He's just doing it to (a) look Kennedyesque, (b) win the geek vote, and (c) give a bunch of money away to the aerospace industry. He doesn't actually believe we'll get there.
Back in 1939, a large part of the eastern seaboard heard about a Martian Invasion on the radio. Turned out it wasn't true.
There is lots of evidence that we landed on the moon (900 pounds of moonrocks being a good part of it). But to say, "I know we landed on the moon 'cause I saw it on my Tee Vee!" is ridiculous.
Considering the low resolution television images that came back, it would have been very easy to fake it.
iBooks are cheaper. They're costing about $289/yr. The MacBooks would be more expensive.
iBooks are more reliable. MacBooks are still getting the kinks worked out. You want to deal with recalling several thousand MacBooks?
Most software is still PowerPC. Why pay extra money to run emulated software?
There's no need for the State of Maine to pay more money for hassles and reduced performance just to be on the bleeding edge. In four years, the kinks will be worked out of the hardware and probably most of the software will be Universal or Intel. Then they'll negotiate again.
If nothing else, this should shut up anybody who says, "Hey, Apple is going to drop the PowerPC versions of Mac OS X!" They'll probably be around for at least four more years...
Well, I'm not sure I'd call it "explosive decompression." That kind of implies that all the pressurized stuff in the structure would immediately depart the structure--usually to the detriment of the structure.
Two holes in the structure would cause decompression, sure. But I'm not sure I'd say that it would be "explosive decompression"--ie, the whole thing disappears in a fraction of a second.
Now the obvious question for an engineer trying to design this is how big will the hole be? Can the pumps that inflate the thing keep up with the air that would be leaving so that there is no danger to the people inside? Can it be designed so that areas can be sealed off in order to keep air inside?
I'm sure people have thought of this. I'd be curious to know their solution...
"Do you really think that in a city, state, or other municipality that is run by officials elected by a majority liberal electorate, with agencies run by political appointees from that camp, that they (the folks hiring new people for even relatively sensitive jobs) would decide not to do background checks?"
I'll agree in regards to the right/left wing argument. But the basis--"stronger resistance against intrusiveness is warranted" is spot on.
When someone does a background check on me, they get information such as credit ratings, police records, etc. In other words, information about how I have dealt with my finances and law enforcement. The issue here is information on the website was password-protected and therefore not public information. Don't get me wrong--if I make a website with video of me and various farm animals, I deserve what I get. But if I make a reasonable attempt to prevent this information from being viewed by the public--and a password is such a reasonable attempt--that means it is none of your business.
Also, the use of the Patriot Act is exceptionally questionable. Remember that this was passed in order to assist law enforcement in catching terrorists. Also, in theory, part of the reason for being able to do such things was for national security--not for doing background checks against prospective employees. If we, the people, believe that these sort of intrusive checks are important to hiring, then let's pass a law allowing it. But don't hide behind a law about terrorism.
To paraphrase my old days in the Rocky Horror Audience, "If I pay billions of dollars for a space station, I expect to see some rope!"
Actually, along the side of the Space Shuttle they have "retractable tethers." When the astronauts go out into the cargo bay, they can attach themselves to a 50 or 85 foot long tether and not have to worry about falling off. A minor problem on the last EVA around the Shuttle was that they had trouble getting the tether to retract, so they had to keep an eye on it and make sure it didn't get wrapped around something it wasn't supposed to. It slowed them down a bit...
Which do you think would be faster, climbing the mountain with all the assorted safety gear and ropes, or taking a jetpack to the top?
Remember, they can't be out there all day. If it takes them two hours to climb--with the ropes--to the thing they need to fix and two hours to climb back, that's four less hours they have to actually do stuff. Don't forget, they probably also have to haul tools and perhaps a replacement device. That would make for some pretty slow going if they had to climb the whole way with safety ropes.
Here's a question I have, though, that perhaps someone could explain: They keep leaving the ISS's "Quest" airlock (did they pay for advertising rights or something?) and climbing down to the Shuttle cargo bay to get their stuff. Why don't they just go out the Shuttle's airlock?
Oh, that is a real consolation! Liberals are amusing. Your point is irrelevent. Prevention is all that matters. What good is the ability to reconstruct the plot after 3000 people are disintegrated?
