All very well and good. It's how things are supposed to work in science. I'm delighted that the models are being refined.
Of course, one might also note that shrill histrionics, cries of impending certain doom, and politically motivated proto-religious hyperbole aren't necessarily "science at work".
"The group whose dominating and inept control of the conservative voice in 2009 was a key factor in passing the sweeping healthcare reform bill isn't news?"
I don't know if you got the memo, but Democrats won the presidency and both houses in 2008. I believe that the Democrats controlling both houses and the presidency was THE key factor in passing the sweeping healthcare reform bill.
And if you're looking to point blame, blame the dominating and inept REPUBLICAN congress and presidency before them that guaranteed they'd win in 2008.
In that vein, it might make sense to change the patent numbering system to add a 2-digit code to the end of the patent number that represents the year of expiry. Seems like a trivial way to make it abundantly clear when the patent expires, both for the company that's protected, and for those interested in accessing the patent once it's free of protection.
"Private citizens have the right to privacy" you can certainly assert this, but it's provably NOT true in most of the world. Please, show me that "right" as tangibly as a ball, water, or lightning?
Governments are parasitic entities based on authority. In a democratic government, presumably, this authority is delegated by the process of voting. If enough authority is delegated to that government that it starts to do things that make people uncomfortable, then those people either need to a) use their vote to change the government; b) forcibly change their government; or c) ignore their government and accept the consequences.
A) is almost pointless, as the Republocrats or Democans are almost indistinguishable (note the Republican congress porking it up like swine in their last control, and Bush II presiding over the greatest expansion of federal power ever; note also the current administration's cheerful support for Wall Street's bonus checks, Guantanamo, and military adventurism). C) well, Guanatanamo's still in business....
The only response LEFT is B. Anything else is just pointless internet whinging. I would agree that you have a basic set of human rights. Whether you're allowed to exercise them freely in reality is a question of power.
I know slashdot's all about the underdog, but doesn't Facebook HAVE to defend it's trademark legally, to at least have a footing to stop any general encroachment or watering down of their legal standing in the future? That doesn't mean that they can't come to some amicable arrangement quickly for a trivial amount, but I think they have to defend it.
Of course, cursing those 'dirty' Americans and their addiction to the car is easy.
Actually looking at the issue an understanding that 'building more trains' will NOT solve the problem is a little more complicated.
The fact is that in most US cities the former 'Union Station' is not only gone, the concept is buried under GENERATIONS of city planning (or mis-planning, if you prefer). One can't simply plop a rail grid into most US city plans and have any actual value. Sure, people can ride the train from Station A to Downtown (or whatever) but lacking any serious public transit from that point, or anything within walking distance, or amenities that one takes almost for granted are nearby any significant train station in Europe - your riders will be essentially debarking in the midst of....nothing.
This will make rail use unattractive and fail.
FIRST the cities have to undergo a serious and sustained effort to make them public-transit friendly (which can be concurrent with car-friendly, at least to a point). THEN when the infrastructure is ready, trains will be useful and successful.
Of course this implies a voting base willing to forego their particular issue du jour and vote for a long-sighted body of legislators. Looking at the current (or previous) administration and congress - I say, fat chance.
If a business treats its employees as human beings with respect, it will (generally) get respect in return.
If a business shows its employees that they are worthless, replaceable drones who may be dumped at any convenient time, then no, the business won't get any courtesy or respect in return.
It's not the sort of thing that shows up on a goddamn balance sheet, and I'm sick of so many larger firms moving ever more toward 'management by accountant' than actually making human decisions based on the long range view of the value of people.
Probably it's been a complaint forever, but it seems that decisions are based more and more on the bottom line THIS year, THIS quarter, THIS month. Those are decisions that are invariably hurtful to employees, generally at lower staff levels.
Much of it is market driven - I've worked for my company for 18 years, and I saw it coming when we went public 7 or 8 years ago. What do we get out of this, aside from capital (which we didn't need) and a giant quiet bump to our top execs' compensation (since then they would have stock options, etc.)? In exchange, we whore our business for the share price, making decisions that can only be understood as logical if one genuinely believes there will BE NO TOMORROW. Incomprehensible.
