No wonder the AV companies are up in arms - its a standard industry requirement to make sure that there is a PR rep assigned to each engineer to "interpret" results, whenever doing tests that shows how well the software actually works!
Yes - a definition of big enough to be spherical, and center of gravity outside of another object is all well and good... except for the fact that it could potentially lead to dozens, if not hundreds of "planets" in the solar system.
Better to find a way to restrict the definition to only the very largest bodies in a system - even if the cutoff point is plucked out of thin air. Otherwise the term will be completely divorced from its historical and popular meaning.
Planets are a fairly arbitrary categorization by us anyway - why not just use some nice round number - like 1 Meter per second per second of Gravity as an arbitrary cutoff between planets and minor planets?
My favorite support call from years in tech support?
Middle of the night... get a page to call back a client on a critical issue. Call the company operator, and get connected to the client:
Me: So whats the problem sir? Client: I'm trying to update your software, but the installer keeps failing Me:Oh - what are you trying to do? Client:Upgrade to version 6 - but it won't work - I keep getting an error Me:Oh - OK. What error do you get? Client:Software is already installed Me:Huh - thats odd... we usually recognize old software and upgrade it automatically. Client:Thats why I'm calling you! Me:OK - so what version do you have installed right now? Client:version 7. Me:Uh sir? Client:yes? Me:Thats the latest version - our version #'s go up with new releases. Client:Really? Uh... in that case, I guess we can close the call.
Its conversations like that which convinced me that even a bug free product with a great UI and documentation could still make a bundle of $$$ through tech support.
Turn based strategy is still alive and kicking - and still way better on a PC than on a console. See Civ 4 and Galciv 2 for recent examples of good sales and PC only...
I've got a stinking dial-up modem at home. And I'm perfectly happy. Why? Because I spend 8 hours+ per day already at a location with a broadband connection. Need to watch a video, download something, etc? No problem. Download to my flash drive at work, bring back home.
For 90% of what I do on the internet - google searches, usenet, email, message boards, slashdot, PBEM gaming, etc - a ~50K connection is just fine - it all loads up in a few seconds (especially with images off).
For 600$ a year (local cost of broadband connection), I can wait a few hours to get to work if I have a really burning need to do more than idle on the information super-highway...
One of the original stated benefits of the program was that by tinkering a little with shuttle derived components, they could create new launch vehicles without much new work. If they aren't using shuttle parts, why the hell don't they just design a new vehicle from scratch?
I know this is off topic, but I have to keep going because you're version of history is so much fun!
So you're saying the Ottomans didn't claim to be the Caliph? Was Selim confused when he called his empire the Caliphate and conquered Eqypt, Palestine, Mecca and Medina? Were the Ottoman armies lost when their armies tried to march through Vienna? (twice! 16th and late 17th century!) Maybe it was a peaceful gesture towards the Christian states of Europe when Suleiman sent armies through Serbia, Hungary, and the rest of SE Europe?
You can debate character, motives, morals, ethics, philosophy, culture, etc - but names, dates, and places are names, dates, and places. And as I originally stated, those pesky Ottomans (who just happened to represent most of the Islamic world neighboring Christian Europe) put the lie to your rhetorical flourish.
right... My mistake for being pedantic, "Turkey invading Greece" is a great shorthand for the actions of the Caliphate that controlled the vast majority of the Muslim world and had a tiny little invasion of half of Europe that lasted a couple of easily overlooked centuries, and involved the forcible occupation of the territory of tiny obscure places like Italy, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Poland, Russia, etc.
Maybe you had a cogent argument in paragraphs 2-4, but as someone with a passing familiarity in history I couldn't continue past the 1st since my eyes rolled back into my head.
lets see... 500 years ago - that would be when the Ottomans were finishing their romp against the Christian holdings in asia minor and greece (and gearing up for another 200 years of invasions deep into Europe).
Try adjusting your date to about 200 years ago - that would serve your rhetorical purpose and have a grounding in reality - that would mark the end of the 1st US-Barbary War and is near the start of European control of North Africa/Middle East/Near East.
