Where did you see them, out of curiosity? I honestly can't recall seeing such while I lived in the US (though I never visited the really big cities like New York or Chicago).
Florida and California mostly. In what I thought looked like safe neighborhoods.
I think the best solution would be if Atlantis could be brought back by autopilot. If the damage is marginal (that is they THINK it might destroy the shuttle but are not sure) then bringing it back unmanned would give you the possibility (if the damage is survivable) of recouping your billion dollar plus investment.
The problem is safety protocol. If they think that the shuttle is damaged, they will command it to deorbit in such a way that it burns up on reentry and lands in the pacific, instead of risking a crash on the US mainland. Such a trajectory makes it impossible to land.
Think of it this way. If they choose an re-entry path so that can land on the Pacific side if it survives reentry, then they've also chosen a path so that it will crash onto land if it doesn't survive. The two goals are incompatible, so they choose the safer and fry the shuttle.
The problem is that I am not sure that the shuttles have autolanding capability.
The shuttles are capable of landing without a crew.
But it's not that NASA scientists "haven't thought about it". It's about beancounters deciding that their table of risk factors doesn't warrant the extra cost, and leaving no margin for error.
No. If you work out the fuel required to move the shuttle from a docking position at Hubble to a docking position at ISS, it requires an amount of fuel that is almost equal to the weight of the entire shuttle itself. It is physically impossible and has nothing to do with the bean counters.
But hell, why let common sense get in the way of ad hominem attacks... this is/. after all.
Or why let science get in the way of a good conspiracy theory?
This is Greece we're talking about. Google just hasn't bribed the right person yet. This is just part of the procedure to extract money from foreign nationals.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree there; that's the part I find sad, if perhaps inevitable. I would like to have seen more "gentlemanly restraint", so to speak, as opposed to "we can do this so we will".
Just like you CAN legally own a half dozen assault rifles with a few thousand rounds of ammunition, but you probably SHOULDN'T (or need to).
That's a really sad statement on the state of society. Whatever happened to quiet, friendly communities where you can throw your windows open to let in the fresh air and chat with passersby?
Oh well, I suppose that once the next few crops of children grow up with no privacy, nobody who'd miss it will be around anymore.
Well the last time I visited the US I was appalled at how many bars there were on the windows of houses, that didn't seem very friendly. You almost never see that here in Canada, even in the big cities like Toronto.
The real reason for ban is quite different, the new street view used in Europe has hell of a resolution, meaning Greece tourism can be in danger, you can go around all the famous places from the comfort of your PC.
You're kidding, right?
If you think a bunch of pictures is a good substitute for actually visiting a place, then you haven't really traveled. You must also think that a movie or Cliff notes are good substitutes for a book.
I do agree SV is an amazing tool, and I think it would increase tourism, not derease it, much in the same way books/brochures in a travel office do.
So let me get this straight. You'd rather hold your PSP out your car window and put up with shitty wifi reception and bad audio just so you can bitch about everyone else instead of getting a decent cell phone.
Oh come on.. if you read it like you appear to be doing then even having an expiring password would be illegal, because it stops you getting at your data.
And it seems he would also think that losing power in a thunderstorm is illegal because damnit he *paid* for that power and his computer is now turned off *without his permission*.
I don't understand why they don't grab Hubble and attach it to the International Space Station? It seems a waste to eventually let a great piece of equipment, into which so much money has been invested, to eventually just drift off into space/crash to earth.
Nice idea but it's physically impossible to do this with the shuttle. Even with no payload, the fuel required to shift the shuttles orbit when it's at Hubble to be able to rendezvous with the ISS is almost equal to the mass of the space shuttle itself. It simply can't be done. Thats why there's a second shuttle being prepped for launch in case there's a problem with Atlantis - the ISS cannot be used as a safe haven because it cannot reach it.
As far as I know one of the goals is to attach a deorbit module to Hubble, which is needed to safely end its life, so there has to be this mission anyway.
Actually they are not attaching a full deorbit module, but a docking interface that can be used in the future for a deorbit module to grapple onto.
Because while Microsoft has every right to disable their software, they have NO LEGAL RIGHT to turn my computer on or off.
