Flash mobs give you cover and a chance to get away during the chaos after taking your shot.
Name one instance where an assassin successfully made their shot and then just ran away from the center of a crowd of people. Didn't happen with McKinley, didn't happen with Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and the reaction of a crowd member actually saved the life of Theodore Roosevelt at his assassination attempt.
Plus, instead of having to conspire with a bunch of people, it would only take one or two to get it started.
Yeah, because assassinations just happen on a whim like that. C'mon man, use your noggin. Flash mobs are a traffic hazard at best, not a menace for assassination attempts.
The sad thing is, they've never really tested their gear. From what I can tell from their webpage, they've fired the engine (unmanned) and had a few parties deciding who got to paint the ship. It seems to me that the Wild Fire crew launching this early, without any real tests of their hardware, is making a foolish decision.
Attempting two space launches in an untested vehicle in an attempt to purse-snatch from a crew who's already flown their ship to the edge of space is only a good decision if your crew-return strategy involves a lot of scraping a smoldering crater with a stick and a spoon.
"I mean, it's mostly my fault -- 'Fill out the form, dumb-ass!'
The rest of the article was, well, enlightening (not that you minded a quick shill for your magazine, right?) but it sounds like there are *some* remedies for guys that are wrongly accused. Since you know more about this than me, you might answer me this: are there counter-suits filed by the claimants when it's so easy to demonstrate an error on the part of the state? Sounds like an open-and-shut case to me that a lawyer would love to jump on. Do counter-suits happen, and if not, why?
Also, since you have some connection with the magazine, what did DCSS AD Leora Gershenzon (the article misspells her name) suggest wrongly accused deadbeat dads do? The article rather abruptly shifted away from her interview. In my experience, that means the author didn't want to tell the whole story, so what's the rest of the story?
But thanks for the example - I guess when I made my second post, I should have thought more about California. Despite what their webpage says (filling out a paternity form is the official method mentioned) it shouldn't surprise me that California is that screwed up.:) Consider it a lesson learned on my part. Although it's not as easy as 'she names him, he goes broke' but more like 'she names him, he fails to be vigilant in defending his interests, he goes broke later on.' Wouldn't you agree?
This whole conversation started with a statement to the effect of "once you establish paternity" you're screwed. After about ten or twenty minutes of checking, I was unable to locate a single state where, in order to be listed as the father of a child on the birth certificate, you didn't have to either:
Sign the certificate saying that you were in fact the father, or
be listed as the father as a result of a court order (deposition, genetic testing, etc.)
If you kept it in your pants, you know that you didn't father any children, and would therefore not be likely to sign something saying you did, addressing point 1. Keeping it in your pants will also take care of point 2 quite easily. Ergo, my father's advice stands. You were foolish to doubt him.:)
And the notion that someone could be 'hijacked' into paternity, without either signing something (even by mistake) or with a court mandate, is patently ludicrous, and I challenge you to provide an example of it happening, if you can. Until then, this is just bitter-man misogyny.
Sure, sure, to reply to this (and the poster below) you can substitute using the ideal gas law for T in the relationship for the speed of sound, e.g.
p = rho * R_star * T (for a mass-weighted gas)
In other words, we're all three of us right - c_sound depends on gas constants (including the adiabatic index) and the equation of state, be it temperature, pressure, or density. In the extreme upper atmosphere (well above the troposphere) the easiest thing to measure is probably the density, followed by the pressure, and then the temperature.
Anyways, this is getting OT, but you see my point I hope.:)
Moreover, the article specifically mentions that the 'anti-HIV' virus is essentially a euphemism for gene therapy. Sure, it only takes $200k to solve the problem when you don't count the research dollars spent getting you to the point where 'viral' gene therapy is possible.
Something about giants and shoulders comes to mind...:)
Technically, that's wrong. The speed of sound, as you've correctly mentioned, is related to gas constants and the temperature of the gas. However, a simple substitution using the equation of state demonstrates the relationship between the speed of sound and the ambient pressure. Regardless, the speed of sound is affected by pressure.
Now, at extremely high altitude (p ~ a few mb) the speed of sound is remarkably slow. Perhaps more interestingly, the idea of what exactly constitutes a gas at this altitude makes the notion of a speed of sound in space somewhat muddled, which is probably what grandparent poster was thinking about.
I don't know if pudge was really throwing a cheap shot: after all, he was talking about his own small package or something. Combined with the fact that the post is obviously Mac-zealot fodder, I just thought this kinda, y'know, was natural.
