> They find it so expensive because shuttles expend $400M of non-recoverable fuel, components and morons per flight.
Nitpick: If shuttle launches actually expended morons at NASA (assuming the morons were either unrecoverable or NASA decided not to recover them), then shuttle launches would be a lot cheaper by now.
Precisely NASA's problem. The damn thing was obsolete by the time it was built.
If I were the private owner of a space shuttle, I'd sell it for $5B to NASA.
I'd then use $1B to fire off 10 Discovery-class missions for the hell of it, and the remaining $4B in cash to develop a reusable launch vehicle that would show the world just how obsolete the space shuttle was. Result -- world has $1000/lb (or lower) cost of lifting things to orbit. Space hotels in 10 years. Lunar or Martian colonies in 20. And exciting jobs for the talented folks trapped in NASA.
Unfortunately, that's not on the table. What's on the table is NASA finding a sux0r to buy a $5B white elephant, and NASA spending the resulting $5B on shuttle launches to ISS. Result -- world has the same $10000/lb (or higher) cost of lifting things to orbit as it always did. But if it doesn't fall from the sky in 10 years, we have ISS, a $100B white elephant, to look at. And a bunch of frustrated, talented geeks, still trapped like flies in NASA's bureaucratic amber.
> Unknown: Greetings to planet Earth. We come in peace from a planet light years away from your Earth. We
have come to bring peace to all, cures to all your diseases, and share all our advanced technology with you. >
Houston: Unknown craft, you are clear to land. Welcome to earth! >
Ellison: Fuck that, I'm a billionaire!! I'm landing first!! >
Houston: Ellison, watch your flight path! NOOOO!!! KABOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!
Radio Transmission received years later: We got rid of Larry Ellison for you, what more did you want, unicorns?
> The Army (or any military orginization) may not be for everybody, but I thought it'd be something completly
different than what I'm doing now (I'm going to be an MP... don't think you can get much different than that
from a Network Administator:).
Funny, everything I've read about network administration says you'll feel right at home. The hard part will be going back to network administration after being an MP. You'll miss the rifle.
> First of all, I really hope the slashdot crowd refrains from silly flames and other immature letters, like some
unfortunately have resorted to in the past.
I also hope that Osama Bin Laden will appear on national TV with a naked Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, renouncing Islam and proclaiming Christ's love, while munching on a bag of pork rinds.
> The so called greenies are trying to preseve the remaining planet for future generations. Unfortunately there is
no profit in that. As a result they are not as rich are the business owners and shareholders. As a result the
natural resources of the world keep spiraling down. Nothing can be done about it except maybe violence.
Thanks for perpetuating the stereotype about "greenies". Now it's my turn.
Why not "better engineering" as a preferable choice than violence.
I'd like to solve the "a bluefin tuna is worth $0 in the sea, and $1000 dead" problem wuth R&D to promote developments in aquaculture and genetic engineering to alter bluefin tuna (and/or farming vats) to the point that it costs less to farm them in vats than to harvest them out of the sea.
But as long as you continue to live down to the greenie stereotype, I suspect you'd find that alternative even more repugnant than violence.
Too bad. Millions of starving humans could have used your help.
(Yeah, it was in the Greetz. The reason my brain boggled on it was 'cuz it was done with FutureWriter. Argh, it's been way too long. At least I didn't get eaten by a mutant lima bean.)
Anyone remember what Future Crew's C-64 demos were?
I remember a C-64 demo called "Edge of Insanity", which displayed (amidst a funky backbeat) a hysterical tale of blood, gore, and doom that went on for page after page after page.
Anyone remember the original authors of this thing?
I'm damned if I can confirm it, but I vaguely remember a reference to Future Crew. But it was a hell of a long time ago, I no longer have the disk, and I could be confusing it with some other demo I enjoyed about the same time. But I do remember Future Crew from way the hell back. Far fucking out to see them still kicking ass.
> "This will only take a moment. Take this plastic protector and slip it over the probe in the middle of that chair over
there. Then just have a seat."
Aha! We've found the goatse.cx guy's new business venture! He's at COMDEX!