According to the project histories posted on the internet ( http://www.paineless.id.au/missiles/NikeZeus.html and http://www.paineless.id.au/missiles/Spartan.html ) the Nike Zeus and Spartan series of ABM missiles were successful in tests against real live missiles (doubt they had explosives - probably just checked how close they were to the target when they triggered the dummy warhead).
I guess that goes to show you where our national defense priorities are - better to have millions of dead former voters when there could be a chance of 10's of millions of pissed off live future voters with burnt out computers and electronics.
The Nike air-defense system that ringed the US in the latter half of the 20th century had low yield nuclear explosives in the warhead - the idea being that rather than directly hit the oncoming missile, it just had to get nearby and vaporize everything in a few hundred feet.
Why this system was good enough in the 60's (and not hugely expensive), and now 40 years later has to be replaced by a much more complicated (and less likely to work) boondogle is for some reason almost never discussed in the media...
Hey! That thing costs $$$ - if I wanted to spend money on my internet connection at home, I wouldn't be using my modem (free internet connection + freeware firewall).
Hey! Those poor saps out there who don't have your fancy-shmancy high-speed internet connections need software firewalls - unless you can figure out a way to block ports on my modem.
BG2 is still a real rarity in RPGs - a game that, at least for a period of time, lets you actually role-play and doesn't force you to take any particular action...
For a good chunk of the game (and about 4 months of the 6 months it took to finish it in real-time), I loved how you could just wander the countryside and delve into little mini-quests: clear a dungeon, or explore ruins, or take back the family castle, or solve the mystery of the caskets, or anything else that wasn't the main plot. sigh. its nice to have strongly plotted games (KOTOR, Torment, IWD, etc), but I do miss the fun of that wide open section of the game.
...that communications were being disrupted, even if they didn't really understand that a solar flare was the reason why reception is lousy... All I could get clearly was channel 7 in my area,which worked out just fine since it was showing the one show I was interested in - Lost.
fighting your own mortality to regain the ability to die is hardly hackneyed as hell... you might have a leg to stand on if you claimed "the reluctanct immortal" was hackneyed as hell... or "amnesia victim tries to uncover his past".
I've read many a story (or seen movies) with a "relucatant immortal/cain/wandering jew/etc" character - in virtually all of them the character ends the story as he began it - reluctantly immortal. For the few where they are released - its usually do to the intervention of someone else (a gift from some higher power) or as an unexpected side effect of some quest or another. I've certainly never read a story where the antagonist, let alone any other character, is someone's Mortality...
Any story, let alone a computer game, where the protaganist is someone who is trying to find a way to destroy his own immortality, is certainly in a very small circle of stories.
One of the amazing things about this game is that it is so deep and complex, that you can play it again, make similiar choices, and because of that complexity uncover things you never did the first time.
I played through it twice (a few years apart), and encountered characters, plots, and levels I never even saw in the first play through. My wife then played it, and uncovered yet again characters, plots and levels I had never encountered in both play throughs.
Truely amazing game - memorable not just because of the depth, the supporting characters you could care (at least a little) about...but for being one of the few CRPG's where you can actually ROLE play, instead of hack/slash. Only games that I've played that have come close in the past few years are KOTOR I/II.
I commend your shift in tone - if you keep this up I'll have to reconsider my original blanket sterotyping of you...so lets go through all the points again:
- The article about them possibly being Mossad agents is interesting. But I still see no connection between Israel and the 9/11 hijackers. The money and information trail still all points back to Al Qaeda. This still leaves this whole story as a side show....
