I'm completely disappointed by my Android phone, however my next will will likely be Android too just because there's no decent alternatives. I can't stand iDevices and how inflexible they are, and there's just no fuckin' way I'm going to use a phone by Microsoft. My best bet is just to make sure I get something that's well-supported by CyanogenMod and use that.
So Android is a real conundrum, on the hand, it's open source, but on the other...
Android is NOT really open source, that's a popular misconception and a canard. An "open source" OS is not filled with closed-source binary drivers that you need to make the thing work. By that standard, Windows is an "open source OS" because there's a few lines of code in there somewhere which are open source.
Linux is an open source OS because all the code you need to run it is open-source (there are a couple of proprietary video drivers, but you don't need these as open-source drivers exist, they just aren't as fast). In addition, it's easy to install Linux on a typical PC. This just isn't true of Android phones: installing a new OS requires rooting the phone, which isn't trivial, and even then it may or may not be possible to run a real open-source Android version on it (like CyanogenMod), depending on whether there's binary (closed-source) drivers required for that device.
In years past, kids who were good at that usually understood it too. Unfortunately, we've regressed to where understanding is not required (hence, iDevices).
I grew up when 8-bit microcomputers were popular: C=64, Apple ][, etc. Yes, kids who were good at using these things did understand them well, however those kids were a small minority. We had computer classes in school back then (~1986) teaching kids how to use Apple ][ computers; most kids were able to turn them on and load a program on disk, and type in a BASIC program, but nothing terribly advanced. Usually, the regular kids ended up asking the computer-savvy kids how to do stuff when the step-by-step instructions the teacher gave failed to work. It did NOT produce whole classes full of kids who really knew how computers worked. It didn't even produce classes full of kids with any interest in computers; they just did enough to pass the class and that was it. When they got to college many years later and were required to buy a computer, this was a big deal for them because they usually didn't already have one.
If that were true RHEL and Ubuntu Server wouldn't have 5-year support on LTS.
It IS true.
Look at what I wrote before:
Anyway, no one really cares that much about desktop and server Linux distros having support for that long because (emphasis mine)
"that long", in this conversation, means as long as Windows XP had support. See the previous comment: Ironically that still isn't as good as Windows (10yrs from obsolescence vs 5yrs from introduction).
5 years isn't even close to as long as WinXP had support. Now, it is important to note that not even MS normally supports stuff that long. Win7 isn't getting support for that long. XP was just a special case.
However, it certainly isn't true that a linux upgrade can't break things, especially proprietary stuff.
It's not nearly as likely, though it is possible if the application is crap and relies on libraries no longer present in modern distros, or relies on specific versions of them which are obsolete, etc. Usually, though, proprietary stuff is all statically-linked and includes all the libraries it needs, so it shouldn't be much of a problem.
New Jersey also has some of the highest property taxes in the nation, and a majority of those taxes are to support the schools there. The state has a separate, independent school district for every single municipality (all 550 of them), because everyone wants "home rule" and no one wants to combine their school district with the poorer sections of their county. By contrast, other east coast states farther south usually have a separate school district for every county, not every single little town, so they end up having an order of magnitude fewer districts statewide, and consequently far lower administration costs. Every one of those 550 school districts in NJ has to support administrative staff, plus a superintendent who makes $250k/year, plus extremely generous retirement pensions for everyone.
I've been wondering when people would start to take notice of this problem with Android. There is no general policy of security backports on it at all.
If you want to see big companies taking linux seriously vendors need to start matching Windows support timelines.
Wrong.
Android is not Linux. Android being mismanaged has nothing to do with Linux versions such as Red Hat, Ubuntu, Arch, Debian, etc.
Anyway, no one really cares that much about desktop and server Linux distros having support for that long because it's easy to simply update the OS to a newer version periodically: it doesn't cost anything, and it doesn't usually break anything either (unlike Windows where changing from, say, XP to 7 will break all kinds of things because there's so many fundamental changes in the OS).
