You're pretty much right about the ham gear. Most of it these days is prepackaged stuff. And the morse code that is used is machine generated and received.
So replace it by robot kits, or some such. The concept here isn't that it's ham gear qua ham gear, but rather something electronic that people can build and has a category. Something doable that's just a bit on the edge. (Robot mini-cars seems a good place to start, but that's just me.)
Do I think they'll do it? No. But they probably could. It *would* require a bit of investment, and hiring some different staff...people who were tinkerers. I really doubt that they're serious about this. We'll see.
The change happened around the time they were bought by Tandy...which itself had been a DIY outfit for people who work with leather.
I think what happened was they saw this big new market opening for pre-packaged electronic gizmos, and figured to get in on it with people who didn't want to build their computer from a Heath-kit. They didn't count on losing their market, and overbuilt. This required that most of the stores be too small to carry a full range of items. It worked out pretty well for awhile, but while it was happening they lost their roots, and now the competition has moved in, and their original market has pretty much written them off as useless. (And they've lost all the people who helped them make it work earlier.)
An excellent point. The answer is clearly "no", but it's not as clear that it should be. Powerful corporate entities start to resemble governments. Amazon is large enough, and powerful enough, that I'm not sure it should be allowed to choose what not to offer for sale. But interfering with that right is also quite dubious.
The real answer is that as corporations become that large, they should be split up. But once you allow them to exist, then it's not clear that they should be allowed to choose who to sell to and who to buy from. Either way is very sticky. This is solved by breaking them up. N.B.: This should not be seen as punishment. The only thing that Amazon has done that I find truly reprehensible is to sell a device that allows it to remove works from a purchaser after the purchaser has bought those works. (I.e., the Kindle.) And even that would be less reprehensible if the company was less dominant. So break them up into two or three smaller companies, but give them a tax break to cover the costs of the breakup. And be a *little* generous. Say 5% over the documentable costs. Or maybe 2%. The idea is that you keep there being a reward for building a successful business, while removing the control.
Monopolies are a very bad idea. Things that approach monopolies need to be managed in such a way that they stop being so powerful. This is totally separate from the idea of punishment for bad behavior. That only an abusive monopoly should be broken up is a silly decision. Abusive companies should be punished, and the punishment should be harsher for more powerful companies than for smaller companies, but that is a separate matter.
The problem is that they're approaching a monopoly level of control. When a company even starts to approach that level of control, every action they take deserves increasing scrutiny and public deliberation.
In this particular case, I don't feel that censorship is too strong a term. When something was "banned in Boston" you could generally buy it at some place close to Boston. And it was still censorship. This is a "forbidding" that covers a much wider number of people than Boston ever held. The fact that (at least currently) you can still get the stuff elsewhere doesn't mean that it's not deserving of the term censorship.
N.B.: Originally the censor was an official of the Roman government. The term now has nothing to do with the Roman government. Later it was an office of the Catholic Church. I believe that that church still has such an office, but it's not what is meant when the word is commonly used. So I have no trouble with it being applied to a large powerful corporate entity, even if it's neither a government nor a religion.
Well, you can usually order from the publisher. Of course there are shipping and handling charges...
I *do* live in a city, and independent bookstores have been disappearing. Borders is a bit better than you describe, so is Barnes & Noble. But not enough. So I often end up ordering from the publisher without being able to see what it is I'm ordering.
If the Nook actually starts being sold as an open software machine, I'll be very tempted. I haven't been tempted by the Kindle since Amazon removed copies of works already purchased. And this has sloshed over onto other e-book readers. If I buy something, I want the merchandise, and I don't want to need to depend on the "good-will" of the vendor of the reader. Until and unless that is true, I consider e-book readers a lousy idea. (Remember the job that Winston Smith had in 1984.)
Demanding is an interesting concept. I find the idea of being dependent on a network connection so unacceptable, that I haven't bought any games recently. I doubt that the game companies know or care.
P.S.: If you really care, you should put in some time developing games that are open. Nethack has been done several times, but there are also "starter versions" of SimCity (LinCity?) Civilization (FreeCiv) etc. Card games don't really need much help, but Pysol could use aid in converting it over to Python3. Etc. What's your favorite? Help them. Every project needs help, if only in the documentation.
Given the *way* they revoked the PlayStation capability, once is more than enough. Of course, that wasn't once. That came after the rootkits that they released on CDs. That came after the official comment (paraphrase)"Most users don't know what a rootkit is, so it doesn't matter.". That came after SONY tried to pass the blame onto another company that they hired specifically to do that job. That came after the repairs to the rootkit that left you vulnerable to any web site you visited. There were several other instances. SONY was already on my "Do not patronize" list before this started happening for other actions which were, relatively, so minor that I've forgotten them.
