I've still got a pinto. And damn, is that thing light. With a mushy clutch, I can beat all the rich kids in their new BMW sport-coupes etc. no problem.
And driving down the highway is 10x as exciting. Everytime a big truck passes/is passed, the car jumps a few feet away from the front and a few feet towards at the back. There's nothing that'll make a passenger jump like doing 80 and having the car try and launch itself into the backend of a big rig doing 65 or so.
Yeah, it could be bad. So we send it up in pieces and assemble it in space. Admittedly, there's still bad stuff going up, but I think it's a small enough risk we could take it. Put it on the older, more stable rockets that are just to expensive for everything else.
First off: why not try an LCD monitor? I'm pretty sure they use noticeably less energy (they certainly give off noticeably less as heat...)
Second: I do know people who its actually productive to watch movies on at the second time. I had an architecture prof who was amazed when he bought a G4 and a big Apple display, cause he could watch a movie in the background while plotting stuff. He thought it was great. He had background noise, and if he got stumped for an idea, something might just pop up in the background that he could build off of.
I think the poster realized that... Just change it so it reads more "Anyone can read my tag and get my info from the databases" or "Only people the database company lets can get my info once they've read my tag."
And yes, this technology might be good, but frankly, I don't trust people. You're going to have to do a lot of work convincing me that all the privacy and other issues have been fully addressed before someone sticks something like that in me...
Dude. I saw one of these in Circuit City a week ago, at least. And it was pretty beaten up, too, so I'd bet it had been there awhile. And yes. It has mouse ears...
I do video editing (NOT porn, music videos at the moment while I'm still in school) and I could use that much space. At 1/2 to 1 GB per minute of decent quality footage... It goes quickly, let me tell you. Ok, that much storage I guess would be a bit much, but it would certainly be appreciated. Especially once I start moving into projects longer than 5 minutes apiece... That, and I host my brother's website and backup file server (he's a professional photographer, so that's a lot of space, right there). Seriously, people do use a lot more space than they used to. Be a little more open minded...
Tell me, please tell me, why the F*** they even *made* 10,000 copies of Whitney Houston's recording of the Star Spangled Banner?
Good CDs do cost too much money, and complaining that it's because they over-produced Whitney is not a reasonable answer. In any business class, that'd get you big, fat F. That's called "Screwing up." It's not an inherant problem of making music, but it is an inherant problem with *their* system of it. Like the article a few weeks ago about how end-sales have gone up while shipped CDs have gone down. It's because stores are getting smarter about ordering only what they are going to sell. Yet the RIAA blames it on piracy, being very quick to ignore the end-sale numbers.
If they lose money because they do a bad job predicting how well Whitney is gonna sell, it's their problem, not ours. If a stock broker mis-analyzes a stock and loses money, he doesn't take it out on his clients, HIS CLIENTS TAKE IT OUT ON HIM. And if he tries to get legislation to make sure that his clients can't do so by switching to another stock broker (they could start doing all the buying and selling and research themselves or just take their money out of the market completely, but those really aren't realistic possibilities), they whack him. And not with a rolled up newspaper...
I'm sorry, but the RIAA hasn't had a viable defense in years. And everytime they look like they've found one, assuming it didn't have enough holes to see daylight through to begin with, they put twice as many in it on their own.
Then I bought the whole run of the series on DVD (It only took 2...)
You should see the episode of South Park where the George Lucas and Steven Spielberg release a special edition update of Indiana Jones, and it sucks so hard it rips their faces off like the scene from Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark. Very closely related. And really, really funny.
I think he means the XServe RAIDs, not the servers themselves. Even so, those things are still a bit overpriced for the storage needs here. The only real advantages of those things I can find is if you live in a pure Mac environment, they're probably easier to admin or something.
I agree completely. Mostly because I have no fscking clue what you just said.
Really though, I think I understand the gist of what you said. But, just a thought, you might wanna pop in a few footnotes next time so that the rest of us 99% know more of what's going on.
Re:Political showpieces and $$ for supporters
on
Big Screen for NYPD
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Scenario: I rob two Stop N'Go's on the East side of town. Run in with a shotgun, shoot the guy behind the desk, exact same MO both times. Now, I hear sirens. I jump a train to the West side and hit another Shop N'Go in the same fashion. I live up north, so I start heading that way. I hit another Stop N' Go on the way. 4 identical crimes in 3 different parts of the city.
