I wasn't thinking of my personal dissappointment with 2000, rather that of the customers in general. 2000 has had poor sales. Possibly people using 98/98 SE often make the false assumption that it is in series with theirs and don't see why they should trade up after just 2 years or something like that, but for whatever reason, it's just not much of the market (last I looked). So, this program is mostly useful for running Linux on an XP system. I don't see much difference between "XP or nothing", and "XP or a infrequently encountered variant". If this Linuxoid had run on NT 4.0 through XP, I would have probably seen that as a whole lot different from "Just on XP", but this looks like only a little different instead of a lot. Maybe colinux does run on older NT versions, but the website says 2000 or XP.
Interesting set of alternatives there. Have I stopped beating my wife yet?
I'm seriously saying that person who holds a film is only enjoyable if there's some suspense about whether the hero ultimately wins won't be able to enjoy a film based on real history (unless just possibly, they don't know anything at all about that area of history). Suspense in general can be a good thing for films. A real feel that the hero could be in real danger can be too. Those two are not the exact same thing, but they are related. Making either of those things too important can make lots of good films unenjoyable.
US Law: Patent = 20 years Corporate held Copyright = 95 years Individual held Copyright = life + 70 years. Trademark = unlimited (but must be defended).
(I am not a lawyer. If you need to know this stuff for financial reasons rather than curiosity, please get someone liscenced to practice law and trained in the appropriate specialties. Your state, province or nation may not recognize legal specialization in patent and copyright law. Fnord!)
For those not in on the joke yet, "First, we'll kill all the Lawyers" is from Richard the 3rd, words put into the mouth of a psycho who orders little kids be drowned in a barrel of wine, thus one of Shaxpur's worst villians.
Corporations have legal status as persons in their own right. That's something different than being a representitive of a person, right there. I'm a person. My lawyer is my representitive in some areas. That's two people. If I incorporate, that same lawyer can be hired to represent a third legal individual, that corporation. How can that corporation be nothing more than my representitive, if the law holds the lawyer can be representing only it or only me or both entities, depending on the situation?
"Governments are nothing more than representitives of individuals. Behind every government interest is an individual or collection of individuals who share the same interest.
We need protection against the loss of our freedom of speech and rediculous seizure without compensation, but you lose a lot of credibility when you throw the "government" bogyman on there.
(I am not a lawyer. Lemelson is not a corporation, for whatever that's worth one way or the other. Flipping off the libertarian partyline on Slashdot may get you negative karma.)
I don't think you can blame all, or even most of the support president Bush gets on the religious right. There's a lot of questioning in that group right now, mostly "If the supreme court was on our side all along, how come they still aren't overturning Roe v. Wade.". An increasing portion of the radical religious right thinks the Republican party is just using them.
"Calling a political policy a "war" doesn't make it so."
A wise old First Sgt. I knew once put it like this: "The guys dealing drugs here are called the Bloods. They wear red bandannas, and they don't let anyone else wear them. If this was really a war on drugs, it would be like 1776, and we wouldn't be losing to people dumb enough to wear bright red uniforms."
The "French Resistance" was against Nazi Germany in world war 2. Those nobles with kids were decapitated in the French Revolution. Resistance and Revolution are separated by 150 years or so.
The tea at the Boston tea party was owned by the British East India company. Founding investment in the firm was overwhelmingly from the British Monarchy of 60-80 years previous, and the firm enjoyed a royal monopoly, and employed British military personel as its "para-military" security forces, ergo it was a government front organization.
Sorry, but that's 0 for 2. Your history teacher needs to hunt you down like a dog and make you give your high school diploma back.
It's been a frequent case that the stated goals of a terrorist organization aren't the real goals of its leaders. It's quite possible at least many of the poeple behind Sept. 11 want effects that make the US economy falter much more than they really want religious law to be reinstated in the more secularized muslem nations, or even the elimination of Israel. It's always playing into a criminal's hands to believe anything they say uncritically, and the bigger the criminal, the more likely big lies are part of their methods.
One point though - "even" Canada? The Canadian system has improved their health care a great deal, largely by clearly defined methods such as having a very few simple forms where the US has literally thousands of variants. Not only is it working for them, but the reasons why it works look clear and logical, and should be part of the US's basic operating principles in reforming the US system.
