I strongly recommend that you take a look at the wikipedia article for inertia.
What, he can't just fire up his Bergenholm and go free? Klono's carborundum drive-baffles, what kind of tin-plated cut-rate space navy are you guys running here? Next you'll tell me that you haven't upgraded from atomic fission to cosmic energy taps, or that your Fleet Navigation Computers aren't all attractive redheads.
yeah, you all know they can't use the startrek transporter
Well, you can, but the first time they tried it the warhead came back inside out, and the second time it came back with a goatee. The third time there were just two identical warheads sitting on the pad, both claiming to be the original. That's about when they gave up and went for trucks.
I'd say that because of nuclear weapons, we haven't had another war with astronomical body count.
Up til 2009, you could also have said that complex financial instruments had prevented a worldwide financial crash. The system worked just fine, until it didn't. Up til 1914, you could have said that the intricate web of mutual European treaties prevented a huge war. Until the day it didn't. And then the existence of these systems made the problem worse.
I can't help but think that, fifty years of bizarro deterrence logic aside, we are actually objectively less safe for having these devices. If we'd rather that our cities weren't irradiated and burned to a cinder, perhaps t would be simpler to not build devices designed to irradiate them and burn them to a cinder.
Our mentality was shaped by the threat of nuclear war, so we don't even consider the war between major powers.
On the contrary, those of us who grew up in the 1980s lived with the constant expectation of imminent all-out war between major powers - it's just that we thought we'd get both a major-power war and a nuclear war. Rational evaluation of the probably outcome led to a constant sinking sense of grim fatalism and cynicism. In the 1990s, when the Cold War powers stepped back from the brink a little, and us 80s kids stepped into our fifteen minutes of media spotlight, that fear and cynicism manifested in the darkness of 90s media. The conspiracy paranoia chic of The X-Files. The despair of Nirvana. Pre-millennial angst. The roots of our modern malaise with government are buried in the atomic bunkers. We know that our grandparents set out quite sanely to end the world if they didn't get their fleeting political way. That knowledge, that we're heirs to cheerful automated mass murder, burns at us even as we try our best to ignore it.
And thing is, having a nuclear standoff didn't prevent all the brushfire wars: millions dead in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq/Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Iraq a third time, Afghanistan again, huge chunks of Africa...
It's hard to say that we're better off for having a proud and determined strategy to cold-bloodedly massacre millions of civilians. It's just that we generally choose to ignore the radioactive Godzilla in the living room - especially now that the end of the world du jour is climate change and economic crash and not The Nuclear Button. But the beast is still there.
The US convoys are better protected than suggested by this article.... the ones I saw there had concealed mounts for remotely-operated miniguns.
Um, that's exactly what the article says, if you actually read it.
A driver has the ability to disable the truck so it can't be moved or opened, and the truck is designed to defend itself, OST officials claim. How so remains unclear, though its parent agency, the DOE, contracted in 2005 with an Australian weapons company called Metal Storm to develop a robotic 40-millimeter gun that could "distribute large quantities of ammunition over a large area in an extremely short time frame."
So we don't like these things. We don't want them to have to exist, but they do. A
Yes, we really don't like these things. We don't like them so much that by some unexplainable mysterious accident of fate, sixty years worth of research and infrastructure devoted entirely to incinerating cities full of civilians just... somehow happened. It was the darnedest thing. One day, out of the blue, here was Enrico Fermi wondering what the heck this strange alien contraption was that had materialised in his squash court, the next a bunch of German V2 scientists just sort of wandered into Texas in a daze.
Anyhoo, long story, here we are with a couple of hundred silos full of flaming toxic megadeath, which we accidentally ordered instead of noodles! Hoo boy, there were some red faces in the Pentagon when that got found out, I tell you! Goes right against our principles to use 'em, of course. Always has. Um. No, we're not going to turn them off. Why? Weeell.... see now, if we *had* them but didn't *use* them, see, that would make us even better people, wouldn't it, than *not* having them and *wanting* to use them? See? That's logic!
