There is absolutely nothing wrong with being rich. I'd like to be rich. Deflective argument.
The problem is that we are wasting hundreds of billions a year paying interest on accumulated debt that is flat-out going disproportionately to the very wealthiest. We are going to fiscally starve to death servicing a giveaway to them, and then WE PAY THE INTEREST ON THAT DEBT TO THE SAME PEOPLE.
There is nothing wrong with being rich, but supply-side nonsense has been a 4 trillion dollar robbery for the sake of a few wealthy people, for which we will pay with our schools, roads, public health, everything but guns. And we are not even beginning to see the blood. Ten years of steady abatements in taxes, paid for with borrowing with interest paid to the lenders. It's a lose/win situation, with the rich not being remotely able to lose, and everyone else paying their cash and their futures to the advantage of the winners.
We don't have the cash for the ISS, science, and all the rest because we are being bled to death by the tax cuts and the interest for the debt, paid to by rich people who have paid for the campaign, on every level, to excuse them from paying taxes.
Nothing wrong with being rich. But if steal ten bucks from a man on the street, you see jail. Steal four trillion, and you get even more money, plus interest on the money *you already stole*.
We're dying from unpatriotic, wealthy thieves eating us alive. This is not calculus. It's simple kitchen arithmetic.
NASA has no impact on our budget deficit compared to the combined impact of tax cuts and the debt and interest taken to pay for them.
It's true welfare, except for wealthy funds, individuals and corporations, at an order of magnitude bigger than the spending ever contemplated for ADC.
Saying "you hate the rich, hippy" is a klutzy intellectual ju jitsu. It's nothing to do with hating the rich, it's about recognizing a colossal robbery ignored every day on the evening news.
Some conservatives WANT the nation bankrupt. They want no spending whatsoever on things they hate. It's a way of killing public schools, the better to create for-profit schools that will inevitably charge far higher prices per student. It's about private schools tossing out the establishment clause. It's about killing social security, a program bankrupted in '85 by stealing all the money to finance the Reagan miracle. It's about killing public health, national parks, clean air laws, labor laws, everything that requires money.
And it's not about just that, but also diverting money into things they like, like military spending, religious schools, corporate welfare, and most importantly their own pockets. This is a war waged by amoral people who don't have much of a sense of obligation except to their own small society. It's social Darwinism, combined with greed on a cosmic level.
WE DID PAY DOWN THE DEBT DURING THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION.
The current administation does not see this as a good thing. Why?
The interest on the debt, about 17% of our national budget, is paid out to very wealthy interests who do not care to see that debt reduced. It's gravy train! TRILLIONS of dollars for free, free, free!!!
We give a trillion bucks in more tax cuts to those same people, who then get the interest on the debt accumulated to pay them those tax cuts!
We've spent over four trillion in adjusted dollars over 20 years to finance the Reagan miracle of the 80's. And now we are back into deficit spending after all those wonderful years under Clinton where we reduced the government size by 250,000 employees, paid DOWN the debt and ran surpluses.
We are being drained dry by tax cuts past and present.
A LOT is happening because we owe that debt. All fifty states are collapsing monetarily. The school system is dying. We are getting service cuts on all levels. We're starving to death while paying enormous levies because we are funding people who DON'T pay taxes -- the offshore corporations, corps who creatively have no income.. and paying those same people enormous amounts of vigorish interest on the debt we've run up to give them tax cuts!
I can't belive "conservatives" don't believe in kitchen arithetic! The money is REAL, and it's the second biggest line item in the budget.
I do remember '86. The Challenger was sent up because of political pressure from the White House to launch, among other things.
The original poster is correct in essence. You can't do something like this without people dying, and we are so risk adverse we overspend enormously on safe system design.
On the other hand, a certain loss of human life is factored into all construction projects. And no one cares.
This is not a zero-sum game. We could have had the space station, the superconducting collider, a Mars mission, space colonization, powersats, and free food for every kid in the world for a fraction of what we spend on financing our debt.
And the debt was run up financing tax cuts for the richest. the same people eating us alive in interest charges on the debt previously run up.
Again, we could have it all. There doesn't need to be a choice. Who said we can't have all both a SC collider and a station? We're freaking rich!
We are spending all our money on clever people who are draining our veins to the tune of hundreds of billions in interest each year, with no principle payoff. The same people complain about government spending on poor NASA, which has been gutted yearly for decades.
NASA has been heroic. They have launched shuttles with a ball of used gum and a paper clip for over ten years.
It is not a zero-sum game. It's just presented that way.
Cost accounting is one of the most misused tools...
40 billion over 19 years is something like two billion a year. Chicken feed.
The management at NASA is one of the finest and most frugal in the world. They have performed freaking miracles on a shoestring budget.
We spend hundreds of billions a year on armed forces with no real enemy in sight. The "war on terror" is a police action, requiring police resources. Any misuse of it, such as conquering oil fields, has nothing to do with defense.
How much have we spent on our military in the last 19 years? Trillions. That's thousands of billions.
How much have we spent financing the debt we ran up proving supply side economics works (for wealthy people)? We spend 17 percent of every federal tax dollar we pay, each year, to finance that debt. That's HUNDREDS of billions of dollars a YEAR paid to the holders of our debt.
How much have we spent in 19 years to finance the supply side miracle? Let's assume 200 billion a year.
200,000,000,000 x 19 = 3,800,000,000,000. Three trillion, eight hundred billion freaking dollars over nineteen years, to the biggest money redistribution government program in history. Where the hell is all this mew wealth coming from? 3.8 trillion in reinvested wealth in the hands of millions of rich people.
