Diesel electric trains are popular because mechanically coupling wheels to a 3000 horsepower engine is not trivial:)
Mechanically coupled steam engines exceeded diesel locomotives power for about the first 50 years we had diesel locomotives. The advantages of diesel electrics are numerous and not just related to transmission of power to the wheels. There are mechanically coupled diesel locomotives in service today though they aren't common. Advantages of diesel electric locomotives include: they can be safely operated with smaller crews, they can be started and stopped basically instantly, they are quieter and cleaner, they can be ganged together easily, they require less maintenance than steam engines, they have lower maintenance costs, they are more reliable, they are safer, etc. Steam engines are basically at full power all the time. It's what made them useful and also what made them dangerous.
A steam engine?? Its one of the most inefficient engines types ever designed.
Umm, you are aware that virtually all fossil fuel and nuclear power plants are types of steam engines right? A steam engine is just a heat engine that uses steam as its working fluid. Modern steam power plants have efficiency approaching 50% in some cases. If you are talking about some particularly inefficient form of steam engine you need to me more specific.
Better off with a gas-electric hybrid. Electric motor has even more low-end torque than diesel.
Depends on the application. Diesels-electrics are used in locomotives and I think they would probably work fairly well in similar applications like in large cargo hauling trucks. I think it wouldn't make sense for a small city runabout or a family sedan but for big trucks I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen it worked on already. Diesels are actually best in steady state applications which is why they are great for trucks. Yes they are torquey but their fuel efficiency is their primary draw and that comes from operating at (relatively) constant speeds.
Go to a book shop and take a look at all the Star Wars universe material that is Star Wars without simply rehashing Ep4.
Just because they are set in the Star Wars universe doesn't mean people will give a shit about them or that they are any good. I've read a few of the better known fan-fic... err, Extended Universe books and frankly they weren't any better than Ep7. I've seen Ep7 and while I do agree they copied rather heavily from Ep4-6, I think it was good enough to get people excited about the next movie. It was basically a reboot without actually rebooting the series.
Now if they do that again for Ep8 I'll be pissed but a one time reminder of what made the original series good isn't a bad thing and I enjoyed the movie.
Communication is the main task (and, IMHO, should be the sole one) of managers.
You mean except for budgeting, staffing, scheduling, conflict resolution, planning, reporting, coaching, motivating, forecasting, negotiating, delegating, and the thousand other things a manager actually has to do in the real world?
If you think communication is the only thing a manager should have to do you are pretty clueless about what it takes to manage a group of people. Effective management is a hell of a lot more than just "communication".
Can anyone remember when laws were made by elected officials? It seems like nowadays some federal agency steps in and declares that they're the governing authority on something, that their decisions are law, and everyone should obey.
That is how it has been since the signing of the Constitution. The legislature makes laws, the executive branch makes regulations, and the judicial branch makes case law. All three are types of law. Some are done by elected officials others aren't. All three are necessary components of a functioning legal system. Congress does not and never has passed laws that are fully fleshed out to every detail. And that's a good thing because Congress is clearly not filled with domain experts for most subjects. The legislature sets the framework and the executive branch makes it work. They delegate this authority to federal agencies who then issue regulations filling in the details. It has ALWAYS worked like this. ALWAYS.
That doesn't seem to mesh with what we were taught in school. Aren't our lawmakers elected?
Sounds like you got some bad schooling. Many lawmakers are elected in all three branches of government. Others are appointed. It's been that way since the dawn of the republic in the US.
When you sell a house, that's pretty much it. However, when you sell IP, you can actually stipulate terms in the sale which may restrict use of said IP, or retain certain rights.
I have news for you. You can do that with a house too. Terms of sale aren't just for intangible property. If you are the one selling you can request all sorts of crazy terms if you want and can find a buyer willing to agree to them. When I bought my last house there were so weird stipulations regarding delayed move out dates and some other stuff. A friend of mine put a conservation easement on his farm which affects the uses available to any future owner. You can sell most things with terms attached if the other party is amenable to the terms.
The Phantom Menace I could sort of live with, Attack of the Clones was ok in a few ways but was mostly still a miss. But lets not act as if his final attempt (Revenge of the Sith) was worth anything, it made everything look like a bunch of toys and was a worst case abuse of CGI.
