Actually, no. The "right to remain silent" is one of your Miranda rights. These rights apply to someone who has been taken into custody,... I don't see how they would apply here to someone who has yet to be arrested.
A slightly better argument could be made of your Constitutional right to remain silent, however, that right is to prevent self-incrimination and is designed to prevent coercision of suspects to incriminate themselves. In other words, you can't make someone admit to a crime. Again, I don't think this would apply either, because having a particular name is not a crime. Even if the police are looking for someone with a particular name, merely saying your name isn't incriminating you, it is identifying you. The incriminating stuff is whatever they found that made them look for you in the first place.
"The ISS crew, likely to be remembered as caretakers of NASA's failed scheme, will be witness to the future of space exploration. Poetic, isn't it?"
I am all for private spaceflight and don't want to come off like I am diminishing the significance of todays events but I really think your sense of perspective needs adjusting...
The ISS is a permanent space station, at an altitude of 386 km. The thing was built in space. Astronauts live for six months at a time in a zero-g environment. Robotic spacecraft deliver supplies. They eat their meals in space. They surf the web in space. Dude, they are living in space. The astronauts on the ISS are not "witnessing the future of space exploration"... they are living the future.
Let me preface what I am about to say with the following: I think that what Scaled Composites has done is nothing short of amazing. I don't need to wish them the best, as I have been to their plant, and seen and crawled inside their vehicle. That said, I believe that SpaceShipOne is more of a bureocratic and idealogical achievement. First off, SC defined the process by which civilian companies are certified for space flight. Second, this event will usher in a newfound pride and enthusiasm for space exploration that has been missing for decades.
Unfortunately, this design is not very, well, useful other than to make Scaled Composites LOTS of money from space tourists. There is not a lot of interest otherwise in manned sub-orbital (heck, the Soviets skipped it entirely) and despite what Mr. Rutan says, this technology is not scalable to an orbital version. SpaceShipOne was point designed for commercial tourism of sub-orbital space.
"the design, although radical, is comparitively simple when viewed alongside early government funded sub-orbital flight."
I have to disagree here. This vehicle is significantly more complex than the Mercury missions. Radical - yes, in the sense of using a dual-aircraft staging ascent, but you do not get much more simple than a redstone rocket with a purely ballistic capsule for re-entry. SpaceShipOne is closer to the space shuttle than it is to a Mercury capsule, in the sense that it flys like an aircraft with all the appropriate control surfaces - not to mention the feathering wing during re-entry. Radical - yes, simple - no. Bear in mind, that this design is made possible by relatively modern composite materials, so comparing this design to a 1950's iron capsule is a bit unfair.
Let me preface what I am about to say with the following: I think that what Scaled Composites has done is nothing short of amazing. I don't need to wish them the best, as I have been to their plant, and seen and crawled inside their vehicle. They will win the X-prize tomorrow... That said, I believe that SpaceShipOne is more of a bureocratic and idealogical achievement. First off, SC defined the process by which civilian companies are certified for space flight. Second, this event will usher in a newfound pride and enthusiasm for space exploration that has been missing for decades.
Unfortunately, this design is not very, well, useful other than to make Scaled Composites LOTS of money from space tourists. There is not a lot of interest otherwise in sub-orbital (heck, the Soviets skipped it entirely). SpaceShipOne was point designed to win the X-prize; the approach used is not scalable to an orbital version.
All that having been said, I am very excited for the future of space flight... I know what I will be doing tomorrow morning!
well, a president can be impeached even if they honestly 'earned' their presidency. Past achievements does not necessarily mean that the person in question meets a certain standard for the rest of their life.
How about PC software? Most 'evaluation' versions of software applications are indeed full version, but until they have been 'activated', lock the user out of certain routines. Most 'cracks' do nothing more than overwirte a few bytes to disable or bypass this 'activation' routine, thus enabling the all the functions. Although I know it is legally wrong these software companies are giving you free, complete versions of their software and are hoping that you don't know that with some bit twiddling you can overcome their poor distribution model. Maybe the software industry could learn from this...
I'll give you a little tip that took me about 3 years to figure out. Women don't care if you care what they are talking about. They also don't care about their friends' problems that they just spent 6 hours listening about. They DO care that you listen to them, just like they listen to their friends to show them that they care about THEM, not the subject of their friends' story. To be geeky, with women it is about a good stable communications channel, rather than the channel's content.
