I played baseball from the time I was 7 to the time I was 22 when I finished college. I pitched from 9 till I finished. I had good umps and bad umps calling games and I have to say there are times I wish there was a machine for calling the strike zone. However I just don't think a machine can do a better job on the whole than a human umpire and I really don't think it can replace the role a human umpire plays in a game of basball.
You can make a machine that calls a rule book strike. Not easy and questech dosn't do that by a damn sight that I am aware of ( it does good and in and out but the variance of hitters hights and stances calls for a modicum of human judgement in the grading phase ). But it can be done however I don't know how desriable that would be. Hell the umps in the majors or college havn't called rule book strikes for years. These days for the most part above the belt is a ball and somewhat above halfway up your shins is a strike ( rule book states kneecaps to armpits more or less... forget the exact wording ).
There are inumerable subtle nuances invovled in the whole process of the game that leads to how the strike zone is called and it is a huge part of the game as anyone who actually plays it for long becomes aware of, especially at the higher levels. A mechanical zone would proove benificial in some ways and detrmental in others. It certainly won't stop complaining about strike/ball calls. People will just complain the system wasn't calibrated right, or a system was malfunctioning.
I am not against change. But I am against removing such an intergral and human element to a great game as a plate umpire calling balls and strikes. As for the idea of grading umpires with questech it A) needs to be agreed upon by all involved, not just the owners and B) needs to be universal with a universal calibration instead of the individualistic methods used in the various systems currently. ( ie sensors/cameras can't be put in the same relative locations due to variences in foul territory and avialability of overhangs etc... the systems are also tuned by different people and the settings can vary from location to location ) finally C) all of the systems need to be verified as consistent in what they consider a strike across the variences of hitters hights and stances out to a pretty significant factor which is where right now there is a good bit of fudge factor covered by the system operators.
Re:When personality control becomes an industry
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Working with ADHD?
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I hope the original poster does read this. They may well have struck on a contributing factor to the over diagnosis of ADD/ADHD but were completely clueless about those who are accurately diagnosed ADD/ADHD. Note I don't say victim, I don't say suffer simply that it is something recognisable in them.
I completely agree on the sports participation as being an excellent vehicle for learning neural feedback skills. I also would add that musicianship can also play much the same role. To this day I don't know if my parents intentionally aimed me at athletics/music with that in mind or if my natural inclinations just worked out that way, but between a lifelong love with Baseball, Playing music and the dedication and concentration required for success in both I have learned how to deal with the worst aspects of ADD in other less appealing endeavors without the need for medications.
As for the original poster that might belive beaing able to learn that control means ADD/ADHD is a myth I would add you simply have no idea. It might help if you thought of concentration as an atheletic skill. IE some people are more athletically capable than others. Something everyone accepts. In running for instance, some people have great endurance and some people are sprinters. The difference between someone who is ADD and someone who is not is somewhat annologus to the difference between a 100 yard dash specialist and a marathon runner. There is nothing wrong with either of them but if you enter sprinters into a marathon they will not do well.
Our educational system is a marathon. It is taylored for people who acheive well in setting of information processing that is slow and gradual. Most people with ADD are capable of biting off huge chunks of information in a short period of time but they cannot sustain this for hours on end, day after day, year after year thus the crash and burn cycle of most ADD students. They also have extreme difficulty focusing on anything at all in a distracting environment ( ie most Public School classrooms ). That distractibility is not a problem of poor self control, for a person who truly is ADD it borders on physical impossibility. Its the sprinter in the first mile of the marathon when the fact they simply don't have the endurance begins to kick in no matter how well they pace themselves. In fact, with long hours of training and hard work the sprinter may become adequate at distance running but it will never be what they are best at because they were born with a physique that contained a high percentage of fast twitch muscle mass. Or in other words they simply don't work that way. Its not wrong, they aren't 'broken', they don't need to be 'fixed'. Its just the way they are.
Don't get me wrong, people with ADD/ADHD can and should work to compensate for their difficulty maintaining focus as needing a certain level of that ability to focus is a painfull reality of the modern world. However, it has to be understood that level of sustainable concentration/focus which is natural for most will never be natural for those of us that are ADD/ADHD. Concentration for us is a difficult and tiring effort that is just as hard to understand for those that don't have the problem as it is for those of us that are technically savvy to comprehend the common publics difficulty understanding computers.
Damn... you just worte my biography through highschool. Except my parents never put me on any drugs, They went through a horrible experience with my older brother and medications for ADD.
They helped me find ways to channel my energy effectively, mostly into Music and Athletics. They also had incredible patience and diligence in teaching me self discipline. While I still had great difficulty with doing 'busy work' and concentrating on things which didn't hold my attention I have learned through the years how to compensate for those areas where I know I am weak.
X-15 never made an orbital speed re-entry, balistic sub-orbital only os its not quite the same thing. Closest thing other than shuttle though I agree.
As for the expensive taxi comment I have to take issue with that. Shuttle was designed to go to skylab and back. Its subsequent missions after devlopment took to long to re-boost skylab were make work missions. Hell other than the Hubble repair job what has shuttle done other than been a short duration space station ? All the science with Shuttle have been compromise work around missions due to the fact THERE WAS NO STATION FOR IT TO GO TO. For the first time since its inception ISS allows it to do what it was designed for.. support a Space Station.
Political bullshit aside regarding station use WHY THE HELL WOULDN'T YOU TAKE SHUTTLE TO STATION ? It has more room, better science facilities for the MG environment and far longer duration... As in its been up there and manned for more than two years and has far more time in space now than all the previous shuttle missions combined !!! ( though with 3 crew I am not sure if station has more man hours in space ).
ISS has problems no doubt. Shuttle has problems no doubt. But they are far more valuable systems together than they are apart.
I don't begrudge expensive manned space expeditions... but I would preffer if they actually spent that money to explaore rather than bore holes in the sky up in Earth orbit. Read Zurbin or go to www.marsdirect.com and read about how we could easily head to the red planet with those rovers easily withen the current space budget for manned exploration.
Nothing all that optimistic about it really... pulling the engines and overhauling them and waiting for all the pieces ( ET and SRB's ) to assemble the stack and payload manifesting/loading can and is all done in two months generally now. The last 4-12 weeks are final safety checks and payload snafu's then waiting for a launch window. They did 3 month turn arounds during the heaviest launch schedule for assembling the ISS... this was without Columbia in the mix also.
Have the pieces available for an assembly line turn around with payloads that are ready to go and your biggest chores in turn around after the orbiter lands are checking the heatshield and reloading the OMS and life support systems. Those checks can be done in that time frame easily including all levels of safety checks and thats with the current aging orbiters.
