Sorry but I just had to comment on this utter fantasy you are spouting.
Fantasy? I'm sorry you're incapable of grasping it, but your "argument" has actually bolstered mine. The U.S. was the sole nuclear superpower at the end of WWII, and it used that power to nuke Japan into submission. If Japan had had similar nukes and the methods to deliver them, those bombs might never have been dropped. Indeed, the war would likely have turned out much differently, probably to the detriment of the Allies.
But your analogy, regardless of any perceived merit, is a stupid one. You cannot compare the deterrent effect of one or two weapons to the concept of both sides having thousands of such weapons. Back when there were at most ten or so nuclear weapons in the entire world, it was possible to wage a "limited" nuclear war. With thousands of ICBM's, that concept is "utter fantasy" as you might call it. Thus, your argument falters and you lose. I would say it was a good try, but it wasn't even mildly challenging to point out your logical failings in this matter.
Tell you what. When you can cite a source that isn't some left-leaning liberal whacko site like reclaimthemedia.org, then perhaps I'll give some credence to your conspiracy theory. In the meantime, I have an extremely difficult time believing that hundreds and hundreds of these "protesters" are all government agents. And there would have to be hundreds of them in order to explain the massive crowds burning cars, destroying businesses, and throwing bombs.
Besides all that, I didn't hear any protester once decry the violence being espoused at these events. They were either ambivalent towards it or actively encouraging it. I'm sure you'll chalk that up to the media "silencing" the voice of the "real" protesters.
First off, it's "thrown" not "throwed," but then again you may be a product of our public education system and thus not know proper grammar and spelling.
To address your point, I not only believe it, but it's historically accurate. Go look deep down at some of the causes of WWII. Although the seeds of WWII were sown in the Versailles Treaty, what really enabled it was the fact that Hitler understood the Allies would do anything to avoid war. He knew that as long as he gave the Allies any excuse not to go to war, they would eagerly seize upon it. Thus the Rhineland was re-militarized, Austria was gobbled up with nary a shot, Czechoslovakia was section up then taken whole, and finally Poland.
Sir Winston Churchill famously observed after the war that "at one point, a memo would've stopped Hitler," and he is quite correct in that. Enemies attack because they think they can win, not because they plan on losing. If you remove the possibility of the enemy winning a conflict, usually the conflict never happens.
Case in point: the insurgency in Iraq is being maintained by those who think they can win by forcing the American public to think the war is going badly, unwinnable, or something like that. The insurgents know they cannot prevail militarily under any possible scenario, so their only possible chance of success is to prevail politically. What's so funny (in a tragic, not humorous, way) is that these so-called "peace protesters" who are so busy screaming about how we need to cut and run in this war are actually encouraging the insurgent. If this country presented a united face against the insurgents, with a resolve to see this through no matter what, the insurgents would find it much more difficult to find new recruits. Instead, the constant -- and totally ludicrous -- comparisons to Vietnam encourages our enemy to try and make us leave a war we winning, prolonging the violence and suffering on all sides.
Actually, I think you're referring to Nobel's comments about dynamite being so powerful it would make war obsolete. Obviously that didn't happen, but it's due more to Nobel's limited view of how destructive something needs to be before it is no longer practical to use. Dynamite wasn't it. Napalm wasn't it. Tactical nukes aren't even it. Strategic nukes, however, with their ability to essentially destroy all of humanity in less than an hour, fit the bill without question.
Rest assured these high tech toys will not be used on armed combatants, but on peaceful protesters.
Yeah, those G8 protesters out there burning cars, smashing storefronts, and generally destroying everything in sight are just...so...peaceful, aren't they?
There was a time when a protest was something arranged around non-violent confrontation. Today, protests are just another excuse for hooligans to do what they do best: destroy things for the fun of it.
Ghandi had it right: if you want an effective protest, violence is the last thing you should encourage or tolerate. It gives your opponents all the ammunition they need to increase the level of control, force, and invasiveness on those who are protesting. These freaks who are out there slinging rocks and Molotov cocktails are not protesters, they're thugs.
While I can appreciate a noble desire by people to wonder why weapons are needed, you do need to understand that weapons exist both as a means to inflict force as well as a means to psychologically affect a potential enemy.
The U.S and (former) U.S.S.R. nuclear arsenals are a perfect example of this idea. If only one country had possessed such a devastating arsenal, it could use it with impunity, thus constituting a an effective deterrence against any other party initiating hostilities. With both parties having the same weaponry, neither side can start anything without a devastating reprisal and are thus mutually deterred.
So, you see, the weapons themselves don't have to actually be used in order to be effective. The very fact that they could be used can deter someone who is considering attacking us or our international interests. Indeed, the lack of such weapons can actually encourage belligerent activity against us and our interests since any such belligerent party might feel they could "get away with it."
Finally, the more effectively our weaponry is, the less likely we'll ever need to use it. For that reason if no other, we should be glad research in these areas is continuing. The fact that this "lightning gun" is intended to be non-lethal is another great idea. It would alway be preferrable to "stun" a target than exercise lethal force. A stunned person will live if you make a mistake. Non-lethal weaponry, if perfected, could eventually eliminate the very concept of civilian casualties. And that is a very good thing to have in your arsenal no matter which "side" you are on.
I just wanted to comment that Otellinis response was the standard corporate response. No market leader is ever going to let a smaller competitor decide how the battle is fought...
The GP poster did interpret my posting properly, however. FUD can take many forms, some of them "active" and some of them "passive." Active FUD is saying things that are misleading, or downright false. Passive FUD is knowingly allowing someone to draw a false conclusion based on questionable comments. Subtle but important distinction.
Otellini's "we'll let the market decide" may be the "standard corporate response" but it's disingenous in the utmost. Otellini knows AMD would make Intel look rather pitiful in such a match up, therefore he's going to take his ball and go home. Yet it's spun as if AMD weren't worthy of competing against. Masterful politics by Otellini, but at its core it has all the spirit of the FUD even if it doesn't have the letter of the FUD.
Intel's Paul Otellini has already publicly refused to take up AMD's challenge. He said he prefers such things "to be worked out in the market."
That's Intel-speak for "we know we can't beat you in any fair contest, so we're just going to outspend you ten-to-one in marketing and make everyone think we're faster, just like we've been doing for the last five years."
Yup, that's the way to do it. If you can't beat 'em, FUD 'em to death.
Can't you just put aside your cynical nature for ten freakin minutes and actually be excited about the fact that humans were just in space for two weeks in a vehicle we built? Come on! What's WRONG with people these days?
Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's the fact that 36 years ago we were putting humans on the moon instead of just lofting them a few tens of miles above the surface of the planet. Maybe it's the fact that, although this was a "successful" flight, NASA spent more time examining and repairing the shuttle in orbit than it did doing any meaningful science. Maybe it's the fact that shuttle lauches cost over a billion dollars apiece whereas the "old" Saturn V launches cost about 60% less in adjusted dollars.
Or maybe, just maybe, it's the fact that the shuttle just goes around in circles, whereas the space program actually used to go somewhere we hadn't been before. Nobody's saying going into LEO isn't risky or challenging, but it's no longer exploring. If we want to explore again, we need to (a) start setting up a moon colony and (b) start planning a Mars mission. Let's pioneer some new propulsion technologies and start planning manned missions to the outer planets. Let's start looking at the prospect of mining asteroids for useful materials, or snagging billion-ton chunks of water ice from Saturn to use as drinking water, rocket fuel, and fuel-cell feedstock. Let's set up solar-powered antimatter production facilities on Mercury (yes, this is feasible. No, it is not some Star Trek fantasy) for propulsion and power production usages. Or perhaps just set up some solar collectors in orbit or on the moon and micrwave it back to Earth for the ultimate in no-pollution power. And this time we really need to do it instead of just talk about it. And I'd be the first volunteer in line for any of it.
If Armstrong had known we'd be so...so...mediocre in following in his footsteps, he would've said "that's one small step for a man. Now let's get back in, go home, and never come back."
Last time I checked 3D Studio Max and Photoshop have Mac OS/X versions.
Then you're out of your fucking gourd, because Max is only available on Windows. I see you can't be bothered to actually check your facts before you spout them, therefore you're just making crap up as you go along. Too bad you've been found out.
Since I refuse to debate with a lying braggart, this conversation is over. Next time, try to actually find something out before opening that spouting hole of yours. Cheers!
