Because a parachute landing is basically a controlled crash.
Hint: when the Army parachutes a hummer into an area, they drop the crew separately from the vehicle, because if they were in the vehicle, they'd get totalled by the landing impact!
Yes, the Russians land their people on the ground via parachute, but not with a ship they want to reuse.
Also, you really can't control where the ship is going to land with a parachute, you have to aim for a big stretch of ocean or desert. With a VTVL, you can land at the spaceport and get taxied back over to the launch pad, without expensive cranes or assembly buildings.
The Mobile Suit Gundam anime series had the orbital breakaway state of Jion dropping asteroids on earth cities, and that came out back in the late 70's/80's.
Speaking of B5, MS Gundam also took a big O'Neil type colony, filled it with CO2, and turned it into a superlaser. Very cool, at least when it's safely ficticious.
What, exactly, is the value for me the consumer in buying this POS operating system anyway?
My apps won't work, the interface is dumbed down and therefore aggravating, backwards compatibility is questionable, and let's not forget the damn thing won't even be servicable for two more service packs!
What? What the fsck is the POINT?
Honestly, I'm glad I've been looking into Linux, because I'm going to FORCED onto Linux!
No need to get it modded, and development efforts are already proceeding apace, and technical information is available. Plus, it's cheap and has Ethernet available.
It may not be a PS2 or XBox on paper, but in practical terms it's still in the same ballpark.
I had the same problem with the stock Sega pad, especially the D-pad, but I got a Mad Katz third-party controller, and all that went away.
I actually prefer the Mad Katz Dreamcast controller to the Playstation/PS2 analog controllers! The analog joystick is more responsive, for one thing. This is saying a lot, because the PSX/PS2 controller was previously the best I had ever seen!
Only slight problem was that the Mad Katz VMU port took a little while to break in before it worked reliably.
An instant-classic RPG, just a lot of fun. Sky Pirates! Flying battleships! Ship-to-ship combat! A game world that actually feels as big as it's supposed to be!
If it had fewer annoying random encounters, and a better variety of monsters (why do I always feel like I'm fighting a salad?), it would be perfect.
I have fond memories of the original show. Yes, it may have been a silly superhero in space show, but it was a lot of fun when I was a kid, and the design work on the show was top-rate and still holds up quite well, much like the original Johnny Quest.
Besides, when the chips are down, nothing saves your bacon like a monkey sidekick...
Because I liked the original, I have a correspondingly virulent hatred of the Coast to Coast bastardization. Especially when they reshow the original episodes with a laugh track. It's not that they're making fun of Space Ghost. That wouldn't bother me so much. It's that they're just mining Space Ghost for source material to make a really cheap Max Headroom ripoff (the talk-show Max Headroom, not the actual show).
I've seen PowerPoint presentations that had more animation than SG:CtC! If they were creating actual animation for the show, that would be something, but they're just capturing snippets and reusing them over and over and over again. It just galls me on an artistic level.
I'm sure he had input, but I guess he's not the only programmer at Transmeta. Maybe he finds the low-level x86 translation code more interesting, who knows?
Set basic parameters for a desired launch vehicle: get x payload to y orbit for under z dollars/lb of payload.
Guarantee to buy 5-10 launches from ANYONE who can come up with a viable launch vehicle (make them do a test flight first with a dummy payload of journalists). This gives them a chance of generating some cash flow out of the box.
This doesn't seem to be the next generation of Dreamcast, but rather just a way for Sega to repackage Dreamcast into a new product that they can get some more money out of.
If it's the next generation anything, it's the next generation Sega Channel.
A lot of microminiaturization work also happened because of the Cold War and the need to have ICBMs with onboard navigation computers, but basically you're right.
You're forgetting the value of having the stuff in orbit, which effectively inflates its value by about $100K a pound. Use it to build satellites and space stations, in nice clean vacuum, and without having to withstand the stresses of launch.
And, moving stuff around in space is not very expensive compared to the cost of lifting stuff out of Earth's gravity well. If you're willing to move stuff over the course of a few months, ion propulsion and favorable orbital mechanics make it doable.
