The "bubbling morons at NASA" who sent people to the moon on the back of one of these?
Those are the folks that gave NASA the credibility it has. They were hard working, energetic, engineers with a vision. For the most part today they are
a) retired
b) dead
They have for the most part been replaced by a couple generations of beaurocrats whos mandate is
a) Preserve government funding
b) Avoid bad publicity
c) Generate good publicity
d) Do space missions
The real problem as seen by most beaurocrats at nasa today is simple. Items b and d are mutually inclusive. Cant do one without the other. the solution they have today is most elegant. Instead of doing real space missions, they talk about them, and that seems to (for now) be preserving the funding, and it's definitely not generating the bad pr they get when they blow up a vehicle. In the longer term, this is getting problematic tho, there are committments to meet with regards to the space station, and they cant meet those commitments without actually launching shuttles again.
There is relief on the horizon tho. If you take a close look at the program at Scaled, they are 'on the way'. Rumor has it that Paul Allen has funded the SS1 program to the tune of 35 million. This type of rumor often stems from some detail of fact leaked out somewhere along the line, and it's a pretty reasonable bet that the number is 'at least close to reality'. For that amount of money, Scaled has designed, built, and test flown a prototype vehicle that can meet the X-Prize requirements. A lot of folks on/. tend to say 'sub orbital is only 10% of the orbital problem'. While this is definitely an exageration of the truth, sub-orbital is indeed more than 10% of the problem, lets assume for a moment that it is only 10%. Nasa spends 500 million to do a single launch that'll carry 7 warm bodies to the station and back. Since they haven't been launching for a couple years, there _should_ be a couple billion unspent in the kitty (we all know, this isn't the case, they spend it if they launch the things or not). If they took the savings from just one of those 'non launches', and contracted to Scaled, that's an amount of money that's more than 10 times what was spent to get to sub-orbital. For that kind of money, Scaled will be able to design, build, and fly a vehicle that can achieve the orbital results, and, if the spec says 'dock with the ISS', then I'm sure it'll be capable of that.
The Scaled Composites vehicle is a runway to runway design, does not require a standing army of thousands of technicians to launch, uses facilities that are pretty common around north america (big long strips of pavement called runways). It would be just to logical to take the half billion dollars used up on a single shuttle launch, give it to Rutan and crowd, along with a spec that says 'make me a vehicle that can take 4 people to/from the ISS, is reuseable, and can be launched weekly from Kennedy Space Center for less than a million dollars a launch'. The real problem with this concept is, Scaled would deliver, and then Nasa would no longer be able to preserve the billions of budget spent on shuttles. That would blow out item a) on the priorities list above.
Nasa today resembles the Nasa of the 60's only insomuch as it has the same name, the pictures of past achievements are on the wall, and they have memorials and momentos from the moon program. If you want to see the innovative engineering spirit that put men on the moon, you gotta head out to the mojave desert on monday, and watch the boys from Scaled Composites attempt to make thier mark in space.
If Nasa is truely about developing space, then the best investment they could possibly make, head over to the Mojave on monday, bring along a certified cheque for 250,000,000 dollars, and a specification document that says 'Deliver within 3 years a vehicle that can carry 4 persons and dock with the ISS, returning to earth within a few days,
Yes, actually. The physics of that calculation is trivial.
The physics involved is only trivial if you use the age old high school simplification, ignore air resistance. As soon as you account for the 'real atmosphere', the physics become radically non trivial, and you quickly realize that when oribital velocity is the goal, air friction on the way up is a HUGE factor, much much larger than the potential energy of the altitude gained. As your velocities go thru the mach numbers, the energy required for altitude gain becomes 'trivial and ignoreable' compared to the energy required to overcome air friction.
To truely understand the magnitude of the issues, turn the problem around. Take a good look at the surface of the moon, it's full of impact craters. The energy involved in creating those craters is trivial to calculate. Take the mass of the impact object, and it's velocity, and you can grind the numbers and come up with a value for energy. Now look at the surface of the earth. We are 6 times the size, so it's reasonable to expect 6 times the number of impacts. There are very few visible impact locations on this earth, because the energy requirements to actually impact are considerably different on earth. The average object on a path to intersect the earth does not contain enough energy to actually penetrate the atmosphere and impact. This is the physics of launch, operating in reverse, and the little detail of 'air friction' makes it really difficult for a fast moving object to actually hit the ground.
In an ideal simple world, the simplest orbital launch trajectory is to climb vertically out of the atmosphere, and then accelerate horizontally to orbital velocity. The real world doesn't work that way very well because of gravity, the vehicle will tend to fall a long ways during the horizontal acceleration phase. The fuel required to give the extra boost to allow the extra time for the horizontal phase adds tremendously to the all up throw weight on the launch pad, so that's where you get out the very large system of simultaneous equations, apply some very advanced calculus, and solve the entire mess for the trajectory that actually minimizes the fuel weight on the launch pad.
If you still think this is trivial, take a look at the history of the computer. Eniac is credited with being the original digital computer, the first one built to actually do digital computations for 'the real world'. The first 'real task' that was assigned to Eniac was calculating the ACTUAL trajectories of artillery shells launched from the big guns of battleships. Its the EXACT same math as done for the launch trajectory of an orbital vehicle, except, in the artillery case, it never gets high enough to actually approach the zero drag conditions of 'out of the atmosphere'. One could in a round-about way credit the atmospheric drag problem as a catalyst for the entire computing industry, it was the original problem for which the digital computer was deployed.
Once the vehicle is actually out of the atmosphere, and the drag element of the equations equal zero, at that point, the physics does become trivial. The only complicating factor is the fact that overall vehicle mass decreases as fuel is burned, changing the amount of acceleration available from the energy being expended. It's still just elementry calculus, the kind of problem you assign to grade 12 students in high school. Truely understanding the physics and math of actually achieving that point is the stuff of which an entire aerospace engineering degree program is made of. It's non trivial, and a branch of engineering unto itself.
While it may be true that Spaceship One is not an orbital vehicle in itself, it is the second stage of a delivery platform, and capable of placing a minimum of 600 pounds into a sub-orbital trajectory. In it's current form, that 600 pounds takes the form of 3 humans and associated life support. If you replace the crew capsule with a clamshell arrangement, it could just as easily eject 600
SpaceShipOne just seems like a bit of a hack to me.
The Spaceship One program is a well planned, and well executed development program, targetted at producing a vehicle that is capable of achieving the goals set forth in the X-Prize rules.
If you want to see a real 'hack', go look at the armadillo aerospace stuff. Thats just a publicity stunt that a bunch of/. folks fell for hook line and sinker.
The classic "yelling 'Fire!' in a theater" example is a case where saying something untrue that puts others in danger can be a criminal act.
This is kinda like yelling 'weapons of mass destruction' when they dont exist.
and we could count the 9/11 attacks as the largest hate crime of all time.
