One problem is that all the equipment for constructing the SR-71 was destroyed, and even if you could magic it out of thin air, the SR-71 is a 40 year old design. You'd probably be better off scrapping the design and using it as a starting point for a modern design.
Um... say you design it for three passengers, Mach 3.5 travel, etc, etc. With no recon equipment and scramjet-oriented propulsion like on the SR-71 (which got more efficient as it got faster), you could probably make a good little speedster.
Plus, we can probably fix some of the problems with modern polymers and composites- things like the plane leaking fuel while on the ground because it doesn't fit together right. The basic design, however, seems almost totally sound. I think it's interesting they didn't expand on it, at least a little.
Actually, I'm not really surprised- most of that looks quite routine, basically just checking to make sure everything's working properly. I imagine they allot so much time so that if something is wrong, they have time to fix it before the plane lifts. The fact that the process can be accelerated considerably probably reinforces that theory.
Now, having it mid-air refuled (because yes, it does leak jet fuel until it's warmed up and then has to refuel and take off on it's mission) is probably the problem.
Also, how much time does it really save? The SR-71's time from NYC to London is 1:55, or close to; the Concorde did it in 3:20. Is there 1:25 worth of more effort done on the SR-71? (admittedly, the SR-71's average speed during that time as Mach 2.68, well below it's presumed maximum of mach 3.3, so.)
First of all, you're not being consistent. First you said it was half a billion dollars just to fly one trip, and then you suggested one million dollars a ride. That's utterly ridiculous. At that price, and the urgency of the mission, you are only going to have one effective passenger. And the trip will need to recoup the initial investment into the aircraft and the likely massive maintenance costs (remember, for fast transport it has to always be in condition to run). You're looking at several billion dollars a trip. You say that if it launched more frequently it would be cheaper, but the costs, many of will never be overcome by volume, won't facilitate at all frequent launches.
I was consistent, but may not have been clear. The current shuttle launch costs are half a billion dollars, hence using the shuttle as a sub-orbital hopper would cost approximately half a billion dollars a trip. Launching the space shuttle more frequently (say two dozen times a year, or so, as it was originally designed) would drastically reduce the launch cost of that vehicle. At the end, what I meant was that sub-orbital hoppers (dedicated ones, not the repuprosed shuttle) could be much cheaper than the shuttle, and that's what I was hoping for with this vehicle.
Then, you've got the 20 minutes trip time. Since you aren't going to be keeping a shuttle ready to fly in ever place on the world, the person traveling had better happen be in the same area. That's extremely unlikely, since the 20 minute trip time is only really necessary in an emergency. Even so, it would take at least several hours when you include the person getting their and an extremely hurried take off.
Oh, indeed. I'm just using the shuttle as an example of a vehicle that could, at the present time, easily be used as a sub-orbital space plane. It isn't, but it could be. There's no reason, however, why a dedicated sub-orbital plane couldn't fly out of a spaceport pretty much anywhere if required.
There are not many cases that someone would pay billions to travel across the world in a few hours. Certainly not the corporate merger you mentioned. Why would a company waste tons of money to get an exec across the world a little faster? Mergers aren't battles, they take place over a significant period of time. The board would easily have time to go in their yachts, let alone private jets. There is no problem with execs having to get anywhere fast. All they would be doing is ceremonially signing a few sheets of paper, and having some lunch.
A head of state might be more plausible, but it still very unlikely. In would only be worth it in a huge emergency, in which case said head of state would be in a bunker. And there's not much he's going to fly across the world and do in 4 hours rather than a day. Electronic communications would be much faster, and more useful.
Let me just say there are some things that only work in person and a lot of powerful people have a very inflated sense of their own importance. Obviously, the cheaper something got, the more it would be used. At the half-billion dollar price tag, (I notice you kept inflating it- up from half a billion which I originally suggested, to a billion, then to 'billions') there would be very few oppertunities. At a tenth that, 50 million, there's probably more than ten times as many. At a tenth THAT... well, you get the picture. Still enormously expensive? Yes, of course.
