There are plenty of states trying to get spaceports built, because a spaceport means high paying jobs.
That's the theory - but it's unsupported by reality. Plenty of states are trying to build spaceports because they are latest and greatest penis size increaser among the various states.
I bet a lot of people balked at the idea of building airports at first too.
Actually - no. There was a massive wave of airport building - because airports meant transport, and transport means commerce. Space'ports' mean niether.
[Rant] The real problem is that these space'ports' aren't actually ports in any useful sense of the word. Currently, and for the forseeable future, these 'ports' are in reality just amusement parks. Folks enthusiatic about these ports should really read these posts from the Space Cynic blog. [/Rant]
Something like only 20% of the availble stock of Stem Cells are still viable but the government makes it illegal to harvest more.
Not familiar with facts are we? The facts are that while Federal Goverment stopped funding the harvesting of new stem lines, it remains quite legal to do so.
Makes you wonder about the motivations of those who claim it is illegal doesn't it?
It is also possible that someone will finally figure out a practical method of laser uranium enrichment that'll eliminate all those pesky centrifuge cascades.
Only to replace them with pesky laser cascades. Laser enrichment isn't a magic wand.
It's better; we've got so much uranium around we don't know what to do with it! The problem is we're using high uranium-235 fuel, leaving lots of u-238 around. We bury it underground, talk about throwing it into the earth's conveyor belt so it gets sucked under, etc.
Interesting thing is that in the same breeder reactors as the GGP posted about you can use u-238 as a fissile fuel; it's a slightly more expensive process which is why we don't use it.
Not really. Breeder reactors convert U-238 into plutonium, then 'burn' the plutonium. It's a lot more expensive, a lot more difficult, and a lot more risky on several fronts. Most importantly however - having that much plutonium around is a vast proliferation risk.
It's the proliferation risk, along with other problems, that make breeders (currently) unnatractive.
You might be surprised to learn that this is not the case. Human skin is fairly resistant to vacuum. Abrasion, radiation protection, thermal insulation are more important considerations. Please read this article on space activity suits.
You might be surprised to learn, if you actually read the article you linked to, that space activity suits are largely the stuff of fiction. Hardly any research has been done on them, and zero development.
You didn't 'defend' yourself - you exposed your ignorance even further.
For instance the nonsensical claim about not delivering or servicing satellites since Challenger - ever heard of Magellan? Hubble?. Or the nonsensical claim about landing in water, given that the recovery mode for Orion is land. Or the dammfool claim about 'packing a backup parachute'. etc... etc...
You haven't the slightest clue what you are talking about.
The implication of your original statement was that somehow the majority of voters were simply a bunch of criminals trying to justify their own transgressions.
That is precisely the impression I get reading on the issue - the nonsense about property and violent crimes is nothing but a smokescreen generated to cover that fact. Playing on the unfounded belief of the general public that crimes go unsolved because the police don't work on them - as opposed to the reality that crimes go unsolved because there is not sufficient evidence, or that they are not as cut-and-dried (from the point of view of the law) as people commonly believe.
Actually reading the initiative is fairly interesting - because significant by it's absence is any serious suggestion that police dept resources be redirected from drug crimes to other crime - but rather that the Dept account for the 'savings'. The notion that the resources should be redirected is disposed of in two sentences - whereas far more are allocated to a byzantine and pointless citizens oversight committee. (Which again reveals their true intent - as it exists primarily to collect data on drug crimes that duplicates existing data collected by the courts, and suggests _requiring_ police officers who make drug requests to appear before the comittee. It's purpose is the harrassment of the police in the furtherance of a political goal. The membership is very carefully slanted to support that.) Had I resided in the county, even thought I support the decriminalization of marijuana, I'd have voted against the Initiative on those (Oversight Committee) grounds alone.
