Well, we need to be going about 17,500 mph at the top of the trajectory to get into LEO. My guess is it would have to be going at least twice that fast upon release due to atmospheric friction and gravity. Which means that we are releasing an object moving twice as fast as the current shuttle is traveling at entry interface into the thickest portion of the atmosphere. I don't think we are anywhere near having the materials to make the ship survivable due to atmospheric heating, even if we could handle building the magnetic rail. Plus the deceleration would be enormous, as would the shock wave produced by a ship being accerated to Mach 54 in the lower atmosphere.
Do you see the iTunes model as "sharing?" Downloading, sure, but the model is clearly focused on a single provider. Maybe I misunderstood your last sentence, but it seemed a bit inaccurate.
To me, what is even more striking than the change in computer technology is the change in marketing! Everytime I see an early 80s advertisement, I just want to laugh at the naivete. Is this presentism, or have modern ads really become that much more compelling?
IMO the Star Trek universe is out of gas. There's nothing to see here. Move on.
It's sad, because I've always loved Star Trek. But I realized the truth when I saw the latest installment in the theater, which in my opinion was nothing but a bad rehash of The Wrath of Khan.
But then, I guess this is a sign of the times. Lately it's seemed to me that we as a culture are running low on creativity. I don't ever remember a time when so many sequels and so few original films were released. And of course, people flock like lemmings to see the latest rehash of whatever. I haven't heard an original musical group in what seems like years. I'm sure there are indie groups that I've never heard of that are doing great stuff, but the mainstream... I guess the latest thing is for bands like The Darkness to resurrect the same lame ass hair metal that Nirvana wiped off the face of the earth. And most of the the rock music that I've heard in the last couple of years has been variations on the Korn theme... detuned guitars and shameless lyrics about childhood trauma. Hey asshole, you're rich -- go get some therapy and get the hell over it!
Anyway, I know I've drifted a bit off topic, but I see this as another attempt to squeeze the every last penny out of what used to be a great franchise by driving it even deeper into the ground. All to avoid, *gasp*, coming up with something ORIGINAL! But no, that would be too risky. Let's just serve up another plate of leftovers.
Hold on, your friend got busted for downloading a file? I thought that you could only punished / detected / threatened for sharing content, not downloading it.
Wow, I wish I had mod points so that I could mod you up. I've been thinking this very same thing for a long time now. It seems to me that the "brain in a vat" conception of AI is likely to meet with continual failure.
You know, I've read a lot about outsourcing over the last several months. And I've never seen anyone mention the ramifications that this outsourcing might have on America's ability to defend itself in war.
When I say "war", I'm not talking about picking on a developing nation on the other side of the world. I'm talking about a global cataclysm. Think World War III.
The ability of a country to wage war is highly dependent upon that country's industrial capacity. At least that has been the case for the wars fought in the industrial age. No one knows what "post-industrial" warfare might look like, but I still think that it is reasonable to assume that we are going to need to make planes, tanks, guns, bullets, uniforms, etc.
How the hell are we supposed to do that when we don't make things here anymore? Will we be able to rely on imports from overseas? Would national security keep us from trusting other nations to build our state of the art weapons? How do we know we can rely on them? Are we supposed to provide armed escort for all incoming shipments? How much strain would that put on the military? How much more would that cost than just manufacturing things domestically?
A lot of the reasoning that I've seen from people regarding outsourcing has been astoundingly myopic. If we give away all our secrets to other countries that can already beat us in cost of labor, do we really think that there countries are going to stand by and let American CEOs exploit their cheap labor forever? Are managers REALLY that valuable? Are Indian CEOs that impossible for people to imagine?
I often hear the argument that outsourcing is neccessary because once one company does it, they can lower prices, and the rest have to follow to stay competitive. If companies really want to stay lean and fit, why do executives need to get paid hundreds of millions of dollars per year? How much could prices be lowered if they were compensated more reasonably?
As an RC airplane hobbyist, I can tell you that electric flight has moved forward quite profoundly in the last 3 years or so. The noise that you are speaking of was generated by the tiny internal combustion engines that used to be the defacto power source for such devices.
My own model airplanes are all electric powered. My planes have about a 3 foot wingspan and weigh 13-16 oz ready to fly. I can get flight times of up to 30 minutes using the new generation Lithium Polymer batteries from companies like Kokam, IRate, and Thunderpower. Additonally, I have achieved a 2:1 power-to-weight ratio with the new generation of brushless motors. This allows really cool maneuvers known as "3d", such as hovering the plane vertically like a helicopter and others such as harriers, waterfalls, and blenders.
