Gigabit would be nice too. Why push the envelope with everything except speed, especially since people will need to transfer those torrents off the router once they're done?
the Space Shuttle program, which as of 2006 nearly costs $5 billion annually, is normally not considered part of the ISS budget
As for the ISS expenditures:
NASA's 2007 budget request [12] lists costs for the ISS (without Shuttle costs) as $25.6 billion for the years 1994 to 2005. For each of 2005 and 2006 about $1.7 to 1.8 billion are allocated to the ISS - this sum will be rising until 2010 when it is calculated to reach 2.3 billion and then should stay at the same level, however inflation-adjusted, until 2016, the defined end of the program.
Nontrivial, but less than half of the $5B you incorrectly reported.
And while the utility is certainly important, it's not the only measure of value. The experience itself is a value, in that the people involved are gaining experience with constructing things in orbit, and having a continuous human presence in orbit furthers our knowledge of the physiological effects of living in space.
The ISS may be a small step, but it's a step, and that's ultimately how humanity progresses for the most part -- in steps, not in leaps and bounds. The ISS may only be an incremental progression, but it's progress nonetheless.
That's not to say the ISS hasn't been somewhat disappointing, but that's at least in part due to several modules being cancelled due to complaints about cost. It's the typical bureaucratic Catch-22: People want to see results before upping the ante. Unfortunately, it's not rarely possible to work like that. If you fund everything except the wheels of a car, all you've got is a nice air-conditioned box.
And even if you consider the ISS a failure, it's important to remember that science is progressed by failure just as much as success -- at the very least we should have ideas on what to do, or not to do, the next time.
I'm a soon-to-be college student (very soon-- next week), and I wanted to buy some good webcams for my girlfriend and I to be able to see each other with.
As much as it pains me to say this, you probably should've saved your money instead of buying a webcam for your soon-to-be ex.
1) Low regard for wealthy people. 2) Collapse of USSR.
They may have been related, and one may have contributed to the other, but it's naive to say that a country collapsed because people didn't respect copyright. Furthermore, rampant corruption is less of an issue with a transparent government because it allows us to hold our politicians accountable.
Now it may be true that America is so tied to entertainment that if it stopped being profitable, and entertainment therefore stopped being produced en masse, we would have little of value to offer the world, and our economy would subsequently collapse. (And in fact, entertainment is America's biggest export.) That, however, would be the fault of putting too many eggs in one entertaining basket.
Actually, the workers in the US have the highest average of working hours in the industrialized world, along with the lowest (and still falling) vacation time. Japanese businessmen, at least here in Asia, are actually renowned for their vacation and extravagant leisure activities, particularly expensive golfing vacations. Their reputation may be different on the other side of the pond, but that's probably more PR or urban legend than anything else. That's not to say they're not hardworking when they're at work, just that the hours thing is more myth than fact, probably related to the fact that many Asian societies do pressure their children to place foremost emphasis on their education, to the exclusion of all else. That's not so different from parents in the US, but Asian parents do seem to be much more agressive about it, at least from what I've seen -- which isn't imperical evidence, of course.
Nonetheless, as I've outlined in the past, it would take approximately 3 years of constant high-usage for the price of the extra energy to reach the higher upfront cost.
Moreover, money spent upfront is more expensive than money spent over time. The easiest way for the layman to understand the concept is as follows: I'll give you a million dollars.
Except that taxation is an illusion, since the government creates the money. What they're really doing is pretending to give it to you. The most obvious version of this is that government workers pay taxes, but we're all government workers indirectly, since we work for the government's money. If taxation did not exist, salaries would just be lower. You wouldn't make any more money, and even if you did, everyone else would too, which means inflation would increase to offset the extra cash. Remember, inflation is set by how much disposible income people have on average. The prices of goods and services is, and always will be, directly proportional (or at least closely linked) to how much the lowest paid workers make. If they make "more," the price of goods and services must increase -- both because you're paying the people who make them more, and because prices are proportional to average income. When income goes up, prices always follow. The only way the cycle could end is if all matter and energy were reduced to 0 value, which is highly unlikely.