And now, since it's "war" time, we are back to deficit spending, raising the debt limit to 6.5 trillion to finance tax cuts for the same wealthy people getting the debt welfare from the previous accumulated debt.
THAT is where we are bleeding to dead. We are paying enormous treasure out to the wealthy to finance tax cuts for the same wealthy.
And two billion a year is a problem? JEEEZUS.
The space station, like everything else in the space program, was starved to death not only on yearly funding, but on the funding of something to actually DO with the damned thing. You can't get anything done with a damned basically military-run tin can complex that isn't part of a greater purpose. It's doomed. Mars? Forget it, no money, we're spending it on debt financing and military conquest of oil fields.
In my opinion as the oldest and most avid space nut I know, the space station was a waste of time, along with the superspaceplane. A transport vehicle to a station which does nothing, except keep Lockheed Martin in contracts.
Mars would have been even worse. It's the Apollo syndrome all over again: exploration for "science" alone is worthless. You have to send people, civilians and private contrators, up on cheap reusable vehicles to do real things.
Like what? Setting up the who Gerry O'Neill/Princeton space industrialization project, to enable USE of it all. Metals, powersats, colonies, all self-supporting after a long time of expensive investment. It would give us a huge frontier with no moral qualms about killing people already living there, and ultimately enable powersats that would save our collective asses in the century to come.
But we have no collective imagination to do such things. It's too outre. So NASA limps along with one leg and '70's castoff furniture in rusting buildings to save money while we borrow money for other things, like tax cuts for rich people and the future pacification of the world in our interests by military and other means.
"I got to the point where I could park the manual in a space 6" (15 cm) longer than the car. No one with an automatic trans could match that."
Matched and beaten you. With an automatic, in the heart of Lakeview in Chicago. Skill and practice. Never tried it with an stick shift -- six months is a long time to practice parking.
The six inch trick can backfire, as the cars front and back of you will tear hell out of your bumpers when they try to get out. After all, "parking by Braille" is the only way suburban transplants know how to parallel park in Chicago.
I hate to point out the obvious, but the floors wouldn't be curved. They'd be flat. And prolly made of wood. You lay beams across the tube, with supports cut to match the curve. Cover with subflooring, then cover with hardwood planks.
The cool thing about that is that you have natural conduit space under your floor.
Did you ever see cylindrical pressurized lunar habitation modules, back when the U.S. cared about space exploration? Same deal. The diff is that the lunar station are tubes to maintain enormous internal air pressure, compared to this bermed tube/pipe, which keeps out enormous masses of earth and water.
I remember the earth-sheltered homes built in the '70's. The big problem was leakage and cracks. This tube concept solves the cracking problem, and has Hobbity coolness to boot.
Um, as geometry would dictate, if you run a floor down a pipe, a large subfloor space is formed, more than enough for any duct, fiber, wire, or plumbing you can imagine. It'd be good for a lot of storage room, too.
Just remember to reserve the lowest point of the subfloor for the emergency drain pipe you will need in a heavy flood, or if those bored neighborhood geek kids drop a garden hose into your chimney and crank up the water.
Colorado, for instance, takes in $1.70 in Federal highway construction funds for every dollar it pays in Federal taxes.
What "everyone in the U.S. pays for" is the highways systems for empty states. The rail systems for high-density population states, which do pay more taxes than they get back, are a bargain.
Same analysis applies to the city/suburb split in rail and road building costs. The per capita boondoggle is in building highways and roads for areas that don't pay for them.
Curiously, the areas getting massive taxpayer gravy, the low-population areas, are the biggest complainers about taxes.
Let me point out that in most the cases that I know of in which little guys sued Scientology, the Scientologist lawyers numbered in the tens! They rack up millions of dollars in legal costs in the smallest of cases, just to intimidate and overwhelm their opponents.
And then, there is the costs of the appeals if the plaintiff losses. Does the plaintiff have to pay off the 20 million dollar legal bill of the corporation as a prerequisite to starting the appeals process? And appeals can take years. There's one poor guy who fought 20 years to get his settlement even partially paid off.
If the law were to require the loser to pay off the winner, Scientology would be safe forevermore from lawsuits. No one could even dare take them on financially: they've hundreds of millions of dollars in cash reserves.
Same for any major corporation. "Loser Pays" would eliminate any real challenge to their practices.
What I'd like to see is the prevention of a major corporate entity from instigating multiple lawsuit attacks against "enemies". A pattern of legal manipulation should disqualify suits. If a corporation gets magic individual citizen status, it should be treated like one. Right now, no one can really sue them, but they can annihilate anyone they like.
If I've done nothing "extemely" wrong, I've nothing to hide?
I'm sorry, but you're supposing a rule that does not now exist, or will exist. And who judges what is "extremely" wrong?
EVERYONE has done something wrong. If the laws of the nation were magically enforceable, and every "criminal" was brought in to serve sentence, there wouldn't be anyone outside of the prisons!
What this means, this ability to identify "criminals", is that whatever or whoever is in power will be able to reach out and harass or destroy selected people at will. I used to keep up on what Scientolgy used to do to people who criticized it; planted evidence, uncovered "crimes", anything works. Hell, to "get" someone, even if they are lily-white clean of taint, go after the people they care about. It's easy, and fun! Somebody you care about probably did something "wrong" once. If someone who has access to their superdata wants you miserable, they just bring the hammer down on your friend, and let you know that they are doing so because of you. You'll crack.