The thing is, those kinds of options make no sense without a sufficient launch load and that we don't have becasue shuttle just isn't cost effective compared to expendable boosters. IF we bit off the chunk of parts ( extra engines ramped up SRB production ) and commited to a heavy launch schedule Shuttle per launch costs could be reduced, the question is how much. Here is where what I suggest is deffinately optimistic, mostly because to even attempt it you would have to build new orbiters ( not an idea I care for ) and commit to keeping the essential shuttle design in operation for a good long while.
Its time to take the next step, Let shuttles run their course. Make our best call on their safety and accept they are ragged edge technology stretched well beyond their intended service life. At some point enough will have to be enough
We could probably make a Shuttle II system that maintained the same essential staged design but used liquid fuled throttleable fly back Boosters in place of the SRB's, a lighter and much smaller shuttle designed around crew return and perhaps limited cargo, with an ET designed to carry the main payload as well as fuel. we more or less get the ET to orbit now, we just don't even it out with an OMS burn. The combination of a lighter otbiter and a slightly more powerfull OMS system would probably make it quite feasible to manuever the ET into orbit, and there are lots of uses that an expended ET could be put to in orbit... like triple the space of ISS for 1/100th the cost. If the heatshield for a smaller orbiter can be reduced by 50-75k pounds from current weight, that means the empty ET and new orbiter would be very close in mass to just the current orbiter meaning the current OMS system could be used, a more powerfull system and better thermal control would enable much higher orbits ( less decay less need for reboost better MG environment ) possibly lunar orbit or even TMI ( trans mars insertion ).
We could also use the shuttle stack components minus the orbiter and a top payload config ( on top of the ET ) or shuttle C design ( no heatshield/wings/tail, just an orbiter shell with OMS and SME's ) with a capsule for crew return. People harp about the shuttle but tend to not realize it tosses almost as much total mass into LEO as an Apollo Sat V stack did. Its just that most of it is tied up in the orbiter, and large chunk of that is the heatshield. SME's are 7k lbs each which is incredibly light considering their power (~450k lbs thrust EACH ). Then besides the heat shield the rest of the orbiter is built like a plane with similar weight IE light enough to fly. The heastshield is cumbersome and HEAVY. Build a small capsule to stow in the hold for Crew return and launch the heatshield less shell/oms system and engines which dosn't reutrn. Design it to be utilized in orbit and the shell weigth actually becomes payload instead of dead weight. Biggest problem with this idea is the need for an engine more expendable than the SME's or you have to bite extra weight for less efficient engines or provide heatshielding and a return ability for the engines, also problematic.
Either of those options would be good interim options to replace
Call it two months and a fleet of 10+ shuttles and you reach the launch rate quite easily. At 2 months thats 6 launches a year for 10 shuttles thats 60. Issues like having enough engines to continually supply an orbiter for a turn around instead of generally overhauling and replacing the eingines from the last mission.. IE have 3 sets and one set is always ready to go when an orbiter completes a mission... same for SRB's etc... there are ways to shorten the shuttle turn around times right there that have no safety issues... just a parts cost issue since labor is the same regardless of the number of launches ( unless you exceed the ground crews capacity of course ).
Like I said there are issues of if the shuttle could ever have attainted that rate. but the attempt was never made. The 2-3 month turn around is not nececarrily hard coded. That length, actually longer was used initialy while they were still learning the system and prooving the flight capabilities. Since then there has never been a launch manifest that demanded even a 3 month turn around untill ISS. In the mean time since we wound up having only 4 orbiters now 3 that are running up on 20+ years of age except for one there are age issues with the systems that is creating even more time in the process that would not have been an issue with a shorter service life. HOWEVER that is all an issue of scale. Shuttle was designed for an unrealisticlly large scale of operations... IE its the same as designing a wholesale company that makes money on slim margins and then having to do single serving sales at a loss with huge overhead costs and your not moving product at a high enough rate to get the margin.
Meanwhile the thousands of high tech jobs that NASA brings via the joint Lockheed/Boeing USA contracts for shuttle ground crew is a huge political tool and choices regarding that tend to be driven by political issues, budget cutting pressure comming from NASA and job creation bloat coming from State officials who don't want to see a major job market hit during their tenure. The tangle of shuttle issues is a true mess... engineering problems and political all run amuck.
Shuttle launch costs are insane because they never had the launch schedule they were designed around. At high launch rates shuttle would be very efficient... scratch that... much more efficient than its current rate. The system was initially designed thinking there would be 50+ launches a year. Though there was nothing to launch at that rate. The costs with shuttle are fixed to the huge army of people that turn the shuttles around on the ground and they pull pay checks whether the shuttle launches 0 times or 20 times. The initial force employed in the 80's was suffcient to work very high launch rates but they where never realized. Now we have aging shuttles that they are having to perform herculean efforts to keep 'safe'... also the fact further orders for shuttle ( initially they envisioned a fleet similar to a fighter wing instead of a squadron ) never materialized and we have had to hoard the ones we do have has led to increased ground work based around longer turn around times and more precautionary measures.
Had the need been there and we had realized economies of scale for the shuttle the shuttles would have reached their design life of 100 missions in 2-3 years of service ( fewer aging issues ) and we would be on the 3erd or possibly 4th generation of designs of reuseable systems simply as they updated the line as new shuttles were being built much similar to the way they improove cars year to year. But the budget wasn't there, the paylaods were never there and with the exception of some sattelite constelations which can't be sustained still isn't there. There are also some serious questions of if the inital launch rates would ever have been atainable. They certainly could not be now with 20 year old orbiters.
So in the end the low launch rates with huge ground crew has tallied up a per launch cost rate for shuttle equal to or more expensive than Sat V stacks that sent us to the moon. And that really dosn't tell the story becasue it gets much more expensive once you also factor in the fact the shuttle only sends roughly 1/5th of the usuable payload that a Sat V did.
However regarding re-useables think of it this way. Lets say a lot down the street has cars for $500. They are reliable to the point that they will run out the tank of gas from the lot about %99 of the time. Every time you run out of gas its 500 for your next car. On another lot you can buy a 50,000 car that you can refuel and with a little work on it will last your for 100 trips. So your cost for 100 trips is $50,000 + fuel Plus Labor or more than it would cost for 100 500 dollar cars that use one tank. However, if the car can be had for 25,000 or will last for 200 trips its a different story. Whether or not the shuttle would have ever broken that margin will never be known, it honestly wasn't ever given the chance to. Obviously the buy in on re-useable technology is steeper, but just as obvious is once you get beyond a certain level of use ( or re-useability ) re-useables make a great deal more sense.
