Unlike a rocket which may fail anytime during it's ascent, a ballistic projectile is pretty much fool proof as long as the initial launch works properly and it doesn't hit anything.
The same could be said for rockets. They're pretty much fool proof, as long as something doesn't go wrong.
QA: Yeah, we've found this problem where the humans can get AIDS. It's kind of a show-stopper. Manager: What's Dev got to say? Dev: Does it happen in the monkeys? QA: Nope. Dev: 'cause remember that you suggested that we just modify the monkeys in order to ship on time. We commented out a bunch of the monkey code. Manager: Well, can't you just uncomment it? Dev: Well, finding it might take some time... QA: And if they do that, we have to do a whole bunch of regression testing. I mean, who knows what other bugs could be introduced? Manager: Shit! The Boss is already on my case. "Where are the humans? They're supposed to ship on day 6!" Dev: Hey, man, I told you that the schedule was pretty unrealistic. Manager: Yeah, but you try explaining that to Him. *sigh* Okay...how can they generate this? QA: Well, if they get exposed to monkey blood so that it mixes with their own blood. Y'know, like, through a cut or something. Manager: Well, that's a pretty low possibility. Any other ways? QA: Well, there's sex. Manager: They're only supposed to use that for procreation! QA: You know users... Manager: Yeah. Well, we'll just cover our asses by putting a note about that in the documentation: No sex with monkeys. Mark it in the database as a "known issue" in case somebody calls and we'll get around to fixing it later...
(Yes, I know that AIDS probably did not make the jump from humans to monkeys from someone having sex with a monkey.)
Put simply, this school has a discipline problem and needs better teachers or better administration. It does not have a technical problem, so a technical solution won't help them.
While I tend to agree in principle, I have no problem with the idea that there are certain places where you will not be allowed to use a cell phone.
It's easy to blame the school, but a school serves a community. It does not stand alone. Which means not only do the children have to follow the rules, the parents of the children must also follow the rules.
Or perhaps their problem is that the faculty doesn't demand student respect, so students ignore the rules.
This is a good example.
Student is using cellphone. Teacher confiscates student's cellphone, returning it after class. Next class, student uses cellphone. Teacher confiscates student's cellphone and tells the student that their parent will have to come in and get it from the principal.
How's the student supposed to tell the parent? Their cellphone was confiscated. Which means the kid will have to tell the parent when they get home. Depending on when the parent gets home, this may be too late to deal with it which means the parent has to come in late for work the next day in order to get the student's cellphone.
Now who's the parent going to blame? Their darling little child who is just a misunderstood little angel? He said that the teacher was picking on him and that everybody else does it and he's being oppressed and it's just not faaaiiir!!!!! And the parent knows that there's no way their little angel would ever distort the truth in any way, shape, form or manner. "You calling my little angel a liar?!?! How dare you!"
Or are the parents going to get all pissed off with the school who took the cell phone in the first place and inconvenienced them? "You just cost me two hours of work to come pick up a stupid cellphone?! You're damn right I expect you to reimburse me for this waste of time! You'll be hearing from my lawyer!"
If you believe the answer is that the parent will discipline their child, you need to join the rest of us in 21st Century America. The child is the victim--they had their phone taken away from them--and it is never the victim's fault.
Remember that there's usually a school board that rules on these as well. Any rule that inconveniences the parents--you know, the people who elect people to the school board--doesn't stand much of a chance. And, dear God, what happens if the school confiscates the student's cellphone and something happens and the parent has to get ahold of the kid to tell them they'll be late and they can't get ahold of the kid and they panic, thinking that their child has been abducted by evil child-molesters! The school owes these parents for pain and suffering, I tells ya!
Like I said, I agree with the principle. Solve technology problems with technology and people problems with people. The problem is that a school has lots of people with different agendas and it can be impossible to reconcile all of them. In situations like that, sometimes having a hard rule ("No cellphones") and having technology to back it up (jammers, picocells, faraday cages) is necessary.
