Terrible reasons actually... If they had just decided to use Aluminum tanks instead of the(at the time) troublesome composite tanks they could have had the X-33 flying...
Way too heavy. The whole X-33 project depended on a bunch of exotic technologies simultaneously succeeding. Linear aerospike, metallic heat shield "tiles", exotically structural materials... May as well have bet the farm on a warp drive and computer AI, too.
Reusable SSTO does not appear to be technologically or economically viable at this time. Its like demanding Christopher Columbus wait until he can fly a supersonic Concorde across the pond instead of using his wooden sailboats.
I've never fully understood why we don't impose financial death penalties in cases like these.
Probably because you don't know anything about civil forfeiture aka asset forfeiture. We already do that. One difference is that you're assuming he's been found guilty, whereas in civil forfeiture, the cops simply take whatever they want, without a trial, and no way to get the assets back, or guilty until proven innocent, at best. Not exactly a thing for americans to be proud of, although hitler would have cheerfully approved.
The booster rockets are still pretty valuable technology regardless of the payload they are attached to.
I checked and all his 300000 pages of docs were from Boeing, not Morton Thiokol.
I can't exactly figure out what Boeing does with the shuttle. Their web page is pure marketing bull "manufacturing the Space Shuttle" uh huh sure buddy I'm sure all those subcontractors had nothing to do with it, Boeing did it all by themselves.
Other marketing bullshit on the Boeing web page implies they developed the space shuttle main engines, I'm sure the rocketdyne folks howl with laughter at that.
The only "real" connection I can come up with is the shuttle carrier aircraft that ferries shuttles about is a modified 70s era 747. I would assume Boeing would have some interesting mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering data as relates to sticking huge vehicles on top of civilian transport aircraft. I suppose he could have stolen the engineering data for a 70s era 747.
To be honest, I can't figure out what the guy stole...
Does this mean kids learn better from virtual sim's than from real people? Or that virtual teachers are better than poorly trained teachers?
Theoretically, 30 teachers in a classroom with 30 students would do better than 30 computers in a classroom with 30 students.
In practice, 30 computers in a classroom with 30 students can provide more one on one interaction than one teacher vs thirty students.
I wonder how much of it is preventing the problem kids from messing up the non-problem kids. In a class of 30 kids, if 5 are gossiping/high/spaced out, 5 are violent, and 5 don't speak any english (probably with considerable overlap) that means the remaining kids will be completely ignored.
The most important question is "Has Apple found a niche for this product that other Tablet PC manufacturers have been unable to find?"
Tablet mfgrs have never tried shipping a box with an attached video/music store. Also, I'm assuming the ipod touch/iphone apps will work on the ipad, meaning it ships with one zillion useful apps, as opposed to the usual tablet that ships with no apps.
Is it useful for something else than browsing the web from your bath tub?
I'm thinking of buying one to watch videos / run the facebook app / run the "kindle for ipod" app.
Basically all the stuff that on my ipod touch would be classified as "cool, but the screen is too small for that app". I vastly prefer the ipod LCD to the e-ink products I've seen for reading, I know its not as expensive so I'm not supposed to like it, but I do. The itouch screen is so small, that itunes-U blackboard notes border on unreadable.
Hardly the 200-300 volts that you're thinking are required.
He's anthropomorphizing it when he writes "Car batteries want to be 200 to 300 volts".
Real engineers know you can gin up a set of equations to optimize an overall system. Not surprisingly, an electric cars optimum voltage and current end up suspiciously nearby, yet somewhat below, industrial heavy equipment and diesel electric traction motors of the same power rating. Lower it a bit because the power levels are a bit lower (plenty of 3000 HP locomotives, not many 3000 HP electric cars... yet). Also lower it a bit because insulation requirements are a bit stricter for morons. Lower it a bit for temperature derating, run the car in death valley, etc. Also lower it a bit for battery reliability, plates shorting, vibration etc. You end up in the 300ish volt range for "car power levels"
Similarly, your average electric motorcycle should be happy around 60 volts. Which is suspiciously close to where they seem to be.
You don't draw it from the grid. You draw it from a battery bank. The battery bank is in turn trickle-charged from the grid.
The problem is, a typical gas nozzle runs about a megawatt. Theres 20 of them at my local quickie-mart or whatever its called. Sometimes all are in use. Often half are in use. Even in the middle of the night at least one is in use. "Trickle Charge" is still going to be a couple megawatts, and in an area without that kind of service.
I admit the whole "fast charging" thing is pretty bogus. The furthest I've ever driven in one day was 500 miles and it was a torturous living hell. I dream of having a car that can't do that, so I have the perfectly socially acceptable excuse that my car simply can not go 500 miles per day. What a darn shame I'll be unable to sit in my car for 8 hours. Drat. Boo F-ing Hoo Hoo.