As for the type of data stored on your disk...those are just bits. They are encrypted and unknown/unavailable to you. Exact and similar patterns of bits show up in hundreds of files. They are just bits.
Have fun explaining that to the SWAT team that just busted down your door and shot your dog and is beating you while you're on the floor.
The right wing is making (or has made) world perception of the USA's public attitude as a bunch of morons willing to believe non-fact checked science. All the Koch bros/Fox are doing is discrediting the intelligence of the general US public.
I disagree. They aren't "discrediting" the intelligence of the general US public, they're showing the world just how stupid the general US public is. We are a bunch of morons.
Well again, I've mailed countless packages a day or two late, from many different post offices in different parts of the country, and never had a problem. I've mailed almost 2000 packages in the last few years; not a single one returned.
Where people might be seeing a problem is with Express Mail (now called "Priority Express Mail" for some dumb reason). Express Mail's price does depend on the mailing date to my knowledge. With Priority and First Class, it does not: the price is the same no matter when you send it, and there's no delivery time guarantees at all. So if you send a package a day late, what's the problem? The postage rate is the same. With Express, however, they guarantee it'll get there by a certain date (1-2 days away usually), so that depends on when you send it. However, when you print an Express label, it does have a place at the bottom for the postal clerk to write when the package was accepted at the PO, so even here it shouldn't matter too much, except again the price might vary by mailing date (I'm not too sure about this; I almost never send anything Express, only Priority and FC).
If you've printed a shipping label "the night before," after business hours in the ship-from zip code, the default shipping date was likely set to the next day.
Nope, at least not with any Paypal labels I've printed. Their site is very stupidly set up too (in many ways). Even if you print a label at 11:55PM, it'll still show that date on the label unless you remember to change the shipping date to the next day.
I've shipped countless packages a day late BTW, and never, ever had one returned.
Bullshit. CNS does print labels correctly and does save you money over the retail rates. I've used it many, many times.
The OP is correct, though: the website is poorly designed, doesn't offer First Class postage (except for international), and generally has a lot of problems. But if you can't figure out how to print labels with it (eventually), you're an idiot.
The factor you're missing is immigration (and also travel): if Iran dropped bombs on US suburbs because of alleged Christian terrorists, it would be incredibly stupid of Iran to then allow large number of US Christians to immigrate into their country, or even to travel in it. Yet that's exactly what western countries are doing.
It's like going and murdering someone's kid (but in a way that the police can't pin it on you, even though the victim's family knows full well you did it), and then inviting him to come live in your house. What kind of idiot does that?
This may or may not be cheaper than what you had before... but you can't complain because you opened the door for a-la-carte pricing, which will inevitably be used to increase profits.
I'm actually OK with this.
I don't have a cable subscription, because their prices are ridiculous and the fact that they think I should actually watch commercials makes me laugh. So if the cable companies make their service even worse and/or increase their prices, that's fine with me. One of two things will happen: either more people will "cut the cord", and the cable companies will die out, which will make me throw a party to celebrate, or people will continue to be idiots and subscribe, making the companies even more profitable, which will make me sit back and laugh at how stupid all those people are.
Cable TV is not like air travel. If I want to go to California, or worse, Sydney, air travel is the only reasonable option. Cable TV is a pure luxury, and thanks to Netflix and other online streaming services, is now completely obsolete. The only reason it's still doing OK is because so many people are like AOL users.
Well think of it this way: when aliens (presumably with FTL technology that we still think is impossible) come visiting, which is going to impress them and make them think ours is an advanced, worthwhile civilization to make first contact with and make diplomatic ties with and exchange technology with? Hint: it sure as hell isn't Britney Spears.
