They wouldn't have enough money for them. Without astronauts, they wouldn't attract as big a budget, because that's what gets the bucks.
Hmm. I agree and disagree. On the one hand, certainly astronauts help sell NASA to the public, which probably helps keep NASA in the budgetary eye. On the other hand, one of the reasons NASA is so f***ed up is because they are mandated to spend money on various projects in various politician's districts, which is what they truly care about (mmm, love that pork).
So I would say that as long as the sweet, sweet money was being spread around, the politicians would be happy. And if we truly had 1,000 probes constantly sending back neat-o images and data, I bet the sheer volume of discovery would actually exceed the romance of humans in space.
How many of these probes could we have launched if we spent money making a cheap launch system instead of ICBMs?
You're talking about shifting one from one part of government to a totally different part of government. I'm talking about using money in the SAME BUDGET for different stuff. If you want to use a military analogy, it's do we get more bang for the buck from cruise missiles or more aircraft carriers?
As cool as the Mars rovers are, they had enough trouble getting money for a 90 day project, let alone a freakin' armada.
That's my point. We got so much more out of this little project than we get with the manned space shuttle missions that it's ridiculous.
I wonder how many probes like this we could've launched with the gigantic money wasted^H^H^H^H^H^H, er, I mean spent on the space shuttles and all the launch support. With some mass production techniques, maybe 1,000? More?
The US scores a resounding 14 out of 14 (note that the sexism one also covers abortion and gay rights).
In my opinion none of them are true to any "fascist" standard, but to lump abortion in as a fundamental human political right pretty much destroys the credibility of the list. You don't have to be fascist (or religious) to believe that genetically new life deserves reasonable protection no matter the age.
Those are so ridiculously vague that you could find evidence for them for any country, any time period. Though, the sexism one is rather absurd for the U.S., considering we have a black female as Secretary of State.
Yet today, the US has transformed into a classic fascist state in all but name. Business controls the government, (instead of the people as in a democracy). Religion and fear control the population, civil liberties and privacy are almost non-existent, freedom of expression is squashed, the media is strictly controlled, and human rights abuses abound.
I didn't remove the.sig, but anyway, when you make statements like this, it's pretty clear that you haven't the faintest idea what fascism means. Your claims are so absurd that you have no idea what a lack of civil liberties looks like. Unfortunately, there's nowhere to go in the discussion after the previous paranoid delusions. It's like arguing with a creationist -- they know what they know, and facts are irrelevent.
(my.sig is about the world community enforcing democracy)
Did you read the article? First the CRX goes missing for a long time. Then...
On September 13, the Oakland police get a search warrant to scour the Reiser household. They find a drop of blood on a support post in the entry. Oakland's crime lab identifies the sample as a mix of Nina's and Reiser's, though it can't determine how old the blood is. Five days later, the police follow Reiser to the CRX, which is parked on a quiet street in nearby Berkeley. He moves it to a secluded, wooded area of Oakland and dashes uphill toward his mother's house 3 miles away.
Police search the CRX and find that the front passenger seat has recently been removed. The floor is soaked, as if it had been washed. There are heavy-duty garbage bags, cloth towels, masking tape, and two books: Masterpieces of Murder and Homicide. Police also find another drop of blood and match it to Nina.
Not that Sturgeon doesn't make this story even more bizarre, but... it can also be said that you learn a lot about a person by the friends they hang out with.
Someone capable of murdering another person (outside of self defense, though I'd classify that as "killing" rather than "murder") is almost always going to be weird by definition. Of course, they may keep their weirdness hidden from the world, so may not seem outwardly weird. Not all weirdos are murderers, but all murderers are weirdos.
I'm personally going to use the iPhone as a "tool detector". If I see that someone actually ran out and bought one instantly, then I know all I need to know about that person.:)
I just hope that any local civilizations had advanced far enough to escape that horrible fate.
Don't worry, the probability of other intelligent life in this galaxy is pretty much zero.
