It's all well and fine to talk about "NASA's role as commercial space entrepreneur"...
Except that it isn't one.
Can you buy stock?
Is NASA seeking a profit?
If NASA fails, does it declare bankruptcy?
Is NASA part of the government and tax-funded?
I am not a big fan of NASA, though I am awed by some of the things that the very smart people of NASA have over the years accomplished. You may like NASA, your dad or mom or best friend (or you!) may work there, and you may unconscionable any suggestion that NASA is not a good use of tax dollars.
I've reviewed some stuff (less than I'd like, more than necessary too maintain life functions) over the years, and have a few nasty and brutish opinions.
Of the reviewed stuff, some of it I've paid for, some of it's been supplied by the maker or a retailer. Of the stuff supplied for review, some of it has been a loan, some of it has been keep-it-when-done, and there's not a simple relationship to whether it's cheap or expensive. I've more than once bought something intending to review it, sometimes I only realized I wanted to when I found it to be useful or interesting (having bought it for pure utility), and quite a few things, solicited or not, that I thought would make good review items turned out not to, because (say) they weren't much worth distinguishing in a crowded field, or just didn't excite me. No accounting for taste.
I wouldn't want to mislead anyone by making them think (oooh!) some specific thing that was false, and favor disclosure on that front, but if you think a review is slanted *because* the provided item was provided for free, then there's IMO a bigger problem than with the review. Whether an item has to be returned doesn't even seem to me to be a big differentiator: the set of people who get to be product reviewers overlaps with the set of people who (say) attend trade shows, which means they're bombarded with cheap and sometimes expensive tschotskes, everything from door prizes to sit-through-a-presentation tokens to (yes, I did this) a little coin that says you were curious or stupid enough to get tased. Anyone who's attended a LinuxWorld or similar has probably walked out with at least a promotional souvenir penguin of some kind -- or chosen not to;)
Note that there's a lot of self-selection; if a hardware review site is offered or solicits an interesting piece of hardware to write about, it's probably not because they believe in advance that it sucks (or even is only middlin') -- just the opposite. I'd like to get a chance to sample an interesting keyboard or (oh, this would be nice) superior wireless access device because I'd like to take part as a happy user of something better than what's come before. There would be little point in giving a product I didn't like a positive review, or in straining to find fault in order to appear "objective" about a product that blows me away. (I'm thinking here of the first two generations of Das Keyboard, which I frankly thought were interesting but ultimately disappointing, and the still-wows-me Tom Bihn Checkpoint Flyer briefcase. The Checkpoint flyer I brought to the Bihn factory with some suggestions after a few months of use, and he -- Tom, his own self -- actually modified mine at my suggestion. I like the product and the company even better as a result, but I like a lot of the competition, too, because the world is interesting that way.)
"Caveat lector" seems appropriate, as you read *any* review you think to be too enthusiastic or one-sidely positive. Whether a product is paid for by the reviewer probably represents less of a gimme than pure *access* to most tech-world things worth reviewing. Just getting to experience new and interesting products is an interesting perq; getting to hang onto some of them as curios or even as often-used items is cool, but as far as my biased eyes can see not a good indicator of "corruption." When 5 or 12 or 96 hardware review sites all have reviews of a new product that appear on the same day (at the stroke of midnight, or suspiciously close), you can bet an NDA bargaining chip just expired. Does that mean "corruption" to you? Maybe it does -- but either way, you'll read the review knowing, or at least intelligently guessing, that there were communications between the product's maker and the reviewers, and that there was trade of access for exposure.
My point: don't assume evil, but also don't assume the same level of disinterest you might prefer in a platonic-solids kind of way; realize that everyone has biases (whether you consider them innocent, misguided, or invidious) and read reviews accordingly.
Like I said: snack, seat, plenty to read... my Slashdot work for the day was done, too, so no one else was being much inconvenienced by my travel delays in particular. (It's the other people, with connections etc, who had bigger hassles.)
This is so far from the worst thing that could happen even among modern travel disruptions that I hope you take my account with the same viewpoint I had: it's a 21st century problem / first-world problem, and that's the best kind of problem to have. Once I was stuck in San Antonio for 3 days because of ice storms... which was actually pretty fun, since I wasn't missing a friend's last moments, an organ transplant, etc.
The worst aspect for those people who didn't have cliff bars, gum, etc. is the uncertainty -- don't know if you have time to go snag an airport-priced sandwich, because you might miss an important announcement.
