> So i would say taht the real problem with selling to linux users is the selling to linux users. A company is not going to stay afloat vending end-user software only to Linux customers.
This doesn't address his issue at all, though. His issue is not companies that port to Linux, it's companies thinking that porting to Linux excuses them from the same level of documentation and quality they put into their Windows products (or not), and then griping about Linux not being profitable when they fail to make any money.
His simple point is that making something "for Linux" isn't enough, if that's its only value. Making it useful, functional and well documented is key to selling it, whether to Linux users or to anyone else.
> On the other hand, you don't get support from Microsoft when using WordPerfect on their system either. It's difficult to support every single piece of software there is for Linux.
True, but last time I checked I couldn't download Wordperfect off of Microsoft's web site. Even if they put packages in an "unsupported" section it would be better than what they do now, which is tell you that it's outside the scope only after you download and (try to) install it. It's not that I expect them to support everything, but a warning about what they will and won't support is very difficult to find.
> Very small stream of O2, lit it on fire, it burned.
No, it didn't. Unless you'd care to explain what chemical reaction, exactly, is taking place when oxygen burns? Mix O2 with...what? More O2? Oxygen doesn't burn, because burning is the mixing of some fuel with oxygen, and oxygen doesn't mix with itself.
> THERE WAS A STUDY ABOUT THIS # YEARS AGO THAT
PROVED IT WAS ALL NY..... OFf shore winds push it INTO NJ... you seem to forget the areas that smell are costal cities on the hudson and kill van kull.
Feel free at any time to cite the study you refer to, because I'd be interested to read it. Offshore winds in NYC come from the south, and the only coastal city on the Hudson River is NYC. Therefore it'd seem that Connecticut or lower-upstate New York would be doing the complaining. I understand that areas like Carteret have complained about pollution from Staten Island, but for the most part it's NYC and its environs (and even some Long Island communitites, which is inexplicable to me) that complain about Newark and Jersey City.
ok, lets try this again. you take an oxygen tank, just some goold old 2O2, you open that sumabich up and stike a match, some flint, whatever, you touch a 9volt to some steal wool, you put it close to that escaping gas, the little fire starts. next, you remove this match, spark, or whatever. Does the fire go out? Come on, dont do a 'thought experiment', go try it.
I've done it. Really, actually done it. Held a match in a set of tongs, opened the tank valve, put the match in. The match popped like a firecracker. Guess what? There was no fire after that. The pure oxygen stream doesn't burn like a gas burner. It doesn't burn at all. Sorry, but you lose. Stuff burns faster in pure oxygen, but if there's nothing to burn, there's no fire in the oxygen flow.
Maybe you should consider actually doing what you propose that others do, since if you did more than the "thought experiment" yourself you'd have known this.
To test this yourself, get an oxyacetylene torch. Open the fuel and oxygen valves, and spark it, and you get a flame on the tip. Now, turn off the fuel feed, but not the oxygen. What happens? I did this one in real life, too, and the flame vanished. You could put your hand in the oxygen flow, and it was cool. Again, you lose.
> besides eveyone knowns the air sucks thanks to NY
...except people who actually know anything about meteorology. Prevailing winds in the area go from west to east, so the air over NJ would have to suck very, very hard to reverse that. Actually, New Yorkers could complain that NJ is fouling up their air instead.
No, the air quality in New Jersey sucks entirely due to New Jersey (except the southern part, which gets Philadelphia's grime, but who cares if a bunch of Pineys get soot-blackened anyway? 8)).
> But they're not claiming that the website is their own. They've kept the author's picture and contact information intact.
If they're collecting his page views and then getting revenue from the ad companies for those views, then they're misrepresenting themselves as him to the ad company (or trying to convince the ad company that it's their work that's drawing the impressions, not his). Still deception, therefore fraudulent. If they were displaying the content entirely as his and redirecting ad revenue back to him, they'd be a mirror, not webscrapers.
> It is very difficult to lose intellectual property. It does not work that way.