Not paranoia: I've watched it happen. But usually it's hired detectives and looney cultists that gather or plant the dirt (sometimes literally -- a cannibis plant in your backyard will send you to prison, or at least eat up all your cash reserves in defense costs). Now, all it will take is a call to a "Poindexter" for someone to get the data necessary to get rid of enemies. God, what a boon this is going to be for dirty business, politics and cult loons!
Poindexter did something "extremely" wrong: sell arms to our enemies to finance a private war. He got six months, total. And that was thrown out. Now he is the chief holder of all the information that is ever collected about anyone. He is now a data god.
A man with morality that slippery is now capable of datamining something "wrong" on anyone he damned well wants to. Or he can be ordered to do so.
Bit by bit, obsessives are gathering up tools to give them all the power they ever will want.
On Salon.com a couple of days ago (can't find the link now) it turns out that there is at least one, if not two, "no-fly" lists being compiled by all of the Homeland Security agencies. If you are on the list, you will be questioned and searched everytime you want to fly. Drop your pants.
Mostly the people on the secret list are Green party or left-of-center groups. Amnesty International, things like that. But an Eagle Forum conservative got on the list, and now its contraversial. Just talking down Bush in an airport may get you yanked out of line, and you get your file marked. No lie.
And, oh yes, you can't find out why you are on the lists. National Security. And you have no way of appealing the listing. You can't find out even who put you on the list! You are fucked!
Now they want to have all the data on everyone. Apparently, they tend to look for people who disagree with the government, especially philosophically, when they compile their badboy lists.
What's "extremely" wrong? What these political fanatics are doing to our world in the climate of fear they are generating.
There will be no way out of this forest once we go in it.
There is no sane logical argument that says that any of this police state power will stop one damned bomb from going off anywhere.
And even if it did, I'd rather a hundred WTC's explode rather than live in the world you all are creating.
Live free or die. Freedom sometimes means that people die. And there is no safety in letting Daddy lock you in the basement. Sometimes Daddy is psycho.
I keep reading the point - not just in this thread -- that profit is not revenue, and that expenses must be subtracted before profit is apparent.
Very Biz 101, but, really, if a movie grosses 1 billion dollars, and somehow the bloodsu- I mean, the businessment involved in production, marketing, and distribution somehow spent that 1 billion, then the shareholders, in proper businesslike spirit, should fire the entire lot of them. But they don't. Why?
Because it's a crock, that's why. It's why Microsoft and hundreds of other megacorps don't pay taxes. Business has paid for laws that make sure they don't pay taxes. Hell, they just bought themselves all branches of the Federal government. The only people that will be paying taxes in twenty years will be the middle class. That'll get rid of all those commie social programs... no money to fund them!
As for Steve Ditko, he doesn't get much ink today, but that is because he took Ayn Rand's philosophy a bit too seriously, to say the least, and hasn't come out of his apartment in decades. Or talk to people. Something about his personhood. Lee has no idea what his problem with everyone is. No one does.
Steve! Come out! The Randites are winning! You can talk to us now!
I think you've summed up why Microsoft can foist crappy software on the world. Crappy software needs support. Millions depend on the bugs and the bad design to make a living. It's sort of why cars are so flakily designed: because the service bays are the profit centers for new car dealers.
Linux and the various other nixes don't require the large amount raw manpower for maintenance that Windows requires, at least, not after things shake down. Therefore, a whole industry is threatened.
I know personally how hard it is to get a job right now. Perhaps it is time we start moving on to newer pastures? Most of the tasks necessary to run networks and machines will be automated or eliminated in the next decade, I'd guess. TCO issues will insure that. MS will survive, because of licensing. But our jobs will not.
Time to think of new things to do for a living. Sad.
Marketing is also the process, more and more it seems, of manufacturing need where none existed before.
Classic Business 101 concepts of serving customer needs may work on a local widget-manufacturing level, but organizations like Microsoft or Exxon or the old Standard Oil trusts have been working from a different playbook for over a hundred years. The similarities between classic marketing and what Microsoft does are disappearing. MS more or less has a say in who gets appointed to the heads of the DOJ, the FCC, you name it. They can annihilate any small company they desire with lawsuits, if it so suits them. They can sway, with some work, the direction that information technology will take in the future.
They are not all powerful -- witness Tablet PC's and Bob -- but the fact is, they no longer really need to cater to the market. The market increasingly must kowtow to them.
It's a classic dilemma of capitalism. Companies compete, some win, then the winners consolidate control, form cooperatives, and ultimately remove market forces that can hurt them. Even IT, with its mercurial nature, is not immune to this.
Off on a tangent -- the second reason, after threatened profits, that MS hates Open Source so much is a viceral hatred by Gates et al of the cooperative aspects of software development. It's akin to communism, as far a Gates and other really hardline neocons are concerned. It's an ideological nightmare for them.
The interviews were held during the trials, yes, but not printed until after the trial was over, per Jackson's demand. So, no ethical rule was violated.
Jackson gave that interview because he knew he was going to be overturned by his political enemies on appeal. He was trying to get the record straight before the shit hit the fan.
AFAIAC, noticing that Microsoft was acting like a pack of lying, entitled weasels who didn't think the law applied to them is an act of intelligence, and not a biased one.
Bias is the presence of unwarranted onus -- Jackson was just noting the obvious.
Judge Jackson was a judge who knew, absolutely, that the three judges who were to rule on his case hated his guts bitterly. They had a history of despising his rulings, and attacking him personally, on and off the record.
