At those prices, you could keep a teem of chauffeurs on call 24/7 for several years.
Or you could buy a metrocard. Here's New York's dirty little secret: Everyone rides the subway. It's the great equalizing factor of New York. NYC traffic can be awful and unpredictable.
(Unless, of course, you'd want the house to make Al Gore's home electricity consumption look "moderate")
Offtopic, and no longer true. He renovated the house, and is now seeking a LEED certification for it. Even at the start, he'd been purchasing enough alt-energy credits to offset the energy consumption of his own home.
It's also not particularly fair to compare Gore's 'home' to a vacation house owned by the Bush family. Although I'm typically not a huge fan of dazzlingly wealthy politicians, I'd sort of expect a former-vice-president to own a fairly large home.
Obligatory hair-raising video of a helmet-mounted cam of a guy riding from Central Park down to the southern tip of Manhattan. He's got nerves of steel.
Alternatively, NYC's got arguably one of the cheapest and most extensive mass-transit system on the planet. Owning a car in the city is just plain dumb unless you need to cart around big heavy items all the time.
Maybe the responsibility for calling evacuations should be entirely moved away from the city's domain of duties. Have a state or federal agency (The Weather Service would be fine!) call the shots, and make the politicians legally responsible for ensuring that the evacuation takes place in a timely and efficient manner.
If evidence surfaces that the politicians dragged their feet after the order was given, throw them in jail. I'm not kidding --- let's make the people responsible actually accountable for their actions.
If you want to define murder in that manner, then no, you haven't murdered them.
However, you've most certainly killed them.
Isn't this how BushCo has been justifying the staggering number of Iraqi civilian deaths? According to the relatively conservative (and verifiable) estimate of the Iraq Body Count, we've killed 0.3% of the population. There have been smaller genocides.
Mod parent up. This is exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote my post (but couldn't remember the formal name by which it's referred).
It's particularly interesting, because I'd initially dismissed the problem as another bit of "mental masturbation" for philosophers to obsess over to little effect, as the situation had no fathomable real-world analog. (Nothing quite makes you want to pull your hair out like getting stuck in the middle of an argument between two philosophy majors).
But the real-world parallel gets even more disturbing. You can steer the hurricane either to the east or to the west of the city. To the east lies a resort town, and to the west lies a trailer park. For academic purposes, suppose there are an equal number of people in both towns. Which way do you steer it? If you want to save as many as possible, you'd steer it toward the resort town, since the buildings there are likely to be stronger. If you want to cause as little monetary damage as possible, you steer at the trailer park -- the whole thing will be leveled, but replacement trailers are cheap. On the other hand, if only a handful of buildings in the resort town are damaged, the damage relative to the entire town will be a lot less, although the dollar amount of the damage will be a lot higher.
Even though the case to send the hurricane toward the resort town is slightly stronger, I have no doubt that an order would come down from the top to send it at the trailer park instead.
And on that note, given how long it took to finally give an evac order for New Orleans, does it really matter? (also, given the slow delay and the unpredictability of these storms, how quickly can the hurricane be "steered" away from a metropolitan area? Will we have to start the process the very moment a tropical storm pops up on the radar?
It also makes the government directly responsible for any damages that occur.
If you steer the hurricane away from the big city, but it still hits a small town 100 miles away, and kills 100 people, have you just murdered those 100 people? And at that rate, the ones who survived are going to be pretty pissed that the government shot a HURRICANE at them.
What if we screw up, and send a Category 5 Hurricane on a collision course with Havana or Mexico City? That would have disastrous consequences.
This sort of technology has terrifying military applications as well. Send a hurricane at *insert insular communist dictatorship here*, wait til it's passed, and then invade the nation while they're picking up the pieces.
I'm generally for the advancement of science, but in this case, we're coming a bit too close to "playing God" for our own good.
Eh. I can't say that they're my *favorite* *favorite*, although I will say that I've never lost a bag with them. (Although I've heard horror stories (none recent) that they're nightmare to deal with in the event that a bag did get lost)
As far as the on-time-ness, I'm pretty convinced that these days, it's more a function of the airport than the airline. The FAA's got a disturbing shortage of air traffic controllers, especially around the NYC area that causes all sorts of problems for everybody. I've also been the victim of a propagating delay while on AirTran, so they don't get my biggest recommendation in that area either, because there wasn't quite enough padding between flights. To be perfectly fair, however, I doubt that any of the other carriers are any better in this regard -- for the price, I really can't complain at all.
