single stage or single stage plus tow plane to orbit on a winged vehicle is not reasonable for the forseeable future
I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. Getting from level flight at (say) 30,000 feet and 700 miles/hour (300 meters/sec) to low orbit is a very different proposition than getting there from a standing start on the ground. There's a lot less air resistance at that altitude for a start.
You need somewhere around 7 KM/second for LEO. The X-15 made about 2 KM/second, with a lot less fuel on board than this proposed configuration would have.
People make life-and-death decisions all the time based around the fact that some must die so that others might live.
In a free country, people make those decisions for themselves, rather than requiring the permission of a bureaucrat to avail themselves of medical help.
We currently need a managed economy with good forward-looking oversight.
Ask a Russian how that worked out for them.
The lesson from this mess is that the Federal Reserve is no better at picking the right interest rate than the Soviets were at setting production quotas. We're in the midst of the collapse of the latest inflationary bubble that the Fed created. The solution is to abolish central planning for the credit market, and let supply and demand determine where interest rates should be.
The thing about Microsoft is they have the money to do just about anything they want...
Funding isn't their problem. What's hurting Microsoft is pervasive management incompetence. This is the kind of thing that can happen when the money comes in too easily for too long.
As soon as Apple gets slapped with an antitrust suit, note the current market share
More like, if Apple loses an antitrust suit. Those clowns at Psystar already tried floating an antitrust theory in their current legal wrangles with Apple.
Giving risky loans to people less likely to be able to repay them is what caused the crisis.
Not by itself. No matter how slipshod a bank is in deciding who to lend money to, without someone to supply a limitless pool of credit, there's a limit to how deep a hole you can dig.
The main perpetrator of this mess is the Federal Reserve. The banks and the politicians are accessories to the crime.
. The real culprit was the unregulated market in credit swaps and derivatives.
No, that was secondary. those derivatives are pyramided on the housing bubble, which was cause by the fed holding interest rates below the rate of inflation for over a decade.
A natural monopoly is a well-defined economic term.
Yes, I'm familiar with the theory. Show me any example in practice of a monopoly which has succeeded in excluding all competition without government on its side.
AT&T didn't start out with a monopoly. They were granted a monopoly in 1934. How is it possible that telephone service existed before then, and how is it possible that telephone service has continued to exist after the government ceased to support the monopoly in 1984?
One of the advantages of tax money, is that it can be used to develop technologies that will then get used by *many* others.
It can also be squandered on dead ends that never turn a profit. The issue is that such risks should be borne by those who choose to take it, not by the taxpayers.
Corporations are miniature governments accountable only to their own shareholders (and not even then, at times).
Nope. They're ultimately accountable to their customers who hold the power of life and death over them. (Unless the government steps in an gives them our money when they fail.)
Greenspan may have been a libertarian at one time, but he certainly wasn't following libertarian principles when he took a job as the head of the federal reserve's board of counterfeiters.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if Woz is happy.
He's sure looked happy the couple of times I've met him.
-jcr
single stage or single stage plus tow plane to orbit on a winged vehicle is not reasonable for the forseeable future
I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. Getting from level flight at (say) 30,000 feet and 700 miles/hour (300 meters/sec) to low orbit is a very different proposition than getting there from a standing start on the ground. There's a lot less air resistance at that altitude for a start.
You need somewhere around 7 KM/second for LEO. The X-15 made about 2 KM/second, with a lot less fuel on board than this proposed configuration would have.
-jcr
Cars kill people every day.
Thank goodness you're here, ridiculous analogy man!
People make life-and-death decisions all the time based around the fact that some must die so that others might live.
In a free country, people make those decisions for themselves, rather than requiring the permission of a bureaucrat to avail themselves of medical help.
-jcr
You are confusing cancer detection (or in this case cancer related protein detection) with cancer therapy.
I'm doing nothing of the kind. I'm taking note of the fact that the earlier a cancer is detected, the better the chances of survival.
