In some cultures, hand holding and kissing are sexual, or at least very intimate. In others, they're things that people will do as a greeting with even casual acquaintances. I suspect that the majority of Americans fall into the first category.
If I condemn you to forever ride a unicorn, does that mean it will happen? I may believe that you are going to hell. That doesn't mean that hell exists, or that you're going there if it does (since my beliefs don't give me the authority to make that decision). So why would you care what I believe, so long as I don't try to send you to hell sooner (by killing you) or otherwise enforce my beliefs on you?
Your books are either literally true and their directives ORDERS you must OBEY or your superstitions are just social clubs.
Likewise, why would I care what you insist my beliefs should be, since they're mine?
That is a real trade barrier. Just like the Spanish Inquisition was a real trade barrier to medieval witches, and the morality laws in Dubai are a trade barrier to orgy tours that aren't hosted by local sheiks. Now, the reasonable response would be for the US to not try to enforce their laws around the world, but that isn't likely to happen. So one would hope that this perfectly reasonable trade barrier will remain in place.
Wow, people like you are never happy. "This silly religion advocates creationism by a powerful (possibly nurturing) being! That's nothing like what the scientists have discovered!" "This silly religion says death is like complete dissolution! That's pretty much what science can prove, but it sure isn't warm and fuzzy!"
There are a lot of reasons to disagree with religion, but all the items you talk about are common themes in most wishes and.or behaviours.
"Central zombie figure." Or, as your highly unbiased description avoids, the desire to not die or, failing that, for death to not be permanent. Remember when a person's heart would stop and the medical professionals would just say, "Welp, he's dead. Next!" Those zombie loving bastards, just won't let anyone stay honestly dead anymore!
"Ritual cannibalism"? While there are a few churches who promote the concept of transubstantiation, most recognize it for the symbol it is - the desire to be more like someone you believe is perfect. Not unlike children who walk around wearing mommy's or daddy's shoes.
"Death from above"? Yes, never in any other context has there been a situation of someone's life being in the hands of a "higher" power. As Bill Cosby said in his comedy routines to his kids, "I brought you into this world, I'll take you out." If that's not serious enough for you, how much is spent to (rightly, imo) support armies around the world. Most of them aren't around to hand out cupcakes...
In short, looks like the market on irrationality isn't cornered by the religious people.
Don't know about you, but I would like to see a mid twenties Sigourney Weaver battle alien monsters. Not grandma. What's she going to do anyway? Stab it with her knitting needles? Make it tea? Relive stories of her neighbors dog 70 years ago?
This sounds like a perfectly viable way to conquer the galaxy. Either all those geriatrics bore the aliens to suicide, or the aliens choke on a bone.
Don't dump it all on religion- while religion is and has been a very popular excuse used for legitimizing brutality and stupidity, I would say that if Mankind didn't have religion as an excuse for brainwashing, fighting wars and brutalizing itself, it would have (and has) found something else... Nationalism, wealth (someone else's), race, you name it. Parts of humanity have always rationalized some justification for shitting on other parts of humanity. Religion just happens to be one of the more convenient vehicles.
Heck, if you want you can bash people for having any religious affiliation - even kill them for it! Shall we blame this on religion, too?
A pardon has a bit more weight behind it because it has it's basis in law as a formal procedure. An apology is just talk.
Yes, but an official apology, after passing a law that negates the previous one (along with any convictions that were judged), does indeed seem to say, "We're sorry we did this, and we will no longer do this (until yet another law is passed)." Note that the caveat is always in place with politicians. Also, it should be noted, especially in places like the U.S., that apologies are generally shied away from, becasue they're often translated as, "We've admitted we made a mistake - let the lawsuits begin!"
People like you amuse me. "If you don't think like me, you don't have free will." It reminds me of the 'rebels', usually teenage, who are supposedly thinking for themselves and rejecting society's norms. And then they all dress the same...
