spam is traffic, traffic costs money. who pays for all this?
You.
Data transfer is subject to the law of supply and demand. Therefore, everyone who is online pays for it, at least indirectly. No spam would mean less demand, leading to a lower price.
(you couldn't break into song during a trial, for example, unless maybe you were a defendant pleading insanity:)
Maybe this is a bit offtopic, but I have heard of a few cases of singing defendants (surprisingly, in a 'fuck the draft' case). Here in Finland inciting someone to break the law is a crime. We also have obligatory military service. If you have a religious/political/ethical non-violent views, you are exempted and allowed to serve 'civil service'. (Which takes 13 months, the most common period of armed service is 6 months)
In the old days, your non-violent views were evaluated by a commitee (A priest, an army officer and a 'layman'), often asking questions like 'What would you do if the Martians invade Earth?'. If they decided your case was not strong enough, you were sent to the army. Refusing to serve in army after a negative committee decision was crime.
The committee system was revoked by ridiculing the law. People made petitions asking those, who got a negative decision, to refuse armed service. After this, they reported themselves to the police. Lists collecting signatures were circulated.
Several thousand people made it to the court. A few poets and singers presented their cases to the court as songs and poems. People set up a contest of 'who gets the longest prison sentence'.
Finally, the president got fed up, and made a general amnesty of all the people involved. The committee system was revoked, and now your concience is tested by 'mark this box if religious, that if ethical'
The Europe Union has no problem banning hate speech it finds destructive.
Hate speech is abuse of free speech. And note that the laws are usually applied afterwards. This is not censorship, you just have to take responsibility of your actions. Think before you start suggesting someone should be shot. Otherwise some other hothead listens to you and actually shoots someone. And this happens in Europe. This is reality: It's ugly, and it stinks, but you have to live with it. Some idiots are abusing the freedom of speech to restrict other peoples right to life. The governments of EU then restrict the right to free speech and gives preference to the right to life. It is a compromise.
The US gives people the right to carry firearms. Some idiots abuse that right and shoot people.
After this, they (at least some of them) are executed by the government. So, the US gives preference for the right to carrying firearms,
and restricts the right to life. It is a compromise.
Living with idiots means you must make compromises. They can not be given the rights you would not abuse. Therefore, your rights are restricted.
I assume libel is illegal also in US. In Europe, this is also applied to groups and not only individuals. You get in trouble by shouting 'kill the bloody jews/arabs/commies/nazis', even when there are no jews/arabs/commies/nazis in sight, so that you are not insulting a particular individual. And we Europeans have our history.
Hate speech proved politically extremely succesful in 1930:s, and was the basic cause of the holocaust and World War II in Europe (maybe not in Pacific, but you Americans would have beaten the Japanese much faster if you had not been so busy helping us.)
There are also several older examples of hate speech resulting in crimes against the humanity. The civil wars of Eastern Europe after the collapse of the four Empires (Hohenzollern, Habsburg, Romanov and Osman) in World War I ended often with mass executions of prisoners and other atrocities. Main cause: propaganda fed to the troops. The murders of the Armenians in Turkey, and countless pogromes in Ukraine and Russia during 19th century were caused by governments using hate speech. 'The only good Indian is a dead Indian' and what that caused in the early US. And so on and so forth, back to the time before the Pyramids.
Banning hate speech is still needed. Dozens of people get killed in Europe just beacuse their skin is not that pale. I know a Turkish man who owns a kebab place. The skinheads served Molotov cocktails there every month last year. Not to mention smashing the windows of his restaurant and car every week, burning his car two times and beating him quite badly once. Finally, they got caught. With no hate speech, we would have much less political violence.
The attempted murder of the French president this year and the murder of Pim Fortuyn (a prominent right-wing politician) in Netherlands are also examples of what hate speech causes.
The space agencies are quite reluctant to talk about failures and statistics, unless it looks very good. There is a good reason for that.
Launchers come in versions. After any failure, things are studied and problems corrected. 'Ariane 4.0beta' is much more likely to fail than 'Ariane 4.6.22' The newest lauchers (like 'Ariane 5.0beta' in that table) have much more undiscovered problems. After these are weeded out, the new ones are much better.
Looking at the failure rates of last 100 launches would make Proton look much better. Looking at the newer half of launches would make Ariane 5 look much better. Today, Ariane 4 has something like 60 subsequent succesful launches, but Ariane 5 is considered so much better that Ariane 4 will soon be phased out. (Or is it already?)
The well-understood 'workhorse' launchers with dozens of lauches, like Soyuz, Proton or Ariane 4 will probably have similar figures in newer reports. ESA Annual report for 2000 is the latest I've seen, and it gives a success rate of 97.3% for Ariane 4.
Big blue is still alive and not only kicking but making big strides too.
I would like to see MS making more real progress, instead of playing with file formats, marketing tricks and FUD. In the old days IBM had 40% share of hardware market and everything they did was automatically standard. They are still alive, but quite far from such a position. And that is forcing IBM to make real progress. MS could make (and sometimes does) good software. But they also make bad software when they can get away with it. As they dominate the desktop market, they can do that far too often. If they lost their monopoly, that would not happen, and the prices would be more reasonable. Instead of paying themselves sick for a load of MS/BS, people would use something else (== alternatives).
And please stop using the phrase "Alternative OS", read the memo for an explanation.
OK, I'll use "Linux" from now on.
I think the memo is a typical example of Open Source advocacy, and not focusing to Linux only
(I know BSD etc. exist.). The case is also an example of the harm clueless and/or bribed government officials can make.
However, I personally prefer focusing on Linux. OpenOffice et al. and Mozilla et al. are good products that can stand on their own, but they are natural choices after you have selected Linux. People who have never used Linux have most likely never heard of Mozilla or Openoffice. Someday we may have MSOffice and IE for Linux, but before that I
focus on advocating Linux. Focusing on the essential is much better than philosophing on free software, unless you are talking to a philosopher.
'Alternatives' are required when we are compelled to use one particular thing or product
And that is exactly what many people are facing.
The memo states that the suggested curriculum contains Win98. If this is accepted, Indian schools are forced to use Win98 until the next review (about 2007!).
Several goverment agencies in my country provide on-line information or forms in Word format only. Have you ever tried opening and filling a complex.doc form with OpenOffice? Can you be 100% sure the filled form is printable on a Windows machine? Would you bet your job on that? I didn't.
