Wow. Just wow. Setting aside, for an instant, the whole DB issue, there is something fundamental that is being flat missed here.
In any proper development environment, robustness and exception management should occur at the lowest level possible. Always. A great app, written against a shaky O/S, running against bogus BIOS calls will never be a great app. Ever. Someone was sleeping during design 101 if they miss this fundamental design concept.
This is the only efficient, and only reasonable development strategy. You can't honestly expect to code "create socket - Did my socket really get created? - try socket out - did that really work?" and think that you've got something solid - no, you've just got a pile of inefficient code on top of a bad socket call that should have reliably returned a status and/or failed gracefully to start with.
The arguments I see against a solid DB design ensuring integrity boil down to one thing, and one thing only, "Gee, we only code in Ruby and that DB stuff is sooooo weird".
Please show me one instance, just one where it's ok to create a product shipment record against an order record that never got created. Explain to me just why a properly designed database should even allow such things from an application, then how it's any more efficient to check for the same potential pitfalls in a dozen pieces of application than it is to get it right at the lowest level to start with.
Well, I agree it's a silly idea, but not for the reasons you postulate.
Yes, the object, given the same amount of atmosphere to punch through at the same velocities as returning spacecraft will get hot - and yes, we already know how to shield that. We've only had one shielding failure in all of our launches to date.
Yes, it will have the earth's rotational velocity. Why do you think Canaveral is on our east coast and closer to the equator than Maine? Gives you a little headstart on orbital velocity.
The energy cost is high - but so is the energy cost for launching conventional rockets. That energy just has to be made available electrically. Which we can do - it's expensive engineering, but it's not science fiction.
The g-forces are much worse than a chemical rocket. But hardware can be made to take more abuse than meat can. Already, we accelerate smart hardware at munition velocities every day in Iraq.
No, the reason this is a silly idea - is because it's a silly idea. There are a lot of ground-based things that can be deployed without nearly so massive a cost.
That was a good first thought - I say that since it was the first thing that occured to me. We already make aluminized mylar by the square mile, far more cheaply than the proposed manufacture and deployment of this "space-bonnet" in terms of natural resources.
But we don't need to knock down greenhouse gas sequestering forests.
There's plenty of deep ocean - blanketing square miles of reflective material with windows to allow phytoplankton survival is a far cheaper (in dollars and in environmental impact).
Solar "shading" is already being proposed to prevent coral bleaching, so this isn't an entirely radical concept.
Cetacian migratory patterns need to be taken into account - air breathers have to have access to the surface. Some means of tensioning, and steering these reflective mats needs to be taken into account - at a minimum they have to be able to navigate around severe weather.
In the meantime, I'm snacking on the roast I made yesterday in my cardboard box/foil "heaven's flame"-type solar oven - and it tastes pretty great - and cost nothing to cook. We're talking a few percent here people - how many of us just can't get that much "greener?" Instead of waiting for flying wonder umbrellas from the world government to save us.
"Nothing bizarre about it. It's called "physics"."
Actually, it's called mis-applied physics.
Point 1)
My math (Ok, I borrowed it from a guy named Newton) says that satellites can orbit. Even in geosynchronous orbit. Apparently they can - they're up there today. As is the moon, the earth, etc. Hopefully, we can agree on that. It is necessary for all that follows. (And also to keep the universe from flying apart)
And, as I stated, geosynchronous orbit, is in fact, absolutely not magic - the only magic about geosynchronous orbit in this application is that it is the one orbit that allows an orbital body to remain static over the earth's surface - it has no other magic in the behavior of tethered, or asymetric orbital systems. For a space elevator, it is undesirable to have your ground terminus dragging across the ground. But the particular orbital altitude really has zero relevance to the behavior of asymetric systems in orbit.
If the earth rotated faster, or slower, the orbital mechanics would remain unchanged - they rely purely on gravity and inertia and are oblivious (aside from minor frame-dragging effects in the fabric of space) to the rotation of the body beneath them.
So for the sake of the physics, the orbit absolutely does not matter - it may be eighty miles up, or eighty-thousand miles up - we are only considering the behavior of any asymetric system in any circular orbit - once you've got a handle on that, geosynch is simply a desirable orbit to allow a fixed relationship to a rotating body.
Point 2)
Assuming this radical leap, that object can in fact orbit, can we also agree that each orbit has it's own period, i.e. velocity, and that an object that is moving too slowly for it's orbit will move inward and an object moving too rapidly for it's orbit will move outward?
I hope so, because if not, we're going to have an awfully tough time from here out figuring out where our satellites go.
Given that, the math also says you can extend a couple of weighted, tethered strings from a body in orbit - one directed inward and one outward. The inward tether will "fall" towards the earth - the outward tether will pull away. Why? Because the center of mass of the system remains in it's original orbit - honest - it has to. The inner tether is moving too slowly for it's orbit - and pulls inward - it's velocity is insufficient for it's orbit.
That's Newton 101. The center of mass of the whole system remains precisely in the same orbit - at precisely the same velocity.