Though a well thought-out stunt may work on a rare occasion, they are much more likely to backfire than a traditional gift. Have flowers and chocolate on hand just in case.
You either need a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Gifts, or a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Girlfriends.
However, I firmly believe that the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security will not appreciate my TSU notification.
And you'd be wrong. Somewhere out there, a bureaucrat is pining away daydreaming of being able to successfully process just one more TSU notification, whatever that means. Probably just index it and file it away somewhere. Just one more dot on his metrics graph and he gets the big performance bonus, and/or gets to hire another headcount to process the notifications. Come on Lorens(597774), send in a notification and make his day!
You can work it two directions, going from "acts of war" toward sanctions or from sanctions toward acts of war. Neither direction works either logically or by authoritative definitions or by historical precedence.
illegal types of warfare by the US goverment
So, you can evaluate this one, either by the golden rule, he whom has the gold makes the rules, in which case its not possible for a government to do something illegal (although individual members might do something illegal). Or, you can evaluate it in a traditional historical method, where the victors write the history and therefore were the good guys. And I don't think the US is going to lose (although the US may change policy). Either way, I'm not seeing it.
As far as ends and means, I think we have the same ends, but your means are just not going to work.
No one in Italy (television, newspapers and so on) gave a decent review of this important achievement.
Probably because we launched "San Marco 1" for you guys way back in '64, and your "sky italia" service rents space on "Hot Bird 8" launched by the french. I have no idea why wikipedia claims sky italia runs on HB7A which is no longer at 13 deg E but moved to 9 deg E when they launched HB9, but thats wikipedia for you. Maybe they used to use HB7A before they replaced it with HB8. My point is its kind of 'been there done that'
Trading securities has an element of supporting the work of the company involved: you are supporting constructive industry, whether you end up with a gain or a loss on your "bet" in the market.
I suggest you research financial futures trading, commodity futures trading, currency futures trading, all of which are legal and no different than betting on whom gets three queens, and re-evaluate your position. Also if a company is not issuing stock, but is paying its $0.5M/yr exchange fee, its not necessarily constructively making money, not all that different from selling bonds or taking out a commercial loan and paying interest, could be constructive but not necessarily, nor is it the only way to raise money for constructive purposes.
Hey, I sell a bumper sticker that says "if electricity comes from electrons, what does morality come from?"
I like that. Google shows you're not alone. We can have nearly identical beliefs yet given dramatically different input data, get opposite conclusions. That's not indicative of a philosophical difference as you originally claim.
If they do extend shuttle flights it will only take a few years to blow up the ones they have left....
It may be modded funny right now, but its also correct. If an orbiter is destroyed every 50 flights, and they launch ten times per year, and they've only got two available (because of the need for a ready to go rescue orbiter).
The funny part, is the only reason the shuttle program exists is to visit the station, and the only reason the station exists is to have a place for the shuttle to go. Every other purpose had to be removed to save money in budget crunches. So now that the shuttles are going away, the "almost finished" station will be deorbited in 3... 2... 1...
It's kind of the spacecraft equivalent of "dig a hole and fill it back in, repeat". No one makes money off a built station that has been budget crunched to the point that it does nothing. But you can make lots of money by building a station.
"The title refers to a story about a visitor to New York who admired the yachts of the bankers and brokers. Naively, he asked where all the customers' yachts were? Of course, none of the customers could afford yachts, even though they dutifully followed the advice of their bankers and brokers."
Slashdot Mirror
Terrible reasons actually... If they had just decided to use Aluminum tanks instead of the(at the time) troublesome composite tanks they could have had the X-33 flying...
Way too heavy. The whole X-33 project depended on a bunch of exotic technologies simultaneously succeeding. Linear aerospike, metallic heat shield "tiles", exotically structural materials... May as well have bet the farm on a warp drive and computer AI, too.
Reusable SSTO does not appear to be technologically or economically viable at this time. Its like demanding Christopher Columbus wait until he can fly a supersonic Concorde across the pond instead of using his wooden sailboats.
Other than the glass cockpit and new russian derived turbopumps most of the tech on the Shuttle is ~40 years old.
They also bought the "space throne" from the Russians.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_toilet
"In 2007, NASA purchased a Russian-made toilet similar to the one already aboard ISS rather than develop one internally.[5]"
I've never fully understood why we don't impose financial death penalties in cases like these.
Probably because you don't know anything about civil forfeiture aka asset forfeiture. We already do that. One difference is that you're assuming he's been found guilty, whereas in civil forfeiture, the cops simply take whatever they want, without a trial, and no way to get the assets back, or guilty until proven innocent, at best. Not exactly a thing for americans to be proud of, although hitler would have cheerfully approved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture
The booster rockets are still pretty valuable technology regardless of the payload they are attached to.
