Yes but this does not matter from a legal stand point. People do stupid things. And stupid people often blame the wrong thing for their problems. This is nothing new. Apple does not have the right to control what you can and can not do with your hardware once you buy it. They also have no control over what other people produce to work with their hardware so long as their copyrighted software is not used without permission. Reverse engineering has a crap load of precedence protecting its practice and in large part creates a more free and competitive market. Reverse engineering for compatibility is also specifically protected by the otherwise heinous DMCA.
Most manufacturers that deal with this sort of things have lots of fine print that in this case would say something like use of 'real gas' with your IPOD will void your warranty.. or possibly use of "non-apple certified gas" or some such.
I am not saying I like real player. Just that they have done nothing wrong. They have just made an aftermarket modification for "enhanced" use of ipod hardware. As with car aftermarket modifications YMMV, your mileage may vary. People do not blame ford if the cold air intake they put on their ride sucks up water from going through a puddle and over compresses their cylinders to the failing point.
However I agree that there is the issue of firmware upgrades that could break real interoperability and could piss off customers and potentially places apple in the position of having to account for reals work in any future firmware upgrades. They could mitigate customer ire at this kind of break if they are intelligent about it and don't do such a thing without informing the customer. IE I would not care about real formatting but I would run a test to see if it works or not.. if it causes a problem then have a check in the updating process which informs the customer that if they proceed with the update it will cause a problem with parts of their music library. Tell them they can choose to conintue running the older firmware or if they want to have the latest and greates IPOD firmware they will have to install this update and loose the real play files until real play can update their software to again work with what apple has done.
People can be reasonable when you give them clear information and give them an option where they clearly understand they are making a choice. But if apple just updates them and suddenly they can't play all their files then yeah people are going to be pissed and probably at apple becasue they didn't know what was going to happen.
This will not protect from the true and utter numb nuts out there but for them there is no help.
I like apples gear but have always dispised their worship of the closed platform. They have created this mess for themselves IMHO.
This is nothing like using TIVO service without paying for it. Lets make an analogy that this is like.
Apple is like a car company that provides cars that can only fuel up at their gas stations.
Real built a station that will also fuel your apple built car and apple is pissed.
In other words in your anology its like someone provided a competing TIVO schedule service that worked with your TIVO box so that you have the CHOICE of which or both to pay for instead of TIVO's service.
Real has done nothing wrong, just have built another system for accessing and downloading tunes to the Ipod hardware... one which is less open than Itunes it seems since I have heard nothing about it being able to download anything other than songs with Reals format. In which case it sounds more like an added functionality/plugin than anything else.
In any case the software in both cases is free, its paying for the files that costs money.
Structures are already in the 10% or less range. The ET for the shuttle weighs in at like 50k lbs dry, couple million wet. Any weight savings in materials will be negligible.
Though advances in heat shielding could help. Shuttles payload is severely hampared by the weight of the heat shield.
At any rate Bi prop rockets are pretty maxed out. We have to find a better way to generate the power to get out of the atmosphere... Perhaps the elevator is the answer but it has problems as well.
Re:Jack of all trades, master of none.
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By Road and Rail?
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yeah but thats only when talking about trains in the traditional sense. I don't think these would be a very good option on highly used trunk lines ( unless they adhered rigidly to the same scheduling tradditional trains deal with ) but on the lesser used branch lines signaling for these could be pretty simple, its not like they take miles to stop. They could work similar to typical road travel and stop when they see an obstruction.
I think the biggest challenge would be direction of travel issues. But put transponders on all trucks with a rail connected network driving GPS tracking system and I think you could create a rail system that didn't need miticulous e signaling but instead could work similar to road traffic.. ie standard rules. You would likely have direction of travel windows varying through the day.
I am not sure how well the savings of operation would come out in the end. I have no doubt you would see some but it would not take to much non-optimum rail to road combination before those efficency advantages would rapidly dissapear.... IE traffic causes a missed window of needed direction of travel so the vehicle proceeds on roads in the mean time at road efficiency carrying all that extra rail equipmentd.
No I am not saying the feelings of a few kids outweighed the security of the United states.
I am saying that the 10-27 minutes were not critical in the grand scheme of what was happening. They may or may not have been critical to the specific events of the day.
I am saying that what the president has decided to do since is far far far more important than how he initally chose to react to the initial news of the events of sept 11th.
I am not saying the intitial reactions by Bush were optimal for the situation. They most certainly were not.
I am saying that while their were better choice to be made there were also worse choices.
Sure we have the right. But in the end it is 'We the People' that put him there and if he fails at those qualities then is it his fault for being merely human or our fault for not choosing a better canidate ?
Fine but anyway you slice it from the time the FAA knew the president knew within minutes. Less than 30 at the outside and through several intermideary sources. Ever played the telephone game? Commercial jets got hijacked can become wwIII or a cessna off course. Stress does funny things to peoples reactions and memories.
However, at anyrate the news went from Joe Schmuck Flight controler to the President of the United states ear in under half an hour. From typical morning blahs to Hijackings happend in less than 30 minutes. Withen the hour the president was back at the airport preparing for takeoff.
Time is a funny thing. Most times an hour is nothing but put it in sharp focus on review regarding a crisis and it becomes an eternity.
Regarding Clintons perceptive abilities, after the fact Joe Beerbelly knew it was Al Queda. Perhaps Clinton made the ascociation perhaps he didn't, I don't belive there is documented evidence at the time he was informed he said that. Simply his statment several days later that is what he thought of the events... and we know Clinton NEVER spun anything to best advantage for himself... no never that.
Personally I am actually inclined to believe he made the connection. He was after all president for two full terms. Bush was still shaking off the problems of the election in september and probably had anything but an attack on US soil on his possible response in mind.
Is it just possible folks that the president just didn't react as well as he might have but be that as it may he did not act negligently?
