Likewise you want to stop the test before failure so you can look for signs of component wear and material stress so that you know what to improve for next time. Stopping at 200 seconds and finding this out is very useful. Stopping at 201 seconds after it has exploded and you have to work out from the pieces what went wrong is not as informative.
Second this! i do use them and love them. Yes they charge for usage during the daytime, but only downloads, uploads are unmetered (so you can leave things seeding, kick off your offsite backup during the day etc). I don't see it as an issue. Besides metered access is fair if the greatest cost is the trunk bandwidth. (less fair if the greatest cost is the cost of the line, but that all depends on your business model).
As parent said even if there is a premium it is worth it (for me) because they give a better service. Unlike some ISPs my connection does not get slower at around 7pm unlike when I used to be on cable. And no I don't work for them either I am just a very satisfied customer.
Disclaimer, I may not be an apple or linux fanboy, but i might just be an AAISP fanboy: I use AAISP as my service provider at home and they are awesome!
Want static IP addresses? Sure, how many? As long as they see access on roughly half of the addresses you ask for, no more questions. Very very useful for IP phones. Want detailed traffic graphing? No problem. Want direct access to all the log files right down to the ATM session layer, no problem, there's a webpage for that. Want to restart the line from the BT side, another button to click. Want a redundant connection for home use? Erm, only available in certain places but i have a friend in Manchester who is using them to do this.
If all this fails and you phone them up they treat you like the geek you are, the person you speak to knows what they're talking about and can fix it themselves. (yes I'm looking at you Virgin Media) My best experience with them was I wanted to use a Cisco 877 router (completely none standard) for my router rather than the one they supplied. Any other company would have told me to sod off, but these guys helped me debug the setup.
Nope definitely a company run by geeks for geeks, you get the impression these people enjoy their job and revel in the technology.
"Maybe it's because there are basically ZERO jobs in most places for real hard-core CS" I'm sure that most doctors don't use the theory of cell metabolism on a regular basis, but I'm fairly sure you have to understand the basics to work with the higher level concepts. Judging by the CS graduates I have worked with there are 2 types, those that understand what a microprocessor is, how it accesses memory and then how to build useful data structures on top of this and create efficient code. Then they can go on and use higher level languages and churn out code. The other type only know the higher level code side of things and while they often code faster, productivity is lower because they don't understand the system, they hack and bodge and design for their part of the system only. A gross generalization granted, but what we see is that someone who understands the theory behind the languages can soon code in any language you choose and can be put to any task you choose. Someone who understands only the languages is going to be useful for certain jobs, but only those jobs.
The idea that you must turn up for a job as a graduate fluent in the tools the company already uses is a misnomer and the only place I have seen that attitude is from educational institutions not at any company I have worked at. The attitude I normally see is you employ a graduate to mold them to be what you as a company want, if they've been primed in a specific language and that only, then they are much less desirable - like the old statement that learning basic breaks a programmer, i would say that learning only languages like c# and python breaks a programmer.
"My college changed the first 3 CS classes to Python instead of C++ because it's easier. " Why would you want to study an easier subject? Don't you want to demonstrate to employers that you are capable of more complex difficult things? What do you do if your first job is at a company that programs in C++? If as you say python is easier then you'd be better prepared by having studied C++ then migrating to python at the company rather then the other way around.
While this is a fine argument I think the reality is a little different. Producers didn't use to require these protections from broadcasters. It seems that instead they want the most that technology will let them have - it used to be copyright law was good enough - as with all things they want to push the borders in their advantage. Not that i think they're evil or anything, they're perfectly entitled to do as they wish with their content*, if they don't want to release that to the public then that is up to the owner of the content.
Can you imagine if broadcast radio turned up today? "You want to send out our content to anyone? You're not charging them? You don't even know how many are listening to it? They are free to record it themselves?"
*Except in this case it's the BBC, therefore it's my content, and everyone else's in the UK, so why are you restricting what i can do with what I've already paid for? Yes i know the law doesn't agree with me on this case, but after the whole Dr Who debacle of the 80s and 90s I'm bitter at how the BBC seems to be treating home recording given how much they have since profited off it.
I can see the point that some people want to protect the wilderness, so that there is somewhere unspoiled by humans.
The point is though thanks to the limits of lightspeed there will always be more wilderness.
