No. We stopped going to the moon because it stopped being politically profitable. The US appears to be incapable of running a long-term project, and by long term I mean 10 years. (Longer than one president's term of office.) We only got to the moon because it was seen as a sporting event, but by doing it that way we lost almost all the advantages of doing it, and only gained political points. Any science or engineering was incidental.
There is much that could be done on the moon, but there are engineering problems that need to be solved before this is practical. For that matter, I think a radio-telescope on the dark side of the moon would be an excellent idea...though it would currently need to be totally automated. It could be more sensitive than ANY on earth, and it could also be linked to earth-based radiotelescopes to give a much larger baseline for resolution. Now start considering the engineering problems that need to be solved/ They aren't minor. So they need to be solved in the context of other similar project to make them worthwhile. And this won't happen when the doing of it requires approval of a short-term president.
I think, perhaps, the governmental structure of the US is incompatible with successful exploration and development of space. Perhaps China is more capable. Perhaps some corporation will be capable. (Corporations can keep their focus over longer periods of time, but they tend to have limited budgets while they are new, and the third generation of management usually devolves into bean-counters, at which point all development ceases, and the corporation usually fades. [They've also cause social problems, but then so does government.])
In the long term, we've GOT to either get off the planet in a surviable manner, or die as a species. How to get from here to there, however, is not clear.
He should have said heavy. Which is correct. But he forgot that the system can recycle the water that is shipped, so that's a one-time cost, not a recurring one. And it's going to NEED to recycle even the air in order to be practical. And THAT'S the big problem which everyone has been ignoring (unless it's been marked SECRET). The private attempts at closed ecosystem have been failures, and with the budgets they had they couldn't just correct the mistakes and try again, which would have been the correct approach. That's the problem with trying to tackle a problem on a shoestring. You need to expect to fail, because you don't have enough money to correct your mistakes.
I don't see any reason to believe there's no chinese-NSA...except that they are mainly intrested in internal matters, and don't consider the rest of the world as to be taken seriously. Since internal matters covers more than half of humanity, they may have a point.
So. The Chinese don't have an NSA. This is because they don't have a rule against the government spying on the citizenry. (Note that the fiction is that the NSA only spies on foreigners.)
You listed the countries that currently (or soon) could put one up. You didn't justify them as necessary.
Personally I think it should be three or four, but five would probably be safer. That way you could always trust SOMEONE to be providing service. Hopefully they'd all use similar (i.e., easily switchable) protocols. The reason for five is that someone is likely to come up with a was to "lock-in" the users, and you want to be able to avoid them.
There has frequently been good evidence that the US innovations were copied. Occasionally it has been shown that this was done using actual copies of some of the technical information.
OTOH, those who make that claim usually forget how the US got it's start: copying technology from Great Britain (then leading the industrial revolution). This was also often done using copied actual technology. (At that time technical documentation was less important than the actual mechanisms being available to study, and the theoretical work being available.)
Still, even give all the copying, at a certain stage in history it is common for many people in separate cultures to make the same invention independently. E.g., three or four people have equally good claims to have independently invented the telephone. IIRC two were US citizens and one was Russian or Swiss. I have only vague memories of there being a fourth. And several people have good claims to haveing invented powered flight independently. The Wright brothers won in court, but I'm afraid that I don't consider that much in the way of proving that the others didn't invent it independently, or even first.
But actual witnesses may be hard to come by. You may well know that "one of those bastards did this", but that doesn't tell you which one. You could probably get them all as accomplices after the fact, but can you do that without having clear evidence against one of them?
What you *COULD* do is fire them all. Revoking their clearances would be sufficient grounds for that, and that doesn't require any oversight. The laws were intentionally written that way. And I'm sure you could prove misfeasance, if not malfeasance. And forbid them to ever again work for the federal government either directly or as a contractor (or subcontractor).
While it's hard to disagree with what you say, it's also true that if he vigorously defended the constitution against it's domestic enemies, he would quickly be dead.
