WTS is a kludge, expensive, and has way too much overhead for what it allows you to do. 3 or so years ago we were using WinDD (which is now WTS I believe), and it was a nightmare. You need to buy servers for it and the network infrastructure to handle it if you want to have a decent number of users. The licenses at least at the time became exorbinant in price, which means you couldn't have enough to have everyone logged in. So much for using it for Outlook. It was too easy for a single user to grind everything to a halt for everyone. Now, this was 3 years ago on nt 3.51, so I'm not going to say things haven't probably improved drastically, but I'm still going to stick by saying that at the very least it's an expensive solution that doesn't return perfect results.
About 3 years ago Sun came out with their sunpci amd cards that allowed you to run a full blown windows 98 desktop on our Sun boxes. It actually worked pretty well, but there were huge issues with the graphic speeds at higher than 256 colors and while most things worked, it wasn't quite up to snuff. When enough people complain about how screen refreshes that should be instaneous are taking 10 seconds or when simply opening an Office attachment that was done on a PC requires 5 extra steps to be able to open and view it pressure gets put on that something has to be done. Plus they were win 98 and not nt so you can imagine the problems inherent there.
Excuse me, but you are completely wrong. Perhaps all those Suns and Linux machines you have at your school CS lab don't need an Office suite, but go into industry where real work has to be done and you will find that the lack of Office/Outlook running under Unix is the single most reason why unix workstation sales plummet and CAD design on PCs increases dramatically. Sure there are workarounds, but training requires time, which translates into money. The training costs to get that many people up to speed so that they can use alternate software as well as they already can use Office offsets any cost savings. Remember, most people use a computer because they have to, not because they want to and they are really interested in how things work.
At one time we used to lease over 200 high end Sun and HP workstations. As their leases run out they are all being replaced by dell workstations. Why is this? Well, for one they are cheaper, but primarily its because at this point 99% of the engineering software that used to be unix only now run under win2k, plus they can use Office/Outlook.
Does anyone here actually think this is a good or even plausible idea for the general public? The complexity and problems abound. For example:
Whats me password set to when i first receive my card? You're telling me i have to memorize some random images for the first time?
I call the bank/support/whatever and over hte phone want a new pin, gee, thats real easy to explain. Well, your password is now that image that has the kind of horsey looking thing in it and has lots of colors...
What do you mean you're color blind, or better yet, completely blind?!
No matter what, some people will need to write it down. I doubt that they would rather draw a picture of their password rather than keep a few numbers in their wallet (yes, i know that is bad, but welcome to the real world).
The sad thing is this crap will get someone a PHD. Yah grad school.
Because this is an academic boondoggle that will never be implemented in the current suit. The first article talks about the current US spacesuit, however goto the actual website and they are working with the Russian Orlan suit. This is nothing more than a proof of concept for something that may be usable for a Mars suit, whenever that happens.
The limiting factor in just about all spacewalks are battery life. You can get about 4 hours max. Every milliamp matters. Currently the suit uses an old rad hardened cpu that runs at like 8mghz(I think its an NEC but I'm not positive, and I believe is now out of production). Last I knew they are looking to upgrade that to a more recent/powerful cpu and I believe a rad hardened PPC was in contention. However, the form factor size was about double the current and I believe it drew like 20% more power than the current.
Currently NASA on the ground gets real time data from about a dozen various systems in the suit. This info includes things such as voltage readings, temp, air flow rates, etc.
I think people don't understand exactly what this is about. The ISS is WAY over budget. NASA is trying to get a grip on this. Over budget means cost over runs are WAY WAY more than was expected. Is NASA and the US expected to just keep writing blank checks so that the rest of the nations involved don't get upset? If the international communitee wants to do something, do it with your check books. The US Space industry has far more jobs invested in the ISS than the rest of the world. Nobody in NASA wants to cut funding. We've practically given the Russians all of the money for there module as well.
