It cost me $400 just to get a lawyer to make a phone call to the cops and plea bargain away a traffic ticket (a nasty one that would have gotten my driver's license revoked, so it was worth it).
Unless he had a public defender, I'd say he ate up the rest of that money just on legal fees.
Although, I am not a Canadian, so maybe their legal system works differently.
ghost in the shell was released in america before it was in japan henceforth the english dub was done first and japanese done second
It most certainly was not! The movie was premiered roughly simultaneously in Japan, America and Great Britain, but was not released in the US until some time after its widespread release in Japan.
I'm asking because Bebop has a pretty wide variety of episode styles. Some are cops and robbers in space, some are fairly violent, and others are just a lot of fun.
I recommend trying a couple more episodes, especially since you're watching for free.
As for anime in general, one of the big deals is variety. Anime is FAR, FAR more varied than you seem to be giving it credit for. There are kid's shows like pokemon, but there are also shows for older audiences. There are shows for guys, and shows for gals. There are dark, violent thrillers, but there are also flowery girly romances, and everything in between.
One of the problems I find with people's view of anime is that it is formed by looking at what they see in video stores and comic shops, and the selection there tends to be skewed towards the violent, R-rated type of thing because that's what the shop owners think their audience is. A vicious circle, really.
Three quick films for you to try to rent:
Princess Mononoke - Violent, but also amazing. Humanity vs. Nature in a powerful story that examines both sides of the issue, and allows the audience to draw their own conclusions. By Studio Ghibli, probably the best animators currently working on Planet Earth.
Kiki's Delivery Service and Totoro - By the same people that did Princess Mononoke, but these are both for children. Kiki is a young witch out on her own, but all she can do is fly a broom. So she starts a messenger service... Totaro is about two little girls living in the country who encounter a friendly and magical forest creature in the woods. Both are probably in the kid's section of your local Blockbuster.
Because freedom from guilt is a big luxury, and because a lot of your early adopters will be rich people with strong environmental sympathies.
So don't build a fuel-cell-powered crappy econobox. Build a fuel-cell-powered Lexus or Suburban.
Quiet, tons of torque, guilt-free.
Heck, with the engines in the wheel hubs you could build something with the offroad capabilites of a Hummer for a lot less, because the powertrain would be so greatly simplified.
How many word processors are there? How many people write the Great Amercian Novel?
An RPG, even a console-style one, takes a ton of work, not only programming, but lots and lots of art, scripting, CGI and other specialized tasks. One person can't bang it out and have something that meets professional standards, at least on the PC.
So far, we're not seeing a lot of successful community game projects. Maybe that will change, I'd like to think so, but I don't see it happening.
Because I use Office 2000 every day, and it's not even remotely a good product. It's a feature landfill. It's terminally buggy. The documents spontaneously corrupt themselves in MANY ways. And it still has well-known bugs in it from Word for Windows 2.0, not to mention misfeatures like fast save and Master Document which NEVER worked in the first place.
It's not even as good a product as Office 95 was.
Jon Acheson
Lots of PalmOs devices have jog wheels.
on
New Palm Pictures?
·
· Score: 2
As far as I know, all of Sony's devices have had it, the Handera has it, and some of Handspring's models too, if I remember correctly.
All before the iPod ever came out.
So, I wouldn't read too much into it. The biggest impact Apple is probably having on Palm is through the ex-Apple ex-Be people working on the OS after PalmOS 5 (not sure if it's PalmOS 6 or 5.5).
I see this running like every crossover comic ever written:
Reel 1: Batman and Superman cross paths, get in each other's way and fight, messing each other up but neither taking home a definitive win. Kiss another Batplane goodbye.
Reel 2: Villians gang up on Batman and Superman.
Reel 3: Batman and Superman team up and defeat villians.
For a good idea of what I mean, see the 3-part World's Finest comic that Steve Rude illustrated for DC a few years back. It rocked.
Of course, for Joe Sixpack, "Batman vs. Superman" is a better title than "World's Finest," since Joe Sixpack doesn't get the reference to the old teamup title from the fifties.
Lastly, while I wish Christopher Reeve all the best, he wasn't the first actor to play Superman, and he won't be the last. It might be nice to get Gene Hackman back as Lex Luthor, though.
My kukri was bought from Himalayan Imports, and was made in Nepal. It's their 15" Ang Khola. It's pretty solid, and looks nice, but it arrived dull, and sharpening it properly took HOURS. For $150, a knife should come sharp.
