As Eli Whitney noted when the cotton gin was put into production by copycats before he'd even finished demoing the prototype:
"Some ideas are too valuable to be owned."
He never filed another patent.
Some ideas are too valuable to the community to be owned, but essentially worthless in terms of license sales. Eola's patent is one of these.
They may get some money for violations of their patent rights, but then the money train parks in the engine house and stays there. Companies will simply work around the patent until it expires. Users who wish the funcitionality in their browsers will simply use older versions released before the "embargo."
And forever afterward Eolas will be know as "those assholes" who made the whole mess happen. Way to go guys. I'm sure your PR flacks are happy as clams.
I hearby sentence the inventors to "death by their own product." We're going to put them in one of these things for 12 hours a day. . . then unlist their phone number.
Won't do much for them but it'll nicely isolate us from whatever further sensory input they might unleash upon us.
Ironically, Americans, living in an open market republic, are the most business and trade ignorant people I have ever met.
This isn't the opinion of an outsider criticizing America. I'm and American. I've always been an American. My father was always an American and so was his, and his and his going back to 1630 something.
But I've traveled, and off the beaten western path at that.
The average Arab door to door rug trader knows more about business and trade than the average American CEO. The proof is as near as the local car dealership. Watching Americans confront trying to buy a car, about the one and only time in their life that they will directly encounter true market dynamics face to face, is pitiful. Masters of industry go all to pieces or have their eye teeth stolen from them.
Buy low, sell high. What's so hard to understand about that? What's low? That which is in oversupply. What's high? That which is short.
You trade what you have in oversupply for what you are short of. What would be the point of paying a high price for that which you already possess an excess of?
India has lots of people and little money.
America has fewer people ( who are necessarily more expensive) and lots of money.
Sounds like trade opportunity to me.
Not happy about that?
Well, let me ask you, when was the last time you payed someone $1000 to mow your lawn or shovel your walk?
Ahhhhhhhhh, you're not quite that much of a moron after all, are you? You get some kid to do it for you for $10.
"I'm mostly advocating bringing the gun, liquor and tobacco companies into the fray simply because any fight with them will be a lot more interesting than 12 year old girls and 71 year old grandfathers."
And no doubt God liable for exothermic chemical reactions. It's those damned energy bonds that are the root cause of it all and he should pay, damn it!
Or, I suppose, we could just look at "Lefty" and say:
"You pulled the pin of a grenade, dumbass, what did you expect would happen?"
There's no profit for anybody in that though, and profit is morality.
"The word "crude" has no place around atomic weapons"
Fat Man and Big Boy were quite crude. Not as crude as what preceded them though. If you don't mind if it weighs 20,000 pounds and isn't made to "military specs" you might be surprised at the scrap crap that could be turned to the purpose.
"You've got to line up the atoms exactly, or almost nothing happens."
Oooooooo-K. I'll go to NAPA and get an "atom alignment tool."
"How's it look Charlie?"
"Not bad, but give that atom on the end there a little nudge, it isn't quite lined up right."
". . . shipped from China. .."
Why on earth would you ship from China when all the stuff is already available where you want to build the bomb? Especially if that somewhere is the US. If you wanted to target NYC I'm not even sure you'd have to leave the city (and certainly not the state) to get everything you need. Talk about taking coals to Newcastle.
Yes, I've got a Manhatten Project A1 security clearance badge (Just a button really. Ideas about badges were pretty crude then too) around the place somewhere and live a few blocks from one of the old labs. I've got some basic ideas of how these things go boom.
So do thousands of the bad guys. That's the scary part.
Nope, they won't even need an SUV. They'll just build it in place. It makes the whole thing much easier and cheaper that way since you can make a big, heavy, crude sucker out of whatever you can turn to the task.
You just rent that abandoned warehouse on the edge of town. Every big town has many to choose from.
No need to be a kamikaze either since you don't need to worry about getting close enough to the target like you do with a conventional bomb.