Now, I'm not going to get into this whole US for them garbage, but lets take a look and see who has the majority of the financial burden here. If you want to help, pay up.
The production line is not at a snails pace by any means. C130s exported all the time. You'll be hard pressed to find a nation that the US will sell military aircraft to that hasn't got some C130s.
Umm..don't keep up much, eh? The US has the F-22 entering into service in a few years as well as the JSF. Europe has its own Eurofighter, the Russians, well, latest they've done i guess is the mig-29, but I'm sure they have something in the works as well.
The problem is these things take alot of time to reach the assembly line. Like 10+ in the case of the Raptor.
Compare that to the P-51 Mustang which went from the design boards to full production in 6 months time. Of course, the Mustang was obsolete in the USAF by the middle of the Korean War. Compare that to the F15 which first flew in 1970 and 30 years later remains a top line fighter.
Both the F-22 and JSF are on a 40 year life cycle. Knowing the military that will probably mean at least 60, assuming we don't start producing X-Wings and Tie Fighters before then.
None of the places you've mentioned were carpet bombed. Afghanistan as far as I can see isn't being carpet bombed. The Republic Army in Iraq was carpet bombed. And what was the result? Soldiers waving white flags to recon drones. A single B-52 carries more fire power than an entire WW2 squandron. There is no comparison to a raid on London to a mordern day heavy bomber attack. (Not to sound like i'm lessoning what the Brits or Germans or Japaneese went through in WW2 raids).
The XB-70 would long be gone if it were introduced. There is no need for it now that the cold war is over, it simply can't carry enough of a payload. The B-1 does a much better job in the role of the XB-70 and in the conventional role can carry a pretty impressive payload of weapons. The B-2, well, much more capable than the XB-70 could ever dream, but again, realyl needed in this day and age?
But all that doesn't change the fact that the XB-70 was a very cool aircraft.
They are regular upgraded. In fact, look at the F-15 and F-14. The F-15 is up to revision E, the F-14 D. Both of them entered service in the early 70s. Thats over 30 years ago. Even the F-16 (up to rev D?)is over 20 years old. The F-18 is currently going through a major retro, emerging as the Super Hornet. The F-22 and JSF are each expected to have 40+ year lifespans. The US gets alot of mileage out of its aircraft. The vast majority of planes in the US inventory are probably old than your average slashdot reader, especially when you consider all the C130s and KC135s. The KCs may soon be replaced by 767s, but the C130s may out last even the B52.
Indeed, this current campaign has seen no B52 carpet bombing, at least not like during Vietnam and even Desert Storm. What we see today is precision bombing. The only reason B52s are being used at all is because there are not enough air bases for the Air Force to use its F-1(56)s. So what you have are B52s making the long flight from Diego Garcia and dropping a half dozen precision bombs, then turning around and going home.
I would love to see some good old fashioned Vietnam era carpet bombing and I would have thought Tora Bora would have been a great place to do it. 2 dozen B-52s unloading their entire ordinance on a few square miles is enough to shake the ground 70 miles away.
Almost single handedly the B-52 was able to break the Republican Army of Iraq.
Anyway, my real point in this is that it has gotten annoying the way whenever a reporter seens a B-52 fly over and drop a bomb they throw around the word Carpet Bombing. Tho a kind of hokey movie, go watch Bat 21 and see what a real carpet bombing is. They are very deliberate, planned attacks that unload an awesome amount of firepower on a single location by a decent number of planes, not just one.
Actually, chances are you just made his point. You spent extra money to do a job that could still probably be done by your 'old' P3 for really no other reason than you can.
Really, probably an even better example than the P3 is the C130. There are far more C130s from the 60s flown by scores of different nations than there are P3s and they remain the backbone of any deployment.
The desks that those people would be sitting at costs much more money. This little cube that I'm in right now costs well over $2k just for the furniture, add to that the cost of the square footage per month. Everybody wants all the benefits but no one wants to pay for them. If it isn't viable for a company to spend the money for an account that the employee can telecommute from then don't let them. It's that simple.
