The article doesn't mention it, but the Las Vegas airport has an operational monorail running between terminals that utilizes the glass-protected station idea. Very nice.
Which artists are producing music on DVD's? Apparently I missed that one...
Not many new titles have been coming out on DVD yet, though a number of older albums have been remixed for 5.1 over the past year or two. Rhino has a bunch in their catalogue, and I believe that Queen's "A Night at the Opera" was recently released in 5.1.
how is this a 'better' deal than CD's and why would DVD's drive sales of CD's down?
Because the audiences for CDs and DVDs are, if not the same, then similar. Most large music chains also stock a decent-sized DVD selection, and with DVD players and titles so cheap these days, they've clearly made some deep inroads into the marketplace. To look at it another way, the consumer who might have spent $30 a week on CDs two or three years ago now also has a DVD player and is just as likely to split that same $30 between a CD and a DVD.
Are they? I'm not trying to troll here, but are CD's really overpriced? Or do you just think that they are?
Assuming that record labels traditionally charge whatever they think the market will bear, I would suggest that, yes, they're overpriced in the US since American CD sales have declined for the past two years running. In other words, the market isn't bearing the price the labels want to charge. On the other hand, prices are probably about right in the UK, which saw about a five percent growth in sales last year, if memory serves.
Seriously, there is no face, there never was a face and what you thought you saw was just the interaction of light and shadow off of an interestingly shaped mountain.
Ah ha! That's exactly what you want us to believe, isn't it, Mr. Shadowy Government Official?
My theory is that the Mars Observer probe, which mysteriously "vanished" in 1993, was actually armed with a nuclear device, which heavily damaged the face when it impacted on the planet's surface. By the time the Mars Global Surveyor had arrived in 1997, the dust stirred up by the explosion had long since settled. I think that the eventual show trial of the responsible NASA officials will be impressive, but mercifully short.
If Titanium is plentiful, then why is it so blasted expensive?
According to the Westword article, the extraction process is expensive. From the article:
The complexity of the manufacturing process is usually blamed for the metal's high cost.
"They need to find a cheaper way to extract it from the ore," says Ken Gall, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It would mark a large technical advance if that process could be improved."
One of Timet's competitors invested millions in a new production process that was supposed to cut costs, says Martin, but it was unsuccessful. Research on cheaper ways to create titanium is under way in Europe, but he isn't expecting any dramatic change.
"There's no breakthrough at hand," Martin says. "There are a lot of obstacles to overcome."
...it's really irrelevant who cast the first stone. Looking back, the commercialization of the Internet (incl. Usenet, email, the Web) seems more like a historical inevitability.
So is war, but that doesn't mean I want to give a free pass to the people who start one.
Didn't the USN or USAF fly SAAB Viggen for disssimilar air combat training a while back under lease ?
You're probably thinking of the Israeli Kfir, an unlicensed copy (using American engines) of France's Mirage III. 25 were leased by Israel to the US in the late '80s, redesignated as the F-21A, and used by US Navy and USMC aggressor squadrons. The Kfir resembles the Viggen.
Aren't Russians and the other ex-communist countries against America and the capitalist way of life? Don't they hold spite against these people who were their enemies or do they completely forgive Americans and have no loyalty to communism?
Pretty much all of the folks from eastern Europe who I've talked to were thrilled to be rid of the Russians and communism. There are few who would say that the transition was easy or that capitalism doesn't have its own set of problems, and some countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, East Germany) have done better for themselves than others (Yugoslavia, Albania), but in many of the countries you'd be hard-pressed to find many people who'd be up for turning back the clock.
The Russians are another matter. Clearly, they've had a hard time of it, and I doubt they'll ever again be half as powerful as they were as part of the U.S.S.R. There's certainly some bitterness in some quarters, as well as a nostalgia for the communist era when the country was powerful. You know, "Communism beat the nazis, communism took us to space, and communism very nearly made us masters of the world!"
Would Russia ever go back to communism? At this point I'd be surprised, particularly since communist nostalgia means less and less to Russia's young as the years go by. But bitterness and nationalism? Yeah, that's there.
It really was awful, there were analog gauges and whatnot littering the interior
It was built the late '60s. What else would they have been using?
basically one step shy of having Cosmonauts just jump out of the orbiter and hope for the best!