People may be more, less, or just as greedy as the corporations. The distinct difference is, the corporations as a general rule have more power (read: money) to enforce their desires than do most people.
I can actually do this 6 hour job in just over an hour.
Another way of saying that is that the average mechanic stretches out a 1 hour job for 6 hours.
No, it's another way of saying that the average mechanic takes six hours, and people who are really experienced (and have specialized tools) can do it in one.
This isn't really any different than having multiple pay grades for different levels of capability in, say, programming. Sure, the new guy can do it in a week, what with all the testing because of little mistakes that he can easily fix once they show up, among other things. The seasoned hand, who's seen this problem before, and has his own specialized tools, takes care of it in a afternoon. For some reason, they pay more per hour for the second guy, and pass those additional costs to the customer one way or another (usually billing the week that the newb would have taken at newb rates, or charging 'specialist' rates for fewer hours).
The big difference between the two situations is that the mechanic industry has a book for shop rates, and the programming industry doesn't even have to task listing yet.
On the other hand, it's only been the last 60 years or so where one loonie could destroy the world all by himself. And even now, it's still pretty difficult.
The difference is, numbers aren't a physical thing, whereas planets are. Unless you're stating that the physics that allowed the earth to form are so unique that they couldn't happen on accident, then it's possible it happened twice. This may change one of the assumed constants of the Drake Equation, but the possibility would have to be infinitesimal for it to have happened only once in our galaxy, let alone in the universe. Of course, 14 billions years is a long time, and 10,000 divides into it quite a bit, so it's possible the circumstances happened more than once and we still wouldn't meet any other civilizations.
Given that about 80% of Americans live in an urban area, the GGP is correct for the vast majority of Americans. Now, we know why the GP has bad service, but what about the other 80%? Do they in fact have decent service? Is it terribly expensive compared to other similar regions? If so (and I expect the answer is no to the first question and yes to the second), why?
Technically, zero, for both. One is an office building, the other is a hole to dig resources out of.Both are doubtless a warren of tunnels that people pass through daily. You were looking for the technical answer, right? Because the realistic answer is that both could be converted to living space with varying amounts of difficulty. Mines (and office buildings) have been converted to residential facilities before.
Your statement is correct from the man's perspective. Until the last two hundred years, what made sense from the woman's perspective? A partner who could provide food, shelter, and protection until the child's safety was no longer a significant burden on the mother. Monogamy, at least for a period of time, makes sense from the mother's perspective.
No one said the evolutionary drives for both sexes had to be the same. Assuming such is a critical flaw.
And yes, desert water is not infinite... Greenland is a desert now? Funny. I expected them to be warmer. And less wet.
In point of fact, the definition of a desert is how much precipitation per year there is. The arctic is one of the biggest deserts in the world, and I'm sure that could include Greenland. Here's a map for your perusal.
In fact, the pdf is a review of a report from a different group, which was claiming that the Hummer was more efficient "dust-to-dust". This report listed various flaws and warning signs of the original report, starting with a lack of peer review (i.e, could be as realistic as your average fairy tale) and going downhill from there. The end result is to say the report is too flawed to be useful, and even correcting for the flaws that can be, it still isn't possible to verify the value of the report.
This short review and analysis calls into question the unsubstantiated conclusions of the CNW “Dust to Dust” report – it appears that the report suffers from fatal flaws. Indeed, correcting only a few of these flaws completely changes the conclusions. A full analysis, however, would require more information about the data, assumptions, methods, and calculations used in the report. CNW has not released this information for independent review. We call on them to do so. At that time, it may be possible to accurately review and assess the important question of life-cycle energy for automobiles. Until then, substantial peer-reviewed and verifiable research indicates that the only reliable ways to cut the use of fossil fuels in the transportation sector are to build more efficient automobiles, develop cars that use alternative energy sources, and drive fewer miles.
As per the GPL, you don't need to release the source if you don't release the compiled code. If they had a development version which was never released, you wouldn't have any right to request the source.