Many RC airplane enthusiasts are now experimenting with the newer "outrunner" brushless motors such as those produced by AXI. These offer truly silent performance -- you can only hear the very quiet "woosh" of the prop blades cutting through the air. It is very cool stuff.
Dean's fiscal policies are *far* more conservative that those of the current administration. Look at his Vermont voting record... the mas is less liberal than Kerry, for chrissakes.
Even if they could function at.5 atm without serious mental lapses, they certainly would not be able to undertake the strenuous exercise that keeps their muscles and bones from breaking down.
A more detailed version of the article can be found at the NY Times site. According to this article, the restrictions imposed by the new safety regulations constrain the shuttle to daylight launches, where adequate ascent video can be obtained. This unfortunately results in am extremely limited number of launch windows to reach the ISS. (It seems that there are only 4 between September 2004 and March 2005, and two of these are very narrow.)
Now I certainly want the thing to be as safe as possible, but is anyone else think that the level of acceptable risk has gotten too small? We should make the shuttle as safe as possible, but we shouldn't do this by compromising the shuttle's ability to fulfill its mission. Remember, we now have a space station up there that is going to need lots of maintenance, supplies, and fresh crews if it is going to be able to carry out any of the science work that are ostensibly the reason for its existence. Albatross or windfall, we put the thing up there, now we have to take care of it -- otherwise we've wasted a lot of money and political capital.
...when you can just go after the companies that hire them.
Now I know this might not work for international stuff like the Nigerian scam, but it should work for domestic spam. And though I don't yet recieve SMS spam, the vast majority of my e-mail spam seems to originate from domestic companies.
I mean, in order to sell a product or a service, you have to provide your vict^h^h^h^h, customers with valid contact information so that they can purchase the product. Jon Q. Fucktard can't purchase herbal viagra or a "real university degree" without knowing where to send the check.
Removing the financial incentive to hire spammers will be far more effective than trying to control it through technological means.
Hey, I'm all for manned space exploration. But endlessly sending humans into LEO is NOT space exploration. We've been there, done that. It's old hat.
I get irritated when I hear people complain about the public's lack of interest in shuttle launches. People aren't interested because we've been doing the same thing over and over again for 20 years now, and frankly it's pointless and boring. And most people have figured that out by now.
Let's build unmanned spacecraft to carry out microgravity research in LEO. And then lets take the rest of the money that we save on the bloated shuttle program and put it into manned space exploration. I'd love to see more missions to the moon. Missions to Mars. Hell, let's put humans down on Europa. I'd love to see these things happen before I die.
I know that's been tried before, but lobbyists from the DMA and other organizations lobbied like hell, because this would have essentially killed their industry.
In addition, many of the computer users drawn to the convenience of peer-to-peer systems do not realize that these systems pose serious security and privacy threats to their personal computers or company networks. Recent studies reveal that the majority of the users of these systems are unable to tell what files they are sharing and sometimes incorrectly assume they were not sharing any files when in fact they were sharing all files on their hard drive.
Does anyone have a reference for these "recent studies?" What evidence suggests that running P2P clients is a security issue?
I don't know what is considered a strong argument in bill-writing, but in graduate school we are expected to provide specifics (including citations) when we describe the results of a study. Otherwise, we could be "creatively interpreting" the results, or better yet, making stuff up altogether. Assuming that these studies actually exist, I'd bet that the subjects were AOL users!
Why can't I highlight a block of text and then press CAPS LOCK to toggle between all caps and all lowercase the way I can say with bold, underline, or italics in my word processor of choice? It doesn't make sense to have to re-type the text in upper case.
It seems that only wealthy countries will be able to afford to use this technology if it ever becomes available. As someone already pointed out, there's only a finite amount of rain, etc. I imagine that poor countries that are already starvation-prone would suffer because of this technology. What, did you expect human nature to change over night?
