Oh come now, you act as if there were actual issues of real import to the American populace and people around the world. Be a good sport now, my only real question about the republican nominee, dating all the way back to the primaries, is how big his penis actually is, and I really, really, really want to know!
You know I actually almost like your how you define facts. If nothing else you capture one of the most salient moments of 'facts', that they refer to something that has already happened(past tense). But you had to use the word verifiable, which kind of muddies things up a bit, for in reference to that which already happened such can only be verified if such is reproducible, an action in the present, which unfortunately only really works with 'data' acquired from controlled experimentation and that which has been recorded, that which renders somethings from the past, present. That which is verifiable is that which is subject to potential current verification, being verified now.
But lets get real now. Of all the things both the Donald and Hillary are accused of how much could reasonably be called data? I would contend that only those recorded statements, whether oral or written, qualify as 'data' and are only reproducible to the extent such were recorded, ie. transcribed(emails, letters, etc.), captured audio and or video.
Still facts, defined as you define them, are superior to mere data. The only notion more vacuous than the assertion that "facts settles arguments", is that some policy decision can be "data-driven". Back here in the real world virtually no arguments are settled by facts, 'facts' are endlessly disputed and usually lead nowhere. Data, the epitome of meaninglessness, albeit potentially meaningful, is far, far weaker in terms of argumentative effectiveness, than facts, defined thusly. So if one can't win arguments with facts, one certainly won't win them with mere data.
That the Donald farted, is objectively data. That someone recorded such with a microphone and recorder and was replayed converts that data into a fact. But that does not settle the argument as to whether or not the Donald is full of shit.
If you happen to agree with any of this and decide for yourself the matter is settled, neither facts nor data played any in role in your conclusion. Simple reason, basic logic and rhetorical skill was all that was sufficient.
The density of thought in that sentence is approaching that a of a black whole, from which no thought will ever escape.
The Donald *is* Wall Street.
Hillary just goes to Wall Street for money like nearly every one else.
Is the reality distortion field so great that this actually requires stating?
I swear sometimes you folks just amaze me with how dense you are.
What Melinda Gates points out in the TFA is amazingly simple yet profoundly insightful and yet the slashjocks can't wrap their big heads around it.
BASIC blew any and or all other "beginners languages", developed since then, out of the water. The reasons are fairly simple to understand, but you have to grasp how they were interconnected.
If you weren't using computers and programming between 1976 and 1984, you probably can't intuitively grasp how things actually were, and what is stated below was true for millions of children around the world, in dozens of different real languages. One of more negative aspects of the "good ole days" is that personal computer were not available for everyone, they were reserved for privileged children from families with incomes sufficient to be able to afford such and these costs were not insignificant, costing families upwards of a $1,000.00.
a) BASIC was everywhere, on every computer that one could get their hands on. And although there were significant difference between them there was enough in common that most basic programs ran with little or no modification in any and all BASIC interpreters.
b) BASIC language programming examples were widely disseminated in hundreds of magazines and many, many books. These magazines in particular played a pivotal role in the creation of local computer clubs, a social aspect completely lost in the modern programming world. The availability of material on the internet is in no way comparable.
c) Every computer came not only with BASIC, but also a BASIC programming book, which listed each and every usable function available in the language. Written by people who could spell the word pedagogic, these books were easy to read, fun, and genuinely educational.
d) The 7 year old could type in a BASIC program and do something fun, if not particularly useful, in 5 minutes with no help at all other than seeing a printed listing of a BASIC program.
e) That same BASIC was also useful for an incredibly large number of small businesses, so daddy or mommy, could use the same language to do productive things for their work world as their children were playing with at home.
f) BASIC was simple, but one could still do amazingly complex things with it. Anyone, with an IQ of 95 or more who can read and write, can learn 100 commands, memorize their syntax and glue them together. Less that 10% of the overall population will ever be able to do anything comparable with any of other languages developed since then.
g) BASIC made complex things simple and simple things complex, it was a wonderful trade-off. No other language has ever hit that particular trade off anywhere near as good. There was a lot of things you could not do in BASIC, but within the repertoire of doable things BASIC was incredibly simple to use, the feedback loop of trial and error was instantaneous, and once you learned it you never thought about the language itself because it vanished in the usage like any truly good tool does.
BASIC as a programming language is dead. It will never come back. But that does not mean that there is no absence. Our expectations have changed radically, what we demand from computers today was far beyond anything anyone could do with BASIC. Truly replacing BASIC is a herculean task, not something easy, and it is an open question whether there will ever be an equivalent again. The problem set solved by BASIC was many orders of magnitude smaller than what anyone could reasonably content themselves with nowadays. There were no videos(cameras capable of capturing pictures or videos), mp3s(computer generated audio was positively primitive compared to today), text and hi-res graphics were frequently completely separated, you could have one or the other, rarely both. The complexities of GUI programming rendered BASIC obsolete and still form the most fundamental hurdle to the development of something truly functionally equivalent. But if you still contend that Python or Javascript could in anyway inherit the mantle from BASIC you simply do not get it.
Despite all the hate I still appreciate what systemd is attempting to do. Now I am not perfectly happy with all the design decisions made in systemd, sometimes grokking new ways of doing things takes a while and I have yet to master all of it. But sometimes I feel like Poettering has been working away at my unpublished list of broken things regarding init.d. I use to be an LTSP server admin at a German university. 400 users via 30 ancient pc's(timeframe was 2004-2008, pc's were 1996-2000 era), running off of one dual-cpu AMD athlon server. Hunting down rogue processes that failed to exit properly was one of the ongoing thorns in my side as an admin. The init system, replete with the run level system, has beek broken in Linux land basically since forever. It was never a matter of which distro you used, they all had problems. There may have been better ways to solve some of these problems, but in contrast to all the fake screaming and cryin you read on slashdot, Poettering, along with several others, attempted to finally do something about it, and even worse damn near every linux distro switched to systemd when systemd was undoubtedly still in it's infancy(this thing, even though it's a baby, has already kicked every other competing init system to the curb, unfinished, with warts and all, it trounces what we had).
I fully suspect to feel the same way about systemd that I felt about pulseaudio: at first pulseaudio was a pain, it was not very reliable and rather pflagmatic at times, involving lots of arcane configuration incantations. However as time went it got better and better, now just about any damn thing I want out of a sound system in computer just works, works reliably and better than any system I have ever used under windows or mac osx. Any person who complains about pulseaudio nowadays, who isn't doing stuff that requires jack anyway(high end professional recording stuff), simply does not remember what a friggin nightmare sound configuration was even a handful of years ago. Every program that does audio had to support artsd, esd, jack, ossv3 and ossv4, alsa dmix etc. Hell has a special place reserved for those who came up with the alsa configuration system. Unless you had one of a half-dozen cards that supported hardware mixing it was not possible to play two sounds at the same time, then it eventually became possible via dmix, but configuring it and getting it to work was a friggin nightmare. Now I can have any number of audio programs running at the same time, can direct their inputs and outputs at will at any time, I can control the volume of each application separately, I can even normalize the sound or run a full-blown equalizer. If i walk out of range with my bluetooth headset on it simply switches over to speakers and returns once my headset syncs again. My 5.1 digital optic audio just works! no more hundreds of hours trying to find the right multichannel mapping for sound, wow, just wow, were almost civilized.
