There's only one thing that I want changed, and that's the stock "OK" button. If you haven't noticed by now, the "OK" button has the "return" arrow on it. Why does this matter? It's the exact same image that is on my "enter" key. Everytime I see the that icon, I think, "That button looks just like the 'enter' key on my keyboard. That button must be associated with this key." Which isn't a problem if "OK" is the default, but alot of time it's not. Alot of times the default is "cancel".
But the icon on the keyboard doesn't indicate the default action. Instead a 5 pixel inset the exact same color of the dialog's background is placed around the default button.
Now I ask you, which is more eye catching, I a 20x20 color image, or a 4 thin black lines?
Which conveys a sense of what key is associtated with which button? A picture of what's on the key, or 4 thin black lines?
It's as if, you have a button marked "Q" and when you press it, you get "esc".
The Soviets wanted to conqurer Afghanistan, the US has no intention of doing this. The US on the otherhand simply plans to destoy as many terrorist bases as possible. Once their dead, we move on.
Secondly, the motivation of the armies completely different as well. The US has one of the strongest motivations that exists: revenge. The Soviet army went because of the Greater Glory of the Soviet Union; not really something that rallys the troops.
The circumstances around the military actions are completely different.
And now for something completely different...
I've heard alot of talk about "We need peace now!" or "We should attack. Violence only leads to more violence!" and whatnot. As proud liberal let me say, this is utter bullshit.
Economic-political actions (ie sanctions) simply don't work. Can anyone honestly name one regime that sanctions alone brought down? So you're left with military action.
Now with that said, does this mean I like war? No, I don't. I'd much rather not fight. I don't like having to fight, but there comes a time when you have no other choice. And when that choice is made, you fight hard, and you fight win. Unfortunately this is one of those times.
Terrorism is nothing more than a scaled up version of bulliing. Bullying is something that I (and sadly too many other/.ers) know about. I was bullied a long time in school. I never did anything about it. Why? I don't like to fight.
There was this guy that set next to me in english class, and evey day when the teacher would leave he would take something off my desk. It didn't matter what it was, he'd just do it to screw with me.
Eventually I had it. I stood up in the middle of class coldcocked son of a bitch. I quite literally knocked him out of his chair on to his ass.
My favorite game of all time is Electronic Arts's Mail Order Monsters. You bought selected a body for your monster (arachnid, brontosaurus, hominid, amoeba, lyonbear, etc), improved its attributes (strength, life, armor, speed, muscle, and brain), added traits to it (photosynthesis, hands, tenticals, poison spit, etc), outfitted it with weapons and armor, and then sent it into battle.
I spent many a day coming home from grade school, and wasting many an afternoon and evening playing as my mom put it "that mind numbing game".
I've been reading the threads from the archive regarding the banning (oh I'm sorry, "manual moderation").
I don't like it admins on lists that feel like they need to exercise power over the list in the name of "harmony". You see it all the time on IRC.
joeuser> Hey I have a question about KDE.
{joeuser has been banned by @^freak: KDE sucks}
Whether Martin Coxall was being an idiot or not
isn't really the point. Everyone should be entitled to read what he has to say, and killfile him if they want. Afterall that's what killfiles are for. I don't like it when someone makes decisions like that for me.
Also what's the point of "nonpublic" lists when the whole process is supposed to be "open" and allow anyone to join?
It's this hypocracy that keeps me from joining
the selfrightous schlong measuringfest that is IRC, or any of these projects.
A complete and usable desktop like we've grown acustom to since Macos/Windooz should be the priority.
Actually this is the problem. Now don't misunderstand me. I'm not talking about thowing out all the past good ideas, and using something that doesn't work, simply because it's new. But one shouldn't blindly reimplement old ideas, including implementing their short comings simply because, that's what people expect.
Take for instance the start menu. Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the user shouldn't be able to edit the root menu. Sure, you a limited ability to add new items, and then remove your items, but you you're stuck with what Microsoft decided would be "useful". (Run, Shutdown, Programs, Favorites, et cetra.) Don't use Favorites? Don't want it cluttering up your menu? Tough.