"End users shouldn't know what a "codec" is, they should double-click a file and see it play, which is what VLC is all about."
This statement is what's made all the headaches of computers happen.
People using computers, especially online, should be required to pass a competency test and basic knowledge test.
Well, sort of. What's made codecs an especially thorny hassle on both Windows and Mac has been the operating system's staunch absolute refusal to admit that they exist, and to give the user any kind of relevant feedback whatsoever, combined with both companies' equally staunch refusal to allow codecs to be distributed freely.
For example, right-click on a.wmv Explorer on Windows 7. Go ahead, I'll wait. Now, let's see what metadata we've got in the details pane. Hmm. Title, Subtitle, Rating (huh?), Tags, Comments, Length, Frame Width, Frame Height... more esoteric stuff, like data rate, Total Bitrate.... absolutely no mention of codec. Go look under Control Panel for anything about installed codecs. Nothing. (For extra credit, go digging through the raw Registry looking for information about codecs... it's certainly not well documented). So how's even a trained user supposed to understand what she has or hasn't bought the rights to use on her system?
Codecs could be sensible, if they were treated just like programs, file extensions and fonts: things you could easily tell existed, and if they had a neat control panel somewhere showing what was and wasn't installed. But for inexplicable reasons, all the major OS manufacturers seem to have conspired to make codecs both invisible, and yet sold as commercial extensions that you can't just assume are there. Bizarre.
You're trying to convince "our ideology failed in the real world 100 times but in principle it's great" lefties by pointing out that the real world requires compromises ?
I love your optimism, man. Just love it.
And as everyone knows, "compromise" is always spelled "labour camp".
If you're not in favour of labour camps, you're in favour of Our Country's Enemies having labour camps. And that's just unpatriotic! What are you, some kind of freedom-loving leftwing nitwit? You just don't understand that the real world requires a little bit of forced enslavement and crushing despair. If you're not for labour camps, you're objectively in favour of our enemies.
Oh, for -! Look, they'll be patriotic labour camps. Smart, well-funded, efficiently run. State of the art. We'll crush and oppress our dissenters with due diligence. Yes, the details will be kept secret, but that's because it's a matter of national security. Theoretically speaking, they'd be fully open to independent inspection, if that were realistically possible, and we all wish it were.
Seriously, you lot are just never satisfied, are you? Well, that's okay. We're generous to our misinformed domestic opponents. The trucks will be calling for you at 3am tomorrow.
i notice you have a reagan signature. maybe you would enjoy his numerous speeches about the virtuous god-fearing mujahideen freedom fighters, and their battle against the godless communist aggressors in the 1980s? because there are a large number of such speeches. they are at the reagan archives, you can google them.
Myself, I like watching 1988's Rambo III where he goes to Afghanistan and helps the proto-Taliban kill Russians.
There was absolutely no possible way such an enlightened defense strategy could ever have had unexpected side effects.
oh wait, you meant, like, actual hardware? Bricks-and-mortar space? That's pretty retro. Um. Let me check out Lifehacker and see if there are any recipes posted for hypergolic propulsion?
Those smart, motivated young people are now attracted more towards financial and web-based endeavors. Because that is where the money and opportunities are.
And unlike building space rockets and ICBMs, when complex financial instruments miscalculate and blow up they don't destroy trillions of.... um...
Well, eheh, the big difference between the two is that financial instruments could conceivably be used for purposes other than mass destruction. I mean, it's possible. It could have been possible. We could imagine a world in which it could have been possible. Logically speaking, the creation of a financial instrument doesn't entail... well... the supposition of a consistent universe of discourse doesn't require that it entail... in all possible frames...
Is it hot in here or is it just me? I'll go see what's happening at the bar.
For a very slim definition of "Successful". That article really needs to be updated - right now it reads like a 1960s propaganda sheet for the atomic spaceflight program.
