I am saying exactly what I said: that NASA has been starved of funding since 1970 and that politicians and their appointees have required more and more from NASA with less and less.
This funding crisis leads to two murderous flights of the shuttle. Richard Feynman and a ton of other really brilliant people investigated the first disaster. We really didn't need to investigate much because the foam strikes were a known problem - but management denied it and had the crews continue to risk their lives.
Do you have any idea what those crewmembers would make in the private sector? Do you have any idea how little we pay these people? M.D., Ph.D.'s are common as are dual Ph.D.'s. The flight-crew people are committed to the space program, as are the majority of the engineers / scientists / and managers.
We have allowed the government to erode the safety standards to the degree that we have lost TWO entire crews.
Meanwhile, Adelphi communications had a Billion dollars stolen by three people. That would fund NASA for a decade...and the three wizards who stole that much money are going to have to give back only half....
Look, funny accounting is endemic today. It is a reflection of this era and government. It won't change until we have another Watergate.
My family name is O'Connor. Look up Rand's husband's name. You picked the wrong day to argue Ayn Rand.
I'm sorry to break this to you fella, but the world does not operate on Rand principals. Bush doesn't operate on Rand principals. Hell, Ayn Rand didn't operate on her own principals.
I grew up a few blocks away from the author, Ayn Rand. Remember that is all that she ever was: an ex-pat Russian author. She never held office and she never did anything but put pen to paper to create a utopia of her own imagination. She was a person who called selfishness a "virtue". If you have bothered to read her work you will recognize that as a title of one of her pieces of fiction.
Reality, Neo, is that we have a social construct and that a 95% marginal tax rate is quite appropriate to preserve the social construct. There is NOTHING different in taxing the wealthy at 95% (FWIW a "marginal" tax is a tax that applies after the entity being taxed accrues sufficient income to make it up onto the next marginal tax bracket...95% would kick in at just about $1meg in 1955 - during the Korean conflict) than it is to have sales taxes on food and medicine that have a disproportionate impact on the poor and aged.
Rand's worldview simply doesn't work. I suggest that you consider your own quotes and apply them to a leader... say, the President. He has never produced a single thing in his entire life. He lost money (OPM) in two failed oil companies and he dumped his stock in the second and ran with $800k - violating SEC reporting requirements for insider transactions.
He then "invested" his $800k in the Rangers - a less than 5% share. (I don't believe that I could buy into the Yankees just by asking pretty-please...) Thereafter the state of Texas used the power of Eminent Domain to take property away from homeowners to build a larger stadium. Then Bush decided that his ownership was a "conflict of interest" with his position as Govenor and he dumped the Rangers (now in their nice new stadium, built with tax dollars on property taken by government fiat) and realized $18meg.
Tell me how Mr. Bush is an "honest man" in Rand's definition? He produced nothing and he left a big mess for the state of Texas - those people he dispossessed of their property at $0.25 on the dollar were the heirs to the Curtis Mathes television fortune and after about 8 years their case made it to the Texas civil supreme court and they were paid the full value of their holdings with pre-judgment interest. Where did that come from: the taxpayers.
You are worried about NASA? NASA?
Do you remember ENRON? Do you remember the rolling blackouts in California? Enron had a few more dollars of funny money than NASA. So did Worldcom, Tyco and a host of others.
Have you noticed that the price of gasoline is over $2.00/gal? Those prices are rising when we have control over one nation known to have vast oil resources. Rand would have exploited Iraq's Oil. As conquerors we have that right - but we say the oil belongs to the conquered? Could it be that a few selfish people exploiting the oil and harming their nation at the same time?
Tell me again how that utopian world Rand created applies to this set of facts? Tell me how, ultimately, the selfish keep from being treated the same as the last of the French monarchy? It is exactly the same fact pattern. Rand could not defend the comparison of her world to the fall of French or the Russian monarchies. Both fell, and they fell because they mistreated the public. Where monarchs become too self-involved to recognize that they are pissing in their own pools - the pool cleaners come along and remove them.
Finally, Ms. Rand lived out her days on the upper west side of Manhattan. I saw her at least once a week during the years 1967 through 1980. She didn't get out much her last two years and I was in grad school and not at home. She was quite happy with her social security checks. Apparently she did not have as much money as she would have liked.
Did you just hear that flushing sound, toilet monster? Move on...this topic is dead to me. BTW, you are a FRWW and a romantic, to boot. Good luck- you will need it for the rest of your life.
RWW syndrome: assume that what you see or read in the popular media has relevance and substantive support for the issues that you want to believe in.
Let's be really honest, tell me that you believe *everything* that you see/hear/read on CNN. Then tell me that the paper records from the past 30 years are all bogus.
I stand by the historical record and the primary sources. You have to do quite a bit better than reference "CNN" if you expect to make an argument worth the electrons you control.
I pointed you to PRIMARY sources. Here's another: http://thomas.loc.gov/
I suggest that you go hunting for NASA's budget. It is not contained in one bill. Indeed there are aspects of the NASA budget that are under DOJ and DOD authorization and are part of the "black" budget for defense-related expenditures.
