Of course what is driving GPU technology at the moment is mostly Bitcoins and crypto-currencies in general. Ever since folks figured out that setting up a server farm of hundreds of GPUs could literally print money, the financial incentive to buy them up has been enormous. Their use in graphics is sort of a sideline when viewed from that perspective. If you can sell a GPU for more than it was a year ago, that is precisely the reason.
Yes, AI technology has been doing well too as has virtual reality stuff. Research in those areas is decades old though and actually pre-dates Byte magazine in terms of some of the seminal software that was developed in those areas. State of the art for Virtual Reality is sadly Minecraft and some knock off clones of various kinds (like Medieval Engineers or Eco). There is a reason why Notch was a huge fan of Oculus Rift when prototypes first started to go public.
The huge area of AI research that has also taken off is in the financial markets. Predictive AI algorithms that can identify trends in various securities and foreign currencies has made a great many multi-millionaires and billionaires even (Warren Buffet if I need to identify but one of those). That has sucked up some of the best and brightest talent in the software industry where creating a better algorithm earns both the author and the company who implements that software some serious money. It wouldn't surprise me at all if GPUs were used there as well for the same reason they are being used by cryptocurrencies.
ReactOS and WINE have been working together since practically day one of both projects. Since both are working on the Windows NT API, a fair bit of the code is mutually interchangable (but obviously not 100%). There have been developers who have contributed to both projects. Neither will be absorbed into the other community as if that were to happen it would have happened a long time ago.
As far as interest, you need to keep in mind that Linux floundered a whole lot until IBM took interest.... in part because Linux permitted the company to use its mainframe business as a platform for web servers. I don't need to go into details, but that is part of what brought the big $$$ and developer interest into Linux and brought in the Nazgul lawyers to actually defend Linux against Microsoft in that epic battle with SCO. ReactOS doesn't have that sort of support or killer app yet.
I would imagine if Windows 8 support ends, ReactOS might get a bit of a review though and certainly interest by companies seeking to maintain older Windows machines. I actually know about at least a few new computers that are shipping with Windows 3.1 oddly enough. Old software on new hardware is still a real thing where if it does the job there is no point in getting it updated. While with a whole lot of digging you can get licenses for that ancient OS and even MS-DOS 6.0 or earlier, often it is simply easier to use the open source operating systems like FreeDOS and ReactOS as they support current hardware even if they use the older APIs.
You would have to let heavy industry into our most well known natural park.
How would a large scale industrial facility built 1000 miles from Yellowstone be different than existing heavy industries that are well within that same radius?
You hear about people getting triggered over the Keystone pipeline. Now just imagine what happens when you try shipping other liquids (or pipelines that could be converted into petroleum lines in a pinch) over similar distances and further. Shipping hot water anywhere beyond a few miles from the generating plant isn't worth the hassle.
A terawatt scale generator plant would definitely produce a whole lot of useful energy for the region though.
Something that would make the Voyager spacecraft stand out as something interesting to look at is that the albedo would be incredibly high (it is far brighter for its size & mass due to the refined metal panels and protective gold-plated foil surrounding the key instruments) and the spectrum of light coming from it would look almost unique compared to any other object. It looks manufactured and can be detected as a manufactured object.
A somewhat similar object is a near-Earth asteroid that has a really high Titanium reflection that many astronomers seem to think is actually a spent 3rd stage engine and rocket core for a Saturn V used in the Apollo missions. It was detected as an asteroid (and cataloged as such) but the spectral analysis shows it to be unlike any other asteroid seen. If space mining ever becomes a thing, I'm sure that will be one of the prime early objects to check out in detail
Oddly, he actually did change his real legal name to Kim Dotcom. While born as Kim Schmitz, you can change your name to any crazy thing you want. He just decided to cash into the internet bubble.
It isn't a lame pseudonym, it is just a lame name that he actually chose for himself. It should say something about his sense of taste too.
I'm pretty sure that the flag is necessary according to both the Geneva Convention (since it is technically a government uniform) and it is also needed according to the Outer Space Treaty in terms of what country is responsible for that astronaut's actions. It is legally required by international law and conventions of space travel.
Furthermore I think it actually looks like a mock-up
Nope, that is the final design, minus a few tweaks. SpaceX engineers have actually been wearing it for human factors design tests.
Take the metric-vs-imperial error that took down the Mars Climate Orbiter as a case study in how well knowledge management is accomplished across teams of rocket scientists.
That doesn't get to the level of a major NASA contract simply getting lost or the final report getting buried like is being done with several FOIA requests from NASA.
What you are describing is making sure everybody understands the data they are receiving and that they are working on the same problem. Essentially it is dealing with an API (to use a software analogy) or interface specification between parts that got screwed up there. Of course I've seen extremely poor documentations on APIs, so such problems are hardly unique to just NASA. I'll bet you a good sized pizza that the unit types were very clearly marked and documented on that Mars Climate Orbiter and it was mostly a lack of paying attention to details which got everybody in trouble including a clash of cultures where multiple groups assumed things that simply weren't true.
