1. All you are doing here is proving my original point, which is that it is possible to construct a long list of reasons why any nation should put its own house in order before pointing the finger at others.
Lest you forget, the US was quite happy to trade with apartheid South Africa, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, etc. And, unlike France, the US is responsible for actually destroying democracies and creating dictatorships on a wide scale, especially in Latin America. A prime example of this is the US overthrow of a democratically elected Chilean government in favour of a fascist dictatorship in 1973, something which Colin Powell recently described as "unfortunate". Gee, thanks Mr Powell.
Oh, and by the way, the French did not threaten the use of a veto with regards to a UN resolution supporting an invasion of Iraq. For a veto situation to occur, a proposed resolution must be before the Security Council and a two-thirds majority of the Council must support it. For one thing, no such resolution was ever tabled. For another thing, the overwhelming majority of the Council was opposed to a military solution at that point in time - most wanted more time for the UN weapons inspectors to do their job, as Hans Blix, the head of the inspectorate team, had requested. So, even if there had been a vote, any French "no" vote wouldn't have been a veto, because the required support was non-existant.
2. And this is addressed to the moderator who decided to slant this thread in favour of their own world view, how the fuck is my grandparent comment flamebait?
Just who is it flaming and how? I challenge the person who moderated it as such to give a reasonable explanation of why it's flamebait. Just because you disagree with something, it doesn't make it inflammatory. Seriously, look the word up in a dictionary, because you have no clue as to what it means.
Fuck France, and their significant Arab population (no doubt brought in as "guest" workers that have not left). Fuck their corporate business interests in Iraq.
France had a few billion dollars in business contracts with Saddam Hussein's government. With how Saddam Hussain ran his country, doesn't any of that money have any taint of blood on it?
There was no great moral stand by France.
And the US intervention is purely altruistic? With no US companies profiting from the invasion? Face it, I can make the same accusation about the US reasons for going to war.
Dick Cheney got a $36 million payoff from Halliburton before he left them to resume office in Washington. Which company has been a major winner amongst those vying for contracts in Iraq and at military bases back in the US? Yes, you guessed it, Halliburton. I guess $36 million isn't a bad investment when you're talking about contracts worth billions.
So far, the US administration in Iraq claims it has spent $5 billion rebuilding and restructuring the country since Saddam's forces fell. That $5 billion is Iraq money, it comes from the procedes of Iraqi oil sales, and how it is spent should be clearly visible. Many NGOs (non-governmental organisations, or charities if you will) such as the Red Cross are now starting to ask where that money has gone and how it's been spent.
Generous estimates by these NGOs (who have more experience at what it costs to rebuild a country than you, I or even the US government) put the rebuilding and restructuring costs so far at around $1 billion. So where's the remaining $4 billion been spent? Where's that gone? It's not American money, so don't the people of Iraq, and the world, have a right to know how it was spent? Yet, damningly, the US administration is refusing to give any answers, practically pretending that the questions haven't been asked.
Oh, and it's funny how you fail to mention that in the past, even when he was waging war with Iran and gassing Kurds (all with the backing of the CIA), the US was happy to do business with Saddam Hussein, just as they are happy to do business with countless oppresive regimes around the world. If the Taliban in Afghanistan was so evil then why was the US negotiating with them to build an American oil pipeline through their country? Why does the US still deal with Zimbabwe? Why does China have most favoured trading nation status?
Yeah, I find it laughable that you say the French didn't want to go to war and proscribe it down to money. It's not like they could have had any other reasons, is it? I guess all those 100+ other countries that were opposed to the war were also raking it in from Iraq, huh? Wake up and smell the coffee, buddy.
I'm not anti-American, I'm anti-stupidity, which is exactly what all the crap that got us to freedom fries, etc is about.
One great way of looking at any argument is to turn it on its head, which is exactly what I did when the original poster that I replied to basically said that China should worry about its people being mainly peasants (farmers) rather than a space programme. Well, I turned that on its head and pointed out that's like saying that the US should worry about the glaring weaknesses in its society rather than spend billions on what most people believe is an unneccessary war.
It's amazing how many people take offense at the latter comment but don't bat an eyelid at the former one. In most civilised societies, telling someone what's wrong with their house when your own house is less than perfect is called hypocrisy.
Wow. So Europeans have to "show some gratitude once in awhile".