But hey, if you want to just be one of countless backwards races that none of the cool aliens of the galaxy want to waste their time visiting, and who just sits on their backwards little planet entertaining themselves with fart jokes and Honey Boo Boo and Britney Spears, that's your choice. Hopefully, people like Elon Musk will be able to advance space travel technology enough to allow people like us to abandon low-foreheaded people like you on this rock, so we can venture in space and hobnob with the galactic elite on the paradise worlds while you guys sit around wondering why the weather keeps getting worse and why the sea levels are rising so fast.
Well, if they'd stop forcing NASA to get hijacked by other interests, and just do makes sense for space exploration, then they wouldn't have this problem.
NASA did great back in the 60s when they were given a single, simple mission, land men on the moon, and given the proper funding to do so (at a time when the technology needed didn't even exist), and wide latitude as to how it should be done.
How about this thought experiment? Forget the Indians for a moment, because you're right, a nuclear war probably should have left more evidence than that (any nuclear experts around?).
We know that humans have been around for about 2 million years. We also know that humans can go from very primitive technology to nuclear weapons and airplanes in only 1000 years (imagine where we'd be now if the Roman Empire hadn't collapsed and all that technological progress lost, with 1000 years between then and the Enlightenment).
Is it possible humans, somewhere, at some very distant time in the past (perhaps 1 million years ago), developed an advanced civilization and then destroyed themselves with nukes? Is 1M years sufficiently distant that several nuclear (or just atomic) detonations would be undetectable now, and for all other traces of that civilization to be gone?
Just how far back do we have to go before a civilization is completely undetectable to us with our present technology and amount of digging we've done? How about non-humans? Would it have been possible for some race to have evolved and created such a civilization 100M or even 1 billion years ago? IIRC, Arthur C Clarke's book "Light of Other Days" actually has this as a plot point at the end.
And they're doing worse than the US how? Last I heard, China only just recently surpassed the US in carbon emissions, and that's with a far larger population plus a huge amount of manufacturing (that we've sent over there). It's rather hypocritical to criticize them for environmentalism when we're polluting 4x as much as them per capita.
Nuclear warfare and a society with that kind of tech would leave behind much more than civilization we've found so far
That's what I'm thinking, but also remember, 10k years (or better yet, 20k or 30k) is a really long time; natural processes quickly erase signs of civilization.
and India is the second most populous country in the world by a rather large margin, which would make it harder to hide something there than the Amazon.
Not necessarily: if all the evidence is buried, it could still be there. India may be populated, but it's never (in the last thousand years at least) been a major center of economic activity or a world power, and has been a bit of a backwater. Here in industrialized western nations (US and EU), we regularly find stuff (especially in the EU) when we're building stuff and accidentally dig up something old. We just recently discovered the skeleton of Richard III in England for example. Many other important archeological discoveries have been made when, for instance, digging the foundation for a large building. India has only recently gotten a decent degree of industrialization; perhaps there's all kinds of things underground waiting to be discovered. Plus, in Europe the oldest technological stuff will only be 2k years old or so, except maybe for stone tools made by Neanderthals and the like. If there's 20k-year-old stuff in India, it might not be discovered until people do really deep digging for things.
Also, in order for them to develop the kind of technology to have a nuclear state, they would need to have had advanced farming, and would have had to have had a bigger population than the rest of the world combined at that time to have the manpower to have developed such things.
Probably true. The other problem I have is that not only should there have been artifacts in India, but elsewhere too, as such a civilization surely would have sent people and technological items around the world. They wouldn't have just flown their vimana around India and stayed away from everywhere else. But there's no evidence for any such technology, even though we have, for instance, found ancient stone tools from humans from before those times, and have found very ancient human bodies trapped in bogs.
Nuclear war that destroyed a civilization would probably leave some kind of trace, as would a civilization that advanced.
