isle? You mean Black Isle? They have nothing whatever to do with NWN...it was produced by Bioware, and published by Infogrames.
It would be cool indeed if they port the NWToolset. My fingers are crossed, but I don't expect it anytime soon; the Live Team is pretty busy squashing bugs at the moment...
It's not elitism. It may have sounded that way due to my poor wording, but it isn't. If you want a simple-to-use computing environment that offers one choice for a desktop environment, the wonderful world of commercial software development offers you two first-rate alternatives: Windows XP and Apple OSX. (not being sarcastic; in my experience both of these are pretty nice computing environments)
If you are comfortable with a much steeper learning curve, and you want more control and a wider range of choices, then you should give a look to Free/Open alternatives like Linux or *BSD.
However, know and understand that Linux is developed largely by a loosely-knit community of volunteers. These people write code because they enjoy it. It therefore does not make sense to:
(1) Employ any kind of global, unifying "roadmap" for the "direction" that Linux will take.
(2) Especially if the first step of the roadmap is: "All of you people working on K, L and M: Stop. Your projects have been flagged as superfluous. You will now be working on project G." That just is not going to work.
The other part that probably sounded elitist was my sharply-worded distinction between users and developers. That was wrong, because with Free/Open Software, potentially anyone can be a developer. The point is that you can't force volunteers to do your bidding. You can ask for things, but if no one bites, then your only option is to code it up yourself, or try an operating system that offers a complaints hotline. That's not elitist, that's just how it is.
The users need MORE THAN WINDOWING ENVIRONMENTS, they need UTILITIES that do stuffs for them !
We have Kylix from Borland (FREE !) and how many of us are using Kylix to develop USEFUL UTILITIES for the users ?
Do something about this problem and we will see the Desktop Linux comes alive.
Great! Go download Kylix and start writing all of these USEFUL UTILITIES that are so lacking. That's how the game is played in Linux, you see. Almost every app that exists, exists because somebody saw a need for it, and coded it up.
I would say about zero exist because some self-declared pundit said "Hey! Here's what we need to do! So get cracking!
Once again, we see a post where "we" == "everyone but me"...
Perhaps, but the positions of those two nearby bodies will depend on the other bodies in the system. You won't be able to predict an accurate trajectory if you don't know where the two nearby bodies are going to be. That was the point I was trying to make.
Chaos theory does not punch a hole of any size in this idea. It's true that one cannot predict the positions of bodies in the solar system long term but on timescales of decades, centuries, even millenia, current models have more than enough accuracy to predict zero-gravity trajectories.
Regarding Lagrange points, the Earth-moon system is not isolated, it is significantly influenced by the Sun. The three-body interaction results in 5 L points, a modification of the "ring of stability" mentioned by the other reply to your post.
The lagrangian case has nothing to do with interplanetary travel, however; it deals only with semi-stable points where gravity sort-of balances between two massive bodies.
In any case, since the mass of the spacecraft is negligible, this isn't the full 3-body problem.
Yes, but you have to consider the masses of the planets and moons that the spacecraft interacts with, all interacting with each other. That makes it a many-body problem that must be "solved" numerically.
You can't solve the three-body problem for a general case (meaning analytically, with the solution written as an equation). You can numerically model the behavior of a gravitational system with many bodies, given some initial conditions.
However, over time your numerical model will deviate more and more from the real evolution of the system. As long as the timescale of this error growth is much longer than a typical spacecraft's travel time, these numerical models are good enough to predict orbital trajectories accurately. Given that current models are estimated to be accurate for many thousands of years, it's no problem.
I'm seeing more and more of these "We need to do this..." posts, and its evil twin "Joe user wants this..."
Where do all of these Linux prophets come from? Why are they so sure that they know what "we" need to do, and what "Joe User" wants? Who the fsck is Joe User wrt Linux anyway? IMHO, Joe Linux User is (and should be) a penguinista who knows his shit. If people are uncomfortable with computers, let them use Windows or better yet OSX. Why should I have my choices stripped away to appease some ill-defined "market"?
These kind of posts just make you look foolish, because it shows plainly that you simply don't understand Free/Open Software at all.
"We" are not a company. "We" have no unified goal vis a vis "marketshare", or "Joe User"'s OS preference. "Huh?!!! WTF??!", I hear you saying, "if you don't care about this stuff, then Linux will *never* overtake MS!!!"