Lets paint another scenario. Lets say he cancles the op with news of the first plane. He orders everything civil grounded at that point and scramblems anything with a gun on it to escort whats in the air. They shoot down the pentagon and 4th plane however due to so many itchy trigger fingers in uncertain situations 3 more of the 11 identified possible threats are shot down before it is learned they are not a threat.
Would that have been a better ending to the story or a worse one? It is entirely possible.
In a hindsight story book ending he leaves and all the hijacked planes after the one that hit the first tower are either shot down or brought down without reaching their destinations.
I just painted a horror book ending.
In reality the president finished reading a book with a class per his schedule. Then issued a brief statement and left for airforce one. At some point in the following hour air traffic was grounded and orders to shoot down any more hijacked planes where given though sources cannot determine just who took the initiative.
Is it the best course of events that could have happend? No. Is it the worst ? Again the answer has to be No. For better or worse it is what happend. If you don't think he acted as he should vote against him in the election if you feel his immediate reaction is the sole criteria upon which you should make your decision regarding who you think the next POTUS should be.
One thing it agrees on is the degree of confusion and conflicting reports. Pehraps you can accuse the white house staff of attempting to muddy the water and make the president look better than he was but even the staff reporters with no allegience gave conflicting reports.
You know what. In the end it just boils down to your interpretation of the events. Personally I think people tend to hold the prez to some inhuman standard. He must be perfect because we have intrusted him to be the leader of our nation. To me the worst case interpretation presented by this articale is that our president may have frozen for 10 minutes when learning that the nation was under attack. Or perhaps the communication system just plain broke down under the pure shock of the situation.
You can also look at it in this way. Within ~30 minutes the president was moving and making decisions ( 9:07 informed of second plane to being at the airfield by 9:45.
Hell the secret service does not rush him out of the room and that is heire job and they cannot be overruled when they feel there is a clear and present danger to the president, thus they over rulled themselvs.
Now one thing in that link I did want to discuss was the lack of fighter support for Air Force 1.
Once it was in the Air and above shoulder launched SAM range it never needed air support, fighter support would not have helped agains SAMs in any case. the idea of a plane colliding with air force one in mid air is just silly. Flying a commercial airliner into one of the worlds largets buildings is one thing. Hitting another airliner that knows your inbound and dosn't want to get hit is ludicrous. Probably the most serious threat terrorist could have raised of that nature would have been a smaller possibly faster plane such as a G-V. Though its speed advantage would be slim if any and would still have little chance of success.
Now not scrambling to protect Sarasota/booker seems more of a problem to me but then there were no Tracked off course planes in the South East or around Florida. Thus no immediate threat.
I didn't side track around it. I delt primarily with that. But since you didn't seem to pay attention I will put it in bullet form.
I haven't seen the flick yet but what I have gathered from the posts here and a couple of friends who have is that Moores key point in dealing with those ten minutes was that
A) Bush might have done something to prevent the second plane had he reacted stronger to the first plane.
B) By staying in that location after being informed of the second plane he was irrseponsibly placing those kids at risk.
C) Futher more, after continuing to not react immediately to the second plane and a rapidly declining possibility it was all a tragic accident he jepordized america's response capacity.
My responses were
A) Nobdoy was sure if it was an accident or terroist attack after the first plane. Yes it was a possibility tossed about but NOBODY KNEW. The memo did not say Bin Laden to hijack planes and use them as human guided cruise missles. It Said Bin Laden didn't like the states and wanted to mount an attack. There have been reports saying that for YEARS. Clinton saw those reports as well. I don't blame Clinton for not taking them more seriously any more than I blame Bush.
B) Nothing more could be done to protect that school than was done. Odds are if they had his itenerary then the school would have been hit first and would have been hit regardless of whether he had been there or not because the real time intelligence necesarry to change targets based on changing location would be difficult at best.
C) Lastly I asked what could he have done differently with those 10 minutes? The system reacted as best it could and there are no orders by the executive branch that should have been given that were not given. IN the end I don't give a flying fuck if Dr. Suess gave the order to shoot down any non-responsive plane on a crash course with highly populated areas. Its debateable if an order from the commander in chief or the executive branch period was needed. IE you are an air force general, you have two or three planes confirmed used as human guided missles and you detect more in a sector under your command headed for Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, LA, DC etc. What is your decision ?
Yes, Bush could have gotten up and said " I'm terribly sorry, but there are more important things I need to attend to at this time". In which case I have a feeling Moore would have protrayed him as a panicked prez not thinking clearly * zoom in to camera clips of dissapointed kids and perhaps a frightend teacher *.
All I am saying is that in the grand scheme of things those 10 minutes meant essentially nothing. He could have accomplished nothing differnt in the course of events of the day had he calmly left the room or bolted out the door screaming "We are all going to die" or " go to defcon one and scramble SAC and then bring me Bin Ladin's head on a stick !!! ". However he did none of those things. What he did do was accomplish one thing. He finished doing something he said he would do and then he dealt with the developing situation.
The events of that day were shocking, unprecedented and went against all experience with terrorist hijacking attempts.
NOBODY knew what was going on.
NOBODY claimed responsibility for the attacks.
NOBODY knew if it was accidental or intentional. Granted the second plane seriously reduced the possibility of accident and the Pentagon clinched it. But Don't forget somewhere in there a plane crashed in a field as well and nobody was real sure what had happend there. As clear as it all has become now, it was confusing as hell when it happend.
Given the complete unreal nature of the whole event I do not find finishing the reading of a very short book to a class to be an unreasonable action.
It wasn't a carpet bombing of Washington or some other american target.
It was not a claimed terrorist action.
It was not a WMD attack.
What would those 10 minutes have bought? Even with 20/20 hindsight I want to know if someone can come up with something he specifically could have done that would have changed the course of events from the time he was first informed of the second plane that would have altered the events of that day.
As far as endangering the kids goes? He and consequently they were about as well protected as could be from any kind of conventional attack. Even from an airspace invasion there is generally a hot set of air cover in the air or ready to go wherever the president is. If the military complex could not have acted to prevent a kamikazi run on the president once they knew it was a possibility ( ie the second plane and pentagon strikes ) then it is severely lacking.