I have been forced to buy a Windows workstation. This is purely because some of our financiers (I work in a research institute) want reports and applications filled on-line. Only IE version is available, and this is because of 'security', which translates to 'we don't have a clue on security'. The alternative to IE was risking 40%-60% of our funding, including my own salary. I hate the situation, and I have let them know that using IE is waste of their money, but what else could we do? Piracy would mean risking my job with no hope of ever recovering it.
The alternative to buying MS is risking my job and my home (I, my wife and my 2-year-old son live in a rented apartment.) And as it's snowing outside today, the alternative to MS is cool.
Putting pressure on the national and local government and increasing the Linux user base in other ways may improve the situation. It may take years or even decades, but it's worth trying.
The war against Microsoft was long ago lost to the US. 95% of all OS are Microsoft in the US.
I am amazed by the performance of Microsoft. Shooting its own foot so many times, and still running. Still I would not say the war is lost.
Many corporations have gained a dominant position in the past, and lost it later on. (IBM on the hardware side comes to mind.) Never underestimate the power of the pointy-haired bosses.
The main obstacle for demolishing the monopoly is corporate inertia. I think most companies are aware of the alternative OS:es, but do not switch, due to the high transition costs (file format problems etc.). However, switching to XP has also high transition costs due to licensing policies. Several large companies and parts of the local government in here are still using Office 97 file formats as internal standards.
The people I have talked with feel the XP licensing is like giving your wallet to Microsoft, instead of money. I feel the pressure for switching to alternatives is increasing.
The Linux community has three tasks: Keep the alternative competitive. Keep the public aware of the alternative. And work for the change.
Get your relatives to try Linux. Get active in politics and show how switching to Linux saves taxpayer money. If you detect piracy, report to BSA. If they make the piracy public, then let the world know, that 'Had they used Linux, that would never have happened'.
Getting aware of the radiation sources is important, but it is not enough. We are living with the radiation, so it would also be nice to undestand radiation. Most people get hysteric when they hear the word 'radioactive'. Joe Average does not understand the physics behind.
For the time being, I live in Finland and it seems that the goverment is dealing with similar issues. Some radioactive stuff is moving around, and often it originates from the former USSR.
There are radiation monitors at the border. Several times a year a load of steel or something similar is sent back, as it contains something radioactive. The Russians living on illegal metal trade steal junk from the old Soviet dumps, and sell it. They are not worried about the radiation.
There are also plenty of environmental 'nuclear bombs' ticking in the old Soviet. I'm expecially worried about the ones in Estonia (see e.g. nti.org which contains plenty of info on these and similar issues). The Sillamae pool contains wastes of uranium ore processing and in Paldiski there is a pool of nuclear waste from two naval training reactors.
Should the pools break, that would practically destroy the Gulf of Finland (which I see from the window of my office). The Sillamae pool contains so much uranium nitrate that even the nitrate part is problematic. And it's leaking...
Estonians can't afford the cleanup alone, so Finland and other rich states around the Baltic Sea are paying a large part of the bill. The Estonians will be dealing with the Soviet cleanup for decades. The non-nuclear mess is a longer story. (as an example: in some areas the water in wells is flammable, as a result of careless fuel handling in airbases).
We also have a bedrock containing plenty of uranium, so radon is a big problem is some areas (most of the houses are not properly vented to save energy). In the worst places, the drinking water contains also plenty of other natural radionuclides.
The shuttle is the heaviest launcher in the world right now, it can put more payload into orbit than any other system. That does not include the mass of the shuttle itself. There may not be a space vehicle as versatile, powerful and reliable as the Space Shuttle for another 50 years.
How much a launcher can put on orbit depends also on the orbit. Shuttle may be useful when putting heavy loads to low orbits. Getting the payload to geostationary (many communiations satellites) or other high orbits (e.g. INTEGRAL satellite observatory has 3 day orbit going halfway to Moon at apogeum), or launching probes to other planets is easier with Delta.
Wasting fuel on getting the shuttle to high velocities needed to reach these orbits is just stupid. If the astronauts wanted back home after being fried in the (Van Allen) radiation belts, an extra load of fuel is needed. In principle the Shuttle could be used to get an upper stage and the real payload to a lower orbit, but it does not make sense.
The astronauts are a problem. Plenty of equipment is needed to keep them alive, they can't take that much radiation, and you want them back.
A robotic shuttle (like Buran) or preferably fully reusable lower stages would be much, much better for simply putting stuff on the orbit.
I hate the idea that piss-poor countries are spending some of their money on software licenses.
That money could be used for the many things you mention (running water, electricity) or fighting
AIDS or malaria. The 'shareholder value' of the richest is obviously more important than the lives of the poor. No wonder software piracy is widespread in poor countries.
But how, practically is this achievable on anything other than an administrative level? Running Linux and Star Office rather than Microsoft Windows and Office and employing sysadmins with the relative skills is all doable in the halls of power but how can open source be brought to the people?
In the poorest countries, the computers are used mainly in the 'halls of power'. Switching to
open source is much easier if the entire government has less PC:s than an average US School.
A few years ago UK donated some PC:s to the police
in a small West African country that was just starting to recover from a civil war. They would have preferred chairs, desks or pencils, as the police station had no electricity.
A friend of mine visited a university in
Mocambique (sp?) a few years ago. There were three computers in an university of several thousand students.
OK, so a little off the government's licensing costs can't hurt but will it really make a meaningful difference? Not to Joe Average it won't
The poorest countries have an education and health budget of the order a few USD per capita.
Any difference is important when playing with
very small budgets. Savings of 10k$ could mean vaccinating thousands of kids against some common disease, saving a few hundred lives. Or spending that 10k$ in condoms or education might save a few hundred people from AIDS. This would be a small
difference, but it is human lives we are talking about.
Statistically, the life of Joe Average might be meaningless. However, Joe Average would hardly
agree with that.
For one thing, even open source software requires support (and so does the hardware it runs on). You might find all the support you need online but
someone who lives miles from the nearest telephone is going to find it a little harder.
If you live miles from the nearest phone, getting
online for support is just as feasible as calling
the "insert-company-here" helpdesk, and hearing that you have to download the latest driver/patch from their Flash-ridden homepage. You have to rely on local documentation and user manuals, and these
are just as crappy on both commercial and open source.
Any satellites put into orbit should be required to have the capability of being brought down safely.
I agree. However, this is extremely hard to enforce. What would the US government do if a foreign (Russian, Chinese, Japanese, French, you name it) satellite does not have this capability?
'Express their concerns' via diplomatic channels,
or something less effective, I think.
Clearly an international treaty would be required.
Many satellites are used for military purposes, and a reliable re-entry system would require
reductions in the satellite payload and efficiency or increase the cost. I doubt most nations are not willing to let some international treaty to compromise their military interests. Considering the fate of the ABM treaty, it is pretty clear that United States is not one of them.
