Why do musicians think the last 80 years is the norm? The world is returning to the norm. They will get paid by audiences for live performances. Instead of a very few getting paid mega bucks, many will make a living.
And where will they be making a living? (Not that very many outside of the top performers made a decent living before the last eighty years.) The concert halls, musical theatres, etc... etc... that provided a bare living a century ago are all but gone - not only physically, but from our culture as well. (They've been replaced by movies, TV, and the internet.) Dance halls, which used to be fairly common, are also all but gone. (Nightclubs aren't dance halls, and you can't make much of a living playing either anyhow.) Making the situation even worse is the fragmentation of musical culture over the last few decades...
As is so often the case, the "golden age" of your imagination never existed in reality.
Google may CHOOSE to comply with a request because there is nothing inappropriate about a business deciding to comply with a lawful request from a government agency.
And how does Google determine if the request is lawful or not? "I'm from the government, I need that data because it's related to a criminal case" isn't enough. Just because it's related to a criminal case doesn't mean the government has the authority or abillity to make the request.- there's a whole shedload of case and black letter law regarding what is and is not legal with regards to search warrants.
In other words, if you have an issue with Google complying with a US government request, your problem isn't with the US government -- it's with Google.
So if Google illegally gives up my information because it cooperates in an illegal act... Google is not accountable? That runs contrary to US law, where one may be held responsible even if one did not know they were enabling, participating in, or profiting from a criminal act.
That's why it's called a "request". Words mean things.
Yes, they do. But the English language is not a programming language and those meanings are not black-and-white, nor are they all found in the dictionary. Tone and context matter, they matter a great deal. Sitting at my elbow, fixing to be walked out to my mailbox, is a reply to a letter from the IRS "requesting" (in very polite phraseology) certain data with regards to my return from 2009... and there's not a doubt in my mind what will happen if I fail to reply to that polite "request". When I was in the Navy, my CO would frequently "request" that I do this or that thing... and there was no doubt in my mind of his authority to compel me to do so, even though he phrased it in a friendly and polite manner.
(And parenthetically speaking - your post is one of the most amazing pieces of Google fanboy/apologist writing I've ever seen on Slashdot. Not a small achievement.)
My largest complaint about the Chinese space program is the lack of operational tempo. Simply put, they aren't really in the habit of sending stuff into space and they are waiting too long between flights if they want to gain institutional knowledge about how to perform tasks in space.
And what''s your standing to complain? Unless you're up there in their political elite, they aren't beholden to you in any way.
Still, all China has done so far is more or less replicate Gemini 8, avoiding the problems that nearly killed Neil Armstrong and David Scott. They have a long way to go if they want to turn this into any sort of useful experience to get them anywhere else, but they can start to have their astronauts do stuff more elaborate than simply being potty-trained monkeys who know how to wave flags.
That's the thing - they don't appear they're interested in gaining institutional knowledge about how to perform tasks in space. They appear to want to have just enough of a space program to certify that they're a Real Country and to provide propaganda victories and not a yuan's worth more. (And they don't have the political pressure that the Soviet Union was under in the 60's and 70's.) They certainly aren't in the game to live up to a space cadet's notion of what they should and shouldn't be doing.
The expensive part of space travel is the traveling to space part.
That depends on what you're doing and where you're going. Yeah, for a cheap-ass LEO 'probe' getting there is the expensive part. For a Mars lander or a Jovian orbiter, R&D/engineering dominates the costs, with operations coming in a close second. (If the mission goes long enough, these swap positions.) For any decently sized LEO operation, this is going to be true as well - even at current launch costs.
Why go cheap on the components?
Because it's cool. And that's the core of this whole proposal - coolness over functionality. Edutainment at it's very best.
This costs $500 more than an entry-level Mac Pro, which have much the same cost categories, and I'm sure hearing aids sell in much greater numbers for better economies of scale.
Quality hearing aids are custom built (to fit the user's ear), custom fit (for comfort and safety), and custom adjusted (to the nature of the user's hearing loss). There is precisely no economy of scale.
The one cost category they obviously missed was "insurance markup" (not to be confused with licenses/insurance).
it's a very rare insurance plan indeed that covers hearing aids.
I still haven't seen a good solution to the catch 22 that a journal cannot gain a reputation without first being reputable. No one with any concern about their academic career will publish in a no-name, no-eyes journal.
Indeed. A couple of years back, I got the chance to have dinner with my brother-in-law (an economics professor) and some of his grad students... I took the opportunity to ask them about publishing in an non standard journal (PLoS was just getting started then), and the response was a universal "no way" for pretty the reasons you give.
