But this whole "everything is either Microsoft or free-as-in-lint" dichotomy is too simple for anyone but retarded schoolchildren.
That's true, but only because it's not about Microsoft, it's about money. Microsoft is simply the exemplar.
Once money gets involved in software development -- or for that matter, once money gets involved in anything -- it has a hugely out-of-proportion influence on how things are run from that time forward. People who contribute money want a say in things; few contributors have the discipline needed to simply give. Products that bring money for their creators tempt those creators with material rewards; few creators have the discipline to question the motivation of each and every one of their own decisions.
Worst of all, money is perceived as power, and, as Frank Herbert said, "Power attracts the corruptible." Once there is money involved, legions of people who believe in or pretend to believe in such fictions as "business ethics" show up. Some number of them are convincing liars who will tell you how your desire to help more people can be enhanced by better marketing, or how having more money will let you do more... isn't that a *good* thing?
I don't trust Apple or Sun because they are in business. They're in business to make money. They're not ashamed of this. Hell, they're *proud* of it! They brag about it to their stockholders. Yes, stockholders. They're not small businesses where a desire for great software and freedom for everyone can have a mellowing influence on decisions. They're big corporations with marketing departments paying money for ads to create the feeling that these big corporations care about something besides getting even more money.
When you remember that Apple runner freeing all the brainwashed 1984 people, or read about Sun's "Connected Communities", remember that people with marketing degrees -- people who were trained for years in methods to distort the truth for business purposes -- created those images to make you feel a certain way about the companies that sign their paychecks.
One of many reasons I work as much as possible with free-as-in-speech software is that it's often free-as-in-beer, too. When there is money involved, it's *less* money. This minimizes the corruption that comes with money by simply having *less* money.
Or even *no* money. There are lots of people busting their asses making great software and giving it away because they believe in excellence in their work and in helping others. If you were designing a perfect world from scratch, isn't that the sort of person you'd want in charge of making things? Aren't *they* the people we should support?
Noooo!!!! I don't know how many "groups" you've worked in at college level, but almost every group has one or two people that do the work and understand the material.
In one simulations group, there were four of us. I did 75% of the work, writing code to simulate a customer queue, someone else did 25% of the work entering data and writing the paper, and Beavis and Butt-Head sat around watching us. (No offense to the much-brighter actual Beavis and Butt-Head intended.)
I wasn't all that upset, but I was hungry, so I "went on strike", "pitched a fit" and "stormed out of the room". After paying way too much for pizza ("I'm sorry, you've misrung that, I only have *two* slices...."), I came back to see our two ballast modules learning the art of silent meditation by intensely staring at a screenful of TurboPascal.
Second, group projects teache the group members to deal with the frustration of working on software with another person. (yeah, cheap shot...)
Not a cheap shot at all. The job of universities -- in practice, if not in my fevered and idealistic dreams -- is to produce workers. Getting along with the untalented volume-occupiers whose primary skill is bull... er, gladhanding... is a workplace skill. One of my instructors called it "an industrial education for the Industrial Revolution".
I'm not sure this is a good thing. I *did* learn this skill in 400-level groups, and every time I apply it in real life, I feel like one of those Nader-supporters who voted for Gore to avoid "throwing away my vote" or "giving the election to Bush".
Many of the technical questions being raised have proposed answers to them in Robert Zubrin's "Mars Direct" Plan..
Anyone with mod points, please mod up krswan's post.
The BBC article has completely out-of-date information corrected by Zubrin.
(1) Travel time is 180 days, *not* 300.
(2) The BBC article says: "Our current recycling technology
is good -- but not good enough." Wrong. The technology
is well-proven... a century old in some cases.
The BBC article also has mythology as information, like the idea that if it did take 300 days that this is a great psychological hardship and we'll need to have a "specially selected" crew.
Finally, there is some sort of politics going on, with the discussion of which nationality should get to place the first footprint on Mars. Quick answer: none of them. A human will be the first to set foot on Mars. (I wish there were Earth citizenships, for civilized people.)
I second krswan's pointer to the Mars Direct site, and add a plug for Zubrin's book, _The Case For Mars_. Zubrin's book is a detailed outline of Mars Direct and will give precision to what is only summarized above.
Yeah, but you'll get the same things you always did for your non-payment; what's changed there? Is it an objection to the two-tiered nature of the content? Why is nothing better than something in that case?
