I recently bought an HP Spectre laptop that came preloaded with Windows 10, and overall I would rate it far above Windows 8, but slightly below Windows 7.
Some pros: It works pretty well for the Spectre, which is a convertible touch-screen ultrabook - I think the tablet mode of Windows 10 works much better than anything Windows 7 could do. That said, >90% of my usage for the thing has been hooked up to a monitor acting as a desktop, with a minority of the time using it portably and even less time using it as a tablet. I was pleasantly surprised to find a $50 credit to use in the Microsoft App store (not sure if that was part of the PC purchase or if it comes with Windows 10) and while the store isn't as well established as Android or Apple App stores, I got some pretty neat PDF apps, flowchart tools, drawing apps that use the touch screen, and some circuit-building stuff that would be handy if you're an electronics hobbiest. Many of those apps would be unavailable on Windows 7.
Cons: The screen is moderately high-resolution, but a number of applications don't seem to handle that well. Something about Cleartext or anti-aliasing just doesn't work quite right, so I find myself forced to choose between text that is too small to read comfortably, or scaled-up text that looks atrocious. For some reason, sleep and hibernate almost never work like they ought to... if I try to wake the machine up with a keypress, it will give no outward indication of activity for a minute or two, and then suddenly be ready to go. Or sometimes it won't, so I wait for two minutes, and then get irritated and do a hard restart.
Overall assessment: Windows 10 offers a few unique features for a laptop (particularly a convertible one), and if you have that sort of machine you'll probably appreciate that. For a desktop or normal laptop, I'd stick with Windows 7, though. 10 isn't horrible, but it certainly has some downsides and rough edges.
I really, really want one of these things. I can tell you that my kids would lose their minds over it, and just as a basic but really capable telepresence platform it would be very cool. It would be a way more interactive means to skype with the kids on work trips, or check on the pets while we're out. Since Amazon is making Alexa portable to other systems, you could do some really freaking neat stuff with this. Looks like the developer registration site is slashdotted otherwise I would sign up right now.
Remember AIBO? That thing cost 4x as much and didn't have anything like the connectivity or versatility - and still managed to push 150k units. I'm hoping this is the first step into general-purpose home robotics. Unfortunately, tech specs are scarce. The critical thing to know is whether it's a little Linux box inside... if so, I foresee a big hit, at least with the geek dad crowd.
Let's suppose you've got one SMS message per minute. That's enough to encode 3 dimensions of position, 3 dimensions of velocity, and 3 dimensions of orientation, to a reasonable precision. On top of that you could provide basic engine status (RPM, binary working/not working, temp, something basic) or other summaries about plane subsystems. And the thing is, it doesn't have to be completely foolproof. It doesn't need to survive the crash. It doesn't need to operate for extended periods without electricity... an hour of battery life would be plenty, because with any modern plane if it has no power it's done for anyway. And it doesn't need to replace the black box - we already have those. It just needs to provide enough info to focus search efforts, and to do that, minimal but frequent data is sufficient.
Why pay for an internet connection to bitch on slashdot when you could use that money to feed a starving child somewhere in the world? How dare we allow mindless entertainment like sports, movies, or video games to exist when the money from any one of those industries could pay to keep people fed across the globe?
The truth is, there are far more useless things out there than telecom satellites and research spacecraft, and in fact, the satellites you dislike so much contribute directly to solving those issues you complain about (like collecting data about icecaps to better inform climate scientists). You're either trolling or completely ignorant.
Everybody is having lots of fun poking at the dumbness of the USB drive solution - and I'll admit, it's really bad. That said, the question is legitimate.
In an age of GPS and satellite data connectivity, why the hell are we still able to lose 747s? You can buy a device right now that will use the satphone network to phone home with your location from anywhere in the world. It's $120. This would have saved a millions of dollars and much of the endless speculation on the Malaysian Airlines flight that disappeared without a trace. If you purpose-built one for the exact needs of the airline industry, I'm sure you could send something like 1-minute pings with all the most critical info - position, orientation, speed, basic status - it's completely ridiculous that we have to search the ocean manually for even the simplest of clues about what happened.
And before objecting that the satellite network doesn't have bandwidth for doing this on a large scale - a text message once per minute would be worlds better than what we have now for planes outside of radar range (that would be... nothing) and anyhow we've got the next-gen Iridium network set to fly very soon, with many other satellite constellations in the works for high-bandwidth global data connections. There are no technical barriers to implementing a simple satellite-based plane tracking system.
