In addition to the limited supplies of food, air, and water, I would think the experiment would want to mimic the other deprivations the crew might experience on the way to and from Mars. Most notably, I'd think, they'd want to emulate the lengthening communications lag between Mission Control and the "ship". Start with the sort of glitch experienced in orbit, and drag it out to the full 6-10 minutes.
Also, you'd want to make the communication link have a realistic bandwidth. Whatever is the state of the art at "launch" is what they're stuck with for the duration of the trip.
Now, if this were an episode of "Survivor: Mars", you'd throw in a monkey wrench... maybe a Galileo-style communications system error, where their phat pipe gets cut down to 300 baud, and the men fight over which supermodel pr0n picture to download each week.
From time to time Segway's product development team devotes days, or even weeks, to creating new product concepts with the goal of finding a prince among frogs. It's a product exploration process they call "frog kissing." During this time, engineers and designers are encouraged to use any available materials in a very short time frame to prove a concept will work.
What else *would* the Segway "product development team" be doing these days? They've only got one product -- the Segway. Other than designing new accessories, these guys have nothing to do *but* kiss frogs.
I'd be hoping for a princess, myself, but that's just the way I swing.
When the cop called back I gave him the number and he was astounded that I could get it.
Similar story for me. Five or six years ago, we were working on adopting our son, and we needed to apply some pressure to the birth father -- he wasn't the type to take responsibility, even when all it would take was signing a paper saying "ok, he's yours". I was able to use various Internet resources to look up the name, address, and telephone number of his employer, and gave that information to the state social worker involved in the case.
The guy wasn't happy when he got a call at work. But the social worker told him that he'd keep getting called -- at work and elsewhere -- unless he took care of business. Not surprisingly, he did.
The BBC article has one small omission. Martin Frost's old district is #24, and is mapped accurately in the article. However, Frost is not running in #24 -- he's running in District 32. He's chosen to change districts and run against Pete Sessions, an incumbent Republican. The race is nasty, and I'd personally have a hard time voting for either corporate mouthpiece.
The Democratic candidate for Texas House District #24 is a friend of mine, Gary Page. He ran on the Green ticket in 2002, and his performance in four-way debates (D/R/Grn/Lib) led the Democrats to recruit him for this year's run. I'm hoping that disgust with the Republican gerrymander will help overcome the 100:1 money gap between Page and his corporate opponent.
Not every train and airplane trip is interstate. The federal government has no jusrisdiction over intrastate transportation. I got mod points today, but since there's no "+/1, Idealistic", I'll just reply.
Not every car trip is interstate, either... most aren't. But when Florida tried to use color-coded highway signs, a federal agency said no:
Florida's Department of Transportation is switching from its "color coded" U.S. highway signs to the standard black-and-white signs, under pressure from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The Florida DOT argued that drivers could simply follow the color of the sign to their destination, but the FHWA said it would be forced to "withhold certain monetary funding if the state of Florida continued to use their color coded markers."
It's the Golden Rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules.
This Federal ability has been a mixed bag. OSHA can only enforce worker safety statutes because of the broad interpretation of "interstate commerce". Same with auto safety, and even most of the civil rights we take for granted (thanks to those who went to jail for us, or worse, in the '60s). On the other hand, it's also brought the drinking age of 21 (a law of dubious usefulness, IMHO) and now, possibly, "standardized" driver's licenses.
My thoughts: use Federal regulation to enhance freedom for individuals and restrict activities of corporations. But I'm just Green like that.
I'm sure Google will be able to handle it. But I wonder what Verizon & co will think about the sudden spike in SMS activity?
Probably, they'll be thinking about the 12c they're getting from me for each one -- 10 for the outgoing, 2 for the incoming. Crap. Well, it's better than the $1.50 (or so) every time my wife decides to call 411. Drives me nuts when she does that...
hah! I've been waiting for this to rear its ugly head again:-)
I'm proud to be the owner of a rare 2004 +5 mod on an "All Your Base" riff. This guy didn't even do all the lines, and his mistranslation of the title line (as noted in another thread, it should be "All your brake are belong to us") is jarring! It's a shame, he had some great material to work with.
