I'm happy to pay for errata. $349 per server is too much for errata. I don't want any kind of support from RH other than errata.
Maybe you should take a look at Redhat Linux (according to Redhat this is suitable for those who want minimal support). Redhat Enterprise Linux is probably not the Linux you are looking for. Redhat Linux (no Enterprise) can still be had for as little as US$39.95.
Take away that inflow of cash, and you utterly decimate the economies of these nations.
If it the oil industry collapsed over-night then it might be a problem, but otherwise it might turn out to be a good thing even for countries that now depend on oil income. Oil and repressive government go hand-in-hand because oil allows governments to make money without having economically productive populations. Without oil to provide income the governments in many countries would have to start thinking about their populations as a work-force, rather than as a rable to be keep under control.
You (and other people with a religious faith in "free markets") are confusing money price with energy price. If it costs more than a barrel's worth of energy to extract a barrel of oil, the game is over, no matter if oil is a kazillion dollars a barrel.
You are wrong. If at some point it takes more energy to get a barrel of oil than you can extract from a barrel of oil, then oil will no longer be used as a primary energy source, but it might still be used in manufacturing (which is mostly what you seem to be worried about).
As for energy sources, if the price of energy rises to a kazillion dollars (for the equivalent of a barrel of oil) then just about every alternative to oil would become economically viable along the way. So, just as the poster above wrote, the market would direct the move from oil to other energy sources, as prices change.
People, and there are lots of them, who think that the market will or can take care of this approaching issue are very sadly mistaken.
People who think they can do a better job of allocating resources than markets can have often been very sadly mistaken. Witness the recent history of communism. The mistake that doomsday predictors like yourself make is that you never really think about how increasing scarcity will affect the choices made by people in the market for oil and energy. When oil starts to become more scarce, and it hasn't yet, other types of energy or research into other types of energy will slowly become more attractive.
There will never be any sudden crisis in energy supply. The absolute worst than can happen is that energy will one day be somewhat more expensive than it is now - and even then we know there is a limit to how much more expensive it can become. The price will never rise far above the current price of nuclear energy, which is in fact only a little higher than the current price of oil energy.
Oh well, if this will occupy their time and keep them out of everyone else's business then perhaps in the end it will be a positive thing. The more that sexually repressed people and groups are distracted and preoccupied, the happier the rest of the world will be.
Actually this comes closer to the mark than you might think. For a lot of the people who fuss about porn the problem of controling their own behavior is what concerns them most. If you have some time to waste then try watching some religious TV. About half of it has to do with money, and the other half has to do with self-discipline and resisting temptation.
Just goes to show that the puritan spirit is still alive and well in the US.
I however, do not believe in the Big Bang or the new Sheets Theory...
Cosmology and biology are entirely different fields. Current theories of the development of the universe have very little, if anything, to do with the theory of evolution, and the evidence for the two types of theory are entirely independent. I should add that the philosophical issues at the bottom of each type of theory are also entirely different.
In the case of cosmology the philosophical question is something like "where did all the stuff that makes up the universe come from?" Traditionally the three available answers have been "from nothing" or "it has always been here", or "from God". Of course the God answer simply shifts the problem back one step to the question of "where did God come from?" Traditionally the two available answers have been "from nothing" and "he has always been here". See a pattern forming here? David Hume did, which led him somewhat sarcastically to suggest a third answer to the God question as well, namely "from a super-God".
In the case of biology the philosophical question is, roughly speaking, "how did all this biological stuff get so well organised?" Traditionally the only answer available was "God designed it that way" (Hume, as you might expect wanted to know how God got to be so well organised). The theory of evolution provides an answer to this philosophical problem. It shows how any structure that replicates can become better organised over time.
Whether you like the modern answers to the problems or not, my point here is just that they are different problems with different answers. You should not confuse your disagreement with one for disagreement with the other.
How could he go to his peers when they all seem to share your views about evolution?
This is the usual complaint of most cranks. The best answer is just to point out all the responses to his work that were not mere ridicule, but were careful explanations of why his arguments do not work, and why his factual claims are often false. A lot of biologists believe in God, and many more simply do not care whether God exists or not. If Behe's work had any scientific merit then there would be plenty of scientists to give it a fair hearing.
How do you propose the universe began?
