If Hubble is going to come home on its own around 2007, that does not mean we have 3 years to make a decision. With every orbit Hubble gets a tiny bit closer to Earth. It isn't going to take a left turn in 3 years and suddenly be on collision course. We need to do something in the next year or so before the orbit decays to the point that a boost won't move it high enough. That and this is mostly about repair and replacement parts as previously stated - which brings me to:
There was a Hubble plan. NASA has had a plan all along to successfully and responsibly keep Hubble going. Obviously, some unexpected and tragic events have changed that plan.
However, U.S. folks posting with a gripe about NASA's bad planning with Hubble and the International Space Station need to re-direct their energies and complain to their congresspeople - they are the ones holding the purse strings, and they are the ones who cut the Hab module for the ISS. Each of us share the burden of what "popular opinion" is, and that is the only thing we can do about keeping plans on track.
The author and creator of Mobile Suit Gundam, Yoshiyuki Tomino, published his first book in 1979. He later credits Heinlein's Starship Troopers as his inspiration. Ergo (laugh when you read that, pls), Heinlein started the so-called "Japanese Giant Robot Craze". I believe Mr. Tomino's remarks are in Grumbles From The Grave. Incidentally, Starship Troopers, was first published in 1959.
To be a bit more on topic - don't forget that if Disney gets in over it's head with a movie (i.e. getting too PG rating oriented) they will just release it through Touchstone Pictures and leave it be. It has happened before - I think it even happened to The Nightmare Before Christmas.
I don't think anyone should do this. I am only explaining what I once did in undergrad:
1) subscribe to a 976 style wake-up phone call service
2) buy an adapter that turns your phone ringing into an AC pulse - they are for the hard of hearing, so that a lamp can flicker on and off to indicate the phone is ringing. Got mine for $11 back in '92. It is a wall adapter that has a phone jack an AC plug, and an AC outlet on it.
3) hook a powerstrip to it
4) set the powerstrip to OFF.
5) plug a stereo with your least favorite LP on the turntable and the needle down. turn it way up. Also works with a cassette player, so long as you FF to the middle of a song, and press PLAY.
6) plug a drill into it, pull the trigger, and lock the trigger.
7) put a paint-stir bit on the drill
8) put the drill down in the bed with you.
When the phone call comes, you had better wake up. It is very unplesant. I only did it once, and it worked perfectly. This music blared, the lights went on and off, and this thing, which got bigger and bigger as it gathered more sheets, was jumping around in the bed, and it is starting to restrict your motion.
My plan now is to pattent this device that gives you immediate access to your fight or flight subroutine.
It's the amount of O2 - if pressure drops, you can increase O2 to compensate to a certain point.
And the ISS ain't dead - we just need to give NASA the funds to complete the crew module in the original spec. It takes 2.5 people to run the station, and.5 people doing science every month is an afterthought. We need to get the station back to its original 7-10 person design in order to see the returns we deserve.
Personally, I have saved every single SPAM message I have ever received, and have a 10-year 30,000+ message deep resevoir of them. Like Groundskeeper Willie's "retirement grease" I am hoping a class action will one day finance my tropical off-shore data center/submarine factory/hermit crab farm.
But seriously - what next? Should I start faxing my archive to Washington? Set up forwarding addresses to.gov email systems and get them on board with their own legislation?
If we do nothing, it will be years before something else is done. I used to get junk faxes, and even after repeated requests to the junk-fax system's 1-800 to remove my number with their add/remove system, nothing happened. So after finding a pile of vacation offers on the floor one morning a week later, I added several numbers via their 1-800 - mainly the local Better Business Bureau's fax machines. A short time later they stopped.
1) Go play Enter The Matrix if you want more answers
2) Smith got into Bane like he got into everyone else. "What?!" you say? Everywhoelse? All the other people he jammed his hand into - he didn't just jam agents - he jammed other people/prisoners/nobodys hooked into the matrix. With hundreds and thousands of Smiths, he's not just overwriting agents. He's a virus. He's indescriminate. He's in your outlook addressbook, overwriting your friends.
3) Sentinels, Neo's destruction thereof, Reloaded: See 1. Seriously. Neo... left code/soul/whatever behind in the Matrix at the end of Reloaded... perhaps because of his Trinity stunt, there are other reasons in the game, I am told... that is how he wacked the sentinels.
No offense meant, but I believe your tuition puts the college or university under contractual obligation to provide a service - until of course you pooch that service by being a jerk and get your access revoked for violation/abuse of your end of a user agreement.