Eh? You have several options and you've already stated them.
1. use the crappy 486
2. goto the larger lab
3. use the crappy physics lab
4. buy your own machine for school. If what you do is so important and you say you can do it on a $400 166mghz alpha then invest a few hundred bucks in your education for school.
5. dont use ssh. I doubt anything that you do at such a pathetic school is worth anything to anyone anyway.
6. find a better school (assuming another will take you).
Re:Empeg/SonicBlue/Rio Receiver
on
Review: SliMP3
·
· Score: 1
You're paying for the low production output. Thing's don't get cheap until you can buy the components that make it up in large volumes.
Anyone considering this should really take a good look at the Turtle Beach Audiotron. Its just about the same price (I just paid $268 at buy.com) and looks like a real audio component. Compare the two side by side and I think anyone would see how over priced the slimp3 is. This was something that was important to me. Eventually you get tired of looking at the mish mosh of elctronics that are laying around all over the house just to get things to work and decide to spend a little bit of money to try to fix it.
No, its not a hackable device, but it does what it is meant to do beautifully. If that really matters to you then you are not really shopping for an MP3 device, but for something to hack around on that also happens to be able to play MP3s.
Well, personally this statistic is a pretty good thing considering the number of lbs of explosives dropped and the amount of time US forces have been on the ground. Would you prefer to have 1000 killed in combat just to make your friendly fire ratio look good?
While sometimes ending disasterously, it's a pretty firm belief that close air support is effective and saves lives in the long run (not to mention it can completely turn the tide of a battle).
That being said, i think its time to start moving in some heavy artillery and relax on the bombing a little bit. This war is getting expensive and using a b52 to take out some mortars seems silly when an battery of 155s could do the job quicker, cheaper and probably safer.
One of 2 helilcopters. Either the venerable Jolly Green Giant (MH-53 Pavelow) of the Vietnam era, or the newer Blackhawk derivative PaveHawk.
Not having seen the movie I can't really tell you which it is. Probably the latter tho, unless they are harder to get a hold of for shooting purposes.
Keep in mind that these choppers and crews are equiped and trained to do just this sort of thing, so while this is probably a bit of a stretch it may not be as much so as it may seem.
A pretty good movie that is based on a true story is Bat 21 and this seems sort of similar. Ironically, Gene Hackman plays the downed pilot in that.
Not that I've seen it, but this sounds like it could have had the following promo:
Flight of the Intruder meets Bat 21.
It even has Hackmen in a slight role reversal. If Danny Glover were in it all 3 movies would have shared actors in common.
By the way, Marines don't use Apaches, Hueys have pretty much been retired to the reserves, so again, not seeing the movie, the Choppers at the end were probably MH53 Pavelows or more recent Blackhawk derivative PaveHawk
But I thought OPT OUT was bad and everything should be OPT IN!
Seriously tho, there are a lot of ways that this sort of information can make it onto the web other than blaming companies. For example, how many times have people bought things online and then saved the html document that was returned as the receipt. It's very easy to imagine that people could save this to a directory that is inadvertanetly crawled.
Eh? Where did you get one for less than $200? Cheapest I can find is around $270 new and a little over $200 on ebay. Please enlighten, xmas is coming quickly.
Did you read the article? Does the location of the WTC fall into the category of items that are being destroyed? I don't think so. What is being destroyed is information that could be used in determining the best way to cause terror through a means less obvious and simple to plan as flying into a big building. Notable this is the US water supply and nuclear/chemical plants.
Example, you want to cause a huge chemical disaster via bombing a a chemical plant, lets say you want to blow up the plant that contains the most amount of chlorine, in the most densely populated area. All of this information can be obtained through various government reports.
These are the types of things that they are trying to hinder.
