Not really. The point of having so many regulations is to imprison anybody who is causing political problems and to destroy liberty. Slave masters still need peons to be doing the work that those who would be the governors would rather not be doing themselves. Why do you think they tolerate so many illegal aliens coming across a supposedly "secure" border? It certainly isn't because the government is ignorant about where they work and live.
Spend a few days in a courtroom watching the cases go by and convince me that justice is equally given out based upon social standing and what family you were born into. Well, I would say spend a few days in a courtroom voluntarily, but if you aren't a reporter or doing something tolerated by a government, you would likely end up getting thrown in jail simply for being there or certainly questioned after you've been there for awhile.
He called me a Luddite by virtue of suggesting that I wanted to get rid of technology and industry. Since I did not suggest anything of that nature, I was responding to that accusation and sort of annoyed that he inferred that assumption. Read his post, where that was explicitly stated.
I also disagree with the notion that modern industry or that industrialization of a society in general is necessarily facilitated by a large government and indeed I am pointing out the early part of the 20th Century in America as an example of an industrialized society that didn't have such a huge government. He also was suggesting that the USA was largely agrarian and in fact it was in a huge transition going from an agriculture economy to a substantial industrial economy... a transition that had been going on since the 1840's and arguably even earlier. I'm not describing the 18th Century government that was originally established by George Washington, but instead trying to compare America of today with the world political power and government that rule a globe spanning empire of a century ago. I think the comparison is much more fitting.
The assumptions being made here that somehow the government of the USA that existed a century ago would be incapable of governing a country of the size and level of technological progress that exists today. I am rejecting completely that notion. Instead, I am challenging the need for such a massive federal bureaucracy and as stated by an anonymous coward in another reply.... to actually follow a document called "the Constitution of the United States of America".
The sad state of government and bureaucracies is that once they are established, they cannot be abolished shy of a violent overthrow of that government... through war or civil unrest. The Ottoman Empire is a really good example of that, and in fact the origin of the word "Byzantine" in reference to insane levels of bureaucracy that prevents anything useful from getting done. The Ottoman Empire even lasted until the 20th Century... one of the last of the major ancient empires, whose disruption and break up is even the source of a great many conflicts today because of the lousy way it was dismantled. The Ottomans were unable to compete against countries like the USA, or even the United Kingdom and collapsed under its own weight of bureaucrats.
There are other examples in world history, so I'll leave it as it is. My assertion is that it would be nice if we could rethink how government works, and that a "reboot" of various federal agencies or even questioning if those agencies need to exist at all should be viewed as a healthy thing. Perhaps some sort of bureaucracy is needed... there were over 200 thousand federal bureaucrats and employees in the 1920's so obviously there was a need for some sort of fairly large bureaucracy to govern a country that wasn't really that much smaller than America is today. I'm just questioning the need for having the millions of federal employees or the need to have so many people in government that those who are in government service of some sort outnumber those who aren't.
Something just seems seriously screwed up to have so many people governing so few.
The only way to go back to the 1900s sized Federal government would be to kill or deport three out of every four Americans and get rid of all modern technology and industry. Like being hungry? because you can't grow nearly as much food with 19th century tech as you can with modern farms.
Where did I advocate a complete return to the 1900's-1920's era? I said nothing of the kind, other than to point out that America was able to prosper and that the bureaucracy of that era was able to politically govern the whole country at the time.
I sure didn't advocate or even remotely suggest that we needed to return to that level of technology. I certainly am no Luddite as you are claiming here. There certainly is a role for modern technology... I'm just questioning the need for a bureaucracy of millions on the federal level to be examining every aspect of your life and to be monitoring every conversation you are having, to tell you how to live, and to have so many regulation and laws that you are committing several felonies every day simply by trying to live your life and do the work you need to routinely to in good faith effort to make this world a better place to live.
I also don't trust your claim that three out of four Americans need to be killed or deported in order to bring this republic back to a minimal level of control.
I would disagree. If NASA budget went up 15%, the amount going to JWST would go up proportionally as well. That is how failing projects start to consume resources and "bad money drives out good money". This isn't a money issue, it is purely a management issue.
I wouldn't mind NASA's budget going up either, but there are other reasons for that to happen, and certainly demanding that what programs NASA is pursuing should be managed well and actually planned in some fashion with real engineering and a goal in mind that can be reached and easily described in plain English seems reasonable. Try asking engineers who've worked on the JWST what they think of their management, or how many times they've had to scrap their designs and essentially start over from scratch. The only thing that the telescope is good for now is a case study on how not to do engineering, like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. It is important to realize that sometimes engineering projects are just an unmitigated disaster and need to be canceled.
But if the law allows people to dump all of their costs in state A, and keep all their profits in state B, it's impossible to tell what policies "work."
The problem is the size of these companies and being beholden to them. If you had a thousand companies employing nearly the same number of people that the one mega multinational company was employing, I would argue that there would be much more economic productivity in that same part of the country, more general tax revenue, and arguably less ability to engage in those kind of accounting shell games because those companies in state A would not have any office in state B to play those kind of games in the first place.
Vermont was able to keep Wal-Mart from coming into their state for a long time simply because they refused to play the political games that Wal-Mart was expecting them to play. Other states could do the same sort of thing and not give in to these companies, but instead encourage local businesses to grow and develop. A tax incentive that helps bring a huge business with a thousand jobs that was instead given to a thousand local businesses or even encouraged ordinary people to become entrepreneurs to start businesses creating a thousand jobs would go a whole lot further and benefit state and local governments far more.
BTW, with small businesses, the "shareholders" are local too, citizens and voters of that state who have a stake in what happens in that government, culture, and society. It is the large businesses that don't care or have likely been managed by executives that have never even heard of that state much less their shareholders.
No, I said I would like a 20th Century management that was able to manage an empire of about 200 million people at a time when communications was really not that different than it is today in terms of getting messages around.