You blindly state that private industry would have, should have, could have -- but the fact is that they did not invent any of NASA's technology - except by filling orders as subcontractors. The NASA technology remains in the public domain and industry continues to derive financial benefits from the public sector. What part of that fact are you unhappy about?
Perhaps what you want is a price for everything: if NASA received royalties we might have an agency in the black.
Hmm, Bush came up with a retroactive tax cut...so much for the ban on ex post facto laws--let's make NASA technology the subject of a "recapture" act and collect royalties retroactively. Now that should warn your cockles.
Military spending is the single largest component of our national budget - and, yes I am factoring the costs of national security foisted off on the states into this calculation.
Try another primary source: http://www.bls.gov/ppi/ the producer price index is a historical and current source of the cost of goods and living in the US. Check it out and run the numbers...see what $350/yr would do for you. Remember to convert that sum to the dollar-value of the prior year (the net present value in prior year's dollars) when making your comparisons. If you really want to do it right there are several nasty variables you have to control for but you can compile a rough guesstimate.
While you are at it, look at the tax burden: the middle class now carries the nation and the lowest class carries the states through sales tax. Business paid 50% of our tax in the 1950-1967 period. Then Nixon started the swing of the pendulum that allows GE and other multinationals to avoid all federal tax. Sorry, but I'm all for taxing the companies that use our infrastructure to make a buck. If we pay taxes, they should pay taxes.
If the tax burden were shifted back to the 1960 schedule Mr. Gates' company would part with a portion of their income that would, at one point in the marginal rate schedule, reach 95% of their income. Billions from Bill and MSFT would do much more to lighten our burden than cutting NASA.
Moreover, I don't think you will come back at me with the old argument, "why, they NEED that money to innovate" when it's MSFT. Everybody on/. would dump on you for that one! - Let's say $2B/yr tax revenue from Bill's company and his top-paid staff. That works out to be approximately $1k/yr for every man, woman and child in the US. A $3k tax cut in my house...$4k for each of my siblings and $3k more for the living extended family - Bill and company - alone, could provide my immediate family with $14k in tax relief/yr. Hmm...
RWW syndrome - just repeat the SOS. Your fair and balanced media will tell you all you need to know. Go watch the game now...BO will be on in a few hours
EXACTLY where do you come up with this BS? NASA has *not* had a budget increase in real dollars since 1970.
Do you remember the price of gasoline per gallon in 1970? How about Milk? What was the average salary for a family of four? What was NASA's budget?
Well, the US Government does keep track of those figures and they still publish them. Try the gov docs section of your local depository library or, http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/steccpi.html for a quick review.
Spin-offs from NASA research include telemetry systems in hospitals and ambulances, composite materials, computing, mapping, photometric analysis, side-looking radar....and on and on ALL WITHOUT PATENTS so industry could benefit without paying for the R&D. Private companies would lock down their innovations and extract every penny for their profits (see, e.g. the insurance and pharmaceutical industries).
Oh, what is our out-of-pocket cost for the dalliance in Iraq? Don't know? Hey, another $25 billion request was put before Congress this last week, alone. (that's 25 gigabucks to/. ers)
A non-partisan review of the costs of the war v. money sent back to your state can be found at http://www.nationalpriorities.org/issues/military/ iraq/25billion/index.html
No, NASA isn't the cost center...
RWW is the proper term for a person who simply mouths the platitudes of the nuts in power.
Bush and his policies just continue to cut a swath through the core of US agencies. No, he didn't do it out of a vacuum. ..
NASA has been under funded since the NIXON administration. Every year since the last of the Moon missions NASA has been yoked to the Albatross of politicians who demand more and more from smaller and smaller budgets. Remember Senator Garn hitching a ride?
What? A short list:
Spacelab - allowed to drop from a decaying orbit in 1979 - but the budget cuts made it apparent in 1977 that the station was doomed.
Spacehab, gravity & solar probes failed littering Near Earth Orbits with debris - in fact, the problem of tracking debris has become a major project for NASA and the DOD. Of the space going powers we, alone, are responsible for more crap in orbit than any other nation by at least an order of magnitude.
The Shuttle project has killed two crews and the hopes of many veteran staff. Attrition of experienced staff has hit a new high while budget constraints gut the applicant pool.
Just do a search for the term, "mission" at http://kscsearch.ksc.nasa.gov/ to see the last 30 years for yourself.
What does Bush do in the wake of the latest shuttle disaster? He cuts funds for the Hubble and calls for a manned mission to Mars. The mere pennies to save Hubble he denies because his "core 'Christian' constituency" has issues with the idea of cosmology. Destroy one of the most effective deep space imaging systems ever and mandate manned missions to Mars! All of this must be accomplished with ever-decreasing budgets.
NASA in financial disarray? How could it be anything else...
Yes: run the Cron scripts, empty the trash, make certain you have enough free hard disk space for the upgrade, be certain you are running an account with administrator status, have TechTool 4 check everything, be certain that the swap files are in good shape and that they have enough space, consider optimizing the main drive, disconnect all firewire and USB devices, shut down the BLUETOOTH keyboard and mouse, run DiskWarrior 3.02 from the new boot CD you created three days ago (but, first do all of this before downloading the update to create the new CD), plug in your pBook or iBook, make certain that the G5 is on a UPS with enough juice to complete the install, download the package and use Pacifist to extract and install the contents because "combo updaters" never work, make certain that you download directly from the cable-modem - no 802.xx for Updates - they might be corrupted by a passing telephone user, turn off all print jobs and exit all APPS, hold your tongue in the gap between the R upper canine and first premolar, whistle a happy tune and cross all digits. ..
