Ya, I guess you're right. I was trying to say that I don't have an archive of stolen music and/or programs, and I don't download with the intention of not paying. If stores had machines set up to try various applications on, I wouldn't have the need to 'borrow' it and try it first. It would really be interesting to see somewhere like CompUSA with a bunch of machines set up with all the software apps installed that they sell. Judging by lots of the crap I've 'borrowed' over the years, it's in the best interest of the software companies not to allow that. Video editing specifically, most of them really suck. I really enjoy Blockbuster's game rentals for that reason. I can rent a game, realize it sucks, and just return it. If it's a game someone in the house really likes, I'll buy it.
If I do download something, it's for the same reason that I would try something at a friends place. Well, assuming that they had the programs I want to try out.:)
I gave up on Poser because I didn't fully understand how to use it, and I didn't want to bother learning. If I had a friend who was already using it, I'm sure I would have asked lots of questions, and stuck with it. That's a freakin' powerful program. I can't even suggest that they simpify it, because if they did, they'd need to remove functionality. It wasn't really something I needed, and not really something I'd use a lot anyways. For what I do, GIMP is fine.:)
Well, in an ideal world, the local vendors would see the loss of sales, and do something about it. You are right though, in the real world, they'll just tack on the extra $5, and more people will start using more various P2P programs.
It's sad, they see P2P as being the evil. They don't realize that they've brought it on themselves.
People don't buy magazines, and photocopy every page so they can share it with their friends. They just tell their friends, "Hey, go buy this magazine". That's exactly what's happening with the music though. Even if every P2P application disappeared tomorrow, people would still find a way to rip the music and share it. Even with all the spiffy stuff they're attempting to do, there's nothing stopping Joe User from recording directly from the audio output. Sure, it's not digitally perfect, but he can listen. When I listen to music in my car, it's not digially perfect either. I have a great factory sound system (10 speaker Delco Monsoon), but when it comes down to it, if I'm driving at 75mph with the driver window half down, I still hear lots of wind and tire noise. What's the difference between "really good" and "digitally perfect" in a real world environment?
If the P2P's went away, we'd be back to the good ol' days of people actually giving each other copies of cassettes. As I recall, in high school, I was perfectly happy listening to copied cassettes, in my car with 4 speakers in it. I copied everything I owned, because the cassettes would get damaged or lost. At least they lasted longer than CD's. I wonder if the music industries will ever consider going to flash media set to read-only. A SD/MMC card would seem to survive better than a CD. Of course, they thrive on the fact that disks get scratched or tapes get worn, so people will buy new copies of things they already own. Sure, cost right now doesn't justify it, but if the music industry was distributing music on them, the price would drop fast.
> He just offered the people knowledge how to break copyright, he didn't break it himself. > It's the same with gun companies, they don't shoot people, they sell you a weapon to do it.
This is a great example.
BT and other P2P programs do have practical uses. I have two that I use.
Guns do have practical uses. I also have two of these.
So, I have a gun. It doesn't mean that I plan to kill someone. Maybe I want to go hunting. Maybe I want to be able to defend my home and family. Maybe I just like to have a piece of metal worth a few hundred dollars as an investment (they are a great one). Is the manufacturer or store responsible if someone uses it to commit a crime? No. Just like they aren't responsible if someone breaks into my house and I have to shoot them.
Manufacturers of kitchen knives are selling a tool for a purpose. Plenty of people are killed every year with knives, but I've never heard of a knife manufacturer being dragged into court over it.
There are plenty of influences beyond police and the military. The RIAA or MPAA could impose economic sanctions on sales in that country, until the local organizations did something about that.
For example, if I was the ??AA them, I could impose an extra USD $5 surcharge on every piece of media sold to vendors in that country, due to their lack of cooperation, making it clear of why they increased the cost. The local vendors would either need to tack that onto the price of the media, or eat it. If they increase their prices, sales will go down. If they eat it, profit goes down. So in the end, they can (and would) put start pressuring the local government to do something about the crimes.
The next reply suggests invasion or mercenaries. That's not their MO, and it wouldn't be necessary.
The recording industry is huge, no matter where you are. They do have an influence. They showed a bit of force with the initial arrest. They'll show more force next time to get their way.
