No, their high resolution picture is a (relatively) low result 2d single plane map. And honestly, I can't even begin to guess at the distances. I'll assume that's what the red shift color scale is, but then that indicates that the colors of the stars they represent.
I'd assume that we (earth) is the center of the universe, as it's what we can see from here. The coordinates are nice and all, but I don't have a frame of reference to guess which direction is what.
It would have been nice if they used a 3d engine of some sort, and plotted the stars in that. Or made the information available so someone else could do it. With just the raw data (3d coordinate, direction of motion, direction of expansion, color (RGB would be fine for most of us), and observed size, there'd probably be dozens of 3d representations of it within a week or two, just from the folks on here.
With local storage, you have choices. Who can use my computer? Do I use an encrypted volume? Do I use Windows, Linux/*nix, or Mac? What program(s) do I do it with?
With Google docs, your spread sheet is in their format. Your letter is in their format. You can export it, print it, and whatever else makes you feel good. They retain your browsing and activity history. They have every email you've sent and received. In theory it's all yours privately. In reality, it's yours, and viewable by everyone at Google, assuming they have the permissions. I won't say it's *all* google employees that have access, but it is greater than 1, which more than you'd want.
If law enforcement wants to see your remote data, they serve Google with a subpoena or warrant. Google hands the information over, and you may never know. It would likely be done in a court outside of your area anyways.
If law enforcement wants to see your local data, they serve you with the warrant or subpoena. You can chose to contact an attorney immediately. You know what they took, and what they viewed.
Nope, you are still the product. Just because you do or don't click the ads doesn't mean much. Your demographic information is their largest product. Everyone who uses Google is a data point that is used for this new product. Where do you think they come up with these cool associations?
You know the Apollo module had a whopping interior volume of 210 cu/ft. The Orion is planned for approx 525 cu/ft.
The crew cabin of the STS orbiter is 2325 cu/ft to 2625 cu/ft depending on the airlock configuration, and even more with an experiment module in the payload bay.
For comparisons that you may know, a 40' bus (like a city bus or greyhound/MCI) is approximately 2400 cu/ft.
A Ford Econoline e150 cargo volume is 230 cu/ft
An average master bedroom is 1,800 cu/ft (15'x15'x8'). An average bedroom (not master) is about 960 cu/ft.
The longest shuttle flight was STS-80 at 17 days, 15 hours, 53 minutes, with a crew of 5.
So STS-80 crew had at least 465 cu/ft each (crew + supplies + flight gear), and flew for just over 17 days.
The Orion module crew will have 131 cu/ft each (crew + supplies + flight gear), for at least a 21 day flight. Basically, 4 to 6 people in 56% of a single small bedroom (8.1x8.1x8), plus all the food, water, clothes, hygiene supplies. It'd get very crowded in there very quickly. It sounds far from ideal as our future of space travel.
I think you found the better cultural phenomena. Monty Python needs to be nominated. They were together for 14 years, and people knowingly or not quote them.
For the same reason, I'd nominate Doctor Who. They have a 48 year history so far, and have opened up people's minds to many possibilities in the universe (and a lot of just plain science fiction).
How about the Star Trek franchise? They have a 43 year history so far. They are directly or indirectly responsible for technological advancements, and have had influences in such things as cellular telephones. Come on, the Motorola StarTAC is a Star Trek communicator. We named our first space shuttle (although it never actually went to space) after the flagship in Star Trek. I doubt we'd see the any ship named Wikipedia.:)
But Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of sorts. It has a whopping 10 year history, and is full of errors, and rewrites so frequent and unverified that on any two given days, you can read completely different fictional entries on the same page. How about the encyclopedias that were around for decades, written by huge staffs of professional writers.
But if we're going for transforming the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, I'd nominate the concept of war. It has changed more lives world wide than Wikipedia ever would.
Wikipedia is all about ego fluffing. I miss the good old days, when you could just pay for your entry in "Who's Who", and that would be a sufficient ego fluff.
Don't worry, there will be military bases up there. It'll happen shortly after private organizations make their own spacecraft for deep space travel.
Consider what would happen if a private company found asteroids made of precious metals. Like, bringing home a metric-fuck-ton of gold would devalue the gold commodities market so much, it would be worth just about as much as fine grain silicon dioxide. You think these wars for oil are rough? They'd look like a little border skirmish compared to what they'd do to the people saturating the precious metals market.
I was excited by the story title, and depressed when I read the rest.
We are at KSC for the STS-134 launch. While we were there, we toured the visitors center. You can look at the mockups of various capsules, and walk inside a cutaway of the STS orbiter. It was all exciting stuff, except when you consider their great Orion capsule.
No offense to the astronauts who have, and may go up in the future. I'd have to believe you'd rather be in a bigger, better ship, than crammed into something smaller than a VW bug for a month in space. Come on, a capsule that size, for a month long mission? They can't even stand up. Well, stretch to full extension, since "up" doesn't exactly work, unless you're saying it relative to the floor of the capsule.:)
Orion would be what I'd see as an emergency transport system. If all else fails, you can get someone up or down in one, but that's about it. Or as I was telling my girlfriend, "Look at the distance from the bottom of the seat, to the bottom of the capsule. I wouldn't want my ass that close to plasma burning away at the hull."
Try running a business using only those metrics - but make a reservation at your local bankruptcy court first, because you're going to need it. Those metrics don't tell you what brought customers into the store, or why those that left without buying didn't buy, etc... (Just for some very basic examples.)
Have you actually looked at FourSquare, or do you just live in a delusional world?
The one with the most check-ins is "72 Spring St at Crosby St New York, NY 10012". 7,813 check-ins. From From August 2 2010 to March 15, 2011, there were 38 comments.
