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Using Apple Computers argument that people were downloading data, not music you can now use the argument that allofmp3.com is providing a data transmission service, not music.

What sony is doing is pretty obvious, since they make alot of stuff that needs media in every shape and form, they "invent" new media that fits it.
PSP = UMD, PSP + Sony Phones (thats alot) + Sony Professional stuff = Memory Sticks. Professional Broadcast still uses Beta.
Why use and pay royalties when you can create your own?

And minidisc actually won the format battle, they beat the DCC tape (you do remember that), only to be beaten to a bloody pulp by Napster and MP3 players.
Blu-Ray was proposed to the DVD forum but rejected over the Toshiba format, because HD-DVD is cheaper to make. The interesting question is, how much cheaper will it be when there is 25 million PS3s out there with games on Blu-Ray discs?
And why pick Blu-Ray over plain DVD for a next gen console? well consider this:

The PS-ONE was a 4MB machine with a 640MB media format, storage factor 160
The PS2 was 32MB machine with a 9GB media format, storage factor 280
The XBOX was a 64MB machine with a 9GB media format, storage factor 140
The 360 is a 512MB machine with a 9GB media, storage factor 18
The PS3 is a 512MB machine with a 50GB media, storage factor 94
Lets just for arguments sake say that most XBOX games took up 2GB space, most of that would be used for graphic assets i would guess.
This is on a machine with only 64MB memory, the 360 has 8 times the memory & 7 times less storage, and the need for higher res textures and more assets is evident.

Sony clearly chose the right format, its just damn expensive right now, but everyone knows that the best price for a product is where the production line can follow the demand, and in the PS3 case it will sell out at launch, it will be hard to get one for quite some time. After that period it will drop in price, Capitalism 101

And about the Betamax vs VHS war, give this a read.
"Read this, and the next time someone tells you that, of course, Betamax was superior to VHS, you can tell them that they are wrong. It's an urban myth."
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/st ory/0,12449,881780,00.html
Basicly the VHS won because... it had more storage :-)

Could be worse. FEMA could "practice" Operation SCATANA. LOL

Well, the article got a few little facts wrong, but it was pretty good. It is just a re-write of http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,660700 ,00.html, but this article has more details http://www.mojones.com/news/feature/1994/01/fema.h tml. Here is a less biased article http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=nd0 1schwartz

FEMA will also be conducting tests of GETS 710-627-4387 access codes and coordinating with ham radio shortwave volunteers. (Do not call that number or the FBI will knock on your door) I hope they test NAWAS.

Raven Rock and Mount Weather will not be the only US underground areas busy during the drill. Olney, Maryland, will be busy also.

But, I would be worried if the Russians also have a June 19 drill at Yamantau Mountain in the Urals.

The National Guards and port authorities will also be coordinating efforts.

Odd, I can't find the code name for this June 19 drill and it is not mentioned on the FEMA calendar.

By the way, Iran is not planning on performing a traditional nuking of Washington DC. Iran is planning on performing an EMP attack that will wipe out almost all electronics in the US.

Such disaster preparations are important not just for nuclear attacks, but for events such as pandemic and asteroids. Rumor says that someone at NASA has reopened Project Orion, for lifting the US equivalent to the Tsar Bomba. Bye bye asteroid.

Let me quote from a year old article "I'm with wolfowitz" by George Monbiot which was printed in The Guardian.
But this surely illustrates the unacknowledged paradox in neocon thinking. They want to drag down the old, multilateral order and replace it with a new, US one. What they fail to understand is that the "multilateral" system is in fact a projection of US unilateralism, cleverly packaged to grant other nations just enough slack to prevent them from fighting it. Like their opponents, the neocons fail to understand how well Roosevelt and Truman stitched up the international order. They are seeking to replace a hegemonic system that is enduring and effective with one that is untested and (because other nations must fight it) unstable. Anyone who believes in global justice should wish them luck.

