport, you need to be there 90 minutes ahead of departure, 90 minute flight, so 2 hours by the time you disembark and get to your rental car, 30 minutes into the city center. 7.5 hrs. Assuming a track following I70, high speed rail would pick you up in Lakewood, it would probably take about the same time, but maybe up to 8, or 8.5 hrs to drop you in the city center. I do that anytime - and so would MANY others. I don't have to have an anal probe, or turn off all electronics occasionally. I can get some work done (using the WIFI) in a comfortable seat and get a decent, if not gourmet meal.
Trains will work, and work well, on any corridor less than about 600 miles ESPECIALLY in the relatively unpopulated areas where airports can be hours of driving away.
Amtrak gets very little money compared to the airlines. All the airports are built and staffed with public funds. The airlines pay "landing fees". The FAA including controllers are on the public payroll.
Part of the problem with trains is there's very little political graft involved. You get an airport, you get tax money to build it, maintain it, etc. etc. etc. Looks good on your political resume. With a train, you get a (relatively) small station and then 600 miles of track - most of which is not in your district. The only reason you'd ever support that is if you put the public good first, and that's not about to happen.