Keep in mind that the judges were Chicago School adherents -- believers in the notion, heavily relied on in the business community, that monopolies are natural beasts and should not be controlled, and that past rulings on such were errroneous and should be ignored. Judge Jackson had in this regard and others offended these extremely opinionated judges. After he heard they had taken the appeal, he knew he was a dead man. The virulence of the personal attack, rare in such circumstances, as well as the fact that they agreed with his assessment of Microsoft's behavior, and nuked his decision anyway, shows that Jackson had once again judged correctly.
If Jackson had appeared on a throne with cherubs and a personal reference from God, these judges would have slashed him anyway. It was an economic/political act against a judge they considered a monopoly regulator, as well as other liberal crimes -- amazing since he is considered a rather conservative judge.
The "rule" against judges talking Jackson dissects with skill, showing the essential stupidity of it. Why in the world can't a judge answer questions about his thinking process? I wish to God Scalia and Thomas would answer some really tough questions about their Bush v Gore decision. They stand alone against almost all Constitutional scholars with their logic; I'd like them to answer to the people for what they have done.
I don't think the judges would have savaged Jackson had he not been Jackson. It was an attempt by vicious men with a political and economic axe to grind to destroy a fellow judge, and nothing more. Oh, perhaps more: to save Microsoft from their economic enemies, regulators.
Those judges destroyed the judgement against Microsoft almost as effectively as Bush's actions with the DOJ. A shame, since Microsoft lost.
Copyright infringement is not "theft". It used to be a civil offense, until RIAA/MPAA/Scientology wrote themselves a really bad law.
Theft is the illegal removal of property, depriving the owner of its use.
Copying a bad recording of a movie screen costs the MPAA absolutely nothing, BS to the contrary. Copies of that quality are worthless in the U.S. market. They would never be offered for sale.
The issue is control, not money.
But I do hate semantic rape such as copying=theft. Such assaults on logic are now ruling the U.S. in so many ways, not the least of which is the semantic manipulation (lying) now flying to justify an attack on a non-aggressor country.
Semantics is important, perhaps the most important thing in the world... the abuse of word logic can kill millions and steal trillions, ultimately.
Court isnt a place to undo bad legislation. It is a place to undo illegal legislation.
This is indeed the stated philosphy of Scalia and the other "literalists".
The thing is, the title of a judge in the SCOTUS is "Justice". The Court is not just about judging the illegality of laws passed by legislators. It also dispenses ultimate justice.
This concept arouses the ire of "literalists", ie the idea that the Justices are to follow the exact letter of the Constitition in this regard. But frankly, in the case of Scalia and the five far-right members, they are most certainly using their position to ultimately promote their religious and social agenda. Abortions will be made unconstitutional; civil rights legislation will be removed, piece by piece; federal funding of religious groups will be permitted; torture of prisoners will be overlooked; the death penalty hallowed.
Strict interpretation of their power's limits is convenient to the 5 if they want to destroy things they don't like about society. I remember one Justice's snide comments about druggy parents sending their kids to druggy schools last term.
The SCOTUS is absolutely necessary to not only interpret constitutionality, but to insure justice when the President and the Congress go insane, and yes, even when the majority of the people of the U.S. side with the erring government. It took a Supreme Court to stop segregated schools, poll taxes, any number of heinous, popular things.
Railing against activists judges, as Scalia and Thomas do, is insanely hypocritical considering that not only do they intend to use their office to change the religous and political orientation of the U.S., they installed a President of their liking, who agrees with their views and will install even more like-minded Justices on all levels of the judiciary to continue their social revolution.
Their alleged distaste for activism is sneerworthy,
For most of a century now, there has been this meme on the loose which posits that goverment is some evil force, tho sometimes necessary, which is corrupt and needs to be reined in whenever possible.
The goverment is US. I'm not afraid of the guvmint! I'm afraid of my neighbors! Of the collective dumbness of my fellow countrymen!
The evil and wickedness, we ascribe to goverment, is actually our own. It's the classic scapegoat; the animal upon which the collective sins of the people are dumped.
The People loved Hitler, loved McCarthyism, loved Nixon, hate the press, and yes, can be led by the nose. We're going to attack a defeated nation, and this country is in favor of it. Where's the sanity?
I fear my neighbors with cameras. I fear cults with cameras. For example downtown Clearwater, Florida, is carpeted with high rez and telescopic cameras. Why? What are they doing with them? Why are they recording everyone's movements?
I can deal with a policeman watching a street corner remotely. I can deal with a paranoid security force watching for terrorists, since I'm not Arabic-looking, I suppose. But I am in stark terror of corporate cameras, private investigator cameras, and private police service cameras. The Guvmint is ultimately under control fo the citizenry, no matter how deluded they can be. But the private cams... what will they evolve into?
All states, I think, make it a crime to wear a mask, or to conceal one's identity. Even on Halloween, cops will stop you and ask you to unmask. I can understand why.
The only way around it is to form a religion that requires you to hide your identity. Takers, anyone? This dodge worked for many others; mayhap we should use that legal blindness to our advantage.
Actually, due to a fucked-up 1930's Supreme Court decision, the Christian Scientists obtained immunity from child abuse, at least the medical kind. Yes, they, and similar religions, can let their kids die of hideous and sometimes preventable sickness, and they are scott-free.
Remember this as you pass by CS reading rooms. Screams of children dying, thinking they aren't praying hard enough for God to save them.
Ah, America. Mark Twain wanted to kick Mary Baker Eddy's ass, and he was right. But now he is called a "religious bigot" because he pointed out that she was a con. And children will pay for her con, forever.
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There is absolutely nothing wrong with being rich. I'd like to be rich. Deflective argument.
The problem is that we are wasting hundreds of billions a year paying interest on accumulated debt that is flat-out going disproportionately to the very wealthiest. We are going to fiscally starve to death servicing a giveaway to them, and then WE PAY THE INTEREST ON THAT DEBT TO THE SAME PEOPLE.