If boredom is an emotion then maybe the French Finance Minister should submit his Balance the Budget game.

"One scientist who posted a message on Louis's website described it as 'bullshit'."

Ouch.

From: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1723 913,00.html

Much more detail about this phenomenon can be found here and here.

You do know, that under the Geneva Convention, we are allowed to shoot the lot of them, don't you?

Here is a story FROM THE GUARDIAN that depicts the "torture" that goes on there Cuba? it was great

You mean US based paper? English language, or other? That amazing invention "Teh Intrerweb" means you can access a lot of journalism from across the planet if your own country's papers aren't doing a good job. The Guardian did an online "World News Guide". Always fun comparing how your country's papers see the world compared to somebody else.

You mean US based paper? English language, or other? That amazing invention "Teh Intrerweb" means you can access a lot of journalism from across the planet if your own country's papers aren't doing a good job. The Guardian did an online "World News Guide". Always fun comparing how your country's papers see the world compared to somebody else.

I'd be very skeptical this program given the history Airbus aircraft have had with their control systems and their general managerial attitudes for safety.

For instance, the crash of Flight 587, an Airbus A300 in November 2001 was caused by a "delamination" of the vertical stabilizer's composite structure - moisture got in between the layers of composite material and caused them to pull apart. Subsequent inspections found other aircraft with signs of vertical stabilizer delamination. The Canadian Transportation Safety Board has recommended detailed checks of Airbus A3000 rudder assemblies because of the issue.

The problem is that manual inspections can't always reveal signs of delamination - it often requires ultrasound inspection - something Airbus has refused to support, and there has even been accusations that Airbus has tried to inappropriately lobby the NTSB against such a recommendation.

Airbus' overreliance on technology and dysfunctional managerial culture continues to put passengers at risk - and this new automated system ensures that the pilot has even less control than he or she did before. Trusting that system to do the right thing in a crisis is always a risky proposition - trusting a manufacturer with such a generally shoddy attitude towards safety makes it even riskier.

"It's the Jordanian border guards who are preventing tht."

I think you misunderstood what I said. I wasn't saying the Palestinians should move to Jordan, I was saying they ARE living in Jordan, occupied Jordan. Thanks to Israel's seizure of their homes and homeland they are stateless refugees in occupied territory. No one wants them so they are sentenced to an eternity living under Israeli occupation mostly in abject poverty. And you wonder why they are so mad. They are enduring the same fate Jews did when they were scattered to the wind. You would think Jews of all people would have some empathy for this and not do the same thing to another people that was done to them.

"Oh, intentionally blowing up young children, and taking pride in it, constitutes "somewhat extreme views" in your opinion...?"

Uh, Israel's military kills young children too. A 13 year old girl shot multiple times by an Israeli officer in cold blood for example. U.S. Marines murdered young children in Haditha Iraq, for example they executed a one year old girl. Thats what happens in bloody insurgencies stoked by mutual hatred and fear. You see you want to forget Israel and the U.S. kill children and only remember Palestinian suicide bombers kill children. I'm a little more intellectually honest and recognize Hamas is not particularly different from the U.S. or Israel in this regard. U.S. strategic bombing campaigns in Vietnam and World War II killed millions of civilians. Palestinian suicide bombers aren't even in the same ballpark if you want to talk about mass murder.

"is that it failed to prevent those acts"

Don't want to debate the subject since its impossible to sort out exactly what happened in those camps, but Israel invaded Lebanon pretty much in violation of international law, those camps were under Israeli military control, they let Christian militias who they knew had a blood feud with them, go in and slaughter unarmed refugees and did nothing in spite of hours of gunfire. Maybe Sharon and his officers were just ignorant or maybe they wanted the Palestinians slaughtered, we will really never know. There are plenty of other case studies of the Israeli military intentionally killing civilians but you are in denial on the subject so I'm not gonna waste the time recounting them as you rationalize that somehow you are somehow inherently better than your foe. I know full well you think you are inherently superior to Palestinians. They are always wrong and you are always in the right, right? That is in the nature of apartheid states.