Either set a timer a week or so down the road, set it off with a radio,, or maybe a phone call, or. ..gasp, use the internet.
"I expected this book to be similar to other "Nutshell" books that I like and am familiar with:
a very accurate and concise description of the domain, followed by a huge API reference."
Which is exactly what I'm looking for when buying a Nutshell book and expect to get.
"this book reads more like a tutorial"
Which is precisely what I don't want when buying a Nutshell book.
Thanks for the review, you may have saved me grave diappointment.
". . . part of the mechanism consists of thick bars locking into the vault walls."
Leading to the logical absurdity that many old time banks employed, having their vault in plain view with the door open so that their customers could feel reassured by being able to see the big bars.
There's no explaining people sometimes.
Computer networks are analogous to modern banks. Many people these days don't like modern banks because you can't even see the vault. This makes them uncomfortable because for all they know they're keeping all the money in an old pizza box or something.
Of course, when it comes to computer networks, sometimes they're right.
One of the first things you learn when you begin working in computer security, especially as an outside contractor, is that your customers don't trust you as far as they could throw the Empire State Building.
In fact, you will be reviled. You will have a hard time convincing many people to hire you because they're scared to death of you in the first place. Once they do hire you you will be assumed at some lizard brain level to be doing something nefarious.
This is one of the reasons why network security is so poor. Companies are loath to allow outside security experts anywhere near the place.
This is one of the reasons white hat hackers like Lamo do what they do. The companies aren't doing what they should, out of fear, thus leaving all the doors wide open. It's a deriliction of duty that the white hats expose to the public.
The companies don't always take kindly to the fact that their customers then know how poorly their personal data is being protected.
Obviously the way to handle the matter is to attack the white hat. Go figure.
Now these same companies don't hesitate a second to call in a locksmith to handle their physical security. They don't worry that when a lock gets changed the locksmith is secretly making a copy of the key so he can break in at night and clean them out, even though this occasionally actually happens.
Why not? Because physical locks aren't black magic beyond their understanding.
Rather than gain that understanding they'd rather fear. Again, go figure.
Computer security experts are like people who treat lepers. We aknowledge that they are needed, but we don't want them around our house.
God forbid they should marry our daughter or something. We'll never sleep at night.
Look at it this way, if the lock on my house is faulty did someone who demonstrates this fact to me "damage" my property by "causing" me to have to buy a new lock?
Or is that maybe a capital expense that's my responsibility in the first place? Especially if I've taken on the responsibility for protecting the safty of other people's property and papers as part of a commercial operation.
Also, is this expense an actual additional one, or did I maybe already have a handyman on salary who simply did it as part of his normal duties?
For $25K the NYT could have hired me for a full quarter to go over their security systems. Did they really do something like that, or did a couple of guys on staff have to spend some of the time they normally would have spent goofing off actually doing their jobs?
Now paying someone $25k to audit security is a perfectly legitimate business undertaking. So, how is providing that service for free necessarily "damage."
( The answer, of course, is that Lamo made his audit public. Still, it's not the simple B&W issue you might think)
The Lexis-Nexis thing is clear theft of services. Given the white hat Lamo was wearing I can understand that he had to do that just to demonstrate that he ( and thus anyone else) could, but it might not have been the smartest thing to do. I'd sure as hell want to see the actual bill though before I'd assent to the fact that he actually used $300k worth of the service.
At the moment I'm just a small timer. Typically I negotiate free stuff in exchange for be willing to display it. Sure I'll put your guitar string sticker on my case, wear your T-shirt and tell people I recommend your strings, but I'll need a box of them. I'll even give some of them away as free samples.
Sure I'll bird-dog for your car dealership, but I get $20 for every referal that results in a sale. Otherwise get that damned sticker off my car or I refuse delivery.
People get payed for making endorsments. Why most people think this idea somehow doesn't apply to them and only basketball stars is beyond me.
