Yeah, WTF is up with this, anyway? When I bought my first computer over 6 years ago from Gateway, they forced me to buy MS Office with it. I didn't get a choice! It came with Windows 95 and Office 95 and if I didn't like that, tough.
Back then, I didn't care, but now, it pisses me off...
We must start solving the very real issues that face the world today or WWIII will happen. The primary issues are Overpopulation, coupled with the problem of food and water supply, and the substantial damage being done to the environment.
At the risk of burning some karma, let me be the first say "Bullshit." What the hell makes you think we are responsible for solving the world's problems? We continue to send $Billions in taxpayer money to third world countries, and for what? So those idiots can continue pumping out babies, spreading disease, and refusing to grow their own food? With the US taxpayers footing the bill they have no incentive to better their situation. Look at the spread of AIDS in Africa, for example! We've tried to warn them. We've bought them condoms, we've urged their government to teach them, but they don't listen. They keep spreading it to one another. They obviously don't care about themselves, so why the fuck should we care about them?
Food riots? Widespread cannabalism? Not in any civilized countries.
It's time to end third world dependence on the United States. Send in huge numbers of specialists and spend a couple of years teaching these idiots to grow their own food, use birth control, and curb the spread of disease. Once they've been taught and are capable of surviving, leave them to their own devices. If they fail, then I guess they'll have to figure their own way out of the situation, because I'm getting sick and fucking tired of supporting everyone. It is NOT our job to take care of them. Period.
all regular parisioners had personalized contribution envelopes, with the expected contribution explicitly based on income. I found this strange
As do I. I attended a Catholic church the first 16 years of my life and never saw anything of the sort. It must vary based on the individual church, but I for one would not attend any church that required monetary contributions, much less some % of my income.
They're all gone, along with Control Data Corporation, Cray, and the commercial market for supercomputers.
Tell that to IBM...
Set up a Beowulf cluster of a thousand rack-mounted 1U servers
Clusters have their own set of issues and problems.
This is the fallacy of "supercomputer centers" and "supercomputer networks". You don't want 1% of a supercomputer; you want a machine of your own.
But everyone can't have a machine of their own that processes huge parallel jobs. You have to buy one, and share it between many users. So while you may only get 1% of a supercomputer's time, during that 1% of time you can use 10-100% of it's power. Considering the type of jobs we're talking about, that's a hell of a lot better than having a regular desktop crunching 100% of the time. It could take months to complete a job that could be done in an hour on a supercomputer, and waiting months for each step during your research would really suck.
The fact remains, supercomputers are not dead. They're still widely in use and people are still buying them for good reason.
Well, in actuality, Catholics, just like many christian religons, do require money from their sheep^H^H^H^H^Hmembers. It's called a tithe. 10% of gross (not net).
Obviously, your ass has never been to a Catholic church. They pass around a collection plate like most Christian religions. It's completely anonymous and you only contribute if you want to. Nobody has any clue if you never give the church a single penny, so it's sure as fuck not required.
Yes, they may try to make you feel a little guilty if you don't contribute. But to say it's required is FUD and I can't believe someone modded you up.
). Ack, I just want a nice PERMANENT (and cheap!) email address.
So spend $35 a year on your own domain and forward your email anywhere you want. If you switch providers, change your forwarding and nobody will even know the difference.
It's so simple, so cheap, why don't more people do it? Whatever@yourownname.com... email addresses don't get much better than that, do they?
Now just throw it in a lunch-box style case with an integrated LCD (doesn't have to be great quality, I always have the TV out) and a hide-away keyboard and pointing device of some kind and I'm sold.
Smaller system units are great, but if you're gonna go that route you may as well make it a true portable.
There are devices like that on the market... They're called lap something. Lap-computers? Lap-processors? Whatever. Anyway, they're all the rage. I'm sure you could find one just about anywhere.
Drug dealer files lawsuit against drug supplier for selling him some bad weed, and some cocaine "padded" with baking soda and talcum.
This may be funny, but not too long ago somebody was selling "really good grass" over the Internet. Some lady bought some and when he delivered lawn clippings instead of marijuana, she sued him and won. Really.