O yes, and SONY always will fight in court rather than pay even minimal compensation to people it has injured. This is reasonable on their behalf, because they courts generally won't make them pay damages.
If you want to do business with them, I'm not the one who will get hurt.
Ever hear the phrase "putting all your eggs in one basket"? Understand at all what it means?
I don't consider our self-destruction inevitable, just extremely likely unless we take steps to lower the risk. One way to lower the risk is to eliminate single points of failure. Another is to operate separable components in different environments (so that they experience different stresses).
FWIW, I expect stability to be possible only with drastically changed social conditions...like having the executive control of the society vested in an advanced AI. We're quite a few years away from that, though, possibly as much as a century (though the median projection of experts in the field is closer to 40 years). And even once it appears, people would need to learn to trust it enough to replace the whims of politicians and boards of directors with it's decisions. (The boards of directors problem will likely resolve itself fairly quickly, as good decisions tend to be more profitable. Governments, however, are more often centered around lust for power, and thus are likely to be slower to change.)
N.B.: I don't see any legal obstacles to this happening right now. It just changes who advises the leader, and advisers change readily. The same outward forms would probably be kept.
If I understand things correctly, Anonymous isn't a coherent group. There's no centralized decision maker. There's no list of members. I'm not sure what makes one a member of Anonymous, except that you claim to be one (anonymously).
So saying that Anonymous was mad at Sony is merely saying that some anonymous person said that he was mad at Sony and called for an attack. Perhaps many people joined in, but, again, if I understand correctly, there's no particular reason to believe that someone who was a member of one Anonymous attack was a member in any other Anonymous attack.
Basically, my understanding is that Anonymous is like a mob. Saying that you were attacked by a mob doesn't convey much information. And saying that a mob conducted an expert and sophisticated attack is clearly silly. Some members of a mob may have done that, but this isn't evidence that other members of the mob would have condoned it if they had known. And one should expect the motives of the members of the mob who conducted the "expert and sophisticated attack" to be disjoint from, if not antithetical to, the motives of the ordinary members of the mob.
To an extent, yes, but I don't think that kind of moderate hording is what the GP was talking about. And you have only to read the news (or look around you) to know that people are quite bad at putting rational limits on their hoarding. E.g., I have more books than I am likely to ever read. And I still want to buy more.
I'd agree that it's *likely* impossible, and we don't currently have any idea as to how to do it. (The negative energy required to stabilize the hole is itself a major problem for anything that isn't microscopic.) This doesn't mean it's really impossible. Just that we have no idea of how to do it. And it looks like there are lots of iffy problems that may not have solutions. But, you know, they might. And saying we can't do it doesn't mean that people 50-100 years from now might not have a way. Doesn't mean it would be worthwhile. I seem to recall that the distance within a wormhole that connects back to the same space in which it originates is supposed to be longer than the distance outside. So it would very likely be only be useful for inter-universal travel. And if the laws of nature are very different over there, it's quite likely that both semi-conductor laws and the laws of organic chemistry would be different. IOW, you can't use it an live. And you can't send a robot through.
So there are reasons why this probably wouldn't do what it wanted. But it's not pure fantasy.
For that matter, on the moon you could build a Space Elevator and use Kevlar for the cable. (Well, probably not really. Kevlar is strong enough, but you'd need to shield it against vacuum or it would probably become brittle.)
OTOH, the Space Elevator is only useful if you're expecting to average as much down traffic as up traffic. So a magnetic launcher would be a reasonable alternative. (Is that what you meant by a launch loop?) Most sky-hooks are out, however, because they almost all require an average of as much down traffic as up traffic.
Solar power on the moon has a similar problem to on Earth, but magnified. Every two weeks, over most of the surface, you are in darkness for two weeks. There's only one small area near one of the poles that is under continual illumination. So you can use it, but you either need a humongous amount of storage, or you need to time your energy expenditures for when the sun is shining.
There *are* some basic problems that need to be addressed, but as you suggest they are largely engineering.
My take on it is that the primary problem that needs to be addressed it a closed ecology. We don't currently know how to maintain one, and there's a clear need for that before any extended human space project is feasible.