However for a second lets assume there was indeed a plane with his name on it and they knew he would be at that school at that time etc.... What would his leaving have done besides save his skin anyway ? Or do you really think the terrorists could really have adapted those plans in real time had his location changed? Whatever increased level of deffense from all air attacks there was could be inacted just as well at that location as at any other so the kids where in no greater danger than they had already been placed in having the POTUS visit their school in the first place. Either the plane could have been intercepted or not... and whehter or not he was there would have been a moot point because the likely hood of them altering the target had he left would have been remote at best.
Your pet peeve is that there were only two extreme reactions. My pet peeve is questioning the reaction in light of what was learned well after those 10 minutes instead of considering it from the level of utter confusion of those 10 minutes.
Not saying you didn't. All in all I think you have made one of the more reasoned responses I have seen. I just wanted to throw another interpretation out there.
100 million to the first LEO vehicle that meets the same requirments for reusability that the X prize requires.
500 million ( or more ) for the first circum lunar vehicle that meets those requirements.
1 billion for first lunar landing system which can accomplish those requriments. ( launch withen two weeks of return though instead of two weeks from first launch date ).
I will point out one thing, I know sports have a given competitive and regulated nature but what I was pointing out is that the real game world interaction of EQ is essentially no different at lower levels than it is at higher levels in much the same way that a pitcher approaches a batter the same way in little league as they would in the majors. Subtelties emerge obviously but the essential confrontation remains unchanged.
In real life there are real sepreations between little league and major league players. There are obvious age and skil differences which keep Jr. or Joe six pack from bing signed to play ball at the big league level. But if you have this ability there is nothing stopping you except to many other skilled players.
In EQ the seperation between the uber warriors and guilds is two fold. There is a deffinate skill usage invovled in choosing strategies etc.. but there is also a highly artificial barrier in the level system and the time required to advance through it.
I do not buy that not having any attainable/clearly defined or improovment scheme in place means an MMO cannot survive. Witness the many players who continue to play even after obtaining all that they can. Lvl 60 EQ players and such, many who have played for years.
The true hook is the social interaction. Its almost impossible to make content for more than a few hours of game play without some form of artificial pacing system. However as I have pointed out the EQ mechanics don't really change from the 1st level to the last level yet people continue to engage in this action for a reason. THe similarity I see with sports games is that their interactions are also the same from start to finish. I simply see no reason to have the artificial stretch. All it does is cause a barrier to interaction between players. MMO's should be ALL about getting people to play together and have as few artificial seperations as possible. People are quite good at seperating themselves already. Have lots of quests, have execution order ( a - b - c etc... ) have open ended options but don't restrict what you can start and what you can do by 'levels' or by what you have or have not or at least don't make attaining what you need the process of weeks if not months.
I agree that most people have niether the time nor inclination to ceate content. But there are many that do and to date they have had very little power. Even in SWG there was no changing the world once you got down to brass tacks. It was still and is a 'ground hogs day' game same as every other MMO to date. There and second life are more along the idea of what I am thinking but take that freedom and plop people down in a world with something to do rather than fart around in beach buggies and paint ball games. Give them the Starwars Universe and let them create the tale of in a galaxy far far a way and then get out of their way instead of spoon feeding them pre-determined morsels. Give them the Star Trek world and let them decide where the borders and neutral zones go, which races becomes dominate. Set them up in Middle earth and let them tell the tale of the 3rd age, Aurther and his Court, Robin Hood, WWII and more.
Developers are scared of this approach because they loose control, and with control they loose predictability. The possibility comes that the game will go horribly wrong but with that risk also comes the possiblity of a self sustaining environment that people return to over and over and over and has no expiration date because it will change as the population does. It is a fundamentally different approach that has yet to be tried. There and second life has NO story, SWG, Camelot, EQ and others have a story but essentially no change so there might as well be no story.... IE its just a back drop. It is a playing field as surely as a baseball diamond or football gridiron.
A player driven game is the perpetual motion machine of the games. Take Counter Strike and other MOD heavy games that completely o
Yep and soyuz costs 20 million to launch 3 people and they are quite willing to sell launches to people with cash in hand much to the dismay of NASA.
Also nothing to stop them from man rating the Falcon 5 eventually, 4000kg should be enough for a capsule to carry at least one person into space. The numbers right now are waiting final verification and may go up. Soyuz tosses ~7000kg. If Falcon V or perhaps the next varient reaches that level then you could license making soyuz capsules and mate them or design your own.
I have to say though I think there is something that has not been dealt with. Obviously you have to have content in a game but it does not have to be consumable in the sense you two have gone back and forth on.
Take sports games for example... in particular Madden. Football games have been essentially the same since the initial madden release. Same rules. Lots of the same plays etc.... They add new bells and whistles and better graphics but you know what I mean.
However the game is a reusable resource. You don't have to lead people on by getting better players etc... There is not problem with people starting right out with skilled teams because it is a game that can be played out again and again and maintain its enjoyable nature.
This is the elusive nature of gaming that has thus far eluded MMORPG designers for the most part. It exists only in the social interaction of groups.
To me it is not the aquisition of higher/better goods that need draw people on but an environment which is continually enjoyable to engage with even if it is repetitive in nature. By creating the treadmill and things like levels you create the elusion of an 'end' I got to max level wooot... now what ? So you create something that is consumable to some extent and it creates a problem. You attract obbsessive compulsive achievers and do what you can to slow them down and yet once they get through the treadmill they are always going to lack for something else to do if you have made the game a slow grind of gaining something that runs out instead of a perpetual motion machine. That makes sense in a stand alone game... not in a multi player interactive world.
The most noteable example of this insanity that comes to my mind is Dark Age of Camelot. They had a possible player V player sport type world interaction with realm V realm play and then they made it almost impossible to get to and enjoy if you were not a power gamer. They placed blocks to peoples enjoyment of what had great potential in order that they didn't 'consume' the game to fast and it cost them.