FWIW, the fall guy, and perhaps he actually was the gunman, in the Kennedy assassination had known ties to both the military and the CIA. Was he an agent? If so, for who? Did he actually do the job? If you think you know the answer to those questions, you're wrong. It *could* have happened the way the Warren Commission declared it did. But that's really no more plausible than lots of other scenarios. (Explain how Jack Ruby was able to so quickly silence Oswald. How certain are you that the explanation is correct? Now, about what happened to Jack Ruby.....)
Sometimes the only responsible thing to do is to accept uncertainty. You *know* people are lying to you, but that doesn't tell you what the truth is.
Have you ever been on the site of a news story, and then gone home and watched the reports? Perhaps "Fox News" is worse than ABC, NBC, CBS, etc., or your local paper. I don't know. I stopped watching all of them after I learned to what extent the "news" portrayed was fictional. I'd rather trust YouTube (which I also don't trust, but which I haven't actually caught lying to me, possibly *because* I don't watch it).
Mind you, I'm not even talking about "news" processed for political purposes. I'm sure that happens, but I'm talking about things like the coverage of a fire. The times I could check it wais severely processed to increase it's entertainment value. This was done to the extent that what actually happened basically got lost in the presentation. (In the particular cases that I observed, I can't really say the images were doctored rather than carefully selected, but the effect was the same.)
Wrong. They are collecting the entire e-mails. They admit only to analysing the metadata. But they store everything. The idea is that if they get interested later they can get retroactive permission to analyze it.
While it is true that a federal judge did say (i.e., rule) there was nothing illegal, that doesn't make it a true statement. There are lots of judges.
Furthermore, I wouldn't believe it even if the Supreme Court had so ruled. The Constitution is fairly clear on that, and no law that violates the constitution is a valid law. (I'm not sure that the Supreme Court wouldn't rule that it was legal, for they are as corrupt as many of the other courts. But *I* will only consider it legal if I am convinced that the Constitution permits the laws that legalize it...and I'm rather convinced of the opposite.)
No. He's just believeing what those in authority say about themselves. Actual events aren't involved. (Given the items he's listed, they can't be. Evidence about the motives for actions is quite difficult even with full access to the events.)
Calling it a policy failure is making an assumption as to what their purpose was. It is quite possible that it was a quite successful policy, and that they just lied about what their purpose was.
When I was in high school, that kind of thing was punished with school discipline. The police were not involved. If there was actual damage, the kid's parents might be sent a bill (if it was worth the effort).
It's not Werner Von Braun you should blame for that, is those who employed him. *He* was a rocket fanatic and an engineer, not management.
The following is "third hand" (or maybe 5th) information. Believe it if you choose. I tend to.: The CIA was formed not only out of the OSS, but also using many people acquired from the 3rd Reich. And the ones acquired were rather unsavory, even though they kept low profiles. (They stole secrets from the falling 3rd Reich to buy their way into govt. service with the conquerors.) Whether they were mass murderers I do not know. Being 3rd Reich secret police only makes that suspect, not certain.
Sorry, but in that particular agency many of them ARE geeks. And they show all to poor judgement of young geeks in a social setting. But they do it with the power to commit major felonies (despite the current court ruling) rather than just smoking pot or drinking underage.
The whole damn agency needs to be disbanded, and the managers prosecuted for, at least misfeasance, probably both malfeasance and many other crimes (illegal wire-tapping comes to mind). Yes, we need an agency that does much of what they do, but not the illegal parts and not the unconstitutional parts. And I don't care what their privately owned "secret courts" say, much of what I've been hearing violates privacy and constitutes illegal search and seizure. (And, unfortunately, these garbage rulings haven't only been coming from their special courts, but even if the Supreme Court says it's constitutional, that doesn't turn black into white.)
The difference is that the NSA is a single source where you can get everything. Like a shopping mall. It may be a bit harder to crack, but it's a lot more rewarding...so expect that some people who would find it rewarding have done so. Some of them just pass it on to their governments, others would sell it over and over.
And, of course, for the NSA there's already and existence proof.
90% of the people in prison shouldn't be there. There should be some kind of "punishment" that doesn't involve socializing with other folk who are experts in some sort of law breaking. Only the ones likely to be violent should be confined. And even they deserve more humane conditions. (And not socializing with those who are expert in other kinds of law breaking.) Some kinds of learning should not be encouraged.