FWIW, I feel that we have a real need for several long term habitations in different locations. On various moons, on Mars, on Luna, possibly on Mercury, and definitely on various asteroids. We've already spent too long with all humanity living under the threat of annihilation. If we wait long enough we'll get someone really crazy with his finger on the button. And I don't consider our recent leadership to be particularly sane, do you? But the US isn't even the only country that could end everything. I can think of around 5 countries that could do it intentionally. And that's with current weaponry. Who knows what biology could come up with...or how cheap it might be? We could soon be at the level where a disaffected company manager could end the world. And a few decades after that, as college kid. The level of risk keeps rising. (Well, it's not monotonic. The current high point was during the Cuban missile crisis where we came within 30 seconds of global atomic war, and it hasn't, as far as I know, been that high since then. But the moving time average risk has kept increasing with a decade used as the averaging period.)
P.S.: This is my own informal risk assessment. Others may disagree. I'd be quite surprised if anyone sane thought the risk had been decreasing, though.
Actually, they had a LOT of trouble. This doesn't mean you're basically wrong though. The job is a bit harder than you seem willing to admit, and some of the payoffs are quite speculative. (And I do worry about some of the designs for an SSPS to power earth, though it should be quite easy to build one to power other space endeavors.)
Still... If we're real lucky one of the outcomes of the Fukishima disaster will be a Japanese SSPS, And if that's done well...
The Japanese are a country that has a real need for an SSPS, A dense population, not much native fossil fuel. And problems with nuclear power. (They do seem a little less twitchy about it now than they were a few decades ago, but even then their need was so great that they went ahead and put them in.) So maybe they'll do it. I wonder who they'll hire for the heavy lifting? China looks like a leading contender. Russia hasn't been putting much effort into heavy lifting, more the intermediate level stuff. Even Europe seems ahead of the US.
That is, indeed, a very bad assumption. Generally people end up voting for whoever they think is "the lesser of two evils". This is why Condorcet voting or Instant Runoff Voting would change politics considerably. (Over time, admittedly. But perhaps not too much time.)
Just for instance, I voted for Obama despite despising hm, because I considered that he might be a little less bad than McCain. Was he? I'll never know. He's pretty bad. And he didn't keep his campaign promises any better than I expected. I basically consider him a moderate-to-conservative Republican posing as a Democrat.
N.B.: Both the Democrats and the Republicans are centralists, and as such I don't really support either of them, but if we're going to get a stronger central government anyway I'd prefer to get some benefits from it. I'd hoped that a civilized health care might be made available. Pity, really, that we got something so watered down that is just going to be cut anyway. After Obama voted for FISA I knew better than to believe that he'd be conciliatory in foreign policy, but I was hoping for a more decent domestic policy, and for the closing of Guantanamo. (Guantanamo kind of things are pretty much useless anyway, so closing it would be a propaganda victory at little to no cost.)
The real point is that he's one of many. Many. It would be quite difficult to buy them all, and as the process progressed, the price would rise. And some of them are corporations themselves. They will certainly want top dollar. Especially if their business is dependent on PostGreSQL, Some of them are already famous or wealthy. And unless you get all of them, you've wasted your money.
And even then someone could just fork it...as has already happened with MySQL. In fact the problem is that there are so many forks that one doesn't know which one will win out. (Probably doesn't matter, but people tend to care about such things.)
Open is the wrong term. GPL software is libre(free), not gratis(free). It's also Open, but that term means something different and doesn't describe the essential property of GPL. Open software always existed (while there were computers, of course). Open just means you can see the source. It doesn't imply any further conditions. GPL has further conditions which are intended (usually successfully) to ensure that the software continues to remain libre (free) as it is improved.
N.B.: By this I do not mean to imply that GPL software isn't gratis. It usually is. But that's not one of the conditions. Though there is a condition that you can't charge someone you distribute a copy to (whether paid for or not) for distributing it to others.
The confusion between the two meanings of free is inherent in English, not in the logic. The free as in "free beer" thing is just a way of explaining an ambiguity that other languages necessarily have. It's used because many people prefer to avoid importing foreign words to patch ambiguities in English. (And these are often in the audience being addressed.)
Do you remember the limitations of coverage in that deal? They were so severe that they were essentially prohibitive. You basically weren't allowed to share anything affected with anybody except Novell, but Novell could share it. However Novell didn't own the patents, so it couldn't license anyone else to use the code. Including you. (There was an exception that you were granted a license to use the patent in Novell's code provided that you purchased the software from Novell.)
What the GPL says about code covered in this way is that you are forbidden to distribute it.
Additionally, the deal was time limited. The original deal was for 5 years, but I think Novell got an extension. Not a permanent one, but I don't remember for how long.