I seem to remember this being a big issue in law somewhere. It is a public institution receiving public funds, and therefore must abide by no internal rule that comes into conflict with federal law. (or something like that) - And crossing the line into the users machine, well, that certainly doesn't sound right. Don't you need a warrant for that?
I guess the question is, is this school public or private? If public, they could get paddled. Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA1986) may actually have some value here. - Because they sure as hell can't squeeze this under the Patriot Act.
(all opinions of this humble correspondent should be presumed wrong until proven otherwise.)
kulakovich
1) Take a simple technology like QuicktimeVR or the like
2) Instead of viewing it as a QTVR, display it all at once like a regular image
3) Instead of shooting a single image like the above, shoot it at 24fps.
4) Now move the POV within the same frame during the shot.
MSPDFs notwithstanding, this tech existed in the mid-90s. And before bullet time, there was multiple 16mm film camera work in a music video I saw back in 97, that I will need to put up or shut up at some point I'm sure.
When you stitch scenes together to make a seamless image, you are really creating a custom lens more than a camera, IMHO. kulakovich
These guys are *totally* stealing Ricardo Montalban's gig from Spy Kids 3D - and I wouldn't call Mr. Montalban "elderly" to his face, that's for sure!
http://www.imdb.com/EGallery?source=ss&group=03384 59&photo=Ss/0338459/pub_still_11.jpg&path=gallery& path_key=0338459
"I can do more than just walk." Too bad there isn't a tag to make text more suave.
]
The island in the Aral Sea, Vozrozhdeniya Island, (which incidentally means something like "rebirth" or "revival") was the test site for Russia's expansive bioweapons program.
Think it through - island inhabited by all manner of animal life, and stocked with certain animal life, and this animal life and environment repeatedly blasted year after year with a variety of biological weapons, and the results recorded. What survived, what didn't. Et cetera.
Now, this island is becoming/has become a peninsula so that things can freely wander on and off the island at will.
So from the history books - Many indigenous peoples were wiped out due to a lack of immunity to the influx of disease brought by travellers (among other things - but that is off topic).
What is going to happen to the rest of us when all this badness escapes Vozrozhdeniya Island ?
One dollar to the person who connects this event (island to peninsula) with monkey pox.
Kulakovich
Read Ken Alibek's _Biohazard_ for more information. He is one of the former heads of the Soviet bioweapons program who defected back in the late 80s/early 90s.
And what could the moon possibly do for an expansionist nation?
1) Return on Investment (ROI)
For an amount of capital, X. You have a base, a mass driver(s), and a powerplant(s) on the moon. Then, you control the Earth. There are many natural phenomena that distort our perceptions of near Earth space. A nice big Coronal Mass Ejection one day, and when the protons clear, there are 30 giant bolders in orbit awaiting a nudge to start their 60 second descent to the surface. Would the last act of Washington be to destroy the US in order to maintain our principles, by slamming the agressor nation before we're crushed from orbit? I don't think so.
Until we have the technology to make transport to and from the moon cheap, it's a useless pile of rock.
We? We who? I hope you mean We as a species and aren't excluding anyone else's scientists from having a good idea first.
I'm not some paranoid recluse, BTW, think of this as one big game of Alpha Centauri, Axis&Allies, or whatever. It's perfectly good sense.
1) We have more than one very technically feasible plan for a mass driver, including one that we (US Gov) built proof-of-concept large scale models of. I will have to look up the acronym. The technology is more on par with firearms rather than spaceflight. That, and the technology is six times more powerful on the moon. It would be arrogant to assume that no one else can come up with plans on their own, if not much better plans. And there is no shortage of rocks on the Moon to throw.
2) You only have Mutual Assured Destruction if the other party believes it. If you don't believe in it, then it won't stop you. Probability never stops the gambler, it just decreases their ante.
Anyone not familiar with this Heinlein tome, and who has an interest in the next century should read it.
Whoever has the moon, has the Earth. If anyone is thinking of entering an expansionist phase, it would behoove them to set up shop there. They are at the top of the gravity well, we're at the bottom.
I am sure there are/.ers just waiting to rebuke this claim, knock yourselves out. Democracy cannot fight gravity, nor stop a 1/2km bolder travelling at Mach 33 coming down through the atmosphere.
I like to maintain a positive outlook, but that is much easier with hindsight rather than foresight.