Poettering is all about linux plumbing. You know that unsexy works that nobody likes but we each depend on. However when you change the infrastructure you end up having to adjust some number of other things to work properly. One thing that has always eluded me, is the whole class of applications which run under linux which are not normal "user processes". Things like the display server, ltsp, web servers, databases etc. These things do not fit into the category of user applications, because they require system reconfiguration, and because they are not session bound(anything that is not working my data, available under my account when I log in, is not in my book my "user process"). This class of applications needs to run at once with more(elevated) privileges than a normal user, but at the same time less-ie. they require a managed environment which enables them to run securely at a privileged level, yet still limited in regards to where and how they access data(sandboxing does some of this, running such processes under dedicated users, like dhcpd etc., does some of this too, but neither fully captures the semantics of such application "personalities" for lack of a better word. Cgroups and systemd's PID #1 is an approach to begin martialing such.
I love it when people defend our current health care system. The abomination that is our current system is utterly indefensible. If we had set out to create such a fucked up system we could not have achieved it. The levels of stupidity, inefficiency, and insanity which are present in every single facet of our health care system boggle the fucking mind. There is no one left in America who does not know someone personally who is going/has gone bankrupt due to medical bills. So defending this system when so many people are suffering under it is the absolute height of willful ignorance. But then again willful ignorance is the hallmark of our age. There are no people left in America who are "ignorant" about such things. Which is why arguing with people about whether global warming/climate change is real or man-made is so futile. Americans have become so cynical that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about any so-called truth.
I guess what kills me the most is not that so many Americans are willfully ignorant about so damned much, for frankly the "truth" is about as relevant as my asshole, but that willful ignorance absolves one of any culpability for any basic level of personal honesty or integrity. Now of course willful ignorance is almost synonymous with "opinion", and everyones got one right? If I meet someone who face to face lies to me about shit they know is true they simply will never get to know me, their loss. I don't argue with them, not anymore, they don't respect themselves enough to be worth it. We may not agree with one another on suggested solutions(single-payer vs. x number of alternatives), but defending what we currently have ?really? I won't engage in that kind of intellectual dishonesty, and you can call it an opinion, but we know what it is. Maybe someday you'll join us, looking forward to getting to know you.
But having said all that, one of the greatest freedoms is the freedom to be full of shit. And I am mighty glad that we have that freedom, for if it were not for the right to be full of shit, there would be remarkably little humor in the world and we would be poorer for it. So instead of walking around with hatred towards my fellow Americans, most of the time, I succeed in realizing that there is just a very fashionable level of bullshit which has become normative, and I allow humor to overcome my anger and simply laugh at that for which it is-bullshit.
I keep reading all this about how open the PDF standard is. Get this through your thick skull: if there are no *other* implementations that do everything that the reference implementation does (for PDF this is Adobe Acrobat Reader) then the "openness" of the format is an illusion. None of the alternative PDF readers, of which there are many, handle *all* of the things supported by the format, much as none of alternative flash encoders/decoders actually support everything done in Adobe flash.
My question to you guys is this:
Is there any real reason left for not implementing things like this as web applications which run in browsers?
Has not our modern HTML5/javascript/css stuff progressed to the point that *everything* in Adobe Reader could actually be done in-browser?
Not only should one not be forced to use a specific program for submitting forms to the government, but also one should not be required to use a PC, regardless of OS. Millions of people around the world now use smartphones/tablets as their primary computing devices.
But again unless the supposed *openness* of the format actually translates into real existing independent implementations, we're stuck at square one.
IF the government is going to require us to make use of Adobe PDF reader, then Adobe PDF reader should *be* a website that works in any current browser.
Then the government agencies could host their own PDF reader server, subject to public accountability requirements, and the the browser client could perform all of its operations locally on the target platform(no cloud shit).
So you have this vague feeling I might be wrong somewhere.
Nope. Nothing vague. But I will admit having this little back and forth has made a couple of things clear to me:
1) I have a full fledged allergy to techno-determinism, and Slashdot being home for many many, many techno-determinists is causing my brain to sneaze, over and over again. Techno-determinism, which is a specific form of nonsense, truly challenges my brain, so much so that it may lead to involuntary brain farts.
2) The price one pays to master a statistical grasp of the world, necessarily involves a break down in categorical thinking.I always thought that statisticians had to firmly grasp logic in order to do their work, but I now understand that it's only possible by suspending categorical thought, so a certain amount of illogicity seems to be built in. That's ok. There is a world unto statistics, a world revealed primarily to the statisticians eyes, but those eyes remain blind to that which is unique, precious, or novel, which again makes sense, but really makes me sad. Most specializations of knowledge are characterized by this two-edged sword: the enabling of the sight, delimits the range of what is seen. BTW my Achilles heal is nonsense.
3) When I look for evidence of something I first look at language. This understanding of empirics, unfortunately puts me at odds with most of science, which understands empirics as experimentation. Experimentation enables reproduction(the objectivity of scientific experimentation lies in it's reproducibility ), but I don't need to reproduce that which has already been produced, language is pure evidence, and it's objectivity blows scientific objectivity out of the water. I have no problem imagining an infinite number of computer industries, as distinct things, unfortunately the need for such has occurred so rarely that no one ever bothered to give such a name, which might just indicate that there is no such thing. The only place one will encounter such are in silly nonsensical sentences uttered/written by modern logicians as a way of trivializing differences by comparing things which aren't comparable(the suspension of categorical thought, hence illogicity)[Poets do it to, but alas that difference is way beyond the scope of this writing]. Which is just downright disingenuous, and intellectually dishonest. It's the grown up version of kids fighting: "Your difference isn't a difference which makes a difference, but mine is, so there !" (tongue sticking out). Modern logicians, the illbegotten offspring of American analytical philosophy have performed a mind-fuck of 20th century thinkers, rendering them more functionally retarded than your average Athenian thinker 2,500 years ago. Progress my ass, that's regression. Just because one can, does not mean that one does. Just because one cannot, does not mean that one doesn't. Lot's of things that can happen, don't, ever. Lots of things that cannot happen, do, sometimes(what we call improbability, which really only means hard to prove! haha). You just can't name them, individually. The only 1-to-1 relationship between possibility and that which is, is that of nothingness.
A few final notes:
But you can't always kill more butterflies and try again. One butterfly made the difference. Which butterfly that was is irrelevant, but one cannot discern which butterfly was the one to make a difference. That's why you don't kill butterflies.
Meanwhile we have massive evidence that technological advancement happened before, during, and after Apollo which was unrelated to Apollo.
I never questioned that even once.
But you would have a kid either way. And if we look at 300 million people rather than one person, we're still going to see people with the same distributions of personality and other features. They'll still have the same problems. They'll still come up with the sorts of fixes.
I hear the rustling of leaves, where the salience of what was said just rushed past your ears, unheard. Not a difference which makes a difference, hence same difference, ie. indifference on your part. That's ok. It just makes me sad.
I like what you said, and I am actually with you in your sentiment, except for your first sentence. This. There is nothing deterministically inevitable about technological advancement. You(I, him, her, them, ie. it doesn't matter who) can't say (I am not trying to forbid the speech just pointing out that saying such is wrong):
While many of the technologies that are being attributed to the Apollo missions (electronics, materials, etc) they would have eventually been made.
