Is it excessive 'respect for experts'? Is it some sort of neurosis that requires people to defer to some sort of authority figure? I simply can't understand how the default response seems to be "let's have the government warn people!" I mean, any reasonably sane person can control their own actions EVEN when something is extremely entertaining or enjoyable.
Life isn't safe. As organisms, it's our OWN responsibility to evaluate our environment both in the short- and longterm in terms of its dangers to our health and well being. Yet it seems that there is a (segment? class? political party?) in the US that believes that wisdom and security lie in building a state which carefully delineates every aspect of everyday life.
I simply don't get it. In the first place it's patronizing, in the second it has follow-on effects on individual sovereignty that I find repellent: it's a small step from giving a government the ability to define what's safe to letting them MAKE something safe (for the greater good, of course). Once they have that power, you as a citizen surrender much of your autonomy.
Take the push for socialized medicine in the US. Once the US gov't is providing your healthcare, don't they then logically have a say in what you can and cannot do? You can't smoke a cigarette or have a drink - too bad for your health. You can't go parasailing - way too dangerous!
The idea of warning labels for self-evident danger is truly the camel's nose of the nanny state. It can stay out of my tent, thanks very much.
If indeed the question is posed in the form of "Will quantum computers let us transcend the human condition and become as powerful as gods, or are they a physical absurdity destined to be exposed as the twenty-first century's perpetual-motion machine?" this is just another sign that SciAm has become another hyperbolix Popular Science magazine, actual science is now optional.
Again, assuming that the summary is correct (I won't read SciAm again) what rational researcher would pose their hypothesis in such absurdly black or white terms? So if it doesn't give us the power of gods, it's an absurd triviality? I'm going to take a wild leap and suggest that it will come down somewhere between the two.
let's look at the data that is the source for these conclusions.
"Our observations suggest that between 20% and 60% of Sun-like stars have evidence for the formation of rocky planets not unlike the processes we think led to planet Earth,"
"Our observations" means only that in a survey of sunlike stars, they identified clouds of dust around them. They haven't imaged anything, they are making the supposition that dust clouds = rocky planets, which is a leap.
Furthermore, they are presuming that there are earth-sized bodies in our own Oort cloud, which again, haven't been imaged or otherwise identified. Another huge supposition.
In both cases, I would believe that these conclusions are reasonable, and I personally believe it's LIKELY that terrestrial, rocky planetoids ARE common both in our system and galactically. But in both these cases I don't see any evidence presented that changes what was a previously widely-held guesstimate into anything more substantial than that.
To be more specific from the grossly oversimplified BEEB article: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer-20080217.html The telescope used images the infrared picture of dust around target stars. Logically, the dust closer in to the stars is hotter than the dust further out (like the oort cloud). Hot dust is 3.6-8 microns in wavelenth, cold dust is 70-160 microns. "Warm dust" at ~24 microns, is presumed to be in the 'sweet spot' - representing in our system the span from Earth to Jupiter's orbits. Looking at main-sequence stars like the sun, they see that at an age of about 300 million years, the 'signal' for warm dust just drops off. Coincidentally, this is the same time in solar evolution in which we believe our solar system was swept clean of dust by the formation of the rocky planets. So they are presuming that this process is taking place elsewhere as well.
...because the geeks in the NSA's basement haven't EVER used the awesome resolution power of spy satellites to watch people having sex in parks, or to check out that hottie as she sunbathes nude.
But in the real world, there are limited resources. And where there are limited resources, there are other people who feel that (if they can) it's easier to take what you have than to work and build something themselves.
Now, in the real world, you have more than two choices of what to do with surplus money: you don't have the false binary choice of investing it in roads, schools, and a network OR you buying bombs, tanks, and combat jets. In fact, spending it all on one thing or another would be catastrophically stupid.
Those comfortably ensconced in the western "safe" world, have a habit of forgetting this. Even our current "oh so expensive" wars are fought at such a distance and such a trivial impact to the economy that nobody really notices it's going on. I've never known someone from a Third-World country who has any trouble understanding it immediately.
Quiz question #1: Suppose you 'own' a research lab and a team of competent or even brilliant scientists. You are going to do research. Which research do you do - the research whose results you can price at whatever price it's worth, or the research whose results will immediately be appropriated by the government and your prices strictly controlled at an extremely low level? (And if you answer "I would do what's best for my fellow man" - please note that answer gives you NO POINTS until let us all know what current charitable work you *donate* your time to currently. If, instead, you work a job for PAY instead of spending your time working in soup kitchens or any one of millions of other charities that would help your fellow man, your answer is disqualified as -1, Hypocrite.)
