We can own buildings on the moon...
on
The Future of NASA
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· Score: 4, Insightful
...and control of facilities on a piece of property like this is as good as owning the property. The US does not own Antarctica but our presence at McMurron and other bases gives us de facto control of the area. There is a key piece of lunar territory on the south pole that gives great visualization of the Earth, and a military observation facility there would be difficult to root out since the building would be United States Territory. In addition, holding a large base in Copernicus crater would give us de facto control of the crater and the space beneath it. An underground facility using the crater as an airlock/entryway would be owned by the United States. Officially the control would be by default, but it would take military force to actually remove the personnel, again granting de facto control to the occupying force.
1) Issue bonds with the return being first access to a space outpost at a later date or something like that. This would be like the Pan-Am sale of tickets to the moon, but these bonds have government backing as to avoid bankruptcy and gain interest when not used (2-3%?). If NASA gives up the initiative, the government bonds still have value. I'd buy quite a few and be happy to contribute to the program over the long term.
2) Lots of space technologies are dual-use for civilian and military, so why not get the DOD to help fund it? Insight into orbital mechanics and practical space vehicles would allow us a decent chance (better than 40%) to shoot down ICBMs and other long-range missles before they reached the US. Also, there is territory on the South Pole of the Moon that gives great visibility to most of the planet, so it is in their best interest to participate and lend a few billion to the plan.
(On the other hand we could always falsify reports that oil or Osama could be found on Mars/the Moon and get up there much sooner without having to worry about how it gets paid for...)
"SCO also has produced all non-privledged response documents requested by IBM. The only exception to such production is the files of certain officers and directors for whom SCO obtain the requested materials during the holidays with sufficient time to review the documents..."
Anyone else wonder if this might be double-talk for, say, possible sale of SCO stock by 'certain officers and directors' while it's riding high?
Does anyone else here think that these EX-cops should be brought up on charges of impersonating a police officer and potentially discrimination (80% of their incidents are against Hispanics and the "officer" interviewed had choice words)? And wouldn't that leave the RIAA open up to liability for potential violation of civil rights and false arrest if the "cops" actually put anyone in handcuffs as they are threatening to?
First, it's about fu*king time we went back to the moon and Mars. We need to get to the Asteroid Belt and secure access to the resources out there. New technologies will surely result, perhaps even fusion with the help of He-3, and the ultra-pure manufacturing possible in zero-g are only immediately obvious commercial benefits.
Seriously, the people we send to the moon and especially Mars need to work as a unit and either get along or be married couples. People who are cramped in a pressurized metal tube for days on end will start having problems, especially if the didn't like each other in the first place. Assuming it will take at least 7 days to get to the moon, do research, and get back, the strain is tremendous when it's all done in 1000 cubic feet or less. If Mars is involved, the travel time could be just over 6 months (ideally with a plasma drive system and only 2 weeks at Mars, 3 months there and back) to just over a year (advanced chemical drive system). The wrong combination of people could cause unprofessional attitudes among other things. Also, how big is the proposed Mars craft? And will it have artifical gravity?
There was also more respect for the weapons. People had responsibility for their own actions to a degree we do not see today in 1944. Yes, many more people respected guns because they knew what they could do, but here (US) the schools are largely run by people who think that eliminating guns eliminates violence. I used to live in a rural area over 10 minutes away from a police agency and our guns (and large dog) saved my family from trouble on several occasions. The whole "zero weapons tolerance in schools" trend is a runaway monster started by a political agenda: If I'm the toughest one on school violence, maybe I'll get re-elected to whatever office. Most of the firearms limitations for civilians I know of arose between 1963 (Kennedy assassination) and 1983? (Brady bill) with a few more in recent years.
Also, most people today do not spend nearly as much time with their kids as they did in 1944. Ever wonder why kids today know so much less about guns and so much more about worldly life in most cases? Their parents are often not there to protect them from the world, they just go find it out for themselves. Personally I would like to see a mandatory firearms education course taught alongside a thorough sex ed course starting in 6th grade and continuing until at least 8th. Kids could opt-out of the course by taking a minimal competency test in both subjects. There are enough non-parents out there that something needs to be done about guns and other issues because many just aren't learning about basic respect issues for themselves or guns from their parents like they used to.
There are a few things we should consider before casting judgement on this situation.
1) The timing of the 9-11 attacks was politically expedient regardless of whoever was in office. It is the automatic meal ticket for re-election and has been used for that purpose. I do not approve of the decimation of civil liberties to "protect ourselves from terrorism", but the PATRIOT act et. al is the price we pay for trying to replace security with freedom.
2) Saying something is true does not make it true. In nine months after "cessation of major hostilites" we have all of the records about the WMD programs of Iraq. Yes, they had biological and chemical programs, but why are we unable to find anything of note despite our access to their inventory logs? Does this question register with those who blindly support an administration that has not delivered on its promose to reveal the stockpiles of WMDs supposedly in place before this war?
3) In my opinion, the 9/11 attacks are partially the fault of intelligence failures on the part of the United States. Many of my college friends were Arabs who irregularly or rarely had their passports checked. There should have been investigations into Moussoui's computer seized prior to the attacks. Why were the CIA, NSA, FBI, and INS unable to at least partially derail an effort that involved international planning and stateside training?
Regardless of who is right and who is wrong, there are still many questions revolving around the Second Gulf War and the Trade Center attacks that should be answered.
I liked Firefly a lot, and was pretty pissed off at the mental midgets at FOX for replacing it with that vacuous teen cop show.
You apparently haven't been wathcing Fox for that long then. These are the same folks who canceled Married With Children (probably the best satire of the American family ever on TV) becuase it wasn't "family-friendly" but who think that 7th Heaven and similar shows reflect actual American families.
