They just want gobs of money to spend on technology development programs (read "new toys").
American tax dollars are working to make these "new toys". The primary justification for NASA's funding is that the technologies that come out of these "technology development programs" push the cutting edge of modern tech.
It's been a long time since Congress has thought about the values of "exploring space". That's just an side-effect of research spending.
It's like those robot-construction competitions where they have to get all the balls into the goal. The contest isn't to designed to solve the great "yellow ball problem", it's to build and explore ideas in technology.
Congress views funding NASA the same way; by funding NASA they're advancing America's technical know-how. Not to mention that NASA contracts go to high-tech american industries.
There's not some sort of conspiracy to keep regular people out of space here. NASA's just doing its job.
I know trolls are an ever-present nuisance on Slashdot, but posting a troll as a news post? I mean come on!
"a biblical-sized tidal wave of losses"
"To reconnect with his feminine side and "write poetry" as he eases into early retirement."
"the largest balance sheet evisceration"
"advertising revenues from the service having now collapsed in a heap"
"after more than fifteen months of bloodletting"
" last week's write-off has only thrown $54 billion of it into the trash bin"
"more could disappear before the carnage is complete"
"You can get as much of a return by investing in a U.S. government bond these days as you can from throwing your money into the AOL Time Warner black hole."
...etc...
Yes AOLTW is getting slammed and their value is low, but so are many former high fliers. This guy doesn't provide any real insight into the situation. He's just flaiming AOL/TW.
And to me this just looks like merger pains. In ten years, maybe, we can begin to pass judgement on whether the deal was worthwhile.
They try to hide all of this under a facade of shiny, "lickable" buttons, but the truth has finally come out: Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism.
I've been licking the buttons on my Dell laptop, and that's okay, but have you tasted the new IMac? Apple has again leaped way ahead in terms of user interface.
Lickable Buttons. Hmmm... I wonder if he's thinking about those candies you used to get at street-fairs and the like which were just little dots on a roll of paper. Or perhaps those weren't really candies and this is all one long, crazy trip...
oddly the word I meant to use was fatuous... wires crossed, brain farted.
You have a good point, making MS change it's OEM licensing structure would solve the problem.
Unfortunately for MS, we've long since passed the "solution" stage. Now we're in the punishment phase. Making MS produce a stripped down "Core Windows" is a punishment. Not much of a punishment, but it is something.
It's not a question of whether MS can correct its behavior; it's been shown that MS can't regulate its own behavior. And they show only scorn for the rules of the system under which they've prospered. They need a spanking.
I don't know if that's the way the states are justifying it, but that's the way I feel about it.
This is BG's job. Dealing with his companies crap. If he was on the stand because he witnessed a hit-and-run accident, then he'd be losing money. But right now, he's doing what he's paid to do, representing the needs and interests of his company.
The problem with your scenario is that Microsoft is not giving people a choice. If you buy a computer from Dell, Compaq, etc. you pretty much have to buy Windows because that's the way MS's licensing practices work.
MS has forced all other players out of the game. Perhaps its because of their superior products, but many believe that it's their strong-arming OEMs and the abuse of monopoly power that keeps them on top. In any case, Microsoft doesn't offer a roll-your-own prodcut and since MS punishes OEMs for selling non-MS OSes, it's practically impossible for other OS companies to compete.
There's no choice, so there's no way to know what people would prefer. But certainly one could imagine that if Dell can bundle disparate hardware components, they could just as easily bundle software for their users. And I could happily buy just the products I want for my machine one at a time, the same thing I do with hardware when I need a new computer.
The hardware PC business is actually a perfect example of why your argument is fecescious. There are companies out there who sell pre-built PCs that come in one-of-three standard flavors. There are companies out there that sell custom-built PCs which allow the customer more flexibility. And ther are companies which sell just the components. All these companies co-exist and everyone who buys computers can get what they want.
The motor power required, some 300 watts, would impose a rather heavy loading on the computer's power supply, though.
I don't think I'd be comfortable with something spinning that quickly in my machine. If I tapped it accidentally, would it rip through the plastic and come flying out of my computer? Perhaps maiming bystanders? Hmmm...
The answer is not to spin the disks faster, but rather to read more of the disk in one shot. But that would increase the cost incrementally with each reading device added.