I'd be willing to bet that they serve well over 10,000 customers/month. In the roughly 5 months period (say 50,000 customers) 38 customers left feedback. That's a sample of 0.076% of the customers.
But, lets have a look at the comments on there. I'll hand pick a few for you.
Bobby B. Check out Bobby Berk Home two doors South on Crosby.
Todd B. Great place to take a piss
Hannah S. unlock the starbucks 40th badge here
Alex F. Alex Frecon was here. And it was good.
Jo J. American runs on Star buck lol
Hafiz J. letih, minum2 jap...
Bruno J. Gossip Girl
Richado T. #turnred pls gv me sime badge here..how? tell me..
Gilang F. oiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii...!! drink in hereee
Erick P. blah blah blah dough
Gilang F. ternyata sama aja rasanya.!!orang kopinya juga eksport dr lampung.wakakakak
(translation: turns out it's just wrote.!! people also export coffee dr lampung.wakakakak)
Caitlin F. If you are a woman, regardless of age, beware of "hugh"..he will call you ma'am
Wow, the feedback is amazingly useful. We've learned that 31.6% of Starbucks customers leave absolutely worthless feedback. Extrapolate that out to the estimated customer base, and now you know that there are 15,800 customers you can't expect useful answers from.
Or more precisely... The sample set is too small for any useful purpose.
And then in your very next paragraph, you prove my point. The metrics needed to determine staffing levels go beyond the simple minded ones you posit above.
No, I said a business must be run by a business person, who can identify their trends in their market. It may mean wearing plain clothes, sitting somewhere in the dining area and listening to conversations. It may mean asking random people how they liked their experience. Getting just 1 personal feedback per hour (assuming a 8 hour day) gives you over 1,600 data points to work with. Working with the useless data points (unless you want to take a piss, and blah blah blah) is more likely to ruin your company.
But who am I to guess. With what I found online about you, you're obviously the business genius. Well, when you aren't vacuuming the soap suds out of your washer.
Then why does Disney provide the Fast Pass system so people *don't* have to stand in line for an hour? (Hint: Disney understands the value of customer experience, you do not.)
Actually, Disney realizes they can herd people better. Before that, anyone who wanted to skip the lines would rent a wheelchair for one person in their party, and then everyone with them goes to the front of the line. Then you'd have backed up lines with people of questionabl
I just replied to the AC that posted before you. Go up and read that. Maybe you'll understand. I would have said people were crazy for believing it. Once I worked with different aspects of the industry for a while, I realized how much is collected and sold. I really rather seed my true identity with so much disinformation that anyone trying to use it can't figure me out. Well, unless I live in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, ReykjavÃk, Berlin, and Moscow all at the same time. One of these days I'll have to throw together a randomize to pick major cities and suburbs to use online. Until then, I just pick one from the cities I know.:)
Well, not really. I worked in the industry that trades that information, and provides it to private investigators, law enforcement, and collections companies. Others provide it to anyone willing to pay. I know what some use for data sources. I still know people involved with those companies. They talk about their data sources, what they can provide to anyone who wants it.
Have you ever searched for yourself on intelius.com? How about looked at the current value of your house on zillow.com? Maybe searched for someone on zabasearch.com? Where do you think they get their information? Yes, they buy it.
I've also worked with people who have worked in other business segments of the same industry. For example, one company handles information used by marketing companies. They sell customized lists. You could get every independent car dealership within 100 miles of a particular city. Another company only trades in email lists. The more details with those email addresses the better. Want the email address for everyone in Middletown, Kansas? They'll be happy to provide it? Add to the list from Foursquare would then give you every person residing in the town, *and* those who "check in" there.
Those companies buy access to the credit reports. Not just hand picked ones, but all of them. They're expensive to buy, but they are out there. Does it show on your credit report? Then it's accessible. Search for "Experian File One" or "TransUnion TUCS file". You're looking at a 7-figure price, plus a whole stack of qualifications, but for the right price, they're more than happy to sell information on every person in the country.
They also buy lists or access to the lists of anything they can. Some it was perfectly legal, and some not so legal. For example, and unhappy and underpaid employee of a cell company may just happen to copy off the list of subscribers, and sell it for tens of thousands of dollars. Some random hacker gets a dump of the Sony database. They may not be in it for the credit card numbers. They may have wanted a verified list of names, addresses, phone numbers, and credit card numbers. The card numbers will stop working pretty quickly if they attempt to use them. The rest of the information is worth a fortune. How big was that data breech again? Oh ya, only 100 million users. That'll have a nice price tag on it when it goes to market. Of course, it will be filtered to remove seeds, and handed through so many people, it'd be easier to find the Holy Grail than the source.
If there is information available online, no matter how tedious it is to click through the forms, they have programs diligently pulling down ever bit they can. You can't guess every name on Facebook, but you can crawl through it pretty quickly. How hard would be be to write a script to request (through various anonymous proxies, with changing USER_AGENT strings):
It'd take a while to run through 2,100,000,000 pages (that's the upper limit I found by changing the id number by hand, without redirecting automatically back to the front page). That's if you have one computer doing them one at a time. How about 100 servers with 100 crawler processes each? 210,000 seconds, or 2.43 days. It may seem like a lot of horsepower to do it, but it's very profitable if even a small percentage have their profiles open for anyone to see.
But what about Foursquare, since that was the topic?
The people who I've know that use foursquare are frequently bored where they are, so they go looking around for other places to check in. So they pick an arbitrary location nearby that appears to be more interesting than where they really are.
I just go one up on the junk rating, and check in, in the wrong state or country. As I've told people, it's all disinformation, and usually located near cities that would drive the tinfoil hat crowd nuts. What's the worst that'll happen? They'll think I'm sort of covert government agent. The best is, they'll go looking for me at the wrong place.