I don't propose that the universe "began". I don't think it is the kind of thing that can have a begining, any more than a cicle can have a begining. I canot imagine how time could have an end. Why should I imagine that it had a start? But all of this is beside the point. The question of whether the universe came from has nothing to do with biology or the theory of evolution.
Yes, Michael Behe is a scientist, but is "Intelligent Design" science? If so, it will be the first science established without a single technical paper published for peer-review, including zero by Behe himself. For some reason he has decided to completely bypass professional review and go directly to a Darwin-doubting public. But more to the point, what is wrong with this book?...
If you want to find out what is wrong with the book take a look here. A short summary would be that Behe starts out with an interesting question but then goes on to supply a series of shoddy argumements, half-truths, and occasional outright falsehoods, in support of a very dubious answer to his original question.
I mean anyone can say "look at a real biologist", and "if you actually understood it [evolution]." This is exactly the same type of hype that has given evolution the appearance of any kind of credibility.
You seem to think that it is unreasonable to ask that you understand a theory before you decide that it is false. It is not.
Take a look at "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins. It's really a great read, and I think it is still one of the best introductions to the idea of evolution you can get.
I have never met anyone who thought the theory of evolution was false and actually understood it.
Parts of the cell must form all at once (aka by a creator) or not at all.
Try talking to a real biologist about this sort of claim and they will quickly show you why it is nonsense. Consider any symbiotic relationship (two species that are biologically dependent on eachother). Although it is true that you cannot have one species without the other - each would die if the other were not available - there is no reason at all to think that this was always true. At some point in the past each species must have lived independently of the other, but then they gradually changed to become interdependent. The dependency that we see today is no evidence at all that the species were always dependent on eachother.
If such a tweak was possible, evolution had long discovered it.
You are wrong in two respects. Your first mistake is in supposing that the psuedo-goals of evolution are the same as our goals. Our genes aim to propagate, but we have other interests. So a "tweak" that looks bad to evolution (perhaps women who are smarter but have fewer children) might look just fine to us. Your second mistake is to suppose that evolution made us well suited to our current environment. Most of our adaptive characteristics arose to meet environmental challenges that no longer exist. For example, first world citizens do not, and will never, have to worry about starving to death, so all of our adaptations for dealing with food scarcity are a either pointless or even dangerous.
Evolution is slow. Environmental change is fast. There is no reason to think that we could not, sometimes at least, do a better job of matching ourselves to our environment than natural selection would.
MDA - Missile Defense Agency - you can find it here:
http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/
Your sig OTOH is a puzzle wrapped in an enigma. I would resolve its paradox by observing that Iraq hasn't really been at peace since 1991: The US and UK have been bombing and blockading with only brief intermissions for 12 years. 12 years of war is what killed those 2 millions, not peace.
I agree that Iraq hasn't really been at peace, but for somewhat different reasons. There has been a state of continuous war between the government of Iraq and the people of Iraq. The people of Iraq have consistently been the losers, and no one outside of Iraq has been willing to take their side.
Actually I arrived at the figure of 2 million by adding up the number of civilians who have supposedly died as a result of sanctions, and the number of civilians that have been killed in the last two major purges (after the Iran-Iraq war, and the Gulf War). The half million or so killed in the purges are directly attributable to the actions of Saddam. The other 1.5 million are indirectly attributable to the actions of Saddam. In Northern Iraq, where he has no power, the sanctions have not caused significant hardship. It is only in the rest of Iraq where he has been able to use the sanctions as an excuse for starving (and otherwise depriving) his own people that they have caused hardship.
Secondly, it doesn't work on ICBMs, because it has to be within a few dozen miles from the launch in order to catch it in its boost phase. It's kinda hard to hit objects over the horizon with a lazer.
You are right about the need to be close, but wrong about ICBMs. It does not matter what type of missle it is (bigger is better in fact) it only matters whether you can get close to the launch site. You may also be underestimating the range. At 40,000 feet the horizon is much further away than a few dozen miles, and even if you are trying to hit a target in the boost phase the target will still be well above sea level. I'm too lazy to do the calculation, but at a guess a 747 at 40,000 feet could probably see an ICBM at the top of its boost phase (which for ICBMs is very high) from several hundred miles away.
I would think that range would have more to do with the power of the laser, than the horizon.
