Warning: If you visit Centralia, it's probably best to do so with a buddy. The ground can sink, and the gases leaking from the ground (CO, SO2, and others) are none too healthy. If you visit and you start to feel lightheaded or nauseous, move upwind or downwind until the feeling goes away.
Interesting fact for the day: Centralia is a drop in the proverbial bucket. There's a coal fire in China that releases 360 million tons of CO2 per year, an amount "equivalent to that emitted per year from all automobiles
and light trucks in the United States".
(Rant: With that in mind, can someone explain to me why those Canadians think the Kyoto Protocol, which won't apply to China, is worth ratifying, and environmentalists in America think SUVs are the real cause of global warming?)
> The Titan Missile museum is the only one like it in the world -- A cold-war nuclear silo open for public tours. Setting foot on the premises before 1983 would have meant you would be shot on sight.
For the Bay Area, I recommend the nearby SF-88 Nike Missile Base. During the 60s, this was the last line of defence against incoming bombers - the entire system was dismantled after the signing of the ABM treaty, except for one site that was kept (mostly) intact for historical purposes.
Located just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, and open a couple of days a week, you'll get to stand on the launch platform and descend into the bay where the missiles were stored. When you're not standing on the platform, they can also raise the missiles into firing position.
The tour guides are informed and geeky - when they detect a fellow geek, most will be happy to show off the gear they've restored. Lots of analog computers, vaccuum tubes, and frighteningly-high voltages. Be sure to ask how the computers worked. You'll be amazed at the engineering.
> The tour includes the actual control room where launch codes were recieved, and the infamous red button & code book are kept. You can even push it..Doing so before 1983 would have meant a couple million people would die..:)
Likewise, the control vans at the Nike Missile Base feature a Button. Pushing said button before 1973, would have taken out a squadron of incoming Soviet bombers 100+ miles away with either a conventionally-tipped or nuclear-tipped warhead, saving several million people:)
Less than two minutes down the road the launcher at SF-88L, is a second Nike launch site - SF-87L. Better known as the Marine Mammal Center, it now defends cute little seals and sea otters, and is also open to visitors daily.
The hike up to the radar platforms at SF-87C is a bit long, but affords a wonderful view of the Marin headlands. (In addition to some of the best views in the Bay Area, the whole area is full of historical artifacts, including abandoned artillery emplacements from the Spanish-American War, through World War I and II.)
> It begs the question of what else could have been done with the same money and far superior management." > > A moon sized space station capabable of destroying rebel bases. > >Assuming, of course, there isn't some OSHA regulation against telepathically strangling incompetant middle-level management.
Other way around.
Were it not for said OSHA regs, NASA might have been managed well enough to build said space station.
> For $40,000,000,000 we could have built a B Arc [google.com] and got rid of the useless third of our population.
No, we couldn't have gotten rid of a third of the world's population for $40B. 2 billion people * 100 pounds = 200 billion pounds of meat. You'd need a $0.20 per pound cost-to-orbit, which NASA can't provide.
If, however, we'd spent the $40B in getting rid of the useless third of NASA management, however, it would have been well worth the price.
Because without the ISS and Shuttle projects they kept alive, NASA might have been well on the way towards reducing the cost-to-orbit to $100/pound range. Granted, it's still a far cry from $0.20, but it'd be a hell of an improvement over today's $10K+ per pound via Shuttle.
> Depending on how you account for the cost of shuttle launches, the number is well over $40 billion in the U.S. alone. It begs the question of what else could have been done with the same money and far superior management.
NASA could have invested in flooz.com, pets.com, or just taken $40 billion in $1 bills, shovelled them into an incinerator, and used the heat thrown off by the withering of the bills in the flames to power a small generating station.
Any of which would have provided a better science return than the ISS ever will.
As I've said before, the best thing NASA could do for the long-term future space exploration would be to deorbit the ISS, and preferably into the Shuttle fleet while it's standing on the ground. (Maybe Taco Bell can paint a big logo on the side of the Shuttle assembly building...:)
The destruction of the two most expensive white elephants in human history would force NASA's hand - they'd have to fire the dead wood, allowing the remaining engineers to build a cheap heavy-lift vehicles while developing next-generation propulsion systems (e.g. nuclear rockets and ion engines for deep space probes.)
(Hmm, anyone know the energy content of a dollar bill? Maybe the dollar-bill-fired power station would have been enough to keep a team of 50-100 engineers comfortable for a year or two while working on said next-generation launch systems:-)
> There's some merit to this: thinking back, just about all of the Mac using women I've dated were serious SM freaks. Of course, they happened to be artistically-inclined pierced, tatooed gothy punks, but that in itself is an odd correlation. > > Any testimonials out there?
What, you mean that wasn't intended as a testimonial?:)
> www.kleinbottle.com is pretty cool, but I'm sure it's too expensive for what you want to do.
I dunno. $30 for the "baby" Klein bottle is pretty reasonable. Add maybe $0.50 for having Kinko's print the company logo on a sheet of transparent sticker stuff, and a little bit of time to stick 'em on.
Besides, they're from Cliff Stoll, of Cuckoo's Egg fame. It just doesn't get much geekier than that.
