It makes Microsoft look like a bunch of petulant three year olds. I actually think the only reason anyone tolerates them is that their behavior is so unbelievably bad that no one actually thinks it could possibly all be true.
Got to agree with you here. The "big lie" idea is real and pervasive, and it works backwards as well.
MS behaves so outragiously, lies so often, so obviously, buys fake "reviews", etc that people become jaded. They can't believe that its all true.
We have the pre-existing idea that corporations are responsible (why we'd have this I have no idea), and behavior that doesn't match that idea tends to slide past un-noticed.
It doesn't hurt that our "news media" is so profit focused that they don't bother with the expense of fact checking. Statements made at a press conference are often quoted as gospel, despite the fact that they're often totally false. Fact checking costs money, mindlessly quoting press releases is free...
what else would you expect them to say? 'Hey we are out to destroy linux'?
Well, it'd be a refreshing bit of honesty, as I said in my other post.
And really, why shouldn't they admit their true motives? Its not like everyone on the face of the planet doesn't know that MS has ambitions to be the sole operating system. Given that they don't have a chance of lying convincingly, why don't they just tell the truth?
I'd probably be less anti-MS if they did start telling the truth, actually. Ballmer: "Well of course we're trying to underwrite SCO's legal fees, we are taking all legal courses of action to keep Linux from spreading." I'd like to see that.
MS, of course has no intention of doing anything to undermine Linux.
What bothers me is not the lie, but the pervasiveness of this sort of attitude. They don't want to admit their true motives, so they lie and the mass media doesn't call them on it.
My question is simple: why are they bothering? They have financial interest in seeing Linux, and MacOS, failing. If Linux's market share expands, theirs contracts. Nothing difficult to understand here.
Unfortunately, that their pathetic lie being allowed to go un-challenged means that otheres will keep right on lying in ever more pathetic manners. Let's have some artistry here, if someone wants to lie to me I expect it to be plausable, not rediculous.
Its rather like the political "doner's" lie: "Oh, no, I'd never bribe a politician. This particular politician just wants to give me special favors because its part of his political philosophy, I'm just giving him money to express my support of that philosophy."
Since that excuse works so well in politics why not everywhere else: "Oh no officer, I wasn't paying that woman for sex, she simply has a philosophy of giving oral sex to strangers, I'm merely expressing my support for that philosophy."
Really, MS, politicians, their lies are just too transparent to be amusing. We need a better class of lies damnit. Either that or some honesty, that would be original too...
No matter how many times you might repeat that, it still isn't true.
Er, actually, it is true. Copyright extends to a specific arrangement of words, not the basic concepts behind the words. You could probably make a pretty good case that Nivin owns the word "Ringworld", but this would not prevent someone from writing stories that involve a ringworld (Dyson Circle?).
If ideas were ownable the Heinlein estate would be getting royalties on waldos (all the various "telepresence" apperatus), and waterbeds. Similarly, SF involving a character becoming both of its parents would be forbidden because Heinlein wrote it in "All You Zombies". The Anime "Bubblegum Crisis" would be illegal because it involves powered armor...
Even in extreme cases, where a writer makes an exact copy of a popular universe, but changes all the names are perfectly legal. As an example: a while back an RPG firm seemed as if it were going to get the rights to make an RPG out of the various "Highlander" movies/televison shows/etc. The deal fell through after they'd invested considerable time and money writing the thing; so they changed all the names, and published. All perfectly legal.
Under the US copyright laws, it is true that no one owns an idea.
I haven't run any numbers, but I think that the heathing effects of even 1,000+ rockets per year will be less significant than the heating effects of the much larger number of automobiles.
Rockets would be hotter, but also briefer. Cars are less hot, but there are lots more of them, and they stick around for longer. Overall I think that the heating effect of rockets can be safely ignored, unless we start launching millions per year.
Finally, I assume that we will only be using conventional rockets for a few more years at the most. They're horribly inefficient. SCRAM jets, space elevators, etc, are not yet built, but eventually will be.
Don't forget, this would be like many nuclear explosions, mostly because existing rockets do emit most of the energy as pure radiation.
I think you're confusing "hard" radiation with "soft" radiation. ALso, rockets tend to release most of their energy as energetic particles (particles of water in the case of hydrogen/oxygen rockets, particles of other, less pleasent things in the case of LOX/kerosine rockets), which makes for a kenetic energy issue, not a radiant energy issue.
The radiant energy of a rocket is primarially heat, with light and sound as a close second. I suppose you might get some alpha, or possibly an X-Ray or two, but not even beta, much less gamma. Compare to nukes which release tons of gamma, as well as spreading monoatomic radioactives around.
I'd MUCH rather be next door to a lifting rocket than a nuke.
Re: Nano-replicators. You may indeed be correct. I actually tend to think that you are, for the very reason you just mentioned: energy. Plus, the additional problem of waste heat.
