Forgive me devil's advocating here but... you do realise the average lifetime for a species on earth is about 1 million years? You realise that, like _we're all going to die_ anyway? Perhaps we should start a monster project to sweep the solar system clear of any potentially hazardous objects. That way we can be sure that nothing will prematurely end the reign of the cockroaches who will take over after humanity exterminates itself.
To quote Bill Hicks... "Excuse me, but aren't y'all HIRED KILLERS?? Listen, next time we need some kids napalmed or a few hundred civilians roasted alive, we'll be in touch. 'key?"
'Dude' is the LAST thing you call the military. You might as well address a rabid rottweiler as "ol' buddy".
Another reason us oh-so-smug & superior non-Merkins look down on y'all... see, a qualification in "Java programming" is not, CANNOT be a degree, almost by definition.
I also heard from a university tutor that when screening applicants from the US, a standard US degree is considered to be worth between 24-33% of a standard BA or BSc Honours degree. Anyone care to confirm or deny? Cos if that's so, you'd need three or four of those even to get IN to a UK university. I guess this helps explain why the American residents posting on this story are all saying "Are you mad? Of course you can't work in IT without a degree!" I haven't got one myself - I did go to college, but was so alienated by the shite they tried to shovel into us in my chosen major (psychology) that I spent more time in media & philosophy lectures. Much more interesting, and it made pulling in the Uni bar much easier;) Not having the piece of paper has probably kept me out of soul-destroying C++ billing system jobs - instead I've done VB development, web pages and sites, Perl (to the level of writing my own modules), smatterings of C, SQL and so forth, a bit of system and network admin, hell I even paid my dues on a support desk for a while. I'm now working as a pentester, which is by far the most enjoyable, creatively satisfying, challenging job I've ever had. And I'm grateful for my luck, of course. (Now, does anyone have a working exploit for the LSASRV hole?:)
You know, I'm getting really tired of people thinking that I support this war.
Apologies!
I live in the blast radius of the White House. Because of Bush, I now actually have to think about that.
To be fair, I don't think the Al Qaeda types are especially concerned whether it's Bush or Clinton or someone else - those particular nutters would want to do bad things to the White House regardless. That said I'm sure the Bush govt.'s actions has increased the number of potential terrorists.
I'm not mad at the government for taking Saddam out of power. I'm mad at them for lying to me about WMD. I would have supported a war to oust Saddam for the sake of ousting him. He was an evil man who shouldn't have been in power.
So, would you also support nation building wars in, say, China, Burma, Pakistan? Georgia? Kazahkstan? AH, right, they've got nukes. OK then, what about all those central african republics?
Although it may be the case that Saddam was an evil tyrant and despot, it's NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS unless or until he starts enacting genocide or other crimes against humanity. At that point it comes down to the UN. For some reason, the UN chose not to believe the US/UK lie^h^h wishful thinking about WMD. Looks like they were right...
As a final note, having Iraq be free is important to our National Defence because, regardless of what those in DC say, part of the war in Iraq is securing access to vital resources for the American Economy. In other words oil.
Right, cos it's perfectly OK to go to war, against the opposition of most of the civilised world, for economic reasons? Hmmm. I think this strategy may end up biting the US back. Ruling the world by fear and economic might puts the country in a very bad light. This is why so non-Americans use words like "arrogance" and "bullying" when speaking of the U.S. (govt., usually, tho' as a UK cit I find the recent outburst in personalised anti-Americanism rather depressing. )
You have to allow a certain amount of goofing around, you have to arrange company braais (BBQs for you American folks), go-karting, bowling, golf, horse-riding, etc.
Ladies and gentlemen, a winner in this year's search for most astounding understatement;)
I hate to shock ya, but where do you think that money came from? That's right, the rest of the world loaned it to America. Oh by the way, you don't appear to have any means of paying it back, and the debt is getting bigger and bigger every year. Eventually the foreign banks / bond investors will have had enough, and Bad Things will be happening to the USA, and oh how the trailer parks will resound with the cries of uneomployed pizza delivery boys. Of course, a nation full of angry, confused morons who believe the rest of the world owes it a living, and who can't understand where all the good times went, will be in a mood to start nasty fights with the perceived enemies who have brought them to this pass. Oh and look at all the military hardware, nukes, chemical and biologocal weapons! These happy thoughts sure keep me warm at nights.
What makes anybody think we can have a colony on Moon? Is it just because once there was a TV series [space1999.net] about one?
Yes. That's ALL it is. Certain people's brains have been turned to mush by too much exposure to Star Trek, Star Wars and other escapist adolescent male fantasies.