CLEAR SARCASM
The UPDATES SO INSTALLED have a 0.00001 variance to the SD (dead on the MEAN) for all updates installed WITHOUT THESE PRECAUTIONS.
Come on! My machines live 24/7 - the 'books just go to sleep when transporting them - AND THE ONLY TIME THEY GO DOWN IS WHEN THE !@$#@ updates screw them up!
THIS IS APPLE - running DARWIN, BSD AND THEIR GUI ON TOP - we PAY FOR and EXPECT solid updates. TRUTH BE TOLD, most of them are clean and quick to install with no problems. BUT, the best method of having a clean update is to wait a week and check VersionTracker,/. and Apple's own forums for bug reports AND THEN INSTALL THEM.
OK, Wife and I have two laptops we use in the home network: iBook 60MHz, 256 MEG, 10.3.3 Airport 802.11b; pBook 867MHz, 640 MEG, 10.3.3, Airport Extreme (802.11g) and a 1st gen ABS 802.11b along with a Deskjet5800 with built in 802.11b.
After the update, the iBook still works without a problem. iBook print jobs to the Deskjet still process. The PB has far lower "bars" and, when sending a print job to the Deskjet the printer drops all but the first page of the job.
I had to reconfigure the Deskjet to ad hoc network mode and stand next to it to complete the print job yesterday.
I'd say that the response of the printer lends support to negative 802.11g changes in the new update.
The office is 100% 802.11g and has 3 ABS (a base, relay and terminal) and I haven't noticed any dropped print jobs to jet direct / HP printers (laserjet 4100 & Deskjet 1220c).
OK. Damnit. You and Jeffrey Dahmer are dam straight! The people who feel queasy about sadists and voyeur sadists are just intolerant jerks.
I still claim the right to point you out to passing young mothers and their children as an example of a seriously twisted mind, but I AM REALLY out on a limb when I express some concern about a snuff film.
Ask your Mom what she thinks. If she is still available, I'd bet she finds my position closer to hers....
There are certain U.S. federal statutes, some state constitutions and a host of state laws that grant US citizens some privacy. Great Britain has no similar set of privacy statutes. The officer is authorized to post these "public records".
Still, it amounts to very little more than a snuff film.
Some poor miserable person, in agony (or, a stupid fool we are better off without) has died. What in the hell are we doing "rubbernecking" on the information superhighway at this crash?
This is neither news for nerds (news for morbid voyeurs?) nor is the fact that a death has been photographed "stuff (snuff) that matters".
The Battle: the Dominion-Cardassian-Breen fleet v. the Federation-Romulan- Klingon fleet with a last-minute defection by the Cardassians. Six separate sets of craft: tenders, small corsairs and cruisers up to full battleships are represented for each fleet. That's 18 classes of craft all performing the kinds of support / defense / attack performance corresponding to a major naval and air battle on Earth.
The battle is brilliant. The craft are well executed (and Defiant III, or whatever) has some of the most complicated CGI flight I've ever seen in ANY medium. The 7th Season DVD's have a number of interviews with the art and computer graphics staff (the Okudas) and Ira Behr - the production problems are discussed, as are storyboards of the battle.
DS9 is IMHO the best of the Trek franchise and this final episode and battle have production values that equal any large-screen production.
Texans, Floridians and all of the citizens of the other states that allow "concealed carry" now have a new accessory: an iPod.
When feeling good and hostile, pack your piece (or two or three) and take a walk on the wild side. When the first Rock & Roll animal reaches for your 'pod, pop a cap in their a**.
Of course, make certain that the "mugger" isn't another 'pod person just wanting to jack-in.
Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! We can kill at will with no thanks (or blame) to Bill! This IS the best of all possible worlds.
Dr. Pangloss has reviewed my meds and I'm OK and you AREN'T.
Where did I put that SIG 229 9mm with the BIG CLIP?
The claims (and they reference and incorporate another "provisional" patent filed in July 2002) certainly seem to describe a method of selecting information from a menu / indexing system. The patent should fail as obvious given prior art. All utility patents must be for matter that is, "new, unique and nonobvious".
I also question the "best mode" disclosure: "[0034] While this invention has been described in terms of a preferred embodiment, there are alterations, permutations, and equivalents that fall within the scope of this invention. It should also be noted that there are many alternative ways of implementing both the process and apparatus of the present invention. It is therefore intended that the invention be interpreted as including all such alterations, permutations, and equivalents as fall within the true spirit and scope of the present invention. "
I don't think you should be able to waffle on best mode. But, I haven't done any applications in recent years and I can't say if this waffling on the best mode disclosure has become standard practice. I know of dozens of patents held invalid for failure to disclose "best mode", though....