Want your employees to treat your data with confidentiality and respect? Then treat the PEOPLE with respect, pay them reasonably well, and above all treat them like humans. Then, if they ultimately depart, they may make the moral decision that you've treated them fairly and that while they could screw you, they are at least slightly more likely not to.
FWIW the warranty DID explicitly cover accidental damage.
Yes, we were stupid, we bought into the furniture industry equivalent of 'underbody coating' but we were younger, stupider, and spending far more that we should have on furniture - we knew we'd have kids, and thought that good, sturdy furniture would (especially with this warranty) serve us well for decades.
This isn't just confined to the computer industry or firms that are having financial troubles.
10 years ago or so we bought $5000 worth of leather furniture (http://legacy-leather.com/v2/bigskytrad.html) from http://www.schneidermans.com/. At the time we purchased a LIFETIME warranty, that included lifetime supply of cleaning solution and care products for the top-grain aniline leather.
About year 2, we had one cushion destroyed by a neighbor's small child and a permanent marker, which was replaced promptly and without any issues.
About 2-3 years later we got a package from Schneidermans saying "oh, sorry, here's your package of care products; we've decided to discontinue the 'lifetime' warranty; we would refund your money for the warranty but you got a replacement part so we consider the warranty used and the contract fulfilled. Sorry."
It was probably my fault for not causing a big stink about it, but RL was pretty complicated at the time and I didn't.
But I've always felt screwed that they sold us a lifetime warranty and then arbitrarily decided they just didn't want to support it later.
Agreed. The other thing not mentioned is that the metric of data 'size' has in fact little relationship to the information value of the message.
A single-page newspaper ad from 1905 stored digitally is maybe what, 18k bytes if stored? A 30-second TV spot today, that contains approximately the same informative value, in 1080p is 8 megs?
So yes, the 'modern' data is nearly 500x the old datasize, but the amount of useful information conveyed is the same (OK yes, for those splitting hairs there is more actual information conveyed in the 30 second tv ad, but the color of the sky in pixel X - while necessary for the image - isn't 'useful' to the message).
I first read it as "...Sydney University's John You says volunteers could simply be attached to cable landing stations to measure ocean currents via the electromagnetic current that they generate..."
OK it's a fantastic improbability, but an alternative explanation in which you're both right has been posited by James P Hogan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giants_series
" Anyone who thinks that chnging the composition of our atmosphere will not result in temp change needs to back to school."
I've another one for you: "Anyone who thinks that the composition of our atmosphere isn't changing constantly needs to go back to school." or how about "Anyone who thinks that making a trivial change in a small fraction of a gas that makes up a truly infinitesimal portion of our atmosphere is somehow going to have some sort of cataclysmically multiplicative effect, and who thinks this effect will overwhelm natural corrective systems despite aeons of historical temperature data showing the planet cycling through MUCH warmer and MUCH cooler cycles needs to go back to school."
" Instead, I think they'll continue releasing things that are essentially toy soldiers, because nobody wants to be pilloried in the media for what amounts to trying to tell the truth."
While that moral high-horse may be a very comfortable, self-validating place to perch, my explanation would be more prosaic: nobody's going to release the game you describe because it's NOT ENTERTAINING and their jobs are to make something that will SELL.
Not sure how this got missed, but "games" are meant to be fun. Kids play cops and robbers (well, they used to) but don't simulate the mind-numbing extent of paperwork, bureaucracy, and tedium involved in a real investigation...I wonder why? Perhaps because it's not fun?
Yes, a 'game' company might release the title you postulated, but I personally wouldn't buy something that's a long excursus into the agonizing brutality of war because that really doesn't seem like much fun. I doubt many people would.