I know I've cost people money looking for me. They shouldn't have tried. When I don't want to be found, I won't be found. When I want to, I'll show up at your door. It's not hard to not be found. Give a trusted friend one of your credit cards, and tell them to buy gas with it at least once a week locally. Ask them to pay you the estimated cost in cash. Give them your cell phone, and tell them to use on a regular basis. Have them email your messages to you, to a dummy email account. Borrow a car from a friend. Pay for all your needs with cash (fuel and food). Buy a pre-paid cell phone with cash in another area. Sleep in the car during the drive, so you won't show up as staying in a hotel. When you get to your safer destination, thank your friend for their assistance. It's pretty hard to identify me by picture. White male, age 25 to 35 years old, average height, average build, wearing nondescript clothes, driving an unknown vehicle, in an unknown area.
It's not just foursquare that I use. My Google Latitude location is at Ft. Meade at the NSA headquarters. Before that, I left myself in Manhattan. Why? I like New York.:) I miss not going up there as much as I used to. Foursquare has me logged in around Area 51, NSA headquarters, CIA headquarters, NGA headquarters, and even Wild Goose Chase, Australia. That last one was too funny, I couldn't resist. I thought about putting myself in Ketchican, AK, but I thought there wouldn't be enough people who got the joke (Catch, I Can).
Social networking sites have me registered in all kinds of arbitrary places. According to Facebook, I live at their office, but my current location is close (approx 5 miles) to a relatively obscure federal government emergency operations center.
How worthwhile is any of that data? Not very. And why do I do it? Well, other than the random PI with a grudge (or a pissy client), It's to avoid all the crazy people out there. There's just too many people in the general population that really should be tucked away safely in a mental facility. Hell, I don't want most of the people on here knowing where I am.
Check any arbitrary location, and see how many people have checked in there recently. The numbers are generally pretty small.
Companies already have a perfectly valid method to measure their business. They have their receipts. They know when they sold items, what they sold, how much to stock, and how many people they need working there.
So there was a line at Starbucks, big deal. They already know how many people that they can have in lines without losing too much business. They look at their costs versus the number of people who may just walk out . If they lose 2 $5 ($10 lost) sales during the 3pm hour, but to handle the load properly they would have needed 3 more people on that shift at $10/hr ($240), it's not advantageous to them to put 3 more people on that shift.
Business isn't about the customer experience. It's about making money. It's the same reason Disney doesn't mind having lines with an hour wait. They know you want their product, and are willing to stand in line waiting for it.
All I've seen of Foursquare is that a limited number of people ever check in from any place that I've spot checked.
Some of us cheat it anyways. There's a workaround for checking in places that you aren't physically at. So I check in at arbitrary places, preferably at or very close to government facilities that makes the tinfoil hat crowd go nuts. So, following my "trail" shows me being anywhere but where I actually am.
I'm fond of companies tracking us and selling that information. I'm happier when I've seeded their data with so much false information that it's virtually impossible to guess which is right.
And it's not that I'm one of the folks wearing a tinfoil hat too tight. I just like privacy. I don't think the government is following me. They already know where to find me.:) It's pesky people like private investigators working for someone trying to make easy money through bogus lawsuits. Go ahead, follow the trail. It's good for dealing with crazy ex-girlfriends too.:)
You know, from what I've found over the years, you are right. They test some of the most innovative aircraft out there.
I wrote up something comparing officially government funded aerospace programs, with huge oversight, versus aerospace programs with little to no government oversight. They've done some of the best aerospace work there, and only the good and/or useful stuff makes it out. The A-12, YF-12, and SR-71 are my favorites. They were operating from there for years before it was officially recognized.
Nope, you're correct. Pretty much they drew off areas in the middle of the desert, and assigned numbers to them. The area is huge, and it would be a waste of time coming up with names for each part of it.
I have seen maps indicating some other areas, but that doesn't help reinforce the mystery of "Area 51", so conspiracy folks don't generally publish that much. Come on, if it's Area 51, and assuming it's just an average spot on the map, there may be 100 "Areas". I don't remember how many area the Nevada Test Site was segmented into. But, if all the tinfoil hat crowd are focused on Area 51, then that means they can continue to test whatever they want at the other sites without nutjobs with telescopes watching them.:)
It's well documented, that was a weapons test range, and they did nuclear testing there.
You could go with what some of the conspiracy theorists say though. They make up stuff about a network of secret government tunnels that span the entire country. A lot of their maps show Area 51 to be a central hub. That kind of stuff is made up by people with their tinfoil hats screwed on a little too tight though.:) I'm sure they could find straight lines through there, which lead directly to arbitrary cities, and they'd claim that there were accidents landing UFOs or some such nonsense, and the tunnels collapsed.
Yup.:) The did a lot of nuke testing in that area. That's probably one of the biggest reasons the area is off limits. There's another test area, Area 25 if I recall correctly, where they did an atmospheric nuke test, and that test area is still hot.
The largest civil purpose nuke was tested in that test range. Google for the "Sedan Crater". They were testing to see if a nuke could move a mountain. It worked very well, except for the pesky radiation problem. It's safe enough to go out and visit for a few minutes, and they do take tour groups, but they're limited, and can't stay very long.
From what I heard, there is an Executive Order from the POTUS stating that they are exempt from EPA testing and inspection. It makes perfect sense though. If they're testing new or exotic fuels, and they had to dump it, testing of the residue could show what was being tested.
Noscript, and Adblock Plus, and I saw nothing but a National Geographic story. Pretty boring stuff. If you've ever known anyone in military intelligence, they'll tell you the same kind of story. Fake vehicles (like cardboard cutouts), scrambling to move anything "interesting" inside, or cover it with a tarp. The idea was to make every base look like it was deserted, even if there was a full complement there.