Also, prison industries should be required to pay a decent wage to their slaves. Yes, it's reasonable that the remaining (i.e. violent) prisoners should work for their keep. But it's not reasonable that anyone should be allowed to profiteer from their work. (Reasonable profits are OK, but it should be at around the level per unit of investment of a chain grocery store.)
I don't think you need to be guilty of something to believe he, based on the know evidence, used poor judgement. The probability to me appears to favor that there is something going on that we don't know about. Death threats are one possibility, and they wouldn't necessarily be coming from other prisoners.
He probably also told you that before you can build something, you need to tear down whatever was there before. And sometimes that means blowing it down. (Disassembly is also sometimes practical, but usually only as an adjunct to blowing it down.)
Well, the French Revolution *eventually* turned out well. We don't know how things would have gone if it hadn't happened. But it sure was bloody expensive. The same may be true of the anti-Czarist Russian Revolution...the "Communists" revolution descendants (that overthrew the Duma) are still working their way back to being as good as it was. OTOH, the Duma didn't last long enough to have much of a track record. There have been coup d'etats that restored a civil government better than the one they overthrew. Not the majority, but they have happened.
OTOH, most cases where the new govt. is superior to the old seem to be cases where the current govt. is overthrown by a foreign invader, and THEN the citizenry throws out the invader. Those also tend to be quite bloody for awhile.
More like half an hour to bring it down. A good replacement would also take more than a couple of days. Something jury-rigged could probably be done in a day, though, in most places. (Think a few trucks with cherry-picker hoists to hold the wires. Not something you want to use as more than a jurry-rig, but enough to help in the short run. And you'ld still need insulators, etc., because you don't want to attach a high voltage wire directly to the cherry picker, even if it IS insulated.) But the problem, to my mind, is that you need to power down that section of the grid to install the patch, and then again when the real replacement is ready. That could affect a large area. (Or maybe not. I'm no expert at power transmission. They may already have cutouts in place.)
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No. We stopped going to the moon because it stopped being politically profitable. The US appears to be incapable of running a long-term project, and by long term I mean 10 years. (Longer than one president's term of office.) We only got to the moon because it was seen as a sporting event, but by doing it that way we lost almost all the advantages of doing it, and only gained political points. Any science or engineering was incidental.
There is much that could be done on the moon, but there are engineering problems that need to be solved before this is practical. For that matter, I think a radio-telescope on the dark side of the moon would be an excellent idea...though it would currently need to be totally automated. It could be more sensitive than ANY on earth, and it could also be linked to earth-based radiotelescopes to give a much larger baseline for resolution. Now start considering the engineering problems that need to be solved/ They aren't minor. So they need to be solved in the context of other similar project to make them worthwhile. And this won't happen when the doing of it requires approval of a short-term president.
I think, perhaps, the governmental structure of the US is incompatible with successful exploration and development of space. Perhaps China is more capable. Perhaps some corporation will be capable. (Corporations can keep their focus over longer periods of time, but they tend to have limited budgets while they are new, and the third generation of management usually devolves into bean-counters, at which point all development ceases, and the corporation usually fades. [They've also cause social problems, but then so does government.])
In the long term, we've GOT to either get off the planet in a surviable manner, or die as a species. How to get from here to there, however, is not clear.
He should have said heavy. Which is correct. But he forgot that the system can recycle the water that is shipped, so that's a one-time cost, not a recurring one. And it's going to NEED to recycle even the air in order to be practical. And THAT'S the big problem which everyone has been ignoring (unless it's been marked SECRET). The private attempts at closed ecosystem have been failures, and with the budgets they had they couldn't just correct the mistakes and try again, which would have been the correct approach. That's the problem with trying to tackle a problem on a shoestring. You need to expect to fail, because you don't have enough money to correct your mistakes.
I don't see any reason to believe there's no chinese-NSA...except that they are mainly intrested in internal matters, and don't consider the rest of the world as to be taken seriously. Since internal matters covers more than half of humanity, they may have a point.
So. The Chinese don't have an NSA. This is because they don't have a rule against the government spying on the citizenry. (Note that the fiction is that the NSA only spies on foreigners.)
You listed the countries that currently (or soon) could put one up. You didn't justify them as necessary.