State governments could certainly take care of nearly everything you are suggesting here as well, and what it needed to coordinate efforts between state governments can be facilitated with a very small bureaucracy that acts more as diplomats than overseers. Satellites can be provided by private businesses... and in fact mostly are anyway. Drug companies who put out a drug that kills people can be sued in court and held liable for their damages. It was a failure of courts to act which brought about the FDA.
Oh, and weather forecasts were done with that federal bureaucracy back so many years ago, as were universities. Of course the universities were also operated by state governments and still are. And they were a whole lot cheaper to attend before the federal government screwed them up with too much money.
So far you haven't given me a convincing argument, other than the fact that we have a standing army that seems to make a whole bunch of other countries pissed at us for having when we go off in misadventures all over the globe. The big government causes the problems we are facing that seems to be the justification for having the big government.
If a state is dependent upon multinational employers who can blackmail the government, it sounds like it is time to start encouraging local business development instead that may have at least some sort of loyalty to that particular state and its culture.
That some state governments are incredibly stupid can't be helped. At least when one of the 50 states goes nuts and does stupid things, there will at least be some sanity in a couple of the other states. If you instead rely upon a federal solution to problems that really belong on the sate level, it often means one awful solution that can't be culled at a later time. Different state solutions at least provide incentive for a state to give up and try something different when a failed policy isn't working.
“I spent 25 years in business. If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I’d say, ‘You’re fired!’” -Mitt Romney
Calling for anything other than a minimal to nonexistent manned space program is hypocrisy for Mitt Romney.
Every time I see that quote, I think of how stupid Romney looks to say that.
First of all, it was a Republican President (George H.W. Bush... aka "Bush senior") who wanted to spend not just $100 billion, but nearly a half trillion dollars on sending a dozen people to Mars (much less the Moon). As if building a colony on the Moon using standard NASA procurement budgets even could cost $100 billion as a low ball estimate originally given to Congress then adjusted for inflation and and facing redesigns and cost overruns typical of government projects like this.
Besides, what Newt Gingrich was proposing was simply setting up a legal environment where America would simply claim a part of the Moon and turn it loose for anybody to go up there on their own dime and do whatever they wanted to do on the Moon with relatively little government money. I have no idea where Romney even got the idea that Gingrich was proposing a government financed base either, other than Gingrich did suggest that government involvement needed to happen with commercial spaceflight as well.
Regardless, Romney then showed a complete ignorance of space policy or the very real issues involved, and this policy document shows little improvement over that decided lack of knowledge as well. Throw a few billion dollars to some government bureaucrats and let them figure out for themselves what they want to do with it, even if it is heading to Las Vegas and throwing a continuous 4-year long party. If anything, I think it would be money much better spent that way than the current appropriations regime at NASA.
Obama pretty much followed his policy document about space released just before the election four years ago. It wasn't exactly bold or promised to do much either, but then again he didn't do much in the past four years either other than cancel Constellation.
At least Obama changed his mind about cancelling outright NASA, which originally he was going to redirect the funding for NASA to the U.S. Department of Education. I haven't seen Romney say anything that stupid, but this isn't exactly an inspiring document either.
Most of the things that Romney is complaining about were Bush administration policies that the Obama administration pretty much ignored and hasn't bothered replacing.
What NASA needs is to be scrapped and started over.
I think you could say the same thing about the whole of the U.S. federal government. It was less than a hundred years ago (in the beginning of the 20th Century) that the Post Office Department was the largest federal agency.... not because the post office was necessarily all that huge but because the rest of the federal government was practically non-existent. That even including the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, which combined was still smaller than the Post Office.
America wasn't exactly a wimpy nation a hundred years ago either and had 48 states plus a dozen territories, including the Philippines and Cuba. That the whole "empire" could be managed with under a couple hundred thousand bureaucrats speaks volumes about what the federal government could be doing today.
Then again I blame Herbert Hoover for the mess that the federal government became, and FDR only made it worse.
The James Webb Space Telescope is an abomination that is killing the exploration of the Solar System and beyond. Just as Constellation was killing manned spaceflight, the same could be said about the JWST. There have been some very well thought out science missions that are getting axed because of the cost overruns of the JWST and other projects including the commercial crew program are starving for fiscal oxygen as it were because that already incredibly late and hugely over budget project simply won't die.
If there was a project that ever should be cancelled due to mismanagement and lack of planning as well as simply being a complete waste of tax dollars, that would be the project. I'm not condemning NASA by any means other than NASA administrators should have fired the management teams of that project a long, long time ago and been very blunt to Congress about why that was done along with recommendations to kill the project back elsewhen. It still isn't too late.
For the price of the JWST in the current fiscal year budget, I bet we could get a couple space-based telescopes built that would end up doing far more actual science and could be routinely replaced. This would be especially true if they would make building those telescopes a part of the Centennial Challenge program and just hold a billion dollars or so out for any team that would put up a telescope that would meet or exceed the claimed properties of the JWST. I'm just calling everything spent so far on that monstrosity as sunk costs and written off completely.
I mean, if we can ask NASA to land a robotic truck on mars with like $14 and a pack of chewing gum, I think the DoD should be able to get its projects done the same way, with no actual deadlines and 1,000x's the budget.
Considering that the Mars Curiosity Rover cost American taxpayers about 2 and a half billion dollars, I would say that must be one very expensive pack of chewing gum.
What Curiosity is going to do with $14 on the surface of Mars is something else I'd like to figure out as well. Real estate development? Testing new currency for the Bureau of Printing and Engraving?
My point in bringing up the Linux Kernel is that some contributions to the kernel are strictly GPL'd, yet software using Linux must by necessity access functions in the kernel to perform basic tasks normally assigned to an operating system. As such they are linking to those functions and technically in violation of the GPL.
Most kernel functions are LGPL'd, so it isn't that big of a deal most of the time. For those that aren't, it becomes something of non-enforcement of the LGPL.