First of all, when you say that the raw materials from an asteroid don't have enough value, you're forgetting the fact that THEY ARE ALREADY IN ORBIT. Since it costs $100K US a pound to lift raw materials into orbit using current technology, this adds tremendous value to the raw materials from an asteroid, which could be used to build things like the International Space Station or comm satellites much more cheaply than they could be on earth.
Secondly, about "spending the money on the rainforest instead": show me some results. The money spent on the space program has benefitted the US economy immensely due to the spinoff technologies and industries it has created. We're talking at least a tenfold return on investment. It has also greatly benefitted medical science, and even our understanding of the environment. It's been a tremendous bargain, frankly, and we haven't even spent that much on it in comparison with things like, say welfare.
One paper may have "proven" this, but I'd wait a few years before I started believing it. Let's see what the others in their field say about the research, or whether other counter-theories are advanced, etc.
It's easy for one research paper to be wrong.
Of course, irresponsible persons in the mass media will immediately run the story as if it had come down from Mt. Sinai on stone tablets, but you have to remember that they're peddling journalism, not facts.
Giraffes also have an organ at the base of their brain which helps choke off the blood pressure, because just the pressure of the column of blood in the however-many feet of neck above their heads would do them in otherwise (think the rush of blood to your head when you hang upside down, only lots worse).
First off, most programmers aren't working 70 hours a week, or at least not in any company I have ever worked for.
Secondly, exactly how is a union supposed to make my work experience better? Most of my problems at work are with management. Bringing a union into the picture ADDS ANOTHER LAYER OF MANAGEMENT! Not only do I still have to deal with my boss, but now I have to deal with my union boss as well, and I probably have to deal with my real boss THROUGH the union boss and some other damn committee. This is NOT a solution!
All I can say is, if anyone ever tries to do this in a company I work for, I will try my utmost to scuttle it.
They've had shotgun sights that use this principle on the market for several years now. You have an inch-long stick of fiber mounted along the end of the barrel that collects light and channels it towards the shooter's eye. They work pretty well, but they can be fragile.
I still can't figure out what they're going to do to move beyond 160x160 or 160x240 screens. Those hundreds of third-party apps are almost all using absolute pixel positioning for form layout. Wait...I have an idea---what if we redefine old pixel positions as really being dimensioned in "dialog units", and...wait, nobody would actually do that...
What you do is implement a new, updated OS on more capable hardware with a bigger screen, and by all means DON'T saddle yourself with backwards compatibility. Then run the old stuff in the extremely good Palm emulation that already exists. The emulator should be able to map the 160x160 dimensions to the new screen without too much difficulty.
I'm hoping for someone to do this with Linux on the IPaq.
The problem I have with this is that you're basically doing the same thing that the people who blame the internet for violence are doing: spouting off statistics without proving a relationship between them.
Is it really Doom that caused the drop in crime rates? Or is it better law enforcement at the state and local levels? Is it mandatory sentencing? Was it caused by things that happened 15 years ago? PROVE IT, or you are as bad as they are.
I have to say that Bush's quote about the Columbine shootings being related to the internet was weak. It certainly sounded like he was blaming the net, at least in the sound bite that got picked up on the radio this morning.
(On the other hand, I have to point out that Gore's assertion that more gun control would have prevented Columbine is absurd. The killers broke something like 19 different laws getting their guns, the problem was that they didn't get CAUGHT doing it. It was a failure of enforcement, by the police, and the schools, and the families, not a problem of not having enough laws on the books. But with Gore, as with all gun control types, all it will take is just one more little law, and one more little right surrendered. Then everything will be fine and the sun will shine 24 hours a day. And when that doesn't work, they'll do it again. This is off-topic, I know, but I had to say it.)
Even if you had hardware compatibility, the interface is sufficiently different that you would want apps written for it anyway.
For example, you really only want something to jot notes in a square window, not a full-fledged word processor, because a handheld (Palm-style at least) is a crappy word processing platform anyway. Think notepad vs typewriter.
People tend to use handhelds differently, too. I find I use my Palm in lots of short bursts, not for a prolonged period of time. Thus, the simple fast interface is a lot better than a complicated power user interface.