Quiz question #2: how many groundbreaking pharmaceuticals have been developed in countries where pharma prices are strictly controlled?
"the reason that extension cord you bought had 4 different warning labels on it was because of morons that do something completely stupid, and then blame the manufacturer for not having a warning label telling you not to do it."
Wrong. Lots of people blame crap on irrelevant and unrelated things from ignorance to superstition (I lost the game because I didn't have my lucky socks on!).
If I electrocute myself because I've tried to cut through the power cord with a scissors, sure, I can blame the manufacturer all I want for not preventing it.
THE CULPRITS IN THIS DRAMA ARE NOT THE IGNORANT SCHMUCKS THAT BLAME SOMEONE ELSE FOR SOMETHING THAT THEY DID. That's probably unavoidable. THE CULPRITS ARE THE LAWYERS WHO CHEERFULLY TAKE AND PROSECUTE THESE CASES IN OUR CIVIL COURTS. Lawyers are supposed to be officers of court; Judges should be able to throw out nonsensical or stupid frivolous lawsuits AND censure the lawyers involved for wasting everyone's time and money, including (let's say after 3 strikes) permanent disbarment. We're PAYING them to make intelligent use of our legal system, and they are milking it for their own personal gain.
"An IQ of 159 means that out of a random sample of 100,000 people, you are one of the four or five people most likely to mention your IQ in conversation. Or your MENSA membership."
"Until your player stops working in a few years, as all electronics eventually do."
Eventually, maybe. But that can be a big number.
My TV is a Hi-def Toshiba 36" tube. It's 7 or 8 years old. By DVD player is (was) Toshiba, bought at the same time. (Sadly, I just bought a HD-DVD for Xmas.) My 5.1 receiver is a Sony, which I've had for at least 13-14 years. My CD-player is a Sony 5 disc carousel I bought 12 years ago at a GARAGE SALE for $15. And it came with 5 nice CD's they left in it! (I did try to return them but they said I should keep 'em.) My VCR is at LEAST 15 years old (Panasonic). My previous receiver (2.1?) and CD player are both still running nicely for the person that has them, they were Harmon Kardon, probably nearly 20 years old by now. My speakers are a 5.1 set from various vendors I don't recall, around 12-14 years old too.
Also, these systems have been moved through 3 or 4 change-of-residences, not just sat in one place forever.
So I'm not sure where you're buying your electronics, but you might want to re-evaluate them. For the last 20 years I've upgraded for features, power, (and in the case of computers, speed) but only vanishingly rarely have I replaced components or units due to FAILURE.
...this is simply his way of trying to improve Microsoft's performance.
(In my experience, taking senior management out of large firms and giving them projects 'elsewhere' gives the people below them a reasonable chance to actually get shit done, instead of ginning up data for tomorrow's 64-slide powerpoint presentation.)
Precisely the sort of naive objection I would expect on an internet forum.
What else, pray tell, did you think was going to be our motivation? Altruism? The beautiful view?
Organisms, including those that fly spaceships and use computers, compete with other organisms for resources. It's a zero-sum game. Those who compete best win, and are able to then pass some advantage to their children to give them a leg up in their own competition. Securing any advantage is good, securing that advantage while denying it to your competitors is logically BETTER.
Either program - lunar or asteroidal - is going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Now, those dollars could be spent on many other things that are beneficial to our people or yes, our country. When deciding where to spend those dollars, I bloody well HOPE that someone is doing some sort of cost-benefit-time analysis. And if those dollars can be spent giving us something that is an advantage to us in terms of commercial, scientific or even - shudder to think of it! - military, doesn't it stand to reason that's worth pursuing?
Unless of course you're one of those starry-eyed Utopians who believe that somehow we're gong to evolve into a future where people don't compete? Then you're simply irrelevant to the conversation, because if that's the case, there's no reason to spend the resources on space exploration in the first place when there are so many other pressing immediate human needs here on earth.
"Essentially, you get the Moon and Mars for only twice the amount as getting the Moon or Mars."
OK, you've listed all the non-advantages for a moon program. Now how about some advantages?