As one of the first agencies to move to electronic documents in the federal government and even having one of the first e-mail systems, it is sort of a joke that NASA can't find documents. While the formats and nature of the documents have changed considerably over the years (that sort of happens with pioneers in technology) it isn't all that hard.
> Add to it that NASA is full of geeks and all that who probably don't really give a hoot about filing or other bureaucratic issues
That isn't the NASA I'm familiar with. They take bureaucratic paperwork very seriously and document everything. For much of their engineering work (I'm personally familiar with the STS software development team but it applies to other areas of engineering and contracting work) they are literally the gold standard of documentation. When software engineers are considered prolific because they wrote 4k lines of software in a full year and others did less, you start to see just how much paperwork really happens.
Add to that NASA issues tons of contracts all the time, and it's likely the one you want is in a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door marked "Beware of the Leopard". in the cellar where the lights have gone as had the stairs.
Nice reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
That may be perception of the worst aspects of a bureaucracy, but the reality is that everything in terms of contracts and even many of the reports is likely sitting on a server at the NASA HQ in DC. Anything needing appropriations will go through the HQ anyway and not be approved at individual centers unless it is such a small project as to be funded with purely discretionary funding. That is like office supplies and stuff under about $10k, not any major contract at all and thresholds might even be lower for all but center chiefs.
It is far more likely that people getting these FOIA requests are simply lazy and don't want to be bothered.... with their immediate bosses encouraging them to not bother with responding either.
Us humans barely understand our own technology that's older than a few 100 years, the Antikythera mechanism, Stonehenge, Inca's and Egyptians all had very basic tools and crude calculations compared to ours and we barely understand both what they had to say and what they did with it, most of it still being a mystery.
The Antikythera mechanism is pretty well understood and many of the wheels have been mapped to celestial phenomena (like the movement of planets during the times of the ancient Greeks), cultural events (like the Olympics), and even a simple calendar. A really neat feature is a part that predicts the timing of solar eclipses in Europe based upon patterns the Greeks observed in the past.
Stonehenge is a bit more complicated because the culture who built it didn't leave much in terms of written records or explanations of their rituals, although it is plainly obvious that the observation of equinoxes and solstices were integral parts of its purpose along with perhaps other celestial bodies including the Moon. That isn't even unique to Britain as such solar observatories have been found in other cultures on completely different continents. The Mayan observatories which did the same sort of thing even have some written records that describe their use and oddly follow the patterns of Venus as a major component.
In contrast crazy stuff like the Cloaca Maxima, something that is as great of a masterpiece of engineering compared to the pyramids and any of the other ancient "wonders of the world", is extremely well documented including instructions that have been preserved that were essentially a maintenance manual. It is very understood as to its purpose, and it is even recorded as to who made it in the first place (not just a culture.... actual names of real people) and why it was made besides the obvious of flushing manure out to sea.
100k years from now, the English language is still going to be understood by at least scholars and English Wikipedia articles about the Voyager spacecraft and possibly NASA/JPL manuals on its operation may even very likely survive to that time for future archeologists to be able to understand this artifact of humanity. If an alien species (aka something not from the Solar System) finds this spacecraft, they will have those scholars from the Earth to explain it and pull out those JPL manuals to even re-activate the scientific instruments after some repair of the vehicle and replacement of the RTG fuel. It will also be very well preserved in 100k years or even a million years.
Untapped mysteries of ancient cultures is just a scam made by people trying to sell books.... often about UFOs and other nonsense that is being generous to call pseudo science. While some thoughts about those ancient devices and buildings is conjecture and speculation, there is some sound reasoning as to why it is thought to be identified. I don't buy your premise here.
The instructions on how to decyper the phonograph is also listed on the outside of the spacecraft in a pretty simple symbolic code and some picture diagrams on how to recover the information.
I think far more likely that descendants of folks currently alive here on the Earth are going to head into space in a couple of centuries and add on some beacon to the probe as some sort of historical monument and a sort of time capsule. This is a famous artifact of mankind that could very likely be treated the way the pyramids are thought of today. Like the Library of Alexandria, it might be protected by some governments but when that government falls it might even be looted and taken as scrap or pulled apart by future archeologists.
I agree that the odds of it being found by somebody other than mankind is awfully remote. It certainly won't be taken out by a random passing by Klingon cruiser (as was depicted in a Star Trek movie).
You are complaining about the first past the post voting system, which as a tendency produces two major political parties and shuts out 3rd parties except when one of the major parties flounders. That historically did happen with the Whigs in the 1840s-1860's when the Republicans took over starting as a 3rd party and getting one of the major party slots.
There are multiple voting systems that encourage groups besides the majors to be involved including IRV, approval voting, and others. I happen to like IRV (sometimes called transferable or ranked preference voting), but frankly almost anything is better than first past the post. A system where out of ten candidates who are running the winner can be somebody who gets just 11% of the vote and pisses off the other 89% of the voters is not something I call sane or able to rule a society.
All you are saying is that you reject majority rule for minority rule then.
