but since no actual crime took place, I don't see how her lawsuit will go anywhere
Obviously you don't understand the legal system in the USA.
You don't have to be guilty of anything to lose a civil suit. All the accuser (more likely accuser's lawyer) has to do is convince a jury.
The same is true for criminal cases. You don't have to be guilty. The prosecutor just has to convince the jury you are.
(FWIW, in some states the sexual solicitation of a minor is a felony, even over a communications medium like phones or the internet. His behavior was a little more illegal than "not exactly proper" in some jurisdictions.)
Natalie Portman Says Focus Of AMD Should Be Starting World War III
Monkey points us to an article over at The Register that has some pretty wicked quotes from Natalie Portman about AMD. He thinks that AMD should focus less on profits and more on starting World War III. Natalie Portman says "Instead of pouring money into the black hole of developing Christianity, they should focus on starting World War III and the profits will come their way." There are many more interesting tidbits in the article, but I'll let you discover and discuss them.
Of course theres always the oldest trick in the book, set a screen dump as someones desktop and delete their icons and put the start bar on auto hide. This won't fool anyone with half a brain but it is funny the amount of confusion it can cause on someone whos not so computer literate.
I was in the Army from 1995 to 1998. All the office machines were running Win95 (our field equipment ran Unix... hooah!). Anyway, Windows 95 had a fun "feature"... click the start button, hit escape, then ALT-minus. Select "Close".
Bye-bye start buttons on all of the machines, and nobody knew how to reboot them softly. (One way was to hit alt-F4 while the desktop is displayed.)
Anyway, the first sergeant, commander, supply sgt, training NCO (who was also my boss), and others I got took it well, since I was the "computer person" in the unit and assured them no permanent damage had been done.
Not necessarily. If it indeed happened, there should be an iridium layer at the geologic layer corresponding to the date they propose for this mysterious impact. If they find one, and it predates all known Yellowstone eruptions, is below all Yellowstone-originated ash layers, and gets thicker toward the suspected impact zone, those would be strong evidence...
True, but depending on the size and composition of the meteorite, that layer could be *extremely* thin.
Maybe I'll go ahead and finish that second major and go to grad school. I could look for an iridium layer and write up a thesis.
IANQAG (I am not quite a geologist), but I am just finishing up my minor in Geology, and considering it as a second major.
Unlikely. The Mohorovicic (Moho) discontinuity can be described in a few different ways - either where seismic veolocities have a marked discontinuity, or where a noticable chemical/mineralogical change occurs (can't remember what it is, I'm a geophysicist, not a geologist).
Seismic discontinuity.
Anyway, regarding the grandparent... in theory, the only thing keeping the mantle from melting is pressure (phase diagrams are easy to find). When you drill down, if you don't maintain pressure in the well, (again, in theory) you might be able to relieve the pressure on mantle rock and cause it to melt. Of course, you'd need a really big hole for the resulting magma to come up before it plugs itself like a puncture wound.
Making an artificial volcano is a highly unlikely thing to accomplish, either on accident or on purpose.
I've read one theory about the yellowstone hotspot that is related to this. David Alt and Donald Hyndman believe (found in _Roadside Geology of Idaho_) that a meteorite struck the pacific northwest and the impact crater relieved pressure on the mantle, allowing the magma to well up. This, of course, relieved pressure below and caused further upwelling. Each eruption of what is now the Yellowstone hot spot keeps the cycle going, they claim.
I don't think it's a very probable explanation, and it doesn't seem to be easily verifiable or falsifiable, since the original evidence would have been destroyed by the volcanic eruptions.
How would you have liked them to include this in the film?
I agree with most of your points, and I agree that it would have soured the film for "mainstream" viewers... so my solution:
It would have made a good short film for later release (maybe DVD only?). Think about it, there's a complete story there... there's enough room for embellishment without screwing up the plot.
But, they killed off Saruman, so that made it impossible. They would have made money, for sure, especially since the Scouring would have have cost a lot less as far as special effects are concerned, and just about anything related to the LotR movies has sold... another movie would, too.