He he... like I said thats the point at which the theory looses me. Leave it to me to butt heads with an almost PHD in Quantum Gravity. Hope you get a chance to finish it. You have a handle you post under ? Hard to tell one AC from another
I think most of my problems accepting the concepts stem from the fact I refuse to accept lightspeed as a limitation and I refuse to accept time dilation. Which gives me fits with discussions of space time as discribed by GR. Probably puts me on a moral level with the Flat Earth Society but hey.. instead of wanting to be anachronistic at least my refusal is based in my desire for humanity to head for the stars instead of just look at them:-)
Poor choice of words... I was mostly just reffering to the fact that other aspects aside matter and energy can move to either side of that equation... I would have stated it better as mass has energy and energy has mass and the relation is mathmatically stated as E=mc^2. Take any value of E or m and you can solve for the other.
Thanks for the info, and I appreciate all the responses. That link dealing with the Bang and H_radiation were excellent. Mostly just raise more questions though:-) I generally go cross eyed at space time curvature. I can accept space time constructs that allow for mass without matter, I have a vauge understanding of how you can zero matter out of the equation by folding space time.
However I just don't follow how you can zero matter out of an equation when you start with matter and compress it to the point of creating a S_radius... my understanding says you can keep it or convert it to energy but thats it, its going to be there inside that radius in one form or another.... compress it down to a geometric point thats fine by me but it didn't go anywhere. Its a point. That point has co-ordinates and a timeline of existence and you can observe its effects as exibited by its gravitational influence on its neighbors. All space encompassed by the singularity might be a vacuum but not the singularity itself... perhaps its a limitation of euclidian geometry but the way I see it you can't fit infinite points at a set point.. IE only one point goes at the point... any defined physcial space is comprised by an infinite amount of points, but a point defines the utmost breakdown, the smallest unbreakable denominator by its deffinition it defines a singular point. Thus that one point of the infinity of points withen the S-radius that defines the singularity possess the matter in some shape or form that created it.... at least when speaking of a singularity formed from a concentration of matter.
Anyway.... My ultimate theory is that the Event Horizon is the hiding place of Schroedinger's damn cat since in terms of direct observation we can't stick our noses inside that limit... in fact by deffinition it pretty much defies observation all around which leaves us with blackboard gibberish with which to work. Not that you can't accomplish great things on a black board but this similar state of affairs created the wondefully complex and beautiful construct of Ptolemy. I wonder if the next 'Galileo' will find evidence corroberating all the black board dancing we have done regarding black holes or if they will turn it all on its ear.
Is this something you deal with as a hobby or proffesionaly ? For me its pure curiosity, perhaps one day I will lessen my ignorance of the more intimate details of these theories that bug me so much from time to time.
Da after that was posted I remebered the whole thing I had read many moons ago about it... forgot they actually added stuff to the ground.
As for the microbial survival limits I have always taken issue with those assertions... the boundaries at which we find microbial life surviving is somthing that has continual expanded through the years... in my mind the current boundaries only reflect what we have observed which is a far cry from what we may not have observed and what we have observed is on earth only. If someone posted a study as conclusive based on testing one person of the billions on the planet we would laugh at them.... yet life sciences posts 'conclusive' studies after studying just the earth in detail. We have to think outsdie of our little blue sphere. For all we know adding water to the soil on mars is a lethal substance for whatever may have evolved there. Not that I think that is the case... my point is we don't know. At least we should openly admit our bias of looking for life 'as we know it' not life as it may exist elsewhere.
Dought... damn I have always seen them presented backwards then.. IE GR discussed then SR discussed always thought it was a linear presentation. Oh well live and learn.. there is my new thing for the day or at least one of them.
Mass is not linked to matter in GR ? Say which ?
as for conservation of matter/mass visa vi e=mc^2 as I understood it that simply reffered to its two extreme states. IE matter is energy. The equation is balanced. Turning matter into energy does not make it dissapear.
e=mc^2 however that means m=e/c^2
matter as stored energy or energy as stored matter is same difference.
So matter of whatever amount.. be it two hadrons colliding at high speed or a supermassive star runnning out of gass reaches sufficient density via gravitional collapse or high speed collision to form a singularity.
Now what ? Convert the Matter to energy or comperess it till it has no demension, only mass whatever you like but the speed limit of the universe means it can't escape the S_radius defined by the mass of the singularity.
True enough but that argument has been tossed at human existence for quite a while and yet that population die back has yet to materialize.
The question is have we exceeded sustainable growth rates. Fossile fuel aside I'd say we have not exceeded sustainable growth and there are energy alternatives.
I'm not a fan of killing off birds but I have to ask in this case why are Birds better than Rats ? Why is it a good thing we are exterminating Rats ? Cause they are known carriers of Human pathogens ? Birds are more interesting to watch ? If we introduced birds to an island dominated by rats and the birds won would we be talking about restoring the rats to dominance ?
Another method of handling this might have been introducing a predator of the rat that would not have presented a threat to the birds... or perhaps that the birds were more effective at defending themselves from thereby further increasing the diversity of the eco system. A tricky equation to balance but ultimately an endeavor that would have taught us more than simply killing Rats.
I see this rebuke of Humans power to alter the 'natural course' and irresonsibility yet it is that same power that enables us to remove the Rats selectively from this system. It is also the same ability which has kept humanity many times from hitting that wall in population growth where survival of the fitist gets down and dirty.... course the higher we get the harder the fall will be and we can't go back so forward ho and we had best do our best to keep technology ahead of the curve or it will indeed be a painfull and yes I do hope I am on top.
Well put... the problem is Dilbertian Pointy Hair Bosses. ISO is a pointy hair creation. Its principles are a revelotionary as saying 'Water is Wet'. Its unquestioned implementation creats massive beuracratic red tape night mares... course it also creates jobs to deal with that red tape which in turn creates more red tape.... ooooooo its a nasty vicious cycle.
On the otherhand responsible documentation and accountability are needed things.. IE water is indeed wet but knowing that dosn't teach you how to swim. ISO fanatics tend to overlook that.
That first sounds more like a limitation of GR than anything else to me... at a rough guess I would imagine its part of what led to SR
Law of conservation tells me the matter is somwhere as it can't be created or destroyed, even if its compressed to a deminsionless point it is still there and we can see the efects of its presence. Unless I am totally spaced mass is a measure of matter therefor to have mass implies matter. Perhaps my understanding of the conservation of mass/energy is too simplistic.
