The Apollo program's critics said that the massive sums of money that were being spent on going to the moon could be better spent solving problems closer to home, and there's this perception that NASA somehow proved those critics wrong because they achieved something amazing (landing men on the moon). But what benefit has that really imparted to society? Hope? Pride? Entertainment? If that's all it was worth, that's what we have major league sports teams for. That is the argument you will get from critics.
To counter that argument, let's talk about what else society got from the Apollo program:
Integrated circuits benefited from the development of the Apollo guidance computer. Without integrated circuits we wouldn't have personal computers, cell phones, DVD players, video games, GPS and a lot of other things.
Fuel cell development got a boost from Apollo funding, but it may be harder to convince the general public of their usefulness because there aren't any commercially-available fuel cell cars on the market, but they're apparently widely used in forklifts at Coca Cola, Whole Foods, FedEx and others where they are cutting down on emissions.
What else owes its development to the Apollo program, and how does it benefit society? Please, add to this list so we can rebuff the people who say money spent on space is wasted.
Anyone can become a programmer, just like anyone can become a painter.
Somehow I misread that as "...just like anyone can become a printer" and was reminded of a friend in the gifted class in elementary school who used to frequently impersonate the Apple ImageWriter printer in the computer lab. He would smoothly glide from one side to the other while imitating the sound the printer made, then glide back to the other side while making a different sound, and repeat ad nauseam. Like the ImageWriter, the quality of his impression was "adequate rather than startling." I thought the whole thing was dumb until he pulled a printout from his back pocket.
In this way, I suppose anyone could become a programmer by sitting at their desk with headphones on, staring at a computer screen and occasionally drinking Bawls. Gliding from side to side in an Aeron chair while making computer noises is optional, as long as they produce something.
One doesn't "hit an alrm clock". One presses a button that is wide and shallow enough that a blow from one's hand will activate it.
In theory one presses a wide button. In practice millions of people hit their alarm clocks. This creates the pretense that the device may be silenced in a non-destructive manner, while ensuring continued regular demand for new alarm clocks. It's really quite brilliant on Microsoft's part. By encouraging this model of behavior they can inflate their sales figures and retention percentages ("9 out of 10 Windows Phone owners buy another Windows Phone each year").
Once you're bent over, grabbing your ankles, you know what happens next.
We only know what happens next because Microsoft patented a system and method for bending people over and making them grab their ankles back in '95. Without their documentation in the patent we wouldn't know what happens next. See how patents benefit society?
The brilliance of our patent system is that it can occasionally be used to entrap mega-corporations when they do stupid things (whether we are smart enough to utilize it in that way is another matter). In this case, call MSFT's bluff: Declare Stephen Elop's tenure at Nokia to be prior art. Either MSFT acknowledges the prior art by Nokia and abandons this claim, or it claims ownership of said prior art by acknowledging that it sent Elop there to whack the phone company and silence it.
China's simply catching up to the levels first world countries are at, and will most likely exceed them since they don't have the petty squabbles that Europe and the US have.
Yes, in China the party decides which squabbles are petty and which are not. (See inset photo on linked page of thousands of "protesters" in Chengdu carrying banners with slogans like "Even if China is covered with graves, we must kill all Japanese" after some Japanese activists erected a Japanese flag on an island Japan owns but China wants.)
You don't want the wireless mechanism in your phone, so you plug your phone into a special device that has the mechanism, and then you put the combined monstrosity on the designated wireless surface. Then you get to spend more money on the electricity to charge your phone because of the inefficiency of the mechanism. But you get to call your mom, from your wireless phone, and say, "look, Ma! No wires!"
The Hollerith Machine was developed for the task of processing the massive amounts of data for the census in the United States. It was the only solution in the world that could handle the job. Decades later, Germany was using these machines for its own census. Most of the data the Nazis compiled with IBM's technology was between 1934 and 1939. While the Nazis were collecting this information to track "undesirables," IBM was so proud of itself it had a plaque affixed to greet visitors to its Madison Ave (NY) headquarters in 1938 which read: WORLD PEACE THROUGH WORLD TRADE.
Am I the only one who does not see the quoted number of 20,000 on either website?