One of the things I saw yesterday was gate switches; the desk staff don't know until they get the (apparently very sporadic) updates about things like that, so people are often directed to distant gates rather than their originally scheduled ones. And when it happened yesterday, I saw two different flights (to different cities!) both being sent to the same gate, and I'm pretty sure they weren't both right. Glad I just had to wait, and it was my final leg.
In real life, my speed-limit, pseudo-hypermiling driving habit may be why my tires have generally outlived expectations;)
That's something I'd never considered before, though. I'm actually amazed by how well tires hold up, considering potholes, glass, rocks, and (esp, when I push through West Texas) heat. They're pretty amazing, really.
And I can double *that*! (Assuming driving only in a wheelie; when you reach the other coast, please swap front and back tires, unless your car can also do a reverse wheelie on the front tires...)
If you love an idea, set it free, in the form of an deniable "early draft."
If it comes back to you, it was meant to me.
If it doesn't come back to, engage in an arduous, years-long search and destroy mission, then shoot it twice in the head. Use the embedded GPS to guide you.
Not that this affects your point, but your comment about alcohol I think is off-base. New Order Amish (as I understand it) frown heavily on alcohol, but not so (or at least not necessarily) the Old Order Amish, or some of the other sub-groups. And whatever the local elders might say, no central authority decries alcohol, as (say) is the case in the mainline LDS church. Which is itself fine with ranches and kids, but long ago publicly forswore polygamy;)
For that matter, what will happen when a love crime is accidentally interrupted by a hate crime because of a religion crime? Hopefully the cops will be able to sort it out... the *police* cops.
Both "gun crime" and "knife crime" remind me a lot of the never-heard-before-2010 phrase "Homeland Security," which to me has an unpleasant mix of aw-shucks! and Heimat.
Billboards talk sternly about special penalties for "gun crime," and in the UK the phrase "knife crime" is common, too. (I've heard that one a few times in the U.S., but not often. But over there, there's http://www.knifecrimes.org/uk-knife-crime-victims.html)
A distinction to be drawn, I think: there are pure category crime descriptions that people *don't* object to (I'm thinking of "white collar crime" / "violent crime"), but these seem different than "gun crime" or "knife crime" (no one talks about "car crime," despite the huge number of vehicular homicides, etc.), because these describe a crime according to its impact / immediate level of fear or risk, rather than on the instrumentalities used to perpetrate it. And I've never seen "gun crime" to mean "theft of lawfully owned guns," only "crimes committed with guns as instrumentality."
("White collar crime" is a nice sweeping term that includes embezzlement, some acts of bribery, strategic data destruction, etc - no one needs to call it "adding machine crime," or "degausser crime"; "violent crime" takes in rape, murder, etc, so no need for screwdriver crime, genitals crime, etc.)
On this basis, "cyber crime" actually has *some* justification, even though it's an annoying term; it seems a fair distinction based the context it which it takes place.
Slashdot Mirror
It's all well and fine to talk about "NASA's role as commercial space entrepreneur" ...
Except that it isn't one.
Can you buy stock?
Is NASA seeking a profit?
If NASA fails, does it declare bankruptcy?
Is NASA part of the government and tax-funded?
I am not a big fan of NASA, though I am awed by some of the things that the very smart people of NASA have over the years accomplished. You may like NASA, your dad or mom or best friend (or you!) may work there, and you may unconscionable any suggestion that NASA is not a good use of tax dollars.
But NASA is not an entrepreneur.
timothy
Jell-O is all purpose.
timothy
I've reviewed some stuff (less than I'd like, more than necessary too maintain life functions) over the years, and have a few nasty and brutish opinions.
Of the reviewed stuff, some of it I've paid for, some of it's been supplied by the maker or a retailer. Of the stuff supplied for review, some of it has been a loan, some of it has been keep-it-when-done, and there's not a simple relationship to whether it's cheap or expensive. I've more than once bought something intending to review it, sometimes I only realized I wanted to when I found it to be useful or interesting (having bought it for pure utility), and quite a few things, solicited or not, that I thought would make good review items turned out not to, because (say) they weren't much worth distinguishing in a crowded field, or just didn't excite me. No accounting for taste.