While Polar Orbits can reach every spot on earth, other orbits might be more effective for certain trouble spots at certain latitudes.
Pick your favorite form of LEO, then - they all go about the same speed. Multiple polar orbiters would be the fastest way to go, but see my previous statement about the number of polar orbiters needed to make this worthwile. Airstrikes from Diego Garcia or carrier-based attacks would give you about the same response time for a fraction of the cost.
As to the good luck with those 'missile launch killer' satellites, I doubt much you are in any position to really evaluate their potential.
Not a pacifist, not necessarily against SDI even, but my physics background and friends who were involved with the Air Force's 747-based anti-missile laser give me more basis to evaluate the potential of a satellite hitting a missile in boost phase than you might think. It's not impossible to do, but it's easier (and cheaper) to do from a plane a thousand miles away and travelling a few hundred miles per hour than from low-earth orbit at a few tens of kilometers per second.
These are options and scenarios that our government must consider, because I assure you other governments are.
Sure, sure - consider all you want, but when it comes down to it, I'd rather spend those defense dollars on programs that will actually work. Wouldn't you?
We tried to bomb where Saddam was, but he wasn't there. Missing him might have just been the time in getting the bombing mission together.
So...you think waiting for a polar-orbiting satellite to work its way around the planet a few times is any faster? Diego Garcia ain't that far from Iraq, buddy, and a B-1 mission sounds a lot cheaper than the number of satellites we'd need to launch to keep response times down to an hour or three.
Space holds special unique military advantages to those that use it, and with the proper systems in place, one nation could keep all other nations out of space. If your missile launch killers are the only ones in space, no one is going to disrupt your monopoly.
First, good luck with those 'missile launch killer' satellites. Second, the other orbiting weapons platforms mentioned are well within the launch capabilities of other nations. Hell, even the French have launch vehicles capable of doing this. And if we do it, everyone else who can will do it too, leading to an expensive and pointless arms race that the U.S. can ill afford. Unless you like how the former USSR is doing nowadays.:)
So set Explorer to single-click folders, and remove toolbars or size their graphics to Small.
Better solution: select 'Linux' from the LILO prompt, boot only to WinXP to play Max Payne 2.:D
What I really should have said was this - I dislike GUI file browsers, period. IE/Explorer is just more loathsome for me with it's (again, to me) extraneous web-browser-like features, which I must manually remove. My main objection is the fact that IE/Explorer is the default file browser in Windows. Some people still like CLI for file management, and Windows' CLI option is a major PITA compared to other OSs.
Anyways, somewhere I may have mentioned the phrase 'to each their own'.;)
Forgot this was slashdot, not fark - I meant to say the numpad enter key (which on my setup is right next to my mouse) but I stupidly used brackets to delineate the key designation, which slashcode rendered as bad HTML. Oops.:)
The fourth click is to 'select' the URL from text - opening a hyperlink in a new tab is only two clicks (right-click URL, left-click on 'open in new tab'.) Still faster than IE, either way.:)
...and notice the part about the USSR capturing the German's A4 rocket as well as swiping a goodly number of Peenemunde scientists. The U.S. got the rest of 'em.
And before anyone tries to call me lazy, I challenge any mouse-wheel addicted user to disable the wheel.
Challenge met, sir, let me get my hammer...
*whomp* *whomp* *WHOMP*...yeah, that ought to do it.:)
And while I appreciate that you enjoy the features you list above (fav's in folders, taskbar access, toolbar mobility) they're not for everyone. Me, for example - I tend to struggle with Microsoft's 'You Must Double-Click A Lot To Get Your File Structure Sorted' hierarchy, and all those damn toolbars just eat space on my not-so-high resolution screen. To each their own, I suppose.
Anyways, if you haven't already, try Firebird - you lose some of the things you like, but the UI is about as intuitive as any I've used, especially in Linux. Cut-n-pasting URLs into new tabs with four mouse clicks and a whammy on the NumPad key just looks cool.
Lomborg's book has 2 930 footnotes which allows you to fact check every single assertion that he makes. I've never seen that level of detail from the environmentalist movement and I speak as someone who has read more than just their pamphlets.
If you haven't read these, then you're just whacking off. Of course, if you had read these, you wouldn't be accusing 'the environmentalist movement' of not being detailed.
