Actually... not so much. Wether or not it is an accomplishment depends on how you qualified.
In some events, it's the individual countries that set the bar for it, sometimes you give countries wildcards. Just look at Eric "The Eal" Moussambani who managed to swim the 100 meter freestyle in 1 minute 52.72 seconds. A time that I myself is able to match (I do it in about 1 minute 50 in a 25 meter pool).
In some of the other events I've seen, I've heard the Danish commentators lament the fact that the Danish Olympic Committee set their bar for olympic qualifying so high, that we can't send an athlete, despite our best athlete being better than the median in that event.
I saw a very interesting interview on Johnny Carson, where the guy interviewed was Jake Ehrlich Sr. He talked about his talked about his book "Unreasonable Doubt" but also talked about "pleading the 5th" and how it had gotten a bum wrap (interview was from 1963), and how you should never plead guilty. I made a transcript of the most interesting part of the interview:
Jake: "Let me ask you a question. What is your name?" Johnny: [Seems confused] Jake: "What is your name?" Johnny: "I refuse to answer [spit take] no. My name is Johnny Carson" Jake: "How do you know that to be your name?" Johnny: "I uhh it's on my birth certificate. A legally recorded... " [is interrupted by Jake] Jake: "That's hearsay" Johnny: "That's hearsay?" Jake: "Of course." Johnny: "But if it's legally recorded?" Jake: "That's still hearsay" Johnny: [Looks even more confused] Jake: "Suppose you were born, and I must assume you were born because you're here tonight with us. There's a certificate made out, not by you, a certificate made out by somebody else. That a boy child was born to Mr. and Mrs. Carson and that he was named Johnny." Johnny: "Mhmm" Jake: "That doesn't mean that you know that to be the fact, that means you have read that to be the fact. Okay?" Johnny: "Yes I see what you mean, in other words I only have to go by what is recorded." Jake: "So you're pleading guilty to something you don't know of your own knowledge!" [Audience gasps for a moment before laughing as they realise the absurdity of that] Johnny: "In other words I should have said I, uh, if somebody asked me who I am, I say 'I plead not guilty'? It doesn't go quite that far." Jake: "No, not quite that far." Johnny: "Not guilty. I see what you mean, that is hearsay. I'm only accepting what somebody else has said." Jake: "... somebody else has said." Johnny: "But that would be legal, if you come in with a birth certificate, that proves you've..." Jake: "Well, birth certificates are legal until they are attacked and proved to be invalid, that has happend too." Johnny: "I get such a kick out of thinking about the second chapter of the book on new laywers who start, when they're trying to question a client, and the things they learn in court by not overquestioning or going too far, there are a couple... give, give the..." Jake: "That, that, that's very dangerous. The apocryphal story is about the defence lawyer who's defending a fellow for driving while drunk. And the officer took the stand and the district attorney asked him questions and he said 'yes, the defendant was drunk'. 'Alright, your witness' he says to the defense. The defense says 'how long have you been in the police department?'. He says 'one year'. Well then he should have stopped right there. But he says 'well, a police officer for one year? Does that give you the authority and the learning and the experience to say that my client was drunk from what you observed?' He says 'Oh, no'. He says 'Well what was your reason?' 'Oh, bartending for 18 years!'" Johnny: "In other words, quit when you're ahead." Jake: "Quit when you're ahead."
The entire interview is almost 30 minutes, and it's very informative and entertaining. What I've learned from that interview and the vidoes the GP talks about boils down to four words:
The difference is that in many places (especially outside the United States) owning guns is against the law. And if you then shoot someone you're probably in more trouble than the guy you shot.
There is, however, no laws against carrying a concealed spray can (well, maybe in Singapore).
Flurescent green spray paint is much better. Not only will you keep your assailant off of you, but you will also make it REALLY easy to pick him out of a line-up later.
Police: "Can you identify the guy who jumped you?" Victim: "He's the green faced guy, crying on the corner about being blind."
Here's a thought. Most people hate DRM, because it's a hindrance to them from playing the game. Put the cd in the drive. No virtual drives. Install this crappy software. All that stuff.
Would it be possible to use a one time keypad, like the kind you use in bank transactions instead? The small electronic keypad thingies. No cd/dvd requirements, no odd software to install and so on. Could even install it on as many computers as you'd want, including multiple simultaneous online accounts.
