That particular piece is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, which is/was the gateway for LEGAL immigrants to come to this country.
I'll agree that in many respects the INS has become too self-serving; BUT there are also good reasons for denying massive amounts of illegal immigrants access to this country without vetting them first. If you don't believe me, go live in Los Angeles for a year or two.
Or ask any of the residents of Austin, MN - and many other towns/cities - just how "beneficial" illegal immigration has been for them. Rising crime rates, foolish restrictions on the local police as to who they can prosecute and who they cannot, overwhelming intrusion into criminal matters by social welfare agencies, etc, etc....
Sorry, but I'm one of those who believes in earning one's place in a new society, not just getting it by politically correct fiat. I daresay most legal immigrants agree - all the ones I've ever met do. Yeah, it's easier to make a living here than it is in Mexico or many other countries - but that doesn't mean that you can come here and shirk the responsibilities that come with citizenship, nor that anyone has a right to be a parasite*, no more than anywhere else.
Sigh.
SB * I'm not saying that all illegal immigrants are parasites, but altogether too many of them are. I know people and have friends from both worlds, and the ones who come here to MAKE a life are disgusted by the many more who come here to suck off of the public teat.
Commodity exchange is barter and cannot be reasonably taxed except thru a large and often unacceptable degree of control over your populace.
Money, especially with a government controlled monopoly on it's production, can be easily controlled, taxed, hoarded, and manipulated.
Anyone who thinks that money - whether paper or electronic - will continue to be an uncorruptible substitute for barter has not been paying attention to the advances and use of technology.
Paper money: The Feds are *barely* keeping ahead of the printing technology. The increasing number of counterfeiting cases the FBI prosecutes every year would, in fact, argue that they aren't.
Electronic money: The numbers of cases of hacked credit card databases and the increasing level of social engineering argues that this simply isn't' going to work, either.
Then again, if we go back to a rare metal exchange, and change our currency to reflect that, even with technology to verify that currency, someone will find a way around it.
If it can be designed and built, it can be reverse engineered and hacked. This extends almost as easily to physical systems as it does to electronic ones.
No, I don't know what the answer is. But I'm pretty sure that those in charge are not on the right track to it either.
My current number was transferred from the maintenance person number for a 275 unit assisted living apartment complex. Even after 18 months (time since the old number was disconnected - was transferred to me a few months after that) I still get calls. Sometimes angry ones (usually the ones involving some catastrophic building failure).
Caller: We have no heat! Get this fixed or by God I'll call the management and get your sorry ass fired!
Me: Sorry sir, but all our maintenance has been outsourced to Mexico.
Caller: !($#*%#$)*! *click*
Me: *chuckles* and grabs another beer. --
Then there are these kinds (abbreviated for posting):
Caller: *quavery elderly voice* My toilet won't flush, can you come over and fix it?
Me: Well, when you press the lever, what happens?
Caller: Nothing, and the lever is really loose. It didn't used to be that way.
Me: Ok. Remove the top of the toilet tank and look inside. You should see a chain hanging from the arm that is attached to the flush lever, and it should be attached to a rubber thingy on the bottom of the toilet.
Caller: Ok, let me get my gloves... well, the chain is laying on the bottom of the toilet. That isn't right, is it?
Me: No, it isn't. Take the chain and attach the end of it to one of the holes in that plastic arm that is part of the flush lever.
Caller: It works! Young man, you are a saint! I'll remember you in my prayers! [ hey, I figure I need all the help I can get:) ]
Me: No problem Ma'am, we live to serve [ puts down the phone, chuckling and wondering where to send the bill ]
Toilet Tech Support. lol. I've worked building maintenance in a number of apartment buildings I've lived in (easy way to get cheap/free rent if you know what you're doing) and I figure there are three categories of calls:
1) Fix it now or I'll callmanager/sue/come over with a gun. Solution: *click* [ this type will often hover over you while you fix things, making useless suggestions and asking repeatedly "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" - "Yessir, I did a home study course in electrical repair. Trust me."
2) The polite and friendly ones. Can often be taught. With these you can often rely on getting Christmas cards with pictures of people you don't even know.