This reminds me of the nuclear debates of the late 1940s. Do we use one of the most efficient energy transmitters conceiveable to power our planet or empower our government? Though it sounds like science fiction, the US army toyed with the idea of using focus solar energy as a weapons system early in the cold war (I've seen the films where they built a prototype complex and incinerated large I-beams of steel as if they were Dreamsicles next to a lighter). The US Army proved that microwave solar technology could be used to relay electricity from extraordinary altitudes in the mid 1960s. In Japan the University of Kyoto is already toying with development of a space-based satellite using an area of 1km^2 to generate solar power then beam it back to earth. The potential for near-limitless energy is especially appealing, though fossil fules would sitll be used in most of our transportation systems for some time to come (no one I know has a mass-market purely-electrical car with over a 150 mile range or better speed than 60 MPH, please send in any info on e-cars that are better).
My concern is that any nation putting this sort of system into place risks misalignment of the beams and having a solar laser of incredible power strafing across the landscape. It would be extremely tempting for terrorists or rogue governments to either put these is orbit themselves, or more likely sabotage/take over those already in place. We would then be forced to either destroy the satellite or launch military strikes on the offending parties, mandating the development and refinement of rapid-deployment and anti-space missile technology. Granted, this is a dual use system whose benefits far outweigh the detractions, but the military application of such a solar energy system seems so obvious that it must be considered.
After the final lunar landings in 1972, NASA and the nation were at a crossroads. We landed on the moon but this was partially to make sure the Russians did not do so first. With the "Great Society" in the works and Vietnam still raging, the space program was put on the back burner in favor or funding for social programs and military expenditures. Russia never went to the moon and it looks to be at least until 2010 before China might try, thus there was no political incentive to sacrifice pork projects or "social" programs in favor of expanded space projects.
Though the Space Shuttle was supposed to reduce space travel costs dramatically and allow for low-cost LEO (Low Earth Orbit) launches, the costs proved so much greater than expected that NASA spends most of its budget maintaining the aging fleet and is hard-pressed to spare the cash for developing new launch vehicles. It was thought that space stations launched via space shuttle would be used as waystations to revisit the moon, but as the shuttles cost so much to move around, that plan became bunk fairly quickly.
We must return to the moon. Its natural vacuum and near-constant illuminated surface allow for massive energy and chemical manufacturing. Deadly plagues and other research requiring isolation could be done easily on our moon with minimal fear of contaminating the earth should their projects go awry. Telescopes on the far side of the moon would give us a new view of the universe uninterrupted by light (and for SETI et. al not so many electronic signals interfereing). If nothing else, the He-3 and solar resources could eventually help reduce our dependence on limited fossil fuels to run our economy. Some of the readers remember the OPEC crisis and no one wants those conditions to return. Finally, the moon serves as a waypoint to exploration of Mars and the Asteroid Belt, both of which contain abundant resources that could satiate our world's demands for resources far beyond the lifetimes of anyone reading this.
I'd like to hear from people who do not want to go back to the moon. Most of the soical programs they advocate funding in place of space exploration have their own difficulties, but maybe there are other reasons they have which get little/no attention.
In every case you mentioned there are either (1) direct threats to the security of the United States from dictators or terrorists, (2) Communist invasion and subteruge threatening the global trading lanes, or (3) ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. Do you think that national soverignty is an acceptable excuse for nonintervention when one ethnic group extinguishing another in the name of "ethnic purity" (Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, Guatemala et. al?) If you are indeed an American, these actions may have saved your life, much as the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are estimated to have saved about 14 lives for every one directly killed in the blasts (about 200,000 perished immediately, estimateed casualties for a ground invasion exceed 6 million Japanese and 0.5 million Americans with weapons including biological, chemical, and radiological). Our American government does not rule the planet, but it is charged to do whatever is necessary to protect and defend its citizenry from any and all threats to this nation. With the exception of Kuwait, and some domestic bombings, have you seen any invading army even contemplating an invasion of the US or its allies since 1955? How many foreign terrorists attack US targets on US soil? The reason is fairly simple: the threat of overwhelming force by one party is often enough to prevent its use by others. Our government has done questionable things in other nations to protect its citizenry, but I would rather they do questionable things elsewhere then deal with attacks on American or allied soil because we did not want to deal with threats when they were minor and easily managed.
In the drug industry there are now certain states that mandate employes of universities and drug companies get a wee percentage of the profits from any drug they find, even if it's on the employer's nickel. If I remember right this got started when the guy who found Prozac got virtually no compensation except for some additional job security and maybe a bonus. Two percent may not sound like much, but two percent of, say, $240 million will almost send three kids to a private four-year college. Heck, even two percent of $1.5 million is not something to be thrown in the trash.
...the difference is that what programmers earn from comrades is respect and prestige. The Greek word Timae (tee-may) works out best, it's a combo of reputation, prestige, respect, influence, and authority (if only over your section of code). Most businessmen in our regulated capitalist economy understand only the hard currency exchange for goods and services rendered, despite their participation in this non-monetary system as well. Just as programmers get timae for doing kick-ass job on their coding work, CEOs and upper echelon folks get timae for pulling off difficult or nigh-impossible tasks like, say, pulling SCO out of the fire. For example, what company isn't going to look at hiring McBride if he heads up SCO should it somehow win the lawsuit?
My point is that regardless of the work, someone is getting something they think is worthwhile out of it. For Communists it was ideological satisfaction (peacetime/reputation; the best factory on the list got little extras to incite higher production) or survival (war), in most Capitalist societies it is satisfaction (luxuries/goods; money buys nice things) or survival (from starvation), in the case of Freeware Programmers who seek neither cash nor survival it is for the rewards of reputation and satisfaction. Any way you slice the pie you get something of value for your work, just not necessarily cold, hard, American cash.
