*ring* *ring* Customer: Hi, I'm having a problem getting apache to start automatically when my server boots. Tech Support: Oh, apache can't do that. You should switch to IIS. It will start automatically.
If they accept evolution, then the entire point of Christianity is called into question.
Only because *they* (the christians) have backed themselves into that corner. You know, the bible also says that god laid the foundation of the Earth, and it makes references to the four corners of the Earth etc. Well, obviously the Earth must be flat right? If it were a sphere then the bible would say, "god created the core of the Earth."
So why don't christians believe that the Earth is flat (and I'm sure that some do, but those have got to be less than 0.001%). The majority of christians look at bible passages about foundations and corners and they accept that these things are metaphors. Just like how jesus said, "I am the vine, you are the branches" it's a metaphor. He wasn't actually a tree.
But for some reason, Christians have painted themselves into a corner on the creation thing. They could have taken it as a metaphor like they do with everything else and then we wouldn't have this stupid, waste of time evolution vs. ID war.
I just don't get it.
And btw, while I'm ranting, I know that Richard Dawkins is an intelligent and articulate scientist. I've read two of his books. But the guy is a jerk and I think he actually makes things worse by ridiculing creationists. Contrast Dawkins with Carl Sagan. In his book _The Demon-Haunted World_ Sagan makes mention of his believe that even when you are dealing with people who are wrong and ignorant, you need to treat them civilly because doing otherwise escalates things. Dawkins should learn that. Calling IDers idiots (if though they are) just makes them feel all warm and martyry inside and encourages them.
Earlier this month the inability to prove who actually did the file sharing caused the RIAA to drop a case in Oklahoma and now it looks like the same defense has worked in a California case as well. In both cases, though, as soon as the RIAA realized the person was using this defense, they dropped the case, rather than lose it and set a precedent showing they really don't have the unequivocal evidence they claim they do.
printing up a quick wireless security tutorial on a printer not linkable to me
you mean like for example *their* printer?
I did that to some AF guys once. I printed a page with orders to call me in giant letters. They were pretty good natured about it and actually appreciated that I was helping them.
I do not have any audio/vibro "you have mail" announcement enabled (nor do I on my desktop computer's email app).
same here, and I find that I'm a lot more productive at work now. I put on some music and I think about what I'm coding. When I need a break, I flip over to my email (or check a website like slashdot) but I do it on my terms. If my boss emails me, then I get a popup. At home, I have an ambient orb with a serial interface and a script that makes it flash red if she emails me. So otherwise, I don't have to worry that there might be an email out there that I haven't seen.
It's not that hard (in my job and life) to manage stress.
I suspect it's as simple as intellectuals being more left wing
And the other side of the coin: people who are successful in a capitalist economy tend to be right-wing. Also, people who have families tend to be right-wing. Either of those things (being successful or having a family) requires time, meaning there is less time available to edit wikipedia.
That's all you've got? Name-calling? You can't even try to make an argument? That says something very profound about your opinions - they are worthless.
You lose this round. Thanks for playing though, I had a lot of fun. Sometimes I have doubts that my worldview is the right one, and then I have a "discussion" with someone like you who holds the opposite view. It makes me feel good about myself to see that you are so inarticulate and intellectually vapid - childlike really (maybe you are a child?). Anyway, when I see that the people who disagree with me can't think or speak logically, I gives me confidence that I'm write and they are wrong.
So, thanks again (btw, I do NOT watch fox. But on the other hand, I realize that the BBC is even more bias, just in the opposite direction, so I don't watch them either. It is clear that I am better informed about the world than you are. Please take this as a challenge to educate yourself, mkay?)
Now to mention that the US's actions for the last fucking hundred years have fueled Middle East hatred of the US in the first place.
So let me just see if I've got this straight - 100 years ago the Middle East was a peaceful, happy paradise with children singing and free candy for everyone? But then the mean evil US did something and now we have terrorists?
Wow, you are a giant sucking black hole of ignorance.