It might work the first few times, but after a couple of tries you'd get a sore loser, who would refuse to accept the results, and would arm a bunch of 'civilians' and try to go beat an apology out of the victor. Bam. You're back to square one.
Or, you have Captain Kirk sail into orbit, have his ship declared "destroyed", and then stubbornly refuse to enter the execution chamber. Happens every freakin' time.
Seriously, who *wouldn't* pay good money for "actual NASA-certified space junk"? Rutan had to have his people guarantee *not* to sell the ballast on the X-Prize flights, so clearly he thinks there's a market.
If NASA can't sell space junk, then Congress needs to give them the ability to do so. It makes sense that you can't find another piece of the Shuttle in East Texas and sell it... it makes no sense that you can't take a blob of solder melted in space and sell *that*.
Unlike regular nuclear bombs, positron bombs wouldn't eject plumes of radioactive debris. When large numbers of positrons and antielectrons collide, the primary product is an invisible but extremely dangerous burst of gamma radiation. Thus, in principle, a positron bomb could be a step toward one of the military's dreams from the early Cold War: a so-called "clean" superbomb that could kill large numbers of soldiers without ejecting radioactive contaminants over the countryside.
As depressing as it sounds, this is probably a Good Thing.
If we take as fact that militaries exist to kill, then it follows logically that they will develop tools to kill as effectively as possible. That's how we've ended up with uranium fission bombs, then plutonium fission bombs, then hydrogen fusion bombs.
Someone, somewhere, will eventually decide that they need to neutralize their enemy bad enough to accept the consequences of a nuke. It may even be us -- if Bush hadn't restarted research on nuclear bunker-busters, someone else would have eventually.
So if you accept the depressing notion that use of massively destructive weapons is inevitable, you *want* this research to go forward. At least, this way, you *can* go back home.
Kind of ironic... for all the talk about "WMD"s, this would be a real Weapon of *Mass* Destruction... or at least, a Weapon of Mass Conversion Directly To Energy.
Since you *are* a professional photographer (and can therefore use the acronym "IAAPP"), what do you think of a new $8k gadget? It seems like the business side would trump the "cool gadget" side, especially if your existing equipment gets the results you want.
You're right about the march of technology, but who *are* the "early adopters" who go and buy this sort of thing? Myself, I'm the opposite... I only got a digital camera just this year, after the family started playing with a hacked-up Ritz.
I'm not a professional photographer, so I'm sure they have their reasons for needing an $8,000 digital camera. For someone who doesn't make a living taking pictures, though, is there any way to justify a camera that costs more than a used Toyota?
The Green party doesn't have the draw the democrats have. [...] I'd love to see Nader or Badnarik president. [...] Next election I'd like Nader to run. But I feel that voting for Nader will have as much effect as writing a letter to Bush asking him to "play nice".
Just to clarify, like they do in polls.slashdot.org:
Ralph Nader: Rejected by the Green Party because we want to grow the party, not just tilt at windmills. Independent candidate for president, though he did exhume enough of the Reform Party to get on the Florida ballot under their name. http://www.votenader.org/
Of the three, Cobb is the only one (as far as I know) who has the guts to publicly state that Bush must go at any cost, even if it takes away from Cobb's own votes. Here's a good news article from Minnesota that puts Cobb and Nader's differences in context.
I've got several domains with Gandi as well. No ads on their site, no additional-cost "features" that should be part of the deal in the first place. Everything is right there, completely configurable. Not for newbies, though -- I recommend Domain Direct for an easy-to-use interface. DD is a lot higher sometimes, but the nice thing is that they'll give me a cut if you click here (shameless, aren't I?).
Plus, it's kind of cool to pay 12 euros for a Gandi domain, and see a few days later how many US bucks that is (used to be ~10, now ~15... I have a greater appreciation of the currency markets now). I also use the French version of the site, just for a challenge (I'm also running the FR version of Opera for the same reason).
