How can privatizing fix anything dealing with the space program? The folks with wads of cash don't invest in anything "new" until they can see a market for it.
Ever hear of Burt Rutan and his Spaceship One project? For that matter, there's a plethora of private companies all working towards the X-Prize. The prize itself is a pittance compared to what these private companies are spending to create a commercially viable SSTO (single stage to orbit) system. And unlike a government-funded project, these guys have to make sure their idea not only works, but works efficiently and economically.
Let's not forget other private ventures that have radically changed the human race. Wilbur and Orville Wright were private individuals working out of their own pockets and the pockets of private benefactors. Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight was funded by private industry. The list goes on and on.
So, perhaps you should check your history, because there's been plenty of times in the past when "folks with wads of cash" have invested in far-fetched ventures, all because they did see a pot of gold somewhere in there. Space may be monstrously expensive, but it contains the most monstrous pot of gold this planet has ever seen. Space travel "isn't really taking you anywhere?" You lack the foresight to see the destination, it appears.
"...if it is ever actually deployed. And if it performs as promised. And if it doesn't meet with an accident (since it is non-servicable, given foreseeable launch technologies)."
I will point out that all of these arguments were used against Hubble itself when the project was first proposed. You're choosing the most negative interpretation possible because it suits your argument. Had NASA listend to someone like you, Hubble wouldn't be up there in the first place.
And even then, it's not truly a successor - it operates in different wavelengths and so will not be able to do some of the observtions that the Hubble does.
The scientists most responsible for deep space observation have been the ones to design the specs for the new telescope. It seems to be what they want, but not what you want. I think they're more qualified than you are to determine the usefullness of what it will observe.
And the point of the article is that the argument that the Hubble is too risky to maintain doesn't hold water.
We have a Shuttle system that's already lost 40% of the active fleet due to engineering failures. In both cases, the entire vehicle and crew were lost. Currently, if a Shuttle develops a tile problem in flight, there is no way to fix it, meaning any crew would be doomed to death from the outset. Nevermind the fact that the entire Shuttle has been built with ridiculously thin safety margins, things that never would've been suggested in the Apollo era. If anything goes wrong while the SRB's are firing, the crew is toast. If anything goes wrong during re-entry, the crew is toast. There are just too many inescapable dangers, dangers that Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts were not required to take. And this is a leap forward in space transportation? It's more expensive and more dangerous than its predecessors. I wouldn't trust a chimp inside this thing, much less the cream of the American astronaut corps.
Better a telescope in the sky, than two on the drawing board.
Again, you sound remarkably like the naysayers during the design of Hubble. If we can do it once, we can do it again, perhaps even better than before. You give the engineers too little credit.
I don't think we should stop our science because a couple people died.
While I agree that we should continue to forge on, you do seem quite cavalier with your desire for the throwing away of human life. I am forced to wonder if you'd be quite so quick to flirt with death if it were your life that hung in the balance. Taking risks in the name of science is one thing; embarking on something that is clearly more dangerous than it needs to be is something else entirely.
The Shuttle is an expensive, dangerous, poorly-equipped vehicle for scientific research. The ISS is similarly a wonderful example of pork-barrel spending at its finest, a testament to just how little you can actually get done with a few billion dollars and no clearly defined mission. Quite honestly, I wouldn't risk a monkey's life on a mission to support or use either one of them.
We should instead be spending our time and money developing safer, cheaper methods of getting into space. We could start by going back in time and reviving the 60's era Saturn V rocket, a phenomenally powerful and immensely safe rocket that propelled the U.S. into orbit and to the moon time and time again without incident (Apollo 13's failure was not due to the Saturn V, it was due to a failure in the CSM). It was far cheaper to operate them once than it is to fly one Shuttle mission. And I can't help but think that with nearly forty years of technological progress since the debut of the Saturn V, we could make it even cheaper, even more powerful, and even safer than before.
There are legions of people at NASA who agree with me here, but none of them are in a position to do much about it. Instead, NASA management makes decisions based upon who'll get the meatiest contracts and to hell with efficient science.
As for Hubble, it's a great achievement, and if all things were equal I'd love to have the Shuttle bring it back and have it put in the Smithsonian. However, I cannot in good conscience recommend that any human being risk his or her life to fix or return Hubble. You wouldn't wax poetic about a hammer or screwdriver, yet Hubble is, at its core, no more than a tool.
A successor to Hubble is already in the works, one that will likely make Hubble look as pitiful and as obsolete as the Model T looks to a modern automobile. We should be cheering at the idea of a replacement for Hubble, not clinging to an outdated satellite that, while immensely useful, is simply too risky and expensive to maintain and operate.
And for 40K I can tool around in my BMW getting lots of upscale ladies while you look like a highschool boy racer. Chicks dig the car, and the more expensive cars draw higher quality chicks.
On a serious note, though, while the Mustang might be really stout on quarter mile blasts, the BMW will stomp all over it when it comes to twists and turns, it'll handle bumpy roads a lot smoother, and it'll sure as hell hold its value a lot longer than the 'stang.
Your argument would make more sense if the money not spent on Hubble was going to be spent on the next generation space telescope (ST:tNG?), but it isn't.
Ummm, yes, it is. NASA has this big pool of cash called a "budget," and the money to fund various projects comes out of this "budget." If more is spent on project A, less is available to spend on project B. Right now, a specific amount of funds are earmarked for the next generation 'scope, but that depends on Hubble being put out to pasture. There are no funds for a recovery mission or an update mission that don't come from some other project, and the most likely target would be from the next generation 'scope.
Compare the scientific value of the HST to that of the space station
Can't disagree with you there.
(or another moon shot or manned mission to Mars).
But I will disagree with this big time. The scientific value of Hubble is immense, there's no doubt about it. However, the returns on establishing a permanent Lunar colony as well as developing the technology for manned missions to Mars simply dwarfs the living daylights out of any possible scientific endeavor NASA can possible accomplish. There are resources in our solar system beyond our dreams, yet we've been stuck on this third rock from the sun for thousands of years. It's time we starting moving outwards and finding science, not just sitting here and observing it.
One flight to the Hubble is a lot safer and cheaper than dozens of flights to the space station, and many would say it would produce more scientific value.
When compared to the ISS, I have no disagreement. But to say that "one" flight to Hubble is better than a Lunar colony or Mars shot is totally ridiculous, IMHO. Most of the computers, materials, and technologies available to us today have roots in the Apollo program. Can you imagine what kind of things we might be enjoying twenty years after a Mars mission? It will be amazing!
"SAVE THE HUBBLE" has replaced "SAVE THE WHALES" as the silly tagline of the day, it seems. Let's think rationally about this for just a second, shall we?
Hubble costs money to operate and costs money to service. A single service mission to Hubble costs a cubic buttload of cash, cash that might be better reserved for Hubble's successor. Would it be nice to retrieve Hubble, to display it in the Smithsonian? Sure it would, and if money were free I'm sure we'd do it. Money is not free, and NASA needs to spend its money where it'll do the most good. Saving Hubble is an emotional argument, not a technically practical one.