The problem with the Middle East isn't the US, it's the culture of the Middle East. They have a culture of sexism and discrimination and hatred. Of course, no every individual buys into that culture. There are plenty of good arabs. But as a whole, their culture is terribly backwards and breeds hatred.
Since we're going back 100 years, tell me this: what is it that the US did to deserve the Barbary Pirates? That was really the US's first encounter with Muslim culture, so I could point to that and say that the Muslim's started it.
The point is, your hatred of the US is just an easy excuse so that you don't have to deal with the real problem - the culture. Contrast that with the culture of Japan or Germany. If there is anyone who has reason to hate the US, it should be Japan. And if they had the kind of culture that channeled that anger into violence then I'm sure we would have Japanese terrorists. But instead, they shed off the violence and now Japan and Germany are two of the richest most prosperous nations on Earth.
Basically all the wealth of the world is in the Middle East. They should own the rest of the world. But because their culture sucks they are pissing it all away. Not all of them actually. Dubai is a smart country that is doing something productive with its wealth.
And you military expertise comes from what? Wait, don't tell me, I already know - it comes from the dark recesses of your ass.
You're from the same group of people who said we could expect 10,000 casualties just getting to Baghdad and that the "siege" would take years - meaning it would be more than a year before a US soldier set foot in Baghdad.
And you're also from the same group of people who said that if we invaded, it would unite all the arab governments against us and set off WWIII. And you guys said that it would lead to almost daily terrorist attacks in the US, and we could expect a 9-11 size attack two or three times a year.
And let me guess, you also bought into the rumor that Bush had already signed an order to reinstate the draft and was just waiting for after the election to make that public. And I bet you ran to the voting booth in a blind panic, your fingers cold, sweaty, and shaking, praying to whatever god might be that you would never ever be drafted.
LOL! I feel really sorry for you. You're full of anger and fear and hatred and you live in a fantasy world where, if only we would be nice to the Islamic fascists then they would stop attacking us.
It's really kind of sad.
Especially considering how the would *could* work if you just didn't exist. We didn't have to go to war with Iraq. If we had been united then most likely Saddam would have backed down. He wasn't stupid (like you), he knew that he couldn't possibly win militarily. He could have gone into exile in France, and then he would be alive today living in luxury. So why didn't he take that option? Well mostly because there were legions of Americans idiots traveling to Iraq to be "human shields" and there were great packs of American idiots holding signs like "no blood for oil" (as if this has anything to do with oil). And seeing this, Saddam thought to himself, a: they wont attack, just like they didn't attack during the 8 years of Clinton and b: even if they do attack, they don't have the balls to finish it.
So basically, because of people like YOU, Saddam thought the US didn't have the balls to fight. And because he thought that, fighting became inevitable. If you didn't exist, then there wouldn't have been an Iraq war.
And just at what happened after the war started. One morning we woke up to see the news that Libya had volunteered to dismantle their WMD program. See how that works? Libya saw the Iraqi Army getting raped and very wisely said, "whoa, I don't want any of that!" If we were strong, then maybe Iran would back down too. But no, people like you make us look weak. Now we are probably going to have to fight Iran too. Nice going.
LOL. The US won the war. Just like Germany won its war with France and the North won its war against the South (US Civil War). Just because there are morons driving around with confederate flags on their trucks screaming "the south with rise again" that doesn't mean that the Civil War is still in progress. There are probably people in Tibet that hate the Chinese but they lost the war.
I don't know. I see it going the way that most websites are going, where you have to watch an ad before your content even loads. It's actually MORE annoying. Yesterday I was looking up movies on IMDB and clicking the "view trailer" link. I had to watch a BellSouth ad before each and every preview. It was so damn annoying.
I also have a couple of DVDs that play monumentous bullcrap before I can get to the top menu. It wont let me skip it. That annoys the hell out of me but of course I can't take the DVDs back since I've already opened them. I wish someone would put up a website with the names of those DVDs so I could avoid them.
