Why bother creating your own satellite when there's a ready made one right next door? Granted, your idea that "if we can colonize that we can colonize anything" is definitely true, but why try to run when you have not yet learned to walk? You will eventually run, but the time and effort required to make such a leap would be enormous, with no payoff until the very end. By moving in more measured steps -- a moonbase first, a space station second, a Mars base third -- you get more consistent payoffs on your efforts and the learning curve is much less steep.
No, you don't appear to be modded down, and your questions are completely valid ones, if somewhat uninformed.
Bootstrapping is entirely viable with today's technology. Consider the following:
- Inflatable living habitats are a reality. They've been tested in NASA's vacuum chamber and are suitable for orbital or planetary use. Lunar colonists could excavate a depression in the moon's surface (with a digging tool or explosives), insert the uninflated habitat, inflate it, cover with the same soil that you excavated, and voila! You've got a sealed environment that has micrometeorite protection, both due to the inflatable construction (remember it was designed for orbital use as well) and then you've got the insulation properties of moon soil.
- Cheap, efficient, compact solar cells are a reality. These could be deployed to recharge rover batteries, crack water into hydrogen and oxygen (for breathing, fuel, and later use in a fuel cell). Compact thermoelectric generators also exist that could provide additional sources of power.
- Environmental systems exist that could easily keep a team of people alive, warm, and healthy on the lunar surface for months. These systems are already being used to keep ISS astronauts in a shirtsleeve enviroment.
- The heavy-lift rocket technology exists to get all of the above to the moon -- it has, in fact, existed since the 60's in the form of a Saturn V. Russia's Energia could be pressed into similar service, and even the old Saturn could be built again, probably cheaper than the bill for the ISS is.
As for your comments about the lack of factories on the moon, you're being too shortsighted. Complex factories are needed here on earth to produce complex goods, like microelectronics. But producing a brick, or an iron bar, or growing food is altogether much simpler. Witness that bricklaying an metalworking have been around for millenia without any need of specialized equipment. Primitive materials can be used to make primitive building tools on the moon. It can be done. It has been done, albeit in earthbound labs with lunar soil brought back almost forty years ago.
One has to consider what we'd have if all the money spent on the ISS had instead been spent on a moonbase. In LEO, you have to drag everything of value up with you, but on the moon there's plenty of materials available to make life much cheaper to maintain.
You can extract oxygen from moon dust. Mix with a little hydrogen in a fuel cell and you get electricity, heat, and water, all necessary for a moonbase. Then crack the water back apart via electrolysis using solar cells (or a small thermoelectric nuclear) and you've got breathing oxygen and hydrogen to use all over again.
Experiments on moon dust from the Apollo missions even showed that if you mixed water with moon dust and a few other things you could get pretty good cement out of it, and protection from micrometeorites and cosmic rays to boot. Silicon, aluminum, and even titanium are present in moon dust and could be refined along with other elements to make some inefficient but cheap solar cells to put all over the lunar surface. Who cares if they're inefficient when you can have a few square miles of them with no atmospheric attenuation to worry about?
We have wasted more than just money on the ISS, we've wasted time and we've wasted the legacy and inertia of Apollo. What a shame it would be if the last to set foot on the moon should die of old age before the next visitor should go there. Sad, and pitiful.
The observed effects are wrong, inasmuch as the characters are capable of dodging an already-fired burst. They would be capable of dodging prior to firing, but for all intents and purposes once the trigger is pulled, any energy weapon is an "instant hit" weapon.
As for phaser's being visible "from the side", you must remember that we're talking special effects here, not actual weaponry. But with regards to real lasers, sometimes you can see them, sometimes not. Some lasers do not operate at visible wavelengths, thus you cannot see them. What you may see, however, is secondary effects such as beam scattering (by air and airborne dust if the laser is being fired in an open room). As a laser is being fired through anything other than a perfect vacuum it's going to heat whatever it's firing through (a phenomena known as thermal blooming). Heat anything enough and it will eventually give off energy in the form of photons, which we may perceive as visible light.
In short, we really shouldn't be able to see these energy blasts, but that would make poor cinema. For that matter, we shouldn't be able to hear anything in space either, as space is a vacuum, but that would also make poor cinema. Imagine Star Wars without the swoop and streak of TIE fighters and X-Wings. Pretty boring, eh?
Actually, you're incorrect here. According to The Next Generation Technical Manual, phaser blasts travel at c, or the speed of light, as a phaser is a directed energy weapon. This corresponds quite nicely to our more mundane LASER, which is a beam of collimated light energy composed of photons. Photons (the particles, not the torpedos) are massless particles that always travel at the speed of light. Beams of energy need not have mass in order to do what they do, but if you ask Einstein, mass and energy are related so the point is somewhat nebulous.
As you see, it would be impossible for our dear captain to dodge a phaser blast, for to do so he would have to be moving faster than c. I doubt Kirk has a personal warp drive in his back pocket, so this just isn't possible. But if he can't dodge the blast, he'd be dead, and in the words of Phil Farrand of The Nitpicker's Guide, "it'd be a really short show".
>Determination and aggressiveness is *nothing*. >Working hard is *useless*. Unless those traits >are applied towards improving our state of >affairs and working on solutions to problems >we've collectively identified in a society.
I think that's a pretty sweeping statement to make considering how much good and ill aggressiveness and determination have brought to the world throughout history. Anything can and will be abused, but that is not an argument for or against any particular action. Just because some people have abused the system of power in this world is no reason to largely condemn the entire crowd.
>I admire generosity, altruism, and a genuine >desire to improve the quality of life (both >physical and emotional, and more importantly, >not at the expense of another group of people)
Ah, but we live in a world of finite resources, be it money, oil, land, water, or even air. One cannot improve any group without divesting another in some way. You cannot give someone money unless you earned it and are willing to divest yourself of it. Likewise, the government cannot give anything to anyone without depriving someone else of it. You could use the argument that it's possible to lift all of humanity up at some fixed pace, but I would argue that attempts to do so in the past have met with miserable success. Some groups are more interested in making sure you don't get ahead rather than seeing themselves elevated. That's their idea of equality, and I'm firmly against it.