So where was that US gratitude towards France when it (together with the majority of the country's on the UN Security Council, and in the General Assembly) opposed military intervention in Iraq?
If if wasn't for the French intervention on behalf of the colonies during the American War of Independence then the US would almost certainly not exist today. Yet somehow, most Americans, especially those in office, tend to forget these facts. Yep, nothing says gratitude as much as bad-mouthing your oldest ally to hell and back, ripping up menus, relabelling french fries as "freedom fries", pouring vintage wine down the drain, etc.
"Ask the French wine industry how well bashing America has worked out for them."? America bashed France, not the other way around. Apparently, telling someone that they might be going about things the wrong way is the highest of all treasons.
Why is it that when one of America's allies suggests that it might veto a US-proposed resolution because it (together with most of the world) has grave reservations about the situation that is treated like some sort of hostile act?
Why does that become cause for the US adminstration to start accusing France of "breaking the UN"? And why when America is the sole dissenting voice blocking UN resolutions condemning Israel for it's actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip isn't that considered "breaking the UN"? So the US gets to use its veto whenever it wants but when another country says it will use its own veto then that's not allowed? What fucking hypocrisy.
Frankly, if you think that France started this whole Franco-American spat then you're blind as a bat.
thank you wu chin... anybody who doesn`t think thier are chinese spys in america well i think this guy makes a good example...
Ah, yet another xenophobe. At least this one has the sense to hide his racism and ignorance (or is that lacks the courage of his convictions) and posts as an AC.
1. I'm not chinese, never have been, don't plan to be, and I have no connection with China whatsoever. I do, admittedly, have a love of chinese food but I can also say the same for italian, indian and japanese cuisine. If you can condemn a man for his culinary choices then I stand guilty before you, but the last time I checked, loving aromatic crispy duck and singapore fried noodles wasn't a crime.
2. You, sir, surely aren't an advert for the fine American education system. Perhaps you can point out to me where the words "thier" and "spys" are in the dictionary? Perhaps at the same time you can tell me when capitalisation of proper nouns was dropped from the english language too?
Face it, you're just a ignorant, arrogant fool. Being proud of your country for what it has acheived is admiral, but being proud of your country just because its your country - pride for pride's sake - is the height of folly. Similarly, dismissing a foreign nation simply because its not your best buddy is the kind of childish politics that gave us freedom fries.
1. The original poster's approach was xenophobic, in as much as he reduced China to a nation of peasants and wrote off any Chinese attempt at self-improvement through space exploration as frivolous.
2. Nice how you label me anti-American. The very point I was making was that it is easy to dismiss the goals of any nation by drawing up a checklist of its shortcomings. That you see a list of things the US less than excels at as anti-American is ironic - whatever happened to freedom of speech?
(And, just to give you something to flame me back about, here's a 3 and a 4.)
3. I live in a country that has its own nuclear deterrent and that also spends a disproportionate amount of its GDP on defence. So what? If you think that the only country with a nuclear arsenal pointing at the USSR during the cold war was the US then think again. There are some countries in the world that have managed to maintain a strong enough nuclear deterrent and tackle social ills.
4. It's nice that you can feel proud about being an American. But go ask someone who lives in the projects what is more important to them, war in Iraq or the food on their table and adequate health care for their children. Ask them about their kids' university prospects. Chances are they won't be as glowing in praise about the US education system as you are. A great many things look different when you step into the shoes of someone juggling two jobs, making minimum wage and struggling to make ends meet.
Frankly, all you've done is reinforced my original post. America, like any country, has strengths and weaknesses. Using one of those weaknesses as a reason to put it down and dismiss its acheivements is pathetic. Similarly, dismissing China's endeavours because it's a nation of peasants (so much more evocative a choice of phrase than, say, farmer) is equally ridiculous.
Oh, and I find it ironic that people dismiss China's space plans so flippantly when it was the Chinese who first discovered the art of rocketry hundreds if not thousands of years ago.
I could level equal charges against the US. 13,000+ shot dead every year, god knows how many more killed on the roads, a welfare system that pales into comparison compared to that of any other developed world nation, a crumbling school system that's badly underfunded yet the US finds it more important to wage war half way around the world.
Why spend billions fighting a war? If Saddam was the problem then why not just put a $1 billion bounty on his head? It would have been cheaper and it probably would have been more successful.