3) The totally helpless ones - yet mostly kind - who will often feed you lavishly after you perform a simple two minute fix (or half a day's work). My personal favorites. (Mmmm...homemade roast and pie, and I didn't have to cook!):)
--
Heh. I've spoken to the management of the complex several times, and they swear they've notified all the residents of the new numbers. The last time I did that, two weeks later we had a town-wide power outage, and I had more than twenty calls in thirty minutes. I wasn't home at the time and it filled my answering machine.
I still can't believe some of the creative profanity I heard on a couple of those calls. Guess experience shows:)
A couple weeks ago I had one of the maintenance people who works there come into where I work, and after I found out who he was, I mentioned the situation. He just grinned, rolled his eyes, and informed me that the management had never even bothered to mass-update the numbers, they just did it piecemeal. He also gave me the complex manager's home phone #:-D I'm still debating on the best way to use that info...
Thanks for the link. Google had too much to search thru.
Interesting, had never heard that, although I'd wondered. Sounds like their major error was that at the time, nobody knew where the start of the Mississippi was (Lake Itasca is actually considerably further south, somewhat further south even from I was living:)
(I've been there by the way, it's a beautiful area and if you're ever in MN again make sure to visit it)
Dunno if I'd call that a sextant, it's more like an astronomical protractor:0... oh, wait:D
Yeah, and requiring custom built furniture:) which I suspect is one of the reasons why such homes aren't in the mainstream.
You're right tho, they are beautiful. Expensive as hell per sqft, but beautiful. Expansion/modification is just a stone cold bitch, at least if you wish to preserve the aesthetics.
A lot of the inherent problems wrt to heat via air distribution have been solved in some more modern designs, but his designs are damned hard to alter to produce truly energy-efficient homes, mostly because you can't easily incorporate passive energy systems *. That's too bad, because in terms of structural material vs. interior volume, BMF's designs are extremely efficient. One time costs...:)
Noise can be dealt with with more modern materials. But - cost, cost...
Sigh.:)
* If one was willing to incorporate a central structure built around the Russian masonry-style woodburners, with the attendant thermal mass, a lot of those problems are averted. But everyone out there wants the incredibly inefficient - and hideable - forced air systems. Whatever:D Then there's the shell insulation, where mass really comes into play. Again, whatever. I much prefer the cordwood or strawbale structures I've seen, and mass definitely helps wrt to high wind conditions, as does the geometry (one can build either as vertical cylinders with a lot more aerodynamics than a box built out of sticks:)
Cheers, SB
Re:Sounds perfect for Florida...
on
Space-Age Houses
·
· Score: 1
While this is true, you need to keep in mind that shaping the windows as part of a sphere makes them far stronger than those on a regular house. In addition, the aerodynamic shape allows airflow to pass over the structure instead of bearing the full brunt of the force.
Which is a good example of why a consistent national building code is just a plain bad idea... requirements differ in various areas, yet the flat box stick builders still dominate the codes. A pox on them. Homes should be built to reflect and integrate with their local environments.
Up where I used to live (and still to some extent where I do live) it's not hurricanes we need to withstand, but intensely cold temperatures. But most of the building code still advises the same styles of structures for both, with minor variations. Boxy stick building for the most extent.
There are some variances, but not enough. A national building code as a foundation for basic construction is just plain a bad idea in the face of the many modern techniques and modern variations on old ideas that are being explored right now. But it's become canon, mostly thru insurance companies wanting consistent code they can write their tables on and contractors who want to simplify hiring/training requirements.
Things are changing, I'll grant that. But the whole building code structure needs a severe overhaul.
Probably... or else everyone else is still struggling with it.:)
Thanks, your instructions worked here while the original ones didn't. Lots of warning during compilation, but I have some weird lib versions on the box I compiled it on, gotta take it down for a few days to update libs (Gentoo is nice but time consuming:) and I run some software that requires custom beta libs, so that might have something to do with...
and now that I've blown the better part of two hours playing with this, it'll probably get shelved in favor of the priority items on my 2-do list:(
Sigh.
I'm not noticing any contrast problems with the 'LED' display; but I am seeing some weird window size problems. (might be due to fluxbox, dunno? but my X and X lib versions are somewhat old on that box)
Neat stuff, tho! I wonder if this will ever be integrated with a LM sim using Orbiter? Or has it already? I can't keep up with the massive amounts of 3rdMods to Orbiter as it is.
What dist are you running there?
If I find time tomorrow I'm going to do a totally clean install on another box.
