Just imagine for a moment that there was an international PRIVATE consortium with the aim of building a space station and that they had a budget of $100 billion... The Airbus A380 cost $11 billion over five years to create. The Chinese Three Gorges Dam cost ~$25 billion....
The ISS has been a colossal WASTE of money. Speaking as a contractor who regularly works for the great US Government, if you want to deliver projects on a budget, don't let the government near it!
I watch 2001 every year on TV and it brings a tear to my eye at how the future that could have been, never was....well, just a bit behind schedule at any rate...
i have never seen anyone twist Maslow's hierarchy of needs to such an extent to support their personal agenda such as you have just done. I suppose you have never worked in a developing country, as you would then realize that your argument is without basis. A substantial proportion of humanity is without the personal power, education, and upward mobility needed to worry about lofty things such as social standing, ideology, or material gain. When someone is hungry, all they think about is where their next meal is coming from. This fact is true anywhere you look.
One could argue your neo-conservative perspective is not only failed, but the cause of much misery in the world today. The facts do not lie. The middle class in America is on the retreat and it is questionable whether it will rebound in the near future or not. Meanwhile, socialist/communist China are making tremendous societal gains. Methinks you're the Hack.;)
...and unfortunately the vast majority of the 'internet' is a cesspool not unlike the back alleys of a medieval city of yore. Google is a gateway, a path to a destination, a route to traverse the maze of everything... but what is gained? The internet is still about the destination, the site, the content. Do we care about those little blinking ads tailored to our whims that entice us, distract us, while we attempt to get to the 'content' we are searching for?
Ah.... but what if the path is merely a maze going nowhere? A ship in a bottle floating in an endless sea of replicating bots who tirelessly analyze our essence and present false choices in an endless stream of nothingness only with the intent to gain our credit card number...
Suppose for a moment, that we are not just entertaining ourselves to death, but are still empowered by our desires to know the truth, to synthesize information in a free society and hold our ideas as our own, and are not just a copy-write infringed info byte of a subsidiary of a monolithic corporation.
The lesson perhaps? Nothing is free. Everything has a price. Search is free, but the road has a toll...for our soul, our individuality.
This is the 21st century, we gotta get with the program. Block the ads. Pay for your hosting, own your domain... pay your dues. Own your identity. Don't sell yourself for nothing. And remember, always make a backup.
Steve Jobs: [overheard on an iphone in a coffee shop somewhere in Cupertino]...As you can see, my young apprentice, your friends have failed. Now witness the streaming power of this fully STACKED and OPERATIONAL data center!
Soon, I shall dawn my cape and mast to fight this tyranny!... I just have to brush up on my knife throwing skills, police in the UK use guns now right?...Bummer.
If you really believe that you are delusional. In most emerging economies you're getting 5-10% year on year growth. Thats real growth. In the US what is it this year? 1.5%? Same in most of Europe. The only way these countries will grow as consumer based societies is to make more consumers, and that will mean greater immigration. This is also why many predict that in 20 years most people will be speaking Spanish and Mexican in the US. It all comes down to demographics.
No offense, but countries like Switzerland and much of Europe presently have negative population growth. They will continue to lose their competitiveness to the US, South America, China, ect...
Israel is a horrible example of sustainability! First of all, they are subsidized by the United States (but lets not get political).... Have you noticed that the Dead Sea is quickly disappearing? Israel uses proportionally magnitudes more water than those of their neighbors. They are sucking the Dead Sea dry to grow cash crops to give the illusion of prosperity (oh, not that all the other countries in the region don't do this as well).
The FACTS are MEGA-Cities of greater than 20M people will become the norm. Natural fresh water will become an ever more scarce and expensive commodity. Levels of pollution will become greater as reliance of these megacities on fossil fuels for electricity and desalinization plants becomes greater. Nuclear power is proliferating, but even that will not compensate for increases in conventional pollution of cars and electrical generation.
And not much changes in our daily lives?.... Can one really say this as the American Middle class is steadily eroding? Your life will not change THAT much, but your childrens' life will be much different.
Anyway, I live in Cairo, Egypt at the moment. It's a city of 20M people and growing bigger every day. This is the future for most of the world, where most of the growth is happening.
I'm an optimist, but from my globetrotting I can say with certainty that there will be resource wars, they have already begun. (Just for a laugh, I suppose you would claim that Iraq was not a resource war?) har har...
Just as there are 'self-published' authors there are freelance editors as well. There seems to be a disconnect that one assumes just because someone is a self-publisher that they don't hire an editor. This criticism seems like a petty and desperate attempt at justifying the current publisher's monopoly.
Bookstores EVERYWHERE are closing! Everyday, in every city another bookstore closes and there aren't any new one's opening! The large chains are going bankrupt as they scramble to figure out how to eek out revenue from declining sales. eBooks are the future.
ebooks are a paradigm change, just like the Guttenburg press. Hint:there were many people who thought that was a bad idea at the time too!. The establishment always FEARS and DERIDES change.
and you will find their sewage ducts, waterways, roadsides, well...everywhere actually choked with BPA plastic bags and food containers. Standard practice is to just burn the stuff, but it usually causes localized flooding disease first. Oh yea, the ocean is full of the stuff too. Aren't we humans a wonderful species?
Maybe they should use some of that non-removable ink similar to what some countries use during voting in elections to prevent 'double dipping'. They could call it the iTattoo. DNA signature matching to device IDs could also work. Both sensible options.
Always wait for SP3, for everything! In fact, just wait for version 3 of everything! Its guaranteed to be a success! Just thinking about what iPad 3.0 will be like, all those features, all those bugs squashed, it keeps me up at night. Windows 7? I say give me windows 10, or give me Death! Now if you'll excuse me, my Windows ME is giving me a dirty look, ctrl-alt-del!
