New York one blackout every 30 years. New Yorkers were without power for a low total of 18 hours, but for some reason you think the rest of the country intimately cares what your memories of this "horrible incident" are? NO ONE DIED, get a clue!
Quite frankly, the rest of America doesn't care. We have blackouts in California all the time. We have a powerful earthquake every 10 years or so. We yawn, rebuild, and move on. Quit shouting "Look at me!" East Coasters. We'll pay attention when it's important (like 9/11) but otherwise, quit acting like a precocious child.
That's what this case is actually all about. SCOX was practically a penny-stock when this started. Darl had no idea how to get them out of that hole by innovating, so litigation gave the stockholders the stock bounce they needed and demanded.
Now, the stock is dropping again. A buddy of mine (who is a broker) told me that the bubble will burst at about $4.50. At that poing, the drop to under a dollar will be very fast. Once that happens, these cases will go away because SCO will either have to hold it's remaining money to find another way out (wow! you mean innovate and try some R & D?!?) or follow this rabbit into insolvency very quickly.
Once the stocks hit >$4, Darl's "strategy" will be considered a failure, and SCO will fire him and seek another company to buy them (for virtually nothing) or stagger on as a dying company maintaining a shrinking customer base of legacy-UNIX systems.
The US bombed the Japanese, and then helped clean and study the sites afterward. The USSR evacuated the whole area and just left it. Granted, the pollution from Chernobyl is far larget than what is left over from a nuke airburst.
Yet another ignorant hippie
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 1
Is the author of this topic serious? Are the editors on vacation?
First of all, the heat and radiation coming off a system like the one that might be sent to Europa is infinitely smaller than the daily amount of radiation and heat Europa takes from Jupiter itself. Even if the ceramic containment structures cracked or somehow allowed these heat elements to drop, they would generate watts, yes only watts of energy. There is NO CHANCE and I repeat NO FRIGGIN CHANCE that even the worst possible destruction of a Europa probe would melt more than a 3-6 inch hole in the ice cap as it decended.
It just sickens me that we are producing so many of these all-heart, and no-brain idiots from our schools. I can't imagine any person who isn't copmpletely stupid making the assumptions the author of this thread made. How hard is it to first read a little bit to see if the question is valid! We are becoming a nation of morons. In 50 years, the Chinese and Russian economies will be kicking our arse because we chose to let our kids know more about hip hop and Brittney's navel than how to read a book without pictures or memorize the perodic table. We are teaching creationism-as-science (intelligent design) in our schools and wondering why the rest of the world has no respect for us?
Pretty simple really. Create a virus that creates a repetitive red strobe flash on the screen. The better the virus, the more people you reach. The more people you reach, the better chance you put some people into seizures, and kill a few in the process.
I know it's a horrible thing to say, but a good virus built like this could easily kill more people than Ted Bundy or the Green River Killer. All you need is a hacker without a conscience, or who want's to get in the history books.
Please remember that SCO has been battling the Linux community as well, not just IBM. Has it occured to anyone that SCO could have willfully released this fake through a proxy to get your panties in a wad?
What purpose would it serve? Well, for one thing, it might sidetrack IBM's lawyers a bit if they try to suponea it. It might give SCO some leverage in court. The corporate world might view it as a M$ endorsement of the suit, thus keeping SCO's stock afloat for just a few more weeks (remember they just announced a disasterous quarter). Finally, it gets the/. crowd spinning about something relatively benign and fuels their paranoia. They MIGHT get another DDOS attack out of it, which Darl will use as a mia culpa in his next speech about how evil the linux community is and how SCO needs to stop it.
Keep this in mind when reading this memo, and it starts to smell more like a fake sent out just to tweak us.
Original transcript of article before it was "prettied up" for public consumption.
Me and Bubba was hanging out in this truck stop. We had just escaped a pack of UFO's on highway 66 in our Kenworth while hauling grapes from Florida to Nevada! I saw em! They had lights on them and these strange whirling blade above them!