It would, but surely it could be long-buried. If this civilization is truly ancient, for instance more than 10k years old, and was destroyed that long ago, that's a long time for ruins to be covered up by natural and geological processes. We're still finding whole cities in the rain forest of Central America now which were previously thought to be legendary or were simply unknown, and that's from a civilization that only died out about 1500 years ago. As for timelines to develop technology, remember only 500 years ago we westerners were all living in wooden huts and burning each other at the stake for heresy; the Industrial Revolution only started less than 200 years ago. It's conceivable (though highly unlikely, thanks to the lack of physical evidence so far) that another technological civilization rose up > 10k years ago, but destroyed itself in nuclear warfare. 10k years is probably enough time for radioactive contamination to peter out to background levels and not be easily detectable, I should think. And who knows, maybe the timeline of these ancient writings is wrong: what if this stuff actually happened 20k or 30k years ago? Not much evidence would be left over from that long ago, unless you can manage to find a vimana in a deep cave somewhere.
Now again, I'm not saying any of this is likely, only that it might be possible.
The main problem I do have with all of this, however, is the lack of evidence. While that much time is a long time for things to be buried or weathered away, it seems like some of it should have survived somewhere. And if a civilization back then were as advanced as, say, our civilization circa 1945, it likely wouldn't have confined itself to the Indian subcontinent, it surely would have expanded far beyond that place, and pieces of its technology taken all over the planet.
He needs to stop wasting his time trying to convince people here to spend money on this. Instead, he should go to China and India and convince them. Their societies actually think about things longer-term than the next reality TV show season, so they're going to be the ones to succeed in this stuff, while western society fails and collapses.
We need to make sure to document all of this using an information storage medium that can last eons, so that when alien travelers come to this planet in the far future and find the ruins of our civilization, their xeno-archeologists can read these records and see exactly why our civilization failed.
NASA has been incredibly wasteful and inefficient in their use of funding (just look at the space shuttle program)
NASA had no choice but to be wasteful and inefficient. The military forced them to. The only reason the Space Shuttle happened is because the military wanted a way to not only launch secret spy satellites, but to be able to recapture them and bring them back intact.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm completely disappointed by my Android phone, however my next will will likely be Android too just because there's no decent alternatives. I can't stand iDevices and how inflexible they are, and there's just no fuckin' way I'm going to use a phone by Microsoft. My best bet is just to make sure I get something that's well-supported by CyanogenMod and use that.
So Android is a real conundrum, on the hand, it's open source, but on the other...
Android is NOT really open source, that's a popular misconception and a canard. An "open source" OS is not filled with closed-source binary drivers that you need to make the thing work. By that standard, Windows is an "open source OS" because there's a few lines of code in there somewhere which are open source.
Linux is an open source OS because all the code you need to run it is open-source (there are a couple of proprietary video drivers, but you don't need these as open-source drivers exist, they just aren't as fast). In addition, it's easy to install Linux on a typical PC. This just isn't true of Android phones: installing a new OS requires rooting the phone, which isn't trivial, and even then it may or may not be possible to run a real open-source Android version on it (like CyanogenMod), depending on whether there's binary (closed-source) drivers required for that device.
In years past, kids who were good at that usually understood it too. Unfortunately, we've regressed to where understanding is not required (hence, iDevices).
I grew up when 8-bit microcomputers were popular: C=64, Apple ][, etc. Yes, kids who were good at using these things did understand them well, however those kids were a small minority. We had computer classes in school back then (~1986) teaching kids how to use Apple ][ computers; most kids were able to turn them on and load a program on disk, and type in a BASIC program, but nothing terribly advanced. Usually, the regular kids ended up asking the computer-savvy kids how to do stuff when the step-by-step instructions the teacher gave failed to work. It did NOT produce whole classes full of kids who really knew how computers worked. It didn't even produce classes full of kids with any interest in computers; they just did enough to pass the class and that was it. When they got to college many years later and were required to buy a computer, this was a big deal for them because they usually didn't already have one.
If that were true RHEL and Ubuntu Server wouldn't have 5-year support on LTS.
It IS true.
Look at what I wrote before:
Anyway, no one really cares that much about desktop and server Linux distros having support for that long because (emphasis mine)
"that long", in this conversation, means as long as Windows XP had support. See the previous comment: Ironically that still isn't as good as Windows (10yrs from obsolescence vs 5yrs from introduction).