At the rate we're going, what with news of Congress living up to their name (opposite of progress) with regard to exploration the exploration of Mars, we won't escape the fate of our solar system.
Several things to say about this:
1) Colonization of other planets in this solar system will NEVER happen. And I mean never. Because a) Environmentalist scientists will convince government to never allow the unique environments to be spoiled, b) once people get over their romantic notions of living on other planets, they will realize they are cold, ugly, radiation-infested, inhospitable rocks, and very few people will want to live there. Proof? How many people want to live in Antarctica? And Antarctica is an order of magnitude more hospitable.
2) The future of space colonies is very large cities floating in space. You can get earth-like gravity (via spinning0, earth-like green environments, and all the romanticism of "living in space". There is still the radiation problem, though.
3) If we do have space colonies, Congress *certainly* won't be the one to build them. It will be private people wanting to make a buck on tourism, and later mining, that will establish the permanent colonies.
4) People on Mars is a total waste of money. If we were dedicated (and killed the space shuttle), we could send 1,000 probes for what we waste on sending humans, and get far more science.
(I realize this post is a little aggressive on opinions, but I'm in a naivete-busting mood today.:D)
Development is possible, perhaps. Deployment, not so, if M$ refuses to grant a valid key, you won't be able to run the potentially-infringing software on TPM'd, M$-infected computers. And refuse they will . Read more about TPM before spouting off, mmkay?
Do you really -- seriously -- not see how ludicrous this is? You're suggesting that Microsoft is going to release an operating system that can't run non-MS-approved programs. Everyone's software investment is rendered meaningless. All legacy applications are destroyed. And yes, I'm familiar with TPM, but these suggestions that Microsoft is going somehow be able to use it in this way is just silly. You'd have to believe that everyone is just going to roll over and throw away every piece of software they've ever purchased. Exactly why would anyone continue to use it if that were true? Never mind the antitrust implications.
You seem to think everyone has a gun to their head to allow Microsoft to do anything they like.
By far, the one term that irritates me above all: GNU/Linux.
How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. First, there is the awkward nature of GNU itself -- the idiocy that the hard-G is pronounced (gah-new -- UGH). Then there is uglyness of the term, all those syllables falling over each other. Thirdly, there is the irritation of the arrogance itself, that RMS thinks that a set of tools is more important than every other function of the operating system.
And finally, there is Stallman himself, who is so dogmatic and, above all, impolite that he's actually been known not to speak to people unless they use his preferred term.
When you add it all up, nothing beats GNU/Linux for sheer irritation.
(And yes, I realize that some people will disagree with me about the above. Fine, it doesn't irritate you, I'm happy for you.)
I have to admit, I DESPISE the word "cookie" in this context. It's completely meaningless about it's function and it's cloyingly cute enough to make me want to barf. It represents everything horrible about nerdish naming tendencies. Wiki is at least a useful word for a concept that doesn't have a good descriptive name.
You right libertarians consistently prove to me that you have the morals of a two year old child.
First of all, I'm not a Libertarian. Your rant says more about your prejudices than about mine.
The point is not whether humans should help out other humans in need (of course we should), the point is how the government buys votes by bribing the populace, all the while sending money to worthless "make work" projects.
The fact that certain policies also destroy many good people by enslaving them into a cycle of poverty and handouts is a mere side effect.
I'm interested in what works and what solves problems, not what makes me feel good (see also: environmentalism).
"When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." -- Benjamin Franklin (maybe)
Lessig is attacking the wrong enemy. I'm not saying that moneyed interest aren't often a problem -- but put all the laws and effects that the government passes for them on one side of the ledger. Now take all the money that is spent to influence the masses on the other: welfare, social security, health care, and god knows how many pork barrel projects at the local level (Alaskan bridge, anyone?). It's not even close.
I have met the enemy and he is YOU. The modern sense of entitlement is what's pulling us down.
(I will resist the urge to tie entitlement to the desire for all music for free)
They plan to do this (at some point in the next five-six years, when Vista and Vienna are sufficiently prevalent) by simply turning off the tap and not allowing ANY non-DRM-ed media or software play/run on their boxes - 'cause by that point they will be THEIR boxes, not yours anymore.