It is indeed. The two-tiered content will lead to a corruption of the material posted, both above AND below the subscriber line. Once there's money involved, things go bad. I'd rather the/. admins posted drunk than under the influence of money; alcohol at least has the saving grace of removing inhibitions.
Also, I'm either part of this community or I'm not. If I wanted to be a second-class citizen, locked out of the good clubs because I don't spend enough money, I could just leave my apartment and participate in the United States.:-)
I just found out about the blackout, so I won't be back until the 28th.
The last thing I'm mentioning here is Subscriber Plums. We have a variety of things that subscribers will eventually have access to.... As I've said before, we won't be taking away things from non-subscribers, just rewarding those who are throwing quarters into the guitar case.
In other words, right now, I have access to everything, and once the "Plums" start, I'll only have access to some things.
That's when I'll go.
Ellen
Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class—whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.
Along the same lines, my cousin -- who used to use Yahoo -- decided to set up his own mail server. Now he's giving online services their own email address coming in to him, so if anyone gives it away, he'll know who it was.
She is angry that Sony Online Entertainment, which owns EverQuest, won't give her the answers she desires. She has hired an attorney who plans to sue the company in an effort to get warning labels put on the games.
Oh, look, she *does* care! A lawsuit will give her the "answers she desires" so much more quickly than creating an account, logging in and asking around. She certainly wouldn't want to ask for help in rec.games.computer.everquest, or do a google search for player registries.
Someone who lacks social skills, they could find it much easier just to play the game instead of going out to a bar."
I don't know whether to find this scary or just ironic. Bars stink of tobacco and booze breath, and their purpose is to serve people an intensely addictive substance. This is better than EverQuest just exactly how?
I'd say that I miss objective journalism, but I've become cynical: I no longer believe there ever was any.
Sun's marketting budget is nothing compared to that of MS.
Hell, Sun only needs to lay out a *little* money! If they post a link to some camera-ready copy, I'll pay for and distribute anti-MS brochures in my spare time!
About 330 light-years, per a Google search (neener neener neener, Anonymous Coward:-@). There are *lots* of stars much closer than that. It's like a whole new field of study, maybe "galactic ecology".
I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, and we used to have a cable TV provider called Prime Cable. It didn't take too long to start calling them Crime Cable.
Naturally we were disappointed when we heard they were being bought out. I mean, what were the odds that the new company would have a name as easy to make fun of as Crime Cable?
What's so shocking about genitals compared to guts? I just don't get it.
Inversion of natural desires by social conditioning is a prime tool of institutional social control in the US.
Sex is naturally and powerfully attractive. Seeing people cut open is naturally and powerfully repulsive. The institutions that govern human life invert these sorts of reactions as much as possible, because these reactions are powerful enough to tear you away from mindless observance of the social order.
The US as a political entity was founded two centuries ago by intelligent and educated free men dedicated to maintaining their own freedom. They recognized, in enlightened self-interest, that the best way to secure their own freedom was to secure that of others. These were powerful men who made lots of money through trade and used it to, among other pleasant activities, get laid. The US as a cultural entity was founded four centuries ago by sexually repressed Puritans who got kicked out of two other countries for attempting violent overthrow of standing governments. The political entity's dramatic increase in freedom was an anomalous spike in the cultural entity's overall downward trend in freedom. From the Declaration of Independence to Marbury v. Madison was only 27 years.
None of these inversions of human nature and none of these infringements on individual rights will change -- none of this even has a chance of changing -- until education of human children starts with the explicitly stated premise that the desires of the individual are unconditionally more important than the artificial needs of family, business, government and all other institutional forms.
Almost everyone believes humans have some rights, but very few don't at some point specify exceptional principles. Some of these principles come from religion, some from science, some from philosophy, but they always show up. There's eventually some excuse why the natural human desire to be free -- the simple desire to do what you want, without interference -- has to be curbed. What's still missing is the unconditional placement of the individual at the top of the social pyramid.
Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about how a fish tank works. In fact, less than nothing... I know stuff that's wrong.:-)
Mike, could you perhaps use a really long piece of plastic tubing? Just coil the tubing on the outside of the case like a big cinnabon. (Secured with duct tape, of course.) The ends of the tubing could run back to the compressor? The pump? Whatever it is in the aquarium that circulates the water and makes the bubbles.