At the very least you should never wear an identifiable trademark on your clothing unless they give it to you for free.
As for the two kids I found out about them when they appeared for their sponsor on the new What's My Line. For a couple of hundred thou the sponsor got four years of direct representation culiminating in 10 minutes of straight national air time. Not a bad deal for either party in the promotional biz.
Learn to work the system, because believe me, if you don't it's working you all the time. They love ignorance.
"Do you wear clothes with labels on the outside? Drive a car with a dealer badge or license plate frame? "
No.
"Why not get paid for those as well?"
Exactly. If Tommy Hilfiger wants to contract with me for advertising we can talk.
Yes, I've actually successfully negotiated such small deals a few times. Two kids just actually put themselves through college by being paid to wear label clothing.
It's not our fault you're a poor businessman.
Some games developers actually pay license fees to commercial companies to be allowed to use their advertising materials in their games. The commercial companies laugh all the way to the bank knowing that the developer could just as easily have negotiated a product placement contract and gotten payed.
The interesting thing is that most of the work needed to uprate a capsule system has already been done by the shuttle project. In that sense it has had some value. It's kept the space program alive and making advances in materials technology, electronics, life support, etc..
It isn't so much a technological issue as a packaging issue.
Part of that packaging issue is the inevitable conclusion that different goals require different packages. Think of a desktop, laptop and PDA. Or mobile home, semi-truck with seperate container and commuter sedan, with a motor scooter thrown in for good measure.
Seperate the functions. Cargo carrying, crew transport and orbital living quarters.
This means pushing forward both X-15 like projects for the small, quicky missions requiring minmal payload and crew and also at least a small, permanent orbital station. For major missions cargo would travel in its own containerized system seperate from the crew capsule. Each would return to earth seperately, reducing the expense and risk to both.
Gimme a weekend sitting around a pool in Daytona Beach with a half dozen decent engineers and we'd hash out most of the details ok.
I haven't really followed SpaceShipOne, but I'll tell you this, I'd never bet against Burt and would almost always be willing to put money on him. He's one of the few really brilliant and innovative aeronautical engineers we've got left.
I never have, and never will, work on weapons systems, nor will I ever overtly teach others to how to do so.
However, if the tracking systems I'm working on now for sporting events, or the electronic controls I'm working on for civilian marine use ever get turned to military purposes, or someone I've tutored in calculus uses that knowledge for ends I wouldn't myself, what do you expect me to do?
Cruch onions with a rock?
Well guess what Sparky, that's a military technology too.
There's no such thing as a strictly peacetime tool so long as people themselves aren't peacable.
I downloaded it in seconds without having to go to the store, in fact I wouldn't be likely to find it in a store (Old H.L. Mencken stuff. I'm sure I could find it but I'd have to do some serious hunting around, or "special" order). It runs under Linux with my existing choice of "reader" (vim, so sue me) because it's in a standard format (ASCII). White text against a black background is easy on the eyes with a decent monitor and high refresh rate. I can grep it. It'll be easy on my back when I move and I didn't have to build more shelf space to house it. If it lose it somehow I'll just get it again.
Ain't Project Gutenberg great?
Keep your damned propriatary stuff.
Downsides? Yeah, you know. I can't curl up in bed with it. That part does suck. If I really want I can print it though, then give the printed version to a friend ( or even sell it, legally) when I'm through with it.
E-books are just spiffy when they're the right book, in the right format, for the right price and for the right usage.
It's just that B&N can't deliver that kind of e-book.
Yes, I remember. Literally. Because I lived through it. I'm an old fart. I remember watching Alan Shepard's flight on TV and dreaming about someday working in the space program myself.
When the day came that I could, and the offer was made, I had to turn it down because I could bear the idea of associating myself with the shuttle.
Some of my oldest friends, we're talking from childhood here, do. None of them are especially happy about because every one of them knows they could do much better.