" Illegal settlements are harshly evacuated by Israeli armed forces."

Dude all settlements in occupied territories are illegal, its just most of them were given under the table blessing of hard liners in the Israeli government. When you build settlements in occupied territories the only way you can do it is by seizing the land of the people that lived there before the occupation. It is against international law to seize the property of people in occupied territories. It is basically ethnic cleansing since you are ejecting the people who lived there to replace them with people of your race.

"But deciding to commit mass-murder"

Take off the blinders friend. There is no difference between a suicide bomb or an F-16 dropping a 1000 pound bomb in an apartment complex full of innocent women and children to assassinate one Palestinian leader. Again you are claiming some morale superiority that simply isn't there. The women and children end up just as dead in both cases. Your problem is you've rationalized that the two acts are inherently different when they are not.

"No one is asking Hamas to "disarm"."

Well at this point you seem to have no clue what you are talking about. EVERYONE is demanding Hamas disarm and recognize Israel's right to exist as a precondition of even entering negot

> Sounds like a bad manager to me. Why would he ever hire an inexperienced programmer?
So... inexperienced programmers should become experienced by... ?

Assuming they did a computer science degree, it's rather odd they got through their entire degree while refusing to use constants, however a computer science degree is not a degree on programming. Sure, some institutions will train their students to a level where they can hit the ground running in a programming job, in the environment they're used to. However, where I work and did my degree (St. Andrews university), the focus is definitely on the why, rather than the how (so, topics such as software engineering, language design, logic, to name a few), and currently we're second best in the UK for Computer Science:

http://browse.guardian.co.uk/education?SearchBySub ject=false&FirstRow=0&SortOrderDirection=&SortOrde rColumn=GuardianTeachingScore&Subject=Computer+sci ences+and+IT&Tariff=6&Go=Submit

The key problem was not their level of programming experience when hired, but their unwillingness to learn better techniques.

• allow construction of valuable Caspian pipelines
• keep Halliburton and Bechtel's stocks higher than Timothy Leary
• threaten the security of the West

Parent is right about Europe. I bought a basic prepay phone in the UK last week and spent 15 mins pestering the assistants about minimal payments. Bottom line: none of the major networks require monthly payments - you just make one call every 6 months to prove the phone is being used.

Where we lose out is rip-off roaming charges when visiting other European countries.

Re the main topic. My new 'phone is smaller and prettier, but slightly harder to use because its predictive text input is very slow for numbers and punctuation, but there are so many option settings that I can't find how to turn it off.

> That sounds to me like a Katrina style disaster.

Katrina was a Cat5 over the Gulf of Mexico. It weakened and actually became a Cat4 and weakening when it hit NOL . The "water" problem due to Katrina was an engineering problem-- the levees broke in a city with significant bits underwater. Also, re hurricanes, the conservative scientific view (insofar I read realclimate right) is that Global Warming does not cause hurricanes but it does make any formed hurricanes more severe because hurricanes thrive on the warmer water global warming's causing.

There's also the bigger point that as human beings build ever-more-populous cities on more square miles of this earth, any natural disaster will impact more lives and cost more money than before. Imagine a Tunguska-style event in the tri-state area!

Anyway, I don't advocate waiting for the 'waters to rise' before doing something. And reducing atmospheric/biospheric pollution is a laudable goal even if global warming were not happening. Also, 'artificial energy regulations' was a poor choice of words on my part -- regulating energy providers is definitely necessary in the interests of public safety. I *am* against artificially created and regulated energy markets, though-- especially when it turns out that those energy markets are fun to sign but difficult to implement.

> With all that said, I'll add one more thing, climate is indeed a complex system so why are we pumping crap into the air making it even more so?