6 months ago I would have been fine with "While many of the technologies that are being attributed to the Apollo missions (electronics, materials, etc) they probably would have eventually been made anyway", but now I can't even stomach that sentence. I guess the techno-determinism rampant on slashdot has finally driven me over the edge. "if we didn't do it, someone else would have", or "if we don't, then they will" as the ultimate cowardice in taking moral responsibility for the choices we make. I am fairly sure you don't mean any of that, but I fear I am developing an allergy to techno-determinism and I sneezed when I read your first sentence. Sorry for bothering you, you can safely ignore my little rant;)
"That's because we are watching a show that it is them that have paid for."PLEASE STOP KILLING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, PRETTY PLEASE
I finally figured out what you were trying to say, and I hate being pedantic but damn you left that sentence bloody on the side of the road, all twisted and contorted
You appear to be a native English speaker, I would never knowingly say such to someone for whom English was a foreign language. If I am wrong forgive me
So what? My point is that we would have a vast amount of job creation anyway. In fact, it might have been worse due to NASA misdirection of so much of US productivity during that time.
Undoubtedly. After all the population of US almost doubled during this period. Many new jobs would have been created. Small grammatical (Not! syntax) point: facts and "might have been"s don't mix well, given that facts occurred (factum est Not! data, which derives from datum, that which is given) and "might have been"s didn't. When parsing your sentence my bio-computer, stated simply "does not compute". I know it's just an expression, people say "in fact, it might have been X" all the time, but really such is rather illogical, there simply is nothing subjunctive about facts. Alas we will never know the answer to this.
This is why I quoted the problem section in question. The computer industry and fiberglass insulation don't need "a myriad of factors happening to fall into place at the right time in the right way". There are a variety of ways to get a computer industry and fiberglass insulation. There's plenty of room for error.
Could you name me a computer industry? I only know of one, it happens to span the world and several of the prominent corporations in the computer industry were founded in the wake of the Apollo Space program. I guess you might be referring to something like the japanese computer industry vs. the american computer industry, or do you mean that something like the Dell computer industry vs. the Hewlett-Packard computer industry? or microcomputer industry vs. mainframe computer industry? really not sure what you are referring to. Comparing the computer industry with fiberglass insulation is well kind of strange, they are both things, in a very broad sense, but such a comparison is worse than apples vs oranges, at least you can eat both of those. Is there anything that computer industries ((pl.) and "fiberglass insulation"';s (note: there is no plural form of insulation, nor fiberglass) have particularly in common which lends one to make such a comparison? My guess is that fiberglass refers to a specific thing with a specific composition, but I could be wrong, can you really make fiberglass out of totally different materials? I always thought of fiberglass insulation as a thing, in fact I think that thing has a name, "fiberglass insulation". I could be wrong, but if I'm not, would you care to elaborate on the different ways to a get a generic computer industry, or some alternative way to make insulation out of fiberglass, or make fiberglass differently? You may think I am being pedantic but I really have no idea what you mean when you say,"There are a variety of ways to get a computer industry and fiberglass insulation".
So again there is one concrete thing in the world named "fiberglass insulation", and there is another concrete thing in the world which we call "the computer industry", both of which were developed according to the same contingency I have described previously. If you could give me one example of multiple computer industries, or one example of fiberglass insulation, which somehow is and is not fiberglass insulation, I might cede your point. But I have a sneaky suspicion that you can't, based primarily on the fact that there is no plural usage of computer industries( which are not simply names for specific countries and their computer industry history, or specific names of corporations or names identifying different types of computers) or fiberglass insulations/fiberglasses insulation in the english language, nor any other indo-european languages. Try it yourself: come up with a sentence where you say "computer industries", or "fiberglass insulations/fiberglasses insulation", I leave it as an exercise for you. Perhaps you really do believe a million monkeys banging on keyboards would eventually create Shakespeare, if so the ontological status of existence is reduced to mere statistical proba
Not at all. The peak spending was a few years later (1966, if I recall), and it was around 2% of GDP. And that $150-200 billion is in current 2015 dollars rather than 1961 dollars (somewhere around $19-24 billion by CPI inflation which is near the GDP deflator-based inflation rate).
And you got this little factoid from where? My guess is that such a figure is a calculated by taking the sum of appropriations earmarked by congress for NASA during the 1960's. My problem with this kind of economics 101 is that it totally misses what happened. And what happened is this: millions of high paying skilled jobs were created, millions got free(government funded) higher education, thousands of companies were created. This mass mobilization led to an incredible pace of technological advancement. Now was all of this specifically dedicated to the Apollo program, of course not, the "need" to murder millions of Vietnamese(thanks cold war, thanks capitalism vs. communism) also propelled military technologies, just as the need to crack WWII german encryption, and the need for calculations related to the making the first atomic bomb propelled the development of the first computers. Most of the high tech companies which came into existence during this time developed technologies which ended up being used by NASA and the military, and only much later general commercial markets(ie. consumer oriented technologies). Boeing engineers when building their rockets, were not divided between two groups one for NASA and one for the defense department, advances in one led to advances in the other.
If you are a bit attentive you will probably notice that I am ascribing the same radical contingency to the Apollo program that I ascribe to technological advancement in general. Why? Because they are both human endeavors. And if you had ever spent anytime trying to inspire and mobilize people towards common goals you would understand why I insist on radical contingency. When you grasp how much failure is inherent in any mutual aspiration, you begin to appreciate, god forbid even discover wonder, when confronted with success. To pretend that such is inevitable is to take for granted that which is never simply given. And i haven't even begun to delve into how radical this contingency is, we are skimming along the surface, the ride is ever more fascinating the deeper you dig. This contingency, of which I now speak, is that of things in and of themselves,with which we struggled to yield the technological advances which actually occurred. Technological advancement is not merely a question of money or man power, but rather will the right material yield the right results, having been experimented with in the right way, with measuring tools that happen to measure the right characteristics which ultimately matter. A million monkeys will never produce Shakespeare by randomly hitting keyboards. How many times did the precursor to penicillin get washed away due to it being a mess and smelling before someone figured out that there was a whole world of antibiotics and the medical possibilities which that opened? The right person, with the right knowledge, in the right place at the right time. Now contemplate this applying to everything that exists. The world does indeed yield when we work together, rendering the impossible possible and the consequences of the world yielding has everything to do with the spirit in which we endeavor.
On what planet do you live? In the real world technological advances are not deterministically inevitable, they are by their nature contingent, dependent on a myriad of factors happening to fall into place at the right time in the right way
This is based on the fallacy of improbability. There is not one particular set of "myriad factors" that results in a computer industry or fiberglass insulation any more than there is one particular set of "myriad factors" that results in a car with a license plate in a parking space.
I did not state that the Apollo program invented the first computer. What I did say is:
Damn near everything in the technology that you and I are using to communicate was initially developed in the wake of Apollo space program.
And I reiterate: the trillion dollars that was paid for by American taxpayers, which created millions of high paying jobs, in turn led to the research, development, design and fabrication of countless technologies you take for granted playing while mentally masturbating on your keyboard.
Go back and do your research my little coward, follow the money: who the fuck paid for all that research, design and development? Uncle Sam. How did Uncle Sam pay for it? By launching a program that created millions of high-paying jobs, which required advanced degrees(the vast majority of all university funding during that time came from ? Uncle Sam), which generated a tax revenue sufficient to fund the entire endeavor. This money flooded every engineering department at every university, flooded every private engineering firm which could land contracts, that money made it possible to mobilize the brightest and the best to develop their skills in service of that "stupid" program.
wow I am impressed. Your position is probably one of dumbest ones I have ever seen posted on slashdot, and that's saying something.