In the current patent climate, it often makes sense to get a patent so somebody else can't, even though there is no plan to charge anyone for its use. One example of this is Richard Garfield's getting a patent on games where a card is turned sideways to show it has been used for the round. Last I checked, other companies are allowed to use this patent without charge, except to include a statement in their rules that the mechanism is patented by its holder.
Of course, this creates situations that might be abused later, but it looks like most cases where a company claims to be establishing a defensive patent, they have stuck to that policy.
Alternately, IBM might be planning to include an exchange of similar patents with other companies - i.e. "use our "paying open source developers" patent, in exchange for us using your patent on "one click inventory transfer", and we'll both declare our respective patents have cash value for the effect it will have on our market pictures. No real money need change hands.".
Maybe IBM has been reviewing its legal positions more than most companies, for some reason or other, and is shoreing up a weak spot in its defenses.
U.S. news on C-Span has been reporting that the Middle east governments are relaxing their previous strict control over citizens using the internet. However, the report only mentioned Iraq and Egypt by nane. What are you seeing from your neighbor states? Do you think these governments mean to stick with a policy of more free speech, or are any of them likely to crack down again in a year or so? Who's likely to be a holdout?
I couldn't agree more that the "machines are people too" element would have been a real improvement if it had been developed well, but isn't much food for thought as watered down as it was.
On the tragic death element, a real non-Hollywood ending isn't a tragic death, it would be a non-heroic death, one that makes the hero a buffoon, an anti-hero, or just another joe. I think there's actually a nod to this. From one set of camera angles, Neo dies a "Life's a bitch - and then you die - face down in the rain - Burmashave" type death (literally). After that, we see the flashy Cruci-fiction stuff, but at least there's that touch.
There's history, and there's fiction. In a film that's entirely fiction, such as Red Dawn, it might make sense to pan it for not having real suspense, because we all know there's gonna be a "happy" ending.
But what happens if we apply this rule to historically accurate films? (Or even approximations). Ooops, can't make a film about Pearl Harbor, everyone knows how that came out, so there won't be any suspense. Ted Turner better drop those plans for the Civil war epics.
Now you've both got a point if Pearl Harbor is given a spin or two to make it more palatable to US audences, but do you want to take that point far enough to make it impossible to enjoy any film with historical roots?
Cold Mountain is actually not nearly bad enough to deserve the treatment, but there have been plenty of past Oscar winners where adding a thousand or so rampaging trolls in mucky loincloths would have been a distinct, if stinky improvement.
It's the general consensus of rocket scientist types that getting to Io or Europa (both moons of Jupiter) in a timeframe allowing humans to go, is a mission for a nuclear propelled craft. It's the general consensus of US politicians that the word nuclear is shorthand for political suicide, (except for a few politicians who think the same about the word Nukular instead). So, it's Mars, for now.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're working from Sturgeons law - "90% of everything is crap". (Short form).
Why auto purge 10-90% each day though? If the site just deletes the worst 2 or 3% each time the storage gets close to full, whether it ends up purging three times an hour some days, or waiting a week other times, the end result will be almost the same, except you're not penalizing the musician who uploaded what would be a 90%+ on most days, but happened to come in on a day with exceptionally good competition and so scored an 89.
Maybe you could move the semi-permanent stuff into a flat out permanent collection every few months instead of just 10 days - that longer time frame would usually result in storage improvements so that moving works into flat out permanent storage wouldn't hurt the website's bottom line, at least on average.
It's a bit disappointing that this won't run on older Windows boxen. After all, one Linux advantage is how some distros will keep older systems useful for years to come, and free users from the continueous upgrade model beloved by MS of late. This runs the risk of becoming Linux yoked to that model, unless its creators specifically preserve Win 2000 compatability, and given how disappointing 2000 was, what are the chances of that? 2 versions down the road, this will probably only run with Longhorn.
This is parallel to the hardware manufacturer's situation. Again, "content" is generally a lot smaller, in terms of both money AND number of jobs provided, than the hardware it runs on. When the MPAA talks about the necessity of hardware based DRM, or "jobs are at risk", that's a realtively small part of the market, insisting that a much larger number of jobs be put at risk if the hardware manufacturer's cant develop effective DRM systems without it hurting their bottom line.