1) by developing technologies for hard vacuum, you are in a sense prepping for one of the hardest parts of the Mars mission, that is, a months/years long transit time. You have a nearly perfect platform for testing technologies outside of the Van Allen belt(s), exposing them for long durations to solar heating and occluded cooling. Note: developing the tech for an asteroid mission is essentially saying that 'we can already do this part' - can we? Reliably to put a crew's lives at risk over extended periods of time?
2) long-term value: geopolitical, military, commercial, geographic - as you dismissively point out, there are theoretically (only!) 2 places where solar power access is continual. Possibly more importantly these two places (the poles) are also the only places where the sun, the earth, in fact the entire ecliptic (north or south) is in clear line of sight. How much are those two spots worth today? How much will they be worth in a century? Want to surveil deep space while having a straight line-of-sight link to earth? Want to have a launch point for a flinger that could theoretically put lunar materials anywhere in the earth-moon system with the simplest ballistic solution? I'd argue that being the first with a permanent base there has an INCALCULABLE value over longer timespans. And if you have the first base on one pole, it's not a giant stretch to put a second one on the other pole and monopolize both. The lunar poles - for near-earth space - are practically 21st Century Suez or Panama canals in their strategic value.
3) raw materials: again, a lunar base in the longer term answers one of the bigger questions to space exploitation. Tossing something up to an orbiting factory or processor module is trivial from the moon, and the effectively limitless raw material (including rather important oxides) doesn't hurt. Going to an asteroid lets you explore, but bringing that back where it could be usefully exploited is an ENTIRELY larger project with propulsive technologies we aren't even CLOSE to having.
Personally, if I were looking at it as a game of Civ or something, I'd say the asteroid is probably the cheaper, higher payoff short range program. The lunar base is the more expensive, slower-to-develop programs that ends up being the incontestable game-winning economic- and military-power multiplier in the endgame.
Needless to say, I don't see nearly the value you do in an asteroid mission. I see THAT as the 'flash in the pan' while the idea of a lunar base is the investment-growth option, for Mars certainly, but also for decades if not centuries further on.
...there are going to be dozens of posts about how WoW sucks, and (game x) is so much better.
Maybe (game x) is better by some specific subjective metric, but in terms of the overall 'package', I'd have to say that in this case Adam Smith's measurement is the best objective general measure of value.
I think WoW is particularly strong in terms of ease-of-play, progression speed, reward vs. time, variety of experience, replayability, and yes, even balance. Other games might have advantages such as a better crafting system, better pvp, and better graphics but each of these involves a tradeoff that Blizzard has perhaps deliberately accepted in favor of more mass-market acceptance (in the above examples, I'd say the tradeoffs are learning curve, playability, and system requirements, respectively).
There are LOTS of specific things to complain about WoW, but commercial success on this scale is hard to dispute. They had no particular advantage in the marketplace compared to other developers (aside from a well-earned reputation), but they have come to utterly dominate the MMOG market to the extent that their 'ownership' of that market space has leaked into popular culture.
Now that WoW is so dominant, it has become the benchmark in ways nobody could have anticipated 5 years ago. They not only pull in more subscribers, they've transformed the "computer gaming" activity almost singlehandedly from nerdville to nearly-mainstream, particularly with 20-somethings and under.
Unfortunately that means they are also able to exert an influence (large, although I'd hesitate to say disproportionate) on other games - I for one believe that WotLK (the next expansion) has been done or nearly done since before the end of the year, and that they are waiting to unleash it a month or so before the 'next big competitor' (I believe Age of Conan) is released.
Notice I said "...or force them to ask for assistance..."
I meant to post sarcastically; obviously the blind and seriously disabled are going to HAVE to ask for assistance no matter what system is used, the brain dead/comatose shouldn't be voting (unless you're a Democrat, in which case you're in favor of ID-free voting, felons voting, so I expect you're in favor of voting for the dead or nearly-so, since it worked so well for Kennedy), and ultimately this whole ISSUE was touched off by a few urban Florida counties where the people were too stupid to figure out a frikkin' PUNCHCARD, so I'm not sure how they safely cross the STREET much less it being a critical issue that these informed, responsible individuals need to cast their ballot.:)
"But if the review does a very good job describing objectively what gameplay is like, then I might be able to decide for myself whether or not I will enjoy the game." +1 Spot-On.