I'm actually moving my domains away from Opera, though, because I get a good deal from my web host. But that deal comes at a price -- I can't go in and tweak my info on those domains (though the Dryline guy is very responsive).
This may be more palatable if you feel Mother Jones goes off the deep end sometimes.
Pardon my offtopicness, but I'd like more info on Mother Jones. I'm considering subscribing -- I like the idea of supporting "Mother Jones' hellraising journalism." I'm a Green Party member and proud-to-say-it liberal, so it sounds like something I'd enjoy. On the other hand, I think anything can be taken too far, and I'd no sooner give money to tinfoil-hat folks on the left than I would those on the right. I want hard questions asked, but I've had all the Michael Moore I can take, you know?
Let's see, after his interesting call on the Venezuelan elections (it is legit, said Carter before all of the votes were even certified, and well before all of the interesting information about electronic voting machines programmed by a company owned by Chavez's brother were out in the open), he now wants to call the Florida elections before they happen?
If I were to focus on this paragraph, I'm sure I'd be modded "offtopic". Aw, what the heck:
I wouldn't be surprised if Chavez hired some monkeys to play with the votes. As I recall, though, Chavez was nearly ousted in a coup orchestrated by the oil companies not so long ago. The Bush administration was falling all over itself to recognize the coup plotters as the "new government"... only to be red-faced (if not red-handed) when Chavez returned to the scene.
I doubt we're aligned politically, but you seem to know a lot more about the situation than I do... care to expand on the Venezuelan vote, the attempted coup, and possibly how neither side seems be anywhere close to trustworthy?
Hmmm... that last bit sounds familiar. That's why I'm voting Green.
By the way, I'm assuming that the misuse of "its" is on purpose, even though it's ("it is" = "it's") not listed in the grandparent's "learn to spell".sig.
Mt. Asama [nodak.edu] in Japan (near Nagano) has been erupting the last few weeks. Check out this short video [maushammer.com] of a continuous stream of ash leaving the top. Some of it reached Tokyo! For some reason, I'm expecting to click on your site and find something like this...
It's not like YOU have any family over there, right? Glad to see you're bearing our losses so well, way to be tough.
Wrong, Einstein. Got a cousin with the 4th ID, just returned from Tikrit, and I personally believe the whole war is a poorly managed mistake, a distraction from the work that still needs to be done in Afghanistan. But that's a topic for politics.slashdot.org.
I wanted to make the point about becoming inured to loss after 9/11. Before then, we had a mighty army that was perceived to turn tail and run when the going got tough. The armed forces themselves never had such a weakness, of course. They know that the purpose of an army is to kill and/or die, preferably more of the former and less of the latter. After 9/11, I think we civilians gained a better understanding of that fact. Now, the debate is about whether the losses are acceptable in light of the military goal -- where it used to be a knee-jerk response to pull out.
How many members of Congress do you have? How many locally elected officials does the Green Party have? How many judicial appointees do you have? See the pattern here?
If nobody had been willing to put themselves on a rickety ass little boat and cross the Atlantic, the only people in America would be the Indians (not that that would be a bad thing, but that's another discussion).
Maybe so... if the folks in India had figured out a way to cross the Pacific.
Of course, they would have called the natives "Europeans", wouldn't they?
Slashdot Mirror
In addition to the limited supplies of food, air, and water, I would think the experiment would want to mimic the other deprivations the crew might experience on the way to and from Mars. Most notably, I'd think, they'd want to emulate the lengthening communications lag between Mission Control and the "ship". Start with the sort of glitch experienced in orbit, and drag it out to the full 6-10 minutes.
Also, you'd want to make the communication link have a realistic bandwidth. Whatever is the state of the art at "launch" is what they're stuck with for the duration of the trip.