Rule #1 of user interface design: The user is always right. If he does something wrong, thank him for pointing out a flaw in your interface.
uh huh. So I have a form with two radio buttons: * search titles * search author names
I have 10 users. 9 of them have no trouble. The 10th guy is totally lost. "I thought that a title was something that queen bestows on a knight! You should get rid of that and just have one radio button"
* yes, it was just last year that someone demanded I have a form with a single radio button.
According to you, my response should be to ignore the 9 users with brains and to apologize to the idiot - and then change the interface.
Science is always driven by "publish first or die" doctrine. If you come up with the constant before Hubble, that means you are more clever than Hubble himself and worthy of the "Oni Constant".
It's possible you missed my point. Good science - that's my point. How many observations do I have to make in order to call it good science?
Hubble knew that he needed a lot, on the order of 40. But the trend became apparent early on. So after only five or six observations, I could have published "the Oni Constant" and I would have been (lucky and) right. But that's not good science, any more than temperature observations over the last few days could be used to show a global climate trend.
Do you really not see what I'm getting at here? We want to encourage good science. We do not want people rushing to get a paper out just to beat someone else. We want people like Hubble to say, "ok, I need to do some more work to confirm this" We don't want him saying, "OMFG THESE TWO PICS ARE TEH RED!!!11 IM GONNA WRITE ABOUT IT."
In many ways, we do get a lot of that today. We get people rushing to tell the media that they have discovered cold fusion. Then later it has to be retracted. We don't want that. We want to give a scientist a tiny, tiny, reasonable amount of privacy so that they will do good work.
If I thought up the idea that maybe the universe is expanding and I applied for the telescope time to see if I'm right, give me a little bit of space to publish. That is totally reasonable.
"The United States will preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space... and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to US national interests."
Translation: we reserve the right to put weapons in space, and we will deny you the right to do so. Good on China for creating an intelligent solution! Hope they patented it.
No, your translation is still wrong and still shows your bias. Use the analogy of the UK and its access to the sea.
"We the UK will preserve our right to access the sea, and we will deny our adversaries capabilities that are hostile to us or designed to prevent us from accessing the sea"
Can you see what that means? Is the UK saying that France can't build fishing boats or even its own Navy? No! Of course not! And since I used the UK as an example and you (presumably) don't hate the UK, you are able to be reasonable and see what that statement means. It's really very simple. Access to the sea is important to the UK and they are damn-well going to defend their access to it. They are not going to let France blockade the English channel.
The USA says the exact same thing about space. Access to space is important to the US. They are going to defend that access. They are not going to allow China to deny them access to space.
Are they saying that China can't launch satellites? Are they saying that the US "owns" space? No, they aren't. It's only your bias that makes you read it that way.
I don't see how it's similar logic at all. A weather satellite is pointed at the Earth and takes pictures of the Earth. That's all it does. What is AccuWeather's contribution? Not a whole lot. AccuWeather just wanted the government to package up a business model and give it to them as a gift.
Compare with what I said about the HST. The HST looks at an area of the sky about the side of your thumb held at arms length. How does it know where to point? Well, some scientist comes up with an idea and submits a proposal asking to have the HST pointed at that particular thumb-sized area. What is the scientist's contribution? Well, he or she had to study past work, had to come up with a unique idea (a theory), had to articulate that idea in a proposal, and so on. I think that person deserves the right to publish a paper. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
The HST is of course named for Edwin Hubble. He is famous for his discovery that redshift increases with distance - thus, the universe is expanding. To make this discovery, he had to make detailed observations of MANY galaxies. It took him a lot of time and a lot of hard work to do that. The wiki page says his data set consisted of 46 galaxies. Undoubtedly, he looked at other galaxies but was unable to use that data (maybe his instruments were not sensitive enough to determine their redshift). Undoubtedly, there were nights where cloud cover prevented him from working. Undoubtedly, he ended up with some smudged images and had to repeat some observations.
The point is, it took him a LONG time to get those 46 galaxies. But having 46 galaxies gives him a good solid trend line. What Hubble did is called good science, but it took time. For all his hard work, he is famous, and he deserve some fame.
