Quote: (from Wired Article) "In defending the Pirate Act, Hatch said the operators of P2P networks are running a conspiracy in which they lure children and young people with free music, movies and pornography."
Uhm, how *exactly* is running a P2P network a "conspiracy"?? You could argue that people who run IRC networks are conspirators. Same with running FTP servers. I mean, yes, there is alot of porn on KaZaa, and free music, and movies, but I fail to see how they can label the intent of p2p networks to "lure children and young people" as some kind of "conspiracy"...
I mean, wouldn't it be more like young people usually don't have jobs, and therefore are more prone to downloading music online for free? And more or less, most teens are horney bastards, who, uhm, are going to look at porn? Not that I support the distribution of child pornography; not at all, but the whole labeling of it being a "conspiracy" really irks me. And yes, I do know that 90% of material traded on p2p networks is copyrighted material.
Quote: "If the draft becomes law, anyone sharing 2,500 or more pieces of content, such as songs or movies, could be fined or thrown in jail. In addition, anyone who distributes content that hasn't been released in wide distribution (for example, pre-release copies of an upcoming movie) also would face the penalties. Even a single file, determined by a judge to be worth more than $10,000, would land the file sharer in prison."
Ouch. Although I understand that people do need to be reimbursed for their creative works, we do really need to redo our whole copyright system. And methinks that, as far as the Internet and content published on the Internet goes, we really should start pushing for more content put online to be published under the Creative Commons license (http://creativecommons.org/), which I think is much more in harmony with the spirit of the Internet than is old standard copyright.
Not that I'm saying people shouldn't be able to run online businesses, just that the spirit of the Internet, and computing in general was to share and promote ideas with people.. and uhm, current copyright laws don't exactly work to well with those ideals.
I thought the USA was called "The Land of Opportunity" for a reason.. the only thing America really gave for people world-wide was a chance to pursue their dreams (and learn how to not spell or use proper grammer and punctuation, as this post clearly indicates) and thus, is how we became so "great" in a way...
now, however, since it seems that there is more opportunity else where (in India, and as regards all this legislation on our freedoms of speech, etc..), we're not so much of a land of opportunity now as we once were...
and, uhm, the part about freedom and liberty and how America "invented" all that bit: Go look up info on "Second Treatiese on Goverment" and info on John Locke, the history of the Greeks and Romans, the Magna Carta, Petition of Right, William Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England", Baron de Montesquieu's "The Spirit of the Laws", Jean Jacques Rousseau's "Social Contract", as well as many personal influences of the original Framers of the Constitution...
America didn't, for the most part (you must also make allowance for the ideals and experience of the Framers), invent all these ideas of personal freedoms and liberties, limited goverment, etc... it was just the first nation on earth to incorporate and keep these ideas in mind while building a nation.
Really, if you take a look back on American History, America just kinda wound up as a nation by luck, and by million's of peoples want of a chance; an oppurtunity: from the Asians who came to the Americas to find food, to the Europeans (British, French, Dutch, etc) to build their own colonies for profit, to great minds coming over to America during WW1 and WW2, on down throughout history, America and Americans were always willing to explore new ideas, seek out oppurtunities to let those ideas florish, and to try and make a decent living out of them. (Yes, its not perfect.) The American Cowboy wasn't the real hero of American history: It was at first the Lawyers & Farmers, then later on the Buisnessmen. (I think in our day, we should be making the hero's the scientists - before we loose out on anything else)
There is a book I've read that argues that the only reason the American economy is so strong today was because America and Americans were so open to ideas, and so rapid and able at adapting to change.. any other nations that couldn't adapt to change fell out.. to some extent, you could also argue thats the reason for the fallout of our economy today.
Anyways, I'm in American Goverment this semester, so tis why I could pull up all those names so quickly. You should probably do some reading up on the early days of American History and how we were just kinda created out of luck in the grand scheme of things...
Well, as I recall; were not the angels in the bible during the flood of Noah's day ones who rebelled against God and were later banished from heaven?
(The whole story about angels coming down out of heaven to have sex with the daughters of the earth, and later producing so called super human beings, or "Nephilim")
(See Genesis 6:1-6 and then the result at Revelation 12:3,4 where it states that Satan was dragging a 3rd of the stars from heaven... later in that same chapter verses 7-11 states that they had been banished to the earth..)