Actually, the people who would have had to be convinced would be NASA--they would be the hard ones to fake out. All the Soviet Union had was the voice signals to the moon, which could easily be faked.
As I've said before, the conspiracists I've read about say we didn't land people on the moon. There's nothing mentioned about our ability to land hardware on the moon. I've never heard anybody say the Surveyor probes were faked. So it's not impossible that NASA landed a transmitter on the moon that would receive signals from Earth and broadcast them back to the Earth, making it look like the signals came from the moon.
iTunes is not a product in its own right, it's a part of the iTunes/iPod ecosystem of products, and as such, there will never be a wall erected between iPod and iTunes business units.
Huh?
I can freely download iTunes on Windows and buy music from Apple and listen to it on my Windows PC. No Apple hardware required.
Fair enough--and I'm sure that the Credit Union offers the services you want and none of the services that you don't. Sounds like a good decision.
So I suppose my point is that why would you knock a healthy bank that seems to be doing well in a toxic financial environment? I mean, I remember an area bank, Washington Mutual, used to run these fun ads talking about how they didn't charge lots of fees, unlike the other banks. Of course, they were among the first to fail and they ended up getting bought up by Chase.
While I'm not necessarily a fan of Wells Fargo, I gotta admit I'm finding this curious:
Wells Fargo has made so much money charging their customers fees (I think there might be a fee for fee processing) that they not only didn't need to take bailout money, they can afford to build a nice shiny corporate office with heated sidewalks.
Okay, let me get this straight. Because Wells Fargo made so much money--and doesn't appear to have lost too much money during the mortgage crisis or at least hasn't lost more money than they made--they didn't need to get bail-out money, saving taxpayers money. Perhaps this is in contrast with other banks that didn't charge fees and made poor choices during the mortgage crisis and needed bail-out money from the taxpayers.
Wells Fargo made lots of money by charging their customers for service, which is sort of the idea of a company which provides a service. You may argue the amounts, and I might agree with you. But they charged the amounts they charged and let the market decide whether they were worth it. You decided they weren't worth it and took your business elsewhere, which is your choice.
Tell me, did the bank you switched to need to take taxpayer money? Have they been absorbed by some other bank?
Well, their corporate offices are in San Francisco. That said, a quick look at google gives us various applications for Wells Fargo to have heated sidewalks in their Des Moines, Iowa office, where they have an average of 32 inches of snowfall during the winter.
I'm sure electrically heated sidewalks are cheaper than paying some guy to shovel the snow.
First, if you want to launch a spacecraft into an equatorial orbit, it's best to launch it from the equator. The rotation of the earth will give you about an 850 MPH boost. This is one reason that things that launch from Florida travel east. The further north you travel, the less rotational energy you get. If you consider the continental US, you're pretty much looking at either Florida or the bottom part of Texas.
Second, ideally you want very little going on to the east, in the event of a problem. If you look to the east of Florida, you'll see a pretty big chunk of water where you can drop things without worrying too much about hitting something or someone. Texas, you have the Gulf of Mexico, but if the rocket veers north, you're hitting the southern part of the US. Veer a little south and you may end up hitting Cuba, which is not necessarily something the US would like to do.
Uh...I'm not sure that civilian GPS systems are that precise.
Now, I don't have a way fancy GPS receiver--it's a Garmin Edge 205. It has a little read-out for accuracy, though, and in my normal travels, the read-out says 10-15 feet.
Now, conceptually, I would agree. But between "detuning" and clock accuracy, I don't think you'll ever find accuracy measured in inches on any civilian GPS device.
Well, part of the problem is that Satellite Navigation is good for cars and is written for them. It is not written for other sized vehicles. Usually, trucking companies have custom software to plan routes with.