There is nothing wrong with being rich, but supply-side nonsense has been a 4 trillion dollar robbery for the sake of a few wealthy people, for which we will pay with our schools, roads, public health, everything but guns. And we are not even beginning to see the blood. Ten years of steady abatements in taxes, paid for with borrowing with interest paid to the lenders. It's a lose/win situation, with the rich not being remotely able to lose, and everyone else paying their cash and their futures to the advantage of the winners.
We don't have the cash for the ISS, science, and all the rest because we are being bled to death by the tax cuts and the interest for the debt, paid to by rich people who have paid for the campaign, on every level, to excuse them from paying taxes.
Nothing wrong with being rich. But if steal ten bucks from a man on the street, you see jail. Steal four trillion, and you get even more money, plus interest on the money *you already stole*.
We're dying from unpatriotic, wealthy thieves eating us alive. This is not calculus. It's simple kitchen arithmetic.
NASA has no impact on our budget deficit compared to the combined impact of tax cuts and the debt and interest taken to pay for them.
It's true welfare, except for wealthy funds, individuals and corporations, at an order of magnitude bigger than the spending ever contemplated for ADC.
Saying "you hate the rich, hippy" is a klutzy intellectual ju jitsu. It's nothing to do with hating the rich, it's about recognizing a colossal robbery ignored every day on the evening news.
Some conservatives WANT the nation bankrupt. They want no spending whatsoever on things they hate. It's a way of killing public schools, the better to create for-profit schools that will inevitably charge far higher prices per student. It's about private schools tossing out the establishment clause. It's about killing social security, a program bankrupted in '85 by stealing all the money to finance the Reagan miracle. It's about killing public health, national parks, clean air laws, labor laws, everything that requires money.
And it's not about just that, but also diverting money into things they like, like military spending, religious schools, corporate welfare, and most importantly their own pockets. This is a war waged by amoral people who don't have much of a sense of obligation except to their own small society. It's social Darwinism, combined with greed on a cosmic level.
WE DID PAY DOWN THE DEBT DURING THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION.
The current administation does not see this as a good thing. Why?
The interest on the debt, about 17% of our national budget, is paid out to very wealthy interests who do not care to see that debt reduced. It's gravy train! TRILLIONS of dollars for free, free, free!!!
We give a trillion bucks in more tax cuts to those same people, who then get the interest on the debt accumulated to pay them those tax cuts!
We've spent over four trillion in adjusted dollars over 20 years to finance the Reagan miracle of the 80's. And now we are back into deficit spending after all those wonderful years under Clinton where we reduced the government size by 250,000 employees, paid DOWN the debt and ran surpluses.
We are being drained dry by tax cuts past and present.
A LOT is happening because we owe that debt. All fifty states are collapsing monetarily. The school system is dying. We are getting service cuts on all levels. We're starving to death while paying enormous levies because we are funding people who DON'T pay taxes -- the offshore corporations, corps who creatively have no income.. and paying those same people enormous amounts of vigorish interest on the debt we've run up to give them tax cuts!
I can't belive "conservatives" don't believe in kitchen arithetic! The money is REAL, and it's the second biggest line item in the budget.
I do remember '86. The Challenger was sent up because of political pressure from the White House to launch, among other things.
The original poster is correct in essence. You can't do something like this without people dying, and we are so risk adverse we overspend enormously on safe system design.
On the other hand, a certain loss of human life is factored into all construction projects. And no one cares.
It is all about perception.
This is not a zero-sum game. We could have had the space station, the superconducting collider, a Mars mission, space colonization, powersats, and free food for every kid in the world for a fraction of what we spend on financing our debt.
And the debt was run up financing tax cuts for the richest. the same people eating us alive in interest charges on the debt previously run up.
Again, we could have it all. There doesn't need to be a choice. Who said we can't have all both a SC collider and a station? We're freaking rich!
We are spending all our money on clever people who are draining our veins to the tune of hundreds of billions in interest each year, with no principle payoff. The same people complain about government spending on poor NASA, which has been gutted yearly for decades.
NASA has been heroic. They have launched shuttles with a ball of used gum and a paper clip for over ten years.
It is not a zero-sum game. It's just presented that way.
Cost accounting is one of the most misused tools...
40 billion over 19 years is something like two billion a year. Chicken feed.
The management at NASA is one of the finest and most frugal in the world. They have performed freaking miracles on a shoestring budget.
We spend hundreds of billions a year on armed forces with no real enemy in sight. The "war on terror" is a police action, requiring police resources. Any misuse of it, such as conquering oil fields, has nothing to do with defense.
How much have we spent on our military in the last 19 years? Trillions. That's thousands of billions.
How much have we spent financing the debt we ran up proving supply side economics works (for wealthy people)? We spend 17 percent of every federal tax dollar we pay, each year, to finance that debt. That's HUNDREDS of billions of dollars a YEAR paid to the holders of our debt.
How much have we spent in 19 years to finance the supply side miracle? Let's assume 200 billion a year.
200,000,000,000 x 19 = 3,800,000,000,000. Three trillion, eight hundred billion freaking dollars over nineteen years, to the biggest money redistribution government program in history. Where the hell is all this mew wealth coming from? 3.8 trillion in reinvested wealth in the hands of millions of rich people.
And now, since it's "war" time, we are back to deficit spending, raising the debt limit to 6.5 trillion to finance tax cuts for the same wealthy people getting the debt welfare from the previous accumulated debt.