Enforcing such a treaty efficiently would also require pre-launch inspections of all satellites, including the military ones. How many nations with space capabilities would allow this?
And anything that would "block" wavelengths, means the absorption would increase, and provide a reading showing that it would have more
sodium, not less.
That depends on what is absorbing.
If the high-altitude clouds are similar to those
on our sky, they cause absorption through scattering. This would mean the absorption is
broad-band.
The astronomers are probably comparing spectra
taken during the planetary transit and before/after that to derive the planetary spectrum. High-altitude clouds would reduce the
planetary spectrum, including any lines.
This is a LOT of data. More data than (I would think at least) would be useful for environmental monitoring. Especially taking bandwidth into
consideration for transmitting all or some of this data back to earth.
I assume this data rate is decoded, not the raw telemetry, which is quite useless. Lets see.
The 'housekeeping data' of a satellite contains thousands of satellite parameters, e.g. orbital position, currents, voltages, radiation level, temperatures, what is on/off, status of each instrument. On many scientific satellites, all this affects the performance of all instruments. Often the HK data is recorded once per a few seconds.
This is because when voltage across some critical part is raising, you have to shut the satellite
down. Then, from the last set of HK data, you have to fig out what is wrong, and correct or shut down
the dangerous part, and still have a 90% functional satellite.
Lets assume you have of the order 10000 parameters to monitor, and the values are recorded 15 times/minute. Assume each values takes five bytes when decoded (including a STRING for parameter name. The raw telemetry will of course be more compact). This gives 10000x15x60x24x5 bytes/day, or about 1 GB/day, just to know the satellite is OK.
Now, add the HK, calibration and science data for each instrument. I have analyzed some data from satellite X-ray instruments, so I use it as a crude estimate. (This is very crude, other instruments may be completely different)
A modern X-ray instrument produces about 1GB/hour
in decoded data (instrumental HK, calibration, science). Thus,we have about 20 GB/day/instrument. I haven't bothered to read the article, but I assume the satellite contains about half a dozen instruments.
This would produce about 100 GB/day. Problem solved.
In some countries (including the one I'm living in), the parliament has passed laws that forbid any insurance on state property. I'm not sure if Japan is one of those, but this might be the reason.
\begin{rant}
If you see 'theory + astronomy + black hole' this
does not automatically mean theory==relativity.
RTFA
\end{rant}
It is so massive that its event horizon is far enough away from the center so that the tidal forces are not enough to produce the large, flattened disk of hot spiraling matter
The 'flattened disk' you refer to is the accretion disk that is easily seen in M87. For example, the X-ray spectrum would be completely different if there was no disk.
The 'doughnut' or torus is a cloud of cool matter, that is feeding the disk. It is about just as 'flat' as a real doughnut. Generally
the torus of an average active galaxy is far enough from the black hole to make all relativistic effects insignificant. Relativity is very important at the inner edge of the accretion disk, where the disk meets the event horizon.
However, this is literally light-years from the torus.
Now, the astronomers can not see the torus.
This means that the matter fed to the black hole is almost finished, and should not be able to power such a bright accretion disk. I believe this
is the 'problem'.
Either the accreted matter comes from some unknown source, and/or some mechanism makes the accretion disk brighter than expected. Thus theoretical problems are more probably related to galaxy evolution and/or accretion disks.
These are both rather ill-understood issues when
compared to general relativity.
Disclaimer: I have written three refereed papers to international science journals. Two more papers
are in the writing phase. I am a Graduate Student, but I also have a 'real' job.
Loads of papers, refereed and non-refereed are available at arXiv.org . The site is mainly for physics, math and related 'hard-core science'.
Many people submit their papers to arXiv immediately after getting it accepted to a refereed journal. When I try to keep up to date, I do not use paper versions that come out months after they have been published at arXiv. I look at the relevant sections of arXiv. If something is not on arXiv, it is not news.
Do you really think the world will become a better place to live in if you run around punching 'naive' students? The 'school bully' approach has not worked before, and it will not work now.
Your analogy is rather bad, but let me tell you about my almost non-violent response to your scenario. I could be one of those students. I got my degree a few years ago, but I still do protest against violence. My response would be the following.
The main point of non-violence is that violence is caused by anger. You should not take revenge. Do not get carried away by anger. Control your feelings, do not let them control you.
Steps 1-5 go according to your scenario.
5) When he's in mid sentence, punch him in the face as hard as you can.
6) When he gets back up to punch you, point out that it would be a mistake and contrary to his values to strike you, because that would, "be awful and he should not cause more violence."
I would not punch you, just say that you are just like the terrorists, practising violence against the innocent. I would also note that we must make sure that the violence does not continue.
7) Wait until he agrees with you that since he has pledged not to commit additional violence it would not be right for him to strike you back.
8) Punch him in the face again, harder this time.
If there is a police officer nearby, I would get
you arrested at this stage. If not, I would
block or dodge your punch, or step a few steps backwards.
9) Repeat steps 5 through 8 until they understand that sometimes it is necessary to punch back.
At this point, I understand that I am dealing with
a violent and dangerous lunatic. I call for a few other students, and we use the least violence needed. We grab you and pull out the joint at your shoulder. After this, we apologize and get some medical aid to you.
Once, during the Gulf War, our pro-peace protest got attacked by some fascists (the real ones with swastikas etc.) during a protest. We had to defend ourselves, and cast them to a shalow ditch no-one of them got hurt. They broke me two ribs, but I did not get angry. I am proud about that.
Two hacker favorites -- USA Cable's Sci-Fi Channel, and UPN's hit show Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- would be perfect places to air the spot.
Saying TV==hacker_favourite is idiotic.
I threw away my TV in 1996, three months after 'checking out that net'. Books and the net are the channels I use for getting information. For entertainment: books, the net, coding, computer games and of course, real life(TM). TV is for people with 5-min attention span, hackers (I hope) have longer spans.
I hate to see how people build their 'living room' around the TV. Then they are in front of it like statues around an altar. Yuck.
Which are Green, Blue, and Red sensitive pixels (a fairly standard pattern)
In astronomy, the chips are generally uniform and
colour sensitivity is achieved by using a filter
wheel (or several) in front of the detector (the wheels may also contain grisms, slits or calcites for spectrometry/polarimetry). Colour sensitive pixels sounds more like a digital camera. Astronomical chips are also sensitive to IR radiation, and the images the Germans show are most probably 'white-light', with significant IR contribution.