Of course it's not cost effective, even if you autioned the TV rights to the highest bidder thats a couple of hundred million dollars _maximum_ income. Oh and the retired astronaut's fees on the rubber chicken circuit, chatshows, ghosted autobiographies etc. To paraphrase Dickens... income, $100m, outgoing: $40b, result: misery.
OK, I'm game - we'll see who can waste more of who's time. Hint: there are five and half billion-odd of us and only 250-something million of you.
Why should my valuable time be consumed by fuckheaded US politicos that personally I'd be happy to see burnt at the stake?
Your logic falls apart in the first line: There is nothing fundamentally stopping us from manufacturing spacecraft elsewhere. There is a practical problem: We do not have infrastructure to do so elsewhere.
Oh yeah? So where are you going to mine and smelt iron, coal, limestone, nickel, zinc, tin, lead, gold and the other dozen or so metals needed? And that's just the metal box I'm talking about. You may of course say that it's a simple matter of building and launching a gigantic dry-dock into space, at which point I file you under K for KOOK (or S for StarTrek luser)
I'm really looking forward to the first one of these I see, when I shall send a lengthy email of complaint about how I'm unable to vote in the election, not being American. Hopefully that'll suck up a few minutes of time of some campaign worker and help drain away the Bush funds. Just doin' my bit...
My girlfriend grew up in the old Soviet Union and then Yugoslavia - both times and places that have gone forever. The photos of detritus of everyday life in communist 1986, in Pripyat, fascinated her. She can never go back, but of course none of us can do. Imagine if you could ride up the rode to a frozen piece of your past.
Let's just hope no-one does anything stupid and evil that makes us abandon another city in this way...
Good to see someone talking sense about this on Slashdot. I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I think a bit less wishful thinking and a tighter grip on the distinctions between reality and Star Trek would help bring a lot more realism to things.
Here's one for the utopian space-heads out there: given that spacecraft can only be manufactured on earth, and that a typical MIR / Salyut / ISS type string of tincans has a design lifetime of the order of 10 years, and that there's a distinct limit to the sort of repairs that can be performed on orbit - clearly humans will/never/ make it out of the solar system. To be honest I think Mars is an extraordinarily ambitious target. It's easy to dismiss the obstancles and difficulties in a hand-waving way but in the real world, if it could realistically be built, speculative engineers at the major aerospace cos will be doodling designs on napkins. Small, lemon soaked paper napkins.
The 1953 movie was utterly camp, despite assertions of playing off cold war fears, but expect it to look good in comparison.
Hey don't knock it, that film scared me senseless on TV, aged 18 or so... granted I don't watch horror / suspense type films so perhaps today's Scream-savvy film goers just laugh at it. But there ya go .
Personally I hope they take some inspiration from Volume 2 of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the Alan Moore comic that is, not the abortion of a Hollywood adaption that metaphorically plumetted past my window some time last year. Alternatively just stick obsessively to the Wells original, which ALSO gave me the willies when reading it for the first time as an adult. Perhaps it's the place names and such that give it that vertiginous sense of looking down at your feet and seeing a well.
E_METAPHOR_OVERLOAD
I'm not sure qhy, exactly, but CA always struck me as being the epitomy of useless corporate shiteware vendors. All their products are designed and marketed (so far as I can tell) purely to non-technical PHBs, which is to say, people who are not qualified to evaluate whether or not it's any good. Anyone have anything good to say about CA, to correct me? Bueller?
Someone in the article speculates that the spherules might result from water percolating upwards through the soil and freezing when it gets near the surface. To a layperson this is an appealing interpretation, with only one small drawback - the spherules are clearly eroding out of the rocks. If you've been following the daily raw images (click the non-obvious 'multimedia' link at the top of the marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov site, then 'all raw images' turns up in the LHS navbar. Took me ages to work that out) you'll see that Opportunity sawed a few in half when with the RAT when grinding holes in a rock. They're clearly in the rock, as the surface weathers away, eventually they fall out and roll across the surface to low points where they collect. Quite possibly we'd never have seen these if Opportunity hadn't been lucky enough to land in a crater.
Slashdot Mirror
Disclaimer: I just read an Asterix book :)
Forgive me devil's advocating here but... you do realise the average lifetime for a species on earth is about 1 million years? You realise that, like _we're all going to die_ anyway? Perhaps we should start a monster project to sweep the solar system clear of any potentially hazardous objects. That way we can be sure that nothing will prematurely end the reign of the cockroaches who will take over after humanity exterminates itself.
To quote Bill Hicks... "Excuse me, but aren't y'all HIRED KILLERS?? Listen, next time we need some kids napalmed or a few hundred civilians roasted alive, we'll be in touch. 'key?"
'Dude' is the LAST thing you call the military. You might as well address a rabid rottweiler as "ol' buddy".