FIFTY PERCENT of our sales are Linux. This is for a $7999/seat graphics software.
[golf clap] Bravo! Now, please tell me exactly how many seats of this $8,000/seat package you sell a year? Now compare that tiny, tiny number to how many seats of 3D Studio Max are sold each year. Or Photoshop. Or any other mainstream application that has a large Windows fanbase. Or game, for that matter. Your numbers will look insignificant by comparison, which should show you where the market is. In a word, it's with DirectX, not OpenGL.
The very fact that you sell such an expensive package actually helps you sell more Linux. Why? Because it's obviously a niche application. Niche applications tend to like oddball or one-off hardware/software solutions because there isn't a large market (with lots of diversity) to support. Hence, moving to Irix, OS X, Windows, Linux, BSD, or even (God forbid) SCO Unix is no big deal. You hold up your "50% of our sales are Linux!" like some sort of talisman, when in fact it's a very pedestrian figure for the type of money you're talking about.
Professional graphics applications will be hit harder. 3DS Max recommends DirectX - but then, it is not cross-platform. Maya, Lightwave etc all run on multiple other platforms (like Linux and Mac OS), and all use OpenGL only. Same with many 2D compositing apps.
You've constructed a tautology. Maya and Lightwave do so because they have no choice if they want to be cross platform since DirectX is a Windows-only technology.
What you are missing here is how the professional graphics card market has changed. Five or ten years ago, the market was dominated by OpenGL-only solutions by companies like 3DLabs. Such graphics cards were fantastically expensive to make and cost an arm and a leg to purchase. Today, the fastest pro card on the market is the Quadro 4500, which is based on a derivation of (some would say an identical derivation, to play with words) on the GeForce 7800. This allows nVidia to hit two markets with one chip, vastly increasing their profits. And it also has the side effect of diminshing the importance of OpenGL, since the graphics cores on these cards are designed largely for DirectX games and DirectX effects. ATI does the same with its innappropriately-named FireGL line, which is also based on (some would say copied from) its gaming line. 3DLabs is not doing too well these days as a result since it has no presence in the gaming market to speak of.
Before everyone starts frothing and gnashing, please go back and read the title of the article: Vista may impact OpenGL performance. Not will impact, may impact. Vista has just now reached Beta 1. There is much that can and will change about it. Look at the other possibilities: Beta 1 could've included a full OpenGL ICD, but it could've been pulled before it reaches release, so even if this supposed layering wasn't present in Vista now, it could be later. There's just no good reason to get worked up at this point.
Now, let's get another little thing out of the way for just a moment, and that's OpenGL versus DirectX. Four or five years ago, OpenGL was the bees knees and DirectX was the red-headed stepchild. No longer. Pretty much every game released today is DirectX. There are a few notable exceptions, but they are the exceptions. OpenGL largely has itself to blame for this, for while it took ages for OpenGL to reach the 2.0 milestone, Microsoft has been radically increasing the functionality of DirectX. Game developers, knowing their largest market is the Windows platform, have gone where the money is, and Microsoft has done a lot to make DirectX very, very attractive to them, both from a financial standpoint and a performance standpoint. And while the idea of cross-platform gaming is a neat idea, I don't think too many game developers and producers lose too much sleep wondering how they're going to market to Mac OS X or Linux gamers; there are simply too few of them to matter. It's not nice to say that here, but it is the truth.
As for professional applications, typically the stronghold of OpenGL, even that has been fading. 3D Studio Max, one of the most popular 3D applications for the Windows platform, now strongly recommends you use the DirectX drivers versus OpenGL. Performance is usually better, and you get to make use of all the DirectX features implemented in hardware on gaming-derived video cards like nVidia's Quadro line. For a while, DirectX stability in these apps was dicey and OpenGL was rock solid, but even that has now been reverse. 3DS Max 7.5's OpenGL is noticeably slower and buggier than its DirectX, again a reflection of where developers are spending their development and Q&A time. Maya, Lightwave, and others are in similar positions. OpenGL won't go away, but it is slowly being marginalized. That's been going on for a while.
There's a lot of angst over what this will do the OSS platform since DirectX is solidly proprietary. Unfortunately, the answer isn't one you're going to like. Nobody, not Autodesk, not Microstation, not Adobe, not anybody in the large-scale commercial software space really gives two damns about the OSS market right now. And why should they? It represents an amazingly tiny fraction of their global market, yet would very likely consume a disproportionate amount of the overall support, troubleshooting, and Q&A resources available. That's not a winning combination for any company. Furthermore, most OSS adherents don't like paying for their software, and they certainly don't like paying $4,000-$10,000 for major OpenGL-based design packages. Thus, not only is the market tiny, it's unreceptive as well. Again, if the OSS market is wondering why no one is paying them attention, you don't have to think on it very hard to see why.
The good news here is that the OSS community can do whatever it damn well pleases with OpenGL. Don't want to follow the DirectX bandwagon? Write your own OpenGL app. Who knows? If it's done well, it might actually gain a foothold. But I sure wouldn't bet on it. I wish I could, because I'd love to see more competition in this arena, but I'm too much of a pragmatist to really have much faith in this area. Companies are going to keep using -- and paying for -- what works for them, and what works for them is what has always worked for them. Microstation shops generally stay Microstation shops. Ditto for Autodesk. Ditto ditto for Maya
No problem. I'm enjoying this debate thus far. I agree with most of what you said until this point:
The side-mount design flaw, as we both know, is one that can't be fixed without flying something entirely new. Fortunately, this is known, better now that we have proof that it doesn't work than before when we could just say "hey, there's probably going to be debris because everything else launched has had some stuff fall off it, so I bet there's going to be a problem".
If there had been nobody pointing out this glaring flaw back when the shuttle was still on the drawing board, I would agree with you. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Many, many engineers pointed out that if Apollo had taught them anything, it was that you can't adequately protect something side-mounted. These knowledgeable engineers, steeped in experience from years of Apollo, were overruled by non-engineers, bureaucrats and bean counters all of them. I'm in a highly technical field myself, and I'm called upon frequently to give my opinion on this design or that design. It is extremely frustrating to see your recommendations be ignored by those who know less about the problem (or system) than you do, but it happens. In my line of work, though, if the worst comes to pass, nobody dies. NASA did not have that luxury. It still doesn't, which is why such decisions should never be made from the top down. I just don't think NASA has learned this, not even after two shuttle losses and the Apollo 1 fire.
As for "someone screwed up and we shouldn't have done it this way" -- yes, that's true, but instead of being negative and pointing fingers and saying "you're an idiot" or whatever, I'd rather say "okay, yes, we've had problems, now what can we learn from this to put into the next design to fix them?"
Your response here would be absolutely on the mark if it weren't for the fact that NASA was widely informed about such shortcomings before the first weld was ever made in the shuttle spaceframe. Therefore, it's not an issue of ignorance -- which could be tolerated due to inexperience -- but instead one of willfull omission, purposefully ignoring the elephant in the living room. I have no problems with people making mistakes when exploring the unknown, but when the make known mistakes, I have absolutely no tolerance for them, even less so when human lives are at stake.
Again, as for being able to do all the great things that need to be done -- I'd rather be positive than a nay-sayer who doesn't believe anything is possible. As long as we assume that something can't be done, it never will be. Negative prophecies have a way of coming true.
And I agree with you. However, when a knowledgeable engineer is told to butt out because he's saying something that's politically or budgetarily inconvenient, there should be no mercy whatsoever if things go exactly as the engineer predicted. Those people making such a call should be drawn and quarter, or at the very least have their careers ruined beyond recovery. They have no business playing dice with the space program, to paraphrase Albert Einstein. There is too much at stake to cut corners like this.
As for the rest, not being a big Potter fan, I can't really comment, although I do understand your analogy. Make no mistake, I think the rewards are definitely worth some risk, perhaps even great risk. But to accept additional risk due to the whim of someone's uninformed judgement is just lunacy, and that's exactly why we have a shuttle now that can't make it beyond LEO, can't carry more than 25 tons of cargo, can't be aborted during launch, can't survive even moderate debris strikes, can't beat the cost of expendable boosters, and can't even "go around" in the event of a botched landing. All of these things were not only avoidable, they were predicted well before shuttle construction started. What upsets me now is the feigned suprise NASA exhibits at the outcome of all these poor decisions.
Look, you can believe whatever you want, as long as you don't try to use unproveable beliefs to tell others what to do.
