"Still, selling an emulator is asking for trouble."
Why? Insignia survived for years selling PC emulators for Macs and Unix machines... I don't remember anyone ever suing them for it.
Admittedly that's somewhat different as all the fundamentals of the PC hardware and the BIOS interface were open knowledge, but I don't see why selling an emulator for a game console should necessarily be illegal (though it easily could be if they're not careful -- e.g. if they ship ripped BIOS ROMs from the console).
"Service missions to Hubble are crazy given the astronomical launch costs for Shuttle missions."
Launching a shuttle costs about $150,000,000. That's the difference between flying a Hubble mission and not flying a Hubble mission: most of the shuttle costs are fixed costs, so you save very little by cancelling one flight... and, equally, adding another flight doesn't cost that much.
I mean, even with _no_ shuttle launches, I doubt the shuttle budget this year is significantly lower than usual.
"Ok, please tell me where do we practise colonization if not on the Moon or on the Mars?"
In free space. It's the only place that makes any sense for a space-faring society, since there's no local gravity well to worry about and the colony can move at will, given sufficient fuel and time. Certainly it can easily move enough to avoid an asteroid impact.
"The whole point about Moon or Mars being more susceptible to asteroids is a moot point"
It's not. Colonising a planet is like painting a big target around your house and mailing your GPS coordinates to bin Laden... it can't be moved, and gravity 'sucks in' passing rocks: Mars and the Moon don't even have enough atmosphere to slow them down.
"It'll cost us the billions we're spending today to come up with those "cheaper and more sophisticated transports."
No, private companies will spend the billions, not taxpayers... and odds are it will be much cheaper and more efficient to do privately, just like the majority of other government programs.
You can't, basically. The modules would need independent maneuvering and docking systems, which don't exist today: they're designed to be put in place by the shuttle arm, not fly there themselves.
A better question might be: why put the rest of the pieces up at all when the station serves no sensible purpose?
"THE HUMAN RACE MUST GET OFF THIS PLANET - NOT LATER BUT RIGHT ABOUT NOW!"
Even if that was true, Bush's Mars boondoggle wouldn't get you one step closer. If we want to get off the planet, then the most important thing by far is really, really cheap and reliable launch vehicles. Mars is irrelevant.
"We are already overdue for an extinction level asteroid impact and the odds won't improve with time."
The odds are around 1/60,000,000 per year. Waiting a century until manned spaceflight is easy and cheap will give us roughly 1/600,000 odds of such an impact. It would also be pointless to move to the Moon or Mars, when their gravity wells give them a much greater chance of such an impact than a colony in free space, which can also just move out of the way.
Mars is simply irrelevant, as is the moon other than as a source of raw materials.
"Then the rocket scientists working for NASA will pretty much be forced to go work for third world nations developing ICBM technology."
Fortunately, if today's NASA designs their ICBM, it will be fully reusable, cost fifty bazillion dollars a flight, require a year of preparation before launch, and explode in flight 50% of the time (the other 50% will abort just before launch and require another six months of preparation to try again).
"So servicing the Hubble will violate his mandate to play it safest"
Exactly: Hubble is pretty much irrelevant, he just wants to be able to pass the buck if another shuttle is lost. If Congress forces him to fly a servicing mission, that's fine, because they'll take the blame if anything happens.
Though, that said, they didn't take the blame for STS-107, which, AFAIR, was a mission essentially forced on NASA by Congress, not one they planned to fly.
"Do NOT try to kill manned Mars exploration just because you hate Bush. That's pretty fuckin' petty."
I don't want to kill it because I hate Bush, I want to kill it because it's a pointless and expensive boondoggle that serves no rational purpose. We've already blown tens of billions of dollars sending government bureaucrats to one barren rock, why spend hundreds of billions sending them to another barren rock?
But then I don't have to worry about that, because as far as I can see, the plan is that once ISS and the shuttle have been killed, the Moon/Mars budget will be cut and NASA's manned space program will die: maybe they'll be allowed to keep the OSP/CRV/CEV capsule or whatever it's called these days and send up an astronaut or two a year, if they're lucky.