Your suggestion that they should just change the law is interesting -- whenever localities have, in fact, changed the local law, the federal government then steps in and tells them that they aren't *allowed* to, which is precisely why the citizens in this area chose this approach -- it has the effect of the locality effectively boycotting enforcement of laws they see as wasteful or unjust, while circumventing the supremacy issues that have plagued previous, more straightforward attempts.
Which reflects their ignorance on two different levels. In the first place, a nonbinding referendum is... nobinding. The comments after the city council meeting plainly show the lack of understanding on this issue. (Implying that your statement about deliberate choice is unfounded in fact - and my reading on the issue supports this assertion.) The second problem is (as the County Attorney attempts to explain) that the police cannot completely ignore crimes. They cannot be 'directed to boycott' enforcement of a law. (And 'directed to boycott' as you say is very different from reducing the emphasis on enforcement.)
Why? Why was Windows 3.0 better than OS/2? Because at the time OS/2 was written only to support the 286, and even if you ran it on a 386 it would just run in 286 mode. Windows 3.0 would only do the cool DOS app multitasking if you ran it on a 386. My understanding is that IBM promised, early on, that OS/2 would run great on a 286; and IBM felt it was seriously important to keep that promise. With hindsight, I think they would have done better to have broken the promise and gone straight to the 386; given deep discounts for a while to their customers to whom they had made the promise or something. Even at the time I thought it was a mistake to keep trying to beat 286 code into something reasonable, while 386-based machines were becoming common.
[sigh] I'm going to have to head off into cranky-old-geezer mode to answer this...
You young 'uns seem to have forgotten, if you ever knew, that back in that era we didn't replace our boxen every year, or even every eighteen months. Computers got faster every now and again - but they didn't really get better. (Once the AT shipped, this was doubly true.) Graphics got a little better - but most games supported the older stuff pretty easily. Business apps in 1990 ran just fine on a computer from 1984. Etc... etc... We tended to keep our boxes for as many as four years.
But the 386, and the growth of Windows changed all that. All of the sudden here was a desireable OS (shell) that really did require a better processor - and here on the shelf was a processor easily available that could fill that slot. That was the first slow turn of the upgrade treadmill, which had previously been a rate best term 'sub glacial'.
On balance I think it likely to be here to stay and evolve as the prime metaverse.
That's what I, and many thousands of others, thought about Alpha World lo these many years ago - but then the company made a few boneheaded decisions, and their lunch was eaten by Second Life and There. (Alpha World, at least currently, is the very definition of 'obscure and forgotten' - on the Wikipedia it's not redirected to the article about the parent company and it's barely mentioned in said article.)
Who the hell actually plays Second Life? I seed tons of stories on/. and digg about it, but out of all the incredibly geeky people I know, none of them plays Second Life (or at least they wont admit to it).
This should be obvious without me having to say it, but since it isn't...
There are one hell of a lot more people in the world than the sets 'incredibly geeky' or 'people you know'. That being said - SL players are a pretty large cross section of the population. Pretty much like any game or online social community.
It's not intended to help security - it's intended to make the lives of thousands of WA state residents that cross the border daily much, much easier. (Especially when the traffic levels spike in 2010 - the residents won't be impeded by the touristas.) Heck, it'll make my life easier. I used to go to Van or the Lower Mainland 2-3 times a year, but had to give it up because of the hassle. I'll be applying for one as soon as I can.
Reptiles did survive - but they never evolved back into the niches they went extinct from (large carnivores and herbivores) because mammals (and fishes) evolved into those niches faster and competed more efficiently.
No, what matters is what the law says - if the law says they are criminals, they are criminals regardless of what the criminal or non-criminal population thinks. And that seems to be the key problem in Missoula, the criminals and their supporter seemed to not (as the country attorney alleges) understand the difference between changing the law, and a non binding referendum on police department policy.
When I voted last year - I had a choice of multiple political parties, few of whom were 'two sides of the same coin'. Heck, for my State House representative, it wasn't a matter of choosing between the lesser of two evils, I had six evils to decide between.
