NASA's websites have a wealth of information -- far more than I have ever seen on a government website. All the pictures alone stored in the KSC Multimedia Archive show one just about every aspect possible of all the shuttle stuff, space stuff, and even their wildlife programs.
NASA has to be one of the few agencies to take pictures of most of their activities. They added Pictures of the cracked bearings today to the KSC Media Archive, and they are some ugly cracks.
If anyone's interested at more information on Buran and Baikal (the other Russian orbiter), take a look at http://www.k26.com/buran/ for some good information, plus a Message forum where I've read lots of interesting information concerning Buran and it's possible ressurrection. Also, the Buran unit designed for aerodynamic test flights (and thusly equipped with 4 turbo jets + afterburners) is on tour in Australia right now. Pictures of that tour can be found at http://members.optusnet.com.au/~pmorton/.
I'm actually going to find it very interesting if Russia ressurrects it's Buran shuttles, as most likely they'll put a small crew of cosmonauts on it and then sell the remaining 3-4 seats to tourists to piss off NASA:P
I haven't watched Voyager too much lately, especially after several of the horribly botched attempts Voyager had to get home during the series (Hell, Voyager should have been a 2 hour made-for-tv movie, all they had to do was drop a couple anti-matter pods on the Caretaker's space station, program them to auto-shutdown the magnetic containment fields at a specified time, and then use the station and go home. Since the Kazon didn't even have transporter tech, I highly doubt they could have analyzed and decrypted the proper codes to turn off the pod countdown anyways..)...and then there was the real badly botched ferengi episode, but enough of Voyager..
What I think would be cool is to set Trek in the 29th century with the time travelling ships and temporal prime directive. This I feel would do several things for Trek, number one being it gives script writers nearly 5 centuries of Trek history to conjure up and fill in. By bunching DS9 & Voyager into the same timeframe as TNG, I feel the writers messed up some Trek facts that had already been set forth in TNG or TOS... The addition of Time travel and that temporal prime directive could add a whole new level of complexity to the scripts (if the writers can even turn out a complex script to begin with)...hell, it could even be kinda like Quantum Leap, a ship that travels through various portions of the last 5 centuries setting things straight in an attempt to get home.. But who knows. I just feel that dropping it in the 29th century would allow for unrestricted creativity to fill the 5 century void between 29th & 24th century...new aliens, new technology, new twists with the Federation...really wicked looking ships from all races (Wonder what the 29th century Borg are like), etc..
I wouldn't mind seeing a good story arc either, TNG and TOS were cool with their one-story-per-episode thing, but DS9 and Voyager's attempts to mimic the story-arc-over-a-period-of-years thing I think went bad (Voyagers more so than DS9's). Babylon 5 I feel is probably the only sci-fi show I have seen to date that successfully creates a compelling and very awesome story-arc to follow over the 5 years. I really would like to see Trek come out with something similar.
--Kumba
"Now it's Omega zero day,
The red star shines it's last ray,
The sun that gave us life yesterday,
Is now the sun that takes our lives away."
Bruce Dickinson, "Omega" -- Accident of Birth
Recall the HomeGen 7000 system GE was said to have available sometime in 2001?. The Slashdot link can be found here. It looks very promising, all you need is a gas line and then you got instant electricity. If GE got these things out now in California, I'm sure alot of people would pay anything to get one..
It appears that GE removed the product description off of their page however. If anyone is able to find a mirror or more info on GE's site, just reply to this comment and attach it. It's a pretty neat system.
--Kumba
"And all this vegetable world appeared on my left foot, as a bright sandal formed immortal of precious stones and gold: I stooped down and bound it on to walk forward through eternity." --Milton 21:4-14 (Bruce Dickinson's The Chemical Wedding: The Alchemist)
I find it funny that the MPAA is actually going this far to swindle what else they can from people. But even if they succeed, and get some kind of protection built into the hardware, someone somewhere at sometime will get bored, and decide to hack it. It won't be the cleanest, most easily reproducable hack, but they'll do it.
Famous Quote I like to go by: "Make something idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot."
So they stop us at the VCR Level. At some point along the path from the cable input to the television, there will be a decrypted video signal, just waiting for someone to snatch up and redirect to a VCR.
