I propose that we already have such a spacecraft. It's called the ISS and it's already in LEO with a nice large habitable space for the crew. Can't we just truck up a big booster on a Titan IV (or even Shuttle) to send it out on a trip to Mars with a retro to get it into Mars orbit? Attach a couple of landers for the Mars landing thing and a couple of Orions (or even Soyuz) for the return to Earth. We could even have another Titan send another booster out to Mars orbit so it could link up and use that to return the ISS (and do the retro-burn thing; I know that Apollo came back from the moon balls-to-the-wall at the same velocity it left with so we'd need to retro back to Earth orbit) and use the Orion to bring the crew back to the surface safely.
Then we could do it again since we have this nice platform up there, already big-assed and in orbit. Even better would be a nuclear rocket for this trip but the anti-nuke crowd would get their panties in a bunch.
The FAA regulates everything that has wings, rotors, or rockets so nobody will be flying/driving one of these without at least a sport pilot license.
Me? I have a Private Pilots license and live in one place that happens to have a small airport nearby and work at a place that happens to have a small airport nearby. I could easily see a commute where I drive the flying car to the airport near my house, preflight, spread the wings, take off land at the work airport about six minutes later, fold up the wings and drive the rest of the way to work. If the weather's bad I take the [non-flying] Jeep to work on regular roads.
Currently my job doesn't pay me enough to afford one of these things, but I could foresee getting a job that has a fantastic rate but killer commute on the road that something like this would make possible.
This is what we like to call in the business "100% pure USDA prime grade horse shit." I have next to me a 'family pack' version of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard which allows me to install it on up to five Macs, of which I have three in my household. I bought it independent of my Macbook(s) to 'upgrade' mine from Tiger to Leopard. I used this opportunity to install a larger hard drive in my Macbook, and when I installed the new drive it was for all intents and purposes a completely virgin Mac with no OS on it. I popped in the DVD, ran the installer, and installed a complete fresh version of Mac OS X where there was no previous version.
The old drive eventually went into a SATA USB external enclosure, but during my install of Leopard my 'old' Tiger hard drive sat on a desk until I got around to that.
The ignorance. It is thick. You can walk into an Apple store and buy a single copy of Leopard, and it is exactly the same. A complete OS with no upgrade required.
You say that in jest, but I've found on my Mac when running dual monitors, my Eyeballs that follow the mouse cursor to be somewhat essential in helping me find where the damned thing is. And I've been using them for just that since my Sun X10 (no, not the camera, the release of X before it went to 11) days.
I usually have them on the internal screen at the top so I have a place that I can immediately look at to know where my mouse cursor is when running dual, and in the menu bar when running portable with the single screen.
The fact that they blink periodically and are aqualishious is just a bonus.
Therefore, since you have to land at an airport anyway, why not leave the wings at the airport? Detachable wings (safety certified, however that's done) would save lots of weight. Land at your airport close to your ultimate destination, drop the wings (tail surfaces and fins too while we're at it, secure the prop however that would be done, and drive the fuselage out the gate to the road. When it's time to go home, drive to the airport, put the surfaces back on, fire up the engine and take off. Land at home FBO repeat, drive home. It's not like you're going to want to deploy the wings on I95 to get over a traffic jam.
Yes, I record off of internet radio. Audacity to record 'what you hear' in my PC days, and now Audio HiJack pro to record just what the streaming app is playing. I even request specific songs from the station (at 128kbps, which I find perfectly acceptible) and record when it plays. I even have a shell script which grabs their 'currently playing' page to extract artist/title/album and the art. I use this info later when I'm extracting the individual songs to tag them.
Crossfading does not bother me; most songs have stupidly long fade-outs anyway, and putting my own fade-out (or even fade-in) doesn't really hurt the listening experience. Advertisements are usually my friend, as they don't often cross-fade into the advert, but end the song, then go to commercial. Makes the end of the song stand out very nicely in my audio editor. Even with crossfading though, it's no bother for me to put my own fade which is indistingushable to the average listener from the actual fade. Also with my iPod on 'gapless playback', it sounds as if I'm listening to the station itself, because really the effect is the same as when the DJ on the inet station crossfades so it works rather well.
Most stations have auto-ban software to detect if you're using a stream-ripper, which is why I don't use a stream-ripper. My method is utterly undetectable from the site, and completely reliable if a bit of work to get. I consider it a hobby, and have inflated my collection by several thousand songs many no longer released.
