I hear this "can't outsource me, nyah nyah" bullshit often enough. By spouting off about the first knockout punch (global outsourcing) being delivered to the middle class, you are being willfully ignorant of the second knockout punch of immigration.
The current United States executive administration is making it quite clear that whatever labor cannot be outsourced, will be imported. The H1B program is just a famous example for the Slashdot crowd.
Globalization of capital is also resulting in the globalization of citizenry, which means that droves of poor can not only cross borders illegally, but also fit into immigration programs. What remains to be seen if the next steps will actually be taken, in which some combination of weakness in visas and strength in transportation will result in a turning point by which those droves will move.
The reason economists' views seldom benefit the common man, is that the common man cannot afford to hire them. Governments, universities and corporations can.
Economists are essentially the economic lawyers for the upper classes, and work to validate class warfare by disguising it with academics. If you* listen to them, then more the fool you... you're probably the type that thinks that brokers are giving you good investment advice.
Whether or not I am a Westerner, is irrelevent to the truth of my statements. If $87 billion can be found for Imperial militarism, surely something can be found for Hubble. (With the aim being: stop spending money attacking other countries, and spend it instead securing your own borders and innate economy.)
Your sentiment towards giving the wealth to the poor has significant hazards (for instance, all welfare is morally corrupting), but within that mode, the aim of raising up society to a more affluent level is the only way to support long-term scientific adventurism. Getting the people's minds off of survival -- by securing it -- and onto more esoteric items, is the way to go towards social advancement or betterment. And from that, space exploration can just be a side effect.
I find many of these posts vastly amusing with the common theme of "let it go, it's obsolete, it'll be replaced". All this common sentiment is utterly ignorant of how telescopes are used.
As soon as you build a major 'scope, people are lined up to use it... and the prior 'scopes still have waiting lists. You can't possibly build enough square meters of mirror to satisfy demand.
So, Hubble will never be "obsolete", since even old, old 'scopes on Earth are being used.
It's time for you throw-it-out boneheads to wake the fuck up from your Western dream (actually a "nightmare") of conspicuous consumption. You cannot afford to continue building things and then throwing them away when they fail to contine to excite your techie bone. Hubble can be used up to a certain limit in the degradation of the mirror's aluminizing layer... many decades, probably. The amortization of Hubble can be very long. But you have to regain an understanding of the amortization process itself.
Use it up, make it last, wear it out. The old New English sayings ring true today.
we'll be able to build a telescope that will make Hubble look like a 25-cent plastic magnifying glass
... and you will STILL have people lining up on a 5-year waiting list to use the Massive Lunar Array, leaving us "needing more square meters of mirror" as we did before. Dropping Hubble is depressingly stupid; any telescope is useful, and more eyes on the universe will be used regardless of the range of quality.
Do not lie. Lies are eventually revealed, you waste your time and theirs.
Faced with serious bias against an increasing period of unemployment, a friend of mine [wink, wink] arranged to have a prior employer claim that he still worked for them. Recruiters stopped throwing him out of their offices, and within a couple of months he did find a position. In over 18 months, his past has never been put to question again.
When employers become vicious, lies are the reward.
If you don't want to see lies on a resume, then don't treat people like dirt or make absurd judgments about their situations. (Specifically: you're unemployed, so I'm not going to hire you.)
If you force people to make difficult decisions, don't act surprised when they perform survival actions.
Well sucks for the RNs in your area. Welcome to the free market!
I work in a bank currently. Just yesterday, one of the managers there said that she had to advise one of her curious workers about taking one of the bank's car-buying deals. She told the worker to not do any such thing, since outsourcing fever has hit and everyone's job is threatened.
Another lost sale. Do YOU work in the auto industry?
And how much of a grasp of English do you need to be a plumber?
My intimation was that even the traditional "be a plumber" excuse of the Republican class, doesn't hold water when even a plumber can be brought from outside the US for half the wages.
And for the record, I hope that plumber has a good enough grasp of English to explain to the officer who stopped him that he didn't understand what a speed limit was, nor what a driver's license was, nor what a car registration was. But that's just my fantasy life popping up again, in which I think that a citizen should have a command of the language and be accountable for such. Oops! There I go, using the word "citizen" again. What a bigot I am!
start studying nursing. They can't outsource that job yet
Natives in the First World are under two threats, Sir, not one:
immigration
outsourcing
You can't outsource nursing, but you sure as Hell can bring 'em in from Mumbai... and ready to work for half of the $28/hr the average RN makes in my area (Toledo OH).
I read an article perhaps 3 months ago about this happening in the UK. The administrators of their national health care system were claiming a nursing shortage, and were working to bring nurses in from Indonesia, etc. I'm sure that was a real comfort to the rafts of people unemployed in the UK.
Do I need to mention the H1B scam that's still going on in America?
The next time you call a plumber, watch him carefully. He may not have a good grasp of English. So much for an "outsource proof" career.
What I do in the grocery today is math combined with no tolerance.