Anyways, so it would seem to me, anyway, if you really believe in the bible, that they would, in fact, be capable of free will.
but does not string theory also allow for estimations or explinations of phenomenon that have not been observed yet?
If these guesses are proved true, then won't that support the theory?
Basically, I'm basing my statement on the last part of the PBS show "The Elegant Universe" in which Greene states that when CERN starts up, they predict that when they do research they will be looking for "sparticles" and, if these are found, then they give evidence to support string theory.
Again, I'm probably wrong, and I've love to have someone correct my understanding on this.
just save the damned thing because we've got plenty of science projects already waiting; have invested already in the repairs; and in the meantime, be working on putting some type of telescope on the moon?
the editors let in these kind of story submissions just because its a slow news day and watching us all get riled up and keeping ourselves on our toes checking up facts entertains them?
Mostly offtopic, but I just had to hash out this idea anyway..
A few days back while in goverment class I couldn't help but think that we will *NEVER* have another President Kennedy ever in office again. Never. Nor will the consenus of Americans ever again unite to support the space program ever, especially with the state of the economy and with the goverment obsessed with war...
So I got to thinking: who can we manipulate that is in the most prime position to gain public appeal by funding/supporting/actively (realistically, as we all know there is no way in hell Congress would ever, ever, ever again fund a massive space program) campaigning for America's role in space?
The answer I could think of was: Bill Gates | Steve Ballamer.
Or anyone else who is that geeky and rich.
I mean, c'mon, think about it: One of these days Bill is going to go into retirement eventually, and he really doesn't need all those billions.. so why not persuade him to dump some funds into NASA or research into an objective mission to Mars? After he's done spending billions on stopping AIDS (note: the only real way you're going to stop AIDS is by not having sex before marriage) and the like, maybe the collective slashdot crowd could petition our arch-enemy to become the poster boy for space?
At least he could score some public points by trying to turn himself into a "good guy" image by doing this.
If you guys seriously want to do something from the comfort of your computer, you can:
Sign the Save the Hubble Petition (which is probably useless by now):
http://www.savethehubble.org/petition.jsp
or all of us (including/.ers outside of the US) go to: http://www.moontomars.org/notices/contact.asp and spam the hell out of the website and request that NASA for once get a goal of getting a moon-based observatory up there!(or any other ideas you may have)
It might not do much (I wonder if they really do read the write ins), but maybe if they get a significant amount of requests in, they might pay attention more.
Or you can do it the proper way and write your Congress-critter.
yea, I got the same thing from a friend around tuesday night..
don't know if the following virus I got was related to the AIM thing about Osama, but at the time I wasn't running AV software, and I did notice that I had been the victim of some worm that apparantly was using my computer for a DoS attack (netstat was returning some SYN_SENT from me to some random address every second or so)...
the story ends with me updating my virus definitions (been awhile since I had) and cleaned it out. I'm running a win2k machine, so don't know if the same might've happened to you... anyone else scan their system and get anything similar?
yes, it has major flaws, and it probably has no legitimate value, but i sent it in anyway (i actually ran over the 6000 character word limit, so I had to delete alot of it. Stole alot of ideas from what I had read here on slashdot, and added a few of my own viewpoints.
here's what I sent in:
___________________________________________
To Whom It May Concern,
First off, I must state that I am pleased that there is a website now available to the public that allows the whole community to comment and suggest ideas on the space program; this has been needed for awhile.
In a depressed economy, including a national deficit that is sure to rise tremendously in the next few years, I agree that looking for proper funding and public support of space will be no easy task. But at the same time, the people that continue looking forward, even through hard times, are the ones that stay afloat. Otherwise, we all might still be living in jungles, still searching for ways to better our societies.
It is with these thoughts in mind that I would like to list the following plans and goals I feel NASA should work hard at:
First, *SCRAP THE SHUTTLE.* The Space Shuttle technology is ages old, and has been badly needing a replacement. I would admonish NASA to instead build a replacement, and even consider different methodologies for future undertakings in space. For instance, Why not instead of putting everything on one rocket, launch payload cargo and humans in separate vehicles? If we are going to dedicate ourselves to returning to the Moon and to Mars, we are going to need to re-evaluate, and maybe return, to some other/other designs for space vehicles, or create the ones needed.