I actually thought about this a while ago, when I read on Wikipedia that in a trans-atlantic abort, the space-shuttle would take only twenty-minutes from SSME ignition to touchdown in Europe or Africa. I pointed out to a friend of mine that it would probably cost on the order of half a billion dollars (space shuttle launch is approximately 500 million dollars, plus a million or so to fly it back via 747 to Kennedy), and my friend pointed out that in quite a few cases, it might well be worth it- a milti-billion dollar merger, a head of state's emergency meeting, etc, etc.
If the space shuttle launched more frequently, of course, the launch costs would decrease significantly and make it even more economically viable.
This has been a long time in coming- suborbital flight hops are damned fast, and even if it does cost a million bucks a ride, I'm sure there'll be plenty of customers willing to use it.
Your reputation relies not on what gifts you recieve but on what you then go on to do afterward. You can accept gifts, private helicopter flights, and a mansion on the carribean and still be entirely objective- and its that objectivity that people treasure, not the gifts.
After all, there are plenty of unpaid people out there who will either canonize or demonize Microsoft no matter what. Microsoft doesn't want those people, because no matter what happens, they'll keep spouting the party line. THat's the irony of this- it's in Microsoft's best interests to keep honest bloggers honest.
Haven't you considered that Microsoft may be trying to do just that? To provide a reward to the most important bloggers, the honest ones? Hell, it's what I would do if I was in their shoes.
There's a difference between being a renaissance man (which seems to be what you mean, and yes, while I agree it's a desirable goal, but isn't necessary) and being barely competent. I didn't say she had to be well-read; I said she had to be able to read. I didn't say she had to be a good writer- but she should be able to write. Likely, she does these things.
I don't expect everyone to know vector calculus- but they should be able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
You'd be amazed how many people just can't do that sort of thing.
A thesis statement should be clearly written, it should clearly elucidate the theme of the essay, etc, etc. There are dozens of rules, and I don't remember them all. However, a thesis statement is clearly one of those things that "You know when you see"- if a document doesn't have it, it's an obvious and glaring ommission, but it can be any one of a dozen specific formats and styles.
Moreover, if you spent three months writing a single report and it still ended up with spelling and grammar mistakes, you should never be allowed to graduate. You're totally incompetent, and yes, you're unable to correctly write a report.
I write many letters on a daily basis, as do many of my colleagues. In fact, if you haven't written a letter in the past twenty years, you are probably seriously abonormal in that respect. Being able to write is a fundamentally important part of existing in society today.
I suppose you also have something against hammers? I learned the hard way after 30 years of hardcore hammer addiction. They will fuck you up. Staring at those little pointy metal bits all day will seriously dissassociate you from reality, and you will lose lots of skills you take for granted. Starting with the screwdriver ones first. Staring at nails for hours on end is not normal nor healthy.
Nothing wrong with not using nails. it's reliable, and worked well for thousands of years. Houses built with nails last maybe 100 years at most. Some caves have lasted for 10,000 years. No metal, refining, or construction required. No hammering or wood needed. Durable, strong, naturally occuring.
In short, your argument is a crock of shit. Doing one thing all the time is bad, no matter WHAT the fuck you're doing- whether it's banging nails or staring at a computer screen. A computer is a tool, and should be used as the situation requires.
Seriously, how do you get 'addicted' to computers? They're boxes of metal with components in them. It must be something you are doing on the computer that's addictive, and that's an entirely different kettle of fish.
Sadly, however, it is not techno-literacy that's the problem. The real problem is that I know people who have come out of graduate programs who can't write a letter. When I was in university, I would easily say that seventy-five percent of my graduating class could not write a proper thesis statement, to say nothing of any particular other style that might be required.
