I run three tiny sites on one ancient system, and weblog analysis is good enough for my needs.
For my personal site, don't care. With the on line high school yearbooks for my alumni group, looking for 404 errors from the hundreds of static html pages I hand editted from the initial template, and getting a general idea whether the alums are using it. For the old man's specialty CD-ROM site, just looking for a general idea what parts of the nation/world lookie-loos/orders are coming from.
Lately, I've also been using the log to see which spiders rate a disallow in robots.txt.
Here's what I'm hearing from widely scattered classmates from the former American School Of Isfahan, Iran:
Afghanistan: The Kabul/Bagram area are relatively safe. Occasional bombings and shootings sound worse in the media than is perceived locally. Locals don't see you as a target. Resist the temptation to see the rest of the country, and you'll be fine. Heroin use among foreign rear echelon motherfuckers is 'way up... do avoid that.
Kuwait: basically safe, but events in Iraq and SA will continue increase tensions. Do as you would in most poor nations (which Kuwait is not) and try not to stand out. Do a year or two and call it a day.
Bahrain: more of a disconnect between rulers and ruled than Kuwait. Looks good compared to SA, Iraq, Afghan.
Qatar & UAE: Looks good. Act conservatively, as has been the case in the Gulf all along. If SA goes down the shitter, there will be spill over, but at least you'll have plenty of warning.
Saudi: things are going to get worse before they get better. Do not take your family, as you'll be forced to live in a foreign compound. If at all posible, live in well off but Arab-heavy apartment complexes or developments. Make a habit of varying your routine outside of the office. Have in mind an alternate exit from said office.
Iraq: If you're lucky enough to work AND live strictly within the occupation authority's green zone in downtown Baghdad, knock yourself out. Keep in mind that that zone will be shrinking considerably over the next 12 months into a still huge US Embassy, so make sure you don't get stuck outside with a housing allowance and a pat on the back. For the less risk adverse, 24x7 at one of the bigger military bases is a consideration. Next down the list is Metro Basra as long as the Badr (as opposed to Sadr) militia and it's political front stay happy. Ditto with the Kurdish areas, which aren't much worse than eastern Turkey. Pass on Mosul, Kirkuk, and the whole rest of the country. If you're going to be driving anywhere, for God's sake opt for small, cheap sedans. Big sedans are begging to be car jacked, and SUVs broadcast "USA" like a HUMMV.
Iran: I throw this in for contrast. If a US citizen/resident alien, your biggest problem will be explaining yourself to Uncle Sam. Consult with an attorney to make darn sure you aren't in conflict with US economic restrictions on trade with Iran before you go. Don't hit on local women, bad mouth Islam or the government, or take pictures of any thing that even resembles a government or military installation. In fact, this is more of a normal overseas posting, so it's not nearly as lucrative. There are some up to date tourist guide books on the country, and good poop from the British and Australian Embassy web sites.
Not taught in American schools? Depends on which school. My high school US history instructor opted to go a bit more in depth on the War of 1812, including the part where Upstate New Yorkers burned down what's now Toronto... then called it a day and marched home. It's suggested that the torching of Washington D.C. was retaliation.
As for land grabs, while there were a number of prominent Americans that advocated annexing Canada in those days, President Madison wasn't one of them. Rather, it was rabble rousers west of the Appalachians and south of Mason-Dixon.
Abstract: Coding for a company where most employees are married w/ kids is your best bet.
Staying married - especially with a child - while working at a shop that expects regular unpaid overtime as a matter of course is a real hard row to hoe. It really depends on your honest (and - hopefully - informed) appraisal of your wife's willingness to spend nearly all of her waking hours going it alone.
I think of personal ambition as a somewhat zero-sum game, and if you aspire to succeed as a husband and father, you're going to need to channel a good piece of your current career ambition towards the other two. If you set your overall career goal to do that which will help support your goals as husband and father, you will do well enough in business and perhaps still have a family twenty years down the line. Maximum bucks as a substitute for personal involvement in your family doesn't usually work.
My personal experience is a career in aerospace and DoD related work. The firms I've worked for are somewhat traditional, in that they expect 40 to 45 hour weeks, and infrequent crunch times. When the crunch does come, they really need it, you know it, and your spouse will understand. Almost everyone from the CEOs on down have family lives, and so have the subconscious expectation that everyone else does, too.