- Can casting a blind eye be delibrate? Sure... just look at Pearl Harbor - its been suggested that the US leadership knew it was coming and supressed knowledge (never proven). Could this have been the same thing? Yes - and no. No in the sense that the US government didn't know this specific attack was coming. That is well documented...but on the other hand you could argue Yes in the sense that the US govt knew some kind of attack would come eventually. But even the worst possible kind of anti-terrorist neglect (spending resources elsewhere with the hope some kind of an attack will happen - and thus justify some sort of policy shift) though is very very far away from organizing, planning, and carrying out the attacks. And again - the information and money trail all leads back to Al Qaeda. Besides that - there was no reason for the US govt to help Al Qaeda - they were doing just fine on their own... The Millenium bombings were stopped by dumb luck - not skill on the US's part. It was just a matter of time once Al Qaeda decided to target the US mainland - and good luck can only defend against terrorism for so long...
- The article you suggest to read is incomplete - while puts and calls are used to bet against/for stock price changes, it completely ignores what they are most famously used for today - Hedges. The concept is simple - spending a few million on a stock (going long)? Hedge your bet by buying some put options as well (go short). It lowers profit, but also reduces downside. The National Review investigated, and were able to identify the source: some firms hedging against large purchases of stock, and an investing newsletter that was bearish on AMR: http://www.nationalreview.com/rose/rose20040726070 0.asp
- First off this last point may smell fishy - but like the passport, its a side show. There is nothing in the flight data except for curiosities... passengers called in all the info authorities needed to ID the hijackers, the flight path was well determined from the ground, so all thats missing is the cockpit conversations - and do to their lack of training in communications equipment - even some of that was captured anyway.
But besides that - I'll note that just because something 'survives' a crash, doesn't mean it does so in any shape we would call 'good'. Its also important to note that their is a big difference between an airliner crashing into the ocean, or a field, or a row of houses - and crashing into 3 of the worlds largest office buildings... office buildings full of electronics in casings - even brightly colored ones (I know some companies like bright colors on routers, power junctions, and other high priority electronics). The flight data recorders were just another group of banged up electronics boxes, in the worlds largest pile of scrap... considering that I'm not sure why anyone ever expected them to be found at ground zero anyway...
This is incorrect. You need a descent amount of angular momentum to stay up there, and for any projectile launched from the orbit to reach earth, you need to kill its angular momentum, which would in return screw up the satellite's angular momentum.
uh... not really. First off - turning the projectile into an autonomous object (ie - attach and engine and some fuel) means that it would have no effect on the originating object. The ISS effectively does this all the time when they throw out their garbage...
Second off - even if it was a projectile launched by a cannon, it just means that the originating satellite just needs the capability to stay relatively on station. This is not an insurmountable problem...
The Antarctic Treaty is usually cited as a model for how space can be... but the big difference is that the treaty for Anarctica was created after the nations of Earth pretty much had full access.
But forgetting about natural resources - the big difference is that Antartica isn't a security threat - space is - its the ultimate high ground. An engine attached to a boulder makes it into a space to surface bombardment system. You don't need nukes or lasers to threaten from above - just being up there is threat enough...
But who knows? Maybe we'll suprise ourselves, and the ISS and McMurdo stations will be the models of our future (well - maybe not the ISS).
Slashdot Mirror
No wonder the AV companies are up in arms - its a standard industry requirement to make sure that there is a PR rep assigned to each engineer to "interpret" results, whenever doing tests that shows how well the software actually works!
Better to find a way to restrict the definition to only the very largest bodies in a system - even if the cutoff point is plucked out of thin air. Otherwise the term will be completely divorced from its historical and popular meaning.
Planets are a fairly arbitrary categorization by us anyway - why not just use some nice round number - like 1 Meter per second per second of Gravity as an arbitrary cutoff between planets and minor planets?
My favorite support call from years in tech support?
Middle of the night... get a page to call back a client on a critical issue. Call the company operator, and get connected to the client:
Me: So whats the problem sir?
Client: I'm trying to update your software, but the installer keeps failing
Me:Oh - what are you trying to do?
Client:Upgrade to version 6 - but it won't work - I keep getting an error
Me:Oh - OK. What error do you get?
Client:Software is already installed
Me:Huh - thats odd... we usually recognize old software and upgrade it automatically.
Client:Thats why I'm calling you!
Me:OK - so what version do you have installed right now?