Let's not screw around with these modern ideas of technology- we have to go back to the basics; reading and writing. Let's make sure people can read a newspaper before we ask them to read code. Let's make sure they can multiply before we ask them to write it. Our society depends on these things. Not knowing how to find the 'start' button or what a network stack is lags an extremely distant third, if at all.
I don't like it because of one point you raised (but I think you didn't emphasize enough)- the protagonist is merely average. And yet he manages to overcome through sheer luck of the draw and general bumblingness someone who is by no means average and has an advantage over him in just about every way possible, other than being bigoted.
Reminds me of that quote from Spacebattles: "Evil will always win... because good is STUPID!"
It just annoys the hell out of me that the bigots always lose because they're bigoted. Sure they're bigots, but I really don't care. The fact that Harry's incompetent bugs the hell out of me a lot more.
Vista does this too, I've noticed. The standard 'shutdown' icon puts the computer into sleep; when it reaches about 10% battery power, it shifts into hibernate. To get an actual reboot, you have to go into a submenu (where you can also independently reach hibernate directly, if necessary)
And, to add my two cents, I've never had a single problem- 'sleep' works seamlessly, both hibernate and sleep.
Ah, yes. On the other hand, I could ask a friend to drop buy and tell him he can have whatever he wants from my fridge, watch my big screen TV whenever he likes, and that he can have my paper (since he doesn't get one at home).
On the other hand, my friend can also fix the catostrophic failures- before they become catastrophic.
Friend or relative you can trust. I sincerely hope you are not looking for a technological solution, because I left the autonomous robotic house minders and the holographic repair people in my other pants.
Actually, I agree. I'm using the RC/Beta whatever they're calling the latest version and it's much, much better than Office XP. Than office 2003, not so much, but still quite a bit.
I urge you to go out, get some exposure to arts that train with a focus on weapons techniques, and review your assumptions. I strongly suspect that the knife-wielding you guy you fought wasn't honestly trying to maim or kill you. If he was, then I'm not sure you realise how lucky you are to be here having this conversation.
That's entirely my point. A knife, unlike a gun, does not drastically change the paradigm of hand to hand combat. I would even go so far as to argue that most people with knives 'aren't honestly trying to maim or kill you'. They think they are, but they aren't. If you are perfectly willing and trying to kill them... you'll win.
I've fought a guy with a knife before; and I do it in practice all the time. An untrained idiot with a knife can get lucky, but is not as dangerous as most martial artists would have you believe. The trick is to disarm them before they can close to grappling range, (or knife-fighting range, I suppose), because grappling with a knife is luck of the draw.
Seriously, I know you meant well, but your post is so far off reality that it's not even relevant. I could quote you plenty more things, like the way many police forces around the world have changed their equipment and rules of engagement for dealing with people carrying bladed weapons in light of their all too real experiences, but I think the point is made. Knives are every bit as dangerous as guns; far more so, actually, at what you called "close to point blank range". While I take your point about guns, it is foolish -- no, suicidal -- to underestimate other weapons.
I don't underestimate other weapons. However, knives are not direct-fire weapons that anyone can effectively use to kill anyone else. Guns are. Guns are much more dangerous just based on that.
You're also very wrong about what really happens when trying to use a weapon to defend yourself against someone threatening you with another weapon. For your own safety, I encourage you to read some of the literature on this subject before relying on these ideas. A lot of self-defence is in your mind, and that starts with not doing stupid things because you think you know better than everyone else.
Yes; defense is in your mind. I have a black belt in Tae Kwon Doe; I regularly spar with arming swords and do dagger and grappling techniques... and do you know what the most important part of self-defense is?
The most important part of self-defense (aside from muscle-memory) is clarity of purpose. People don't lose sparring matches because they're incompetent- they lose sparring matches because they're not willing to strike. If I've broken into your kitchen, and you're unarmed save for a knife, and we're standing about five feet apart from each other and gazing at each other- the victory is going to go to the person who is absolutely sure they want to fight, absolutely sure they want to win, and doesn't hesitate. If that means the unarmed person, the person with a knife is dead. If that means person with a knife, the unarmed person is dead. Having a knife just makes it a little easier, and will tip the balance in an otherwise equal fight.