I'm curious - who exactly are you trying to impress with your post? DCSD have declared that Lomborg's book isn't scientifically honest (and with chapters titled 'Pollution, Does it Undercut Human Prosperity?' I'm tempted to agree) and you wish for...what? That a book primarily about cost-benefit analyses and socioeconomic impacts of environmental regulation parading as science be declared scientifically honest? Look, it's a fine book for policy wonks, but it ain't science, and it shouldn't be presented as such. So what do you want?
A few more years of this, there won't be any room left on the screen for apps.
That's a feature, not a bug - if Microsoft keeps flexing it's monopolistic muscle, in a few years, there won't be any apps - only MS embedded 'programs' like Internet Exploder, Outlook, etc. So who needs screen space?:)
Re:The real problem with "E-Democracy"
on
Public Net-work
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
was gonna mod, decided to post instead...
so what your saying is that people are not capable of governing themselfs and that we need a ruling class???
No...what they're saying is "e-democracy" falls short of real democracy insofar as real democracy contains a measure of order, brought about by the inherent limitations of communication IRL. (Notice how parliamentary rules have evolved to address this very issue in our various forms of government.) Grandparent poster's point is that 'e-democracy' removes these communication limitations, thereby removing orderly dissemination of the democratic process, leading to mob-dominated chaos. Thus does 'e-democracy' fall short of real democracy. Kindly remove the aluminum beanie.:)
Why do I have to prove that I own my music? It is their responsability to prove that I don't own it. WTF?
In a word: precisely. And it's really, really hard for the RIAA to do that, i.e. get a subpoena/warrant, search through someone's hard drive, prosecute, wash, rinse, and repeat. They know they can't afford to do that over and over again. Which is the beauty (in the most evil and twisted sense of that word) of this little program - the RIAA thinks people will gladly do the RIAA's dirty work for 'em, like they're suckers or something.
Then again, people pay money for Christina Aguilera too...maybe the RIAA's got a point...:)
Did you even RTFA? NO:) Do they force you to sign the license or click accept? NO
Well, yes, actually, they tried. If you want to get out of BIOS you had to click through, and tech support instructed them to just click accept even though it was impossible to read the documents they were agreeing to. Do you enter into legal agreements without reading them first? to me it looks like a ordinary Windows EULA.
But see...Windows EULAs approach War and Peace in terms of sheer bulk - this Dell BIOS screen was maybe a paragraph, with a big goofy 'click here' image at the bottom. Not even remotely similar to a Windows EULA.
Heh-heh...you're joking, right? Let's look at some innovations that came out of.edu's...
The Mouse - developed at the Stanford Research Institute and forwared to Xerox PARC...
Windowed GUI systems - again Xerox PARC, which benefited from it's University of Washington roots...
While we're on GUIs...the X-Windows system was an MIT project
Although DARPA created the Internet (Al Gore notwithstanding:) it was universities that spread its use to students long before AOL came around...
You are familiar with what the "B" stands for in "BSD" aren't you? (hint: it's Berkeley, as in UC-Berkeley. OK, that's more than a hint, but I figured you might need it...)
...and that's just off the top of my head. I don't think you can swing a cat in the world of computers and not hit something that exists at least partly because of those pesky.edus.
Besides which, if you think that Microsoft ripping off Q-DOS to make MS-DOS and then copying Apple to make Windows is 'innovative' then I have a bridge that might be for sale...:)
Well...to be really anal, what gives a diamond its 'sparkle' is the combination of an extremely high index of refraction and perfect diamond-cutting techniques exploit the critical angle of said index of refraction. Snell's law is as responsible for sparkly diamonds as is the carbon itself.:)
Seems to me there's no pressure on NASA to be practical or cost efficient, which is whats really needed.
Not only does this pressure exist, it has been listed as a contributory cause to both the Challenger and the Columbia accident. Chapter 5 and 6.2 of the CAIB final report goes into this in great detail.
"An Agency Trying To Do Too Much With Too Little" seems to sum up these sections. Keeping in mind that NASA's budget varies between one-half and one percent of the national budget, that's not to far afield. By way of comparison, NASA's budget is comparable to what the U.S. spends on food stamps. We spend ~30 times as much money on Social Security as we do on the entirity of NASA, with much, much higher expectations on safety and mission success. Don't even get me started on the ratio of DoD funding to NASA's.:)
Seems to me there's too much pressure on NASA to be practical and cost efficient given the dearth of resources we give them. Frankly, it's a miracle we fly in space at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Flash mobs give you cover and a chance to get away during the chaos after taking your shot.