But, and this is a very important but, since all humans live on one planet right now we are playing for all the marbles. I'd rather not take any chance that can be eleminated. If we had self-sufficient colonies elsewhere I wouldn't worry about something unlikely to happen, but we don't...
Re: Resources. At this point I think you are a bit like a person in the early 20th century telling me that automobiles are pointless because we will always have enough horses. It is certainly true that we have resources not yet exploited. However these resources are inherently limited. Large yes, but infinate no.
It is absolutely true that at the moment it is cheaper to build on Earth. In the early 20th century it was cheaper to use horses, yet you may have noticed that we use cars today. Technology will improve, that's a given. Most projections made based on todays technology show that we could get materials much cheaper from the Belt, or Luna, than we could here on Earth, aside from the problem of getting off Earth in the first place.
There is actually a corporation looking into building a space elevator, whether it will succeed or not I don't know, but eventually something will succeed.
As for room, most of the real-estate you mention is undesireable in the extreme. Additionally, we require more than living space. We need space for farms and ranches to grow our food. We need space for factories to build our computers. We need space for...
Most of the space left on Earth is left because it would require large amounts of terraforming to be usable, requiring more energy expenditures, etc.
Fossil fuels are inherently limited, no arguing that there are oil fields yet untapped, but eventually we will run out. More importantly the use of fossil fuels have hidden costs, mostly in the form of their pollutants. Terrestrial based solar power is at the mercy of clouds, night, etc. Again, at the moment, building an orbital power collector is prohibitively expensive. But the moment will pass.
You do not really believe that exactly the Chinese would pay the transport to protect nature? The have their own national Moon: Tibet, where too few people are living for any audible protest. There they already store their nuclear waste.
I was thinking in more general terms. China, in specific, does not represent my idea of a government that has the best interests of anybody (including themselves, in the long run) in mind. I realize that the article is about Chinese mining operations, but the comment I was replying to was more general in nature, implying that ANY space based industry/mining/etc was a bad thing.
Not to be nasty here, but you seem to be missing a critical point: one of the reasons that we're messing up the Earth is because of conditions here. Luna, as a nice example, has no atmosphere, thus atmospheric pollution is impossible. Similarly, its surface is blasted with hard solar radiation stronger than most radioactive waste, thus its a perfect place for experiments involving radioactivity.
On a more pragmatic note some industry MUST be located off planet for safety reasons. Research into nano-scale assemblers is an excellent idea -- as long as a mistake can't turn the planet into grey goo. Orbital facilities seem ideally suited for this.
Also, much of the industry on Earth can benefit from more careful management of waste at all stages. Many "wastes" can actually be resold at a profit. Unfortunately, due to tradition, status-quo thinking, and so forth, industrial producers aren't used to thinking in these terms. In space, or even on Luna, the surrounding environment tends to force people into thinking along the lines of efficiency, reuse, etc. This can't help but bleed over into terrestrial industry.
Finally, there aren't many other games in town. Terrestrial industry is already facing large problems of overcrowding, pollution, and energy shortage. If we limit ourselves to terrestrial industry it is literally impossible to build a car for every person in China due to a lack of energy and raw materials. Space allows us to generate huge amounts of power, has raw materials that are accessable without harming any environment, etc.
We simply don't have the room here on Earth for enough industry to provide first-world luxury for all humans, from a long term socio-political standpoint that leads to several nasty scenarios. Using the vastly larger resources of space gives us an out.
As an environmentalist I cannot help but think that space based industry is probably our best bet.
The more frightening point is the underlying attitude behind the notion. Essentially he's dividing the world into two segments: those who know what is going on, and everyone else who is properly kept in the dark...
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." And yes, I know its a quote from a game, but it seemed quote appropriate.
So your definition of 'Communism' is actually Marxism-Leninism, which unfortunately has been the dominant interpretation thanks to the Soviet Union. And even the independent Communist voices did not have the guts to return to the pre-Leninist interpretations (witness the International Socialists. A scary bunch).
You are, of course, correct. I was using current/common/generally accepted/whatever definition rather than the proper dictionary definition.
Which, I am sure, is the definition that BitGeek intends when he slings about the term "communist" as an insult. In the real world there has never been a communism under its real definition, and personally I rather doubt there will be. Like all utopias, the communist utopia requires a change in people.
For myself I tend to be nervous about any accumulation of power; regardless of whether that power is gathered by a government, a corporation, or even an individual. Concentrations of political power are potential threats to liberty, and merit watching.
One more time: The rights outlined in the Ammendments to the Constitution apply only to US citizens. Not a difficult concept, I should think.
The first Ammendment reads, as follows:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Outlining no fewer than five separate rights, something I always thought was a bit of a mistake on our Founder's part, but no worries. And, no, it obviously does not say anything about corporations being excluded. However, these rights do only apply to US citizens.
You probably think the second ammendment only applies ot the national guard (which came into being 109 years AFTER it was written) don't you?
Nope. I think that it was intended to apply to individual citizens. As with many laws of the time they first ennumerated the reason they thought the right was important, but that reason was not generally meant as a restriction on the right. I'm a generally pro-freedom type of person.