Make no mistake, however- killing someone with your bare hands is not only possible, it's downright simple. A knife doesn't do anything but make that easier. A gun changes the paradigm.
Not really. It's only safer if you expect the suspect will shoot at you to prevent themselves being taken into custody. There are plenty of places where police officers don't need to draw their guns to approach suspects in vehicles, simply because they don't think they're going to get shot for doing so.
It's a self-perpetuating cycle. As the police become more willing to use force, their opponents will be more willing to use force, thus allowing the police to justify using even more force, and so on and so forth.
Slashdot Mirror
One problem is that all the equipment for constructing the SR-71 was destroyed, and even if you could magic it out of thin air, the SR-71 is a 40 year old design. You'd probably be better off scrapping the design and using it as a starting point for a modern design.
Um... say you design it for three passengers, Mach 3.5 travel, etc, etc. With no recon equipment and scramjet-oriented propulsion like on the SR-71 (which got more efficient as it got faster), you could probably make a good little speedster.
Plus, we can probably fix some of the problems with modern polymers and composites- things like the plane leaking fuel while on the ground because it doesn't fit together right. The basic design, however, seems almost totally sound. I think it's interesting they didn't expand on it, at least a little.
Actually, I'm not really surprised- most of that looks quite routine, basically just checking to make sure everything's working properly. I imagine they allot so much time so that if something is wrong, they have time to fix it before the plane lifts. The fact that the process can be accelerated considerably probably reinforces that theory.
Now, having it mid-air refuled (because yes, it does leak jet fuel until it's warmed up and then has to refuel and take off on it's mission) is probably the problem.
Also, how much time does it really save? The SR-71's time from NYC to London is 1:55, or close to; the Concorde did it in 3:20. Is there 1:25 worth of more effort done on the SR-71? (admittedly, the SR-71's average speed during that time as Mach 2.68, well below it's presumed maximum of mach 3.3, so.)
Still, would be cool.
Or hire your ass into an SR-71 blackbird, if you've got the cash to pay for a shuttle launch. I agree.
I was consistent, but may not have been clear. The current shuttle launch costs are half a billion dollars, hence using the shuttle as a sub-orbital hopper would cost approximately half a billion dollars a trip. Launching the space shuttle more frequently (say two dozen times a year, or so, as it was originally designed) would drastically reduce the launch cost of that vehicle. At the end, what I meant was that sub-orbital hoppers (dedicated ones, not the repuprosed shuttle) could be much cheaper than the shuttle, and that's what I was hoping for with this vehicle.
Oh, indeed. I'm just using the shuttle as an example of a vehicle that could, at the present time, easily be used as a sub-orbital space plane. It isn't, but it could be. There's no reason, however, why a dedicated sub-orbital plane couldn't fly out of a spaceport pretty much anywhere if required.
Let me just say there are some things that only work in person and a lot of powerful people have a very inflated sense of their own importance. Obviously, the cheaper something got, the more it would be used. At the half-billion dollar price tag, (I notice you kept inflating it- up from half a billion which I originally suggested, to a billion, then to 'billions') there would be very few oppertunities. At a tenth that, 50 million, there's probably more than ten times as many. At a tenth THAT... well, you get the picture. Still enormously expensive? Yes, of course.
I actually thought about this a while ago, when I read on Wikipedia that in a trans-atlantic abort, the space-shuttle would take only twenty-minutes from SSME ignition to touchdown in Europe or Africa. I pointed out to a friend of mine that it would probably cost on the order of half a billion dollars (space shuttle launch is approximately 500 million dollars, plus a million or so to fly it back via 747 to Kennedy), and my friend pointed out that in quite a few cases, it might well be worth it- a milti-billion dollar merger, a head of state's emergency meeting, etc, etc.