Purely using your swarm intelligence, how long do you think it would be before someone said "Hey, let's see if someone in another part of the city had a crime just like this?" I'd say quite awhile.
Now, with our "Big Board," as soon as police get on the scene, they send in to central that a Stop N' Go got hit and the clerk got his head blown off by a 12 guage. Now, when four points show up on the map like that, that look exactly the same, one of those guys in the command room is gonna say "DAAAMN!!" and give a call to the units investigating the crimes to tell them to talk to the other units.
Now, instead of 3 units investigating the 4 crimes seperately, we have 1 unit who has access to all the crimes and all the evidence collected at the crimes. That leaves 2 units free to get donu^H^H^H^H investigate other crimes.
You have more experience in this field, so maybe you're right. But from perspective, I see visualization centers like this as a good thing, assuming getting the info for it doesn't put too much a burden on the streetcops.
Oh dear lord. I wanna break in and play the world's sweetest game of CounterStrike. Screw AimBots, I really *will* be able to see people on the other side of the map.
Having spent my recently-ended high school career at a top private school, I can honestly say that you don't even need to pay teachers that much more. Hire more teachers, build more classrooms, and give them things like paper and Xerox machines.
My school pays teachers thousands less than what they would be getting at the public school next door. Yet, teachers still flock to my school. The head of their english department took a job as a bottom rung english teacher at my school. Why? Cause the environment more than makes up for it. My school has no more than about 20 people per class. We don't have to walk through metal detectors on the way into school. We don't have random police searches for drugs. And teachers get all the Xerox and paper they want. One of my history teachers, who used to work at the public school, told us as he handed us each out a reading packet that the amount of paper he used making us each a packet would have depleted his entire allowance for the year at the public school.
I agree that schools need to become better run, more efficient, and less susceptable to fraud. And I agree when you say that "a good lecurer [sic] with chalk and a blackboard is far more valuable then [sic] some hack with power point [sic]." I'm just unsure how the situation is ever going to get better so-long as there are administrators out their who will screw over a school of children for a new car or three, a boat, and 7 properties.
They do have the moral right to protect their property, intellectual or not.
They do NOT have the right to lie and/or give misleading information to support their claims of piracy. That's called "fraud." It's illegal.
This article has nothing to do with them protecting their property. They can go after pirates all they want. But what about dealing with the iTunes Music Store? The RIAA was hesitant going in because they didn't think iTMS had enough "protection" on their files. They still bitch and moan about it all the time, saying that things like downloadable music and non-protected cds (read: cds that don't break my computer if it doesn't have Palladium or whatever) create piracy and that that hurts their sales.
They can't prove that iTMS etc. promote piracy (though, maybe they can prove it for Napster et al), so instead, they try to prove this:
Well, problem is, they've always said "loss of sales," not loss of "profit." We just *assumed* that when they said loss of sales, they meant loss of profit. However, they misled us. They misled business leaders. And they misled the government when they tried getting stricter laws for prosecuting copyright infringers (some old/. article, I'm to lazy to find it now).
It would be like Microsoft telling us that because of piracy on the internet, they've sold a few less products, so therefore the government should nationalize all internet traffic, and let Microsoft regulate it. However, they failed to mention that by "selling less products," they mean, they sold less cardboard boxes containing a Windows cd and some papers from a store, meanwhile, sales by buying it online from the Microsoft website and downloading straight to the computer have doubled.
This is not about protecting property rights. We have the right to protect property rights, that's why they're called property *rights*. We, and especially not companies, corporations, conglomerates, organizations, and associations, do NOT have the right to lie, cheat, and scam the people around us to get what we want. I would have modded your comment "Offtopic," but it irked me just a wee-bit too much to let it slide.
To what extent do you think Microsoft would attempt legal action to stall/eliminate development/production of software that would make it unnecessary to use their OS? And, as a tag-on, do you forsee future additions to Windows, such as DRM, to be problematic and do you think that Microsoft would consider adding things to the OS that work like DRM just to stop your software?