It's been a long time since I read that statement. I was profoundly dissatisfied with it at the time, and don't even know if it was legally binding on MS. OTOH, if you want details, sorry, it's been a long time since I read it, and I don't intend to wade through analyzing it again.
That said, I seem to recall that the covenant only covered the bare language, not any of the associated libraries. So perhaps if you write programs that don't use any of the standard libraries you'd be OK. But for such programs there's little reason to use C#. So it's probably better to just avoid it.
Sorry, but only some gods can have their existence disproven. How would you go about disproving the existence of the god of the Deists? Can't be done. Similarly for many others. Only gods who are postulated as caring enough that people believe in them and are simultaneously capable of acting within the bounds of space-time without causing more damage than they are willing to accept, and not otherwise constrained, as, say, by a wager, are even potentially subject to disproof.
I'll grant you that the traditional christian god could prove his existence, but there are easy modifications of the tenets of the faith that would negate that. (E.g., consider a larger version of the wager made about Job.)
So it's not at all clear this it's possible to disprove the belief in the non-existence of god, depending on just what the nature of the god is that you are presuming exists. (This is usually so carefully non-defined in critical areas that it's generally impossible.)
The real problem is that, even presuming the existence of a god, one is left with no rational way to choose among an infinite set of candidates. (Please allow me to include "No god exists" as one of those candidates, as there's no more reason to select that one than any of the others.)
To me it appears that the appropriate action in such a circumstance is avoidance of premature certainty.
(FWIW, I have personal experiences that incline me towards a particular set of beliefs. But as there is no way to share them with others, it would be irrational to consider them as evidence to anyone other than myself.)
I'd sort of assumed that it was the analog of a communion wafer (Catholic, not Anglican, and the Anglican wafer isn't literally transformed).
Doesn't matter. The FSM is only one of a multitude of candidates. And even the FSM can be justified with arguments no more specious than those commonly used to justify traditional religious beliefs.
N.B.: This doesn't mean that any particular religious belief is incorrect, merely that there is no logical reason to believe that it is either correct, or preferable to any of a multitude of other contenders. Just because you are familiar with it, and comfortable with it's story, doesn't give it any logical backing. And it's certainly not evidential. (It does, however, make you more willing to believe it. This is one of the bases of advertising.)
The thing is, the number of things that one cannot disprove is an insanely huge number. And a large number of them are mutually contradictory. And even if you filter that to only include the things that one cannot construct a logically plausible theory that is explicitly specified, it's still a larger number than anyone can think of.
So there's no particular reason to prefer any one of them over any of the others. The only thing we use is "familiarity". Thus the example of "the Fairy Bojangles" (I would have said "Clinkerbell" as a nod to Terry Pratchett), there's no logical reason to prefer that to any of the other choices, but there's also no logical reason to prefer one of the others.
Which brings up the question of "Why is it forbidden to use the name of god?". The answer, though, is pretty clear. When the Hebrews were fleeing the Egyptians they worshiped several different gods. Because of this Moses forbid the speaking of the name of the god, so that people wouldn't know who they were prejudiced against. Note the severity with which he treated the followers of Apis when they made an image of their god (a golden calf). And I've been told that a plausible translation of Yahweh is "O, He", which means it's also not any specific god. (And even then over time the speaking or writing of that name became "discouraged". It was holy, i.e., set apart.
If it makes you comfortable to use some particular belief system, that's fine. When you start expecting others to give it honor, you go too far.
(FWIW, I am rather religious, but not in any conventional sense. Mine is based on personal experiences, and unless you also have those same experiences it's unreasonable for me to expect you to accept my conclusions. And I have no way to share those experiences. But my religion is one that most atheists, agnostics, and Buddhists would have no trouble with. Some, of course, are fanatics.)
To be fair, in most cases the news releases the correction in small type in a small box on page 2 (or 4, or 16) correcting the error in the page one headline. Sometimes even an error that totally invalidates the headline.
Now an alternate source of news, on a large story, may, indeed, make a splash of the correction, but it's rare for the news source that made the mistake to do so.
(You'll note that my references are to newspapers. TV news got so bad that I entirely stopped following it. Now newspaper news is almost equally bad, so I no longer follow that either. I'm not sure whether it's better to be ignorant than misinformed, but it's quicker, and those appear to be the choices.)
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You're pretty much right about the ham gear. Most of it these days is prepackaged stuff. And the morse code that is used is machine generated and received.