So GNOME and KDE (they both suffer from the same debilitating disease last time I checked) said, "Hey we need a start menu. Afterall Microsoft has one and when the Great Flood comes and Redmond is washed into the sea, those that the Great Penguin deamed worthy will go forth and claim the land and the people left will be expecting a start menu. Those that don't want a start menu, can remove it. So everyone is happy.
Not quite. For the would-be deliverers have decided that everyone should have "Programs", "Favorites", "Run", "Applets", "Logout", and "Lock Screen". You mean you would like to edit this? You can't under windows. What do you mean that's not acceptable? That's how Microsoft does it.
For all the talk about how Microsoft doesn't innovate, there sure is lack of innovation in the opensource world. I've yet to see it. In fact there has never been a "killer app" for Linux.
Sure someone will bring up something like Gimp, but let's face it. It's Photoshop, only more confusing and without nearly as many useful plugins.
Yes, it was included. It didn't work, and was removed. What he fuck is your problem? Are you suggesting that any old shit should be bundled into GNOME, and never removed if it doesn't work?
Well it never seemed to stop them before. Only they said, "This is alphaware. If you don't like it, patch it. Then it will get better."
It's not just GNOME, the entire opensource commun ity is made up of software that doesn't quite work right all the time.
Myh mom (she was in highschool when sputnik was launched) told me about pre Gagarin flights for
years. Basically the story goes, that you could
pick up on a ham radio the radio transmissions
of from the doomed cosmonauts. Basically they were steuck up there, and couldn't return.
Supposably you could also hear their heartbeat (well at least the *beep* *beep* *beep* of the
EKG). My mom said that it was reported in the
papers when this happened, but I never heard anything about it except from her.
The idea of the Ruskies launching men before the
technology was ready plays into the heartless commie stereotype of the red scare.
While this whole story strikes me as plausable, without collaborating evidence, it's still just urban legend.
The could get it make arbitrary movements and speak at arbitrary times. They now how the speech is encoded, but not the specifics. (As they said, "It was outside the scope of the project. Plus it ensures that Barney is constantly in character.")
For $250 bucks, you could go out and buy yourself a some mindstorms and an add on kit (May I suggest the videocam addon?) and build this exact bot. And have a lot more fun doing it.
I thought that domain name looked familure. Back when in 1994-1995 (freshman in college) I went through my infatuation with cracker culture, that alot of people do. I amassed quite a collection of filez and had ran a semipopular site out of my dorm room (running Slackware).
This was back in the day when alt.hackers still was "self-moderated" meaning you had to add a specific header saying "X-Moderator-Approved:" or something in order to get your post to propigate across USENET. And you had better include your "ObHack" or you'd get flamed. (Some where quite involved. Like hacking a garage door opener to your beer refridgerator to open the door and deliver a beer to you.)
This was also back back in the day when alt.2600 actually had a resident population that new stuff, as opposed to being just 5cr1pT k1Ddi3z. There were two guys on alt.2600 that new the most. Will something (the FAQ maintainer) and route@infonexus.com. (I forgot his email address but his FTP site was something at ftp.cdrom.com/.../route.)
I haven't thought about that guy in years.
--
The Guy Formerlly Known as "Coolness Incarnate"
(Now I'll have to track down The Bob(c) and my walk down memory lane will be complete.)
(Oh and incase you're wondering when alt.2600 took the nosie dive into pure shit, I say summer of 1995. Basically USENET's commuliative quallity halved that summer. Don't know exactly why though. It was after the AOL-USENET fiasco.)
Perhaps, but see we don't care what they're using now. All they had to do is blast EM noise for a few years so that so that we pick it up. To use your analogy, the aliens went from runners, to cell phones, skipping smoke signals completly. It just doesn't strike me as that plausable.
The chance that a "Prime Directive" not to interfere in other civilizations is part of the cause is actually more likely than at first glance. Assume that civilizations arise at the rate of one every few thousand years. This means that the first civilization (Civ A) to arise has that amount of technological head start over the next (Civ B). At this point, we've hit the Clarke "Magic" level of technology for A over B, where civilization B could be stepped on like ants by civilization A.
Thus, we don't need every civilization to decide not to interfere. We only need the first to decide on a Prime Directive and decide to enforce it.