Developing one thing as Open Source doesn't mean you're obligated to release every piece of code you produce as open source.
Some software which is labelled as open, rather than free, doesn't obligate you to do anything with the code, except include licensing text, re. BSD.
Frankly, open source isn't simple, unless you live in a kindergarten world. I'm sure Google's team of lawyers made sure that what they were doing wasn't illegal. And just because you don't agree with their decision doesn't make it wrong.
FYI, the Soyuz is rated for 30 man days in space, about 10 days for a 3-man crew. I'm not sure if that includes reserve time. The shuttle could do up to 28 days with a full crew, although it's usually kept to 2 weeks. It's quite possible that the Soyuz could do a moon mission with an additional module (the Apollo missions used the lander module for additional space during the moon missions, so it's comparable).
As you said, most of what the space shuttle did could be done more cheaply with robots, which means providing for the capability in a manned capsule is just more wasted mass. The one thing that I haven't heard that could be done more effectively by another existing system are the repair missions. While I'm grateful for the Hubble, the total costs for it are about $6.5 billion, including a couple repair/upgrade missions. Given that the final tally for shuttle missions has been estimated at $1.5 billion each, it could be argued that we could have sent up a second Hubble, and just scrapped the first, and still have been in the same price range. This more I look at it, the more the shuttle program looks like an extended propaganda campaign than it does a scientific endeavor, especially after the first few years.
Also, any space colonization program, even ones using space elevators or an efficient teleporter, that assumes all the source material will be lifted from earth will be prohibitively expensive. A lunar mission with a goal of doing simple construction tasks (move dirt, use it as shielding for a module, test shielding quality; bring a solar array, use it to melt lunar material into a solid shield, test durability of the solid shield) with local materials would certainly not be a mere propaganda piece, and would help explore the costs of construction in space.
I agree, except for colonization, there isn't much in space that can't be done at least as well by a robot. So the main reason to look to manned space exploration is colonization - anything else is pointless. Some (maybe even most) may argue that space, or more accurately extraterrestrial, colonization is pointless, too. The nice thing about 7 billion people is that you only need a few hundreds or thousands with the skills, desire, and finances to try it out. The last is the tricky one, right now.
No matter how old the Soyuz design is, it's still doing missions, which is something the venerated (and misguided) space shuttle can't claim to do. So your big beef is that the only current spacecraft design in use is simpler, probably cheaper, and possibly more reliable than the shuttle, with the one caveat that it has limited landing choices (one of the key requirements that made the shuttle what it was)? Keep in mind, the Soyuz is a lot closer to the only thing that has gone to the moon than the shuttle ever was. From that perspective, the shuttle was a step back.
Also, given that America is scaling back their space operation, and has been pretty much since July 1969, it's obvious to pretty much everyone that any other nation that wishes to surpass America's greatest space achievements (which are almost as old as the Soyuz design) will first have to "play catch-up". While some, like Iran, are laughable, I wouldn't rule out China. I would be unsurprised if they did something more than propaganda on a manned lunar landing before the U.S. After all, America can't even put a man up in orbit anymore - doing so again will require some catch-up on their own part. The sad thing is, they would have to catch up with themselves.
I honestly think space can be colonized with the technology we have right now. I think it's too expensive, and ultimately not worth it, right now. However, it won't get cheaper, and those breakthroughs won't happen if all we do is sit on our couches and say, "Look at what we used to be able to do."
Slashdot Mirror
In some cultures, hand holding and kissing are sexual, or at least very intimate. In others, they're things that people will do as a greeting with even casual acquaintances. I suspect that the majority of Americans fall into the first category.
Islam and Christianity consign sinners to Hell.
If I condemn you to forever ride a unicorn, does that mean it will happen? I may believe that you are going to hell. That doesn't mean that hell exists, or that you're going there if it does (since my beliefs don't give me the authority to make that decision). So why would you care what I believe, so long as I don't try to send you to hell sooner (by killing you) or otherwise enforce my beliefs on you?
