My grandfather was commissioned into the Navy in 1936 as a pilot. My great uncle flew the China Clipper and was a Pan-Am pilot for 30 years. My father is a retired airline pilot with over 20 years. I took flying lessons from when I was 12 to when I was 17 (I was supposed to solo the Saturday following Sept. 11, however that fucked everything up and I never got my lesson).
I even have some time logged behind the stick of a DASH-8 that my dad snuck me in to ferry between Newport News and Norfolk airports one time when I was 13 (only crew members on board, no "passengers").
Its not that I don't like flying. However, I **HATE** to fly commercially. The seats are uncomfortable, the air is stale, babies scream, people cough and sneeze, etc.
I always look pissed off on airlines and in airports, because I usually am. Of course, most of the flights I've taken in the past were as a non-rev and the crew knew my dad, so I was nice to them and they were nice to me, too.
Frankly, I think the people who **DON'T** look like they're about to kill someone are the ones you need to watch out for. There is probably something wrong with them as they clearly enjoy pain and discomfort.
That was the combination to the door lock to the comp sci lab with the cluster and the sofas and stuff at my school. I was VP of our ACM chapter my Freshman year, so I got to know it. Still hasn't changed.
So long as they don't replace shell fortunes with adsense, and pimp out Evolution to work with Google calendar and stuff, then I'd be cool with it. I wouldn't use it, but I wouldn't complain too hard.
I don't know if NASA people have to sign any sort of non-compete (I did to intern at the DOE a few years ago, so they might), but otherwise I would assume that a team of engineers that has done something like this before -- for instance, one of the Mars rover teams, would start their own team and be done with this.
Have none of them thought of it, or are they not allowed to? Perhaps a reader from JPL might tell us? I know there are a few from comments in the Phoenix thread the other day.
When I was in high school, I discovered that I could put pointers to functions inside of typdef structs and create a primitive sort of object system instead of learning C++.
I also spent a whole hell of a lot of time doing absolutely nothing productive with my time at all.
Well, the C7 on the Pico-ITX board apparently draws a lowly 1 watt a 1Ghz. That means that twice the address space costs 5x the power and the same clock speed.
Someone feel free to correct me if my interpretation is flawed, but I'm not really seeing this as worth it.
There is also the CEBAF. However, there is apparently a difference between particle physics and atomic physics, which I hope someone more knowledgeable than myself can explain, 'cause i'm not sure exactly what it is...
Jefferson Lab is apparently doing some hardronic experiments, but the 12GeV upgrade still isn't done -- and it was started around ~2001? I know it was in early phases when I interned there in 2002, while we were upgrading the FEL from 1KW to 10KW.
A robot that goes out to collect data is just another scientific instrument to be used. Ultimately, people are still going to have to make sense of the data.
It takes a certain kind of person to want to go out into extreme conditions to take measurements. Being able to make meaningful conclusions based on them in the field when you have other things to worry about also takes a special kind of person.
Robots can go out, measure, and send back to you in your comfy office. The only sad thing is that we're moving towards a world of astronomers without astronauts, so to speak.
Without the adventure there is a lot less to inspire 8 year olds -- imagine if the draw to NASA had been "hey, kids! you can wear starched shirts and use a slide rule!" instead of "you can be a kick-ass fighter pilot, get a FREE Corvette and wear an Omega watch!"
The reality is that even the astronauts had to put on the starch and take out the slide rule, but that's not what you want to show kids up front.
That its being shown to them now that space is mostly going to just get the machine treatment and astronauts aren't going to do much past float around not be able to go to the bathroom for a few weeks, its small wonder that the smart kids who have the wanderlust as well look at Marine Bio as the new Apollo.
When I was substitute teaching about a year ago lots of kids wanted to be marine biologists. none of them were saying astronaut anymore.
Vista was probably the New Coke of Windows... unfortunately, Windows 7 seems to be taking more of a "New Coke Ultra Cystal Lite Cola" approach, rather than a "Coke Classic" approach.