If someone takes your intellectual property, and presents it as their own, and people believe they're the original creator, then yeah, you do lose intellectual property. Copying and plagiarism are not the same thing. Plagiarism is actually stealing, since when you're done the original creator has actually lost something.
> The important thing is that all of these arguments can be applied to the case of this Taiwanese site.
Not correct. None of the arguments apply to plagiarism, which is the claiming of someone else's ideas as your own. Duplicating an MP3 and claiming that you made it yourself would be a good comparison to this case. The problem is not that the Taiwanese site simply copied the data, but they are misrepresenting it on an ongoing basis as their own work. That dances dangerously close to identity theft, especially if the Taiwanese site is using the fraud to capture ad revenue or using your reputation to garner faith (like convincing someone to give them a credit card number because they think it's you). In the case of a stolen Metallica MP3, it's rather unlikely that someone stealing the MP3 will try to present themselves as Metallica.
> EB is a business and not a charity. If they have goods on the shelf that were once hers she will have to pay for them in order to get them back from EB.
You're incorrect. Stolen goods are stolen goods, no matter how many intermediate buyers they go through, according to the law. Which means that she still owns them, legally, even if EB bought them in good faith. Sorry, but you lose.
> The same thing happened to me (similar circumstance) where a large quantity of music CDs were stolen from my home - in my case the insurance paid the claim after seeing the exetnsive list and photographs of my living room showing the CDs stored there.
Your case doesn't apply. By accepting payment from the insurance company, you yielded ownership rights to the CDs. In a legal sense, when you cashed the insurance check, the CDs weren't yours any more. Therefore, when you went to the store later, you didn't have any right of claim to the CDs, because you're not a representative of the legal owner (the insurance company, in this case). Sorry, but you lose again.
Maybe you can take a bit of the insurance check and buy yourself some law books.
> Is this good? Is it legal? Is it right? I don't know...I just do what they tell me to, so I get my paycheck, and I can feed my family.
If your company asks you to break the law to get paid, you need to get out as fast as you can move. Putting aside all of the ethical arguments, look at the pragmatic side. When the local law comes down on the store for breaking the law, who do you think is going to get offered up for prosecution? How do you think the police or a judge are going to respond to "I was just doing what I was told to do"? Do you expect your manager to throw himself on his sword to protect you and your family's well being? Or is it more likely that you'll get thrown to the wolves, your family's needs be damned, so that he can sidestep a criminal charge?
> And for the record, EB doesn't have these kinds of supply problems, from what I've seen. I mean, the local store in my area was willing to have a *used* game from a store 150 miles away shipped into the local one so that I could pick it up.
You say *used* like that makes it even more amazing, when in fact it makes it much less so. To test, try getting them to send in a *new* game from that 150-miles-away store, and they'll tell you to stuff it. The reason the store was willing to go to that length to get the game in is that the profit margin on a used game is much, much higher than on a new game, so they stood to make more money.
> What would have happened if she tried to walk out of the store with her goods and EB tried to stop her? I am currious, they call the police, she presents her side, the cops have to do somthing, but what?
This depends entirely on how the clerk handles it. If he calls in the police but takes no action on his own, then they will arrest her on suspicion of shoplifting, and then when she presents her case in questioning, they'd drop the charges. It's likely she'd get her stuff back, but she might face a minor charge like disturbing the peace or other little trump-up for the display.
If on the other hand, the clerk attemped to subdue or detain her, then she'd have a good case for assault against the clerk, since the whole "citizen's arrest" thing that everyone talks about doesn't exist, and detention of someone against their will is generally against the law unless it's a case of threat to life or limb (remember this the next time you decide to lock down a shoplifter, store owners! Don't assume you know the law, read about it or consult an attorney). In that case, they'd be nuts to press a shoplifting charge that would be dropped, and then face criminal assault charges.
So, in the best of cases, she'd still have more trouble just taking the stuff back than getting the courts involved.
> After all, if you hate this country so much, why would you live here?
Perhaps because corruption in the court system isn't bad enough to offset some good things about living here, but that doesn't mean he should just suck it up when it comes to corruption in the court system. Perhaps because he feels enough concern for America to stay here and fight to correct the corruption in the court system.