They still don't understand, bringing the costs down would solve a lot of their problems. If I can get an album (record, tape, cd, or whatever) for $5, why bother pirating it? But, looking at a $20 price tag, that may encourage me to pirate. At $5 each, I'd consider actually going to the store and buying music. If I could buy 5 CD's for $25, that's reasonable. 5 CD's for $100 isn't justifiable to me, even though I do have the money to do it.
For the record, I don't pirate. I have a small collection of store bought DVD's. I listen to broadcast or streaming radio. I watch most movies on DirecTV. We actually find it's more comfortable to watch movies in my home theater, than it is to watch in a traditional movie theater. I'm satisfied. Why bother download songs and burn them to CD? I'd say iPod, but I don't even own one. I'm not the coolest geek on the block, as far as that goes.
I don't use BitTorrent, but I do use other P2P programs to get the occasional piece of software to try out. For example, I wanted to try 'Poser'. I installed it, played with it for abotu 20 minutes, grew bored of it, and uninstalled it. I also downloaded several video editing programs, for editing home movies. I picked one that I liked, and bought the current version from the store.
The full fledged circular designs that I've seen in movies and technical drawings was like this. Actually, I believe the center can rotate, and your craft can match the rotation. It would seem trivial to make the docking platform spin on bearings and make no motion.
Balance would still seem to be very important. If all the inhabitents or too much payload ended up at one part of the wheel, it would make the entire wheel off balance. Think of your laundry washing machine walking across the floor due to an unbalanced load.
You can build a perfect machine, but human error is a bastard.
I remember a carnival ride called Gravitron. Ahhh, the wonders of the Internet. It exerts 4G, and the control booth is in the middle, where the operator doesn't feel anything.
The really notable problem is that if you turn your head while it's running, it can make you nauseous. I suppose that's because you're being pulled by 4G horizontally, and 1G vertically. Obviously the 4G horizontally is the more noticable force.
Lots of people do. Many DSL routers come with wifi. Some people buy firewalls with wifi, just because it's more expensive. Everyone knows, things that are more expensive are better, right?:)
Nope. Don't forget the Patriot Act. You're guilty until trial, which may happen at an undetermined time, without a lawyer, in a closed court of the government's choosing. If the government things you did something against it, you'll find yourself rotting in Southeast Cuba, or any number of non-existant prisons in countries where they'll ignore the happenings of non-existant front companies who happen to own prisons in remote areas.
The "4 computer" argument sounded funny to me, but then I thought about it. I just went to a distant friend's house and helped him with his computer.
He had his "new" computer, which actually worked.
He had his "old" computer, which worked but was really slow.
He had a much older computer, that was dead. Bad hard drive, flaky memory, and it was only 133Mhz.
And finally, he had another computer, a friend brought over and abandon, that was in unknown operational order, and he didn't care to find out.
It took me three days to talk him into changing the memory in it, which I picked out specifically for that machine. He didn't want to, because he had never opened a computer before. He doesn't deal with installing many softwares, because he doesn't understand how they all work. He uses his mail client, his web browser, and that's about it. Completely not technical, and he "owns" 4 computers.
If his house was raided tomorrow, of course he'd get the same report of having four computers. He doesn't do anything illegal, immoral, or questionable, but that fourth abandon computer may have something on it. How responsible can he be for it? He can't even finger the friend who had it. They were on a first name basis, and the friend moved out of state. "That computer? Oh that was Joe's. He lives in some other state now. I haven't heard from him in a year."
If *MY* house was ever raided, they'd just shit themselves. I have roughly two dozen computers. Most of them are non-working workstations from an old office. Others are old servers, and lots of old parts. I don't throw much of anything away, because I know there will always be something useful. I grabbed a 20Gb drive from the pile, for someone who needed a drive, and didn't have money for a new drive. It was an identical match, and she didn't do much of anything with it other than check Email. It formatted, it didn't click or whine, and they're happy to have a working computer again.
Now, the question would be, would they find anything illegal? Nope. They'd spend weeks searching through the 100+ hard drives until they found the worst thing I have is ISO's of Linux distributions, and possibly they could recover some old web sites from drives that go "click". Maybe the BSA could get me, because I don't have the Windows licenses associated with the old parts.