So, would you also support nation building wars in, say, China, Burma, Pakistan? Georgia? Kazahkstan? AH, right, they've got nukes. OK then, what about all those central african republics?
Although it may be the case that Saddam was an evil tyrant and despot, it's NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS unless or until he starts enacting genocide or other crimes against humanity. At that point it comes down to the UN. For some reason, the UN chose not to believe the US/UK lie^h^h wishful thinking about WMD. Looks like they were right...
Right, cos it's perfectly OK to go to war, against the opposition of most of the civilised world, for economic reasons? Hmmm. I think this strategy may end up biting the US back. Ruling the world by fear and economic might puts the country in a very bad light. This is why so non-Americans use words like "arrogance" and "bullying" when speaking of the U.S. (govt., usually, tho' as a UK cit I find the recent outburst in personalised anti-Americanism rather depressing. )
he's a friend first and a boss second... probably an entertainer third, right?
I hate to shock ya, but where do you think that money came from? That's right, the rest of the world loaned it to America. Oh by the way, you don't appear to have any means of paying it back, and the debt is getting bigger and bigger every year. Eventually the foreign banks / bond investors will have had enough, and Bad Things will be happening to the USA, and oh how the trailer parks will resound with the cries of uneomployed pizza delivery boys. Of course, a nation full of angry, confused morons who believe the rest of the world owes it a living, and who can't understand where all the good times went, will be in a mood to start nasty fights with the perceived enemies who have brought them to this pass. Oh and look at all the military hardware, nukes, chemical and biologocal weapons! These happy thoughts sure keep me warm at nights.
Oh wait, Dubya's brain's already mush...
Of course it's not cost effective, even if you autioned the TV rights to the highest bidder thats a couple of hundred million dollars _maximum_ income. Oh and the retired astronaut's fees on the rubber chicken circuit, chatshows, ghosted autobiographies etc. To paraphrase Dickens... income, $100m, outgoing: $40b, result: misery.
I will be referring back to this post in years to come with the label "Told you so" :)
OK, I'm game - we'll see who can waste more of who's time. Hint: there are five and half billion-odd of us and only 250-something million of you. Why should my valuable time be consumed by fuckheaded US politicos that personally I'd be happy to see burnt at the stake?
I'm really looking forward to the first one of these I see, when I shall send a lengthy email of complaint about how I'm unable to vote in the election, not being American. Hopefully that'll suck up a few minutes of time of some campaign worker and help drain away the Bush funds. Just doin' my bit...
Let's just hope no-one does anything stupid and evil that makes us abandon another city in this way...
Here's one for the utopian space-heads out there: given that spacecraft can only be manufactured on earth, and that a typical MIR / Salyut / ISS type string of tincans has a design lifetime of the order of 10 years, and that there's a distinct limit to the sort of repairs that can be performed on orbit - clearly humans will /never/ make it out of the solar system. To be honest I think Mars is an extraordinarily ambitious target. It's easy to dismiss the obstancles and difficulties in a hand-waving way but in the real world, if it could realistically be built, speculative engineers at the major aerospace cos will be doodling designs on napkins. Small, lemon soaked paper napkins.
Hey don't knock it, that film scared me senseless on TV, aged 18 or so... granted I don't watch horror / suspense type films so perhaps today's Scream-savvy film goers just laugh at it. But there ya go .
Personally I hope they take some inspiration from Volume 2 of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the Alan Moore comic that is, not the abortion of a Hollywood adaption that metaphorically plumetted past my window some time last year. Alternatively just stick obsessively to the Wells original, which ALSO gave me the willies when reading it for the first time as an adult. Perhaps it's the place names and such that give it that vertiginous sense of looking down at your feet and seeing a well. E_METAPHOR_OVERLOAD
Sta pricec?
I'm not sure qhy, exactly, but CA always struck me as being the epitomy of useless corporate shiteware vendors. All their products are designed and marketed (so far as I can tell) purely to non-technical PHBs, which is to say, people who are not qualified to evaluate whether or not it's any good. Anyone have anything good to say about CA, to correct me? Bueller?
To be fair, the number of dupes does seem to have dropped off quite significantly in the last month or two.
Someone in the article speculates that the spherules might result from water percolating upwards through the soil and freezing when it gets near the surface. To a layperson this is an appealing interpretation, with only one small drawback - the spherules are clearly eroding out of the rocks. If you've been following the daily raw images (click the non-obvious 'multimedia' link at the top of the marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov site, then 'all raw images' turns up in the LHS navbar. Took me ages to work that out) you'll see that Opportunity sawed a few in half when with the RAT when grinding holes in a rock. They're clearly in the rock, as the surface weathers away, eventually they fall out and roll across the surface to low points where they collect. Quite possibly we'd never have seen these if Opportunity hadn't been lucky enough to land in a crater.