The edge on these is supposed to be indestructible, onine reviews talked about chopping off car doors without harming the edge. Well, they're all full of shit. After an hour clearing light brush with mine, the edge was noticeably messed up. I would have expected better from a $15 machete.
I probably should have gotten the Cold Steel one, quality control would have been better. As it is, I pretty much feel I got a Shemp.
Lastly, the main reason I think a Kukri is a bad choice for a stroll through the Mines of Moria or some such nonsense is that it's a chopping weapon, and in a tunnel you want a thrusting point. The bend in the Kukri that makes it a good chopper tends to make it a poor thrusting weapon.
Firstly, neither of them mentioned the most important thing: a backup flashlight.
MAG-lites are wonderfully durable, but their bulbs and batteries are still prone to damage in an abusive environment like a cave. I know: on my one caving trip in college, my primary mag-lite gave out halfway through. Fortunately I had a AA backup. Better yet would be an LED flashlight: they're incredibly tough.
Secondly, a kukri? Please. I own one, and it's mostly useless except as a heavy-duty machete. And it might get you arrested. And was he carrying it stuck through his belt without a sheath?
Important stuff for caving:
Some kind of helmet. We used Army helmet liners, which were protection enough without being too heavy.
Multiple light sources. The best would be an LED light on a headband, so you can use it hands-free. Bring extras in case you lose your primary, or your buddy does.
Your buddy. At least they got this one right.
Overalls, or plan to change clothes when you get out. Caves are filthy even when they're not a sewer. You're going to come out dirty from head to toe.
Work gloves. Protect your hands.
Tell someone where you're going, so if you run into problems they can send help eventually.
Anywhere you might need rope for, you shouldn't be going.
Question is, would they have enough market share by then ? Enough to ponder a new version ?
"By then?" I didn't know their market share was increasing. I would have thought that it would be decreasing, due to poor performance overseas relative to the other consoles, but I confess I have seen no hard numbers.
Also would they take a hit in terms of cost as they did with the original Xbox?
They will if they follow the same design path as the current XBox. Their problem is that they don't get the same economies of scales as Sony or Nintendo, since the components they assemble into an XBox are already at their volume-discounted prices, and the XBox is a lot more complicated than a PS2 or GameCube.
The real problem is, with the XBox selling poorly, and its software therefore also selling poorly, how will they get developers without having to pay them off up front?
I'm checking the sites almost daily to see if the 1 ghz Via C3 cpu has come out yet. It's been reviewed favorably, but has not hit the market yet.
Why? Because although it's kind of wimpy, it's cheap, it has the oomph to decode DVD in software, and IT CAN RUN WITHOUT A FAN.
Perfect for my own tv-companion PC project, building a TV PC inside the case of an APEX AD-1200 DVD player (the $65 one that Circuit City sells). The AD-1200 uses a standard IDE DVD drive, so all I have to do is get a C3 in there on a small motherboard along with a power supply and hard drive. Woo Hoo!
I would suggest wiring the braces on their teeth up to the Dana and feeding them lemons, which apparently will generate enough power to run a calculator, but that would be wrong.:)
Also, braces are plastic nowadays instead of metal.
I would think that you could get all of the advantages of maglev at a fraction of the price by using a thin air cushion underneath the train instead of magnetic levitation.
It would certainly make your track cheaper: an air cushion train could run on concrete.
Several of the copy protection companies have acted in a way that harms legal use of the CDs.
At least one of these companies has produced a product that can lock up a Mac while being used legally. It is apparently a PITA to get the CD out, and I doubt that my parents could do it. That IS malicious. There are going to be people screwing up their computers with these things for years.
Frankly, I think as a consumer you have a reasonable right to assume that a commercially purchased CD isn't going to break your computer. If someone put out a Cd that contained a virus, you'd expect them to be responsible for the damages. I see no difference between this kind of "copy protection" and a virus.
Granted, the record companies have the big bucks if you want a cash settlement, but if you want to stamp this kind of thing out, I'd think you'd be better off putting the Macrovision-level companies out of business instead.
Once a few of those companies have been sued into smoking holes in the ground, their surviving ilk should be hesitant to repeat the same mistake.
And in my mind , missle defense research is a moral imperative.
We certainly do agree there. I would much rather save lives on our side than threaten to kill millions of civilians on the other side.
BTW, in my last posting where I asked "How old are you?", it was not meant to be a put down. I realized what it would sound like after I posted. I was really trying to get to the Regan vs. Bush Jr. versions of SDI; which are substantially different.