IIRC correctly during the Apollo 11 landing they actually passed the "no-abort" point at about 60 seconds of fuel, when they were simply too low for a successful ascent stage abort.
OI isn't really that critical timewise unless you have to hit *precisely* the orbit you want; a few seconds either way (and there often was during the lunar missions even with the computer running things) meant merely that your orbit would have a few miles or tens of miles discrepancy in perigee/apogee, correctable with a short burn.
The Saturn rockets were pretty reliable wrt to launch windows, but as I recall with the Atlas and Redstone they often couldn't predict exactly how long the rocket would fire sometimes not even to tens of seconds; but they still achieved the trajectories they wanted. So it couldn't have been *that* critical.
De-orbiting to splashdown, now, that's a different matter, a few seconds difference in retrofire and you could under or overshoot your splashdown target by tens of miles.:) But then that's because after the retros were jettisoned they had little maneuverability, which wasn't true with LM deorbit.
Given that the Polynesians didn't have clocks (or sextants) they did most of their navigating using dead reckoning and knowledge of their local environment; which shows just how much they understood the local winds and their ability to move their rafts. ( * see below)
Without a clock determining longitude accurately was extremely difficult. One could approximate the time using star set/rise times and seasonal charts, but with the distortion near the horizon causing enormous errors in the actual location of the star, and especially given the inaccuracy of the charts at the time, this was pretty much a crap shoot.
Sextants are certainly incredible! While in college I had the opportunity to learn to use a modern one (with a sun filter) and on my first few tries I located the longitude of the observatory at SCSU to within 14 minutes of arc; not especially astounding by modern standards (see the link below), but astonishing given the basic simplicity of the device and my inexperience.
I didn't know that about the MN NW Angle, do you have a ref? Fascinating!
* There is a good piece available about the Polynesians and modern navigation here
I'm still waiting for a belt device with a hi-res LCD screen which will show me the latest and best porno from the web. Just need to enter a little bit of preference info.
It'd probably sell a helluva lot better than this would.:)
I bought a clearanced Phoebe wireless setup from Radio Shit ($50 for the NIC connected WAP and two USB AP's) and had it up in running in Gentoo in a couple hours which was mostly research and maybe twenty minutes compiling. I've pretty well scripted the installation now, when I'm satisfied I'll dump the script on the sourceforge page I got the drivers from. Hopefully someone will get some use out of it.
The USB WAPs still don't work reliably in Windows on the same laptop, power management kills the connection, and I have ditto for data as to why. At least in Linux I can look at the kernel log or tweak the source.
Yes it's been said before, but it apparently needs to be said over and over and over until it's understood! D'OH!!!
The manufacturers of USB keychain devices seem to understand this, why is it so many other manufacturers of USB devices don't? Don't they understand why USB keychains have become so hugely popular?
Fucking STANDARDS, people! Follow them and you're guaranteed a long lifetime for your product, don't follow them and you are guaranteed that as soon as something better or another OS version comes out you're spending more money making your proprietary device work with it rather than just changing the hardware and staying with the software specs you already built it to!
I just don't get it. Why spend all the $ deving and re-devving a proprietary interface when you can use existing specs and have your product to market faster, cheaper, and with a longer lifetime? Good Bog, the old management techniques from the High Priest age of computers just won't die off, will they? Auuuuuggghh
I was saying that your statement that other OS's maintain driver compatibility between versions is simply not true, nothing about linux.
But just to put my few cents in there, I recently bought a ultra-cheap Walmart webcam, which I thought would work with windows (was gonna use it as a laptop webcam for my winlaptop, turns out it barely works at all and causes frequent lockups); a couple hours investigation brought me to a few people who are in the process of writing linux drivers for this chipset, and they are near full-functionality at this point; so it ended up being connected to one of the linux laptops.
This particular cheapie was introduced by a UK company just last fall. Hardly a "year or two". The company who makes the chipset is not exactly forthcoming on it's specs, either, like Not At All (bastards).
Considering the amount of time it often takes companies to tweak their hardware drivers to full functionality in windows, it seems to me that you are underestimating the determination and resources of the OSS community.
I'll grant that back in the late 90's and even the first couple years of this century, I'd have agreed with you (and did in fact in many ways as I struggled to make hardware work with linux); but all that is changing incredibly rapidly, and thank the many selfless devs out there for that!