That reasoning doesn't work.
This relies on a super civilzation among the alien species. Assuming this is going to occur (which I have my doubts) it's unlikely that its exclusive hold on power would remain forever. All civilzations eventaully fall.
The superciv must have a network of spies throught the galaxy (or atleast the planetary systems relativly close to Earth). With useful interstellar travel being a Hard thing to accomplish, this is extremely unlikely. (The superciv would be held to the same laws of physics as we are. ("Oh but they have hyperdrive motivators!" is just one too many levels of conjecture for me.))
Assuming they do have this network of spies: the superciv's spies need to be 100% effective. This doesn't pass the sanity test.
What if the superciv missed a alien species? The "rogue" species sends out a ping to the rest of the galaxy. What happens? Thge superciv goes out and rushes ahead of the EM pulse and dampens it? How? There's a hell of alot of surface area you have to cover.
What happened to the EM noise the superciv put out BEFORE they became "enlightened"? Did they develop timetravel as well and then go back in time and dampen the EM noise that already occured? Or do they race out infront of the EM noise and dampen it, know that it has probably around a 1000 lightyears headstart on them?
If there's one superciv, why can't there be another that developed away from the first superciv? Say this second superciv was expansionist. Or atleast said, "Go to hell first superciv! We'll do any damn thing we want." and sends out all the EM pulses it likes. Knowing there's nothing the first superciv can do about it.
So, ISS and Mir and whatnot keep [nuking the US] from happening. Cool. That's good science, and good effective use of public funds, imho. So what's the problem?
Well it's not really science now is it? And no I don't really have a problem with basically paying off Russian scientists. I just think we should be paying them to do something a little more constructive.
However, in this thread, I believe you may have missed my earlier point which is simply this:
Better men than you or I have argued *for* space, and we're going to space, and the ISS is being built, and it's happening. Any attempt at arguing against it is really just masturbation
Actually I did read that. I just decided to skip over it. But since you insist. I'll respond.
<flame> That is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS thinking. Lots of things that are were either either incredibly Wrong or doomed for failure from the outset have been argued by "great minds". (I'll let you plug in your own favorite establishment supported debace/Generally_Acknolledged_Bad_Thing(tm).)
The fact that saying "someone else thought we should do it, so we should do it" illustrates a completely lack of critical thinking. All advances in civilization have their basis in questioning the status quo. The fact that you're arguing against questioning the reasoning, shows that you're not very strong in your convictions. </flame> There I said it.
(The one interesting point the article makes is about Napster's corporate structure and equity positions. I was unaware that the investors were able to pry over 90% of the company away from the founder. Fanning is an excellent developer, but he must be a *lousy* businessman.)
He's lucky the Vulture Capitalists let him keep that much. US Venture Capital is highly interventionist, at least compared to their UK equivalent (who generally swipe about 60 per cent) and generall make damned sure that if the company founder doesn't dance to their business tune they can have him tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail toute de suite.
What the hell does a VC do to warrant the amount of power they have over a company. They wrote a check. Big fucking deal. All they do is take over companies and throw the founders to the wolves. So really what's the incentive of founding a company then?
And how do VCs compare to "Angel Investors". Supposably Angels are supposed to be nicer, but why?
There is so much for the future of Russian economy to be gained from the space program, its not even funny. Space manufacturing, medicine, electronics - all of these human endeavours stand to benefit from research to be done on the ISS over the next few years, and the Russians know this just as well as any corporate bigwig at McDonnall/Douglas or Boeing.
Space is probably about the only thing the Russians are good at, as an industrialized nation, right now, and so it follows that they are putting their heart and soul into continuing to lead and participate in human exploration of space. Russian pursuits of space programs are *vital* to the future economic stability of the Russian system, since it's among the few truly exportable industries that Russia has right now, having lost a great deal of her productive power due to Communist misguidance.
That you cannot see this, or are unwilling to be able to even *think* that scientists and great minds of this ilk have an accute awareness of the benefits for what they're doing, belies your pop-culture, spoon-fed, MTV instant fix upbringing.