The MMO game gold mine will be creating a game environment which engages people without the pull of 'improovement' but instead simply pulls them to interact for the sake of interacting ala sports. Sports addict people and they never get old, they continue to do the same thing over and over and over even though they may be as good as they will get... and in a video game you have a forum where getting old and no longer being able to particiapate is not an issue unless you do silly things like make it an issue with insane time requirments to get anywhere and artificially seperate everyone with levels that mean nothing more than one person has spent more time in this pariticular world than someone else. Make the seperation skill based.. IE you can be new and fit in with people of equal skill level be that advanced or utter noob.
After all once you boild it down killing a rat in EQ is the exact same as killing the dreaded Grue of shinning evil. Point click and wait. Why try to pull people with imaginary gains in levels and not focus on the interaction that does hold them ? Place game play dynamics that rely on stratigies and cooperation rather than the uber sword of elvishness and X number of experience points before you can point click and wait on the uber evil god of slaying. You have real people in the game world, let them run the world. People are sordid, scheming and endlessly changing. If you harness your players properly you don't have to create content because they will create it for you.
Folks there are plenty of jokes about an inflatable structure but they need not be so fragile as one might think. After all bullet proof vests are largely kevlar.
Transhab had to deal with the problem of micrometerite impacts same as any manned space structure. Not to mention once you deal with much besides a micrometeorite it dosn't matter what the building material is.
On the positive side this could be a serious boost to private space ventures. This guy wants a 3/4 hab up next year ? Falcon V can boost 4000kg+ to Stations orbit for 12 million if all goes well.
http://www.spacex.com/index.html?section=falcon& co ntent=http%3A//www.spacex.com/falcon_overview.php
If they make this work then in short order they could have a station with more inhabitable volume than ISS for a fraction of the cost.
Why is the FCC the only recourse for regulatory control ? If bandwidth is sold then some can be kept back for common use. Preservation of satelite bands, Ham radio, general purpose bands ( remotes, r/c, walkie talkies ). If needed some could be bought back same as is done for right of ways for roads.
Congress can pass law and the courts can hear disputes on a case by case basis instead of congress delegating regulation to the FCC. An overseeing regulatory beauracracy was needed when the market was unable of regulating itself with the help of the courts. Now its highly possible the regulatory function of the FCC could largely be taken over by a congressional committee with communications as its purview. There is deffinatly an argument that today the market can and would regulate itself better than the FCC.
See cliche regarding mehtods, skin, cats, multiple.
He is speaking of content which can be copied without a loss of value to either person. Think of it this way. Lets say we go to purely digital money. A copy of a million dollar digital account creats another million dollars. Thus he can give you a million dollars and yet he still has his million dollars. You gain what he has and he retains what he had.
That is the crux of digital information. It can be copied and shared without loss.
Sorry, you were probably just trying to be funny but I find many people who don't really grasp this fundamental difference between physical goods and digital information. Physical goods have the issue of creation and of manufacturing and distribution. Digital goods only have the cost of creation. With the internet the cost of production and distribution is already dealt with in the computing infrastructure. Any cost on those activities that approaches comparison with physcial goods is insane and yet that is what has been foisted off onto the public by the media industry.
Personally I think that is what has caused the issue of copyright infringement and of piracy to become so wide spread.
Eh, hitting something 40 million miles away is an accomplishment in my book be it a rock or a Rover impersonating one. However, I agree piggybacking makes it less of one... IE they didn't accomplish the task with the 50 million but paid for a ride on the technology that accomplished that.
Giants and shoulders and all that. Sloppy effort or simply underfunded I really find much to be excited about with the Beagel II launch. Lowering the bar and being willing to take risks is something that has to happen. Now if only more people were willing to chalk it up to experience and move on.
My response had little to do with taking your statements too litterally. I was responding to the spirit of your comment indicating that the mission was doomed to failure simply due to the amount spent. Their is no law stating that a mars mission has to cost X dollars. Hell had the rovers failed that same argument could have been used for them, they were very economic by comparison to other ventures.
So, I really do not think I was being picky at all. Simply reaching the planet for the amount of money spent was a great acomplishment. Afterall, can you imagine what a succesfull landing of beagle could have done to the mind set of what it takes to explore mars ?
As knowledge increases it becomes easier and easier to accomplish great feats. It is about time for a our knowledge of space travel to begin making things easier and showing that it is an activity no different from anything else. The more you do it the cheaper and easier it becomes at the same time we countinually get better and better at doing it. 20 years ago accomplishing what Beagle did for the money spent ( with the possibility for landing an explorer ) was unthinkable. Now it is perhaps one more iteration from working.
You say I am being picky... I am simply saying your glass is half full.
actually you can. Granted to probe wasn't completely successfull but it most certainly did get to mars for less than the cost of a movie about going to mars.
Dosn't have to work like traditional sports. The money in the events could come largely from entrance fees since it is so open to all. If it ever gets to the point where significant sums of money are invovled then you will see spectators begin to gain interst for that fact alone.
Better spectator technology for the games would also help in that department. Games can be involving for spectators, resource games in particular would lend themselves in similar fashion to chess matches, poker games etc...
Well if that were true it wouldn't matter how you drove your car, you would always get the same mielage with variations only in how much idle time you had ( IE time at stoplights ). However if you go run through a tank always putting your foot down when the light turns green vrs a tank where you take it easy you will see a noted difference in the mpg.
I think the answer lies in not trying to anticipate all possible outcomes. A DM does not anticipate all the paths but instead understands the world and simply allows the world to react logically to the decisions of the players.
Games need to make flexible worlds that create plot lines as a natural result of the players actions changing the equilibrium of the game world systems.
