After all the hype that we've been hearing over the years about rail-guns and seeing a few military and hobbyist demos on video sites, this one piece of near-former sci-fi may be finally coming to fruition as a usable approach. It's a great example of the sort of thing that had to wait for technological improvements and refinements, rather than a fundamental scientific or technological breakthrough, and is the convergence of several technologies. I'm encouraged to see more progress on such things which seems to have in recent years been eclipsed by information technology's faster cycles and overhyping in media (and I say this as someone who makes his living as a software engineer).
I, well, I agree. And make my living the same way. I've also been a science-fiction fan since I was a kid (Clarke, Heinlein, Norton, Silverberg, Harrison, Dick, you name it I probably read it) and honestly I've been disappointed by the past forty years, at least so far as near-space development is concerned. I thought, well, I'd hoped we would be way further along than we are, and had we continued the pace of development after the end of the Apollo program we would have be. But we chickened out, let our leaders dilute the vision and throw away the many of the gains we made during the sixties.
I'm always flabbergasted at the people who seriously believe that investment in space is a waste of time and money. Try to tell them that the economic benefits from that investment outweigh the costs, and they laugh at you, and say we would be better off spending it on "social programs." Hell, what the world has gained from, say, advanced weather prediction alone would pay for the space program.
The big problem is determining where to spend your resources in order to get the most ROI. Hell, for that matter, defining the ROI is something many people, politicians especially, simply can't agree.
new idea, exactly, but I guess it's good to see NASA looking at other possibilities. There are many. I remember MIT doing work on alternate launch technologies back in the seventies, if not earlier. The mass driver was one (a giant electromagnetic linear accelerator) although the idea was kicked around in science-fiction long before that. My current favorite is a possibly-reusable rocket whose reaction mass is water, using heat energy provided by ground-based lasers. You could launch things into orbit all day long with a setup like that. Probably need a dedicated nuclear power plant to run the thing.
On the contrary. I think this will blow the de Beers cartel wide open, assuming that a FTL mining vessel could be equipped.
Yes, well, keep in mind that it's not just a simple matter of scooping up diamonds and filling your vessel's holds. The thing may only be 4,000 kilometers across, but it's still going to have a star's gravitational field.
I do not, however, think Japan needed any lessons from the US on how to implement airport security measures.
There are two kinds of security: there's the theatrical version, whose only function is to encourage a feeling of safety among the population, and then there's real security, which is less concerned about appearance and more concerned about results. I don't know about Japan, but I'm sure Israel could teach us a few things.
Some HP printers use a blue LED to self-align the printhead's three color channels; the yellow ink is dark enough in the blue light that the position sensor can reliably detect the fine yellow lines.
We didn't care. We just watched the little blue light go back, and forth, and back, and forth.
Microsoft got where it is by committing a whole host of illegal, anti-competitive acts [...]
No, it didn't, pretty much by definition, since they couldn't have been committing "illegal, anti-competitive acts" until they were actually "there".
I, uh... what? That makes absolutely no sense. A company can certainly engage in the anticompetitive practices whether it's a monopoly or not. Granted, being a monopoly can make them more effective. You're going to have to work much, much harder if your goal is to become an effective Microsoft apologist.
[...] can be legitimately said to have retarded progress over the past thirty-odd years.
How ?
Apparently you've been asleep during that time. Microsoft has always stepped on any possible competition, and did so from day one. Nor did they have to be a monopoly to do so. I'm sure that some well-informed Slashdotters can remember more than a few companies with products and technologies that were superior to anything Microsoft was offering at the time. Microsoft did everything in its power to snuff those outfits before they could be come a threat. Dude, there's a reason that Microsoft took on the mantle of "the new IBM."
En_US is not a language? It's the language that kept most of the Europe relatively free for the past hundred years or so. If not for that En_US, you would be speaking Deutsch.
More importantly, it's the current lingua franca of the industrialized world, so why he would say "is not a language" is kinda arrogant and smacks of sour grapes. I would say that the next one would be Mandarin, but given that China is investing heavily in EN_US (last I read there are more people in China learning U.S. English than there are people in the U.S.) that's probably not going to change any time soon. The GP had best get used to that.
A government without the ability to levy taxes and the power to force the sale of property to recover those taxes would be entirely inneffectual.
I suppose what I'm complaining about is the way such sales are handled, at least in my experience.