On the grand scale, 9/11 was a small isolated incident. If you want to see large hate crimes, go read the history books regarding events of world war 2. Even recent history contains many examples of much greater magnitude than 9/11. Go read up on Bosnia and Somalia for just a couple recent examples. As much as americans want to believe 9/11 changed the world, and is justification for wars and invasions, it was truely a small isolated incident on the overall scale of this world.
The hypocracy of americans trying rationalize the slanted views never ceases to amaze me. If China throws a few 'inusurgents' in jail for political reasons, it's a 'violation of human rights'. If america throws a few into a jail in cuba with no trials, and no rights to defend against accusations, thats 'for the good of the people'. The amazing part is, americans cant see the hypocracy of it, and they actually believe the drivel from the politicians about 'well, this is different, human rights dont apply when its us doing the afflicting'.
Americans talking about 'rights and freedoms' these days is just a laff for the rest of the world. Go take a look at any newscast from the last couple of months. America has demonstrated clearly how they view human rights. USA doesn't have to take second place to any third world dictatorship when it comes to invading another country, setting up jails for political prisoners, or establishing systematic torture treatment for political prisoners. GW wanted to show the world that he's as good as the best of them at running the show, and he's proved it. He doesn't have to take a second seat to Saddam for anything, quite capable of matching all the deeds. Now the rest of the world just isn't paying attention to any of the 'rights and freedoms' drivel coming forth from america anymore. It's cheap talk for the press, not something to actually practise.
I'm sure I'll get modded troll into oblivion for this, but wtf, I've got karma to burn, and if it opens the eyes of a single american voter, it's worth it. To be taken seriously on the world stage, you have to practise what you preach. Until a couple years ago, usa was given credit for doing just that, but not anymore. Anybody willing to step back and look at facts, ignoring the political spin, can see it pretty plainly. If americans truely believe in 'rights and freedoms', regime change is in order. Luckily, they have the mechanism to do it legally. Time will tell, we will find out in November if they truely believe in rights and freedoms, or if they they approve of the new role of oppressive invader with total disregard for even the most basic of human rights.
This is an interesting concept. This can potentially turn into a mobilization of the masses to do the due dilligence that patent office employees are _supposed_ to do, prior to issuing a patent. Assuming the office itself has an employee review system internally, where one of those actually granting patents gets black marks because a patent they granted is overturned, this could provide an interesting check to balance the system a bit. I dont believe for a minute that the USPTO employees are so clueless that they cannot recognize some of these patents as bogus, but they have a system where they have to 'clear them off the desk' in given timeframes, so they just approve them.
If only one or two of the folks in that office find themselves unemployed after an annual review, because to many of the patents they granted were overturned, it wont take long and the rest will actually take the couple hours required to document prior art on many of them.
An obvious next step, would be for the patent office itself to provide a public input period for feedback on various applications. Heck, if they posted new applications to/., they could save a lot of effort. At least half of the new applications would get responded to with a link documenting valid prior art within an hour of being posted, thereby saving the office the trouble of processing that application.
So what's your basis for the claim that they were acting as a broker in this case? (Which they also do, of course.)
That's really simple, look at the name in all the released documents. The company name is the name of thier brokerage division. If they were making the investment directly thru one of the investment divisions, the name of record would be the name of one of thier investment funds, which are public entities, and do not invest anonymously. The portfolio holdings of the various investment funds are a matter of public record.
The other detail that most/. types really dont understand, the interest in SCOX shares on the open market is driven by prudent fund managers, as much as speculative investors. The numbers are easy to calculate. In the unlikely event that sco were to win the lawsuit against ibm, ibm would be looking at taking a 2 billion dollar charge at a future quarterly or annual report. A 2 billion dollar charge will have a measurable effect on ibm share prices, and a 2 billion dollar gain has a measurable effect on the price of SCOX shares. It's a simple matter of calculating the ratio of SCOX to IBM shares that one must hold, to totally offset any risk. Funds with large ibm holdings therefore were prudent to hedge the risks early on. The same can be said of funds with large holdings in redhat. In the event of an sco win, redhat share prices will approach zero, it becomes simple arithmetic to calculate how many SCOX shares a portfolio requires to offset any risk from that event.
This is prudent risk management because there is no logic to how the us courts come to decisions on things like this, and it's like playing the lottery to try second guess the outcome. Managers are much better off to do the homework, establish the effects such a suit would have on the bottom line for both companies in either outcome, and then plan thier holdings for both events, and basically carry some SCOX stock as an insurance policy against the worst case outcome. Consider it as just that, an insurance policy, something that you pay for, and hope you never cash in on it, but it's a cost of doing business. The SCOX shares are expected to ultimately head to zero as a final value, but, they are held on the off chance there is a miracle in court, and the ibm/redhat holdings end up taking a huge loss because of it. The SCOX holdings will offset that loss at that time. It's a logical hedge against stupidity by the american courts, which has been demonstrated over and over many times.
These are the same assholes that were SCO's top investor.
This has been widely mis-reported. RBC doesn't make such investments themselves, they act as the broker on behalf of clients, exactly the same as any other brokerage. In the case in question, the client chose to remain anonymous, and the shares in question were purchased by RBC, and then held 'in street name' for assignment to an internal client account. The actual details of who the account holder is, are protected by confidentiality laws, and would only become public information if the client requested certificates of shares issued in thier own name, rather than held by the brokerage in street name on thier behalf. the courts can also order such disclosures, but will only do so if there is a real requirement for said disclosure. In this case, there is no requirement for disclosure.
RBC has recieved a lot of negative exposure in the linux community simply because they have respected privacy laws. They acted as the broker in the transaction, and held the shares on behalf of a client. I'd commend the bank, in the face of a lot of pressure, never once have they released or leaked to the public the name of the client they are acting on behalf of. This is as it should be.
The real question in my mind, what individual/corporation outsourced this transaction to Canada, to take advantage of privacy laws that allowed them to do the entire deal anonymously, with the bank acting as the publicly visible broker of record?
So, if they were awarded a patent or copyright or whatever it is on FAT, at least they have a moral leg to stand on.
Actually, not really. The fat file system is well documented in published media. The MsDos Encyclopedia comes to mind, Microsoft Press.
The extensions for FAT32 are not patentable either, there were numerous other systems available prior to FAT32 that grafted similar extensions onto the file system.
As for the patent just granted, changing behaviour based on now long the button is pressed. I'll have to get my notes to confirm dates, but, I worked on a device about 20 years ago, it had a single input button. If you pressed it once, something happened. If you pressed it twice in quick succession, something else happened, and if you held it in for 5 seconds, the device would reset. There was a z-80 processor with 1024 bytes of ram on board, and we had a single input kludged onto it. I believe this would qualify as a 'limited resource' environment, and far predates anything this patent is related to. The device was sold commercially, I believe that qualifies it as 'prior art'.