. Don't want your phone number published in the phone book or given out in directory assistance? That is an option that they charge for and on a monthly basis. Yes, you have to pay to prevent getting dinner time calls for a motor club.
I pay that fee every month and it pisses me off every time. What's worse, the phone company itself (QWest) calls me no less than once every couple of months trying to sell me caller ID servce that I already subscribe to! I tell them to stop, but they don't care, they call anyway. Bastards. I hope there is a special place in hell for each and every one of them.
It could be worse, though. I've had a particular alarm system company come to my house no less than 7 times in the past 8 months. Every time they claim they're giving away 5 free alarm systems, a $1500 value, just for a "test market." Every time I've told them I'm not interested and to leave me the hell alone but I still see them going door to door in the neighborhood, and they still come to my house to bother me. What's worse is they're full of shit: They'll give a free alarm system to anyone who wants one because you take it up the ass in their monitoring fees ($35 a month! Basically you're just financing the system.) And every time they lie to me: "Oh no. We only have 5 free systems. That's it." -- "Are you telling me that if I gave you the names of 10 people who would sign up right now if they got a free system, you would tell 5 of them 'too bad'?" -- "That's right." BS. Their $1500 system can be bought brand new from the manufacturer for $200.
Like hell they don't! Outlook has a paper-clip for crying out loud, and it says "Attachment" on it. People know what attachments are. They just think there is a conspiracy by the geeks in I.T. to keep them from seeing the cool little programs. One lady opened up an attachment and unleashed a virus on her computer. We fixed it all up and told her, "Now, don't do this again." An hour later she got another copy of it and ran it again! Her excuse? "I know you said not to run it, but I wanted to see if this one was different."
People are just plain stupid when it comes to computers. You can have a highly intelligent person who, when put in front of a computer, turns into a complete dumbshit incapable of following simple directions. They UNDERSTAND what we're talking about. They just don't listen.
I'm afraid, though, that any solution would be difficult to implement. Sure, a lot of people would be happy to use the.sex domain. But there are also a lot of folks who take a perverse delight in inflicting porn upon those who are offended by it.
That's why you mandate it with a law. "If you're going to distribute sexual material online, you MUST use a.sex or.xxx domain. Period." Define "sexual material" explicitely and punish those that don't abide by the law.
I'm usually not into new laws, but this benefits everyone. The adult sites still get to distribute their material, their customers can find them with ease, and people who don't want their children/employees looking at that crap can block it easily. Plus, with porn blocking being simple and foolproof, you could do away with those AdultCheck systems. There's no way a child will stumble across a.sex or.xxx domain by accident if their parents have clicked "block adult domains" in Windows.
Even something as disgusting (note, my personal opinion, I can't speak for all) as child pornography.
What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you giving ANY credit to those sick perverts?
If you're talking about an issue that may offend someone and you want to be courteous or sensitive to their feelings, you say "this is only my opinion." You're essentially being sensitive to the pedophiles who might read your post: "No offense intended if you get off on naked children."
Have a little backbone. It's not your opinion, it's the truth. Child porn is DISGUSTING. The people who traffic in it are sick fucking perverts that should be locked up for life. If some pedophile finds these comments offense, TOUGH SHIT.
Because she was told 20 times not to open strange attachments by the folks in the I.T. department.
Because she should have had a fscking clue when the attachment said something to the effect of, "Hi. I send file for your look. What you think?"
Because she was told 20 times not to open strange attachments. (I already said this, but it's worth repeating)
At my last employer, we told people on a regular basis, "DO NOT OPEN STRANGE ATTACHMENTS. If you don't know who sent the message or why, delete it or call us!" And every single idiot who got an attachment opened it anyway, then wondered why we became angry with them. Did they not read the message we sent out about this JUST YESTERDAY? The answer is always the same: "Yeah, I read it, but the message said the attachment was a naked picture of Britney Spears and I really, really wanted to see that."
We solved the problem, though: All attachments from outside the company are filtered & most are blocked.