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Yes but this does not matter from a legal stand point. People do stupid things. And stupid people often blame the wrong thing for their problems. This is nothing new. Apple does not have the right to control what you can and can not do with your hardware once you buy it. They also have no control over what other people produce to work with their hardware so long as their copyrighted software is not used without permission. Reverse engineering has a crap load of precedence protecting its practice and in large part creates a more free and competitive market. Reverse engineering for compatibility is also specifically protected by the otherwise heinous DMCA.
Most manufacturers that deal with this sort of things have lots of fine print that in this case would say something like use of 'real gas' with your IPOD will void your warranty.. or possibly use of "non-apple certified gas" or some such.
I am not saying I like real player. Just that they have done nothing wrong. They have just made an aftermarket modification for "enhanced" use of ipod hardware. As with car aftermarket modifications YMMV, your mileage may vary. People do not blame ford if the cold air intake they put on their ride sucks up water from going through a puddle and over compresses their cylinders to the failing point.
However I agree that there is the issue of firmware upgrades that could break real interoperability and could piss off customers and potentially places apple in the position of having to account for reals work in any future firmware upgrades. They could mitigate customer ire at this kind of break if they are intelligent about it and don't do such a thing without informing the customer. IE I would not care about real formatting but I would run a test to see if it works or not.. if it causes a problem then have a check in the updating process which informs the customer that if they proceed with the update it will cause a problem with parts of their music library. Tell them they can choose to conintue running the older firmware or if they want to have the latest and greates IPOD firmware they will have to install this update and loose the real play files until real play can update their software to again work with what apple has done.
People can be reasonable when you give them clear information and give them an option where they clearly understand they are making a choice. But if apple just updates them and suddenly they can't play all their files then yeah people are going to be pissed and probably at apple becasue they didn't know what was going to happen.
This will not protect from the true and utter numb nuts out there but for them there is no help.
I like apples gear but have always dispised their worship of the closed platform. They have created this mess for themselves IMHO.
This is nothing like using TIVO service without paying for it. Lets make an analogy that this is like.
Apple is like a car company that provides cars that can only fuel up at their gas stations.
Real built a station that will also fuel your apple built car and apple is pissed.
In other words in your anology its like someone provided a competing TIVO schedule service that worked with your TIVO box so that you have the CHOICE of which or both to pay for instead of TIVO's service.
Real has done nothing wrong, just have built another system for accessing and downloading tunes to the Ipod hardware... one which is less open than Itunes it seems since I have heard nothing about it being able to download anything other than songs with Reals format. In which case it sounds more like an added functionality/plugin than anything else.
In any case the software in both cases is free, its paying for the files that costs money.
SO are you saying this can't be done or that its hard ? We know its freakin hard. What was your point ?
have to be elevators or new propulsion.
Structures are already in the 10% or less range. The ET for the shuttle weighs in at like 50k lbs dry, couple million wet. Any weight savings in materials will be negligible.
Though advances in heat shielding could help. Shuttles payload is severely hampared by the weight of the heat shield.
At any rate Bi prop rockets are pretty maxed out. We have to find a better way to generate the power to get out of the atmosphere... Perhaps the elevator is the answer but it has problems as well.
yeah but thats only when talking about trains in the traditional sense. I don't think these would be a very good option on highly used trunk lines ( unless they adhered rigidly to the same scheduling tradditional trains deal with ) but on the lesser used branch lines signaling for these could be pretty simple, its not like they take miles to stop. They could work similar to typical road travel and stop when they see an obstruction.
I think the biggest challenge would be direction of travel issues. But put transponders on all trucks with a rail connected network driving GPS tracking system and I think you could create a rail system that didn't need miticulous e signaling but instead could work similar to road traffic.. ie standard rules. You would likely have direction of travel windows varying through the day.
I am not sure how well the savings of operation would come out in the end. I have no doubt you would see some but it would not take to much non-optimum rail to road combination before those efficency advantages would rapidly dissapear.... IE traffic causes a missed window of needed direction of travel so the vehicle proceeds on roads in the mean time at road efficiency carrying all that extra rail equipmentd.
No I am not saying the feelings of a few kids outweighed the security of the United states.
I am saying that the 10-27 minutes were not critical in the grand scheme of what was happening. They may or may not have been critical to the specific events of the day.
I am saying that what the president has decided to do since is far far far more important than how he initally chose to react to the initial news of the events of sept 11th.
I am not saying the intitial reactions by Bush were optimal for the situation. They most certainly were not.
I am saying that while their were better choice to be made there were also worse choices.
Sure we have the right. But in the end it is 'We the People' that put him there and if he fails at those qualities then is it his fault for being merely human or our fault for not choosing a better canidate ?
Fine but anyway you slice it from the time the FAA knew the president knew within minutes. Less than 30 at the outside and through several intermideary sources. Ever played the telephone game? Commercial jets got hijacked can become wwIII or a cessna off course. Stress does funny things to peoples reactions and memories.
However, at anyrate the news went from Joe Schmuck Flight controler to the President of the United states ear in under half an hour. From typical morning blahs to Hijackings happend in less than 30 minutes. Withen the hour the president was back at the airport preparing for takeoff.
Time is a funny thing. Most times an hour is nothing but put it in sharp focus on review regarding a crisis and it becomes an eternity.
Regarding Clintons perceptive abilities, after the fact Joe Beerbelly knew it was Al Queda. Perhaps Clinton made the ascociation perhaps he didn't, I don't belive there is documented evidence at the time he was informed he said that. Simply his statment several days later that is what he thought of the events... and we know Clinton NEVER spun anything to best advantage for himself... no never that.
Personally I am actually inclined to believe he made the connection. He was after all president for two full terms. Bush was still shaking off the problems of the election in september and probably had anything but an attack on US soil on his possible response in mind.
Is it just possible folks that the president just didn't react as well as he might have but be that as it may he did not act negligently?
Lets paint another scenario. Lets say he cancles the op with news of the first plane. He orders everything civil grounded at that point and scramblems anything with a gun on it to escort whats in the air. They shoot down the pentagon and 4th plane however due to so many itchy trigger fingers in uncertain situations 3 more of the 11 identified possible threats are shot down before it is learned they are not a threat.