Name one instance where an assassin successfully made their shot and then just ran away from the center of a crowd of people. Didn't happen with McKinley, didn't happen with Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and the reaction of a crowd member actually saved the life of Theodore Roosevelt at his assassination attempt.
Plus, instead of having to conspire with a bunch of people, it would only take one or two to get it started.
Yeah, because assassinations just happen on a whim like that. C'mon man, use your noggin. Flash mobs are a traffic hazard at best, not a menace for assassination attempts.
The sad thing is, they've never really tested their gear. From what I can tell from their webpage, they've fired the engine (unmanned) and had a few parties deciding who got to paint the ship. It seems to me that the Wild Fire crew launching this early, without any real tests of their hardware, is making a foolish decision.
Attempting two space launches in an untested vehicle in an attempt to purse-snatch from a crew who's already flown their ship to the edge of space is only a good decision if your crew-return strategy involves a lot of scraping a smoldering crater with a stick and a spoon.
The first thing I read that amused me was:
:) Consider it a lesson learned on my part. Although it's not as easy as 'she names him, he goes broke' but more like 'she names him, he fails to be vigilant in defending his interests, he goes broke later on.' Wouldn't you agree?
"I mean, it's mostly my fault -- 'Fill out the form, dumb-ass!'
The rest of the article was, well, enlightening (not that you minded a quick shill for your magazine, right?) but it sounds like there are *some* remedies for guys that are wrongly accused. Since you know more about this than me, you might answer me this: are there counter-suits filed by the claimants when it's so easy to demonstrate an error on the part of the state? Sounds like an open-and-shut case to me that a lawyer would love to jump on. Do counter-suits happen, and if not, why?
Also, since you have some connection with the magazine, what did DCSS AD Leora Gershenzon (the article misspells her name) suggest wrongly accused deadbeat dads do? The article rather abruptly shifted away from her interview. In my experience, that means the author didn't want to tell the whole story, so what's the rest of the story?
But thanks for the example - I guess when I made my second post, I should have thought more about California. Despite what their webpage says (filling out a paternity form is the official method mentioned) it shouldn't surprise me that California is that screwed up.
And neither, apparantly, are you.
This whole conversation started with a statement to the effect of "once you establish paternity" you're screwed. After about ten or twenty minutes of checking, I was unable to locate a single state where, in order to be listed as the father of a child on the birth certificate, you didn't have to either:
If you kept it in your pants, you know that you didn't father any children, and would therefore not be likely to sign something saying you did, addressing point 1. Keeping it in your pants will also take care of point 2 quite easily. Ergo, my father's advice stands. You were foolish to doubt him.
And the notion that someone could be 'hijacked' into paternity, without either signing something (even by mistake) or with a court mandate, is patently ludicrous, and I challenge you to provide an example of it happening, if you can. Until then, this is just bitter-man misogyny.
I'll be waiting for your reply.
My dad came up with the perfect solution a long time ago, and when I got Old Enough To Get In Trouble, he told it to me. I'll tell it to you, now.
"Son, unless you want to pay for a kid, keep it in your pants."
I suspect a lot of people on Slashdot follow this advice (whether they want to or not
Sure, sure, to reply to this (and the poster below) you can substitute using the ideal gas law for T in the relationship for the speed of sound, e.g.
:)
p = rho * R_star * T (for a mass-weighted gas)
In other words, we're all three of us right - c_sound depends on gas constants (including the adiabatic index) and the equation of state, be it temperature, pressure, or density. In the extreme upper atmosphere (well above the troposphere) the easiest thing to measure is probably the density, followed by the pressure, and then the temperature.
Anyways, this is getting OT, but you see my point I hope.
Moreover, the article specifically mentions that the 'anti-HIV' virus is essentially a euphemism for gene therapy. Sure, it only takes $200k to solve the problem when you don't count the research dollars spent getting you to the point where 'viral' gene therapy is possible.
Something about giants and shoulders comes to mind...
Technically, that's wrong. The speed of sound, as you've correctly mentioned, is related to gas constants and the temperature of the gas. However, a simple substitution using the equation of state demonstrates the relationship between the speed of sound and the ambient pressure. Regardless, the speed of sound is affected by pressure.
Now, at extremely high altitude (p ~ a few mb) the speed of sound is remarkably slow. Perhaps more interestingly, the idea of what exactly constitutes a gas at this altitude makes the notion of a speed of sound in space somewhat muddled, which is probably what grandparent poster was thinking about.