Some (maynbe most) of "We" simply don't care about such things. We hack the kernel, GNOME, KDE, X, E, whatever else, because we like to. "You" Joe Users get to enjoy the result. Don't take that as a license to tell us what we need to do with our hobby, however.
Let's suppose you get to implement your grand plan, and proclaim from on high that henceforth, all Linux devs will work on Redhat and Gnome. Development on other desktops is outlawed, since they are superfluous and counter-productive to "Our" goals. Do you *really* think that people who were volunteer hackers on other projects that they care deeply about are just going to shrug their shoulders and switch to a new project that they couldn't care less about?
my brother! I too have Dumped the Grease at Wendy's. One time I made the horrible mistake of breathing while dumping my load of grease. It was, by far, the worst smell I've ever experienced.
Later, I asked my manager why we keep all that shit; I mean, who comes to collect it? He told me (and he may have been pulling my leg) that it's used as a blubber substitute in the manufacture of lipstick and other makeup. eewwwwwww....
I loved the "construction set" games when I was a kid. I had a bunch on my trusty C64. Some of my faves:
Ultimate Wizard (well, it "only" had a level editor, I guess, but man! so much fun...)
Slot Car Construction Set (tile-based racetracks!)
Racing Destruction Set
GameMaker
Adventure Construction Set
And I don't care how much you naysayers say "nay"; the spirit of these games lives on in NWN. NWN mods are not just PVP mods and crappy, unfinished story mods. There are tons of good modules available already, but you're better off playing them in small groups with people you know (just like "real" tabletop DnD).
To the people complaining about too many "uber" twinked-out characters running around, I say: why are you playing on a server that allows them? Every time someone serves a game, there are two check boxes: "Enforce Legal Characters?" and "Item Level Restrictions?". If you don't want to be knee-deep in twinked-out munchkins, stay off the non-ELC, non-ILR servers! et voila.
I love Linux on the desktop, and I love KDE, but unless it offers something original, something that Windows and Mac OS don't, then what's the point?
What's the point? Freedom, for starters. You get a first-rate GUI without sacrificing Freedom. Isn't that worth celebrating, even if the GUI is not totally "original"?
Besides, why is it necessarily desireable for a GUI to be completely original? It's been said often before, but I guess it bears repeating. Most modern GUI systems look very similar. They all use "windows", "menus", "icons", "buttons", and "desktops". Does this mean that no one can think of anything new, and it's all about "A copied B copied C copied D! Shame on A, B and C!" ? Perhaps. But it's also possible that the Desktop metaphor just makes sense and it works well. Would you rather KDE make a completely new computing paradigm, even if it meant it was harder to use? Just for the sake of being "different"?
Besides, KDE offers plenty that Win/Mac don't, besides Freedom. Themability, for one. You claim to "love" KDE, and yet it seems you don't understand that the way your desktop looks is largely up to you in KDE. You can make it look very similar to WinXP, or very similar to OSX, or not really like either. The person who took those screenshots chose to have a panel that looks like the OSX dock. Others have an XP-like panel. Mine looks like neither. KDE gives you the freedom to build a desktop that suits your needs and style. How is that copying either OSX or XP?
I guess I shouldn't even bother...there will always be naysayers. I remember when they were saying "KDE will never be as good as Windows or Mac!". Now it's "Ok, KDE is just as good as Windows/Mac...but it's not BETTER, so what's the point?!"
This is a great illustration of the difference between Free Software and Open Source software.
An ad-supported open-source operating system (OS OS?) *might* work, but how Open would it really be? I mean suppose company X actually starts this. To whom will the Ad revenue go? I assume it would go to their employees, not the "volunteers" who contribute code from outside. So, independent developers would have to be comfortable with this company profiting from their volunteer labor.
Wouldn't the company have to demand copyright on the body of code used by the OS? Either that or give a cut of the ad revenue to volunteers. But based on what? Lines of code contributed? (hello bloat!)
The point is, there's a huge difference between volunteering for a body of software which is guaranteed to be owned by [no/every]one, and volunteering to help some company make a buck. I just think it would wind up being "Open" in name only, because no one outside said company would be interested in developing for it...
What is the manifestation of this painfully obvious disconnect between developers and users on the KDE desktop? Which features are "muddled" and "heavily developer-centric" in flavor?
I'm looking at my KDE3 desktop right now...sorry, I don't see anything even remotely like what you describe.
Does KDE software strike you as the kind made by people who give no consideration to end users? Is there a KDE project which is deaf to the constructive criticisms of its users?
