Take your straw-man "justifications" somewhere else.
You want a real justification? Here is one: I demand that the State of Texas abide by the terms of the First and Fourteenth amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
The Constitution prohibits the government from endorsing one religious viewpoint over another or from infringing on the freedom of speech or the press. As much as it may bug you that other people can do things that your religion says are bad, you cannot use the power of the state to impose your religious beliefs on everyone else.
The US Supreme Court has consistantly ruled on multiple occasions that filtering a publicly-funded internet connection is an unconstitutional abridgement of the freedom of speech. Don't like it? Tough shit. The First Amendment provides equal protection to my right to surf porn as it does your right to download Chick tracts.
Walk into a local retail shop, design your own computer from the ground up and get what you *actually* want not just *what the cheapest thing Dell will hawk on ya* thing is.
One-off custom builds are fine for enthusiast machines or a small business which only needs a half-dozen servers. It would be a support nightmare to try that approach when you're ordering a batch of 500 desktop machines or building out a server farm.
They care more about overclocking, neon lights, and fps in the latest games.
Painting with a pretty broad brush, aren't you? Every system I own except my laptop is AMD-based, and not a single one of them is overclocked. Why? Because AMD consistently kicks Intel's ass in terms of Price/Performance ratio, especially when you back off a couple of steps from the top-of-the-line model. At just about any price point you select, AMD offers a significantly faster CPU than Intel.
Why would any manufacturer in their right mind produce anything under such terms?
More to the point, why would anyone BUY a device that could stop working at any moment? Let's say 50,000 people plunk down $500 for a new HD-DVD player. A week later, some yutz hacks the key for that model and it is revoked. Now any DVD made after the key was revoked won't work in those brand-new players. Queue the class action lawsuits...
Even if people didn't sue, they still would be HIGHLY reluctant to buy a replacement player unless they got a guarantee that it wouldn't suffer the same fate. Simlarly, people aren't going to buy a new DVD if they can't be confidant that it's going to work in their players.
The Circuit City DIVX scheme was the movie studios' wet dream: you had to pay for the disk to watch it the first time, then if you wanted to watch it again later you had to pay again. Of course it took the public about 30 seconds to catch on to this scam and reject it completely. I don't know how much money was lost in that debacle, but I'm sure it was in the millions.
What part of the Constitution grants the federal government any power whatsoever over the airwaves?
Article I section 8: "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes", otherwise known as the Commerce Clause.
And no, the interstate commerce clause *cannot* be used to justify whatever federal power you have a hard-on for, despite historical precedent
As a strict constructionist myself, I agree with you that the Commerce clause is very over-used for things which have a tenuous, if not specious, relationship to actual interstate commerce. However, IMHO, this is a case where it is being used appropriately; not just because of the interstate issues involved, but because of the interNATIONAL issues involved.
Remember that EM spectrum use is subject to INTERNATIONAL TREATY. The EM spectrum is not bounded by state or national borders: a transmission in one juristiction can be received by someone in another, and interference on the same frequency could easily happen over political borders. Furthermore, there are treaties governing how the EM spectrum is used in international waters for (EG for navigation & communication).
Remember that making international treaties is a power explicitly prohibited to the States (Article I section 10), and as such is the sole pervue of the Federal government under the 10th amendment. The power to enforce the terms of international treaties is clearly granted to Congress under the "elastic" clause of Article I section 8: "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
Even if you could argue that the Commerce and Treaty clauses did not apply, the federal courts would still have jurisdiction (Article III section 2) in any interstate case regarding EM spectrum use, again putting the issue squarely in the hands of the federal government.
As much as I'd like to use the 10th amendment to limit the powers of the federal government, on this issue I have to conclude that the Constitution prohibits the STATES from regulating the use of the EM spectrum.
Obviously there are engineering problems to be worked out -- the difference in gravity alone is going to impose a lot of interesting design constraints.
As for cooling, they mentioned that the ambient temperature at the proposed site is around -50C. The "waste" heat from a nuclear reactor is going to be very valuable.
You'll still need some way of moving that heat around, which means bringing some kind of coolant with you from Earth. Your colony is going to need lots of water anyway, so you might as well use that. If you still have more heat than you need, you can get rid of it with passive radiant cooling or by using the lunar rock as a heat sink.
I seriously doubt a moonbase would rely 100% on solar power, or any single power source for that matter. If they were smart they'd have at least a small (submarine-style) nuclear reactor as a backup system.