As I go along, I have a running total in my head to the nearest 1/4 dollar. When I get to the checkout, I have a final total in my head that can only be slightly off due to tax (on non-food items).
If the total's off, then I investigate. I go over each of my bills at home, so I can see that this works to catch errors.
The nontolerance part of it is: when I catch an item off, I contest it, and if they choose the barcode price over what I plainly remember being on the sign, I say "no thanks" and just don't buy it. That means some clerk or manager has to come through and re-shelve. They have to feel the pain from their errors, else they'd never fix them.
Despite my contempt for the fusionistas -- who have bamboozled us for decades to obtain continued funding -- it does kind of make sense to seek out a large supply of a particular fuel, to experiment with.
Of course, telling us "just go to the Moon and get it for us" is pretty ballsy, given their utter failure to produce an economic kilowatt.
No matter how many pounds in an object lofted into orbit at $10K per, NASA will let the mass fall when it becomes yet another distressing line in some administrator's much beloved Spreadsheet of Doom {tm}.
Skylab and Mir burned. I predicted that NASA will let the ISS burn when it becomes another political liability too. The Hubble's abandonment is yet another point in my prediction space.
NASA well knows that in order to avoid the incredible risks and difficult efforts of doing real space work, they have to encourage a "business cycle" within the industry of space exploration. Boom, Bust. Using a bust, they can fund the following boom. I have already heard people say things like "get the Hubble out of the way of the Webb". This type of gross stupidity is actually quite cunning; it represents an undercurrent of agreement about this cycling, and promotes conspicuous consumption.
If you want to know the truth, the Hubble's only real purpose was to support the rafts of NASA and aerospace industry employees. Once launched, 90% of its real usefulness was gone. After a couple of "maintenance" events, the ROI on the beast is much less attractive than another sexy piece of equipment like the Webb. But since it's widely perceived that "you can't have both"... well, better to fund the big new project in its design phase than to support the old cheaper project in its maintenance phase.
Do you know how many times NASA has developed things, just to throw them away? Things like the Hubble are only the tip of the massive money-wasting iceberg that we can see.
NASA hates amortization, and loves your tax money. Now, stop reading this right now, and get another job to pay into this money-burning system. While driving to work, don't be distracted by that flash in the sky... think of it as your tax dollars providing you with a fireworks show.
Judging by your attitude, I'll be happy to leave your collective of pyramid schemes that we laughably call "modern capitalism". Keep buying those stock certificates, Roscoe... you'll need 'em eventually for fuel.
With all the spam and virii passing across the Internet today, too many people and organizations just can't be bothered to make their systems secure. So how am I to accept that some sort of security mentality will take root and then rule in 2010? Especially since I will be able to put my 2004 computer on the net then, as we can do with a 286 today?
Also, the 911 event in the USA did NOT slap down draconian securty measures across the globe. Hence, a "Pearl Harbor" event on the Internet itself (primarily affecting the West) is still unlikely to involve such security measures globally. The Internet is too fractious; like "terrorism" today, even the threat of an Imperial military with global reach hasn't stopped it.
What this article is essentially predicting is an end to Microsoft's OS dominance. It won't even require a "Pearl Harbor" event, since the combination of MS's constant weaknesses, combined with Open Source's strengths, have been arguing against MS for some time now. MS is heading for less market share, or less revenue, at any rate. (For instance, how much of that $100 computer in 2010 will be a MS license? $50? If so, then why not buy a Linux computer for $60? Or do you really think that MS will write "Windows AC" (Windows 2010: the Arthur C. Clarke Edition) for $10 per copy?)
One aspect to the article, I do agree with, although it's an unintended undercurrent since it critques modern Capitalism. The article's gloom and doom suggests to me that to avoid such digital attacks, you shouldn't digitize operations to such a degree that they can become catastrophic. Look at the national power grid; computerizing operations to the extent that extreme remote controls are possible, makes the grid very vulnerable. And there's another factor here: economizing. The "remote controls" of tree trimming in Ohio was one factor in the Aug 2003 blackout; in fact, these "controls" were so "remote", that they were being underperformed.
1) Planetary gravity. This makes it difficult to get up the gravity well for the purposes of commerce and travel.
2) Atmosphere. By its presence, it makes it difficult to get down as a risk factor in heat shielding. By its weakness -- 1% of the Earth standard pressure that we are used to -- it's not breathable and may as well be a vaccuum.
3) Further from Sol. Less energy for a biosphere to work with, making a smaller life zone... as well as less possibility for solar energy for direct power and heating.
There are better choices:
1) Luna. It is much closer to Earth (ready access to Earth's materials, markets, skills, etc.), has readily available materials in the regolith (oxygen, aluminum, silicon, titanium, etc.), has lower gravity (making launches much easier while keeping up Human bone mass), and has the same insolation as Earth (growing crops, solar power, solar heating). Really, small craters can be roofed over with a transparent sandwich of glass/composites, containing water, and the entire crater floor can be used for living area.