The inner tethered mass cannot accelerate the whole assembly - that silly conservation of energy thing - it can't speed up (it's tethered,remember?) so it continuously falls. The outer tether is moving too rapidly for it's orbit - similarly, it cannot decelerate the entire system - and pulls outward. Or do you also revoke Newton?
Your denial of this fact suggests that tidal alignment is not a factor in orbital mechanics - yet it is. Or perhaps it's just an amazing coincidence that the moon's rotational and orbital periods are identical?
Point 3)
If you grant that, Point 1, bodies can, and do, orbit, and Point 2, that any mass-point moving too slowly for it's orbit moves to a lower orbit, and any mass-point moving too rapidly for it's orbit moves to a higher orbit, then where is the inconsistency? All that is necessary from those points to derive a (theoretical) space elevator is to select an orbit that matches the rotational period of the body beneath it (the "magic" geosynchronous orbit) and extend the orbiting tethers such that the inner tether can reach the ground.
I admire your ability not to let reality interfere with your equations - but your equations may not be the right wrench to hammer that nail in.
"No, it won't. There's no restoring force here anywhere. If you are trying to orbit any kind of "counterweight" past geosync, then the orbital period of that counterweight will be longer than one day and thus it'll start wrapping the entire tether around the planet."
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Bizarre. mass element dm - pseudo-forces-integrating over dm - Euler-lagrange equations...
This confirms a theory I have long had that advanced math, like other dangerous weapons, should not be put into the hands of children without at least a few semesters on how to think.
Try the following thought experiment. Tie a kilogram weight on the end of a long string. Start swinging it around your head. Does the length of the string make it magically wrap around your head at some point? No. Not even if you denote some arbitrary point on the string as geo-synchronous.
Allow a ten-gram weight to slide out along your string. The assembly will deflect slightly - but your continued rotation will straighten it back out - at the expense of a little extra energy from you. To enhance the thought experiment, you are standing on a magic platform in no (micro) gravity space, swinging your string around. Can you rotate it around slowly? Yes. Can you rotate it faster? Yes. Now start slowly turning up the artificial gravity on your magic platform. Does everything wrap around your head? No. Not until the gravity is turned up to the point that the center of mass of your system falls inside the natural synchronous orbital period of your system's rotation. Then it "falls" down.
Put it another way. Speed the earths rotation up. Faster and faster, until a geosynchronous orbit is about twenty feet off the ground (It'll drive the birds nuts, but hey, it's for science). Tie a rock on a string, hang on to the end of the string and toss your rock fifty feet straight up. It'll stay up there, I promise.
Geo-synch is not really magic in terms of the system. It's simply the point at the natural orbital period equals one day, which is why the counterweight must be located past that point. Lower than that point, and of course the whole assembly falls down. But above that point, the counterweight is forced into an unnaturally fast orbit, providing tension for the assembly.
As freight moves up the cable, the cable does indeed deflect - then returns to it's natural "centripital" position - at the expense of a little rotational energy stolen from earth.
Actually - No. I did an interesting project a while back for a company that manufactures gas pipe (Not PVC, which is not acceptable for gas, especially LP).
The project was QC - as the pipe was extruded, it ran through a water bath with a pair of rotating transducers spinning around it. Whenever a void or thin spot was detected, the cutter and printer, further down the line were notified - the printer put some data on the bad section, the cutter chomped it, and the bad part got kicked into the QC bucket.
Absolutely no metal involved in this stuff.
On a side note, an Oklahoma company, WilTel, got started when they were trying to figure out what to do with their empty natural gas transport lines. Someone got the bright idea that a big expense in data transport is infrastructure and right-of-way, which the company already had. They used pigs (devices to crawl through lines and inspect them) to string fiber through the lines and did a good business transporting data through the abandoned lines.
I'm not so sure. Air travel and fatigue never screwed me up. I always knew which way was which, even in some fairly labrynthian underground situations. Until I had a traffic accident with some minor head trauma. Having, then mostly losing that sense of direction leads me to suspect it's a real sense - stronger in some than others.
Maybe we'll find out when the Earth's magnetic poles flip - if the call volume to various traveler's services from lost motorists goes up dramatically, we'll have a good case study;-)
Nah - I'm thoroughly left-handed. Intriguingly, my sense of direction was always on, and, like so many things we are born with, taken for granted, until I had a car accident about ten years ago and had some minor head trauma. I can still find my way around, but that feeling of "go this way" is much weaker, and much missed.
But I can always count on my wife and mother-in-law. If they say, "Turn left", I immediately get in the right lane. Never fails to get us where we're going.
There's already an easy hack against these crab nano-sensors. Seems they go into panic mode when they detect lemon-garlic butter. Shuts 'em down every time.
C'mon guys - it's a great idea. Microsoft can then spend the next five years throwing a ton o' cash at getting rid of those nasty FreeBSD machines and replacing all the LISP code with V-Basic. Should be good for dogfood giggles for years to come!
