The telescope is a ways outside of town on top of Mount Graham. I've not see it personally, but I've seen the building for the MMT (a much smaller telescope) on Mt. Hopkins and it is quite impressive.
The large building behind the football stadium on campus is the mirror lab where they cast and finish the individual mirrors. Even that building isn't so small.
Perhaps you are thinking of the small white domed building (Old Steward Observatory) that sits behind the current Steward Observatory? That's mostly graduate student offices now. There's a telescope in there, but it's very old and quite small.
No, there's no physical limit to how many you can have. But, of course, cost is a factor. The construction of the LBT was very expensive. Each of the 7.5m mirrors alone cost a fortune to construct.
On another mountain outside of Tucson (Mt. Hopkins) is the MMTO (Multiple Mirror Telescope Observatory). As the name suggests, this was a large telescope made from six smaller mirror segments. It has since been converted into a telescope with a single 6.5m mirror. There's a group at the University of Arizona which does adaptive optics experiments with it (MMTAO).
At the risk of sounding stupid, I'll have to disagree with both you and the parent.
In particular, Linux has long had an over commit memory system. An app can ask for vast quantities of memory and the kernel will happily give it. But that doesn't change the amount of memory being used nor does it kick things out of the cache. Only when that memory is actually used will the kernel *really* allocate it and make room in RAM.
Also, Linux does not cache every file on the system that it touches. locatedb scans only the contents of the filesystem, not the contents of the files themselves. Depending on your system and how many files and directories you have, locatedb can still make a system grind, but this is from excess I/O and not from emptying the cache. On the other hand, some of the desktop indexing daemons, like Tracker, do scan the contents of files and those will end up, at least temporarily, in the cache.
Just because I can't speak a language doesn't mean I won't be able to recognize it. If he had instead spoken German, Spanish, Italian, or even Russian, I probably would have known. Of course, there's always some room for error.
In this case, I was in the middle of France, surrounded by French reporters. Even if what he spoke hadn't immediately sounded like French, I think it would have been a safe guess.:)
Indeed he can. In 2003 I attended a free software press conference in Soissons, France at which he spoke at length in French about free software, GNU, and a few other topics. While socially awkward, he is quite capable in front of groups and spoke well and without the need for assistance.
Unfortunately for me, in 2003 I knew exactly zero French so I mostly stared blankly for an hour and a half. Oh well...:)
While not an obvious question, the grandparent neglected to mention that on this particular show the questions are multiple choice and four possible answers are given. And since this was the second question given to the contestant, at least one of the answers was a clear throw away.
So now you're asked who Number 3 is: a) Speaker of the House, b) President Pro Tempore, c) Minority Whip, d) Licorice Whip
As a prime time game show this is, perhaps, more difficult than many questions that might be asked. Still, with a tiny bit of logic you can narrow it down to A or B.
We do all make mistakes, and surgeons are no exception.
I had a laproscopic procedure done a few years back and in the end I developed and abdominal infection. The surgeon had done his work, as had the hospital, but bacteria are microscopic. And, sometimes, the procedure just has a mistake.
As best as the surgeon could guess, there must have been some bacteria on one of the instruments despite all of the precautions. Shortly afterwards, though he didn't say so, I could tell that he was worried. Once I made it clear that I had no intentions of suing him, he became far more relaxed.
I don't blame him, and told him as much. Sometimes, even when you follow all of the proper procedures, things don't turn out right. It's unfortunate, but it doesn't mean he did it through incompetence or malice. Perhaps I would feel differently if it hadn't turned out well enough in the end, but given the amount of medical procedures I've been through, I expect I would have felt this way regardless.
Nobuo Uematsu: okay, bear with me - he makes a lot of good music, but he reuses a lot of chords and melodies from game-to-game, and has a hard time branching out. BUT, what he gets right he gets very right. One Winged Angel - Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Zanarkand (FFX), YOU'RE NOT ALONE (FFIX), Vamo' alla Flamenco (FF IX), FITHOS, LUSEC, WEPOS, VINOSEC (FF VIII), Cyan (FF VI), Trojan Beauty (FF IV), and My Home, Sweet Home (FF V "Dear Friends" soundtrack).