Richard Stallman matters so far as he helped to author the LGPL and is active in the "or later version" drafts of both the GPL and LGPL.
For people who are being lazy with the GPL, often the best course of action is just to insist that they get back up to 100%.
I've had people do that to me in various locations where I've worked with open source content and it has helped. It does become a bit of an educational process, particularly compared to what happens in private business where the level of integrity is close to 0% and stuff like licenses or even concern about copyright is something that is left for the lawyers to figure out how to resolve including purchasing licenses when necessary to make things legal.
When it comes to the GPL, it shocks lawyers because they suddenly find a licensing issue that money can't gloss over and fix. Their usual reaction in a commercial software situation is to stay away from GPL'd software as a contagious disease that should never be let into the company.
What I also see here is that the folks who were upset didn't even let a reasonable amount of time pass to resolve this issue. If you are out of compliance with something like the GPL, it takes more than a few minutes to get back into compliance. That doesn't mean you should take a year or more to resolve the situation, and perhaps temporarily taking down your software that is out of compliance may be a reasonable solution until you get back into compliance, but getting your panties into a bunch when action isn't immediately taken is also unreasonable.
GPL is about the rights of the user, not of the developer.
No, the GPL is about the rights of somebody trying to distribute software. It is a distribution license, not an EULA. What an individual user can actually do with GPL'd software is not even covered at all, including reverse engineering, modifications, or how it is used if even as placemats for dinner.
The only thing the GPL covers is what happens if you want to give a copy of the software covered under the GPL to somebody else. Normally most companies simply say you can't redistribute the software and that is the end of it. The GPL instead spells out specific conditions that must be met if you engage in that practice.
Then again, you can opt instead for something like the CC0 license. If that had been done, this whole mess wouldn't even be remotely a problem. I've offered some of my software under this license when I thought it was appropriate.
The point of the LGPL is to explicitly clean up the legal mess about plug-ins, suggesting that software which isn't GPL'd can explicitly use those plug-ins and "libraries" which are licensed under the LGPL. Permission is explicitly granted for this kind of use.
If you instead use the GPL instead of the LGPL, that sort of forces software which uses those libraries to also be GPL'd. MySQL used this sort of licensing scheme as a way to force you to use their alternative (and very proprietary) license for commercial products for a fee. You could use MySQL for non-commercial products or for things that used the GPL license as much as you wanted, but as soon as you used their software for products not using the GPL license (like a proprietary licensed product or something made by Microsoft... to give an example) you needed to purchase a separate license that even needed annual renewing.
That is an interesting business model that sort of takes advantage of the GPL, allows for some independent development using a certain set of libraries, but does traditional software licensing when it is needed.
As for the Linux kernel, that is a huge grey area. Linus Torvald may say it is OK to use ordinary proprietary licensed software on Linux, but Richard Stallman may beg to differ. Some parts of the kernel are LGPL'd, so it isn't a problem at all, but not all of it is that way. The LGPL and the GPL have some other subtle differences that can make a huge impact in situations like this.
I think you've missed the point. This is the license which covers the software which was allegedly stolen. There cannot be a GPL violation where there is no GPL software.
No, you've missed the point. If the works are derivatives of GPL works then they must be GPL'd themselves. FTFL, "YOU are granted the usage of Raspbmc under the conditions set within this license".
This particular license for Raspbmc is attempting to rewrite the terms and conditions of the GPL for at least their extensions. After a fashion that may be reasonable, but the problem is that they are redistributing that software including GPL'd software using that mixed license software. In effect it terminates the distribution rights for Raspbmc in terms of any GPL'd software.
The work-around is to make everything available under the GPL and be done with it, or stop distribution.
This whole thing seems to be incredibly laughable as it looks like a bunch of guys who don't take license seriously until they get their noses out of joint, and are just now trying to play catch up but slamming each other in the process.
Americans have this odd tendency to confuse Denmark and the Netherlands, for whatever reason. Happens all the time.
That is an over generalization I have never even heard about. That there are Americans who are clueless about geography that would confuse Austria and Australia as being the same country perhaps, or think that Ghana is one of the "low countries of Europe". Then again I've met Europeans who think Los Angeles is an hour drive from New York City.
Microsoft changes their terms of service, no doubt. But the terms of service that you agree to when you click on the "I agree" button are what you have agreed to and can't change if you go into litigation. If you update the software often there will be a new contract which you much "agree" to in order to install the software update, but that is also when the terms change. So no, Microsoft doesn't just change the terms arbitrarily.... you know when they change and you must agree to those changes first. That few people ever bother to read what those changes actually are is a travesty, but the opportunity to read those changes to the terms is always presented including the ability to reject such changes.
What this clause says essentially is that the terms of the agreement can change at any time at their discretion with no limit. That means the terms can be anything they want and those terms can even change (in theory) even in the middle of a trial and certainly the day before they decide to shut down anybody else using their software. It is such an open ended clause that it might as well simply say "All rights reserved" and be done with it.
Actually "all rights reserved" would be a much more honest approach to a license of this nature. At least you would understand that any duplication of content under such a license gives you absolutely no rights for redistribution.
The "evil" part of what Microsoft throws into their EULA is that they feel they can go beyond controlling redistribution and immunity from indemnification if their software causes problems with your computer and moves into attempts to control what you can and can't do with their software as an end-user... moving beyond copyright law to pure contract law. The GPL, on the other hand, demands no contract but it does give terms and conditions for how you may be permitted to perform redistribution.
This particular license for the boot loader goes well beyond even controlling redistribution but also can be used to control how the end user even operates their computer and other practices that make the Microsoft EULA seem tame in comparison. It doesn't matter if it isn't being used in this fashion, just that it could be done that way. No matter what way you cut it, this particular boot loader license is no by any stretch of the imagination an open source license and it should never be seen as one either. It is also poorly worded in a number of ways that I don't think would hold up in court, but then that would simply throw out the license altogether and turn it into a pure copyright situation.