So what does X running through ssh look like? Or IPSec/VPN solutions? Seems like they could generate a lot of encrypted traffic that would be hard to differentiate. No?
"...statistically speaking, pornography DOES lead to increased sex crimes against women."
Garbage. You've been watching the FSC again (Fundamentalist Science Channel). Stop it. Exposure to that stuff will damage your brain.
Look, bad science is bad science, and bad statistics are the bedrock and foundation of bad science.
At best, you can find studies that correlate inappropriate sex with porn. But that does not establish porn as causitive, merely symptomatic.
Again, show me a real study. One where half of 1,000 individual are exposed to porn in a blind study, with the degree of victimization tracked. Until you can find that study, all you're doing is barking up the correlation tree.
Look, I smoke tobacco (I know, I know, I'm an evil bad pariah). Studies show that drug users smoke tobacco way out of proportion to the rest of the population. Therefore tobacco causes drug use. Right? Problem is, if they were giving away crack at 7-11, I wouldn't be interested. Correlation, or causality?
Folks, this stuff is way the heck too serious for us to abandon thought and reason in favor of mushy emotianalism and rhetoric, and fundamentalist notions that you improve human behavior by legislating "temptation" out of existance.
But until we do that, we are going to continue to be societal victims of a government that heavily funds bad science in the hope of apeasing the mystical majority.
"As far as child pornography and mitigating circumstances, exposure to child pornography does lead people to be more likely to molest children."
Bing-bing-bing... Timeout. I have seen one or two studies quoted on this (and related) issues, and I have also seen them torn down for their methodology. The core problem? Correlation does not establish causality, no matter how much academic language you cloak your paper in.
A disproportionate number of suicides prefer country music. Therefore, country music makes one suicidal (well, it does me, but that's a different phenomenan at work). Or is it just possible that someone in a state of depression identifies with songs about losing their job at the factory only to find their spouse ran off with their truck and dog?
Your argument is dangerously close to arguments the moral majorinuts use to legislate temptation out of our lives. Yet bizarrely, something is not working. Amsterdam, for example, with it's liberal drug and prostitution laws has a lower incidence of drug use and sex crimes. Go figure.
Do pedos seek out juvenile erotica? Duh. But have you seen any real study where actual control groups were randomly "exposed" to different types of stimulus with a followup on the amount and type of victimization perpetrated by the study group?
There is also a school of thought that the ability to act out certain unacceptable fantasies may provide a sort of safety valve for some individuals. Escalating behavior is a pattern in many sex crimes, and certainly seeking out reinforcing material is a part of that pattern. But it is by no means clear that it is causative.
"Seems even the Tulsa NBC affiliate picked up the story."
The Tulsa NBC affiliate is KJRH - www.teamtulsa.com. Trust me - they're not cluefull enough to have picked up on this.
What you have there is the Oklahoma affiliate, who deserve credit for being at lesat a little more on the ball.
Well, I can kind of see your point. I have to squint and hold my head funny, but I can kind of see it.
However...
Sorry, but Mr. Taylor was obnoxious from jump. That has nothing to do with the uber geek elite, and everything to do with being a general asshat. He undoubtedly deals with the poor schmucks that mow the grass at the world-famous six-hole Tuttle country club the same way.
Secondly, Mr. Taylor IS a member of the geek elite. Just ask him. he has "22 years" of computer and administration experience. Sorry, no cookie there either. Read the email transcription for yourself.
So he's either a lying asshat, or an incompetent asshat. Take your choice, but I have bloody little sympathy for either.
An open letter to City Manager Jerry A. Taylor, City of Tuttle, OK:
Sir,
As a former Oklahoman, a news item, which I am sure you are quite familiar with, caught my eye recently. For the record, it was in a British e-publication, 'The Register' at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/24/tuttle_cen tos/
I read the article somewhat skeptically. After all, Brits having a bit of fun at the Yanks' expense, I figured, until I found the link to the actual email history. Sadly, the Brits, bless them, actually understated things.
Sir, from the very first sentence of your very first contact with the victims of your harassment you managed at once to be arrogant, ignorant and demanding. You are to be congratulated. Very few people can pull that off in just three sentences. I finished reading the email transcript, shook my head sadly and filed it away.
Until yesterday, when I read at the same publication that you literally expect 'The Register' to turn off the Internet. Because that is exactly and precisely what you request - "I think this is unjustified, and would like for it to stop". Sir, this is your genie that you let out of the bottle by stomping around like the 800 Lb. gorilla that you are NOT. Yet once again, you want everyone else to fix your problems. Sorry. Not happening this time.
I am frankly apalled that anyone who has achieved the lofty status of City Manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma could behave this way. I firmly expected that you were 1) a professional and 2) a man. Either or both should have led you to step up to the plate and admit that you were just plain wrong. It seems that you are neither.
Thanks to the Internet, you'll never be able to bury this in your litterbox.But there are a few things that really should be done, and might actually salvage the global perception that you have given the City of Tuttle, and by extension, Oklahomans in general.