I know I should destroy the clicking drives, but sometimes they're entertaining to take the top off, and watch the platters spin while I grind them down with a screwdriver. Wheeeeee... The magnets make cool things to stick to light switch screws, and the bearings bounce really well on hard surfaces. Ya, I've made some very unrecoverable drives.
I agree totally. DirecTV added more channels, so they could have the duplicate of regular resolution and HD. It's kind of cool for me, since I do have HD, but a couple months ago, before I got the HD receiver, it was completely worthless to me.
I have a big front projection screen, so having things in HD is actually very nice. Until I moved, I had my screen set for roughly 10 feet wide, and yes, I saw things that you weren't suppose to see. Reruns of sliders became even more cheesy, because I could see the really lame effects where they jumped through the wormhole, and the characters were actually just still shots squished and stretched. On a normal TV, I would have never noticed.
For some reason, the HD DirecTV is noticable in the variations it has all the way up to 1080. I was trying to demonstrate the reason for "needing" the HD receiver to my girlfriend after we got it. I brought it down to 480, with it paused on a HD movie. As I stepped up, you could see the jagged edges go away, and details show up. The best example was in that shot. At 480, you could see the character's head. By the time we got up to 1080, you could see the whisps of his hair, which weren't visible at the lower resolutions.
I know a few people have said on here that DirecTV only broadcasts at 720, but we couldn't see the hairs at 720.
Now, do I *NEED* to see Jerry Springer's inbread guests nose hairs? Probably not. Does it make a clearer picture on a large format screen? Yes. If I had a smaller screen, it wouldn't have made a freakin' difference. I know on the large screen, it kills the magic of some things, but for many things it's much better.
The one thing that sucks about my projector is that it doesn't see that something is letterboxed, and try to expand it out to the full screen size. My projector doesn't have a good enough zoom on it, to expand a letterbox out to the full screen size with the throw that I'm using now. I suppose in 10 years, that will be something I'll be looking for in a new projector, but everything will be different by then.:)
Just think, if you made the shuttle come to a quick stop, the counterweight would be like a big yoyo. That may hurt when it slaps into the cargo bay..:)
Technically, we're all orbiting, and at FTL speed. It's all relative to the point of reference.
Go ahead and ask, "Huh?"
We're on this planet moving at about 1,000 mph (depending on latitude). The earth is rotating around the sun at 67,000 mph.
The mikey way galaxy is rotating at roughly 490,000 mph.
So, at just the right point in our year, when all those vectors are going the same way, you could be traveling at 558,000 mph, relative to an object which is moving in the same direction we are from galactic center, but not following the motion of the milky way galaxy.
I could go on, but... Right now, my motion relative to my desk is 0.
Everphilski's reply is right about the ring inside the shuttle, even if you built it in the cargo bay. You couldn't make it large enough to do much good.
The counterweight idea is interesting, but that's going to be one heavy weight, and one strong cable. The orbiter weighs 240,000 pounds. This could be compensated by a long cable, and a lighter weight, but even still it would have to be one heavy freakin' weight. And they'd still need enough fuel to move the orbiter in a circle, plus start the weight spinning at the desired rotational speed. I don't think the orbiter has a single mount point strong enough to hold the full 240,000 pounds, and it wouldn't be safe to settle into a sling, because they'd end up crushing the heat tiles.
If they wanted a 1G environment in space, I think the smartest thing to do would be to find something already floating around (old large mission parts), and attach a pressurized area to it. That would be a bitch to dock with though. Their docking procedure is so damned slow, they'd never manage it without constantly firing the OMS engines. But anyways, that goes beyond the scope of the show, where they're suppose to be in the real shuttle at 1G in LEO.
You make a good point on the load of public utilities, but look at the losses from private companies. Say 10,000 troops were deployed from a base. In many places, the city by the base survives because of the base. Taking 10,000 individuals out of the population makes 10,000 individuals that aren't buying things locally. If I were, say a local cleaners, I'd be financially hurt due to any significant number of troops being deployed. Not everyone washes their uniforms at home. Many take them to me (the local cleaner) to get washed, ironed, and repaired.
Grocery stores, liquer stores, and even places like video rental stores are hurt too. Even the local mechanic and gas station. While these troops are out, their cars are parked. They don't get oil changes. They don't get fueled up, and obviously they don't get repaired.