In terms of overall architecture and lessons learned, absolutely there's a lot of commonality for SpaceX to leverage. That said, Dragon V2 has a totally different solar array and trunk, it's a different size, it uses new propulsive landing and brand new SuperDraco engines to support it, it docks instead of berthing via Canadarm2, it has to support manual control by the astronauts and provide full ECLSS... for all practical purposes it's a brand new vehicle.
The Dragon V2 is actually a very next-gen spacecraft, not least because it can do a propulsive landing. This means it can not only land gently and precisely in any random field that it needs to (and also safely abort and save the crew in the case of launch vehicle failure) but that it can potentially land on other planets, asteroids, whatever. That's a totally new capability that no other manned spacecraft has possessed before now.
IOW, not much is left for the first manned spaceX flight.
My point isn't that I think Dragon V2 has issues - it's just incorrect to claim (as the summary did) that it has flight heritage, because it really is a different vehicle than the cargo-only Dragon. I agree that SpaceX is on track and only a short way from that first flight, though.
Also: we had multiple shuttle failures before orbiters had reached EOL, and there's a good argument that the system was nowhere near the reliability that it was claimed to have when it was designed. So an original "design life" is fairly meaningless compared to your actual track record and a real assessment of the condition of the vehicles.
The thing is, to the extent that a lack of shuttle capability has opened up more funding and pressure to get a commercial option off the ground, it has been a good move. I agree that it would have been better if there was some overlap, and Commercial Crew came fully online before the shuttles were retired, but at the same time Commercial Crew has struggled to get full funding and support from congress even when it has been competing against the unbuilt, hugely expensive, and technically unoriginal SLS. The other piece is that NASA has been looking for a shuttle replacement for a long, long time - remember Venturestar? It would be tough to fully fund development of a new launch system while keeping the existing one running, though, so I think that entered into the decision to cancel shuttle as well - saving that money was meant to allow NASA to focus on the next-gen launch systems.
I agree with you that political BS is a big part of the problem, though. Which is why I'm such a fan of commercial space efforts, because it almost entirely removes congresscritters from having any influence on the technical decisions. Removing undue political influence would've prevented the space shuttle from being crippled by compromise, might have allowed Venturestar to actually proceed, would prevent boondoggles like SLS from getting traction, and so far seems to be allowing SpaceX to make progress at a rate that nobody previously thought possible.
Absolutely. BTW, I'm a longtime unregistered lurker at the NSF forums, and I think I've seen you (or someone with your username) posting over there about Venusian habitats among other things - really interesting stuff!
The problem is, to keep even a single shuttle flying, you have to maintain most of the infrastructure that was required to keep an entire fleet running. Low flight rate was one of the reasons that the shuttle never met cost projections in the first place, because you're paying for these huge facilities and workforces that are perpetually running at 25% capacity because of low launch rates. So keeping a single shuttle in play would have exacerbated this problem and ended up making our per-flight cost go through the roof, and so it probably came down to an "all-or-nothing" sort of calculation. And nobody wanted to risk killing another crew because of trying to stretch an orbiter beyond its useful life.
Note: many of these same problems are set up to plague SLS, the follow-on program to the space shuttle, which is hugely expensive, over budget, and behind schedule. If you're a fan of low-cost American space access, you should root for more funding of Commercial Crew and the other COTS efforts, and cancellation of this giant congressional effort to repeat shuttle's mistakes.
SpaceX has sent its ship to the ISS on multiple uncrewed cargo resupply missions
To be fair, the Dragon that SpaceX has flown is a very different vehicle than the Dragon V2, which is the capsule rated to carry astronauts. So while they do have a leg up on Boeing in some respects (and will likely beat them on schedule) neither capsule is really flight-proven at this point.
Really, isn't the question: when does collapse happen? And really, what constitutes an observation? I know that was a piece of Von Neumann's Automata as well, and it really gets at the heart of the issue - because if you need a person to do it, then you have most of the universe that is entangled with most other parts of the universe and nothing to ever stop it until a photon gets into our region of the universe... and then does everything entangled with that photon collapse entirely as soon as it hits a human's retina?
It's a hell of an idea, and I think is what Einstein was talking about when he told Bohr "I like to think the moon is still there when I'm not looking at it". In reality, I think we might find some part of the answer through experimenting more with the exact threshold between quantum and classical behavior - we know buckyballs (and viruses, I believe) can be made to interfere and exhibit wavelike behavior, the question is if there's an upper limit to that, where it is, and why it exists?