> Perhaps Tom Cruise would like a face transplant... He has worn a mask [tvguide.com] in four recent movies -- Mission Impossible [imdb.com], Minority Report [imdb.com], Eyes Wide Shut [imdb.com], and Vanilla Sky [imdb.com]. Something out of the ordinary is afoot...
Yeah, I don't get it. I mean, all the money in the world won't get your own body thetans removed, I can only imagine how many of the little buggers come attached to some random wog's face.
Leading theory: What if they extracted a few chunks of DNA on some Kool's cigarettebutts smoked by L. Ron Hubbard, wedged 'em into some stem cells, and 20 years later, there's Cruise's face transplant. Cruise then runs for President as the reincarnated Source, and fills HomeSec with OSA employees, and starts executing everyone on the Pacific and Atlantic seabord who's ever eaten clam chowder...
> The second- is what if they could do the whole deal perfectly? What if you could have some dead persons face?
Some kid'll walk up to you and say "I see dead people!" Someone'll probably make a movie about it:)
>I picture someone walking in a mall and they see their son who committed suicide a bit back walking by.
That's easy. Public Service Ads.
"Hi! We're the band members from Nirvana, and this is our new friend Michael Jackson! We'd like to remind you that being a multi-platinum rock star sucks so fucking hard that not even a brand new face can cure that gnawing need for heroin, uh, happiness, that's deep down inside there, and you finally decide to end it all, you should be a responsible citizen! Make sure to do it right! Be like Kurt! Erase Your Face!"
> As long as the station lies dormant and routine maintence takes place, what is the worst that could happen to the ISS?
It stays in orbit.
> The potential benefits are that we would be saving both American and Russian space program dollars that could be used on other projects. I'm sure we could still send up missions to add additional modules to the ISS, just leave the station uninhabited for a few years.
"It stays in orbit" is the worst-case scenario, because it means "...and we continue to waste money on it, get zero science out of it, and because we know that someday we'll have to bring it back online, we can't do any real science in the interim".
Which is essentially the status quo. Money-leeching zero-science space station (ISS) in orbit, extraordinarily-high-cost launch vehicle program (Shuttle) burning the rest of the budget to keep it there.
The best thing that could happen to the ISS is that it deorbits, and a chunk of debris takes out half the Shuttle fleet while it's still on the ground.
Then, we have no space station. Big budget savings, and no real loss - we weren't doing any science or satellite construction or interplanetary-probe-fueling in low earth orbit anyways.
And we have no Shuttle programme. Huge budget savings, and no real loss - for a while, NASA goes back to unmanned boosters, like Atlas, Delta, Ariane, and yes, even Energia, like anyone doing real work in space is doing.
With all the money you save, you develop a new cheap heavy-lift vehicle, while working on next-generation propulsion systems like nuclear rockets and ion engines for deep space activities.
You test these technologies out on faster, better, and not cheaper space probes. Europa orbiters/landers. Semi-autonomous Mars rovers. Lunar soil/ice probes. Insanely-Long-Baseline-Interferometry radio and optical telescopes to look for atmospheric signatures of planets around other stars. A Pluto/Charon flyby before the damn atmosphere freezes over, and with an ion or nuclear engine, maybe a flyby of another Kuiper Belt Object on your way to the heliopause.
ISS was the politically-correct renaming of "Space Station Freedom" once we realized the Cold War was mostly over, and we couldn't afford to build "Freedom" ourselves. Just like the race to the moon, "Freedom" (ca. 1986) was a space station that we had to have, not to do any science, but simply because the Russkies had just launched one named "Peace", and it was kinda embarassing for them to have a space station and us not to have one.
But hey, let's keep it in orbit. If you're a NASA administrator, and Congress has been giving you billions of dollars every year for 17+ years not to do science, isn't the perpetual continuation of ISS/Shuttle - and now you don't even have to build the frickin' ISS to keep the dollars flowing, so you're being paid to do neither science nor flashy PR projects - the kind of thing you have wet dreams about every night?
> If you really think you want go up to the ISS, remember that there is no broadband Net access up there, and therefore no access to pr0n -- and even worse, there's no pizza delivery.
Someone else pointed out that 1000 people at $10,000 per head doesn't make sense, but 10 people at $1,000,000 just might.
How about 5 major pr0n studios with $2,000,000 each? (My contribution? Well, I volunteer to wear a pizza delivery guy's uniform.)
> A threat to do something which is legal, (such as saying, "I'll sue you"), is perfectly legal; at least in the US. Basically, they're telling these people that a lawsuit is on the way, but that they can avoid legal action by entering into a settlement agreement. This is not extortion.
Both the Reuters article and the Inq article described the offer not as an "invoice", not as an offer of an out-of-court settlement.
IANAL, but an invoice for services (not) rendered is not the same as an offer of an out-of-court settlement.
IANAJudge, but if this came to my courtroom and the defendant had countersued for the bogus bill, I'd say "Warezd00d infringed $14,000 worth of copyrights and is ordered to pay der UberGruppenFuhrer of Copyrights. Warezd00d prevails in his countersuit against Der UberGruppenFuhrer of Copyrights for false billings of $7,000. UGFoC is ordered to pay Warezd00d $7,000 in damages and $6,999 for being a bunch of extortionate assholes. Now both of you, get the fsck out of my court!"
