There used to be a 'step-up-from-dialup' option (JetStart), with an uncapped 128kb/128kb ADSL connection, but now the 'independent' ISPs are being forced to cap even that (10GB/month on my connection) to meet the costs passed on by Telecom NZ (who are virtually the only ADSL providers in NZ)...
10Gb at 128kb/128kb is better than the default 600mb cap at full speed, which costs the same... But when i can get unlimited dial-up for NZ$20, vs the NZ$65/month it costs me for JetStart... The temptation to switch back to dialup and pocket the difference is sometimes a hard one to resist...
One point - "Someday one will notice some inconsistency." Would we able to notice? Or even be able to notice? And if we did notice, who would believe us?
And if it worked for any format besides mp3 i'd be interested... (my music's been converted to ogg vorbis - and it's surprising how much dedicated profiling software doesn't work with it)
I think the difference here is that it allows the listeners to choose what they want to listen to. As opposed to allowing the RIAA to justify it's promoting 10 artists who fit the 'hit profile' matching yesterday's 'stars'...
Mind you, i haven't been able to get Synapse running on my machine since first hearing about it near the start of the year (under XP, despite emailing the Synapse site for help, and after two reinstalls for non-connected problems) so i'll just stick with Foobar and Winamp 2...
Piracy is probably one of the most effective ways of increasing market share... They lose sales from it, but it's their products that end up on someone's desktop...
Hmmm, that depends on your interpretation of 'registration' though, doesn't it? The activation process (which will 'remember' your installation, albeit without personal identifiers) sounds a little 'registrational' to me...
The problem with the people at NASA who are being paid to be experts, is that there are also people at NASA who'll likely know next to nothing about engineering or science, who have to interpret what the people what the experts tell them and pass on what they think the politicians will accept.
When something has to make a profit (ie work in the private sector), they have to provide results. When something has to satisfy a politician, it just had to look good and come under budget.
If the experts had been allowed to do what they were hired for, and were given the money to do it, we could have had *real* orbital stations, and outposts on the Moon and even Mars by now.
Nobody except the media... A politician wants to be seen doing something. But in order to not lose market share, the media needs to be seen saying something.
I think you're being a little optimistic... Or a lot... I'd think it more likely that a) the shuttle would be grounded, b) NASA's operating budget would be cut because they weren't having to pay for shuttle launches, c) lots of arguing and finger-pointing and searching for people or parts to blame.
It's been time to retire the shuttle for the last decade at least - and ideally take out the governmental roadblocks to private companies developing their own launch systems.
I think the 'The Titanic was built by professionals, the Ark was built by amateurs' quote needs to be re-written...
There are always more people willing to give their opinion regardless of their knowledge, than people willing to give an intelligent, knowledgable and relevant opinion.
Columbia is (or was) over 20 years old. It used old technology when it was designed. It was built by the lowest bidder. Odds are *not* in favour of a terrorist attack at 200,000ft.
I don't want to think about the efforts behind the scene that have managed to stretch the operations budget enough to have kept something like this from happening far before now... Oh, that's right, Challenger...
If you want someone to hold responsible, try those who control the purse-strings and decided how much NASA really needed to run the space program, not terrorists.
My mistaike... But i also have Heinlein on my bookshelf (old copies of 'I Will Fear No Evil' and 'Time Enough For Love')... Heinlein is an entertaining writer (loved 'Number of the Beast'), but Battlefield Earth is still the book i come back to...
I never cared for Terry Goodkind, but David Eddings (and wife) have written some of my favourite fantasy fiction... (But give me Traci Hardings anyday!)
I think that's something that gets forgotten - there's science fiction, and there's science fantasy... And these aren't the same thing.
Consider 2001 (up to 'Oh my god, it's full of stars' anyway)... The ship is based (well, maybe HAL isn't on our doorstep yet, nor is the hibernation technology) on real science. But the ship uses centrifuge to provide gravity, for crying out loud.
And then consider Star Wars... Gravity-on-demand. Hyperdrive. Lightsabers. Moon-sized space stations with planet-destroying super-weapons. It's space fantasy - albeit wonderfully entertaining... (And i haven't said a word about sounds travelling in space)
That trilogy (Time, Space, Origin - whatever the order) was a curious waste-of-time... Not a good waste, just curious... I still prefer his sequel to H.G. Wells' Time Machine, namely 'The Time Ships' - i liked the 'feel', that came across to me as being so similar in style-of-writing/use-of-language to the original...
Giant Squid? Well, L.Neil Smith wrote a delightful tome entitled 'Forge of the Elders' that i had a ball reading... It's a fascinating piece set in the not-too-distant future, where America has become Socialist, and the world isn't that nice a place to live in. An expedition has been launched to mine an asteroid in orbit between Mars and Jupiter using three mothballed century-old NASA space shuttles, only they find someone got there first. And they weren't human (for all they were from alternate Earths).
It's a delight to hear the non-human characters 'dissecting' human culture, especially our 'cult of obedience' (which they're convinced is a sign of racial madness - after all, no intelligent being takes orders from another...). I thoroughly recommend this, although it is a long read - it looked exhausting with 624 pages, but didn't feel like it afterwards!
But as far as other authors go, i'd have to include Heinlein (Battlefield Earth is one of my most-read books), Clarke, E.E. 'Doc' Smith (Long live the Lensmen;) and of course H.G. Wells with The First Men in the Moon and War of the Worlds...
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Or a sleep disorder... I'm autistic and require melatonin to be able to get to sleep.
There used to be a 'step-up-from-dialup' option (JetStart), with an uncapped 128kb/128kb ADSL connection, but now the 'independent' ISPs are being forced to cap even that (10GB/month on my connection) to meet the costs passed on by Telecom NZ (who are virtually the only ADSL providers in NZ)...
