Somewhere, someone speculated that Jobs might announce a G3 Cube (can't recall where I read this).
I think it has some potential. Granted, G4 Cube sales have been a disappointment. But iMac sales are starting to drop off. High-end iMac DV sales apparently did pretty well, because there is little inventory left on these. Given that the high-end iMac DV SE sells for $1500, maybe a G3 Cube would be a good product to replace the high-end iMac.
How about a bundle: G3 Cube + RAGE 128 + 15 inch flat screen? By bundling the screen with the G3 Cube, Apple might be able to sell the whole package for under $2000.
Consider that Compaq and Acer are marketing flat-screen PC bundles for about that price. Such a product would address one complaint about the iMac, its all-in-one design.
There are reasons why Apple might not do this. For one, it might hurt sales of the G4 Cube. But my sense is that anyone who might stretch a bit to reach $2K for a G3 Cube would not go for the G4 Cube anyway. Since G4 sales are poor, it does not appear that the cachet of the trendy design is really moving the product anyway. So, why not market the design to another segment to try to recoup the investment?
The Microsoft angle is only one part of the report, which also discusses open-source, mobile computing, distributed computing, and nanotechnology. The specific areas of concern are predictably:
1. threat of disruption of communication
2. threat of exploitation of information
3. threat of manipulation of information
4. threat of destruction of information or infrastructure
A similar exploit occurred with PDF files on the NY Times web site, where documents were posted pertaining to the CIA-assisted coup which installed the Shah of Iran. The names of certain operatives were blacked out in the graphics layer to protect their identities, but the text was still present in the document.
I don't just blame corporations, but I also don't let them off the hook entirely. As several postings have mentioned, there are some genetic tendencies, some behavioral habits, some psychological issues, some chemical issues (e.g. some medications tend to promote weight gain). I felt that your initial posting was unfair because I interpreted it as assigning some moral failing to people who are overweight, and because it assigned this as a uniquely American trait. American hyperconsumerism may play a part in the problem, but I don't see this as a trait unique to Americans. Everyone likes possessions and everyone likes food -- we just have more of them than just about anyone else.
It may be appropriate to differentiate between those who are a little pudgy and those who are unhealthily overweight. Although we might think pudgy people are weak because they do not resist eating more than they need, the last time I checked, pudginess was not a uniquely American trait. Unhealthy weight levels, however, are a different story. There are individuals who know in the rational sense that they are harming themselves, but who overeat anyway. How does a hypothesis of American greed explain that?
You're right that the genetic manipulation proposed by the article won't solve all of the problems. It seems unlikely to address the particular problems causing unhealthy obesity, because I believe the condition has deeper issues than flipping a single bit in the DNA. In my opinion, pathological overeating has more in common with drug addiction than it does with moderate overindulgence. It should be addressed as a medical issue, not as some sort of moral failing.
As to the arguments that other countries with US-style fast food do not have the same problems with overconsumption: it would be interesting to try to determine why that is so. Maybe fast food and hyper-sweetened cereal, etc just hasn't managed to dominate the market to the extent that it has in the US. Maybe it has something to do with the mass media. Maybe it just hasn't had time to become the norm, and we will see problems in a generation.
As to the power of marketing, sure it's not the sole explanation for eating disorders (both overweight and underweight). But it is almost certainly part of the problem. I read recently (sorry, can't remember where) that women in China are trying to lose weight as compared with the traditional view that a little plumpness was considered attractive. The article correlated this trend with the emergence of western TV in China, promoting a new ideal of beauty: the Kate Moss look. Anyone who remembers the cite, I'd appreciate a posting.
You may have a point, but you're pointing the greed finger at the wrong Americans. The American corporations which market food may have more to do with it than the American consumers. American consumers have the same genetics as people worldwide, because we are a nation of immigrants. The difference is that Americans have more disposable income and the corporations compete ruthlessly for that income.
Next time you walk through a shopping mall food court, make a note of the smells the fast-food joints pump into the air. The corporations have tested what lures people into their restaurants and what sells more products. They don't make too many mistakes, or they go out of business. Then some other company takes that spot, selling even more unhealthy food.