Does the US really need tens of thousands of nuclear warheads? Wouldn't a few hundred be enough? Just how many $1.3 billion B-2 stealth bombers does the USAF need? They're going to get 20, but the original order was 144... Even so, wouldn't that money be better spent elsewhere?
See? I can construct a similar myopic argument detailing why money shouldn't be spent on grand endeavours for just about any nation in the world. Just because you think that there's no benefit to the average Chinese citizen in this lunar programme that doesn't make it so. If I recall correctly, people made the same argument about the NASA Apollo missions, and the scientific acheivements of Apollo and the success of its commercial spin-offs are still benefitting us today.
Something tells me if this new endeavour came from NASA rather than China you'd be the first to jump on the "about time too" bandwagon. Stop being so damn xenophobic.
can somebody tell me how this is incremental? here were the steps listed in order: 1)orbiting the Moon 2)docking spacecraft with one another in lunar orbit 3)and returning moon rock samples to Earth. they just got into space and they already want to tackle the moon? and they have more than one spacecraft to dock in lunar orbit? IMO, that's like me saying i'm going to create an operating system, gain 80% of the market, and run gates out of the OS business... but it's all going to happen in increments...
1. It's incremental because they have a series of goals, each more complex than the previous one, and aim to acheive each one in order.
Really, is that so hard to understand? Has the meaning of the word "incremental" changed or something?
2. The goals aren't only acheivable, they've already been acheived once.
NASA did all this back in the 60's, in the same order - lunar orbits, lunar docking, then finally lunar landing and return. If NASA can do it, then so can the Chinese. All it takes is manpower and resources, which won't be an issue for China.
Remember, JFK announced the US's intention to go to the moon and back just a few years after the first American was launched into space. At the time of that announcement, the US had as much experience, perhaps less, of space exploration, rocketry, etc than China has today. Again, if the US could make such a bold claim then and deliver then there is no reason to dismiss China's claim so flippantly.
Is China in a position to put men on the moon today? No. Will China be in a position to put men on the moon 10 years from now? You better believe it.
Space exploration is all about small steps of steady progress and giant leaps of vision. If Neil Armstrong could recognise that standing on the surface of the moon 34 years ago then why can't you today?
If they really trusted the consumer, wouldn't they forget about the copy prevention and the DRM stuff?
I just don't get it. Large scale-piracy outfits have access to large commercial presses, hence their being able to put out CDs that look just like the real thing. They sure as hell don't use burners, so all this copy protection is useless in combatting large-scale organised piracy. So, the only people that these new copy prevention and DRM techniques inconvenience are the consumers.
Tell me again how Sony is showing trust in the consumer?
CN said: I still haven't seen this film, so I'll refrain from passing judgment, but I'm ever so happy the matrix-within-a-matrix theories were unfounded.
Translation: I haven't seen the film yet but I'll happily ruin at least one possible plot twist for the hundreds of thousands that read this website but haven't yet seen the film.
Looks like CN's finally succombed to Katz-Taco disease.
Microsoft never has made an anti-virus product, or stand-alone firewall software so it's hardly making money from "treating" the disease. It has far more to gain by eradicating the problem altogether than it does fighting an unwinnable war.
After all, one of the biggest arguments in favour of OSS is that OSS solutions offer greater security - if Microsoft tightens up product security that's one less reason for it to lose business to Linux, etc.
Right now, Microsoft has an newspaper ad campaign that focuses on how to combat viruses and exploits. The company is clearly trying to limit the damage caused by the ever-frequent virus alerts and exploits that threaten to engulf not just our PCs but our news every other month or so.
Putting a bounty on the heads of virus writers is just an extension of this PR exercise, as valuable for the publicity it generates ("look, we're so serious about combating viruses that we're offering six figure sums to find the people who cause innocent users so much misery") as it is in actually combating the problem.
Well, ask any doctor and he'll tell you it's better to cure a disease than to treat its symptoms. No virus writers means no viruses, which means no headline news virus alerts and scares.
Of course, the question is how much of the "disease" is the virus writers and how much is Microsoft itself with its sloppy approach to secure computing?
As others have pointed out much better than I have, only part of the ice is floating in the seas and supported by displacement, much of the rest of it is supported by land. Where this is the case, there's no equivalent volume of water that's being replaced by an equivalent volume of melted ice.
Sorry if I was too dense (no pun intended) to have made myself clearer. I've been up for almost 30 hours now and I won't be hitting the sack for at least another 10-12.