Now, if this were an episode of "Survivor: Mars", you'd throw in a monkey wrench... maybe a Galileo-style communications system error, where their phat pipe gets cut down to 300 baud, and the men fight over which supermodel pr0n picture to download each week.
From time to time Segway's product development team devotes days, or even weeks, to creating new product concepts with the goal of finding a prince among frogs. It's a product exploration process they call "frog kissing." During this time, engineers and designers are encouraged to use any available materials in a very short time frame to prove a concept will work.
What else *would* the Segway "product development team" be doing these days? They've only got one product -- the Segway. Other than designing new accessories, these guys have nothing to do *but* kiss frogs.
I'd be hoping for a princess, myself, but that's just the way I swing.
When the cop called back I gave him the number and he was astounded that I could get it.
Similar story for me. Five or six years ago, we were working on adopting our son, and we needed to apply some pressure to the birth father -- he wasn't the type to take responsibility, even when all it would take was signing a paper saying "ok, he's yours". I was able to use various Internet resources to look up the name, address, and telephone number of his employer, and gave that information to the state social worker involved in the case.
The guy wasn't happy when he got a call at work. But the social worker told him that he'd keep getting called -- at work and elsewhere -- unless he took care of business. Not surprisingly, he did.
The BBC article has one small omission. Martin Frost's old district is #24, and is mapped accurately in the article. However, Frost is not running in #24 -- he's running in District 32. He's chosen to change districts and run against Pete Sessions, an incumbent Republican. The race is nasty, and I'd personally have a hard time voting for either corporate mouthpiece.
The Democratic candidate for Texas House District #24 is a friend of mine, Gary Page. He ran on the Green ticket in 2002, and his performance in four-way debates (D/R/Grn/Lib) led the Democrats to recruit him for this year's run. I'm hoping that disgust with the Republican gerrymander will help overcome the 100:1 money gap between Page and his corporate opponent.
I got mod points today, but since there's no "+/1, Idealistic", I'll just reply.
Not every car trip is interstate, either... most aren't. But when Florida tried to use color-coded highway signs, a federal agency said no:It's the Golden Rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules.
This Federal ability has been a mixed bag. OSHA can only enforce worker safety statutes because of the broad interpretation of "interstate commerce". Same with auto safety, and even most of the civil rights we take for granted (thanks to those who went to jail for us, or worse, in the '60s). On the other hand, it's also brought the drinking age of 21 (a law of dubious usefulness, IMHO) and now, possibly, "standardized" driver's licenses.
My thoughts: use Federal regulation to enhance freedom for individuals and restrict activities of corporations. But I'm just Green like that.
I'm sure Google will be able to handle it. But I wonder what Verizon & co will think about the sudden spike in SMS activity?
Probably, they'll be thinking about the 12c they're getting from me for each one -- 10 for the outgoing, 2 for the incoming. Crap. Well, it's better than the $1.50 (or so) every time my wife decides to call 411. Drives me nuts when she does that...
hah! I've been waiting for this to rear its ugly head again :-)
I'm proud to be the owner of a rare 2004 +5 mod on an "All Your Base" riff. This guy didn't even do all the lines, and his mistranslation of the title line (as noted in another thread, it should be "All your brake are belong to us") is jarring! It's a shame, he had some great material to work with.
Here's mine, from May: Safe "Engineered" Fugu, Sans Gene Manipulation
It might work the first few times, but after a couple of tries you'd get a sore loser, who would refuse to accept the results, and would arm a bunch of 'civilians' and try to go beat an apology out of the victor. Bam. You're back to square one.
Or, you have Captain Kirk sail into orbit, have his ship declared "destroyed", and then stubbornly refuse to enter the execution chamber. Happens every freakin' time.
Seriously, who *wouldn't* pay good money for "actual NASA-certified space junk"? Rutan had to have his people guarantee *not* to sell the ballast on the X-Prize flights, so clearly he thinks there's a market.
If NASA can't sell space junk, then Congress needs to give them the ability to do so. It makes sense that you can't find another piece of the Shuttle in East Texas and sell it... it makes no sense that you can't take a blob of solder melted in space and sell *that*.