Just out of curiousity over this bizarre theory of yours, exactly what do you think is going to happen when Grandma can't play her grandchildren's DVDs anymore? Or can't play the videos that have been emailed to her? How is Microsoft going to get away with making literally billions of videos just stop playing?
And exactly how will Microsoft prevent someone from releasing a non-DRM video player? Lock down the Codecs? Big deal, someone just creates a DLL interface to the Codec drivers and bypasses the operating system.
The top 3 oil companies in America pulled in well over $700 BILLION [marketwatch.com] for the last two years, without even looking at the record profits for the previous years. The movie makes a serious case that there was a serious push against the electric car to preserve those future profits from harm and keep the electric car from being a mainstream idea / product.
Um, what the oil companies and car companies have to do with each other? You do realize they are totally separate businesses, right? The car companies couldn't care less what the oil companies think about what they do. Car companies sell cars. They sell more cars when the cars use less gas.
It's a nice story, but it sound apocryphal. It really makes no sense at all:
1) A large computer is going to be a much bigger target than the smaller computer, so that's not much of a win.
2) Any bullet through the motherboard is going to take out a computer -- why only worry about bullets through memory boards?? Plus, I have a hard time believing that a shattered memory board wouldn't short something out.
3) Weight is critical for a military device. It's easier to add more armor to a small device than depend on big iffy electronics that "route around the damage."
4) They could probably buy 5 (if not 50) of the modern semiconductor computers than these presumably wire-wrapped iron-core memory boards (why else would they be so big?).
5) The performance is bound to be crappy with such huge interconnect-lengths.
6) If the buyers want "bullet redundancy", then sheesh, SPECIFY bullet redundancy. What, only the russians have this secret of being damage resistent, handed down through the Czars? It'd be a hell of a lot easier to build a redundant computer with multiple fully-redundant small computers in a nice small space.
Anyone, while I think it's clear this story makes no sense, I have no doubt that you can find pockets of Russian ingenuity when it was necessary, perhaps with your car motor that was more resistant to cold than is typical, because they HAD to make it resistant to cold. The point is whether across the board they had equivalent technology to the west, and they simply didn't.
Once money does not matter anymore all that matters is the satisfaction of having done a good job and created a perfect product as well as the non monetary recognition from your peers of having done a good job.
The flaw in your logic is the assumption that most people care about doing a good job. The vast majority of people choose to maximize the pleasure in their lives, generally through leisure. You seriously think the garbage man cares about doing the best job he can? Or the bookkeeper? Or the assembly line worker? Hell no. Most people just want to get through the day with as little effort as possible so they can make it to the weekend when they can go fishing. Once money doesn't matter anymore and there is little penalty for mediocrity, why would someone care about his *job*, which is the least fun part of their life?
Of course, I'm not even addressing the lack of incentives for innovation.
Well it turns out most of these facilities were junk just like Star Wars and the manned space program.
If only the US had embraced the Soviet model and way of life, we'd all be in flying cars be now because of their clear technological superiority! (sheesh) All you've proven is that if you spend enough money on something, any political system can produce results. No one argues that the Russians did good work in space, just like no one argues they have a good chess culture, and a good arts culture. But overall, if you look at their technology, the vast majority of it was utter crap compared to capitalist countries.
In other news, Arab countries have done some good work in palace architecture and irrigated golf courses.
Slashdot Mirror
Macintosh was the one that brought it to the world. They are the ones that got it right. That gives them some pretty significant bragging rights.
Well, to be accurate, Apple brought it to the rich. Microsoft brought it to the world.
They wouldn't have enough money for them. Without astronauts, they wouldn't attract as big a budget, because that's what gets the bucks.
Hmm. I agree and disagree. On the one hand, certainly astronauts help sell NASA to the public, which probably helps keep NASA in the budgetary eye. On the other hand, one of the reasons NASA is so f***ed up is because they are mandated to spend money on various projects in various politician's districts, which is what they truly care about (mmm, love that pork).