Well, even the current Bush government admits that deforestation is an issue. Their watered down environmental plan talks about establishing "sinks", and the rain forests are the biggest natural sinks on the planet.
If even the skeptics admit that deforestation is an issue then why can't you?
And as for me attacking the person who my grandparent post was in response to, I was merely responding to his question asking whether or not I had read the article by questioning whether he had read my comment, specifically the bit regarding research funding and objectivity.
Part of Venice's problem is because of sinking but part of it is also due to rising water levels. The rate of the overall descent has dramatically increased in the last century, epecially so in the last 40 years.
10 percent of the volume of ice sits above the water level. What bit of that is hard to understand?
If you don't believe that the water levels will rise try out the "melting ice in a glass" experiment I described. If that doesn't convince you then I don't know what will.
Ice is less dense than water. So, an ice cube melting in a glass of water will cause the level of water to rise. If you don't believe me then try it.
Why do you think that a bottle of water (or beer, ok Coke) left in the freezer too long will crack its container? Put a bottle of Bud or a can of Coke in the freezer if you don't believe this either. Simple science: ice takes up more room than water because it has a lower density.
Imagine a glass that's got a cube of ice in it and water full to the brim. What will happen when that ice cube melts? The water will spill over the side of the glass, that's what will happen. The same thing is true with the polar ice caps and the oceans, just on a bigger scale.
Your Archimedes theory is flawed because you've failed to take into account the volume of the solid ice that is above the water level before it started, which is approximately 10 percent by mass. The rest of your post seems to be gibberish. For one thing, you don't seem to have a clue how gravitic forces work, which is a bit worrying as you profess to be an engineering student (according to your user page).
Are you trolling? Did you even read my post? Who paid for this research? Do they have an agenda?
The very fact that you believe that humans play no part in global warming astounds me. Ever heard of ozone depletion caused by CFCs, etc? Deforestation of the rain forests? Acid rain? Aren't those our responsibility?
All that water's going somewhere, and that somewhere is the oceans. Global sea levels are rising, and you only have to look at the situation in Tuvalu in the Pacific or Venice, Italy to see that the threat of rising tides isn't a myth.
People can harp on about "not enough data" or "inconclusive evidence" all they want but if entire nations vanishing beneath the waves or historic cities sinking isn't a wake-up call then I don't know what is.
Frankly, there are some people who will bury their heads in the sand over this issue just as long as they can make a profit by ignoring it. Oil companies and big business are never going to recognise that they are part of the problem until the last possible moment, at which time they'll just shrug their shoulders and say "Who knew?", just like the tobacco industry before them.
But, unlike tobacco, this isn't a problem that will affect just a handful of people, or a problem that will be easily settled by the courts - billions in punitive damages are useless when your country is underwater. The last time I checked there wasn't a court on the planet that could push back the tides.
I'm sure there are dozens of readers out there that will right off this comment as yet more half-baked environmental doom-mongering but I find it funny that these same people will demand more money to scan the heavens for deadly meteors - it seems that extinction Armageddon-style is trendy but the possibility of extinction because of our own actions just isn't sexy enough.
If you really want to be objective about these issues try to look beyond the smoke and mirrors. Ask yourself how objective the research is - there are far more people out there funded by big business than you'd imagine. Ask yourself who stands to profit by presenting a negative picture of climate change? Who stands to lose if the problem is tackled head-on? And who stands to profit if it's ignored and the situation is allowed to continue unchecked?
At the same time, no one says that it's silly to spend $1000+ on a PC to play games, when you can do the same thing with a $199 PlayStation 2.
Ever tried to find a decent flight simulator on a console? Good luck searching for one. There are plenty of games (and genres of games) that are better on a PC than they are on a console.
Some of us older gamers can remember the time when consoles couldn't even save games unless the cartridge came with built-in storage (ie, almost anything that came before the PS1), and it's only recently that online multiplayer gaming has become possible on the latest generation of consoles.
Still, try finding a real equivalent of Everquest or even Warcraft III on a PS2/X-Box/GC. You can get close, but not close enough to earn you a cigar.
Slashdot Mirror
1. All you are doing here is proving my original point, which is that it is possible to construct a long list of reasons why any nation should put its own house in order before pointing the finger at others.