Oh and as to the Star Trek's role in unusual storylines, I don't see why any SF program shouldn't be able to explore them to their hearts content. In fact to me SF better stands for Speculative Fiction which by definition speculates on unusual situations. See the messiah like Sheriden in Babylon 5 as an example related to your example...
Just a thought, how do you define "the first fully civilian nuclear reactor."? because I thought Shippingport was used for fuel production too. As soon as you allow that, then what about:
Ok, so if we employ people to build a massive statue to our glorious leader that then gets immediately burnt down is it still a waste of money? Yes because that money and human effort could have been spent on building something that will enhance people's way of life. If you're paying people to design something that has no use, then that is a waste.
so in 5 years time when the cost halves and suddenly slightly less rich pricks can afford it, is it still a bad thing? What about in 10 years time when it becomes cheap enough to set up a new sporting series for a few elitist ultra talented people, (as formula 1 is now) is it still a waste then? What about in 20 years time when it's cheap enough for a rich middle class person to do as a once in a lifetime thrill, is it pointless then?
Kind of reminds me of sports cars that in the 50s were the plaything of the ultra rich elite and now everyone can afford one or at the least have a track day given as a birthday present. If we can do that for sub orbital space, then that to be is worthwhile
Meanwhile back in the real world... I would summarize and say that all progress has happened for either profit, survival or to impress the opposite sex. The last one only occurs when you have an excess of resources, the first 2 essentially come down to the same thing, can more be extracted from the endeavor than the endeavor cost; i.e. economic viability.
However much you may like the fantasy world of star trek it isn't real life and there is no way we can go out there and stay out there unless it is worthwhile being out there. Putting it in Trek terms so you might understand it, suppose that the only way the enterprise could survive was to destroy another 10 federation starships, what would the captain do? Probably sacrifice himself to save everyone else. i.e. no-one with any sense would destroy the many for the sake of a small cause. Do not be mistaken at the moment the rewards from space development are small compared to the cost.
Now that is why this is so exciting, this is the first time since the first telecommunications satellite that there is hope for serious profit to be made in space that doesn't rely on taxpayer money.
On a side note you've reminded me of something I've been meaning to poke a trek fanboy about: Star Trek primarily and almost exclusively shows the military in operation in space, yet they are often the first to try and shut down anything that involves the military and space, you yourself are now trying to talk down commerce in space as unimportant. What exactly do you want? Either you're in space for commercial goals, or you're in them for nationalistic goals. You may call them humaistic goals, but i don't see who is going to pay for that until there is a single global government. And I don't see that happening until there is someone to compete with outside of this globe.
How about if it gets cheaper then MUCH more science can be done. How about if it becomes profitable to be in space we'll see the next gold rush and then good luck trying to keep people out of space, oh and then it's much easier to do science. How about economics is unfortunately what makes the world turn, I would argue half/most the point of science and engineering is to serve the people through continued quality of life improvements and this is reflected in previously high cost activities being driven to lower costs.
Yes we do need some budget targeted for pure science projects because that enhances all our quality of life, not just the research satellites, but also things like I love seeing the photos from the latest rover/telescope. Likewise though we need to enhance the economics of space use because we have the technology to do pretty much anything we want in space, we just can't afford it. Make it cheap enough and we'll have thousands/millions of people up there and the only way to achieve that is by targeting effort at bringing the cost down. As other posters have pointed out, the current cist structures do not encourage businesses to bring their prices down because there is very little competition. As soon as building a significantly cheaper vehicle makes you significantly more money (as opposed to the current position where a government contract sets your allowed profit as a percentage of the vehicle cost) then we should see access costs to space fall, and the smaller they get the more we'll be able to do up there.
you make 2 assumptions which I believe are false: 1) the technology developed by constellation would have been applicable for the average person. It wouldn't; no more anyway than Saturn V was. Constellation was a dead end. 2) It would take decades to develop technology of equivalent technology. Nope the problems of getting into space are mainly materials science and economic. If she wants to get into space, then campaign to get Supersonic/Hypersonic Transport back on the table. Unless of course you're willing to go nuclear, then things get much simpler and far cheaper. Either way Constellation would have taken effort away from making space affordable and would have propogated the idea that space must be very expensive and be late and suffer massive overruns. Killing constellation may very well be her only chance to get into space.