And before anyone begins the predictable rant about this giving our populace unrealistic ideas of how clean war is and thus make us more likely to resort to it as a solution, I'd have two points to make: - in an historical context, there is no populace that understands better than we do what graphic, horrible things happen during war, thanks to the media's pornographic obsession with showing it to us. Or do you really think that the people of WW2, WW1, Civil War, or other wars throughout history before photography, really understood war better than us? Where do you think our antiquated mythopoeic concepts of the 'warrior hero' came from, but from them? - the likelihood of (in the US at least) our politicians sending our troops to war has far, far more to do with the tacit agreement between Congress and the President since Korea: that in exchange for the Congress not being FORCED to declare a position on an issue, the President is allowed to dispense troops without too much scrutiny. If the President was FORCED to wait for a War Powers resolution to send troops abroad, he would hesitate to deploy them in any but the more serious, justifiable circumstances. If congress was FORCED to call out votes on a War Powers Act - meaning their positions are clearly laid out and usable against them later politically, Congress would be hesitant to endorse the use of troops for any but the clearest present danger. Either way, once troops finally were deployed, the political futures of both congress and the president would be LINKED and inseparable, and thus less subject to the backbiting bullshit we see today.
Yes, you're right that the current iteration is a snoozer. I would point the blame directly at the weaksauce administration of NASA, and the several presidential administrations that have been obsessed with politics than real achievement. NASA has for decades been an entrenched bureaucracy, ossified and fearful of human risk.
1) the Space Shuttle - what should have been a testbed for cutting-edge low-orbit lift technologies ended up being a camel-designed-by-committee, grossly non-modular, reusable (the one success), clumsy, and frightfully impossible to upgrade. 2) the ISS - again, this is NOTHING more than a trivial expansion of Spacelab or Mir. In such low orbit it practically needs a bug shield and windshield wipers, its life is circumscribed by the requirements of maintenance flights by the shuttle. 3) Constellation - hardly even needs comment. It should terrify us that in 2010 we can't even re-create the FORTY YEAR OLD TECH that took us to the moon. Seriously.
So NASA lacks any sort of adventurousness or vision, it's unsurprising that a video game promulgated by this tepid organization is boring. They have a video game where ANYTHING is possible. Anything. And this is the extent of their imagination. Perfect.
Here's a tip: it didn't have to suck. Really, it didn't. Postulate some advancement, and combine genres. You have a zero-gravity flight sim, and need to pilot your craft to Hypothetical Low Orbit Station X, pick up something, and take it with some time-pressure to Hypothetical L5 Station Y. (Zero grav flight sim, realistic attitude control, orbital movement, and yes, plotting much of the course by computer but terminal maneuvers by hand...moderately cool). Once you have stopped at L5, you're sent to the Moonbase, again with some time pressure. Now you're playing a first-person lunar lander because solar flares have made your automated control systems unreliable. Finally, you can pilot a rescue mission to the Mars Lander team (shades of Oregon Trail!). Once you get there, you find that the command orbiter is perhaps empty, and you're forced to repair it manually (sure you have instructions from earth but the timelag means it's very reactive) and ultimately, have to use the limited capabilities of a suite of surface-exploration robots (like the GREAT infocom game Suspended) to figure out what happened to the Mars Away Team and (hopefully) rescue them. All based on hard-hard-hard science, no postulated Little Green Men or Ancient Artifacts.
I'm no game designer,none of the game systems I listed is LESS than 20 years old. But I think that could make for a fairly compelling game.
I'm unsurprised that NASA couldn't manage it.
I agree with Neil deGrasse Tyson that we need to push the envelope. I'm not sure NASA has anything left that can do it (the unmanned programs being the giant exception - they're daring, skilled, and extraordinarily successful).
Meh. As much as people will post about "OMG, those stupid deniers won't care!" I'll just remind folks that very few people deny that there IS some sort of climate change going on. Of course there is - point to any time in history when climate wasn't changing in some way.
It's a giant step, however, to assert that this is ipso facto the result of something humans did/are doing AND that whatever is happening is neither cyclical and/or beyond the bounds of what the system can rebound from.
Two 'warming' fallacies: It was 75 degrees two hours ago, 82 one hour ago, and nearly 90 now. By that measure, by tomorrow it's going to be boiling hot outside! It was cool this morning. Then THREE of my neighbors started up their lawnmowers, and now it's starting to get freaking warm. I'm going to have to tell them to stop mowing their lawns because it's clearly causing it to get hot outside.
It's warming. Yep, I agree. This will result in a rough ride weather wise both for summers and winters. Good thing we're the most adaptable creature on the planet. Too bad the polar bears may just turn back into bears tho, they look cool white.
This study does the opposite, in fact it builds in the gigantic subsidies for solar, and disregards the same for nuclear. Further, the replacement costs and long-term costs of nuclear are well known, this 'study' disregards that for solar.