You'll probably never see this, but I couldn't figure out how to send it. Where's that in Vice City? I've been playing for awhile and haven't seen it, and now I'm curious...
I got it from a sign my uncle's hunting club has up. I don't hunt there, I just go up during the summer for the family reunion. They've got a lot of entertaining things like that up there. I wouldn't advise breaking in, especially if you're a lawyer (they seem to have a passion again lawyers).
And considering that 57 years ago, that trip probably would have taken a day or more,114 years ago (57 years *before* breaking the soundbarrier) that trip would have taken weeks, and 171 years ago (57 years before 57 years before breaking the sound barrier) that trip would have taken months, considering that was 15 years before the first rail line was completed to Chicago.
Yes, I can certainly see how "sad [a] commentary on the human condition at present" this is, that a mere 171 years after you would have traveled for months via sailship (the first steamship to actually cross the Atlantic wholly under steam power was the Royal William in 1833, the same year we're talking about, and took 25 days) and stagecoach to get from London to Chicago, you can now do it in 8 hours, sitting in an air conditioned cabin with a choice of 8 movie/tv stations and 13 radio stations with breakfast, lunch, and dinner served to you in your seat and a reasonably clean restroom not more than 30 feet away. Jesus, we humans sure are in a bad condition.
The reason it *failed* was because one leveled an apartment building when it crashed, and the other's seemed to have the same problems it had, maintenance/design-wise.
You may not realize this, but there are people, lots of people, who are both willing and able to pay $10,000 for a plane ticket, if only to get from London to New York in half the time. For some people (bankers, investors, musicians, models, movie stars, people of that nature), it actually makes damn good financial sense to pay that much extra for a ticket. When you make $10,000 for a 2 hour appearance, you can fit in 2 extra appearnces with that much time earning yourself an extra $10k.
Just because most people in the world can't buy a house that sells for $41 million dollars doesn't make it a failure in the real estate business. Someone out there can and will. It becomes a failure when one or two of the rooms cave in on the new owners, and no one wants to buy it from them.
I mean, surely something that can take down an APC at 1000m can quiet your neighbor's stereo. And if you're a good enough shot, you're neighbor's neighbor, and maybe his neighbor's stereo, too.
Also useful in avoiding the police when they come to stop you from silencing any more stereos.
Well, I'm glad then that I live in Houston, where we're perfectly safe from terrorist attacks. We don't have any of that damn nuclear crap! (Well, actually we do, but only a small one...) Nah, we've got good old oil. Petroleum refineries, oil wells, oil tankers (naval and road going), oil tanks, Liquid Natural Gas tankers and terminals, etc. So yeah, we don't have to worry about terrorists wanting to take a crack at us...
Not that we need terrorists. We have enough industrial accidents spilling tons of toxic chemicals into the air as it is. It's kinda sad when it's no longer surprising to turn on the news and see a column of smoke that's probably 600 to 700 feet...across...at the base...that reaches 3 or 10 miles up. Nice, thick, black, toxic, asthma/cancer causing smoke.
Of course, if we went nuclear, we'd have to deal with the possibility that someone got past all the background checks to get into the facility, got through the security to get somewhere where they could do something, and once they got there, had the time alone to go about doing something that would breach all of the safety and redundandt safety systems we have. Or they could attack with guns or an airplane. Supposing they made it through the no-fly zone in 1 or 2 large pieces, they'd then have to make it through several layers of several foot thick reinforced concrete. Not to mention they'd have to be pretty damn accurate. And I feel sorry for anyone who tried to storm it by ground, considering there's an army base an hour or so outside of town. Yeah, where they grabbed a bunch of the guys in Iraq from. The one where they train all the special forces guys. Seriously, taking a nuclear powerplant near Houston would be like playing a 1 on 1000 game of Rogue Spear. Only shorter.
Whereas, taking out one of our dozen or so oil refineries would be about as hard as sitting down and waiting for it to happen on its own. Maybe driving by and throwing a cigarette out the window if you were in a hurry. I hope you enjoy your Ford Excursion now, cause once we've gone up in greasy, black, yet not radioactive (oh thank god...) fireball, its gonna cost a wee little bit more to drive...