Every KDE app has a "Report Bug..." item in its Help menu. Isn't that asking for user feedback? Those reported bugs go to bugs.kde.org, where they are dealt with, not ignored.
I just wish people would pay a bit more attention to what KDE has created, and a bit less to the ramblings of people with personal grudges and axes to grind...
Ok, I'm a little pissed about this. KDE deserves heavy praise for its attention to desktop users' needs on Linux, not these cheap insults from the peanut gallery.
dep and his cheerleaders might have a point if KDE programs were difficult to use for "Joe User". IMHO, KDE provides the most User-friendly Linux desktop and apps out there. Given that, what is the point of claiming that KDE developers don't give a damn about users? The statement is a non-starter; it's so demonstrably false. Go check out #kde-user. Browse bugs.kde.org. Read application mailing lists. Hell, use KDE for an hour. Do all that, then come back here and tell me KDE devs don't give a damn about users.
Here's a question I'd like dep or others who buy his line to answer: If KDE developers really didn't care about users, then why would they ever make a release? All KDE devs use KDE straight from CVS; they don't benefit from releases at all. In fact, releases are a pain for developers. They have to halt development during a pre-release freeze, which can last months. During this period, they can *only* work on bugfixes. Often, these bugs are obscure or don't happen on the dev's machine. How can feature-freezes and stable releases exist in a world where KDE does not care about its users? In addition, why bother with i18n? Just write your app in English or German, and to hell with anyone who can't read it! And yet KDE is translated into 40 languages. Hmmm....
AFAICT, dep's just pissed because KMail no longer uses the stone-age address book it did back in the "good old days" of KDE 1.x. Because the devs said they weren't going to revert the addressbook, dep is now on some kind of anti-KDE crusade. Damn, man, get over it! Just put your addresses in a textfile, because that's all the old addressbook was.
I know he's a troll; I don't care. When I see anti-science jibber-jabber on/., I feel the need to debunk it. Some people might have taken him seriously. He is, after all, a PhysicsGenius.
The colors in this particular image are especially misleading.
In most HST "pretty-picture" images, the colors are at least representative of reality. You take three images, through "blue", "green" and "red" filters, then stack them, with each layer driving the appropriate R,G,B value of the color composite. The result may be more saturated than reality, but you get at least some idea of how it would look to your eye.
However, this image is a stack of "narrow-band" images, centered on particular atomic emission lines. These narrow-band images are incredibly useful scientifically, because they let you study the energetics and chemistry inside the SN remnant, as well as the shock conditions of the gas. However, the colors are assigned arbitrarily, and have no connection to how the object would actually look.
Unfortunately I saw no caveat to this effect in either the CNN article (no suprise) nor the space.com article (mildly disappointing).
I mean, why not add a phrase in there like: "In reality, Cas A is not so colorful. The vivid colors are added to the image to help scientists map out different chemicals and their ionization states, which allows them to determine the strength of the original explosion, and how it has evolved to its present state."
You make a remarkably ill-informed post for someone with the arrogance to give themselves a nick like PhysicsGenius.
Your assertions that only projects which will make HST "look good" get time, and that approved HST projects must conform to the narrow vision of a small number of people, are demonstrably false. Anyone who knows the first thing about modern telescope scheduling in general (and HST's scheduling in particular), knows that it's just about the opposite of what you claim.
Observing time on HST is not determined by "bureaucrats" nor by "politicians". The Time Allocation Committee (TAC) is comprised of active research astronomers, who judge the huge number of proposals on scientific merit. The TAC members are different every observing semester, and they all come from outside of STScI (the institute which "runs" HST). Indeed, those who are selected to be on the TAC have a wide variety of interests and perspectives on how "important" a particular project is. I'm sure you can understand how this diversity of opinion leads to a more objective judgement by the TAC as a whole. In other words, the rotating TAC system does a good job of reflecting the opinion of the entire astronomical community.
In short, you have no idea what you're talking about. Why would a "PhysicsGenius" make up slanderous statements about one of the greatest scientific instruments ever constructed? The mind boggles...
Legend has it that every even-numbered Star Trek sequel sucks.
You got that backwards, surely.
No one of sound mind could rank The Search for Spock above the much-beloved Wrath of Khan. Or the soul-shudderingly bad The Final Frontier above... well, anything on film, Star Trek or not!?!
Slashdot Mirror
Wonder who fast isle can provide the editor ;))
isle? You mean Black Isle? They have nothing whatever to do with NWN...it was produced by Bioware, and published by Infogrames.
