I take this to mean that it is not ready for precision applications and that it may not be. Well, duh. Think about the vibration concerns. Any movement not only jiggles the thing but it also takes time for it to settle back down.
Back when I designed a version of this w a a a a y back in the early eighties I was quite paranoid about the issue of how do ya keep the thing from accumulating stuff near the resonant frequencies. I'm not seeing anything in the brief English-language piece about this at all. My puppy allowed for the option of changing focal length by changing ring diameter which, oh btw, made things potentially even worse on that front. On the other hand, IIRC, I made a point of the importance of being willing to switch ring materials to optimize for stuff like ability to dampen vibration. I wonder if they've figured out yet that when you've got a liquid lens that changes properties by changing electrical charge, you can add impurities to the liquid such that charging the liquid, the liquid will change color. Very precise, very neat, and entirely reversable, at least for as many cycles as they would need for a consumer product.
As I mentioned below, I really *am* gonna have to dig up my old drawings and writeup.
*sigh* This because I have nothing else to do with my time.
After all, I invented a variant back in '83. NASA should still have copies of some of my drawings.
Of course I designed it for different uses (mostly diagnostic) and had a few added features that they didn't implement. Gonna have to look at their patents and take a gander at the claims.
I wonder if I should sue.
What's *really* funny is that from what I know, DoD may already have patented my beastie for use in SDI, with or without NASA permission.
Do they just pick on the tourists, then?
Well, I'm generalizing here but . ..
Actually, yes. The cabbies know full well that tourists are usually less rational and have less of a clue about what constitutes effective behavior then New Yorkers. Tourists *expect* frantic, rushed driving so some cabbies, in search of a better tip for their exceedingly dangerous jobs (higher mortaility then either cops or firefighters, IIRC) will give the customers what they want.
In fact, I've found that cabbies *slow down* and start making comments about the fare not being worth a ticket, let alone losing a shift, when they realize that I know what I'm talking about.
Btw, just for the record, I took an average of over ten cabs a week for several years, mostly in NYC, sometimes in nearby Jersey, and occasionally in DC, Boston, or Westchester and my experience is that NY cabbies (on average) get there faster, know more about what they're doing, and are more honest. But, then again, I've long made it a policy to know the general route, know the key pronunciations of major streets, and treat the cabbies as human beings no matter where I've been and it has been my sad experience that far too many tourists not only do none of the above but are quite openly racist and insulting ("do you speak English?") in their behavior as I have gotten to witness when sharing cabs from conventions or otherwise having to experience letting out-of-towners give the directions.
In short, having taken lots of cabs in, hmm, let me count 'em up, seven American cities and three or four suburban areas, I find New York cabbies to be the most professional and (barring Portland, OR) the most civilized in their behavior.
Oh, no question, the use of the dollar sign is a cheap shot. But, hey, at least a quarter of why I hang out at/. is to be able to indulge my whims to engage in cheap shots:->
Maybe my serious stuff would be read more if I were to adopt a more "proper" tone but after too many years in jacket and tie (or even suit-bound - blech!) in flourescent-lit office buildings, I just can't be bothered.
I mean, criminy, I've been in self-imposed exile from the land of corporate jobs and "serious" business prose for over three years now and have just come home from the mushiest, sappiest, flat out cutest Valentine's Day dinner of my life, part of which was spent discussing the implications of my swiftly growing business and my swiftly improving finances. So doggone it, the silly letter usages stay. The world will just have to survive the trauma of it all.
Down with propriety! Hail giggling and ditzy cheap shots!
Good Lord, sir, you hereby win my award for Intriguingly Informative Old Timer for this thred. Nice to be reminded that I'm not the only one around here who was a geek before last month;->
btw, thanks for the naming convention heads-up, it matches what I've read in an old MS doc I've got sitting around. And good luck with your film.
I'll betcha a nickel that this comment and quite a few others are being posted by Micro$oft employees. It's just got that classic M$ pseudo-reasonable, highly informed, but somehow off feel to it. We're watching history, folks and don't you doubt for a second that we'll being seeing vast mounds of astroturfing in the days ahead. Again, mark my words, someday it will come out in memoirs or elsewhere that a key part of how M$ is reacting is having hordes of their staffers go online and do spin control.
Don't forget just how many smart, aggressive folks with smart, aggressive bosses depend on Bill for their paychecks and will be sent off to minimize the damage of what is sure to be causing no small amount of realignment out Seattle way.
Intentional release? I really don't think so. Micro$oft has one of the strongest corporate cultures of any organization of the past hundred years. Their acculturation means make the Jesuits seem like they just test prospectives for eyesight and driver's licence.
That having been said, one of the fundamental tenets of the Micro$oft belief system is that source code is to be held close at all costs, kinda like the brain-damaged way that Palm continues to fight to insist that "smaller is always better" even while every other platform is furiously adding back keyboards, different form factors, etc.
To willfully open a codebase is to accept the inevitability of vulnerability, to surrender the myth of impregnable barriers and perfect seals. M$ is far too wealthy, too successful as they are, and too paranoid, from Ballmer and Gates on down, to be so bold.
Without doubt, this event will change tech history. You know it, I know it, even Jon Katz probably knows it. But even so, I'ld lay heavy odds that the folks in Redmond will still be denying key implications and consequences of this leak for at least (mark my words) four years.
Well, first of all, I linked through to my JE because that, in turn, *does* link to other sources. I'm pretty fond of my own writing, but I'm not under the impression that I'm a well-known news outlet;-)
Now, again, if you had read my journal, you'ld know that:
A.) I loath the term "liberal", do not consider myself one, and have gone into exhaustive detail about leftists of any number of stripes who were not "good people".