You do raise a good point about the political cycles at play here. One question i would ask though is had the program not consistently failed and instead been ontime and on budget, would political backing be such an issue - wouldn't everyone then be fighting over the chance to back a winner? For me that's an interesting thought because one observation over my career as an engineer is the more likely a program I have been on is to be cancelled, the greater the progress that team seems to make. i.e. The one time I was working on a project that had absolutely guaranteed customers, we were concerned with minimal risk almost glacial development, in fact we were quite happy to be late with deliverables because it was all about getting it perfect; the projects where it seemed we would be out of the door at any moment the change in group philosophy meant that the team seemed to achieve the impossible. I find it interesting to speculate that the manned space program at NASA is currently in the former camp; but they spent the 60s in the latter camp. Therefore because of the politics in play here NASA feels like they'll never cancel the manned space program so they are better off taking the softly slowly careful approach and ignoring deadlines in the furtherance of this process.
I'm one of the most passionate people you'll find about space exploration but I'm glad constellation has been cancelled - it's about time. Why? It wasn't about building a Big Dumb Booster which is blatantly what is needed, but about a jobs program. If you really want a program to create jobs regardless of if they are useful jobs then employ people to go around breaking windows - lots of skilled jobs in the window fitting and glazing industry created there for minimal government spending. The government creating jobs is only useful if it can be demonstrated that the benefit outweighs the cost; and I'm sure that attracting uyour best and brightest to a technological and operational dead end is a bad idea. If they'd have kept Ares V simple I could have been behind it, but it was way too complex. Yes rocket science is hard, and the idiots were man rating a cargo system. No NASA has failed yet again, the reason private companies work is that if they don't perform (by fair means or foul) they will fail; NASA has failed completely here with the constant delays and cost overruns, yes rocket science is hard, but we're talking consistent failure here and I'm not convinced the culture at nasa accepts the guil for their failures. I don't believe NASA hasn't delivered in the rocket engineering department since Columbia first orbited. I'm fully aware of how mind-bogglingly amazing an achievement the STS is, it's an awesome piece of engineering, i just want more like it.
I know this post comes across as an angry troll but I am genuinely passionate about getting us into space and I don't think that NASA has the economic wherewithal or technical push to make this happen anymore - everything I hear about NASA implies a mix of a jobs program and a company filled with managers at the expense of engineers. No getting into space is a technical and economic problem - i.e. if we could afford it, we could have space hotels and moon bases, if we had some really advanced technology that might make it cheap enough so that we could afford it. I never saw how constellation would address either of these issues, so good riddemce to it.
As for the jobs programs, if they're truly skilled engineers then they'll find well paid useful work in the rest of society,and an influx of good engineers should kickstart more economic growth. If they can't outperform people working in the rest of industry and contribute to the economy, then what were they doing in the first place in NASA?
Worse than that, since all the media talks about is the latest trendy new Ford, it soon becomes like you're the oddball if you don't have their latest model. Everyone crowds around Ford's latest models and everyone else is all but ignored. Children growing up only see Ford's car and think that is synonymous with a car and soon all there is is Ford and their overpriced overhyped standard.
Right time for another dried frog pill before the slashdot car analogy gets out of had
While I agree with the gist of your post, what's wrong with "snitch-ing" on someone else? Aside from playground ethics, what is wrong with schemes like neighbourhood watch?
I do see a problem with potentially this forces the police's hand into following up minor offences they'd not normally bother with e.g. littering. effectively wasting police time that would be better spent fighting more important crimes. Someone could effectively then be stalked by someone watching out for the slightest infraction and because the evidence of crime is undeniable the person has no defence and the police have no choice but to follow it up whereas at the moment they'd say don't waste our time.
It's weird this sort of thing half scares the pants off me because of the obvious potential for abuse, and half doesn't bother me because any sword can be used both by the owner and against the owner. Also all the policemen I know are really great people with their heads well screwed on - but it only takes one bad apple...
Disclaimer: I am actually a bit of a privacy nut, the intent of my previous post (and this one) was/is to highlight a thought experiment I have of trying to see the otherside of what I actually believe. I'm trying to imagine a world where our current assumptions of privacy and private life have been turned around and whether this would be more healthy than the status quo.