Because pumping less crap into the air would reduce our standard of living? For example, the US consumed ~100 quad BTUs of energy in 2003. By contrast, a rapidly developing country like India (1/3rd the size of the US but 3x the population) used only 12.8 quad BTUs in 2001. In the same year, a first-world country like France (1/6th the size of India and 1/20th the population) used almost the same amount, ~11 quad BTUs.

It takes a *lot* of energy to sustain the first-world way of life.

Of course, improved research could reduce pollutants like heavy metals and sulfur from getting into the atmosphere, but as long as we have to burn stuff to produce energy, we'll continue to pump CO2 into the air. What I guess we need is better energy storage technology (batteries currently are quite inefficient) and better, safer fission reactors (3rd gen pebble-bed?) or practical nuclear fusion!

What you are actually referring to is "Healthcare paid for by involuntary contributions, taken by force, known colloquially as taxes"

What I read there is "I don't want to pay your healthcare. Pay it yourself or fuck you". But what if "I" is someone else and "your healthcare" is yours? What if I cannot pay an insurance because I have to pay more than half of my salary to the renter of my home?

And there are better places to cut expenses.

Better to charge the masses peanuts than reign in their own expences.

I know, an old complaint.

even international parties involved in an experimental nuclear fusion reactor project have initialled a 10bn-euro (£6.8bn) agreement on the plan.

10Bn over 35 years for cheap clean energy?

Bah! I say - much better to spend 10bn/month to secure access to limitless supplies of the cleanest energy!

One evening, I sent away a smiling lady with a new PC, assuring her that it would work with her existing monitor. It did. Later in the week she returned red-faced, her ears spouting steam. She'd lost all her files.

"I thought they stayed in the screen!" she screamed

I'd say the overall crumbling of society / end of life on earth would have more of an effect than a switch in the polarity. Those Van Allen belts are darn useful and I don't have enough sun cream at the moment.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12 374,912530,00.html

This google thing actually seems to work... :)

Claims of Al Queda’s synthetic nature may not be entirely baseless, although the tendency among many is to conflate Mr. Bush with the movement he currently figureheads, which muddles things considerably. Look for the word ‘database’ on this page. There is much more info out there, that was the first decent hit of a quick search. Look into Tim Osman as well. I don’t know how accurate information about him is, but it’s an interesting tale regardless.

http://society.guardian.co.uk/crimeandpunishment/s tory/0,,1778674,00.html

We are in the lead! Huzzah for our friendly neighbour hood spies!

This may sound a little partisan and controversial, but the problem is basically Tony Blair.

Since coming to power, he's increasingly become a control freak.

He's emasculated the house of lords, under cover of "reform", while seemingly trying to block the option (favoured by many MPs) of a largely-elected house of lords (because a largely-elected second chamber would be a legitimate "check and balance" on his authority, as compared to a set of nominated place-men). (See for example here).

He's also marginalised parliament - his government carries out the minimum of "debate" there now, merely using it as the place to anounce previously-decided policies. There was a big fuss recently, little reported, about the government trying to pass a law allowing them to change legislation at will, without any debate at all, under cover of "reducing red tape" (see here.

Even within the cabinet, he seems to fire anyone who seems remotely a threat or who disagrees with him in any way (with the exception of Gordon Brown, the chancellor (and probably the next Labour leader), who is powerful enough to be left alone).

Since he's been prime minister, there have been dozens of crime bills, making hundreds of new criminal offences (e.g. see here.

He's increasingly making noises about the criminal justice system being "out of touch" (i.e. not automatically just doing what he says), in a seeming bid to further curtail their powers. For what he's already achieved, see, for example, here.

He himself is becoming increasingly irrational and out-of-touch to the extent where his party are starting to think of him as a liability, let alone what the country now thinks of him. The more out of touch he gets, the determined to get his own way he becomes. He's done a lot or damage to this country's constitutional processes, a lot of damage to its reputation (via Iraq), and the sooner he goes, the better.