Actually, this isn't too far off the mark. If memory serves, the Soviet lunar missions were planned for two-man crews, as opposed to the three-man crews of the Apollo program. In the Soviet missions one cosmonaut would have stayed with the orbiter - same as the US flights - and the other would have spacewalked to and from the lander, rather the orbiter first docking with the lander. Soviet lunar landings and explorations would have been accomplished by one man, at least early on.
Re:How much rocket fuel?
on
Soviet Moon Rocket
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Everything you've ever wanted to know about the Saturn V.
Why in the hell would anyone at Lucasfilm be attending the indie South by Southwest convention? Are we to insinuate that someone other than Lucasfilm has a cut of the movie?
Well, SXSW hasn't been a strictly indie affair for several years now. It's now the music biz' answer to Cannes and Sundance: A great place to create a buzz. Traditionally, yes, SXSW has been about music, but considering that Universal, Dreamworks, Sony, etc. all have film *and* music interests, it wouldn't surprise me at all if someone from Lucasfilm was there.
I think the idea of going to Mars is wrong headed. I don't think an exploration of Mars will lead to great new developments for humanity. I don't think the idea of colonizing Mars is practical, and if it was, it certainly won't help humans on the Earth.
bIHnuch! You would dare dishonor your name and Qo'noS through your cowardice! You are worse than a mewing Qa'Hom with water for blood! Do you not desire glory for your house?!
He doesn't mention Project Pluto! It doesn't really support his repetition of perfectly safe and all that.
The Discovery Wings channel has a documentary on the Pluto project that's well worth watching. I've seen it two or three times myself. A functional Pluto cruise missile was never built, but it would have been a behemoth; "locomotive-size missile" is not hyperbole here. The engine worked quite well in ground tests, though, all things considered. The project ended for a couple of reasons. One was that by the early '60s ICBMs were turning out to be a much more practical way to lob nukes at an enemy. Another reason was that no one could figure out a practical way to flight-test the thing. One idea was to put it on a tether and fly it around the testing range that way, but the mental image of a practically unstoppable fission-powered cruise missile breaking free from its tether and flying over downtown Las Vegas at treetop height was all the Air Force needed to give up on that idea.
This VASIMR thing sounds like a microwave MPD, with a nuclear power source. The question is: why lug a massive nuke power supply when you have the Sun? In terms of Amperes per kg, IMHO solar panels are much cheaper than a nuke reactor.
True, but only up to a point. As you get further from the sun, the amount of light that the solar panels collects decreases, so you need to either attach more solar panels, reduce power consumption, or find another power source. Solar works well for missions to the rocky inner planets, but once you're out past Mars there's less and less light to collect. If you're talking about sending men to, say, Titan, solar won't cut it.
At no point was an invasion of Britain a possibility.
Hilarious. Read up on Hitler's Operation Sea Lion sometime. Not only was it a possibility, but had the Germans had a bit more success during the Battle of Britain - a few more attacks on airfields and radar installations instead of industrial sites - it certainly would have happened. The English Channel has given Great Britain a certain measure of protection from potential continental invaders, particularly the Germans, the French, and the Spanish, but the threat of invasion has been a very definite concern of the British at several points over the past thousand years.
Of course small nuclear devices are possible, even workable.
I don't think the article was questioning the size to which a nuclear device can be scaled down so much as there were questions as to whether such a device still stood a good chance of functioning after barreling through 60 feet or so of concrete, rebar, and rock.
Yeah, I submitted this the other day, too, and also found the Register version more interesting. And they bring up a good point about the timing. Is NAI scared of the possibility of one of its products being linked to terrorism? Or have they crunched the numbers and determined that making software for building a police state is more profitable than making software that can prevent one?
The fact that you can embed a link to the article within your own text, does not absolve you from using correct grammar.
Instead of saying "The New York Times has this article...", you should say "The New York Times has an article..."
Trooooooolllllll....
Technological changes justify adjustments in grammar under certain instances, gramps. The ability to add links to text is one of them.
In addition, you shouldn't say "...that he'd hired" (which is really saying, "...that he had hired"). Instead you should say "...that he hired..."
Why? I had intended to use the past perfect tense - which refers to a past event (the hiring of the students) which occurred before another past event (the Grammy broadcast) - and "he'd hired" accomplished that admirably. Try reading up on the past perfect tense sometime while you're riding the short bus.