This means, that for every user that is connecting TO (not FROM) the XP box via a Remote Desktop application, you MUST have a seperate windows license UNLESS you are using Windows Remote Desktop or Netmeeting, etc.
It's still monopolistic and unenforceable. Quite frankly, Microsoft can go fuck a goat. If I used XP (I don't), I would use my own choice of remote control application without the extra XP licenses, just like I now have multiple people within my home using the same license of their other products. Do they really think I'm going to spend a few hundred bucks for everyone in my house who might want to use Word some day? Like hell! The software I buy is on a "per household" license whether Microsoft likes it or not. I'll use it on as many PCs within my own home as I want. If that means I have to download some extra reg codes to get them to talk to each other, so be it, but it will be a cold day in hell when I buy 5 copies of any software so my wife and children can use it.
Whether you agree of not once you hit i agree and install the product it isnt an invasion of your privacy as you have agreed to it.
Sorry, but you're wrong. It's still an invasion of my privacy, it doesn't matter whether Microsoft thinks I agreed to it. Imagine if you installed a hidden camera in a restroom and then posted a 20 page agreement, in small print, on the front of the restroom. The agreement starts off with limits & liabilities in using the restroom, states what you are and are not allowed to do in the restroom - all in legalese, of course - and somewhere in the middle says, "You agree to release us of any and all liability if someone should post a picture of you taking a crap in this bathroom on the Internet."
When someone runs across a picture of themselves doing their business and sues you, who the hell do you think is going to win? Do you think the courts are going to tell the victim, "Well, he warned you. You should have known better." Hell no. They're going to lock you up and throw away the key.
The ONLY - and I mean ONLY - way this sort of thing (Both the restroom camera example and collecting personal information via spyware) is going to stand up in court (both the legal courts and the court of public opinion) is if a pop-up box comes up during install and/or use of the software proclaiming, "NOTICE! We are sending data about your web surfing habits back to (company name). If you want to stop this from happening, click the REMOVE button below." To make this right, you've got to be bold about it. A big bold sign on your restroom door that says "You absolutely positively will have your photograph taken while doing your business and that photograph may be posted on the Internet at our discretion" would probably release you of liability, depending on the location of the restroom. Hiding it in an EULA doesn't cut it.
When have Microsoft ever actually included spyware in products ? (and dont talk to me about Media Player - its been in the user agreement for a long time)
Oh, I see... Spyware is OK as long as they bury the disclosure somewhere in a 20 page EULA that they know damn well nobody will read. To think that all this time I thought there was something wrong about invading people's privacy...
Several apps dynamically link to the same library. You try to update one of the apps, and it includes an update to that library.
This should never be a problem anymore. Why? Disk space. Nobody needs to link to shared libraries when disk space is so cheap. I've had it with troubleshooting two pieces of software where the end result is copying the different versions of the same DLL from/windows/system to each of the program directories. Especially when it's only a stupid 100k dll and I've got 80GB of free drive space. This sort of BS drives me insane.
Anyone with an extra $50 burning that large a hole in their pocket should feel free to contact me and I'll give you a few worthy charities who could more deservingly use the cash.
More deservingly? You've got to be fscking kidding me. Are you saying I'm less deserving of my money because I earned it myself? Nobody decides who is more deserving of my money but me, and here's my position: *I* am the most deserving of my money. Why? I EARN IT.
Deserving is defined as follows: To earn by service; to be worthy of (something due, either good or evil); to merit; to be entitled to; as, the laborer deserves his wages; a work of value deserves praise.
So, tell me again how a charity is more deserving of my $50 than I am? The charity didn't earn it by service. The people whom the charity are giving it to didn't earn it. There was no work of value by anyone but me, so how can anyone but me deserve the money? The answer is, they don't. It's very nice if you're willing to give them money out of the goodness of your heart, but they don't deserve a single dime. Period.
The USA was once full of people who worked their asses off to own nice things. Now it's full of people who don't do shit yet believe they are deserving of a luxurious American lifestyle. Their front-men are people like you, and the people who believe this "I deserve what you earned" mantra are part of what is tearing our country apart.