Bottom line: if this issues, it will fail in a court challenge. (A great insight on my part where 90% of all patent challenges result in finding the patent invalid....it's sort of like how 98% of taxpayers lose in tax court)
Yep, that describes a menu system. However the text posted is not part of the claim(s) section of the application.
Claims cover what is "patented" and nothing but the claims and "best mode" disclosure are relevant to the patent *assuming it issues*.
Anybody want to post a link to the app? I don't have the time or the inclination to search the USPTO database to find this application (somewhere in the thousands of Apple Patents / Patent Applications).
Medical care is not a consumable. You do not set out one day to select a "baby blue" hysterectomy to go with the curtains.
Medicine (and my mother is a physician, a Tulane grad of 1950) has been changed from a profession with a fee-for-service to a complex group of "providers" and "managers" where the goal is PROFIT.
Medicine was not a profit center and hospitals were not-for-profit or charitable institutions for most of US History. The Reagan administration took a disturbing trend and made it mainstream: Add a layer or two of paper-pushers and call it "managed care" - AND THE INVISIBLE HAND OF THE MARKET WILL SAVE US MONEY!
It doesn't work. As I said at the outset: you don't start out your day to consume medical care as you would a lunch. Medicine is about disease, genetics, trauma, lifestyle choices and, MOST DEFINITELY, your education about your own health options. Physicians are trained and licensed to do just that.
Insurance companies should not practice medicine. Insurance companies should "pool risks" and provide universal coverage at a low profit-profile because it is unethical to kill people for money.
Post WWII the VA managed to do a decent job for the lowest paid in the US and BC/BS was a not-for-profit organization recognized for the quality of its coverage. BC/BS has now gone from a "mutual insurance company" (owned by the people who pay premiums) to a "stock insurance company" (a publically held insurance company listed on various exchanges). That transition (each state has a different insurance commissioner and the transfer from private to public ownership has taken 50 different actions to accomplish) stole a substantial amount of cash from the insured's and transferred it to the investment class.
Physicians make few decisions these days. The INSURACE COMPANIES tell the doctors what drugs the can use and how many patients to see in a day....
Medical ethics are not very ethical where a company run for profit (and the last time I looked, there were no M.D or D.O initials after the name of my local "HMO") orders a doctor to treat patients according to the best profit plan - rather than what the patient needs.
Doctors (I have two in the family - and two attorneys) should stand up for their patients and their professional rights. IT is about to happen: Union Physicians!
Get an attorney and seek a "trial de novo" in a "real" court. The Apple Co, cannot disclaim two of the implied warranties (fitness for an intended purpose and merchantability) for a certain period after purchase.
There is an exception to that old chestnut, "you can run, but you can't hide" - that exception being that you can run and you can hide in the Afgan-Pakistan-Hindu Kush borderlands.
I would not put anything past the current administration - but I suspect that the imposition of martial law with an emergency delay of the election would be somewhat easier to pull off than finding bin Laden.
If bin Laden is to be of any political use he will have to appear sometime before the political conventions this summer.
Moreover, he would have to be captured alive and be willing to sing the administration's favorite tunes: Saddam + al Queda = all of the world's threats to the US. That GWB got us all - we did it and that GWB was right and every registered democrat is a member of a sleeper cell dedicated to the overthrow of the USA.
I think only that kind of bin Laden could help the re-election chances of GWB. I don't think a few DNA samples from a shredded corpse would be of much use.
I'd love to have had NASA & the rest of the space programs working towards these ends since the moon landings. We might well be better off. The technology we use to discuss this today, along with the telemetry systems and materials science (to name a few) owe a debt to the Kennedy space program.
The support for the proposition that the current administration has ANY reason other than political gain for this proposal is lacking.
If we had 40 years of consistent manned spaceflight behind us, I'd expect that we would be able to assess the risks and costs of this "mandate". What we have is a group of really poor administrators at NASA who have killed two shuttle crews and the shuttle program through their gross errors in judgment.
We need an entirely new NASA-with an international mandate to cooperate and jointly budget new programs long before we start back to the moon.
It's not possible with the current NASA - all we will have will be bloated costs for proposals and a few happy contractors.
Dead on. Therre is no better H2G2 than the original BBC radio production. I like my kind of casting and my kind of character imagery and then somebody comes around and makes a mess of my kind of overdraft...
I went from my tapes (recorded off of NPR) to the CD's to my ripped copy on my iPod and pBook.
Slarty Bartfast and the fjords are a perfect answer to "let me jack into your iPod" requests!
Slashdot Mirror
I am saying exactly what I said: that NASA has been starved of funding since 1970 and that politicians and their appointees have required more and more from NASA with less and less.
This funding crisis leads to two murderous flights of the shuttle. Richard Feynman and a ton of other really brilliant people investigated the first disaster. We really didn't need to investigate much because the foam strikes were a known problem - but management denied it and had the crews continue to risk their lives.
Do you have any idea what those crewmembers would make in the private sector? Do you have any idea how little we pay these people? M.D., Ph.D.'s are common as are dual Ph.D.'s. The flight-crew people are committed to the space program, as are the majority of the engineers / scientists / and managers.
We have allowed the government to erode the safety standards to the degree that we have lost TWO entire crews.