> Now if only there was a way to get Bush and Friends out of Afghanistan. Or at least drop inflatable ready-made schools and hospitals instead of bombs;)
Are you nuts? You think the Taliban are pissed with us now, wait'll you see how pissed off they get when their women learn to read.
> When was the last time anyone went bezerk or committed mass murder at a computer show?
I don't know about mass murder, but I've seem some pretty insane things spewed forth from the mouths of marketroids during just about every trade show I've attended. *g*
> Honestly, I don't see the banning of non-Vendor bags as a "security" measure. I see it as a "protect-the-people-who-are-here-profit" measure.
No, no, you see, it's got nothing to do with that.
You see, I just found out that COMDEX officials have a tape of Osama Bin Laden promising on Mohammed's grave that his terrorists will not slip their bombs into vendor-supplied bags, because Nostradamus (who co-wrote the Koran) said, in an apocryphal note, that only non-vendor-supplied bags were permissible for jihad warriors. Osama said it. COMDEX believes it. That makes it true!
Or, OK, it's a way to make sure that you buy your food at the overpriced concession stands, and that the vendors who paid $10000 and up for the right to have their names put on bags, have a monopoly on the advertising space they've purchased between your ass and your knee.
> Since it is an "experimental" car, Toyota pays for all service for 4 years. The batteries have a 10 year warranty. We have
had no problems with it yet, except for driving over debris from an accident, slashing a rear tire.
Now that is interesting. The high cost of battery replacement is the potential bug that makes hybrids a problem. (And the performance of the batteries in winter in cold climates.)
I've test-driven a Prius, and it rocks. The high-tech display is a great example of user interface design -- by giving the user continual feedback on mileage, users tend to adjust their driving habits to maximize the MPG readout -- a classic example of a UI that lends itself to a desired outcome, namely fuel-efficient driving habits that apply to any sort of vehicle.
> The other big expense will be replacing the batteries when they wear out. They are designed to last about half the life
of the car and need to be replaced at about 80,000 miles. That should run about $5000.
Hybrid:
$5000 worth of batteries every 80000 miles
Conventional:
$5000 worth of gas at $1.60/gallon = 3125 gallons.
3125 gallons at a pretty pathetic 20 mpg = 62500 miles.
So I pay $5000 in batteries every 80000 miles, assuming the hybrid uses no gas (!). Or I pay $5000 in gasoline costs every 60000 miles by going conventional.
I think hybrids are cool, but could someone explain to me where the huge cost savings is, again?
(Ah, I see, you sell the hybrid at 79,000 miles, and you buy a new one every few years. Yeah, that's way more eco-friendly than regular maintenance and keeping your old beater running for 10-12 years;-)
> we wouldn't want to get terrorised on christmas. so why does donald rumsfeld insist that the bombing will not stop for the muslim holy days of 'ramadan'?
Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about the "Yom Kippur War".
Pot, kettle, event horizon.
Re:Actually...
on
Globalization
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
> it's our love and support of Israel and the Jews which is the cornerstone of the hatred against us
in the Muslim world (and other places)
Well-put. It has nothing to do with technology, it has to do with our (poorly-executed) attempt to make good in 1948 for what we stood by and allowed to happen during WW2.
> Drop Israel, and everything will be fine. Or will it?
I'm glad you said "Or will it?" Because that's tantamount to dropping the one country in the middle east that's actively capitalist, has a burgeoning high-tech industry, and watching a second genocide.
The point now is that after 50 years, we're inextricably linked to them - it's no longer old-sk00l or neo-Nazis, it's also the fundie Muslims claiming that Jews (whether in America or Israel) control the world's money supply, and using that as the pretext for continuous bloodshed.
America is a target and will remain one, whether or not we withdraw support for Israel.
But to the peaceniks who really do think that dropping support for Israel will end the violence in the Middle East, I'd like you to think very carefully about how hard, and with what weapons, the Israelis will strike back, should they be faced with certain annihilation?
Bonus points for working out how many years it'll be before any survivors feel the need to build streetlights within 20 miles of the glassy plains around what was once Mecca?