I remember similar discussions over plot removal in Lord of the Rings... I'll reserve judgement until I actually see the film, as opposed to reading someone's fanboy opinion.
And enough of the plot was removed, and so many of the characters changed that the movie was an okay "telling", but it was *not* LotR as those of us who have read the books expect.
I, personally, thought the LotR movies were disappointing. Here's the main reasons why:
* In the book, it was Gandalf who wanted to go through Moria. He wasn't afraid of it. * In the book, Aragorn always knew the role he was born into. In the movie he was reluctant to lead and comparatively weak. * In the book, Aragorn never questioned his devotion to Arwen. * In the book, Faramir never tried to take the ring. This is *key*, as it showed that not all men were swayed by it and gave hope for the future of men. Additionally, it showed that the better son, man, and leader isn't necessarily favored by a father. He was honorable in the book. The movie just f***ed it up bad. * Failure to include the scouring of the Shire missed another key point in the book, that evil touches everything, even the most innocent of places and things. Between this and the preceeding point, it's clear that the writers had little literary understanding of Tolkien's work. * Tolkien described Frodo as queer, but not necessarily in *that* way. There is not anything inherently wrong with that portrayal, but it led to a lot of annoying moments where it seemed clear that certain scenes' only value was to show that Frodo was carrying a torch for Sam. Between this and finding a way to throw in female characters in the movie where none existed in the book, the whole series reeks of political correctness being forced on Tolkien's story. People would have watched it without this having been done to it.
There are many other changes, but I can see the justification for most them (mostly film run-time considerations).
The same things done to H2G2 will completely ruin the movie, for me at least. There are a lot of subtleties in the story, and it appears (according to the review) that they left out many of them. Again, it points to the problem where movie-makers adapting a novel have no literary understanding of the work.
As a matter of interest, if having all the bills the same size is such a good idea, why aren't all coins the same size as well?
(1) Tradition. (2) The printing on a coin is a lot smaller, and there is less contrast.
With a bill, the printing is large, and the contrast between the paper and ink is high, allowing faster recognition of the denomination.
Note that some people in this discussion have complained that Susan B Anthony dollars and quarters are too similar.
Except the dollar is bigger, the bust is facing to the right, and has a regular polygon (a hendecagon - 11 sided) stamped on the outer edge of both the obverse and the reverse.
The quarter is smaller, bust facing left, and has a thin outer band on the obverse and reverse.
The only similarity that makes a real difference is that neither one has smoothe outside edges. This, IMHO, is the only real problem with the Susan B., and could have been changed easily.
You're thinking of the new dollar coin, the older silver colored ones with Susan on them are fairly easy to confuse with quarters superficially.
No, I was thinking about the new dollar coin because the parent post implied (in the text I quoted) that the new coin had the exact same problems as the old coin. I disagree.
The Susan B. Anthony dollars are only confusing to people who don't pay attention, I guess. I've never made that mistake, and I've only ran into a few minimum-wage clerks who have said "you only gave me $.50" when I gave them $2 in Susan B's. Most people didn't bat an eye, even in my little town. Then there are places like Boston, where you see $1 coins all the time because many machines that sell tokens for the T take $1 coins and give them as change, too.
Every paycheck I used to get a ton of them from the bank (in my effort to get them circulating... I prefer coins over bills in the $1 denomination. Now I have probably 50 or so in my safe (since they are no longer in production). Now I get the Sacajawea (however you spell it), and spend them instead.
When I heard they were going to create a new dollar coin a couple of years ago, I thought: Great, now that they've learned their lesson, they won't put out a coin that is so easily mistaken for another denomination. I was wrong; now the vending machine industry wanted them to make the new coin exactly the same size and weight as the Susan B. to maintain "compatibility"! How stupid can they get? Now nobody uses the new one either.
So, are you saying that even though it is (1) bigger than a quarter and (2) gold-ish in color, it still looks like some other U.S. coin in circulation? I'd think that #2 would have eliminated that. Maybe you and some other people are too stupid to tell the difference, but not me and most people I know.
You want to see the new dollar coin in use? Tell the government to stop printing paper singles and start minting more of the coins. The banks around here have hardly any of them. Part of the problem is that morons save them because they are seen as being more rare, and the other part is that there aren't enough of them in circulation.