TFA, on the other hand, links to Fox News.
I didn't see it either... just last year's warning from the CDC and this week's warning from Homeland Security about Zombie attacks. I don't really care about the number of people who may be infected because that number doesn't really have any bearing on my safety. What really concerns me is this: can zombies transmit the hantavirus?
Great. First the supervolcano under Yellowstone, now deadly virus from Yosemite.
You nature lovers and conservationists feel good about yourselves for preserving it? Huh?
Right, because if we'd built a WalMart over Yellowstone the weight of several million obese consumers would keep the supervolcano from erupting. In the U.S., more people will die in car accidents this week on the way to WalMart than the hantavirus will kill this year. Still feel good about preserving GM?
Corporate Fraud? Deceptive conduct? Could the lawyers get disbarred?
Fraudulently taking control of a dormant corporation and defrauding investors is not corporate fraud. It's business ethics (which is different from business intelligence). Get your oxymorons straight... "corporate fraud" isn't even an oxymoron!
Just wait till they start hiding under your bed with chainsaws.
Nah, they come in through the skylight or on stage at Yale. It's common knowledge that under the bed is where Stallman keeps his katana and Linus keeps his nunchucks. Rumor has it RMS also hid a special macro in Emacs which turns your pinky finger into a deadly weapon.
Coke machines are essential in times of national emergency. Haven't you ever seen Dr. Strangelove?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Colonel... that Coca-Cola machine. I want you to shoot the lock off it. There may be some change in there.
Colonel "Bat" Guano: That's private property.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Colonel! Can you possibly imagine what is going to happen to you, your frame, outlook, way of life, and everything, when they learn that you have obstructed a telephone call to the President of the United States? Can you imagine? Shoot it off! Shoot! With a gun! That's what the bullets are for, you twit!
Colonel "Bat" Guano: Okay. I'm gonna get your money for ya. But if you don't get the President of the United States on that phone, you know what's gonna happen to you?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: What?
Colonel "Bat" Guano: You're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.
There are many "good" objective people who work for the government and submit reports to Congress (lawyers, scientists, accountants... Even IRS agents), however, it is important to understand that "objective people" do not make decisions for congress. They are not the "leaders" that the submitter is calling them and they have no power. The "leaders" are the representatives and senators, whose job is to cherry pick the reports for facts/out-of-context-statements that agree with their opinions. This has been going on for quite some time... After all, Benjamin Franklin wrote of the three degrees of lies, "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics."
There are very good "economic" reasons for a small percentage of the population, but for the entire population there are very good "experiential" reasons for summer vacation. The new places you go, people you meet, the experiences you have an the things you learn from all that are invaluable, whether the kids are working, at a summer camp, on a family vacation or cruising the neighborhood on their bikes. You have to show kids that there is more to life than the scripted environment in the same old classroom, otherwise how do they know what they're working for?
I also think it's important to have a well-defined beginning and end to the school year, otherwise they just bleed into one another. If you've been working at the same job in the same building for 4 years or more, can you honestly say you remember what year you learned a certain skill? Was it two years ago... Maybe three? If you can't remember, how well have you really learned. But ask a kid what grade they learned cursive or their multiplication tables. They'll have little trouble telling you what grade because those periods of their life are separated and well-defined. If they were in school year round with a week off here or there, I'm sure they'd lose that, and their knowledge retention would be lower. They're human beings, not containers to pour knowledge into.
RMS says Steve Jobs was reincarnated as Windows 8 as punishment for his sins against FOSS in his past life. Personally I think RMS was drunk and just happened to be watching that Superman movie where the bad guys are imprisoned in panes of glass floating through space forever.
I thought humor was the whole point behind trolling?
There's a fine line between humor and trolling.
A troll blocking a bridge threatening to eat travelers is disruptive.
A man standing next to the bridge threatening to eat passersby but not actually disrupting anything is simply entertaining.
Looking through the apps on the screen, you've got (in order of appearance):
Contacts
Messaging
Photo Wizard
Video widzard" (WTF is a widzard?)
Gallery
Camera (Oh look! It takes pictures too! Neat! Why isn't this first on the list?)
