Technically, "to blog" isn't all that much of a neologism: "to log" (as in "to make an entry in a logbook') is a venerable verb that has long been accepted.
Oh yeah, and stop listening to the radio while you're driving.
Listening to the radio doesn't support anybody. They're spending money to broadcast these programs. Having you listen to the broadcast does them no good at all, unless they can convince you to give them some money to cover their expenses. Listen to the radio all you want, but boycott the advertisers.
My mistake. You may have implied that we're no better than the terrorists, but I probably was reading too much into it.
The military has been misrepresenting the intelligence of their so-called "smart" bombs. So now what? They're still smarter than the "stupid" bombs--should we go back to using those?
Using no bombs at all would be even better, of course. It's unclear whether the U.S. government has done enough to avoid using bombs, before resorting to them. That is something worth debating.
But why does everybody insist that this war is about trading innocent lives for oil?
Do we get oil out of this war? Yes. A nation acts to preserve its interests. Big surprise. I tend to prefer that to nations that spend their treasure without preservering their interests--especially when the treasure happens to be my tax dollars and value-adding labor!
But isn't it just possible that there's other good reasons for using "smart" bombs in Afghanistan, or Iraq? Moral reasons? Ethical reasons? Practical reasons? I've heard strong arguments in support of these reasons. I hope your counter-arguments consist of more than simply "this war is about trading innocent lives for oil".
I think the U.S. has a tendency to mistreat and kill innocent people as part of its institutional preservation of its interests. I think that many have suffered in the U.S.'s quest for oil.
But I think that even if we had no oil interests in the middle east, there could still be excellent reasons to go in there with the best weapons our technology can provide us. And I think that we have those reasons now. We're protecting our oil at the same time? Well, what did you expect?
I'm not one of those squeamish 1984 wankers you mentioned. So it's not like I'm being hypocritical here. Also, I don't think there's any inherent contradiction in abhorring tyranny and being squeamish about armed resistance. Certainly men like Ghandi and Mandela have demonstrated that it's possible to do both at the same time, effectively.
Also, it's not "when" my peaceful resistance fails, it's "if". And it's a pretty big "if", too. Perhaps we should both do some research on the subject: how many peaceful resistances have failed, in the past 100 years? In the failure cases, how many of them would have succeeded if the resisters had been armed? We know Ghandi succeeded. We know Mandela succeeded. We know the Chinese students in Tiananmen Square failed. We also know that they were up against the Chinese Army, so it's pretty obvious that personal firearms wouldn't have helped much. I guess it's debateable whether or not a sufficiently large percentage of the Chinese population would have had better luck armed, as opposed to not armed. We can debate that, if you like.
My idea of "authorities" does not stop at the local PD. I agree completely with the idea that it's much bigger than that. Which is exactly why your personal firearms seem so pointless in this context.
This isn't the Wild West, where "authority" is the local Sherriff, and once you take him out you're free to make your own rules. You've got a much bigger battle to fight nowadays, one you won't be able to win by shooting people.
Sure, the decisions are being made by a faceless conspiracy, but who do you think is going to come and get you? Spooky mind-control men in black trench coats? Policy-makers? No, it's going to be local PD, or a SWAT team, or National Guard troops, or U.S. Army troops, or whatever. Real people, with real lives, just like yours. If killing any of them would make an institutional difference, then maybe killing them would be justified--it would certainly be effective, anyway. But killing grunts won't make a difference. Not in this kind of war, anyway. So why do it?
And what if nobody comes for you? What if they just keep eroding your freedoms little by little, until it's far too late to fight back? What if things just keep going on the way they are today, only always getting just a little bit worse? Then who are you going to shoot? Who would you shoot, today, this minute, to safeguard your freedoms?
Your guns are tools for killing people, not tools for effecting social change. If you can give some reasonable scenario in our nation's future where the two not only overlap, but where bringing social change by killing people is the most effective and humane solution, please let me know. My arguments are based on the assumption that such a scenario does not exist (though it has in the past). If you could show that it does, then I'd probably reconsider my position on personal firearms.
Enthusiastic, maybe. Hysterical, not so much. But I'm glad you're having fun.