If we weren't paying roughly 20% or so on our income, plus 6% or more on our purchased items, plus.. well, they screw us every which way.. Lets just stick at 26%.
If we weren't paying out 26% of our income to taxes, so the government could spend it any way they want, like wars that the majority don't agree with, economics would be a lot different.
I was listening to an add on the radio, where they were saying the US Government has hired tens of thousands of new tax auditors, trying to get people who are cheating the income tax system. If they weren't collecting that tax, they wouldn't have the expense of paying the new auditors. It sounds like a failing business model.
If people and businesses weren't paying out the money in the first place, we'd all individually have the money to pay for our own parts of the migration, plus many of the other things we 'need'. Government is all about control. Consider, why did we shift from citizen militia to organized military and no gun rights? Because the government needs that control. If the people were the military, and the majority had the power to say "Hey, we don't like that!", that would be bad for the government. With that said, Bush's approval rating lately has been in the high 30%. That means around 60% or so of the people don't approve.
In concept, it's good. Unfortunately, it wouldn't fit on the shuttle. To make 1G, it would need to be making hard loops all the time, and burning up a lot of fuel in the process. Rotating around any of it's own axis would make different degrees of gravity throughout the craft, and probably make you nauseous. A ring shaped area, like portrayed in many movies, would provide the 1G, but the floor would always be curved.
I guess it would be harder to fool the general public into believing that these kids believed they were being sent up on a new spaceship. Going up on a good ol' workhorse is more believable. Well, kinda. Not really though. Ok, people who believe the actors on the show actually believe what they're doing are the fools here.:)
Now, where exactly would they find something of sufficent mass and density to simulate 1G on something the size of the space shuttle? They wouldn't, and actually be able to move it.:)
But hey, if they want to believe, they will.
When I was a kid, I went to Space Academy at the Huntsville Space and Rocket center, twice. It was fun. It was geared more towards beginners, but still, it was fun.
Someone else linked This Page, which shows that the folks in the simulation aren't regular kids being fooled. They're actors being paid to act like they believe the whole thing.
The simulation sounds really cool though, if it's as realistic as their site portrays.
I'm looking at moving expenses to cross the country. Gas for a 26' U-Haul will be $1,500. I look at that and say, "Fuck, $1,500, that's a lot of money.". I think we get lost in the fact that we know it's a number, but really we've gotten very used to numbers, and it really doesn't sink in.
$75,000,000,000
That's 15,000,000,000 $5 shooters in a club. That's a lot of drunk people.:)
That's 3,750,000,000 large pizza's delivered, with tip.
Like, every man, woman, and child in America could get 10 pizza's delivered to them.
And yes, none of those numbers seem to include anything towards human costs.
I seriously doubt they'll be cutting checks to the families of the dead, or doing a socialized health care to help the injured. Hell, even here, they're cutting back on VA benefits, so even American service men and women may be seriously injured and not have enough income to survive. Ask any local Vietnam vet.
Re:Have you ever missed meals or been hungry?
on
The Year in Ideas
·
· Score: 1
I just listed them to indicate that I am healthy, and of a normal weight.
The stereotypical picture of a Slashdot user is an overweight male nerd, stuck to his chair by a cement created by spilled soda, coffee, and cigarette ashes. The truth won't really come out until Slashdot starts having it's own conventions. Of course, I probably won't show up, unless it happens to be where I am that week.
Re:Have you ever missed meals or been hungry?
on
The Year in Ideas
·
· Score: 1
Ahhh, the Unicorn. A creature that may or may not have actually existed.
I'm fond of the dragon legend. Virtually every culture on the planet has dragon lore, and they're all very similiar. Did they exist? Who knows. I haven't seen a dodo bird either, but legend has it that they existed.
Slashdot Mirror
Adam Savage appears to be the pseudonym for ... Adam Savage. :)
....
:)
But that elusive Jamie Hyneman is
oh... Jamie Hyneman.
Now, JW Smythe may be a bit more elusive. You may someday learn more, if they take my email asking to play at M5 seriously.