Now, I'm not getting into whether this is the right thing or not. I haven't really decided that. However, the least you people can do is think a little about what the issue really is and not go off half cocked and spout jibberish that doesn't touch the real issue.
I'll have to agree that although this guy insists that it was well packed, it obviously wasn't. How many computers are shipped via UPS every day? What percentage of them come out in this condition?
Companies spend alot of money in figuring out how to properly package things for shipping. The boxes he used certainly werent the original, which means he didnt have the original packing material either. You really need the foam that is contoured to the shape of what you are shipping if you expect any kind of structural integrity. Boxes that are being shipped don't need lots of cushy foam to protect whats inside. What they really need is material that will keep the box in its intended shape. As soon as it starts to give, your stuff is toast.
I mean, the guy has his tupperware packed with his monitor? Of course, this guy is so ubersmart that the notion that he could possibly do a crappy job as something as trivial as packing would never occure to him.
You over simplify things a little bit. The bailout money comes in several different forms. True, there is the amount that is simply a subsidy. The majority of it however is in the form of loan guarantees. Basically, what this means is that in the aftermath of Sept 11 banks are afraid to give out large loans to the airlines for fear of more attacks which may hinder loans being paid back.
The bailout covers this by guaranteeing the banks that they will be paid back even if an airline goes under. Hopefully, this is money that has been allocated and will never be drawn upon.
Because we don't need one. Tell me, how many Europeans use their passport to travel to places other than other European countries. My guess is that its about the same number as Americans who travel outside of North America. Note, we don't need a passport to travel to Canada or Mexico. Goto Asia and I think you will find alot more Americans traveling than you will Europeans. Please take your holier than tho attitude somewhere else.
The 747 basically uses current technology, thus the price of research and development is probably a factor of 100 less than a scramjet would be, which you should understand is the whole point of my argument. You won't see this being used when you have 747s that are currently flying and tho may take 6-10 times as long do it alot cheaper.
Slashdot Mirror
WTS is a kludge, expensive, and has way too much overhead for what it allows you to do. 3 or so years ago we were using WinDD (which is now WTS I believe), and it was a nightmare. You need to buy servers for it and the network infrastructure to handle it if you want to have a decent number of users. The licenses at least at the time became exorbinant in price, which means you couldn't have enough to have everyone logged in. So much for using it for Outlook. It was too easy for a single user to grind everything to a halt for everyone. Now, this was 3 years ago on nt 3.51, so I'm not going to say things haven't probably improved drastically, but I'm still going to stick by saying that at the very least it's an expensive solution that doesn't return perfect results.
About 3 years ago Sun came out with their sunpci amd cards that allowed you to run a full blown windows 98 desktop on our Sun boxes. It actually worked pretty well, but there were huge issues with the graphic speeds at higher than 256 colors and while most things worked, it wasn't quite up to snuff. When enough people complain about how screen refreshes that should be instaneous are taking 10 seconds or when simply opening an Office attachment that was done on a PC requires 5 extra steps to be able to open and view it pressure gets put on that something has to be done. Plus they were win 98 and not nt so you can imagine the problems inherent there.
Excuse me, but you are completely wrong. Perhaps all those Suns and Linux machines you have at your school CS lab don't need an Office suite, but go into industry where real work has to be done and you will find that the lack of Office/Outlook running under Unix is the single most reason why unix workstation sales plummet and CAD design on PCs increases dramatically. Sure there are workarounds, but training requires time, which translates into money. The training costs to get that many people up to speed so that they can use alternate software as well as they already can use Office offsets any cost savings. Remember, most people use a computer because they have to, not because they want to and they are really interested in how things work.
At one time we used to lease over 200 high end Sun and HP workstations. As their leases run out they are all being replaced by dell workstations. Why is this? Well, for one they are cheaper, but primarily its because at this point 99% of the engineering software that used to be unix only now run under win2k, plus they can use Office/Outlook.