See I had the opposite opinion of their relative quality. All three were crap but ROTS was the most bearable of the batch to me. Don't get me wrong, it was terrible but marginally less than the other two. TPM was just horrid aside from the one lightsaber duel. It was like watching a Disney theme park ride but with worse acting and dialog. Jar-Jar gets the hate but the worst of it for me was any scene with the kid that played Anakin in it. AOTC wasn't any better. I'm not expecting Shakespeare or anything but the movies are so bad I don't even watch them when I'm bored and there is nothing else on TV. The problems were almost all in writing and directing and to some degree editing. I've seen most of the actors in other things so I know it wasn't a talent problem. The special effects were pretty amazing as expected but a movie has to have more than that. Dr. Who has legendarily terrible effects but it's still fun because the stories and dialog are generally pretty good.
My problem with all this, and the tentative point where I agree with Lucas, is that it seems a strange new world where the creator of a work is locked out of its further development simply because a corporation stepped in with $4B's and bought all rights and control of it.
Pretty naive to think that that is somehow anything new. People have sold IP rights since the first moment there was such a thing as IP. That's like selling your house and then expecting to have a say in how the new owner decorates it. The entire notion is idiotic. If George wanted a say in how things were done he could have negotiated that. He chose not to. Frankly given how bad the prequels were, I wouldn't have wanted him around either. He clearly failed to understand why people liked Star Wars, couldn't direct, couldn't write and everybody knew it. Disney has dealt with guys like him before and his time had clearly passed.
In other words, when a work of art becomes too popular it is in danger of becoming a mere franchise.
It's adorable that you think Star Wars wasn't a franchise before. I saw Star Wars in the theater in 1977. Do you have ANY idea how big of a think merchandising became because of Star Wars? Every kid I knew was carrying around a Darth Vader carrying case loaded with action figures. Video games, lunch boxes, toys, decoration, etc. Those became a big deal because Star Wars WAS a franchise right from the very beginning. Your notion that it was some holy work of "art" is belied by the actual facts.
Then you fail to understand the problem. Disney HAD to make a film that reminded everyone of why they loved Star Wars. After the debacle that was the prequels, they needed to come back to basics. THEN they can start doing more creative things going forward. But they had to repair the damage first and get people enthused about the franchise again. I suspect they'll get more adventurous in the future but doing so for this movie would have been idiotic.
A real filmmaker would have made his own film, not just remade someone else's.
And if they did that then everyone would have bitched about how it wasn't Star Wars. And they would have been right. Giving some director complete freedom to go off on whatever idiotic tangent they want is how we got the prequels.
George Lucas has criticized the "retro" tone of The Force Awakens and lamented his own lack of involvement in it.
Shut up George and go spend your billions. You had your chance and blew it with the prequels. Nobody gives a shit what you think anymore. You created something cool 35 years ago and then made a mockery of it with your arrogance and incompetence 20 years later. Star Wars HAD to do something retro because you screwed it up. You failed to understand why Star Wars was a success in the first place. People needed to be reminded of why they liked Star Wars and THEN we can worry about doing something new and interesting with it.
George, if you wanted control you shouldn't have sold out. If you want to do something new then go create something genuinely new. You've got the money and the time but I'm pretty sure you don't have the talent to write or direct. Go do some experimental film making and prove to us that you have something worthwhile to contribute.
Before we get too excited there are some pretty substantial environmental and political and technical issues to consider. 1) What is the effect of large scale solar panel deployment on local atmosphere and climate conditions as well as ecosystems? That is a LOT of sunlight being reflected no matter what technology you use. I could see a "sea" of solar panels creating it's own climate and not necessarily a beneficial one. 2) The governments in that part of the world aren't noted for their stability or integrity. While this is nothing new to energy companies it would be a big issue. 3) Countries blessed with copious natural resources often find it to be a curse. I see no reason why sunlight should be different from oil in this respect. 4) Maintenance could be a pretty substantial problem on such a scale. 5) The sun isn't shining for a pretty substantial part of the day even in the Sahara (it's called night) and energy storage is still a big problem.
Seriously, getting a desktop "right" is hard... Apple certainly hasn't figured it out yet, none of the Linux camps have figured it out... it's hard. The only one that may have come close to perfecting it was Microsoft with Windows 7, and then they went and screwed it all up after they had it.
