Micro-USB is not just about size, it's actually the official replacement for mini-USB. micro-USB is designed to handle more disconnect/reconnect cycles than mini-USB, so it's better even if your devices are large enough to not need micro-USB. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#Mini_and_Micro
I also grumbled about replacing my mini-USB chargers, but at least it's standard-for-standard. I now have two connectors to deal with (some devices still on mini-USB, some devices on micro-USB) as opposed to a mess of proprietary connectors.
Thanks to squares and cubes, a small increase in capsule diameter gives a big increase in floor surface area and total volume. Also, Apollo trips were to the moon and back, which made the time between stops somewhat longer, so it needed to carry more food, water, etc.
The bigger surprise is that the CST-100 will seat 7 astronauts while the larger Orion was only designed for 6. TFA says that CST-100 will be "less spacious" than Orion, which probably is code for "astronauts will be packed like sardines."
An ex post facto law is a law whose effective date is before it was passed. A law is allowed to stop a previously legal activity -- if you think about it, the first law that banned any given illegal substance is criminalizing a behavior that was previously legal. The problem with ex post facto is when the law takes effect.
Example: if I pass a law in 1930 saying that cocaine was illegal starting in 1920 and try to prosecute someone who smoked crack in 1925, that's an ex post facto law in violation of the constitution. The person who smoked crack in 1925 had no way to know it would become illegal. If I pass the same law in 1930 but make it effective in 1931 and only prosecute people who smoke crack starting in 1932, that's not ex post facto. The people in 1932 who violated the law did so after the law was passed, so they had an opportunity to stop.
In this case, if the law tries to prosecute artists who already copied the works in question, then it would be ex post facto. But if it only prevents them from making new copies, then it's not ex post facto. Of course, it might be a bad law for reasons other than ex post facto.
A lot of the problems that cost so much time and effort to solve 50 years ago are now well-known and documented. Modern space companies are staffed with people who literally grew up in a world where the problems and solutions are well-known. Just knowing how the problems were solved back then makes it a lot cheaper to build new rockets, even aside from GP's point on the other new tech that has appeared on the shelf in the last 50 years.
GP is correct, Elohim isn't always plural. The above verse is not a counter-example. slashdot won't let me post Hebrew words, but you can see verse 26 here:
In Hebrew, nouns and verbs agree on singular vs. plural. The subject of "elohim" takes the verb "va-yo-mer", which is singular; the plural would have been "va-yo-m'ru". So basic Hebrew grammar means that the word "elohim" is acting in the singular even though the word looks like a plural. The same thing happens in most other places that the word "elohim" appears, including in the verses before and after this one -- singular verbs.
The verb "na'a'seh", which is usually translated "let us make man", starts a new clause. To whom does "us" refer? That's a classic question, and one which is somewhat controversial, but grammatically does not imply that "elohim" is plural. Think of the analogous English sentence "Jack said 'we are running low on milk'" -- "Jack" is singular, even though "Jack" is speaking in the plural. Some of the options: (1) god is talking to creation; (2) god is talking to the angels; (3) god is using some sort of honorific "we", with modern analogs in the royal we and the editorial we; or (4) in a trinitarian view, god is addressing the other parts of the trinity.
Note that the word "elohim" has other meanings, including "gods" of other varieties (as in "you shall not have other gods before my face" from Exodus 20:2), angels, and judges.
However, GP missed Rael's point. Rael's claim is that the "elohim" aliens were misunderstood by humans, who thought they were god. Rael is explicitly trying to draw that parallel, so doesn't want to use an original term. See http://rael.org/rael_content/rael_summary.php .
Aging changes perspective. For a high school kid, appearing as a fat, awkward kid in a famous internet video is epic shame. But for an adult angling to be a lawyer and a politician, *having appeared* some years before in a famous internet video is a great advantage. I rather think he has come to terms with his fame and is using it to his advantage. Good for him.
As of this writing, BP's market cap is $129.89B, while google's is $149.69B. Even before the current mess, BP's stock was about 50% higher, which would have given it a market cap of about $195B; more than google, but still in the same league.
Links (will probably have different values by the time you view):
* The oil spill is a regional environmental catastrophe. It has scope well outside of BP or even the oil industry as a whole -- it's impacting marshlands, seafood industry, tourism, and other industries. So far, this privacy issue seems to only be present within google.