As a Georgia voter, I'd rather have seen both a standard punch-card machine and an electronic voting machine in enlarged booths. A punch-card system would certify both the candidate aht the voting machine as viable winners if the results fall in their favor, and losers if the results do not. In my district we had a screwy election for governor and senator, with Republicans slated to lose in both cases making mysterious and timely gains that were *just* enough to allow both to win their respective elections. Questions about the voting were rampant immiedately following the elections among voters in both parties. A paper trail should not only be available in situations like this but mandatory to prevent potential fraud by anyone.
In both cases the victories are credited to the President's arrival and grass-roots stumping for the candidates involved. If it is found that the election was tampered with in any way than an immediate interim election should be held for all offices involved with punch-cards and paper trails available for a hand-count if necessary. I tend to vote by person instead of party and am quite happy with my Republican Representative, but fraud by any party is unacceptable. Until such time that a computer program is available with a stable platform and a secure databank for votes, this technology should be suspended indefinitely from implementation. At the very least they need a punch-card system in the next election to validate the results for quite some time to gather data and ensure that the machines themselves work properly.
I congratulate the Chinese on their achievement, it is truly awesome for them to put a man in orbit. However I have to wonder about how the world, especially the US, will react in the long-term to an accelerating Chinese space program. Mayalsia has announced that it wants to send a cosmonaut up to the ISS, India has hinted that it wants a manned space program, Japan has a shuttle in the works, and the European Space Agency has yet to even plan for manned space travel after the Hermes shuttle failed to materialize.
Overall this may be the spark of a new space race. No one wants to see their neighbors achieve a presence in space that they cannot reach, thus we open the door for half-a-dozen groups to begin sending men into space for political and scientific purposes. China has already announced that they intend to build their own station in orbit to compete with the ISS, and old USSR/Russian technology/training is for sale to whoever can afford it (India, ESA, USA, etc.). If manned spacefaring technology is truly the passport to being a first-rate power of the 21st century, we will see almost every nation with ballistic missile technology attempting at least some sort of manned spaceflight capacity.
Thus a new space race may prove detrimental since most of the technology is dual-use. No doubt, it would be uber-cool to have observatories on the backside of the moon and a space station comparable to those seen only in sci-fi platforms thus far. Microwave solar power systems like those under development at the University of Kyoto could solve most of the world's power problems. Yet these also become quite potent orbital weapons capable of incinerating missile silos, labs, and cities is "accidentally misalinged". Space rockets were ballistic missiles, and the whole of composite materials, microcomputers, velcro, and hosts od other civilican and military discoveries trace their way back to the Space Race of the 1960s.
At worst we might be seeing the beginnings of a new arms race. Hopefully the initiative by China will evolve into an independent space station that goads India, Japan, the ESA, and USA to seriously pump funding back into their own programs and develop the spacefaring technology of 2001 by 2051. Maybe whoever said, "the 1960s were a decade transplanted from the 21st century because of the space race" will be proven right after all. If the US does not get off its duff soon, we may see a Chinese camera on the moon looking at two taikonauts wondering whether to take down the American flag still found at the Sea of Tranquility before we know it.
I decided not to give the pledge of allegiance for the better part of my high school career and caught hell for it early on. Kids are very pure in their actions and tend not to be as political, so if they think you're out of line they let you know. Middle and high school teaches conformity as much as knowledge, and even the teachers encourage the recitation of the pledge. Acting on principle or doing what is right, especially at that age, is neither easy or without reprecussions, and it is much easier to go with the crowd than voice your mind.
The way I got out of it was when one of my teachers saw me not pledging for years and brought the issue to a head. I told him that I truly love this nation and its ideals but that prostituting such for the notion of conformity both cheapens my humanity and belittles my respect of this country. Oddly enough most of the students agreed in principle and only a few of them continued giving me trouble after that.
Maybe Ballamer and Gates meant to say that greater emphasis will be placed on the security of Microsoft's profit margins instead of the security of their software?
The DMCA was created in the spirit that new forms of electronic media were not safe from potential copyright violations, and the act did what it set out to do. Yet it also did a great deal more as special interests and corporate schmoozers managed to get their paws on the bill and turn it into more of a "dominant market player protection act" than anything else. We all agree that the amount of innovation stifled using the DMCA as justification is staggering. Yet electronic media should also be protected from the loopholes the bill originally solved. Here are a few potential solutions:
1) Remove the current DMCA and amend it such that only specific uses of media are prohibited. Allow for the use of back-engineering tools with HARSH punishments for people who knowingly use them to break copyrighted material with intent to distribute. This leaves the burden of proof with a prosecutors instead of the "guilty-til-proven- innocent" tactics of the RIAA et. al.
2) Make a specific statement for "loser pays": anyone suing under using this legislation who loses the case pays for the legal costs of both parties. Settlements don't count, and this will outright favor the bigger players, but in the American climate of "legal attrition" as a business strategy I see no other effective means of trying to relieve this aspect of the DMCA problem.
3) Allow publications on computer security to be done freely and thoroughly if tied to legitimate academic or corporate entities. Hold computer manufacturers liable if one of their components has a security flaw that causes eggregious commercial/monetary damage but which could have been fixed by repair of one of these published flaws.
4) Ensure that American laws apply only to American citizens with the express wording that products purchased in other parts of the world which belong to the consumer are theirs to do with as they please. A clause allowing rightful action to take whatever steps necessary to use that product would be nice (mod chips et. al)
Pointing fingers makes us feel good, but unless we propose alternatives and compromises, are we really doing anything but venting? Does anyone else have potential solutions/thoughts on how to resolve this issue?