Umm, I'm guessing this is a troll because I doubt you'll find many people agreeing with you that Windows 7 was "close to perfect". It might have been close to YOUR personal preferences but please don't pretend to speak for the rest of us. Personally I prefer Apple's desktop interface slightly to Microsoft's though I'm fine with both. I haven't yet seen a linux desktop that even came close to suiting my work flow preferences though I continue to hold out hope. None of them are perfect and what might be perfect for me will likely be annoying for you.
But Window 7 "close to perfect"?....No. Just No...
This is no different than our ancestors from tens of thousands of years ago who didn't keep an eye out for dangers around them. They were removed from the gene pool.
That only works if it removes them prior to reproduction. Otherwise it's merely a tragedy, not a Darwin Award because they have not removed themselves from the gene pool.
If you think dropping large rocks onto Earth's surface is even remote possibility at this point, you need to take a few physics classes.
If you have the tech to mine asteroids you will have the tech to drop the asteroids onto the planet. It's like nuclear power. If you can build a power plant you can build a bomb. You don't get one without the other.
And I happen to have a college minor in physics as well as a pair of engineering degrees so I've taken "a few" physics classes.
There are no technology barriers to a manned mission to Mars.
You're kidding right? We have built barely any of the stuff you cite. We certainly don't have any of it ready to pull of the shelf and send to Mars. We don't have human rated habitats for that kind of mission or duration, we don't have life support systems, we haven't figured out the physiology problems, we haven't even tried building a spacecraft surrounded by water and certainly don't have any other type of shielding, etc. The notion that there are no technological barriers is just nonsense. We can probably figure them out with enough time and money but that isn't the same as saying we are ready to go to Mars. Absent a crash program to work on all this (which won't happen) it's going to take decades to work out the technical details. We've only been outside of low earth orbit a handful of times and nothing longer than a few days. I don't mean to be rude (seriously I don't) but if you seriously think we've figured out all the technical problems you don't adequately understand the problems.
I think you are correct that the financial and political barriers are the bigger problems but let's not understate the technical ones.
Bringing back some Mars rocks would be nice in my lifetime. Even in unmanned missions.
An unmanned mission to bring back Mars rocks is probably doable. I'm dubious that we will send humans there in my remaining lifespan.
Beginning of asteroid mining too.
I think asteroid mining is a ridiculous concept. To be economically viable one of two things has to happen. Either 1) you have to bring the materials back to Earth to be refined and utilized or 2) you have to develop technology to refine and utilize them in space. If you choose option 1) you have to drop VERY large rocks onto the surface of the Earth. Do I have to explain that dropping large rocks onto Earth's surface is REALLY destructive? If you choose option 2) you have to replicate entire supply chains in space and we have ZERO technology in the pipeline to do that. We have no smelting or mining equipment that works in space on anything close to an industrial scale. We don't have the robotics. We don't have the control systems. Even if we did we have no power systems adequate to drive them on an industrial scale except maybe nuclear fission and that's pretty dicey even here on Earth.
We're probably in a better state to reach Mars today than to reach the Moon in the 1960's.
Technologically I would cautiously agree though there are some pretty substantial technical problems yet to be solved. Politically it's not even close. The US is realistically the only country right now that could seriously consider such a mission and those in power currently will never be willing to raise the taxes that would be necessary to fund such a mission.
The Martian will either be Elon Musk or the vanguard of the next space race.
Won't be Elon Musk I'm afraid unless he can amass a Scrooge McDuck sized fortune. Don't get me wrong, I think it's super cool that he is working hard on the problem but I don't think he'll be able to get the financing for the trip even if we can work out the technical details. There are good reasons to go to Mars but they aren't business reasons. Not yet anyway. The risk is huge, the cost is huge and the return on investment is impossible to determine.
The only way I see us getting to Mars within the next 100 years is if we have an existential crisis (war, cold war, asteroid, etc...) or some minor miracle of a technological breakthrough. The only reason we went to the Moon was because of the Cold War with Russia.
Economic disparity between states is almost as bad in the U.S., but Minnesota doesn't complain that Mississippi is stealing all of its wealth -- well, not much anyway -- because we're all Americans.