Realistically, until they get a plant set up to manufacture photovoltaic cells locally, it would be too expensive to get all their power from PV cells and batteries ferried up from Earth. You would need nuclear power to jump-start the industries (mining, refining, manufacturing) needed to make the PV cells and storage batteries locally.
Nothing gives you more kilowatts per kilogram than a nuclear reactor, and mass is the single MOST important factor in getting stuff to the Moon in the first place.
The future of space colonization is space stations. Cheaper to build, cheaper to get to and from, unlimited room to build, and you can spin them for earth-like gravity. I say we should skip these planetary fantasies and skip to the end-game.
And where are you going to get these cheap materials to build your space station? You can't get them from Earth's surface because you're at the bottom of a huge gravity well. You can't get them from the asteroid belt because it's so far away. Let's see -- where is there an abundant source of raw materials close to Earth that has a low escape velocity? Could it be THE MOON, maybe?
Building a moon base is a vital precursor to building an orbital habitat or exploiting the rest of the solar system. And by "moon base" I don't mean some overpriced clubhouse like the ISS -- it needs to be a real industrial city, complete with mining, refining, and manufacturing facilities.
My conclusion: Linux needs commercial(-grade) software
It's already there, at least on the server side. For instance, every major database vendor except Microsoft officially supports Linux. Apache is the de-facto standard web server for every non-Microsoft development shop. Samba is a viable replacement for a windows file/print server and is an adequate replacement for a Windows domain controller in many environments. And so on...
The real killer app for widespread acceptance of desktop Linux would be Microsoft Office (or a 100% work-alike). Openoffice.org and Evolution have come a long way, but they're only (IMHO) about 85% there in terms of replacing MS-Office.
The other thing which would drive acceptance of desktop linux would be the availability of games. If Joe User could walk in to Best Buy and see that all the popular games are available in Windows and Linux versions, he might consider switching. As it is now, even hard-core Linux geeks usually have a Windows partition for gaming.
As an aside, Given the success of live CD distros like Knoppix, I'm suprised that game makers haven't considered releasing their products under a custom bootable Linux distro.
Software developers who can't figure out how to restrict access from things
As others have said, this guy is having a MANAGEMENT problem, not a TECHNOLOGY problem. If you can't trust your professional employees, *NO* technological fix is going to solve your problems.
Creativity and productivity are the two things a startup company, particuarly a software startup, needs the most. Draconian security kills both of these. Likewise, oppressive NDAs and a corporate attitude of mistrust are not going to build loyalty among your employees.
If you don't want your programmers to steal "your" code, treat them like PARTNERS, not EMPLOYEES. There's not much incentive to steal from yourself.
Exactly the point. Blacklisting doesn't work, and you'll never get the pr0n merchants out of the general TLDs.
An actual WORKABLE solution is to have TLDs like.KIDS and.TEEN. To get one of these TLDs, you have to SIGN A CONTRACT saying you will abide by the contractually-imposed content restrictions, and perhaps even POST A BOND which would be forfiet if you broke the terms of the contract.
This wouldn't solve the problem completely, as it still requires client-side or proxy-level enforcement, but it does make it easier.
Quit changing the subject The question wasn't whether it was moral or not to take her off of the feeding tube -- the question was whether or not the executive branch (President, Governer) and/or legislative (Congress, state legislature) have the Constitutional authority to override the decisions of the Legislative branch.
FYI, when a person (like Mrs. Schiavo, or a child in a custody case) is unable to represent their own interests, the court appoints a neutral third party to act on their behalf, called a Guardian Ad Ligtem. It was not a case of the husband's attorney vs. the parents' attorney; it was a case of the husband's attorney AND the guardian ad ligtem against the parents.
As I said earlier, which you convieniently ignored, the Constitutional issue would be the same regardless of whether the parents' and husband's positions were inverted -- it is a guiding principle of our legal system the Executive and Legislative branches shall not muck with the decisions of the Judicial branch, period, end of story.
besides the lack of MP3 support, which unfortunately seems to be a trend
Don't blame RedHat, blame the USPTO for issuing software patents. MP3 encoding and playback is patented in the US, and the patent holder likes to sue people.
Personally, I just avoid the issue and use Ogg Vorbis instead. IMHO it sounds better, it's not encumbered with patents, and there's a free player for PalmOS. But if you insist on having genuine MP3 support, it isn't that hard to install it yourself. Wget + tar + configure + make + make install is a little harder than getting an rpm with yum, but it's not rocket science.
Sodomy laws, while still on the books in a few bass-ackwards states, have been universally held to be unconstitutional when applied to any consentual, non-commercial heterosexual act performed in private.