I'm trying to figure out if you're being serious.
I'm going to repeat it again--much like the Republicans, maybe if I repeat it enough it will get through to you: We had all the information necessary to stop the 9/11 Attacks.
Unfortunately, some of the information was at the CIA. Some of the information was at the FBI. Some of the information was at the NSA. None of the groups shared their information. In some cases, they couldn't because it was illegal--the CIA is forbidden from "domestic spying", while the FBI is forbidden from "foreign spying." Some of it is turf--why give the FBI information so they can make the arrest and get all the credit? So while the CIA thought these guys were bad news, they didn't tell the FBI. The FBI thought these guys were bad news but they didn't have enough evidence to convince the higher-ups to devote the resources to watching them. The NSA had the evidence that these guys were bad news, but telling the FBI or CIA would have meant divulging national security capabilities.
But I will repeat this again, so it will hopefully get through: We had all the information necessary to stop the 9/11 Attacks.
That's why I get incensed when people bring up 9/11 in this context. 9/11 was not an issue where we didn't have enough information. 9/11 was an organizational problem. There was no reasonable way to make sure that information about dangerous people would get to the appropriate people where they could be watched and/or arrested. So the argument that we need "more information" to "prevent another 9/11" is wrong. What we need to do is do a better job of managing the information we have.
You see, this is why we had an investigation into 9/11--much to the President's chagrin--so we could find out what went wrong and try to fix the problem so it wouldn't happen again.
Okay, new rule: The First Person To Bring Up 9/11 Loses The Argument. Call it a corollary to Godwin's Law.
Prior to 9/11 the cockroaches to plotted to attack the US did so in the kind of open environment you seem to want to restore.
You've been listening to way too much Republican propaganda.
The fact is various different intelligence and investigative agencies already had all of the pieces of the plot in different datasets necessary to detect and stop the 9/11 attacks. However, the various agencies did not communicate with each other for various different reasons--some legal, some turf. In theory, this is why the Department of Homeland Security was created--to facilitate the kind of sharing needed for these cases. Whether it will be effective is a debate for another day.
But let's repeat the important part again, so that it has a better chance of being recorded in your brain: The various different intelligence and investigative agencies already had all of the pieces of the plot in different datasets necessary to detect and stop the 9/11 attacks. In other words, the "openness and freedom" that existed before the 9/11 attacks still managed to tell us everything we needed to know about the attacks.
It was the government that "let us down" by not connecting the dots. Of course, they don't want to say it that way because it makes them look bad, so suddenly we need all sorts of new surveillance laws to collect data that we don't need.
[...] It is all very well for a bottlerocket to explode in flight, NOT A MANNED SHIP!
Okay, let's try to get a little reality check in here.
First, foam did not cause the Challenger accident. It has been nice and warm in Florida and there is no reason to believe that the SRBs will create a problem as they did with Challenger. Foam is a problem in that it can come off and damage the tiles which protect the Shuttle upon re-entry, which will occur in a couple of weeks. So there will be no "fourth to remember" because of the foam.
That said, I think it would be a good idea to fix the problem. If that means reapplying the foam, then do so. I'm not worried about the astronauts, I'm worried about the Shuttle. We kinda need those puppies for the next four years or so--I'd like to see one of them go fix the Hubble, for example. I'd rather not see one of them get trashed on a "remote controlled re-entry" while the astronauts are perfectly safe aboard the space station.
By the way--does anybody know how they handle the "blackout" period during re-entry? Does the Shuttle fly itself down to whatever altitude?
Yes, it's a dangerous mission and NASA cannot guarantee that falling foam will not damage the shuttle, but in the hundred plus launches only two shuttles have been lost, which isn't a bad track record.
Well, I figured I'd better make sure I referenced something that explicitly says it's a joke. You know Mac people...we'd end up with 700 posts about how "Well, yeah, but that was before Mac OS X" or how they don't have the problem and I'm making it up, etc., etc.
Well, lots of people will say that there's a difference. Heck, I just the responses--lots of people did say there was a difference. I'm going to take a different tack and say that there is no difference and a person in the car is just as distracting.
So what is the difference?
The difference has to do with the number of cars on the road and the number of distracting conversations occurring.