I once had a natural right to copy a work. That's where Jefferson and others said the man made copyright came from, a transfer of a natural right. Now that transfer has been extended to life plus seventy years (which is a lot different from it BEING 70 years). Where did that +70 come from? I never had a natural right to copy anything one minute or one second after I die, so where did that plus 70 part come from?
Copyright stopped being a transfer of my natural right to the author's man made right, and became a right MANUFACTURED by the government. What the Government makes from nothing, they essentially own, so now if the law takes back that right (for example by restoring a fixed term of 50 years), I have lost the guarentee I will get my natural right back - It might become a right the government keeps after the author loses it, by the same example.
Now it may make sense for me to give up my natural right so that the author has a fair chance to make money and will keep writing. I'm not being hurt if that happens. But can I (or you) be hurt if the government has an incentive to grab a right back that it didn't used to have? Even if no one else is being hurt right now, isn't this a risk for the future, which would not otherwise exist?
(That's admittedly a retorical question, see History 101.)
Also, something that afects the author's life plus 70 years probably affects an average of 70 years after my life as well. Let's assume I'm willing to give back a right my children or grandchildren would otherwise have. Do I have a right to give up their natural right and not just my own, even if I want to?
Recently, I've been helping clean up the legal mess left behind by a woman who was leading a 'criminal lifestyle" (Crack whore), until she OD'ed. (Ive been helping with this on behalf of her daughter, whom a close relative is adopting). What does this have to do with the story?
We found that this woman gave obviously false information to everyone she ever got a card from. In a small town of about 10,000 people, where all the streets are named according to an obvious pattern, she still listed made up addresses such as "anytime place" or "1313 Mockingbird lane" on every grocery discount card, blockbuster type movie rental or whatever she got, going back 8 or 9 years. In a town with only one set of numbers for the first three digits of the local phone number, she entered what are apparently completely random strings, and sometimes mixxed letters and numbers, again without anyone apparently looking at them. On one, she listed her work address as 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC. Guess what her job description was?
Not a single business evidently looked at the information she filled in on those forms, and she had over 30 such cards, literally including one for every grocery store in town. She ripped off several of the movie rental places for tapes, was wanted for bad checks and other crimes where an address might particularly matter at various times, and still, no one noticed any of this.
We weren't too surprised that some pharmacies had ignored forged perscriptions and fraudulent signatures, or that she had pawned things with tickets in obviously false names (Her favorites when buying drugs seemed to be astronaut's names, and David Bowman). What we are surprised by is how many business that DIDNT have an incentive to look the other way obviously did so. Many of these lost money from their unconcern rather than made any.
At first glance, it's like this whole system is built to work only for criminals. Still, if only the crooks were doing this, stores are not going to be dumb enough to keep getting stung with bad checks and such. Ergo, lots of otherwise honest people must be filling these things out with just as spurious information.
It's unwise to expect all your partners to stick to the course despite their own individual setbacks, or to always be fully open with you, or to all have the same goals as the project develops that they did when it started.
I'm not sure though, that there is any way to write a contract that protects against SCO type behavior. Once a company keeps on inflicting damage to others despite racking up incredible amounts of eventual damage in return, what can you do to it? "Hah, we're going to sue you for all the assets you have left after 20 other companies finish squeezing your corporate carcass dry."? "Ha, we're going to seek criminal charges - we know the 6,384 years consecutive you already face won't deter you, but the 20 extra we'll get added to it will"?
SCO can only hold off payment for as long as they can afford lawyers. If SCO stock tanks (yes, I'm treating it as a hypothetical), they will probably have to face lawsuits from some of their own disgruntled shareholders as well as appealing IBM's win. 50 Million won't last six months at that rate.
You've given a fair number of facts that people should know about this case, but I do see one point on which I think you are mistaken. That's "creative thinking of where else they might look for evidence".
It's very hard to actually do that without supoenaing people without proper cause. The FBI had been repeatedly chastized for that sort of creative thinking. Any attempts to do that would be gambles, where the FBI would have had to turn up big evidence damned quick or get censured for it and told to back off on that tactic, and the chance of getting a nothing, or a little break that they would never get to use, was a lot higher than of getting that big break. As Alan Sherman supposedly said about Gus Grissom's Mercury flight, "sometimes you get a pooch that just can't be screwed".