Let me take your example then of a disease and concoct a hypothetical situation: If a person had a deadly highly contagious disease do they have the right to hide this from people? I would assume not under the logic that knowingly exposing people to it would count as manslaughter. How about a none terminal disease such as herpes, should you have the right to hide this from your sexual partner(s)? I would argue not. Should your boss have a right to know, I don't think he should, but consider the situation where it was known by everyone who had what STDs and therefore you could avoid them; you can imagine that within a generation STDs would be a thing of the past - sucks if you happen to be in the generation that has them and you happen to have one, but would this not in the long run make for a better world? Can you not see that this instrumentality of mankind could make for a far better world - I don't believe that would, but there must be at least the possibility that this would make some parts of life much better.
Alternatively we come to a more honest world where everyone realises that pretty much everyone looks at porn. And if he tries to pull that on you in the interview you whip out your phone and google him and fine he's a fan of MILFs and you then both compare favourite websites. You then look up who else he has looked up and find that they had far more dodgy tastes than you do and use this to your advantage in the salary negotiation phase of the interview.
Power and knowledge are only scary when the few have them, as soon as everyone has them then that's a lot less worrysome...
Let's assume you're right and it could have been done 30 years ago (it couldn't but I'll get to that later). It's newsworthy because no-one has done this before, in fact it's more newsworthy if someone has a really obvious idea that no-one has done before. I'm sure the first person to stick an internal combustion or steam engine on a cart was told it was a really obvious idea, but the first horseless carriage still deserved to be big news. I'd certainly class a major engine development as being as newsworthy as the latest revision of the Linux kernel being released.
As I understand the article they're using direct injection similar to that used in modern performance diesels. This is a relatively new technology that requires very high pressure fuel injectors which are still a developing technology and weren't available 10 years ago never mind 30. Don't forget mechanical engineering is a much slower moving field than software - they have to design and test things in their field before they release them;-)
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Hang on, weren't they going to cancel constellation in the new budjet?
Likewise you want to stop the test before failure so you can look for signs of component wear and material stress so that you know what to improve for next time. Stopping at 200 seconds and finding this out is very useful. Stopping at 201 seconds after it has exploded and you have to work out from the pieces what went wrong is not as informative.
when water is in the form of CLOUDS, it COOLS the planet.
Try telling that to Venus
Ok I know they're not clouds of water, but you get the point...
Second this! i do use them and love them.
Yes they charge for usage during the daytime, but only downloads, uploads are unmetered (so you can leave things seeding, kick off your offsite backup during the day etc). I don't see it as an issue. Besides metered access is fair if the greatest cost is the trunk bandwidth. (less fair if the greatest cost is the cost of the line, but that all depends on your business model).
As parent said even if there is a premium it is worth it (for me) because they give a better service. Unlike some ISPs my connection does not get slower at around 7pm unlike when I used to be on cable.
And no I don't work for them either I am just a very satisfied customer.
Disclaimer, I may not be an apple or linux fanboy, but i might just be an AAISP fanboy: I use AAISP as my service provider at home and they are awesome!
Want static IP addresses? Sure, how many? As long as they see access on roughly half of the addresses you ask for, no more questions. Very very useful for IP phones.
Want detailed traffic graphing? No problem.
Want direct access to all the log files right down to the ATM session layer, no problem, there's a webpage for that.
Want to restart the line from the BT side, another button to click.
Want a redundant connection for home use? Erm, only available in certain places but i have a friend in Manchester who is using them to do this.
If all this fails and you phone them up they treat you like the geek you are, the person you speak to knows what they're talking about and can fix it themselves. (yes I'm looking at you Virgin Media)
My best experience with them was I wanted to use a Cisco 877 router (completely none standard) for my router rather than the one they supplied. Any other company would have told me to sod off, but these guys helped me debug the setup.
Nope definitely a company run by geeks for geeks, you get the impression these people enjoy their job and revel in the technology.
I thought the American dream was to get to the top then lobby to have laws passed that then help your monopoly? ;-)
If only they ran an operating system that was standards compliant, then all they would have to do is comply to that standard.
How hard can that be?
"Maybe it's because there are basically ZERO jobs in most places for real hard-core CS"
I'm sure that most doctors don't use the theory of cell metabolism on a regular basis, but I'm fairly sure you have to understand the basics to work with the higher level concepts.