Strawman. I have clearly stated I don't want religious beliefs being forced on anyone. That is not the same thing as saying they should be banned from consideration as you are suggesting. For you, it's not enough to let people make up their own minds, you must actively seek to control what goes into those minds so that they draw the "right" conclusions...namely, the ones you deem correct. Again, you demonstrate your hypocrisy. You are arguing for the exact thing you are arguing against.
You are living in your own self-defined, self-referential system. You pick ideas whose reality threatens you, like actual diversity, where people are actually different from you, actual acceptance of differences, rather than the prudish, self-servingly superior "tolerance", and get all worked up about them. I listen to your "side of the story": I read you posts, and I call out the lies and tautologies that compose them.
You should listen to yourself sometime. You just drip with smug self confidence, so sure that you know all the answers, that you have it all figured out, that anyone who disagrees with you is a mindless, unknowing freak who is too stupid to see the forest for the trees. You know what you sound like? You sound just like a bible-thumping religious zealot in the truest sense, only your religion is essentially one of anti-religion. You're nothing more than the opposite side of the same coin in your inability to admit you don't know it all and someone else might be right. I have the ability to admit that you might be right, that all this religious business is nothing but hocus pocus, mere claptrap, and there is nothing but the laws of physics governing things. You, however, would burst a vein in your forehead before you'd even consider saying the religous folks might be right. There is no clearer indication of your total intolerance in this matter, your total close-mindedness to any other possibility than the one you deem correct. Your arrogance and hubris are astounding.
It doesn't stop you from playing shallow games of insults and childish nonsense, hiding behind cynical pretense while you pray for any inch gained by your "faith-oriented methodology" (known as "mythology") against actual rationality and science.
Funny how it's you that seem so intent on mentally degrading anyone who disagrees with you, not I. I haven't questioned your intelligence once, nor have I done anything but point out just how arrogant you are. As for your "rationality" and "science," you have put your faith in the "god" of science, that is obvious. But never forget that at some point in history, science was absolutely sure the Earth was the center of the universe. Later, science was absolutely sure time and space were absolute. After that, science was absolutely sure everything propagated through "luminiferous aether." Throughout history, science at any given point has been sure it knew it all, and routinely it's been proven otherwise. You base your "faith" on the "rationality" of science, but a true scientist understands the limits of his or her knowledge. You don't. You think you know it all and everyone else is wrong. Your presumptuous attitude in this respect is, again, astounding, but it is not unexpected given your prior statements. One can hope that one day you actually grow up and understand just how little you really do know. Perhaps then, with a little perspective, you will be a little more humble and respectful of others.
I place no bad intentions or blame on this because it's just a fact of life that doing something for the first time takes longer than it does when you've got some experience.
Well, I agree with you that the shuttle was indeed a learning experience, but I don't agree that it should take this long for NASA to figure out the idea wasn't a good one. Again, I'm going to direct you to the "Comm Check..." book I mentioned earlier. There is abundant evidence of how NASA violated its own safety procedures routinely just to operate the shuttle. There were certain things "the book" said you should never allow, such as debris strikes during launch, that happened with every single launch. The TPS wasn't designed with that in mind, and it said so in the flight manual. NASA, instead of saying "hey, we've got a major design problem here" just decided to write a waiver and launch anyway.
The comparisons to the fatal Apollo 1 fire are chilling here, as are the comparisons to Challenger. In all cases, NASA knew it was doing something in a way that made things more dangerous than they already were, but NASA went ahead and did it anyway out of expediency, neglect, inertia, ignorance, politics, and plain laziness. People died as a result.
A few examples of old things that are still in use:
You raise a good point, one I'll come back to in a minute. My favorite example of a design that just keeps on going in the venerable B-52 bomber. The "52" in the name reflects the year the design was started, and the first one flew in 1955. Today, it's projected the B-52 could keep flying until 2045. That's an unprecedented lifespan for a front-line bomber, something never before seen. If you examine sharks today, you'll find they are little changed from million-year-old fossils. Why? They are the pinnacle of evolution for their particular function, just as the B-52 is with jet-powered bombers.
Unfortunately, the shuttle does not belong -- and will never belong -- in this category. It was an interesting attempt, and had it remained true to more of its original design intent with fewer compromises along the way, the idea might've held merit even today. But, it didn't, and NASA has known this for some time.
It is ridiculous that nothing was done to fix the major problems that were fixable; however, some of them are inherent in the design, like foam shedding is going to be a problem as long as you have the crew cabin mounted on the side of the booster instead of atop it. That's something that can't be changed without a complete redesign; however, a lot of other safety issues have been addressed with ongoing upgrades, and that's a thing to applaud.
Agreed. But the remaining flaws are both amazingly dangerous and -- and here's the worst part -- they're amazingly obvious to anyone. Even a layman can understand that if you place your crew vehicle alongside a giant tank full of cryopropellants, you're going to have to worry about debris. Apollo had no such worries because it put the valuable, fragile stuff like humans at the top of the stack. You can't look at all the design compromises in the shuttle and tell me NASA didn't realize it was building a much more dangerous vehicle. There are too many smart people there for me to believe that. However, there are also a lot of bureaucrats and yes-men there, and they also happen to more or less run the place. That's why we ended up with the lemon we have now, and that's why fourteen astronauts are dead. NASA not only could've done better, it knew it could've done better and didn't. That is unforgivable.
Also, as I said, there's quite a lot that is being done, within the bounds of the current design, to reduce risk. We will never entirely eliminate it, however. That is part of life and part of walking out of your house every day. Heck, it's still possible to get killed while at home. Life is risky...
Again, no disagreement here about space travel being risky. H
I almost forgot to get into this usage with you. You wave Occam's Razor about as if it were some sort of shield. I will quote from the wikipedia entry on Occam's Razor:
Occam's Razor has become a basic perspective for those who follow the scientific method. It is important to note that it is a heuristic argument that does not necessarily give correct answers; it is a loose guide to choosing the scientific hypothesis which (currently) contains the least number of unproven assumptions. Often, several hypotheses are equally "simple" and Occam's Razor does not express any preference in such cases.
Occam's Razor simply states that the simplest answer is usually the right one. It is not always the right one. The example given in the wikipedia is a good one: a charred treestump could be the result of a landing UFO or it could be the result of a lightning strike. Occam's Razor says the lightning strike requires the fewest assumptions, therefore it must be the correct one. Does that now mean there is no such thing as extraterrestrial life? Of course not. It is also possible it was a UFO, since our uniqueness in the universe is far from proven thus far. Occam's Razor helps us define what is probable, not what is possible.
Be careful using Occam's Razor. It is a tool to enhance judgement, not a substitute for it.
The grandparent post is correct; Evolution (in the sense of The History of Life on Earth), is correct but not complete.
In the sense that there is no documented, uninterrupted fossil evidence of man's ascension from a single-celled organism, you are correct. There is also no direct, observed evidence because we weren't around to observe it! However, it is rather undeniable that we are evolving even now, and that other species actively evolve to better fit their environment. This does not disprove any sort of a "Creator" concept as I described in my original post. If God snapped his fingers and created the Universe, then stepped back to watch everything unfold according to his grand design, it would look like natural evolution to anyone observing it from within the system. There'd be no way to tell the difference if God is non-interventionist. However, if God really is omnipotent, he wouldn't need to be interventionist in the fist place, since his original design would proceed exactly as he planned it. Quite honestly I belive modern religion has diminished God greatly by attributing to him fallability, thus requiring him to interacting with his creations on a regular basis to keep things humming along. It makes God sound like the ever-tinkering programmer, constantly finding bugs and correcting them one at a time. If God really is God, none of this is needed, and he would be -- for all intents and purposes -- invisible to us. That's rather what you're arguing here, you know.
And while creationism cannot be disproven, I can prove that forms of Creationism are either content-free (and banished by Occam's Razor) or contradicted by the evidence, i.e. false.
You can, can you? My, how powerful you are. You can prove that "forms of Creationism" are content-free or contradictory, eh? I must guffaw for a moment, for in order for you to be able to do so, you must know all the facts in the matter, and you do not. You cannot. You can only know what you have been taught and what you have observed, both of which are woefully incomplete when you consider the vast number of possibilities involved in the matter under discussion. Your claims are premature, I fear. Logic may be logic, but it requires a complete understanding of the situtation in order to be applied. You lack this, as does everyone else who hasn't been alive since the dawn of time.