This company was back by MILLIONS in VC money.

To the disappointment of users, they pulled the plug without any warning.

Of course, this probably makes me sound like some evil spammer. I am not.

(at least) two open source projects are in the process of taking over the BF source code. BlackFrog already has a name, other are being discussed at http://bluefrogfanclub.com/ (hosted by Google Groups).

The comon thinking is that a P2P system is the way to go. As best I can tell, these projects and groups are being run by good people with the best intentions.

Blue Security on the other hand...

the Guardian article alluded to:
here

Scientists: Humans and Apes share a common ancestor.

Creationists: No they don't, God created us all as we are now.

Scientists: To clarify, we're actually descended from the interbreeding between our ancestral humans and early chimps, which created a third, infertile "hybrid" species, the human equivalent of a mule. Though incapable of breeding among its own, the hybrid is believed to have survived by mating with its parent human or chimp species.

Scientists: Oh, and our ancestor's were happily getting up to monkey business with their cousins (so to speak) for four million years after the split!

Creationists: Oh right, that clears that up then! Cheers :-)

(Second scientist line ripped off from the rather good article on this subject on the Guardian's website.)

In the UK over the past few years there've been various rights-eroding laws put in place (e.g. warrantless searches and arrests if they suspect you're a terrorist), and then this happened.

What worries me is that the security staff are going to blindly believe the computer's "this is suspicious", causing the person huge inconvenience despite any actual evidence of him being a terrorist on his person. See the link - just because someone matched enough random, minor items on (presumably) some sort of mental checklist in the security staff's head, they put him through huge inconvenience, arrested him, searched his house, took his cellphone's SIM card, took computers from his home, all without a warrant, simply because they had enough things crossed off to be able to mark him as "suspicious" (and thus use the Terrorism Act), despite there being absolutely no proof on his person.

If this gets done, thus moving the mental checklist into the computer, I can only hope there WILL be regular false positives (so that the security staff take it with a pinch of salt and use it as a guideline only), else they might suspect people unduly despite there being no cause for suspicion other than "the computer says so".

6. Why didn't the hijackers names appear on the released passenger manifests (example)? Furthermore, why did a number of the purported hijackers did turn up alive sometime after the attacks?

7. We know that Mohammed Atta flew one of the airplanes into the WTC because we found his lightly-scorched passport lying on the streets of lower Manhattan shortly afterward. WTF?

8. Osama Bin Laden allegedly orchestrated the greatest single criminal act of terror in history against the USA, a nation that does not have a history of taking such things lightly, so why, six months later, was no-one interested in catching the guy? As early as March 2002, Bush said "I truly am not concerned about him". Is he the bogeyman or just another operator who takes orders from his handlers?

Just asking.

> What happens when the people who release the evidence have been shown to have been lying about everything else important during that time period? .... Like Iraq WMD

To say that Iraq never had WMD is pure non-sense.

That's why he didn't say it. You introduced the word "never", and yes, your straw man is nonsense.

He was referring to the claims that Iraq had WMD circa 2001-2003, which were used as justification for the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq. Those claims were lies.

Yes, we know Iraq had WMD in the past. Of course we know that, we sold them the WMD. But Iraq had used or destroyed all its WMD prior to the illegal invasion.

> ... Like cheaper, more plentiful oil.

I'm guessing you are hiding in a cave somewhere. You obviously haven't bought gas recently.

Oh, do pay attention. He was saying that the claim that oil prices would be controlled was false. The current high prices are demonstration that he's right.

And as for bringing up Bill Clinton: Did anybody claim that the problems started in 2000? No, I don't think so, so once again you're erecting a straw man.

In fact, if you look at the people who complain about the lies used to justify the invasion of Iraq, you'll find that almost all of them were also deeply critical of the Clinton era sanctions that resulted in the lingering death of tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and their children.