Lest you forget, the US was quite happy to trade with apartheid South Africa, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, etc. And, unlike France, the US is responsible for actually destroying democracies and creating dictatorships on a wide scale, especially in Latin America. A prime example of this is the US overthrow of a democratically elected Chilean government in favour of a fascist dictatorship in 1973, something which Colin Powell recently described as "unfortunate". Gee, thanks Mr Powell.
Oh, and by the way, the French did not threaten the use of a veto with regards to a UN resolution supporting an invasion of Iraq. For a veto situation to occur, a proposed resolution must be before the Security Council and a two-thirds majority of the Council must support it. For one thing, no such resolution was ever tabled. For another thing, the overwhelming majority of the Council was opposed to a military solution at that point in time - most wanted more time for the UN weapons inspectors to do their job, as Hans Blix, the head of the inspectorate team, had requested. So, even if there had been a vote, any French "no" vote wouldn't have been a veto, because the required support was non-existant.
2. And this is addressed to the moderator who decided to slant this thread in favour of their own world view, how the fuck is my grandparent comment flamebait?
Just who is it flaming and how? I challenge the person who moderated it as such to give a reasonable explanation of why it's flamebait. Just because you disagree with something, it doesn't make it inflammatory. Seriously, look the word up in a dictionary, because you have no clue as to what it means.
Forget about a bug in the system, this one's got a system in the bug!
Fuck France, and their significant Arab population (no doubt brought in as "guest" workers that have not left). Fuck their corporate business interests in Iraq.
France had a few billion dollars in business contracts with Saddam Hussein's government. With how Saddam Hussain ran his country, doesn't any of that money have any taint of blood on it?
There was no great moral stand by France.
And the US intervention is purely altruistic? With no US companies profiting from the invasion? Face it, I can make the same accusation about the US reasons for going to war.
Dick Cheney got a $36 million payoff from Halliburton before he left them to resume office in Washington. Which company has been a major winner amongst those vying for contracts in Iraq and at military bases back in the US? Yes, you guessed it, Halliburton. I guess $36 million isn't a bad investment when you're talking about contracts worth billions.
So far, the US administration in Iraq claims it has spent $5 billion rebuilding and restructuring the country since Saddam's forces fell. That $5 billion is Iraq money, it comes from the procedes of Iraqi oil sales, and how it is spent should be clearly visible. Many NGOs (non-governmental organisations, or charities if you will) such as the Red Cross are now starting to ask where that money has gone and how it's been spent.
Generous estimates by these NGOs (who have more experience at what it costs to rebuild a country than you, I or even the US government) put the rebuilding and restructuring costs so far at around $1 billion. So where's the remaining $4 billion been spent? Where's that gone? It's not American money, so don't the people of Iraq, and the world, have a right to know how it was spent? Yet, damningly, the US administration is refusing to give any answers, practically pretending that the questions haven't been asked.
Oh, and it's funny how you fail to mention that in the past, even when he was waging war with Iran and gassing Kurds (all with the backing of the CIA), the US was happy to do business with Saddam Hussein, just as they are happy to do business with countless oppresive regimes around the world. If the Taliban in Afghanistan was so evil then why was the US negotiating with them to build an American oil pipeline through their country? Why does the US still deal with Zimbabwe? Why does China have most favoured trading nation status?
Yeah, I find it laughable that you say the French didn't want to go to war and proscribe it down to money. It's not like they could have had any other reasons, is it? I guess all those 100+ other countries that were opposed to the war were also raking it in from Iraq, huh? Wake up and smell the coffee, buddy.
I'm not anti-American, I'm anti-stupidity, which is exactly what all the crap that got us to freedom fries, etc is about.
One great way of looking at any argument is to turn it on its head, which is exactly what I did when the original poster that I replied to basically said that China should worry about its people being mainly peasants (farmers) rather than a space programme. Well, I turned that on its head and pointed out that's like saying that the US should worry about the glaring weaknesses in its society rather than spend billions on what most people believe is an unneccessary war.
It's amazing how many people take offense at the latter comment but don't bat an eyelid at the former one. In most civilised societies, telling someone what's wrong with their house when your own house is less than perfect is called hypocrisy.
Wow. So Europeans have to "show some gratitude once in awhile".
So where was that US gratitude towards France when it (together with the majority of the country's on the UN Security Council, and in the General Assembly) opposed military intervention in Iraq?