Now imagine that every time he made an observation it was immediately published on a website. Now I come along and look at his first 10 galaxies and publish a paper titled "The Oni Conjecture, the Universe is Expanding."
Now suddenly, *I'm* famous. And instead of "The Hubble Constant" kids in school are learning about "The Oni Constant." And Edwin Hubble would be remembered for "having gathered additional data to confirm the Oni Constant." Does any of that seem fair to you??
in the light of its stated policy to achieve hegemony in space
wow, does it hurt to be this big of an idiot? I mean, I can only guess that you're in constant pain or something, because you really are an enormous, drooling idiot.
The US space policy has two parts: 1. space is important to us 2. we will not allow anyone to deny us access to space
You, being a complete blathering idiot, have somehow interpreted that as: 1. we ownerz teh space 2. we will not let U into teh space ha ha, suck it!
I'm sorry that you have chosen to misinterpret the policy. I understand that the media news sources you have access to are just as retarded as you, and probably facilitated your misinterpretation, but that's no excuse. The simple fact is, the US policy is not about a hegemony, nor is it about denying anyone else access. It is simply about stating what is important to the US.
Here's an analogy: Open access to the sea is important to Brittan. Brittan will not allow anyone else to deny it access to the sea.
To me, that seems reasonable and intelligent. Of course, if I was predisposed to hate the UK, then I might intentionally misinterpret that as saying that they thought they owned the sea. But I guess the difference between you and me is that I don't make those kinds of misinterpretations, because I'm not an idiot.
The data should be public but I would just add one small caveat. There should be a substantial delay in releasing the data in order to give the sponsor the first go at publishing it.
It's the same thing that they do with Hubble images. If you take all the time necessary to write a (lengthy) proposal to have the HST take a picture, then you patiently wait (perhaps years) for your turn in line, then finally you get your image - but some other random shmoe throws together a paper describing it, well, how much would that suck? You did all the leg work, you should be able to publish and get the recognition.
After that of course, it's fine to make the data public.
Re:Exit Polls are Inaccurate
on
Who won?
·
· Score: 0
leaving the poor Democrats with hanging chads
Speaking of hanging chads, I saw the guy who invented that kind of voting machine on CNN and he said that if the machine is used properly, it is IMPOSSIBLE to get a hanging chad. Hell, you can take the ballot and wave it in the air and chads will fall out.
So the question is, how did we get all those hanging chads?? Easy. If you try to stuff two or three ballots into the machine then sure enough, you get hanging chads.
So that's what happened in Florida in 2000. Democrat poll workers in Democrat districts gave two or thee ballots to certain voters, along with a wink, wink, nudge nudge. The result was that some of those ballots were left with hanging chads because, try as they may, the cheaters couldn't push the stylus through three ballots at the same time. Aw, shucks!
Where's the book about how the Democrats tried to steal the election? Where are the books about how in some Democrat counties they had more votes cast than registered voters? What about all the felons and dead people who just happened to be registered as Democrats?
Oh right, I just remember, we don't care about cheating unless we think we were cheated. How silly of me.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, they do need to be recycled. I actually don't know where I would take them. I'm not sure they *can* be recycled in my area.
I just know how this is going to turn out:
*ring* *ring*
Customer: Hi, I'm having a problem getting apache to start automatically when my server boots.
Tech Support: Oh, apache can't do that. You should switch to IIS. It will start automatically.
http://www.wellingtongrey.net/miscellanea/archive/ 2006-12-18-why-go.html
much better than I can explain it.
If they accept evolution, then the entire point of Christianity is called into question.
Only because *they* (the christians) have backed themselves into that corner. You know, the bible also says that god laid the foundation of the Earth, and it makes references to the four corners of the Earth etc. Well, obviously the Earth must be flat right? If it were a sphere then the bible would say, "god created the core of the Earth."
So why don't christians believe that the Earth is flat (and I'm sure that some do, but those have got to be less than 0.001%). The majority of christians look at bible passages about foundations and corners and they accept that these things are metaphors. Just like how jesus said, "I am the vine, you are the branches" it's a metaphor. He wasn't actually a tree.
