Not all MP3s are illigitimately traded though. MP3 is just an encoding scheme, it does not stand for Music Piracy 3rd generation or something. It's simply sound in compressed digital form. Now if I were to record something I made, compress it into an MP3 format (personally I'd use ogg vorbis but that's a whole different ball of wax) and put it on kazaa or whatever the flavor of the month is, is that illegal?
If I happen to decide to call my 'group' Ecstasy and I decide to do songs of elements (ie, Of Carbon, Of Tungsten, Of Amercanium, etc...) and one of the files I distribute is Ecstasy - Of Gold.mp3 sure that could possibly be construed as a trademark violation or something, but if the RIAA comes knocking at my door with a long letter containing many various permutations of 'cease and desist your DMCA violations' then what? I certanly wasn't trading anything illegal (it was MY IP and no one else had anything to do with it), but I'm sure the RIAA's lawyers could somehow manage to have the jury find me guilty.
I'm not pro-piracy, just anti-stupidity. IMHO there are two major groups with regards to the law: those who don't break because it is the law, and those who do break it because it is the law (and then there are probably many smaller groups within the spectrum). By pursuing this matter legally and with such amount of overkill, it might show the law-abiding group that trading illegal music doesn't pay, but it doesn't do squat for the other group except cause RIAA hatred to go up a notch, and Machiavelli 101 says it's better to be feared than loved and either is preferable to being hated because when your hated, people plot your downfall (something like that).
It's a pretty cool way to detect radiation, but I wonder about its effectiveness. They say it's the size of a '95ish cellphone, so how close to the source would it have to be to get an effective reading? They say it measures gammas so it depends on photo-interactions (ie compton scattering, pair production, photo-electric effect...not an acutal collision like the article implies). It's most likely that compton scattering and photo-electric effect will occur (they are based on essentially the proximity of the gammas to an electron) as opposed to pair production (which requires a highly charged nucleus and how many of those can you find at 1K??)
In any case, all of those rely on the probability that a gamma will interact which means that size does matter: the bigger the counting material (the tin) the more likely a gamma will get measured. IMHO the best radiological defense wouldn't be portable little devices (which are good for measuring personal exposure) but rather some large detectors placed in strategic locations (say wiring a metal detector with some of this tech and turn it into a metal/radiation detector?).
All in all a pretty cool devicewhich has some limited use but I doubt it will turn out to be any major solution to discovering a dirty bomb randomly, I'd say they are much better suited to scanning suspicious items (or monitoring your own gamma exposure!).
Valve released something like this for Hlaf Life a long time ago (I think over a year ago...maybe a year and a half by now). I don't remember the exact patch, but essentially you could log on to a server and see the map from various perspectives (1st person from any of the players, overhead view, both combined...maybe some others). It was pretty cool to see things unfold in counterstrike from a birds-eye view when good teams were facing off.
Beyond that I think there was a Q3 mod that would do what you said...it would find where the action was taking place (based on some criteria I don't remember) and would let you sit there and watch.
And of course there's the mark I demos...usually in important matches someone records a demo of it...those can be downloaded and viewed (albeit after the fact).
Not necessarily. All you have to do is design a system where electricity must be removed to cause the brakes to engage. Essentailly it would be a fail safe. Here's an example of how a very simplified (very very) electronic braking system could work (IANAMECHANICALENGINEER):
Brake is forced to engage by a spring (a really strong one). To disengage brake, an electromagnet is powered which attracts the brake and compresses the spring. If power is lost, brake engages. If (for some reason) power fails ON (ie the electromagnet gets stuck in an energized state), just put a brbeaker switch or even a fuse nearby which can be removed. This'll provide a meechanical means to interrupt power to the magnets, thus engaging the brakes.