Your books are either literally true and their directives ORDERS you must OBEY or your superstitions are just social clubs.
Likewise, why would I care what you insist my beliefs should be, since they're mine?
That is a real trade barrier. Just like the Spanish Inquisition was a real trade barrier to medieval witches, and the morality laws in Dubai are a trade barrier to orgy tours that aren't hosted by local sheiks. Now, the reasonable response would be for the US to not try to enforce their laws around the world, but that isn't likely to happen. So one would hope that this perfectly reasonable trade barrier will remain in place.
It's easy and inexpensive to reduce your kid's chances of dying from whooping cough to almost zero. Vaccinations.
Based on the numbers listed above, the risk of death is already less than 1% if you actually catch whooping cough and have to go to the hospital.
Looks like it's time to read about wandering planets.
Wow, people like you are never happy. "This silly religion advocates creationism by a powerful (possibly nurturing) being! That's nothing like what the scientists have discovered!" "This silly religion says death is like complete dissolution! That's pretty much what science can prove, but it sure isn't warm and fuzzy!"
There are a lot of reasons to disagree with religion, but all the items you talk about are common themes in most wishes and.or behaviours.
"Central zombie figure." Or, as your highly unbiased description avoids, the desire to not die or, failing that, for death to not be permanent. Remember when a person's heart would stop and the medical professionals would just say, "Welp, he's dead. Next!" Those zombie loving bastards, just won't let anyone stay honestly dead anymore!
"Ritual cannibalism"? While there are a few churches who promote the concept of transubstantiation, most recognize it for the symbol it is - the desire to be more like someone you believe is perfect. Not unlike children who walk around wearing mommy's or daddy's shoes.
"Death from above"? Yes, never in any other context has there been a situation of someone's life being in the hands of a "higher" power. As Bill Cosby said in his comedy routines to his kids, "I brought you into this world, I'll take you out." If that's not serious enough for you, how much is spent to (rightly, imo) support armies around the world. Most of them aren't around to hand out cupcakes...
In short, looks like the market on irrationality isn't cornered by the religious people.
Don't know about you, but I would like to see a mid twenties Sigourney Weaver battle alien monsters. Not grandma. What's she going to do anyway? Stab it with her knitting needles? Make it tea? Relive stories of her neighbors dog 70 years ago?
This sounds like a perfectly viable way to conquer the galaxy. Either all those geriatrics bore the aliens to suicide, or the aliens choke on a bone.
Don't dump it all on religion- while religion is and has been a very popular excuse used for legitimizing brutality and stupidity, I would say that if Mankind didn't have religion as an excuse for brainwashing, fighting wars and brutalizing itself, it would have (and has) found something else... Nationalism, wealth (someone else's), race, you name it. Parts of humanity have always rationalized some justification for shitting on other parts of humanity. Religion just happens to be one of the more convenient vehicles.
Heck, if you want you can bash people for having any religious affiliation - even kill them for it! Shall we blame this on religion, too?
A pardon has a bit more weight behind it because it has it's basis in law as a formal procedure. An apology is just talk.
Yes, but an official apology, after passing a law that negates the previous one (along with any convictions that were judged), does indeed seem to say, "We're sorry we did this, and we will no longer do this (until yet another law is passed)." Note that the caveat is always in place with politicians. Also, it should be noted, especially in places like the U.S., that apologies are generally shied away from, becasue they're often translated as, "We've admitted we made a mistake - let the lawsuits begin!"
People like you amuse me. "If you don't think like me, you don't have free will." It reminds me of the 'rebels', usually teenage, who are supposedly thinking for themselves and rejecting society's norms. And then they all dress the same...
People may be more, less, or just as greedy as the corporations. The distinct difference is, the corporations as a general rule have more power (read: money) to enforce their desires than do most people.