Absolutely! One of the points of the electoral college is that support for a candidate can't be geographically limited. You need to get a broad consensus across a whole bunch of different states in likely multiple regions in order to get elected President. If you are talking majority votes for office winning, that is the point of the U.S. House of Representatives.... which was designed from the beginning to be precisely that kind of political body where its representatives would be chosen in that manner.
Note also that the U.S. Constitution doesn't even require a single vote by citizens of a state to be cast in order to determine who becomes electors. It could be a foot race, a game of poker, people picked out at random like jury duty, or some other process. It is entirely up to the state legislature to determine how those votes are allocated.... which in most states happens to be a state-wide contest that claims all of the electors for a particular political party.
The President of the USA was never intended to be chosen by the majority of voters in a national election.
In order to get a Social Security card, you need to have an ID of some sort. Heck, to collect most welfare benefits you also need an ID card. You also need an ID simply to enter most courtrooms. It is also neither complicated nor incredibly difficult to obtain an ID card in most states other than you need to know how to read a form and fill it out or get somebody you know to help you with that process if you are illiterate.
It really isn't an onerous task to obtain an ID and it is needed for so many things besides voting that having the ID is simply a part of being a citizen. I suppose somebody who is homeless and has never had a job with a W-2 form and living entirely on hand-outs while living completely off the grid might have a problem voting. How many people are we talking about in that situation though?
Voter impersonation has never and will never be a credible threat.
And places where you have a 110% voter turnout is never a credible threat?
I personally know of an abandoned trailer park.... that had several hundred registered voters and people from that trailer park that actually voted in recent elections (according to the county clerk). By abandoned I mean literally there is nothing but an empty parking lot there and no homes of any kind or even homeless folks.
Having meatbags double vote is the least effective and most dangerous method of electoral fraud.
That is somewhat true, although it depends on if the voting judges involved give a damn about what is happening. I'll agree though that the place where voting fraud is most likely to happen is at the point of those collecting the votes. In other words at the local voting precinct. If those judges collude and let people in who shouldn't vote or "stuff the ballot box" and do other kinds of voting fraud, it is still very easy to get into the system. If spread around to multiple precincts/districts, elections can get changed.
That is assuming the internal party politics permits free speech, the ability to contest leadership, and the ability to criticize with the intent to replace policies that might be harmful to that above mentioned free speech.
A single party system is not the same if the ability to criticize is non-existent and the only people who can aspire to any sort of leadership role are those hand selected by the top brass of that party. I know you can find similar complaints in multi-party contested elections, but at least in that situation you can form your own political party if you aren't getting anywhere.
For those that think SpaceX is soaking up piles of investor's money, it should be pointed out that SpaceX hasn't had any additional investment since the Fidelity/Google round of investment that arguably wasn't even for operations but rather for the satellite constellation.
More to the point, I think SpaceX is laughing all of the way to the bank right now and making tremendous profits off of its rockets right now. That they might be earning even more profit from each launch due to reflown boosters and space capsules (CRS-11 is a reused Dragon that was originally flown on CRS-4), they certainly seem to be able to meet payroll, pay for major expansions, and engage in R&D for future designs on their own dime. As to if this particular area of operations is profitable yet, I agree that remains to be seen.
All told, I would think that SpaceX has likely put in about a quarter of a billion to a billion dollars worth of R&D resources into its reusable rocket core development program. As per some discussion Elon Musk had after the reflown core happened, SpaceX plans on recouping that investment over the next several years.
Well, if we don't want the Russians to interfere with "elections", then maybe we should stop having them!
That worked out really well for Germany in the 1930's. And then worked out wonderfully for the rest of the world in the 1940's.:)
To be honest, I think that a much better system would be to simply hold a lottery made up of interested citizens that could serve in a legislative capacity and help make the laws rather than holding elections. This is called a Sortion election, something that even dates back to ancient Athens as a governing body selection process. IMHO those who would serve in such legislative bodies would be far more representative of ordinary citizens, hold proportionally similar views of the general public at-large, and such a selection process would be completely free of all of the corruption that comes from the lobbying groups that finance political campaigns. Lobbyists would still exist, but their influence would be substantially diminished and would really only be able to represent their constituency alone. Bribery would need to be blatant... and ineffective so far as their "bought" politicians would be leaving office at the end of the term.
If you feel that you need experienced legislators on a national or federal level, you could have such candidates for a national legislature (aka the U.S. Congress) made up of those who have served for some time on a state or even local level.
There are obviously some problems with such a selection process, but I think that would be far less complicated than the current electoral process.
I would say that the number of elected positions is something that is beneficial and relevant. The reason why so many positions are up for election is precisely because we live, in American, in a representative democracy. All of those positions, including clerks (you really don't know what those clerks do, don't you) are very important and powerful positions if you really get into it. A clerk in this case is actually the head figure for a whole office and is a significant executive office. Think of it more like a cabinet secretary on the federal government level rather than a lowly peon bureaucrat.
Where I live, the county clerk is actually the top official in charge of elections and the ultimate arbitrator and decider of election rules and procedures before involving state courts. If anything, keeping that as a separate office directly accountable to the voters of that jurisdiction means that screwups of the election process can be pointed at directly to that person.
There's nothing to run on to be a judge.