Welcome to the real world.
Does anyone here actually think this is a good or even plausible idea for the general public? The complexity and problems abound. For example:
Whats me password set to when i first receive my card? You're telling me i have to memorize some random images for the first time?
I call the bank/support/whatever and over hte phone want a new pin, gee, thats real easy to explain. Well, your password is now that image that has the kind of horsey looking thing in it and has lots of colors...
What do you mean you're color blind, or better yet, completely blind?!
No matter what, some people will need to write it down. I doubt that they would rather draw a picture of their password rather than keep a few numbers in their wallet (yes, i know that is bad, but welcome to the real world).
The sad thing is this crap will get someone a PHD. Yah grad school.
Because this is an academic boondoggle that will never be implemented in the current suit. The first article talks about the current US spacesuit, however goto the actual website and they are working with the Russian Orlan suit. This is nothing more than a proof of concept for something that may be usable for a Mars suit, whenever that happens.
The limiting factor in just about all spacewalks are battery life. You can get about 4 hours max. Every milliamp matters. Currently the suit uses an old rad hardened cpu that runs at like 8mghz(I think its an NEC but I'm not positive, and I believe is now out of production). Last I knew they are looking to upgrade that to a more recent/powerful cpu and I believe a rad hardened PPC was in contention. However, the form factor size was about double the current and I believe it drew like 20% more power than the current.
Currently NASA on the ground gets real time data from about a dozen various systems in the suit. This info includes things such as voltage readings, temp, air flow rates, etc.
More info can be had here: here
I think people don't understand exactly what this is about. The ISS is WAY over budget. NASA is trying to get a grip on this. Over budget means cost over runs are WAY WAY more than was expected. Is NASA and the US expected to just keep writing blank checks so that the rest of the nations involved don't get upset? If the international communitee wants to do something, do it with your check books. The US Space industry has far more jobs invested in the ISS than the rest of the world. Nobody in NASA wants to cut funding. We've practically given the Russians all of the money for there module as well.
Now, I'm not going to get into this whole US for them garbage, but lets take a look and see who has the majority of the financial burden here. If you want to help, pay up.
The production line is not at a snails pace by any means. C130s exported all the time. You'll be hard pressed to find a nation that the US will sell military aircraft to that hasn't got some C130s.
Umm..don't keep up much, eh? The US has the F-22 entering into service in a few years as well as the JSF. Europe has its own Eurofighter, the Russians, well, latest they've done i guess is the mig-29, but I'm sure they have something in the works as well.
The problem is these things take alot of time to reach the assembly line. Like 10+ in the case of the Raptor.
Compare that to the P-51 Mustang which went from the design boards to full production in 6 months time. Of course, the Mustang was obsolete in the USAF by the middle of the Korean War. Compare that to the F15 which first flew in 1970 and 30 years later remains a top line fighter.
Both the F-22 and JSF are on a 40 year life cycle. Knowing the military that will probably mean at least 60, assuming we don't start producing X-Wings and Tie Fighters before then.
None of the places you've mentioned were carpet bombed. Afghanistan as far as I can see isn't being carpet bombed. The Republic Army in Iraq was carpet bombed. And what was the result? Soldiers waving white flags to recon drones. A single B-52 carries more fire power than an entire WW2 squandron. There is no comparison to a raid on London to a mordern day heavy bomber attack. (Not to sound like i'm lessoning what the Brits or Germans or Japaneese went through in WW2 raids).
The XB-70 would long be gone if it were introduced. There is no need for it now that the cold war is over, it simply can't carry enough of a payload. The B-1 does a much better job in the role of the XB-70 and in the conventional role can carry a pretty impressive payload of weapons. The B-2, well, much more capable than the XB-70 could ever dream, but again, realyl needed in this day and age?
But all that doesn't change the fact that the XB-70 was a very cool aircraft.