> I can't count the number of times I've tried doing some file management in DOS (usually
while Windows was crapped out) and thought "man this would be so much easier in
Windows".
Funny, though, with Windows crapped out, you were still able to do it.
I can think of three or four times when I saved myself (or a friend) from a complete Windows reinstall because I had the ability to boot to DOS first.
Typical case - the registry gets corrupted, Win9x's GUI says "Hey, my registry is corrupt! Cannot continue!" and either hangs or gives me an icon I can click to reboot. So I pop into DOS, find the C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP\RB00n.CAB registry backup files, restore them from the command line, tweak some ATTRIButes, and voila, one restored registry, ready to go.
Or because my Win9x partitions always boot to DOS without invoking the GUI (Yeah, I still type "Win"), I can yank a hard drive out of one box and shove it into another box (ah, the joy of removable drive racks!), boot to DOS, and transfer half a gig of MP3z via sneakernet without worrying about Windoze' GUI fux0ring my configuration because it "detected" new hardware.
And finally, as the other/.er has already pointed out, when I delete a file, I want it the fuck gone. "rm foo" != "mv foo/recycled". Particularly annoying if you're deleting files because you need the diskspace. Kinda defeats the fucking purpose, no?
(Or in Windows, until you learn to hold down the Shift key while deleting a file, deleting a file is a three-step process - "Delete file" -> "Delete it from recyclebin" -> "YES, I REALLY REALLY WANT IT GONE".)
> I haven't seen any mini CD-R media laying around but I would imagine that it costs more than regular sized
CD-R media. At this point, you'd be better off buying a portable CD burner and getting a separate MP3 player.
Neat concept though.
I've seen mini-CDR media at Fry's Electronics. It's not fantastic stuff, but it is available.
But for $400, as cool as the small form factor is, I really don't need it to burn CD-Rs for me. For $400, I'll buy a CD-RW and use the money left over for a full-size (650M/disc) player-only portable unit.
Big question left unanswered in the review: Do you rip/encode/burn the MP3s with some grotty proprietary DRM-hobbled application that ships with the device, or do you actually just shovel MP3s onto it like you would a regular CD-R?
> If you read the article, you'll see this only applies to telecommunications and electronic devices. No mention
made about software or Internet technology. So no worries, folks, I'm sure we'll still have plenty of silly
"one-click" patents to talk about here on/.
USPTO: Look, we need 500 new engineers for the USPTO, and we need 'em now.
Grunt:Why?
USPTO:Because we have so many frivolous patent applications coming in for crap like clicking on web sites and ways to keep cats amused that our current examiners can barely keep up with the load. You got any idea how tired a guy's arm gets slamming down that damn rubber stamp for eight hours a day, five days a week, 52 weeks a year?
Grunt:Ah, I get it. You want a different process for the types of companies that might have actual innovations, but what you really want to do is make sure idiot dot-coms with obvious applications of prior art also have a fair shake at approval!
> As I said elsewhere [kuro5hin.org], the tech companies are opposed to this, and
the "content" companies support it. It's BSA vs MPAA and RIAA.
Then perhaps we've already won.
Content companies carry clout because they 0wned Clinton, and politicians like to be seen with movie stars and other celebs as part of their campaign strategies.
But if you compare the economic impact (both in jobs and and in taxes remitted to the government) from the tech industry with the revenues from the movie industry, you'll realize that the movie and record studios are pretty small fuckin' potatoes.
Perhaps the money-buys-political-support tradition will work in our favor this time, and crush Rosen and Valenti like the squabbling little insects they are.
> What would they do about
the billions of lines of "uncertified" code already out there? Grandfather it? How does anyone know the
difference between that code and new, uncertified code?
I can already hear the drool from the lips of Rational/Clearcase sales reps from a thousand miles away.
> Actually, the thing that's most likely to impress them is "self regulation." If the open source community produces it's own, open source, rights management software, which is
absurd on the face of it but I'll get back to that, we can say "see, no need for legislation, we're being responsible and doing it ourselves, Senator."