2) Free Space. Habitats can be constructed from Lunar/Asteroidal material. Free space will allow the ultimate in freedom. I predict that if Humans really do take to space in self-sustaining population levels, that the wealth of the Solar system will be centered around the Asteroid Belt.
Endless studies represent the length, breadth and depth of the huge volume of our incompetence when it comes to colonizing space. We know more than enough to attempt to survive. We have more than enough knowledge, skill and wealth to start the colonizing process. But we just aren't doing that. As I love to say, no matter how many decimal points academia gets, they always want one more.
Mars is a world, like Earth is a world. Worlds are livable. We have rafts of data from various probes, and it tends to boil down to the availability of the elements hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen. Once we know about those -- and we do -- then any further delay is political. Engineering is just waiting to attack Martian problems. It is waiting on us to get out of Earth's gravity well.
Mars presents the problem of having no readily-available building material. But it's a world. Worlds have ores. All those rocks scattered over Earth's surface contain aluminum, and all it takes to extract it is energy; the same probably applies to Mars. All this means is that Martians must be devoted miners.
We are ready. More precisely, those of us who are ready, are ready. Life is not assured in this venture, like it is when you move from New York to Australia. Nasty death is entirely possible... decompression, starvation, freezing, deficiency sickness, physical accident, etc. Yet fear, uncertainty and doubt about the future are not valid reasons for avoiding the future. The prize of Mars is an opportunity that merits great risks.
I fully understand motivation. Take a ship over an ocean and then break the ship up for building material. You'll find a way to survive. Just make sure you brought enough stuff on that ship.
NASA never had any lack of volunteers. What it has lacked since Apollo is the will to get things done. And what needs to be done now, is starting up Human civilization in space.
There are better choices than Mars, but it's not so bad. Humans can even live on the surface while is is being kinetically terraformed. If an actual impactor is required, then settlements should avoid the latitudes where those will be aimed.
The good thing about a one-way trip is you don't waste fuel and structure for a return. You can then stock with solar panels, tools, fuel cells, emergency rations, and oxygen extractors. And people. More people. People to get things done.
Send me. I volunteer. My bones may end up moldering early in some sandy grave, a casualty of circumstance, but no one could say that I didn't try.
I can only surmise that it is more draconian since it uses a measure of you (allegedly in McD's case, a palm print) that can be passed on to others, and can't be disconnected from you for the rest of your life. I can see being highly upset at that kind of thing. Your worker ID with McD's (or any other workplace) should only ID you to the company, not anyone else, and should be destroyed once you leave. The outrage comes by identifying that too many workplaces will cross the line with their data.
Also your biometric data can be used across many other systems... whereas your employee# and ID card are only useful in one workplace. This must make biometric ID very prone to fraud and abuse, by design. As a precedent, look at how much damage Social Security numbers have caused with all that "identity theft"; the SSN should never have been used for private institutions, and should have been restricted even inside the government.
Ashcroft would love biometric ID, of course. As a rule of thumb, anything that makes him happy is something I'm against.
Since profit margins are fatter for niche products, companies always want to get away from commodity business. But niche markets are either small, don't last, are fickle, or are some combination of all these things.
End result: company not only loses much of the investment in the niche product development, but it tends to let the unsexy commodity business fall by the wayside.
I too had noticed that over time, less and less Lego sets were "generic"... just a bunch of mixed blocks that any idiot could see challenges kids to build with. Then I stopped looking once the bulk sets were impossible to find, and the model sets were flashy and even more plied with motors, stickers, etc.
I still have my Legos from my single-digit years; generally, I built spacecraft with them. Those kinds of things were lost in the shuffle for mega-profits. It's good to see that Lego has now realized it... perhaps in time to stop a fall into bankruptcy.
Since vote forms cost money, I can see why poorer districts simply reset the alarm and let the erring voter walk away, since that saved on filling out another 75c form. I believe Greg Palast has reported on things like this (or maybe I read in the book "Jews for Buchanan" -- an interesting book, BTW).
This was the original poster's assertion, and as you implied, it's been a widely-varying argument. Planetary surfaces themselves may not be the best choices in many instances for new Human homes (ref. Gerard K. O'Neill). But relative airlessness (1% of Earth's) is hardly insurmountable. Comets can be redirected to either crash into the planet, or skim-crash the atmosphere, or can be mined en route to Mars in such a way that they fragment while transiting the atmosphere. At any rate, these are terraforming issues, and like any Human engineering enterprise, they just have to be thought out AND tried out. Note my wording... sitting around and planning is an extraordinarily good way to avoid doing anything at all; if we are going to try our hand at terraformation, we have to actually go out and do it.
Your skepticism about a new Human home is warranted. Your conclusion isn't.
[Robots ar]e fun, they're cheap, they work pretty well, and even if they occasionally blow up... nobody dies.