You have a theory which is based upon such facts as you have been able to collect. It neither means it is complete nor correct. Thus you can make suppositions, you can make arguments, but you cannot make an unequivocal case in this matter. Don't feel bad. It is not just beyond you, it is beyond any human being, because nobody has been around long enough to know everything, and (barring some time travel invention) nobody ever will.
So we're left with claims for recent creation that have been disproven long ago
No, we're not, and if you think the vast majority of Christians out there believe the world is only 6,000 years old, you're off your rocker. I've run into a couple of people who think so, but they are the fringe. Most all modern Christians believe the book of Genesis to be almost completely metaphorical. God did not create everything in six 24-hour days. It could've taken millenia, it could've taken microseconds. The minutiae is, actually, quite irrelevant. It's the larger concept of what (or who) was here before the Universe got started that I'm after. You cannot answer that question any more than any other man can. I am humble enough to admit that I don't know everything and thus am willing to leave the answer to this question to Providence. To me, claiming to know the answer to something I can't possibly know is rather arrogant, all the more so if I insist on forcing said belief down everyone else's throat, yet another reason why I don't proselytize others in an attempt to conver them to Christianity.
Your sarcasm only deepens the air of immaturity around you, you know. You're one of the first people I ever foelisted, and you're rapidly reminding me why I did so. You're a testament to model liberal thinking, where you claim to love diversity, but only so long as it conforms exactly to your ideals. You claim to love tolerance, yet denigrate anyone who dissents. You claim to be open minded, but refuse to hear anyone's side of the story but your own. You are a walking, talking, typing definition of hypocrisy.
It is not up to you to determine the value of any particular theory. It is enough that we teach a scientific approach and acknowledge that we don't have enough evidence to say we know everything yet, thus leaving the door open for anyone who chooses to believe a faith-oriented methodology.
I'd say that going to LEO for the 115th time *is* something grand.
Look, nobody is going to argue that getting into space isn't difficult. It is. And the fact that NASA's done it 114 times with the shuttle is an acheivement.
However...
Merely going somewhere is not a challenge, nor is it anything to really get worked up about...if you've already been there. NASA found this out at the end of the Apollo program when the public considered the moon landings somewhat routine. Is it supremely difficult to do? Sure. Is it a worthy goal? Not anymore.
Humanity is driven by expansion, not consolidation. This is a fundamental desire in most people. We strive to go where we haven't been, to try what we haven't tried, to do what we haven't done. Once that's complete, we start the cycle over again, ad nauseum.
You mention NASA's budget woes, but budgets are driven by the public's willingness to throw money at something. The public had no problem at all with throwing massive amounts of money at moon landings in 1969 because it was a grand spectacle. Had NASA kept that momentum and moved on to a permanent lunar colony and a mission to Mars, NASA would've had no trouble getting funding from taxpayers. Today, if the public actually had confidence in NASA's ability to execute, it would likely have no trouble drumming up funding for a moon colony or Mars landing mission, but nobody trusts NASA anymore.
Yes, that is why facts like evolution must be balanced by fiction like Creationism, in the mandatory education.
You can no more prove Creationism is fiction than I can prove it is non-fiction, so your comment is disingenous to begin with. The hubris of folks like you never ceases to amaze me. You cannot prove God doesn't exist, but you're absolutely, totally, unalterably sure he doesn't, so much so that you're more than willing to insult others who do believe in God.
On the other hand you scoff at anyone who doesn't believe exactly as you do, even though you cannot prove God does not exist and did not create the universe. Who's the narrow-minded and intolerant one in this conversation?
Look, I'm a Christian, and I believe in God. I also believe it's entirely possible God set things into motion billions of years ago that allowed humans to evolve into what we are today. This is the "non-interventionist" view of God as opposed to the interactive God preached by so many today. My particular viewpoint on the creation of the universe and man in particular is not incompatible with the current theory of evolution, and since you cannot prove God does not exist any more than I can prove he does, my viewpoint is no less valid than yours.
Unlike you, however, I will not scoff at your belief even if I don't agree with it. That's the difference between being mature and tolerant and being immature and arrogant, like you obviously are.
You're right about the troll thing, and let's take that away. Now, I will respond to the rest of what you said, and let us stop being incendiary at each other and let's actually hold a good debate here.
I agree. Much more productive that way. My opinion of you just went up several notches.
The design lifetime of the Shuttle was for 100 flights per orbiter.
Very true. What you're forgetting, though, is that the shuttle was originally designed to be turned around in about four weeks, not four months. If you take that into account, the planned lifetime of the shuttle was (100 / 12 = 8.3) 8.3 years assuming a maximal usage and minimal turnaround time. Double that figure for a slightly more optimistic launch schedule (by 1975 estimates) and you still only get a rough lifetime of 16.6 years. Columbia was first launched on April 12, 1981. Add 17 years and you get 1998. To paraphrase an old saying, it's not the mileage, it's the years. The shuttle is just old. The very ideas and concepts it is based upon, its very structure, power-to-weight ratios, everything is based upon how things looked 34 years ago. If we had a clean sheet today we'd build a much different vehicle I'm sure. Back then we had to make certain compromises to make the shuttle work, and most of those compromises were under the heading of "safety." To take your argument at face value, an unused Saturn V booster, having sat in a warehouse somewhere for 34 years, is still an economical and safe way to get into orbit. While it may work just fine, it represents old thinking in many ways, compromises that we made back then but no longer have to. We can do better. We should do better.
While it is true that not all of the design goals have been met (which is a shame), keep in mind that no one had ever built a spaceplane anything like the shuttle before and therefore the only experience that it could be based on was that of airline service.
Agreed, the shuttle was a first try at a totally new concept. However, if you research the birth of the shuttle carefully, you'll find the engineers were dragged kicking and screaming to the current shuttle design. Did you know the original design didn't have solid boosters? They were deemed too dangerous for manned spaceflight due to the fact that they can't be throttled, trimmed, or even turned off in flight. The original design allowed for an ejection system as well but was cut for weight and cost reasons. Never before had NASA sent its astronauts into space without some kind of escape system, be it ever so humble. The original design had air-breathing engines for a powered landing on the return flight. These were scrapped, again for cost and weight issues, meaning the shuttle must land perfectly all the time, every time. Did you know the original specifications for thermal protection tiles demanded that no debris be shed during launch? And yet NASA continued to launch knowing that foam, ice, and other things were impacting and damaging the tiles even from the very first launch? NASA knowingly operated the vehicle outside its design specifications, which is negligent at best and criminal at worst. Yet it did so because that was the only way the platform could be operated. When you have to operate something outside its design specs in order to actually get it to work, something is dreadfully wrong. All this has been known since 1981, yet nothing has been done about almost all of it.
It all adds up to a ton of things that must function perfectly or people die. All that perfection runs up costs and turnaround time while simultaneously greatly increasing risk. The original shuttle engineers knew this, but they were overruled by NASA brass and the politicians.
While it seems easy enough to say that "they should have thought of that", is it really true? I don't think so. You only gain confidence in statements like that when you've had a lot of experience with
While I agree with you that this country has become far too risk-averse for its own good, you're not getting the whole point here.
Risk in and of itself is a vice, not a virtue. Risk is something to always be avoided wherever and whenever possible...unless the rewards from taking such a risk are deemed worth the danger, and so long as there is no better way to accomplish the goal.
In the case of the shuttle, exactly what are those seven astronauts risking their lives for? So we can study space? They could've done that in an Apollo capsule much more safely. Or, for that matter, in Skylab, launched not by the shuttle by by a stripped-down version of the Saturn V. Most of the experiments being performed on board the shuttle right now could be performed without the need for humans to interact with them. Indeed, some experiments would benefit from being on something other than a shuttle full of oxygen/nitrogen, rattling around from astronauts bouncing off the walls/floors, and shooting hydrazine thrusters all over the place.
In short, these astronauts are risking their invaluable lives, along with a billion dollars worth of hardware, to do some marginally-useful science that could be done much cheaper and more easily via other means. That, my friend, is the very definition of a stupid risk.
Now, if the astronauts were risking their lives to found a colony on the moon, or to go to Mars, that'd be something entirely different. But to keep going to LEO for the 115th time? What's the point? No wonder the public is disenchanted with the shuttle! It doesn't do anything grand, like land a man on the moon or go to Mars, and it still is very risky. More risk and less reward? Sure, gimme more of that any day. Not.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry but I just had to comment on this utter fantasy you are spouting.