But for some reason, Christians have painted themselves into a corner on the creation thing. They could have taken it as a metaphor like they do with everything else and then we wouldn't have this stupid, waste of time evolution vs. ID war.
I just don't get it.
And btw, while I'm ranting, I know that Richard Dawkins is an intelligent and articulate scientist. I've read two of his books. But the guy is a jerk and I think he actually makes things worse by ridiculing creationists. Contrast Dawkins with Carl Sagan. In his book _The Demon-Haunted World_ Sagan makes mention of his believe that even when you are dealing with people who are wrong and ignorant, you need to treat them civilly because doing otherwise escalates things. Dawkins should learn that. Calling IDers idiots (if though they are) just makes them feel all warm and martyry inside and encourages them.
RIAA Will Drop Cases If You Point Out That An IP Address Isn't A Person
Earlier this month the inability to prove who actually did the file sharing caused the RIAA to drop a case in Oklahoma and now it looks like the same defense has worked in a California case as well. In both cases, though, as soon as the RIAA realized the person was using this defense, they dropped the case, rather than lose it and set a precedent showing they really don't have the unequivocal evidence they claim they do.
printing up a quick wireless security tutorial on a printer not linkable to me
you mean like for example *their* printer?
I did that to some AF guys once. I printed a page with orders to call me in giant letters. They were pretty good natured about it and actually appreciated that I was helping them.
because of the cult of the dead cow, loftcrack, back orifice, port 31337, etc. etc.
It's part of a culture that goes back to The Beginning.
What's the saying from roots? If you don't know where you came from you wont know where you're going.
I do not have any audio/vibro "you have mail" announcement enabled (nor do I on my desktop computer's email app).
same here, and I find that I'm a lot more productive at work now. I put on some music and I think about what I'm coding. When I need a break, I flip over to my email (or check a website like slashdot) but I do it on my terms. If my boss emails me, then I get a popup. At home, I have an ambient orb with a serial interface and a script that makes it flash red if she emails me. So otherwise, I don't have to worry that there might be an email out there that I haven't seen.
It's not that hard (in my job and life) to manage stress.
The deal was buy one get one free, and that's exactly what happened.
Of all the lawyeristic ways of looking at this issue, yours is the dumbest. If it's buys one get one free, please point to the one you bought.
A price was agreed upon by both parties.
right. And that price was, "buy one get one free"
However, due to a computer error *you* didn't pay the price that was agreed upon.
I suspect it's as simple as intellectuals being more left wing
And the other side of the coin: people who are successful in a capitalist economy tend to be right-wing. Also, people who have families tend to be right-wing. Either of those things (being successful or having a family) requires time, meaning there is less time available to edit wikipedia.
I thought it might be helpful to quote your entire "contribution" to this discussion:
9 67062
9 67124 ... don't you raging, drooling Bush lovers understand?
9 88134
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=221596&cid=17
You're an idiot. Worse, you're a clueless Bush idiot.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=221596&cid=17
What part
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=221596&cid=17
Try reading something other than the taglines under the commentators on Fox News sometime.
That's all you've got? Name-calling? You can't even try to make an argument? That says something very profound about your opinions - they are worthless.
You lose this round. Thanks for playing though, I had a lot of fun. Sometimes I have doubts that my worldview is the right one, and then I have a "discussion" with someone like you who holds the opposite view. It makes me feel good about myself to see that you are so inarticulate and intellectually vapid - childlike really (maybe you are a child?). Anyway, when I see that the people who disagree with me can't think or speak logically, I gives me confidence that I'm write and they are wrong.
So, thanks again (btw, I do NOT watch fox. But on the other hand, I realize that the BBC is even more bias, just in the opposite direction, so I don't watch them either. It is clear that I am better informed about the world than you are. Please take this as a challenge to educate yourself, mkay?)
