Secretary: "Sir, The political science majors from the local university are here and have waited the mandatory hour. Shall I send them in?"
Politician: "Give me two minutes for my aide to leave by the back door and to zip up my pants."
As the students enter, Politician: standard politician greeting meaning absolutely nothing.
Prof: "Thanks for agreeing to meet us. It will help my students learn so much. They will set up everything and then we will begin."
Politician: "What are all those things?"
Prof: "Well, my students rarely have an opportunity to examine a politician and do a dissection. We couldn't pass up the opportunity. Students, please prepare him."
But people aren't expected to run 24 hours individually. And like people have said, there are complications with an internationally aware system in both cases. So you have to pick your poison. People typically choose the existing standard where noon, 1200, represents approximately the time the sun is directly overhead. For most people, who only deal with their local area, this works quite well. If you have to do command and control of a military, or even business, that operates, literally, around the world, then you tend to use UTC. Both systems truly are necessary, and folks who have to, will, change between both at will.
You may very well be correct. But I would classify it as the tortoise and the hare race, with a jump over a chasm required. The US (hare) can make the jump, but isn't interested or willing (money or risk) to do the 'interesting' missions; while the Chinese have the interest, but not the speed and ability to make the jump. Maybe someday that tortoise will evolve, but beyond the slow progress and basic missions the Chinese are doing right now, they're not going to get very far. They could catch up to exactly where the US and Russia are right now though with manned missions within 20 years definitely. At current rates, US and Russia will have stagnated and may be worse off in 20 years.
You are correct that the best solution is for the end user to be smart. However, just because you shouldn't have twenty dollars bills taped to your suit when you go walking down an urban street, doesn't mean that the law shouldn't punish the crook who will rob you. Society and civil behavior exists because we try to prove Darwin wrong by helping the morons survive and smacking down the predatory.
Well we all know how well governments takes care of those kids, so I guess we just let all the kids have a "Lord of the Flies" situation. Perhaps the ones who survive will be better off anyways.
Yes many of the baby boomers are approaching retirement, but can they afford to retire? That may delay the effect 5-10 years. How many companies are going to work their boomer employees to death?
Absoultely. DS-9 started off weak, but once the long plot lines were developed (more than one) the show became a great ones. Not only that, the magic reset button can totally ruin a show (mucking about with time for example to reset for example. SG-1, for example, has done this at least twice, and both times they did not fit well with the rest of the plot.
In a book, that's what can make a great book, is a well-defined plot line that goes from start to end. We should expect that of a series (any, not just sci-fi), not just the individual shows that make up a series.
Sliders was a show that had a magic reset button (the slide at the end) but tried to develop a long plot line (besides the slide home) , but didn't quite succeed. I have heard that network executives also got involved to be able to switch the order of the shows, which is why after the first couple shows you never saw the lead-in to the next show. You instead, possibly got a tease starter or ender: hints about what happened on the previous planet, but wasn't an episode or hints about the next planet, also not an episode. That plus the main characters leaving were a sure demise.
Stargate and Stargate Atlantis don't focus on that underlying plot line, but it is there. Not necessarily linking every show, but it does provide some development of the characters. Case in point, the 'two hour season finales' for both the past two weeks. Two one-hour shows, the second of which was a finale. Little linking, between them.
Battlestar Galactica focuses on it, where nearly every show depends heavily on the previous one. Makes you need to see each episode when it runs.
So true about actual soaps' reset buttons. At least the sci-fi resets are a little more plausible (though I still hate most of the time travel ones).
