Yeah, but Google Maps shows that my neighbor still has the minivan she totaled last year.... (Of course Bing Maps shows that I still have the Jeep I sold three years ago.) -- Ian

On 13 May 2010 at 16:46, steve shumaker wrote: A couple of years ago, I went hacking through some deep brush to find out what the heck I was seeing on a Google sattelite photo of my land. Couldn't find a thing. So I asked Google what the heck was going on. They informed me that I was looking at a digital watermark. Sigh. --Chuck

On Thu, 13 May 2010, Ian King wrote: a mainframe shows up on satellite pictures, . . .

This is just cooler than words: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100513121121635 g.

The MAFIAA depend on frightened people that don't have ready access to the resources needed to fight them off. It's sickening.

On Fri, 14 May 2010, Cameron Kaiser wrote: MPAA + RIAA = MAFIAA.

This is just cooler than words: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100513121121635

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 10:03 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote: I was going to mention that. It's interesting to me that the later amigas have been actually less reliable than the 1000 because of leaking caps and that crappy battery. Cars have made it much (much) longer than that and still worked, why not computers? brian

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 10:18 AM, Keith M <keithvz at verizon.net> wrote: The 500 didn't have a battery on the motherboard, but the 500+ did iirc. For the 500, the battery and clock was part of the trap door memory upgrade.

Well, quite. To be honest, I've not tried my Miggy 1200 in 4-5 years, but it was fine when I last tried it, and it was pushing 20 then. I tend to find 1980s machines last better than 1990s / early noughties mass-produced low-quality PCs.

Is it me or is it just a little odd that PJ finds it so gosh-wow AMAZING that a 24-year-old Amiga still works?

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Gene Buckle <geneb at deltasoft.com> wrote: Is it me or is it just a little odd that PJ finds it so gosh-wow AMAZING that a 24-year-old Amiga still works?

Not really. Keep in mind that the average person considers any computer

over 5 years old to be totally unusable junk.

g.

This is just cooler than words: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100513121121635

speaking of ol' technology... I guess they don't look out their window much, there's a 25yr old spacecraft, called the Space Shuttle, that just launched about 1hr ago. =Dan

um, call me in about 20yrs when you have your space shuttle ready with the same mission requirements that doesn't end simply with a vehicle with rockets strapped to your ass for a joy ride in space. Then we'll see how this happens to be the most sophisticated aerospace vehicle to this _date_. Gee, how is it that nobody can still build something with such features and requirements yet, hmmm?

Maybe, maybe not. It doesn't seem as though the Ares I was universally praised within NASA. ________________________________ From: Dave McGuire<mcguire at neurotica.com> To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts<cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Fri, May 14, 2010 3:18:21 PM Subject: Re: Amiga 1000 helps win against patent troll... On 5/14/10 4:13 PM, Dan Roganti wrote: We'd certainly have one if the damn funding didn't get yanked. -Dave -- Dave McGuire Port Charlotte, FL

Boy, that's digging back a ways. Last I'd seen about Venturestar was about 10 years ago. ________________________________ From: Dave McGuire<mcguire at neurotica.com> To: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts<cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Fri, May 14, 2010 3:37:02 PM Subject: Re: Amiga 1000 helps win against patent troll... I was talking about Venturestar. Is anyone really suggesting that we lack the ability to design something now that we designed 35 years ago? That's pretty silly. -Dave On 5/14/10 4:22 PM, geoffrey oltmans wrote:

Rockets are just fine for launching stuff into LEO, cheaper too. About the only thing I can think of the shuttles were great at was sending people to fix stuff in orbit (Hubbell telescope).

I don't think any of the rockets have the heavy lift capability of the shuttle, do they? At least to LEO.

Delta IV heavy is 22.5 metric tons to 51.6 degree LEO, 21.5 metric tons to 90 degree LEO, 10.75 metric tons to GTO (1500 m/s to GEO) or 12.5 metric tons to GTO (1800 m/s to GEO). STS is 24.4 metric tons to 28.5 degree LEO, 12.5 metric tons to 90 degree LEO, 2.27 tons to GEO. Compared to the big boys of the EELV family the STS is a wimp, largely because it's so damn massive in terms of dead weight.