What do you think I mean by "valuable". I'm not comparing it to the typical value of garden gnomes here. I'm comparing it to what you can do with $150-200 billion dollars in today's money. Sure, it's probably somewhat more valuable than half a year of the 2000s Iraqi occupation, but notice how you can't come up with any tangible benefits from the program. There's the vague "common good" thing. There's the "vast advances" in stuff which would have experienced those vast advances anyway.
I mean really? You are going to reduce the "value" of the Apollo space program to:
$150-200 billion dollars in today's money.
Here's a little clue for you: the moneys spent on the Apollo program over it's lifespan exceeded that of the the GDP of the US when John F. Kennedy announced the goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. That's right you heard it, the Apollo program ended up costing more money than was in circulation(american dollars) at the outset. These vast sums of money in turn were produced by the taxes generated by millions of 6 figure jobs created in academia, engineering, chemistry, physics etc, which lead to the "vast advances" you spoke of. And the creation of most of these jobs was facilitated primarily by a) the GI Bill, which allowed millions of returned vets from Korea and WWII to pursue higher education, and b) a presidential call to action in the context of an ideological cold war which commanded a patriotic response from millions of Americans. I guess the birth of the modern American middles class might be some
vague "common good" thing
.
There's the "vast advances" in stuff which would have experienced those vast advances anyway.
On what planet do you live? In the real world technological advances are not deterministically inevitable, they are by their nature contingent, dependent on a myriad of factors happening to fall into place at the right time in the right way. There is nothing in and of itself inevitable regarding technological advancement. Damn near everything in the technology that you and I are using to communicate was initially developed in the wake of Apollo space program. Hell Douglas Engelbart would probably not have created the first computer mouse if the Stanford Research Institute hadn't been awash in federal funding related to the Apollo space program. Counter arguing that someone, somewhere else would have done it eventually is simply sophomoric.
I just wonder in what little world you find yourself in where you think that your evaluation of the value of the Apollo space program is of any value whatsoever to any other person existing. I am only responding because of the arrogance coupled with ignorance that bleeds through the letters of your text posting. The Apollo space program was simply put the grandest enterprise that this country has ever embarked upon, and there is practically 0 probability that anything like it will ever happen again within my or your lifespan. Most other human endeavors made possible by uniting millions in common cause have resulted in genocide and mass annihilation, but instead, even while we were murdering the Vietnamese by the millions, we laid the foundations for a technological revolution which has changed how most of the 7 billion people alive today work, play, and live. Talk about not seeing the forest for the fucking trees.
For those of you on slashdot who would have the audacity to not be familiar with how things in America are:
1) 3/4 of Americans have probably never ridden in a Taxi. Unless you live in one of a handful of major metropolitan areas chances are you have never used a taxi service. Most American cities do not have Taxi stands, if they have one it is at the airport, this is in part because most American cities have virtually no pedestrians, other than those Other people. Taxis in most American cities are highly unreliable and one cannot simply hail a Taxi.
2) 3/4 of Americans do not use any form of public transportation. With very few exceptions American cities have the worst public transit accommodations in the civilized world. 200 of 330 million Americans do not live within 50 miles of passenger train service, and if you count frequent passenger train service access you can bump that number up to 250 million people. Less than 50 million people live in cities which have subways, trams or trolleys. Public transportation is the city bus, and those are only for those Other people.
3) The vast majority of Americans rarely walk anywhere except to and from their cars, except for the occasional walk in a park. Housing is situated such that there are no local businesses and one must compete with 6 and 8 lane wide intersections, and god forbid you ever try to make use of pedestrian crossing light/zone. Most residential areas built in last 30 years don't even have sidewalks, zero public transportation, and no bike routes.
4) Those Other people are not "real Americans"(TM). They are inner city urban dwellers, they are poor, don't have cars, or money for gas or insurance and must walk ungodly amounts in maintenance of their daily lives. The only europeans who have have ever walked as much as those Other people are people who have gone on pilgrimages.
"Real Americans"(TM) have cars, live in the suburbs and have a deep abiding disdain for any and everything public. Luckily the under 35 group is starting to challenge some of what has been described here, and perhaps before I die, they will actually change things.
America, land of the free, home of the brave, where sociopathy is more than just a way of life.
Fuck Facebook. Fuck Google. Fuck American mega corporations who think that American law and the lawlessness of the Internet give them the right to trample over every other culture on the planet earth. Get the fuck out of here, abide by the laws of the land and if you can't/won't, then you can't do buisness there. My Gawd, do you think you have an inalienable right to do commerce with anyone anywhere notwithstanding the culture, values and opinions of the constitutuents to whom you are trying to do buisness with?.
If and when America ever has a grasp of history, or value it in anyway, then we can talk to the German about learning from history.
It was not the case that a prohibition against vile anti-social violence-inciting rhetoric gave rise to the Nazis. There were many things that contributed to the rise of nazis, laws against hate speech were not among the contributing factors.
We act as if our 2nd Amendment was a lesson from the Truth of History (TM) as handed down by God(TM). And although there was a historical reality, to which the 2nd Amendment, was a response, that historical reality was the capriciousness of the King of England who forbird political organization of the colonists which in any way threated the Kingdom. This however has nothing to do with what happened in Germany in the 1920's/30's.
Freedom of speech, without accountability and responsibility, is like absolute freedom: indistinguishable from pure hell.
ahh I guess it must be fascim in your book to tell others not to go around spreading and incitng hatred of various groups based on mythical blood superiority. Well you know what, if thats the case call me a fascist. Get your head out of your ass. There is nothing fascist about telling a group of anti-social hate mongerers to STFU. On the contrary, tolerating such behavior of people is the surest path to actual fascism. If you have nothing to contribute to society other than ill-will, hatred and and a desire to to see your fellow country men killed off, then you simply cannot and should not be part of political discourse. Except in places like in America, which has no real political discourse, but rather politics as theater.
ROFL Germany "grow up" ?. No, no my friend it is the childish Americans, with their immature grasp of the signinficance of the 2nd Amendment that need to grow up. Germany is far more democratic now than America is, or ever has been. All though we revel in our Freedom of Speech(TM), the fact is America has far less Freedom of Speech than Germany has, not, however, by virtue of laws or the lack thereof but rather because Americans are disgustingly conform in their political speech and won't allow one another to speak in ways that violate certain norms. But then again, "I hate *(#$%*##)" is considered deep insightful political speech in America, here's looking at you Trump. There is no legitimate claim to a political point of view which is held to be illegal in Germany, however hate mongerers are not allowed to fill the airwaves and dominate the media with their incendiary bullshit, like FOX news etc.
"We aren't going to pretend this didn't happen." Except that is exactly what they did. You cannot even learn about the Nazis in Germany, as they ban all content the mentions them. America and the rest of the world gets Nazi and holocaust documentaries and novels, German citizens don't.
are you really so ignorant? There is noplace on eather where one is more inundated with documentaries and films about the abuses of the nazis, than modern day Germany. There is no country on the planet earth that has done more to own their role in the horrors of the 20th century than Germany, which is one of the reasons why the majority of Germans are now pacifists. Along with making certain forms of hate speech illegal they actully succeeded in socially excising the machismo, tough guy/brute social role of young men. Men don't speak of killing one another or beating one another up, bragging about physical abilities in reference to fighting/killing is seen as socially uncouth.
No your ignorance is just appalling: it is not that you cannot mention the nazis in Germany, but it is the case that you cannot boast, brag, gloat or glorify things the nazis did, because unlike America, which never owned it's own history worth a damn, Germany holds itself and has held itself accountable for what Germany did under the nazis.