You have a valid point. I didn't mean to imply that "enemy soldiers are people, too, so don't shoot them, talk to them".
Being willing to fight for my principles is a laudable thing. Being willing to fight a losting battle against overwhelming odds, for my principles, is both laudable and courageous, I think.
But claiming that my personal firearms will make any sort of difference at all in an armed rebellion against the U.S. government is foolishness. The only difference they'll make is on the personal level. They'll make a personal difference to the SWAT team member I shoot, and a personal difference to his family. They'll make a personal difference to me, too: I'll derive personal satisfaction from sticking it to The Man (by shooting some SWAT guy), and I'll experience personal pain (and probably personal death) once the return fire starts coming in.
My personal firearms won't make an institutional difference of any kind. Maybe, if there were thousands like me... but like I said, if there were thousands like me, we could probably get better results by nonviolent means.
I think that it's somewhat different for soldiers: they're agents of the State, which is an institution. Individually, they only have personal effects, but in aggregate they're a tool of the State to further the State's policies. If I agree that the State must sometimes use force to protect its interests, and if I trust the State to use its force wisely, then I might join the army and support my State as a soldier. And I'd go to battle not as an individual, but as one of thousands, all agreed upon the necessity of this course of action.
If we were to raise a rebel army in this country though, by the time it got big enough to make an institutional difference, it would be big enough to make that difference without resorting to violence.
Thus, personal firearms do not appear to be at all useful as tools for fighting oppression in modern, civilized nations. Because of this, I have little patience for 2nd-amendment apologies that assume that personal firearms are useful in this way.
I say that if you're serious about fighting the regime, you should be looking at the constitutional clause about abolishing the current government and replacing it with something new. Think of what change--real change--might come about if the NRA put all its lobbying power behind that idea!
All this ranting about "right to bear arms" is a distraction, a folly. Defending an expensive and dangerous leisure activity with patriotic rhetoric and lofty speeches about principles and rights is naive at best, and willfully misleading at worst. Owning and operating firearms is a privilege and a luxury. If you really care about personal freedoms and undermining an authoritarian State, there's more honest, less violent, better ways to go about it.
If you're going to say "bombing Afghanistan makes us no better than the terrorists", then please back it up.
Show me the civilian casualties. Show me the civilians who were targeted on purpose. Show me either the official military plans to bomb civilians, or the unofficial military plot to bomb the civilians. Show me civilians who died for any other reason than because they were hanging around military targets.
People die in war. Not all of them signed up for it. No matter how much you may be pained by this fact, saying it aloud or writing it down always seems callous and uncaring. But it's sad because it's true.
"We won't fight wars, because people die," is an adimirable sentiment, and one we should all agree on. Until we do, though, it's a pretty stupid principle to base foreign policy on.
Sweatshops as you call them give jobs and money to people who would otherwise go without.
See, I've always suspected that was the case. What would be unacceptable working conditions in this country could very well be hard work for an honest wage, in a country that doesn't have the luxury of a 40-hour, 5-day work week.
On the other hand, what if the "sweatshop" in question neglects the safety of its workers? Is that just part of the toil and trouble of a developing nation? Or is that a company that refuses to spend any money on worker health if not forced to--in spite of the fact that they're saving millions of dollars by operating in the Third World? Working hard for a living wage is one thing. Being mistreated and exploited by a sweatshop because, in spite of its inhumane policies, you have to work somewhere, and suffering in a "sweatshop" may be a better way to die than lying in the gutter--that's something else entirely.
I'm not saying Nike runs the second kind of "sweatshop", but if they were, no amount of "things are different over there" arguments can excuse the behavior.
Because, of course, your life would be much better if there were no humans mediating between you and the machines.
And you know what? Any time you want to be treated like a human being, all you have to do is smile, or be polite, or (apparently) have breasts. I know you're capable of doing at least two of those things.
Wake me up when they deploy a perfect system, that handles all eventualities without error, mistreatment, or accidental cruelty.
In the mean time, give me people who respond to a smile any day.
I have three 'votes' on what the authorities ultimately can and can't do: HK93, Mauser P.08, and Enfield #1 mk3.