B.) My conclusions about the nature of the two guys who were inciting violence came from quite a few variables, including clothes, behavior, and, oh, let's not forget, the fact that one of them was able to jump up and down on top of a police van with impunity while the cops were arresting people left and right just for crossing barricades.
(Ask any cypherpunk or 2600 habitue, far too many cops look like cops look like cops and "spot the fed" has long been an easy and satisfying sport any time public organized activities are going on that make law enforcement nervous. Chances are that there were plenty of cops there I didn't "make". But these two were obvious for reasons having nothing to do with their alleged ideologies.)
C.) I have, in fact documented examples of protesters being violent. Just not there and then.
As right-wingers do so love to do, you have grossly overbroadened a small group of very specific statements and then tried to condemn me on the basis of things I never said. I was responding to a specific challenge with a specific answer.
Cocky? Could be. Hard not to get that way when the people opposing me are so frequently such mental pygmies. If the day comes that you learn how to read, or even, heaven forfend, exhibit reasoning skills, feel free to come back and you may find that when you provide coherent arguments connected to things that actually happened, I will be more then willing to take you more seriously.
Dude, don't tease us like this. You write this great little post, give good reasons for your argument, have worked at the damn place for SEVEN YEARS but then you don't give us a link. Are you telling me that Record Exchange has no site at all?
*sigh*
Here in NYC, online sales derived from their superior knowledge and stock of older stuff is part of what keeps indie stores in business. My favorite source, Accidental, now makes more money online then they do from bricks and mortar. Keep in mind, tho, the stock they sell online comes in from people like me dropping by their location and selling off our stuff for quick cash. All kinda synergistic, y'know.
Re Fox and your view of them: Well, at least now we *know* that you're clueless.
Re "facts not on your side": Funny, I've been providing confirmable details and links all along. You've just bullshitted.
Re "the unnamed agency": I left them unnamed merely because that was how they were described in the police and press statements. From context it's pretty clear that they were mostly Homeland Security [sic] with a few from the FBI and Justice [sic]. There has never been a coverup and I never said that there had been. Quite the contrary, the federal government has put out vast piles of open documents on this stuff. Our primary media outlets may not have given it much coverage but that's more a shortage of airtime then any "coverup". Of course, in Seattle we simply don't know who some of them were but the most indicators seem to point to military folks planning for urban warfare. Let's hope that some of the result of that "observing" is making them a little less trigger-happy in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
Sorry, oh cowardly, clueless one, but my "whackjob conspiracy theories" are based on things like the New York City police department having since admitted that agents from an unamed federal agency were responsible for originating several key things, such as the "protestor questionaire" and the shutting down of thru streets. Check statements from the police in Seattle, New York, San Franciso, Oakland, D.C., and so on and you'll find all of them eager to admit the involvement of federal agents, if only to cover their own increasingly toasty posteriors.
Go back to my JEs if you need links (such as to the lawsuit versus the NYPD).
Too bad you still need this explained to you at this late date (and on/. yet!) but we're in the middle of a vast move to refederalize politics-related law-enforcement and Asscroft and buddies have made no effort to hide it. In fact, they don't quite seem to understand why anybody would be upset by this. Maybe you should start by looking into a little bitty thing called the Patriot Actm and its many open and stealth variants. Everybody but you already knows this stuff. Maybe if you looked at something besides Fox you'ld be a little better informed.
Oh, btw, if you intend to engage in repeated interactions, stop hiding behind AC posts. Try to grow some balls and learn to post in an attributed fashion as we grownups do.
[can you]Come up with any valid claims of protesters being harassed, other than:
* protesters engaged in such crimes as trespass or violence
* protesters unlucky to be caught in the middle of a riot caused by the violent ones.
I was there for all of the major New York protests and I can tell you firsthand that the police repeatedly slammed into crowds of peaceful protestors. No violent actions to be seen at all except for cops riding horses into packed crowds of peaceful citizens. Same is true in D.C. The protestors were peacefully and lawfully assembling when the police blocked all exits to the park, trapping everybody within, and then pushed everyone into a too-small space. Then they started arresting people for "refusing to leave" (if they just stood there) or "assault" if they tried to get through the police lines to leave.
On Feburary 15th, as you can read about in my JEs, they also closed down the subway stations, blocked streets, and worked quite hard to force a confrontation by shoving us into ever smaller spaces and trying to force us into a clash.
Did I see anybody being flat out inciting? Yeah, two guys, both big, young, muscular, white guys in preppie clothes screaming at the people around them that we should get violent. One of them on top of a police van jumping up and down and yelling in his Long Island accent. In other words, undercover cops doing their illegal best to create violence. The real protesters just avoided these guys, with some of us making loud comments about "agents provocateurs", assuming that they were either cops or crazy but either way they certainly were not part of any group *we* would ever support.
So yet again, I call bullshit. We were not violent. The cops were. And frankly, from what I've now seen and read, chances are the whole damned thing was coordinated by Ashcroft's slimeballs exercising oversight from within local police offices.
Too bad, so sad; yet another right wing bit of disinformation falls in the face of actual facts. Got any Iraqi WMD documents to sell me?
or the other part of that is it converts some forms of radiation in to light, does that mean if you made a big Sphere of the stuff it would be well lit and warm on the inside.
Prolly not. Since aerogel is so low density, only a tiny fraction of the particles passing through create light. To get enough light to usefully illuminate the region underneath you'ld most likely need a layer of aerogel hundreds of meters thick. But in that case, since it is not one hundred percent transparent (if it were, it would be invisible), you'ld lose more light from transmission loss then you'ld gain from all that volume. Feel free to do the math, but I wouldn't keep my hopes up.