For an example of some of the actual real-world difficulties that nuclear rockets faced, try reading this article on the ever amazing "Beyond Apollo" blog: Nuclear Flight System Definition studies (1971)
Osias postulated a maximum allowable radiation dose for an astronaut from sources other than cosmic rays of between 10 and 25 Roentgen Equivalent Man (REM) per year. Astronauts riding an RNS would, however, receive 10 REM each time its NERVA I engine operated. An astronaut 10 miles behind or to the side of an RNS operating at full power would receive a radiation dose of between 25 and 30 REM per hour. Osias noted that the NFSD contractors had recommended that no piloted spacecraft approach to within 100 miles of an operating NERVA I engine.
Radiation created other operational problems, Osias wrote. Spacecraft could dock with an RNS by approaching through the cone-shaped radiation shadow that protected its crew (bottom image below). Docking an RNS to a large vehicle that protruded beyond the shadow - for example, a space station or propellant depot - would, however, create obvious problems (top image below). The large vehicle's crew might be exposed to radiation from the NERVA I; more insidiously, the large vehicle's structure would reflect radiation back at the RNS, endangering its crew.
The NERVA I engine would not only emit radiation while it was in operation; it would also generate long-lived spent nuclear fuel that would emit radiation. Osias noted that NAR had "repeatedly emphasized [that] maintainability is essential to economic operation of the RNS." He noted, however, that a spacewalking repairman who approached to within 400 feet of the side of an RNS 10 days after its tenth (and, going by MSFC's traffic model, final) Earth-moon roundtrip would receive one REM per hour from the spent fuel it contained. Maintenance robots might replace the repair capabilities of astronauts, Osias noted, but such systems would need expensive development.
Yeah. Not exactly a "successful" design if you want it to not kill all your astronauts.
Since we know the answer is 'yes' and the bonus answer is 'ferret'
Well, if nothing else, I look forward to the next big pop culture monster to take over from "sparkly vampire" and "zombie".
From the producers of "Snakes On A Tesseract", "Sunday Afternoon Tea-Time of the Dead", and "David Attenborough's Rather Interesting Space Creature With An Unusual Yet Beautiful Life Cycle".
The Next Frontier Of Terror Just Scurried Up Your Trousers.
Slashdot Mirror
Attacked with: guns!
In space I guess you play rock-lasers-Mylar...
Extra bonus: We shot them with our poo!
And that's what happens when you give monkeys a monolith.
I agree, but missiles are vulnerable to getting attacked. Unless the missiles are armored...
Dog, I heard you liked missiles so I put missiles on your missiles... on the missiles on your missiles!.
Basically it's missiles all the way down.
You don't want to be hit with one of the little gluon-sized ones, they really sting.
I strongly recommend that you take a look at the wikipedia article for inertia.
What, he can't just fire up his Bergenholm and go free? Klono's carborundum drive-baffles, what kind of tin-plated cut-rate space navy are you guys running here? Next you'll tell me that you haven't upgraded from atomic fission to cosmic energy taps, or that your Fleet Navigation Computers aren't all attractive redheads.
"Circumvented Internet Explorer's privacy protections".
Um. If a third party can circumvent it, it's not actually a protection.
Sir, if this post doesn't have a +5 (Inconceivable) rating by the end of the day - you have been robbed.
As we all know, Slashdot is populated entirely by criminals.
yeah, you all know they can't use the startrek transporter
Well, you can, but the first time they tried it the warhead came back inside out, and the second time it came back with a goatee. The third time there were just two identical warheads sitting on the pad, both claiming to be the original. That's about when they gave up and went for trucks.
This is why nukes were named 'peacemakers', it was what they did.
So it turns out Mao was just a good student of American foreign policy: political power does flow from the barrel of a gun^Watomic warhead!
Or perhaps all those gun barrels pointed at the world created a wave of fear and hatred of the US and shunted the problem into the future.
I'd say that because of nuclear weapons, we haven't had another war with astronomical body count.
Up til 2009, you could also have said that complex financial instruments had prevented a worldwide financial crash. The system worked just fine, until it didn't. Up til 1914, you could have said that the intricate web of mutual European treaties prevented a huge war. Until the day it didn't. And then the existence of these systems made the problem worse.