Generally, people use CDs as a one-shot deal, install to hard disk once and then never use the CD again. Though people would like to read from their CDs faster they don't want to pay 4-10 times as much for a CD Player with the mechanics to read multiple sectors at once.
I wonder if public school ever was supposed to be actually educational. But from my experience, at the time I thought of it like day camp. A place to put the kids while the parents worked.
Now I see it as a camp for the indoctrination of culture. The public education system is pretty much the same from here to Alaska (skipping Canada). They have similar course structures, similar standards, etc...
The point is to make the students all have a commonality. More than just living in the same town, state, or country, because those types of bonds aren't strong. Instead, because we share the same educational structure, we learn the same history, take the same tests, and generally learn to approach life the same way. Public School itself is another bond. No matter what state you go to, you can always find people to b*tch about the crappy public school system with.
But looking outside the mandated structures, the school itself is a tool to be accessed by the students (like the terminal from the article). There is a wealth of possibility, not from the courses, but from the things that are ancillary to your report card. The opportunity to contribute to a newspaper, to perform in a play, sing in a chorus, or compete in a sporting event. All these things are available through the school system. The kids who benefit the most from Public School are those that approach it with curiosity.
20 Miles from anywhere and it doesn't respect any court of law in the world... So thats what I call secure (Even from the DMCA).
Except that they're not responsible to you for what they do with your data. They can look at it, parse it, copy it, distribute it. You store your neato new plans for a next generation personal mobility device on their servers and suddently you find a company called SLMovers that's beat you to the market with exactly your product.
Hey! You can't do that! Oh wait. No. You can do whatever you want.
Man, you made my day. This may lead some to wonder how boring my day is. It's pretty boring.
"RIAA can create CDs where only part of the audio track exists in our universe..."
I would bet this appeals a lot to RIAA. But why stop there? From what I understand they're looking for a way to sell you the CD so that there's actually no music on it.
Perhaps just a recording of one of the executives in charge saying "Thank you for purchasing this digital music container device. We assume that you have a computer and have downloaded countless megabytes of our copyrighted material. Therefore, we have pre-removed the equivalent amount of data from this CD. Enjoy." Followed by 71 and 3/4 minutes of silence.
"And I'm glad that on Unix we still have a browser war" Trolling in the news post?
The browser war on Windows is joined as well!
IE may come installed with all copies of Windows but that doesn't mean that Mozilla can't compete. In fact, Mozilla.9.7 was already better than IE in almost every category..9.9 just blows everything else out of the water. The browser war is alive and well on Windows.
Moz 1 will be a great breakthrough for open-source software. And there were a lot of people who thought we'd never see it. Now it looks inevitable. Moz already runs fast and load times are generally 2 secs, I can't wait to see what it does fully optimized.
So, hats off to the Mozilla crew. And bravo. Hoorah for OSS and openness, modularity and custizability in user software!
if shutting down Napster and other P2P clients is making RIAA's user-base into criminals, these services are their parole or house-arrest.
When Napster came out it was a way for you to hear that really cool new song. A way to sample the music you buy, without having to filter through the much on the radio. And the recording industry's sales went up because people were more inclined to buy what they'd listened to.
Now, RIAA's made it clear that their enemy is anyone who shares music online. They fired the first shot by biting the hand that was just beginning to feed them. Now the same people who were browsing through downloads and buying at Tower are burning not buying. Because they're angry with RIAA and they feel the record industry is out to get them. No wonder RIAA's sales are down (although , probably not as much as they say, RIAA's cooked up some phony numbers before), though it has very little to do with P2P file-sharing.
If the record industry really wants to shut down Morpheus they could offer the following service.
Monthly fee for a flat bps download (scalable of course).
Download to MP3.
The file is yours to do with as you please.
Distribution and sale would be illegal, but copying to other machines for your personal use would be okay. (MP3 format would make that pretty difficult to enforce anyway).
And, of course, a vast selection of high-quality, always available tracks.
Sharing would be rampant, but it already is. RIAA wouldn't be losing anything even if the whole thing fell through. But it probably wouldn't.
Too bad I don't have millions of dollars and my dad isn't the head of Sony Music.
...Unless you think it'd be a good idea to shoot down foreign astronauts.