How many of these actually mattered (i.e., how many had a realistic chance of getting elected)?
That doesn't actually matter - as the OP implied he didn't have a choice, and it didn't matter who he voted for. The simple fact is, there almost always is an alternate choice - the system still belongs to the people, but they are in the main not bright enough to seize the controls.
Anyone who thinks the US is even remotely totalitarian hasn't a clue, and likely hasn't a functioning brain cell. (As well as being a large part of the problem.)
I think you shouldn't be quite so dismissive, although you do have a point insofar as that we're only at the beginning and that it still can get much, MUCH worse. Still, if anything, that's just another reason to pick up the proverbial fight now *before* it's too late.
I'm not being dismissive (though it may seem so) of what could happen, and to a limited extent is happening. I'm being dismissive of posters like the OP who take extremist (and ignorant) positions and polarize the fight - squeezing the moderates and the centrists (and reality) right of out his worldview. They key to winning the fight is education - and people like the OP who have given up the fight before one can even hear the drums are the biggest problem.
This is total nonsense FUD and you know it. Of course there is a learning curve - but that's why I said KEEP OFFICE INSTALLED.
No, it's not FUD. It's the honest and straightforward truth - but OO zealots don't want to hear it. You have to take the time to learn the new software - period. Running a dual install only makes that period longer and harder.
Unless you are a total invalid who does not deserve to be a manager in the first place, you should be able to judge form the first few minutes of trying if this "task" is going to be too hard to accomplish under OpenOffice given it's time constraints. If you have a report due tomorrow, have nothing done, and don't have time to screw around with OO.org writer - then do it in Word. Whose stopping you? You can try OO.org later, when you have more time.
Oh, right - my office has spent days or weeks working up the basis for the report in OO, and now at the last minute I have to switch to Word to finish it? Where exactly am I to find the time to do the conversion, reformatting, etc... On top of the work of the finishing and polishing the report.
If you're too afraid to risk ANYTHING with your business, you are not going to innovate, and your business will end up failing. Innovation is the root of success for all businesses.
Now this is pure FUD. Replacing your word processing software has nothing to do with innovating your business.
What manager would not take that offer? Why then do they not do the same with Office software?
If you weren't comparing fish and bicycles - that would be a question a worth asking.
Ever heard of application integration? Excel has it - R does not. Ever heard of user familiarity? It's far easier to use a program (like Excel) that you already familiar with, so long as it does a reasonable job, than to learn multiple programs.
It's not like it costs anything, or you have to uninstall MS Office to install OpenOffice or some other nonsense.
Oh? The time for a user to become familiar with a new interface costs nothing? The time to create new templates for routine reports costs nothing? The time to convert commonly used forms costs nothing?
It would be absolutely retarded from a business perspective to proceed any other way - based on anyones advice, no matter how much of an "expert" they claim to be. Just try for yourself - if it fits your needs, great. If it doesn't, you still have MS Office installed, so there is no risk of it hurting your business.
Right. My business can't possibly be hurt because I miss a deadline because I'm still crawling up Open Office's learning curve. My business can't possibly be hurt because Calc doesn't have something that I use, and that Excel has...
There is absolutely NO reason to use ANY clip art on any sort of business paperwork. Just a company logo, somewhere out of the way. Anything else just makes the document look unprofessional, or worse, trashy.
Out here in the real world any experienced graphic artist will be glad to explain to you the value of a properly placed bit of clip art that calls attention to the contents of the fax, or differentiates between notifications, alerts, and alarms.
Fax headers are not a collage. For God's sake, keep them neat and uncluttered so I can figure out why you are faxing me.
Ever wonder why computer's have different icons in their popup boxes? Maybe, just maybe it's to assist you in figuring out what the box is telling you - and how important it is.