Judging by the CS graduates I have worked with there are 2 types, those that understand what a microprocessor is, how it accesses memory and then how to build useful data structures on top of this and create efficient code. Then they can go on and use higher level languages and churn out code. The other type only know the higher level code side of things and while they often code faster, productivity is lower because they don't understand the system, they hack and bodge and design for their part of the system only.
A gross generalization granted, but what we see is that someone who understands the theory behind the languages can soon code in any language you choose and can be put to any task you choose. Someone who understands only the languages is going to be useful for certain jobs, but only those jobs.
The idea that you must turn up for a job as a graduate fluent in the tools the company already uses is a misnomer and the only place I have seen that attitude is from educational institutions not at any company I have worked at. The attitude I normally see is you employ a graduate to mold them to be what you as a company want, if they've been primed in a specific language and that only, then they are much less desirable - like the old statement that learning basic breaks a programmer, i would say that learning only languages like c# and python breaks a programmer.
"My college changed the first 3 CS classes to Python instead of C++ because it's easier. "
Why would you want to study an easier subject? Don't you want to demonstrate to employers that you are capable of more complex difficult things? What do you do if your first job is at a company that programs in C++? If as you say python is easier then you'd be better prepared by having studied C++ then migrating to python at the company rather then the other way around.
While this is a fine argument I think the reality is a little different. Producers didn't use to require these protections from broadcasters. It seems that instead they want the most that technology will let them have - it used to be copyright law was good enough - as with all things they want to push the borders in their advantage.
Not that i think they're evil or anything, they're perfectly entitled to do as they wish with their content*, if they don't want to release that to the public then that is up to the owner of the content.
Can you imagine if broadcast radio turned up today? "You want to send out our content to anyone? You're not charging them? You don't even know how many are listening to it? They are free to record it themselves?"
*Except in this case it's the BBC, therefore it's my content, and everyone else's in the UK, so why are you restricting what i can do with what I've already paid for? Yes i know the law doesn't agree with me on this case, but after the whole Dr Who debacle of the 80s and 90s I'm bitter at how the BBC seems to be treating home recording given how much they have since profited off it.
But then don't you need a CA for that repository?
What happens when that starts to fail?
I can see the point that some people want to protect the wilderness, so that there is somewhere unspoiled by humans.
The point is though thanks to the limits of lightspeed there will always be more wilderness.
Oh and as to the Star Trek's role in unusual storylines, I don't see why any SF program shouldn't be able to explore them to their hearts content. In fact to me SF better stands for Speculative Fiction which by definition speculates on unusual situations. See the messiah like Sheriden in Babylon 5 as an example related to your example...
Just a thought, how do you define "the first fully civilian nuclear reactor."?
because I thought Shippingport was used for fuel production too. As soon as you allow that, then what about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obninsk_Nuclear_Power_Plant
or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield#Calder_Hall_nuclear_power_station
Ok, so if we employ people to build a massive statue to our glorious leader that then gets immediately burnt down is it still a waste of money?
Yes because that money and human effort could have been spent on building something that will enhance people's way of life. If you're paying people to design something that has no use, then that is a waste.
so in 5 years time when the cost halves and suddenly slightly less rich pricks can afford it, is it still a bad thing?
What about in 10 years time when it becomes cheap enough to set up a new sporting series for a few elitist ultra talented people, (as formula 1 is now) is it still a waste then?
What about in 20 years time when it's cheap enough for a rich middle class person to do as a once in a lifetime thrill, is it pointless then?
Kind of reminds me of sports cars that in the 50s were the plaything of the ultra rich elite and now everyone can afford one or at the least have a track day given as a birthday present. If we can do that for sub orbital space, then that to be is worthwhile
Meanwhile back in the real world...
I would summarize and say that all progress has happened for either profit, survival or to impress the opposite sex. The last one only occurs when you have an excess of resources, the first 2 essentially come down to the same thing, can more be extracted from the endeavor than the endeavor cost; i.e. economic viability.
However much you may like the fantasy world of star trek it isn't real life and there is no way we can go out there and stay out there unless it is worthwhile being out there. Putting it in Trek terms so you might understand it, suppose that the only way the enterprise could survive was to destroy another 10 federation starships, what would the captain do? Probably sacrifice himself to save everyone else. i.e. no-one with any sense would destroy the many for the sake of a small cause. Do not be mistaken at the moment the rewards from space development are small compared to the cost.