By all means, let them run amok and waste money on BS patents. Just make sure that the first time they get challenged they actually go down. If the challenge fails, THEN there's a problem.
The problem with this is simple. Little guys done have the bucks required to mount a challenge against something like this. So, it locks markets up to those that have the resources to challenge such a patent, but, those large corps dont have to, they just cross license their own bullshit patents, and voila, you now have a marketplace where the little guy cant play anymore.
The whole point of building large portfolios of bullshit patents is to lock out the little guy. It's a classic case of a system defeating it's own purpose. The patent system was built so the little guy would be protected from having his invention stolen by the big corps. Now the big corps use that same system to lock little guys out of markets, by patenting obvious things, so they cant be used by anybody else.
The patent covers a couple of things, one of them is the 'holding the button down for a longer period to signify a different action', and the other is the double click.
For some prior art, go back to the 1800's, and talk to a telegraph operator. Ask them how a morse code key works, and, the difference between a long click, and a double click.
This patent is a blatant example of why the rest of the world just has to start ignoring patents issued in the USA, they have no meaning. American business is so concerned about intellectual property protection, they should consider that honoring patents is an all or nothing deal, and with stupid stuff like this being granted, the rest of the world cannot afford to honor this kind of silliness. There are many many examples in the real world of 'click once to do one thing, twice to do something else'. Anybody that flies airplanes into small airfields at night knows this (just one real world example). Click you microphone 5 times to turn on the runway lights. Depending on the setup, once they are on, 3 clicks for brighter, 2 clicks for dimmer, is common. This methodology was around long before microsoft plugged thier first mouse into a computer, it's a method that pre-dates the pc. It's common, and it's OBVIOUS, and it was long before the pc even came into the equation, or any 'limited resource' environment as discussed in that patent.
Go forth into the real world, there must be thousands of devices in this world that have a single button for input, and differing numbers of 'clicks' or 'presses' on that button, have different meanings.
This was being done in the early 60's by a Canadian research team. Google for Harp Gun, and read here . Basically they started with 7 inch guns, and were shooting probes up to do high altitude research. In phase 2 of the project they were using a 16 inch gun, and projectiles that included a rocket motor. The 16 inch gun was capable of lifting a 200lb projectile to an altitude of 90 miles.
The projectiles they were firing (the martlett) had a bunch of electronics in them, and they had designed them with a small rocket motor to maneuver at that altitude, not sure if they actually flew any with the motor.
The entire story is quite interesting, after the Harp project ended, Gerald Bull (the engineer behind it) went on to continue the research covertly funded by the cia initially. When he had a major falling out with the cia, he worked with other foriegn governments to continue the upscaling of the concept. He was assasinated when he built one that was capable of launching a 1000kg projectile over a distance of a thousand miles, before they had a chance to fire it. Interestingly, that one was capable of orbiting a much smaller projectile.
You can find a decent virtual server that will suit all of your needs for less then $50 a month
I've been looking at various offerings for a virtual server, and 50 dollars is WAY off the mark. They are out there in the 15 to 20 dollar range, and if you are only doing low volume mail, a tiny vds can be had for $12.50 a month. No, I have no affiliation with the folks on the end of that link, other than I've been considering using it for just that, fixed ip low volume mail server that's 'in the data center' instead of 'on the cable ip'. It looks like a cost effective way to get around the hassles, and, it's cheaper than upgrading to a fixed ip with my cable provider.
What kind of search will I have to go through to get into SPACE?
This is SOOOO obvious. You will be subjected to a 'wallet search'. The purpose of the wallet search is to 'lighten the load' to the point where it's light enough to actually lift into space. If the wallet search proves successful, then, the rest will be minor formalities. If the wallet search is unsuccessful, boarding will be denied on 'financial security' grounds.
mail is handled by 10 mail.cluster1.didtheyreadit.com.
Ok, a little more digging. mail.cluster1.didtheyreadit.com resolves to 3 consecutive ip addresses. Repeat the process for www.didtheyreadit.com and you find that the same 3 ip address resolve to that. This smells a lot like somebody has gone to the effort to build a high availability cluster for dealing with mail, just based on the consecutive ip's and the telltale names.
Interesting, this same cluster is also set up to provide the backing infrastructure to do email tracking via embedded images.
Obviously these guys are set up to handle volume, so, that does prompt a question. Are there really enough people using this service to load up 3 mail servers in a cluster configuration ? Or is it possible they have the infrastructure in place for another business, and they are leveraging it to do this too ?
I just dont see the 'didtheyreadthat.com' business being large enough to swamp 3 machines processing the outgoing mail, and the incoming image connections. But, if this is just a sideline for machines that are spending the day tracking inline images on spam, it sure makes sense. A whole new business leveraged off existing infrastructure.
but because there might be a.001% chance of something going wrong, and we just can't have that!!
If that were indeed the case, there would be a lot more happening in terms of space. The reality of the situation is, the shuttle has a failure rate of approximately 2%. With that in mind, the shuttle program has turned out dramatically different than originally planned, and as it was originally sold to the public.
The original plan sold to the public in the 70's called for a re-useable vehicle that was akin to a pick up truck for space. these things would be blasting off into space on a regular basis, and the net cost per launch was initially projected on the order of 18 million dollars per instance, and i dont remember EVER seeing mtbf numbers calculated in there.
The reality of the situation is, the direct cost to launch a shuttle is on the order of 500 million dollars. There are some indirect costs too. With a failure rate on the order of 2%, there needs to be an equipment amortization of approximately 2% the value of the shuttle per launch. With a crew of 7, another cost is 2% of 7, or approximately 0.014 astronaut lives per launch. This is NOT the bill of goods Nasa sold the country on back in the 70's.
And now, with new procedures coming in place, it's only going to get more expensive to operate the shuttle. The grand plan now includes having one shuttle 'available' as a rescue vehicle when the other launches. That impacts crew capacity. If you are gonna take a 7 seat vehicle up to rescue a crew, and it takes a minimum of 2 folks on board to fly it, you can only pick up 5 folks. That means crew size is going to be reduced, or, more re-design to carry more folks on the rescue mission. It also means you cannot launch Discovery till Atalantis is basically 'in the barn, ready to go'. That's going to dramatically reduce the number of annual launches possible, but since the number of folks on the program is not going to reduce, the actual cost per launch is just going to continue to rise.
The shuttle program has been a financial fiasco from the get go. The actual costs of operation are more than an order of magnitude higher than original early projections. Its a tough business, and i can see being off by a factor of 2 or 3, but off by more than an order of magnitude ? Either the boys at nasa were intentionally carpet bagging the predictions, or there was a lot of incompetence making the predictions. My opinion sides with the former, but many will suggest, carpet bagging the predictions is just another form of incompetence. then again, polticians would call it 'well done, very competent'.
The american space program is not stalled because it's risk adverse, it's stalled on economics. Nasa sold congress/public on the shuttle, a nice space truck with no place to go. It's soaked up all the money available for space development, and then some, and never came close to living up to it's early promise.