It would be cool indeed if they port the NWToolset. My fingers are crossed, but I don't expect it anytime soon; the Live Team is pretty busy squashing bugs at the moment...
It's not elitism. It may have sounded that way due to my poor wording, but it isn't. If you want a simple-to-use computing environment that offers one choice for a desktop environment, the wonderful world of commercial software development offers you two first-rate alternatives: Windows XP and Apple OSX. (not being sarcastic; in my experience both of these are pretty nice computing environments)
If you are comfortable with a much steeper learning curve, and you want more control and a wider range of choices, then you should give a look to Free/Open alternatives like Linux or *BSD.
However, know and understand that Linux is developed largely by a loosely-knit community of volunteers. These people write code because they enjoy it. It therefore does not make sense to:
(1) Employ any kind of global, unifying "roadmap" for the "direction" that Linux will take.
(2) Especially if the first step of the roadmap is: "All of you people working on K, L and M: Stop. Your projects have been flagged as superfluous. You will now be working on project G." That just is not going to work.
The other part that probably sounded elitist was my sharply-worded distinction between users and developers. That was wrong, because with Free/Open Software, potentially anyone can be a developer. The point is that you can't force volunteers to do your bidding. You can ask for things, but if no one bites, then your only option is to code it up yourself, or try an operating system that offers a complaints hotline. That's not elitist, that's just how it is.
The users need MORE THAN WINDOWING ENVIRONMENTS, they need UTILITIES that do stuffs for them !
We have Kylix from Borland (FREE !) and how many of us are using Kylix to develop USEFUL UTILITIES for the users ?
Do something about this problem and we will see the Desktop Linux comes alive.
Great! Go download Kylix and start writing all of these USEFUL UTILITIES that are so lacking. That's how the game is played in Linux, you see. Almost every app that exists, exists because somebody saw a need for it, and coded it up.
I would say about zero exist because some self-declared pundit said "Hey! Here's what we need to do! So get cracking!
Once again, we see a post where "we" == "everyone but me"...
Perhaps, but the positions of those two nearby bodies will depend on the other bodies in the system. You won't be able to predict an accurate trajectory if you don't know where the two nearby bodies are going to be. That was the point I was trying to make.
Chaos theory does not punch a hole of any size in this idea. It's true that one cannot predict the positions of bodies in the solar system long term but on timescales of decades, centuries, even millenia, current models have more than enough accuracy to predict zero-gravity trajectories.
Regarding Lagrange points, the Earth-moon system is not isolated, it is significantly influenced by the Sun. The three-body interaction results in 5 L points, a modification of the "ring of stability" mentioned by the other reply to your post.
The lagrangian case has nothing to do with interplanetary travel, however; it deals only with semi-stable points where gravity sort-of balances between two massive bodies.
In any case, since the mass of the spacecraft is negligible, this isn't the full 3-body problem.
Yes, but you have to consider the masses of the planets and moons that the spacecraft interacts with, all interacting with each other. That makes it a many-body problem that must be "solved" numerically.
You can't solve the three-body problem for a general case (meaning analytically, with the solution written as an equation). You can numerically model the behavior of a gravitational system with many bodies, given some initial conditions.
However, over time your numerical model will deviate more and more from the real evolution of the system. As long as the timescale of this error growth is much longer than a typical spacecraft's travel time, these numerical models are good enough to predict orbital trajectories accurately. Given that current models are estimated to be accurate for many thousands of years, it's no problem.
Dark Matter?! Absolutely negligible on interplanetary scales.
Whatever. Who died and made you Linus?
I'm seeing more and more of these "We need to do this..." posts, and its evil twin "Joe user wants this..."
Where do all of these Linux prophets come from? Why are they so sure that they know what "we" need to do, and what "Joe User" wants? Who the fsck is Joe User wrt Linux anyway? IMHO, Joe Linux User is (and should be) a penguinista who knows his shit. If people are uncomfortable with computers, let them use Windows or better yet OSX. Why should I have my choices stripped away to appease some ill-defined "market"?
These kind of posts just make you look foolish, because it shows plainly that you simply don't understand Free/Open Software at all.
"We" are not a company. "We" have no unified goal vis a vis "marketshare", or "Joe User"'s OS preference. "Huh?!!! WTF??!", I hear you saying, "if you don't care about this stuff, then Linux will *never* overtake MS!!!"
Some (maynbe most) of "We" simply don't care about such things. We hack the kernel, GNOME, KDE, X, E, whatever else, because we like to. "You" Joe Users get to enjoy the result. Don't take that as a license to tell us what we need to do with our hobby, however.