On the contrary. What should be happening with judicial elections is that the judicial rulings should be held up and those judges should be made accountable for those rulings on behalf of the citizens they serve. Federal judges aren't elected, only local judges (where relevant I might add too). That means you need to also pay attention to local issues at hand.
I have seen lousy judges removed from their position, something that generally would not happen in a similar situation if the only removal mechanism was merely impeachment by legislators that are mostly lawyers and former judges themselves that have a conflict of interest in removing those judges.
All in all, the point of all of those offices and the huge number of positions you are complaining about is a result of a philosophy that government ought to be as decentralized as possible and accountable to those on the lowest level of organization as possible. Mistakes can and indeed to happen, but your ability to "vote with your feet" is much easier to do in that sort of situation compared to a highly centralized government where all you do is cast a single vote once every few years for a political party alone (as does happen in some countries). This is also something that makes America unique, perhaps, and it is a part of the "Great American Experiment" that is the American form of governance.
Besides, I've seen and even been involved with the process of manually counting ballots without machines from those kind of elections. It is slow, tedious, and boring, but it can be done and the use of all of the ballot machines is mainly because those running the elections are simply lazy and don't want to bother actually doing their jobs. The ability to hack a voting booth is simply unacceptable and the result of piss poor planning on the part of the election officials who set it up, not because of the number of issues or offices that are found on the ballot.
One of the problems I see is how local and state governments want to do elections on the cheap and save a few bucks with the election process. That is also why they buy machines from the lowest bidder, don't care about securing the voting machines (like the infamous Dibold crap), and don't bother verifying a voting trail to make sure the elections are secure. Heck, a chain of custody for the votes themselves is often hard to prove from the voter to the final voting total as well.
In other words, a whole lot of room is there ripe for fraud even without Russia getting into the act.
As much as at first I didn't like the idea, I'm really warming up to public funding of elections too. While not perfect, such public funding where candidates have the chance to present their platforms mostly free of financial campaign raising is also a good way to get rid of foreign influence too, as well as to debate ideas and not simply let the wealthiest candidate win. While a Russian diplomat can presumably bribe a member of Congress or a presidential candidate with a few million dollars, public funding would move that into a flagrant bribe and not merely something that can be whitewashed with being a campaign contribution through 3rd parties (since foreign governments aren't permitted legally to finance political campaigns... not that stops it from happening though).
Every legislative body that I've been involved with, including even as a delegate at a political convention, has had the ability to initiate and propose a law. For crying out loud, Parliament (aka the "English Parliament") House of Commons can definitely initiate legislation and members routinely do so. With the U.S. Congress, it is expected that literally every member of Congress initiate and propose new laws of almost every sort. They might consult with lawyers or special parliamentarians to get the wording into legalese and consult with lobbyists or others with interest in the legislation to get it crafted, but it is that legislator who initiates the law themself and not some nameless bureaucrat. Then again, I suppose "Congress" isn't a parliament, so there might be some fine distinction I'm not aware of directly.
For crying out loud, I've personally initiated legislative concepts. Then again, I've even personally forced my state legislature (I'm an American BTW) into a special legislative session because of a legislative petition that I helped co-sponsor. That was merely as an ordinary citizen who found a weak and very unpopular law and got it changed. I even have the ability as a mere citizen to initiate new laws, assuming that I can get the support of my fellow citizens in approving a referendum where I live.
The idea that a parliament can be formed where members of that body can't initiate legislation is utterly weird to me. It makes them at best an advisory body, and certainly makes them as a legislative body a real joke. I wonder why people even bother running as an MEP if what they do is to simply rubber stamp stuff some other non-elected body has come up with?
Except it isn't like any real parliament except perhaps a weaker version of the UK House of Lords. The EU Parliament can't initiate any legislation at all, only vote on stuff that has already been submitted by unelected bureaucrats that can't even be modified through amendments. Even if the EU Parliament votes a resounding "No" on some legislation, it can still pass into law and impact the lives of European citizens.
MEPs are there for show, not for substance. They really don't matter other than to make headlines and dramatic speeches that have no substance because it is really nothing more than a debate club. If anything, individual citizens have far more political clout at the United Nations and the resolutions that get passed in New York... and damn little even there that matters worth anything.
If the EU Parliament had some teeth, could propose new legislation and have it mean something, and if it could really be a governing body over the bureaucracy of the EU, you might have a point. Decisions governing the EU simply don't happen in that body at all.
The reason why Elon Musk isn't working on the Hyperloop himself is mainly because his work on other projects is cut out for him. As if building a rocket company sending ever heavier payloads into space isn't enough with several launches per month being regular and a whole new rocket (the Falcon Heavy) ready to debut in a few months, he is also rolling out a new automobile model (the Tesla Model X), putting a major satellite telecommunications constellation for high speed internet service (essentially launching a whole new global ISP).
If Elon Musk feels that he would be overwhelmed with the task of trying to start up the idea of the Hyperloop, I certainly don't blame him at all for saying it would be too much on his plate to properly get it accomplished.