Umm, no. The reason nobody complains is that a citizen of Mississippi can move to Minnesota if that is where the jobs are. Labor mobility matters. A lot. The problem Europe has is that citizens of one country (say Greece) cannot become citizens of another country (say Germany) simply by moving there. In the US I simply pick up my things and move to the new state and boom, I'm a citizen of that state. This matters because it very naturally adjusts the price of goods to match the relative economic prospects of a particular state. If European countries were like the US you would see mass migration out of places like Spain and Greece to areas with better prospects. This would help normalize monetary pressures. You either have to be able to adjust exchange rates or have labor mobility. The problem with the Euro is that they have neither. Exchange rates were fixed when they joined the Euro and moving between countries is more difficult than it is in the US.
Which we no longer have and do not have any plans to build again. We could do something similar but first you have to answer the question of what you are trying to accomplish. We used that design because it was economical at the time. Doesn't necessarily mean it is a good idea today.
Easy to put in orbit.
Only true if you have a Saturn V rocket. We stopped making those 40 years ago. Yes we could do something similar if we build a Saturn V replacement but easy to orbit is merely one consideration.
Quite sizable for the planned crew. Update the design with the technology we developed over the decades since then.
And do what with it exactly? What does a Skylab copy get us? What problems are you solving that cannot be accomplish better in other ways? Is copying programs from the 1970s really the best way to move the space program forward?
So...all NESA's noise about preparing for a manned Mars mission was just a joke then?
Probably not but I think the claims of getting there by the 2030s are absurdly unrealistic and certainly haven't been funded in a way that would make them feasible. It might be technologically possible but I don't see it being politically viable. I think NASA knows that it isn't politically viable so they aren't seriously planning for it. There certainly hasn't been serious funding on the level necessary to do a realistic manned Mars mission so why should NASA seriously plan for one? They are working on it but the Apollo program had double the funding NASA gets now (adjusted for inflation) and the Moon is a lot easier.
I wouldn't have modded it 'flamebait'; but it does fall into the relatively unhelpful category of being overbroad(if you go state-by-state, the degree to which US education is totally fucked varies quite widely); and it also ignores the important fact that the DOE isn't actively changing the state of CS education here; but merely signalling an unwillingness to get tough on trying to improve it.
That presumes the ED (DoE is the Dept of Energy) has the statutory authority to dictate CS education requirements. In all likelihood it doesn't have any such authority delegated to it by Congress. While I don't pretend to be an expert I do know that the Dept of Education has very little to do with and almost no authority regarding determining curriculum outside of No Child Left Behind the recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act.
And stuff like this is why many think the Department of Education should be eliminated or severely scaled back. Perhaps set national standards but not get into the day-to-day operations of a school.
Aside from No Child Left Behind which was mandated by CONGRESS, the Dept of Education has very little to do with the day to day operations of schools. In fact the Dept of Ed is by a wide margin the least involved ministerial level department for education in the civilized world. The US education system is hugely decentralized and demonstrably NOT controlled from Washington. People calling for the Dept of Ed to be eliminated or scaled back invariably have no idea what it does. Any meddling it does with regard to operations of schools is because it was instructed to do so by Congress. All it would take to change that is another act of Congress and in fact such a law was just passed. Repeal NCLB and ESSA and the Dept of Education would have almost no direct interaction with most school systems.
Once upon a time, well 1960, there was a Presidential Debate where candidates discussed societal issues (imagine that). One topic that came up was the nature of federal support for local schools. Both candidates, Kennedy (D) and Nixon (R), were concerned that federal support (funding) would lead to federal meddling.
And very little has changed. There is very little funding and for the most part very little meddling.
I think we are now seeing the wisdom of their shared concerns regarding centralizing too much control and authority in Washington DC.
"Wisdom"? No. That is ideology, not wisdom. Virtually every other country in the civilized world has FAR more centralized control over education than we do in the US and many of them get measurably better results. If you think decentralized schooling is good I'd invite you to visit the school districts in places like Detroit or Cleveland or Los Angeles. They get terrible results and no one holds them accountable or gives them any substantial help. Federal control has problems to be sure but so does local control.