As an aside, since when did we start getting science news from the Christian Science Monitor?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, we need to be going about 17,500 mph at the top of the trajectory to get into LEO. My guess is it would have to be going at least twice that fast upon release due to atmospheric friction and gravity. Which means that we are releasing an object moving twice as fast as the current shuttle is traveling at entry interface into the thickest portion of the atmosphere. I don't think we are anywhere near having the materials to make the ship survivable due to atmospheric heating, even if we could handle building the magnetic rail. Plus the deceleration would be enormous, as would the shock wave produced by a ship being accerated to Mach 54 in the lower atmosphere.
Do you see the iTunes model as "sharing?" Downloading, sure, but the model is clearly focused on a single provider. Maybe I misunderstood your last sentence, but it seemed a bit inaccurate.
You mean, like Claria?
It seems that this is easy to fix for now by simply configuring your firewall to not allow Winamp to access the network.
Do not look at laser with remaining eye.
To me, what is even more striking than the change in computer technology is the change in marketing! Everytime I see an early 80s advertisement, I just want to laugh at the naivete. Is this presentism, or have modern ads really become that much more compelling?
It's sad, because I've always loved Star Trek. But I realized the truth when I saw the latest installment in the theater, which in my opinion was nothing but a bad rehash of The Wrath of Khan.
But then, I guess this is a sign of the times. Lately it's seemed to me that we as a culture are running low on creativity. I don't ever remember a time when so many sequels and so few original films were released. And of course, people flock like lemmings to see the latest rehash of whatever. I haven't heard an original musical group in what seems like years. I'm sure there are indie groups that I've never heard of that are doing great stuff, but the mainstream... I guess the latest thing is for bands like The Darkness to resurrect the same lame ass hair metal that Nirvana wiped off the face of the earth. And most of the the rock music that I've heard in the last couple of years has been variations on the Korn theme... detuned guitars and shameless lyrics about childhood trauma. Hey asshole, you're rich -- go get some therapy and get the hell over it!
Anyway, I know I've drifted a bit off topic, but I see this as another attempt to squeeze the every last penny out of what used to be a great franchise by driving it even deeper into the ground. All to avoid, *gasp*, coming up with something ORIGINAL! But no, that would be too risky. Let's just serve up another plate of leftovers.
Hold on, your friend got busted for downloading a file? I thought that you could only punished / detected / threatened for sharing content, not downloading it.
I ask this because I have long thought that the mind or consciousness is an emergent property of the biology of our nervous systems.
Wow, I wish I had mod points so that I could mod you up. I've been thinking this very same thing for a long time now. It seems to me that the "brain in a vat" conception of AI is likely to meet with continual failure.
When I say "war", I'm not talking about picking on a developing nation on the other side of the world. I'm talking about a global cataclysm. Think World War III.
The ability of a country to wage war is highly dependent upon that country's industrial capacity. At least that has been the case for the wars fought in the industrial age. No one knows what "post-industrial" warfare might look like, but I still think that it is reasonable to assume that we are going to need to make planes, tanks, guns, bullets, uniforms, etc.
How the hell are we supposed to do that when we don't make things here anymore? Will we be able to rely on imports from overseas? Would national security keep us from trusting other nations to build our state of the art weapons? How do we know we can rely on them? Are we supposed to provide armed escort for all incoming shipments? How much strain would that put on the military? How much more would that cost than just manufacturing things domestically?
A lot of the reasoning that I've seen from people regarding outsourcing has been astoundingly myopic. If we give away all our secrets to other countries that can already beat us in cost of labor, do we really think that there countries are going to stand by and let American CEOs exploit their cheap labor forever? Are managers REALLY that valuable? Are Indian CEOs that impossible for people to imagine?
I often hear the argument that outsourcing is neccessary because once one company does it, they can lower prices, and the rest have to follow to stay competitive. If companies really want to stay lean and fit, why do executives need to get paid hundreds of millions of dollars per year? How much could prices be lowered if they were compensated more reasonably?
As an RC airplane hobbyist, I can tell you that electric flight has moved forward quite profoundly in the last 3 years or so. The noise that you are speaking of was generated by the tiny internal combustion engines that used to be the defacto power source for such devices.
My own model airplanes are all electric powered. My planes have about a 3 foot wingspan and weigh 13-16 oz ready to fly. I can get flight times of up to 30 minutes using the new generation Lithium Polymer batteries from companies like Kokam, IRate, and Thunderpower. Additonally, I have achieved a 2:1 power-to-weight ratio with the new generation of brushless motors. This allows really cool maneuvers known as "3d", such as hovering the plane vertically like a helicopter and others such as harriers, waterfalls, and blenders.