Secondly, *SCRAP THE ISS.* The International Space Station isn't doing much in the way of any major important science. Rather, as someone put it, it's more of a welfare program for scientists. If we cannot find enough reasons to scrap the ISS, at least limit its size and operating costs, if not decrease them some way. Each day it costs us millions to maintain it, and overall, it is not totally beneficial for the moment.
*A MOON BASE IS NOT NECESSARILY NEEDED. PUT TELESCOPES INSTEAD ON THE MOON.* At least, not in the whole extended stay concept. Perhaps if one day the commercial industry wanted to open a lunar hotel with the funds going into the space program, then yes, a moon base could be built; but for the most part, the cost of putting humans in space and providing for those humans to live in space is tremendous. Instead, especially with the controversy with the Hubble Space Telescope going down, why not put telescopes on the moon? Doing so eliminates some of the problems with viewing the heavens through earth's atmosphere. These telescopes (perhaps with a *small* facility for those astronauts that go to the moon to service them), would have the best seat in the universe, so to speak, of the heavens. The energy needed to run them could be gained from solar panels planted on parts of the moon receiving constant light, or from the vast amounts of helium-3 that litter the lunar surface. By doing this, we provide for good science that is worth being funded. There is also talk of even mining the moon for helium-3, so perhaps once we have built telescopes on the moon, we could look for ways to earn back some of that money by mining the moon.
*IF WE GO TO MARS, WE NEED A WAY TO BUILD 'EM IN SPACE.* If we do want to go to Mars, it is much, much, much more cheaper to just launch the materials into space and then assemble the materials into a proper craft headed to Mars. Doing so also eliminates most of the energy needed to get out of the earth's atmosphere. Launching from the lunar surface is ineffective because again, you are launching against the moon's gravity. There has been talk of building a shipyard/space-station facility at one of the Lagrange points (the point in space between the earth and the moon where the pull of gravity between both equalizes, and the object between them remains s
Slightly off topic, but agreed; maybe we should consider an admendment to the Constitution to balance the frickin' budget... (?)
On the moon base thing: I'd much rather have a moon "observatory" (put a telescope up there, best view ever!) as a base would prolly cost too much to have to ferret up supplies; I can't remember where on slashdot but someone stated that the cost of pushing stuff up and down on the moon is ineffective (if you're thinking about using a moon base later on to build and blast off stuff to Mars; which, would inevitably be the main point of a base I would assume).
If I were running NASA, I'd just like to see (1) the James Webb Telescope put up in space (and while the idea of selling Hubble to a University or to another country is a totally great idea, I doubt the Govt would go for it), (2) the Shuttle retired to the museums and a major revamp [I'm thinking seperate vehicles for people and cargo] of the way we travel into space - different shuttle, whatever, and (3) figure out ways to do something useful with the ISS - if not then reduce its size and cost, and start working on ways to put permanent stuff further out in space (like a moon base;) and eventually, research for a Mars mission.
Those things should really be NASA's main goals for the next few years; with the a man on Mars mission as the total overall goal. Call it something fancy like "The 20 Year Project" and then find some way to get Congress to fund it (or do some kind of fundraising outside of Congress to get it done).
[Note: Didn't NASA have something like that a few years back with an outline of its supposed goals for the next decade or so in 1999? Anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?]
"It may turn out that the only viable planet to really colonize is Venus, then, it becomes a question of, what do we do with 10^20 tons of carbon dioxide!"
I've read (in a book anyway somewhere, forget where) of what it would take to terraform Venus (though Mars would be much more easier). Something along the lines of dumping a ton of algea or some other organism that would live off of the CO2... or maybe we could just harvest the CO2?
Would the Feds allow a private company to (if someone ever raised enough capital for it; highly impossible) to go on producing its own space programs; like going forth to put a moonbase? Or does the goverment have restrictions on stuff like that?
If this were so, I'd be pleading with Steve Ballmer to buy out NASA (kinda like what parent said) and put some real life into the beast...
(sorry for double submit, forgot to change to Plain Old Text)
Why can't we (at least on Windows):
Get on the "Welcome to Windows" (the thing that often runs first when you very *first* boot up the system) to:
* enable maintenence wizard by default and have it run while the computer is idle, and *inform* the user that there are certain things that must be done to ensure the "health" of a computer?