My roomate used to drive big-rig trucks. Her first time out, she partnered with a former IT guy who brought his laptop with a GPS card and a satellite navigation program. When they were going through Atlanta, my roomate was sleeping in the back while he was driving. She noticed that he seemed to be starting and stopping alot and wondered what the hell was going on. When she stepped into the cockpit, she found that her partner had left the highway and was on surface streets because the navigation program had told him that it was shorter.
So here he is trying to maneuver this 18-wheeler through Atlanta traffic on a 6 lane street. It turned into four lanes. Then into 2. Residential streets. They chugged along until they eventually got back to the freeway (my roomate was thankful that there were no low bridges though they did scrape up a few trees). He figured that his navigation program was better than the one that the trucking company had, which had told him to stay on the freeway. After all, the shorter route would save gas, right?
These delivery guys are trying to save money by using a navigation program for cars rather than the, usually more expensive, navigation program for trucks.
(As an aside, I still want try to biking on I-405 and, when the cops arrest me, tell them "But Google Maps said it would be okay!")
Agreed. Why NASA bothered with the Saturn I or the Saturn IB when they could have just waited until the Saturn V was built and then done everything after that shows what a waste of tax dollars NASA is.
European nations require companies to give employees more paid vacations--4-6 weeks on average. Some companies pretty much shut down during the summer months. In the US, you tend to get your two weeks and that's about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Unlike a rocket which may fail anytime during it's ascent, a ballistic projectile is pretty much fool proof as long as the initial launch works properly and it doesn't hit anything.
The same could be said for rockets. They're pretty much fool proof, as long as something doesn't go wrong.
Besides, what if that uranium hit your children?!
Unless you make a engine thats about 1/2 the circumference of the moon (or, just the diameter, if you were REALLY hard core).
Actually, we could make it a Coca-Cola or Pepsi logo and see if we could get them to pay for it.
It's a good sound business solution.
As George Carlin said:
"I hate all these people talking about 'Save the Planet! Save the Planet!' Everybody, the Planet is fine. The people are fucked!"
[...] such as attacking the dragon with a broken glass bottle, rocks, coins, and other fairly harmless items.
Did you try using your bare hands?
Imagine the meeting:
QA: Yeah, we've found this problem where the humans can get AIDS. It's kind of a show-stopper.
Manager: What's Dev got to say?
Dev: Does it happen in the monkeys?
QA: Nope.
Dev: 'cause remember that you suggested that we just modify the monkeys in order to ship on time. We commented out a bunch of the monkey code.
Manager: Well, can't you just uncomment it?
Dev: Well, finding it might take some time...
QA: And if they do that, we have to do a whole bunch of regression testing. I mean, who knows what other bugs could be introduced?
Manager: Shit! The Boss is already on my case. "Where are the humans? They're supposed to ship on day 6!"
Dev: Hey, man, I told you that the schedule was pretty unrealistic.
Manager: Yeah, but you try explaining that to Him. *sigh* Okay...how can they generate this?
QA: Well, if they get exposed to monkey blood so that it mixes with their own blood. Y'know, like, through a cut or something.
Manager: Well, that's a pretty low possibility. Any other ways?
QA: Well, there's sex.
Manager: They're only supposed to use that for procreation!
QA: You know users...
Manager: Yeah. Well, we'll just cover our asses by putting a note about that in the documentation: No sex with monkeys. Mark it in the database as a "known issue" in case somebody calls and we'll get around to fixing it later...
(Yes, I know that AIDS probably did not make the jump from humans to monkeys from someone having sex with a monkey.)
Put simply, this school has a discipline problem and needs better teachers or better administration. It does not have a technical problem, so a technical solution won't help them.
While I tend to agree in principle, I have no problem with the idea that there are certain places where you will not be allowed to use a cell phone.
It's easy to blame the school, but a school serves a community. It does not stand alone. Which means not only do the children have to follow the rules, the parents of the children must also follow the rules.
Or perhaps their problem is that the faculty doesn't demand student respect, so students ignore the rules.
This is a good example.