I live in Missoula and discussed this initiative with quite a few people, none of whom are consumers of unregulated or illegal substances. They all voted for this, and they all understood it clearly. "The police should be investigating real crimes" was the most commonly cited reason.
Many criminals don't think their crimes are 'real' or warrant punishment. So what?
There are unsolved robberies every week in this town that receive, as far as anyone can tell, scant police attention. Police can build careers and the county can confiscate property (and generate revenue) "busting people for drugs" but investigating robberies is hard work and not glamorous in any way.
Ah yes - the old (and largely false) saw that the police do nothing but what is glamorous and easy.
The move has resulted in a flood of disaffection among voters, especially young voters. "Is there even a point to voting any more if the will of the people can so easily be subverted by two people?" one voter posted on a comment blog.
What this shows is a chilling ignorance of how the system works among those voters. Advisory referendums are, well... advisory. They are not binding. They are easy to disregard and overturn by design.
Becoming diaffected because the system works as designed is stupid. Get off your ass and pass a binding resolution.
I've been saying that off-and-on here on Slashdot for years. The biggest obstacle to obtaining actual reasonable fair use is assholes like the OP (who are in a majority on Slashdot) who define fair use as "mine, mine, mine" - like a petulant four year old.
And I've been saying it for years here on slashdot that the real problem is ignorant folk like you who have bought the [RIAA/MPAA/etc] party line and don't realize that these artifacts of our common culture are indeed "ours, ours, ours". The songs and stories, once shared with the public, belong to all of us.
That's an assumption on your part - one not shared by any reasonable individual. Nor is it supported by the history of copyright - which stretches back centuries before the RIAA/MIAA/etc... existed. You are a prime example of the petulant four year old - with the except that you are proud of being profoundly ignorant.
It is only an artifice of government that permits them reserve an artificial monopoly on copying, and it's an act of evil that they've extended this supposedly limited time monopoly into effective perpetuity. If you actually look at the long history of artistry and creativity, and the somewhat shorter history of copyright, the way these bastards have twisted what was meant as an incentive to create into a perpetual revenue model becomes a lot clearer. At this point, most copyright is "theft", the unjust fencing off of huge swathes of our culture in order to charge admission.
That's precisely the situation that those of us who are seeking a fair (to all parties) solution are trying to remedy. But ignorant little bastards like yourself with their cries of "mine, mine, mine" have so poisoned the well it has become nigh impossible to do so. Like the children you are, you have no concept that other people have property and rights.
I love your "I am right everyone else is wrong" attitude... But aside from that;
'm looking forward to flying the A380 because of the increased interior comfort (I hope -- we'll see) in cattle class,
If you believe, even for a moment, that the A380 won't be crowded to the gills to maximize revenue per airframe, you are seriously delusional. Every commercial aircraft has, in the its showroom version, had large amounts of room, tasteful decor, etc... etc... It has never survived onto the flight versions.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the theory - but it's unsupported by reality. Plenty of states are trying to build spaceports because they are latest and greatest penis size increaser among the various states.
Actually - no. There was a massive wave of airport building - because airports meant transport, and transport means commerce. Space'ports' mean niether.
[Rant]
The real problem is that these space'ports' aren't actually ports in any useful sense of the word. Currently, and for the forseeable future, these 'ports' are in reality just amusement parks. Folks enthusiatic about these ports should really read these posts from the Space Cynic blog.
[/Rant]
Not familiar with facts are we? The facts are that while Federal Goverment stopped funding the harvesting of new stem lines, it remains quite legal to do so.
Makes you wonder about the motivations of those who claim it is illegal doesn't it?
And the US, and the USSR, and probably a dozen or more nations where nobody has bothered to look yet because so much is available elsewhere.
But more most of those things, notably including thorium, the reactors are vaporware at best. Nobody is certain that one can be built.
Only to replace them with pesky laser cascades. Laser enrichment isn't a magic wand.