Smart people use technology to speed up activities they don't like, so that they can spend more time on the activities they do like. To the untrained eye, this may appear to be laziness, but instead it is just good time management. Technology can provide order of magnitude decreases in time spent. Smarter people will make it appear to only be reduced a small amount ("The Scotty effect") so that a job that used to take 8 hours a day, will be shortened to an hour by the smart person, who will tell his boss that he's reduced it to 7 hours around the time that performance is evaluated. This must be carefully guarded because the 'management' %$^@%# (expletive deleted) will then try to claim all the benefits, reduce your pay anyways (to justify his pay increase) and add 4 hours of work a day. As much as possible avoid this to continue to apply those 7 hours to your favorite 'lazy' activity: slashdot, WOW, Quake, whatever
Well if we are going to prevent some people from having children (pre-aborting, without the killing, just the sterilization) we need to seriously consider the post case on a lot of folks, who were missed before we became 'enlightened'. The 80+ trimester abortions. Those children, now adults, who just should never have been born or did not learn how to play nice with others, but still want to play. Because only the truly effective, and final, sterilization will help society with these folks. Because if we do solve the mortality problem, I don't want to deal with these folks for eternity.
That's why Boeing teamed with Ukraine and I believe a Netherlands organization to do Sea Launch from the Equator. Ukraine supplied the rocket (Zenit) and Netherlands supplied the support ship and launch platform. Boeing provides the operations. But it is definitely not capable of heavy lift. Our only real choice then is to invade Brazil.
Weather is not the only concern, though the Cape Canaveral does have more weather issues than most (Central Florida leads the US in lightning strikes). You also have to worry about overflight. So that leaves east or west coast. West coast is limited to basically polar orbits, useful for some missions, though they have to deal with stricter environmental laws. That leaves the east coast for most missions. For fuel the best location is as south as you can get. Historically Cape Canaveral is fairly safe, compared to the rest of the east coast south of about Virginia. Last year was as bad as it has been for the area, with several near misses, which did some damage to the launch sites and support facilities. A direct hit from a storm like Katrina on any launch site would ruin the site for some time.
Launch from New Mexico as the state has proposed, and the weather problems almost completely go away. But in our lawsuit happy society, think about how many people would file if a rocket has just a one in a million chance of falling on them? Florida is about the best launch site. However, every site where the parts were made or assembled was chosen to ensure maximum senatorial support. Just check every major military purchase (B-2, Joint Strike Fighter, etc.) Same politics.
I'm sorry. That's like saying "Because the user didn't click in PRECISELY the right spot the program crashed" or "because the assembly tech didn't cut to the 1/4" tolerance required for this car, it shook itself apart". If, at the end of the day, you have humans at either end of the system, you need to design for them. How they do their work and how they will use it. If you get frustrated that they won't behave like a computer, then the problem is with you -- not the people.
You do have a good point; however, if the human workers ignore the big label saying "FRAGILE" and toss the thing onto its destination, your comment is defending their actions because we didn't think of the 'human' nature. If their job is to load the bags correctly, then they need to load the bags correctly. If they do that, and the system doesn't work, then it is most definitely time to blame the designers, the machine, whatever.
Since I am very tired, I could hardly focus on any of the pictures, let alone note which ones were sideways. One problem with their hypothesis is that the hand stood out to me not because it was a gory picture, because I couldn't even tell it was a hand or anything else for that matter, let alone gory. It stood out because of the red. Due to image persistence and the short time frame, I never had the chance to see the next picture before the following picture was presented. Instead of trying to link this experiment to psychological reasons of emotions, perhaps art students should be in charge and apply it to psychological reasons of attention grabbers--maybe marketing students would also be interested.
I had some idiot pass me doing about 20mph over the speed limit (55mph). He tried changing lanes as much as possible to gain an advantage, in fairly heavy traffic, for this area. I stopped paying attention to him. About 8 miles later I reached my exit and chose the left lane of two, who was in the right lane but the speed demon. I had continued travelling at the speed limit or less due to traffic, and eventually gotten ahead of him. I had such a good laugh as I passed him, though I was concerned that the idiot would cause a wreck as he caught up to me again, as traffic had lightened up.