The US is planning to deploy space based lasers (take a look at the MDA website). The treaty you are thinking of is already history. The real advantage of 747 mounted lasers is that they do not need to be as powerful because they can get closer to the target area, power suply is less of a problem, and you don't need to have enough to cover the entire globe (you can just send them where the trouble is).
I remember a war to liberate Kuwait. I also remember that a choice was made not to liberate Iraq at the same time because too many of the coalition members would not support it (most of the resistance came from Arab countries).
In fact, what did ANY WAR that US has fought since WWII leave us with?
Korean War - result was a democratic South Korea. Invasion of Grenada - result was democracy in Grenada. Invasion of Panama - result was democracy in Panama. Gulf War - result was liberation of Kuwait. Kosovo - result was an end to a campaign of genocide, and indirectly democracy in Serbia.
Apart from Vietnam, I can't think of any post-WWII US wars that did not have reasonably positive results.
a) the US trained the taliban - something people tend to forget conveniently for some reason
Perhaps because it is not true. Some members of the Taliban may have recieved US training or funding, but the Taliban itself barely even existed during the war against the USSR. Until some years after the war it was strictly a religious organisation and it played no part in the war itself. It turned into a political and military organisation during the civil war that followed.
b) Bush's energy certainly does not seem to be focused on Afgan restoration...
There is no reason why his energy should be focused there. He very sensibly chose to let the UN and others take care of most of the reconstruction effort. That is most of the reason why the Afghan people do not view US military forces in Afghanistan as an ocupation force - the US government has tried to keep its involvement to a minimum while still ensuring security.
It is also something to mention that muslim countries often were never accustomed to democracy and it isn't something that's wanted anyhow
Japan and Germany had almost no history of democracy when the US invaded those countries and turned them into democracies. Also a number of populations in the middle east have shown a great deal of interest in democracy. Iran is the most obvious example, but in fact you can find pro-democracy movements in almost every country in the region.
That's not to mention US's nonchalance toward other non-democratic countries, a good example being, say, Kuwait.
On a global scale Kuwait is not particularly free, but acording to World Audit it is the most free country in the Arab league.
it is quite impossible for Sadam to get anything near nukes for quite some time
Prior to the Gulf war the Atomic energy agency assured everyone that Iraq did not have a nuclear weapons program. After the gulf war we found that they were perhaps a year away from producing their first nuke. Pakistan managed to completely surprise the US with its nuclear weapons program in spite of close surveillance by the US.
does the war has to start, NOW?
The situation in the middle east is slowly getting worse, and every day that weapons programs go unchecked is a serious risk. Time is not on our side. Would you prefer it if Bush waited a year and fought the war during an election year? Should he wait two years, and just hope that nothing bad happens in the mean time?
Keep in mind that the inspectors are only in Iraq because there is a vast US army camped on Iraq's borders. When that army leaves, the inspectors leave as well. The alternative to war now is not a period of close surveillance by weapons inspectors, it is a return to the situation in the 90's. Once the troops are gone saddam will go back to doing whatever the hell he feels like.
...a Peace Treaty specifically limiting the number of launches by a country.
Couldn't find any sign of this agreement on google, and I have never heard of it. There is an agreement concerning launches to the ISS that is intended to ensure funding for the Russian space program. Is that what you were thinking of?
As fas as I know there is no treaty that limits the number of launches for comercial or scientific reasons.
So, when you say "'Peaceful exploration' is a convenient way to test new missile systems without attracting bad press," i just have to smile.
Here's a little hint, buddy. Anything in the US governement with a launch date further than 2 years from now is entirely speculative.
Thanks for the hint. Here's one for you. Weapons systems usually take at least a decade to go from from first funding to first deployment. Some programs do get canceled along the way, but not that many. A prmoise of tax cuts ten years from now is not worth the paper that it is printed on. A promise to deploy a weapons system is an entirely different thing - just consider how much trouble Rumsfeld has had trying to cancel one new artilery system.
I should point out that some powers in the world are on the way to militarizing outer space...
The US is seriously planning to deploy orbital weapons. One part of the current missile defense program is a space based laser system. First tests are due in 2012, so it is still a fair way off.