As for cameras, as a amateur photographer, if the camera manufacturers stay with the simple USB storage specs, they aren't a problem. I have a last-year model Fuji camera that required nothing more than plugging it in and figuring out which scsi device it showed up as then mounting it. There was nothing whatsoever on the web about it when I bought it. I'm currently tweaking a simple script that is easily launched to download the camera pix and open the viewer of one's choice.
Scanners are problematical, I'll admit - I've heard a lot of bitching - but if they'd stick to the specs (which also makes the windows drivers more reliable) then it wouldn't be a problem. In any case there is a huge number of people out there willing to write SANE interfaces; and those scanners which don't work are often the ultra-cheapies which are junk anyway, meh.
NICS, as I pointed out in another reply, are a minor problem, and I doubt that'll change.
Here's one for ya; I even got my Radio Shack clearance sale Phoebe wireless setup ($50 for the NIC-AP and two USB WAPs) to work with Gentoo with nothing more than an hour or so's research and source compiling, and it's proven reliable. If I had time I'd write a simple python script for dealing with the setup. Someday maybe:D
OT: You should have seen the look on the face of the manager of the local Shack when I stopped in the next morning and told him it was working - I don't think he believed me.:D ("That doesn't work with Linux and never will, I know, I run Redhat linux at home!" I'll treasure that moment for a long, long time, believe me. )
The old view that "it doesn't work" is changing to "it'll work with some effort" - and if those who do the effort share the info, and someone else down the line writes simply setup scripts to use that work, well, maybe that'll wake some of these corporate asshats up, eh?
No, AKA, things are changing, and changing rapidly. Sure, a lot of this stuff isn't for the average home JoeJill yet, but as the work gets done and the distros incorporate it, that'll keep changing, eh?
However, network cards, especially the new ones, are one of those critical pieces of hardware for which a lot of people are always RE'ing the drivers for. Remember that network cards, unlike the mostly home-use graphics cards, are in demand by those who run linux servers, and who have in-house support to write drivers and who understand the overall benefits of releasing the source.
No, the major problem with source updating is in obscure hardware which is used by home users, and network cards are definitely not in that group.
I just recently ordered some HP Vectra PII boxes off of Ebay dirt cheap, I'll be adding to my stack under the desk:) MP3 server hooked to the stereo, filled with HDDs, another running a private IRC server and ftp, haven't decided what to do with the other two yet:)
Old hardware is really the way to go for home setups, stack it in the closet, cable it and open it to the internal NAT. For cheap. Yip!
(halfway thru building a shelf-rack on rollers for hanging those boxes on, gonna hide them somewhere in the bedroom closet methinks, but for now they will be under the desk:) Gotta love those Vectras, small footprint and at $50/apiece including shipping was a great deal, and they are very reliable boxes.)
Every other OS is careful to build in a driver interface that is independent of the OS version
What are you talking about? I a piece of hardware here (a very expensive midi keyboard) that only works with Win98, not Win98 Second Edition. It doesn't work with XP at all, locks the system up. This is a parallel port midi kbd, for which the specs haven't changed in ages.
That's keeping the driver interface independent of the OS version? I think not.
I think this is a great idea. Here's to hoping it gets populated pretty quick, because it's certainly a resource I could use. I don't have anything to add to the list at this point, all my hardware either works or has been forced to:) but I've bookmarked it right next to my "working" bookmarks; I'm sure I'll run into something sooner or later given my propensity for being cheap:)
LOL, I had the same kind of, um, epiphany when I bought my Fujifilm S3000 last winter:)/mnt/fuji just seemed so... intuitive:D
Been damned happy with that camera. Having one that mounts as a usb storage device can also be really handy, I use it's ability to connect to a TV/VCR to upload images to it and record them to VCR so I can send them to my internet-impaired relatives:)
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That particular piece is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, which is/was the gateway for LEGAL immigrants to come to this country.
I'll agree that in many respects the INS has become too self-serving; BUT there are also good reasons for denying massive amounts of illegal immigrants access to this country without vetting them first. If you don't believe me, go live in Los Angeles for a year or two.
Or ask any of the residents of Austin, MN - and many other towns/cities - just how "beneficial" illegal immigration has been for them. Rising crime rates, foolish restrictions on the local police as to who they can prosecute and who they cannot, overwhelming intrusion into criminal matters by social welfare agencies, etc, etc....