I kind of thought that was what you meant, but I wasn't sure, so I didn't respond. I guess I should have given you the benefit of the doubt. I'm 34, btw.
As to speling, don't be fooled into the simplistic equation that there is a correlation between speling and intelligence. I believe there is a greater correlation between people who nit-pick speling and simple mindedness (not you of course:). Remeber Kwalitee is Gob won.
"Correct speling is essential!" : )
The thing about bad spelling is that it implies that either the writer can't spell, or can't be bothered to proofread what they wrote. It really does matter, especially when making a first impression.
Thanks for responding so politely, btw. It's a pleasure finding someone who takes the high road. I have to apologize, some of my own tone was pretty harsh. Sorry.
There are times when less than five nines (99.999%) security means no security at all. Defense against the Soviet Nuclear Arsenal is one of those.
Then I guess we disagree. As I see it, having a defense that is 99% effective (which, allowing for human error, is as good as you can ever hope for in the real world) is much better and safer than not having the defense. Specifically, it is much better in situations that fall short of an all-out attack. Think of the scenario where a single rogue missile gets launched by one side (through malfunction, error, insanity, whatever). The other side, possessing a defense, has much better options (shoot it down) than they would otherwise (retaliate or just take it).
The information I am working on is from the Regan Administration, not the refried-beans regugitated by the Bush Jr. Administration. Specifically, my education in this area goes back to a presentation at the MIT Club of Washington DC by some Air Force General involved in the developement of SDI part I in 1987.
Again, my info came directly from the SDI program via NTIS, published (and read by me) at about the same time as your club meeting. Please check my sources.
A clip that can hold the PDA in my shirt pocket. No more bouncing it off the floor when I lean over to pick something up. This could be as simple as a pen-clip mounted on the stylus.
MP3 playback & record.
Some kind of removable storage, preferably CompactFlash, but anything with 128 MB and up would do.
Durable. Metal shell, rubberise the corners.
GameBoy style buttons (up, down, left right in a gamepad configuration on the left and at least 2 fire buttons on the right. For playing games, of course. Sony has many of the other features, but their buttons suck for game playing.
What's wrong with a pocket sized notepad and pencil?
A pad of paper doesn't beep an alarm before the event you forgot about happens.
Worse, once you fill up the pad of paper, you either leave it at home, where you no longer have access to the information it contains, or carry around two pads of paper. Either way you wind up with scads of paper notepads lying around. I know: that's what I used to do before I bought a Palm. You will never fill up a current-model Palm with your notes and addresses and schedule. I never came close to filling up my original 1 MB Pilot, and current machines start at 8 MB. Plus, when the time comes to copy those notes into some other app, they're already there on your computer.
No SDI plan has ever been proposed that would satisfy my critereon: less than 10 warheads get thru. Any more than a dozen, and there wouldn't be a USA to bother with. We are talking 10+ megaton warheads. No piddling 14 kiloton crap that hit Hiroshima.
Your argument is, if I can't have a 100% impervious shield, why bother with defense? That makes no sense. It's certainly not the standard applied to any other type of defense. And in the worst case (now unlikely) where 200+ nukes are fired and 10 get through, 10 is still a lot better than the alternative.
Further, your characterization of the opposition to SDI is what is truely flawed. Lauching more missles is a viable counter to SDI. Missles are the cheap parts, warheads are the expensive part of a Nuclear wepon. Further, lasars and particle beams were definitely the most talked about SDI wepons. Specifically, mini-nuclear explosions creating focused X-ray beams. The kenetic wepons "smart-pebbles" are more plausible but have tons of drawbacks.
You haven't even done your basic research. I have. Unlike Joe Loser Journalist from Newsweek, I was reading the official public releases from the SDI program that were published on microfiche through NTIS. And no, laser beams and particle beams were NOT part of the first generation SDI project. SDI was strictly using off the shelf technology to build kinetic energy interceptors, the "smart rocks" that were later called "brilliant pebbles." While the official releases talked about the possibility of using directed energy weapons in a future second generation defense system (for the space of maybe one paragraph), they were not a part of the first-generation SDI system in any way. Go find a library with NTIS archives and read the official SDI papers for yourself.
