Re:Do you also own a cat with a diamond collar?
on
Failing Our Geniuses
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· Score: 1
It was extremely harmful for me, as well. I was in parochial and private schools for elementary schooling, and was able to spend a lot of time working at my own speed. By sixth grade I was scoring post high school level on everything except spelling (heh). Then I ended up in public school, where they completely ignored my actual performance level in favor of my age. I had started school early based on where in the year my birthday falls (and the fact I could already read and write), so I was already "a year ahead" as far as the school was concerned. They flatly refused to allow me to skip any grades or take more advanced classes, no matter what level my already completed work evaluated at. As I noted, I was already scoring post high school, so the actual school itself was a complete waste for the next six years. Worse, I was actively punished by some of the teachers, who were threatened by me. I certainly didn't help matters; having no experience with public school teachers I did stupid things like offer to take the final during the first week to prove I knew the subject already. That didn't go over well, as you can imagine. For a smart kid who used to look up to teachers to suddenly be scolded and obviously disliked by teachers for knowing too much is about as good a demotivator as you can provide.
He has no proof that NAT was not in use. He says flat out he doesn't even know how the defendant's computer was set up. There isn't a think in his testimony that truly proves no NAT. He says Windows was set to use DHCP, which is true of most home machines behind a NAT box. He claims that the packets examined not having private IP addresses proves there wasn't a NAT. Well, no, not even close. They weren't captured from the defendant's computer, so they had already passed through the NAT box when captured, which means the private IPs would have been replaced by the public IP from Verizon.
This guy is shoveling bullshit, and does a lot of dancing around questions that would open credibility holes in the RIAA cases.
Wow, they actually referenced an anime on their list, although I haven't been able to figure out what kind of criteria they're judging on.
Anyway, it's a TV show so I understand why she wasn't included, but it's hard to see Iwakura Lain ignored on a list like this. Very few hackers can reach her level...
Alita69 "Information softly strokes my lips. The soft spot below the ear." -- Serial Experiments: Lain
Can-am is the one. I got a couple of their units recently to handle my own DVD collection (two three drawer units handled my current collection; I'll need to get another soon). No complaints from me. The quality is quite high, and while I'm not particularly fond of the divider/backstop system it does the job.
Like you, I spent rather a lot of time looking for alternatives. There just aren't many good ones.
--"The Boomer generation climbed the ladder, pulled it up behind them, and are looking at the smaller generation after them wondering why they won't take care of them the way they took care of their parents..."
Probably because they still haven't paid off the loan they took from us to take care of their parents...
--"those parts of the Shuttle program (such as the engines) which have proven worthwhile. "
Not sure what you're talking about. The shuttle main engines have been one of the biggest headaches of the program. While they haven't caused any crashes yet, the things do not do what they were originally designed to do. NASA still has to tear them apart and overhaul them every mission since they can't predict what kind of failures they're going to see. As a multi-launch-capable long-term solution, these fail miserably.
I just like how they say it could be used for things that are too dangerous for officers, then go on to add "find missing children, search for lost hikers". LA must have those dangerous nuclear mutant hiker kids with poor sense of direction.
The plans are still around, the tools and dies and so forth are not.
That said, I'd much rather see a refresh of the Saturn V designs to use modern materials and methods than see NASA keep using the SSMEs. The history of problems they've had with their so-called multi-use engines (that really have to be rebuilt every flight) is staggering.
--"Apollo died because people stopped seing the use of sending people to hop around on moon dust."
Not exactly. It just wasn't what the US military wanted. The current shuttle design suffers a lot from this, since early NASA tried playing politics but got eaten alive by the more experienced groups they were trying to use. Unfortunately, the shuttle is a far less capable launch vehicle. Yes, it really is. The Saturn V can put bigger cargos, including humans, into LEO than the shuttle can. And the shuttle can't put any significant cargo into GEO at all; the additional booster ring they have to use to launch from the cargo bay is too bulky, heavy, and risky to make it worthwhile much.