* The oil spill is an emergency. We normally give companies a chance to "make it right". In the case of the oil spill, any unnecessary delay means definite short-term damage/impact to the environment, the seafood industry, and tourism, and possible long-term damage. We don't have time to take a wait-and-see attitude.
Normal legal processes have taken years to "fix" problems. That's fine for improperly gathering private data; not fine for an ongoing environmental catastrophe.
In general, NASA builds most spacecraft to considerably higher spec than required to perform the primary mission. This is a basic engineering principle called safety margin. If you calculate that a bridge needs to handle a load of X, then you build it to actually handle 3X.
Spacecraft that complete their primary missions become eligible to do extended mission, usually at a reduced budget. Most spacecraft that survive their primary mission do end up going into extended mission. The primary mission is the set of scientific observations that spacecraft are funded to do. The extended mission is a collection of observations that we do given that we are already "there".
This might seem odd, but actually makes a lot of sense. A lot of the mission cost is up-front cost -- designing instruments, launch vehicle, ground systems, calibration, systems integration, etc. So build the actual spacecraft a whole lot better than spec to make sure all those other costs don't get wasted if something unexpected occurs. Then, after the primary mission, you find yourself with an incredibly expensive asset uniquely placed to do scientific observations, which has just proven itself capable of providing lots of scientific data -- so do you shut it down, or keep pulling value out of it as long as you can?
Disclaimer: I speak for myself, not my employer or work site.
First, infinity is not a number, so you cannot divide it by two or use operators such as = and != on it.
However, we can discuss the cardinality of infinite sets. Given two infinite sets, where the second set contains every other member of the first set, they will have the same cardinality because there is a one-to-one correspondence. As a simple example, look at the positive integers and the positive even numbers. The two sets have the same cardinality because every positive integer corresponds to exactly one positive even number by the rule even=2*integer (AKA integer=even/2). Since there is a one-to-one mapping, the sets have the same cardinality.
Technology transfer of NASA tech to private industry already happens. Google "NASA commercialization" and "NASA technology transfer" for more info. For example, here is the NASA spinoff homepage.
Because market share has advantages even if the market share is due to piracy.
Think of Chinese ISVs and the OS/ISV catch-22. Right now Linux ISVs are relatively rare (on the desktop at least) because Windows is so dominant, and Windows is so dominant because most software is for Windows. Linux ISVs have trouble because of this catch-22. If the dominant local OS in a huge market like China were Windows, even if it's pirated, local ISVs would produce software for Windows. If Microsoft withdraws its products from the market, ISVs will produce software for competitor OSs, and maybe that software will also be sold in the West, boosting competitor OSs in markets where people actually do pay for OSs. Microsoft only remains dominant as an ISV platform if they supply the whole software ecosystem, even the pirates.
Similar for training. Microsoft wants every young kid growing up to be comfortable with Windows. Even if that kid is pirating software today, that kid might grow up and get a job in a corporation where his/her preferences would have influence in a purchasing decision. So again, better for Microsoft to live with the piracy that to strengthen a competitor.
So if Microsoft is going to lose a sale, they would rather that the software seat go to a pirated version of their own product than a competitor's product.
Reality check: per-capita GDP and income levels are about 10x higher in the US. Consider for a moment that the major cost that each agency faces is in labor. Obviously this is reflected in agency employees and contractor salaries, but also in materials and goods -- most of the cost for an item is the labor to extract or manufacture. In the US, those costs are about 10x higher because US labor costs about 10x more, and aerospace isn't outsourced. So in a very real sense, the reason space costs the US 10x more than the Chinese is because we are paying Americans to do the work.
Censorship is when the potential consumers of an artwork are denied access to experience that artwork by some authoritarian figure. When the potential consumers choose not to experience the artwork, that isn't censorship, that's the free market.
In different terms, freedom of speech is about the speaker's right to talk, not about the speaker's right to compel someone else to listen.
So if a game company releases a game that insults America and the American government bans it, that is censorship. If the government does not ban it but citizens choose not to buy it, that is not censorship.
See how you like working in a field that pretty much is dependant on the whims of taste and then be told, hey, entertainment has moved to something else now so we don't need you anymore...but we do like your other song and now we want it for free.
Too bad there is no market for older acts to tour, and thus continue to earn money as they age. Oh, wait. There is. In fact, according to the Eagle's website, two of the members are, in fact, touring. Ain't that grand?