Wait. I grew up being a big space fan, but now than I'm older I kind of wonder what's the point of a manned space program. I've been trying to justify for a long time; and I can't. I just don't see a compelling reason to send people into space.
Let's look at the common given reasons, and your reasons that the Russians are doing this. Then I'll give my own reason why the US is backing the Russian space program.
space manufacturing Yea! You can build rockets in space. Yes, that would be a Good-Thing(tm) if there was a place to send the rocket to.
Now if you mean space based factories making goods for terrestrial based consumers, well then what can you build in space that you can't build on Earth. (It's going to have to be something unique, otherwise the shipping costs would be insane.) I'll tell you what they've found in the past 50 years. Microcrystals. Now these crystals are supposed to eventually maybe if we're lucky to some sort of uber-drug. However, I haven't heard of anydrug yet that uses them. If there was, Merck would have launched a factory.
medicine Uhh gravity is good for bones. While this knowledge is important long duration space flight, it really doesn't have a direct terresstrial application, since the average person isn't exposed to a microgravity enviroment at all. Now if there was a place to go in that rocket we assembled in orbit then it would be useful to know what will happen to the crew. That is of course there was someplace to go.
electronics Electronics suffers from the same problems that the other two do, except that it doesn't have a crew to apply to nor does gravity affect it in the slightest. So there goes the only two positives.
exploration Sure, but a series of robotic landers do the same tasks that person can do (read: pick up rocks). Basically the only reason you'd want a team on-site as it were would be if you were doing a long term study, or where you need high dexterity (say archaelogy), but currently it's prohibitivly expensive to send a team for a long duration stay for something that doesn't effect the Earth life or public policy. (Compare a planetary expedition to an Antartic expedition. One is relativly cheap. One is provides information about the state of the habitat. The other is expensive, and deals with a completly independent system.)
Sure, I get all goose-pimply when I think of someone walking on another planet, but the more rational part of me looks at it like a trip to the Grand Canyon. "Gee sure is big isn't? *click* Okay, let's go back." Nothing is there.
Russian pursuits of space programs are *vital* to the future economic stability of the Russian system, since it's among the few truly exportable industries that Russia has right now I'll grant you this one. But launching satelites isn't really a country supporting industry.
mining (You didn't mention it, but it's typically given as the big payoff in investing in the space program.)
Astroids are rocks. Mostly iron. There also VERY FAR AWAY! Until we run out of terrestrially accessable iron and steel, the cost of lassoing one of those bad boys is going to be alot more than the actual profit you'd make off of the iron.
Until the price of terrestrial iron gets prohibitvly expensive, or an orbiting astroid of solid gold is discovered, there ain't going to be any astroid prospectors.
avoid catastrophe Yes having the population spread out does make it harder to eradicate. However this is looking VERY far down the road.
Now I'm not saying Nasa is worthless. They do a lot of good work in areonautics resarch. They're THE government research lab when it comes to airplanes and rockets. They facilitate alot of work in studing the Earth. However most of this doesn't involve sending people into orbit. When it does, the crews are pretty much relagated to being space-mechanics.
I'm not even so selfish where everything needs a direct and immediate payoff. I'm all for studying cosmology and an astronomy, and Nasa facilitates that. It's just that I'd rather see Nasa spending it's resources on building an orbiting infrarometer, or installing a radio telescope on the far side of the moon (you could assemble it in orbit if need be, and then put it in geostationary orbit (However Nasa deemed the prefix planetary based during the last Mars lander mission. So according to them the word should be "lunarstationary" or some other nonsense.) along with an orbiting relay station. No long duration crews at all.), rather than sticking 6 people in an orbiting room and finding out what happens when they stop being nice and start being real.
So why did the US give so much money to the Russians?
Simple. The Russian economy is sucking ass right now. You've got a lot of hightly trained areospace engineers not being paid. The US is worried about ICBM technology falling into the hands of rogue nations. Now presented with the delimina of either paying the Russians to build a big orbiting can of people for no real purpose other than to furthering the "industry" of puting cans of people into orbit and some crap about "furthering international relations"; or have the Russians getting paid to put bombs on missles for everyone with 50 million dollars; which one do you the the US government would choose?