Their is a difference between a show designed to put forward a certain philosophy, and a phone system or mail system that eliminates certain viewpoints.
Facebook isn't a phone system though, or a mail system. There is a messenger component that is similar to email or texting, certainly. And as far as I know, something sent via that route is never censored or modified in any way (unless it's blocked or reported as harassment). The update feed is fundamentally different, though - it's like Google search results, or Slashdot's front page - when I post an update I have no idea who might see it... could be nobody, could be thousands of people if it gets shared widely. I also don't have any expectation that I'll see every single post from every single person I'm connected to... I merely look at the update feed when I'm interested.
So it seems to me something like a personalized, curated news page with a heavy dose of content from personal connections. Are there laws that apply to this sort of thing? I have no idea. Should there be? That's a good question, but it seems to me that when in doubt, it's better to err on the side of free speech and allow the distributors and content creators to publish what they want.
The real answer to all of this, of course, is critical evaluation of all journalism and information (especially that which agrees with our personal biases) and higher skepticism of media claims all around. It's more fun to blindly accept info that agrees with me and blindly reject information that goes against my ideology, though... so we all know what will really happen.
Laws about disclosing bias are a tricky problem though - how far do you go on requiring that bias be disclosed? Bias is everywhere, and behind every single journal article and every single one of our comments here. Do you require it of all speech, or just speech with the potential for monetary gain? Do you have to disclose bias only if you make money on your content? What about a blogger who only makes a bit of cash on product referrals? What about a bias that you don't know exists (as we certainly both have)? Do you include comic artists, novelists, weather people, and
I think the standard rules are ok for the most part - where there's a clear financial incentive for a journalist (or anyone) to lie, they should disclose it (and typically advertisements are marked as such). I suppose you could require that people disclose their funding sources, but again, how far do you take that? Do you require it of novelists?
I agree with you that on some level we ought to reign in the amount of propaganda and advertising that pollutes minds. The problem is, though, how do you do that without seriously and dangerously restricting first amendment rights? How do you do that without empowering someone (the government, a corporation, etc) to silence dissent? There are some interesting models out there - a look at the advertising restrictions on public radio is a start, and you can consider the BBC for an example of different attempts to provide unbiased press. Removing the profit motive might help in some respects, but the BBC still isn't perfect and shoddy press is still a problem in England.
So, at some level the desire to have this problem go away amounts to the desire for people to stop being assholes. Which would be nice, but will never happen. The best thing I can come up with is that I can point out things like snopes and politifact to call out BS when I see it, and I can hold myself to a high standard of integrity in terms of the things that I will link to or post in internet discussions. We could also hope for better education, and a higher amount of skepticism and critical thinking to be taught to students - but that's not an easy problem either. For sure, though, the one thing you can control is your own integrity and commitment to objectivity - and so I do my honest best to demand evidence even (and especially) for things that I agree with, and to give fair consideration to people with different opinions from my own. That's a start at least.
Here's the thing though: you don't have a right to unbiased news. In fact, Facebook has no legal obligation to provide unbiased news - and it would be a restriction of Facebook's first amendment rights to legally require that they follow any specific doctrine with respect to the news that they choose to promote (or not). They don't need to be unbiased, and they don't need to disclose bias. So, strangely enough, if you really believe in free speech as a constitutional right you believe in Facebook's ability to censor or promote or distort to their heart's content.
That said, even if it isn't illegal for them to do so, you can certainly argue that it is immoral and bad business to censor content or introduce bias into the news feed without disclosing it or giving the user control. I wish that I had an option to make Facebook simply present content chronologically and do no "curating" whatsoever of updates... but it doesn't appear that's an option. If they continue this, though, and it's a big enough problem, that creates an opportunity for a different social network to gain traction. And hell, start your own, with a conservative bias, or that specifically vows to never censor content (a big part of Slashdot's attraction for many of its users, at least with respect to ACs and uneditable comments).
My point isn't to defend what Facebook is doing, but to say that what Facebook is doing isn't restricting free speech. You don't have a right to have airtime on any media platform of your choice, and that's essentially what the Facebook newsfeed amounts to - it's their tech, and their choice who and what they communicate over their platform. As it should be. IMO it's better to use the free market to address censorship and bias by patronizing unbiased news sources that have integrity in their journalism. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be what the masses are interested in, but that's life.
No, you get this straight, my Precious Little Snowflake: one cannot give offense, one can only take it. So un-bunch your panties and recognize that much of that "hate speech" your holding your hands over your ears to avoid hearing may just be another, considered, point of view.
