Both Mercury and Venus have very nasty environments with which to deal with. Yes, they have launch intervals at tight intervals, yes there's an atmosphere to bleed delta-v, but at the same time a Venus rover would require comparatively huge engineering and material science investment, Mercury is a similar story unless hiding in a permanently shadowed crater is your only interest. Mars is a most excellent place to work out plenty of the other engineering challenges involved with such tools before we throw hostile environments into the mix.
They get lots of mandates from congress. Trouble is they tend change their mind faster than systems engineering development cycles. Then they get a requirement to integrate a boat trolling motor onto the first stage booster. Later a camper van must be retrofitted and attached to serve as crew quarters. After finally convincing Congress that the trolling motor requirement is making it hard to engineer the booster to meet mission objectives, Congress redirects them to swap the trolling motor for a 750HP outboard motor. Finally after protracted struggles to engineer the booster they come close to cracking the nut only to find the project shut down for lack of progress. This time its replacement will be required to have four outboard motors and two camper vans.
Perhaps you forget that the exploration and trade conducted via those big dumb old boats a few centuries ago were government funded efforts. ROI on new frontier ventures often requires timelines too extended for justifiable commercial pursuit.
The launch and maintenance costs for the shuttle were crippling NASA's ability to operate. It was a horribly expensive system regardless of whether it flew or sat on the ground. They had no choice but to kill it.
The natural mechanics of the human body fit far better with the narrow to wide angle (from bottom to top). I suspect making the keys columnar would increase repetitive stress injuries. If you wished to challenge the QWERTY arrangement as being an anachronism then I would agree that you may well have a case.
Sharks sometimes get into the shark cages, or bite through the protective mesh armor. It is a known risk and the person jumping in is accepting that risk when they enter.
The waters (the Internet) are infested, and the user chose to accept the risks associated with using AM as a shelter within that environment. Personal responsibility doesn't stop at the gate. It would be nice to leave your worries at the door, but first you need to decide if it's made of paper and whether you're willing to accept the risks inherent with that.
I would. I most whole heartedly would. They are unreliable for the very reason that they are an annoyance and a bother and self-select to a certain group of individuals.
No they didn't expose themselves at all, a site they thought was safe to use to be able to have a little bit of freedom was hacked.
They chose to exposed themselves to the site. They made a risk calculation and found themselves on the wrong side of probability. The politics, and the consequences thereof have nothing to do with it.
Victim blaming in some circumstances is very much appropriate. If you jump into shark infested waters with bloody raw meat strapped to you, then you are at least in part to blame when you become lunch. It is shameful that the shark infested environment exists in the first place, but at the same time the person chose to jump in and offer themselves as the tasty morsel.
I'm not sure why this is even an issue--at least for American and similar keyboards. There are fourteen keys on that row. If you divide it down the middle the '6' is lotted with the left-hand side. MS' ergo keyboards make it an obvious decision, but for keyboards that aren't split, I still don't see why you would want to reach your right hand beyond it's normal range of travel to hit the '6'.
While that might be the rational, logical thing to do. The reality is that we will see legislation that increases the cost of doing business for alternative services.
The alternatives offer more value that cost savings. They're also "on demand". I get what I want when I want it, not a fixed schedule. If cable and on-demand streaming cost the same, people would chose streaming every time. But ironically they don't cost the same. Streaming costs an order of magnitude less.
The only thing that prevents me from cutting the cord is the godd***n Hallmark channel and what my wife would do to me if she couldn't get it. Those bastards refuse to offer any streaming alternative that doesn't require a cable provider account. I would gladly pay them $30+/month if it meant I could ditch cable.
The common audience for these games wouldn't appreciate such nuance/sophistication. EVE is very much a "geek's" game. EVE's complex economics and politics tends to drive away the casual/braindead players.
Actually you're proving my point. "Manshon" to "mansion" is not a proper translation of the concept. The western world's notion of "mansion" is not a large apartment house but an over-sized, typically opulent single family dwelling. The same is true for those odd "decorator" words that are commonly attached in Japanese (mostly marketing material). The Japanese usage is meant to emphasis that it is the appropriate choice for an apartment house (manshon) as opposed to a family dwelling (famiri).