Again, that's a very simple example that only takes into account a power interruption and a fail 'on' scenario, and it offers very simple solutions which would probably cause the car to crash in some instances (ie brakes suddenly locking up, hit some ice, go spinning away into something)...those are problems I'll leave to people whose job it is to make sure that doesn't happen (I'm thinking maybe put a brake battery somewhere so a kind of anti-lock brake system can maintain wheel rotation in the event of a catastrophic loss-of-power failure or something).
As for the steering, a similiar emergency thing is probably viable, but nothing will beat redundancy. If you engineer something well enough and then put in 1 or 2 redundant systems beyond that, then chances are astronomically small that everything would fail. In the past 40-50 years of nuclear powered US naval vessels there hasn't been a single vessel lost due to the reactor and reactor control systems just giving up the ghost. If Naval Reactors can do it, then you can be damn sure someone else can do it.
Using ohms law, if you play around with the current and resistance you can get voltage to change. However, it is fairly trivial to step up AC voltage: get a transformer. That'll step up the voltage to whatever you need, then all you have to do to get DC is a simple bridge rectifier, filter that signal (a couple capacitors, inductors, and/or resistors will suffice), then slap in a zener diode (in parallel! Don't forget the series resistor!) to give a flat DC signal.
Just a little blurb re: your "Another comment about the whole Microsoft case and antitrust laws in general. I cannot understand how these laws can be remotely construed as constitutional."...
Way back when (turn of the centure kinda thing) the trusts/monopolies were pretty much beginning to contrtol the gov't...forcing all of their workers to vote a single way, making elected officials who they didn't like have a hard time in office (via crime, etc...making them seem impotent, essentially). So they were essentially trrampling on the rights of the people which the constitution (correct me if I'm wrong) is there to protect. Not the rights of a company to get very very rich.
IMHO, there's a point beyond which gov't regulation is needed, or else the country would begin to fall into anarchy. A situation which it's the gov't's job to avoid.
"The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair paints a pretty stark picture of trusts getting out of hand, unfortunately the last couple chapters descend into inane blather about how good socialism is, yadda yadda yadda (sorry to ruin the ending for you!)
This brings up a question that's been bothering me lately: what exactly can the EU do to microsoft beyond not allowing MS to sell products in their countries? I suppose they could force MS to pay a tax so it can remain in their markets, but seeing as how MS is a US company, can they do anything else besides that?
Ok, what EXACTLY happened at three mile island? Did anything BAD happen? No. Did anything good happen? No. What happened was the reactor operators didn't trrust the system, and let the reactor overheat, melting the fuel plates and ummmm...yeah. They melted. WOW!
A little release of readiactive gas, a little release of radioactive water, and a public panic brought about by news people who know squat talking to other people who knew less. TMI has pretty well been cleaned up, and in fact will be torn down in 2 or 3 years (sometime in 2005 IIRC).
The main problem w/ TMI was that the people operating the plant weren't being careful enough. That, compounded with a few design flaws, led to a situation which COULD have been bad, but was really only a 'whoops'.
The only way to combat negative connotations is with good info, so radioactivity should, imho, be a required course in HS (as well as a course in common sense =P)
WOW! now THAT stuff would be extremely unsafe w/o sufficient shielding etc..etc... You'd have to be VERY sure that you only get a little small smidgen of the stuff, and even then it's all just a mish-mash of decayed and decaying fission fragments, poisons, and unused fuel. I think it would cost much more for quality control on that kind of project than just finding (or making) what you need. Now if it were some kinda gov't subsidized operation and it had amazing QA then I guess it would be feasible. Until then, I say just keep putting it in the wat^H^H^H ground!
"...chose only isotopes that emit beta particles because their energy is small enough not to penetrate skin. Radioactive material can emit beta particles, alpha particles or gamma rays--the last two of which are carry enough energy to be hazardous..."
Really gamma rays (ie photons) are the only form of radiation we'd have to worry about. They have such low specific ionization (# of ions created (due to photointeractions in this case) per cm trraveled that they can go right through your body...ionizing stuff which shouldn't be and making you sick (or worse).
