A lot of us in Florida watched it live with a Mark 1 Eyeball. It was routine to watch the TV coverage and wait for the main engines to fire then step outside to watch the launch. This is from the Orlando area about 50 miles from the coast so the view is pretty good.
I remember watching it go and then seeing it explode, at least that is what it looked like, and watching the boosters continue to climb and start to twist. I ran back inside and grabbed a camera to take a picture.
What amazed me is that instead of building a better system they continued to use the shuttle system. I had hoped that by now we would be using single stage to orbit vehicles with powered decent. One promising system was scrapped, believe it was the delta clipper. They had a 1/3 scaled down version actually flying. The last test flight they had a problem with the landing gear and it tipped over. The scaled down version did not go to orbit but had proven the take off and landing capabilities. Found this link to this vehicle. http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/x-33/dc-xa.htm
It is a shame they did not continue the development of this system. It has several successful take offs and landings and could have been developed to the full scale system. But instead we are going to go back to the throw away rockets and capsule recovery systems used back in the 60's. Let's hope that one of the commercial space companies will do what NASA and the government have been unwilling to do, build a reliable and finacially feasible system for getting off the planet. Earth orbit is good for a start. From there we can jump to the Moon or other places in the system.
Very few if any will be produced or get where they are intended. The U.N. is endorsing this because they smell a way to get lots of money just like the oil for food program. Just another scam.
You did not answer the question. Where does the money for the dole come from? If you are small business owner then I would think you would know. It would come from you. And if you doubled the work force you would not only have that many more people out of work, but those that have jobs would be displaced by those that are willing to work for less. There would be a huge churn in the workforce until that equilibrium was reached. Companies would be able to replace expensive workers with cheaper labor and require the same or better skill levels.
This happened a few years ago when the dotcom bubble burst. There were companies out there hiring highly skilled IT people with many years of experience for rates that had been starting rates for people just out of college.
As to your other idea of doubling eveyrones salary. The result would be a stagering inflation rate. Not only would prices soar they would exceed the difference in everyones new salary. As a result the poor would be poorer. The rich would be less rich but would still live very well.
And you still have not laid out a plan to get from here to the utopia you describe. Sudden changes as you have proposed would cause a catastrophic collapse of what we call civilization.
And while true that the dollar has not been tied to a silver or gold standard for many many years it is not something that can be printed in huge volumes and distributed without impact to the economy. If that was true, printing your own money or hacking your bank account to add a few zeroes would not be a problem.
Where do you expect to get all this money to pay everyone for doing nothing? Run some numbers, there about 300 million here now, or do you plan to do this world wide? Then change that to 6+ billion. And if you are giving that much money to everyone how much are you going to shrink the workforce? There will be large numbers of people that will just take the dole and not work. Which is what you are aiming for. And at what age do people start collecting the dole? And you are going to include health care with that right?
Once you find out how the real world works you will see that what you describe is a fantasy. Remember, Star Trek is fiction. You can never get enough altruistic people together to create such a society.
how do you Slashdot readers keep up with your continuing education, while still maintaining a personal life? Is it naive to try to leave my work at work?
New to IT, huh. There is no life outside of work. Once you are put in charge of a network or production application and you are placed on call you are expected to be available 24/7/365. Most operations run with as few people as possible. So plan for it, keep an extra bottle of water at your desk and have someone else take care of your pets, or get rid of the pets. You won't be home that much to take care of them.
Makes that job at the fast food restraunt sound good now doesn't it? "Want fries with that?" you can leave at work. A network down or a crashed server you can't. Well you can, but you won't be going back to that job anytime soon.
The part you seem to miss that it would cost HUGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY to automate to that point. Companies today live or die in 3 month intervals. If they don't out perform expectations every three months the stock holders and the market punish the company. No company will ever attempt such automation because of the impact it would have on the bottom line.
But lets assume for the moment that most companies do attempt to automate to the point that no one is working at those companies. The immediate impact would be hundreds of thousands of people if not millions thrown out of work. And as such companies will start to go out of business since no one will be able to buy their goods. This will cause a spiral effect as more companies that supply goods to those companies go out of business throwing yet more people out of work. This would devistate the economy beyond repair. And destroy millions of famlies.
Consider the case of cook at KFC. Any reason it CAN'T be automated rather than WON'T be because there are plenty of people desperate for ANY job. Do you think KFC would just fold the tents and go home if they couldn't find people willing to cook for minimum wage?
I don't think every task in the kitchen could automated. And those that could would cost huge amounts of money. And there would be the downside if such jobs could be fully automated, you put tens of thousands of people out of work. The reality is that every one can not grow to be white collar business people. There are those that "Do you want fries with that?" is about all they will ever be. And quite frankly some if not most of those white collar jobs are not that great either. Shuffling paper work and negotiating with internal groups to get things "done" is not that satisfying.