>It seems to me that people only recognize the >futility and uselessness of the means when the >end is sufficiently horrendous.
Throughout history mankind has almost exclusively been motived by loss, punishment, pain, or struggle, far more so than any motivation by reward. Shortsightedness is in our DNA somewhere, and I don't see that trait changing for a long, long time -- if ever.
>Whos to say we wouldn't have been building >disabled-friendly buildings 40 years ago had >our society been less focused on 'working hard' >and instead more focused on 'working towards >progress'.
An interesting aside on this subject: if the needs of the disabled had not been met by laws, sooner or later some entrepeneur would've noted this untapped market and built a business around it. It might've taken longer, but the point is it probably would've happened anyway simply because that's how a free market economy works best. Ignore customers at your peril, because you're competitors won't. Those who don't heed this invariably go out of business, even if it takes decades. I'm a firm believer that the RIAA/MPAA is composed of walking dead men, if only because they'd rather wallow in outmoded distribution models instead of embracing the cash cow that is the Internet. They can't keep it up forever, DMCA or no DMCA. Sooner or later, all life forms (companies included) must adapt or become extinct.
>However, I am a firm believer that those who >attain power are there because they want power, >not because they worked harder towards a goal >everybody wanted, and only they got their.
Then I am proud to say I'm an exception to your rule. I started in college as a junior sysadmin. Over the last twenty years I've steadily worked my way up to the point where I'm an I.T. Director for a rather large company. I have budgets in the millions and I'm responsible for thousands of users and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues. I did this because I'm one determined sonofabitch -- determined to proove that you don't have to be a power-grubbing asshole to rise in the ranks. And you know what? You don't have to be. Much like Yoda says, the "dark side" is easier, quicker, and more seductive, but those who attain power by those means seldom hold onto it for long. Those who attain power by hard work and gaining the respect (not fear) of your peers and subordinates deserve to be rewarded for their efforts, not besmirched with the rest of the crowd.
>but theres no self-checking mechanism from the >top
Ah, but there is. Justice may work slowly and blindly, but I'm a firm believer that everyone gets what's coming to them sooner or later. Enron and WorldCom execs thought they were getting away with it, too, and now they're looking at massive lawsuits at the least and jail time at the worst. No, the best self-checking mechanism in place is Karma.
>If equality is a goal, and mandating is too >communist (ie, centrally set wealth >distribution), why not search for a variation >on capitalism which balances the motivation to >generate wealth to the motivation of keeping >your inferiors not too far behind with respect >to opportunity (of which wealth is a part of?)
Systems like this are what we continually strive for. Although the U.S. is universally regarded as a capitalistic economy, we are in fact not. The government regulates quite a bit of stuff, from OSHA rules, to ADA laws, to what kind of gas mileage cars must have. In a pure model, such controls would never exist and the market would be allowed to run itself wherever it wants. Oddly enough this usually ends up hurting consumers through increased costs of regulatory compliance, but thus far there haven't been too many gross violations either way.
My take on things is this: society will enforce pressures on the market in much the same way as government would with laws. It may take longer, and it may be more uncomfortable in the short run, but in the long run it's better than a raft of new laws because laws beget laws. Further, laws create a whole new class of people: loophole lookers. Better to allow society to determine its course than a bunch of bureaucrats who's motives are always rooted in how they're going to get re-elected next time.
While I find your attempts to bring equality to the masses somewhat of a noble endeavor, I have to say that such a goal is fundamentally flawed with respect to the continued struggle for improvement. Those who try the hardest are generally rewarded for it by "moving up the ladder", so to speak. Those who don't try are, by corrolary, moved down. To bring those "down" people "up" would require those above to make some sort of sacrifice, be it monetary or otherwise. Such a sacrifice is a good thing when done voluntarily (I contribute to charity) but should not under any circumstances be made into any sort of a law. We are already too far in that direction as is.
The fact is, there will always be class divisions, if only because some people will always try harder, work smarter, or be more aggressive than the other fellow. Nature has a way of reinforcing positive behavior, and it's called evolution. Social constructs develop in the same manner whereby the successful stay successful because they keep doing whatever made them successful (saving, investing, working hard, etc.) and the less successful stay that way because of the very same reasons (dropping out of school, spending money on beer, cigarettes, WWF tickets). Those that cannot hack it should, by natural convention, fall off the social/evolutionary ladder, and thus the entire race is improved. Flouting this always leads to disasters.
Now, I'm certainly not going to say that all who exist in the halls of power got there through sheer determination and/or ability. I'm firmly against any sort of "silver spoon" inheritance of power. But, I would have to say that the vast majority of those who are in a position to lead companies and nations got there through years of determination and aggressiveness, two traits that I must admire. Do you?
Actually, no I'm not reinforcing your point. You think that it's alright to deprive the movie industry of the $7 ticket price, but you still want to enjoy the fruit of their labors. It is irrelevant how much money someone does or doesn't have with regards to whether you owe them anything for their products. McDonald's is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Does that entitle you to a free sandwich? Hey, it's only $2.59, right? They don't really need that money.
Your argument lends absurdity to itself all too easily. Billion dollar companies employ tens of thousands of people, and hundreds of thousands more are connected in some way to those very same industries. When you steal, you aren't stealing just from some fat-cat movie mogul, you're stealing from everyone who has anything to do with movies. That includes the minimum-wage guys sweeping the floors as surely as it does the actor with a $30 million salary.
To further put perspective, which is something your argument obviously lacks, into this debate, suppose for just one tiny microsecond that a few million people felt the same way as you do about that $7 movie ticket. After all, if it's good for you, why not someone else? You're not special, so why not? Suddenly that $7, something that "no one would ever notice" is now $7 million. If nobody paid to see a movie, movies wouldn't get made.
Further, you put forth the argument that it's not really stealing because you wouldn't have paid to see the movie anyway. Well, perhaps you're not depriving them of income in that manner, but you are helping yourself to some very undeserved entertainment in the process. If I decided to employ you but then refused to pay you, do I "deserve" your labor? Absolutely not, but that's what you're arguing.