As for my take on the Big Bang.. could be. Obviously I am not well versed in the minute details of the theory. However it seems to me that is all a semantic issue based on the deffinition of the universe. The 'Soap bubble' multiverse idea would imply that there indeed was an explosion located in an otherwise unoccupied or perhaps even occupied space ( and thus did have a horizon ). At anyrate if the demensions of the universe today are greater than it was at the Big bang where was the space into which it has expanded before the bang ? Or is it simply that the universe then is the universe now and silly things like deminsions have no real meaning other than convienence for our perception.. ie the concentration of matter ( space/time ) made the demenions effectivly the same for the singularity formed prior to the big bang as today its just our perceptions of the deminsions that change.... ack brain melt, think I'll leave off there and let the ole noodle cool off.
Havn't read those ( read Pale Blue Dot ) but if I recall the nay sayers to the results claimed preasure/temperature change or some such in test chamber caused a change in state from the matian soil. IE say you have alkaseltser sitting on top of a cube of ice... no gas change. You scoop up the ice and alkazeltzer into a chamber with a different temperature.. one which melts the water, the liquid water then begins to react with the alkaseltzer causing a gaseus change ( what the experiment was looking for ).
Can't recall off the top of my head if it was the preasure/temp or both that changed.. but the environment in the experiment was not that of mars surface which caused the problem.
George R.R. Martin Song of FIre and Ice Series
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A Good Summer Read?
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SOmethign about fantasy worlds and guys with two R's in there name.
Enders game if you have never read it.
Actual hacker stuff ??? Dunno sounds like you have read the best or at least most current.
I understand..... wait make that I can envision matter being blown off from outside of the horizon for a simple reason... outside of the horizon escape velocity does not exceed C.
If there is not matter per say inside the black hole then what formed it... I thought it was matter which became sufficiently dense that its gravitational pull caused its escape velocity to exceed that of C. IE in the article they are talking about compressing the nucleuses to a sufficient point to exceed the density needed to form a S_Radius
If mass is being lost from inside an event horizon where is it going ? MOre importantly how the hell is it leaving ? Mostly a rhetorical question... I imagine the answer is many years of school and probably a nobel prize or two.
Thanks for the link, I'll dig into that later. I have always been under the impression that the compression of matter prior to the big bang was into essentially a deminsionless point ala ye olde electron which is why I made that assumption that it follows there would have been an event horizon. In fact I would imagine if all the matter of the universe were compressed to the size of an electron be it a point or not I would imagine escape velocity would be many multiples of C if not many powers of C with the appropriate exponential drop off acording to the increasing radius out to the S_Radius. Course the properties of Anti-matter might goof that one up.... damn stuff is pesky as hell to experiment with:-).
I swear.. has a sense of humor become politically incorrect ? I know its real peoples time wasted... but damn thats a funny one. If the guy had been scamming credit cards or something I'd say fry him... otherwise slap him on the wrist if he exploited an in game bug, kick him out if he actually hacked it. More importantly fix the problem.
You know it will be interesting to see how the Matrix online deals with issus like this.. after all its the freakin story line:-)/brodacast_all: Yeeeesssss !!!!!! I AM THE ONE !!! KNEEL BEOFORE ZOD.
No real particle.... ack I give on that, going to have to go back to learning to get that one. If there is dissipation there is loss of mass. Otherwise what is disipating ? Perhaps its a poor term buts its used alot, That then seems to break the limit of light speed somehow as whatever escapes has to escape the schwartzchild (however you spell it) radius.
As for the Big Bang thing I will pose it this way. If all matter was compresed into a small area then it stands to reason there was an event horizon. Of course I understand there is a growing belife that the constants of physcis where in flux at that point.... Think a big string theorist guy was using that idea to deal with the issue of inital expansion rates after the BANG. However that would seem irrelevant as what ever the light speed value was nothing could have ever exceeded it.. so unless light speed at formation was so high that the matter was not suffciently dense to create an event horizon there was indeed an event horizon and it could never be escaped thus we are in a contracting universe... Ok thats way off the deep end for me... but perhaps that gets across the idea of what I was asking.
I certainly am not a physics person but the Light speed limitation and the big bang just don't seem to mesh unless we are inside the event horizon of the collection of matter from right before the Big Bang.
With all these wonderful masters of physics around I was wondering if there was a laymen's explination of how the hell anything could escape a black hole and yet still maintain C as the speed limit of the universe ( hawking radiation ) and if there is any indication yet if we live outside the event horizon of the begining of the universe or if the universe still exists inside of an event horizon dating back to the collection of mass at the big bang ?
You advertise me a 24/7 connection with XXXX up and XXX down rate and then want to charge me for useing XXXX/up and XXX/down 24/7 bandwidth usage ? You want to try explaining that again ?
If its a defunct buisness plan then that was a brilliant decision to roll out a money lossing plan. If they have to meter then fine, they had best allow it to accumulate. IE if I buy 2 GB this month and only use 1 then either I get money back or next month I have 3 and there had best not be a cap on how much can accumulate. I don't mind if I use less on a flat rate but if I am on a metered rate then I am due the bandwidth I purchased. THis also has to break any contract agreements on a no harm no foul basis or the customer has to have the right to demand the honoring of their contract... contracts have to be binding both ways and not just one otherwise its a racket. RIght now custerms are horned into a 12 month deal that the provider has the right to change mid term and you have no out option.
The other funny thing to me is if P2P really is 60% and they actually manage to kill P2P they have just killed 60% of the reason their users have for having their connection and 60% of the reason peopole get broadband..... talk about a sticky wicket.
Bandwidth is an artifically high priced commodity and sooner or later it will crash.... especially in the US the telcos have a strangle hold on the services with DSL access points in their control and they are laughing all the way to the bank with the money they are making. Don't give me this boo hoo crap about ISP's. Frankly I think the Telco's have them over the barrel and sooner or later they will starve the isp's out or get busted up for price fixing. Cable is in much the same boat but there access point is more focused ( ie customers come to them before they have to go out whereas in DSL customers go through the DSLAM before they hit the ISP.
Finaly last but not least.. they had best curb spam before they start yacking at people for downloading to much stuff.
What was Red Dwarfs audience compared to the Matrix ? The success of Matrix was its appeal on many different levels. Pure action, and some good mind twisting with some decent theology/philosophy basis. It was the blend that made it such a smash hit.... swinging to far to one side or the other would have been a mistake in terms of ticket sales. I think they did a good job of opening up new issues of the matrix for discussion and expanding the scale and epic sense of the action for this movie.... after all you have to recall the economic drive which creates this movie.
The mixed reviews are no surprise to me... hell the damn thing would have had tell us the meaning of life in a holodeck 3d experience to fullfill the hype.