Obviously it'd cost you something as the publisher, but what would the "drm sucks" pirates think of this scheme? What of the regular players? As a plus it'd make it insanely hard to steal your online account if you had to use the token to log in. Downside would be selling characters, but that could be fixed in-game by allowing character transfer across accounts anyway.
One of the Danish commentators for the swimming events is Mette Jacobsen. She is a former European champion swimmer, and I believe she managed to get in the finals of at least one of her events in each of the five olympics she participated in.
She hasn't tried the suit, but has spent a lot of time talking to the swimmers, and the general consensus is that it will cut your times by about a second every 100 meters in the short evens, half that in the longer events. And interestingly that also seems to be the case when you look at the new records. Especially the olympic records, as they were all set before the suit.
Now, while 1 second on 100 meters sounds like a lot - after all, a sprinter does that in about 10 seconds. But take freestyle - the fastest of the disciplines. World Record for 100 meter freestyle, set in 2000, is 47.84 seconds,or 2.09 meters/second. With the suit that should change to about 46.84 seconds or 2.13 meters/second. A "measly" 4 cm/second advantage.
Well, people keep bringing up the "small town" and "urbanisation" excuses for poor US broadband penetration.
I'm moving to Sweden from Denmark in 3 weeks. Did a bit of checking.
Here are my options for internet in Sweden where I'll be living: Company 1 and 2: 3G modem, 7.2 Mbit/s down, 384kbit/s down - theoretical max. Realistic is 4/256 in that area according to the people who work there. 60$/month Company 2 and 3: ADSL, up to 20/2 Mbit/s. 80$/month Company 4: Fiber. 100 Mbit/s down, not sure about up, but FAST. Including free calls to landline phones in Sweden: 52$/month
And every single option is without a usage cap.
So, obviously I will be moving to a big city, right?
Wrong.
I'm moving to Ljusdal. A town of about 8,000 people. The municipality has about 20,000 residents and covers an area of 5,288 km^2 (2,041 miles^2). It's about 300 km north of the capital of Sweden. The biggest city nearby is the main city of the country (Gävle) with about 69,000 residents.
Not entirely sure, but I suspect that would pretty much put any kind of rural/urbanisation argument to rest. Hell, Sweden is 449,964 km^2 (173,732 miles^2), compared to Texas' 696,241 km^2, so about 2/3rds the size, but only has 9.2 million residents compared to Texas' 23.9 million. And yes, I left out Alaska of the equation. But if we're playing that game, we can always go with the Kingdom of Denmark which includes Greenland and its 830,000 miles^2;)
Personally I suspect it's the fact that four different companies are vying for customers in the same area that makes the big difference.
That's still rare. If we assume that there's 100 billion galaxies in the world (which Wiki says is the current estimate), and put a star system like ours on the rare end of the scale as in 1 per galaxy, you do end up with 100 billion star systems like ours. But that's still extremely rare, as it's pretty much impossible to find one.
Look at it another way: In 2006 the world supply of platinium was about 217,000 kg. That's about 1,112,341 mole or 667,404,810,235,590,822,414,959,709,663 molecules. That's a BIG number, but it's still a very rare metal. So rare in fact, that 2006 world supply wouldn't even let you give 1 gram of platinum to each resident of the United States.
Big numbers doesn't indicate how rare something is. Rare is an indication of the chance/risk of encountering something. And in a huge universe with 100 billion galaxies, 100 billion star systems like ours is RARE! In fact it's so rare, that it might as well not exist anywhere else, because without visiting other galaxies, we'd never know they were there.
And in future news, a large contingent of nerds world wide cried out in joy as the Large Hadron Collider was turned on today.
Surprising to some people, they managed to create a miniature black hole. However, LHC lead scientists informed us that it only lasted for 16 seconds after being created inside RIAA headquaters, and completely dissapated after having absorbed it.
Only kinda. I'm yet to see a cheap Mini-ITX, Nano-ITX, Pico-ITX board from Via. They're always very expensive. Especially when you compare them to the Atom options today. The cheapest Via I can find is their EPIA ML8000AG with an 800 MHz C3 processor costing almost twice as much as Intel's D945GCLF with a 1.6 GHz Atom or Intel's D201GLY2 with a 1.2 GHz Celeron.
Back when Via were the only ones with Mini-ITX boards the premium was somewhat okay, but not any more.
EXACT position? You'd think a 'fairly close' position would do. For people walking, car park etc, you'd probably go with a specific car or face/hand/leg rather than [327;173].