I wouldn't want to mislead anyone by making them think (oooh!) some specific thing that was false, and favor disclosure on that front, but if you think a review is slanted *because* the provided item was provided for free, then there's IMO a bigger problem than with the review. Whether an item has to be returned doesn't even seem to me to be a big differentiator: the set of people who get to be product reviewers overlaps with the set of people who (say) attend trade shows, which means they're bombarded with cheap and sometimes expensive tschotskes, everything from door prizes to sit-through-a-presentation tokens to (yes, I did this) a little coin that says you were curious or stupid enough to get tased. Anyone who's attended a LinuxWorld or similar has probably walked out with at least a promotional souvenir penguin of some kind -- or chosen not to ;)
Note that there's a lot of self-selection; if a hardware review site is offered or solicits an interesting piece of hardware to write about, it's probably not because they believe in advance that it sucks (or even is only middlin') -- just the opposite. I'd like to get a chance to sample an interesting keyboard or (oh, this would be nice) superior wireless access device because I'd like to take part as a happy user of something better than what's come before. There would be little point in giving a product I didn't like a positive review, or in straining to find fault in order to appear "objective" about a product that blows me away. (I'm thinking here of the first two generations of Das Keyboard, which I frankly thought were interesting but ultimately disappointing, and the still-wows-me Tom Bihn Checkpoint Flyer briefcase. The Checkpoint flyer I brought to the Bihn factory with some suggestions after a few months of use, and he -- Tom, his own self -- actually modified mine at my suggestion. I like the product and the company even better as a result, but I like a lot of the competition, too, because the world is interesting that way.)
"Caveat lector" seems appropriate, as you read *any* review you think to be too enthusiastic or one-sidely positive. Whether a product is paid for by the reviewer probably represents less of a gimme than pure *access* to most tech-world things worth reviewing. Just getting to experience new and interesting products is an interesting perq; getting to hang onto some of them as curios or even as often-used items is cool, but as far as my biased eyes can see not a good indicator of "corruption." When 5 or 12 or 96 hardware review sites all have reviews of a new product that appear on the same day (at the stroke of midnight, or suspiciously close), you can bet an NDA bargaining chip just expired. Does that mean "corruption" to you? Maybe it does -- but either way, you'll read the review knowing, or at least intelligently guessing, that there were communications between the product's maker and the reviewers, and that there was trade of access for exposure.
My point: don't assume evil, but also don't assume the same level of disinterest you might prefer in a platonic-solids kind of way; realize that everyone has biases (whether you consider them innocent, misguided, or invidious) and read reviews accordingly.
Ahem!
timothy
This is an outgrowth of the same Yale studies :)
Seems that jello is the product they're using, too.
timothy
Yep -- I was fine.
Like I said: snack, seat, plenty to read ... my Slashdot work for the day was done, too, so no one else was being much inconvenienced by my travel delays in particular. (It's the other people, with connections etc, who had bigger hassles.)
This is so far from the worst thing that could happen even among modern travel disruptions that I hope you take my account with the same viewpoint I had: it's a 21st century problem / first-world problem, and that's the best kind of problem to have. Once I was stuck in San Antonio for 3 days because of ice storms ... which was actually pretty fun, since I wasn't missing a friend's last moments, an organ transplant, etc.
The worst aspect for those people who didn't have cliff bars, gum, etc. is the uncertainty -- don't know if you have time to go snag an airport-priced sandwich, because you might miss an important announcement.
And my favorite on this sort of problem remains this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk
One of the things I saw yesterday was gate switches; the desk staff don't know until they get the (apparently very sporadic) updates about things like that, so people are often directed to distant gates rather than their originally scheduled ones. And when it happened yesterday, I saw two different flights (to different cities!) both being sent to the same gate, and I'm pretty sure they weren't both right. Glad I just had to wait, and it was my final leg.
timothy
In real life, my speed-limit, pseudo-hypermiling driving habit may be why my tires have generally outlived expectations ;)
That's something I'd never considered before, though. I'm actually amazed by how well tires hold up, considering potholes, glass, rocks, and (esp, when I push through West Texas) heat. They're pretty amazing, really.
timothy
And I can double *that*! (Assuming driving only in a wheelie; when you reach the other coast, please swap front and back tires, unless your car can also do a reverse wheelie on the front tires ...)
timothy
Not so much for itself, as for a font I would like to offer to the world for filling in any IRS forms.