Client:version 7.
Me:Uh sir?
Client:yes?
Me:Thats the latest version - our version #'s go up with new releases.
Client:Really? Uh... in that case, I guess we can close the call.
Its conversations like that which convinced me that even a bug free product with a great UI and documentation could still make a bundle of $$$ through tech support.
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/gsp/Experimental _Detection.pdf
It seems they were careful - thermally isolated, faraday cage to block electromagnetic affects, multiple versions of the superconducting ring with different materials.
Turn based strategy is still alive and kicking - and still way better on a PC than on a console. See Civ 4 and Galciv 2 for recent examples of good sales and PC only...
For 90% of what I do on the internet - google searches, usenet, email, message boards, slashdot, PBEM gaming, etc - a ~50K connection is just fine - it all loads up in a few seconds (especially with images off).
For 600$ a year (local cost of broadband connection), I can wait a few hours to get to work if I have a really burning need to do more than idle on the information super-highway...
One of the original stated benefits of the program was that by tinkering a little with shuttle derived components, they could create new launch vehicles without much new work. If they aren't using shuttle parts, why the hell don't they just design a new vehicle from scratch?
So you're saying the Ottomans didn't claim to be the Caliph? Was Selim confused when he called his empire the Caliphate and conquered Eqypt, Palestine, Mecca and Medina? Were the Ottoman armies lost when their armies tried to march through Vienna? (twice! 16th and late 17th century!) Maybe it was a peaceful gesture towards the Christian states of Europe when Suleiman sent armies through Serbia, Hungary, and the rest of SE Europe?
You can debate character, motives, morals, ethics, philosophy, culture, etc - but names, dates, and places are names, dates, and places. And as I originally stated, those pesky Ottomans (who just happened to represent most of the Islamic world neighboring Christian Europe) put the lie to your rhetorical flourish.
lets see... 500 years ago - that would be when the Ottomans were finishing their romp against the Christian holdings in asia minor and greece (and gearing up for another 200 years of invasions deep into Europe).
Try adjusting your date to about 200 years ago - that would serve your rhetorical purpose and have a grounding in reality - that would mark the end of the 1st US-Barbary War and is near the start of European control of North Africa/Middle East/Near East.
I guess that goes to show you where our national defense priorities are - better to have millions of dead former voters when there could be a chance of 10's of millions of pissed off live future voters with burnt out computers and electronics.
Why this system was good enough in the 60's (and not hugely expensive), and now 40 years later has to be replaced by a much more complicated (and less likely to work) boondogle is for some reason almost never discussed in the media...
Hey! That thing costs $$$ - if I wanted to spend money on my internet connection at home, I wouldn't be using my modem (free internet connection + freeware firewall).
Hey! Those poor saps out there who don't have your fancy-shmancy high-speed internet connections need software firewalls - unless you can figure out a way to block ports on my modem.
Is it just me, or is the friggin slashdot summary got more information than the linked article?
Thats gotta be a first...
For a good chunk of the game (and about 4 months of the 6 months it took to finish it in real-time), I loved how you could just wander the countryside and delve into little mini-quests: clear a dungeon, or explore ruins, or take back the family castle, or solve the mystery of the caskets, or anything else that wasn't the main plot. sigh. its nice to have strongly plotted games (KOTOR, Torment, IWD, etc), but I do miss the fun of that wide open section of the game.
...that communications were being disrupted, even if they didn't really understand that a solar flare was the reason why reception is lousy... All I could get clearly was channel 7 in my area ,which worked out just fine since it was showing the one show I was interested in - Lost.
I've read many a story (or seen movies) with a "relucatant immortal/cain/wandering jew/etc" character - in virtually all of them the character ends the story as he began it - reluctantly immortal. For the few where they are released - its usually do to the intervention of someone else (a gift from some higher power) or as an unexpected side effect of some quest or another. I've certainly never read a story where the antagonist, let alone any other character, is someone's Mortality...