Wow, it is a really good thing the author had a short name (Eric Ball)... can you imagine trying to make a title screen with "by Michael Rosenbaum" using 80x40 graphics?
Note that I did not even disagree with the content fo the movie, just that it is not nerd material and therefore not appropriate for slashdot. I guess even that gets you modded as a troll these days...
Exactly how is this news for nerds? I understand that the prevailing opinion on Slashdot is hatred for the Bush administration, but I fail to see the 'nerd' aspect to this story. Politics aside, if it was a sci/fi or fantasy movie, I could understand, but this was simply a politically charged documentary about 9/11 and the Iraq war. What is next? Reviews of campaign ads?
First off, I doubt that the original poster AC is american. Can't quite pin-point it, but his/her writing style seems non-American English. For instance, they used the British spelling for "Coloured" whereas in the US one would use colored.
anyway, while I doubt anyone has tried to correlate IQ with political affiliation, the FACT of the matter is that Republicans are more educated than Democrats (as a group). Of course one can argue that education != intelligence, but lacking any IQ data, this is what we have to work with.
Finally, I have no idea who Phil Henry is. Given the context, I assume you are referring to Phil HenDRIE, a popular talk-radio host. I have two news-flashes for you: Phil Hendrie is a self-admitted SOCIALIST (he voted for Gore by the way), and second, his show is an ACT, and the joke is on you.
Moreover, at least Windows could make an argument (if not a crappy one) that a low IQ customer could confuse Windows with Lindows, potentially depriving them of some revenue. Exactly what revenue was the name for the number googol bringing in?
easy there... while it is obvious that MS sent different CSS settings to different browsers (not a big deal), there is no proof that the Opera CSS was INTENTIONALLY BROKEN as you seem to claim. Intentionally different, but only the coder knows if he intentionally 'broke' the CSS settings or not. It is quite possible that different coders with appropriate backgrounds in the various browsers wrote seperate style sheets, and perhaps the Opera guy simply made a mistake. Just a thought.
(b). I am educated with a degree in Physics and 3 graduate degrees in aero/astro engineering.
(c). I have seen UFOs (that certainly weren't alien)
It would seem that I am the textbook case of an intelligent, credible witness who has seen a UFO. Unfortunately (sic), my scientific mind prevailed and the true nature of the events became apparent, although I can vouch for the powerful psychological effects that fool even the most credible and educated of witnesses.
I will cite three examples that have personally happened to me:
(1). Flying at night somewhere over the Med I saw a burst of light, which seemed to be maneuvering at amazing (and quite odd) rates. Later we discovered our sighting was a fighter deploying flares many miles from our position. When the night is that dark, a very bright object almost overloads your visual system causing the many flares to appear as one large moving object. The odd trajectories were a result of our having been orbiting at a rather steep angle of bank for quite a while, which created the illusion (in our own heads) that the object was moving in the vertical much more than it really was.
2. This one is almost embarrassing. I once saw a strange red light out in the distance (again at night in the air). It seemed to move randomly, sometimes almost hovering, sometimes zipping about erratically. I watched this for a couple minutes and even discussed it with the other crewmember. Eventually, while leaning to get a better look, it disappeared. I moved again, it reappeared. I moved again, it disappeared... I waved my arms around the cockpit until I discovered it: a red light on an instrument panel was reflecting off of the side canopy and was being projected onto another part of the canopy. The 'motions' I was seeing were all do to my moving my head and the associated parallax. For a few minutes, I really believed I was looking at another aircraft.
3. Ok, this last one wasn't really a UFO but certainly was an example of how dangerous and convincing an optical illusion can be. We were flying on a low-level route (about 200 ft) over flat terrain when I spotted a very large aircraft right in front of us (1/4 mile) and apparently maneuvering. It looked to me like a large passenger liner. The illusion lasted about 10 seconds. In reality, we were approaching a large moored white blimp, about 100 ft off the ground. My brain had 'filled in' the missing detail of the featureless blimp to look like an airplane (since I could see air under it, it had to be a plane right?). All target motion was cause again by our own aircraft's motion.