Student is using cellphone. Teacher confiscates student's cellphone, returning it after class. Next class, student uses cellphone. Teacher confiscates student's cellphone and tells the student that their parent will have to come in and get it from the principal.
How's the student supposed to tell the parent? Their cellphone was confiscated. Which means the kid will have to tell the parent when they get home. Depending on when the parent gets home, this may be too late to deal with it which means the parent has to come in late for work the next day in order to get the student's cellphone.
Now who's the parent going to blame? Their darling little child who is just a misunderstood little angel? He said that the teacher was picking on him and that everybody else does it and he's being oppressed and it's just not faaaiiir!!!!! And the parent knows that there's no way their little angel would ever distort the truth in any way, shape, form or manner. "You calling my little angel a liar?!?! How dare you!"
Or are the parents going to get all pissed off with the school who took the cell phone in the first place and inconvenienced them? "You just cost me two hours of work to come pick up a stupid cellphone?! You're damn right I expect you to reimburse me for this waste of time! You'll be hearing from my lawyer!"
If you believe the answer is that the parent will discipline their child, you need to join the rest of us in 21st Century America. The child is the victim--they had their phone taken away from them--and it is never the victim's fault.
Remember that there's usually a school board that rules on these as well. Any rule that inconveniences the parents--you know, the people who elect people to the school board--doesn't stand much of a chance. And, dear God, what happens if the school confiscates the student's cellphone and something happens and the parent has to get ahold of the kid to tell them they'll be late and they can't get ahold of the kid and they panic, thinking that their child has been abducted by evil child-molesters! The school owes these parents for pain and suffering, I tells ya!
Like I said, I agree with the principle. Solve technology problems with technology and people problems with people. The problem is that a school has lots of people with different agendas and it can be impossible to reconcile all of them. In situations like that, sometimes having a hard rule ("No cellphones") and having technology to back it up (jammers, picocells, faraday cages) is necessary.
Taking the battery is good enough.
My phone has a non-removable battery, you insensitive clod!
Actually, the people who would have had to be convinced would be NASA--they would be the hard ones to fake out. All the Soviet Union had was the voice signals to the moon, which could easily be faked.
As I've said before, the conspiracists I've read about say we didn't land people on the moon. There's nothing mentioned about our ability to land hardware on the moon. I've never heard anybody say the Surveyor probes were faked. So it's not impossible that NASA landed a transmitter on the moon that would receive signals from Earth and broadcast them back to the Earth, making it look like the signals came from the moon.
5% = safety discount (stay below 75mph and the discount is yours)
Hmm...Nah. Not worth it.
Okay. So Apple isn't losing money if I buy music from the iTunes store and put it on my Pre, either.
iTunes is not a product in its own right, it's a part of the iTunes/iPod ecosystem of products, and as such, there will never be a wall erected between iPod and iTunes business units.
Huh?
I can freely download iTunes on Windows and buy music from Apple and listen to it on my Windows PC. No Apple hardware required.
It's not any different from the original.
Yes it is! In the original, Neil shot first!
Fair enough--and I'm sure that the Credit Union offers the services you want and none of the services that you don't. Sounds like a good decision.
So I suppose my point is that why would you knock a healthy bank that seems to be doing well in a toxic financial environment? I mean, I remember an area bank, Washington Mutual, used to run these fun ads talking about how they didn't charge lots of fees, unlike the other banks. Of course, they were among the first to fail and they ended up getting bought up by Chase.
While I'm not necessarily a fan of Wells Fargo, I gotta admit I'm finding this curious:
Wells Fargo has made so much money charging their customers fees (I think there might be a fee for fee processing) that they not only didn't need to take bailout money, they can afford to build a nice shiny corporate office with heated sidewalks.
Okay, let me get this straight. Because Wells Fargo made so much money--and doesn't appear to have lost too much money during the mortgage crisis or at least hasn't lost more money than they made--they didn't need to get bail-out money, saving taxpayers money. Perhaps this is in contrast with other banks that didn't charge fees and made poor choices during the mortgage crisis and needed bail-out money from the taxpayers.