Since they would need to be constructed and programmed within the next 4 years or so - thats probably not in the realm of feasibilty.
If I remember correctly, the Mars missions that just landed (sucessfuly!!!) were designed, built, launched, and landed in about 18 months or so. Even with the amount of fine motor skill that would be required, I think repairing the hubble is feasible.
Look at the chip industry. They use robots with some pretty rediculously fine motor control. Much more than what the Hubble would need, so I could see them scale that down, build it into a robot, give it some replaceable tools like they use on miniature submarines, and launch that.
Actually, that might be a good idea. Get one of the groups that makes mini-submersibles, like Jason or something, to make 2 or 3 of the simplest things they think could get the job done, and send them all up in 1 or 2 flights, in case something went wrong.
One other thing. I know when they say they go up for a "Hubble Mission", they spend *a lot* of time working on the Hubble, but they do a lot of other things, too. I had a friend who worked on it, actually. And he still did a lot of other work on the flight, even though he was up there primarily to work on the Hubble. Plus, it was a seven astronaut mission, but only 3 people really worked on the Hubble, generally 2 guys walking and 1 guy inside working the arm. I think it would be feasible to send up a Soyuz with a couple of astronauts purely to work on the Hubble. Don't spend the money and risk the lives of extra people who might not be necessary for the work. Soyuz's are pretty cheap, they're safe (they are or were thinking of using them as safety boats on the ISS), they've got room for about 3 astronauts for a little bit of time (think Apollo or something). And if there's not enough room in it, send up the equipment on an ICBM or some random workhorse rocket.
My point is, I think a) its feasible to fix the Hubble with robots, and if not then b) its possible to find another way to fix the Hubble with humans that doesn't require the shuttle. And I certainly think it's worth looking at. If not by the US govt, then let them sell it to a University somewhere for the cost to fix it, then they could fund it through donations etc. and we'd all be happy.
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Why stop with litigation? If they're growing up in Texas, we can give them the death penalty...
I've still got a pinto. And damn, is that thing light. With a mushy clutch, I can beat all the rich kids in their new BMW sport-coupes etc. no problem.
And driving down the highway is 10x as exciting. Everytime a big truck passes/is passed, the car jumps a few feet away from the front and a few feet towards at the back. There's nothing that'll make a passenger jump like doing 80 and having the car try and launch itself into the backend of a big rig doing 65 or so.
Yeah, it could be bad. So we send it up in pieces and assemble it in space. Admittedly, there's still bad stuff going up, but I think it's a small enough risk we could take it. Put it on the older, more stable rockets that are just to expensive for everything else.
First off: why not try an LCD monitor? I'm pretty sure they use noticeably less energy (they certainly give off noticeably less as heat...)
Second: I do know people who its actually productive to watch movies on at the second time. I had an architecture prof who was amazed when he bought a G4 and a big Apple display, cause he could watch a movie in the background while plotting stuff. He thought it was great. He had background noise, and if he got stumped for an idea, something might just pop up in the background that he could build off of.
I think the poster realized that... Just change it so it reads more "Anyone can read my tag and get my info from the databases" or "Only people the database company lets can get my info once they've read my tag."
And yes, this technology might be good, but frankly, I don't trust people. You're going to have to do a lot of work convincing me that all the privacy and other issues have been fully addressed before someone sticks something like that in me...
Dude. I saw one of these in Circuit City a week ago, at least. And it was pretty beaten up, too, so I'd bet it had been there awhile. And yes. It has mouse ears...
I do video editing (NOT porn, music videos at the moment while I'm still in school) and I could use that much space. At 1/2 to 1 GB per minute of decent quality footage... It goes quickly, let me tell you. Ok, that much storage I guess would be a bit much, but it would certainly be appreciated. Especially once I start moving into projects longer than 5 minutes apiece... That, and I host my brother's website and backup file server (he's a professional photographer, so that's a lot of space, right there). Seriously, people do use a lot more space than they used to. Be a little more open minded...
Tell me, please tell me, why the F*** they even *made* 10,000 copies of Whitney Houston's recording of the Star Spangled Banner?
