Re:Insulation Vs. The Flying Armoured Tank
on
Columbia Coverage
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· Score: 1
We're not talking about a "2lb piece of insulation"; the most likely candidate at this point is a big chunk of foam from the forward attachment point for the external tank... we're talking a piece of tough foam maybe four feet by four feet by six, travelling at 500 mph when it hit the wing.
I very much doubt it was terrorists because I don't think they're smart enough, but they'd hardly shoot it down when they could plant a bomb on board.
Remember, this is an organisation that on a past shuttle flight discovered loose tools in the engine bay after landing even though three people had signed beforehand to say that those tools had been removed; getting a bomb past them might not be too hard.
Columbia was originally fitted with ejection seats for the pilot and commander, but they were disabled on the fifth flight and removed completely later. Even if they did have them, a breakup at hypersonic speeds at 200,000 feet is simply unsurvivable without a completely self-contained crew module with its own landing systems.
Actually the jet boat ride I had at a place near Wellington (don't remember the name) was more fun than the Shotover Jet; two seats, 500 horsepower and a driver who was totally out of his tree (and had apparently been the local carpenter until the regular driver got sick a few days earlier) on a course full of tight turns really showed off what those things can do.
Not that there's anything wrong with the Shotover Jet, and it's certainly worth doing, it's just toned down somewhat for the average tourist.
Of course the President in question was lying under oath in court... whatever the merits or lack of merit of the RAMBUS case may be, they aren't accused here of lying in court. We have a name for that, it's called "perjury", and normally results in a jail sentence if you're not President at the time.
"24-track digital multi-track recorder($3,500);[etc]"
This sounds a lot like those "I've gotta edit my DV movie on Avid, cause it's what Hollywood uses and Premiere just isn't 3l33t enough" people. Just as there are many cheaper ways of post-producing low-budget movies than the Hollywood approach, I'm sure there are plenty of cheaper ways of recording good-quality sound than the big studio approach; and, of course, even if there aren't, once you have the gear you can spread the cost over numerous songs.
"everyone knows you don't make squat for profit on CD sales"
Then, uh, why are you wasting all that money making CDs to sell in order to lose more money? Or is this one of those:
1. Burn CDs 2. Lose Money 3. ???? 4. Profit
things? If you're not making a profit on CD sales then, uh, maybe you should just not sell them? Or is there something important here that I'm missing?
Which makes a difference how? Terrorist walks into the station carrying a bomb in a carrier bag, drops it into the unattended trolley and walks away. Or a big chocolate box, or some similar innocuous container. It's not as though they're likely to carry a bomb around in an obvious manner.
"Unfortunately many people do, but at the larger railway stations there are cleaners pushing carts with transparent plastic bags hanging from frames"
Which, of course, largely defeats the point of not having the bins; the cleaners often leave their trolleys unattended, so it would be easy for a terrorist to wait a while and drop a bomb into the trolley while the cleaner isn't around.
As usual, it's a case of burrowcrats living in a fantasy world when they impose their "bright ideas" on the rest of us.
You're thinking backwards. Any expansionist technologically advanced society could colonise our entire galaxy in a million years or less with no magic technology that we can't currently understand. So if there is another alien species out there more advanced than us, they should be here by now. They're not, therefore the odds are very high that they don't exist.
To put it simply, one species has to be the first to evolve, and a million years after it starts expanding to other star systems there'll be little prospect of a second one evolving independently anywhere in the galaxy. And a million years is a tiny window in the lifetime of the universe.
There never was a budget surplus. There was never a year during Clinton's two terms when the national debt was less at the end of the year than at the start. The "budget surplus" was a scam from start to finish, but obviously many Americans were dumb enough to be taken in by it.
As a non-American, this is really great news. If the American companies aren't allowed to bring foreigners to America to do the job for less than pampered American workers, they'll export the job to cheaper nations, which means more jobs for us and less taxes for the US government.
This is just brilliant! I'd like to give a big thank you to the US government for putting the welfare of us foreigners over that of your own nation.
Well, I believe Britain's biggest mass murderer was a doctor killing his patients, and so successful they weren't even certain how many he'd murdered to the nearest hundred... luckily the hundred or two they were sure of was enough to get him convicted.
"After playing the game for a while, you'll start conversing with other players, and you'll see the one thing all players have in common is that they all hate Sony - the designers of Everquest."