5 years isn't even close to as long as WinXP had support. Now, it is important to note that not even MS normally supports stuff that long. Win7 isn't getting support for that long. XP was just a special case.
However, it certainly isn't true that a linux upgrade can't break things, especially proprietary stuff.
It's not nearly as likely, though it is possible if the application is crap and relies on libraries no longer present in modern distros, or relies on specific versions of them which are obsolete, etc. Usually, though, proprietary stuff is all statically-linked and includes all the libraries it needs, so it shouldn't be much of a problem.
New Jersey also has some of the highest property taxes in the nation, and a majority of those taxes are to support the schools there. The state has a separate, independent school district for every single municipality (all 550 of them), because everyone wants "home rule" and no one wants to combine their school district with the poorer sections of their county. By contrast, other east coast states farther south usually have a separate school district for every county, not every single little town, so they end up having an order of magnitude fewer districts statewide, and consequently far lower administration costs. Every one of those 550 school districts in NJ has to support administrative staff, plus a superintendent who makes $250k/year, plus extremely generous retirement pensions for everyone.
I've been wondering when people would start to take notice of this problem with Android. There is no general policy of security backports on it at all.
If you want to see big companies taking linux seriously vendors need to start matching Windows support timelines.
Wrong.
Android is not Linux. Android being mismanaged has nothing to do with Linux versions such as Red Hat, Ubuntu, Arch, Debian, etc.
Anyway, no one really cares that much about desktop and server Linux distros having support for that long because it's easy to simply update the OS to a newer version periodically: it doesn't cost anything, and it doesn't usually break anything either (unlike Windows where changing from, say, XP to 7 will break all kinds of things because there's so many fundamental changes in the OS).
As for the type of data stored on your disk...those are just bits. They are encrypted and unknown/unavailable to you. Exact and similar patterns of bits show up in hundreds of files. They are just bits.
Have fun explaining that to the SWAT team that just busted down your door and shot your dog and is beating you while you're on the floor.
The right wing is making (or has made) world perception of the USA's public attitude as a bunch of morons willing to believe non-fact checked science. All the Koch bros/Fox are doing is discrediting the intelligence of the general US public.
I disagree. They aren't "discrediting" the intelligence of the general US public, they're showing the world just how stupid the general US public is. We are a bunch of morons.
Well again, I've mailed countless packages a day or two late, from many different post offices in different parts of the country, and never had a problem. I've mailed almost 2000 packages in the last few years; not a single one returned.
Where people might be seeing a problem is with Express Mail (now called "Priority Express Mail" for some dumb reason). Express Mail's price does depend on the mailing date to my knowledge. With Priority and First Class, it does not: the price is the same no matter when you send it, and there's no delivery time guarantees at all. So if you send a package a day late, what's the problem? The postage rate is the same. With Express, however, they guarantee it'll get there by a certain date (1-2 days away usually), so that depends on when you send it. However, when you print an Express label, it does have a place at the bottom for the postal clerk to write when the package was accepted at the PO, so even here it shouldn't matter too much, except again the price might vary by mailing date (I'm not too sure about this; I almost never send anything Express, only Priority and FC).
If you've printed a shipping label "the night before," after business hours in the ship-from zip code, the default shipping date was likely set to the next day.
Nope, at least not with any Paypal labels I've printed. Their site is very stupidly set up too (in many ways). Even if you print a label at 11:55PM, it'll still show that date on the label unless you remember to change the shipping date to the next day.
I've shipped countless packages a day late BTW, and never, ever had one returned.
Bullshit. CNS does print labels correctly and does save you money over the retail rates. I've used it many, many times.
The OP is correct, though: the website is poorly designed, doesn't offer First Class postage (except for international), and generally has a lot of problems. But if you can't figure out how to print labels with it (eventually), you're an idiot.