So replace it by robot kits, or some such. The concept here isn't that it's ham gear qua ham gear, but rather something electronic that people can build and has a category. Something doable that's just a bit on the edge. (Robot mini-cars seems a good place to start, but that's just me.)
Do I think they'll do it? No. But they probably could. It *would* require a bit of investment, and hiring some different staff...people who were tinkerers. I really doubt that they're serious about this. We'll see.
The change happened around the time they were bought by Tandy...which itself had been a DIY outfit for people who work with leather.
I think what happened was they saw this big new market opening for pre-packaged electronic gizmos, and figured to get in on it with people who didn't want to build their computer from a Heath-kit. They didn't count on losing their market, and overbuilt. This required that most of the stores be too small to carry a full range of items. It worked out pretty well for awhile, but while it was happening they lost their roots, and now the competition has moved in, and their original market has pretty much written them off as useless. (And they've lost all the people who helped them make it work earlier.)
An excellent point. The answer is clearly "no", but it's not as clear that it should be. Powerful corporate entities start to resemble governments. Amazon is large enough, and powerful enough, that I'm not sure it should be allowed to choose what not to offer for sale. But interfering with that right is also quite dubious.
The real answer is that as corporations become that large, they should be split up. But once you allow them to exist, then it's not clear that they should be allowed to choose who to sell to and who to buy from. Either way is very sticky. This is solved by breaking them up.
N.B.: This should not be seen as punishment. The only thing that Amazon has done that I find truly reprehensible is to sell a device that allows it to remove works from a purchaser after the purchaser has bought those works. (I.e., the Kindle.) And even that would be less reprehensible if the company was less dominant. So break them up into two or three smaller companies, but give them a tax break to cover the costs of the breakup. And be a *little* generous. Say 5% over the documentable costs. Or maybe 2%. The idea is that you keep there being a reward for building a successful business, while removing the control.
Monopolies are a very bad idea. Things that approach monopolies need to be managed in such a way that they stop being so powerful. This is totally separate from the idea of punishment for bad behavior. That only an abusive monopoly should be broken up is a silly decision. Abusive companies should be punished, and the punishment should be harsher for more powerful companies than for smaller companies, but that is a separate matter.
The problem is that they're approaching a monopoly level of control. When a company even starts to approach that level of control, every action they take deserves increasing scrutiny and public deliberation.
In this particular case, I don't feel that censorship is too strong a term. When something was "banned in Boston" you could generally buy it at some place close to Boston. And it was still censorship. This is a "forbidding" that covers a much wider number of people than Boston ever held. The fact that (at least currently) you can still get the stuff elsewhere doesn't mean that it's not deserving of the term censorship.
N.B.: Originally the censor was an official of the Roman government. The term now has nothing to do with the Roman government. Later it was an office of the Catholic Church. I believe that that church still has such an office, but it's not what is meant when the word is commonly used. So I have no trouble with it being applied to a large powerful corporate entity, even if it's neither a government nor a religion.
Well, you can usually order from the publisher. Of course there are shipping and handling charges...
I *do* live in a city, and independent bookstores have been disappearing. Borders is a bit better than you describe, so is Barnes & Noble. But not enough. So I often end up ordering from the publisher without being able to see what it is I'm ordering.
If the Nook actually starts being sold as an open software machine, I'll be very tempted. I haven't been tempted by the Kindle since Amazon removed copies of works already purchased. And this has sloshed over onto other e-book readers. If I buy something, I want the merchandise, and I don't want to need to depend on the "good-will" of the vendor of the reader. Until and unless that is true, I consider e-book readers a lousy idea. (Remember the job that Winston Smith had in 1984.)
Demanding is an interesting concept. I find the idea of being dependent on a network connection so unacceptable, that I haven't bought any games recently. I doubt that the game companies know or care.
P.S.: If you really care, you should put in some time developing games that are open. Nethack has been done several times, but there are also "starter versions" of SimCity (LinCity?) Civilization (FreeCiv) etc. Card games don't really need much help, but Pysol could use aid in converting it over to Python3. Etc. What's your favorite? Help them. Every project needs help, if only in the documentation.
SONY BMG is a separate company too. So what? They share common executives and executive policy. And profits.
If you want to trust them, it's your neck. Just don't say you weren't warned.
Given the *way* they revoked the PlayStation capability, once is more than enough. Of course, that wasn't once. That came after the rootkits that they released on CDs. That came after the official comment (paraphrase)"Most users don't know what a rootkit is, so it doesn't matter.". That came after SONY tried to pass the blame onto another company that they hired specifically to do that job. That came after the repairs to the rootkit that left you vulnerable to any web site you visited. There were several other instances. SONY was already on my "Do not patronize" list before this started happening for other actions which were, relatively, so minor that I've forgotten them.