I concur that garden variety overweightness has increased as our population has become more sedentary. But pathological (i.e. dangerous) eating disorders are also on the rise. Is that because American consumers are more greedy than those in other countries, or because our society has more disposable income, more food available, more aggressive marketing of food, and more stress (which is a documented trigger for overeating in some individuals)? I don't think that 'greed' explains why people overeat when they themselves acknowledge on a rational basis that they are harming themselves by doing so.
The salvation of Iridium will not reduce the odds of someone being clobbered by a deorbiting satellite in the future. There are still 87 birds up there (one recently deorbited without incident, see article). Every one of these will come down eventually. The odds of hitting someone will rise marginally as the human population increases.
NASA just turned off the funding spigot for the Extreme Ultra-Violet Explorer, because they couldn't find $1M to keep it running for another year. No other stellar observatory can image in this band.
So what will we call the server and client software? NapSTAR?
Seriously though -- if there really are lot of amateur astronomers out there snapping digital pictures of comets, would there be any benefit to creating an automatically indexed peer to peer server scheme?
The Cnet article says that one participant in the conference compared Open Source Software to the medieval trade guilds:
"Participation in code writing is the apprenticeship in the guild," said E. Gabriela Coleman.
I would say that OSS is closer to the Reformation (and this idea fits more closely with the 'religious' theme of the conference).
Martin Luther said that we don't need no stinkin' priests to intervene between us and God (no offense to Catholics, but priests probably did not smell too good in those days:). RS, Linus, et al. basically said we don't need no stinkin' corporations to tell us how to code.
The fact that the Reformation was made possible by a technological transformation (the printing press) reinforces the parallel -- the OSS movement was greatly accelerated by the internet.
I followed the link in the New Scientist story to the UK ministry web site. There is some great stuff there on all of the technology they are testing in the harsh GTO (geosynch transfer orbit) environment:
- comm layers (CCSDS and a new jointly developed protocol for TT+C)
- lots of sensor, battery, and PV technologies
- and of course the rad-hard SPARC
This is a great way to work on risk reduction for the next generation of cheapsats. Bravo!
Let me say it differently: I would trust the US, TODAY, far more.... As to your examples, I am not saying you are wrong, but I do see things differently.
The examples of World War 2 really underscore the role which Precision Guided Munitions play in making our ability to wage war as painless as possible for everyone. During Workd War 2, we threw our men into the maw of the meat grinder (ground troops, sailors, and bomber crews). We lacked PGMs and waged war in the way which was available at the time. The examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not all that clear cut. Many people saw those as saving both US and Japanese lives. And again, they demonstrate that PGMs are the way to go if you want to limit casualties all around.
Viet Nam was a case where the lines between regular armies, irregulars, civilian participants, and non-combatants were hazy. The Geneva convention was ill-equipped (and still is) for such situations. I'm not sure that PGMs and UCAVs would have made that a more 'humane' war -- most likely not.
The NATO first use doctrine was the only possible deterrent to the overwhelming advantage of the Soviet tank forces. Thank God it never came to a test. The reason it was publicized was to prevent the Soviets from trying it. So if a threat is made, but it never is used, does it matter? I venture once again that UCAVs and PGMs might make such a threat less necessary in the future.
The destruction of the Republican Guard on the road back into Iraq might seem questionable, but these guys were not 'hors de combat'. Nor were this some sort of slaughter of innocents. Although I don't buy half the propaganda advanced by either side (e.g. the unproven claim that Iraqis removed Kuwaiti infants from incubators and stole the incubators), it's clear that the Iraqis did not even try to conform with the Geneva Convention as it pertains to civilians. That does not necessarily make it open season on them, but again they were not hors de combat under the Convention.
In the case of Belgrade, again, we used PGMs to limit the damage as much as possible. What would have happened without PGMs? Either we would have flattened the city to sap their will to continue the Serbs' despicable war in Kosovo, or we would have done nothing. With UCAVs, we could have flown lower than the 15000 ft ceiling and bombed with even greater precision. Let's not forget that this was not a war we entered lightly. The prospect of US casualties was only one issue which slowed our response to the atrocities committed in Kosovo.
This issue cannot be analyzed fully in a few glib paragraphs, but every case has two sides. I just don't happen to see things as you do. Given the conflicting viewpoints, it seems like a good question for some defense policy thinktanks to consider.