Instagram
Music
Videos
Clock
Calculator
S Planner (I often thought this would be a useful feature in a camera so I could plan my day around developing photos... not much use for it now, though)
Memo
S Voice
Dropbox
My Files
Samsung Apps
Play Store
Settings
Usability FAIL. It looks like you've got two competing app stores on your camera (Google's and Samsung's), and how are you going to find your files (is it in my files? gallery? dropbox? Oh, wait, maybe they're in camera?)? It never ceases to amaze me that huge corporations spend all this money developing and releasing these products and it's like no one ever bothered to pick it up and try to use it first. They work so hard to copy Apple, and they can't even do that properly.
I have a Samsung home theater system with an "iPod Dock" that disables the iPod interface and starts playing the first song on the device in alphabetical order. To choose another song, you have to hit the >> button, wait two seconds for it to load and then a few more seconds to figure out if it's something you want to listen to. With over 2,000 songs, it takes about 15 minutes to find a song on-demand.
I have a Samsung TV that doesn't come with a printed manual. Users are expected to read it on the TV, yet the manual includes a troubleshooting section devoted to "The TV will not turn on." If you can't get the TV to turn on, you can't read the manual. I guess they expect you'll go back to the store and read the manual on the floor model to get your TV to turn on. Or you figure out that they have a very nice PDF file on their Web site.
Sally Albright: Most women at one time or another have faked it. Harry Burns: Well, they haven't faked it with me. Sally Albright: How do you know? Harry Burns: Because I know. Sally Albright: Oh. Right. Thats right. I forgot. Youre a man. Harry Burns: What was that supposed to mean? Sally Albright: Nothing. Its just that all men are sure it never happened to them and all women at one time or other have done it so you do the math.
The odds are the women were faking happiness during the study. You do the math. In the mean time, I'll have what she's having.
Just be careful using f.lux if you're pulling an all nighter working with photo editing or video production, unless you're very "artsy." People will either say your colors are all off or you have a very unique style. Then again, it worked for the Wachowski brothers...
That's melatonin not melanin. Melatonin regulated sleep.
It used to. Now there's an app for that. Actually, according to the article, just about every app that doesn't turn off the backlight on your tablet is taking over melatonin's role and regulating your sleep (or lack thereof).
Romney should deliver his victory speech aboard an aircraft carrier floating past New Orleans City Hall. In doing so, he could reinvigorate the portion of the Republican base that believes things were better off under Bush.
Slashdot Mirror
To counter that argument, let's talk about what else society got from the Apollo program:
What else owes its development to the Apollo program, and how does it benefit society? Please, add to this list so we can rebuff the people who say money spent on space is wasted.
Anyone can become a programmer, just like anyone can become a painter.
Somehow I misread that as "...just like anyone can become a printer" and was reminded of a friend in the gifted class in elementary school who used to frequently impersonate the Apple ImageWriter printer in the computer lab. He would smoothly glide from one side to the other while imitating the sound the printer made, then glide back to the other side while making a different sound, and repeat ad nauseam. Like the ImageWriter, the quality of his impression was "adequate rather than startling." I thought the whole thing was dumb until he pulled a printout from his back pocket.
In this way, I suppose anyone could become a programmer by sitting at their desk with headphones on, staring at a computer screen and occasionally drinking Bawls. Gliding from side to side in an Aeron chair while making computer noises is optional, as long as they produce something.
One doesn't "hit an alrm clock". One presses a button that is wide and shallow enough that a blow from one's hand will activate it.
In theory one presses a wide button. In practice millions of people hit their alarm clocks. This creates the pretense that the device may be silenced in a non-destructive manner, while ensuring continued regular demand for new alarm clocks. It's really quite brilliant on Microsoft's part. By encouraging this model of behavior they can inflate their sales figures and retention percentages ("9 out of 10 Windows Phone owners buy another Windows Phone each year").
Once you're bent over, grabbing your ankles, you know what happens next.
We only know what happens next because Microsoft patented a system and method for bending people over and making them grab their ankles back in '95. Without their documentation in the patent we wouldn't know what happens next. See how patents benefit society?