Scenario #1: Let's say there are 100 people on a particular stretch of road. Each person is in their own car. Each person is talking on their cell phone. That's 200 distracting conversations.
Scenario #2: Same stretch of road, same number of people. But this time, there are two people per car and no one is talking on a cell phone. So there are 50 cars on the stretch of road. The fewer cars on the road, the less chance of an accident. There are fewer distracting conversations going, too.
[...] there are games like "Mega Man X" (right after MM6) and "Wizards and Warriors X" (sequel to W&W2, I believe) that just confuse people as to what game they are playing.
I did a freelance gig back in '98 where I had to use a Mac (an 8600/300 w/64 megs of RAM). It took well over 20 minutes to copy a 17 meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another. 20 minutes! At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT4, the same operation would take about 2 minutes.
That having been said, it doesn't run on a lot of hardware [...]
Yeah. A little note to the guys who run the website: Before you expect me to pony up 30 dollars, do me a favor and tell me what hardware is necessary for this thing to run. I was pretty sure it wouldn't run on my PowerMac G5, but I couldn't find any hardware specs to give me an idea as to what it would run on.
While I'm not in as firm agreement with the grandparent, I do agree that this is a worthwhile thing for those who are interested. One group who would be interested, I'd imagine, is parents. No matter how good a job you do of hiding, locking, etc. things up, kids will find a way into it. If I were a parent, I'd consider owning something like this if I felt the need for a gun in the house.
My own 2 cents is that the idea that guns somehow protect our freedoms is a little illogical, to begin with. Have all of you making that argument forgotten tanks, planes, helicopters, even nuclear weapons?
Well, let's start with the obvious. If the government brings in tanks, planes, and helicopters (I'll leave out nuclear weapons), it's certainly easier to gain access to them or the high-tech weapons you need to counter them if you have a rifle than if you don't. 50 people armed with hunting rifles will certainly cause more casualties than 50 people armed with pointed sticks when facing an enemy with machine guns.
Heck, take a fun example like Iraq. Lots of the bad guys have guns over there. It takes more troops to "pacify" an armed populace. We don't have enough troops to do this. Now tell me that, say, 100 million gun owners in America couldn't make life hell for the, say, million or so troops meant to guard them?
I probably should keep my yap shut, but this one struck me at an odd angle:
During the last shuttle launch the ET impacted with a turkey vulture. Had the strike occured at a higher speed and altitude the vehicle could have been brought down.
Fair enough. But think about it for a second.
Turkey Vultures don't go that high (best I could find was 100m). Since the Shuttle is accelerating from the ground, it isn't going that fast as it passes 100 meters. So therefore, there's not a good probability that the shuttle is going to run into a turkey vulture going mach 1 or something.
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Well, those get taken out by convenient meteors. It's an amazing coincidence! Like the World Trade Towers collapsing...
He's just doing it to (a) look Kennedyesque, (b) win the geek vote, and (c) give a bunch of money away to the aerospace industry. He doesn't actually believe we'll get there.
(Yes, I know the original is a troll. So am I.)
There is lots of evidence that we landed on the moon (900 pounds of moonrocks being a good part of it). But to say, "I know we landed on the moon 'cause I saw it on my Tee Vee!" is ridiculous.
Considering the low resolution television images that came back, it would have been very easy to fake it.
Why?
- iBooks are cheaper. They're costing about $289/yr. The MacBooks would be more expensive.
- iBooks are more reliable. MacBooks are still getting the kinks worked out. You want to deal with recalling several thousand MacBooks?
- Most software is still PowerPC. Why pay extra money to run emulated software?
There's no need for the State of Maine to pay more money for hassles and reduced performance just to be on the bleeding edge. In four years, the kinks will be worked out of the hardware and probably most of the software will be Universal or Intel. Then they'll negotiate again.If nothing else, this should shut up anybody who says, "Hey, Apple is going to drop the PowerPC versions of Mac OS X!" They'll probably be around for at least four more years...
Well, I'm not sure I'd call it "explosive decompression." That kind of implies that all the pressurized stuff in the structure would immediately depart the structure--usually to the detriment of the structure.
Two holes in the structure would cause decompression, sure. But I'm not sure I'd say that it would be "explosive decompression"--ie, the whole thing disappears in a fraction of a second.