Oh, and this idea that the founding fathers wanted corporations to serve the prublic good is bullshit-- more liberal lies about the past.
Ugh. Don't think, just call anyone who disagrees with you a liberal or communist. Research is for loosers, right? So, the quotes:
"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our
moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." --Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816.
"Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is
to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1785
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."
-- U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 (letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
Nifarious communists, the both of them....
It is self evident that communism is a failure as an economic and political system. However, proposing that corporate power be checked, noting that for profit corporations are not the best solution to every problem, pointing out that government regulation and control of corporations has benefits, and so forth are in no way an endorsement of communism. Communism is the philosophy that the government should own and directly control all means of production. Denying that corporations are citizens, but rather tools of citizens, is not communistic. My computer is my tool, it is not a citizen (now, if that AI program I'm woring on ever takes off, that's a different story).
I have been involved in constructing two corporations, and the idea that these legal fictions are people in the same sense that I am is preposterous.
Actually, Bitgeek, you've missed a fairly large and important bit of the Ammendments to the Constitution. They apply only to citizens.
Animals are not citizens, thus are not protected by the constitution. Koko the gorilla, as an example, is not granted free speach rights. The big question is: are corporations citizens? Do they deserve the same rights that are accorded to real people?
Similarly, until slavery was declared illegal, the Constitution did not apply to slaves. Their rights to free speach, trial by jury, etc were not being violated because officially they were not citizens.
Obviously this was not a good thing, and later the Constitution was ammended to outlaw slavery, at which time blacks became legally entitled to the same rights as any other citizen (though this was not enforced everywhere....)
So, no, this is not a simple open and shut case. If corporations are not citizens (and, I for one don't see how they can be counted as such), then they are not entitled to First Ammendment rights.
Also, regarding "communism", I would like to point out that such noted communists as George Washington, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson fought to have an 11th ammendment added to the original ten that would has specifically required all corporations to serve the public good, as well as specifically barring them from influencing politics in any way, shape, or form.
I'm a First Ammendment fantic, but I don't think it applies to corporations.
Ahh, the joys of belief in strong dichotomies. Either a person believes in no governmental regulation of any sort, or he believes that the government should be all powerful and control everything.
An article pointing out that resources are not infinite doesn't say that we should live in the hypothetical de-regulated utopia, so therefore it *must* be calling for totalitarian governmental control of everything.
There are positions between these two extremes. It is possible to both respect private property and the rights of private property, while simultaniously recognizing that some regulations and restrictions must exist. Its like the old joke "Your right to punch ends where my nose begins".
Recognizing that resources are not infinite is not equivalent to demanding that we go back to living in caves. Calling for increased efficiency and conservation efforts is *not* identical to calling for an end to industrialization and technology. The solution is to step back, abandon the urge to split things into "two sides", and look at reality. Any Rynd and Greenpeace are not the only two alternatives.
It is self evident that we have to maintain a technological society, increase our industrial capicity, and increase energy production. This does not mean that increased industrial capicity, and increased energy produciton must come at the expense of more environmental harm, and paving the world. Also, it is self evident that a continuiously increasing human population will cause shortages of scarce resources. By combining efforts, abandoning the urge to dichotomize, and looking for solutions we can all get what we want.
I want a world with vast forests, and a world with advanced technology. We can have both. But we can't get there by denying that the way we currently are working is causing problems. It is one thing to say "technology is good, let's keep improving it". I agree with that statement, and its fine. But when you say "technology is good, therefore let's wreck the planet" I think you've fallen victim to the belief that we can have one, or the other. Both is both possible and necessary.
Actually, I think its a shame he couldn't go up. Space tourism is a promising way to a) get more people interested, b) encourage work on a space plane, c) get MONEY to the continually cash starved space agencies, etc.
If Lance Bass had gotten to go up millions of screaming fangirls would start thinking of space travel as being kind of interesting, as opposed to thinking of it as a nerdy waste of time. This may not seem important now, but screaming fangirls do grow up, become voters, and (hopefully) pay for space exploration/exploitation.
As long as space travel remains exclusively the domain of highly intelligent uber-jocks only a very few people will see its benefits. Space travel must become more accessable or it will die off.
OSI initiates thier certification program by choosing that old Windows learn-to-program langauge with the turtle?
I'm pretty sure that you're joking, but just in case you aren't: LOGO was not made for Windows. There are Windows LOGO interperaters, but LOGO was initially designed back in the old days, way pre-Windows.
My first experience with programming was using LOGO on a Tandy TRS-80 computer. I was six and I thought it was absolutely great.
The "required to accept" clause doesn't mean you can't shield, it means you can't sue/whatever people putting out radiation that messes up your stuff. Why isn't it written more clearly? Remember, its written in Lawyerease, not English... Don't worry though, the FCC isn't going to send in its goon squad if you put a farady cage around your Part 15 gear (though it probably would make the gear useless).