In other words, all the author needed to say was simply "All Rights Reserved". I wonder why this author decided to get fancy?
The group is based out of Copenhagen, although there might be some participants and volunteers involved with Copenhagen Suborbital that may be from the Netherlands. That is the only thing I can think of. There certainly is a pretty large group of volunteers working on this rocket, and they are willing to take on additional volunteers if you have something legitimate to contribute or can fill in a skill gap they may have.
WE reserve the right to change the terms of this agreement at our discretion.
That is just an evil license agreement... something even Microsoft doesn't try to insert into their licenses. In other words they can change the terms at anytime to any other terms for any other reason and it can mean whatever they want it to mean when the time comes.
I don't know how that would hold up under an actual legal challenge, but it seems real slimy. Yes, I know the GPL does have the ability to use the "or later version" option, but that is an optional license upgrade that any end users or redistributor can apply or you can stick with the original terms and conditions. Not everybody trusts the Free Software Foundation and sometimes deliberately leaves that clause out of the license.
This sounds like somebody begging to have this software reimplemented in a clean room environment and released under a proper software licensing agreement... like the GPL.
I'd like to point out that Copenhagen Suborbital seems to be on the cutting edge of inexpensive spaceflight. While it seems like there are a whole bunch of people who are making capsules, those tend to be major national governments like the United States, Russia, India, or China. That this group of modern day Vikings are able to carry on the tradition of their ancestors in space seems to be icing on the cake.
The amazing thing here isn't that this is necessarily novel or the first time people have gone into space, but that a private group using essentially just donations and money most people would put into a hobby can be able to pull this off. Some of those involved are retired NASA engineers or Danish military who have the technical expertise to pull this off along with the ability to collectively put in thousands of hours of volunteer time into the project as well as a few bucks on the side to help get tools and things they need to build everything.
Frankly the $10k that they are seeking for a donation is a drop in the bucket for most spacecraft and really represents just the raw materials needed to build the spacecraft.
In terms of charter schools, most do not charge tuition or fees of any kind, or at least are just like public schools in terms of costs. If anything, most of them operate on a per pupil basis with considerably less money than the public schools and don't have access to some kinds of tax revenues such as the ability to levy local property taxes (although they may get some state funds that may include a statewide levy and other educational funds). That they can get higher scores with less money should speak volumes about what the public schools are doing.
On the other hand, most charter schools don't have to take in the troubled children or those with serious handicaps or disabilities. If a student is disruptive, has students who don't want to abide by a dress code, or sass off to their teachers, the charter school doesn't have to keep them. Public schools can't be quite so choosy in those situations and need to do more to work with these kind of students. There are very few charter schools that I've ever even heard about which work explicitly with students having "special education needs".
What I especially like about charter schools, as a parent, is that the administration is much closer to the student and much more responsive to legitimate requests by parents. If I am having a problem with an instructor that doesn't seem to get resolved or simply need to address a bullying problem one of my children is encountering, the public schools seem to make it into a bureaucratic mess that rarely gets resolved. It seems to be taken care of immediately in a charter school... assuming it is ever a problem at all.
In fairness, NASA is subsidizing the R&D of at least a part of the cost of these rockets through various programs.
The big difference here is that NASA has sort of a philosophy with these programs that once the industry is up and going, where there are plenty of competitors who can build rockets delivering supplies and passengers into orbit, that there will be plenty of other customers who will take advantage of these services and that these private companies will be able to offer services or products just like Dell Computer can offer their equipment and services to government agencies (which they can and do).
There are many in Congress who are justifiably very skeptical of this concept, some who are so skeptical that they are seeking to kill these development programs as well. There are also many members of congress who simply are clueless about economics in general and don't understand what is going on either... along with many of their constituents.
One of the problems here is that NASA had 30 years to get an alternative to the Space Shuttle built. In spite of dozens of efforts to get that accomplished using a traditional government procurement contract, NASA has had one failure after another over the years and can't seem to get the job done. Even the latest effort, the SLS program (affectionately called the "Senate Launch System" due to its engineering taking place in the upper house of the United States Congress and enacted as a matter of law) seems destined to utter failure. I would dare say hundreds of billions of dollars have been dumped down a rat hole of constant failure, and what I don't understand is why they expect any different results? If it was just one program that failed, I could understand, but we are talking dozens of different programs that have tried and been dumped over the years.
This is something a bit different as a result. NASA really needs to get cargo and crew into orbit, and would rather not be relying 100% on the Russians to get the job done. That the Soyuz may still be used in the future and that American astronauts may still be training in Star City for future missions is something I think is still useful, but it shouldn't be the only game in town.
It is also useful to note that before SpaceX got into the game, 90%+ of all commercial spaceflight payloads were going to other countries, pretty much split evenly between Roskosmos (Russia) and Arianespace (European Union... well mostly), although China and India did snag up more than a few launches of their own. A few other companies were in the game (like SeaLaunch... a joint partnership between Boeing and RKK Energia... the Russian company who makes the Soyuz spacecraft too). Basically the American launcher companies had priced themselves completely out of the market, where the only people using these American launchers was the U.S. government... usually for things that simply needed an American rocket and they were willing to pay any price to see that it happened that way.
This said, private efforts for spaceflight that are not being subsidized at all are happening in America, and if anything I'd say that America is where the big changes in how things are happening in space is taking place. While I can name a small handful of private commercial spaceflight efforts in other countries (like Copenhagen Suborbital, ARCA, and Excalibur Almaz), the real development is happening in America with a couple dozen companies who have actual hardware they are working on and new companies popping up as fast as older companies seem to go under. It really is extremely exciting to see all of the activity that is taking place and so much is happening with private commercial spaceflight that no single person can really keep track of what is going on now.
SpaceX certainly is not the only company doing stuff in space right now.