I'd have to agree. I'm a bit surprised with the amount of Nobuo-hating going on in the comments for this story. Perhaps it's just easier to find bad examples because he's composed such a large number of tunes? But, you're right. When he nails it, he really does it right.
At the first PAX, I picked up several FF soundtrack CDs. Only one of them was an OST, though. The Final Fantasy Symphonic Suite is really top notch, but my favorite is "Final Fantasy IV: Celtic Moon" where a celtic band was brought in to play the tunes. They do quite a remarkable job, too. Same melodies, but with a markedly different treatment.
Hey, don't kid yourself now. If a group of terrorists were somehow able to kill millions of people, you can bet they would be dancing in the streets.
Of course, since a lot of fundamentalist groups consider dancing to be verboten, those terrorists would probably be killed by another group of terrorists...
It's possible that depleted uranium is a factor (maybe even a big one) in the Iraq War Syndrome, but there is a very sensible reason for that.
Because it is used in weapons and reactors, uranium has a terrible reputation. The real honest truth is that naturally occurring uranium (of which there is a substantial amount) is not very radioactive. It has a half-life of roughly 4.5 billion years and so radiates weakly. Depleted uranium is only about half as radioactive as that. Really, you could sleep with a box of the stuff under your bed for a long long time.
So why is depleted uranium ammo bad? Because it gets shot at things at very high velocities and when it hits something, the DU part of the round disintegrates. Inhaling any of that is bad news. It has far more surface area and it is now inside your body where your layer of dead skin cannot stop the weak radiation.
As already mentioned, there are plenty of other uses for DU such as counterweights in planes (takes up less of the limited space), shielding in medical radiation devices (because it is so dense) and others.
I'm not sure what your beef with uranium is. Maybe some uranium sneaked up on your grandfather and mugged him? I'm just guessing here...
I was in a department store not long ago (a Target, I think) and there was a bin of super cheap DVDs. I dug around a little and came across, of all things, "Future War."
That was from maybe season 8 or 9? Not sure. But what an awful movie. Even at $3 it was horribly overpriced.
You make some good points about the electors and who we as voters actually choose in an election, BUT...
You're wrong about getting Bill Clinton elected for a third term. Congress didn't just make a law about it, it's the 22nd amendment to the Constitution.
"No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice..."
I'm from Southern Arizona (Tucson) and, like SoCal, it is everywhere. That is, Mexican restaurants, markets, etc. are all over the place and you'd be hard pressed to find one that doesn't sell chorizo. Even most ordinary grocery stores carry passable chorizo. The best always came from my grandparents in Bisbee which is a stone's throw from the border.
Now, I'm in Amherst, Mass. and it is significantly harder to find. What I can locate is usually Spanish style chorizo. That's not bad, of course, but much different from Mexican which I'd rather have.
On the other hand, now I can have clam chowder for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I really wanted...
It's unlikely that the RIAA would come into court with no evidence at all. Unfortunately, as we've seen from a few other stories on Slashdot, that evidence is often of poor quality. But, because the judge's are not technically inclined they fail to see how poor the evidence is.
That's why these extortion letters are so dangerous. Because this is a civil suit the amount which must be proven by the prosecution is substantially less than in a criminal case.
That's easy. In order not to give the RIAA any money whatsoever, you must prove that you have not done what they say you did.
You can ignore the RIAA. They'll just take the lawsuit forward anyway.
You can argue with the RIAA. They'll just take the lawsuit forward anyway.
You can ignore your own trial and almost certainly receive a summary judgement against you.
You can defend yourself and most likely lose against the RIAA's lawyers.
Finally, you can hire your own lawyer and, provided you really are innocent, will probably win your case.