Good CDs do cost too much money, and complaining that it's because they over-produced Whitney is not a reasonable answer. In any business class, that'd get you big, fat F. That's called "Screwing up." It's not an inherant problem of making music, but it is an inherant problem with *their* system of it. Like the article a few weeks ago about how end-sales have gone up while shipped CDs have gone down. It's because stores are getting smarter about ordering only what they are going to sell. Yet the RIAA blames it on piracy, being very quick to ignore the end-sale numbers.
If they lose money because they do a bad job predicting how well Whitney is gonna sell, it's their problem, not ours. If a stock broker mis-analyzes a stock and loses money, he doesn't take it out on his clients, HIS CLIENTS TAKE IT OUT ON HIM. And if he tries to get legislation to make sure that his clients can't do so by switching to another stock broker (they could start doing all the buying and selling and research themselves or just take their money out of the market completely, but those really aren't realistic possibilities), they whack him. And not with a rolled up newspaper...
I'm sorry, but the RIAA hasn't had a viable defense in years. And everytime they look like they've found one, assuming it didn't have enough holes to see daylight through to begin with, they put twice as many in it on their own.
I downloaded that episode.
Then I bought the whole run of the series on DVD (It only took 2...)
You should see the episode of South Park where the George Lucas and Steven Spielberg release a special edition update of Indiana Jones, and it sucks so hard it rips their faces off like the scene from Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark. Very closely related. And really, really funny.
I think he means the XServe RAIDs, not the servers themselves. Even so, those things are still a bit overpriced for the storage needs here. The only real advantages of those things I can find is if you live in a pure Mac environment, they're probably easier to admin or something.
I agree completely. Mostly because I have no fscking clue what you just said.
Really though, I think I understand the gist of what you said. But, just a thought, you might wanna pop in a few footnotes next time so that the rest of us 99% know more of what's going on.
Scenario: I rob two Stop N'Go's on the East side of town. Run in with a shotgun, shoot the guy behind the desk, exact same MO both times. Now, I hear sirens. I jump a train to the West side and hit another Shop N'Go in the same fashion. I live up north, so I start heading that way. I hit another Stop N' Go on the way. 4 identical crimes in 3 different parts of the city.
Purely using your swarm intelligence, how long do you think it would be before someone said "Hey, let's see if someone in another part of the city had a crime just like this?" I'd say quite awhile.
Now, with our "Big Board," as soon as police get on the scene, they send in to central that a Stop N' Go got hit and the clerk got his head blown off by a 12 guage. Now, when four points show up on the map like that, that look exactly the same, one of those guys in the command room is gonna say "DAAAMN!!" and give a call to the units investigating the crimes to tell them to talk to the other units.
Now, instead of 3 units investigating the 4 crimes seperately, we have 1 unit who has access to all the crimes and all the evidence collected at the crimes. That leaves 2 units free to get donu^H^H^H^H investigate other crimes.
You have more experience in this field, so maybe you're right. But from perspective, I see visualization centers like this as a good thing, assuming getting the info for it doesn't put too much a burden on the streetcops.
Oh dear lord. I wanna break in and play the world's sweetest game of CounterStrike. Screw AimBots, I really *will* be able to see people on the other side of the map.
Having spent my recently-ended high school career at a top private school, I can honestly say that you don't even need to pay teachers that much more. Hire more teachers, build more classrooms, and give them things like paper and Xerox machines.
My school pays teachers thousands less than what they would be getting at the public school next door. Yet, teachers still flock to my school. The head of their english department took a job as a bottom rung english teacher at my school. Why? Cause the environment more than makes up for it. My school has no more than about 20 people per class. We don't have to walk through metal detectors on the way into school. We don't have random police searches for drugs. And teachers get all the Xerox and paper they want. One of my history teachers, who used to work at the public school, told us as he handed us each out a reading packet that the amount of paper he used making us each a packet would have depleted his entire allowance for the year at the public school.
I agree that schools need to become better run, more efficient, and less susceptable to fraud. And I agree when you say that "a good lecurer [sic] with chalk and a blackboard is far more valuable then [sic] some hack with power point [sic]." I'm just unsure how the situation is ever going to get better so-long as there are administrators out their who will screw over a school of children for a new car or three, a boat, and 7 properties.
