Actually, Lockheed-Martin beat out others and won a contract to build a half-size sub-orbital prototype of a single stage to orbital next generation shuttle. The prototype was called the X-33. The full blown bird would have been VentureStar.
It had a lot of new techonologies. One has a new design fuel tank make of a new composite material. The first time they tried filling it up with liquid hydrogen, it ripped open. They told the government that they needed a ton of money more, over and above the original bid to fix it. The government said, forget it and the project was abandoned.
It seems to me that military communications needs to exist in hostile environments. One theater of modern warfare is electronic - both active and countermeaures. What does it say about the robustness of military communications that it is easily interfered with by civilians are not even hostile? Sure, pass those regulations but then enemy will be ready with adjusted equipment to wipe out that communication when it needs to.
The DoD needs to shutup about this and fix it's stuff so that is can stand the heat of the kitchen and be battle ready transparent to us all.
...please, rent the Steve Martin movie, "The Jerk". There is a scene when The Jerk is set to leave his family home for the first time. His father, a poor black sharecorper takes him out back to teach him an importment lesson before he leaves....
"Son, this is Shinola", he says, pointing to the shoe shine in his hand. Then he points to a pile of manure on the ground and adds, "and son, this is..."
Learn this lesson, Mr. Berkman, learn it well. Then maybe you will not destroy another culteral icon.
At first, I prepared to accept all of the reassurances that there is no way that terrorism was involved. But then I learned that Ilan Ramon was one of the fighter pilots in an Israeli attack that destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor that would have created weapons grade plutonium. See http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtm l?itemNo=253327&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSub ContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
It is just too weird. It seems that a mole could have thrown a monkey wench into the works here. I would have thought that they would had cause the launch to fail, not the re-entry, but then I just don't think like a terrorist.
>I'm sure everyone here would welcome any successes you have in researching this. Oh, so no one has the right to criticized the Tower of Babel unless she has invented her own superior language? Forgive me for having an opinion!
>Maybe you're missing the point. I think not. I never said that FLAC was to replace MP3 or OGG or whatever. You read that into my word. It is just a 50% decrease over WAV is not enough to trouble switching to FLAC and re-encoded all of my WAV files to FLAC. Or adding to mountain of codecs IN MY HOME. I don't care what codecs you use - knock yourself out. Just don't lay your bum trip on me.
With all of the damn codecs in the world, one that only provides 50% saving is just Not Ready for Prime Time. Somehow, with all of the repetition in music, there has GOT to be a way to do better than that.
Storing in one format and then have to convert to another all of the time just not an option. Maybe when memory is a dollar a gigabyte (and I mean RAM!), them this might be a choice - but I am hoping for something better.
Imagine plugging in your Les Paul and playing the first bar of a song. Your computer recognizes it and setup the correct settings on the multi-effects - one for each string. I have heard legends about hexaphonic distorion. And you can have separate delay and reverb settings for each string. Run each of the separate sounds thorugh unique choruses and finally to 12 different amps, placed all around the room.
"Fire Woman" coming at you from 12 different directions! A sea of fire, burning your soul. Then you play a few notes of "Telegraph Road" and the computer automagically switched to that ultraclean Mark Knopfler patch, reverbing around the countryside.
Then switch to Eric Johnson's "Trail of Tears". Eric used three completely different chains of effects and amps and danced on A/B switches while he played to achieve seamless tone changes. With Gibson's Magic, the computer can handle it.
And then imagine a guitar symphony version of the Music of the Ainur!
I own my second S-VHS because I cannot stand the lousy quality of VHS. The point of this article is if everyone buys it, then it must be better. What a load of crap. Popular has never meant better - not if you are talking about true quality.
Join in the long, long line ready to take a Big Fat Wizzz all over the grave of the RIAA and it's puppet masters. Good Artists will always be rewards. The "Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Men" can rot for all I care.
Robots can do anything that needs to be done on Mars for the next 20-30 years. We need to get over this planetary fixation and start building solar powered mass drivers on the Moon and then O'Neil colonies at the Lx points in the Earth-Moon system. Microwave power from Earth orbit. Blow the wade to jump down another gravity well 30 to 180 million miles away is a waste.
If this discovery means there are 12 times the stars that we previously thought, does that not increase the chance of finding earth-like planets? Yes, given the brown dwarfs don't give out as much heat, but there is life on earth right now that does not depend on the sun - at geothermal vents, living via chemosynthesis. A frozen earthlike planet given the right amount of tidal energy (like Europa) or maybe internally generated heat could have life living under the ice.
And then maybe a planet very close to the brown dwarf would not be so frozen. There are scenarios that no one have thought of yet.
This can ONLY increase the change of finding more earth-like planets, if even only a bit.
12 times 100 billion is 1.2 trillion - and that is just in this galaxy.