Would that have been a better ending to the story or a worse one? It is entirely possible.
In a hindsight story book ending he leaves and all the hijacked planes after the one that hit the first tower are either shot down or brought down without reaching their destinations.
I just painted a horror book ending.
In reality the president finished reading a book with a class per his schedule. Then issued a brief statement and left for airforce one. At some point in the following hour air traffic was grounded and orders to shoot down any more hijacked planes where given though sources cannot determine just who took the initiative.
Is it the best course of events that could have happend? No. Is it the worst ? Again the answer has to be No. For better or worse it is what happend. If you don't think he acted as he should vote against him in the election if you feel his immediate reaction is the sole criteria upon which you should make your decision regarding who you think the next POTUS should be.
A very interesting essay.
One thing it agrees on is the degree of confusion and conflicting reports. Pehraps you can accuse the white house staff of attempting to muddy the water and make the president look better than he was but even the staff reporters with no allegience gave conflicting reports.
You know what. In the end it just boils down to your interpretation of the events. Personally I think people tend to hold the prez to some inhuman standard. He must be perfect because we have intrusted him to be the leader of our nation. To me the worst case interpretation presented by this articale is that our president may have frozen for 10 minutes when learning that the nation was under attack. Or perhaps the communication system just plain broke down under the pure shock of the situation.
You can also look at it in this way. Within ~30 minutes the president was moving and making decisions ( 9:07 informed of second plane to being at the airfield by 9:45.
Hell the secret service does not rush him out of the room and that is heire job and they cannot be overruled when they feel there is a clear and present danger to the president, thus they over rulled themselvs.
Now one thing in that link I did want to discuss was the lack of fighter support for Air Force 1.
Once it was in the Air and above shoulder launched SAM range it never needed air support, fighter support would not have helped agains SAMs in any case. the idea of a plane colliding with air force one in mid air is just silly. Flying a commercial airliner into one of the worlds largets buildings is one thing. Hitting another airliner that knows your inbound and dosn't want to get hit is ludicrous. Probably the most serious threat terrorist could have raised of that nature would have been a smaller possibly faster plane such as a G-V. Though its speed advantage would be slim if any and would still have little chance of success.
Now not scrambling to protect Sarasota/booker seems more of a problem to me but then there were no Tracked off course planes in the South East or around Florida. Thus no immediate threat.
I didn't side track around it. I delt primarily with that. But since you didn't seem to pay attention I will put it in bullet form.
I haven't seen the flick yet but what I have gathered from the posts here and a couple of friends who have is that Moores key point in dealing with those ten minutes was that
A) Bush might have done something to prevent the second plane had he reacted stronger to the first plane.
B) By staying in that location after being informed of the second plane he was irrseponsibly placing those kids at risk.
C) Futher more, after continuing to not react immediately to the second plane and a rapidly declining possibility it was all a tragic accident he jepordized america's response capacity.
My responses were
A) Nobdoy was sure if it was an accident or terroist attack after the first plane. Yes it was a possibility tossed about but NOBODY KNEW. The memo did not say Bin Laden to hijack planes and use them as human guided cruise missles. It Said Bin Laden didn't like the states and wanted to mount an attack. There have been reports saying that for YEARS. Clinton saw those reports as well. I don't blame Clinton for not taking them more seriously any more than I blame Bush.
B) Nothing more could be done to protect that school than was done. Odds are if they had his itenerary then the school would have been hit first and would have been hit regardless of whether he had been there or not because the real time intelligence necesarry to change targets based on changing location would be difficult at best.
C) Lastly I asked what could he have done differently with those 10 minutes? The system reacted as best it could and there are no orders by the executive branch that should have been given that were not given. IN the end I don't give a flying fuck if Dr. Suess gave the order to shoot down any non-responsive plane on a crash course with highly populated areas. Its debateable if an order from the commander in chief or the executive branch period was needed. IE you are an air force general, you have two or three planes confirmed used as human guided missles and you detect more in a sector under your command headed for Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, LA, DC etc. What is your decision ?
Yes, Bush could have gotten up and said " I'm terribly sorry, but there are more important things I need to attend to at this time". In which case I have a feeling Moore would have protrayed him as a panicked prez not thinking clearly * zoom in to camera clips of dissapointed kids and perhaps a frightend teacher *.
All I am saying is that in the grand scheme of things those 10 minutes meant essentially nothing. He could have accomplished nothing differnt in the course of events of the day had he calmly left the room or bolted out the door screaming "We are all going to die" or " go to defcon one and scramble SAC and then bring me Bin Ladin's head on a stick !!! ". However he did none of those things. What he did do was accomplish one thing. He finished doing something he said he would do and then he dealt with the developing situation.
Hindsight is 20/20.
The events of that day were shocking, unprecedented and went against all experience with terrorist hijacking attempts.
NOBODY knew what was going on.
NOBODY claimed responsibility for the attacks.
NOBODY knew if it was accidental or intentional. Granted the second plane seriously reduced the possibility of accident and the Pentagon clinched it. But Don't forget somewhere in there a plane crashed in a field as well and nobody was real sure what had happend there. As clear as it all has become now, it was confusing as hell when it happend.
Given the complete unreal nature of the whole event I do not find finishing the reading of a very short book to a class to be an unreasonable action.
It wasn't a carpet bombing of Washington or some other american target.
It was not a claimed terrorist action.
It was not a WMD attack.
What would those 10 minutes have bought? Even with 20/20 hindsight I want to know if someone can come up with something he specifically could have done that would have changed the course of events from the time he was first informed of the second plane that would have altered the events of that day.
As far as endangering the kids goes? He and consequently they were about as well protected as could be from any kind of conventional attack. Even from an airspace invasion there is generally a hot set of air cover in the air or ready to go wherever the president is. If the military complex could not have acted to prevent a kamikazi run on the president once they knew it was a possibility ( ie the second plane and pentagon strikes ) then it is severely lacking.