I can actually do this 6 hour job in just over an hour.
Another way of saying that is that the average mechanic stretches out a 1 hour job for 6 hours.
No, it's another way of saying that the average mechanic takes six hours, and people who are really experienced (and have specialized tools) can do it in one.
This isn't really any different than having multiple pay grades for different levels of capability in, say, programming. Sure, the new guy can do it in a week, what with all the testing because of little mistakes that he can easily fix once they show up, among other things. The seasoned hand, who's seen this problem before, and has his own specialized tools, takes care of it in a afternoon. For some reason, they pay more per hour for the second guy, and pass those additional costs to the customer one way or another (usually billing the week that the newb would have taken at newb rates, or charging 'specialist' rates for fewer hours).
The big difference between the two situations is that the mechanic industry has a book for shop rates, and the programming industry doesn't even have to task listing yet.
On the other hand, it's only been the last 60 years or so where one loonie could destroy the world all by himself. And even now, it's still pretty difficult.
The difference is, numbers aren't a physical thing, whereas planets are. Unless you're stating that the physics that allowed the earth to form are so unique that they couldn't happen on accident, then it's possible it happened twice. This may change one of the assumed constants of the Drake Equation, but the possibility would have to be infinitesimal for it to have happened only once in our galaxy, let alone in the universe. Of course, 14 billions years is a long time, and 10,000 divides into it quite a bit, so it's possible the circumstances happened more than once and we still wouldn't meet any other civilizations.
The bullshit you're smelling is probably of a political nature. Hard to build a plant in a country where the government says no.
Given that about 80% of Americans live in an urban area, the GGP is correct for the vast majority of Americans. Now, we know why the GP has bad service, but what about the other 80%? Do they in fact have decent service? Is it terribly expensive compared to other similar regions? If so (and I expect the answer is no to the first question and yes to the second), why?
Technically, zero, for both. One is an office building, the other is a hole to dig resources out of.Both are doubtless a warren of tunnels that people pass through daily. You were looking for the technical answer, right? Because the realistic answer is that both could be converted to living space with varying amounts of difficulty. Mines (and office buildings) have been converted to residential facilities before.
Your statement is correct from the man's perspective. Until the last two hundred years, what made sense from the woman's perspective? A partner who could provide food, shelter, and protection until the child's safety was no longer a significant burden on the mother. Monogamy, at least for a period of time, makes sense from the mother's perspective.
No one said the evolutionary drives for both sexes had to be the same. Assuming such is a critical flaw.
And yes, desert water is not infinite... Greenland is a desert now? Funny. I expected them to be warmer. And less wet.
In point of fact, the definition of a desert is how much precipitation per year there is. The arctic is one of the biggest deserts in the world, and I'm sure that could include Greenland. Here's a map for your perusal.
In fact, the pdf is a review of a report from a different group, which was claiming that the Hummer was more efficient "dust-to-dust". This report listed various flaws and warning signs of the original report, starting with a lack of peer review (i.e, could be as realistic as your average fairy tale) and going downhill from there. The end result is to say the report is too flawed to be useful, and even correcting for the flaws that can be, it still isn't possible to verify the value of the report.
This short review and analysis calls into question the unsubstantiated conclusions of the CNW “Dust to Dust” report – it appears that the report suffers from fatal flaws. Indeed, correcting only a few of these flaws completely changes the conclusions. A full analysis, however, would require more information about the data, assumptions, methods, and calculations used in the report. CNW has not released this information for independent review. We call on them to do so. At that time, it may be possible to accurately review and assess the important question of life-cycle energy for automobiles. Until then, substantial peer-reviewed and verifiable research indicates that the only reliable ways to cut the use of fossil fuels in the transportation sector are to build more efficient automobiles, develop cars that use alternative energy sources, and drive fewer miles.
As per the GPL, you don't need to release the source if you don't release the compiled code. If they had a development version which was never released, you wouldn't have any right to request the source.