No, you make my point rather well, but in an inverse manner. Scale is something you are lacking in this debate. You think it's just fine and dandy to steal so long as it does no harm, yet you fail to realize the implications of what would happen if others thought like you. Like so many Slashdotter's, you think only of yourself and "the oppressed", and never about the actual consequences of your actions.
So what is your point? Since your seven dollars "means" more to you in your pocket than seven dollars in Bill Gates' pocket, does that mean you deserve your seven dollars more than Bill deserves his? You've constructed a wonderful system whereby you can say someone doesn't need the money they work for, and the "need" scale is based solely on how much you need. How lovely.
Of course, to a homeless person, or to a bankrupt person, seven dollars to them is much more important than seven dollars to you. Perhaps someone should take away your money and give it to a homeless person. After all, they "need" it more than you do! You have something, they have nothing...that's not fair, is it?
You sound a lot like the former head of a country that no longer exists. "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." That was voiced by Stalin, a great humanitarian if the world has ever known one, right? Hey, you're trumpeting his ideology, I'm just letting you know where you stand.
I recently had the same question you do, namely I've got a small site doing a limited amount of business but I still need to accept credit cards and use SSL. Verisign? No way in hell. It'd take me two months to make their fee back in profits. No thank you.
After searching around a bit I found a site called InstantSSL run by an outfit called Comodo. They offer a 1 year 128-bit cert for $49, and you can even try it out for 30 days free of charge. I did, and it works well enough that I haven't had any complaints.
I'll forgive your impertinence and answer the question at hand: the chipset is responsible for managing the power saving schema for the entire system. Why do you think APM/ACPI setup is in the BIOS? Because it's on the CPU? Nope, it's because it's CHIPSET dependent. The CPU depends upon an external entity to put it into power saving mode (aka the "HALT" instruction), just as it requires the chipset to wake it back up again afterwards.
Now, try being less rude the next time you're asking a question. Starting your inquiry with "just how the fuck..." is immature and shows a lack of intelligence on your part.
AMD processor temps have long been thrown around as proof that Intel processors are a "safer" buy. What one fails to realize, however, is that the P4 can and DOES generate MORE heat than an Athlon XP!
Go to Intel's whitepaper area and note the max heat dissipation in watts, then go get the same info on the Athlon. You'll find that Intel's flagship will dissipate ~70W-75W, and AMD's flagship will run about ~68W-70W.
The crucial difference between the two is Intel's thermal management techniques. Both AMD and Intel processors can make use of a HALT instruction provided by the chipset. This basically stops the CPU when nothing is going on, allowing it to dramatically cool down. The problem is, AMD chipsets (VIA, SiS, even AMD's own 760 series) don't properly implement the HALT instruction, whereas Intel REQUIRES it of their chipsets and board makers.
The results of this are pretty obvious. Intel chips cool down quicker and generally run cooler UNDER PARTIAL LOAD. But when both chips are stressed to the maximum, the P4 WILL get hotter than an Athlon.
Actually, the liners crack not because they were designed with cheapness in mind, but because they were designed to be as lightweight as possible. In many cases, NASA engineers have thrown costs to the wind to save a few precious pounds.
Like a Top Fuel dragster, most components are designed to be used only a few times and then replaced, and everything else is shaved down to the bare minimum tolerances for whatever stresses the part may encounter. Many of these components were never designed to have the lifetimes now being thrust upon them (no pun intended) and the fact that they're still even somewhat functional is a tribute to (a) the excellent safety margin NASA usually insists on and (b) the incredible expertise of the engineers who designed it in the first place.
Sure, they could design parts that last forever -- and the shuttle would weigh twice as much and not be able to carry ANY cargo. Until we make some bigger, better leaps in materials technologies that allow us to make super-strong, super-lightweight materials that'll last forever, space travel is going to remain a somewhat risky, enormously expensive, labor intensive evolution.
I would agree with you except for one thing: how many Premiere/Avid users do YOU know of that happen to be programmers? I'd be willing to bet that the percentage is under 1%. People who handled NLE systems are video people, artists if you will. Most of them couldn't code an MS-DOS batch file much less modify the code for Cinelerra. If you're thinking that perhaps some non-video oriented people (aka. regular old programmers) will get around to modifying Cinelerra then perhaps you're right, but I have to point out that regardless of how bad Premiere's SDK is, people have been coding to it for years and are familiar with its pitfalls and strengths. They are NOT going to run en masse to Cinelerra because the SDK is better! They'll run to it if CUSTOMERS run to it, and customers won't run to it until it can run all the Adobe plugins. That will be a long, long time coming -- if it ever comes.
As for Cinelerra being destined for HDTV, I'd have to agree that it has the capability to go there. The question is, however, will anyone want to take it there? Only major broadcasters are even PLAYING with HDTV these days, primarily because of the expense. "But this is free!" you say? True -- and that, believe it or not, is a huge impediment to acceptance in the industry. Right or wrong, most folks equate the price tag with capabilities, functionality, stability, and "prestige"...how the hell else could Avid still be in business when there are many cheaper alternatives that work just as well or better? A prior poster noted that many studios are buying $40K Avid's "for show" but doing real work on $5K software packages and standard PC's! I know, because I've been there. People don't want to hear whether or not you're using Premiere, Final Cut, or (God forbid) something nobody's ever heard of called Cinelerra. They ask one question "do you have an Avid"?
Yeah, it's stupid, but customers have HEARD of Avid and think it's the top 'o the line. If it weren't for that fact, I think Avid would be damn near out of business, because the rest of the pack has caught up with them big time, especially in cost vs. performance.
I wish nothing but the best for Cinelerra. I'd love to not have to pay what I currently pay for NLE software. But the truth of the matter is something that the Linux Community has ignored and continues to ignore: people don't always shop on price or technological superiority -- in fact they FREQUENTLY DON'T. Just because something is free or better does not mean it'll take over the world. If that were the case then we'd all be running Linux everywhere (or OS/2 about 10 years ago). Wishful thinking is great, but when someone tries to force that worldview onto the rest of us it does more harm than good.
And that's where you're thinking stops, eh? Blocky, jerky, postage-stamp-sized video is no longer a necessity on the web.
First off, you've got improved codecs that are making more out of less. Real, QT, and even WMV formats have come a long, long ways in the last 2-3 years. You can get some pretty good video out of them now for realistic (100kbit/sec average) bitrates. Sure, it's no threat to HDTV, but you gotta start somewhere.