* get a *better* version of the maintenance wizard? one that oh, i dunno, includes something like a defrag, scandisk, lavasoft's ad-aware, and some sort of basic virus-scanner? (if only that were ever possible) and then inform the user with some kind of popup or message to remember to leave the computer on from time to time to do defrag, maintenance and all that?
In my local school district, almost all regular admin duties (the gradebook, taking roll, etc) is done on computer (of course, if the system goes down, regular paper books are also used as backup), and I've noticed that at least for our systems (which use w2k), every time the computer has been idle for around 20 min or so, maintenence comes on and scans the computer. Why can't we have that on regular Windows systems?
* get a "basic" firewall enabled by *default* with a tab on the lower right (near the clock) in the system tray running, just like zonelabs's zonealarm?
* have outlook not auto launch files? (this, of course, should've been implemented *way* earlier)
I suspect that most of these problems with spyware (gator, all that) could be softened with at least these changes in effect. If only the focus was, instead of building more fisher price looking OSes, figuring out ways to make computer systems more bulletproof for the users against the outside world and against themselves (which seems to be addressed by MS via Pallidium, and was halfway addressed with all those "rollback" software packages).
Why can't we (at least on Windows):
Get on the "Welcome to Windows" (the thing that often runs first when you very *first* boot up the system) to:
* enable maintenence wizard by default and have it run while the computer is idle, and *inform* the user that there are certain things that must be done to ensure the "health" of a computer?
* get a *better* version of the maintenance wizard? one that oh, i dunno, includes something like a defrag, scandisk, lavasoft's ad-aware, and some sort of basic virus-scanner? (if only that were ever possible) and then inform the user with some kind of popup or message to remember to leave the computer on from time to time to do defrag, maintenance and all that?
In my local school district, almost all regular admin duties (the gradebook, taking roll, etc) is done on computer (of course, if the system goes down, regular paper books are also used as backup), and I've noticed that at least for our systems (which use w2k), every time the computer has been idle for around 20 min or so, maintenence comes on and scans the computer. Why can't we have that on regular Windows systems?
* get a "basic" firewall enabled by *default* with a tab on the lower right (near the clock) in the system tray running, just like zonelabs's zonealarm?
* have outlook not auto launch files? (this, of course, should've been implemented *way* earlier)
I suspect that most of these problems with spyware (gator, all that) could be softened with at least these changes in effect. If only the focus was, instead of building more fisher price looking OSes, figuring out ways to make computer systems more bulletproof for the users against the outside world and against themselves (which seems to be addressed by MS via Pallidium, and was halfway addressed with all those "rollback" software packages).
What would *YOU* do you save NASA if *YOU* were in charge?
(Minus the fact that we need a cheaper way to get in space, since fuel is really the limiting factor?)
It would seem to be that the ISS is nothing more than a dead end project, so here is what I would do: (don't know if it'd be that great of a deal, and would prolly never make it past congress, but hey, this is slashdot, and I'm allowed the right to dream...)
* Get rid of ISS, or at least make it much smaller, and try and return the focus to research. * Build a station at one of the Lagrange Points (again, minus the whole fuel issue) for building ships in space (instead of the moon, where, as I understand it, the cost of launching rockets off of the moon is actually much more than just building units in zero gravity and firin' 'em up) and focus on using ion engines, with focus on Mars and such * Build a small moonbase with focus on an observartory, and maybe for some kind of mining use (maybe use it to haul raw materials to one of the stations in L point?) * MARS! MARS! MARS! * Focus again more on the tech, instead of the problems with beaucracy...
Thats just my take on it; what would you guys do if you were in charge of NASA? (again, minus all the huge $$$ involved in maintaining such a tremendous fleet)
Slashdot Mirror
Quote: (from Wired Article)
"In defending the Pirate Act, Hatch said the operators of P2P networks are running a conspiracy in which they lure children and young people with free music, movies and pornography."
Uhm, how *exactly* is running a P2P network a "conspiracy"?? You could argue that people who run IRC networks are conspirators. Same with running FTP servers. I mean, yes, there is alot of porn on KaZaa, and free music, and movies, but I fail to see how they can label the intent of p2p networks to "lure children and young people" as some kind of "conspiracy"...