Also, I only use these songs for my own personal enjoyment. So the RIAA can kiss my white ass. I'm now a 'recorder', and their monopoly over that technology evaporated back when I was recording KROQ on 8-tracks.
Re:This phone is a 2 HAND device vs 1 HAND device
on
Apple iPhone Dissected
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· Score: 1
Good, that'll keep down the number of people using it while driving. Or at least darwinize out people who would try to use it while driving.
(Oooh, a picture! I'll just pinch it down and OH SHIT A TELEPHONE PO-[*static*])
Yeah, it does seem a tad windy. The rocking back and forth is making me space-sick.
Countdown hold?
Of course, it seems as if the entire scene is swaying...I know, seismic acitvity!
Eh, I suppose you could call them Bayships. They do have a bunch of 'bays' from which raiders and whatnot are launched. But yeah, Base Ship is what they are called. Better than 'Base Stars' from TOS. That version was okay when I was eleven, but now...campylishious.
Indeed, and I have one. A Sony Sports Walkman AM/FM Stereo Cassete player WM-F45 from circa 1987. Still works (even with my iPod earbuds) and runs for about a bazillion hours on two AA batteries. Once I find out that yes, the power will be out for another XX hours I plug the earbuds back into the iPod Nano to while away the time.
I keep wondering why people aren't impressed by a launch/capsule system that is rock solid reliable. Soyuz is the exact same thing, right down to the solar panels and for that matter has a bit more room inside what with that crew module attached to the the return vehicle.
The Russians keep sending capsule after capsule, after Progress, after capsule up to the ISS in a way that was hoped would be routine with the shuttle.
Sure, it takes $20mil per launch, but that's a fixed cost. I think this more than proves that a disposable booster/capsule/ablative re-entry return vehicle is the friggin' way to go.
If we ever need to return things, I'm sure we could build a module for the HLV that would take up a re-entry vehicle that you could stick your cargo into and hurl it back to earth without it getting all burned up. Send up the CEV with a crew to maneuver the cargo into the module, press the button, and send it back to earth.
Which is why my mp3 player is clipped to the treadmill somehow rather than me during the workout.
My wife, however, clips her mini to the neck of her shirt...might have to tell her to stop doing that.
Hmmm, yes they certainly should make them waterproof. My GPS receiver is waterproof, and in fact floats. I'm pretty sure most GPS units also are waterproof/float. If those electronics can be made to float, I don't see why Apple couldn't make theirs as well.
Record music! And these unsuspecting drivers could run afoul of the RIAA while the pirates who illegally recorded the Intellectual Property would get away scot free!
As many people have stated, they'll do something to the hardware that will make it difficult. Nothing is impossible, but it will be difficult and not in any way supported by Apple.
The real question, is why would you? I'm sure all you/. script kiddies will love the 'challenge' of getting OS X to run on that Asus cobbleware you put together with parts from CompUSA, and I would have too in the past. However over the 20+ year history of Apple, it has become clear that one truism of the world is that if you want to run Apple's stuff, you just gotta buy Apple's stuff.
And that's really not such a bad thing. Since getting in with Apple with my Mac Mini, I now see that it kind of is worth the price of admission. It sucks that it has to be, but it also sucks that I have to give a % of my salary to the government. The user experience is such that I don't feel compelled to hack a toaster to run OS X. I'd rather just buy a Mac and be done with it.
Hell, maybe the Intel Macs will be cheaper. I don't think they will, but then again the vast majority of the world (sans the Dvoraks) didn't think apple would ever switch to Intel.
That's because in the UK, all subjects are used to being tracked by the 'authorities' by cameras and other wonderfully intrusive methods in the interest of 'reducing crime'.
Yeah, seeing the obvious shape of a Battroid Valkyrie in the preview picture then actually seeing it in flight was far more impressive than the Enterprise. I just wanted to see it change into a Guardian or Battloid!
True, but you have to remember that, being a TV show, the director needs to show in a very understandable-by-non-geek-public way how data is passed around. During the production of all of the series' computer networks were not very well known by the general public.
Besides, how do you film in a very visceral way the Captain sending an email to a subordinate with orders?
They were distributed by Compaq a couple years ago in some sort of marketing scheme. I have one on the front of my Jeep, and one outside my office. Yeah, they're cool.