The shuttle has demonstrated (statistically) its ability to deliver space travel, and the cost of that travel in terms of dollars, and human lives. The american public is willing to turn a blind eye to the dollar cost so some degree, but, not to the human cost. the american public is also capable of demonstrating the ability to 'tolerate' the human cost (look at recent military activity), so, they have spoken pretty clearly in regards to the shuttle.
The real problem now is that the whole thing is one big quagmire. The ISS was built specifically to give the shuttle a destination. Now, the shuttle is to expensive to fly, but, there are committments to reach the destination put in orbit specifically to justify the shuttle operation.
The whole discussion of the future of the shuttle program really does become moot at some point. Once Nasa gets flying again, they will fly shuttles back and forth to the space station, until they lose another one. That's going to be the end of the program. When they only have one left,
I disagree; handing out free WiFi is a great business model,
Finally, somebody that understands the concept. Wi-fi is not a business unto itself, it's a value add service that is part of the package for a real business. Take the coffee shop example, who wants to spend 10 bucks to get online for 20 minutes while you drink a coffee you bought for $2 ? It doesn't make sense. On the other hand, the coffee shop owner that has wi-fi in his coffee shop will have more traffic.
For this business though, wide open access doesn't really do the job, because it allows non customers to use and plug up the internet pipe, which is why you need a controlled access sytem of some kind, ie a captive portal setup. problem is, mention 'captive portal' to your average coffee shop owner, and thier eyes go all glossy.
I've installed a couple of these for clients, and they love it. A simple appliance that they can use to control who uses the hotspot, but it doesn't have the fees associated with it like the mainstream ones do, ie no subscriptions. One client gives away the tickets to anybody that buys a meal, and the other one is selling them for a buck. They just printed off a bunch of the access tickets it generates, and keep em at the cash register.
Wi-fi is a value add to an existing real business, and most of the hotspot chains are realizing that. There's a lot more of them showing up on fuckedcompany.com than there is showing up in forbes....
Ive got basically the same unit sitting on my desk, 2197CA. Had the same issue initially. 5 minutes googling and I found you have to change one bios setting to fix the keyboard detection problem, turn off the 'legacy usb'. I've got a pretty good broadband connection here, took me all of 20 minutes to get Sarge running on it, installed across the net. Took another 15 minutes to get the 'hardware specific' drivers all in place. Hint, google for hp nx9005 (it's the same notebook, different stickers on the front). I've actually got both sitting on the desk here right now. One caveat, no linux drivers for the Wireless, pester broadcom and compaq about that. Broadcom has chosen to ignore linux for this particular chipset on i386 hardware. interestingly enough, they do have mips drivers for it, they are in use in access points....
As an interesting exercise, the notebook in question came with XPHome on it, but we required a dual boot XP Pro + Linux for deployment. Including the fussing for device specific hardware drivers, the linux install took about 40 minutes, all across the net, using the 10 meg boot cd to kickstart it. XP Pro + updates took almost 3 hours, and it installed initially from local media. I'm still battling the wireless. It seems windows update detected an updated driver, installed it, and killed the wireless in the process. Now the drivers on the factory supplied cd wont go back in. I'm not impressed, this is after over 2 hours of applying updates, then updates to the updates, then updates to the updates to the updates, then yet another patch on top of that. For giggles, I measured it at the firewall. After a fresh install of XP Pro, I've let this thing install all the updates it seems to need from Windows Update. So far, its downloaded slightly over 600 megs of data, makes me wonder if theres anything original left from that cd it installed off....
I've kind of learned an appreciation for apt today that I never had before. When you do a net install of Sarge, you get the updated packages to begin with, no updates to apply. The experience with XP really demonstrated that, I feel like i've been installing and updateing this notebook all day.
In the end tho, all is pretty equal. Got a notebook that is for the most part functional all around, wireless isn't working in linux, but it's not working in windows either. Oh well, tomorrow is another day...
The chemical weapons he has used in Iran did not come from us. They came from either Japan or Germany.
The chemical weapons used in iran came in 2 forms. The first form was aerial delivery. American supplied chemicals were delivered from american supplied helicopters, originally justified as 'crop dusters'. The second form came as mortar shells. American made chemical shells were fired from german made mortars. The german supplier of the mortars brokered and acted as middle man in the purchase of the shells for those mortars.
Another interesting 'point of interest', there were WMD used during gulf war 2nd edition. They came in the form of anti tank shells made up of depleted uranium, and there is a considerable inventory of those things in iraq today. They are american made, and in use by the american military. Thier radioactive nature has them officially qualified as WMD by the UN doctrines that define such things.
So, it's actually quite easy to find WMD in iraq today, just go look in the munitions supply at all the american locations holding any significant number of tanks.
But, the hypocracy of this whole thing really starts to show now. The american forces in iraq are holding Saddam on various and sundry charges, things like his jailors would torture and kill prisoners. The shoe is on the other foot now, still waiting to see GW in jail cuz his jailors are torturing prisoners. As they say, what's good for the goose...
An asteroid the size of Tautatis traveling at cosmic velocities would puncture the earth. It would take less than a second for it to hit the crust after it entered the atmosphere.
You really need to check the facts before you say things like this. Orbital velocities are in the range of 17,000 mph, and solar system escape is on the order of 28,000 mph. These numbers are close, and I'm to lazy right now to dig up exact numbers, but, google will find it for you if you want to split the hairs. Since the asteroid in question is on a solar orbit, by definition, it's velocity will be at/below 28,000 mph. Now do some simple math.
28,000 mph divided by 3600 sec/hr = 7.7 miles per second.
Atmosphere is generally given to be 60 miles deep.
60 miles divided by 7.7 miles/second = 7.79 seconds
Soo, in the worst case, velocities approaching solar system escape, and a vertical impact, transition time from atmosphere entry to surface impact (ignoring the friction and deceleration from the atmospheric entry) will be AT LEAST 7.79 seconds. A trajectory that is not vertical will increase that time in atmosphere. To achieve your 1 second from entry interface to impact, the item would have to be travelling on the order of 216,000 mph, and arrive on a perfectly vertical trajectory. This combination of trajectory and velocity will pretty much rule out any early detection of such a beast incoming.
As for nuclear missle launch, the rockets attached to nuclear missles do not have enough power to escape earths atmosphere
Again, quite wrong. Ballistic misslies RELY on escaping the atmosphere to achieve ballistic trajectories. What they dont do, is achieve orbit, because that wont result in 'dropping on the target'. Most are capable of achieving orbit by simply lightening the payload.
Your sig in C is an example of why they had to invent 'managed' languages. A lot of wannabe developers writing code that is fundamentally flawed, to the point it was determined to be more cost effective to write 'managers' for broken code than it was to try teach 'developers' to do it right to begin with.