Who has their panties in a bunch here? Because it certainly seems to me that the conservatives who bitch about their right to free speech, when NOBODY IS ACTUALLY RESTRICTING THAT SPEECH, are the really hysterical ones. Your first amendment rights allow you to spew anything you want, no matter how racist, sexist, or backwards it might be. My first amendment rights allow me to call you an idiot and tell everyone else that you aren't worth listening to. So, what you really need to do, is stop insisting that my criticisms of your ideas are an infringement of your rights. You apparently want state protection for hate speech, such that no one is allowed to disagree with you - I'm on the side of free speech, which allows people to respond to racist remarks however they like.
The hypocrisy in your statements is truly staggering. If you are a friend of free speech, you should realize what it means: that short of a very narrow category of things like threats, slander, and libel, people in the U.S. can say anything they damn well please, and other people can respond in kind, and the government can't do anything about it. However, your apparent desire to have racist remarks go unchallenged amounts to a direct request to RESTRICT FREE SPEECH. You are using a misconception about the nature of first amendment rights to destroy the very protections you claim.
So here's what it really means, and what you need to get through your head: you have a right to say whatever the hell you want. And everybody else in the country has a right to ignore you. Wishing it was otherwise just means you are yet another conservative with a made-up persecution complex who takes "freedom" to mean "freedom from things that make me uncomfortable". Which is really just another way of asking to remove freedom from other people.
Sure, that sounds appalling, but Facebook itself is disturbing when you realize it is intentionally structured as an "echo chamber" to reinforce people's existing beliefs. One can only "Like" posts, there is no mechanism for pointing out they are stupid, and one only receives updates about the posts from people one is friended with, which means you probably have conforming views to begin with!
Every post can be commented on - and I frequently do comment on posts that are wrong or misguided. Also, Facebook is merely a reflection of the social group you have created for yourself. If you have a politically diverse friend base, you'll see a diverse mix of updates, but if you selectively associate only with people that share your opinions, you'll only see your own opinions reflected back at you.
I personally have a lot of liberal friends and a lot of conservative friends. And I argue with both of them about the various kinds of bullshit they push.
Yeah, son, actually you kinda do. And that space is called "everywhere in the U.S." You're just young, and confusing the rights you think you *should* have with the rights outlined in the Constitution that you actually, legally, *do* have.
Let's get this straight: telling you that your hate speech is unwelcome in no way infringes upon your first amendment rights. Conservatives seem to think that they ought to be able to say anything at all, no matter how offensive or misanthropic, without having anybody call them out on it. Freedom of speech doesn't protect you from disagreement, and it doesn't protect you from being publicly lambasted for your opinions - it merely means that you can't be thrown in jail or otherwise silenced by the government.
[2] I'm skeptical that government anti-trust efforts are either necessary or even useful. If you look at the history of government anti-trust efforts what you find is a repeated pattern of government stepping in with relatively ineffective measures, followed by the destruction of the monopoly by an innovation-driven market reorganization that which would have happened regardless.
Over and over this topic comes up, and over and over I wonder how in the hell people are so unaware of THE defining example of a government regulated monopoly. That being Ma Bell and Bell Labs, of course. The combo of immense corporate power, focus, and resources, combined with government scrutiny that required them to limit their profits meant that they dumped most excess cash into Bell Labs, which did the lion's share of the fundamental research work that created the information age. Seriously, it's a long list: the transistor, UNIX, cellular networks, information theory for starters... They had all that excess cash from being a government-granted monopoly, but also due to that reason they had to constantly demonstrate that the existence of their monopoly was good for the public. So they dumped the money into research, developed all this revolutionary technology and licensed that tech out cheaply. Bell Labs more than any other single entity deserves to be credited with developing the enabling fundamental technology that's changed the world in the past few decades.
So all this nonsense dogmatism that monopolies are inefficient or that government regulation strangles innovation needs to die - it's the exact opposite of reality. In honesty, we should look at a combination of corporate efficiency and government scrutiny as the model to strive for. This isn't to say that monopolies (or government regulation) are always helpful when they are allowed to exist unchecked, but to say that our single best example in recent history of a total monopoly is also on of our best examples of effective government regulation, and happens to be the best instance of innovation and technological development in modern history.
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I'm sure he has people who can tell him to 3 significant figures how much energy is needed. I can too, 31.273 MJ/kg.
3? You've got 5 sig figs right there, brother.
Congratulations, you've just reinvented colonialism! See: Australia.