If if wasn't for the French intervention on behalf of the colonies during the American War of Independence then the US would almost certainly not exist today. Yet somehow, most Americans, especially those in office, tend to forget these facts. Yep, nothing says gratitude as much as bad-mouthing your oldest ally to hell and back, ripping up menus, relabelling french fries as "freedom fries", pouring vintage wine down the drain, etc.
"Ask the French wine industry how well bashing America has worked out for them."? America bashed France, not the other way around. Apparently, telling someone that they might be going about things the wrong way is the highest of all treasons.
Why is it that when one of America's allies suggests that it might veto a US-proposed resolution because it (together with most of the world) has grave reservations about the situation that is treated like some sort of hostile act?
Why does that become cause for the US adminstration to start accusing France of "breaking the UN"? And why when America is the sole dissenting voice blocking UN resolutions condemning Israel for it's actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip isn't that considered "breaking the UN"? So the US gets to use its veto whenever it wants but when another country says it will use its own veto then that's not allowed? What fucking hypocrisy.
Frankly, if you think that France started this whole Franco-American spat then you're blind as a bat.
thank you wu chin... anybody who doesn`t think thier are chinese spys in america well i think this guy makes a good example...
Ah, yet another xenophobe. At least this one has the sense to hide his racism and ignorance (or is that lacks the courage of his convictions) and posts as an AC.
1. I'm not chinese, never have been, don't plan to be, and I have no connection with China whatsoever. I do, admittedly, have a love of chinese food but I can also say the same for italian, indian and japanese cuisine. If you can condemn a man for his culinary choices then I stand guilty before you, but the last time I checked, loving aromatic crispy duck and singapore fried noodles wasn't a crime.
2. You, sir, surely aren't an advert for the fine American education system. Perhaps you can point out to me where the words "thier" and "spys" are in the dictionary? Perhaps at the same time you can tell me when capitalisation of proper nouns was dropped from the english language too?
Face it, you're just a ignorant, arrogant fool. Being proud of your country for what it has acheived is admiral, but being proud of your country just because its your country - pride for pride's sake - is the height of folly. Similarly, dismissing a foreign nation simply because its not your best buddy is the kind of childish politics that gave us freedom fries.
1. The original poster's approach was xenophobic, in as much as he reduced China to a nation of peasants and wrote off any Chinese attempt at self-improvement through space exploration as frivolous.
2. Nice how you label me anti-American. The very point I was making was that it is easy to dismiss the goals of any nation by drawing up a checklist of its shortcomings. That you see a list of things the US less than excels at as anti-American is ironic - whatever happened to freedom of speech?
(And, just to give you something to flame me back about, here's a 3 and a 4.)
3. I live in a country that has its own nuclear deterrent and that also spends a disproportionate amount of its GDP on defence. So what? If you think that the only country with a nuclear arsenal pointing at the USSR during the cold war was the US then think again. There are some countries in the world that have managed to maintain a strong enough nuclear deterrent and tackle social ills.
4. It's nice that you can feel proud about being an American. But go ask someone who lives in the projects what is more important to them, war in Iraq or the food on their table and adequate health care for their children. Ask them about their kids' university prospects. Chances are they won't be as glowing in praise about the US education system as you are. A great many things look different when you step into the shoes of someone juggling two jobs, making minimum wage and struggling to make ends meet.
Frankly, all you've done is reinforced my original post. America, like any country, has strengths and weaknesses. Using one of those weaknesses as a reason to put it down and dismiss its acheivements is pathetic. Similarly, dismissing China's endeavours because it's a nation of peasants (so much more evocative a choice of phrase than, say, farmer) is equally ridiculous.
Oh, and I find it ironic that people dismiss China's space plans so flippantly when it was the Chinese who first discovered the art of rocketry hundreds if not thousands of years ago.
I could level equal charges against the US. 13,000+ shot dead every year, god knows how many more killed on the roads, a welfare system that pales into comparison compared to that of any other developed world nation, a crumbling school system that's badly underfunded yet the US finds it more important to wage war half way around the world.
Why spend billions fighting a war? If Saddam was the problem then why not just put a $1 billion bounty on his head? It would have been cheaper and it probably would have been more successful.
Does the US really need tens of thousands of nuclear warheads? Wouldn't a few hundred be enough? Just how many $1.3 billion B-2 stealth bombers does the USAF need? They're going to get 20, but the original order was 144... Even so, wouldn't that money be better spent elsewhere?