The water would be around room temperature from the tank (plus a few ergs for fishy metabolism? minus a few for evaporative cooling?) Or, for those with no fish in the equation, 15 degrees or so from the tap.
Water has something like 64 times the heat capacity of air. As long as the water kept flowing through the cinnabon, it's bound to take some heat away.
I don't know how efficient this would be. Would the actual amount of cooling make up for having to leave the case on the box? In either case, a hell of a conversation starter.
From: Richard Stallman
To: uraeus linuxpower org
Cc: gnome-summary gnome org
Subject: Re: Discussion dropped
Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 07:44:38 -0600 (MDT)
As GNOME is a part of the GNU Project, it is supposed to follow the GNU Project policies--and none of them is more important than the policy towards non-free software. Our reason for existence is that non-free software is a bad thing. To promote its use, to assert it is a good thing, is to deny our goal.
Please stop promoting non-free software in these summaries.
This hardly appears to be authoritarian censorship of some sort. RMS is suggesting that GNOME simply follow its own policies. This suggestion isn't about some fine and obscure point; it's about GNOME violating the most fundamental element of its own policy.
The proabition against unreasonable searches and sezures is a limitation on the police powers of the government, not on it's ability to set terms of employment.
Here is what the Constitution actually says on this issue:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
In brief, you can't search someone without probable cause sworn in front of a judge, and you have to say what you're looking for.
Sep. 11th changed the definition of "unreasonable". War usually does, and make no mistake, we're in a war. Even if Congress hasn't quite declared it.
Assume for discussion's sake that being in a state of war justifies the dimunition of fundamental civil rights. Congress hasn't declared war. Are you proposing that we should surrender our civil rights based on a state of war that hasn't been legally declared? Should we surrender our civil rights based on the general feeling that we are at war?
(This leaves aside two issues whaich are relevant to the current 'war' and, presumably, somewhat relevant to this thread.
One, as a legal issue, can a state of war be declared against a terrorist organization? This isn't the U.S. against Afghanistan. It's the U.S. against some particular segment of the Afghani population, not the Afghani government and military.
Two, as a practical issue, these military actions are not going to benefit us. They will provide propaganda ammunition to the functionaries whose job is to show dead children, point west, and say "The U.S. has killed our innocent children!" Unfortunately, people who are foolish enough to think that they have wisdom enough to make decisions for others -- politicians, in this particular case -- are mental children, so "he started it" is considered good reason to do incredibly stupid things. The only benefit of this is to the politicians who get to pose as strong human beings and say "I defended us against our enemies" the next time they're running for office.)
I wish they would, the most important legal ramification is that when the war ends, the expanded police powers go away automatically.
And here's the really scary part. The people who have the power to take away our civil rights in a time of war are the same people who decide whether or not we're in a time of war.
These people have no legal authority over us, and they never have:
... to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...
... it's not perfect, but it's better than what we have now.
wiredog said:
You have a right to refuse searches... and they have a right to fire you for doing so. You don't have to work there, so the searches can be considered voluntary, or a condition of employment. You're working for the Federal Government, which is definitely a target for attacks these days.
You're talking about the Federal Government as if they were a private business. They're not. The U.S. Federal Government is constrained by the U.S. Constitution -- de jure, if no longer de facto post Marbury v. Madison -- and has to follow a tougher set of rules than a company in the private sector.
More to the point, we crazed philosophers who believe in the American ideal of freedom believe in the Constitution as a higher standard to live up to. The Feds are supposed to be the champions of freedom, not a bunch of control freaks cowering in their offices who just can't stand the idea that there might be something scary in that big bad world out there and wishing that darned Consitution wasn't in the way of making things oh so *very* much safer.
... the laser "signal" from earth (which would presumably only be receivable on a perpendicular to the ground)...
My understanding is that these satellites would have to be in geosynchronous (geostationary?) orbits, like TV satellites. The dirtside equipment would presumably have to pitch and catch at angles like a BUD for TV signals.
Ellen
PS: I've always wanted to ask you about this: "All men are great before declaring war on humanity." Where is it from?
Nineteen years until the SPS appears over the horizon?!? Once again, here's the corporate and governmental lack of vision. We could have seen one of these in orbit in 1983!!!
I guess electricity at 1/10th the price isn't sufficient motivation until the lights start going out (if I lived in California, I'd be marching to Sacramento to kick ass and take names, and, oops, I can't write in the dark!)