Possibly, assuming that it works (which I don't necessarially), the only explination I can think of is that its a variant on the ion drive.
It isn't reactionless, the reaction just comes from ionized air. If you look in the 1968 copy of WorldBook encyclopedia it gives instructions on building ion engines. They're pretty low thrust, and, of course, only work in an atmosphere.
I notice that the guy's site had pictures of one working in a farady cage, but not a vacuum chamber.
I'm not saying that it *IS* an ion drive, its probably a hoax. But if it does work, then its probably an ion drive.
Note, recently the Deep Space 1 probe that NASA sent out was described as using an "ion drive", this is a completely different type of drive, and not related to the "ionized atmosphere" drive that I think this guy has built. DS1 used reaction mass, but got thrust from it by ionizing it and repelling it from a thin mesh.
Why is it that every Slashdot article posted related to microsoft always talks about how they are stomping on our rights, choking innovation
Um, that would be because MS is stomping on our rights and choking innovation. This is the exact same reason why all the articles you see about Ted Bunday/Jeff Dhalmer/Chuck Mason are about them being evil psychopaths. Mason et all are evil psychopaths, and MS is stomping innovation every chance they get, if you don't believe this I suggust that you look at the tanscripts of the recent court cases MS has been involved in. Are we supposed to say that MS *isn't* stomping out innovation?
Their office suite cannot be matched by anything available for Linux in stability, user-friendliness, and many other factors
I don't know how it acts under Linux, but the Corel office suite is much more stable/friendly/usable than the MS suite under Win9x. Perhaps this is because Corel's WordPerfect is what MS made a cheap knock off of when they made Word. Do we see MS innovating and getting a better market share because its new and innovative product is superior, or MS copying a successful piece of software and then forcing the true innovator out of business by illegally exploiting its virtual monopoly on operating systems?
The reason MS gets bashed so much is because what it is doing is not acceptable. It has nothing to do with jelousy, or being anti-capitalistic, and everything to do with the concepts of fair play. Recall, please, that the central tenant of capitalism is competition, in the absence of competition capitalism breaks down and stops working. This is why mergers and corporate buyouts are essentially an anti-capitalistic thing. Since MS has a pseudo-monopoly on desktop OS's then it is necessary to prevent MS from using this monopoly to give their application software an unfair advantage. This is why people support breaking MS up, let there be one company that does nothing but OS, and another that does everything else.
Wouldn't it be better if they tried to improve on speech typewriting - the present ones need so much of practice on diction that it's easier to type.
Because I can program faster by typing than by dictating. Imagine saying:
"Class hello. Line break. Open curley bracket. Line break. Indent. Public static void main. Open parentheses. Wordcap String end wordcap. Args [note: here ensues a thirty second pause while you convince the software that "args" is a real word]. Close parentheses. Line break. Open curley bracket. Indent. Wordcap System. End wordcap. Period. nocaps out. Period. println [note: here we have another thirty second break while you convince the software that "println" is a word]. Open parentheses. Quotation mark. Hello world. Explination mark. Quotation mark. Close parentheses. Semicolin. Line break. Close curley bracket. Line break. Backspace. Close curley bracket. Line break."
And that's just to get:
class hello
{
public static void main(String args)
{
System.out.println("Hello world!");
}
}
Trying to program via dictation is a nightmare.
What's really sad about this post is that I wasted a few minutes putting in HTML to make the "code block" look right....
The most frightening thing is that this talk of the corporate death penalty sort of ignores the fact that the corporations are not penalized in the slightest (other than slap on the wrist fines) for their criminal activity.
A while back some politician proposed a law that would require the government to try to deal exclusively with corporations that hadn't violated the law lately. Not an outright forbiddance, but if corp A hasn't violated the law and corp B had, than the government would deal preferentially with corp A. It never even made it out of committee.
If we can't even get the government to try to deal exclusively with law abiding corporations, how can we expect to get them to execute illegal corporations?
Waitaminute, why is the logo for the Patents topic a picture of silverware? How is that relevant? Just occurred to me how little sense that makes....
I believe that it is an editoral comment on the nature of many of the patents being filed lately. Notice that the silverware set has "Patent Pending" printed over it, implying that some lawyer has decided to patent silverware. "A method of eating using an intermediary tool so as to avoid direct contact between the fingers and the food".
Given that several patents (especially tech patents) filed lately are pretty stupid I think that the logo makes sense.
So just go buy a share or two of stock for any company that affects your life. You at least have access to shareholder meetings to make your point heard. If you own shares you can bring up law suits against the company as a minority shareholder
And if I can't afford to buy the stock, or can't afford the fancy ass lawyer it takes to bring a successful lawsuit to bear I can just get screwed, neh?
I'm not in favor of big government, and I'm not in favor of big business either. However, the fact that it is much easier to fight against a repressive government than a repressive corporation is undisputeable.
Add to that the "Tort reform" laws currently being proposed and you will notice that suing a corporation to punish it for its wrongs becomes even less of an option. Unless you can exercise the death penalty against a corporation (and there is no way to kill a corporation other than bankrupting it) then they are effectively immune to any penalties that you can try to hit them with.