None of these are justifications for avoiding direct Human involvement in space missions. Not only do robots malfunction and require repair, but space is not just an object of study... it's a place to go, work and play... a place to live. By your assertions, Europe should have studied North America with robots instead of sending ships filled with people.
If you want to emphasize the exploration angle in your pro-robot argument, allow me to point out that we now know more than enough about the solar system to determine manned targets. Luna, Mars, the Asteroids... we know enough to conclude that we can send people and they will have a good chance of surviving in those places indefinitely (provided Luna gets volatiles, etc.... trade with Earth's manufacturing base will be necessary for some time).
Exploration with robots is now an academic act with little justification. How many more decimal points do we need before we make our manned moves? For academics themselves, the answer is "just one more decimal place than last time", which obviously will never end. The time of manned steps forward is in the past. We are well behind schedule.
Hence, please do not tout robots over Humans. Either you are incorrect, or your agenda of endless bellybutton-contemplation is showing.
tell us which asteroidal element could be mined profitably
Nearly all of them, if they are used as they must be used... in support of Human civilization in space. If your only goal is to bring elements back to Earth's surface, then very few would qualify.
There are 3 basic types of Asteriods; nickel-iron (metallic), silicate (rocky) and carbonaceous chondrite (nonmetallic). These mimic planetary composition at different points, correspondingly core, mantle and crust, hence indicate that the Asteroid Belt probably was on the way to forming a planet, but just didn't quite get there.
The Belt represents colossal wealth... in the "Old Economy" sense of the term that we are currently pretending is dead. An entire planet could be constructed from the Belt. However, if your profit expectations are Earth-bound as well as being fundamentally shifted into things like currency speculation, then you're not going to understand the wealth that the Belt offers. That's OK; you can stay on Earth while people like me exploit the Belt. I'm sure you won't mind; by the time people like you come to understand what you'd given up, you won't be in any position to grab any of it. You'd have to climb Sol's gravity well to get to the Belt, and then you'd have to fight the then-indigenous people there for "your share".
In case you didn't know, the Belt is necessary for permanent Lunar civ
And foregt this baloney about balancing out lifestyles and setting us eqaul to the rest of the world.
It's not baloney. We just have to tell all the asswipes with $300K homes that, so sorry, they're only worth $100K... and less.
... BOOM!Lookit all th' yuppies start squawkin'!
Welcome to a Depression. You can fight it all you want, and put the CON in eCONomy for even more years, but eventually your beloved stock-certificate-that-looks-like-a-house just isn't going to sell anymore, and you will have to sit on it year after year, being hit in the jaw with property taxes. Then you'll slink and sneak down to the tax office and practically whore out your sister's mouth to get the guy to drop your home's assessed value. I watched it happen in Massachusetts in the 1990s. And I had no sympathy for those people then, and have even less now.
She probably thinks her employees owe *her* money for hiring them!
In a roundabout way (which is America's scam of choice nowadays), they do, and they will. The use of tax abatements by companies is at an epidemic level. Hence, to meet shortfalls, local governments are placing more of a tax load upon the individual payers of sales, wage and property taxes. The companies escape more and more taxation, while (as anyone can notice) you are paying more and more. Those go hand in hand.
If this (Dragon Lady named) Fiorina isn't doing it right now, there are plenty of other companies demanding tax abatements to either move, stay on or upgrade their sites.
(And in case no one has said it: Fiorina is a "hatchet man". She is there to convert the company into sold assets; in the end, she gets the hatchet herself, but with all the millions she was paid, I'm sure she will be consoled with her unemployment.)
Roger that. I worked for months in a bank cash vault, and after some time noticed that most of the counterfeits were detectable in normal lighting... literally, their falseness "jumped" out at you. When I asked why so many passed into the customer despoits, I was told that most of them came from bars, where the lighting was bad. The bills were always darker, and also their fuzziness would be impossible to detect in dim lighting.
For stuff like this, you'd think that a bar owner would research and install a small bill scanner. To pay for a drink, instead of handing the money to the 'tender, you'd slip the bill into the same type of scanner that the grocery store automated checkout line uses (and also any bill changer).
I doubly think the scanner idea is good, since my experience at a Home Depot store some months ago. A counterfeit $100 bill was passed right in front of me while I was waiting in the checkout line. The customer and clerk both let me look the bill over. It felt like plastic, like someone had ironed a laminate into it... it was sooooo fake! I told the clerk that I had worked in a bank vault, and that I would not accept that bill. She did anyway. Another $100 loss for Home Depot.
Re:Some of the early plans are a bit out there
on
Dreams of the Moon
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· Score: 1
Of course I would... as long as I was a principal planner in the entire project. Otherwise, I'd be letting somebody else "pack my 'chute", which is just fucking insane.
Slashdot Mirror
I hear this "can't outsource me, nyah nyah" bullshit often enough. By spouting off about the first knockout punch (global outsourcing) being delivered to the middle class, you are being willfully ignorant of the second knockout punch of immigration.