Let's suppose you get to implement your grand plan, and proclaim from on high that henceforth, all Linux devs will work on Redhat and Gnome. Development on other desktops is outlawed, since they are superfluous and counter-productive to "Our" goals. Do you *really* think that people who were volunteer hackers on other projects that they care deeply about are just going to shrug their shoulders and switch to a new project that they couldn't care less about?
my brother! I too have Dumped the Grease at Wendy's. One time I made the horrible mistake of breathing while dumping my load of grease. It was, by far, the worst smell I've ever experienced.
Later, I asked my manager why we keep all that shit; I mean, who comes to collect it? He told me (and he may have been pulling my leg) that it's used as a blubber substitute in the manufacture of lipstick and other makeup. eewwwwwww....
- Ultimate Wizard (well, it "only" had a level editor, I guess, but man! so much fun...)
- Slot Car Construction Set (tile-based racetracks!)
- Racing Destruction Set
- GameMaker
- Adventure Construction Set
And I don't care how much you naysayers say "nay"; the spirit of these games lives on in NWN. NWN mods are not just PVP mods and crappy, unfinished story mods. There are tons of good modules available already, but you're better off playing them in small groups with people you know (just like "real" tabletop DnD).To the people complaining about too many "uber" twinked-out characters running around, I say: why are you playing on a server that allows them? Every time someone serves a game, there are two check boxes: "Enforce Legal Characters?" and "Item Level Restrictions?". If you don't want to be knee-deep in twinked-out munchkins, stay off the non-ELC, non-ILR servers! et voila.
***Disclaimer*** I'm not a pedant, but
wouldn't that be MMXLI ?
Interesting...a Linux "master" that thinks it's possible to "leak" KDE code....
I love Linux on the desktop, and I love KDE, but unless it offers something original, something that Windows and Mac OS don't, then what's the point?
What's the point? Freedom, for starters. You get a first-rate GUI without sacrificing Freedom. Isn't that worth celebrating, even if the GUI is not totally "original"?
Besides, why is it necessarily desireable for a GUI to be completely original? It's been said often before, but I guess it bears repeating. Most modern GUI systems look very similar. They all use "windows", "menus", "icons", "buttons", and "desktops". Does this mean that no one can think of anything new, and it's all about "A copied B copied C copied D! Shame on A, B and C!" ? Perhaps. But it's also possible that the Desktop metaphor just makes sense and it works well. Would you rather KDE make a completely new computing paradigm, even if it meant it was harder to use? Just for the sake of being "different"?
Besides, KDE offers plenty that Win/Mac don't, besides Freedom. Themability, for one. You claim to "love" KDE, and yet it seems you don't understand that the way your desktop looks is largely up to you in KDE. You can make it look very similar to WinXP, or very similar to OSX, or not really like either. The person who took those screenshots chose to have a panel that looks like the OSX dock. Others have an XP-like panel. Mine looks like neither. KDE gives you the freedom to build a desktop that suits your needs and style. How is that copying either OSX or XP?
I guess I shouldn't even bother...there will always be naysayers. I remember when they were saying "KDE will never be as good as Windows or Mac!". Now it's "Ok, KDE is just as good as Windows/Mac...but it's not BETTER, so what's the point?!"
Indeed, what's the point?
My god...you guys just got together, and are already bickering? Doesn't sound like a long-term relationship is in the cards, boys.... :)
This is a great illustration of the difference between Free Software and Open Source software.
/every]one, and volunteering to help some company make a buck. I just think it would wind up being "Open" in name only, because no one outside said company would be interested in developing for it...
An ad-supported open-source operating system (OS OS?) *might* work, but how Open would it really be? I mean suppose company X actually starts this. To whom will the Ad revenue go? I assume it would go to their employees, not the "volunteers" who contribute code from outside. So, independent developers would have to be comfortable with this company profiting from their volunteer labor.
Wouldn't the company have to demand copyright on the body of code used by the OS? Either that or give a cut of the ad revenue to volunteers. But based on what? Lines of code contributed? (hello bloat!)
The point is, there's a huge difference between volunteering for a body of software which is guaranteed to be owned by [no
What is the manifestation of this painfully obvious disconnect between developers and users on the KDE desktop? Which features are "muddled" and "heavily developer-centric" in flavor?
I'm looking at my KDE3 desktop right now...sorry, I don't see anything even remotely like what you describe.