The brilliance of our patent system is that it can occasionally be used to entrap mega-corporations when they do stupid things (whether we are smart enough to utilize it in that way is another matter). In this case, call MSFT's bluff: Declare Stephen Elop's tenure at Nokia to be prior art. Either MSFT acknowledges the prior art by Nokia and abandons this claim, or it claims ownership of said prior art by acknowledging that it sent Elop there to whack the phone company and silence it.
if you are making enough money to pay $250 a year in tax for a corporation, you should probably file for incorporation.
For those in California, LLCs pay a $70 fee for the paperwork and $800 minimum in annual taxes to the state.
China's simply catching up to the levels first world countries are at, and will most likely exceed them since they don't have the petty squabbles that Europe and the US have.
Yes, in China the party decides which squabbles are petty and which are not. (See inset photo on linked page of thousands of "protesters" in Chengdu carrying banners with slogans like "Even if China is covered with graves, we must kill all Japanese" after some Japanese activists erected a Japanese flag on an island Japan owns but China wants.)
You don't want the wireless mechanism in your phone, so you plug your phone into a special device that has the mechanism, and then you put the combined monstrosity on the designated wireless surface. Then you get to spend more money on the electricity to charge your phone because of the inefficiency of the mechanism. But you get to call your mom, from your wireless phone, and say, "look, Ma! No wires!"
The Hollerith Machine was developed for the task of processing the massive amounts of data for the census in the United States. It was the only solution in the world that could handle the job. Decades later, Germany was using these machines for its own census. Most of the data the Nazis compiled with IBM's technology was between 1934 and 1939. While the Nazis were collecting this information to track "undesirables," IBM was so proud of itself it had a plaque affixed to greet visitors to its Madison Ave (NY) headquarters in 1938 which read: WORLD PEACE THROUGH WORLD TRADE.
Am I the only one who does not see the quoted number of 20,000 on either website? TFA, on the other hand, links to Fox News.
I didn't see it either... just last year's warning from the CDC and this week's warning from Homeland Security about Zombie attacks. I don't really care about the number of people who may be infected because that number doesn't really have any bearing on my safety. What really concerns me is this: can zombies transmit the hantavirus?
Great. First the supervolcano under Yellowstone, now deadly virus from Yosemite.
You nature lovers and conservationists feel good about yourselves for preserving it? Huh?
Right, because if we'd built a WalMart over Yellowstone the weight of several million obese consumers would keep the supervolcano from erupting. In the U.S., more people will die in car accidents this week on the way to WalMart than the hantavirus will kill this year. Still feel good about preserving GM?
Corporate Fraud? Deceptive conduct? Could the lawyers get disbarred?
Fraudulently taking control of a dormant corporation and defrauding investors is not corporate fraud. It's business ethics (which is different from business intelligence). Get your oxymorons straight... "corporate fraud" isn't even an oxymoron!
Just wait till they start hiding under your bed with chainsaws.
Nah, they come in through the skylight or on stage at Yale. It's common knowledge that under the bed is where Stallman keeps his katana and Linus keeps his nunchucks. Rumor has it RMS also hid a special macro in Emacs which turns your pinky finger into a deadly weapon.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Colonel... that Coca-Cola machine. I want you to shoot the lock off it. There may be some change in there.
Colonel "Bat" Guano: That's private property.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Colonel! Can you possibly imagine what is going to happen to you, your frame, outlook, way of life, and everything, when they learn that you have obstructed a telephone call to the President of the United States? Can you imagine? Shoot it off! Shoot! With a gun! That's what the bullets are for, you twit!
Colonel "Bat" Guano: Okay. I'm gonna get your money for ya. But if you don't get the President of the United States on that phone, you know what's gonna happen to you?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: What?
Colonel "Bat" Guano: You're gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.
There are many "good" objective people who work for the government and submit reports to Congress (lawyers, scientists, accountants... Even IRS agents), however, it is important to understand that "objective people" do not make decisions for congress. They are not the "leaders" that the submitter is calling them and they have no power. The "leaders" are the representatives and senators, whose job is to cherry pick the reports for facts/out-of-context-statements that agree with their opinions. This has been going on for quite some time... After all, Benjamin Franklin wrote of the three degrees of lies, "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics."