I mean, wouldn't it be more like young people usually don't have jobs, and therefore are more prone to downloading music online for free? And more or less, most teens are horney bastards, who, uhm, are going to look at porn? Not that I support the distribution of child pornography; not at all, but the whole labeling of it being a "conspiracy" really irks me. And yes, I do know that 90% of material traded on p2p networks is copyrighted material.
Quote:
"If the draft becomes law, anyone sharing 2,500 or more pieces of content, such as songs or movies, could be fined or thrown in jail. In addition, anyone who distributes content that hasn't been released in wide distribution (for example, pre-release copies of an upcoming movie) also would face the penalties. Even a single file, determined by a judge to be worth more than $10,000, would land the file sharer in prison."
Ouch. Although I understand that people do need to be reimbursed for their creative works, we do really need to redo our whole copyright system. And methinks that, as far as the Internet and content published on the Internet goes, we really should start pushing for more content put online to be published under the Creative Commons license (http://creativecommons.org/), which I think is much more in harmony with the spirit of the Internet than is old standard copyright.
Not that I'm saying people shouldn't be able to run online businesses, just that the spirit of the Internet, and computing in general was to share and promote ideas with people.. and uhm, current copyright laws don't exactly work to well with those ideals.
yes, troll, but anyways...
I thought the USA was called "The Land of Opportunity" for a reason.. the only thing America really gave for people world-wide was a chance to pursue their dreams (and learn how to not spell or use proper grammer and punctuation, as this post clearly indicates) and thus, is how we became so "great" in a way...
now, however, since it seems that there is more opportunity else where (in India, and as regards all this legislation on our freedoms of speech, etc..), we're not so much of a land of opportunity now as we once were...
and, uhm, the part about freedom and liberty and how America "invented" all that bit: Go look up info on "Second Treatiese on Goverment" and info on John Locke, the history of the Greeks and Romans, the Magna Carta, Petition of Right, William Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England", Baron de Montesquieu's "The Spirit of the Laws", Jean Jacques Rousseau's "Social Contract", as well as many personal influences of the original Framers of the Constitution...
America didn't, for the most part (you must also make allowance for the ideals and experience of the Framers), invent all these ideas of personal freedoms and liberties, limited goverment, etc... it was just the first nation on earth to incorporate and keep these ideas in mind while building a nation.
Really, if you take a look back on American History, America just kinda wound up as a nation by luck, and by million's of peoples want of a chance; an oppurtunity: from the Asians who came to the Americas to find food, to the Europeans (British, French, Dutch, etc) to build their own colonies for profit, to great minds coming over to America during WW1 and WW2, on down throughout history, America and Americans were always willing to explore new ideas, seek out oppurtunities to let those ideas florish, and to try and make a decent living out of them. (Yes, its not perfect.) The American Cowboy wasn't the real hero of American history: It was at first the Lawyers & Farmers, then later on the Buisnessmen. (I think in our day, we should be making the hero's the scientists - before we loose out on anything else)
There is a book I've read that argues that the only reason the American economy is so strong today was because America and Americans were so open to ideas, and so rapid and able at adapting to change.. any other nations that couldn't adapt to change fell out.. to some extent, you could also argue thats the reason for the fallout of our economy today.
Anyways, I'm in American Goverment this semester, so tis why I could pull up all those names so quickly. You should probably do some reading up on the early days of American History and how we were just kinda created out of luck in the grand scheme of things...
Well, as I recall; were not the angels in the bible during the flood of Noah's day ones who rebelled against God and were later banished from heaven?
(The whole story about angels coming down out of heaven to have sex with the daughters of the earth, and later producing so called super human beings, or "Nephilim")
(See Genesis 6:1-6 and then the result at Revelation 12:3,4 where it states that Satan was dragging a 3rd of the stars from heaven... later in that same chapter verses 7-11 states that they had been banished to the earth..)
Anyways, so it would seem to me, anyway, if you really believe in the bible, that they would, in fact, be capable of free will.
Please correct me if I am wrong...
but does not string theory also allow for estimations or explinations of phenomenon that have not been observed yet?
If these guesses are proved true, then won't that support the theory?
Basically, I'm basing my statement on the last part of the PBS show "The Elegant Universe" in which Greene states that when CERN starts up, they predict that when they do research they will be looking for "sparticles" and, if these are found, then they give evidence to support string theory.