I wrote computer game reviews for more than 10 years for a handful of niche-market websites and even a magazine or two, more as a hobby than anything else. We were fairly small potatoes, and the money was trivial. So I definitely had less riding on the reception of my reviews and my continuing as a writer for a specific outlet. But at various times I felt both the overt and implied pressure from games companies, one blatantly saying "if you don't change that review, you'll never see another game from us" - not much of a threat, since if we'd really wanted to review it we'd have bought it anyway and in any case they were really relying on US to get their game publicized. But the fact that they'd have the nuts to come out and say it was stunning.
From the point of view of someone who's been in that market, I'd make some recommendations: - A review should state clearly if the reviewer or his firm was GIVEN the game or BOUGHT the game. The cost of an individual game is a meaningless amount of money for a business, yet there is still a large step up in credibility and editorial freedom when one is not beholden to the game company by even that small amount. There's a reason Consumer Reports has done it for all these years on all the products they review. - the game reviewer's machine specs need to be stated clearly in the review. Optimally, the game should be run on both 'min spec' and 'recommended or better' machines. - the game should be reviewed AS RECEIVED; no last-minute patches, no 'supplemental' disk that the consumer isn't going to get. Anything that's not a 'gold' version going on the shelves is a PREVIEW not a REVIEW. (Another reason why buying a copy off the shelf is a sound practice.) *Any* other swag from the company should be refused or donated away. - I like reviews that set out the reviewer's bias at the beginning; it lets me know outright if they want to like the game or not. Usually that's clear from the text, but stating it explicitly is more transparent. - As the above-poster said, a review is strongest when it's descriptive. Hyperbole should be at a minimum, and the best reviews never say anything as bluntly as "this is a good game"...such should be clear from the text.
Simply marking down a space next to the name is elitist discriminatory to the handi-capable!
Blind people can't vote. People with no arms or legs can't vote. The comatose and brain-dead can't vote. People from Florida couldn't understand it.
Are you willing to nearly disenfranchise these voters (or force them to ask for/have assistance) just for your silly, reliable, simple, and trustworthy system?
Given where sea levels have been historically, I'd consider Denmark (as many other places) no more a 'permanent place to live' as the beach at low tide.
There is a not-insignificant value to being first with a moonbase, and that's the primary mantra of Real Estate developers everywhere: location, location, location. Except in this case, it's just "location x2". There are two optimal locations for a moonbase which then has the ability to observe Earth AND farside simultaneously as well as having permanent solar power - the poles. AFAIK the lunar axis wobbles slightly, but not too much.
Being there first means first choice of locations, and when there's really only two, that's a pretty significant issue that could have impact on American lunar policy for decades or even centuries.
It would also mean we're the first to work on the unforeseen problems that would crop up, and, although our ability to keep secrets is positively seive-like, would also confer early advantages to other bases throughout the solar system.
...I believe this is not a French-exclusive sort of deal. I would say it's generally continental/European.
In my experience in Germany at least, the prices of books are entirely fixed by a cartel BY LAW and it's illegal to sell them below that cartel's set prices. Pretty sad in a country that values learning so highly.
Part of the problem for outsiders is that they begin with a set of flawed presumptions. The US is huge, but that's not the primary problem. The problem is the heterogeneity which is CONSTITUTIONALLY built into the system at all levels.
At least theoretically, the US is a democratic republic. That is, it is a collection of nominally-independent states who have certain guaranteed rights as members of the association, many of which have to do with voting procedures, as these were extremely sensitive and deeply-discussed subjects during the formation of the country.
The best way to explain it is that the states form an intellectual marketplace for their citizens. Each state is allowed a certain amount of freedom within certain federally-established limits, to set their own rules. If you don't like the rules, you have two options - leave and go to another state with a 'better' system (in your view) or establish power within the state to the point where you are able to change the rules. If enough people agree with you, this is a far easier system to 'fix' than to have to change the voting rules for a country of 300 million all at once.
So there are a couple of answers to your question: 1) it's not as simple as a federal law just saying "everyone do it this way"...I don't believe that's even possible. 2) the chaos is the messy result of democracy AT WORK. Yes, it's messy. But it sorts itself out.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it just me, or is it highly ironic that the Ulysses spacecraft (to study the sun) didn't use SOLAR power?
Is it excessive 'respect for experts'? Is it some sort of neurosis that requires people to defer to some sort of authority figure? I simply can't understand how the default response seems to be "let's have the government warn people!" I mean, any reasonably sane person can control their own actions EVEN when something is extremely entertaining or enjoyable.