Altho I must admit, I'm slightly amazed. I really thought an average/. reader could write 4 or 5 lines of C that doesn't blow/corrupt the stack. Guess my opinion of/. readers is still a little on the high side...
Anyone know what government regulations were in place when F. Magellan, F. Drake, L. Ericson, and guys like them sailed?
The Collision Regulations commonly known as ColRegs are adhered to at sea the world over. In areas where local jurasdictions may apply, local regulations are normally derived from the colregs. International courts uphold the ColRegs, and, in the case of contest, insurance companies will 'assign blame' based on them, irrelavent of jurasdiction or lack thereof at the point of incident.
Colregs is very interesting, a set of regulations upheld internationally, and respected by mariners the world over. It hasn't changed much in the last 200 years except to accomodate new classes of vessels as they are invented.
The preface to ColRegs is an interesting read, it basically acknowledges that there are 2 sets of laws in effect on the seas. When the two sets are in conflict, the laws of physics shall always prevail over the ColRegs.
It really is hard to imagine a set of laws that actually makes sense, and is pretty much logical. ColRegs is the exception in this case though. For the most part it's based on logic, and a few arbitrary points just because there was a need for 'definition' in a circumstance where none of the available choices had any compelling reason to be 'right', so one was chosen arbitrarily.
Cable networks may be discouraged from innovating or pushing their boundaries if they are in constant worry of getting their plug pulled by disgruntled viewers.
In every other business one has to be concerned about satisfying customers, or losing them, and with that loss comes a loss of revenue. Why should cable networks be any different ? What makes them so special to be deserving of revenue for producing crap the audience doesn't want to see?
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Those are the folks that gave NASA the credibility it has. They were hard working, energetic, engineers with a vision. For the most part today they are
a) retired
b) dead
They have for the most part been replaced by a couple generations of beaurocrats whos mandate is
a) Preserve government funding
b) Avoid bad publicity
c) Generate good publicity
d) Do space missions
The real problem as seen by most beaurocrats at nasa today is simple. Items b and d are mutually inclusive. Cant do one without the other. the solution they have today is most elegant. Instead of doing real space missions, they talk about them, and that seems to (for now) be preserving the funding, and it's definitely not generating the bad pr they get when they blow up a vehicle. In the longer term, this is getting problematic tho, there are committments to meet with regards to the space station, and they cant meet those commitments without actually launching shuttles again.
There is relief on the horizon tho. If you take a close look at the program at Scaled, they are 'on the way'. Rumor has it that Paul Allen has funded the SS1 program to the tune of 35 million. This type of rumor often stems from some detail of fact leaked out somewhere along the line, and it's a pretty reasonable bet that the number is 'at least close to reality'. For that amount of money, Scaled has designed, built, and test flown a prototype vehicle that can meet the X-Prize requirements. A lot of folks on /. tend to say 'sub orbital is only 10% of the orbital problem'. While this is definitely an exageration of the truth, sub-orbital is indeed more than 10% of the problem, lets assume for a moment that it is only 10%. Nasa spends 500 million to do a single launch that'll carry 7 warm bodies to the station and back. Since they haven't been launching for a couple years, there _should_ be a couple billion unspent in the kitty (we all know, this isn't the case, they spend it if they launch the things or not). If they took the savings from just one of those 'non launches', and contracted to Scaled, that's an amount of money that's more than 10 times what was spent to get to sub-orbital. For that kind of money, Scaled will be able to design, build, and fly a vehicle that can achieve the orbital results, and, if the spec says 'dock with the ISS', then I'm sure it'll be capable of that.
The Scaled Composites vehicle is a runway to runway design, does not require a standing army of thousands of technicians to launch, uses facilities that are pretty common around north america (big long strips of pavement called runways). It would be just to logical to take the half billion dollars used up on a single shuttle launch, give it to Rutan and crowd, along with a spec that says 'make me a vehicle that can take 4 people to/from the ISS, is reuseable, and can be launched weekly from Kennedy Space Center for less than a million dollars a launch'. The real problem with this concept is, Scaled would deliver, and then Nasa would no longer be able to preserve the billions of budget spent on shuttles. That would blow out item a) on the priorities list above.
Nasa today resembles the Nasa of the 60's only insomuch as it has the same name, the pictures of past achievements are on the wall, and they have memorials and momentos from the moon program. If you want to see the innovative engineering spirit that put men on the moon, you gotta head out to the mojave desert on monday, and watch the boys from Scaled Composites attempt to make thier mark in space.
If Nasa is truely about developing space, then the best investment they could possibly make, head over to the Mojave on monday, bring along a certified cheque for 250,000,000 dollars, and a specification document that says 'Deliver within 3 years a vehicle that can carry 4 persons and dock with the ISS, returning to earth within a few days,
The physics involved is only trivial if you use the age old high school simplification, ignore air resistance. As soon as you account for the 'real atmosphere', the physics become radically non trivial, and you quickly realize that when oribital velocity is the goal, air friction on the way up is a HUGE factor, much much larger than the potential energy of the altitude gained. As your velocities go thru the mach numbers, the energy required for altitude gain becomes 'trivial and ignoreable' compared to the energy required to overcome air friction.
To truely understand the magnitude of the issues, turn the problem around. Take a good look at the surface of the moon, it's full of impact craters. The energy involved in creating those craters is trivial to calculate. Take the mass of the impact object, and it's velocity, and you can grind the numbers and come up with a value for energy. Now look at the surface of the earth. We are 6 times the size, so it's reasonable to expect 6 times the number of impacts. There are very few visible impact locations on this earth, because the energy requirements to actually impact are considerably different on earth. The average object on a path to intersect the earth does not contain enough energy to actually penetrate the atmosphere and impact. This is the physics of launch, operating in reverse, and the little detail of 'air friction' makes it really difficult for a fast moving object to actually hit the ground.
In an ideal simple world, the simplest orbital launch trajectory is to climb vertically out of the atmosphere, and then accelerate horizontally to orbital velocity. The real world doesn't work that way very well because of gravity, the vehicle will tend to fall a long ways during the horizontal acceleration phase. The fuel required to give the extra boost to allow the extra time for the horizontal phase adds tremendously to the all up throw weight on the launch pad, so that's where you get out the very large system of simultaneous equations, apply some very advanced calculus, and solve the entire mess for the trajectory that actually minimizes the fuel weight on the launch pad.
If you still think this is trivial, take a look at the history of the computer. Eniac is credited with being the original digital computer, the first one built to actually do digital computations for 'the real world'. The first 'real task' that was assigned to Eniac was calculating the ACTUAL trajectories of artillery shells launched from the big guns of battleships. Its the EXACT same math as done for the launch trajectory of an orbital vehicle, except, in the artillery case, it never gets high enough to actually approach the zero drag conditions of 'out of the atmosphere'. One could in a round-about way credit the atmospheric drag problem as a catalyst for the entire computing industry, it was the original problem for which the digital computer was deployed.