Here's a thought. Most people hate DRM, because it's a hindrance to them from playing the game. Put the cd in the drive. No virtual drives. Install this crappy software. All that stuff.
Would it be possible to use a one time keypad, like the kind you use in bank transactions instead? No cd/dvd requirements, no odd software to install and so on. Could even install it on as many computers as you'd want, including multiple simultaneous online accounts.
Obviously it'd cost you something as the publisher, but what would the "drm sucks" pirates think of this scheme? What of the regular players? As a plus it'd make it insanely hard to steal your online account if you had to use the token to log in. Downside would be selling characters, but that could be fixed in-game by allowing character transfer across accounts anyway.
Well, that's arguable, but since the show's writers are trying to portray their main characters as paragons of good and virtue, I found one exchange rather troubling - especially since so many people seem to take fiction as life lessons: Suspect: "I was acquitted of that" Horatio Caine: "But that doesn't mean you didn't do it, does it?"
Which is a stupid fucking point to bring up, as you might as well turn it on its head:
Horatio Caine: "You were convicted of killing and raping that girl" Suspect: "But that doesn't mean I did it, does it?"
Nah, that'd never be the case. After all no country with as foolproof a judicial system as the US has never ever convicted someone of a crime that they simply couldn't have done. Well, maybe "never ever" is a bit much - after all, we've gone through a lot of changes in the last couple of hundred years. In the last 30 years then.
Can't we call it something like, oh, aggressive defense?
Still too aggressive. Go with pro active defence. That way we're only defending ourselves. Pro actively. Like shooting a guy in self defence because you think he's reaching for a gun instead of a pen.
Windows Media Center IS really nice though. Honestly, it's a hell of a lot better than Myth, because unlike Myth it just works. That is one thing Microsoft got right in both Vista and XP (Windows Media Center Edition).
While I haven't tried Myth (or any of the linux based media centers), I don't agree with you. Vista Media Center has a couple of really stupid bugs.
1) Why am I not allowed to play an ISO file in it? I like ripping my DVDs to full images, and it's just silly having to mount the images - especially because Vista doesn't come with its own utility for doing this. VideoLAN can play ISOs right off the bat.
2) Why does it HAVE to run in full screen to handle an odd TV? My tv (crappy) is a 16:9 format TV, that only take 1024x768 as input via DVI or VGA. Now, I can get Vista Media Center to handle that, but then it HAS to run full screen on my TV. Not maximized or something neat to cover everything, it forces full screen like most games do. If I then change the focus to something else (I like browsing while watching TV) on my other screen, Media Center leaves fullscreen and now changes its view back from fullscreen AND loses the aspect ratio setting. Again, VideoLAN handles this with no problem what so ever.
Sure, it might not be high on the list of bugs/missing features, but it's still crappy.
Say with MOND, why are we so scared to think that perhaps Newtonian mechanics aren't quite enough to calculate with on galactic scales?
It's not about being scared - it's about the scope of that theory. Using "stuff falls down" as a theory of gravity works, but only in very specific situations. It's not something you can use as a usable replacement for any of the accepted theories, like GR and Newton.
Talking about scientists being scared of MOND is silly. Especially when you bring in Newtonian mechanics, which have long since been proven to fail in a large number of ways. The reason we still use Newtonian mechanics is that it's "good enough" for most things. Just like "stuff falls down" works great here on Earth, but not so well inside the ISS.
Interesting way to put it. While I wouldn't call it slavery (I'd go with breach of contract), think about this for a moment:
Worker is "forced" to work overtime with no compensation - "that's alright"
Worker doesn't stay the full amount of hours his contract states - "he shouldn't expect to get paid for those hours; hell, fire his ass"
Why the hell do Americans (especially the ones working under these conditions) put up with that kind of dogma?
Here (Denmark) I can file bankruptcy against my employer, if he fails to pay me my wages on time more than once. That includes failure to pay me for overtime. It's even free of charge for me to do so, if I can show due cause (I.e. time sheet showing overtime that isn't paid). Always fun to see how they react around here, when you ask them why you didn't get your money on time. Especially when you point out that it's not the first time it happened.
Well, who says space crafts have to look like either airplanes or ships? An interesting take on the whole idea is Peter Hamilton's "Night's Dawn Trilogy" is the need for any interstellar travel to be done in spheres.
Besides, if we go with the idea that space crafts should look like air craft, then why don't we have air craft shaped like sea vessels? I mean, wouldn't it make a whole lot more sense if you had massively huge floating tankers, hundreds of yards long, dozen of yards across instead of those puny tanker planes?