Unless you then take it to the next level and sue the RIAA to recover legal expenses, you'll be out a whole lot of money. And even if you do counter sue, there's no guarantee that you'll get your legal expenses paid. As you can see from the above list, it sure looks a lot like a case of being guilty until you can prove yourself innocent.
To be honest, I see no problems with a system like that. I don't know how voting is seen in the Netherlands, but over here it is often a very politically and racially charged event. I'm not talking riots or violence, but after nearly every election there always seems to be cries of disenfranchisement, either overt or accidental. And there are other problems as well.
What this means is for voting reform is committee after committee. Industry groups and lobbying groups and voting rights groups... all of whom can't seem to agree on anything. I think these fancy systems they end up with are largely a result of trying to placate everyone. Some would probably argue that your system of multiple ballots and multiple envelopes is too confusing. I think it's trying to design for the lowest common denominator. Rather than assuming that random citizen X could handle four envelopes, they assume that said citizen couldn't.
All of my voting so far has occured in Arizona. Since the first time I could vote, in 1998, Arizona has used what are essentially fancy scantron sheets. The ballot is a long, fairly thick piece of paper and you mark your vote with a black marker by filling in large circles. It's old technology. It has a paper trail. The machines work very well. Everybody understands how to use it. And you get an instant vote count.
As far as I know, Arizona isn't planning on switching away from these machines any time soon. That's good because I abhor the thought of using anything where the voting booth is some sort of computer terminal (i.e. something from Diebold).
Concerning the disabled... I don't know, but I suspect it's a matter of it being a "secret ballot." The rules on what the polling station workers can and can't do is fairly strict. Of course, I imagine that if somebody asked for help they're unlikely to be turned down either.
Single party ballots won't work in the U.S., at least not for the general election in November. In the primaries which are occuring now, you can only vote for people in the party you are registered for. Laws differ by state, though, so in some states if you have no party affiliation or are registered as independent you can use whichever party's ballot you like.
In the general election, however, you can vote for whomever you feel like. I'll use myself as an example... I'm registered as a Democrat in Arizona and I do lean to the left on most issues. I intend to vote for the incumbent Democratic governor, Janet Napolitano. But that's not the only race. There are state and federal seats. I'll likely vote for most of the Democratic candidates, but on some races I'll probably vote for the Green party candidate.
And it's not always to the left. Depsite disagreeing with him on a number of issues, I happen to like Senator McCain. I voted for him last time rather than his Democratic opponent.
So, it's important to have all of the candidates listed on the ballot. Also, and this varies again from state to state, propositions and initiatives are not just one line on the sheet. There is usually a paragraph accompanying each. I try to do my homework before voting, but these paragraphs do come in very handy to remind me of which prop. is which.
Put all this together and you can get a fairly long ballot. In the past, I know some states have separated the two, with textual descriptions on one reusable sheet and marks put on another. Most people seem to dislike this arrangement though, and it certainly didn't work out well for Florida in 2000.
Electronic voting can make many of these issues easier to deal with. As long as it is done right. So far, though...
High speed rail? Hell, I'd be happy with any rail at this point.
Back in 1999, I returned home from a summer internship via rail. I took the train from Grand Central Station in Washington, D.C. all the way to Tucson, Arizona. It was a three day trip, but I did have a room on the train. It was small, but comfortable. I wasn't in a big hurry and the trip was quite enjoyable.
The only major annoyances were a power outage which knocked out the signal towers which brought all the trains to a standstill. Also, the tracks are almost all owned by the freight companies so their trains get right of way. In busy areas this can mean the passenger train is side lined frequently.
The problems with passenger rail in this country are not entirely Amtrak's fault. Certainly they've made their share of mistakes, though. The southern rail line (roughly following Interstate 10) from Florida to California is still out of service where it passes near New Orleans. And the prices are still sky high. I would gladly take the rail next time I go home (Amherst, Mass. to Tucson, Arizona) if I could afford it. As it stands now, though, taking the train, even with the smallest room, costs at least twice as much as a plane ticket.