I too was a bit taken aback at the Microsoft ads appearing in the Slashdot banner a couple of months back, shortly before I started aliasing the major ad servers to 127.0.0.1 in my hosts file (yeah, I got yer 'theft' right here, Jack Valenti).
This took me back to 1994, when SGI and MS ponied up for full page Wintel spreads in all the Mac-oriented trade rags, MacWeek in particular. Now, for the publishers of MacWeek/World/User, etc, ad dollars are ad dollars, and it didn't really matter if the net result is that a percentage of readers end up on Wintel systems. After all, the motherships all published Wintel (and other) rags in the same offices.
An exception was MacTutor (now MacTech), a Dr. Dobbs-like magazine for developers on the MacOS, and the sole product of the then publisher. Around about 1995, Microsoft placed a number of two page spreads advertising seminars, workshops, and tool kits for developers to migrate to Windows. One could argue that Mac developers were headed that way in any case, and MacTutor might as well suck up ad dollars what ever the source on their way down the toliet. However, that the premier - hell, only - Mac technical journal would host a series of such ads couldn't help but speed MacTutor's only customers out the door.
In the end, ads are propaganda, and if the message they contain doesn't jibe with the editorial goals of the publication, then the owner that runs them is exposed as strictly a whore to Mammon, and their "editorial stance" a sham. At least when I flip through Harper's Bazaar in a waiting room, I already know that their sole purpose is to shill for the ad clients. Giving me wood is just a side effect.
I notice the lawyers have no trouble understanding that a law cannot be anyone's property.
Unfortunately, at least one attorney at Thelen Reid & Priest hasn't completely figured this out, yet. Mr. Patry lays out both sides of the argument, but IMO fails to draw the logical conclusion. As Patry sees it, the facts are these:
Governments are outsourcing to cut costs.
Rather than charge government huge flat fee to write boilerplate regs, private authors are opting to charge citizens for copies, asserting their copyright.
If government asserts the power to punish those who do not obey the law, ready and free access to that law is essential.
Governments can't seize copyright except in bankruptcy (ed: or national security).
Mr. Patry concludes copyright holders shouldn't get screwed by the quaint 19th century notion that "the law is free", and should be allowed compesation, thereby making the crafting of laws cheaper for the tax payer.
My conclusion would be that public access to it's own laws trumps other interests, and the consequenses should flow from there. If it's expensive to write a boat load of regs, then either 1) a government should pay the going rate to rate 'em, 2) governments can go in together to buy rights to the regs they need, or 3) if it's that fscking expensive, maybe they're introducing too many regs... do without!
... and no one trying to get work done really wants to listen. Microsoft has been passing out badge holders at the SuperComputing conferences for a few years. To my knowledge, their biggest efforts to date have been to pour money into UWis' Condor job scheduler, as well as variousMPI implementations.
So far, they don't compare at all well with various Linux/UNIX implementations. However, I'm sure they'll manage to get their nose under the tent flap where either they paid their way in, or a PHB thinks that it'll leverage his existing stock of desktop machines. My lab built a couple of turnkey systems for the later scenario, where the given reason was that the typing pool cpus could pitch in some cycles to the cluster after hours. What really happened was that the non-com tasked with managing the systems was trained as an MCSE, and he wanted to stick with what he knew, come hell or high water.
Ah, jr. high science fair. Back in '72, Edmunds' lens was only about 1.5' square. I found a design for a 4' tall wood test rig at the library, which wisely suggested a kiln brick at the focal point. I chiseled out a small pit to hold samples, and went to work.
It made a great project, the most sophisticated object I had built up to that point. It blew as a science experiment, since I didn't have a plan of action other than to melt things, nor a thermometer that could measure it's limits. In retrospect a turkey probe might have worked. I did succeed in liquifying a number of types of solder.
I only rated a participation ribbon at the fair, but one of the science teachers took it off of my hands for $75, recouping my (dad's) material expenses and then some.
I've been using some of the national block lists from http://www.blackholes.us/ for about a year. My logs show quite a few blocks from these alone, so it's worth your while. The result is that virtually all of my spam sources from the US or Eastern Europe. A little nmap'ing of the US IPs leads me to believe these are mostly unsecured Windows boxes on broadband.