Boy, it's been a long time since I've seen those words. Fer yew ignorant young folks, the parent to this post is a paraphrasing of the classic game Paranoia!
Yes, dice, pen, and paper gaming, the one true faith.
I'm not convinced at all that we should be spending billions of dollars of government money on new launchers when we have a system sitting around that works very nicely, thank you very much.
Sure, a brand new system would be better, but between the brevity of our pass by-with Mars, the vitality of private space programs, and our humbled and abused government finances, perhaps the Saturn should be more then a five million dollar paperweight and conversation piece.
And even beyond that, nothing gives perspective on a subject liking getting to look up close and personal at the gear used to do it. Especially since leading-edge gear from the seventies and earlier (like, say, the Spirit of St. Louis) always looks so DIY to anybody who pays attention.
I found it very energizing when I was a kid to see the Kennedy Space Center Saturn and think "hmm.... that wouldn't be so hard to build at all".
Cool link and good point. But as a bunch of us discussed in a JE this past summer much of the hot and heavy VR work was done in random places all over the world and, incidently was done by '94, while his team were still denying the very term "VR".
He makes a good point about near-space interaction, but again, much of this was also being worked on in other places.
Even he refers back to Ivan Sutherland's work back in 1968!
VIEW was seminal. Just as VPL was. Just as Warnock's work was. Just as was the work by enough groups that their leaders wouldn't fit in my living room.
I remember SIGGRAPH back in, IIRC, '85 and seeing some mighty VR-looking work being presented by some mighty threadbare and independent bunches of guys.
Did the space program contribute "something"? Certainly.
Is VR something that "came from the space program"? I think not.
Now, I love space development as much as anybody (check my journal if you doubt it) but this utter bullshit of claiming that NASA still creates a tidal wave of spinoffs is a grotesque exaggeration that decreases the credibility of a once-true claim.
GROUND PROCESSING SCHEDULING SYSTEM - Computer-based scheduling system that uses artificial intelligence to manage thousands of overlapping activities involved in launch preparations of NASA's Space Shuttles. The NASA technology was licensed to a new company which developed commercial applications that provide real-time planning and optimization of manufacturing operations, integrated supply chains, and customer orders.
Oh, please. After everything from the Challenger disaster to the constant ISS cost overruns, do you really expect us to want to use project management software from NASA? As with most of these, the best they can do is to say, "NASA made a product that did this". They certainly can't say "X percent of the market uses this product". Now, speaking as a onetime economics major and a former workflow consultant, I've actually looked at NASA and DOD-created workflow and project managment solutions and I have found them to have absolutely foul interfaces, enterprise-level admin and platform costs, require dedicated boxen, and then provide third-rate functionality.
You know, about what you'ld expect from a government contractor.
SEMICONDUCTOR CUBING - NASA initiative led to the Memory Short Stack, a three-dimensional semiconductor package in which dozens of integrated circuits are stacked one atop another to form a cube, offering faster computer processing speeds, higher levels of integration, lower power requirements than conventional chip sets, and dramatic reduction in the size and weight of memory-intensive systems, such as medical imaging devices.
Yep, this one is all over the place, in use from PS/2s to digital watches. NOT!
Like IBM's early gallium-arsenide opto-electronics or the late Alpha chips, this is a pretty toy that is not only is too expensive for most real-world applications, but is also being done better by more, shall we say, frugal organizations. And, just in case you folks are forgetting, the supercomputer companies have been doing variations on this for years now.
STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS - This NASA program, originally created for spacecraft design, has been employed in a broad array of non-aerospace applications, such as the automobile industry, manufacture of machine tools, and hardware designs.
Okay, so I'll agree that this is important. But not only are most of the important concepts like NURBS things developed at places like Autodesk, but NASA's funding and development for this was, AFAIK, mostly in their aircraft research division, which is almost entirely separate from spaceflight development.
WINDOWS VISUAL NEWS READER (Win Vn) - Software program developed to support payload technical documentation at Kennedy Space Center, allowing the exchange of technical information among a large group of users. WinVn is an enabling technology product that provides countless people with Internet access otherwise beyond their grasp, and it was optimized for organizations that have direct Internet access.
Well, shucky-darn! A news client. Gawd knows there's a shortage of those! Why surely the two hundred or so other variants out there already would have been useless without NASA getting into the act.
Uh-huh. Right.
AIR QUALITY MONITOR - Utilizing a NASA-developed, advanced analytical technique software package, an air quality monitor system was created, capable of separating the various gases in bulk smokestack exhaust streams and determining the amount of individual gases present within the stream for compliance with smo
So, I've now been to the Lego site, Amazon, and about half a dozen other places, and clearly there are plenty of kits just like what we're talking about. Funny, though, I go to ToysrUs & others like them on a regular basis and I, certainly haven't seen these around.
What we have here, yet again, is a failure to communicate. Lego needs to get their shit together and get decent placement and promotion for their core products.
And ya know what else, I am, in fact, gonna be buying some of those "creator" tubs in a few weeks for some upcoming birthdays. Sending a few of my dollars to the folks in the cold lands.
Management with a clue (tm) would have realized about a decade ago it was time to produce the 'Lego Value Line' with probably 5-10 very generic and interchangable pieces that can serve as the base of some other larger more specialized constructions....
Hear, hear! I couldn't agree more. I'ld say it should be more like thirty or forty pieces, all in classic colors, with one of the big flat bases.
In fact, I seem to remember that when I was a kid (way back in the early seventies), there were kits just like that.
I'll say this much. If there were kits for a little under twenty bucks that would give a kid enough to be functional, I'ld be buying two or more kits per year, handing them off to every kid born to friends, relatives, whatever. I spent around eighty bucks this year on simple basic toys for various kids in the under ten range and that is about average.