At this point we had been on crystal-meth for about 46 hours, so obviously our minds were a-clear. So there we were in the truck stop counting all the money we done made transporting meth across state lines for this "mex" called Jose. We had a huge wad of cash! As we left, this young pencil-neck (probably an alien in disguise) started hasseling us about how we hadn't paid for some chewing gum in out pockets or something. That's when I started a wondering how they KNEW?! Must be one of dem R.I.D.E. tags I hear the guberment is using to control our minds! They know our thoughts!
So, Bubba and I bought us some shiney tin foil and wrapped it on our heads. Thank the lord Jesus for the Crystal Meth! We couldn't have come up with this idear ta stop em without it! Well, we started to leave again, and the lil alien started bugging us again about the gum. THEY STILL KNEW! I figured right about then that it must be OUR MONEY! Sure, Bill Gates controls the money, and Jose must have put tracking devices in it fer him!
So we gots real smart and put our money in the microwave! Now it's OK to spend. Sure, it's brown and burnt, but we can still spend it at the titty bar! Thank god for Crystal Meth! Next time, Bubba and I will make sure we bring extra, just in case the guberment tries to bug our coffee.
I don't know why more coders haven't refused SCO use of their code. It is one very distinct power allowed by the GPL, and obviously SCO is violating it.
It's bad enough that every corporate conglomo is going to be allowed to invade your privacy for their own records, but now there is going to be a second conglomo who is going to SELL you products to protect you from the first! Jesus H. Christo! We need to elect another political party because both current groups somehow think this is a good idea. They have both been sucking on the corporate teat too long.
Or worse, some might develop mutant powers and demand the US standardize on Macs. They will even demand "MAC SERVERS!". Hey, I said they mutated, not get any smarter.
Wouldn't a G5 in a laptop generate enough heat and radiation to emit a gamma ray burst? Sure, it's portable, but the cooling system is a 3m ball that needs to be immersed in water.
Ogre, Space Rogue, Wing Commander, Ultima Online and so many others. Origin was one of the originals. I remember playing Ogre on my 386. Every few years these guys seemed to put out another good game. I remember playing Space Rogue, it was one of the first really good 3d space simulations. The storyline sucked, but you could fly your ship by inertia or on a "fighter tracking' style. Mastering inertia thrusters was awesome, and something I will never forget.
Killing Origin is just another sad episode in the tale of "EA Lames". We'll see more game console stupidity with John Madden screaming about football, but truly original game concepts are dying, as are the companies who made them.
I will lift a Guiness to my youth, and the hours of fun I had with Origin tonight.
I am a pilot. In a plane with a cockpit, it is important to have a known senter of balance. The plane performs quite differently with the COB rearward. A pilot for this device would be vulnerable to increaded stall and a number of other issues if they are only using their body weight to control the craft. Yes, a hang glider uses weight to move, but it has the advantage of moving at a slow speed. This craft, with a jet, will probably move in the 100mph range. A slight shift will create large changes in attitude that could be lethal. Another issue is the flying wing itself. There is a reason Northrop abandoned flying wings till they had the computer controls to compensate for human flying inadequacies. That's why it took so long to build the B-2. I believe this will be a very unstable craft, and I certainly wouldn't want to be the first to fly it. I also have a nagging feeling that the artists building it will likely look for a woman who has the "look" of their heroine more than the most qualified woman. Add to that the fact that there will be few safety devices or protection for a pilot in the open airstream, and I would say the chance of crashing this on it's maiden flight is about 50/50.
This is really pretty simple. Put a launcher on the moon. Launch big rocks. If you aren't carrying a human, you can get a projectile out of the moon's gravity well at great speeds and G-force. It would be impossible for all but a few nations to stop you, and you would have plenty of warning to stop them. They have to pull their weapon out of Earth's gravity well.
Basically, a rail or tube, a lump of iron rock, and a computer to compute the trajectory and you have an unlimited supply of kinetic weapons. It makes any general salivate. If you can protect your own homeland on the planet, you could conceiveably leave the rest of the planet a cratered wasteland within a week.
I doubt that's the plan, but if you think the Chinese aren't thinking the same thing with their "moonbase" you're insane. A permanent human presence, and a few "spare parts" kept around the base for times of war could make any base on the moon THE premiere weapons system.