There's also another item to consider: the only "spacecraft" vehicles on the entire planet capable of retrieving Hubble have lost 40% of its fleet due to launch explosions or atmospheric disintegration due to tile failure. Let's assume for a moment that money to retrieve/fix/run Hubble existed. How would you feel if seven astronauts were killed trying to extend Hubbles life a few years, or to return it to the ground? It's not worth it, and the only arguments to the contrary are emotional arguments. NASA should be about science, not emotion.
That has more to do with my feelings about consensuality and legitimacy in government than about democracy in particular.
Consensus is a nice thing sometimes, but it frequently results in (a) decision by lowest common denominator and/or (b) squelching of minority opinions.
A perfect example would be the civil rights bills of the 60's. If the consensus mob had had its way, these things would never have come to pass. A more recent example of rule-by-consensus being bad is the Iraq war. If France, Germany, and Russia had had their way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power. True, no WMD's have been found, but there is evidence that these weapons found their way to Syria before the war. Further, there is no denying that the human race is fundamentally better off with Saddam and his family no longer throwing people into plastic shredders. The war was/is unpopular with the "national community" as a whole, but the national community has frequently shown itself to be incapable of taking hard, unpopular action even when hard, unpopular action is in the best interests of humanity. Consensus is frequently dumbed down to the "let's not rock the boat" mentality. This is why I think, IMHO, consensus can be a good thing but is more frequently a bad thing.
Excellent points, and I think you're dead on about the stability of our Constitution. But it's a mistake to feel appointed officials don't hold debts and allegiances, and it's a mistake to have too much contempt for "the public mob".
Oh, I know the road to any appointed position is paved with owed promises, but once appointed, a judge is pretty much immune to attempts to unseat them. You can impeach a judge, but it's not happened in a long, long time. There's not much stopping them from doing whatever they feel is right and Constitutional, and to hell with special interests. That obviously doesn't always happen, but at least it can happen that way.
So many people feel that everyone but them wanted PATRIOT type legislation in the aftermath if 9/11, but I don't feel the public was truly consulted. Congress passed things so quickly, with their established corporate interests riding along, that they set the political mood instead of reading it. We never saw what the "mob" would do if it was left with the choice.
The public wasn't consulted, but you act like that's a bad thing. Despite public schooling's indoctrinary attempt to teach us otherwise, we do not live in a Democracy, nor did the Founders want us to. We live in a Republic, where we vest trust in those we elect to accurately represent what we, their constituents, would want if we were in their shoes. If the public disagrees with the actions of their elected representative, they can vote him or her out in the next election. The system is precisely engineered in that fashion for a reason; for the same reason that the Judicial branch is not beholden to voters at all, members of Congress should not be beholden to the immediate whims of voters. The public, the mob, frequently gets inflamed about something today and forgets about it tomorrow. Our Republic is designed to damp that out, and that's a Good Thing. Mob rule is a Bad Thing.
Judges are theoretically free of both organized lobbying and the fickle public, but they are also humans with their own idealogical axes to grind. Appointment allows people with political motives (the Executive) to suggest which idealogical motives receive power. Judicial isolation is a vital patch, but the closest thing to a solution is more representation.
I must disagree, unfortunately. I think the current system works well. It does not work immediately, nor do I think it should. Implementing immediacy would dilute the system too far, in my opinion, and potentially skew the whole works to where the passions of today can make the law of tomorrow. Decisions and policies of great gravity ought to take time. The last thing I want is a judge, congressman, or President who makes a national decision based upon up-to-the-minute polling data.
why aren't our elected legislative and executive officials doing a good job of upholding constitutional rights in the first place?
Precisely because they are elected, my dear Watson. Being elected, they are beholden to the swaying to and fro of the public. Elected officials are always thinking about the next election, and thus anything they can do that says "I did something" is viewed as a positive, even if it's later shown to be unconstitutional. The wronged Congressman can then say "well, I did my part but those liberal/conservative judges knocked it down" and still gain the voter's support.
That is why the framers of the Constitution specifically wanted our government to be a troika of a sorts. The Executive and Legislative branches are elected and can follow the will of the people. The Judicial branch is not elected and thus (in theory) not subject to the whims of the passing fancy of a public mob. This is a Good Thing, because it's times like these that judges are called upon to do unpopular things. The fact that they can do so largely without facing the ire of voters means they don't have to worry about their political skins like elected officials do.
You know, the longer I view the Constitution, the more brilliant I think the framers were. Truly men of vision, trying to set down a system of fair, just laws in which freedom could endure. What a shame we've made such a mess of it since then.
While you're certainly entitled to your opinion, I happen to disagree. Although you are correct by saying it's much cheaper and safer to send robots to explore Mars, the ultimate goal is to expand humanity to other places in, and beyond, this solar system. Robot probes just aren't going to do that.
For that, we need humans in space. Rocket propulsion will be driven faster with human payloads because, unlike robot probes, us wimpy humans can't spend five to ten years coasting around the cosmos without ungodly amounts of food, air, and power. Colonization has to start somewhere, and manned missions to wherever are the necessary precursors to that. You're not seriously suggesting that the first mission to Mars be a colonization attempt, are you? You must learn to crawl before you can walk, and sending a colonization effort to Mars without first having a manned exploration mission would be amazingly risky.
No, we need humans out there. And we have to start somewhere. Even if Bush is going after this for pure politcal gain (something I don't believe, BTW), I am more than happy it's being done. We haven't put a human anywhere outside of Earth orbit in thirty years! The technological progress made in this interval is absolutely amazing, thus the effort to return to the moon should be better, faster, and safer than before. It's also a logical first step to Mars.
Before the anti-Bush screed gets too much further, have you even stopped to consider that Bush just might actually, really, desire for mankind to explore other planets? Have you even given the guy the benefit of the doubt before you condemned him? Or have you, like so many other knee-jerkers out there, simply applied the "Bush BAD! Anything else GOOD!" maxim and (ahem) "MovedOn"?
Reality: Microsoft products are a huge liability. Ask anyone who has had their files randomly mailed due one of the thousands of email viruses. The security breaches that Microsoft products bring to the table far more than offset any of their claimed savings in techie hours.
Now hold on just a second there, mister. You are currently putting all the blame on MS, but have you stopped to consider that most, if not all, of the blame ought to reside on the admin who was running the system?
Case in point: my company runs a large number of Windows workstations, Windows servers, and Exchange. We've got Solaris and Linux in there, too, but let's just consider the Windows stuff for the moment. We watched with some amusement as many other companies flailed and wilted under SoBig.F, Slammer, and everything between that and ILOVEYOU. We were amused because we were unaffected. We had the same OS's as they did, the same email software, the same everything, but we didn't get hit.
Oh, that's not to say our email antivirus filter didn't go batty with all the inbound crap. That's not to say our firewall logs didn't fill up with CodeRed probes. The nasty stuff came at us just as hard as everyone else, but we were prepared for it. Our systems were patched. Our virus patterns were up to date. Our networks were segmented with VLANs. Our firewalls were tight. Our workstation permissions were ruthless. Our server permissions were More Ruthless. In short, we had our shit together and, apart from not being able to contact anyone else because they were having problems, it was a normal workday for my company of more than 1,000 employees.