Except disabling their software results in your computer shutting off - you cant run your hardware without it. Of course they could change things to have the OS shut down and display that stupid 'it is now safe to turn off your hardware' message so you can leave your useless hardware powered on.
Many of us loyal fans are royally pissed off with how J.J. Abrams wiped his ass with Star Trek canon in this movie.
I was willing to give him lots of benefit of doubt, but now, having seen the movie, I believe that he fucked it up good. He fucked up everything he *could have* fucked up.
I guess you hated the new Battlestar Galactica series too then as it wasn't faithful to the original tv series?
If we were somehow able to see ONLY this dipole contribution [...] by removing the average brightness (or temperature) from the preceding diagram and amplify the contrast by approximately a thousand, the sky now looks like the figure at the right.
And why would an ancient translation of a Hebrew text by a non-native speaker be considered more accurate than a modern translation?
Because the modern translations were done by protestants, mainly American Evangelicals that have an agenda. There are other instances where the modern translation deliberately changed allegorical references to literal ones with the argument that it would be easier to understand. This changes the meaning.
The original Hebrew text plainly uses the word for 'murder,' which is different than the word for 'kill.'
Ok, and many scholars point out that 'thou shalt not steal' actually means 'thou shalt not kidnap', since the Hebew word used for seal was exclusively used for people, not objects. Does that mean it's ok to take another's possessions if we feel like it?
And the Israelites do plenty of killing throughout the Old Testament with nary an ill word from God about it.
Well I hope you don't think that is the only time that the bible is inconsistent within itself. That's what happens when it is a compilation of dozens of authors over thousands or years, continuously written and rewritten.
Besides, when you write about the history of your own people, you tend to make sure you portray your motives as just.
The Vulgate bible is not 'the oldest translated texts.' You'd need to go back to the original Hebrew sources, which DO use the Hebrew word for 'unjust killing.' And to call things like the NIV Bible 'revisionist' is kinda funny, considering they were done to correct the REAL revisions found in editions like the King James Version by going back to the original Greek for New Testament stuff instead of translating from the Vulgate (which itself was a translation of the Greek).
The Ten Commandments is in the book of Moses in the old testament. The Vulgate bible used the original Hebrew writings for the translations and was the first to have done so, instead of using the Greek translations as others had done. So since that was written in the fifth century and directly from the Hebrew, I would believe that over any more modern translations.
Come on - it's a well known fact that the US was supporting the war against the soviets in Afghanistan. There was even a comedy with that as a theme called Spies Like US, or maybe you dont believe in movies either.
Comply with the US desire to invade. Comply as in shut up and play along. Comply as in if you publicly question the US intentions the US will economically ruin you. For those of us outside the US the message was clear.
Anyway, just another bullshit lie from a left-wing drone.
No its not bullshit because I am not an American.
Seeing the difference in media portrayal from US and non-US television stations was a real eye-opener. If all I saw was US TV up to the invasion of Iraq, I would have probably felt it was justified, an the US was preventing an all out attack by a crazy dictator on US soil. But it was all a farce. Completely fabricated.
It's amazing how much power the Republican right had over the media at that time (and still has over Fox today). It was complete propaganda.
Then you shouldn't have trouble coming up with an example of one who does.
Someone else already did a pretty good job of replying to that.
Conservative beliefs do not require a belief in God.
No but they often go hand in hand, or at least the conservatives like to pretend that if you are not conservative then obviously you do not believe in God.
Conservative beliefs do not require a belief in God.
You need to brush up on your facts. Pretty much every intelligence agency the US interacts with believed that Iraq was in the process of reconstituting their WMD program. We're talking the UK, France, Germany, the Czech Republic here
No. The US threatened these countries with economic sanctions if they did not comply. Do you not remember Bush's famous 'if you are not with us, you are against us' speech? Do you not remember when France stood up and said the WMDs were not real, the American backlash and the ridiculous change from 'French Fries' to Freedom Fries'? Do you not remember Colin Powell quitting the Bush administration saying the weapons stockpiling was a lie? Do you not remember the UN stating that the UNILATERAL decision by the US to invade Iraq was illegal, after the UN had decided the US had no justification in invading? Do you not remember Hans Blix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Blix the UN weapons inspector stating there were no WMDs in Iraq?