Ya, I guess you're right. I was trying to say that I don't have an archive of stolen music and/or programs, and I don't download with the intention of not paying. If stores had machines set up to try various applications on, I wouldn't have the need to 'borrow' it and try it first. It would really be interesting to see somewhere like CompUSA with a bunch of machines set up with all the software apps installed that they sell. Judging by lots of the crap I've 'borrowed' over the years, it's in the best interest of the software companies not to allow that. Video editing specifically, most of them really suck. I really enjoy Blockbuster's game rentals for that reason. I can rent a game, realize it sucks, and just return it. If it's a game someone in the house really likes, I'll buy it.
If I do download something, it's for the same reason that I would try something at a friends place. Well, assuming that they had the programs I want to try out.
I gave up on Poser because I didn't fully understand how to use it, and I didn't want to bother learning. If I had a friend who was already using it, I'm sure I would have asked lots of questions, and stuck with it. That's a freakin' powerful program. I can't even suggest that they simpify it, because if they did, they'd need to remove functionality. It wasn't really something I needed, and not really something I'd use a lot anyways. For what I do, GIMP is fine.
Well, in an ideal world, the local vendors would see the loss of sales, and do something about it. You are right though, in the real world, they'll just tack on the extra $5, and more people will start using more various P2P programs.
It's sad, they see P2P as being the evil. They don't realize that they've brought it on themselves.
People don't buy magazines, and photocopy every page so they can share it with their friends. They just tell their friends, "Hey, go buy this magazine". That's exactly what's happening with the music though. Even if every P2P application disappeared tomorrow, people would still find a way to rip the music and share it. Even with all the spiffy stuff they're attempting to do, there's nothing stopping Joe User from recording directly from the audio output. Sure, it's not digitally perfect, but he can listen. When I listen to music in my car, it's not digially perfect either. I have a great factory sound system (10 speaker Delco Monsoon), but when it comes down to it, if I'm driving at 75mph with the driver window half down, I still hear lots of wind and tire noise. What's the difference between "really good" and "digitally perfect" in a real world environment?
If the P2P's went away, we'd be back to the good ol' days of people actually giving each other copies of cassettes. As I recall, in high school, I was perfectly happy listening to copied cassettes, in my car with 4 speakers in it. I copied everything I owned, because the cassettes would get damaged or lost. At least they lasted longer than CD's. I wonder if the music industries will ever consider going to flash media set to read-only. A SD/MMC card would seem to survive better than a CD. Of course, they thrive on the fact that disks get scratched or tapes get worn, so people will buy new copies of things they already own. Sure, cost right now doesn't justify it, but if the music industry was distributing music on them, the price would drop fast.
> He just offered the people knowledge how to break copyright, he didn't break it himself.
> It's the same with gun companies, they don't shoot people, they sell you a weapon to do it.
This is a great example.
BT and other P2P programs do have practical uses. I have two that I use.
Guns do have practical uses. I also have two of these.
So, I have a gun. It doesn't mean that I plan to kill someone. Maybe I want to go hunting. Maybe I want to be able to defend my home and family. Maybe I just like to have a piece of metal worth a few hundred dollars as an investment (they are a great one). Is the manufacturer or store responsible if someone uses it to commit a crime? No. Just like they aren't responsible if someone breaks into my house and I have to shoot them.
Manufacturers of kitchen knives are selling a tool for a purpose. Plenty of people are killed every year with knives, but I've never heard of a knife manufacturer being dragged into court over it.
There are plenty of influences beyond police and the military. The RIAA or MPAA could impose economic sanctions on sales in that country, until the local organizations did something about that.
For example, if I was the ??AA them, I could impose an extra USD $5 surcharge on every piece of media sold to vendors in that country, due to their lack of cooperation, making it clear of why they increased the cost. The local vendors would either need to tack that onto the price of the media, or eat it. If they increase their prices, sales will go down. If they eat it, profit goes down. So in the end, they can (and would) put start pressuring the local government to do something about the crimes.
The next reply suggests invasion or mercenaries. That's not their MO, and it wouldn't be necessary.
The recording industry is huge, no matter where you are. They do have an influence. They showed a bit of force with the initial arrest. They'll show more force next time to get their way.
