In the communication, Skippy confirmed that he and the other dolphins were indeed armed, declared himself and his compatriots "freedom fighters" for an organization called the "Cetacean Liberation Front" or "CTF", and demanded that all other wrongfully imprisoned cetaceans be released immediately, or the group would initiate hostilities against surfers, SCUBA divers, and windsurfers.
Not to be confused with the organization of their tree-dwelling brothers called the CLIT, the Coalition for Liberation of Itinerate Tree-dwellers, which is an extension of the LABIA, Liberate Apes Before Imprisoning Apes.
I define "accident" as a catastrophic failure, not as missing a/some mission objective(s). You can have a successful mission even if you miss a/some mission objective(s). It's not the one you wanted, but that's why space is still considered "a frontier".
One huge factor is reentry stability. The soyuz capsule is inherantly stable. Once it performs a retro burn it is set to go. Natural aerodynamic stability (just like Mercury/Gemini/Apollo, and hopefully the CEV). The shuttle has no such thing. If it loses power, we lose the shuttle. That is huge. Another factor is that the Russians use the same and similar launchers/flight hardware/flight computers to launch Progress computers. Now I know, while a system is a sum of its components the unique combination of its components will lead to uniquenesses in the system, but having the additional flight time on those components gains experiance and system use time.
The Russians also have much higher flight rates in general. Shooting rockets isn't a special event to them it is the status quo.
I'm not knocking the shuttle - it was a good piece of hardware, and honestly the two accidents that occured were due to management errors. But the Soyuz system is a good system with a lot of merits and is honestly where we should have went post-Apollo (and is where we are going with the CEV).
- Noone currently makes a capsule (man rated, cargo rated, whatever) that mates with a SpaceX rocket.
If you could link to their website, I presume you could take a minute to read about their engine testing program and lack of actual (sub-orbital or orbital) flights.
The difference is in the trends. Both Soyuz accidents happened early in the life cycle and were addressed. They havent had an accident in how many years? That's a very valid metric that is completely in Soyuz favor. There are other factors that leave the ball in the Soyuz court as well. Cost is a huge one.
an IPO of the Xbox division would generate a metric ton of revenue. Revenue that would ride out the first few years of losses. The article explicitly mentioned that the XBOX division was getting the best and the brightest, much like an early Microsoft, whereas the other divisions were getting stagnant. A seperate XBOX company therefore would be a group of intelligent bright people who would turn a profit shortly, and whose stock would rise much like an early Microsoft.
The reason you seperate was very clearly stated: with three cash cows in one barn, things get stagnant. Seperate them into seperate entities and you spur a little more innovation (that's the theory, anyways).
Windows Inc. would be afraid that Google threatens it's dominance of the world's computing platform, but would not be able to use MSN Inc. to battle Google. Windows Inc would be forced to make Windows better.
They aren't afraid of Google as a computing platform. They are afraid of Google as a search interface. See Bill's interview posted recently on/.
Office Inc.... Internet Explorer Inc.
...still wouldnt give a flying f*ck about linux because the market share isn't there.
And, MSN Inc. would have to compete fairly with its competition from Yahoo and Google
MSN is not only a web portal but an ISP. MSN merging with AOL is 2 full service **internet providers** merging. Last I checked (5 minutes ago) neigher Google nor Yahoo advertized internet access. Although I could have sworn Yahoo used to.
So to conclude, your wrong on premise #1, draw bad conclusions on premises #2 and #3, and are comparing apples to oranges on #4.
As you'll notice its a little longer thinner (depth) and not as wide. I doubt the Zen Nano was packing extra space inside just for the heck of it. Dell also has a 5 band equalizer compared to the Zen's 4 band.
So the conspiracy theorists can go back in their holes now:P
Can be... could be... That's the problem. The tech isn't there. The carbon nanotubes that are long enough, aren't strong enough. The carbon nanotubes that are strong enough aren't nearly long enough.
The tech isn't there. How can they start building something that doesn't have the prerequisite materials? The current plan NASA is proposing they can start building **soon**.
The R&D you need to produce space elevators is currently being performed worldwide by a variety of companies and is well-funded. Diverting $100B isn't going to up the timescale **that** much. Not to mention while it looks good on paper, we haven't even tried a prototype yet.