Oh, just for the record, *my* legos all got packed up in, yep, a bucket and shipped off to my nephew when he was around three. As of when he was hitting his teen years, he was still very happy to have gotten them.
As for the related issue of the market decreasing as the accumulated sets stay usable, all I can say is, ARE YOU HIGH?! India, China, and Indonesia are all seeing the creation of a middle class that will get larger to the tune of HALF A BILLION PEOPLE in the next ten years. Add in Mexico and assorted industrialising nations and the numbers are huge. All Lego needs to do is focus on all those first-generation-prosperous parents, selling not as flash gimcracks but as real educational toys and they'll have more sales then they can handle for the next generation, at least.
Sell Lego as a quality, prestige product that will help their kids make money as adults and the 'rents will buy by the ton.
He and Gibson started Cyberpunk.
Uhhh... no. John Brunner was writing stuff like Shockwave Rider w a-a-a-a-a-a- y before either of those two.
For that matter, some of Phillip K. Dick's stuff and that of a dozen others was pretty doggone relevant back when Gibson and Sterling were still in nappies. Delany certainly is on that list of earlier folks, as is Bester.
For tone, I'ld go with Cordwainer Smith or even Van Vogt.
Lem? Funny as hell, smart and sharp. But I wouldn't classify him as cyberpunk. Silly though his tone may be, some of Harry Harrison's stuff has some pretty good cpunkish meat under all the sugar.
Don't get me wrong, I love Stirling's and Gibson's work. Just reread Globalhead for that matter (fifth time?). But "started"? Uh-uh.
Okay, I'm kinda kidding here but not entirely. How many of you have ever looked at a Saturn 5? In person, I mean. In my case I spent some time (in '83?) walking around and checking out the one at the Cape.
Man, that's some seriously primitive gear there by modern standards.
As my old boss when I worked for a consulting firm used to say,"Best is the enemy of good enough". In other words, if you've got a solution that you know will do the job and you find yourself wanking about trying to find the best of all possible solutions, then it's time to give serious thought to going with the "good enough" and get the job done instead of watching the years go by as you aspire to "best". Okay, so we know that Saturns work. We know how to build them, we know how to launch them and we know how they act. How much would it cost to just bloody well build some more of the f*ckers? I mean, if they were doable in the Sixties, how much can it possibly cost now? -Use modern electronics but just match function with the prehistoric gear you're replacing.
-Use composites where convenient but just as lighter "aftermarket" versions of the original metal.
-Propellant? Criminy. Have it made in India and launch from near there. Kick in five million for assorted environmental reclamation and biology training for locals.
-What to launch? Not my department, cobber. That's a whole other discussion. What I'm addressing here is why aren't we going back right now.
Basically I'm talking about building something that is to an original Saturn 5 what a kit car is to a Model A. Original "lines", original basic design, built with off-the shelf modern parts. Maybe some tweaking of nozzle geometry but don't get het up about the one true optimum, just rebuild the old one with standard, off-the-shelf modern ceramics.
So, anybody got a guess on what that would cost to do?
Rustin
Re:I'm sick of wasted tax dollars
on
Dreams of the Moon
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Nothing is preventing a private business from doing this except for the massive up front costs involved. Not true at all.
As the X-Prize competitors have been documenting step by appalling step, our oh-so-helpful goverment has strewn a vast and willfully undocumented collection of regulations, structures, and plain old misinformation meant to keep space travel in the hands of the, yep, it's that thing again, military-industrial complex of major contractors and government departments. Ever since they shut down Ford Motor's space programs (really - I'm not kidding) the U.S. Government, the major contractors, and dozens of fuzzily defined entities like Intelsat have been jeaslously guarding their monopoly.
Look into Beal Aerospace and what happened to them. The path to space is laid with many traps. Most of them laid and maintained by the same sorts put in charge of overseeing Haliburton's Iraq contracts.
Well, first of all, MIAHM assumes generations of moon presence by the time of the revolt, by which time they're pretty far along in self-sufficiency.
Secondly, Check out the off-the grid folks, stereolithography, and the friggin Society for Creative Anachronism get-togethers and you'll see that modern techies are real damn good these days at building industrial infrastructure real fast.
Chips, for now, are a bitch. But even there a deep reserve of Transmeta-style gear would give some solid breathing room.
As for the usual canard of trace minerals in the diet, do you really think that the residents of the average prison get a balanced diet? People can go for years without some of this stuff.
Thirdly, there is, IIRC, oxygen on the moon and, assuming a fleet of robotic ram scoops doing sun runs, plenty of hydrogen and other light elements reachable from the moon.
Lastly, from the H.M.S. Bounty to Skylab, carefully picked, tightly-managed populations have a persnickity habit of going rebel when they get pushed too hard and are very far from the source of authority.
All of which comes back to READ THE FRICKIN BOOK! It is still a tome of much value. Anything treated as a textbook by space enthusiasts and the Weather Undergound is some serious shit.
You're in the city; pick up a copy at Mercer Books or at the Strand or something.
Happy reading, write a JE (instead of another of those skimpy links) on your thoughts when you're done,
Slashdot Mirror
I take this to mean that it is not ready for precision applications and that it may not be.
Well, duh. Think about the vibration concerns. Any movement not only jiggles the thing but it also takes time for it to settle back down.
Back when I designed a version of this w a a a a y back in the early eighties I was quite paranoid about the issue of how do ya keep the thing from accumulating stuff near the resonant frequencies. I'm not seeing anything in the brief English-language piece about this at all. My puppy allowed for the option of changing focal length by changing ring diameter which, oh btw, made things potentially even worse on that front. On the other hand, IIRC, I made a point of the importance of being willing to switch ring materials to optimize for stuff like ability to dampen vibration.