I agree with the person who said that the real problem here is that people are too polarized on this issue, eitehr they think that the government is the essence of all evil, or they think that the corporations are. The truth is that neither of those sides is right. Obviously a government *can* be evil, equally obviously a corporation can. You need regulations to reign in the potential for evil in the corporations, and you need truly independant media to reign in the potential for evil in the government. Right now, in the US, I'd say it looks like the corporations have too much power.
But they didn't 'link' to it. There is no page on their web-server that has a link to Ford's site.
What they did do was define a DNS entry that points directly to Fords site. There is no linking. It is a DNS ENTRY. To assume it is a 'link' is to assume that the only protocol on the internet is HTTP.
Feh, a text-based domain name, which points to a given server is a link. Not in the HTTP sense perhaps, but it is a link in the exact same sense that a symbolic link is in *nix.
A domain name can point to any IP address that the owner of the domain name wants it to. If the owner of that IP address doesn't like it he has two possible solutions a) tell his server to reject requests from that domain name, or b) ask the person who owns the domain name to stop pointing it at his IP address. Ford rejected both of those solutions (the domain name is still pointing to their address), which sort of nullifies their argument that they are afraid that people will think they registered the domain name (if they were genuinely afraid of loosing their reputation they'd have taken measures to make it stop already). Instead they're engaging in militant nastyness and asking for buckets of money in an effort to put 2600 out of business.
But neverminding all that, the point of your post is dead wrong, a domain name is *by*definition* a link.
Slashdot Mirror
Got to agree with you here. The "big lie" idea is real and pervasive, and it works backwards as well.
MS behaves so outragiously, lies so often, so obviously, buys fake "reviews", etc that people become jaded. They can't believe that its all true.
We have the pre-existing idea that corporations are responsible (why we'd have this I have no idea), and behavior that doesn't match that idea tends to slide past un-noticed.
It doesn't hurt that our "news media" is so profit focused that they don't bother with the expense of fact checking. Statements made at a press conference are often quoted as gospel, despite the fact that they're often totally false. Fact checking costs money, mindlessly quoting press releases is free...
Well, it'd be a refreshing bit of honesty, as I said in my other post.
And really, why shouldn't they admit their true motives? Its not like everyone on the face of the planet doesn't know that MS has ambitions to be the sole operating system. Given that they don't have a chance of lying convincingly, why don't they just tell the truth?
I'd probably be less anti-MS if they did start telling the truth, actually. Ballmer: "Well of course we're trying to underwrite SCO's legal fees, we are taking all legal courses of action to keep Linux from spreading." I'd like to see that.
What bothers me is not the lie, but the pervasiveness of this sort of attitude. They don't want to admit their true motives, so they lie and the mass media doesn't call them on it.
My question is simple: why are they bothering? They have financial interest in seeing Linux, and MacOS, failing. If Linux's market share expands, theirs contracts. Nothing difficult to understand here.
Unfortunately, that their pathetic lie being allowed to go un-challenged means that otheres will keep right on lying in ever more pathetic manners. Let's have some artistry here, if someone wants to lie to me I expect it to be plausable, not rediculous.
Its rather like the political "doner's" lie: "Oh, no, I'd never bribe a politician. This particular politician just wants to give me special favors because its part of his political philosophy, I'm just giving him money to express my support of that philosophy."
Since that excuse works so well in politics why not everywhere else: "Oh no officer, I wasn't paying that woman for sex, she simply has a philosophy of giving oral sex to strangers, I'm merely expressing my support for that philosophy."
Really, MS, politicians, their lies are just too transparent to be amusing. We need a better class of lies damnit. Either that or some honesty, that would be original too...
Er, actually, it is true. Copyright extends to a specific arrangement of words, not the basic concepts behind the words. You could probably make a pretty good case that Nivin owns the word "Ringworld", but this would not prevent someone from writing stories that involve a ringworld (Dyson Circle?).
If ideas were ownable the Heinlein estate would be getting royalties on waldos (all the various "telepresence" apperatus), and waterbeds. Similarly, SF involving a character becoming both of its parents would be forbidden because Heinlein wrote it in "All You Zombies". The Anime "Bubblegum Crisis" would be illegal because it involves powered armor...
Even in extreme cases, where a writer makes an exact copy of a popular universe, but changes all the names are perfectly legal. As an example: a while back an RPG firm seemed as if it were going to get the rights to make an RPG out of the various "Highlander" movies/televison shows/etc. The deal fell through after they'd invested considerable time and money writing the thing; so they changed all the names, and published. All perfectly legal.
Under the US copyright laws, it is true that no one owns an idea.
I haven't run any numbers, but I think that the heathing effects of even 1,000+ rockets per year will be less significant than the heating effects of the much larger number of automobiles.
Rockets would be hotter, but also briefer. Cars are less hot, but there are lots more of them, and they stick around for longer. Overall I think that the heating effect of rockets can be safely ignored, unless we start launching millions per year.