Meanwhile, Adelphi communications had a Billion dollars stolen by three people. That would fund NASA for a decade...and the three wizards who stole that much money are going to have to give back only half....
Look, funny accounting is endemic today. It is a reflection of this era and government. It won't change until we have another Watergate.
My family name is O'Connor. Look up Rand's husband's name. You picked the wrong day to argue Ayn Rand.
I'm sorry to break this to you fella, but the world does not operate on Rand principals. Bush doesn't operate on Rand principals. Hell, Ayn Rand didn't operate on her own principals.
I grew up a few blocks away from the author, Ayn Rand. Remember that is all that she ever was: an ex-pat Russian author. She never held office and she never did anything but put pen to paper to create a utopia of her own imagination. She was a person who called selfishness a "virtue". If you have bothered to read her work you will recognize that as a title of one of her pieces of fiction.
Reality, Neo, is that we have a social construct and that a 95% marginal tax rate is quite appropriate to preserve the social construct. There is NOTHING different in taxing the wealthy at 95% (FWIW a "marginal" tax is a tax that applies after the entity being taxed accrues sufficient income to make it up onto the next marginal tax bracket...95% would kick in at just about $1meg in 1955 - during the Korean conflict) than it is to have sales taxes on food and medicine that have a disproportionate impact on the poor and aged.
Rand's worldview simply doesn't work. I suggest that you consider your own quotes and apply them to a leader... say, the President. He has never produced a single thing in his entire life. He lost money (OPM) in two failed oil companies and he dumped his stock in the second and ran with $800k - violating SEC reporting requirements for insider transactions.
He then "invested" his $800k in the Rangers - a less than 5% share. (I don't believe that I could buy into the Yankees just by asking pretty-please...) Thereafter the state of Texas used the power of Eminent Domain to take property away from homeowners to build a larger stadium. Then Bush decided that his ownership was a "conflict of interest" with his position as Govenor and he dumped the Rangers (now in their nice new stadium, built with tax dollars on property taken by government fiat) and realized $18meg.
Tell me how Mr. Bush is an "honest man" in Rand's definition? He produced nothing and he left a big mess for the state of Texas - those people he dispossessed of their property at $0.25 on the dollar were the heirs to the Curtis Mathes television fortune and after about 8 years their case made it to the Texas civil supreme court and they were paid the full value of their holdings with pre-judgment interest. Where did that come from: the taxpayers.
You are worried about NASA? NASA?
Do you remember ENRON? Do you remember the rolling blackouts in California? Enron had a few more dollars of funny money than NASA. So did Worldcom, Tyco and a host of others.
Have you noticed that the price of gasoline is over $2.00/gal? Those prices are rising when we have control over one nation known to have vast oil resources. Rand would have exploited Iraq's Oil. As conquerors we have that right - but we say the oil belongs to the conquered? Could it be that a few selfish people exploiting the oil and harming their nation at the same time?
Tell me again how that utopian world Rand created applies to this set of facts? Tell me how, ultimately, the selfish keep from being treated the same as the last of the French monarchy? It is exactly the same fact pattern. Rand could not defend the comparison of her world to the fall of French or the Russian monarchies. Both fell, and they fell because they mistreated the public. Where monarchs become too self-involved to recognize that they are pissing in their own pools - the pool cleaners come along and remove them.
Finally, Ms. Rand lived out her days on the upper west side of Manhattan. I saw her at least once a week during the years 1967 through 1980. She didn't get out much her last two years and I was in grad school and not at home. She was quite happy with her social security checks. Apparently she did not have as much money as she would have liked.
Did you just hear that flushing sound, toilet monster? Move on...this topic is dead to me. BTW, you are a FRWW and a romantic, to boot. Good luck- you will need it for the rest of your life.
RWW syndrome: assume that what you see or read in the popular media has relevance and substantive support for the issues that you want to believe in.
/. would dump on you for that one! - Let's say $2B/yr tax revenue from Bill's company and his top-paid staff. That works out to be approximately $1k/yr for every man, woman and child in the US. A $3k tax cut in my house...$4k for each of my siblings and $3k more for the living extended family - Bill and company - alone, could provide my immediate family with $14k in tax relief/yr. Hmm...
Let's be really honest, tell me that you believe *everything* that you see/hear/read on CNN. Then tell me that the paper records from the past 30 years are all bogus.
I stand by the historical record and the primary sources. You have to do quite a bit better than reference "CNN" if you expect to make an argument worth the electrons you control.
I pointed you to PRIMARY sources. Here's another: http://thomas.loc.gov/
I suggest that you go hunting for NASA's budget. It is not contained in one bill. Indeed there are aspects of the NASA budget that are under DOJ and DOD authorization and are part of the "black" budget for defense-related expenditures.
You blindly state that private industry would have, should have, could have -- but the fact is that they did not invent any of NASA's technology - except by filling orders as subcontractors. The NASA technology remains in the public domain and industry continues to derive financial benefits from the public sector. What part of that fact are you unhappy about?
Perhaps what you want is a price for everything: if NASA received royalties we might have an agency in the black.