Again, you need to brush up on your facts and command of history. The Taliban did not come into existence until 1994
Are you saying that Osama bin Laden was not trained by the US as an anti-communist guerrilla against the Soviets? Because that's an easily verifiable fact. I didn't say they WERE the Taliban, I said they now FORM the Taliban.
It's amazing the revisionist history the right wing nutbars can spew. Do you really believe what you write or are you just writing it because you want to believe it happened that way?
No I don't mean Iraq at all. No one but Bush thought that removing Hussein was a good idea, every other country in the world knew the WMD thing was bullshit. And if Hussein was repressing a couple of nutbar religious groups, well if you haven't noticed, sometimes its a good thing to repress certain groups of fanatical crazies.
No, I'm talking about Regan's interference in Afghanistan, training and arming the local religious crazies against the Russians, who were trying to repress (wait for it), the people who now form the Taliban! Good gob there!
Well good thing you helped elect someone that is spending money at twice the rate Bush did. Way to usher in an era of fiscal responsibility.
Well thats what you sometimes have to do when it gets so royally f'ed up by the previous administration sheer incompetence.
Also I'd much rather my money being spent locally on constructive issues than spent trying to blow the crap out of someone half a world away in a situation REPUBLICANS CREATED (Regan era) and we should never have been involved in in the first place!
Slashdot Mirror
Where did you see them, out of curiosity? I honestly can't recall seeing such while I lived in the US (though I never visited the really big cities like New York or Chicago).
Florida and California mostly. In what I thought looked like safe neighborhoods.
I think the best solution would be if Atlantis could be brought back by autopilot. If the damage is marginal (that is they THINK it might destroy the shuttle but are not sure) then bringing it back unmanned would give you the possibility (if the damage is survivable) of recouping your billion dollar plus investment.
The problem is safety protocol. If they think that the shuttle is damaged, they will command it to deorbit in such a way that it burns up on reentry and lands in the pacific, instead of risking a crash on the US mainland. Such a trajectory makes it impossible to land.
Think of it this way. If they choose an re-entry path so that can land on the Pacific side if it survives reentry, then they've also chosen a path so that it will crash onto land if it doesn't survive. The two goals are incompatible, so they choose the safer and fry the shuttle.
The problem is that I am not sure that the shuttles have autolanding capability.
The shuttles are capable of landing without a crew.
But it's not that NASA scientists "haven't thought about it". It's about beancounters deciding that their table of risk factors doesn't warrant the extra cost, and leaving no margin for error.
No. If you work out the fuel required to move the shuttle from a docking position at Hubble to a docking position at ISS, it requires an amount of fuel that is almost equal to the weight of the entire shuttle itself. It is physically impossible and has nothing to do with the bean counters.
But hell, why let common sense get in the way of ad hominem attacks ... this is /. after all.
Or why let science get in the way of a good conspiracy theory?
This is Greece we're talking about. Google just hasn't bribed the right person yet. This is just part of the procedure to extract money from foreign nationals.
I believe you are thinking of Turkey or India.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree there; that's the part I find sad, if perhaps inevitable. I would like to have seen more "gentlemanly restraint", so to speak, as opposed to "we can do this so we will".
Just like you CAN legally own a half dozen assault rifles with a few thousand rounds of ammunition, but you probably SHOULDN'T (or need to).
That's a really sad statement on the state of society. Whatever happened to quiet, friendly communities where you can throw your windows open to let in the fresh air and chat with passersby? Oh well, I suppose that once the next few crops of children grow up with no privacy, nobody who'd miss it will be around anymore.
Well the last time I visited the US I was appalled at how many bars there were on the windows of houses, that didn't seem very friendly. You almost never see that here in Canada, even in the big cities like Toronto.
The real reason for ban is quite different, the new street view used in Europe has hell of a resolution, meaning Greece tourism can be in danger, you can go around all the famous places from the comfort of your PC.
You're kidding, right?