A "just works" version of Windows, that MS sold support for, marketed toward businesses, that just stayed the same forever.
In the real world, that doesn't work so well as the underlying hardware changes regularly - as do the expectations of the users. Nor are many people are going to be interested in paying for "upgrades" that don't actually upgrade.
Where I work at, we installed new systems in police stations in the last two years that were brand new and had Windows XP on them, because the software at the time didn't have Windows 7 drivers.
Well, in the first place - it's not Microsoft's fault that the software provider's didn't upgrade their drivers. Even in your fanciful universe, you'll still face the same problem when providers don't rewrite their drivers for v89.93.47 of StaticWindowsAncient (which was released to allow StaticWindowsAncient to run properly on multi threaded multi core CPU's that didn't even exist when v01.00.00 came out for x86 chips).
The only reason it won was because of better reaction time in pushing the button. If the questions were asked in a fair round-robin to all contestants, Watson would not have won.
In other words, if they weren't playing Jeopardy then Watson wouldn't have won at Jeopardy. Which is something of a logical non sequitur because they *were* playing Jeopardy, and winning the game absolutely relies on finding the correct answer and pressing the button faster than one's opponents.
One can take the strategy of hoping your opponent gets it wrong and provides you sufficient clues to answer correctly I suppose - but that's extraordinarily risky against players of any talent.
There are people who don't understand that with GNU/Linux you can make good money.
That's like saying "there are people who don't understand that with little rubber feet for appliances you can make good money". It's rubbish. The expertise here lies in the specialized domain of providing complex control and management systems - the OS is almost irrelevant, as it's something small shops and startups don't have.
SpaceX has a much different mindset than Lockheed Martin or McDonnell Douglas. They plan on making money selling launches to private and government clients. They have a strong incentive to make their boosters as reliable as possible, and from everything I've heard, that's exactly what they're doing.
LockMart and Boeing and the ULA make their money selling launches to private and government clients too. (McDonnell Douglas was bought out by Boeing nearly fifteen years ago.) So they also have every incentive to make their boosters as reliable as possible. SpaceX is no different than those companies.
Unlike Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas, et al who only need to design and build their boosters "good enough" to meet their contract requirements. Elon Musk's reputation is on the line with every launch. Who's personal reputation is on the line if an Atlas booster fails?
Again, SpaceX is no different from the others - their boosters don't need to be any more reliable than their contract requirements require either. (I.E. you can damn well bet their launch contracts do not accept full responsibility for anything but "attempting" a launch. They'd be fools otherwise.) 'Personal reputation' is irrelevant. (Other than to fanboys.)
I don't see any reason why, with proper design, boosters shouldn't be as reliable, or almost as reliable, as airliners.
Many people claim that. They're all pretty much ignorant of how little experience we actually have designing boosters and how much it costs to add each decimal place of reliability.
I'm guessing that the biggest difference is that the actuary statistics are well established for the airline industry, while they're limited for the commercial space industry.
That, and failure rate for civil aviation is several orders of magnitude lower. If civil aviation failed at the average rate that boosters do - there would be over 50 crashes on take off per day at Sea-Tac alone instead of only two in nearly seventy years of operation. (And Sea-Tac is far from the busiest airport in the US, let alone the world.)
The Dyna-Soar does not "boost into a new orbit" as you specified. It's a Saenger type vehicle that will barely complete one orbit once it starts to skip.
"No such panel of sufficient size has been noted by amateur observers - not to mention that the space a solar panel would take up is required for radiators since the skin of the drone is unsuitable." Ahh no you are wrong. http://www.af.mil/information/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=16639 Power: Gallium Arsenide Solar Cells with lithium-Ion batteries
No solar cell of significant size has been seen by observers, therefore there is no retractable panel of any size. Given that the bay door will be covered at least partially by radiators, that sharply limits the size of the available panel and thus the amount of power generated.
What else would should I expect from a six digit user.
That's the best you have? Cut and pasted crap you failed to comprehend and then a slam because of my user number? You really are a sad little man. (Or woman, or earthworm or whatever.)
Easy, cheap and convenient is something that is desirable, but it doesn't have to come with a concurrent lack of quality.
Yeah, pretty much it does. Once you start paying professors and having to schedule classes so they and/or other students are available for discussion and interaction... It's no longer cheap, easy. or convenient.
I toured through Washington State in December/January (after battling through US border security...don't get me started) and I swear there's a whole Austrian township in there.
You're probably thinking of Leavenworth, which has a town square [tourist trap] modeled after a Bavarian village. Not Austrian and not a whole township.