And probably the worst thing you can do is take something you love to do and turn it into a job. Which happens the first time HAVE to get up and start doing it.
I suspect that if we raise our standards (and make it economically POSSIBLE for people to raise their standards) we'll find that many of the hated jobs are not actually required (or in some cases society would be better off if they were eliminated) or could be modified until they become enjoyable to a sufficient number of people.
Have you ever watched that show on Discover Channel, Dirty Jobs? There are many many jobs out there that are absolutely horrible. It is amazing that people are willing to do those jobs at all. And if no one would do them civilization would collapse on itself.
Way back when I was in high school I ended up taking a job as cook in a KFC. That job alone pretty much made up my mind to get through college so I would not have to do such a job for the rest of my life. But am I doing something I love? No. There are times now when I sit back and realize that the "work" I am doing does not really mean anything. And that is how the majority of jobs are.
I just hope one of these days that my retirement plan kicks in. At some point my lottery numbers have to hit!:)
It would be nice if you can get paid for doing something you really like to do. The reality is that most jobs really suck. And people do them for one reason only, to make enough money to feed, house and cloth their families.
The real problem is separating your work from the rest of your life. Spending 15 to 18 hours a day starring at a monitor does not allow one to have a life.
Overall, given the general public's taste in music, wasting fidelity on their ears is pointless, in any case. They can't tell at all, and probably wouldn't care, as long as there was a beat.
Based on the noise coming from the neighbor's kid's car they could use a much lower bit rate for what apparently passes for music today. And it sounded like at least one of his speakers was blown. Why people listen to music that loud and distorted is beyond understanding. Makes me wonder if you could package a white noise generator with a bass track.
Camera made from a scanner? Very interesting. But how do you get the subject to mash their face, or other body parts, against the scanning bed? Must be hard to use for group shots.:)
How do you count the cost for someone to recieve the goods? Is it prorated on the number of items received over the year or on a per day bases? If on a per day basis does that mean it costs more for some packages than others? Some days 10 packages arrive some days only 1. And is this taken to extreme, how about the janitor that cleans up after the guy that recives the goods? Or the guard at the gate that waved him into the parking lot that morning?
Whole thing can be taken to a ridiculous extreme, but then maybe that is why a hammer costs $500.00 when the government buys one instead of $5.00 down at the hardware store.
Why guess the bar code? Just send it on to multiple phones. The system could allow the first one through and block any duplicates. Which works great as long as all that communications gear is up and running. Would take a minor glitch and none of those tickets could be validated.
imagine if a country is crazy enough to adapt paperless voting where voters don't get a "vote receipt" in case something or someone messed up the results.
The voters don't get a vote receipt. There needs to be a paper trail so the votes can be verified. If only electronic tallies are kept there is no way to prove the votes registered electronically are correct. With a paper trail the electronic tally can be verified.
The government always over spends. The whole operation could be done much cheaper. Most readers on/. probably have the equipment to rip and burn cd/DVDs and have not spent as much as they claim to have spent.
But maybe they are using numbers provided by RIAA or MPAA. Those always seem to be inflated.
And think of the architectural changes that will come with such technology! Imagine a building with no hallways. To get to a room you get in one of several dozen cars that move you not only up but horizontally to your room. You get out of the car and enter directly into your room. All this can be based on your rooms key that is used to summon the elevator.
Want to go to the dinning room? Just press the button for the dining room, you step into the dining room. Checking out? You step from your room into the car and out at the front desk. Going to your car? You step from your room into the elevator car and step out in the garage in the section you parked your car.
With enough cars circulating in the system you would not have to share an elevator car with anyone you did not know.
This is just a ploy to build weapons that can be used to defend our cities from the space aliens. (And you thought all those years practicing at Space Invaders was for fun only.) The high scores in those games were collected and the players have been tracked. As soon as sufficient number of mag lev elevators have been installed you will be called to duty to protect mankind from the real space invaders. Your weapon of choice will be mag lev cannons conviently located in the taller buildings of your city. As the aliens approach the planet you will need to wait until the optimum moment to fire your mag lev car err weapon at them to distroy them as they advance.
With hundreds of these deployed in each city we should be able to easily defeat the invaders.
Unless they land in a rural area.....DAMN you alien scum!
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of us in Florida watched it live with a Mark 1 Eyeball. It was routine to watch the TV coverage and wait for the main engines to fire then step outside to watch the launch. This is from the Orlando area about 50 miles from the coast so the view is pretty good.
I remember watching it go and then seeing it explode, at least that is what it looked like, and watching the boosters continue to climb and start to twist. I ran back inside and grabbed a camera to take a picture.