Anyway, there have been handhelds that were able to run DOS and Windows programs, I think HP made one, and they didn't set the world on fire. They never really took off because the machines were underpowered compared to a PC and the tiny screens and keyboards were awkward to use.
I just found out about this little number this morning. It's a video switcher unit that handles routing the video signals around in your TV/entertainment system. "7x4" means that it can route 7 different inputs to 4 different outputs. So, you can have Playstation going to TV and stereo audio, while cable box simultaneously goes to VCR1 to tape Babylon 5, and VCR2 goes to VCR3 and your monitor outs so you can dupe anime fansubs for your buds. And you can run the laserdisc and DVD players into the switcher too.
Even better, it has both sVideo and RCA connectors, and built in circuitry to convert between sVideo and normal video signals, so that you can run your system on sVHS and still connect in the peripherals like the Playstation that lack sVideo outputs.
Yes! I've been looking for a switcher like this ever since I got spoiled working with professional gear!
As a customer, I could make a point by cancelling the contract and using a different company's product. I wouldn't have to buy an expensive office suite without being sure that it actually serves my needs.
How is this different from your current position, where you could just buy the competitor's product? And, if the product is MS Office, how long will you keep your job after you cancel it? After all, you have to factor in the costs of retraining all of your company's less capable users. You're forgetting about lock-in.
The developers will actually have a reason to fix bugs, streamline the product and honor requests - instead of trying to make flashy upgrades or version updates that try to trick customers into buying it.
I do NOT see how this follows. You could just as easily argue that now they would need to have new features every year, instead of just at every product cycle, in order to justify re-upping with their software.
If they didn't care or understand about quality before, going to a subscription plan isn't going to magically change their developer's corporate culture.
The developers could be much more relaxed about their user base - as mentioned before, they have "their" users to care about. They can be sure that as long as they keep their users happy, money will come. They don't have to reinvent again and again to find new customers, but can work for their existing customers and still make money.
Again, I don't see how this follows. If the developers were going to be relaxed and virtuous, they could have done it under the existing pricing scheme. Putting them on a yearly update schedule is going to make things more hectic, not less.
Lastly, the disruption of upgrade churn is going to be a million times worse with a constant stream of upgrades than with a major upgrade every few years, assuming Microsoft continues to reinvent the wheel with every release, a behavior they seem incapable of breaking themselves from.
Slashdot Mirror
What's the battery life like on these things, particularly when running a wireless card?
Still, 64MB of storage would be awfully sweet on a Palm...
Jon Acheson
Because a parachute landing is basically a controlled crash.
Hint: when the Army parachutes a hummer into an area, they drop the crew separately from the vehicle, because if they were in the vehicle, they'd get totalled by the landing impact!
Yes, the Russians land their people on the ground via parachute, but not with a ship they want to reuse.
Also, you really can't control where the ship is going to land with a parachute, you have to aim for a big stretch of ocean or desert. With a VTVL, you can land at the spaceport and get taxied back over to the launch pad, without expensive cranes or assembly buildings.
Jon Acheson
Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science has been flying a small-scale remotely-piloted VTVL demonstrator craft on a fairly small budget as a proof-of-concept vehicle, seen here flying around as a naked framework(!) and here with it's skin on.
If anyone from Japan knows more about this, I'd love to hear about it.
Jon Acheson
The Mobile Suit Gundam anime series had the orbital breakaway state of Jion dropping asteroids on earth cities, and that came out back in the late 70's/80's.
Speaking of B5, MS Gundam also took a big O'Neil type colony, filled it with CO2, and turned it into a superlaser. Very cool, at least when it's safely ficticious.
Jon
What, exactly, is the value for me the consumer in buying this POS operating system anyway?
My apps won't work, the interface is dumbed down and therefore aggravating, backwards compatibility is questionable, and let's not forget the damn thing won't even be servicable for two more service packs!
What? What the fsck is the POINT?
Honestly, I'm glad I've been looking into Linux, because I'm going to FORCED onto Linux!
Jon Acheson
It may not be a PS2 or XBox on paper, but in practical terms it's still in the same ballpark.