If the space shuttle launched more frequently, of course, the launch costs would decrease significantly and make it even more economically viable.
This has been a long time in coming- suborbital flight hops are damned fast, and even if it does cost a million bucks a ride, I'm sure there'll be plenty of customers willing to use it.
Your reputation relies not on what gifts you recieve but on what you then go on to do afterward. You can accept gifts, private helicopter flights, and a mansion on the carribean and still be entirely objective- and its that objectivity that people treasure, not the gifts.
After all, there are plenty of unpaid people out there who will either canonize or demonize Microsoft no matter what. Microsoft doesn't want those people, because no matter what happens, they'll keep spouting the party line. THat's the irony of this- it's in Microsoft's best interests to keep honest bloggers honest.
Haven't you considered that Microsoft may be trying to do just that? To provide a reward to the most important bloggers, the honest ones? Hell, it's what I would do if I was in their shoes.
There's a difference between being a renaissance man (which seems to be what you mean, and yes, while I agree it's a desirable goal, but isn't necessary) and being barely competent. I didn't say she had to be well-read; I said she had to be able to read. I didn't say she had to be a good writer- but she should be able to write. Likely, she does these things.
I don't expect everyone to know vector calculus- but they should be able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.
You'd be amazed how many people just can't do that sort of thing.
A thesis statement should be clearly written, it should clearly elucidate the theme of the essay, etc, etc. There are dozens of rules, and I don't remember them all. However, a thesis statement is clearly one of those things that "You know when you see"- if a document doesn't have it, it's an obvious and glaring ommission, but it can be any one of a dozen specific formats and styles.
Moreover, if you spent three months writing a single report and it still ended up with spelling and grammar mistakes, you should never be allowed to graduate. You're totally incompetent, and yes, you're unable to correctly write a report.
I write many letters on a daily basis, as do many of my colleagues. In fact, if you haven't written a letter in the past twenty years, you are probably seriously abonormal in that respect. Being able to write is a fundamentally important part of existing in society today.
I suppose you also have something against hammers? I learned the hard way after 30 years of hardcore hammer addiction. They will fuck you up. Staring at those little pointy metal bits all day will seriously dissassociate you from reality, and you will lose lots of skills you take for granted. Starting with the screwdriver ones first. Staring at nails for hours on end is not normal nor healthy.
Nothing wrong with not using nails. it's reliable, and worked well for thousands of years. Houses built with nails last maybe 100 years at most. Some caves have lasted for 10,000 years. No metal, refining, or construction required. No hammering or wood needed. Durable, strong, naturally occuring.
In short, your argument is a crock of shit. Doing one thing all the time is bad, no matter WHAT the fuck you're doing- whether it's banging nails or staring at a computer screen. A computer is a tool, and should be used as the situation requires.
Seriously, how do you get 'addicted' to computers? They're boxes of metal with components in them. It must be something you are doing on the computer that's addictive, and that's an entirely different kettle of fish.
Sadly, however, it is not techno-literacy that's the problem. The real problem is that I know people who have come out of graduate programs who can't write a letter. When I was in university, I would easily say that seventy-five percent of my graduating class could not write a proper thesis statement, to say nothing of any particular other style that might be required.
Let's not screw around with these modern ideas of technology- we have to go back to the basics; reading and writing. Let's make sure people can read a newspaper before we ask them to read code. Let's make sure they can multiply before we ask them to write it. Our society depends on these things. Not knowing how to find the 'start' button or what a network stack is lags an extremely distant third, if at all.
I don't like it because of one point you raised (but I think you didn't emphasize enough)- the protagonist is merely average. And yet he manages to overcome through sheer luck of the draw and general bumblingness someone who is by no means average and has an advantage over him in just about every way possible, other than being bigoted.
Reminds me of that quote from Spacebattles:
"Evil will always win... because good is STUPID!"