Airlines treat their customers like dirt. There's no secret about it. (unless you're a frequent business traveler, in which case your predicament is probably still lousy, but you at least the airlines are nice, and I digress....)
Since it's been the increasing trend for airlines to Nickel-and-dime their customers, charging for every little item possible, it's probably time for them to reevaluate their business model.
A bunch of low-cost carriers across Europe have sprung up, offering bare-bones service at insanely low prices. They get around this by flying to airports outside of metropolitan areas (which can be a boon or a curse depending upon where you need to go!) and more or less pass their costs directly on to their customers. If you want to check-in at the counter, you'll get a small surcharge -- after all, keeping the counter staffed does cost money. Likewise, you're charged a decently reasonable rate for each and every piece of baggage you check. After all, heavy baggage means more fuel, which means increased costs. (On the same note, I find the typical American process of charging obscene fees for being a few pounds over to be absurd. I've had to shuffle items between bags to meet my quots, and avoid paying $75.)
Although they're subject to taxes and fees like everyone else, the pricing of base fares is more often than not clear and upfront, without many complicated "fare rules" attached -- one-way tickets are often no more expensive than round-trips, and there are no strange discount rules involving connections or layovers. There is no "system" to be worked, and it's usually obvious why your ticket costs as much as it does. One of my biggest gripes with traditional airlines is that I have absolutely no idea why my ticket costs twice as much on as wednesday as it does on a tuesday, but only on odd numbered months....
This you-pay-for-what-you-get approach has been extremely popular, and low-cost airlines such as RyanAir and EasyJet are among the most profitable airlines in the industry. Granted, they do have their share of shady business practices, although these days I'm beginning to expect that everywhere.
Likewise, I've noticed that airlines that force to pay for meals often serve better food, because they're being forced to compete with (*gasp*) people packing their own sandwiches.
Although this business model doesn't particularly benefit vacationers and long-distance business travelers very well, it's absolutely fantastic for "commuter flights", or an impromptu visit home to see my family for the weekend.
Back in the US, I used AirTran all the time to travel between New York (LaGuardia) and Newport News, VA. Both are smaller airports, are relatively easy to get to, and usually aren't too crowded (LaGuardia's a bit of an exception here, although they're probably the "least of the three evils" in the NY Metro area). Although they're a bit more "posh" than the low-cost European carriers, I get the distinct impression that they "get it" in terms of where the industry needs to go -- low-cost regional flights without too many frills. Fares are easy to comprehend, and it's not particularly uncommon to get a one-way ticket for around $60 -- considerably less than Amtrak, and only takes you 30-45 minutes on the ground and an hour in the air, as opposed to 15-30 minutes in a train station followed by 8 hours on an excruciatingly slow train that offers even fewer frills than the flight.
All that said, there are a few rules airlines do need to follow. Customers need to be treated like human beings, there should always be someone to talk to in the event of a problem, and certain in-flight amenities should be provided such as complimentary drinks (in light of the liquids ban, and the fact that it's not an expensive service to provide), and blankets/pillows on long-distance overnight flights.
I think he's referring to the Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY instead of the one in Virginia. Specifically, the criticism relating to the development of the Atlantic Yards project, which has been opposed by just about everybody apart from the politicians and the developers themselves. Criticism of the actual project aside, there were also some very valid issues raised over the enormous public subsidies going into the project ($2 billion plus any infrastructure improvements necessary, which is insofar an undisclosed amount), given that certain agencies of the city are running Billion-dollar deficits. The entire project reeks of pork.
On the other hand, if they built it in Virginia (a much more sensible idea because it's closer to the equator), they wouldn't be able to send any more than 3 astronauts up in the capsule at a time. Williamsburg is one of the few cities in the US to have retained its "Brothel Laws", and still actively enforces them against tenants the city deems "undesirable" (eg. poor people and college students)
I'm sure the Williamsburg heat and humidity would be hell on the tether (and the tethernauts) as well -- the Hampton Peninsula, and most of Virginia for that matter is chock full of beautiful, fertile land with a decent climate; why the colonial settlers chose to land in Jamestown, and then move to Williamsburg (essentially a swamp) absolutely boggles the mind. Being there in the summer sucks.