Ideally, the State should be above Politics. However, its somewhat impossible to expect that the people who work within the State will not have political leanings and agenda.
That said, whatever political activism people want to take part in should use their own time and their own equipment -- unless their job IS political activism. TFA doesn't say what this guy's job is, but I seriously doubt it"s "chief nasa suck-up to potential future presidents."
If he's using NASA equipment, NASA time, and identifying himself as a NASA employee, then he's basically creating a situation in which causual observers might be forgiven for assuming that NASA is endorsing "candidate x"
Quite frankly, it doesn't make sense for a department, which is often the subject of political punches, to want to be seen as interested - because if "their guy" lost, then the other guy will take it out on them.
Sucks for this guy, but if you work at NASA you should be smart enough to know better.
Yes, people need gas. I'm just saying that complaining about the price is sort of unfair. Frankly, I'm surprised that it took this long for the price to get high.
When I was a kid, I remember it being in the 70s-80s cents a gallon. When I was 17, I'd fill up my Yukon for $20 and have change left over. I can't afford to drive anything that big now.
My Aveo is getting ~30+ mpg, which is fine. Filling it up is a bitch at $38, but meh...
In the movie "High Sierra," (Which was Bogart's first leading roll), Bogart's character gets his tank filled, his radiator checked, and his windows done - pays out of a $5 and gets change.
That was in 1941, So yes, people have been used to paying hardly anything for this stuff for a very long time.
But just because everyone "needs" gas doesn't mean it has to be cheap. Actually, I seem to remember it being fairly basic economics that as demand for a product rises, prices will go up because people are willing to pay more for it -- especially when they don't really have a choice.
My point was that, by volume, gas is still rather cheap. Compared to some of the stupid crap that people buy, gas is still a really good deal.... and I'm not a hippie.
A few banks did some stupid things which should have been illegal and sold bad debts (mortgages to people who obviously couldn't afford them) to investors.
One they started getting fallout from being retards, more investors jumped ship. A lot of those people dumped money into oil and other comodities, running the price up -- creating another bubble to burst. Of course, even at ~4.00 a gallon, it's still cheaper than 1 venti green tea frap at starbucks, which even with a b&n discount card at the one in the store costs 4.37. Gas is 3.97 here, so if I buy 8 fraps to get the same volume, it costs me $3.20 more, which is a lot closer to a second gallon of gas than it is to another stupid frap. Gas is over 80% cheaper by volume than Starbucks is.
The Federal Reserve then kept lowering interest rates to "encourage growth" (because for some reason anything less than "growth" (and even then, the growth has to be at least thiiiiiiiiis big to count....) counts as "recession" these days), but that just created inflation and discouraged foreign capital investment, lowering the dollar's value.
If I were Congress or the President, I'd make trading petrol futures a capital offense. Margin trading would be earn you public floggings. Frankly, what I might do to the federal reserve board would probably have gotten me kicked out of the SS for inhumane treatment, I hate them so much for crimes of stupidity.
Get your parents (early 60-something) to co-sign? There are ways. I'm too much of an abused worker right now, and going to hide out in school again, to worry about it right now... plus i'm still a month shy of 24.
yay for "early 20s" -- like being a teenager, only with my own car insurance.
We're having economic troubles because people are dumb - not because something has actually happened.
"oh woe is me, the housing market is collapsing!" no its not. Now's a great time to buy. In fact this is really the sort of situation that benefits people in their mid-late 20s. Real Estate values were inflated before. Now those people can more easily afford to buy houses.
now, back on topic... if there is any sort of actual shift taking place, it is not likely to be the big corps that want to try and ring every last drop out of "business as usual" who will benefit.
If people perceive times to be tough and getting worse, with regards to the environment, energy "crisis," etc - then the people who can move in and offer solutions to those problems are going to win. They're going to attract the money from the people that have it to get the stuff to market.