No? Gee, I wonder why? Maybe... because they are entirely different realms.
Why would you want to make a space craft that cannot turn equally fast around all axes. If you need to change direction, wouldn't it be a whole lot simpler if you simply pointed your craft in the right direction and applied thrust, instead of spinning a bit around one axis, then a bit around another axis and THEN applying thrust? This is especially true if you need to point at something directly to the left/right of your position. If you can simply turn your craft to 90 deg around one axis vs turning the craft 90 deg around one axis and then 90 around another, why would you settle for the latter? The ONLY reason turning around two axes instead of one would be faster is crappy engineering.
They keep arguing that we're buying a license to the music. As such, since the medium they have delivered this to you is obviously flawed (cannot stand up to a reasonable amount of use), they should be obliged to replacing the medium with a new one at their cost. Right?
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Actually ... not so much. Wether or not it is an accomplishment depends on how you qualified.
In some events, it's the individual countries that set the bar for it, sometimes you give countries wildcards. Just look at Eric "The Eal" Moussambani who managed to swim the 100 meter freestyle in 1 minute 52.72 seconds. A time that I myself is able to match (I do it in about 1 minute 50 in a 25 meter pool).
In some of the other events I've seen, I've heard the Danish commentators lament the fact that the Danish Olympic Committee set their bar for olympic qualifying so high, that we can't send an athlete, despite our best athlete being better than the median in that event.
I saw a very interesting interview on Johnny Carson, where the guy interviewed was Jake Ehrlich Sr. He talked about his talked about his book "Unreasonable Doubt" but also talked about "pleading the 5th" and how it had gotten a bum wrap (interview was from 1963), and how you should never plead guilty. I made a transcript of the most interesting part of the interview:
The entire interview is almost 30 minutes, and it's very informative and entertaining. What I've learned from that interview and the vidoes the GP talks about boils down to four words:
YOU ARE NEVER AHEAD!
The difference is that in many places (especially outside the United States) owning guns is against the law. And if you then shoot someone you're probably in more trouble than the guy you shot.
There is, however, no laws against carrying a concealed spray can (well, maybe in Singapore).
Mace? Screw maze.
Flurescent green spray paint is much better. Not only will you keep your assailant off of you, but you will also make it REALLY easy to pick him out of a line-up later.
Police: "Can you identify the guy who jumped you?"
Victim: "He's the green faced guy, crying on the corner about being blind."
Here's a thought. Most people hate DRM, because it's a hindrance to them from playing the game. Put the cd in the drive. No virtual drives. Install this crappy software. All that stuff.
Would it be possible to use a one time keypad, like the kind you use in bank transactions instead? The small electronic keypad thingies. No cd/dvd requirements, no odd software to install and so on. Could even install it on as many computers as you'd want, including multiple simultaneous online accounts.
Obviously it'd cost you something as the publisher, but what would the "drm sucks" pirates think of this scheme? What of the regular players? As a plus it'd make it insanely hard to steal your online account if you had to use the token to log in. Downside would be selling characters, but that could be fixed in-game by allowing character transfer across accounts anyway.
Suppose you move it from your car to another car, without the police knowing about it.
Now they see "you" going all kinds of suspicious places, because your randomly picked car belongs to a mob wife.
One of the Danish commentators for the swimming events is Mette Jacobsen. She is a former European champion swimmer, and I believe she managed to get in the finals of at least one of her events in each of the five olympics she participated in.
She hasn't tried the suit, but has spent a lot of time talking to the swimmers, and the general consensus is that it will cut your times by about a second every 100 meters in the short evens, half that in the longer events. And interestingly that also seems to be the case when you look at the new records. Especially the olympic records, as they were all set before the suit.
Now, while 1 second on 100 meters sounds like a lot - after all, a sprinter does that in about 10 seconds. But take freestyle - the fastest of the disciplines. World Record for 100 meter freestyle, set in 2000, is 47.84 seconds,or 2.09 meters/second. With the suit that should change to about 46.84 seconds or 2.13 meters/second. A "measly" 4 cm/second advantage.
Well, people keep bringing up the "small town" and "urbanisation" excuses for poor US broadband penetration.
I'm moving to Sweden from Denmark in 3 weeks. Did a bit of checking.
