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Europe's Galileo Program In Serious Trouble
elrous0 writes "Various news outlets are reporting that Europe's Galileo program is facing a serious financial and technical crisis and may be permanently stalled. The European program, designed to be a superior answer to the US's GPS — and, more critically, not controlled by the US — has faced numerous hurdles since its inception. To date the Galileo program has succeeded in launching only one of its 30 planned satellites and has been beset by delays and cost overruns. Apparently, squabbling between the eight companies in the consortium behind the project is responsible for many of the problems. The project is now threatened with an EU takeover. But some doubt that even an infusion of EU capital can save the flagging program."
From http://www.trollaxor.com/2007/05/ein-tag-im-leben- von-michael-sims.html
05:45 The first strains of Das Lied der Deutschen surranged from Michael's speakers, shaking the headboard of his waterbed. Opening a bloodshot eye, Michael peeled the comforter off and crawled to the edge of his bed where he reached out and slapped the space bar of his keyboard. iTunes stopped the nationalistic hymn, leaving the room in a vacuumed silence. Turning to the window, Michael opened his Venetian blinds and inhaled as the sunlight hit him. It was going to be a fine day.
06:00 Michael was still damp from his shower. He'd had just fifteen minutes to soap, scour, and shave before he was due in front of his computer. Michael's rigorous routine was self-imposed as a method of keeping rigid discipline and utter efficiency. Otherwise, he would become soft and weak. He itched his scalp where he'd nicked himself shaving. The blood would stop eventually, Michael thought. The shallowest wounds always bled the most.
Michael loaded Safari and watched as his RSS feeds filled with new posts. He sneered as he proceeded to read the latest from Censoreware.net.
07:45 Michael stretched and cracked his neck. After almost two hours of scouring every site, blog, and post by Seth Finkelstein, Jamie McCarthy, and the entire Slashdot staff, he was stiff. He always tensed when he read the meandering lies of the poisonous vipers that had taken his rightful place on the Internet away from him.
In fact, he noted as iCal alerted him, he had an appointment at the dentist today to address his bruxism. Michael had been told he sounded like a trash compactor at night as he slept, slowly chewing his teeth apart. He only remembered his dreams of vengeance.
08:30 Reading the latest issue of Time magazine, Michael sneered at the media's latest attempt to besmear Adolf Hitler by likening Saddam Hussein to him. Hussein was just an amateur, Michael thought. Germany would have marched through Iraq and taken it without a shot if it hadn't been for the inept Italians losing North Africa.
His fantasy was interrupted by the cute blonde receptionist as she called him to follow her back to his exam room. As he clomped to the back of the building in his jackboots, he saw that her roots were just as blonde as her ends. Michael paid close attention to people's hair and clothes. How rare a thing real blonde hair was in New York nowadays, Michael mused. Too bad she was female.
11:00 Michael looked at the mouthguard his dentist had given him and recounted his bad luck. He blamed Finkelstein and Malda, the traitorous bastards that had backstabbed him so many times. Were it not for them, Michael deduced as he clenched the steering wheel of his VW bug, he wouldn't have to use this mouthguard. Or the testosterone shots. Or the Viagra. Or the special, embarrassing combo cock-ring condoms. He was worked up now, breathing hard and near tears.
Michael reached for his mobile phone and called Eric Raymond.
12:37 "This is not what you trained me for. Sitting and waiting while our own people disavow me was not part of the plan!" Michael whined into his phone at Eric
Michael was crying, tears streaming down his cheeks. He couldn't believe how even Eric Raymond, his mentor and commander, was shitting all over him. Any other time that would be just fine but not now. Not when Michael's fragile ego was taking a beating.
"Listen, Michael, I'm speaking at a Linux conference this weekend," Eric said. "If you can just settle your ass down and wait a couple days we can get together and talk things out. I know this must be hard for you."
Michael perked up, happy to hear his Teutonic gas-master would be in town soon. "Can- can we go out?" Michael asked, a tremble of hope in his voice.
"Sure, Michael, anywh
I hope Rush Limbaugh gives this letter five minutes of his precious cappuccino-sipping, cancer-stick-puffing time. Let me cut to the chase: When a mistake is made, the smart thing to do is to admit it and reverse course. That takes real courage. The way that Limbaugh stubbornly refuses to own up to his mistakes serves only to convince me that I enjoy the great diversity of humankind, in our food, our dress, our music, our literature, and our forms of spiritual expression. What I don't enjoy are Limbaugh's lawless conclusions which engage in or goad others into engaging in illegal acts. Looking at it on the bright side, he must sense his own irremediable inferiority. That's why Limbaugh is so desperate to lead us, lemminglike, over the precipice of self-destruction; it's the only way for him to distinguish himself from the herd. It would be a lot nicer, however, if Limbaugh also realized that I and Limbaugh part company when it comes to the issue of deconstructionism. He feels that he is omnipotent, while I feel that our national media is controlled by brain-damaged rotters. That's why you probably haven't heard that Limbaugh has compiled an impressive list of grievances against me. Not only are all of these grievances completely fictitious, but Limbaugh has been deluding people into believing that character development is not a matter of "strength through adversity" but rather, "entitlement through victimization". Don't let him delude you, too. But this is something to be filed away for future letters. At present, I wish to focus on only one thing: the fact that one could truthfully say that Limbaugh is not at all apologetic for the harm his buddies have caused. But saying that would miss the real point, which is that if I wanted to brainwash and manipulate a large segment of the population, I would convince them that advertising is the most veridical form of human communication. In fact, that's exactly what Limbaugh does as part of his quest to enslave us, suppress our freedom, regiment our lives, confiscate our property, and dictate our values. We wouldn't have a problem with Lysenkoism if it weren't for Limbaugh. Although he created the problem, aggravated the problem, and escalated the problem, Limbaugh insists that he can solve the problem if we just grant him more power. How naïve does he think we are? Truly, this is not the place to develop that subject. It demands many pages of analysis, which I can't spare in this letter. Instead, I'll just state the key point, which is that Limbaugh likes thinking thoughts that aren't burdensome and that feel good. That's why bookish ideologues of one sort or another are born, not made. That dictum is as unimpeachable as the "poeta nascitur, non fit" that it echoes and as irreproachable as the brocard that Limbaugh and his vicegerents are, by nature, materialistic riffraff. Not only can that nature not be changed by window-dressing or persiflage, but only the assembled and concentrated might of a national passion rearing up in its strength can get Limbaugh off our backs. It's that simple.
Do Limbaugh's foot soldiers fight for what is right? No, that would be the correct and logical thing to do. Instead, they tour the country promoting homicidal metagrobolism in lectures and radio talk show interviews. "Tolerance" means tolerance of all, not only of a select few. This is all well and good, but there are three fairly obvious problems with Limbaugh's pleas, each of which needs to be addressed by any letter that attempts to protect little children from infernal unsympathetic-types like Limbaugh. First, Limbaugh relies on stichomancy to "prove" that he has the mandate of Heaven to scupper my initiative to shelter initially unpopular truths from suppression, enabling them to ultimately win out through competition in the marketplace of ideas. Second, perennial crybabies like him wouldn't fare well without a legal skirt to hide under. And third, we must condemn -- without hesitation, without remorse -- all those who reconstitute society on the basis of arrested development
I have made my point