Sorry, but I'm one of those who believes in earning one's place in a new society, not just getting it by politically correct fiat. I daresay most legal immigrants agree - all the ones I've ever met do. Yeah, it's easier to make a living here than it is in Mexico or many other countries - but that doesn't mean that you can come here and shirk the responsibilities that come with citizenship, nor that anyone has a right to be a parasite*, no more than anywhere else.
Sigh.
SB
* I'm not saying that all illegal immigrants are parasites, but altogether too many of them are. I know people and have friends from both worlds, and the ones who come here to MAKE a life are disgusted by the many more who come here to suck off of the public teat.
Most of that smog is the by-product from power facilities in Utah.
Edward Abbey wrote about that in his book Desert Solitaire; he first observed it more than thirty years ago.
SB
That's right.
Commodity exchange is barter and cannot be reasonably taxed except thru a large and often unacceptable degree of control over your populace.
Money, especially with a government controlled monopoly on it's production, can be easily controlled, taxed, hoarded, and manipulated.
Anyone who thinks that money - whether paper or electronic - will continue to be an uncorruptible substitute for barter has not been paying attention to the advances and use of technology.
Paper money: The Feds are *barely* keeping ahead of the printing technology. The increasing number of counterfeiting cases the FBI prosecutes every year would, in fact, argue that they aren't.
Electronic money: The numbers of cases of hacked credit card databases and the increasing level of social engineering argues that this simply isn't' going to work, either.
Then again, if we go back to a rare metal exchange, and change our currency to reflect that, even with technology to verify that currency, someone will find a way around it.
If it can be designed and built, it can be reverse engineered and hacked. This extends almost as easily to physical systems as it does to electronic ones.
No, I don't know what the answer is. But I'm pretty sure that those in charge are not on the right track to it either.
SB
Hee!
:) ]
:)
:)
:-D I'm still debating on the best way to use that info...
My current number was transferred from the maintenance person number for a 275 unit assisted living apartment complex. Even after 18 months (time since the old number was disconnected - was transferred to me a few months after that) I still get calls. Sometimes angry ones (usually the ones involving some catastrophic building failure).
Caller: We have no heat! Get this fixed or by God I'll call the management and get your sorry ass fired!
Me: Sorry sir, but all our maintenance has been outsourced to Mexico.
Caller: !($#*%#$)*! *click*
Me: *chuckles* and grabs another beer.
--
Then there are these kinds (abbreviated for posting):
Caller: *quavery elderly voice* My toilet won't flush, can you come over and fix it?
Me: Well, when you press the lever, what happens?
Caller: Nothing, and the lever is really loose. It didn't used to be that way.
Me: Ok. Remove the top of the toilet tank and look inside. You should see a chain hanging from the arm that is attached to the flush lever, and it should be attached to a rubber thingy on the bottom of the toilet.
Caller: Ok, let me get my gloves... well, the chain is laying on the bottom of the toilet. That isn't right, is it?
Me: No, it isn't. Take the chain and attach the end of it to one of the holes in that plastic arm that is part of the flush lever.
Caller: It works! Young man, you are a saint! I'll remember you in my prayers! [ hey, I figure I need all the help I can get
Me: No problem Ma'am, we live to serve [ puts down the phone, chuckling and wondering where to send the bill ]
Toilet Tech Support. lol. I've worked building maintenance in a number of apartment buildings I've lived in (easy way to get cheap/free rent if you know what you're doing) and I figure there are three categories of calls:
1) Fix it now or I'll callmanager/sue/come over with a gun. Solution: *click* [ this type will often hover over you while you fix things, making useless suggestions and asking repeatedly "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" - "Yessir, I did a home study course in electrical repair. Trust me."
2) The polite and friendly ones. Can often be taught. With these you can often rely on getting Christmas cards with pictures of people you don't even know.
3) The totally helpless ones - yet mostly kind - who will often feed you lavishly after you perform a simple two minute fix (or half a day's work). My personal favorites. (Mmmm...homemade roast and pie, and I didn't have to cook!)
--
Heh. I've spoken to the management of the complex several times, and they swear they've notified all the residents of the new numbers. The last time I did that, two weeks later we had a town-wide power outage, and I had more than twenty calls in thirty minutes. I wasn't home at the time and it filled my answering machine.