Now to mention that the US's actions for the last fucking hundred years have fueled Middle East hatred of the US in the first place.
e -Shipwreck-Enslavement/dp/1602390428
So let me just see if I've got this straight - 100 years ago the Middle East was a peaceful, happy paradise with children singing and free candy for everyone? But then the mean evil US did something and now we have terrorists?
Wow, you are a giant sucking black hole of ignorance.
The problem with the Middle East isn't the US, it's the culture of the Middle East. They have a culture of sexism and discrimination and hatred. Of course, no every individual buys into that culture. There are plenty of good arabs. But as a whole, their culture is terribly backwards and breeds hatred.
Since we're going back 100 years, tell me this: what is it that the US did to deserve the Barbary Pirates? That was really the US's first encounter with Muslim culture, so I could point to that and say that the Muslim's started it.
http://www.amazon.com/Sufferings-Africa-Incredibl
">Here's another great example of Muslim culture *before* they had any contact with the US
Another good book is the Kite Runner (maybe I've giving you too much credit in assuming you can read)
The point is, your hatred of the US is just an easy excuse so that you don't have to deal with the real problem - the culture. Contrast that with the culture of Japan or Germany. If there is anyone who has reason to hate the US, it should be Japan. And if they had the kind of culture that channeled that anger into violence then I'm sure we would have Japanese terrorists. But instead, they shed off the violence and now Japan and Germany are two of the richest most prosperous nations on Earth.
Basically all the wealth of the world is in the Middle East. They should own the rest of the world. But because their culture sucks they are pissing it all away. Not all of them actually. Dubai is a smart country that is doing something productive with its wealth.
And you military expertise comes from what? Wait, don't tell me, I already know - it comes from the dark recesses of your ass.
You're from the same group of people who said we could expect 10,000 casualties just getting to Baghdad and that the "siege" would take years - meaning it would be more than a year before a US soldier set foot in Baghdad.
And you're also from the same group of people who said that if we invaded, it would unite all the arab governments against us and set off WWIII. And you guys said that it would lead to almost daily terrorist attacks in the US, and we could expect a 9-11 size attack two or three times a year.
And let me guess, you also bought into the rumor that Bush had already signed an order to reinstate the draft and was just waiting for after the election to make that public. And I bet you ran to the voting booth in a blind panic, your fingers cold, sweaty, and shaking, praying to whatever god might be that you would never ever be drafted.
LOL! I feel really sorry for you. You're full of anger and fear and hatred and you live in a fantasy world where, if only we would be nice to the Islamic fascists then they would stop attacking us.
It's really kind of sad.
Especially considering how the would *could* work if you just didn't exist. We didn't have to go to war with Iraq. If we had been united then most likely Saddam would have backed down. He wasn't stupid (like you), he knew that he couldn't possibly win militarily. He could have gone into exile in France, and then he would be alive today living in luxury. So why didn't he take that option? Well mostly because there were legions of Americans idiots traveling to Iraq to be "human shields" and there were great packs of American idiots holding signs like "no blood for oil" (as if this has anything to do with oil). And seeing this, Saddam thought to himself, a: they wont attack, just like they didn't attack during the 8 years of Clinton and b: even if they do attack, they don't have the balls to finish it.
So basically, because of people like YOU, Saddam thought the US didn't have the balls to fight. And because he thought that, fighting became inevitable. If you didn't exist, then there wouldn't have been an Iraq war.
And just at what happened after the war started. One morning we woke up to see the news that Libya had volunteered to dismantle their WMD program. See how that works? Libya saw the Iraqi Army getting raped and very wisely said, "whoa, I don't want any of that!" If we were strong, then maybe Iran would back down too. But no, people like you make us look weak. Now we are probably going to have to fight Iran too. Nice going.
Of course the issue is moot since WinFS will be released on the 43rd day of Lovermber in the year Two thousand and flibbity quard.
oh that sucks. I'm going to be in the nova square sector getting my makleb polished on that day.