I really don't understand the context of the question. My Palm Zire 21 both runs and charges off of USB. Of course, it charges faster if the AC adapter is plugged in...
What the TFA was talking about is that there are many (small) proprietary connectors on phones and some PDAs that require a special cable to link up to USB or a charger.
I assume that a lot of these are designed with space in mind (the chassis is rather small on a cell or PDA). They don't want to put one charging connector, one programming connector, one USB port, etc. all on separate connectors because that takes away space.
Now, as far as your PDA is concerned, that's one of the other things. USB can only supply a little bit of current for charging, enough to trickle-charge a Zire 21 (or 31 in my case). The charging system can make use of a lot more current to charge the battery (especially Li-ION batteries), and an external charger can supply that.
Additionally, the interface to the external charger can be "dumb"... with USB the device has to tell the PC how much current it draws, so there must be communication (I think there is a default for the device side, and that's how the cigarette lighter->USB power adapters work).
Anyway, my guess is that the guy who submitted TFA was just annoyed at having to buy a $25 cable from his cell phone manufacturer... which is another advantage of a small proprietary connector.
I don't normally reply to myself, but what the hell... I've thought more about it.
I'll blow any conspiracy theory with a counterexample
Of course, the White House and Capitol really are obscured, but it just proves that our elected representatives are paranoid. The DoD is obviously not scared of a few satellite photos. The big wigs there are probably thinking something along the lines of "you think that's cool? You should see our imagery!"
The reality of the situation is, they probably don't want to reveal the locations of guards and air defense artillery emplacements.
I'm not sure whether the the obscuration of the imagery is mandated by law, or if Google or the imagery provider is obscuring it just to avoid potential problems.
Too bad the imagery isn't updated often... I found a cool way to tell what time it is in D.C.:
Perhaps that is why certain images from Google have been obscured? Several buildings on and near the White House property have been covered up. The entire grounds of the Capitol building are blurry (while the surrounding area is 10x or 100x sharper)... Commence the conspiracy theories!
I'll blow any conspiracy theory with a counterexample:
Are we sure that we can live with a three year gap?
Gee, how did we live all these many, many thousands of years without a space telescope?
There will probably not be a major asteroid stike on earth during my lifetime, However, I belive they will identify a rock that will impact at some future date before then.
Suppose we do... what exactly do you think we can do about it? Half the population will have wiped itself out in mass panic before they could even get a shuttle launched with little hope of success at changing things (with modern technology).
XP x64 has also completely dropped 16bit support. No more old DOS programs. No more Win3.1 programs.
If you are really running 16-bit applications (isn't it about time you perform a fscking upgrade?), just use Bochs. It'll be plenty fast on an AMD 64-bit processor.
The single biggest problem is, IMNSHO, is that the shuttle was designed three decades ago, and is still a first-generation vehicle. Sure, there have been upgrades, but there is one simple fact: We could build a better system right now.
We have experience. We have new technology. We have a long list of "lessons learned" from the shuttle. We have new partners in space exploration.
With these assets in mind, we could presumably devise a new reusable launch vehicle, hopefully one that reduces cost to less $1500 per kilogram to operate.
Wish I had more time to think about this, but unfortunately, Linear Algebra awaits...
Lane Community College near the People's Republic of Eugene, Oregon has an excellent Computer Technology programs in the CIT department. Options include a 2-year Computer Programming degree if you want to be a VB/Java code monkey, as well as Computer Network Operations and Computer User Support programs..
Most of the courses are fully transferable to Oregon universities, and they offer a transfer program for Computer Science students which basically covers most of the lower-division requirements for most CIS programs, including discrete mathematics and introductory computer science courses.
In two years and a term, I earned the AAOT (and, well, the AGS... I could apply for the AS degree too - I collect associate degrees, I guess) which guaranteed that I'd meet group requirements as set forth by the University of Oregon's degree requirements, in addition to filling out the requirements of the direct transfer. It worked out well, and I am now a senior in CIS at the UO.
Because it sucked. This is honest opinion, not a troll or flamebait.