Slashdot Mirror
Safari, adblock + click2flash, and I get 7 1/2 hours of run time on my Macbook pro with wifi. Pretty sweet ;)
The ISS has been a colossal WASTE of money. Speaking as a contractor who regularly works for the great US Government, if you want to deliver projects on a budget, don't let the government near it!
I watch 2001 every year on TV and it brings a tear to my eye at how the future that could have been, never was....well, just a bit behind schedule at any rate...
One could argue your neo-conservative perspective is not only failed, but the cause of much misery in the world today. The facts do not lie. The middle class in America is on the retreat and it is questionable whether it will rebound in the near future or not. Meanwhile, socialist/communist China are making tremendous societal gains. Methinks you're the Hack. ;)
at puny attempt of competitors to create so called 'alliance.' Nothing can beat the mighty Apple! HA! Ha! Ha ha ha ha!!!!
Ah.... but what if the path is merely a maze going nowhere? A ship in a bottle floating in an endless sea of replicating bots who tirelessly analyze our essence and present false choices in an endless stream of nothingness only with the intent to gain our credit card number...
Suppose for a moment, that we are not just entertaining ourselves to death, but are still empowered by our desires to know the truth, to synthesize information in a free society and hold our ideas as our own, and are not just a copy-write infringed info byte of a subsidiary of a monolithic corporation.
The lesson perhaps? Nothing is free. Everything has a price. Search is free, but the road has a toll...for our soul, our individuality.
This is the 21st century, we gotta get with the program. Block the ads. Pay for your hosting, own your domain... pay your dues. Own your identity. Don't sell yourself for nothing. And remember, always make a backup.
Steve Jobs: [overheard on an iphone in a coffee shop somewhere in Cupertino] ...As you can see, my young apprentice, your friends have failed. Now witness the streaming power of this fully STACKED and OPERATIONAL data center!
It's full of Apples.
Soon, I shall dawn my cape and mast to fight this tyranny! ... I just have to brush up on my knife throwing skills, police in the UK use guns now right? ...Bummer.
China is playing the west for a bunch of chumps.
10 years of work on his laptop without a single backup?
If you really believe that you are delusional. In most emerging economies you're getting 5-10% year on year growth. Thats real growth. In the US what is it this year? 1.5%? Same in most of Europe. The only way these countries will grow as consumer based societies is to make more consumers, and that will mean greater immigration. This is also why many predict that in 20 years most people will be speaking Spanish and Mexican in the US. It all comes down to demographics.
You don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Israel is a horrible example of sustainability! First of all, they are subsidized by the United States (but lets not get political).... Have you noticed that the Dead Sea is quickly disappearing? Israel uses proportionally magnitudes more water than those of their neighbors. They are sucking the Dead Sea dry to grow cash crops to give the illusion of prosperity (oh, not that all the other countries in the region don't do this as well).
The FACTS are MEGA-Cities of greater than 20M people will become the norm. Natural fresh water will become an ever more scarce and expensive commodity. Levels of pollution will become greater as reliance of these megacities on fossil fuels for electricity and desalinization plants becomes greater. Nuclear power is proliferating, but even that will not compensate for increases in conventional pollution of cars and electrical generation.
And not much changes in our daily lives?.... Can one really say this as the American Middle class is steadily eroding? Your life will not change THAT much, but your childrens' life will be much different.
Anyway, I live in Cairo, Egypt at the moment. It's a city of 20M people and growing bigger every day. This is the future for most of the world, where most of the growth is happening.
I'm an optimist, but from my globetrotting I can say with certainty that there will be resource wars, they have already begun. (Just for a laugh, I suppose you would claim that Iraq was not a resource war?) har har...
The ebook market is growing year to year, while paper books are continuing to shrink. Give it 5 years, the pattern will be even more accelerated.
Just as there are 'self-published' authors there are freelance editors as well. There seems to be a disconnect that one assumes just because someone is a self-publisher that they don't hire an editor. This criticism seems like a petty and desperate attempt at justifying the current publisher's monopoly.
Bookstores EVERYWHERE are closing! Everyday, in every city another bookstore closes and there aren't any new one's opening! The large chains are going bankrupt as they scramble to figure out how to eek out revenue from declining sales. eBooks are the future.
ebooks are a paradigm change, just like the Guttenburg press. Hint:there were many people who thought that was a bad idea at the time too!. The establishment always FEARS and DERIDES change.
and you will find their sewage ducts, waterways, roadsides, well...everywhere actually choked with BPA plastic bags and food containers. Standard practice is to just burn the stuff, but it usually causes localized flooding disease first. Oh yea, the ocean is full of the stuff too. Aren't we humans a wonderful species?
I guess I should get rid of my asbestos mattress eh? Oh well, I'm sorry.
So one bullet to one of these 'death balloons' and all those scary Russians would die from their own Super EVIL WEAPON. Sounds brilliant!
Maybe they should use some of that non-removable ink similar to what some countries use during voting in elections to prevent 'double dipping'. They could call it the iTattoo. DNA signature matching to device IDs could also work. Both sensible options.
We Canucks are just too polite to keep them secret. I'm sorry.
Always wait for SP3, for everything! In fact, just wait for version 3 of everything! Its guaranteed to be a success! Just thinking about what iPad 3.0 will be like, all those features, all those bugs squashed, it keeps me up at night. Windows 7? I say give me windows 10, or give me Death! Now if you'll excuse me, my Windows ME is giving me a dirty look, ctrl-alt-del!
google it.
Never mind half their population live on $1 a day!