Maybe if you weren't so dense as to see it as an all-or-nothing situation, you'd be a better American yourself. "Love it or leave it" is the single most unpatriotic thing an American can say.
There's this thing they call the "Internet" that's full of great porn, and, oh yeah, stuff you can buy.
But that's not the point. To say you "can't" go to EBGames any more is not true. You can continue to shop there. But, you must ask yourself if you want to do business with a company that's willing to knowingly break the law. Sure, it could be one manager that's doing wrong, but the corporate heads haven't come out to say he's doing wrong. Therefore it's reasonable to extend the tendency to break the law to the corporation as a whole. Think about what that means if you find yourself at odds with them for some reason, like buying a game new that turns out to be resold, and you can't register it because the serial number is already in use. What sort of treatment can you expect from them when the inevitable problem comes up?
> It doesn't really seem to address the issue of what happens when the stuff is already sold and no longer in posession of the dealer.
Actually, although this part of the law doesn't address it, the main part does address it very directly. When someone buys stolen goods from a dealer, they don't suddenly become un-stolen goods. Michelle (assuming she can prove ownership) can simply claim the goods back from the buyers, who then have to return to EB for restitution. It's not her problem that EB sold stolen goods.
See, this exhibits the reason why proposals like this are better than first blush would suspect. Firstly, we're discussing a manned (or locally maintained) array, so there's already something there if this plan is to work. That given, why send wires to the Moon? Why not send the current bottle-rocket space shot with big blocks of some conductive material (copper would work, but there are lighter materials that would work just as well)? You don't even plan for an entry vehicle, just let it tunnel in when it hits. Then the Moon base folks fly out in their Eagle (erk, sorry, obligatory "Space: 1999" reference) and fetch it, and roll the wire locally. Or, make wire out of local materials, and what difference if they're lower conductivity than copper? Even so, I imagine the best answer would be microwave towers, for servicing purposes (adding bandwidth just requires more transmitters, not more wire rolled out), but I think you can see the idea. The obvious advantage to a ground-based solution appears the first time one of the transceivers breaks, and a pair of astronauts can drive out in a buggy and fix it. How does one fix a lunar satellite? And before you suggest that it's the same for an Earth-orbit satellite, I put forth that there are still lots of wires on the Earth because of that very fact.
> Considering that the Delta-V required to get from Earth to the Moon and then from the Moon to Mars is greater than Earth to Mars, why should we stop by the Moon at all?
Because being on the Moon would not be completely and solely to build a jumping-off point to Mars? Stopping by the Moon has the benefit of being on the Moon. If we weren't considering going to Mars at all, there would still be enormous benefit to building a Moon base. Add to that that we can build a Mars mission there once it's established, and that's just an added plus.
In short, we should stop by the Moon because the Moon is worth stopping by all on its own.
>I have a business to run here, actually two. I have bills to pay, right here in the Chicago area. I have some great ideas that I'd like to risk my money on, in order to help myself and my family. I have some long term things to purchase that will make my life better. I could care less about Mars or the Moon or higher orbits. None of that affects me, except in a negative way.
None of it affects you? Wow, how do you run two businesses without using a telephone?
See, the benefits of the space program are all around you. You just don't recognize them. Does knowing about the weather help you in your everyday life? Do professional fire suppression systems or computers "affect" you except in a negative way? You paint with a very wide brush, and all that says about you is that your perspective is limited.
There's no waffling in these statements. What he said paraphrases correctly to "I'd go tomorrow if they asked me to, but I think they should ask someone else to go if they need to further examine space flight on the elderly." That's common sense, couched in personal preference. No flip-flopping to see here.
> Before doing anything like building a manned base on the far side of the moon... or even an unmanned radio telescope for that matter, is to create a series of 'stationary' communication satellites in moon orbit for communication.
The very idea of being free from interference, also prevents us from retrieving data due to the giant piece of rock in the way.