They still don't understand, bringing the costs down would solve a lot of their problems. If I can get an album (record, tape, cd, or whatever) for $5, why bother pirating it? But, looking at a $20 price tag, that may encourage me to pirate. At $5 each, I'd consider actually going to the store and buying music. If I could buy 5 CD's for $25, that's reasonable. 5 CD's for $100 isn't justifiable to me, even though I do have the money to do it.
For the record, I don't pirate. I have a small collection of store bought DVD's. I listen to broadcast or streaming radio. I watch most movies on DirecTV. We actually find it's more comfortable to watch movies in my home theater, than it is to watch in a traditional movie theater. I'm satisfied. Why bother download songs and burn them to CD? I'd say iPod, but I don't even own one. I'm not the coolest geek on the block, as far as that goes.
I don't use BitTorrent, but I do use other P2P programs to get the occasional piece of software to try out. For example, I wanted to try 'Poser'. I installed it, played with it for abotu 20 minutes, grew bored of it, and uninstalled it. I also downloaded several video editing programs, for editing home movies. I picked one that I liked, and bought the current version from the store.
The full fledged circular designs that I've seen in movies and technical drawings was like this. Actually, I believe the center can rotate, and your craft can match the rotation. It would seem trivial to make the docking platform spin on bearings and make no motion.
Balance would still seem to be very important. If all the inhabitents or too much payload ended up at one part of the wheel, it would make the entire wheel off balance. Think of your laundry washing machine walking across the floor due to an unbalanced load.
You can build a perfect machine, but human error is a bastard.
I remember a carnival ride called Gravitron. Ahhh, the wonders of the Internet. It exerts 4G, and the control booth is in the middle, where the operator doesn't feel anything.
The really notable problem is that if you turn your head while it's running, it can make you nauseous. I suppose that's because you're being pulled by 4G horizontally, and 1G vertically. Obviously the 4G horizontally is the more noticable force.
Lots of people do. Many DSL routers come with wifi. Some people buy firewalls with wifi, just because it's more expensive. Everyone knows, things that are more expensive are better, right? :)
Imagine a beowulf cluster of those.
Are you sure it was a joke?
But ya, he's safe from that, until they find an encrypted file, which is obvious proof that he was doing something subversive.
Nope. Don't forget the Patriot Act. You're guilty until trial, which may happen at an undetermined time, without a lawyer, in a closed court of the government's choosing. If the government things you did something against it, you'll find yourself rotting in Southeast Cuba, or any number of non-existant prisons in countries where they'll ignore the happenings of non-existant front companies who happen to own prisons in remote areas.
[knock][knock]
Who's at my door?
The "4 computer" argument sounded funny to me, but then I thought about it. I just went to a distant friend's house and helped him with his computer.
He had his "new" computer, which actually worked.
He had his "old" computer, which worked but was really slow.
He had a much older computer, that was dead. Bad hard drive, flaky memory, and it was only 133Mhz.
And finally, he had another computer, a friend brought over and abandon, that was in unknown operational order, and he didn't care to find out.
It took me three days to talk him into changing the memory in it, which I picked out specifically for that machine. He didn't want to, because he had never opened a computer before. He doesn't deal with installing many softwares, because he doesn't understand how they all work. He uses his mail client, his web browser, and that's about it. Completely not technical, and he "owns" 4 computers.
If his house was raided tomorrow, of course he'd get the same report of having four computers. He doesn't do anything illegal, immoral, or questionable, but that fourth abandon computer may have something on it. How responsible can he be for it? He can't even finger the friend who had it. They were on a first name basis, and the friend moved out of state. "That computer? Oh that was Joe's. He lives in some other state now. I haven't heard from him in a year."
If *MY* house was ever raided, they'd just shit themselves. I have roughly two dozen computers. Most of them are non-working workstations from an old office. Others are old servers, and lots of old parts. I don't throw much of anything away, because I know there will always be something useful. I grabbed a 20Gb drive from the pile, for someone who needed a drive, and didn't have money for a new drive. It was an identical match, and she didn't do much of anything with it other than check Email. It formatted, it didn't click or whine, and they're happy to have a working computer again.
Now, the question would be, would they find anything illegal? Nope. They'd spend weeks searching through the 100+ hard drives until they found the worst thing I have is ISO's of Linux distributions, and possibly they could recover some old web sites from drives that go "click". Maybe the BSA could get me, because I don't have the Windows licenses associated with the old parts.