Hmm, someone complains about EQ and projects his opinions on the rest of the players. Having been playing the game for a year now I can safely say I don't hate Sony, even though their customer service is poor and they keep screwing things up in the game for no good reason. It's just a game, for "Bob"'s sake.
"I've already called Universal and arranged my return, but the screwup is inexcusable given that it's been known for four months and Universal didn't acknowledge the issue until Wednesday."
The most likely explanation being that it _wasn't_ a screwup and they deliberately reframed those few shots to remove problems (crew or equipment in shot, that kind of thing)... since it's only a very few shots that are framed strangely, and most of the movies are fine. But hey, I'm sure that a few websites know better than the director what the framing was meant to be.
"Most of the gags are site gags and without the bottom or top of the frame, it's just not the same movie."
A bizarre claim given that the "misframing" of the two shots in question (the inflating jacket and the sneakers) don't affect the joke in the slightest when you actually watch the movie for real; nor are they particularly important parts of the movie. If that "ruins the movie" for you, well...
One thing you'll find is that many of the most vocal proponents of the 'misframing' of these DVDs are people who've never seen them. I watched all three over the weekend and counted about half a dozen shots which looked like they could have been framed better, most of them in the first future sequence of BTTF2... that's it. Frankly, I was so utterly unconcerned by the slightly odd framing in those shots that I doubt I'll even bother sending my disks back for replacements if they release a version with those few shots changed.
Most, if not all, of these comparisons have been between the movie and the laserdisk. Yet the laserdisk apparently wasn't even released in the correct aspect ratio, so who's to say how it was supposed to look other than the director? Until and unless the director or one of the other major creative production staff actually come out and say 'no, they were framed wrong, thanks for getting them to fix the movie', I'm going to presume that the version we got was the version intended and keep it, rather than a new version that's been edited by committee. Oddly, some of the people making the most fuss about these disks are some of the people who make a big fuss whenever a movie is released in a different form to that which the director intended... yet now they want to control how the movie is framed regardless of what the director may think.
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We're not talking about a "2lb piece of insulation"; the most likely candidate at this point is a big chunk of foam from the forward attachment point for the external tank... we're talking a piece of tough foam maybe four feet by four feet by six, travelling at 500 mph when it hit the wing.
I very much doubt it was terrorists because I don't think they're smart enough, but they'd hardly shoot it down when they could plant a bomb on board.
Remember, this is an organisation that on a past shuttle flight discovered loose tools in the engine bay after landing even though three people had signed beforehand to say that those tools had been removed; getting a bomb past them might not be too hard.
Columbia was originally fitted with ejection seats for the pilot and commander, but they were disabled on the fifth flight and removed completely later. Even if they did have them, a breakup at hypersonic speeds at 200,000 feet is simply unsurvivable without a completely self-contained crew module with its own landing systems.
I believe most of the fuel is burnt up before re-entry for precisely that reason.
Sad, sad news... guess that's the end of ISS too.
Actually the jet boat ride I had at a place near Wellington (don't remember the name) was more fun than the Shotover Jet; two seats, 500 horsepower and a driver who was totally out of his tree (and had apparently been the local carpenter until the regular driver got sick a few days earlier) on a course full of tight turns really showed off what those things can do.
Not that there's anything wrong with the Shotover Jet, and it's certainly worth doing, it's just toned down somewhat for the average tourist.
Of course the President in question was lying under oath in court... whatever the merits or lack of merit of the RAMBUS case may be, they aren't accused here of lying in court. We have a name for that, it's called "perjury", and normally results in a jail sentence if you're not President at the time.
"24-track digital multi-track recorder($3,500) ;[etc]"
This sounds a lot like those "I've gotta edit my DV movie on Avid, cause it's what Hollywood uses and Premiere just isn't 3l33t enough" people. Just as there are many cheaper ways of post-producing low-budget movies than the Hollywood approach, I'm sure there are plenty of cheaper ways of recording good-quality sound than the big studio approach; and, of course, even if there aren't, once you have the gear you can spread the cost over numerous songs.
"everyone knows you don't make squat for profit on CD sales"
Then, uh, why are you wasting all that money making CDs to sell in order to lose more money? Or is this one of those:
1. Burn CDs
2. Lose Money
3. ????