That said, I agree with you that if this is something which would make a huge profit, it would already be done by now. The test tracks that I've seen are incredibly pathetic, with the Hyperloop One track not even being in a vacuum tube at all but instead simply an amusement park ride at best. Indeed I've seen far more innovation from roller coaster designers than what I've seen with these guys. For that matter, installing a Hyperloop into an amusement park would be a fantastic test track that could put actual paying customers into pods and act as a good proof of concept as folks could travel from one end of the park to another like the Disneyland monorail is able to accomplish (another fanciful transportation system that is still mostly confined to amusement parks).
Slashdot Mirror
Of course what is driving GPU technology at the moment is mostly Bitcoins and crypto-currencies in general. Ever since folks figured out that setting up a server farm of hundreds of GPUs could literally print money, the financial incentive to buy them up has been enormous. Their use in graphics is sort of a sideline when viewed from that perspective. If you can sell a GPU for more than it was a year ago, that is precisely the reason.
Yes, AI technology has been doing well too as has virtual reality stuff. Research in those areas is decades old though and actually pre-dates Byte magazine in terms of some of the seminal software that was developed in those areas. State of the art for Virtual Reality is sadly Minecraft and some knock off clones of various kinds (like Medieval Engineers or Eco). There is a reason why Notch was a huge fan of Oculus Rift when prototypes first started to go public.
The huge area of AI research that has also taken off is in the financial markets. Predictive AI algorithms that can identify trends in various securities and foreign currencies has made a great many multi-millionaires and billionaires even (Warren Buffet if I need to identify but one of those). That has sucked up some of the best and brightest talent in the software industry where creating a better algorithm earns both the author and the company who implements that software some serious money. It wouldn't surprise me at all if GPUs were used there as well for the same reason they are being used by cryptocurrencies.
ReactOS and WINE have been working together since practically day one of both projects. Since both are working on the Windows NT API, a fair bit of the code is mutually interchangable (but obviously not 100%). There have been developers who have contributed to both projects. Neither will be absorbed into the other community as if that were to happen it would have happened a long time ago.
As far as interest, you need to keep in mind that Linux floundered a whole lot until IBM took interest.... in part because Linux permitted the company to use its mainframe business as a platform for web servers. I don't need to go into details, but that is part of what brought the big $$$ and developer interest into Linux and brought in the Nazgul lawyers to actually defend Linux against Microsoft in that epic battle with SCO. ReactOS doesn't have that sort of support or killer app yet.
I would imagine if Windows 8 support ends, ReactOS might get a bit of a review though and certainly interest by companies seeking to maintain older Windows machines. I actually know about at least a few new computers that are shipping with Windows 3.1 oddly enough. Old software on new hardware is still a real thing where if it does the job there is no point in getting it updated. While with a whole lot of digging you can get licenses for that ancient OS and even MS-DOS 6.0 or earlier, often it is simply easier to use the open source operating systems like FreeDOS and ReactOS as they support current hardware even if they use the older APIs.
How would a large scale industrial facility built 1000 miles from Yellowstone be different than existing heavy industries that are well within that same radius?
You hear about people getting triggered over the Keystone pipeline. Now just imagine what happens when you try shipping other liquids (or pipelines that could be converted into petroleum lines in a pinch) over similar distances and further. Shipping hot water anywhere beyond a few miles from the generating plant isn't worth the hassle.
A terawatt scale generator plant would definitely produce a whole lot of useful energy for the region though.
Something that would make the Voyager spacecraft stand out as something interesting to look at is that the albedo would be incredibly high (it is far brighter for its size & mass due to the refined metal panels and protective gold-plated foil surrounding the key instruments) and the spectrum of light coming from it would look almost unique compared to any other object. It looks manufactured and can be detected as a manufactured object.
A somewhat similar object is a near-Earth asteroid that has a really high Titanium reflection that many astronomers seem to think is actually a spent 3rd stage engine and rocket core for a Saturn V used in the Apollo missions. It was detected as an asteroid (and cataloged as such) but the spectral analysis shows it to be unlike any other asteroid seen. If space mining ever becomes a thing, I'm sure that will be one of the prime early objects to check out in detail
Oddly, he actually did change his real legal name to Kim Dotcom. While born as Kim Schmitz, you can change your name to any crazy thing you want. He just decided to cash into the internet bubble.
It isn't a lame pseudonym, it is just a lame name that he actually chose for himself. It should say something about his sense of taste too.
I'm pretty sure that the flag is necessary according to both the Geneva Convention (since it is technically a government uniform) and it is also needed according to the Outer Space Treaty in terms of what country is responsible for that astronaut's actions. It is legally required by international law and conventions of space travel.
Nope, that is the final design, minus a few tweaks. SpaceX engineers have actually been wearing it for human factors design tests.
That doesn't get to the level of a major NASA contract simply getting lost or the final report getting buried like is being done with several FOIA requests from NASA.
What you are describing is making sure everybody understands the data they are receiving and that they are working on the same problem. Essentially it is dealing with an API (to use a software analogy) or interface specification between parts that got screwed up there. Of course I've seen extremely poor documentations on APIs, so such problems are hardly unique to just NASA. I'll bet you a good sized pizza that the unit types were very clearly marked and documented on that Mars Climate Orbiter and it was mostly a lack of paying attention to details which got everybody in trouble including a clash of cultures where multiple groups assumed things that simply weren't true.