Take a look here for details:
http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/bmdolink/html/boost. ht ml
Although you will not find any mention of this at the MDA webstite, it is a fair bet that one function of such a system will be to defend US intelligence asets in space. Now that the US military is so heavily dependent on these asets, countries like China are starting to look at such asets as a potential weak link in US military power. Satelites are relatively easy to kill, and hard to replace at short notice.
Of course all talk of "peaceful exploration" in space has to be taken with a grain of salt. The technology that you need to launch to orbit and return to Earth is exactly the same technology that you need to build ICBM's. "Peaceful exploration" is a convenient way to test new missile systems without attracting bad press.
Re:Scientists who marginalize life ...
on
Europan Life In Doubt
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· Score: 2, Informative
So many things happened in such a precise order, under precise conditions...
Astrobiology is just one small step above wild speculation - one step above because it is at least informed speculation. In fact our observations, even of planets in our own solar system, have merely scratched the surface. So you are right that those who think life is common and arises just about anywhere are really just guessing. However, you are also just guessing. Even our understanding of how life arose on Earth is sketchy, so any assumption that a particular set of steps or conditions is required is just wild speculation.
Without the capability to send a human crew up, Hubble would be space junk right now.
While this is true, the money spent on manned space flight could have bought dozens of replacement Hubble's. So far the only thing that has been gained from the manned program is a lot of knowledge about how to put humans into space. One day that knowledge might actually useful - but it isn't useful now and it will not be useful anytime in the near future.
Rumors has (have it? please correct my grammar) it that china wants to goto mars too...
Either of "rumor has it that...", or "rumors have it that...", would be fine.
China might not care about having the first person to return from Mars, but I am pretty sure that they will not want to go down in the history books as the first nation to land a corpse on Mars. Just getting someone there alive will be no small feat, and China has not yet put a human into orbit. Even if they are serious about going to Mars, it will take them at least a couple of decades.
Most versions of the scam ask people to supply some money up front (to pay bribes or whatever). This is a scam run by con-men - there is no way for you to make money off it except by running the scam yourself, and there is no way to avoid losing money except by not getting involved.
Actually one of the aims of the GPL is to prevent exactly that kind of thing from happening. Although it has not been tested in court, one aim of the GPL was to ensure that someone (not even the author) could not come a long at a later date and stop you from using or continuing to work on code that you had been using before.
It's all about freedom remember?
A while back someone did suggest a variation on the GPL which would rule out various sorts of immoral use (I think they had dictatorial regimes in mind) but I don't know whether it caught on at all.
The jury aspect is interesting but not relevant...
I think you missed the point of my original post. Under US law the distinction between legal rulings and factual findings is usually very clear because they are carried out by different people. You are right that in some instances they are carried out by the same person (the judge) but even then the US system maintains a clear distinction between these two functions of the judge. Under the Norwegian system the distinction is not as clear. "Aquital" does not imply a factual finding as it does in the US. It may result merely from legal rulings by the judges. In this particular case it looks like the defendants "aquital" was the result of a legal ruling, and as such it would have been subject to appeal in the US (although of course in the US it would not have been called aquital at all).
You are also wrong about double jeopardy not attaching to the verdict. Mistrial, and sometimes dismissal, do not prevent retrial. Typically if a trial ends prematurely, the defendant can be tried again. The main exception to this is when the charges are dismissed because of lack of evidence - and here the presumption is that the trial would have ended in aquital. Although it is hard to find any sharp line that defines double jeopardy, the clearest line is the one drawn by the verdict of a jury.
I've never seen any kind of study that actually reports how much piracy is going on around the internet...
Studies have been done from time to time. Sometimes the estimates of the number of pirate copies are implausibly high, but that is not the real problem with the economic loss figures that they come up with. The real problem is that they simply take the estimated number of illegal copies, and multply by the list price. Most of the time they do not even bother to take account of the actual market prices of legal copies (i.e. discount prices, or second hand prices).
What they ought to do is try to estimate how many people would have bought a legal copy if illegal copies had not been available to them. Of course it would be impossible to get precise figures, but it would be possible to get reasonable estimates by surveying. As far as I know, no one has ever bothered to this, so we keep getting these massively inflated figures for economic losses.
Slashdot Mirror
Oddly enough, just after reading your post I ran across this at the Reason website:
http://www.reason.com/rb/rb031203.shtml
Looks like the body may well adapt to toxins in a way that is comparable to other desease causing agents.