Hmm, Bush came up with a retroactive tax cut...so much for the ban on ex post facto laws--let's make NASA technology the subject of a "recapture" act and collect royalties retroactively. Now that should warn your cockles.
Military spending is the single largest component of our national budget - and, yes I am factoring the costs of national security foisted off on the states into this calculation.
Try another primary source: http://www.bls.gov/ppi/ the producer price index is a historical and current source of the cost of goods and living in the US. Check it out and run the numbers...see what $350/yr would do for you. Remember to convert that sum to the dollar-value of the prior year (the net present value in prior year's dollars) when making your comparisons. If you really want to do it right there are several nasty variables you have to control for but you can compile a rough guesstimate.
While you are at it, look at the tax burden: the middle class now carries the nation and the lowest class carries the states through sales tax. Business paid 50% of our tax in the 1950-1967 period. Then Nixon started the swing of the pendulum that allows GE and other multinationals to avoid all federal tax. Sorry, but I'm all for taxing the companies that use our infrastructure to make a buck. If we pay taxes, they should pay taxes.
If the tax burden were shifted back to the 1960 schedule Mr. Gates' company would part with a portion of their income that would, at one point in the marginal rate schedule, reach 95% of their income. Billions from Bill and MSFT would do much more to lighten our burden than cutting NASA.
Moreover, I don't think you will come back at me with the old argument, "why, they NEED that money to innovate" when it's MSFT. Everybody on
RWW syndrome - just repeat the SOS. Your fair and balanced media will tell you all you need to know. Go watch the game now...BO will be on in a few hours
EXACTLY where do you come up with this BS? NASA has *not* had a budget increase in real dollars since 1970.
/. ers)
/ iraq/25billion/index.html
Do you remember the price of gasoline per gallon in 1970? How about Milk? What was the average salary for a family of four? What was NASA's budget?
Well, the US Government does keep track of those figures and they still publish them. Try the gov docs section of your local depository library or, http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/steccpi.html for a quick review.
Spin-offs from NASA research include telemetry systems in hospitals and ambulances, composite materials, computing, mapping, photometric analysis, side-looking radar....and on and on ALL WITHOUT PATENTS so industry could benefit without paying for the R&D. Private companies would lock down their innovations and extract every penny for their profits (see, e.g. the insurance and pharmaceutical industries).
Oh, what is our out-of-pocket cost for the dalliance in Iraq? Don't know? Hey, another $25 billion request was put before Congress this last week, alone. (that's 25 gigabucks to
A non-partisan review of the costs of the war v. money sent back to your state can be found at http://www.nationalpriorities.org/issues/military
No, NASA isn't the cost center...
RWW is the proper term for a person who simply mouths the platitudes of the nuts in power.
Bush and his policies just continue to cut a swath through the core of US agencies. No, he didn't do it out of a vacuum. . .
NASA has been under funded since the NIXON administration. Every year since the last of the Moon missions NASA has been yoked to the Albatross of politicians who demand more and more from smaller and smaller budgets. Remember Senator Garn hitching a ride?
What? A short list:
Spacelab - allowed to drop from a decaying orbit in 1979 - but the budget cuts made it apparent in 1977 that the station was doomed.
Spacehab, gravity & solar probes failed littering Near Earth Orbits with debris - in fact, the problem of tracking debris has become a major project for NASA and the DOD. Of the space going powers we, alone, are responsible for more crap in orbit than any other nation by at least an order of magnitude.
The Shuttle project has killed two crews and the hopes of many veteran staff. Attrition of experienced staff has hit a new high while budget constraints gut the applicant pool.
Just do a search for the term, "mission" at http://kscsearch.ksc.nasa.gov/ to see the last 30 years for yourself.
What does Bush do in the wake of the latest shuttle disaster? He cuts funds for the Hubble and calls for a manned mission to Mars. The mere pennies to save Hubble he denies because his "core 'Christian' constituency" has issues with the idea of cosmology. Destroy one of the most effective deep space imaging systems ever and mandate manned missions to Mars! All of this must be accomplished with ever-decreasing budgets.
NASA in financial disarray? How could it be anything else...
Backup dump truck...
.
/. and Apple's own forums for bug reports AND THEN INSTALL THEM.
unload: sarcasm:
Yes: run the Cron scripts, empty the trash, make certain you have enough free hard disk space for the upgrade, be certain you are running an account with administrator status, have TechTool 4 check everything, be certain that the swap files are in good shape and that they have enough space, consider optimizing the main drive, disconnect all firewire and USB devices, shut down the BLUETOOTH keyboard and mouse, run DiskWarrior 3.02 from the new boot CD you created three days ago (but, first do all of this before downloading the update to create the new CD), plug in your pBook or iBook, make certain that the G5 is on a UPS with enough juice to complete the install, download the package and use Pacifist to extract and install the contents because "combo updaters" never work, make certain that you download directly from the cable-modem - no 802.xx for Updates - they might be corrupted by a passing telephone user, turn off all print jobs and exit all APPS, hold your tongue in the gap between the R upper canine and first premolar, whistle a happy tune and cross all digits. .
CLEAR SARCASM
The UPDATES SO INSTALLED have a 0.00001 variance to the SD (dead on the MEAN) for all updates installed WITHOUT THESE PRECAUTIONS.