Area 51 still does a fine job of it. I check Google Maps there once in a while to see what's changed. Some of the underground bunkers, that had taxiways from the runways, which had an obvious opening, now look like they're just the side of a mountain. So you have an empty taxiway to nowhere? Yup, I'm falling for that. I still have yet to see interesting aircraft, but of course they are the gov't, and can tell Google to remove any unpopular images before they're published. Most likely, they still do their privacy covers. What's the difference between a dirty colored tarp, and the side of a mountain? Absolutely nothing without very high resolution and/or infrared imaging.
If you browse around, they only have 4 aircraft. Two airliners, two helicopters, and one fighter jet. Hmmm, that doesn't seem quite right, now does it?:)
Well, you know that's pretty much the way it works. Worse than that, they use test markets, and apply trends improperly across areas that they consider normalized.
A couple years ago, we had a heat wave in Florida, which in itself isn't all that unusual, except that it was early in the season. 105 during the day, and 90-something at night. Perfectly normal.:) During this particular one, I just needed a small fan for my office.
Because of the time of year, they had heaters stocked. This part of Florida needs heaters for maybe a couple weeks a year. The small section of fans were gone. People were asking employees about air conditioners, that they hadn't received in. They were expecting the seasonal change to come in a few weeks, and their air conditioners would arrive then.
We'll use today as an example. High of 93. Low of 70. New York 60/56. Seattle: 61/47. Los Angeles: 71/56. I sent to a Walmart yesterday. They have plenty of heaters to choose from, two air conditioners on the shelf, and no empty spots on the shelves for more.
Nope, we should buy heaters, because statistics throughout the US are show that customers nationally are still purchasing heaters. For here, highs in the 90's is perfectly normal right now. The weather report here from May to October is almost always the same unless we have a hurricane coming. "Highs in 90's, lows in the upper 70's through mid 80's, 50% chance of afternoon evening thunderstorms. Seas are 3 to 6 feet." They joke about it sometimes, when a new newscaster comes in, and they realize that every days weather report is exactly the same for 6 months of the year. Having a working air conditioner isn't just a nice thing, it's virtually required. We haven't turned on the heater for at least a couple months.
I know it was some executive that look at the seasonal numbers, and said "The hardware department in all zones get the same inventory. Heaters are selling right now, so don't ship air conditioners." It's the same reason you get glossy screens, or the Walmart decided fashion of the month is "in style". The test market, or statistics from chosen stores say it's true, so it must be what everyone wants. I'm sure they know their market down to the point where a red package sells better than a blue package, but we are all victims of their market analysis. It doesn't matter what any surveys say. They work strictly from "what makes us money?"
Manufacturers aren't dumb. They don't produce things totally wrong just to satisfy their own urges.
A survey of technical people may say we want matte.
An analysis of sales probably showed that glossy screens sold better.
Manufacturers produce products for sale. If a survey said that consumers prefer black laptops, but they preferred to purchase hot pink laptops with sparkles, we'd all be running around with sparkly hot pink laptops, regardless of what the people said they wanted. It's a fun game to watch. It works in so many industries. People are frequently influenced by irrational things.
I'd guess that that glossy screens make people feel that they have the newer or cleaner model. People tend to like shiny things. The dull matte finish looks older or more worn.
I've spent plenty of time in computer stores, selecting the best specifications. While I'm doing that, I listen to the people around me. "Pretty" and "Shiny" are definitely what customers want. The next (for computer) is the "memory". I quote that, as most consumers consider the drive space and RAM as the same thing. {sigh}. People will lean towards a PC with a 500GB drive and 1GB RAM, over a 25GB drive and 4GB RAM. I've also noticed they get confused by TB drive sizes. 1TB is obviously smaller than 500GB (1 500). Flash memory sizes are hilarious. They don't judge size based on the storage size. They judge it on the sign that says "This will hold 500 songs":) And back to the pretty factor, they'll go with a pretty 4GB USB flash drive over a plain looking 16GB USB flash drive. I've pretty much given up on helping random strangers in stores because despite their request for "help", they'll still buy fashion over function. The only way I can make someone buy the better devices is to purchase it for them (who then pay me the purchase price). I do that for friends and family only.
So, it's not our fault (generally people who would read here), it's the general consumer's fault. The manufacturers may even offer both what's favorable and not, but retail stores will only stock the items that sell well. It doesn't do any retail store any good at all to stock items that won't move. It wastes floor space, and will eventually have to be sold at clearance for cheap. Consider the WalMart effect. They buy in huge quantity. They only stock what will move, and they put substantial research into that. There's a science behind it, and they study it carefully, from what items to stock, to where to display it, down to the direction you walk through the store. Do most people turn left or right when they enter the store? Will they do high dollar impulse buys first or last?
As I've noticed, they stock low dollar impulse buys ( $20) at the entrance, and cheap impulse buys ($10) at the register. In a Walmart close to me, the traffic path goes from the entrance to the right. You encounter the departments in the following order. I note departments on each side of the aisle together.
$20 impulse buys. HBA (health/beauty) and home decor.
Womens clothing and toys.
Sporting/fitness and womens/teens clothing. Stuck back in a corner from there is hardware and tools.
The newly designed electronics section with cell phones in the front, TV's hanging on the wall in the back in clear sight, and more home decor (bedroom).
Children's clothes and pet supplies
Pharmacy and food
HBA/fashion (makeup), and food.
Jewelry and frozen food, with fresh produce in the corner.