You've got to be kidding. When the authorities come to debate the issue with you, what, exactly, are you going to do? Shoot some cop, soldier, or CTU agent? Some guy with a job to do, and maybe a family, or a dog, or whatever back home waiting for him?
Then what? The authorities are going to back down and let you keep whatever rights they were planning to take away from you? Please.
If you're lucky, you'll get that grunt's commander in your sights before they gun you down, but it's not like he sets policy either. Or maybe you're betting that once the SWAT team figures out that the job involves getting shot at, they'll call the whole thing off.
Of course, if you get enough citizens armed and ready to fight, you might have some impact--the exact same impact a large number of citizens would have if they engaged in peacful noncompliance.
Would people get shot during a nonviolent protest? Probably. Would people get shot during a violent protest? Most definitely. So where's the benefit to your solution?
If the SWAT team does desert, it won't be because you're shooting at them--it'll be because they've heard a lot of reasonable debate on the subject, and you position makes much more sense to them than the other guy's. So there they are, teetering between their responsibility to their employer and their growing conviction that their employer is wrong. They're having second thoughts about this whole raid. Maybe you're a nice guy, they're thinking. Maybe you have a good point. Maybe taking you down would be the wrong thing to do. Maybe it's time to take a stand and make a change.
And then you start shooting at them. Nice going, Einstein. Now you, and your family, and your dog, and your mp3 collection--gassed, and firebombed, and mercilessly slaughtered. And the media will carry the story of another crazy gun nut getting shut down before he could endanger innocent lives.
Of course, if you don't think your arguments could make a change, or you don't relish joining thousands of other dissenters in prison for your beliefs, or you've seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid one too many times, then maybe going out in a violent, bloody, and futile blaze of glory might seem pretty appealing. It's certainly more cinematic than sitting in prison for a couple decades, like Nelson Mandela. Certainly more heroic than traveling the countryside, educating citizens with your example of passive resitance, like Gandhi. Congratulations! Vin Diesel will star in the MTV movie of your extreme rebellion.
What do your "votes" have to offer that peaceful protest does not, except more dead people and less calm discussion?
By all means, excercise your rights! Keep those guns, enjoy them. But if you think they're going to help you make a difference during some armed rebellion, you may want to consider moving to the United States of Some Parallel Universe. I hear that there, the 2nd Amendment guarantees everybody's right to own a main battle tank, a joint strike fighter, mechanized artillery, a recon satellite, and a cruise missile.
Could be. Not that it will matter, of course. What did we learn at the beginning of the Space Race? That putting the first satellite into orbit didn't mean fuck all. Then we learned that putting the first man into orbit didn't mean fuck all. Then we learned that putting the first man on the Moon didn't mean fuck all. I say, let China put the first man on Mars. Let them spend untold resources developing the technology. Meanwhile, let others watch and learn. In the end, it's the nation who puts the tenth man on mars, or the 20th, or the 30th through the 50th, or the first batch of 10 simultaneous mars walks, or the first permanent mars habitation to support more than 5 residents... those nations will be the big winners. The first man on mars will be a footnote, in the end, and the Martian era will be counted from a later, much more spectacular endeavor.
Hell, in 100 years, the Apollo missions will be a short prologue to the real story of Moon exploration.
I don't have my books here, but I worked it out once, and if you had a source of gold on Earth, for free, and all you had to do was lift it to orbit to sell it, you would lose money on fuel and non-replaceble parts.
Gold isn't like the speed of light, you know. Its value does actually change based on context.
What if you had a source of gold on earth, and a bunch of belt miners in space? What if the asteroid belt turns out to contain mind-boggling amounts of nifty materials that are rare or nonexistent on earth? And what if gold-plated sprockets were a vital component in belt-mining operations?
Might not your terrestrial gold be traded for enough Wheatonium (named after legendary space nerd Wil Wheaton, of course) to pay for your mining and lift costs, and buy you yet another house in the Bahamas (or what's left of them, or whatever)?