Oh. I realize how painfully excruciating scientific data collection can be. Robert Millikan must have had the patience of a saint, considering he spent several years painstakingly measuring the charge on an electron, producing a result was incredibly accurate and precise. I'm not going to enter the Mythbusters debate here (I can really see both sides of it)....
Back on topic, given the HUGE size of mars compared to the absolutely miniscule portion of what we've looked at, I can't help but think that it'd make sense for NASA to build a rover that were able to travel considerably further distances. The rovers have only moved about 7 miles from their starting point in over 3 years! Wouldn't it be more scientifically advantageous to spend a few months in one place, and then drive off to someplace with a different topography, so that a wider spectrum of data could be collected?
I guess that the rovers right now are still just as useful as a functioning stationary lander, but can't help but think that they're not likely to make any sort of groundbreaking observations that they haven't already, given that they're not all that far away from where they started.
Facebook used to be great -- a prime example of exactly how you want to build a website. They knew their purpose, and the satisfied that purpose well. Their forays into other areas that were relevant also proved to be a considerable success, photo sharing being the most obvious example. Events were also revamped to the degree where they were actually useful (and of course, they're quite relevant to Facbook's original goals)
As time went on, they grew too greedy. Their "blogging" and "bookmark sharing" components didn't achieve nearly as much success -- anyone wanting either feature was already on digg, del.icio.us, livejounal, etc... Undeterred by these two failures, they opened up the floodgates to the filth and scum of the internet (I'm talking about AOL and MySpace -- not High-Schoolers)
The App platform in one fell swoop eliminated every single competitive advantage Facebook once had, and completely erased its identity. Even the goons in charge of facebook have gone as far to openly say that it's nothing more than a way for them to make money, and a platform for others to do the same. (Seriously -- read the developer documentation!)
So what you end up with are the Vampires, Zombies, giant smiley-faces, and spam invites. I had the misfortune of viewing a profile with a goatse app in it. That said, there are a few nice apps -- the ability to tie into Last.Fm was an obvious one, and the 'Graffiti' application can be fun when used in moderation.
Everything else can go for all I care. I can't stand the applications and groups whose sole purpose is to invite as many people as possible to them, nor can I stand the asshats who invite every single one of their 'friends' to their party, regardless of whether they actually live in the same country or not.
Well, the mission officially began in 2003 (when the rocket was launched), so I'll maintain that my timeline's correct, although you are correct it was 2004 by the time they landed on the surface.
Simple answer: They must have been designed by the same people who crafted the Iraq war. Both of them have been going since 2003, and show no signs of stopping anytime soon!
The thing is that the engineers predicted that they would fail years ago. A few months into the mission, I remember that there was a significant amount of speculation over why the things hadn't failed, because it was confusing the hell out of the guys who built it.
I'm a bit curious if the rovers are actually doing anything all that useful at the moment... after all, they move at a painfully slow rate, and the landscape isn't all that varied in the areas they're in.
I have this funny vision of what would happen if/. got hacked, and how it would have been done:
The admins would wake up the next day to discover that the site was running perfectly normally, but was performing slightly faster than normal.
After closer inspection, they'd find that their datacenter had been emptied, and replaced by a single Apple ][ that had been hacked to run the latest version of Ubuntu, and that slashcode had been rewritten so that it would perform all of the same functions as the previous slashcode, but ran at twice the speed... on the Apple ][.
A post-it would be found stuck to the screen, stating that all of slashdot's old and now unnecessary hardware had been sold, with the proceeds being donated to the EFF. The message would likely include or be in the form of a Soviet Russia joke. Additionally, a miniaturized plastic Gnu would be left behind as a calling-card.
The news of this would be regarded as insignificant by the editors, until over a year later, it gets posted four times in the span of two days.
So wait...... you run OS X, but use all software that's freely available for Linux?
As a Mac user, I can't help buy ask you WHY you do such a thing? Most unix apps ported to OS X tend to run poorly, and don't integrate with the rest of the operating system well -- Apple's slightly different windowing paradigm also typically makes the UIs a bit awkward. On top of that, Apple's X11 implementation leaves much to be desired.
I love my mac, but ran entirely *nix apps, I'd have Ubuntu on it immediately. Heck... back when my primary job function was to churn out MATLAB code, I put Ubuntu on my G4 for the time being, because I was fed up with the quirkiness of Apple's X11.