Developing one thing as Open Source doesn't mean you're obligated to release every piece of code you produce as open source.
Some software which is labelled as open, rather than free, doesn't obligate you to do anything with the code, except include licensing text, re. BSD.
Frankly, open source isn't simple, unless you live in a kindergarten world. I'm sure Google's team of lawyers made sure that what they were doing wasn't illegal. And just because you don't agree with their decision doesn't make it wrong.
FYI, the Soyuz is rated for 30 man days in space, about 10 days for a 3-man crew. I'm not sure if that includes reserve time. The shuttle could do up to 28 days with a full crew, although it's usually kept to 2 weeks. It's quite possible that the Soyuz could do a moon mission with an additional module (the Apollo missions used the lander module for additional space during the moon missions, so it's comparable).
As you said, most of what the space shuttle did could be done more cheaply with robots, which means providing for the capability in a manned capsule is just more wasted mass. The one thing that I haven't heard that could be done more effectively by another existing system are the repair missions. While I'm grateful for the Hubble, the total costs for it are about $6.5 billion, including a couple repair/upgrade missions. Given that the final tally for shuttle missions has been estimated at $1.5 billion each, it could be argued that we could have sent up a second Hubble, and just scrapped the first, and still have been in the same price range. This more I look at it, the more the shuttle program looks like an extended propaganda campaign than it does a scientific endeavor, especially after the first few years.
Also, any space colonization program, even ones using space elevators or an efficient teleporter, that assumes all the source material will be lifted from earth will be prohibitively expensive. A lunar mission with a goal of doing simple construction tasks (move dirt, use it as shielding for a module, test shielding quality; bring a solar array, use it to melt lunar material into a solid shield, test durability of the solid shield) with local materials would certainly not be a mere propaganda piece, and would help explore the costs of construction in space.
I agree, except for colonization, there isn't much in space that can't be done at least as well by a robot. So the main reason to look to manned space exploration is colonization - anything else is pointless. Some (maybe even most) may argue that space, or more accurately extraterrestrial, colonization is pointless, too. The nice thing about 7 billion people is that you only need a few hundreds or thousands with the skills, desire, and finances to try it out. The last is the tricky one, right now.
No matter how old the Soyuz design is, it's still doing missions, which is something the venerated (and misguided) space shuttle can't claim to do. So your big beef is that the only current spacecraft design in use is simpler, probably cheaper, and possibly more reliable than the shuttle, with the one caveat that it has limited landing choices (one of the key requirements that made the shuttle what it was)? Keep in mind, the Soyuz is a lot closer to the only thing that has gone to the moon than the shuttle ever was. From that perspective, the shuttle was a step back.
Also, given that America is scaling back their space operation, and has been pretty much since July 1969, it's obvious to pretty much everyone that any other nation that wishes to surpass America's greatest space achievements (which are almost as old as the Soyuz design) will first have to "play catch-up". While some, like Iran, are laughable, I wouldn't rule out China. I would be unsurprised if they did something more than propaganda on a manned lunar landing before the U.S. After all, America can't even put a man up in orbit anymore - doing so again will require some catch-up on their own part. The sad thing is, they would have to catch up with themselves.
I honestly think space can be colonized with the technology we have right now. I think it's too expensive, and ultimately not worth it, right now. However, it won't get cheaper, and those breakthroughs won't happen if all we do is sit on our couches and say, "Look at what we used to be able to do."
Meanwhile back on Earth, we've just retired our only manned spacecraft with no successor.
Ah, from the grandparent's post...
He equates the U.S. with mankind, ignoring that other nations are ramping up their space programs.
Professor Murphy, is that you? Last I heard, the Soyuz was still working fine.
Well, you know those Vancouverites - always into the weed. We're lucky that he knew there were districts, let alone named ones!
Just kidding (about the second sentence anyway). But feel free to start a thread on the merits of various illegal (and quasi-legal) drugs.