In Edison, on Route 1 South, where it meets with Plainfield avenue, at the traffic light before the Loews theatre and the intersection with Route 18, there is an Outback steak-house. It sits on a triangle of land between Route 1, Plainfield ave, and the "exit ramp" between the two (Wick plaza is right behind it). In the building right next door to Outback (sharing the same land strip) is a cluster of shops. One of them is an all-anime video shop. I don't remember its name, but you definitely want to check it out. If it's still there. It's been a number of years since I paid it any notice.
- You won't want to be a sysadmin forever, so go to college and explore the possibilities. Once you're in a career, it's really difficult to change tracks. You may find later on that you are bored with being a sysadmin, and you want to try out something else. But most jobs don't grant you the luxury of switching gears.
- Having a "theoretical" background from a college education is beneficial even for a sysadmin. It gives you a framework for acquiring knowledge and understanding. Just knowing how to run a Solaris box or make an ethernet cable isn't enough. You need the higher-level knowledge to put it all in perspective (to think outside the box, as another poster put it).
- Certifications are worthless in my book. They get dated rather quickly, so you have to keep getting re-certified every year, and it winds-up being a rat-race. Besides, it's been my experience that if a guy has a certification, it's no indication of what he really knows or what he can really do. It's only an indication of how well he can regurgitate something on a standardized test. Kind of like a handful of the guys I've interviewed recently.
I don't see what one thing has to do with the other, really. Why should belief in these things imply an ignorance of science? That's a hell of a conclusion to jump to. For someone who is mourning the ignorance of the populace, you sure are exemplifying it. Science is all about carefully reasoned arugments, and this sure isn't one of them.
Also, belief and knowledge don't necessarily go together. You're free to believe all you want, just as long as you don't mistake that belief for knowledge. A widely held belief (there's that word again) among philosophers is that knowledge is a "true justified belief" (TJB, for short). So knowledge may imply belief, but not the other way around.
Besides, if you wanted to gauge peoples' ignorance of science based on beliefs, then you don't really need to turn to things like alien abductions and psychic powers. Just look at the number of people who believe in God.
I would've thought that the Moon would be more of "an effective simulant for the Red Planet" than Utah (or any other place on Earth) could ever be. But then again, what do I know. Let's just jump into the deep end and see what happens. If we fail, then so what if people won't fund us for another hundred years.
P.P.S. -- AltaVista appears to be making a comeback. Six years ago, when I was in the Internet Business Group at Digital and Digital owned AltaVista, about a third of the traffic to my Web site came by way of AltaVista.
I don't see this as a good thing. You seem to see it as a good sign if a significant number of hits to your website come by way of AltaVista, and that it's bad when that percentage goes down. But I wouldn't feel very comfortable if a large chunk of my business was so reliant on a single path. Redundancy is key. I would be much happier if the number of customers I got came from a large variety of sources. It's like a mutual fund - don't put all your money in one stock. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
Don't forget about the pull of the Sun's gravity. If an object were to "drift" across the solar system, it would settle into some sort of orbit (even if that's a decaying one). To have an effective constant velocity, one would have to counteract the gravitational pull the Sun exerts.
Usually, if you're going to go from one planet to another (within the solar system) you would want to apply an initial acceleration such that you put yourself in an orbit around the sun which is tangential with the orbits of your source and destination. (And it would have to be tangential at the right time too, so you and the planet meet at the same time.) But the acceleration only happens for a short while at the beginning, and the deceleration would happen at the end of course. But the rest of the journey would be drifting once the orbit was established (not counting minor course corrections along the way). This way you're using the Sun's gravity to your advantage, and saving fuel (but the journey takes a long time).
So what do they plan on doing with nuclear rockets? Do they plan to cut right across the orbits (thus saving lots of time)?
"I don't think the idea of colonizing Mars is practical..."
"...but I think any R&D budget would be better spent elsewhere..."
I agree with you on both counts, but only if the qualifier "...for now" is tacked-onto the end of both of those statements. I think it's too early for us to be going to Mars. We need to establish a presence on the Moon first, so that we can make our mistakes closer to home. If something goes wrong between here and Mars, those astronauts will be f---ed.
"Manifest Destiny in space is so sci-fi."
You say that as though sci-fi is something that's bad, or out-of-style. Don't forget how much sci-fi has come to pass in our modern world. To dismiss it as fantastical is pretty short-sighted. I for one am inspired by lots of the sci-fi I read, and truly believe that much of it will come true one day.
Would the penatly be less for a fission rocket than it would be for a chemical rocket? I'm assuming that nuclear over chemical gets you more bang for your buck - more thrust with less fuel.
Worse? I would think it gets better the further out you get. The most intense source of radiation in the solar system is at its center. Or am I missing something...
If the suits were really interseted in getting accurate information about peoples' viewing tastes and habits (for marketing purposes), then they would see PVRs as the perfect replacement for the Neilsen rating system. PVRs are a whole lot more widely deployed than Neilsen boxes, which means that they're positioned to get much better statistics than Neilsen could ever hope to get. But the suits aren't intersted in adapting to a newly emerging market.