O yes, and SONY always will fight in court rather than pay even minimal compensation to people it has injured. This is reasonable on their behalf, because they courts generally won't make them pay damages.
If you want to do business with them, I'm not the one who will get hurt.
That's my excuse. I don't really believe it. It's really more akin to greed, only applied to books rather than (as well as?) food or money.
But please note that you don't hoard internet pages. Not unless you download them to disk and prevent others from accessing them.
Ever hear the phrase "putting all your eggs in one basket"? Understand at all what it means?
I don't consider our self-destruction inevitable, just extremely likely unless we take steps to lower the risk. One way to lower the risk is to eliminate single points of failure. Another is to operate separable components in different environments (so that they experience different stresses).
FWIW, I expect stability to be possible only with drastically changed social conditions...like having the executive control of the society vested in an advanced AI. We're quite a few years away from that, though, possibly as much as a century (though the median projection of experts in the field is closer to 40 years). And even once it appears, people would need to learn to trust it enough to replace the whims of politicians and boards of directors with it's decisions. (The boards of directors problem will likely resolve itself fairly quickly, as good decisions tend to be more profitable. Governments, however, are more often centered around lust for power, and thus are likely to be slower to change.)
N.B.: I don't see any legal obstacles to this happening right now. It just changes who advises the leader, and advisers change readily. The same outward forms would probably be kept.
If I understand things correctly, Anonymous isn't a coherent group. There's no centralized decision maker. There's no list of members. I'm not sure what makes one a member of Anonymous, except that you claim to be one (anonymously).
So saying that Anonymous was mad at Sony is merely saying that some anonymous person said that he was mad at Sony and called for an attack. Perhaps many people joined in, but, again, if I understand correctly, there's no particular reason to believe that someone who was a member of one Anonymous attack was a member in any other Anonymous attack.
Basically, my understanding is that Anonymous is like a mob. Saying that you were attacked by a mob doesn't convey much information. And saying that a mob conducted an expert and sophisticated attack is clearly silly. Some members of a mob may have done that, but this isn't evidence that other members of the mob would have condoned it if they had known. And one should expect the motives of the members of the mob who conducted the "expert and sophisticated attack" to be disjoint from, if not antithetical to, the motives of the ordinary members of the mob.
To an extent, yes, but I don't think that kind of moderate hording is what the GP was talking about. And you have only to read the news (or look around you) to know that people are quite bad at putting rational limits on their hoarding. E.g., I have more books than I am likely to ever read. And I still want to buy more.
You're a little be judgmental.
I'd agree that it's *likely* impossible, and we don't currently have any idea as to how to do it. (The negative energy required to stabilize the hole is itself a major problem for anything that isn't microscopic.) This doesn't mean it's really impossible. Just that we have no idea of how to do it. And it looks like there are lots of iffy problems that may not have solutions. But, you know, they might. And saying we can't do it doesn't mean that people 50-100 years from now might not have a way. Doesn't mean it would be worthwhile. I seem to recall that the distance within a wormhole that connects back to the same space in which it originates is supposed to be longer than the distance outside. So it would very likely be only be useful for inter-universal travel. And if the laws of nature are very different over there, it's quite likely that both semi-conductor laws and the laws of organic chemistry would be different. IOW, you can't use it an live. And you can't send a robot through.
So there are reasons why this probably wouldn't do what it wanted. But it's not pure fantasy.
For that matter, on the moon you could build a Space Elevator and use Kevlar for the cable. (Well, probably not really. Kevlar is strong enough, but you'd need to shield it against vacuum or it would probably become brittle.)
OTOH, the Space Elevator is only useful if you're expecting to average as much down traffic as up traffic. So a magnetic launcher would be a reasonable alternative. (Is that what you meant by a launch loop?) Most sky-hooks are out, however, because they almost all require an average of as much down traffic as up traffic.
Solar power on the moon has a similar problem to on Earth, but magnified. Every two weeks, over most of the surface, you are in darkness for two weeks. There's only one small area near one of the poles that is under continual illumination. So you can use it, but you either need a humongous amount of storage, or you need to time your energy expenditures for when the sun is shining.
There *are* some basic problems that need to be addressed, but as you suggest they are largely engineering.
My take on it is that the primary problem that needs to be addressed it a closed ecology. We don't currently know how to maintain one, and there's a clear need for that before any extended human space project is feasible.