Not really. Breeder reactors convert U-238 into plutonium, then 'burn' the plutonium. It's a lot more expensive, a lot more difficult, and a lot more risky on several fronts. Most importantly however - having that much plutonium around is a vast proliferation risk.
It's the proliferation risk, along with other problems, that make breeders (currently) unnatractive.
You might be surprised to learn, if you actually read the article you linked to, that space activity suits are largely the stuff of fiction. Hardly any research has been done on them, and zero development.
You didn't 'defend' yourself - you exposed your ignorance even further.
For instance the nonsensical claim about not delivering or servicing satellites since Challenger - ever heard of Magellan? Hubble?. Or the nonsensical claim about landing in water, given that the recovery mode for Orion is land. Or the dammfool claim about 'packing a backup parachute'. etc... etc...
You haven't the slightest clue what you are talking about.
That is precisely the impression I get reading on the issue - the nonsense about property and violent crimes is nothing but a smokescreen generated to cover that fact. Playing on the unfounded belief of the general public that crimes go unsolved because the police don't work on them - as opposed to the reality that crimes go unsolved because there is not sufficient evidence, or that they are not as cut-and-dried (from the point of view of the law) as people commonly believe.
Actually reading the initiative is fairly interesting - because significant by it's absence is any serious suggestion that police dept resources be redirected from drug crimes to other crime - but rather that the Dept account for the 'savings'. The notion that the resources should be redirected is disposed of in two sentences - whereas far more are allocated to a byzantine and pointless citizens oversight committee. (Which again reveals their true intent - as it exists primarily to collect data on drug crimes that duplicates existing data collected by the courts, and suggests _requiring_ police officers who make drug requests to appear before the comittee. It's purpose is the harrassment of the police in the furtherance of a political goal. The membership is very carefully slanted to support that.) Had I resided in the county, even thought I support the decriminalization of marijuana, I'd have voted against the Initiative on those (Oversight Committee) grounds alone.
Which reflects their ignorance on two different levels. In the first place, a nonbinding referendum is... nobinding. The comments after the city council meeting plainly show the lack of understanding on this issue. (Implying that your statement about deliberate choice is unfounded in fact - and my reading on the issue supports this assertion.) The second problem is (as the County Attorney attempts to explain) that the police cannot completely ignore crimes. They cannot be 'directed to boycott' enforcement of a law. (And 'directed to boycott' as you say is very different from reducing the emphasis on enforcement.)
[sigh] I'm going to have to head off into cranky-old-geezer mode to answer this...
You young 'uns seem to have forgotten, if you ever knew, that back in that era we didn't replace our boxen every year, or even every eighteen months. Computers got faster every now and again - but they didn't really get better. (Once the AT shipped, this was doubly true.) Graphics got a little better - but most games supported the older stuff pretty easily. Business apps in 1990 ran just fine on a computer from 1984. Etc... etc... We tended to keep our boxes for as many as four years.
But the 386, and the growth of Windows changed all that. All of the sudden here was a desireable OS (shell) that really did require a better processor - and here on the shelf was a processor easily available that could fill that slot. That was the first slow turn of the upgrade treadmill, which had previously been a rate best term 'sub glacial'.
That's what I, and many thousands of others, thought about Alpha World lo these many years ago - but then the company made a few boneheaded decisions, and their lunch was eaten by Second Life and There. (Alpha World, at least currently, is the very definition of 'obscure and forgotten' - on the Wikipedia it's not redirected to the article about the parent company and it's barely mentioned in said article.)
This should be obvious without me having to say it, but since it isn't...
There are one hell of a lot more people in the world than the sets 'incredibly geeky' or 'people you know'. That being said - SL players are a pretty large cross section of the population. Pretty much like any game or online social community.
It's not intended to help security - it's intended to make the lives of thousands of WA state residents that cross the border daily much, much easier. (Especially when the traffic levels spike in 2010 - the residents won't be impeded by the touristas.) Heck, it'll make my life easier. I used to go to Van or the Lower Mainland 2-3 times a year, but had to give it up because of the hassle. I'll be applying for one as soon as I can.