So I would say that as long as the sweet, sweet money was being spread around, the politicians would be happy. And if we truly had 1,000 probes constantly sending back neat-o images and data, I bet the sheer volume of discovery would actually exceed the romance of humans in space.
But I admit the point is arguable.
How many of these probes could we have launched if we spent money making a cheap launch system instead of ICBMs?
You're talking about shifting one from one part of government to a totally different part of government. I'm talking about using money in the SAME BUDGET for different stuff. If you want to use a military analogy, it's do we get more bang for the buck from cruise missiles or more aircraft carriers?
As cool as the Mars rovers are, they had enough trouble getting money for a 90 day project, let alone a freakin' armada.
That's my point. We got so much more out of this little project than we get with the manned space shuttle missions that it's ridiculous.
I wonder how many probes like this we could've launched with the gigantic money wasted^H^H^H^H^H^H, er, I mean spent on the space shuttles and all the launch support. With some mass production techniques, maybe 1,000? More?
The US scores a resounding 14 out of 14 (note that the sexism one also covers abortion and gay rights).
In my opinion none of them are true to any "fascist" standard, but to lump abortion in as a fundamental human political right pretty much destroys the credibility of the list. You don't have to be fascist (or religious) to believe that genetically new life deserves reasonable protection no matter the age.
Those are so ridiculously vague that you could find evidence for them for any country, any time period. Though, the sexism one is rather absurd for the U.S., considering we have a black female as Secretary of State.
Yet today, the US has transformed into a classic fascist state in all but name. Business controls the government, (instead of the people as in a democracy). Religion and fear control the population, civil liberties and privacy are almost non-existent, freedom of expression is squashed, the media is strictly controlled, and human rights abuses abound.
I didn't remove the .sig, but anyway, when you make statements like this, it's pretty clear that you haven't the faintest idea what fascism means. Your claims are so absurd that you have no idea what a lack of civil liberties looks like. Unfortunately, there's nowhere to go in the discussion after the previous paranoid delusions. It's like arguing with a creationist -- they know what they know, and facts are irrelevent.
(my .sig is about the world community enforcing democracy)
The rest (his geekiness, lover of death literature, alledged row) is completely circumstancial and not very relevant.
For some reason, people think circumstancial means irrelevant. Smoke is only circumstantial evidence of fire, but that doesn't mean it's irrelevant.
Don't look now, but I think that quote in your sig functions in exactly the same way. ;-)
Why? Because I want to accelerate the process of eliminating war, once and for all?
Did you read the article? First the CRX goes missing for a long time. Then...
On September 13, the Oakland police get a search warrant to scour the Reiser household. They find a drop of blood on a support post in the entry. Oakland's crime lab identifies the sample as a mix of Nina's and Reiser's, though it can't determine how old the blood is. Five days later, the police follow Reiser to the CRX, which is parked on a quiet street in nearby Berkeley. He moves it to a secluded, wooded area of Oakland and dashes uphill toward his mother's house 3 miles away.
Police search the CRX and find that the front passenger seat has recently been removed. The floor is soaked, as if it had been washed. There are heavy-duty garbage bags, cloth towels, masking tape, and two books: Masterpieces of Murder and Homicide. Police also find another drop of blood and match it to Nina.
Not that Sturgeon doesn't make this story even more bizarre, but... it can also be said that you learn a lot about a person by the friends they hang out with.
What does being weird have to do with innocence?
Someone capable of murdering another person (outside of self defense, though I'd classify that as "killing" rather than "murder") is almost always going to be weird by definition. Of course, they may keep their weirdness hidden from the world, so may not seem outwardly weird. Not all weirdos are murderers, but all murderers are weirdos.
I'm personally going to use the iPhone as a "tool detector". If I see that someone actually ran out and bought one instantly, then I know all I need to know about that person. :)
I just hope that any local civilizations had advanced far enough to escape that horrible fate.