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I wasn't thinking of my personal dissappointment with 2000, rather that of the customers in general. 2000 has had poor sales. Possibly people using 98/98 SE often make the false assumption that it is in series with theirs and don't see why they should trade up after just 2 years or something like that, but for whatever reason, it's just not much of the market (last I looked). So, this program is mostly useful for running Linux on an XP system. I don't see much difference between "XP or nothing", and "XP or a infrequently encountered variant". If this Linuxoid had run on NT 4.0 through XP, I would have probably seen that as a whole lot different from "Just on XP", but this looks like only a little different instead of a lot. Maybe colinux does run on older NT versions, but the website says 2000 or XP.
Interesting set of alternatives there. Have I stopped beating my wife yet?
I'm seriously saying that person who holds a film is only enjoyable if there's some suspense about whether the hero ultimately wins won't be able to enjoy a film based on real history (unless just possibly, they don't know anything at all about that area of history). Suspense in general can be a good thing for films. A real feel that the hero could be in real danger can be too. Those two are not the exact same thing, but they are related. Making either of those things too important can make lots of good films unenjoyable.
US Law:
Patent = 20 years
Corporate held Copyright = 95 years
Individual held Copyright = life + 70 years.
Trademark = unlimited (but must be defended).
(I am not a lawyer. If you need to know this stuff for financial reasons rather than curiosity, please get someone liscenced to practice law and trained in the appropriate specialties. Your state, province or nation may not recognize legal specialization in patent and copyright law. Fnord!)
For those not in on the joke yet, "First, we'll kill all the Lawyers" is from Richard the 3rd, words put into the mouth of a psycho who orders little kids be drowned in a barrel of wine, thus one of Shaxpur's worst villians.
Corporations have legal status as persons in their own right. That's something different than being a representitive of a person, right there. I'm a person. My lawyer is my representitive in some areas. That's two people. If I incorporate, that same lawyer can be hired to represent a third legal individual, that corporation. How can that corporation be nothing more than my representitive, if the law holds the lawyer can be representing only it or only me or both entities, depending on the situation?
"Governments are nothing more than representitives of individuals. Behind every government interest is an individual or collection of individuals who share the same interest.
We need protection against the loss of our freedom of speech and rediculous seizure without compensation, but you lose a lot of credibility when you throw the "government" bogyman on there.
(I am not a lawyer. Lemelson is not a corporation, for whatever that's worth one way or the other. Flipping off the libertarian partyline on Slashdot may get you negative karma.)
I don't think you can blame all, or even most of the support president Bush gets on the religious right. There's a lot of questioning in that group right now, mostly "If the supreme court was on our side all along, how come they still aren't overturning Roe v. Wade.". An increasing portion of the radical religious right thinks the Republican party is just using them.
"Calling a political policy a "war" doesn't make it so."
A wise old First Sgt. I knew once put it like this:
"The guys dealing drugs here are called the Bloods. They wear red bandannas, and they don't let anyone else wear them. If this was really a war on drugs, it would be like 1776, and we wouldn't be losing to people dumb enough to wear bright red uniforms."
The "French Resistance" was against Nazi Germany in world war 2. Those nobles with kids were decapitated in the French Revolution. Resistance and Revolution are separated by 150 years or so.
The tea at the Boston tea party was owned by the British East India company. Founding investment in the firm was overwhelmingly from the British Monarchy of 60-80 years previous, and the firm enjoyed a royal monopoly, and employed British military personel as its "para-military" security forces, ergo it was a government front organization.
Sorry, but that's 0 for 2. Your history teacher needs to hunt you down like a dog and make you give your high school diploma back.
It's been a frequent case that the stated goals of a terrorist organization aren't the real goals of its leaders. It's quite possible at least many of the poeple behind Sept. 11 want effects that make the US economy falter much more than they really want religious law to be reinstated in the more secularized muslem nations, or even the elimination of Israel. It's always playing into a criminal's hands to believe anything they say uncritically, and the bigger the criminal, the more likely big lies are part of their methods.
One point though - "even" Canada? The Canadian system has improved their health care a great deal, largely by clearly defined methods such as having a very few simple forms where the US has literally thousands of variants. Not only is it working for them, but the reasons why it works look clear and logical, and should be part of the US's basic operating principles in reforming the US system.