So there you have it, I don't doubt that military, police, and even scientists routinely see UFOs as well. No one is immune to the illusions of the human mind. Critical thinkers are the 'open minded' ones who DONT immediately jump to conclusions!
Every program ever written runs on any computer regardless of architecture or operating system.
This applies to computers of alien species as well. We learned that from 'Independence Day' when Jeff Goldbloom created a virus on his Mac, and inserted it into the alien mothership. Any you people say Macs aren't part of the virus culture. Sheesh!
Actually, most of the other post are defining the wrong type of gyroscope. Gyroscopes have been used for decades for the purpose of navigation. Much like a top encased inside two gimbals, the gyro maintains its orientation despite any motion of the platform to which it is attached. Thus it is used in aircraft, ships, submarines and spacecraft to determine the vehicles' orientation.
However, that is not the type of gyroscope that has failed here! In the last couple decades, gyroscopes have been used as actuators to actually provide the TORQUES necessary to MANEUVER space vehicles. This is very different from the much more common use of gyros simply to determine attitude. In fact, these gyroscopes are more correctly referred to as Control Moment Gyrospcopes or CMGs. (Incidently, they come in two flavors, single and dual gimbaled - with the ISS using the much less common and more complex [read prone to failure] dual gimbaled CMGs (DGCMG)).
A CMG works as a torque amplifier. You essentially spin up the inner element to a high rpm (usually 3000-5000 rpm) and then apply a small torque to the outer gimbal. The the gyroscopic rigidity of the inner rotating element resists this torque and the result is a much-amplified reaction torque imparted on the vehicle.
Traditionally, three-axis stabilized spacecraft that require fine pointing control have used reaction wheels or momentum wheels for control. CMGs allow for orders of more magnitude of more torque (for an equivalent mass alternative) and more momentum storage (unfortunately, momentum is conserved even in space, so if you impart an angular rate to a spacecraft, you must have some element inside the spacecraft to 'store' an equal an opposite momentum - this is what actually limits a spacecraft's slew rate). The downside of CMGs is that they are mechanically complex (don't even get me talking about null-spaces) and that high rpm inner element must be lubricated extremely well if you want the vehicle to perform for years without an oil change (as those are hard to come by in LEO); thus they tend to higher failure rates. The solution to this has tended to be to add redundant CMGs (which is probably still a better option than using less capable alternatives.)
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you need a GPS to surrender?
</joke>
A slightly better argument could be made of your Constitutional right to remain silent, however, that right is to prevent self-incrimination and is designed to prevent coercision of suspects to incriminate themselves. In other words, you can't make someone admit to a crime. Again, I don't think this would apply either, because having a particular name is not a crime. Even if the police are looking for someone with a particular name, merely saying your name isn't incriminating you, it is identifying you. The incriminating stuff is whatever they found that made them look for you in the first place.
I am all for private spaceflight and don't want to come off like I am diminishing the significance of todays events but I really think your sense of perspective needs adjusting...
The ISS is a permanent space station, at an altitude of 386 km. The thing was built in space. Astronauts live for six months at a time in a zero-g environment. Robotic spacecraft deliver supplies. They eat their meals in space. They surf the web in space. Dude, they are living in space. The astronauts on the ISS are not "witnessing the future of space exploration"... they are living the future.
Let me preface what I am about to say with the following: I think that what Scaled Composites has done is nothing short of amazing. I don't need to wish them the best, as I have been to their plant, and seen and crawled inside their vehicle. That said, I believe that SpaceShipOne is more of a bureocratic and idealogical achievement. First off, SC defined the process by which civilian companies are certified for space flight. Second, this event will usher in a newfound pride and enthusiasm for space exploration that has been missing for decades.
Unfortunately, this design is not very, well, useful other than to make Scaled Composites LOTS of money from space tourists. There is not a lot of interest otherwise in manned sub-orbital (heck, the Soviets skipped it entirely) and despite what Mr. Rutan says, this technology is not scalable to an orbital version. SpaceShipOne was point designed for commercial tourism of sub-orbital space.
and yes, IAARS.
Excellent point, I got a head of myself... X-prize no... but they will hit the magic altitude.