/etc/motd: This system uses an open-source DRM technology to ensure compliance with SSSCA. By reading this, you agree not to reproduce copyrighted content in violation of the licenceholder's wishes."
> As soon as logical arguments start being made, their whole deal falls apart. They're waging a legislative war with nonsense and half-truths and we should
return in kind.
The truth be told, your solution isn't funny, it's viable. Politicians tend not to think logically - the wrapping of illogic in rhetoric is their bread and butter. I've long-suspected that they do so, on such a constant basis, that their ability to think is curtailed.
I suspect that just as they expect our thought processes to stop (who, after all, could oppose a PATRIOT Act?) when they see a name, their thought processes stop when they see a name that doesn't sound friendly to them.
For instance, when a conservative sees "Collective", "People's", or "United" in a group's name, they switch off and think "leftist." No doubt there are similar buzzwords that liberals see in "conservative" groups ("Institute" comes to mind.)
Just look at the names of the organizations who are winning the cultural war - "$INDUSTRY Association of $GEOGRAPHICAL_REGION".
Now look at our names: "User Group", "User's", "Frontier", "Free". Are these the kinds of names that resonate with politicians? Hardly.
Assuming the names hasn't already been co-opted by the DMA, RIAA/MPAA or other enemy groups, why not rename "our" groups into kitschy, politician-friendly names like "Privacy Foundation of America", or "Californians for Intellectual Property Rights", "Association of Software Engineers for Self-Regulation", "Digital Rights Political Action Committee".
It might make all the difference. For the wrong reason, but as long as it makes a difference, it's worth a try.
Slashdot Mirror
Nitpick: If shuttle launches actually expended morons at NASA (assuming the morons were either unrecoverable or NASA decided not to recover them), then shuttle launches would be a lot cheaper by now.
Precisely NASA's problem. The damn thing was obsolete by the time it was built.
If I were the private owner of a space shuttle, I'd sell it for $5B to NASA.
I'd then use $1B to fire off 10 Discovery-class missions for the hell of it, and the remaining $4B in cash to develop a reusable launch vehicle that would show the world just how obsolete the space shuttle was. Result -- world has $1000/lb (or lower) cost of lifting things to orbit. Space hotels in 10 years. Lunar or Martian colonies in 20. And exciting jobs for the talented folks trapped in NASA.
Unfortunately, that's not on the table. What's on the table is NASA finding a sux0r to buy a $5B white elephant, and NASA spending the resulting $5B on shuttle launches to ISS. Result -- world has the same $10000/lb (or higher) cost of lifting things to orbit as it always did. But if it doesn't fall from the sky in 10 years, we have ISS, a $100B white elephant, to look at. And a bunch of frustrated, talented geeks, still trapped like flies in NASA's bureaucratic amber.
> Houston: Unknown craft, you are clear to land. Welcome to earth!
> Ellison: Fuck that, I'm a billionaire!! I'm landing first!!
> Houston: Ellison, watch your flight path! NOOOO!!! KABOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!
Radio Transmission received years later: We got rid of Larry Ellison for you, what more did you want, unicorns?
Funny, everything I've read about network administration says you'll feel right at home. The hard part will be going back to network administration after being an MP. You'll miss the rifle.
I also hope that Osama Bin Laden will appear on national TV with a naked Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, renouncing Islam and proclaiming Christ's love, while munching on a bag of pork rinds.
Hey, we can dream.
As opposed to their more sedate hoods, which are attached to their jackets at all times?
Thanks for perpetuating the stereotype about "greenies". Now it's my turn.
Why not "better engineering" as a preferable choice than violence.
I'd like to solve the "a bluefin tuna is worth $0 in the sea, and $1000 dead" problem wuth R&D to promote developments in aquaculture and genetic engineering to alter bluefin tuna (and/or farming vats) to the point that it costs less to farm them in vats than to harvest them out of the sea.
But as long as you continue to live down to the greenie stereotype, I suspect you'd find that alternative even more repugnant than violence.
Too bad. Millions of starving humans could have used your help.