But Betamax WAS inferior to VHS.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/st ory/0,12449,881780,00.html

In all the ways that mattered.

Good technology isn't something that "could work very elegantly in a few years, but is squirrely right now." It's "works well right now" and sometimes "works well right now, and can be upgraded to work even better in the future."

VHS won because it solved the problem people had.

Another reason may be the introduction of fingerprint scanners in some pubs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,1764978 ,00.html

With constant cctv surveilance and fingerprint scanning I now no longer about anything exciting or unusual happening when I go out for a drink. Apart from the occasional arrest for thoughtcrime that is.

That's it!

The real threat isn't coming from the tens of thousands Islamist extremist terrorists trained in Afghanistan by Al Qaeda, in Saddam's Iraq, and their associates (minus the captured ones). No!

The 9/11 attacks, the attack on the USS Cole, the Bali bombings, the Madrid bombings, the London bombings, the shoe bomb attempt, the US embassy bombings in Africa, the attacks and bombings in Saudi Arabia, the bombing in Jordan, the attacks in the Philippines, the Beslan attack, the dirty bomb plan, the plan to attack the soccer stadium in the UK, the plan to attack Heathrow, the 19 person ring just broken in Michigan, the hundreds of Hezbollah operatives in the US, including the recent Hezbollah Mexican border smuggling ring broken, and the rest all show its not the terrorists that are the problem!!

The real threat is that *cough* fantasy *cough* cabal in the White House which the "insiders" on Slashnut know are secretly planning to ignore the next election with mass destraction. (How this will actually work, nobody explains. The Constitution limits the term in office and provides for succession.) Meanwhile, outside Mom's basement (or with more meds), the rest of us see them trying to detect and stop the next terrorist attack, prefereably before they can use a salvaged anthrax or chemical weapon from Saddam's discards, or maybe even start a nuclear Jihad with a little help, or simply send a suicide bomber to a crowded mall.

Lets reach over into one of the Evolution v. Creation debates and grab Occam's Razor. Which way do you think it cuts here?

I think I understand the impulse behind William F. Buckley's statement that he would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. It seems to require a certain degree of sophistication to engage in certain forms of idiocy.

Not to mention asbos which effectivly mean some people can be sent down for such non offences as feeding pigions or gardedning in a bikini.

Wake up and smell the tea dude. Its hapening to us HERE and now and all you can do is scratch your arse saying "I'm allright Jack"

An Amnesty International report has cited Microsoft among a clutch of leading computer firms heavily criticised for helping to fuel 'a dramatic rise in the number of people detained or sentenced for internet-related offences'.

Just like GW Bush is yours.

Saddam Huseein sponsored terrorists, allowed them to form training camps in Iraq

Both of these are false. I'd say that the third statement was false too, but I've got nothing to back that up, mostly since I've never seen anyone ever make that assertion before.

The terrorist camps in Iraq were in Kurd-controlled sections. You know, the sections that Saddam was banned from ever entering because he kept gassing the Kurds? clearly biased source less biased source and another.

I think the most ironic thing about this whole Iraq war was that Saddam was doing the anti-terrorism job we couldn't do, and now we've replaced his secular rule with a fundie muslim regime that will almost certainly start sponsoring terrorists of their own, just like all the other fundie muslim nations in the region. All because he was such a bad man for gassing the terrorists.

Pornography is only art if you consider a picture of the virgin Mary painted in elephant dung to be art.

Some people do.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0 ,,1667595,00.html

Actually our greenhouse emissions are reducing, just not as fast as they should. In fact the UK is closer to meeting its Kyoto obligations than almost all other EU countries. And our emissions are around a quarter of the per person emissions in the USA.

Do you believe everything your government tells you?

While quite a rosy picture is being painted by defra, it appears they have been forgetting to include boats and planes in their emmission counts. Oops.

I agree that the UK is generally better then the US. But that's not something I'd be particularly proud of.