I would trust the US far more than anyone else to wage war as humanely as possible, meaning trying to minimize casualties to our side as well as noncombatants. That's what smart weapons are for. It makes no sense to waste a $1M Tomahawk as an antipersonnel weapon. UCAVs, properly applied, will not be used willy-nilly to conduct a scorched earth total war.
For a picture of total war, read this disturbing account ; of the Chechen war in the Los Angeles Times. (WARNING: not for sensitive readers. I mean it, it's pretty horrific).
You may notice that this terrible war is being conducted without any smart weapons. You may also note that members of the Russian government apparently care little for the lives of the men they send into battle. The respect for life begins with one's own men and women in uniform.
Jon Katz has raised several interesting issues and proposed solutions to some of the obvious problems. The stochasic element inherent to the punchcard system has been exposed by the differing counts. Yet, going to a computerized system also seems troublesome.
The comp.risks digest issue 21.12 has a well-written essay by Lauren Weinstein and Peter G. Neumann (both affiliated with PFIR and ACM). They refer to some position papers which address some of the risks associated with various computerized solutions to the voting mess.
Personally, I have plenty of reasons to be skeptical about digital voting systems. Paper ballots can be verified after the fact. As creaky as the security systems are in our current system, the citizens who are our poll workers are less likely (IMHO) to defraud their neighbors than impersonal vote-hackers living in other states. It's the integrity of the poll workers which helps to keep our system honest.
One specific concern about the glib comparison between anti-fraud provisions in e-commerce and those in the polling stations: e-commerce transactions have no requirement for anonymity. In fact, the anti-fraud provisions require that one examine his credit card statement to verify that it contains only legitimate charges. How would the anonymity of votes be protected? I'm not saying it's impossible, I just can't see an obvious way to do it which has parallels to e-commerce.
Now, to a proposal: after this election and the legal challenges are over, and we have sworn in the new Congress and a new President, the partisan divisions are likely to be more bitter than ever. One way to try to bring the two parties together would be for them to cooperate early in the session on an appropriation to the states, for a nationwide upgrade of the voting infrastructure. This could include a research phase, to identify or invent the best solution[s] and possibly to have NIST create some sort of standards (not technology standards, but "shall" requirements on security features, etc). After the research phase, the second appropriation would go to the states to deploy new infrastructure. Finally, some of the anecdotal evidence suggests that better training of poll workers is desirable.
By cooperating on such uncontroversial measures, the new Congress might be able to move on to other matters important to the nation. In the process, our Congress might elevate their public image above the current low, so that they might be seen as the moral equals of, say, Chimpanzees instead of Baboons. (apologies to primates).
In a recent column, Thomas Friedman, foreign affairs correspondent for the New York Times, says the bashing of the federal bureaucracies is largely ignorant. Friedman, who has traveled widely and is a proponent of free trade, says that our 3-letter agencies, where "faceless bureaucrats" enforce rules of basic fairness without the rampant corruption seen abroad, are the envy of the world.
Friedman quotes a new book by Hernando de Soto, which concludes that "good political institutiions and property law" are the ingredients that have consistently enabled entrepreneurs in the West to succeed, and their absence elsewhere explains why others fail.
If there is no incentive for hard work then nothing will be created. Please, don't raise the canard of "give the content away to create a market for the server" or other schemes which have been disproven in the marketplace.
Look at the Globalstar revenues -- even if they double revenues every quarter, the top line will be $6M this year -- ooof. Kinda hard to pay off billions that way.
The BBC article does not say how it works. Although vaporizing debris might seem like a good idea, a little calculation shows that the energy requirements for this are HUGE. Do a little calorimetry on melting a steel bolt. I haven't done the calculations but it's gotta be pretty daunting. (Where's that CRC handbook when I need it?)
A few months ago I heard of a proposal by The Aerospace Corp to use lasers for just this purpose. The idea was to generate light pressure on debris objects to cause orbital decay, not to disintegrate them. The experiment mentioned by the BBC is likely a feasibility demonstration.
I hesitate to respond to this flame-bait, but since this was mod'ed up to 3, I feel compelled to reply.
