Potential astronauts are everywhere, but there are only three shuttles left. Lose one more and it doesn't matter what NASA want, the shuttle program is dead... it simply cannot function in any useful sense with only two shuttles (in particular because at any time there's usually one shuttle undergoing major maintenance work).
Even with three shuttles it's going to be very hard to finish ISS before they stop flying.
If your list wasn't almost entirely bogus, it might actually prove something. The simple fact is that almost every claim of 'space spinoffs' turns out to be untrue, or something so trivial that it can't even come close to compensating for the hundreds of billions of dollars spent flying people into space.
Are you really claiming, for example, that the CD was invented by NASA!?!?!
"Try long-range weapons and a pack of rabid lawyers."
Before you can attack anyone you need to find them. Finding someone who doesn't want to be found in a cube of space a billion miles on a side is, shall we say, not very easy.
"As if the airplane was immediately relevant to everyone the day after the wright brothers had a successfull flight?"
Uh, you may not have noticed, but it's now nearly fifty years since the space equivalent of the 'Wright Flyer', and space is still not relevant to ordinary people. Fifty years in aviation took us from the Wright Flyer to the first jet airliners... fifty years in space has taken us from expensive, cramped capsules to really, really expensive, slightly less cramped space shuttles.
"Sure, let private corporations control asteroids, artificial satellites and other space debris but keep space itself free for general use by all, or by some international body."
LOL... I'd love to see a government or corporation try to build a wall around a big chunk of space and claim it's theirs.
Exactly how was my original post a 'Troll'? Have the moderators actually compared DVD to 1080 HDTV? Do they want to be made to buy movies on DVD and then buy the same movie yet again on HD-DVD?
"I only go to movies because I get to see the movie now, and not a year from now."
Of course, here in the UK, I suspect that you can download most movies from the web before they've actually been released here.
Even with DVDs, I've often had them imported a month or more before the movie was released in the UK.
Actually, thinking about it, most times I've been to the cinema in the last year or two it's been to preview screenings before it's been publically shown anywhere...
1080 would be pretty much close enough for me: I was watching the LoTR movies on DVD a few weeks ago, and with a decent display and 7.1 sound it wasn't too far from a cinema experience... other than the lack of mobile phones, not having chewing gum on the seats, kids not talking through the entire movie, babies not crying, etc, etc, etc.
"So yeah, great, HD-DVDs live up to the full potential of HDTVs. But I don't have an HDTV."
So you plug in the SDTV output of your HD-DVD player to your crappy old TV and it will downconvert for you. Then when you go to your mate's place and see just how much better the DVDs look in HD, you buy an HDTV.
Assuming the disks don't cost much more than an SD DVD, then movie companies can release only HD-DVD versions of the movies and anyone with an HD-DVD player can watch them.
"having to wait for the corpus of films to get re-telecined to HD may take as long as a decade."
I'm not sure it's true of most movies, but a lot of bigger movies have already been telecined in HD and then downconverted to SD for the DVD release. Those movies can trivially be re-released on HD.
"I also wonder if 35mm film has the grain necessary to be more than just a mild improvement in HD over SD"
Uh, yes. 35mm film is generally considered to be equivalent to at least 2k pixels across in resolution, and a lot of people argue that it's more like 4k pixels. Certainly 1080 line HD footage doesn't look as good to me as a cinema projection.
"Consumers don't want this -- especially when regular DVD is "good enough""
DVD is crap. This consumer is putting off buying new movies on DVD because they're nowhere near as good as HD footage and I don't want to have to buy them twice.
"the USA does not have a democracy; it has a system where 50% + 1 controls the other 49%"
Uh, hello... exactly what do you think democracy is, other than majority rule? Any pretence at the constitution limiting government was ended by Lincoln.
Supporting democracy and complaining when 51% of the population control the other 49% is madness.
Whereas in Britain, candidates get caught with big bags full of postal vote forms in their cars... all democracies are corrupt, just in different ways.
I guess you don't realise that every 747 on the planet contains thousands of pounds of depleted uranium as balance weights. I believe that's true of many other airliners too, so if you're too scared of depleted uranium to get within a few feet of it I hope you don't plan to fly anywhere soon.