Second, bandwidth is increasing dramatically. Back when Real first came on the scene 56K modems were all there were. Now DSL and cable modems are available in about 60% of urban areas and it's increasing fast. More bandwidth equals faster framerates, greater resolution, and better image definition.
Lastly, the audience is changing. Not everyone is trying to broadcast to home users across the web. A substantial portion of work these days comes from the corporate streaming video field. With gigabit and/or fast ethernet links pretty common in big companies it's become quite feasible to stream video to the desktop. This can be a boon to training that would otherwise require a dedicated A/V room and tape replication. It also allows the training material to be more up to date since it can be changed much more easily than physical media would allow.
So, think about more than what's two inches in front of your face before commenting next time. There are larger issues here, and I think the original poster had some good points.
Sorry to take issue with you, but I thought I'd point out a couple of things:
1. Premeire can export QT, AVI, and version 6.0 includes a Real exporter as well. So Premiere has the ground pretty darn well covered when it comes to export formats.
2. Media Cleaner has its place but if you've got export capabilities from your editing app you don't NEED Media Cleaner. Why in the world would you want to spend extra money on something like MC if you could have those same features built into your editing app for free? Of course, I do MPEG-2 exporting from Premiere via CinemaCraft, but it sure is handy to be able to output any format you could possibly think of if you're handing off clips to someone else.
I think he was pointing out not that you can't edit these formats, but that outputting them in said formats is apparently impossible. You're right, we edit in different formats, but if you can't output what you need (QT, Real, and WMV being THE dominant ones right now), then the application is quite limited with respect to web publishing.
It'd be okay for doing your own video work, though, so long as you didn't need to exchange media with anyone else in the world (since nearly everyone uses AVI's or QT's for exchanging media).
I doubt it. Most soccer moms I know break the speed limit. Give 'em a few speeding tickets and you'll see them change their tunes real quick.
You must live far, far away from me then. Here in Atlanta the soccer moms are the idiots in the left lane doing 55MPH while everyone else swerves around them doing 75MPH.
You think I'm kidding? It would happen. It has happened before.
When?
Reference such idiotic things as the Million Mom March and their stupid, emotionally-driven responses to any issue that threaten to compromise the cradle-to-grave "safety" offered by our Imperial Federal Government and you'll see EXACTLY what I mean.
I would agree with you if I thought for one minute that the spineless, insipid American public would stage some sort of protest or outrage against the vigorous enforcement and thus force the laws to change. Unfortunately, I lost faith in the public's ability to be sensible a long time ago, and my admiration for the forces of idiocy grow every day as they find new and interesting ways to sidestep logic and get "the public" to accept their views.
...and whoever endorsed the higher speed limits would be denounced by their opponents as caving into the speed demons, the road ragers, and whoever else they can demonize, all while massive throngs of soccer moms chant that speeds must be kept where they are "for the children".
You think I'm kidding? It would happen. It has happened before. No politician can fight the soccer moms, it seems. They always get their way, because anything they're for is "for the children", and no pol in his/her right mind would DARE do anything that's (by contraposition) "against" the children.
Go to the National Motorists Association website (http://www.motorists.org/) and you'll find volumes of data that shows increasing speeds does not contribute to an increase in traffic fatalities or accidents.
Conversely, you can also find data that shows an increased number of accidents per vehicle mile driven when speed limits are set too low. Drivers fall asleep on long routes when they could've already been there if speeds were higher. Further, driving at a speed SLOWER than what you're comfortable at has about the same effects as driving at a speed FASTER than what you're comfortable at, namely an increase in accidents.
Unfortunately the massive stupidity of the American public has bought the safety lobby's argument hook, line, and sinker. "Speed Kills" was chanted for so long that people no longer think to even question it -- or no longer think at all so it seems sometimes.
It doesn't matter if they're enforced or not, the point is that they're enforcable if and when the authorities say so. In many ways it's worse than if they did vigorously enforce it, because "letting it slide" allows people to get complacent about it and carry on with the activity. That won't stop the judge from throwing the book at you when you're caught.
Here in Georgia they have some ridiculous laws on the books. One of them bans oral sex as "an unnatural act against God", believe it or not. Having been on the receiving end of numerous such favors from my girlfriend, I could go to jail (and so could she) for that. Sure, they don't enforce it, but they could.
How about this? Suppose I had a right to kill you, anytime, anywhere, for no reason at all and without fear of prosecution, but I just never decided to do so, whilst you were legally barred from stopping me from doing so or taking steps to defend yourself. Would you feel safe? Didn't think so.
No, I could NOT go to jail for lending him the car unless I had prior knowledge that the vehicle would be used in the commission of a crime. If I did, then I'd be an "accessory" to the crime, as I stated in my post. However, if I had no prior knowledge then I am (and should be) free of any illegality concerns.
As for "making them pay the damn fine", good luck there. The cops would come after the car owner and have the law on their side to prosecute. The car owner, however, has no legal means to prosecute the DRIVER of the loaner vehicle whatsoever outside of civil court, the costs of which would be prohibitive unless you're just trying to prove a very expensive point. Sorry, no dice there.
Try reading up on the laws you're commenting on before making statements like the above. It makes the debate more interesting.
Why should Congress care what the speed limits are set to? Most don't even drive themselves (exception: Kennedy at Chappaquiddick, but I digress) and those that still do can easily get tickets "fixed", unlike the average you and me.
Point is, the folks who make and enforce the laws are apparently not bound by them!!! When was the last time you saw a COP pulled over for speeding (I'll hazard a guess: NEVER), but they pass me all the time with no lights, no siren. I've followed them before, and they're NOT on their way to a silent alarm, they're just trying to get wherever it is they're going -- albeit just a bit faster than I'M allowed to.
No, the lawmakers and enforcers have abandoned us, largely because they now consider themselves above the law. Only a public revolt would change things, and the American public has about as much revolt instinct as a lapdog. They just want their WWF Wrestling and Springer re-runs.