The factor you're missing is immigration (and also travel): if Iran dropped bombs on US suburbs because of alleged Christian terrorists, it would be incredibly stupid of Iran to then allow large number of US Christians to immigrate into their country, or even to travel in it. Yet that's exactly what western countries are doing.
It's like going and murdering someone's kid (but in a way that the police can't pin it on you, even though the victim's family knows full well you did it), and then inviting him to come live in your house. What kind of idiot does that?
No, they aren't; what the hell are you talking about? A regular MRE is just a vacuum-sealed bag of food.
This may or may not be cheaper than what you had before... but you can't complain because you opened the door for a-la-carte pricing, which will inevitably be used to increase profits.
I'm actually OK with this.
I don't have a cable subscription, because their prices are ridiculous and the fact that they think I should actually watch commercials makes me laugh. So if the cable companies make their service even worse and/or increase their prices, that's fine with me. One of two things will happen: either more people will "cut the cord", and the cable companies will die out, which will make me throw a party to celebrate, or people will continue to be idiots and subscribe, making the companies even more profitable, which will make me sit back and laugh at how stupid all those people are.
Cable TV is not like air travel. If I want to go to California, or worse, Sydney, air travel is the only reasonable option. Cable TV is a pure luxury, and thanks to Netflix and other online streaming services, is now completely obsolete. The only reason it's still doing OK is because so many people are like AOL users.
Well think of it this way: when aliens (presumably with FTL technology that we still think is impossible) come visiting, which is going to impress them and make them think ours is an advanced, worthwhile civilization to make first contact with and make diplomatic ties with and exchange technology with? Hint: it sure as hell isn't Britney Spears.
But hey, if you want to just be one of countless backwards races that none of the cool aliens of the galaxy want to waste their time visiting, and who just sits on their backwards little planet entertaining themselves with fart jokes and Honey Boo Boo and Britney Spears, that's your choice. Hopefully, people like Elon Musk will be able to advance space travel technology enough to allow people like us to abandon low-foreheaded people like you on this rock, so we can venture in space and hobnob with the galactic elite on the paradise worlds while you guys sit around wondering why the weather keeps getting worse and why the sea levels are rising so fast.
Well, if they'd stop forcing NASA to get hijacked by other interests, and just do makes sense for space exploration, then they wouldn't have this problem.
NASA did great back in the 60s when they were given a single, simple mission, land men on the moon, and given the proper funding to do so (at a time when the technology needed didn't even exist), and wide latitude as to how it should be done.
How about this thought experiment? Forget the Indians for a moment, because you're right, a nuclear war probably should have left more evidence than that (any nuclear experts around?).
We know that humans have been around for about 2 million years. We also know that humans can go from very primitive technology to nuclear weapons and airplanes in only 1000 years (imagine where we'd be now if the Roman Empire hadn't collapsed and all that technological progress lost, with 1000 years between then and the Enlightenment).
Is it possible humans, somewhere, at some very distant time in the past (perhaps 1 million years ago), developed an advanced civilization and then destroyed themselves with nukes? Is 1M years sufficiently distant that several nuclear (or just atomic) detonations would be undetectable now, and for all other traces of that civilization to be gone?
Just how far back do we have to go before a civilization is completely undetectable to us with our present technology and amount of digging we've done? How about non-humans? Would it have been possible for some race to have evolved and created such a civilization 100M or even 1 billion years ago? IIRC, Arthur C Clarke's book "Light of Other Days" actually has this as a plot point at the end.
And they're doing worse than the US how? Last I heard, China only just recently surpassed the US in carbon emissions, and that's with a far larger population plus a huge amount of manufacturing (that we've sent over there). It's rather hypocritical to criticize them for environmentalism when we're polluting 4x as much as them per capita.