Heinlein was writing stories about going to the moon way before we actually did it. And as far as realism goes, he was pretty close to the mark (as opposed to say, Jules Verne, who also wrote about going to the moon, but wasn't quite as informed).
Okay, so by that reasoning, we should've waited for the Nazis to catch-up to us and invent The Bomb before we decided to start dropping our A-bombs on them. Because it would've been more honourable to wait until the playing field was level.
Suddenly? There's nothing "suddenly" about it. It's called self-preservation. And it has nothing to do with them being Chinese. If you were to ask me who's life is more important, mine or yours, I would say mine, hands-down. And if someone were to threaten my life, assuming it comes to that, you can be sure I'd kill him before he could kill me. If I'm given a choice to live or die, then a level playing field is the last thing I want - I want the advantage.
I was using Mozilla for the past few Months, and I was more or less satisfied. Then I upgraded to the latest point release (0.9.2 -> 0.9.3) and a few things broke. For example, all the plug-ins stopped working.
I switched to Konqueror last week, and realized how much better it is. It renders much more quickly, and has a better response time to mouse events - I had chalked-up Mozilla's sluggishness to X.
There have been plenty of audio-only Doctor Who adventures done by Big Finish Productions lately. So why aren't any of these news? Then there's both monthly book series too (the continued eighth doctor adventures, and past doctor adventures).
Don't forget that "Life, The Universe, and Everything" was originally intended to be a script for a Tom Baker episode. But since it never got used, he decided to re-tool it as the third Hitchhiker book when the publishers wouldn't get off his back.
In other words, your encrypted files may only be as secure as the computer and network on which the key resides.
Well... duh.
Encryption relies on keys, which are kept in keyrings, which are computer files; and those keyring files have a default install location; and while that default location can be changed, the program still keeps track of where it is. In the case of PGP, this is a file called PGPprefs.txt, and that has a default location that (as far as I know) cannot be changed. And if it can be changed, the location of the preferences file has to be stored somewhere.
Slashdot Mirror
In Edison, on Route 1 South, where it meets with Plainfield avenue, at the traffic light before the Loews theatre and the intersection with Route 18, there is an Outback steak-house. It sits on a triangle of land between Route 1, Plainfield ave, and the "exit ramp" between the two (Wick plaza is right behind it). In the building right next door to Outback (sharing the same land strip) is a cluster of shops. One of them is an all-anime video shop. I don't remember its name, but you definitely want to check it out. If it's still there. It's been a number of years since I paid it any notice.
Consider the following:
- You won't want to be a sysadmin forever, so go to college and explore the possibilities. Once you're in a career, it's really difficult to change tracks. You may find later on that you are bored with being a sysadmin, and you want to try out something else. But most jobs don't grant you the luxury of switching gears.
- Having a "theoretical" background from a college education is beneficial even for a sysadmin. It gives you a framework for acquiring knowledge and understanding. Just knowing how to run a Solaris box or make an ethernet cable isn't enough. You need the higher-level knowledge to put it all in perspective (to think outside the box, as another poster put it).
- Certifications are worthless in my book. They get dated rather quickly, so you have to keep getting re-certified every year, and it winds-up being a rat-race. Besides, it's been my experience that if a guy has a certification, it's no indication of what he really knows or what he can really do. It's only an indication of how well he can regurgitate something on a standardized test. Kind of like a handful of the guys I've interviewed recently.
- College is fun.
I don't see what one thing has to do with the other, really. Why should belief in these things imply an ignorance of science? That's a hell of a conclusion to jump to. For someone who is mourning the ignorance of the populace, you sure are exemplifying it. Science is all about carefully reasoned arugments, and this sure isn't one of them.
Also, belief and knowledge don't necessarily go together. You're free to believe all you want, just as long as you don't mistake that belief for knowledge. A widely held belief (there's that word again) among philosophers is that knowledge is a "true justified belief" (TJB, for short). So knowledge may imply belief, but not the other way around.
Besides, if you wanted to gauge peoples' ignorance of science based on beliefs, then you don't really need to turn to things like alien abductions and psychic powers. Just look at the number of people who believe in God.
I would've thought that the Moon would be more of "an effective simulant for the Red Planet" than Utah (or any other place on Earth) could ever be. But then again, what do I know. Let's just jump into the deep end and see what happens. If we fail, then so what if people won't fund us for another hundred years.
P.P.S. -- AltaVista appears to be making a comeback. Six years ago, when I was in the Internet Business Group at Digital and Digital owned AltaVista, about a third of the traffic to my Web site came by way of AltaVista.
I don't see this as a good thing. You seem to see it as a good sign if a significant number of hits to your website come by way of AltaVista, and that it's bad when that percentage goes down. But I wouldn't feel very comfortable if a large chunk of my business was so reliant on a single path. Redundancy is key. I would be much happier if the number of customers I got came from a large variety of sources. It's like a mutual fund - don't put all your money in one stock. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
Don't forget about the pull of the Sun's gravity. If an object were to "drift" across the solar system, it would settle into some sort of orbit (even if that's a decaying one). To have an effective constant velocity, one would have to counteract the gravitational pull the Sun exerts.