Slashdot Mirror
Why bother creating your own satellite when there's a ready made one right next door? Granted, your idea that "if we can colonize that we can colonize anything" is definitely true, but why try to run when you have not yet learned to walk? You will eventually run, but the time and effort required to make such a leap would be enormous, with no payoff until the very end. By moving in more measured steps -- a moonbase first, a space station second, a Mars base third -- you get more consistent payoffs on your efforts and the learning curve is much less steep.
No, you don't appear to be modded down, and your questions are completely valid ones, if somewhat uninformed.
Bootstrapping is entirely viable with today's technology. Consider the following:
- Inflatable living habitats are a reality. They've been tested in NASA's vacuum chamber and are suitable for orbital or planetary use. Lunar colonists could excavate a depression in the moon's surface (with a digging tool or explosives), insert the uninflated habitat, inflate it, cover with the same soil that you excavated, and voila! You've got a sealed environment that has micrometeorite protection, both due to the inflatable construction (remember it was designed for orbital use as well) and then you've got the insulation properties of moon soil.
- Cheap, efficient, compact solar cells are a reality. These could be deployed to recharge rover batteries, crack water into hydrogen and oxygen (for breathing, fuel, and later use in a fuel cell). Compact thermoelectric generators also exist that could provide additional sources of power.
- Environmental systems exist that could easily keep a team of people alive, warm, and healthy on the lunar surface for months. These systems are already being used to keep ISS astronauts in a shirtsleeve enviroment.
- The heavy-lift rocket technology exists to get all of the above to the moon -- it has, in fact, existed since the 60's in the form of a Saturn V. Russia's Energia could be pressed into similar service, and even the old Saturn could be built again, probably cheaper than the bill for the ISS is.
As for your comments about the lack of factories on the moon, you're being too shortsighted. Complex factories are needed here on earth to produce complex goods, like microelectronics. But producing a brick, or an iron bar, or growing food is altogether much simpler. Witness that bricklaying an metalworking have been around for millenia without any need of specialized equipment. Primitive materials can be used to make primitive building tools on the moon. It can be done. It has been done, albeit in earthbound labs with lunar soil brought back almost forty years ago.
It's not as hard as you might think.
One has to consider what we'd have if all the money spent on the ISS had instead been spent on a moonbase. In LEO, you have to drag everything of value up with you, but on the moon there's plenty of materials available to make life much cheaper to maintain.
You can extract oxygen from moon dust. Mix with a little hydrogen in a fuel cell and you get electricity, heat, and water, all necessary for a moonbase. Then crack the water back apart via electrolysis using solar cells (or a small thermoelectric nuclear) and you've got breathing oxygen and hydrogen to use all over again.
Experiments on moon dust from the Apollo missions even showed that if you mixed water with moon dust and a few other things you could get pretty good cement out of it, and protection from micrometeorites and cosmic rays to boot. Silicon, aluminum, and even titanium are present in moon dust and could be refined along with other elements to make some inefficient but cheap solar cells to put all over the lunar surface. Who cares if they're inefficient when you can have a few square miles of them with no atmospheric attenuation to worry about?
We have wasted more than just money on the ISS, we've wasted time and we've wasted the legacy and inertia of Apollo. What a shame it would be if the last to set foot on the moon should die of old age before the next visitor should go there. Sad, and pitiful.
The observed effects are wrong, inasmuch as the characters are capable of dodging an already-fired burst. They would be capable of dodging prior to firing, but for all intents and purposes once the trigger is pulled, any energy weapon is an "instant hit" weapon.
As for phaser's being visible "from the side", you must remember that we're talking special effects here, not actual weaponry. But with regards to real lasers, sometimes you can see them, sometimes not. Some lasers do not operate at visible wavelengths, thus you cannot see them. What you may see, however, is secondary effects such as beam scattering (by air and airborne dust if the laser is being fired in an open room). As a laser is being fired through anything other than a perfect vacuum it's going to heat whatever it's firing through (a phenomena known as thermal blooming). Heat anything enough and it will eventually give off energy in the form of photons, which we may perceive as visible light.
In short, we really shouldn't be able to see these energy blasts, but that would make poor cinema. For that matter, we shouldn't be able to hear anything in space either, as space is a vacuum, but that would also make poor cinema. Imagine Star Wars without the swoop and streak of TIE fighters and X-Wings. Pretty boring, eh?
Actually, you're incorrect here. According to The Next Generation Technical Manual, phaser blasts travel at c, or the speed of light, as a phaser is a directed energy weapon. This corresponds quite nicely to our more mundane LASER, which is a beam of collimated light energy composed of photons. Photons (the particles, not the torpedos) are massless particles that always travel at the speed of light. Beams of energy need not have mass in order to do what they do, but if you ask Einstein, mass and energy are related so the point is somewhat nebulous.
As you see, it would be impossible for our dear captain to dodge a phaser blast, for to do so he would have to be moving faster than c. I doubt Kirk has a personal warp drive in his back pocket, so this just isn't possible. But if he can't dodge the blast, he'd be dead, and in the words of Phil Farrand of The Nitpicker's Guide, "it'd be a really short show".
Yeah, but WHO'S brain will they be rivalling? There are a few folks out there that would be hard-pressed to out think a 286 running DOS.
>Determination and aggressiveness is *nothing*. >Working hard is *useless*. Unless those traits >are applied towards improving our state of >affairs and working on solutions to problems >we've collectively identified in a society.
I think that's a pretty sweeping statement to make considering how much good and ill aggressiveness and determination have brought to the world throughout history. Anything can and will be abused, but that is not an argument for or against any particular action. Just because some people have abused the system of power in this world is no reason to largely condemn the entire crowd.
>I admire generosity, altruism, and a genuine >desire to improve the quality of life (both >physical and emotional, and more importantly, >not at the expense of another group of people)
Ah, but we live in a world of finite resources, be it money, oil, land, water, or even air. One cannot improve any group without divesting another in some way. You cannot give someone money unless you earned it and are willing to divest yourself of it. Likewise, the government cannot give anything to anyone without depriving someone else of it. You could use the argument that it's possible to lift all of humanity up at some fixed pace, but I would argue that attempts to do so in the past have met with miserable success. Some groups are more interested in making sure you don't get ahead rather than seeing themselves elevated. That's their idea of equality, and I'm firmly against it.