So, when you take the time to rail about how awful Microsoft security is, you ought to consider for a moment that, if the admins had been doing their jobs properly, this whole thing would've been a non-issue. What people really are complaining about is (a) the pitiful defaults Microsoft gives us and (b) the thoroughly worthless I.T. bastards who run these servers without the slightest clue as to what they're doing.
But you cannot say Microsoft products are a huge security risk. If we can secure our systems against this crap, anyone else can as well. You should be saying that idiot admins are a huge security risk, and that holds true no matter what OS you're using.
Don't thank me. The truth is avaiable for anyone to find out, they just have to have the desire to test their own beliefs. I've taken the time to see what's really going on here and I've divorced myself from the emotional aspects of this issue. The problem with liberals is they're still pissed off that Bush beat Gore despite their best attempts to rig the election in Gore's favor. Why get even when you can just get angry and lose? That's where the Democratic party is headed with Howard Dean, but they seem to be perfectly happy to drive off the cliff at full speed so long as they can spew venom on Bush the entire way.
The people there are too busy being shot at by dimwitted American troops to engage foreigners about the transgressions of the former regime. The current one is worse.
Really? You've been there and asked the people directly? Gosh, you must really get around to have interviewed everyone in Iraq so quickly! Or, could it be that you're simply regurgitating news you would like to believe is true without first checking to see whether it is true or not? Could it be that you actually want the people of Iraq to be suffering because it feeds your anger against Bush?
Amnesty International was doing its thing. Being a respectable, diplomatic charity, it uses words and public opinion to change the world.
And over 300,000 innocent civilians are DEAD IN THE GROUND, executed by Saddam and his henchmen, while Amnesty International was "doing its thing", being "respectable" and using "words and public opinion to change the world." This all happened since the U.N. sanctioned war against Iraq in 1991. I wonder what the dead would say about Amnesty's "respectable" way of getting murderous dictators to change their ways. Oh, I forgot, they're dead, and you don't care a damn about them. If Amnesty International had been running things back in 1939, Hitler would be in power, the Jews would be history, and Frenchmen would be speaking German. Well, I guess that last one wouldn't be so bad.
And how Bush Sr. gave Saddam equipment to make WMDs, then gave him intelligence to use it. Hardly innocent.
Actually, you'd have to go back a lot further than Bush Sr. to see who was giving Saddam weapons. Try the Carter administration. As for innocence, perhaps you've heard of the all the Russian, German, and French conventional weapons we've found in country. You know, the ones that have been imported into Iraq after 1991 in violation of the U.N. mandate against Iraq? You're so eager to blame the U.S., but the key appeasers in the U.N. have far more blood on their hands, and far more recent blood at that.
You really need to turn off Fox News and read some books.
And you really need to quit living at DemocraticUnderground.com, Moveon.org, and CNN, since that seems to be your primary source of unfounded vitriol against the President and these United States.
Ronald Reagan was called a warmonger and idiot lunatic by everyone not a staunch Republican.
That's odd. The only people who called him that were hardcore leftwing liberals, not moderates, not right wingers, and not conservatives.
Well, seeing as Jimmy Carter has done more for the world during Bush's term than Bush, I think he'll be remembered in a much, much nicer light.
What's he done? Well, let's see. He badmouthed the current president on foreign policy, something that no former president has ever done, regardless of party affiliation, since the country was founded. He got a Nobel prize from a commitee more concerned with sticking their thumb in the eye of the U.S. than anything else. He's pontificated at length on how he doesn't think the U.S. has done the right thing, but he's completely dodged any possible question of what he would've done differently except to say that he would've handed it all off to the U.N -- which is a fancy political dodgy way of saying "I wouldn't have done anything."
I'm sure all of this is falling on deaf ears, because you're clearly too angry and naive to be even remotely rational. Please, try to think about what I've said, though. You're not doing anyone any favors by allowing your emotions to rule you in this manner.
"Except that iraq had been nicely contained for 10 years, had no WMD, and was no threat to the american people."
Hitler was "nicely contained" for 10 years, had no WMD, and was no threat to the American people, either. Apparently you've never even considered the concept of what happens when evil is allowed to fester.
As for Iraq's possession of WMD, there are only two possible cases to consider here. Case 1: they had the WMD's. Case 2: they didn't have them.
If Case 1 is true then the weapons have been well hidden or transported elsewhere, perhaps to Syria, a Baathist stronghold. It took many months to find Saddam, one man in a country larger than the state of California. WMD's could be hidden anywhere in Iraq and could take years to find. It took years to find Eric Robert Rudolph and he was right here in the USA. To say Case 1 is untrue simply because they haven't been found yet is specious and premature. While nukes can be hard to disguise and hide (although, as N. Korea has shown, certainly not impossible), biological and chemical weapons can be made in something smaller than a tractor trailer container. Actively hidden, such a lab could conceivable never be found.
If Case 2 is true then why did Iraq refuse to produce documentation of their WMD destruction program? We know Saddam at least had WMD's in the past; that is without question since he used them in wars against Iran and against his own people. If they were destroyed, and threatened with war over their purported existence, why did Saddam refuse to show evidence of their destruction? I will remind you that according to the U.N. resolutions, unanimously voted upon and affirmed by all members of the U.N. Security Council, required Saddam to show proof of the destruction of these weapons. It was not enough for Hans Blix to simply "not find" them. The burden of proof was on Iraq. You seem to be forgetting that, as are many others who seek to find fault anywhere they can with American actions to date.
Essentially, if Iraq had no WMD, Saddam was bluffing and blustering. Well, I've got news for you: you don't bluff the U.S. when they're threatening war. That might've gone over with the Clinton administration, but it doesn't go over now, especially after 9/11. I hear Kaddafi is now dismantling his WMD program in Libya. Gee, I wonder if he's heard that the U.S. doesn't take kindly to third world dictators who are threatening nuclear armageddon against "the West" or "the infidels" or "the imperialist Americans". Before 9/11 we could look at those threats and shrug them off as far fetched. Today, any threat must be taken seriously, and the U.S. is going to take an active stance in finding these hate-filled extremists and destroying them before they get around to destroying us. Dictators, tyrants, and extremists who actively incite our destruction will be treated as fomentors of war and sought out like the vermin that they are.
The world can be divided into three camps: those who are with us, those who are against us, and those who are neutral. Those who are with us will receive preferential treatment politically, economically, and militarily. Those who are neutral will neither be preferred nor estranged. Those who actively oppose us will be fought to utter destruction, hounded, hunted, and ruthlessly exterminated to the utmost of our ability.
If you meant to say the Nanking Massacre, then you are correct. But that is just one example among many of how Imperial Japan brutalized others. This is not to in any way imply the U.S. doesn't have blood on its hands from Native Americans, Chinese immigrants, and others. However, it's the chief sign of an intelligent species that it can learn from its mistakes.