Personally I think it should be three or four, but five would probably be safer. That way you could always trust SOMEONE to be providing service. Hopefully they'd all use similar (i.e., easily switchable) protocols. The reason for five is that someone is likely to come up with a was to "lock-in" the users, and you want to be able to avoid them.
There has frequently been good evidence that the US innovations were copied. Occasionally it has been shown that this was done using actual copies of some of the technical information.
OTOH, those who make that claim usually forget how the US got it's start: copying technology from Great Britain (then leading the industrial revolution). This was also often done using copied actual technology. (At that time technical documentation was less important than the actual mechanisms being available to study, and the theoretical work being available.)
Still, even give all the copying, at a certain stage in history it is common for many people in separate cultures to make the same invention independently. E.g., three or four people have equally good claims to have independently invented the telephone. IIRC two were US citizens and one was Russian or Swiss. I have only vague memories of there being a fourth. And several people have good claims to haveing invented powered flight independently. The Wright brothers won in court, but I'm afraid that I don't consider that much in the way of proving that the others didn't invent it independently, or even first.
You left out "and are lousy at statistics". That's needed for your argument to work. (Of course, it's also true...)
And violation of their oaths of office.
But actual witnesses may be hard to come by. You may well know that "one of those bastards did this", but that doesn't tell you which one. You could probably get them all as accomplices after the fact, but can you do that without having clear evidence against one of them?
What you *COULD* do is fire them all. Revoking their clearances would be sufficient grounds for that, and that doesn't require any oversight. The laws were intentionally written that way. And I'm sure you could prove misfeasance, if not malfeasance. And forbid them to ever again work for the federal government either directly or as a contractor (or subcontractor).
While it's hard to disagree with what you say, it's also true that if he vigorously defended the constitution against it's domestic enemies, he would quickly be dead.
FWIW, the fall guy, and perhaps he actually was the gunman, in the Kennedy assassination had known ties to both the military and the CIA. Was he an agent? If so, for who? Did he actually do the job? If you think you know the answer to those questions, you're wrong. It *could* have happened the way the Warren Commission declared it did. But that's really no more plausible than lots of other scenarios. (Explain how Jack Ruby was able to so quickly silence Oswald. How certain are you that the explanation is correct? Now, about what happened to Jack Ruby.....)
Sometimes the only responsible thing to do is to accept uncertainty. You *know* people are lying to you, but that doesn't tell you what the truth is.
I think it's been originated multiple times. Certainly the details have varied, but I think even the origin is multiple.
Before you believe this, consider the source. He's someone who *ought* to know, but he's also someone who has made a career of lying.
That's probably the best approach, but there are a few others. MHD might work.
Have you ever been on the site of a news story, and then gone home and watched the reports? Perhaps "Fox News" is worse than ABC, NBC, CBS, etc., or your local paper. I don't know. I stopped watching all of them after I learned to what extent the "news" portrayed was fictional. I'd rather trust YouTube (which I also don't trust, but which I haven't actually caught lying to me, possibly *because* I don't watch it).
Mind you, I'm not even talking about "news" processed for political purposes. I'm sure that happens, but I'm talking about things like the coverage of a fire. The times I could check it wais severely processed to increase it's entertainment value. This was done to the extent that what actually happened basically got lost in the presentation. (In the particular cases that I observed, I can't really say the images were doctored rather than carefully selected, but the effect was the same.)
Wrong. They are collecting the entire e-mails. They admit only to analysing the metadata. But they store everything. The idea is that if they get interested later they can get retroactive permission to analyze it.
I interpreted the gp as sarcasm.
While it is true that a federal judge did say (i.e., rule) there was nothing illegal, that doesn't make it a true statement. There are lots of judges.
Furthermore, I wouldn't believe it even if the Supreme Court had so ruled. The Constitution is fairly clear on that, and no law that violates the constitution is a valid law. (I'm not sure that the Supreme Court wouldn't rule that it was legal, for they are as corrupt as many of the other courts. But *I* will only consider it legal if I am convinced that the Constitution permits the laws that legalize it...and I'm rather convinced of the opposite.)
No. He's just believeing what those in authority say about themselves. Actual events aren't involved. (Given the items he's listed, they can't be. Evidence about the motives for actions is quite difficult even with full access to the events.)
