And that's cheap energy that comes with the added benefit that if you drain enough energy out of Yellowstone, you may even prevent it from doing its every-n-million-year super-eruptions that trigger those super-extinctions.
Sadly, if you drained enough energy to do that you would end up with an environmental problem all by itself unless you find a clever way to radiate all that extra heat to space.
Of course, you know this would be very impractical. In order to put it in orbit you would have to adjust its speed and trajectory in very precise ways. It's not very easy to do so with a spacecraft. With an uncooperative mountain of ruble it should prove remarkably difficult.
While I agree it would be nice to have a big chunk of raw materials in LEO, putting it there would not be the easiest thing to do and could, possibly, end up very, very badly.
But with a smaller solid one, that's something that could be attempted. Even as a test.
Discounting the racist tones of your message, if any population's youth is really determined to kill itself, the government should step out of its way and let nature do its job.
If those kids kill themselves before reproducing, any genetic tendency to aggression they had won't be passed to future generations. Unfortunately, it's expected that overly aggressive populations with high mortality rates in young ages will, given enough time, develop suitable mating behaviour that allows them to reproduce sooner.
I have been reliably running my hello world program since my Apple II days. With more than 30 years of field testing, extensive debugging and hardening, it's probably one of the most enterprise-ready hello world programs in existence.
"just take the free one provided with your wireless providers contract of adhesion"
Actually, the subsidies and tie-ins network providers impose are responsible for a lot of the craziness of the cell-phone market and, most probably, they are the reason why Europe's smartphone market is so far ahead of the US (as to make the iPhone a lot less cool when compared to other überphones). You really should be able to buy phones and network service from unrelated parties and switch as you wish. Preventing you from paying full price on a phone distorts the perception of value.
And a phone is a whole lot more useful when it is combined with a PDA and a PDA is a whole lot more useful when it's combined with a phone. It's actually a great idea (and an old one).
I will concede you may gain some versatility if your phone can provide data connectivity to your other devices, but, nevertheless, connectivity is great.
Apart from that, the iPhone has a great web browser.
"I think if you could get Republicans to see how truly corrupt our election system has become, they'd be as outraged as well."
The winning side should be every bit as outraged as the losing one. The fact they are not is a very bad sign.
And, frankly, with all the complexities in the US election system and with all the tiny rules than can be manipulated to change the outcome of an election, I am quite surprised someone had to resort to tamper with the electronic system.
On the other hand, if the POTUS is a really good one, he should feel safe and welcome just about anywhere, just like any other president of any other friendly nation should feel.
The fact the current POTUS and most of his predecessors would most definitely not be welcome in most of the Middle East says more about US foreign policy than libraries worth of studies could ever approach.
Maybe if the US hadn't invaded Iraq to benefit greedy government supporters...
400 years?! No. I am certainly not that patient;-)
I agree exploration can be a slow process and most of the less noble drivers to go to the Moon are gone now, but 40 years is a long time in terms of human lives. Far too many of the engineers who built those extraordinary machines are dead and the technology has to be re-developed. If we keep stopping like this it will take very long to get back there.
It goes deeper than that. There is no other country really interested in exploring space. Most space programs are usually a way to keep the aerospace industry happy with non-military projects (and funding the military ones by indirect means) or a form of propaganda proclaiming how brave a given country is.
"Have some patience, man! It's like having the Vikings visit the Americas, get killed, never return, and then you complain that "Maybe we don't deserve to be a seafaring race.""
But nobody got killed by Selenites. The Moon is ours to take, as is pretty much everything in our solar system. It's like the Vikings came back full of interesting stories and people would never get back because it's too risky and expensive etc.
"JFK was buried the day Armstrong set foot on the Moon.
In which parallel universe did that happen?"
Metaphor: noun [C or U] an expression which describes a person or object in a literary way by referring to something that is considered to possess similar characteristics to the person or object you are trying to describe:
'The mind is an ocean' and 'the city is a jungle' are both metaphors.
Metaphor and simile are the most commonly used figures of speech in everyday language.
One role is to develop technology for space access. The other is to use said space access to advance science. Those two goals are conflicting.
The second role could be satisfied with cheap and relatively simple technology, but that is not what the first role requires, as it does not push the envelope far enough.
Slashdot Mirror
And that's cheap energy that comes with the added benefit that if you drain enough energy out of Yellowstone, you may even prevent it from doing its every-n-million-year super-eruptions that trigger those super-extinctions.
Sadly, if you drained enough energy to do that you would end up with an environmental problem all by itself unless you find a clever way to radiate all that extra heat to space.
"But the pieces will have more surface area and therefore will burn up in the atmosphere more efficiently."
And, if you blow it to pieces with enough energy, most pieces will miss Earth.
"Wont be something for the last minute, but, could work?"
If you plan ahead, hitting it with a brick ten years before it hits Earth may change its course just enough it misses us.
If you do it a million years before it hits, you may get away just by staring at it long enough.
Of course, you know this would be very impractical. In order to put it in orbit you would have to adjust its speed and trajectory in very precise ways. It's not very easy to do so with a spacecraft. With an uncooperative mountain of ruble it should prove remarkably difficult.