In most professions, people get paid for work they do now, not for work they did 30 years ago. There are other careers where people tend to age out quickly, including IT -- it's much harder to get a job in IT after you are 40 years old. In other industries, the entire industry has gone away -- go ask a laid-off steelworker how their job prospects look, and then ask them how many residuals they're getting from the steel they worked on in the past. Even the old copyright law provided revenue streams for 56 years -- well after most people's retirement age, assuming the music was recorded at age 18 -- and the various copyright extensions have taken this to extremes. Do musicians really need to be paid for their music for decades after they've died?
So, a certification vendor says certification is necessary, based on statistics produced in-house. Subtext: security product vendors need to buy the services of the certification vendor. It might be true, or it might be bias. Hardly news.
Ideally one should show not only some of the great sci fi out there but also show sci fi's unique roles in literature.
Several people have pointed out Asimov's "The Last Question". It might also be informative to compare that with Asimov's "How it Happened" and at least one of C.S. Lewis's more religious Narnia novels ("The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", "Voyage of the Dawn Treader", "The Last Battle", "The Magician's Nephew".)
The classic Star Trek episode "Let That be Your Last Battlefield" is an opportunity to discuss sci fi as social commentary. If you prefer the written word, you can use "Fahrenheit 451" or even "The Running Man".
Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" is great for sci fi as inspiration.
Card's "Ender's Game" has a great description of something very similar to modern web forums. Great for sci fi as prediction. [Of course, by then, Usenet existed for real.]
Asimov's "The Feeling of Power" (or any of a number of Asimov's multivac stories) is great to demonstrate that sometimes, even sci fi authors fail to imagine aspects of the future, i.e. the miniaturization and cheapness of computers.
In general, for each sci fi item, I would ask not just "why is this great sci fi?" but also "Why couldn't this be mainstream fiction?"
NASA contracts almost all of their work out to private companies, you know. A few probes are built by NASA labs (JPL in particular), but mostly the spacecraft are bid out to industry, and the launch services are also bid out to industry.
And a step further: JPL itself is staffed 100% by contractors. It's an FFRDC -- Federally Funded Research and Development Center. See the JPL welcome page and look for "FFRDC".
TFA doesn't say this that the recovery is too slow. Nor does it say how much of a problem NO is, just that it is the biggest remaining threat. It does say that we are still in the process of phasing out HCFCs, i.e. we haven't done all that is already planned to deal with the today's threat. So at least based on the TFA, then no, no further action is required.
And BTW: your analogy is bad. The ozone hole isn't analogous to the deficit, it's analogous to the national debt. The recovery is analogous to a budget surplus.
TFA says that the ozone layer is improving anyway. So it appears that NO, while bad for the ozone layer, is not present in sufficient quantities to actually be causing a problem. No action should be required.
Or in different terms, it may be the most significant cause of damage to the ozone layer, but it is not a cause of significant damage to the ozone layer.
Indeed, the article implies that it is old news that noctilucent clouds can be caused by the shuttle. The new point in the article is that Tunguska was the likely cause of noctilucent clouds that occurred shortly after, which implies an impacting body containing a lot of water rather than a lot of rock. The slashdot article summary does actually convey this, although the slashdot article title is misleading.
Nuclear still isn't sustainable. We only have finite nuclear fuel. Replace oil with nuclear and we burn through it that much faster. While we still have plenty of reserves, nuclear is subject to the same peak extraction economics; if we use it faster, we'll soon run out of cheap nuclear fuel.
Modern CG? From seeing the footage, I'm less than impressed. The basic concept seems to still be mired in the 1980s. We're still seeing what amounts to a two-player snake game rather than a more modern FPS or RPG.
It's likely more subtle. Remember IE for Unix? Microsoft has a lot of business departments. Microsoft's desktop OS and office suites are dominant, but perhaps their browser or VM is not. If one department is not dominant in part because of multiplatform concerns, it makes sense for Microsoft to release a product that is multiplatform. Once the product obliterates the competition, Microsoft can then drop multiplatform support, reinforcing their underlying platform monopoly.
It's a delicate balancing act. But Microsoft has pulled it off before.