]3
ps - I didn't have anyone in mind when I mentioned entering an expansionist era - if you associated the remark with any particular geopolitical entity, that was your own doing!
I will answer sequentially, and attempt to be brief. I have saved diggitzz response for last.
Lester67 - Thank you for your remark and informative web page. I had no idea.
bmf033069 - Why do people keep coming up with the defense that doing nothing is better than trying? In the US we don't launch chemical attacks on our own citizens, or murder people for having contrary political opinions. We have flush toilets, clean water and electricity. We even have social programs to help one another. You pick the things from this paragraph that the Iraqi people deserve, and come up with a better plan than regime change.
Yes, we put Saddam there 20 years ago. If it makes it easier for you to accept what is happening, think of it of cleaning up after ourselves.
What makes me think it will be better? I know it will. Our social scientists are working on perfecting a democratic republic with a capitalist economy. =)
bmf033069, anonymous coward- "have you seen the news, apparently you missed the news et cetera."
Don't make me assign homework. The doctrine of appeasement failed in the 20th Century. Saddam had his chance. France has a trillion dollar oil deal at stake, and Germany and Russia have lucrative relations with Saddam as well. A regime change means all bets are off. Otherwise, we'd have full backing by the UN
Peyna - "democracy (does not equal) better quality of life" a properly implemented democracy does. - Tell me what sort of representation within their government the people in Chiapas have outside of a masked man with a pipe? (I know the situation has improved, but that is how it was not 5 years ago.)
A question of forcing ideals. This is interesting. Do you think the Kurds, Tajiks and Shia want to be chased around with guns and look forward to rocket attacks? Or do they want to be free?
It never ceases to amaze me how many people will jump up and slap a "Free Tibet" bumper sticker on their car, but the idea of a Free Iraq makes those same people hostile. The situation is no different, these people are suffering.
diggitzz - Very well said, for starters. Point for point:
What you are proposing is nothing short of genocide when applied to Iraq and the middle east!
We have each gone through our phases of forced implementation and rabid ideological infliction of mass casualties. As a response to this paragraph, I can only say that our social climes can evolve much more quickly than our biology, thankfully. The most adaptive social organism will win out here as well. Look forward to forward thinking homogeny.
I don't believe this is a war purely to "establish democracy" in Iraq.... And I suspect that there isn't a tooth fairy. To each his own. =)
"rogue states", classified as I suppose any who hate us because we won't leave them alone culturally(1- Ed.) or on any other level. This reasoning has a fatal failure in the assumption that we can't leave them alone, and thus is not logically sound.(2-Ed.)
I think you can do better than this. Of course these remarks are extreme, and a bit of a stretch. I do agree that the reasoning has a fatal failure though. =)
I pretty much understand and agree with most of the rest, at some broad points. I too feel frustrated. However I do don my aluminum foil cap from time to time. It helps.
]3
Why? - For all those who continue to ask.
on
Updates on War in Iraq
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Why are we doing this?
1) Because we cannot continue to monitor and control nuclear weapons proliferation.
We have about another 10 or 20 years of this "control" before the technology to enrich heavy elements for use in weapons will get too small to easily find, and too technically feasible to prevent through restricted access to plans and hardware.
We need a regime change in the gulf region, not for oil*, but to:
2) Introduce Democracy in the region. Democracies do not wage wars of aggression. If you want the planet to be safe any time soon, if you want our species to aspire to something greater than self-inflicted violence, we need to be rid of fascists, isolationists and xenophobes. That starts with Saddam.
* No blood for oil is lame 20th Century rhetoric. The only possible connotation of that catch-phrase now is "No (innocent Iraqi) blood for (French) oil." If you think this war is about oil, you need to wake up.
Who says "they" want Democracy, you ask? Everyone deserves a higher quality of life. The Iraqi people will have a much higher QOL when this is over with, because they will have a Democracy. Don't they deserve it? The anti-war protest folks need to realize that they are fighting AGAINST a better life for the Iraqi people.
Slashdot Mirror
A few quick notes on Hubble and NASA:
If Hubble is going to come home on its own around 2007, that does not mean we have 3 years to make a decision. With every orbit Hubble gets a tiny bit closer to Earth. It isn't going to take a left turn in 3 years and suddenly be on collision course. We need to do something in the next year or so before the orbit decays to the point that a boost won't move it high enough. That and this is mostly about repair and replacement parts as previously stated - which brings me to:
There was a Hubble plan. NASA has had a plan all along to successfully and responsibly keep Hubble going. Obviously, some unexpected and tragic events have changed that plan.