I guess I'm just less impressionable or more forgetful then, because I have no memory of said commercial. If I didn't already know Honeycomb was a cereal, I wouldn't even have known that the above were probably references to a commercial.
There has to be more than just a capacity.. there actually has to be moisture coming from somewhere. Unless your computer is built out of ice, there's no source of water.
I did, in fact, use the cosine, but I must have fat fingered something in the calculator to come up with ~700ft/sec. At any rate (no pun intended), the fact remains that it is a significantly less efficient launch site.
Somebody might want to let these guys know they're at Latitude 46N, which means they have a tangential velocity of 720ft/s, or just over half of Cape Canaveral's. But hey, it's their fuel.
There's no reason caps-lock couldn't be accomplished by some other shortcut, such as both shifts at the same time, or CTRL-Shift. I agree that it's often accidentally engaged, it's probably only slightly more frequently used than Scroll Lock, and yet it's taking up almost two-keys worth of valuable real-estate right smack dab in the home row mirroring the Enter key. As the late Mr. Cochran would say [if he were a construction paper animation], "That does not make sense!"
1) You're thinking of something completely different. The Firefly is just a little glowing phone with 5 or so buttons and up to 20 stored numbers, not a tracking service. Some providers said they would start a tracking service, but that's completely different.
2) The phone is aimed at the 8-12 range; hardly the rebellious, parent-loathing demographic (unless perhaps you're a seriously f'd up parent, but even then..)
3) If you don't know where your 8-12 year-old is to begin with (assuming they're not lost), you have bigger problems.
Teenagers are a whole different story, but even they have little reason to turn down a phone which could be useful in an emergency.
Slashdot Mirror
If they don't tell you about it, how do you know?
Gigabit would be nice too. Why push the envelope with everything except speed, especially since people will need to transfer those torrents off the router once they're done?
Unfortunately, those of you with the new ASUS PCs will not be able to see it.
As for the ISS expenditures:
Nontrivial, but less than half of the $5B you incorrectly reported.
And while the utility is certainly important, it's not the only measure of value. The experience itself is a value, in that the people involved are gaining experience with constructing things in orbit, and having a continuous human presence in orbit furthers our knowledge of the physiological effects of living in space.
The ISS may be a small step, but it's a step, and that's ultimately how humanity progresses for the most part -- in steps, not in leaps and bounds. The ISS may only be an incremental progression, but it's progress nonetheless.
That's not to say the ISS hasn't been somewhat disappointing, but that's at least in part due to several modules being cancelled due to complaints about cost. It's the typical bureaucratic Catch-22: People want to see results before upping the ante. Unfortunately, it's not rarely possible to work like that. If you fund everything except the wheels of a car, all you've got is a nice air-conditioned box.
And even if you consider the ISS a failure, it's important to remember that science is progressed by failure just as much as success -- at the very least we should have ideas on what to do, or not to do, the next time.
Consider that 100 is 99.99% of 1,000,000...
I'll file that next to my idea of "12 inches".
LOL!
I'm a soon-to-be college student (very soon-- next week), and I wanted to buy some good webcams for my girlfriend and I to be able to see each other with.
As much as it pains me to say this, you probably should've saved your money instead of buying a webcam for your soon-to-be ex.
Good point, except that it's a non-sequitor.
Two seperate "events":
1) Low regard for wealthy people.
2) Collapse of USSR.
They may have been related, and one may have contributed to the other, but it's naive to say that a country collapsed because people didn't respect copyright. Furthermore, rampant corruption is less of an issue with a transparent government because it allows us to hold our politicians accountable.
Now it may be true that America is so tied to entertainment that if it stopped being profitable, and entertainment therefore stopped being produced en masse, we would have little of value to offer the world, and our economy would subsequently collapse. (And in fact, entertainment is America's biggest export.) That, however, would be the fault of putting too many eggs in one entertaining basket.