Another spiffy use for a live CD is to have your favored environment with you everywhere you go. I'm posting this from one right now. I have a work provipded laptop that has Win2000 installed on it. When I go over to my parents house to care for my sister during trips I take my work laptop with me, but got real sick of having only the Win2000 environment. Sure, it works but I work better with a Gnome or KDE desktop. So, out comes the Knoppix CD, a couple minutes later it negotiates with dad's cable modem, and I'm browsing the web, conversing via IM with my wife, and windows follow mouse focus and autoraise like god intended them to!
The fact that it's connected directly to the internet without a firewall (that's dad's failing) is not an issue because there's nothing to hack!
Even if I didn't have a laptop I could boot the CD on either of thier computers and have my favored desktop environment without messing up their (ugh) windows desktop.
Re:New light to shed on Bill Gates, Microsoft and
on
SCO's Plan Examined
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· Score: 1
This is so absurd as to be ludicrous. It would be as if I wrote a handy program that, say, helped a user with renaming a bunch of jpegs in a directory. I release it to the community and tell everyone they can use it if they want.
So now imagine Adobe finding this handy program and saying "Hey, we own some rights to renaming of image files, so we're gonna sue this guy for infringement on our IP over batch renaming image files of any kind." So they do this, then Microsoft comes in and makes some sort of deal with Adobe to modify their EULA so nobody can use my program? One neither company had anything to do with authoring? Ridiculous.
Minor, simple example. But SCO didn't have anything to do with writing Linux, it hasn't been proven in court, so Microsoft cannot make any deals with anyone such that they can rewrite a EULA.
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Then we could do it again since we have this nice platform up there, already big-assed and in orbit. Even better would be a nuclear rocket for this trip but the anti-nuke crowd would get their panties in a bunch.
"Yes, it is very, very cute isn't it. Wanna fuck?"
Me? I have a Private Pilots license and live in one place that happens to have a small airport nearby and work at a place that happens to have a small airport nearby. I could easily see a commute where I drive the flying car to the airport near my house, preflight, spread the wings, take off land at the work airport about six minutes later, fold up the wings and drive the rest of the way to work. If the weather's bad I take the [non-flying] Jeep to work on regular roads.
Currently my job doesn't pay me enough to afford one of these things, but I could foresee getting a job that has a fantastic rate but killer commute on the road that something like this would make possible.
The old drive eventually went into a SATA USB external enclosure, but during my install of Leopard my 'old' Tiger hard drive sat on a desk until I got around to that.
The ignorance. It is thick. You can walk into an Apple store and buy a single copy of Leopard, and it is exactly the same. A complete OS with no upgrade required.
You say that in jest, but I've found on my Mac when running dual monitors, my Eyeballs that follow the mouse cursor to be somewhat essential in helping me find where the damned thing is. And I've been using them for just that since my Sun X10 (no, not the camera, the release of X before it went to 11) days.
I usually have them on the internal screen at the top so I have a place that I can immediately look at to know where my mouse cursor is when running dual, and in the menu bar when running portable with the single screen.
The fact that they blink periodically and are aqualishious is just a bonus.
So will the pilot also see an old COBOL program scrolling up in the lower left of the display like the Terminator's did?
Therefore, since you have to land at an airport anyway, why not leave the wings at the airport? Detachable wings (safety certified, however that's done) would save lots of weight. Land at your airport close to your ultimate destination, drop the wings (tail surfaces and fins too while we're at it, secure the prop however that would be done, and drive the fuselage out the gate to the road. When it's time to go home, drive to the airport, put the surfaces back on, fire up the engine and take off. Land at home FBO repeat, drive home. It's not like you're going to want to deploy the wings on I95 to get over a traffic jam.
Crossfading does not bother me; most songs have stupidly long fade-outs anyway, and putting my own fade-out (or even fade-in) doesn't really hurt the listening experience. Advertisements are usually my friend, as they don't often cross-fade into the advert, but end the song, then go to commercial. Makes the end of the song stand out very nicely in my audio editor. Even with crossfading though, it's no bother for me to put my own fade which is indistingushable to the average listener from the actual fade. Also with my iPod on 'gapless playback', it sounds as if I'm listening to the station itself, because really the effect is the same as when the DJ on the inet station crossfades so it works rather well.
Most stations have auto-ban software to detect if you're using a stream-ripper, which is why I don't use a stream-ripper. My method is utterly undetectable from the site, and completely reliable if a bit of work to get. I consider it a hobby, and have inflated my collection by several thousand songs many no longer released.