Where I went to college there were about 10-15 people running so much bandwidth that they began regulating times that all students could use the comps. Privacy violation sounds extreme and probably unconstitutional since UF is a government-owned institution that mandates certain people live on campus. I propose the following as alternate solutions:
1) check total size of all files transfered in a given period on a port-by-port basis. Anyone breaching a limit (say, 1GB/week as an example) pays for additional bandwidth at a specified rate (say, $5/extra GB/week). Anyone doing legitimate reserach could appeal to a committee/get special permission or designate a lab to run these programs from.
2) If research and campus business is being disturbed, restrict student internet access between 9am and 5pm in all dorms, allowing them to access only University websites. Most research I ever needed was done on-campus, and if people need to they can wait until businesss hours are closed to go off campus. This would be a temporary fix but it gives the professors and bureaucrats an out and prevents them from complaining more than they do now.
3) Notify incoming freshmen that the university reserves the right to observe what files are being uploaded/downloaded from their computers. Anyone caught trading music, porn, etc. will be asked to verify that they own a copy of the files being traded with an initially stern in-house warning then reference to the local police authorities as punishment. This is extreme, but most of the bandwidth hogs are trading illegal copies of movies/porn/music anyway.
4) Note the top 50 people using bandwidth and publish their picture in the school newspaper. Enterprising students can deal with the individuals in legal means as they feel appropriate.
Finger-pointing is easy, but does anyone else have potential solutions/thoughts on how to solve this problem?
If Japan is so upset about people tossing computers away instead of recycling them, why not charge customers more for hauling away the computer as trash instead of mandating them to send them back to manufacturers? These companies ought to be paying the consumers for their (recyclable) merchandise anyway since parts can be stripped from a few obselete comps and used to rebuild a less obselete one. Personally I think it would be better all around: computers would be recycled instead of tossed, consumers could get paid for recycling the parts, and companies could turn over a profit by reselling the parts as rebuilt comps. Anyone have any other ideas/thoughts on this?
Microsoft's overpriced software is a true government waste of money, just as their lobbying efforts are a waste of the time of elected officials. I'd like to see a federal anti-bribery law such that anyone in appointed or elected public found to accept monetary donations would be eligible for a fine in the amount of double the amount in question and/or a 1-year jail sentence. This makes it the smallest felony possible by the jail sentence. That would eliminate most government waste overnight, but it will probably never happen.
BTW, Personally I found Democracy in America laden with author bias.
It was written by a Frenchman who toured Cincinnati and other Ohio Valley towns in the 1820s then decided to write a book about how our society was going to split into three countries based on Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. I'll grant that he was accurate about the tyranny of the majority threatening property rights (go to google and look up Wal-mart and eminent domain in Alabama, Colorado, or Ohio). Recall that France expressed concerns about a unified United States threatening European manufacturers once it became a true industrial power. While he had a unique insight into frontier democracy, he also was apparently using most of his book to try and justify the point already mentioned. The role of the French in flaming the secessionist fires of the American Civil War is worth examining if anyone is interested.
Remember, In Soviet Russia, The Computer Programs YOU!
Since about 1929, our government (US) has engaged in almost non-stop deficit spending. It was most evident in the current admin as well as the Reagan and Roosevelt (WWII) regimes. Yet in the past we can see that war, space exploration, and staving off of Communism were the primary causes. These were much more justifiable because of the tangible returns on our investment: GPS systems, microcomputers, solid-state electronics, and thousands of other useful technologies we now use everyday. In the current administration we can not point to anything so tangible, but to claim that Bush was the first president to fail fiscally is not true.
I do not supprt most of the things that Mr. Bush does nor do I agree with any of his policies on domestic economics. The tax cuts do largely target wealthy families and did little to close loopholes on international money-shuffling that allow the wealthy of our nation to by-pass payment of most of our taxes. Nor did it do anything to prevent the corporations of the US from getting million or billion-dollar refunds from the IRS via corporate loopholes. It is easy for us to idealize the Clinton years, espeically along party lines, but much of the same problems were going on. The only major difference was that our quiescence was purchased at the cost of prosperity and overvalued telecom and tech stocks.
Real change is difficult, especially in a nation of this size. This is compounded by the fact that the population of our nation now knows that politicians are so desperate to keep office that they will give their voters money from the public treasury (tax cuts, socialized medicine, etc.) in order to retain office. Though this began in the Depression it continues unabated and magnified to this day. Remember that only about 102 million Americans voted in the last election - between 35-40% of the populace as a whole. It is much easier to pay for the votes of 50 million Americans than it would be to pay for 150 million. Again, fiscally this nation has been slowly going more and more out-of-whack since 1932 and continues in a financial death spiral that will catch up with us as soon as our international creditors no longer believe we are creditworthy and pull the plug on more loans.
Getting a group of friends together can make the difference in local, state, or even national elections. We must take responsibility for our politician's actions and call them to heel if they do not perform. It is easy to stand by and point fingers, but just because it is easy does not mean it is the right thing to do. Real change in this country will only come about when we as a people elect a group of people to office who are dedicated to getting us out of debt and making us self-sufficient in energy again. This may mean fusion research, getting our oil from Siberia instead of Arabia, microwave solar systems, banning SUVs and other fuel-inefficient cars (god forbid), or whatever else is deemed necessary. The time has come for hard choices: do we send the same old politicans back for more or does someone have wherewithall to buck the system and help someone dedicated to change get elected to an office themselves?
