The timescale of your concern is far too large. Climate change will make us extinct long before 500 million years pass. More like 500,000 years.
It's not worth wringing your hands about "survival of the human race", it's just not in the cards. Species go extinct all the time; it's what they do. Bipedal hairless ape is not exactly an adaptable design; we are the product of an anomalously long-lived warm "interglacial" period. It won't last forever.
If that means 'bully-ish' contracts, then fine. There is nothing against the law about that.
This is only true if the company is not a monopoly! If they are a monopoly, then yes, there are anti-trust laws that prohibit overly "competitive" behavior.
Or you could just go without, as you did before Hubble existed.
Well, obviously. The whole point of the discussion is that some of us think it would be better to accept the risks of SM4 and keep HST operational, rather than let it die before its time.
Seriously, is something going to happen in the 6 years between Hubble being decommissioned and JW being commissioned?
No, if HST is let go, I think much less will happen in that time period, than if it was kept going.
An older and wiser head has looked at the risk (much larger then previously thought)
No, that's not right. The risk of failure after the wiser heads of CAIB investigated the Shuttle fleet was the same as the assessed risk before the accident. Nothing has changed about our knowledge of the risks involved in a shuttle mission before and after the accident. Only the willingness to face the risks has changed, and that abruptly.
In your post, you sound as if it's some huge suprise that there's a risk of death when a shuttle launches. This has always been known. Spaceflight is inherently dangerous. That's why astronauts are Heroes.
I was responding to a post that claimed that Democrats in office cause "strangulating" tax rates. By no account do the numbers show that.
Yes, taxes went down in 2002, halleluleah and all praise Bush (peace be unto him). Well, No. As I expressed elsewhere in this thread, I believe these tax cuts were fiscally irresponsible and motivated by a desire to starve congress of money. Tax cuts are fine, if we can afford them. I think it's obvious that we cannot in this case.
I think your analogy is bad. It's as if you had already purchased some new part for your old truck for $4000, and had hired someone to install it. You are already planning to buy the new truck in 4 years. So, you can either pay the guy $50 to install the part and drive your awesome tricked-out truck for 4 years, or you can refuse, and walk for 4 years. Oh, and you'll have that fancy $4000 part lying around your living room, doing squat. Maybe you can make it into some kind of ashtray!
For a wishy washy economy at the moment, we sure have a lot of money to throw around.
No, we actually don't. That's the whole point. Hence our huge deficits. We actually had a surplus just 4 years ago. This administration is fiscally reckless, no matter what your politics are.
So why do Republicans seem to love huge deficits? My speculation is that by running up the deficit, they starve Congress of money that could otherwise be used for social programs that they are morally opposed to. $1600 from every American is now used to pay off the deficit. Think what we could do with that money, if we now had a $5.6 trillion surplus instead of a $1.5 trillion deficit (as was the projection for 2004 at the end of the Clinton administration).
I know the Hubble telescope has done some great science, but shouldn't we just let it go so we have more money to put up the next generation telescope?
No, we should not just let it go, especially not when we've already spent $200 million on the instruments that are supposed to be installed in the next mission. HST is quite possibly the greatest scientific instrument anyone's ever built. You don't just throw it away unless you really have to.
Or is this really about hating Bush's attempt to bring a man to Mars, and undermining it anyway possible just because he's Bush?
Look, no one believes that Bush is serious about a manned mission to Mars, least of all the man himself. His proposed reshuffling of the NASA budget to pay for it is sub-laughable.
I can't see why people are suddenly spendthrift when a Republican president wants to do something, but we can spend billions on welfare and hike taxes up to strangulating levels without anyone complaining under a Democrat.
Please, get serious. What are these "strangulating" tax levels you are talking about, and under whose administration did they occur? If you look at this page, you'll see that tax rates have not appreciably changed since 1980. In fact, that same chart will show you that most people's taxes were actually lower in 2000, when the Man You Love To Hate left office, compared to 1992, when he took office.
Maybe people seem spendthrift because the Bush administration is mangling our budget with explosive spending programs coupled with irresponsible tax breaks for the rich. This results in (suprise, suprise) huge deficits which our children's children will be paying for. This isn't "just party politics"; fiscal conservatives are crying foul about Bush Economics as well.