As a result, I may soon start looking around for rbls of zombie PCs, or consider running a bot to sniff these out myself. Thumb in the dike? Sure, but it beats doing nothing.
"The United States harbors concerns that the army-run Chinese program could some day pose a threat to U.S. dominance in military satellite communications."
And finally the "truth" comes to light.
I don't have a problem with this proposition, do you? Given the long standing policies of both the Chinese and US governments - this goes 'way beyond Dubya - it is enevitable that they contend with each other's freedom of action. It's perfectly natural that the US works to maintain it's various military advantages, and equally natural that the PRC works to close the gap.
As other posters have pointed out, retailers are carrying less stock than was previously mandated by the RIAA. Why? While we'd like to think this has something to do with mp3 and Kazaa, I think it's primarily due to Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart is renowned for forcing it's suppliers to radically revamp their operations to meet Wal-Mart's needs. Wal-Mart dictates to it's suppliers, demanding just-in-time inventory control and annual - if not quarterly - wholesale price drops. 20% of CD and DVD retail dollars now flow through Wal-Mart. With that kind of buying pull, recorded music became yet another consumer item that Wal-Mart could live without, but that couldn't live without Wal-Mart. If we go with the theory that Sam Walton's boys popped the RIAA's cherry during the buyer's renegotiations, that probably provided leverage for other retailers from Kmart to Tower Records to cut the same deal, especially during a down economy.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that the gusto with which the music industry tries to squeeze more blood out of consumers by lobbying Washington and other capitals was in direct relation to how much of they're getting squeezed in Bentonville, AR.
First, full points to the builder for moving beyond the web research stage and getting his hands dirty. For those wanting to play with turbines, but want a design that's ready to slap onto a r/c model, some gents in the Netherlands implemented a cheap design using a smaller turbocharger and an empty Gaz propane camping stove cartridge back in '99. The original links to this design are harder to Google nowadays, now that the designers have gone commercial.
Turkey is a *largely* Islamic country, but that wouldn't account for the govt. keeping people off of Ararat. The Koran mentions the Ark, and Islamic tradition doesn't consider Noah a Jew. The "first" Jew (or Arab, depending on who you talk to) was Abraham from what's now Iraq, and who post-dates the biblical flood by a wide margin.
I agree that if there was something to be found, it would not only be well known by now, it would have been a pilgrimage site for millenia.
I'd like to take small exception to your assumptions about flooding in the area. Non-literialist biblical researchers had long thought that flooding in Mesopotamia led to the story of the Flood, as a major flood is recorded in the Summerian Epic Of Gilgamesh. More recently, a case has been made that the flooding of the Black Sea basin, which previously held a smaller fresh water lake, would have provided the seed for the story.
Compare this localized 1000 foot (300m) flood with the 17000 foot (5000m) global flood posited by the biblical story. Now, before someone lays into me for discounting the power of the Lord, consider how scientific research approaches this.
1. make observations of nature.
2. based on those observations, make an informed guess about why something came to be what was observed.
3. develop series of tests that might support your assertion, tests that other people can make independently.
4. collate data collected from many such tests, and see if the results support the theory.
For a localized Black Sea flood, there is previously collected evidence that due to the end of the last ice age, ice sheet melt flooded the eastern Med area, and what is now the Bosporus strait was breached about 7000 years ago. Salt water added 300m to the level of the Black Sea within a matter of months, drowning hundreds of square miles of land. Recent archeological dives along this now submerged land seem to show paleolithic human settlements. Further research is needed before strong conclusions can be drawn.
For a global 5000m+ flood, the very first thing we need to account for is the lack of suitable debris that would have washed ashore at high elevations as the waters subsided. If the Ark survived, some of the other wood left floating around might be expected to. The next thing would be to account for the volume of the ocean being doubled, and then halved, all in the course of a few months. Where did it come from, and where did it go?
As a biblical literalist, if your answer is basically that the Lord gave, and the Lord took away, then you've provided faith as evidence. While one's faith can be tested, it can't be independently checked and verified. The scientific method of investigating the works of the Lord assumes - baring evidence to the contrary - that the Lord maintains His creation in a consistent state: hot air rises, the sun sets, gravity sucks. If He doesn't, then the method will need to adjust.