"Twice a year, 100 are chosen for The Guildhall...This is an opportunity to test your mettle with the best in the business...It isn't easy, but The Guildhall can get you there. Do you accept the challenge?"
Weed out the weak, fight to the death, king of the mountain, competitive CRAP!! While this is the world of many games, this is totally inappropriate in education. Education should never be a boot camp. Damn competition! Let it be about teaching and nurturing, guiding, and learning for Christ's sake! And this is supposely a Christian college????
I am amazed. A flash of sanity for the BSA. The next thing, you know, Microsoft will make the source code for W2000 open source. Or maybe even, I will find a meaningful, rewarding job.
LIES! The ACLU was never about neglect. Service were supposed to be provided that never were. And spending on social programs is NOTHING - NOTHING today, comparing to the fetish of weapons and gorging of civil libreties by the police state.
You keep on repeating your lies. They will never come true. The biggest receiver of welfare today are the megacorps getting away with raiding the treasury, tax breaks to the rich, and subsidies to the war machines.
DAMN YOU AND YOUR LIES!!!!!
YOU CAN KEEP ON TRYING TO REWRITE HISTORY.
BUT THE TRUTH WILL REMIND - THE REAGAN/BUSH REGIME OF 1980's SPENT MORE ON CORPORATE WELFARE THAN THE U.S. SPEND IN IT"S ENTIRE HISTORY!
1980 started with a public debt less then a trillion dollars. Reagan/Bush left it over 3 trillion and raising.
Don't fucking piss on my leg and tell me it is raining!!!!!!!!
There were some. But not millions...not even a million by a low shot. And not families. Certainly, nothing like it is now, not with beggars at every intersection, not thousands of homeless in every city.
It all got insane during the Reagan era. Especially with the "deinstitutionalization" movement. The mental hosptials emptied people on to the streets with little or no followup care. And with the long term unemployed and then the rollback of social services.
America has never seen hoards of homeless like we have now - including during the depression of the 30's.
I grew watching the all of the Mercury launches. Most of Gemini. I stayed up pass midnight for the first time in my life to wait for Armstrong and Aldin to take a walk on the moon. I was a True Believer in human spaceflight and a human presence in space.
But now that I am older and with our new computers, I just wonder. I see millions of homeless in America that we never tolerated before. My older friends are all in fear of not being able to afford healthcare. The American empire is ready to start preemptive wars to maintain the right to pollute the earth and to maintain the monolopy on weapons of mass destruction.
I am totally opposed to going to Mars. It is just too soon and too much else needs to be done. I would like to a program that works toward building O'Neil colonies but that type of planning and cooperation is just not going to happen. Any exploration can be done by robots. The resources for a human base on the moon or a trip to Mars is just misplaced resources.
Now, if you are going to build mass drivers and then build solar geneator transmitters in orbit, then I would dearly love to stop burning carbon. And if a few monarchies lose there billions in the process, that can only be a Good Thang.
No, gawd, no. Microsoft Outlook (ad Outlook Express) maybe the single biggest security hole in the whole of the history of computing. Whoever provides a free alternate with no possible buffer overflow exploits, no damnable script kiddie hooks, and defaults set to allow the Average Joe to plug and play safely will have done all of humanity a favor.
I have to agree. I never buy CD's anymore - unless it is directly from the band - which is one of the cool thangs about living in Austin. Because 1) the RIAA sucks, 2) most popular music sucks, 3) the Net provides great alternatives, especially if you are over the hill and lost your hearing above 12Khz. As for the MPAA, welll.... there is just no substitute for the experience of the silver screen with it's giant 35mm glory and 5.1 sound that would get me evicted in my apartment. I am sad to report the ONLY picket line that I had ever crossed in my life was to see "Star Wars:The Empire Strikes Back". There was a projectionist's strike on. But dammit, it was Star Wars! I would do it again.
Oh, my dear YoungBlood, truly old games are text only and only work on mainframes with teletype machines. The Colossal Cave Adventure, Star Trek (with 64 "quandrants" and no map of the galaxy - you had to write it out by hand), or probably Chess is much older than any microprocessor including the Z80 in that TRS-80. I recall playing on an IBM 370 but I am sure someone will remember before that.
...is everyone has a computer and it is Good Enough. Also, having a console in a home frees up the computer for other people. Consoles work well with two or more people - computers are generally designed for a single person.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, Lockheed-Martin beat out others and won a contract to build a half-size sub-orbital prototype of a single stage to orbital next generation shuttle. The prototype was called the X-33. The full blown bird would have been VentureStar.
It had a lot of new techonologies. One has a new design fuel tank make of a new composite material. The first time they tried filling it up with liquid hydrogen, it ripped open. They told the government that they needed a ton of money more, over and above the original bid to fix it. The government said, forget it and the project was abandoned.