Mens and boys clothes, as well as shoes, housewares are buried in the middle of the loop. They aren't usually impulse buys, so they don't get the high visibility spots. People assume (correctly) that the department exists, so they will go off of the
For fun, it'd be great. If you were say living near the Fukushima, not so great.:)
I'd actually like to walk through the grocery store, and see if any of the levels are beyond EPA limits. But hey, if I had something small that went click in any sort of accurate fashion, it'd be a good hint of "don't buy this".:)
I've read on how to make them. Maybe I should just go ahead and do it one day. Being the analytical person that I am, I'd of course have to tie it to my Linux machine, so I can log and graph the results.:)
Slashdot Mirror
No, their high resolution picture is a (relatively) low result 2d single plane map. And honestly, I can't even begin to guess at the distances. I'll assume that's what the red shift color scale is, but then that indicates that the colors of the stars they represent.
I'd assume that we (earth) is the center of the universe, as it's what we can see from here. The coordinates are nice and all, but I don't have a frame of reference to guess which direction is what.
It would have been nice if they used a 3d engine of some sort, and plotted the stars in that. Or made the information available so someone else could do it. With just the raw data (3d coordinate, direction of motion, direction of expansion, color (RGB would be fine for most of us), and observed size, there'd probably be dozens of 3d representations of it within a week or two, just from the folks on here.
At least there's at least something here
Shouldn't there be a 9 month period between the cause and effect? It should be that Excel causes people to make babies. :)
With local storage, you have choices. Who can use my computer? Do I use an encrypted volume? Do I use Windows, Linux/*nix, or Mac? What program(s) do I do it with?
With Google docs, your spread sheet is in their format. Your letter is in their format. You can export it, print it, and whatever else makes you feel good. They retain your browsing and activity history. They have every email you've sent and received. In theory it's all yours privately. In reality, it's yours, and viewable by everyone at Google, assuming they have the permissions. I won't say it's *all* google employees that have access, but it is greater than 1, which more than you'd want.
If law enforcement wants to see your remote data, they serve Google with a subpoena or warrant. Google hands the information over, and you may never know. It would likely be done in a court outside of your area anyways.
If law enforcement wants to see your local data, they serve you with the warrant or subpoena. You can chose to contact an attorney immediately. You know what they took, and what they viewed.
Nope, you are still the product. Just because you do or don't click the ads doesn't mean much. Your demographic information is their largest product. Everyone who uses Google is a data point that is used for this new product. Where do you think they come up with these cool associations?
Sure they migrate. Up to approx 100', mostly vertically.
You know the Apollo module had a whopping interior volume of 210 cu/ft. The Orion is planned for approx 525 cu/ft.
The crew cabin of the STS orbiter is 2325 cu/ft to 2625 cu/ft depending on the airlock configuration, and even more with an experiment module in the payload bay.
For comparisons that you may know, a 40' bus (like a city bus or greyhound/MCI) is approximately 2400 cu/ft.
A Ford Econoline e150 cargo volume is 230 cu/ft
An average master bedroom is 1,800 cu/ft (15'x15'x8'). An average bedroom (not master) is about 960 cu/ft.
The longest shuttle flight was STS-80 at 17 days, 15 hours, 53 minutes, with a crew of 5.
So STS-80 crew had at least 465 cu/ft each (crew + supplies + flight gear), and flew for just over 17 days.
The Orion module crew will have 131 cu/ft each (crew + supplies + flight gear), for at least a 21 day flight. Basically, 4 to 6 people in 56% of a single small bedroom (8.1x8.1x8), plus all the food, water, clothes, hygiene supplies. It'd get very crowded in there very quickly. It sounds far from ideal as our future of space travel.
I think you found the better cultural phenomena. Monty Python needs to be nominated. They were together for 14 years, and people knowingly or not quote them.
For the same reason, I'd nominate Doctor Who. They have a 48 year history so far, and have opened up people's minds to many possibilities in the universe (and a lot of just plain science fiction).
How about the Star Trek franchise? They have a 43 year history so far. They are directly or indirectly responsible for technological advancements, and have had influences in such things as cellular telephones. Come on, the Motorola StarTAC is a Star Trek communicator. We named our first space shuttle (although it never actually went to space) after the flagship in Star Trek. I doubt we'd see the any ship named Wikipedia. :)
But Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of sorts. It has a whopping 10 year history, and is full of errors, and rewrites so frequent and unverified that on any two given days, you can read completely different fictional entries on the same page. How about the encyclopedias that were around for decades, written by huge staffs of professional writers.
But if we're going for transforming the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, I'd nominate the concept of war. It has changed more lives world wide than Wikipedia ever would.
Wikipedia is all about ego fluffing. I miss the good old days, when you could just pay for your entry in "Who's Who", and that would be a sufficient ego fluff.
Don't worry, there will be military bases up there. It'll happen shortly after private organizations make their own spacecraft for deep space travel.
Consider what would happen if a private company found asteroids made of precious metals. Like, bringing home a metric-fuck-ton of gold would devalue the gold commodities market so much, it would be worth just about as much as fine grain silicon dioxide. You think these wars for oil are rough? They'd look like a little border skirmish compared to what they'd do to the people saturating the precious metals market.
I was excited by the story title, and depressed when I read the rest.
We are at KSC for the STS-134 launch. While we were there, we toured the visitors center. You can look at the mockups of various capsules, and walk inside a cutaway of the STS orbiter. It was all exciting stuff, except when you consider their great Orion capsule.
No offense to the astronauts who have, and may go up in the future. I'd have to believe you'd rather be in a bigger, better ship, than crammed into something smaller than a VW bug for a month in space. Come on, a capsule that size, for a month long mission? They can't even stand up. Well, stretch to full extension, since "up" doesn't exactly work, unless you're saying it relative to the floor of the capsule. :)
Orion would be what I'd see as an emergency transport system. If all else fails, you can get someone up or down in one, but that's about it. Or as I was telling my girlfriend, "Look at the distance from the bottom of the seat, to the bottom of the capsule. I wouldn't want my ass that close to plasma burning away at the hull."
Have you actually looked at FourSquare, or do you just live in a delusional world?