I'd like to think that in the next 5-10 years we're going to see a lot more people interested in home power generation -- solar and/or wind, appliances that use less power, etc.
We're also going to see people and companies wanting solutions which provide maximum advantage for minimum cost. That means we'll see a lot more open, standards-based solutions to problems. We're likely to see more foss solutions to software problems, open hardware solutions to hardware problems, etc.
Likewise, if programmers are now no longer employed by megacorp a, they'll likely have a few more hours a day to contribute to foss projects -- or start smaller ventures based on foss solutions to some of the more pressing problems of our day, and into the future.
Now if only someone could "discover" a patent that covers Flash or ColdFusion or any of that other crap, and decide that not only do they want to to enforce it, and not license it, but not market and implementation themselves.
Bonus points if they're in the WTO so that America European states "have to" enforce it.
These days, so much content, so little information...
Yes, but any AP Physics student with whatever digital cable sub-species of the Discovery Channel has the science on it now should know more or less how to build a nuclear bomb.
The hard part is getting the materials -- and hell, Trinity was held together with 3M masking tape! But "knowing how" to place shaped explosive charges around the core and actually being able to come up with enough materials, or the industrial capacity to make the materials, is another thing.
Neither the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hamas or Al Quaeda is going to be building a bomb anytime soon. And now that the cat's out of the bag, you need significantly fewer physicists and mathematicians than you need engineers or machinists.
nuclear terrorists are just war propaganda and hype -- especially the "dirty bomb" variety.
Slashdot Mirror
My grandfather was commissioned into the Navy in 1936 as a pilot. My great uncle flew the China Clipper and was a Pan-Am pilot for 30 years. My father is a retired airline pilot with over 20 years. I took flying lessons from when I was 12 to when I was 17 (I was supposed to solo the Saturday following Sept. 11, however that fucked everything up and I never got my lesson).
I even have some time logged behind the stick of a DASH-8 that my dad snuck me in to ferry between Newport News and Norfolk airports one time when I was 13 (only crew members on board, no "passengers").
Its not that I don't like flying. However, I **HATE** to fly commercially. The seats are uncomfortable, the air is stale, babies scream, people cough and sneeze, etc.
I always look pissed off on airlines and in airports, because I usually am. Of course, most of the flights I've taken in the past were as a non-rev and the crew knew my dad, so I was nice to them and they were nice to me, too.
Frankly, I think the people who **DON'T** look like they're about to kill someone are the ones you need to watch out for. There is probably something wrong with them as they clearly enjoy pain and discomfort.
That was the combination to the door lock to the comp sci lab with the cluster and the sofas and stuff at my school. I was VP of our ACM chapter my Freshman year, so I got to know it. Still hasn't changed.
Wouldn't most slashdotter's luggage combo be 3142 ?
Well, the Joke's on them -- in Soviet America, the MONEY has no value...
I hate my country. Can I have a new one?
So long as they don't replace shell fortunes with adsense, and pimp out Evolution to work with Google calendar and stuff, then I'd be cool with it. I wouldn't use it, but I wouldn't complain too hard.
I don't know if NASA people have to sign any sort of non-compete (I did to intern at the DOE a few years ago, so they might), but otherwise I would assume that a team of engineers that has done something like this before -- for instance, one of the Mars rover teams, would start their own team and be done with this.
Have none of them thought of it, or are they not allowed to? Perhaps a reader from JPL might tell us? I know there are a few from comments in the Phoenix thread the other day.
yes, but magic incantations in C are more likely to produce real-world results. The TechnoGods help those who help themselves, after all.
When I was in high school, I discovered that I could put pointers to functions inside of typdef structs and create a primitive sort of object system instead of learning C++.
I also spent a whole hell of a lot of time doing absolutely nothing productive with my time at all.
Well, the C7 on the Pico-ITX board apparently draws a lowly 1 watt a 1Ghz. That means that twice the address space costs 5x the power and the same clock speed.
Someone feel free to correct me if my interpretation is flawed, but I'm not really seeing this as worth it.