Finally, this 'study' disregards any storage costs for solar, intermittance, or transport costs for the voltage.
Basically, solar has a strong potential for arid, sunny climates. Unfortunately, the bulk of the Western World doesn't live in deserts, and power transmission isn't free.
The money shot from that, for those who are too lazy to follow the link: "For the cost of solar electricity, Blackburn and Cunningham relied on reported offers of "commercial scale" solar electricity at a certain price to the grid supplier - without noting that those offers are on a strictly "when available" basis that is also take or pay.
Here is an analogy - if you happen to grow tomatoes in your yard, imagine going to your local grocery store and demanding that the grocer pay you the same price that he charges at retail. The grocer must take all of the tomatoes that your garden produces, but you make no promises about how many you will bring each day. When you want to eat tomatoes at home, but your garden has not produced any, you expect to be able to walk into the store and purchase all of the tomatoes that you need at the same price that you sold them for. (Actually, this is not a very good analogy, because on page 11 of their paper, Blackburn and Cunningham admit that certain solar electricity suppliers will actually be paid a "subsidized" rate of 19 cents per kilowatt hour, which is almost two times the residential retail price in North Carolina of 10.5 cents per kilowatt hour.)
In addition to failing to mention the terms and conditions under which electricity is being offered, Blackburn and Cunningham bury a few "minor" details about solar electricity real costs in an appendix. As they admit in a section that few people will read, the price that some installers are talking about charging utilities is the "net" price - after they receive and bank all currently offered payments from other taxpayers and after they have obtained taxpayer subsidized 25 year amortization, tax free loans. In North Carolina today, a homeowner who purchases a solar energy system receives a 30% cash grant from the federal government and a 35% cash grant from the state government.
Using the example provided in the paper, those cash payments turn a 3 KWe (max capacity), $18,000 system that produces electricity at 35 cents per kilowatt hour (if financed at 6% interest for 25 years) into a system costing the homeowner just $8,190 and producing electricity for a total of 15.9 cents per kilowatt hour - when the sun is shining. Of course, that means that the homeowner has received a grant of $9,810 from his or her neighbors, some of whom may not own a home (renters) or even own a roof (condo and apartment dwellers). Blackburn and Cunningham admit that they did not include energy storage costs of any kind (pg 11)."
@Vector- your sense of reading discretion is apparently on vacation. Or perhaps it's easier to feign outrage than think critically.
The OP claims he was the victim of a 'Terry Stop' and that on this basis they searched his car on his property, and as a result he was facing "...five life sentences plus 105 years for an offense no one had ever been jailed a day on before...".
Really? That's an extraordinary claim, and surprising that he wouldn't bother to reveal what such an amazing offense might be. Of course, to 'save himself from 12 stupid jurors' he pled, and served 52 months.
So ask yourself if there might not be the TEENSIEST bit of bias in the OP's description? What the HELL did the police find in that 'illegal' search? A body?
The OP posts, 'we're all just one Terry Stop away from ruin'. I'd reply that yes, much of our criminal system depends on impulsive or subjective enforcement by officers, sure. But they could Terry Stop me, search my car, my person, my home, my office, and STILL not find anything to charge me with...certainly not to give me 5 life sentences.
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All very well and good. It's how things are supposed to work in science. I'm delighted that the models are being refined.
Of course, one might also note that shrill histrionics, cries of impending certain doom, and politically motivated proto-religious hyperbole aren't necessarily "science at work".
"The group whose dominating and inept control of the conservative voice in 2009 was a key factor in passing the sweeping healthcare reform bill isn't news?"
I don't know if you got the memo, but Democrats won the presidency and both houses in 2008.
I believe that the Democrats controlling both houses and the presidency was THE key factor in passing the sweeping healthcare reform bill.
And if you're looking to point blame, blame the dominating and inept REPUBLICAN congress and presidency before them that guaranteed they'd win in 2008.
...because only KIDS are getting fat, right?
There's no ADULT obesity problem, is there?
In that vein, it might make sense to change the patent numbering system to add a 2-digit code to the end of the patent number that represents the year of expiry. Seems like a trivial way to make it abundantly clear when the patent expires, both for the company that's protected, and for those interested in accessing the patent once it's free of protection.
