I'm sorry. But what, EXACTLY can we learn by shooting a frail, semi-autonomous bag of flesh and bone into space that we can't learn learn with a probe?
Basically, from dropping unmanned probes into Jupiter, we already know that you just keep going down and down and down until the pressure crushes you. If you want that, we can drop you into the Mariana Trench in a cut-rate submersible.
If you're LUCKY, such a death would be quick. If not, it could be indescribably painful for the few seconds/minutes you have left.
This is essentially a false dichotomy. Creativity vs technical excellence.
Sure, you can have creativity without technical excellence. There's hordes of crappy garage bands out there that can attest to this.
You can also have technical excellence without creativity. Think about some of the ugliest, most painful-to-read code you have ever seen, but that happens to just work.
You do NOT prioritize one over the other (well, you can, but you're a dumbass of Jobsian proportions if you do).
Ideally, you want them to co-exist, harmoniously, in your people. Or, if that isn't happening, you make sure that they can interact amiably.
You mean the US Government's attempt to corner the market in minimum wage, untrained rent-a-cops in airports is a spectacular cluster-fuck? But look at all the good they've done! Like the economy! Oops! Err...Like the budget! Uhh... Social Security!... Yeah. I'll just shut up now...
Yeah. But MOSTLY Apple. Sure, the stupid DRM'ed online-only "book" companies too. Oh, and all the Apple stores around the area for when the little "darlings" inevitably break something.
I'd rather this money have gone into things that would actually BENEFIT these kids' education. Like building new schools or staggered school hours to reduce class sizes. Setting tighter metrics (or ANY metrics for that matter) on teachers to weed out the incompetent. Hell, increased police presence to help tone down the gang bangers.
...of an idiot who was teaching people how to hack into certain types of setups in an open IRC channel of mine. And he was using his employer's servers to do it!
Now this guy was, at the time, causing ALL sorts of grief for me and several of my colleagues. He kept trying to hack our message boards, hack our e-mails, break onsite computers, tried DDOS'ing us numerous times, was sniffing wifi traffic for all he was worth, etc. All while claiming he was "twice the hacker of all of us put together".
Anyhow, I was basically logged into my channel 24x7. So I'd logged the whole thing. Including the part where the guy promised to "eventually" get around to cleaning up the hack job they'd used to get in.
Well, he probably WOULD have. Had a copy of the complete IRC log, including the mention of live customer financial data being on that server, NOT found its way directly to the company's owner.
The next time the guy came in, he was detained, his system was imaged for evidence, and he was let go. And it took him nearly 3 months before anyone got around to actually telling him who'd dropped the dime on him.
Actually, shooting someone in the leg could very well kill them faster than a center-mass shot (unless you get a "lucky" shot in the heart).
One of the largest arteries (not THE largest, that's the aorta) in your body (the femoral artery) , is present in each leg. It's extremely vulnerable. If you rip it open, a person can lose consciousness from blood loss in under a minute and be dead a couple minutes after that.
The thing is, there's no such thing as a "safe" way to pacify an opponent. PERIOD.
Physically overpowering (physical strength, martial art, etc) them can lead to breaks and muscle tears and joint injuries at the very least.
Tasers...well...outside of the bullshit non-explanation of "excited delerium" that lawsuits from Taser International have tried pushing, a taser can cause burns, cardiac arrhythmia, a person hit by one can strain muscles, and even break bones when falling.
Stun guns? Same thing.
Riot gas? Can cause extreme respiratory distress which can exacerbate other conditions. With enough, they fall out, choking, and can hurt themselves on the way down.
Tranq round? You can accidentally piece something vital. Shoot them in the eye. The dosage could be too high for them. There could be adverse reactions to the anaesthesia, etc.
So please, stop with the supposed notion that there's a "good way" to stop someone from attacking you.
You're excused. Especially since I spent 3 years in the military, I was a medic while in, and a nurse a few years after I got out. I've seen gunshot wound victims. Around the time I was still doing hospital work it became "popular" to shoot guys in the back. Not to kill them, but to cripple them for life. I've also see what happens to a human being who takes a shotgun to the face at point blank range, and even siphoned the guys brains out as they leaked out what was left of his nose before his body died.
I'm not ignorant nor uncaring of the damage such things inflict on victims and their families.
The fact remains that you're blaming a tool for the actions of the person wielding it.
As for "a gun is a device pretty much guaranteed to maim or kill" argument.
The gun doesn't load itself. The gun doesn't point itself. The gun doesn't pull its own trigger.
The damage it does compared to another weapon, when used in a venue where firearms shine is relatively meaningless. The fact that it's "easy" is simply good engineering.
Again, a knife works really well for cancelling out the size/weight/strength advantage in a fist fight. As does a bow and arrow. As does a sling and stone (just ask that David fella).
The fact remains that if someone wants to kill you badly enough, they're going to find some way to do it. Regardless of whether or not they have access to a gun.
You can ignore it all you want. But it is the truth.