Lasers and particle beams and nuke-pumped x-ray lasers were/are pie in the sky technology, decades away from being feasible at the time, and they might not have panned out at all. SDI was intended to field a working missile defense system RIGHT AWAY. The only people talking about lasers were idiot journalists who didn't do their research, or did their research by talking to idiot college professors. And Christ, there were a lot of them. I heard so-called "experts" claim that the whole project came out of an idea Reagan had at a dinner party! (Note: DOD has been actively and steadily pursuing anti-ballistic missile technology since the fifties.)
Then, when SDI announced that "hey, the interceptors we've been working on are doing pretty well," the idiots in the press reported it as "guess they gave up on those lasers." (See the Newsweek cover story "SDI Changes Its Course.")
Research into directed energy weapons was ongoing at the same time, of course, and had been before SDI in projects like Red River, but directed energy weapons were NOT a part of the first-generation SDI system.
Don't act so high and mighty when you are clearly just an ignorant of the fact that people of differing view points might be inteligent, informed, and well intentioned, yet still disagree with you.
If I'm acting high and mighty, it's because I bothered to actually do the basic research and learn the basic facts, and the vast majority of talking heads out there did not. And neither have you. It pisses me off. PS, learn to spell.
Slashdot Mirror
It cost me $400 just to get a lawyer to make a phone call to the cops and plea bargain away a traffic ticket (a nasty one that would have gotten my driver's license revoked, so it was worth it).
Unless he had a public defender, I'd say he ate up the rest of that money just on legal fees.
Although, I am not a Canadian, so maybe their legal system works differently.
Jon Acheson
Jon Acheson
I'm asking because Bebop has a pretty wide variety of episode styles. Some are cops and robbers in space, some are fairly violent, and others are just a lot of fun.
I recommend trying a couple more episodes, especially since you're watching for free.
As for anime in general, one of the big deals is variety. Anime is FAR, FAR more varied than you seem to be giving it credit for. There are kid's shows like pokemon, but there are also shows for older audiences. There are shows for guys, and shows for gals. There are dark, violent thrillers, but there are also flowery girly romances, and everything in between.
One of the problems I find with people's view of anime is that it is formed by looking at what they see in video stores and comic shops, and the selection there tends to be skewed towards the violent, R-rated type of thing because that's what the shop owners think their audience is. A vicious circle, really.
Three quick films for you to try to rent:
Princess Mononoke - Violent, but also amazing. Humanity vs. Nature in a powerful story that examines both sides of the issue, and allows the audience to draw their own conclusions. By Studio Ghibli, probably the best animators currently working on Planet Earth.
Kiki's Delivery Service and Totoro - By the same people that did Princess Mononoke, but these are both for children. Kiki is a young witch out on her own, but all she can do is fly a broom. So she starts a messenger service... Totaro is about two little girls living in the country who encounter a friendly and magical forest creature in the woods. Both are probably in the kid's section of your local Blockbuster.
Jon Acheson
We had her as a guest of honor at OTAKON a few years back, and she was really nice.
Hopefully she'll do some live music at the NYC con.
Gotta finish the graphic for my Cowboy Bebop "best of" CD... (Note: I bought all the Japanese CDs, so don't even start...).
Jon Acheson
Because freedom from guilt is a big luxury, and because a lot of your early adopters will be rich people with strong environmental sympathies.
So don't build a fuel-cell-powered crappy econobox. Build a fuel-cell-powered Lexus or Suburban.
Quiet, tons of torque, guilt-free.
Heck, with the engines in the wheel hubs you could build something with the offroad capabilites of a Hummer for a lot less, because the powertrain would be so greatly simplified.
Jon Acheson
How many word processors are there? How many people write the Great Amercian Novel?
An RPG, even a console-style one, takes a ton of work, not only programming, but lots and lots of art, scripting, CGI and other specialized tasks. One person can't bang it out and have something that meets professional standards, at least on the PC.
So far, we're not seeing a lot of successful community game projects. Maybe that will change, I'd like to think so, but I don't see it happening.
Jon Acheson
...you're in trouble.
Because I use Office 2000 every day, and it's not even remotely a good product. It's a feature landfill. It's terminally buggy. The documents spontaneously corrupt themselves in MANY ways. And it still has well-known bugs in it from Word for Windows 2.0, not to mention misfeatures like fast save and Master Document which NEVER worked in the first place.
It's not even as good a product as Office 95 was.
Jon Acheson
As far as I know, all of Sony's devices have had it, the Handera has it, and some of Handspring's models too, if I remember correctly.
All before the iPod ever came out.
So, I wouldn't read too much into it. The biggest impact Apple is probably having on Palm is through the ex-Apple ex-Be people working on the OS after PalmOS 5 (not sure if it's PalmOS 6 or 5.5).