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...and control of facilities on a piece of property like this is as good as owning the property. The US does not own Antarctica but our presence at McMurron and other bases gives us de facto control of the area. There is a key piece of lunar territory on the south pole that gives great visualization of the Earth, and a military observation facility there would be difficult to root out since the building would be United States Territory. In addition, holding a large base in Copernicus crater would give us de facto control of the crater and the space beneath it. An underground facility using the crater as an airlock/entryway would be owned by the United States. Officially the control would be by default, but it would take military force to actually remove the personnel, again granting de facto control to the occupying force.
They could always threaten the French military.
...instead of blowing $32 million to develop a proprietary version?
No wonder we're running a half-trillion dollar deficit...
Two scenarios:
1) Issue bonds with the return being first access to a space outpost at a later date or something like that. This would be like the Pan-Am sale of tickets to the moon, but these bonds have government backing as to avoid bankruptcy and gain interest when not used (2-3%?). If NASA gives up the initiative, the government bonds still have value. I'd buy quite a few and be happy to contribute to the program over the long term.
2) Lots of space technologies are dual-use for civilian and military, so why not get the DOD to help fund it? Insight into orbital mechanics and practical space vehicles would allow us a decent chance (better than 40%) to shoot down ICBMs and other long-range missles before they reached the US. Also, there is territory on the South Pole of the Moon that gives great visibility to most of the planet, so it is in their best interest to participate and lend a few billion to the plan.
(On the other hand we could always falsify reports that oil or Osama could be found on Mars/the Moon and get up there much sooner without having to worry about how it gets paid for...)
"SCO also has produced all non-privledged response documents requested by IBM. The only exception to such production is the files of certain officers and directors for whom SCO obtain the requested materials during the holidays with sufficient time to review the documents..."
Anyone else wonder if this might be double-talk for, say, possible sale of SCO stock by 'certain officers and directors' while it's riding high?
Does anyone else here think that these EX-cops should be brought up on charges of impersonating a police officer and potentially discrimination (80% of their incidents are against Hispanics and the "officer" interviewed had choice words)? And wouldn't that leave the RIAA open up to liability for potential violation of civil rights and false arrest if the "cops" actually put anyone in handcuffs as they are threatening to?
First, it's about fu*king time we went back to the moon and Mars. We need to get to the Asteroid Belt and secure access to the resources out there. New technologies will surely result, perhaps even fusion with the help of He-3, and the ultra-pure manufacturing possible in zero-g are only immediately obvious commercial benefits.
Seriously, the people we send to the moon and especially Mars need to work as a unit and either get along or be married couples. People who are cramped in a pressurized metal tube for days on end will start having problems, especially if the didn't like each other in the first place. Assuming it will take at least 7 days to get to the moon, do research, and get back, the strain is tremendous when it's all done in 1000 cubic feet or less. If Mars is involved, the travel time could be just over 6 months (ideally with a plasma drive system and only 2 weeks at Mars, 3 months there and back) to just over a year (advanced chemical drive system). The wrong combination of people could cause unprofessional attitudes among other things. Also, how big is the proposed Mars craft? And will it have artifical gravity?
There was also more respect for the weapons. People had responsibility for their own actions to a degree we do not see today in 1944. Yes, many more people respected guns because they knew what they could do, but here (US) the schools are largely run by people who think that eliminating guns eliminates violence. I used to live in a rural area over 10 minutes away from a police agency and our guns (and large dog) saved my family from trouble on several occasions. The whole "zero weapons tolerance in schools" trend is a runaway monster started by a political agenda: If I'm the toughest one on school violence, maybe I'll get re-elected to whatever office. Most of the firearms limitations for civilians I know of arose between 1963 (Kennedy assassination) and 1983? (Brady bill) with a few more in recent years.
Also, most people today do not spend nearly as much time with their kids as they did in 1944. Ever wonder why kids today know so much less about guns and so much more about worldly life in most cases? Their parents are often not there to protect them from the world, they just go find it out for themselves. Personally I would like to see a mandatory firearms education course taught alongside a thorough sex ed course starting in 6th grade and continuing until at least 8th. Kids could opt-out of the course by taking a minimal competency test in both subjects. There are enough non-parents out there that something needs to be done about guns and other issues because many just aren't learning about basic respect issues for themselves or guns from their parents like they used to.
Microsoft Windows...stability guarenteed or your money back!
There are a few things we should consider before casting judgement on this situation.
1) The timing of the 9-11 attacks was politically expedient regardless of whoever was in office. It is the automatic meal ticket for re-election and has been used for that purpose. I do not approve of the decimation of civil liberties to "protect ourselves from terrorism", but the PATRIOT act et. al is the price we pay for trying to replace security with freedom.
2) Saying something is true does not make it true. In nine months after "cessation of major hostilites" we have all of the records about the WMD programs of Iraq. Yes, they had biological and chemical programs, but why are we unable to find anything of note despite our access to their inventory logs? Does this question register with those who blindly support an administration that has not delivered on its promose to reveal the stockpiles of WMDs supposedly in place before this war?
3) In my opinion, the 9/11 attacks are partially the fault of intelligence failures on the part of the United States. Many of my college friends were Arabs who irregularly or rarely had their passports checked. There should have been investigations into Moussoui's computer seized prior to the attacks. Why were the CIA, NSA, FBI, and INS unable to at least partially derail an effort that involved international planning and stateside training?
Regardless of who is right and who is wrong, there are still many questions revolving around the Second Gulf War and the Trade Center attacks that should be answered.
I liked Firefly a lot, and was pretty pissed off at the mental midgets at FOX for replacing it with that vacuous teen cop show.