Does KDE software strike you as the kind made by people who give no consideration to end users? Is there a KDE project which is deaf to the constructive criticisms of its users?
Every KDE app has a "Report Bug..." item in its Help menu. Isn't that asking for user feedback?
Those reported bugs go to bugs.kde.org, where they are dealt with, not ignored.
I just wish people would pay a bit more attention to what KDE has created, and a bit less to the ramblings of people with personal grudges and axes to grind...
Ok, I'm a little pissed about this. KDE deserves heavy praise for its attention to desktop users' needs on Linux, not these cheap insults from the peanut gallery.
dep and his cheerleaders might have a point if KDE programs were difficult to use for "Joe User". IMHO, KDE provides the most User-friendly Linux desktop and apps out there. Given that, what is the point of claiming that KDE developers don't give a damn about users? The statement is a non-starter; it's so demonstrably false. Go check out #kde-user. Browse bugs.kde.org. Read application mailing lists. Hell, use KDE for an hour. Do all that, then come back here and tell me KDE devs don't give a damn about users.
Here's a question I'd like dep or others who buy his line to answer: If KDE developers really didn't care about users, then why would they ever make a release? All KDE devs use KDE straight from CVS; they don't benefit from releases at all. In fact, releases are a pain for developers. They have to halt development during a pre-release freeze, which can last months. During this period, they can *only* work on bugfixes. Often, these bugs are obscure or don't happen on the dev's machine. How can feature-freezes and stable releases exist in a world where KDE does not care about its users? In addition, why bother with i18n? Just write your app in English or German, and to hell with anyone who can't read it! And yet KDE is translated into 40 languages. Hmmm....
AFAICT, dep's just pissed because KMail no longer uses the stone-age address book it did back in the "good old days" of KDE 1.x. Because the devs said they weren't going to revert the addressbook, dep is now on some kind of anti-KDE crusade. Damn, man, get over it! Just put your addresses in a textfile, because that's all the old addressbook was.
I know he's a troll; I don't care. When I see anti-science jibber-jabber on /., I feel the need to debunk it. Some people might have taken him seriously. He is, after all, a PhysicsGenius.
The colors in this particular image are especially misleading.
In most HST "pretty-picture" images, the colors are at least representative of reality. You take three images, through "blue", "green" and "red" filters, then stack them, with each layer driving the appropriate R,G,B value of the color composite. The result may be more saturated than reality, but you get at least some idea of how it would look to your eye.
However, this image is a stack of "narrow-band" images, centered on particular atomic emission lines. These narrow-band images are incredibly useful scientifically, because they let you study the energetics and chemistry inside the SN remnant, as well as the shock conditions of the gas. However, the colors are assigned arbitrarily, and have no connection to how the object would actually look.
Unfortunately I saw no caveat to this effect in either the CNN article (no suprise) nor the space.com article (mildly disappointing).
I mean, why not add a phrase in there like: "In reality, Cas A is not so colorful. The vivid colors are added to the image to help scientists map out different chemicals and their ionization states, which allows them to determine the strength of the original explosion, and how it has evolved to its present state."
You make a remarkably ill-informed post for someone with the arrogance to give themselves a nick like PhysicsGenius.
Your assertions that only projects which will make HST "look good" get time, and that approved HST projects must conform to the narrow vision of a small number of people, are demonstrably false. Anyone who knows the first thing about modern telescope scheduling in general (and HST's scheduling in particular), knows that it's just about the opposite of what you claim.
Observing time on HST is not determined by "bureaucrats" nor by "politicians". The Time Allocation Committee (TAC) is comprised of active research astronomers, who judge the huge number of proposals on scientific merit. The TAC members are different every observing semester, and they all come from outside of STScI (the institute which "runs" HST). Indeed, those who are selected to be on the TAC have a wide variety of interests and perspectives on how "important" a particular project is. I'm sure you can understand how this diversity of opinion leads to a more objective judgement by the TAC as a whole. In other words, the rotating TAC system does a good job of reflecting the opinion of the entire astronomical community.
In short, you have no idea what you're talking about. Why would a "PhysicsGenius" make up slanderous statements about one of the greatest scientific instruments ever constructed? The mind boggles...
Atari is a brand name owned by Infogrames.
Legend has it that every even-numbered Star Trek sequel sucks.
You got that backwards, surely.
No one of sound mind could rank The Search for Spock above the much-beloved Wrath of Khan.
Or the soul-shudderingly bad The Final Frontier above... well, anything on film, Star Trek or not!?!