In case you're just tuning in, China can already "deliver highly enriched Uranium right to your doorstep". http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/ch-war.htm
But this wasn't an ICBM test. This was "a manned space vessel"
Instead they're doing something progressive and forward looking, investing in science and technology. Perhaps they will agree to help fund or build the ISS.
They thought they could control it? A program that powerful? That much computing muscle? Did they really think they could contain it?
It's alive I tell you! Alive! And it's hungry for pages to index! Tell it not to index a page, to exclude a page completely from its memory and it will certainly do the exact opposite. Bullying and threats will only provoke it! It has the collective knowledge and power of the internet to draw upon (neatly indexed, I might add)! It's unstopable!
I warned you! For years I have been speaking about the perils of advanced Search Engine technology. But mine was a voice in the wilderness. Now, the truth is revealed, but it's too late!
And this is wrong, why? Law is a profession, not a Sainthood. Some doctors do only plastic surgery for people who don't need it. Some funeral directors gauge their clientelle because they're vulnerable. Some gas stations fix their pumps so people pay more for less gas.
And yet many lawyers spend their whole lives working with the system to make it better. Both prosecutors and defense lawyers. And they have as much concern for the proper use of the law as anyone (on top of which they have a better understanding of it than most).
But before you go slamming on the lawyers consider that it wasn't the lawyers who brought this lawsuit, it was company execs. And they were probably NOT lawyers.
Remind me never to move next door to you. Most people I know respond to new neighbors by bringing over food and generally being nice. Your first instinct, I take it, would be to kill them.
We go about our everyday lives not knowing how many things around us work (gravity is one that comes to mind). That's been the way of our civilization since it's beginnings. We used to think the world was flat and that we were the center of the universe. We used to think the Gods decided our fate when we were born by snipping the thread that was sewed into the fabric of the world. And we went about our lives anyway and were modestly succesful.
Just because we didn't know we weren't on the edge of the cosmos revolving around our (to us) stationary star, didn't keep us from growing food or raising animals with the seasons. Just because we didn't understand about trade winds and tidal forces didn't keep us from sailing around the world.
Ignorance is a fact of life. Not knowing how things work is nothing new. Not knowing what to do when the things you count on fail is a common problem. But that same person who, the first time the door fails, gets beffudled and stuck, the next time the door fails will have found a solution. That's how we got out of the trees in the first place.
Of course, if you want to be gloomy and doomy, who am I to stand in your way.
I'm sure it's been posted before, but I don't have the patience to look for it.
MMMMMM Milky Way. That is the first thing that I thought of when I read the article. I could sure go in for a candy bar.
And (okay now I'm getting deep) that's the problem with getting funding for space probes. My stomach is a lot more important to me than Uranus (or Pluto). Even if it costs next to nothing, I don't want to spend money on a probe when I could be spending money on making my life nicer.
Knowledge is all well in good, but there's no nugguty center.
Hmmm, wonder what would happen if I used Word to type my letter.
"It looks like you are writing a letter to the DOJ.
Would you like help?"
Talk about a conflict of interest... How do I make this thing dissapear?
You're kidding about that Terrorism thing...
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
...aren't you?
The "equalizer" (if you want to call it that) here is terrorism -- if civilians here start dying in scores in retaliation... public support for this dries up pretty fast.
Um, hello? Have you ever heard of Israel? There people haven't been cowed by forty years of bombings, wars, etc...
We wouldn't bomb Afghanistan when they were abusing their women and blowing up priceless historical artifacts. Not even the terrorist attacks in Yemin and Saudi Arrabia could convince us. Those were just servicemen. It took an attack on civilians to justify this war. And Bush's approval ratings are astronomical (and comically depressing)
Support for military action doesn't dry up when terrorists strike. It grows. When people feel threatened in their everyday life they want only to end that threat. And the quickest way is to destroy the people attacking you. It's also the easiest to understand and demonstrate.
What makes a war difficult 'to swallow' is when there's the people supporting the war don't feel threatened. Like Somalia and Bosnia and Vietnam. That's when casualties become dangerous.
To sum up: Civilian casualties increase public support for war. Because it could be me and you who are killed next time.
(Ugh, this wasn't supposed to be this long -- Sorry)
He added that, although the Earth is safe from destruction, life here still faces some formidable challenges in the far future. The new calculations suggest that the surface of the Earth will become too hot to sustain human life for a few million years about 5.7 billion years from now.