Jon
I had the same problem with the stock Sega pad, especially the D-pad, but I got a Mad Katz third-party controller, and all that went away.
I actually prefer the Mad Katz Dreamcast controller to the Playstation/PS2 analog controllers! The analog joystick is more responsive, for one thing. This is saying a lot, because the PSX/PS2 controller was previously the best I had ever seen!
Only slight problem was that the Mad Katz VMU port took a little while to break in before it worked reliably.
Jon
An instant-classic RPG, just a lot of fun. Sky Pirates! Flying battleships! Ship-to-ship combat! A game world that actually feels as big as it's supposed to be!
If it had fewer annoying random encounters, and a better variety of monsters (why do I always feel like I'm fighting a salad?), it would be perfect.
Jon
I have fond memories of the original show. Yes, it may have been a silly superhero in space show, but it was a lot of fun when I was a kid, and the design work on the show was top-rate and still holds up quite well, much like the original Johnny Quest.
Besides, when the chips are down, nothing saves your bacon like a monkey sidekick...
Because I liked the original, I have a correspondingly virulent hatred of the Coast to Coast bastardization. Especially when they reshow the original episodes with a laugh track. It's not that they're making fun of Space Ghost. That wouldn't bother me so much. It's that they're just mining Space Ghost for source material to make a really cheap Max Headroom ripoff (the talk-show Max Headroom, not the actual show).
I've seen PowerPoint presentations that had more animation than SG:CtC! If they were creating actual animation for the show, that would be something, but they're just capturing snippets and reusing them over and over and over again. It just galls me on an artistic level.
It doesn't help that I don't like campy humor.
Jon
Check out the list of developers.
I'm sure he had input, but I guess he's not the only programmer at Transmeta. Maybe he finds the low-level x86 translation code more interesting, who knows?
Jon Acheson
- Set basic parameters for a desired launch vehicle: get x payload to y orbit for under z dollars/lb of payload.
- Guarantee to buy 5-10 launches from ANYONE who can come up with a viable launch vehicle (make them do a test flight first with a dummy payload of journalists). This gives them a chance of generating some cash flow out of the box.
- Provide legal/insurance umbrella for companies.
- Get the hell out of the way.
- There is no step 5.
Jon AchesonIt's from Dirty Pair Does Dishes, a parody dub of one of the original Dirty Pair TV episodes by Pinesalad Productions.
"Here lies Carl Macek, killed after a showing of Robotech: The Movie. Man, he must have really f**ked up!"
Jon
This doesn't seem to be the next generation of Dreamcast, but rather just a way for Sega to repackage Dreamcast into a new product that they can get some more money out of.
If it's the next generation anything, it's the next generation Sega Channel.
Jon
A lot of microminiaturization work also happened because of the Cold War and the need to have ICBMs with onboard navigation computers, but basically you're right.
Jon Acheson
You're forgetting the value of having the stuff in orbit, which effectively inflates its value by about $100K a pound. Use it to build satellites and space stations, in nice clean vacuum, and without having to withstand the stresses of launch.
And, moving stuff around in space is not very expensive compared to the cost of lifting stuff out of Earth's gravity well. If you're willing to move stuff over the course of a few months, ion propulsion and favorable orbital mechanics make it doable.
Jon Acheson
First of all, when you say that the raw materials from an asteroid don't have enough value, you're forgetting the fact that THEY ARE ALREADY IN ORBIT. Since it costs $100K US a pound to lift raw materials into orbit using current technology, this adds tremendous value to the raw materials from an asteroid, which could be used to build things like the International Space Station or comm satellites much more cheaply than they could be on earth.
Secondly, about "spending the money on the rainforest instead": show me some results. The money spent on the space program has benefitted the US economy immensely due to the spinoff technologies and industries it has created. We're talking at least a tenfold return on investment. It has also greatly benefitted medical science, and even our understanding of the environment. It's been a tremendous bargain, frankly, and we haven't even spent that much on it in comparison with things like, say welfare.
What has your side accomplished lately?
Jon Acheson
One paper may have "proven" this, but I'd wait a few years before I started believing it. Let's see what the others in their field say about the research, or whether other counter-theories are advanced, etc.