Every episode looked like a Mad TV or SNL spoof. It wasn't so bad that it was fit for an MST3K treatment, but it was close.
It seemed like space comedy. That's okay, I guess, if you like comedy, but I don't. I don't like the melodrama of Star Trek, necessarily, either.
I liked B5. I liked Earth: Final Conflict for the first several seasons, then it turned crappy. I like Andromeda, though it took me a while to get into it. I only really started watching it the past couple seasons. Enterprise basically sucks, which is why it's getting cancelled, too. Sliders was good.
If you look at what's on TV today that's popular, you've got all the CSI and Law & Order shows. There is Navy NCIS and JAG. Now there's Medical Investigations and House. That's the kind of show that people watch.
If you can work some of the elements that make these shows popular into a sci-fi show, you'll get viewers as long as you don't resort to completely bullshit plot devices.
There are some things most of these have in common with each other. There's the good vs. evil, there's the mystery. There's the internal conflict, there's (and this is the big one) the believable problem solving.
The problem with Star Trek, for instance, especially in the later incarnations, was simply that situations and solutions to problems were no longer believable. This was especially prevalent in Voyager and the "particle of the week" solution formula. It's deus ex machina, and people don't like it.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/txconst/articles/cn 000100.html
Here are the main sections of the Texas state constitution.
No, the list you provided is the sections of article 1 of the Texas State Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights.
Full document here.
I can't find anything about requiring access to the entire internet if you provide access to some of the internet.
Despite your inaccuracy, I believe that point still stands, though.
its a blimp, it will gently touch down with 4 years warning.
Unless the aforementioned malfunction is in the stitching.
Maybe we could apply the term "wardrobe malfunction" to a popped blimp.
but since no actual crime took place, I don't see how her lawsuit will go anywhere
Obviously you don't understand the legal system in the USA.
You don't have to be guilty of anything to lose a civil suit. All the accuser (more likely accuser's lawyer) has to do is convince a jury.
The same is true for criminal cases. You don't have to be guilty. The prosecutor just has to convince the jury you are.
(FWIW, in some states the sexual solicitation of a minor is a felony, even over a communications medium like phones or the internet. His behavior was a little more illegal than "not exactly proper" in some jurisdictions.)
What happens when this thing malfunctions and falls out of the sky?
My bet is that it'll hit the ground.
Now, why didn't I think of that?
I'd also presume old Skylab jokes would resurface.
What happens when this thing malfunctions and falls out of the sky?
Natalie Portman Says Focus Of AMD Should Be Starting World War III
Monkey points us to an article over at The Register that has some pretty wicked quotes from Natalie Portman about AMD. He thinks that AMD should focus less on profits and more on starting World War III. Natalie Portman says "Instead of pouring money into the black hole of developing Christianity, they should focus on starting World War III and the profits will come their way." There are many more interesting tidbits in the article, but I'll let you discover and discuss them.
OMFG, that's hilarious.
Of course theres always the oldest trick in the book, set a screen dump as someones desktop and delete their icons and put the start bar on auto hide. This won't fool anyone with half a brain but it is funny the amount of confusion it can cause on someone whos not so computer literate.
I was in the Army from 1995 to 1998. All the office machines were running Win95 (our field equipment ran Unix... hooah!). Anyway, Windows 95 had a fun "feature"... click the start button, hit escape, then ALT-minus. Select "Close".
Bye-bye start buttons on all of the machines, and nobody knew how to reboot them softly. (One way was to hit alt-F4 while the desktop is displayed.)
Anyway, the first sergeant, commander, supply sgt, training NCO (who was also my boss), and others I got took it well, since I was the "computer person" in the unit and assured them no permanent damage had been done.
Not necessarily. If it indeed happened, there should be an iridium layer at the geologic layer corresponding to the date they propose for this mysterious impact. If they find one, and it predates all known Yellowstone eruptions, is below all Yellowstone-originated ash layers, and gets thicker toward the suspected impact zone, those would be strong evidence...
True, but depending on the size and composition of the meteorite, that layer could be *extremely* thin.
Maybe I'll go ahead and finish that second major and go to grad school. I could look for an iridium layer and write up a thesis.