I checked and all his 300000 pages of docs were from Boeing, not Morton Thiokol.
I can't exactly figure out what Boeing does with the shuttle. Their web page is pure marketing bull "manufacturing the Space Shuttle" uh huh sure buddy I'm sure all those subcontractors had nothing to do with it, Boeing did it all by themselves.
Other marketing bullshit on the Boeing web page implies they developed the space shuttle main engines, I'm sure the rocketdyne folks howl with laughter at that.
The only "real" connection I can come up with is the shuttle carrier aircraft that ferries shuttles about is a modified 70s era 747. I would assume Boeing would have some interesting mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering data as relates to sticking huge vehicles on top of civilian transport aircraft. I suppose he could have stolen the engineering data for a 70s era 747.
To be honest, I can't figure out what the guy stole...
So if scientists use MS Excel for part of their data analysis,
If they use excel, they should have their PHDs/Tenure revoked.
An absolute complete piece of dung for data analysis.
Its on the order of using micrometers as c-clamps, or bypassing safety switches, or not wearing goggles in the chem lab.
And if MS doesnt comply then all scientists have to switch to OO.org ?
And the problem would be... Um... Trust me its a lot easier to switch from old office to OO.org than from old office to new office.
Does this mean kids learn better from virtual sim's than from real people? Or that virtual teachers are better than poorly trained teachers?
Theoretically, 30 teachers in a classroom with 30 students would do better than 30 computers in a classroom with 30 students.
In practice, 30 computers in a classroom with 30 students can provide more one on one interaction than one teacher vs thirty students.
I wonder how much of it is preventing the problem kids from messing up the non-problem kids. In a class of 30 kids, if 5 are gossiping/high/spaced out, 5 are violent, and 5 don't speak any english (probably with considerable overlap) that means the remaining kids will be completely ignored.
The most important question is "Has Apple found a niche for this product that other Tablet PC manufacturers have been unable to find?"
Tablet mfgrs have never tried shipping a box with an attached video/music store. Also, I'm assuming the ipod touch/iphone apps will work on the ipad, meaning it ships with one zillion useful apps, as opposed to the usual tablet that ships with no apps.
Is it useful for something else than browsing the web from your bath tub?
I'm thinking of buying one to watch videos / run the facebook app / run the "kindle for ipod" app.
Basically all the stuff that on my ipod touch would be classified as "cool, but the screen is too small for that app". I vastly prefer the ipod LCD to the e-ink products I've seen for reading, I know its not as expensive so I'm not supposed to like it, but I do. The itouch screen is so small, that itunes-U blackboard notes border on unreadable.
Ultracapactiors usually use esoteric materials and have problems with leakage over long periods of time,
Yeah, what he said, also immense internal resistance compared to say, a camera flash cap, or a nicad battery.
A farad is a wonderful thing to have... unless it has ten ohms of internal resistance.
Hardly the 200-300 volts that you're thinking are required.
He's anthropomorphizing it when he writes "Car batteries want to be 200 to 300 volts".
Real engineers know you can gin up a set of equations to optimize an overall system. Not surprisingly, an electric cars optimum voltage and current end up suspiciously nearby, yet somewhat below, industrial heavy equipment and diesel electric traction motors of the same power rating. Lower it a bit because the power levels are a bit lower (plenty of 3000 HP locomotives, not many 3000 HP electric cars... yet). Also lower it a bit because insulation requirements are a bit stricter for morons. Lower it a bit for temperature derating, run the car in death valley, etc. Also lower it a bit for battery reliability, plates shorting, vibration etc. You end up in the 300ish volt range for "car power levels"
Similarly, your average electric motorcycle should be happy around 60 volts. Which is suspiciously close to where they seem to be.
You don't draw it from the grid. You draw it from a battery bank. The battery bank is in turn trickle-charged from the grid.
The problem is, a typical gas nozzle runs about a megawatt. Theres 20 of them at my local quickie-mart or whatever its called. Sometimes all are in use. Often half are in use. Even in the middle of the night at least one is in use. "Trickle Charge" is still going to be a couple megawatts, and in an area without that kind of service.
I admit the whole "fast charging" thing is pretty bogus. The furthest I've ever driven in one day was 500 miles and it was a torturous living hell. I dream of having a car that can't do that, so I have the perfectly socially acceptable excuse that my car simply can not go 500 miles per day. What a darn shame I'll be unable to sit in my car for 8 hours. Drat. Boo F-ing Hoo Hoo.
We're not dead, we're just pining for the fjords.
Except for Roland, of course...