That word is WHY the US lost the war
LOL. The US won the war. Just like Germany won its war with France and the North won its war against the South (US Civil War). Just because there are morons driving around with confederate flags on their trucks screaming "the south with rise again" that doesn't mean that the Civil War is still in progress. There are probably people in Tibet that hate the Chinese but they lost the war.
I don't know. I see it going the way that most websites are going, where you have to watch an ad before your content even loads. It's actually MORE annoying. Yesterday I was looking up movies on IMDB and clicking the "view trailer" link. I had to watch a BellSouth ad before each and every preview. It was so damn annoying.
I also have a couple of DVDs that play monumentous bullcrap before I can get to the top menu. It wont let me skip it. That annoys the hell out of me but of course I can't take the DVDs back since I've already opened them. I wish someone would put up a website with the names of those DVDs so I could avoid them.
You mean paying more for something that will take longer to download than going to the rental store?
From the f*cking headline: Amazon & Tivo Take on Netflix
I wasn't aware that Netflix had rental stores
Rule #1 of user interface design: The user is always right. If he does something wrong, thank him for pointing out a flaw in your interface.
uh huh. So I have a form with two radio buttons:
* search titles
* search author names
I have 10 users. 9 of them have no trouble. The 10th guy is totally lost. "I thought that a title was something that queen bestows on a knight! You should get rid of that and just have one radio button"
* yes, it was just last year that someone demanded I have a form with a single radio button.
According to you, my response should be to ignore the 9 users with brains and to apologize to the idiot - and then change the interface.
I don't think so.
Science is always driven by "publish first or die" doctrine. If you come up with the constant before Hubble, that means you are more clever than Hubble himself and worthy of the "Oni Constant".
It's possible you missed my point. Good science - that's my point. How many observations do I have to make in order to call it good science?
Hubble knew that he needed a lot, on the order of 40. But the trend became apparent early on. So after only five or six observations, I could have published "the Oni Constant" and I would have been (lucky and) right. But that's not good science, any more than temperature observations over the last few days could be used to show a global climate trend.
Do you really not see what I'm getting at here? We want to encourage good science. We do not want people rushing to get a paper out just to beat someone else. We want people like Hubble to say, "ok, I need to do some more work to confirm this" We don't want him saying, "OMFG THESE TWO PICS ARE TEH RED!!!11 IM GONNA WRITE ABOUT IT."
In many ways, we do get a lot of that today. We get people rushing to tell the media that they have discovered cold fusion. Then later it has to be retracted. We don't want that. We want to give a scientist a tiny, tiny, reasonable amount of privacy so that they will do good work.
If I thought up the idea that maybe the universe is expanding and I applied for the telescope time to see if I'm right, give me a little bit of space to publish. That is totally reasonable.
"The United States will preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space... and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to US national interests."
Translation: we reserve the right to put weapons in space, and we will deny you the right to do so. Good on China for creating an intelligent solution! Hope they patented it.
No, your translation is still wrong and still shows your bias. Use the analogy of the UK and its access to the sea.
"We the UK will preserve our right to access the sea, and we will deny our adversaries capabilities that are hostile to us or designed to prevent us from accessing the sea"
Can you see what that means? Is the UK saying that France can't build fishing boats or even its own Navy? No! Of course not! And since I used the UK as an example and you (presumably) don't hate the UK, you are able to be reasonable and see what that statement means. It's really very simple. Access to the sea is important to the UK and they are damn-well going to defend their access to it. They are not going to let France blockade the English channel.
The USA says the exact same thing about space. Access to space is important to the US. They are going to defend that access. They are not going to allow China to deny them access to space.
Are they saying that China can't launch satellites? Are they saying that the US "owns" space? No, they aren't. It's only your bias that makes you read it that way.
Don't forget that, using similar logic
I don't see how it's similar logic at all. A weather satellite is pointed at the Earth and takes pictures of the Earth. That's all it does. What is AccuWeather's contribution? Not a whole lot. AccuWeather just wanted the government to package up a business model and give it to them as a gift.