The other two, beta (electrons or positrons) and alpha particles (essentially helium-4 w/o the electrons) have such high specific ionizations (due to their charges) that they will not penetrate past your skin. In fact, alpha particles won't even penetrate your DEAD skin! IMHO, I consider alpha particles are much safer (unless you swallow the emitter ) in that you could hold those 'batteries' in your bare hand and not have live skin be touched whereas the beta particles WOULD reach live skin.
In any case, all of this is just probability so 'safe' is a relative term. Economically, many more nuclides beta decay (specifically beta minus decay) than anything else so that is probably the real reason: easier and cheaper to get enouogh of the right nuclide...but I applaud the efforts at trying to show the general public that at least one type of radiation isn't so bad.
You can bet as soon as these decay-powered batteries are available I'll be the first in line to get one =)
Doubtful...just because you pay off debts doesn't mean squat. Those countries would have to have infrastructure built for them as well. Otherwise a bad year of crops, some million starving people, and boom: regime change, attacks on more fruitful neighbors, etc...
Investment in military tech development can yield amazing results. Case in point: nuclear power. Without the government funding big science during the manhatten project, how far could a scientist have gotten? And after we tested atomic theory using weapons, we were better able to design nuclear reactors (some better than others: US Naval reactors being near the top, reactors like Chernobyl at the bottom).
Ultimately, IMHO, a peaceful situation is a stagnant situation. If there was complete peace on earth, I believe that people would tend to be more and more complacent with the technological level. Why bother trying to make perfect even better?
So all of that $800 billion is not necessarily lost. This laser thingy from the article, who knows? Perhaps one day we'll use laser thingies like that as part of a mission to mars to fend off space debris from the craft? Maybe it'll save the craft from certain death coming from a big object which would set any manned extraterrestrial missions back by 100 years? Meanwhile, in the interregnum between now and the hypothetical then, if it helps people like me survive just a little bit longer in the heat of battle then I'm all for it, peace spending be damned.
In any case, I hear canada pretty much has no military (~50,000 members last I heard) so if you're not already a canadian citizen I'm sure it would be closer to your government-spending ideals than most other 1st world countries; you might consider moving there.
hahaha 'lose the pounds' been at nuc school for a year and damned if any of the skinny-vinculum guys have lost a pound...most kinda bloated up a little bit after boot camp haha.
But Navy has so far been fairly interesting (if not a little bit fuun as well). Most of the movies get the atmosphere of it all wrong (like in crimson tide, on the bus, that one officer yelling at the petty officer like that...bah!). Just watch out, you'd be suprised how stupid people can be.
No, I don't think the guy cares about the fact he's being ID'ed, it's the fact that he's being ID'ed because of a secret rule that the gov't told the airlines...I'm sure if it was publicly stated gov't policy there wouldn't be a suit at all.
they can easily get one...you can get a US Passport, if you're from california you can get a state ID (I dunno if other states have them). It's not like a drivers license is the ONLY form of identification easily accessible, it's just the most common.
Haha close but not quite...we get paid slightly more to operate those reactors at sea (~40-50k, maybe a little more maybe a little less, depending). But the real benifits are AFTER you get out...you can land a fat paycheck in the private sector easily after being a nuke for even just 6 years (minimum enlistment requirement).
Granted what we get paid to keep those multi-billion dollar machines from going boom (or more likely sizzle sizzle *crunch* as the nuclear slag eats through the boat and sends it to crush depth) and keep things going roundy roundy doesn't look like much,,but relative to what everyone else gets it's a heck of a lot...and would you prefer it if the navy had a 5 trillion dollar budget to pay everyone working on nukes what the civilian nuke plants pay their employees???