Slashdot Mirror
I played baseball from the time I was 7 to the time I was 22 when I finished college. I pitched from 9 till I finished. I had good umps and bad umps calling games and I have to say there are times I wish there was a machine for calling the strike zone. However I just don't think a machine can do a better job on the whole than a human umpire and I really don't think it can replace the role a human umpire plays in a game of basball.
You can make a machine that calls a rule book strike. Not easy and questech dosn't do that by a damn sight that I am aware of ( it does good and in and out but the variance of hitters hights and stances calls for a modicum of human judgement in the grading phase ). But it can be done however I don't know how desriable that would be. Hell the umps in the majors or college havn't called rule book strikes for years. These days for the most part above the belt is a ball and somewhat above halfway up your shins is a strike ( rule book states kneecaps to armpits more or less... forget the exact wording ).
There are inumerable subtle nuances invovled in the whole process of the game that leads to how the strike zone is called and it is a huge part of the game as anyone who actually plays it for long becomes aware of, especially at the higher levels. A mechanical zone would proove benificial in some ways and detrmental in others. It certainly won't stop complaining about strike/ball calls. People will just complain the system wasn't calibrated right, or a system was malfunctioning.
I am not against change. But I am against removing such an intergral and human element to a great game as a plate umpire calling balls and strikes. As for the idea of grading umpires with questech it A) needs to be agreed upon by all involved, not just the owners and B) needs to be universal with a universal calibration instead of the individualistic methods used in the various systems currently. ( ie sensors/cameras can't be put in the same relative locations due to variences in foul territory and avialability of overhangs etc... the systems are also tuned by different people and the settings can vary from location to location ) finally C) all of the systems need to be verified as consistent in what they consider a strike across the variences of hitters hights and stances out to a pretty significant factor which is where right now there is a good bit of fudge factor covered by the system operators.
I hope the original poster does read this. They may well have struck on a contributing factor to the over diagnosis of ADD/ADHD but were completely clueless about those who are accurately diagnosed ADD/ADHD. Note I don't say victim, I don't say suffer simply that it is something recognisable in them.
I completely agree on the sports participation as being an excellent vehicle for learning neural feedback skills. I also would add that musicianship can also play much the same role. To this day I don't know if my parents intentionally aimed me at athletics/music with that in mind or if my natural inclinations just worked out that way, but between a lifelong love with Baseball, Playing music and the dedication and concentration required for success in both I have learned how to deal with the worst aspects of ADD in other less appealing endeavors without the need for medications.
As for the original poster that might belive beaing able to learn that control means ADD/ADHD is a myth I would add you simply have no idea. It might help if you thought of concentration as an atheletic skill. IE some people are more athletically capable than others. Something everyone accepts. In running for instance, some people have great endurance and some people are sprinters. The difference between someone who is ADD and someone who is not is somewhat annologus to the difference between a 100 yard dash specialist and a marathon runner. There is nothing wrong with either of them but if you enter sprinters into a marathon they will not do well.
Our educational system is a marathon. It is taylored for people who acheive well in setting of information processing that is slow and gradual. Most people with ADD are capable of biting off huge chunks of information in a short period of time but they cannot sustain this for hours on end, day after day, year after year thus the crash and burn cycle of most ADD students. They also have extreme difficulty focusing on anything at all in a distracting environment ( ie most Public School classrooms ). That distractibility is not a problem of poor self control, for a person who truly is ADD it borders on physical impossibility. Its the sprinter in the first mile of the marathon when the fact they simply don't have the endurance begins to kick in no matter how well they pace themselves. In fact, with long hours of training and hard work the sprinter may become adequate at distance running but it will never be what they are best at because they were born with a physique that contained a high percentage of fast twitch muscle mass. Or in other words they simply don't work that way. Its not wrong, they aren't 'broken', they don't need to be 'fixed'. Its just the way they are.
Don't get me wrong, people with ADD/ADHD can and should work to compensate for their difficulty maintaining focus as needing a certain level of that ability to focus is a painfull reality of the modern world. However, it has to be understood that level of sustainable concentration/focus which is natural for most will never be natural for those of us that are ADD/ADHD. Concentration for us is a difficult and tiring effort that is just as hard to understand for those that don't have the problem as it is for those of us that are technically savvy to comprehend the common publics difficulty understanding computers.
Damn... you just worte my biography through highschool. Except my parents never put me on any drugs, They went through a horrible experience with my older brother and medications for ADD.
They helped me find ways to channel my energy effectively, mostly into Music and Athletics. They also had incredible patience and diligence in teaching me self discipline. While I still had great difficulty with doing 'busy work' and concentrating on things which didn't hold my attention I have learned through the years how to compensate for those areas where I know I am weak.
As the other guy said... you have a very poor understanding of what is different in someone who is ADD/ADHD and someone who is not.
X-15 never made an orbital speed re-entry, balistic sub-orbital only os its not quite the same thing. Closest thing other than shuttle though I agree.
As for the expensive taxi comment I have to take issue with that. Shuttle was designed to go to skylab and back. Its subsequent missions after devlopment took to long to re-boost skylab were make work missions. Hell other than the Hubble repair job what has shuttle done other than been a short duration space station ? All the science with Shuttle have been compromise work around missions due to the fact THERE WAS NO STATION FOR IT TO GO TO. For the first time since its inception ISS allows it to do what it was designed for.. support a Space Station.
Political bullshit aside regarding station use WHY THE HELL WOULDN'T YOU TAKE SHUTTLE TO STATION ? It has more room, better science facilities for the MG environment and far longer duration... As in its been up there and manned for more than two years and has far more time in space now than all the previous shuttle missions combined !!! ( though with 3 crew I am not sure if station has more man hours in space ).
ISS has problems no doubt. Shuttle has problems no doubt. But they are far more valuable systems together than they are apart.
I don't begrudge expensive manned space expeditions... but I would preffer if they actually spent that money to explaore rather than bore holes in the sky up in Earth orbit. Read Zurbin or go to www.marsdirect.com and read about how we could easily head to the red planet with those rovers easily withen the current space budget for manned exploration.
Nothing all that optimistic about it really... pulling the engines and overhauling them and waiting for all the pieces ( ET and SRB's ) to assemble the stack and payload manifesting/loading can and is all done in two months generally now. The last 4-12 weeks are final safety checks and payload snafu's then waiting for a launch window. They did 3 month turn arounds during the heaviest launch schedule for assembling the ISS... this was without Columbia in the mix also.
Have the pieces available for an assembly line turn around with payloads that are ready to go and your biggest chores in turn around after the orbiter lands are checking the heatshield and reloading the OMS and life support systems. Those checks can be done in that time frame easily including all levels of safety checks and thats with the current aging orbiters.