Calling it a policy failure is making an assumption as to what their purpose was. It is quite possible that it was a quite successful policy, and that they just lied about what their purpose was.
When I was in high school, that kind of thing was punished with school discipline. The police were not involved. If there was actual damage, the kid's parents might be sent a bill (if it was worth the effort).
It's not Werner Von Braun you should blame for that, is those who employed him. *He* was a rocket fanatic and an engineer, not management.
The following is "third hand" (or maybe 5th) information. Believe it if you choose. I tend to.:
The CIA was formed not only out of the OSS, but also using many people acquired from the 3rd Reich. And the ones acquired were rather unsavory, even though they kept low profiles. (They stole secrets from the falling 3rd Reich to buy their way into govt. service with the conquerors.) Whether they were mass murderers I do not know. Being 3rd Reich secret police only makes that suspect, not certain.
Sorry, but in that particular agency many of them ARE geeks. And they show all to poor judgement of young geeks in a social setting. But they do it with the power to commit major felonies (despite the current court ruling) rather than just smoking pot or drinking underage.
The whole damn agency needs to be disbanded, and the managers prosecuted for, at least misfeasance, probably both malfeasance and many other crimes (illegal wire-tapping comes to mind). Yes, we need an agency that does much of what they do, but not the illegal parts and not the unconstitutional parts. And I don't care what their privately owned "secret courts" say, much of what I've been hearing violates privacy and constitutes illegal search and seizure. (And, unfortunately, these garbage rulings haven't only been coming from their special courts, but even if the Supreme Court says it's constitutional, that doesn't turn black into white.)
The difference is that the NSA is a single source where you can get everything. Like a shopping mall. It may be a bit harder to crack, but it's a lot more rewarding...so expect that some people who would find it rewarding have done so. Some of them just pass it on to their governments, others would sell it over and over.
And, of course, for the NSA there's already and existence proof.
90% of the people in prison shouldn't be there. There should be some kind of "punishment" that doesn't involve socializing with other folk who are experts in some sort of law breaking. Only the ones likely to be violent should be confined. And even they deserve more humane conditions. (And not socializing with those who are expert in other kinds of law breaking.) Some kinds of learning should not be encouraged.
Also, prison industries should be required to pay a decent wage to their slaves. Yes, it's reasonable that the remaining (i.e. violent) prisoners should work for their keep. But it's not reasonable that anyone should be allowed to profiteer from their work. (Reasonable profits are OK, but it should be at around the level per unit of investment of a chain grocery store.)
I don't think you need to be guilty of something to believe he, based on the know evidence, used poor judgement. The probability to me appears to favor that there is something going on that we don't know about. Death threats are one possibility, and they wouldn't necessarily be coming from other prisoners.
He probably also told you that before you can build something, you need to tear down whatever was there before. And sometimes that means blowing it down. (Disassembly is also sometimes practical, but usually only as an adjunct to blowing it down.)
Well, the French Revolution *eventually* turned out well. We don't know how things would have gone if it hadn't happened. But it sure was bloody expensive. The same may be true of the anti-Czarist Russian Revolution...the "Communists" revolution descendants (that overthrew the Duma) are still working their way back to being as good as it was. OTOH, the Duma didn't last long enough to have much of a track record. There have been coup d'etats that restored a civil government better than the one they overthrew. Not the majority, but they have happened.
OTOH, most cases where the new govt. is superior to the old seem to be cases where the current govt. is overthrown by a foreign invader, and THEN the citizenry throws out the invader. Those also tend to be quite bloody for awhile.
More like half an hour to bring it down. A good replacement would also take more than a couple of days. Something jury-rigged could probably be done in a day, though, in most places. (Think a few trucks with cherry-picker hoists to hold the wires. Not something you want to use as more than a jurry-rig, but enough to help in the short run. And you'ld still need insulators, etc., because you don't want to attach a high voltage wire directly to the cherry picker, even if it IS insulated.) But the problem, to my mind, is that you need to power down that section of the grid to install the patch, and then again when the real replacement is ready. That could affect a large area. (Or maybe not. I'm no expert at power transmission. They may already have cutouts in place.)