As one of the first agencies to move to electronic documents in the federal government and even having one of the first e-mail systems, it is sort of a joke that NASA can't find documents. While the formats and nature of the documents have changed considerably over the years (that sort of happens with pioneers in technology) it isn't all that hard.
> Add to it that NASA is full of geeks and all that who probably don't really give a hoot about filing or other bureaucratic issues
That isn't the NASA I'm familiar with. They take bureaucratic paperwork very seriously and document everything. For much of their engineering work (I'm personally familiar with the STS software development team but it applies to other areas of engineering and contracting work) they are literally the gold standard of documentation. When software engineers are considered prolific because they wrote 4k lines of software in a full year and others did less, you start to see just how much paperwork really happens.
Nice reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
That may be perception of the worst aspects of a bureaucracy, but the reality is that everything in terms of contracts and even many of the reports is likely sitting on a server at the NASA HQ in DC. Anything needing appropriations will go through the HQ anyway and not be approved at individual centers unless it is such a small project as to be funded with purely discretionary funding. That is like office supplies and stuff under about $10k, not any major contract at all and thresholds might even be lower for all but center chiefs.
It is far more likely that people getting these FOIA requests are simply lazy and don't want to be bothered.... with their immediate bosses encouraging them to not bother with responding either.
The Antikythera mechanism is pretty well understood and many of the wheels have been mapped to celestial phenomena (like the movement of planets during the times of the ancient Greeks), cultural events (like the Olympics), and even a simple calendar. A really neat feature is a part that predicts the timing of solar eclipses in Europe based upon patterns the Greeks observed in the past.
Stonehenge is a bit more complicated because the culture who built it didn't leave much in terms of written records or explanations of their rituals, although it is plainly obvious that the observation of equinoxes and solstices were integral parts of its purpose along with perhaps other celestial bodies including the Moon. That isn't even unique to Britain as such solar observatories have been found in other cultures on completely different continents. The Mayan observatories which did the same sort of thing even have some written records that describe their use and oddly follow the patterns of Venus as a major component.
In contrast crazy stuff like the Cloaca Maxima, something that is as great of a masterpiece of engineering compared to the pyramids and any of the other ancient "wonders of the world", is extremely well documented including instructions that have been preserved that were essentially a maintenance manual. It is very understood as to its purpose, and it is even recorded as to who made it in the first place (not just a culture.... actual names of real people) and why it was made besides the obvious of flushing manure out to sea.
100k years from now, the English language is still going to be understood by at least scholars and English Wikipedia articles about the Voyager spacecraft and possibly NASA/JPL manuals on its operation may even very likely survive to that time for future archeologists to be able to understand this artifact of humanity. If an alien species (aka something not from the Solar System) finds this spacecraft, they will have those scholars from the Earth to explain it and pull out those JPL manuals to even re-activate the scientific instruments after some repair of the vehicle and replacement of the RTG fuel. It will also be very well preserved in 100k years or even a million years.
Untapped mysteries of ancient cultures is just a scam made by people trying to sell books.... often about UFOs and other nonsense that is being generous to call pseudo science. While some thoughts about those ancient devices and buildings is conjecture and speculation, there is some sound reasoning as to why it is thought to be identified. I don't buy your premise here.
The instructions on how to decyper the phonograph is also listed on the outside of the spacecraft in a pretty simple symbolic code and some picture diagrams on how to recover the information.
I think far more likely that descendants of folks currently alive here on the Earth are going to head into space in a couple of centuries and add on some beacon to the probe as some sort of historical monument and a sort of time capsule. This is a famous artifact of mankind that could very likely be treated the way the pyramids are thought of today. Like the Library of Alexandria, it might be protected by some governments but when that government falls it might even be looted and taken as scrap or pulled apart by future archeologists.
I agree that the odds of it being found by somebody other than mankind is awfully remote. It certainly won't be taken out by a random passing by Klingon cruiser (as was depicted in a Star Trek movie).
You are complaining about the first past the post voting system, which as a tendency produces two major political parties and shuts out 3rd parties except when one of the major parties flounders. That historically did happen with the Whigs in the 1840s-1860's when the Republicans took over starting as a 3rd party and getting one of the major party slots.
There are multiple voting systems that encourage groups besides the majors to be involved including IRV, approval voting, and others. I happen to like IRV (sometimes called transferable or ranked preference voting), but frankly almost anything is better than first past the post. A system where out of ten candidates who are running the winner can be somebody who gets just 11% of the vote and pisses off the other 89% of the voters is not something I call sane or able to rule a society.
Absolutely! One of the points of the electoral college is that support for a candidate can't be geographically limited. You need to get a broad consensus across a whole bunch of different states in likely multiple regions in order to get elected President. If you are talking majority votes for office winning, that is the point of the U.S. House of Representatives.... which was designed from the beginning to be precisely that kind of political body where its representatives would be chosen in that manner.