In those circuits which haven't overturned their sodomy laws yet, the laws are on the books but are basically unenforcable. This is because there is such a mass of precedent that any attempt to bring a case to trial would almost certianly result in the law being struck down . So we have the insane situation where the bible-thumpers get to keep their unconstitutional law as long as they don't actually try to use it against anyone.
As I understand it, the governor and President both had the Constitutional wherewithal to stop it
You understand wrong. Neither the president nor a governer has any Constitutional authority to intervene in a private medical decision or to override a court ruling. I defy anyone to quote the section of the Constitution which grants them this authority.
If she were sentenced to be executed, then yes, the president or the governer could stay the execution. That was not the case here -- her husband and the court-appointed guardian ad ligtem decided that it would be her wish to not be kept alive by artificial means, and the courts agreed. Her parents -- WHO HAD NO LEGAL STANDING WHATSOEVER TO DETERMINE HER COURSE OF TREATMENT -- objected to this and created a media circus.
Actually, the earliest examples of rifled firearms date back to the 14th century. Early rifles were hard to make, insanely expensive, and difficult to reload. The manufacturing techniques to ECONOMICALLY produce a rifled barrel didn't emerge until the 18th century (EG the Kentucky long rifle of the American Revoloution).
No, if you want to sell space exploration to the current administration, you need justify it with fundimentalist Christian dogma, not evil yukky godless science.
While I realize you're probably making a joke, the GPs point was that all the hardware for entire Mercury/Gemini/Apollo program was designed and built using technology that was primitive compared to what we have today.
Indeed. I'm very tempted to go to the Cockeysville best buy tomorrow with a $2 bill, a couple Suzie B's and Sacejaweia dollars, 50cent pieces, and whatever other unusual currency I have around and buy something.
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You want a real justification? Here is one: I demand that the State of Texas abide by the terms of the First and Fourteenth amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
The Constitution prohibits the government from endorsing one religious viewpoint over another or from infringing on the freedom of speech or the press. As much as it may bug you that other people can do things that your religion says are bad, you cannot use the power of the state to impose your religious beliefs on everyone else.
The US Supreme Court has consistantly ruled on multiple occasions that filtering a publicly-funded internet connection is an unconstitutional abridgement of the freedom of speech. Don't like it? Tough shit. The First Amendment provides equal protection to my right to surf porn as it does your right to download Chick tracts.
If you work at a place like that, it's a tough sell (if not a bureaucratic nightmare) to get hardware from a "non-preferred" vendor.
We have convicted criminals in high political office too... as well as individuals who used political & family influence to avoid prosecution for crimes that anyone else would have done time for.
Even if people didn't sue, they still would be HIGHLY reluctant to buy a replacement player unless they got a guarantee that it wouldn't suffer the same fate. Simlarly, people aren't going to buy a new DVD if they can't be confidant that it's going to work in their players.
The Circuit City DIVX scheme was the movie studios' wet dream: you had to pay for the disk to watch it the first time, then if you wanted to watch it again later you had to pay again. Of course it took the public about 30 seconds to catch on to this scam and reject it completely. I don't know how much money was lost in that debacle, but I'm sure it was in the millions.
Remember that EM spectrum use is subject to INTERNATIONAL TREATY. The EM spectrum is not bounded by state or national borders: a transmission in one juristiction can be received by someone in another, and interference on the same frequency could easily happen over political borders. Furthermore, there are treaties governing how the EM spectrum is used in international waters for (EG for navigation & communication).
Remember that making international treaties is a power explicitly prohibited to the States (Article I section 10), and as such is the sole pervue of the Federal government under the 10th amendment. The power to enforce the terms of international treaties is clearly granted to Congress under the "elastic" clause of Article I section 8: "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
Even if you could argue that the Commerce and Treaty clauses did not apply, the federal courts would still have jurisdiction (Article III section 2) in any interstate case regarding EM spectrum use, again putting the issue squarely in the hands of the federal government.
As much as I'd like to use the 10th amendment to limit the powers of the federal government, on this issue I have to conclude that the Constitution prohibits the STATES from regulating the use of the EM spectrum.
As for cooling, they mentioned that the ambient temperature at the proposed site is around -50C. The "waste" heat from a nuclear reactor is going to be very valuable.
You'll still need some way of moving that heat around, which means bringing some kind of coolant with you from Earth. Your colony is going to need lots of water anyway, so you might as well use that. If you still have more heat than you need, you can get rid of it with passive radiant cooling or by using the lunar rock as a heat sink.