Have a look for Starbucks in New York.
The one with the most check-ins is "72 Spring St at Crosby St New York, NY 10012". 7,813 check-ins. From From August 2 2010 to March 15, 2011, there were 38 comments.
I'd be willing to bet that they serve well over 10,000 customers/month. In the roughly 5 months period (say 50,000 customers) 38 customers left feedback. That's a sample of 0.076% of the customers.
But, lets have a look at the comments on there. I'll hand pick a few for you.
Wow, the feedback is amazingly useful. We've learned that 31.6% of Starbucks customers leave absolutely worthless feedback. Extrapolate that out to the estimated customer base, and now you know that there are 15,800 customers you can't expect useful answers from.
Or more precisely... The sample set is too small for any useful purpose.
No, I said a business must be run by a business person, who can identify their trends in their market. It may mean wearing plain clothes, sitting somewhere in the dining area and listening to conversations. It may mean asking random people how they liked their experience. Getting just 1 personal feedback per hour (assuming a 8 hour day) gives you over 1,600 data points to work with. Working with the useless data points (unless you want to take a piss, and blah blah blah) is more likely to ruin your company.
But who am I to guess. With what I found online about you, you're obviously the business genius. Well, when you aren't vacuuming the soap suds out of your washer.
Actually, Disney realizes they can herd people better. Before that, anyone who wanted to skip the lines would rent a wheelchair for one person in their party, and then everyone with them goes to the front of the line. Then you'd have backed up lines with people of questionabl
I just replied to the AC that posted before you. Go up and read that. Maybe you'll understand. I would have said people were crazy for believing it. Once I worked with different aspects of the industry for a while, I realized how much is collected and sold. I really rather seed my true identity with so much disinformation that anyone trying to use it can't figure me out. Well, unless I live in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, ReykjavÃk, Berlin, and Moscow all at the same time. One of these days I'll have to throw together a randomize to pick major cities and suburbs to use online. Until then, I just pick one from the cities I know. :)
Well, not really. I worked in the industry that trades that information, and provides it to private investigators, law enforcement, and collections companies. Others provide it to anyone willing to pay. I know what some use for data sources. I still know people involved with those companies. They talk about their data sources, what they can provide to anyone who wants it.
Have you ever searched for yourself on intelius.com? How about looked at the current value of your house on zillow.com? Maybe searched for someone on zabasearch.com? Where do you think they get their information? Yes, they buy it.
I've also worked with people who have worked in other business segments of the same industry. For example, one company handles information used by marketing companies. They sell customized lists. You could get every independent car dealership within 100 miles of a particular city. Another company only trades in email lists. The more details with those email addresses the better. Want the email address for everyone in Middletown, Kansas? They'll be happy to provide it? Add to the list from Foursquare would then give you every person residing in the town, *and* those who "check in" there.
Those companies buy access to the credit reports. Not just hand picked ones, but all of them. They're expensive to buy, but they are out there. Does it show on your credit report? Then it's accessible. Search for "Experian File One" or "TransUnion TUCS file". You're looking at a 7-figure price, plus a whole stack of qualifications, but for the right price, they're more than happy to sell information on every person in the country.
They also buy lists or access to the lists of anything they can. Some it was perfectly legal, and some not so legal. For example, and unhappy and underpaid employee of a cell company may just happen to copy off the list of subscribers, and sell it for tens of thousands of dollars. Some random hacker gets a dump of the Sony database. They may not be in it for the credit card numbers. They may have wanted a verified list of names, addresses, phone numbers, and credit card numbers. The card numbers will stop working pretty quickly if they attempt to use them. The rest of the information is worth a fortune. How big was that data breech again? Oh ya, only 100 million users. That'll have a nice price tag on it when it goes to market. Of course, it will be filtered to remove seeds, and handed through so many people, it'd be easier to find the Holy Grail than the source.
If there is information available online, no matter how tedious it is to click through the forms, they have programs diligently pulling down ever bit they can. You can't guess every name on Facebook, but you can crawl through it pretty quickly. How hard would be be to write a script to request (through various anonymous proxies, with changing USER_AGENT strings):
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1
through
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=2100000000
It'd take a while to run through 2,100,000,000 pages (that's the upper limit I found by changing the id number by hand, without redirecting automatically back to the front page). That's if you have one computer doing them one at a time. How about 100 servers with 100 crawler processes each? 210,000 seconds, or 2.43 days. It may seem like a lot of horsepower to do it, but it's very profitable if even a small percentage have their profiles open for anyone to see.
But what about Foursquare, since that was the topic?
https://foursquare.com/user/1
through
It would depend on how you view junk.
In the right city? I'd say 25% is junk.
In the actual location? I'd say >50% is junk.
The people who I've know that use foursquare are frequently bored where they are, so they go looking around for other places to check in. So they pick an arbitrary location nearby that appears to be more interesting than where they really are.
I just go one up on the junk rating, and check in, in the wrong state or country. As I've told people, it's all disinformation, and usually located near cities that would drive the tinfoil hat crowd nuts. What's the worst that'll happen? They'll think I'm sort of covert government agent. The best is, they'll go looking for me at the wrong place.
I know I've cost people money looking for me. They shouldn't have tried. When I don't want to be found, I won't be found. When I want to, I'll show up at your door. It's not hard to not be found. Give a trusted friend one of your credit cards, and tell them to buy gas with it at least once a week locally. Ask them to pay you the estimated cost in cash. Give them your cell phone, and tell them to use on a regular basis. Have them email your messages to you, to a dummy email account. Borrow a car from a friend. Pay for all your needs with cash (fuel and food). Buy a pre-paid cell phone with cash in another area. Sleep in the car during the drive, so you won't show up as staying in a hotel. When you get to your safer destination, thank your friend for their assistance. It's pretty hard to identify me by picture. White male, age 25 to 35 years old, average height, average build, wearing nondescript clothes, driving an unknown vehicle, in an unknown area.