Now the obvious question for an engineer trying to design this is how big will the hole be? Can the pumps that inflate the thing keep up with the air that would be leaving so that there is no danger to the people inside? Can it be designed so that areas can be sealed off in order to keep air inside?
I'm sure people have thought of this. I'd be curious to know their solution...
These terrorists wouldn't be attacking us if we all had larger penises. It's your patriotic duty to buy this pill...
And, of course, it'll be illegal to turn it off.
"Do you really think that in a city, state, or other municipality that is run by officials elected by a majority liberal electorate, with agencies run by political appointees from that camp, that they (the folks hiring new people for even relatively sensitive jobs) would decide not to do background checks?"
I'll agree in regards to the right/left wing argument. But the basis--"stronger resistance against intrusiveness is warranted" is spot on.
When someone does a background check on me, they get information such as credit ratings, police records, etc. In other words, information about how I have dealt with my finances and law enforcement. The issue here is information on the website was password-protected and therefore not public information. Don't get me wrong--if I make a website with video of me and various farm animals, I deserve what I get. But if I make a reasonable attempt to prevent this information from being viewed by the public--and a password is such a reasonable attempt--that means it is none of your business.
Also, the use of the Patriot Act is exceptionally questionable. Remember that this was passed in order to assist law enforcement in catching terrorists. Also, in theory, part of the reason for being able to do such things was for national security--not for doing background checks against prospective employees. If we, the people, believe that these sort of intrusive checks are important to hiring, then let's pass a law allowing it. But don't hide behind a law about terrorism.
True. After all, we all know that Alabama is working on getting The Bomb.
To paraphrase my old days in the Rocky Horror Audience, "If I pay billions of dollars for a space station, I expect to see some rope!"
Actually, along the side of the Space Shuttle they have "retractable tethers." When the astronauts go out into the cargo bay, they can attach themselves to a 50 or 85 foot long tether and not have to worry about falling off. A minor problem on the last EVA around the Shuttle was that they had trouble getting the tether to retract, so they had to keep an eye on it and make sure it didn't get wrapped around something it wasn't supposed to. It slowed them down a bit...
Which do you think would be faster, climbing the mountain with all the assorted safety gear and ropes, or taking a jetpack to the top?
Remember, they can't be out there all day. If it takes them two hours to climb--with the ropes--to the thing they need to fix and two hours to climb back, that's four less hours they have to actually do stuff. Don't forget, they probably also have to haul tools and perhaps a replacement device. That would make for some pretty slow going if they had to climb the whole way with safety ropes.
Here's a question I have, though, that perhaps someone could explain: They keep leaving the ISS's "Quest" airlock (did they pay for advertising rights or something?) and climbing down to the Shuttle cargo bay to get their stuff. Why don't they just go out the Shuttle's airlock?
I'm going to repeat it again--much like the Republicans, maybe if I repeat it enough it will get through to you: We had all the information necessary to stop the 9/11 Attacks.
Unfortunately, some of the information was at the CIA. Some of the information was at the FBI. Some of the information was at the NSA. None of the groups shared their information. In some cases, they couldn't because it was illegal--the CIA is forbidden from "domestic spying", while the FBI is forbidden from "foreign spying." Some of it is turf--why give the FBI information so they can make the arrest and get all the credit? So while the CIA thought these guys were bad news, they didn't tell the FBI. The FBI thought these guys were bad news but they didn't have enough evidence to convince the higher-ups to devote the resources to watching them. The NSA had the evidence that these guys were bad news, but telling the FBI or CIA would have meant divulging national security capabilities.
But I will repeat this again, so it will hopefully get through: We had all the information necessary to stop the 9/11 Attacks.
That's why I get incensed when people bring up 9/11 in this context. 9/11 was not an issue where we didn't have enough information. 9/11 was an organizational problem. There was no reasonable way to make sure that information about dangerous people would get to the appropriate people where they could be watched and/or arrested. So the argument that we need "more information" to "prevent another 9/11" is wrong. What we need to do is do a better job of managing the information we have.
You see, this is why we had an investigation into 9/11--much to the President's chagrin--so we could find out what went wrong and try to fix the problem so it wouldn't happen again.
You've been listening to way too much Republican propaganda.