Come on! My machines live 24/7 - the 'books just go to sleep when transporting them - AND THE ONLY TIME THEY GO DOWN IS WHEN THE !@$#@ updates screw them up!
THIS IS APPLE - running DARWIN, BSD AND THEIR GUI ON TOP - we PAY FOR and EXPECT solid updates. TRUTH BE TOLD, most of them are clean and quick to install with no problems. BUT, the best method of having a clean update is to wait a week and check VersionTracker,
Because I have learned my lesson: don't live on the bleeding edge if you have real work to get done.
I'm fat, dumb and happy and staying with 3.3.1 for the next few weeks. I'll let others play around with this update till the bugs are worked out.
Thanks to ^Fish Sun^ for the reversion page. That saved my entire day.
OK, Wife and I have two laptops we use in the home network: iBook 60MHz, 256 MEG, 10.3.3 Airport 802.11b; pBook 867MHz, 640 MEG, 10.3.3, Airport Extreme (802.11g) and a 1st gen ABS 802.11b along with a Deskjet5800 with built in 802.11b.
After the update, the iBook still works without a problem. iBook print jobs to the Deskjet still process. The PB has far lower "bars" and, when sending a print job to the Deskjet the printer drops all but the first page of the job.
I had to reconfigure the Deskjet to ad hoc network mode and stand next to it to complete the print job yesterday.
I'd say that the response of the printer lends support to negative 802.11g changes in the new update.
The office is 100% 802.11g and has 3 ABS (a base, relay and terminal) and I haven't noticed any dropped print jobs to jet direct / HP printers (laserjet 4100 & Deskjet 1220c).
OK. Damnit. You and Jeffrey Dahmer are dam straight! The people who feel queasy about sadists and voyeur sadists are just intolerant jerks.
I still claim the right to point you out to passing young mothers and their children as an example of a seriously twisted mind, but I AM REALLY out on a limb when I express some concern about a snuff film.
Ask your Mom what she thinks. If she is still available, I'd bet she finds my position closer to hers....
Of course, if she didn't - you wouldn't be here.
Flamebait? Nah, terminal autoignition.
There are certain U.S. federal statutes, some state constitutions and a host of state laws that grant US citizens some privacy. Great Britain has no similar set of privacy statutes. The officer is authorized to post these "public records".
Still, it amounts to very little more than a snuff film.
Tasteless, tired and foolish.
Sadism is taking pleasure in another person's pain.
Some poor miserable person, in agony (or, a stupid fool we are better off without) has died. What in the hell are we doing "rubbernecking" on the information superhighway at this crash?
This is neither news for nerds (news for morbid voyeurs?) nor is the fact that a death has been photographed "stuff (snuff) that matters".
Let's put this thread (and the subject) to rest.
The Battle: the Dominion-Cardassian-Breen fleet v. the Federation-Romulan- Klingon fleet with a last-minute defection by the Cardassians. Six separate sets of craft: tenders, small corsairs and cruisers up to full battleships are represented for each fleet. That's 18 classes of craft all performing the kinds of support / defense / attack performance corresponding to a major naval and air battle on Earth.
The battle is brilliant. The craft are well executed (and Defiant III, or whatever) has some of the most complicated CGI flight I've ever seen in ANY medium. The 7th Season DVD's have a number of interviews with the art and computer graphics staff (the Okudas) and Ira Behr - the production problems are discussed, as are storyboards of the battle.
DS9 is IMHO the best of the Trek franchise and this final episode and battle have production values that equal any large-screen production.
Texans, Floridians and all of the citizens of the other states that allow "concealed carry" now have a new accessory: an iPod.
When feeling good and hostile, pack your piece (or two or three) and take a walk on the wild side. When the first Rock & Roll animal reaches for your 'pod, pop a cap in their a**.
Of course, make certain that the "mugger" isn't another 'pod person just wanting to jack-in.
Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! We can kill at will with no thanks (or blame) to Bill! This IS the best of all possible worlds.
Dr. Pangloss has reviewed my meds and I'm OK and you AREN'T.
Where did I put that SIG 229 9mm with the BIG CLIP?
Thanks for the link.
The claims (and they reference and incorporate another "provisional" patent filed in July 2002) certainly seem to describe a method of selecting information from a menu / indexing system. The patent should fail as obvious given prior art. All utility patents must be for matter that is, "new, unique and nonobvious".
I also question the "best mode" disclosure: "[0034] While this invention has been described in terms of a preferred embodiment, there are alterations, permutations, and equivalents that fall within the scope of this invention. It should also be noted that there are many alternative ways of implementing both the process and apparatus of the present invention. It is therefore intended that the invention be interpreted as including all such alterations, permutations, and equivalents as fall within the true spirit and scope of the present invention. "
I don't think you should be able to waffle on best mode. But, I haven't done any applications in recent years and I can't say if this waffling on the best mode disclosure has become standard practice. I know of dozens of patents held invalid for failure to disclose "best mode", though....
Bottom line: if this issues, it will fail in a court challenge. (A great insight on my part where 90% of all patent challenges result in finding the patent invalid....it's sort of like how 98% of taxpayers lose in tax court)
Yep, that describes a menu system. However the text posted is not part of the claim(s) section of the application.