I know I should destroy the clicking drives, but sometimes they're entertaining to take the top off, and watch the platters spin while I grind them down with a screwdriver. Wheeeeee... The magnets make cool things to stick to light switch screws, and the bearings bounce really well on hard surfaces. Ya, I've made some very unrecoverable drives.
I agree totally. DirecTV added more channels, so they could have the duplicate of regular resolution and HD. It's kind of cool for me, since I do have HD, but a couple months ago, before I got the HD receiver, it was completely worthless to me.
I have a big front projection screen, so having things in HD is actually very nice. Until I moved, I had my screen set for roughly 10 feet wide, and yes, I saw things that you weren't suppose to see. Reruns of sliders became even more cheesy, because I could see the really lame effects where they jumped through the wormhole, and the characters were actually just still shots squished and stretched. On a normal TV, I would have never noticed.
For some reason, the HD DirecTV is noticable in the variations it has all the way up to 1080. I was trying to demonstrate the reason for "needing" the HD receiver to my girlfriend after we got it. I brought it down to 480, with it paused on a HD movie. As I stepped up, you could see the jagged edges go away, and details show up. The best example was in that shot. At 480, you could see the character's head. By the time we got up to 1080, you could see the whisps of his hair, which weren't visible at the lower resolutions.
I know a few people have said on here that DirecTV only broadcasts at 720, but we couldn't see the hairs at 720.
Now, do I *NEED* to see Jerry Springer's inbread guests nose hairs? Probably not. Does it make a clearer picture on a large format screen? Yes. If I had a smaller screen, it wouldn't have made a freakin' difference. I know on the large screen, it kills the magic of some things, but for many things it's much better.
The one thing that sucks about my projector is that it doesn't see that something is letterboxed, and try to expand it out to the full screen size. My projector doesn't have a good enough zoom on it, to expand a letterbox out to the full screen size with the throw that I'm using now. I suppose in 10 years, that will be something I'll be looking for in a new projector, but everything will be different by then.
Just think, if you made the shuttle come to a quick stop, the counterweight would be like a big yoyo. That may hurt when it slaps into the cargo bay..
Technically, we're all orbiting, and at FTL speed. It's all relative to the point of reference.
Go ahead and ask, "Huh?"
We're on this planet moving at about 1,000 mph (depending on latitude). The earth is rotating around the sun at 67,000 mph.
The mikey way galaxy is rotating at roughly 490,000 mph.
So, at just the right point in our year, when all those vectors are going the same way, you could be traveling at 558,000 mph, relative to an object which is moving in the same direction we are from galactic center, but not following the motion of the milky way galaxy.
I could go on, but... Right now, my motion relative to my desk is 0.
Everphilski's reply is right about the ring inside the shuttle, even if you built it in the cargo bay. You couldn't make it large enough to do much good.
The counterweight idea is interesting, but that's going to be one heavy weight, and one strong cable. The orbiter weighs 240,000 pounds. This could be compensated by a long cable, and a lighter weight, but even still it would have to be one heavy freakin' weight. And they'd still need enough fuel to move the orbiter in a circle, plus start the weight spinning at the desired rotational speed. I don't think the orbiter has a single mount point strong enough to hold the full 240,000 pounds, and it wouldn't be safe to settle into a sling, because they'd end up crushing the heat tiles.
If they wanted a 1G environment in space, I think the smartest thing to do would be to find something already floating around (old large mission parts), and attach a pressurized area to it. That would be a bitch to dock with though. Their docking procedure is so damned slow, they'd never manage it without constantly firing the OMS engines. But anyways, that goes beyond the scope of the show, where they're suppose to be in the real shuttle at 1G in LEO.
You make a good point on the load of public utilities, but look at the losses from private companies. Say 10,000 troops were deployed from a base. In many places, the city by the base survives because of the base. Taking 10,000 individuals out of the population makes 10,000 individuals that aren't buying things locally. If I were, say a local cleaners, I'd be financially hurt due to any significant number of troops being deployed. Not everyone washes their uniforms at home. Many take them to me (the local cleaner) to get washed, ironed, and repaired.