In closing, take your anti-American bullshit elsewhere. We don't need it here.
some modern commercial aircraft can reach 40,000 feet on a good day
SOME commercial aircraft? Try most. Any decent aircraft can climb to 40,000 feet. The Cessna Citation X can climb to 51k. You make it sound like 40k feet is a really big deal, but the truth is that any business jet worth it's weight can climb to that height.
Those Russian engineers have a lot more experience in manned space flight than the US. They hold ALL the records for duration, ALL records related to space stations and have flown many more cosmonauts than the US has flown astronauts.
Damn right. While these safety jokes may be funny, they don't hold an ounce of truth. The Russians have been doing this much longer than we have and have an excellent safety record. I'd hop on a Russian rocket without even thinking about it.
And no, I am not a Russian; I am a fifth generation American who is deeply frustrated by the US space program.
As am I. As is most of America. Look at the cover of Popular Science this month... Nerds aren't the only ones upset over what has become of NASA.
To this now the russians are the crazy capitalists and it's us with the draconian anti-freedom laws (DMCA).
I was thinking the exact same thing. The Russians get it. Why the hell don't our leaders run with this? It's a huge idea and will make millions, not to mention the awesome benefits to technology. We piss and moan about people like Tito coming to the ISS while the Russians are making money. The next guy they're taking up has gone through a year of training and is paying millions to be an active crew member. He's going to perform experiments and act as a functional member of the crew.
There are more than enough people willing and able to pay for things like this. What the hell is wrong with the people running my beloved USA?
Slashdot Mirror
fuck you. idiot shits like you dont deserve a cognative response.
As opposed to you, a witty, intelligent, and brave person with the capability to form said response?
By the way, it's 'cognitive'. Smart ass.
AND MS Works
Yeah, WTF is up with this, anyway? When I bought my first computer over 6 years ago from Gateway, they forced me to buy MS Office with it. I didn't get a choice! It came with Windows 95 and Office 95 and if I didn't like that, tough.
Back then, I didn't care, but now, it pisses me off...
We must start solving the very real issues that face the world today or WWIII will happen. The primary issues are Overpopulation, coupled with the problem of food and water supply, and the substantial damage being done to the environment.
At the risk of burning some karma, let me be the first say "Bullshit." What the hell makes you think we are responsible for solving the world's problems? We continue to send $Billions in taxpayer money to third world countries, and for what? So those idiots can continue pumping out babies, spreading disease, and refusing to grow their own food? With the US taxpayers footing the bill they have no incentive to better their situation. Look at the spread of AIDS in Africa, for example! We've tried to warn them. We've bought them condoms, we've urged their government to teach them, but they don't listen. They keep spreading it to one another. They obviously don't care about themselves, so why the fuck should we care about them?
Food riots? Widespread cannabalism? Not in any civilized countries.
It's time to end third world dependence on the United States. Send in huge numbers of specialists and spend a couple of years teaching these idiots to grow their own food, use birth control, and curb the spread of disease. Once they've been taught and are capable of surviving, leave them to their own devices. If they fail, then I guess they'll have to figure their own way out of the situation, because I'm getting sick and fucking tired of supporting everyone. It is NOT our job to take care of them. Period.
all regular parisioners had personalized contribution envelopes, with the expected contribution explicitly based on income. I found this strange
As do I. I attended a Catholic church the first 16 years of my life and never saw anything of the sort. It must vary based on the individual church, but I for one would not attend any church that required monetary contributions, much less some % of my income.
They're all gone, along with Control Data Corporation, Cray, and the commercial market for supercomputers.
Tell that to IBM...
Set up a Beowulf cluster of a thousand rack-mounted 1U servers
Clusters have their own set of issues and problems.
This is the fallacy of "supercomputer centers" and "supercomputer networks". You don't want 1% of a supercomputer; you want a machine of your own.
But everyone can't have a machine of their own that processes huge parallel jobs. You have to buy one, and share it between many users. So while you may only get 1% of a supercomputer's time, during that 1% of time you can use 10-100% of it's power. Considering the type of jobs we're talking about, that's a hell of a lot better than having a regular desktop crunching 100% of the time. It could take months to complete a job that could be done in an hour on a supercomputer, and waiting months for each step during your research would really suck.