But unlike the nuke program, there has never been much of a push for safety (ie security) in most any network made, it seems like...there are some exceptions (I'm sure/. has more than its share of safety-oriented sysadmins), and until people realize that information theft can be as bad as a nuclear accident (minus the environmental concerns!) I doubt there'll be much of a push in (state) governemnt to pay sysadmins what they're worth, and be selective about who's hired.
When all's said and done, who knows...this could be the three-mile-island of networking? Probably not.
Nah, I gotta say that if it happened in LA, there might've been a bigger hullabaloo...after all, look what a little thing like OJ Simpson running from the cops caused oO Imagine if that circly triangly building thing (you know...the building in independance day where the people are having the 'welcome' party right before the attack) downtown got hit instead? Sure it's no WTC, but IMHO Los Angeles is as much a symbol of the US as NY, albeit in a different way (heck, personally I don't recognize any east coast skyline, but take a minor building out of the LA one and I'll be pissed).
Eh anyway, small chance us angelenos'll be saved by spiderman in any forthcoming movies though, looks like we'll have to wait for earthquakes to kill our supervillains (or some riots, HAH!)
ahh, thanks for the info, I hadn't even heard of that thing...too bad it's late here or I'd do some research on it...sounds like a project for tomorrow!
IIRC, Challenger is the only one. I think the problem is that there are so many things that CAN go wrong...that's why the survivability thing is important. I imagine the new thing'll have more redundancies, be more resistant to certain accidents, or other things to that effect, which will raise that number.
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Not all MP3s are illigitimately traded though. MP3 is just an encoding scheme, it does not stand for Music Piracy 3rd generation or something. It's simply sound in compressed digital form. Now if I were to record something I made, compress it into an MP3 format (personally I'd use ogg vorbis but that's a whole different ball of wax) and put it on kazaa or whatever the flavor of the month is, is that illegal?
If I happen to decide to call my 'group' Ecstasy and I decide to do songs of elements (ie, Of Carbon, Of Tungsten, Of Amercanium, etc...) and one of the files I distribute is Ecstasy - Of Gold.mp3 sure that could possibly be construed as a trademark violation or something, but if the RIAA comes knocking at my door with a long letter containing many various permutations of 'cease and desist your DMCA violations' then what? I certanly wasn't trading anything illegal (it was MY IP and no one else had anything to do with it), but I'm sure the RIAA's lawyers could somehow manage to have the jury find me guilty.
I'm not pro-piracy, just anti-stupidity. IMHO there are two major groups with regards to the law: those who don't break because it is the law, and those who do break it because it is the law (and then there are probably many smaller groups within the spectrum). By pursuing this matter legally and with such amount of overkill, it might show the law-abiding group that trading illegal music doesn't pay, but it doesn't do squat for the other group except cause RIAA hatred to go up a notch, and Machiavelli 101 says it's better to be feared than loved and either is preferable to being hated because when your hated, people plot your downfall (something like that).
--Jubedgy
It's a pretty cool way to detect radiation, but I wonder about its effectiveness. They say it's the size of a '95ish cellphone, so how close to the source would it have to be to get an effective reading? They say it measures gammas so it depends on photo-interactions (ie compton scattering, pair production, photo-electric effect...not an acutal collision like the article implies). It's most likely that compton scattering and photo-electric effect will occur (they are based on essentially the proximity of the gammas to an electron) as opposed to pair production (which requires a highly charged nucleus and how many of those can you find at 1K??)
In any case, all of those rely on the probability that a gamma will interact which means that size does matter: the bigger the counting material (the tin) the more likely a gamma will get measured. IMHO the best radiological defense wouldn't be portable little devices (which are good for measuring personal exposure) but rather some large detectors placed in strategic locations (say wiring a metal detector with some of this tech and turn it into a metal/radiation detector?).
All in all a pretty cool devicewhich has some limited use but I doubt it will turn out to be any major solution to discovering a dirty bomb randomly, I'd say they are much better suited to scanning suspicious items (or monitoring your own gamma exposure!).