The thing is, those kinds of options make no sense without a sufficient launch load and that we don't have becasue shuttle just isn't cost effective compared to expendable boosters. IF we bit off the chunk of parts ( extra engines ramped up SRB production ) and commited to a heavy launch schedule Shuttle per launch costs could be reduced, the question is how much. Here is where what I suggest is deffinately optimistic, mostly because to even attempt it you would have to build new orbiters ( not an idea I care for ) and commit to keeping the essential shuttle design in operation for a good long while.
Its time to take the next step, Let shuttles run their course. Make our best call on their safety and accept they are ragged edge technology stretched well beyond their intended service life. At some point enough will have to be enough
We could probably make a Shuttle II system that maintained the same essential staged design but used liquid fuled throttleable fly back Boosters in place of the SRB's, a lighter and much smaller shuttle designed around crew return and perhaps limited cargo, with an ET designed to carry the main payload as well as fuel. we more or less get the ET to orbit now, we just don't even it out with an OMS burn. The combination of a lighter otbiter and a slightly more powerfull OMS system would probably make it quite feasible to manuever the ET into orbit, and there are lots of uses that an expended ET could be put to in orbit... like triple the space of ISS for 1/100th the cost. If the heatshield for a smaller orbiter can be reduced by 50-75k pounds from current weight, that means the empty ET and new orbiter would be very close in mass to just the current orbiter meaning the current OMS system could be used, a more powerfull system and better thermal control would enable much higher orbits ( less decay less need for reboost better MG environment ) possibly lunar orbit or even TMI ( trans mars insertion ).
We could also use the shuttle stack components minus the orbiter and a top payload config ( on top of the ET ) or shuttle C design ( no heatshield/wings/tail, just an orbiter shell with OMS and SME's ) with a capsule for crew return. People harp about the shuttle but tend to not realize it tosses almost as much total mass into LEO as an Apollo Sat V stack did. Its just that most of it is tied up in the orbiter, and large chunk of that is the heatshield. SME's are 7k lbs each which is incredibly light considering their power (~450k lbs thrust EACH ). Then besides the heat shield the rest of the orbiter is built like a plane with similar weight IE light enough to fly. The heastshield is cumbersome and HEAVY. Build a small capsule to stow in the hold for Crew return and launch the heatshield less shell/oms system and engines which dosn't reutrn. Design it to be utilized in orbit and the shell weigth actually becomes payload instead of dead weight. Biggest problem with this idea is the need for an engine more expendable than the SME's or you have to bite extra weight for less efficient engines or provide heatshielding and a return ability for the engines, also problematic.
Either of those options would be good interim options to replace
Call it two months and a fleet of 10+ shuttles and you reach the launch rate quite easily. At 2 months thats 6 launches a year for 10 shuttles thats 60. Issues like having enough engines to continually supply an orbiter for a turn around instead of generally overhauling and replacing the eingines from the last mission.. IE have 3 sets and one set is always ready to go when an orbiter completes a mission... same for SRB's etc... there are ways to shorten the shuttle turn around times right there that have no safety issues... just a parts cost issue since labor is the same regardless of the number of launches ( unless you exceed the ground crews capacity of course ).
Like I said there are issues of if the shuttle could ever have attainted that rate. but the attempt was never made. The 2-3 month turn around is not nececarrily hard coded. That length, actually longer was used initialy while they were still learning the system and prooving the flight capabilities. Since then there has never been a launch manifest that demanded even a 3 month turn around untill ISS. In the mean time since we wound up having only 4 orbiters now 3 that are running up on 20+ years of age except for one there are age issues with the systems that is creating even more time in the process that would not have been an issue with a shorter service life. HOWEVER that is all an issue of scale. Shuttle was designed for an unrealisticlly large scale of operations... IE its the same as designing a wholesale company that makes money on slim margins and then having to do single serving sales at a loss with huge overhead costs and your not moving product at a high enough rate to get the margin.
Meanwhile the thousands of high tech jobs that NASA brings via the joint Lockheed/Boeing USA contracts for shuttle ground crew is a huge political tool and choices regarding that tend to be driven by political issues, budget cutting pressure comming from NASA and job creation bloat coming from State officials who don't want to see a major job market hit during their tenure. The tangle of shuttle issues is a true mess... engineering problems and political all run amuck.
Shuttle launch costs are insane because they never had the launch schedule they were designed around. At high launch rates shuttle would be very efficient... scratch that... much more efficient than its current rate. The system was initially designed thinking there would be 50+ launches a year. Though there was nothing to launch at that rate. The costs with shuttle are fixed to the huge army of people that turn the shuttles around on the ground and they pull pay checks whether the shuttle launches 0 times or 20 times. The initial force employed in the 80's was suffcient to work very high launch rates but they where never realized. Now we have aging shuttles that they are having to perform herculean efforts to keep 'safe'... also the fact further orders for shuttle ( initially they envisioned a fleet similar to a fighter wing instead of a squadron ) never materialized and we have had to hoard the ones we do have has led to increased ground work based around longer turn around times and more precautionary measures.
Had the need been there and we had realized economies of scale for the shuttle the shuttles would have reached their design life of 100 missions in 2-3 years of service ( fewer aging issues ) and we would be on the 3erd or possibly 4th generation of designs of reuseable systems simply as they updated the line as new shuttles were being built much similar to the way they improove cars year to year. But the budget wasn't there, the paylaods were never there and with the exception of some sattelite constelations which can't be sustained still isn't there. There are also some serious questions of if the inital launch rates would ever have been atainable. They certainly could not be now with 20 year old orbiters.
So in the end the low launch rates with huge ground crew has tallied up a per launch cost rate for shuttle equal to or more expensive than Sat V stacks that sent us to the moon. And that really dosn't tell the story becasue it gets much more expensive once you also factor in the fact the shuttle only sends roughly 1/5th of the usuable payload that a Sat V did.
However regarding re-useables think of it this way. Lets say a lot down the street has cars for $500. They are reliable to the point that they will run out the tank of gas from the lot about %99 of the time. Every time you run out of gas its 500 for your next car. On another lot you can buy a 50,000 car that you can refuel and with a little work on it will last your for 100 trips. So your cost for 100 trips is $50,000 + fuel Plus Labor or more than it would cost for 100 500 dollar cars that use one tank. However, if the car can be had for 25,000 or will last for 200 trips its a different story. Whether or not the shuttle would have ever broken that margin will never be known, it honestly wasn't ever given the chance to. Obviously the buy in on re-useable technology is steeper, but just as obvious is once you get beyond a certain level of use ( or re-useability ) re-useables make a great deal more sense.