However for a second lets assume there was indeed a plane with his name on it and they knew he would be at that school at that time etc.... What would his leaving have done besides save his skin anyway ? Or do you really think the terrorists could really have adapted those plans in real time had his location changed? Whatever increased level of deffense from all air attacks there was could be inacted just as well at that location as at any other so the kids where in no greater danger than they had already been placed in having the POTUS visit their school in the first place. Either the plane could have been intercepted or not... and whehter or not he was there would have been a moot point because the likely hood of them altering the target had he left would have been remote at best.
Your pet peeve is that there were only two extreme reactions. My pet peeve is questioning the reaction in light of what was learned well after those 10 minutes instead of considering it from the level of utter confusion of those 10 minutes.
Not saying you didn't. All in all I think you have made one of the more reasoned responses I have seen. I just wanted to throw another interpretation out there.
100 million to the first LEO vehicle that meets the same requirments for reusability that the X prize requires.
500 million ( or more ) for the first circum lunar vehicle that meets those requirements.
1 billion for first lunar landing system which can accomplish those requriments. ( launch withen two weeks of return though instead of two weeks from first launch date ).
10 billion for a man on mars and safe return.
I agree very much with what you had to say.
I will point out one thing, I know sports have a given competitive and regulated nature but what I was pointing out is that the real game world interaction of EQ is essentially no different at lower levels than it is at higher levels in much the same way that a pitcher approaches a batter the same way in little league as they would in the majors. Subtelties emerge obviously but the essential confrontation remains unchanged.
In real life there are real sepreations between little league and major league players. There are obvious age and skil differences which keep Jr. or Joe six pack from bing signed to play ball at the big league level. But if you have this ability there is nothing stopping you except to many other skilled players.
In EQ the seperation between the uber warriors and guilds is two fold. There is a deffinate skill usage invovled in choosing strategies etc.. but there is also a highly artificial barrier in the level system and the time required to advance through it.
I do not buy that not having any attainable/clearly defined or improovment scheme in place means an MMO cannot survive. Witness the many players who continue to play even after obtaining all that they can. Lvl 60 EQ players and such, many who have played for years.
The true hook is the social interaction. Its almost impossible to make content for more than a few hours of game play without some form of artificial pacing system. However as I have pointed out the EQ mechanics don't really change from the 1st level to the last level yet people continue to engage in this action for a reason. THe similarity I see with sports games is that their interactions are also the same from start to finish. I simply see no reason to have the artificial stretch. All it does is cause a barrier to interaction between players. MMO's should be ALL about getting people to play together and have as few artificial seperations as possible. People are quite good at seperating themselves already. Have lots of quests, have execution order ( a - b - c etc... ) have open ended options but don't restrict what you can start and what you can do by 'levels' or by what you have or have not or at least don't make attaining what you need the process of weeks if not months.
I agree that most people have niether the time nor inclination to ceate content. But there are many that do and to date they have had very little power. Even in SWG there was no changing the world once you got down to brass tacks. It was still and is a 'ground hogs day' game same as every other MMO to date. There and second life are more along the idea of what I am thinking but take that freedom and plop people down in a world with something to do rather than fart around in beach buggies and paint ball games. Give them the Starwars Universe and let them create the tale of in a galaxy far far a way and then get out of their way instead of spoon feeding them pre-determined morsels. Give them the Star Trek world and let them decide where the borders and neutral zones go, which races becomes dominate. Set them up in Middle earth and let them tell the tale of the 3rd age, Aurther and his Court, Robin Hood, WWII and more.
Developers are scared of this approach because they loose control, and with control they loose predictability. The possibility comes that the game will go horribly wrong but with that risk also comes the possiblity of a self sustaining environment that people return to over and over and over and has no expiration date because it will change as the population does. It is a fundamentally different approach that has yet to be tried. There and second life has NO story, SWG, Camelot, EQ and others have a story but essentially no change so there might as well be no story.... IE its just a back drop. It is a playing field as surely as a baseball diamond or football gridiron.
A player driven game is the perpetual motion machine of the games. Take Counter Strike and other MOD heavy games that completely o
Yes but thick metal sheets are not an option either.. they weigh to much... similar problem to using them in the field if you are on foot.
Yep and soyuz costs 20 million to launch 3 people and they are quite willing to sell launches to people with cash in hand much to the dismay of NASA.
Also nothing to stop them from man rating the Falcon 5 eventually, 4000kg should be enough for a capsule to carry at least one person into space. The numbers right now are waiting final verification and may go up. Soyuz tosses ~7000kg. If Falcon V or perhaps the next varient reaches that level then you could license making soyuz capsules and mate them or design your own.
I have to say though I think there is something that has not been dealt with. Obviously you have to have content in a game but it does not have to be consumable in the sense you two have gone back and forth on.
Take sports games for example... in particular Madden. Football games have been essentially the same since the initial madden release. Same rules. Lots of the same plays etc.... They add new bells and whistles and better graphics but you know what I mean.
However the game is a reusable resource. You don't have to lead people on by getting better players etc... There is not problem with people starting right out with skilled teams because it is a game that can be played out again and again and maintain its enjoyable nature.
This is the elusive nature of gaming that has thus far eluded MMORPG designers for the most part. It exists only in the social interaction of groups.
To me it is not the aquisition of higher/better goods that need draw people on but an environment which is continually enjoyable to engage with even if it is repetitive in nature. By creating the treadmill and things like levels you create the elusion of an 'end' I got to max level wooot... now what ? So you create something that is consumable to some extent and it creates a problem. You attract obbsessive compulsive achievers and do what you can to slow them down and yet once they get through the treadmill they are always going to lack for something else to do if you have made the game a slow grind of gaining something that runs out instead of a perpetual motion machine. That makes sense in a stand alone game... not in a multi player interactive world.