I still can't believe some of the creative profanity I heard on a couple of those calls. Guess experience shows
A couple weeks ago I had one of the maintenance people who works there come into where I work, and after I found out who he was, I mentioned the situation. He just grinned, rolled his eyes, and informed me that the management had never even bothered to mass-update the numbers, they just did it piecemeal. He also gave me the complex manager's home phone #
SB
Thanks for the link. Google had too much to search thru.
:)
:0 ... oh, wait :D
Interesting, had never heard that, although I'd wondered. Sounds like their major error was that at the time, nobody knew where the start of the Mississippi was (Lake Itasca is actually considerably further south, somewhat further south even from I was living
(I've been there by the way, it's a beautiful area and if you're ever in MN again make sure to visit it)
Dunno if I'd call that a sextant, it's more like an astronomical protractor
Cheers,
SB
Yeah, and requiring custom built furniture :) which I suspect is one of the reasons why such homes aren't in the mainstream.
:)
:)
:D Then there's the shell insulation, where mass really comes into play. Again, whatever. I much prefer the cordwood or strawbale structures I've seen, and mass definitely helps wrt to high wind conditions, as does the geometry (one can build either as vertical cylinders with a lot more aerodynamics than a box built out of sticks :)
You're right tho, they are beautiful. Expensive as hell per sqft, but beautiful. Expansion/modification is just a stone cold bitch, at least if you wish to preserve the aesthetics.
A lot of the inherent problems wrt to heat via air distribution have been solved in some more modern designs, but his designs are damned hard to alter to produce truly energy-efficient homes, mostly because you can't easily incorporate passive energy systems *. That's too bad, because in terms of structural material vs. interior volume, BMF's designs are extremely efficient. One time costs...
Noise can be dealt with with more modern materials. But - cost, cost...
Sigh.
* If one was willing to incorporate a central structure built around the Russian masonry-style woodburners, with the attendant thermal mass, a lot of those problems are averted. But everyone out there wants the incredibly inefficient - and hideable - forced air systems. Whatever
Cheers,
SB
While this is true, you need to keep in mind that shaping the windows as part of a sphere makes them far stronger than those on a regular house. In addition, the aerodynamic shape allows airflow to pass over the structure instead of bearing the full brunt of the force.
:)
Which is a good example of why a consistent national building code is just a plain bad idea... requirements differ in various areas, yet the flat box stick builders still dominate the codes. A pox on them. Homes should be built to reflect and integrate with their local environments.
Up where I used to live (and still to some extent where I do live) it's not hurricanes we need to withstand, but intensely cold temperatures. But most of the building code still advises the same styles of structures for both, with minor variations. Boxy stick building for the most extent.
There are some variances, but not enough. A national building code as a foundation for basic construction is just plain a bad idea in the face of the many modern techniques and modern variations on old ideas that are being explored right now. But it's become canon, mostly thru insurance companies wanting consistent code they can write their tables on and contractors who want to simplify hiring/training requirements.
Things are changing, I'll grant that. But the whole building code structure needs a severe overhaul.
slash rant. Meh.
SB
Probably... or else everyone else is still struggling with it. :)
:) and I run some software that requires custom beta libs, so that might have something to do with...
:(
Thanks, your instructions worked here while the original ones didn't. Lots of warning during compilation, but I have some weird lib versions on the box I compiled it on, gotta take it down for a few days to update libs (Gentoo is nice but time consuming
and now that I've blown the better part of two hours playing with this, it'll probably get shelved in favor of the priority items on my 2-do list
Sigh.
I'm not noticing any contrast problems with the 'LED' display; but I am seeing some weird window size problems. (might be due to fluxbox, dunno? but my X and X lib versions are somewhat old on that box)
Neat stuff, tho! I wonder if this will ever be integrated with a LM sim using Orbiter? Or has it already? I can't keep up with the massive amounts of 3rdMods to Orbiter as it is.
What dist are you running there?
If I find time tomorrow I'm going to do a totally clean install on another box.
Cheers and thanks!
SB
LOL
Yeah, these guys seem like space cases at times
But more seriously, until they get some serious funding this is all pretty thin. I suspect they have a long ways to go.
I hope not!
SB
IIRC correctly during the Apollo 11 landing they actually passed the "no-abort" point at about 60 seconds of fuel, when they were simply too low for a successful ascent stage abort.