It wouldn't be that big a deal to recreate the Saturn Vs. We've got the plans, just not the tools and dies (never have figured out why standard military policy is to destroy these when the project ends, like they did with the SR-71). With an upgrade for modern materials and avionics, these Saturn VIs would outstrip anything else around right now. And still be cheaper than Shuttle launches...
--"The shuttle is not an "insane contraption". It's a machine that, due to its completely different design from most rocket systems, exposed a lot of problems that we didn't even know existed."
What makes it an insane contraption is the fact that we've never bothered/managed to address most of those problems. Even worse, there were a number of problems with the design we knew about in advance, but we went with it anyway because (wait for it) it was the low bid.
What am I talking about? Segmented SRBs for a starter. Instead of building a single big rocket, we build it in sections, ship the sections, and then put them together later. Why? To spread the pork around. Unfortunately, this is what killed Challenger. Heat tiles for another. Custom-made for each location, meaning absolutely zero economy-of-scale. Very stupid thing to do for such a fragile, expensive and necessary piece of the project. Lost two to this one.
And there's other problems we've lucked out on so far. Like the SSMEs. Sure, they're powerful. They're also finicky, and have never had the multi-flight capacity they were supposed to have. They have to be completely rebuilt every flight to be inspected and repaired. Why? Lots of little, medium, and even big problems with them that we've never been able to fix completly. They were just flat out designed with the wrong methedology.
So we've got three major components of the system that are flat out bad ideas to be used in something like this. Stuff like avionics hasn't ever been a problem; it was properly designed, and it's something that can be upgrades as we go even if it wasn't. We managed to get all the major, high-cost-to-fix items wrong. So why keep using it?
Horrible, horrible idea. They're taking two of the three worst components of the current shuttle platform and reusing them in a system where we have already made and used much better systems. The only way they could make it worse is to rely on the current shuttle thermal tiling.
So, lets look at the other two pieces. SRBs? They killed Challenger. They've never worked properly, or we wouldn't have been getting blow-by as routine. If NASA is insisting on sticking with solid fuels, for whatever odd reason, they need to make them non-segmented (although there are other practical problems here that would have to be solved). Increasing the segments to five is just going to make the problem much worse, since the joints are the weakest part of the system, which means more losses.
Then we've got the SSMEs. Good ISP, fine, but the mechanical problems are still around. We've never, ever been able to get these to work the way we wanted them to. NASA just keeps moving the "acceptable" bar every time a new problem is found. They need a complete redesign to get rid of the problems we do know about (that's what top-down design gets you), but that'd be far too expensive. If we want to stick with old tech, we'd be much better off just remaking the tools for the Saturn V engines and restarting production.
If this memo at all reflects NASAs future actions, then they'll have proven themselves irrelevant. Unles the US government decides to try out a bounty system, and offers appropriate (ie. billions) numbers for good systems, we're out of the race. Maybe someone else will be able to keep going.
Alita "Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation." -- Johnny Hart
Don't listen to the Ayn Rand Foundation. The Objectivist Center is a much better source. The ARF has gone a bit off the deep end on a couple subjects.
In any case, no, they don't spout the Republican party line (at least, not if they're really Objectivist; haven't paid attention to ARF for a while, so I can't say for sure). They do sound quite Republican on economic matters, yes. Basically, keep government out of it unless someone's doing something like committing fraud or theft. They disagree strongly with the Repubs on social matters, though. Objectivists think things like flag-burning bans and gay-marriage bans are silly. And certainly don't agree with the whole Christian State nonesense. Or the agressive "hit them before they hit us" War on Terror nonesense. Or the drug war. Or... well, you get the picture.
Actually, Kerry just wants different scary stuff. He's all in favor of things that even Ashcroft was against. Which is kinda scary, if you think about it.
Check out:
http://www.reason.com/hod/jb072604.shtml
for some starter info. You can find a lot more if you bother looking at his voting record.
Sorry, but under Kerry it'll be Reno all over again. And there isn't a whole lot to choose from between Reno and Ashcroft.
Me? I'll vote Libertarian.
