Why is this marked troll? The original Hummer was a badass car that had real "macho" potential and retailed for about $70k. The H2 is a sissy-version that has the same size and poor fuel efficiency, but otherwise was scaled down so it could hit the more customer friendly $30k sales point.
And don't get me started on the "smaller/leaner" H3....
If you wanna drive a Hummer... accept no substitutes and get the original Hummer. And if you want to drive a car that'll survive an impact with a Hummer... get a Volvo (or another Hummer).
If internet delivery of content is really an issue because of low bandwidth limits, then shouldn't I be able to get TV signals for dirt cheap? One service *must* have lower margins than the other and based on economics, I'd suspect it would be in the cable industries best interest to lower cable and to the point where they barely have any margin so they can retain customers who might become interested in internet delivery otherwise.
Oh course, Showtime and HBO can still be big for the cable companies because they each provide extra value to the customer and with a DVR a subscription to these becomes close to the equivalent of an On Demand Netflix/Blockbuster service. Surely the cable companies can leverage this.
Kudos to Viacom though. Content is king. If the network operators can't operate the networks efficiently, make an example of them and force them to trim their network supporting fat.
Okay... so have the car ping its odometer reading and location to a satellite or cellular telephone network every 6 hours. If location reading n+1 is within the same state as location reading n, then assume that odometer reading x+1 minus odometer reading x was within the same state and charge that fee times the rate to the person's bill.
If n+1 is in Washington, California, Idaho, or Nevada then calculate the shortest route from the previous location to the border of the other state and charge that distance.
Trouble is that eventually those other states will see this and people will begin to get tax bills from all the states they've driven in for the year (unless they have an EZ-Pass like system that autodebits your checking account in real time).
But yeah, using the odometer reading is better than using a goddamned unreliable GPS signal. But using a "miles driven" factor is still worse than using a "resources consumed" factor (be it electricity or gas fuel).
food/water [x] shelter [x] power (heat/electricity) [x] telecommunications [x] transportation [x] space exploration [ ]
If any of the higher checkboxes get unchecked, then we'd need to take a step back and rethink the resources that are given to NASA. But yes - this is a nerds way of saying "there are basic priorities that need to be considered before you go mucking around on the Moon", and the implicit part of what I was saying is that the things in the top part of the checklist (despite media outcries) is actually in pretty good shape.
It's guys like Donald Trump, Ken Lay, and the guy with the fifty billion dollar Ponzi scheme. The people who never wanted for anything whatever in their lives, who never got their hands dirty, who think that they're somehow better than the poor slob who actually produces his wealth for him.
This should probably be modded off-topic because it's far from the discussion about NASA, but I'd leave Trump off the list of "arrogant rich". Having read his autobiographical "The Art of the Deal", he grew up as a normal shmoe in Brooklyn with a dad who built 6 family houses in the seedier parts of the 'hood. And his wealth, IMHO, is created from (a) being a visionary, and (b) not taking shit from contractors who make promises that they can't keep (i.e. time and cost guarantees).
And I was in Trump Tower last week. It's nice. Way nicer than I can afford. I'd dream that there comes a day when the standard of living is high enough that Trump's level of quality (in real estate) is the rule, not the exception.
For that matter, I'd dream that there comes a day when NASA's level of quality (in engineering) is the same way.
"I don't frankly know what the answer is," [Dr. Crowley, of MIT] said, "but I know it's a lot closer and a lot more complicated answer than the one playing out in the media and the blogs."
I think they're talking about us.
===
But in all seriousness, the cost of running the shuttle for 5 years is $x and the cost of developing the Constellation program in 5 years is $y. Meanwhile, NASA's budget is not x+y and if they wanted to try to develop Constellation in 3 years its cost would be closer to $y^2.
It seems like people can't grasp the rudimentary guideline of engineering development: you've got limitations in quality, cost, and timeliness, and on any challenging project you need to pick one of those limitations that you won't particularly worry about.