However, U.S. folks posting with a gripe about NASA's bad planning with Hubble and the International Space Station need to re-direct their energies and complain to their congresspeople - they are the ones holding the purse strings, and they are the ones who cut the Hab module for the ISS. Each of us share the burden of what "popular opinion" is, and that is the only thing we can do about keeping plans on track.
Kulakovich
The author and creator of Mobile Suit Gundam, Yoshiyuki Tomino, published his first book in 1979. He later credits Heinlein's Starship Troopers as his inspiration. Ergo (laugh when you read that, pls), Heinlein started the so-called "Japanese Giant Robot Craze". I believe Mr. Tomino's remarks are in Grumbles From The Grave. Incidentally, Starship Troopers, was first published in 1959.
To be a bit more on topic - don't forget that if Disney gets in over it's head with a movie (i.e. getting too PG rating oriented) they will just release it through Touchstone Pictures and leave it be. It has happened before - I think it even happened to The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Kulakovich
Yes, but mostly to investors.
I don't think anyone should do this. I am only explaining what I once did in undergrad:
1) subscribe to a 976 style wake-up phone call service
2) buy an adapter that turns your phone ringing into an AC pulse - they are for the hard of hearing, so that a lamp can flicker on and off to indicate the phone is ringing. Got mine for $11 back in '92. It is a wall adapter that has a phone jack an AC plug, and an AC outlet on it.
3) hook a powerstrip to it
4) set the powerstrip to OFF.
5) plug a stereo with your least favorite LP on the turntable and the needle down. turn it way up. Also works with a cassette player, so long as you FF to the middle of a song, and press PLAY.
6) plug a drill into it, pull the trigger, and lock the trigger.
7) put a paint-stir bit on the drill
8) put the drill down in the bed with you.
When the phone call comes, you had better wake up. It is very unplesant. I only did it once, and it worked perfectly. This music blared, the lights went on and off, and this thing, which got bigger and bigger as it gathered more sheets, was jumping around in the bed, and it is starting to restrict your motion.
My plan now is to pattent this device that gives you immediate access to your fight or flight subroutine.
kulakovich
It's the amount of O2 - if pressure drops, you can increase O2 to compensate to a certain point.
.5 people doing science every month is an afterthought. We need to get the station back to its original 7-10 person design in order to see the returns we deserve.
And the ISS ain't dead - we just need to give NASA the funds to complete the crew module in the original spec. It takes 2.5 people to run the station, and
Then the moon and L5.
kulakovich
If you are in the New England region of the US, how can you volunteer to host an array? kulakovich
These are our reps - what can we do?
.gov email systems and get them on board with their own legislation?
Personally, I have saved every single SPAM message I have ever received, and have a 10-year 30,000+ message deep resevoir of them. Like Groundskeeper Willie's "retirement grease" I am hoping a class action will one day finance my tropical off-shore data center/submarine factory/hermit crab farm.
But seriously - what next? Should I start faxing my archive to Washington? Set up forwarding addresses to
If we do nothing, it will be years before something else is done. I used to get junk faxes, and even after repeated requests to the junk-fax system's 1-800 to remove my number with their add/remove system, nothing happened. So after finding a pile of vacation offers on the floor one morning a week later, I added several numbers via their 1-800 - mainly the local Better Business Bureau's fax machines. A short time later they stopped.
THAT is the sort of thing we need to do here.
kulakovich
1) Go play Enter The Matrix if you want more answers
2) Smith got into Bane like he got into everyone else. "What?!" you say? Everywhoelse? All the other people he jammed his hand into - he didn't just jam agents - he jammed other people/prisoners/nobodys hooked into the matrix. With hundreds and thousands of Smiths, he's not just overwriting agents. He's a virus. He's indescriminate. He's in your outlook addressbook, overwriting your friends.
3) Sentinels, Neo's destruction thereof, Reloaded: See 1. Seriously. Neo... left code/soul/whatever behind in the Matrix at the end of Reloaded... perhaps because of his Trinity stunt, there are other reasons in the game, I am told... that is how he wacked the sentinels.
Cheers.
kulakovich
ps - haven't seen it yet. I'm sure it's fine.
This is all well and good, but we KNOW that this guy will one day cause us interminable problems vieing for control of Planet. He's wiley that Yang.
/.er still playing Sid Meiers AC?