Here are my options for internet in Sweden where I'll be living:
Company 1 and 2: 3G modem, 7.2 Mbit/s down, 384kbit/s down - theoretical max. Realistic is 4/256 in that area according to the people who work there. 60$/month
Company 2 and 3: ADSL, up to 20/2 Mbit/s. 80$/month
Company 4: Fiber. 100 Mbit/s down, not sure about up, but FAST. Including free calls to landline phones in Sweden: 52$/month
And every single option is without a usage cap.
So, obviously I will be moving to a big city, right?
Wrong.
I'm moving to Ljusdal. A town of about 8,000 people. The municipality has about 20,000 residents and covers an area of 5,288 km^2 (2,041 miles^2). It's about 300 km north of the capital of Sweden. The biggest city nearby is the main city of the country (Gävle) with about 69,000 residents.
Not entirely sure, but I suspect that would pretty much put any kind of rural/urbanisation argument to rest. Hell, Sweden is 449,964 km^2 (173,732 miles^2), compared to Texas' 696,241 km^2, so about 2/3rds the size, but only has 9.2 million residents compared to Texas' 23.9 million. And yes, I left out Alaska of the equation. But if we're playing that game, we can always go with the Kingdom of Denmark which includes Greenland and its 830,000 miles^2 ;)
Personally I suspect it's the fact that four different companies are vying for customers in the same area that makes the big difference.
That's still rare. If we assume that there's 100 billion galaxies in the world (which Wiki says is the current estimate), and put a star system like ours on the rare end of the scale as in 1 per galaxy, you do end up with 100 billion star systems like ours. But that's still extremely rare, as it's pretty much impossible to find one.
Look at it another way: In 2006 the world supply of platinium was about 217,000 kg. That's about 1,112,341 mole or 667,404,810,235,590,822,414,959,709,663 molecules. That's a BIG number, but it's still a very rare metal. So rare in fact, that 2006 world supply wouldn't even let you give 1 gram of platinum to each resident of the United States.
Big numbers doesn't indicate how rare something is. Rare is an indication of the chance/risk of encountering something. And in a huge universe with 100 billion galaxies, 100 billion star systems like ours is RARE! In fact it's so rare, that it might as well not exist anywhere else, because without visiting other galaxies, we'd never know they were there.
And in future news, a large contingent of nerds world wide cried out in joy as the Large Hadron Collider was turned on today.
Surprising to some people, they managed to create a miniature black hole. However, LHC lead scientists informed us that it only lasted for 16 seconds after being created inside RIAA headquaters, and completely dissapated after having absorbed it.
We were unable to reach the RIAA for comments.
Shhhh ... this is just a slightly modified approach to the Amazon Patent method:
Patent something that uses electricity by adding "from a fuel cell" instead of "via the internet".
But don't tell anyone. Via the internet. Powered by a fuel cell.
Only kinda. I'm yet to see a cheap Mini-ITX, Nano-ITX, Pico-ITX board from Via. They're always very expensive. Especially when you compare them to the Atom options today. The cheapest Via I can find is their EPIA ML8000AG with an 800 MHz C3 processor costing almost twice as much as Intel's D945GCLF with a 1.6 GHz Atom or Intel's D201GLY2 with a 1.2 GHz Celeron.
Back when Via were the only ones with Mini-ITX boards the premium was somewhat okay, but not any more.
EXACT position? You'd think a 'fairly close' position would do. For people walking, car park etc, you'd probably go with a specific car or face/hand/leg rather than [327;173].
Here's a thought. Most people hate DRM, because it's a hindrance to them from playing the game. Put the cd in the drive. No virtual drives. Install this crappy software. All that stuff.
Would it be possible to use a one time keypad, like the kind you use in bank transactions instead? No cd/dvd requirements, no odd software to install and so on. Could even install it on as many computers as you'd want, including multiple simultaneous online accounts.
Obviously it'd cost you something as the publisher, but what would the "drm sucks" pirates think of this scheme? What of the regular players? As a plus it'd make it insanely hard to steal your online account if you had to use the token to log in. Downside would be selling characters, but that could be fixed in-game by allowing character transfer across accounts anyway.
Well, that's arguable, but since the show's writers are trying to portray their main characters as paragons of good and virtue, I found one exchange rather troubling - especially since so many people seem to take fiction as life lessons:
Suspect: "I was acquitted of that"
Horatio Caine: "But that doesn't mean you didn't do it, does it?"
Which is a stupid fucking point to bring up, as you might as well turn it on its head:
Horatio Caine: "You were convicted of killing and raping that girl"
Suspect: "But that doesn't mean I did it, does it?"