This is about 200 million years later than previously thought - an extra period of grace that humans could use to develop technologies for living on a hotter Earth, such as building communities deep underground. Alternatively, the human race could move to another planet for a while.
[snip]
hard to imagine that after 5.7 billion years we'll still be worried about something as banal as the expanding sun. No, by then we'll have figured out a way to transmute our living soul into pure electronic energy and we will roam the cosmos, imortal and all-powerful.
Or we'll die out. How long did the dinosaurs live?
On the other hand, we may still be working the bugs out of the missile defense shield. Damn those decoys!
Act now on this exclusive offer from IveGotEnergy.com!
Haven't you ever wondered why energy, which is so small it can travel through the tiniest wire, is created in huge, expensive power-plants? The power companies would like you to believe that it's because it requires expensive equipment and long years of training. But they're WRONG!
Working together, scientists in Holland and Bulgaria have come up with an enormous breakthrough in energy production. Using things you can find around the house you too can have your own 1000MW Power Plant! That's enough power to light all of Manhatten. Think of how envious your neighbors will be.
The best part is, once you've set up the device, you never have to think about it again. It'll work forever and ever without any maintenance at all.
And, if that's not appealing to you...
Me and my friends at IveGotEnergy.com are having a slumber party and YOU'RE INVITED! So come see hot chicks naked
Email petitions are a form of SPAM. I don't want joeschmoe@SPAMMAILER.com sending me a petition or any other piece of garbage. Now if my best friend wants to, that's another story (I'd have to give him a stern talking to).
Unsolicited mail is a pain in the ass. Whether or not it's well intentioned.
If Halo comes out for the PC does that mean they'll have to remove the "XBox Only" logos from the comercials and boxes?
Hmmm...
Two machines, two purposes
on
Portable GameCube
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
First off... I believe that all the consoles out now are being sold at a very small profit. Perhaps a dollar or so. I've heard that only the Dreamcast was sold at a loss and even then it wasn't a very big loss.
A game console is not a computer. A computer is not a game console. Although one can serve as the other, it cannot do the same things as well. And, of course, if you want to play Pikmin, Halo, or Metal Gear Solid on your PC... uh... well, you can't.
The GC, PS2, and XBox can all pump out better graphics than my $1200 laptop, not neccesarily because the hardware is better, but because the hardware is specialized. The games are written specifically for it and it is designed to do ONE thing (I leave it to your imagination to figure out what that is)
Slashdot Mirror
They just want gobs of money to spend on technology development programs (read "new toys").
American tax dollars are working to make these "new toys". The primary justification for NASA's funding is that the technologies that come out of these "technology development programs" push the cutting edge of modern tech.
It's been a long time since Congress has thought about the values of "exploring space". That's just an side-effect of research spending.
It's like those robot-construction competitions where they have to get all the balls into the goal. The contest isn't to designed to solve the great "yellow ball problem", it's to build and explore ideas in technology.
Congress views funding NASA the same way; by funding NASA they're advancing America's technical know-how. Not to mention that NASA contracts go to high-tech american industries.
There's not some sort of conspiracy to keep regular people out of space here. NASA's just doing its job.
Sweat
Yes AOLTW is getting slammed and their value is low, but so are many former high fliers. This guy doesn't provide any real insight into the situation. He's just flaiming AOL/TW.
And to me this just looks like merger pains. In ten years, maybe, we can begin to pass judgement on whether the deal was worthwhile.
Sweat
They try to hide all of this under a facade of shiny, "lickable" buttons, but the truth has finally come out: Apple Computers promote Godless Darwinism and Communism.
I've been licking the buttons on my Dell laptop, and that's okay, but have you tasted the new IMac? Apple has again leaped way ahead in terms of user interface.
Lickable Buttons. Hmmm... I wonder if he's thinking about those candies you used to get at street-fairs and the like which were just little dots on a roll of paper. Or perhaps those weren't really candies and this is all one long, crazy trip...
Sweat
oddly the word I meant to use was fatuous... wires crossed, brain farted.
You have a good point, making MS change it's OEM licensing structure would solve the problem.
Unfortunately for MS, we've long since passed the "solution" stage. Now we're in the punishment phase. Making MS produce a stripped down "Core Windows" is a punishment. Not much of a punishment, but it is something.