See? I can construct a similar myopic argument detailing why money shouldn't be spent on grand endeavours for just about any nation in the world. Just because you think that there's no benefit to the average Chinese citizen in this lunar programme that doesn't make it so. If I recall correctly, people made the same argument about the NASA Apollo missions, and the scientific acheivements of Apollo and the success of its commercial spin-offs are still benefitting us today.
Something tells me if this new endeavour came from NASA rather than China you'd be the first to jump on the "about time too" bandwagon. Stop being so damn xenophobic.
can somebody tell me how this is incremental? here were the steps listed in order: 1)orbiting the Moon 2)docking spacecraft with one another in lunar orbit 3)and returning moon rock samples to Earth. they just got into space and they already want to tackle the moon? and they have more than one spacecraft to dock in lunar orbit? IMO, that's like me saying i'm going to create an operating system, gain 80% of the market, and run gates out of the OS business... but it's all going to happen in increments...
1. It's incremental because they have a series of goals, each more complex than the previous one, and aim to acheive each one in order.
Really, is that so hard to understand? Has the meaning of the word "incremental" changed or something?
2. The goals aren't only acheivable, they've already been acheived once.
NASA did all this back in the 60's, in the same order - lunar orbits, lunar docking, then finally lunar landing and return. If NASA can do it, then so can the Chinese. All it takes is manpower and resources, which won't be an issue for China.
Remember, JFK announced the US's intention to go to the moon and back just a few years after the first American was launched into space. At the time of that announcement, the US had as much experience, perhaps less, of space exploration, rocketry, etc than China has today. Again, if the US could make such a bold claim then and deliver then there is no reason to dismiss China's claim so flippantly.
Is China in a position to put men on the moon today? No. Will China be in a position to put men on the moon 10 years from now? You better believe it.
Space exploration is all about small steps of steady progress and giant leaps of vision. If Neil Armstrong could recognise that standing on the surface of the moon 34 years ago then why can't you today?
If they really trusted the consumer, wouldn't they forget about the copy prevention and the DRM stuff?
I just don't get it. Large scale-piracy outfits have access to large commercial presses, hence their being able to put out CDs that look just like the real thing. They sure as hell don't use burners, so all this copy protection is useless in combatting large-scale organised piracy. So, the only people that these new copy prevention and DRM techniques inconvenience are the consumers.
Tell me again how Sony is showing trust in the consumer?
...Muffit. But only because you twisted my arm into doing so.
Well, I'm pretty sure that's Jamie. His surname is McCarthy, IIRC.
CN said: I still haven't seen this film, so I'll refrain from passing judgment, but I'm ever so happy the matrix-within-a-matrix theories were unfounded.
Translation: I haven't seen the film yet but I'll happily ruin at least one possible plot twist for the hundreds of thousands that read this website but haven't yet seen the film.
Looks like CN's finally succombed to Katz-Taco disease.
Is it really that hard to assign one person the task of being responsible for domain renewals?
Jeez, even if that's all somebody did it would be worth paying someone $20,000/year just to avoid serious cock-ups like this one.
Microsoft never has made an anti-virus product, or stand-alone firewall software so it's hardly making money from "treating" the disease. It has far more to gain by eradicating the problem altogether than it does fighting an unwinnable war.
After all, one of the biggest arguments in favour of OSS is that OSS solutions offer greater security - if Microsoft tightens up product security that's one less reason for it to lose business to Linux, etc.
Right now, Microsoft has an newspaper ad campaign that focuses on how to combat viruses and exploits. The company is clearly trying to limit the damage caused by the ever-frequent virus alerts and exploits that threaten to engulf not just our PCs but our news every other month or so.
Putting a bounty on the heads of virus writers is just an extension of this PR exercise, as valuable for the publicity it generates ("look, we're so serious about combating viruses that we're offering six figure sums to find the people who cause innocent users so much misery") as it is in actually combating the problem.
Well, ask any doctor and he'll tell you it's better to cure a disease than to treat its symptoms. No virus writers means no viruses, which means no headline news virus alerts and scares.
Of course, the question is how much of the "disease" is the virus writers and how much is Microsoft itself with its sloppy approach to secure computing?
As others have pointed out much better than I have, only part of the ice is floating in the seas and supported by displacement, much of the rest of it is supported by land. Where this is the case, there's no equivalent volume of water that's being replaced by an equivalent volume of melted ice.