Make sure to use LARGE fonts...
They do have the moral right to protect their property, intellectual or not.
They do NOT have the right to lie and/or give misleading information to support their claims of piracy. That's called "fraud." It's illegal.
This article has nothing to do with them protecting their property. They can go after pirates all they want. But what about dealing with the iTunes Music Store? The RIAA was hesitant going in because they didn't think iTMS had enough "protection" on their files. They still bitch and moan about it all the time, saying that things like downloadable music and non-protected cds (read: cds that don't break my computer if it doesn't have Palladium or whatever) create piracy and that that hurts their sales.
They can't prove that iTMS etc. promote piracy (though, maybe they can prove it for Napster et al), so instead, they try to prove this:
Step 1: Downloadable Music
Step 2: ???
Step 3: (Loss of) Profit!
Well, problem is, they've always said "loss of sales," not loss of "profit." We just *assumed* that when they said loss of sales, they meant loss of profit. However, they misled us. They misled business leaders. And they misled the government when they tried getting stricter laws for prosecuting copyright infringers (some old /. article, I'm to lazy to find it now).
It would be like Microsoft telling us that because of piracy on the internet, they've sold a few less products, so therefore the government should nationalize all internet traffic, and let Microsoft regulate it. However, they failed to mention that by "selling less products," they mean, they sold less cardboard boxes containing a Windows cd and some papers from a store, meanwhile, sales by buying it online from the Microsoft website and downloading straight to the computer have doubled.
This is not about protecting property rights. We have the right to protect property rights, that's why they're called property *rights*. We, and especially not companies, corporations, conglomerates, organizations, and associations, do NOT have the right to lie, cheat, and scam the people around us to get what we want. I would have modded your comment "Offtopic," but it irked me just a wee-bit too much to let it slide.
To what extent do you think Microsoft would attempt legal action to stall/eliminate development/production of software that would make it unnecessary to use their OS? And, as a tag-on, do you forsee future additions to Windows, such as DRM, to be problematic and do you think that Microsoft would consider adding things to the OS that work like DRM just to stop your software?
You'll probably never see this, but I couldn't figure out how to send it. Where's that in Vice City? I've been playing for awhile and haven't seen it, and now I'm curious...
I got it from a sign my uncle's hunting club has up. I don't hunt there, I just go up during the summer for the family reunion. They've got a lot of entertaining things like that up there. I wouldn't advise breaking in, especially if you're a lawyer (they seem to have a passion again lawyers).
Why don't I try it out on *your FACE*! OOoohh, beat that! What's that? You can't? Yeah, that's what I though....
(Sorry for responding to flamebait, it just amused me too much to pass up the opportunity...)
And considering that 57 years ago, that trip probably would have taken a day or more,114 years ago (57 years *before* breaking the soundbarrier) that trip would have taken weeks, and 171 years ago (57 years before 57 years before breaking the sound barrier) that trip would have taken months, considering that was 15 years before the first rail line was completed to Chicago.
Yes, I can certainly see how "sad [a] commentary on the human condition at present" this is, that a mere 171 years after you would have traveled for months via sailship (the first steamship to actually cross the Atlantic wholly under steam power was the Royal William in 1833, the same year we're talking about, and took 25 days) and stagecoach to get from London to Chicago, you can now do it in 8 hours, sitting in an air conditioned cabin with a choice of 8 movie/tv stations and 13 radio stations with breakfast, lunch, and dinner served to you in your seat and a reasonably clean restroom not more than 30 feet away. Jesus, we humans sure are in a bad condition.
The reason it *failed* was because one leveled an apartment building when it crashed, and the other's seemed to have the same problems it had, maintenance/design-wise.
You may not realize this, but there are people, lots of people, who are both willing and able to pay $10,000 for a plane ticket, if only to get from London to New York in half the time. For some people (bankers, investors, musicians, models, movie stars, people of that nature), it actually makes damn good financial sense to pay that much extra for a ticket. When you make $10,000 for a 2 hour appearance, you can fit in 2 extra appearnces with that much time earning yourself an extra $10k.
Just because most people in the world can't buy a house that sells for $41 million dollars doesn't make it a failure in the real estate business. Someone out there can and will. It becomes a failure when one or two of the rooms cave in on the new owners, and no one wants to buy it from them.