THAT is where we are bleeding to dead. We are paying enormous treasure out to the wealthy to finance tax cuts for the same wealthy.
And two billion a year is a problem? JEEEZUS.
The space station, like everything else in the space program, was starved to death not only on yearly funding, but on the funding of something to actually DO with the damned thing. You can't get anything done with a damned basically military-run tin can complex that isn't part of a greater purpose. It's doomed. Mars? Forget it, no money, we're spending it on debt financing and military conquest of oil fields.
In my opinion as the oldest and most avid space nut I know, the space station was a waste of time, along with the superspaceplane. A transport vehicle to a station which does nothing, except keep Lockheed Martin in contracts.
Mars would have been even worse. It's the Apollo syndrome all over again: exploration for "science" alone is worthless. You have to send people, civilians and private contrators, up on cheap reusable vehicles to do real things.
Like what? Setting up the who Gerry O'Neill/Princeton space industrialization project, to enable USE of it all. Metals, powersats, colonies, all self-supporting after a long time of expensive investment. It would give us a huge frontier with no moral qualms about killing people already living there, and ultimately enable powersats that would save our collective asses in the century to come.
But we have no collective imagination to do such things. It's too outre. So NASA limps along with one leg and '70's castoff furniture in rusting buildings to save money while we borrow money for other things, like tax cuts for rich people and the future pacification of the world in our interests by military and other means.
Ad astra, someday. not today.
"I got to the point where I could park the manual in a space 6" (15 cm) longer than the car. No one with an automatic trans could match that."
Matched and beaten you. With an automatic, in the heart of Lakeview in Chicago. Skill and practice. Never tried it with an stick shift -- six months is a long time to practice parking.
The six inch trick can backfire, as the cars front and back of you will tear hell out of your bumpers when they try to get out. After all, "parking by Braille" is the only way suburban transplants know how to parallel park in Chicago.
I hate to point out the obvious, but the floors wouldn't be curved. They'd be flat. And prolly made of wood. You lay beams across the tube, with supports cut to match the curve. Cover with subflooring, then cover with hardwood planks.
The cool thing about that is that you have natural conduit space under your floor.
Did you ever see cylindrical pressurized lunar habitation modules, back when the U.S. cared about space exploration? Same deal. The diff is that the lunar station are tubes to maintain enormous internal air pressure, compared to this bermed tube/pipe, which keeps out enormous masses of earth and water.
I remember the earth-sheltered homes built in the '70's. The big problem was leakage and cracks. This tube concept solves the cracking problem, and has Hobbity coolness to boot.
Um, as geometry would dictate, if you run a floor down a pipe, a large subfloor space is formed, more than enough for any duct, fiber, wire, or plumbing you can imagine. It'd be good for a lot of storage room, too.
Just remember to reserve the lowest point of the subfloor for the emergency drain pipe you will need in a heavy flood, or if those bored neighborhood geek kids drop a garden hose into your chimney and crank up the water.
Colorado, for instance, takes in $1.70 in Federal highway construction funds for every dollar it pays in Federal taxes.
What "everyone in the U.S. pays for" is the highways systems for empty states. The rail systems for high-density population states, which do pay more taxes than they get back, are a bargain.
Same analysis applies to the city/suburb split in rail and road building costs. The per capita boondoggle is in building highways and roads for areas that don't pay for them.
Curiously, the areas getting massive taxpayer gravy, the low-population areas, are the biggest complainers about taxes.
Let me point out that in most the cases that I know of in which little guys sued Scientology, the Scientologist lawyers numbered in the tens! They rack up millions of dollars in legal costs in the smallest of cases, just to intimidate and overwhelm their opponents.
And then, there is the costs of the appeals if the plaintiff losses. Does the plaintiff have to pay off the 20 million dollar legal bill of the corporation as a prerequisite to starting the appeals process? And appeals can take years. There's one poor guy who fought 20 years to get his settlement even partially paid off.
If the law were to require the loser to pay off the winner, Scientology would be safe forevermore from lawsuits. No one could even dare take them on financially: they've hundreds of millions of dollars in cash reserves.
Same for any major corporation. "Loser Pays" would eliminate any real challenge to their practices.
What I'd like to see is the prevention of a major corporate entity from instigating multiple lawsuit attacks against "enemies". A pattern of legal manipulation should disqualify suits. If a corporation gets magic individual citizen status, it should be treated like one. Right now, no one can really sue them, but they can annihilate anyone they like.
If I've done nothing "extemely" wrong, I've nothing to hide?
I'm sorry, but you're supposing a rule that does not now exist, or will exist. And who judges what is "extremely" wrong?
EVERYONE has done something wrong. If the laws of the nation were magically enforceable, and every "criminal" was brought in to serve sentence, there wouldn't be anyone outside of the prisons!
What this means, this ability to identify "criminals", is that whatever or whoever is in power will be able to reach out and harass or destroy selected people at will. I used to keep up on what Scientolgy used to do to people who criticized it; planted evidence, uncovered "crimes", anything works. Hell, to "get" someone, even if they are lily-white clean of taint, go after the people they care about. It's easy, and fun! Somebody you care about probably did something "wrong" once. If someone who has access to their superdata wants you miserable, they just bring the hammer down on your friend, and let you know that they are doing so because of you. You'll crack.
Not paranoia: I've watched it happen. But usually it's hired detectives and looney cultists that gather or plant the dirt (sometimes literally -- a cannibis plant in your backyard will send you to prison, or at least eat up all your cash reserves in defense costs). Now, all it will take is a call to a "Poindexter" for someone to get the data necessary to get rid of enemies. God, what a boon this is going to be for dirty business, politics and cult loons!