It's easy for one research paper to be wrong.
Of course, irresponsible persons in the mass media will immediately run the story as if it had come down from Mt. Sinai on stone tablets, but you have to remember that they're peddling journalism, not facts.
Jon Acheson
Giraffes also have an organ at the base of their brain which helps choke off the blood pressure, because just the pressure of the column of blood in the however-many feet of neck above their heads would do them in otherwise (think the rush of blood to your head when you hang upside down, only lots worse).
Jon
Secondly, exactly how is a union supposed to make my work experience better? Most of my problems at work are with management. Bringing a union into the picture ADDS ANOTHER LAYER OF MANAGEMENT! Not only do I still have to deal with my boss, but now I have to deal with my union boss as well, and I probably have to deal with my real boss THROUGH the union boss and some other damn committee. This is NOT a solution!
All I can say is, if anyone ever tries to do this in a company I work for, I will try my utmost to scuttle it.
Jon Acheson
They've had shotgun sights that use this principle on the market for several years now. You have an inch-long stick of fiber mounted along the end of the barrel that collects light and channels it towards the shooter's eye. They work pretty well, but they can be fragile.
At any rate, this is nothing new.
Jon
What you do is implement a new, updated OS on more capable hardware with a bigger screen, and by all means DON'T saddle yourself with backwards compatibility. Then run the old stuff in the extremely good Palm emulation that already exists. The emulator should be able to map the 160x160 dimensions to the new screen without too much difficulty.
I'm hoping for someone to do this with Linux on the IPaq.
Jon
The problem I have with this is that you're basically doing the same thing that the people who blame the internet for violence are doing: spouting off statistics without proving a relationship between them.
Is it really Doom that caused the drop in crime rates? Or is it better law enforcement at the state and local levels? Is it mandatory sentencing? Was it caused by things that happened 15 years ago? PROVE IT, or you are as bad as they are.
I have to say that Bush's quote about the Columbine shootings being related to the internet was weak. It certainly sounded like he was blaming the net, at least in the sound bite that got picked up on the radio this morning.
(On the other hand, I have to point out that Gore's assertion that more gun control would have prevented Columbine is absurd. The killers broke something like 19 different laws getting their guns, the problem was that they didn't get CAUGHT doing it. It was a failure of enforcement, by the police, and the schools, and the families, not a problem of not having enough laws on the books. But with Gore, as with all gun control types, all it will take is just one more little law, and one more little right surrendered. Then everything will be fine and the sun will shine 24 hours a day. And when that doesn't work, they'll do it again. This is off-topic, I know, but I had to say it.)
Jon
Even if you had hardware compatibility, the interface is sufficiently different that you would want apps written for it anyway.
For example, you really only want something to jot notes in a square window, not a full-fledged word processor, because a handheld (Palm-style at least) is a crappy word processing platform anyway. Think notepad vs typewriter.
People tend to use handhelds differently, too. I find I use my Palm in lots of short bursts, not for a prolonged period of time. Thus, the simple fast interface is a lot better than a complicated power user interface.
Anyway, there have been handhelds that were able to run DOS and Windows programs, I think HP made one, and they didn't set the world on fire. They never really took off because the machines were underpowered compared to a PC and the tiny screens and keyboards were awkward to use.
Jon
Even better, it has both sVideo and RCA connectors, and built in circuitry to convert between sVideo and normal video signals, so that you can run your system on sVHS and still connect in the peripherals like the Playstation that lack sVideo outputs.
Yes! I've been looking for a switcher like this ever since I got spoiled working with professional gear!
I'm buying it for myself for Christmas!
Jon
If they didn't care or understand about quality before, going to a subscription plan isn't going to magically change their developer's corporate culture.
Again, I don't see how this follows. If the developers were going to be relaxed and virtuous, they could have done it under the existing pricing scheme. Putting them on a yearly update schedule is going to make things more hectic, not less.Lastly, the disruption of upgrade churn is going to be a million times worse with a constant stream of upgrades than with a major upgrade every few years, assuming Microsoft continues to reinvent the wheel with every release, a behavior they seem incapable of breaking themselves from.
Jon