Apparently the peaceniks and appeasers out there aren't overly intelligent, because the whole appeasement thing has been tried before. I've got news for you: it doesn't work. Appease an aggressor and you only get a more ambitious and self-assured aggressor. Pre-emptive war is not only a valid strategy, it is a necessary one if you wish to avoid things like Pearl Harbor all over again. Given than a single terrorist can lay waste to an entire city with a trunk-sized nuke, it's all the more important that we seek out and destroy potential enemies as early on as possible, before they can become a clear and present danger.
To those who think we should just sit back and wait for our enemies to come to us, I have only this to say: I profoundly hope that either yourself or one of your loved ones or one of your closest friends is in the next city to be nuked, gassed, or airliner-bombed. Perhaps then will you gain a glimmer of understanding, but I doubt it.
Nobody forced US to start the war. Preventive war isn't a good argument else.
No, of course it isn't. It's much better to wait until the enemy attacks you first and causes massive casualties to both civilians and military. After all, wasn't Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 a wonderful place to be? Yep, we got just what we deserved for using diplomatic pressure to oppose a Japanese regime that was busy raping, murdering, and sacking China. And Poland in 1939 was another great example of a country that knew just how to sit back and wait to be attacked before it did anything, all while Britain and France did nothing.
Yep, we should all learn from history, and history says it's so much better to lose thousands or even millions of lives by allowing evil leaders to fester and grow in power instead of nipping them in the bud early on. World War II consumed in excess of 20 million human lives across the world, and all of them absolutely deserved to die. After all, wasn't it far better that all these people died rather than Britain, or the U.S., or (God forbid) France lift a finger to oppose Hitler, or Mussolini, or Stalin, or any of the other autocratic dictators that have risen in the last sixty years?
I'm so glad that you think the way you do about this. It makes me sleep so much better at night knowing that someone out there has all the answers, knows everthing, and can do an excellent job of Monday morning quarterbacking. Where would the world be without people like you to tell everyone else how they're doing it all wrong?
Ridiculous economic policies? I suppose you haven't heard a damn thing about the economy growing 7% last quarter, and that it grew around 6% the quarter prior? I also don't suppose you've heard anything about unemployement claims falling, or employment rising? And I'm sure you've never heard anything at all about corporate and individual spending being up significantly this year?
Yessirree, it's all bad news isn't it? Must be all those wacky policies Dubya put into place.
Y'know, if it weren't for the fact that you're likely a Democrat or a liberal (usually one and the same), you'd be happy about things. Alas, since it means you'll likely have to put up with another four years of Dubya, you're positively despondent because things are looking up for the U.S. Why be happy that the nation is doing better when it means you can't get your own political way?
Uh, despite your earnest attempt to pin the blame of this on George Bush and the Iraqi war, perhaps you might want to add in the fact that the American dollar is down roughly 18% for this same period -- very similar to the price increase of the 12 days of Christmas.
Yes, I know you hate the President, but he isn't responsible for every hideous and awful thing that happens to you regardless of whether you want him to be or not.
I was the I.T. Director for a web development firm back in 1999. When I got there, the former administrator had allowed all developers to have root access and total control of the development servers. I fought tooth and nail with the development director to get this removed, but I was told to accomodate this. I warned the COO numerous times that not only did the developers not need root access, giving them that access was potentially dangerous. Everybody thought I was being paranoid.
Well, about a month later a developer was having difficulty with his JSP app and decided to not just restart Apache -- no, he restarted the entire server. About forty developers who were telnetted in lost everything they had been working on (periodic saves? "What's that?" says a developer). Total cost: about six hours of work per developer. Dev's were billed out at about $200/hr back then, so 180hrs x $200/hr = $36,000 lost in one day, not to mention putting the project behind schedule. There were other incidents of programmers deleting other people's code. In one case a developer took the opportunity to push an outdated build of code onto a production webserver and hosed an entire database. It took the I.T. team about half a day to get everything restored from tape, during which time the webserver was down.
I took my case to the COO and got root yanked from the developers -- all of them. They whined, they bitched, they moaned, they screamed that they'd never be able to get any work done, they had to have root or the world would end.
Well, it didn't end. We used sudo to give them the ability to do certain things, but the I.T. department kept absolute control over the box otherwise. We made no friends in the development department (we were hated, to be frank), but oddly enough projects continued to get done on time, on budget, and without any pain.
Far from it being the I.T. department that's the control freak, it's the developers who like being the control freaks most of the time. You want root? Fine. You just better be able to explain to me why you need root in a way that makes good business sense, and why there's no other way under God's green Earth you can do what you're trying to do without root. I've been in this business for almost twenty years now, both developing and administrating, and I have yet to hear a convincing case ever why a developer must have root access. This is, of course, assuming the I.T. staff is competent and up to the task of managing the box, but if they're not then you've got much larger problems than just who gets root. In the end, the I.T. staff gets held responsible if a box goes awry or gets fscked up by somebody else. If they're responsible for it, they damned well ought to be in charge of it, and that includes deciding who gets what kind of access.
And to be honest, your post so too lacking in any substantive thought to be worth much of a response, but I'll try anyway.
Slashdot, being somewhat overrun by liberals and left-leaning "thinkers" are often champions of diversity -- so long as the diversity goes along with what the crowd wants. Quite often it's posted that we should accept the racial, sexual, and national diversity without question, but when it comes to ideological differences, no diversity is to be tolerated. Toe the line. Say the right things. Nod like everyone else. Linux good, Microsoft Bad. Open source good, anything else bad. Naysayers are trolls who pollute the purity of our collective brilliance. What a bunch of hypocritical hogwash, and I'm not the only one who notices it here.
You don't feel the need to go anywhere near things you disagree with? So, how is it, living in a conflict-free world? Kind of nice, isn't it? No worries, no challenges, no need to really exercise your debating or rational thinking skills. Your brain can enjoy a nice, peaceful, vegetative state where nothing bad ever happens and all thought agree with whatever preconceived notions you've already arrived at. Oh, and the world is flat, the Sun revolves around the Earth, and there's absolutely no way that man can ever fly or travel faster than the speed of sound.
Lots of great things came from people who did not participate in groupthink. You shy away from adversity? Fine, enjoy yourself. You're doing very little to advance yourself if all you do is surround yourself with an agreeable environment, and you're doing nothing to advance the state of the human species. It's too bad you're taking up space and consuming resources, though, because it appears you're more or less a waste of genetic material.
Oops! Sorry! I exposed you to a disagreeable thought! I know that must be traumatizing you right about now, so I'll leave you to meditate, or burn incense, or whatever else it is you do when the abrasive world called reality bumps uncomfortably up against that delicate cranium of yours. Now run on and play. No need to read more boring posts anymore. I'm sure there's a nice post elsewhere that only says nice things that you already agree with. Now run on and play and don't splash in the puddles.
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How can privatizing fix anything dealing with the space program? The folks with wads of cash don't invest in anything "new" until they can see a market for it.
Ever hear of Burt Rutan and his Spaceship One project? For that matter, there's a plethora of private companies all working towards the X-Prize. The prize itself is a pittance compared to what these private companies are spending to create a commercially viable SSTO (single stage to orbit) system. And unlike a government-funded project, these guys have to make sure their idea not only works, but works efficiently and economically.