You apparently haven't been wathcing Fox for that long then. These are the same folks who canceled Married With Children (probably the best satire of the American family ever on TV) becuase it wasn't "family-friendly" but who think that 7th Heaven and similar shows reflect actual American families.
This reminds me of the nuclear debates of the late 1940s. Do we use one of the most efficient energy transmitters conceiveable to power our planet or empower our government? Though it sounds like science fiction, the US army toyed with the idea of using focus solar energy as a weapons system early in the cold war (I've seen the films where they built a prototype complex and incinerated large I-beams of steel as if they were Dreamsicles next to a lighter). The US Army proved that microwave solar technology could be used to relay electricity from extraordinary altitudes in the mid 1960s. In Japan the University of Kyoto is already toying with development of a space-based satellite using an area of 1km^2 to generate solar power then beam it back to earth. The potential for near-limitless energy is especially appealing, though fossil fules would sitll be used in most of our transportation systems for some time to come (no one I know has a mass-market purely-electrical car with over a 150 mile range or better speed than 60 MPH, please send in any info on e-cars that are better).
My concern is that any nation putting this sort of system into place risks misalignment of the beams and having a solar laser of incredible power strafing across the landscape. It would be extremely tempting for terrorists or rogue governments to either put these is orbit themselves, or more likely sabotage/take over those already in place. We would then be forced to either destroy the satellite or launch military strikes on the offending parties, mandating the development and refinement of rapid-deployment and anti-space missile technology. Granted, this is a dual use system whose benefits far outweigh the detractions, but the military application of such a solar energy system seems so obvious that it must be considered.
After the final lunar landings in 1972, NASA and the nation were at a crossroads. We landed on the moon but this was partially to make sure the Russians did not do so first. With the "Great Society" in the works and Vietnam still raging, the space program was put on the back burner in favor or funding for social programs and military expenditures. Russia never went to the moon and it looks to be at least until 2010 before China might try, thus there was no political incentive to sacrifice pork projects or "social" programs in favor of expanded space projects.
Though the Space Shuttle was supposed to reduce space travel costs dramatically and allow for low-cost LEO (Low Earth Orbit) launches, the costs proved so much greater than expected that NASA spends most of its budget maintaining the aging fleet and is hard-pressed to spare the cash for developing new launch vehicles. It was thought that space stations launched via space shuttle would be used as waystations to revisit the moon, but as the shuttles cost so much to move around, that plan became bunk fairly quickly.
We must return to the moon. Its natural vacuum and near-constant illuminated surface allow for massive energy and chemical manufacturing. Deadly plagues and other research requiring isolation could be done easily on our moon with minimal fear of contaminating the earth should their projects go awry. Telescopes on the far side of the moon would give us a new view of the universe uninterrupted by light (and for SETI et. al not so many electronic signals interfereing). If nothing else, the He-3 and solar resources could eventually help reduce our dependence on limited fossil fuels to run our economy. Some of the readers remember the OPEC crisis and no one wants those conditions to return. Finally, the moon serves as a waypoint to exploration of Mars and the Asteroid Belt, both of which contain abundant resources that could satiate our world's demands for resources far beyond the lifetimes of anyone reading this.
I'd like to hear from people who do not want to go back to the moon. Most of the soical programs they advocate funding in place of space exploration have their own difficulties, but maybe there are other reasons they have which get little/no attention.
In every case you mentioned there are either (1) direct threats to the security of the United States from dictators or terrorists, (2) Communist invasion and subteruge threatening the global trading lanes, or (3) ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. Do you think that national soverignty is an acceptable excuse for nonintervention when one ethnic group extinguishing another in the name of "ethnic purity" (Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, Guatemala et. al?) If you are indeed an American, these actions may have saved your life, much as the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are estimated to have saved about 14 lives for every one directly killed in the blasts (about 200,000 perished immediately, estimateed casualties for a ground invasion exceed 6 million Japanese and 0.5 million Americans with weapons including biological, chemical, and radiological). Our American government does not rule the planet, but it is charged to do whatever is necessary to protect and defend its citizenry from any and all threats to this nation. With the exception of Kuwait, and some domestic bombings, have you seen any invading army even contemplating an invasion of the US or its allies since 1955? How many foreign terrorists attack US targets on US soil? The reason is fairly simple: the threat of overwhelming force by one party is often enough to prevent its use by others. Our government has done questionable things in other nations to protect its citizenry, but I would rather they do questionable things elsewhere then deal with attacks on American or allied soil because we did not want to deal with threats when they were minor and easily managed.
In the drug industry there are now certain states that mandate employes of universities and drug companies get a wee percentage of the profits from any drug they find, even if it's on the employer's nickel. If I remember right this got started when the guy who found Prozac got virtually no compensation except for some additional job security and maybe a bonus. Two percent may not sound like much, but two percent of, say, $240 million will almost send three kids to a private four-year college. Heck, even two percent of $1.5 million is not something to be thrown in the trash.
...the difference is that what programmers earn from comrades is respect and prestige. The Greek word Timae (tee-may) works out best, it's a combo of reputation, prestige, respect, influence, and authority (if only over your section of code). Most businessmen in our regulated capitalist economy understand only the hard currency exchange for goods and services rendered, despite their participation in this non-monetary system as well. Just as programmers get timae for doing kick-ass job on their coding work, CEOs and upper echelon folks get timae for pulling off difficult or nigh-impossible tasks like, say, pulling SCO out of the fire. For example, what company isn't going to look at hiring McBride if he heads up SCO should it somehow win the lawsuit?
My point is that regardless of the work, someone is getting something they think is worthwhile out of it. For Communists it was ideological satisfaction (peacetime/reputation; the best factory on the list got little extras to incite higher production) or survival (war), in most Capitalist societies it is satisfaction (luxuries/goods; money buys nice things) or survival (from starvation), in the case of Freeware Programmers who seek neither cash nor survival it is for the rewards of reputation and satisfaction. Any way you slice the pie you get something of value for your work, just not necessarily cold, hard, American cash.