Moderators: It's not "flamebait", it's an irreverant rubtle. What's the difference? One has a kernel of thought, the other doesn't.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no unionization in the animation industry, and Nickelodeon means to keep it that way.
I guess nobody told these guys this.
There's only one thing that I want changed, and that's the stock "OK" button. If you haven't noticed by now, the "OK" button has the "return" arrow on it. Why does this matter? It's the exact same image that is on my "enter" key. Everytime I see the that icon, I think, "That button looks just like the 'enter' key on my keyboard. That button must be associated with this key." Which isn't a problem if "OK" is the default, but alot of time it's not. Alot of times the default is "cancel".
But the icon on the keyboard doesn't indicate the default action. Instead a 5 pixel inset the exact same color of the dialog's background is placed around the default button.
Now I ask you, which is more eye catching, I a 20x20 color image, or a 4 thin black lines?
Which conveys a sense of what key is associtated with which button? A picture of what's on the key, or 4 thin black lines?
It's as if, you have a button marked "Q" and when you press it, you get "esc".
You don't judge the whole human race by the people who attend monster car rallies, do you?
:)
Well actually I do.
Last year I asked for, and received, the coolest gift I ever got in my 25 years.
1000 blank white index cards
Sorry Mike, but you're just plain wrong.
/.ers) know about. I was bullied a long time in school. I never did anything about it. Why? I don't like to fight.
The Soviets wanted to conqurer Afghanistan, the US has no intention of doing this. The US on the otherhand simply plans to destoy as many terrorist bases as possible. Once their dead, we move on.
Secondly, the motivation of the armies completely different as well. The US has one of the strongest motivations that exists: revenge. The Soviet army went because of the Greater Glory of the Soviet Union; not really something that rallys the troops.
The circumstances around the military actions are completely different.
And now for something completely different...
I've heard alot of talk about "We need peace now!" or "We should attack. Violence only leads to more violence!" and whatnot. As proud liberal let me say, this is utter bullshit.
Economic-political actions (ie sanctions) simply don't work. Can anyone honestly name one regime that sanctions alone brought down? So you're left with military action.
Now with that said, does this mean I like war? No, I don't. I'd much rather not fight. I don't like having to fight, but there comes a time when you have no other choice. And when that choice is made, you fight hard, and you fight win. Unfortunately this is one of those times.
Terrorism is nothing more than a scaled up version of bulliing. Bullying is something that I (and sadly too many other
There was this guy that set next to me in english class, and evey day when the teacher would leave he would take something off my desk. It didn't matter what it was, he'd just do it to screw with me.
Eventually I had it. I stood up in the middle of class coldcocked son of a bitch. I quite literally knocked him out of his chair on to his ass.
You know what, no one messed with me after that.
So yes, violence does sometimes solve problems.
My favorite game of all time is Electronic Arts's Mail Order Monsters. You bought selected a body for your monster (arachnid, brontosaurus, hominid, amoeba, lyonbear, etc), improved its attributes (strength, life, armor, speed, muscle, and brain), added traits to it (photosynthesis, hands, tenticals, poison spit, etc), outfitted it with weapons and armor, and then sent it into battle.
I spent many a day coming home from grade school, and wasting many an afternoon and evening playing as my mom put it "that mind numbing game".
I don't like it admins on lists that feel like they need to exercise power over the list in the name of "harmony". You see it all the time on IRC.
Whether Martin Coxall was being an idiot or not
isn't really the point. Everyone should be entitled to read what he has to say, and killfile him if they want. Afterall that's what killfiles are for. I don't like it when someone makes decisions like that for me.
Also what's the point of "nonpublic" lists when the whole process is supposed to be "open" and allow anyone to join?
It's this hypocracy that keeps me from joining
the selfrightous schlong measuringfest that is IRC, or any of these projects.
A complete and usable desktop like we've grown acustom to since Macos/Windooz should be the priority.
Actually this is the problem. Now don't misunderstand me. I'm not talking about thowing out all the past good ideas, and using something that doesn't work, simply because it's new. But one shouldn't blindly reimplement old ideas, including implementing their short comings simply because, that's what people expect.