Though a well thought-out stunt may work on a rare occasion, they are much more likely to backfire than a traditional gift. Have flowers and chocolate on hand just in case.
You either need a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Gifts, or a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Girlfriends.
According to my friend's wife, the ironing board he gave her when they were first married is the worst Valentine's Day gift ever.
Roomba cleaning robot? I can't be the only guy whom thought it was a great idea.
2. subtract 3 months
Well, Donald Knuth's job remains secure, for now.
However, I firmly believe that the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security will not appreciate my TSU notification.
And you'd be wrong. Somewhere out there, a bureaucrat is pining away daydreaming of being able to successfully process just one more TSU notification, whatever that means. Probably just index it and file it away somewhere. Just one more dot on his metrics graph and he gets the big performance bonus, and/or gets to hire another headcount to process the notifications. Come on Lorens(597774), send in a notification and make his day!
But that's hard to avoid when complying with a law that is stupid and completely ineffective.
How is it stupid and ineffective if the purpose was to enlarge/preserve the great American bureaucracy and secondarily harass O.S. developers?
`Sanctions` are acts of WAR
Uh, no, they are not.
You can work it two directions, going from "acts of war" toward sanctions or from sanctions toward acts of war. Neither direction works either logically or by authoritative definitions or by historical precedence.
illegal types of warfare by the US goverment
So, you can evaluate this one, either by the golden rule, he whom has the gold makes the rules, in which case its not possible for a government to do something illegal (although individual members might do something illegal). Or, you can evaluate it in a traditional historical method, where the victors write the history and therefore were the good guys. And I don't think the US is going to lose (although the US may change policy). Either way, I'm not seeing it.
As far as ends and means, I think we have the same ends, but your means are just not going to work.
Never say never... Admittedly this battle ended about a decade ago. Not sure how/why SF caught up with the 90s and had their little fit.
http://www.debian.org/legal/cryptoinmain
No one in Italy (television, newspapers and so on) gave a decent review of this important achievement.
Probably because we launched "San Marco 1" for you guys way back in '64, and your "sky italia" service rents space on "Hot Bird 8" launched by the french. I have no idea why wikipedia claims sky italia runs on HB7A which is no longer at 13 deg E but moved to 9 deg E when they launched HB9, but thats wikipedia for you. Maybe they used to use HB7A before they replaced it with HB8. My point is its kind of 'been there done that'
Trading securities has an element of supporting the work of the company involved: you are supporting constructive industry, whether you end up with a gain or a loss on your "bet" in the market.
I suggest you research financial futures trading, commodity futures trading, currency futures trading, all of which are legal and no different than betting on whom gets three queens, and re-evaluate your position. Also if a company is not issuing stock, but is paying its $0.5M/yr exchange fee, its not necessarily constructively making money, not all that different from selling bonds or taking out a commercial loan and paying interest, could be constructive but not necessarily, nor is it the only way to raise money for constructive purposes.
Hey, I sell a bumper sticker that says "if electricity comes from electrons, what does morality come from?"
I like that. Google shows you're not alone. We can have nearly identical beliefs yet given dramatically different input data, get opposite conclusions. That's not indicative of a philosophical difference as you originally claim.
If they do extend shuttle flights it will only take a few years to blow up the ones they have left....
It may be modded funny right now, but its also correct. If an orbiter is destroyed every 50 flights, and they launch ten times per year, and they've only got two available (because of the need for a ready to go rescue orbiter).
The funny part, is the only reason the shuttle program exists is to visit the station, and the only reason the station exists is to have a place for the shuttle to go. Every other purpose had to be removed to save money in budget crunches. So now that the shuttles are going away, the "almost finished" station will be deorbited in 3... 2... 1...
It's kind of the spacecraft equivalent of "dig a hole and fill it back in, repeat". No one makes money off a built station that has been budget crunched to the point that it does nothing. But you can make lots of money by building a station.
Could someone explain that one cause I really don't get it or see the nod.
Someone screwed up because it should have been 4e100.net, aka "four googol" aka "for google"
A key feature of gambling against the house is that, over the long run, the house will always take its cut.
Aka sales commission
http://www.flipkart.com/customers-yachts-schwed-fred-jr/0471770892-1xw3frp8bb
"The title refers to a story about a visitor to New York who admired the yachts of the bankers and brokers. Naively, he asked where all the customers' yachts were? Of course, none of the customers could afford yachts, even though they dutifully followed the advice of their bankers and brokers."
They are not the same, Equities are investments, I don't know of any gambling site that pays dividends, do you?
Do you know of any futures contracts that pay dividends? Or 1999 style dot coms that paid dividends?
Financial futures markets are legal gambling...
Speculation is gambling by another name.