Seismic discontinuity.
I didn't mean to exclude the theoretical mineralogical/chemical change, but the Moho is definitely a seismic discontinuity.
IANQAG (I am not quite a geologist), but I am just finishing up my minor in Geology, and considering it as a second major.
Unlikely. The Mohorovicic (Moho) discontinuity can be described in a few different ways - either where seismic veolocities have a marked discontinuity, or where a noticable chemical/mineralogical change occurs (can't remember what it is, I'm a geophysicist, not a geologist).
Seismic discontinuity.
Anyway, regarding the grandparent... in theory, the only thing keeping the mantle from melting is pressure (phase diagrams are easy to find). When you drill down, if you don't maintain pressure in the well, (again, in theory) you might be able to relieve the pressure on mantle rock and cause it to melt. Of course, you'd need a really big hole for the resulting magma to come up before it plugs itself like a puncture wound.
Making an artificial volcano is a highly unlikely thing to accomplish, either on accident or on purpose.
I've read one theory about the yellowstone hotspot that is related to this. David Alt and Donald Hyndman believe (found in _Roadside Geology of Idaho_) that a meteorite struck the pacific northwest and the impact crater relieved pressure on the mantle, allowing the magma to well up. This, of course, relieved pressure below and caused further upwelling. Each eruption of what is now the Yellowstone hot spot keeps the cycle going, they claim.
I don't think it's a very probable explanation, and it doesn't seem to be easily verifiable or falsifiable, since the original evidence would have been destroyed by the volcanic eruptions.
How would you have liked them to include this in the film?
I agree with most of your points, and I agree that it would have soured the film for "mainstream" viewers... so my solution:
It would have made a good short film for later release (maybe DVD only?). Think about it, there's a complete story there... there's enough room for embellishment without screwing up the plot.
But, they killed off Saruman, so that made it impossible. They would have made money, for sure, especially since the Scouring would have have cost a lot less as far as special effects are concerned, and just about anything related to the LotR movies has sold... another movie would, too.
I remember similar discussions over plot removal in Lord of the Rings... I'll reserve judgement until I actually see the film, as opposed to reading someone's fanboy opinion.
And enough of the plot was removed, and so many of the characters changed that the movie was an okay "telling", but it was *not* LotR as those of us who have read the books expect.
I, personally, thought the LotR movies were disappointing. Here's the main reasons why:
* In the book, it was Gandalf who wanted to go through Moria. He wasn't afraid of it.
* In the book, Aragorn always knew the role he was born into. In the movie he was reluctant to lead and comparatively weak.
* In the book, Aragorn never questioned his devotion to Arwen.
* In the book, Faramir never tried to take the ring. This is *key*, as it showed that not all men were swayed by it and gave hope for the future of men. Additionally, it showed that the better son, man, and leader isn't necessarily favored by a father. He was honorable in the book. The movie just f***ed it up bad.
* Failure to include the scouring of the Shire missed another key point in the book, that evil touches everything, even the most innocent of places and things. Between this and the preceeding point, it's clear that the writers had little literary understanding of Tolkien's work.
* Tolkien described Frodo as queer, but not necessarily in *that* way. There is not anything inherently wrong with that portrayal, but it led to a lot of annoying moments where it seemed clear that certain scenes' only value was to show that Frodo was carrying a torch for Sam. Between this and finding a way to throw in female characters in the movie where none existed in the book, the whole series reeks of political correctness being forced on Tolkien's story. People would have watched it without this having been done to it.
There are many other changes, but I can see the justification for most them (mostly film run-time considerations).
The same things done to H2G2 will completely ruin the movie, for me at least. There are a lot of subtleties in the story, and it appears (according to the review) that they left out many of them. Again, it points to the problem where movie-makers adapting a novel have no literary understanding of the work.
Maybe geeks should consider spending their 8 bucks on a film that isn't science fiction, if the science fiction films that come out stink.
A lot of those other films are better with a date... and you're talking about geeks here.
As a matter of interest, if having all the bills the same size is such a good idea, why aren't all coins the same size as well?