In the current patent climate, it often makes sense to get a patent so somebody else can't, even though there is no plan to charge anyone for its use. One example of this is Richard Garfield's getting a patent on games where a card is turned sideways to show it has been used for the round. Last I checked, other companies are allowed to use this patent without charge, except to include a statement in their rules that the mechanism is patented by its holder.
Of course, this creates situations that might be abused later, but it looks like most cases where a company claims to be establishing a defensive patent, they have stuck to that policy.
Alternately, IBM might be planning to include an exchange of similar patents with other companies - i.e. "use our "paying open source developers" patent, in exchange for us using your patent on "one click inventory transfer", and we'll both declare our respective patents have cash value for the effect it will have on our market pictures. No real money need change hands.".
Maybe IBM has been reviewing its legal positions more than most companies, for some reason or other, and is shoreing up a weak spot in its defenses.
U.S. news on C-Span has been reporting that the Middle east governments are relaxing their previous strict control over citizens using the internet. However, the report only mentioned Iraq and Egypt by nane. What are you seeing from your neighbor states? Do you think these governments mean to stick with a policy of more free speech, or are any of them likely to crack down again in a year or so? Who's likely to be a holdout?
I couldn't agree more that the "machines are people too" element would have been a real improvement if it had been developed well, but isn't much food for thought as watered down as it was.
On the tragic death element, a real non-Hollywood ending isn't a tragic death, it would be a non-heroic death, one that makes the hero a buffoon, an anti-hero, or just another joe. I think there's actually a nod to this. From one set of camera angles, Neo dies a "Life's a bitch - and then you die - face down in the rain - Burmashave" type death (literally). After that, we see the flashy Cruci-fiction stuff, but at least there's that touch.
There's history, and there's fiction. In a film that's entirely fiction, such as Red Dawn, it might make sense to pan it for not having real suspense, because we all know there's gonna be a "happy" ending.
But what happens if we apply this rule to historically accurate films? (Or even approximations). Ooops, can't make a film about Pearl Harbor, everyone knows how that came out, so there won't be any suspense. Ted Turner better drop those plans for the Civil war epics.
Now you've both got a point if Pearl Harbor is given a spin or two to make it more palatable to US audences, but do you want to take that point far enough to make it impossible to enjoy any film with historical roots?
Cold Mountain is actually not nearly bad enough to deserve the treatment, but there have been plenty of past Oscar winners where adding a thousand or so rampaging trolls in mucky loincloths would have been a distinct, if stinky improvement.
It's the general consensus of rocket scientist types that getting to Io or Europa (both moons of Jupiter) in a timeframe allowing humans to go, is a mission for a nuclear propelled craft.
It's the general consensus of US politicians that the word nuclear is shorthand for political suicide, (except for a few politicians who think the same about the word Nukular instead).
So, it's Mars, for now.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're working from Sturgeons law - "90% of everything is crap". (Short form).
Why auto purge 10-90% each day though? If the site just deletes the worst 2 or 3% each time the storage gets close to full, whether it ends up purging three times an hour some days, or waiting a week other times, the end result will be almost the same, except you're not penalizing the musician who uploaded what would be a 90%+ on most days, but happened to come in on a day with exceptionally good competition and so scored an 89.
Maybe you could move the semi-permanent stuff into a flat out permanent collection every few months instead of just 10 days - that longer time frame would usually result in storage improvements so that moving works into flat out permanent storage wouldn't hurt the website's bottom line, at least on average.
It's a bit disappointing that this won't run on older Windows boxen. After all, one Linux advantage is how some distros will keep older systems useful for years to come, and free users from the continueous upgrade model beloved by MS of late. This runs the risk of becoming Linux yoked to that model, unless its creators specifically preserve Win 2000 compatability, and given how disappointing 2000 was, what are the chances of that? 2 versions down the road, this will probably only run with Longhorn.
Arizona has always been considered surreal by the reat of the nation. That beats what they have always considered Wisconsin.
This is a bad thing, right?
This is parallel to the hardware manufacturer's situation. Again, "content" is generally a lot smaller, in terms of both money AND number of jobs provided, than the hardware it runs on. When the MPAA talks about the necessity of hardware based DRM, or "jobs are at risk", that's a realtively small part of the market, insisting that a much larger number of jobs be put at risk if the hardware manufacturer's cant develop effective DRM systems without it hurting their bottom line.