Note also that the U.S. Constitution doesn't even require a single vote by citizens of a state to be cast in order to determine who becomes electors. It could be a foot race, a game of poker, people picked out at random like jury duty, or some other process. It is entirely up to the state legislature to determine how those votes are allocated.... which in most states happens to be a state-wide contest that claims all of the electors for a particular political party.
The President of the USA was never intended to be chosen by the majority of voters in a national election.
In order to get a Social Security card, you need to have an ID of some sort. Heck, to collect most welfare benefits you also need an ID card. You also need an ID simply to enter most courtrooms. It is also neither complicated nor incredibly difficult to obtain an ID card in most states other than you need to know how to read a form and fill it out or get somebody you know to help you with that process if you are illiterate.
It really isn't an onerous task to obtain an ID and it is needed for so many things besides voting that having the ID is simply a part of being a citizen. I suppose somebody who is homeless and has never had a job with a W-2 form and living entirely on hand-outs while living completely off the grid might have a problem voting. How many people are we talking about in that situation though?
And places where you have a 110% voter turnout is never a credible threat?
I personally know of an abandoned trailer park.... that had several hundred registered voters and people from that trailer park that actually voted in recent elections (according to the county clerk). By abandoned I mean literally there is nothing but an empty parking lot there and no homes of any kind or even homeless folks.
That is assuming the internal party politics permits free speech, the ability to contest leadership, and the ability to criticize with the intent to replace policies that might be harmful to that above mentioned free speech.
A single party system is not the same if the ability to criticize is non-existent and the only people who can aspire to any sort of leadership role are those hand selected by the top brass of that party. I know you can find similar complaints in multi-party contested elections, but at least in that situation you can form your own political party if you aren't getting anywhere.
Neil Armstrong also nearly killed himself when trying to perform a similar landing on the Earth. You can see Neil Armstrong at the 2:30 time mark.
For those that think SpaceX is soaking up piles of investor's money, it should be pointed out that SpaceX hasn't had any additional investment since the Fidelity/Google round of investment that arguably wasn't even for operations but rather for the satellite constellation.
More to the point, I think SpaceX is laughing all of the way to the bank right now and making tremendous profits off of its rockets right now. That they might be earning even more profit from each launch due to reflown boosters and space capsules (CRS-11 is a reused Dragon that was originally flown on CRS-4), they certainly seem to be able to meet payroll, pay for major expansions, and engage in R&D for future designs on their own dime. As to if this particular area of operations is profitable yet, I agree that remains to be seen.
All told, I would think that SpaceX has likely put in about a quarter of a billion to a billion dollars worth of R&D resources into its reusable rocket core development program. As per some discussion Elon Musk had after the reflown core happened, SpaceX plans on recouping that investment over the next several years.
Well, if we don't want the Russians to interfere with "elections", then maybe we should stop having them!
That worked out really well for Germany in the 1930's. And then worked out wonderfully for the rest of the world in the 1940's. :)
To be honest, I think that a much better system would be to simply hold a lottery made up of interested citizens that could serve in a legislative capacity and help make the laws rather than holding elections. This is called a Sortion election, something that even dates back to ancient Athens as a governing body selection process. IMHO those who would serve in such legislative bodies would be far more representative of ordinary citizens, hold proportionally similar views of the general public at-large, and such a selection process would be completely free of all of the corruption that comes from the lobbying groups that finance political campaigns. Lobbyists would still exist, but their influence would be substantially diminished and would really only be able to represent their constituency alone. Bribery would need to be blatant... and ineffective so far as their "bought" politicians would be leaving office at the end of the term.
If you feel that you need experienced legislators on a national or federal level, you could have such candidates for a national legislature (aka the U.S. Congress) made up of those who have served for some time on a state or even local level.
There are obviously some problems with such a selection process, but I think that would be far less complicated than the current electoral process.
Cut down on the number of elected positions
I would say that the number of elected positions is something that is beneficial and relevant. The reason why so many positions are up for election is precisely because we live, in American, in a representative democracy. All of those positions, including clerks (you really don't know what those clerks do, don't you) are very important and powerful positions if you really get into it. A clerk in this case is actually the head figure for a whole office and is a significant executive office. Think of it more like a cabinet secretary on the federal government level rather than a lowly peon bureaucrat.
Where I live, the county clerk is actually the top official in charge of elections and the ultimate arbitrator and decider of election rules and procedures before involving state courts. If anything, keeping that as a separate office directly accountable to the voters of that jurisdiction means that screwups of the election process can be pointed at directly to that person.
There's nothing to run on to be a judge.
On the contrary. What should be happening with judicial elections is that the judicial rulings should be held up and those judges should be made accountable for those rulings on behalf of the citizens they serve. Federal judges aren't elected, only local judges (where relevant I might add too). That means you need to also pay attention to local issues at hand.
I have seen lousy judges removed from their position, something that generally would not happen in a similar situation if the only removal mechanism was merely impeachment by legislators that are mostly lawyers and former judges themselves that have a conflict of interest in removing those judges.