The current United States executive administration is making it quite clear that whatever labor cannot be outsourced, will be imported. The H1B program is just a famous example for the Slashdot crowd.
Globalization of capital is also resulting in the globalization of citizenry, which means that droves of poor can not only cross borders illegally, but also fit into immigration programs. What remains to be seen if the next steps will actually be taken, in which some combination of weakness in visas and strength in transportation will result in a turning point by which those droves will move.
I quote this poorly, but:
... you're probably the type that thinks that brokers are giving you good investment advice.
The reason economists' views seldom benefit the common man, is that the common man cannot afford to hire them. Governments, universities and corporations can.
Economists are essentially the economic lawyers for the upper classes, and work to validate class warfare by disguising it with academics. If you* listen to them, then more the fool you
*You in general, not you smallpaul.
Whether or not I am a Westerner, is irrelevent to the truth of my statements. If $87 billion can be found for Imperial militarism, surely something can be found for Hubble. (With the aim being: stop spending money attacking other countries, and spend it instead securing your own borders and innate economy.)
Your sentiment towards giving the wealth to the poor has significant hazards (for instance, all welfare is morally corrupting), but within that mode, the aim of raising up society to a more affluent level is the only way to support long-term scientific adventurism. Getting the people's minds off of survival -- by securing it -- and onto more esoteric items, is the way to go towards social advancement or betterment. And from that, space exploration can just be a side effect.
I find many of these posts vastly amusing with the common theme of "let it go, it's obsolete, it'll be replaced". All this common sentiment is utterly ignorant of how telescopes are used.
... and the prior 'scopes still have waiting lists. You can't possibly build enough square meters of mirror to satisfy demand.
... many decades, probably. The amortization of Hubble can be very long. But you have to regain an understanding of the amortization process itself.
As soon as you build a major 'scope, people are lined up to use it
So, Hubble will never be "obsolete", since even old, old 'scopes on Earth are being used.
It's time for you throw-it-out boneheads to wake the fuck up from your Western dream (actually a "nightmare") of conspicuous consumption. You cannot afford to continue building things and then throwing them away when they fail to contine to excite your techie bone. Hubble can be used up to a certain limit in the degradation of the mirror's aluminizing layer
Use it up, make it last, wear it out. The old New English sayings ring true today.
we'll be able to build a telescope that will make Hubble look like a 25-cent plastic magnifying glass
... and you will STILL have people lining up on a 5-year waiting list to use the Massive Lunar Array, leaving us "needing more square meters of mirror" as we did before. Dropping Hubble is depressingly stupid; any telescope is useful, and more eyes on the universe will be used regardless of the range of quality.
Do not lie. Lies are eventually revealed, you waste your time and theirs.
Faced with serious bias against an increasing period of unemployment, a friend of mine [wink, wink] arranged to have a prior employer claim that he still worked for them. Recruiters stopped throwing him out of their offices, and within a couple of months he did find a position. In over 18 months, his past has never been put to question again.
When employers become vicious, lies are the reward.
If you don't want to see lies on a resume, then don't treat people like dirt or make absurd judgments about their situations. (Specifically: you're unemployed, so I'm not going to hire you.)
If you force people to make difficult decisions, don't act surprised when they perform survival actions.
Well sucks for the RNs in your area. Welcome to the free market!
I work in a bank currently. Just yesterday, one of the managers there said that she had to advise one of her curious workers about taking one of the bank's car-buying deals. She told the worker to not do any such thing, since outsourcing fever has hit and everyone's job is threatened.
Another lost sale. Do YOU work in the auto industry?
And how much of a grasp of English do you need to be a plumber?
My intimation was that even the traditional "be a plumber" excuse of the Republican class, doesn't hold water when even a plumber can be brought from outside the US for half the wages.
And for the record, I hope that plumber has a good enough grasp of English to explain to the officer who stopped him that he didn't understand what a speed limit was, nor what a driver's license was, nor what a car registration was. But that's just my fantasy life popping up again, in which I think that a citizen should have a command of the language and be accountable for such. Oops! There I go, using the word "citizen" again. What a bigot I am!
Natives in the First World are under two threats, Sir, not one:
- immigration
- outsourcing
You can't outsource nursing, but you sure as Hell can bring 'em in from MumbaiI read an article perhaps 3 months ago about this happening in the UK. The administrators of their national health care system were claiming a nursing shortage, and were working to bring nurses in from Indonesia, etc. I'm sure that was a real comfort to the rafts of people unemployed in the UK.
Do I need to mention the H1B scam that's still going on in America?
The next time you call a plumber, watch him carefully. He may not have a good grasp of English. So much for an "outsource proof" career.
What I do in the grocery today is math combined with no tolerance.
As I go along, I have a running total in my head to the nearest 1/4 dollar. When I get to the checkout, I have a final total in my head that can only be slightly off due to tax (on non-food items).
If the total's off, then I investigate. I go over each of my bills at home, so I can see that this works to catch errors.