Reptiles did survive - but they never evolved back into the niches they went extinct from (large carnivores and herbivores) because mammals (and fishes) evolved into those niches faster and competed more efficiently.
No, what matters is what the law says - if the law says they are criminals, they are criminals regardless of what the criminal or non-criminal population thinks. And that seems to be the key problem in Missoula, the criminals and their supporter seemed to not (as the country attorney alleges) understand the difference between changing the law, and a non binding referendum on police department policy.
That doesn't actually matter - as the OP implied he didn't have a choice, and it didn't matter who he voted for. The simple fact is, there almost always is an alternate choice - the system still belongs to the people, but they are in the main not bright enough to seize the controls.
I'm not being dismissive (though it may seem so) of what could happen, and to a limited extent is happening. I'm being dismissive of posters like the OP who take extremist (and ignorant) positions and polarize the fight - squeezing the moderates and the centrists (and reality) right of out his worldview. They key to winning the fight is education - and people like the OP who have given up the fight before one can even hear the drums are the biggest problem.
No, it's not FUD. It's the honest and straightforward truth - but OO zealots don't want to hear it. You have to take the time to learn the new software - period. Running a dual install only makes that period longer and harder.
Oh, right - my office has spent days or weeks working up the basis for the report in OO, and now at the last minute I have to switch to Word to finish it? Where exactly am I to find the time to do the conversion, reformatting, etc... On top of the work of the finishing and polishing the report.
Now this is pure FUD. Replacing your word processing software has nothing to do with innovating your business.
If you weren't comparing fish and bicycles - that would be a question a worth asking.
Ever heard of application integration? Excel has it - R does not. Ever heard of user familiarity? It's far easier to use a program (like Excel) that you already familiar with, so long as it does a reasonable job, than to learn multiple programs.
Oh? The time for a user to become familiar with a new interface costs nothing? The time to create new templates for routine reports costs nothing? The time to convert commonly used forms costs nothing?
Right. My business can't possibly be hurt because I miss a deadline because I'm still crawling up Open Office's learning curve. My business can't possibly be hurt because Calc doesn't have something that I use, and that Excel has...
Out here in the real world any experienced graphic artist will be glad to explain to you the value of a properly placed bit of clip art that calls attention to the contents of the fax, or differentiates between notifications, alerts, and alarms.
Ever wonder why computer's have different icons in their popup boxes? Maybe, just maybe it's to assist you in figuring out what the box is telling you - and how important it is.
Many criminals don't think their crimes are 'real' or warrant punishment. So what?
Ah yes - the old (and largely false) saw that the police do nothing but what is glamorous and easy.
What this shows is a chilling ignorance of how the system works among those voters. Advisory referendums are, well... advisory. They are not binding. They are easy to disregard and overturn by design.
Becoming diaffected because the system works as designed is stupid. Get off your ass and pass a binding resolution.
They haven't flown yet - so, making any assumptions about how they will fly, especially in the face of historical evidence, is delusional.
That's an assumption on your part - one not shared by any reasonable individual. Nor is it supported by the history of copyright - which stretches back centuries before the RIAA/MIAA/etc... existed. You are a prime example of the petulant four year old - with the except that you are proud of being profoundly ignorant.
That's precisely the situation that those of us who are seeking a fair (to all parties) solution are trying to remedy. But ignorant little bastards like yourself with their cries of "mine, mine, mine" have so poisoned the well it has become nigh impossible to do so. Like the children you are, you have no concept that other people have property and rights.
If you believe, even for a moment, that the A380 won't be crowded to the gills to maximize revenue per airframe, you are seriously delusional. Every commercial aircraft has, in the its showroom version, had large amounts of room, tasteful decor, etc... etc... It has never survived onto the flight versions.