No floppy drive on the machine. No thumb drive. Latest version of Firefox. She doesn't download malicious.exe's (I can validate this...) The only application she uses is Mozilla Firefox to check webmail and play Java-based games online (!!!red flag!!! this is where they are coming from). No other computer games, no utilities, no nothing. I secured the Messenger service, etc. etc. I'm not an idiot. You can get spyware using Firefox. Other/.ers have commented on the same thing (the zealots choose to deny it however).
My wife has gotten several, I installed Firefox immediately after setting up her computer. I don't remember all of them, the one nasty one I do recall was Aurora.
I use Firefox at home and IE at work. I don't get viruses on either. Safe browsing habits are all you need. The browser really doesn't matter. I used Firefox at home because my wife for awhile used my computer and went to lots of game websites. Firefox reduced, but DID NOT eliminate the number of infections. With the new tabbed browsing in IE, I'm not sure which browser I'll start using at home.
Zubrin makes a lot of speculation. Not to mention the stuff he proposes to do hasn't been done before meaning it has to go through a development cycle which he generally doesn't account for. Not to mention some of his engineering decisions make may of us who are engineers for a living cringe.
Don't get me wrong - I own two of his books ("Case for Mars" and "Entering Space". Both are good reads). But he oversimplifies the situation. The lift vehicle he wants to use was a thought project - never designed or produced. The habitat modules have no current production facility (much larger than space station modules). Et cetera.
10 times safer means going (roughly) from 2 failures in 100 to 2 failures in 1000 - an order of magnitude - which happen to coincide pretty well with the numbers they were proposing at the AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference in July.
Since they are reusing shuttle components they have safety ratings for individual shuttle components. Safety analysis - both fatal and near fatal - are well known and well documented procedures. All they have to do is plug the individual safety ratings of known components into their spreadsheets and make intelligent guesses on the new hardware (which isn't difficult - the CEV is similar to capsules from the apollo-era).
I've seen the analysis. I like what I see. This is a definite step in the right direction.
... except Gate's point is still valid. They aren't getting paid to code, they have to support themselves to code. He believes in selling a product instead of selling support. It's 2 different ideologies, and he admits later there is room for both.
At the same time, King County Superior Court Judge Steven Gonzalez found that former Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) vice president Kai-Fu Lee had misled his former employer and taken advantage of confidential Microsoft information when first working at Google.
Your missing the point. They pay $1000 to get you as a customer. Who cares if you don't use eBay or PayPal. In a few years, just by way of your subscription to skype, you will pay for yourself, with interest.
The alternative that was proposed - that my post replied to - was saying they should just put a bunch of open source software together and make their own stab at a VoIP service. I'm saying, getting the millions of customers and the name will pay for itself quickly, even if they don't buy into your other services.
Remember - they have money to burn, and they are on the top of their game. What else are they supposed to do with it?
They don't have to survive the first strike. They have to detect the missiles en route and return fire before they land. That technology (RADAR) is not that hard. ICBM's and cruise missiles have a very loud heat signature and is easily detected at long range.
The sentence remain valid if you replace "soviets" with "Americans", or several other nations.
Right. But we don't generally sell weapons to our enemies. We sell/give them to allies. The russians have been known, well documented, to sell to anyone if the price is right.
The biggest threat is the fact that the soviets had/have (may still?) sell weapons to other countries so long as the price is right. On top of that, many soviet scientist could be bought for a price.
That's the reason NASA can't pay Russia to launch more Soyuz's to station to compensate for grounded shuttles, the nonproliferation laws state that the US can't exchange money for services to countries that supply arms to our enemies...
Slashdot Mirror
...maybe...
-everphilski-
er... GLONASS.
-everphilski-
The Russians have their own GPS satellite network, GLOSNASS.
-everphilski-
In the communication, Skippy confirmed that he and the other dolphins were indeed armed, declared himself and his compatriots "freedom fighters" for an organization called the "Cetacean Liberation Front" or "CTF", and demanded that all other wrongfully imprisoned cetaceans be released immediately, or the group would initiate hostilities against surfers, SCUBA divers, and windsurfers.