Life isn't safe. As organisms, it's our OWN responsibility to evaluate our environment both in the short- and longterm in terms of its dangers to our health and well being. Yet it seems that there is a (segment? class? political party?) in the US that believes that wisdom and security lie in building a state which carefully delineates every aspect of everyday life.
I simply don't get it. In the first place it's patronizing, in the second it has follow-on effects on individual sovereignty that I find repellent: it's a small step from giving a government the ability to define what's safe to letting them MAKE something safe (for the greater good, of course). Once they have that power, you as a citizen surrender much of your autonomy.
Take the push for socialized medicine in the US. Once the US gov't is providing your healthcare, don't they then logically have a say in what you can and cannot do? You can't smoke a cigarette or have a drink - too bad for your health. You can't go parasailing - way too dangerous!
The idea of warning labels for self-evident danger is truly the camel's nose of the nanny state. It can stay out of my tent, thanks very much.
If indeed the question is posed in the form of "Will quantum computers let us transcend the human condition and become as powerful as gods, or are they a physical absurdity destined to be exposed as the twenty-first century's perpetual-motion machine?" this is just another sign that SciAm has become another hyperbolix Popular Science magazine, actual science is now optional.
Again, assuming that the summary is correct (I won't read SciAm again) what rational researcher would pose their hypothesis in such absurdly black or white terms? So if it doesn't give us the power of gods, it's an absurd triviality? I'm going to take a wild leap and suggest that it will come down somewhere between the two.
let's look at the data that is the source for these conclusions.
"Our observations suggest that between 20% and 60% of Sun-like stars have evidence for the formation of rocky planets not unlike the processes we think led to planet Earth,"
"Our observations" means only that in a survey of sunlike stars, they identified clouds of dust around them. They haven't imaged anything, they are making the supposition that dust clouds = rocky planets, which is a leap.
Furthermore, they are presuming that there are earth-sized bodies in our own Oort cloud, which again, haven't been imaged or otherwise identified. Another huge supposition.
In both cases, I would believe that these conclusions are reasonable, and I personally believe it's LIKELY that terrestrial, rocky planetoids ARE common both in our system and galactically. But in both these cases I don't see any evidence presented that changes what was a previously widely-held guesstimate into anything more substantial than that.
To be more specific from the grossly oversimplified BEEB article: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer-20080217.html
The telescope used images the infrared picture of dust around target stars. Logically, the dust closer in to the stars is hotter than the dust further out (like the oort cloud).
Hot dust is 3.6-8 microns in wavelenth, cold dust is 70-160 microns. "Warm dust" at ~24 microns, is presumed to be in the 'sweet spot' - representing in our system the span from Earth to Jupiter's orbits. Looking at main-sequence stars like the sun, they see that at an age of about 300 million years, the 'signal' for warm dust just drops off. Coincidentally, this is the same time in solar evolution in which we believe our solar system was swept clean of dust by the formation of the rocky planets. So they are presuming that this process is taking place elsewhere as well.
...because the geeks in the NSA's basement haven't EVER used the awesome resolution power of spy satellites to watch people having sex in parks, or to check out that hottie as she sunbathes nude.
Yeah, never.
..Which is right, as far as it goes.
But in the real world, there are limited resources. And where there are limited resources, there are other people who feel that (if they can) it's easier to take what you have than to work and build something themselves.
Now, in the real world, you have more than two choices of what to do with surplus money: you don't have the false binary choice of investing it in roads, schools, and a network OR you buying bombs, tanks, and combat jets. In fact, spending it all on one thing or another would be catastrophically stupid.
Those comfortably ensconced in the western "safe" world, have a habit of forgetting this. Even our current "oh so expensive" wars are fought at such a distance and such a trivial impact to the economy that nobody really notices it's going on. I've never known someone from a Third-World country who has any trouble understanding it immediately.
"...Right now, each custom-made piece has about US$50 (£25) worth of parts..."
So, priced about the same as Lego then?
Here's a quick quiz:
Quiz question #1: Suppose you 'own' a research lab and a team of competent or even brilliant scientists.
You are going to do research. Which research do you do - the research whose results you can price at whatever price it's worth, or the research whose results will immediately be appropriated by the government and your prices strictly controlled at an extremely low level? (And if you answer "I would do what's best for my fellow man" - please note that answer gives you NO POINTS until let us all know what current charitable work you *donate* your time to currently. If, instead, you work a job for PAY instead of spending your time working in soup kitchens or any one of millions of other charities that would help your fellow man, your answer is disqualified as -1, Hypocrite.)