*crossed eyes*
:-)
He he... like I said thats the point at which the theory looses me. Leave it to me to butt heads with an almost PHD in Quantum Gravity. Hope you get a chance to finish it. You have a handle you post under ? Hard to tell one AC from another
I think most of my problems accepting the concepts stem from the fact I refuse to accept lightspeed as a limitation and I refuse to accept time dilation. Which gives me fits with discussions of space time as discribed by GR. Probably puts me on a moral level with the Flat Earth Society but hey.. instead of wanting to be anachronistic at least my refusal is based in my desire for humanity to head for the stars instead of just look at them
Poor choice of words... I was mostly just reffering to the fact that other aspects aside matter and energy can move to either side of that equation... I would have stated it better as mass has energy and energy has mass and the relation is mathmatically stated as E=mc^2. Take any value of E or m and you can solve for the other.
:-) I generally go cross eyed at space time curvature. I can accept space time constructs that allow for mass without matter, I have a vauge understanding of how you can zero matter out of the equation by folding space time.
Thanks for the info, and I appreciate all the responses. That link dealing with the Bang and H_radiation were excellent. Mostly just raise more questions though
However I just don't follow how you can zero matter out of an equation when you start with matter and compress it to the point of creating a S_radius... my understanding says you can keep it or convert it to energy but thats it, its going to be there inside that radius in one form or another.... compress it down to a geometric point thats fine by me but it didn't go anywhere. Its a point. That point has co-ordinates and a timeline of existence and you can observe its effects as exibited by its gravitational influence on its neighbors. All space encompassed by the singularity might be a vacuum but not the singularity itself... perhaps its a limitation of euclidian geometry but the way I see it you can't fit infinite points at a set point.. IE only one point goes at the point... any defined physcial space is comprised by an infinite amount of points, but a point defines the utmost breakdown, the smallest unbreakable denominator by its deffinition it defines a singular point. Thus that one point of the infinity of points withen the S-radius that defines the singularity possess the matter in some shape or form that created it.... at least when speaking of a singularity formed from a concentration of matter.
Anyway.... My ultimate theory is that the Event Horizon is the hiding place of Schroedinger's damn cat since in terms of direct observation we can't stick our noses inside that limit... in fact by deffinition it pretty much defies observation all around which leaves us with blackboard gibberish with which to work. Not that you can't accomplish great things on a black board but this similar state of affairs created the wondefully complex and beautiful construct of Ptolemy. I wonder if the next 'Galileo' will find evidence corroberating all the black board dancing we have done regarding black holes or if they will turn it all on its ear.
Is this something you deal with as a hobby or proffesionaly ? For me its pure curiosity, perhaps one day I will lessen my ignorance of the more intimate details of these theories that bug me so much from time to time.
Da after that was posted I remebered the whole thing I had read many moons ago about it... forgot they actually added stuff to the ground.
As for the microbial survival limits I have always taken issue with those assertions... the boundaries at which we find microbial life surviving is somthing that has continual expanded through the years... in my mind the current boundaries only reflect what we have observed which is a far cry from what we may not have observed and what we have observed is on earth only. If someone posted a study as conclusive based on testing one person of the billions on the planet we would laugh at them.... yet life sciences posts 'conclusive' studies after studying just the earth in detail. We have to think outsdie of our little blue sphere. For all we know adding water to the soil on mars is a lethal substance for whatever may have evolved there. Not that I think that is the case... my point is we don't know. At least we should openly admit our bias of looking for life 'as we know it' not life as it may exist elsewhere.
Dought... damn I have always seen them presented backwards then.. IE GR discussed then SR discussed always thought it was a linear presentation. Oh well live and learn.. there is my new thing for the day or at least one of them.
Mass is not linked to matter in GR ? Say which ?
as for conservation of matter/mass visa vi e=mc^2 as I understood it that simply reffered to its two extreme states. IE matter is energy. The equation is balanced. Turning matter into energy does not make it dissapear.
e=mc^2
however that means
m=e/c^2
matter as stored energy or energy as stored matter is same difference.
So matter of whatever amount.. be it two hadrons colliding at high speed or a supermassive star runnning out of gass reaches sufficient density via gravitional collapse or high speed collision to form a singularity.
Now what ? Convert the Matter to energy or comperess it till it has no demension, only mass whatever you like but the speed limit of the universe means it can't escape the S_radius defined by the mass of the singularity.
ack I give.... mostly just thinking out loud now.
True enough but that argument has been tossed at human existence for quite a while and yet that population die back has yet to materialize.
The question is have we exceeded sustainable growth rates. Fossile fuel aside I'd say we have not exceeded sustainable growth and there are energy alternatives.
I'm not a fan of killing off birds but I have to ask in this case why are Birds better than Rats ? Why is it a good thing we are exterminating Rats ? Cause they are known carriers of Human pathogens ? Birds are more interesting to watch ? If we introduced birds to an island dominated by rats and the birds won would we be talking about restoring the rats to dominance ?
Another method of handling this might have been introducing a predator of the rat that would not have presented a threat to the birds... or perhaps that the birds were more effective at defending themselves from thereby further increasing the diversity of the eco system. A tricky equation to balance but ultimately an endeavor that would have taught us more than simply killing Rats.
I see this rebuke of Humans power to alter the 'natural course' and irresonsibility yet it is that same power that enables us to remove the Rats selectively from this system. It is also the same ability which has kept humanity many times from hitting that wall in population growth where survival of the fitist gets down and dirty.... course the higher we get the harder the fall will be and we can't go back so forward ho and we had best do our best to keep technology ahead of the curve or it will indeed be a painfull and yes I do hope I am on top.
Well put... the problem is Dilbertian Pointy Hair Bosses. ISO is a pointy hair creation. Its principles are a revelotionary as saying 'Water is Wet'. Its unquestioned implementation creats massive beuracratic red tape night mares... course it also creates jobs to deal with that red tape which in turn creates more red tape.... ooooooo its a nasty vicious cycle.
On the otherhand responsible documentation and accountability are needed things.. IE water is indeed wet but knowing that dosn't teach you how to swim. ISO fanatics tend to overlook that.
That first sounds more like a limitation of GR than anything else to me... at a rough guess I would imagine its part of what led to SR
Law of conservation tells me the matter is somwhere as it can't be created or destroyed, even if its compressed to a deminsionless point it is still there and we can see the efects of its presence. Unless I am totally spaced mass is a measure of matter therefor to have mass implies matter. Perhaps my understanding of the conservation of mass/energy is too simplistic.