Let's not forget other private ventures that have radically changed the human race. Wilbur and Orville Wright were private individuals working out of their own pockets and the pockets of private benefactors. Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight was funded by private industry. The list goes on and on.
So, perhaps you should check your history, because there's been plenty of times in the past when "folks with wads of cash" have invested in far-fetched ventures, all because they did see a pot of gold somewhere in there. Space may be monstrously expensive, but it contains the most monstrous pot of gold this planet has ever seen. Space travel "isn't really taking you anywhere?" You lack the foresight to see the destination, it appears.
"...if it is ever actually deployed. And if it performs as promised. And if it doesn't meet with an accident (since it is non-servicable, given foreseeable launch technologies)."
I will point out that all of these arguments were used against Hubble itself when the project was first proposed. You're choosing the most negative interpretation possible because it suits your argument. Had NASA listend to someone like you, Hubble wouldn't be up there in the first place.
And even then, it's not truly a successor - it operates in different wavelengths and so will not be able to do some of the observtions that the Hubble does.
The scientists most responsible for deep space observation have been the ones to design the specs for the new telescope. It seems to be what they want, but not what you want. I think they're more qualified than you are to determine the usefullness of what it will observe.
And the point of the article is that the argument that the Hubble is too risky to maintain doesn't hold water.
We have a Shuttle system that's already lost 40% of the active fleet due to engineering failures. In both cases, the entire vehicle and crew were lost. Currently, if a Shuttle develops a tile problem in flight, there is no way to fix it, meaning any crew would be doomed to death from the outset. Nevermind the fact that the entire Shuttle has been built with ridiculously thin safety margins, things that never would've been suggested in the Apollo era. If anything goes wrong while the SRB's are firing, the crew is toast. If anything goes wrong during re-entry, the crew is toast. There are just too many inescapable dangers, dangers that Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts were not required to take. And this is a leap forward in space transportation? It's more expensive and more dangerous than its predecessors. I wouldn't trust a chimp inside this thing, much less the cream of the American astronaut corps.
Better a telescope in the sky, than two on the drawing board.
Again, you sound remarkably like the naysayers during the design of Hubble. If we can do it once, we can do it again, perhaps even better than before. You give the engineers too little credit.
I don't think we should stop our science because a couple people died.
While I agree that we should continue to forge on, you do seem quite cavalier with your desire for the throwing away of human life. I am forced to wonder if you'd be quite so quick to flirt with death if it were your life that hung in the balance. Taking risks in the name of science is one thing; embarking on something that is clearly more dangerous than it needs to be is something else entirely.
The Shuttle is an expensive, dangerous, poorly-equipped vehicle for scientific research. The ISS is similarly a wonderful example of pork-barrel spending at its finest, a testament to just how little you can actually get done with a few billion dollars and no clearly defined mission. Quite honestly, I wouldn't risk a monkey's life on a mission to support or use either one of them.
We should instead be spending our time and money developing safer, cheaper methods of getting into space. We could start by going back in time and reviving the 60's era Saturn V rocket, a phenomenally powerful and immensely safe rocket that propelled the U.S. into orbit and to the moon time and time again without incident (Apollo 13's failure was not due to the Saturn V, it was due to a failure in the CSM). It was far cheaper to operate them once than it is to fly one Shuttle mission. And I can't help but think that with nearly forty years of technological progress since the debut of the Saturn V, we could make it even cheaper, even more powerful, and even safer than before.
There are legions of people at NASA who agree with me here, but none of them are in a position to do much about it. Instead, NASA management makes decisions based upon who'll get the meatiest contracts and to hell with efficient science.
As for Hubble, it's a great achievement, and if all things were equal I'd love to have the Shuttle bring it back and have it put in the Smithsonian. However, I cannot in good conscience recommend that any human being risk his or her life to fix or return Hubble. You wouldn't wax poetic about a hammer or screwdriver, yet Hubble is, at its core, no more than a tool.
A successor to Hubble is already in the works, one that will likely make Hubble look as pitiful and as obsolete as the Model T looks to a modern automobile. We should be cheering at the idea of a replacement for Hubble, not clinging to an outdated satellite that, while immensely useful, is simply too risky and expensive to maintain and operate.
And for 40K I can tool around in my BMW getting lots of upscale ladies while you look like a highschool boy racer. Chicks dig the car, and the more expensive cars draw higher quality chicks.
On a serious note, though, while the Mustang might be really stout on quarter mile blasts, the BMW will stomp all over it when it comes to twists and turns, it'll handle bumpy roads a lot smoother, and it'll sure as hell hold its value a lot longer than the 'stang.
Your argument would make more sense if the money not spent on Hubble was going to be spent on the next generation space telescope (ST:tNG?), but it isn't.
Ummm, yes, it is. NASA has this big pool of cash called a "budget," and the money to fund various projects comes out of this "budget." If more is spent on project A, less is available to spend on project B. Right now, a specific amount of funds are earmarked for the next generation 'scope, but that depends on Hubble being put out to pasture. There are no funds for a recovery mission or an update mission that don't come from some other project, and the most likely target would be from the next generation 'scope.
Compare the scientific value of the HST to that of the space station
Can't disagree with you there.
(or another moon shot or manned mission to Mars).
But I will disagree with this big time. The scientific value of Hubble is immense, there's no doubt about it. However, the returns on establishing a permanent Lunar colony as well as developing the technology for manned missions to Mars simply dwarfs the living daylights out of any possible scientific endeavor NASA can possible accomplish. There are resources in our solar system beyond our dreams, yet we've been stuck on this third rock from the sun for thousands of years. It's time we starting moving outwards and finding science, not just sitting here and observing it.
One flight to the Hubble is a lot safer and cheaper than dozens of flights to the space station, and many would say it would produce more scientific value.
When compared to the ISS, I have no disagreement. But to say that "one" flight to Hubble is better than a Lunar colony or Mars shot is totally ridiculous, IMHO. Most of the computers, materials, and technologies available to us today have roots in the Apollo program. Can you imagine what kind of things we might be enjoying twenty years after a Mars mission? It will be amazing!
Not to be petty or anything, but just how slow of a news day does it have to be when a font change is considered newsworthy?
"SAVE THE HUBBLE" has replaced "SAVE THE WHALES" as the silly tagline of the day, it seems. Let's think rationally about this for just a second, shall we?
Hubble costs money to operate and costs money to service. A single service mission to Hubble costs a cubic buttload of cash, cash that might be better reserved for Hubble's successor. Would it be nice to retrieve Hubble, to display it in the Smithsonian? Sure it would, and if money were free I'm sure we'd do it. Money is not free, and NASA needs to spend its money where it'll do the most good. Saving Hubble is an emotional argument, not a technically practical one.
There's also another item to consider: the only "spacecraft" vehicles on the entire planet capable of retrieving Hubble have lost 40% of its fleet due to launch explosions or atmospheric disintegration due to tile failure. Let's assume for a moment that money to retrieve/fix/run Hubble existed. How would you feel if seven astronauts were killed trying to extend Hubbles life a few years, or to return it to the ground? It's not worth it, and the only arguments to the contrary are emotional arguments. NASA should be about science, not emotion.