Don't worry, the probability of other intelligent life in this galaxy is pretty much zero.
At the rate we're going, what with news of Congress living up to their name (opposite of progress) with regard to exploration the exploration of Mars, we won't escape the fate of our solar system.
Several things to say about this:
1) Colonization of other planets in this solar system will NEVER happen. And I mean never. Because a) Environmentalist scientists will convince government to never allow the unique environments to be spoiled, b) once people get over their romantic notions of living on other planets, they will realize they are cold, ugly, radiation-infested, inhospitable rocks, and very few people will want to live there. Proof? How many people want to live in Antarctica? And Antarctica is an order of magnitude more hospitable.
2) The future of space colonies is very large cities floating in space. You can get earth-like gravity (via spinning0, earth-like green environments, and all the romanticism of "living in space". There is still the radiation problem, though.
3) If we do have space colonies, Congress *certainly* won't be the one to build them. It will be private people wanting to make a buck on tourism, and later mining, that will establish the permanent colonies.
4) People on Mars is a total waste of money. If we were dedicated (and killed the space shuttle), we could send 1,000 probes for what we waste on sending humans, and get far more science.
(I realize this post is a little aggressive on opinions, but I'm in a naivete-busting mood today. :D)
Development is possible, perhaps. Deployment, not so, if M$ refuses to grant a valid key, you won't be able to run the potentially-infringing software on TPM'd, M$-infected computers. And refuse they will . Read more about TPM before spouting off, mmkay?
Do you really -- seriously -- not see how ludicrous this is? You're suggesting that Microsoft is going to release an operating system that can't run non-MS-approved programs. Everyone's software investment is rendered meaningless. All legacy applications are destroyed. And yes, I'm familiar with TPM, but these suggestions that Microsoft is going somehow be able to use it in this way is just silly. You'd have to believe that everyone is just going to roll over and throw away every piece of software they've ever purchased. Exactly why would anyone continue to use it if that were true? Never mind the antitrust implications.
You seem to think everyone has a gun to their head to allow Microsoft to do anything they like.
By far, the one term that irritates me above all: GNU/Linux.
How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. First, there is the awkward nature of GNU itself -- the idiocy that the hard-G is pronounced (gah-new -- UGH). Then there is uglyness of the term, all those syllables falling over each other. Thirdly, there is the irritation of the arrogance itself, that RMS thinks that a set of tools is more important than every other function of the operating system.
And finally, there is Stallman himself, who is so dogmatic and, above all, impolite that he's actually been known not to speak to people unless they use his preferred term.
When you add it all up, nothing beats GNU/Linux for sheer irritation.
(And yes, I realize that some people will disagree with me about the above. Fine, it doesn't irritate you, I'm happy for you.)
Cookie? Wiki? I guess I just don't get those.
I have to admit, I DESPISE the word "cookie" in this context. It's completely meaningless about it's function and it's cloyingly cute enough to make me want to barf. It represents everything horrible about nerdish naming tendencies. Wiki is at least a useful word for a concept that doesn't have a good descriptive name.
You right libertarians consistently prove to me that you have the morals of a two year old child.
First of all, I'm not a Libertarian. Your rant says more about your prejudices than about mine.
The point is not whether humans should help out other humans in need (of course we should), the point is how the government buys votes by bribing the populace, all the while sending money to worthless "make work" projects.
The fact that certain policies also destroy many good people by enslaving them into a cycle of poverty and handouts is a mere side effect.
I'm interested in what works and what solves problems, not what makes me feel good (see also: environmentalism).
"When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." -- Benjamin Franklin (maybe)
Lessig is attacking the wrong enemy. I'm not saying that moneyed interest aren't often a problem -- but put all the laws and effects that the government passes for them on one side of the ledger. Now take all the money that is spent to influence the masses on the other: welfare, social security, health care, and god knows how many pork barrel projects at the local level (Alaskan bridge, anyone?). It's not even close.
I have met the enemy and he is YOU. The modern sense of entitlement is what's pulling us down.
