Word: launchful
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Until last Sunday. Then the President shocked many veteran Iraq watchers by publicly embracing the bill and promising to "do what we can" to bring down Iraq's perpetually menacing dictator. As Clinton told the world that he had aborted the launch of hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles, his Iraq policy seemed to wear a stern new look. Was this goodbye containment, hello replacement? Not exactly. Clinton made it clear the reason for aborting military action last week was to preserve unfettered inspection of Iraq's arsenal, the one semi-working mechanism for keeping Saddam's nasty ambitions in check...
That said, shoe-size supercomputers were the only data-crunching gadgets I did not see at Comdex last week. Plenty of ultrathin, superlight laptops were on exhibit though--the industry's response to the critical acclaim that met Sony's launch of the under-3-lb. Vaio earlier this year. While Sony has just introduced an even newer model, the Vaio 505FX, people looking for a great on-the-road machine should check out Toshiba's Portege 3010CT. The Portege weighs 2.9 lbs. and still packs a 10.4-in. active-matrix color screen, a 4.3-gigabyte hard disk...
...launch control center 36 years ago, when John Glenn made his first orbit of the earth [SPACE, Nov. 9]. I spent 20 years in manned space flight, and am now 65 and retired. When I was 48, I applied to become a mission specialist, but, alas, was deemed "too old." Glenn's second space trip has given me new hope! Maybe in 12 years, when I'm 77 like he is now, space travel will be available to anyone with the health and determination to go. If that happens, we'll look back on this mission as the milestone that...
...voice network has an important job, the General Accounting Office pointed out in a report released last week. It's designed "to enable commanders to discuss whether a ballistic-missile launch threatens North America and, if so, to determine the appropriate retaliatory response." But, like your first cell phone, the system is a bit clunky. The GAO says recent tests show that "the National Command Authorities and the chief military commanders would be unable to communicate by voice in a timely and intelligible manner...
Adhering to the mantra that simpler is better, cell phones and pagers have always had one primary function, respectively, but they got even better at it in 1998. The launch of Iridium's worldwide satellite paging and cellular-phone service was the flashiest advance, but the new low-cost calling plans (of just 10[cents] to 15[cents] a minute) on regular cell phones will do much more to increase their use. The Yankee Group predicts that these lower-priced calling plans will bump up average cell-phone usage, from three to five hours a month, by 2007. Pagers...