The nontolerance part of it is: when I catch an item off, I contest it, and if they choose the barcode price over what I plainly remember being on the sign, I say "no thanks" and just don't buy it. That means some clerk or manager has to come through and re-shelve. They have to feel the pain from their errors, else they'd never fix them.
Well, goldspider, you posted twice around this topic, and it appears that this is all the evidence you gave for justifying a $40 charge for a $1 item:
"I work in the logistics command of the Navy; I believe I come from a stronger position of knowledge on the subject"
"sufficient knowledge of wartime logistics (I work for the military and know what I'm talking about)"
Run the numbers for us, 'K? Step by step, how a $1 item becomes $40. With your superior knowledge, that shouldn't be much of a chore.
Time to put up or shut up, Mr. Bullshit Artist.
Despite my contempt for the fusionistas -- who have bamboozled us for decades to obtain continued funding -- it does kind of make sense to seek out a large supply of a particular fuel, to experiment with.
Of course, telling us "just go to the Moon and get it for us" is pretty ballsy, given their utter failure to produce an economic kilowatt.
Yes, believe it.
... well, better to fund the big new project in its design phase than to support the old cheaper project in its maintenance phase.
... think of it as your tax dollars providing you with a fireworks show.
No matter how many pounds in an object lofted into orbit at $10K per, NASA will let the mass fall when it becomes yet another distressing line in some administrator's much beloved Spreadsheet of Doom {tm}.
Skylab and Mir burned. I predicted that NASA will let the ISS burn when it becomes another political liability too. The Hubble's abandonment is yet another point in my prediction space.
NASA well knows that in order to avoid the incredible risks and difficult efforts of doing real space work, they have to encourage a "business cycle" within the industry of space exploration. Boom, Bust. Using a bust, they can fund the following boom. I have already heard people say things like "get the Hubble out of the way of the Webb". This type of gross stupidity is actually quite cunning; it represents an undercurrent of agreement about this cycling, and promotes conspicuous consumption.
If you want to know the truth, the Hubble's only real purpose was to support the rafts of NASA and aerospace industry employees. Once launched, 90% of its real usefulness was gone. After a couple of "maintenance" events, the ROI on the beast is much less attractive than another sexy piece of equipment like the Webb. But since it's widely perceived that "you can't have both"
Do you know how many times NASA has developed things, just to throw them away? Things like the Hubble are only the tip of the massive money-wasting iceberg that we can see.
NASA hates amortization, and loves your tax money. Now, stop reading this right now, and get another job to pay into this money-burning system. While driving to work, don't be distracted by that flash in the sky
Judging by your attitude, I'll be happy to leave your collective of pyramid schemes that we laughably call "modern capitalism". Keep buying those stock certificates, Roscoe ... you'll need 'em eventually for fuel.
Yep, I don't buy the article either.
With all the spam and virii passing across the Internet today, too many people and organizations just can't be bothered to make their systems secure. So how am I to accept that some sort of security mentality will take root and then rule in 2010? Especially since I will be able to put my 2004 computer on the net then, as we can do with a 286 today?
Also, the 911 event in the USA did NOT slap down draconian securty measures across the globe. Hence, a "Pearl Harbor" event on the Internet itself (primarily affecting the West) is still unlikely to involve such security measures globally. The Internet is too fractious; like "terrorism" today, even the threat of an Imperial military with global reach hasn't stopped it.
What this article is essentially predicting is an end to Microsoft's OS dominance. It won't even require a "Pearl Harbor" event, since the combination of MS's constant weaknesses, combined with Open Source's strengths, have been arguing against MS for some time now. MS is heading for less market share, or less revenue, at any rate. (For instance, how much of that $100 computer in 2010 will be a MS license? $50? If so, then why not buy a Linux computer for $60? Or do you really think that MS will write "Windows AC" (Windows 2010: the Arthur C. Clarke Edition) for $10 per copy?)
One aspect to the article, I do agree with, although it's an unintended undercurrent since it critques modern Capitalism. The article's gloom and doom suggests to me that to avoid such digital attacks, you shouldn't digitize operations to such a degree that they can become catastrophic. Look at the national power grid; computerizing operations to the extent that extreme remote controls are possible, makes the grid very vulnerable. And there's another factor here: economizing. The "remote controls" of tree trimming in Ohio was one factor in the Aug 2003 blackout; in fact, these "controls" were so "remote", that they were being underperformed.
Mars has several significant negatives:
... as well as less possibility for solar energy for direct power and heating.
1) Planetary gravity. This makes it difficult to get up the gravity well for the purposes of commerce and travel.
2) Atmosphere. By its presence, it makes it difficult to get down as a risk factor in heat shielding. By its weakness -- 1% of the Earth standard pressure that we are used to -- it's not breathable and may as well be a vaccuum.