Now that is why this is so exciting, this is the first time since the first telecommunications satellite that there is hope for serious profit to be made in space that doesn't rely on taxpayer money.
On a side note you've reminded me of something I've been meaning to poke a trek fanboy about: Star Trek primarily and almost exclusively shows the military in operation in space, yet they are often the first to try and shut down anything that involves the military and space, you yourself are now trying to talk down commerce in space as unimportant. What exactly do you want? Either you're in space for commercial goals, or you're in them for nationalistic goals. You may call them humaistic goals, but i don't see who is going to pay for that until there is a single global government. And I don't see that happening until there is someone to compete with outside of this globe.
Wow! Where to start?
How about if it gets cheaper then MUCH more science can be done.
How about if it becomes profitable to be in space we'll see the next gold rush and then good luck trying to keep people out of space, oh and then it's much easier to do science.
How about economics is unfortunately what makes the world turn, I would argue half/most the point of science and engineering is to serve the people through continued quality of life improvements and this is reflected in previously high cost activities being driven to lower costs.
Yes we do need some budget targeted for pure science projects because that enhances all our quality of life, not just the research satellites, but also things like I love seeing the photos from the latest rover/telescope. Likewise though we need to enhance the economics of space use because we have the technology to do pretty much anything we want in space, we just can't afford it. Make it cheap enough and we'll have thousands/millions of people up there and the only way to achieve that is by targeting effort at bringing the cost down.
As other posters have pointed out, the current cist structures do not encourage businesses to bring their prices down because there is very little competition. As soon as building a significantly cheaper vehicle makes you significantly more money (as opposed to the current position where a government contract sets your allowed profit as a percentage of the vehicle cost) then we should see access costs to space fall, and the smaller they get the more we'll be able to do up there.
you make 2 assumptions which I believe are false:
1) the technology developed by constellation would have been applicable for the average person. It wouldn't; no more anyway than Saturn V was. Constellation was a dead end.
2) It would take decades to develop technology of equivalent technology. Nope the problems of getting into space are mainly materials science and economic. If she wants to get into space, then campaign to get Supersonic/Hypersonic Transport back on the table. Unless of course you're willing to go nuclear, then things get much simpler and far cheaper. Either way Constellation would have taken effort away from making space affordable and would have propogated the idea that space must be very expensive and be late and suffer massive overruns. Killing constellation may very well be her only chance to get into space.
You do raise a good point about the political cycles at play here. One question i would ask though is had the program not consistently failed and instead been ontime and on budget, would political backing be such an issue - wouldn't everyone then be fighting over the chance to back a winner?
For me that's an interesting thought because one observation over my career as an engineer is the more likely a program I have been on is to be cancelled, the greater the progress that team seems to make. i.e. The one time I was working on a project that had absolutely guaranteed customers, we were concerned with minimal risk almost glacial development, in fact we were quite happy to be late with deliverables because it was all about getting it perfect; the projects where it seemed we would be out of the door at any moment the change in group philosophy meant that the team seemed to achieve the impossible.
I find it interesting to speculate that the manned space program at NASA is currently in the former camp; but they spent the 60s in the latter camp. Therefore because of the politics in play here NASA feels like they'll never cancel the manned space program so they are better off taking the softly slowly careful approach and ignoring deadlines in the furtherance of this process.
I'm one of the most passionate people you'll find about space exploration but I'm glad constellation has been cancelled - it's about time.
Why? It wasn't about building a Big Dumb Booster which is blatantly what is needed, but about a jobs program. If you really want a program to create jobs regardless of if they are useful jobs then employ people to go around breaking windows - lots of skilled jobs in the window fitting and glazing industry created there for minimal government spending. The government creating jobs is only useful if it can be demonstrated that the benefit outweighs the cost; and I'm sure that attracting uyour best and brightest to a technological and operational dead end is a bad idea.
If they'd have kept Ares V simple I could have been behind it, but it was way too complex. Yes rocket science is hard, and the idiots were man rating a cargo system.
No NASA has failed yet again, the reason private companies work is that if they don't perform (by fair means or foul) they will fail; NASA has failed completely here with the constant delays and cost overruns, yes rocket science is hard, but we're talking consistent failure here and I'm not convinced the culture at nasa accepts the guil for their failures. I don't believe NASA hasn't delivered in the rocket engineering department since Columbia first orbited. I'm fully aware of how mind-bogglingly amazing an achievement the STS is, it's an awesome piece of engineering, i just want more like it.