I wonder if they've figured out yet that when you've got a liquid lens that changes properties by changing electrical charge, you can add impurities to the liquid such that charging the liquid, the liquid will change color. Very precise, very neat, and entirely reversable, at least for as many cycles as they would need for a consumer product.
As I mentioned below, I really *am* gonna have to dig up my old drawings and writeup.
*sigh*
This because I have nothing else to do with my time.
Yeah, right.
Rustin
After all, I invented a variant back in '83. NASA should still have copies of some of my drawings.
.
Of course I designed it for different uses (mostly diagnostic) and had a few added features that they didn't implement. Gonna have to look at their patents and take a gander at the claims.
I wonder if I should sue.
What's *really* funny is that from what I know, DoD may already have patented my beastie for use in SDI, with or without NASA permission.
Hmmmmm . . . . .
Rustin
Do they just pick on the tourists, then? .
Well, I'm generalizing here but . .
Actually, yes.
The cabbies know full well that tourists are usually less rational and have less of a clue about what constitutes effective behavior then New Yorkers. Tourists *expect* frantic, rushed driving so some cabbies, in search of a better tip for their exceedingly dangerous jobs (higher mortaility then either cops or firefighters, IIRC) will give the customers what they want.
In fact, I've found that cabbies *slow down* and start making comments about the fare not being worth a ticket, let alone losing a shift, when they realize that I know what I'm talking about.
Btw, just for the record, I took an average of over ten cabs a week for several years, mostly in NYC, sometimes in nearby Jersey, and occasionally in DC, Boston, or Westchester and my experience is that NY cabbies (on average) get there faster, know more about what they're doing, and are more honest. But, then again, I've long made it a policy to know the general route, know the key pronunciations of major streets, and treat the cabbies as human beings no matter where I've been and it has been my sad experience that far too many tourists not only do none of the above but are quite openly racist and insulting ("do you speak English?") in their behavior as I have gotten to witness when sharing cabs from conventions or otherwise having to experience letting out-of-towners give the directions.
In short, having taken lots of cabs in, hmm, let me count 'em up, seven American cities and three or four suburban areas, I find New York cabbies to be the most professional and (barring Portland, OR) the most civilized in their behavior.
Rustin
LOL
/. is to be able to indulge my whims to engage in cheap shots :->
Oh, no question, the use of the dollar sign is a cheap shot. But, hey, at least a quarter of why I hang out at
Maybe my serious stuff would be read more if I were to adopt a more "proper" tone but after too many years in jacket and tie (or even suit-bound - blech!) in flourescent-lit office buildings, I just can't be bothered.
I mean, criminy, I've been in self-imposed exile from the land of corporate jobs and "serious" business prose for over three years now and have just come home from the mushiest, sappiest, flat out cutest Valentine's Day dinner of my life, part of which was spent discussing the implications of my swiftly growing business and my swiftly improving finances. So doggone it, the silly letter usages stay. The world will just have to survive the trauma of it all.
Down with propriety! Hail giggling and ditzy cheap shots!
Rustin
Good Lord, sir, you hereby win my award for Intriguingly Informative Old Timer for this thred. Nice to be reminded that I'm not the only one around here who was a geek before last month ;->
btw, thanks for the naming convention heads-up, it matches what I've read in an old MS doc I've got sitting around. And good luck with your film.
Rustin
I'll betcha a nickel that this comment and quite a few others are being posted by Micro$oft employees. It's just got that classic M$ pseudo-reasonable, highly informed, but somehow off feel to it.
We're watching history, folks and don't you doubt for a second that we'll being seeing vast mounds of astroturfing in the days ahead. Again, mark my words, someday it will come out in memoirs or elsewhere that a key part of how M$ is reacting is having hordes of their staffers go online and do spin control.
Don't forget just how many smart, aggressive folks with smart, aggressive bosses depend on Bill for their paychecks and will be sent off to minimize the damage of what is sure to be causing no small amount of realignment out Seattle way.
Rustin
Intentional release? I really don't think so.
Micro$oft has one of the strongest corporate cultures of any organization of the past hundred years. Their acculturation means make the Jesuits seem like they just test prospectives for eyesight and driver's licence.
That having been said, one of the fundamental tenets of the Micro$oft belief system is that source code is to be held close at all costs, kinda like the brain-damaged way that Palm continues to fight to insist that "smaller is always better" even while every other platform is furiously adding back keyboards, different form factors, etc.
To willfully open a codebase is to accept the inevitability of vulnerability, to surrender the myth of impregnable barriers and perfect seals. M$ is far too wealthy, too successful as they are, and too paranoid, from Ballmer and Gates on down, to be so bold.
Without doubt, this event will change tech history. You know it, I know it, even Jon Katz probably knows it. But even so, I'ld lay heavy odds that the folks in Redmond will still be denying key implications and consequences of this leak for at least (mark my words) four years.
Rustin
Well, first of all, I linked through to my JE because that, in turn, *does* link to other sources. I'm pretty fond of my own writing, but I'm not under the impression that I'm a well-known news outlet ;-)
Now, again, if you had read my journal, you'ld know that:
A.) I loath the term "liberal", do not consider myself one, and have gone into exhaustive detail about leftists of any number of stripes who were not "good people".
B.) My conclusions about the nature of the two guys who were inciting violence came from quite a few variables, including clothes, behavior, and, oh, let's not forget, the fact that one of them was able to jump up and down on top of a police van with impunity while the cops were arresting people left and right just for crossing barricades.