Jon Acheson
I see this running like every crossover comic ever written:
Reel 1: Batman and Superman cross paths, get in each other's way and fight, messing each other up but neither taking home a definitive win. Kiss another Batplane goodbye.
Reel 2: Villians gang up on Batman and Superman.
Reel 3: Batman and Superman team up and defeat villians.
For a good idea of what I mean, see the 3-part World's Finest comic that Steve Rude illustrated for DC a few years back. It rocked.
Of course, for Joe Sixpack, "Batman vs. Superman" is a better title than "World's Finest," since Joe Sixpack doesn't get the reference to the old teamup title from the fifties.
Lastly, while I wish Christopher Reeve all the best, he wasn't the first actor to play Superman, and he won't be the last. It might be nice to get Gene Hackman back as Lex Luthor, though.
Jon Acheson
My kukri was bought from Himalayan Imports, and was made in Nepal. It's their 15" Ang Khola. It's pretty solid, and looks nice, but it arrived dull, and sharpening it properly took HOURS. For $150, a knife should come sharp.
The edge on these is supposed to be indestructible, onine reviews talked about chopping off car doors without harming the edge. Well, they're all full of shit. After an hour clearing light brush with mine, the edge was noticeably messed up. I would have expected better from a $15 machete.
I probably should have gotten the Cold Steel one, quality control would have been better. As it is, I pretty much feel I got a Shemp.
Lastly, the main reason I think a Kukri is a bad choice for a stroll through the Mines of Moria or some such nonsense is that it's a chopping weapon, and in a tunnel you want a thrusting point. The bend in the Kukri that makes it a good chopper tends to make it a poor thrusting weapon.
Jon Acheson
MAG-lites are wonderfully durable, but their bulbs and batteries are still prone to damage in an abusive environment like a cave. I know: on my one caving trip in college, my primary mag-lite gave out halfway through. Fortunately I had a AA backup. Better yet would be an LED flashlight: they're incredibly tough.
Secondly, a kukri? Please. I own one, and it's mostly useless except as a heavy-duty machete. And it might get you arrested. And was he carrying it stuck through his belt without a sheath?
Important stuff for caving:
Jon Acheson
"By then?" I didn't know their market share was increasing. I would have thought that it would be decreasing, due to poor performance overseas relative to the other consoles, but I confess I have seen no hard numbers.
They will if they follow the same design path as the current XBox. Their problem is that they don't get the same economies of scales as Sony or Nintendo, since the components they assemble into an XBox are already at their volume-discounted prices, and the XBox is a lot more complicated than a PS2 or GameCube.
The real problem is, with the XBox selling poorly, and its software therefore also selling poorly, how will they get developers without having to pay them off up front?
Jon Acheson
I'm checking the sites almost daily to see if the 1 ghz Via C3 cpu has come out yet. It's been reviewed favorably, but has not hit the market yet.
Why? Because although it's kind of wimpy, it's cheap, it has the oomph to decode DVD in software, and IT CAN RUN WITHOUT A FAN.
Perfect for my own tv-companion PC project, building a TV PC inside the case of an APEX AD-1200 DVD player (the $65 one that Circuit City sells). The AD-1200 uses a standard IDE DVD drive, so all I have to do is get a C3 in there on a small motherboard along with a power supply and hard drive. Woo Hoo!
Jon Acheson
I would suggest wiring the braces on their teeth up to the Dana and feeding them lemons, which apparently will generate enough power to run a calculator, but that would be wrong. :)
Also, braces are plastic nowadays instead of metal.
Jon Acheson
It uses a rechargeable battery pack that can be replaced by 3 AAs.
Check the product sheet.
Jon Acheson
If you give folding Palm keyboards to grade school kids, they will destroy them.
If you give them regular Palms, they will break them or lose them.
These things are supposed to be tough and last a long time on the battery pack. For their intended purpose, they will rock.
I wonder if you could run one off of solar cells?
Jon Acheson
I would think that you could get all of the advantages of maglev at a fraction of the price by using a thin air cushion underneath the train instead of magnetic levitation.
It would certainly make your track cheaper: an air cushion train could run on concrete.
Jon Acheson
It just seems odd to me that Microsoft hasn't cobbled a Beowulf solution together yet and included it with their server OSes.
Or have they done it and I just didn't hear about it? Most of their clustering seems centered around high availability, not parallel processing.
Jon Acheson
Several of the copy protection companies have acted in a way that harms legal use of the CDs.