Do you think dissidents would really be given visas to work in the US? On the contrary, it's quite possible your coworkers were collecting information for the Chinese government.

As loss of radio contact was one of the factors the resulted in Jean Charles de Menezes being shot dead by police, radios that work in the Underground ("tube") as well as underground would be a good thing.

The biggest hope for saving people at the start of a bird flu pandemic, before a vaccine is available, is the antiviral drug Tamiflu

• Flu drugs 'will not work' if pandemic strikes
  
• Tamiflu May Not Be So Effective Against Bird Flu
  
• Bird flu proving resistant to Tamiflu treatment
  

Yes, I believe that. Cryptanalysis is an international science - take the recent SHA-1 collision attack, for example. I'm sure the NSA would love a backdoor into the world's encryption systems, but luckily the NSA realises that there are plenty of talented cryptographers in other countries who would be able to find and exploit any such backdoor, damaging the business and military interests of America and its allies.

As long as a significant fraction of the world's cryptanalysts are located outside of Fort Meade, the NSA's best bet is to recommend the strongest cryptosystems it knows about.

Condensed Matter, abstract cond-mat/0502336: Achieving Transparency with Plasmonic Coatings

There is not enough information in the Guardian article to judge whether the approaches to transparency are similar or not. It is definitely interesting to note that there are at least these two fairly mature theoretical research/engineering projects underway.

Who has not had a dream of having the power of invisibility? Such a power could be fun, useful, and dangerous. If it were invented, how would people use it? How would governments use it? Although the research is early stage and there are practical bugs for implementation, the science and general engineering are good and it is only a matter of time before such a device is demonstrated.

Here are additional references on the nanoplasmonic research:

• Nature 28 February 2005: Engineers Devise Invisibility Shield

  PDF: Nanofocusing_in_Tapered_Plasmonic_Waveguides

Actually, I'm well aware of NASA's proposals for replacing the shuttle fleet, and I whole-heartedly support these proposals. Griffin seems to be putting the space agency in the right direction, and I have no serious dispute with his leadership. The main thrust of my argument - if you'll pardon the obvious pun - is that NASA continues to downplay safety concerns on the shuttle, a program that even Griffin admits was a bad idea in the first place. At the moment, the reward for returning the shuttle to active service, i.e. completing the ISS, just doesn't seem to justify the risks involved.

...the space shuttle program had nothing to do with manned settlements on the moon or Mars.

Sadly, you're absolutely correct. Back in the early 1970s, NASA officials sold Congress on the space shuttle concept by arguing that a reusable shuttle would reduce the costs and increase the frequency of manned space travel. With three decades of hindsight, I think it's reasonable to say that the shuttle program achieved neither of these goals.

In my mind, that was one of the biggest problems with the shuttle - it never looked like an appropriate follow-on to the success of Apollo. Instead of boldly going where no man had gone before, America adopted a beancounting approach to space travel with the shuttle, going where we'd already been dozens of times before, with the vain hope that it would be less expensive this time. The ISS has done nothing to change this. I'm afraid that I just don't care if we ever learn to teach ants how to sort tiny screws in space.

You and I may disagree on this point, but I believe that the future of manned spaceflight lies in reaching out towards the edges of the solar system, putting men and women on Mars and beyond. So this is why I'm still wondering what NASA has accomplished with the shuttle program that even comes close to the earlier Apollo program.

Regarding costs, I've never seen a published comparison for operating the shuttle vs. launching Apollo missions in real dollars but according to Wikipedia, the Apollo program cost $25.4 billion ($135 billion in 2005 dollars) for 11 flights, including 6 landings. In comparison, the space shuttle program has used a total of $145 billion of NASA budget over the years, and has flown 114 missions. The average cost per mission then is $1.3 billion, but that includes R&D and construction of the shuttles and their facilities. Directly related costs per launch are quoted at only $55 million, meaning it would cost only that much to add another launch to the manifest, assuming no further problem mitigation needs to be performed. Yes, $1.3 billion is too much to justify the program, but when it was originally expected to launch 12-24 times per year (200-400 launches by now).