I recently bought an HP Spectre laptop that came preloaded with Windows 10, and overall I would rate it far above Windows 8, but slightly below Windows 7.
Some pros:
It works pretty well for the Spectre, which is a convertible touch-screen ultrabook - I think the tablet mode of Windows 10 works much better than anything Windows 7 could do. That said, >90% of my usage for the thing has been hooked up to a monitor acting as a desktop, with a minority of the time using it portably and even less time using it as a tablet.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a $50 credit to use in the Microsoft App store (not sure if that was part of the PC purchase or if it comes with Windows 10) and while the store isn't as well established as Android or Apple App stores, I got some pretty neat PDF apps, flowchart tools, drawing apps that use the touch screen, and some circuit-building stuff that would be handy if you're an electronics hobbiest. Many of those apps would be unavailable on Windows 7.
Cons:
The screen is moderately high-resolution, but a number of applications don't seem to handle that well. Something about Cleartext or anti-aliasing just doesn't work quite right, so I find myself forced to choose between text that is too small to read comfortably, or scaled-up text that looks atrocious.
For some reason, sleep and hibernate almost never work like they ought to... if I try to wake the machine up with a keypress, it will give no outward indication of activity for a minute or two, and then suddenly be ready to go. Or sometimes it won't, so I wait for two minutes, and then get irritated and do a hard restart.
Overall assessment: Windows 10 offers a few unique features for a laptop (particularly a convertible one), and if you have that sort of machine you'll probably appreciate that. For a desktop or normal laptop, I'd stick with Windows 7, though. 10 isn't horrible, but it certainly has some downsides and rough edges.
I really, really want one of these things. I can tell you that my kids would lose their minds over it, and just as a basic but really capable telepresence platform it would be very cool. It would be a way more interactive means to skype with the kids on work trips, or check on the pets while we're out. Since Amazon is making Alexa portable to other systems, you could do some really freaking neat stuff with this. Looks like the developer registration site is slashdotted otherwise I would sign up right now.
Remember AIBO? That thing cost 4x as much and didn't have anything like the connectivity or versatility - and still managed to push 150k units. I'm hoping this is the first step into general-purpose home robotics. Unfortunately, tech specs are scarce. The critical thing to know is whether it's a little Linux box inside... if so, I foresee a big hit, at least with the geek dad crowd.
Let's suppose you've got one SMS message per minute. That's enough to encode 3 dimensions of position, 3 dimensions of velocity, and 3 dimensions of orientation, to a reasonable precision. On top of that you could provide basic engine status (RPM, binary working/not working, temp, something basic) or other summaries about plane subsystems. And the thing is, it doesn't have to be completely foolproof. It doesn't need to survive the crash. It doesn't need to operate for extended periods without electricity... an hour of battery life would be plenty, because with any modern plane if it has no power it's done for anyway. And it doesn't need to replace the black box - we already have those. It just needs to provide enough info to focus search efforts, and to do that, minimal but frequent data is sufficient.
Why pay for an internet connection to bitch on slashdot when you could use that money to feed a starving child somewhere in the world? How dare we allow mindless entertainment like sports, movies, or video games to exist when the money from any one of those industries could pay to keep people fed across the globe?
The truth is, there are far more useless things out there than telecom satellites and research spacecraft, and in fact, the satellites you dislike so much contribute directly to solving those issues you complain about (like collecting data about icecaps to better inform climate scientists). You're either trolling or completely ignorant.
Everybody is having lots of fun poking at the dumbness of the USB drive solution - and I'll admit, it's really bad. That said, the question is legitimate.
In an age of GPS and satellite data connectivity, why the hell are we still able to lose 747s? You can buy a device right now that will use the satphone network to phone home with your location from anywhere in the world. It's $120. This would have saved a millions of dollars and much of the endless speculation on the Malaysian Airlines flight that disappeared without a trace. If you purpose-built one for the exact needs of the airline industry, I'm sure you could send something like 1-minute pings with all the most critical info - position, orientation, speed, basic status - it's completely ridiculous that we have to search the ocean manually for even the simplest of clues about what happened.
And before objecting that the satellite network doesn't have bandwidth for doing this on a large scale - a text message once per minute would be worlds better than what we have now for planes outside of radar range (that would be... nothing) and anyhow we've got the next-gen Iridium network set to fly very soon, with many other satellite constellations in the works for high-bandwidth global data connections. There are no technical barriers to implementing a simple satellite-based plane tracking system.