It's not a question of whether MS can correct its behavior; it's been shown that MS can't regulate its own behavior. And they show only scorn for the rules of the system under which they've prospered. They need a spanking.
I don't know if that's the way the states are justifying it, but that's the way I feel about it.
Sweat
This is BG's job. Dealing with his companies crap. If he was on the stand because he witnessed a hit-and-run accident, then he'd be losing money. But right now, he's doing what he's paid to do, representing the needs and interests of his company.
Evil needs. But needs none-the-less.
Sweat
The problem with your scenario is that Microsoft is not giving people a choice. If you buy a computer from Dell, Compaq, etc. you pretty much have to buy Windows because that's the way MS's licensing practices work.
MS has forced all other players out of the game. Perhaps its because of their superior products, but many believe that it's their strong-arming OEMs and the abuse of monopoly power that keeps them on top. In any case, Microsoft doesn't offer a roll-your-own prodcut and since MS punishes OEMs for selling non-MS OSes, it's practically impossible for other OS companies to compete.
There's no choice, so there's no way to know what people would prefer. But certainly one could imagine that if Dell can bundle disparate hardware components, they could just as easily bundle software for their users. And I could happily buy just the products I want for my machine one at a time, the same thing I do with hardware when I need a new computer.
The hardware PC business is actually a perfect example of why your argument is fecescious. There are companies out there who sell pre-built PCs that come in one-of-three standard flavors. There are companies out there that sell custom-built PCs which allow the customer more flexibility. And ther are companies which sell just the components. All these companies co-exist and everyone who buys computers can get what they want.
Sweat
And I quote...
The motor power required, some 300 watts, would impose a rather heavy loading on the computer's power supply, though.
I don't think I'd be comfortable with something spinning that quickly in my machine. If I tapped it accidentally, would it rip through the plastic and come flying out of my computer? Perhaps maiming bystanders? Hmmm...
The answer is not to spin the disks faster, but rather to read more of the disk in one shot. But that would increase the cost incrementally with each reading device added.
Generally, people use CDs as a one-shot deal, install to hard disk once and then never use the CD again. Though people would like to read from their CDs faster they don't want to pay 4-10 times as much for a CD Player with the mechanics to read multiple sectors at once.
Sweat
I wonder if public school ever was supposed to be actually educational. But from my experience, at the time I thought of it like day camp. A place to put the kids while the parents worked.
Now I see it as a camp for the indoctrination of culture. The public education system is pretty much the same from here to Alaska (skipping Canada). They have similar course structures, similar standards, etc...
The point is to make the students all have a commonality. More than just living in the same town, state, or country, because those types of bonds aren't strong. Instead, because we share the same educational structure, we learn the same history, take the same tests, and generally learn to approach life the same way. Public School itself is another bond. No matter what state you go to, you can always find people to b*tch about the crappy public school system with.
But looking outside the mandated structures, the school itself is a tool to be accessed by the students (like the terminal from the article). There is a wealth of possibility, not from the courses, but from the things that are ancillary to your report card. The opportunity to contribute to a newspaper, to perform in a play, sing in a chorus, or compete in a sporting event. All these things are available through the school system. The kids who benefit the most from Public School are those that approach it with curiosity.
Sweat
20 Miles from anywhere and it doesn't respect any court of law in the world... So thats what I call secure (Even from the DMCA).
Except that they're not responsible to you for what they do with your data. They can look at it, parse it, copy it, distribute it. You store your neato new plans for a next generation personal mobility device on their servers and suddently you find a company called SLMovers that's beat you to the market with exactly your product.
Hey! You can't do that! Oh wait. No. You can do whatever you want.
Sweat
Man, you made my day. This may lead some to wonder how boring my day is. It's pretty boring.
"RIAA can create CDs where only part of the audio track exists in our universe..."
I would bet this appeals a lot to RIAA. But why stop there? From what I understand they're looking for a way to sell you the CD so that there's actually no music on it.
Perhaps just a recording of one of the executives in charge saying "Thank you for purchasing this digital music container device. We assume that you have a computer and have downloaded countless megabytes of our copyrighted material. Therefore, we have pre-removed the equivalent amount of data from this CD. Enjoy." Followed by 71 and 3/4 minutes of silence.