(I will resist the urge to tie entitlement to the desire for all music for free)
They plan to do this (at some point in the next five-six years, when Vista and Vienna are sufficiently prevalent) by simply turning off the tap and not allowing ANY non-DRM-ed media or software play/run on their boxes - 'cause by that point they will be THEIR boxes, not yours anymore.
Just out of curiousity over this bizarre theory of yours, exactly what do you think is going to happen when Grandma can't play her grandchildren's DVDs anymore? Or can't play the videos that have been emailed to her? How is Microsoft going to get away with making literally billions of videos just stop playing?
And exactly how will Microsoft prevent someone from releasing a non-DRM video player? Lock down the Codecs? Big deal, someone just creates a DLL interface to the Codec drivers and bypasses the operating system.
The top 3 oil companies in America pulled in well over $700 BILLION [marketwatch.com] for the last two years, without even looking at the record profits for the previous years. The movie makes a serious case that there was a serious push against the electric car to preserve those future profits from harm and keep the electric car from being a mainstream idea / product.
Um, what the oil companies and car companies have to do with each other? You do realize they are totally separate businesses, right? The car companies couldn't care less what the oil companies think about what they do. Car companies sell cars. They sell more cars when the cars use less gas.
In fact, it was a even a pocket of an ingenious communist conspiracy that pushed NASA to spend 25% of its budget for several years on the space pen.
Oops, I think I realized this was a joke. :)
How about this pocket of ingenuity?
Sheesh, not this legend again. And maybe it's me, but Paul Fisher doesn't sound like a very Russian name.
(25% of its budget??)
Guess which devices were purchased?
It's a nice story, but it sound apocryphal. It really makes no sense at all:
1) A large computer is going to be a much bigger target than the smaller computer, so that's not much of a win.
2) Any bullet through the motherboard is going to take out a computer -- why only worry about bullets through memory boards?? Plus, I have a hard time believing that a shattered memory board wouldn't short something out.
3) Weight is critical for a military device. It's easier to add more armor to a small device than depend on big iffy electronics that "route around the damage."
4) They could probably buy 5 (if not 50) of the modern semiconductor computers than these presumably wire-wrapped iron-core memory boards (why else would they be so big?).
5) The performance is bound to be crappy with such huge interconnect-lengths.
6) If the buyers want "bullet redundancy", then sheesh, SPECIFY bullet redundancy. What, only the russians have this secret of being damage resistent, handed down through the Czars? It'd be a hell of a lot easier to build a redundant computer with multiple fully-redundant small computers in a nice small space.
Anyone, while I think it's clear this story makes no sense, I have no doubt that you can find pockets of Russian ingenuity when it was necessary, perhaps with your car motor that was more resistant to cold than is typical, because they HAD to make it resistant to cold. The point is whether across the board they had equivalent technology to the west, and they simply didn't.
Once money does not matter anymore all that matters is the satisfaction of having done a good job and created a perfect product as well as the non monetary recognition from your peers of having done a good job.
The flaw in your logic is the assumption that most people care about doing a good job. The vast majority of people choose to maximize the pleasure in their lives, generally through leisure. You seriously think the garbage man cares about doing the best job he can? Or the bookkeeper? Or the assembly line worker? Hell no. Most people just want to get through the day with as little effort as possible so they can make it to the weekend when they can go fishing. Once money doesn't matter anymore and there is little penalty for mediocrity, why would someone care about his *job*, which is the least fun part of their life?
Of course, I'm not even addressing the lack of incentives for innovation.
Well it turns out most of these facilities were junk just like Star Wars and the manned space program.
If only the US had embraced the Soviet model and way of life, we'd all be in flying cars be now because of their clear technological superiority! (sheesh) All you've proven is that if you spend enough money on something, any political system can produce results. No one argues that the Russians did good work in space, just like no one argues they have a good chess culture, and a good arts culture. But overall, if you look at their technology, the vast majority of it was utter crap compared to capitalist countries.
In other news, Arab countries have done some good work in palace architecture and irrigated golf courses.