This is dangerously off topic again, but what the hell... On Fri, 14 May 2010, geoffrey oltmans wrote: According to wikipedia, for currently operational vehicles: Vehicle/tonnes to LEO Shuttle/24.4 Delta IV Heavy/22.9 Proton/21.6 Ariane 5ES/21 so there are 3 that are capable of the same ballpak lift. But of course the heaviest launcher ever to fly was the Saturn V, with 119 tonnes to LEO, far surpassing the shuttle. Alexey

AFAICT, a Delta IV Heavy would be perfectly suitable for launching ISS modules. It's not suitable for launching astronauts. One of the possible alternatives to Ares I was upgrading the Delta IV Heavy to be man-rated. NASA decided against that for political reasons; my friends who are aerospace engineers tell me that from a technical point of view it would have been better in every way than Ares I.

So what is going to replace the Shuttle and when? Rod -----Original Message----- From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Eric Smith Sent: 15 May 2010 02:53 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: [OT] Space Shuttle and ISS (was Re: Amiga 1000 helps win againstpatent troll...) On 05/14/2010 06:30 PM, Geoff Oltmans wrote: program was slated to end the same time as the last shuttle launches. Other way around. NASA wanted to retire the Space Shuttle to work on a new system, and decided to do it as soon as the ISS was complete. The issue was that Congress wouldn't give them enough budget to continue flying the Space Shuttle and in parallel develop its replacement. Each Space Shuttle mission costs around $750 million (private estimate, the published NASA estimate is $450 million but is not generally considered credible). It seems to me that they should have kept flying but scaled back to a schedule of four flights per year, while developing the replacement. A really big problem is that once they committed to shutting down the Space Shuttle program, it became all but impossible (prohibitively expensive even by Congressional standards) to extend the program beyond the scheduled shutdown. AFAICT, a Delta IV Heavy would be perfectly suitable for launching ISS modules. It's not suitable for launching astronauts. One of the possible alternatives to Ares I was upgrading the Delta IV Heavy to be man-rated. NASA decided against that for political reasons; my friends who are aerospace engineers tell me that from a technical point of view it would have been better in every way than Ares I. Eric

On 05/16/2010 08:50 AM, RodSmallwood wrote: Originally the plan was to replace it with two systems: * crew launched in an Orion capsule on an Ares I * cargo (heavy lift) launched on an Ares V Obama and the NASA administrator want to cancel Ares I, but Congress might block that. Ares I is an incredibly stupid design, but if we cancel it we will have no capability of launching manned missions at all. The NASA plan is to contract that out to private industry, and I'm generally in favor of that, but we shouldn't kill NASA's in-house manned launch capability until the private alternative has been successfully tested. Eric

You sound like a poker player who is down Billions and thinks if he keeps playing he can dig himself out. The fact is this country is broke, spending another dime sending man off the earth is a waste of money we do not have. Private companies can send satellites into orbit, and NASA has the money and rockets to send robots into the solar system as needed. We will never give the plans for our rockets out since they have military uses (if you can get a payload into space you can drop one anywhere on the earth). ----- Original Message ----- From: "Curt @ Atari Museum" <curt at atarimuseum.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Sunday, May 16, 2010 9:14 PM Subject: Re: [OT] Space Shuttle and ISS (was Re: Amiga 1000 helps winagainstpatent troll...)

I don't think any of the rockets have the heavy lift capability of the shuttle, do they? At least to LEO.

Gee, how is it that nobody can still build something with such features and requirements yet, hmmm?

Gee, how is it that nobody can still build something with such features and requirements yet, hmmm?

On 14 May 2010 at 15:13, geoffrey oltmans wrote: ESA? (European Space Agency, established in 1975). (Stepping back from the resulting flames) --Chuck

On 14 May 2010 at 20:29, Geoff Oltmans wrote: No, the honor there would also go to Grand Fenwick, who sent a manned mission to the moon 6 years before the US.

--Chuck

I've talked with a number of people from large technology companies who patent anything and everything just to proactively defend against such carpetbaggers. Unfortunately, then management changes, business philosophy changes and the patent thicket gets more and more dense....

Hi Chuck That is great. That means that all the flim-flam men selling such machines are in violation of that patent.