Slashdot Mirror
The skyline and culture for Gotham always seemed more like New York City. wikipedia also identifies Gotham City with NYC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotham_City#Origin_of_name
Metropolis, meanwhile, appeared Midwestern in the early comics, although wikipedia claims that they haven't been consistent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(comics)
Micro-USB is not just about size, it's actually the official replacement for mini-USB. micro-USB is designed to handle more disconnect/reconnect cycles than mini-USB, so it's better even if your devices are large enough to not need micro-USB. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#Mini_and_Micro
I also grumbled about replacing my mini-USB chargers, but at least it's standard-for-standard. I now have two connectors to deal with (some devices still on mini-USB, some devices on micro-USB) as opposed to a mess of proprietary connectors.
Thanks to squares and cubes, a small increase in capsule diameter gives a big increase in floor surface area and total volume. Also, Apollo trips were to the moon and back, which made the time between stops somewhat longer, so it needed to carry more food, water, etc.
The bigger surprise is that the CST-100 will seat 7 astronauts while the larger Orion was only designed for 6. TFA says that CST-100 will be "less spacious" than Orion, which probably is code for "astronauts will be packed like sardines."
An ex post facto law is a law whose effective date is before it was passed. A law is allowed to stop a previously legal activity -- if you think about it, the first law that banned any given illegal substance is criminalizing a behavior that was previously legal. The problem with ex post facto is when the law takes effect.
Example: if I pass a law in 1930 saying that cocaine was illegal starting in 1920 and try to prosecute someone who smoked crack in 1925, that's an ex post facto law in violation of the constitution. The person who smoked crack in 1925 had no way to know it would become illegal. If I pass the same law in 1930 but make it effective in 1931 and only prosecute people who smoke crack starting in 1932, that's not ex post facto. The people in 1932 who violated the law did so after the law was passed, so they had an opportunity to stop.
In this case, if the law tries to prosecute artists who already copied the works in question, then it would be ex post facto. But if it only prevents them from making new copies, then it's not ex post facto. Of course, it might be a bad law for reasons other than ex post facto.
A lot of the problems that cost so much time and effort to solve 50 years ago are now well-known and documented. Modern space companies are staffed with people who literally grew up in a world where the problems and solutions are well-known. Just knowing how the problems were solved back then makes it a lot cheaper to build new rockets, even aside from GP's point on the other new tech that has appeared on the shelf in the last 50 years.
GP is correct, Elohim isn't always plural. The above verse is not a counter-example. slashdot won't let me post Hebrew words, but you can see verse 26 here:
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0101.htm
In Hebrew, nouns and verbs agree on singular vs. plural. The subject of "elohim" takes the verb "va-yo-mer", which is singular; the plural would have been "va-yo-m'ru". So basic Hebrew grammar means that the word "elohim" is acting in the singular even though the word looks like a plural. The same thing happens in most other places that the word "elohim" appears, including in the verses before and after this one -- singular verbs.
The verb "na'a'seh", which is usually translated "let us make man", starts a new clause. To whom does "us" refer? That's a classic question, and one which is somewhat controversial, but grammatically does not imply that "elohim" is plural. Think of the analogous English sentence "Jack said 'we are running low on milk'" -- "Jack" is singular, even though "Jack" is speaking in the plural. Some of the options: (1) god is talking to creation; (2) god is talking to the angels; (3) god is using some sort of honorific "we", with modern analogs in the royal we and the editorial we; or (4) in a trinitarian view, god is addressing the other parts of the trinity.
Note that the word "elohim" has other meanings, including "gods" of other varieties (as in "you shall not have other gods before my face" from Exodus 20:2), angels, and judges.
However, GP missed Rael's point. Rael's claim is that the "elohim" aliens were misunderstood by humans, who thought they were god. Rael is explicitly trying to draw that parallel, so doesn't want to use an original term. See http://rael.org/rael_content/rael_summary.php .
Aging changes perspective. For a high school kid, appearing as a fat, awkward kid in a famous internet video is epic shame. But for an adult angling to be a lawyer and a politician, *having appeared* some years before in a famous internet video is a great advantage. I rather think he has come to terms with his fame and is using it to his advantage. Good for him.
As of this writing, BP's market cap is $129.89B, while google's is $149.69B. Even before the current mess, BP's stock was about 50% higher, which would have given it a market cap of about $195B; more than google, but still in the same league.
Links (will probably have different values by the time you view):
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=bp
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=goog
I think the comparison is unfair for other reasons, as I mentioned, but relative company size is not one of them.
BP's oil spill has far greater scope and urgency:
* The oil spill is a regional environmental catastrophe. It has scope well outside of BP or even the oil industry as a whole -- it's impacting marshlands, seafood industry, tourism, and other industries. So far, this privacy issue seems to only be present within google.