The fact remains, supercomputers are not dead. They're still widely in use and people are still buying them for good reason.
Well, in actuality, Catholics, just like many christian religons, do require money from their sheep^H^H^H^H^Hmembers. It's called a tithe. 10% of gross (not net).
Obviously, your ass has never been to a Catholic church. They pass around a collection plate like most Christian religions. It's completely anonymous and you only contribute if you want to. Nobody has any clue if you never give the church a single penny, so it's sure as fuck not required.
Yes, they may try to make you feel a little guilty if you don't contribute. But to say it's required is FUD and I can't believe someone modded you up.
). Ack, I just want a nice PERMANENT (and cheap!) email address.
... email addresses don't get much better than that, do they?
So spend $35 a year on your own domain and forward your email anywhere you want. If you switch providers, change your forwarding and nobody will even know the difference.
It's so simple, so cheap, why don't more people do it? Whatever@yourownname.com
Now just throw it in a lunch-box style case with an integrated LCD (doesn't have to be great quality, I always have the TV out) and a hide-away keyboard and pointing device of some kind and I'm sold.
Smaller system units are great, but if you're gonna go that route you may as well make it a true portable.
There are devices like that on the market... They're called lap something. Lap-computers? Lap-processors? Whatever. Anyway, they're all the rage. I'm sure you could find one just about anywhere.
Drug dealer files lawsuit against drug supplier for selling him some bad weed, and some cocaine "padded" with baking soda and talcum.
This may be funny, but not too long ago somebody was selling "really good grass" over the Internet. Some lady bought some and when he delivered lawn clippings instead of marijuana, she sued him and won. Really.
. Don't want your phone number published in the phone book or given out in directory assistance? That is an option that they charge for and on a monthly basis. Yes, you have to pay to prevent getting dinner time calls for a motor club.
I pay that fee every month and it pisses me off every time. What's worse, the phone company itself (QWest) calls me no less than once every couple of months trying to sell me caller ID servce that I already subscribe to! I tell them to stop, but they don't care, they call anyway. Bastards. I hope there is a special place in hell for each and every one of them.
It could be worse, though. I've had a particular alarm system company come to my house no less than 7 times in the past 8 months. Every time they claim they're giving away 5 free alarm systems, a $1500 value, just for a "test market." Every time I've told them I'm not interested and to leave me the hell alone but I still see them going door to door in the neighborhood, and they still come to my house to bother me. What's worse is they're full of shit: They'll give a free alarm system to anyone who wants one because you take it up the ass in their monitoring fees ($35 a month! Basically you're just financing the system.) And every time they lie to me: "Oh no. We only have 5 free systems. That's it." -- "Are you telling me that if I gave you the names of 10 people who would sign up right now if they got a free system, you would tell 5 of them 'too bad'?" -- "That's right." BS. Their $1500 system can be bought brand new from the manufacturer for $200.
I was able to copy an 80gig drive from native ide to a remote ide via firewire on the latest linux 2.4.18 kernel in about 3 hrs or less.
Wow, a whopping 7.4 megs per second? I wouldn't exactly call that high speed...
These people don't know what an attachment is.
Like hell they don't! Outlook has a paper-clip for crying out loud, and it says "Attachment" on it. People know what attachments are. They just think there is a conspiracy by the geeks in I.T. to keep them from seeing the cool little programs. One lady opened up an attachment and unleashed a virus on her computer. We fixed it all up and told her, "Now, don't do this again." An hour later she got another copy of it and ran it again! Her excuse? "I know you said not to run it, but I wanted to see if this one was different."
People are just plain stupid when it comes to computers. You can have a highly intelligent person who, when put in front of a computer, turns into a complete dumbshit incapable of following simple directions. They UNDERSTAND what we're talking about. They just don't listen.