3) Further from Sol. Less energy for a biosphere to work with, making a smaller life zone
There are better choices:
1) Luna. It is much closer to Earth (ready access to Earth's materials, markets, skills, etc.), has readily available materials in the regolith (oxygen, aluminum, silicon, titanium, etc.), has lower gravity (making launches much easier while keeping up Human bone mass), and has the same insolation as Earth (growing crops, solar power, solar heating). Really, small craters can be roofed over with a transparent sandwich of glass/composites, containing water, and the entire crater floor can be used for living area.
2) Free Space. Habitats can be constructed from Lunar/Asteroidal material. Free space will allow the ultimate in freedom. I predict that if Humans really do take to space in self-sustaining population levels, that the wealth of the Solar system will be centered around the Asteroid Belt.
Endless studies represent the length, breadth and depth of the huge volume of our incompetence when it comes to colonizing space. We know more than enough to attempt to survive. We have more than enough knowledge, skill and wealth to start the colonizing process. But we just aren't doing that. As I love to say, no matter how many decimal points academia gets, they always want one more.
... decompression, starvation, freezing, deficiency sickness, physical accident, etc. Yet fear, uncertainty and doubt about the future are not valid reasons for avoiding the future. The prize of Mars is an opportunity that merits great risks.
Mars is a world, like Earth is a world. Worlds are livable. We have rafts of data from various probes, and it tends to boil down to the availability of the elements hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen. Once we know about those -- and we do -- then any further delay is political. Engineering is just waiting to attack Martian problems. It is waiting on us to get out of Earth's gravity well.
Mars presents the problem of having no readily-available building material. But it's a world. Worlds have ores. All those rocks scattered over Earth's surface contain aluminum, and all it takes to extract it is energy; the same probably applies to Mars. All this means is that Martians must be devoted miners.
We are ready. More precisely, those of us who are ready, are ready. Life is not assured in this venture, like it is when you move from New York to Australia. Nasty death is entirely possible
I volunteer.
I fully understand motivation. Take a ship over an ocean and then break the ship up for building material. You'll find a way to survive. Just make sure you brought enough stuff on that ship.
NASA never had any lack of volunteers. What it has lacked since Apollo is the will to get things done. And what needs to be done now, is starting up Human civilization in space.
There are better choices than Mars, but it's not so bad. Humans can even live on the surface while is is being kinetically terraformed. If an actual impactor is required, then settlements should avoid the latitudes where those will be aimed.
The good thing about a one-way trip is you don't waste fuel and structure for a return. You can then stock with solar panels, tools, fuel cells, emergency rations, and oxygen extractors. And people. More people. People to get things done.
Send me. I volunteer. My bones may end up moldering early in some sandy grave, a casualty of circumstance, but no one could say that I didn't try.
I can only surmise that it is more draconian since it uses a measure of you (allegedly in McD's case, a palm print) that can be passed on to others, and can't be disconnected from you for the rest of your life. I can see being highly upset at that kind of thing. Your worker ID with McD's (or any other workplace) should only ID you to the company, not anyone else, and should be destroyed once you leave. The outrage comes by identifying that too many workplaces will cross the line with their data.
... whereas your employee# and ID card are only useful in one workplace. This must make biometric ID very prone to fraud and abuse, by design. As a precedent, look at how much damage Social Security numbers have caused with all that "identity theft"; the SSN should never have been used for private institutions, and should have been restricted even inside the government.
Also your biometric data can be used across many other systems
Ashcroft would love biometric ID, of course. As a rule of thumb, anything that makes him happy is something I'm against.
Since profit margins are fatter for niche products, companies always want to get away from commodity business. But niche markets are either small, don't last, are fickle, or are some combination of all these things.
... just a bunch of mixed blocks that any idiot could see challenges kids to build with. Then I stopped looking once the bulk sets were impossible to find, and the model sets were flashy and even more plied with motors, stickers, etc.
... perhaps in time to stop a fall into bankruptcy.
End result: company not only loses much of the investment in the niche product development, but it tends to let the unsexy commodity business fall by the wayside.
I too had noticed that over time, less and less Lego sets were "generic"
I still have my Legos from my single-digit years; generally, I built spacecraft with them. Those kinds of things were lost in the shuffle for mega-profits. It's good to see that Lego has now realized it
Since vote forms cost money, I can see why poorer districts simply reset the alarm and let the erring voter walk away, since that saved on filling out another 75c form. I believe Greg Palast has reported on things like this (or maybe I read in the book "Jews for Buchanan" -- an interesting book, BTW).
New home for humanity.
... sitting around and planning is an extraordinarily good way to avoid doing anything at all; if we are going to try our hand at terraformation, we have to actually go out and do it.
... it's a place to go, work and play ... a place to live. By your assertions, Europe should have studied North America with robots instead of sending ships filled with people.
... we know enough to conclude that we can send people and they will have a good chance of surviving in those places indefinitely (provided Luna gets volatiles, etc. ... trade with Earth's manufacturing base will be necessary for some time).
... in support of Human civilization in space. If your only goal is to bring elements back to Earth's surface, then very few would qualify.