Finally, the sentence beginning with "Leaving aside..." is a run on sentence. It is very difficult to understand, due both to its run-on nature, and excessive use of parentheses.
Would I write a novel like that? No. But a single-paragraph submission to/. is hardly a novel.
Both, actually. The -111 is no longer in service with the USAF, but the Aussies still operate it.
They are strong enough that you not only clear the tail fin, but you can eject on the runway and get high enough for the chute to open and land you gently.
Alternatively, if you ejected over water the cockpit capsule would float and double as a survival pod. The B-1A had a similar ejection cockpit capsule - which apparently worked quite well when one of the four prototypes went down - but this feature was dispensed with for the B-1B.
I suspect that distance has something to do with it; that for the Klingons to fight a war of conquest in Earth's backyard, they'd be operating at the end of some very long supply lines, whereas Earth wouldn't have that problem. They also couldn't be certain that the Vulcans wouldn't fight for Earth if it came to that.
Finally, it might simply be that during the time of "Enterprise," the Klingons are fighting other wars closer to home and that conquering Earth just isn't a priority at the moment. Given their psychology, I'd guess that a state of constant war is normal for them, so it's not like they can just drop what they're doing to conquer Earth.
Although both had warp drives, the Klingons had photon torpedoes, beam weapons already equipped on their ships, sizeable space fleets, etc.
Which suggests that either a) the area around the Klingon Empire is a good deal more dangerous than the space around Earth, b) Klingons are totally paranoid, c) Humans are hopelessly naive, or d) some combination of all three. But I'm not sure that it necessarily implies that the Klingons were more advanced at the time of first contact; just that their priorities were different.
The Who did it first, with 1967's "The Who Sell Out." The album featured ads (performed by the group) inbetween most of the songs for products like Heinz Baked Beans, Rotosound guitar strings, Odorono, etc.
Brooklyn artist Gregory Green built a replica of Sputnik 1 a few years ago, though I'm fairly certain that he never managed to find the money it would have taken to launch the thing into orbit.
Slashdot Mirror
The article doesn't mention it, but the Las Vegas airport has an operational monorail running between terminals that utilizes the glass-protected station idea. Very nice.
Which artists are producing music on DVD's? Apparently I missed that one...
Not many new titles have been coming out on DVD yet, though a number of older albums have been remixed for 5.1 over the past year or two. Rhino has a bunch in their catalogue, and I believe that Queen's "A Night at the Opera" was recently released in 5.1.
how is this a 'better' deal than CD's and why would DVD's drive sales of CD's down?
Because the audiences for CDs and DVDs are, if not the same, then similar. Most large music chains also stock a decent-sized DVD selection, and with DVD players and titles so cheap these days, they've clearly made some deep inroads into the marketplace. To look at it another way, the consumer who might have spent $30 a week on CDs two or three years ago now also has a DVD player and is just as likely to split that same $30 between a CD and a DVD.
Are they?
I'm not trying to troll here, but are CD's really overpriced? Or do you just think that they are?
Assuming that record labels traditionally charge whatever they think the market will bear, I would suggest that, yes, they're overpriced in the US since American CD sales have declined for the past two years running. In other words, the market isn't bearing the price the labels want to charge. On the other hand, prices are probably about right in the UK, which saw about a five percent growth in sales last year, if memory serves.
Seriously, there is no face, there never was a face and what you thought you saw was just the interaction of light and shadow off of an interestingly shaped mountain.
Ah ha! That's exactly what you want us to believe, isn't it, Mr. Shadowy Government Official?
My theory is that the Mars Observer probe, which mysteriously "vanished" in 1993, was actually armed with a nuclear device, which heavily damaged the face when it impacted on the planet's surface. By the time the Mars Global Surveyor had arrived in 1997, the dust stirred up by the explosion had long since settled. I think that the eventual show trial of the responsible NASA officials will be impressive, but mercifully short.
If Titanium is plentiful, then why is it so blasted expensive?
According to the Westword article, the extraction process is expensive. From the article:
The complexity of the manufacturing process is usually blamed for the metal's high cost.
"They need to find a cheaper way to extract it from the ore," says Ken Gall, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It would mark a large technical advance if that process could be improved."