If you think a bunch of pictures is a good substitute for actually visiting a place, then you haven't really traveled. You must also think that a movie or Cliff notes are good substitutes for a book.
I do agree SV is an amazing tool, and I think it would increase tourism, not derease it, much in the same way books/brochures in a travel office do.
So let me get this straight. You'd rather hold your PSP out your car window and put up with shitty wifi reception and bad audio just so you can bitch about everyone else instead of getting a decent cell phone.
Get a grip and stop being such an ass.
Yea, only one bar and sounded like a busted vinyl AND I had to hold it just outside of the car's window, but IT STILL WORKED.
Your wifi sounds like busted vinyl? Do you know what wifi is? It seems you are confusing wifi with cellular as the parent post suggests.
Oh come on.. if you read it like you appear to be doing then even having an expiring password would be illegal, because it stops you getting at your data.
And it seems he would also think that losing power in a thunderstorm is illegal because damnit he *paid* for that power and his computer is now turned off *without his permission*.
Of course you can: install another operating system.
If all he wants to do is install another operating system, why be upset that the disabled OS powered off the computer?
I don't understand why they don't grab Hubble and attach it to the International Space Station? It seems a waste to eventually let a great piece of equipment, into which so much money has been invested, to eventually just drift off into space/crash to earth.
Nice idea but it's physically impossible to do this with the shuttle. Even with no payload, the fuel required to shift the shuttles orbit when it's at Hubble to be able to rendezvous with the ISS is almost equal to the mass of the space shuttle itself. It simply can't be done. Thats why there's a second shuttle being prepped for launch in case there's a problem with Atlantis - the ISS cannot be used as a safe haven because it cannot reach it.
As far as I know one of the goals is to attach a deorbit module to Hubble, which is needed to safely end its life, so there has to be this mission anyway.
Actually they are not attaching a full deorbit module, but a docking interface that can be used in the future for a deorbit module to grapple onto.
Because while Microsoft has every right to disable their software, they have NO LEGAL RIGHT to turn my computer on or off.
Except disabling their software results in your computer shutting off - you cant run your hardware without it. Of course they could change things to have the OS shut down and display that stupid 'it is now safe to turn off your hardware' message so you can leave your useless hardware powered on.
Plus I hate how they turned the original Zephram Cochrane from a genius engineer into a drunken fool.
I guess you've never met any genius engineers have you? Engineers are mostly a bunch of drunks.
Many of us loyal fans are royally pissed off with how J.J. Abrams wiped his ass with Star Trek canon in this movie. I was willing to give him lots of benefit of doubt, but now, having seen the movie, I believe that he fucked it up good. He fucked up everything he *could have* fucked up.
I guess you hated the new Battlestar Galactica series too then as it wasn't faithful to the original tv series?
From the link you sent
If we were somehow able to see ONLY this dipole contribution [...] by removing the average brightness (or temperature) from the preceding diagram and amplify the contrast by approximately a thousand, the sky now looks like the figure at the right.
Did they not realize that this is the Taoist symbol of yin and yang? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TaoismSymbol.PNG
And since the Taoist believe in universal evolution, I guess the creationists can finally admit they are wrong.
And why would an ancient translation of a Hebrew text by a non-native speaker be considered more accurate than a modern translation?
Because the modern translations were done by protestants, mainly American Evangelicals that have an agenda. There are other instances where the modern translation deliberately changed allegorical references to literal ones with the argument that it would be easier to understand. This changes the meaning.
The original Hebrew text plainly uses the word for 'murder,' which is different than the word for 'kill.'
Ok, and many scholars point out that 'thou shalt not steal' actually means 'thou shalt not kidnap', since the Hebew word used for seal was exclusively used for people, not objects. Does that mean it's ok to take another's possessions if we feel like it?
And the Israelites do plenty of killing throughout the Old Testament with nary an ill word from God about it.
Well I hope you don't think that is the only time that the bible is inconsistent within itself. That's what happens when it is a compilation of dozens of authors over thousands or years, continuously written and rewritten.
Besides, when you write about the history of your own people, you tend to make sure you portray your motives as just.