1) CentOS, particularly Johnny Hughes are owed a very public apology from you personally, and from the City of Tuttle. They did absolutely nothing to cause any of your problems. Their only crime was working, mostly without compensation, to provide the operating system version that the City of Tuttle chose to use. Yes, you did choose it. You can't claim over two decades of computer experience and tell me you did no due diligence into the operating system being used to host the City website. To claim that is to claim even more gross incompetence and negligence than you have already exhibited.
2) CentOS is owed a generous consulting fee. They went above and beyond to research your problem, not because of, but in spite of your threats, your ignorance (something I find utterly inexcusable in anyone claiming "22 years in computer systems engineering and operation"), and your total refusal to provide any real information to CentOS to assist them in resolving your problem, which they did not create. In addition they are owed a percentage over and above the consulting fee just for putting up with you instead of very justifiably letting you hang yourself, and putting the City of Tuttle at risk legally and financially.
3) The good citizens of Tuttle are owed an apology from the Mayor, for hiring you, and from you - just for being you. They deserve better.
Please see a doctor. Immediately. If you can claim that your medications were out of adjustment, you may be able to scrape some of the richly deserved egg off of your face. At the very least, he may be able to help you with your other problem. Having both feet inserted in your mouth while having your head firmly lodged where it clearly is has to be causing all kinds of physical problems.
I doubt any Oklahoma publication will publish this particular bit of idiocy. So I'm publishing it in my own modest way, and urging my Oklahoma friends and acquaintances to do the same. Hopefully it will reach enough of the good folks it Tuttle for it to make what is clearly a much-needed change in the affairs and management of that city.
"Is the real problem the law, homeland security or just the people in the position?"
The real problem, in my immodest opinion is the people of the U.S. who have no sense of history. The creation of secretive (how many agents are there - what exactly do they do?) police agencies, with broad-reaching, and vaguely defined powers has, historically, never been a good thing for the populace. I repeat, never.
This is not about a couple of bad eggs. Their abuse of power is not at all inconsistant with the framework they operate in. They are not the disease - they are a symptom of the disease and are by no means unique.
The fact that we are so ignorant of this is sometimes blamed on the government who educated us to be sheep. I don't buy it. So far, at least, basic history is available to most of our citizens. We can all do this - and should - At least, until the men in uniforms come to the library to take the history books off of the shelves.
"Hoever, I get so damn tired of being told what rights others have, when it comes out of my pocket."
But it's OK when the rights you enjoy come out of others pockets? You, sir, or madam, frighten me.
Virtually all of the rights we enjoy are, in one way or another, out of the public's pockets. We pay for a military, and (supposedly) law enforcement to, among other things, defend those rights.
Democracy and Freedom are not easy, nor for the faint of heart. These concepts demand that you value those concepts to the extent that the guy next door, whose opinions and tastes and religion you absolutely despise, is worth your defending his rights. This may include his right to condemn your favorite candidate, his right to burn the flag we love in protest, and his right to have access to materials in a public media forum that you don't agree with.
I promise you, there are church ladies out there who are angry that they have to pay for your right to look at 14th-century Italian painters at your library - because there might be pictures of naked chubby girls in there. They resent having to pay for your right to view this trash. Ridiculous? How, exactly, are you any different?
Because, believe me - Your neighbor that you despise may not agree with what you have to say, believe, or have access to in your library either. The very essence of the core of our government, that we all pay lip service to, but let slip away when it gets tough, is the concept of inalienable rights. I can't take your rights - and you can't take mine. And we each have to pay a little for that priviledge.
I think they are referring to an interesting article (complete with animations) that described the sometimes unreal way our perceptions deal with observed phenomena. Especially near-light-speed phenomena.
Imagine that you are an observer positioned to one side of the path of an object moving at very near lightspeed. The first light from the object to reach you will be from nearly it's closest approach. The light from earlier in it's path is still plodding along at c, trying to get to you. The next light rays to reach you will be from slightly further away - both before and after it's point of closest approach. Thus, the article contends, your perception is of an object that appears from nowhere, and recedes at near light speed along it's path of travel - in both directions.
I don't think the article mentioned dopplering, but I'm guessing that, assuming an arbitrary left-to-right travel for the object, that the observer would percieve the "true" receding obect to the right to be heavily red-shifted, and the "apparent" receding object to the left as being heavily blue-shifted. In other words, be suspicious of blue things running away frome you - they may be perceptual goblins.
Weird, counterintuitive, and completely provable with fairly simple math. Welcome to relativistic silliness.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. Just wow. Setting aside, for an instant, the whole DB issue, there is something fundamental that is being flat missed here.
In any proper development environment, robustness and exception management should occur at the lowest level possible. Always. A great app, written against a shaky O/S, running against bogus BIOS calls will never be a great app. Ever. Someone was sleeping during design 101 if they miss this fundamental design concept.