Sweat
"And I'm glad that on Unix we still have a browser war" Trolling in the news post?
.9.7 was already better than IE in almost every category. .9.9 just blows everything else out of the water. The browser war is alive and well on Windows.
The browser war on Windows is joined as well!
IE may come installed with all copies of Windows but that doesn't mean that Mozilla can't compete. In fact, Mozilla
Moz 1 will be a great breakthrough for open-source software. And there were a lot of people who thought we'd never see it. Now it looks inevitable. Moz already runs fast and load times are generally 2 secs, I can't wait to see what it does fully optimized.
So, hats off to the Mozilla crew. And bravo. Hoorah for OSS and openness, modularity and custizability in user software!
Sweat
When Napster came out it was a way for you to hear that really cool new song. A way to sample the music you buy, without having to filter through the much on the radio. And the recording industry's sales went up because people were more inclined to buy what they'd listened to.
Now, RIAA's made it clear that their enemy is anyone who shares music online. They fired the first shot by biting the hand that was just beginning to feed them. Now the same people who were browsing through downloads and buying at Tower are burning not buying. Because they're angry with RIAA and they feel the record industry is out to get them. No wonder RIAA's sales are down (although , probably not as much as they say, RIAA's cooked up some phony numbers before), though it has very little to do with P2P file-sharing.
If the record industry really wants to shut down Morpheus they could offer the following service.
Sharing would be rampant, but it already is. RIAA wouldn't be losing anything even if the whole thing fell through. But it probably wouldn't.
Too bad I don't have millions of dollars and my dad isn't the head of Sony Music.
Sweat
...Unless you think it'd be a good idea to shoot down foreign astronauts.
In case you're just tuning in, China can already "deliver highly enriched Uranium right to your doorstep".
http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/ch-war.htm
But this wasn't an ICBM test. This was "a manned space vessel"
Instead they're doing something progressive and forward looking, investing in science and technology. Perhaps they will agree to help fund or build the ISS.
Please keep your hate-mongering to yourself.
Sweat
They thought they could control it? A program that powerful? That much computing muscle? Did they really think they could contain it?
It's alive I tell you! Alive! And it's hungry for pages to index! Tell it not to index a page, to exclude a page completely from its memory and it will certainly do the exact opposite. Bullying and threats will only provoke it! It has the collective knowledge and power of the internet to draw upon (neatly indexed, I might add)! It's unstopable!
I warned you! For years I have been speaking about the perils of advanced Search Engine technology. But mine was a voice in the wilderness. Now, the truth is revealed, but it's too late!
ITS TOOO LATE!!! ARGH...
And this is wrong, why? Law is a profession, not a Sainthood. Some doctors do only plastic surgery for people who don't need it. Some funeral directors gauge their clientelle because they're vulnerable. Some gas stations fix their pumps so people pay more for less gas.
And yet many lawyers spend their whole lives working with the system to make it better. Both prosecutors and defense lawyers. And they have as much concern for the proper use of the law as anyone (on top of which they have a better understanding of it than most).
But before you go slamming on the lawyers consider that it wasn't the lawyers who brought this lawsuit, it was company execs. And they were probably NOT lawyers.
Sweat
Remind me never to move next door to you. Most people I know respond to new neighbors by bringing over food and generally being nice. Your first instinct, I take it, would be to kill them.
Sweat
... it would have it's own gravitational field.
We go about our everyday lives not knowing how many things around us work (gravity is one that comes to mind). That's been the way of our civilization since it's beginnings. We used to think the world was flat and that we were the center of the universe. We used to think the Gods decided our fate when we were born by snipping the thread that was sewed into the fabric of the world. And we went about our lives anyway and were modestly succesful.
Just because we didn't know we weren't on the edge of the cosmos revolving around our (to us) stationary star, didn't keep us from growing food or raising animals with the seasons. Just because we didn't understand about trade winds and tidal forces didn't keep us from sailing around the world.
Ignorance is a fact of life. Not knowing how things work is nothing new. Not knowing what to do when the things you count on fail is a common problem. But that same person who, the first time the door fails, gets beffudled and stuck, the next time the door fails will have found a solution. That's how we got out of the trees in the first place.
Of course, if you want to be gloomy and doomy, who am I to stand in your way.
Sweat
I'm sure it's been posted before, but I don't have the patience to look for it.