Sorry. Couldn't resist. - Or am I the only
The fact that he's even decked out in blue makes it all the more savory.
kulakovich
No offense meant, but I believe your tuition puts the college or university under contractual obligation to provide a service - until of course you pooch that service by being a jerk and get your access revoked for violation/abuse of your end of a user agreement.
But you can't call it a privledge, I don't think.
kulakovich
I seem to remember this being a big issue in law somewhere. It is a public institution receiving public funds, and therefore must abide by no internal rule that comes into conflict with federal law. (or something like that) - And crossing the line into the users machine, well, that certainly doesn't sound right. Don't you need a warrant for that?
I guess the question is, is this school public or private? If public, they could get paddled. Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA1986) may actually have some value here. - Because they sure as hell can't squeeze this under the Patriot Act.
(all opinions of this humble correspondent should be presumed wrong until proven otherwise.) kulakovich
Is it just me, or would this make one hell of a gyroscope?
1) Take a simple technology like QuicktimeVR or the like
2) Instead of viewing it as a QTVR, display it all at once like a regular image
3) Instead of shooting a single image like the above, shoot it at 24fps.
4) Now move the POV within the same frame during the shot.
MSPDFs notwithstanding, this tech existed in the mid-90s. And before bullet time, there was multiple 16mm film camera work in a music video I saw back in 97, that I will need to put up or shut up at some point I'm sure.
When you stitch scenes together to make a seamless image, you are really creating a custom lens more than a camera, IMHO.
kulakovich
These guys are *totally* stealing Ricardo Montalban's gig from Spy Kids 3D - and I wouldn't call Mr. Montalban "elderly" to his face, that's for sure! http://www.imdb.com/EGallery?source=ss&group=03384 59&photo=Ss/0338459/pub_still_11.jpg&path=gallery& path_key=0338459
"I can do more than just walk." Too bad there isn't a tag to make text more suave.
]
The island in the Aral Sea, Vozrozhdeniya Island, (which incidentally means something like "rebirth" or "revival") was the test site for Russia's expansive bioweapons program.
Think it through - island inhabited by all manner of animal life, and stocked with certain animal life, and this animal life and environment repeatedly blasted year after year with a variety of biological weapons, and the results recorded. What survived, what didn't. Et cetera.
Now, this island is becoming/has become a peninsula so that things can freely wander on and off the island at will.
So from the history books - Many indigenous peoples were wiped out due to a lack of immunity to the influx of disease brought by travellers (among other things - but that is off topic).
What is going to happen to the rest of us when all this badness escapes Vozrozhdeniya Island ?
One dollar to the person who connects this event (island to peninsula) with monkey pox.
Kulakovich
Read Ken Alibek's _Biohazard_ for more information. He is one of the former heads of the Soviet bioweapons program who defected back in the late 80s/early 90s.
Best of Luck, Earth! - Kulakovich
For two /. peers: Imeperator, arvindn
And what could the moon possibly do for an expansionist nation?
1) Return on Investment (ROI)
For an amount of capital, X. You have a base, a mass driver(s), and a powerplant(s) on the moon. Then, you control the Earth. There are many natural phenomena that distort our perceptions of near Earth space. A nice big Coronal Mass Ejection one day, and when the protons clear, there are 30 giant bolders in orbit awaiting a nudge to start their 60 second descent to the surface. Would the last act of Washington be to destroy the US in order to maintain our principles, by slamming the agressor nation before we're crushed from orbit? I don't think so.
Until we have the technology to make transport to and from the moon cheap, it's a useless pile of rock.
We? We who? I hope you mean We as a species and aren't excluding anyone else's scientists from having a good idea first.
I'm not some paranoid recluse, BTW, think of this as one big game of Alpha Centauri, Axis&Allies, or whatever. It's perfectly good sense.
]3
Good points, however:
1) We have more than one very technically feasible plan for a mass driver, including one that we (US Gov) built proof-of-concept large scale models of. I will have to look up the acronym. The technology is more on par with firearms rather than spaceflight. That, and the technology is six times more powerful on the moon. It would be arrogant to assume that no one else can come up with plans on their own, if not much better plans. And there is no shortage of rocks on the Moon to throw.
2) You only have Mutual Assured Destruction if the other party believes it. If you don't believe in it, then it won't stop you. Probability never stops the gambler, it just decreases their ante.
So who has more to gain?
Anyone not familiar with this Heinlein tome, and who has an interest in the next century should read it.