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Not really. The point of having so many regulations is to imprison anybody who is causing political problems and to destroy liberty. Slave masters still need peons to be doing the work that those who would be the governors would rather not be doing themselves. Why do you think they tolerate so many illegal aliens coming across a supposedly "secure" border? It certainly isn't because the government is ignorant about where they work and live.
Spend a few days in a courtroom watching the cases go by and convince me that justice is equally given out based upon social standing and what family you were born into. Well, I would say spend a few days in a courtroom voluntarily, but if you aren't a reporter or doing something tolerated by a government, you would likely end up getting thrown in jail simply for being there or certainly questioned after you've been there for awhile.
He called me a Luddite by virtue of suggesting that I wanted to get rid of technology and industry. Since I did not suggest anything of that nature, I was responding to that accusation and sort of annoyed that he inferred that assumption. Read his post, where that was explicitly stated.
I also disagree with the notion that modern industry or that industrialization of a society in general is necessarily facilitated by a large government and indeed I am pointing out the early part of the 20th Century in America as an example of an industrialized society that didn't have such a huge government. He also was suggesting that the USA was largely agrarian and in fact it was in a huge transition going from an agriculture economy to a substantial industrial economy... a transition that had been going on since the 1840's and arguably even earlier. I'm not describing the 18th Century government that was originally established by George Washington, but instead trying to compare America of today with the world political power and government that rule a globe spanning empire of a century ago. I think the comparison is much more fitting.
The assumptions being made here that somehow the government of the USA that existed a century ago would be incapable of governing a country of the size and level of technological progress that exists today. I am rejecting completely that notion. Instead, I am challenging the need for such a massive federal bureaucracy and as stated by an anonymous coward in another reply.... to actually follow a document called "the Constitution of the United States of America".
The sad state of government and bureaucracies is that once they are established, they cannot be abolished shy of a violent overthrow of that government... through war or civil unrest. The Ottoman Empire is a really good example of that, and in fact the origin of the word "Byzantine" in reference to insane levels of bureaucracy that prevents anything useful from getting done. The Ottoman Empire even lasted until the 20th Century... one of the last of the major ancient empires, whose disruption and break up is even the source of a great many conflicts today because of the lousy way it was dismantled. The Ottomans were unable to compete against countries like the USA, or even the United Kingdom and collapsed under its own weight of bureaucrats.
There are other examples in world history, so I'll leave it as it is. My assertion is that it would be nice if we could rethink how government works, and that a "reboot" of various federal agencies or even questioning if those agencies need to exist at all should be viewed as a healthy thing. Perhaps some sort of bureaucracy is needed... there were over 200 thousand federal bureaucrats and employees in the 1920's so obviously there was a need for some sort of fairly large bureaucracy to govern a country that wasn't really that much smaller than America is today. I'm just questioning the need for having the millions of federal employees or the need to have so many people in government that those who are in government service of some sort outnumber those who aren't.
Something just seems seriously screwed up to have so many people governing so few.
The only way to go back to the 1900s sized Federal government would be to kill or deport three out of every four Americans and get rid of all modern technology and industry. Like being hungry? because you can't grow nearly as much food with 19th century tech as you can with modern farms.
Where did I advocate a complete return to the 1900's-1920's era? I said nothing of the kind, other than to point out that America was able to prosper and that the bureaucracy of that era was able to politically govern the whole country at the time.
I sure didn't advocate or even remotely suggest that we needed to return to that level of technology. I certainly am no Luddite as you are claiming here. There certainly is a role for modern technology... I'm just questioning the need for a bureaucracy of millions on the federal level to be examining every aspect of your life and to be monitoring every conversation you are having, to tell you how to live, and to have so many regulation and laws that you are committing several felonies every day simply by trying to live your life and do the work you need to routinely to in good faith effort to make this world a better place to live.
I also don't trust your claim that three out of four Americans need to be killed or deported in order to bring this republic back to a minimal level of control.
I would disagree. If NASA budget went up 15%, the amount going to JWST would go up proportionally as well. That is how failing projects start to consume resources and "bad money drives out good money". This isn't a money issue, it is purely a management issue.
I wouldn't mind NASA's budget going up either, but there are other reasons for that to happen, and certainly demanding that what programs NASA is pursuing should be managed well and actually planned in some fashion with real engineering and a goal in mind that can be reached and easily described in plain English seems reasonable. Try asking engineers who've worked on the JWST what they think of their management, or how many times they've had to scrap their designs and essentially start over from scratch. The only thing that the telescope is good for now is a case study on how not to do engineering, like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. It is important to realize that sometimes engineering projects are just an unmitigated disaster and need to be canceled.
But if the law allows people to dump all of their costs in state A, and keep all their profits in state B, it's impossible to tell what policies "work."
The problem is the size of these companies and being beholden to them. If you had a thousand companies employing nearly the same number of people that the one mega multinational company was employing, I would argue that there would be much more economic productivity in that same part of the country, more general tax revenue, and arguably less ability to engage in those kind of accounting shell games because those companies in state A would not have any office in state B to play those kind of games in the first place.
Vermont was able to keep Wal-Mart from coming into their state for a long time simply because they refused to play the political games that Wal-Mart was expecting them to play. Other states could do the same sort of thing and not give in to these companies, but instead encourage local businesses to grow and develop. A tax incentive that helps bring a huge business with a thousand jobs that was instead given to a thousand local businesses or even encouraged ordinary people to become entrepreneurs to start businesses creating a thousand jobs would go a whole lot further and benefit state and local governments far more.
BTW, with small businesses, the "shareholders" are local too, citizens and voters of that state who have a stake in what happens in that government, culture, and society. It is the large businesses that don't care or have likely been managed by executives that have never even heard of that state much less their shareholders.
No, I said I would like a 20th Century management that was able to manage an empire of about 200 million people at a time when communications was really not that different than it is today in terms of getting messages around.