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Diesel electric trains are popular because mechanically coupling wheels to a 3000 horsepower engine is not trivial :)
Mechanically coupled steam engines exceeded diesel locomotives power for about the first 50 years we had diesel locomotives. The advantages of diesel electrics are numerous and not just related to transmission of power to the wheels. There are mechanically coupled diesel locomotives in service today though they aren't common. Advantages of diesel electric locomotives include: they can be safely operated with smaller crews, they can be started and stopped basically instantly, they are quieter and cleaner, they can be ganged together easily, they require less maintenance than steam engines, they have lower maintenance costs, they are more reliable, they are safer, etc. Steam engines are basically at full power all the time. It's what made them useful and also what made them dangerous.
A steam engine?? Its one of the most inefficient engines types ever designed.
Umm, you are aware that virtually all fossil fuel and nuclear power plants are types of steam engines right? A steam engine is just a heat engine that uses steam as its working fluid. Modern steam power plants have efficiency approaching 50% in some cases. If you are talking about some particularly inefficient form of steam engine you need to me more specific.
Better off with a gas-electric hybrid. Electric motor has even more low-end torque than diesel.
Depends on the application. Diesels-electrics are used in locomotives and I think they would probably work fairly well in similar applications like in large cargo hauling trucks. I think it wouldn't make sense for a small city runabout or a family sedan but for big trucks I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen it worked on already. Diesels are actually best in steady state applications which is why they are great for trucks. Yes they are torquey but their fuel efficiency is their primary draw and that comes from operating at (relatively) constant speeds.
Go to a book shop and take a look at all the Star Wars universe material that is Star Wars without simply rehashing Ep4.
Just because they are set in the Star Wars universe doesn't mean people will give a shit about them or that they are any good. I've read a few of the better known fan-fic... err, Extended Universe books and frankly they weren't any better than Ep7. I've seen Ep7 and while I do agree they copied rather heavily from Ep4-6, I think it was good enough to get people excited about the next movie. It was basically a reboot without actually rebooting the series.
Now if they do that again for Ep8 I'll be pissed but a one time reminder of what made the original series good isn't a bad thing and I enjoyed the movie.
Communication is the main task (and, IMHO, should be the sole one) of managers.
You mean except for budgeting, staffing, scheduling, conflict resolution, planning, reporting, coaching, motivating, forecasting, negotiating, delegating, and the thousand other things a manager actually has to do in the real world?
If you think communication is the only thing a manager should have to do you are pretty clueless about what it takes to manage a group of people. Effective management is a hell of a lot more than just "communication".
On what basis? This is Disney.
They've done pretty well with Marvel properties. And Pixar. No reason to think they can't do similarly well with Star Wars.
Can anyone remember when laws were made by elected officials? It seems like nowadays some federal agency steps in and declares that they're the governing authority on something, that their decisions are law, and everyone should obey.
That is how it has been since the signing of the Constitution. The legislature makes laws, the executive branch makes regulations, and the judicial branch makes case law. All three are types of law. Some are done by elected officials others aren't. All three are necessary components of a functioning legal system. Congress does not and never has passed laws that are fully fleshed out to every detail. And that's a good thing because Congress is clearly not filled with domain experts for most subjects. The legislature sets the framework and the executive branch makes it work. They delegate this authority to federal agencies who then issue regulations filling in the details. It has ALWAYS worked like this. ALWAYS.
That doesn't seem to mesh with what we were taught in school. Aren't our lawmakers elected?
Sounds like you got some bad schooling. Many lawmakers are elected in all three branches of government. Others are appointed. It's been that way since the dawn of the republic in the US.
When you sell a house, that's pretty much it. However, when you sell IP, you can actually stipulate terms in the sale which may restrict use of said IP, or retain certain rights.
I have news for you. You can do that with a house too. Terms of sale aren't just for intangible property. If you are the one selling you can request all sorts of crazy terms if you want and can find a buyer willing to agree to them. When I bought my last house there were so weird stipulations regarding delayed move out dates and some other stuff. A friend of mine put a conservation easement on his farm which affects the uses available to any future owner. You can sell most things with terms attached if the other party is amenable to the terms.
The Phantom Menace I could sort of live with, Attack of the Clones was ok in a few ways but was mostly still a miss. But lets not act as if his final attempt (Revenge of the Sith) was worth anything, it made everything look like a bunch of toys and was a worst case abuse of CGI.