It is in no way a crackdown on free speech. If you confess to murder and you go to jail you for it, you are not being punished for free speech.
In terms of overall architecture and lessons learned, absolutely there's a lot of commonality for SpaceX to leverage. That said, Dragon V2 has a totally different solar array and trunk, it's a different size, it uses new propulsive landing and brand new SuperDraco engines to support it, it docks instead of berthing via Canadarm2, it has to support manual control by the astronauts and provide full ECLSS... for all practical purposes it's a brand new vehicle.
The Dragon V2 is actually a very next-gen spacecraft, not least because it can do a propulsive landing. This means it can not only land gently and precisely in any random field that it needs to (and also safely abort and save the crew in the case of launch vehicle failure) but that it can potentially land on other planets, asteroids, whatever. That's a totally new capability that no other manned spacecraft has possessed before now.
IOW, not much is left for the first manned spaceX flight.
My point isn't that I think Dragon V2 has issues - it's just incorrect to claim (as the summary did) that it has flight heritage, because it really is a different vehicle than the cargo-only Dragon. I agree that SpaceX is on track and only a short way from that first flight, though.
Did you mean you agree? Because every other part of what you wrote seems to mirror my own statements.
Also: we had multiple shuttle failures before orbiters had reached EOL, and there's a good argument that the system was nowhere near the reliability that it was claimed to have when it was designed. So an original "design life" is fairly meaningless compared to your actual track record and a real assessment of the condition of the vehicles.
The thing is, to the extent that a lack of shuttle capability has opened up more funding and pressure to get a commercial option off the ground, it has been a good move. I agree that it would have been better if there was some overlap, and Commercial Crew came fully online before the shuttles were retired, but at the same time Commercial Crew has struggled to get full funding and support from congress even when it has been competing against the unbuilt, hugely expensive, and technically unoriginal SLS. The other piece is that NASA has been looking for a shuttle replacement for a long, long time - remember Venturestar? It would be tough to fully fund development of a new launch system while keeping the existing one running, though, so I think that entered into the decision to cancel shuttle as well - saving that money was meant to allow NASA to focus on the next-gen launch systems.
I agree with you that political BS is a big part of the problem, though. Which is why I'm such a fan of commercial space efforts, because it almost entirely removes congresscritters from having any influence on the technical decisions. Removing undue political influence would've prevented the space shuttle from being crippled by compromise, might have allowed Venturestar to actually proceed, would prevent boondoggles like SLS from getting traction, and so far seems to be allowing SpaceX to make progress at a rate that nobody previously thought possible.
Absolutely. BTW, I'm a longtime unregistered lurker at the NSF forums, and I think I've seen you (or someone with your username) posting over there about Venusian habitats among other things - really interesting stuff!
The problem is, to keep even a single shuttle flying, you have to maintain most of the infrastructure that was required to keep an entire fleet running. Low flight rate was one of the reasons that the shuttle never met cost projections in the first place, because you're paying for these huge facilities and workforces that are perpetually running at 25% capacity because of low launch rates. So keeping a single shuttle in play would have exacerbated this problem and ended up making our per-flight cost go through the roof, and so it probably came down to an "all-or-nothing" sort of calculation. And nobody wanted to risk killing another crew because of trying to stretch an orbiter beyond its useful life.
Note: many of these same problems are set up to plague SLS, the follow-on program to the space shuttle, which is hugely expensive, over budget, and behind schedule. If you're a fan of low-cost American space access, you should root for more funding of Commercial Crew and the other COTS efforts, and cancellation of this giant congressional effort to repeat shuttle's mistakes.
FTFS:
SpaceX has sent its ship to the ISS on multiple uncrewed cargo resupply missions
To be fair, the Dragon that SpaceX has flown is a very different vehicle than the Dragon V2, which is the capsule rated to carry astronauts. So while they do have a leg up on Boeing in some respects (and will likely beat them on schedule) neither capsule is really flight-proven at this point.
Really, isn't the question: when does collapse happen? And really, what constitutes an observation? I know that was a piece of Von Neumann's Automata as well, and it really gets at the heart of the issue - because if you need a person to do it, then you have most of the universe that is entangled with most other parts of the universe and nothing to ever stop it until a photon gets into our region of the universe... and then does everything entangled with that photon collapse entirely as soon as it hits a human's retina?