If your really that deperate, break out the old camcorder, take a set of headphones and cut the jack off. Wire the jack to the speaker in your television, plug it into the camcorder's "Audio In". Face the camcorder at the TV Screen, press record, and watch as the camcorder captures both video and sound (you can use the microphone if you want...)
In the end, MPAA and RIAA are trying to resist change rather than adapting to it. And this will be the final nail in their coffin. Change is here, and they need to learn to adapt to it rather than trying to twist it to their own devilish schemes.
Had the MPAA/RIAA worked out a business plan that used these new and emerging technologies, they would be leaning back in their chairs, enjoying a nice cuban cigar, while they continued to make money, rather than wasting it on endless lawyer/legal fees to fight it.
I honestly think that in the end, the Consumers will win this. It may take many years, but in the end, we will win.
I'm up for using genetic science to remove certain diseases like Cystic Fibrosis (sp?), or MSD, etc.. from the child before it is born. But treating the unborn like it was a car and choosing it's features (i.e. choosing eye color, hair color, weight, height, etc...) isn't right. It should all be left up to the chaotic randomness of the Universe so that you don't know what your getting. Its exciting to expect the unexpected..
Arthur Caplan quotes: "Absolutely, somewhere in the next millennium, making babies sexually will be rare..." -- If you ask me, he's nuts. Genetic engineering may be an alternative, but it'll never replace the "natural" way.
And the concept of microchips in the brain is really dumb...Sure it may provide the ability to imbue the entire UNIX manual into a 4 year old's brain, but there's no fun in that...tis better to spend time to learn by trial & error. Eh well, I won't be around when all this happens prolly anyways, cause it's still a good century down the road I think...*coughtechnologicaldarkagecough*
A penny for your thoughts, and I gave my two cents, now where is my change?:P
Slashdot Mirror
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/images/large/02 pd1167.jpg [nasa.gov]
And can you beleive how BIG those pics are! Jesus!
And if you're also interested, here is a picture of the mysterious cracks that grounded the shuttles initially (Found on Discovery first).
KSC-02PD-1057
NASA's websites have a wealth of information -- far more than I have ever seen on a government website. All the pictures alone stored in the KSC Multimedia Archive show one just about every aspect possible of all the shuttle stuff, space stuff, and even their wildlife programs.
--Kumba
NASA has to be one of the few agencies to take pictures of most of their activities. They added Pictures of the cracked bearings today to the KSC Media Archive, and they are some ugly cracks.
Links can be found here:
KSC-02PD-1166
KSC-02PD-1167
KSC-02PD-1168
KSC-02PD-1169
KSC-02PD-1170
KSC-02PD-1171
--Kumba
If anyone's interested at more information on Buran and Baikal (the other Russian orbiter), take a look at http://www.k26.com/buran/ for some good information, plus a Message forum where I've read lots of interesting information concerning Buran and it's possible ressurrection. Also, the Buran unit designed for aerodynamic test flights (and thusly equipped with 4 turbo jets + afterburners) is on tour in Australia right now. Pictures of that tour can be found at http://members.optusnet.com.au/~pmorton/.
:P
I'm actually going to find it very interesting if Russia ressurrects it's Buran shuttles, as most likely they'll put a small crew of cosmonauts on it and then sell the remaining 3-4 seats to tourists to piss off NASA
--Kumba
I haven't watched Voyager too much lately, especially after several of the horribly botched attempts Voyager had to get home during the series (Hell, Voyager should have been a 2 hour made-for-tv movie, all they had to do was drop a couple anti-matter pods on the Caretaker's space station, program them to auto-shutdown the magnetic containment fields at a specified time, and then use the station and go home. Since the Kazon didn't even have transporter tech, I highly doubt they could have analyzed and decrypted the proper codes to turn off the pod countdown anyways..)...and then there was the real badly botched ferengi episode, but enough of Voyager..