* The oil spill is an emergency. We normally give companies a chance to "make it right". In the case of the oil spill, any unnecessary delay means definite short-term damage/impact to the environment, the seafood industry, and tourism, and possible long-term damage. We don't have time to take a wait-and-see attitude.
Normal legal processes have taken years to "fix" problems. That's fine for improperly gathering private data; not fine for an ongoing environmental catastrophe.
In general, NASA builds most spacecraft to considerably higher spec than required to perform the primary mission. This is a basic engineering principle called safety margin. If you calculate that a bridge needs to handle a load of X, then you build it to actually handle 3X.
Spacecraft that complete their primary missions become eligible to do extended mission, usually at a reduced budget. Most spacecraft that survive their primary mission do end up going into extended mission. The primary mission is the set of scientific observations that spacecraft are funded to do. The extended mission is a collection of observations that we do given that we are already "there".
This might seem odd, but actually makes a lot of sense. A lot of the mission cost is up-front cost -- designing instruments, launch vehicle, ground systems, calibration, systems integration, etc. So build the actual spacecraft a whole lot better than spec to make sure all those other costs don't get wasted if something unexpected occurs. Then, after the primary mission, you find yourself with an incredibly expensive asset uniquely placed to do scientific observations, which has just proven itself capable of providing lots of scientific data -- so do you shut it down, or keep pulling value out of it as long as you can?
Disclaimer: I speak for myself, not my employer or work site.
Incorrect on two levels.
First, infinity is not a number, so you cannot divide it by two or use operators such as = and != on it.
However, we can discuss the cardinality of infinite sets. Given two infinite sets, where the second set contains every other member of the first set, they will have the same cardinality because there is a one-to-one correspondence. As a simple example, look at the positive integers and the positive even numbers. The two sets have the same cardinality because every positive integer corresponds to exactly one positive even number by the rule even=2*integer (AKA integer=even/2). Since there is a one-to-one mapping, the sets have the same cardinality.
Technology transfer of NASA tech to private industry already happens. Google "NASA commercialization" and "NASA technology transfer" for more info. For example, here is the NASA spinoff homepage.
Because market share has advantages even if the market share is due to piracy.
Think of Chinese ISVs and the OS/ISV catch-22. Right now Linux ISVs are relatively rare (on the desktop at least) because Windows is so dominant, and Windows is so dominant because most software is for Windows. Linux ISVs have trouble because of this catch-22. If the dominant local OS in a huge market like China were Windows, even if it's pirated, local ISVs would produce software for Windows. If Microsoft withdraws its products from the market, ISVs will produce software for competitor OSs, and maybe that software will also be sold in the West, boosting competitor OSs in markets where people actually do pay for OSs. Microsoft only remains dominant as an ISV platform if they supply the whole software ecosystem, even the pirates.
Similar for training. Microsoft wants every young kid growing up to be comfortable with Windows. Even if that kid is pirating software today, that kid might grow up and get a job in a corporation where his/her preferences would have influence in a purchasing decision. So again, better for Microsoft to live with the piracy that to strengthen a competitor.
So if Microsoft is going to lose a sale, they would rather that the software seat go to a pirated version of their own product than a competitor's product.
Reality check: per-capita GDP and income levels are about 10x higher in the US. Consider for a moment that the major cost that each agency faces is in labor. Obviously this is reflected in agency employees and contractor salaries, but also in materials and goods -- most of the cost for an item is the labor to extract or manufacture. In the US, those costs are about 10x higher because US labor costs about 10x more, and aerospace isn't outsourced. So in a very real sense, the reason space costs the US 10x more than the Chinese is because we are paying Americans to do the work.
Censorship is when the potential consumers of an artwork are denied access to experience that artwork by some authoritarian figure. When the potential consumers choose not to experience the artwork, that isn't censorship, that's the free market.
In different terms, freedom of speech is about the speaker's right to talk, not about the speaker's right to compel someone else to listen.
So if a game company releases a game that insults America and the American government bans it, that is censorship. If the government does not ban it but citizens choose not to buy it, that is not censorship.
See how you like working in a field that pretty much is dependant on the whims of taste and then be told, hey, entertainment has moved to something else now so we don't need you anymore...but we do like your other song and now we want it for free.