Another interesting thing is that they are using
Peltier cooling. Liquid nitrogen would reduce
the dark current considerably, allowing longer
integrations. Maybe they get confusion-limited
(not enough spatial resolution to see faint sources => multiple overlapping faint sources
=> confusion), or light pollution is a bigger problem.
On another note, who else thinks that this device has 2-3 dead pixel columns?
I think they are not that upset. After using this
for a few years, they will probably have dozens of dead columns, hot/dead pixels etc.
Europe is much more diverse than the US, and the regional variations of the culture are huge
Compare London (western), Madrid (southern), Stockholm(northern), Vienna(central) and Bucharest(east) to get a view of this. The average GNP per person varies with about one order of magnitude between the rich and poor countries.
What part of Europe did you visit? That has very much to do with the quality of public tranport,
and the telco stuff, etc. Scandinavia is extremely
advanced in use of cellphones (Ericsson, Nokia)
and other telco stuff. Central/Southern Europe
is more conservative, but in US standard it would probably be not backward. However,you have probably not visited any former Soviet Satellites.
In the Rumanian countryside horse-carts are just as common as cars. The public transport is quite
good in Eastern Europe, as not that many people
can afford any cars. I have seen a car where the
windshield was replaced with wood, as the owner
could not afford a new one. It was not considered
peculiar. Cellphones are quite common in some
ex-socialist countries, as the ordinary phone network is underdeveloped. The commie government
could not listen to so many phones, so you could have a waiting-time of a decade before you got the phone.
In my experience, Scandinavia has excellent telco network, that is used in ways I think will take
decades to implement in US. Checks are not used
in Scandinavia. You have automates at malls that
allow you to pay your rent and bills (if you don't
use the net for paying them) and take out
cash, if you are not using a credit card.
In Finland, the police uses a cellphone to check your income from the tax register when you get a speeding ticket, as the fine depends on your income. Many younger Scandinavians do not have ordinary phones at all, and almost everyone (more than 90% of the population) has a cellphone.
The public transport varies a lot throughout.
My exprience shows that it varies a lot. In Germany or Scandinavia the public transport is
excellent. England is also pretty good, although I have not been there in a few years, and people say the railway systems is miserable these days. In Spain, Greece and Southern France, the public transport sucks. The Baltic states and Poland have a pretty good public transport, when you remember that their GNP per person is about 10% of that in US.
Could be a pretty damn fast trip to third-world status.
To become underdeveloped, USA would have to get
into a long and steady decline. I think USA might
stagnate into current situation, but more likely is a slower development when compared to European
countries. Even so, it would take several decades
before ex-socialist countries will have standards of living comparable to present USA.
Just gripe on slashdot about spam/junk mail and
you'll receive it forever. Take action and it will
end after a long fight. However, junk mail and
spam can be reduced by simple means.
look at all the junk snail mail you get every day, do you think that's going away any time soon?
My standard reply seems to work well.
You could also try to look at some consumer groups, they have good advice on this.
'I will inform all my friends and their dog
about your harassive and misleading marketing'
(which I actually never do, griping about junk mail is boring)... 'I hereby forbid you to send
me any mail in the future. I am not interested
in you products and never will'... 'Legal actions may follow' (Some companies sending junk mail do not have large legal depts, so I try to scare them).
For the junk mail
send to me by without an address, I have
a 'No junk mail here, please' sticker on my mailbox. And if I get some, I call the local
post office. The amount of junk mail I receive has diminished by about 75% in two years.
Some of my neighbours have started imitating me,
as they are getting sick of junk mail.
As absurd as spam seems, it works.
Sometimes spam is counter-productive.
The spam I get is mostly 'harvested' from the company website. Most of the spam we get is
'evaluate our new (MS-Win) software'. The department I work in has about 40 Linuxes, 5 Sun and 3 Mac workstations and 2 Windows machines for the secretaries. So, we do not use Windows software expect the Office package that the secretaries use. This is also clearly stated in our website.
The company spam policy is:
1. Sending spam is strictly forbidden. (This applies also to the marketroids, not only R/D
where I work). Spamming would lead to suspending
of e-mail account (or the employee, depending on
how bad it was).
2. Any spam received should immediately be reported (forwardedto ). A 'legal actions may follow' reply describing our spam policy is sent to the spammer, his/her boss and the webmaster/sysadmin of the spam-sending company. In a few days, the spammer is added to a corporate blacklist for some period of time (something like 3 months). The spam-sending company is also informed on our policy. Anyone on the blacklist will have the following treatment: Any mail sent to our employees from their addresses is dumped automatically. No business will be made with anyone on the blacklist. Repeated spamming results in that we contact
the ISP and CEO of the company sending spam,
and ask them to stop the harassment.
Some of our departments are Win-only, so the
blacklist policy is actually hurting spammers.
An their bosses are infomed on that.
What kind of a judge would allow something like that?... I can't imagine a sane person actually letting something like that happen.
Nicely put. But in USA(c) or United States of America (for Corporations), what did you expect?
A sane legal system?
The thing I can't understand is why has PaeTec sold the service to MonsterHut? I thought
MonsterHut is a well-known spammer. If someone
is well known to violate the policies of the corporation I work in, they end on our 'corporate blacklist' and will not be dealed with. Sometimes
we share the blacklists with a few of our competitors so that someone having/being a constant problem will not be able to change from one to the other provider. For example, if someone can't keep his deals with one of our competitors, why should he treat us differently? We don't take risks like that. No company can be forced to sell/buy a service/product. This is also a good
way of saving legal costs and trouble. I think
10% of our customers make 90% of the trouble.
Activities that will generally put you to our
blacklist include spamming, paying bills only
after 3rd reminder, and some other things.
if you're going to run a self-sustaining colony which pays its own way, to pay for imports from Earth you need something you can export back.
This is the major hazard of space colonization.
You have to get money from it, if you want to
pay it with corporate money.
And you suggest raw materials!!! I firmly believe transport costs of pure platinum from Mars would be high enough to make extraction from sea water
look dirt cheap. Recycling is another thing that
will not let the prices go that high. Extraction
of gold from used electronics will be cheaper
than importing the stuff from Mars.
Information would be cheap to transport, so prodicung it on other planets would be better.
For geological/planetological research, every planet will have it's own colony, if robots are
not considered better.
However, I think Moon would be the prime place
for some sciences: Astronomers would love the continuous two-week data set. Radio interference
from Earth would be no problem on the backside
of Moon. No atmosphere means all wavelengths
(IR to gamma-rays) can be studied from the Moon.