Many RC airplane enthusiasts are now experimenting with the newer "outrunner" brushless motors such as those produced by AXI. These offer truly silent performance -- you can only hear the very quiet "woosh" of the prop blades cutting through the air. It is very cool stuff.
Dean's fiscal policies are *far* more conservative that those of the current administration. Look at his Vermont voting record... the mas is less liberal than Kerry, for chrissakes.
Even if they could function at .5 atm without serious mental lapses, they certainly would not be able to undertake the strenuous exercise that keeps their muscles and bones from breaking down.
A more detailed version of the article can be found at the NY Times site. According to this article, the restrictions imposed by the new safety regulations constrain the shuttle to daylight launches, where adequate ascent video can be obtained. This unfortunately results in am extremely limited number of launch windows to reach the ISS. (It seems that there are only 4 between September 2004 and March 2005, and two of these are very narrow.)
Now I certainly want the thing to be as safe as possible, but is anyone else think that the level of acceptable risk has gotten too small? We should make the shuttle as safe as possible, but we shouldn't do this by compromising the shuttle's ability to fulfill its mission. Remember, we now have a space station up there that is going to need lots of maintenance, supplies, and fresh crews if it is going to be able to carry out any of the science work that are ostensibly the reason for its existence. Albatross or windfall, we put the thing up there, now we have to take care of it -- otherwise we've wasted a lot of money and political capital.
...when you can just go after the companies that hire them.
Now I know this might not work for international stuff like the Nigerian scam, but it should work for domestic spam. And though I don't yet recieve SMS spam, the vast majority of my e-mail spam seems to originate from domestic companies.
I mean, in order to sell a product or a service, you have to provide your vict^h^h^h^h, customers with valid contact information so that they can purchase the product. Jon Q. Fucktard can't purchase herbal viagra or a "real university degree" without knowing where to send the check.
Removing the financial incentive to hire spammers will be far more effective than trying to control it through technological means.
Hey, I'm all for manned space exploration. But endlessly sending humans into LEO is NOT space exploration. We've been there, done that. It's old hat.
I get irritated when I hear people complain about the public's lack of interest in shuttle launches. People aren't interested because we've been doing the same thing over and over again for 20 years now, and frankly it's pointless and boring. And most people have figured that out by now.
Let's build unmanned spacecraft to carry out microgravity research in LEO. And then lets take the rest of the money that we save on the bloated shuttle program and put it into manned space exploration. I'd love to see more missions to the moon. Missions to Mars. Hell, let's put humans down on Europa. I'd love to see these things happen before I die.
I know that's been tried before, but lobbyists from the DMA and other organizations lobbied like hell, because this would have essentially killed their industry.
Not that this would be a bad thing though.
From the text of the bill:
In addition, many of the computer users drawn to the convenience of peer-to-peer systems do not realize that these systems pose serious security and privacy threats to their personal computers or company networks. Recent studies reveal that the majority of the users of these systems are unable to tell what files they are sharing and sometimes incorrectly assume they were not sharing any files when in fact they were sharing all files on their hard drive.
Does anyone have a reference for these "recent studies?" What evidence suggests that running P2P clients is a security issue?
I don't know what is considered a strong argument in bill-writing, but in graduate school we are expected to provide specifics (including citations) when we describe the results of a study. Otherwise, we could be "creatively interpreting" the results, or better yet, making stuff up altogether. Assuming that these studies actually exist, I'd bet that the subjects were AOL users!
Humans are genetically predisposed to religion...
Really? Pray, which genes are responsible for this phenomenon?
Blaming everything on god is one kind of pseudoscience, blaming everything on genes is another.
From the blurb: "When you search in Yahoo, those Sponsor Matches at the top are provided by Overture."
You mean you can search in Yahoo?
Why can't I highlight a block of text and then press CAPS LOCK to toggle between all caps and all lowercase the way I can say with bold, underline, or italics in my word processor of choice? It doesn't make sense to have to re-type the text in upper case.
Or Ohio State vs. Ohio?
No, really...
Please mod this up.
It seems that only wealthy countries will be able to afford to use this technology if it ever becomes available. As someone already pointed out, there's only a finite amount of rain, etc. I imagine that poor countries that are already starvation-prone would suffer because of this technology. What, did you expect human nature to change over night?
As an aside, since when did we start getting science news from the Christian Science Monitor?