So far, however, the method has proved useful at measuring the nature of Nature, such that we can reliably do things based on many of the conclusions we've drawn so far.
I bought a Dragon in the 80's, right before the first $150 CD players started showing up in L.A. Hung onto it through the great CD change over to handle Grateful Dead concert dupes. Continued hanging onto it (and getting it serviced) to finish moving some oddball tapes to CD, and listen to my $.25 finds from garage sales. Never thought it would end up being my anti-DRM ace in the hole.
While you can bash consumers tendency to buy the cheapest crap available for the offshoring of manufacturing, Walmart customers aren't a driving force in the US stock markets.
Earners in the top 10% (>US$95K) hold 80% of the stock, the top 1% (>US$350K) hold 60%. Half of American households hold no stock.
It's very cute to point out that the average American is buying lots of stuff manufactured outside of the US. Back in the late 70's and early 80's, "Eat Your Own Dogfood" was a very valid observation.
Now, however, it has become virtually impossible to "Buy American" for a wide variety of goods. For instance, consumer audio products: with the exception of speakers, everything has been made overseas for years, and I'm not sure even speakers are an exception anymore. When I say everything, I mean everything: copper wire, steel and aluminum sheet, power supply, capacitors, opamps, RAM, CPU, final assembly. Every DVD drive and player is made in China.
This isn't just a matter of buying an "American" vs. Japanese/European/Korean brand. Even the American makers of a vast array of products have offshored their production.
So, the next time someone wants to make a wise-ass comment about not "Buying American", they can start by inserting my (MADE IN THAILAND) dildo in their anal canal.
You're right, not only would the original poster have problems getting the hardware specs to design against, the moment s/he slapped a real implementation onto SourceForge, the US/French/UK/German/Russian/Japanese/Chinese governments would classify it as a state secret and take posession of any computers even suspected of containing it within their jurisdiction. Any software using portions of the original code would get the same "GSL" license treatment.
Someone else mentioned the travails of the NZ gent who's been working on a backyard "cruise missile", if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, gov'ments are going to treat it like a duck.
The defense contractors in AZ (Phoenix & Tucson) have plenty of engineers, particularly after head offices got the idea that their products would work better if the designers sat real close to the assembly areas. Example: Raytheon's Tucson plant has about 8000 souls, of which about half are engineers. From a Slashdot perspective, they may not be the right *kind* of engineers, what with all the EE's working on radar, and ME's focused on aerodynamics and airframes.
What I see as the problem with startups in AZ and TX is a lack of a local market to sell to, compared to the coasts. There are people who manage to make it happen, but it's still a struggle when the local market has just a few big players, surrounded by a shit load of 7-11's, gravel pits, and trailer parks.
Another error in the brief mention of Huygens: Titan's "thin" atmosphere. The surface pressure is estimated to be 4 to 10 times as high as Earth, although fscking cold.
And don't hold your breath on Huygens's launch into Titan: that doesn't occur until, I believe, the fourth orbit.
Which means we only have to wait until December '04.
Back in the '50's and early '60's we had pretty much the same problem, nobody wanted to study math, engineering, or the hard sciences. Back in the USSR, Khurschev was getting the blood moving again, and they were cranking out technologists. How to get young Americans to get some fire in the belly and go for it? Space, brother. Kennedy found something to make technology where it was at.
Nowadays, it's back to business degrees and Liberal Arts, somebody to manage the deconstruction of the national economy, and someone to write articles that it's all gonna be all right. At a time like this, it's too God damn bad that there's nobody with even a prayer of getting into the White House that has the vision to get this nation some wood again.
Does the private sector have the vision and the money? Not unless I see Bill Fucking Gates decide that life just won't be complete unless his kids stand on Mars.
Congress is going to have to shit or get off the pot soon. As a result of their budgeting decisions since the Moon program, the US is *this* close to not having *any* manned spaceflight capability. If they chose to have Americans in space for next to no money, they may finally decide that Soyuz (or Soyuz NT;-)) looks pretty good. Or, they may decide to get out of the biz, and leave manned space flight to a government that gives a damn, like the Chinese.
Point well taken. The issue remains, however, how much aggregate time in depot does it take to support a squadron of (in this case) 29's vs. a squadron of 18's. The Russian parts may be cheap, and the rebuild quick, but is it really that great of a deal for the ground crew to be constantly taking aircraft off of flight status to yank one set of engines and drop in another? God help 'em if for some reason the tempo of operations picks up during, say, a war.