Accordingly a concept translation might be something like: "Hikari Next Generation Giga for apartment houses" and "Hikari Next Generation Giga for homes."
The trouble is mostly in the translation. Japanese doesn't easily match up 1-for-1 with western languages when you're focused on the words. I'm not sure what the state of concept based translation software is but translation web services use the former.
Now that I think about it. You're right. This smells quite a bit more like the poorly considered ideas coming from Hollywood's action films than hard sci-fi authors. Either way, it's part and parcel for a Bush presidency "expert." Hopefully that is credential enough for his advice to be properly ignored.
I guess someone's been reading/watching too many cyberpunk books/movies. Vigilante justice seldom ends well. There's absolutely no evidence that just because to prepend "cyber" to the front of it that thing will turn out any different.
I'm not sure I have a good answer to that. I was answering the "why" posed above. Ultimately steps need to be taken that work towards the creation of sustainable goods and services industries. Without a healthy functioning economic engine little else matters. Certain of the African nations are more amenable to supporting their citizenry than others. Those would obviously be the best places to start with. In the course of doing so, perhaps the citizens of the other nations will facilitate a change in their environment.
Until recently no one has bothered to invest in Africa (only now China). Western powers, particularly the US, actually found it to be a good place to dump farm commodity surplus (USAID). Since these are principally agrarian nations that was particularly helpful to the farmers whom have a hard time competing with free. To support their families the farmers turn to growing coffee for export. Not only does this NOT produce food for local consumption, but these farmers tend to get severely screwed by the middlemen (only weakly mitigated by the joke known as "Fair Trade" certification). The investment that did come (principally oil) went directly into the coffers of despotic leaders of whom are far more concerned with keeping their citizens' necks under their boot than with education, health, infrastructure, etc..
Don't over-estimate the "help" the western world provides to Africa. The principal goal of which is to make the west feel good about themselves not to bootstrap their entrance into the first world.
Slashdot Mirror
Both Mercury and Venus have very nasty environments with which to deal with. Yes, they have launch intervals at tight intervals, yes there's an atmosphere to bleed delta-v, but at the same time a Venus rover would require comparatively huge engineering and material science investment, Mercury is a similar story unless hiding in a permanently shadowed crater is your only interest. Mars is a most excellent place to work out plenty of the other engineering challenges involved with such tools before we throw hostile environments into the mix.
They get lots of mandates from congress. Trouble is they tend change their mind faster than systems engineering development cycles. Then they get a requirement to integrate a boat trolling motor onto the first stage booster. Later a camper van must be retrofitted and attached to serve as crew quarters. After finally convincing Congress that the trolling motor requirement is making it hard to engineer the booster to meet mission objectives, Congress redirects them to swap the trolling motor for a 750HP outboard motor. Finally after protracted struggles to engineer the booster they come close to cracking the nut only to find the project shut down for lack of progress. This time its replacement will be required to have four outboard motors and two camper vans.
Perhaps you forget that the exploration and trade conducted via those big dumb old boats a few centuries ago were government funded efforts. ROI on new frontier ventures often requires timelines too extended for justifiable commercial pursuit.
The launch and maintenance costs for the shuttle were crippling NASA's ability to operate. It was a horribly expensive system regardless of whether it flew or sat on the ground. They had no choice but to kill it.
The natural mechanics of the human body fit far better with the narrow to wide angle (from bottom to top). I suspect making the keys columnar would increase repetitive stress injuries. If you wished to challenge the QWERTY arrangement as being an anachronism then I would agree that you may well have a case.
Sharks sometimes get into the shark cages, or bite through the protective mesh armor. It is a known risk and the person jumping in is accepting that risk when they enter.
The waters (the Internet) are infested, and the user chose to accept the risks associated with using AM as a shelter within that environment. Personal responsibility doesn't stop at the gate. It would be nice to leave your worries at the door, but first you need to decide if it's made of paper and whether you're willing to accept the risks inherent with that.
I would. I most whole heartedly would. They are unreliable for the very reason that they are an annoyance and a bother and self-select to a certain group of individuals.
No they didn't expose themselves at all, a site they thought was safe to use to be able to have a little bit of freedom was hacked.