Far-fetched? Maybe. But the value of gold is worth no more and no less than whatever value someone is willing to give you for it. If there's someone in space who's willing to make it worth your while, then the Golden Rocket could be the most profitable endeavor ever, instead of the loss-leader you confidently claim it would be.
This isn't bells and whistles, this is R&D. The best search engine in the world will still be obsolete in 5 years.
What we're really looking for is better ways to organize data for intuitive retrieval by humans. The relational database is a precursor. The rumblings we're hearing about moving beyond the desktop metaphor of UI? That's the beginning of a whole new approach to information management.
It should be fairly obvious by now that Google means to be at the forefront of these advances. And they're going about it in just the right way: start early, establish a strong business around a solid product, and use the stability and cashflow this provides to quietly start experimenting with new ideas and implementations. The guys that are building these toys are the same guys that will put Google light years ahead of the next-generation data management solutions from IBM, Oracle, &c.
Assuming everything goes according to plan, of course.
Seriously, if you're finding dozens of great SciFi books, could you recommend some of them to me? I can't find anything decent on the shelves these days. Maybe I'm looking wrong, or I'm just too picky, or something, but it's really bleak over here.
Re:Wesley could have saved it with Open Source!
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
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· Score: 2
Thanks. It's been over a year since Slashdot last made me spit beer out my nose.
Star Trek's II and III were your basic fight, nothing serious. Put them in battleships on the open sea and you wouldn't have to change much, if anything.
True, but the virtue of those movies wasn't the story, which is pretty generic [1], but the strong characterizations, excellent pacing, and generally well-written dialog.
On a meta-level, one of my favorite things about II is that it's an adaptation of the Moby Dick version of the story, with Khan as Ahab, and Kirk as the whale. Next time you watch it, think of Kirk as the big villain, and Khan as the hero. It's pretty fun! I don't know who Ishmael would be, but my personal preference is Spock.
[1] Generic stories aren't necessarily bad stories. All the best stories are just the old stories retold, after all.
Slashdot Mirror
Technically, "to blog" isn't all that much of a neologism: "to log" (as in "to make an entry in a logbook') is a venerable verb that has long been accepted.
Also, you forgot "to google".
Listening to the radio doesn't support anybody. They're spending money to broadcast these programs. Having you listen to the broadcast does them no good at all, unless they can convince you to give them some money to cover their expenses. Listen to the radio all you want, but boycott the advertisers.
Sounds good to me. But aren't we boycotting Metallica already? Where have you been?
We are at war with the RIAA. We have always been at war with the RIAA.
In Soviet Russia, of course, the RIAA is at war with us...
Oh.
My mistake. You may have implied that we're no better than the terrorists, but I probably was reading too much into it.
The military has been misrepresenting the intelligence of their so-called "smart" bombs. So now what? They're still smarter than the "stupid" bombs--should we go back to using those?
Using no bombs at all would be even better, of course. It's unclear whether the U.S. government has done enough to avoid using bombs, before resorting to them. That is something worth debating.
But why does everybody insist that this war is about trading innocent lives for oil?
Do we get oil out of this war? Yes. A nation acts to preserve its interests. Big surprise. I tend to prefer that to nations that spend their treasure without preservering their interests--especially when the treasure happens to be my tax dollars and value-adding labor!
But isn't it just possible that there's other good reasons for using "smart" bombs in Afghanistan, or Iraq? Moral reasons? Ethical reasons? Practical reasons? I've heard strong arguments in support of these reasons. I hope your counter-arguments consist of more than simply "this war is about trading innocent lives for oil".
I think the U.S. has a tendency to mistreat and kill innocent people as part of its institutional preservation of its interests. I think that many have suffered in the U.S.'s quest for oil.
But I think that even if we had no oil interests in the middle east, there could still be excellent reasons to go in there with the best weapons our technology can provide us. And I think that we have those reasons now. We're protecting our oil at the same time? Well, what did you expect?
Fair enough.
But--
I'm not one of those squeamish 1984 wankers you mentioned. So it's not like I'm being hypocritical here. Also, I don't think there's any inherent contradiction in abhorring tyranny and being squeamish about armed resistance. Certainly men like Ghandi and Mandela have demonstrated that it's possible to do both at the same time, effectively.