I forgot to convert from radians to degrees. The actual Earth-Moon separation as seen from Mars now is about 4 arcmin, not 4 arcsec. Still not resolvable in this wide-field image, but I thought that my trifling factor-of-60 error was worth a correction:)
Except that the Earth is currently more like 330 million km from Mars, so the angle between Earth and Moon is at most about 3 arcminutes (about 0.05 degrees). Also, when the Earth and Mars are close together, the Earth is also necessarily also more nearly lined up with the Sun. Not saying that resolving the Moon couldn't be done, but it would be difficult, I think, without a telescope.
The Moon is 384,000 km from Earth. Mars is 329,000,000 km from Earth. Therefore, as seen from Mars, the Earth and Moon are separated by, at most, 4 arcseconds. That means that without a telescope, you cannot resolve the Earth-Moon system from Mars.
In other words, that dot is *both* Earth and Moon.
Oh, come on! The Shuttles are hardly "deathtraps"!
Before the Columbia accident, the estimated critical failure rate for Shuttle missions was 2%. The CAIB revised this, to 2%. Yes, that's right, their investigation found that the previous failure estimates were correct. In other words, our understanding of the danger inherent in shuttle missions has not changed at all since before the accident, only our willingness to face the danger has changed.
Why? I don't know. There's no shortage of astronauts willing to take the same risks they've always taken, and fly another HST servicing mission. They recognize the benefits in keeping the greatest scientific instrument we've ever produced healthy. Too bad NASA and the president do not. I sincerely hope that our lawmakers can salvage the mission.
Argh! What are you talking about? We know how far away the "edge" of the Universe is! The only context in which the question makes sense is if by "Universe" we mean the observable Universe, which is simply a sphere centered on us, with radius c*T, where T is the elapsed time between the epoch of recombination and now, which was just a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang. So T=13.7 Gyr +/- 10%.
1) The universe is a lot older than we thought
No, no one who knows the first thing about cosmology entertains such a theory today.
2) There was no big bang, and space is infinite
Sorry, *all* applicable evidence points to a Big Bang as the origin of our Universe. Besides, the Big Bang does *NOT* preclude a physical Universe that is infinite in size! (here I am not talking about the observable Universe, whose finite geometry is well understood)
3) Space curves back on itself
If such curvature exists, its radius is much larger than that of the observable universe, so this has little to do with what you are talking about. The observable universe is very nearly flat.
Considering how old the technology that went into Hubble is, it would make more sense to plough the money into a new telescope with the latest technology.
That's why HST is serviceable, so that new instruments using improved technology can be added. The UDF was only possible because of the new Advanced Camera for Surveys that was installed during the last servicing mission.
A modern telescope could capture images with less of an exposure time, letting us view more of the sky in less time, and with greater clarity.
Again, you're describing the role of the instruments, not the telescope. The telescope is just the infrastructure to collect light and throw it onto the detector, there's not much technology there (unless you have an adaptive optics system, which isn't needed in a space telescope like HST).
Maybe the CEO of IBM can kick in some of the $51.5 MILLION DOLLARS in bonuses and options he received last year to compensate these people. What do you think of that idea?
That's totally up to the CEO of IBM, I guess.
isn't that how its supposed to work in OSS land? The corporations benefit from this work and therefore offer financial support?
No, absolutely not. Believe it or not, some things are orthogonal to traditional economics. As John Nash said, "Adam Smith needs revision". Anyone is free to benefit from OSS software, whether they are a corporation or not (as long as they play by the rules). That's the whole point. Part of "playing by the rules" for the GPL means that any changes they make must be contributed back. *This* is how companies can best support OSS: by *joining* our communities, not simply paying us off.
It's not meant to be for "average joes"! It's a mechanism for people who are very interested in contributing to KDE, but are not developers. Note the adverb-adjective pair in "people who are very interested".
The positions pay nothing. There's this thing called "open source software", in which software is largely developed by a community of volunteer contributors. KDE is such a project. You may have heard of some others, such as GNU and the linux kernel.
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The timescale of your concern is far too large. Climate change will make us extinct long before 500 million years pass. More like 500,000 years.
It's not worth wringing your hands about "survival of the human race", it's just not in the cards. Species go extinct all the time; it's what they do. Bipedal hairless ape is not exactly an adaptable design; we are the product of an anomalously long-lived warm "interglacial" period. It won't last forever.
We won't "make it in the long run", humans will be extinct long before the Sun changes perceptably.
Two words: ice age.
Interglacials are the exception, not the rule.
If that means 'bully-ish' contracts, then fine. There is nothing against the law about that.
This is only true if the company is not a monopoly! If they are a monopoly, then yes, there are anti-trust laws that prohibit overly "competitive" behavior.
In this case, its a $2million package for Hubble
You are off by two orders of magnitude.