They chose to exposed themselves to the site. They made a risk calculation and found themselves on the wrong side of probability. The politics, and the consequences thereof have nothing to do with it.
Victim blaming in some circumstances is very much appropriate. If you jump into shark infested waters with bloody raw meat strapped to you, then you are at least in part to blame when you become lunch. It is shameful that the shark infested environment exists in the first place, but at the same time the person chose to jump in and offer themselves as the tasty morsel.
I'm not sure why this is even an issue--at least for American and similar keyboards. There are fourteen keys on that row. If you divide it down the middle the '6' is lotted with the left-hand side. MS' ergo keyboards make it an obvious decision, but for keyboards that aren't split, I still don't see why you would want to reach your right hand beyond it's normal range of travel to hit the '6'.
While that might be the rational, logical thing to do. The reality is that we will see legislation that increases the cost of doing business for alternative services.
The alternatives offer more value that cost savings. They're also "on demand". I get what I want when I want it, not a fixed schedule. If cable and on-demand streaming cost the same, people would chose streaming every time. But ironically they don't cost the same. Streaming costs an order of magnitude less.
The only thing that prevents me from cutting the cord is the godd***n Hallmark channel and what my wife would do to me if she couldn't get it. Those bastards refuse to offer any streaming alternative that doesn't require a cable provider account. I would gladly pay them $30+/month if it meant I could ditch cable.
I thought I did say that...
The common audience for these games wouldn't appreciate such nuance/sophistication. EVE is very much a "geek's" game. EVE's complex economics and politics tends to drive away the casual/braindead players.
Actually you're proving my point. "Manshon" to "mansion" is not a proper translation of the concept. The western world's notion of "mansion" is not a large apartment house but an over-sized, typically opulent single family dwelling. The same is true for those odd "decorator" words that are commonly attached in Japanese (mostly marketing material). The Japanese usage is meant to emphasis that it is the appropriate choice for an apartment house (manshon) as opposed to a family dwelling (famiri).
Accordingly a concept translation might be something like: "Hikari Next Generation Giga for apartment houses" and "Hikari Next Generation Giga for homes."
The trouble is mostly in the translation. Japanese doesn't easily match up 1-for-1 with western languages when you're focused on the words. I'm not sure what the state of concept based translation software is but translation web services use the former.
Now that I think about it. You're right. This smells quite a bit more like the poorly considered ideas coming from Hollywood's action films than hard sci-fi authors. Either way, it's part and parcel for a Bush presidency "expert." Hopefully that is credential enough for his advice to be properly ignored.
I guess someone's been reading/watching too many cyberpunk books/movies. Vigilante justice seldom ends well. There's absolutely no evidence that just because to prepend "cyber" to the front of it that thing will turn out any different.
My apologies, I did mention the oil money going to the local despots but you're right I forgot to include their other investments in Africa.
I'm not sure I have a good answer to that. I was answering the "why" posed above. Ultimately steps need to be taken that work towards the creation of sustainable goods and services industries. Without a healthy functioning economic engine little else matters. Certain of the African nations are more amenable to supporting their citizenry than others. Those would obviously be the best places to start with. In the course of doing so, perhaps the citizens of the other nations will facilitate a change in their environment.
Until recently no one has bothered to invest in Africa (only now China). Western powers, particularly the US, actually found it to be a good place to dump farm commodity surplus (USAID). Since these are principally agrarian nations that was particularly helpful to the farmers whom have a hard time competing with free. To support their families the farmers turn to growing coffee for export. Not only does this NOT produce food for local consumption, but these farmers tend to get severely screwed by the middlemen (only weakly mitigated by the joke known as "Fair Trade" certification). The investment that did come (principally oil) went directly into the coffers of despotic leaders of whom are far more concerned with keeping their citizens' necks under their boot than with education, health, infrastructure, etc..
Don't over-estimate the "help" the western world provides to Africa. The principal goal of which is to make the west feel good about themselves not to bootstrap their entrance into the first world.
You must be scared out of your mind when it rains or snows. How do you sleep at night? Do you have a hardened bunker for when it hails?
They may not plan to...
Don't even joke about such things...