You seem to have missed the point here. Look, when people talk about ressurecting our rail system they don't mean that we should replace all of our modern trucks with 1950's railroad technology. They mean we should return to using rail as a concept for mass transportation of goods and people with new and up to date trains because it's a concept that works.
No one is suggesting that we return to using 1960's computers, radar, engines or space suits.
What they're suggesting is that conventional payloads on top of a conventional rocket booster is a superiour solution to getting masses into space and returning a live crew.
And they're right. Apollo never had a tile fall off, a wing fail or some Rube Goldberged solid booster glued onto the rocket explode and set off the liquid fuel in the main tank.
The only failures of Apollo systems were systems that are still necessary for the support of a live crew; and those systems are already markedly better.
So is our recovery technology. We recover the booster shells from the space shuttle. What makes you think we couldn't recover them just because they launch a capsule instead of a "plane?"
Need I really go into the expense and support staffs required just to deal with the ludicrous heat tiles after every flight?
The shuttle does many things poorer than a capsule on top of a booster can. It does nothing better than that system does. It is more complicated, less sensical. . . and fails in ways that conventional boost system can't while retaining all possible ways a conventional boost system can fail.
It's silly.
You want a reusable space plane? Fine, so do I. I remember how completely cool the X-15 was. Let's build an up to date version. I'll help. For food.
You want to put a pile of hardware into low earth orbit? Fine. Put it on the nose of a rocket and send it up. It's the right thing to do.
Each technology according to its abilities, each mission according to its technological needs.
Slashdot Mirror
As Eli Whitney noted when the cotton gin was put into production by copycats before he'd even finished demoing the prototype:
"Some ideas are too valuable to be owned."
He never filed another patent.
Some ideas are too valuable to the community to be owned, but essentially worthless in terms of license sales. Eola's patent is one of these.
They may get some money for violations of their patent rights, but then the money train parks in the engine house and stays there. Companies will simply work around the patent until it expires. Users who wish the funcitionality in their browsers will simply use older versions released before the "embargo."
And forever afterward Eolas will be know as "those assholes" who made the whole mess happen. Way to go guys. I'm sure your PR flacks are happy as clams.
KFG
in a tech support Matrix.
I hearby sentence the inventors to "death by their own product." We're going to put them in one of these things for 12 hours a day. . . then unlist their phone number.
Won't do much for them but it'll nicely isolate us from whatever further sensory input they might unleash upon us.
KFG
Ironically, Americans, living in an open market republic, are the most business and trade ignorant people I have ever met.
This isn't the opinion of an outsider criticizing America. I'm and American. I've always been an American. My father was always an American and so was his, and his and his going back to 1630 something.
But I've traveled, and off the beaten western path at that.
The average Arab door to door rug trader knows more about business and trade than the average American CEO. The proof is as near as the local car dealership. Watching Americans confront trying to buy a car, about the one and only time in their life that they will directly encounter true market dynamics face to face, is pitiful. Masters of industry go all to pieces or have their eye teeth stolen from them.
Buy low, sell high. What's so hard to understand about that? What's low? That which is in oversupply. What's high? That which is short.
You trade what you have in oversupply for what you are short of. What would be the point of paying a high price for that which you already possess an excess of?
India has lots of people and little money.
America has fewer people ( who are necessarily more expensive) and lots of money.
Sounds like trade opportunity to me.
Not happy about that?
Well, let me ask you, when was the last time you payed someone $1000 to mow your lawn or shovel your walk?
Ahhhhhhhhh, you're not quite that much of a moron after all, are you? You get some kid to do it for you for $10.
Because you can.
KFG
"I'm mostly advocating bringing the gun, liquor and tobacco companies into the fray simply because any fight with them will be a lot more interesting than 12 year old girls and 71 year old grandfathers."
And a much better party.
KFG
And no doubt God liable for exothermic chemical reactions. It's those damned energy bonds that are the root cause of it all and he should pay, damn it!