There is also the CEBAF. However, there is apparently a difference between particle physics and atomic physics, which I hope someone more knowledgeable than myself can explain, 'cause i'm not sure exactly what it is...
Jefferson Lab is apparently doing some hardronic experiments, but the 12GeV upgrade still isn't done -- and it was started around ~2001? I know it was in early phases when I interned there in 2002, while we were upgrading the FEL from 1KW to 10KW.
A robot that goes out to collect data is just another scientific instrument to be used. Ultimately, people are still going to have to make sense of the data.
It takes a certain kind of person to want to go out into extreme conditions to take measurements. Being able to make meaningful conclusions based on them in the field when you have other things to worry about also takes a special kind of person.
Robots can go out, measure, and send back to you in your comfy office. The only sad thing is that we're moving towards a world of astronomers without astronauts, so to speak.
Without the adventure there is a lot less to inspire 8 year olds -- imagine if the draw to NASA had been "hey, kids! you can wear starched shirts and use a slide rule!" instead of "you can be a kick-ass fighter pilot, get a FREE Corvette and wear an Omega watch!"
The reality is that even the astronauts had to put on the starch and take out the slide rule, but that's not what you want to show kids up front.
That its being shown to them now that space is mostly going to just get the machine treatment and astronauts aren't going to do much past float around not be able to go to the bathroom for a few weeks, its small wonder that the smart kids who have the wanderlust as well look at Marine Bio as the new Apollo.
When I was substitute teaching about a year ago lots of kids wanted to be marine biologists. none of them were saying astronaut anymore.
Perhaps by "task bar" they meant the "File Edit..." thing at the top of applications?
I watched the video, but I wasn't paying close enough attention to notice if that were there or not.
Vista was probably the New Coke of Windows... unfortunately, Windows 7 seems to be taking more of a "New Coke Ultra Cystal Lite Cola" approach, rather than a "Coke Classic" approach.
I predict failure. It sure is pretty, though.
At least his script didn't almost capsize the oil tankers... people would be super pissed off then.
Ideally, the State should be above Politics. However, its somewhat impossible to expect that the people who work within the State will not have political leanings and agenda.
That said, whatever political activism people want to take part in should use their own time and their own equipment -- unless their job IS political activism. TFA doesn't say what this guy's job is, but I seriously doubt it"s "chief nasa suck-up to potential future presidents."
If he's using NASA equipment, NASA time, and identifying himself as a NASA employee, then he's basically creating a situation in which causual observers might be forgiven for assuming that NASA is endorsing "candidate x"
Quite frankly, it doesn't make sense for a department, which is often the subject of political punches, to want to be seen as interested - because if "their guy" lost, then the other guy will take it out on them.
Sucks for this guy, but if you work at NASA you should be smart enough to know better.
Yes, people need gas. I'm just saying that complaining about the price is sort of unfair. Frankly, I'm surprised that it took this long for the price to get high.
... and I'm not a hippie.
When I was a kid, I remember it being in the 70s-80s cents a gallon. When I was 17, I'd fill up my Yukon for $20 and have change left over. I can't afford to drive anything that big now.
My Aveo is getting ~30+ mpg, which is fine. Filling it up is a bitch at $38, but meh...
In the movie "High Sierra," (Which was Bogart's first leading roll), Bogart's character gets his tank filled, his radiator checked, and his windows done - pays out of a $5 and gets change.
That was in 1941, So yes, people have been used to paying hardly anything for this stuff for a very long time.
But just because everyone "needs" gas doesn't mean it has to be cheap. Actually, I seem to remember it being fairly basic economics that as demand for a product rises, prices will go up because people are willing to pay more for it -- especially when they don't really have a choice.
My point was that, by volume, gas is still rather cheap. Compared to some of the stupid crap that people buy, gas is still a really good deal.
my asshat employers don't believe in 401k... or health insurance... or vacations... or living wages... or evolution... or gravity.
I can't wait to get out of this place... counting down the days.