Unlike regular nuclear bombs, positron bombs wouldn't eject plumes of radioactive debris. When large numbers of positrons and antielectrons collide, the primary product is an invisible but extremely dangerous burst of gamma radiation. Thus, in principle, a positron bomb could be a step toward one of the military's dreams from the early Cold War: a so-called "clean" superbomb that could kill large numbers of soldiers without ejecting radioactive contaminants over the countryside.
As depressing as it sounds, this is probably a Good Thing.
If we take as fact that militaries exist to kill, then it follows logically that they will develop tools to kill as effectively as possible. That's how we've ended up with uranium fission bombs, then plutonium fission bombs, then hydrogen fusion bombs.
Someone, somewhere, will eventually decide that they need to neutralize their enemy bad enough to accept the consequences of a nuke. It may even be us -- if Bush hadn't restarted research on nuclear bunker-busters, someone else would have eventually.
So if you accept the depressing notion that use of massively destructive weapons is inevitable, you *want* this research to go forward. At least, this way, you *can* go back home.
Kind of ironic... for all the talk about "WMD"s, this would be a real Weapon of *Mass* Destruction... or at least, a Weapon of Mass Conversion Directly To Energy.
Since you *are* a professional photographer (and can therefore use the acronym "IAAPP"), what do you think of a new $8k gadget? It seems like the business side would trump the "cool gadget" side, especially if your existing equipment gets the results you want.
You're right about the march of technology, but who *are* the "early adopters" who go and buy this sort of thing? Myself, I'm the opposite... I only got a digital camera just this year, after the family started playing with a hacked-up Ritz.
I'm not a professional photographer, so I'm sure they have their reasons for needing an $8,000 digital camera. For someone who doesn't make a living taking pictures, though, is there any way to justify a camera that costs more than a used Toyota?
Must.. get.. facts... straight... arrrg...
Don't worry. If you can't get your facts straight, you're in good company these days.
(Meant to be humorous, not insulting...)
The Green party doesn't have the draw the democrats have. [...] I'd love to see Nader or Badnarik president. [...] Next election I'd like Nader to run. But I feel that voting for Nader will have as much effect as writing a letter to Bush asking him to "play nice".
Just to clarify, like they do in polls.slashdot.org:
Michael Badnarik: Libertarian Party candidate for president. http://www.badnarik.org/
David Cobb: Green Party candidate for president. http://www.votecobb.org/
Ralph Nader: Rejected by the Green Party because we want to grow the party, not just tilt at windmills. Independent candidate for president, though he did exhume enough of the Reform Party to get on the Florida ballot under their name. http://www.votenader.org/
Of the three, Cobb is the only one (as far as I know) who has the guts to publicly state that Bush must go at any cost, even if it takes away from Cobb's own votes. Here's a good news article from Minnesota that puts Cobb and Nader's differences in context.
I've got several domains with Gandi as well. No ads on their site, no additional-cost "features" that should be part of the deal in the first place. Everything is right there, completely configurable. Not for newbies, though -- I recommend Domain Direct for an easy-to-use interface. DD is a lot higher sometimes, but the nice thing is that they'll give me a cut if you click here (shameless, aren't I?).
Plus, it's kind of cool to pay 12 euros for a Gandi domain, and see a few days later how many US bucks that is (used to be ~10, now ~15... I have a greater appreciation of the currency markets now). I also use the French version of the site, just for a challenge (I'm also running the FR version of Opera for the same reason).
I'm actually moving my domains away from Opera, though, because I get a good deal from my web host. But that deal comes at a price -- I can't go in and tweak my info on those domains (though the Dryline guy is very responsive).
This may be more palatable if you feel Mother Jones goes off the deep end sometimes.