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It was extremely harmful for me, as well. I was in parochial and private schools for elementary schooling, and was able to spend a lot of time working at my own speed. By sixth grade I was scoring post high school level on everything except spelling (heh). Then I ended up in public school, where they completely ignored my actual performance level in favor of my age. I had started school early based on where in the year my birthday falls (and the fact I could already read and write), so I was already "a year ahead" as far as the school was concerned. They flatly refused to allow me to skip any grades or take more advanced classes, no matter what level my already completed work evaluated at. As I noted, I was already scoring post high school, so the actual school itself was a complete waste for the next six years. Worse, I was actively punished by some of the teachers, who were threatened by me. I certainly didn't help matters; having no experience with public school teachers I did stupid things like offer to take the final during the first week to prove I knew the subject already. That didn't go over well, as you can imagine. For a smart kid who used to look up to teachers to suddenly be scolded and obviously disliked by teachers for knowing too much is about as good a demotivator as you can provide.
He has no proof that NAT was not in use. He says flat out he doesn't even know how the defendant's computer was set up. There isn't a think in his testimony that truly proves no NAT. He says Windows was set to use DHCP, which is true of most home machines behind a NAT box. He claims that the packets examined not having private IP addresses proves there wasn't a NAT. Well, no, not even close. They weren't captured from the defendant's computer, so they had already passed through the NAT box when captured, which means the private IPs would have been replaced by the public IP from Verizon.
This guy is shoveling bullshit, and does a lot of dancing around questions that would open credibility holes in the RIAA cases.
Kamogawa Asumi would be sad.
Wow, they actually referenced an anime on their list, although I haven't been able to figure out what kind of criteria they're judging on.
Anyway, it's a TV show so I understand why she wasn't included, but it's hard to see Iwakura Lain ignored on a list like this. Very few hackers can reach her level...
Alita69
"Information softly strokes my lips. The soft spot below the ear."
-- Serial Experiments: Lain
Can-am is the one. I got a couple of their units recently to handle my own DVD collection (two three drawer units handled my current collection; I'll need to get another soon). No complaints from me. The quality is quite high, and while I'm not particularly fond of the divider/backstop system it does the job.
Like you, I spent rather a lot of time looking for alternatives. There just aren't many good ones.
--"The Boomer generation climbed the ladder, pulled it up behind them, and are looking at the smaller generation after them wondering why they won't take care of them the way they took care of their parents..." Probably because they still haven't paid off the loan they took from us to take care of their parents...
--"those parts of the Shuttle program (such as the engines) which have proven worthwhile. "
Not sure what you're talking about. The shuttle main engines have been one of the biggest headaches of the program. While they haven't caused any crashes yet, the things do not do what they were originally designed to do. NASA still has to tear them apart and overhaul them every mission since they can't predict what kind of failures they're going to see. As a multi-launch-capable long-term solution, these fail miserably.
I just like how they say it could be used for things that are too dangerous for officers, then go on to add "find missing children, search for lost hikers". LA must have those dangerous nuclear mutant hiker kids with poor sense of direction.
The plans are still around, the tools and dies and so forth are not.
That said, I'd much rather see a refresh of the Saturn V designs to use modern materials and methods than see NASA keep using the SSMEs. The history of problems they've had with their so-called multi-use engines (that really have to be rebuilt every flight) is staggering.
--"That being said, the Space Transport System program has been a wild success"
It has met a grand zero of it's design goals. How is that a wild success?
--"Apollo died because people stopped seing the use of sending people to hop around on moon dust."
Not exactly. It just wasn't what the US military wanted. The current shuttle design suffers a lot from this, since early NASA tried playing politics but got eaten alive by the more experienced groups they were trying to use.
Unfortunately, the shuttle is a far less capable launch vehicle. Yes, it really is. The Saturn V can put bigger cargos, including humans, into LEO than the shuttle can. And the shuttle can't put any significant cargo into GEO at all; the additional booster ring they have to use to launch from the cargo bay is too bulky, heavy, and risky to make it worthwhile much.