A few banks did some stupid things which should have been illegal and sold bad debts (mortgages to people who obviously couldn't afford them) to investors.
One they started getting fallout from being retards, more investors jumped ship. A lot of those people dumped money into oil and other comodities, running the price up -- creating another bubble to burst. Of course, even at ~4.00 a gallon, it's still cheaper than 1 venti green tea frap at starbucks, which even with a b&n discount card at the one in the store costs 4.37. Gas is 3.97 here, so if I buy 8 fraps to get the same volume, it costs me $3.20 more, which is a lot closer to a second gallon of gas than it is to another stupid frap. Gas is over 80% cheaper by volume than Starbucks is.
The Federal Reserve then kept lowering interest rates to "encourage growth" (because for some reason anything less than "growth" (and even then, the growth has to be at least thiiiiiiiiis big to count....) counts as "recession" these days), but that just created inflation and discouraged foreign capital investment, lowering the dollar's value.
If I were Congress or the President, I'd make trading petrol futures a capital offense. Margin trading would be earn you public floggings. Frankly, what I might do to the federal reserve board would probably have gotten me kicked out of the SS for inhumane treatment, I hate them so much for crimes of stupidity.
Get your parents (early 60-something) to co-sign? There are ways. I'm too much of an abused worker right now, and going to hide out in school again, to worry about it right now... plus i'm still a month shy of 24.
yay for "early 20s" -- like being a teenager, only with my own car insurance.
We're having economic troubles because people are dumb - not because something has actually happened.
"oh woe is me, the housing market is collapsing!" no its not. Now's a great time to buy. In fact this is really the sort of situation that benefits people in their mid-late 20s. Real Estate values were inflated before. Now those people can more easily afford to buy houses.
now, back on topic... if there is any sort of actual shift taking place, it is not likely to be the big corps that want to try and ring every last drop out of "business as usual" who will benefit.
If people perceive times to be tough and getting worse, with regards to the environment, energy "crisis," etc - then the people who can move in and offer solutions to those problems are going to win. They're going to attract the money from the people that have it to get the stuff to market.
I'd like to think that in the next 5-10 years we're going to see a lot more people interested in home power generation -- solar and/or wind, appliances that use less power, etc.
We're also going to see people and companies wanting solutions which provide maximum advantage for minimum cost. That means we'll see a lot more open, standards-based solutions to problems. We're likely to see more foss solutions to software problems, open hardware solutions to hardware problems, etc.
Likewise, if programmers are now no longer employed by megacorp a, they'll likely have a few more hours a day to contribute to foss projects -- or start smaller ventures based on foss solutions to some of the more pressing problems of our day, and into the future.
or maybe i'm just high
Well, I'm just reaching to see if I can find a good reason for the WTO to exist. I'm not sure if I hate Flash or "free trade" more.
Now if only someone could "discover" a patent that covers Flash or ColdFusion or any of that other crap, and decide that not only do they want to to enforce it, and not license it, but not market and implementation themselves.
Bonus points if they're in the WTO so that America European states "have to" enforce it.
These days, so much content, so little information...
Without all the fluff, how is it not just Debian?
Yes, but any AP Physics student with whatever digital cable sub-species of the Discovery Channel has the science on it now should know more or less how to build a nuclear bomb.
The hard part is getting the materials -- and hell, Trinity was held together with 3M masking tape! But "knowing how" to place shaped explosive charges around the core and actually being able to come up with enough materials, or the industrial capacity to make the materials, is another thing.
Neither the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hamas or Al Quaeda is going to be building a bomb anytime soon. And now that the cat's out of the bag, you need significantly fewer physicists and mathematicians than you need engineers or machinists.
nuclear terrorists are just war propaganda and hype -- especially the "dirty bomb" variety.
I didn't want sympathy, just giving an explanation in answer to the question responding to my original post.
Looking at what I wrote through the lens of FelixGordon's post above actually I figured out why it would be entertaining. Thanks though.