:) But then that's because after the retros were jettisoned they had little maneuverability, which wasn't true with LM deorbit.
OI isn't really that critical timewise unless you have to hit *precisely* the orbit you want; a few seconds either way (and there often was during the lunar missions even with the computer running things) meant merely that your orbit would have a few miles or tens of miles discrepancy in perigee/apogee, correctable with a short burn.
The Saturn rockets were pretty reliable wrt to launch windows, but as I recall with the Atlas and Redstone they often couldn't predict exactly how long the rocket would fire sometimes not even to tens of seconds; but they still achieved the trajectories they wanted. So it couldn't have been *that* critical.
De-orbiting to splashdown, now, that's a different matter, a few seconds difference in retrofire and you could under or overshoot your splashdown target by tens of miles.
Given that the Polynesians didn't have clocks (or sextants) they did most of their navigating using dead reckoning and knowledge of their local environment; which shows just how much they understood the local winds and their ability to move their rafts. ( * see below)
Without a clock determining longitude accurately was extremely difficult. One could approximate the time using star set/rise times and seasonal charts, but with the distortion near the horizon causing enormous errors in the actual location of the star, and especially given the inaccuracy of the charts at the time, this was pretty much a crap shoot.
Sextants are certainly incredible! While in college I had the opportunity to learn to use a modern one (with a sun filter) and on my first few tries I located the longitude of the observatory at SCSU to within 14 minutes of arc; not especially astounding by modern standards (see the link below), but astonishing given the basic simplicity of the device and my inexperience.
I didn't know that about the MN NW Angle, do you have a ref? Fascinating!
* There is a good piece available about the Polynesians and modern navigation here
Cheers,
SB
Maybe in the US. Fortunately, there are other countries that don't share our short-sighted public paranoia about all things "nucular".
Almighty Meh, this country sure has it's head up it's ass.
SB
Mental voyeurism
Usenet (.)(?)(!)?
SB
Put a magnet in it and it's a prostate cancer cure.
Hey! I got an email that said it's so! Advertising never lies, right?
Right?
SB
Okay that's it, we're all going straight to hell.
:D
Well, that's a relief.
Do ya figure it'll be colder or warmer? Will they allow PDA's there, or will they be mandatory? I can just about visualize the interface
SB
I'm still waiting for a belt device with a hi-res LCD screen which will show me the latest and best porno from the web. Just need to enter a little bit of preference info.
:)
It'd probably sell a helluva lot better than this would.
SB
Power spikes would be Zeus's methodology then
SB
Heh.
I bought a clearanced Phoebe wireless setup from Radio Shit ($50 for the NIC connected WAP and two USB AP's) and had it up in running in Gentoo in a couple hours which was mostly research and maybe twenty minutes compiling. I've pretty well scripted the installation now, when I'm satisfied I'll dump the script on the sourceforge page I got the drivers from. Hopefully someone will get some use out of it.
The USB WAPs still don't work reliably in Windows on the same laptop, power management kills the connection, and I have ditto for data as to why. At least in Linux I can look at the kernel log or tweak the source.
Go figure. Windows. Bleh.
SB
Yes it's been said before, but it apparently needs to be said over and over and over until it's understood! D'OH!!!
The manufacturers of USB keychain devices seem to understand this, why is it so many other manufacturers of USB devices don't? Don't they understand why USB keychains have become so hugely popular?
Fucking STANDARDS, people! Follow them and you're guaranteed a long lifetime for your product, don't follow them and you are guaranteed that as soon as something better or another OS version comes out you're spending more money making your proprietary device work with it rather than just changing the hardware and staying with the software specs you already built it to!
I just don't get it. Why spend all the $ deving and re-devving a proprietary interface when you can use existing specs and have your product to market faster, cheaper, and with a longer lifetime? Good Bog, the old management techniques from the High Priest age of computers just won't die off, will they? Auuuuuggghh
SB
Huh?
:D
:D ("That doesn't work with Linux and never will, I know, I run Redhat linux at home!" I'll treasure that moment for a long, long time, believe me. )
I was saying that your statement that other OS's maintain driver compatibility between versions is simply not true, nothing about linux.