Quiz question #2: how many groundbreaking pharmaceuticals have been developed in countries where pharma prices are strictly controlled?
It's clear that no robot should EVER have to kill more than 64,000 people. 64k should be plenty for everyone.
"the reason that extension cord you bought had 4 different warning labels on it was because of morons that do something completely stupid, and then blame the manufacturer for not having a warning label telling you not to do it."
Wrong. Lots of people blame crap on irrelevant and unrelated things from ignorance to superstition (I lost the game because I didn't have my lucky socks on!).
If I electrocute myself because I've tried to cut through the power cord with a scissors, sure, I can blame the manufacturer all I want for not preventing it.
THE CULPRITS IN THIS DRAMA ARE NOT THE IGNORANT SCHMUCKS THAT BLAME SOMEONE ELSE FOR SOMETHING THAT THEY DID. That's probably unavoidable. THE CULPRITS ARE THE LAWYERS WHO CHEERFULLY TAKE AND PROSECUTE THESE CASES IN OUR CIVIL COURTS. Lawyers are supposed to be officers of court; Judges should be able to throw out nonsensical or stupid frivolous lawsuits AND censure the lawyers involved for wasting everyone's time and money, including (let's say after 3 strikes) permanent disbarment. We're PAYING them to make intelligent use of our legal system, and they are milking it for their own personal gain.
"An IQ of 159 means that out of a random sample of 100,000 people, you are one of the four or five people most likely to mention your IQ in conversation. Or your MENSA membership."
Fixed that for you.
"Really, the rest of your point is rendered moot because all your supporting evidence is nonsense."
/cry.
"You like war. Now that's established, you're not worth listening to."
Thank you both for summarizing the level of political discourse this election season.
"addblock plus , no-script and a host file with 16,875 add servers pointed to 127.0.0.1"
Any chance you'd post that hosts file? I could use it too.
"Until your player stops working in a few years, as all electronics eventually do."
Eventually, maybe. But that can be a big number.
My TV is a Hi-def Toshiba 36" tube. It's 7 or 8 years old.
By DVD player is (was) Toshiba, bought at the same time. (Sadly, I just bought a HD-DVD for Xmas.)
My 5.1 receiver is a Sony, which I've had for at least 13-14 years.
My CD-player is a Sony 5 disc carousel I bought 12 years ago at a GARAGE SALE for $15. And it came with 5 nice CD's they left in it! (I did try to return them but they said I should keep 'em.)
My VCR is at LEAST 15 years old (Panasonic).
My previous receiver (2.1?) and CD player are both still running nicely for the person that has them, they were Harmon Kardon, probably nearly 20 years old by now.
My speakers are a 5.1 set from various vendors I don't recall, around 12-14 years old too.
Also, these systems have been moved through 3 or 4 change-of-residences, not just sat in one place forever.
So I'm not sure where you're buying your electronics, but you might want to re-evaluate them. For the last 20 years I've upgraded for features, power, (and in the case of computers, speed) but only vanishingly rarely have I replaced components or units due to FAILURE.
...this is simply his way of trying to improve Microsoft's performance.
(In my experience, taking senior management out of large firms and giving them projects 'elsewhere' gives the people below them a reasonable chance to actually get shit done, instead of ginning up data for tomorrow's 64-slide powerpoint presentation.)
Precisely the sort of naive objection I would expect on an internet forum.
What else, pray tell, did you think was going to be our motivation? Altruism? The beautiful view?
Organisms, including those that fly spaceships and use computers, compete with other organisms for resources. It's a zero-sum game. Those who compete best win, and are able to then pass some advantage to their children to give them a leg up in their own competition. Securing any advantage is good, securing that advantage while denying it to your competitors is logically BETTER.
Either program - lunar or asteroidal - is going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Now, those dollars could be spent on many other things that are beneficial to our people or yes, our country. When deciding where to spend those dollars, I bloody well HOPE that someone is doing some sort of cost-benefit-time analysis. And if those dollars can be spent giving us something that is an advantage to us in terms of commercial, scientific or even - shudder to think of it! - military, doesn't it stand to reason that's worth pursuing?
Unless of course you're one of those starry-eyed Utopians who believe that somehow we're gong to evolve into a future where people don't compete? Then you're simply irrelevant to the conversation, because if that's the case, there's no reason to spend the resources on space exploration in the first place when there are so many other pressing immediate human needs here on earth.