Once the vehicle is actually out of the atmosphere, and the drag element of the equations equal zero, at that point, the physics does become trivial. The only complicating factor is the fact that overall vehicle mass decreases as fuel is burned, changing the amount of acceleration available from the energy being expended. It's still just elementry calculus, the kind of problem you assign to grade 12 students in high school. Truely understanding the physics and math of actually achieving that point is the stuff of which an entire aerospace engineering degree program is made of. It's non trivial, and a branch of engineering unto itself.
While it may be true that Spaceship One is not an orbital vehicle in itself, it is the second stage of a delivery platform, and capable of placing a minimum of 600 pounds into a sub-orbital trajectory. In it's current form, that 600 pounds takes the form of 3 humans and associated life support. If you replace the crew capsule with a clamshell arrangement, it could just as easily eject 600
The Spaceship One program is a well planned, and well executed development program, targetted at producing a vehicle that is capable of achieving the goals set forth in the X-Prize rules.
If you want to see a real 'hack', go look at the armadillo aerospace stuff. Thats just a publicity stunt that a bunch of /. folks fell for hook line and sinker.
This is kinda like yelling 'weapons of mass destruction' when they dont exist.
and we could count the 9/11 attacks as the largest hate crime of all time.
On the grand scale, 9/11 was a small isolated incident. If you want to see large hate crimes, go read the history books regarding events of world war 2. Even recent history contains many examples of much greater magnitude than 9/11. Go read up on Bosnia and Somalia for just a couple recent examples. As much as americans want to believe 9/11 changed the world, and is justification for wars and invasions, it was truely a small isolated incident on the overall scale of this world.
The hypocracy of americans trying rationalize the slanted views never ceases to amaze me. If China throws a few 'inusurgents' in jail for political reasons, it's a 'violation of human rights'. If america throws a few into a jail in cuba with no trials, and no rights to defend against accusations, thats 'for the good of the people'. The amazing part is, americans cant see the hypocracy of it, and they actually believe the drivel from the politicians about 'well, this is different, human rights dont apply when its us doing the afflicting'.
Americans talking about 'rights and freedoms' these days is just a laff for the rest of the world. Go take a look at any newscast from the last couple of months. America has demonstrated clearly how they view human rights. USA doesn't have to take second place to any third world dictatorship when it comes to invading another country, setting up jails for political prisoners, or establishing systematic torture treatment for political prisoners. GW wanted to show the world that he's as good as the best of them at running the show, and he's proved it. He doesn't have to take a second seat to Saddam for anything, quite capable of matching all the deeds. Now the rest of the world just isn't paying attention to any of the 'rights and freedoms' drivel coming forth from america anymore. It's cheap talk for the press, not something to actually practise.
I'm sure I'll get modded troll into oblivion for this, but wtf, I've got karma to burn, and if it opens the eyes of a single american voter, it's worth it. To be taken seriously on the world stage, you have to practise what you preach. Until a couple years ago, usa was given credit for doing just that, but not anymore. Anybody willing to step back and look at facts, ignoring the political spin, can see it pretty plainly. If americans truely believe in 'rights and freedoms', regime change is in order. Luckily, they have the mechanism to do it legally. Time will tell, we will find out in November if they truely believe in rights and freedoms, or if they they approve of the new role of oppressive invader with total disregard for even the most basic of human rights.
If only one or two of the folks in that office find themselves unemployed after an annual review, because to many of the patents they granted were overturned, it wont take long and the rest will actually take the couple hours required to document prior art on many of them.
An obvious next step, would be for the patent office itself to provide a public input period for feedback on various applications. Heck, if they posted new applications to /., they could save a lot of effort. At least half of the new applications would get responded to with a link documenting valid prior art within an hour of being posted, thereby saving the office the trouble of processing that application.
That's really simple, look at the name in all the released documents. The company name is the name of thier brokerage division. If they were making the investment directly thru one of the investment divisions, the name of record would be the name of one of thier investment funds, which are public entities, and do not invest anonymously. The portfolio holdings of the various investment funds are a matter of public record.
The other detail that most /. types really dont understand, the interest in SCOX shares on the open market is driven by prudent fund managers, as much as speculative investors. The numbers are easy to calculate. In the unlikely event that sco were to win the lawsuit against ibm, ibm would be looking at taking a 2 billion dollar charge at a future quarterly or annual report. A 2 billion dollar charge will have a measurable effect on ibm share prices, and a 2 billion dollar gain has a measurable effect on the price of SCOX shares. It's a simple matter of calculating the ratio of SCOX to IBM shares that one must hold, to totally offset any risk. Funds with large ibm holdings therefore were prudent to hedge the risks early on. The same can be said of funds with large holdings in redhat. In the event of an sco win, redhat share prices will approach zero, it becomes simple arithmetic to calculate how many SCOX shares a portfolio requires to offset any risk from that event.
This is prudent risk management because there is no logic to how the us courts come to decisions on things like this, and it's like playing the lottery to try second guess the outcome. Managers are much better off to do the homework, establish the effects such a suit would have on the bottom line for both companies in either outcome, and then plan thier holdings for both events, and basically carry some SCOX stock as an insurance policy against the worst case outcome. Consider it as just that, an insurance policy, something that you pay for, and hope you never cash in on it, but it's a cost of doing business. The SCOX shares are expected to ultimately head to zero as a final value, but, they are held on the off chance there is a miracle in court, and the ibm/redhat holdings end up taking a huge loss because of it. The SCOX holdings will offset that loss at that time. It's a logical hedge against stupidity by the american courts, which has been demonstrated over and over many times.
This has been widely mis-reported. RBC doesn't make such investments themselves, they act as the broker on behalf of clients, exactly the same as any other brokerage. In the case in question, the client chose to remain anonymous, and the shares in question were purchased by RBC, and then held 'in street name' for assignment to an internal client account. The actual details of who the account holder is, are protected by confidentiality laws, and would only become public information if the client requested certificates of shares issued in thier own name, rather than held by the brokerage in street name on thier behalf. the courts can also order such disclosures, but will only do so if there is a real requirement for said disclosure. In this case, there is no requirement for disclosure.
RBC has recieved a lot of negative exposure in the linux community simply because they have respected privacy laws. They acted as the broker in the transaction, and held the shares on behalf of a client. I'd commend the bank, in the face of a lot of pressure, never once have they released or leaked to the public the name of the client they are acting on behalf of. This is as it should be.
The real question in my mind, what individual/corporation outsourced this transaction to Canada, to take advantage of privacy laws that allowed them to do the entire deal anonymously, with the bank acting as the publicly visible broker of record?
Actually, not really. The fat file system is well documented in published media. The MsDos Encyclopedia comes to mind, Microsoft Press.
The extensions for FAT32 are not patentable either, there were numerous other systems available prior to FAT32 that grafted similar extensions onto the file system.