What amazed me is that instead of building a better system they continued to use the shuttle system. I had hoped that by now we would be using single stage to orbit vehicles with powered decent. One promising system was scrapped, believe it was the delta clipper. They had a 1/3 scaled down version actually flying. The last test flight they had a problem with the landing gear and it tipped over. The scaled down version did not go to orbit but had proven the take off and landing capabilities. Found this link to this vehicle. http://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/x-33/dc-xa.htm
It is a shame they did not continue the development of this system. It has several successful take offs and landings and could have been developed to the full scale system. But instead we are going to go back to the throw away rockets and capsule recovery systems used back in the 60's. Let's hope that one of the commercial space companies will do what NASA and the government have been unwilling to do, build a reliable and finacially feasible system for getting off the planet. Earth orbit is good for a start. From there we can jump to the Moon or other places in the system.
Very few if any will be produced or get where they are intended. The U.N. is endorsing this because they smell a way to get lots of money just like the oil for food program. Just another scam.
They found Nemo!
You did not answer the question. Where does the money for the dole come from? If you are small business owner then I would think you would know. It would come from you. And if you doubled the work force you would not only have that many more people out of work, but those that have jobs would be displaced by those that are willing to work for less. There would be a huge churn in the workforce until that equilibrium was reached. Companies would be able to replace expensive workers with cheaper labor and require the same or better skill levels.
This happened a few years ago when the dotcom bubble burst. There were companies out there hiring highly skilled IT people with many years of experience for rates that had been starting rates for people just out of college.
As to your other idea of doubling eveyrones salary. The result would be a stagering inflation rate. Not only would prices soar they would exceed the difference in everyones new salary. As a result the poor would be poorer. The rich would be less rich but would still live very well.
And you still have not laid out a plan to get from here to the utopia you describe. Sudden changes as you have proposed would cause a catastrophic collapse of what we call civilization.
And while true that the dollar has not been tied to a silver or gold standard for many many years it is not something that can be printed in huge volumes and distributed without impact to the economy. If that was true, printing your own money or hacking your bank account to add a few zeroes would not be a problem.
You need to lay off the drugs.
You must be very young.
Where do you expect to get all this money to pay everyone for doing nothing? Run some numbers, there about 300 million here now, or do you plan to do this world wide? Then change that to 6+ billion. And if you are giving that much money to everyone how much are you going to shrink the workforce? There will be large numbers of people that will just take the dole and not work. Which is what you are aiming for. And at what age do people start collecting the dole? And you are going to include health care with that right?
Once you find out how the real world works you will see that what you describe is a fantasy. Remember, Star Trek is fiction. You can never get enough altruistic people together to create such a society.
how do you Slashdot readers keep up with your continuing education, while still maintaining a personal life? Is it naive to try to leave my work at work?
New to IT, huh. There is no life outside of work. Once you are put in charge of a network or production application and you are placed on call you are expected to be available 24/7/365. Most operations run with as few people as possible. So plan for it, keep an extra bottle of water at your desk and have someone else take care of your pets, or get rid of the pets. You won't be home that much to take care of them.
Makes that job at the fast food restraunt sound good now doesn't it? "Want fries with that?" you can leave at work. A network down or a crashed server you can't. Well you can, but you won't be going back to that job anytime soon.
So how do you get there from here?
Communist......
The part you seem to miss that it would cost HUGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY to automate to that point. Companies today live or die in 3 month intervals. If they don't out perform expectations every three months the stock holders and the market punish the company. No company will ever attempt such automation because of the impact it would have on the bottom line.
But lets assume for the moment that most companies do attempt to automate to the point that no one is working at those companies. The immediate impact would be hundreds of thousands of people if not millions thrown out of work. And as such companies will start to go out of business since no one will be able to buy their goods. This will cause a spiral effect as more companies that supply goods to those companies go out of business throwing yet more people out of work. This would devistate the economy beyond repair. And destroy millions of famlies.
Such a scheme is not realistic.
Consider the case of cook at KFC. Any reason it CAN'T be automated rather than WON'T be because there are plenty of people desperate for ANY job. Do you think KFC would just fold the tents and go home if they couldn't find people willing to cook for minimum wage?
I don't think every task in the kitchen could automated. And those that could would cost huge amounts of money. And there would be the downside if such jobs could be fully automated, you put tens of thousands of people out of work. The reality is that every one can not grow to be white collar business people. There are those that "Do you want fries with that?" is about all they will ever be. And quite frankly some if not most of those white collar jobs are not that great either. Shuffling paper work and negotiating with internal groups to get things "done" is not that satisfying.
And probably the worst thing you can do is take something you love to do and turn it into a job. Which happens the first time HAVE to get up and start doing it.