I appreciate the sentiment but your underestimation of propaganda is bordering on delusional.
Successfull propaganda is imperceptible to anyone with a stake in power, for those not targeted are,
in the carrying out of such propaganda, already removed from power.
You could not work for the FBI during that time period if you questioned propaganda,
there were no agents who saw through this, if they hadn't drunk the cool aid they never
would have been hired.
Vietnam is the prime example of this. The NVA despite taking overwhelming losses on the battle field manage to win by destroying the will of the American homefront to prosecute the war.
LMAO Climb out of your bunker recently? If you're over 50 I forgive your retardation, otherwise ?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh come now, you act as if there were actual issues of real import to the American populace and people around the world. Be a good sport now, my only real question about the republican nominee, dating all the way back to the primaries, is how big his penis actually is, and I really, really, really want to know!
If something is never reported, it can never be fact checked.
captcha: industry
Damn, the level of insight present in this thread keeps rising, I can't give you mod points because I posted above but you are on the right track...
Facts are verifiable data.
You know I actually almost like your how you define facts. If nothing else you capture one of the most salient moments of 'facts', that they refer to something that has already happened(past tense). But you had to use the word verifiable, which kind of muddies things up a bit, for in reference to that which already happened such can only be verified if such is reproducible, an action in the present, which unfortunately only really works with 'data' acquired from controlled experimentation and that which has been recorded, that which renders somethings from the past, present. That which is verifiable is that which is subject to potential current verification, being verified now.
But lets get real now. Of all the things both the Donald and Hillary are accused of how much could reasonably be called data? I would contend that only those recorded statements, whether oral or written, qualify as 'data' and are only reproducible to the extent such were recorded, ie. transcribed(emails, letters, etc.), captured audio and or video.
Still facts, defined as you define them, are superior to mere data. The only notion more vacuous than the assertion that "facts settles arguments", is that some policy decision can be "data-driven". Back here in the real world virtually no arguments are settled by facts, 'facts' are endlessly disputed and usually lead nowhere. Data, the epitome of meaninglessness, albeit potentially meaningful, is far, far weaker in terms of argumentative effectiveness, than facts, defined thusly. So if one can't win arguments with facts, one certainly won't win them with mere data.
That the Donald farted, is objectively data. That someone recorded such with a microphone and recorder and was replayed converts that data into a fact. But that does not settle the argument as to whether or not the Donald is full of shit.
If you happen to agree with any of this and decide for yourself the matter is settled, neither facts nor data played any in role in your conclusion. Simple reason, basic logic and rhetorical skill was all that was sufficient.
The density of thought in that sentence is approaching that a of a black whole, from which no thought will ever escape.
The Donald *is* Wall Street.
Hillary just goes to Wall Street for money like nearly every one else.
Is the reality distortion field so great that this actually requires stating?
What Melinda Gates points out in the TFA is amazingly simple yet profoundly insightful and yet the slashjocks can't wrap their big heads around it.
BASIC blew any and or all other "beginners languages", developed since then, out of the water. The reasons are fairly simple to understand, but you have to grasp how they were interconnected.
If you weren't using computers and programming between 1976 and 1984, you probably can't intuitively grasp how things actually were, and what is stated below was true for millions of children around the world, in dozens of different real languages. One of more negative aspects of the "good ole days" is that personal computer were not available for everyone, they were reserved for privileged children from families with incomes sufficient to be able to afford such and these costs were not insignificant, costing families upwards of a $1,000.00.
BASIC as a programming language is dead. It will never come back. But that does not mean that there is no absence. Our expectations have changed radically, what we demand from computers today was far beyond anything anyone could do with BASIC. Truly replacing BASIC is a herculean task, not something easy, and it is an open question whether there will ever be an equivalent again. The problem set solved by BASIC was many orders of magnitude smaller than what anyone could reasonably content themselves with nowadays. There were no videos(cameras capable of capturing pictures or videos), mp3s(computer generated audio was positively primitive compared to today), text and hi-res graphics were frequently completely separated, you could have one or the other, rarely both. The complexities of GUI programming rendered BASIC obsolete and still form the most fundamental hurdle to the development of something truly functionally equivalent. But if you still contend that Python or Javascript could in anyway inherit the mantle from BASIC you simply do not get it.
Here is what really happened:http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/01/107-nobel-laureate-attack-on-greenpeace-traced-back-to-biotech-pr-operators/
Despite all the hate I still appreciate what systemd is attempting to do. Now I am not perfectly happy with all the design decisions made in systemd, sometimes grokking new ways of doing things takes a while and I have yet to master all of it. But sometimes I feel like Poettering has been working away at my unpublished list of broken things regarding init.d. I use to be an LTSP server admin at a German university. 400 users via 30 ancient pc's(timeframe was 2004-2008, pc's were 1996-2000 era), running off of one dual-cpu AMD athlon server. Hunting down rogue processes that failed to exit properly was one of the ongoing thorns in my side as an admin. The init system, replete with the run level system, has beek broken in Linux land basically since forever. It was never a matter of which distro you used, they all had problems. There may have been better ways to solve some of these problems, but in contrast to all the fake screaming and cryin you read on slashdot, Poettering, along with several others, attempted to finally do something about it, and even worse damn near every linux distro switched to systemd when systemd was undoubtedly still in it's infancy(this thing, even though it's a baby, has already kicked every other competing init system to the curb, unfinished, with warts and all, it trounces what we had).
I fully suspect to feel the same way about systemd that I felt about pulseaudio: at first pulseaudio was a pain, it was not very reliable and rather pflagmatic at times, involving lots of arcane configuration incantations. However as time went it got better and better, now just about any damn thing I want out of a sound system in computer just works, works reliably and better than any system I have ever used under windows or mac osx. Any person who complains about pulseaudio nowadays, who isn't doing stuff that requires jack anyway(high end professional recording stuff), simply does not remember what a friggin nightmare sound configuration was even a handful of years ago. Every program that does audio had to support artsd, esd, jack, ossv3 and ossv4, alsa dmix etc. Hell has a special place reserved for those who came up with the alsa configuration system. Unless you had one of a half-dozen cards that supported hardware mixing it was not possible to play two sounds at the same time, then it eventually became possible via dmix, but configuring it and getting it to work was a friggin nightmare. Now I can have any number of audio programs running at the same time, can direct their inputs and outputs at will at any time, I can control the volume of each application separately, I can even normalize the sound or run a full-blown equalizer. If i walk out of range with my bluetooth headset on it simply switches over to speakers and returns once my headset syncs again. My 5.1 digital optic audio just works! no more hundreds of hours trying to find the right multichannel mapping for sound, wow, just wow, were almost civilized.
Poettering is all about linux plumbing. You know that unsexy works that nobody likes but we each depend on. However when you change the infrastructure you end up having to adjust some number of other things to work properly. One thing that has always eluded me, is the whole class of applications which run under linux which are not normal "user processes". Things like the display server, ltsp, web servers, databases etc. These things do not fit into the category of user applications, because they require system reconfiguration, and because they are not session bound(anything that is not working my data, available under my account when I log in, is not in my book my "user process"). This class of applications needs to run at once with more(elevated) privileges than a normal user, but at the same time less-ie. they require a managed environment which enables them to run securely at a privileged level, yet still limited in regards to where and how they access data(sandboxing does some of this, running such processes under dedicated users, like dhcpd etc., does some of this too, but neither fully captures the semantics of such application "personalities" for lack of a better word. Cgroups and systemd's PID #1 is an approach to begin martialing such.