It seems to me that military communications needs to exist in hostile environments. One theater of modern warfare is electronic - both active and countermeaures. What does it say about the robustness of military communications that it is easily interfered with by civilians are not even hostile? Sure, pass those regulations but then enemy will be ready with adjusted equipment to wipe out that communication when it needs to.
The DoD needs to shutup about this and fix it's stuff so that is can stand the heat of the kitchen and be battle ready transparent to us all.
...please, rent the Steve Martin movie, "The Jerk". There is a scene when The Jerk is set to leave his family home for the first time. His father, a poor black sharecorper takes him out back to teach him an importment lesson before he leaves....
..."
"Son, this is Shinola", he says, pointing to the shoe shine in his hand. Then he points to a pile of manure on the ground and adds, "and son, this is
Learn this lesson, Mr. Berkman, learn it well. Then maybe you will not destroy another culteral icon.
I miss Animaniacs so much! is Dot gonna be Trinity in Animatrix?
Oh, wait......Nevermind
At first, I prepared to accept all of the reassurances that there is no way that terrorism was involved. But then I learned that Ilan Ramon was one of the fighter pilots in an Israeli attack that destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor that would have created weapons grade plutonium. See http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtm l?itemNo=253327&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSub ContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
It is just too weird. It seems that a mole could have thrown a monkey wench into the works here. I would have thought that they would had cause the launch to fail, not the re-entry, but then I just don't think like a terrorist.
I dunno, I just don't know. Sad day.
Fox News is reported that the Columbia was going Mach 7 at the time it was lost. They (and everyone else is reporting that it was going 12,000 mph.
m os.s html, 12,000 mph at 200,000 feet is Mach 17.
According to the Atmospheric Properties Calculator at
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/design/scripts/at
My prayers to the friends and family of the astronauts. May we move on to space!
>I'm sure everyone here would welcome any successes you have in researching this.
Oh, so no one has the right to criticized the Tower of Babel unless she has invented her own superior language? Forgive me for having an opinion!
>Maybe you're missing the point.
I think not. I never said that FLAC was to replace MP3 or OGG or whatever. You read that into my word. It is just a 50% decrease over WAV is not enough to trouble switching to FLAC and re-encoded all of my WAV files to FLAC. Or adding to mountain of codecs IN MY HOME. I don't care what codecs you use - knock yourself out. Just don't lay your bum trip on me.
With all of the damn codecs in the world, one that only provides 50% saving is just Not Ready for Prime Time. Somehow, with all of the repetition in music, there has GOT to be a way to do better than that.
Storing in one format and then have to convert to another all of the time just not an option. Maybe when memory is a dollar a gigabyte (and I mean RAM!), them this might be a choice - but I am hoping for something better.
Imagine plugging in your Les Paul and playing the first bar of a song. Your computer recognizes it and setup the correct settings on the multi-effects - one for each string. I have heard legends about hexaphonic distorion. And you can have separate delay and reverb settings for each string. Run each of the separate sounds thorugh unique choruses and finally to 12 different amps, placed all around the room.
"Fire Woman" coming at you from 12 different directions! A sea of fire, burning your soul. Then you play a few notes of "Telegraph Road" and the computer automagically switched to that ultraclean Mark Knopfler patch, reverbing around the countryside.
Then switch to Eric Johnson's "Trail of Tears". Eric used three completely different chains of effects and amps and danced on A/B switches while he played to achieve seamless tone changes. With Gibson's Magic, the computer can handle it.
And then imagine a guitar symphony version of the Music of the Ainur!
Damn, I'm creaming in my jeans over this.
Just imagine!
I own my second S-VHS because I cannot stand the lousy quality of VHS. The point of this article is if everyone buys it, then it must be better. What a load of crap. Popular has never meant better - not if you are talking about true quality.
The majority of people are just plain STUPID.
Join in the long, long line ready to take a Big Fat Wizzz all over the grave of the RIAA and it's puppet masters. Good Artists will always be rewards. The "Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Men" can rot for all I care.
....then you GOTTA mention _Blood_Music_. Tim Leary recommended it and it did complete blow my mind.
Robots can do anything that needs to be done on Mars for the next 20-30 years. We need to get over this planetary fixation and start building solar powered mass drivers on the Moon and then O'Neil colonies at the Lx points in the Earth-Moon system. Microwave power from Earth orbit. Blow the wade to jump down another gravity well 30 to 180 million miles away is a waste.
If this discovery means there are 12 times the stars that we previously thought, does that not increase the chance of finding earth-like planets? Yes, given the brown dwarfs don't give out as much heat, but there is life on earth right now that does not depend on the sun - at geothermal vents, living via chemosynthesis. A frozen earthlike planet given the right amount of tidal energy (like Europa) or maybe internally generated heat could have life living under the ice.
And then maybe a planet very close to the brown dwarf would not be so frozen. There are scenarios that no one have thought of yet.