I do like the articles conclusion though... NASA's budget is way too small for the amount of good that it can do for the world and for the amount of high-tech science jobs that it can create. As long as everybody in the nation has food, shelter, telecommunications, and power... there is no reason NASA's budgets shouldn't balloon.
I took this suggestion seriously and elevated it to a platform which it would be more appropriate for here. This site hosts audiobooks that are read of public domain manuscripts and released into the world. If support is gathered through the discussion to the "suggestion" that I posted, it would be a matter of time before we could do a proper production of the Recording Industry versus Jammie Thomas in audio format.
Could you comment on the potential legality of such an effort and reaffirm that the transcripts truly are "Public Domain"? Could you additionally answer the question of whether you'd think it would be a worthwhile effort? Would you imagine it being able to grip a target audience and hold their attention? Perhaps an abridged version would be better to exclude parts that are overly dry and boring? Is this case truly historical enough to be preserved in an audiobook fashion? Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated since you are much closer to the Jammie Thomas case than the casual/. reader.
They do audio books of public domain works. Many older "classic" fiction stories are there, but if you wade deep enough you'll find historically relevant documents like the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence. This *may* fit their definition of appropriate content and their volunteers (you can be one too!) might take up the charge of recording the manuscript in audio format.
Its purpose is to be an extremely versatile, scalable, and portable kernel for a unix-like operating system - and when coupled with GNU it becomes a very powerful unix-like operating system capable of pretty much anything.
You're thinking spurred a thought in my head that relates to a discussion from a few weeks ago about "What's the future of the Nintendo after the Wii". The article in general was a trollish flamewar between the views of (a) improving graphics, or (b) continuing to innovate the UI.
Is it possible for Nintendo (or Dell, for that matter) to produce an open gaming platform to compete with Sony and Microsoft? It seems like "gaming" is one of the few areas where Linux still sucks... and this could be easily alleviated by the backing of a corporate entity who's willing to innovate their competition into obscurity.
So maybe 2014 is the year of the Linux Gaming Platform?
Not to sound like the Chinese who "like it that way", but I don't think a complete censor of Chinese news broadcasts to America would effect me in the least. I suspect the same major stories (Free Tibet, the major Earthquake, and the Olympics) would have aggregated into the American and British news sites that I read... and that's all that I really need (or want).
However... I sincerely believe that long-term diplomatic relations are needed with China to prevent any potential future pissing contests like what America had with Russia during the Cold War. So long as these tensions are kept in check, I'm happy to basically shrug off the Chinese news equivalents of what I see on American news everyday (i.e. weather reports and mostly insignificant filler).
At the same time no one can sell their house because no one can get credit and if the houses don't move the price drops screwing home owners. At the same time banks are dumping foreclosed homes further driving down the home price comps.
Emphasis mine. I think you mean, because buyers can't get enough credit to buy the houses at their present values.
I'm nearly positive that I'd get a $200,000. Heck, I could probably get a $300,000 loan. Unfortunately, house prices are $400,000+ for anything worth living in (i.e. not a closet and not in the bad section of town).
Thus... the complaints you raise about falling prices are actually the invisible hand of the market bitch-slapping the buyers who got in right before the bubble burst. But fortunately for those people, the government is stepping in with Foreclosure avoidance programs and as a result they aren't going to be financially ruined for the rest of their lives (as opposed to the people who have rightfully been foreclosed on because they can't afford their ARM loans that are sky-rocketing in cost... those people made dumb moves and they deserve the hardships that they'll go through dealing with the mess they've created).
Wouldn't your work be just as opposed to your wasting your time and their bandwidth on Obama messages as on typical boring YouTube stuff?
Oddly, there aren't filters stopping me from hitting Slashdot every couple of hours. I figure this is because it related to the type of technological work that I am involved with on the job. Believe it or not, this site is actually educational.