"Exiting Windows would most definately bring you back to a DOS prompt, in real mode, without a reboot."
And, as has been pointed out, you're wrong: the 286 was rebooted to switch it back to real mode, since, as far as Intel were concerned, no sane person would ever want to go back to real mode after entering protected mode. Of course they overestimated Microsoft.
"Why I am even bothering to respond to an AC who is calling me a "retard" is beyond me,"
Maybe not a retard, but you should at least learn the facts before complaining that a web site is wrong.
I don't think that's the problem, in general. With a small amount of effort you can eliminate the majority of buffer overflow bugs, for example.
The real problem is that much software is insecure by design: many security holes recently have been due to deliberate design choices in applications like IE and Outlook, which were obviously insecure... the solution is not to build the insecurity into the product to begin with.
"if you were mugged, and it was caught on CCTV they would not only have have evidence of the incident, but probably a good picture of the criminal's face."
One slight problem: despite all these cameras we keep getting installed, mugging are _increasing_.
Sorry, but you're just another of the 'useful idiots' helping Blunkett and friends turn this country into a police state.
"But it does have an inherent deterrent value of its own."
So why are the shopkeepers complaining that they're getting robbed _more_ now than they were before the cameras were introduced a few years back?
Cameras are just another way for the police to pretend they're doing their job while they abdicate control of the streets to the crooks. I can only hope that the next Tory government sack the lot of them and privatise policing completely.
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"Keep the shuttles flying as long as needed."
Potential astronauts are everywhere, but there are only three shuttles left. Lose one more and it doesn't matter what NASA want, the shuttle program is dead... it simply cannot function in any useful sense with only two shuttles (in particular because at any time there's usually one shuttle undergoing major maintenance work).
Even with three shuttles it's going to be very hard to finish ISS before they stop flying.
If your list wasn't almost entirely bogus, it might actually prove something. The simple fact is that almost every claim of 'space spinoffs' turns out to be untrue, or something so trivial that it can't even come close to compensating for the hundreds of billions of dollars spent flying people into space.
Are you really claiming, for example, that the CD was invented by NASA!?!?!
"Where you got your "3 year trip" line from, I'm not sure"
Three years is the minimum-energy transfer orbit to and from Mars... any faster than that starts to require a lot more fuel.
"Try long-range weapons and a pack of rabid lawyers."
Before you can attack anyone you need to find them. Finding someone who doesn't want to be found in a cube of space a billion miles on a side is, shall we say, not very easy.
"As if the airplane was immediately relevant to everyone the day after the wright brothers had a successfull flight?"
Uh, you may not have noticed, but it's now nearly fifty years since the space equivalent of the 'Wright Flyer', and space is still not relevant to ordinary people. Fifty years in aviation took us from the Wright Flyer to the first jet airliners... fifty years in space has taken us from expensive, cramped capsules to really, really expensive, slightly less cramped space shuttles.
"The benefits of going to the moon, building the space station, and other manned ventures have turned out to be in two areas:
* Spinoff technologies "
And the 'spinoffs' are highly over-rated too.
"Sure, let private corporations control asteroids, artificial satellites and other space debris but keep space itself free for general use by all, or by some international body."
LOL... I'd love to see a government or corporation try to build a wall around a big chunk of space and claim it's theirs.
Congratulations for not realising that the first 'Lord of the Rings' movie _was_ a rotoscoped cartoon.
"A proper Web API will allow some companies to write proper applications delivered over the web"
.NET framework"
And that would make my granny or girlfriend upgrade to Longhorn because, exactly?
"Also microsoft always have the option of upgrading IE/windows in Win2k to include more of the
Why would they want to encourage people to continue running W2k rather than Longhorn?
"there are those of us who do read. Even if it is for diversity rather than spiriutual growth"
I read the Bible for the sex and violence, myself.
Exactly how was my original post a 'Troll'? Have the moderators actually compared DVD to 1080 HDTV? Do they want to be made to buy movies on DVD and then buy the same movie yet again on HD-DVD?
"I only go to movies because I get to see the movie now, and not a year from now."
Of course, here in the UK, I suspect that you can download most movies from the web before they've actually been released here.