I appreciate what you're trying to say, and I'll agree that Soyuz is a proven, reliable design. The five Space Shuttles have flown nearly 115 missions, of which the large flight crew was lost in 2. Soyuz has flown 230 missions, not all manned, and lost the crew in 2. Too bad Buran didn't get to develop a flight history, and see how it compared.
In any case, the point of my previous "bullshit" post was that it's premature to assume NASA won't - or won't be allowed to - fund Energiya to work on it's new design. If they don't, it won't be because NASA is too proud, it'll be because maintaining a design and manufacturing base in showcase technologies is a political priority for most industrialized nations, the USA included.
NASA, the DoD, and American aerospace firms have had no reluctance to buy and/or license better Russian technology. Both the newest Boeing Delta and Lock-Mart Atlas use license-built Russian engines with nary a design change. NASA couldn't wait to get it's hands on Russian space nuke power generators when offered. When the DoD needed a drone to simulate a common Russian anti-ship missile, they skipped the American contractors and just bought the Russian anti-ship missile.
Regarding the generalizations for strength/weaknesses in Russian and American aerospace products, particularly aircraft:
Russian airframes, landing gear, gearboxes... built tought to work in shitty conditions.
Russian turbojets, great while they work, but need to be rebuilt every few hundred flight hours.
Russian avionics/radar: relatively primitive and prone to crapping out.
American airframes: finely engineered and can take a licking. Landing gear: engineered for whatever a particular design's expected environment, pick one: candy-ass smooth USAF tarmac, a carrier deck, dirt strip.
American engines: reliable, last long time, 1000's hours between rebuilds.
American avionics/radar: used to crap out regularly, even if not as often as Russian... until Hughes and Westinghouse got their digital h/w worked out in the 80's, now tough as nuts and runs for weeks w/o swapping out.
Just as an example, ask the Royal Malaysian Air Force. They fly F-18 and MiG-29. Sure, the 29's were about a quarter the price of the 18's, but it's the 18's that are flight-ready almost 24x7.
Slashdot Mirror
For my personal site, don't care. With the on line high school yearbooks for my alumni group, looking for 404 errors from the hundreds of static html pages I hand editted from the initial template, and getting a general idea whether the alums are using it. For the old man's specialty CD-ROM site, just looking for a general idea what parts of the nation/world lookie-loos/orders are coming from.
Lately, I've also been using the log to see which spiders rate a disallow in robots.txt.
Afghanistan: The Kabul/Bagram area are relatively safe. Occasional bombings and shootings sound worse in the media than is perceived locally. Locals don't see you as a target. Resist the temptation to see the rest of the country, and you'll be fine. Heroin use among foreign rear echelon motherfuckers is 'way up... do avoid that.
Kuwait: basically safe, but events in Iraq and SA will continue increase tensions. Do as you would in most poor nations (which Kuwait is not) and try not to stand out. Do a year or two and call it a day.
Bahrain: more of a disconnect between rulers and ruled than Kuwait. Looks good compared to SA, Iraq, Afghan.
Qatar & UAE: Looks good. Act conservatively, as has been the case in the Gulf all along. If SA goes down the shitter, there will be spill over, but at least you'll have plenty of warning.
Saudi: things are going to get worse before they get better. Do not take your family, as you'll be forced to live in a foreign compound. If at all posible, live in well off but Arab-heavy apartment complexes or developments. Make a habit of varying your routine outside of the office. Have in mind an alternate exit from said office.
Iraq: If you're lucky enough to work AND live strictly within the occupation authority's green zone in downtown Baghdad, knock yourself out. Keep in mind that that zone will be shrinking considerably over the next 12 months into a still huge US Embassy, so make sure you don't get stuck outside with a housing allowance and a pat on the back. For the less risk adverse, 24x7 at one of the bigger military bases is a consideration. Next down the list is Metro Basra as long as the Badr (as opposed to Sadr) militia and it's political front stay happy. Ditto with the Kurdish areas, which aren't much worse than eastern Turkey. Pass on Mosul, Kirkuk, and the whole rest of the country. If you're going to be driving anywhere, for God's sake opt for small, cheap sedans. Big sedans are begging to be car jacked, and SUVs broadcast "USA" like a HUMMV.