A valid point, but there are many cheaper ways of doing this than a network of lunar satellites. Ground based transmissions using the age-old technology of wires are valid on the Moon, where danger of damage to the wire is relatively low (heck, you can just roll the cable out on the ground, and a few thousand miles of wire isn't all that expensive compared to a lunar satellite). Targetted microwave transceivers on towers are another valid route to take, if cables concern you. Both of these solutions use technology that's cheap today, and both are cheaper than the satellite network you propose. I'm sure other answers can be brought up as well.
> It is actually *more* wasteful to go to the moon on a trip to Mars...
This is the crux of the problem, in terms of the Mars Society's arguments against a Moon base. They seem to position all of their arguments in terms of Mars exploration (not surprisingly) and so they see a Moon base as nothing more than an inefficient stepping-stone to Mars. But while the Mars mission craft is being built on the Moon, other stuff important to space exploration can also be happening, like the assembly of a dark-side telescope array and a thousand other lower profile projects.
See, folks, it's not all about Mars. Being on the Moon has its own benefits.
> "Blast shield in case the fuel goes up"? There's no oxidising (or reducing, for that matter) atmosphere in space. If you have the sense of a gopher, you'll keep your oxidizer on one side and the fuel safely away from that.
Fuel doesn't need an oxidizer to cause explosive damage. It's reasonable that you're going to be storing the fuels under pressure (the only exception to this is solid fuels, because even liquid fuels will evaporate if there's no atmosphere). The safety of no oxidizing atmosphere becomes the danger of no drag when a tank ruptures and the rapidly-vaporizing fuel pops it like a balloon. The shrapnel from such a rupture would run out in all directions, unimpeded by any atmospheric drag that would slow the parts down, so when they reach and impact other parts of the station, they'll have essentially the same energy as they had right near the blast. Therefore, some sort of shield is still necessary to protect the rest of the station from being peppered with high-velocity debris.
Slashdot Mirror
> So i would say taht the real problem with selling to linux users is the selling to linux users. A company is not going to stay afloat vending end-user software only to Linux customers.
This doesn't address his issue at all, though. His issue is not companies that port to Linux, it's companies thinking that porting to Linux excuses them from the same level of documentation and quality they put into their Windows products (or not), and then griping about Linux not being profitable when they fail to make any money.
His simple point is that making something "for Linux" isn't enough, if that's its only value. Making it useful, functional and well documented is key to selling it, whether to Linux users or to anyone else.
Virg
> On the other hand, you don't get support from Microsoft when using WordPerfect on their system either. It's difficult to support every single piece of software there is for Linux.
True, but last time I checked I couldn't download Wordperfect off of Microsoft's web site. Even if they put packages in an "unsupported" section it would be better than what they do now, which is tell you that it's outside the scope only after you download and (try to) install it. It's not that I expect them to support everything, but a warning about what they will and won't support is very difficult to find.
Virg
> Very small stream of O2, lit it on fire, it burned.
No, it didn't. Unless you'd care to explain what chemical reaction, exactly, is taking place when oxygen burns? Mix O2 with...what? More O2? Oxygen doesn't burn, because burning is the mixing of some fuel with oxygen, and oxygen doesn't mix with itself.
Give it another try.
Virg
> THERE WAS A STUDY ABOUT THIS # YEARS AGO THAT PROVED IT WAS ALL NY..... OFf shore winds push it INTO NJ... you seem to forget the areas that smell are costal cities on the hudson and kill van kull.
Feel free at any time to cite the study you refer to, because I'd be interested to read it. Offshore winds in NYC come from the south, and the only coastal city on the Hudson River is NYC. Therefore it'd seem that Connecticut or lower-upstate New York would be doing the complaining. I understand that areas like Carteret have complained about pollution from Staten Island, but for the most part it's NYC and its environs (and even some Long Island communitites, which is inexplicable to me) that complain about Newark and Jersey City.
Virg
ok, lets try this again. you take an oxygen tank, just some goold old 2O2, you open that sumabich up and stike a match, some flint, whatever, you touch a 9volt to some steal wool, you put it close to that escaping gas, the little fire starts. next, you remove this match, spark, or whatever. Does the fire go out? Come on, dont do a 'thought experiment', go try it.