While I agree it would be nice to have a big chunk of raw materials in LEO, putting it there would not be the easiest thing to do and could, possibly, end up very, very badly.
But with a smaller solid one, that's something that could be attempted. Even as a test.
Discounting the racist tones of your message, if any population's youth is really determined to kill itself, the government should step out of its way and let nature do its job.
If those kids kill themselves before reproducing, any genetic tendency to aggression they had won't be passed to future generations. Unfortunately, it's expected that overly aggressive populations with high mortality rates in young ages will, given enough time, develop suitable mating behaviour that allows them to reproduce sooner.
Evolution has its own agenda, you know.
I have been reliably running my hello world program since my Apple II days. With more than 30 years of field testing, extensive debugging and hardening, it's probably one of the most enterprise-ready hello world programs in existence.
Yours obviously can't compete.
I think the best way to describe this attitude is "our products are much better than our clients".
"just take the free one provided with your wireless providers contract of adhesion"
Actually, the subsidies and tie-ins network providers impose are responsible for a lot of the craziness of the cell-phone market and, most probably, they are the reason why Europe's smartphone market is so far ahead of the US (as to make the iPhone a lot less cool when compared to other überphones). You really should be able to buy phones and network service from unrelated parties and switch as you wish. Preventing you from paying full price on a phone distorts the perception of value.
And a phone is a whole lot more useful when it is combined with a PDA and a PDA is a whole lot more useful when it's combined with a phone. It's actually a great idea (and an old one).
I will concede you may gain some versatility if your phone can provide data connectivity to your other devices, but, nevertheless, connectivity is great.
Apart from that, the iPhone has a great web browser.
Just a thought: Could a disk IO scheduler detect transfer speed and seek times and optimize itself to compensate/alleviate any problems?
This would be very good not only for different storage mediums (magnetic disks, optical disks, tape, SSDs, memory, network-attached-whatever...)
"Unusually clean installs are 6GB+!"
There. Fixed that for you.
I wonder how that one would work.
In any way you put it, they won't do it for free.
They may even do it for no money, but, after all, that's what diplomacy is for - to turn money (or the lack of it) into political influence.
"Why should Japan get paid to get the same benefits the US has to pay to get?"
Because they won't do it for free?
I think it will, but only when we can maintain intelligent conversations with our computers HAL-9000 style.
Until then, it's more of a nuisance than anything else.
One does not exclude the other.
"I think if you could get Republicans to see how truly corrupt our election system has become, they'd be as outraged as well."
The winning side should be every bit as outraged as the losing one. The fact they are not is a very bad sign.
And, frankly, with all the complexities in the US election system and with all the tiny rules than can be manipulated to change the outcome of an election, I am quite surprised someone had to resort to tamper with the electronic system.
"I'm fairly certain that if *I* merely open the ballot box or machine during the election"
I think you wouldn't even need to open it - just breaking the seals should suffice.
On the other hand, if the POTUS is a really good one, he should feel safe and welcome just about anywhere, just like any other president of any other friendly nation should feel.
The fact the current POTUS and most of his predecessors would most definitely not be welcome in most of the Middle East says more about US foreign policy than libraries worth of studies could ever approach.
Maybe if the US hadn't invaded Iraq to benefit greedy government supporters...
What is a "contol" and why is this so important?
400 years?! No. I am certainly not that patient ;-)
I agree exploration can be a slow process and most of the less noble drivers to go to the Moon are gone now, but 40 years is a long time in terms of human lives. Far too many of the engineers who built those extraordinary machines are dead and the technology has to be re-developed. If we keep stopping like this it will take very long to get back there.
It goes deeper than that. There is no other country really interested in exploring space. Most space programs are usually a way to keep the aerospace industry happy with non-military projects (and funding the military ones by indirect means) or a form of propaganda proclaiming how brave a given country is.
It's not a problem of the US.
"Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1968."
July, 1969
"For that matter, the Apollo 1 mission didn't happend until 1967"
Apollo 1 never left the ground. Parts of it did, in a sense, but mainly in the form of smoke.
And it's marked as insightful because most people here do indeed understand metaphor and also get their facts straight when understanding it.
"Have some patience, man! It's like having the Vikings visit the Americas, get killed, never return, and then you complain that "Maybe we don't deserve to be a seafaring race.""
But nobody got killed by Selenites. The Moon is ours to take, as is pretty much everything in our solar system. It's like the Vikings came back full of interesting stories and people would never get back because it's too risky and expensive etc.
"JFK was buried the day Armstrong set foot on the Moon.
In which parallel universe did that happen?"
Metaphor:
noun [C or U]
an expression which describes a person or object in a literary way by referring to something that is considered to possess similar characteristics to the person or object you are trying to describe:
'The mind is an ocean' and 'the city is a jungle' are both metaphors.
Metaphor and simile are the most commonly used figures of speech in everyday language.
NASA has actually two roles here.
One role is to develop technology for space access. The other is to use said space access to advance science. Those two goals are conflicting.
The second role could be satisfied with cheap and relatively simple technology, but that is not what the first role requires, as it does not push the envelope far enough.