See I had the opposite opinion of their relative quality. All three were crap but ROTS was the most bearable of the batch to me. Don't get me wrong, it was terrible but marginally less than the other two. TPM was just horrid aside from the one lightsaber duel. It was like watching a Disney theme park ride but with worse acting and dialog. Jar-Jar gets the hate but the worst of it for me was any scene with the kid that played Anakin in it. AOTC wasn't any better. I'm not expecting Shakespeare or anything but the movies are so bad I don't even watch them when I'm bored and there is nothing else on TV. The problems were almost all in writing and directing and to some degree editing. I've seen most of the actors in other things so I know it wasn't a talent problem. The special effects were pretty amazing as expected but a movie has to have more than that. Dr. Who has legendarily terrible effects but it's still fun because the stories and dialog are generally pretty good.
My problem with all this, and the tentative point where I agree with Lucas, is that it seems a strange new world where the creator of a work is locked out of its further development simply because a corporation stepped in with $4B's and bought all rights and control of it.
Pretty naive to think that that is somehow anything new. People have sold IP rights since the first moment there was such a thing as IP. That's like selling your house and then expecting to have a say in how the new owner decorates it. The entire notion is idiotic. If George wanted a say in how things were done he could have negotiated that. He chose not to. Frankly given how bad the prequels were, I wouldn't have wanted him around either. He clearly failed to understand why people liked Star Wars, couldn't direct, couldn't write and everybody knew it. Disney has dealt with guys like him before and his time had clearly passed.
In other words, when a work of art becomes too popular it is in danger of becoming a mere franchise.
It's adorable that you think Star Wars wasn't a franchise before. I saw Star Wars in the theater in 1977. Do you have ANY idea how big of a think merchandising became because of Star Wars? Every kid I knew was carrying around a Darth Vader carrying case loaded with action figures. Video games, lunch boxes, toys, decoration, etc. Those became a big deal because Star Wars WAS a franchise right from the very beginning. Your notion that it was some holy work of "art" is belied by the actual facts.
I agree with him.
Then you fail to understand the problem. Disney HAD to make a film that reminded everyone of why they loved Star Wars. After the debacle that was the prequels, they needed to come back to basics. THEN they can start doing more creative things going forward. But they had to repair the damage first and get people enthused about the franchise again. I suspect they'll get more adventurous in the future but doing so for this movie would have been idiotic.
A real filmmaker would have made his own film, not just remade someone else's.
And if they did that then everyone would have bitched about how it wasn't Star Wars. And they would have been right. Giving some director complete freedom to go off on whatever idiotic tangent they want is how we got the prequels.
George Lucas has criticized the "retro" tone of The Force Awakens and lamented his own lack of involvement in it.
Shut up George and go spend your billions. You had your chance and blew it with the prequels. Nobody gives a shit what you think anymore. You created something cool 35 years ago and then made a mockery of it with your arrogance and incompetence 20 years later. Star Wars HAD to do something retro because you screwed it up. You failed to understand why Star Wars was a success in the first place. People needed to be reminded of why they liked Star Wars and THEN we can worry about doing something new and interesting with it.
George, if you wanted control you shouldn't have sold out. If you want to do something new then go create something genuinely new. You've got the money and the time but I'm pretty sure you don't have the talent to write or direct. Go do some experimental film making and prove to us that you have something worthwhile to contribute.
Before we get too excited there are some pretty substantial environmental and political and technical issues to consider.
1) What is the effect of large scale solar panel deployment on local atmosphere and climate conditions as well as ecosystems? That is a LOT of sunlight being reflected no matter what technology you use. I could see a "sea" of solar panels creating it's own climate and not necessarily a beneficial one.
2) The governments in that part of the world aren't noted for their stability or integrity. While this is nothing new to energy companies it would be a big issue.
3) Countries blessed with copious natural resources often find it to be a curse. I see no reason why sunlight should be different from oil in this respect.
4) Maintenance could be a pretty substantial problem on such a scale.
5) The sun isn't shining for a pretty substantial part of the day even in the Sahara (it's called night) and energy storage is still a big problem.
Seriously, getting a desktop "right" is hard... Apple certainly hasn't figured it out yet, none of the Linux camps have figured it out... it's hard. The only one that may have come close to perfecting it was Microsoft with Windows 7, and then they went and screwed it all up after they had it.