But, most of the blame for Amtrak's current state rests with Congress. It is understandable to have a passenger rail monopoly. You really don't want a giant mesh of competing rails, most likely. But to have it be useful, it needs support from the government and that support has not been there for a long time.
Likewise the ice problem has been there since day one. But nobody realized it was enough to kill the ship (or possibly, the people who did think so never figured out a way to prove it to until one of them actually did get killed by it.
It's probably more accurate to say that the public's ignorance is bliss. Only the public has been, by and large, ignorant of these problems. The engineers knew about all of them right away and made sure to inform management who then did little.
I just finished reading Mike Mullane's book "Riding Rockets." I highly recommend it to anybody interested in NASA and the shuttle program. His account of his career as an astronaut paints NASA as a far more enjoyable and human organization while at the same time not avoiding the harder issues like the terrible management and disasters like Challanger.
On Mullane's first flight (something like the 15th shuttle flight, I think) mission control saw a large piece of the foam come off and strike the orbiter. That flight had the robot arm installed so they used it to inspect the damage. To the crew the damage looked very bad, but mission control said, repeatedly, not to worry about it. Upon landing they looked at the underside of the orbiter where the foam had hit. The damage was, in fact, very bad. It was the worst tile damage until that which did in Columbia. Mission control later said that the quality of the downlink video from the robot arm was not very good, so to them the damage did not seem as extensive.
None of the problems which led to the loss of either Challanger or Columbia were new or unknown. Engineers had seen them, had been worried about them, and attempted to make a case to management. But, as Mullane describes it, management took the view that if damage this bad had not caused a shuttle loss, then having it happen again was an acceptable risk. And we all know how the story turns out.
As an astronomy undergrad I don't claim to be an expert by any stretch, but I have read a number of papers from the Astrophysical Journal (and others) on GRBs. My understanding is that they do not beam to any large extent.
GRBs are exceptionally rare and exceptionally powerful. At present, they seem to be a special very large sort of supernova explosion (a hypernova). The gamma rays are sent out in all directions. The reason we detect so many is simply because the observable universe is so huge and a GRB can be detected from a great distance.
I do agree, though, that a nearby GRB isn't going to sterilize a galaxy. They're powerful, but not that powerful. Also, gamma rays, while deadly, are stopped easily by matter. In the worst case scenario, such as having a GRB go off only a few light years from the Earth, you have to remember that only half the Earth would be facing the GRB. That half would be in for a bad time, but the other half would be untouched by the deadly rays.
Of course, GRBs come from gigantic stars and there are none of those nearby, so...
I programmed the University of Arizona cubesats. We actually have two satellites launching from the Cosmodrome this summer. The first is, as the summary notes, called Rincon. It is named for Rincon Research which provided us much of the funding. Rincon Research is in turn named for the mountain range on the East side of Tucson. The other satellite is called SACRED, and, honestly, I can't actually remember what it stands for. I think it's something in French...
The summary is not entirely correct about the construction of the cubesats. Some are indeed made from the kit, but not all. Ours, for example, were completely designed and built at the UA with the exception of the radio transceivers. SACRED also includes an experiment board designed by the Univ. of Montpelier.
Here's a much better link to a page describing the cubesats:
Some of the other posts have been complaining about the purpose of these cubesats. It's true that they are all very simple. But you have to remember that they were designed and built by students (with faculty help, of course). The UA cubesats have PIC 16F877 microcontrollers on board with 64 KB of ferromagnetic storage memory. So, it's understandable that they will be limited.
The Rincon satellite has twelve sensors which monitor voltage, temperature, and current. These will let us know how well the cubesat is working and hopefully allow us to compute its spin rate. SACRED also has an experiment board which will perform some radiation tests on a few electronic components.