I think this should do it: the Steyr AMR.
I mean, surely something that can take down an APC at 1000m can quiet your neighbor's stereo. And if you're a good enough shot, you're neighbor's neighbor, and maybe his neighbor's stereo, too.
Also useful in avoiding the police when they come to stop you from silencing any more stereos.
Well, I'm glad then that I live in Houston, where we're perfectly safe from terrorist attacks. We don't have any of that damn nuclear crap! (Well, actually we do, but only a small one...) Nah, we've got good old oil. Petroleum refineries, oil wells, oil tankers (naval and road going), oil tanks, Liquid Natural Gas tankers and terminals, etc. So yeah, we don't have to worry about terrorists wanting to take a crack at us...
Not that we need terrorists. We have enough industrial accidents spilling tons of toxic chemicals into the air as it is. It's kinda sad when it's no longer surprising to turn on the news and see a column of smoke that's probably 600 to 700 feet...across...at the base...that reaches 3 or 10 miles up. Nice, thick, black, toxic, asthma/cancer causing smoke.
Of course, if we went nuclear, we'd have to deal with the possibility that someone got past all the background checks to get into the facility, got through the security to get somewhere where they could do something, and once they got there, had the time alone to go about doing something that would breach all of the safety and redundandt safety systems we have. Or they could attack with guns or an airplane. Supposing they made it through the no-fly zone in 1 or 2 large pieces, they'd then have to make it through several layers of several foot thick reinforced concrete. Not to mention they'd have to be pretty damn accurate. And I feel sorry for anyone who tried to storm it by ground, considering there's an army base an hour or so outside of town. Yeah, where they grabbed a bunch of the guys in Iraq from. The one where they train all the special forces guys. Seriously, taking a nuclear powerplant near Houston would be like playing a 1 on 1000 game of Rogue Spear. Only shorter.
Whereas, taking out one of our dozen or so oil refineries would be about as hard as sitting down and waiting for it to happen on its own. Maybe driving by and throwing a cigarette out the window if you were in a hurry. I hope you enjoy your Ford Excursion now, cause once we've gone up in greasy, black, yet not radioactive (oh thank god...) fireball, its gonna cost a wee little bit more to drive...
Since they would need to be constructed and programmed within the next 4 years or so - thats probably not in the realm of feasibilty.
If I remember correctly, the Mars missions that just landed (sucessfuly!!!) were designed, built, launched, and landed in about 18 months or so. Even with the amount of fine motor skill that would be required, I think repairing the hubble is feasible.
Look at the chip industry. They use robots with some pretty rediculously fine motor control. Much more than what the Hubble would need, so I could see them scale that down, build it into a robot, give it some replaceable tools like they use on miniature submarines, and launch that.
Actually, that might be a good idea. Get one of the groups that makes mini-submersibles, like Jason or something, to make 2 or 3 of the simplest things they think could get the job done, and send them all up in 1 or 2 flights, in case something went wrong.
One other thing. I know when they say they go up for a "Hubble Mission", they spend *a lot* of time working on the Hubble, but they do a lot of other things, too. I had a friend who worked on it, actually. And he still did a lot of other work on the flight, even though he was up there primarily to work on the Hubble. Plus, it was a seven astronaut mission, but only 3 people really worked on the Hubble, generally 2 guys walking and 1 guy inside working the arm. I think it would be feasible to send up a Soyuz with a couple of astronauts purely to work on the Hubble. Don't spend the money and risk the lives of extra people who might not be necessary for the work. Soyuz's are pretty cheap, they're safe (they are or were thinking of using them as safety boats on the ISS), they've got room for about 3 astronauts for a little bit of time (think Apollo or something). And if there's not enough room in it, send up the equipment on an ICBM or some random workhorse rocket.
My point is, I think a) its feasible to fix the Hubble with robots, and if not then b) its possible to find another way to fix the Hubble with humans that doesn't require the shuttle. And I certainly think it's worth looking at. If not by the US govt, then let them sell it to a University somewhere for the cost to fix it, then they could fund it through donations etc. and we'd all be happy.
Down here in Texas, we *only* have coke.