Fantasy? I'm sorry you're incapable of grasping it, but your "argument" has actually bolstered mine. The U.S. was the sole nuclear superpower at the end of WWII, and it used that power to nuke Japan into submission. If Japan had had similar nukes and the methods to deliver them, those bombs might never have been dropped. Indeed, the war would likely have turned out much differently, probably to the detriment of the Allies.
But your analogy, regardless of any perceived merit, is a stupid one. You cannot compare the deterrent effect of one or two weapons to the concept of both sides having thousands of such weapons. Back when there were at most ten or so nuclear weapons in the entire world, it was possible to wage a "limited" nuclear war. With thousands of ICBM's, that concept is "utter fantasy" as you might call it. Thus, your argument falters and you lose. I would say it was a good try, but it wasn't even mildly challenging to point out your logical failings in this matter.
Tell you what. When you can cite a source that isn't some left-leaning liberal whacko site like reclaimthemedia.org, then perhaps I'll give some credence to your conspiracy theory. In the meantime, I have an extremely difficult time believing that hundreds and hundreds of these "protesters" are all government agents. And there would have to be hundreds of them in order to explain the massive crowds burning cars, destroying businesses, and throwing bombs.
Besides all that, I didn't hear any protester once decry the violence being espoused at these events. They were either ambivalent towards it or actively encouraging it. I'm sure you'll chalk that up to the media "silencing" the voice of the "real" protesters.
That should be "sectioned" not "section."
First off, it's "thrown" not "throwed," but then again you may be a product of our public education system and thus not know proper grammar and spelling.
To address your point, I not only believe it, but it's historically accurate. Go look deep down at some of the causes of WWII. Although the seeds of WWII were sown in the Versailles Treaty, what really enabled it was the fact that Hitler understood the Allies would do anything to avoid war. He knew that as long as he gave the Allies any excuse not to go to war, they would eagerly seize upon it. Thus the Rhineland was re-militarized, Austria was gobbled up with nary a shot, Czechoslovakia was section up then taken whole, and finally Poland.
Sir Winston Churchill famously observed after the war that "at one point, a memo would've stopped Hitler," and he is quite correct in that. Enemies attack because they think they can win, not because they plan on losing. If you remove the possibility of the enemy winning a conflict, usually the conflict never happens.
Case in point: the insurgency in Iraq is being maintained by those who think they can win by forcing the American public to think the war is going badly, unwinnable, or something like that. The insurgents know they cannot prevail militarily under any possible scenario, so their only possible chance of success is to prevail politically. What's so funny (in a tragic, not humorous, way) is that these so-called "peace protesters" who are so busy screaming about how we need to cut and run in this war are actually encouraging the insurgent. If this country presented a united face against the insurgents, with a resolve to see this through no matter what, the insurgents would find it much more difficult to find new recruits. Instead, the constant -- and totally ludicrous -- comparisons to Vietnam encourages our enemy to try and make us leave a war we winning, prolonging the violence and suffering on all sides.
Didn't some guy say that about the Gatling Gun?
Actually, I think you're referring to Nobel's comments about dynamite being so powerful it would make war obsolete. Obviously that didn't happen, but it's due more to Nobel's limited view of how destructive something needs to be before it is no longer practical to use. Dynamite wasn't it. Napalm wasn't it. Tactical nukes aren't even it. Strategic nukes, however, with their ability to essentially destroy all of humanity in less than an hour, fit the bill without question.
Rest assured these high tech toys will not be used on armed combatants, but on peaceful protesters.
Yeah, those G8 protesters out there burning cars, smashing storefronts, and generally destroying everything in sight are just...so...peaceful, aren't they?
There was a time when a protest was something arranged around non-violent confrontation. Today, protests are just another excuse for hooligans to do what they do best: destroy things for the fun of it.
Ghandi had it right: if you want an effective protest, violence is the last thing you should encourage or tolerate. It gives your opponents all the ammunition they need to increase the level of control, force, and invasiveness on those who are protesting. These freaks who are out there slinging rocks and Molotov cocktails are not protesters, they're thugs.
Whom are we supposed to be fighting?
While I can appreciate a noble desire by people to wonder why weapons are needed, you do need to understand that weapons exist both as a means to inflict force as well as a means to psychologically affect a potential enemy.
The U.S and (former) U.S.S.R. nuclear arsenals are a perfect example of this idea. If only one country had possessed such a devastating arsenal, it could use it with impunity, thus constituting a an effective deterrence against any other party initiating hostilities. With both parties having the same weaponry, neither side can start anything without a devastating reprisal and are thus mutually deterred.
So, you see, the weapons themselves don't have to actually be used in order to be effective. The very fact that they could be used can deter someone who is considering attacking us or our international interests. Indeed, the lack of such weapons can actually encourage belligerent activity against us and our interests since any such belligerent party might feel they could "get away with it."
Finally, the more effectively our weaponry is, the less likely we'll ever need to use it. For that reason if no other, we should be glad research in these areas is continuing. The fact that this "lightning gun" is intended to be non-lethal is another great idea. It would alway be preferrable to "stun" a target than exercise lethal force. A stunned person will live if you make a mistake. Non-lethal weaponry, if perfected, could eventually eliminate the very concept of civilian casualties. And that is a very good thing to have in your arsenal no matter which "side" you are on.
I just wanted to comment that Otellinis response was the standard corporate response. No market leader is ever going to let a smaller competitor decide how the battle is fought...
The GP poster did interpret my posting properly, however. FUD can take many forms, some of them "active" and some of them "passive." Active FUD is saying things that are misleading, or downright false. Passive FUD is knowingly allowing someone to draw a false conclusion based on questionable comments. Subtle but important distinction.
Otellini's "we'll let the market decide" may be the "standard corporate response" but it's disingenous in the utmost. Otellini knows AMD would make Intel look rather pitiful in such a match up, therefore he's going to take his ball and go home. Yet it's spun as if AMD weren't worthy of competing against. Masterful politics by Otellini, but at its core it has all the spirit of the FUD even if it doesn't have the letter of the FUD.
Intel's Paul Otellini has already publicly refused to take up AMD's challenge. He said he prefers such things "to be worked out in the market."
That's Intel-speak for "we know we can't beat you in any fair contest, so we're just going to outspend you ten-to-one in marketing and make everyone think we're faster, just like we've been doing for the last five years."
Yup, that's the way to do it. If you can't beat 'em, FUD 'em to death.
Can't you just put aside your cynical nature for ten freakin minutes and actually be excited about the fact that humans were just in space for two weeks in a vehicle we built? Come on! What's WRONG with people these days?
Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's the fact that 36 years ago we were putting humans on the moon instead of just lofting them a few tens of miles above the surface of the planet. Maybe it's the fact that, although this was a "successful" flight, NASA spent more time examining and repairing the shuttle in orbit than it did doing any meaningful science. Maybe it's the fact that shuttle lauches cost over a billion dollars apiece whereas the "old" Saturn V launches cost about 60% less in adjusted dollars.
Or maybe, just maybe, it's the fact that the shuttle just goes around in circles, whereas the space program actually used to go somewhere we hadn't been before. Nobody's saying going into LEO isn't risky or challenging, but it's no longer exploring. If we want to explore again, we need to (a) start setting up a moon colony and (b) start planning a Mars mission. Let's pioneer some new propulsion technologies and start planning manned missions to the outer planets. Let's start looking at the prospect of mining asteroids for useful materials, or snagging billion-ton chunks of water ice from Saturn to use as drinking water, rocket fuel, and fuel-cell feedstock. Let's set up solar-powered antimatter production facilities on Mercury (yes, this is feasible. No, it is not some Star Trek fantasy) for propulsion and power production usages. Or perhaps just set up some solar collectors in orbit or on the moon and micrwave it back to Earth for the ultimate in no-pollution power. And this time we really need to do it instead of just talk about it. And I'd be the first volunteer in line for any of it.
If Armstrong had known we'd be so...so...mediocre in following in his footsteps, he would've said "that's one small step for a man. Now let's get back in, go home, and never come back."
Last time I checked 3D Studio Max and Photoshop have Mac OS/X versions.
Then you're out of your fucking gourd, because Max is only available on Windows. I see you can't be bothered to actually check your facts before you spout them, therefore you're just making crap up as you go along. Too bad you've been found out.