Iran: I throw this in for contrast. If a US citizen/resident alien, your biggest problem will be explaining yourself to Uncle Sam. Consult with an attorney to make darn sure you aren't in conflict with US economic restrictions on trade with Iran before you go. Don't hit on local women, bad mouth Islam or the government, or take pictures of any thing that even resembles a government or military installation. In fact, this is more of a normal overseas posting, so it's not nearly as lucrative. There are some up to date tourist guide books on the country, and good poop from the British and Australian Embassy web sites.
As for land grabs, while there were a number of prominent Americans that advocated annexing Canada in those days, President Madison wasn't one of them. Rather, it was rabble rousers west of the Appalachians and south of Mason-Dixon.
Staying married - especially with a child - while working at a shop that expects regular unpaid overtime as a matter of course is a real hard row to hoe. It really depends on your honest (and - hopefully - informed) appraisal of your wife's willingness to spend nearly all of her waking hours going it alone.
I think of personal ambition as a somewhat zero-sum game, and if you aspire to succeed as a husband and father, you're going to need to channel a good piece of your current career ambition towards the other two. If you set your overall career goal to do that which will help support your goals as husband and father, you will do well enough in business and perhaps still have a family twenty years down the line. Maximum bucks as a substitute for personal involvement in your family doesn't usually work.
My personal experience is a career in aerospace and DoD related work. The firms I've worked for are somewhat traditional, in that they expect 40 to 45 hour weeks, and infrequent crunch times. When the crunch does come, they really need it, you know it, and your spouse will understand. Almost everyone from the CEOs on down have family lives, and so have the subconscious expectation that everyone else does, too.
This took me back to 1994, when SGI and MS ponied up for full page Wintel spreads in all the Mac-oriented trade rags, MacWeek in particular. Now, for the publishers of MacWeek/World/User, etc, ad dollars are ad dollars, and it didn't really matter if the net result is that a percentage of readers end up on Wintel systems. After all, the motherships all published Wintel (and other) rags in the same offices.
An exception was MacTutor (now MacTech), a Dr. Dobbs-like magazine for developers on the MacOS, and the sole product of the then publisher. Around about 1995, Microsoft placed a number of two page spreads advertising seminars, workshops, and tool kits for developers to migrate to Windows. One could argue that Mac developers were headed that way in any case, and MacTutor might as well suck up ad dollars what ever the source on their way down the toliet. However, that the premier - hell, only - Mac technical journal would host a series of such ads couldn't help but speed MacTutor's only customers out the door.
In the end, ads are propaganda, and if the message they contain doesn't jibe with the editorial goals of the publication, then the owner that runs them is exposed as strictly a whore to Mammon, and their "editorial stance" a sham. At least when I flip through Harper's Bazaar in a waiting room, I already know that their sole purpose is to shill for the ad clients. Giving me wood is just a side effect.
Unfortunately, at least one attorney at Thelen Reid & Priest hasn't completely figured this out, yet. Mr. Patry lays out both sides of the argument, but IMO fails to draw the logical conclusion. As Patry sees it, the facts are these:
Governments are outsourcing to cut costs.
Rather than charge government huge flat fee to write boilerplate regs, private authors are opting to charge citizens for copies, asserting their copyright.
If government asserts the power to punish those who do not obey the law, ready and free access to that law is essential.
Governments can't seize copyright except in bankruptcy (ed: or national security).
Mr. Patry concludes copyright holders shouldn't get screwed by the quaint 19th century notion that "the law is free", and should be allowed compesation, thereby making the crafting of laws cheaper for the tax payer.
My conclusion would be that public access to it's own laws trumps other interests, and the consequenses should flow from there. If it's expensive to write a boat load of regs, then either 1) a government should pay the going rate to rate 'em, 2) governments can go in together to buy rights to the regs they need, or 3) if it's that fscking expensive, maybe they're introducing too many regs... do without!
So far, they don't compare at all well with various Linux/UNIX implementations. However, I'm sure they'll manage to get their nose under the tent flap where either they paid their way in, or a PHB thinks that it'll leverage his existing stock of desktop machines. My lab built a couple of turnkey systems for the later scenario, where the given reason was that the typing pool cpus could pitch in some cycles to the cluster after hours. What really happened was that the non-com tasked with managing the systems was trained as an MCSE, and he wanted to stick with what he knew, come hell or high water.