I'm afraid, though, that any solution would be difficult to implement. Sure, a lot of people would be happy to use the .sex domain. But there are also a lot of folks who take a perverse delight in inflicting porn upon those who are offended by it.
.sex or .xxx domain. Period." Define "sexual material" explicitely and punish those that don't abide by the law.
.sex or .xxx domain by accident if their parents have clicked "block adult domains" in Windows.
That's why you mandate it with a law. "If you're going to distribute sexual material online, you MUST use a
I'm usually not into new laws, but this benefits everyone. The adult sites still get to distribute their material, their customers can find them with ease, and people who don't want their children/employees looking at that crap can block it easily. Plus, with porn blocking being simple and foolproof, you could do away with those AdultCheck systems. There's no way a child will stumble across a
Even something as disgusting (note, my personal opinion, I can't speak for all) as child pornography.
What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you giving ANY credit to those sick perverts?
If you're talking about an issue that may offend someone and you want to be courteous or sensitive to their feelings, you say "this is only my opinion." You're essentially being sensitive to the pedophiles who might read your post: "No offense intended if you get off on naked children."
Have a little backbone. It's not your opinion, it's the truth. Child porn is DISGUSTING. The people who traffic in it are sick fucking perverts that should be locked up for life. If some pedophile finds these comments offense, TOUGH SHIT.
Most family members will only use a browser to look at things, sad but true. What does is it look like on say IE or Mozilla? ftp://65.x.xxx.x -what?
l .j pg
ftp://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:portnum
or,
http://www.yourdomain.com:3333/pictures/babygir
Why is this her fault?
Because she was told 20 times not to open strange attachments by the folks in the I.T. department.
Because she should have had a fscking clue when the attachment said something to the effect of, "Hi. I send file for your look. What you think?"
Because she was told 20 times not to open strange attachments. (I already said this, but it's worth repeating)
At my last employer, we told people on a regular basis, "DO NOT OPEN STRANGE ATTACHMENTS. If you don't know who sent the message or why, delete it or call us!" And every single idiot who got an attachment opened it anyway, then wondered why we became angry with them. Did they not read the message we sent out about this JUST YESTERDAY? The answer is always the same: "Yeah, I read it, but the message said the attachment was a naked picture of Britney Spears and I really, really wanted to see that."
We solved the problem, though: All attachments from outside the company are filtered & most are blocked.
This means, that for every user that is connecting TO (not FROM) the XP box via a Remote Desktop application, you MUST have a seperate windows license UNLESS you are using Windows Remote Desktop or Netmeeting, etc.
It's still monopolistic and unenforceable. Quite frankly, Microsoft can go fuck a goat. If I used XP (I don't), I would use my own choice of remote control application without the extra XP licenses, just like I now have multiple people within my home using the same license of their other products. Do they really think I'm going to spend a few hundred bucks for everyone in my house who might want to use Word some day? Like hell! The software I buy is on a "per household" license whether Microsoft likes it or not. I'll use it on as many PCs within my own home as I want. If that means I have to download some extra reg codes to get them to talk to each other, so be it, but it will be a cold day in hell when I buy 5 copies of any software so my wife and children can use it.
Whether you agree of not once you hit i agree and install the product it isnt an invasion of your privacy as you have agreed to it.
Sorry, but you're wrong. It's still an invasion of my privacy, it doesn't matter whether Microsoft thinks I agreed to it. Imagine if you installed a hidden camera in a restroom and then posted a 20 page agreement, in small print, on the front of the restroom. The agreement starts off with limits & liabilities in using the restroom, states what you are and are not allowed to do in the restroom - all in legalese, of course - and somewhere in the middle says, "You agree to release us of any and all liability if someone should post a picture of you taking a crap in this bathroom on the Internet."
When someone runs across a picture of themselves doing their business and sues you, who the hell do you think is going to win? Do you think the courts are going to tell the victim, "Well, he warned you. You should have known better." Hell no. They're going to lock you up and throw away the key.