> Since there was no purchase agreement between the "buyer" and "seller," the seller has to put a dollar value on the product by invoicing the "buyer." This way, they can take the cases to CIVIL court (suing for non-payment under much looser juries -- preponderance of evidence rules instead of reasonable doubt, etc., etc.) instead of waiting for the government to get involved with CRIMINAL charges.
IANAL, but "Me too".
They can sue in court for non-payment of the bill, which they'll probably lose, because there was never an agreement from the "buyer" to pay for the wares of the "seller".
They can, of course, not sue for non-payment of the bill, and instead, sue for civil copyright infringement. That suit, they might win.
But I still think linking a frivolous bill ("Pay $7000 for no reason at all!") to a non-frivolous claim of copyright infringement ("If you don't pay the frivolous bill, we'll file suit against you for $14,000 for copyright infringement") is ethically questionable at best, and under some legal systems may even be illegal.
If they wanted to do it right, IMHO, they'd have filed suit for $14,000 for infringement, and then offered to settle out of court for $7,000. There may not be much practical difference to the warez-d00d getting the subpoena, but IMNSHO there's one hell of a legal/ethical difference.
Disclaimer: IANAL. Can any US or Danish lawyers clear this up?
> This bill is an option. They are being nice to you. They are saying; OK, look, you're busted and, deep inside, you know you are busted. We are giving you a chance to avoid court and make this go away as if you were legit. Just pay this bill and you won't go to court. Oh, don't agree? Want to deny it? Won't pay? Fine. We'll take you to court. Oh... NOT for not paying this bill. You are right, you didn't sign or receive a service for THIS bill. Nope, we're taking you to court for the copyrighted material you have stole and are redistributing.
Then for Chrissakes why don't they just sue for $14,000 and when serving notice of suit to each copyright infringer, deliver an offer to settle out of court for $7,000?
What you call the "nice" option - sending a made-up bill for services not rendered, payment of which will (assuming the Ubergruppenfuhrer of Copyrights doesn't change his mind after the check clears) somehow get the UoC off one's back - is very close to what I call "barratry".
This isn't quite up there with threatening criminal prosecution in order to win a civil suit ("Pay up or we'll call the cops!"), which would be way over the line in my limited understanding of legal ethics, but IMNSHO it's pretty damn close.
IANAL. Any American/Danish lawyers care to comment over whether the "pay us or we'll sue" (as opposed to "suing and offering to settle out of court") would be legal/ethical for an attorney practising in the States? Or Denmark, for that matter?
> Erm, is there something about computer people I should know? I have this image forming in my mind of thousands of geeks every morning, puting on their clean underwear and flannel-lined jeans, then trooping to work in their ladybug rain boots and finally sitting down in front of the computer and slipping into their cheetah print slippers.
> Cut and pasted from half.com: > >
"If you like MAC OS X Developer's Guide you may also enjoy: > >Bridget Jones's Diary [...] > >At Home in Mitford [...] > >The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing [...]
So half.com definitely thinks you're gay, but doesn't know whether you're male or female?
Wow, marketers really are dumber than advertised.
Re:Why I stopped playing the Sims...
on
Virtual Simerica
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· Score: 2
> The article gives several examples of people re-creating their lives in the Sim world. I never saw it that way... I saw the game as the most insidious form of social commentary ever to be distributed to the masses. There are two stages to sim actualization. Stage one is looking at your life through Sims progress meters. Stage two is realizing that the game is, for all its faults, a pretty good model of the human condition... you really have little choice than to follow the rules society places on you, no matter how much of a black sheep you think you are or try to be. Getting people to realize this blows their minds and makes them quite impressionable.
What I wouldn't give to undo my post and get mod points for your post.
Stage Two seems to be the case for many Maxis ("Sim") games, going as far back as SimCity's developers' preference for rails over roads.
In retrospect, it's not at all surprising that The Sims contained the same feature. If you wanna "win", you gotta "play the game" by "the rules".
> I wouldn't be suprised if Wil Wright were going to start the next revolution via the next sims upgrade pack "The glorious new Sim order".
Except that instead of "[meatspace] society's" rules, it's "the game developers" rules. The folks who miss the difference between the two are the ones most malleable to Sim-indoctrination.
And since the game's so addictive, that might include enough people to make your game-developer-inspired revolution possible.
Furthermore, if the online/MMORPG version of Sims results in lots of people - say, 10% or more of the population - playing the game, and Simfolk setting up their own governments, the hypothesis of people's [meatspace] sociopolitical outlook being affected by [gamespace] constraints, becomes real interesting.
I wonder if HomeSec will be watching or making suggestions to Maxis/EA during the larval phase of any such developments. The more I think about it, the more I think they probably should be.:-)
Re:Why I stopped playing the Sims...
on
Virtual Simerica
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· Score: 4, Interesting
> I started thinking things like: >"My Bladder meter is getting pretty low. Hygene Bar could use a refresher too, maybe I should jump in the shower. And it would be nice to up my social meter." > > Then I realized I was looking AT MY REAL LIFE through the metric of The Sims.
I tried The Sims on a whim and a friend's recommendation, and enjoyed it enough that it was morning by the time I decided I needed sleep. (But that's been true for me since the first DOS (R.I.P.) version of SimCity.)