There will be a day when it makes sense for people to go to Mars. But those people will be called 'tourists' and they'll be paying their own way on transports far cheaper and more sophisticated than anything NASA is going to come up with in the next few decades.
"Make more shows like Alias, X-Files, or La Femme Nikita that are/were actually interesting and you might retain some viewers"
But making good drama costs money. "Reality TV" is basically free in comparison, and the drones will continue to watch since they have nothing else to do.
"True, but the copyright monopoly is only on distributing Windows. Not quite the same thing as a monopoly on the distribution of any kind of OS. The former allows for consumer choice and is OK,"
So? How is that OK? What legitimate consumer choice do I have if I want to buy a copy of Windows? Um, I can buy it from Microsoft or... I can not buy it at all. Some choice.
Absent government interference, there would be as many Windows distributions available as there are Linux distributions. That's the difference.
Uh, yes. What do you call copyright if not a government-mandated monopoly? Without copyright, Microsoft would not exist... and with copyright, no-one is allowed to compete with them in distributing Windows, under force of law.
Where did I say anything about "severe punishment"? All I pointed out was that when you rely on the kindness of government for your income, you can't legitimately whine when the government then decides to impose restrictions on you. When you sell your soul to Satan, you live with the consequences.
Because Microsoft have a government-granted monopoly on selling Windows, while McDonalds' do not have a government-granted monopoly on selling fries. If you want a government monopoly, you live with the consequences.
"two people can't (reasonably) use the book's contents at the same time."
They can when you rip all the pages out and pass them along a line of people:).
However, I don't see why simultaneity really matters: libraries can still rent out the same book to hundreds of people before it's replaced. Whether they're reading it serially or in parallel is irrelevant, they're still not buying the book.
Every book in a library 'costs' the author a sizable amount of money, unless they're so crap that no-one would want to read them: if libraries hadn't existed for centuries and were invented today, authors would be demanding laws against them.
"A profile where you are expending a massive effort to do a round trip with the dubious returns of a short stay on Mars, bracketed by a massively long, expensive, dangerous, debilitating trip there and back."
Uh, you don't have the _option_ of "a short stay on Mars". By the time you get there you're probably looking at a minimum of a six month stay just waiting for the planets to be in the right position to get back. This is one of the reasons why a trip to Mars and back is so difficult, you _have_ to spend several years making the trip, with current rocket technologies.
The moon's gravity is high enough to be problematic getting there and getting away, but too low to be very useful in maintaining muscle strength. Also, 'Space 1999' aside, the moon can't be flown around the solar system anywhere near as easily as a 100,000 person space habitat with a fusion pulse rocket on the back if you get bored with your current location.
"If the ultimate goal is to work toward colonization of other planets then building factories on the moon is not insane,"
Well, obviously that's true in the long-term sense: but it's certainly not possible with forseeable NASA budgets, and definitely a non-starter in terms of reducing the cost of near-term trips to Mars.
Also, colonising other planets is silly in itself: there's little point to colonising them when you can build self-contained habitats in free space much more easily than you can terraform planets, and you avoid the whole gravity well thing.
"Also, once you've reached orbit, getting to the moon will only add another 50% or so to the cost,"
Oh, and the generally accepted figure is more like 2x the cost of LEO launch to get to GEO, and 4x the cost to the moon, at least with conventional rockets.
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"Still, selling an emulator is asking for trouble."
Why? Insignia survived for years selling PC emulators for Macs and Unix machines... I don't remember anyone ever suing them for it.
Admittedly that's somewhat different as all the fundamentals of the PC hardware and the BIOS interface were open knowledge, but I don't see why selling an emulator for a game console should necessarily be illegal (though it easily could be if they're not careful -- e.g. if they ship ripped BIOS ROMs from the console).
Interesting, I hadn't heard anything about that being added to ATA-133.
Either way, it's pretty much irrelevant here since this drive is apparently ATA-100 only, and SATA will eliminate bus sharing altogether.