Usually, if you're going to go from one planet to another (within the solar system) you would want to apply an initial acceleration such that you put yourself in an orbit around the sun which is tangential with the orbits of your source and destination. (And it would have to be tangential at the right time too, so you and the planet meet at the same time.) But the acceleration only happens for a short while at the beginning, and the deceleration would happen at the end of course. But the rest of the journey would be drifting once the orbit was established (not counting minor course corrections along the way). This way you're using the Sun's gravity to your advantage, and saving fuel (but the journey takes a long time).
So what do they plan on doing with nuclear rockets? Do they plan to cut right across the orbits (thus saving lots of time)?
"I don't think the idea of colonizing Mars is practical..."
"...but I think any R&D budget would be better spent elsewhere..."
I agree with you on both counts, but only if the qualifier "...for now" is tacked-onto the end of both of those statements. I think it's too early for us to be going to Mars. We need to establish a presence on the Moon first, so that we can make our mistakes closer to home. If something goes wrong between here and Mars, those astronauts will be f---ed.
"Manifest Destiny in space is so sci-fi."
You say that as though sci-fi is something that's bad, or out-of-style. Don't forget how much sci-fi has come to pass in our modern world. To dismiss it as fantastical is pretty short-sighted. I for one am inspired by lots of the sci-fi I read, and truly believe that much of it will come true one day.
Would the penatly be less for a fission rocket than it would be for a chemical rocket? I'm assuming that nuclear over chemical gets you more bang for your buck - more thrust with less fuel.
Worse? I would think it gets better the further out you get. The most intense source of radiation in the solar system is at its center. Or am I missing something...
If the suits were really interseted in getting accurate information about peoples' viewing tastes and habits (for marketing purposes), then they would see PVRs as the perfect replacement for the Neilsen rating system. PVRs are a whole lot more widely deployed than Neilsen boxes, which means that they're positioned to get much better statistics than Neilsen could ever hope to get. But the suits aren't intersted in adapting to a newly emerging market.
Would you even consider the average wealthy AOL subscriber with online access truly 'on the Internet'?
Heinlein was writing stories about going to the moon way before we actually did it. And as far as realism goes, he was pretty close to the mark (as opposed to say, Jules Verne, who also wrote about going to the moon, but wasn't quite as informed).
Okay, so by that reasoning, we should've waited for the Nazis to catch-up to us and invent The Bomb before we decided to start dropping our A-bombs on them. Because it would've been more honourable to wait until the playing field was level.
Suddenly? There's nothing "suddenly" about it. It's called self-preservation. And it has nothing to do with them being Chinese. If you were to ask me who's life is more important, mine or yours, I would say mine, hands-down. And if someone were to threaten my life, assuming it comes to that, you can be sure I'd kill him before he could kill me. If I'm given a choice to live or die, then a level playing field is the last thing I want - I want the advantage.
I was using Mozilla for the past few Months, and I was more or less satisfied. Then I upgraded to the latest point release (0.9.2 -> 0.9.3) and a few things broke. For example, all the plug-ins stopped working.
I switched to Konqueror last week, and realized how much better it is. It renders much more quickly, and has a better response time to mouse events - I had chalked-up Mozilla's sluggishness to X.
These are just my initial subjective reactions...
And still the Beeb drags its feet on American releases. Come on, BBC, get with the program and make yourself some money!
"Money? What's that?"
Come on, the Beeb couldn't smell a profit if it bit it in the ass.
Catcha' later,
Paul.
There have been plenty of audio-only Doctor Who adventures done by Big Finish Productions lately. So why aren't any of these news? Then there's both monthly book series too (the continued eighth doctor adventures, and past doctor adventures).
Don't forget that "Life, The Universe, and Everything" was originally intended to be a script for a Tom Baker episode. But since it never got used, he decided to re-tool it as the third Hitchhiker book when the publishers wouldn't get off his back.
I think I'll patent air.
Attention everybody!
Stop breathing right now and pay me royalties, or else I'll sue!
..you don't use Linux...you eat, breath, shit, piss, live it
You make it sound like a venerial disease.
Blame Can-a-da...
20 minutes into the future...
Let's have a show of hands. Who remembers?
Also, just to add to what he's saying here...
You've got to ask yourself: is it cost-effective for the NSA to care about my love letters?
In other words, your encrypted files may only be as secure as the computer and network on which the key resides.
Well... duh.
Encryption relies on keys, which are kept in keyrings, which are computer files; and those keyring files have a default install location; and while that default location can be changed, the program still keeps track of where it is. In the case of PGP, this is a file called PGPprefs.txt, and that has a default location that (as far as I know) cannot be changed. And if it can be changed, the location of the preferences file has to be stored somewhere.
*cough* sourcecode *cough*
It was the Charonians! They killed the dinosaurs. ;)