Again, I'm probably wrong, and I've love to have someone correct my understanding on this.
could I just point out small point?
If you believe in God, Angels, all that; wouldn't you, in fact, be admitting that you believe in ET? (extra-terrestrial life)?
Maybe not carbon based like we are; but (if you believe in them) life at any rate; since they are supposedly intelligent beings?
be spending money on putting a telescope on the moon?
just save the damned thing because we've got plenty of science projects already waiting; have invested already in the repairs; and in the meantime, be working on putting some type of telescope on the moon?
The question still remains:
*Has anyone been able to detect it?*
Because I sure can't...
the editors let in these kind of story submissions just because its a slow news day and watching us all get riled up and keeping ourselves on our toes checking up facts entertains them?
can't say that I'd blame him for suggesting such a thing :-P
"This is a world where eradication of the enemy is seen for what it is: a symptom of the problem, not a solution." - www.thematrix101.com
And also (though not as clear)
o og le&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
http://www.google.com/quality_form?q=help+out+g
although the above link is much better...
use it as much as you can if you really care about google.
Mostly offtopic, but I just had to hash out this idea anyway..
A few days back while in goverment class I couldn't help but think that we will *NEVER* have another President Kennedy ever in office again. Never. Nor will the consenus of Americans ever again unite to support the space program ever, especially with the state of the economy and with the goverment obsessed with war...
So I got to thinking: who can we manipulate that is in the most prime position to gain public appeal by funding/supporting/actively (realistically, as we all know there is no way in hell Congress would ever, ever, ever again fund a massive space program) campaigning for America's role in space?
The answer I could think of was: Bill Gates | Steve Ballamer.
Or anyone else who is that geeky and rich.
I mean, c'mon, think about it: One of these days Bill is going to go into retirement eventually, and he really doesn't need all those billions.. so why not persuade him to dump some funds into NASA or research into an objective mission to Mars? After he's done spending billions on stopping AIDS (note: the only real way you're going to stop AIDS is by not having sex before marriage) and the like, maybe the collective slashdot crowd could petition our arch-enemy to become the poster boy for space?
At least he could score some public points by trying to turn himself into a "good guy" image by doing this.
Eh? Eh?
If you guys seriously want to do something from the comfort of your computer, you can:
/.ers outside of the US) go to: http://www.moontomars.org/notices/contact.asp and spam the hell out of the website and request that NASA for once get a goal of getting a moon-based observatory up there!(or any other ideas you may have)
Sign the Save the Hubble Petition (which is probably useless by now):
http://www.savethehubble.org/petition.jsp
or all of us (including
It might not do much (I wonder if they really do read the write ins), but maybe if they get a significant amount of requests in, they might pay attention more.
Or you can do it the proper way and write your Congress-critter.
yea, I got the same thing from a friend around tuesday night..
don't know if the following virus I got was related to the AIM thing about Osama, but at the time I wasn't running AV software, and I did notice that I had been the victim of some worm that apparantly was using my computer for a DoS attack (netstat was returning some SYN_SENT from me to some random address every second or so)...
the story ends with me updating my virus definitions (been awhile since I had) and cleaned it out. I'm running a win2k machine, so don't know if the same might've happened to you... anyone else scan their system and get anything similar?
yes, it has major flaws, and it probably has no legitimate value, but i sent it in anyway (i actually ran over the 6000 character word limit, so I had to delete alot of it. Stole alot of ideas from what I had read here on slashdot, and added a few of my own viewpoints.
here's what I sent in:
___________________________________________
To Whom It May Concern,
First off, I must state that I am pleased that there is a website now available to the public that allows the whole community to comment and suggest ideas on the space program; this has been needed for awhile.
In a depressed economy, including a national deficit that is sure to rise tremendously in the next few years, I agree that looking for proper funding and public support of space will be no easy task. But at the same time, the people that continue looking forward, even through hard times, are the ones that stay afloat. Otherwise, we all might still be living in jungles, still searching for ways to better our societies.