The derogation of 'career bureaucrats' is the kind of stuff we used to hear from Newt Gingrich. I worked as a NASA contractor, I know NASA employees, I am friends with NASA employees and this characterization is far from the truth.
As in any large organization, there are some jerks and zeros. But most people at NASA (including contractors) are excited to work on The Space Program (TM). Some of the best will admit privately to conflicting feelings about the meager aspirations of our manned space program, but they also know that it's the only game in town.
If you want a more optimistic view of 'career bureaucrats', read Gene Kranz's book Failure Is Not An Option.
I get the idea that many people think the airbags are very simple compared with "rocket science". Keep in mind that the development of the airbag landing method was far from a no-brainer. Donna Shirley, the manager of the successful 1997 Mars Pathfinder project, wrote about the development of this technology in her book "Managing Martians". They had many tests and some failures, resulting in making the bags thicker and heavier.
ISBN 0-7679-0241-6. 1998, Broadway Books. Donna Shirley with Danielle Morton: "Managing Martians".
Robert Zubrin created a workable baseline for human exploration and settlement of Mars in his book "The Case For Mars". His proposal does not rely upon a 30-year $400B Space Exploration Initiative as did the 1989 proposal which was DOA.
Zubrin's proposal uses resources available on Mars to bootstrap the operation efficiently. Although I was skeptical when I started reading it, he convinced me that there is nothing we need from ISS or the Moon if we want to go to Mars. He estimated a cost of around $30B for all hardware development and 3 manned missions to Mars. Best of all, his proposal scales well to colonization.
As to patience -- it is patience which has resulted in so much money having been wasted on ISS. The original plans were pretty bold (remember the solar concentrators and liquid sodium turbine power generators?). In the 16 years since ISS was started, we have retreated from creating bold new technology to integrating obsolete off the shelf components (80386 computers form the data management system backbone). ISS has survived on promises of cancer cures, on pork-barrel politics, and on foreign policy considerations, but survival is not the same as vitality.
Zubrin and his collaborator, David Baker, make a case that their program would succeed because it would go fast, not slow. On p. 55 (paperback version):
I felt very strongly that a humans-to-Mars program had to be done on a rapid schedule. Fast schedules reduce program cost: cost equals people multiplied by time. Moreover, every year any major program has to go before Congress for continued funding where it faces risk of termination, often caused by deals or interpersonal frictions that have nothing to do with the program itself. Every time a program goes before Congress for funds it is forced to play another game of Russian roulette. You can only expect to be lucky so many times.
ISBN 0-684-83550-9 (softbound) 1996, Touchstone Books. Robert M. Zubrin with Richard Wagner: "The Case For Mars"
While I concur that new technology is required, I strongly disagree that ISS is the way to get there. ISS and its predecessors are the reason there is little money for basic technology R+D and for science missions.
My proposal: it is time for NASA to return to its roots (a la NACA) as an engine of technological R+D. ISS is developing very little new technology outside of things needed for ISS and little else. The technology that is being developed is self-serving. E.g. analysis methods for controls/structures interactions, great for all sorts of big floppy space structures which are based on many DoF (degrees of freedom) with few inputs and outputs.
In the days of NACA, the role of govt was a technology-agnostic R+D lab, performing in the role of a technology creator, not a consumer.
As a nation, we have let 'The Space Program' become a self-serving extrapolation from the past without examining what we want our space program to achieve. (Actually there have been various commissions whose reports have been ignored).
The fundamental barrier to space is the difficulty in getting there. NASA should be working on the basic technology needed to dramatically lower the barriers to space. This means high-strength structures (buckytubes?), high-temperature materials, manufacturing techniques, propulsion, etc.
For too long, NASA has convinced the US taxpayers that they ought to have a monopoly on space. Time for them to become the enablers instead of the sole operators.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it has some potential. Granted, G4 Cube sales have been a disappointment. But iMac sales are starting to drop off. High-end iMac DV sales apparently did pretty well, because there is little inventory left on these. Given that the high-end iMac DV SE sells for $1500, maybe a G3 Cube would be a good product to replace the high-end iMac.