NASA already is almost pathologically paranoid about what gets near the ISS.
If you 'owned' an irreplaceable multi billion dollar asset - and would get scorched by your bosses and atomized by the public if it got so much as scratched... you'd be pathologically paranoid too. And that's on top of the issue of astronaut safety.
retractable solar panel. Would would expect some kind of payload bay doors which would house the sensors and a retractable solar panel.
No such panel of sufficient size has been noted by amateur observers - not to mention that the space a solar panel would take up is required for radiators since the skin of the drone is unsuitable.
What I wonder is if the X37 has enough delta v available to dip into the atmosphere, make a high speed pass over a target, gather data and then boost back to a new orbit.
Only if the USAF has perfected some kind of unobtanium fueled drive system. Otherwise, no.
I see, you fail to comprehend the difference between somebody forced to move and somebody forced to move... oh, wait. There is no difference. You, just like the OP are a clueless moron.
Wayne Cooksey joined the flight of African-Americans from this city last year to escape soaring rents and buy a home. Michael Higgenbotham left six years ago for a safer neighborhood and better schools for his three children.
One guy bought a home, and the other guy found a better school? Sounds to me like people are moving up in the world! These are two success stories.
By that logic, the Indians who were forced onto reservations and now have a steady income from casino gambling are screaming successes.
No, I'm not ignoring those things. You're not considering that even with the savings from being unmanned, it still takes a considerable amount of power to support a payload of any notable size or capacity. Even if it's just passively drifting, there will be considerable power consumption over the course of a year just maintaining thermal control - and that's not something that can be done in bursts.
Slashdot Mirror
And where will they be making a living? (Not that very many outside of the top performers made a decent living before the last eighty years.) The concert halls, musical theatres, etc... etc... that provided a bare living a century ago are all but gone - not only physically, but from our culture as well. (They've been replaced by movies, TV, and the internet.) Dance halls, which used to be fairly common, are also all but gone. (Nightclubs aren't dance halls, and you can't make much of a living playing either anyhow.) Making the situation even worse is the fragmentation of musical culture over the last few decades...
As is so often the case, the "golden age" of your imagination never existed in reality.
And how does Google determine if the request is lawful or not? "I'm from the government, I need that data because it's related to a criminal case" isn't enough. Just because it's related to a criminal case doesn't mean the government has the authority or abillity to make the request.- there's a whole shedload of case and black letter law regarding what is and is not legal with regards to search warrants.
So if Google illegally gives up my information because it cooperates in an illegal act... Google is not accountable? That runs contrary to US law, where one may be held responsible even if one did not know they were enabling, participating in, or profiting from a criminal act.
Yes, they do. But the English language is not a programming language and those meanings are not black-and-white, nor are they all found in the dictionary. Tone and context matter, they matter a great deal. Sitting at my elbow, fixing to be walked out to my mailbox, is a reply to a letter from the IRS "requesting" (in very polite phraseology) certain data with regards to my return from 2009... and there's not a doubt in my mind what will happen if I fail to reply to that polite "request". When I was in the Navy, my CO would frequently "request" that I do this or that thing... and there was no doubt in my mind of his authority to compel me to do so, even though he phrased it in a friendly and polite manner.
(And parenthetically speaking - your post is one of the most amazing pieces of Google fanboy/apologist writing I've ever seen on Slashdot. Not a small achievement.)
I've been pointing this out for years - Schneier has pretty much no experience or knowledge in 90% of what he pontificates about.
And what''s your standing to complain? Unless you're up there in their political elite, they aren't beholden to you in any way.
That's the thing - they don't appear they're interested in gaining institutional knowledge about how to perform tasks in space. They appear to want to have just enough of a space program to certify that they're a Real Country and to provide propaganda victories and not a yuan's worth more. (And they don't have the political pressure that the Soviet Union was under in the 60's and 70's.) They certainly aren't in the game to live up to a space cadet's notion of what they should and shouldn't be doing.
That depends on what you're doing and where you're going. Yeah, for a cheap-ass LEO 'probe' getting there is the expensive part. For a Mars lander or a Jovian orbiter, R&D/engineering dominates the costs, with operations coming in a close second. (If the mission goes long enough, these swap positions.) For any decently sized LEO operation, this is going to be true as well - even at current launch costs.
Because it's cool. And that's the core of this whole proposal - coolness over functionality. Edutainment at it's very best.
No, they don't really. But one can't start their political education too early.
Quality hearing aids are custom built (to fit the user's ear), custom fit (for comfort and safety), and custom adjusted (to the nature of the user's hearing loss). There is precisely no economy of scale.
it's a very rare insurance plan indeed that covers hearing aids.