Umm, I'm guessing this is a troll because I doubt you'll find many people agreeing with you that Windows 7 was "close to perfect". It might have been close to YOUR personal preferences but please don't pretend to speak for the rest of us. Personally I prefer Apple's desktop interface slightly to Microsoft's though I'm fine with both. I haven't yet seen a linux desktop that even came close to suiting my work flow preferences though I continue to hold out hope. None of them are perfect and what might be perfect for me will likely be annoying for you.
But Window 7 "close to perfect"? ....No. Just No...
This is no different than our ancestors from tens of thousands of years ago who didn't keep an eye out for dangers around them. They were removed from the gene pool.
That only works if it removes them prior to reproduction. Otherwise it's merely a tragedy, not a Darwin Award because they have not removed themselves from the gene pool.
If you think dropping large rocks onto Earth's surface is even remote possibility at this point, you need to take a few physics classes.
If you have the tech to mine asteroids you will have the tech to drop the asteroids onto the planet. It's like nuclear power. If you can build a power plant you can build a bomb. You don't get one without the other.
And I happen to have a college minor in physics as well as a pair of engineering degrees so I've taken "a few" physics classes.
There are no technology barriers to a manned mission to Mars.
You're kidding right? We have built barely any of the stuff you cite. We certainly don't have any of it ready to pull of the shelf and send to Mars. We don't have human rated habitats for that kind of mission or duration, we don't have life support systems, we haven't figured out the physiology problems, we haven't even tried building a spacecraft surrounded by water and certainly don't have any other type of shielding, etc. The notion that there are no technological barriers is just nonsense. We can probably figure them out with enough time and money but that isn't the same as saying we are ready to go to Mars. Absent a crash program to work on all this (which won't happen) it's going to take decades to work out the technical details. We've only been outside of low earth orbit a handful of times and nothing longer than a few days. I don't mean to be rude (seriously I don't) but if you seriously think we've figured out all the technical problems you don't adequately understand the problems.
I think you are correct that the financial and political barriers are the bigger problems but let's not understate the technical ones.
Bringing back some Mars rocks would be nice in my lifetime. Even in unmanned missions.
An unmanned mission to bring back Mars rocks is probably doable. I'm dubious that we will send humans there in my remaining lifespan.
Beginning of asteroid mining too.
I think asteroid mining is a ridiculous concept. To be economically viable one of two things has to happen. Either 1) you have to bring the materials back to Earth to be refined and utilized or 2) you have to develop technology to refine and utilize them in space. If you choose option 1) you have to drop VERY large rocks onto the surface of the Earth. Do I have to explain that dropping large rocks onto Earth's surface is REALLY destructive? If you choose option 2) you have to replicate entire supply chains in space and we have ZERO technology in the pipeline to do that. We have no smelting or mining equipment that works in space on anything close to an industrial scale. We don't have the robotics. We don't have the control systems. Even if we did we have no power systems adequate to drive them on an industrial scale except maybe nuclear fission and that's pretty dicey even here on Earth.
These are completely realistic goals.
Depends on your timescale.
We're probably in a better state to reach Mars today than to reach the Moon in the 1960's.
Technologically I would cautiously agree though there are some pretty substantial technical problems yet to be solved. Politically it's not even close. The US is realistically the only country right now that could seriously consider such a mission and those in power currently will never be willing to raise the taxes that would be necessary to fund such a mission.
The Martian will either be Elon Musk or the vanguard of the next space race.
Won't be Elon Musk I'm afraid unless he can amass a Scrooge McDuck sized fortune. Don't get me wrong, I think it's super cool that he is working hard on the problem but I don't think he'll be able to get the financing for the trip even if we can work out the technical details. There are good reasons to go to Mars but they aren't business reasons. Not yet anyway. The risk is huge, the cost is huge and the return on investment is impossible to determine.
The only way I see us getting to Mars within the next 100 years is if we have an existential crisis (war, cold war, asteroid, etc...) or some minor miracle of a technological breakthrough. The only reason we went to the Moon was because of the Cold War with Russia.
Economic disparity between states is almost as bad in the U.S., but Minnesota doesn't complain that Mississippi is stealing all of its wealth -- well, not much anyway -- because we're all Americans.