I wanted to moderate this, but there was no "Stiller"[1] rating for stuff that you think is maybe supposed to be funny but is so simultaneously off the wall and parodically accurate that it creeps you out....
Ellen
[1] See "Ben Stiller's The Pig Latin Lover and Parallel Universe Theory", Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory Weekly, 2012 January 23.
Slashdot Mirror
But this whole "everything is either Microsoft or free-as-in-lint" dichotomy is too simple for anyone but retarded schoolchildren.
That's true, but only because it's not about Microsoft, it's about money. Microsoft is simply the exemplar.
Once money gets involved in software development -- or for that matter, once money gets involved in anything -- it has a hugely out-of-proportion influence on how things are run from that time forward. People who contribute money want a say in things; few contributors have the discipline needed to simply give. Products that bring money for their creators tempt those creators with material rewards; few creators have the discipline to question the motivation of each and every one of their own decisions.
Worst of all, money is perceived as power, and, as Frank Herbert said, "Power attracts the corruptible." Once there is money involved, legions of people who believe in or pretend to believe in such fictions as "business ethics" show up. Some number of them are convincing liars who will tell you how your desire to help more people can be enhanced by better marketing, or how having more money will let you do more... isn't that a *good* thing?
I don't trust Apple or Sun because they are in business. They're in business to make money. They're not ashamed of this. Hell, they're *proud* of it! They brag about it to their stockholders. Yes, stockholders. They're not small businesses where a desire for great software and freedom for everyone can have a mellowing influence on decisions. They're big corporations with marketing departments paying money for ads to create the feeling that these big corporations care about something besides getting even more money.
When you remember that Apple runner freeing all the brainwashed 1984 people, or read about Sun's "Connected Communities", remember that people with marketing degrees -- people who were trained for years in methods to distort the truth for business purposes -- created those images to make you feel a certain way about the companies that sign their paychecks.
One of many reasons I work as much as possible with free-as-in-speech software is that it's often free-as-in-beer, too. When there is money involved, it's *less* money. This minimizes the corruption that comes with money by simply having *less* money.
Or even *no* money. There are lots of people busting their asses making great software and giving it away because they believe in excellence in their work and in helping others. If you were designing a perfect world from scratch, isn't that the sort of person you'd want in charge of making things? Aren't *they* the people we should support?
Ellen
Noooo!!!! I don't know how many "groups" you've worked in at college level, but almost every group has one or two people that do the work and understand the material.
In one simulations group, there were four of us. I did 75% of the work, writing code to simulate a customer queue, someone else did 25% of the work entering data and writing the paper, and Beavis and Butt-Head sat around watching us. (No offense to the much-brighter actual Beavis and Butt-Head intended.)
I wasn't all that upset, but I was hungry, so I "went on strike", "pitched a fit" and "stormed out of the room". After paying way too much for pizza ("I'm sorry, you've misrung that, I only have *two* slices...."), I came back to see our two ballast modules learning the art of silent meditation by intensely staring at a screenful of TurboPascal.
Second, group projects teache the group members to deal with the frustration of working on software with another person. (yeah, cheap shot...)
Not a cheap shot at all. The job of universities -- in practice, if not in my fevered and idealistic dreams -- is to produce workers. Getting along with the untalented volume-occupiers whose primary skill is bull... er, gladhanding... is a workplace skill. One of my instructors called it "an industrial education for the Industrial Revolution".
I'm not sure this is a good thing. I *did* learn this skill in 400-level groups, and every time I apply it in real life, I feel like one of those Nader-supporters who voted for Gore to avoid "throwing away my vote" or "giving the election to Bush".
Ellen
Many of the technical questions being raised have proposed answers to them in Robert Zubrin's "Mars Direct" Plan..
Anyone with mod points, please mod up krswan's post.
The BBC article has completely out-of-date information corrected by Zubrin.
(1) Travel time is 180 days, *not* 300.
(2) The BBC article says: "Our current recycling technology
is good -- but not good enough." Wrong. The technology
is well-proven... a century old in some cases.
The BBC article also has mythology as information, like the idea that if it did take 300 days that this is a great psychological hardship and we'll need to have a "specially selected" crew.
Finally, there is some sort of politics going on, with the discussion of which nationality should get to place the first footprint on Mars. Quick answer: none of them. A human will be the first to set foot on Mars. (I wish there were Earth citizenships, for civilized people.)