Yeah, it's reasonable. Life isn't fair.
Indeed. A couple of years back, I got the chance to have dinner with my brother-in-law (an economics professor) and some of his grad students... I took the opportunity to ask them about publishing in an non standard journal (PLoS was just getting started then), and the response was a universal "no way" for pretty the reasons you give.
We tried that. And the results to date has been four long decades of bitching and whining about the workaday non heroic stuff that has to be done too.
In the real world, that doesn't work so well as the underlying hardware changes regularly - as do the expectations of the users. Nor are many people are going to be interested in paying for "upgrades" that don't actually upgrade.
Well, in the first place - it's not Microsoft's fault that the software provider's didn't upgrade their drivers. Even in your fanciful universe, you'll still face the same problem when providers don't rewrite their drivers for v89.93.47 of StaticWindowsAncient (which was released to allow StaticWindowsAncient to run properly on multi threaded multi core CPU's that didn't even exist when v01.00.00 came out for x86 chips).
In other words, if they weren't playing Jeopardy then Watson wouldn't have won at Jeopardy. Which is something of a logical non sequitur because they *were* playing Jeopardy, and winning the game absolutely relies on finding the correct answer and pressing the button faster than one's opponents.
One can take the strategy of hoping your opponent gets it wrong and provides you sufficient clues to answer correctly I suppose - but that's extraordinarily risky against players of any talent.
That's like saying "there are people who don't understand that with little rubber feet for appliances you can make good money". It's rubbish. The expertise here lies in the specialized domain of providing complex control and management systems - the OS is almost irrelevant, as it's something small shops and startups don't have.
LockMart and Boeing and the ULA make their money selling launches to private and government clients too. (McDonnell Douglas was bought out by Boeing nearly fifteen years ago.) So they also have every incentive to make their boosters as reliable as possible. SpaceX is no different than those companies.
Again, SpaceX is no different from the others - their boosters don't need to be any more reliable than their contract requirements require either. (I.E. you can damn well bet their launch contracts do not accept full responsibility for anything but "attempting" a launch. They'd be fools otherwise.) 'Personal reputation' is irrelevant. (Other than to fanboys.)
Many people claim that. They're all pretty much ignorant of how little experience we actually have designing boosters and how much it costs to add each decimal place of reliability.
That, and failure rate for civil aviation is several orders of magnitude lower. If civil aviation failed at the average rate that boosters do - there would be over 50 crashes on take off per day at Sea-Tac alone instead of only two in nearly seventy years of operation. (And Sea-Tac is far from the busiest airport in the US, let alone the world.)
The Dyna-Soar does not "boost into a new orbit" as you specified. It's a Saenger type vehicle that will barely complete one orbit once it starts to skip.
No solar cell of significant size has been seen by observers, therefore there is no retractable panel of any size. Given that the bay door will be covered at least partially by radiators, that sharply limits the size of the available panel and thus the amount of power generated.
That's the best you have? Cut and pasted crap you failed to comprehend and then a slam because of my user number? You really are a sad little man. (Or woman, or earthworm or whatever.)
Yeah, pretty much it does. Once you start paying professors and having to schedule classes so they and/or other students are available for discussion and interaction... It's no longer cheap, easy. or convenient.
In the same way and for the same reasons that McDonald's has replaced a home cooked meal, it's cheap, easy, and convenient.
The requirements haven't changed just because SpaceX docked to it.
You're probably thinking of Leavenworth, which has a town square [tourist trap] modeled after a Bavarian village. Not Austrian and not a whole township.
If you 'owned' an irreplaceable multi billion dollar asset - and would get scorched by your bosses and atomized by the public if it got so much as scratched... you'd be pathologically paranoid too. And that's on top of the issue of astronaut safety.
No such panel of sufficient size has been noted by amateur observers - not to mention that the space a solar panel would take up is required for radiators since the skin of the drone is unsuitable.
Only if the USAF has perfected some kind of unobtanium fueled drive system. Otherwise, no.
I see, you fail to comprehend the difference between somebody forced to move and somebody forced to move... oh, wait. There is no difference. You, just like the OP are a clueless moron.
By that logic, the Indians who were forced onto reservations and now have a steady income from casino gambling are screaming successes.
No, I'm not ignoring those things. You're not considering that even with the savings from being unmanned, it still takes a considerable amount of power to support a payload of any notable size or capacity. Even if it's just passively drifting, there will be considerable power consumption over the course of a year just maintaining thermal control - and that's not something that can be done in bursts.