"Essentially, you get the Moon and Mars for only twice the amount as getting the Moon or Mars."
OK, you've listed all the non-advantages for a moon program. Now how about some advantages?
1) by developing technologies for hard vacuum, you are in a sense prepping for one of the hardest parts of the Mars mission, that is, a months/years long transit time. You have a nearly perfect platform for testing technologies outside of the Van Allen belt(s), exposing them for long durations to solar heating and occluded cooling. Note: developing the tech for an asteroid mission is essentially saying that 'we can already do this part' - can we? Reliably to put a crew's lives at risk over extended periods of time?
2) long-term value: geopolitical, military, commercial, geographic - as you dismissively point out, there are theoretically (only!) 2 places where solar power access is continual. Possibly more importantly these two places (the poles) are also the only places where the sun, the earth, in fact the entire ecliptic (north or south) is in clear line of sight. How much are those two spots worth today? How much will they be worth in a century? Want to surveil deep space while having a straight line-of-sight link to earth? Want to have a launch point for a flinger that could theoretically put lunar materials anywhere in the earth-moon system with the simplest ballistic solution? I'd argue that being the first with a permanent base there has an INCALCULABLE value over longer timespans. And if you have the first base on one pole, it's not a giant stretch to put a second one on the other pole and monopolize both. The lunar poles - for near-earth space - are practically 21st Century Suez or Panama canals in their strategic value.
3) raw materials: again, a lunar base in the longer term answers one of the bigger questions to space exploitation. Tossing something up to an orbiting factory or processor module is trivial from the moon, and the effectively limitless raw material (including rather important oxides) doesn't hurt. Going to an asteroid lets you explore, but bringing that back where it could be usefully exploited is an ENTIRELY larger project with propulsive technologies we aren't even CLOSE to having.
Personally, if I were looking at it as a game of Civ or something, I'd say the asteroid is probably the cheaper, higher payoff short range program. The lunar base is the more expensive, slower-to-develop programs that ends up being the incontestable game-winning economic- and military-power multiplier in the endgame.
Needless to say, I don't see nearly the value you do in an asteroid mission. I see THAT as the 'flash in the pan' while the idea of a lunar base is the investment-growth option, for Mars certainly, but also for decades if not centuries further on.
...there are going to be dozens of posts about how WoW sucks, and (game x) is so much better.
Maybe (game x) is better by some specific subjective metric, but in terms of the overall 'package', I'd have to say that in this case Adam Smith's measurement is the best objective general measure of value.
I think WoW is particularly strong in terms of ease-of-play, progression speed, reward vs. time, variety of experience, replayability, and yes, even balance. Other games might have advantages such as a better crafting system, better pvp, and better graphics but each of these involves a tradeoff that Blizzard has perhaps deliberately accepted in favor of more mass-market acceptance (in the above examples, I'd say the tradeoffs are learning curve, playability, and system requirements, respectively).
There are LOTS of specific things to complain about WoW, but commercial success on this scale is hard to dispute. They had no particular advantage in the marketplace compared to other developers (aside from a well-earned reputation), but they have come to utterly dominate the MMOG market to the extent that their 'ownership' of that market space has leaked into popular culture.
Now that WoW is so dominant, it has become the benchmark in ways nobody could have anticipated 5 years ago. They not only pull in more subscribers, they've transformed the "computer gaming" activity almost singlehandedly from nerdville to nearly-mainstream, particularly with 20-somethings and under.
Unfortunately that means they are also able to exert an influence (large, although I'd hesitate to say disproportionate) on other games - I for one believe that WotLK (the next expansion) has been done or nearly done since before the end of the year, and that they are waiting to unleash it a month or so before the 'next big competitor' (I believe Age of Conan) is released.
Notice I said "...or force them to ask for assistance..."
:)
I meant to post sarcastically; obviously the blind and seriously disabled are going to HAVE to ask for assistance no matter what system is used, the brain dead/comatose shouldn't be voting (unless you're a Democrat, in which case you're in favor of ID-free voting, felons voting, so I expect you're in favor of voting for the dead or nearly-so, since it worked so well for Kennedy), and ultimately this whole ISSUE was touched off by a few urban Florida counties where the people were too stupid to figure out a frikkin' PUNCHCARD, so I'm not sure how they safely cross the STREET much less it being a critical issue that these informed, responsible individuals need to cast their ballot.