All in all, the point of all of those offices and the huge number of positions you are complaining about is a result of a philosophy that government ought to be as decentralized as possible and accountable to those on the lowest level of organization as possible. Mistakes can and indeed to happen, but your ability to "vote with your feet" is much easier to do in that sort of situation compared to a highly centralized government where all you do is cast a single vote once every few years for a political party alone (as does happen in some countries). This is also something that makes America unique, perhaps, and it is a part of the "Great American Experiment" that is the American form of governance.
Besides, I've seen and even been involved with the process of manually counting ballots without machines from those kind of elections. It is slow, tedious, and boring, but it can be done and the use of all of the ballot machines is mainly because those running the elections are simply lazy and don't want to bother actually doing their jobs. The ability to hack a voting booth is simply unacceptable and the result of piss poor planning on the part of the election officials who set it up, not because of the number of issues or offices that are found on the ballot.
One of the problems I see is how local and state governments want to do elections on the cheap and save a few bucks with the election process. That is also why they buy machines from the lowest bidder, don't care about securing the voting machines (like the infamous Dibold crap), and don't bother verifying a voting trail to make sure the elections are secure. Heck, a chain of custody for the votes themselves is often hard to prove from the voter to the final voting total as well.
In other words, a whole lot of room is there ripe for fraud even without Russia getting into the act.
As much as at first I didn't like the idea, I'm really warming up to public funding of elections too. While not perfect, such public funding where candidates have the chance to present their platforms mostly free of financial campaign raising is also a good way to get rid of foreign influence too, as well as to debate ideas and not simply let the wealthiest candidate win. While a Russian diplomat can presumably bribe a member of Congress or a presidential candidate with a few million dollars, public funding would move that into a flagrant bribe and not merely something that can be whitewashed with being a campaign contribution through 3rd parties (since foreign governments aren't permitted legally to finance political campaigns... not that stops it from happening though).
Every legislative body that I've been involved with, including even as a delegate at a political convention, has had the ability to initiate and propose a law. For crying out loud, Parliament (aka the "English Parliament") House of Commons can definitely initiate legislation and members routinely do so. With the U.S. Congress, it is expected that literally every member of Congress initiate and propose new laws of almost every sort. They might consult with lawyers or special parliamentarians to get the wording into legalese and consult with lobbyists or others with interest in the legislation to get it crafted, but it is that legislator who initiates the law themself and not some nameless bureaucrat. Then again, I suppose "Congress" isn't a parliament, so there might be some fine distinction I'm not aware of directly.
For crying out loud, I've personally initiated legislative concepts. Then again, I've even personally forced my state legislature (I'm an American BTW) into a special legislative session because of a legislative petition that I helped co-sponsor. That was merely as an ordinary citizen who found a weak and very unpopular law and got it changed. I even have the ability as a mere citizen to initiate new laws, assuming that I can get the support of my fellow citizens in approving a referendum where I live.
The idea that a parliament can be formed where members of that body can't initiate legislation is utterly weird to me. It makes them at best an advisory body, and certainly makes them as a legislative body a real joke. I wonder why people even bother running as an MEP if what they do is to simply rubber stamp stuff some other non-elected body has come up with?
The EU parliament works like any parliament.
Except it isn't like any real parliament except perhaps a weaker version of the UK House of Lords. The EU Parliament can't initiate any legislation at all, only vote on stuff that has already been submitted by unelected bureaucrats that can't even be modified through amendments. Even if the EU Parliament votes a resounding "No" on some legislation, it can still pass into law and impact the lives of European citizens.
MEPs are there for show, not for substance. They really don't matter other than to make headlines and dramatic speeches that have no substance because it is really nothing more than a debate club. If anything, individual citizens have far more political clout at the United Nations and the resolutions that get passed in New York... and damn little even there that matters worth anything.
If the EU Parliament had some teeth, could propose new legislation and have it mean something, and if it could really be a governing body over the bureaucracy of the EU, you might have a point. Decisions governing the EU simply don't happen in that body at all.
The reason why Elon Musk isn't working on the Hyperloop himself is mainly because his work on other projects is cut out for him. As if building a rocket company sending ever heavier payloads into space isn't enough with several launches per month being regular and a whole new rocket (the Falcon Heavy) ready to debut in a few months, he is also rolling out a new automobile model (the Tesla Model X), putting a major satellite telecommunications constellation for high speed internet service (essentially launching a whole new global ISP).
If Elon Musk feels that he would be overwhelmed with the task of trying to start up the idea of the Hyperloop, I certainly don't blame him at all for saying it would be too much on his plate to properly get it accomplished.
That said, I agree with you that if this is something which would make a huge profit, it would already be done by now. The test tracks that I've seen are incredibly pathetic, with the Hyperloop One track not even being in a vacuum tube at all but instead simply an amusement park ride at best. Indeed I've seen far more innovation from roller coaster designers than what I've seen with these guys. For that matter, installing a Hyperloop into an amusement park would be a fantastic test track that could put actual paying customers into pods and act as a good proof of concept as folks could travel from one end of the park to another like the Disneyland monorail is able to accomplish (another fanciful transportation system that is still mostly confined to amusement parks).