Or, I suppose, we could just look at "Lefty" and say:
"You pulled the pin of a grenade, dumbass, what did you expect would happen?"
There's no profit for anybody in that though, and profit is morality.
KFG
It's called "vi."
KFG
In a critical mass beowulf cluster.
Profit!
KFG
"The word "crude" has no place around atomic weapons"
."
Fat Man and Big Boy were quite crude. Not as crude as what preceded them though. If you don't mind if it weighs 20,000 pounds and isn't made to "military specs" you might be surprised at the scrap crap that could be turned to the purpose.
"You've got to line up the atoms exactly, or almost nothing happens."
Oooooooo-K. I'll go to NAPA and get an "atom alignment tool."
"How's it look Charlie?"
"Not bad, but give that atom on the end there a little nudge, it isn't quite lined up right."
". . . shipped from China. .
Why on earth would you ship from China when all the stuff is already available where you want to build the bomb? Especially if that somewhere is the US. If you wanted to target NYC I'm not even sure you'd have to leave the city (and certainly not the state) to get everything you need. Talk about taking coals to Newcastle.
Yes, I've got a Manhatten Project A1 security clearance badge (Just a button really. Ideas about badges were pretty crude then too) around the place somewhere and live a few blocks from one of the old labs. I've got some basic ideas of how these things go boom.
So do thousands of the bad guys. That's the scary part.
KFG
A scientist also shouldn't be afraid to ask questions, or make another scientist afraid to do so.
KFG
Nope, they won't even need an SUV. They'll just build it in place. It makes the whole thing much easier and cheaper that way since you can make a big, heavy, crude sucker out of whatever you can turn to the task.
.gasp, use the internet.
You just rent that abandoned warehouse on the edge of town. Every big town has many to choose from.
No need to be a kamikaze either since you don't need to worry about getting close enough to the target like you do with a conventional bomb.
Either set a timer a week or so down the road, set it off with a radio,, or maybe a phone call, or. .
KFG
Because this shit really terrorizes the hell out of me.
KFG
"I expected this book to be similar to other "Nutshell" books that I like and am familiar with:
a very accurate and concise description of the domain, followed by a huge API reference."
Which is exactly what I'm looking for when buying a Nutshell book and expect to get.
"this book reads more like a tutorial"
Which is precisely what I don't want when buying a Nutshell book.
Thanks for the review, you may have saved me grave diappointment.
KFG
". . . part of the mechanism consists of thick bars locking into the vault walls."
Leading to the logical absurdity that many old time banks employed, having their vault in plain view with the door open so that their customers could feel reassured by being able to see the big bars.
There's no explaining people sometimes.
Computer networks are analogous to modern banks. Many people these days don't like modern banks because you can't even see the vault. This makes them uncomfortable because for all they know they're keeping all the money in an old pizza box or something.
Of course, when it comes to computer networks, sometimes they're right.
KFG
One of the first things you learn when you begin working in computer security, especially as an outside contractor, is that your customers don't trust you as far as they could throw the Empire State Building.
In fact, you will be reviled. You will have a hard time convincing many people to hire you because they're scared to death of you in the first place. Once they do hire you you will be assumed at some lizard brain level to be doing something nefarious.
This is one of the reasons why network security is so poor. Companies are loath to allow outside security experts anywhere near the place.
This is one of the reasons white hat hackers like Lamo do what they do. The companies aren't doing what they should, out of fear, thus leaving all the doors wide open. It's a deriliction of duty that the white hats expose to the public.
The companies don't always take kindly to the fact that their customers then know how poorly their personal data is being protected.
Obviously the way to handle the matter is to attack the white hat. Go figure.
Now these same companies don't hesitate a second to call in a locksmith to handle their physical security. They don't worry that when a lock gets changed the locksmith is secretly making a copy of the key so he can break in at night and clean them out, even though this occasionally actually happens.
Why not? Because physical locks aren't black magic beyond their understanding.