Sure, you may deter some lazier criminals. But you can't guarantee that, on the flip-side, that someone who is attacked and then doesn't have a gun won't suffer from that lack.
If I honestly thought getting rid of guns would actually solve the problem, I'd do it. In a heartbeat! Hell, I don't even PERSONALLY own a gun. However, the cool, rational part of me that understands how society works knows that it's a pipe dream.
I'd rather have educated, responsible gun owners than a complete moratorium on gun ownership, resulting in only violent criminals packing guns.
The problem is that ownership of firearms in the US has been criminalized to such an extent, and that enforcement is so lax and underfunded, that black market weapons are profitable and easily obtained by criminals. And on the street, if you have a gun and the other guy doesn't, you have an advantage.
What needs to happen in the US isn't to strip legitimate owners of guns.
It's to more rigorously go after black market gun trade, enforcement of existing laws, and severe crackdowns on criminals caught with guns. On the flip side, gun safety education needs to be expanded. I'd LOVE to say "to everyone".
Unfortunately, politicians have been busily raiding the coffers for their pork projects for so long that there's no money to do this right. Hell, there isn't even the money to do it in a half-assed way.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. That's great.
Until you burn through that dinky little 8GB due to heavy read/write.
Then what? You now have a 5400 rpm hard drive.
Romanadvoratrelundar (A.K.A. Romana).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romana
http://www.underview.com/funbits.html
The fact that ANY of these "letter agencies" are doing it in the first place is more than "troubling".
After that, it's just a matter of death by degrees.
I'm sorry. But what, EXACTLY can we learn by shooting a frail, semi-autonomous bag of flesh and bone into space that we can't learn learn with a probe?
Etch "Killroy was here!" someplace?
Well, if you're hell-bent on committing public suicide, be my guest.
You're not helping anything, even the population issues.
Pardon me if I find this sort of exhibitionism ghoulish in the extreme.
You never thought about silly things like which execution method would you prefer?
Two girls, old age, and a wild night.
Anything else and you're not even trying.
Awesome? Maybe awesomely stupid.
Fun? Suicide? See a shrink. SOON.
Basically, from dropping unmanned probes into Jupiter, we already know that you just keep going down and down and down until the pressure crushes you.
If you want that, we can drop you into the Mariana Trench in a cut-rate submersible.
If you're LUCKY, such a death would be quick.
If not, it could be indescribably painful for the few seconds/minutes you have left.
Is it worth dying to be the first human ever to "walk" on a Jovian moon or really anywhere other than the moon?
In one word: NO!
We can send unmanned probes to do exploration and science experiments.
We send people when we have a chance to safely return them.
Sending them out on a suicide mission "For Science!" is a reeking crock of shit.
At least be honest about what it is. One long snuff film.
If this was "going out with a slim chance of coming home". That's one thing.
This is "You AIN'T coming back!"
People who don't volunteer for this aren't "risk averse". They're simply proving they have higher brain function in the form of reason.
Seriously?
Who the fuck is dumb enough to envision a suicide run to Jupiter?
And, more telling, who the fuck is dumb enough to actually GO on one of these suicide runs?
Not quite sure where people's heads are at on this one.
If people die in the scientific endeavor of space exploration by ACCIDENT or misadventure? It happens. It's tragic.
But going out there knowing you're going to die, "FOR SCIENCE!"?
GET YOUR FUCKING HEAD CHECKED!
Rhetorical question is rhetorical.
Skill or talent!
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
This is essentially a false dichotomy. Creativity vs technical excellence.
Sure, you can have creativity without technical excellence. There's hordes of crappy garage bands out there that can attest to this.
You can also have technical excellence without creativity. Think about some of the ugliest, most painful-to-read code you have ever seen, but that happens to just work.
You do NOT prioritize one over the other (well, you can, but you're a dumbass of Jobsian proportions if you do).
Ideally, you want them to co-exist, harmoniously, in your people. Or, if that isn't happening, you make sure that they can interact amiably.
Seriously.
You mean the US Government's attempt to corner the market in minimum wage, untrained rent-a-cops in airports is a spectacular cluster-fuck? ...
But look at all the good they've done!
Like the economy!
Oops!
Err...Like the budget!
Uhh...
Social Security!
Yeah. I'll just shut up now...
Work expands to fill the space given to it.
Give it no definable boundaries?
SpaceMonster: OOOOOOOH!!! *Wiggles fingers acquisitively*
Yeah. But MOSTLY Apple.
Sure, the stupid DRM'ed online-only "book" companies too.
Oh, and all the Apple stores around the area for when the little "darlings" inevitably break something.
I'd rather this money have gone into things that would actually BENEFIT these kids' education. Like building new schools or staggered school hours to reduce class sizes. Setting tighter metrics (or ANY metrics for that matter) on teachers to weed out the incompetent. Hell, increased police presence to help tone down the gang bangers.
But nope! Kidz gotsta haz teh bling bling!
Fucking morons...