It made a great project, the most sophisticated object I had built up to that point. It blew as a science experiment, since I didn't have a plan of action other than to melt things, nor a thermometer that could measure it's limits. In retrospect a turkey probe might have worked. I did succeed in liquifying a number of types of solder.
I only rated a participation ribbon at the fair, but one of the science teachers took it off of my hands for $75, recouping my (dad's) material expenses and then some.
As a result, I may soon start looking around for rbls of zombie PCs, or consider running a bot to sniff these out myself. Thumb in the dike? Sure, but it beats doing nothing.
And finally the "truth" comes to light.
I don't have a problem with this proposition, do you? Given the long standing policies of both the Chinese and US governments - this goes 'way beyond Dubya - it is enevitable that they contend with each other's freedom of action. It's perfectly natural that the US works to maintain it's various military advantages, and equally natural that the PRC works to close the gap.
Wal-Mart is renowned for forcing it's suppliers to radically revamp their operations to meet Wal-Mart's needs. Wal-Mart dictates to it's suppliers, demanding just-in-time inventory control and annual - if not quarterly - wholesale price drops. 20% of CD and DVD retail dollars now flow through Wal-Mart. With that kind of buying pull, recorded music became yet another consumer item that Wal-Mart could live without, but that couldn't live without Wal-Mart. If we go with the theory that Sam Walton's boys popped the RIAA's cherry during the buyer's renegotiations, that probably provided leverage for other retailers from Kmart to Tower Records to cut the same deal, especially during a down economy.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that the gusto with which the music industry tries to squeeze more blood out of consumers by lobbying Washington and other capitals was in direct relation to how much of they're getting squeezed in Bentonville, AR.
You've seen the movie, now buy the book: Gas Turbine Engines for Model Aircraft by Kurt Schreckling
What Kurt's design looks like when built per plans.
Gas Turbine Builders Association
Photos from the GTBA of various completed motors, note the small sizes.
Turkey is a *largely* Islamic country, but that wouldn't account for the govt. keeping people off of Ararat. The Koran mentions the Ark, and Islamic tradition doesn't consider Noah a Jew. The "first" Jew (or Arab, depending on who you talk to) was Abraham from what's now Iraq, and who post-dates the biblical flood by a wide margin.
I'd like to take small exception to your assumptions about flooding in the area. Non-literialist biblical researchers had long thought that flooding in Mesopotamia led to the story of the Flood, as a major flood is recorded in the Summerian Epic Of Gilgamesh. More recently, a case has been made that the flooding of the Black Sea basin, which previously held a smaller fresh water lake, would have provided the seed for the story.
Compare this localized 1000 foot (300m) flood with the 17000 foot (5000m) global flood posited by the biblical story. Now, before someone lays into me for discounting the power of the Lord, consider how scientific research approaches this.
1. make observations of nature.
2. based on those observations, make an informed guess about why something came to be what was observed.
3. develop series of tests that might support your assertion, tests that other people can make independently.
4. collate data collected from many such tests, and see if the results support the theory.
For a localized Black Sea flood, there is previously collected evidence that due to the end of the last ice age, ice sheet melt flooded the eastern Med area, and what is now the Bosporus strait was breached about 7000 years ago. Salt water added 300m to the level of the Black Sea within a matter of months, drowning hundreds of square miles of land. Recent archeological dives along this now submerged land seem to show paleolithic human settlements. Further research is needed before strong conclusions can be drawn.
For a global 5000m+ flood, the very first thing we need to account for is the lack of suitable debris that would have washed ashore at high elevations as the waters subsided. If the Ark survived, some of the other wood left floating around might be expected to. The next thing would be to account for the volume of the ocean being doubled, and then halved, all in the course of a few months. Where did it come from, and where did it go?
As a biblical literalist, if your answer is basically that the Lord gave, and the Lord took away, then you've provided faith as evidence. While one's faith can be tested, it can't be independently checked and verified. The scientific method of investigating the works of the Lord assumes - baring evidence to the contrary - that the Lord maintains His creation in a consistent state: hot air rises, the sun sets, gravity sucks. If He doesn't, then the method will need to adjust.