Rather than gain that understanding they'd rather fear. Again, go figure.
Computer security experts are like people who treat lepers. We aknowledge that they are needed, but we don't want them around our house.
God forbid they should marry our daughter or something. We'll never sleep at night.
KFG
I do get the wink.
Look at it this way, if the lock on my house is faulty did someone who demonstrates this fact to me "damage" my property by "causing" me to have to buy a new lock?
Or is that maybe a capital expense that's my responsibility in the first place? Especially if I've taken on the responsibility for protecting the safty of other people's property and papers as part of a commercial operation.
Also, is this expense an actual additional one, or did I maybe already have a handyman on salary who simply did it as part of his normal duties?
For $25K the NYT could have hired me for a full quarter to go over their security systems. Did they really do something like that, or did a couple of guys on staff have to spend some of the time they normally would have spent goofing off actually doing their jobs?
Now paying someone $25k to audit security is a perfectly legitimate business undertaking. So, how is providing that service for free necessarily "damage."
( The answer, of course, is that Lamo made his audit public. Still, it's not the simple B&W issue you might think)
The Lexis-Nexis thing is clear theft of services. Given the white hat Lamo was wearing I can understand that he had to do that just to demonstrate that he ( and thus anyone else) could, but it might not have been the smartest thing to do. I'd sure as hell want to see the actual bill though before I'd assent to the fact that he actually used $300k worth of the service.
KFG
At the moment I'm just a small timer. Typically I negotiate free stuff in exchange for be willing to display it. Sure I'll put your guitar string sticker on my case, wear your T-shirt and tell people I recommend your strings, but I'll need a box of them. I'll even give some of them away as free samples.
Sure I'll bird-dog for your car dealership, but I get $20 for every referal that results in a sale. Otherwise get that damned sticker off my car or I refuse delivery.
People get payed for making endorsments. Why most people think this idea somehow doesn't apply to them and only basketball stars is beyond me.
At the very least you should never wear an identifiable trademark on your clothing unless they give it to you for free.
As for the two kids I found out about them when they appeared for their sponsor on the new What's My Line. For a couple of hundred thou the sponsor got four years of direct representation culiminating in 10 minutes of straight national air time. Not a bad deal for either party in the promotional biz.
Learn to work the system, because believe me, if you don't it's working you all the time. They love ignorance.
KFG
"Do you wear clothes with labels on the outside? Drive a car with a dealer badge or license plate frame? "
No.
"Why not get paid for those as well?"
Exactly. If Tommy Hilfiger wants to contract with me for advertising we can talk.
Yes, I've actually successfully negotiated such small deals a few times. Two kids just actually put themselves through college by being paid to wear label clothing.
It's not our fault you're a poor businessman.
Some games developers actually pay license fees to commercial companies to be allowed to use their advertising materials in their games. The commercial companies laugh all the way to the bank knowing that the developer could just as easily have negotiated a product placement contract and gotten payed.
Learn how to play the game, or you're a loser.
KFG
That's cool. Please note I said I object to doing so myself. I didn't directly criticise anyone else for doing so.
Unlike many I can still seperate the two arguments.
KFG
No one ever lost money underestimating the taste of the American public - H. L. Mencken
KFG
You missed one reason. Von Braun.
KFG
The interesting thing is that most of the work needed to uprate a capsule system has already been done by the shuttle project. In that sense it has had some value. It's kept the space program alive and making advances in materials technology, electronics, life support, etc..
It isn't so much a technological issue as a packaging issue.
Part of that packaging issue is the inevitable conclusion that different goals require different packages. Think of a desktop, laptop and PDA. Or mobile home, semi-truck with seperate container and commuter sedan, with a motor scooter thrown in for good measure.
Seperate the functions. Cargo carrying, crew transport and orbital living quarters.
This means pushing forward both X-15 like projects for the small, quicky missions requiring minmal payload and crew and also at least a small, permanent orbital station. For major missions cargo would travel in its own containerized system seperate from the crew capsule. Each would return to earth seperately, reducing the expense and risk to both.