As for my take on the Big Bang.. could be. Obviously I am not well versed in the minute details of the theory. However it seems to me that is all a semantic issue based on the deffinition of the universe. The 'Soap bubble' multiverse idea would imply that there indeed was an explosion located in an otherwise unoccupied or perhaps even occupied space ( and thus did have a horizon ). At anyrate if the demensions of the universe today are greater than it was at the Big bang where was the space into which it has expanded before the bang ? Or is it simply that the universe then is the universe now and silly things like deminsions have no real meaning other than convienence for our perception.. ie the concentration of matter ( space/time ) made the demenions effectivly the same for the singularity formed prior to the big bang as today its just our perceptions of the deminsions that change.... ack brain melt, think I'll leave off there and let the ole noodle cool off.
Havn't read those ( read Pale Blue Dot ) but if I recall the nay sayers to the results claimed preasure/temperature change or some such in test chamber caused a change in state from the matian soil. IE say you have alkaseltser sitting on top of a cube of ice... no gas change. You scoop up the ice and alkazeltzer into a chamber with a different temperature.. one which melts the water, the liquid water then begins to react with the alkaseltzer causing a gaseus change ( what the experiment was looking for ).
Can't recall off the top of my head if it was the preasure/temp or both that changed.. but the environment in the experiment was not that of mars surface which caused the problem.
SOmethign about fantasy worlds and guys with two R's in there name.
Enders game if you have never read it.
Actual hacker stuff ??? Dunno sounds like you have read the best or at least most current.
I understand..... wait make that I can envision matter being blown off from outside of the horizon for a simple reason... outside of the horizon escape velocity does not exceed C.
:-).
If there is not matter per say inside the black hole then what formed it... I thought it was matter which became sufficiently dense that its gravitational pull caused its escape velocity to exceed that of C. IE in the article they are talking about compressing the nucleuses to a sufficient point to exceed the density needed to form a S_Radius
If mass is being lost from inside an event horizon where is it going ? MOre importantly how the hell is it leaving ? Mostly a rhetorical question... I imagine the answer is many years of school and probably a nobel prize or two.
Thanks for the link, I'll dig into that later. I have always been under the impression that the compression of matter prior to the big bang was into essentially a deminsionless point ala ye olde electron which is why I made that assumption that it follows there would have been an event horizon. In fact I would imagine if all the matter of the universe were compressed to the size of an electron be it a point or not I would imagine escape velocity would be many multiples of C if not many powers of C with the appropriate exponential drop off acording to the increasing radius out to the S_Radius. Course the properties of Anti-matter might goof that one up.... damn stuff is pesky as hell to experiment with
I swear.. has a sense of humor become politically incorrect ? I know its real peoples time wasted... but damn thats a funny one. If the guy had been scamming credit cards or something I'd say fry him... otherwise slap him on the wrist if he exploited an in game bug, kick him out if he actually hacked it. More importantly fix the problem.
:-) /brodacast_all: Yeeeesssss !!!!!! I AM THE ONE !!! KNEEL BEOFORE ZOD.
You know it will be interesting to see how the Matrix online deals with issus like this.. after all its the freakin story line
No real particle .... ack I give on that, going to have to go back to learning to get that one. If there is dissipation there is loss of mass. Otherwise what is disipating ? Perhaps its a poor term buts its used alot, That then seems to break the limit of light speed somehow as whatever escapes has to escape the schwartzchild (however you spell it) radius.
As for the Big Bang thing I will pose it this way. If all matter was compresed into a small area then it stands to reason there was an event horizon. Of course I understand there is a growing belife that the constants of physcis where in flux at that point.... Think a big string theorist guy was using that idea to deal with the issue of inital expansion rates after the BANG. However that would seem irrelevant as what ever the light speed value was nothing could have ever exceeded it.. so unless light speed at formation was so high that the matter was not suffciently dense to create an event horizon there was indeed an event horizon and it could never be escaped thus we are in a contracting universe... Ok thats way off the deep end for me... but perhaps that gets across the idea of what I was asking.
I certainly am not a physics person but the Light speed limitation and the big bang just don't seem to mesh unless we are inside the event horizon of the collection of matter from right before the Big Bang.
I suppose your one of those crazy people that think ISO9000 is a good idea.
With all these wonderful masters of physics around I was wondering if there was a laymen's explination of how the hell anything could escape a black hole and yet still maintain C as the speed limit of the universe ( hawking radiation ) and if there is any indication yet if we live outside the event horizon of the begining of the universe or if the universe still exists inside of an event horizon dating back to the collection of mass at the big bang ?
You advertise me a 24/7 connection with XXXX up and XXX down rate and then want to charge me for useing XXXX/up and XXX/down 24/7 bandwidth usage ? You want to try explaining that again ?
If its a defunct buisness plan then that was a brilliant decision to roll out a money lossing plan. If they have to meter then fine, they had best allow it to accumulate. IE if I buy 2 GB this month and only use 1 then either I get money back or next month I have 3 and there had best not be a cap on how much can accumulate. I don't mind if I use less on a flat rate but if I am on a metered rate then I am due the bandwidth I purchased. THis also has to break any contract agreements on a no harm no foul basis or the customer has to have the right to demand the honoring of their contract... contracts have to be binding both ways and not just one otherwise its a racket. RIght now custerms are horned into a 12 month deal that the provider has the right to change mid term and you have no out option.
The other funny thing to me is if P2P really is 60% and they actually manage to kill P2P they have just killed 60% of the reason their users have for having their connection and 60% of the reason peopole get broadband..... talk about a sticky wicket.
Bandwidth is an artifically high priced commodity and sooner or later it will crash.... especially in the US the telcos have a strangle hold on the services with DSL access points in their control and they are laughing all the way to the bank with the money they are making. Don't give me this boo hoo crap about ISP's. Frankly I think the Telco's have them over the barrel and sooner or later they will starve the isp's out or get busted up for price fixing. Cable is in much the same boat but there access point is more focused ( ie customers come to them before they have to go out whereas in DSL customers go through the DSLAM before they hit the ISP.
Finaly last but not least.. they had best curb spam before they start yacking at people for downloading to much stuff.
What was Red Dwarfs audience compared to the Matrix ? The success of Matrix was its appeal on many different levels. Pure action, and some good mind twisting with some decent theology/philosophy basis. It was the blend that made it such a smash hit.... swinging to far to one side or the other would have been a mistake in terms of ticket sales. I think they did a good job of opening up new issues of the matrix for discussion and expanding the scale and epic sense of the action for this movie.... after all you have to recall the economic drive which creates this movie.
The mixed reviews are no surprise to me... hell the damn thing would have had tell us the meaning of life in a holodeck 3d experience to fullfill the hype.