State governments could certainly take care of nearly everything you are suggesting here as well, and what it needed to coordinate efforts between state governments can be facilitated with a very small bureaucracy that acts more as diplomats than overseers. Satellites can be provided by private businesses... and in fact mostly are anyway. Drug companies who put out a drug that kills people can be sued in court and held liable for their damages. It was a failure of courts to act which brought about the FDA.
Oh, and weather forecasts were done with that federal bureaucracy back so many years ago, as were universities. Of course the universities were also operated by state governments and still are. And they were a whole lot cheaper to attend before the federal government screwed them up with too much money.
So far you haven't given me a convincing argument, other than the fact that we have a standing army that seems to make a whole bunch of other countries pissed at us for having when we go off in misadventures all over the globe. The big government causes the problems we are facing that seems to be the justification for having the big government.
If a state is dependent upon multinational employers who can blackmail the government, it sounds like it is time to start encouraging local business development instead that may have at least some sort of loyalty to that particular state and its culture.
That some state governments are incredibly stupid can't be helped. At least when one of the 50 states goes nuts and does stupid things, there will at least be some sanity in a couple of the other states. If you instead rely upon a federal solution to problems that really belong on the sate level, it often means one awful solution that can't be culled at a later time. Different state solutions at least provide incentive for a state to give up and try something different when a failed policy isn't working.
January 27, 2012 Republican debate:
“I spent 25 years in business. If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I’d say, ‘You’re fired!’” -Mitt Romney
Calling for anything other than a minimal to nonexistent manned space program is hypocrisy for Mitt Romney.
Every time I see that quote, I think of how stupid Romney looks to say that.
First of all, it was a Republican President (George H.W. Bush... aka "Bush senior") who wanted to spend not just $100 billion, but nearly a half trillion dollars on sending a dozen people to Mars (much less the Moon). As if building a colony on the Moon using standard NASA procurement budgets even could cost $100 billion as a low ball estimate originally given to Congress then adjusted for inflation and and facing redesigns and cost overruns typical of government projects like this.
Besides, what Newt Gingrich was proposing was simply setting up a legal environment where America would simply claim a part of the Moon and turn it loose for anybody to go up there on their own dime and do whatever they wanted to do on the Moon with relatively little government money. I have no idea where Romney even got the idea that Gingrich was proposing a government financed base either, other than Gingrich did suggest that government involvement needed to happen with commercial spaceflight as well.
Regardless, Romney then showed a complete ignorance of space policy or the very real issues involved, and this policy document shows little improvement over that decided lack of knowledge as well. Throw a few billion dollars to some government bureaucrats and let them figure out for themselves what they want to do with it, even if it is heading to Las Vegas and throwing a continuous 4-year long party. If anything, I think it would be money much better spent that way than the current appropriations regime at NASA.
Obama pretty much followed his policy document about space released just before the election four years ago. It wasn't exactly bold or promised to do much either, but then again he didn't do much in the past four years either other than cancel Constellation.
At least Obama changed his mind about cancelling outright NASA, which originally he was going to redirect the funding for NASA to the U.S. Department of Education. I haven't seen Romney say anything that stupid, but this isn't exactly an inspiring document either.
Most of the things that Romney is complaining about were Bush administration policies that the Obama administration pretty much ignored and hasn't bothered replacing.
What NASA needs is to be scrapped and started over.
I think you could say the same thing about the whole of the U.S. federal government. It was less than a hundred years ago (in the beginning of the 20th Century) that the Post Office Department was the largest federal agency.... not because the post office was necessarily all that huge but because the rest of the federal government was practically non-existent. That even including the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, which combined was still smaller than the Post Office.
America wasn't exactly a wimpy nation a hundred years ago either and had 48 states plus a dozen territories, including the Philippines and Cuba. That the whole "empire" could be managed with under a couple hundred thousand bureaucrats speaks volumes about what the federal government could be doing today.
Then again I blame Herbert Hoover for the mess that the federal government became, and FDR only made it worse.
The James Webb Space Telescope is an abomination that is killing the exploration of the Solar System and beyond. Just as Constellation was killing manned spaceflight, the same could be said about the JWST. There have been some very well thought out science missions that are getting axed because of the cost overruns of the JWST and other projects including the commercial crew program are starving for fiscal oxygen as it were because that already incredibly late and hugely over budget project simply won't die.
If there was a project that ever should be cancelled due to mismanagement and lack of planning as well as simply being a complete waste of tax dollars, that would be the project. I'm not condemning NASA by any means other than NASA administrators should have fired the management teams of that project a long, long time ago and been very blunt to Congress about why that was done along with recommendations to kill the project back elsewhen. It still isn't too late.
For the price of the JWST in the current fiscal year budget, I bet we could get a couple space-based telescopes built that would end up doing far more actual science and could be routinely replaced. This would be especially true if they would make building those telescopes a part of the Centennial Challenge program and just hold a billion dollars or so out for any team that would put up a telescope that would meet or exceed the claimed properties of the JWST. I'm just calling everything spent so far on that monstrosity as sunk costs and written off completely.
I mean, if we can ask NASA to land a robotic truck on mars with like $14 and a pack of chewing gum, I think the DoD should be able to get its projects done the same way, with no actual deadlines and 1,000x's the budget.
Considering that the Mars Curiosity Rover cost American taxpayers about 2 and a half billion dollars, I would say that must be one very expensive pack of chewing gum.
What Curiosity is going to do with $14 on the surface of Mars is something else I'd like to figure out as well. Real estate development? Testing new currency for the Bureau of Printing and Engraving?
My point in bringing up the Linux Kernel is that some contributions to the kernel are strictly GPL'd, yet software using Linux must by necessity access functions in the kernel to perform basic tasks normally assigned to an operating system. As such they are linking to those functions and technically in violation of the GPL.
Most kernel functions are LGPL'd, so it isn't that big of a deal most of the time. For those that aren't, it becomes something of non-enforcement of the LGPL.