It is with these thoughts in mind that I would like to list the following plans and goals I feel NASA should work hard at:
First, *SCRAP THE SHUTTLE.* The Space Shuttle technology is ages old, and has been badly needing a replacement. I would admonish NASA to instead build a replacement, and even consider different methodologies for future undertakings in space. For instance, Why not instead of putting everything on one rocket, launch payload cargo and humans in separate vehicles? If we are going to dedicate ourselves to returning to the Moon and to Mars, we are going to need to re-evaluate, and maybe return, to some other/other designs for space vehicles, or create the ones needed.
Secondly, *SCRAP THE ISS.* The International Space Station isn't doing much in the way of any major important science. Rather, as someone put it, it's more of a welfare program for scientists. If we cannot find enough reasons to scrap the ISS, at least limit its size and operating costs, if not decrease them some way. Each day it costs us millions to maintain it, and overall, it is not totally beneficial for the moment.
*A MOON BASE IS NOT NECESSARILY NEEDED. PUT TELESCOPES INSTEAD ON THE MOON.* At least, not in the whole extended stay concept. Perhaps if one day the commercial industry wanted to open a lunar hotel with the funds going into the space program, then yes, a moon base could be built; but for the most part, the cost of putting humans in space and providing for those humans to live in space is tremendous. Instead, especially with the controversy with the Hubble Space Telescope going down, why not put telescopes on the moon? Doing so eliminates some of the problems with viewing the heavens through earth's atmosphere. These telescopes (perhaps with a *small* facility for those astronauts that go to the moon to service them), would have the best seat in the universe, so to speak, of the heavens. The energy needed to run them could be gained from solar panels planted on parts of the moon receiving constant light, or from the vast amounts of helium-3 that litter the lunar surface. By doing this, we provide for good science that is worth being funded. There is also talk of even mining the moon for helium-3, so perhaps once we have built telescopes on the moon, we could look for ways to earn back some of that money by mining the moon.
*IF WE GO TO MARS, WE NEED A WAY TO BUILD 'EM IN SPACE.* If we do want to go to Mars, it is much, much, much more cheaper to just launch the materials into space and then assemble the materials into a proper craft headed to Mars. Doing so also eliminates most of the energy needed to get out of the earth's atmosphere. Launching from the lunar surface is ineffective because again, you are launching against the moon's gravity. There has been talk of building a shipyard/space-station facility at one of the Lagrange points (the point in space between the earth and the moon where the pull of gravity between both equalizes, and the object between them remains s
Slightly off topic, but agreed; maybe we should consider an admendment to the Constitution to balance the frickin' budget... (?)
;) and eventually, research for a Mars mission.
On the moon base thing: I'd much rather have a moon "observatory" (put a telescope up there, best view ever!) as a base would prolly cost too much to have to ferret up supplies; I can't remember where on slashdot but someone stated that the cost of pushing stuff up and down on the moon is ineffective (if you're thinking about using a moon base later on to build and blast off stuff to Mars; which, would inevitably be the main point of a base I would assume).
If I were running NASA, I'd just like to see (1) the James Webb Telescope put up in space (and while the idea of selling Hubble to a University or to another country is a totally great idea, I doubt the Govt would go for it), (2) the Shuttle retired to the museums and a major revamp [I'm thinking seperate vehicles for people and cargo] of the way we travel into space - different shuttle, whatever, and (3) figure out ways to do something useful with the ISS - if not then reduce its size and cost, and start working on ways to put permanent stuff further out in space (like a moon base
Those things should really be NASA's main goals for the next few years; with the a man on Mars mission as the total overall goal. Call it something fancy like "The 20 Year Project" and then find some way to get Congress to fund it (or do some kind of fundraising outside of Congress to get it done).
[Note: Didn't NASA have something like that a few years back with an outline of its supposed goals for the next decade or so in 1999? Anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?]
Yes, but do you seriously think (without major shouting from the general public) that the US with it's ego would do such a thing?
Unless someone wants to start a public campagin and get the public to start writing congressmen...
"It may turn out that the only viable planet to really colonize is Venus, then, it becomes a question of, what do we do with 10^20 tons of carbon dioxide!"
I've read (in a book anyway somewhere, forget where) of what it would take to terraform Venus (though Mars would be much more easier). Something along the lines of dumping a ton of algea or some other organism that would live off of the CO2... or maybe we could just harvest the CO2?
Slightly offtopic but:
Would the Feds allow a private company to (if someone ever raised enough capital for it; highly impossible) to go on producing its own space programs; like going forth to put a moonbase? Or does the goverment have restrictions on stuff like that?