--Jubedgy
Valve released something like this for Hlaf Life a long time ago (I think over a year ago...maybe a year and a half by now). I don't remember the exact patch, but essentially you could log on to a server and see the map from various perspectives (1st person from any of the players, overhead view, both combined...maybe some others). It was pretty cool to see things unfold in counterstrike from a birds-eye view when good teams were facing off.
Beyond that I think there was a Q3 mod that would do what you said...it would find where the action was taking place (based on some criteria I don't remember) and would let you sit there and watch.
And of course there's the mark I demos...usually in important matches someone records a demo of it...those can be downloaded and viewed (albeit after the fact).
--Jubedgy
Regarding the 50 Hz:
If you live in the US (since we operate at 60 Hz) does that change anything?
--Jubedgy
Not necessarily. All you have to do is design a system where electricity must be removed to cause the brakes to engage. Essentailly it would be a fail safe. Here's an example of how a very simplified (very very) electronic braking system could work (IANAMECHANICALENGINEER):
Brake is forced to engage by a spring (a really strong one). To disengage brake, an electromagnet is powered which attracts the brake and compresses the spring. If power is lost, brake engages. If (for some reason) power fails ON (ie the electromagnet gets stuck in an energized state), just put a brbeaker switch or even a fuse nearby which can be removed. This'll provide a meechanical means to interrupt power to the magnets, thus engaging the brakes.
Again, that's a very simple example that only takes into account a power interruption and a fail 'on' scenario, and it offers very simple solutions which would probably cause the car to crash in some instances (ie brakes suddenly locking up, hit some ice, go spinning away into something)...those are problems I'll leave to people whose job it is to make sure that doesn't happen (I'm thinking maybe put a brake battery somewhere so a kind of anti-lock brake system can maintain wheel rotation in the event of a catastrophic loss-of-power failure or something).
As for the steering, a similiar emergency thing is probably viable, but nothing will beat redundancy. If you engineer something well enough and then put in 1 or 2 redundant systems beyond that, then chances are astronomically small that everything would fail. In the past 40-50 years of nuclear powered US naval vessels there hasn't been a single vessel lost due to the reactor and reactor control systems just giving up the ghost. If Naval Reactors can do it, then you can be damn sure someone else can do it.
--Jubedgy
Using ohms law, if you play around with the current and resistance you can get voltage to change. However, it is fairly trivial to step up AC voltage: get a transformer. That'll step up the voltage to whatever you need, then all you have to do to get DC is a simple bridge rectifier, filter that signal (a couple capacitors, inductors, and/or resistors will suffice), then slap in a zener diode (in parallel! Don't forget the series resistor!) to give a flat DC signal.
--Reid
Just a little blurb re: your "Another comment about the whole Microsoft case and antitrust laws in general. I cannot understand how these laws can be remotely construed as constitutional."...
Way back when (turn of the centure kinda thing) the trusts/monopolies were pretty much beginning to contrtol the gov't...forcing all of their workers to vote a single way, making elected officials who they didn't like have a hard time in office (via crime, etc...making them seem impotent, essentially). So they were essentially trrampling on the rights of the people which the constitution (correct me if I'm wrong) is there to protect. Not the rights of a company to get very very rich.
IMHO, there's a point beyond which gov't regulation is needed, or else the country would begin to fall into anarchy. A situation which it's the gov't's job to avoid.
"The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair paints a pretty stark picture of trusts getting out of hand, unfortunately the last couple chapters descend into inane blather about how good socialism is, yadda yadda yadda (sorry to ruin the ending for you!)
--Jubedgy
This brings up a question that's been bothering me lately: what exactly can the EU do to microsoft beyond not allowing MS to sell products in their countries? I suppose they could force MS to pay a tax so it can remain in their markets, but seeing as how MS is a US company, can they do anything else besides that?