I suspect that if we raise our standards (and make it economically POSSIBLE for people to raise their standards) we'll find that many of the hated jobs are not actually required (or in some cases society would be better off if they were eliminated) or could be modified until they become enjoyable to a sufficient number of people.
:)
Have you ever watched that show on Discover Channel, Dirty Jobs? There are many many jobs out there that are absolutely horrible. It is amazing that people are willing to do those jobs at all. And if no one would do them civilization would collapse on itself.
Way back when I was in high school I ended up taking a job as cook in a KFC. That job alone pretty much made up my mind to get through college so I would not have to do such a job for the rest of my life. But am I doing something I love? No. There are times now when I sit back and realize that the "work" I am doing does not really mean anything. And that is how the majority of jobs are.
I just hope one of these days that my retirement plan kicks in. At some point my lottery numbers have to hit!
Very true! But that is what the emergency room has become. If you really need health care just go to the emergency room.
TO ALL EMPLOYEES
New Incentive Plan
WORK OR GET FIRED!
It would be nice if you can get paid for doing something you really like to do. The reality is that most jobs really suck. And people do them for one reason only, to make enough money to feed, house and cloth their families.
The real problem is separating your work from the rest of your life. Spending 15 to 18 hours a day starring at a monitor does not allow one to have a life.
Overall, given the general public's taste in music, wasting fidelity on their ears is pointless, in any case. They can't tell at all, and probably wouldn't care, as long as there was a beat.
Based on the noise coming from the neighbor's kid's car they could use a much lower bit rate for what apparently passes for music today. And it sounded like at least one of his speakers was blown. Why people listen to music that loud and distorted is beyond understanding. Makes me wonder if you could package a white noise generator with a bass track.
Camera made from a scanner? Very interesting. But how do you get the subject to mash their face, or other body parts, against the scanning bed? Must be hard to use for group shots. :)
Correct! :)
How do you count the cost for someone to recieve the goods? Is it prorated on the number of items received over the year or on a per day bases? If on a per day basis does that mean it costs more for some packages than others? Some days 10 packages arrive some days only 1. And is this taken to extreme, how about the janitor that cleans up after the guy that recives the goods? Or the guard at the gate that waved him into the parking lot that morning?
Whole thing can be taken to a ridiculous extreme, but then maybe that is why a hammer costs $500.00 when the government buys one instead of $5.00 down at the hardware store.
Where in my post did I say anything about silver? My comment was regarding the fact that pennies have been made primarly of zinc for a very long time.
Why guess the bar code? Just send it on to multiple phones. The system could allow the first one through and block any duplicates. Which works great as long as all that communications gear is up and running. Would take a minor glitch and none of those tickets could be validated.
imagine if a country is crazy enough to adapt paperless voting where voters don't get a "vote receipt" in case something or someone messed up the results.
The voters don't get a vote receipt. There needs to be a paper trail so the votes can be verified. If only electronic tallies are kept there is no way to prove the votes registered electronically are correct. With a paper trail the electronic tally can be verified.
Hot damn! All those pennies I have been saving for years are going to be worth something. OH wait! They make those of zinc now don't they.
Never mind.
The government always over spends. The whole operation could be done much cheaper. Most readers on /. probably have the equipment to rip and burn cd/DVDs and have not spent as much as they claim to have spent.
But maybe they are using numbers provided by RIAA or MPAA. Those always seem to be inflated.
What doesn't kill you, hurts like a sononfabitch!
And think of the architectural changes that will come with such technology! Imagine a building with no hallways. To get to a room you get in one of several dozen cars that move you not only up but horizontally to your room. You get out of the car and enter directly into your room. All this can be based on your rooms key that is used to summon the elevator.
Want to go to the dinning room? Just press the button for the dining room, you step into the dining room. Checking out? You step from your room into the car and out at the front desk. Going to your car? You step from your room into the elevator car and step out in the garage in the section you parked your car.
With enough cars circulating in the system you would not have to share an elevator car with anyone you did not know.
This is why we must build more nuclear plants now! We will need to support all those elevators in the coming years. :)
This is just a ploy to build weapons that can be used to defend our cities from the space aliens. (And you thought all those years practicing at Space Invaders was for fun only.) The high scores in those games were collected and the players have been tracked. As soon as sufficient number of mag lev elevators have been installed you will be called to duty to protect mankind from the real space invaders. Your weapon of choice will be mag lev cannons conviently located in the taller buildings of your city. As the aliens approach the planet you will need to wait until the optimum moment to fire your mag lev car err weapon at them to distroy them as they advance.
With hundreds of these deployed in each city we should be able to easily defeat the invaders.
Unless they land in a rural area.....DAMN you alien scum!
Bye bye power....better pray those saftey systems are working.
This is why we need more nuclear power plants built now, to support all those mag lev elevators......