I have the opposite problem. I want a car with good gas mileage, since it is for commuting. For the family we have a minivan. But since I am 6', most high mpg cars are designed to put my head thru the roof. Including all the cheaper hybrids. The more luxurious hybrids were more accomodating, at a price. I could fit I suppose if I was willing to lean back further, but since I am the driver, I want to be aware of my surroundings and that includes sitting upright. In the end I chose a Scion xB as a compromise over all my requirements (primarily cost, fuel efficiency, fitting me)
While I was looking, a car that surprised me by actually maybe fitting me was the Mini Cooper, with its seat lowered all the way to the floor with the seat pushed all the way back. Very surprising in such a small car. Your average NBA player is not going to be driving it though.
I think the key is to define Adults Only as 80+ as I am still not convinced that 65 year olds are mature enough yet to handle the sexual themes involved. If you are not over 80, you'll have to get your adult parents (over 80, grandparents if you have to) to get it for you. After all we are just protecting someone's child. It's just for the greater good.
I tend to agree that the speed limit is set for the lowest common denominator. However, if the speed limit is 55 for a long straightaway and you have people doing 55 and along comes the guy doing 85, 'because he's a good driver', that 30 mph differential is where problems occur. So if most of the the traffic is driving the speed limit, exceeding the speed limit by 30 mph. Having said that, here in Central Florida, most driver end up doing 10-15 miles per hour above the speed limit on the many straight roads here. Then the person doing the speed limit ends up being the roadblock that causes the problem. That person is typically over 60, as they also are the ones you find doing 25 in a 35 in this region, barely seeing over the steering wheel.
Well the smarter recruiters should recognize when they aren't going to get a sale. Their job is tough enough, especially these days. They need to focus their energies on the ones who may join, they don't have time for chasing those folks who aren't going to join. Unfortunately, for those not smart enough, they're probably not even fazed by a recruit who wouldn't make it through the processing station, so even homosexuality probably wouldn't do it. Even a felony conviction on your record might not stop him.
But recruiters aren't nearly as bad as the pushy car salesmen. They really don't understand the meaning of the word NO, and even "How thick is your damn skull?", and "I'm just looking" apparently translates to "Bend me over one of these cars with your financing opportunities"
Disney's making it harder to get into their parks? About time. Maybe now you won't have to wait over an hour to get on a damn ride. I am just waiting for the time when Disney offers home equity loans at the gate to pay for your time at the park.
It may have been that low, but post-Challenger I believe it was closer to 1 in 25, much of it due to the SRBs and Air Force history with SRBs. Note the Air Force only really cared deeply for the first 125 seconds as that is when it posed a risk to the American public and fell within the 'launch category' that the Air Force is responsible for. So that 1 in 25 for early Shuttle launches really only applies to the first 125 seconds. Landing was entirely NASA's purview.
A good deal of it is also due to the main engines as well. See this web site
Also this was earlier in NASA's history, when they had much fewer launches. Air Force has adjusted their earlier estimates to lower failure rates due to Shuttle successes. Two failures in 113 launches, in manned spaceflight, is actually pretty damn good. If NASA had better management, they could have achieved 113 successes in 113 launches.
a couple years ago, the Eastern Range implemented some measures to keep the pbulic better informed, so that boats, and aircraft, would not be a problem on launch day. Also, range instrumentation scrubs are almost a thing of the past (delays in count, different story) Now, almost all scrubs are weather or launch vehicle related.
It is a northerly launch so it may good viewing all the way up to Daytona Beach. Titusville along US 1 will likely be packed, so get your spot early. Not sure how KSC handles the tickets and all that but the KSC Visitor Center will have decent viewing and a few thousand people. KSC plans to allow about 10,000 on the causeway (they used to allow much more) If you know the right people at KSC, you might even get invited to the Banana Creek Viewing site, about 3-4 miles west of the pad. Jetty Park will probably be packed too. Even the Beeline (Beachline) will be lined full with viewers.
I have talked with some NASA folks and trust me they do know it's launching on the 13t, but it is, as you said, not a Friday. However, if you look at NASA's history with the Shuttle, I'd be more worried about a January launch.
I'll be watching it live, I give it at least a 99% chance of making it to orbit, at least 98% of making it back.