FWIW, I feel that we have a real need for several long term habitations in different locations. On various moons, on Mars, on Luna, possibly on Mercury, and definitely on various asteroids. We've already spent too long with all humanity living under the threat of annihilation. If we wait long enough we'll get someone really crazy with his finger on the button. And I don't consider our recent leadership to be particularly sane, do you? But the US isn't even the only country that could end everything. I can think of around 5 countries that could do it intentionally. And that's with current weaponry. Who knows what biology could come up with...or how cheap it might be? We could soon be at the level where a disaffected company manager could end the world. And a few decades after that, as college kid. The level of risk keeps rising. (Well, it's not monotonic. The current high point was during the Cuban missile crisis where we came within 30 seconds of global atomic war, and it hasn't, as far as I know, been that high since then. But the moving time average risk has kept increasing with a decade used as the averaging period.)
P.S.: This is my own informal risk assessment. Others may disagree. I'd be quite surprised if anyone sane thought the risk had been decreasing, though.
Actually, they had a LOT of trouble. This doesn't mean you're basically wrong though. The job is a bit harder than you seem willing to admit, and some of the payoffs are quite speculative. (And I do worry about some of the designs for an SSPS to power earth, though it should be quite easy to build one to power other space endeavors.)
Still ... If we're real lucky one of the outcomes of the Fukishima disaster will be a Japanese SSPS, And if that's done well ...
The Japanese are a country that has a real need for an SSPS, A dense population, not much native fossil fuel. And problems with nuclear power. (They do seem a little less twitchy about it now than they were a few decades ago, but even then their need was so great that they went ahead and put them in.) So maybe they'll do it. I wonder who they'll hire for the heavy lifting? China looks like a leading contender. Russia hasn't been putting much effort into heavy lifting, more the intermediate level stuff. Even Europe seems ahead of the US.
That is, indeed, a very bad assumption. Generally people end up voting for whoever they think is "the lesser of two evils". This is why Condorcet voting or Instant Runoff Voting would change politics considerably. (Over time, admittedly. But perhaps not too much time.)
Just for instance, I voted for Obama despite despising hm, because I considered that he might be a little less bad than McCain. Was he? I'll never know. He's pretty bad. And he didn't keep his campaign promises any better than I expected. I basically consider him a moderate-to-conservative Republican posing as a Democrat.
N.B.: Both the Democrats and the Republicans are centralists, and as such I don't really support either of them, but if we're going to get a stronger central government anyway I'd prefer to get some benefits from it. I'd hoped that a civilized health care might be made available. Pity, really, that we got something so watered down that is just going to be cut anyway. After Obama voted for FISA I knew better than to believe that he'd be conciliatory in foreign policy, but I was hoping for a more decent domestic policy, and for the closing of Guantanamo. (Guantanamo kind of things are pretty much useless anyway, so closing it would be a propaganda victory at little to no cost.)
The real point is that he's one of many. Many. It would be quite difficult to buy them all, and as the process progressed, the price would rise. And some of them are corporations themselves. They will certainly want top dollar. Especially if their business is dependent on PostGreSQL, Some of them are already famous or wealthy. And unless you get all of them, you've wasted your money.
And even then someone could just fork it...as has already happened with MySQL. In fact the problem is that there are so many forks that one doesn't know which one will win out. (Probably doesn't matter, but people tend to care about such things.)
Open is the wrong term. GPL software is libre(free), not gratis(free). It's also Open, but that term means something different and doesn't describe the essential property of GPL. Open software always existed (while there were computers, of course). Open just means you can see the source. It doesn't imply any further conditions. GPL has further conditions which are intended (usually successfully) to ensure that the software continues to remain libre (free) as it is improved.
N.B.: By this I do not mean to imply that GPL software isn't gratis. It usually is. But that's not one of the conditions. Though there is a condition that you can't charge someone you distribute a copy to (whether paid for or not) for distributing it to others.
The confusion between the two meanings of free is inherent in English, not in the logic. The free as in "free beer" thing is just a way of explaining an ambiguity that other languages necessarily have. It's used because many people prefer to avoid importing foreign words to patch ambiguities in English. (And these are often in the audience being addressed.)
Do you remember the limitations of coverage in that deal? They were so severe that they were essentially prohibitive. You basically weren't allowed to share anything affected with anybody except Novell, but Novell could share it. However Novell didn't own the patents, so it couldn't license anyone else to use the code. Including you. (There was an exception that you were granted a license to use the patent in Novell's code provided that you purchased the software from Novell.)