(Yeah, it was in the Greetz. The reason my brain boggled on it was 'cuz it was done with FutureWriter. Argh, it's been way too long. At least I didn't get eaten by a mutant lima bean.)
I remember a C-64 demo called "Edge of Insanity", which displayed (amidst a funky backbeat) a hysterical tale of blood, gore, and doom that went on for page after page after page.
Anyone remember the original authors of this thing?
I'm damned if I can confirm it, but I vaguely remember a reference to Future Crew. But it was a hell of a long time ago, I no longer have the disk, and I could be confusing it with some other demo I enjoyed about the same time. But I do remember Future Crew from way the hell back. Far fucking out to see them still kicking ass.
Aha! We've found the goatse.cx guy's new business venture! He's at COMDEX!
Are you nuts? You think the Taliban are pissed with us now, wait'll you see how pissed off they get when their women learn to read.
I don't know about mass murder, but I've seem some pretty insane things spewed forth from the mouths of marketroids during just about every trade show I've attended. *g*
Hey, it's COMDEX Vegas. Always did have more strippers than techies...
No, no, you see, it's got nothing to do with that.
You see, I just found out that COMDEX officials have a tape of Osama Bin Laden promising on Mohammed's grave that his terrorists will not slip their bombs into vendor-supplied bags, because Nostradamus (who co-wrote the Koran) said, in an apocryphal note, that only non-vendor-supplied bags were permissible for jihad warriors. Osama said it. COMDEX believes it. That makes it true!
Or, OK, it's a way to make sure that you buy your food at the overpriced concession stands, and that the vendors who paid $10000 and up for the right to have their names put on bags, have a monopoly on the advertising space they've purchased between your ass and your knee.
Now that is interesting. The high cost of battery replacement is the potential bug that makes hybrids a problem. (And the performance of the batteries in winter in cold climates.)
I've test-driven a Prius, and it rocks. The high-tech display is a great example of user interface design -- by giving the user continual feedback on mileage, users tend to adjust their driving habits to maximize the MPG readout -- a classic example of a UI that lends itself to a desired outcome, namely fuel-efficient driving habits that apply to any sort of vehicle.
Hybrid:
Conventional:
So I pay $5000 in batteries every 80000 miles, assuming the hybrid uses no gas (!). Or I pay $5000 in gasoline costs every 60000 miles by going conventional.
I think hybrids are cool, but could someone explain to me where the huge cost savings is, again?
(Ah, I see, you sell the hybrid at 79,000 miles, and you buy a new one every few years. Yeah, that's way more eco-friendly than regular maintenance and keeping your old beater running for 10-12 years ;-)
You forgot the important step. "...and report the number in the next-larger unit of time measurement."
Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about the "Yom Kippur War".
Pot, kettle, event horizon.
Well-put. It has nothing to do with technology, it has to do with our (poorly-executed) attempt to make good in 1948 for what we stood by and allowed to happen during WW2.
> Drop Israel, and everything will be fine. Or will it?
I'm glad you said "Or will it?" Because that's tantamount to dropping the one country in the middle east that's actively capitalist, has a burgeoning high-tech industry, and watching a second genocide.
The point now is that after 50 years, we're inextricably linked to them - it's no longer old-sk00l or neo-Nazis, it's also the fundie Muslims claiming that Jews (whether in America or Israel) control the world's money supply, and using that as the pretext for continuous bloodshed.
America is a target and will remain one, whether or not we withdraw support for Israel.
But to the peaceniks who really do think that dropping support for Israel will end the violence in the Middle East, I'd like you to think very carefully about how hard, and with what weapons, the Israelis will strike back, should they be faced with certain annihilation?
Bonus points for working out how many years it'll be before any survivors feel the need to build streetlights within 20 miles of the glassy plains around what was once Mecca?
Funny, though, with Windows crapped out, you were still able to do it.
I can think of three or four times when I saved myself (or a friend) from a complete Windows reinstall because I had the ability to boot to DOS first.
Typical case - the registry gets corrupted, Win9x's GUI says "Hey, my registry is corrupt! Cannot continue!" and either hangs or gives me an icon I can click to reboot. So I pop into DOS, find the C:\WINDOWS\SYSBCKUP\RB00n.CAB registry backup files, restore them from the command line, tweak some ATTRIButes, and voila, one restored registry, ready to go.