(1) Tradition. (2) The printing on a coin is a lot smaller, and there is less contrast.
With a bill, the printing is large, and the contrast between the paper and ink is high, allowing faster recognition of the denomination.
Note that some people in this discussion have complained that Susan B Anthony dollars and quarters are too similar.
Except the dollar is bigger, the bust is facing to the right, and has a regular polygon (a hendecagon - 11 sided) stamped on the outer edge of both the obverse and the reverse.
The quarter is smaller, bust facing left, and has a thin outer band on the obverse and reverse.
The only similarity that makes a real difference is that neither one has smoothe outside edges. This, IMHO, is the only real problem with the Susan B., and could have been changed easily.
You're thinking of the new dollar coin, the older silver colored ones with Susan on them are fairly easy to confuse with quarters superficially.
No, I was thinking about the new dollar coin because the parent post implied (in the text I quoted) that the new coin had the exact same problems as the old coin. I disagree.
The Susan B. Anthony dollars are only confusing to people who don't pay attention, I guess. I've never made that mistake, and I've only ran into a few minimum-wage clerks who have said "you only gave me $.50" when I gave them $2 in Susan B's. Most people didn't bat an eye, even in my little town. Then there are places like Boston, where you see $1 coins all the time because many machines that sell tokens for the T take $1 coins and give them as change, too.
Every paycheck I used to get a ton of them from the bank (in my effort to get them circulating... I prefer coins over bills in the $1 denomination. Now I have probably 50 or so in my safe (since they are no longer in production). Now I get the Sacajawea (however you spell it), and spend them instead.
When I heard they were going to create a new dollar coin a couple of years ago, I thought: Great, now that they've learned their lesson, they won't put out a coin that is so easily mistaken for another denomination. I was wrong; now the vending machine industry wanted them to make the new coin exactly the same size and weight as the Susan B. to maintain "compatibility"! How stupid can they get? Now nobody uses the new one either.
So, are you saying that even though it is (1) bigger than a quarter and (2) gold-ish in color, it still looks like some other U.S. coin in circulation? I'd think that #2 would have eliminated that. Maybe you and some other people are too stupid to tell the difference, but not me and most people I know.
You want to see the new dollar coin in use? Tell the government to stop printing paper singles and start minting more of the coins. The banks around here have hardly any of them. Part of the problem is that morons save them because they are seen as being more rare, and the other part is that there aren't enough of them in circulation.
I really don't understand the context of the question. My Palm Zire 21 both runs and charges off of USB. Of course, it charges faster if the AC adapter is plugged in...
What the TFA was talking about is that there are many (small) proprietary connectors on phones and some PDAs that require a special cable to link up to USB or a charger.
I assume that a lot of these are designed with space in mind (the chassis is rather small on a cell or PDA). They don't want to put one charging connector, one programming connector, one USB port, etc. all on separate connectors because that takes away space.
Now, as far as your PDA is concerned, that's one of the other things. USB can only supply a little bit of current for charging, enough to trickle-charge a Zire 21 (or 31 in my case). The charging system can make use of a lot more current to charge the battery (especially Li-ION batteries), and an external charger can supply that.
Additionally, the interface to the external charger can be "dumb"... with USB the device has to tell the PC how much current it draws, so there must be communication (I think there is a default for the device side, and that's how the cigarette lighter->USB power adapters work).
Anyway, my guess is that the guy who submitted TFA was just annoyed at having to buy a $25 cable from his cell phone manufacturer... which is another advantage of a small proprietary connector.
So what time would that be?
Late afternoon or early evening... About 6 PM, I'd guess. (Old time, where the literal high noon is 12:00 PM)
Is the top North?
Of course top is North. It's a map server. All standard maps are North at the top.
Daylight Saving time? What Day of the year? Does it matter?
I figure that it doesn't matter. You can take a guess at local time, but you're not going to be as accurate as they are in Colorado Springs.
I don't normally reply to myself, but what the hell... I've thought more about it.
:)
I'll blow any conspiracy theory with a counterexample
Of course, the White House and Capitol really are obscured, but it just proves that our elected representatives are paranoid. The DoD is obviously not scared of a few satellite photos. The big wigs there are probably thinking something along the lines of "you think that's cool? You should see our imagery!"