(Ask any cypherpunk or 2600 habitue, far too many cops look like cops look like cops and "spot the fed" has long been an easy and satisfying sport any time public organized activities are going on that make law enforcement nervous. Chances are that there were plenty of cops there I didn't "make". But these two were obvious for reasons having nothing to do with their alleged ideologies.)
C.) I have, in fact documented examples of protesters being violent. Just not there and then.
As right-wingers do so love to do, you have grossly overbroadened a small group of very specific statements and then tried to condemn me on the basis of things I never said. I was responding to a specific challenge with a specific answer.
Cocky? Could be. Hard not to get that way when the people opposing me are so frequently such mental pygmies.
If the day comes that you learn how to read, or even, heaven forfend, exhibit reasoning skills, feel free to come back and you may find that when you provide coherent arguments connected to things that actually happened, I will be more then willing to take you more seriously.
Rustin
Dude, don't tease us like this. You write this great little post, give good reasons for your argument, have worked at the damn place for SEVEN YEARS but then you don't give us a link.
Are you telling me that Record Exchange has no site at all?
*sigh*
Here in NYC, online sales derived from their superior knowledge and stock of older stuff is part of what keeps indie stores in business.
My favorite source, Accidental, now makes more money online then they do from bricks and mortar. Keep in mind, tho, the stock they sell online comes in from people like me dropping by their location and selling off our stuff for quick cash. All kinda synergistic, y'know.
Rustin
Re Fox and your view of them: Well, at least now we *know* that you're clueless.
Re "facts not on your side": Funny, I've been providing confirmable details and links all along. You've just bullshitted.
Re "the unnamed agency": I left them unnamed merely because that was how they were described in the police and press statements. From context it's pretty clear that they were mostly Homeland Security [sic] with a few from the FBI and Justice [sic]. There has never been a coverup and I never said that there had been. Quite the contrary, the federal government has put out vast piles of open documents on this stuff. Our primary media outlets may not have given it much coverage but that's more a shortage of airtime then any "coverup".
Of course, in Seattle we simply don't know who some of them were but the most indicators seem to point to military folks planning for urban warfare. Let's hope that some of the result of that "observing" is making them a little less trigger-happy in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
You have ceased to amuse me. This thread is over.
Rustin
Sorry, oh cowardly, clueless one, but my "whackjob conspiracy theories" are based on things like the New York City police department having since admitted that agents from an unamed federal agency were responsible for originating several key things, such as the "protestor questionaire" and the shutting down of thru streets.
/. yet!) but we're in the middle of a vast move to refederalize politics-related law-enforcement and Asscroft and buddies have made no effort to hide it. In fact, they don't quite seem to understand why anybody would be upset by this. Maybe you should start by looking into a little bitty thing called the Patriot Actm and its many open and stealth variants.
Check statements from the police in Seattle, New York, San Franciso, Oakland, D.C., and so on and you'll find all of them eager to admit the involvement of federal agents, if only to cover their own increasingly toasty posteriors.
Go back to my JEs if you need links (such as to the lawsuit versus the NYPD).
Too bad you still need this explained to you at this late date (and on
Everybody but you already knows this stuff. Maybe if you looked at something besides Fox you'ld be a little better informed.
Oh, btw, if you intend to engage in repeated interactions, stop hiding behind AC posts. Try to grow some balls and learn to post in an attributed fashion as we grownups do.
Rustin
[can you]Come up with any valid claims of protesters being harassed, other than:
* protesters engaged in such crimes as trespass or violence
* protesters unlucky to be caught in the middle of a riot caused by the violent ones.
Can you?
Yes. Easily.
I was there for all of the major New York protests and I can tell you firsthand that the police repeatedly slammed into crowds of peaceful protestors. No violent actions to be seen at all except for cops riding horses into packed crowds of peaceful citizens.
Same is true in D.C. The protestors were peacefully and lawfully assembling when the police blocked all exits to the park, trapping everybody within, and then pushed everyone into a too-small space. Then they started arresting people for "refusing to leave" (if they just stood there) or "assault" if they tried to get through the police lines to leave.
On Feburary 15th, as you can read about in my JEs, they also closed down the subway stations, blocked streets, and worked quite hard to force a confrontation by shoving us into ever smaller spaces and trying to force us into a clash.
Did I see anybody being flat out inciting? Yeah, two guys, both big, young, muscular, white guys in preppie clothes screaming at the people around them that we should get violent. One of them on top of a police van jumping up and down and yelling in his Long Island accent. In other words, undercover cops doing their illegal best to create violence.
The real protesters just avoided these guys, with some of us making loud comments about "agents provocateurs", assuming that they were either cops or crazy but either way they certainly were not part of any group *we* would ever support.
So yet again, I call bullshit. We were not violent. The cops were.
And frankly, from what I've now seen and read, chances are the whole damned thing was coordinated by Ashcroft's slimeballs exercising oversight from within local police offices.
Too bad, so sad; yet another right wing bit of disinformation falls in the face of actual facts. Got any Iraqi WMD documents to sell me?
-Rustin
Hmm... I like it. Maybe you should enter my competition. Or at least do a more detailed JE on it.
Rustin
or the other part of that is it converts some forms of radiation in to light, does that mean if you made a big Sphere of the stuff it would be well lit and warm on the inside.
Prolly not. Since aerogel is so low density, only a tiny fraction of the particles passing through create light. To get enough light to usefully illuminate the region underneath you'ld most likely need a layer of aerogel hundreds of meters thick.
But in that case, since it is not one hundred percent transparent (if it were, it would be invisible), you'ld lose more light from transmission loss then you'ld gain from all that volume.
Feel free to do the math, but I wouldn't keep my hopes up.