Take for instance the start menu. Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the user shouldn't be able to edit the root menu. Sure, you a limited ability to add new items, and then remove your items, but you you're stuck with what Microsoft decided would be "useful". (Run, Shutdown, Programs, Favorites, et cetra.) Don't use Favorites? Don't want it cluttering up your menu? Tough.
So GNOME and KDE (they both suffer from the same debilitating disease last time I checked) said, "Hey we need a start menu. Afterall Microsoft has one and when the Great Flood comes and Redmond is washed into the sea, those that the Great Penguin deamed worthy will go forth and claim the land and the people left will be expecting a start menu. Those that don't want a start menu, can remove it. So everyone is happy.
Not quite. For the would-be deliverers have decided that everyone should have "Programs", "Favorites", "Run", "Applets", "Logout", and "Lock Screen". You mean you would like to edit this? You can't under windows. What do you mean that's not acceptable? That's how Microsoft does it.
For all the talk about how Microsoft doesn't innovate, there sure is lack of innovation in the opensource world. I've yet to see it. In fact there has never been a "killer app" for Linux.
Sure someone will bring up something like Gimp, but let's face it. It's Photoshop, only more confusing and without nearly as many useful plugins.
Yes, it was included. It didn't work, and was removed. What he fuck is your problem? Are you suggesting that any old shit should be bundled into GNOME, and never removed if it doesn't work?
Well it never seemed to stop them before. Only they said, "This is alphaware. If you don't like it, patch it. Then it will get better."
It's not just GNOME, the entire opensource commun ity is made up of software that doesn't quite work right all the time.
Myh mom (she was in highschool when sputnik was launched) told me about pre Gagarin flights for
years. Basically the story goes, that you could
pick up on a ham radio the radio transmissions
of from the doomed cosmonauts. Basically they were steuck up there, and couldn't return.
Supposably you could also hear their heartbeat (well at least the *beep* *beep* *beep* of the
EKG). My mom said that it was reported in the
papers when this happened, but I never heard anything about it except from her.
The idea of the Ruskies launching men before the
technology was ready plays into the heartless commie stereotype of the red scare.
While this whole story strikes me as plausable, without collaborating evidence, it's still just urban legend.
> And anyway, Nintendo spelt 'Colour' wrong too ;)
Hey. Can Nintendo and the US help it the rest of the world are bad spellers?
Or for our european (and european colony (ie
Canada) brethren:
Hey. Can Nintendo and the US help it the rest of the wourld are bad spellres?
It's been done. At XEROX Parc no less.
The could get it make arbitrary movements and speak at arbitrary times. They now how the speech is encoded, but not the specifics. (As they said, "It was outside the scope of the project. Plus it ensures that Barney is constantly in character.")
If we're going to get a blow by blow account of what goes on at the big hunk o' metal in the sky I want it to have a topic so I can turn it off.
I like space stories, I just don't give a damn about the space station.
If you're going to submit a story. At least have the decency to write your own blurb, and not simply copy and paste the blurb from Wired.
First, that's plagurism. Secondly, that's just lame.
What would be the advantage of buying this?
For $250 bucks, you could go out and buy yourself a some mindstorms and an add on kit (May I suggest the videocam addon?) and build this exact bot. And have a lot more fun doing it.
I thought that domain name looked familure. Back when in 1994-1995 (freshman in college) I went through my infatuation with cracker culture, that alot of people do. I amassed quite a collection of filez and had ran a semipopular site out of my dorm room (running Slackware).
.)
This was back in the day when alt.hackers still was "self-moderated" meaning you had to add a specific header saying "X-Moderator-Approved:" or something in order to get your post to propigate across USENET. And you had better include your "ObHack" or you'd get flamed. (Some where quite involved. Like hacking a garage door opener to your beer refridgerator to open the door and deliver a beer to you.)
This was also back back in the day when alt.2600 actually had a resident population that new stuff, as opposed to being just 5cr1pT k1Ddi3z. There were two guys on alt.2600 that new the most. Will something (the FAQ maintainer) and route@infonexus.com. (I forgot his email address but his FTP site was something at ftp.cdrom.com/.../route
I haven't thought about that guy in years.
--
The Guy Formerlly Known as "Coolness Incarnate"
(Now I'll have to track down The Bob(c) and my walk down memory lane will be complete.)