That has more to do with my feelings about consensuality and legitimacy in government than about democracy in particular.
Consensus is a nice thing sometimes, but it frequently results in (a) decision by lowest common denominator and/or (b) squelching of minority opinions.
A perfect example would be the civil rights bills of the 60's. If the consensus mob had had its way, these things would never have come to pass. A more recent example of rule-by-consensus being bad is the Iraq war. If France, Germany, and Russia had had their way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power. True, no WMD's have been found, but there is evidence that these weapons found their way to Syria before the war. Further, there is no denying that the human race is fundamentally better off with Saddam and his family no longer throwing people into plastic shredders. The war was/is unpopular with the "national community" as a whole, but the national community has frequently shown itself to be incapable of taking hard, unpopular action even when hard, unpopular action is in the best interests of humanity. Consensus is frequently dumbed down to the "let's not rock the boat" mentality. This is why I think, IMHO, consensus can be a good thing but is more frequently a bad thing.
Excellent points, and I think you're dead on about the stability of our Constitution. But it's a mistake to feel appointed officials don't hold debts and allegiances, and it's a mistake to have too much contempt for "the public mob".
Oh, I know the road to any appointed position is paved with owed promises, but once appointed, a judge is pretty much immune to attempts to unseat them. You can impeach a judge, but it's not happened in a long, long time. There's not much stopping them from doing whatever they feel is right and Constitutional, and to hell with special interests. That obviously doesn't always happen, but at least it can happen that way.
So many people feel that everyone but them wanted PATRIOT type legislation in the aftermath if 9/11, but I don't feel the public was truly consulted. Congress passed things so quickly, with their established corporate interests riding along, that they set the political mood instead of reading it. We never saw what the "mob" would do if it was left with the choice.
The public wasn't consulted, but you act like that's a bad thing. Despite public schooling's indoctrinary attempt to teach us otherwise, we do not live in a Democracy, nor did the Founders want us to. We live in a Republic, where we vest trust in those we elect to accurately represent what we, their constituents, would want if we were in their shoes. If the public disagrees with the actions of their elected representative, they can vote him or her out in the next election. The system is precisely engineered in that fashion for a reason; for the same reason that the Judicial branch is not beholden to voters at all, members of Congress should not be beholden to the immediate whims of voters. The public, the mob, frequently gets inflamed about something today and forgets about it tomorrow. Our Republic is designed to damp that out, and that's a Good Thing. Mob rule is a Bad Thing.
Judges are theoretically free of both organized lobbying and the fickle public, but they are also humans with their own idealogical axes to grind. Appointment allows people with political motives (the Executive) to suggest which idealogical motives receive power. Judicial isolation is a vital patch, but the closest thing to a solution is more representation.
I must disagree, unfortunately. I think the current system works well. It does not work immediately, nor do I think it should. Implementing immediacy would dilute the system too far, in my opinion, and potentially skew the whole works to where the passions of today can make the law of tomorrow. Decisions and policies of great gravity ought to take time. The last thing I want is a judge, congressman, or President who makes a national decision based upon up-to-the-minute polling data.
why aren't our elected legislative and executive officials doing a good job of upholding constitutional rights in the first place?
Precisely because they are elected, my dear Watson. Being elected, they are beholden to the swaying to and fro of the public. Elected officials are always thinking about the next election, and thus anything they can do that says "I did something" is viewed as a positive, even if it's later shown to be unconstitutional. The wronged Congressman can then say "well, I did my part but those liberal/conservative judges knocked it down" and still gain the voter's support.
That is why the framers of the Constitution specifically wanted our government to be a troika of a sorts. The Executive and Legislative branches are elected and can follow the will of the people. The Judicial branch is not elected and thus (in theory) not subject to the whims of the passing fancy of a public mob. This is a Good Thing, because it's times like these that judges are called upon to do unpopular things. The fact that they can do so largely without facing the ire of voters means they don't have to worry about their political skins like elected officials do.
You know, the longer I view the Constitution, the more brilliant I think the framers were. Truly men of vision, trying to set down a system of fair, just laws in which freedom could endure. What a shame we've made such a mess of it since then.
While you're certainly entitled to your opinion, I happen to disagree. Although you are correct by saying it's much cheaper and safer to send robots to explore Mars, the ultimate goal is to expand humanity to other places in, and beyond, this solar system. Robot probes just aren't going to do that.
For that, we need humans in space. Rocket propulsion will be driven faster with human payloads because, unlike robot probes, us wimpy humans can't spend five to ten years coasting around the cosmos without ungodly amounts of food, air, and power. Colonization has to start somewhere, and manned missions to wherever are the necessary precursors to that. You're not seriously suggesting that the first mission to Mars be a colonization attempt, are you? You must learn to crawl before you can walk, and sending a colonization effort to Mars without first having a manned exploration mission would be amazingly risky.
No, we need humans out there. And we have to start somewhere. Even if Bush is going after this for pure politcal gain (something I don't believe, BTW), I am more than happy it's being done. We haven't put a human anywhere outside of Earth orbit in thirty years! The technological progress made in this interval is absolutely amazing, thus the effort to return to the moon should be better, faster, and safer than before. It's also a logical first step to Mars.
This is what passes for "Insightful" these days?
Before the anti-Bush screed gets too much further, have you even stopped to consider that Bush just might actually, really, desire for mankind to explore other planets? Have you even given the guy the benefit of the doubt before you condemned him? Or have you, like so many other knee-jerkers out there, simply applied the "Bush BAD! Anything else GOOD!" maxim and (ahem) "MovedOn"?
Nope, it'd be:
US President Condems African-American Astronaut to Death!
You forgot to apply your political correctness correction factor.
Reality: Microsoft products are a huge liability. Ask anyone who has had their files randomly mailed due one of the thousands of email viruses. The security breaches that Microsoft products bring to the table far more than offset any of their claimed savings in techie hours.
Now hold on just a second there, mister. You are currently putting all the blame on MS, but have you stopped to consider that most, if not all, of the blame ought to reside on the admin who was running the system?
Case in point: my company runs a large number of Windows workstations, Windows servers, and Exchange. We've got Solaris and Linux in there, too, but let's just consider the Windows stuff for the moment. We watched with some amusement as many other companies flailed and wilted under SoBig.F, Slammer, and everything between that and ILOVEYOU. We were amused because we were unaffected. We had the same OS's as they did, the same email software, the same everything, but we didn't get hit.
Oh, that's not to say our email antivirus filter didn't go batty with all the inbound crap. That's not to say our firewall logs didn't fill up with CodeRed probes. The nasty stuff came at us just as hard as everyone else, but we were prepared for it. Our systems were patched. Our virus patterns were up to date. Our networks were segmented with VLANs. Our firewalls were tight. Our workstation permissions were ruthless. Our server permissions were More Ruthless. In short, we had our shit together and, apart from not being able to contact anyone else because they were having problems, it was a normal workday for my company of more than 1,000 employees.