It almost happened to my father. He owned his home: paid off his thirty year mortgage on time and in full. But he became ill one year, and racked up some substantial medical bills, and couldn't pay all of his property tax. He was so sick at the time that he didn't even know that. Fortunately, I had financial power-of-attorney and was going through his records, and discovered (only a couple of days in advance) that his house was scheduled to be sold (the county provided no notice, naturally, I was just lucky enough to figure it out on my own.)
So on the morning of the yearly tax sale, I went to the county seat and attempted to speak with one of the city attorneys about the matter. She was about the coldest human being I've ever encountered, and told me literally, "pay up or lose the house, and don't bother me again." "Civil servant" my ass, and all I wanted was a week 'til some receivables came in. I had brought letters from his physicians documenting his medical condition, but this woman wouldn't even look at them, eventually ordered me out of her office because she had "more important matters to attend to."
So, I went downstairs to the cashier, and found a line of people that stretched down the hall, most of whom were in line to buy my father's house for the price of six month's property taxes. I elbowed my way to the head of the line and handed the cashier a certified check for the remaining balance (flattening my checking account in the process.) I heard a collective groan behind me, as a couple dozen vultures turned around and left because I'd beaten them to it.
A few years before that, he'd had that audacity to ask the county to reappraise his home because he felt they'd valued it too high (and, of course, his taxes were based upon that valuation.) The assessor came out and assessed it about $20,000 higher and told him, "that'll teach you."
Frankly, I'd much rather deal with the Internal Revenue Service than any lower-level taxing body. Yes, the IRS takes a lot of deserved heat, but they do have rules and they follow them, and they'd rather get the cash, even if they don't get it right away. Matter of fact, Dad ended up owing them some money as well, but when I sent them medical documentation and explained the situation, they were willing to write it all off.
When it comes to real estate taxes, don't get behind because you'll likely lose a whole lot more. The problem is likely to get worse, as our local governments start to have more and more financial problems, and start squeezing people even more than they already do.
No, we don't, and it's that complacency that's virtually guaranteed to lose us everything we have left, eventually.
I didn't say things were perfect, just better than most people make it out to be.
Compare living in America to many other countries in the world, and tell me we don't have, in the grand scheme of things, relatively easy and free lives. Could it be better? Certainly. Do we have to be careful that we don't lose that relatively easy and free living? Absolutely. But it's not all doom and gloom...I'd much rather live here than dozens of other countries.
I wasn't disagreeing with you. I just think it would be a good idea if we had more respect for what we do have, and realize what it could mean if we give it up.
Yes, well, don't think law enforcement in the U.S. forgets much of anything either. The long arm of the law is based upon the long memory of the law, and that's true no matter where you are.
And your uninformed opinion at the top of this discussion marks you as a moron. Congratulations, I guess.
And your uncouth commentary marks you as of the same personality type who sent that stupid email to Obama. Congrats on your lack of civility. Too bad I'm not the President, I could ban your ass.
Besides, I did RTFA, it was just completely useless and uninformative and that was as far I was interested in pursuing the matter.
However, nothing ever came of it. Interesting that the US got so much more worked up.
Still, if a government is going to behave poorly, it's best that it do so right out in the open. Were you wise to be concerned about a message you sent to the Chinese government, assuming you were being critical of it? I don't know. But I would be very surprised if that didn't get a file opened on you somewhere, and you'll never know if that will come back to haunt you some day.
Many of you are fellow US citizens - how dare you be so easily cowed and manipulated by false information. Shame on slashdot for posting this trash and shame on you for being gullible sheeple.
Hey, Slashdot is entertainment, and this is a forum where we get to post opinions, and other people get to vote on how entertaining our opinions are. That's pretty much the long and the short of it. Sooner or later, if there's anything meaningful about this incident anywhere on the Web, somebody will post it here and we'll all get to go "oh my, how we overreacted" or "Jesus, it's even worse than I thought!" In the meantime, we get to have fun ragging on each other.
I think there's more to it. According to the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-11296303) his email was "full of abusive and threatening language". The 'threatening' part is the problem. All threats aimed at the white house get investigated, regardless of who makes them. If you're in the US, they'll come visit you (a relative-of-a-friend of mine had it happen to them several years ago). Outside of the US, apparently they just ban you. This isn't new to this President.
Yes, it does seem a lot of fuss over not a lot though.
According to the article (not that I place much faith in it, but whatever) there are some sixty things you can do that will get you banned, of course, they aren't allowed to actually tell anyone what they are. Does anyone know what that DHS person was reputedly talking about?