As long as we're throwing cheap shots...
/dodging bitch-slappage now... :)
I don't know if pudge was really throwing a cheap shot: after all, he was talking about his own small package or something. Combined with the fact that the post is obviously Mac-zealot fodder, I just thought this kinda, y'know, was natural.
While Polar Orbits can reach every spot on earth, other orbits might be more effective for certain trouble spots at certain latitudes.
Pick your favorite form of LEO, then - they all go about the same speed. Multiple polar orbiters would be the fastest way to go, but see my previous statement about the number of polar orbiters needed to make this worthwile. Airstrikes from Diego Garcia or carrier-based attacks would give you about the same response time for a fraction of the cost.
As to the good luck with those 'missile launch killer' satellites, I doubt much you are in any position to really evaluate their potential.
Not a pacifist, not necessarily against SDI even, but my physics background and friends who were involved with the Air Force's 747-based anti-missile laser give me more basis to evaluate the potential of a satellite hitting a missile in boost phase than you might think. It's not impossible to do, but it's easier (and cheaper) to do from a plane a thousand miles away and travelling a few hundred miles per hour than from low-earth orbit at a few tens of kilometers per second.
These are options and scenarios that our government must consider, because I assure you other governments are.
Sure, sure - consider all you want, but when it comes down to it, I'd rather spend those defense dollars on programs that will actually work. Wouldn't you?
We tried to bomb where Saddam was, but he wasn't there. Missing him might have just been the time in getting the bombing mission together.
:)
So...you think waiting for a polar-orbiting satellite to work its way around the planet a few times is any faster? Diego Garcia ain't that far from Iraq, buddy, and a B-1 mission sounds a lot cheaper than the number of satellites we'd need to launch to keep response times down to an hour or three.
Space holds special unique military advantages to those that use it, and with the proper systems in place, one nation could keep all other nations out of space. If your missile launch killers are the only ones in space, no one is going to disrupt your monopoly.
First, good luck with those 'missile launch killer' satellites. Second, the other orbiting weapons platforms mentioned are well within the launch capabilities of other nations. Hell, even the French have launch vehicles capable of doing this. And if we do it, everyone else who can will do it too, leading to an expensive and pointless arms race that the U.S. can ill afford. Unless you like how the former USSR is doing nowadays.
So set Explorer to single-click folders, and remove toolbars or size their graphics to Small.
:D
;)
Better solution: select 'Linux' from the LILO prompt, boot only to WinXP to play Max Payne 2.
What I really should have said was this - I dislike GUI file browsers, period. IE/Explorer is just more loathsome for me with it's (again, to me) extraneous web-browser-like features, which I must manually remove. My main objection is the fact that IE/Explorer is the default file browser in Windows. Some people still like CLI for file management, and Windows' CLI option is a major PITA compared to other OSs.
Anyways, somewhere I may have mentioned the phrase 'to each their own'.
4? Numpad?
:)
:)
Forgot this was slashdot, not fark - I meant to say the numpad enter key (which on my setup is right next to my mouse) but I stupidly used brackets to delineate the key designation, which slashcode rendered as bad HTML. Oops.
The fourth click is to 'select' the URL from text - opening a hyperlink in a new tab is only two clicks (right-click URL, left-click on 'open in new tab'.) Still faster than IE, either way.
...which just means that their ex-Nazi rocket scientists were faster than our ex-Nazi rocket scientists. Check this out for enhanced cluefulness...
...and notice the part about the USSR capturing the German's A4 rocket as well as swiping a goodly number of Peenemunde scientists. The U.S. got the rest of 'em.
Chronology of the Russian Space Program
And before anyone tries to call me lazy, I challenge any mouse-wheel addicted user to disable the wheel.
...yeah, that ought to do it. :)
Challenge met, sir, let me get my hammer...
*whomp* *whomp* *WHOMP*
And while I appreciate that you enjoy the features you list above (fav's in folders, taskbar access, toolbar mobility) they're not for everyone. Me, for example - I tend to struggle with Microsoft's 'You Must Double-Click A Lot To Get Your File Structure Sorted' hierarchy, and all those damn toolbars just eat space on my not-so-high resolution screen. To each their own, I suppose.
Anyways, if you haven't already, try Firebird - you lose some of the things you like, but the UI is about as intuitive as any I've used, especially in Linux. Cut-n-pasting URLs into new tabs with four mouse clicks and a whammy on the NumPad key just looks cool.