One of Timet's competitors invested millions in a new production process that was supposed to cut costs, says Martin, but it was unsuccessful. Research on cheaper ways to create titanium is under way in Europe, but he isn't expecting any dramatic change.
"There's no breakthrough at hand," Martin says. "There are a lot of obstacles to overcome."
...it's really irrelevant who cast the first stone. Looking back, the commercialization of the Internet (incl. Usenet, email, the Web) seems more like a historical inevitability.
So is war, but that doesn't mean I want to give a free pass to the people who start one.
and Siegel died in 2001
One down, one to go....
Didn't the USN or USAF fly SAAB Viggen for disssimilar air combat training a while back under lease ?
You're probably thinking of the Israeli Kfir, an unlicensed copy (using American engines) of France's Mirage III. 25 were leased by Israel to the US in the late '80s, redesignated as the F-21A, and used by US Navy and USMC aggressor squadrons. The Kfir resembles the Viggen.
Aren't Russians and the other ex-communist countries against America and the capitalist way of life? Don't they hold spite against these people who were their enemies or do they completely forgive Americans and have no loyalty to communism?
Pretty much all of the folks from eastern Europe who I've talked to were thrilled to be rid of the Russians and communism. There are few who would say that the transition was easy or that capitalism doesn't have its own set of problems, and some countries (Poland, the Czech Republic, East Germany) have done better for themselves than others (Yugoslavia, Albania), but in many of the countries you'd be hard-pressed to find many people who'd be up for turning back the clock.
The Russians are another matter. Clearly, they've had a hard time of it, and I doubt they'll ever again be half as powerful as they were as part of the U.S.S.R. There's certainly some bitterness in some quarters, as well as a nostalgia for the communist era when the country was powerful. You know, "Communism beat the nazis, communism took us to space, and communism very nearly made us masters of the world!"
Would Russia ever go back to communism? At this point I'd be surprised, particularly since communist nostalgia means less and less to Russia's young as the years go by. But bitterness and nationalism? Yeah, that's there.
It really was awful, there were analog gauges and whatnot littering the interior
It was built the late '60s. What else would they have been using?
basically one step shy of having Cosmonauts just jump out of the orbiter and hope for the best!
Actually, this isn't too far off the mark. If memory serves, the Soviet lunar missions were planned for two-man crews, as opposed to the three-man crews of the Apollo program. In the Soviet missions one cosmonaut would have stayed with the orbiter - same as the US flights - and the other would have spacewalked to and from the lander, rather the orbiter first docking with the lander. Soviet lunar landings and explorations would have been accomplished by one man, at least early on.
Everything you've ever wanted to know about the Saturn V.
Why in the hell would anyone at Lucasfilm be attending the indie South by Southwest convention? Are we to insinuate that someone other than Lucasfilm has a cut of the movie?
Well, SXSW hasn't been a strictly indie affair for several years now. It's now the music biz' answer to Cannes and Sundance: A great place to create a buzz. Traditionally, yes, SXSW has been about music, but considering that Universal, Dreamworks, Sony, etc. all have film *and* music interests, it wouldn't surprise me at all if someone from Lucasfilm was there.
A pretty good website on the history and science behind the Orion proposal can be found here.
I think the idea of going to Mars is wrong headed. I don't think an exploration of Mars will lead to great new developments for humanity. I don't think the idea of colonizing Mars is practical, and if it was, it certainly won't help humans on the Earth.
bIHnuch! You would dare dishonor your name and Qo'noS through your cowardice! You are worse than a mewing Qa'Hom with water for blood! Do you not desire glory for your house?!
He doesn't mention Project Pluto! It doesn't really support his repetition of perfectly safe and all that.
The Discovery Wings channel has a documentary on the Pluto project that's well worth watching. I've seen it two or three times myself. A functional Pluto cruise missile was never built, but it would have been a behemoth; "locomotive-size missile" is not hyperbole here. The engine worked quite well in ground tests, though, all things considered. The project ended for a couple of reasons. One was that by the early '60s ICBMs were turning out to be a much more practical way to lob nukes at an enemy. Another reason was that no one could figure out a practical way to flight-test the thing. One idea was to put it on a tether and fly it around the testing range that way, but the mental image of a practically unstoppable fission-powered cruise missile breaking free from its tether and flying over downtown Las Vegas at treetop height was all the Air Force needed to give up on that idea.