Nuclear warfare and a society with that kind of tech would leave behind much more than civilization we've found so far
That's what I'm thinking, but also remember, 10k years (or better yet, 20k or 30k) is a really long time; natural processes quickly erase signs of civilization.
and India is the second most populous country in the world by a rather large margin, which would make it harder to hide something there than the Amazon.
Not necessarily: if all the evidence is buried, it could still be there. India may be populated, but it's never (in the last thousand years at least) been a major center of economic activity or a world power, and has been a bit of a backwater. Here in industrialized western nations (US and EU), we regularly find stuff (especially in the EU) when we're building stuff and accidentally dig up something old. We just recently discovered the skeleton of Richard III in England for example. Many other important archeological discoveries have been made when, for instance, digging the foundation for a large building. India has only recently gotten a decent degree of industrialization; perhaps there's all kinds of things underground waiting to be discovered. Plus, in Europe the oldest technological stuff will only be 2k years old or so, except maybe for stone tools made by Neanderthals and the like. If there's 20k-year-old stuff in India, it might not be discovered until people do really deep digging for things.
Also, in order for them to develop the kind of technology to have a nuclear state, they would need to have had advanced farming, and would have had to have had a bigger population than the rest of the world combined at that time to have the manpower to have developed such things.
Probably true. The other problem I have is that not only should there have been artifacts in India, but elsewhere too, as such a civilization surely would have sent people and technological items around the world. They wouldn't have just flown their vimana around India and stayed away from everywhere else. But there's no evidence for any such technology, even though we have, for instance, found ancient stone tools from humans from before those times, and have found very ancient human bodies trapped in bogs.
Nuclear war that destroyed a civilization would probably leave some kind of trace, as would a civilization that advanced.
It would, but surely it could be long-buried. If this civilization is truly ancient, for instance more than 10k years old, and was destroyed that long ago, that's a long time for ruins to be covered up by natural and geological processes. We're still finding whole cities in the rain forest of Central America now which were previously thought to be legendary or were simply unknown, and that's from a civilization that only died out about 1500 years ago. As for timelines to develop technology, remember only 500 years ago we westerners were all living in wooden huts and burning each other at the stake for heresy; the Industrial Revolution only started less than 200 years ago. It's conceivable (though highly unlikely, thanks to the lack of physical evidence so far) that another technological civilization rose up > 10k years ago, but destroyed itself in nuclear warfare. 10k years is probably enough time for radioactive contamination to peter out to background levels and not be easily detectable, I should think. And who knows, maybe the timeline of these ancient writings is wrong: what if this stuff actually happened 20k or 30k years ago? Not much evidence would be left over from that long ago, unless you can manage to find a vimana in a deep cave somewhere.
Now again, I'm not saying any of this is likely, only that it might be possible.
The main problem I do have with all of this, however, is the lack of evidence. While that much time is a long time for things to be buried or weathered away, it seems like some of it should have survived somewhere. And if a civilization back then were as advanced as, say, our civilization circa 1945, it likely wouldn't have confined itself to the Indian subcontinent, it surely would have expanded far beyond that place, and pieces of its technology taken all over the planet.
He needs to stop wasting his time trying to convince people here to spend money on this. Instead, he should go to China and India and convince them. Their societies actually think about things longer-term than the next reality TV show season, so they're going to be the ones to succeed in this stuff, while western society fails and collapses.
We need to make sure to document all of this using an information storage medium that can last eons, so that when alien travelers come to this planet in the far future and find the ruins of our civilization, their xeno-archeologists can read these records and see exactly why our civilization failed.
NASA has been incredibly wasteful and inefficient in their use of funding (just look at the space shuttle program)
NASA had no choice but to be wasteful and inefficient. The military forced them to. The only reason the Space Shuttle happened is because the military wanted a way to not only launch secret spy satellites, but to be able to recapture them and bring them back intact.
'Entertainment' that fails in the marketplace.
Because regular people would rather listen to high-quality music like One Direction and Britney Spears.
So basically, great things require well-meaning ultra-rich people for them to happen, because commoners are too cheap and stupid.