Gimme a weekend sitting around a pool in Daytona Beach with a half dozen decent engineers and we'd hash out most of the details ok.
I haven't really followed SpaceShipOne, but I'll tell you this, I'd never bet against Burt and would almost always be willing to put money on him. He's one of the few really brilliant and innovative aeronautical engineers we've got left.
Please note that he's a congenital independant.
These facts are not unrelated.
KFG
They also do a dandy job of slicing onions.
I never have, and never will, work on weapons systems, nor will I ever overtly teach others to how to do so.
However, if the tracking systems I'm working on now for sporting events, or the electronic controls I'm working on for civilian marine use ever get turned to military purposes, or someone I've tutored in calculus uses that knowledge for ends I wouldn't myself, what do you expect me to do?
Cruch onions with a rock?
Well guess what Sparky, that's a military technology too.
There's no such thing as a strictly peacetime tool so long as people themselves aren't peacable.
KFG
Stunning rebuttal Looking in the Mirror Boy.
KFG
I downloaded it in seconds without having to go to the store, in fact I wouldn't be likely to find it in a store (Old H.L. Mencken stuff. I'm sure I could find it but I'd have to do some serious hunting around, or "special" order). It runs under Linux with my existing choice of "reader" (vim, so sue me) because it's in a standard format (ASCII). White text against a black background is easy on the eyes with a decent monitor and high refresh rate. I can grep it. It'll be easy on my back when I move and I didn't have to build more shelf space to house it. If it lose it somehow I'll just get it again.
Ain't Project Gutenberg great?
Keep your damned propriatary stuff.
Downsides? Yeah, you know. I can't curl up in bed with it. That part does suck. If I really want I can print it though, then give the printed version to a friend ( or even sell it, legally) when I'm through with it.
E-books are just spiffy when they're the right book, in the right format, for the right price and for the right usage.
It's just that B&N can't deliver that kind of e-book.
KFG
Yes, I remember. Literally. Because I lived through it. I'm an old fart. I remember watching Alan Shepard's flight on TV and dreaming about someday working in the space program myself.
When the day came that I could, and the offer was made, I had to turn it down because I could bear the idea of associating myself with the shuttle.
Some of my oldest friends, we're talking from childhood here, do. None of them are especially happy about because every one of them knows they could do much better.
You seem to have missed the point here. Look, when people talk about ressurecting our rail system they don't mean that we should replace all of our modern trucks with 1950's railroad technology. They mean we should return to using rail as a concept for mass transportation of goods and people with new and up to date trains because it's a concept that works.
No one is suggesting that we return to using 1960's computers, radar, engines or space suits.
What they're suggesting is that conventional payloads on top of a conventional rocket booster is a superiour solution to getting masses into space and returning a live crew.
And they're right. Apollo never had a tile fall off, a wing fail or some Rube Goldberged solid booster glued onto the rocket explode and set off the liquid fuel in the main tank.
The only failures of Apollo systems were systems that are still necessary for the support of a live crew; and those systems are already markedly better.
So is our recovery technology. We recover the booster shells from the space shuttle. What makes you think we couldn't recover them just because they launch a capsule instead of a "plane?"
Need I really go into the expense and support staffs required just to deal with the ludicrous heat tiles after every flight?
The shuttle does many things poorer than a capsule on top of a booster can. It does nothing better than that system does. It is more complicated, less sensical. . . and fails in ways that conventional boost system can't while retaining all possible ways a conventional boost system can fail.
It's silly.
You want a reusable space plane? Fine, so do I. I remember how completely cool the X-15 was. Let's build an up to date version. I'll help. For food.
You want to put a pile of hardware into low earth orbit? Fine. Put it on the nose of a rocket and send it up. It's the right thing to do.
Each technology according to its abilities, each mission according to its technological needs.
KFG