If this were so, I'd be pleading with Steve Ballmer to buy out NASA (kinda like what parent said) and put some real life into the beast...
(sorry for double submit, forgot to change to Plain Old Text) Why can't we (at least on Windows): Get on the "Welcome to Windows" (the thing that often runs first when you very *first* boot up the system) to: * enable maintenence wizard by default and have it run while the computer is idle, and *inform* the user that there are certain things that must be done to ensure the "health" of a computer? * get a *better* version of the maintenance wizard? one that oh, i dunno, includes something like a defrag, scandisk, lavasoft's ad-aware, and some sort of basic virus-scanner? (if only that were ever possible) and then inform the user with some kind of popup or message to remember to leave the computer on from time to time to do defrag, maintenance and all that? In my local school district, almost all regular admin duties (the gradebook, taking roll, etc) is done on computer (of course, if the system goes down, regular paper books are also used as backup), and I've noticed that at least for our systems (which use w2k), every time the computer has been idle for around 20 min or so, maintenence comes on and scans the computer. Why can't we have that on regular Windows systems? * get a "basic" firewall enabled by *default* with a tab on the lower right (near the clock) in the system tray running, just like zonelabs's zonealarm? * have outlook not auto launch files? (this, of course, should've been implemented *way* earlier) I suspect that most of these problems with spyware (gator, all that) could be softened with at least these changes in effect. If only the focus was, instead of building more fisher price looking OSes, figuring out ways to make computer systems more bulletproof for the users against the outside world and against themselves (which seems to be addressed by MS via Pallidium, and was halfway addressed with all those "rollback" software packages).
Why can't we (at least on Windows): Get on the "Welcome to Windows" (the thing that often runs first when you very *first* boot up the system) to: * enable maintenence wizard by default and have it run while the computer is idle, and *inform* the user that there are certain things that must be done to ensure the "health" of a computer? * get a *better* version of the maintenance wizard? one that oh, i dunno, includes something like a defrag, scandisk, lavasoft's ad-aware, and some sort of basic virus-scanner? (if only that were ever possible) and then inform the user with some kind of popup or message to remember to leave the computer on from time to time to do defrag, maintenance and all that? In my local school district, almost all regular admin duties (the gradebook, taking roll, etc) is done on computer (of course, if the system goes down, regular paper books are also used as backup), and I've noticed that at least for our systems (which use w2k), every time the computer has been idle for around 20 min or so, maintenence comes on and scans the computer. Why can't we have that on regular Windows systems? * get a "basic" firewall enabled by *default* with a tab on the lower right (near the clock) in the system tray running, just like zonelabs's zonealarm? * have outlook not auto launch files? (this, of course, should've been implemented *way* earlier) I suspect that most of these problems with spyware (gator, all that) could be softened with at least these changes in effect. If only the focus was, instead of building more fisher price looking OSes, figuring out ways to make computer systems more bulletproof for the users against the outside world and against themselves (which seems to be addressed by MS via Pallidium, and was halfway addressed with all those "rollback" software packages).
Amen!
What would *YOU* do you save NASA if *YOU* were in charge?
(Minus the fact that we need a cheaper way to get in space, since fuel is really the limiting factor?)
It would seem to be that the ISS is nothing more than a dead end project, so here is what I would do: (don't know if it'd be that great of a deal, and would prolly never make it past congress, but hey, this is slashdot, and I'm allowed the right to dream...)
* Get rid of ISS, or at least make it much smaller, and try and return the focus to research.
* Build a station at one of the Lagrange Points (again, minus the whole fuel issue) for building ships in space (instead of the moon, where, as I understand it, the cost of launching rockets off of the moon is actually much more than just building units in zero gravity and firin' 'em up) and focus on using ion engines, with focus on Mars and such
* Build a small moonbase with focus on an observartory, and maybe for some kind of mining use (maybe use it to haul raw materials to one of the stations in L point?)
* MARS! MARS! MARS!
* Focus again more on the tech, instead of the problems with beaucracy...
Thats just my take on it; what would you guys do if you were in charge of NASA? (again, minus all the huge $$$ involved in maintaining such a tremendous fleet)
Here here, I agree totally..
(not a troll...)
Now how are we going to get Congress and the rest of the industry to realize this?