"But of course you will put two of these on each controller, so you need more than 100MB."
Uh, this is IDE, not SCSI. SCSI can share the bus bandwidth between multiple drives, IDE can't.
"Service missions to Hubble are crazy given the astronomical launch costs for Shuttle missions."
Launching a shuttle costs about $150,000,000. That's the difference between flying a Hubble mission and not flying a Hubble mission: most of the shuttle costs are fixed costs, so you save very little by cancelling one flight... and, equally, adding another flight doesn't cost that much.
I mean, even with _no_ shuttle launches, I doubt the shuttle budget this year is significantly lower than usual.
"Ok, please tell me where do we practise colonization if not on the Moon or on the Mars?"
In free space. It's the only place that makes any sense for a space-faring society, since there's no local gravity well to worry about and the colony can move at will, given sufficient fuel and time. Certainly it can easily move enough to avoid an asteroid impact.
"The whole point about Moon or Mars being more susceptible to asteroids is a moot point"
It's not. Colonising a planet is like painting a big target around your house and mailing your GPS coordinates to bin Laden... it can't be moved, and gravity 'sucks in' passing rocks: Mars and the Moon don't even have enough atmosphere to slow them down.
"It'll cost us the billions we're spending today to come up with those "cheaper and more sophisticated transports."
No, private companies will spend the billions, not taxpayers... and odds are it will be much cheaper and more efficient to do privately, just like the majority of other government programs.
"Why not put the rest of the pieces up on ELVs"
You can't, basically. The modules would need independent maneuvering and docking systems, which don't exist today: they're designed to be put in place by the shuttle arm, not fly there themselves.
A better question might be: why put the rest of the pieces up at all when the station serves no sensible purpose?
"THE HUMAN RACE MUST GET OFF THIS PLANET - NOT LATER BUT RIGHT ABOUT NOW!"
Even if that was true, Bush's Mars boondoggle wouldn't get you one step closer. If we want to get off the planet, then the most important thing by far is really, really cheap and reliable launch vehicles. Mars is irrelevant.
"We are already overdue for an extinction level asteroid impact and the odds won't improve with time."
The odds are around 1/60,000,000 per year. Waiting a century until manned spaceflight is easy and cheap will give us roughly 1/600,000 odds of such an impact. It would also be pointless to move to the Moon or Mars, when their gravity wells give them a much greater chance of such an impact than a colony in free space, which can also just move out of the way.
Mars is simply irrelevant, as is the moon other than as a source of raw materials.
"Then the rocket scientists working for NASA will pretty much be forced to go work for third world nations developing ICBM technology."
Fortunately, if today's NASA designs their ICBM, it will be fully reusable, cost fifty bazillion dollars a flight, require a year of preparation before launch, and explode in flight 50% of the time (the other 50% will abort just before launch and require another six months of preparation to try again).
"So servicing the Hubble will violate his mandate to play it safest"
Exactly: Hubble is pretty much irrelevant, he just wants to be able to pass the buck if another shuttle is lost. If Congress forces him to fly a servicing mission, that's fine, because they'll take the blame if anything happens.
Though, that said, they didn't take the blame for STS-107, which, AFAIR, was a mission essentially forced on NASA by Congress, not one they planned to fly.
"Do NOT try to kill manned Mars exploration just because you hate Bush. That's pretty fuckin' petty."
I don't want to kill it because I hate Bush, I want to kill it because it's a pointless and expensive boondoggle that serves no rational purpose. We've already blown tens of billions of dollars sending government bureaucrats to one barren rock, why spend hundreds of billions sending them to another barren rock?
But then I don't have to worry about that, because as far as I can see, the plan is that once ISS and the shuttle have been killed, the Moon/Mars budget will be cut and NASA's manned space program will die: maybe they'll be allowed to keep the OSP/CRV/CEV capsule or whatever it's called these days and send up an astronaut or two a year, if they're lucky.
There will be a day when it makes sense for people to go to Mars. But those people will be called 'tourists' and they'll be paying their own way on transports far cheaper and more sophisticated than anything NASA is going to come up with in the next few decades.