The reality of the situation is, they probably don't want to reveal the locations of guards and air defense artillery emplacements.
I'm not sure whether the the obscuration of the imagery is mandated by law, or if Google or the imagery provider is obscuring it just to avoid potential problems.
Too bad the imagery isn't updated often... I found a cool way to tell what time it is in D.C.:
Sundial
Perhaps that is why certain images from Google have been obscured? Several buildings on and near the White House property have been covered up. The entire grounds of the Capitol building are blurry (while the surrounding area is 10x or 100x sharper) ... Commence the conspiracy theories!
I'll blow any conspiracy theory with a counterexample:
The Pentagon.
Are we sure that we can live with a three year gap?
Gee, how did we live all these many, many thousands of years without a space telescope?
There will probably not be a major asteroid stike on earth during my lifetime, However, I belive they will identify a rock that will impact at some future date before then.
Suppose we do... what exactly do you think we can do about it? Half the population will have wiped itself out in mass panic before they could even get a shuttle launched with little hope of success at changing things (with modern technology).
XP x64 has also completely dropped 16bit support. No more old DOS programs. No more Win3.1 programs.
If you are really running 16-bit applications (isn't it about time you perform a fscking upgrade?), just use Bochs. It'll be plenty fast on an AMD 64-bit processor.
I wish they really would cancel it!
That was my first thought, too, upon seeing this Slashdot post.
The shuttle is damn expensive to operate, as this guy points out.
The single biggest problem is, IMNSHO, is that the shuttle was designed three decades ago, and is still a first-generation vehicle. Sure, there have been upgrades, but there is one simple fact: We could build a better system right now.
We have experience. We have new technology. We have a long list of "lessons learned" from the shuttle. We have new partners in space exploration.
With these assets in mind, we could presumably devise a new reusable launch vehicle, hopefully one that reduces cost to less $1500 per kilogram to operate.
Wish I had more time to think about this, but unfortunately, Linear Algebra awaits...
Lane Community College near the People's Republic of Eugene, Oregon has an excellent Computer Technology programs in the CIT department. Options include a 2-year Computer Programming degree if you want to be a VB/Java code monkey, as well as Computer Network Operations and Computer User Support programs..
Most of the courses are fully transferable to Oregon universities, and they offer a transfer program for Computer Science students which basically covers most of the lower-division requirements for most CIS programs, including discrete mathematics and introductory computer science courses.
In two years and a term, I earned the AAOT (and, well, the AGS... I could apply for the AS degree too - I collect associate degrees, I guess) which guaranteed that I'd meet group requirements as set forth by the University of Oregon's degree requirements, in addition to filling out the requirements of the direct transfer. It worked out well, and I am now a senior in CIS at the UO.
It was called Firefly. They cancelled it.
Because it sucked. This is honest opinion, not a troll or flamebait.
Every episode looked like a Mad TV or SNL spoof. It wasn't so bad that it was fit for an MST3K treatment, but it was close.
It seemed like space comedy. That's okay, I guess, if you like comedy, but I don't. I don't like the melodrama of Star Trek, necessarily, either.
I liked B5. I liked Earth: Final Conflict for the first several seasons, then it turned crappy. I like Andromeda, though it took me a while to get into it. I only really started watching it the past couple seasons. Enterprise basically sucks, which is why it's getting cancelled, too. Sliders was good.
If you look at what's on TV today that's popular, you've got all the CSI and Law & Order shows. There is Navy NCIS and JAG. Now there's Medical Investigations and House. That's the kind of show that people watch.
If you can work some of the elements that make these shows popular into a sci-fi show, you'll get viewers as long as you don't resort to completely bullshit plot devices.
There are some things most of these have in common with each other. There's the good vs. evil, there's the mystery. There's the internal conflict, there's (and this is the big one) the believable problem solving.
The problem with Star Trek, for instance, especially in the later incarnations, was simply that situations and solutions to problems were no longer believable. This was especially prevalent in Voyager and the "particle of the week" solution formula. It's deus ex machina , and people don't like it.