The Russians do not have the money to pay for this. They barely have the money to pay the heating bills at Star City. They lost one whole mothballed Buran (their last)a few years back because they couldn't pay for the maintenance to replace bolts keeping it suspended in a hanger.
What the Russians are doing is letting NASA know that they want to be included in the OSP competition. They will undoubtably be able to build a cheaper and probably more reliable craft than the US contractors, and they also are looking at a big brick wall ahead if they don't get this project.
Remember, the Russians deorbited Mir and put all their resources into the ISS at NASA's insistance. If the US abandons the ISS project in 2010, or cuts all external funding because they have their own safe 6 man OSP, Russia has no Soyuze launches, no Progress launches, and few satellite launches. NASA and the US are basically propping up the Russian space program right now. The Russians need to find a way to finance their once proud space industry, and they see the current funding dissappearing in 6 years.
"We have a design ahead of the Americans design"
"We will make it reusable"
"We can do all the LEO launches"
Sounds like they are trying to do all the LEO launches, funded by NASA, so the US can develop a trans-lunar vehicle. If someone at NASA sees it the same, it allows cheaper access to orbit, while enabling NASA to build a real trans-Lunar/trans-Mars type vehicle and a human-rated lander of some type. I am willing to bet a paycheck this is how it turns out:
Russia will own LEO, and be contracted by NASA to handle ISS personnel and resupply. NASA will build a bigger system that is more capable, but too expensive to be wasted on ferrying assignments to the ISS. They get the interplanetary craft.
I have had Direct TV for 4 years now. I have NEVER had a problem with reception, whether it's in high winds or in torrential rains. Sounds like your cable company is selling FUD.
The next reason is simple, you get more options. If you like the NFL, you can only get NFL SUnday TIcket through Direct TV. It's really nice being able to bring up any game I want on Sunday. Further, with TIVO, I can record my favorite teams games for the entire season! They also do March Madness, Basebal, and Hockey int he same manner. The Sports pay program is awesome.
Finally, Direct TV will be bringing you more HDTV stations faster. They are committed to HDTV, and although the programming is now pretty slim, they are digital ready to broadcast all HDTV stations when the time comes.
My recommendation, get Direct TV with the Tivo box and buy an inexpensive HDTV. That package will set you up for the next decade. It's that good. Enjoy!
Roy keeps the Disney flame alive once again. He quit over the liquidation of feature animation in Florida. He told it like it is. Disney has fallen so far away from it's core values (making excellent animated features, and then marketing them in it's parks) that he felt Eisner should leave.
Eisner and the other souless robots on the board countered by justifying Pixar and digital animation shopped out to other studios as the future.
Guess what? Pixar is gone, at best, Disney can only do cheesy straight-to-video sequels from now on. They have no decent feature animation left to speak of. It's all regurtitation of old ideas from here on out.
Roy will be back in about a year, when Disney's stock drops by $5. That should be enough to bring Roy back just like last time he did this. Eisner is a dead man walking. Perhaps Disney will be able to right the ship after he's gone. No more Mighty Ducks, Haunted Mansion, or Miracle movies unless they actually release actual animated flicks.
Was watching the NASA TV coverage, and they got imaging at 1:24 AM PST. WOW! There is a rock outcrop about 30 meters away that had the geologist say he "Was speechless". The outcrop looks like an actual hematite outcrop! If this is true, this lander is in the perfect place even though it landed a little long in it's ellipse. Every image they got looked completely strange. It didn't look anything like the Gusev images (which look a lot like Viking and Sojoner's). I think this will be the most interesting landing site from the look of it. The images will probably be available at the JPL site within an hour. Go check them out.
He was free to use my writing, but he could have at least included me in the footnotes.:)
Where are the conspiracy articles?
on
Spirit Rolls on Mars
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Since/. has seemed to adopt allowing crackpots to post their conspiracy theories as articles about NASA lately, I was shocked to actually see a NASA post that wasn't full of wishful hyperbole. Where are the idiots? Cmon guys, lets see some more articles about how the rover is actually sitting in a hanger in New Mexico in a simulated Mars setting. Let's hear about how the Columbia astronauts were actually executed with a handgun and the accident was just staged to keep us all thinking we are reaching space. Jackasses, jackasses all.