But I found it frustrating to have to fight the energy/social/fun meters while advancing in my career. Fer chrissakes, this character's only worked for three days straight, and is already depressed/lonely? What's wrong with him/her? Needing a shower every 1-2 days, fine, but a party?! This is nuts!
So I created a Sim a little more suited to my own personality and called him Mini-Me.
Playing Mini-Me was more fun, but after a few sessions, Mini-Me still found it hard to advance his career, because he didn't have enough Friends ("Aaw, crap, I have to invite those idiots over?!"), and didn't have enough Energy ("I just wanna fsckin' sleep!") to throw the requisite parties after work.
So Mini-Me took a day or two off Sim-work ("Grumble, grumble") and wound up l33ching some other Sim's wife ("Ain't enough hours in the day to do it myself!"). She then stayed at home to organize the requisite friend-making parties (and click on "Hell, no!" whenever the adoption agency called) while Mini-Me worked his way up the career ladder ("Fuck yes, I come home, go to bed for an hour or two, wake up for the party, make a Friend, and rack up another career level! I 0wnz 411 j00r 51m5!").
The only reason Mini-Me got married was to make Friends - not because he wanted any Friends but for the sole purposes of advancing his career. (And Big-Me, as the player, still found it horribly boring to spend hours queueing up "Invite $SIM", "Greet", "Joke" "Talk" "Dance" and occasionally "Flirt" commands just to get to the top career level).
> Realizing how pathetic this was, I took said bathroom break and shower, went back to the room, and unistalled the Sims.
The day Mini-Me reached the top of his career ladder, Big-Me realized, with a sigh of great relief, that unlike Mini-Me, he had a good enough job that he doesn't have to put up with that kind of crap in real life. So why should he have to put up with it in a game?
At this point, Mini-Me (and his entire city!) were promptly transformed into several thousand sectors of free diskspace, and eagerly await the installation of DOOM III.
> > [Chinese] Police promptly raided the business and confiscated Ralsky's servers. Although they were returned a few days later, Ralsky now tries to cover his tracks better, so opponents won't know what companies and servers he's using. > >If that worked, maybe we can find someone with a much *longer* reach to take him down. > >We need to start reporting him as a terrorist to the FBI. We know how pushy they can be.:)
Yeah. I'm kinda amazed that it worked, but I suppose with the number of people doing it, someone would get lucky. Alas, unlike American cops, when the Chinese cops raid a place and steal its equipment, they give it back. Who'dathunk that?
Yo, Charlie Chan, that's not how you're supposed to play the game! When you raid a shop for its computers, you're supposed to keep the damn computers! Duh!
(Obviously they haven't been taking their lessons from the FBI seriously, or the Chinese Communist dictatorship, because it has no concept of private property, has yet to invent asset forfeiture laws yet:-)
A Modest Proposal, then:
For every blocked spam delivery attempt, bounce every Ralsky spam with:
Every day, plus or minus a few hours, randomly regenerate the pro-Arab slogan. (The idea is that it's supposed to look like an SMTP server is responding to the hashbusters *in* Ralsky's spam, and responding with a segment of a coded message.)
Then, for every 550 message, increment the message segment number, and randomly generate blocks of random characters.
Sit back and wait. If Fedz show up on your doorstep, supply with donuts (the good kind, damnit!) and show 'em the script that generates 'em randomly. And give 'em a laptop for their troubles.
If Fedz show up on Ralsky's doorstep, write letter to Congressman requesting that the US government authorize the use of any and all means of torture on terror suspects. Laugh maniacally as spam problem goes away. And I mean far away.
As for what to do with Ralsky once he's been disappeared for supporting terrorism, I have another Modest Proposal:
1) Lock Ralsky in cell with a laptop and a 2400-baud modem.
2) He can eat his meals and quaff his drinks if and only if he replies with "Yes, I'd like to eat today!" to an email written by someone (a different person each day) working in the prison kitchen.
3) Post his email address to USENET in alt.make.money.fast.
4) If he objects that he can't find the chow-time email with the Subject: line of "Hi!" or "Let's do lunch!" message amidst the spam... well, it's just e-mail, can't he Just Hit Delete?
5) Install a webcam in the cell and sell subscriptions to live streaming webcasts of Ralsky writhing in agony as convulsions from hunger and thirst wrack his body.
6)...
(and I hope "..." lasts for weeks, whether there are any subscribers to the webcasts or not)
7) Profit!
And just to show you I'm not a total softie when it comes to dealing with spammers, then go all Vlad-the-Impaler on him in front of Verio headquarters, as an example to the others.
> Tell me how is so almost-certain that biological manufacture of organisms will save lives. > I think the only "inevitable" use of technologoy is that it will be used to hurt someone.
Back atcha:
Tell me how is so almost-certain that biological manufacture of organisims will hurt someone.
I think the only "inevitable" use of technologoy is that it will be used to improve lives.
With a twist:
Overall, has technology improved or degraded the standard of living for Joe Sixpack...
...in the last 5000 years? (agriculture, writing) ...in the last 500 years? (germ theory of disease, sewage systems, industrialization) ...in the last 100 years? (mass production, running water, the toilet, in-home refrigeration, electricity, radio, antibiotics) ...in the last 50 years? (air travel, television, mass vaccination against polio, eradication of smallpox) ...in the last 5 years? (widely-available cheap computers, progress on cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, gene-hacked foods requiring lower pesticide levels and higher crop yields)
Has technology been used for evil, as well as good? Sure. But has the good outweighed the bad? I've got my opinion, but hey, it's your call.