Lower gravity means that the telescopes can be made larger. Some deep craters near the Lunar
poles are in permanent shadow, so they would be
excellent places for far infrared astronomy,
where detectors must be at milliKelvin temperatures. To have a 10-K heat sink nearby will
make things very easy.
Hazardous biotech research could also be done
and safely tested on the Moon. It would be much
harder to kill billions of people by stupid accidents.
Another possibility of the Moon is to use coilgun-like launchers that would use solar power
to accelerate the cargo. This would eliminate the need for chemical propellant and rockets.
Estimated launch price: less than one dollar
per kilogram! As launching from Earth will never
be able to compete with this, manufacturing satellites etc. could be an interesting option.
I am also a member of the 'Moon 1st' crowd.
We have most of the tehcnology and money,
and some recent missions (Clementine, Lunar Prospector) have given us plenty of new information. ESA's new mission SMART-1
will be the next step (launch in October 2002),
mapping most of the Moon in several wavelengths
from IR to X-rays, with a resolution of down to
50 meters in the optical. It will give us a map
on the distribution of the Lunar resources.
In a few years we will be able to select the
optimum place for the first Lunar base. After that, we should send a few robotic landers to study the places in more detail. And after that,
we should get a base over there. I think it would
take less than one decade to get the base there.
Perhaps we should start lobbying the politicians, as otherwise they will do nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
You.
Data transfer is subject to the law of supply and demand. Therefore, everyone who is online pays for it, at least indirectly. No spam would mean less demand, leading to a lower price.
Maybe this is a bit offtopic, but I have heard of a few cases of singing defendants (surprisingly, in a 'fuck the draft' case). Here in Finland inciting someone to break the law is a crime. We also have obligatory military service. If you have a religious/political/ethical non-violent views, you are exempted and allowed to serve 'civil service'. (Which takes 13 months, the most common period of armed service is 6 months)
In the old days, your non-violent views were evaluated by a commitee (A priest, an army officer and a 'layman'), often asking questions like 'What would you do if the Martians invade Earth?'. If they decided your case was not strong enough, you were sent to the army. Refusing to serve in army after a negative committee decision was crime. The committee system was revoked by ridiculing the law. People made petitions asking those, who got a negative decision, to refuse armed service. After this, they reported themselves to the police. Lists collecting signatures were circulated.
Several thousand people made it to the court. A few poets and singers presented their cases to the court as songs and poems. People set up a contest of 'who gets the longest prison sentence'. Finally, the president got fed up, and made a general amnesty of all the people involved. The committee system was revoked, and now your concience is tested by 'mark this box if religious, that if ethical'
Hate speech is abuse of free speech. And note that the laws are usually applied afterwards. This is not censorship, you just have to take responsibility of your actions. Think before you start suggesting someone should be shot. Otherwise some other hothead listens to you and actually shoots someone. And this happens in Europe. This is reality: It's ugly, and it stinks, but you have to live with it. Some idiots are abusing the freedom of speech to restrict other peoples right to life. The governments of EU then restrict the right to free speech and gives preference to the right to life. It is a compromise.
The US gives people the right to carry firearms. Some idiots abuse that right and shoot people. After this, they (at least some of them) are executed by the government. So, the US gives preference for the right to carrying firearms, and restricts the right to life. It is a compromise.
Living with idiots means you must make compromises. They can not be given the rights you would not abuse. Therefore, your rights are restricted.
I assume libel is illegal also in US. In Europe, this is also applied to groups and not only individuals. You get in trouble by shouting 'kill the bloody jews/arabs/commies/nazis', even when there are no jews/arabs/commies/nazis in sight, so that you are not insulting a particular individual. And we Europeans have our history. Hate speech proved politically extremely succesful in 1930:s, and was the basic cause of the holocaust and World War II in Europe (maybe not in Pacific, but you Americans would have beaten the Japanese much faster if you had not been so busy helping us.)
There are also several older examples of hate speech resulting in crimes against the humanity. The civil wars of Eastern Europe after the collapse of the four Empires (Hohenzollern, Habsburg, Romanov and Osman) in World War I ended often with mass executions of prisoners and other atrocities. Main cause: propaganda fed to the troops. The murders of the Armenians in Turkey, and countless pogromes in Ukraine and Russia during 19th century were caused by governments using hate speech. 'The only good Indian is a dead Indian' and what that caused in the early US. And so on and so forth, back to the time before the Pyramids.
Banning hate speech is still needed. Dozens of people get killed in Europe just beacuse their skin is not that pale. I know a Turkish man who owns a kebab place. The skinheads served Molotov cocktails there every month last year. Not to mention smashing the windows of his restaurant and car every week, burning his car two times and beating him quite badly once. Finally, they got caught. With no hate speech, we would have much less political violence.
The attempted murder of the French president this year and the murder of Pim Fortuyn (a prominent right-wing politician) in Netherlands are also examples of what hate speech causes.
Launchers come in versions. After any failure, things are studied and problems corrected. 'Ariane 4.0beta' is much more likely to fail than 'Ariane 4.6.22' The newest lauchers (like 'Ariane 5.0beta' in that table) have much more undiscovered problems. After these are weeded out, the new ones are much better.
Looking at the failure rates of last 100 launches would make Proton look much better. Looking at the newer half of launches would make Ariane 5 look much better. Today, Ariane 4 has something like 60 subsequent succesful launches, but Ariane 5 is considered so much better that Ariane 4 will soon be phased out. (Or is it already?)
The well-understood 'workhorse' launchers with dozens of lauches, like Soyuz, Proton or Ariane 4 will probably have similar figures in newer reports. ESA Annual report for 2000 is the latest I've seen, and it gives a success rate of 97.3% for Ariane 4.
I would like to see MS making more real progress, instead of playing with file formats, marketing tricks and FUD. In the old days IBM had 40% share of hardware market and everything they did was automatically standard. They are still alive, but quite far from such a position. And that is forcing IBM to make real progress. MS could make (and sometimes does) good software. But they also make bad software when they can get away with it. As they dominate the desktop market, they can do that far too often. If they lost their monopoly, that would not happen, and the prices would be more reasonable. Instead of paying themselves sick for a load of MS/BS, people would use something else (== alternatives).
And please stop using the phrase "Alternative OS", read the memo for an explanation.
OK, I'll use "Linux" from now on. I think the memo is a typical example of Open Source advocacy, and not focusing to Linux only (I know BSD etc. exist.). The case is also an example of the harm clueless and/or bribed government officials can make. However, I personally prefer focusing on Linux. OpenOffice et al. and Mozilla et al. are good products that can stand on their own, but they are natural choices after you have selected Linux. People who have never used Linux have most likely never heard of Mozilla or Openoffice. Someday we may have MSOffice and IE for Linux, but before that I focus on advocating Linux. Focusing on the essential is much better than philosophing on free software, unless you are talking to a philosopher.