... in the "Old Economy" sense of the term that we are currently pretending is dead. An entire planet could be constructed from the Belt. However, if your profit expectations are Earth-bound as well as being fundamentally shifted into things like currency speculation, then you're not going to understand the wealth that the Belt offers. That's OK; you can stay on Earth while people like me exploit the Belt. I'm sure you won't mind; by the time people like you come to understand what you'd given up, you won't be in any position to grab any of it. You'd have to climb Sol's gravity well to get to the Belt, and then you'd have to fight the then-indigenous people there for "your share".
This was the original poster's assertion, and as you implied, it's been a widely-varying argument. Planetary surfaces themselves may not be the best choices in many instances for new Human homes (ref. Gerard K. O'Neill). But relative airlessness (1% of Earth's) is hardly insurmountable. Comets can be redirected to either crash into the planet, or skim-crash the atmosphere, or can be mined en route to Mars in such a way that they fragment while transiting the atmosphere. At any rate, these are terraforming issues, and like any Human engineering enterprise, they just have to be thought out AND tried out. Note my wording
Your skepticism about a new Human home is warranted. Your conclusion isn't.
[Robots ar]e fun, they're cheap, they work pretty well, and even if they occasionally blow up... nobody dies.
None of these are justifications for avoiding direct Human involvement in space missions. Not only do robots malfunction and require repair, but space is not just an object of study
If you want to emphasize the exploration angle in your pro-robot argument, allow me to point out that we now know more than enough about the solar system to determine manned targets. Luna, Mars, the Asteroids
Exploration with robots is now an academic act with little justification. How many more decimal points do we need before we make our manned moves? For academics themselves, the answer is "just one more decimal place than last time", which obviously will never end. The time of manned steps forward is in the past. We are well behind schedule.
Hence, please do not tout robots over Humans. Either you are incorrect, or your agenda of endless bellybutton-contemplation is showing.
tell us which asteroidal element could be mined profitably
Nearly all of them, if they are used as they must be used
There are 3 basic types of Asteriods; nickel-iron (metallic), silicate (rocky) and carbonaceous chondrite (nonmetallic). These mimic planetary composition at different points, correspondingly core, mantle and crust, hence indicate that the Asteroid Belt probably was on the way to forming a planet, but just didn't quite get there.
The Belt represents colossal wealth
In case you didn't know, the Belt is necessary for permanent Lunar civ
And foregt this baloney about balancing out lifestyles and setting us eqaul to the rest of the world.
... and less.
... BOOM! Lookit all th' yuppies start squawkin'!
It's not baloney. We just have to tell all the asswipes with $300K homes that, so sorry, they're only worth $100K
Welcome to a Depression. You can fight it all you want, and put the CON in eCONomy for even more years, but eventually your beloved stock-certificate-that-looks-like-a-house just isn't going to sell anymore, and you will have to sit on it year after year, being hit in the jaw with property taxes. Then you'll slink and sneak down to the tax office and practically whore out your sister's mouth to get the guy to drop your home's assessed value. I watched it happen in Massachusetts in the 1990s. And I had no sympathy for those people then, and have even less now.
She probably thinks her employees owe *her* money for hiring them!
In a roundabout way (which is America's scam of choice nowadays), they do, and they will. The use of tax abatements by companies is at an epidemic level. Hence, to meet shortfalls, local governments are placing more of a tax load upon the individual payers of sales, wage and property taxes. The companies escape more and more taxation, while (as anyone can notice) you are paying more and more. Those go hand in hand.
If this (Dragon Lady named) Fiorina isn't doing it right now, there are plenty of other companies demanding tax abatements to either move, stay on or upgrade their sites.
(And in case no one has said it: Fiorina is a "hatchet man". She is there to convert the company into sold assets; in the end, she gets the hatchet herself, but with all the millions she was paid, I'm sure she will be consoled with her unemployment.)
in dark places like bars where it's hard to see
... literally, their falseness "jumped" out at you. When I asked why so many passed into the customer despoits, I was told that most of them came from bars, where the lighting was bad. The bills were always darker, and also their fuzziness would be impossible to detect in dim lighting.
... it was sooooo fake! I told the clerk that I had worked in a bank vault, and that I would not accept that bill. She did anyway. Another $100 loss for Home Depot.
Roger that. I worked for months in a bank cash vault, and after some time noticed that most of the counterfeits were detectable in normal lighting
For stuff like this, you'd think that a bar owner would research and install a small bill scanner. To pay for a drink, instead of handing the money to the 'tender, you'd slip the bill into the same type of scanner that the grocery store automated checkout line uses (and also any bill changer).
I doubly think the scanner idea is good, since my experience at a Home Depot store some months ago. A counterfeit $100 bill was passed right in front of me while I was waiting in the checkout line. The customer and clerk both let me look the bill over. It felt like plastic, like someone had ironed a laminate into it
Of course I would ... as long as I was a principal planner in the entire project. Otherwise, I'd be letting somebody else "pack my 'chute", which is just fucking insane.