I'm happy to pay for errata. $349 per server is too much for errata. I don't want any kind of support from RH other than errata.
Maybe you should take a look at Redhat Linux (according to Redhat this is suitable for those who want minimal support). Redhat Enterprise Linux is probably not the Linux you are looking for. Redhat Linux (no Enterprise) can still be had for as little as US$39.95.
Take away that inflow of cash, and you utterly decimate the economies of these nations.
If it the oil industry collapsed over-night then it might be a problem, but otherwise it might turn out to be a good thing even for countries that now depend on oil income. Oil and repressive government go hand-in-hand because oil allows governments to make money without having economically productive populations. Without oil to provide income the governments in many countries would have to start thinking about their populations as a work-force, rather than as a rable to be keep under control.
You (and other people with a religious faith in "free markets") are confusing money price with energy price. If it costs more than a barrel's worth of energy to extract a barrel of oil, the game is over, no matter if oil is a kazillion dollars a barrel.
You are wrong. If at some point it takes more energy to get a barrel of oil than you can extract from a barrel of oil, then oil will no longer be used as a primary energy source, but it might still be used in manufacturing (which is mostly what you seem to be worried about).
As for energy sources, if the price of energy rises to a kazillion dollars (for the equivalent of a barrel of oil) then just about every alternative to oil would become economically viable along the way. So, just as the poster above wrote, the market would direct the move from oil to other energy sources, as prices change.
People, and there are lots of them, who think that the market will or can take care of this approaching issue are very sadly mistaken.
People who think they can do a better job of allocating resources than markets can have often been very sadly mistaken. Witness the recent history of communism. The mistake that doomsday predictors like yourself make is that you never really think about how increasing scarcity will affect the choices made by people in the market for oil and energy. When oil starts to become more scarce, and it hasn't yet, other types of energy or research into other types of energy will slowly become more attractive.
There will never be any sudden crisis in energy supply. The absolute worst than can happen is that energy will one day be somewhat more expensive than it is now - and even then we know there is a limit to how much more expensive it can become. The price will never rise far above the current price of nuclear energy, which is in fact only a little higher than the current price of oil energy.
Oh well, if this will occupy their time and keep them out of everyone else's business then perhaps in the end it will be a positive thing. The more that sexually repressed people and groups are distracted and preoccupied, the happier the rest of the world will be.
Actually this comes closer to the mark than you might think. For a lot of the people who fuss about porn the problem of controling their own behavior is what concerns them most. If you have some time to waste then try watching some religious TV. About half of it has to do with money, and the other half has to do with self-discipline and resisting temptation.
Just goes to show that the puritan spirit is still alive and well in the US.
I however, do not believe in the Big Bang or the new Sheets Theory...
Cosmology and biology are entirely different fields. Current theories of the development of the universe have very little, if anything, to do with the theory of evolution, and the evidence for the two types of theory are entirely independent. I should add that the philosophical issues at the bottom of each type of theory are also entirely different.
In the case of cosmology the philosophical question is something like "where did all the stuff that makes up the universe come from?" Traditionally the three available answers have been "from nothing" or "it has always been here", or "from God". Of course the God answer simply shifts the problem back one step to the question of "where did God come from?" Traditionally the two available answers have been "from nothing" and "he has always been here". See a pattern forming here? David Hume did, which led him somewhat sarcastically to suggest a third answer to the God question as well, namely "from a super-God".
In the case of biology the philosophical question is, roughly speaking, "how did all this biological stuff get so well organised?" Traditionally the only answer available was "God designed it that way" (Hume, as you might expect wanted to know how God got to be so well organised). The theory of evolution provides an answer to this philosophical problem. It shows how any structure that replicates can become better organised over time.
Whether you like the modern answers to the problems or not, my point here is just that they are different problems with different answers. You should not confuse your disagreement with one for disagreement with the other.
How could he go to his peers when they all seem to share your views about evolution?
This is the usual complaint of most cranks. The best answer is just to point out all the responses to his work that were not mere ridicule, but were careful explanations of why his arguments do not work, and why his factual claims are often false. A lot of biologists believe in God, and many more simply do not care whether God exists or not. If Behe's work had any scientific merit then there would be plenty of scientists to give it a fair hearing.
How do you propose the universe began?