As for the patent just granted, changing behaviour based on now long the button is pressed. I'll have to get my notes to confirm dates, but, I worked on a device about 20 years ago, it had a single input button. If you pressed it once, something happened. If you pressed it twice in quick succession, something else happened, and if you held it in for 5 seconds, the device would reset. There was a z-80 processor with 1024 bytes of ram on board, and we had a single input kludged onto it. I believe this would qualify as a 'limited resource' environment, and far predates anything this patent is related to. The device was sold commercially, I believe that qualifies it as 'prior art'.
The problem with this is simple. Little guys done have the bucks required to mount a challenge against something like this. So, it locks markets up to those that have the resources to challenge such a patent, but, those large corps dont have to, they just cross license their own bullshit patents, and voila, you now have a marketplace where the little guy cant play anymore.
The whole point of building large portfolios of bullshit patents is to lock out the little guy. It's a classic case of a system defeating it's own purpose. The patent system was built so the little guy would be protected from having his invention stolen by the big corps. Now the big corps use that same system to lock little guys out of markets, by patenting obvious things, so they cant be used by anybody else.
For some prior art, go back to the 1800's, and talk to a telegraph operator. Ask them how a morse code key works, and, the difference between a long click, and a double click.
This patent is a blatant example of why the rest of the world just has to start ignoring patents issued in the USA, they have no meaning. American business is so concerned about intellectual property protection, they should consider that honoring patents is an all or nothing deal, and with stupid stuff like this being granted, the rest of the world cannot afford to honor this kind of silliness. There are many many examples in the real world of 'click once to do one thing, twice to do something else'. Anybody that flies airplanes into small airfields at night knows this (just one real world example). Click you microphone 5 times to turn on the runway lights. Depending on the setup, once they are on, 3 clicks for brighter, 2 clicks for dimmer, is common. This methodology was around long before microsoft plugged thier first mouse into a computer, it's a method that pre-dates the pc. It's common, and it's OBVIOUS, and it was long before the pc even came into the equation, or any 'limited resource' environment as discussed in that patent.
Go forth into the real world, there must be thousands of devices in this world that have a single button for input, and differing numbers of 'clicks' or 'presses' on that button, have different meanings.
The projectiles they were firing (the martlett) had a bunch of electronics in them, and they had designed them with a small rocket motor to maneuver at that altitude, not sure if they actually flew any with the motor.
The entire story is quite interesting, after the Harp project ended, Gerald Bull (the engineer behind it) went on to continue the research covertly funded by the cia initially. When he had a major falling out with the cia, he worked with other foriegn governments to continue the upscaling of the concept. He was assasinated when he built one that was capable of launching a 1000kg projectile over a distance of a thousand miles, before they had a chance to fire it. Interestingly, that one was capable of orbiting a much smaller projectile.
I've been looking at various offerings for a virtual server, and 50 dollars is WAY off the mark. They are out there in the 15 to 20 dollar range, and if you are only doing low volume mail, a tiny vds can be had for $12.50 a month. No, I have no affiliation with the folks on the end of that link, other than I've been considering using it for just that, fixed ip low volume mail server that's 'in the data center' instead of 'on the cable ip'. It looks like a cost effective way to get around the hassles, and, it's cheaper than upgrading to a fixed ip with my cable provider.
This is SOOOO obvious. You will be subjected to a 'wallet search'. The purpose of the wallet search is to 'lighten the load' to the point where it's light enough to actually lift into space. If the wallet search proves successful, then, the rest will be minor formalities. If the wallet search is unsuccessful, boarding will be denied on 'financial security' grounds.
Ok, a little more digging. mail.cluster1.didtheyreadit.com resolves to 3 consecutive ip addresses. Repeat the process for www.didtheyreadit.com and you find that the same 3 ip address resolve to that. This smells a lot like somebody has gone to the effort to build a high availability cluster for dealing with mail, just based on the consecutive ip's and the telltale names.
Interesting, this same cluster is also set up to provide the backing infrastructure to do email tracking via embedded images.
Obviously these guys are set up to handle volume, so, that does prompt a question. Are there really enough people using this service to load up 3 mail servers in a cluster configuration ? Or is it possible they have the infrastructure in place for another business, and they are leveraging it to do this too ?
I just dont see the 'didtheyreadthat.com' business being large enough to swamp 3 machines processing the outgoing mail, and the incoming image connections. But, if this is just a sideline for machines that are spending the day tracking inline images on spam, it sure makes sense. A whole new business leveraged off existing infrastructure.
If that were indeed the case, there would be a lot more happening in terms of space. The reality of the situation is, the shuttle has a failure rate of approximately 2%. With that in mind, the shuttle program has turned out dramatically different than originally planned, and as it was originally sold to the public.
The original plan sold to the public in the 70's called for a re-useable vehicle that was akin to a pick up truck for space. these things would be blasting off into space on a regular basis, and the net cost per launch was initially projected on the order of 18 million dollars per instance, and i dont remember EVER seeing mtbf numbers calculated in there.
The reality of the situation is, the direct cost to launch a shuttle is on the order of 500 million dollars. There are some indirect costs too. With a failure rate on the order of 2%, there needs to be an equipment amortization of approximately 2% the value of the shuttle per launch. With a crew of 7, another cost is 2% of 7, or approximately 0.014 astronaut lives per launch. This is NOT the bill of goods Nasa sold the country on back in the 70's.
And now, with new procedures coming in place, it's only going to get more expensive to operate the shuttle. The grand plan now includes having one shuttle 'available' as a rescue vehicle when the other launches. That impacts crew capacity. If you are gonna take a 7 seat vehicle up to rescue a crew, and it takes a minimum of 2 folks on board to fly it, you can only pick up 5 folks. That means crew size is going to be reduced, or, more re-design to carry more folks on the rescue mission. It also means you cannot launch Discovery till Atalantis is basically 'in the barn, ready to go'. That's going to dramatically reduce the number of annual launches possible, but since the number of folks on the program is not going to reduce, the actual cost per launch is just going to continue to rise.
The shuttle program has been a financial fiasco from the get go. The actual costs of operation are more than an order of magnitude higher than original early projections. Its a tough business, and i can see being off by a factor of 2 or 3, but off by more than an order of magnitude ? Either the boys at nasa were intentionally carpet bagging the predictions, or there was a lot of incompetence making the predictions. My opinion sides with the former, but many will suggest, carpet bagging the predictions is just another form of incompetence. then again, polticians would call it 'well done, very competent'.
The american space program is not stalled because it's risk adverse, it's stalled on economics. Nasa sold congress/public on the shuttle, a nice space truck with no place to go. It's soaked up all the money available for space development, and then some, and never came close to living up to it's early promise.
The shuttle has demonstrated (statistically) its ability to deliver space travel, and the cost of that travel in terms of dollars, and human lives. The american public is willing to turn a blind eye to the dollar cost so some degree, but, not to the human cost. the american public is also capable of demonstrating the ability to 'tolerate' the human cost (look at recent military activity), so, they have spoken pretty clearly in regards to the shuttle.