(Also..... if you're running a platform for which Photoshop and numerous other image manipulation tools are available, why on earth would you use the GIMP? The idea of running GNOME on top of Aqua and the Finder also strikes me as being particularly odd...)
Why does anyone need to call to say "I'm on the ground now"?
So that the person picking me up knows to leave home and start driving to the airport? Of if they're already on their way, they'll know to look for me outside the airport in a few minutes time, instead of paying for parking and waiting an indeterminate amount of time? Parking at airports is often extremely expensive and time-consuming.
Given the ridiculously low number of US airports directly connected to mass transportation, I can think of countless reasons why you'd want to inform somebody that your flight has landed.
Um. No. The NT kernel is generally regarded as being extremely solid. You'd be an absolute idiot to run the Win32 shell on top of the Linux kernel. The NT kernel is at the top of a very small list of the the few things Microsoft's done right. It's also one of the most recently developed kernels in widespread use. (OS X/Mach and Linux, though both innovative are evolutionary updates to a very old system)
However, I do like the idea of open-sourcing bits of the OS to any paid and licensed end-user. RMS's whining about a free-as-in-speech kernel are impractical and counterproductive. Getting a peek inside the NT kernel would be extremely enlightening, and would allow developers to better tune their applications to the OS, and find security flaws (to be fair, most of those occur far above the kernel level).
Likewise, Internet Explorer and the explorer.exe shell should both *definitely* be open-sourced, as they've both been extremely buggy for the entirety of their existence. At the moment, all of the desktop shells leave much to be desired -- Explorer is insecure, and prone to crashing -- it peaked around Win2k, and has been going downhill since, which is a shame because it's generally very *fast*. X11 is rapidly improving and evolving into something modern and desirable (and about time!), but KDE and GNOME still have a ways to go in terms of Usability -- I absolutely adore XFCE, but realize that it's not for everyone. The OS X shell is stable, fast, and secure, but suffers from somewhat poor latency, and the Finder needs to be completely revamped (and properly multithreaded!!!).
Vista had some fantastic features going for it. If WinFS were the first to market, they could have gained a enormous competitive edge. Instead, that got cut out in favor of a myriad of features that the market has demonstrated that it doesn't want.
Microsoft needs to rewind the past 7 years (kind of like our Government, but I digress...), Open-Source the Explorer shell, keep it simple, but gradually build it up. Make absolute sure that IE goes open-source, and let the community have input into it. Like so many other things MS does, IE7 was a big improvement in many ways, but also misses the mark completely in terms of the user experience (which is the general concensus I get from everyone who's used it). Firefox *is* the better product, and Microsoft needs to distinguish itself from it in a positive manner.
Once you've got a fast, modern, lightweight shell, start emphasizing new and unique features within the core operating system, especially with regard to the Filesystem; Metadata is the future, and the first OS to properly implement it will be wildly successful. I'd even wager that Windows would be particularly well-suited to the task. Heck... if we're going to be audacious, consider implementing ZFS, with Time-Machine-Esque functionality built in.
Hopefully, they'll learn from their mistakes. I love my Linux Box, and I love my Powerbook. However, it's great to see some competition.
I should probably go one step further to point out that NT is probably the best (and most modern) general-use kernel in widespread use today. I'm no kernel developer, although after talking to people 'in the know', I get the general concensus that NT was one of the few things Microsoft got right and nailed on the head.
Although there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the Linux Monolithic Kernel (especially since it's behaving more and more like a microkernel these days), Linus has admitted that were he to start from scratch, it wouldn't be monolithic.
I don't know too many specifics of the OS X (Mach) kernel, although from what I understand, there are some fundamental performance and latency issues holding the entire system back that have existed in Mach since the beginning.
Although the software on top of NT is often less than stellar (ruined by the businesses execs, and trashed by the requirement for backward-compatibility), the NT kernel is generally regarded as being the most solid part of the operating system.
What? The House is actually holding a corporation responsible for its actions overseas?
I think it should be pretty plainly clear by now that they don't give a shit about this sort of thing. (Blackwater had to start murdering crowds of people in cold blood before congress even paid any attention to its actions.)
So the real question is.... what topic are they avoiding discussing right now? Have they run out of talking points for their usual debates over civil unions and abortion rights that they usually use for this purpose? Don't they have some baseball players they can call in for testimony? It worked great for them after Abu Ghraib.
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At those prices, you could keep a teem of chauffeurs on call 24/7 for several years.