So far, however, the method has proved useful at measuring the nature of Nature, such that we can reliably do things based on many of the conclusions we've drawn so far.
I bought a Dragon in the 80's, right before the first $150 CD players started showing up in L.A. Hung onto it through the great CD change over to handle Grateful Dead concert dupes. Continued hanging onto it (and getting it serviced) to finish moving some oddball tapes to CD, and listen to my $.25 finds from garage sales. Never thought it would end up being my anti-DRM ace in the hole.
Earners in the top 10% (>US$95K) hold 80% of the stock, the top 1% (>US$350K) hold 60%. Half of American households hold no stock.
So yes, it is just the chosen few.
Now, however, it has become virtually impossible to "Buy American" for a wide variety of goods. For instance, consumer audio products: with the exception of speakers, everything has been made overseas for years, and I'm not sure even speakers are an exception anymore. When I say everything, I mean everything: copper wire, steel and aluminum sheet, power supply, capacitors, opamps, RAM, CPU, final assembly. Every DVD drive and player is made in China.
This isn't just a matter of buying an "American" vs. Japanese/European/Korean brand. Even the American makers of a vast array of products have offshored their production.
So, the next time someone wants to make a wise-ass comment about not "Buying American", they can start by inserting my (MADE IN THAILAND) dildo in their anal canal.
Someone else mentioned the travails of the NZ gent who's been working on a backyard "cruise missile", if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, gov'ments are going to treat it like a duck.
What I see as the problem with startups in AZ and TX is a lack of a local market to sell to, compared to the coasts. There are people who manage to make it happen, but it's still a struggle when the local market has just a few big players, surrounded by a shit load of 7-11's, gravel pits, and trailer parks.
And don't hold your breath on Huygens's launch into Titan: that doesn't occur until, I believe, the fourth orbit.
Which means we only have to wait until December '04.
Nowadays, it's back to business degrees and Liberal Arts, somebody to manage the deconstruction of the national economy, and someone to write articles that it's all gonna be all right. At a time like this, it's too God damn bad that there's nobody with even a prayer of getting into the White House that has the vision to get this nation some wood again.
Does the private sector have the vision and the money? Not unless I see Bill Fucking Gates decide that life just won't be complete unless his kids stand on Mars.
Congress is going to have to shit or get off the pot soon. As a result of their budgeting decisions since the Moon program, the US is *this* close to not having *any* manned spaceflight capability. If they chose to have Americans in space for next to no money, they may finally decide that Soyuz (or Soyuz NT ;-)) looks pretty good. Or, they may decide to get out of the biz, and leave manned space flight to a government that gives a damn, like the Chinese.
Point well taken. The issue remains, however, how much aggregate time in depot does it take to support a squadron of (in this case) 29's vs. a squadron of 18's. The Russian parts may be cheap, and the rebuild quick, but is it really that great of a deal for the ground crew to be constantly taking aircraft off of flight status to yank one set of engines and drop in another? God help 'em if for some reason the tempo of operations picks up during, say, a war.
In any case, the point of my previous "bullshit" post was that it's premature to assume NASA won't - or won't be allowed to - fund Energiya to work on it's new design. If they don't, it won't be because NASA is too proud, it'll be because maintaining a design and manufacturing base in showcase technologies is a political priority for most industrialized nations, the USA included.
Regarding the generalizations for strength/weaknesses in Russian and American aerospace products, particularly aircraft:
Russian airframes, landing gear, gearboxes... built tought to work in shitty conditions.
Russian turbojets, great while they work, but need to be rebuilt every few hundred flight hours.
Russian avionics/radar: relatively primitive and prone to crapping out.
American airframes: finely engineered and can take a licking. Landing gear: engineered for whatever a particular design's expected environment, pick one: candy-ass smooth USAF tarmac, a carrier deck, dirt strip.
American engines: reliable, last long time, 1000's hours between rebuilds.
American avionics/radar: used to crap out regularly, even if not as often as Russian... until Hughes and Westinghouse got their digital h/w worked out in the 80's, now tough as nuts and runs for weeks w/o swapping out.
Just as an example, ask the Royal Malaysian Air Force. They fly F-18 and MiG-29. Sure, the 29's were about a quarter the price of the 18's, but it's the 18's that are flight-ready almost 24x7.