I second krswan's pointer to the Mars Direct site, and add a plug for Zubrin's book, _The Case For Mars_. Zubrin's book is a detailed outline of Mars Direct and will give precision to what is only summarized above.
Ellen
They claim that the author can only link to the site's homepage, and attempting to link to stories within the site violates their copyright.
This isn't about copyright. If you go in via a "deep link", you see less ads.
Ellen
Yeah, but you'll get the same things you always did for your non-payment; what's changed there? Is it an objection to the two-tiered nature of the content? Why is nothing better than something in that case?
/. admins posted drunk than under the influence of money; alcohol at least has the saving grace of removing inhibitions.
:-)
It is indeed. The two-tiered content will lead to a corruption of the material posted, both above AND below the subscriber line. Once there's money involved, things go bad. I'd rather the
Also, I'm either part of this community or I'm not. If I wanted to be a second-class citizen, locked out of the good clubs because I don't spend enough money, I could just leave my apartment and participate in the United States.
I just found out about the blackout, so I won't be back until the 28th.
Ellen
In other words, right now, I have access to everything, and once the "Plums" start, I'll only have access to some things.
That's when I'll go.
Ellen
Along the same lines, my cousin -- who used to use Yahoo -- decided to set up his own mail server. Now he's giving online services their own email address coming in to him, so if anyone gives it away, he'll know who it was.
Ellen
Morrison and Foerster's URL is www.mofo.com.
B-),
Ellen
I'd say that I miss objective journalism, but I've become cynical: I no longer believe there ever was any.
Ellen
Sun's marketting budget is nothing compared to that of MS.
Hell, Sun only needs to lay out a *little* money! If they post a link to some camera-ready copy, I'll pay for and distribute anti-MS brochures in my spare time!
Ellen
That's why as a final tie-breaker in tough cases we sometimes refer people to a group of nine highly respected lawyers.
Bwahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhahahahahahaha!
heh
heh
*gasp*
*wheeze*
*deep breath*
*deep breath*
*deep breath*
Bwahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhahahahahahaha!
ROFL,
Ellen
Some people don't WANT to deal with technology on any level no matter how flawless or "easy" you make it.
Pride overcame Paul's fear. "You dare suggest a duke's son is an animal?" he demanded.
"Let us say I suggest you may be human," she said.
A wee bit over 100 pc.
:-@). There are *lots* of stars much closer than that. It's like a whole new field of study, maybe "galactic ecology".
About 330 light-years, per a Google search (neener neener neener, Anonymous Coward
Not to get all '60s, but... whoa.
Ellen
Does anyone know how far away the cluster was at the time of the alleged nova? I googled around but couldn't find that figure.
Ellen
What kind of dope are these astronomers smoking?
:-)
CNN was smoking the dope. Other sources reported 500 light-years.
Ellen
I live in Las Vegas, Nevada, and we used to have a cable TV provider called Prime Cable. It didn't take too long to start calling them Crime Cable.
Naturally we were disappointed when we heard they were being bought out. I mean, what were the odds that the new company would have a name as easy to make fun of as Crime Cable?
Thank you, Cox!
Ellen
Instructors shouldn't waste time trying to catch cheating out of class; if people are stupid enough to short *themselves* by cheating, let them.
Catch cheating the same way other courses do: with solo in-class exams that can't be faked.
Ellen
What's so shocking about genitals compared to guts? I just don't get it.
Inversion of natural desires by social conditioning is a prime tool of institutional social control in the US.
Sex is naturally and powerfully attractive. Seeing people cut open is naturally and powerfully repulsive. The institutions that govern human life invert these sorts of reactions as much as possible, because these reactions are powerful enough to tear you away from mindless observance of the social order.
The US as a political entity was founded two centuries ago by intelligent and educated free men dedicated to maintaining their own freedom. They recognized, in enlightened self-interest, that the best way to secure their own freedom was to secure that of others. These were powerful men who made lots of money through trade and used it to, among other pleasant activities, get laid. The US as a cultural entity was founded four centuries ago by sexually repressed Puritans who got kicked out of two other countries for attempting violent overthrow of standing governments. The political entity's dramatic increase in freedom was an anomalous spike in the cultural entity's overall downward trend in freedom. From the Declaration of Independence to Marbury v. Madison was only 27 years.