Here at Cape Canaveral there are several letters that get used. L (only for minus count, up till coming out of the final hold point) is the actual time till planned launch time. L of course for launch. R has also been used for days prior to launch for Titans. All of these times are based on preparation actions. Some are based on time before launch. Some, you don't want to accomplish until you get past a milestone, which are what the built-in holds, and holdpoints are there for.
Slashdot Mirror
Secretary: "Sir, The political science majors from the local university are here and have waited the mandatory hour. Shall I send them in?"
Politician: "Give me two minutes for my aide to leave by the back door and to zip up my pants."
As the students enter, Politician: standard politician greeting meaning absolutely nothing.
Prof: "Thanks for agreeing to meet us. It will help my students learn so much. They will set up everything and then we will begin."
Politician: "What are all those things?"
Prof: "Well, my students rarely have an opportunity to examine a politician and do a dissection. We couldn't pass up the opportunity. Students, please prepare him."
Politician: "Wait! Wait! Noooo!"
But people aren't expected to run 24 hours individually. And like people have said, there are complications with an internationally aware system in both cases. So you have to pick your poison. People typically choose the existing standard where noon, 1200, represents approximately the time the sun is directly overhead. For most people, who only deal with their local area, this works quite well. If you have to do command and control of a military, or even business, that operates, literally, around the world, then you tend to use UTC. Both systems truly are necessary, and folks who have to, will, change between both at will.
You may very well be correct. But I would classify it as the tortoise and the hare race, with a jump over a chasm required. The US (hare) can make the jump, but isn't interested or willing (money or risk) to do the 'interesting' missions; while the Chinese have the interest, but not the speed and ability to make the jump. Maybe someday that tortoise will evolve, but beyond the slow progress and basic missions the Chinese are doing right now, they're not going to get very far. They could catch up to exactly where the US and Russia are right now though with manned missions within 20 years definitely. At current rates, US and Russia will have stagnated and may be worse off in 20 years.
You are correct that the best solution is for the end user to be smart. However, just because you shouldn't have twenty dollars bills taped to your suit when you go walking down an urban street, doesn't mean that the law shouldn't punish the crook who will rob you. Society and civil behavior exists because we try to prove Darwin wrong by helping the morons survive and smacking down the predatory.
Well we all know how well governments takes care of those kids, so I guess we just let all the kids have a "Lord of the Flies" situation. Perhaps the ones who survive will be better off anyways.
Yes many of the baby boomers are approaching retirement, but can they afford to retire? That may delay the effect 5-10 years. How many companies are going to work their boomer employees to death?
Absoultely. DS-9 started off weak, but once the long plot lines were developed (more than one) the show became a great ones. Not only that, the magic reset button can totally ruin a show (mucking about with time for example to reset for example. SG-1, for example, has done this at least twice, and both times they did not fit well with the rest of the plot.
In a book, that's what can make a great book, is a well-defined plot line that goes from start to end. We should expect that of a series (any, not just sci-fi), not just the individual shows that make up a series.
Sliders was a show that had a magic reset button (the slide at the end) but tried to develop a long plot line (besides the slide home) , but didn't quite succeed. I have heard that network executives also got involved to be able to switch the order of the shows, which is why after the first couple shows you never saw the lead-in to the next show. You instead, possibly got a tease starter or ender: hints about what happened on the previous planet, but wasn't an episode or hints about the next planet, also not an episode. That plus the main characters leaving were a sure demise.
Stargate and Stargate Atlantis don't focus on that underlying plot line, but it is there. Not necessarily linking every show, but it does provide some development of the characters. Case in point, the 'two hour season finales' for both the past two weeks. Two one-hour shows, the second of which was a finale. Little linking, between them.
Battlestar Galactica focuses on it, where nearly every show depends heavily on the previous one. Makes you need to see each episode when it runs.
So true about actual soaps' reset buttons. At least the sci-fi resets are a little more plausible (though I still hate most of the time travel ones).