As a Georgia voter, I'd rather have seen both a standard punch-card machine and an electronic voting machine in enlarged booths. A punch-card system would certify both the candidate aht the voting machine as viable winners if the results fall in their favor, and losers if the results do not. In my district we had a screwy election for governor and senator, with Republicans slated to lose in both cases making mysterious and timely gains that were *just* enough to allow both to win their respective elections. Questions about the voting were rampant immiedately following the elections among voters in both parties. A paper trail should not only be available in situations like this but mandatory to prevent potential fraud by anyone.
In both cases the victories are credited to the President's arrival and grass-roots stumping for the candidates involved. If it is found that the election was tampered with in any way than an immediate interim election should be held for all offices involved with punch-cards and paper trails available for a hand-count if necessary. I tend to vote by person instead of party and am quite happy with my Republican Representative, but fraud by any party is unacceptable. Until such time that a computer program is available with a stable platform and a secure databank for votes, this technology should be suspended indefinitely from implementation. At the very least they need a punch-card system in the next election to validate the results for quite some time to gather data and ensure that the machines themselves work properly.
I congratulate the Chinese on their achievement, it is truly awesome for them to put a man in orbit. However I have to wonder about how the world, especially the US, will react in the long-term to an accelerating Chinese space program. Mayalsia has announced that it wants to send a cosmonaut up to the ISS, India has hinted that it wants a manned space program, Japan has a shuttle in the works, and the European Space Agency has yet to even plan for manned space travel after the Hermes shuttle failed to materialize.
Overall this may be the spark of a new space race. No one wants to see their neighbors achieve a presence in space that they cannot reach, thus we open the door for half-a-dozen groups to begin sending men into space for political and scientific purposes. China has already announced that they intend to build their own station in orbit to compete with the ISS, and old USSR/Russian technology/training is for sale to whoever can afford it (India, ESA, USA, etc.). If manned spacefaring technology is truly the passport to being a first-rate power of the 21st century, we will see almost every nation with ballistic missile technology attempting at least some sort of manned spaceflight capacity.
Thus a new space race may prove detrimental since most of the technology is dual-use. No doubt, it would be uber-cool to have observatories on the backside of the moon and a space station comparable to those seen only in sci-fi platforms thus far. Microwave solar power systems like those under development at the University of Kyoto could solve most of the world's power problems. Yet these also become quite potent orbital weapons capable of incinerating missile silos, labs, and cities is "accidentally misalinged". Space rockets were ballistic missiles, and the whole of composite materials, microcomputers, velcro, and hosts od other civilican and military discoveries trace their way back to the Space Race of the 1960s.
At worst we might be seeing the beginnings of a new arms race. Hopefully the initiative by China will evolve into an independent space station that goads India, Japan, the ESA, and USA to seriously pump funding back into their own programs and develop the spacefaring technology of 2001 by 2051. Maybe whoever said, "the 1960s were a decade transplanted from the 21st century because of the space race" will be proven right after all. If the US does not get off its duff soon, we may see a Chinese camera on the moon looking at two taikonauts wondering whether to take down the American flag still found at the Sea of Tranquility before we know it.
Anyone else have any thoughts/comments?
I decided not to give the pledge of allegiance for the better part of my high school career and caught hell for it early on. Kids are very pure in their actions and tend not to be as political, so if they think you're out of line they let you know. Middle and high school teaches conformity as much as knowledge, and even the teachers encourage the recitation of the pledge. Acting on principle or doing what is right, especially at that age, is neither easy or without reprecussions, and it is much easier to go with the crowd than voice your mind.
The way I got out of it was when one of my teachers saw me not pledging for years and brought the issue to a head. I told him that I truly love this nation and its ideals but that prostituting such for the notion of conformity both cheapens my humanity and belittles my respect of this country. Oddly enough most of the students agreed in principle and only a few of them continued giving me trouble after that.
Maybe Ballamer and Gates meant to say that greater emphasis will be placed on the security of Microsoft's profit margins instead of the security of their software?
The DMCA was created in the spirit that new forms of electronic media were not safe from potential copyright violations, and the act did what it set out to do. Yet it also did a great deal more as special interests and corporate schmoozers managed to get their paws on the bill and turn it into more of a "dominant market player protection act" than anything else. We all agree that the amount of innovation stifled using the DMCA as justification is staggering. Yet electronic media should also be protected from the loopholes the bill originally solved. Here are a few potential solutions:
1) Remove the current DMCA and amend it such that only specific uses of media are prohibited. Allow for the use of back-engineering tools with HARSH punishments for people who knowingly use them to break copyrighted material with intent to distribute. This leaves the burden of proof with a prosecutors instead of the "guilty-til-proven- innocent" tactics of the RIAA et. al.
2) Make a specific statement for "loser pays": anyone suing under using this legislation who loses the case pays for the legal costs of both parties. Settlements don't count, and this will outright favor the bigger players, but in the American climate of "legal attrition" as a business strategy I see no other effective means of trying to relieve this aspect of the DMCA problem.
3) Allow publications on computer security to be done freely and thoroughly if tied to legitimate academic or corporate entities. Hold computer manufacturers liable if one of their components has a security flaw that causes eggregious commercial/monetary damage but which could have been fixed by repair of one of these published flaws.