I love it when people defend our current health care system. The abomination that is our current system is utterly indefensible. If we had set out to create such a fucked up system we could not have achieved it. The levels of stupidity, inefficiency, and insanity which are present in every single facet of our health care system boggle the fucking mind. There is no one left in America who does not know someone personally who is going/has gone bankrupt due to medical bills. So defending this system when so many people are suffering under it is the absolute height of willful ignorance. But then again willful ignorance is the hallmark of our age. There are no people left in America who are "ignorant" about such things. Which is why arguing with people about whether global warming/climate change is real or man-made is so futile. Americans have become so cynical that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about any so-called truth.
I guess what kills me the most is not that so many Americans are willfully ignorant about so damned much, for frankly the "truth" is about as relevant as my asshole, but that willful ignorance absolves one of any culpability for any basic level of personal honesty or integrity. Now of course willful ignorance is almost synonymous with "opinion", and everyones got one right? If I meet someone who face to face lies to me about shit they know is true they simply will never get to know me, their loss. I don't argue with them, not anymore, they don't respect themselves enough to be worth it. We may not agree with one another on suggested solutions(single-payer vs. x number of alternatives), but defending what we currently have ?really? I won't engage in that kind of intellectual dishonesty, and you can call it an opinion, but we know what it is. Maybe someday you'll join us, looking forward to getting to know you.
But having said all that, one of the greatest freedoms is the freedom to be full of shit. And I am mighty glad that we have that freedom, for if it were not for the right to be full of shit, there would be remarkably little humor in the world and we would be poorer for it. So instead of walking around with hatred towards my fellow Americans, most of the time, I succeed in realizing that there is just a very fashionable level of bullshit which has become normative, and I allow humor to overcome my anger and simply laugh at that for which it is-bullshit.
I keep reading all this about how open the PDF standard is. Get this through your thick skull: if there are no *other* implementations that do everything that the reference implementation does (for PDF this is Adobe Acrobat Reader) then the "openness" of the format is an illusion. None of the alternative PDF readers, of which there are many, handle *all* of the things supported by the format, much as none of alternative flash encoders/decoders actually support everything done in Adobe flash. My question to you guys is this: Is there any real reason left for not implementing things like this as web applications which run in browsers? Has not our modern HTML5/javascript/css stuff progressed to the point that *everything* in Adobe Reader could actually be done in-browser? Not only should one not be forced to use a specific program for submitting forms to the government, but also one should not be required to use a PC, regardless of OS. Millions of people around the world now use smartphones/tablets as their primary computing devices. But again unless the supposed *openness* of the format actually translates into real existing independent implementations, we're stuck at square one. IF the government is going to require us to make use of Adobe PDF reader, then Adobe PDF reader should *be* a website that works in any current browser. Then the government agencies could host their own PDF reader server, subject to public accountability requirements, and the the browser client could perform all of its operations locally on the target platform(no cloud shit).
So you have this vague feeling I might be wrong somewhere.
Nope. Nothing vague. But I will admit having this little back and forth has made a couple of things clear to me:
1) I have a full fledged allergy to techno-determinism, and Slashdot being home for many many, many techno-determinists is causing my brain to sneaze, over and over again. Techno-determinism, which is a specific form of nonsense, truly challenges my brain, so much so that it may lead to involuntary brain farts.
2) The price one pays to master a statistical grasp of the world, necessarily involves a break down in categorical thinking.I always thought that statisticians had to firmly grasp logic in order to do their work, but I now understand that it's only possible by suspending categorical thought, so a certain amount of illogicity seems to be built in. That's ok. There is a world unto statistics, a world revealed primarily to the statisticians eyes, but those eyes remain blind to that which is unique, precious, or novel, which again makes sense, but really makes me sad. Most specializations of knowledge are characterized by this two-edged sword: the enabling of the sight, delimits the range of what is seen. BTW my Achilles heal is nonsense.
3) When I look for evidence of something I first look at language. This understanding of empirics, unfortunately puts me at odds with most of science, which understands empirics as experimentation. Experimentation enables reproduction(the objectivity of scientific experimentation lies in it's reproducibility ), but I don't need to reproduce that which has already been produced, language is pure evidence, and it's objectivity blows scientific objectivity out of the water. I have no problem imagining an infinite number of computer industries, as distinct things, unfortunately the need for such has occurred so rarely that no one ever bothered to give such a name, which might just indicate that there is no such thing. The only place one will encounter such are in silly nonsensical sentences uttered/written by modern logicians as a way of trivializing differences by comparing things which aren't comparable(the suspension of categorical thought, hence illogicity)[Poets do it to, but alas that difference is way beyond the scope of this writing]. Which is just downright disingenuous, and intellectually dishonest. It's the grown up version of kids fighting: "Your difference isn't a difference which makes a difference, but mine is, so there !" (tongue sticking out). Modern logicians, the illbegotten offspring of American analytical philosophy have performed a mind-fuck of 20th century thinkers, rendering them more functionally retarded than your average Athenian thinker 2,500 years ago. Progress my ass, that's regression. Just because one can, does not mean that one does. Just because one cannot, does not mean that one doesn't. Lot's of things that can happen, don't, ever. Lots of things that cannot happen, do, sometimes(what we call improbability, which really only means hard to prove! haha). You just can't name them, individually. The only 1-to-1 relationship between possibility and that which is, is that of nothingness.
A few final notes:
But you can't always kill more butterflies and try again. One butterfly made the difference. Which butterfly that was is irrelevant, but one cannot discern which butterfly was the one to make a difference. That's why you don't kill butterflies.
Meanwhile we have massive evidence that technological advancement happened before, during, and after Apollo which was unrelated to Apollo.
I never questioned that even once.
But you would have a kid either way. And if we look at 300 million people rather than one person, we're still going to see people with the same distributions of personality and other features. They'll still have the same problems. They'll still come up with the sorts of fixes.
I hear the rustling of leaves, where the salience of what was said just rushed past your ears, unheard. Not a difference which makes a difference, hence same difference, ie. indifference on your part. That's ok. It just makes me sad.
I like what you said, and I am actually with you in your sentiment, except for your first sentence. This. There is nothing deterministically inevitable about technological advancement. You(I, him, her, them, ie. it doesn't matter who) can't say (I am not trying to forbid the speech just pointing out that saying such is wrong):
While many of the technologies that are being attributed to the Apollo missions (electronics, materials, etc) they would have eventually been made.
6 months ago I would have been fine with "While many of the technologies that are being attributed to the Apollo missions (electronics, materials, etc) they probably would have eventually been made anyway", but now I can't even stomach that sentence. I guess the techno-determinism rampant on slashdot has finally driven me over the edge. "if we didn't do it, someone else would have", or "if we don't, then they will" as the ultimate cowardice in taking moral responsibility for the choices we make. I am fairly sure you don't mean any of that, but I fear I am developing an allergy to techno-determinism and I sneezed when I read your first sentence. Sorry for bothering you, you can safely ignore my little rant;)
I finally figured out what you were trying to say, and I hate being pedantic but damn you left that sentence bloody on the side of the road, all twisted and contorted
You appear to be a native English speaker, I would never knowingly say such to someone for whom English was a foreign language. If I am wrong forgive me
So what? My point is that we would have a vast amount of job creation anyway. In fact, it might have been worse due to NASA misdirection of so much of US productivity during that time.