Your post is full of theory...and nonsense.
"Private citizens have the right to privacy" you can certainly assert this, but it's provably NOT true in most of the world. Please, show me that "right" as tangibly as a ball, water, or lightning?
Governments are parasitic entities based on authority. In a democratic government, presumably, this authority is delegated by the process of voting. If enough authority is delegated to that government that it starts to do things that make people uncomfortable, then those people either need to a) use their vote to change the government; b) forcibly change their government; or c) ignore their government and accept the consequences.
A) is almost pointless, as the Republocrats or Democans are almost indistinguishable (note the Republican congress porking it up like swine in their last control, and Bush II presiding over the greatest expansion of federal power ever; note also the current administration's cheerful support for Wall Street's bonus checks, Guantanamo, and military adventurism).
C) well, Guanatanamo's still in business....
The only response LEFT is B. Anything else is just pointless internet whinging. I would agree that you have a basic set of human rights. Whether you're allowed to exercise them freely in reality is a question of power.
"But I don't think it will be economically rewarding without our lifetime." (within)
Just like those pointless American colonies. Those things weren't profitable for generations either.
I know slashdot's all about the underdog, but doesn't Facebook HAVE to defend it's trademark legally, to at least have a footing to stop any general encroachment or watering down of their legal standing in the future? That doesn't mean that they can't come to some amicable arrangement quickly for a trivial amount, but I think they have to defend it.
...is the Win95's ease of copying and piracy really established their dominance in the PC market.
OS2 was a better system, but iirc much harder to pirate.
The fact that sneaker-net distribution meant EVERYONE grew up with a system running Win95 ended up making Gates a bajillionaire.
The sad thing is that you mentioned just about every other detail except...the name of the contractor.
Of course, cursing those 'dirty' Americans and their addiction to the car is easy.
Actually looking at the issue an understanding that 'building more trains' will NOT solve the problem is a little more complicated.
The fact is that in most US cities the former 'Union Station' is not only gone, the concept is buried under GENERATIONS of city planning (or mis-planning, if you prefer). One can't simply plop a rail grid into most US city plans and have any actual value. Sure, people can ride the train from Station A to Downtown (or whatever) but lacking any serious public transit from that point, or anything within walking distance, or amenities that one takes almost for granted are nearby any significant train station in Europe - your riders will be essentially debarking in the midst of....nothing.
This will make rail use unattractive and fail.
FIRST the cities have to undergo a serious and sustained effort to make them public-transit friendly (which can be concurrent with car-friendly, at least to a point).
THEN when the infrastructure is ready, trains will be useful and successful.
Of course this implies a voting base willing to forego their particular issue du jour and vote for a long-sighted body of legislators. Looking at the current (or previous) administration and congress - I say, fat chance.
If a business treats its employees as human beings with respect, it will (generally) get respect in return.
If a business shows its employees that they are worthless, replaceable drones who may be dumped at any convenient time, then no, the business won't get any courtesy or respect in return.
It's not the sort of thing that shows up on a goddamn balance sheet, and I'm sick of so many larger firms moving ever more toward 'management by accountant' than actually making human decisions based on the long range view of the value of people.
Probably it's been a complaint forever, but it seems that decisions are based more and more on the bottom line THIS year, THIS quarter, THIS month. Those are decisions that are invariably hurtful to employees, generally at lower staff levels.
Much of it is market driven - I've worked for my company for 18 years, and I saw it coming when we went public 7 or 8 years ago. What do we get out of this, aside from capital (which we didn't need) and a giant quiet bump to our top execs' compensation (since then they would have stock options, etc.)? In exchange, we whore our business for the share price, making decisions that can only be understood as logical if one genuinely believes there will BE NO TOMORROW. Incomprehensible.
Want your employees to treat your data with confidentiality and respect? Then treat the PEOPLE with respect, pay them reasonably well, and above all treat them like humans. Then, if they ultimately depart, they may make the moral decision that you've treated them fairly and that while they could screw you, they are at least slightly more likely not to.
FWIW the warranty DID explicitly cover accidental damage.