These cubesats (the UA's at least) are more than just beacons, as some posters have suggested. I programmed them, so I'm well aware of their capabilities. They have, for their size, a fairly decent command structure and allow for two-way communication. They take measurements on a schedule (which can be modified) and store the results for later transmission to the ground station in Tucson, Arizona. For the extra curious among you, you can read the cubesat manual I wrote for our project:
Slashdot Mirror
The telescope is a ways outside of town on top of Mount Graham. I've not see it personally, but I've seen the building for the MMT (a much smaller telescope) on Mt. Hopkins and it is quite impressive.
The large building behind the football stadium on campus is the mirror lab where they cast and finish the individual mirrors. Even that building isn't so small.
Perhaps you are thinking of the small white domed building (Old Steward Observatory) that sits behind the current Steward Observatory? That's mostly graduate student offices now. There's a telescope in there, but it's very old and quite small.
No, there's no physical limit to how many you can have. But, of course, cost is a factor. The construction of the LBT was very expensive. Each of the 7.5m mirrors alone cost a fortune to construct.
On another mountain outside of Tucson (Mt. Hopkins) is the MMTO (Multiple Mirror Telescope Observatory). As the name suggests, this was a large telescope made from six smaller mirror segments. It has since been converted into a telescope with a single 6.5m mirror. There's a group at the University of Arizona which does adaptive optics experiments with it (MMTAO).
At the risk of sounding stupid, I'll have to disagree with both you and the parent.
In particular, Linux has long had an over commit memory system. An app can ask for vast quantities of memory and the kernel will happily give it. But that doesn't change the amount of memory being used nor does it kick things out of the cache. Only when that memory is actually used will the kernel *really* allocate it and make room in RAM.
Also, Linux does not cache every file on the system that it touches. locatedb scans only the contents of the filesystem, not the contents of the files themselves. Depending on your system and how many files and directories you have, locatedb can still make a system grind, but this is from excess I/O and not from emptying the cache. On the other hand, some of the desktop indexing daemons, like Tracker, do scan the contents of files and those will end up, at least temporarily, in the cache.
Just because I can't speak a language doesn't mean I won't be able to recognize it. If he had instead spoken German, Spanish, Italian, or even Russian, I probably would have known. Of course, there's always some room for error.
In this case, I was in the middle of France, surrounded by French reporters. Even if what he spoke hadn't immediately sounded like French, I think it would have been a safe guess. :)
Indeed he can. In 2003 I attended a free software press conference in Soissons, France at which he spoke at length in French about free software, GNU, and a few other topics. While socially awkward, he is quite capable in front of groups and spoke well and without the need for assistance.
Unfortunately for me, in 2003 I knew exactly zero French so I mostly stared blankly for an hour and a half. Oh well... :)
While not an obvious question, the grandparent neglected to mention that on this particular show the questions are multiple choice and four possible answers are given. And since this was the second question given to the contestant, at least one of the answers was a clear throw away.
So now you're asked who Number 3 is: a) Speaker of the House, b) President Pro Tempore, c) Minority Whip, d) Licorice Whip
As a prime time game show this is, perhaps, more difficult than many questions that might be asked. Still, with a tiny bit of logic you can narrow it down to A or B.
We do all make mistakes, and surgeons are no exception.
I had a laproscopic procedure done a few years back and in the end I developed and abdominal infection. The surgeon had done his work, as had the hospital, but bacteria are microscopic. And, sometimes, the procedure just has a mistake.
As best as the surgeon could guess, there must have been some bacteria on one of the instruments despite all of the precautions. Shortly afterwards, though he didn't say so, I could tell that he was worried. Once I made it clear that I had no intentions of suing him, he became far more relaxed.
I don't blame him, and told him as much. Sometimes, even when you follow all of the proper procedures, things don't turn out right. It's unfortunate, but it doesn't mean he did it through incompetence or malice. Perhaps I would feel differently if it hadn't turned out well enough in the end, but given the amount of medical procedures I've been through, I expect I would have felt this way regardless.