The most noteable example of this insanity that comes to my mind is Dark Age of Camelot. They had a possible player V player sport type world interaction with realm V realm play and then they made it almost impossible to get to and enjoy if you were not a power gamer. They placed blocks to peoples enjoyment of what had great potential in order that they didn't 'consume' the game to fast and it cost them.
The MMO game gold mine will be creating a game environment which engages people without the pull of 'improovement' but instead simply pulls them to interact for the sake of interacting ala sports. Sports addict people and they never get old, they continue to do the same thing over and over and over even though they may be as good as they will get... and in a video game you have a forum where getting old and no longer being able to particiapate is not an issue unless you do silly things like make it an issue with insane time requirments to get anywhere and artificially seperate everyone with levels that mean nothing more than one person has spent more time in this pariticular world than someone else. Make the seperation skill based.. IE you can be new and fit in with people of equal skill level be that advanced or utter noob.
After all once you boild it down killing a rat in EQ is the exact same as killing the dreaded Grue of shinning evil. Point click and wait. Why try to pull people with imaginary gains in levels and not focus on the interaction that does hold them ? Place game play dynamics that rely on stratigies and cooperation rather than the uber sword of elvishness and X number of experience points before you can point click and wait on the uber evil god of slaying. You have real people in the game world, let them run the world. People are sordid, scheming and endlessly changing. If you harness your players properly you don't have to create content because they will create it for you.
Folks there are plenty of jokes about an inflatable structure but they need not be so fragile as one might think. After all bullet proof vests are largely kevlar.
& co ntent=http%3A//www.spacex.com/falcon_overview.php
Transhab had to deal with the problem of micrometerite impacts same as any manned space structure. Not to mention once you deal with much besides a micrometeorite it dosn't matter what the building material is.
On the positive side this could be a serious boost to private space ventures. This guy wants a 3/4 hab up next year ? Falcon V can boost 4000kg+ to Stations orbit for 12 million if all goes well.
http://www.spacex.com/index.html?section=falcon
If they make this work then in short order they could have a station with more inhabitable volume than ISS for a fraction of the cost.
Why is the FCC the only recourse for regulatory control ? If bandwidth is sold then some can be kept back for common use. Preservation of satelite bands, Ham radio, general purpose bands ( remotes, r/c, walkie talkies ). If needed some could be bought back same as is done for right of ways for roads.
Congress can pass law and the courts can hear disputes on a case by case basis instead of congress delegating regulation to the FCC. An overseeing regulatory beauracracy was needed when the market was unable of regulating itself with the help of the courts. Now its highly possible the regulatory function of the FCC could largely be taken over by a congressional committee with communications as its purview. There is deffinatly an argument that today the market can and would regulate itself better than the FCC.
See cliche regarding mehtods, skin, cats, multiple.
He is speaking of content which can be copied without a loss of value to either person. Think of it this way. Lets say we go to purely digital money. A copy of a million dollar digital account creats another million dollars. Thus he can give you a million dollars and yet he still has his million dollars. You gain what he has and he retains what he had.
That is the crux of digital information. It can be copied and shared without loss.
Sorry, you were probably just trying to be funny but I find many people who don't really grasp this fundamental difference between physical goods and digital information. Physical goods have the issue of creation and of manufacturing and distribution. Digital goods only have the cost of creation. With the internet the cost of production and distribution is already dealt with in the computing infrastructure. Any cost on those activities that approaches comparison with physcial goods is insane and yet that is what has been foisted off onto the public by the media industry.
Personally I think that is what has caused the issue of copyright infringement and of piracy to become so wide spread.
Eh, hitting something 40 million miles away is an accomplishment in my book be it a rock or a Rover impersonating one. However, I agree piggybacking makes it less of one... IE they didn't accomplish the task with the 50 million but paid for a ride on the technology that accomplished that.
Giants and shoulders and all that. Sloppy effort or simply underfunded I really find much to be excited about with the Beagel II launch. Lowering the bar and being willing to take risks is something that has to happen. Now if only more people were willing to chalk it up to experience and move on.
My response had little to do with taking your statements too litterally. I was responding to the spirit of your comment indicating that the mission was doomed to failure simply due to the amount spent. Their is no law stating that a mars mission has to cost X dollars. Hell had the rovers failed that same argument could have been used for them, they were very economic by comparison to other ventures.
So, I really do not think I was being picky at all. Simply reaching the planet for the amount of money spent was a great acomplishment. Afterall, can you imagine what a succesfull landing of beagle could have done to the mind set of what it takes to explore mars ?
As knowledge increases it becomes easier and easier to accomplish great feats. It is about time for a our knowledge of space travel to begin making things easier and showing that it is an activity no different from anything else. The more you do it the cheaper and easier it becomes at the same time we countinually get better and better at doing it. 20 years ago accomplishing what Beagle did for the money spent ( with the possibility for landing an explorer ) was unthinkable. Now it is perhaps one more iteration from working.
You say I am being picky... I am simply saying your glass is half full.
actually you can. Granted to probe wasn't completely successfull but it most certainly did get to mars for less than the cost of a movie about going to mars.
Dosn't have to work like traditional sports. The money in the events could come largely from entrance fees since it is so open to all. If it ever gets to the point where significant sums of money are invovled then you will see spectators begin to gain interst for that fact alone.
Better spectator technology for the games would also help in that department. Games can be involving for spectators, resource games in particular would lend themselves in similar fashion to chess matches, poker games etc...
Well if that were true it wouldn't matter how you drove your car, you would always get the same mielage with variations only in how much idle time you had ( IE time at stoplights ). However if you go run through a tank always putting your foot down when the light turns green vrs a tank where you take it easy you will see a noted difference in the mpg.
I think the answer lies in not trying to anticipate all possible outcomes. A DM does not anticipate all the paths but instead understands the world and simply allows the world to react logically to the decisions of the players.
Games need to make flexible worlds that create plot lines as a natural result of the players actions changing the equilibrium of the game world systems.