Since I refuse to debate with a lying braggart, this conversation is over. Next time, try to actually find something out before opening that spouting hole of yours. Cheers!
FIFTY PERCENT of our sales are Linux. This is for a $7999/seat graphics software.
[golf clap] Bravo! Now, please tell me exactly how many seats of this $8,000/seat package you sell a year? Now compare that tiny, tiny number to how many seats of 3D Studio Max are sold each year. Or Photoshop. Or any other mainstream application that has a large Windows fanbase. Or game, for that matter. Your numbers will look insignificant by comparison, which should show you where the market is. In a word, it's with DirectX, not OpenGL.
The very fact that you sell such an expensive package actually helps you sell more Linux. Why? Because it's obviously a niche application. Niche applications tend to like oddball or one-off hardware/software solutions because there isn't a large market (with lots of diversity) to support. Hence, moving to Irix, OS X, Windows, Linux, BSD, or even (God forbid) SCO Unix is no big deal. You hold up your "50% of our sales are Linux!" like some sort of talisman, when in fact it's a very pedestrian figure for the type of money you're talking about.
Professional graphics applications will be hit harder. 3DS Max recommends DirectX - but then, it is not cross-platform. Maya, Lightwave etc all run on multiple other platforms (like Linux and Mac OS), and all use OpenGL only. Same with many 2D compositing apps.
You've constructed a tautology. Maya and Lightwave do so because they have no choice if they want to be cross platform since DirectX is a Windows-only technology.
What you are missing here is how the professional graphics card market has changed. Five or ten years ago, the market was dominated by OpenGL-only solutions by companies like 3DLabs. Such graphics cards were fantastically expensive to make and cost an arm and a leg to purchase. Today, the fastest pro card on the market is the Quadro 4500, which is based on a derivation of (some would say an identical derivation, to play with words) on the GeForce 7800. This allows nVidia to hit two markets with one chip, vastly increasing their profits. And it also has the side effect of diminshing the importance of OpenGL, since the graphics cores on these cards are designed largely for DirectX games and DirectX effects. ATI does the same with its innappropriately-named FireGL line, which is also based on (some would say copied from) its gaming line. 3DLabs is not doing too well these days as a result since it has no presence in the gaming market to speak of.
Before everyone starts frothing and gnashing, please go back and read the title of the article: Vista may impact OpenGL performance. Not will impact, may impact. Vista has just now reached Beta 1. There is much that can and will change about it. Look at the other possibilities: Beta 1 could've included a full OpenGL ICD, but it could've been pulled before it reaches release, so even if this supposed layering wasn't present in Vista now, it could be later. There's just no good reason to get worked up at this point.
Now, let's get another little thing out of the way for just a moment, and that's OpenGL versus DirectX. Four or five years ago, OpenGL was the bees knees and DirectX was the red-headed stepchild. No longer. Pretty much every game released today is DirectX. There are a few notable exceptions, but they are the exceptions. OpenGL largely has itself to blame for this, for while it took ages for OpenGL to reach the 2.0 milestone, Microsoft has been radically increasing the functionality of DirectX. Game developers, knowing their largest market is the Windows platform, have gone where the money is, and Microsoft has done a lot to make DirectX very, very attractive to them, both from a financial standpoint and a performance standpoint. And while the idea of cross-platform gaming is a neat idea, I don't think too many game developers and producers lose too much sleep wondering how they're going to market to Mac OS X or Linux gamers; there are simply too few of them to matter. It's not nice to say that here, but it is the truth.
As for professional applications, typically the stronghold of OpenGL, even that has been fading. 3D Studio Max, one of the most popular 3D applications for the Windows platform, now strongly recommends you use the DirectX drivers versus OpenGL. Performance is usually better, and you get to make use of all the DirectX features implemented in hardware on gaming-derived video cards like nVidia's Quadro line. For a while, DirectX stability in these apps was dicey and OpenGL was rock solid, but even that has now been reverse. 3DS Max 7.5's OpenGL is noticeably slower and buggier than its DirectX, again a reflection of where developers are spending their development and Q&A time. Maya, Lightwave, and others are in similar positions. OpenGL won't go away, but it is slowly being marginalized. That's been going on for a while.
There's a lot of angst over what this will do the OSS platform since DirectX is solidly proprietary. Unfortunately, the answer isn't one you're going to like. Nobody, not Autodesk, not Microstation, not Adobe, not anybody in the large-scale commercial software space really gives two damns about the OSS market right now. And why should they? It represents an amazingly tiny fraction of their global market, yet would very likely consume a disproportionate amount of the overall support, troubleshooting, and Q&A resources available. That's not a winning combination for any company. Furthermore, most OSS adherents don't like paying for their software, and they certainly don't like paying $4,000-$10,000 for major OpenGL-based design packages. Thus, not only is the market tiny, it's unreceptive as well. Again, if the OSS market is wondering why no one is paying them attention, you don't have to think on it very hard to see why.
The good news here is that the OSS community can do whatever it damn well pleases with OpenGL. Don't want to follow the DirectX bandwagon? Write your own OpenGL app. Who knows? If it's done well, it might actually gain a foothold. But I sure wouldn't bet on it. I wish I could, because I'd love to see more competition in this arena, but I'm too much of a pragmatist to really have much faith in this area. Companies are going to keep using -- and paying for -- what works for them, and what works for them is what has always worked for them. Microstation shops generally stay Microstation shops. Ditto for Autodesk. Ditto ditto for Maya
So much for being short ...
No problem. I'm enjoying this debate thus far. I agree with most of what you said until this point:
The side-mount design flaw, as we both know, is one that can't be fixed without flying something entirely new. Fortunately, this is known, better now that we have proof that it doesn't work than before when we could just say "hey, there's probably going to be debris because everything else launched has had some stuff fall off it, so I bet there's going to be a problem".
If there had been nobody pointing out this glaring flaw back when the shuttle was still on the drawing board, I would agree with you. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Many, many engineers pointed out that if Apollo had taught them anything, it was that you can't adequately protect something side-mounted. These knowledgeable engineers, steeped in experience from years of Apollo, were overruled by non-engineers, bureaucrats and bean counters all of them. I'm in a highly technical field myself, and I'm called upon frequently to give my opinion on this design or that design. It is extremely frustrating to see your recommendations be ignored by those who know less about the problem (or system) than you do, but it happens. In my line of work, though, if the worst comes to pass, nobody dies. NASA did not have that luxury. It still doesn't, which is why such decisions should never be made from the top down. I just don't think NASA has learned this, not even after two shuttle losses and the Apollo 1 fire.
As for "someone screwed up and we shouldn't have done it this way" -- yes, that's true, but instead of being negative and pointing fingers and saying "you're an idiot" or whatever, I'd rather say "okay, yes, we've had problems, now what can we learn from this to put into the next design to fix them?"
Your response here would be absolutely on the mark if it weren't for the fact that NASA was widely informed about such shortcomings before the first weld was ever made in the shuttle spaceframe. Therefore, it's not an issue of ignorance -- which could be tolerated due to inexperience -- but instead one of willfull omission, purposefully ignoring the elephant in the living room. I have no problems with people making mistakes when exploring the unknown, but when the make known mistakes, I have absolutely no tolerance for them, even less so when human lives are at stake.
Again, as for being able to do all the great things that need to be done -- I'd rather be positive than a nay-sayer who doesn't believe anything is possible. As long as we assume that something can't be done, it never will be. Negative prophecies have a way of coming true.
And I agree with you. However, when a knowledgeable engineer is told to butt out because he's saying something that's politically or budgetarily inconvenient, there should be no mercy whatsoever if things go exactly as the engineer predicted. Those people making such a call should be drawn and quarter, or at the very least have their careers ruined beyond recovery. They have no business playing dice with the space program, to paraphrase Albert Einstein. There is too much at stake to cut corners like this.
As for the rest, not being a big Potter fan, I can't really comment, although I do understand your analogy. Make no mistake, I think the rewards are definitely worth some risk, perhaps even great risk. But to accept additional risk due to the whim of someone's uninformed judgement is just lunacy, and that's exactly why we have a shuttle now that can't make it beyond LEO, can't carry more than 25 tons of cargo, can't be aborted during launch, can't survive even moderate debris strikes, can't beat the cost of expendable boosters, and can't even "go around" in the event of a botched landing. All of these things were not only avoidable, they were predicted well before shuttle construction started. What upsets me now is the feigned suprise NASA exhibits at the outcome of all these poor decisions.