The ONLY - and I mean ONLY - way this sort of thing (Both the restroom camera example and collecting personal information via spyware) is going to stand up in court (both the legal courts and the court of public opinion) is if a pop-up box comes up during install and/or use of the software proclaiming, "NOTICE! We are sending data about your web surfing habits back to (company name). If you want to stop this from happening, click the REMOVE button below." To make this right, you've got to be bold about it. A big bold sign on your restroom door that says "You absolutely positively will have your photograph taken while doing your business and that photograph may be posted on the Internet at our discretion" would probably release you of liability, depending on the location of the restroom. Hiding it in an EULA doesn't cut it.
When have Microsoft ever actually included spyware in products ? (and dont talk to me about Media Player - its been in the user agreement for a long time)
Oh, I see... Spyware is OK as long as they bury the disclosure somewhere in a 20 page EULA that they know damn well nobody will read. To think that all this time I thought there was something wrong about invading people's privacy...
Several apps dynamically link to the same library. You try to update one of the apps, and it includes an update to that library.
/windows/system to each of the program directories. Especially when it's only a stupid 100k dll and I've got 80GB of free drive space. This sort of BS drives me insane.
This should never be a problem anymore. Why? Disk space. Nobody needs to link to shared libraries when disk space is so cheap. I've had it with troubleshooting two pieces of software where the end result is copying the different versions of the same DLL from
Or simply, eject card apply hammer.
Yeah, right. Like that won't attract the attention of the geek in the next cube:
(shuffle shuffle) BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP BANG! BEEPBEEPFUCKBEEPBANG! BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBANGBANGBANG! (silence)
Anyone with an extra $50 burning that large a hole in their pocket should feel free to contact me and I'll give you a few worthy charities who could more deservingly use the cash.
More deservingly? You've got to be fscking kidding me. Are you saying I'm less deserving of my money because I earned it myself? Nobody decides who is more deserving of my money but me, and here's my position: *I* am the most deserving of my money. Why? I EARN IT.
Deserving is defined as follows: To earn by service; to be worthy of (something due, either good or evil); to merit; to be entitled to; as, the laborer deserves his wages; a work of value deserves praise.
So, tell me again how a charity is more deserving of my $50 than I am? The charity didn't earn it by service. The people whom the charity are giving it to didn't earn it. There was no work of value by anyone but me, so how can anyone but me deserve the money? The answer is, they don't. It's very nice if you're willing to give them money out of the goodness of your heart, but they don't deserve a single dime. Period.
The USA was once full of people who worked their asses off to own nice things. Now it's full of people who don't do shit yet believe they are deserving of a luxurious American lifestyle. Their front-men are people like you, and the people who believe this "I deserve what you earned" mantra are part of what is tearing our country apart.
In closing, take your anti-American bullshit elsewhere. We don't need it here.
some modern commercial aircraft can reach 40,000 feet on a good day
SOME commercial aircraft? Try most. Any decent aircraft can climb to 40,000 feet. The Cessna Citation X can climb to 51k. You make it sound like 40k feet is a really big deal, but the truth is that any business jet worth it's weight can climb to that height.
Those Russian engineers have a lot more experience in manned space flight than the US. They hold ALL the records for duration, ALL records related to space stations and have flown many more cosmonauts than the US has flown astronauts.
Damn right. While these safety jokes may be funny, they don't hold an ounce of truth. The Russians have been doing this much longer than we have and have an excellent safety record. I'd hop on a Russian rocket without even thinking about it.
And no, I am not a Russian; I am a fifth generation American who is deeply frustrated by the US space program.
As am I. As is most of America. Look at the cover of Popular Science this month... Nerds aren't the only ones upset over what has become of NASA.
To this now the russians are the crazy capitalists and it's us with the draconian anti-freedom laws (DMCA).
I was thinking the exact same thing. The Russians get it. Why the hell don't our leaders run with this? It's a huge idea and will make millions, not to mention the awesome benefits to technology. We piss and moan about people like Tito coming to the ISS while the Russians are making money. The next guy they're taking up has gone through a year of training and is paying millions to be an active crew member. He's going to perform experiments and act as a functional member of the crew.
There are more than enough people willing and able to pay for things like this. What the hell is wrong with the people running my beloved USA?