It just annoys the hell out of me that the bigots always lose because they're bigoted. Sure they're bigots, but I really don't care. The fact that Harry's incompetent bugs the hell out of me a lot more.
Actually, 'they' can also be used as a gender-neutral singular. Wiki article.
Technically, the grandparent was correct, and you are incorrect.
Vista does this too, I've noticed. The standard 'shutdown' icon puts the computer into sleep; when it reaches about 10% battery power, it shifts into hibernate. To get an actual reboot, you have to go into a submenu (where you can also independently reach hibernate directly, if necessary)
And, to add my two cents, I've never had a single problem- 'sleep' works seamlessly, both hibernate and sleep.
Ah, yes. On the other hand, I could ask a friend to drop buy and tell him he can have whatever he wants from my fridge, watch my big screen TV whenever he likes, and that he can have my paper (since he doesn't get one at home).
On the other hand, my friend can also fix the catostrophic failures- before they become catastrophic.
Friend or relative you can trust. I sincerely hope you are not looking for a technological solution, because I left the autonomous robotic house minders and the holographic repair people in my other pants.
I can't believe you're on Slashdot and you're that uninformed.
Wiki is your friend.
NOOB!
(Yes, the last line was flamebait. But he was asking for it.)
Actually, I agree. I'm using the RC/Beta whatever they're calling the latest version and it's much, much better than Office XP. Than office 2003, not so much, but still quite a bit.
Yes, I realize that- but Word 2007 is a pre-release product and... I don't know if it'd be included.
That I could tell, nobody answered my question the last time this issue was reported on slashdot- is Word 2007 immune to this issue?
Heh heh heh. Did I just imply a conspiracy? No really. That would be totally stupid, unethical, immoral...
I feel your pain. Why is it that nobody these days can use the phrase 'begs the question' appropriately?
Is earthlink hosting slashdot?!
That's entirely my point. A knife, unlike a gun, does not drastically change the paradigm of hand to hand combat. I would even go so far as to argue that most people with knives 'aren't honestly trying to maim or kill you'. They think they are, but they aren't. If you are perfectly willing and trying to kill them... you'll win.
I've fought a guy with a knife before; and I do it in practice all the time. An untrained idiot with a knife can get lucky, but is not as dangerous as most martial artists would have you believe. The trick is to disarm them before they can close to grappling range, (or knife-fighting range, I suppose), because grappling with a knife is luck of the draw.
I don't underestimate other weapons. However, knives are not direct-fire weapons that anyone can effectively use to kill anyone else. Guns are. Guns are much more dangerous just based on that.
Yes; defense is in your mind. I have a black belt in Tae Kwon Doe; I regularly spar with arming swords and do dagger and grappling techniques... and do you know what the most important part of self-defense is?
The most important part of self-defense (aside from muscle-memory) is clarity of purpose. People don't lose sparring matches because they're incompetent- they lose sparring matches because they're not willing to strike. If I've broken into your kitchen, and you're unarmed save for a knife, and we're standing about five feet apart from each other and gazing at each other- the victory is going to go to the person who is absolutely sure they want to fight, absolutely sure they want to win, and doesn't hesitate. If that means the unarmed person, the person with a knife is dead. If that means person with a knife, the unarmed person is dead. Having a knife just makes it a little easier, and will tip the balance in an otherwise equal fight.
Make no mistake, however- killing someone with your bare hands is not only possible, it's downright simple. A knife doesn't do anything but make that easier. A gun changes the paradigm.
Not really. It's only safer if you expect the suspect will shoot at you to prevent themselves being taken into custody. There are plenty of places where police officers don't need to draw their guns to approach suspects in vehicles, simply because they don't think they're going to get shot for doing so.
It's a self-perpetuating cycle. As the police become more willing to use force, their opponents will be more willing to use force, thus allowing the police to justify using even more force, and so on and so forth.