I've done it. Really, actually done it. Held a match in a set of tongs, opened the tank valve, put the match in. The match popped like a firecracker. Guess what? There was no fire after that. The pure oxygen stream doesn't burn like a gas burner. It doesn't burn at all. Sorry, but you lose. Stuff burns faster in pure oxygen, but if there's nothing to burn, there's no fire in the oxygen flow.
Maybe you should consider actually doing what you propose that others do, since if you did more than the "thought experiment" yourself you'd have known this.
To test this yourself, get an oxyacetylene torch. Open the fuel and oxygen valves, and spark it, and you get a flame on the tip. Now, turn off the fuel feed, but not the oxygen. What happens? I did this one in real life, too, and the flame vanished. You could put your hand in the oxygen flow, and it was cool. Again, you lose.
Bye, now. See you when you get a clue.
Virg
> besides eveyone knowns the air sucks thanks to NY
...except people who actually know anything about meteorology. Prevailing winds in the area go from west to east, so the air over NJ would have to suck very, very hard to reverse that. Actually, New Yorkers could complain that NJ is fouling up their air instead.
No, the air quality in New Jersey sucks entirely due to New Jersey (except the southern part, which gets Philadelphia's grime, but who cares if a bunch of Pineys get soot-blackened anyway? 8)).
Virg
> But they're not claiming that the website is their own. They've kept the author's picture and contact information intact.
If they're collecting his page views and then getting revenue from the ad companies for those views, then they're misrepresenting themselves as him to the ad company (or trying to convince the ad company that it's their work that's drawing the impressions, not his). Still deception, therefore fraudulent. If they were displaying the content entirely as his and redirecting ad revenue back to him, they'd be a mirror, not webscrapers.
Virg
> It is very difficult to lose intellectual property. It does not work that way.
If someone takes your intellectual property, and presents it as their own, and people believe they're the original creator, then yeah, you do lose intellectual property. Copying and plagiarism are not the same thing. Plagiarism is actually stealing, since when you're done the original creator has actually lost something.
Virg
> The important thing is that all of these arguments can be applied to the case of this Taiwanese site.
Not correct. None of the arguments apply to plagiarism, which is the claiming of someone else's ideas as your own. Duplicating an MP3 and claiming that you made it yourself would be a good comparison to this case. The problem is not that the Taiwanese site simply copied the data, but they are misrepresenting it on an ongoing basis as their own work. That dances dangerously close to identity theft, especially if the Taiwanese site is using the fraud to capture ad revenue or using your reputation to garner faith (like convincing someone to give them a credit card number because they think it's you). In the case of a stolen Metallica MP3, it's rather unlikely that someone stealing the MP3 will try to present themselves as Metallica.
Virg
> EB is a business and not a charity. If they have goods on the shelf that were once hers she will have to pay for them in order to get them back from EB.
You're incorrect. Stolen goods are stolen goods, no matter how many intermediate buyers they go through, according to the law. Which means that she still owns them, legally, even if EB bought them in good faith. Sorry, but you lose.
> The same thing happened to me (similar circumstance) where a large quantity of music CDs were stolen from my home - in my case the insurance paid the claim after seeing the exetnsive list and photographs of my living room showing the CDs stored there.
Your case doesn't apply. By accepting payment from the insurance company, you yielded ownership rights to the CDs. In a legal sense, when you cashed the insurance check, the CDs weren't yours any more. Therefore, when you went to the store later, you didn't have any right of claim to the CDs, because you're not a representative of the legal owner (the insurance company, in this case). Sorry, but you lose again.
Maybe you can take a bit of the insurance check and buy yourself some law books.
Virg
> Oh the stories I could tell.
.sig. We love stories.
Then do it. That's what journals are for. Then link to it in your
br. Virg
> Is this good? Is it legal? Is it right? I don't know...I just do what they tell me to, so I get my paycheck, and I can feed my family.