> but anyways, if we do finally create life from scratch, does that make the scientist in charge a god?
Geek: "Hydrogen atoms are just protons, which are made out of three quarks stuck together, and about which an electron happens to be found. If I put enough hydrogen in the same place, I get a star, which I can use to synthesize helium, carbon, and all the other elements. And by combining these elements in the right way, I can make amino acids. And by combining those amino acids just so, I can make life from scratch! Yah00! I'm a God!"
God: "Really? So, like, next time, you'll start with your own quark-gluon plasma instead of Mine?"
> But think about it: He's president of a country of 280 million, making what, $400k, and probably the most powerful single human in the whole world. > >You're some shlub posting on/. when you should be working. Where does that leave YOU on the scale of intelligence?
Obviously smart enough to know when I'm being grossly overpaid:-)
Time for a Far Side reference:
Frame 1: Guy in a suit and tie, mainlining six cups of coffee a day and chain-smoking.
Frame 2: Gorilla kickin' back, peelin' a banana.
Caption: "Who's the dumb ape?"
> [ Cashierless checkout at Kash and Karry story snipped ] > >Maybe because I used to do cashier work, or maybe because the store was so deserted at the time I went. I'm sure I'll get used to it in time. I guess I've experienced my very first taste of "Future Shock." (Which in itself was unsettling for someone who would normally identify themselves as belonging to the Paranoia Pro-Tech secret society.)
I don't see what the problem is. I mean, as long as your secret mutant power is Machine Empathy, you've got it made, Citizen!
> There was a big thing in the past about tracking purchases and selling the information to insurance companies (Shopper X bought 85 cartons of Marlboros and 50 cases of Heineken in the past week) so they could use it to raise ra[tes].
I dunno about the beer, but I think the 85 cartons of Marlboros would be of more interest to the IRS than the insurance company:)
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Warning: If you visit Centralia, it's probably best to do so with a buddy. The ground can sink, and the gases leaking from the ground (CO, SO2, and others) are none too healthy. If you visit and you start to feel lightheaded or nauseous, move upwind or downwind until the feeling goes away.
Interesting fact for the day: Centralia is a drop in the proverbial bucket. There's a coal fire in China that releases 360 million tons of CO2 per year, an amount "equivalent to that emitted per year from all automobiles and light trucks in the United States".
(Rant: With that in mind, can someone explain to me why those Canadians think the Kyoto Protocol, which won't apply to China, is worth ratifying, and environmentalists in America think SUVs are the real cause of global warming?)
Cool! (Sorry, I'm a sucker for Cold War History - might I also recommend The Bureau of Atomic Tourism"> as a vacation planning site?)
For the Bay Area, I recommend the nearby SF-88 Nike Missile Base. During the 60s, this was the last line of defence against incoming bombers - the entire system was dismantled after the signing of the ABM treaty, except for one site that was kept (mostly) intact for historical purposes.
Located just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, and open a couple of days a week, you'll get to stand on the launch platform and descend into the bay where the missiles were stored. When you're not standing on the platform, they can also raise the missiles into firing position.
The tour guides are informed and geeky - when they detect a fellow geek, most will be happy to show off the gear they've restored. Lots of analog computers, vaccuum tubes, and frighteningly-high voltages. Be sure to ask how the computers worked. You'll be amazed at the engineering.
> The tour includes the actual control room where launch codes were recieved, and the infamous red button & code book are kept. You can even push it..Doing so before 1983 would have meant a couple million people would die.. :)
Likewise, the control vans at the Nike Missile Base feature a Button. Pushing said button before 1973, would have taken out a squadron of incoming Soviet bombers 100+ miles away with either a conventionally-tipped or nuclear-tipped warhead, saving several million people :)
Less than two minutes down the road the launcher at SF-88L, is a second Nike launch site - SF-87L. Better known as the Marine Mammal Center, it now defends cute little seals and sea otters, and is also open to visitors daily.
The hike up to the radar platforms at SF-87C is a bit long, but affords a wonderful view of the Marin headlands. (In addition to some of the best views in the Bay Area, the whole area is full of historical artifacts, including abandoned artillery emplacements from the Spanish-American War, through World War I and II.)
>
> A moon sized space station capabable of destroying rebel bases.
>
>Assuming, of course, there isn't some OSHA regulation against telepathically strangling incompetant middle-level management.
Other way around.
Were it not for said OSHA regs, NASA might have been managed well enough to build said space station.
No, we couldn't have gotten rid of a third of the world's population for $40B. 2 billion people * 100 pounds = 200 billion pounds of meat. You'd need a $0.20 per pound cost-to-orbit, which NASA can't provide.
If, however, we'd spent the $40B in getting rid of the useless third of NASA management, however, it would have been well worth the price.
Because without the ISS and Shuttle projects they kept alive, NASA might have been well on the way towards reducing the cost-to-orbit to $100/pound range. Granted, it's still a far cry from $0.20, but it'd be a hell of an improvement over today's $10K+ per pound via Shuttle.