But just to put my few cents in there, I recently bought a ultra-cheap Walmart webcam, which I thought would work with windows (was gonna use it as a laptop webcam for my winlaptop, turns out it barely works at all and causes frequent lockups); a couple hours investigation brought me to a few people who are in the process of writing linux drivers for this chipset, and they are near full-functionality at this point; so it ended up being connected to one of the linux laptops.
This particular cheapie was introduced by a UK company just last fall. Hardly a "year or two". The company who makes the chipset is not exactly forthcoming on it's specs, either, like Not At All (bastards).
Considering the amount of time it often takes companies to tweak their hardware drivers to full functionality in windows, it seems to me that you are underestimating the determination and resources of the OSS community.
I'll grant that back in the late 90's and even the first couple years of this century, I'd have agreed with you (and did in fact in many ways as I struggled to make hardware work with linux); but all that is changing incredibly rapidly, and thank the many selfless devs out there for that!
As for cameras, as a amateur photographer, if the camera manufacturers stay with the simple USB storage specs, they aren't a problem. I have a last-year model Fuji camera that required nothing more than plugging it in and figuring out which scsi device it showed up as then mounting it. There was nothing whatsoever on the web about it when I bought it. I'm currently tweaking a simple script that is easily launched to download the camera pix and open the viewer of one's choice.
Scanners are problematical, I'll admit - I've heard a lot of bitching - but if they'd stick to the specs (which also makes the windows drivers more reliable) then it wouldn't be a problem. In any case there is a huge number of people out there willing to write SANE interfaces; and those scanners which don't work are often the ultra-cheapies which are junk anyway, meh.
NICS, as I pointed out in another reply, are a minor problem, and I doubt that'll change.
Here's one for ya; I even got my Radio Shack clearance sale Phoebe wireless setup ($50 for the NIC-AP and two USB WAPs) to work with Gentoo with nothing more than an hour or so's research and source compiling, and it's proven reliable. If I had time I'd write a simple python script for dealing with the setup. Someday maybe
OT: You should have seen the look on the face of the manager of the local Shack when I stopped in the next morning and told him it was working - I don't think he believed me.
The old view that "it doesn't work" is changing to "it'll work with some effort" - and if those who do the effort share the info, and someone else down the line writes simply setup scripts to use that work, well, maybe that'll wake some of these corporate asshats up, eh?
No, AKA, things are changing, and changing rapidly. Sure, a lot of this stuff isn't for the average home JoeJill yet, but as the work gets done and the distros incorporate it, that'll keep changing, eh?
Cheers,
SB
However, network cards, especially the new ones, are one of those critical pieces of hardware for which a lot of people are always RE'ing the drivers for. Remember that network cards, unlike the mostly home-use graphics cards, are in demand by those who run linux servers, and who have in-house support to write drivers and who understand the overall benefits of releasing the source.
No, the major problem with source updating is in obscure hardware which is used by home users, and network cards are definitely not in that group.
SB
Part of Ballmer's job description methinks.
:D Hmm, lots of good jokes there I'd wager )
*ducks*
SB
( still chuckling at "OEM balls"
Amen!
I just recently ordered some HP Vectra PII boxes off of Ebay dirt cheap, I'll be adding to my stack under the desk
Old hardware is really the way to go for home setups, stack it in the closet, cable it and open it to the internal NAT. For cheap. Yip!
(halfway thru building a shelf-rack on rollers for hanging those boxes on, gonna hide them somewhere in the bedroom closet methinks, but for now they will be under the desk
Cheers!
SB
Every other OS is careful to build in a driver interface that is independent of the OS version
What are you talking about? I a piece of hardware here (a very expensive midi keyboard) that only works with Win98, not Win98 Second Edition. It doesn't work with XP at all, locks the system up. This is a parallel port midi kbd, for which the specs haven't changed in ages.
That's keeping the driver interface independent of the OS version? I think not.
Sigh.
SB
Yeah, 'ware the Mongol Hordes
I think this is a great idea. Here's to hoping it gets populated pretty quick, because it's certainly a resource I could use. I don't have anything to add to the list at this point, all my hardware either works or has been forced to
Cheers and good luck sir!
SB
LOL, I had the same kind of, um, epiphany when I bought my Fujifilm S3000 last winter
Been damned happy with that camera. Having one that mounts as a usb storage device can also be really handy, I use it's ability to connect to a TV/VCR to upload images to it and record them to VCR so I can send them to my internet-impaired relatives
Cheers,
SB