I can't help but think that, fifty years of bizarro deterrence logic aside, we are actually objectively less safe for having these devices. If we'd rather that our cities weren't irradiated and burned to a cinder, perhaps t would be simpler to not build devices designed to irradiate them and burn them to a cinder.
Our mentality was shaped by the threat of nuclear war, so we don't even consider the war between major powers.
On the contrary, those of us who grew up in the 1980s lived with the constant expectation of imminent all-out war between major powers - it's just that we thought we'd get both a major-power war and a nuclear war. Rational evaluation of the probably outcome led to a constant sinking sense of grim fatalism and cynicism. In the 1990s, when the Cold War powers stepped back from the brink a little, and us 80s kids stepped into our fifteen minutes of media spotlight, that fear and cynicism manifested in the darkness of 90s media. The conspiracy paranoia chic of The X-Files. The despair of Nirvana. Pre-millennial angst. The roots of our modern malaise with government are buried in the atomic bunkers. We know that our grandparents set out quite sanely to end the world if they didn't get their fleeting political way. That knowledge, that we're heirs to cheerful automated mass murder, burns at us even as we try our best to ignore it.
And thing is, having a nuclear standoff didn't prevent all the brushfire wars: millions dead in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq/Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Iraq a third time, Afghanistan again, huge chunks of Africa...
It's hard to say that we're better off for having a proud and determined strategy to cold-bloodedly massacre millions of civilians. It's just that we generally choose to ignore the radioactive Godzilla in the living room - especially now that the end of the world du jour is climate change and economic crash and not The Nuclear Button. But the beast is still there.
The US convoys are better protected than suggested by this article. ... the ones I saw there had concealed mounts for remotely-operated miniguns.
Um, that's exactly what the article says, if you actually read it.
It has happened before, it will happen again.
That's certainly one explanation for the asteroid belt where there ought to be a planet, and why Venus is greenhoused...
But... But... Where do you put the sharks?
Inside cute li'l spacesuits, of course.
So we don't like these things. We don't want them to have to exist, but they do. A
Yes, we really don't like these things. We don't like them so much that by some unexplainable mysterious accident of fate, sixty years worth of research and infrastructure devoted entirely to incinerating cities full of civilians just... somehow happened. It was the darnedest thing. One day, out of the blue, here was Enrico Fermi wondering what the heck this strange alien contraption was that had materialised in his squash court, the next a bunch of German V2 scientists just sort of wandered into Texas in a daze.
Anyhoo, long story, here we are with a couple of hundred silos full of flaming toxic megadeath, which we accidentally ordered instead of noodles! Hoo boy, there were some red faces in the Pentagon when that got found out, I tell you! Goes right against our principles to use 'em, of course. Always has. Um. No, we're not going to turn them off. Why? Weeell.... see now, if we *had* them but didn't *use* them, see, that would make us even better people, wouldn't it, than *not* having them and *wanting* to use them? See? That's logic!
It still takes forever to "Rebuild the Font Cache".
What exactly is VLC doing when it does this?
It's actually reticulating the splines.
"End users shouldn't know what a "codec" is, they should double-click a file and see it play, which is what VLC is all about."
This statement is what's made all the headaches of computers happen.
People using computers, especially online, should be required to pass a competency test and basic knowledge test.
Well, sort of. What's made codecs an especially thorny hassle on both Windows and Mac has been the operating system's staunch absolute refusal to admit that they exist, and to give the user any kind of relevant feedback whatsoever, combined with both companies' equally staunch refusal to allow codecs to be distributed freely.
For example, right-click on a .wmv Explorer on Windows 7. Go ahead, I'll wait. Now, let's see what metadata we've got in the details pane. Hmm. Title, Subtitle, Rating (huh?), Tags, Comments, Length, Frame Width, Frame Height... more esoteric stuff, like data rate, Total Bitrate.... absolutely no mention of codec. Go look under Control Panel for anything about installed codecs. Nothing. (For extra credit, go digging through the raw Registry looking for information about codecs... it's certainly not well documented). So how's even a trained user supposed to understand what she has or hasn't bought the rights to use on her system?