So, when you take the time to rail about how awful Microsoft security is, you ought to consider for a moment that, if the admins had been doing their jobs properly, this whole thing would've been a non-issue. What people really are complaining about is (a) the pitiful defaults Microsoft gives us and (b) the thoroughly worthless I.T. bastards who run these servers without the slightest clue as to what they're doing.
But you cannot say Microsoft products are a huge security risk. If we can secure our systems against this crap, anyone else can as well. You should be saying that idiot admins are a huge security risk, and that holds true no matter what OS you're using.
Don't thank me. The truth is avaiable for anyone to find out, they just have to have the desire to test their own beliefs. I've taken the time to see what's really going on here and I've divorced myself from the emotional aspects of this issue. The problem with liberals is they're still pissed off that Bush beat Gore despite their best attempts to rig the election in Gore's favor. Why get even when you can just get angry and lose? That's where the Democratic party is headed with Howard Dean, but they seem to be perfectly happy to drive off the cliff at full speed so long as they can spew venom on Bush the entire way.
The people there are too busy being shot at by dimwitted American troops to engage foreigners about the transgressions of the former regime. The current one is worse.
Really? You've been there and asked the people directly? Gosh, you must really get around to have interviewed everyone in Iraq so quickly! Or, could it be that you're simply regurgitating news you would like to believe is true without first checking to see whether it is true or not? Could it be that you actually want the people of Iraq to be suffering because it feeds your anger against Bush?
Amnesty International was doing its thing. Being a respectable, diplomatic charity, it uses words and public opinion to change the world.
And over 300,000 innocent civilians are DEAD IN THE GROUND, executed by Saddam and his henchmen, while Amnesty International was "doing its thing", being "respectable" and using "words and public opinion to change the world." This all happened since the U.N. sanctioned war against Iraq in 1991. I wonder what the dead would say about Amnesty's "respectable" way of getting murderous dictators to change their ways. Oh, I forgot, they're dead, and you don't care a damn about them. If Amnesty International had been running things back in 1939, Hitler would be in power, the Jews would be history, and Frenchmen would be speaking German. Well, I guess that last one wouldn't be so bad.
And how Bush Sr. gave Saddam equipment to make WMDs, then gave him intelligence to use it. Hardly innocent.
Actually, you'd have to go back a lot further than Bush Sr. to see who was giving Saddam weapons. Try the Carter administration. As for innocence, perhaps you've heard of the all the Russian, German, and French conventional weapons we've found in country. You know, the ones that have been imported into Iraq after 1991 in violation of the U.N. mandate against Iraq? You're so eager to blame the U.S., but the key appeasers in the U.N. have far more blood on their hands, and far more recent blood at that.
You really need to turn off Fox News and read some books.
And you really need to quit living at DemocraticUnderground.com, Moveon.org, and CNN, since that seems to be your primary source of unfounded vitriol against the President and these United States.
Ronald Reagan was called a warmonger and idiot lunatic by everyone not a staunch Republican.
That's odd. The only people who called him that were hardcore leftwing liberals, not moderates, not right wingers, and not conservatives.
Well, seeing as Jimmy Carter has done more for the world during Bush's term than Bush, I think he'll be remembered in a much, much nicer light.
What's he done? Well, let's see. He badmouthed the current president on foreign policy, something that no former president has ever done, regardless of party affiliation, since the country was founded. He got a Nobel prize from a commitee more concerned with sticking their thumb in the eye of the U.S. than anything else. He's pontificated at length on how he doesn't think the U.S. has done the right thing, but he's completely dodged any possible question of what he would've done differently except to say that he would've handed it all off to the U.N -- which is a fancy political dodgy way of saying "I wouldn't have done anything."
I'm sure all of this is falling on deaf ears, because you're clearly too angry and naive to be even remotely rational. Please, try to think about what I've said, though. You're not doing anyone any favors by allowing your emotions to rule you in this manner.
"Except that iraq had been nicely contained for 10 years, had no WMD, and was no threat to the american people."
Hitler was "nicely contained" for 10 years, had no WMD, and was no threat to the American people, either. Apparently you've never even considered the concept of what happens when evil is allowed to fester.
As for Iraq's possession of WMD, there are only two possible cases to consider here. Case 1: they had the WMD's. Case 2: they didn't have them.
If Case 1 is true then the weapons have been well hidden or transported elsewhere, perhaps to Syria, a Baathist stronghold. It took many months to find Saddam, one man in a country larger than the state of California. WMD's could be hidden anywhere in Iraq and could take years to find. It took years to find Eric Robert Rudolph and he was right here in the USA. To say Case 1 is untrue simply because they haven't been found yet is specious and premature. While nukes can be hard to disguise and hide (although, as N. Korea has shown, certainly not impossible), biological and chemical weapons can be made in something smaller than a tractor trailer container. Actively hidden, such a lab could conceivable never be found.
If Case 2 is true then why did Iraq refuse to produce documentation of their WMD destruction program? We know Saddam at least had WMD's in the past; that is without question since he used them in wars against Iran and against his own people. If they were destroyed, and threatened with war over their purported existence, why did Saddam refuse to show evidence of their destruction? I will remind you that according to the U.N. resolutions, unanimously voted upon and affirmed by all members of the U.N. Security Council, required Saddam to show proof of the destruction of these weapons. It was not enough for Hans Blix to simply "not find" them. The burden of proof was on Iraq. You seem to be forgetting that, as are many others who seek to find fault anywhere they can with American actions to date.
Essentially, if Iraq had no WMD, Saddam was bluffing and blustering. Well, I've got news for you: you don't bluff the U.S. when they're threatening war. That might've gone over with the Clinton administration, but it doesn't go over now, especially after 9/11. I hear Kaddafi is now dismantling his WMD program in Libya. Gee, I wonder if he's heard that the U.S. doesn't take kindly to third world dictators who are threatening nuclear armageddon against "the West" or "the infidels" or "the imperialist Americans". Before 9/11 we could look at those threats and shrug them off as far fetched. Today, any threat must be taken seriously, and the U.S. is going to take an active stance in finding these hate-filled extremists and destroying them before they get around to destroying us. Dictators, tyrants, and extremists who actively incite our destruction will be treated as fomentors of war and sought out like the vermin that they are.
The world can be divided into three camps: those who are with us, those who are against us, and those who are neutral. Those who are with us will receive preferential treatment politically, economically, and militarily. Those who are neutral will neither be preferred nor estranged. Those who actively oppose us will be fought to utter destruction, hounded, hunted, and ruthlessly exterminated to the utmost of our ability.
Which camp do you want to be in?
I'm glad you've seen fit to throw your little tantrum. As stated above, you can kindly go and fuck yourself now.
Toodles!
"currently accepted" transliteration? That depends who you ask, my not-so-subtle comrade, and Nanking has been the standard spelling in all the history books. Then there's the volumes and volumes of books, movies, and audio material all spelling it Nanking.
So, it seems the stick is wedged firmly in your anus, not mine. You can kindly fuck off now.