Any story, let alone a computer game, where the protaganist is someone who is trying to find a way to destroy his own immortality, is certainly in a very small circle of stories.
I played through it twice (a few years apart), and encountered characters, plots, and levels I never even saw in the first play through. My wife then played it, and uncovered yet again characters, plots and levels I had never encountered in both play throughs.
Truely amazing game - memorable not just because of the depth, the supporting characters you could care (at least a little) about...but for being one of the few CRPG's where you can actually ROLE play, instead of hack/slash. Only games that I've played that have come close in the past few years are KOTOR I/II.
- The article about them possibly being Mossad agents is interesting. But I still see no connection between Israel and the 9/11 hijackers. The money and information trail still all points back to Al Qaeda. This still leaves this whole story as a side show....
- Can casting a blind eye be delibrate? Sure... just look at Pearl Harbor - its been suggested that the US leadership knew it was coming and supressed knowledge (never proven). Could this have been the same thing? Yes - and no. No in the sense that the US government didn't know this specific attack was coming. That is well documented...but on the other hand you could argue Yes in the sense that the US govt knew some kind of attack would come eventually. But even the worst possible kind of anti-terrorist neglect (spending resources elsewhere with the hope some kind of an attack will happen - and thus justify some sort of policy shift) though is very very far away from organizing, planning, and carrying out the attacks. And again - the information and money trail all leads back to Al Qaeda. Besides that - there was no reason for the US govt to help Al Qaeda - they were doing just fine on their own... The Millenium bombings were stopped by dumb luck - not skill on the US's part. It was just a matter of time once Al Qaeda decided to target the US mainland - and good luck can only defend against terrorism for so long...
- The article you suggest to read is incomplete - while puts and calls are used to bet against/for stock price changes, it completely ignores what they are most famously used for today - Hedges. The concept is simple - spending a few million on a stock (going long)? Hedge your bet by buying some put options as well (go short). It lowers profit, but also reduces downside. The National Review investigated, and were able to identify the source: some firms hedging against large purchases of stock, and an investing newsletter that was bearish on AMR:
http://www.nationalreview.com/rose/rose2004072607
- First off this last point may smell fishy - but like the passport, its a side show. There is nothing in the flight data except for curiosities... passengers called in all the info authorities needed to ID the hijackers, the flight path was well determined from the ground, so all thats missing is the cockpit conversations - and do to their lack of training in communications equipment - even some of that was captured anyway.
But besides that - I'll note that just because something 'survives' a crash, doesn't mean it does so in any shape we would call 'good'. Its also important to note that their is a big difference between an airliner crashing into the ocean, or a field, or a row of houses - and crashing into 3 of the worlds largest office buildings... office buildings full of electronics in casings - even brightly colored ones (I know some companies like bright colors on routers, power junctions, and other high priority electronics). The flight data recorders were just another group of banged up electronics boxes, in the worlds largest pile of scrap... considering that I'm not sure why anyone ever expected them to be found at ground zero anyway...
uh... not really. First off - turning the projectile into an autonomous object (ie - attach and engine and some fuel) means that it would have no effect on the originating object. The ISS effectively does this all the time when they throw out their garbage...
Second off - even if it was a projectile launched by a cannon, it just means that the originating satellite just needs the capability to stay relatively on station. This is not an insurmountable problem...
But forgetting about natural resources - the big difference is that Antartica isn't a security threat - space is - its the ultimate high ground. An engine attached to a boulder makes it into a space to surface bombardment system. You don't need nukes or lasers to threaten from above - just being up there is threat enough...
But who knows? Maybe we'll suprise ourselves, and the ISS and McMurdo stations will be the models of our future (well - maybe not the ISS).
Don't worry - we'll just make this info our little secret ;)
SOHO, a (joint US/EU project) is in a halo orbit around L1 (http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/mission/page1.html ) and WMAP, a US satellite, is in a halo orbit around L2 - according to their official explanation (http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_mm/ob_techorbit1.html)
The WMAP page also explains that the L1 and L2 points aren't as stable as the article implies...