Umm, no. The reason nobody complains is that a citizen of Mississippi can move to Minnesota if that is where the jobs are. Labor mobility matters. A lot. The problem Europe has is that citizens of one country (say Greece) cannot become citizens of another country (say Germany) simply by moving there. In the US I simply pick up my things and move to the new state and boom, I'm a citizen of that state. This matters because it very naturally adjusts the price of goods to match the relative economic prospects of a particular state. If European countries were like the US you would see mass migration out of places like Spain and Greece to areas with better prospects. This would help normalize monetary pressures. You either have to be able to adjust exchange rates or have labor mobility. The problem with the Euro is that they have neither. Exchange rates were fixed when they joined the Euro and moving between countries is more difficult than it is in the US.
People have forgotten that there are two axis to politics, left/right, and Totalitarian/libertarian.
Must be nice to live on a planet with such simple political distinctions. Here on Earth things are rather more complicated than that.
Skylab was built from a Saturn V upper stage.
Which we no longer have and do not have any plans to build again. We could do something similar but first you have to answer the question of what you are trying to accomplish. We used that design because it was economical at the time. Doesn't necessarily mean it is a good idea today.
Easy to put in orbit.
Only true if you have a Saturn V rocket. We stopped making those 40 years ago. Yes we could do something similar if we build a Saturn V replacement but easy to orbit is merely one consideration.
Quite sizable for the planned crew. Update the design with the technology we developed over the decades since then.
And do what with it exactly? What does a Skylab copy get us? What problems are you solving that cannot be accomplish better in other ways? Is copying programs from the 1970s really the best way to move the space program forward?
So...all NESA's noise about preparing for a manned Mars mission was just a joke then?
Probably not but I think the claims of getting there by the 2030s are absurdly unrealistic and certainly haven't been funded in a way that would make them feasible. It might be technologically possible but I don't see it being politically viable. I think NASA knows that it isn't politically viable so they aren't seriously planning for it. There certainly hasn't been serious funding on the level necessary to do a realistic manned Mars mission so why should NASA seriously plan for one? They are working on it but the Apollo program had double the funding NASA gets now (adjusted for inflation) and the Moon is a lot easier.
I wouldn't have modded it 'flamebait'; but it does fall into the relatively unhelpful category of being overbroad(if you go state-by-state, the degree to which US education is totally fucked varies quite widely); and it also ignores the important fact that the DOE isn't actively changing the state of CS education here; but merely signalling an unwillingness to get tough on trying to improve it.
That presumes the ED (DoE is the Dept of Energy) has the statutory authority to dictate CS education requirements. In all likelihood it doesn't have any such authority delegated to it by Congress. While I don't pretend to be an expert I do know that the Dept of Education has very little to do with and almost no authority regarding determining curriculum outside of No Child Left Behind the recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act.
And stuff like this is why many think the Department of Education should be eliminated or severely scaled back. Perhaps set national standards but not get into the day-to-day operations of a school.
Aside from No Child Left Behind which was mandated by CONGRESS, the Dept of Education has very little to do with the day to day operations of schools. In fact the Dept of Ed is by a wide margin the least involved ministerial level department for education in the civilized world. The US education system is hugely decentralized and demonstrably NOT controlled from Washington. People calling for the Dept of Ed to be eliminated or scaled back invariably have no idea what it does. Any meddling it does with regard to operations of schools is because it was instructed to do so by Congress. All it would take to change that is another act of Congress and in fact such a law was just passed. Repeal NCLB and ESSA and the Dept of Education would have almost no direct interaction with most school systems.
Once upon a time, well 1960, there was a Presidential Debate where candidates discussed societal issues (imagine that). One topic that came up was the nature of federal support for local schools. Both candidates, Kennedy (D) and Nixon (R), were concerned that federal support (funding) would lead to federal meddling.
And very little has changed. There is very little funding and for the most part very little meddling.
I think we are now seeing the wisdom of their shared concerns regarding centralizing too much control and authority in Washington DC.
"Wisdom"? No. That is ideology, not wisdom. Virtually every other country in the civilized world has FAR more centralized control over education than we do in the US and many of them get measurably better results. If you think decentralized schooling is good I'd invite you to visit the school districts in places like Detroit or Cleveland or Los Angeles. They get terrible results and no one holds them accountable or gives them any substantial help. Federal control has problems to be sure but so does local control.