Not to be confused with the organization of their tree-dwelling brothers called the CLIT, the Coalition for Liberation of Itinerate Tree-dwellers, which is an extension of the LABIA, Liberate Apes Before Imprisoning Apes.
Schnoogans.
-everphilski-
I define "accident" as a catastrophic failure, not as missing a/some mission objective(s). You can have a successful mission even if you miss a/some mission objective(s). It's not the one you wanted, but that's why space is still considered "a frontier".
One huge factor is reentry stability. The soyuz capsule is inherantly stable. Once it performs a retro burn it is set to go. Natural aerodynamic stability (just like Mercury/Gemini/Apollo, and hopefully the CEV). The shuttle has no such thing. If it loses power, we lose the shuttle. That is huge. Another factor is that the Russians use the same and similar launchers/flight hardware/flight computers to launch Progress computers. Now I know, while a system is a sum of its components the unique combination of its components will lead to uniquenesses in the system, but having the additional flight time on those components gains experiance and system use time.
The Russians also have much higher flight rates in general. Shooting rockets isn't a special event to them it is the status quo.
I'm not knocking the shuttle - it was a good piece of hardware, and honestly the two accidents that occured were due to management errors. But the Soyuz system is a good system with a lot of merits and is honestly where we should have went post-Apollo (and is where we are going with the CEV).
-everphilski-
- SpaceX hasn't launched to LEO
- SpaceX only makes boosters
- Noone currently makes a capsule (man rated, cargo rated, whatever) that mates with a SpaceX rocket.
If you could link to their website, I presume you could take a minute to read about their engine testing program and lack of actual (sub-orbital or orbital) flights.
-everphilski-
The difference is in the trends. Both Soyuz accidents happened early in the life cycle and were addressed. They havent had an accident in how many years? That's a very valid metric that is completely in Soyuz favor. There are other factors that leave the ball in the Soyuz court as well. Cost is a huge one.
-everphilski-
If your net worth is $100, fair enough. Dollar for dollar, he gives a higher percentage of his net worth to charity and research than most people do.
-everphilski-
If you RTFA a little closer...
an IPO of the Xbox division would generate a metric ton of revenue. Revenue that would ride out the first few years of losses. The article explicitly mentioned that the XBOX division was getting the best and the brightest, much like an early Microsoft, whereas the other divisions were getting stagnant. A seperate XBOX company therefore would be a group of intelligent bright people who would turn a profit shortly, and whose stock would rise much like an early Microsoft.
The reason you seperate was very clearly stated: with three cash cows in one barn, things get stagnant. Seperate them into seperate entities and you spur a little more innovation (that's the theory, anyways).
-everphilski-
... and we've only heard one. Bear that in mind before you blame the police, or profiling, or whatever.
-everphilski-
*sigh*
/.
... Internet Explorer Inc.
...still wouldnt give a flying f*ck about linux because the market share isn't there.
Windows Inc. would be afraid that Google threatens it's dominance of the world's computing platform, but would not be able to use MSN Inc. to battle Google. Windows Inc would be forced to make Windows better.
They aren't afraid of Google as a computing platform. They are afraid of Google as a search interface. See Bill's interview posted recently on
Office Inc.
And, MSN Inc. would have to compete fairly with its competition from Yahoo and Google
MSN is not only a web portal but an ISP. MSN merging with AOL is 2 full service **internet providers** merging. Last I checked (5 minutes ago) neigher Google nor Yahoo advertized internet access. Although I could have sworn Yahoo used to.
So to conclude, your wrong on premise #1, draw bad conclusions on premises #2 and #3, and are comparing apples to oranges on #4.
-everphilski-
Dell's offering
:P
As you'll notice its a little longer thinner (depth) and not as wide. I doubt the Zen Nano was packing extra space inside just for the heck of it. Dell also has a 5 band equalizer compared to the Zen's 4 band.
So the conspiracy theorists can go back in their holes now
-everphilski-
Can be... could be... That's the problem. The tech isn't there. The carbon nanotubes that are long enough, aren't strong enough. The carbon nanotubes that are strong enough aren't nearly long enough.
The tech isn't there. How can they start building something that doesn't have the prerequisite materials? The current plan NASA is proposing they can start building **soon**.