Even with DVDs, I've often had them imported a month or more before the movie was released in the UK.
Actually, thinking about it, most times I've been to the cinema in the last year or two it's been to preview screenings before it's been publically shown anywhere...
1080 would be pretty much close enough for me: I was watching the LoTR movies on DVD a few weeks ago, and with a decent display and 7.1 sound it wasn't too far from a cinema experience... other than the lack of mobile phones, not having chewing gum on the seats, kids not talking through the entire movie, babies not crying, etc, etc, etc.
"So yeah, great, HD-DVDs live up to the full potential of HDTVs. But I don't have an HDTV."
So you plug in the SDTV output of your HD-DVD player to your crappy old TV and it will downconvert for you. Then when you go to your mate's place and see just how much better the DVDs look in HD, you buy an HDTV.
Assuming the disks don't cost much more than an SD DVD, then movie companies can release only HD-DVD versions of the movies and anyone with an HD-DVD player can watch them.
"having to wait for the corpus of films to get re-telecined to HD may take as long as a decade."
I'm not sure it's true of most movies, but a lot of bigger movies have already been telecined in HD and then downconverted to SD for the DVD release. Those movies can trivially be re-released on HD.
"I also wonder if 35mm film has the grain necessary to be more than just a mild improvement in HD over SD"
Uh, yes. 35mm film is generally considered to be equivalent to at least 2k pixels across in resolution, and a lot of people argue that it's more like 4k pixels. Certainly 1080 line HD footage doesn't look as good to me as a cinema projection.
"Not only do I need a new DVD player, I also need a new TV to play it on?"
No, you just install an HD DVD drive, switch your monitor to 1920x1080 mode, and off you go...
"Consumers don't want this -- especially when regular DVD is "good enough""
DVD is crap. This consumer is putting off buying new movies on DVD because they're nowhere near as good as HD footage and I don't want to have to buy them twice.
"the USA does not have a democracy; it has a system where 50% + 1 controls the other 49%"
Uh, hello... exactly what do you think democracy is, other than majority rule? Any pretence at the constitution limiting government was ended by Lincoln.
Supporting democracy and complaining when 51% of the population control the other 49% is madness.
Whereas in Britain, candidates get caught with big bags full of postal vote forms in their cars... all democracies are corrupt, just in different ways.
"It should put an end to any unauthorized demonstrations against the U.S. or any of its allies."
Of course it will also prove extremely effective at knocking out the police and military who are trying to stop people from demonstrating.
I suspect muggers,rapists and other criminals will find a few uses for it too...
I guess you don't realise that every 747 on the planet contains thousands of pounds of depleted uranium as balance weights. I believe that's true of many other airliners too, so if you're too scared of depleted uranium to get within a few feet of it I hope you don't plan to fly anywhere soon.
"Exiting Windows would most definately bring you back to a DOS prompt, in real mode, without a reboot."
And, as has been pointed out, you're wrong: the 286 was rebooted to switch it back to real mode, since, as far as Intel were concerned, no sane person would ever want to go back to real mode after entering protected mode. Of course they overestimated Microsoft.
"Why I am even bothering to respond to an AC who is calling me a "retard" is beyond me,"
Maybe not a retard, but you should at least learn the facts before complaining that a web site is wrong.
I don't think that's the problem, in general. With a small amount of effort you can eliminate the majority of buffer overflow bugs, for example.
The real problem is that much software is insecure by design: many security holes recently have been due to deliberate design choices in applications like IE and Outlook, which were obviously insecure... the solution is not to build the insecurity into the product to begin with.
"if you were mugged, and it was caught on CCTV they would not only have have evidence of the incident, but probably a good picture of the criminal's face."
One slight problem: despite all these cameras we keep getting installed, mugging are _increasing_.
Sorry, but you're just another of the 'useful idiots' helping Blunkett and friends turn this country into a police state.
"But it does have an inherent deterrent value of its own."
So why are the shopkeepers complaining that they're getting robbed _more_ now than they were before the cameras were introduced a few years back?
Cameras are just another way for the police to pretend they're doing their job while they abdicate control of the streets to the crooks. I can only hope that the next Tory government sack the lot of them and privatise policing completely.