Richard Stallman matters so far as he helped to author the LGPL and is active in the "or later version" drafts of both the GPL and LGPL.
For people who are being lazy with the GPL, often the best course of action is just to insist that they get back up to 100%.
I've had people do that to me in various locations where I've worked with open source content and it has helped. It does become a bit of an educational process, particularly compared to what happens in private business where the level of integrity is close to 0% and stuff like licenses or even concern about copyright is something that is left for the lawyers to figure out how to resolve including purchasing licenses when necessary to make things legal.
When it comes to the GPL, it shocks lawyers because they suddenly find a licensing issue that money can't gloss over and fix. Their usual reaction in a commercial software situation is to stay away from GPL'd software as a contagious disease that should never be let into the company.
What I also see here is that the folks who were upset didn't even let a reasonable amount of time pass to resolve this issue. If you are out of compliance with something like the GPL, it takes more than a few minutes to get back into compliance. That doesn't mean you should take a year or more to resolve the situation, and perhaps temporarily taking down your software that is out of compliance may be a reasonable solution until you get back into compliance, but getting your panties into a bunch when action isn't immediately taken is also unreasonable.
GPL is about the rights of the user, not of the developer.
No, the GPL is about the rights of somebody trying to distribute software. It is a distribution license, not an EULA. What an individual user can actually do with GPL'd software is not even covered at all, including reverse engineering, modifications, or how it is used if even as placemats for dinner.
The only thing the GPL covers is what happens if you want to give a copy of the software covered under the GPL to somebody else. Normally most companies simply say you can't redistribute the software and that is the end of it. The GPL instead spells out specific conditions that must be met if you engage in that practice.
Then again, you can opt instead for something like the CC0 license. If that had been done, this whole mess wouldn't even be remotely a problem. I've offered some of my software under this license when I thought it was appropriate.
The point of the LGPL is to explicitly clean up the legal mess about plug-ins, suggesting that software which isn't GPL'd can explicitly use those plug-ins and "libraries" which are licensed under the LGPL. Permission is explicitly granted for this kind of use.
If you instead use the GPL instead of the LGPL, that sort of forces software which uses those libraries to also be GPL'd. MySQL used this sort of licensing scheme as a way to force you to use their alternative (and very proprietary) license for commercial products for a fee. You could use MySQL for non-commercial products or for things that used the GPL license as much as you wanted, but as soon as you used their software for products not using the GPL license (like a proprietary licensed product or something made by Microsoft... to give an example) you needed to purchase a separate license that even needed annual renewing.
That is an interesting business model that sort of takes advantage of the GPL, allows for some independent development using a certain set of libraries, but does traditional software licensing when it is needed.
As for the Linux kernel, that is a huge grey area. Linus Torvald may say it is OK to use ordinary proprietary licensed software on Linux, but Richard Stallman may beg to differ. Some parts of the kernel are LGPL'd, so it isn't a problem at all, but not all of it is that way. The LGPL and the GPL have some other subtle differences that can make a huge impact in situations like this.
These are people who think "fair use" means "I can do any damn thing I want with copyrighted content as long as I don't charge money for it".
I agree that sometimes folks need to just read the license.
I think you've missed the point. This is the license which covers the software which was allegedly stolen. There cannot be a GPL violation where there is no GPL software.
No, you've missed the point. If the works are derivatives of GPL works then they must be GPL'd themselves. FTFL, "YOU are granted the usage of Raspbmc under the conditions set within this license".
This particular license for Raspbmc is attempting to rewrite the terms and conditions of the GPL for at least their extensions. After a fashion that may be reasonable, but the problem is that they are redistributing that software including GPL'd software using that mixed license software. In effect it terminates the distribution rights for Raspbmc in terms of any GPL'd software.
The work-around is to make everything available under the GPL and be done with it, or stop distribution.
This whole thing seems to be incredibly laughable as it looks like a bunch of guys who don't take license seriously until they get their noses out of joint, and are just now trying to play catch up but slamming each other in the process.
It's much simpler than that.
Americans have this odd tendency to confuse Denmark and the Netherlands, for whatever reason. Happens all the time.
That is an over generalization I have never even heard about. That there are Americans who are clueless about geography that would confuse Austria and Australia as being the same country perhaps, or think that Ghana is one of the "low countries of Europe". Then again I've met Europeans who think Los Angeles is an hour drive from New York City.
Microsoft changes their terms of service, no doubt. But the terms of service that you agree to when you click on the "I agree" button are what you have agreed to and can't change if you go into litigation. If you update the software often there will be a new contract which you much "agree" to in order to install the software update, but that is also when the terms change. So no, Microsoft doesn't just change the terms arbitrarily.... you know when they change and you must agree to those changes first. That few people ever bother to read what those changes actually are is a travesty, but the opportunity to read those changes to the terms is always presented including the ability to reject such changes.
What this clause says essentially is that the terms of the agreement can change at any time at their discretion with no limit. That means the terms can be anything they want and those terms can even change (in theory) even in the middle of a trial and certainly the day before they decide to shut down anybody else using their software. It is such an open ended clause that it might as well simply say "All rights reserved" and be done with it.
Actually "all rights reserved" would be a much more honest approach to a license of this nature. At least you would understand that any duplication of content under such a license gives you absolutely no rights for redistribution.
The "evil" part of what Microsoft throws into their EULA is that they feel they can go beyond controlling redistribution and immunity from indemnification if their software causes problems with your computer and moves into attempts to control what you can and can't do with their software as an end-user... moving beyond copyright law to pure contract law. The GPL, on the other hand, demands no contract but it does give terms and conditions for how you may be permitted to perform redistribution.
This particular license for the boot loader goes well beyond even controlling redistribution but also can be used to control how the end user even operates their computer and other practices that make the Microsoft EULA seem tame in comparison. It doesn't matter if it isn't being used in this fashion, just that it could be done that way. No matter what way you cut it, this particular boot loader license is no by any stretch of the imagination an open source license and it should never be seen as one either. It is also poorly worded in a number of ways that I don't think would hold up in court, but then that would simply throw out the license altogether and turn it into a pure copyright situation.