This VASIMR thing sounds like a microwave MPD, with a nuclear power source. The question is: why lug a massive nuke power supply when you have the Sun? In terms of Amperes per kg, IMHO solar panels are much cheaper than a nuke reactor.
True, but only up to a point. As you get further from the sun, the amount of light that the solar panels collects decreases, so you need to either attach more solar panels, reduce power consumption, or find another power source. Solar works well for missions to the rocky inner planets, but once you're out past Mars there's less and less light to collect. If you're talking about sending men to, say, Titan, solar won't cut it.
At no point was an invasion of Britain a possibility.
Hilarious. Read up on Hitler's Operation Sea Lion sometime. Not only was it a possibility, but had the Germans had a bit more success during the Battle of Britain - a few more attacks on airfields and radar installations instead of industrial sites - it certainly would have happened. The English Channel has given Great Britain a certain measure of protection from potential continental invaders, particularly the Germans, the French, and the Spanish, but the threat of invasion has been a very definite concern of the British at several points over the past thousand years.
Of course small nuclear devices are possible, even workable.
I don't think the article was questioning the size to which a nuclear device can be scaled down so much as there were questions as to whether such a device still stood a good chance of functioning after barreling through 60 feet or so of concrete, rebar, and rock.
Yeah, I submitted this the other day, too, and also found the Register version more interesting. And they bring up a good point about the timing. Is NAI scared of the possibility of one of its products being linked to terrorism? Or have they crunched the numbers and determined that making software for building a police state is more profitable than making software that can prevent one?
The fact that you can embed a link to the article within your own text, does not absolve you from using correct grammar.
/. is hardly a novel.
Instead of saying "The New York Times has this article...", you should say "The New York Times has an article..."
Trooooooolllllll....
Technological changes justify adjustments in grammar under certain instances, gramps. The ability to add links to text is one of them.
In addition, you shouldn't say "...that he'd hired" (which is really saying, "...that he had hired"). Instead you should say "...that he hired..."
Why? I had intended to use the past perfect tense - which refers to a past event (the hiring of the students) which occurred before another past event (the Grammy broadcast) - and "he'd hired" accomplished that admirably. Try reading up on the past perfect tense sometime while you're riding the short bus.
Finally, the sentence beginning with "Leaving aside..." is a run on sentence. It is very difficult to understand, due both to its run-on nature, and excessive use of parentheses.
Would I write a novel like that? No. But a single-paragraph submission to
OTOH, the F111, which has (had?)
Both, actually. The -111 is no longer in service with the USAF, but the Aussies still operate it.
They are strong enough that you not only clear the tail fin, but you can eject on the runway and get high enough for the chute to open and land you gently.
Alternatively, if you ejected over water the cockpit capsule would float and double as a survival pod. The B-1A had a similar ejection cockpit capsule - which apparently worked quite well when one of the four prototypes went down - but this feature was dispensed with for the B-1B.
I suspect that distance has something to do with it; that for the Klingons to fight a war of conquest in Earth's backyard, they'd be operating at the end of some very long supply lines, whereas Earth wouldn't have that problem. They also couldn't be certain that the Vulcans wouldn't fight for Earth if it came to that.
Finally, it might simply be that during the time of "Enterprise," the Klingons are fighting other wars closer to home and that conquering Earth just isn't a priority at the moment. Given their psychology, I'd guess that a state of constant war is normal for them, so it's not like they can just drop what they're doing to conquer Earth.
Although both had warp drives, the Klingons had photon torpedoes, beam weapons already equipped on their ships, sizeable space fleets, etc.
Which suggests that either a) the area around the Klingon Empire is a good deal more dangerous than the space around Earth, b) Klingons are totally paranoid, c) Humans are hopelessly naive, or d) some combination of all three. But I'm not sure that it necessarily implies that the Klingons were more advanced at the time of first contact; just that their priorities were different.
The Who did it first, with 1967's "The Who Sell Out." The album featured ads (performed by the group) inbetween most of the songs for products like Heinz Baked Beans, Rotosound guitar strings, Odorono, etc.
Brooklyn artist Gregory Green built a replica of Sputnik 1 a few years ago, though I'm fairly certain that he never managed to find the money it would have taken to launch the thing into orbit.