The real problem now is that the whole thing is one big quagmire. The ISS was built specifically to give the shuttle a destination. Now, the shuttle is to expensive to fly, but, there are committments to reach the destination put in orbit specifically to justify the shuttle operation.
The whole discussion of the future of the shuttle program really does become moot at some point. Once Nasa gets flying again, they will fly shuttles back and forth to the space station, until they lose another one. That's going to be the end of the program. When they only have one left,
look here to see for yourself. 29.99 a month on annual contract, 39.99 monthly....
Finally, somebody that understands the concept. Wi-fi is not a business unto itself, it's a value add service that is part of the package for a real business. Take the coffee shop example, who wants to spend 10 bucks to get online for 20 minutes while you drink a coffee you bought for $2 ? It doesn't make sense. On the other hand, the coffee shop owner that has wi-fi in his coffee shop will have more traffic.
For this business though, wide open access doesn't really do the job, because it allows non customers to use and plug up the internet pipe, which is why you need a controlled access sytem of some kind, ie a captive portal setup. problem is, mention 'captive portal' to your average coffee shop owner, and thier eyes go all glossy.
I've installed a couple of these for clients, and they love it. A simple appliance that they can use to control who uses the hotspot, but it doesn't have the fees associated with it like the mainstream ones do, ie no subscriptions. One client gives away the tickets to anybody that buys a meal, and the other one is selling them for a buck. They just printed off a bunch of the access tickets it generates, and keep em at the cash register.
Wi-fi is a value add to an existing real business, and most of the hotspot chains are realizing that. There's a lot more of them showing up on fuckedcompany.com than there is showing up in forbes....
As an interesting exercise, the notebook in question came with XPHome on it, but we required a dual boot XP Pro + Linux for deployment. Including the fussing for device specific hardware drivers, the linux install took about 40 minutes, all across the net, using the 10 meg boot cd to kickstart it. XP Pro + updates took almost 3 hours, and it installed initially from local media. I'm still battling the wireless. It seems windows update detected an updated driver, installed it, and killed the wireless in the process. Now the drivers on the factory supplied cd wont go back in. I'm not impressed, this is after over 2 hours of applying updates, then updates to the updates, then updates to the updates to the updates, then yet another patch on top of that. For giggles, I measured it at the firewall. After a fresh install of XP Pro, I've let this thing install all the updates it seems to need from Windows Update. So far, its downloaded slightly over 600 megs of data, makes me wonder if theres anything original left from that cd it installed off....
I've kind of learned an appreciation for apt today that I never had before. When you do a net install of Sarge, you get the updated packages to begin with, no updates to apply. The experience with XP really demonstrated that, I feel like i've been installing and updateing this notebook all day.
In the end tho, all is pretty equal. Got a notebook that is for the most part functional all around, wireless isn't working in linux, but it's not working in windows either. Oh well, tomorrow is another day...
The chemical weapons used in iran came in 2 forms. The first form was aerial delivery. American supplied chemicals were delivered from american supplied helicopters, originally justified as 'crop dusters'. The second form came as mortar shells. American made chemical shells were fired from german made mortars. The german supplier of the mortars brokered and acted as middle man in the purchase of the shells for those mortars.
Another interesting 'point of interest', there were WMD used during gulf war 2nd edition. They came in the form of anti tank shells made up of depleted uranium, and there is a considerable inventory of those things in iraq today. They are american made, and in use by the american military. Thier radioactive nature has them officially qualified as WMD by the UN doctrines that define such things.
So, it's actually quite easy to find WMD in iraq today, just go look in the munitions supply at all the american locations holding any significant number of tanks.
But, the hypocracy of this whole thing really starts to show now. The american forces in iraq are holding Saddam on various and sundry charges, things like his jailors would torture and kill prisoners. The shoe is on the other foot now, still waiting to see GW in jail cuz his jailors are torturing prisoners. As they say, what's good for the goose...
Apollo never reused the same vehicle for another trip. XPrize requires use of the same vehicle for both trips.
You really need to check the facts before you say things like this. Orbital velocities are in the range of 17,000 mph, and solar system escape is on the order of 28,000 mph. These numbers are close, and I'm to lazy right now to dig up exact numbers, but, google will find it for you if you want to split the hairs. Since the asteroid in question is on a solar orbit, by definition, it's velocity will be at/below 28,000 mph. Now do some simple math.
28,000 mph divided by 3600 sec/hr = 7.7 miles per second.
Atmosphere is generally given to be 60 miles deep.
60 miles divided by 7.7 miles/second = 7.79 seconds
Soo, in the worst case, velocities approaching solar system escape, and a vertical impact, transition time from atmosphere entry to surface impact (ignoring the friction and deceleration from the atmospheric entry) will be AT LEAST 7.79 seconds. A trajectory that is not vertical will increase that time in atmosphere. To achieve your 1 second from entry interface to impact, the item would have to be travelling on the order of 216,000 mph, and arrive on a perfectly vertical trajectory. This combination of trajectory and velocity will pretty much rule out any early detection of such a beast incoming.
As for nuclear missle launch, the rockets attached to nuclear missles do not have enough power to escape earths atmosphere
Again, quite wrong. Ballistic misslies RELY on escaping the atmosphere to achieve ballistic trajectories. What they dont do, is achieve orbit, because that wont result in 'dropping on the target'. Most are capable of achieving orbit by simply lightening the payload.
I suggest then you take the code in question, compile it, run it, and explain to me why it will fail with a stack overflow.
Altho I must admit, I'm slightly amazed. I really thought an average /. reader could write 4 or 5 lines of C that doesn't blow/corrupt the stack. Guess my opinion of /. readers is still a little on the high side...
The Collision Regulations commonly known as ColRegs are adhered to at sea the world over. In areas where local jurasdictions may apply, local regulations are normally derived from the colregs. International courts uphold the ColRegs, and, in the case of contest, insurance companies will 'assign blame' based on them, irrelavent of jurasdiction or lack thereof at the point of incident.
Colregs is very interesting, a set of regulations upheld internationally, and respected by mariners the world over. It hasn't changed much in the last 200 years except to accomodate new classes of vessels as they are invented.
The preface to ColRegs is an interesting read, it basically acknowledges that there are 2 sets of laws in effect on the seas. When the two sets are in conflict, the laws of physics shall always prevail over the ColRegs.
It really is hard to imagine a set of laws that actually makes sense, and is pretty much logical. ColRegs is the exception in this case though. For the most part it's based on logic, and a few arbitrary points just because there was a need for 'definition' in a circumstance where none of the available choices had any compelling reason to be 'right', so one was chosen arbitrarily.
In every other business one has to be concerned about satisfying customers, or losing them, and with that loss comes a loss of revenue. Why should cable networks be any different ? What makes them so special to be deserving of revenue for producing crap the audience doesn't want to see?