I don't propose that the universe "began". I don't think it is the kind of thing that can have a begining, any more than a cicle can have a begining. I canot imagine how time could have an end. Why should I imagine that it had a start? But all of this is beside the point. The question of whether the universe came from has nothing to do with biology or the theory of evolution.
From the World of Dawkins we get the following:
Yes, Michael Behe is a scientist, but is "Intelligent Design" science? If so, it will be the first science established without a single technical paper published for peer-review, including zero by Behe himself. For some reason he has decided to completely bypass professional review and go directly to a Darwin-doubting public. But more to the point, what is wrong with this book?...
If you want to find out what is wrong with the book take a look here. A short summary would be that Behe starts out with an interesting question but then goes on to supply a series of shoddy argumements, half-truths, and occasional outright falsehoods, in support of a very dubious answer to his original question.
I mean anyone can say "look at a real biologist", and "if you actually understood it [evolution]." This is exactly the same type of hype that has given evolution the appearance of any kind of credibility.
You seem to think that it is unreasonable to ask that you understand a theory before you decide that it is false. It is not.
Take a look at "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins. It's really a great read, and I think it is still one of the best introductions to the idea of evolution you can get.
I have never met anyone who thought the theory of evolution was false and actually understood it.
Parts of the cell must form all at once (aka by a creator) or not at all.
Try talking to a real biologist about this sort of claim and they will quickly show you why it is nonsense. Consider any symbiotic relationship (two species that are biologically dependent on eachother). Although it is true that you cannot have one species without the other - each would die if the other were not available - there is no reason at all to think that this was always true. At some point in the past each species must have lived independently of the other, but then they gradually changed to become interdependent. The dependency that we see today is no evidence at all that the species were always dependent on eachother.
If such a tweak was possible, evolution had long discovered it.
You are wrong in two respects. Your first mistake is in supposing that the psuedo-goals of evolution are the same as our goals. Our genes aim to propagate, but we have other interests. So a "tweak" that looks bad to evolution (perhaps women who are smarter but have fewer children) might look just fine to us. Your second mistake is to suppose that evolution made us well suited to our current environment. Most of our adaptive characteristics arose to meet environmental challenges that no longer exist. For example, first world citizens do not, and will never, have to worry about starving to death, so all of our adaptations for dealing with food scarcity are a either pointless or even dangerous.
Evolution is slow. Environmental change is fast. There is no reason to think that we could not, sometimes at least, do a better job of matching ourselves to our environment than natural selection would.
What MDN website is that?
MDA - Missile Defense Agency - you can find it here:
http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/
Your sig OTOH is a puzzle wrapped in an enigma. I would resolve its paradox by observing that Iraq hasn't really been at peace since 1991: The US and UK have been bombing and blockading with only brief intermissions for 12 years. 12 years of war is what killed those 2 millions, not peace.
I agree that Iraq hasn't really been at peace, but for somewhat different reasons. There has been a state of continuous war between the government of Iraq and the people of Iraq. The people of Iraq have consistently been the losers, and no one outside of Iraq has been willing to take their side.
Actually I arrived at the figure of 2 million by adding up the number of civilians who have supposedly died as a result of sanctions, and the number of civilians that have been killed in the last two major purges (after the Iran-Iraq war, and the Gulf War). The half million or so killed in the purges are directly attributable to the actions of Saddam. The other 1.5 million are indirectly attributable to the actions of Saddam. In Northern Iraq, where he has no power, the sanctions have not caused significant hardship. It is only in the rest of Iraq where he has been able to use the sanctions as an excuse for starving (and otherwise depriving) his own people that they have caused hardship.
Secondly, it doesn't work on ICBMs, because it has to be within a few dozen miles from the launch in order to catch it in its boost phase. It's kinda hard to hit objects over the horizon with a lazer.
You are right about the need to be close, but wrong about ICBMs. It does not matter what type of missle it is (bigger is better in fact) it only matters whether you can get close to the launch site. You may also be underestimating the range. At 40,000 feet the horizon is much further away than a few dozen miles, and even if you are trying to hit a target in the boost phase the target will still be well above sea level. I'm too lazy to do the calculation, but at a guess a 747 at 40,000 feet could probably see an ICBM at the top of its boost phase (which for ICBMs is very high) from several hundred miles away.
I would think that range would have more to do with the power of the laser, than the horizon.