Pardon my offtopicness, but I'd like more info on Mother Jones. I'm considering subscribing -- I like the idea of supporting "Mother Jones' hellraising journalism." I'm a Green Party member and proud-to-say-it liberal, so it sounds like something I'd enjoy. On the other hand, I think anything can be taken too far, and I'd no sooner give money to tinfoil-hat folks on the left than I would those on the right. I want hard questions asked, but I've had all the Michael Moore I can take, you know?
Let's see, after his interesting call on the Venezuelan elections (it is legit, said Carter before all of the votes were even certified, and well before all of the interesting information about electronic voting machines programmed by a company owned by Chavez's brother were out in the open), he now wants to call the Florida elections before they happen?
If I were to focus on this paragraph, I'm sure I'd be modded "offtopic". Aw, what the heck:
I wouldn't be surprised if Chavez hired some monkeys to play with the votes. As I recall, though, Chavez was nearly ousted in a coup orchestrated by the oil companies not so long ago. The Bush administration was falling all over itself to recognize the coup plotters as the "new government"... only to be red-faced (if not red-handed) when Chavez returned to the scene.
I doubt we're aligned politically, but you seem to know a lot more about the situation than I do... care to expand on the Venezuelan vote, the attempted coup, and possibly how neither side seems be anywhere close to trustworthy?
Hmmm... that last bit sounds familiar. That's why I'm voting Green.
I've never heard of anyone being mugged by a vote-wielding assailant, have you?
cf. Florida, 2000: Mugging of an entire country by 5 (of 9) vote-wielding assailants known as the "Supremes".
What little water was trapped inside caused a massive steam explosion that blew hot dirt for a radius of hundreds of feet.
I'm now the technical support for the financial servers for the federal bankruptcy court for M4.
Bankruptcy? What happened, did they neglect to sell the TV rights in advance? This historic event comes to mind, as does this more obscure one.
Parent is brilliant, definitely worthy of a +5, Funny. But you know, when the grandparent's .sig changes, the parent is just going to look... wierd.
.sig (as of this writing):
.sig.
So as a public service, here is the grandparent message's
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy
By the way, I'm assuming that the misuse of "its" is on purpose, even though it's ("it is" = "it's") not listed in the grandparent's "learn to spell"
Mt. Asama [nodak.edu] in Japan (near Nagano) has been erupting the last few weeks. Check out this short video [maushammer.com] of a continuous stream of ash leaving the top. Some of it reached Tokyo!
For some reason, I'm expecting to click on your site and find something like this...
Only problem is that some of the images are a couple years old... but then how often do streets and house move/change physcially?
I live in a mobile home, YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!
It's not like YOU have any family over there, right? Glad to see you're bearing our losses so well, way to be tough.
Wrong, Einstein. Got a cousin with the 4th ID, just returned from Tikrit, and I personally believe the whole war is a poorly managed mistake, a distraction from the work that still needs to be done in Afghanistan. But that's a topic for politics.slashdot.org.
I wanted to make the point about becoming inured to loss after 9/11. Before then, we had a mighty army that was perceived to turn tail and run when the going got tough. The armed forces themselves never had such a weakness, of course. They know that the purpose of an army is to kill and/or die, preferably more of the former and less of the latter. After 9/11, I think we civilians gained a better understanding of that fact. Now, the debate is about whether the losses are acceptable in light of the military goal -- where it used to be a knee-jerk response to pull out.
How many members of Congress do you have? How many locally elected officials does the Green Party have? How many judicial appointees do you have? See the pattern here?
According to http://greens.org/elections/
429 Candidates in 2004
40 States
74 Types of Offices
And I do indeed see a pattern:
37 Victories in 1996-7
44 Victories in 1998-9
131 Victories in 2000-1
146 Victories in 2002-3
Considering the obstacles faced by third-party candidates... I like what I see so far.
If nobody had been willing to put themselves on a rickety ass little boat and cross the Atlantic, the only people in America would be the Indians (not that that would be a bad thing, but that's another discussion).
Maybe so... if the folks in India had figured out a way to cross the Pacific.
Of course, they would have called the natives "Europeans", wouldn't they?