"Make more shows like Alias, X-Files, or La Femme Nikita that are/were actually interesting and you might retain some viewers"
But making good drama costs money. "Reality TV" is basically free in comparison, and the drones will continue to watch since they have nothing else to do.
"These same people then turn around and sit their ass on the couch the same ammount of time and watch TV."
But they're improving their social skills. How will you pick up chicks if you don't stay up to date on the plot-lines of trendy soap operas?
"The point is, to be super smart is NOT ENOUGH. You have to be well rounded to be successful."
Tell that to Bill Gates.
Personally, half the role-playing group I used to be in at university was made up of hot chicks, but maybe I was just lucky.
"then he'll get to [...] handle chicks,"
:).
Yeah, there were some benefits to the ballet lessons I took
Not to mention that it's also quite fun :). I should really find somewhere to take some more dance lessons, haven't done it for a few years now.
"True, but the copyright monopoly is only on distributing Windows. Not quite the same thing as a monopoly on the distribution of any kind of OS. The former allows for consumer choice and is OK,"
So? How is that OK? What legitimate consumer choice do I have if I want to buy a copy of Windows? Um, I can buy it from Microsoft or... I can not buy it at all. Some choice.
Absent government interference, there would be as many Windows distributions available as there are Linux distributions. That's the difference.
Uh, yes. What do you call copyright if not a government-mandated monopoly? Without copyright, Microsoft would not exist... and with copyright, no-one is allowed to compete with them in distributing Windows, under force of law.
Where did I say anything about "severe punishment"? All I pointed out was that when you rely on the kindness of government for your income, you can't legitimately whine when the government then decides to impose restrictions on you. When you sell your soul to Satan, you live with the consequences.
Because Microsoft have a government-granted monopoly on selling Windows, while McDonalds' do not have a government-granted monopoly on selling fries. If you want a government monopoly, you live with the consequences.
"If that's the case, a boxset would be 2-3 years away."
And, hopefully, on HD-DVD. There's no way I'd buy another copy of LOTR on standard-def DVD, but I would stump up the cash for a hi-def set.
"two people can't (reasonably) use the book's contents at the same time."
:).
They can when you rip all the pages out and pass them along a line of people
However, I don't see why simultaneity really matters: libraries can still rent out the same book to hundreds of people before it's replaced. Whether they're reading it serially or in parallel is irrelevant, they're still not buying the book.
Every book in a library 'costs' the author a sizable amount of money, unless they're so crap that no-one would want to read them: if libraries hadn't existed for centuries and were invented today, authors would be demanding laws against them.
"A profile where you are expending a massive effort to do a round trip with the dubious returns of a short stay on Mars, bracketed by a massively long, expensive, dangerous, debilitating trip there and back."
Uh, you don't have the _option_ of "a short stay on Mars". By the time you get there you're probably looking at a minimum of a six month stay just waiting for the planets to be in the right position to get back. This is one of the reasons why a trip to Mars and back is so difficult, you _have_ to spend several years making the trip, with current rocket technologies.
The moon's gravity is high enough to be problematic getting there and getting away, but too low to be very useful in maintaining muscle strength. Also, 'Space 1999' aside, the moon can't be flown around the solar system anywhere near as easily as a 100,000 person space habitat with a fusion pulse rocket on the back if you get bored with your current location.
"If the ultimate goal is to work toward colonization of other planets then building factories on the moon is not insane,"
Well, obviously that's true in the long-term sense: but it's certainly not possible with forseeable NASA budgets, and definitely a non-starter in terms of reducing the cost of near-term trips to Mars.
Also, colonising other planets is silly in itself: there's little point to colonising them when you can build self-contained habitats in free space much more easily than you can terraform planets, and you avoid the whole gravity well thing.
"Also, once you've reached orbit, getting to the moon will only add another 50% or so to the cost,"
Oh, and the generally accepted figure is more like 2x the cost of LEO launch to get to GEO, and 4x the cost to the moon, at least with conventional rockets.