This is the only efficient, and only reasonable development strategy. You can't honestly expect to code "create socket - Did my socket really get created? - try socket out - did that really work?" and think that you've got something solid - no, you've just got a pile of inefficient code on top of a bad socket call that should have reliably returned a status and/or failed gracefully to start with.
The arguments I see against a solid DB design ensuring integrity boil down to one thing, and one thing only, "Gee, we only code in Ruby and that DB stuff is sooooo weird".
Please show me one instance, just one where it's ok to create a product shipment record against an order record that never got created. Explain to me just why a properly designed database should even allow such things from an application, then how it's any more efficient to check for the same potential pitfalls in a dozen pieces of application than it is to get it right at the lowest level to start with.
Well, I agree it's a silly idea, but not for the reasons you postulate.
Yes, the object, given the same amount of atmosphere to punch through at the same velocities as returning spacecraft will get hot - and yes, we already know how to shield that. We've only had one shielding failure in all of our launches to date.
Yes, it will have the earth's rotational velocity. Why do you think Canaveral is on our east coast and closer to the equator than Maine? Gives you a little headstart on orbital velocity.
The energy cost is high - but so is the energy cost for launching conventional rockets. That energy just has to be made available electrically. Which we can do - it's expensive engineering, but it's not science fiction.
The g-forces are much worse than a chemical rocket. But hardware can be made to take more abuse than meat can. Already, we accelerate smart hardware at munition velocities every day in Iraq.
No, the reason this is a silly idea - is because it's a silly idea. There are a lot of ground-based things that can be deployed without nearly so massive a cost.
That was a good first thought - I say that since it was the first thing that occured to me. We already make aluminized mylar by the square mile, far more cheaply than the proposed manufacture and deployment of this "space-bonnet" in terms of natural resources.
But we don't need to knock down greenhouse gas sequestering forests.
There's plenty of deep ocean - blanketing square miles of reflective material with windows to allow phytoplankton survival is a far cheaper (in dollars and in environmental impact).
Solar "shading" is already being proposed to prevent coral bleaching, so this isn't an entirely radical concept.
Cetacian migratory patterns need to be taken into account - air breathers have to have access to the surface. Some means of tensioning, and steering these reflective mats needs to be taken into account - at a minimum they have to be able to navigate around severe weather.
In the meantime, I'm snacking on the roast I made yesterday in my cardboard box/foil "heaven's flame"-type solar oven - and it tastes pretty great - and cost nothing to cook. We're talking a few percent here people - how many of us just can't get that much "greener?" Instead of waiting for flying wonder umbrellas from the world government to save us.
"Nothing bizarre about it. It's called "physics"."
Actually, it's called mis-applied physics.
Point 1)
My math (Ok, I borrowed it from a guy named Newton) says that satellites can orbit. Even in geosynchronous orbit. Apparently they can - they're up there today. As is the moon, the earth, etc. Hopefully, we can agree on that. It is necessary for all that follows. (And also to keep the universe from flying apart)
And, as I stated, geosynchronous orbit, is in fact, absolutely not magic - the only magic about geosynchronous orbit in this application is that it is the one orbit that allows an orbital body to remain static over the earth's surface - it has no other magic in the behavior of tethered, or asymetric orbital systems. For a space elevator, it is undesirable to have your ground terminus dragging across the ground. But the particular orbital altitude really has zero relevance to the behavior of asymetric systems in orbit.
If the earth rotated faster, or slower, the orbital mechanics would remain unchanged - they rely purely on gravity and inertia and are oblivious (aside from minor frame-dragging effects in the fabric of space) to the rotation of the body beneath them.
So for the sake of the physics, the orbit absolutely does not matter - it may be eighty miles up, or eighty-thousand miles up - we are only considering the behavior of any asymetric system in any circular orbit - once you've got a handle on that, geosynch is simply a desirable orbit to allow a fixed relationship to a rotating body.
Point 2)
Assuming this radical leap, that object can in fact orbit, can we also agree that each orbit has it's own period, i.e. velocity, and that an object that is moving too slowly for it's orbit will move inward and an object moving too rapidly for it's orbit will move outward?
I hope so, because if not, we're going to have an awfully tough time from here out figuring out where our satellites go.
Given that, the math also says you can extend a couple of weighted, tethered strings from a body in orbit - one directed inward and one outward. The inward tether will "fall" towards the earth - the outward tether will pull away. Why? Because the center of mass of the system remains in it's original orbit - honest - it has to. The inner tether is moving too slowly for it's orbit - and pulls inward - it's velocity is insufficient for it's orbit.
That's Newton 101. The center of mass of the whole system remains precisely in the same orbit - at precisely the same velocity.
The inner tethered mass cannot accelerate the whole assembly - that silly conservation of energy thing - it can't speed up (it's tethered,remember?) so it continuously falls. The outer tether is moving too rapidly for it's orbit - similarly, it cannot decelerate the entire system - and pulls outward. Or do you also revoke Newton?
Your denial of this fact suggests that tidal alignment is not a factor in orbital mechanics - yet it is. Or perhaps it's just an amazing coincidence that the moon's rotational and orbital periods are identical?