What I think would be cool is to set Trek in the 29th century with the time travelling ships and temporal prime directive. This I feel would do several things for Trek, number one being it gives script writers nearly 5 centuries of Trek history to conjure up and fill in. By bunching DS9 & Voyager into the same timeframe as TNG, I feel the writers messed up some Trek facts that had already been set forth in TNG or TOS... The addition of Time travel and that temporal prime directive could add a whole new level of complexity to the scripts (if the writers can even turn out a complex script to begin with)...hell, it could even be kinda like Quantum Leap, a ship that travels through various portions of the last 5 centuries setting things straight in an attempt to get home.. But who knows. I just feel that dropping it in the 29th century would allow for unrestricted creativity to fill the 5 century void between 29th & 24th century...new aliens, new technology, new twists with the Federation...really wicked looking ships from all races (Wonder what the 29th century Borg are like), etc..
I wouldn't mind seeing a good story arc either, TNG and TOS were cool with their one-story-per-episode thing, but DS9 and Voyager's attempts to mimic the story-arc-over-a-period-of-years thing I think went bad (Voyagers more so than DS9's). Babylon 5 I feel is probably the only sci-fi show I have seen to date that successfully creates a compelling and very awesome story-arc to follow over the 5 years. I really would like to see Trek come out with something similar.
--Kumba
"Now it's Omega zero day,
The red star shines it's last ray,
The sun that gave us life yesterday,
Is now the sun that takes our lives away."
Bruce Dickinson, "Omega" -- Accident of Birth
I say that Mir will fall on 2001-03-21 16:52:51
Recall the HomeGen 7000 system GE was said to have available sometime in 2001?. The Slashdot link can be found here. It looks very promising, all you need is a gas line and then you got instant electricity. If GE got these things out now in California, I'm sure alot of people would pay anything to get one..
It appears that GE removed the product description off of their page however. If anyone is able to find a mirror or more info on GE's site, just reply to this comment and attach it. It's a pretty neat system.
--Kumba
"And all this vegetable world appeared on my left foot, as a bright sandal formed immortal of precious stones and gold: I stooped down and bound it on to walk forward through eternity." --Milton 21:4-14 (Bruce Dickinson's The Chemical Wedding: The Alchemist)
I find it funny that the MPAA is actually going this far to swindle what else they can from people. But even if they succeed, and get some kind of protection built into the hardware, someone somewhere at sometime will get bored, and decide to hack it. It won't be the cleanest, most easily reproducable hack, but they'll do it.
Famous Quote I like to go by: "Make something idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot."
So they stop us at the VCR Level. At some point along the path from the cable input to the television, there will be a decrypted video signal, just waiting for someone to snatch up and redirect to a VCR.
If your really that deperate, break out the old camcorder, take a set of headphones and cut the jack off. Wire the jack to the speaker in your television, plug it into the camcorder's "Audio In". Face the camcorder at the TV Screen, press record, and watch as the camcorder captures both video and sound (you can use the microphone if you want...)
In the end, MPAA and RIAA are trying to resist change rather than adapting to it. And this will be the final nail in their coffin. Change is here, and they need to learn to adapt to it rather than trying to twist it to their own devilish schemes.
Had the MPAA/RIAA worked out a business plan that used these new and emerging technologies, they would be leaning back in their chairs, enjoying a nice cuban cigar, while they continued to make money, rather than wasting it on endless lawyer/legal fees to fight it.
I honestly think that in the end, the Consumers will win this. It may take many years, but in the end, we will win.
This link says it all: Explaining the CSS Decryption Source Code to the MPAA
--Kumba
I'm up for using genetic science to remove certain diseases like Cystic Fibrosis (sp?), or MSD, etc.. from the child before it is born. But treating the unborn like it was a car and choosing it's features (i.e. choosing eye color, hair color, weight, height, etc...) isn't right. It should all be left up to the chaotic randomness of the Universe so that you don't know what your getting. Its exciting to expect the unexpected..
:P
Arthur Caplan quotes: "Absolutely, somewhere in the next millennium, making babies sexually will be rare..." -- If you ask me, he's nuts. Genetic engineering may be an alternative, but it'll never replace the "natural" way.
And the concept of microchips in the brain is really dumb...Sure it may provide the ability to imbue the entire UNIX manual into a 4 year old's brain, but there's no fun in that...tis better to spend time to learn by trial & error. Eh well, I won't be around when all this happens prolly anyways, cause it's still a good century down the road I think...*coughtechnologicaldarkagecough*
A penny for your thoughts, and I gave my two cents, now where is my change?