Undoubtedly. After all the population of US almost doubled during this period. Many new jobs would have been created. Small grammatical (Not! syntax) point: facts and "might have been"s don't mix well, given that facts occurred (factum est Not! data, which derives from datum, that which is given) and "might have been"s didn't. When parsing your sentence my bio-computer, stated simply "does not compute". I know it's just an expression, people say "in fact, it might have been X" all the time, but really such is rather illogical, there simply is nothing subjunctive about facts. Alas we will never know the answer to this.
This is why I quoted the problem section in question. The computer industry and fiberglass insulation don't need "a myriad of factors happening to fall into place at the right time in the right way". There are a variety of ways to get a computer industry and fiberglass insulation. There's plenty of room for error.
Could you name me a computer industry? I only know of one, it happens to span the world and several of the prominent corporations in the computer industry were founded in the wake of the Apollo Space program. I guess you might be referring to something like the japanese computer industry vs. the american computer industry, or do you mean that something like the Dell computer industry vs. the Hewlett-Packard computer industry? or microcomputer industry vs. mainframe computer industry? really not sure what you are referring to. Comparing the computer industry with fiberglass insulation is well kind of strange, they are both things, in a very broad sense, but such a comparison is worse than apples vs oranges, at least you can eat both of those. Is there anything that computer industries ((pl.) and "fiberglass insulation"';s (note: there is no plural form of insulation, nor fiberglass) have particularly in common which lends one to make such a comparison? My guess is that fiberglass refers to a specific thing with a specific composition, but I could be wrong, can you really make fiberglass out of totally different materials? I always thought of fiberglass insulation as a thing, in fact I think that thing has a name, "fiberglass insulation". I could be wrong, but if I'm not, would you care to elaborate on the different ways to a get a generic computer industry, or some alternative way to make insulation out of fiberglass, or make fiberglass differently? You may think I am being pedantic but I really have no idea what you mean when you say,"There are a variety of ways to get a computer industry and fiberglass insulation".
So again there is one concrete thing in the world named "fiberglass insulation", and there is another concrete thing in the world which we call "the computer industry", both of which were developed according to the same contingency I have described previously. If you could give me one example of multiple computer industries, or one example of fiberglass insulation, which somehow is and is not fiberglass insulation, I might cede your point. But I have a sneaky suspicion that you can't, based primarily on the fact that there is no plural usage of computer industries( which are not simply names for specific countries and their computer industry history, or specific names of corporations or names identifying different types of computers) or fiberglass insulations/fiberglasses insulation in the english language, nor any other indo-european languages. Try it yourself: come up with a sentence where you say "computer industries", or "fiberglass insulations/fiberglasses insulation", I leave it as an exercise for you. Perhaps you really do believe a million monkeys banging on keyboards would eventually create Shakespeare, if so the ontological status of existence is reduced to mere statistical proba
Not at all. The peak spending was a few years later (1966, if I recall), and it was around 2% of GDP. And that $150-200 billion is in current 2015 dollars rather than 1961 dollars (somewhere around $19-24 billion by CPI inflation which is near the GDP deflator-based inflation rate).
And you got this little factoid from where? My guess is that such a figure is a calculated by taking the sum of appropriations earmarked by congress for NASA during the 1960's. My problem with this kind of economics 101 is that it totally misses what happened. And what happened is this: millions of high paying skilled jobs were created, millions got free(government funded) higher education, thousands of companies were created. This mass mobilization led to an incredible pace of technological advancement. Now was all of this specifically dedicated to the Apollo program, of course not, the "need" to murder millions of Vietnamese(thanks cold war, thanks capitalism vs. communism) also propelled military technologies, just as the need to crack WWII german encryption, and the need for calculations related to the making the first atomic bomb propelled the development of the first computers. Most of the high tech companies which came into existence during this time developed technologies which ended up being used by NASA and the military, and only much later general commercial markets(ie. consumer oriented technologies). Boeing engineers when building their rockets, were not divided between two groups one for NASA and one for the defense department, advances in one led to advances in the other.
If you are a bit attentive you will probably notice that I am ascribing the same radical contingency to the Apollo program that I ascribe to technological advancement in general. Why? Because they are both human endeavors. And if you had ever spent anytime trying to inspire and mobilize people towards common goals you would understand why I insist on radical contingency. When you grasp how much failure is inherent in any mutual aspiration, you begin to appreciate, god forbid even discover wonder, when confronted with success. To pretend that such is inevitable is to take for granted that which is never simply given. And i haven't even begun to delve into how radical this contingency is, we are skimming along the surface, the ride is ever more fascinating the deeper you dig. This contingency, of which I now speak, is that of things in and of themselves,with which we struggled to yield the technological advances which actually occurred. Technological advancement is not merely a question of money or man power, but rather will the right material yield the right results, having been experimented with in the right way, with measuring tools that happen to measure the right characteristics which ultimately matter. A million monkeys will never produce Shakespeare by randomly hitting keyboards. How many times did the precursor to penicillin get washed away due to it being a mess and smelling before someone figured out that there was a whole world of antibiotics and the medical possibilities which that opened? The right person, with the right knowledge, in the right place at the right time. Now contemplate this applying to everything that exists. The world does indeed yield when we work together, rendering the impossible possible and the consequences of the world yielding has everything to do with the spirit in which we endeavor.
On what planet do you live? In the real world technological advances are not deterministically inevitable, they are by their nature contingent, dependent on a myriad of factors happening to fall into place at the right time in the right way
This is based on the fallacy of improbability. There is not one particular set of "myriad factors" that results in a computer industry or fiberglass insulation any more than there is one particular set of "myriad factors" that results in a car with a license plate in a parking space.
Wrong. First off their is no "f
run and hide little coward, scurry on now.
You ever seen a computer from 1960?
take a look at one from 1970?
coincidence, hardly.
I did not state that the Apollo program invented the first computer. What I did say is :
Damn near everything in the technology that you and I are using to communicate was initially developed in the wake of Apollo space program.
And I reiterate: the trillion dollars that was paid for by American taxpayers, which created millions of high paying jobs, in turn led to the research, development, design and fabrication of countless technologies you take for granted playing while mentally masturbating on your keyboard.
Go back and do your research my little coward, follow the money: who the fuck paid for all that research, design and development? Uncle Sam. How did Uncle Sam pay for it? By launching a program that created millions of high-paying jobs, which required advanced degrees(the vast majority of all university funding during that time came from ? Uncle Sam), which generated a tax revenue sufficient to fund the entire endeavor. This money flooded every engineering department at every university, flooded every private engineering firm which could land contracts, that money made it possible to mobilize the brightest and the best to develop their skills in service of that "stupid" program.
wow I am impressed. Your position is probably one of dumbest ones I have ever seen posted on slashdot, and that's saying something.
What do you think I mean by "valuable". I'm not comparing it to the typical value of garden gnomes here. I'm comparing it to what you can do with $150-200 billion dollars in today's money. Sure, it's probably somewhat more valuable than half a year of the 2000s Iraqi occupation, but notice how you can't come up with any tangible benefits from the program. There's the vague "common good" thing. There's the "vast advances" in stuff which would have experienced those vast advances anyway.
I mean really? You are going to reduce the "value" of the Apollo space program to :
$150-200 billion dollars in today's money.