If you meant to say the Nanking Massacre, then you are correct. But that is just one example among many of how Imperial Japan brutalized others. This is not to in any way imply the U.S. doesn't have blood on its hands from Native Americans, Chinese immigrants, and others. However, it's the chief sign of an intelligent species that it can learn from its mistakes.
Apparently the peaceniks and appeasers out there aren't overly intelligent, because the whole appeasement thing has been tried before. I've got news for you: it doesn't work. Appease an aggressor and you only get a more ambitious and self-assured aggressor. Pre-emptive war is not only a valid strategy, it is a necessary one if you wish to avoid things like Pearl Harbor all over again. Given than a single terrorist can lay waste to an entire city with a trunk-sized nuke, it's all the more important that we seek out and destroy potential enemies as early on as possible, before they can become a clear and present danger.
To those who think we should just sit back and wait for our enemies to come to us, I have only this to say: I profoundly hope that either yourself or one of your loved ones or one of your closest friends is in the next city to be nuked, gassed, or airliner-bombed. Perhaps then will you gain a glimmer of understanding, but I doubt it.
Nobody forced US to start the war. Preventive war isn't a good argument else.
No, of course it isn't. It's much better to wait until the enemy attacks you first and causes massive casualties to both civilians and military. After all, wasn't Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 a wonderful place to be? Yep, we got just what we deserved for using diplomatic pressure to oppose a Japanese regime that was busy raping, murdering, and sacking China. And Poland in 1939 was another great example of a country that knew just how to sit back and wait to be attacked before it did anything, all while Britain and France did nothing.
Yep, we should all learn from history, and history says it's so much better to lose thousands or even millions of lives by allowing evil leaders to fester and grow in power instead of nipping them in the bud early on. World War II consumed in excess of 20 million human lives across the world, and all of them absolutely deserved to die. After all, wasn't it far better that all these people died rather than Britain, or the U.S., or (God forbid) France lift a finger to oppose Hitler, or Mussolini, or Stalin, or any of the other autocratic dictators that have risen in the last sixty years?
I'm so glad that you think the way you do about this. It makes me sleep so much better at night knowing that someone out there has all the answers, knows everthing, and can do an excellent job of Monday morning quarterbacking. Where would the world be without people like you to tell everyone else how they're doing it all wrong?
Ridiculous economic policies? I suppose you haven't heard a damn thing about the economy growing 7% last quarter, and that it grew around 6% the quarter prior? I also don't suppose you've heard anything about unemployement claims falling, or employment rising? And I'm sure you've never heard anything at all about corporate and individual spending being up significantly this year?
Yessirree, it's all bad news isn't it? Must be all those wacky policies Dubya put into place.
Y'know, if it weren't for the fact that you're likely a Democrat or a liberal (usually one and the same), you'd be happy about things. Alas, since it means you'll likely have to put up with another four years of Dubya, you're positively despondent because things are looking up for the U.S. Why be happy that the nation is doing better when it means you can't get your own political way?
Uh, despite your earnest attempt to pin the blame of this on George Bush and the Iraqi war, perhaps you might want to add in the fact that the American dollar is down roughly 18% for this same period -- very similar to the price increase of the 12 days of Christmas.
Yes, I know you hate the President, but he isn't responsible for every hideous and awful thing that happens to you regardless of whether you want him to be or not.
I was the I.T. Director for a web development firm back in 1999. When I got there, the former administrator had allowed all developers to have root access and total control of the development servers. I fought tooth and nail with the development director to get this removed, but I was told to accomodate this. I warned the COO numerous times that not only did the developers not need root access, giving them that access was potentially dangerous. Everybody thought I was being paranoid.
Well, about a month later a developer was having difficulty with his JSP app and decided to not just restart Apache -- no, he restarted the entire server. About forty developers who were telnetted in lost everything they had been working on (periodic saves? "What's that?" says a developer). Total cost: about six hours of work per developer. Dev's were billed out at about $200/hr back then, so 180hrs x $200/hr = $36,000 lost in one day, not to mention putting the project behind schedule. There were other incidents of programmers deleting other people's code. In one case a developer took the opportunity to push an outdated build of code onto a production webserver and hosed an entire database. It took the I.T. team about half a day to get everything restored from tape, during which time the webserver was down.
I took my case to the COO and got root yanked from the developers -- all of them. They whined, they bitched, they moaned, they screamed that they'd never be able to get any work done, they had to have root or the world would end.
Well, it didn't end. We used sudo to give them the ability to do certain things, but the I.T. department kept absolute control over the box otherwise. We made no friends in the development department (we were hated, to be frank), but oddly enough projects continued to get done on time, on budget, and without any pain.
Far from it being the I.T. department that's the control freak, it's the developers who like being the control freaks most of the time. You want root? Fine. You just better be able to explain to me why you need root in a way that makes good business sense, and why there's no other way under God's green Earth you can do what you're trying to do without root. I've been in this business for almost twenty years now, both developing and administrating, and I have yet to hear a convincing case ever why a developer must have root access. This is, of course, assuming the I.T. staff is competent and up to the task of managing the box, but if they're not then you've got much larger problems than just who gets root. In the end, the I.T. staff gets held responsible if a box goes awry or gets fscked up by somebody else. If they're responsible for it, they damned well ought to be in charge of it, and that includes deciding who gets what kind of access.
And to be honest, your post so too lacking in any substantive thought to be worth much of a response, but I'll try anyway.
Slashdot, being somewhat overrun by liberals and left-leaning "thinkers" are often champions of diversity -- so long as the diversity goes along with what the crowd wants. Quite often it's posted that we should accept the racial, sexual, and national diversity without question, but when it comes to ideological differences, no diversity is to be tolerated. Toe the line. Say the right things. Nod like everyone else. Linux good, Microsoft Bad. Open source good, anything else bad. Naysayers are trolls who pollute the purity of our collective brilliance. What a bunch of hypocritical hogwash, and I'm not the only one who notices it here.
You don't feel the need to go anywhere near things you disagree with? So, how is it, living in a conflict-free world? Kind of nice, isn't it? No worries, no challenges, no need to really exercise your debating or rational thinking skills. Your brain can enjoy a nice, peaceful, vegetative state where nothing bad ever happens and all thought agree with whatever preconceived notions you've already arrived at. Oh, and the world is flat, the Sun revolves around the Earth, and there's absolutely no way that man can ever fly or travel faster than the speed of sound.
Lots of great things came from people who did not participate in groupthink. You shy away from adversity? Fine, enjoy yourself. You're doing very little to advance yourself if all you do is surround yourself with an agreeable environment, and you're doing nothing to advance the state of the human species. It's too bad you're taking up space and consuming resources, though, because it appears you're more or less a waste of genetic material.
Oops! Sorry! I exposed you to a disagreeable thought! I know that must be traumatizing you right about now, so I'll leave you to meditate, or burn incense, or whatever else it is you do when the abrasive world called reality bumps uncomfortably up against that delicate cranium of yours. Now run on and play. No need to read more boring posts anymore. I'm sure there's a nice post elsewhere that only says nice things that you already agree with. Now run on and play and don't splash in the puddles.