Or you could buy a metrocard. Here's New York's dirty little secret: Everyone rides the subway. It's the great equalizing factor of New York. NYC traffic can be awful and unpredictable.
Offtopic, and no longer true. He renovated the house, and is now seeking a LEED certification for it. Even at the start, he'd been purchasing enough alt-energy credits to offset the energy consumption of his own home.
It's also not particularly fair to compare Gore's 'home' to a vacation house owned by the Bush family. Although I'm typically not a huge fan of dazzlingly wealthy politicians, I'd sort of expect a former-vice-president to own a fairly large home.
Obligatory hair-raising video of a helmet-mounted cam of a guy riding from Central Park down to the southern tip of Manhattan. He's got nerves of steel.
Also, buy a really strong lock.
Alternatively, NYC's got arguably one of the cheapest and most extensive mass-transit system on the planet. Owning a car in the city is just plain dumb unless you need to cart around big heavy items all the time.
Maybe the responsibility for calling evacuations should be entirely moved away from the city's domain of duties. Have a state or federal agency (The Weather Service would be fine!) call the shots, and make the politicians legally responsible for ensuring that the evacuation takes place in a timely and efficient manner.
If evidence surfaces that the politicians dragged their feet after the order was given, throw them in jail. I'm not kidding --- let's make the people responsible actually accountable for their actions.
If you want to define murder in that manner, then no, you haven't murdered them.
However, you've most certainly killed them.
Isn't this how BushCo has been justifying the staggering number of Iraqi civilian deaths? According to the relatively conservative (and verifiable) estimate of the Iraq Body Count, we've killed 0.3% of the population. There have been smaller genocides.
Mod parent up. This is exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote my post (but couldn't remember the formal name by which it's referred).
It's particularly interesting, because I'd initially dismissed the problem as another bit of "mental masturbation" for philosophers to obsess over to little effect, as the situation had no fathomable real-world analog. (Nothing quite makes you want to pull your hair out like getting stuck in the middle of an argument between two philosophy majors).
But the real-world parallel gets even more disturbing. You can steer the hurricane either to the east or to the west of the city. To the east lies a resort town, and to the west lies a trailer park. For academic purposes, suppose there are an equal number of people in both towns. Which way do you steer it? If you want to save as many as possible, you'd steer it toward the resort town, since the buildings there are likely to be stronger. If you want to cause as little monetary damage as possible, you steer at the trailer park -- the whole thing will be leveled, but replacement trailers are cheap. On the other hand, if only a handful of buildings in the resort town are damaged, the damage relative to the entire town will be a lot less, although the dollar amount of the damage will be a lot higher.
Even though the case to send the hurricane toward the resort town is slightly stronger, I have no doubt that an order would come down from the top to send it at the trailer park instead.
Will there be time to do either?
And on that note, given how long it took to finally give an evac order for New Orleans, does it really matter? (also, given the slow delay and the unpredictability of these storms, how quickly can the hurricane be "steered" away from a metropolitan area? Will we have to start the process the very moment a tropical storm pops up on the radar?
It also makes the government directly responsible for any damages that occur.
This presents a huge ethical dilemma.
If you steer the hurricane away from the big city, but it still hits a small town 100 miles away, and kills 100 people, have you just murdered those 100 people? And at that rate, the ones who survived are going to be pretty pissed that the government shot a HURRICANE at them.
What if we screw up, and send a Category 5 Hurricane on a collision course with Havana or Mexico City? That would have disastrous consequences.
This sort of technology has terrifying military applications as well. Send a hurricane at *insert insular communist dictatorship here*, wait til it's passed, and then invade the nation while they're picking up the pieces.
I'm generally for the advancement of science, but in this case, we're coming a bit too close to "playing God" for our own good.
Eh. I can't say that they're my *favorite* *favorite*, although I will say that I've never lost a bag with them. (Although I've heard horror stories (none recent) that they're nightmare to deal with in the event that a bag did get lost)
As far as the on-time-ness, I'm pretty convinced that these days, it's more a function of the airport than the airline. The FAA's got a disturbing shortage of air traffic controllers, especially around the NYC area that causes all sorts of problems for everybody. I've also been the victim of a propagating delay while on AirTran, so they don't get my biggest recommendation in that area either, because there wasn't quite enough padding between flights. To be perfectly fair, however, I doubt that any of the other carriers are any better in this regard -- for the price, I really can't complain at all.