How about a bundle: G3 Cube + RAGE 128 + 15 inch flat screen? By bundling the screen with the G3 Cube, Apple might be able to sell the whole package for under $2000. Consider that Compaq and Acer are marketing flat-screen PC bundles for about that price. Such a product would address one complaint about the iMac, its all-in-one design.
There are reasons why Apple might not do this. For one, it might hurt sales of the G4 Cube. But my sense is that anyone who might stretch a bit to reach $2K for a G3 Cube would not go for the G4 Cube anyway. Since G4 sales are poor, it does not appear that the cachet of the trendy design is really moving the product anyway. So, why not market the design to another segment to try to recoup the investment?
Check "Dragonfly" by Bryan Burrough for more info on Abbey and other aspects of the Texas mafia...
I say, let Tito run NASA from space, and send Goldin to swab space fungus from the walls of Mir in preparation for deboost.
The Microsoft angle is only one part of the report, which also discusses open-source, mobile computing, distributed computing, and nanotechnology. The specific areas of concern are predictably:
1. threat of disruption of communication
2. threat of exploitation of information
3. threat of manipulation of information
4. threat of destruction of information or infrastructure
A similar exploit occurred with PDF files on the NY Times web site, where documents were posted pertaining to the CIA-assisted coup which installed the Shah of Iran. The names of certain operatives were blacked out in the graphics layer to protect their identities, but the text was still present in the document.
I can't define a bad law, but I know one when I see one.
Does it seem a little odd that McCain supported this? Isn't the GOP supposed to be the party of minimal government?
It may be appropriate to differentiate between those who are a little pudgy and those who are unhealthily overweight. Although we might think pudgy people are weak because they do not resist eating more than they need, the last time I checked, pudginess was not a uniquely American trait. Unhealthy weight levels, however, are a different story. There are individuals who know in the rational sense that they are harming themselves, but who overeat anyway. How does a hypothesis of American greed explain that?
You're right that the genetic manipulation proposed by the article won't solve all of the problems. It seems unlikely to address the particular problems causing unhealthy obesity, because I believe the condition has deeper issues than flipping a single bit in the DNA. In my opinion, pathological overeating has more in common with drug addiction than it does with moderate overindulgence. It should be addressed as a medical issue, not as some sort of moral failing.
As to the arguments that other countries with US-style fast food do not have the same problems with overconsumption: it would be interesting to try to determine why that is so. Maybe fast food and hyper-sweetened cereal, etc just hasn't managed to dominate the market to the extent that it has in the US. Maybe it has something to do with the mass media. Maybe it just hasn't had time to become the norm, and we will see problems in a generation.
As to the power of marketing, sure it's not the sole explanation for eating disorders (both overweight and underweight). But it is almost certainly part of the problem. I read recently (sorry, can't remember where) that women in China are trying to lose weight as compared with the traditional view that a little plumpness was considered attractive. The article correlated this trend with the emergence of western TV in China, promoting a new ideal of beauty: the Kate Moss look. Anyone who remembers the cite, I'd appreciate a posting.
Next time you walk through a shopping mall food court, make a note of the smells the fast-food joints pump into the air. The corporations have tested what lures people into their restaurants and what sells more products. They don't make too many mistakes, or they go out of business. Then some other company takes that spot, selling even more unhealthy food.
I concur that garden variety overweightness has increased as our population has become more sedentary. But pathological (i.e. dangerous) eating disorders are also on the rise. Is that because American consumers are more greedy than those in other countries, or because our society has more disposable income, more food available, more aggressive marketing of food, and more stress (which is a documented trigger for overeating in some individuals)? I don't think that 'greed' explains why people overeat when they themselves acknowledge on a rational basis that they are harming themselves by doing so.
The salvation of Iridium will not reduce the odds of someone being clobbered by a deorbiting satellite in the future. There are still 87 birds up there (one recently deorbited without incident, see article). Every one of these will come down eventually. The odds of hitting someone will rise marginally as the human population increases.
NASA just turned off the funding spigot for the Extreme Ultra-Violet Explorer, because they couldn't find $1M to keep it running for another year. No other stellar observatory can image in this band.
Seriously though -- if there really are lot of amateur astronomers out there snapping digital pictures of comets, would there be any benefit to creating an automatically indexed peer to peer server scheme?