10Gb at 128kb/128kb is better than the default 600mb cap at full speed, which costs the same... But when i can get unlimited dial-up for NZ$20, vs the NZ$65/month it costs me for JetStart... The temptation to switch back to dialup and pocket the difference is sometimes a hard one to resist...
Or we're just the equivalent of fish debating the existance of water...
One point - "Someday one will notice some inconsistency." Would we able to notice? Or even be able to notice? And if we did notice, who would believe us?
And if it worked for any format besides mp3 i'd be interested... (my music's been converted to ogg vorbis - and it's surprising how much dedicated profiling software doesn't work with it)
I think the difference here is that it allows the listeners to choose what they want to listen to. As opposed to allowing the RIAA to justify it's promoting 10 artists who fit the 'hit profile' matching yesterday's 'stars'...
Mind you, i haven't been able to get Synapse running on my machine since first hearing about it near the start of the year (under XP, despite emailing the Synapse site for help, and after two reinstalls for non-connected problems) so i'll just stick with Foobar and Winamp 2...
Piracy is probably one of the most effective ways of increasing market share... They lose sales from it, but it's their products that end up on someone's desktop...
"Scientists have now shown that everything you enjoy is fattening, is bad for your skin/teeth/bones/, or causes cancer in rats."
Or possibly the first time their PR department/firm mixed tech terms...
But NASA (with its govt-approved monopoly) is doing it's best...
Hmmm, that depends on your interpretation of 'registration' though, doesn't it? The activation process (which will 'remember' your installation, albeit without personal identifiers) sounds a little 'registrational' to me...
The problem with the people at NASA who are being paid to be experts, is that there are also people at NASA who'll likely know next to nothing about engineering or science, who have to interpret what the people what the experts tell them and pass on what they think the politicians will accept.
When something has to make a profit (ie work in the private sector), they have to provide results. When something has to satisfy a politician, it just had to look good and come under budget.
If the experts had been allowed to do what they were hired for, and were given the money to do it, we could have had *real* orbital stations, and outposts on the Moon and even Mars by now.
Nobody except the media... A politician wants to be seen doing something. But in order to not lose market share, the media needs to be seen saying something.
I think you're being a little optimistic... Or a lot... I'd think it more likely that a) the shuttle would be grounded, b) NASA's operating budget would be cut because they weren't having to pay for shuttle launches, c) lots of arguing and finger-pointing and searching for people or parts to blame.
It's been time to retire the shuttle for the last decade at least - and ideally take out the governmental roadblocks to private companies developing their own launch systems.
I think the 'The Titanic was built by professionals, the Ark was built by amateurs' quote needs to be re-written...
There are always more people willing to give their opinion regardless of their knowledge, than people willing to give an intelligent, knowledgable and relevant opinion.
Columbia is (or was) over 20 years old. It used old technology when it was designed. It was built by the lowest bidder. Odds are *not* in favour of a terrorist attack at 200,000ft. I don't want to think about the efforts behind the scene that have managed to stretch the operations budget enough to have kept something like this from happening far before now... Oh, that's right, Challenger... If you want someone to hold responsible, try those who control the purse-strings and decided how much NASA really needed to run the space program, not terrorists.
If anyone in my location starts whistling 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' i treat that as an instruction.
Ah, but are they anti-matter?
Uh... He was lost...?
My mistaike... But i also have Heinlein on my bookshelf (old copies of 'I Will Fear No Evil' and 'Time Enough For Love')... Heinlein is an entertaining writer (loved 'Number of the Beast'), but Battlefield Earth is still the book i come back to...
I never cared for Terry Goodkind, but David Eddings (and wife) have written some of my favourite fantasy fiction... (But give me Traci Hardings anyday!)
I think that's something that gets forgotten - there's science fiction, and there's science fantasy... And these aren't the same thing.
Consider 2001 (up to 'Oh my god, it's full of stars' anyway)... The ship is based (well, maybe HAL isn't on our doorstep yet, nor is the hibernation technology) on real science. But the ship uses centrifuge to provide gravity, for crying out loud.
And then consider Star Wars... Gravity-on-demand. Hyperdrive. Lightsabers. Moon-sized space stations with planet-destroying super-weapons. It's space fantasy - albeit wonderfully entertaining... (And i haven't said a word about sounds travelling in space)
That trilogy (Time, Space, Origin - whatever the order) was a curious waste-of-time... Not a good waste, just curious... I still prefer his sequel to H.G. Wells' Time Machine, namely 'The Time Ships' - i liked the 'feel', that came across to me as being so similar in style-of-writing/use-of-language to the original...
;) and of course H.G. Wells with The First Men in the Moon and War of the Worlds...
Giant Squid? Well, L.Neil Smith wrote a delightful tome entitled 'Forge of the Elders' that i had a ball reading... It's a fascinating piece set in the not-too-distant future, where America has become Socialist, and the world isn't that nice a place to live in. An expedition has been launched to mine an asteroid in orbit between Mars and Jupiter using three mothballed century-old NASA space shuttles, only they find someone got there first. And they weren't human (for all they were from alternate Earths).
It's a delight to hear the non-human characters 'dissecting' human culture, especially our 'cult of obedience' (which they're convinced is a sign of racial madness - after all, no intelligent being takes orders from another...). I thoroughly recommend this, although it is a long read - it looked exhausting with 624 pages, but didn't feel like it afterwards!
But as far as other authors go, i'd have to include Heinlein (Battlefield Earth is one of my most-read books), Clarke, E.E. 'Doc' Smith (Long live the Lensmen
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