The R&D you need to produce space elevators is currently being performed worldwide by a variety of companies and is well-funded. Diverting $100B isn't going to up the timescale **that** much. Not to mention while it looks good on paper, we haven't even tried a prototype yet.
-everphilski-
No floppy drive on the machine. No thumb drive. Latest version of Firefox. She doesn't download malicious .exe's (I can validate this...) The only application she uses is Mozilla Firefox to check webmail and play Java-based games online (!!!red flag!!! this is where they are coming from). No other computer games, no utilities, no nothing. I secured the Messenger service, etc. etc. I'm not an idiot. You can get spyware using Firefox. Other /.ers have commented on the same thing (the zealots choose to deny it however).
-everphilski-
My wife has gotten several, I installed Firefox immediately after setting up her computer. I don't remember all of them, the one nasty one I do recall was Aurora.
I use Firefox at home and IE at work. I don't get viruses on either. Safe browsing habits are all you need. The browser really doesn't matter. I used Firefox at home because my wife for awhile used my computer and went to lots of game websites. Firefox reduced, but DID NOT eliminate the number of infections. With the new tabbed browsing in IE, I'm not sure which browser I'll start using at home.
-everphilski-
Zubrin makes a lot of speculation. Not to mention the stuff he proposes to do hasn't been done before meaning it has to go through a development cycle which he generally doesn't account for. Not to mention some of his engineering decisions make may of us who are engineers for a living cringe.
Don't get me wrong - I own two of his books ("Case for Mars" and "Entering Space". Both are good reads). But he oversimplifies the situation. The lift vehicle he wants to use was a thought project - never designed or produced. The habitat modules have no current production facility (much larger than space station modules). Et cetera.
-everphilski-
10 times safer means going (roughly) from 2 failures in 100 to 2 failures in 1000 - an order of magnitude - which happen to coincide pretty well with the numbers they were proposing at the AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference in July.
-everphilski-
Since they are reusing shuttle components they have safety ratings for individual shuttle components. Safety analysis - both fatal and near fatal - are well known and well documented procedures. All they have to do is plug the individual safety ratings of known components into their spreadsheets and make intelligent guesses on the new hardware (which isn't difficult - the CEV is similar to capsules from the apollo-era).
I've seen the analysis. I like what I see. This is a definite step in the right direction.
-everphilski-
... except Gate's point is still valid. They aren't getting paid to code, they have to support themselves to code. He believes in selling a product instead of selling support. It's 2 different ideologies, and he admits later there is room for both.
-everphilski-
Maybe you didn't RTFA:
At the same time, King County Superior Court Judge Steven Gonzalez found that former Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) vice president Kai-Fu Lee had misled his former employer and taken advantage of confidential Microsoft information when first working at Google.
All's not good for Mr. Lee.
-everphilski-
Your missing the point. They pay $1000 to get you as a customer. Who cares if you don't use eBay or PayPal. In a few years, just by way of your subscription to skype, you will pay for yourself, with interest.
The alternative that was proposed - that my post replied to - was saying they should just put a bunch of open source software together and make their own stab at a VoIP service. I'm saying, getting the millions of customers and the name will pay for itself quickly, even if they don't buy into your other services.
Remember - they have money to burn, and they are on the top of their game. What else are they supposed to do with it?
-everphilski-
Software, both client side and server side, is infrastructure. Corporate billing systems, advertising methods, etc. also fall under infrastructure.
-everphilski-
They don't have to survive the first strike. They have to detect the missiles en route and return fire before they land. That technology (RADAR) is not that hard. ICBM's and cruise missiles have a very loud heat signature and is easily detected at long range.
-everphilski-
The sentence remain valid if you replace "soviets" with "Americans", or several other nations.
Right. But we don't generally sell weapons to our enemies. We sell/give them to allies. The russians have been known, well documented, to sell to anyone if the price is right.
-everphilski-
The biggest threat is the fact that the soviets had/have (may still?) sell weapons to other countries so long as the price is right. On top of that, many soviet scientist could be bought for a price.
That's the reason NASA can't pay Russia to launch more Soyuz's to station to compensate for grounded shuttles, the nonproliferation laws state that the US can't exchange money for services to countries that supply arms to our enemies...
-everphilski-