Here's a little clue for you: the moneys spent on the Apollo program over it's lifespan exceeded that of the the GDP of the US when John F. Kennedy announced the goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. That's right you heard it, the Apollo program ended up costing more money than was in circulation(american dollars) at the outset. These vast sums of money in turn were produced by the taxes generated by millions of 6 figure jobs created in academia, engineering, chemistry, physics etc, which lead to the "vast advances" you spoke of. And the creation of most of these jobs was facilitated primarily by a) the GI Bill, which allowed millions of returned vets from Korea and WWII to pursue higher education, and b) a presidential call to action in the context of an ideological cold war which commanded a patriotic response from millions of Americans. I guess the birth of the modern American middles class might be some
vague "common good" thing
.
There's the "vast advances" in stuff which would have experienced those vast advances anyway.
On what planet do you live? In the real world technological advances are not deterministically inevitable, they are by their nature contingent, dependent on a myriad of factors happening to fall into place at the right time in the right way. There is nothing in and of itself inevitable regarding technological advancement. Damn near everything in the technology that you and I are using to communicate was initially developed in the wake of Apollo space program. Hell Douglas Engelbart would probably not have created the first computer mouse if the Stanford Research Institute hadn't been awash in federal funding related to the Apollo space program. Counter arguing that someone, somewhere else would have done it eventually is simply sophomoric.
I just wonder in what little world you find yourself in where you think that your evaluation of the value of the Apollo space program is of any value whatsoever to any other person existing. I am only responding because of the arrogance coupled with ignorance that bleeds through the letters of your text posting. The Apollo space program was simply put the grandest enterprise that this country has ever embarked upon, and there is practically 0 probability that anything like it will ever happen again within my or your lifespan. Most other human endeavors made possible by uniting millions in common cause have resulted in genocide and mass annihilation, but instead, even while we were murdering the Vietnamese by the millions, we laid the foundations for a technological revolution which has changed how most of the 7 billion people alive today work, play, and live. Talk about not seeing the forest for the fucking trees.
For those of you on slashdot who would have the audacity to not be familiar with how things in America are:
1) 3/4 of Americans have probably never ridden in a Taxi. Unless you live in one of a handful of major metropolitan areas chances are you have never used a taxi service. Most American cities do not have Taxi stands, if they have one it is at the airport, this is in part because most American cities have virtually no pedestrians, other than those Other people. Taxis in most American cities are highly unreliable and one cannot simply hail a Taxi.
2) 3/4 of Americans do not use any form of public transportation. With very few exceptions American cities have the worst public transit accommodations in the civilized world. 200 of 330 million Americans do not live within 50 miles of passenger train service, and if you count frequent passenger train service access you can bump that number up to 250 million people. Less than 50 million people live in cities which have subways, trams or trolleys. Public transportation is the city bus, and those are only for those Other people.
3) The vast majority of Americans rarely walk anywhere except to and from their cars, except for the occasional walk in a park. Housing is situated such that there are no local businesses and one must compete with 6 and 8 lane wide intersections, and god forbid you ever try to make use of pedestrian crossing light/zone. Most residential areas built in last 30 years don't even have sidewalks, zero public transportation, and no bike routes.
4) Those Other people are not "real Americans"(TM). They are inner city urban dwellers, they are poor, don't have cars, or money for gas or insurance and must walk ungodly amounts in maintenance of their daily lives. The only europeans who have have ever walked as much as those Other people are people who have gone on pilgrimages.
"Real Americans"(TM) have cars, live in the suburbs and have a deep abiding disdain for any and everything public. Luckily the under 35 group is starting to challenge some of what has been described here, and perhaps before I die, they will actually change things.
America, land of the free, home of the brave, where sociopathy is more than just a way of life.
only small children like banned things: Grow. The. Fuck. Up.
Fuck Facebook. Fuck Google. Fuck American mega corporations who think that American law and the lawlessness of the Internet give them the right to trample over every other culture on the planet earth. Get the fuck out of here, abide by the laws of the land and if you can't/won't, then you can't do buisness there. My Gawd, do you think you have an inalienable right to do commerce with anyone anywhere notwithstanding the culture, values and opinions of the constitutuents to whom you are trying to do buisness with?.
If and when America ever has a grasp of history, or value it in anyway, then we can talk to the German about learning from history.
It was not the case that a prohibition against vile anti-social violence-inciting rhetoric gave rise to the Nazis. There were many things that contributed to the rise of nazis, laws against hate speech were not among the contributing factors.
We act as if our 2nd Amendment was a lesson from the Truth of History (TM) as handed down by God(TM). And although there was a historical reality, to which the 2nd Amendment, was a response, that historical reality was the capriciousness of the King of England who forbird political organization of the colonists which in any way threated the Kingdom. This however has nothing to do with what happened in Germany in the 1920's/30's.
Freedom of speech, without accountability and responsibility, is like absolute freedom: indistinguishable from pure hell.
ahh I guess it must be fascim in your book to tell others not to go around spreading and incitng hatred of various groups based on mythical blood superiority. Well you know what, if thats the case call me a fascist. Get your head out of your ass. There is nothing fascist about telling a group of anti-social hate mongerers to STFU. On the contrary, tolerating such behavior of people is the surest path to actual fascism. If you have nothing to contribute to society other than ill-will, hatred and and a desire to to see your fellow country men killed off, then you simply cannot and should not be part of political discourse. Except in places like in America, which has no real political discourse, but rather politics as theater.
ROFL Germany "grow up" ?. No, no my friend it is the childish Americans, with their immature grasp of the signinficance of the 2nd Amendment that need to grow up. Germany is far more democratic now than America is, or ever has been. All though we revel in our Freedom of Speech(TM), the fact is America has far less Freedom of Speech than Germany has, not, however, by virtue of laws or the lack thereof but rather because Americans are disgustingly conform in their political speech and won't allow one another to speak in ways that violate certain norms. But then again, "I hate *(#$%*##)" is considered deep insightful political speech in America, here's looking at you Trump. There is no legitimate claim to a political point of view which is held to be illegal in Germany, however hate mongerers are not allowed to fill the airwaves and dominate the media with their incendiary bullshit, like FOX news etc.
"We aren't going to pretend this didn't happen." Except that is exactly what they did. You cannot even learn about the Nazis in Germany, as they ban all content the mentions them. America and the rest of the world gets Nazi and holocaust documentaries and novels, German citizens don't.
are you really so ignorant? There is noplace on eather where one is more inundated with documentaries and films about the abuses of the nazis, than modern day Germany. There is no country on the planet earth that has done more to own their role in the horrors of the 20th century than Germany, which is one of the reasons why the majority of Germans are now pacifists. Along with making certain forms of hate speech illegal they actully succeeded in socially excising the machismo, tough guy/brute social role of young men. Men don't speak of killing one another or beating one another up, bragging about physical abilities in reference to fighting/killing is seen as socially uncouth.
No your ignorance is just appalling: it is not that you cannot mention the nazis in Germany, but it is the case that you cannot boast, brag, gloat or glorify things the nazis did, because unlike America, which never owned it's own history worth a damn, Germany holds itself and has held itself accountable for what Germany did under the nazis.
I appreciate the sentiment but your underestimation of propaganda is bordering on delusional. Successfull propaganda is imperceptible to anyone with a stake in power, for those not targeted are, in the carrying out of such propaganda, already removed from power.
You could not work for the FBI during that time period if you questioned propaganda, there were no agents who saw through this, if they hadn't drunk the cool aid they never would have been hired.
Vietnam is the prime example of this. The NVA despite taking overwhelming losses on the battle field manage to win by destroying the will of the American homefront to prosecute the war.
LMAO Climb out of your bunker recently? If you're over 50 I forgive your retardation, otherwise ?