Finally, I assume that we will only be using conventional rockets for a few more years at the most. They're horribly inefficient. SCRAM jets, space elevators, etc, are not yet built, but eventually will be.
I think you're confusing "hard" radiation with "soft" radiation. ALso, rockets tend to release most of their energy as energetic particles (particles of water in the case of hydrogen/oxygen rockets, particles of other, less pleasent things in the case of LOX/kerosine rockets), which makes for a kenetic energy issue, not a radiant energy issue.
The radiant energy of a rocket is primarially heat, with light and sound as a close second. I suppose you might get some alpha, or possibly an X-Ray or two, but not even beta, much less gamma. Compare to nukes which release tons of gamma, as well as spreading monoatomic radioactives around.
I'd MUCH rather be next door to a lifting rocket than a nuke.
But, and this is a very important but, since all humans live on one planet right now we are playing for all the marbles. I'd rather not take any chance that can be eleminated. If we had self-sufficient colonies elsewhere I wouldn't worry about something unlikely to happen, but we don't...
Re: Resources. At this point I think you are a bit like a person in the early 20th century telling me that automobiles are pointless because we will always have enough horses. It is certainly true that we have resources not yet exploited. However these resources are inherently limited. Large yes, but infinate no.
It is absolutely true that at the moment it is cheaper to build on Earth. In the early 20th century it was cheaper to use horses, yet you may have noticed that we use cars today. Technology will improve, that's a given. Most projections made based on todays technology show that we could get materials much cheaper from the Belt, or Luna, than we could here on Earth, aside from the problem of getting off Earth in the first place.
There is actually a corporation looking into building a space elevator, whether it will succeed or not I don't know, but eventually something will succeed.
As for room, most of the real-estate you mention is undesireable in the extreme. Additionally, we require more than living space. We need space for farms and ranches to grow our food. We need space for factories to build our computers. We need space for...
Most of the space left on Earth is left because it would require large amounts of terraforming to be usable, requiring more energy expenditures, etc.
Fossil fuels are inherently limited, no arguing that there are oil fields yet untapped, but eventually we will run out. More importantly the use of fossil fuels have hidden costs, mostly in the form of their pollutants. Terrestrial based solar power is at the mercy of clouds, night, etc. Again, at the moment, building an orbital power collector is prohibitively expensive. But the moment will pass.
I was thinking in more general terms. China, in specific, does not represent my idea of a government that has the best interests of anybody (including themselves, in the long run) in mind. I realize that the article is about Chinese mining operations, but the comment I was replying to was more general in nature, implying that ANY space based industry/mining/etc was a bad thing.
On a more pragmatic note some industry MUST be located off planet for safety reasons. Research into nano-scale assemblers is an excellent idea -- as long as a mistake can't turn the planet into grey goo. Orbital facilities seem ideally suited for this.
Also, much of the industry on Earth can benefit from more careful management of waste at all stages. Many "wastes" can actually be resold at a profit. Unfortunately, due to tradition, status-quo thinking, and so forth, industrial producers aren't used to thinking in these terms. In space, or even on Luna, the surrounding environment tends to force people into thinking along the lines of efficiency, reuse, etc. This can't help but bleed over into terrestrial industry.
Finally, there aren't many other games in town. Terrestrial industry is already facing large problems of overcrowding, pollution, and energy shortage. If we limit ourselves to terrestrial industry it is literally impossible to build a car for every person in China due to a lack of energy and raw materials. Space allows us to generate huge amounts of power, has raw materials that are accessable without harming any environment, etc.
We simply don't have the room here on Earth for enough industry to provide first-world luxury for all humans, from a long term socio-political standpoint that leads to several nasty scenarios. Using the vastly larger resources of space gives us an out.
As an environmentalist I cannot help but think that space based industry is probably our best bet.
The more frightening point is the underlying attitude behind the notion. Essentially he's dividing the world into two segments: those who know what is going on, and everyone else who is properly kept in the dark...
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
And yes, I know its a quote from a game, but it seemed quote appropriate.
You are, of course, correct. I was using current/common/generally accepted/whatever definition rather than the proper dictionary definition.
Which, I am sure, is the definition that BitGeek intends when he slings about the term "communist" as an insult. In the real world there has never been a communism under its real definition, and personally I rather doubt there will be. Like all utopias, the communist utopia requires a change in people.
For myself I tend to be nervous about any accumulation of power; regardless of whether that power is gathered by a government, a corporation, or even an individual. Concentrations of political power are potential threats to liberty, and merit watching.
Ahem. That is, I always thought that it was a mistake to bundle five separate rights under one Ammendment, not to provide all five. Oops.
The first Ammendment reads, as follows:
Outlining no fewer than five separate rights, something I always thought was a bit of a mistake on our Founder's part, but no worries. And, no, it obviously does not say anything about corporations being excluded. However, these rights do only apply to US citizens.