So what? I mean... so what? A lot of Americans feel the same way and we don't have to be drunk to say it... free speech and all that. Or do we believe that people in other countries shouldn't be able to express negative opinions about our leaders? What kind of example are we trying to set here?
Low hanging fruit, I guess. As if a drunken teenager's ramblings constituted some credible threat against the President. Besides, I'm a little confused on how a kid gets banned from the United States forever for performing an action that isn't illegal in this country, probably isn't illegal in his, and should have been entirely beneath law enforcement's radar anyway? Why didn't his local cops tell the FBI to go pound sand? What if he'd been visiting the United States when he wrote that? Would we have imprisoned or deported him? Does the FBI use lead plumbing?
Yeah, I'm kinda embarrassed by this. Don't try to tell me that every President since the we starting having them hasn't received thousands of messages a year calling him all kinds of names. It's part and parcel of the job: if you don't have a pretty thick skin you have no business being a politician in the first place. So, what made them single this kid out from the rest of the pack? Does the FBI ban every foreigner who expresses a negative opinion of the President from ever setting foot in our country?
Personally, I'd like to know what Obama thinks of this silliness, what he thinks has been accomplished here. It sounds to me like a couple of Federal agents need to have their wings clipped, or at least should be assigned duties more suitable for their temperament. Reading obituaries, maybe.
Slashdot Mirror
After all the hype that we've been hearing over the years about rail-guns and seeing a few military and hobbyist demos on video sites, this one piece of near-former sci-fi may be finally coming to fruition as a usable approach. It's a great example of the sort of thing that had to wait for technological improvements and refinements, rather than a fundamental scientific or technological breakthrough, and is the convergence of several technologies. I'm encouraged to see more progress on such things which seems to have in recent years been eclipsed by information technology's faster cycles and overhyping in media (and I say this as someone who makes his living as a software engineer).
I, well, I agree. And make my living the same way. I've also been a science-fiction fan since I was a kid (Clarke, Heinlein, Norton, Silverberg, Harrison, Dick, you name it I probably read it) and honestly I've been disappointed by the past forty years, at least so far as near-space development is concerned. I thought, well, I'd hoped we would be way further along than we are, and had we continued the pace of development after the end of the Apollo program we would have be. But we chickened out, let our leaders dilute the vision and throw away the many of the gains we made during the sixties.
I'm always flabbergasted at the people who seriously believe that investment in space is a waste of time and money. Try to tell them that the economic benefits from that investment outweigh the costs, and they laugh at you, and say we would be better off spending it on "social programs." Hell, what the world has gained from, say, advanced weather prediction alone would pay for the space program.
The big problem is determining where to spend your resources in order to get the most ROI. Hell, for that matter, defining the ROI is something many people, politicians especially, simply can't agree.
Well, I believe this critter was up and at it in the 70's at Princeton: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_K._O'Neill
Yah. Him too. Sometimes I forget that Google is my friend.
Indeed. Isn't this a mass driver?
Or a Gaussrifle.
That space is up.
Up is relative. Space is away.
new idea, exactly, but I guess it's good to see NASA looking at other possibilities. There are many. I remember MIT doing work on alternate launch technologies back in the seventies, if not earlier. The mass driver was one (a giant electromagnetic linear accelerator) although the idea was kicked around in science-fiction long before that. My current favorite is a possibly-reusable rocket whose reaction mass is water, using heat energy provided by ground-based lasers. You could launch things into orbit all day long with a setup like that. Probably need a dedicated nuclear power plant to run the thing.
On the contrary. I think this will blow the de Beers cartel wide open, assuming that a FTL mining vessel could be equipped.
Yes, well, keep in mind that it's not just a simple matter of scooping up diamonds and filling your vessel's holds. The thing may only be 4,000 kilometers across, but it's still going to have a star's gravitational field.
I prefer gnome-chucks myself.
Gnome-chucks, that's good. I swear, this is the least informative and most entertaining Slashdot story I've encountered in a while.
I do not, however, think Japan needed any lessons from the US on how to implement airport security measures.
There are two kinds of security: there's the theatrical version, whose only function is to encourage a feeling of safety among the population, and then there's real security, which is less concerned about appearance and more concerned about results. I don't know about Japan, but I'm sure Israel could teach us a few things.