What the GPL says about code covered in this way is that you are forbidden to distribute it.
Additionally, the deal was time limited. The original deal was for 5 years, but I think Novell got an extension. Not a permanent one, but I don't remember for how long.
It's been a long time since I read that statement. I was profoundly dissatisfied with it at the time, and don't even know if it was legally binding on MS. OTOH, if you want details, sorry, it's been a long time since I read it, and I don't intend to wade through analyzing it again.
That said, I seem to recall that the covenant only covered the bare language, not any of the associated libraries. So perhaps if you write programs that don't use any of the standard libraries you'd be OK. But for such programs there's little reason to use C#. So it's probably better to just avoid it.
Sorry, but only some gods can have their existence disproven. How would you go about disproving the existence of the god of the Deists? Can't be done. Similarly for many others. Only gods who are postulated as caring enough that people believe in them and are simultaneously capable of acting within the bounds of space-time without causing more damage than they are willing to accept, and not otherwise constrained, as, say, by a wager, are even potentially subject to disproof.
I'll grant you that the traditional christian god could prove his existence, but there are easy modifications of the tenets of the faith that would negate that. (E.g., consider a larger version of the wager made about Job.)
So it's not at all clear this it's possible to disprove the belief in the non-existence of god, depending on just what the nature of the god is that you are presuming exists. (This is usually so carefully non-defined in critical areas that it's generally impossible.)
The real problem is that, even presuming the existence of a god, one is left with no rational way to choose among an infinite set of candidates. (Please allow me to include "No god exists" as one of those candidates, as there's no more reason to select that one than any of the others.)
To me it appears that the appropriate action in such a circumstance is avoidance of premature certainty.
(FWIW, I have personal experiences that incline me towards a particular set of beliefs. But as there is no way to share them with others, it would be irrational to consider them as evidence to anyone other than myself.)
I'd sort of assumed that it was the analog of a communion wafer (Catholic, not Anglican, and the Anglican wafer isn't literally transformed).
Doesn't matter. The FSM is only one of a multitude of candidates. And even the FSM can be justified with arguments no more specious than those commonly used to justify traditional religious beliefs.
N.B.: This doesn't mean that any particular religious belief is incorrect, merely that there is no logical reason to believe that it is either correct, or preferable to any of a multitude of other contenders. Just because you are familiar with it, and comfortable with it's story, doesn't give it any logical backing. And it's certainly not evidential. (It does, however, make you more willing to believe it. This is one of the bases of advertising.)
The thing is, the number of things that one cannot disprove is an insanely huge number. And a large number of them are mutually contradictory. And even if you filter that to only include the things that one cannot construct a logically plausible theory that is explicitly specified, it's still a larger number than anyone can think of.
So there's no particular reason to prefer any one of them over any of the others. The only thing we use is "familiarity". Thus the example of "the Fairy Bojangles" (I would have said "Clinkerbell" as a nod to Terry Pratchett), there's no logical reason to prefer that to any of the other choices, but there's also no logical reason to prefer one of the others.
Which brings up the question of "Why is it forbidden to use the name of god?". The answer, though, is pretty clear. When the Hebrews were fleeing the Egyptians they worshiped several different gods. Because of this Moses forbid the speaking of the name of the god, so that people wouldn't know who they were prejudiced against. Note the severity with which he treated the followers of Apis when they made an image of their god (a golden calf). And I've been told that a plausible translation of Yahweh is "O, He", which means it's also not any specific god. (And even then over time the speaking or writing of that name became "discouraged". It was holy, i.e., set apart.
If it makes you comfortable to use some particular belief system, that's fine. When you start expecting others to give it honor, you go too far.
(FWIW, I am rather religious, but not in any conventional sense. Mine is based on personal experiences, and unless you also have those same experiences it's unreasonable for me to expect you to accept my conclusions. And I have no way to share those experiences. But my religion is one that most atheists, agnostics, and Buddhists would have no trouble with. Some, of course, are fanatics.)
To be fair, in most cases the news releases the correction in small type in a small box on page 2 (or 4, or 16) correcting the error in the page one headline. Sometimes even an error that totally invalidates the headline.
Now an alternate source of news, on a large story, may, indeed, make a splash of the correction, but it's rare for the news source that made the mistake to do so.
(You'll note that my references are to newspapers. TV news got so bad that I entirely stopped following it. Now newspaper news is almost equally bad, so I no longer follow that either. I'm not sure whether it's better to be ignorant than misinformed, but it's quicker, and those appear to be the choices.)