MMMMMM Milky Way. That is the first thing that I thought of when I read the article. I could sure go in for a candy bar.
And (okay now I'm getting deep) that's the problem with getting funding for space probes. My stomach is a lot more important to me than Uranus (or Pluto). Even if it costs next to nothing, I don't want to spend money on a probe when I could be spending money on making my life nicer.
Knowledge is all well in good, but there's no nugguty center.
Sweat
Hmmm, wonder what would happen if I used Word to type my letter.
"It looks like you are writing a letter to the DOJ.
Would you like help?"
Talk about a conflict of interest... How do I make this thing dissapear?
The "equalizer" (if you want to call it that) here is terrorism -- if civilians here start dying in scores in retaliation ... public support for this dries up pretty fast.
Um, hello? Have you ever heard of Israel? There people haven't been cowed by forty years of bombings, wars, etc...
We wouldn't bomb Afghanistan when they were abusing their women and blowing up priceless historical artifacts. Not even the terrorist attacks in Yemin and Saudi Arrabia could convince us. Those were just servicemen. It took an attack on civilians to justify this war. And Bush's approval ratings are astronomical (and comically depressing)
Support for military action doesn't dry up when terrorists strike. It grows. When people feel threatened in their everyday life they want only to end that threat. And the quickest way is to destroy the people attacking you. It's also the easiest to understand and demonstrate.
What makes a war difficult 'to swallow' is when there's the people supporting the war don't feel threatened. Like Somalia and Bosnia and Vietnam. That's when casualties become dangerous.
To sum up: Civilian casualties increase public support for war. Because it could be me and you who are killed next time.
(Ugh, this wasn't supposed to be this long -- Sorry)
Sweat
He added that, although the Earth is safe from destruction, life here still faces some formidable challenges in the far future. The new calculations suggest that the surface of the Earth will become too hot to sustain human life for a few million years about 5.7 billion years from now.
This is about 200 million years later than previously thought - an extra period of grace that humans could use to develop technologies for living on a hotter Earth, such as building communities deep underground. Alternatively, the human race could move to another planet for a while.
[snip]
hard to imagine that after 5.7 billion years we'll still be worried about something as banal as the expanding sun. No, by then we'll have figured out a way to transmute our living soul into pure electronic energy and we will roam the cosmos, imortal and all-powerful.
Or we'll die out. How long did the dinosaurs live?
On the other hand, we may still be working the bugs out of the missile defense shield. Damn those decoys!
Sweat
Act now on this exclusive offer from IveGotEnergy.com!
Haven't you ever wondered why energy, which is so small it can travel through the tiniest wire, is created in huge, expensive power-plants? The power companies would like you to believe that it's because it requires expensive equipment and long years of training. But they're WRONG!
Working together, scientists in Holland and Bulgaria have come up with an enormous breakthrough in energy production. Using things you can find around the house you too can have your own 1000MW Power Plant! That's enough power to light all of Manhatten. Think of how envious your neighbors will be.
The best part is, once you've set up the device, you never have to think about it again. It'll work forever and ever without any maintenance at all.
And, if that's not appealing to you...
Me and my friends at IveGotEnergy.com are having a slumber party and YOU'RE INVITED! So come see hot chicks naked
Email petitions are a form of SPAM. I don't want joeschmoe@SPAMMAILER.com sending me a petition or any other piece of garbage. Now if my best friend wants to, that's another story (I'd have to give him a stern talking to).
Unsolicited mail is a pain in the ass. Whether or not it's well intentioned.
If Halo comes out for the PC does that mean they'll have to remove the "XBox Only" logos from the comercials and boxes?
Hmmm...
First off... I believe that all the consoles out now are being sold at a very small profit. Perhaps a dollar or so. I've heard that only the Dreamcast was sold at a loss and even then it wasn't a very big loss.
A game console is not a computer. A computer is not a game console. Although one can serve as the other, it cannot do the same things as well. And, of course, if you want to play Pikmin, Halo, or Metal Gear Solid on your PC... uh... well, you can't.
The GC, PS2, and XBox can all pump out better graphics than my $1200 laptop, not neccesarily because the hardware is better, but because the hardware is specialized. The games are written specifically for it and it is designed to do ONE thing (I leave it to your imagination to figure out what that is)