The fact is various different intelligence and investigative agencies already had all of the pieces of the plot in different datasets necessary to detect and stop the 9/11 attacks. However, the various agencies did not communicate with each other for various different reasons--some legal, some turf. In theory, this is why the Department of Homeland Security was created--to facilitate the kind of sharing needed for these cases. Whether it will be effective is a debate for another day.
But let's repeat the important part again, so that it has a better chance of being recorded in your brain: The various different intelligence and investigative agencies already had all of the pieces of the plot in different datasets necessary to detect and stop the 9/11 attacks. In other words, the "openness and freedom" that existed before the 9/11 attacks still managed to tell us everything we needed to know about the attacks.
It was the government that "let us down" by not connecting the dots. Of course, they don't want to say it that way because it makes them look bad, so suddenly we need all sorts of new surveillance laws to collect data that we don't need.
I remember Gil Amelio saying the same thing back in 2000. Apple's success was due to Amelio's plans, not Jobs.
It needs a scale measured in "Libraries of Congress" or "Volkswagens."
First, foam did not cause the Challenger accident. It has been nice and warm in Florida and there is no reason to believe that the SRBs will create a problem as they did with Challenger. Foam is a problem in that it can come off and damage the tiles which protect the Shuttle upon re-entry, which will occur in a couple of weeks. So there will be no "fourth to remember" because of the foam.
That said, I think it would be a good idea to fix the problem. If that means reapplying the foam, then do so. I'm not worried about the astronauts, I'm worried about the Shuttle. We kinda need those puppies for the next four years or so--I'd like to see one of them go fix the Hubble, for example. I'd rather not see one of them get trashed on a "remote controlled re-entry" while the astronauts are perfectly safe aboard the space station.
By the way--does anybody know how they handle the "blackout" period during re-entry? Does the Shuttle fly itself down to whatever altitude?
Well, I figured I'd better make sure I referenced something that explicitly says it's a joke. You know Mac people...we'd end up with 700 posts about how "Well, yeah, but that was before Mac OS X" or how they don't have the problem and I'm making it up, etc., etc.
Well, lots of people will say that there's a difference. Heck, I just the responses--lots of people did say there was a difference. I'm going to take a different tack and say that there is no difference and a person in the car is just as distracting.
So what is the difference?
The difference has to do with the number of cars on the road and the number of distracting conversations occurring.
Scenario #1: Let's say there are 100 people on a particular stretch of road. Each person is in their own car. Each person is talking on their cell phone. That's 200 distracting conversations.
Scenario #2: Same stretch of road, same number of people. But this time, there are two people per car and no one is talking on a cell phone. So there are 50 cars on the stretch of road. The fewer cars on the road, the less chance of an accident. There are fewer distracting conversations going, too.
See how it works?
I did a freelance gig back in '98 where I had to use a Mac (an 8600/300 w/64 megs of RAM). It took well over 20 minutes to copy a 17 meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another. 20 minutes! At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT4, the same operation would take about 2 minutes.
(Admit it. You knew this was coming.)
"[...] I remember in my day to get to Taliesin we had to walk 5 miles uphill both ways in the snow..."
:^)
You had snow? LUXURY! We had to walk through lava...
"what would squirrels walk on if there weren't above-ground power lines?"
And what the birds land on?
Well, let's start with the obvious. If the government brings in tanks, planes, and helicopters (I'll leave out nuclear weapons), it's certainly easier to gain access to them or the high-tech weapons you need to counter them if you have a rifle than if you don't. 50 people armed with hunting rifles will certainly cause more casualties than 50 people armed with pointed sticks when facing an enemy with machine guns.
Heck, take a fun example like Iraq. Lots of the bad guys have guns over there. It takes more troops to "pacify" an armed populace. We don't have enough troops to do this. Now tell me that, say, 100 million gun owners in America couldn't make life hell for the, say, million or so troops meant to guard them?
Fair enough. But think about it for a second.
Turkey Vultures don't go that high (best I could find was 100m). Since the Shuttle is accelerating from the ground, it isn't going that fast as it passes 100 meters. So therefore, there's not a good probability that the shuttle is going to run into a turkey vulture going mach 1 or something.
Of course, no discussion such as this can be complete without the obvious quote: "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."