>It seems to me that people only recognize the >futility and uselessness of the means when the >end is sufficiently horrendous.
Throughout history mankind has almost exclusively been motived by loss, punishment, pain, or struggle, far more so than any motivation by reward. Shortsightedness is in our DNA somewhere, and I don't see that trait changing for a long, long time -- if ever.
>Whos to say we wouldn't have been building >disabled-friendly buildings 40 years ago had >our society been less focused on 'working hard' >and instead more focused on 'working towards >progress'.
An interesting aside on this subject: if the needs of the disabled had not been met by laws, sooner or later some entrepeneur would've noted this untapped market and built a business around it. It might've taken longer, but the point is it probably would've happened anyway simply because that's how a free market economy works best. Ignore customers at your peril, because you're competitors won't. Those who don't heed this invariably go out of business, even if it takes decades. I'm a firm believer that the RIAA/MPAA is composed of walking dead men, if only because they'd rather wallow in outmoded distribution models instead of embracing the cash cow that is the Internet. They can't keep it up forever, DMCA or no DMCA. Sooner or later, all life forms (companies included) must adapt or become extinct.
>However, I am a firm believer that those who >attain power are there because they want power, >not because they worked harder towards a goal >everybody wanted, and only they got their.
Then I am proud to say I'm an exception to your rule. I started in college as a junior sysadmin. Over the last twenty years I've steadily worked my way up to the point where I'm an I.T. Director for a rather large company. I have budgets in the millions and I'm responsible for thousands of users and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues. I did this because I'm one determined sonofabitch -- determined to proove that you don't have to be a power-grubbing asshole to rise in the ranks. And you know what? You don't have to be. Much like Yoda says, the "dark side" is easier, quicker, and more seductive, but those who attain power by those means seldom hold onto it for long. Those who attain power by hard work and gaining the respect (not fear) of your peers and subordinates deserve to be rewarded for their efforts, not besmirched with the rest of the crowd.
>but theres no self-checking mechanism from the >top
Ah, but there is. Justice may work slowly and blindly, but I'm a firm believer that everyone gets what's coming to them sooner or later. Enron and WorldCom execs thought they were getting away with it, too, and now they're looking at massive lawsuits at the least and jail time at the worst. No, the best self-checking mechanism in place is Karma.
>If equality is a goal, and mandating is too >communist (ie, centrally set wealth >distribution), why not search for a variation >on capitalism which balances the motivation to >generate wealth to the motivation of keeping >your inferiors not too far behind with respect >to opportunity (of which wealth is a part of?)
Systems like this are what we continually strive for. Although the U.S. is universally regarded as a capitalistic economy, we are in fact not. The government regulates quite a bit of stuff, from OSHA rules, to ADA laws, to what kind of gas mileage cars must have. In a pure model, such controls would never exist and the market would be allowed to run itself wherever it wants. Oddly enough this usually ends up hurting consumers through increased costs of regulatory compliance, but thus far there haven't been too many gross violations either way.
My take on things is this: society will enforce pressures on the market in much the same way as government would with laws. It may take longer, and it may be more uncomfortable in the short run, but in the long run it's better than a raft of new laws because laws beget laws. Further, laws create a whole new class of people: loophole lookers. Better to allow society to determine its course than a bunch of bureaucrats who's motives are always rooted in how they're going to get re-elected next time.
While I find your attempts to bring equality to the masses somewhat of a noble endeavor, I have to say that such a goal is fundamentally flawed with respect to the continued struggle for improvement. Those who try the hardest are generally rewarded for it by "moving up the ladder", so to speak. Those who don't try are, by corrolary, moved down. To bring those "down" people "up" would require those above to make some sort of sacrifice, be it monetary or otherwise. Such a sacrifice is a good thing when done voluntarily (I contribute to charity) but should not under any circumstances be made into any sort of a law. We are already too far in that direction as is.
The fact is, there will always be class divisions, if only because some people will always try harder, work smarter, or be more aggressive than the other fellow. Nature has a way of reinforcing positive behavior, and it's called evolution. Social constructs develop in the same manner whereby the successful stay successful because they keep doing whatever made them successful (saving, investing, working hard, etc.) and the less successful stay that way because of the very same reasons (dropping out of school, spending money on beer, cigarettes, WWF tickets). Those that cannot hack it should, by natural convention, fall off the social/evolutionary ladder, and thus the entire race is improved. Flouting this always leads to disasters.
Now, I'm certainly not going to say that all who exist in the halls of power got there through sheer determination and/or ability. I'm firmly against any sort of "silver spoon" inheritance of power. But, I would have to say that the vast majority of those who are in a position to lead companies and nations got there through years of determination and aggressiveness, two traits that I must admire. Do you?
Actually, no I'm not reinforcing your point. You think that it's alright to deprive the movie industry of the $7 ticket price, but you still want to enjoy the fruit of their labors. It is irrelevant how much money someone does or doesn't have with regards to whether you owe them anything for their products. McDonald's is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Does that entitle you to a free sandwich? Hey, it's only $2.59, right? They don't really need that money.
Your argument lends absurdity to itself all too easily. Billion dollar companies employ tens of thousands of people, and hundreds of thousands more are connected in some way to those very same industries. When you steal, you aren't stealing just from some fat-cat movie mogul, you're stealing from everyone who has anything to do with movies. That includes the minimum-wage guys sweeping the floors as surely as it does the actor with a $30 million salary.
To further put perspective, which is something your argument obviously lacks, into this debate, suppose for just one tiny microsecond that a few million people felt the same way as you do about that $7 movie ticket. After all, if it's good for you, why not someone else? You're not special, so why not? Suddenly that $7, something that "no one would ever notice" is now $7 million. If nobody paid to see a movie, movies wouldn't get made.
Further, you put forth the argument that it's not really stealing because you wouldn't have paid to see the movie anyway. Well, perhaps you're not depriving them of income in that manner, but you are helping yourself to some very undeserved entertainment in the process. If I decided to employ you but then refused to pay you, do I "deserve" your labor? Absolutely not, but that's what you're arguing.