The US is planning to deploy space based lasers (take a look at the MDA website). The treaty you are thinking of is already history. The real advantage of 747 mounted lasers is that they do not need to be as powerful because they can get closer to the target area, power suply is less of a problem, and you don't need to have enough to cover the entire globe (you can just send them where the trouble is).
People used tp say that about "Made in Japan".
Then they said it about "Made in Taiwan".
Today's cheap and nasty often turns into tomorrows quality product.
Remember the war a little while back in Iraq?
I remember a war to liberate Kuwait. I also remember that a choice was made not to liberate Iraq at the same time because too many of the coalition members would not support it (most of the resistance came from Arab countries).
In fact, what did ANY WAR that US has fought since WWII leave us with?
Korean War - result was a democratic South Korea.
Invasion of Grenada - result was democracy in Grenada.
Invasion of Panama - result was democracy in Panama.
Gulf War - result was liberation of Kuwait.
Kosovo - result was an end to a campaign of genocide, and indirectly democracy in Serbia.
Apart from Vietnam, I can't think of any post-WWII US wars that did not have reasonably positive results.
a) the US trained the taliban - something people tend to forget conveniently for some reason
Perhaps because it is not true. Some members of the Taliban may have recieved US training or funding, but the Taliban itself barely even existed during the war against the USSR. Until some years after the war it was strictly a religious organisation and it played no part in the war itself. It turned into a political and military organisation during the civil war that followed.
b) Bush's energy certainly does not seem to be focused on Afgan restoration...
There is no reason why his energy should be focused there. He very sensibly chose to let the UN and others take care of most of the reconstruction effort. That is most of the reason why the Afghan people do not view US military forces in Afghanistan as an ocupation force - the US government has tried to keep its involvement to a minimum while still ensuring security.
It is also something to mention that muslim countries often were never accustomed to democracy and it isn't something that's wanted anyhow
Japan and Germany had almost no history of democracy when the US invaded those countries and turned them into democracies. Also a number of populations in the middle east have shown a great deal of interest in democracy. Iran is the most obvious example, but in fact you can find pro-democracy movements in almost every country in the region.
That's not to mention US's nonchalance toward other non-democratic countries, a good example being, say, Kuwait.
On a global scale Kuwait is not particularly free, but acording to World Audit it is the most free country in the Arab league.
it is quite impossible for Sadam to get anything near nukes for quite some time
Prior to the Gulf war the Atomic energy agency assured everyone that Iraq did not have a nuclear weapons program. After the gulf war we found that they were perhaps a year away from producing their first nuke. Pakistan managed to completely surprise the US with its nuclear weapons program in spite of close surveillance by the US.
does the war has to start, NOW?
The situation in the middle east is slowly getting worse, and every day that weapons programs go unchecked is a serious risk. Time is not on our side. Would you prefer it if Bush waited a year and fought the war during an election year? Should he wait two years, and just hope that nothing bad happens in the mean time?
Keep in mind that the inspectors are only in Iraq because there is a vast US army camped on Iraq's borders. When that army leaves, the inspectors leave as well. The alternative to war now is not a period of close surveillance by weapons inspectors, it is a return to the situation in the 90's. Once the troops are gone saddam will go back to doing whatever the hell he feels like.
...a Peace Treaty specifically limiting the number of launches by a country.
Couldn't find any sign of this agreement on google, and I have never heard of it. There is an agreement concerning launches to the ISS that is intended to ensure funding for the Russian space program. Is that what you were thinking of?
As fas as I know there is no treaty that limits the number of launches for comercial or scientific reasons.
So, when you say "'Peaceful exploration' is a convenient way to test new missile systems without attracting bad press," i just have to smile.
Glad I could make someone's day.
Here's a little hint, buddy. Anything in the US governement with a launch date further than 2 years from now is entirely speculative.
Thanks for the hint. Here's one for you. Weapons systems usually take at least a decade to go from from first funding to first deployment. Some programs do get canceled along the way, but not that many. A prmoise of tax cuts ten years from now is not worth the paper that it is printed on. A promise to deploy a weapons system is an entirely different thing - just consider how much trouble Rumsfeld has had trying to cancel one new artilery system.
I should point out that some powers in the world are on the way to militarizing outer space...