Also, it's not "when" my peaceful resistance fails, it's "if". And it's a pretty big "if", too. Perhaps we should both do some research on the subject: how many peaceful resistances have failed, in the past 100 years? In the failure cases, how many of them would have succeeded if the resisters had been armed? We know Ghandi succeeded. We know Mandela succeeded. We know the Chinese students in Tiananmen Square failed. We also know that they were up against the Chinese Army, so it's pretty obvious that personal firearms wouldn't have helped much. I guess it's debateable whether or not a sufficiently large percentage of the Chinese population would have had better luck armed, as opposed to not armed. We can debate that, if you like.
My idea of "authorities" does not stop at the local PD. I agree completely with the idea that it's much bigger than that. Which is exactly why your personal firearms seem so pointless in this context.
This isn't the Wild West, where "authority" is the local Sherriff, and once you take him out you're free to make your own rules. You've got a much bigger battle to fight nowadays, one you won't be able to win by shooting people.
Sure, the decisions are being made by a faceless conspiracy, but who do you think is going to come and get you? Spooky mind-control men in black trench coats? Policy-makers? No, it's going to be local PD, or a SWAT team, or National Guard troops, or U.S. Army troops, or whatever. Real people, with real lives, just like yours. If killing any of them would make an institutional difference, then maybe killing them would be justified--it would certainly be effective, anyway. But killing grunts won't make a difference. Not in this kind of war, anyway. So why do it?
And what if nobody comes for you? What if they just keep eroding your freedoms little by little, until it's far too late to fight back? What if things just keep going on the way they are today, only always getting just a little bit worse? Then who are you going to shoot? Who would you shoot, today, this minute, to safeguard your freedoms?
Your guns are tools for killing people, not tools for effecting social change. If you can give some reasonable scenario in our nation's future where the two not only overlap, but where bringing social change by killing people is the most effective and humane solution, please let me know. My arguments are based on the assumption that such a scenario does not exist (though it has in the past). If you could show that it does, then I'd probably reconsider my position on personal firearms.
Enthusiastic, maybe. Hysterical, not so much. But I'm glad you're having fun.
You have a valid point. I didn't mean to imply that "enemy soldiers are people, too, so don't shoot them, talk to them".
Being willing to fight for my principles is a laudable thing. Being willing to fight a losting battle against overwhelming odds, for my principles, is both laudable and courageous, I think.
But claiming that my personal firearms will make any sort of difference at all in an armed rebellion against the U.S. government is foolishness. The only difference they'll make is on the personal level. They'll make a personal difference to the SWAT team member I shoot, and a personal difference to his family. They'll make a personal difference to me, too: I'll derive personal satisfaction from sticking it to The Man (by shooting some SWAT guy), and I'll experience personal pain (and probably personal death) once the return fire starts coming in.
My personal firearms won't make an institutional difference of any kind. Maybe, if there were thousands like me... but like I said, if there were thousands like me, we could probably get better results by nonviolent means.
I think that it's somewhat different for soldiers: they're agents of the State, which is an institution. Individually, they only have personal effects, but in aggregate they're a tool of the State to further the State's policies. If I agree that the State must sometimes use force to protect its interests, and if I trust the State to use its force wisely, then I might join the army and support my State as a soldier. And I'd go to battle not as an individual, but as one of thousands, all agreed upon the necessity of this course of action.
If we were to raise a rebel army in this country though, by the time it got big enough to make an institutional difference, it would be big enough to make that difference without resorting to violence.
Thus, personal firearms do not appear to be at all useful as tools for fighting oppression in modern, civilized nations. Because of this, I have little patience for 2nd-amendment apologies that assume that personal firearms are useful in this way.
I say that if you're serious about fighting the regime, you should be looking at the constitutional clause about abolishing the current government and replacing it with something new. Think of what change--real change--might come about if the NRA put all its lobbying power behind that idea!
All this ranting about "right to bear arms" is a distraction, a folly. Defending an expensive and dangerous leisure activity with patriotic rhetoric and lofty speeches about principles and rights is naive at best, and willfully misleading at worst. Owning and operating firearms is a privilege and a luxury. If you really care about personal freedoms and undermining an authoritarian State, there's more honest, less violent, better ways to go about it.