Smart people use technology to speed up activities they don't like, so that they can spend more time on the activities they do like. To the untrained eye, this may appear to be laziness, but instead it is just good time management. Technology can provide order of magnitude decreases in time spent. Smarter people will make it appear to only be reduced a small amount ("The Scotty effect") so that a job that used to take 8 hours a day, will be shortened to an hour by the smart person, who will tell his boss that he's reduced it to 7 hours around the time that performance is evaluated. This must be carefully guarded because the 'management' %$^@%# (expletive deleted) will then try to claim all the benefits, reduce your pay anyways (to justify his pay increase) and add 4 hours of work a day. As much as possible avoid this to continue to apply those 7 hours to your favorite 'lazy' activity: slashdot, WOW, Quake, whatever
Well if we are going to prevent some people from having children (pre-aborting, without the killing, just the sterilization) we need to seriously consider the post case on a lot of folks, who were missed before we became 'enlightened'. The 80+ trimester abortions. Those children, now adults, who just should never have been born or did not learn how to play nice with others, but still want to play. Because only the truly effective, and final, sterilization will help society with these folks. Because if we do solve the mortality problem, I don't want to deal with these folks for eternity.
Weather is not the only concern, though the Cape Canaveral does have more weather issues than most (Central Florida leads the US in lightning strikes). You also have to worry about overflight. So that leaves east or west coast. West coast is limited to basically polar orbits, useful for some missions, though they have to deal with stricter environmental laws. That leaves the east coast for most missions. For fuel the best location is as south as you can get. Historically Cape Canaveral is fairly safe, compared to the rest of the east coast south of about Virginia. Last year was as bad as it has been for the area, with several near misses, which did some damage to the launch sites and support facilities. A direct hit from a storm like Katrina on any launch site would ruin the site for some time.
Launch from New Mexico as the state has proposed, and the weather problems almost completely go away. But in our lawsuit happy society, think about how many people would file if a rocket has just a one in a million chance of falling on them? Florida is about the best launch site. However, every site where the parts were made or assembled was chosen to ensure maximum senatorial support. Just check every major military purchase (B-2, Joint Strike Fighter, etc.) Same politics.
Since I am very tired, I could hardly focus on any of the pictures, let alone note which ones were sideways. One problem with their hypothesis is that the hand stood out to me not because it was a gory picture, because I couldn't even tell it was a hand or anything else for that matter, let alone gory. It stood out because of the red. Due to image persistence and the short time frame, I never had the chance to see the next picture before the following picture was presented. Instead of trying to link this experiment to psychological reasons of emotions, perhaps art students should be in charge and apply it to psychological reasons of attention grabbers--maybe marketing students would also be interested.
I had some idiot pass me doing about 20mph over the speed limit (55mph). He tried changing lanes as much as possible to gain an advantage, in fairly heavy traffic, for this area. I stopped paying attention to him. About 8 miles later I reached my exit and chose the left lane of two, who was in the right lane but the speed demon. I had continued travelling at the speed limit or less due to traffic, and eventually gotten ahead of him. I had such a good laugh as I passed him, though I was concerned that the idiot would cause a wreck as he caught up to me again, as traffic had lightened up.
I have the opposite problem. I want a car with good gas mileage, since it is for commuting. For the family we have a minivan. But since I am 6', most high mpg cars are designed to put my head thru the roof. Including all the cheaper hybrids. The more luxurious hybrids were more accomodating, at a price. I could fit I suppose if I was willing to lean back further, but since I am the driver, I want to be aware of my surroundings and that includes sitting upright. In the end I chose a Scion xB as a compromise over all my requirements (primarily cost, fuel efficiency, fitting me) While I was looking, a car that surprised me by actually maybe fitting me was the Mini Cooper, with its seat lowered all the way to the floor with the seat pushed all the way back. Very surprising in such a small car. Your average NBA player is not going to be driving it though.