This can ONLY increase the change of finding more earth-like planets, if even only a bit.
12 times 100 billion is 1.2 trillion - and that is just in this galaxy.
"Twice a year, 100 are chosen for The Guildhall...This is an opportunity to test your mettle with the best in the business...It isn't easy, but The Guildhall can get you there. Do you accept the challenge?"
Weed out the weak, fight to the death, king of the mountain, competitive CRAP!! While this is the world of many games, this is totally inappropriate in education. Education should never be a boot camp. Damn competition! Let it be about teaching and nurturing, guiding, and learning for Christ's sake! And this is supposely a Christian college????
I am amazed. A flash of sanity for the BSA. The next thing, you know, Microsoft will make the source code for W2000 open source. Or maybe even, I will find a meaningful, rewarding job.
...of this off-topic crap. I think everyone is tried of it.
Can you quit?
LIES! The ACLU was never about neglect. Service were supposed to be provided that never were. And spending on social programs is NOTHING - NOTHING today, comparing to the fetish of weapons and gorging of civil libreties by the police state.
You keep on repeating your lies. They will never come true. The biggest receiver of welfare today are the megacorps getting away with raiding the treasury, tax breaks to the rich, and subsidies to the war machines.
DAMN YOU AND YOUR LIES!!!!!
YOU CAN KEEP ON TRYING TO REWRITE HISTORY.
BUT THE TRUTH WILL REMIND - THE REAGAN/BUSH REGIME OF 1980's SPENT MORE ON CORPORATE WELFARE THAN THE U.S. SPEND IN IT"S ENTIRE HISTORY!
1980 started with a public debt less then a trillion dollars. Reagan/Bush left it over 3 trillion and raising.
Don't fucking piss on my leg and tell me it is raining!!!!!!!!
There were some. But not millions...not even a million by a low shot. And not families. Certainly, nothing like it is now, not with beggars at every intersection, not thousands of homeless in every city.
It all got insane during the Reagan era. Especially with the "deinstitutionalization" movement. The mental hosptials emptied people on to the streets with little or no followup care. And with the long term unemployed and then the rollback of social services.
America has never seen hoards of homeless like we have now - including during the depression of the 30's.
I grew watching the all of the Mercury launches. Most of Gemini. I stayed up pass midnight for the first time in my life to wait for Armstrong and Aldin to take a walk on the moon. I was a True Believer in human spaceflight and a human presence in space.
But now that I am older and with our new computers, I just wonder. I see millions of homeless in America that we never tolerated before. My older friends are all in fear of not being able to afford healthcare. The American empire is ready to start preemptive wars to maintain the right to pollute the earth and to maintain the monolopy on weapons of mass destruction.
I am totally opposed to going to Mars. It is just too soon and too much else needs to be done. I would like to a program that works toward building O'Neil colonies but that type of planning and cooperation is just not going to happen. Any exploration can be done by robots. The resources for a human base on the moon or a trip to Mars is just misplaced resources.
Now, if you are going to build mass drivers and then build solar geneator transmitters in orbit, then I would dearly love to stop burning carbon. And if a few monarchies lose there billions in the process, that can only be a Good Thang.
No, gawd, no. Microsoft Outlook (ad Outlook Express) maybe the single biggest security hole in the whole of the history of computing. Whoever provides a free alternate with no possible buffer overflow exploits, no damnable script kiddie hooks, and defaults set to allow the Average Joe to plug and play safely will have done all of humanity a favor.
I have to agree. I never buy CD's anymore - unless it is directly from the band - which is one of the cool thangs about living in Austin. Because 1) the RIAA sucks, 2) most popular music sucks, 3) the Net provides great alternatives, especially if you are over the hill and lost your hearing above 12Khz. As for the MPAA, welll.... there is just no substitute for the experience of the silver screen with it's giant 35mm glory and 5.1 sound that would get me evicted in my apartment. I am sad to report the ONLY picket line that I had ever crossed in my life was to see "Star Wars:The Empire Strikes Back". There was a projectionist's strike on. But dammit, it was Star Wars! I would do it again.
Oh, my dear YoungBlood, truly old games are text only and only work on mainframes with teletype machines. The Colossal Cave Adventure, Star Trek (with 64 "quandrants" and no map of the galaxy - you had to write it out by hand), or probably Chess is much older than any microprocessor including the Z80 in that TRS-80. I recall playing on an IBM 370 but I am sure someone will remember before that.
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Projects/Pathfinder/
or search for "Nasa solar-powered Pathfinder" in your favorite search engine.
This is a solar-powered drone that eventually will fly 24 hours (carrying batteries for night).
...is everyone has a computer and it is Good Enough. Also, having a console in a home frees up the computer for other people. Consoles work well with two or more people - computers are generally designed for a single person.