"But if the review does a very good job describing objectively what gameplay is like, then I might be able to decide for myself whether or not I will enjoy the game."
+1 Spot-On.
I wrote computer game reviews for more than 10 years for a handful of niche-market websites and even a magazine or two, more as a hobby than anything else. We were fairly small potatoes, and the money was trivial.
So I definitely had less riding on the reception of my reviews and my continuing as a writer for a specific outlet. But at various times I felt both the overt and implied pressure from games companies, one blatantly saying "if you don't change that review, you'll never see another game from us" - not much of a threat, since if we'd really wanted to review it we'd have bought it anyway and in any case they were really relying on US to get their game publicized. But the fact that they'd have the nuts to come out and say it was stunning.
From the point of view of someone who's been in that market, I'd make some recommendations:
- A review should state clearly if the reviewer or his firm was GIVEN the game or BOUGHT the game. The cost of an individual game is a meaningless amount of money for a business, yet there is still a large step up in credibility and editorial freedom when one is not beholden to the game company by even that small amount. There's a reason Consumer Reports has done it for all these years on all the products they review.
- the game reviewer's machine specs need to be stated clearly in the review. Optimally, the game should be run on both 'min spec' and 'recommended or better' machines.
- the game should be reviewed AS RECEIVED; no last-minute patches, no 'supplemental' disk that the consumer isn't going to get. Anything that's not a 'gold' version going on the shelves is a PREVIEW not a REVIEW. (Another reason why buying a copy off the shelf is a sound practice.) *Any* other swag from the company should be refused or donated away.
- I like reviews that set out the reviewer's bias at the beginning; it lets me know outright if they want to like the game or not. Usually that's clear from the text, but stating it explicitly is more transparent.
- As the above-poster said, a review is strongest when it's descriptive. Hyperbole should be at a minimum, and the best reviews never say anything as bluntly as "this is a good game"...such should be clear from the text.
Simply marking down a space next to the name is elitist discriminatory to the handi-capable!
Blind people can't vote.
People with no arms or legs can't vote.
The comatose and brain-dead can't vote.
People from Florida couldn't understand it.
Are you willing to nearly disenfranchise these voters (or force them to ask for/have assistance) just for your silly, reliable, simple, and trustworthy system?
You're PRACTICALLY Hitler!
Given where sea levels have been historically, I'd consider Denmark (as many other places) no more a 'permanent place to live' as the beach at low tide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Phanerozoic_Sea_Level.png
(shrug)
There is a not-insignificant value to being first with a moonbase, and that's the primary mantra of Real Estate developers everywhere: location, location, location. Except in this case, it's just "location x2". There are two optimal locations for a moonbase which then has the ability to observe Earth AND farside simultaneously as well as having permanent solar power - the poles. AFAIK the lunar axis wobbles slightly, but not too much.
Being there first means first choice of locations, and when there's really only two, that's a pretty significant issue that could have impact on American lunar policy for decades or even centuries.
It would also mean we're the first to work on the unforeseen problems that would crop up, and, although our ability to keep secrets is positively seive-like, would also confer early advantages to other bases throughout the solar system.
...I believe this is not a French-exclusive sort of deal. I would say it's generally continental/European.
In my experience in Germany at least, the prices of books are entirely fixed by a cartel BY LAW and it's illegal to sell them below that cartel's set prices. Pretty sad in a country that values learning so highly.
I think it's a valid question.
Part of the problem for outsiders is that they begin with a set of flawed presumptions.
The US is huge, but that's not the primary problem. The problem is the heterogeneity which is CONSTITUTIONALLY built into the system at all levels.
At least theoretically, the US is a democratic republic. That is, it is a collection of nominally-independent states who have certain guaranteed rights as members of the association, many of which have to do with voting procedures, as these were extremely sensitive and deeply-discussed subjects during the formation of the country.
The best way to explain it is that the states form an intellectual marketplace for their citizens. Each state is allowed a certain amount of freedom within certain federally-established limits, to set their own rules. If you don't like the rules, you have two options - leave and go to another state with a 'better' system (in your view) or establish power within the state to the point where you are able to change the rules. If enough people agree with you, this is a far easier system to 'fix' than to have to change the voting rules for a country of 300 million all at once.
So there are a couple of answers to your question:
1) it's not as simple as a federal law just saying "everyone do it this way"...I don't believe that's even possible.
2) the chaos is the messy result of democracy AT WORK. Yes, it's messy. But it sorts itself out.