There are very good "economic" reasons for a small percentage of the population, but for the entire population there are very good "experiential" reasons for summer vacation. The new places you go, people you meet, the experiences you have an the things you learn from all that are invaluable, whether the kids are working, at a summer camp, on a family vacation or cruising the neighborhood on their bikes. You have to show kids that there is more to life than the scripted environment in the same old classroom, otherwise how do they know what they're working for?
I also think it's important to have a well-defined beginning and end to the school year, otherwise they just bleed into one another. If you've been working at the same job in the same building for 4 years or more, can you honestly say you remember what year you learned a certain skill? Was it two years ago... Maybe three? If you can't remember, how well have you really learned. But ask a kid what grade they learned cursive or their multiplication tables. They'll have little trouble telling you what grade because those periods of their life are separated and well-defined. If they were in school year round with a week off here or there, I'm sure they'd lose that, and their knowledge retention would be lower. They're human beings, not containers to pour knowledge into.
RMS says Steve Jobs was reincarnated as Windows 8 as punishment for his sins against FOSS in his past life. Personally I think RMS was drunk and just happened to be watching that Superman movie where the bad guys are imprisoned in panes of glass floating through space forever.
Because if it's funny it's not a troll.
I thought humor was the whole point behind trolling?
There's a fine line between humor and trolling.
A troll blocking a bridge threatening to eat travelers is disruptive.
A man standing next to the bridge threatening to eat passersby but not actually disrupting anything is simply entertaining.
Closing tags do not take attributes /wooooooosh
<joke>In Soviet Russia, closing tag takes attribute.</joke style="humor-family:smirnoff;censorship-exemption-reason:obligatory;taste:moderate;american-compatibility:none;">
Looking through the apps on the screen, you've got (in order of appearance):
Usability FAIL. It looks like you've got two competing app stores on your camera (Google's and Samsung's), and how are you going to find your files (is it in my files? gallery? dropbox? Oh, wait, maybe they're in camera?)? It never ceases to amaze me that huge corporations spend all this money developing and releasing these products and it's like no one ever bothered to pick it up and try to use it first. They work so hard to copy Apple, and they can't even do that properly.
I have a Samsung home theater system with an "iPod Dock" that disables the iPod interface and starts playing the first song on the device in alphabetical order. To choose another song, you have to hit the >> button, wait two seconds for it to load and then a few more seconds to figure out if it's something you want to listen to. With over 2,000 songs, it takes about 15 minutes to find a song on-demand.
I have a Samsung TV that doesn't come with a printed manual. Users are expected to read it on the TV, yet the manual includes a troubleshooting section devoted to "The TV will not turn on." If you can't get the TV to turn on, you can't read the manual. I guess they expect you'll go back to the store and read the manual on the floor model to get your TV to turn on. Or you figure out that they have a very nice PDF file on their Web site.
Artist's concept of a dusty torus, or donut, of accreting material fueling a quasar.
There's a "WASH ME" car analogy in there somewhere... I just can't find it!
Sally Albright: Most women at one time or another have faked it.
Harry Burns: Well, they haven't faked it with me.
Sally Albright: How do you know?
Harry Burns: Because I know.
Sally Albright: Oh. Right. Thats right. I forgot. Youre a man.
Harry Burns: What was that supposed to mean?
Sally Albright: Nothing. Its just that all men are sure it never happened to them and all women at one time or other have done it so you do the math.
The odds are the women were faking happiness during the study. You do the math. In the mean time, I'll have what she's having.
Just be careful using f.lux if you're pulling an all nighter working with photo editing or video production, unless you're very "artsy." People will either say your colors are all off or you have a very unique style. Then again, it worked for the Wachowski brothers...
That's melatonin not melanin. Melatonin regulated sleep.
It used to. Now there's an app for that. Actually, according to the article, just about every app that doesn't turn off the backlight on your tablet is taking over melatonin's role and regulating your sleep (or lack thereof).
Romney should deliver his victory speech aboard an aircraft carrier floating past New Orleans City Hall. In doing so, he could reinvigorate the portion of the Republican base that believes things were better off under Bush.