I'd have to agree. I'm a bit surprised with the amount of Nobuo-hating going on in the comments for this story. Perhaps it's just easier to find bad examples because he's composed such a large number of tunes? But, you're right. When he nails it, he really does it right.
At the first PAX, I picked up several FF soundtrack CDs. Only one of them was an OST, though. The Final Fantasy Symphonic Suite is really top notch, but my favorite is "Final Fantasy IV: Celtic Moon" where a celtic band was brought in to play the tunes. They do quite a remarkable job, too. Same melodies, but with a markedly different treatment.
Hey, don't kid yourself now. If a group of terrorists were somehow able to kill millions of people, you can bet they would be dancing in the streets.
Of course, since a lot of fundamentalist groups consider dancing to be verboten, those terrorists would probably be killed by another group of terrorists...
It's possible that depleted uranium is a factor (maybe even a big one) in the Iraq War Syndrome, but there is a very sensible reason for that.
Because it is used in weapons and reactors, uranium has a terrible reputation. The real honest truth is that naturally occurring uranium (of which there is a substantial amount) is not very radioactive. It has a half-life of roughly 4.5 billion years and so radiates weakly. Depleted uranium is only about half as radioactive as that. Really, you could sleep with a box of the stuff under your bed for a long long time.
So why is depleted uranium ammo bad? Because it gets shot at things at very high velocities and when it hits something, the DU part of the round disintegrates. Inhaling any of that is bad news. It has far more surface area and it is now inside your body where your layer of dead skin cannot stop the weak radiation.
As already mentioned, there are plenty of other uses for DU such as counterweights in planes (takes up less of the limited space), shielding in medical radiation devices (because it is so dense) and others.
I'm not sure what your beef with uranium is. Maybe some uranium sneaked up on your grandfather and mugged him? I'm just guessing here...
I was in a department store not long ago (a Target, I think) and there was a bin of super cheap DVDs. I dug around a little and came across, of all things, "Future War."
That was from maybe season 8 or 9? Not sure. But what an awful movie. Even at $3 it was horribly overpriced.
You make some good points about the electors and who we as voters actually choose in an election, BUT...
You're wrong about getting Bill Clinton elected for a third term. Congress didn't just make a law about it, it's the 22nd amendment to the Constitution.
"No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice..."
That was truly impressive, sir. I do believe you may have too much time on your hands, however.
Kudos, though. Kudos, indeed.
I'm from Southern Arizona (Tucson) and, like SoCal, it is everywhere. That is, Mexican restaurants, markets, etc. are all over the place and you'd be hard pressed to find one that doesn't sell chorizo. Even most ordinary grocery stores carry passable chorizo. The best always came from my grandparents in Bisbee which is a stone's throw from the border.
Now, I'm in Amherst, Mass. and it is significantly harder to find. What I can locate is usually Spanish style chorizo. That's not bad, of course, but much different from Mexican which I'd rather have.
On the other hand, now I can have clam chowder for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I really wanted...
Well, that settles it. If I can get chorizo in space, sign me up. It's hard enough to find here on Earth in most places.
Mmmmmmm...
It's unlikely that the RIAA would come into court with no evidence at all. Unfortunately, as we've seen from a few other stories on Slashdot, that evidence is often of poor quality. But, because the judge's are not technically inclined they fail to see how poor the evidence is.
That's why these extortion letters are so dangerous. Because this is a civil suit the amount which must be proven by the prosecution is substantially less than in a criminal case.
That's easy. In order not to give the RIAA any money whatsoever, you must prove that you have not done what they say you did.
Unless you then take it to the next level and sue the RIAA to recover legal expenses, you'll be out a whole lot of money. And even if you do counter sue, there's no guarantee that you'll get your legal expenses paid. As you can see from the above list, it sure looks a lot like a case of being guilty until you can prove yourself innocent.
Perhaps, but how do we know that Entropy didn't invent the thing?