Poindexter did something "extremely" wrong: sell arms to our enemies to finance a private war. He got six months, total. And that was thrown out. Now he is the chief holder of all the information that is ever collected about anyone. He is now a data god.
A man with morality that slippery is now capable of datamining something "wrong" on anyone he damned well wants to. Or he can be ordered to do so.
Bit by bit, obsessives are gathering up tools to give them all the power they ever will want.
On Salon.com a couple of days ago (can't find the link now) it turns out that there is at least one, if not two, "no-fly" lists being compiled by all of the Homeland Security agencies. If you are on the list, you will be questioned and searched everytime you want to fly. Drop your pants.
Mostly the people on the secret list are Green party or left-of-center groups. Amnesty International, things like that. But an Eagle Forum conservative got on the list, and now its contraversial. Just talking down Bush in an airport may get you yanked out of line, and you get your file marked. No lie.
And, oh yes, you can't find out why you are on the lists. National Security. And you have no way of appealing the listing. You can't find out even who put you on the list! You are fucked!
Now they want to have all the data on everyone. Apparently, they tend to look for people who disagree with the government, especially philosophically, when they compile their badboy lists.
What's "extremely" wrong? What these political fanatics are doing to our world in the climate of fear they are generating.
There will be no way out of this forest once we go in it.
There is no sane logical argument that says that any of this police state power will stop one damned bomb from going off anywhere.
And even if it did, I'd rather a hundred WTC's explode rather than live in the world you all are creating.
Live free or die. Freedom sometimes means that people die. And there is no safety in letting Daddy lock you in the basement. Sometimes Daddy is psycho.
I keep reading the point - not just in this thread -- that profit is not revenue, and that expenses must be subtracted before profit is apparent.
Very Biz 101, but, really, if a movie grosses 1 billion dollars, and somehow the bloodsu- I mean, the businessment involved in production, marketing, and distribution somehow spent that 1 billion, then the shareholders, in proper businesslike spirit, should fire the entire lot of them. But they don't. Why?
Because it's a crock, that's why. It's why Microsoft and hundreds of other megacorps don't pay taxes. Business has paid for laws that make sure they don't pay taxes. Hell, they just bought themselves all branches of the Federal government. The only people that will be paying taxes in twenty years will be the middle class. That'll get rid of all those commie social programs... no money to fund them!
As for Steve Ditko, he doesn't get much ink today, but that is because he took Ayn Rand's philosophy a bit too seriously, to say the least, and hasn't come out of his apartment in decades. Or talk to people. Something about his personhood. Lee has no idea what his problem with everyone is. No one does.
Steve! Come out! The Randites are winning! You can talk to us now!
I think you've summed up why Microsoft can foist crappy software on the world. Crappy software needs support. Millions depend on the bugs and the bad design to make a living. It's sort of why cars are so flakily designed: because the service bays are the profit centers for new car dealers.
Linux and the various other nixes don't require the large amount raw manpower for maintenance that Windows requires, at least, not after things shake down. Therefore, a whole industry is threatened.
I know personally how hard it is to get a job right now. Perhaps it is time we start moving on to newer pastures? Most of the tasks necessary to run networks and machines will be automated or eliminated in the next decade, I'd guess. TCO issues will insure that. MS will survive, because of licensing. But our jobs will not.
Time to think of new things to do for a living. Sad.
Marketing is also the process, more and more it seems, of manufacturing need where none existed before.
Classic Business 101 concepts of serving customer needs may work on a local widget-manufacturing level, but organizations like Microsoft or Exxon or the old Standard Oil trusts have been working from a different playbook for over a hundred years. The similarities between classic marketing and what Microsoft does are disappearing. MS more or less has a say in who gets appointed to the heads of the DOJ, the FCC, you name it. They can annihilate any small company they desire with lawsuits, if it so suits them. They can sway, with some work, the direction that information technology will take in the future.
They are not all powerful -- witness Tablet PC's and Bob -- but the fact is, they no longer really need to cater to the market. The market increasingly must kowtow to them.
It's a classic dilemma of capitalism. Companies compete, some win, then the winners consolidate control, form cooperatives, and ultimately remove market forces that can hurt them. Even IT, with its mercurial nature, is not immune to this.
Off on a tangent -- the second reason, after threatened profits, that MS hates Open Source so much is a viceral hatred by Gates et al of the cooperative aspects of software development. It's akin to communism, as far a Gates and other really hardline neocons are concerned. It's an ideological nightmare for them.
:) Mike Doyle better stay off of small commuter planes if it ever looks like he'll pull it off.
The interviews were held during the trials, yes, but not printed until after the trial was over, per Jackson's demand. So, no ethical rule was violated.
Jackson gave that interview because he knew he was going to be overturned by his political enemies on appeal. He was trying to get the record straight before the shit hit the fan.
AFAIAC, noticing that Microsoft was acting like a pack of lying, entitled weasels who didn't think the law applied to them is an act of intelligence, and not a biased one.
Bias is the presence of unwarranted onus -- Jackson was just noting the obvious.
Judge Jackson was a judge who knew, absolutely, that the three judges who were to rule on his case hated his guts bitterly. They had a history of despising his rulings, and attacking him personally, on and off the record.
Keep in mind that the judges were Chicago School adherents -- believers in the notion, heavily relied on in the business community, that monopolies are natural beasts and should not be controlled, and that past rulings on such were errroneous and should be ignored. Judge Jackson had in this regard and others offended these extremely opinionated judges. After he heard they had taken the appeal, he knew he was a dead man. The virulence of the personal attack, rare in such circumstances, as well as the fact that they agreed with his assessment of Microsoft's behavior, and nuked his decision anyway, shows that Jackson had once again judged correctly.