The Vulgate bible is not 'the oldest translated texts.' You'd need to go back to the original Hebrew sources, which DO use the Hebrew word for 'unjust killing.' And to call things like the NIV Bible 'revisionist' is kinda funny, considering they were done to correct the REAL revisions found in editions like the King James Version by going back to the original Greek for New Testament stuff instead of translating from the Vulgate (which itself was a translation of the Greek).
The Ten Commandments is in the book of Moses in the old testament. The Vulgate bible used the original Hebrew writings for the translations and was the first to have done so, instead of using the Greek translations as others had done. So since that was written in the fifth century and directly from the Hebrew, I would believe that over any more modern translations.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. It's a bald faced lie by the left.
And this is a lie? http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa092801a.htm
Come on - it's a well known fact that the US was supporting the war against the soviets in Afghanistan. There was even a comedy with that as a theme called Spies Like US, or maybe you dont believe in movies either.
Comply with what?
Comply with the US desire to invade. Comply as in shut up and play along. Comply as in if you publicly question the US intentions the US will economically ruin you. For those of us outside the US the message was clear.
Anyway, just another bullshit lie from a left-wing drone.
No its not bullshit because I am not an American.
Seeing the difference in media portrayal from US and non-US television stations was a real eye-opener. If all I saw was US TV up to the invasion of Iraq, I would have probably felt it was justified, an the US was preventing an all out attack by a crazy dictator on US soil. But it was all a farce. Completely fabricated.
It's amazing how much power the Republican right had over the media at that time (and still has over Fox today). It was complete propaganda.
Then you shouldn't have trouble coming up with an example of one who does.
Someone else already did a pretty good job of replying to that.
Conservative beliefs do not require a belief in God.
No but they often go hand in hand, or at least the conservatives like to pretend that if you are not conservative then obviously you do not believe in God.
Conservative beliefs do not require a belief in God.
Only if you believe the revisionist protestant publications, or the newer Jewish ones. The oldest translated texts all agree that it is 'kill', but yes this is a contentious point. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments#Killing_or_murder
You need to brush up on your facts. Pretty much every intelligence agency the US interacts with believed that Iraq was in the process of reconstituting their WMD program. We're talking the UK, France, Germany, the Czech Republic here
No. The US threatened these countries with economic sanctions if they did not comply. Do you not remember Bush's famous 'if you are not with us, you are against us' speech? Do you not remember when France stood up and said the WMDs were not real, the American backlash and the ridiculous change from 'French Fries' to Freedom Fries'? Do you not remember Colin Powell quitting the Bush administration saying the weapons stockpiling was a lie? Do you not remember the UN stating that the UNILATERAL decision by the US to invade Iraq was illegal, after the UN had decided the US had no justification in invading? Do you not remember Hans Blix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Blix the UN weapons inspector stating there were no WMDs in Iraq?
The WMD thing was a huge lie: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4086361.stm
Again, you need to brush up on your facts and command of history. The Taliban did not come into existence until 1994
Are you saying that Osama bin Laden was not trained by the US as an anti-communist guerrilla against the Soviets? Because that's an easily verifiable fact. I didn't say they WERE the Taliban, I said they now FORM the Taliban.
It's amazing the revisionist history the right wing nutbars can spew. Do you really believe what you write or are you just writing it because you want to believe it happened that way?
Presumably you mean Iraq.
No I don't mean Iraq at all. No one but Bush thought that removing Hussein was a good idea, every other country in the world knew the WMD thing was bullshit. And if Hussein was repressing a couple of nutbar religious groups, well if you haven't noticed, sometimes its a good thing to repress certain groups of fanatical crazies.
No, I'm talking about Regan's interference in Afghanistan, training and arming the local religious crazies against the Russians, who were trying to repress (wait for it), the people who now form the Taliban! Good gob there!
Well good thing you helped elect someone that is spending money at twice the rate Bush did. Way to usher in an era of fiscal responsibility.
Well thats what you sometimes have to do when it gets so royally f'ed up by the previous administration sheer incompetence.
Also I'd much rather my money being spent locally on constructive issues than spent trying to blow the crap out of someone half a world away in a situation REPUBLICANS CREATED (Regan era) and we should never have been involved in in the first place!