Or because my Win9x partitions always boot to DOS without invoking the GUI (Yeah, I still type "Win"), I can yank a hard drive out of one box and shove it into another box (ah, the joy of removable drive racks!), boot to DOS, and transfer half a gig of MP3z via sneakernet without worrying about Windoze' GUI fux0ring my configuration because it "detected" new hardware.
And finally, as the other /.er has already pointed out, when I delete a file, I want it the fuck gone. "rm foo" != "mv foo /recycled". Particularly annoying if you're deleting files because you need the diskspace. Kinda defeats the fucking purpose, no?
(Or in Windows, until you learn to hold down the Shift key while deleting a file, deleting a file is a three-step process - "Delete file" -> "Delete it from recyclebin" -> "YES, I REALLY REALLY WANT IT GONE".)
GUIs. Ugh.
I've seen mini-CDR media at Fry's Electronics. It's not fantastic stuff, but it is available.
But for $400, as cool as the small form factor is, I really don't need it to burn CD-Rs for me. For $400, I'll buy a CD-RW and use the money left over for a full-size (650M/disc) player-only portable unit.
Big question left unanswered in the review: Do you rip/encode/burn the MP3s with some grotty proprietary DRM-hobbled application that ships with the device, or do you actually just shovel MP3s onto it like you would a regular CD-R?
USPTO: Look, we need 500 new engineers for the USPTO, and we need 'em now.
Grunt:Why?
USPTO:Because we have so many frivolous patent applications coming in for crap like clicking on web sites and ways to keep cats amused that our current examiners can barely keep up with the load. You got any idea how tired a guy's arm gets slamming down that damn rubber stamp for eight hours a day, five days a week, 52 weeks a year?
Grunt:Ah, I get it. You want a different process for the types of companies that might have actual innovations, but what you really want to do is make sure idiot dot-coms with obvious applications of prior art also have a fair shake at approval!
USPTO:For great justice, approve every patent!
Then perhaps we've already won.
Content companies carry clout because they 0wned Clinton, and politicians like to be seen with movie stars and other celebs as part of their campaign strategies.
But if you compare the economic impact (both in jobs and and in taxes remitted to the government) from the tech industry with the revenues from the movie industry, you'll realize that the movie and record studios are pretty small fuckin' potatoes.
Perhaps the money-buys-political-support tradition will work in our favor this time, and crush Rosen and Valenti like the squabbling little insects they are.
I can already hear the drool from the lips of Rational/Clearcase sales reps from a thousand miles away.
> As soon as logical arguments start being made, their whole deal falls apart. They're waging a legislative war with nonsense and half-truths and we should return in kind.
The truth be told, your solution isn't funny, it's viable. Politicians tend not to think logically - the wrapping of illogic in rhetoric is their bread and butter. I've long-suspected that they do so, on such a constant basis, that their ability to think is curtailed.
I suspect that just as they expect our thought processes to stop (who, after all, could oppose a PATRIOT Act?) when they see a name, their thought processes stop when they see a name that doesn't sound friendly to them.
For instance, when a conservative sees "Collective", "People's", or "United" in a group's name, they switch off and think "leftist." No doubt there are similar buzzwords that liberals see in "conservative" groups ("Institute" comes to mind.)
Just look at the names of the organizations who are winning the cultural war - "$INDUSTRY Association of $GEOGRAPHICAL_REGION".
Now look at our names: "User Group", "User's", "Frontier", "Free". Are these the kinds of names that resonate with politicians? Hardly.
Assuming the names hasn't already been co-opted by the DMA, RIAA/MPAA or other enemy groups, why not rename "our" groups into kitschy, politician-friendly names like "Privacy Foundation of America", or "Californians for Intellectual Property Rights", "Association of Software Engineers for Self-Regulation", "Digital Rights Political Action Committee".
It might make all the difference. For the wrong reason, but as long as it makes a difference, it's worth a try.