Airlines treat their customers like dirt. There's no secret about it. (unless you're a frequent business traveler, in which case your predicament is probably still lousy, but you at least the airlines are nice, and I digress....)
Since it's been the increasing trend for airlines to Nickel-and-dime their customers, charging for every little item possible, it's probably time for them to reevaluate their business model.
A bunch of low-cost carriers across Europe have sprung up, offering bare-bones service at insanely low prices. They get around this by flying to airports outside of metropolitan areas (which can be a boon or a curse depending upon where you need to go!) and more or less pass their costs directly on to their customers. If you want to check-in at the counter, you'll get a small surcharge -- after all, keeping the counter staffed does cost money. Likewise, you're charged a decently reasonable rate for each and every piece of baggage you check. After all, heavy baggage means more fuel, which means increased costs. (On the same note, I find the typical American process of charging obscene fees for being a few pounds over to be absurd. I've had to shuffle items between bags to meet my quots, and avoid paying $75.)
Although they're subject to taxes and fees like everyone else, the pricing of base fares is more often than not clear and upfront, without many complicated "fare rules" attached -- one-way tickets are often no more expensive than round-trips, and there are no strange discount rules involving connections or layovers. There is no "system" to be worked, and it's usually obvious why your ticket costs as much as it does. One of my biggest gripes with traditional airlines is that I have absolutely no idea why my ticket costs twice as much on as wednesday as it does on a tuesday, but only on odd numbered months....
This you-pay-for-what-you-get approach has been extremely popular, and low-cost airlines such as RyanAir and EasyJet are among the most profitable airlines in the industry. Granted, they do have their share of shady business practices, although these days I'm beginning to expect that everywhere.
Likewise, I've noticed that airlines that force to pay for meals often serve better food, because they're being forced to compete with (*gasp*) people packing their own sandwiches.
Although this business model doesn't particularly benefit vacationers and long-distance business travelers very well, it's absolutely fantastic for "commuter flights", or an impromptu visit home to see my family for the weekend.
Back in the US, I used AirTran all the time to travel between New York (LaGuardia) and Newport News, VA. Both are smaller airports, are relatively easy to get to, and usually aren't too crowded (LaGuardia's a bit of an exception here, although they're probably the "least of the three evils" in the NY Metro area). Although they're a bit more "posh" than the low-cost European carriers, I get the distinct impression that they "get it" in terms of where the industry needs to go -- low-cost regional flights without too many frills. Fares are easy to comprehend, and it's not particularly uncommon to get a one-way ticket for around $60 -- considerably less than Amtrak, and only takes you 30-45 minutes on the ground and an hour in the air, as opposed to 15-30 minutes in a train station followed by 8 hours on an excruciatingly slow train that offers even fewer frills than the flight.
All that said, there are a few rules airlines do need to follow. Customers need to be treated like human beings, there should always be someone to talk to in the event of a problem, and certain in-flight amenities should be provided such as complimentary drinks (in light of the liquids ban, and the fact that it's not an expensive service to provide), and blankets/pillows on long-distance overnight flights.
I think he's referring to the Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY instead of the one in Virginia. Specifically, the criticism relating to the development of the Atlantic Yards project, which has been opposed by just about everybody apart from the politicians and the developers themselves. Criticism of the actual project aside, there were also some very valid issues raised over the enormous public subsidies going into the project ($2 billion plus any infrastructure improvements necessary, which is insofar an undisclosed amount), given that certain agencies of the city are running Billion-dollar deficits. The entire project reeks of pork.
On the other hand, if they built it in Virginia (a much more sensible idea because it's closer to the equator), they wouldn't be able to send any more than 3 astronauts up in the capsule at a time. Williamsburg is one of the few cities in the US to have retained its "Brothel Laws", and still actively enforces them against tenants the city deems "undesirable" (eg. poor people and college students)
I'm sure the Williamsburg heat and humidity would be hell on the tether (and the tethernauts) as well -- the Hampton Peninsula, and most of Virginia for that matter is chock full of beautiful, fertile land with a decent climate; why the colonial settlers chose to land in Jamestown, and then move to Williamsburg (essentially a swamp) absolutely boggles the mind. Being there in the summer sucks.
Oh. I realize how painfully excruciating scientific data collection can be. Robert Millikan must have had the patience of a saint, considering he spent several years painstakingly measuring the charge on an electron, producing a result was incredibly accurate and precise. I'm not going to enter the Mythbusters debate here (I can really see both sides of it)....