But at this point you can't criticize when the device is so far from proven
The hell I can't. The FDA kills people every day.
-jcr
Music labels are dead. They don't control the artists. They don't control access to the masses.
I don't think we're quite there yet. If the labels were dead, would we even know who brittany spears or kanye west are?
They have no traits that would let them survive in the future.
I hope you're right, but I'm not going to bet on it.
-jcr
Should be able to draft an epic "get bent" letter in response to this proposal.
-jcr
Fourteen years, and probably tens of thousands of deaths.
-jcr
We currently need a managed economy with good forward-looking oversight.
Ask a Russian how that worked out for them.
The lesson from this mess is that the Federal Reserve is no better at picking the right interest rate than the Soviets were at setting production quotas. We're in the midst of the collapse of the latest inflationary bubble that the Fed created. The solution is to abolish central planning for the credit market, and let supply and demand determine where interest rates should be.
-jcr
The thing about Microsoft is they have the money to do just about anything they want...
Funding isn't their problem. What's hurting Microsoft is pervasive management incompetence. This is the kind of thing that can happen when the money comes in too easily for too long.
-jcr
TFA doesn't say anything about brain scans What's up with that headline?
-jcr
As soon as Apple gets slapped with an antitrust suit, note the current market share
More like, if Apple loses an antitrust suit. Those clowns at Psystar already tried floating an antitrust theory in their current legal wrangles with Apple.
-jcr
Giving risky loans to people less likely to be able to repay them is what caused the crisis.
Not by itself. No matter how slipshod a bank is in deciding who to lend money to, without someone to supply a limitless pool of credit, there's a limit to how deep a hole you can dig.
The main perpetrator of this mess is the Federal Reserve. The banks and the politicians are accessories to the crime.
-jcr
. The real culprit was the unregulated market in credit swaps and derivatives.
No, that was secondary. those derivatives are pyramided on the housing bubble, which was cause by the fed holding interest rates below the rate of inflation for over a decade.
-jcr
the press will do everything in their power to convince the populace that we are all doomed.
Like, say, finally acknowledging the obvious?
-jcr
Microsoft will stop supporting XP even when it comes to security.
And that will make things worse in what way, exactly?
-jcr
If the Supreme Court says it's constitutional, it's constitutional (by definition).
Nonsense. The supreme court has made mistakes on many occasions. Dred Scott and Korematsu, to name two.
-jcr
You really worked hard on your snotty, condescending prick lessons, didn't you?
-jcr
A natural monopoly is a well-defined economic term.
Yes, I'm familiar with the theory. Show me any example in practice of a monopoly which has succeeded in excluding all competition without government on its side.
-jcr
AT&T didn't start out with a monopoly. They were granted a monopoly in 1934. How is it possible that telephone service existed before then, and how is it possible that telephone service has continued to exist after the government ceased to support the monopoly in 1984?
-jcr
It will generally make all future conversations adversarial.
Why would you care, if the vendor has screwed up to the point that you want to get your money back? There are plenty of better vendors to choose from.
-jcr
Chris,
You're putting a lot of words in my mouth, and arguing against positions I haven't taken. Rather arrogant of you, to say the least.
-jcr
Jcr wants a government of the corporations by the corporations and for the corporations.
That's pretty much what we have now, and for the record, I'm against it.
The idea that government can serve to protect us from the increasing power of corporations is ludicrous. Government is the ultimate monopoly.
-jcr
One of the advantages of tax money, is that it can be used to develop technologies that will then get used by *many* others.
It can also be squandered on dead ends that never turn a profit. The issue is that such risks should be borne by those who choose to take it, not by the taxpayers.
-jcr
Corporations are miniature governments accountable only to their own shareholders (and not even then, at times).
Nope. They're ultimately accountable to their customers who hold the power of life and death over them. (Unless the government steps in an gives them our money when they fail.)
-jcr
Greenspan may have been a libertarian at one time, but he certainly wasn't following libertarian principles when he took a job as the head of the federal reserve's board of counterfeiters.
-jcr