Point 3)
If you grant that, Point 1, bodies can, and do, orbit, and Point 2, that any mass-point moving too slowly for it's orbit moves to a lower orbit, and any mass-point moving too rapidly for it's orbit moves to a higher orbit, then where is the inconsistency? All that is necessary from those points to derive a (theoretical) space elevator is to select an orbit that matches the rotational period of the body beneath it (the "magic" geosynchronous orbit) and extend the orbiting tethers such that the inner tether can reach the ground.
I admire your ability not to let reality interfere with your equations - but your equations may not be the right wrench to hammer that nail in.
"then swing forwards again as a pendulum."
"No, it won't. There's no restoring force here anywhere. If you are trying to orbit any kind of "counterweight" past geosync, then the orbital period of that counterweight will be longer than one day and thus it'll start wrapping the entire tether around the planet."
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Bizarre. mass element dm - pseudo-forces-integrating over dm - Euler-lagrange equations...
This confirms a theory I have long had that advanced math, like other dangerous weapons, should not be put into the hands of children without at least a few semesters on how to think.
Try the following thought experiment. Tie a kilogram weight on the end of a long string. Start swinging it around your head. Does the length of the string make it magically wrap around your head at some point? No. Not even if you denote some arbitrary point on the string as geo-synchronous.
Allow a ten-gram weight to slide out along your string. The assembly will deflect slightly - but your continued rotation will straighten it back out - at the expense of a little extra energy from you. To enhance the thought experiment, you are standing on a magic platform in no (micro) gravity space, swinging your string around. Can you rotate it around slowly? Yes. Can you rotate it faster? Yes. Now start slowly turning up the artificial gravity on your magic platform. Does everything wrap around your head? No. Not until the gravity is turned up to the point that the center of mass of your system falls inside the natural synchronous orbital period of your system's rotation. Then it "falls" down.
Put it another way. Speed the earths rotation up. Faster and faster, until a geosynchronous orbit is about twenty feet off the ground (It'll drive the birds nuts, but hey, it's for science). Tie a rock on a string, hang on to the end of the string and toss your rock fifty feet straight up. It'll stay up there, I promise.
Geo-synch is not really magic in terms of the system. It's simply the point at the natural orbital period equals one day, which is why the counterweight must be located past that point. Lower than that point, and of course the whole assembly falls down. But above that point, the counterweight is forced into an unnaturally fast orbit, providing tension for the assembly.
As freight moves up the cable, the cable does indeed deflect - then returns to it's natural "centripital" position - at the expense of a little rotational energy stolen from earth.
Heh - we both have defective memories, because Feeble is what I remember, too. Hmmmm.
Ummm - Eric Rudolph, Theodore Kaczynski, Steven Hatfill... You are clearly as well-informed as you are bigoted, sir.
Actually - No. I did an interesting project a while back for a company that manufactures gas pipe (Not PVC, which is not acceptable for gas, especially LP).
The project was QC - as the pipe was extruded, it ran through a water bath with a pair of rotating transducers spinning around it. Whenever a void or thin spot was detected, the cutter and printer, further down the line were notified - the printer put some data on the bad section, the cutter chomped it, and the bad part got kicked into the QC bucket.
Absolutely no metal involved in this stuff.
On a side note, an Oklahoma company, WilTel, got started when they were trying to figure out what to do with their empty natural gas transport lines. Someone got the bright idea that a big expense in data transport is infrastructure and right-of-way, which the company already had. They used pigs (devices to crawl through lines and inspect them) to string fiber through the lines and did a good business transporting data through the abandoned lines.
I'm not so sure. Air travel and fatigue never screwed me up. I always knew which way was which, even in some fairly labrynthian underground situations. Until I had a traffic accident with some minor head trauma. Having, then mostly losing that sense of direction leads me to suspect it's a real sense - stronger in some than others.
Maybe we'll find out when the Earth's magnetic poles flip - if the call volume to various traveler's services from lost motorists goes up dramatically, we'll have a good case study;-)
Nah - I'm thoroughly left-handed. Intriguingly, my sense of direction was always on, and, like so many things we are born with, taken for granted, until I had a car accident about ten years ago and had some minor head trauma. I can still find my way around, but that feeling of "go this way" is much weaker, and much missed.
But I can always count on my wife and mother-in-law. If they say, "Turn left", I immediately get in the right lane. Never fails to get us where we're going.
"a look which reminds me of NeXT hardware (which also used anodized black paint on aluminum)"
;-)
Except that the NeXT boxes were magnesium - and anodizing isn't paint. But I do like my Lian-li
There's already an easy hack against these crab nano-sensors. Seems they go into panic mode when they detect lemon-garlic butter. Shuts 'em down every time.
C'mon guys - it's a great idea. Microsoft can then spend the next five years throwing a ton o' cash at getting rid of those nasty FreeBSD machines and replacing all the LISP code with V-Basic. Should be good for dogfood giggles for years to come!