They are regular upgraded. In fact, look at the F-15 and F-14. The F-15 is up to revision E, the F-14 D. Both of them entered service in the early 70s. Thats over 30 years ago. Even the F-16 (up to rev D?)is over 20 years old. The F-18 is currently going through a major retro, emerging as the Super Hornet. The F-22 and JSF are each expected to have 40+ year lifespans. The US gets alot of mileage out of its aircraft. The vast majority of planes in the US inventory are probably old than your average slashdot reader, especially when you consider all the C130s and KC135s. The KCs may soon be replaced by 767s, but the C130s may out last even the B52.
Indeed, this current campaign has seen no B52 carpet bombing, at least not like during Vietnam and even Desert Storm. What we see today is precision bombing. The only reason B52s are being used at all is because there are not enough air bases for the Air Force to use its F-1(56)s. So what you have are B52s making the long flight from Diego Garcia and dropping a half dozen precision bombs, then turning around and going home.
I would love to see some good old fashioned Vietnam era carpet bombing and I would have thought Tora Bora would have been a great place to do it. 2 dozen B-52s unloading their entire ordinance on a few square miles is enough to shake the ground 70 miles away.
Almost single handedly the B-52 was able to break the Republican Army of Iraq.
Anyway, my real point in this is that it has gotten annoying the way whenever a reporter seens a B-52 fly over and drop a bomb they throw around the word Carpet Bombing. Tho a kind of hokey movie, go watch Bat 21 and see what a real carpet bombing is. They are very deliberate, planned attacks that unload an awesome amount of firepower on a single location by a decent number of planes, not just one.
Actually, chances are you just made his point. You spent extra money to do a job that could still probably be done by your 'old' P3 for really no other reason than you can.
Really, probably an even better example than the P3 is the C130. There are far more C130s from the 60s flown by scores of different nations than there are P3s and they remain the backbone of any deployment.
The desks that those people would be sitting at costs much more money. This little cube that I'm in right now costs well over $2k just for the furniture, add to that the cost of the square footage per month. Everybody wants all the benefits but no one wants to pay for them. If it isn't viable for a company to spend the money for an account that the employee can telecommute from then don't let them. It's that simple.
Eh? You have several options and you've already stated them.
1. use the crappy 486
2. goto the larger lab
3. use the crappy physics lab
4. buy your own machine for school. If what you do is so important and you say you can do it on a $400 166mghz alpha then invest a few hundred bucks in your education for school.
5. dont use ssh. I doubt anything that you do at such a pathetic school is worth anything to anyone anyway.
6. find a better school (assuming another will take you).
You're paying for the low production output. Thing's don't get cheap until you can buy the components that make it up in large volumes.
Anyone considering this should really take a good look at the Turtle Beach Audiotron. Its just about the same price (I just paid $268 at buy.com) and looks like a real audio component. Compare the two side by side and I think anyone would see how over priced the slimp3 is. This was something that was important to me. Eventually you get tired of looking at the mish mosh of elctronics that are laying around all over the house just to get things to work and decide to spend a little bit of money to try to fix it.
No, its not a hackable device, but it does what it is meant to do beautifully. If that really matters to you then you are not really shopping for an MP3 device, but for something to hack around on that also happens to be able to play MP3s.
Well, personally this statistic is a pretty good thing considering the number of lbs of explosives dropped and the amount of time US forces have been on the ground. Would you prefer to have 1000 killed in combat just to make your friendly fire ratio look good?
While sometimes ending disasterously, it's a pretty firm belief that close air support is effective and saves lives in the long run (not to mention it can completely turn the tide of a battle).
That being said, i think its time to start moving in some heavy artillery and relax on the bombing a little bit. This war is getting expensive and using a b52 to take out some mortars seems silly when an battery of 155s could do the job quicker, cheaper and probably safer.
One of 2 helilcopters. Either the venerable Jolly Green Giant (MH-53 Pavelow) of the Vietnam era, or the newer Blackhawk derivative PaveHawk.