Yes, we were stupid, we bought into the furniture industry equivalent of 'underbody coating' but we were younger, stupider, and spending far more that we should have on furniture - we knew we'd have kids, and thought that good, sturdy furniture would (especially with this warranty) serve us well for decades.
A "...consumer-focused proposition..." is communicated by market preferences and purchasing choices, isn't it?
(I mean, instead of a backroom deal negotiated by self-selected 'representatives' and the 'industry'.)
Yeah, I thought we were moving there when we got married. Unfortunately, my wife was headed for somewhere else.
This isn't just confined to the computer industry or firms that are having financial troubles.
10 years ago or so we bought $5000 worth of leather furniture (http://legacy-leather.com/v2/bigskytrad.html) from http://www.schneidermans.com/. At the time we purchased a LIFETIME warranty, that included lifetime supply of cleaning solution and care products for the top-grain aniline leather.
About year 2, we had one cushion destroyed by a neighbor's small child and a permanent marker, which was replaced promptly and without any issues.
About 2-3 years later we got a package from Schneidermans saying "oh, sorry, here's your package of care products; we've decided to discontinue the 'lifetime' warranty; we would refund your money for the warranty but you got a replacement part so we consider the warranty used and the contract fulfilled. Sorry."
It was probably my fault for not causing a big stink about it, but RL was pretty complicated at the time and I didn't.
But I've always felt screwed that they sold us a lifetime warranty and then arbitrarily decided they just didn't want to support it later.
Agreed. The other thing not mentioned is that the metric of data 'size' has in fact little relationship to the information value of the message.
A single-page newspaper ad from 1905 stored digitally is maybe what, 18k bytes if stored?
A 30-second TV spot today, that contains approximately the same informative value, in 1080p is 8 megs?
So yes, the 'modern' data is nearly 500x the old datasize, but the amount of useful information conveyed is the same (OK yes, for those splitting hairs there is more actual information conveyed in the 30 second tv ad, but the color of the sky in pixel X - while necessary for the image - isn't 'useful' to the message).
I first read it as "...Sydney University's John You says volunteers could simply be attached to cable landing stations to measure ocean currents via the electromagnetic current that they generate..."
Mine's more interesting.
OK it's a fantastic improbability, but an alternative explanation in which you're both right has been posited by James P Hogan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giants_series
" Anyone who thinks that chnging the composition of our atmosphere will not result in temp change needs to back to school."
I've another one for you:
"Anyone who thinks that the composition of our atmosphere isn't changing constantly needs to go back to school."
or how about
"Anyone who thinks that making a trivial change in a small fraction of a gas that makes up a truly infinitesimal portion of our atmosphere is somehow going to have some sort of cataclysmically multiplicative effect, and who thinks this effect will overwhelm natural corrective systems despite aeons of historical temperature data showing the planet cycling through MUCH warmer and MUCH cooler cycles needs to go back to school."
How's that?
" Instead, I think they'll continue releasing things that are essentially toy soldiers, because nobody wants to be pilloried in the media for what amounts to trying to tell the truth."
While that moral high-horse may be a very comfortable, self-validating place to perch, my explanation would be more prosaic: nobody's going to release the game you describe because it's NOT ENTERTAINING and their jobs are to make something that will SELL.
Not sure how this got missed, but "games" are meant to be fun. Kids play cops and robbers (well, they used to) but don't simulate the mind-numbing extent of paperwork, bureaucracy, and tedium involved in a real investigation...I wonder why? Perhaps because it's not fun?
Yes, a 'game' company might release the title you postulated, but I personally wouldn't buy something that's a long excursus into the agonizing brutality of war because that really doesn't seem like much fun. I doubt many people would.
And before anyone begins the predictable rant about this giving our populace unrealistic ideas of how clean war is and thus make us more likely to resort to it as a solution, I'd have two points to make:
- in an historical context, there is no populace that understands better than we do what graphic, horrible things happen during war, thanks to the media's pornographic obsession with showing it to us. Or do you really think that the people of WW2, WW1, Civil War, or other wars throughout history before photography, really understood war better than us? Where do you think our antiquated mythopoeic concepts of the 'warrior hero' came from, but from them?