4. Profit
things? If you're not making a profit on CD sales then, uh, maybe you should just not sell them? Or is there something important here that I'm missing?
"Hence the transparent bags, I suspect."
Which makes a difference how? Terrorist walks into the station carrying a bomb in a carrier bag, drops it into the unattended trolley and walks away. Or a big chocolate box, or some similar innocuous container. It's not as though they're likely to carry a bomb around in an obvious manner.
"With this attack, you've got to remove and disassemble the lock"
Which part of "it can be used without resorting to removing the lock and taking it apart" did you not understand?
"Unfortunately many people do, but at the larger railway stations there are cleaners pushing carts with transparent plastic bags hanging from frames"
Which, of course, largely defeats the point of not having the bins; the cleaners often leave their trolleys unattended, so it would be easy for a terrorist to wait a while and drop a bomb into the trolley while the cleaner isn't around.
As usual, it's a case of burrowcrats living in a fantasy world when they impose their "bright ideas" on the rest of us.
You're thinking backwards. Any expansionist technologically advanced society could colonise our entire galaxy in a million years or less with no magic technology that we can't currently understand. So if there is another alien species out there more advanced than us, they should be here by now. They're not, therefore the odds are very high that they don't exist.
To put it simply, one species has to be the first to evolve, and a million years after it starts expanding to other star systems there'll be little prospect of a second one evolving independently anywhere in the galaxy. And a million years is a tiny window in the lifetime of the universe.
"So Long, budget surplus!"
There never was a budget surplus. There was never a year during Clinton's two terms when the national debt was less at the end of the year than at the start. The "budget surplus" was a scam from start to finish, but obviously many Americans were dumb enough to be taken in by it.
As a non-American, this is really great news. If the American companies aren't allowed to bring foreigners to America to do the job for less than pampered American workers, they'll export the job to cheaper nations, which means more jobs for us and less taxes for the US government.
This is just brilliant! I'd like to give a big thank you to the US government for putting the welfare of us foreigners over that of your own nation.
"doctors (make the best killers?)"
Well, I believe Britain's biggest mass murderer was a doctor killing his patients, and so successful they weren't even certain how many he'd murdered to the nearest hundred... luckily the hundred or two they were sure of was enough to get him convicted.
"After playing the game for a while, you'll start conversing with other players, and you'll see the one thing all players have in common is that they all hate Sony - the designers of Everquest."
Hmm, someone complains about EQ and projects his opinions on the rest of the players. Having been playing the game for a year now I can safely say I don't hate Sony, even though their customer service is poor and they keep screwing things up in the game for no good reason. It's just a game, for "Bob"'s sake.
"I've already called Universal and arranged my return, but the screwup is inexcusable given that it's been known for four months and Universal didn't acknowledge the issue until Wednesday."
The most likely explanation being that it _wasn't_ a screwup and they deliberately reframed those few shots to remove problems (crew or equipment in shot, that kind of thing)... since it's only a very few shots that are framed strangely, and most of the movies are fine. But hey, I'm sure that a few websites know better than the director what the framing was meant to be.
"Most of the gags are site gags and without the bottom or top of the frame, it's just not the same movie."
A bizarre claim given that the "misframing" of the two shots in question (the inflating jacket and the sneakers) don't affect the joke in the slightest when you actually watch the movie for real; nor are they particularly important parts of the movie. If that "ruins the movie" for you, well...
One thing you'll find is that many of the most vocal proponents of the 'misframing' of these DVDs are people who've never seen them. I watched all three over the weekend and counted about half a dozen shots which looked like they could have been framed better, most of them in the first future sequence of BTTF2... that's it. Frankly, I was so utterly unconcerned by the slightly odd framing in those shots that I doubt I'll even bother sending my disks back for replacements if they release a version with those few shots changed.
Most, if not all, of these comparisons have been between the movie and the laserdisk. Yet the laserdisk apparently wasn't even released in the correct aspect ratio, so who's to say how it was supposed to look other than the director? Until and unless the director or one of the other major creative production staff actually come out and say 'no, they were framed wrong, thanks for getting them to fix the movie', I'm going to presume that the version we got was the version intended and keep it, rather than a new version that's been edited by committee. Oddly, some of the people making the most fuss about these disks are some of the people who make a big fuss whenever a movie is released in a different form to that which the director intended... yet now they want to control how the movie is framed regardless of what the director may think.