I have to disagree here. This vehicle is significantly more complex than the Mercury missions. Radical - yes, in the sense of using a dual-aircraft staging ascent, but you do not get much more simple than a redstone rocket with a purely ballistic capsule for re-entry. SpaceShipOne is closer to the space shuttle than it is to a Mercury capsule, in the sense that it flys like an aircraft with all the appropriate control surfaces - not to mention the feathering wing during re-entry. Radical - yes, simple - no. Bear in mind, that this design is made possible by relatively modern composite materials, so comparing this design to a 1950's iron capsule is a bit unfair.
Let me preface what I am about to say with the following: I think that what Scaled Composites has done is nothing short of amazing. I don't need to wish them the best, as I have been to their plant, and seen and crawled inside their vehicle. They will win the X-prize tomorrow... That said, I believe that SpaceShipOne is more of a bureocratic and idealogical achievement. First off, SC defined the process by which civilian companies are certified for space flight. Second, this event will usher in a newfound pride and enthusiasm for space exploration that has been missing for decades.
Unfortunately, this design is not very, well, useful other than to make Scaled Composites LOTS of money from space tourists. There is not a lot of interest otherwise in sub-orbital (heck, the Soviets skipped it entirely). SpaceShipOne was point designed to win the X-prize; the approach used is not scalable to an orbital version.
All that having been said, I am very excited for the future of space flight... I know what I will be doing tomorrow morning!
and yes, IAARS.
Don't worry, I hear Voyager gets through and makes contact with an intelligent race of machines...
well, a president can be impeached even if they honestly 'earned' their presidency. Past achievements does not necessarily mean that the person in question meets a certain standard for the rest of their life.
How about PC software? Most 'evaluation' versions of software applications are indeed full version, but until they have been 'activated', lock the user out of certain routines. Most 'cracks' do nothing more than overwirte a few bytes to disable or bypass this 'activation' routine, thus enabling the all the functions. Although I know it is legally wrong these software companies are giving you free, complete versions of their software and are hoping that you don't know that with some bit twiddling you can overcome their poor distribution model. Maybe the software industry could learn from this...
I'll give you a little tip that took me about 3 years to figure out. Women don't care if you care what they are talking about. They also don't care about their friends' problems that they just spent 6 hours listening about. They DO care that you listen to them, just like they listen to their friends to show them that they care about THEM, not the subject of their friends' story. To be geeky, with women it is about a good stable communications channel, rather than the channel's content.
wow...looks like someone struck a nerve...
Wow, it is a really good thing the author had a short name (Eric Ball)... can you imagine trying to make a title screen with "by Michael Rosenbaum" using 80x40 graphics?
Note that I did not even disagree with the content fo the movie, just that it is not nerd material and therefore not appropriate for slashdot. I guess even that gets you modded as a troll these days...
Exactly how is this news for nerds? I understand that the prevailing opinion on Slashdot is hatred for the Bush administration, but I fail to see the 'nerd' aspect to this story. Politics aside, if it was a sci/fi or fantasy movie, I could understand, but this was simply a politically charged documentary about 9/11 and the Iraq war. What is next? Reviews of campaign ads?
anyway, while I doubt anyone has tried to correlate IQ with political affiliation, the FACT of the matter is that Republicans are more educated than Democrats (as a group). Of course one can argue that education != intelligence, but lacking any IQ data, this is what we have to work with.
Finally, I have no idea who Phil Henry is. Given the context, I assume you are referring to Phil HenDRIE, a popular talk-radio host. I have two news-flashes for you: Phil Hendrie is a self-admitted SOCIALIST (he voted for Gore by the way), and second, his show is an ACT, and the joke is on you.
Moreover, at least Windows could make an argument (if not a crappy one) that a low IQ customer could confuse Windows with Lindows, potentially depriving them of some revenue. Exactly what revenue was the name for the number googol bringing in?
easy there... while it is obvious that MS sent different CSS settings to different browsers (not a big deal), there is no proof that the Opera CSS was INTENTIONALLY BROKEN as you seem to claim. Intentionally different, but only the coder knows if he intentionally 'broke' the CSS settings or not. It is quite possible that different coders with appropriate backgrounds in the various browsers wrote seperate style sheets, and perhaps the Opera guy simply made a mistake. Just a thought.
(a). I am a military aviator
(b). I am educated with a degree in Physics and 3 graduate degrees in aero/astro engineering.