Grocery stores, liquer stores, and even places like video rental stores are hurt too. Even the local mechanic and gas station. While these troops are out, their cars are parked. They don't get oil changes. They don't get fueled up, and obviously they don't get repaired.
That's always a valid argument.
If we weren't paying roughly 20% or so on our income, plus 6% or more on our purchased items, plus.. well, they screw us every which way.. Lets just stick at 26%.
If we weren't paying out 26% of our income to taxes, so the government could spend it any way they want, like wars that the majority don't agree with, economics would be a lot different.
I was listening to an add on the radio, where they were saying the US Government has hired tens of thousands of new tax auditors, trying to get people who are cheating the income tax system. If they weren't collecting that tax, they wouldn't have the expense of paying the new auditors. It sounds like a failing business model.
If people and businesses weren't paying out the money in the first place, we'd all individually have the money to pay for our own parts of the migration, plus many of the other things we 'need'. Government is all about control. Consider, why did we shift from citizen militia to organized military and no gun rights? Because the government needs that control. If the people were the military, and the majority had the power to say "Hey, we don't like that!", that would be bad for the government. With that said, Bush's approval rating lately has been in the high 30%. That means around 60% or so of the people don't approve.
I didn't even think of that, but you know..... That isn't a bad idea.
In concept, it's good. Unfortunately, it wouldn't fit on the shuttle. To make 1G, it would need to be making hard loops all the time, and burning up a lot of fuel in the process. Rotating around any of it's own axis would make different degrees of gravity throughout the craft, and probably make you nauseous. A ring shaped area, like portrayed in many movies, would provide the 1G, but the floor would always be curved.
I guess it would be harder to fool the general public into believing that these kids believed they were being sent up on a new spaceship. Going up on a good ol' workhorse is more believable. Well, kinda. Not really though. Ok, people who believe the actors on the show actually believe what they're doing are the fools here.
Two points to the winner!
I'm surprised no one else had said it..
Now, where exactly would they find something of sufficent mass and density to simulate 1G on something the size of the space shuttle? They wouldn't, and actually be able to move it.
But hey, if they want to believe, they will.
When I was a kid, I went to Space Academy at the Huntsville Space and Rocket center, twice. It was fun. It was geared more towards beginners, but still, it was fun.
Someone else linked This Page, which shows that the folks in the simulation aren't regular kids being fooled. They're actors being paid to act like they believe the whole thing.
The simulation sounds really cool though, if it's as realistic as their site portrays.
I know..
I'm looking at moving expenses to cross the country. Gas for a 26' U-Haul will be $1,500. I look at that and say, "Fuck, $1,500, that's a lot of money.". I think we get lost in the fact that we know it's a number, but really we've gotten very used to numbers, and it really doesn't sink in.
$75,000,000,000
That's 15,000,000,000 $5 shooters in a club. That's a lot of drunk people.
That's 3,750,000,000 large pizza's delivered, with tip.
Like, every man, woman, and child in America could get 10 pizza's delivered to them.
Or you could buy 750 million $100 laptops.
Ok, I'll stop being silly now.
The current rebuilding estimate was $50 billion.
And yes, none of those numbers seem to include anything towards human costs.
I seriously doubt they'll be cutting checks to the families of the dead, or doing a socialized health care to help the injured. Hell, even here, they're cutting back on VA benefits, so even American service men and women may be seriously injured and not have enough income to survive. Ask any local Vietnam vet.
I just listed them to indicate that I am healthy, and of a normal weight.
The stereotypical picture of a Slashdot user is an overweight male nerd, stuck to his chair by a cement created by spilled soda, coffee, and cigarette ashes. The truth won't really come out until Slashdot starts having it's own conventions. Of course, I probably won't show up, unless it happens to be where I am that week.
Ahhh, the Unicorn. A creature that may or may not have actually existed.
I'm fond of the dragon legend. Virtually every culture on the planet has dragon lore, and they're all very similiar. Did they exist? Who knows. I haven't seen a dodo bird either, but legend has it that they existed.
In accordance with Godwin's Law...
The voting machines were built by Nazi's, because Bush is Hitler and the NWO is taking over.
Or something like that. I couldn't resist an open inviation like that without saying something stupid. Go ahead, mod me down.