Martin Luther said that we don't need no stinkin' priests to intervene between us and God (no offense to Catholics, but priests probably did not smell too good in those days:). RS, Linus, et al. basically said we don't need no stinkin' corporations to tell us how to code.
The fact that the Reformation was made possible by a technological transformation (the printing press) reinforces the parallel -- the OSS movement was greatly accelerated by the internet.
- comm layers (CCSDS and a new jointly developed protocol for TT+C)
- lots of sensor, battery, and PV technologies
- and of course the rad-hard SPARC
This is a great way to work on risk reduction for the next generation of cheapsats. Bravo!
The examples of World War 2 really underscore the role which Precision Guided Munitions play in making our ability to wage war as painless as possible for everyone. During Workd War 2, we threw our men into the maw of the meat grinder (ground troops, sailors, and bomber crews). We lacked PGMs and waged war in the way which was available at the time. The examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not all that clear cut. Many people saw those as saving both US and Japanese lives. And again, they demonstrate that PGMs are the way to go if you want to limit casualties all around.
Viet Nam was a case where the lines between regular armies, irregulars, civilian participants, and non-combatants were hazy. The Geneva convention was ill-equipped (and still is) for such situations. I'm not sure that PGMs and UCAVs would have made that a more 'humane' war -- most likely not.
The NATO first use doctrine was the only possible deterrent to the overwhelming advantage of the Soviet tank forces. Thank God it never came to a test. The reason it was publicized was to prevent the Soviets from trying it. So if a threat is made, but it never is used, does it matter? I venture once again that UCAVs and PGMs might make such a threat less necessary in the future.
The destruction of the Republican Guard on the road back into Iraq might seem questionable, but these guys were not 'hors de combat'. Nor were this some sort of slaughter of innocents. Although I don't buy half the propaganda advanced by either side (e.g. the unproven claim that Iraqis removed Kuwaiti infants from incubators and stole the incubators), it's clear that the Iraqis did not even try to conform with the Geneva Convention as it pertains to civilians. That does not necessarily make it open season on them, but again they were not hors de combat under the Convention.
In the case of Belgrade, again, we used PGMs to limit the damage as much as possible. What would have happened without PGMs? Either we would have flattened the city to sap their will to continue the Serbs' despicable war in Kosovo, or we would have done nothing. With UCAVs, we could have flown lower than the 15000 ft ceiling and bombed with even greater precision. Let's not forget that this was not a war we entered lightly. The prospect of US casualties was only one issue which slowed our response to the atrocities committed in Kosovo.
This issue cannot be analyzed fully in a few glib paragraphs, but every case has two sides. I just don't happen to see things as you do. Given the conflicting viewpoints, it seems like a good question for some defense policy thinktanks to consider.
For a picture of total war, read this disturbing account ; of the Chechen war in the Los Angeles Times. (WARNING: not for sensitive readers. I mean it, it's pretty horrific).
You may notice that this terrible war is being conducted without any smart weapons. You may also note that members of the Russian government apparently care little for the lives of the men they send into battle. The respect for life begins with one's own men and women in uniform.
The comp.risks digest issue 21.12 has a well-written essay by Lauren Weinstein and Peter G. Neumann (both affiliated with PFIR and ACM). They refer to some position papers which address some of the risks associated with various computerized solutions to the voting mess.
Personally, I have plenty of reasons to be skeptical about digital voting systems. Paper ballots can be verified after the fact. As creaky as the security systems are in our current system, the citizens who are our poll workers are less likely (IMHO) to defraud their neighbors than impersonal vote-hackers living in other states. It's the integrity of the poll workers which helps to keep our system honest.
One specific concern about the glib comparison between anti-fraud provisions in e-commerce and those in the polling stations: e-commerce transactions have no requirement for anonymity. In fact, the anti-fraud provisions require that one examine his credit card statement to verify that it contains only legitimate charges. How would the anonymity of votes be protected? I'm not saying it's impossible, I just can't see an obvious way to do it which has parallels to e-commerce.