Actually, the workers in the US have the highest average of working hours in the industrialized world, along with the lowest (and still falling) vacation time. Japanese businessmen, at least here in Asia, are actually renowned for their vacation and extravagant leisure activities, particularly expensive golfing vacations. Their reputation may be different on the other side of the pond, but that's probably more PR or urban legend than anything else. That's not to say they're not hardworking when they're at work, just that the hours thing is more myth than fact, probably related to the fact that many Asian societies do pressure their children to place foremost emphasis on their education, to the exclusion of all else. That's not so different from parents in the US, but Asian parents do seem to be much more agressive about it, at least from what I've seen -- which isn't imperical evidence, of course.
Nonetheless, as I've outlined in the past, it would take approximately 3 years of constant high-usage for the price of the extra energy to reach the higher upfront cost.
Moreover, money spent upfront is more expensive than money spent over time. The easiest way for the layman to understand the concept is as follows: I'll give you a million dollars.
One dollar a year.
Except that taxation is an illusion, since the government creates the money. What they're really doing is pretending to give it to you. The most obvious version of this is that government workers pay taxes, but we're all government workers indirectly, since we work for the government's money. If taxation did not exist, salaries would just be lower. You wouldn't make any more money, and even if you did, everyone else would too, which means inflation would increase to offset the extra cash. Remember, inflation is set by how much disposible income people have on average. The prices of goods and services is, and always will be, directly proportional (or at least closely linked) to how much the lowest paid workers make. If they make "more," the price of goods and services must increase -- both because you're paying the people who make them more, and because prices are proportional to average income. When income goes up, prices always follow. The only way the cycle could end is if all matter and energy were reduced to 0 value, which is highly unlikely.
I guess I'm just less impressionable or more forgetful then, because I have no memory of said commercial. If I didn't already know Honeycomb was a cereal, I wouldn't even have known that the above were probably references to a commercial.
Maybe he's missing his natural intestinal flora.
If the moderation of the above four comments is any indication, Slashdot is populated by the same demographic which watches Saturday morning cartoons.
There has to be more than just a capacity.. there actually has to be moisture coming from somewhere. Unless your computer is built out of ice, there's no source of water.
By detecting, with a strain gauge, the slight bending of a stiff bar attached to the piece under test, while the resulting strain is measured by the bending of a flexible beam, that exerts negligible force on the piece under test.
Your logic is rivaled only by your spelling and counting.
I did, in fact, use the cosine, but I must have fat fingered something in the calculator to come up with ~700ft/sec. At any rate (no pun intended), the fact remains that it is a significantly less efficient launch site.
Somebody might want to let these guys know they're at Latitude 46N, which means they have a tangential velocity of 720ft/s, or just over half of Cape Canaveral's. But hey, it's their fuel.
There's no reason caps-lock couldn't be accomplished by some other shortcut, such as both shifts at the same time, or CTRL-Shift. I agree that it's often accidentally engaged, it's probably only slightly more frequently used than Scroll Lock, and yet it's taking up almost two-keys worth of valuable real-estate right smack dab in the home row mirroring the Enter key. As the late Mr. Cochran would say [if he were a construction paper animation], "That does not make sense!"
Wow, to think that TCP/IP hadn't been invented when it was launched... would be wrong.
There, fixed that for you.
breaking the previous record of 99.99999AU, also set by Voyager I... the day before.
How many times have you seen some woman looking/reaching into the back seat to deal with her kid?
No wonder their rate of accidents is so much higher!
Oh wait..
1) You're thinking of something completely different. The Firefly is just a little glowing phone with 5 or so buttons and up to 20 stored numbers, not a tracking service. Some providers said they would start a tracking service, but that's completely different.
1 02-0652733-6486550?v=glance&n=301185
2) The phone is aimed at the 8-12 range; hardly the rebellious, parent-loathing demographic (unless perhaps you're a seriously f'd up parent, but even then..)
3) If you don't know where your 8-12 year-old is to begin with (assuming they're not lost), you have bigger problems.
Teenagers are a whole different story, but even they have little reason to turn down a phone which could be useful in an emergency.
href=http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000C1GBJG/
Not to be confused with Insomniac's Dave Attell, although both equally fond of the back door.