If you're going to say "bombing Afghanistan makes us no better than the terrorists", then please back it up.
Show me the civilian casualties. Show me the civilians who were targeted on purpose. Show me either the official military plans to bomb civilians, or the unofficial military plot to bomb the civilians. Show me civilians who died for any other reason than because they were hanging around military targets.
People die in war. Not all of them signed up for it. No matter how much you may be pained by this fact, saying it aloud or writing it down always seems callous and uncaring. But it's sad because it's true.
"We won't fight wars, because people die," is an adimirable sentiment, and one we should all agree on. Until we do, though, it's a pretty stupid principle to base foreign policy on.
See, I've always suspected that was the case. What would be unacceptable working conditions in this country could very well be hard work for an honest wage, in a country that doesn't have the luxury of a 40-hour, 5-day work week.
On the other hand, what if the "sweatshop" in question neglects the safety of its workers? Is that just part of the toil and trouble of a developing nation? Or is that a company that refuses to spend any money on worker health if not forced to--in spite of the fact that they're saving millions of dollars by operating in the Third World? Working hard for a living wage is one thing. Being mistreated and exploited by a sweatshop because, in spite of its inhumane policies, you have to work somewhere, and suffering in a "sweatshop" may be a better way to die than lying in the gutter--that's something else entirely.
I'm not saying Nike runs the second kind of "sweatshop", but if they were, no amount of "things are different over there" arguments can excuse the behavior.
Because, of course, your life would be much better if there were no humans mediating between you and the machines.
And you know what? Any time you want to be treated like a human being, all you have to do is smile, or be polite, or (apparently) have breasts. I know you're capable of doing at least two of those things.
Wake me up when they deploy a perfect system, that handles all eventualities without error, mistreatment, or accidental cruelty.
In the mean time, give me people who respond to a smile any day.
You've got to be kidding. When the authorities come to debate the issue with you, what, exactly, are you going to do? Shoot some cop, soldier, or CTU agent? Some guy with a job to do, and maybe a family, or a dog, or whatever back home waiting for him?
Then what? The authorities are going to back down and let you keep whatever rights they were planning to take away from you? Please.
If you're lucky, you'll get that grunt's commander in your sights before they gun you down, but it's not like he sets policy either. Or maybe you're betting that once the SWAT team figures out that the job involves getting shot at, they'll call the whole thing off.
Of course, if you get enough citizens armed and ready to fight, you might have some impact--the exact same impact a large number of citizens would have if they engaged in peacful noncompliance.
Would people get shot during a nonviolent protest? Probably. Would people get shot during a violent protest? Most definitely. So where's the benefit to your solution?
If the SWAT team does desert, it won't be because you're shooting at them--it'll be because they've heard a lot of reasonable debate on the subject, and you position makes much more sense to them than the other guy's. So there they are, teetering between their responsibility to their employer and their growing conviction that their employer is wrong. They're having second thoughts about this whole raid. Maybe you're a nice guy, they're thinking. Maybe you have a good point. Maybe taking you down would be the wrong thing to do. Maybe it's time to take a stand and make a change.
And then you start shooting at them. Nice going, Einstein. Now you, and your family, and your dog, and your mp3 collection--gassed, and firebombed, and mercilessly slaughtered. And the media will carry the story of another crazy gun nut getting shut down before he could endanger innocent lives.
Of course, if you don't think your arguments could make a change, or you don't relish joining thousands of other dissenters in prison for your beliefs, or you've seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid one too many times, then maybe going out in a violent, bloody, and futile blaze of glory might seem pretty appealing. It's certainly more cinematic than sitting in prison for a couple decades, like Nelson Mandela. Certainly more heroic than traveling the countryside, educating citizens with your example of passive resitance, like Gandhi. Congratulations! Vin Diesel will star in the MTV movie of your extreme rebellion.
What do your "votes" have to offer that peaceful protest does not, except more dead people and less calm discussion?