Back on topic, given the HUGE size of mars compared to the absolutely miniscule portion of what we've looked at, I can't help but think that it'd make sense for NASA to build a rover that were able to travel considerably further distances. The rovers have only moved about 7 miles from their starting point in over 3 years! Wouldn't it be more scientifically advantageous to spend a few months in one place, and then drive off to someplace with a different topography, so that a wider spectrum of data could be collected?
I guess that the rovers right now are still just as useful as a functioning stationary lander, but can't help but think that they're not likely to make any sort of groundbreaking observations that they haven't already, given that they're not all that far away from where they started.
Facebook used to be great -- a prime example of exactly how you want to build a website. They knew their purpose, and the satisfied that purpose well. Their forays into other areas that were relevant also proved to be a considerable success, photo sharing being the most obvious example. Events were also revamped to the degree where they were actually useful (and of course, they're quite relevant to Facbook's original goals)
As time went on, they grew too greedy. Their "blogging" and "bookmark sharing" components didn't achieve nearly as much success -- anyone wanting either feature was already on digg, del.icio.us, livejounal, etc... Undeterred by these two failures, they opened up the floodgates to the filth and scum of the internet (I'm talking about AOL and MySpace -- not High-Schoolers)
The App platform in one fell swoop eliminated every single competitive advantage Facebook once had, and completely erased its identity. Even the goons in charge of facebook have gone as far to openly say that it's nothing more than a way for them to make money, and a platform for others to do the same. (Seriously -- read the developer documentation!)
So what you end up with are the Vampires, Zombies, giant smiley-faces, and spam invites. I had the misfortune of viewing a profile with a goatse app in it. That said, there are a few nice apps -- the ability to tie into Last.Fm was an obvious one, and the 'Graffiti' application can be fun when used in moderation.
Everything else can go for all I care. I can't stand the applications and groups whose sole purpose is to invite as many people as possible to them, nor can I stand the asshats who invite every single one of their 'friends' to their party, regardless of whether they actually live in the same country or not.
Well, the mission officially began in 2003 (when the rocket was launched), so I'll maintain that my timeline's correct, although you are correct it was 2004 by the time they landed on the surface.
Simple answer: They must have been designed by the same people who crafted the Iraq war. Both of them have been going since 2003, and show no signs of stopping anytime soon!
The thing is that the engineers predicted that they would fail years ago. A few months into the mission, I remember that there was a significant amount of speculation over why the things hadn't failed, because it was confusing the hell out of the guys who built it.
I'm a bit curious if the rovers are actually doing anything all that useful at the moment... after all, they move at a painfully slow rate, and the landscape isn't all that varied in the areas they're in.
I have this funny vision of what would happen if /. got hacked, and how it would have been done:
The admins would wake up the next day to discover that the site was running perfectly normally, but was performing slightly faster than normal.
After closer inspection, they'd find that their datacenter had been emptied, and replaced by a single Apple ][ that had been hacked to run the latest version of Ubuntu, and that slashcode had been rewritten so that it would perform all of the same functions as the previous slashcode, but ran at twice the speed... on the Apple ][.
A post-it would be found stuck to the screen, stating that all of slashdot's old and now unnecessary hardware had been sold, with the proceeds being donated to the EFF. The message would likely include or be in the form of a Soviet Russia joke. Additionally, a miniaturized plastic Gnu would be left behind as a calling-card.
The news of this would be regarded as insignificant by the editors, until over a year later, it gets posted four times in the span of two days.
Even if you weren't able to eat them, you'd still be able to throw them at bad actors. That's what the British did with them until the 1600s.
So wait...... you run OS X, but use all software that's freely available for Linux?
As a Mac user, I can't help buy ask you WHY you do such a thing? Most unix apps ported to OS X tend to run poorly, and don't integrate with the rest of the operating system well -- Apple's slightly different windowing paradigm also typically makes the UIs a bit awkward. On top of that, Apple's X11 implementation leaves much to be desired.
I love my mac, but ran entirely *nix apps, I'd have Ubuntu on it immediately. Heck... back when my primary job function was to churn out MATLAB code, I put Ubuntu on my G4 for the time being, because I was fed up with the quirkiness of Apple's X11.