Compare with what I said about the HST. The HST looks at an area of the sky about the side of your thumb held at arms length. How does it know where to point? Well, some scientist comes up with an idea and submits a proposal asking to have the HST pointed at that particular thumb-sized area. What is the scientist's contribution? Well, he or she had to study past work, had to come up with a unique idea (a theory), had to articulate that idea in a proposal, and so on. I think that person deserves the right to publish a paper. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
The HST is of course named for Edwin Hubble. He is famous for his discovery that redshift increases with distance - thus, the universe is expanding. To make this discovery, he had to make detailed observations of MANY galaxies. It took him a lot of time and a lot of hard work to do that. The wiki page says his data set consisted of 46 galaxies. Undoubtedly, he looked at other galaxies but was unable to use that data (maybe his instruments were not sensitive enough to determine their redshift). Undoubtedly, there were nights where cloud cover prevented him from working. Undoubtedly, he ended up with some smudged images and had to repeat some observations.
The point is, it took him a LONG time to get those 46 galaxies. But having 46 galaxies gives him a good solid trend line. What Hubble did is called good science, but it took time. For all his hard work, he is famous, and he deserve some fame.
Now imagine that every time he made an observation it was immediately published on a website. Now I come along and look at his first 10 galaxies and publish a paper titled "The Oni Conjecture, the Universe is Expanding."
Now suddenly, *I'm* famous. And instead of "The Hubble Constant" kids in school are learning about "The Oni Constant." And Edwin Hubble would be remembered for "having gathered additional data to confirm the Oni Constant." Does any of that seem fair to you??
in the light of its stated policy to achieve hegemony in space
wow, does it hurt to be this big of an idiot? I mean, I can only guess that you're in constant pain or something, because you really are an enormous, drooling idiot.
The US space policy has two parts:
1. space is important to us
2. we will not allow anyone to deny us access to space
You, being a complete blathering idiot, have somehow interpreted that as:
1. we ownerz teh space
2. we will not let U into teh space ha ha, suck it!
I'm sorry that you have chosen to misinterpret the policy. I understand that the media news sources you have access to are just as retarded as you, and probably facilitated your misinterpretation, but that's no excuse. The simple fact is, the US policy is not about a hegemony, nor is it about denying anyone else access. It is simply about stating what is important to the US.
Here's an analogy: Open access to the sea is important to Brittan. Brittan will not allow anyone else to deny it access to the sea.
To me, that seems reasonable and intelligent. Of course, if I was predisposed to hate the UK, then I might intentionally misinterpret that as saying that they thought they owned the sea. But I guess the difference between you and me is that I don't make those kinds of misinterpretations, because I'm not an idiot.
The data should be public but I would just add one small caveat. There should be a substantial delay in releasing the data in order to give the sponsor the first go at publishing it.
It's the same thing that they do with Hubble images. If you take all the time necessary to write a (lengthy) proposal to have the HST take a picture, then you patiently wait (perhaps years) for your turn in line, then finally you get your image - but some other random shmoe throws together a paper describing it, well, how much would that suck? You did all the leg work, you should be able to publish and get the recognition.
After that of course, it's fine to make the data public.
leaving the poor Democrats with hanging chads
Speaking of hanging chads, I saw the guy who invented that kind of voting machine on CNN and he said that if the machine is used properly, it is IMPOSSIBLE to get a hanging chad. Hell, you can take the ballot and wave it in the air and chads will fall out.
So the question is, how did we get all those hanging chads?? Easy. If you try to stuff two or three ballots into the machine then sure enough, you get hanging chads.
So that's what happened in Florida in 2000. Democrat poll workers in Democrat districts gave two or thee ballots to certain voters, along with a wink, wink, nudge nudge. The result was that some of those ballots were left with hanging chads because, try as they may, the cheaters couldn't push the stylus through three ballots at the same time. Aw, shucks!
Where's the book about how the Democrats tried to steal the election? Where are the books about how in some Democrat counties they had more votes cast than registered voters? What about all the felons and dead people who just happened to be registered as Democrats?
Oh right, I just remember, we don't care about cheating unless we think we were cheated. How silly of me.