4) Ensure that American laws apply only to American citizens with the express wording that products purchased in other parts of the world which belong to the consumer are theirs to do with as they please. A clause allowing rightful action to take whatever steps necessary to use that product would be nice (mod chips et. al)
Pointing fingers makes us feel good, but unless we propose alternatives and compromises, are we really doing anything but venting? Does anyone else have potential solutions/thoughts on how to resolve this issue?
Where I went to college there were about 10-15 people running so much bandwidth that they began regulating times that all students could use the comps. Privacy violation sounds extreme and probably unconstitutional since UF is a government-owned institution that mandates certain people live on campus. I propose the following as alternate solutions:
1) check total size of all files transfered in a given period on a port-by-port basis. Anyone breaching a limit (say, 1GB/week as an example) pays for additional bandwidth at a specified rate (say, $5/extra GB/week). Anyone doing legitimate reserach could appeal to a committee/get special permission or designate a lab to run these programs from.
2) If research and campus business is being disturbed, restrict student internet access between 9am and 5pm in all dorms, allowing them to access only University websites. Most research I ever needed was done on-campus, and if people need to they can wait until businesss hours are closed to go off campus. This would be a temporary fix but it gives the professors and bureaucrats an out and prevents them from complaining more than they do now.
3) Notify incoming freshmen that the university reserves the right to observe what files are being uploaded/downloaded from their computers. Anyone caught trading music, porn, etc. will be asked to verify that they own a copy of the files being traded with an initially stern in-house warning then reference to the local police authorities as punishment. This is extreme, but most of the bandwidth hogs are trading illegal copies of movies/porn/music anyway.
4) Note the top 50 people using bandwidth and publish their picture in the school newspaper. Enterprising students can deal with the individuals in legal means as they feel appropriate.
Finger-pointing is easy, but does anyone else have potential solutions/thoughts on how to solve this problem?
If Japan is so upset about people tossing computers away instead of recycling them, why not charge customers more for hauling away the computer as trash instead of mandating them to send them back to manufacturers? These companies ought to be paying the consumers for their (recyclable) merchandise anyway since parts can be stripped from a few obselete comps and used to rebuild a less obselete one. Personally I think it would be better all around: computers would be recycled instead of tossed, consumers could get paid for recycling the parts, and companies could turn over a profit by reselling the parts as rebuilt comps. Anyone have any other ideas/thoughts on this?
Microsoft's overpriced software is a true government waste of money, just as their lobbying efforts are a waste of the time of elected officials. I'd like to see a federal anti-bribery law such that anyone in appointed or elected public found to accept monetary donations would be eligible for a fine in the amount of double the amount in question and/or a 1-year jail sentence. This makes it the smallest felony possible by the jail sentence. That would eliminate most government waste overnight, but it will probably never happen.
BTW, Personally I found Democracy in America laden with author bias.
It was written by a Frenchman who toured Cincinnati and other Ohio Valley towns in the 1820s then decided to write a book about how our society was going to split into three countries based on Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. I'll grant that he was accurate about the tyranny of the majority threatening property rights (go to google and look up Wal-mart and eminent domain in Alabama, Colorado, or Ohio). Recall that France expressed concerns about a unified United States threatening European manufacturers once it became a true industrial power. While he had a unique insight into frontier democracy, he also was apparently using most of his book to try and justify the point already mentioned. The role of the French in flaming the secessionist fires of the American Civil War is worth examining if anyone is interested.
Remember, In Soviet Russia, The Computer Programs YOU!
Since about 1929, our government (US) has engaged in almost non-stop deficit spending. It was most evident in the current admin as well as the Reagan and Roosevelt (WWII) regimes. Yet in the past we can see that war, space exploration, and staving off of Communism were the primary causes. These were much more justifiable because of the tangible returns on our investment: GPS systems, microcomputers, solid-state electronics, and thousands of other useful technologies we now use everyday. In the current administration we can not point to anything so tangible, but to claim that Bush was the first president to fail fiscally is not true.
I do not supprt most of the things that Mr. Bush does nor do I agree with any of his policies on domestic economics. The tax cuts do largely target wealthy families and did little to close loopholes on international money-shuffling that allow the wealthy of our nation to by-pass payment of most of our taxes. Nor did it do anything to prevent the corporations of the US from getting million or billion-dollar refunds from the IRS via corporate loopholes. It is easy for us to idealize the Clinton years, espeically along party lines, but much of the same problems were going on. The only major difference was that our quiescence was purchased at the cost of prosperity and overvalued telecom and tech stocks.
Real change is difficult, especially in a nation of this size. This is compounded by the fact that the population of our nation now knows that politicians are so desperate to keep office that they will give their voters money from the public treasury (tax cuts, socialized medicine, etc.) in order to retain office. Though this began in the Depression it continues unabated and magnified to this day. Remember that only about 102 million Americans voted in the last election - between 35-40% of the populace as a whole. It is much easier to pay for the votes of 50 million Americans than it would be to pay for 150 million. Again, fiscally this nation has been slowly going more and more out-of-whack since 1932 and continues in a financial death spiral that will catch up with us as soon as our international creditors no longer believe we are creditworthy and pull the plug on more loans.
Getting a group of friends together can make the difference in local, state, or even national elections. We must take responsibility for our politician's actions and call them to heel if they do not perform. It is easy to stand by and point fingers, but just because it is easy does not mean it is the right thing to do. Real change in this country will only come about when we as a people elect a group of people to office who are dedicated to getting us out of debt and making us self-sufficient in energy again. This may mean fusion research, getting our oil from Siberia instead of Arabia, microwave solar systems, banning SUVs and other fuel-inefficient cars (god forbid), or whatever else is deemed necessary. The time has come for hard choices: do we send the same old politicans back for more or does someone have wherewithall to buck the system and help someone dedicated to change get elected to an office themselves?