The judge was very specific in December. She demanded forthright and overwhelming examples of the offending code. She said she would not allow the case to move forward unless it was submitted. She further stated she would not compel IBM the task of providing all development and and beta data unless it was required to answer SCO's disclosure. 60 pages is not a sufficient brief to even outline the supposed infractions SCO is throwing about, let alone actual instances of IP theft! A divorce case can easily have a 200 page evidentiary outline! Unless there is more we aren't hearing about, there is a good chance this will not meet the court's demands and the case will be dismissed.
While I don't disagree that the public has been exposed to radiation in the past, Gulf War Syndrome is/was caused by nerve agents, not DU.
As to taking a cavalier attitude towards radiation, I think the opposite is now true. If you look at all the protocols and testing that went into Cassini, it was probably the safest nuclear probe ever launched. It still BARELY got past the courts because of irrational fears. The anti-nuke pundits were screaming about how plutonium would rain down on all of central Florida if there was a malfunction. This was simply impossible.
Cassini's TN cores were encased in a solid substance that could not melt and could take an explosive impact 5 times greater than if the booster was blown up, full of fuel, with 5 pounds of C4 strapped to the side. There was no risk, but the absolutists and fear mongers held an equally indefensible anti-nuke line. The problem is that it should be a pragmatic world, not an anti or pro world. Look at the inherit risks LOGICALLY and see if they outweigh the benefits. The end result should always be the greatest benefit via compromise. The pros and antis on this topic are a bunch of blithering idiots. Neither side can really back up what they say. Don't be taken in by either.
Slashdot Mirror
New York one blackout every 30 years. New Yorkers were without power for a low total of 18 hours, but for some reason you think the rest of the country intimately cares what your memories of this "horrible incident" are? NO ONE DIED, get a clue!
Quite frankly, the rest of America doesn't care. We have blackouts in California all the time. We have a powerful earthquake every 10 years or so. We yawn, rebuild, and move on. Quit shouting "Look at me!" East Coasters. We'll pay attention when it's important (like 9/11) but otherwise, quit acting like a precocious child.
That's what this case is actually all about. SCOX was practically a penny-stock when this started. Darl had no idea how to get them out of that hole by innovating, so litigation gave the stockholders the stock bounce they needed and demanded.
Now, the stock is dropping again. A buddy of mine (who is a broker) told me that the bubble will burst at about $4.50. At that poing, the drop to under a dollar will be very fast. Once that happens, these cases will go away because SCO will either have to hold it's remaining money to find another way out (wow! you mean innovate and try some R & D?!?) or follow this rabbit into insolvency very quickly.
Once the stocks hit >$4, Darl's "strategy" will be considered a failure, and SCO will fire him and seek another company to buy them (for virtually nothing) or stagger on as a dying company maintaining a shrinking customer base of legacy-UNIX systems.
http://quote.money.cnn.com/quote/quote?symbols=S COX>=1dy
Today is the first blow of many that will take SCO's stock back to the penny-stock pink sheet.
Uh, the USSR idiot
The US bombed the Japanese, and then helped clean and study the sites afterward. The USSR evacuated the whole area and just left it. Granted, the pollution from Chernobyl is far larget than what is left over from a nuke airburst.
Is the author of this topic serious? Are the editors on vacation?
First of all, the heat and radiation coming off a system like the one that might be sent to Europa is infinitely smaller than the daily amount of radiation and heat Europa takes from Jupiter itself. Even if the ceramic containment structures cracked or somehow allowed these heat elements to drop, they would generate watts, yes only watts of energy. There is NO CHANCE and I repeat NO FRIGGIN CHANCE that even the worst possible destruction of a Europa probe would melt more than a 3-6 inch hole in the ice cap as it decended.