Not having seen the movie I can't really tell you which it is. Probably the latter tho, unless they are harder to get a hold of for shooting purposes.
Keep in mind that these choppers and crews are equiped and trained to do just this sort of thing, so while this is probably a bit of a stretch it may not be as much so as it may seem. A pretty good movie that is based on a true story is Bat 21 and this seems sort of similar. Ironically, Gene Hackman plays the downed pilot in that.
Not that I've seen it, but this sounds like it could have had the following promo:
Flight of the Intruder meets Bat 21.
It even has Hackmen in a slight role reversal. If Danny Glover were in it all 3 movies would have shared actors in common.
By the way, Marines don't use Apaches, Hueys have pretty much been retired to the reserves, so again, not seeing the movie, the Choppers at the end were probably MH53 Pavelows or more recent Blackhawk derivative PaveHawk
Well, you are a way off. Right off the Boeing web site there is a max fuel capacity of a little less than 24,000 gallons in all 767 models.
But I thought OPT OUT was bad and everything should be OPT IN!
Seriously tho, there are a lot of ways that this sort of information can make it onto the web other than blaming companies. For example, how many times have people bought things online and then saved the html document that was returned as the receipt. It's very easy to imagine that people could save this to a directory that is inadvertanetly crawled.
Eh? Where did you get one for less than $200? Cheapest I can find is around $270 new and a little over $200 on ebay. Please enlighten, xmas is coming quickly.
Did you read the article? Does the location of the WTC fall into the category of items that are being destroyed? I don't think so. What is being destroyed is information that could be used in determining the best way to cause terror through a means less obvious and simple to plan as flying into a big building. Notable this is the US water supply and nuclear/chemical plants.
Example, you want to cause a huge chemical disaster via bombing a a chemical plant, lets say you want to blow up the plant that contains the most amount of chlorine, in the most densely populated area. All of this information can be obtained through various government reports.
These are the types of things that they are trying to hinder.
Now, I'm not getting into whether this is the right thing or not. I haven't really decided that. However, the least you people can do is think a little about what the issue really is and not go off half cocked and spout jibberish that doesn't touch the real issue.
I'll have to agree that although this guy insists that it was well packed, it obviously wasn't. How many computers are shipped via UPS every day? What percentage of them come out in this condition?
Companies spend alot of money in figuring out how to properly package things for shipping. The boxes he used certainly werent the original, which means he didnt have the original packing material either. You really need the foam that is contoured to the shape of what you are shipping if you expect any kind of structural integrity. Boxes that are being shipped don't need lots of cushy foam to protect whats inside. What they really need is material that will keep the box in its intended shape. As soon as it starts to give, your stuff is toast.
I mean, the guy has his tupperware packed with his monitor? Of course, this guy is so ubersmart that the notion that he could possibly do a crappy job as something as trivial as packing would never occure to him.
You over simplify things a little bit. The bailout money comes in several different forms. True, there is the amount that is simply a subsidy. The majority of it however is in the form of loan guarantees. Basically, what this means is that in the aftermath of Sept 11 banks are afraid to give out large loans to the airlines for fear of more attacks which may hinder loans being paid back.
The bailout covers this by guaranteeing the banks that they will be paid back even if an airline goes under. Hopefully, this is money that has been allocated and will never be drawn upon.
Because we don't need one. Tell me, how many Europeans use their passport to travel to places other than other European countries. My guess is that its about the same number as Americans who travel outside of North America. Note, we don't need a passport to travel to Canada or Mexico. Goto Asia and I think you will find alot more Americans traveling than you will Europeans. Please take your holier than tho attitude somewhere else.
The 747 basically uses current technology, thus the price of research and development is probably a factor of 100 less than a scramjet would be, which you should understand is the whole point of my argument. You won't see this being used when you have 747s that are currently flying and tho may take 6-10 times as long do it alot cheaper.