It wouldn't be that big a deal to recreate the Saturn Vs. We've got the plans, just not the tools and dies (never have figured out why standard military policy is to destroy these when the project ends, like they did with the SR-71). With an upgrade for modern materials and avionics, these Saturn VIs would outstrip anything else around right now. And still be cheaper than Shuttle launches...
--"The shuttle is not an "insane contraption". It's a machine that, due to its completely different design from most rocket systems, exposed a lot of problems that we didn't even know existed."
What makes it an insane contraption is the fact that we've never bothered/managed to address most of those problems.
Even worse, there were a number of problems with the design we knew about in advance, but we went with it anyway because (wait for it) it was the low bid.
What am I talking about? Segmented SRBs for a starter. Instead of building a single big rocket, we build it in sections, ship the sections, and then put them together later. Why? To spread the pork around. Unfortunately, this is what killed Challenger.
Heat tiles for another. Custom-made for each location, meaning absolutely zero economy-of-scale. Very stupid thing to do for such a fragile, expensive and necessary piece of the project. Lost two to this one.
And there's other problems we've lucked out on so far. Like the SSMEs. Sure, they're powerful. They're also finicky, and have never had the multi-flight capacity they were supposed to have. They have to be completely rebuilt every flight to be inspected and repaired. Why? Lots of little, medium, and even big problems with them that we've never been able to fix completly. They were just flat out designed with the wrong methedology.
So we've got three major components of the system that are flat out bad ideas to be used in something like this. Stuff like avionics hasn't ever been a problem; it was properly designed, and it's something that can be upgrades as we go even if it wasn't. We managed to get all the major, high-cost-to-fix items wrong. So why keep using it?
... all of our old mistakes.
Horrible, horrible idea. They're taking two of the three worst components of the current shuttle platform and reusing them in a system where we have already made and used much better systems. The only way they could make it worse is to rely on the current shuttle thermal tiling.
So, lets look at the other two pieces. SRBs? They killed Challenger. They've never worked properly, or we wouldn't have been getting blow-by as routine. If NASA is insisting on sticking with solid fuels, for whatever odd reason, they need to make them non-segmented (although there are other practical problems here that would have to be solved). Increasing the segments to five is just going to make the problem much worse, since the joints are the weakest part of the system, which means more losses.
Then we've got the SSMEs. Good ISP, fine, but the mechanical problems are still around. We've never, ever been able to get these to work the way we wanted them to. NASA just keeps moving the "acceptable" bar every time a new problem is found. They need a complete redesign to get rid of the problems we do know about (that's what top-down design gets you), but that'd be far too expensive. If we want to stick with old tech, we'd be much better off just remaking the tools for the Saturn V engines and restarting production.
If this memo at all reflects NASAs future actions, then they'll have proven themselves irrelevant. Unles the US government decides to try out a bounty system, and offers appropriate (ie. billions) numbers for good systems, we're out of the race. Maybe someone else will be able to keep going.
Alita
"Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation."
-- Johnny Hart
See A PETITION From the Manufacturers of Candles, Tapers, Lanterns, sticks, Street Lamps, Snuffers, and Extinguishers, and from Producers of Tallow, Oil, Resin, Alcohol, and Generally of Everything Connected with Lighting. by Bastiat
In any case, no, they don't spout the Republican party line (at least, not if they're really Objectivist; haven't paid attention to ARF for a while, so I can't say for sure). They do sound quite Republican on economic matters, yes. Basically, keep government out of it unless someone's doing something like committing fraud or theft. They disagree strongly with the Repubs on social matters, though. Objectivists think things like flag-burning bans and gay-marriage bans are silly. And certainly don't agree with the whole Christian State nonesense. Or the agressive "hit them before they hit us" War on Terror nonesense. Or the drug war. Or... well, you get the picture.
Actually, Kerry just wants different scary stuff. He's all in favor of things that even Ashcroft was against. Which is kinda scary, if you think about it. Check out: http://www.reason.com/hod/jb072604.shtml for some starter info. You can find a lot more if you bother looking at his voting record. Sorry, but under Kerry it'll be Reno all over again. And there isn't a whole lot to choose from between Reno and Ashcroft. Me? I'll vote Libertarian.