It just sickens me that we are producing so many of these all-heart, and no-brain idiots from our schools. I can't imagine any person who isn't copmpletely stupid making the assumptions the author of this thread made. How hard is it to first read a little bit to see if the question is valid! We are becoming a nation of morons. In 50 years, the Chinese and Russian economies will be kicking our arse because we chose to let our kids know more about hip hop and Brittney's navel than how to read a book without pictures or memorize the perodic table. We are teaching creationism-as-science (intelligent design) in our schools and wondering why the rest of the world has no respect for us?
Pretty simple really. Create a virus that creates a repetitive red strobe flash on the screen. The better the virus, the more people you reach. The more people you reach, the better chance you put some people into seizures, and kill a few in the process.
I know it's a horrible thing to say, but a good virus built like this could easily kill more people than Ted Bundy or the Green River Killer. All you need is a hacker without a conscience, or who want's to get in the history books.
Please remember that SCO has been battling the Linux community as well, not just IBM. Has it occured to anyone that SCO could have willfully released this fake through a proxy to get your panties in a wad?
/. crowd spinning about something relatively benign and fuels their paranoia. They MIGHT get another DDOS attack out of it, which Darl will use as a mia culpa in his next speech about how evil the linux community is and how SCO needs to stop it.
What purpose would it serve? Well, for one thing, it might sidetrack IBM's lawyers a bit if they try to suponea it. It might give SCO some leverage in court. The corporate world might view it as a M$ endorsement of the suit, thus keeping SCO's stock afloat for just a few more weeks (remember they just announced a disasterous quarter). Finally, it gets the
Keep this in mind when reading this memo, and it starts to smell more like a fake sent out just to tweak us.
Original transcript of article before it was "prettied up" for public consumption.
Me and Bubba was hanging out in this truck stop. We had just escaped a pack of UFO's on highway 66 in our Kenworth while hauling grapes from Florida to Nevada! I saw em! They had lights on them and these strange whirling blade above them!
At this point we had been on crystal-meth for about 46 hours, so obviously our minds were a-clear. So there we were in the truck stop counting all the money we done made transporting meth across state lines for this "mex" called Jose. We had a huge wad of cash! As we left, this young pencil-neck (probably an alien in disguise) started hasseling us about how we hadn't paid for some chewing gum in out pockets or something. That's when I started a wondering how they KNEW?! Must be one of dem R.I.D.E. tags I hear the guberment is using to control our minds! They know our thoughts!
So, Bubba and I bought us some shiney tin foil and wrapped it on our heads. Thank the lord Jesus for the Crystal Meth! We couldn't have come up with this idear ta stop em without it! Well, we started to leave again, and the lil alien started bugging us again about the gum. THEY STILL KNEW! I figured right about then that it must be OUR MONEY! Sure, Bill Gates controls the money, and Jose must have put tracking devices in it fer him!
So we gots real smart and put our money in the microwave! Now it's OK to spend. Sure, it's brown and burnt, but we can still spend it at the titty bar! Thank god for Crystal Meth! Next time, Bubba and I will make sure we bring extra, just in case the guberment tries to bug our coffee.
I don't know why more coders haven't refused SCO use of their code. It is one very distinct power allowed by the GPL, and obviously SCO is violating it.
It's bad enough that every corporate conglomo is going to be allowed to invade your privacy for their own records, but now there is going to be a second conglomo who is going to SELL you products to protect you from the first! Jesus H. Christo! We need to elect another political party because both current groups somehow think this is a good idea. They have both been sucking on the corporate teat too long.
Or worse, some might develop mutant powers and demand the US standardize on Macs. They will even demand "MAC SERVERS!". Hey, I said they mutated, not get any smarter.
:)
Troll away Mac Facists!
Wouldn't a G5 in a laptop generate enough heat and radiation to emit a gamma ray burst? Sure, it's portable, but the cooling system is a 3m ball that needs to be immersed in water.
I know, I know, I'm just a feckless troll.