By all means, excercise your rights! Keep those guns, enjoy them. But if you think they're going to help you make a difference during some armed rebellion, you may want to consider moving to the United States of Some Parallel Universe. I hear that there, the 2nd Amendment guarantees everybody's right to own a main battle tank, a joint strike fighter, mechanized artillery, a recon satellite, and a cruise missile.
In Soviet Russia, space station destroy rebels!
Oh...
And it's about time, too.
That's a very good point. I like your idea even better. Europa it is!
Could be. Not that it will matter, of course. What did we learn at the beginning of the Space Race? That putting the first satellite into orbit didn't mean fuck all. Then we learned that putting the first man into orbit didn't mean fuck all. Then we learned that putting the first man on the Moon didn't mean fuck all. I say, let China put the first man on Mars. Let them spend untold resources developing the technology. Meanwhile, let others watch and learn. In the end, it's the nation who puts the tenth man on mars, or the 20th, or the 30th through the 50th, or the first batch of 10 simultaneous mars walks, or the first permanent mars habitation to support more than 5 residents... those nations will be the big winners. The first man on mars will be a footnote, in the end, and the Martian era will be counted from a later, much more spectacular endeavor.
Hell, in 100 years, the Apollo missions will be a short prologue to the real story of Moon exploration.
Gold isn't like the speed of light, you know. Its value does actually change based on context.
What if you had a source of gold on earth, and a bunch of belt miners in space? What if the asteroid belt turns out to contain mind-boggling amounts of nifty materials that are rare or nonexistent on earth? And what if gold-plated sprockets were a vital component in belt-mining operations?
Might not your terrestrial gold be traded for enough Wheatonium (named after legendary space nerd Wil Wheaton, of course) to pay for your mining and lift costs, and buy you yet another house in the Bahamas (or what's left of them, or whatever)?
Far-fetched? Maybe. But the value of gold is worth no more and no less than whatever value someone is willing to give you for it. If there's someone in space who's willing to make it worth your while, then the Golden Rocket could be the most profitable endeavor ever, instead of the loss-leader you confidently claim it would be.
Some? They're all retards, as far as I can tell.
That forum makes Slashdot look like tea with Queen Victoria.
This isn't bells and whistles, this is R&D. The best search engine in the world will still be obsolete in 5 years.
What we're really looking for is better ways to organize data for intuitive retrieval by humans. The relational database is a precursor. The rumblings we're hearing about moving beyond the desktop metaphor of UI? That's the beginning of a whole new approach to information management.
It should be fairly obvious by now that Google means to be at the forefront of these advances. And they're going about it in just the right way: start early, establish a strong business around a solid product, and use the stability and cashflow this provides to quietly start experimenting with new ideas and implementations. The guys that are building these toys are the same guys that will put Google light years ahead of the next-generation data management solutions from IBM, Oracle, &c.
Assuming everything goes according to plan, of course.
Hopefully they'll continue on this track for a long time to come.
iq in binary (responding):
I agree with you completely... Some things are best kept simple, GOOGLE would be one of them.
That's either an embarassing failure to preview, or a truly frightening communication breakdown.
Seriously, if you're finding dozens of great SciFi books, could you recommend some of them to me? I can't find anything decent on the shelves these days. Maybe I'm looking wrong, or I'm just too picky, or something, but it's really bleak over here.
Thanks. It's been over a year since Slashdot last made me spit beer out my nose.
Thank you. You've rekindled my interest in this series. Hopefully I'll be able to find and watch it in order some day.
In other words, "Enterprise" and "Babylon 5", respectively.
Entertainment is one of the few things that's worth taking seriously.
True, but the virtue of those movies wasn't the story, which is pretty generic [1], but the strong characterizations, excellent pacing, and generally well-written dialog.
On a meta-level, one of my favorite things about II is that it's an adaptation of the Moby Dick version of the story, with Khan as Ahab, and Kirk as the whale. Next time you watch it, think of Kirk as the big villain, and Khan as the hero. It's pretty fun! I don't know who Ishmael would be, but my personal preference is Spock.
[1] Generic stories aren't necessarily bad stories. All the best stories are just the old stories retold, after all.