Look, you can believe whatever you want, as long as you don't try to use unproveable beliefs to tell others what to do.
Strawman. I have clearly stated I don't want religious beliefs being forced on anyone. That is not the same thing as saying they should be banned from consideration as you are suggesting. For you, it's not enough to let people make up their own minds, you must actively seek to control what goes into those minds so that they draw the "right" conclusions...namely, the ones you deem correct. Again, you demonstrate your hypocrisy. You are arguing for the exact thing you are arguing against.
You are living in your own self-defined, self-referential system. You pick ideas whose reality threatens you, like actual diversity, where people are actually different from you, actual acceptance of differences, rather than the prudish, self-servingly superior "tolerance", and get all worked up about them. I listen to your "side of the story": I read you posts, and I call out the lies and tautologies that compose them.
You should listen to yourself sometime. You just drip with smug self confidence, so sure that you know all the answers, that you have it all figured out, that anyone who disagrees with you is a mindless, unknowing freak who is too stupid to see the forest for the trees. You know what you sound like? You sound just like a bible-thumping religious zealot in the truest sense, only your religion is essentially one of anti-religion. You're nothing more than the opposite side of the same coin in your inability to admit you don't know it all and someone else might be right. I have the ability to admit that you might be right, that all this religious business is nothing but hocus pocus, mere claptrap, and there is nothing but the laws of physics governing things. You, however, would burst a vein in your forehead before you'd even consider saying the religous folks might be right. There is no clearer indication of your total intolerance in this matter, your total close-mindedness to any other possibility than the one you deem correct. Your arrogance and hubris are astounding.
It doesn't stop you from playing shallow games of insults and childish nonsense, hiding behind cynical pretense while you pray for any inch gained by your "faith-oriented methodology" (known as "mythology") against actual rationality and science.
Funny how it's you that seem so intent on mentally degrading anyone who disagrees with you, not I. I haven't questioned your intelligence once, nor have I done anything but point out just how arrogant you are. As for your "rationality" and "science," you have put your faith in the "god" of science, that is obvious. But never forget that at some point in history, science was absolutely sure the Earth was the center of the universe. Later, science was absolutely sure time and space were absolute. After that, science was absolutely sure everything propagated through "luminiferous aether." Throughout history, science at any given point has been sure it knew it all, and routinely it's been proven otherwise. You base your "faith" on the "rationality" of science, but a true scientist understands the limits of his or her knowledge. You don't. You think you know it all and everyone else is wrong. Your presumptuous attitude in this respect is, again, astounding, but it is not unexpected given your prior statements. One can hope that one day you actually grow up and understand just how little you really do know. Perhaps then, with a little perspective, you will be a little more humble and respectful of others.
I place no bad intentions or blame on this because it's just a fact of life that doing something for the first time takes longer than it does when you've got some experience.
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Well, I agree with you that the shuttle was indeed a learning experience, but I don't agree that it should take this long for NASA to figure out the idea wasn't a good one. Again, I'm going to direct you to the "Comm Check..." book I mentioned earlier. There is abundant evidence of how NASA violated its own safety procedures routinely just to operate the shuttle. There were certain things "the book" said you should never allow, such as debris strikes during launch, that happened with every single launch. The TPS wasn't designed with that in mind, and it said so in the flight manual. NASA, instead of saying "hey, we've got a major design problem here" just decided to write a waiver and launch anyway.
The comparisons to the fatal Apollo 1 fire are chilling here, as are the comparisons to Challenger. In all cases, NASA knew it was doing something in a way that made things more dangerous than they already were, but NASA went ahead and did it anyway out of expediency, neglect, inertia, ignorance, politics, and plain laziness. People died as a result.
A few examples of old things that are still in use:
You raise a good point, one I'll come back to in a minute. My favorite example of a design that just keeps on going in the venerable B-52 bomber. The "52" in the name reflects the year the design was started, and the first one flew in 1955. Today, it's projected the B-52 could keep flying until 2045. That's an unprecedented lifespan for a front-line bomber, something never before seen. If you examine sharks today, you'll find they are little changed from million-year-old fossils. Why? They are the pinnacle of evolution for their particular function, just as the B-52 is with jet-powered bombers.
Unfortunately, the shuttle does not belong -- and will never belong -- in this category. It was an interesting attempt, and had it remained true to more of its original design intent with fewer compromises along the way, the idea might've held merit even today. But, it didn't, and NASA has known this for some time.
It is ridiculous that nothing was done to fix the major problems that were fixable; however, some of them are inherent in the design, like foam shedding is going to be a problem as long as you have the crew cabin mounted on the side of the booster instead of atop it. That's something that can't be changed without a complete redesign; however, a lot of other safety issues have been addressed with ongoing upgrades, and that's a thing to applaud.
Agreed. But the remaining flaws are both amazingly dangerous and -- and here's the worst part -- they're amazingly obvious to anyone. Even a layman can understand that if you place your crew vehicle alongside a giant tank full of cryopropellants, you're going to have to worry about debris. Apollo had no such worries because it put the valuable, fragile stuff like humans at the top of the stack. You can't look at all the design compromises in the shuttle and tell me NASA didn't realize it was building a much more dangerous vehicle. There are too many smart people there for me to believe that. However, there are also a lot of bureaucrats and yes-men there, and they also happen to more or less run the place. That's why we ended up with the lemon we have now, and that's why fourteen astronauts are dead. NASA not only could've done better, it knew it could've done better and didn't. That is unforgivable.
Also, as I said, there's quite a lot that is being done, within the bounds of the current design, to reduce risk. We will never entirely eliminate it, however. That is part of life and part of walking out of your house every day. Heck, it's still possible to get killed while at home. Life is risky
Again, no disagreement here about space travel being risky. H
I almost forgot to get into this usage with you. You wave Occam's Razor about as if it were some sort of shield. I will quote from the wikipedia entry on Occam's Razor:
Occam's Razor simply states that the simplest answer is usually the right one. It is not always the right one. The example given in the wikipedia is a good one: a charred treestump could be the result of a landing UFO or it could be the result of a lightning strike. Occam's Razor says the lightning strike requires the fewest assumptions, therefore it must be the correct one. Does that now mean there is no such thing as extraterrestrial life? Of course not. It is also possible it was a UFO, since our uniqueness in the universe is far from proven thus far. Occam's Razor helps us define what is probable, not what is possible.
Be careful using Occam's Razor. It is a tool to enhance judgement, not a substitute for it.
The grandparent post is correct; Evolution (in the sense of The History of Life on Earth), is correct but not complete.
In the sense that there is no documented, uninterrupted fossil evidence of man's ascension from a single-celled organism, you are correct. There is also no direct, observed evidence because we weren't around to observe it! However, it is rather undeniable that we are evolving even now, and that other species actively evolve to better fit their environment. This does not disprove any sort of a "Creator" concept as I described in my original post. If God snapped his fingers and created the Universe, then stepped back to watch everything unfold according to his grand design, it would look like natural evolution to anyone observing it from within the system. There'd be no way to tell the difference if God is non-interventionist. However, if God really is omnipotent, he wouldn't need to be interventionist in the fist place, since his original design would proceed exactly as he planned it. Quite honestly I belive modern religion has diminished God greatly by attributing to him fallability, thus requiring him to interacting with his creations on a regular basis to keep things humming along. It makes God sound like the ever-tinkering programmer, constantly finding bugs and correcting them one at a time. If God really is God, none of this is needed, and he would be -- for all intents and purposes -- invisible to us. That's rather what you're arguing here, you know.
And while creationism cannot be disproven, I can prove that forms of Creationism are either content-free (and banished by Occam's Razor) or contradicted by the evidence, i.e. false.
You can, can you? My, how powerful you are. You can prove that "forms of Creationism" are content-free or contradictory, eh? I must guffaw for a moment, for in order for you to be able to do so, you must know all the facts in the matter, and you do not. You cannot. You can only know what you have been taught and what you have observed, both of which are woefully incomplete when you consider the vast number of possibilities involved in the matter under discussion. Your claims are premature, I fear. Logic may be logic, but it requires a complete understanding of the situtation in order to be applied. You lack this, as does everyone else who hasn't been alive since the dawn of time.