Ogre, Space Rogue, Wing Commander, Ultima Online and so many others. Origin was one of the originals. I remember playing Ogre on my 386. Every few years these guys seemed to put out another good game. I remember playing Space Rogue, it was one of the first really good 3d space simulations. The storyline sucked, but you could fly your ship by inertia or on a "fighter tracking' style. Mastering inertia thrusters was awesome, and something I will never forget.
Killing Origin is just another sad episode in the tale of "EA Lames". We'll see more game console stupidity with John Madden screaming about football, but truly original game concepts are dying, as are the companies who made them.
I will lift a Guiness to my youth, and the hours of fun I had with Origin tonight.
I am a pilot. In a plane with a cockpit, it is important to have a known senter of balance. The plane performs quite differently with the COB rearward. A pilot for this device would be vulnerable to increaded stall and a number of other issues if they are only using their body weight to control the craft. Yes, a hang glider uses weight to move, but it has the advantage of moving at a slow speed. This craft, with a jet, will probably move in the 100mph range. A slight shift will create large changes in attitude that could be lethal. Another issue is the flying wing itself. There is a reason Northrop abandoned flying wings till they had the computer controls to compensate for human flying inadequacies. That's why it took so long to build the B-2. I believe this will be a very unstable craft, and I certainly wouldn't want to be the first to fly it. I also have a nagging feeling that the artists building it will likely look for a woman who has the "look" of their heroine more than the most qualified woman.
Add to that the fact that there will be few safety devices or protection for a pilot in the open airstream, and I would say the chance of crashing this on it's maiden flight is about 50/50.
This is really pretty simple. Put a launcher on the moon. Launch big rocks. If you aren't carrying a human, you can get a projectile out of the moon's gravity well at great speeds and G-force. It would be impossible for all but a few nations to stop you, and you would have plenty of warning to stop them. They have to pull their weapon out of Earth's gravity well.
Basically, a rail or tube, a lump of iron rock, and a computer to compute the trajectory and you have an unlimited supply of kinetic weapons. It makes any general salivate. If you can protect your own homeland on the planet, you could conceiveably leave the rest of the planet a cratered wasteland within a week.
I doubt that's the plan, but if you think the Chinese aren't thinking the same thing with their "moonbase" you're insane. A permanent human presence, and a few "spare parts" kept around the base for times of war could make any base on the moon THE premiere weapons system.
We are going to make sure we take you with us.
:)*
Have a nice day! *insert smiley face here
The Russians do not have the money to pay for this. They barely have the money to pay the heating bills at Star City. They lost one whole mothballed Buran (their last)a few years back because they couldn't pay for the maintenance to replace bolts keeping it suspended in a hanger.
What the Russians are doing is letting NASA know that they want to be included in the OSP competition. They will undoubtably be able to build a cheaper and probably more reliable craft than the US contractors, and they also are looking at a big brick wall ahead if they don't get this project.
Remember, the Russians deorbited Mir and put all their resources into the ISS at NASA's insistance. If the US abandons the ISS project in 2010, or cuts all external funding because they have their own safe 6 man OSP, Russia has no Soyuze launches, no Progress launches, and few satellite launches. NASA and the US are basically propping up the Russian space program right now. The Russians need to find a way to finance their once proud space industry, and they see the current funding dissappearing in 6 years.
"We have a design ahead of the Americans design"
"We will make it reusable"
"We can do all the LEO launches"
Sounds like they are trying to do all the LEO launches, funded by NASA, so the US can develop a trans-lunar vehicle. If someone at NASA sees it the same, it allows cheaper access to orbit, while enabling NASA to build a real trans-Lunar/trans-Mars type vehicle and a human-rated lander of some type. I am willing to bet a paycheck this is how it turns out:
Russia will own LEO, and be contracted by NASA to handle ISS personnel and resupply. NASA will build a bigger system that is more capable, but too expensive to be wasted on ferrying assignments to the ISS. They get the interplanetary craft.
Where else can you download and play a $50 game a company abandoned?
I have had Direct TV for 4 years now. I have NEVER had a problem with reception, whether it's in high winds or in torrential rains. Sounds like your cable company is selling FUD.