'Alternatives' are required when we are compelled to use one particular thing or product
And that is exactly what many people are facing.
The memo states that the suggested curriculum contains Win98. If this is accepted, Indian schools are forced to use Win98 until the next review (about 2007!).
Several goverment agencies in my country provide on-line information or forms in Word format only. Have you ever tried opening and filling a complex .doc form with OpenOffice? Can you be 100% sure the filled form is printable on a Windows machine? Would you bet your job on that? I didn't.
I have been forced to buy a Windows workstation. This is purely because some of our financiers (I work in a research institute) want reports and applications filled on-line. Only IE version is available, and this is because of 'security', which translates to 'we don't have a clue on security'. The alternative to IE was risking 40%-60% of our funding, including my own salary. I hate the situation, and I have let them know that using IE is waste of their money, but what else could we do? Piracy would mean risking my job with no hope of ever recovering it.
The alternative to buying MS is risking my job and my home (I, my wife and my 2-year-old son live in a rented apartment.) And as it's snowing outside today, the alternative to MS is cool. Putting pressure on the national and local government and increasing the Linux user base in other ways may improve the situation. It may take years or even decades, but it's worth trying.
I am amazed by the performance of Microsoft. Shooting its own foot so many times, and still running. Still I would not say the war is lost. Many corporations have gained a dominant position in the past, and lost it later on. (IBM on the hardware side comes to mind.) Never underestimate the power of the pointy-haired bosses.
The main obstacle for demolishing the monopoly is corporate inertia. I think most companies are aware of the alternative OS:es, but do not switch, due to the high transition costs (file format problems etc.). However, switching to XP has also high transition costs due to licensing policies. Several large companies and parts of the local government in here are still using Office 97 file formats as internal standards. The people I have talked with feel the XP licensing is like giving your wallet to Microsoft, instead of money. I feel the pressure for switching to alternatives is increasing.
The Linux community has three tasks: Keep the alternative competitive. Keep the public aware of the alternative. And work for the change.
Get your relatives to try Linux. Get active in politics and show how switching to Linux saves taxpayer money. If you detect piracy, report to BSA. If they make the piracy public, then let the world know, that 'Had they used Linux, that would never have happened'.
For the time being, I live in Finland and it seems that the goverment is dealing with similar issues. Some radioactive stuff is moving around, and often it originates from the former USSR.
There are radiation monitors at the border. Several times a year a load of steel or something similar is sent back, as it contains something radioactive. The Russians living on illegal metal trade steal junk from the old Soviet dumps, and sell it. They are not worried about the radiation.
There are also plenty of environmental 'nuclear bombs' ticking in the old Soviet. I'm expecially worried about the ones in Estonia (see e.g. nti.org which contains plenty of info on these and similar issues). The Sillamae pool contains wastes of uranium ore processing and in Paldiski there is a pool of nuclear waste from two naval training reactors. Should the pools break, that would practically destroy the Gulf of Finland (which I see from the window of my office). The Sillamae pool contains so much uranium nitrate that even the nitrate part is problematic. And it's leaking...
Estonians can't afford the cleanup alone, so Finland and other rich states around the Baltic Sea are paying a large part of the bill. The Estonians will be dealing with the Soviet cleanup for decades. The non-nuclear mess is a longer story. (as an example: in some areas the water in wells is flammable, as a result of careless fuel handling in airbases).
We also have a bedrock containing plenty of uranium, so radon is a big problem is some areas (most of the houses are not properly vented to save energy). In the worst places, the drinking water contains also plenty of other natural radionuclides.
How much a launcher can put on orbit depends also on the orbit. Shuttle may be useful when putting heavy loads to low orbits. Getting the payload to geostationary (many communiations satellites) or other high orbits (e.g. INTEGRAL satellite observatory has 3 day orbit going halfway to Moon at apogeum), or launching probes to other planets is easier with Delta.
Wasting fuel on getting the shuttle to high velocities needed to reach these orbits is just stupid. If the astronauts wanted back home after being fried in the (Van Allen) radiation belts, an extra load of fuel is needed. In principle the Shuttle could be used to get an upper stage and the real payload to a lower orbit, but it does not make sense.
The astronauts are a problem. Plenty of equipment is needed to keep them alive, they can't take that much radiation, and you want them back. A robotic shuttle (like Buran) or preferably fully reusable lower stages would be much, much better for simply putting stuff on the orbit.
But how, practically is this achievable on anything other than an administrative level? Running Linux and Star Office rather than Microsoft Windows and Office and employing sysadmins with the relative skills is all doable in the halls of power but how can open source be brought to the people?
In the poorest countries, the computers are used mainly in the 'halls of power'. Switching to open source is much easier if the entire government has less PC:s than an average US School.
A few years ago UK donated some PC:s to the police in a small West African country that was just starting to recover from a civil war. They would have preferred chairs, desks or pencils, as the police station had no electricity.
A friend of mine visited a university in Mocambique (sp?) a few years ago. There were three computers in an university of several thousand students.
OK, so a little off the government's licensing costs can't hurt but will it really make a meaningful difference? Not to Joe Average it won't
The poorest countries have an education and health budget of the order a few USD per capita. Any difference is important when playing with very small budgets. Savings of 10k$ could mean vaccinating thousands of kids against some common disease, saving a few hundred lives. Or spending that 10k$ in condoms or education might save a few hundred people from AIDS. This would be a small difference, but it is human lives we are talking about.
Statistically, the life of Joe Average might be meaningless. However, Joe Average would hardly agree with that.
For one thing, even open source software requires support (and so does the hardware it runs on). You might find all the support you need online but someone who lives miles from the nearest telephone is going to find it a little harder.
If you live miles from the nearest phone, getting online for support is just as feasible as calling the "insert-company-here" helpdesk, and hearing that you have to download the latest driver/patch from their Flash-ridden homepage. You have to rely on local documentation and user manuals, and these are just as crappy on both commercial and open source.
I agree. However, this is extremely hard to enforce. What would the US government do if a foreign (Russian, Chinese, Japanese, French, you name it) satellite does not have this capability? 'Express their concerns' via diplomatic channels, or something less effective, I think. Clearly an international treaty would be required.
Many satellites are used for military purposes, and a reliable re-entry system would require reductions in the satellite payload and efficiency or increase the cost. I doubt most nations are not willing to let some international treaty to compromise their military interests. Considering the fate of the ABM treaty, it is pretty clear that United States is not one of them. Enforcing such a treaty efficiently would also require pre-launch inspections of all satellites, including the military ones. How many nations with space capabilities would allow this?