No, you make my point rather well, but in an inverse manner. Scale is something you are lacking in this debate. You think it's just fine and dandy to steal so long as it does no harm, yet you fail to realize the implications of what would happen if others thought like you. Like so many Slashdotter's, you think only of yourself and "the oppressed", and never about the actual consequences of your actions.
So what is your point? Since your seven dollars "means" more to you in your pocket than seven dollars in Bill Gates' pocket, does that mean you deserve your seven dollars more than Bill deserves his? You've constructed a wonderful system whereby you can say someone doesn't need the money they work for, and the "need" scale is based solely on how much you need. How lovely.
Of course, to a homeless person, or to a bankrupt person, seven dollars to them is much more important than seven dollars to you. Perhaps someone should take away your money and give it to a homeless person. After all, they "need" it more than you do! You have something, they have nothing...that's not fair, is it?
You sound a lot like the former head of a country that no longer exists. "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." That was voiced by Stalin, a great humanitarian if the world has ever known one, right? Hey, you're trumpeting his ideology, I'm just letting you know where you stand.
I recently had the same question you do, namely I've got a small site doing a limited amount of business but I still need to accept credit cards and use SSL. Verisign? No way in hell. It'd take me two months to make their fee back in profits. No thank you.
After searching around a bit I found a site called InstantSSL run by an outfit called Comodo. They offer a 1 year 128-bit cert for $49, and you can even try it out for 30 days free of charge. I did, and it works well enough that I haven't had any complaints.
I'll forgive your impertinence and answer the question at hand: the chipset is responsible for managing the power saving schema for the entire system. Why do you think APM/ACPI setup is in the BIOS? Because it's on the CPU? Nope, it's because it's CHIPSET dependent. The CPU depends upon an external entity to put it into power saving mode (aka the "HALT" instruction), just as it requires the chipset to wake it back up again afterwards.
Now, try being less rude the next time you're asking a question. Starting your inquiry with "just how the fuck..." is immature and shows a lack of intelligence on your part.
AMD processor temps have long been thrown around as proof that Intel processors are a "safer" buy. What one fails to realize, however, is that the P4 can and DOES generate MORE heat than an Athlon XP!
Go to Intel's whitepaper area and note the max heat dissipation in watts, then go get the same info on the Athlon. You'll find that Intel's flagship will dissipate ~70W-75W, and AMD's flagship will run about ~68W-70W.
The crucial difference between the two is Intel's thermal management techniques. Both AMD and Intel processors can make use of a HALT instruction provided by the chipset. This basically stops the CPU when nothing is going on, allowing it to dramatically cool down. The problem is, AMD chipsets (VIA, SiS, even AMD's own 760 series) don't properly implement the HALT instruction, whereas Intel REQUIRES it of their chipsets and board makers.
The results of this are pretty obvious. Intel chips cool down quicker and generally run cooler UNDER PARTIAL LOAD. But when both chips are stressed to the maximum, the P4 WILL get hotter than an Athlon.
Actually, the liners crack not because they were designed with cheapness in mind, but because they were designed to be as lightweight as possible. In many cases, NASA engineers have thrown costs to the wind to save a few precious pounds.
Like a Top Fuel dragster, most components are designed to be used only a few times and then replaced, and everything else is shaved down to the bare minimum tolerances for whatever stresses the part may encounter. Many of these components were never designed to have the lifetimes now being thrust upon them (no pun intended) and the fact that they're still even somewhat functional is a tribute to (a) the excellent safety margin NASA usually insists on and (b) the incredible expertise of the engineers who designed it in the first place.
Sure, they could design parts that last forever -- and the shuttle would weigh twice as much and not be able to carry ANY cargo. Until we make some bigger, better leaps in materials technologies that allow us to make super-strong, super-lightweight materials that'll last forever, space travel is going to remain a somewhat risky, enormously expensive, labor intensive evolution.
I would agree with you except for one thing: how many Premiere/Avid users do YOU know of that happen to be programmers? I'd be willing to bet that the percentage is under 1%. People who handled NLE systems are video people, artists if you will. Most of them couldn't code an MS-DOS batch file much less modify the code for Cinelerra. If you're thinking that perhaps some non-video oriented people (aka. regular old programmers) will get around to modifying Cinelerra then perhaps you're right, but I have to point out that regardless of how bad Premiere's SDK is, people have been coding to it for years and are familiar with its pitfalls and strengths. They are NOT going to run en masse to Cinelerra because the SDK is better! They'll run to it if CUSTOMERS run to it, and customers won't run to it until it can run all the Adobe plugins. That will be a long, long time coming -- if it ever comes.
As for Cinelerra being destined for HDTV, I'd have to agree that it has the capability to go there. The question is, however, will anyone want to take it there? Only major broadcasters are even PLAYING with HDTV these days, primarily because of the expense. "But this is free!" you say? True -- and that, believe it or not, is a huge impediment to acceptance in the industry. Right or wrong, most folks equate the price tag with capabilities, functionality, stability, and "prestige"...how the hell else could Avid still be in business when there are many cheaper alternatives that work just as well or better? A prior poster noted that many studios are buying $40K Avid's "for show" but doing real work on $5K software packages and standard PC's! I know, because I've been there. People don't want to hear whether or not you're using Premiere, Final Cut, or (God forbid) something nobody's ever heard of called Cinelerra. They ask one question "do you have an Avid"?
Yeah, it's stupid, but customers have HEARD of Avid and think it's the top 'o the line. If it weren't for that fact, I think Avid would be damn near out of business, because the rest of the pack has caught up with them big time, especially in cost vs. performance.
I wish nothing but the best for Cinelerra. I'd love to not have to pay what I currently pay for NLE software. But the truth of the matter is something that the Linux Community has ignored and continues to ignore: people don't always shop on price or technological superiority -- in fact they FREQUENTLY DON'T. Just because something is free or better does not mean it'll take over the world. If that were the case then we'd all be running Linux everywhere (or OS/2 about 10 years ago). Wishful thinking is great, but when someone tries to force that worldview onto the rest of us it does more harm than good.
And that's where you're thinking stops, eh? Blocky, jerky, postage-stamp-sized video is no longer a necessity on the web.