Too bad there is no market for older acts to tour, and thus continue to earn money as they age. Oh, wait. There is. In fact, according to the Eagle's website, two of the members are, in fact, touring. Ain't that grand?
In most professions, people get paid for work they do now, not for work they did 30 years ago. There are other careers where people tend to age out quickly, including IT -- it's much harder to get a job in IT after you are 40 years old. In other industries, the entire industry has gone away -- go ask a laid-off steelworker how their job prospects look, and then ask them how many residuals they're getting from the steel they worked on in the past. Even the old copyright law provided revenue streams for 56 years -- well after most people's retirement age, assuming the music was recorded at age 18 -- and the various copyright extensions have taken this to extremes. Do musicians really need to be paid for their music for decades after they've died?
So, a certification vendor says certification is necessary, based on statistics produced in-house. Subtext: security product vendors need to buy the services of the certification vendor. It might be true, or it might be bias. Hardly news.
Ideally one should show not only some of the great sci fi out there but also show sci fi's unique roles in literature.
Several people have pointed out Asimov's "The Last Question". It might also be informative to compare that with Asimov's "How it Happened" and at least one of C.S. Lewis's more religious Narnia novels ("The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", "Voyage of the Dawn Treader", "The Last Battle", "The Magician's Nephew".)
The classic Star Trek episode "Let That be Your Last Battlefield" is an opportunity to discuss sci fi as social commentary. If you prefer the written word, you can use "Fahrenheit 451" or even "The Running Man".
Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" is great for sci fi as inspiration.
Card's "Ender's Game" has a great description of something very similar to modern web forums. Great for sci fi as prediction. [Of course, by then, Usenet existed for real.]
Asimov's "The Feeling of Power" (or any of a number of Asimov's multivac stories) is great to demonstrate that sometimes, even sci fi authors fail to imagine aspects of the future, i.e. the miniaturization and cheapness of computers.
In general, for each sci fi item, I would ask not just "why is this great sci fi?" but also "Why couldn't this be mainstream fiction?"
NASA contracts almost all of their work out to private companies, you know. A few probes are built by NASA labs (JPL in particular), but mostly the spacecraft are bid out to industry, and the launch services are also bid out to industry.
And a step further: JPL itself is staffed 100% by contractors. It's an FFRDC -- Federally Funded Research and Development Center. See the JPL welcome page and look for "FFRDC".
TFA doesn't say this that the recovery is too slow. Nor does it say how much of a problem NO is, just that it is the biggest remaining threat. It does say that we are still in the process of phasing out HCFCs, i.e. we haven't done all that is already planned to deal with the today's threat. So at least based on the TFA, then no, no further action is required.
And BTW: your analogy is bad. The ozone hole isn't analogous to the deficit, it's analogous to the national debt. The recovery is analogous to a budget surplus.
TFA says that the ozone layer is improving anyway. So it appears that NO, while bad for the ozone layer, is not present in sufficient quantities to actually be causing a problem. No action should be required.
Or in different terms, it may be the most significant cause of damage to the ozone layer, but it is not a cause of significant damage to the ozone layer.
Indeed, the article implies that it is old news that noctilucent clouds can be caused by the shuttle. The new point in the article is that Tunguska was the likely cause of noctilucent clouds that occurred shortly after, which implies an impacting body containing a lot of water rather than a lot of rock. The slashdot article summary does actually convey this, although the slashdot article title is misleading.
Note that there are parallels here with the first manned American orbital mission. John Glenn observed "sparks" that were later determined to be water vapor. Although I don't think those were visible from the ground as noctilucent clouds.
Nuclear still isn't sustainable. We only have finite nuclear fuel. Replace oil with nuclear and we burn through it that much faster. While we still have plenty of reserves, nuclear is subject to the same peak extraction economics; if we use it faster, we'll soon run out of cheap nuclear fuel.
Modern CG? From seeing the footage, I'm less than impressed. The basic concept seems to still be mired in the 1980s. We're still seeing what amounts to a two-player snake game rather than a more modern FPS or RPG.
It's likely more subtle. Remember IE for Unix? Microsoft has a lot of business departments. Microsoft's desktop OS and office suites are dominant, but perhaps their browser or VM is not. If one department is not dominant in part because of multiplatform concerns, it makes sense for Microsoft to release a product that is multiplatform. Once the product obliterates the competition, Microsoft can then drop multiplatform support, reinforcing their underlying platform monopoly.
It's a delicate balancing act. But Microsoft has pulled it off before.