Sorry if I was too dense (no pun intended) to have made myself clearer. I've been up for almost 30 hours now and I won't be hitting the sack for at least another 10-12.
Well, even the current Bush government admits that deforestation is an issue. Their watered down environmental plan talks about establishing "sinks", and the rain forests are the biggest natural sinks on the planet.
If even the skeptics admit that deforestation is an issue then why can't you?
And as for me attacking the person who my grandparent post was in response to, I was merely responding to his question asking whether or not I had read the article by questioning whether he had read my comment, specifically the bit regarding research funding and objectivity.
Part of Venice's problem is because of sinking but part of it is also due to rising water levels. The rate of the overall descent has dramatically increased in the last century, epecially so in the last 40 years.
10 percent of the volume of ice sits above the water level. What bit of that is hard to understand?
If you don't believe that the water levels will rise try out the "melting ice in a glass" experiment I described. If that doesn't convince you then I don't know what will.
Ice is less dense than water. So, an ice cube melting in a glass of water will cause the level of water to rise. If you don't believe me then try it.
Why do you think that a bottle of water (or beer, ok Coke) left in the freezer too long will crack its container? Put a bottle of Bud or a can of Coke in the freezer if you don't believe this either. Simple science: ice takes up more room than water because it has a lower density.
Imagine a glass that's got a cube of ice in it and water full to the brim. What will happen when that ice cube melts? The water will spill over the side of the glass, that's what will happen. The same thing is true with the polar ice caps and the oceans, just on a bigger scale.
Your Archimedes theory is flawed because you've failed to take into account the volume of the solid ice that is above the water level before it started, which is approximately 10 percent by mass. The rest of your post seems to be gibberish. For one thing, you don't seem to have a clue how gravitic forces work, which is a bit worrying as you profess to be an engineering student (according to your user page).
Are you trolling? Did you even read my post? Who paid for this research? Do they have an agenda?
The very fact that you believe that humans play no part in global warming astounds me. Ever heard of ozone depletion caused by CFCs, etc? Deforestation of the rain forests? Acid rain? Aren't those our responsibility?
A recent study by Arctic researchers showed that the polar ice cap isn't just shrinking in terms of land mass, it's shrinking in terms of depth too, by 4cm a year.
All that water's going somewhere, and that somewhere is the oceans. Global sea levels are rising, and you only have to look at the situation in Tuvalu in the Pacific or Venice, Italy to see that the threat of rising tides isn't a myth.
People can harp on about "not enough data" or "inconclusive evidence" all they want but if entire nations vanishing beneath the waves or historic cities sinking isn't a wake-up call then I don't know what is.
Frankly, there are some people who will bury their heads in the sand over this issue just as long as they can make a profit by ignoring it. Oil companies and big business are never going to recognise that they are part of the problem until the last possible moment, at which time they'll just shrug their shoulders and say "Who knew?", just like the tobacco industry before them.
But, unlike tobacco, this isn't a problem that will affect just a handful of people, or a problem that will be easily settled by the courts - billions in punitive damages are useless when your country is underwater. The last time I checked there wasn't a court on the planet that could push back the tides.
I'm sure there are dozens of readers out there that will right off this comment as yet more half-baked environmental doom-mongering but I find it funny that these same people will demand more money to scan the heavens for deadly meteors - it seems that extinction Armageddon-style is trendy but the possibility of extinction because of our own actions just isn't sexy enough.
If you really want to be objective about these issues try to look beyond the smoke and mirrors. Ask yourself how objective the research is - there are far more people out there funded by big business than you'd imagine. Ask yourself who stands to profit by presenting a negative picture of climate change? Who stands to lose if the problem is tackled head-on? And who stands to profit if it's ignored and the situation is allowed to continue unchecked?
A flying toasters screensaver?
At the same time, no one says that it's silly to spend $1000+ on a PC to play games, when you can do the same thing with a $199 PlayStation 2.
Ever tried to find a decent flight simulator on a console? Good luck searching for one. There are plenty of games (and genres of games) that are better on a PC than they are on a console.
Some of us older gamers can remember the time when consoles couldn't even save games unless the cartridge came with built-in storage (ie, almost anything that came before the PS1), and it's only recently that online multiplayer gaming has become possible on the latest generation of consoles.
Still, try finding a real equivalent of Everquest or even Warcraft III on a PS2/X-Box/GC. You can get close, but not close enough to earn you a cigar.