It's a hell of an idea, and I think is what Einstein was talking about when he told Bohr "I like to think the moon is still there when I'm not looking at it". In reality, I think we might find some part of the answer through experimenting more with the exact threshold between quantum and classical behavior - we know buckyballs (and viruses, I believe) can be made to interfere and exhibit wavelike behavior, the question is if there's an upper limit to that, where it is, and why it exists?
Their is a difference between a show designed to put forward a certain philosophy, and a phone system or mail system that eliminates certain viewpoints.
Facebook isn't a phone system though, or a mail system. There is a messenger component that is similar to email or texting, certainly. And as far as I know, something sent via that route is never censored or modified in any way (unless it's blocked or reported as harassment). The update feed is fundamentally different, though - it's like Google search results, or Slashdot's front page - when I post an update I have no idea who might see it... could be nobody, could be thousands of people if it gets shared widely. I also don't have any expectation that I'll see every single post from every single person I'm connected to... I merely look at the update feed when I'm interested.
So it seems to me something like a personalized, curated news page with a heavy dose of content from personal connections. Are there laws that apply to this sort of thing? I have no idea. Should there be? That's a good question, but it seems to me that when in doubt, it's better to err on the side of free speech and allow the distributors and content creators to publish what they want.
The real answer to all of this, of course, is critical evaluation of all journalism and information (especially that which agrees with our personal biases) and higher skepticism of media claims all around. It's more fun to blindly accept info that agrees with me and blindly reject information that goes against my ideology, though... so we all know what will really happen.
Laws about disclosing bias are a tricky problem though - how far do you go on requiring that bias be disclosed? Bias is everywhere, and behind every single journal article and every single one of our comments here. Do you require it of all speech, or just speech with the potential for monetary gain? Do you have to disclose bias only if you make money on your content? What about a blogger who only makes a bit of cash on product referrals? What about a bias that you don't know exists (as we certainly both have)? Do you include comic artists, novelists, weather people, and
I think the standard rules are ok for the most part - where there's a clear financial incentive for a journalist (or anyone) to lie, they should disclose it (and typically advertisements are marked as such). I suppose you could require that people disclose their funding sources, but again, how far do you take that? Do you require it of novelists?
I agree with you that on some level we ought to reign in the amount of propaganda and advertising that pollutes minds. The problem is, though, how do you do that without seriously and dangerously restricting first amendment rights? How do you do that without empowering someone (the government, a corporation, etc) to silence dissent? There are some interesting models out there - a look at the advertising restrictions on public radio is a start, and you can consider the BBC for an example of different attempts to provide unbiased press. Removing the profit motive might help in some respects, but the BBC still isn't perfect and shoddy press is still a problem in England.
So, at some level the desire to have this problem go away amounts to the desire for people to stop being assholes. Which would be nice, but will never happen. The best thing I can come up with is that I can point out things like snopes and politifact to call out BS when I see it, and I can hold myself to a high standard of integrity in terms of the things that I will link to or post in internet discussions. We could also hope for better education, and a higher amount of skepticism and critical thinking to be taught to students - but that's not an easy problem either. For sure, though, the one thing you can control is your own integrity and commitment to objectivity - and so I do my honest best to demand evidence even (and especially) for things that I agree with, and to give fair consideration to people with different opinions from my own. That's a start at least.
Here's the thing though: you don't have a right to unbiased news. In fact, Facebook has no legal obligation to provide unbiased news - and it would be a restriction of Facebook's first amendment rights to legally require that they follow any specific doctrine with respect to the news that they choose to promote (or not). They don't need to be unbiased, and they don't need to disclose bias. So, strangely enough, if you really believe in free speech as a constitutional right you believe in Facebook's ability to censor or promote or distort to their heart's content.
That said, even if it isn't illegal for them to do so, you can certainly argue that it is immoral and bad business to censor content or introduce bias into the news feed without disclosing it or giving the user control. I wish that I had an option to make Facebook simply present content chronologically and do no "curating" whatsoever of updates... but it doesn't appear that's an option. If they continue this, though, and it's a big enough problem, that creates an opportunity for a different social network to gain traction. And hell, start your own, with a conservative bias, or that specifically vows to never censor content (a big part of Slashdot's attraction for many of its users, at least with respect to ACs and uneditable comments).
My point isn't to defend what Facebook is doing, but to say that what Facebook is doing isn't restricting free speech. You don't have a right to have airtime on any media platform of your choice, and that's essentially what the Facebook newsfeed amounts to - it's their tech, and their choice who and what they communicate over their platform. As it should be. IMO it's better to use the free market to address censorship and bias by patronizing unbiased news sources that have integrity in their journalism. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be what the masses are interested in, but that's life.