See my point above. The Apollo program put men on the moon; no one doubts that NASA spectacularly accomplished its goals with Apollo. In comparison, the shuttle program failed to meet most of its stated goals, as the Wikipedia article you reference suggests. We received something infinitely valuable for the $135 billion 2005 dollars spent on Apollo. Despite the enormous risks, not a single astronaut died in space during the lunar program. Now contrast that with the space shuttle program. We received something less obvious and tangible with the space shuttle, and it has so far cost the lives of 14 astronauts. With the price of gas toping $3 a gallon in the U.S., let's use an oil analogy here: if we hit a gusher with Apollo, then the shuttle program has turned out to be a mostly dry well.

I also want to point out that this "obvious

Furthermore, the passport applications will be denied unless you give up your passport number, DVLA number and NI number ie indexes to major UK databases on:

1. international travels.
2. car travels via national ANPR.
3. tax/income & disability benefits.

We're also being given a new unique number for what can be no other purpose than indexing our medical records, bank records, phone & email records and potentially even dissident Slashdot posts like this one.

For those without a background in databases, I've explained this further here.

If that wasn't bad enough, the cards will also contain RFID chips.

It's also clear that the Government want to make us dependent on ID cards
"the ID card is now an accepted part of accessing many public- and private-sector services."

This would be less scary if Blair's Government hadn't lied at every opportunity, attacked one of our most prestigious academic institutes for daring to offer a less intrusive scheme and wasn't passing Bills to do away with our democratic process.

So what can you do to help?

1. Join No2ID, the extremely well-run campaign that is the fastest growing in the UK.
2. Tell all your UK friends, especially influential ones what is happening. Tell them to Renew their passports for Freedom in May.

Furthermore, the passport applications will be denied unless you give up your passport number, DVLA number and NI number ie indexes to major UK databases on:

1. international travels.
2. car travels via national ANPR.
3. tax/income & disability benefits.

We're also being given a new unique number for what can be no other purpose than indexing our medical records, bank records, phone & email records and potentially even dissident Slashdot posts like this one.

For those without a background in databases, I've explained this further here.

If that wasn't bad enough, the cards will also contain RFID chips.

It's also clear that the Government want to make us dependent on ID cards
"the ID card is now an accepted part of accessing many public- and private-sector services."

This would be less scary if Blair's Government hadn't lied at every opportunity, attacked one of our most prestigious academic institutes for daring to offer a less intrusive scheme and wasn't passing Bills to do away with our democratic process.

So what can you do to help?

1. Join No2ID, the extremely well-run campaign that is the fastest growing in the UK.
2. Tell all your UK friends, especially influential ones what is happening. Tell them to Renew their passports for Freedom in May.

There are plenty of examples of how Governments and police have misused additional circumstanstial evidence, without relying on actual evidence - for example, http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,1 6132,1575532,00.html . In particular, "The officer explains what made them change their mind and arrest me. Apparently, on August 4, 2004, there was a firearms incident at the company where I work. The next day I find out that there had been a hoax call the previous year, apparently from a temp claiming there was an armed intruder. Some staff had also been seen photographing tube stations with a camera phone. On June 2, as part of a team-building exercise, new colleagues were supposed to photograph landmarks and try to get a picture of themselves with a policeman." With these sorts of abuses, I do not like the idea of more information being held in databases that police can mine, and use to arrest innocent people.

As for other loss of rights - with the UK's card, you will use your freedom (i.e., go to prison) if you fail to sign up for the scheme (requiring interview, fingerprinting and personal cost of £90+), and also if you fail to notify the authorities if your card is ever lost, stolen or merely damaged.

Your turn: tell us what known benefits these cards bring. Actual examples with evidence, not hypothetical claims.