Hmm. Perhaps someone has already done this, based on published exemplars?
timothy
Thanks for spotting -- cut and paste error. Secretly, I blame Chrome. Now fixed, thanks to you.
timothy
In fact, it's almost certain.
However, in the meantime, it's less fun to be Aleksandr Isaevi Solenicyn and more fun to be Too Much Coffee Man. Witness:
http://www.google.com/search?q=too+much+coffee+man&hl=en&prmd=ivns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Z0TUTYXoMdLAgQeD3Nku&ved=0CDwQsAQ&biw=999&bih=462
timothy
If you love an idea, set it free, in the form of an deniable "early draft."
If it comes back to you, it was meant to me.
If it doesn't come back to, engage in an arduous, years-long search and destroy mission, then shoot it twice in the head. Use the embedded GPS to guide you.
timothy
I could be wrong -- heard fireworks, too, but several bangs/booms that I thought were gunfire. I'm sure the fireworks at least predominated :)
timothy
Thanks -- now nabbed.
timothy
"Amiguous" sounds like a useful term -- for when you aren't sure if someone's being friendly or not ;)
timothy
"... under no circumstance is it possible to confess by iPhone."
Oh?
http://www.cathnewsindia.com/2011/02/08/us-bishop-sanctions-cell-phone-in-confession/
I guess they'll have to go before the Supreme Court to resolve the issue ...
timothy
Not that this affects your point, but your comment about alcohol I think is off-base. New Order Amish (as I understand it) frown heavily on alcohol, but not so (or at least not necessarily) the Old Order Amish, or some of the other sub-groups. And whatever the local elders might say, no central authority decries alcohol, as (say) is the case in the mainline LDS church. Which is itself fine with ranches and kids, but long ago publicly forswore polygamy ;)
Cheers,
timothy (Presbyterian by birth, y'might say)
I don't plan to pay you (anyone reading this) to establish a church on Mars. You may think it's a good idea, but I have objections.
However, please don't interpret this as a ban on your doing so.
If you do, you are dum.
Thanks,
timothy
I think your post can be summed up as "'Economics in One Lesson' by clarkkent09" ;)
timothy
But salorie restriction is very unpopular with girlfriends, wives, heirs, etc ... ;)
timothy
Wondered this myself -- a very strange bug, since playing MP3s has been a solved since the days of (IIRC) 100Mhz Pentiums :)
I figured there was some option to prebuffer that I've never had the time to google for ... but I look forward lazily to the day when it's fixed ;)
timothy
For that matter, what will happen when a love crime is accidentally interrupted by a hate crime because of a religion crime? Hopefully the cops will be able to sort it out ... the *police* cops.
timothy
Agreed, heartily :)
Both "gun crime" and "knife crime" remind me a lot of the never-heard-before-2010 phrase "Homeland Security," which to me has an unpleasant mix of aw-shucks! and Heimat.
I keep waiting for the term "glass crime" to be used; are you aware of the handwringing over this in Scotland? They say "glassing" instead. (cite: http://www.theglaswegian.co.uk/glasgow-news/news/2010/05/06/horror-glass-attacks-cut-thanks-to-drive-for-safe-drinking-in-glasgow-102692-22237602/)
timothy
Billboards talk sternly about special penalties for "gun crime," and in the UK the phrase "knife crime" is common, too. (I've heard that one a few times in the U.S., but not often. But over there, there's http://www.knifecrimes.org/uk-knife-crime-victims.html)
A distinction to be drawn, I think: there are pure category crime descriptions that people *don't* object to (I'm thinking of "white collar crime" / "violent crime"), but these seem different than "gun crime" or "knife crime" (no one talks about "car crime," despite the huge number of vehicular homicides, etc.), because these describe a crime according to its impact / immediate level of fear or risk, rather than on the instrumentalities used to perpetrate it. And I've never seen "gun crime" to mean "theft of lawfully owned guns," only "crimes committed with guns as instrumentality."
("White collar crime" is a nice sweeping term that includes embezzlement, some acts of bribery, strategic data destruction, etc - no one needs to call it "adding machine crime," or "degausser crime"; "violent crime" takes in rape, murder, etc, so no need for screwdriver crime, genitals crime, etc.)
On this basis, "cyber crime" actually has *some* justification, even though it's an annoying term; it seems a fair distinction based the context it which it takes place.
timothy
... is if you wake up to find that your country has installed a "Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries."
No good can come of that :)
timothy