At least one of these companies has produced a product that can lock up a Mac while being used legally. It is apparently a PITA to get the CD out, and I doubt that my parents could do it. That IS malicious. There are going to be people screwing up their computers with these things for years.
Frankly, I think as a consumer you have a reasonable right to assume that a commercially purchased CD isn't going to break your computer. If someone put out a Cd that contained a virus, you'd expect them to be responsible for the damages. I see no difference between this kind of "copy protection" and a virus.
Jon Acheson
Granted, the record companies have the big bucks if you want a cash settlement, but if you want to stamp this kind of thing out, I'd think you'd be better off putting the Macrovision-level companies out of business instead.
Once a few of those companies have been sued into smoking holes in the ground, their surviving ilk should be hesitant to repeat the same mistake.
Jon Acheson
We certainly do agree there. I would much rather save lives on our side than threaten to kill millions of civilians on the other side.
I kind of thought that was what you meant, but I wasn't sure, so I didn't respond. I guess I should have given you the benefit of the doubt. I'm 34, btw.
"Correct speling is essential!" : )
The thing about bad spelling is that it implies that either the writer can't spell, or can't be bothered to proofread what they wrote. It really does matter, especially when making a first impression.
Thanks for responding so politely, btw. It's a pleasure finding someone who takes the high road. I have to apologize, some of my own tone was pretty harsh. Sorry.
Jon Acheson
Then I guess we disagree. As I see it, having a defense that is 99% effective (which, allowing for human error, is as good as you can ever hope for in the real world) is much better and safer than not having the defense. Specifically, it is much better in situations that fall short of an all-out attack. Think of the scenario where a single rogue missile gets launched by one side (through malfunction, error, insanity, whatever). The other side, possessing a defense, has much better options (shoot it down) than they would otherwise (retaliate or just take it).
Again, my info came directly from the SDI program via NTIS, published (and read by me) at about the same time as your club meeting. Please check my sources.
Jon Acheson
Jon Acheson
A pad of paper doesn't beep an alarm before the event you forgot about happens.
Worse, once you fill up the pad of paper, you either leave it at home, where you no longer have access to the information it contains, or carry around two pads of paper. Either way you wind up with scads of paper notepads lying around. I know: that's what I used to do before I bought a Palm. You will never fill up a current-model Palm with your notes and addresses and schedule. I never came close to filling up my original 1 MB Pilot, and current machines start at 8 MB. Plus, when the time comes to copy those notes into some other app, they're already there on your computer.
Jon Acheson
Your argument is, if I can't have a 100% impervious shield, why bother with defense? That makes no sense. It's certainly not the standard applied to any other type of defense. And in the worst case (now unlikely) where 200+ nukes are fired and 10 get through, 10 is still a lot better than the alternative.
You haven't even done your basic research. I have. Unlike Joe Loser Journalist from Newsweek, I was reading the official public releases from the SDI program that were published on microfiche through NTIS. And no, laser beams and particle beams were NOT part of the first generation SDI project. SDI was strictly using off the shelf technology to build kinetic energy interceptors, the "smart rocks" that were later called "brilliant pebbles." While the official releases talked about the possibility of using directed energy weapons in a future second generation defense system (for the space of maybe one paragraph), they were not a part of the first-generation SDI system in any way. Go find a library with NTIS archives and read the official SDI papers for yourself.
Lasers and particle beams and nuke-pumped x-ray lasers were/are pie in the sky technology, decades away from being feasible at the time, and they might not have panned out at all. SDI was intended to field a working missile defense system RIGHT AWAY. The only people talking about lasers were idiot journalists who didn't do their research, or did their research by talking to idiot college professors. And Christ, there were a lot of them. I heard so-called "experts" claim that the whole project came out of an idea Reagan had at a dinner party! (Note: DOD has been actively and steadily pursuing anti-ballistic missile technology since the fifties.)
Then, when SDI announced that "hey, the interceptors we've been working on are doing pretty well," the idiots in the press reported it as "guess they gave up on those lasers." (See the Newsweek cover story "SDI Changes Its Course.")
Research into directed energy weapons was ongoing at the same time, of course, and had been before SDI in projects like Red River, but directed energy weapons were NOT a part of the first-generation SDI system.
If I'm acting high and mighty, it's because I bothered to actually do the basic research and learn the basic facts, and the vast majority of talking heads out there did not. And neither have you. It pisses me off. PS, learn to spell.
Jon Acheson