The next reason is simple, you get more options. If you like the NFL, you can only get NFL SUnday TIcket through Direct TV. It's really nice being able to bring up any game I want on Sunday. Further, with TIVO, I can record my favorite teams games for the entire season! They also do March Madness, Basebal, and Hockey int he same manner. The Sports pay program is awesome.
Finally, Direct TV will be bringing you more HDTV stations faster. They are committed to HDTV, and although the programming is now pretty slim, they are digital ready to broadcast all HDTV stations when the time comes.
My recommendation, get Direct TV with the Tivo box and buy an inexpensive HDTV. That package will set you up for the next decade. It's that good. Enjoy!
Roy keeps the Disney flame alive once again. He quit over the liquidation of feature animation in Florida. He told it like it is. Disney has fallen so far away from it's core values (making excellent animated features, and then marketing them in it's parks) that he felt Eisner should leave.
Eisner and the other souless robots on the board countered by justifying Pixar and digital animation shopped out to other studios as the future.
Guess what? Pixar is gone, at best, Disney can only do cheesy straight-to-video sequels from now on. They have no decent feature animation left to speak of. It's all regurtitation of old ideas from here on out.
Roy will be back in about a year, when Disney's stock drops by $5. That should be enough to bring Roy back just like last time he did this. Eisner is a dead man walking. Perhaps Disney will be able to right the ship after he's gone. No more Mighty Ducks, Haunted Mansion, or Miracle movies unless they actually release actual animated flicks.
Was watching the NASA TV coverage, and they got imaging at 1:24 AM PST. WOW! There is a rock outcrop about 30 meters away that had the geologist say he "Was speechless". The outcrop looks like an actual hematite outcrop! If this is true, this lander is in the perfect place even though it landed a little long in it's ellipse. Every image they got looked completely strange. It didn't look anything like the Gusev images (which look a lot like Viking and Sojoner's). I think this will be the most interesting landing site from the look of it. The images will probably be available at the JPL site within an hour. Go check them out.
I was hoping someone would do this. I recommended someone call their bluff weeks ago:
i d= 7893291
:)
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=91696&c
He was free to use my writing, but he could have at least included me in the footnotes.
Since /. has seemed to adopt allowing crackpots to post their conspiracy theories as articles about NASA lately, I was shocked to actually see a NASA post that wasn't full of wishful hyperbole. Where are the idiots? Cmon guys, lets see some more articles about how the rover is actually sitting in a hanger in New Mexico in a simulated Mars setting. Let's hear about how the Columbia astronauts were actually executed with a handgun and the accident was just staged to keep us all thinking we are reaching space. Jackasses, jackasses all.
The judge was very specific in December. She demanded forthright and overwhelming examples of the offending code. She said she would not allow the case to move forward unless it was submitted. She further stated she would not compel IBM the task of providing all development and and beta data unless it was required to answer SCO's disclosure. 60 pages is not a sufficient brief to even outline the supposed infractions SCO is throwing about, let alone actual instances of IP theft! A divorce case can easily have a 200 page evidentiary outline! Unless there is more we aren't hearing about, there is a good chance this will not meet the court's demands and the case will be dismissed.
While I don't disagree that the public has been exposed to radiation in the past, Gulf War Syndrome is/was caused by nerve agents, not DU.
As to taking a cavalier attitude towards radiation, I think the opposite is now true. If you look at all the protocols and testing that went into Cassini, it was probably the safest nuclear probe ever launched. It still BARELY got past the courts because of irrational fears. The anti-nuke pundits were screaming about how plutonium would rain down on all of central Florida if there was a malfunction. This was simply impossible.
Cassini's TN cores were encased in a solid substance that could not melt and could take an explosive impact 5 times greater than if the booster was blown up, full of fuel, with 5 pounds of C4 strapped to the side. There was no risk, but the absolutists and fear mongers held an equally indefensible anti-nuke line. The problem is that it should be a pragmatic world, not an anti or pro world. Look at the inherit risks LOGICALLY and see if they outweigh the benefits. The end result should always be the greatest benefit via compromise. The pros and antis on this topic are a bunch of blithering idiots. Neither side can really back up what they say. Don't be taken in by either.