Nope. I think that it was intended to apply to individual citizens. As with many laws of the time they first ennumerated the reason they thought the right was important, but that reason was not generally meant as a restriction on the right. I'm a generally pro-freedom type of person.
Ugh. Don't think, just call anyone who disagrees with you a liberal or communist. Research is for loosers, right? So, the quotes:
Nifarious communists, the both of them....
It is self evident that communism is a failure as an economic and political system. However, proposing that corporate power be checked, noting that for profit corporations are not the best solution to every problem, pointing out that government regulation and control of corporations has benefits, and so forth are in no way an endorsement of communism. Communism is the philosophy that the government should own and directly control all means of production. Denying that corporations are citizens, but rather tools of citizens, is not communistic. My computer is my tool, it is not a citizen (now, if that AI program I'm woring on ever takes off, that's a different story).
I have been involved in constructing two corporations, and the idea that these legal fictions are people in the same sense that I am is preposterous.
Animals are not citizens, thus are not protected by the constitution. Koko the gorilla, as an example, is not granted free speach rights. The big question is: are corporations citizens? Do they deserve the same rights that are accorded to real people?
Similarly, until slavery was declared illegal, the Constitution did not apply to slaves. Their rights to free speach, trial by jury, etc were not being violated because officially they were not citizens.
Obviously this was not a good thing, and later the Constitution was ammended to outlaw slavery, at which time blacks became legally entitled to the same rights as any other citizen (though this was not enforced everywhere....)
So, no, this is not a simple open and shut case. If corporations are not citizens (and, I for one don't see how they can be counted as such), then they are not entitled to First Ammendment rights.
Also, regarding "communism", I would like to point out that such noted communists as George Washington, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson fought to have an 11th ammendment added to the original ten that would has specifically required all corporations to serve the public good, as well as specifically barring them from influencing politics in any way, shape, or form.
I'm a First Ammendment fantic, but I don't think it applies to corporations.
Ahh, the joys of belief in strong dichotomies. Either a person believes in no governmental regulation of any sort, or he believes that the government should be all powerful and control everything.
An article pointing out that resources are not infinite doesn't say that we should live in the hypothetical de-regulated utopia, so therefore it *must* be calling for totalitarian governmental control of everything.
There are positions between these two extremes. It is possible to both respect private property and the rights of private property, while simultaniously recognizing that some regulations and restrictions must exist. Its like the old joke "Your right to punch ends where my nose begins".
Recognizing that resources are not infinite is not equivalent to demanding that we go back to living in caves. Calling for increased efficiency and conservation efforts is *not* identical to calling for an end to industrialization and technology. The solution is to step back, abandon the urge to split things into "two sides", and look at reality. Any Rynd and Greenpeace are not the only two alternatives.
It is self evident that we have to maintain a technological society, increase our industrial capicity, and increase energy production. This does not mean that increased industrial capicity, and increased energy produciton must come at the expense of more environmental harm, and paving the world. Also, it is self evident that a continuiously increasing human population will cause shortages of scarce resources. By combining efforts, abandoning the urge to dichotomize, and looking for solutions we can all get what we want.
I want a world with vast forests, and a world with advanced technology. We can have both. But we can't get there by denying that the way we currently are working is causing problems. It is one thing to say "technology is good, let's keep improving it". I agree with that statement, and its fine. But when you say "technology is good, therefore let's wreck the planet" I think you've fallen victim to the belief that we can have one, or the other. Both is both possible and necessary.
If Lance Bass had gotten to go up millions of screaming fangirls would start thinking of space travel as being kind of interesting, as opposed to thinking of it as a nerdy waste of time. This may not seem important now, but screaming fangirls do grow up, become voters, and (hopefully) pay for space exploration/exploitation.
As long as space travel remains exclusively the domain of highly intelligent uber-jocks only a very few people will see its benefits. Space travel must become more accessable or it will die off.
I'm pretty sure that you're joking, but just in case you aren't: LOGO was not made for Windows. There are Windows LOGO interperaters, but LOGO was initially designed back in the old days, way pre-Windows.
My first experience with programming was using LOGO on a Tandy TRS-80 computer. I was six and I thought it was absolutely great.
The "required to accept" clause doesn't mean you can't shield, it means you can't sue/whatever people putting out radiation that messes up your stuff. Why isn't it written more clearly? Remember, its written in Lawyerease, not English... Don't worry though, the FCC isn't going to send in its goon squad if you put a farady cage around your Part 15 gear (though it probably would make the gear useless).
Possibly, assuming that it works (which I don't necessarially), the only explination I can think of is that its a variant on the ion drive.
It isn't reactionless, the reaction just comes from ionized air. If you look in the 1968 copy of WorldBook encyclopedia it gives instructions on building ion engines. They're pretty low thrust, and, of course, only work in an atmosphere.
I notice that the guy's site had pictures of one working in a farady cage, but not a vacuum chamber.
I'm not saying that it *IS* an ion drive, its probably a hoax. But if it does work, then its probably an ion drive.