Rustin
Oh
My
God!
Boy, it's been a long time since I've seen those words. Fer yew ignorant young folks, the parent to this post is a paraphrasing of the classic game Paranoia!
Yes, dice, pen, and paper gaming, the one true faith.
Rustin
As was discussed recently, they have a lot to teach us.
I'm not convinced at all that we should be spending billions of dollars of government money on new launchers when we have a system sitting around that works very nicely, thank you very much.
Sure, a brand new system would be better, but between the brevity of our pass by-with Mars, the vitality of private space programs, and our humbled and abused government finances, perhaps the Saturn should be more then a five million dollar paperweight and conversation piece.
And even beyond that, nothing gives perspective on a subject liking getting to look up close and personal at the gear used to do it. Especially since leading-edge gear from the seventies and earlier (like, say, the Spirit of St. Louis) always looks so DIY to anybody who pays attention.
I found it very energizing when I was a kid to see the Kennedy Space Center Saturn and think "hmm.... that wouldn't be so hard to build at all".
Rustin
Cool link and good point. But as a bunch of us discussed in a JE this past summer much of the hot and heavy VR work was done in random places all over the world and, incidently was done by '94, while his team were still denying the very term "VR".
He makes a good point about near-space interaction, but again, much of this was also being worked on in other places.
Even he refers back to Ivan Sutherland's work back in 1968!
VIEW was seminal. Just as VPL was. Just as Warnock's work was. Just as was the work by enough groups that their leaders wouldn't fit in my living room.
I remember SIGGRAPH back in, IIRC, '85 and seeing some mighty VR-looking work being presented by some mighty threadbare and independent bunches of guys.
Did the space program contribute "something"? Certainly.
Is VR something that "came from the space program"? I think not.
Rustin
If the folks at the Mars Society have any clue at all, they'll be selling these as soon as they can get 'em.
At the very least, they should finagle a way to get one for Zubrin.
Me? I'm founding a company right now, cobber. Money is kinda scarce at the moment. I'll just have to hope to pick one up later.
*sigh*
Rustin
Now, I love space development as much as anybody (check my journal if you doubt it) but this utter bullshit of claiming that NASA still creates a tidal wave of spinoffs is a grotesque exaggeration that decreases the credibility of a once-true claim.
Let's take the first dozen or so alleged spinoffs from the first article linked above.
GROUND PROCESSING SCHEDULING SYSTEM - Computer-based scheduling system that uses artificial intelligence to manage thousands of overlapping activities involved in launch preparations of NASA's Space Shuttles. The NASA technology was licensed to a new company which developed commercial applications that provide real-time planning and optimization of manufacturing operations, integrated supply chains, and customer orders.
Oh, please. After everything from the Challenger disaster to the constant ISS cost overruns, do you really expect us to want to use project management software from NASA?
As with most of these, the best they can do is to say, "NASA made a product that did this". They certainly can't say "X percent of the market uses this product". Now, speaking as a onetime economics major and a former workflow consultant, I've actually looked at NASA and DOD-created workflow and project managment solutions and I have found them to have absolutely foul interfaces, enterprise-level admin and platform costs, require dedicated boxen, and then provide third-rate functionality.
You know, about what you'ld expect from a government contractor.
SEMICONDUCTOR CUBING - NASA initiative led to the Memory Short Stack, a three-dimensional semiconductor package in which dozens of integrated circuits are stacked one atop another to form a cube, offering faster computer processing speeds, higher levels of integration, lower power requirements than conventional chip sets, and dramatic reduction in the size and weight of memory-intensive systems, such as medical imaging devices.
Yep, this one is all over the place, in use from PS/2s to digital watches. NOT!
Like IBM's early gallium-arsenide opto-electronics or the late Alpha chips, this is a pretty toy that is not only is too expensive for most real-world applications, but is also being done better by more, shall we say, frugal organizations. And, just in case you folks are forgetting, the supercomputer companies have been doing variations on this for years now.
STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS - This NASA program, originally created for spacecraft design, has been employed in a broad array of non-aerospace applications, such as the automobile industry, manufacture of machine tools, and hardware designs.
Okay, so I'll agree that this is important. But not only are most of the important concepts like NURBS things developed at places like Autodesk, but NASA's funding and development for this was, AFAIK, mostly in their aircraft research division, which is almost entirely separate from spaceflight development.
WINDOWS VISUAL NEWS READER (Win Vn) - Software program developed to support payload technical documentation at Kennedy Space Center, allowing the exchange of technical information among a large group of users. WinVn is an enabling technology product that provides countless people with Internet access otherwise beyond their grasp, and it was optimized for organizations that have direct Internet access.
Well, shucky-darn! A news client. Gawd knows there's a shortage of those! Why surely the two hundred or so other variants out there already would have been useless without NASA getting into the act.
Uh-huh. Right.
AIR QUALITY MONITOR - Utilizing a NASA-developed, advanced analytical technique software package, an air quality monitor system was created, capable of separating the various gases in bulk smokestack exhaust streams and determining the amount of individual gases present within the stream for compliance with smo
So, I've now been to the Lego site, Amazon, and about half a dozen other places, and clearly there are plenty of kits just like what we're talking about.
Funny, though, I go to ToysrUs & others like them on a regular basis and I, certainly haven't seen these around.
What we have here, yet again, is a failure to communicate. Lego needs to get their shit together and get decent placement and promotion for their core products.
And ya know what else, I am, in fact, gonna be buying some of those "creator" tubs in a few weeks for some upcoming birthdays. Sending a few of my dollars to the folks in the cold lands.
Rustin
Management with a clue (tm) would have realized about a decade ago it was time to produce the 'Lego Value Line' with probably 5-10 very generic and interchangable pieces that can serve as the base of some other larger more specialized constructions....