/.ers just waiting to rebuke this claim, knock yourselves out. Democracy cannot fight gravity, nor stop a 1/2km bolder travelling at Mach 33 coming down through the atmosphere.
Whoever has the moon, has the Earth. If anyone is thinking of entering an expansionist phase, it would behoove them to set up shop there. They are at the top of the gravity well, we're at the bottom.
I am sure there are
I like to maintain a positive outlook, but that is much easier with hindsight rather than foresight.
]3
ps - I didn't have anyone in mind when I mentioned entering an expansionist era - if you associated the remark with any particular geopolitical entity, that was your own doing!
I will answer sequentially, and attempt to be brief. I have saved diggitzz response for last.
... And I suspect that there isn't a tooth fairy. To each his own. =)
Lester67 - Thank you for your remark and informative web page. I had no idea.
bmf033069 - Why do people keep coming up with the defense that doing nothing is better than trying? In the US we don't launch chemical attacks on our own citizens, or murder people for having contrary political opinions. We have flush toilets, clean water and electricity. We even have social programs to help one another. You pick the things from this paragraph that the Iraqi people deserve, and come up with a better plan than regime change.
Yes, we put Saddam there 20 years ago. If it makes it easier for you to accept what is happening, think of it of cleaning up after ourselves.
What makes me think it will be better? I know it will. Our social scientists are working on perfecting a democratic republic with a capitalist economy. =)
bmf033069, anonymous coward- "have you seen the news, apparently you missed the news et cetera."
Don't make me assign homework. The doctrine of appeasement failed in the 20th Century. Saddam had his chance. France has a trillion dollar oil deal at stake, and Germany and Russia have lucrative relations with Saddam as well. A regime change means all bets are off. Otherwise, we'd have full backing by the UN
Peyna - "democracy (does not equal) better quality of life" a properly implemented democracy does. - Tell me what sort of representation within their government the people in Chiapas have outside of a masked man with a pipe? (I know the situation has improved, but that is how it was not 5 years ago.)
A question of forcing ideals. This is interesting. Do you think the Kurds, Tajiks and Shia want to be chased around with guns and look forward to rocket attacks? Or do they want to be free?
It never ceases to amaze me how many people will jump up and slap a "Free Tibet" bumper sticker on their car, but the idea of a Free Iraq makes those same people hostile. The situation is no different, these people are suffering.
diggitzz - Very well said, for starters. Point for point:
What you are proposing is nothing short of genocide when applied to Iraq and the middle east!
We have each gone through our phases of forced implementation and rabid ideological infliction of mass casualties. As a response to this paragraph, I can only say that our social climes can evolve much more quickly than our biology, thankfully. The most adaptive social organism will win out here as well. Look forward to forward thinking homogeny.
I don't believe this is a war purely to "establish democracy" in Iraq.
"rogue states", classified as I suppose any who hate us because we won't leave them alone culturally(1- Ed.) or on any other level. This reasoning has a fatal failure in the assumption that we can't leave them alone, and thus is not logically sound.(2-Ed.)
I think you can do better than this. Of course these remarks are extreme, and a bit of a stretch. I do agree that the reasoning has a fatal failure though. =)
I pretty much understand and agree with most of the rest, at some broad points. I too feel frustrated. However I do don my aluminum foil cap from time to time. It helps.
]3
Why are we doing this?
1) Because we cannot continue to monitor and control nuclear weapons proliferation.
We have about another 10 or 20 years of this "control" before the technology to enrich heavy elements for use in weapons will get too small to easily find, and too technically feasible to prevent through restricted access to plans and hardware.
We need a regime change in the gulf region, not for oil*, but to:
2) Introduce Democracy in the region. Democracies do not wage wars of aggression. If you want the planet to be safe any time soon, if you want our species to aspire to something greater than self-inflicted violence, we need to be rid of fascists, isolationists and xenophobes. That starts with Saddam.
* No blood for oil is lame 20th Century rhetoric. The only possible connotation of that catch-phrase now is "No (innocent Iraqi) blood for (French) oil." If you think this war is about oil, you need to wake up.
Who says "they" want Democracy, you ask? Everyone deserves a higher quality of life. The Iraqi people will have a much higher QOL when this is over with, because they will have a Democracy. Don't they deserve it? The anti-war protest folks need to realize that they are fighting AGAINST a better life for the Iraqi people.
Hahahahah. Yeah. I think the Nobel Prize for fiction went to those cold fusion guys...
Personal Area Network. Worked off a pager sized whoditty. Kulakovich