Now, I'm sure the YouTube has some diamonds in the rough that are educational, too. But keeping up with a small amount of national politics shouldn't be something that employers tell their employees is off limits at work. Especially if their code is compiling. So hosting this on sites that aren't popular block targets within the US would be a good thing. And if a US employer blocked whitehouse.gov... well - they would do so at the risk of taking a major karma hit.
material produced by the federal government of the United States is automatically public domain
And where I work, YouTube is a blocked website that would prevent me from seeing Obama's messages. Something like transition.whitehouse.gov or speeches.whitehouse.gov would be a more suitable host for these videos.
The new administration should attempt to disassociate itself with corporate giant Google and open standards running on websites that aren't regarded as "a giant waste of time" who's aim is to give every man, woman, and child (no matter how talentless) a platform to "Broadcast Yourself".
But nobody who has traveled by plane since the FAA has put in these new system checks has been a terrorist. When there are billions of passengers who fly every year and none have been terrorists since 2001... you might need to wait longer to gather meaningful data.
I mean... complete failure of the system would be proven if a real terrorist had made it past the new checks, and unless I'm wildly mistaken that hasn't happened.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy engineering and when the stuff you design actually works the way it's supposed to it can be really fun. But you cherry picked my response and neglected to consider that I said engineering is a *harder* subject to master.
Props for the pure math, though. I'd think that CS+Math would be able to earn you a nice paycheck at any number of companies. CS by itself isn't as attractive to employers.
If comp sci and engineering majors typically made less than 30k out of college with no benefits, no one would give a shit about the lack of women in that field.
If that were true, I would have spent 4 years reading fiction, history, and analysis in an English Lit degree. Engineers make more because engineering is a *harder* subject matter to master. Now, I am going to come off sending sexist here but men go into engineering because it's an economically viable way to live their lives while women go into liberal arts because they're "fun".
And don't get me wrong... I really would rather have the "fun" degree then the engineering one that I have. It's just that the $30k per year paycheck doesn't do it for me.
I know you! For years Anonymous Coward has been making all sorts of predictions. You can't improve your credibility from one specific event to make me believe you! And signing the e-mail with the name of a fictional character from Vonnegut doesn't help either.
I mean, according to Hollywood accountants Spider Man, Forrest Gump, and Lord of the Rings all failed to make a profit, right? Of course we can trust them.
These films all had "revenues" and "costs". The difference between the two is "profit". Now, just because some of the "costs" include "lines of blow off a dead hooker" or "funding for an unrelated project in the production company that DIDN'T make any money" it doesn't make the "profit" calculation is completely fraudulent.
I'm not trying to start a disinformation campaign. I may have been unknowingly perpetrating somebody else's, though. Thanks for the clarification. Without digging into the counts from each state from a respected source... 52.6% vs 46.1% sounds more likely to be correct.
By my calculation, Obama had 51% of the news articles, 55% of the front pages, and (according to stats that I heard from last week's election) 57% of the vote. I *highly* doubt that the electorate voted based on who was in the news more. OTOH, there were a lot of McCain press appearances that felt very scripted and fake... as if he was doing it just to get himself into the news. When the press follows Obama to his workout... that's a different issue although (and paparazzi laws in the country would be appreciated to protect the privacy of the famous).
Hilarity ensues as the average little old granny tries to understand how to use the clunky command line FTP client.
You joke about command-line FTP being clunky, but the only time I ever use it instead of more convenient GUI options is while transferring files from a UNIX system to an embedded system. In Windows, the Explorer has enough sense to load a graphical file view if you specify the target's IP address. OTOH, the command-line version is easily scriptable so if I really needed to do any heavy FTPing I'd just write the UploadWebsite.sh or DownloadTestResults.sh and let them do the job for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is this marked troll? The original Hummer was a badass car that had real "macho" potential and retailed for about $70k. The H2 is a sissy-version that has the same size and poor fuel efficiency, but otherwise was scaled down so it could hit the more customer friendly $30k sales point.
And don't get me started on the "smaller/leaner" H3....