Now, to a proposal: after this election and the legal challenges are over, and we have sworn in the new Congress and a new President, the partisan divisions are likely to be more bitter than ever. One way to try to bring the two parties together would be for them to cooperate early in the session on an appropriation to the states, for a nationwide upgrade of the voting infrastructure. This could include a research phase, to identify or invent the best solution[s] and possibly to have NIST create some sort of standards (not technology standards, but "shall" requirements on security features, etc). After the research phase, the second appropriation would go to the states to deploy new infrastructure. Finally, some of the anecdotal evidence suggests that better training of poll workers is desirable.
By cooperating on such uncontroversial measures, the new Congress might be able to move on to other matters important to the nation. In the process, our Congress might elevate their public image above the current low, so that they might be seen as the moral equals of, say, Chimpanzees instead of Baboons. (apologies to primates).
Friedman quotes a new book by Hernando de Soto, which concludes that "good political institutiions and property law" are the ingredients that have consistently enabled entrepreneurs in the West to succeed, and their absence elsewhere explains why others fail.
If there is no incentive for hard work then nothing will be created. Please, don't raise the canard of "give the content away to create a market for the server" or other schemes which have been disproven in the marketplace.
Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2001 (Public Print)
The entire bill is here ;.
The rider in question is Title VI - Children's Internet Protection.
Look at the Globalstar revenues -- even if they double revenues every quarter, the top line will be $6M this year -- ooof. Kinda hard to pay off billions that way.
The New Scientist article
Marshall Space Flight Center PDF file
A few months ago I heard of a proposal by The Aerospace Corp to use lasers for just this purpose. The idea was to generate light pressure on debris objects to cause orbital decay, not to disintegrate them. The experiment mentioned by the BBC is likely a feasibility demonstration.
The derogation of 'career bureaucrats' is the kind of stuff we used to hear from Newt Gingrich. I worked as a NASA contractor, I know NASA employees, I am friends with NASA employees and this characterization is far from the truth.
As in any large organization, there are some jerks and zeros. But most people at NASA (including contractors) are excited to work on The Space Program (TM). Some of the best will admit privately to conflicting feelings about the meager aspirations of our manned space program, but they also know that it's the only game in town.
If you want a more optimistic view of 'career bureaucrats', read Gene Kranz's book Failure Is Not An Option.
ISBN 0-7679-0241-6. 1998, Broadway Books. Donna Shirley with Danielle Morton: "Managing Martians".
Zubrin's proposal uses resources available on Mars to bootstrap the operation efficiently. Although I was skeptical when I started reading it, he convinced me that there is nothing we need from ISS or the Moon if we want to go to Mars. He estimated a cost of around $30B for all hardware development and 3 manned missions to Mars. Best of all, his proposal scales well to colonization.
As to patience -- it is patience which has resulted in so much money having been wasted on ISS. The original plans were pretty bold (remember the solar concentrators and liquid sodium turbine power generators?). In the 16 years since ISS was started, we have retreated from creating bold new technology to integrating obsolete off the shelf components (80386 computers form the data management system backbone). ISS has survived on promises of cancer cures, on pork-barrel politics, and on foreign policy considerations, but survival is not the same as vitality.
Zubrin and his collaborator, David Baker, make a case that their program would succeed because it would go fast, not slow. On p. 55 (paperback version):
ISBN 0-684-83550-9 (softbound) 1996, Touchstone Books. Robert M. Zubrin with Richard Wagner: "The Case For Mars"
My proposal: it is time for NASA to return to its roots (a la NACA) as an engine of technological R+D. ISS is developing very little new technology outside of things needed for ISS and little else. The technology that is being developed is self-serving. E.g. analysis methods for controls/structures interactions, great for all sorts of big floppy space structures which are based on many DoF (degrees of freedom) with few inputs and outputs.
In the days of NACA, the role of govt was a technology-agnostic R+D lab, performing in the role of a technology creator, not a consumer.
As a nation, we have let 'The Space Program' become a self-serving extrapolation from the past without examining what we want our space program to achieve. (Actually there have been various commissions whose reports have been ignored).
The fundamental barrier to space is the difficulty in getting there. NASA should be working on the basic technology needed to dramatically lower the barriers to space. This means high-strength structures (buckytubes?), high-temperature materials, manufacturing techniques, propulsion, etc.
For too long, NASA has convinced the US taxpayers that they ought to have a monopoly on space. Time for them to become the enablers instead of the sole operators.