(c). I have seen UFOs (that certainly weren't alien)
It would seem that I am the textbook case of an intelligent, credible witness who has seen a UFO. Unfortunately (sic), my scientific mind prevailed and the true nature of the events became apparent, although I can vouch for the powerful psychological effects that fool even the most credible and educated of witnesses.
I will cite three examples that have personally happened to me:
(1). Flying at night somewhere over the Med I saw a burst of light, which seemed to be maneuvering at amazing (and quite odd) rates. Later we discovered our sighting was a fighter deploying flares many miles from our position. When the night is that dark, a very bright object almost overloads your visual system causing the many flares to appear as one large moving object. The odd trajectories were a result of our having been orbiting at a rather steep angle of bank for quite a while, which created the illusion (in our own heads) that the object was moving in the vertical much more than it really was.
2. This one is almost embarrassing. I once saw a strange red light out in the distance (again at night in the air). It seemed to move randomly, sometimes almost hovering, sometimes zipping about erratically. I watched this for a couple minutes and even discussed it with the other crewmember. Eventually, while leaning to get a better look, it disappeared. I moved again, it reappeared. I moved again, it disappeared... I waved my arms around the cockpit until I discovered it: a red light on an instrument panel was reflecting off of the side canopy and was being projected onto another part of the canopy. The 'motions' I was seeing were all do to my moving my head and the associated parallax. For a few minutes, I really believed I was looking at another aircraft.
3. Ok, this last one wasn't really a UFO but certainly was an example of how dangerous and convincing an optical illusion can be. We were flying on a low-level route (about 200 ft) over flat terrain when I spotted a very large aircraft right in front of us (1/4 mile) and apparently maneuvering. It looked to me like a large passenger liner. The illusion lasted about 10 seconds. In reality, we were approaching a large moored white blimp, about 100 ft off the ground. My brain had 'filled in' the missing detail of the featureless blimp to look like an airplane (since I could see air under it, it had to be a plane right?). All target motion was cause again by our own aircraft's motion.
So there you have it, I don't doubt that military, police, and even scientists routinely see UFOs as well. No one is immune to the illusions of the human mind. Critical thinkers are the 'open minded' ones who DONT immediately jump to conclusions!
This applies to computers of alien species as well. We learned that from 'Independence Day' when Jeff Goldbloom created a virus on his Mac, and inserted it into the alien mothership. Any you people say Macs aren't part of the virus culture. Sheesh!
Maybe we should use the technology from three stories down to settle this once and for all!
For what it is worth, I am American and also had neither heard of this, nor knew what it meant (until a google search that is)
Its amazing what sticks with you, isn't it? I think I could probably knock out a chow-call if I had to...
I was curious, how is the cow?
Not to mention all the poeple who lived in Ur.
However, that is not the type of gyroscope that has failed here! In the last couple decades, gyroscopes have been used as actuators to actually provide the TORQUES necessary to MANEUVER space vehicles. This is very different from the much more common use of gyros simply to determine attitude. In fact, these gyroscopes are more correctly referred to as Control Moment Gyrospcopes or CMGs. (Incidently, they come in two flavors, single and dual gimbaled - with the ISS using the much less common and more complex [read prone to failure] dual gimbaled CMGs (DGCMG)).
A CMG works as a torque amplifier. You essentially spin up the inner element to a high rpm (usually 3000-5000 rpm) and then apply a small torque to the outer gimbal. The the gyroscopic rigidity of the inner rotating element resists this torque and the result is a much-amplified reaction torque imparted on the vehicle.
Traditionally, three-axis stabilized spacecraft that require fine pointing control have used reaction wheels or momentum wheels for control. CMGs allow for orders of more magnitude of more torque (for an equivalent mass alternative) and more momentum storage (unfortunately, momentum is conserved even in space, so if you impart an angular rate to a spacecraft, you must have some element inside the spacecraft to 'store' an equal an opposite momentum - this is what actually limits a spacecraft's slew rate). The downside of CMGs is that they are mechanically complex (don't even get me talking about null-spaces) and that high rpm inner element must be lubricated extremely well if you want the vehicle to perform for years without an oil change (as those are hard to come by in LEO); thus they tend to higher failure rates. The solution to this has tended to be to add redundant CMGs (which is probably still a better option than using less capable alternatives.)
SO where can we see some pictures?