If your company asks you to break the law to get paid, you need to get out as fast as you can move. Putting aside all of the ethical arguments, look at the pragmatic side. When the local law comes down on the store for breaking the law, who do you think is going to get offered up for prosecution? How do you think the police or a judge are going to respond to "I was just doing what I was told to do"? Do you expect your manager to throw himself on his sword to protect you and your family's well being? Or is it more likely that you'll get thrown to the wolves, your family's needs be damned, so that he can sidestep a criminal charge?
Get real, and get out.
Virg
> And for the record, EB doesn't have these kinds of supply problems, from what I've seen. I mean, the local store in my area was willing to have a *used* game from a store 150 miles away shipped into the local one so that I could pick it up.
You say *used* like that makes it even more amazing, when in fact it makes it much less so. To test, try getting them to send in a *new* game from that 150-miles-away store, and they'll tell you to stuff it. The reason the store was willing to go to that length to get the game in is that the profit margin on a used game is much, much higher than on a new game, so they stood to make more money.
Virg
> What would have happened if she tried to walk out of the store with her goods and EB tried to stop her? I am currious, they call the police, she presents her side, the cops have to do somthing, but what?
This depends entirely on how the clerk handles it. If he calls in the police but takes no action on his own, then they will arrest her on suspicion of shoplifting, and then when she presents her case in questioning, they'd drop the charges. It's likely she'd get her stuff back, but she might face a minor charge like disturbing the peace or other little trump-up for the display.
If on the other hand, the clerk attemped to subdue or detain her, then she'd have a good case for assault against the clerk, since the whole "citizen's arrest" thing that everyone talks about doesn't exist, and detention of someone against their will is generally against the law unless it's a case of threat to life or limb (remember this the next time you decide to lock down a shoplifter, store owners! Don't assume you know the law, read about it or consult an attorney). In that case, they'd be nuts to press a shoplifting charge that would be dropped, and then face criminal assault charges.
So, in the best of cases, she'd still have more trouble just taking the stuff back than getting the courts involved.
Virg
> After all, if you hate this country so much, why would you live here?
Perhaps because corruption in the court system isn't bad enough to offset some good things about living here, but that doesn't mean he should just suck it up when it comes to corruption in the court system. Perhaps because he feels enough concern for America to stay here and fight to correct the corruption in the court system.
Maybe if you weren't so dense as to see it as an all-or-nothing situation, you'd be a better American yourself. "Love it or leave it" is the single most unpatriotic thing an American can say.
Virg
There's this thing they call the "Internet" that's full of great porn, and, oh yeah, stuff you can buy.
But that's not the point. To say you "can't" go to EBGames any more is not true. You can continue to shop there. But, you must ask yourself if you want to do business with a company that's willing to knowingly break the law. Sure, it could be one manager that's doing wrong, but the corporate heads haven't come out to say he's doing wrong. Therefore it's reasonable to extend the tendency to break the law to the corporation as a whole. Think about what that means if you find yourself at odds with them for some reason, like buying a game new that turns out to be resold, and you can't register it because the serial number is already in use. What sort of treatment can you expect from them when the inevitable problem comes up?
Caveat Emptor.
Virg
> It doesn't really seem to address the issue of what happens when the stuff is already sold and no longer in posession of the dealer.
Actually, although this part of the law doesn't address it, the main part does address it very directly. When someone buys stolen goods from a dealer, they don't suddenly become un-stolen goods. Michelle (assuming she can prove ownership) can simply claim the goods back from the buyers, who then have to return to EB for restitution. It's not her problem that EB sold stolen goods.
Virg
See, this exhibits the reason why proposals like this are better than first blush would suspect. Firstly, we're discussing a manned (or locally maintained) array, so there's already something there if this plan is to work. That given, why send wires to the Moon? Why not send the current bottle-rocket space shot with big blocks of some conductive material (copper would work, but there are lighter materials that would work just as well)? You don't even plan for an entry vehicle, just let it tunnel in when it hits. Then the Moon base folks fly out in their Eagle (erk, sorry, obligatory "Space: 1999" reference) and fetch it, and roll the wire locally. Or, make wire out of local materials, and what difference if they're lower conductivity than copper? Even so, I imagine the best answer would be microwave towers, for servicing purposes (adding bandwidth just requires more transmitters, not more wire rolled out), but I think you can see the idea. The obvious advantage to a ground-based solution appears the first time one of the transceivers breaks, and a pair of astronauts can drive out in a buggy and fix it. How does one fix a lunar satellite? And before you suggest that it's the same for an Earth-orbit satellite, I put forth that there are still lots of wires on the Earth because of that very fact.