Hmm -
So what does X running through ssh look like? Or IPSec/VPN solutions? Seems like they could generate a lot of encrypted traffic that would be hard to differentiate. No?
"...statistically speaking, pornography DOES lead to increased sex crimes against women."
Garbage. You've been watching the FSC again (Fundamentalist Science Channel). Stop it. Exposure to that stuff will damage your brain.
Look, bad science is bad science, and bad statistics are the bedrock and foundation of bad science.
At best, you can find studies that correlate inappropriate sex with porn. But that does not establish porn as causitive, merely symptomatic.
Again, show me a real study. One where half of 1,000 individual are exposed to porn in a blind study, with the degree of victimization tracked. Until you can find that study, all you're doing is barking up the correlation tree.
Look, I smoke tobacco (I know, I know, I'm an evil bad pariah). Studies show that drug users smoke tobacco way out of proportion to the rest of the population. Therefore tobacco causes drug use. Right? Problem is, if they were giving away crack at 7-11, I wouldn't be interested. Correlation, or causality?
Folks, this stuff is way the heck too serious for us to abandon thought and reason in favor of mushy emotianalism and rhetoric, and fundamentalist notions that you improve human behavior by legislating "temptation" out of existance.
But until we do that, we are going to continue to be societal victims of a government that heavily funds bad science in the hope of apeasing the mystical majority.
"As far as child pornography and mitigating circumstances, exposure to child pornography does lead people to be more likely to molest children."
Bing-bing-bing... Timeout. I have seen one or two studies quoted on this (and related) issues, and I have also seen them torn down for their methodology. The core problem? Correlation does not establish causality, no matter how much academic language you cloak your paper in.
A disproportionate number of suicides prefer country music. Therefore, country music makes one suicidal (well, it does me, but that's a different phenomenan at work). Or is it just possible that someone in a state of depression identifies with songs about losing their job at the factory only to find their spouse ran off with their truck and dog?
Your argument is dangerously close to arguments the moral majorinuts use to legislate temptation out of our lives. Yet bizarrely, something is not working. Amsterdam, for example, with it's liberal drug and prostitution laws has a lower incidence of drug use and sex crimes. Go figure.
Do pedos seek out juvenile erotica? Duh. But have you seen any real study where actual control groups were randomly "exposed" to different types of stimulus with a followup on the amount and type of victimization perpetrated by the study group?
There is also a school of thought that the ability to act out certain unacceptable fantasies may provide a sort of safety valve for some individuals. Escalating behavior is a pattern in many sex crimes, and certainly seeking out reinforcing material is a part of that pattern. But it is by no means clear that it is causative.
"Seems even the Tulsa NBC affiliate picked up the story." The Tulsa NBC affiliate is KJRH - www.teamtulsa.com. Trust me - they're not cluefull enough to have picked up on this. What you have there is the Oklahoma affiliate, who deserve credit for being at lesat a little more on the ball.
"Oh and while there are plenty of stupid people in my state it's nowhere near as many in OK."
Pity you're the exeption to the rule. Is English actually your native language?
Well, I can kind of see your point. I have to squint and hold my head funny, but I can kind of see it.
However...
Sorry, but Mr. Taylor was obnoxious from jump. That has nothing to do with the uber geek elite, and everything to do with being a general asshat. He undoubtedly deals with the poor schmucks that mow the grass at the world-famous six-hole Tuttle country club the same way.
Secondly, Mr. Taylor IS a member of the geek elite. Just ask him. he has "22 years" of computer and administration experience. Sorry, no cookie there either. Read the email transcription for yourself.
So he's either a lying asshat, or an incompetent asshat. Take your choice, but I have bloody little sympathy for either.
An open letter to City Manager Jerry A. Taylor, City of Tuttle, OK:
n tos/
Sir,
As a former Oklahoman, a news item, which I am sure you are quite familiar with, caught my eye recently. For the record, it was in a British e-publication, 'The Register' at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/24/tuttle_ce
I read the article somewhat skeptically. After all, Brits having a bit of fun at the Yanks' expense, I figured, until I found the link to the actual email history. Sadly, the Brits, bless them, actually understated things.
Sir, from the very first sentence of your very first contact with the victims of your harassment you managed at once to be arrogant, ignorant and demanding. You are to be congratulated. Very few people can pull that off in just three sentences. I finished reading the email transcript, shook my head sadly and filed it away.
Until yesterday, when I read at the same publication that you literally expect 'The Register' to turn off the Internet. Because that is exactly and precisely what you request - "I think this is unjustified, and would like for it to stop". Sir, this is your genie that you let out of the bottle by stomping around like the 800 Lb. gorilla that you are NOT. Yet once again, you want everyone else to fix your problems. Sorry. Not happening this time.
I am frankly apalled that anyone who has achieved the lofty status of City Manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma could behave this way. I firmly expected that you were 1) a professional and 2) a man. Either or both should have led you to step up to the plate and admit that you were just plain wrong. It seems that you are neither.