Note, recently the Deep Space 1 probe that NASA sent out was described as using an "ion drive", this is a completely different type of drive, and not related to the "ionized atmosphere" drive that I think this guy has built. DS1 used reaction mass, but got thrust from it by ionizing it and repelling it from a thin mesh.
Um, that would be because MS is stomping on our rights and choking innovation. This is the exact same reason why all the articles you see about Ted Bunday/Jeff Dhalmer/Chuck Mason are about them being evil psychopaths. Mason et all are evil psychopaths, and MS is stomping innovation every chance they get, if you don't believe this I suggust that you look at the tanscripts of the recent court cases MS has been involved in. Are we supposed to say that MS *isn't* stomping out innovation?
I don't know how it acts under Linux, but the Corel office suite is much more stable/friendly/usable than the MS suite under Win9x. Perhaps this is because Corel's WordPerfect is what MS made a cheap knock off of when they made Word. Do we see MS innovating and getting a better market share because its new and innovative product is superior, or MS copying a successful piece of software and then forcing the true innovator out of business by illegally exploiting its virtual monopoly on operating systems?
The reason MS gets bashed so much is because what it is doing is not acceptable. It has nothing to do with jelousy, or being anti-capitalistic, and everything to do with the concepts of fair play. Recall, please, that the central tenant of capitalism is competition, in the absence of competition capitalism breaks down and stops working. This is why mergers and corporate buyouts are essentially an anti-capitalistic thing. Since MS has a pseudo-monopoly on desktop OS's then it is necessary to prevent MS from using this monopoly to give their application software an unfair advantage. This is why people support breaking MS up, let there be one company that does nothing but OS, and another that does everything else.
Because I can program faster by typing than by dictating. Imagine saying:
}"Class hello. Line break. Open curley bracket. Line break. Indent. Public static void main. Open parentheses. Wordcap String end wordcap. Args [note: here ensues a thirty second pause while you convince the software that "args" is a real word]. Close parentheses. Line break. Open curley bracket. Indent. Wordcap System. End wordcap. Period. nocaps out. Period. println [note: here we have another thirty second break while you convince the software that "println" is a word]. Open parentheses. Quotation mark. Hello world. Explination mark. Quotation mark. Close parentheses. Semicolin. Line break. Close curley bracket. Line break. Backspace. Close curley bracket. Line break."
And that's just to get:
class hello
{
Trying to program via dictation is a nightmare.
What's really sad about this post is that I wasted a few minutes putting in HTML to make the "code block" look right....
A while back some politician proposed a law that would require the government to try to deal exclusively with corporations that hadn't violated the law lately. Not an outright forbiddance, but if corp A hasn't violated the law and corp B had, than the government would deal preferentially with corp A. It never even made it out of committee.
If we can't even get the government to try to deal exclusively with law abiding corporations, how can we expect to get them to execute illegal corporations?
I believe that it is an editoral comment on the nature of many of the patents being filed lately. Notice that the silverware set has "Patent Pending" printed over it, implying that some lawyer has decided to patent silverware. "A method of eating using an intermediary tool so as to avoid direct contact between the fingers and the food".
Given that several patents (especially tech patents) filed lately are pretty stupid I think that the logo makes sense.
And if I can't afford to buy the stock, or can't afford the fancy ass lawyer it takes to bring a successful lawsuit to bear I can just get screwed, neh?
I'm not in favor of big government, and I'm not in favor of big business either. However, the fact that it is much easier to fight against a repressive government than a repressive corporation is undisputeable.
Add to that the "Tort reform" laws currently being proposed and you will notice that suing a corporation to punish it for its wrongs becomes even less of an option. Unless you can exercise the death penalty against a corporation (and there is no way to kill a corporation other than bankrupting it) then they are effectively immune to any penalties that you can try to hit them with.
I agree with the person who said that the real problem here is that people are too polarized on this issue, eitehr they think that the government is the essence of all evil, or they think that the corporations are. The truth is that neither of those sides is right. Obviously a government *can* be evil, equally obviously a corporation can. You need regulations to reign in the potential for evil in the corporations, and you need truly independant media to reign in the potential for evil in the government. Right now, in the US, I'd say it looks like the corporations have too much power.
Feh, a text-based domain name, which points to a given server is a link. Not in the HTTP sense perhaps, but it is a link in the exact same sense that a symbolic link is in *nix.
A domain name can point to any IP address that the owner of the domain name wants it to. If the owner of that IP address doesn't like it he has two possible solutions a) tell his server to reject requests from that domain name, or b) ask the person who owns the domain name to stop pointing it at his IP address. Ford rejected both of those solutions (the domain name is still pointing to their address), which sort of nullifies their argument that they are afraid that people will think they registered the domain name (if they were genuinely afraid of loosing their reputation they'd have taken measures to make it stop already). Instead they're engaging in militant nastyness and asking for buckets of money in an effort to put 2600 out of business.
But neverminding all that, the point of your post is dead wrong, a domain name is *by*definition* a link.