Some HP printers use a blue LED to self-align the printhead's three color channels; the yellow ink is dark enough in the blue light that the position sensor can reliably detect the fine yellow lines.
We didn't care. We just watched the little blue light go back, and forth, and back, and forth.
Microsoft got where it is by committing a whole host of illegal, anti-competitive acts [...]
No, it didn't, pretty much by definition, since they couldn't have been committing "illegal, anti-competitive acts" until they were actually "there".
I, uh ... what? That makes absolutely no sense. A company can certainly engage in the anticompetitive practices whether it's a monopoly or not. Granted, being a monopoly can make them more effective. You're going to have to work much, much harder if your goal is to become an effective Microsoft apologist.
[...] can be legitimately said to have retarded progress over the past thirty-odd years.
How ?
Apparently you've been asleep during that time. Microsoft has always stepped on any possible competition, and did so from day one. Nor did they have to be a monopoly to do so. I'm sure that some well-informed Slashdotters can remember more than a few companies with products and technologies that were superior to anything Microsoft was offering at the time. Microsoft did everything in its power to snuff those outfits before they could be come a threat. Dude, there's a reason that Microsoft took on the mantle of "the new IBM."
En_US is not a language? It's the language that kept most of the Europe relatively free for the past hundred years or so. If not for that En_US, you would be speaking Deutsch.
More importantly, it's the current lingua franca of the industrialized world, so why he would say "is not a language" is kinda arrogant and smacks of sour grapes. I would say that the next one would be Mandarin, but given that China is investing heavily in EN_US (last I read there are more people in China learning U.S. English than there are people in the U.S.) that's probably not going to change any time soon. The GP had best get used to that.
What are the odds of that?
Not high.
A government without the ability to levy taxes and the power to force the sale of property to recover those taxes would be entirely inneffectual.
I suppose what I'm complaining about is the way such sales are handled, at least in my experience.
It almost happened to my father. He owned his home: paid off his thirty year mortgage on time and in full. But he became ill one year, and racked up some substantial medical bills, and couldn't pay all of his property tax. He was so sick at the time that he didn't even know that. Fortunately, I had financial power-of-attorney and was going through his records, and discovered (only a couple of days in advance) that his house was scheduled to be sold (the county provided no notice, naturally, I was just lucky enough to figure it out on my own.)
So on the morning of the yearly tax sale, I went to the county seat and attempted to speak with one of the city attorneys about the matter. She was about the coldest human being I've ever encountered, and told me literally, "pay up or lose the house, and don't bother me again." "Civil servant" my ass, and all I wanted was a week 'til some receivables came in. I had brought letters from his physicians documenting his medical condition, but this woman wouldn't even look at them, eventually ordered me out of her office because she had "more important matters to attend to."
So, I went downstairs to the cashier, and found a line of people that stretched down the hall, most of whom were in line to buy my father's house for the price of six month's property taxes. I elbowed my way to the head of the line and handed the cashier a certified check for the remaining balance (flattening my checking account in the process.) I heard a collective groan behind me, as a couple dozen vultures turned around and left because I'd beaten them to it.
A few years before that, he'd had that audacity to ask the county to reappraise his home because he felt they'd valued it too high (and, of course, his taxes were based upon that valuation.) The assessor came out and assessed it about $20,000 higher and told him, "that'll teach you."
Frankly, I'd much rather deal with the Internal Revenue Service than any lower-level taxing body. Yes, the IRS takes a lot of deserved heat, but they do have rules and they follow them, and they'd rather get the cash, even if they don't get it right away. Matter of fact, Dad ended up owing them some money as well, but when I sent them medical documentation and explained the situation, they were willing to write it all off.
When it comes to real estate taxes, don't get behind because you'll likely lose a whole lot more. The problem is likely to get worse, as our local governments start to have more and more financial problems, and start squeezing people even more than they already do.
No, we don't, and it's that complacency that's virtually guaranteed to lose us everything we have left, eventually.
I didn't say things were perfect, just better than most people make it out to be.
Compare living in America to many other countries in the world, and tell me we don't have, in the grand scheme of things, relatively easy and free lives. Could it be better? Certainly. Do we have to be careful that we don't lose that relatively easy and free living? Absolutely. But it's not all doom and gloom...I'd much rather live here than dozens of other countries.
I wasn't disagreeing with you. I just think it would be a good idea if we had more respect for what we do have, and realize what it could mean if we give it up.
Don't think they forgot about it!