You have a theory which is based upon such facts as you have been able to collect. It neither means it is complete nor correct. Thus you can make suppositions, you can make arguments, but you cannot make an unequivocal case in this matter. Don't feel bad. It is not just beyond you, it is beyond any human being, because nobody has been around long enough to know everything, and (barring some time travel invention) nobody ever will.
So we're left with claims for recent creation that have been disproven long ago
No, we're not, and if you think the vast majority of Christians out there believe the world is only 6,000 years old, you're off your rocker. I've run into a couple of people who think so, but they are the fringe. Most all modern Christians believe the book of Genesis to be almost completely metaphorical. God did not create everything in six 24-hour days. It could've taken millenia, it could've taken microseconds. The minutiae is, actually, quite irrelevant. It's the larger concept of what (or who) was here before the Universe got started that I'm after. You cannot answer that question any more than any other man can. I am humble enough to admit that I don't know everything and thus am willing to leave the answer to this question to Providence. To me, claiming to know the answer to something I can't possibly know is rather arrogant, all the more so if I insist on forcing said belief down everyone else's throat, yet another reason why I don't proselytize others in an attempt to conver them to Christianity.
Your sarcasm only deepens the air of immaturity around you, you know. You're one of the first people I ever foelisted, and you're rapidly reminding me why I did so. You're a testament to model liberal thinking, where you claim to love diversity, but only so long as it conforms exactly to your ideals. You claim to love tolerance, yet denigrate anyone who dissents. You claim to be open minded, but refuse to hear anyone's side of the story but your own. You are a walking, talking, typing definition of hypocrisy.
It is not up to you to determine the value of any particular theory. It is enough that we teach a scientific approach and acknowledge that we don't have enough evidence to say we know everything yet, thus leaving the door open for anyone who chooses to believe a faith-oriented methodology.
I'd say that going to LEO for the 115th time *is* something grand.
Look, nobody is going to argue that getting into space isn't difficult. It is. And the fact that NASA's done it 114 times with the shuttle is an acheivement.
However...
Merely going somewhere is not a challenge, nor is it anything to really get worked up about...if you've already been there. NASA found this out at the end of the Apollo program when the public considered the moon landings somewhat routine. Is it supremely difficult to do? Sure. Is it a worthy goal? Not anymore.
Humanity is driven by expansion, not consolidation. This is a fundamental desire in most people. We strive to go where we haven't been, to try what we haven't tried, to do what we haven't done. Once that's complete, we start the cycle over again, ad nauseum.
You mention NASA's budget woes, but budgets are driven by the public's willingness to throw money at something. The public had no problem at all with throwing massive amounts of money at moon landings in 1969 because it was a grand spectacle. Had NASA kept that momentum and moved on to a permanent lunar colony and a mission to Mars, NASA would've had no trouble getting funding from taxpayers. Today, if the public actually had confidence in NASA's ability to execute, it would likely have no trouble drumming up funding for a moon colony or Mars landing mission, but nobody trusts NASA anymore.
Yes, that is why facts like evolution must be balanced by fiction like Creationism, in the mandatory education.
You can no more prove Creationism is fiction than I can prove it is non-fiction, so your comment is disingenous to begin with. The hubris of folks like you never ceases to amaze me. You cannot prove God doesn't exist, but you're absolutely, totally, unalterably sure he doesn't, so much so that you're more than willing to insult others who do believe in God.
On the other hand you scoff at anyone who doesn't believe exactly as you do, even though you cannot prove God does not exist and did not create the universe. Who's the narrow-minded and intolerant one in this conversation?
Look, I'm a Christian, and I believe in God. I also believe it's entirely possible God set things into motion billions of years ago that allowed humans to evolve into what we are today. This is the "non-interventionist" view of God as opposed to the interactive God preached by so many today. My particular viewpoint on the creation of the universe and man in particular is not incompatible with the current theory of evolution, and since you cannot prove God does not exist any more than I can prove he does, my viewpoint is no less valid than yours.
Unlike you, however, I will not scoff at your belief even if I don't agree with it. That's the difference between being mature and tolerant and being immature and arrogant, like you obviously are.
Church is optional. Education, at least until you're 16 in the U.S., is mandatory. 'nuff said.
You're right about the troll thing, and let's take that away. Now, I will respond to the rest of what you said, and let us stop being incendiary at each other and let's actually hold a good debate here.
I agree. Much more productive that way. My opinion of you just went up several notches.
The design lifetime of the Shuttle was for 100 flights per orbiter.
Very true. What you're forgetting, though, is that the shuttle was originally designed to be turned around in about four weeks, not four months. If you take that into account, the planned lifetime of the shuttle was (100 / 12 = 8.3) 8.3 years assuming a maximal usage and minimal turnaround time. Double that figure for a slightly more optimistic launch schedule (by 1975 estimates) and you still only get a rough lifetime of 16.6 years. Columbia was first launched on April 12, 1981. Add 17 years and you get 1998. To paraphrase an old saying, it's not the mileage, it's the years. The shuttle is just old. The very ideas and concepts it is based upon, its very structure, power-to-weight ratios, everything is based upon how things looked 34 years ago. If we had a clean sheet today we'd build a much different vehicle I'm sure. Back then we had to make certain compromises to make the shuttle work, and most of those compromises were under the heading of "safety." To take your argument at face value, an unused Saturn V booster, having sat in a warehouse somewhere for 34 years, is still an economical and safe way to get into orbit. While it may work just fine, it represents old thinking in many ways, compromises that we made back then but no longer have to. We can do better. We should do better.
While it is true that not all of the design goals have been met (which is a shame), keep in mind that no one had ever built a spaceplane anything like the shuttle before and therefore the only experience that it could be based on was that of airline service.
Agreed, the shuttle was a first try at a totally new concept. However, if you research the birth of the shuttle carefully, you'll find the engineers were dragged kicking and screaming to the current shuttle design. Did you know the original design didn't have solid boosters? They were deemed too dangerous for manned spaceflight due to the fact that they can't be throttled, trimmed, or even turned off in flight. The original design allowed for an ejection system as well but was cut for weight and cost reasons. Never before had NASA sent its astronauts into space without some kind of escape system, be it ever so humble. The original design had air-breathing engines for a powered landing on the return flight. These were scrapped, again for cost and weight issues, meaning the shuttle must land perfectly all the time, every time. Did you know the original specifications for thermal protection tiles demanded that no debris be shed during launch? And yet NASA continued to launch knowing that foam, ice, and other things were impacting and damaging the tiles even from the very first launch? NASA knowingly operated the vehicle outside its design specifications, which is negligent at best and criminal at worst. Yet it did so because that was the only way the platform could be operated. When you have to operate something outside its design specs in order to actually get it to work, something is dreadfully wrong. All this has been known since 1981, yet nothing has been done about almost all of it.
It all adds up to a ton of things that must function perfectly or people die. All that perfection runs up costs and turnaround time while simultaneously greatly increasing risk. The original shuttle engineers knew this, but they were overruled by NASA brass and the politicians.
While it seems easy enough to say that "they should have thought of that", is it really true? I don't think so. You only gain confidence in statements like that when you've had a lot of experience with
esus Christ, America TAKE A CHANCE!
While I agree with you that this country has become far too risk-averse for its own good, you're not getting the whole point here.
Risk in and of itself is a vice, not a virtue. Risk is something to always be avoided wherever and whenever possible...unless the rewards from taking such a risk are deemed worth the danger, and so long as there is no better way to accomplish the goal.
In the case of the shuttle, exactly what are those seven astronauts risking their lives for? So we can study space? They could've done that in an Apollo capsule much more safely. Or, for that matter, in Skylab, launched not by the shuttle by by a stripped-down version of the Saturn V. Most of the experiments being performed on board the shuttle right now could be performed without the need for humans to interact with them. Indeed, some experiments would benefit from being on something other than a shuttle full of oxygen/nitrogen, rattling around from astronauts bouncing off the walls/floors, and shooting hydrazine thrusters all over the place.
In short, these astronauts are risking their invaluable lives, along with a billion dollars worth of hardware, to do some marginally-useful science that could be done much cheaper and more easily via other means. That, my friend, is the very definition of a stupid risk.
Now, if the astronauts were risking their lives to found a colony on the moon, or to go to Mars, that'd be something entirely different. But to keep going to LEO for the 115th time? What's the point? No wonder the public is disenchanted with the shuttle! It doesn't do anything grand, like land a man on the moon or go to Mars, and it still is very risky. More risk and less reward? Sure, gimme more of that any day. Not.