NASA could have invested in flooz.com, pets.com, or just taken $40 billion in $1 bills, shovelled them into an incinerator, and used the heat thrown off by the withering of the bills in the flames to power a small generating station.
Any of which would have provided a better science return than the ISS ever will.
As I've said before, the best thing NASA could do for the long-term future space exploration would be to deorbit the ISS, and preferably into the Shuttle fleet while it's standing on the ground. (Maybe Taco Bell can paint a big logo on the side of the Shuttle assembly building... :)
The destruction of the two most expensive white elephants in human history would force NASA's hand - they'd have to fire the dead wood, allowing the remaining engineers to build a cheap heavy-lift vehicles while developing next-generation propulsion systems (e.g. nuclear rockets and ion engines for deep space probes.)
(Hmm, anyone know the energy content of a dollar bill? Maybe the dollar-bill-fired power station would have been enough to keep a team of 50-100 engineers comfortable for a year or two while working on said next-generation launch systems :-)
>
> Any testimonials out there?
What, you mean that wasn't intended as a testimonial? :)
I dunno. $30 for the "baby" Klein bottle is pretty reasonable. Add maybe $0.50 for having Kinko's print the company logo on a sheet of transparent sticker stuff, and a little bit of time to stick 'em on.
Besides, they're from Cliff Stoll, of Cuckoo's Egg fame. It just doesn't get much geekier than that.
Yeah, I don't get it. I mean, all the money in the world won't get your own body thetans removed, I can only imagine how many of the little buggers come attached to some random wog's face.
Leading theory: What if they extracted a few chunks of DNA on some Kool's cigarettebutts smoked by L. Ron Hubbard, wedged 'em into some stem cells, and 20 years later, there's Cruise's face transplant. Cruise then runs for President as the reincarnated Source, and fills HomeSec with OSA employees, and starts executing everyone on the Pacific and Atlantic seabord who's ever eaten clam chowder...
Some kid'll walk up to you and say "I see dead people!" Someone'll probably make a movie about it :)
>I picture someone walking in a mall and they see their son who committed suicide a bit back walking by.
That's easy. Public Service Ads.
"Hi! We're the band members from Nirvana, and this is our new friend Michael Jackson! We'd like to remind you that being a multi-platinum rock star sucks so fucking hard that not even a brand new face can cure that gnawing need for heroin, uh, happiness, that's deep down inside there, and you finally decide to end it all, you should be a responsible citizen! Make sure to do it right! Be like Kurt! Erase Your Face!"
It stays in orbit.
> The potential benefits are that we would be saving both American and Russian space program dollars that could be used on other projects. I'm sure we could still send up missions to add additional modules to the ISS, just leave the station uninhabited for a few years.
"It stays in orbit" is the worst-case scenario, because it means "...and we continue to waste money on it, get zero science out of it, and because we know that someday we'll have to bring it back online, we can't do any real science in the interim".
Which is essentially the status quo. Money-leeching zero-science space station (ISS) in orbit, extraordinarily-high-cost launch vehicle program (Shuttle) burning the rest of the budget to keep it there.
The best thing that could happen to the ISS is that it deorbits, and a chunk of debris takes out half the Shuttle fleet while it's still on the ground.
Then, we have no space station. Big budget savings, and no real loss - we weren't doing any science or satellite construction or interplanetary-probe-fueling in low earth orbit anyways.
And we have no Shuttle programme. Huge budget savings, and no real loss - for a while, NASA goes back to unmanned boosters, like Atlas, Delta, Ariane, and yes, even Energia, like anyone doing real work in space is doing.
With all the money you save, you develop a new cheap heavy-lift vehicle, while working on next-generation propulsion systems like nuclear rockets and ion engines for deep space activities.
You test these technologies out on faster, better, and not cheaper space probes. Europa orbiters/landers. Semi-autonomous Mars rovers. Lunar soil/ice probes. Insanely-Long-Baseline-Interferometry radio and optical telescopes to look for atmospheric signatures of planets around other stars. A Pluto/Charon flyby before the damn atmosphere freezes over, and with an ion or nuclear engine, maybe a flyby of another Kuiper Belt Object on your way to the heliopause.
ISS was the politically-correct renaming of "Space Station Freedom" once we realized the Cold War was mostly over, and we couldn't afford to build "Freedom" ourselves. Just like the race to the moon, "Freedom" (ca. 1986) was a space station that we had to have, not to do any science, but simply because the Russkies had just launched one named "Peace", and it was kinda embarassing for them to have a space station and us not to have one.
But hey, let's keep it in orbit. If you're a NASA administrator, and Congress has been giving you billions of dollars every year for 17+ years not to do science, isn't the perpetual continuation of ISS/Shuttle - and now you don't even have to build the frickin' ISS to keep the dollars flowing, so you're being paid to do neither science nor flashy PR projects - the kind of thing you have wet dreams about every night?
It must suck ass if you're a scientist, though.
Someone else pointed out that 1000 people at $10,000 per head doesn't make sense, but 10 people at $1,000,000 just might.
How about 5 major pr0n studios with $2,000,000 each? (My contribution? Well, I volunteer to wear a pizza delivery guy's uniform.)
Both the Reuters article and the Inq article described the offer not as an "invoice", not as an offer of an out-of-court settlement.