I once had a natural right to copy a work. That's where Jefferson and others said the man made copyright came from, a transfer of a natural right.
Now that transfer has been extended to life plus seventy years (which is a lot different from it BEING 70 years). Where did that +70 come from? I never had a natural right to copy anything one minute or one second after I die, so where did that plus 70 part come from?
Copyright stopped being a transfer of my natural right to the author's man made right, and became a right MANUFACTURED by the government. What the Government makes from nothing, they essentially own, so now if the law takes back that right (for example by restoring a fixed term of 50 years), I have lost the guarentee I will get my natural right back - It might become a right the government keeps after the author loses it, by the same example.
Now it may make sense for me to give up my natural right so that the author has a fair chance to make money and will keep writing. I'm not being hurt if that happens. But can I (or you) be hurt if the government has an incentive to grab a right back that it didn't used to have? Even if no one else is being hurt right now, isn't this a risk for the future, which would not otherwise exist?
(That's admittedly a retorical question, see History 101.)
Also, something that afects the author's life plus 70 years probably affects an average of 70 years after my life as well. Let's assume I'm willing to give back a right my children or grandchildren would otherwise have. Do I have a right to give up their natural right and not just my own, even if I want to?
Recently, I've been helping clean up the legal mess left behind by a woman who was leading a 'criminal lifestyle" (Crack whore), until she OD'ed. (Ive been helping with this on behalf of her daughter, whom a close relative is adopting). What does this have to do with the story?
We found that this woman gave obviously false information to everyone she ever got a card from. In a small town of about 10,000 people, where all the streets are named according to an obvious pattern, she still listed made up addresses such as "anytime place" or "1313 Mockingbird lane" on every grocery discount card, blockbuster type movie rental or whatever she got, going back 8 or 9 years. In a town with only one set of numbers for the first three digits of the local phone number, she entered what are apparently completely random strings, and sometimes mixxed letters and numbers, again without anyone apparently looking at them. On one, she listed her work address as 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC. Guess what her job description was?
Not a single business evidently looked at the information she filled in on those forms, and she had over 30 such cards, literally including one for every grocery store in town. She ripped off several of the movie rental places for tapes, was wanted for bad checks and other crimes where an address might particularly matter at various times, and still, no one noticed any of this.
We weren't too surprised that some pharmacies had ignored forged perscriptions and fraudulent signatures, or that she had pawned things with tickets in obviously false names (Her favorites when buying drugs seemed to be astronaut's names, and David Bowman). What we are surprised by is how many business that DIDNT have an incentive to look the other way obviously did so. Many of these lost money from their unconcern rather than made any.
At first glance, it's like this whole system is built to work only for criminals. Still, if only the crooks were doing this, stores are not going to be dumb enough to keep getting stung with bad checks and such. Ergo, lots of otherwise honest people must be filling these things out with just as spurious information.
It's unwise to expect all your partners to stick to the course despite their own individual setbacks, or to always be fully open with you, or to all have the same goals as the project develops that they did when it started.
I'm not sure though, that there is any way to write a contract that protects against SCO type behavior. Once a company keeps on inflicting damage to others despite racking up incredible amounts of eventual damage in return, what can you do to it?
"Hah, we're going to sue you for all the assets you have left after 20 other companies finish squeezing your corporate carcass dry."? "Ha, we're going to seek criminal charges - we know the 6,384 years consecutive you already face won't deter you, but the 20 extra we'll get added to it will"?
SCO can only hold off payment for as long as they can afford lawyers. If SCO stock tanks (yes, I'm treating it as a hypothetical), they will probably have to face lawsuits from some of their own disgruntled shareholders as well as appealing IBM's win. 50 Million won't last six months at that rate.
You've given a fair number of facts that people should know about this case, but I do see one point on which I think you are mistaken. That's "creative thinking of where else they might look for evidence".
It's very hard to actually do that without supoenaing people without proper cause. The FBI had been repeatedly chastized for that sort of creative thinking. Any attempts to do that would be gambles, where the FBI would have had to turn up big evidence damned quick or get censured for it and told to back off on that tactic, and the chance of getting a nothing, or a little break that they would never get to use, was a lot higher than of getting that big break. As Alan Sherman supposedly said about Gus Grissom's Mercury flight, "sometimes you get a pooch that just can't be screwed".