Or you could just go without, as you did before Hubble existed.
Well, obviously. The whole point of the discussion is that some of us think it would be better to accept the risks of SM4 and keep HST operational, rather than let it die before its time.
Seriously, is something going to happen in the 6 years between Hubble being decommissioned and JW being commissioned?
No, if HST is let go, I think much less will happen in that time period, than if it was kept going.
An older and wiser head has looked at the risk (much larger then previously thought)
No, that's not right. The risk of failure after the wiser heads of CAIB investigated the Shuttle fleet was the same as the assessed risk before the accident. Nothing has changed about our knowledge of the risks involved in a shuttle mission before and after the accident. Only the willingness to face the risks has changed, and that abruptly.
In your post, you sound as if it's some huge suprise that there's a risk of death when a shuttle launches. This has always been known. Spaceflight is inherently dangerous. That's why astronauts are Heroes.
I was responding to a post that claimed that Democrats in office cause "strangulating" tax rates. By no account do the numbers show that.
Yes, taxes went down in 2002, halleluleah and all praise Bush (peace be unto him). Well, No. As I expressed elsewhere in this thread, I believe these tax cuts were fiscally irresponsible and motivated by a desire to starve congress of money. Tax cuts are fine, if we can afford them. I think it's obvious that we cannot in this case.
I think your analogy is bad. It's as if you had already purchased some new part for your old truck for $4000, and had hired someone to install it. You are already planning to buy the new truck in 4 years. So, you can either pay the guy $50 to install the part and drive your awesome tricked-out truck for 4 years, or you can refuse, and walk for 4 years. Oh, and you'll have that fancy $4000 part lying around your living room, doing squat. Maybe you can make it into some kind of ashtray!
For a wishy washy economy at the moment, we sure have a lot of money to throw around.
No, we actually don't. That's the whole point. Hence our huge deficits. We actually had a surplus just 4 years ago. This administration is fiscally reckless, no matter what your politics are.
The deficit, in pure dollar amount is now higher than it has ever been. The previous record was set in 1992 (see same story). In terms of GDP percentage, it was actually a bit higher under Reagan and Bush Sr. The Beeb has a nice article about all of this.
So why do Republicans seem to love huge deficits? My speculation is that by running up the deficit, they starve Congress of money that could otherwise be used for social programs that they are morally opposed to. $1600 from every American is now used to pay off the deficit. Think what we could do with that money, if we now had a $5.6 trillion surplus instead of a $1.5 trillion deficit (as was the projection for 2004 at the end of the Clinton administration).
I know the Hubble telescope has done some great science, but shouldn't we just let it go so we have more money to put up the next generation telescope?
No, we should not just let it go, especially not when we've already spent $200 million on the instruments that are supposed to be installed in the next mission. HST is quite possibly the greatest scientific instrument anyone's ever built. You don't just throw it away unless you really have to.
Or is this really about hating Bush's attempt to bring a man to Mars, and undermining it anyway possible just because he's Bush?
Look, no one believes that Bush is serious about a manned mission to Mars, least of all the man himself. His proposed reshuffling of the NASA budget to pay for it is sub-laughable.
I can't see why people are suddenly spendthrift when a Republican president wants to do something, but we can spend billions on welfare and hike taxes up to strangulating levels without anyone complaining under a Democrat.
Please, get serious. What are these "strangulating" tax levels you are talking about, and under whose administration did they occur? If you look at this page, you'll see that tax rates have not appreciably changed since 1980. In fact, that same chart will show you that most people's taxes were actually lower in 2000, when the Man You Love To Hate left office, compared to 1992, when he took office.
Maybe people seem spendthrift because the Bush administration is mangling our budget with explosive spending programs coupled with irresponsible tax breaks for the rich. This results in (suprise, suprise) huge deficits which our children's children will be paying for. This isn't "just party politics"; fiscal conservatives are crying foul about Bush Economics as well.
This release should clear the most litigious point against GTK+ : the file dialog.
Oh really? How many people have been sued over the old file dialog? Or maybe you meant contentious.
Announcing Slashdot Sniglets!
alligation: The process of being consumed by an alligator. See also Crocidation.
We're both wrong, it's more like 1.765 AU, or 264 million km.
I forgot to convert from radians to degrees. The actual Earth-Moon separation as seen from Mars now is about 4 arcmin, not 4 arcsec. Still not resolvable in this wide-field image, but I thought that my trifling factor-of-60 error was worth a correction :)
Except that the Earth is currently more like 330 million km from Mars, so the angle between Earth and Moon is at most about 3 arcminutes (about 0.05 degrees). Also, when the Earth and Mars are close together, the Earth is also necessarily also more nearly lined up with the Sun. Not saying that resolving the Moon couldn't be done, but it would be difficult, I think, without a telescope.