In other words, all the author needed to say was simply "All Rights Reserved". I wonder why this author decided to get fancy?
The group is based out of Copenhagen, although there might be some participants and volunteers involved with Copenhagen Suborbital that may be from the Netherlands. That is the only thing I can think of. There certainly is a pretty large group of volunteers working on this rocket, and they are willing to take on additional volunteers if you have something legitimate to contribute or can fill in a skill gap they may have.
That is just an evil license agreement... something even Microsoft doesn't try to insert into their licenses. In other words they can change the terms at anytime to any other terms for any other reason and it can mean whatever they want it to mean when the time comes.
I don't know how that would hold up under an actual legal challenge, but it seems real slimy. Yes, I know the GPL does have the ability to use the "or later version" option, but that is an optional license upgrade that any end users or redistributor can apply or you can stick with the original terms and conditions. Not everybody trusts the Free Software Foundation and sometimes deliberately leaves that clause out of the license.
This sounds like somebody begging to have this software reimplemented in a clean room environment and released under a proper software licensing agreement... like the GPL.
I'd like to point out that Copenhagen Suborbital seems to be on the cutting edge of inexpensive spaceflight. While it seems like there are a whole bunch of people who are making capsules, those tend to be major national governments like the United States, Russia, India, or China. That this group of modern day Vikings are able to carry on the tradition of their ancestors in space seems to be icing on the cake.
The amazing thing here isn't that this is necessarily novel or the first time people have gone into space, but that a private group using essentially just donations and money most people would put into a hobby can be able to pull this off. Some of those involved are retired NASA engineers or Danish military who have the technical expertise to pull this off along with the ability to collectively put in thousands of hours of volunteer time into the project as well as a few bucks on the side to help get tools and things they need to build everything.
Frankly the $10k that they are seeking for a donation is a drop in the bucket for most spacecraft and really represents just the raw materials needed to build the spacecraft.
In terms of charter schools, most do not charge tuition or fees of any kind, or at least are just like public schools in terms of costs. If anything, most of them operate on a per pupil basis with considerably less money than the public schools and don't have access to some kinds of tax revenues such as the ability to levy local property taxes (although they may get some state funds that may include a statewide levy and other educational funds). That they can get higher scores with less money should speak volumes about what the public schools are doing.
On the other hand, most charter schools don't have to take in the troubled children or those with serious handicaps or disabilities. If a student is disruptive, has students who don't want to abide by a dress code, or sass off to their teachers, the charter school doesn't have to keep them. Public schools can't be quite so choosy in those situations and need to do more to work with these kind of students. There are very few charter schools that I've ever even heard about which work explicitly with students having "special education needs".
What I especially like about charter schools, as a parent, is that the administration is much closer to the student and much more responsive to legitimate requests by parents. If I am having a problem with an instructor that doesn't seem to get resolved or simply need to address a bullying problem one of my children is encountering, the public schools seem to make it into a bureaucratic mess that rarely gets resolved. It seems to be taken care of immediately in a charter school... assuming it is ever a problem at all.
In fairness, NASA is subsidizing the R&D of at least a part of the cost of these rockets through various programs.
The big difference here is that NASA has sort of a philosophy with these programs that once the industry is up and going, where there are plenty of competitors who can build rockets delivering supplies and passengers into orbit, that there will be plenty of other customers who will take advantage of these services and that these private companies will be able to offer services or products just like Dell Computer can offer their equipment and services to government agencies (which they can and do).
There are many in Congress who are justifiably very skeptical of this concept, some who are so skeptical that they are seeking to kill these development programs as well. There are also many members of congress who simply are clueless about economics in general and don't understand what is going on either... along with many of their constituents.
One of the problems here is that NASA had 30 years to get an alternative to the Space Shuttle built. In spite of dozens of efforts to get that accomplished using a traditional government procurement contract, NASA has had one failure after another over the years and can't seem to get the job done. Even the latest effort, the SLS program (affectionately called the "Senate Launch System" due to its engineering taking place in the upper house of the United States Congress and enacted as a matter of law) seems destined to utter failure. I would dare say hundreds of billions of dollars have been dumped down a rat hole of constant failure, and what I don't understand is why they expect any different results? If it was just one program that failed, I could understand, but we are talking dozens of different programs that have tried and been dumped over the years.
This is something a bit different as a result. NASA really needs to get cargo and crew into orbit, and would rather not be relying 100% on the Russians to get the job done. That the Soyuz may still be used in the future and that American astronauts may still be training in Star City for future missions is something I think is still useful, but it shouldn't be the only game in town.
It is also useful to note that before SpaceX got into the game, 90%+ of all commercial spaceflight payloads were going to other countries, pretty much split evenly between Roskosmos (Russia) and Arianespace (European Union... well mostly), although China and India did snag up more than a few launches of their own. A few other companies were in the game (like SeaLaunch... a joint partnership between Boeing and RKK Energia... the Russian company who makes the Soyuz spacecraft too). Basically the American launcher companies had priced themselves completely out of the market, where the only people using these American launchers was the U.S. government... usually for things that simply needed an American rocket and they were willing to pay any price to see that it happened that way.
This said, private efforts for spaceflight that are not being subsidized at all are happening in America, and if anything I'd say that America is where the big changes in how things are happening in space is taking place. While I can name a small handful of private commercial spaceflight efforts in other countries (like Copenhagen Suborbital, ARCA, and Excalibur Almaz), the real development is happening in America with a couple dozen companies who have actual hardware they are working on and new companies popping up as fast as older companies seem to go under. It really is extremely exciting to see all of the activity that is taking place and so much is happening with private commercial spaceflight that no single person can really keep track of what is going on now.
SpaceX certainly is not the only company doing stuff in space right now.