Thanks to the Internet, you'll never be able to bury this in your litterbox.But there are a few things that really should be done, and might actually salvage the global perception that you have given the City of Tuttle, and by extension, Oklahomans in general.
1) CentOS, particularly Johnny Hughes are owed a very public apology from you personally, and from the City of Tuttle. They did absolutely nothing to cause any of your problems. Their only crime was working, mostly without compensation, to provide the operating system version that the City of Tuttle chose to use. Yes, you did choose it. You can't claim over two decades of computer experience and tell me you did no due diligence into the operating system being used to host the City website. To claim that is to claim even more gross incompetence and negligence than you have already exhibited.
2) CentOS is owed a generous consulting fee. They went above and beyond to research your problem, not because of, but in spite of your threats, your ignorance (something I find utterly inexcusable in anyone claiming "22 years in computer systems engineering and operation"), and your total refusal to provide any real information to CentOS to assist them in resolving your problem, which they did not create. In addition they are owed a percentage over and above the consulting fee just for putting up with you instead of very justifiably letting you hang yourself, and putting the City of Tuttle at risk legally and financially.
3) The good citizens of Tuttle are owed an apology from the Mayor, for hiring you, and from you - just for being you. They deserve better.
Please see a doctor. Immediately. If you can claim that your medications were out of adjustment, you may be able to scrape some of the richly deserved egg off of your face. At the very least, he may be able to help you with your other problem. Having both feet inserted in your mouth while having your head firmly lodged where it clearly is has to be causing all kinds of physical problems.
I doubt any Oklahoma publication will publish this particular bit of idiocy. So I'm publishing it in my own modest way, and urging my Oklahoma friends and acquaintances to do the same. Hopefully it will reach enough of the good folks it Tuttle for it to make what is clearly a much-needed change in the affairs and management of that city.
Regards,
A former Oklahoman
Gnope. Gnot doing it. Gnot today, Gnot tomorrow.
Kall me krazy, or just konfused, but I kan't konceive klicking to another desktop. Kount me out.
It's good to see Jerry Falwell reads slashdot - and has mod points. Jeeeeezuuuus!
"Is the real problem the law, homeland security or just the people in the position?"
The real problem, in my immodest opinion is the people of the U.S. who have no sense of history. The creation of secretive (how many agents are there - what exactly do they do?) police agencies, with broad-reaching, and vaguely defined powers has, historically, never been a good thing for the populace. I repeat, never.
This is not about a couple of bad eggs. Their abuse of power is not at all inconsistant with the framework they operate in. They are not the disease - they are a symptom of the disease and are by no means unique.
The fact that we are so ignorant of this is sometimes blamed on the government who educated us to be sheep. I don't buy it. So far, at least, basic history is available to most of our citizens. We can all do this - and should - At least, until the men in uniforms come to the library to take the history books off of the shelves.
"Hoever, I get so damn tired of being told what rights others have, when it comes out of my pocket."
But it's OK when the rights you enjoy come out of others pockets? You, sir, or madam, frighten me.
Virtually all of the rights we enjoy are, in one way or another, out of the public's pockets. We pay for a military, and (supposedly) law enforcement to, among other things, defend those rights.
Democracy and Freedom are not easy, nor for the faint of heart. These concepts demand that you value those concepts to the extent that the guy next door, whose opinions and tastes and religion you absolutely despise, is worth your defending his rights. This may include his right to condemn your favorite candidate, his right to burn the flag we love in protest, and his right to have access to materials in a public media forum that you don't agree with.
I promise you, there are church ladies out there who are angry that they have to pay for your right to look at 14th-century Italian painters at your library - because there might be pictures of naked chubby girls in there. They resent having to pay for your right to view this trash. Ridiculous? How, exactly, are you any different?
Because, believe me - Your neighbor that you despise may not agree with what you have to say, believe, or have access to in your library either. The very essence of the core of our government, that we all pay lip service to, but let slip away when it gets tough, is the concept of inalienable rights. I can't take your rights - and you can't take mine. And we each have to pay a little for that priviledge.
I think they are referring to an interesting article (complete with animations) that described the sometimes unreal way our perceptions deal with observed phenomena. Especially near-light-speed phenomena.
Imagine that you are an observer positioned to one side of the path of an object moving at very near lightspeed. The first light from the object to reach you will be from nearly it's closest approach.
The light from earlier in it's path is still plodding along at c, trying to get to you. The next light rays to reach you will be from slightly further away - both before and after it's point of closest approach. Thus, the article contends, your perception is of an object that appears from nowhere, and recedes at near light speed along it's path of travel - in both directions.
I don't think the article mentioned dopplering, but I'm guessing that, assuming an arbitrary left-to-right travel for the object, that the observer would percieve the "true" receding obect to the right to be heavily red-shifted, and the "apparent" receding object to the left as being heavily blue-shifted. In other words, be suspicious of blue things running away frome you - they may be perceptual goblins.
Weird, counterintuitive, and completely provable with fairly simple math. Welcome to relativistic silliness.