Nah, that'd never be the case. After all no country with as foolproof a judicial system as the US has never ever convicted someone of a crime that they simply couldn't have done. Well, maybe "never ever" is a bit much - after all, we've gone through a lot of changes in the last couple of hundred years. In the last 30 years then.
Still too aggressive. Go with pro active defence. That way we're only defending ourselves. Pro actively. Like shooting a guy in self defence because you think he's reaching for a gun instead of a pen.
I do agree with most of your sentiments, but I do have to ask. USS Cole - terrorist attack or para military attack on the US?
If you read up on dark matter, you'd realise that it's merely a placeholder. We don't know WHAT it is, we just know it's there.
While I haven't tried Myth (or any of the linux based media centers), I don't agree with you. Vista Media Center has a couple of really stupid bugs.
1) Why am I not allowed to play an ISO file in it? I like ripping my DVDs to full images, and it's just silly having to mount the images - especially because Vista doesn't come with its own utility for doing this. VideoLAN can play ISOs right off the bat.
2) Why does it HAVE to run in full screen to handle an odd TV? My tv (crappy) is a 16:9 format TV, that only take 1024x768 as input via DVI or VGA. Now, I can get Vista Media Center to handle that, but then it HAS to run full screen on my TV. Not maximized or something neat to cover everything, it forces full screen like most games do. If I then change the focus to something else (I like browsing while watching TV) on my other screen, Media Center leaves fullscreen and now changes its view back from fullscreen AND loses the aspect ratio setting. Again, VideoLAN handles this with no problem what so ever.
Sure, it might not be high on the list of bugs/missing features, but it's still crappy.
It's not about being scared - it's about the scope of that theory. Using "stuff falls down" as a theory of gravity works, but only in very specific situations. It's not something you can use as a usable replacement for any of the accepted theories, like GR and Newton.
Talking about scientists being scared of MOND is silly. Especially when you bring in Newtonian mechanics, which have long since been proven to fail in a large number of ways. The reason we still use Newtonian mechanics is that it's "good enough" for most things. Just like "stuff falls down" works great here on Earth, but not so well inside the ISS.
And thanks to the current thread subject, I just got the horrible thought of a long paper cut on my glans penis. Ouch!
Interesting way to put it. While I wouldn't call it slavery (I'd go with breach of contract), think about this for a moment:
Worker is "forced" to work overtime with no compensation - "that's alright"
Worker doesn't stay the full amount of hours his contract states - "he shouldn't expect to get paid for those hours; hell, fire his ass"
Why the hell do Americans (especially the ones working under these conditions) put up with that kind of dogma?
Here (Denmark) I can file bankruptcy against my employer, if he fails to pay me my wages on time more than once. That includes failure to pay me for overtime. It's even free of charge for me to do so, if I can show due cause (I.e. time sheet showing overtime that isn't paid). Always fun to see how they react around here, when you ask them why you didn't get your money on time. Especially when you point out that it's not the first time it happened.
Well ... personally I stay away from using laptops that only have those, if I can't use a mouse with them.
I really, really, really cannot stand them. It's just way too much like using a joystick, and joysticks aren't supposed to be used for that.
Well, who says space crafts have to look like either airplanes or ships? An interesting take on the whole idea is Peter Hamilton's "Night's Dawn Trilogy" is the need for any interstellar travel to be done in spheres.
Besides, if we go with the idea that space crafts should look like air craft, then why don't we have air craft shaped like sea vessels? I mean, wouldn't it make a whole lot more sense if you had massively huge floating tankers, hundreds of yards long, dozen of yards across instead of those puny tanker planes?
No? Gee, I wonder why? Maybe ... because they are entirely different realms.
Why would you want to make a space craft that cannot turn equally fast around all axes. If you need to change direction, wouldn't it be a whole lot simpler if you simply pointed your craft in the right direction and applied thrust, instead of spinning a bit around one axis, then a bit around another axis and THEN applying thrust? This is especially true if you need to point at something directly to the left/right of your position. If you can simply turn your craft to 90 deg around one axis vs turning the craft 90 deg around one axis and then 90 around another, why would you settle for the latter? The ONLY reason turning around two axes instead of one would be faster is crappy engineering.
They keep arguing that we're buying a license to the music. As such, since the medium they have delivered this to you is obviously flawed (cannot stand up to a reasonable amount of use), they should be obliged to replacing the medium with a new one at their cost. Right?