It's not just foursquare that I use. My Google Latitude location is at Ft. Meade at the NSA headquarters. Before that, I left myself in Manhattan. Why? I like New York. :) I miss not going up there as much as I used to. Foursquare has me logged in around Area 51, NSA headquarters, CIA headquarters, NGA headquarters, and even Wild Goose Chase, Australia. That last one was too funny, I couldn't resist. I thought about putting myself in Ketchican, AK, but I thought there wouldn't be enough people who got the joke (Catch, I Can).
Social networking sites have me registered in all kinds of arbitrary places. According to Facebook, I live at their office, but my current location is close (approx 5 miles) to a relatively obscure federal government emergency operations center.
How worthwhile is any of that data? Not very. And why do I do it? Well, other than the random PI with a grudge (or a pissy client), It's to avoid all the crazy people out there. There's just too many people in the general population that really should be tucked away safely in a mental facility. Hell, I don't want most of the people on here knowing where I am.
Check any arbitrary location, and see how many people have checked in there recently. The numbers are generally pretty small.
Companies already have a perfectly valid method to measure their business. They have their receipts. They know when they sold items, what they sold, how much to stock, and how many people they need working there.
So there was a line at Starbucks, big deal. They already know how many people that they can have in lines without losing too much business. They look at their costs versus the number of people who may just walk out . If they lose 2 $5 ($10 lost) sales during the 3pm hour, but to handle the load properly they would have needed 3 more people on that shift at $10/hr ($240), it's not advantageous to them to put 3 more people on that shift.
Business isn't about the customer experience. It's about making money. It's the same reason Disney doesn't mind having lines with an hour wait. They know you want their product, and are willing to stand in line waiting for it.
That's odd.
All I've seen of Foursquare is that a limited number of people ever check in from any place that I've spot checked.
Some of us cheat it anyways. There's a workaround for checking in places that you aren't physically at. So I check in at arbitrary places, preferably at or very close to government facilities that makes the tinfoil hat crowd go nuts. So, following my "trail" shows me being anywhere but where I actually am.
I'm fond of companies tracking us and selling that information. I'm happier when I've seeded their data with so much false information that it's virtually impossible to guess which is right.
And it's not that I'm one of the folks wearing a tinfoil hat too tight. I just like privacy. I don't think the government is following me. They already know where to find me. :) It's pesky people like private investigators working for someone trying to make easy money through bogus lawsuits. Go ahead, follow the trail. It's good for dealing with crazy ex-girlfriends too. :)
You know, from what I've found over the years, you are right. They test some of the most innovative aircraft out there.
I wrote up something comparing officially government funded aerospace programs, with huge oversight, versus aerospace programs with little to no government oversight. They've done some of the best aerospace work there, and only the good and/or useful stuff makes it out. The A-12, YF-12, and SR-71 are my favorites. They were operating from there for years before it was officially recognized.
Nope, you're correct. Pretty much they drew off areas in the middle of the desert, and assigned numbers to them. The area is huge, and it would be a waste of time coming up with names for each part of it.
I have seen maps indicating some other areas, but that doesn't help reinforce the mystery of "Area 51", so conspiracy folks don't generally publish that much. Come on, if it's Area 51, and assuming it's just an average spot on the map, there may be 100 "Areas". I don't remember how many area the Nevada Test Site was segmented into. But, if all the tinfoil hat crowd are focused on Area 51, then that means they can continue to test whatever they want at the other sites without nutjobs with telescopes watching them. :)
It's well documented, that was a weapons test range, and they did nuclear testing there.
You could go with what some of the conspiracy theorists say though. They make up stuff about a network of secret government tunnels that span the entire country. A lot of their maps show Area 51 to be a central hub. That kind of stuff is made up by people with their tinfoil hats screwed on a little too tight though. :) I'm sure they could find straight lines through there, which lead directly to arbitrary cities, and they'd claim that there were accidents landing UFOs or some such nonsense, and the tunnels collapsed.
Occam says, they're just craters from tests. :)
Yup. :) The did a lot of nuke testing in that area. That's probably one of the biggest reasons the area is off limits. There's another test area, Area 25 if I recall correctly, where they did an atmospheric nuke test, and that test area is still hot.
The largest civil purpose nuke was tested in that test range. Google for the "Sedan Crater". They were testing to see if a nuke could move a mountain. It worked very well, except for the pesky radiation problem. It's safe enough to go out and visit for a few minutes, and they do take tour groups, but they're limited, and can't stay very long.
From what I heard, there is an Executive Order from the POTUS stating that they are exempt from EPA testing and inspection. It makes perfect sense though. If they're testing new or exotic fuels, and they had to dump it, testing of the residue could show what was being tested.
Frozen food is on one side of the aisle. Jewelry is on the other. :)
Noscript, and Adblock Plus, and I saw nothing but a National Geographic story. Pretty boring stuff. If you've ever known anyone in military intelligence, they'll tell you the same kind of story. Fake vehicles (like cardboard cutouts), scrambling to move anything "interesting" inside, or cover it with a tarp. The idea was to make every base look like it was deserted, even if there was a full complement there.
Area 51 still does a fine job of it. I check Google Maps there once in a while to see what's changed. Some of the underground bunkers, that had taxiways from the runways, which had an obvious opening, now look like they're just the side of a mountain. So you have an empty taxiway to nowhere? Yup, I'm falling for that.
I still have yet to see interesting aircraft, but of course they are the gov't, and can tell Google to remove any unpopular images before they're published. Most likely, they still do their privacy covers. What's the difference between a dirty colored tarp, and the side of a mountain? Absolutely nothing without very high resolution and/or infrared imaging.