I think the key is to define Adults Only as 80+ as I am still not convinced that 65 year olds are mature enough yet to handle the sexual themes involved. If you are not over 80, you'll have to get your adult parents (over 80, grandparents if you have to) to get it for you. After all we are just protecting someone's child. It's just for the greater good.
I tend to agree that the speed limit is set for the lowest common denominator. However, if the speed limit is 55 for a long straightaway and you have people doing 55 and along comes the guy doing 85, 'because he's a good driver', that 30 mph differential is where problems occur. So if most of the the traffic is driving the speed limit, exceeding the speed limit by 30 mph. Having said that, here in Central Florida, most driver end up doing 10-15 miles per hour above the speed limit on the many straight roads here. Then the person doing the speed limit ends up being the roadblock that causes the problem. That person is typically over 60, as they also are the ones you find doing 25 in a 35 in this region, barely seeing over the steering wheel.
Well the smarter recruiters should recognize when they aren't going to get a sale. Their job is tough enough, especially these days. They need to focus their energies on the ones who may join, they don't have time for chasing those folks who aren't going to join. Unfortunately, for those not smart enough, they're probably not even fazed by a recruit who wouldn't make it through the processing station, so even homosexuality probably wouldn't do it. Even a felony conviction on your record might not stop him. But recruiters aren't nearly as bad as the pushy car salesmen. They really don't understand the meaning of the word NO, and even "How thick is your damn skull?", and "I'm just looking" apparently translates to "Bend me over one of these cars with your financing opportunities"
Disney's making it harder to get into their parks? About time. Maybe now you won't have to wait over an hour to get on a damn ride. I am just waiting for the time when Disney offers home equity loans at the gate to pay for your time at the park.
It may have been that low, but post-Challenger I believe it was closer to 1 in 25, much of it due to the SRBs and Air Force history with SRBs. Note the Air Force only really cared deeply for the first 125 seconds as that is when it posed a risk to the American public and fell within the 'launch category' that the Air Force is responsible for. So that 1 in 25 for early Shuttle launches really only applies to the first 125 seconds. Landing was entirely NASA's purview. A good deal of it is also due to the main engines as well. See this web site Also this was earlier in NASA's history, when they had much fewer launches. Air Force has adjusted their earlier estimates to lower failure rates due to Shuttle successes. Two failures in 113 launches, in manned spaceflight, is actually pretty damn good. If NASA had better management, they could have achieved 113 successes in 113 launches.
This one (external tank) is going to land hundreds of miles east of New Zealand in the Pacific.
a couple years ago, the Eastern Range implemented some measures to keep the pbulic better informed, so that boats, and aircraft, would not be a problem on launch day. Also, range instrumentation scrubs are almost a thing of the past (delays in count, different story) Now, almost all scrubs are weather or launch vehicle related.
It is a northerly launch so it may good viewing all the way up to Daytona Beach. Titusville along US 1 will likely be packed, so get your spot early. Not sure how KSC handles the tickets and all that but the KSC Visitor Center will have decent viewing and a few thousand people. KSC plans to allow about 10,000 on the causeway (they used to allow much more) If you know the right people at KSC, you might even get invited to the Banana Creek Viewing site, about 3-4 miles west of the pad. Jetty Park will probably be packed too. Even the Beeline (Beachline) will be lined full with viewers.
I have talked with some NASA folks and trust me they do know it's launching on the 13t, but it is, as you said, not a Friday. However, if you look at NASA's history with the Shuttle, I'd be more worried about a January launch. I'll be watching it live, I give it at least a 99% chance of making it to orbit, at least 98% of making it back.
Here at Cape Canaveral there are several letters that get used. L (only for minus count, up till coming out of the final hold point) is the actual time till planned launch time. L of course for launch. R has also been used for days prior to launch for Titans. All of these times are based on preparation actions. Some are based on time before launch. Some, you don't want to accomplish until you get past a milestone, which are what the built-in holds, and holdpoints are there for.
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/fr ances.html
VAB already been hit by a hurricane, and been damaged but still standing.