No, you get this straight, my Precious Little Snowflake: one cannot give offense, one can only take it. So un-bunch your panties and recognize that much of that "hate speech" your holding your hands over your ears to avoid hearing may just be another, considered, point of view.
Who has their panties in a bunch here? Because it certainly seems to me that the conservatives who bitch about their right to free speech, when NOBODY IS ACTUALLY RESTRICTING THAT SPEECH, are the really hysterical ones. Your first amendment rights allow you to spew anything you want, no matter how racist, sexist, or backwards it might be. My first amendment rights allow me to call you an idiot and tell everyone else that you aren't worth listening to. So, what you really need to do, is stop insisting that my criticisms of your ideas are an infringement of your rights. You apparently want state protection for hate speech, such that no one is allowed to disagree with you - I'm on the side of free speech, which allows people to respond to racist remarks however they like.
The hypocrisy in your statements is truly staggering. If you are a friend of free speech, you should realize what it means: that short of a very narrow category of things like threats, slander, and libel, people in the U.S. can say anything they damn well please, and other people can respond in kind, and the government can't do anything about it. However, your apparent desire to have racist remarks go unchallenged amounts to a direct request to RESTRICT FREE SPEECH. You are using a misconception about the nature of first amendment rights to destroy the very protections you claim.
So here's what it really means, and what you need to get through your head: you have a right to say whatever the hell you want. And everybody else in the country has a right to ignore you. Wishing it was otherwise just means you are yet another conservative with a made-up persecution complex who takes "freedom" to mean "freedom from things that make me uncomfortable". Which is really just another way of asking to remove freedom from other people.
Sure, that sounds appalling, but Facebook itself is disturbing when you realize it is intentionally structured as an "echo chamber" to reinforce people's existing beliefs. One can only "Like" posts, there is no mechanism for pointing out they are stupid, and one only receives updates about the posts from people one is friended with, which means you probably have conforming views to begin with!
Every post can be commented on - and I frequently do comment on posts that are wrong or misguided. Also, Facebook is merely a reflection of the social group you have created for yourself. If you have a politically diverse friend base, you'll see a diverse mix of updates, but if you selectively associate only with people that share your opinions, you'll only see your own opinions reflected back at you.
I personally have a lot of liberal friends and a lot of conservative friends. And I argue with both of them about the various kinds of bullshit they push.
Yeah, son, actually you kinda do. And that space is called "everywhere in the U.S." You're just young, and confusing the rights you think you *should* have with the rights outlined in the Constitution that you actually, legally, *do* have.
Let's get this straight: telling you that your hate speech is unwelcome in no way infringes upon your first amendment rights. Conservatives seem to think that they ought to be able to say anything at all, no matter how offensive or misanthropic, without having anybody call them out on it. Freedom of speech doesn't protect you from disagreement, and it doesn't protect you from being publicly lambasted for your opinions - it merely means that you can't be thrown in jail or otherwise silenced by the government.
[2] I'm skeptical that government anti-trust efforts are either necessary or even useful. If you look at the history of government anti-trust efforts what you find is a repeated pattern of government stepping in with relatively ineffective measures, followed by the destruction of the monopoly by an innovation-driven market reorganization that which would have happened regardless.
Over and over this topic comes up, and over and over I wonder how in the hell people are so unaware of THE defining example of a government regulated monopoly. That being Ma Bell and Bell Labs, of course. The combo of immense corporate power, focus, and resources, combined with government scrutiny that required them to limit their profits meant that they dumped most excess cash into Bell Labs, which did the lion's share of the fundamental research work that created the information age. Seriously, it's a long list: the transistor, UNIX, cellular networks, information theory for starters... They had all that excess cash from being a government-granted monopoly, but also due to that reason they had to constantly demonstrate that the existence of their monopoly was good for the public. So they dumped the money into research, developed all this revolutionary technology and licensed that tech out cheaply. Bell Labs more than any other single entity deserves to be credited with developing the enabling fundamental technology that's changed the world in the past few decades.
So all this nonsense dogmatism that monopolies are inefficient or that government regulation strangles innovation needs to die - it's the exact opposite of reality. In honesty, we should look at a combination of corporate efficiency and government scrutiny as the model to strive for. This isn't to say that monopolies (or government regulation) are always helpful when they are allowed to exist unchecked, but to say that our single best example in recent history of a total monopoly is also on of our best examples of effective government regulation, and happens to be the best instance of innovation and technological development in modern history.