If you wanna drive a Hummer... accept no substitutes and get the original Hummer. And if you want to drive a car that'll survive an impact with a Hummer... get a Volvo (or another Hummer).
If internet delivery of content is really an issue because of low bandwidth limits, then shouldn't I be able to get TV signals for dirt cheap? One service *must* have lower margins than the other and based on economics, I'd suspect it would be in the cable industries best interest to lower cable and to the point where they barely have any margin so they can retain customers who might become interested in internet delivery otherwise.
Oh course, Showtime and HBO can still be big for the cable companies because they each provide extra value to the customer and with a DVR a subscription to these becomes close to the equivalent of an On Demand Netflix/Blockbuster service. Surely the cable companies can leverage this.
Kudos to Viacom though. Content is king. If the network operators can't operate the networks efficiently, make an example of them and force them to trim their network supporting fat.
Okay... so have the car ping its odometer reading and location to a satellite or cellular telephone network every 6 hours. If location reading n+1 is within the same state as location reading n, then assume that odometer reading x+1 minus odometer reading x was within the same state and charge that fee times the rate to the person's bill.
If n+1 is in Washington, California, Idaho, or Nevada then calculate the shortest route from the previous location to the border of the other state and charge that distance.
Trouble is that eventually those other states will see this and people will begin to get tax bills from all the states they've driven in for the year (unless they have an EZ-Pass like system that autodebits your checking account in real time).
But yeah, using the odometer reading is better than using a goddamned unreliable GPS signal. But using a "miles driven" factor is still worse than using a "resources consumed" factor (be it electricity or gas fuel).
It's like a checklist:
food/water [x]
shelter [x]
power (heat/electricity) [x]
telecommunications [x]
transportation [x]
space exploration [ ]
If any of the higher checkboxes get unchecked, then we'd need to take a step back and rethink the resources that are given to NASA. But yes - this is a nerds way of saying "there are basic priorities that need to be considered before you go mucking around on the Moon", and the implicit part of what I was saying is that the things in the top part of the checklist (despite media outcries) is actually in pretty good shape.
It's guys like Donald Trump, Ken Lay, and the guy with the fifty billion dollar Ponzi scheme. The people who never wanted for anything whatever in their lives, who never got their hands dirty, who think that they're somehow better than the poor slob who actually produces his wealth for him.
This should probably be modded off-topic because it's far from the discussion about NASA, but I'd leave Trump off the list of "arrogant rich". Having read his autobiographical "The Art of the Deal", he grew up as a normal shmoe in Brooklyn with a dad who built 6 family houses in the seedier parts of the 'hood. And his wealth, IMHO, is created from (a) being a visionary, and (b) not taking shit from contractors who make promises that they can't keep (i.e. time and cost guarantees).
And I was in Trump Tower last week. It's nice. Way nicer than I can afford. I'd dream that there comes a day when the standard of living is high enough that Trump's level of quality (in real estate) is the rule, not the exception.
For that matter, I'd dream that there comes a day when NASA's level of quality (in engineering) is the same way.
"I don't frankly know what the answer is," [Dr. Crowley, of MIT] said, "but I know it's a lot closer and a lot more complicated answer than the one playing out in the media and the blogs."
I think they're talking about us.
===
But in all seriousness, the cost of running the shuttle for 5 years is $x and the cost of developing the Constellation program in 5 years is $y. Meanwhile, NASA's budget is not x+y and if they wanted to try to develop Constellation in 3 years its cost would be closer to $y^2.
It seems like people can't grasp the rudimentary guideline of engineering development: you've got limitations in quality, cost, and timeliness, and on any challenging project you need to pick one of those limitations that you won't particularly worry about.
I do like the articles conclusion though... NASA's budget is way too small for the amount of good that it can do for the world and for the amount of high-tech science jobs that it can create. As long as everybody in the nation has food, shelter, telecommunications, and power... there is no reason NASA's budgets shouldn't balloon.