IANAL, but an invoice for services (not) rendered is not the same as an offer of an out-of-court settlement.
IANAJudge, but if this came to my courtroom and the defendant had countersued for the bogus bill, I'd say "Warezd00d infringed $14,000 worth of copyrights and is ordered to pay der UberGruppenFuhrer of Copyrights. Warezd00d prevails in his countersuit against Der UberGruppenFuhrer of Copyrights for false billings of $7,000. UGFoC is ordered to pay Warezd00d $7,000 in damages and $6,999 for being a bunch of extortionate assholes. Now both of you, get the fsck out of my court!"
IANAL, but "Me too".
They can sue in court for non-payment of the bill, which they'll probably lose, because there was never an agreement from the "buyer" to pay for the wares of the "seller".
They can, of course, not sue for non-payment of the bill, and instead, sue for civil copyright infringement. That suit, they might win.
But I still think linking a frivolous bill ("Pay $7000 for no reason at all!") to a non-frivolous claim of copyright infringement ("If you don't pay the frivolous bill, we'll file suit against you for $14,000 for copyright infringement") is ethically questionable at best, and under some legal systems may even be illegal.
If they wanted to do it right, IMHO, they'd have filed suit for $14,000 for infringement, and then offered to settle out of court for $7,000. There may not be much practical difference to the warez-d00d getting the subpoena, but IMNSHO there's one hell of a legal/ethical difference.
Disclaimer: IANAL. Can any US or Danish lawyers clear this up?
Then for Chrissakes why don't they just sue for $14,000 and when serving notice of suit to each copyright infringer, deliver an offer to settle out of court for $7,000?
What you call the "nice" option - sending a made-up bill for services not rendered, payment of which will (assuming the Ubergruppenfuhrer of Copyrights doesn't change his mind after the check clears) somehow get the UoC off one's back - is very close to what I call "barratry".
This isn't quite up there with threatening criminal prosecution in order to win a civil suit ("Pay up or we'll call the cops!"), which would be way over the line in my limited understanding of legal ethics, but IMNSHO it's pretty damn close.
IANAL. Any American/Danish lawyers care to comment over whether the "pay us or we'll sue" (as opposed to "suing and offering to settle out of court") would be legal/ethical for an attorney practising in the States? Or Denmark, for that matter?
One word: "Telecommuting"
So, like, Ellen Feiss is gay...
I think I see the new "Switch" commercial comin' up. Or pr0n. Or both. w00t!
>
> "If you like MAC OS X Developer's Guide you may also enjoy:
>
>Bridget Jones's Diary [...]
>
>At Home in Mitford [...]
>
>The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing [...]
So half.com definitely thinks you're gay, but doesn't know whether you're male or female?
Wow, marketers really are dumber than advertised.
What I wouldn't give to undo my post and get mod points for your post.
Stage Two seems to be the case for many Maxis ("Sim") games, going as far back as SimCity's developers' preference for rails over roads.
In retrospect, it's not at all surprising that The Sims contained the same feature. If you wanna "win", you gotta "play the game" by "the rules".
> I wouldn't be suprised if Wil Wright were going to start the next revolution via the next sims upgrade pack "The glorious new Sim order".
Except that instead of "[meatspace] society's" rules, it's "the game developers" rules. The folks who miss the difference between the two are the ones most malleable to Sim-indoctrination.
And since the game's so addictive, that might include enough people to make your game-developer-inspired revolution possible.
Furthermore, if the online/MMORPG version of Sims results in lots of people - say, 10% or more of the population - playing the game, and Simfolk setting up their own governments, the hypothesis of people's [meatspace] sociopolitical outlook being affected by [gamespace] constraints, becomes real interesting.
I wonder if HomeSec will be watching or making suggestions to Maxis/EA during the larval phase of any such developments. The more I think about it, the more I think they probably should be. :-)
>"My Bladder meter is getting pretty low. Hygene Bar could use a refresher too, maybe I should jump in the shower. And it would be nice to up my social meter."
>
> Then I realized I was looking AT MY REAL LIFE through the metric of The Sims.
I tried The Sims on a whim and a friend's recommendation, and enjoyed it enough that it was morning by the time I decided I needed sleep. (But that's been true for me since the first DOS (R.I.P.) version of SimCity.)
But I found it frustrating to have to fight the energy/social/fun meters while advancing in my career. Fer chrissakes, this character's only worked for three days straight, and is already depressed/lonely? What's wrong with him/her? Needing a shower every 1-2 days, fine, but a party?! This is nuts!
So I created a Sim a little more suited to my own personality and called him Mini-Me.
Playing Mini-Me was more fun, but after a few sessions, Mini-Me still found it hard to advance his career, because he didn't have enough Friends ("Aaw, crap, I have to invite those idiots over?!"), and didn't have enough Energy ("I just wanna fsckin' sleep!") to throw the requisite parties after work.
So Mini-Me took a day or two off Sim-work ("Grumble, grumble") and wound up l33ching some other Sim's wife ("Ain't enough hours in the day to do it myself!"). She then stayed at home to organize the requisite friend-making parties (and click on "Hell, no!" whenever the adoption agency called) while Mini-Me worked his way up the career ladder ("Fuck yes, I come home, go to bed for an hour or two, wake up for the party, make a Friend, and rack up another career level! I 0wnz 411 j00r 51m5!").