Yep! All those sweatshop programmers in China and India are more efficient than the three people left at RIM's office in Canuckistan.
Next week, they'll announce that they're moving their office to the local StarSchmucks'.
Yeah, but if he gets to close, Grove Industries just blows it up surreptitiously and then collects massive InsuranceBucks!
Then the CHP shouldn't have any problem with me tearing them down and hauling them away as trash right?
...of an idiot who was teaching people how to hack into certain types of setups in an open IRC channel of mine.
And he was using his employer's servers to do it!
Now this guy was, at the time, causing ALL sorts of grief for me and several of my colleagues. He kept trying to hack our message boards, hack our e-mails, break onsite computers, tried DDOS'ing us numerous times, was sniffing wifi traffic for all he was worth, etc. All while claiming he was "twice the hacker of all of us put together".
Anyhow, I was basically logged into my channel 24x7. So I'd logged the whole thing. Including the part where the guy promised to "eventually" get around to cleaning up the hack job they'd used to get in.
Well, he probably WOULD have.
Had a copy of the complete IRC log, including the mention of live customer financial data being on that server, NOT found its way directly to the company's owner.
The next time the guy came in, he was detained, his system was imaged for evidence, and he was let go.
And it took him nearly 3 months before anyone got around to actually telling him who'd dropped the dime on him.
And all without doing a single illegal thing.
I later wound up helping the FBI give him a vacation at Club Fed.
And it looks like he's going back to stay for a while.
Actually, shooting someone in the leg could very well kill them faster than a center-mass shot (unless you get a "lucky" shot in the heart).
One of the largest arteries (not THE largest, that's the aorta) in your body (the femoral artery) , is present in each leg. It's extremely vulnerable. If you rip it open, a person can lose consciousness from blood loss in under a minute and be dead a couple minutes after that.
The thing is, there's no such thing as a "safe" way to pacify an opponent. PERIOD.
Physically overpowering (physical strength, martial art, etc) them can lead to breaks and muscle tears and joint injuries at the very least.
Tasers...well...outside of the bullshit non-explanation of "excited delerium" that lawsuits from Taser International have tried pushing, a taser can cause burns, cardiac arrhythmia, a person hit by one can strain muscles, and even break bones when falling.
Stun guns? Same thing.
Riot gas? Can cause extreme respiratory distress which can exacerbate other conditions. With enough, they fall out, choking, and can hurt themselves on the way down.
Tranq round? You can accidentally piece something vital. Shoot them in the eye. The dosage could be too high for them. There could be adverse reactions to the anaesthesia, etc.
So please, stop with the supposed notion that there's a "good way" to stop someone from attacking you.
You're excused. Especially since I spent 3 years in the military, I was a medic while in, and a nurse a few years after I got out.
I've seen gunshot wound victims.
Around the time I was still doing hospital work it became "popular" to shoot guys in the back. Not to kill them, but to cripple them for life.
I've also see what happens to a human being who takes a shotgun to the face at point blank range, and even siphoned the guys brains out as they leaked out what was left of his nose before his body died.
I'm not ignorant nor uncaring of the damage such things inflict on victims and their families.
The fact remains that you're blaming a tool for the actions of the person wielding it.
As for "a gun is a device pretty much guaranteed to maim or kill" argument.
The gun doesn't load itself.
The gun doesn't point itself.
The gun doesn't pull its own trigger.
The damage it does compared to another weapon, when used in a venue where firearms shine is relatively meaningless.
The fact that it's "easy" is simply good engineering.
Again, a knife works really well for cancelling out the size/weight/strength advantage in a fist fight.
As does a bow and arrow.
As does a sling and stone (just ask that David fella).
The fact remains that if someone wants to kill you badly enough, they're going to find some way to do it. Regardless of whether or not they have access to a gun.
You can ignore it all you want. But it is the truth.
Sure, you may deter some lazier criminals. But you can't guarantee that, on the flip-side, that someone who is attacked and then doesn't have a gun won't suffer from that lack.
If I honestly thought getting rid of guns would actually solve the problem, I'd do it. In a heartbeat! Hell, I don't even PERSONALLY own a gun.
However, the cool, rational part of me that understands how society works knows that it's a pipe dream.
I'd rather have educated, responsible gun owners than a complete moratorium on gun ownership, resulting in only violent criminals packing guns.
The problem is that ownership of firearms in the US has been criminalized to such an extent, and that enforcement is so lax and underfunded, that black market weapons are profitable and easily obtained by criminals. And on the street, if you have a gun and the other guy doesn't, you have an advantage.
What needs to happen in the US isn't to strip legitimate owners of guns.
It's to more rigorously go after black market gun trade, enforcement of existing laws, and severe crackdowns on criminals caught with guns.
On the flip side, gun safety education needs to be expanded. I'd LOVE to say "to everyone".
Unfortunately, politicians have been busily raiding the coffers for their pork projects for so long that there's no money to do this right. Hell, there isn't even the money to do it in a half-assed way.