- the likelihood of (in the US at least) our politicians sending our troops to war has far, far more to do with the tacit agreement between Congress and the President since Korea: that in exchange for the Congress not being FORCED to declare a position on an issue, the President is allowed to dispense troops without too much scrutiny. If the President was FORCED to wait for a War Powers resolution to send troops abroad, he would hesitate to deploy them in any but the more serious, justifiable circumstances. If congress was FORCED to call out votes on a War Powers Act - meaning their positions are clearly laid out and usable against them later politically, Congress would be hesitant to endorse the use of troops for any but the clearest present danger. Either way, once troops finally were deployed, the political futures of both congress and the president would be LINKED and inseparable, and thus less subject to the backbiting bullshit we see today.
Yes, you're right that the current iteration is a snoozer.
I would point the blame directly at the weaksauce administration of NASA, and the several presidential administrations that have been obsessed with politics than real achievement. NASA has for decades been an entrenched bureaucracy, ossified and fearful of human risk.
1) the Space Shuttle - what should have been a testbed for cutting-edge low-orbit lift technologies ended up being a camel-designed-by-committee, grossly non-modular, reusable (the one success), clumsy, and frightfully impossible to upgrade.
2) the ISS - again, this is NOTHING more than a trivial expansion of Spacelab or Mir. In such low orbit it practically needs a bug shield and windshield wipers, its life is circumscribed by the requirements of maintenance flights by the shuttle.
3) Constellation - hardly even needs comment. It should terrify us that in 2010 we can't even re-create the FORTY YEAR OLD TECH that took us to the moon. Seriously.
So NASA lacks any sort of adventurousness or vision, it's unsurprising that a video game promulgated by this tepid organization is boring. They have a video game where ANYTHING is possible. Anything. And this is the extent of their imagination. Perfect.
Here's a tip: it didn't have to suck. Really, it didn't.
Postulate some advancement, and combine genres. You have a zero-gravity flight sim, and need to pilot your craft to Hypothetical Low Orbit Station X, pick up something, and take it with some time-pressure to Hypothetical L5 Station Y. (Zero grav flight sim, realistic attitude control, orbital movement, and yes, plotting much of the course by computer but terminal maneuvers by hand...moderately cool). Once you have stopped at L5, you're sent to the Moonbase, again with some time pressure. Now you're playing a first-person lunar lander because solar flares have made your automated control systems unreliable.
Finally, you can pilot a rescue mission to the Mars Lander team (shades of Oregon Trail!). Once you get there, you find that the command orbiter is perhaps empty, and you're forced to repair it manually (sure you have instructions from earth but the timelag means it's very reactive) and ultimately, have to use the limited capabilities of a suite of surface-exploration robots (like the GREAT infocom game Suspended) to figure out what happened to the Mars Away Team and (hopefully) rescue them. All based on hard-hard-hard science, no postulated Little Green Men or Ancient Artifacts.
I'm no game designer,none of the game systems I listed is LESS than 20 years old. But I think that could make for a fairly compelling game.
I'm unsurprised that NASA couldn't manage it.
I agree with Neil deGrasse Tyson that we need to push the envelope. I'm not sure NASA has anything left that can do it (the unmanned programs being the giant exception - they're daring, skilled, and extraordinarily successful).
Meh. As much as people will post about "OMG, those stupid deniers won't care!" I'll just remind folks that very few people deny that there IS some sort of climate change going on. Of course there is - point to any time in history when climate wasn't changing in some way.
It's a giant step, however, to assert that this is ipso facto the result of something humans did/are doing AND that whatever is happening is neither cyclical and/or beyond the bounds of what the system can rebound from.
Two 'warming' fallacies:
It was 75 degrees two hours ago, 82 one hour ago, and nearly 90 now. By that measure, by tomorrow it's going to be boiling hot outside!
It was cool this morning. Then THREE of my neighbors started up their lawnmowers, and now it's starting to get freaking warm. I'm going to have to tell them to stop mowing their lawns because it's clearly causing it to get hot outside.
(...and while you might want to point to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Satellite_Temperatures.png (30 year data) and even http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png (2000-year data) to illustrate that there really IS warming; I'd point to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png as a record going back 500 MILLION years illustrating that our current temps are actually fairly COOL compared to history, and that both the recent and archaic records point to radical climate changes over short periods REPEATEDLY in global climate history.)