Ray,
In another part of this thread it was (humorously, perhaps?) suggested to make an audiobook of these transcripts.
I took this suggestion seriously and elevated it to a platform which it would be more appropriate for here. This site hosts audiobooks that are read of public domain manuscripts and released into the world. If support is gathered through the discussion to the "suggestion" that I posted, it would be a matter of time before we could do a proper production of the Recording Industry versus Jammie Thomas in audio format.
Could you comment on the potential legality of such an effort and reaffirm that the transcripts truly are "Public Domain"? Could you additionally answer the question of whether you'd think it would be a worthwhile effort? Would you imagine it being able to grip a target audience and hold their attention? Perhaps an abridged version would be better to exclude parts that are overly dry and boring? Is this case truly historical enough to be preserved in an audiobook fashion? Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated since you are much closer to the Jammie Thomas case than the casual /. reader.
Best regards,
Rob
Some thought would need to go into planning and such. I'd invite you to express interest by posting into the LibriVox forum.
I've added "The Recording Industry versus Jammie Thomas" as a suggestion of LibriVox.org. See here to discuss or volunteer.
There's a great site: LibriVox.org
They do audio books of public domain works. Many older "classic" fiction stories are there, but if you wade deep enough you'll find historically relevant documents like the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence. This *may* fit their definition of appropriate content and their volunteers (you can be one too!) might take up the charge of recording the manuscript in audio format.
Its purpose is to be an extremely versatile, scalable, and portable kernel for a unix-like operating system - and when coupled with GNU it becomes a very powerful unix-like operating system capable of pretty much anything.
You're thinking spurred a thought in my head that relates to a discussion from a few weeks ago about "What's the future of the Nintendo after the Wii". The article in general was a trollish flamewar between the views of (a) improving graphics, or (b) continuing to innovate the UI.
Is it possible for Nintendo (or Dell, for that matter) to produce an open gaming platform to compete with Sony and Microsoft? It seems like "gaming" is one of the few areas where Linux still sucks... and this could be easily alleviated by the backing of a corporate entity who's willing to innovate their competition into obscurity.
So maybe 2014 is the year of the Linux Gaming Platform?
Not to sound like the Chinese who "like it that way", but I don't think a complete censor of Chinese news broadcasts to America would effect me in the least. I suspect the same major stories (Free Tibet, the major Earthquake, and the Olympics) would have aggregated into the American and British news sites that I read... and that's all that I really need (or want).
However... I sincerely believe that long-term diplomatic relations are needed with China to prevent any potential future pissing contests like what America had with Russia during the Cold War. So long as these tensions are kept in check, I'm happy to basically shrug off the Chinese news equivalents of what I see on American news everyday (i.e. weather reports and mostly insignificant filler).
At the same time no one can sell their house because no one can get credit and if the houses don't move the price drops screwing home owners. At the same time banks are dumping foreclosed homes further driving down the home price comps.
Emphasis mine. I think you mean, because buyers can't get enough credit to buy the houses at their present values.
I'm nearly positive that I'd get a $200,000. Heck, I could probably get a $300,000 loan. Unfortunately, house prices are $400,000+ for anything worth living in (i.e. not a closet and not in the bad section of town).
Thus... the complaints you raise about falling prices are actually the invisible hand of the market bitch-slapping the buyers who got in right before the bubble burst. But fortunately for those people, the government is stepping in with Foreclosure avoidance programs and as a result they aren't going to be financially ruined for the rest of their lives (as opposed to the people who have rightfully been foreclosed on because they can't afford their ARM loans that are sky-rocketing in cost... those people made dumb moves and they deserve the hardships that they'll go through dealing with the mess they've created).
his Presidential Transition makes him worse than the Nazis.
Godwin's Law. You lose.
some sort of threat similar to this to us or one of our allies
This type of defense system would also be a good thing to use to protect one of the USA's enemies, too.
Wouldn't your work be just as opposed to your wasting your time and their bandwidth on Obama messages as on typical boring YouTube stuff?