Claims cover what is "patented" and nothing but the claims and "best mode" disclosure are relevant to the patent *assuming it issues*.
Anybody want to post a link to the app? I don't have the time or the inclination to search the USPTO database to find this application (somewhere in the thousands of Apple Patents / Patent Applications).
Sigless and proud of it.
Medical care is not a consumable. You do not set out one day to select a "baby blue" hysterectomy to go with the curtains.
Medicine (and my mother is a physician, a Tulane grad of 1950) has been changed from a profession with a fee-for-service to a complex group of "providers" and "managers" where the goal is PROFIT.
Medicine was not a profit center and hospitals were not-for-profit or charitable institutions for most of US History. The Reagan administration took a disturbing trend and made it mainstream: Add a layer or two of paper-pushers and call it "managed care" - AND THE INVISIBLE HAND OF THE MARKET WILL SAVE US MONEY!
It doesn't work. As I said at the outset: you don't start out your day to consume medical care as you would a lunch. Medicine is about disease, genetics, trauma, lifestyle choices and, MOST DEFINITELY, your education about your own health options. Physicians are trained and licensed to do just that.
Insurance companies should not practice medicine. Insurance companies should "pool risks" and provide universal coverage at a low profit-profile because it is unethical to kill people for money.
Post WWII the VA managed to do a decent job for the lowest paid in the US and BC/BS was a not-for-profit organization recognized for the quality of its coverage. BC/BS has now gone from a "mutual insurance company" (owned by the people who pay premiums) to a "stock insurance company" (a publically held insurance company listed on various exchanges). That transition (each state has a different insurance commissioner and the transfer from private to public ownership has taken 50 different actions to accomplish) stole a substantial amount of cash from the insured's and transferred it to the investment class.
Whose money, indeed?
GROW UP.
Physicians make few decisions these days. The INSURACE COMPANIES tell the doctors what drugs the can use and how many patients to see in a day....
Medical ethics are not very ethical where a company run for profit (and the last time I looked, there were no M.D or D.O initials after the name of my local "HMO") orders a doctor to treat patients according to the best profit plan - rather than what the patient needs.
Doctors (I have two in the family - and two attorneys) should stand up for their patients and their professional rights. IT is about to happen: Union Physicians!
Get an attorney and seek a "trial de novo" in a "real" court. The Apple Co, cannot disclaim two of the implied warranties (fitness for an intended purpose and merchantability) for a certain period after purchase.
MOVE NOW!
Written on a 12" pBook
There is an exception to that old chestnut, "you can run, but you can't hide" - that exception being that you can run and you can hide in the Afgan-Pakistan-Hindu Kush borderlands.
I would not put anything past the current administration - but I suspect that the imposition of martial law with an emergency delay of the election would be somewhat easier to pull off than finding bin Laden.
If bin Laden is to be of any political use he will have to appear sometime before the political conventions this summer.
Moreover, he would have to be captured alive and be willing to sing the administration's favorite tunes: Saddam + al Queda = all of the world's threats to the US. That GWB got us all - we did it and that GWB was right and every registered democrat is a member of a sleeper cell dedicated to the overthrow of the USA.
I think only that kind of bin Laden could help the re-election chances of GWB. I don't think a few DNA samples from a shredded corpse would be of much use.
Bush and the boys are not forever - and they certainly aren't "the USA" by any means.
I'd love to have had NASA & the rest of the space programs working towards these ends since the moon landings. We might well be better off. The technology we use to discuss this today, along with the telemetry systems and materials science (to name a few) owe a debt to the Kennedy space program.
The support for the proposition that the current administration has ANY reason other than political gain for this proposal is lacking.
If we had 40 years of consistent manned spaceflight behind us, I'd expect that we would be able to assess the risks and costs of this "mandate". What we have is a group of really poor administrators at NASA who have killed two shuttle crews and the shuttle program through their gross errors in judgment.
We need an entirely new NASA-with an international mandate to cooperate and jointly budget new programs long before we start back to the moon.
It's not possible with the current NASA - all we will have will be bloated costs for proposals and a few happy contractors.
Dead on. Therre is no better H2G2 than the original BBC radio production. I like my kind of casting and my kind of character imagery and then somebody comes around and makes a mess of my kind of overdraft...
I went from my tapes (recorded off of NPR) to the CD's to my ripped copy on my iPod and pBook.
Slarty Bartfast and the fjords are a perfect answer to "let me jack into your iPod" requests!
Flame-bait and off topic? It's a joke, but the point remains valid:
/. post.
No coder could make a living if their code were as full of grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors as the average
I find the dichotomy ironic.
THE ANSWER! /. folks never have enough money. Apparently the reason is a lack of interactive / mandatory spell checking.
/. "compiled" and ran debugging tools on their posts on ebay the easy money would roll in!
.that /.'ers all attended!
If all of the coders on
Imagine the market for 1st Ed. K&R!
The subject line, save for the opening, was a subway ad I saw every day for a decade....apparently some dictation school. .
So long, Karma. It was nice while it lasted.