I know this post comes across as an angry troll but I am genuinely passionate about getting us into space and I don't think that NASA has the economic wherewithal or technical push to make this happen anymore - everything I hear about NASA implies a mix of a jobs program and a company filled with managers at the expense of engineers.
No getting into space is a technical and economic problem - i.e. if we could afford it, we could have space hotels and moon bases, if we had some really advanced technology that might make it cheap enough so that we could afford it. I never saw how constellation would address either of these issues, so good riddemce to it.
As for the jobs programs, if they're truly skilled engineers then they'll find well paid useful work in the rest of society,and an influx of good engineers should kickstart more economic growth. If they can't outperform people working in the rest of industry and contribute to the economy, then what were they doing in the first place in NASA?
Worse than that, since all the media talks about is the latest trendy new Ford, it soon becomes like you're the oddball if you don't have their latest model. Everyone crowds around Ford's latest models and everyone else is all but ignored.
Children growing up only see Ford's car and think that is synonymous with a car and soon all there is is Ford and their overpriced overhyped standard.
Right time for another dried frog pill before the slashdot car analogy gets out of had
While I agree with the gist of your post, what's wrong with "snitch-ing" on someone else? Aside from playground ethics, what is wrong with schemes like neighbourhood watch?
I do see a problem with potentially this forces the police's hand into following up minor offences they'd not normally bother with e.g. littering. effectively wasting police time that would be better spent fighting more important crimes. Someone could effectively then be stalked by someone watching out for the slightest infraction and because the evidence of crime is undeniable the person has no defence and the police have no choice but to follow it up whereas at the moment they'd say don't waste our time.
It's weird this sort of thing half scares the pants off me because of the obvious potential for abuse, and half doesn't bother me because any sword can be used both by the owner and against the owner. Also all the policemen I know are really great people with their heads well screwed on - but it only takes one bad apple...
Disclaimer:
I am actually a bit of a privacy nut, the intent of my previous post (and this one) was/is to highlight a thought experiment I have of trying to see the otherside of what I actually believe.
I'm trying to imagine a world where our current assumptions of privacy and private life have been turned around and whether this would be more healthy than the status quo.
Let me take your example then of a disease and concoct a hypothetical situation: If a person had a deadly highly contagious disease do they have the right to hide this from people? I would assume not under the logic that knowingly exposing people to it would count as manslaughter.
How about a none terminal disease such as herpes, should you have the right to hide this from your sexual partner(s)? I would argue not. Should your boss have a right to know, I don't think he should, but consider the situation where it was known by everyone who had what STDs and therefore you could avoid them; you can imagine that within a generation STDs would be a thing of the past - sucks if you happen to be in the generation that has them and you happen to have one, but would this not in the long run make for a better world? Can you not see that this instrumentality of mankind could make for a far better world - I don't believe that would, but there must be at least the possibility that this would make some parts of life much better.
DOH! ;-)
Thanks don't know what I was thinking - I clearly need to rely less on coffee
Alternatively we come to a more honest world where everyone realises that pretty much everyone looks at porn.
And if he tries to pull that on you in the interview you whip out your phone and google him and fine he's a fan of MILFs and you then both compare favourite websites. You then look up who else he has looked up and find that they had far more dodgy tastes than you do and use this to your advantage in the salary negotiation phase of the interview.
Power and knowledge are only scary when the few have them, as soon as everyone has them then that's a lot less worrysome...
Dude, Chill!
Let's assume you're right and it could have been done 30 years ago (it couldn't but I'll get to that later). It's newsworthy because no-one has done this before, in fact it's more newsworthy if someone has a really obvious idea that no-one has done before. I'm sure the first person to stick an internal combustion or steam engine on a cart was told it was a really obvious idea, but the first horseless carriage still deserved to be big news. I'd certainly class a major engine development as being as newsworthy as the latest revision of the Linux kernel being released.
As I understand the article they're using direct injection similar to that used in modern performance diesels. This is a relatively new technology that requires very high pressure fuel injectors which are still a developing technology and weren't available 10 years ago never mind 30. Don't forget mechanical engineering is a much slower moving field than software - they have to design and test things in their field before they release them ;-)