That depends on what is absorbing. If the high-altitude clouds are similar to those on our sky, they cause absorption through scattering. This would mean the absorption is broad-band.
The astronomers are probably comparing spectra taken during the planetary transit and before/after that to derive the planetary spectrum. High-altitude clouds would reduce the planetary spectrum, including any lines.
I assume this data rate is decoded, not the raw telemetry, which is quite useless. Lets see.
The 'housekeeping data' of a satellite contains thousands of satellite parameters, e.g. orbital position, currents, voltages, radiation level, temperatures, what is on/off, status of each instrument. On many scientific satellites, all this affects the performance of all instruments. Often the HK data is recorded once per a few seconds.
This is because when voltage across some critical part is raising, you have to shut the satellite down. Then, from the last set of HK data, you have to fig out what is wrong, and correct or shut down the dangerous part, and still have a 90% functional satellite.
Lets assume you have of the order 10000 parameters to monitor, and the values are recorded 15 times/minute. Assume each values takes five bytes when decoded (including a STRING for parameter name. The raw telemetry will of course be more compact). This gives 10000x15x60x24x5 bytes/day, or about 1 GB/day, just to know the satellite is OK.
Now, add the HK, calibration and science data for each instrument. I have analyzed some data from satellite X-ray instruments, so I use it as a crude estimate. (This is very crude, other instruments may be completely different) A modern X-ray instrument produces about 1GB/hour in decoded data (instrumental HK, calibration, science). Thus,we have about 20 GB/day/instrument. I haven't bothered to read the article, but I assume the satellite contains about half a dozen instruments.
This would produce about 100 GB/day. Problem solved.
In some countries (including the one I'm living in), the parliament has passed laws that forbid any insurance on state property. I'm not sure if Japan is one of those, but this might be the reason.
If you see 'theory + astronomy + black hole' this does not automatically mean theory==relativity.
RTFA
\end{rant}
It is so massive that its event horizon is far enough away from the center so that the tidal forces are not enough to produce the large, flattened disk of hot spiraling matter
The 'flattened disk' you refer to is the accretion disk that is easily seen in M87. For example, the X-ray spectrum would be completely different if there was no disk.
The 'doughnut' or torus is a cloud of cool matter, that is feeding the disk. It is about just as 'flat' as a real doughnut. Generally the torus of an average active galaxy is far enough from the black hole to make all relativistic effects insignificant. Relativity is very important at the inner edge of the accretion disk, where the disk meets the event horizon. However, this is literally light-years from the torus.
Now, the astronomers can not see the torus. This means that the matter fed to the black hole is almost finished, and should not be able to power such a bright accretion disk. I believe this is the 'problem'.
Either the accreted matter comes from some unknown source, and/or some mechanism makes the accretion disk brighter than expected. Thus theoretical problems are more probably related to galaxy evolution and/or accretion disks. These are both rather ill-understood issues when compared to general relativity.
Loads of papers, refereed and non-refereed are available at arXiv.org . The site is mainly for physics, math and related 'hard-core science'.
Many people submit their papers to arXiv immediately after getting it accepted to a refereed journal. When I try to keep up to date, I do not use paper versions that come out months after they have been published at arXiv. I look at the relevant sections of arXiv. If something is not on arXiv, it is not news.
Your analogy is rather bad, but let me tell you about my almost non-violent response to your scenario. I could be one of those students. I got my degree a few years ago, but I still do protest against violence. My response would be the following.
The main point of non-violence is that violence is caused by anger. You should not take revenge. Do not get carried away by anger. Control your feelings, do not let them control you.
Steps 1-5 go according to your scenario. 5) When he's in mid sentence, punch him in the face as hard as you can.
6) When he gets back up to punch you, point out that it would be a mistake and contrary to his values to strike you, because that would, "be awful and he should not cause more violence."
I would not punch you, just say that you are just like the terrorists, practising violence against the innocent. I would also note that we must make sure that the violence does not continue.
7) Wait until he agrees with you that since he has pledged not to commit additional violence it would not be right for him to strike you back.
8) Punch him in the face again, harder this time.
If there is a police officer nearby, I would get you arrested at this stage. If not, I would block or dodge your punch, or step a few steps backwards.
9) Repeat steps 5 through 8 until they understand that sometimes it is necessary to punch back.
At this point, I understand that I am dealing with a violent and dangerous lunatic. I call for a few other students, and we use the least violence needed. We grab you and pull out the joint at your shoulder. After this, we apologize and get some medical aid to you.
Once, during the Gulf War, our pro-peace protest got attacked by some fascists (the real ones with swastikas etc.) during a protest. We had to defend ourselves, and cast them to a shalow ditch no-one of them got hurt. They broke me two ribs, but I did not get angry. I am proud about that.
Saying TV==hacker_favourite is idiotic.
I threw away my TV in 1996, three months after 'checking out that net'. Books and the net are the channels I use for getting information. For entertainment: books, the net, coding, computer games and of course, real life(TM). TV is for people with 5-min attention span, hackers (I hope) have longer spans.
I hate to see how people build their 'living room' around the TV. Then they are in front of it like statues around an altar. Yuck.
"Islamway is in no way responsible for the content of postings by private individuals", the notice (on Islamway website) said.
From slashdot:
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
From a lawyers view, what is the difference?
Which are Green, Blue, and Red sensitive pixels (a fairly standard pattern)
In astronomy, the chips are generally uniform and colour sensitivity is achieved by using a filter wheel (or several) in front of the detector (the wheels may also contain grisms, slits or calcites for spectrometry/polarimetry). Colour sensitive pixels sounds more like a digital camera. Astronomical chips are also sensitive to IR radiation, and the images the Germans show are most probably 'white-light', with significant IR contribution.
Another interesting thing is that they are using Peltier cooling. Liquid nitrogen would reduce the dark current considerably, allowing longer integrations. Maybe they get confusion-limited (not enough spatial resolution to see faint sources => multiple overlapping faint sources => confusion), or light pollution is a bigger problem.
On another note, who else thinks that this device has 2-3 dead pixel columns?
I think they are not that upset. After using this for a few years, they will probably have dozens of dead columns, hot/dead pixels etc.
- Otto von Bismarck
I just got back from Europe
Europe is much more diverse than the US, and the regional variations of the culture are huge Compare London (western), Madrid (southern), Stockholm(northern), Vienna(central) and Bucharest(east) to get a view of this. The average GNP per person varies with about one order of magnitude between the rich and poor countries.