Realistically, until they get a plant set up to manufacture photovoltaic cells locally, it would be too expensive to get all their power from PV cells and batteries ferried up from Earth. You would need nuclear power to jump-start the industries (mining, refining, manufacturing) needed to make the PV cells and storage batteries locally.
Nothing gives you more kilowatts per kilogram than a nuclear reactor, and mass is the single MOST important factor in getting stuff to the Moon in the first place.
Building a moon base is a vital precursor to building an orbital habitat or exploiting the rest of the solar system. And by "moon base" I don't mean some overpriced clubhouse like the ISS -- it needs to be a real industrial city, complete with mining, refining, and manufacturing facilities.
The real killer app for widespread acceptance of desktop Linux would be Microsoft Office (or a 100% work-alike). Openoffice.org and Evolution have come a long way, but they're only (IMHO) about 85% there in terms of replacing MS-Office.
The other thing which would drive acceptance of desktop linux would be the availability of games. If Joe User could walk in to Best Buy and see that all the popular games are available in Windows and Linux versions, he might consider switching. As it is now, even hard-core Linux geeks usually have a Windows partition for gaming.
As an aside, Given the success of live CD distros like Knoppix, I'm suprised that game makers haven't considered releasing their products under a custom bootable Linux distro.
Creativity and productivity are the two things a startup company, particuarly a software startup, needs the most. Draconian security kills both of these. Likewise, oppressive NDAs and a corporate attitude of mistrust are not going to build loyalty among your employees.
If you don't want your programmers to steal "your" code, treat them like PARTNERS, not EMPLOYEES. There's not much incentive to steal from yourself.
An actual WORKABLE solution is to have TLDs like .KIDS and .TEEN. To get one of these TLDs, you have to SIGN A CONTRACT saying you will abide by the contractually-imposed content restrictions, and perhaps even POST A BOND which would be forfiet if you broke the terms of the contract.
This wouldn't solve the problem completely, as it still requires client-side or proxy-level enforcement, but it does make it easier.
FYI, when a person (like Mrs. Schiavo, or a child in a custody case) is unable to represent their own interests, the court appoints a neutral third party to act on their behalf, called a Guardian Ad Ligtem. It was not a case of the husband's attorney vs. the parents' attorney; it was a case of the husband's attorney AND the guardian ad ligtem against the parents.
As I said earlier, which you convieniently ignored, the Constitutional issue would be the same regardless of whether the parents' and husband's positions were inverted -- it is a guiding principle of our legal system the Executive and Legislative branches shall not muck with the decisions of the Judicial branch, period, end of story.
Personally, I just avoid the issue and use Ogg Vorbis instead. IMHO it sounds better, it's not encumbered with patents, and there's a free player for PalmOS. But if you insist on having genuine MP3 support, it isn't that hard to install it yourself. Wget + tar + configure + make + make install is a little harder than getting an rpm with yum, but it's not rocket science.
If you're not a parent, you probably don't get it. If you are, you do.
Trust me, it's the best feeling in the world.
In those circuits which haven't overturned their sodomy laws yet, the laws are on the books but are basically unenforcable. This is because there is such a mass of precedent that any attempt to bring a case to trial would almost certianly result in the law being struck down . So we have the insane situation where the bible-thumpers get to keep their unconstitutional law as long as they don't actually try to use it against anyone.
If she were sentenced to be executed, then yes, the president or the governer could stay the execution. That was not the case here -- her husband and the court-appointed guardian ad ligtem decided that it would be her wish to not be kept alive by artificial means, and the courts agreed. Her parents -- WHO HAD NO LEGAL STANDING WHATSOEVER TO DETERMINE HER COURSE OF TREATMENT -- objected to this and created a media circus.
Actually, the earliest examples of rifled firearms date back to the 14th century. Early rifles were hard to make, insanely expensive, and difficult to reload. The manufacturing techniques to ECONOMICALLY produce a rifled barrel didn't emerge until the 18th century (EG the Kentucky long rifle of the American Revoloution).
No, if you want to sell space exploration to the current administration, you need justify it with fundimentalist Christian dogma, not evil yukky godless science.
While I realize you're probably making a joke, the GPs point was that all the hardware for entire Mercury/Gemini/Apollo program was designed and built using technology that was primitive compared to what we have today.
Indeed. I'm very tempted to go to the Cockeysville best buy tomorrow with a $2 bill, a couple Suzie B's and Sacejaweia dollars, 50cent pieces, and whatever other unusual currency I have around and buy something.