First off, you've got improved codecs that are making more out of less. Real, QT, and even WMV formats have come a long, long ways in the last 2-3 years. You can get some pretty good video out of them now for realistic (100kbit/sec average) bitrates. Sure, it's no threat to HDTV, but you gotta start somewhere.
Second, bandwidth is increasing dramatically. Back when Real first came on the scene 56K modems were all there were. Now DSL and cable modems are available in about 60% of urban areas and it's increasing fast. More bandwidth equals faster framerates, greater resolution, and better image definition.
Lastly, the audience is changing. Not everyone is trying to broadcast to home users across the web. A substantial portion of work these days comes from the corporate streaming video field. With gigabit and/or fast ethernet links pretty common in big companies it's become quite feasible to stream video to the desktop. This can be a boon to training that would otherwise require a dedicated A/V room and tape replication. It also allows the training material to be more up to date since it can be changed much more easily than physical media would allow.
So, think about more than what's two inches in front of your face before commenting next time. There are larger issues here, and I think the original poster had some good points.
Sorry to take issue with you, but I thought I'd point out a couple of things:
1. Premeire can export QT, AVI, and version 6.0 includes a Real exporter as well. So Premiere has the ground pretty darn well covered when it comes to export formats.
2. Media Cleaner has its place but if you've got export capabilities from your editing app you don't NEED Media Cleaner. Why in the world would you want to spend extra money on something like MC if you could have those same features built into your editing app for free? Of course, I do MPEG-2 exporting from Premiere via CinemaCraft, but it sure is handy to be able to output any format you could possibly think of if you're handing off clips to someone else.
I think he was pointing out not that you can't edit these formats, but that outputting them in said formats is apparently impossible. You're right, we edit in different formats, but if you can't output what you need (QT, Real, and WMV being THE dominant ones right now), then the application is quite limited with respect to web publishing.
It'd be okay for doing your own video work, though, so long as you didn't need to exchange media with anyone else in the world (since nearly everyone uses AVI's or QT's for exchanging media).
I doubt it. Most soccer moms I know break the speed limit. Give 'em a few speeding tickets and you'll see them change their tunes real quick.
You must live far, far away from me then. Here in Atlanta the soccer moms are the idiots in the left lane doing 55MPH while everyone else swerves around them doing 75MPH.
You think I'm kidding? It would happen. It has happened before.
When?
Reference such idiotic things as the Million Mom March and their stupid, emotionally-driven responses to any issue that threaten to compromise the cradle-to-grave "safety" offered by our Imperial Federal Government and you'll see EXACTLY what I mean.
I would agree with you if I thought for one minute that the spineless, insipid American public would stage some sort of protest or outrage against the vigorous enforcement and thus force the laws to change. Unfortunately, I lost faith in the public's ability to be sensible a long time ago, and my admiration for the forces of idiocy grow every day as they find new and interesting ways to sidestep logic and get "the public" to accept their views.
...and whoever endorsed the higher speed limits would be denounced by their opponents as caving into the speed demons, the road ragers, and whoever else they can demonize, all while massive throngs of soccer moms chant that speeds must be kept where they are "for the children".
You think I'm kidding? It would happen. It has happened before. No politician can fight the soccer moms, it seems. They always get their way, because anything they're for is "for the children", and no pol in his/her right mind would DARE do anything that's (by contraposition) "against" the children.
Spineless herds, all of them.
Go to the National Motorists Association website (http://www.motorists.org/) and you'll find volumes of data that shows increasing speeds does not contribute to an increase in traffic fatalities or accidents.
Conversely, you can also find data that shows an increased number of accidents per vehicle mile driven when speed limits are set too low. Drivers fall asleep on long routes when they could've already been there if speeds were higher. Further, driving at a speed SLOWER than what you're comfortable at has about the same effects as driving at a speed FASTER than what you're comfortable at, namely an increase in accidents.
Unfortunately the massive stupidity of the American public has bought the safety lobby's argument hook, line, and sinker. "Speed Kills" was chanted for so long that people no longer think to even question it -- or no longer think at all so it seems sometimes.
It doesn't matter if they're enforced or not, the point is that they're enforcable if and when the authorities say so. In many ways it's worse than if they did vigorously enforce it, because "letting it slide" allows people to get complacent about it and carry on with the activity. That won't stop the judge from throwing the book at you when you're caught.
Here in Georgia they have some ridiculous laws on the books. One of them bans oral sex as "an unnatural act against God", believe it or not. Having been on the receiving end of numerous such favors from my girlfriend, I could go to jail (and so could she) for that. Sure, they don't enforce it, but they could.
How about this? Suppose I had a right to kill you, anytime, anywhere, for no reason at all and without fear of prosecution, but I just never decided to do so, whilst you were legally barred from stopping me from doing so or taking steps to defend yourself. Would you feel safe? Didn't think so.
No, I could NOT go to jail for lending him the car unless I had prior knowledge that the vehicle would be used in the commission of a crime. If I did, then I'd be an "accessory" to the crime, as I stated in my post. However, if I had no prior knowledge then I am (and should be) free of any illegality concerns.
As for "making them pay the damn fine", good luck there. The cops would come after the car owner and have the law on their side to prosecute. The car owner, however, has no legal means to prosecute the DRIVER of the loaner vehicle whatsoever outside of civil court, the costs of which would be prohibitive unless you're just trying to prove a very expensive point. Sorry, no dice there.
Try reading up on the laws you're commenting on before making statements like the above. It makes the debate more interesting.
Why should Congress care what the speed limits are set to? Most don't even drive themselves (exception: Kennedy at Chappaquiddick, but I digress) and those that still do can easily get tickets "fixed", unlike the average you and me.
Point is, the folks who make and enforce the laws are apparently not bound by them!!! When was the last time you saw a COP pulled over for speeding (I'll hazard a guess: NEVER), but they pass me all the time with no lights, no siren. I've followed them before, and they're NOT on their way to a silent alarm, they're just trying to get wherever it is they're going -- albeit just a bit faster than I'M allowed to.
No, the lawmakers and enforcers have abandoned us, largely because they now consider themselves above the law. Only a public revolt would change things, and the American public has about as much revolt instinct as a lapdog. They just want their WWF Wrestling and Springer re-runs.