None of these inversions of human nature and none of these infringements on individual rights will change -- none of this even has a chance of changing -- until education of human children starts with the explicitly stated premise that the desires of the individual are unconditionally more important than the artificial needs of family, business, government and all other institutional forms.
Almost everyone believes humans have some rights, but very few don't at some point specify exceptional principles. Some of these principles come from religion, some from science, some from philosophy, but they always show up. There's eventually some excuse why the natural human desire to be free -- the simple desire to do what you want, without interference -- has to be curbed. What's still missing is the unconditional placement of the individual at the top of the social pyramid.
Ellen
Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about how a fish tank works. In fact, less than nothing... I know stuff that's wrong. :-)
Mike, could you perhaps use a really long piece of plastic tubing? Just coil the tubing on the outside of the case like a big cinnabon. (Secured with duct tape, of course.) The ends of the tubing could run back to the compressor? The pump? Whatever it is in the aquarium that circulates the water and makes the bubbles.
The water would be around room temperature from the tank (plus a few ergs for fishy metabolism? minus a few for evaporative cooling?) Or, for those with no fish in the equation, 15 degrees or so from the tap.
Water has something like 64 times the heat capacity of air. As long as the water kept flowing through the cinnabon, it's bound to take some heat away.
I don't know how efficient this would be. Would the actual amount of cooling make up for having to leave the case on the box? In either case, a hell of a conversation starter.
Ellen
This hardly appears to be authoritarian censorship of some sort. RMS is suggesting that GNOME simply follow its own policies. This suggestion isn't about some fine and obscure point; it's about GNOME violating the most fundamental element of its own policy.
Ellen
In brief, you can't search someone without probable cause sworn in front of a judge, and you have to say what you're looking for.
Assume for discussion's sake that being in a state of war justifies the dimunition of fundamental civil rights. Congress hasn't declared war. Are you proposing that we should surrender our civil rights based on a state of war that hasn't been legally declared? Should we surrender our civil rights based on the general feeling that we are at war?
(This leaves aside two issues whaich are relevant to the current 'war' and, presumably, somewhat relevant to this thread.
One, as a legal issue, can a state of war be declared against a terrorist organization? This isn't the U.S. against Afghanistan. It's the U.S. against some particular segment of the Afghani population, not the Afghani government and military.
Two, as a practical issue, these military actions are not going to benefit us. They will provide propaganda ammunition to the functionaries whose job is to show dead children, point west, and say "The U.S. has killed our innocent children!" Unfortunately, people who are foolish enough to think that they have wisdom enough to make decisions for others -- politicians, in this particular case -- are mental children, so "he started it" is considered good reason to do incredibly stupid things. The only benefit of this is to the politicians who get to pose as strong human beings and say "I defended us against our enemies" the next time they're running for office.)
And here's the really scary part. The people who have the power to take away our civil rights in a time of war are the same people who decide whether or not we're in a time of war.
These people have no legal authority over us, and they never have:
Ellen
wiredog said:
You're talking about the Federal Government as if they were a private business. They're not. The U.S. Federal Government is constrained by the U.S. Constitution -- de jure, if no longer de facto post Marbury v. Madison -- and has to follow a tougher set of rules than a company in the private sector.
More to the point, we crazed philosophers who believe in the American ideal of freedom believe in the Constitution as a higher standard to live up to. The Feds are supposed to be the champions of freedom, not a bunch of control freaks cowering in their offices who just can't stand the idea that there might be something scary in that big bad world out there and wishing that darned Consitution wasn't in the way of making things oh so *very* much safer.
Ellen
Ellen
PS: I've always wanted to ask you about this: "All men are great before declaring war on humanity." Where is it from?
Nineteen years until the SPS appears over the horizon?!? Once again, here's the corporate and governmental lack of vision. We could have seen one of these in orbit in 1983!!!
I guess electricity at 1/10th the price isn't sufficient motivation until the lights start going out (if I lived in California, I'd be marching to Sacramento to kick ass and take names, and, oops, I can't write in the dark!)
Ellen
I wanted to moderate this, but there was no "Stiller"[1] rating for stuff that you think is maybe supposed to be funny but is so simultaneously off the wall and parodically accurate that it creeps you out....
Ellen
[1] See "Ben Stiller's The Pig Latin Lover and Parallel Universe Theory", Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory Weekly, 2012 January 23.