It's warming. Yep, I agree.
This will result in a rough ride weather wise both for summers and winters.
Good thing we're the most adaptable creature on the planet. Too bad the polar bears may just turn back into bears tho, they look cool white.
Still think Al Gore's a self-promoting dick, tho.
Absolutely wrong.
This study does the opposite, in fact it builds in the gigantic subsidies for solar, and disregards the same for nuclear. Further, the replacement costs and long-term costs of nuclear are well known, this 'study' disregards that for solar.
Finally, this 'study' disregards any storage costs for solar, intermittance, or transport costs for the voltage.
Basically, solar has a strong potential for arid, sunny climates.
Unfortunately, the bulk of the Western World doesn't live in deserts, and power transmission isn't free.
The money shot from that, for those who are too lazy to follow the link:
"For the cost of solar electricity, Blackburn and Cunningham relied on reported offers of "commercial scale" solar electricity at a certain price to the grid supplier - without noting that those offers are on a strictly "when available" basis that is also take or pay.
Here is an analogy - if you happen to grow tomatoes in your yard, imagine going to your local grocery store and demanding that the grocer pay you the same price that he charges at retail. The grocer must take all of the tomatoes that your garden produces, but you make no promises about how many you will bring each day. When you want to eat tomatoes at home, but your garden has not produced any, you expect to be able to walk into the store and purchase all of the tomatoes that you need at the same price that you sold them for. (Actually, this is not a very good analogy, because on page 11 of their paper, Blackburn and Cunningham admit that certain solar electricity suppliers will actually be paid a "subsidized" rate of 19 cents per kilowatt hour, which is almost two times the residential retail price in North Carolina of 10.5 cents per kilowatt hour.)
In addition to failing to mention the terms and conditions under which electricity is being offered, Blackburn and Cunningham bury a few "minor" details about solar electricity real costs in an appendix. As they admit in a section that few people will read, the price that some installers are talking about charging utilities is the "net" price - after they receive and bank all currently offered payments from other taxpayers and after they have obtained taxpayer subsidized 25 year amortization, tax free loans. In North Carolina today, a homeowner who purchases a solar energy system receives a 30% cash grant from the federal government and a 35% cash grant from the state government.
Using the example provided in the paper, those cash payments turn a 3 KWe (max capacity), $18,000 system that produces electricity at 35 cents per kilowatt hour (if financed at 6% interest for 25 years) into a system costing the homeowner just $8,190 and producing electricity for a total of 15.9 cents per kilowatt hour - when the sun is shining. Of course, that means that the homeowner has received a grant of $9,810 from his or her neighbors, some of whom may not own a home (renters) or even own a roof (condo and apartment dwellers). Blackburn and Cunningham admit that they did not include energy storage costs of any kind (pg 11)."
and ...that shows the sustained price for modern nuclear power to be about $50/MWh or 1/3 of Solar. (That's in the US; in Eur/Jpn/Kor where their proficiency and experience is much better, about $0.033/MWh.)
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_lfibbBnlKt8/TFAYotKn1yI/AAAAAAAAA4Q/e7giOX_5kV4/s1600/LCOE_Electricity_OECD.png
New York Times guilty of 'writing to their preconceptions' again.
@Vector- your sense of reading discretion is apparently on vacation. Or perhaps it's easier to feign outrage than think critically.
The OP claims he was the victim of a 'Terry Stop' and that on this basis they searched his car on his property, and as a result he was facing "...five life sentences plus 105 years for an offense no one had ever been jailed a day on before...".
Really? That's an extraordinary claim, and surprising that he wouldn't bother to reveal what such an amazing offense might be. Of course, to 'save himself from 12 stupid jurors' he pled, and served 52 months.
So ask yourself if there might not be the TEENSIEST bit of bias in the OP's description? What the HELL did the police find in that 'illegal' search? A body?
The OP posts, 'we're all just one Terry Stop away from ruin'. I'd reply that yes, much of our criminal system depends on impulsive or subjective enforcement by officers, sure. But they could Terry Stop me, search my car, my person, my home, my office, and STILL not find anything to charge me with...certainly not to give me 5 life sentences.