--Jubedgy
Ok, what EXACTLY happened at three mile island? Did anything BAD happen? No. Did anything good happen? No. What happened was the reactor operators didn't trrust the system, and let the reactor overheat, melting the fuel plates and ummmm...yeah. They melted. WOW!
A little release of readiactive gas, a little release of radioactive water, and a public panic brought about by news people who know squat talking to other people who knew less. TMI has pretty well been cleaned up, and in fact will be torn down in 2 or 3 years (sometime in 2005 IIRC).
The main problem w/ TMI was that the people operating the plant weren't being careful enough. That, compounded with a few design flaws, led to a situation which COULD have been bad, but was really only a 'whoops'.
The only way to combat negative connotations is with good info, so radioactivity should, imho, be a required course in HS (as well as a course in common sense =P)
--Jubedgy
WOW! now THAT stuff would be extremely unsafe w/o sufficient shielding etc..etc... You'd have to be VERY sure that you only get a little small smidgen of the stuff, and even then it's all just a mish-mash of decayed and decaying fission fragments, poisons, and unused fuel. I think it would cost much more for quality control on that kind of project than just finding (or making) what you need. Now if it were some kinda gov't subsidized operation and it had amazing QA then I guess it would be feasible. Until then, I say just keep putting it in the wat^H^H^H ground!
--Jubedgy
"...chose only isotopes that emit beta particles because their energy is small enough not to penetrate skin. Radioactive material can emit beta particles, alpha particles or gamma rays--the last two of which are carry enough energy to be hazardous..."
Really gamma rays (ie photons) are the only form of radiation we'd have to worry about. They have such low specific ionization (# of ions created (due to photointeractions in this case) per cm trraveled that they can go right through your body...ionizing stuff which shouldn't be and making you sick (or worse).
The other two, beta (electrons or positrons) and alpha particles (essentially helium-4 w/o the electrons) have such high specific ionizations (due to their charges) that they will not penetrate past your skin. In fact, alpha particles won't even penetrate your DEAD skin! IMHO, I consider alpha particles are much safer (unless you swallow the emitter ) in that you could hold those 'batteries' in your bare hand and not have live skin be touched whereas the beta particles WOULD reach live skin.
In any case, all of this is just probability so 'safe' is a relative term. Economically, many more nuclides beta decay (specifically beta minus decay) than anything else so that is probably the real reason: easier and cheaper to get enouogh of the right nuclide...but I applaud the efforts at trying to show the general public that at least one type of radiation isn't so bad.
You can bet as soon as these decay-powered batteries are available I'll be the first in line to get one =)
--Jubedgy
Doubtful...just because you pay off debts doesn't mean squat. Those countries would have to have infrastructure built for them as well. Otherwise a bad year of crops, some million starving people, and boom: regime change, attacks on more fruitful neighbors, etc...
Investment in military tech development can yield amazing results. Case in point: nuclear power. Without the government funding big science during the manhatten project, how far could a scientist have gotten? And after we tested atomic theory using weapons, we were better able to design nuclear reactors (some better than others: US Naval reactors being near the top, reactors like Chernobyl at the bottom).
Ultimately, IMHO, a peaceful situation is a stagnant situation. If there was complete peace on earth, I believe that people would tend to be more and more complacent with the technological level. Why bother trying to make perfect even better?
So all of that $800 billion is not necessarily lost. This laser thingy from the article, who knows? Perhaps one day we'll use laser thingies like that as part of a mission to mars to fend off space debris from the craft? Maybe it'll save the craft from certain death coming from a big object which would set any manned extraterrestrial missions back by 100 years? Meanwhile, in the interregnum between now and the hypothetical then, if it helps people like me survive just a little bit longer in the heat of battle then I'm all for it, peace spending be damned.
In any case, I hear canada pretty much has no military (~50,000 members last I heard) so if you're not already a canadian citizen I'm sure it would be closer to your government-spending ideals than most other 1st world countries; you might consider moving there.