Hear, hear! I couldn't agree more. I'ld say it should be more like thirty or forty pieces, all in classic colors, with one of the big flat bases.
In fact, I seem to remember that when I was a kid (way back in the early seventies), there were kits just like that.
I'll say this much. If there were kits for a little under twenty bucks that would give a kid enough to be functional, I'ld be buying two or more kits per year, handing them off to every kid born to friends, relatives, whatever.
I spent around eighty bucks this year on simple basic toys for various kids in the under ten range and that is about average.
Oh, just for the record, *my* legos all got packed up in, yep, a bucket and shipped off to my nephew when he was around three. As of when he was hitting his teen years, he was still very happy to have gotten them.
As for the related issue of the market decreasing as the accumulated sets stay usable, all I can say is, ARE YOU HIGH?! India, China, and Indonesia are all seeing the creation of a middle class that will get larger to the tune of HALF A BILLION PEOPLE in the next ten years. Add in Mexico and assorted industrialising nations and the numbers are huge.
All Lego needs to do is focus on all those first-generation-prosperous parents, selling not as flash gimcracks but as real educational toys and they'll have more sales then they can handle for the next generation, at least.
Sell Lego as a quality, prestige product that will help their kids make money as adults and the 'rents will buy by the ton.
Rustin
He and Gibson started Cyberpunk.
Uhhh... no.
John Brunner was writing stuff like Shockwave Rider w a-a-a-a-a-a- y before either of those two.
For that matter, some of Phillip K. Dick's stuff and that of a dozen others was pretty doggone relevant back when Gibson and Sterling were still in nappies. Delany certainly is on that list of earlier folks, as is Bester.
For tone, I'ld go with Cordwainer Smith or even Van Vogt.
Lem? Funny as hell, smart and sharp. But I wouldn't classify him as cyberpunk.
Silly though his tone may be, some of Harry Harrison's stuff has some pretty good cpunkish meat under all the sugar.
Don't get me wrong, I love Stirling's and Gibson's work. Just reread Globalhead for that matter (fifth time?). But "started"? Uh-uh.
Rustin
Okay, I'm kinda kidding here but not entirely. How many of you have ever looked at a Saturn 5? In person, I mean. In my case I spent some time (in '83?) walking around and checking out the one at the Cape.
Man, that's some seriously primitive gear there by modern standards.
As my old boss when I worked for a consulting firm used to say,"Best is the enemy of good enough". In other words, if you've got a solution that you know will do the job and you find yourself wanking about trying to find the best of all possible solutions, then it's time to give serious thought to going with the "good enough" and get the job done instead of watching the years go by as you aspire to "best".
Okay, so we know that Saturns work. We know how to build them, we know how to launch them and we know how they act.
How much would it cost to just bloody well build some more of the f*ckers? I mean, if they were doable in the Sixties, how much can it possibly cost now?
-Use modern electronics but just match function with the prehistoric gear you're replacing.
-Use composites where convenient but just as lighter "aftermarket" versions of the original metal.
-Propellant? Criminy. Have it made in India and launch from near there. Kick in five million for assorted environmental reclamation and biology training for locals.
-What to launch? Not my department, cobber. That's a whole other discussion. What I'm addressing here is why aren't we going back right now.
Basically I'm talking about building something that is to an original Saturn 5 what a kit car is to a Model A. Original "lines", original basic design, built with off-the shelf modern parts. Maybe some tweaking of nozzle geometry but don't get het up about the one true optimum, just rebuild the old one with standard, off-the-shelf modern ceramics.
So, anybody got a guess on what that would cost to do?
Rustin
Nothing is preventing a private business from doing this except for the massive up front costs involved.
Not true at all.
As the X-Prize competitors have been documenting step by appalling step, our oh-so-helpful goverment has strewn a vast and willfully undocumented collection of regulations, structures, and plain old misinformation meant to keep space travel in the hands of the, yep, it's that thing again, military-industrial complex of major contractors and government departments.
Ever since they shut down Ford Motor's space programs (really - I'm not kidding) the U.S. Government, the major contractors, and dozens of fuzzily defined entities like Intelsat have been jeaslously guarding their monopoly.
Look into Beal Aerospace and what happened to them. The path to space is laid with many traps. Most of them laid and maintained by the same sorts put in charge of overseeing Haliburton's Iraq contracts.
Rustin
Well, first of all, MIAHM assumes generations of moon presence by the time of the revolt, by which time they're pretty far along in self-sufficiency.
Secondly, Check out the off-the grid folks, stereolithography, and the friggin Society for Creative Anachronism get-togethers and you'll see that modern techies are real damn good these days at building industrial infrastructure real fast.
Chips, for now, are a bitch. But even there a deep reserve of Transmeta-style gear would give some solid breathing room.
As for the usual canard of trace minerals in the diet, do you really think that the residents of the average prison get a balanced diet? People can go for years without some of this stuff.
Thirdly, there is, IIRC, oxygen on the moon and, assuming a fleet of robotic ram scoops doing sun runs, plenty of hydrogen and other light elements reachable from the moon.
Lastly, from the H.M.S. Bounty to Skylab, carefully picked, tightly-managed populations have a persnickity habit of going rebel when they get pushed too hard and are very far from the source of authority.
All of which comes back to READ THE FRICKIN BOOK! It is still a tome of much value. Anything treated as a textbook by space enthusiasts and the Weather Undergound is some serious shit.
You're in the city; pick up a copy at Mercer Books or at the Strand or something.
Happy reading, write a JE (instead of another of those skimpy links) on your thoughts when you're done,
Rustin