Lomborg's book has 2 930 footnotes which allows you to fact check every single assertion that he makes. I've never seen that level of detail from the environmentalist movement and I speak as someone who has read more than just their pamphlets.
Clicky-clicky:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/techrep.htm
If you haven't read these, then you're just whacking off. Of course, if you had read these, you wouldn't be accusing 'the environmentalist movement' of not being detailed.
I'm curious - who exactly are you trying to impress with your post? DCSD have declared that Lomborg's book isn't scientifically honest (and with chapters titled 'Pollution, Does it Undercut Human Prosperity?' I'm tempted to agree) and you wish for...what? That a book primarily about cost-benefit analyses and socioeconomic impacts of environmental regulation parading as science be declared scientifically honest? Look, it's a fine book for policy wonks, but it ain't science, and it shouldn't be presented as such. So what do you want?
A few more years of this, there won't be any room left on the screen for apps.
:)
That's a feature, not a bug - if Microsoft keeps flexing it's monopolistic muscle, in a few years, there won't be any apps - only MS embedded 'programs' like Internet Exploder, Outlook, etc. So who needs screen space?
was gonna mod, decided to post instead...
:)
so what your saying is that people are not capable of governing themselfs and that we need a ruling class???
No...what they're saying is "e-democracy" falls short of real democracy insofar as real democracy contains a measure of order, brought about by the inherent limitations of communication IRL. (Notice how parliamentary rules have evolved to address this very issue in our various forms of government.) Grandparent poster's point is that 'e-democracy' removes these communication limitations, thereby removing orderly dissemination of the democratic process, leading to mob-dominated chaos. Thus does 'e-democracy' fall short of real democracy. Kindly remove the aluminum beanie.
Why do I have to prove that I own my music? It is their responsability to prove that I don't own it. WTF?
:)
In a word: precisely. And it's really, really hard for the RIAA to do that, i.e. get a subpoena/warrant, search through someone's hard drive, prosecute, wash, rinse, and repeat. They know they can't afford to do that over and over again. Which is the beauty (in the most evil and twisted sense of that word) of this little program - the RIAA thinks people will gladly do the RIAA's dirty work for 'em, like they're suckers or something.
Then again, people pay money for Christina Aguilera too...maybe the RIAA's got a point...
Common, he could have required a license from Dell if he absolutly wanted one.
Yeah, RTFA, he did exactly that, and they said something to the effect of 'we don't have it, use a public computer and look it up yourself.'
He should trust a big company like Dell, they have nothing to win by screwing him.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry...
Did you even RTFA? NO :)
Do they force you to sign the license or click accept? NO
Well, yes, actually, they tried. If you want to get out of BIOS you had to click through, and tech support instructed them to just click accept even though it was impossible to read the documents they were agreeing to. Do you enter into legal agreements without reading them first?
to me it looks like a ordinary Windows EULA.
But see...Windows EULAs approach War and Peace in terms of sheer bulk - this Dell BIOS screen was maybe a paragraph, with a big goofy 'click here' image at the bottom. Not even remotely similar to a Windows EULA.
Sheesh.
Who has the classified super computers?
:) I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you and all that. :)
That's, um, classified.
Besides which, if you think that Microsoft ripping off Q-DOS to make MS-DOS and then copying Apple to make Windows is 'innovative' then I have a bridge that might be for sale...
Well...to be really anal, what gives a diamond its 'sparkle' is the combination of an extremely high index of refraction and perfect diamond-cutting techniques exploit the critical angle of said index of refraction. Snell's law is as responsible for sparkly diamonds as is the carbon itself. :)
[end pedantism]
Seems to me there's no pressure on NASA to be practical or cost efficient, which is whats really needed.
:)
Not only does this pressure exist, it has been listed as a contributory cause to both the Challenger and the Columbia accident. Chapter 5 and 6.2 of the CAIB final report goes into this in great detail.
"An Agency Trying To Do Too Much With Too Little" seems to sum up these sections. Keeping in mind that NASA's budget varies between one-half and one percent of the national budget, that's not to far afield. By way of comparison, NASA's budget is comparable to what the U.S. spends on food stamps. We spend ~30 times as much money on Social Security as we do on the entirity of NASA, with much, much higher expectations on safety and mission success. Don't even get me started on the ratio of DoD funding to NASA's.
Seems to me there's too much pressure on NASA to be practical and cost efficient given the dearth of resources we give them. Frankly, it's a miracle we fly in space at all.