For reference, this is one of those spots.
If you browse around, they only have 4 aircraft. Two airliners, two helicopters, and one fighter jet. Hmmm, that doesn't seem quite right, now does it? :)
This is my favorite feature of the area.
Oops, I rambled again, didn't I? Oh well.
That was just a typo. 250GB, but I'm sure you had already figured that out. :)
Well, you know that's pretty much the way it works. Worse than that, they use test markets, and apply trends improperly across areas that they consider normalized.
A couple years ago, we had a heat wave in Florida, which in itself isn't all that unusual, except that it was early in the season. 105 during the day, and 90-something at night. Perfectly normal. :) During this particular one, I just needed a small fan for my office.
Because of the time of year, they had heaters stocked. This part of Florida needs heaters for maybe a couple weeks a year. The small section of fans were gone. People were asking employees about air conditioners, that they hadn't received in. They were expecting the seasonal change to come in a few weeks, and their air conditioners would arrive then.
We'll use today as an example. High of 93. Low of 70. New York 60/56. Seattle: 61/47. Los Angeles: 71/56. I sent to a Walmart yesterday. They have plenty of heaters to choose from, two air conditioners on the shelf, and no empty spots on the shelves for more.
Nope, we should buy heaters, because statistics throughout the US are show that customers nationally are still purchasing heaters. For here, highs in the 90's is perfectly normal right now. The weather report here from May to October is almost always the same unless we have a hurricane coming. "Highs in 90's, lows in the upper 70's through mid 80's, 50% chance of afternoon evening thunderstorms. Seas are 3 to 6 feet." They joke about it sometimes, when a new newscaster comes in, and they realize that every days weather report is exactly the same for 6 months of the year. Having a working air conditioner isn't just a nice thing, it's virtually required. We haven't turned on the heater for at least a couple months.
I know it was some executive that look at the seasonal numbers, and said "The hardware department in all zones get the same inventory. Heaters are selling right now, so don't ship air conditioners." It's the same reason you get glossy screens, or the Walmart decided fashion of the month is "in style". The test market, or statistics from chosen stores say it's true, so it must be what everyone wants. I'm sure they know their market down to the point where a red package sells better than a blue package, but we are all victims of their market analysis. It doesn't matter what any surveys say. They work strictly from "what makes us money?"
Manufacturers aren't dumb. They don't produce things totally wrong just to satisfy their own urges.
A survey of technical people may say we want matte.
An analysis of sales probably showed that glossy screens sold better.
Manufacturers produce products for sale. If a survey said that consumers prefer black laptops, but they preferred to purchase hot pink laptops with sparkles, we'd all be running around with sparkly hot pink laptops, regardless of what the people said they wanted. It's a fun game to watch. It works in so many industries. People are frequently influenced by irrational things.
I'd guess that that glossy screens make people feel that they have the newer or cleaner model. People tend to like shiny things. The dull matte finish looks older or more worn.
I've spent plenty of time in computer stores, selecting the best specifications. While I'm doing that, I listen to the people around me. "Pretty" and "Shiny" are definitely what customers want. The next (for computer) is the "memory". I quote that, as most consumers consider the drive space and RAM as the same thing. {sigh}. People will lean towards a PC with a 500GB drive and 1GB RAM, over a 25GB drive and 4GB RAM. I've also noticed they get confused by TB drive sizes. 1TB is obviously smaller than 500GB (1 500). Flash memory sizes are hilarious. They don't judge size based on the storage size. They judge it on the sign that says "This will hold 500 songs" :) And back to the pretty factor, they'll go with a pretty 4GB USB flash drive over a plain looking 16GB USB flash drive. I've pretty much given up on helping random strangers in stores because despite their request for "help", they'll still buy fashion over function. The only way I can make someone buy the better devices is to purchase it for them (who then pay me the purchase price). I do that for friends and family only.
So, it's not our fault (generally people who would read here), it's the general consumer's fault. The manufacturers may even offer both what's favorable and not, but retail stores will only stock the items that sell well. It doesn't do any retail store any good at all to stock items that won't move. It wastes floor space, and will eventually have to be sold at clearance for cheap. Consider the WalMart effect. They buy in huge quantity. They only stock what will move, and they put substantial research into that. There's a science behind it, and they study it carefully, from what items to stock, to where to display it, down to the direction you walk through the store. Do most people turn left or right when they enter the store? Will they do high dollar impulse buys first or last?
As I've noticed, they stock low dollar impulse buys ( $20) at the entrance, and cheap impulse buys ($10) at the register. In a Walmart close to me, the traffic path goes from the entrance to the right. You encounter the departments in the following order. I note departments on each side of the aisle together.
$20 impulse buys. HBA (health/beauty) and home decor.
Womens clothing and toys.
Sporting/fitness and womens/teens clothing. Stuck back in a corner from there is hardware and tools.
The newly designed electronics section with cell phones in the front, TV's hanging on the wall in the back in clear sight, and more home decor (bedroom).
Children's clothes and pet supplies
Pharmacy and food
HBA/fashion (makeup), and food.
Jewelry and frozen food, with fresh produce in the corner.
Mens and boys clothes, as well as shoes, housewares are buried in the middle of the loop. They aren't usually impulse buys, so they don't get the high visibility spots. People assume (correctly) that the department exists, so they will go off of the
For fun, it'd be great. If you were say living near the Fukushima, not so great. :)
I'd actually like to walk through the grocery store, and see if any of the levels are beyond EPA limits. But hey, if I had something small that went click in any sort of accurate fashion, it'd be a good hint of "don't buy this". :)
I've read on how to make them. Maybe I should just go ahead and do it one day. Being the analytical person that I am, I'd of course have to tie it to my Linux machine, so I can log and graph the results. :)