To be honest, I see no problems with a system like that. I don't know how voting is seen in the Netherlands, but over here it is often a very politically and racially charged event. I'm not talking riots or violence, but after nearly every election there always seems to be cries of disenfranchisement, either overt or accidental. And there are other problems as well.
What this means is for voting reform is committee after committee. Industry groups and lobbying groups and voting rights groups... all of whom can't seem to agree on anything. I think these fancy systems they end up with are largely a result of trying to placate everyone. Some would probably argue that your system of multiple ballots and multiple envelopes is too confusing. I think it's trying to design for the lowest common denominator. Rather than assuming that random citizen X could handle four envelopes, they assume that said citizen couldn't.
All of my voting so far has occured in Arizona. Since the first time I could vote, in 1998, Arizona has used what are essentially fancy scantron sheets. The ballot is a long, fairly thick piece of paper and you mark your vote with a black marker by filling in large circles. It's old technology. It has a paper trail. The machines work very well. Everybody understands how to use it. And you get an instant vote count.
As far as I know, Arizona isn't planning on switching away from these machines any time soon. That's good because I abhor the thought of using anything where the voting booth is some sort of computer terminal (i.e. something from Diebold).
Concerning the disabled... I don't know, but I suspect it's a matter of it being a "secret ballot." The rules on what the polling station workers can and can't do is fairly strict. Of course, I imagine that if somebody asked for help they're unlikely to be turned down either.
Single party ballots won't work in the U.S., at least not for the general election in November. In the primaries which are occuring now, you can only vote for people in the party you are registered for. Laws differ by state, though, so in some states if you have no party affiliation or are registered as independent you can use whichever party's ballot you like.
In the general election, however, you can vote for whomever you feel like. I'll use myself as an example... I'm registered as a Democrat in Arizona and I do lean to the left on most issues. I intend to vote for the incumbent Democratic governor, Janet Napolitano. But that's not the only race. There are state and federal seats. I'll likely vote for most of the Democratic candidates, but on some races I'll probably vote for the Green party candidate.
And it's not always to the left. Depsite disagreeing with him on a number of issues, I happen to like Senator McCain. I voted for him last time rather than his Democratic opponent.
So, it's important to have all of the candidates listed on the ballot. Also, and this varies again from state to state, propositions and initiatives are not just one line on the sheet. There is usually a paragraph accompanying each. I try to do my homework before voting, but these paragraphs do come in very handy to remind me of which prop. is which.
Put all this together and you can get a fairly long ballot. In the past, I know some states have separated the two, with textual descriptions on one reusable sheet and marks put on another. Most people seem to dislike this arrangement though, and it certainly didn't work out well for Florida in 2000.
Electronic voting can make many of these issues easier to deal with. As long as it is done right. So far, though...
High speed rail? Hell, I'd be happy with any rail at this point.
Back in 1999, I returned home from a summer internship via rail. I took the train from Grand Central Station in Washington, D.C. all the way to Tucson, Arizona. It was a three day trip, but I did have a room on the train. It was small, but comfortable. I wasn't in a big hurry and the trip was quite enjoyable.
The only major annoyances were a power outage which knocked out the signal towers which brought all the trains to a standstill. Also, the tracks are almost all owned by the freight companies so their trains get right of way. In busy areas this can mean the passenger train is side lined frequently.
The problems with passenger rail in this country are not entirely Amtrak's fault. Certainly they've made their share of mistakes, though. The southern rail line (roughly following Interstate 10) from Florida to California is still out of service where it passes near New Orleans. And the prices are still sky high. I would gladly take the rail next time I go home (Amherst, Mass. to Tucson, Arizona) if I could afford it. As it stands now, though, taking the train, even with the smallest room, costs at least twice as much as a plane ticket.
But, most of the blame for Amtrak's current state rests with Congress. It is understandable to have a passenger rail monopoly. You really don't want a giant mesh of competing rails, most likely. But to have it be useful, it needs support from the government and that support has not been there for a long time.