(Oh and incase you're wondering when alt.2600 took the nosie dive into pure shit, I say summer of 1995. Basically USENET's commuliative quallity halved that summer. Don't know exactly why though. It was after the AOL-USENET fiasco.)
It got the pics from my hdd. Wait! Those are on my unmounted partition!
:)
Uhhh...shit. I said too much.
Perhaps, but see we don't care what they're using now. All they had to do is blast EM noise for a few years so that so that we pick it up. To use your analogy, the aliens went from runners, to cell phones, skipping smoke signals completly. It just doesn't strike me as that plausable.
The chance that a "Prime Directive" not to interfere in other civilizations is part of the cause is actually more likely than at first glance. Assume that civilizations arise at the rate of one every few thousand years. This means that the first civilization (Civ A) to arise has that amount of technological head start over the next (Civ B). At this point, we've hit the Clarke "Magic" level of technology for A over B, where civilization B could be stepped on like ants by civilization A.
Thus, we don't need every civilization to decide not to interfere. We only need the first to decide on a Prime Directive and decide to enforce it.
That reasoning doesn't work.
This logic simply doesn't work.
Damn it. Why can't slashback stay in the slashback topic?
GARH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Engineering Machismo
Why a Remote Manipulator System whatelse?
So, ISS and Mir and whatnot keep [nuking the US] from happening. Cool. That's good science, and good effective use of public funds, imho. So what's the problem?
Well it's not really science now is it? And no I don't really have a problem with basically paying off Russian scientists. I just think we should be paying them to do something a little more constructive.
However, in this thread, I believe you may have missed my earlier point which is simply this:
Better men than you or I have argued *for* space, and we're going to space, and the ISS is being built, and it's happening. Any attempt at arguing against it is really just masturbation
Actually I did read that. I just decided to skip over it. But since you insist. I'll respond.
<flame>
That is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS thinking. Lots of things that are were either either incredibly Wrong or doomed for failure from the outset have been argued by "great minds". (I'll let you plug in your own favorite establishment supported debace/Generally_Acknolledged_Bad_Thing(tm).)
The fact that saying "someone else thought we should do it, so we should do it" illustrates a completely lack of critical thinking. All advances in civilization have their basis in questioning the status quo. The fact that you're arguing against questioning the reasoning, shows that you're not very strong in your convictions.
</flame>
There I said it.
(The one interesting point the article makes is about Napster's corporate structure and equity positions. I was unaware that the investors were able to pry over 90% of the company away from the founder. Fanning is an excellent developer, but he must be a *lousy* businessman.)
He's lucky the Vulture Capitalists let him keep that much. US Venture Capital is highly interventionist, at least compared to their UK equivalent (who generally swipe about 60 per cent) and generall make damned sure that if the company founder doesn't dance to their business tune they can have him tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail toute de suite.
What the hell does a VC do to warrant the amount of power they have over a company. They wrote a check. Big fucking deal. All they do is take over companies and throw the founders to the wolves. So really what's the incentive of founding a company then?
And how do VCs compare to "Angel Investors". Supposably Angels are supposed to be nicer, but why?
There is so much for the future of Russian economy to be gained from the space program, its not even funny. Space manufacturing, medicine, electronics - all of these human endeavours stand to benefit from research to be done on the ISS over the next few years, and the Russians know this just as well as any corporate bigwig at McDonnall/Douglas or Boeing.
Space is probably about the only thing the Russians are good at, as an industrialized nation, right now, and so it follows that they are putting their heart and soul into continuing to lead and participate in human exploration of space. Russian pursuits of space programs are *vital* to the future economic stability of the Russian system, since it's among the few truly exportable industries that Russia has right now, having lost a great deal of her productive power due to Communist misguidance.
That you cannot see this, or are unwilling to be able to even *think* that scientists and great minds of this ilk have an accute awareness of the benefits for what they're doing, belies your pop-culture, spoon-fed, MTV instant fix upbringing.
Wait. I grew up being a big space fan, but now than I'm older I kind of wonder what's the point of a manned space program. I've been trying to justify for a long time; and I can't. I just don't see a compelling reason to send people into space.