Also, I only use these songs for my own personal enjoyment. So the RIAA can kiss my white ass. I'm now a 'recorder', and their monopoly over that technology evaporated back when I was recording KROQ on 8-tracks.
(Oooh, a picture! I'll just pinch it down and OH SHIT A TELEPHONE PO-[*static*])
Yeah, it does seem a tad windy. The rocking back and forth is making me space-sick.
Countdown hold?
Of course, it seems as if the entire scene is swaying...I know, seismic acitvity!
Eh, I suppose you could call them Bayships. They do have a bunch of 'bays' from which raiders and whatnot are launched. But yeah, Base Ship is what they are called. Better than 'Base Stars' from TOS. That version was okay when I was eleven, but now...campylishious.
Indeed, and I have one. A Sony Sports Walkman AM/FM Stereo Cassete player WM-F45 from circa 1987. Still works (even with my iPod earbuds) and runs for about a bazillion hours on two AA batteries. Once I find out that yes, the power will be out for another XX hours I plug the earbuds back into the iPod Nano to while away the time.
Apple doesn't make it's money on the iTunes Music Store. They make the money on the iPods themselves. The RIAA gets the benefits of your iTunes purchase.
I'd prefer to think of it as a fecal coliform bacillus in the vagina.
The Russians keep sending capsule after capsule, after Progress, after capsule up to the ISS in a way that was hoped would be routine with the shuttle.
Sure, it takes $20mil per launch, but that's a fixed cost. I think this more than proves that a disposable booster/capsule/ablative re-entry return vehicle is the friggin' way to go.
If we ever need to return things, I'm sure we could build a module for the HLV that would take up a re-entry vehicle that you could stick your cargo into and hurl it back to earth without it getting all burned up. Send up the CEV with a crew to maneuver the cargo into the module, press the button, and send it back to earth.
My wife, however, clips her mini to the neck of her shirt...might have to tell her to stop doing that.
Hmmm, yes they certainly should make them waterproof. My GPS receiver is waterproof, and in fact floats. I'm pretty sure most GPS units also are waterproof/float. If those electronics can be made to float, I don't see why Apple couldn't make theirs as well.
Madness I tells ya!
The real question, is why would you? I'm sure all you /. script kiddies will love the 'challenge' of getting OS X to run on that Asus cobbleware you put together with parts from CompUSA, and I would have too in the past. However over the 20+ year history of Apple, it has become clear that one truism of the world is that if you want to run Apple's stuff, you just gotta buy Apple's stuff.
And that's really not such a bad thing. Since getting in with Apple with my Mac Mini, I now see that it kind of is worth the price of admission. It sucks that it has to be, but it also sucks that I have to give a % of my salary to the government. The user experience is such that I don't feel compelled to hack a toaster to run OS X. I'd rather just buy a Mac and be done with it.
Hell, maybe the Intel Macs will be cheaper. I don't think they will, but then again the vast majority of the world (sans the Dvoraks) didn't think apple would ever switch to Intel.
Oh wait, I just read the article. He likens linux geeks as the Mob, or at least the Trade Federation. Power beyond what you can imagine and all that.
Looks like he's afraid of the Power of, oh, I don't know...the People? Yeah, that must be it.
That's because in the UK, all subjects are used to being tracked by the 'authorities' by cameras and other wonderfully intrusive methods in the interest of 'reducing crime'.
Yeah, seeing the obvious shape of a Battroid Valkyrie in the preview picture then actually seeing it in flight was far more impressive than the Enterprise. I just wanted to see it change into a Guardian or Battloid!
Besides, how do you film in a very visceral way the Captain sending an email to a subordinate with orders?
They were distributed by Compaq a couple years ago in some sort of marketing scheme. I have one on the front of my Jeep, and one outside my office. Yeah, they're cool.
The fact that it's connected directly to the internet without a firewall (that's dad's failing) is not an issue because there's nothing to hack!
Even if I didn't have a laptop I could boot the CD on either of thier computers and have my favored desktop environment without messing up their (ugh) windows desktop.
So now imagine Adobe finding this handy program and saying "Hey, we own some rights to renaming of image files, so we're gonna sue this guy for infringement on our IP over batch renaming image files of any kind." So they do this, then Microsoft comes in and makes some sort of deal with Adobe to modify their EULA so nobody can use my program? One neither company had anything to do with authoring? Ridiculous.
Minor, simple example. But SCO didn't have anything to do with writing Linux, it hasn't been proven in court, so Microsoft cannot make any deals with anyone such that they can rewrite a EULA.