The Moon is 384,000 km from Earth. Mars is 329,000,000 km from Earth. Therefore, as seen from Mars, the Earth and Moon are separated by, at most, 4 arcseconds. That means that without a telescope, you cannot resolve the Earth-Moon system from Mars.
In other words, that dot is *both* Earth and Moon.
Oh, come on! The Shuttles are hardly "deathtraps"!
Before the Columbia accident, the estimated critical failure rate for Shuttle missions was 2%. The CAIB revised this, to 2%. Yes, that's right, their investigation found that the previous failure estimates were correct. In other words, our understanding of the danger inherent in shuttle missions has not changed at all since before the accident, only our willingness to face the danger has changed.
Why? I don't know. There's no shortage of astronauts willing to take the same risks they've always taken, and fly another HST servicing mission. They recognize the benefits in keeping the greatest scientific instrument we've ever produced healthy. Too bad NASA and the president do not. I sincerely hope that our lawmakers can salvage the mission.
Argh! What are you talking about? We know how far away the "edge" of the Universe is! The only context in which the question makes sense is if by "Universe" we mean the observable Universe, which is simply a sphere centered on us, with radius c*T, where T is the elapsed time between the epoch of recombination and now, which was just a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang. So T=13.7 Gyr +/- 10%.
1) The universe is a lot older than we thought
No, no one who knows the first thing about cosmology entertains such a theory today.
2) There was no big bang, and space is infinite
Sorry, *all* applicable evidence points to a Big Bang as the origin of our Universe. Besides, the Big Bang does *NOT* preclude a physical Universe that is infinite in size! (here I am not talking about the observable Universe, whose finite geometry is well understood)
3) Space curves back on itself
If such curvature exists, its radius is much larger than that of the observable universe, so this has little to do with what you are talking about. The observable universe is very nearly flat.
Considering how old the technology that went into Hubble is, it would make more sense to plough the money into a new telescope with the latest technology.
That's why HST is serviceable, so that new instruments using improved technology can be added. The UDF was only possible because of the new Advanced Camera for Surveys that was installed during the last servicing mission.
A modern telescope could capture images with less of an exposure time, letting us view more of the sky in less time, and with greater clarity.
Again, you're describing the role of the instruments, not the telescope. The telescope is just the infrastructure to collect light and throw it onto the detector, there's not much technology there (unless you have an adaptive optics system, which isn't needed in a space telescope like HST).
Because he knows us [sic] Linux Hackers has [sic] implanted a monitoring device in his shoes so we can steel his precious SCO Code.
Let me guess, he was wearing steal-toed boots? (sorry...)
If surgery is required, perhaps they can bleed out his boated evil gland while they're in there...
Reminds me of the classic SNL skit:
President Carter, while visiting a nuclear power plant, attempts to avert a core meltdown and is transformed into a 12-foot tall glowing mutant.
Reporter: "Is it true that the president is now over 15 feet tall, and a glowing mutant?"
Press Secretary: "No! Of course not! That's ridiculous! Where do you guys come up with this stuff?"
Reporter: "Is the president over ten feet tall?"
Press Secretary: "No comment."
Headline: "Computers Purported To Be Used For Something Besides Serving Webpages"!
Film at 11.
Maybe the CEO of IBM can kick in some of the $51.5 MILLION DOLLARS in bonuses and options he received last year to compensate these people. What do you think of that idea?
That's totally up to the CEO of IBM, I guess.
isn't that how its supposed to work in OSS land? The corporations benefit from this work and therefore offer financial support?
No, absolutely not. Believe it or not, some things are orthogonal to traditional economics. As John Nash said, "Adam Smith needs revision". Anyone is free to benefit from OSS software, whether they are a corporation or not (as long as they play by the rules). That's the whole point. Part of "playing by the rules" for the GPL means that any changes they make must be contributed back. *This* is how companies can best support OSS: by *joining* our communities, not simply paying us off.
It's not meant to be for "average joes"! It's a mechanism for people who are very interested in contributing to KDE, but are not developers. Note the adverb-adjective pair in "people who are very interested".
The positions pay nothing. There's this thing called "open source software", in which software is largely developed by a community of volunteer contributors. KDE is such a project. You may have heard of some others, such as GNU and the linux kernel.