Let's look at the common given reasons, and your reasons that the Russians are doing this. Then I'll give my own reason why the US is backing the Russian space program.
space manufacturing
Yea! You can build rockets in space. Yes, that would be a Good-Thing(tm) if there was a place to send the rocket to.
Now if you mean space based factories making goods for terrestrial based consumers, well then what can you build in space that you can't build on Earth. (It's going to have to be something unique, otherwise the shipping costs would be insane.) I'll tell you what they've found in the past 50 years. Microcrystals. Now these crystals are supposed to eventually maybe if we're lucky to some sort of uber-drug. However, I haven't heard of anydrug yet that uses them. If there was, Merck would have launched a factory.
medicine
Uhh gravity is good for bones. While this knowledge is important long duration space flight, it really doesn't have a direct terresstrial application, since the average person isn't exposed to a microgravity enviroment at all. Now if there was a place to go in that rocket we assembled in orbit then it would be useful to know what will happen to the crew. That is of course there was someplace to go.
electronics
Electronics suffers from the same problems that the other two do, except that it doesn't have a crew to apply to nor does gravity affect it in the slightest. So there goes the only two positives.
exploration
Sure, but a series of robotic landers do the same tasks that person can do (read: pick up rocks). Basically the only reason you'd want a team on-site as it were would be if you were doing a long term study, or where you need high dexterity (say archaelogy), but currently it's prohibitivly expensive to send a team for a long duration stay for something that doesn't effect the Earth life or public policy. (Compare a planetary expedition to an Antartic expedition. One is relativly cheap. One is provides information about the state of the habitat. The other is expensive, and deals with a completly independent system.)
Sure, I get all goose-pimply when I think of someone walking on another planet, but the more rational part of me looks at it like a trip to the Grand Canyon. "Gee sure is big isn't? *click* Okay, let's go back." Nothing is there.
Russian pursuits of space programs are *vital* to the future economic stability of the Russian system, since it's among the few truly exportable industries that Russia has right now
I'll grant you this one. But launching satelites isn't really a country supporting industry.
mining
(You didn't mention it, but it's typically given as the big payoff in investing in the space program.)
Astroids are rocks. Mostly iron. There also VERY FAR AWAY! Until we run out of terrestrially accessable iron and steel, the cost of lassoing one of those bad boys is going to be alot more than the actual profit you'd make off of the iron.
Until the price of terrestrial iron gets prohibitvly expensive, or an orbiting astroid of solid gold is discovered, there ain't going to be any astroid prospectors.
avoid catastrophe
Yes having the population spread out does make it harder to eradicate. However this is looking VERY far down the road.
Now I'm not saying Nasa is worthless. They do a lot of good work in areonautics resarch. They're THE government research lab when it comes to airplanes and rockets. They facilitate alot of work in studing the Earth. However most of this doesn't involve sending people into orbit. When it does, the crews are pretty much relagated to being space-mechanics.
I'm not even so selfish where everything needs a direct and immediate payoff. I'm all for studying cosmology and an astronomy, and Nasa facilitates that. It's just that I'd rather see Nasa spending it's resources on building an orbiting infrarometer, or installing a radio telescope on the far side of the moon (you could assemble it in orbit if need be, and then put it in geostationary orbit (However Nasa deemed the prefix planetary based during the last Mars lander mission. So according to them the word should be "lunarstationary" or some other nonsense.) along with an orbiting relay station. No long duration crews at all.), rather than sticking 6 people in an orbiting room and finding out what happens when they stop being nice and start being real.
So why did the US give so much money to the Russians?
Simple. The Russian economy is sucking ass right now. You've got a lot of hightly trained areospace engineers not being paid. The US is worried about ICBM technology falling into the hands of rogue nations. Now presented with the delimina of either paying the Russians to build a big orbiting can of people for no real purpose other than to furthering the "industry" of puting cans of people into orbit and some crap about "furthering international relations"; or have the Russians getting paid to put bombs on missles for everyone with 50 million dollars; which one do you the the US government would choose?
Moderators: It's not "flamebait", it's an irreverant rubtle. What's the difference? One has a kernel of thought, the other doesn't.