--Jubedgy
hahaha 'lose the pounds' been at nuc school for a year and damned if any of the skinny-vinculum guys have lost a pound...most kinda bloated up a little bit after boot camp haha.
But Navy has so far been fairly interesting (if not a little bit fuun as well). Most of the movies get the atmosphere of it all wrong (like in crimson tide, on the bus, that one officer yelling at the petty officer like that...bah!). Just watch out, you'd be suprised how stupid people can be.
--Jubedgy
and hey, if you're a sub-vol, you get to see even less....metal bulkheads, wooooo!!
--Jubedgy
haha, having at one point attended that particular university, I highly doubt that that is the case...
haha reminds me of the marlinspike out in Great Lakes...at least the sound-powered phones worked (and the floor was painted blue just like water!!)
--Jubedgy
No, I don't think the guy cares about the fact he's being ID'ed, it's the fact that he's being ID'ed because of a secret rule that the gov't told the airlines...I'm sure if it was publicly stated gov't policy there wouldn't be a suit at all.
--Jubedgy
they can easily get one...you can get a US Passport, if you're from california you can get a state ID (I dunno if other states have them). It's not like a drivers license is the ONLY form of identification easily accessible, it's just the most common.
--Jubedgy
heh, sounds like UCSD to me
--Jubedgy
Haha close but not quite...we get paid slightly more to operate those reactors at sea (~40-50k, maybe a little more maybe a little less, depending). But the real benifits are AFTER you get out...you can land a fat paycheck in the private sector easily after being a nuke for even just 6 years (minimum enlistment requirement).
,but relative to what everyone else gets it's a heck of a lot...and would you prefer it if the navy had a 5 trillion dollar budget to pay everyone working on nukes what the civilian nuke plants pay their employees???
/. has more than its share of safety-oriented sysadmins), and until people realize that information theft can be as bad as a nuclear accident (minus the environmental concerns!) I doubt there'll be much of a push in (state) governemnt to pay sysadmins what they're worth, and be selective about who's hired.
Granted what we get paid to keep those multi-billion dollar machines from going boom (or more likely sizzle sizzle *crunch* as the nuclear slag eats through the boat and sends it to crush depth) and keep things going roundy roundy doesn't look like much,
But unlike the nuke program, there has never been much of a push for safety (ie security) in most any network made, it seems like...there are some exceptions (I'm sure
When all's said and done, who knows...this could be the three-mile-island of networking? Probably not.
--Jubedgy
Nah, I gotta say that if it happened in LA, there might've been a bigger hullabaloo...after all, look what a little thing like OJ Simpson running from the cops caused oO Imagine if that circly triangly building thing (you know...the building in independance day where the people are having the 'welcome' party right before the attack) downtown got hit instead? Sure it's no WTC, but IMHO Los Angeles is as much a symbol of the US as NY, albeit in a different way (heck, personally I don't recognize any east coast skyline, but take a minor building out of the LA one and I'll be pissed).
Eh anyway, small chance us angelenos'll be saved by spiderman in any forthcoming movies though, looks like we'll have to wait for earthquakes to kill our supervillains (or some riots, HAH!)
--Jubedgy
haha I remember toting that towel around the UCSD campus...it sure was kinda strange and lonely...I expected there to be more DA fans around!!!
--Jubedgy
ahh, thanks for the info, I hadn't even heard of that thing...too bad it's late here or I'd do some research on it...sounds like a project for tomorrow!
--Jubedgy
IIRC, Challenger is the only one. I think the problem is that there are so many things that CAN go wrong...that's why the survivability thing is important. I imagine the new thing'll have more redundancies, be more resistant to certain accidents, or other things to that effect, which will raise that number.
--Jubedgy
Well, I wouldn't call it embarassing since:
There's been only one major accident (challenger) in those 30 years
No one else has a reusable launch vehicle (that I know of...I don't think russia does, pretty sure no one else does either
--Jubedgy