Wells Fargo made lots of money by charging their customers for service, which is sort of the idea of a company which provides a service. You may argue the amounts, and I might agree with you. But they charged the amounts they charged and let the market decide whether they were worth it. You decided they weren't worth it and took your business elsewhere, which is your choice.
Tell me, did the bank you switched to need to take taxpayer money? Have they been absorbed by some other bank?
Well, their corporate offices are in San Francisco. That said, a quick look at google gives us various applications for Wells Fargo to have heated sidewalks in their Des Moines, Iowa office, where they have an average of 32 inches of snowfall during the winter.
I'm sure electrically heated sidewalks are cheaper than paying some guy to shovel the snow.
I'd imagine one obvious reason would be logistics--it's probably easier and quicker to transport rocket parts to Florida than it is to Hawaii.
Which is why most European Space Agency missions are launched from French Guiana.
Well, there are a few reasons for Florida.
First, if you want to launch a spacecraft into an equatorial orbit, it's best to launch it from the equator. The rotation of the earth will give you about an 850 MPH boost. This is one reason that things that launch from Florida travel east. The further north you travel, the less rotational energy you get. If you consider the continental US, you're pretty much looking at either Florida or the bottom part of Texas.
Second, ideally you want very little going on to the east, in the event of a problem. If you look to the east of Florida, you'll see a pretty big chunk of water where you can drop things without worrying too much about hitting something or someone. Texas, you have the Gulf of Mexico, but if the rocket veers north, you're hitting the southern part of the US. Veer a little south and you may end up hitting Cuba, which is not necessarily something the US would like to do.
So Florida makes pretty good sense, actually.
Can you give me an example of a device that is that accurate?
Uh...I'm not sure that civilian GPS systems are that precise.
Now, I don't have a way fancy GPS receiver--it's a Garmin Edge 205. It has a little read-out for accuracy, though, and in my normal travels, the read-out says 10-15 feet.
Now, conceptually, I would agree. But between "detuning" and clock accuracy, I don't think you'll ever find accuracy measured in inches on any civilian GPS device.
Well, part of the problem is that Satellite Navigation is good for cars and is written for them. It is not written for other sized vehicles. Usually, trucking companies have custom software to plan routes with.
My roomate used to drive big-rig trucks. Her first time out, she partnered with a former IT guy who brought his laptop with a GPS card and a satellite navigation program. When they were going through Atlanta, my roomate was sleeping in the back while he was driving. She noticed that he seemed to be starting and stopping alot and wondered what the hell was going on. When she stepped into the cockpit, she found that her partner had left the highway and was on surface streets because the navigation program had told him that it was shorter.
So here he is trying to maneuver this 18-wheeler through Atlanta traffic on a 6 lane street. It turned into four lanes. Then into 2. Residential streets. They chugged along until they eventually got back to the freeway (my roomate was thankful that there were no low bridges though they did scrape up a few trees). He figured that his navigation program was better than the one that the trucking company had, which had told him to stay on the freeway. After all, the shorter route would save gas, right?
These delivery guys are trying to save money by using a navigation program for cars rather than the, usually more expensive, navigation program for trucks.
(As an aside, I still want try to biking on I-405 and, when the cops arrest me, tell them "But Google Maps said it would be okay!")
Agreed. Why NASA bothered with the Saturn I or the Saturn IB when they could have just waited until the Saturn V was built and then done everything after that shows what a waste of tax dollars NASA is.
(Yes, this is sarcasm)
Oh hell, you can get taken hostage anywhere.
The problem with going to Afghanistan is that you'll probably end up on some terrorist watch list just because you decide to check the place out.
I would love to hang out with this guy when 2016 rolls around...
European nations require companies to give employees more paid vacations--4-6 weeks on average. Some companies pretty much shut down during the summer months. In the US, you tend to get your two weeks and that's about it.