Yes, well, don't think law enforcement in the U.S. forgets much of anything either. The long arm of the law is based upon the long memory of the law, and that's true no matter where you are.
And your uninformed opinion at the top of this discussion marks you as a moron. Congratulations, I guess.
And your uncouth commentary marks you as of the same personality type who sent that stupid email to Obama. Congrats on your lack of civility. Too bad I'm not the President, I could ban your ass.
Besides, I did RTFA, it was just completely useless and uninformative and that was as far I was interested in pursuing the matter.
And punks. Dickheads. Douchebags. And ugly. With bad odor.
Thanks, I think we get the idea.
However, nothing ever came of it. Interesting that the US got so much more worked up.
Still, if a government is going to behave poorly, it's best that it do so right out in the open. Were you wise to be concerned about a message you sent to the Chinese government, assuming you were being critical of it? I don't know. But I would be very surprised if that didn't get a file opened on you somewhere, and you'll never know if that will come back to haunt you some day.
Many of you are fellow US citizens - how dare you be so easily cowed and manipulated by false information. Shame on slashdot for posting this trash and shame on you for being gullible sheeple.
Hey, Slashdot is entertainment, and this is a forum where we get to post opinions, and other people get to vote on how entertaining our opinions are. That's pretty much the long and the short of it. Sooner or later, if there's anything meaningful about this incident anywhere on the Web, somebody will post it here and we'll all get to go "oh my, how we overreacted" or "Jesus, it's even worse than I thought!" In the meantime, we get to have fun ragging on each other.
"Remember son, if an upper-classman calls you a pussy, just respond 'I am what I eat'" -Advice from my Dad on my first day of high school
Your Dad sounds like a pretty cool dude. Good advice anyway.
I think there's more to it. According to the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-11296303) his email was "full of abusive and threatening language". The 'threatening' part is the problem. All threats aimed at the white house get investigated, regardless of who makes them. If you're in the US, they'll come visit you (a relative-of-a-friend of mine had it happen to them several years ago). Outside of the US, apparently they just ban you. This isn't new to this President.
Yes, it does seem a lot of fuss over not a lot though.
According to the article (not that I place much faith in it, but whatever) there are some sixty things you can do that will get you banned, of course, they aren't allowed to actually tell anyone what they are. Does anyone know what that DHS person was reputedly talking about?
Love the fact that you cite lack of free speech, yet cite burning the flag and protesting as things that you can legally do in this country.
Yeah ... he didn't actually make his case very well, did he.
I swear, most Americans don't realize how good we actually have it.
No, we don't, and it's that complacency that's virtually guaranteed to lose us everything we have left, eventually.
A prick?
The first article I read about this just showed it as p****, so I thought it might be pussy.
Just show the fucking word, people. It's not that big of a deal.
Yes, well, us Yanks are a big prudish about such things you know.
Now, if he'd called the President a "prick" vs. a "pussy" or even a "punk", would the FBI have reacted differently to his choice of words?
If anything, ban him til the end of Obama's term...
Really. Who knows, he might have something nice to say about our next President.
But I think I called Barack Obama a p***k.
So what? I mean ... so what? A lot of Americans feel the same way and we don't have to be drunk to say it ... free speech and all that. Or do we believe that people in other countries shouldn't be able to express negative opinions about our leaders? What kind of example are we trying to set here?
Low hanging fruit, I guess. As if a drunken teenager's ramblings constituted some credible threat against the President. Besides, I'm a little confused on how a kid gets banned from the United States forever for performing an action that isn't illegal in this country, probably isn't illegal in his, and should have been entirely beneath law enforcement's radar anyway? Why didn't his local cops tell the FBI to go pound sand? What if he'd been visiting the United States when he wrote that? Would we have imprisoned or deported him? Does the FBI use lead plumbing?
Yeah, I'm kinda embarrassed by this. Don't try to tell me that every President since the we starting having them hasn't received thousands of messages a year calling him all kinds of names. It's part and parcel of the job: if you don't have a pretty thick skin you have no business being a politician in the first place. So, what made them single this kid out from the rest of the pack? Does the FBI ban every foreigner who expresses a negative opinion of the President from ever setting foot in our country?
Personally, I'd like to know what Obama thinks of this silliness, what he thinks has been accomplished here. It sounds to me like a couple of Federal agents need to have their wings clipped, or at least should be assigned duties more suitable for their temperament. Reading obituaries, maybe.