The only reason Mini-Me got married was to make Friends - not because he wanted any Friends but for the sole purposes of advancing his career. (And Big-Me, as the player, still found it horribly boring to spend hours queueing up "Invite $SIM", "Greet", "Joke" "Talk" "Dance" and occasionally "Flirt" commands just to get to the top career level).
> Realizing how pathetic this was, I took said bathroom break and shower, went back to the room, and unistalled the Sims.
The day Mini-Me reached the top of his career ladder, Big-Me realized, with a sigh of great relief, that unlike Mini-Me, he had a good enough job that he doesn't have to put up with that kind of crap in real life. So why should he have to put up with it in a game?
At this point, Mini-Me (and his entire city!) were promptly transformed into several thousand sectors of free diskspace, and eagerly await the installation of DOOM III.
>
>If that worked, maybe we can find someone with a much *longer* reach to take him down.
>
>We need to start reporting him as a terrorist to the FBI. We know how pushy they can be.
Yeah. I'm kinda amazed that it worked, but I suppose with the number of people doing it, someone would get lucky. Alas, unlike American cops, when the Chinese cops raid a place and steal its equipment, they give it back. Who'dathunk that?
Yo, Charlie Chan, that's not how you're supposed to play the game! When you raid a shop for its computers, you're supposed to keep the damn computers! Duh!
(Obviously they haven't been taking their lessons from the FBI seriously, or the Chinese Communist dictatorship, because it has no concept of private property, has yet to invent asset forfeiture laws yet :-)
A Modest Proposal, then:
For every blocked spam delivery attempt, bounce every Ralsky spam with:
"550 - Allahu Akbar! - Islamohash detected - responding with segment #12345 - FJAKC RLXCJ VOHSA COPQM JJWOZ"
Every day, plus or minus a few hours, randomly regenerate the pro-Arab slogan. (The idea is that it's supposed to look like an SMTP server is responding to the hashbusters *in* Ralsky's spam, and responding with a segment of a coded message.)
Then, for every 550 message, increment the message segment number, and randomly generate blocks of random characters.
Sit back and wait. If Fedz show up on your doorstep, supply with donuts (the good kind, damnit!) and show 'em the script that generates 'em randomly. And give 'em a laptop for their troubles.
If Fedz show up on Ralsky's doorstep, write letter to Congressman requesting that the US government authorize the use of any and all means of torture on terror suspects. Laugh maniacally as spam problem goes away. And I mean far away.
As for what to do with Ralsky once he's been disappeared for supporting terrorism, I have another Modest Proposal:
1) Lock Ralsky in cell with a laptop and a 2400-baud modem. ...
2) He can eat his meals and quaff his drinks if and only if he replies with "Yes, I'd like to eat today!" to an email written by someone (a different person each day) working in the prison kitchen.
3) Post his email address to USENET in alt.make.money.fast.
4) If he objects that he can't find the chow-time email with the Subject: line of "Hi!" or "Let's do lunch!" message amidst the spam... well, it's just e-mail, can't he Just Hit Delete?
5) Install a webcam in the cell and sell subscriptions to live streaming webcasts of Ralsky writhing in agony as convulsions from hunger and thirst wrack his body.
6)
(and I hope "..." lasts for weeks, whether there are any subscribers to the webcasts or not)
7) Profit!
And just to show you I'm not a total softie when it comes to dealing with spammers, then go all Vlad-the-Impaler on him in front of Verio headquarters, as an example to the others.
> I think the only "inevitable" use of technologoy is that it will be used to hurt someone.
Back atcha:
Tell me how is so almost-certain that biological manufacture of organisims will hurt someone.
I think the only "inevitable" use of technologoy is that it will be used to improve lives.
With a twist:
Overall, has technology improved or degraded the standard of living for Joe Sixpack...
Has technology been used for evil, as well as good? Sure. But has the good outweighed the bad? I've got my opinion, but hey, it's your call.
Geek: "Hydrogen atoms are just protons, which are made out of three quarks stuck together, and about which an electron happens to be found. If I put enough hydrogen in the same place, I get a star, which I can use to synthesize helium, carbon, and all the other elements. And by combining these elements in the right way, I can make amino acids. And by combining those amino acids just so, I can make life from scratch! Yah00! I'm a God!"
God: "Really? So, like, next time, you'll start with your own quark-gluon plasma instead of Mine?"
>
>You're some shlub posting on
Obviously smart enough to know when I'm being grossly overpaid :-)
Time for a Far Side reference:
Frame 1: Guy in a suit and tie, mainlining six cups of coffee a day and chain-smoking.
Frame 2: Gorilla kickin' back, peelin' a banana.
Caption: "Who's the dumb ape?"
>
>Maybe because I used to do cashier work, or maybe because the store was so deserted at the time I went. I'm sure I'll get used to it in time. I guess I've experienced my very first taste of "Future Shock." (Which in itself was unsettling for someone who would normally identify themselves as belonging to the Paranoia Pro-Tech secret society.)
I don't see what the problem is. I mean, as long as your secret mutant power is Machine Empathy, you've got it made, Citizen!
I dunno about the beer, but I think the 85 cartons of Marlboros would be of more interest to the IRS than the insurance company :)