. ht ml
The US is seriously planning to deploy orbital weapons. One part of the current missile defense program is a space based laser system. First tests are due in 2012, so it is still a fair way off.
Take a look here for details:
http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/bmdolink/html/boost
Although you will not find any mention of this at the MDA webstite, it is a fair bet that one function of such a system will be to defend US intelligence asets in space. Now that the US military is so heavily dependent on these asets, countries like China are starting to look at such asets as a potential weak link in US military power. Satelites are relatively easy to kill, and hard to replace at short notice.
Of course all talk of "peaceful exploration" in space has to be taken with a grain of salt. The technology that you need to launch to orbit and return to Earth is exactly the same technology that you need to build ICBM's. "Peaceful exploration" is a convenient way to test new missile systems without attracting bad press.
So many things happened in such a precise order, under precise conditions...
Astrobiology is just one small step above wild speculation - one step above because it is at least informed speculation. In fact our observations, even of planets in our own solar system, have merely scratched the surface. So you are right that those who think life is common and arises just about anywhere are really just guessing. However, you are also just guessing. Even our understanding of how life arose on Earth is sketchy, so any assumption that a particular set of steps or conditions is required is just wild speculation.
Without the capability to send a human crew up, Hubble would be space junk right now.
While this is true, the money spent on manned space flight could have bought dozens of replacement Hubble's. So far the only thing that has been gained from the manned program is a lot of knowledge about how to put humans into space. One day that knowledge might actually useful - but it isn't useful now and it will not be useful anytime in the near future.
Rumors has (have it? please correct my grammar) it that china wants to goto mars too...
Either of "rumor has it that...", or "rumors have it that...", would be fine.
China might not care about having the first person to return from Mars, but I am pretty sure that they will not want to go down in the history books as the first nation to land a corpse on Mars. Just getting someone there alive will be no small feat, and China has not yet put a human into orbit. Even if they are serious about going to Mars, it will take them at least a couple of decades.
Most versions of the scam ask people to supply some money up front (to pay bribes or whatever). This is a scam run by con-men - there is no way for you to make money off it except by running the scam yourself, and there is no way to avoid losing money except by not getting involved.
Actually one of the aims of the GPL is to prevent exactly that kind of thing from happening. Although it has not been tested in court, one aim of the GPL was to ensure that someone (not even the author) could not come a long at a later date and stop you from using or continuing to work on code that you had been using before.
It's all about freedom remember?
A while back someone did suggest a variation on the GPL which would rule out various sorts of immoral use (I think they had dictatorial regimes in mind) but I don't know whether it caught on at all.
Thanks for the correction Herman. It is hard to find details on the Norwegian legal system in English.
The jury aspect is interesting but not relevant...
I think you missed the point of my original post. Under US law the distinction between legal rulings and factual findings is usually very clear because they are carried out by different people. You are right that in some instances they are carried out by the same person (the judge) but even then the US system maintains a clear distinction between these two functions of the judge. Under the Norwegian system the distinction is not as clear. "Aquital" does not imply a factual finding as it does in the US. It may result merely from legal rulings by the judges. In this particular case it looks like the defendants "aquital" was the result of a legal ruling, and as such it would have been subject to appeal in the US (although of course in the US it would not have been called aquital at all).
You are also wrong about double jeopardy not attaching to the verdict. Mistrial, and sometimes dismissal, do not prevent retrial. Typically if a trial ends prematurely, the defendant can be tried again. The main exception to this is when the charges are dismissed because of lack of evidence - and here the presumption is that the trial would have ended in aquital. Although it is hard to find any sharp line that defines double jeopardy, the clearest line is the one drawn by the verdict of a jury.
I've never seen any kind of study that actually reports how much piracy is going on around the internet...
Studies have been done from time to time. Sometimes the estimates of the number of pirate copies are implausibly high, but that is not the real problem with the economic loss figures that they come up with. The real problem is that they simply take the estimated number of illegal copies, and multply by the list price. Most of the time they do not even bother to take account of the actual market prices of legal copies (i.e. discount prices, or second hand prices).
What they ought to do is try to estimate how many people would have bought a legal copy if illegal copies had not been available to them. Of course it would be impossible to get precise figures, but it would be possible to get reasonable estimates by surveying. As far as I know, no one has ever bothered to this, so we keep getting these massively inflated figures for economic losses.