If Jackson had appeared on a throne with cherubs and a personal reference from God, these judges would have slashed him anyway. It was an economic/political act against a judge they considered a monopoly regulator, as well as other liberal crimes -- amazing since he is considered a rather conservative judge.
The "rule" against judges talking Jackson dissects with skill, showing the essential stupidity of it. Why in the world can't a judge answer questions about his thinking process? I wish to God Scalia and Thomas would answer some really tough questions about their Bush v Gore decision. They stand alone against almost all Constitutional scholars with their logic; I'd like them to answer to the people for what they have done.
I don't think the judges would have savaged Jackson had he not been Jackson. It was an attempt by vicious men with a political and economic axe to grind to destroy a fellow judge, and nothing more. Oh, perhaps more: to save Microsoft from their economic enemies, regulators.
Those judges destroyed the judgement against Microsoft almost as effectively as Bush's actions with the DOJ. A shame, since Microsoft lost.
If you are rich enough, you can't be touched.
Copyright infringement is not "theft". It used to be a civil offense, until RIAA/MPAA/Scientology wrote themselves a really bad law.
Theft is the illegal removal of property, depriving the owner of its use.
Copying a bad recording of a movie screen costs the MPAA absolutely nothing, BS to the contrary. Copies of that quality are worthless in the U.S. market. They would never be offered for sale.
The issue is control, not money.
But I do hate semantic rape such as copying=theft. Such assaults on logic are now ruling the U.S. in so many ways, not the least of which is the semantic manipulation (lying) now flying to justify an attack on a non-aggressor country.
Semantics is important, perhaps the most important thing in the world... the abuse of word logic can kill millions and steal trillions, ultimately.
Intelligent women are really scary, aren't they?
Court isnt a place to undo bad legislation. It is a place to undo illegal legislation.
This is indeed the stated philosphy of Scalia and the other "literalists".
The thing is, the title of a judge in the SCOTUS is "Justice". The Court is not just about judging the illegality of laws passed by legislators. It also dispenses ultimate justice.
This concept arouses the ire of "literalists", ie the idea that the Justices are to follow the exact letter of the Constitition in this regard. But frankly, in the case of Scalia and the five far-right members, they are most certainly using their position to ultimately promote their religious and social agenda. Abortions will be made unconstitutional; civil rights legislation will be removed, piece by piece; federal funding of religious groups will be permitted; torture of prisoners will be overlooked; the death penalty hallowed.
Strict interpretation of their power's limits is convenient to the 5 if they want to destroy things they don't like about society. I remember one Justice's snide comments about druggy parents sending their kids to druggy schools last term.
The SCOTUS is absolutely necessary to not only interpret constitutionality, but to insure justice when the President and the Congress go insane, and yes, even when the majority of the people of the U.S. side with the erring government. It took a Supreme Court to stop segregated schools, poll taxes, any number of heinous, popular things.
Railing against activists judges, as Scalia and Thomas do, is insanely hypocritical considering that not only do they intend to use their office to change the religous and political orientation of the U.S., they installed a President of their liking, who agrees with their views and will install even more like-minded Justices on all levels of the judiciary to continue their social revolution.
Their alleged distaste for activism is sneerworthy,
Government, government, government.
For most of a century now, there has been this meme on the loose which posits that goverment is some evil force, tho sometimes necessary, which is corrupt and needs to be reined in whenever possible.
The goverment is US. I'm not afraid of the guvmint! I'm afraid of my neighbors! Of the collective dumbness of my fellow countrymen!
The evil and wickedness, we ascribe to goverment, is actually our own. It's the classic scapegoat; the animal upon which the collective sins of the people are dumped.
The People loved Hitler, loved McCarthyism, loved Nixon, hate the press, and yes, can be led by the nose. We're going to attack a defeated nation, and this country is in favor of it. Where's the sanity?
I fear my neighbors with cameras. I fear cults with cameras. For example downtown Clearwater, Florida, is carpeted with high rez and telescopic cameras. Why? What are they doing with them? Why are they recording everyone's movements?
I can deal with a policeman watching a street corner remotely. I can deal with a paranoid security force watching for terrorists, since I'm not Arabic-looking, I suppose. But I am in stark terror of corporate cameras, private investigator cameras, and private police service cameras. The Guvmint is ultimately under control fo the citizenry, no matter how deluded they can be. But the private cams... what will they evolve into?
I believe that falls under trademark law, not copyright law. You can trademark your image.
And if not, it's just an example of rights businesses and corporations have that individuals don't.
In a libertarian society, which we developing, you get what rights you can pay for. Sadly.
All states, I think, make it a crime to wear a mask, or to conceal one's identity. Even on Halloween, cops will stop you and ask you to unmask. I can understand why.
The only way around it is to form a religion that requires you to hide your identity. Takers, anyone? This dodge worked for many others; mayhap we should use that legal blindness to our advantage.
Actually, due to a fucked-up 1930's Supreme Court decision, the Christian Scientists obtained immunity from child abuse, at least the medical kind. Yes, they, and similar religions, can let their kids die of hideous and sometimes preventable sickness, and they are scott-free.
Remember this as you pass by CS reading rooms. Screams of children dying, thinking they aren't praying hard enough for God to save them.
Ah, America. Mark Twain wanted to kick Mary Baker Eddy's ass, and he was right. But now he is called a "religious bigot" because he pointed out that she was a con. And children will pay for her con, forever.