And my favorite:
"I'm a fourteenth level vice president."
It's probably more accurate to say that the public's ignorance is bliss. Only the public has been, by and large, ignorant of these problems. The engineers knew about all of them right away and made sure to inform management who then did little.
I just finished reading Mike Mullane's book "Riding Rockets." I highly recommend it to anybody interested in NASA and the shuttle program. His account of his career as an astronaut paints NASA as a far more enjoyable and human organization while at the same time not avoiding the harder issues like the terrible management and disasters like Challanger.
On Mullane's first flight (something like the 15th shuttle flight, I think) mission control saw a large piece of the foam come off and strike the orbiter. That flight had the robot arm installed so they used it to inspect the damage. To the crew the damage looked very bad, but mission control said, repeatedly, not to worry about it. Upon landing they looked at the underside of the orbiter where the foam had hit. The damage was, in fact, very bad. It was the worst tile damage until that which did in Columbia. Mission control later said that the quality of the downlink video from the robot arm was not very good, so to them the damage did not seem as extensive.
None of the problems which led to the loss of either Challanger or Columbia were new or unknown. Engineers had seen them, had been worried about them, and attempted to make a case to management. But, as Mullane describes it, management took the view that if damage this bad had not caused a shuttle loss, then having it happen again was an acceptable risk. And we all know how the story turns out.
As an astronomy undergrad I don't claim to be an expert by any stretch, but I have read a number of papers from the Astrophysical Journal (and others) on GRBs. My understanding is that they do not beam to any large extent.
GRBs are exceptionally rare and exceptionally powerful. At present, they seem to be a special very large sort of supernova explosion (a hypernova). The gamma rays are sent out in all directions. The reason we detect so many is simply because the observable universe is so huge and a GRB can be detected from a great distance.
I do agree, though, that a nearby GRB isn't going to sterilize a galaxy. They're powerful, but not that powerful. Also, gamma rays, while deadly, are stopped easily by matter. In the worst case scenario, such as having a GRB go off only a few light years from the Earth, you have to remember that only half the Earth would be facing the GRB. That half would be in for a bad time, but the other half would be untouched by the deadly rays.
Of course, GRBs come from gigantic stars and there are none of those nearby, so...
I programmed the University of Arizona cubesats. We actually have two satellites launching from the Cosmodrome this summer. The first is, as the summary notes, called Rincon. It is named for Rincon Research which provided us much of the funding. Rincon Research is in turn named for the mountain range on the East side of Tucson. The other satellite is called SACRED, and, honestly, I can't actually remember what it stands for. I think it's something in French...
The summary is not entirely correct about the construction of the cubesats. Some are indeed made from the kit, but not all. Ours, for example, were completely designed and built at the UA with the exception of the radio transceivers. SACRED also includes an experiment board designed by the Univ. of Montpelier.
Here's a much better link to a page describing the cubesats:
UA Cubesats
Some of the other posts have been complaining about the purpose of these cubesats. It's true that they are all very simple. But you have to remember that they were designed and built by students (with faculty help, of course). The UA cubesats have PIC 16F877 microcontrollers on board with 64 KB of ferromagnetic storage memory. So, it's understandable that they will be limited.
The Rincon satellite has twelve sensors which monitor voltage, temperature, and current. These will let us know how well the cubesat is working and hopefully allow us to compute its spin rate. SACRED also has an experiment board which will perform some radiation tests on a few electronic components.
These cubesats (the UA's at least) are more than just beacons, as some posters have suggested. I programmed them, so I'm well aware of their capabilities. They have, for their size, a fairly decent command structure and allow for two-way communication. They take measurements on a schedule (which can be modified) and store the results for later transmission to the ground station in Tucson, Arizona. For the extra curious among you, you can read the cubesat manual I wrote for our project:
Cubesat II Operating System Owner's Manual