Virg
> Get the inhabitants to tunnel out areas to support more people...
...and...
> Oh right... it's boring.
Was this an intentional pun?
Virg
> Considering that the Delta-V required to get from Earth to the Moon and then from the Moon to Mars is greater than Earth to Mars, why should we stop by the Moon at all?
Because being on the Moon would not be completely and solely to build a jumping-off point to Mars? Stopping by the Moon has the benefit of being on the Moon. If we weren't considering going to Mars at all, there would still be enormous benefit to building a Moon base. Add to that that we can build a Mars mission there once it's established, and that's just an added plus.
In short, we should stop by the Moon because the Moon is worth stopping by all on its own.
Virg
>I have a business to run here, actually two. I have bills to pay, right here in the Chicago area. I have some great ideas that I'd like to risk my money on, in order to help myself and my family. I have some long term things to purchase that will make my life better. I could care less about Mars or the Moon or higher orbits. None of that affects me, except in a negative way.
None of it affects you? Wow, how do you run two businesses without using a telephone?
See, the benefits of the space program are all around you. You just don't recognize them. Does knowing about the weather help you in your everyday life? Do professional fire suppression systems or computers "affect" you except in a negative way? You paint with a very wide brush, and all that says about you is that your perspective is limited.
Virg
There's no waffling in these statements. What he said paraphrases correctly to "I'd go tomorrow if they asked me to, but I think they should ask someone else to go if they need to further examine space flight on the elderly." That's common sense, couched in personal preference. No flip-flopping to see here.
Virg
> Before doing anything like building a manned base on the far side of the moon... or even an unmanned radio telescope for that matter, is to create a series of 'stationary' communication satellites in moon orbit for communication.
The very idea of being free from interference, also prevents us from retrieving data due to the giant piece of rock in the way.
A valid point, but there are many cheaper ways of doing this than a network of lunar satellites. Ground based transmissions using the age-old technology of wires are valid on the Moon, where danger of damage to the wire is relatively low (heck, you can just roll the cable out on the ground, and a few thousand miles of wire isn't all that expensive compared to a lunar satellite). Targetted microwave transceivers on towers are another valid route to take, if cables concern you. Both of these solutions use technology that's cheap today, and both are cheaper than the satellite network you propose. I'm sure other answers can be brought up as well.
> It is actually *more* wasteful to go to the moon on a trip to Mars...
This is the crux of the problem, in terms of the Mars Society's arguments against a Moon base. They seem to position all of their arguments in terms of Mars exploration (not surprisingly) and so they see a Moon base as nothing more than an inefficient stepping-stone to Mars. But while the Mars mission craft is being built on the Moon, other stuff important to space exploration can also be happening, like the assembly of a dark-side telescope array and a thousand other lower profile projects.
See, folks, it's not all about Mars. Being on the Moon has its own benefits.
Virg
> "Blast shield in case the fuel goes up"? There's no oxidising (or reducing, for that matter) atmosphere in space. If you have the sense of a gopher, you'll keep your oxidizer on one side and the fuel safely away from that.
Fuel doesn't need an oxidizer to cause explosive damage. It's reasonable that you're going to be storing the fuels under pressure (the only exception to this is solid fuels, because even liquid fuels will evaporate if there's no atmosphere). The safety of no oxidizing atmosphere becomes the danger of no drag when a tank ruptures and the rapidly-vaporizing fuel pops it like a balloon. The shrapnel from such a rupture would run out in all directions, unimpeded by any atmospheric drag that would slow the parts down, so when they reach and impact other parts of the station, they'll have essentially the same energy as they had right near the blast. Therefore, some sort of shield is still necessary to protect the rest of the station from being peppered with high-velocity debris.
Virg