I agree the moon is the perfect staging area and launch platform to the rest of the solar system.
With regards to those who want the moon kept "pristine" like Antartica, why don't we do this:
1) Develop half the moon in an industrial, commercial, and scientific manner (not in order).
2) Leave the other half untouched.
The moon rotates on its axis once every 28 days, it also happens to make one orbit around the earth every 28 days. Thus, we only ever see one side of the Moon from earth (light side / dark side does not refer to solar illumination)
So, the side we see, we keep pristine. The side we don't, we develop.
Added bonus, the dark side on the moon (the one we never see) is in the earth's RF shadow. All the better for radio astronomers, scientists, etc...
This is one monopoly bitching about another monopoly.
This would be like Microsoft bitching about Dell (if Dell had a monopoly on distribution) because Dell says, "People want Win98SE, so that is what we give them." and Microsoft wimpering, "But we have a monopoly too, and we want people to lock-in to XP and upgrades."
The real fact is people want the brain-dead DJ's to shut up, limit the commercials to a couple per hour, and play tunes they want to hear.
What if Kathy Lee Gifford got a monopoly on clothing and the only option for women was to buy her clothes? Now there's some shit hitting the fan...
If any of you have not taken the opportunity (doubtful, but I'll toss it out there in case any one isn't aware of him), Ben Bova has an excellent Sci-Fi series with nanotech as one of the aspects of the near future.
He does a really good job of showing potential applications and FUD spread by political movements.
Check out the first two books:
Moonrise
Moonwar
The rest of the series is also very good. Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Asteroid Belt, etc.
Do a search for Ben Bova on bn.com, they have the complete list.
Can anyone else say "What information do you think they're trying to collect?"
And finally, what do you think Ms. Rosen would do with a list of IPs *known* to traffic in mp3's?
Hell, if you download this one, you must have others and we all know Vivendi didn't sell them to you. So you must be a pirate. Go burn in hell. You english k-nigut.
Okay, this one was only worth 1/500th of a dollar.
How do we know if they are abusing the power of Echelon? Easy.
One of the scary facts of Intelligence is having to intentionally not act on it.
For example, we broke the German codes during WWII. We knew way too much. But yet to act on that info (saving Allied lives in the process) would tip our hand, the Germans would change encryption, and we would lose our advantage.
So what advantage did we have? The Big Picture. Which allowed us to "randomly" take advantage of weak points, etc. Allowing us to win the overall objective: National Security (and win the war).
So how does this relate here? If the NSA et al actually used this massive field of info to help small, pathetic things (saving an individual life, helping an individual company, saying "tsk, tsk" about naughty e-mail suggestions to your secretary), that would not have survived any other way, then the NSA would be giving up their hand.
By not caring about day to day affairs of people and the world, they are free to inform heads of government about grave threats to national security and then play the chess game which follows.
If the NSA began abusing this power, eg, a lot of NSA employees making it big on the stock market, or the guvmint coming to your door asking about e-mail sent to your tailor in the middle east, etc. There would be huge public outrage.
The truth of the matter is, the intel weenies aren't hitting it big on the market. I have not been harassed for getting hand-tailored suits from the middle east (I was stationed there btw). And the average joe isn't getting harassed by NSA for copyright infringment, etc...
Slashdot Mirror
I agree the moon is the perfect staging area and launch platform to the rest of the solar system.
With regards to those who want the moon kept "pristine" like Antartica, why don't we do this:
1) Develop half the moon in an industrial, commercial, and scientific manner (not in order).
2) Leave the other half untouched.
The moon rotates on its axis once every 28 days, it also happens to make one orbit around the earth every 28 days. Thus, we only ever see one side of the Moon from earth (light side / dark side does not refer to solar illumination)
So, the side we see, we keep pristine. The side we don't, we develop.
Added bonus, the dark side on the moon (the one we never see) is in the earth's RF shadow. All the better for radio astronomers, scientists, etc...
This is one monopoly bitching about another monopoly.
This would be like Microsoft bitching about Dell (if Dell had a monopoly on distribution) because Dell says, "People want Win98SE, so that is what we give them." and Microsoft wimpering, "But we have a monopoly too, and we want people to lock-in to XP and upgrades."
The real fact is people want the brain-dead DJ's to shut up, limit the commercials to a couple per hour, and play tunes they want to hear.
What if Kathy Lee Gifford got a monopoly on clothing and the only option for women was to buy her clothes? Now there's some shit hitting the fan...
If any of you have not taken the opportunity (doubtful, but I'll toss it out there in case any one isn't aware of him), Ben Bova has an excellent Sci-Fi series with nanotech as one of the aspects of the near future.
He does a really good job of showing potential applications and FUD spread by political movements.
Check out the first two books:
MoonriseMoonwar
The rest of the series is also very good. Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Asteroid Belt, etc.
Do a search for Ben Bova on bn.com, they have the complete list.How about don't buy it, period.
Can anyone say connect log?
Can anyone else say "What information do you think they're trying to collect?"
And finally, what do you think Ms. Rosen would do with a list of IPs *known* to traffic in mp3's?
Hell, if you download this one, you must have others and we all know Vivendi didn't sell them to you. So you must be a pirate. Go burn in hell. You english k-nigut.
Okay, this one was only worth 1/500th of a dollar.
How do we know if they are abusing the power of Echelon? Easy.
One of the scary facts of Intelligence is having to intentionally not act on it.
For example, we broke the German codes during WWII. We knew way too much. But yet to act on that info (saving Allied lives in the process) would tip our hand, the Germans would change encryption, and we would lose our advantage.
So what advantage did we have? The Big Picture. Which allowed us to "randomly" take advantage of weak points, etc. Allowing us to win the overall objective: National Security (and win the war).
So how does this relate here? If the NSA et al actually used this massive field of info to help small, pathetic things (saving an individual life, helping an individual company, saying "tsk, tsk" about naughty e-mail suggestions to your secretary), that would not have survived any other way, then the NSA would be giving up their hand.
By not caring about day to day affairs of people and the world, they are free to inform heads of government about grave threats to national security and then play the chess game which follows.
If the NSA began abusing this power, eg, a lot of NSA employees making it big on the stock market, or the guvmint coming to your door asking about e-mail sent to your tailor in the middle east, etc. There would be huge public outrage.
The truth of the matter is, the intel weenies aren't hitting it big on the market. I have not been harassed for getting hand-tailored suits from the middle east (I was stationed there btw). And the average joe isn't getting harassed by NSA for copyright infringment, etc...
Just my 1/50th of a dollar.
The USA Patriot Act is another matter entirely.