Codecs could be sensible, if they were treated just like programs, file extensions and fonts: things you could easily tell existed, and if they had a neat control panel somewhere showing what was and wasn't installed. But for inexplicable reasons, all the major OS manufacturers seem to have conspired to make codecs both invisible, and yet sold as commercial extensions that you can't just assume are there. Bizarre.
Just out of curiosity, as a non-USer, why does the "central time zone" have news at a different time? That seems kinda weird.
You're trying to convince "our ideology failed in the real world 100 times but in principle it's great" lefties by pointing out that the real world requires compromises ?
I love your optimism, man. Just love it.
And as everyone knows, "compromise" is always spelled "labour camp".
If you're not in favour of labour camps, you're in favour of Our Country's Enemies having labour camps. And that's just unpatriotic! What are you, some kind of freedom-loving leftwing nitwit? You just don't understand that the real world requires a little bit of forced enslavement and crushing despair. If you're not for labour camps, you're objectively in favour of our enemies.
Oh, for -! Look, they'll be patriotic labour camps. Smart, well-funded, efficiently run. State of the art. We'll crush and oppress our dissenters with due diligence. Yes, the details will be kept secret, but that's because it's a matter of national security. Theoretically speaking, they'd be fully open to independent inspection, if that were realistically possible, and we all wish it were.
Seriously, you lot are just never satisfied, are you? Well, that's okay. We're generous to our misinformed domestic opponents. The trucks will be calling for you at 3am tomorrow.
i notice you have a reagan signature. maybe you would enjoy his numerous speeches about the virtuous god-fearing mujahideen freedom fighters, and their battle against the godless communist aggressors in the 1980s? because there are a large number of such speeches. they are at the reagan archives, you can google them.
Myself, I like watching 1988's Rambo III where he goes to Afghanistan and helps the proto-Taliban kill Russians.
There was absolutely no possible way such an enlightened defense strategy could ever have had unexpected side effects.
Would today's engineers in their 20s be able to devise a space program if they had to?
1. Buy Xbox.
2. Buy Mass Effect 3.
3. Achievement unlocked!
oh wait, you meant, like, actual hardware? Bricks-and-mortar space? That's pretty retro. Um. Let me check out Lifehacker and see if there are any recipes posted for hypergolic propulsion?
Those smart, motivated young people are now attracted more towards financial and web-based endeavors. Because that is where the money and opportunities are.
And unlike building space rockets and ICBMs, when complex financial instruments miscalculate and blow up they don't destroy trillions of .... um...
Well, eheh, the big difference between the two is that financial instruments could conceivably be used for purposes other than mass destruction. I mean, it's possible. It could have been possible. We could imagine a world in which it could have been possible. Logically speaking, the creation of a financial instrument doesn't entail... well... the supposition of a consistent universe of discourse doesn't require that it entail... in all possible frames...
Is it hot in here or is it just me? I'll go see what's happening at the bar.
Nuclear rocket engines have been built and tested successfully, but for political reasons were not pursued.
For a very slim definition of "Successful". That article really needs to be updated - right now it reads like a 1960s propaganda sheet for the atomic spaceflight program.
For an example of some of the actual real-world difficulties that nuclear rockets faced, try reading this article on the ever amazing "Beyond Apollo" blog: Nuclear Flight System Definition studies (1971)
Yeah. Not exactly a "successful" design if you want it to not kill all your astronauts.
Since we know the answer is 'yes' and the bonus answer is 'ferret'
Well, if nothing else, I look forward to the next big pop culture monster to take over from "sparkly vampire" and "zombie".
From the producers of "Snakes On A Tesseract", "Sunday Afternoon Tea-Time of the Dead", and "David Attenborough's Rather Interesting Space Creature With An Unusual Yet Beautiful Life Cycle".
The Next Frontier Of Terror Just Scurried Up Your Trousers.
Fear It.
The Doctor will find a cure
Matt Smith that is.
Good thinking, Pond, but how are we going to build an instant distribution system for eight billion servings of fish fingers and custard?
So his readers are suffering from a comma coma?