(Also..... if you're running a platform for which Photoshop and numerous other image manipulation tools are available, why on earth would you use the GIMP? The idea of running GNOME on top of Aqua and the Finder also strikes me as being particularly odd...)
Sure.... however, this probably has a higher chance of reproducing and ruining the planet...
So that the person picking me up knows to leave home and start driving to the airport? Of if they're already on their way, they'll know to look for me outside the airport in a few minutes time, instead of paying for parking and waiting an indeterminate amount of time? Parking at airports is often extremely expensive and time-consuming.
Given the ridiculously low number of US airports directly connected to mass transportation, I can think of countless reasons why you'd want to inform somebody that your flight has landed.
Um. No. The NT kernel is generally regarded as being extremely solid. You'd be an absolute idiot to run the Win32 shell on top of the Linux kernel. The NT kernel is at the top of a very small list of the the few things Microsoft's done right. It's also one of the most recently developed kernels in widespread use. (OS X/Mach and Linux, though both innovative are evolutionary updates to a very old system)
However, I do like the idea of open-sourcing bits of the OS to any paid and licensed end-user. RMS's whining about a free-as-in-speech kernel are impractical and counterproductive. Getting a peek inside the NT kernel would be extremely enlightening, and would allow developers to better tune their applications to the OS, and find security flaws (to be fair, most of those occur far above the kernel level).
Likewise, Internet Explorer and the explorer.exe shell should both *definitely* be open-sourced, as they've both been extremely buggy for the entirety of their existence. At the moment, all of the desktop shells leave much to be desired -- Explorer is insecure, and prone to crashing -- it peaked around Win2k, and has been going downhill since, which is a shame because it's generally very *fast*. X11 is rapidly improving and evolving into something modern and desirable (and about time!), but KDE and GNOME still have a ways to go in terms of Usability -- I absolutely adore XFCE, but realize that it's not for everyone. The OS X shell is stable, fast, and secure, but suffers from somewhat poor latency, and the Finder needs to be completely revamped (and properly multithreaded!!!).
Vista had some fantastic features going for it. If WinFS were the first to market, they could have gained a enormous competitive edge. Instead, that got cut out in favor of a myriad of features that the market has demonstrated that it doesn't want.
Microsoft needs to rewind the past 7 years (kind of like our Government, but I digress...), Open-Source the Explorer shell, keep it simple, but gradually build it up. Make absolute sure that IE goes open-source, and let the community have input into it. Like so many other things MS does, IE7 was a big improvement in many ways, but also misses the mark completely in terms of the user experience (which is the general concensus I get from everyone who's used it). Firefox *is* the better product, and Microsoft needs to distinguish itself from it in a positive manner.
Once you've got a fast, modern, lightweight shell, start emphasizing new and unique features within the core operating system, especially with regard to the Filesystem; Metadata is the future, and the first OS to properly implement it will be wildly successful. I'd even wager that Windows would be particularly well-suited to the task. Heck... if we're going to be audacious, consider implementing ZFS, with Time-Machine-Esque functionality built in.
Hopefully, they'll learn from their mistakes. I love my Linux Box, and I love my Powerbook. However, it's great to see some competition.
William Shatner posts on slashdot?
I should probably go one step further to point out that NT is probably the best (and most modern) general-use kernel in widespread use today. I'm no kernel developer, although after talking to people 'in the know', I get the general concensus that NT was one of the few things Microsoft got right and nailed on the head.
Although there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the Linux Monolithic Kernel (especially since it's behaving more and more like a microkernel these days), Linus has admitted that were he to start from scratch, it wouldn't be monolithic.
I don't know too many specifics of the OS X (Mach) kernel, although from what I understand, there are some fundamental performance and latency issues holding the entire system back that have existed in Mach since the beginning.
Although the software on top of NT is often less than stellar (ruined by the businesses execs, and trashed by the requirement for backward-compatibility), the NT kernel is generally regarded as being the most solid part of the operating system.
What? The House is actually holding a corporation responsible for its actions overseas?
I think it should be pretty plainly clear by now that they don't give a shit about this sort of thing. (Blackwater had to start murdering crowds of people in cold blood before congress even paid any attention to its actions.)
So the real question is.... what topic are they avoiding discussing right now? Have they run out of talking points for their usual debates over civil unions and abortion rights that they usually use for this purpose? Don't they have some baseball players they can call in for testimony? It worked great for them after Abu Ghraib.