What part of Europe did you visit? That has very much to do with the quality of public tranport, and the telco stuff, etc. Scandinavia is extremely advanced in use of cellphones (Ericsson, Nokia) and other telco stuff. Central/Southern Europe is more conservative, but in US standard it would probably be not backward. However,you have probably not visited any former Soviet Satellites. In the Rumanian countryside horse-carts are just as common as cars. The public transport is quite good in Eastern Europe, as not that many people can afford any cars. I have seen a car where the windshield was replaced with wood, as the owner could not afford a new one. It was not considered peculiar. Cellphones are quite common in some ex-socialist countries, as the ordinary phone network is underdeveloped. The commie government could not listen to so many phones, so you could have a waiting-time of a decade before you got the phone.
In my experience, Scandinavia has excellent telco network, that is used in ways I think will take decades to implement in US. Checks are not used in Scandinavia. You have automates at malls that allow you to pay your rent and bills (if you don't use the net for paying them) and take out cash, if you are not using a credit card. In Finland, the police uses a cellphone to check your income from the tax register when you get a speeding ticket, as the fine depends on your income. Many younger Scandinavians do not have ordinary phones at all, and almost everyone (more than 90% of the population) has a cellphone.
The public transport varies a lot throughout. My exprience shows that it varies a lot. In Germany or Scandinavia the public transport is excellent. England is also pretty good, although I have not been there in a few years, and people say the railway systems is miserable these days. In Spain, Greece and Southern France, the public transport sucks. The Baltic states and Poland have a pretty good public transport, when you remember that their GNP per person is about 10% of that in US.
Could be a pretty damn fast trip to third-world status.
To become underdeveloped, USA would have to get into a long and steady decline. I think USA might stagnate into current situation, but more likely is a slower development when compared to European countries. Even so, it would take several decades before ex-socialist countries will have standards of living comparable to present USA.
look at all the junk snail mail you get every day, do you think that's going away any time soon?
My standard reply seems to work well. You could also try to look at some consumer groups, they have good advice on this.
'I will inform all my friends and their dog about your harassive and misleading marketing' (which I actually never do, griping about junk mail is boring) ... 'I hereby forbid you to send
me any mail in the future. I am not interested
in you products and never will' ... 'Legal actions may follow' (Some companies sending junk mail do not have large legal depts, so I try to scare them).
For the junk mail send to me by without an address, I have a 'No junk mail here, please' sticker on my mailbox. And if I get some, I call the local post office. The amount of junk mail I receive has diminished by about 75% in two years. Some of my neighbours have started imitating me, as they are getting sick of junk mail.
As absurd as spam seems, it works.
Sometimes spam is counter-productive.
The spam I get is mostly 'harvested' from the company website. Most of the spam we get is 'evaluate our new (MS-Win) software'. The department I work in has about 40 Linuxes, 5 Sun and 3 Mac workstations and 2 Windows machines for the secretaries. So, we do not use Windows software expect the Office package that the secretaries use. This is also clearly stated in our website.
The company spam policy is:
1. Sending spam is strictly forbidden. (This applies also to the marketroids, not only R/D where I work). Spamming would lead to suspending of e-mail account (or the employee, depending on how bad it was).
2. Any spam received should immediately be reported (forwardedto ). A 'legal actions may follow' reply describing our spam policy is sent to the spammer, his/her boss and the webmaster/sysadmin of the spam-sending company. In a few days, the spammer is added to a corporate blacklist for some period of time (something like 3 months). The spam-sending company is also informed on our policy. Anyone on the blacklist will have the following treatment: Any mail sent to our employees from their addresses is dumped automatically. No business will be made with anyone on the blacklist. Repeated spamming results in that we contact the ISP and CEO of the company sending spam, and ask them to stop the harassment.
Some of our departments are Win-only, so the blacklist policy is actually hurting spammers. An their bosses are infomed on that.
Nicely put. But in USA(c) or United States of America (for Corporations), what did you expect? A sane legal system?
The thing I can't understand is why has PaeTec sold the service to MonsterHut? I thought MonsterHut is a well-known spammer. If someone is well known to violate the policies of the corporation I work in, they end on our 'corporate blacklist' and will not be dealed with. Sometimes we share the blacklists with a few of our competitors so that someone having/being a constant problem will not be able to change from one to the other provider. For example, if someone can't keep his deals with one of our competitors, why should he treat us differently? We don't take risks like that. No company can be forced to sell/buy a service/product. This is also a good way of saving legal costs and trouble. I think 10% of our customers make 90% of the trouble.
Activities that will generally put you to our blacklist include spamming, paying bills only after 3rd reminder, and some other things.
This is the major hazard of space colonization. You have to get money from it, if you want to pay it with corporate money. And you suggest raw materials!!! I firmly believe transport costs of pure platinum from Mars would be high enough to make extraction from sea water look dirt cheap. Recycling is another thing that will not let the prices go that high. Extraction of gold from used electronics will be cheaper than importing the stuff from Mars.
Information would be cheap to transport, so prodicung it on other planets would be better. For geological/planetological research, every planet will have it's own colony, if robots are not considered better.
However, I think Moon would be the prime place for some sciences: Astronomers would love the continuous two-week data set. Radio interference from Earth would be no problem on the backside of Moon. No atmosphere means all wavelengths (IR to gamma-rays) can be studied from the Moon. Lower gravity means that the telescopes can be made larger. Some deep craters near the Lunar poles are in permanent shadow, so they would be excellent places for far infrared astronomy, where detectors must be at milliKelvin temperatures. To have a 10-K heat sink nearby will make things very easy.
Hazardous biotech research could also be done and safely tested on the Moon. It would be much harder to kill billions of people by stupid accidents.
Another possibility of the Moon is to use coilgun-like launchers that would use solar power to accelerate the cargo. This would eliminate the need for chemical propellant and rockets. Estimated launch price: less than one dollar per kilogram! As launching from Earth will never be able to compete with this, manufacturing satellites etc. could be an interesting option.
I really do not understand this. The ISP:s are not Angels, but are they Archdaemons?
All the political/religious/environmental wacko pages, you ever visited them?
Many oppressive 3rd world governments also have their sites, you ever heard of them?
Sites mentioned in spam, (get-rich-now etc.). Or have you never received spam?
EOF (end-of-flame)
In a few years we will be able to select the optimum place for the first Lunar base. After that, we should send a few robotic landers to study the places in more detail. And after that, we should get a base over there. I think it would take less than one decade to get the base there. Perhaps we should start lobbying the politicians, as otherwise they will do nothing.