Oddly, there aren't filters stopping me from hitting Slashdot every couple of hours. I figure this is because it related to the type of technological work that I am involved with on the job. Believe it or not, this site is actually educational.
Now, I'm sure the YouTube has some diamonds in the rough that are educational, too. But keeping up with a small amount of national politics shouldn't be something that employers tell their employees is off limits at work. Especially if their code is compiling. So hosting this on sites that aren't popular block targets within the US would be a good thing. And if a US employer blocked whitehouse.gov... well - they would do so at the risk of taking a major karma hit.
material produced by the federal government of the United States is automatically public domain
And where I work, YouTube is a blocked website that would prevent me from seeing Obama's messages. Something like transition.whitehouse.gov or speeches.whitehouse.gov would be a more suitable host for these videos.
The new administration should attempt to disassociate itself with corporate giant Google and open standards running on websites that aren't regarded as "a giant waste of time" who's aim is to give every man, woman, and child (no matter how talentless) a platform to "Broadcast Yourself".
But nobody who has traveled by plane since the FAA has put in these new system checks has been a terrorist. When there are billions of passengers who fly every year and none have been terrorists since 2001... you might need to wait longer to gather meaningful data.
I mean... complete failure of the system would be proven if a real terrorist had made it past the new checks, and unless I'm wildly mistaken that hasn't happened.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy engineering and when the stuff you design actually works the way it's supposed to it can be really fun. But you cherry picked my response and neglected to consider that I said engineering is a *harder* subject to master.
Props for the pure math, though. I'd think that CS+Math would be able to earn you a nice paycheck at any number of companies. CS by itself isn't as attractive to employers.
If comp sci and engineering majors typically made less than 30k out of college with no benefits, no one would give a shit about the lack of women in that field.
If that were true, I would have spent 4 years reading fiction, history, and analysis in an English Lit degree. Engineers make more because engineering is a *harder* subject matter to master. Now, I am going to come off sending sexist here but men go into engineering because it's an economically viable way to live their lives while women go into liberal arts because they're "fun".
And don't get me wrong... I really would rather have the "fun" degree then the engineering one that I have. It's just that the $30k per year paycheck doesn't do it for me.
I know you! For years Anonymous Coward has been making all sorts of predictions. You can't improve your credibility from one specific event to make me believe you! And signing the e-mail with the name of a fictional character from Vonnegut doesn't help either.
I mean, according to Hollywood accountants Spider Man, Forrest Gump, and Lord of the Rings all failed to make a profit, right? Of course we can trust them.
These films all had "revenues" and "costs". The difference between the two is "profit". Now, just because some of the "costs" include "lines of blow off a dead hooker" or "funding for an unrelated project in the production company that DIDN'T make any money" it doesn't make the "profit" calculation is completely fraudulent.
I'm not trying to start a disinformation campaign. I may have been unknowingly perpetrating somebody else's, though. Thanks for the clarification. Without digging into the counts from each state from a respected source... 52.6% vs 46.1% sounds more likely to be correct.
By my calculation, Obama had 51% of the news articles, 55% of the front pages, and (according to stats that I heard from last week's election) 57% of the vote. I *highly* doubt that the electorate voted based on who was in the news more. OTOH, there were a lot of McCain press appearances that felt very scripted and fake... as if he was doing it just to get himself into the news. When the press follows Obama to his workout... that's a different issue although (and paparazzi laws in the country would be appreciated to protect the privacy of the famous).
Hilarity ensues as the average little old granny tries to understand how to use the clunky command line FTP client.
You joke about command-line FTP being clunky, but the only time I ever use it instead of more convenient GUI options is while transferring files from a UNIX system to an embedded system. In Windows, the Explorer has enough sense to load a graphical file view if you specify the target's IP address. OTOH, the command-line version is easily scriptable so if I really needed to do any heavy FTPing I'd just write the UploadWebsite.sh or DownloadTestResults.sh and let them do the job for me.